A modest wooden ship spear-fronted through floating platforms of shattered ice across the sea that washed the shores of both Land of Frost and Land of Lightning. Since the wooden vessel now worked its way through Land of Frost territory, it had to deal with frigid temperatures but the captain worked his girl like he had done many times before and kept it far away from the shores, where the ice had been fragmented and his little baby could swiftly maneuver around the separate frosted plates.
It was a dangerous trip and, compared to taking a mountain ride on a carriage, it cost an arm and a leg, but it was also faster. The Allied Ninja didn't finance the trip. However, the Stars' new member seemed to have some sway with the seamen. Mana wasn't overly fond of the bitter looks on their faces whenever they sneered at her but she's been stonewalled for almost a year by the public that still wouldn't let go of the supposed crime she's committed in potentially saving the world and preventing a Ninja World War.
"Okay, I'm curious. How did you convince these men to take us all the way around to the Stone Gulf?" Shige-H crossed her arms sitting in the passenger's cabin during lunch. The entire vessel had just a single room for passengers and usually, it was filled with cargo and not people, as evidenced by the lackluster temperature and lack of commodities.
"They're not taking us to the Stone Gulf. That's too much of a hassle. Also, this ship's not fit for that kind of curve and it's not large enough to fit enough supplies for a trip so far from the shore," the blond kunoichi replied while munching on some crackers and giving it some taste with quince slices.
"You know a lot about ships and sea travel," Endo squinted while sipping on his tea. Given how Mana skipped out on an opportunity to eat crackers and quince jam for the entire trip. The only satisfaction she got out of this gloomy voyage was seeing Endo drinking tea by choice. She'd have bet on someone like Endo to take hardcore liquor, but she'd have, apparently, lost that gamble. It wasn't an issue of supply either. The sailors often wobbled as if they've properly boozed themselves up.
The last time Mana brought this up, the newbie rudely shut her down saying that seamen needed a counterbalance for the quake of the waves or else they'd get nauseous or forget themselves and get flipped overboard. If her spiteful look was of any sign–it was as if Mana had accused the rookie herself of juicing up with the devil's drops.
"Gee, it's almost like I come from a country that's essentially just an archipelago of islands floating in the middle of an ocean hundreds of kilometers deep and hundreds of thousands of kilometers wide…" the rookie stabbed at Endo with her cerulean eyes but, given how Endo had no-sold literal stab wounds many times, the focused gaze of a young adult did little to break him.
"You can't get mad at Endo for this. Not when you hardly told us anything about you," Mana noted. It felt vomit-inducing to take Endo's side on something, but it helped to keep her gut secretions down when Endo was right with his observations. "Plus, you being from Kirigakure or any other part of Land of Water doesn't really justify grand knowledge of sailing per se. Plenty of Kirigakure aristocracy never leave their homes in the high-town districts and most Kirigakure ninja don't bother themselves with their own sailing. Konoha ninja, for example, wouldn't know every type of tree there is or which one was best to make a table out of and how to polish it best."
"If I treat you to some tea, will you shut up for a second?" the blonde rolled her eyes. These mixed signals caught Mana's attention. This newbie was snobby and vain and many quite unpleasant things, but the way she spoke to Mana differed from how she dismissed Endo or Shige. It didn't take a grandmaster in social sciences to see that.
"If that will help us move past our first impressions as people who should learn to work together, sure…" Mana sighed. She had to admit, she'd love some tea right about now. Even if she could easily stonewall the temperatures of being at sea in a frozen tundra where every leave onto the deck was met with pelting blizzards or howling rains and cheek-biting frost, even if she could go on without food or water for extended periods of time as a kunoichi with superhuman metabolism, it didn't mean that she wouldn't love a cup of hot, flavorful drink. Even if Mana didn't strictly need it.
"Great, this won't be your high-class Konoha shit, but, hopefully, it'll suit your classy tastes, ma'am…" the rookie squinted her eyes, almost like trying to gouge Mana's out with a mere look. The ninja magician pushed her knuckle under her chin in discomfort as the newbie left to find a sailor to make some tea for Mana at the rookie's expense.
"What exactly is her problem?" Mana mumbled.
"Look, she's got quills. She's in an unfamiliar crew, performing under high-stress situations on an incredibly important and tough mission. Plus, I don't want to play this card, Mana, but… You've got sort of mixed reputation, you know?" Shige-H shrugged before stuffing her mouth full of a cracker with quince jam. "You should eat some of this though. The new girl said that quince is vital to prevent gums from bleeding and teeth from falling out, or something…"
"I'm not a fan of jam. Plus, scurvy won't be a bother for us since we'll only be sailing for a couple of days. Also, I forgot to mention, we can't just stop in Boulder Town. We'll actually need to reach Iwagakure. It'll be highly suspicious if I bring my World Magic Tour to Boulder Town, that's just a mountain ridge away from Iwagakure without visiting Iwa," Mana said.
"True, maybe we can find our guide who knows their way around the mountains near Boulder Town and can help us find the hideout of our nuke organization… Jeez, we've even got no clue how they call themselves or who's on it… This mission's a real nightmare," Shige sighed and hid behind her hands while ramming her forehead onto her grip for support.
"You should mind your elbows, that's lousy manners," Endo scolded Shige with a strict voice, making both young women raise their wary eyebrows and turn to the rowdy swordsman in bafflement. "What? I've trained with one of the God Swords, samurai take their tea drinking rituals very seriously."
"I've sent the hawk to Iwagakure already prior to leaving," Mana broke the ensuing silence first with an observation. "Still, we'll need to hire a caravan to make the arrival of the would-be magic tour seem realistic."
"I agree…" Endo declared out of the blue, slashing through the ongoing discussion before turning to Mana. "With Mana, that is. Something's off about this newbie. I get it, we need to prevent the Iwagakure big wig from getting kidnapped and used for ransom or murdered, but… That's it, no way she's Stars material!"
"We've been wrong about people before, Endo," Shige-H reasoned. "Remember Ion?"
Mana rubbed her abdomen to ease the oozing sensation of phantom pain that twinged in her gut at just the mention of the infiltrator assassin. The wooden door squeaked, startling Mana out of the surge of forlorn memories as the new Star recruit returned with a bubbling green cup and placed it in front of Mana. The magician loomed over the surface of the liquid, observing the curious happenings inside her beverage.
"Thanks, this is so warming and… Bubbly…" Mana tried to smile, though it might have come off a bit more fake than she'd have liked it because of her discomfort over the sight of the state of her tea.
"It's boiling," the new girl muttered and picked up a cracker.
"You should ask her to try it first. Make sure she didn't squeeze some laxatives in or something…" Endo sneered at the rookie, earning mirroring spiteful looks in return.
The rookie cringed into her knuckle, looking more excited about the thought of paralyzing Mana from the waist down and dooming her to spending her night in the ship's heads. She's been more over the moon about this idea than mad at Endo for suggesting she's been up to no good with this, which was certainly… Something.
Mana took a light sip of the tea, feeling a bit alarmed because it wasn't as hot as the recruit implied. Emboldened by the curious temperature of the beverage, Mana took another sip and then gulped down a mouthful to get to feel what exactly made this drink look and act so curious. A twinge ran down Mana's temples. The ninja magician closed her eyes and breathed out.
"Hmm? Mana… Are you okay?" Endo wondered, noticing Mana's curious behavior.
"I've been poisoned," Mana declared. "Fast-working, highly lethal stuff, incredibly high dosage. Powder form. Reacts to bodily fluids and expands in size when inside the target's system."
"Wh-What!?" Shige-H jumped up, lightly shoving the table away with her hips. "Are you going to be okay?"
"This is a ship that mostly carries cargo. It doesn't have a medic onboard. It's quite small, so it's essential personnel only," the recruit's voice rang across the room as she jumped up and pushed the table aside fully, blocking the path on the corridor outside the passenger quarters. "Ships like these usually board immediately in case of a health emergency and see medics in local port towns. Could be why the fatality rate of sailors in vessels such as these is as high as it is…"
"That's awfully handy for a poisoner, isn't it?" Endo squinted.
"I'll be fine," Mana replied. "Manually managing my bodily systems, handling sicknesses, venom and poisons has been one of the few advantages of advanced skill in meditation."
"I'm a medical ninja! I can put together an antidote if I know what I'm working with…" Shige-H pointed out. "You said you know which organs the poison targets, right?"
"I'll soon show you exactly what we're working with," Mana raised a finger while keeping her facial expression tranquil and her eyes closed. With a single motion, she flipped the tea aside from the wooden cup, splattering it all over the floor and over the shoved outside table before leaning over the cup and spitting out a mouthful of purple, deadly sludge from her mouth. "I need another cup. The mass of the poison's expanding so I need to keep forcing it out."
"Holy shit, so you can just… Control the functions of your entire body, to where you can force it to isolate poison and venom and spit it all out?" the recruit scratched the back of her head before crossing her arms. "That's… You've got to teach me that some time. That's just an unheard-of skill…"
"You mean, unfortunate. For our poisoner, that is," Endo didn't move his eyes away from the blond kunoichi, trying to peer into her body language and scanning for anything that'd betray her role in this. It was she who brought the tea, after all. Heck, it was the mysterious newbie that suggested Mana to have some tea.
"Alright… I guess if you're just going as far as spitting it all out…" Shige-H scratched her head. "No antidote will be necessary."
"It's not like you could have put one together from the limited materials on this ship, kilometers away from shore," the recruit crossed her arms and handed Mana her own emptied cup to spit out another mouthful of eggplant-colored bile.
"Hmm… That's some nasty stuff…" Shige-H scratched her chin, gently excusing herself and stepping over the newbie's lap to examine the sizzling table and ship's floor. "I'm surprised it's not eating away at your insides and that you can just spit it out like that. It's rotting anything organic up from the looks of it."
The medical kunoichi leaned down and pulled out a shuriken, using one of its four blade tips to scoop up a little of the poison for examination. In the meantime, Mana kept spitting up the increasing amounts of poison.
"This is nothing. Some poison doesn't really come up, so it has to go down…" Mana tried to lighten the mood while focusing on working her body through the ordeal.
"I've got blanks…" Shige-H shrugged. "I've got no idea what type of poison this is. If I had the time and the necessary tools, a lab meant for this sort of research, I could properly analyze the samples I've taken but…"
"Exotic poisons… Maybe something you could find on a lethal ocean dweller or some fruit on a remote island lost to time and mysterious to explorers?" Endo smirked lightly without moving his eyes away from the new Stars recruit.
"Octopi, jellyfishes, and the like are the most likely producers of something like this…" Mana sighed while staring at a smidge of her would-be killer left over on Shige's shuriken tip.
"Why don't we ask our expert on marine life and remote islands?" Endo thrust with his tongue, secreting speech as poisonous as the material in Mana's tea.
"Excuse me? Am I the suspect?" the blond kunoichi gasped, placing her hand defensively over her chest as she stood up looking appalled.
"Why are you so surprised? You came to the Allied Ninja from the Land of Water. No one's seen or heard of you before. You hide your identity from us all the while posing as if you want to work alongside us to prevent some bogus plot that could spark a war across the continent. A war that would be unlikely to even touch the Land of Water since it's got no investment or gain from it. You never as much as faked to have a liking to Mana or any of us, though you've acted spiteful toward her in particular. It was you who suggested Mana to have some tea. It was you who brought it to her as well. You even downplayed Mana's instincts not to drink it," Endo stood up. The swordsman had to bow his head so that he didn't bump the ceiling of the passenger quarters.
"No one in their right mind would gut some venomous octopus halfway across the world, then drag its venomous glands all over the wasteland smelling of dead fish only to spray it into someone's tea, you half-wit!" the recruit jabbed back. "You're right, I don't particularly trust you lot or your stupid organization. I am still very much a potential asset to my village, so I'm being incredibly careful with how I manage personal information about me because it belongs just as much to Kirigakure as it does to me. Nor do I trust a unit that I've never met before that has an apprentice samurai on it, one of the kind who struck down Lady Fourth, also a kunoichi that put a pummeling on Guru Ayushi as if she's got nothing she considers sacred!"
"Look… Whatever your name is… We're sorry to press on you this way, but you have to understand how this all looks from our position. This isn't even the first or the second or… The point is… Mana's life is constantly being targeted and… You're a complete mystery to us and, like it or not, your actions are linked to the poison," Shige-H pointed out in a much more reasonable and less accusatory manner. "Unless you can help us work through this, help us understand how this happened, and help us find the real culprit, we can't trust you or work with you on this vital mission. We'll have to subdue you and hire someone to take you in when we reach the Sound Country."
"You should eat something, Mana…" Endo sat down and shoved a plate with crackers stacked on it. "You've spent the last hour throwing up biles of something that would take only a mere sprinkle of to kill someone."
"Thanks, you've gone a long way since trying to kill me and calling me "witch"," Mana mustered up a warm smile.
"Look, a sailor handed the tea to me. I didn't prepare it, just like we didn't prepare our own teas this morning! As you've said, I don't like Nakotsumi Mana nearly enough to make tea for her, so I asked a sailor to brew it. If we ask around…" the recruit began explaining herself, but Mana raised her hand and sighed.
"Leave it. If an outside party truly is involved, they'll have long since left the ship by now. I was too focused on keeping the poison contained and removing it from my system to track the chakra signatures onboard. Maybe someone had already taken off. It'd not have been too hard to jump off and dash across the ice platforms to the shore the moment their gig was up," Mana rubbed her eyes.
"In that case, we still don't know who tried to kill you and why," Shige-H insisted.
"That's true, but given the number of enemies that wish me dead, it's a fool's errand to try to shoot in the dark. It is entirely possible that the organization working in Boulder Town has found out about us trying to foil them and took us out by sending an agent onboard," Mana shrugged it off. "I'm too tired to hustle through it today. We'll reach Sound Country tomorrow and we can keep working on it then, given how an attempt at my life is hardly news by now, let's just drop it."
"What the fuck…?" Endo shook his head in disbelief. "Drop it?"
"If the enemy had sent an agent on board, you'd have sensed them. It's more than likely they'd have been a ninja with a sizeable chakra signature," Shige-H pointed out an obvious flaw in Mana's hasty guess.
"We don't know if the organization is that of ninja or civilians. Civilians can be skilled at killing ninja too, mercenaries make a living out of killing inexperienced ninja," the newbie pointed out.
"I'm glad we agree over this…" Mana gifted the rookie a warm smile before stretching out her legs and closing her eyes. "I'm still feeling nauseous, but it has to be muscle memory from belching up for almost an hour non-stop. Let's just hope it's gone in the morning."
A figure wrapped in bedsheets loomed over the stretched-out and relaxed body of a young woman in a rustled stage magician's uniform that so many before her had confused for that of service staff. A nude arm holding a kunai slipped out from under an opening in the sheets that covered up most of the figure's features. The knife slipped up and then moved down before halting because of a fleshy slapping noise.
"Will you give it a rest already?" a forceful whisper came out from Mana as the magician opened her eyes and focused it on the concealed assassin. "You've already exposed yourself plenty as it is…"
Mana shot her foot with a quick smack, attempting to whip it at the young woman's ankle and to reduce her to a kneeling state where she could place her hand over the newbie's forehead and enter her mind so that the two could have chat but the newbie tilted her foot up, resulting with Mana's foot sweeping through thin air while the assassin fell over and pressed on the knife with her whole body. A fleshy, plunging noise spread through the cabin, but it was too subtle to wake any of the sleepy souls aboard.
"Temple of Nirvana Jutsu…" Mana's voice filled the dark passenger's hall, alarming the assassin as she staggered back. Asuka thought to have plunged the knife right into Mana's heart with that last press but it seemed like the immortal magician didn't much care about even such an injury. "I thought you'd settle down after the close call this evening. I even told everyone to forget about it and lied about not having sensed anything suspicious, but you really showed your hand using a genjutsu technique on the others while they were asleep to keep them that way. Unfortunately for you… You won't catch me in an illusion with that level of skill."
Much to Asuka's terror, Mana's dying body collapsed into a fluttering blizzard of petals and disappeared from where she was sleeping. In mid-air, the petals became thicker and less silky, taking a more paper-like shape as they began sticking all over the body of the assassin, no matter how hard she tried shaking them off.
"No way… When did you put me under an illusion?" Asuka grumbled while trying to free herself of the hundreds of paper tags sticking all over her and covering her up head-to-toe to where only her eyes could peek through a minute gap on her face.
"There were far too many openings. When you plunged your knife, you looked me straight in the eye, for example. It's a sentimental thing to wish to see your mark plead for their life and struggle with their own mortality, to seek fear from their last expression that satisfies your own wicked urges. Your mistake was using a genjutsu. When you connect with an illusion, you flush your own chakra into someone else's system. Problem is, if your opponent is that much more skilled than you and knows exactly what's going on–they can easily use that same connection to put you under an illusion instead," Mana's disembodied, supernaturally augmented voice explained as the paper tags covering Asuka head-to-toe sizzled.
"No way! You mean to tell me I've been under an illusion for almost an entire hour now?" Asuka called out. Her voice lost all sense of coolness to it since she realized that once those tags blow up–her whole mind would be in tatters and she'd be left just a drooling vegetable.
"I gave you a chance to reconsider your intentions earlier. My sensory tipped me off that nobody entered this ship or left it the whole day, even though I lied about that earlier. I knew all along it was you that tried to poison me. I don't know why. I don't particularly care, though. You pulling this, putting my friends to sleep with a genjutsu you can find in an intermediate level genjutsu textbook, however, that's as sloppy as it is disappointing to me," Mana's voice thundered so loudly that it tore the ship in which Asuka sailed apart board by board. The illusion left the young woman floating in an endless, stormy sea with lightning lashing out in the skies with her only protection from the elements being the layer of soon-to-explode paper tags.
"You better finish me, Nakotsumi Mana. Cut off my head and make sure I'm dead, because as long as there's a chance that…!" the assassin began screaming through the rowdy oceans at the mistress of this illusion, knowing full-well that Mana could hear her but a bright and hitting close to home lash of thunder drowned her out and interrupted the young woman.
"No, you listen to me…" Mana's whisper rung so close to the soul of the imprisoned assassin that young Asuka shivered. "I am in control of this illusion you brought yourself into. I can make it last for as long as I want because I've mastered temporal sensory manipulation too. When you wake up in the morning, however long it feels to you like this lasts, we can have a talk about what this is all about. We have a vital mission at hand, and I won't let you petty squabbles ruin this. Not when the stakes are this high. If you still remember this, whenever it feels like to you when you wake up to reality, we can settle whatever this is about after we save Kaguya Yaban's life and prevent a continental war. Now feel free to seethe in your hatred and reflect on your reckless actions."
"I'll kill you!" Asuka screamed out, feeling the pelting rain tear off the explosive tags that stopped threatening to detonate and rip Asuka's mind apart. An overwhelming sense of pull plunged Asuka underwater and began pulling her toward the abyss, with there being nothing that the drowning young woman could do to stop the water from filling her lungs with dread and frigid heftiness. Despite the constant drowning and ceaseless pouring of inhospitable abyss right into Asuka's lungs, she simply couldn't drown, despite feeling every moment of drowning for the rest of what Mana attributed to her as punishment for her actions.
"I'll absolutely kill you!" Asuka screamed out, letting the water freely soak and bloat her from the inside as the feeling of dreadful, cold fullness kept on dragging her toward the infinite, freezing, and dark depths for what extended into hours, days, weeks, and months. All throughout, it was Asuka's hatred and creed to kill Nakotsumi Mana, no matter the necessary means to do so, that kept her sane. It would be that very thing that would welcome her when she wakes up in the morning.
Whenever it would inevitably come.
Author's Notes: I might have some 'splainin' to do about the lack of updates. Saturday was Christmas and I sort of got entangled into some festive stuff so I couldn't quite make it home and write anything. Earlier this week I had way too much work and did some major overtime so I couldn't even begin to work on a chapter either. Figured I'd put this down today, even though it's off of schedule but I love this story and I don't want to leave it alone for this long. If you're reading this, know that odds are I love you and wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays 3