"What's going on here? What's with all the fighting in the middle of the day?" a dark-skinned kunoichi in a Kumogakure uniform approached Mana and Shige-H while the two recovered after the unpleasant encounter with the living-whip-man. The entire back of Shige's coat had been torn open and streaks of violet bruises and a red spray of blood splashed over her entire back. It was an odd shortcoming to encounter, but the medical kunoichi couldn't treat this wound entirely, because of its position on her back.
"Don't let your guard down," Mana approached the Kumogakure kunoichi of bright lemon hair and thick golden eyelashes. The young woman tensed up in reaction to Mana's haste and both the present Kumogakure ninja and the ninja in Iwagakure uniforms rushed in to control the situation.
"Calm down and tell us what's going on here," a massive in both size and girth ninja with a long patch of brown hair that reached to the end of his scalp and fell over his eyes all the way to the man's nose and must have obstructed his glasses too spoke up.
"My name is Nakotsumi Mana, I'm the…" Mana was about to explain the situation from the ground up, even if she felt like there wasn't time. While she could still track the signatures of the hidden puppet master, as well as his smokescreen distractions, he could slip away at any point and Mana desperately wanted to get to the bottom of what this attack was all about.
"Konoha's Sorceress, yes, we know who you are…" an Iwagakure kunoichi with a dark ponytail and a standard Iwagakure uniform and a brown flak jacket pressed her right hand to her hips. "You can skip this part."
"Really? All the way here…?" a warm smile colored Mana's face as the ninja magician began daydreaming and wriggling about in excitement. It took Shige's cooler head to pull Mana back by the collar of her blazer and step in between the party of intercepting ninja to establish order and haste again.
"Feet on the ground, Mana. As you might see from my headband–I'm an Allied Ninja and we're charged with protecting Konoha's Sorceress during her World Magic Tour. This mysterious man attacked us out of nowhere while we were trying to settle some things concerning our next few shows here and in Iwagakure," Shige-H took over the responsibilities of being the adult in this situation.
"You mean Stratogakure?" a slim Kumogakure ninja with slick hunter-green hair crossed his arms. "You must've stayed out of international politics for pretty long, can't say I blame you, heard you guys got hit pretty badly by some nukenin."
"Come on, Prim-S, don't start trouble in front of the local ninja," the blond kunoichi scolded her ally with a strict look. "They have not changed the name yet. Not until the Earth Lord recognizes Iwagakure as a Land of Lightning province."
"It's not us you should worry about, Kumo ninja," the Iwagakure giant wrapped his arms over his chest, approaching the two Kumogakure ninja to where his shadow covered them up. "I don't think that the Earth Lord would feel too happy about hearing Kumogakure renaming a piece of land that's still rightfully his and treating it as their province."
"Guys, whatever is about to go down here, I'd appreciate it if you can it. We're still not out of trouble. The attacker is still in the vicinity. We need to scout out and check the corner buildings of this square. The top floors of each of these buildings have potent chakra signatures and either of them might belong to the puppeteer," Mana insisted, not wanting this to devolve into a massive inter-village scrap.
"Calm down," the Iwagakure kunoichi with the ponytail said. "Your bodyguard is hurt, and she needs someone to take a look at that. I know some field survival stuff, but her injuries look a bit nastier than what a few ointments and bandaging can fix. You need a medical ninja to look at that back."
"Plus, your face is pretty well-known. It's clear that they attacked you to kidnap you and blackmail either the Allied Ninja or Konoha for loads of money. You shouldn't go anywhere near those buildings or else you're gonna get snagged when your guard is down," the green-haired Kumogakure ninja crossed his arms. He looked mighty proud of himself for having figured this out.
Despite the general smugness of the Kumogakure ninja, Mana found some wisdom behind this theory. If this attack was related to the presence of Allied Ninja and their attempts to prevent the kidnapping of the ex-Tsuchikage, Mana wouldn't have been the specific target. Based on how that whip-ninja fought and what he said, they were after Mana specifically and not the entire team of Allied Ninja.
"Alright then, we're going to spread out and check all of those locations at once. We can't afford the dirtbag to give us the slip while we're all checking a single place and we leave three exists open," the giant from Iwagakure declared with a firm nod of his head.
"There are four of us here and someone needs to watch over Konoha's Sorceress and help the Allied kunoichi with her injuries," the Iwagakure kunoichi objected.
"Why? It's not our mission to keep her safe…" Prim-S pouted his lips and turned his nose up. "Plus, the criminal will be significantly easier to catch if they have to carry dead weight around."
"Shut up, Prim-S," the Kumogakure kunoichi hissed. "How do you think this will reflect on Kumogakure if the rest of the world finds out that the Konoha's Sorceress went missing on our watch? Look around at all those witnesses. Look at these Iwagakure ninja. Do you think any of them will let an opportunity not to report something like this pass? Will you be the one to pick up a blade and make sure there are no witnesses in case our reputation is tainted?"
"Whatever…" Prim-S leaned his head back in his arms, rolling his eyes. He looked bitter and humbled on the inside. "Let's just get on with this before the bad guy gets away." His embarrassment must've been why he was in such a hurry to change the topic.
"I'm not in as bad of a condition as you think I am," Shige-H grumbled out before pulling out a green food pill and popping it in between her teeth. Just seeing the thing made Mana remember the minty, herbal and slimy flavor, but Shige mashed its contents with her teeth without as much as a twitch to her eye. "I can still fulfill my mission of protecting Mana and we can cover the exits if either of you lets the enemy go."
"Isn't it ironic, Allied Ninja all battered and cowering in front of surrounding ninja, swearing they've got the stones to make it in the big and cruel world… It's cool and brave, no, it really is. It's just that any of us could grind you guys down into paste and you only exist because all of us allow it, think about that the next time you rear your teeth at Kumogakure ninja," Prim-S beamed a snarky grin at Shige-H.
"You've no idea what you're talking about, Prim-S," the lemon-haired Kumogakure kunoichi squinted in the annoyance of her ally's behavior. "You should listen more carefully to the reports that our international agents bring home. They say that right now the Allied Ninja are more dangerous than ever. Do you guys actually have a Tailed Beast leashed in your campsite?"
Mana's eyes widened a few inches. She turned to Shige-H, wondering how they were to handle the fact that the other villages already knew about the Four Tails. Knowing how adequate the Supreme Leader was at picking the pieces back up and drifting the Allied Ninja through the perilous waters of international politics, it seemed tough to believe that she may have let such a crucial factoid slip.
"Sure thing, we've got it leashed tight. That nukenin you mentioned earlier tried to sic it at us so we restrained it and made it work for us instead," Shige-H replied as if it was a completely unimpressive fact. The Iwa and Kumo ninja seemed to have breaths stuck in their lungs, wondering just what exactly did that entail. The Iwagakure military was crushed, so a Tailed Beast may have utterly wiped most of the Land of Earth military out with a snap. Despite what they may have claimed, the Coltan Conflict also stretched Kumogakure out too. Enough to where they were no longer the No. 1 military power in the world. They wouldn't have wanted to tangle with a Tailed Beast and ruin their hopes of ever claiming that seat again.
Stunned and reflecting on what Shige-H said, the combined law-enforcing party of Iwagakure and Kumogakure ninja moved out to check the buildings. Mana gestured for Shige-H to move toward the nearest boulder laying on the ground. She saw the locals use them as benches if their shapes fit that purpose. It seemed counterintuitive, but it was better than resting one's bottom on dirt and gravel.
"Why did you tell them that?" Mana wondered. "About the Four-Tails? What you told them isn't entirely true. We can only use the Four-Tails three more times, though, I guess they still don't know I have it sealed inside my hat."
"Come on, don't underestimate the Supreme Leader like that. The only reason that the Kumogakure spies became aware of our situation is that the Supreme Leader let them. I believe that she intentionally spread the rumor about Four-Tails working for us so that the other villages and nukenin groups were too terrified to start anything with us while the Allied Ninja recover. I know it's not necessarily how you like to handle things…" Shige-H shrugged while keeping her eyes on the doors leading into the square and all four exit paths.
"No," Mana shook her head. "I think it's actually great. As long as it saves lives, I don't mind intimidation tactics. I suppose you could look at my nindo as something similar to intimidation in a way, even though that's not how I see it."
"Your nindo?" Shige-H asked.
"Yeah, I may have joined the Allied Ninja, plenty of people in Konoha may hate me and they may not trust me for a long time but… I still look to become a Sannin. A legendary ninja that's so great and has accomplished so much that their very presence protects people's lives and prevents conflict," Mana said while turning her attention to the roads leading out of each of the four buildings.
"Well… Your village promoted you to Special Jounin before you left, right? You may as well be halfway there," Shige-H replied with warmth and encouragement radiating from her voice.
"The chakra signatures… They're gone," Mana reported what she was feeling. "All four of them."
"That's odd… There didn't seem to be any signs of a conflict," Shige's voice became coarser as she stood up and scanned the top floors of each stone structure. Some buildings in boulder town were fully designed wooden buildings, others were carved and molded from natural stone pillars, meanwhile, others were a fusion of something in between. Part wooden architecture, part stone.
The quartet of Kumogakure and Iwagakure ninja left the buildings one by one, assembling in the square. With some time having passed, the pain on Shige-H's back eased a bit, but she still walked with stiffness in her back. Moreover, feeling a light breeze, she removed her coat and looked at the cut-up and torn back with frustration. The fur coat she usually wore now hung as torn straps of fur. The medical kunoichi hung the ruined piece of her outfit over the bench boulder.
"There was nothing but a bunch of fleshy stumps. Like… Cocoons of… Tendons and… Veins…" the gentle giant from Iwagakure scratched the back of his neck.
"All four of them?" Mana asked. This seemed odd. She assumed that at least one of these fleshy stumps would've hosted a ninja inside. This reeked of a jutsu that formed a cocoon of chakra-heavy tissue around the user to smokescreen their own chakra signature. It was easy as pie to put together the purpose behind such a jutsu too–one could create many formations like these and concealed themselves in any of them. That way, they'd be able to operate from within one of those flesh bags and conceal their true location.
"Yes. They burn easily and burnt up to cinders, but there was nothing inside mine. It seems to me like the rest were empty too…" the Iwagakure kunoichi said. "It looks like your kidnapper bolted."
"It seems so…" Mana closed her eyes in submission to failure. It couldn't have been helped, the enemy was crafty and the arrival of the Kumogakure and Iwagakure ninja rustled the water for them. They wouldn't have been able to keep up the chase anyway because of Shige-H's injury.
"You should report this assault to the Police Force. It's a small quartz building on the western mountain range by the town border. As a Konohagakure native, you should be familiar with landmarks sticking out from mountain ranges…" the blond Kumogakure ninja pointed in the approximate direction with her thumb, moving it over her shoulder.
"Right…" Mana nodded. Her hair slipped over her face, obstructing her eyes, with the cup of Mana's hat serving as the only defense against the unruly invasion. The quartet of ninja began splitting up, the Iwagakure and Kumogakure ninja left to opposite sides and strutted confidently back to their mission of maintaining order in Boulder Town. Prim-S had a mark of frustration on his face, feeling like his time had been wasted here, scouting some random buildings and burning up freaky meat bags.
"So… Konoha's Sorceress, do you know her?" the Iwagakure kunoichi turned back at her massive ally who walked onward with a sickly sway and a blank face that stared onward toward their destination.
"It's hard not to. She's a well-known face. If this World Magic Tour goes well, she'll be a worldwide celebrity even if you don't count her as one already. Hers is the perfect face to promote a mission. Must be why Allied Ninja jumped on the occasion to bodyguard her," the giant replied with a grumbling tone.
"Are you sick or something? Your voice sounds like your throat swelled up like you're having a cold or something," the Iwagakure kunoichi turned around to take a visual examination of her ally, who just walked on with a slouch and a grumpy look.
"I feel fine," the man grumbled out a response. The malady in his voice still didn't change.
"Really? Because your lips are turning blue…" the young woman pointed at her teammate's face while covering up her mouth with her free hand.
"Can't tell, can't see that low…" the man shrugged and proceeded to walk on as a man possessed. "What about you? I bet the kids in the Academy keep yapping on and on about wanting to see her. She's a bigger hit with the younger generation, from what I've heard."
"Oh, don't even get started… They've been on about it for years! She arrived and arranged this performance quite fast. Usually, they'd let the hype build-up for an entire year. Doesn't it sell more tickets that way?" the kunoichi wondered, scratching her cheek while turning back to look on to the road ahead while her eyes looked up daydreaming about the kids she left behind with a substitute teacher for this mission.
"You look like you're still there in your heart," the giant observed without even bothering to look at his teammate, his eyes stayed fixed on the roads they've turned toward a larger rock formation where two mountainous ridges came close to meeting and formed a sort of natural alleyway. Damp and dark, crawling with centipedes and other types of crawlers. Just the way they liked it.
"Well, yes. I don't maintain public order because I enjoy dealing with kidnappings, beatings, murders, you know. I have to take on more missions to get my promotion. They require Special Jounin or Jounin to teach in Cumulus High, you know," the woman pressed her hands by her hips while contemplating her troubles. There just didn't seem to be an end to the number of missions she'd need to do before her dreamed promotion that could allow her to teach in Cumulus High–an educational facility producing ninja that specialize in specific fields like barrier or medical ninjutsu.
"You mean Cradle High…" the man let out a short but irritated growl.
"You know very well I meant Cumulus High," his partner turned around. "There's no way they would take me if I called it by its old name… Before the Kumogakure ninja started calling the shots."
A spider took a bountiful leap off of a cliffside, landing straight on the woman's face and freaking her out. It was a highly unnatural leap since this species of spider stayed in the shade and hunted in the night, choosing to stay stationary except for when they hunted. One thing was for certain–they didn't jump around. Startled by the arachnid, the kunoichi shook her head to get it off of her face, but as her guard was down because of this, a crude shove made her drop into the dark space between the two ridges.
"You're a… Disgrace. To think that you teach children while colluding with the enemy like that… Absolutely disgusting. It's rare for me to just murder someone with no reason but… I usually kill to make puppets or to send a message, maybe I'll still have time to arrange your body for the second…" the looming shadow of the massive Iwagakure ninja covered up the already limited sunlight that broke through in the narrow space.
"Montmor… What are you talking about? You're freaking me out, step aside," the Iwagakure kunoichi returned to her feet before the reeling sound alerted her to the fact that her own right hand was being strung up. Then another loop she didn't notice pulled her left one up. Her feet stretched out subdued by an adamantine grip of spider silk that had chakra coursing through it. A handful more spiders jumped off of the cliffside, heeding the command of their titanic master who just stood there staring at a blank point while the color of his skin grew paler and paler.
One spider ran around the kunoichi's throat. This species of spider didn't produce any webs. They hunted in the dark by just lashing at its prey and impaling it with its stingers, but this one appeared to be wrapping something around. It was wire. A sharp sting at the nostrils made the woman cry out in pain, some wicked feeling of numbness and weakness passed down her body. The venom of these spiders shouldn't have had any effect on humans.
Once the woman's mouth opened, the spider slid inside and stuffed itself down her throat, bending its crawly feet by its side to make itself as slick as possible, but it was far too large to fit down the woman's throat. It was just the right size for her to choke on it though, while paralytic venom coursed through her circulation system.
A fleshy noise ripped through the poor kunoichi's gagging sounds and pathetic attempts to squirm out of her restraints as two pairs of scissor-like blades burst forth from the chest and belly of the massive Iwagakure ninja. A splash of blood-soaked the choking kunoichi, making her nearly rip her vocal cords apart from the inside, trying to muzzle out a single noise in the reaction to something unnatural cutting its way out of her lifelong friend before her very eyes.
The blades moved in a circle, cutting through the giant's flesh and as it slumped down and exposed a broken ribcage, the woman tried screaming again but could only release a mixture of bloody vomit and slobber that dripped from the few crevices of her throat that it could slip past the obstructing spider through. A highly disproportional man of an alien-like bald head, entirely hairless yet covered with blood and innards, opened his eyes to look at the restrained kunoichi.
"It's a good thing your pal is so girthy though. He made for a perfect vessel to escape in," the man said in a high-pitched voice that switched volumes and intensity in between syllables. "That sensory ability was troublesome. I even got caught there. I just want you to know that you won't die because I had to kill you. I could have very easily walked in your friend's… Shoes… As far as I wanted to before I regrouped with my crew. You die because you're a collaborating piece of wet cloth trying to cover up horse shit yet turning soaked in its stench. Kumogakure scum are pieces of garbage that only the flames of war can immolate. Weak and submissive women like you have no business teaching our children, let alone in Cradle High… Now die…"
Just as the man tilted his disproportionately long hand, carrying scissor blades attached to each of his noodle-like fingers, he looked to the side where a white bunny leaped through the space in between the legs of the disemboweled Iwagakure giant with great confusion.
"A snow rabbit? Here in Iwagakure?" the creepy body-snatcher shrieked out, emphasizing the lack of control he had in his own voice. Something that was a tad odd, given how well he could imitate the voice of the vessel he walked in.
It wasn't just a single rabbit taking lovely yet elegant hops toward the restrained woman, but an entire fluffle. This caused the body-snatcher to reach out from inside of his victim's ribcage and grab hold of his head, pulling himself up with one good swing to look around. Once he looked around, he realized an entire field of bunnies surrounded him. As the fluffle all scurried into one location, they formed a mountain of fluff that then slipped and rolled off in a cutesy manner revealing a young woman in a magician's uniform. With the conclusion of this genjutsu, the bindings that held the Iwagakure kunoichi restrained loosened, and the woman collapsed on her knees, still feeling numb from the paralytic agent.
"You underestimated me, thinking you could escape," Mana said while looking the bloodied, proportionally challenged butcher right in the eyes with a strict look. "I can memorize the chakra of people I meet so I know if someone just looks like someone or if they're someone wearing their skin. Granted, I thought you'd be using Transformation Jutsu and not… Pulling this."
"Well, well…" the petite man with oversized arms took a pig-like snort while clanging the scissor blades on each of his fingers. "I'm glad you presented to me. I guess my mission won't have been for naught after all. Now all that's left is to wrap you up. I hope you don't mind human guts as a wrapping." The disturbing puppeteer chuckled to himself, having found himself hilarious.