Gwirlon stared at Mana. What troubled the crippled kunoichi most of all was that the big guy didn't seem to register her words at all. His emotions after being freed from the restraints and seeing the iron gate keeping him move out of his way didn't differ at all from how he looked when he was all bound and locked up.
"You've lost your forearm… It must be hurting or, at the very least, itchy. I know how that feels, though no one must have offered you help for your wounds…" Mana lowered her hand and leaned forward as much as her condition allowed her to examine Gwirlon's stump. From the looks of it, the thing appeared to have been burnt up to a crisp to keep the big man from bleeding out, but it didn't receive any other treatment. "I'm sorry but… As much as I may have dreamed of becoming a medical kunoichi and actually saving people's lives my entire life, I'm just not cut out for it. I'll ask Shige-H to take care of it though…"
"You shouldn't waste your breath, this guy only responds to orders," Endo sneered at the utterly oblivious giant as he loomed above Mana without what may have looked like an ill-thought about him. "Hey, asshole, Mana told you to scratch that crispy stump of yours if you want to."
Gwirlon tilted his arm with the missing forearm and pulled it closer to his chest, thusly making Prabba's heart skip a whole handful of beats as she gasped in panic at seeing the liberated prisoner move around with impunity. Slowly, the big guy moved his other hand and wrapped his rough fingers with chipped-up and dirty fingernails. A blunt scratching sound filled the warehouse dungeon as complete silence reigned in while the trio waited for Gwirlon's reaction. The captured giant scratched his stump before returning to his default standing state, awaiting following orders.
"Huh… I guess I can see why those terrorists kept this guy around. A human tool comes in handy…" Endo crossed his arms and blew air through his nose. Somehow, he pulled off looking pleased by Gwirlon's obedience and disappointed at any lack of pride or defiance in the giant's actions at the same time. "Go ahead, you try…" Endo looked at Mana.
"I will not!" Mana barked back with an upset reaction. She crutched her way closer to Endo and pointed at the static giant with her free of crutch hand. "This poor man is handicapped in more ways than one. He's lived his entire life as a human tool, doing whatever everyone told him to. I absolutely refuse to play along and add to that oppression. I won't give up until Gwirlon-san does things on his own and acts how he truly wants to!"
"Are you sure that's what we want?" Prabba scratched her head. "I mean… Look at this guy. He's got an entire arsenal just embedded under his flesh. Someone that can endure such an arming process would probably go mad from the pain alone. No wonder Denkka's torture didn't reach him at all."
Mana walked up to Gwirlon and weaved her hand seals together. A howling gale of Wind Release chakra formed an air pocket underneath Mana's leg and elevated the magician into the air with the Mystical Wings Jutsu coming into play and letting her levitate before she could walk right. Mana evened her eyes up to Gwirlon's level. The giant's eyes didn't move or react to someone else looking right at him.
"I don't have the time to help you now, Gwirlon-san. Shige-H and the rest are almost here and we'll have to leave soon but… I won't give up on you. You're not just a tool, no one's life is without purpose, and I want you to find yours. A calling that's truly yours, Gwirlon-san," Mana spoke with a softened facial expression from the strict determination she confronted the man whose efforts led to her crippling injury. "I just… I want you to know that I don't blame you for what happened. You followed that other man's orders and… At that time, you didn't know any better. Heck, I probably shouldn't have been there in the first place and, if I did, I should have reached out to you and helped you instead of obsessing over stopping that man feeding you orders. You're no Human-Swiss-Knife, or whatever, you're just human and that's beautiful and unique enough."
Mana floated up closer to Gwirlon and pressed her hand against the giant's chest. "No matter what happens, please don't forget that, and please act on your own will when you feel safe to do so. No man is just a tool to other people."
"I don't know, if that "no lives are pointless" stuff is all you want to say, tools can be pretty useful too…" Endo shrugged.
"What the fuck is going on here? Why is the warehouse door open?" Denkka's voice resonated from outside the warehouse at the office level. Those two have returned with Shige-H, Mana could feel it. Seeing absolutely no reaction from the big man, the magician turned around. Just as she and Endo were about to ascend the steps and regroup with the party, Prabba yelled out.
"Wait, what are you going to do with him?" the peacekeeper kunoichi pointed at Gwirlon.
"I can order him to come along if you want to… It's gonna be dangerous to have him parading around his old folks but, if you want to prove something to yourself or someone else, I can keep an eye on him. Be warned though, if he acts up, I won't hesitate to cut him down," Endo turned to Mana with a miffed shrug.
"No," Mana shook his head. "It won't do if just I refuse to play along with the rules Gwirlon-san has lived by his entire life. He must feel truly free before he can heal. You must choose Gwirlon-san, all by yourself, what do you want? You can come with us and do whatever you like, help us, attack us and betray us, but those will be your own actions with your own consequences. Or you can walk back and choose your cell. By accepting the consequences for your past actions, you'll make a valid and healthy choice too and make the first step to being more than just someone else's Swiss knife."
Gwirlon didn't budge, proving just how deep the damage in his heart and his soul had spread. With the steps alerting everyone that ninja were coming down the stairs to the dungeon, it seemed like Mana was robbed of her choice too.
"What is the meaning of this?" Prim-S demanded an explanation as the descended pair of peacekeepers immediately took fighting stances and prepared to engage the enemy. Thunderous crackles lit up around Prim-S, connecting to various chipped-off stones present in the warehouse and elevating them in the air through a form of electro-magnetism working off of the minerals within those stones. Denkka coated her body with lightning armor and pulled a handle of a sword, missing a blade.
"It's clear that you're not working together with the enemy, no one would go through losing their own leg just to get behind enemy lines. Still, this is highly suspicious so I'll want to hear an explanation for this, Konoha's Sorceress. Depending on that explanation, I'll either have you locked up alongside this man or proceed with our plan," Denkka warned Mana about how this situation looked from the outside.
"I just wanted to talk to Gwirlon-san and see if I could reach him," Mana replied, turning around while still hovering in the air with a quiet hum of the self-sustaining wind current. The gale ruffled her kimono from down below, occasionally making her bandaged up stump peak through the rustling silk. "I don't think he's fully culpable for his actions. I believe that because of his mental condition, he's been influenced by people applying pressure to him and that he's not fully aware of his actions. I guess, just how our leader picked us up and took us under her wing and guidance, I was looking to see if I could do the same to Gwirlon-san."
"Mana…" Shige-H muttered. All this time after meeting Mana after the surgery, she's stood there with her eyes delving down and to the side, afraid to look her fellow Stars member in the eyes and face the truth of reality but after Mana's words, she no longer could do so. Through those words and lack of any hatred in them, Shige realized that there were no arrows of grudge or blame aimed at Shige's side.
"Shige, in my ideal world, I hoped to talk things through after I've been able to help Gwirlon-san. I guess, I thought I could just whisk away a lifetime of damage and oppression by just being nice to him once… Sorry for being so naïve," Mana scratched her cheek. She lowered herself down on the ground to preserve chakra and stamina, only for Endo to pick up her crutch and hand it to her.
"Even though you've made mistakes, I've failed you as a leader too, Mana. I used up too much strength the night before and couldn't help you when you needed me most. Even more, I refused to acknowledge my own weakness and I would have ended up killing you by accident by sustaining that fruitless Mystical Palm treatment. If the healers of Boulder Town didn't step in and forcefully remove me from the ward… I have no right to blame you for your recklessness when my own nearly cost you your life," Shige pressed her palm to her chest and sunk her head down.
"It's because of my recklessness and inability to accept the help that I put you in that position, to begin with. You have nothing to apologize for, boss," out of forgetfulness, Mana tried kneeling, but she winced in pain and stress placed on her one stationary thigh and faltered on her crutch. Just barely, she kept her balance all by herself, proving that little by little, her haze had walked off or she was just getting a bit better at this whole being crippled thing.
"Mana… I don't deserve you as a squadmate…" Shige clenched her fists. "But… Based on what Denkka told me, I must ask you to put yourself in danger again. I'm sorry! The best I can do is make sure that your life is never threatened again, putting my body on the line. That's what a true leader would do."
"Are we done feeling bad and sorry about ourselves?" Endo crossed his arms and closed his eyes, blanking out. As usual, he never apologized or felt bad about a single thing. "Those of us that were doing just fine sort of want to get going already and draw some blood."
"I can't believe I'm saying this but, the psychopathic swordsman is telling the truth. If we are to strike, there's no reason to sit around talking to one another and we waste any time spent on this lug," Prim-S pointed at Gwirlon before turning to point back at his cell while looking the giant in the eyes. "Go back to your…"
"No!" Mana snapped her fingers with a loud lash that resonated with a pop and made Prim-S stop in shock at how loud a snap could be. "Gwirlon-san must choose his actions by himself. If he sees it fit to not choose and stay standing here, so be it. Suppose you're worried about someone infiltrating the facility or one of your subordinates giving him any orders and ruining his recovery. In that case, you can lock the warehouse door, but he stays here until he decides on what he wants to do next."
"I don't mean to burst your idealistic bubble, but… Your say holds no sway here…" Prim-S objected before the tip of a drawn sword butted against the tip of his nose out of nowhere. Very few people could surpass the drawing speed of an anxious Endo.
"The say of a sword holds all the sway in the world to the one its edge is pointing at though…" Endo muttered. "All the walking and hiking we're about to do is so annoying, I wouldn't mind cutting someone up right away for the trip. Leaving witnesses that know about the Allied Ninja business never sat well with me anyway…"
"Please, we have to work together. That's the only way we'll ever stand a chance. Even if I don't want any of you to get hurt, I'm afraid that I don't have any choice but to entrust the success of our mission to all of you," Mana bowed her head as she couldn't really bow any other parts of her body anymore.
"I'm not getting into a bloodbath over this debilitated brick wall, let's just leave him locked and move out," Denkka groaned.
"Before we leave, Shige, could you please take a look at Gwirlon-san's forearm? I know you won't be able to do much, but even the most elementary field aid would go a long way," Mana asked Shige. With the strides the two have made here, the medical kunoichi nodded and approached the big guy for a quick look-up before they took off.
"You okay?" Shige-H turned back to look at Mana for the possibly thousandth time as, after a blurry myriad of hops over the cliffs leading up to the mountain's peak, she finally found a safer place to stop and look back at Mana.
"Same as the last time you asked," Mana shrugged, gently levitating behind Shige-H on the wind currents that she rode alongside the other ninja who were beginning to gain some distance ahead, despite Mana being their guide.
"Sorry, it's just… From what we gathered, you've lost a great deal of chakra during that battle that did you in last time. That… Hasn't happened yet," Shige-H pointed out before returning to the hi-speed dash and taking a plunge down to the nearest stony platform she could kick off of before reaching the edge of another mountain in the boundless range of ridges ahead.
"I've never used Armor Ninjutsu so much. I had to restore its integrity a few times and stack up multiple layers of it. In a way, I was experimenting on the battlefield," Mana explained why she was so short of chakra when Shige-H scanned her with the Diagnosis Jutsu.
"I guess when we don't have time to train up during our downtime, we're forced to experiment during battle," Shige-H sighed. "At least this insane schedule might slow down now…"
"Yeah… I suppose so…" Mana agreed with the leader without flirting too much with the subject of retirement that couldn't leave her mind. She's been at her weakest at the moment. A condition far worse than the time she's lost chakra control by stretching the limits of chakra augmentation. Back then, she could tap into physical chakra and still move around normally. Right now, Mana's chakra resources were suspiciously limited despite multiple days having passed and there being no reason they shouldn't have returned to normal. Not to mention the movement limitations with having just one foot.
With there being no reason for Mana to believe that her new and crippled chakra network would return to a level anywhere near normal, she simply couldn't foster false dreams of fighting while being this way. She was as good as crippled, and there was no other way of going about it. Mana may have had the same amount of chakra left as she had when being a genin and that was pretty much the last time she's ever hit a wall in terms of chakra strain. If she continued being a ninja, she'd only put her own life and that of others in danger.
Still, Mana felt too weak to confront Shige-H about it.
"There…" Mana pointed at a mountain that had a handful of luscious oaks fostering below. Something resembling a gravel landslide covered its entire south-eastern section, which made that area look suspicious. Even if one suspected something, they'd have had 4 square kilometers of the area to scan for a potential secret entrance. Had it not been for Mana's chakra sensory pointing out the exact level of altitude they needed to be in, the peacekeepers would've snooped around for something resembling days before they could've found the entrance.
"There it is, markings on the stone…" Prabba stroked her hand across the wall after using an arrow that unraveled into a carbon-weave sheet, that she could use a makeshift shovel and drag a whole ton of gravel off of the area with. The kunoichi used something like a power winch to drag the wrapped gravel away from a parallel ridge before taking a leap and sticking her feet to the wall.
"Is this it?" Prim-S looked at Mana. Just to be completely sure, Mana closed her eyes and expanded her sensory to its limits, focused on shutting her presence in the physical world off and delving deeper into her sensory of chakra. There could have been no doubts about it, the familiar chakra signature of Asuka had led her here and it was further into the mountain's core, inside a makeshift cave where the group hid.
"Man…" Endo sighed while clutching the hilt of his sword with a gloved hand. "Coming in here, knowing that mommy and daddy are out to get captured by Ishigakure because of the anonymous tip we've sent them, it almost makes me feel like a bad guy for sneaking in here and taking everyone out."
"Even Asuka?" Mana looked up.
"Especially Asuka," Endo closed his eyes, shutting himself off from being reasoned with in terms of this question. "She's the one that will make this feel good, as opposed to just feeling like work. With ambitious backstabbers like her, there's nothing better than thrusting a sword through their throat and watching their life leave their eyes and their grand ambitions pool alongside the blood splattering from the wound."
"I can't stop you the way I am now but… It would mean a lot to me if you would find another way to stop her," Mana turned to Endo but she could only see a back of someone who rushed to pull a set of six wooden, rope-tied levers up and enter through the rumbling opening into the enemy's den.
It seemed like her curse of being unable to help the people when it counted had gone nowhere. It stayed in the part of Mana that she preserved, as opposed to the rather useful part of her she had to be rid of.