Gwirlon's right hand pushed a soda can around on the table. A handful of hooks and other steel tools laid dislodged from their place under strips of the brute's flesh and impeded him from grabbing the can and taking sips from it. Mana leaned over to pick up the can and hopped up to Gwirlon on one leg. Gently, she tilted his head back while balancing herself by pressing her rear to the table and gave him a handful of sips from the can.
"Thank you," Gwirlon said in a half-intelligible slur. Talking must not have been his strong suit, as he had a strange accent to everything he said that wasn't one native to any of the ninja countries. It could have only been that the giant spoke so little that coherent speech didn't come easy to him.
"You're welcome," Mana's face shifted to a warm smile while she helped the man to a few more sips after he had swallowed the previous ones and his mouth had dried out. "Can you help me look at Gwirlon-san's arm?" Mana turned to Shige after finishing with giving the big man a hand in refreshing himself.
"Sure, we've got a few more hours until we reach Getsugakure anyway…" Shige nodded. The medical kunoichi stood up and walked up to Gwirlon, gently manipulating his arm around him so that she could get a clearer look. The big man grumbled and snarled, pulling the arm out of Shige's reach.
"It's okay, she's just trying to help you. Your implants aren't working how they're supposed to and they can get in your way. I won't always be able to help you with that, you know," Mana tried softening the big guy's reaction but, from the looks of it, the memories of the other Stars handicapping him were still fresh in Gwirlon's mind.
"Huh… I thought it was dangerous to sail to Getsugakure…" Asuka leaned her head back and looked at the ceiling of the cabin in a small vessel navigating the perilous rock formations of the Stone Gulf. "Isn't that where the Eight-Tails sometimes lurks in the depths, eating up tons of fish and dragging vessels down when it hasn't had its fill?"
"Tako's Reach is another region infamous for Eight-Tails' activity. You can't avoid sailing around the world fearing that a lone monster is haunting the entire world's oceans," Mana pointed out while sitting down by Gwirlon's side in case he needed more help. It just so happened that his implant malfunction situation was all the help he needed to carve a can of sprats open.
"You big oaf, you've got oil all over your tools. They'll get rusty if you don't maintain them. Maybe that's why they don't always work?" Endo grumbled, standing up with a sheet of cloth that he flung to Mana. Mana's first reaction was to question why Endo treated her like a chambermaid but then it dawned on her that Endo would've incited a far more violent backlash from the big guy if he tried coming close to Gwirlon because of his much closer involvement in bullying the giant back during their first clash.
Mana picked the piece of cloth up and wiped the oil and fish off of the jagged blades, hooks, knives, and key-like stubs sticking out from Gwirlon's forearm. "You know," she said. "Endo is a swordsman, so he's very good at maintaining blades and taking care of tools. The reason he hurt you back then is that he saw you as an enemy. Maybe now that things have changed, you could let him help you take better care of your implants? After all, it doesn't seem like they can leave your body soon."
"Not soon, no," Shige-H shook her head after a sigh. "I can't tell for certain without getting a closer look, but these implants may be grown in deeper than they initially seem. They may be grown into the bone or shoved in and around sensitive blood vessels and nerve clusters. From what I've gathered, the big guy is great at enduring lots of pain, he'd have had to be to endure the insertion procedures like these, but unless he calms down about being around me, I won't be able to tell for certain, let alone help him."
"Just give Gwirlon-san some time," Mana said. "Him deciding that he wants to be his handler from this point on took time, so will him getting used to you."
"What is your plan for the big lug, exactly?" Asuka stared Mana straight in the eyes. "Do you intend to ask him to join the Allied Ninja? To be contracted by the Allied Ninja as a mercenary? Or do you want him to be your bodyguard or something?"
"Why? Feeling bitter that with the big guy watching Mana, you won't be able to slip anything into her drink?" Endo squinted Asuka's way.
"Get real," Asuka rolled her eyes. "Mana's chakra network is a far cry from what it used to be before her injury right now. If I wanted her dead, she'd have far more difficulty handling poison or fending me off right now. She might still be her, but she's only got enough chakra for one bigger illusion, tops. As long as you can dispel it–she'd be done for."
"That's why I intend on leaving the Stars," Mana reminded the Mizukage's daughter. "I'll be far more of a hassle than I'm worth. Maybe in time I can reconnect my severed chakra network nodes with new links and regain my peak condition, either way, I'm missing part of my leg and that's forever. The sooner I accept that, the better."
"You know, Damisan stayed on active duty while being horribly misshapen and lacking any limbs whatsoever…" Endo shrugged.
"He was fortunate enough to be a puppetry expert," Mana replied.
"Your skill set doesn't necessitate a perfect balance. You can use one-handed hand seals just fine, so there's no reason for you to retire. You can stay a powerful ninjutsu and genjutsu specialist without moving around too much. There are plenty of one-legged ninja, some of them are even weaponry or taijutsu specialists, which is the worst-case scenario for them. It really feels like you're just retreating out of fear and despair," Shige-H joined the harassing side. Or so it felt to Mana, even though a part of her knew the three wanted what was best for her and only wanted to help.
"Bunny girl one-legged. I carry bunny girl around and protect her," Gwirlon mumbled, slamming his hooked and bladed arm on the table, though he showed enough restraint not to break it, which would've been a cinch to someone his size and raw power.
"Aww, he named you, like a pet…" Endo closed his eyes for some rest while stretching the right corner of his lips up and sneaking a sassy smirk in.
"I've already made my decision. I promise you guys to give my best shot at seeing how much of my skills I can still salvage and how well I can still perform on stage one-legged. Though I'm ready to throw in the towel already. I won't let any more people get hurt or die because they had to watch my back, that includes you, Gwirlon-san. I didn't reach out to you to make you my bodyguard or to have you work for me or to make you feel indebted to me. You're your own man and you should make your own decisions from now on," Mana looked at the big man with a worried look. The way he had become attached to her and always carried her around on his shoulders and stood up for her like her actual bodyguard made the crippled kunoichi a tad worried that he may have misunderstood the meaning of being free.
It seemed like she'd have to monitor him and see. She'd hate to cut all ties with him and act mean to him or try to push him away. Though if that'd be for the best in shaping him as his own man… It may just have been the right thing to do.
Mana had seen nothing like Getsugakure. The grim tales of cannibalism, murder, and people being driven to their absolute worst impulses that the handicapped magician heard from Stea during the Chuunin Exams had crafted a false image of wooden shacks and gaunt figures wandering the sandy beaches like zombies, looking for their next meal that had woken up alive and well that morning, not knowing it wouldn't see the end of the day.
The Getsugakure that greeted the arriving vessel and its departing Allied Ninja passengers was a marvelous sight that was halfway visible from beyond the horizon. Moon Country was a rocky island in the northern-west regions of the world, shaped like a crescent moon. The shores on the inside of the "crescent" island had been incredibly shallow, only fitting for barges or minute floats to swim through. When the tide retreated, it wasn't an alien sight to see the "crescent" island adopt a rounder shape with the sandy bottoms becoming visible from up in the air. This granted Moon Country a more "full moon" appearance every once in a few months.
Getsugakure was visible from the very edge of the Moon Country shores. Its marvelous, classic oriental-style buildings dwarfed the fruit and cherry blossom trees that were ample on the island. It seemed like every mountain had lush patches of green and every tree on the island had colorful petals to it and branches drawn to the ground with juicy fruit of mother Earth's labor.
Small fishing boats took off from the port settlements every hour, heading out to all corners of the world. Just looking at the heart and core of the crescent shape with the naked eye showed how full of flopping and splashing life these shores were. Looking at the pristine, renovated and hand-built temples and oriental wonders pleasing to the eye and the romantic shine of the cherry blossom trees complimenting the tiger-colored tiles and golden frames of the building roofs made one question how once this place could have been in the state that it had been in.
"Ugh… Kirigakure should've been this way too," Asuka's mood soured upon seeing the success of Getsugakure that the country had achieved almost in just a speck of a few years, compared to total degradation into the abyss of primal instincts and famine that it had drowned in before.
Mana wanted to voice the most accepted historical interpretation that it was because of the actions of Namikaze Shirona, Asuka's mother, that her village had to struggle through years of lost autonomy and other villages handling Kirigakure's affairs while looking out for their own best interests first and foremost. It was that period that held Kirigakure's development back a great deal. While Mana had heard little about the current Mizukage, if he hadn't been overly successful at spearheading the village to the modern age, it may in part have been because of the path set for failure that they've started on. Listening to the voice of reason in her mind, she didn't say all that out loud.
"I thought I sensed a familiar chakra signature…" a feeling that Mana was well-acquainted with hit her head-on with Gasco Patura, once a powerhouse of Team Phobos, socked Mana like a sledgehammer when the sneaky man stopped concealing his signature. Only after feeling nostalgia breaching the hull of her ribcage and flooding all over the chest cavity that Mana realized that hearing the low-pitched, grinding voice of the man that taught her about chakra sensory caused her goosebumps.
Gasco had added two more chains attached to what looked like his actual scalp hanging on the sides, alongside the central and the largest one that acted like a braid or a growth attached to his head. Gwirlon blinked a few times, identifying a few things in common with the tall and broad-shouldered man with excessive facial tattoos and perchance for body modification. Endo barely restrained a cringe, likely relating to the ring that Gasco had in his nostrils.
"Gasco-san!" Mana bowed respectfully. Gasco looked a tad confused, yet he nodded his head in acknowledgment of Mana's respectful gesture. With an apathetic glare, he scanned her company, paying a special amount of attention to Gwirlon because of his highly unnatural appearance matching if not surpassing Gasco's own by a confident margin.
"It's good to see you in Getsugakure. Fortunately, you get to see the fruits of your and Stea's combined efforts and what they helped create. I'm sure it'd have broken Stea's heart to host you before Getsugakure's rebirth," Gasco's booming voice spoke with a softer tone than Mana was used to. Maybe it was just that she had been hearing the man threatening her and acting suspicious or hostile toward her in her memories and reliving those experiences in her dreams so often that she wasn't used to the new status quo between Team Phobos and her.
"I didn't know you had acquaintances in Getsugakure…" Endo crossed his arms and gave Mana a glare that accused her of being shifty and deceitful about this.
"You must not be all that experienced to not have heard about the unbelievable match that Mana and Stea had during the finals of the Chuunin Exams in Konoha," Gasco turned to Endo with the same ironclad face Mana recalled being subjected to herself all those years back.
"I must admit, I've heard of Mana's noteworthy performance during the Chuunin Exams but I haven't seen the match itself nor do I know many details about it," Shige-H bowed her head, paying her respects to the local shinobi before speaking up.
"I did…" Asuka crossed her arms and looked away. "I wanted to take part in those Chuunin Exams to kill Mana back then. I thought I was ready, but even back then I knew I wasn't. Not even close."
"Those were the most competitive and tough Chuunin Exams ever," Gasco Patura nodded in response while reacting with some moderate bafflement at the fact that Asuka had admitted to wishing for Mana's death despite standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the kunoichi now. "Anyone that wasn't ready and even those that were far beyond the level of an average Chuunin but were just plain unlucky got chewed up and spat out."
"Well, in that case, it does not surprise me to know that Mana over-performed," Shige-H smiled while looking at Mana. "It is nice to meet you, Gasco-san. My name is Shige-H. I am the squad leader of Stars, a unit aligned with the Allied Ninja. You already know Mana, this is Endo. These two are recruits, they're not Stars yet, but they may make it in the future: Asuka and Gwirlon."
"The Allied Ninja?" Gasco's eyes hid underneath the facial piercings and the shade of his bony ridges carrying the marks of his eyebrows. "You'd be wise not to stay around for too much longer around these parts then. The locals think little of the Allied Ninja. Many times during our toughest moments, we've reached out to the Allied Ninja for help, yet the Allied Ninja didn't respond. They neither sent us food or supplies nor assisted us with humanitarian missions. We didn't see a single Allied Ninja here when we needed help the most."
"It's a good thing we're not staying around then," Endo opened his eyes to challenge Gasco with a fiery look. "This is just a place to hitch our ride back to the Lightning Country shores."
"Endo…" Shige-H disciplined her squadmate with a look before bowing her head again with respect. "I don't intend on questioning the complicated history your village has with the Allied Ninja but nobody amongst the Stars, let alone either of the recruits, has worked with the Allied Ninja long enough to have been any part of the negligence your country has suffered in the face of adversity."
"I know that well enough," Gasco blinked slowly. "Not to mention that Mana and her role during the match against Stea has been instrumental in restoring the former glory of Getsugakure, if not expanding that power substantially. Getsugakure is now a gem of the northern seas and Mana's aid in helping us make this happen will forever be appreciated by the locals. It is because I know that neither of you has worked with the Allied Ninja long enough to know where things stand here with the locals that I've told you this upfront."
"Stea-san…" Mana muttered to change the subject to avoid the discomfort from developing into animosity. "How is she doing?"
"She is away on a mission with her team now. It's been a few days, so she might be back soon, though, if you're in a rush to get back to the mainland, you might miss it," Gasco said. "Come, I'd like to accompany you to the harbor where I can arrange for you to get a nice sail back to Lightning Country with a local captain I know."
The broad-shouldered man turned around and began walking across the rocky shores and beaches, walking past tall, flat-topped mountains and further into lush leafages on a marble and onyx-paved trail. Saying nothing, just sharing mutual looks, the Stars followed Mana's acquaintance to where Gasco's captain friend worked in the harbor.
"So… I see that you've suffered a nasty injury on the field, Mana," Gasco turned the corner of his right eye back at the handicapped kunoichi who sort of kept it to herself atop of Gwirlon's shoulders since the giant wouldn't let Mana walk unless she levitated using Mystical Wings or would've insisted on walking on Serenity Arcana makeshift leg.
"Yes. Actually, it happened on this very mission, quite recently," Mana nodded.
"I see… I'm sorry if I've inconvenienced you in that case. I wouldn't presume to know what you're going through, but I'm sure you'll persevere," Gasco turned back to look at the road ahead.
"Actually, she won't…" Asuka smirked, glad to have bitten the crippled magician for her surrender. "She's quitting."
"That sounds like a mistake," Gasco cut without sparing a look back. "I do sense damage in your chakra network, but it's nothing you shouldn't be able to recover from. With training and meditation, you've got a fair chance of returning to full strength and there are plenty of ninja that can do just fine without one limb. If memory serves, you can perform seals one-handed, right?"
"That's… Not the point," Mana looked away. Somehow, it began feeling like the entire rest of the world was against her. Even people she looked up to and her friends. Everyone was always pushing her toward things she was afraid of turning toward. "I've… Lost someone fairly recently too. A woman died because she was doing her best to watch my back. I've lived my life to help everyone I can and save as many lives as I can and… It feels like I'm doing damage to this goal. It feels like I'm burning down the legacy I've built and undoing every bit of success I've achieved."
"Stupid," Gasco put it bluntly, with a slam like a falling stone of muzzled volume. "Turn your head to your left. There, behind this lush jungle, lays your legacy that you can't just burn down, no matter how many arms or legs you lose. This village, these lucky people, they are your legacy too."
"I'd rather not discuss this anymore, I've made my decision, Gasco-san," Mana insisted. "Honestly, I had expected people I've known and counted on to support me in what's the toughest decision of my life. Leaving already makes me feel alone."
"I see," Gasco said. "Maybe the reason the entire world pushes back against you trying to run away is that it feels indebted to you? Because you've helped it in ways you can't immediately see and fathom and because your world is just as afraid of functioning without you as you are of the unknown you're facing after leaving everything you've accomplished behind? Nothing spoils a hero's legacy more than a hero turning their back against a world that asks for their help."
Mana didn't reply. Mainly because she didn't know how. Clearly, Gasco and the Stars saw something more in Mana than she saw in herself. To them, what crushed her spirit and left her begging for a finishing stomp felt only like a temporary setback. Who knew, maybe if it had been one of them that walked in Mana's boot right now and she was the one on their side, maybe she'd also plead with them the same way and use the same arguments they used?