A pair of small dips in Meiko's chakra made Mana glance back a pair of times. By now the magician's experience hinted that if Meiko was really in trouble, she'd be much more desperate and would use chakra in much greater extents. Nothing burns through the remaining supply like use tainted by fear for one's own safety. A careful application becomes a slap of as much chakra as possible to maximize the chance of withstanding an attack with as little damage as possible and it wasn't like Meiko was the most skilled ninja with chakra control, to begin with.
The magician landed by a small Yordalaran home and hid behind it. Most of the Yordalarans were either hidden inside their homes, intimidated by the all the ruckus or laid knocked out in the middle of the settlement's square. It was not a nice statistic or one that Mana could have been proud of but it was the one she'd have to live with. It was not any easier to deal with it knowing that she was responsible for likely the most incapacitations out of her entire team… Just what on Earth got over her?
Meiko's chakra signature began moving at Mana's direction. Not like before, not where Mana required effort to track its movement but much more slowly. Was the blacksmith that safe that she could move at the pace in which her wounded body demanded to be moved in? That meant that the redhead had managed to give the slip to the Yordalarans around her, that was impressive. Perhaps it was foolish of Mana to trust the condition of Meiko's body and just assume that she was good to use the Body Flicker or that her Body Flicker technique would succeed in getting the blacksmith away.
Mana's eyes moved down at the unconscious body by her side. This man was a spy, spies were some of the best-taught opponents to resist interrogation. That included mental interrogation and Mana's track record of successful interrogations ever since she picked up the skill has been rather unimpressive. Every time someone worth their mettle forced her to pull out the stops – she failed to get what she needed. Even if she skipped the mental questioning part and tried her own, better-proven method of getting what she wanted, there was a minor hitch – the spy was jawless and physically could not speak.
"You know, I'm kind of beginning to think you're enjoying getting killed in front of people…" Meiko sighed shortly after landing beside Mana. Despite all of her gear and bulk, the redhead was significantly more quiet than Mana in her movement. Part of it may have been because she did not have a body that she needed to haul around, part of it was because Meiko was just better with stealth.
"I can't choose what I show people in my illusions. The illusion is what it is. I made the Fancy Trick Jutsu when I was ten years old, the illusion seemed like a good idea back then…" Mana sighed in relief when her friend met up with her.
"Well, are you going to do this?" Meiko looked at the unconscious, jawless ninja. "We don't have a whole day. If this guy wakes up with even a hint of his chakra recovered we'll have our hands full, plus the whole place is buzzing to kick us out of Yordalar."
"I guess I was waiting for someone to watch my back." Mana made a gentle smile before placing her hand atop the jawless man's forehead. She closed her eyes and channeled her chakra, building it up and accelerating its flow throughout her entire body, refusing to focus it into just a singular place.
"Roger…" Meiko sighed, realizing the difficult task ahead. She'll have to protect Mana while she'll leave herself exposed and work on the interrogation without disrupting the magician which would hinder her interrogation.
Everything around Mana was sunken in total darkness. It was a similar feeling to that which she experienced when entering her own mental realm during meditation. Except for the cold and damp sensations running up and down her body, drilling through every loop in the fabric of her clothes and pinching her skin like lying down atop of millions of needles. She should have figured that the mind of this man would be a raw and drab place…
A metallic banging noise reached the magician's ears, alerting her adjusting and budding senses to something to navigate by. As seconds passed, Mana heard a cascade of these same noises coming from all around her. Not a moment after the magician's eyes became more accustomed to the darkness around her that not even the somber lanterns beside each miner could illuminate, she realized that she was in a tunnel system.
The magician treaded forward without losing the tempo in her step. She could pretty much polka around there narrow turns and sharp ridges, she could do flips without smacking her head against the tunnel of shifting height and width after all the training she did with the Ninja Rabbits. If this was the way that the spy's mind protected itself against foreign invaders, Mana was the worst match-up for him to encounter. Even if none of one's outside strength mattered here, only the fortitude of one's mind, the magician retained enough confidence in her navigation abilities in this environment to feed some of her physical realm skills in navigating in darkness to her mental self.
A crowd of pitiful, underfed and pale figures appeared from the countless twists and turns of the tunnel system, peeked their faces from little tunnels etched into the ceiling and the floor of the carved corridors of the endless mine before squirming out of these pocket holes. Maybe it was for the better that the magician could not see them in full detail or smell them as she had almost forgotten what it felt like to smell anymore, which made it difficult for olfactory mental or illusionary factors to affect her…
All of the rushing miners smashed against an invisible barrier around Mana that shimmered with an azure glow, the miners hid from illumination like cockroaches from a turned on kitchen light. So far, the joyless spy did not appear to put up much resistance, the answers to what Mana wanted to know laid somewhere deep within these mines. The imaginary safe zone of the man she was interrogating, his own mental fortress. His sanctuary and home.
A mistake the magician kept on making while learning to interrogate in the Intelligence Division was treating the mental realm like the physical. The only rules here were the ones created by a player that was strong enough to enforce them. Mana extended her hands and dragged the left hand closer to her right as if attempting to flip the entire three-dimensional mine around her like a page. The fabric of mental reality shook and flapped but did not budge. The resistance was formidable, without a doubt the spy was aware on some level that Mana was here, despite his physical body being unconscious.
A tall and malformed, humanoid shape possessing two heads charged right through Mana. The magician could not sense it but she managed to make her body intangible to the figment of imagination by sensing the inner quakes inside the spy's own mind. When one prepared to throw a punch, they performed the wind-up, there were plenty of signs inside the mental realm that one was winding up a mental blow of their own.
Mana glared at the grotesque shape attempting to make it disperse. Unlike in the real world where thinking that if one refused to acknowledge and believe that which terrified them would end up getting one killed, here, in someone else's mind, it may just have worked.
"He's too solid… Could this not be a sign of imagination but… A memory?" Mana wondered while the two-headed miner swung his pickaxe over his head. Instead of attacking the monstrous miner, the magician used her concentration to lower the mine's ceiling and have the pickaxe get stuck inside it. The malformed man roared, grumbled and threw slobber up in attempt to pull the stuck tool out but it was to no avail. Hardening the stone in the mine was as simple as lowering the ceiling to an entire tunnel.
"In that case… I'll need a little physical therapy…" Mana thought to herself while her body crackled with lightning. If she focused hard enough on the thought of a certain ninjutsu technique, not just focused, really felt every feeling that followed it, truly simulated the experience of using it with her entire being, her physical body may have used that technique while Mana's mind was still stuck inside. It was difficult with a technique of rank as high as the Magician's Touch Jutsu but, luckily, the magician's concentration was never her weakness.
After a crackle of lightning passed through Mana's body and resonated through the entire mine, creating glowing cracks that appeared almost like the bolts of actual lightning in the darkest covers of the night, the malformed miner was no longer in Mana's way, as if he had never been there, to begin with…
The magician began taking simple steps forward. Shifting right through the mine appeared to be not an option since it did not work the last time but maybe she could still fool the host mind that the way she was going was actually the right one through subtle mental manipulation. It would not be easy to traverse a mind and alter it at the same time, especially on such a level… The mine around Mana began rushing forward, it appeared as if the magician was plummeting down when, in fact, she was standing quite still, and yet, the mine around her kept on moving at tremendous speed. Twists and turns all turned and curled without Mana's input, it was almost like the young woman was being taken somewhere…
"I am a bit confused," Mana spoke up, seeing the jawless spy hacking with his pickaxe right in front of her at the ceiling above him with a curious tool she had never seen before – a twin-sided long staff, on one end hung the typical end of a pickaxe, on another – the end of a rake. An oddly practical tool that meant to shatter hardened minerals and then use the other side to quickly filter through the shatters to reveal the shimmering details within the ruined stone.
"You made me forget…" the spy spoke back at her. It was something that felt surprising, sure, anyone who couldn't normally speak could imagine themselves speaking inside their own mind, however, it required concentration being focused on speech instead of protecting one from the mental invader. "You did something and I don't remember Lutno anymore. I'll tell you anything you need to know if you make me forget more things."
"Hm? Not very devoted to your goal, I see…" Mana taunted the man who now took a much younger, slimmer and still jawed form. He wore a white filtering mask that covered his lower face so even when he clearly had a lower jaw it was still hidden under that facial accessory.
"It's not that I don't want us to succeed or that I don't believe in it. It's that you're already too late to stop us." The Iwagakure spy declared right before dropping a massive payload of minerals all over the ground. For whatever reason, it reminded Mana of the seppuku that she saw in the Summit with the life of Mother Mountain spilling all over the ground. It was a much richer drop compared to most of the ones Mana saw the other miners get. Needless to say, the younger version of the spy she attempted to interrogate continued to brush the stones with the rake.
The young man was excited, overly so, he had none of the careful brushing that the other miners or even he himself used before. His movements were filled with haste to collect the day's quota of coltan, gold, silver, copper and whatever else he managed to get his hands on and get paid. With the teeth of the rake brushing against the stone so quickly and with such childish brashness, it was of no surprise that it got stuck in a harder vein of a mineral. The rest was all inertia, the other side of the stick flying like a battleax and picking the young man's lower jaw off. It was not a clean wound at all…
"You want to forget this?" Mana asked something that required no clarification. She wanted to know the reason why the young man wanted to forget this so much that he'd bargain with a foreign ninja more than she needed the confirmation that this memory required wiping.
"This changed my life. I could no longer work in the mines after this, mining is the pride and joy of any Iwagakure civilian. Plenty, even the Tsuchikage himself have risen from the ranks of lowly miners, climbing their way up the mountain to more light, ironically enough, more and cleaner air… I do not hate the mines, in fact, I love the shot every man is given to earn their bread and medals. This is the only memory that bitters the entire experience. My spoon of tar in a barrel of honey…" the spy's voice still spread across the mine's despite his previous body being frozen in time, writhing on the ground while the other miners that had enough mercy to save his life gathered around him. It surprised the magician to see just how many continued to work, whether refusing to look at the boy in an attempt to avoid seeing the gruesome nature of his injury or because it distracted them from their own quota and the surplus they needed to earn in order to ascend.
"It's not as easy as that…" Mana raised her hand up, demonstrating the lightning crackles of the magician's touch passing through her body. "Even if I left your mind and focused on the jutsu, I can't be certain of what I am making you forget. In the strictest manner of speaking, I'll merely direct the power of an octillion volts right through your brain. Even if the contact lasts for a split-moment, who knows what you will be forgetting…"
"I see." The jawless spy dragged his hand across the gruesome wound on his lower jaw. With just a simple wave the man's jaw reassembled and stitched itself back together on flesh and skin strands that all wrapped around one another like separate strings weaving together. "I trust you. Zap me as many times as you need to so that I forget it, it doesn't matter what gets lost in the way. If only one memory remains while this is gone forever, it will be a fair trade."
"I must admit, I did not expect this to go this way…" Mana muttered before finally signing the resolution inside her to do what needed to be done.
"I could struggle but… My body is unconscious, it would just be unnecessary. The battle would cost me my precious memories and by now we've already bought more than enough time… It's a compromise, as some would call it. You said you needed to leave my mind to fry my brain?" the spy raised the issue. Mana felt cold sweat run down her back whenever the spy mentioned stalling and having won enough time already.
"P-Please don't call it that. It doesn't make it any easier to do." Mana scratched the back of her neck before nodding with unease. "Yes, I would rather focus on the technique than use it half-subconsciously. Using it like this will feel like solving advanced math problems while memorizing a poem and singing along with your favorite song."
"I see, I'd rather you stay. That will help us clear up what I've forgotten and it will help to only sacrifice the necessary and not one memory more." The spy insisted.
"You're… That's insane." Mana shook her head.
"Please… Coltan, home, and other miners… They're all that means anything in my life anymore. Every day I wake up just to protect those memories and experience them some more. I'd rather die than lose a treasured memory I could have protected."
There was that word… People joked when referring to it as the "magic word" but when Mana was concerned and other people spoke it… It very well may have actually possessed mystical properties. Magician's Touch was not a jutsu that Mana did too much training on during the time in the Rabbit Caves, she had only narrowly sharpened her skills with the technique compared to how they were before. This was a gamble yet the worst thing that could happen was Mana leaving the man a drooling vegetable. If she focused just enough, she'd be able to notice and restrict the power output and save the man from death even if the worst came to pass…
This was reckless, this was immensely dangerous for this man but…
Lives were at stake, the innocent, generous and naïve lives of the Yordalaran people, the lives of Kumogakure ninja and the allies that chose to walk alongside the path of the stronger side of the war. Whatever plan Iwagakure had, it must have been important enough to win the coltan conflict without question as nothing less than that justified intervention like this. An intervention that justified the complete reduction of a ninja village to rubble by the other Great Countries…
There was only one line Mana would never cross and this had no danger approaching it, even if this suggestion was dangerous.
The magician sighed, feeling a little shocked by how okay she felt about what she was about to do. There may have been easier ways to make the man forget, maybe Kiyomi possessed Yamanaka hijutsu that applied pressure on one's mind strong enough to cut access to some memories, maybe Meiko could have punched the man hard enough to shake his noggin up a little bit. Either one of those was an outlandish suggestion but they were both more likely than successfully pulling this feat off…
"Very well, I will do my best…" Mana sighed while rolling back her sleeves and extending her hands in a wide-guard stance. "I will need you to tell me the information beforehand, however, in the case of me screwing up you will be in no condition at all to give me anything and that case is extremely likely."
"I suppose that's fair enough… The location you need to go to is the Eternal Fire. A complex of black, metallic structures in the northern side of Yordalar, next to Mound Tate. It is a sort of a parliament building where the council of Yordalarans that decide over the faith of their people reside while the meetings are in session, it is far too hot to stay there any other time. It is a clever joke, whoever thought of it, incentivizes the council to hurry up with their political bantering. There you will find the others."
"The others?" Mana asked, surprised by the shock in her own voice. Somewhere in the corner of her mind, she had always suspected that the spies had more allies than those that revealed themselves during the election.
"Correct. The election was just a charade, while we occupied the Yordalaran people and played with you, the rest have already drafted a contract for Yordalar's current leader to sign that will grant the power over the land to Iwagakure. It may not sound entirely fair and legal and I won't presume to understand the specifics but… The transmission is a complicated, multi-part process that, once completed, will leave the other countries no other choice but to acknowledge it."
Azure bolts of lightning ran down Mana's body, arcing and forming small rings around her body before dispersing into nets of smaller jolts. The magician was eager to start this crazy procedure now that it became clear what was at stake.
