"Hmmm…" the man disappeared deep within his thoughts while stroking his rodent-sized mustache incessantly. Who could have blamed him, it occurred to Mana that if she had such a rich hairline over her lip, she'd probably be stroking it all the time too, just like when she stroke her plentiful hair. "I am not like my constituents, I am afraid. I will need more information than this to let you place traps that would endanger my own people in my settlement."
"That is understandable, what would you like to know?" Yushijin took over the initiative of speaking for his team as a leader.
"First of all, you people are clearly Konoha ninja. You're not hiding the plates of your forehead protectors but Land of Snow is not used to working with other villages. We've worked with Kumogakure as far as I can remember so this development is extremely suspicious to me." The chief wondered. The man settled down into a chair, wrapped his arms over his chest and placed one leg onto the other, shutting himself off from the team of guests this way.
"We've been hired by a settlement inside the Land of Snow. It is not your settlement but it is local nevertheless. It seems that Kumogakure is too busy with its military engagements to watch their own allies' back." Yushijin replied. It did not seem all too wise to Mana to try and throw shade at Kumogakure in front of a settler who must have been working with Kumogakure ninja his entire career.
"Heh, I suppose that's right…" the chief smiled while opening his uppermost drawer and pulling out a kiseru pipe. "It doesn't seem like you've reported to your client though. Why would that be?"
"There's no use, we've been hired to eliminate this tribe. That is all that we will do. There's no use in moving two thousand kilometers further north just to show our faces to someone. As long as we do our job and pull out, that will be fine." Yushijin replied, for a youth who was shrugging shoulders, he looked quite confident in his reply.
"This tribe, what is it exactly?" the chief wondered while long strands of tar-black smoke extended from the end of his pipe. Something revolting was bubbling at the very end of the smoking tool as if a spoonful of boiling oil. Every expanding bubble was colored with every color of the spectrum while also releasing puffs of smoke with every detonation.
"A nasty piece of work. Raiders who see violence and animalistic brutality as their way of life. They send their young to cause a general ruckus and test the place they will be raiding, then they come full force and decimate the place." Yushijin explained.
"So you've seen it happen?" the chief wondered.
"No. My knowledge of what comes after comes from the mission objective file." Yushijin shook his head. The young man took a brief moment to wipe his hair off of his face afterward.
"It just so happens that I've heard of this tribe, also we've noticed the early signs you speak of and we've called for Kumogakure ninja to intervene on our behalf already." The village chief sighed. While he explained with the proper edge that would have been necessary if one was explaining how they caught a hardened criminal in their act, this time the context did not match the intensity of the man's tone. "So you can see why I am in a bit of an impasse here."
"With all due respect, if the Kumogakure ninja planned on helping you out, they'd have been here already. We were worried to find nothing but bloodstains and ruin while we were coming here, there's no time to sit idly and wait for your saviors to come. You need to prepare." Erumo stepped up. The young kunoichi was always prepared to fight for a possible opportunity to place traps for someone.
"That is the only reason why I did not ask you four out of here yet." The village chief puffed his smoke while leaning back in his chair. "Your effort might be useful to my settlement."
"Then why…" Mana was about to ask the man who appeared to be quite strict and hardy from the first glance what was the reason for his soft-boiled behavior but Yushijin interjected halfway.
"You're worried that the Kumogakure ninja will arrive at any point of our preparations or during the battle…" the leader of Team Fir stated.
"That's right. The only reason I know of this tribe is because of constant radio contact between the officials in charge of maintaining the radio bases scattered all over the Land of Snow. Contact from the military stations built and kept by Kumogakure. For all I may know, they're sitting outside and waiting for a chance to ambush the invading raiders." The chief lamented his situation.
"In that case, you're already screwed, aren't you?" Kouta replied rather rudely. "You've already let in Konoha ninja inside your settlement and spoke to them. May as well let us do our thing."
"Well… As a kid who grew up in quartz mines, I am a sucker for good old manual labor. Trap away…" the chief sighed after slowly placing his pipe on the table, letting some of the disgusting goop that simmered in it to leak out on the cedar table. "However, do involve the locals too. This is the first and the last time that I bargain with foreigners I didn't call here so I need to make sure that it's useful. Let my folk absorb some of your knowledge so that they know how to protect themselves in the future when Kumogakure decides to sit these things out again."
The village chief rumbled in his chair with his heavy frame, pressing two of his large fingers against a button on a wooden tile with a red lamp on it. Moments later, a plump administration official who intended to mirror his superior's sense of militaristic style almost rolled into the man's room.
"This is Voshchia, he is in charge of managing how local freeloaders spend their time. He'll help you gather a group. I'm sure the concept of building something that will kill invaders will be exciting enough for the lot to keep them on your side." The village chief declared.
Yushijin glanced at Erumo. "Not what I signed up for but it'll do…" the Konoha kunoichi shrugged with an irked look on her face. Mana could fathom the source for her irritation. It was troublesome enough to try and prepare the settlement borders from an attack by a foreign threat that should have happened already at the very moment of the conversation, it would be a whole different matter entirely to also babysit and tutor a group of unemployment-loving civilians.
"I didn't expect you to be this complicit and helpful, I'll be honest." Erumo looked at Mana who remained seated atop of a small bench as she oversaw Usuzoku digging a hole. At the same time, she could spare a pair of eyes to look over the men and women assigned by the settlement chief to help, even if Erumo was doing a fine enough job engaging them as it is.
"I didn' expect ya ta make me dig a hole! Swords ain't meant fer diggin'!" Usuzoku grumbled from down below.
"Why not? If these traps can protect these people and help them protect from foreign threats all by themselves, I'll do whatever I can do to help." Mana smiled. "Obviously, I'm not strong enough to dig through the frozen solid ground but there are other ways I can be helpful."
"Not strong 'nuff my ass…" Usuzoku grumbled. "Bullshit an' she knows it…"
"Don't get grumpy. You can still use that sword for its intended purpose when you're making spikes for the bottom of the hole from the trees. There aren't that many trees here, that's why I've asked Bane-chan train in the forest and drag some back." Mana tried mending her standing with her rabbits a little bit. Truthfully, there was another reason why Mana sent Usubane to train in the forest than just ask her to down and drag some trees. While she's out there she'll not only serve as a loud detergent to anyone within their right mind but also as a scout.
"If you're in a giving mood, could you help me teaching some locals a thing or two? I don't mean the practical part, they're pretty handy with that. I'm a little surprised even. I mean maybe relay to them some of your signature thought processes? The type of stuff that helps you think up deathtraps for your shows?" Erumo put her hands in a praying position while closing one of her eyes to make a begging expression. Something suggested to the magician that Erumo wasn't really asking out of the emptiness for ideas of her own mind, she was asking because she wanted to nab a proper handful of them.
"You know me, all about that giving…" Mana grinned.
Unlike Usuzoku, who was working on a more complicated, if a little dragged through the dirt, hole with spikes trap, the small group of locals that Erumo led Mana to were working on simple trap holes. Erumo started blushing and stuttering with even her breathing when the two approached the hole-diggers, obviously ashamed to be seen by Nakotsumi Tsukumo's daughter having instructed these people to just dig trap holes.
"I… I figured that maybe we could use some of these. You know… 'Cause of the whole no-killing policy you have, I figured maybe a couple of traps could try that." Erumo shrugged.
"I think it's really nice of you." Mana nodded. She didn't need to fake her cheer. She was used by now that nobody she worked with, save for Meiko, bothered with Mana's no-killing policy. The best she could have hoped for was nobody mocking it out in the open. For Erumo to go out of her way and do something like this…
The Konoha magician cocked her head, letting her hat roll down the front of her head and onto her shoulder, then down her arm until a firm clutch left it pinched between Mana's index and her thumb. With a playful spin of the cylinder-shaped artifact of sealing, she showed Erumo the glowing tag at the top of the hat from the inside.
"I figured, for efficiency's sake, that these holes could use some of these seals. It's a seal my father gifted to me long ago. Granted, that hat was destroyed… I don't even remember when. Nevertheless, it's the first and probably the only proper sealing technique I've learned because I didn't feel comfortable asking him over and over again to put it on a new hat every time I lost the old one or it got shredded in supernova heat somewhere..." Mana weaved the required hand seals for the setup of the sealing technique that her hat used to store objects and, more commonly, rabbits that Mana called upon because she still felt a bit stingy about using unoriginal ninjutsu.
"Are you sure you want to do that? Spend so much of your chakra on my trap holes? I just don't think I'm worth it…" Erumo shook her head with an energetic refusal.
"If you won't accept that, you can always just copy my jutsu. It's not that tough to master, you are a seal-user, right? I'm sure somebody at least partly specializing in sealing jutsu should be able to get the hang of it. The jutsu's been perfected and polished long ago, optimized for easy pick-up and usage. If even I, a non-sealing user could pick it up…" Mana let the thought linger as there was no necessity to finish it.
Invigorated, Erumo reached for her back pouch and removed a pair of blank sealing tags, then jumped down one of the holes and pressed it against the ground. The trapster placed her palm onto the sealing tag and focused her chakra at the hand to where it visibly formed a bland blue glow around it visible even to a naked eye. It seemed to Mana that her ally was using far too much chakra for the jutsu but she kept that observation to herself.
With a mighty shredding noise, the paper erupted into tiny pieces like torn to bits by a mighty shockwave in front. Erumo stumbled and flipped over on her butt and back before jumping back on her feet. Nobody expected to master a jutsu from the first try but she did far better than most may have done.
"Too much chakra. It's a far simpler technique than you'd think." Mana explained with a never-fading grin, trying not to make it too apparent that the grin was assisted in its curving angle by the hilarity of seeing her friend being thrown around by her own mistakes.
"It's Nakotsumi Tsukumo's technique…" Erumo mumbled something that was meant solely to herself but it was something that everybody ended up hearing. "It's gotta be special…"
This time, the red gleam spreading from Erumo's hands suggested that she had performed the sealing technique correctly, having contained her excitement if still a little overtaxed on the chakra strain. It was not a matter of lacking chakra control or lack of polish with the technique. Erumo purposefully forced too much chakra through her system, still considering the jutsu to be far more powerful and impressive than it actually was.
"You're still overcompensating but you've nailed it!" Mana commended her peer. Something that took her years to learn only took a kunoichi specializing in sealing techniques two tries.
"No. I'm trying to seal people, not tools. The amount of chakra needed to seal away an entire person is much larger than it would be sealing away a handful of steel-tipped cards." Erumo breathed out while dusting off her hands.
Mana raised her eyebrows and restrained the first instinct to let her jaw drop. She had completely forgotten to incorporate that sort of detail into the mix. Not only did Erumo pick up on Mana's technique, but she also improved and modified it to fit a purpose that the original was not suitable for. The initial try must have merely been something to get used to the technique, see how it worked and felt. The second try was the real deal.
"People are also unlike small rodents…" Erumo grinned. "C'mon, you'll help me place some barriers on the cardboard walls in the east. Those savages will shit bricks when they'll smack their faces into a reflection barrier seal."
Seeing Erumo working on traps gave Mana flashes of Meiko's excitement over fancy gear or food. The magician turned to the east and stared at the gloomy grey sky for a moment. The cold drizzle that substituted the pelting snowfall brushed against Mana's face, for something that seemed much colder and more intense, its touch was much softer.
"C'mon. We've no time already." Erumo encouraged Mana to hurry up.
A gripping feeling in her chest made Mana clutch at it instinctively, hard enough to tear a string of her coat. Something was wrong. It was not the revolting feeling of nausea that feeling a particularly despicable chakra invited to one's gut, it was a feeling of loss.
"They're here already. Usubane has been taken out. Go set up what can still be set up, I'll warn Usuzoku." Mana's cheerfulness faded in that singular instant. She needed to do everything right or else this encounter would only end up another thing she'll regret about on stormy and cold nights.
"Huh? How'd you know?" Erumo whined out but the firmness in Mana's voice made the trapster cease her dillydallying and do what she's been encouraged to do. Mana was soft in nature and voice but when her tone became this serious, no matter what one's relation was to the magician, as long as they could identify the meaningful change in attitude, they did what they were told to do.
Mana closed her eyes and reached out up to the small forested hills surrounding the settlement. If she settled down, entered a meditational trance, maybe she'd be able to reach out far wider but in her sense of dread, this was the best she could have done.
Beacons of blood-red sparked in from blank void. It was impossible to miss, this did not seem like a raiding group, this had to have been an entire army. Nobody moved this much people just to loot a bunch of houses, these people were ready to kick every little stone off of where it rested on. They may have turned the entire settlement upside down and nothing about the way the sheer physicality of their chakra felt suggested they'd do it nice and slow.
A cascade of explosions rung through the plains. The army of tribesmen set off the sealing mines that Erumo and the borrowed settlers left all over the plains surrounding the settlement. These warriors weren't like any Mana had encountered, not in terms of strength, but in terms of character. Even when reacting to this awful resistance, seeing at least thirty-five souls snuffed out at once and many more having their signatures dip to the danger zone after one chain of explosions the crimson fury of their blazing signatures did not fade in the slightest, on the contrary, the heat was rising up, the intensity was accelerating.
"Dispensers!" Mana heard Erumo's voice from farther away, it reminded the magician that she had a rabbit swordsman to warn but Usuzoku was already standing by Mana's side and watching on ahead in the direction that the magician was staring off to.
"Can the girly defend dis lousy joint?" Usuzoku wondered with a dull grumble.
"The traps should work on all but two members of the tribe. Their physical chakra would be a danger to even an experienced genin. That's not the kind of training and brute force mere traps can overcome." Mana expressed her worries. Truthfully to her statement, she sensed a pair of masked signatures that was surrounded in weak sparks of red. It was like hundreds of thousands of these tribesmen all collided into a pair of monstrous beings on a whole different scale.
The siege on the Land of Snow settlement had begun. After days of detours and attempts to locate the target, the macabre tribe of Land of Snow mountains and the Konohagakure ninja have finally collided with one another.