Led by a question plaguing her mind, Mana picked up the pace so that she could close up to Mollay again. The Allied Ninja turned at her though it looked like that was only because she broke formation and he did not expect that to happen rather than a genuine interest in what Mana had to say. In the brief moment that the man looked at her, Mana noticed tracks of dried out blood on his face.
The rest of the crew looked like they could have used some rest too. Their chakra had taken a decent dip, though only Mollay had a truly sizable reduction from his full state. Shitaka's greasy black hair got clumped together in sharp strings as parts of it had been soaked in his own blood. Everybody's flak jackets and clothes took some damage making their jackets less likely to protect them from a stray ninja tool shot.
"You're breaking formation," Mollay grumbled out.
"Yes, I know. I wanted to ask you something," Mana nodded. The grumpy nature in which Mollay reprimanded her made the magician almost feel like a criminal.
"Never ask permission from someone if you want to ask them something. Just ask," Mollay answered without dropping the passive ire he felt toward the young woman for breaking formation and making it more difficult for them to do their job. Especially so given the recently established context of bounty hunters and some Nine Tales Gang being after her.
"That Bloodline Selection ability, is it something you were born with, or is it something you shape through skill and training?" Mana wondered.
"No one is born skilled with three different nature transformations," Mollay answered in a way that made Mana feel stupid. "Still, to manage to pull off even an Advanced Bloodline transformation takes years of training and knowledge of the nature transformations that makes them feel natural. Bloodline Selection is something very few ninja can pull off, regardless of if they want to or not."
"I see," Mana breathed out with a sense of moderate relief. As a child, she's been fascinated by the Advanced Bloodline ability though she never had the courage of even dreaming to achieve it or use it herself. Part of her had thought that it had something to with genetics and, frankly, there was nothing special about her own.
"You're happy that genetics play no part in that, aren't you?" in a surprising twist, it was Mollay who asked Mana a question.
"That's right. My parents aren't descended from an important clan, the only things special about me were the mental problems I had to work hard to overcome," Mana nodded. "A few years back I'd have never even dared to dream about learning an Advanced Bloodline ability. Serving time in Jigoku made things different, it made me care a whole lot less and just want to shoot for the sky. It made me realize I had way less to lose than I initially thought. People tend to think treasures and problems of their life are more important than they really are."
"Rock on!" Shitaka chuckled striking up his horns with both hands. "Get swole and burn everything down!"
"That's a wrong mindset to strive for strength with," Mollay shook his head in a rare moment of connection with someone. "If you don't care much about anything or think that nothing matters – you'll slam against a wall you won't be able to break through because your head will be too soft to butt into it."
"If one took you for an example, they'd not be able to tell…" Shitaka stuck his tongue out, flapping it in the wind and mocking his larger ally.
"I come from a similar background to yours. I too know the grinding abyss that imprisonment puts on a human soul. I was never meant for any great things, born just to mine for any veins in the mountains that were more expensive than my own life. However, where the world tried breaking my soul, making me a mindless zombie extracting shards of minerals my entire life, I wanted to prove that world wrong instead. I wanted to make everyone believe that my life was more precious than the coltan, silver, coal, or iron we were mining. It was my undying dream of becoming a ninja that made me reach the plateau of an Advanced Bloodline." Mollay ceased talking, looking exhausted by the words he let loose.
"Heh, you might have said the most words now that I've ever heard you say," Shitaka grinned like a cheeky monkey. "I guess your pathetic journey out of the mines gets you all teared up…"
"It's not pathetic," Mana shook her head, turning to Shitaka with a disparaging look. "Whenever someone works hard for their dream and makes it come true, it's anything but that."
"Maybe most of the time, but he's still a slave of a flawed system," Shitaka tapped his right temple with his index and middle fingers as if gesturing for Mana to think deeper than that. "Mollay wanted to not be treated as a living pickaxe, to be seen as something more precious to his village than a rock but, in the end, he gave up on his village because he had become just a different kind of tool but a tool nonetheless."
"That is not true. I did not become an Allied Ninja because Iwagakure would never see me as anything more than the sum of my use for the village," Mollay shook his head. "That is, after all, the way you all see me still."
"That's not true," Mana shook her head.
"Man, who would have known that once the old man would finally start to grumble we'd be begging for him to shut up again…" Shitaka ran his hand over his greasy hair, making an even greater mess of it.
"And what about you?" Mollay stated while resuming his apathetic stare toward the bleak expanse of woods in front of them. "You state that you wish to burn it all down, the villages, the Daimyo, the very ninja system that governs us. I will admit that your approach to assignments is often anarchistic enough to remain consistent with your attitude but you serve the very system you wish to destroy."
"Fuck you, old man, what other choice do I have!? How else can I make my voice matter in this lump of clogs and clockwork? Serve as a samurai, box myself in some Bullshido code? The only way for me to become strong enough to burn it all down is working as a ninja," Shitaka beamed an aggressive glare Mollay's way though due to the fact that Mollay completely ignored it by not even noticing it made the rebellious punk sigh.
"Return to your formation, Mana," Mollay mumbled.
With an oppressive feeling in her chest, Mana slowed down to center herself inside the formation. She turned back to look at Junichi. The man was the de facto leader of the squad so his word would have been paid heed to. Even Cailar, who was often dismissive and liked to position himself at odds with Junichi, would have only jabbed at the veteran but submitted to his word in the end.
"Everyone looks tired after that last brawl. We could use some rest," Mana said with a raised voice so that the Allied Ninja could hear her without her having to tempt fate and break formation again.
"I am aware," Junichi replied, looking like some less elegant ways of saying the same thing ran down his mind before he settled on a more professional-sounding response.
"Does the recruit feel like it's past her bedtime?" Cailar, on the other hand, was always there to jab where better men refused to do so.
"Just setting up camp won't do. We need to lick our wounds and eat something to escalate replenishing our chakra sooner. We could use an inn," Mana insisted.
"They don't build inns in the middle of the woods. In case you haven't noticed, we've strayed from the main path, what with all the ambushes and the entire country wanting you dead and all," Cailar shrugged with a smug expression.
While Mana wanted to stomp her foot into the face of the arrogant Allied Ninja very much, it was only because his words rang very close to playing her strings in a tragic tune. It might just have been that the whole country wanted her dead, part of it because of the whole business with Guru Ayushi and the other part because they just wanted an easy out of the system in the form of ryo bills, not unlike Shitaka.
"Wh-What the!?" Mana exclaimed, rushing through her words so fast that she got something wet stuck in her throat and had to cough it back up.
Vision went black. Pain only came later, accompanied by loud howling. Mana wasn't sure how she fell down but she could feel the mossy forest floor underneath her as she struggled to get back to her feet. Only her, aching sides, and the taste of blood in her mouth, it seemed. These chakra signatures came out of nowhere and there were far more than a handful, in fact, there might have been more than even nine, if Nine Tales Gang was the prime suspect still.
With hazy vision, the magician bent down to pick up a wooden tool off the ground with traces of blood on its edge. Her hand reached back and made out traces of red on her white gloves, though the shade made it difficult to make out at first. A crow's caw made Mana jump up and look behind her. She had never seen crows dive through so much leafage and race to the forest floor but this one looked curious in her though it was as quick to take off as it was to land.
Dull pain in her backside. It was a struggle to keep her head from bashing against a tree she was kicked into from behind. Where did these ninja come from, more importantly, how did they elude Mana's sensory? She couldn't sense them at all until the final moment, right before they attacked which made sneaking up from behind really easy for them.
The assailant rushed in from behind her, pressing her arm to Mana's backside and tilting it slightly to let her know he could have made the hold much more painful if she resisted. The man looked up, there were echoes of a struggle up above but the assailants were too numerous for the Allied Ninja to brush off and prioritize getting to Mana. Even if she was their mission objective, the numbers of the enemy would make it difficult to fulfill that objective.
Mana's free arm shot down to her subdued wrist, restraining her assailant from breaking her arm with her own free arm while her foot searched for the enemy's own. Her assailant struggled to keep up with her, as expected, the strength of an enemy that chose to work in great numbers wasn't as great as that of a lone wolf of a small squad. Once Mana gambled for some space for herself, her other elbow shot back and forced the assailant to evade it by releasing her hand.
A slick noise of steel brushing against the evening breeze rung in Mana's still hazy ears. A kunai was in play, though she couldn't see it. Just like that, as she looked to find her assailant in the cover of the forest grounds he was gone. It was not only his physical self that was nowhere to be seen or heard but his chakra too. Mana had to hand it to these guys, whoever they were or whomever they worked for, they operated as a true ninja would, employing stealth as their second nature.
Mana's foot shot back like a lance behind her. She didn't look where she was thrusting it though she tried to trace the timing to when she was last attacked. Taijutsu worked in patterns, timing was not an easy thing to break for a person, timing was individual. It was one of the lessons that she had learned from Meiko and Kouta back in the day, that would help her evade the enemy easier.
Her foot hit something solid, at last, she saw two cross-shaped kunai blocking her foot. The knives moved onward, attempting to entrap her calf into a dangerous hold where the assailant could cut her tendons if they ever felt like disabling the magician for life as a punishment for her resistance. Mana moved faster than that, reading her assailant's intent and reveling in the moment of engagement with her enemy rather than them hiding from her with what she had to hand it to them was extreme efficiency.
Mana's foot cut at the calf of her opponent while her other one struck at their temple, sending the attacker flipping in mid-air. At last, she could place a voice behind the bundled appearance of her enemy. The magician extended her index and middle fingers as lightning crackled through her body and extended in a shocking stream, beaming toward her fallen opponent but they were no longer there. A single crow flapped its wings, ascending to the upper level of the woods.
"The crows…" Mana realized though she didn't have much time to revel in her discovery.
The sound of steel cutting through the air reached her in time for the ninja magician to roll aside from the path of a handful of kunai knives coming at her from above. She could hear the noise of crow's wings flapping as the bird ascended from the position in the trees up above where Mana could not pursue it or follow it with her gaze without leaving herself open.
The assailants transformed themselves into crows before and after their attack. It was not the generic Transformation Jutsu that was at play here but a trademarked, more advanced method as it completely masked their chakra signature too, making them impossible to tell from actual crows when they were transformed. It was only when they turned back human that their chakra stood out. Still, from what Mana could tell, sensing the attackers in-between their transformations, their chakra was not too impressive in terms of its size, suggesting that the numbers were the main advantage in play here.
"A number game, huh?" the tip of Mana's lips turned upward. She bit her thumb and shuffled through a collection of hand seals she hadn't performed for a long time. As if knowing that the enemy would attempt to prevent her placing her hand on the ground, she rolled to the side and evaded a hail of kunai that would have pinned her hand down had she been any more naïve, it was only after Mana evaded the enemy's follow-up that she placed her palm firmly on the mossy floor.
"Summoning Jutsu!" she chanted out while her position sunk in a cloud of smoke. A pair of flappy, long, white ears emerged from the cloud, followed by crazed and racing eyes and a goofy smile of one very deranged rabbit.
"Ji-Ji!" Usujitsa exclaimed, for a couple of moments his simple mind raced to recall who this young woman summoning him was and just how he got here.
"Blow all of the crows up," Mana ordered the rabbit menace, tapping into the memory that the two-eared terror submitted to commands as long as they sounded authoritative enough as it couldn't fathom whom it was supposed to obey and relied on following commands that sounded like they came from people that knew better.
"Ji-Ji!" Usujitsa exclaimed, high-fiving the sky as it ran out and began duplicating in alarming quantities, filling the trees in numbers surpassing the fruits that the trees bore.
It was only a matter of time before resonating blasts filled the sky, chain reactions of detonations as the clones closed up on the deceptive bird flocks and detonated themselves with extreme prejudice. Mana didn't like the idea of gambling on the attacking ninja surviving Usujitsa in their crow forms but she lacked any better option right now. The table had just declared that an ace was needed and she held just the right one in her hand. To rely on cards she was yet to draw from the deck would have been gambling on the lives of the Allied Ninja who have already given their all for her.
The traces of the crows' chakra disappeared together with the suicidal Usujitsa clones. Mana slipped down to the ground, she didn't care that the rough bark of the tree tore holes in her blazer and opened the bleeding gash in the back of her head again. She crawled out from the cover to look at the hell she wrought, the Allied Ninja landed down by her to ensure her safety and to evade the resonating destruction up in the air.
"That's one rocking rabbit!" Shitaka rocked his head, trying to match his rhythm to the bangs in the air.
"He killed them…" Mana sighed. "There're no traces of their chakra left,"
"Don't beat yourself over it, it was a nice find associating the crows with those assailants. If they chose to conceal their chakra that way, it's their problem when they get blown up taking the shape of a measly bird," Junichi tried keeping Mana's spirits up but he saw his attempt unraveling before he even finished his sentence.
Mana punched the ground a couple of times, crying out in frustration before a weightless body slumped on the ground with whited out eyes. The man wore a black bandage that he had wrapped his entire body into, though now his outfit was in tatters, leaving a lot of his body and the grievous burns exposed. After he took the bump, the crows up in the air popped and dispersed in wobbly puffs of black smoke.
"Ji-Ji!" Usujitsa exclaimed something unintelligible from atop of a nearby branch, raising its arms up and declaring his triumph over the birds while more and more yet undetonated clones prepared to suicide bomb the downed enemy.
"No!" Mana stepped out in front of the fallen enemy, blocking Usujitsa's path to a suicidal blaze of glory. "You've done quite enough already!"
"Ji…?" Usujitsa pressed his fluffy hand to his plump, pink lips as his tongue hung out from the side of his mouth. His feeble mind tried to wrap itself around what he might have done wrong and why the mean lady was mad at him.
Mana rolled back the sleeve of her left hand and dragged her still bleeding thumb across it, drawing a line over her wrist which made Usujitsa disperse into a cloud of smoke and return to where he came from. His job was done, now Mana would have to deal with the consequences of all the lives that Usujitsa had taken. She felt almost glad that the full implication of what she had done hadn't hit her in the head yet though it had begun creeping up to her mind with pulsating nerve signals and her breakfast that morning which had begun to crawl back up, asking for a way out.
"Get yourself together," Mollay insisted. "We need to keep moving."
"No," Junichi shook his head. "Mana needs to take some time, we can use some of that downtime. Shitaka, find out who this ninja is and who he and his gang work for."
"Rocking!" Shitaka smirked, pulling out a small plastic jar from the inner pocket of his jacket and pushing it down under the nose of the fallen enemy ninja and forcing him to jolt back up on his butt with painful-looking vigor. Energized to the point where he powered through the burns and injuries he had suffered after point-blank suicidal blast of an Usujitsa clone. "You and I are going to have a rocking good time, bud!" Shitaka smiled at the revitalized ninja.