"I hope we're not being horribly naïve." Utakata pushed an icy branch out of his way, picking his way carefully through the woods.
"Send out another bubble," Mangetsu said. "Anything, Rei?"
"No." Rei was not impressed with the quite mediocre Land of Fire. The snow wasn't as thick as it had been back home, but it was still cold, wet, and thus far, empty. "I thought you said finding it would be the easy part."
Mangetsu didn't look back at her. "If memory serves, I believe I said, 'finding it would be the easy part, considering.'"
One of Utakata's several surveillance bubbles floated back down. "Wait."
Rei almost stopped mid-step. "What?"
"There's disturbance of the snow up ahead. There've been people around."
Straining her eyes, Rei panned the entire area. Mangetsu exhaled heavily. "Alright, then. It may not be Shinobi, but we can't take that chance. With this kind of terrain, they're the kind that run through trees. Up we go."
Rei's chakra control was effortless after Koichi and Kohana's training, but running through trees was going to take some getting used to. Her concentration was split between surveying the area and maintaining her balance, and she almost flipped completely around a branch once time, catching herself clumsily before she could plumet to the ground.
"Nice," Utakata chuckled, and she stuck her tongue out at him.
Taking a careful four-foot leap, Rei landed next to Mangetsu, who had come to a stop. "What?"
"Quiet," he murmured, eyes flicking back and forth attentively. He silently touched a hand to the trunk of the tree, letting his eyes drop closed. Utakata joined them, much more sure of himself than Rei. When Mangetsu opened his eyes, they were narrowed in concentration. "There are three up ahead with active chakra signatures. Fully trained Shinobi, by the feel of it."
"How can you tell? I can't see anything."
"I guess this is as good a place as any to teach you new techniques," he said under his breath. "Give me your hand."
She hesitated only a moment. He took her palm and placed it against the trunk of the tree, just where his had been, and withdrew his own hand. "You're a Sensory Type. You can detect chakra networks from what kind of distance?"
She thought back to the handful of times she'd tried. "Probably about half a mile."
"That distance will increase as you get older and more powerful. But when that fails, you can rely on the earth to give you information that your eyes can't." Mangetsu placed his palm next to hers. "Close your eyes. What do you feel?"
"A tree." He was more patient than Rei deserved, she knew.
"Think of it like a person. If you were touching someone and wanted to analyze their chakra network, what would you be looking for?"
Alone in her mind, Rei concentrated on her palm. Her chakra was trying to draw something from the tree, but wasn't succeeding. It was a pale green, faint, softly waving energy, and it ignored her chakra completely. "It almost has its own chakra, but not quite. It's…"
"It's the life force, the physical energy," Mangetsu filled in. "Plants lack the spiritual energy that humans possess to create chakra. But they can still communicate with us. Keep your eyes closed and focus on the life force. What do you see?"
The tree's energy was so pale, so difficult to grasp onto, and Rei felt her fingernails begin to scratch the trunk. The life force quivered, barely perceptible, then blipped with a jolt of yellow energy. "Whoa," she said, snapping her eyes open. "What was that?"
"That was you detecting a foreign chakra signature."
"Wow." She flattened her palm against the trunk again. "How were you able to get all those specifics?"
"You don't have anything to compare it to right now, but when this is all over, we can work on that. Eventually you'll get to see the differences between Shinobi and civilians, children and adults, even individuals if you are familiar with their chakra." He stood, pulling his sword from his back. "I'm not even a Sensory type. Anyone can do that with enough practice. Ready for lesson number two?"
Rei nodded mutely. "What's that?"
The expression didn't change on his face as he said, "Assassination."
Utakata tilted his head slightly, like a bird. "Is that really necessary? They're probably only scouts."
Mangetsu offered the twin hilts of his massive flat-bladed sword to Utakata, who took it hesitantly after a moment of contemplation. "It's necessary. If they're scouts and they are left alive, they'll eventually report our presence back to the Hokage, who will then issue an order of war against the Mist. We can't risk that, not now. Not even if we want the Mizukage out." He pulled a pair of kunai from his weapons pouch, testing their sharpness with his thumb. "Better three dead men than three thousand."
"Would it be a bad suggestion to offer that we could just avoid them?"
"Yes," Mangetsu replied, but didn't explain why.
Setting her lips firmly, Rei stood next to Mangetsu and pulled her sword from her own scabbard. "This time, you watch," he said. Rei replaced her sword with a huff.
Rei and Utakata followed Mangetsu through the treetops, Utakata toting the huge, wrapped sword, and stopped the moment that Rei could detect the foreign men's chakra. "There."
"Okay. Utakata, stay about a two hundred feet back and keep an eye out for Leaf backup." When Utakata nodded his agreement, Mangetsu motioned for Rei to follow. They crept across the snow, leaving silent footprints, and concealed their presence behind a thick tree trunk. Rei was tempted to look for this one's life force, too, despite there being enemy Shinobi on the other side.
Mangetsu was tense, but not with any kind of fear, Rei noticed. It was anticipation. "What do you notice, Rei?" he asked, just above a whisper.
Closing her eyes, Rei inhaled deeply and centered herself before turning her gaze to the enemy. "Three. Like you said, definitely Shinobi. Distracted. They're playing some kind of card game on a stump."
"Good. Ages, power levels, anything of interest?"
"Um…" She looked for marked differences between their chakra levels and compared them to the kinds of people she'd seen in the Mist and on the ship. "Older. Maybe in their forties? One of them is a woman. Probably Chunin-level, all of them."
"Excellent." He inhaled deeply, then met her eyes. "This is one of those times that you need to let your emotions die, just for a while. If you hesitate, if you treat this as anything less than a moment of war, you'll be the one who is killed. Got it?"
Kill the emotions, but only for a while. She nodded. "Yeah."
"Alright. Here's what I'm going to do." The whispered explanation lasted less than ten seconds, then he said, "These are the handsigns. Try it yourself. Water-type from your mouth, in mist form. If you didn't have enough chakra, you could pull the moisture from the snow. Try for about forty feet ahead to cover my presence. If you don't get it perfectly, it's alright. I'll be fine."
"Wait, you want me to do the Hidden in Mist Technique?"
"What better way to learn than under pressure, Rei?" Then he dissolved into a puddle of liquid person that slid forward over the snow, toward the Leaf Shinobi.
"Okay, okay, okay, okay," Rei whispered to herself, closing her eyes to concentrate. Ox, snake, ram… Forcing her chakra up into her mouth and using her Water-type chakra exactly has Mangetsu had said, she forced a thin stream of mist from her mouth. Crap. That's not going to be enough. She inhaled and tried again, squeezing her eyes tightly enough that she saw spots when they opened again. But that was almost all that she saw.
Everything ahead of her was covered by a thick, almost soupy fog, and all she could see was the collection of chakra networks ahead of her: three Leaf chakras and one very obviously Mangetsu-like puddle on the ground. Nice. I did it. Never again would Utakata pick on her for sucking at most Jutsu.
She crept forward into the mist, hoping to get a better view of their actual bodies, but had to stop when she realized that her mist hadn't reached as far as she'd hoped. It had gone maybe twenty feet before dissipating into the air, creating a very solid (and suspicious) cloud on the ground.
And the Leaf Shinobi had noticed.
"Never seen that before," one of the men murmured, tossing down a card onto the stump. "I hate winter."
The other two were less oblivious. "That's full of chakra," the woman said, standing and immediately falling into a defensive stance. "Formation Six."
Before the Leaf men could move, Mangetsu had materialized back into his human form, walking through the mist like it had been his plan all along. "Greetings, Leaf Shinobi." Before any of them could respond, he darted forward, quite literally too fast for Rei to see at first, and reappeared behind the first man to have spoken. His kunai sliced through the man's neck effortlessly, dropping him, and as the woman made to swing Mangetsu's way, he re-liquified and her blade cut through the space where his body had been. He materialized again behind the other man, who was quicker than his teammate, and they met blades fiercely. At least, it was supposed to be fierce.
The Leaf man's teeth were grinding together and his feet were planted firmly in the earth, giving him traction as he pushed his kunai against Mangetsu's, but the famous swordsman had a light smile on his face. "Thank you for your service," he said, then he let his hand fall and when the Leaf Shinobi rushed past, pushed by his own momentum, Mangetsu cut his throat as well. In the same motion, he faced the woman.
"Oh, god," she whispered, the tips of her knives shaking as her eyes fastened to his headband. "The Blood Mist."
Mangetsu's lips quirked downwards in distaste. "Why are Leaf Shinobi this close to the border of the country?" Emotionless. Cold.
The woman's voice was no such thing. "W-We live in this country! The Hokage sends us wherever he wants!"
Mangetsu took two threatening steps in her direction. Obviously outmatched, the woman tried to retreat, planning to leap into the surrounding trees, but the moment her feet left the ground, Mangetsu was upon her, grabbing her by the neck of her flak jacket and yanking her backwards into the snow. His fingers were around her throat, choking off her air supply, and she wheezed helplessly.
"Why did he send you here?" Mangetsu loosened his grip just an iota, enough for her to draw in a tight breath and scream, but a sharp blow to the side of her head put an end to that. "Why did he send you here?" he repeated.
"I…I don't know!" she finally shrieked. "We were just a lookout squad!" Her chest heaved with frantic sobs. "Please! Let me—"
"Thank you for your service." With that, Mangetsu slit her throat as well, silencing her forever.
Rei hadn't even noticed that Utakata had come up to stand with her. He stood rigidly with his hand over his mouth, deep in thought, and she suddenly realized that she had been gripping his arm as if her life depended on it. She let go in the jerkiest, non-Shinobi way possible. So much for killing the emotions.
Mangetsu hadn't yet looked their way. He'd pulled a scroll from his jacket and spread it flat on the snow next to the woman's body. With a few whispered words, her body was transferred into the scroll, leaving behind only smatterings of blood-spotted snow. He did the same with the two men.
Rei and Utakata left the shelter of the mist while Mangetsu worked, covering the bloodied ground and retrieving the discarded playing cards. Rei's hands shook as she opened one of the packs by the stump. Inside were classic Shinobi weapons, paper bombs, wire, all the good stuff, which she pulled out and transferred into one of her storage scrolls. There was some loose cash, which she also took, and a small photo album.
Nope. She snapped the pack closed and delivered it to Mangetsu to Seal away with the bodies. "Quickly," he said as he finished with the last one. "She did get a little loud there for a moment. We need to be prepared for another squad to show up to relieve them or provide aid."
Only two or three minutes later, the small spot in the woods looked the same as any other spot.
"They weren't very good lookouts," Rei mentioned as they left, once again up in the trees.
"They were comfortable," Mangetsu corrected. "They've probably done it a thousand times and couldn't imagine meeting an enemy this far out in the sticks."
"What'll you do with the bodies?" Utakata asked, offering the sword back to its bearer.
Mangetsu took it gratefully, swinging it onto his back. "We'll give the scroll to Sachio on our way out of the country. They seemed like honorable Shinobi. They deserve proper burials by their kin."
After another hour of walking, they still hadn't detected a trace of a Tailed Beast.
"How long are we prepared to stay out here looking?" Rei asked.
"Until we find it, or until we get word that it's changed locations." Mangetsu set his hand against the nearest tree.
Rei did the same. This tree was the same type and same-ish size as the first tree she'd read, but their life forces varied the tiniest bit. Rei would have bet that this tree's energy was a slightly more blue color than the last. She'd forgotten that she was looking for something when an orange spark interrupted the tree's flow. "There's someone else out here," she whispered.
Mangetsu had already pulled his hand back to his side, but he replaced it on the tree now. "I don't feel anything."
Rei looked to Utakata, who set his hand next to hers. Almost immediately, he flashed a look to their superior. "That's no Shinobi. But it's something."
"Where?" Mangetsu asked, once again pulling his sword from his back.
Rei had no idea how to verbalize the thing's location. "I think it's… further away than the others were when we found them."
"You said we were near a lake, right?" Utakata asked.
"Yeah, Suisen Lake."
"Yeah, it's at the bottom of the lake."
Rei had a frustrated groan on the tip of her tongue, but Mangetsu chuckled and rubbed his hands together. "My favorite place for a fight."
