A gentle shake woke Mana up from the brief moment of slumber that the squad was taking while waiting for the Syndicate to arrive at the mines. It was Shimo’s decision to wait for them and then stumble into the mines after them, following them quietly they could’ve surveyed key points, seen all the hidden sensitive spots and they wouldn’t have even had to wander aimlessly around a mine. The plan was for one person to keep watch at all time, Mana was excluded from the watch since the sleep deprivation had the worst effect on her.
Ninja could normally push their human limits to superhuman without much effort. A young genin, just out the Academy could lift a large boulder above their head if they pushed themselves to the limit, could’ve spent at least twenty or more minutes underwater or in an environment where breathing was impossible like a room filled with gas. Poisons and sickness worked differently on them just because they mastered the control over their bodies, they’ve learned to tap into the combination of spiritual and physical energies deep inside their very essences.
Mana had access to none of that, she couldn’t spend multiple days without sleep and only then feel the negative effects of sleepless nights, she was nodding off midway into the first night, she had to eat and drink as often as she could. An interesting fact that she found out was that ninja didn’t have to eat as often as they could, the magician thought when leaving on this mission that Meiko’s monstrous appetite would be impossible to satisfy in the middle of wilderness, as she found out quite quickly, Meiko didn’t eat that much because she had to, she ate so much because she loved to. At the moment of stalking, the blacksmith had not eaten a thing for two days and she didn’t even complain one little bit. It appeared that the clear limit of ninja endurance and potential was not well explored and depended much more on the will of a particular individual. After all, the injuries that Mana sustained during her fight with Hisako before she lost her chakra manipulation would’ve killed even the most tough-headed a person several times over.
“Is it my turn to watch?” Mana moaned in a whisper, she was woken from a quite calm and utopic dream of her early days. She was washing dishes at Ichiraku with Shimo and Sugemi and Tanshu-sensei was making fun of them for enjoying it, just like he used to way back… It’s hard to imagine that at some point in one’s life cheap work of washing the dishes would seem dreamy and call up nostalgic longing for better times.
“Get real, it’s never your turn to watch, you can’t see in the dark half as well as we do” Shimo grunted just as silently and pointed at a rich party of people gathering at the gate.
Mana looked away, obviously her feeling offended and crushed didn’t matter to anyone at that moment, anyone but herself but Shimo’s words really hit her deep. It appeared that training all this time was just her fooling herself that she could ever fight on the level of her friends and the enemies that ninja usually fought. It wouldn’t have been nearly as painful if she was the one to stumble to that conclusion but it was a dear friend, one she loved more than anyone else in the world speaking those words.
The party below was composed of a bunch of mobsters, some of them wore similar attires to the slimy gent that the team met back in Tanzaku town: just slick and expensive suits and more sophisticated hats than the peacock feather stuck onto them. Others looked different in status, whether they were higher or lower the chain remained to be seen: several wore black and white kimonos with dragon motifs and had their heads shaved, they had their entire bodies covered with tattoos but it was too dark for Mana to make out the details of those tattoos, she could’ve sworn several of them were kanji symbols.
“Rabbit, Dragon, Rooster… What do those tattoos mean?” Kouta wondered, clearly his superhuman perception of a ninja allowed him to make out some details of the tattoos and his curiosity also informed Mana of what exactly they had tattooed on those exposed chests of theirs, some of those tattoos extended well past the chest and all over the bald head of the men as well.
“Doesn’t matter, ideally we won’t engage them, we’ll just get what we want from this place and be on our way. We can report on the Syndicate’s activities once we return and Hokage-sama will send people to deal with them…” Shimo cut the topic down turning his eyes on the more… Peculiar looking figures.
Mixed in between the Syndicate’s members were two incredibly frail figures, they were wrapped in bright coloured cloaks and one of them was really short and bald while the other one was much taller, had similar tattoos to the rest of the kimono wearing group and a strange braid wrapped around his head. They stood out from the rest of the group and that said a lot having in mind that the group involved two more brutes amongst their midst, similar to the muscle-heads that the team met in Tanzaku.
“So they weren’t completely out of those numbskulls…” Meiko remarked scratching the back of her head.
The group left the two brutes behind to watch the entrance, they entered the mines without wasting much time, Shimo grunted and leaped down the slope, his ninja stealth skills allowed even his shoes to slip down without making a single stone fall down the slope picking up other stones and making too large of a ruckus and the sound of his slipping shoes was muffled by stone and coal being worked on by complex machinery nearby. The rest of the group followed, Meiko grabbed Mana by her collar and held her in her arms while she slid down, as thick skulled as she liked to appear at times, the girl was not by any means lacking intelligence.
The group hid behind the machinery and moved quietly closer to the entrance, one step at a time. Shimo cursed to himself as he was almost seen by one of the brutes.
“This isn’t good, we didn’t plan on them bringing those guys here, we still have no foolproof plan on fighting them…” the Yuki swordsman whispered.
“Yeah, some blows are completely ineffective, then others seem to work just like they were made of flesh and bones…” Kouta reminded everyone.
Mana growled under her own nose “ she was putting her friends to threat, a single blow from those monstrous men was enough to tear down a building, they were told to be strong enough to lift one above their heads when enraged and she personally saw the one she fought tear through walls and any kind of barriers she placed in their way effortlessly. He even tore through wet cement, using his large palms to dig himself out and tossing the goo aside. The only thing that stopped them for good was certain techniques, the mystery of which was still just that “ a mystery, and punches of ones of their own.
“They didn’t bring anyone for the “product”, remember the miner thought that me and Meiko were tributes of some sort. That means that this “product” they’re making here, these brutes, they cost people’s lives. Since they didn’t bring anyone with them except those weird looking soggy guys with cloaks they’ll probably use the innocent miners. I can’t let them do that…” Mana whispered out. Once again her principles put the mission objective in jeopardy by making them do a detour.
“Hey… Where’s Meiko?” Kouta asked slightly louder than a sneaking person should.
Mana’s eyes slipped up and on to the open field where she was standing right in front of the two brutes, the giant mobsters cracked their fists as Meiko slapped her hands together into a handseal.
“Don’t worry guys, I got this! Transformation Jutsu!” she yelled out as in a loud poof and a blinding cloud of smoke she appeared to have transformed into an animal to distract the brutes.
The problem was that the specifics of the animal were hard to tell, it was the most chimera-like animal that Mana had ever seen: it had a tail of a fox, a rich fur all over its body that looked like that of a terrier except it was as thick as an old bug infested carpet, not unlike ones that grandmas put on their walls. It had a tapir-like snout which was also covered with fur, its eyes reminded most of an old cat but for some reason one of them was shot out and much larger than the other.
The brutes looked confused at the miserable pile of failure that this animal appeared to be and burst into laughter. These men appeared to have little to no control of emotion as they rolled on the floor and punched stones and machines close-by to dust in their mad laughter induced rampage. Mana decided to move in, she leaped out from the cover and signalled the team to follow her, the boys did just that and they sneaked through completely unseen.
A couple of minutes later the miserable fusion of animals poofed back into Meiko. The girl appeared to be visibly annoyed to the point where her face was so grumpy that it was hard to tell which was funnier: the animal she transformed into or her grumpy and pissed expression.
“Not a single word…” she growled out angrily.
As the blacksmith bolted forward in an attempt to make the squad feel more occupied with chasing her than thinking about the miserable attempt to pull off a decent transformation, something that was actually in the curriculum of the Ninja Academy so it was one of the most fundamental skills of a ninja, Kouta leaned in on the rest of the squad and whispered.
“I thought she did that on purpose… Didn’t she?” the boy whispered out.
Meiko looked back at them with the most angered and horrific also threatening expression one could imagine.
“Let’s go, we’ll lose them!” she yelled out, caring very little if the brutes pick up on her voice since the mine was much too small for them to fit into it.
“Apparently not…” Shimo cracked a grin as the team picked up the pace. Mana tripped and fell in the total darkness busting up her knee. Meiko leaped into a wall and kicked off of it to repurpose her momentum to get her to Mana’s location quicker. The magician grunted and pet her knee in an attempt to get the rocks out of it.
“How are you?” the blacksmith asked.
“Ummm… Fine just… Hurts a lot…” Mana reported, Kouta cursed as he leaned in.
“It’s a bit too dark to see for sure in here, let me check it in more detail… “Diagnosis Jutsu”!” he suggested as bright blue light emanated from his hands. In a brief moment of his hands making a more decent light source than the few torches on the walls and the couple of lamps on the ceiling every hundred meters or so Mana could see a nasty flesh wound and her bone sticking out.
“Well then, this needs attention…” Kouta sighed, “Let’s just slow down for a moment… It’s dark enough for this to happen to any of us so don’t beat your head around it, Mana-chan” he tried to calm her down. He must’ve known how sad Mana felt whenever her humanity and loss of chakra control was brought up.
Meiko looked really on the edge, it was weird since it was Mana who had her knees getting checked and a bone getting put back into place and healed up. As she had learned from her experience so far “ bone injuries were some of the most painful ones to heal as even if the usual Mystical Palm Jutsu treatment felt calm and refreshing, almost like soothing cold water being spilt on one’s wound that made it feel really warm and relaxed, with bones it hurt much more. Whether it be repositioning or them being stuck together, bones were a tough thing to fix and they hurt even when patched skilfully.
“It’s all my fault…” she said, the blacksmith leaned up to Mana and placed her hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have rushed so much it’s just… That fail with the Transformation Technique… I’m sorry, Mana!” she kept apologizing, jumping up and quickly walking from one side to another as if the magician was her child who was in the middle of a surgery or something.
“Relax, I know you didn’t mean anything bad by it, it’s fine. We wanted to catch up to those guys anyways but I guess now we kind of lost them so… We probably would’ve been in a rush even if you weren’t distressed. No need to worry. No one cares you botched that transformation, for all we know it worked flawlessly, it did what it had to do, didn’t it?” Mana smiled even though occasionally her lips twisted in pain and she even slapped Kouta’s face on accident when the bone got stuck together and all the bone shards and dust in the wound just fused with the bone forming a fresh and strong bone, after that the knee closed almost instantly.
Kouta sighed, he looked visibly more drained than before and Mana felt ashamed that she was the one who needed such a stupid treatment for something as dumb as a clumsy mistake. Still, she didn’t apologize or said anything to defend her clumsiness, Kouta made it clear that he didn’t want to hear any of it.
“I see some light further down the line, the lamps on the ceiling become more frequent there, we can pick up the pace there, for now let’s stay careful and move slowly…” the swordsman smiled, his eyes opened up and softened in a kindred expression for the first time in a while. All this situation with the Syndicate must’ve reminded him of a tough time he spent with his rogue sensei training and learning the ways of how the rogue ninja survived, how they communicated and how they thought. Shimo’s rogue skills were quite useful when dealing with these guys but Mana didn’t want to notice that out loud “ he may not have been proud of those skills…
The four started moving again, it was odd, this whole mine seemed to have just a single moving pattern, so far it was just a single way leading up to something. It was dark, it looked just like one would’ve suspected a normal mine to look “ bunch of coal and rock on the side, it all fortified by some oak wood beams so that the whole place didn’t cave in at the first shock. Most beams were also fortified by solid hardened steel, having in mind that these brutes were made in this place this may not have been such a bad idea…
“Wait a second…” Kouta stopped and turned at the wall, carefully stroking it.
“What’s wrong?” Shimo asked slowing down as well.
“They didn’t touch any of the coal in the wall, it’s a valuable resource, I’ve seen machines that work the ores in this place use coal as fuel, why wouldn’t they touch such rich veins of coal so close to the entrance if they need it for fuel?” the medical ninja wondered bumping the wall again and again with his kunai knife, examining it.
“Forget that…” Mana said as her eyes widened, her hand carefully stroke a soft bright glowing vein which playfully glowed in her eyes as the light from the lamp on the ceiling reflected off of its pleasantly reflective surface. The rest of the squad turned at her direction.
“They’re not touching the gold either…” the magician’s lips barely moved to utter these words just due to how tough it was to believe what she was saying.
“I thought this was a gold mine? I mean sure, they may use it to make those brutes also but… If you’re doing it in a gold mine, may as well take the gold too…” Meiko scratched the back of her head trying to get to the bottom of it.
Shimo closed his eyes, he tried to figure it out but then his eyes shot open widely and anger filled them, anger because he couldn’t wrap his head around any of it.
“Let’s get to this elevator, it will take us to the lower floors, if this is the only path that means the mobsters took it too. I don’t know why they’re not touching the coal which is integral for their machinery or why they don’t care about the gold here but I very much intend to find out if we’re stopping whatever we’re doing here…” the swordsman replied stepping onto an old elevator of a very questionable quality. The rest of the squad stepped onto the elevator too, Mana kept on looking at the wall.
Somehow to her descending and finding out the answer felt like cheating. She saw this as a really exciting puzzle and she wanted to find out about it with her own smarts. Was this how her audience felt when watching her shows? Seeing something incredible, something so unbelievable that it seemed illogical and then being given the honor to figure out that great mystery, “How did she do that?”, except in this case it was more of a “What” than “How”.
“Come on, get on the elevator…” Shimo complained waving for her to step on the platform before he pulled the lever to lower them down.
Mana kept observing the wall with her eyes closed, they rapidly moved to the left and to the right as she tried to figure it all out, put it all together: the mobsters, the brutes, their lack of any interest in gold or coal… No, this wasn’t a lack of interest, this was a blatant denial, almost like they NEEDED for it to remain in the walls…
“Mana-chan! You said in one of your shows, when a little boy asked you how exactly did you do a trick… You said “I’d never be as heinous as to spoil you the secret…” then you gave him a small hint to help him figure it out by himself. If you want to figure it out by yourself before we find out, that’s fine, that’s kind of cute but… There’s nothing wrong with getting some more hints along the way” Kouta smiled.
Mana’s eyes opened and looked down hopelessly, she slowly crept onto the elevator as Shimo pulled the lever raising them up first. The lever seemed to go both ways: above and below. The trip above or the top floor, for that matter, weren’t a very eventful or interesting one “ it appeared to be just a very mechanized and well-built base of operations.
As the four left the elevator to look around Kouta’s eyes seemed to have been fixed onto something that appeared to intimidate him quite a bit, after Mana saw the medical ninja just standing there staring at some sort of a window above on a small station with a control panel operating a large cart system which was supposed to transport a large amount of carts filled with whatever they were storing there she also froze. Looking through the window was Kouta’s father and his crew from before. The man’s hand reached up to press a button.
“We know you’re looking for something called B.U.B., whatever you guys are so interested in also intrigues me. I know that these Syndicate guys are too weak to take you down but they’ll slow you guys down enough for us to gain a small lead. Let us spoil it for you “ the interesting part is what’s underground this mine…” after saying those words he pressed a small button initiating the movement of the carts.
“Shit, this’ll alert everyone!” Kouta yelled out, “Father, stop this stupid nonsense!”
“As I’ve said, I don’t want you or the other brats getting yourselves killed but the thought of a scavenger hunt excites me, race you guys to the B.U.B. then?” a sick smile covered the face of Kouta’s father as he and his team behind him disappeared in a black flash while the doors all around the upper floor of the mines burst open with miners and mobsters spilling into the place like ants swarming to protect their home.
“I can’t stress out enough how much of a dick your father is!” Shimo roared out loud in pure rage as he reached for his blade.
“Protect Mana-chan!” Kouta ordered trying to cover her from the rushing swarm of miners armed with small knives and pickaxes, Mana gently pushed him out of her way.
“Sorry, after being punched in the face so many times, I’d like to see the fruits of my training. I may just be an ordinary teenage girl with a lot of training now but I refuse to hide when I’m in perfect condition to help…” she replied.
A miner leapt at Mana swinging his pickaxe, the magician saw his moves from a mile away having been attacked ten times as fast, she leaned out of its way guiding his arms down to get his weapon stuck in the grate below. The girl’s gentle and flowing movements flipped the man over using his own momentum and her foot snapped right onto his face breaking his nose and knocking him out with one go.
Just like that the mad brawl began…
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