“I don’t know how to pay you guys back…” Mana awkwardly smiled rubbing the back of her head. The trio took a whole night off after nearly getting utterly incinerated by the Nine Tails’ immense power. They still had to keep moving to the Wind Country, especially now when they knew that they had competition on their tracks who currently were a whole day ahead of them.
The head of the small family bowed his head and politely shook his head refusing any payment. The man saw the bleeding and injured quartet wandering the streets, he took pity on the four letting them stay in his shabby home overnight, he gave Mana some of his daughter’s clothes since hers were almost completely burnt off. Kouta rested overnight and then took care of their injuries, leaving a little bit of healing to various burn ointments and pills instead of using his chakra to heal them up.
Meiko grinned and opened a satchel showing some shards of a glowing purplish mineral inside. “How ‘bout some of this for your trouble, a single shard probably costs a billion ryo, you know…” she explained.
Mana was surprised to see that Meiko had the time to snag some of the minerals while she was down there. Must’ve happened either when she was digging the tunnel for the four to cross from the resting quarters over to the labs or when they were down in the mines.
The house owner looked quite intimidated by the prospect. “Please don’t, we don’t need something like this in our lives. This cursed rock already cost this town its freedom, it has become infested with criminal families trading it and making it down the mines. Now that the mine is closed and sealed under layers of rock and gold, perhaps they won’t find it worth the hassle to try and salvage what they’ve lost, having some of this around would only bring my family trouble!” he explained.
Mana nodded, it may not have been the best idea to leave something like this in the family’s home. If they tried to exchange it for money word would spread, just one word of the ore’s presence in the family’s home would bring crime families on their doorstep trying to reclaim some of what they have lost. After some overly long farewells the four departed from the Land of the Rivers settlement, heading west towards the Land’s border with the Wind Country. They were getting closer to their objective.
“Wait… So did we win? Whatever we were doing in the mines?” Meiko scratched her chin wondering, “I mean I lost my armor, at least tell me we’ve won…” the blacksmith complained once again.
“Well, we’ve buried the Audra ore under endless layers of rock and gold, it’d take entire years for them to reach that ore, more so, the Syndicate no longer has the Nine Tails’ infinite supply of chakra for their production so even if they did reach it in however many years it’d take them, they can no longer produce the element artificially. Eventually the crime families should move out of the settlement since they’ll have no more business there. Also, all of us survived that which very few have before “ a scuffle with the Nine Tails, a weakened and delirious Nine Tails but still, it could’ve killed us easily if we were any less lucky… All of those are small victories in my book” Mana mumbled out looking at the murky grey sky. Rain clouds were gathering, the girl could only wonder as to what these clouds could have actually meant.
“On the other hand, Kouta is still not completely recovered after healing us so many times in such a short period of time, your card supply is completely empty, Meiko’s armor with all the weapons sealed in it was destroyed, also now we know that Kouta’s dirtbag father is after the Box as well. We’re not ready to fight him or pretty much anyone strong at that matter…” Shimo replied to Mana’s pondering. “Still, we’ve helped quite a lot of people, I just hope that the Nine Tails won’t blow that statistic up in our faces now that it’s free to rampage freely”
“We’ve got another trouble on our hands, that ore, I assume Meiko can’t work it since if she could she’d have rebuilt her armor long ago. That means we’ve got bunch of heavy cargo and no money…” Kouta brought up another problem.
“The Wind Country desert will be full of raiders and bandits, some of them I’ve been introduced to by sensei. I may try talking to some of them and see if they want to buy some Audra, their prices won’t be one tenth of its worth but it’ll at least give us enough money to bargain with the wandering tribes living in the desert for food, water and shelter as well as supplies we’ll desperately need. On the other hand, those guys will absolutely make that ore into weapons. We’ll be selling it to the bandits who would use it to rob and kill people. We should think about what we’re doing before deciding to go with it” Shimo suggested a rather immoral yet, having their situation in mind, quite alluring to some idea.
“I don’t fancy selling my precious minerals but… Mana looks like a twig already, guess we do have to eat something at some point, the bandits would be the problem for the Wind Country and Sunagakure, they have ninja in their arsenal who could probably handle them easily” Meiko wondered.
“Plus we’d technically be helping Konohagakure out by giving Wind Country extra trouble, it would almost be like we’d be doing the job of the Black Ops, I’m sure it’d score some points with the village council that’d go quite a long way when our promotion comes into question…” Kouta theorized.
“Normally I’d be against selling Audra ore shards to raiders but… They can’t possibly have means to work it properly. They won’t have a Kirikuzu among their midst so they will either try working it with normal tools and ruin their tools or they’ll have to wait for nobody knows how long before they’ll find an expert capable of working it. We should give it a shot, if we see that it’s not going to be pretty we can always inform Sunagakure after returning to the village” Mana once again decided on their actions. Strangely enough with her being the client of the mission she had quite a heavy voice among the group and her say usually happened, as it was with them taking a detour to destroy the Katabami mines and setting free the Nine Tails.
Either way, it was at least several more days before they’d even reach the Wind Country border and start getting sand in their shoes…
*****
A bunch of suit wearing tall and bulky men rushed into a tent of a white cloaked middle aged man. His assistant, a young female with glasses and a similar white cloak fixed them nervously, the young woman didn’t like having dealings with the Syndicate but their clients were always of the like, such was the bread of being a Quack, or rather, a Quack in-training.
“Yo, Quack, we’ve got a job for you, we’re paying coins this time…” one of the muscleheads informed the middle aged grey haired man by lifting a body bag onto his table and unzipping it.
“Oh? That’s new, what’s the matter, trouble with the damned ore? I still haven’t managed to sell a single rock to anyone so I’d appreciate the change in payment…” the man washed his hands and peeked inside the body bag, quickly moving his face away from the nasty sight and stench that came from inside.
“We’ve had issues with the… Production… The little rock we have we want to be used on the man in the bag, you know… Upgrade him to mess up any… Competitors…” the mobster who was dealing with the Quack informed the man.
“Oh, so this is my patient? I thought you brought mashed tomatoes for lunch…” the Quack joked opening the bag revealing a porridge like mass inside. Whoever this patient was, we looked like he was utterly crushed to the point where he was completely unrecognizable and reminded little of an actual person.
“You’ve got to be kidding, he’s missing entire body parts! We can’t possibly bring this man to life even if he somehow is miraculously still alive!” the young assistant objected, once again angrily fixing her tight glasses and moving her blond hair out of the way of her sweating forehead.
“Whatever body parts you will need we shall provide, we’ve got plenty of… Human resources to go around. The Big Guy left us a lot of… Leftovers too before he bolted” the mobster looked at the man in the body bag and then back at the Quack nervously.
The Quack broke a grin, “Heh, so it’s that bad, huh? I assume this man here is the Boss? No one else would be worth so much after the whole family was completely blown up. Ironically enough we saw the Nine Tails breaking out and bolting north ourselves, I was taking a leak at the time… It was the most monumental piss of my life”
The mobster grabbed the Quack by his coat and pulled the man up closer lifting him off the ground. “Listen you, wise guy, we got a knuckle duster with the coordinates of your face on it. We don’t know if the Boss is alive or not but the fact that some of him was still recovered makes us think that you can play some of your Quack mumbo jumbo on him and at least salvage some of him. Isn’t that what Bellucini’s Quack did for Bellucini’s old man? Put the man’s brain into a jar and attached him to a puppet of some sort? Do whatever it takes, if you need arms, legs, organs or whatever we’ll give them to you”
The Quack sighed and tapped the man’s arms so that the mobster put him down, the medical rogue then walked up to the mass and placed his hands above it, scanning it a couple of times with his “Diagnosis Jutsu”.
“I’ll need twelve fresh bodies, blood type AB. I can make you a Boss from the body parts of twelve more bodies. Also bring me as much of the ore as you can, we may need to use the chakra properties to keep that monstrosity together, also I’d advise to switch out his brain since whatever trauma befell and will befall him would and will in the future, most likely, ruin his brain, if not physically then psychologically”
“We’ll get you everything you need, it’s important that you use the brain of the Boss, we don’t need A Boss, we need THE Boss” the mobster growled and then took notes of the medical rogue’s orders. “The current Boss’ brain is jambled up but its here, we’ve made sure of that before bringing him to you, what trauma are you talking about?”
“Not the trauma from the injury, the trauma of recovery. I’ll have to bring him back throughout the whole process, it’s too much of a risk to have him sleeping through such a complicated and long period of time so he’ll have to be awake, that’ll ruin a man’s screws…” the Quack explained.
“Okay, so you can bring him back then?” the mobster asked for confirmation.
The Quack smiled and nodded at his assistant, “First we’ll need to fix his brain from being way over the edge of braindead. Okay, girl, do it like I showed you, use THAT technique…”
The woman fixed her glasses and rushed up to the mangled mess of a man that the Boss was. She placed her hands above him and concentrated. Sweat broke through her forehead and blood started dripping from her nose somewhere down into the mashed mass of human remains.
“One’s Own Life Reincarnation!” she shouted out through pain and pressure, blood vessels shot out on the woman’s forehead and her eyes became bloodshot with heavy bags. Her glasses fell down onto the floor and broke into small pieces. About twenty minutes later the eyes of the poor woman rolled back as her body collapsed lifeless onto the floor, only to be caught by the hair by her superior. His quick fingers quickly shot into her eye sockets removing the woman’s eyes with a skilled and swift motion, he then forced her mouth open and removed some scissors from his pocket laying her body close to the body bag.
“I seem to have miscalculated, I only need eleven more bodies…” he smiled briefly, having all things in mind, he probably should’ve informed the young woman of the cost of that technique before teaching it to her, that being said she was becoming far too confrontational lately and was of no use to him anymore. Rogues had no tolerance for useless things, now at least her eyes and her tongue could’ve served some use, her eyes would need some adjustment work though, she did need glasses didn’t she?
A deafening moan came from the body bag. The Quack quickly zipped it up, maybe he rushed a bit too much resurrecting the… Whatever inside of it was, now he had to deal with those gut wrenching moans. At least he knew that whatever that thing was, it was functional enough to scream in agony as it was resurrected prematurely.
The mobsters scurried from the tent and back into the small settlement nearby in search for the bodies. Boss needed to be brought back if the Syndicate was to survive. They were right to hire and to come to that Quack, he was ruthless enough to sacrifice his own apprentice just to save them some trouble and silence her…
Syndicate will survive, and then… They’ll go right for that Box thing that the Boss spoke of. At least they still had some intel about some alternative business idea now that their main source of income was ruined. Syndicate will survive… If the other families paid so much for an overpriced chunk of rock, imagine what they’ll pay to make a wish upon this Box of Ultimate Bliss!
*****
Loud huffs and moans echoed through the streets of Sunagakure. Even in the middle of a scorching desert it was cold enough to freeze one’s balls off in the middle of the night. A man in a furry coat was running for his life, running at speeds that to the common villagers would’ve appeared incomprehensible. Just a furry blur, then again, he was being chased by someone much faster, a black flash of light with red sparks for eyes, eyes that emanated malevolence and death.
The man leaped to the side as the black flash hit a building making it explode from the pressure and the force of impact and crumble on top of it. Bunch of ninja leaped around the rooftops, tried attacking the black flash surrounded by some mysterious devilish chakra. A chakra that crippled any sensor in the range, close enough to sense its black toxic sludge like substance. However the owner of such black malevolent chakra was not as toxic and sludgy as one may have taken it for. He was more of a majestic force of nature. Almost like a graceful angel of darkness.
The Sand Village ninja leaped into the fray, attempting to cut the man down but their screams of agony woke up anyone in the alleyway. Due to the blitzing speed of this man it was impossible to tell that many details about him, only that he wore black and had some strange shining red irises in his eyes, almost like miniature crimson stars burning up. Within just mere moments the black flash started chasing the man in the furry coat with the brown hood. More and more ninja tried to get in the black flash’s way, some of them waved gigantic fans sending entire whirlwinds of cutting gusts that simply disappeared once they collided with whatever this moving dark shadow was, as if they were absorbed by it almost. Some more sent entire sandstorms its way but those were absorbed by the force of nature as well.
The black flash leaped up into the air, covering entire village with a single bound, landing right onto the rooftops were the attackers stood. In a wild hurricane of strikes and grabs he tore the men and women, the loyal ninja of Sunagakure apart in a twister of blood and limbs flying out from it. His punches made even ninja with access to chakra augmentation explode into clouds of blood and guts, his hands grabbed ninja and tore them apart limb by limb with all of this happening faster than within a moment. The ninja didn’t even comprehend their demise. With a loud shout the mysterious dark shadow with the eyes of red announced its victory and disappeared in the alleyways of the Sand Village.
The man in the fur coat landed in the outskirts of the village having left his chaser back inside the village to slaughter the ninja that attempted to apprehend him. A woman in a red hood approached him. She wore a furry coat of desert foxes, skins of whom she tore herself, all of whom came from animals she herself hunted down and a golden gourd encased with gems like rubies and sapphires, also emeralds and onyxes that contrasted the golden casing of the gourd. The two kissed upon coming in contact. They hugged passionately and for a moment it appeared like they would go all the way with their display of love but then the man violently tore the woman off of him.
“We’ve no time, we have to move, he’ll find us here…” he pleaded the woman in a desperate and almost whining voice which was surprising having his powerful and determined tone in mind. He did not possess a voice that commonly came in a whiny shade.
“Where’s Aziz?” the woman asked, just her brightly red colored lips were visible as her entire face was covered in shadow of her red hood. The moon could only illuminate her lips.
“The Leech got to him first, I went to sleep, Father said he’d watch the perimeter and… Next thing I remember is seeing that monster suck the life out of him with that bloody smile of his… Those crimson evil eyes were shining so brightly! I tried attacking him, I cut him again and again but you know how he is when he’s well fed, I could only run… That’s all we can ever do… Run!” the man cried out in desperation.
“Well… At least now we know he won’t come after us immediately, Aziz… Father should’ve satisfied his sick appetite for at least a short while. He’s an Uchiha, like you, isn’t he? Then there were all those Sunagakure ninja…” the woman’s crimson lips turned into a wicked smile. She felt sorry about the death of the father of her husband but she also was glad that he died and not her, such was the life of a family chased by a monster such as the black shadow with eyes of red.
“Where’s Aisha? If she’s out in the brothels again screwing with some lowlife… The Leech will be the last of her worries…” the man cried out angrily, he still felt pain of loss, yet he too felt relief that this day it was the life of his elderly father that was taken.
“Ahh, so you do care, brother?” a sarcastic voice of a teenage girl reached the man’s ears, he turned at her and saw a figure of a girl in her late teens with short black hair and those malevolent Sharingan eyes glowing red in the moonlight. Her clothes were messy as if she hastily put them on, it was apparent that she was once again entertaining herself…
“You bitch, the Leech tore our father apart, he tore his arms off so that father could not resist as easily as one tears a sheet of paper! If you were with us tonight, maybe we could’ve saved him! I’ll fucking choke you in your sleep one day!” the angry brother pulled a curved sword from the sheathe on his back and approached his sister, his mouth slobbered as the young man expressed his anger towards his sibling.
“Sleep? When was the last time we had any of that? The life of being chased suits you ill, brother. Well, while you two were busy playing wolf and the lamb, I was actually getting some intelligence that might help us kill the fucker who ruined our lives” the teen snapped back playfully flipping off of the small rocky structure she observed her brother from.
“Is that what you call being plowed from behind now?” the woman in red hood replied sarcastically.
The teen’s red Sharingan glared angrily at her sister in law. “Konoha made their move, they sent ninja to retrieve something called “the Box of Ultimate Bliss” and according to a friend I met today that thing is a wishing artifact. Think about it, just one word and we could wish the Leech away…”
“Is that what you were doing while your father was dismembered and had his chakra absorbed until he was just a dried out corpse? Listening to fairytales that your boytoys told you as a bonus for your payment for their services?” the hooded woman angrily yelled out.
“Good thing your sandy crotch isn’t in charge. You’re not even a part of this family!” the teen pulled out a knife and lunged towards the hooded woman thrusting the knife at the lady’s face before it was stopped by a wave of golden glowing sand that flowed out from the gourd on the woman’s back, the sand was glowing in bright golden light that illuminated the part of the desert they were meeting in.
“We’ve had no hopes, only fled in terror ever since that monster touched us, tasted our chakra and decided we’re tasty enough to be its food and entertainment. We ran and changed places, fled all the way from Kirigakure through Kumogakure and now here… We’ve lost friends, anyone who was kind enough to shelter us got their bodies gruesomely mangled because they were kind enough to shelter his food. Now sister tells us we’ve got a rat’s ass of a chance… Some semblance of hope! Isn’t that the best thing one could ask for? A chance to finally for once fight that thing back? Where is this Box, sister?” the man asked letting his hood slip down revealing a messy curly dark haired head with an almost primal beard and sleepless eyes, a face covered in scars and bruises, missing one eye while the second one was shining in red “ with the infernal Sharingan eye of the Uchiha clan.
“The ruins of the Jookselman settlement, east-south from here, may be a couple of days path ahead…” the teen answered.
“Well then… We’re heading to that old graveyard. We’ll get this Box even if we have to peel it from the cold dead hands of those Konoha ninja! I saw that fucker take my own eye out and pop it in front of me like a grape, let’s see how he likes it when we return the favor!” the man declared vibrantly and put his hood back on, turning towards the ruins, heading towards a giant sandstorm. The chased had no time to hide or rest. Now that the Leech had their taste, he could’ve found them anywhere at any time and either left them barely alive, beaten and almost void of any chakra, or outright take everything and leave them as sandy shells, gruesome remains of the body they once were.
There was no rest for the ones who were chased…
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