Pain was a poor companion for someone who had just woken up after being briefly knocked out. Yet it was the first one to greet Kouta as the young man’s consciousness returned to him. The medical ninja felt a little bit of shame, even against an opponent like his father he expected to do more, he expected to buy his friends more time. He wasn’t sure about what had happened but he was surprised to say the least to wake up inside a briefly lit ancient stone room. The tiles below him, ravaged by time, made for a poor pillow forcing the young man to sit up and look around him.
Shimo was resting nearby, he didn’t look too bad but his arm and leg was bleeding out and gruesomely broken and were very amateurishly patched. Without asking too many questions the boy stood up and staggered up to his friend, removing the bandages and getting to work. He was drained after punching his father, he put all of his heart, all of his chakra and all of his feelings into that fist. Any lesser man would’ve been flung into beyond the farthest layers of skies but his father snapped right out of it. Even with the crazy Juugo bloodline combined with the medical ninja’s enhanced strength, Kouta was still too weak.
Thundering bumps sending dust and pebbles down the ceiling onto the boys’ heads made Kouta jump up in surprise and fear.
“It’s Meiko, Mana bought us time by revealing herself, Meiko had to leave her behind to save us. She’s not taking that well…” Shimo explained grunting in pain as Kouta was examining his broken bones.
“Well, these injuries can be treated, these blows were weak but precise, they didn’t cause too gruesome and irreparable bone damage but they merely stroke at the tension points making the bones snap. Remashi-san is a very gentle and pinpoint fighter, had she been rougher your bones would have been beyond my ability to fix without Mystical Palm technique which I am too drained to use right now” Kouta explained trying to move the subject past Mana.
He felt ashamed about the whole situation. He didn’t know what happened, all he remembered was him doing his best and getting knocked out by father’s blast, one of his weaker ones too, one used to blow up buildings or bust barriers, one with more bang and concussive force than actual killing power. From what he could put together the rest were overpowered too, that only makes sense, father was a top tier Jounin after all with experience in the Konohagakure Black Ops called ANBU. All of his teammates were of similar level as well. They stood no chance from the start.
And yet loss was not what brought Kouta shame, it was that Mana was apparently the one to buy them time to escape. She was the weakest one and yet she flung herself head first to the jaws of death again. Father would’ve killed her if he had the chance, Kouta harbored no hopes of Mana’s survival which started making him visibly distressed. Maybe even more torn inside than Meiko was, at least the blacksmith was expressing her rage whereas Kouta was allowing it to pile up.
“We have to keep moving…” Kouta said trying to move his thoughts away from his shame and his regret over Mana’s apparent death. He knew exactly how lethal and ruthless his father was when he wanted to be, Shimo and Meiko may not have known and so they must’ve still believed that the girl was alive.
“Hey, hey, don’t lose any tears over her. She’s alive as long as she doesn’t show that bastard where the Box is or explains what it is. Had they known about the box they’d have long since claimed it even before we came here. They needed us to explain what it is and tell them where it may be hidden” Shimo tried to calm his friend down, Kouta backed up and sat into the corner where he woke up in.
“That’s a long shot, all that father cared about was killing Mana-chan for wishing to use the Box without the village’s permission or without informing it. She’s as good as done now…” the medical ninja mumbled out, he sounded like his mind was moving in closer and closer to snapping at any moment.
“Shut up!” Meiko’s loud roar reached them from inside a large library further on. “Don’t you think I feel shitty enough for leaving her behind?” more and more loud thuds and cracks reached the ears of the two injured genin laying by the crossroad between the library Meiko was in and nobody knew where.
“It’s… Really bad…” Shimo lowered his head staring at the ruined castle floor.
“Wow, it’s like you’re a detective or something!” Meiko’s angry reply came from the rampaging blacksmith as the floor of the library was starting to collapse but it didn’t appear to even irk the girl at the slightest. The redhead continued to catch the giant stones as they fell on her head, pounding them with all of her strength using chakra enhancement to bust those giant stones to dust before they reached the ground.
“No, I mean… Meiko feels bad for leaving Mana behind, she really shouldn’t, she had no other option. It was either leaving her to die or letting all of us die, it’s surprising she even managed to pull our sorry asses out with her. Kouta feels bad because he couldn’t beat up his father which is straight out ridiculous. He’s whole leagues above our paygrade, there’s no shame in losing to a guy like that. I’m the only one with a legitimate reason to feel bad about…” the swordsman scratched his bandaged forehead. Meiko must’ve bumped his head into somewhere while she was carrying him opening a wound on the back of his head which Kouta treated.
“What do you mean?” Meiko’s face with a giant bump on her eye and a swollen jaw appeared from the library which completely collapsed once the blacksmith wasn’t busting the stones to nothingness inside.
“Well… I actually didn’t really feel bad about it when I woke up. That’s the only legitimate reason to feel bad about. My friend probably died and had her head torn off and I… I didn’t feel bad about it to begin with” Shimo spoke almost laughing out from how ridiculous he sounded. Meiko walked up to him and lifted his body off the ground by his collar.
“What do you mean, what do you mean you didn’t feel bad about anything?” she uttered silently but with a hidden spark of threat brewing in her chest. Just one wrong word may have sent the blacksmith over the edge and forced her to splatter the swordsman’s brain on the wall behind him with a well-placed punch.
“Well, when I was away, training and trying to realize who I actually was or what I wanted to be like… I always wanted to come back and see Mana again, not because of some specific reasons but because of the fun times I remembered having with her. I didn’t chase her, who she was, I chased all those fun experiences and so when I did come back and see her again I expected more of the same. Then I saw that she didn’t change one bit after I left, the worst part was that I did change. I became more like a rogue, whether I wanted it or not, I started to only be worried about what was there to gain in everything, always looking out for my own ass and asses of my friends…” Shimo started to talk, Meiko let his sorry body to slip out from her grasp and hit the rocky floor as the swordsman collapsed and kept on sitting. Kouta stood up and approached him too.
“Then I saw just what kind of person I became friends with all those years ago. Someone who couldn’t have been more different from what a rogue was and she started to piss me off in all the wrong ways. She spat at survival, sometimes she even put our own lives in danger too but even when she did that she was always ready to die first, even when the threat was out of this world and someone none of us had any chance to beat. I thought I discovered part of who I was and then Mana showed me that she’s an exact opposite of that. I saw a person who was the exact opposite of a rogue and I saw how miserable and in how much pain she was every time while doing it but… It made me confused again, confused about what a ninja is, confused about who I am. That whole year of self-discovery, all those injuries and all that training went down the drain. I no longer know who I am again and that’s why I hated Mana for a while, hated my best friend for reminding me why I left but also for telling me that I haven’t come a step closer to discovering who I am. She rubbed into my face how wrong I was… The only feature about her I liked was her selfishness, I thought maybe that’s what we had in common, that’s one step closer to me being a real ninja, a ninja with identity, someone who knows who he is…”
Kouta and Meiko continued to stand there in silence, the medical ninja moved back into the shade to try and hide his watery eyes whenever he thought about the teammate he thought he had lost. Meiko no longer felt bad about Shimo, it was almost like she realized what the swordsman was talking about and she started to feel bad for him.
“You see I always saw Mana like someone who knew exactly what she was and what she wanted and I wanted to be like that, I wanted to be like her. And so when I returned having discovered part of who I am and saw the real deal be everything but that… I tried to cling to the only parts of our character that matched “ our selfishness. Part of me wants me to survive, that’s just rogue programming, rogues always bolt and leave their friends behind. Mana also had some of that, she lead us all here just so she could regain her chakra control instead of living her life as a starlet stage magician? That’s selfish as shit, right? Then she gambled our lives to save some mobsters and corrupt miners, just to feed her ambition and hero complex, that’s selfish as shit too, right? Now when I saw her giving up her life for us… I no longer saw that selfishness, I no longer saw anything in common between me and her. I’m just a confused swordsman who became even more confused after trying to find himself. Mana lost her identity but she knew what it was, I never found one in the first place, I guess in the end, that’s the only bond we ever shared…” finally Shimo sat there in silence, staring at the floor as his hair flowed over his sorry face.
Meiko was the first one to speak up. “You’re right, I did think that maybe Mana just wanted the Box for herself, she just made up this whole story about me being nice to her and her wanting me to see it and hold it just so she could regain her gift and her identity in the process. It must’ve been painful for her to be so weak yet yearn to be strong, strong as a true hero. Then when I heard her plead for us to go on, when I heard that weak crying voice that begged us to survive and find the Box… No, she may have tried convincing herself that she was going to get her identity back and nothing more but, she told us that before ripping us off, right? She told us halfway, no, she told us from the very beginning, before we even got halfway through our journey and then she sacrificed herself to make this all possible. She wanted us to find that Box, she wanted me to hold it in my hands and see a legendary artifact just like she said, she wanted all the best for us because she had already given up on herself inside…”
That must’ve been the largest collection of words that Meiko had ever said, she usually didn’t say much, mostly she just shrieked and acted like a fangirl over the strangest things but now she was so much different. She had a whole different side to her. Maybe it was because Mana saw that side right from the beginning, right when she met Meiko that the magician wanted her to hold that Box in her hands…
“Well then, what are we waiting for? Mana-chan sacrificed herself so that Meiko can have that Box. Our mission may be failed because our client is most likely… Dead but… Let’s at the very least honor the reason and what she gave up her life for. Let’s find that Box!” Kouta sneaked up to Shimo and extended his hand forward for the rogue swordsman.
“You said you didn’t know who you wanted to be, you said you were confused and Mana was the person who showed you what a person with identity was, now you know who she really was, how she really felt and what she was willing to do for us. Does that not answer your question? Does that not clear out your confusion? The answer to your question was always lying within Mana’s dream, you wanted an identity to strive for, Mana wanted to be a hero that people would strive to be more like. You told me that making ladies happy was one part of your identity once, I’m not sure how it changed but you defended Mana’s honor even against someone like father. You have solid foundations to build your new identity on, identity isn’t something you find, it’s something you build. To build you need to stand up and move…” Kouta stroke his tears off with his wristband.
Shimo grabbed hold of Kouta’s hand and stood up.
“Well, it seems I caught you at the wrong time…” Kusagoro’s voice reached the three from behind them. “It just seems that luck isn’t on your side, I just flashed around the place from bottom floor to the top and I happened to hear some ground shaking from around here”
Meiko scratched the back of her head with a silly apologetic grin as the boys looked at her annoyed, the girl’s rampage through the library must’ve been what this man had picked up on.
“No, father, you’ve caught us just at the right time. Had you caught us a moment earlier you’d have found us in a broken state, now we’ve picked ourselves up and we will find that Box before you, we’ll let Meiko hold it in her hands to honor Mana-chan’s last wish and then we’ll ask the Box to bring her back to life!” Kouta yelled out trusting his fist close to his father’s face.
“I see, well then, I don’t particularly mind if you do that, however I will still try to have some fun and stop you from doing that!” Kusagoro grinned angrily and winded up his fist playfully to smack his son. The ground beneath his feet trembled and the man flashed backwards to avoid tumbling into a black abyss together with the falling apart ruins.
Meiko laughed out as her sudden and incredibly powerful stomp was what caused the collapse of the floor. She stood on the other side, the one located at the other turn as opposed to one that lead to the thrashed library she wrecked before. Kouta was also moved there by Shimo who moved much slower yet still managed to pull his friend out in time. The Yuki then went through a couple of hand seals predicting the assault of Kusagoro to come soon, after all, the man moved too fast even for his ninja eyes to track, he may have been moving far faster than sound itself and if he was caught unprepared all three of them would get captured and incapacitated.
“Ice Style: Blue Screen!” the boy yelled out as a translucent blue screen erected in front of them covering the passage, now not only a large gap of collapsing floor covered the distance between Kusagoro and the three teens but also this strange barrier that the young swordsman had erected. Kusagoro only grinned. “You think your foolish barrier would stop me? Someone who busted through a Rashomon gate with a mere backhand slap?” the man gloated as he charged forward with a lazy and weak punch.
As Kusagoro’s punch collided with the near invisible blue barrier a powerful chakra feedback fired off from it, the barrier broke down almost instantly but the blue shattered pieces gathered around Kusagoro and covered his body like armor, slowly the pieces started to evaporate into cold mist and soon the Konohagakure Jounin found himself completely encased in ice.
“Holy shit!” Meiko yelled out in surprise that Shimo actually had some more tricks up his sleeve.
“Yeah, it’s an ace in the sleeve meant to be used for quick escapes in closed spaces, I wouldn’t have been able to use it outside because the bug creep and the Hyuuga lady would’ve simply moved around it… Let’s move, he’s a Juugo so he probably expelled enough chakra from his pores to make an invisible force field around him, he’s not frozen solid and he’ll thaw out pretty soon, as soon as he deals with the absolute zero temperatures from inside…” Shimo explained as he turned to run further the ruined path, intending to follow it wherever it lead.
Meiko and Kouta nodded and followed the young man, the three ran on the walls and ceiling wherever the path had collapsed, they swung around flagpoles when their chakra ran out or they ran out of stamina, taking turns and shortcuts wherever they saw them just to put as much distance between them and the infernally powerful force chasing them. They were not yet aware of the irony how similar their troubles were compared to the Sunagakure party outside…
“I’m afraid we’re playing into father’s hands…” Kouta huffed as all the running was getting to his lungs and already crippled stamina.
“Yeah, he’s having fun from this little chase and I’ve already seen how dangerous he is when he’s having fun…” Shimo grunted pouting his face.
“Let’s just hope that we’ll find the Box soon or we won’t run into any traps, this place is a real ruin, let’s just hope that whatever traps it holds inside are just as broken…” Meiko worried over completely different things. She knew there was no stopping Kouta’s father if he caught up to them, he would’ve likely already learned to deal with Shimo’s barrier technique anyways…
“With our luck, I wouldn’t bet on it…” Shimo cracked a small grin as the three kept on rushing wherever eyes lead them in coordination, following the main path until they found it too difficult to follow it.
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