Moving through the desert with someone who knew very well what they were doing was quite different. Naturally the secrets of the desert were not all that mysterious to these people seeing how they lived in a village built of clay and sandstone entirely surrounded by a hulking wall of desert stone and residing in a large crater of mysterious origin so that the slightly colder layers of sand below offered some chills and the surrounding rocks provided ample shade.
“Enough…” the jounin leader of the Sunagakure team raised his fist signaling everyone to stop. While Shimo couldn’t help but feel suspicious by the Sunagakure party leading them to Sunagakure such was his job in the group, to question everything and use his cred and experience he picked up being trained by a rogue ninja to help and guide them through the tough environment of outside the walls.
“Why are we stopping, we can still move for a good two or three hours!?” Shimo grumped out, he constantly questioned and complained about the jounin’s leadership. Mostly because he was waiting for the man to slip up so that the ex-rogue could expose him as not who he claimed to be. It was a mystery to Mana as to why he wanted to pick a fight with a jounin but the opponent’s rank appeared to be of little importance to the Yuki swordsman.
“What we walk in distance is inconsequential compared to the energy we waste walking during those hours. That rock right there is a very decent shade, we won’t find anything like that several hours later down the road” the bulky Sunagakure jounin explained stroking his beard.
From what the Konoha team picked up so far the man was called Izem, it was a very strange name the likes of which Mana had never heard but she just assumed people from different parts of the world would have different names. He was a calm yet very authoritative in his presence individual, just like in the current quarrel of question and answer what he said sounded perfectly logical and no one really questioned it further. Even Shimo didn’t seem to have a problem with the jounin’s decision.
While the Konoha three awaited for the conclusion of Shimo questioning the jounin the Sunagakure team just settled down. The only girl in the Sunagakure party “ Tiwul chose to settle down on the edge of the rock providing them shade, initially it appeared weird to Mana as to why the female would choose to sit in the Sun throughout their stay but the girl then pulled out a sheet of paper and a some drawing brushes and small containers of paint and began to draw the desert sights.
Meiko, while feeling totally bored, scaled the rock up and settled down on top close to the girl to see her paint. Shimo just sat down by the stone, pressing his back against the shadier and colder parts to chill himself out, it appeared from the low position of the boy’s head and his hair falling over his face that he had fallen asleep or just functioned in some sort of trance-like state. It was very similar to meditation but occasionally the boy swatted his sheathed sword around to scare away the insects buzzing around him. There must’ve been some dead animal carcass nearby because the concentration of flies was not very pleasant to deal with.
The blonde boy kept on looking at his refilled flask and laughing to himself, he drank a gulp and then looked at the slightly diminished amount of water. To Mana such behavior proved odd so she slowly and without any attempts to sneak around walked up to him and sat down on a small rock close to him. For a moment she observed the boy playing with the flask like a little child having discovered a hidden wonder of the world as children often do.
“It’s astounding, isn’t it?” Menna, the blonde youngster who was distinguished by his excessive politeness, asked.
“I knew that the people living in desert didn’t see water often but I never would have thought you’d be amazed to that extent” Mana smiled still not quite catching Menna’s cold.
“No, your friend’s ability to use his ice to refill our flasks. It is such a remarkable ability, he is born to live in the desert, we would never let go of him if he was our prisoner. Truth be told, most of us would grow quite fond of such a man… Not that we intend any harm!” the young man shook his hands once he realized how strangely his sentence must’ve sounded.
“Not that many Yuki clansmen around your parts, I assume?” Mana winked at the boy trying to tell him that his poor choice of words was forgotten and ignored.
“Not really, Sunagakure might have a rapidly recovering military potential but we don’t have a very wide variety of ninja. Most of us are either Sabaku clansmen manipulating sand, puppet users or Wind Style ninja. There are quite a lot of swordsmen and weapon masters in our village but no one with such an exotic ability like your friend” Menna continued to stare at his flask.
“Well, if you ever need your flask refilled, don’t hesitate to ask Shimo or me” Mana smiled and nodded her head leaving the boy to obsess over the water.
As the magician passed over the rock from below a couple of small stones almost hit her on the head forcing her to look up. The magician was intending to go talk to Meiko about training her to defend against genjutsu like the armored ninja asked, also she felt a little curious about how Tiwul’s drawing venture was going on. Sitting above was the fourth member of the Sand party “ Tala. The boy didn’t speak that much and Mana only knew his name from his teammates referring to him. It didn’t even feel too comfortable to refer to a person by their name when they don’t tell it to you themselves…
With moderate effort the magician scaled the rock upwards and settled down closer to Tala. It wasn’t that she wanted to spend some time and get to know him or anything, even if she pretty much had to scope him and his intentions out with him being a foreigner and all, but she needed some rest before she finished climbing that rock.
For a moment there both she and Tala continued to stare at Shimo sitting quietly below, Izem, the strong-headed jounin stretching out and training and Menna obsessing over water and some of the food looted from the raider camp before that they shared with the Sunagakure party. The boy must’ve never had sherbet, preserved in those strange cooling sealing tubes, before or at least it must’ve been quite the delicacy around these parts. Granted Mana had never had any herself before finding out about it from Meiko and finding a hidden stash of it that Meiko still had not eaten during her brief stay at the camp. Even with all the sophistication around that delicacy it was getting tiresome to eat dessert for breakfast, lunch and dinner, saving smoked meat and fruits for the special occasions.
“You don’t talk much?” Tala asked speaking up first which was really unusual for him.
“Why? Does it bother you? I just stopped to rest for a while, I’m sorry if I’m disturbing you…” Mana replied beginning to feel a little awkward having just stopped climbing close to the young man’s location and not talking at all.
“No, I like it, I’m just used to everyone talking all the time so I’m a little surprised…” the redhead shook his head and resumed his over-watching duty which he himself decided to take up.
“I’ve seen your ability when you took out those raiders, are you a Sabaku clansman? I’ve recently met another Sabaku clan member, I never knew you were so common in Sunagakure…” Mana took the liberty of asking.
“Really? A ninja wielding sand in the middle of the desert is surprising to you? No, I’m not a Sabaku clansman, I am a Wind Style user, I wrap the sand and compress it into small spheres of wind chakra making it add some weight and force to it. I’m not going to tell you much more than that, Konoha kunoichi” Tala responded with some malicious sounding and offensive irony in his voice but Mana decided to not push it, she already felt thankful that this young man spoke to her at all having the last couple of days in mind.
“Oh, I’m not really a kunoichi, not anymore, anyways… I overused chakra augmentation and broke my chakra network” Mana decided to be honest with the boy and see where it’d go.
“Oh… I’m sorry, that must feel horrible. Still, to break it permanently you should’ve tried to kick the planet like a football or something, I know it’ll sound rude but it’s really your own fault” Tala finally looked at Mana with some curiosity but also some hidden judgment. At least he understood how crushing losing one’s chakra manipulation ability felt, at least his eyes suggested that he did because they projected pity from them. At least being honest opened him up somewhat.
“Yeah… It’s not really that, a sensor told me that everything’s fine with my chakra network it’s just my mind…”
“You are telling me an awful lot of things about you, why? Aren’t you afraid I’d use them against you? I am from another village after all, your head would grant me a moderate bounty, enough for lunch at least. Why do you trust strangers so much?” Tala asked revealing why he was so interested in Mana.
“Because you shall not allow a single hair to fall from this girl’s head, she is the client of the Konoha Four…” Izem’s strong and low pitched but also relatively gentle in tone voice explained. Shocked by the man’s presence being completely unknown not only to her but to a ninja nearby Mana turned to the side seeing the slightly aged man hanging sideways off of the rock with his hands crossed on his bulky chest with his feet sticking to the rocky surface and holding his entire weight.
“Well, if you’re the VIP, my point is just strengthened. Your head would pay a little more than that of your friends…” Tala closed his eyes and crossed his own hands and legs suggesting that he was done talking. Izem extended his hand to Mana with the intention of bringing her up the rock. Once the magician allowed the jounin to bring her up the man apologized for his pupil.
“Forgive Tala, the old ways are still not lost on him, he is a lot more conservative than even my generation… The Kazekage would pay for neither of your heads, Konoha is in exceptionally good standing with the Sand Village so don’t pay Tala’s ramblings much thought. In fact, Kazekage-sama and your Fifth engage in casual friendly rivalry from time to time and meet quite often in various meetings and Summits. He’d never go so far as to encourage putting sticks in Konoha’s wheels. Actually I’ll let you in to a little rumor, the Kazekage is a little afraid of Lady Fifth, that being said, if you were in Land of the Waves or Kirigakure you’d be smart to heed Tala’s advice and not talk too much about yourself” Izem explained while he slowly carried Mana up and placed her on top of the rock.
“Now please check out Tiwul’s painting, it’s really something else, or so people that see them say…” the man smiled to Mana twisting his facial hair in strange manners and then leaped down the rock landing down as if he barely even leaped half a meter, without even picking up sand from beneath his feet.
Slowly Mana approached Meiko and Tiwul sitting down. These two looked so much like two boys when looking from behind and being blinded by the desert Sun. Meiko was rather tall and had a very physical build, it would’ve been clear to any observer that she could physically kick their ass if she needed to. Tiwul was rather chubby and didn’t appear to be ashamed of it at all but her attire choices made her look like a little boy if anything else. While walking up closer to the two the magician could not help it but see Tiwul painting a heavenly oasis with palm trees, ripe fruits and flowing rich rivers. The only sand in her painting was on the ring-shaped beaches around the small squirting spring of mineral water she drew in the center.
“Izem-san was right, this is amazing, albeit not too accurate…” Mana smiled meaning no offence with her critique, she was just a little stumped as to why would Tiwul choose to sit on top of a rock in front of the raging desert Sun in the middle of a day if she wasn’t drawing the desert itself and was just imagining her own painting and bringing it to life.
“I always draw not what I see but how I want it to look, how I’d like for it to change during my lifetime. Maybe one day after this life kills me someone will see my paintings and decide to realize that vision… That is just my way of…”
“Leaving the world better than you found it, actually leaving a mark” Mana finished Tiwul’s sentence to which the girl turned around and smiled at the magician. It was only then that Mana noticed that Tiwul was missing a couple of teeth. The magician wanted to bring it up but she wondered if it was somehow important to Tiwul to keep it that way, after all, most medical ninja were able to heal missing teeth back in half an hour or so.
“Yeah! When I told Meiko about it she instantly brought you up, it appears you think quite similarly to me. I am very glad that there are more people like us, she also told me you even go as far as to never kill people which to me sounded a bit overboard and too hard to live by in our line of work. To each their own, I guess” Tiwul laughed out and continued to draw.
“We made a bet that I could beat Tiwul at an eating contest, we’re gonna go at it when we reach Sunagakure. That way I’ll have the chance to check the local cuisine out!” Meiko smiled with wicked excitement, looking back at Mana while dangling her feet off the edge of the rock.
“You know… Kouta is pretty skilled at healing missing teeth, he helped me with that a lot, if you wish I can ask him to heal yours” Mana tried to carefully go there and find out why exactly didn’t Tiwul have her mouth healed.
“Nah, I’m fine. I had quite a number of them grown back and it hurts too much, I’d rather keep ‘em out than go through that bother” the chubby girl giggled to herself, her appearance appeared to not at all bother her, while Mana took a completely different approach in life she couldn’t help but warmly smile and look at clouds covering up the midday Sun.
“Say, Mana… Tiwul said that Fennec guy is kind of a jerk, think we’ll have some time to kick his ass during our trip back?” Meiko looked back at Mana questioningly.
“Huh… It’s strange, you’re not actually that strong or fast yet your team looks at you with trust and considers your voice important, I don’t think I’d like to paint you at all, you’re really good the way you are…” Tiwul murmured to herself.
“I don’t know, it’s not really our primary or even secondary objective. If he gets in our way I suppose we can take him out but I think our best bet is leaving him to Sunagakure since he’s really their problem. We can’t just solve their problems for them, it’s people like Fennec that might make the next Sunagakure generation famous…” Mana scratched the back of her head. While she did wish to solve that problem someone of his caliber just sounded completely out of their paygrade and totally unrelated to their objective.
“Yeah, but don’t worry, he’s not really keeping himself contained to just Land of Wind anymore so you may just have your shot soon enough. Recently he blew up a small settlement in Land of Rivers as a signal to Konoha to stop interfering, I think he’s mad for something you guys did, you’re the only Konoha team working here at the moment, as far as we know…” Tiwul carelessly explained while not losing her rhythm of painting.
“Shit, you think he’s mad on us for taking down that raider camp?” Meiko looked at Mana worried. The blacksmith must’ve finally realized how living in Mana’s shoes and blaming herself for everything felt like.
“Oh, so you guys did do it? Well good riddance, Viper’s Pit or whatever it’s called was a hole anyways, still, Meiko, you should listen to your friend. This Fennec guy is our problem and we’ll deal with him. Stop meddling with him and putting other people and other countries in his crosshair. You have a mission of your own, don’t you?” the chubby calmed the blacksmith down better than Mana could have. Mostly because Mana actually felt bad about their decision now. Maybe if they played it cool they could’ve avoided that whole fallout with the raiders and then all those attacks on Land of Rivers. After all, it was her call to bargain with them for supplies they needed so much…
“If anything it’s my fault, I made the call to bargain with them, don’t feel bad about it, Meiko. Now I don’t like that Fennec guy one bit but Tiwul is right. The best we can do with a guy like that is report him to Konoha so that they offer assistance to Sunagakure, maybe some manpower or intelligence we have on his growing syndicate. Ultimately our meddling and attempts to help already cost lives. We need to stop messing this up and leave it to those able to actually help” Mana sadly explained. It appeared all the talking about Tiwul’s art and that unifier of raiders Fennec made the magician forget bringing Meiko’s training up.
Tiwul then stood up and sealed her work of art into a small scroll with a simple sealing technique. She looked at the clouds with a sense of wonder, clouds must’ve been quite a rare occurrence in the desert.
“Well, the opportunity to move out presented itself, by the time the sky clears up it’ll be late enough for us to move anyways. Let’s go” she said and headed down the rock. Mana and Meiko followed. Sunagakure was just one day away so they should reach it pretty soon.
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