The Justicars appeared strangely in quite a rush to speak about the situation they were involved in. This could’ve been due to a number of reasons but the fact that they concealed those reasons troubled Mana. The magician had read a lot of things about the order of Justicars over the years. It had many split factions, some were funded and supervised by the villages and countries meanwhile some worked separately with no supervision. Supervision technically was against the code set by the First Justicar several hundred years ago. Most of the time the Justicars, both supervised and unsupervised were just another kind of mercenary, one that didn’t take money but only helped when they thought their code allowed it.
“I don’t like this, not one bit. We have no obligation to speak with them, we could just leave right now and keep moving, we’d reach the edge of Takigakure in a couple of days” Shimo grunted, the young swordsman had a very fine reason to hate Justicars, most of the order despised nukenin and criminals and considered killing them their sole purpose. It may have been due to popular culture praising the Justicars that killed the nastiest and strongest criminals more than the code prioritizing killing criminals in any way.
“I don’t know, we should hear what they have to say, won’t hurt just to let them know who we are and where we’re going, it might keep the Justicars off our tail. Remember that they answer to no one so if they think we’re being shady they may attack us” Meiko spoke up raising a rather fair point even if her reasons of sticking around and talking to the ground were much more clear “ these Justicars were just well built and developed people in general wearing ancient and gigantic looking armor and weaponry. Of course the blacksmith would’ve wished to stay and admire these men and women a bit more…
“I really don’t care, on one hand moving quicker is better, we’ll get to our goal faster and all that, on the other hand making sure that we don’t have the Justicars on our ass forcing me to hold a certain amount of chakra in at all times, just in case I’ll need to heal someone, does have its benefits” Kouta shrugged, of all people his opinion seemed most indifferent but also the most objective, everyone else had interests or history with these people.
“I don’t even wish to think hard about it, after all, we can’t know if they’re not still using those Intents from before. I don’t feel like they are but the thought is still scary” Mana admitted looking to the side, usually she was regarded by the group as the leader making her decision quite important in the actions that the group took. Now that she had removed herself from the decision making process the situation became more complicated.
The large leading Justicar walked up to the four letting them keep some distance before leaning in.
“We’re ready to answer any questions you may have but also report the situation at hand. If you could be troubled for a moment we’ve decided you could be quite helpful” he smiled, Mana looked at his face and wondered if the genuine affection and warm feelings inside of her were still from the Intent that the man used on a much smaller level or if she, just like Meiko, was captivated by how attractive visually and well trained these people were.
“Helpful?” Mana instantly asked, whenever there was a way she could’ve helped someone and potentially saved some lives the magician was all ears.
“Yes, you see there is a system of rotten trees the tops of which were devastated by a battle that had transpired long ago. There trees were ancient and well over a couple of centuries old with rich entangled systems of underground roots. We’ve been hunting those criminals we’ve mentioned to you before for a long time and some of them we’ve chased to here used to hide inside those root systems, apparently they are completely hollow, almost like a tunnel. These people disappeared in those tunnels and naturally as Justicars we are very interested in this matter” the man explained.
“Isn’t that a job well done for you Justicars? Don’t you just kill all criminals you find anyways? Why are you so angry someone did your job for you?” Shimo angrily tried finding some problems with this man.
“I can see that a criminal like you would have problem with that…” the leader nodded beginning to get more and more peeved by Shimo’s notes.
“That’s the thing, I’m not a criminal, I never was. I was let go from the village with the Hokage’s permission, I was a wanderer the whole time and I had to fight you losers off and never had a moment of peace and quiet. You don’t hunt actual criminals, you label people you wish to kill and then proceed to do so” Shimo began losing it as well reaching for his sword, with the same degree of subtlety the Justicar’s hand also reached for his blade.
“So you’ve never sent people down there? Your plan was to wait here and try talking ninja into going inside those tunnels?” Kouta scratched his head as the Justicar’s explanation lacked some details that would’ve given it some more sense.
“We did send them, none returned, in fact, ever since quite recently we’ve even been getting attacked at night by something coming from inside these tunnels, someone that leaps out and uses the dark to drag people inside. None of those dragged into the tunnels returned either. We were planning a big time raid of those tunnels but then we’ve ran into some more mercenaries whom we must have killed at that moment following our code. Now we don’t have enough manpower or weapons to properly raid it but our code demands to fight injustice or to die trying and so I’m prolonging the deaths of me and my men by as long as possible as any sensible leader would. Your intervention would be of great help” the leader explained.
These Justicars appeared to take the code even more seriously than most accounts Mana had read about them. It was true that some Justicars were outright religious with their following of the code but this group appeared to follow it like law where the leader was a master lawyer looking for holes in it that allowed the group to function better than a group functioning on centuries old rules devised by a violent forest hermit would reasonably be.
“Who do you think might be inside those tunnels?” Meiko wondered relaxing and stretching out. It was clear that she may have beginning to get bored of the ridiculously good looks of these Justicars and began feeling bored, knowing Meiko only being hungry could ever shift that boredom in a relevant way and a hungry Meiko presented more problems all of itself.
“Anything in existence, everything and anything lives inside these trees in those parts. Homes are etched inside, entire cities are built out of them, it could be people, it could be a very savage wild animal, it could be a little bit of both mixed in together…” the Justicar nodded his head in shame of not knowing just what exactly may have been killing his men.
“Very well, we will check into it…” Mana nodded. The team all looked back and raised an eyebrow or two remembering that the magician was thinking about completely sitting this one out and here she outright declared that the Konohagakure ninja would be looking into this small sidequest.
“We shouldn’t be helping these men, nothing good ever comes of Justicars” Shimo looked at Mana, it wasn’t a look of anger or even contempt, it was a look and advice of wisdom and experience that was supposed to encourage the girl to reconsider but the magician shook her head.
“I have a certain sporting interest into this. I’ve never heard of anything that behaves this way, I’m really excited to find a new species of animals or meet new people that behave in a way I’ve never heard about. I don’t know much about Takigakure and this might help us get to know the place better, if it won’t, it will still potentially save lives and give these people closure. I’ve never refused a person asking for help and I don’t intend to begin today” Mana explained seriously with a little wink of excitement when she spoke about her sporting interest into this. She was genuinely intrigued by this story because it sounded so unlike something that’d normally happen in a place like this.
Some kind of creatures living inside desolate and ravaged battlefields underground, hunting people that enter those places and even leaving out during the night and hunting for prey outside. Mana’s childish imagination began creating the most wild dreams and ideas of what these creatures could’ve been and this interest into this weird case fueled her decision, she may have agreed to help just out of the elementary need to potentially save lives and help but it would’ve never made her this excited to do so normally.
“I’ve never seen Mana-chan this excited before…” Kouta noted nodding in agreement to her idea. “She looks just riled up enough to go and look into it with or without us and I’d be a nasty medical ninja if I let her do that…”
Meiko shrugged, “Well, we’ve gotten this far already, to let Mana muck it up and fail would be really dumb, I wanna do this too, whatever interests Mana must be pretty cool to see!” she declared just as vibrantly as Mana did.
“Very well, I suppose if you guys decided to go I really can’t say no to this… Shouldn’t really take long” Shimo shrugged.
“Actually…” the leader stood up and released the iron grip he held around the hilt of his sword from back when Shimo tried to instigate a conflict. “We’d really appreciate if Shimo stayed here. We may have made a temporary truce having decided that he’s not a criminal, for now, however if any of those lost Justicars in there are still alive and see him they may strike from the shadows making the mission unnecessarily more difficult than it should be. Please consider leaving him in our camp, he’s done quite well fighting us off for entire years, there’s no reason to think we could take him now even if we wanted to…” the man suggested.
Mana looked at Shimo expecting a lot of opposition to come from the Yuki’s side in which case she may have cancelled this thing out. This would’ve looked just too suspicious but the young swordsman just shrugged again, “He does have a point, I could fight those guys off and take most of them out, it’d make no sense for them to attack me when I know they’re coming, also, whatever danger I have a reason to expect they also have to feel placing me in their camp. I don’t think they’ll try anything funny, go and have fun…” the young man said.
Mana asked her team to prepare and warm up for a short while before she asked the Justicar a couple of questions, she was seeking for the minor insight and information that the Justicars had on these things she’d be looking for because in the magician’s world knowledge and insight was everything that made all the difference. Same was with both fights and missions.
“Do you have any information about their typical behaviors? Anything at all that could help?” Mana wondered to which the leader only shrugged.
“Usually they’re pretty scaredy, the lower layers of the roots are really thin and near impossible for the humans to navigate, you’d get stuck immediately and die of dehydration and starvation before anyone could pull you out of there. It might make more sense to attack during the night, when they surface and are on the higher levels of the root system” the man explained, “But due to their stealthy and extremely lethal nature we don’t know much, all of this is just speculation”
“No, it’s fine” Mana nodded before moving to her team and stretching out herself. She took off her blazer and laid it aside because it felt restrictive enough, if these tunnels ever got too thin she’d just cause herself unnecessary discomfort. It was alright to slightly discomfort herself in battle that way having in mind the advantages that her uniform granted otherwise but during an exploration venture it may have been just suffering for suffering’s sake.
“We’ll move in after the Sun sets…” Mana said, “During that time they’ll be closest to the surface giving us highest possible chance to at the very least encounter them. We’ll move together at all times, if at any point we find that we need to crawl we’ll pull out. There’s no use losing people here or getting too injured, remember, this is for fun, and a little bit of necessity just in case someone those things captured is still alive”
“Wow, you’re getting confident enough to give orders, nice!” Meiko laughed out to which Mana just shamefully turned to the side.
“Just relaying the information I got” she tried to get out of the leader’s label.
Once the evening went the trio that was allowed to move out creeped up to the tunnel and took some peaks inside. The whole system appeared just like a colossal stump that may have taken an entire sports field and covered with hollow tunnel-like holes wherever the roots went. Maybe the tree was so colossal that these were actually the places where it tried to absorb and move water through literally?
Mana took out a sharp tipped card before placing it back and asking Meiko for some kunai. Despite having similar cutting power in battle the magician simply trusted the kunai more in climbing ventures. Slowly the magician etched her knife into the rotten and dead tree and began climbing down, carefully testing how the tree held her weight because there should’ve been no reasons why the dead tree would even hold her weight in the first place. After seeing Mana disappear in darkness and not hearing neither a scream nor a splat the duo followed shortly.
Much to her surprise the tunnel disappeared completely pretty soon, wherever those roots lead to ended just as soon as it began with the tips of the roots looking like they were bitten and chewed off. Something definitely lived in here and it apparently ate the roots and made an actual stony tunnel where the mineral part of the soil began. They must’ve been pretty deep because usually the soil of Takigakure and similar swampy areas had to go pretty deep down before it became so hard and rocky, the moist and wet ground soaked all of the dirt and minerals all the way through.
There was this eerie sound of water clacking against the stony floor of the caves. This wasn’t that unexpected since the entire place was actually a large system of caves located below a country filled with watery floors and waterfalls. Still, it really made the whole trip definitely a lot creepier. Mana felt uneasy the whole way through because the whole place was just dark and noisy with its dripping enough to remind her of the ghost stories of her youth.
Meiko stepped on her leg in the darkness…
“Sorry…” she uttered beginning to walk forward again normally, waiting just a short moment so that Mana could move her aching leg forward.
“No problem, just… Try not to step on it again, it really hurt, your armored shoes didn’t help” Mana replied whining a little over the really disabling pain of Meiko’s iron boots. If just small accidents hurt this much, just how badly would it hurt if the blacksmith actually stomped on her foot and meant it? Moments like this made Mana glad that the blacksmith was not her enemy in this case…
“Wait, were you? Quivering?” Meiko asked with a little quieter tone than normally.
“No! Don’t make things up…” Mana almost shouted out embarrassingly in return. She really didn’t wish to admit that she was frightened right after being so excited to go there in the first place and being one of the leading voices advocating their descent into the caves.
“You totally were!” Meiko laughed out childishly, “What’s wrong, can’t take a little darkness? I can hug you and hold you tight if it’ll help, Mana-chan…” the blacksmith began making fun of Mana like a kid in the Academy would’ve.
“I’m… I’m… Fine, this place is just too much like those ghost plays, I sometimes stay after the shows in Konoha to watch some of my actor friends performing, ever since I was a kid I was stupidly afraid of ghosts, those plays were terrible and most of them used sound effects and sets just like this…” Mana spoke.
“Mana-chan is afraid of ghosts? That’s an eerily specific and a silly thing to fear, I mean why would you be afraid of dead people? They’ve already been beaten, that’s what killed them, right?” Kouta wondered to himself voicing his thoughts in a turtle’s pace and manner of speaking.
“It’s not dumb! They’re really scary! I mean doesn’t the concept of a malevolent spirit returning to exact its vengeance not frighten you one bit?” Mana began getting a little bit irritated. Both Kouta and Meiko shook their heads, it was tough making it out but the sounds of their clothes rustling and the brief dance of their shapes around the head area suggested so.
“We’re shaking our heads if you can’t see…” Meiko added once again giggling childishly.
“Maybe it goes deeper than just ghosts? Maybe Mana-chan is afraid not necessarily of ghosts coming after her but ghosts of people she failed to save because they remind her of her failures?” Kouta wondered when Mana outright screamed and leaped to the side after seeing a large cave spider.
“Nah, I think it’s just ghosts… She’s scared of ghosts…” Meiko awkwardly pointed at Mana trying to scare the spider away with a stick. “That’s not a ghost, Mana, it’s a spi---“ suddenly Meiko’s speech stop and the girl began shaking herself, Kouta also froze in fear forcing Mana to turn around and look at what scared them so.
Standing, or rather crawling in front of them was a whole group of wall scaling quadruped man-animal like things. People of no hair anywhere on their body and without eyes or any significant area of their faces except a really big and sharp toothed mouth. Strangely enough the very sides of the creatures’ mouths had two really thick and blunt teeth that were also really long and tacked against the other half making the creatures express themselves in a chattering noise of tooth clacking.
Slowly the creatures approached Mana and the group, chattering their mouths and pointing their large claws that allowed them to scale even the rocky caves they lived in. Apparently there was a species living underground that Mana has never heard of before…
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