By the time that Mana woke up the day was well past its middle. One could’ve expected at the very least that much from how the team spent the whole last night doing a great many things that ended up leaving the Sound Village pretty shaken up. The sight through the balcony was an intimidating one, the one of the largest, towering skyscraper buildings in the village was brought down, the whole district where Synth was summoned last night was in smoldering ashes even though the Lesser Demon saved all the injured as well as kept the dying from going over the line when asked by Mana to do so.
For the first time in a while Mana didn’t feel a crushing leftover of past wounds, the pain that made it difficult to imagine how the rest of the day would go. By now, having been just a normal civilian for months the magician had gotten used to the frail human body. It was tough to imagine how she could’ve taken the ninja metabolism for granted during all those years. Luckily enough due to Melobi’s effort Mana could make the bed she slept in and get dressed without any pain. Having in mind the literal torture she went through last night it was impressive.
By the time Mana got dressed and descended to the main guestroom below where everyone was having breakfast and, it appeared, waiting for her, everyone was already ready. The things were packed and stacked close to the door, everyone was just sitting around and looked happy to see Mana finally woken up and ready. The magician was a little scared to be entirely honest.
They’ve been chasing this box for so long. The four have been in so many places and experienced so much throughout all of this time and now they had all the cards they needed in their hand. All the four needed to do was to make the play and find out where the Box was exactly. Mana settled down and had some pancakes for breakfast, eating something made by an actual housewife who knew what she was doing felt really odd somehow, tasty nevertheless. It made Mana think about how much she missed cooking herself. Everyone hated when she cooked on the road because, frankly, Mana wasn’t as good as she told herself she was. The young one lacked experience, something she could hopefully fix in time.
“It was strangely affectionate of you to show that much love last night… You’ve never hugged me openly before” Mana smiled to Kouta during the session of small talk when each member of the team recounted their adventures in Otogakure. The girl, of course, referred to when Kouta hugged her after getting back to his senses and over his injuries. While the two did awkwardly talk around the topic of their feelings towards each other neither of them made an actual step to illustrate their firm intentions towards those feelings.
“Yeah, well… I met a woman last night that helped me open my eyes. Helping her cleared up a lot of things for me” Kouta replied with a smile stuffing another pancake. Meiko and the medical ninja continued to eat the second breakfast using Mana needing breakfast-company as excuse to stuff their cheeks full of food. These two were quite the heavy eaters when they had plenty of access to food…
“It might not be wise for us to stick around this place for much longer. Right now the whole Syndicate chain of operations is unstable and it is highly possible that they’re losing their public grip on the people. The village officials will view it as an opportunity to take their village back” Shimo tried to hurry everyone up and leave the village. There was a lot of truth in his words, they were ninja of completely different village after all. If the village re-established order and found them scooping around or made connections between them and the destruction last night the Hokage might have some explaining to do. Ninja have been suspended for far less than this.
“Well, we’ve made messes everywhere we went, we’re in a whole stew of them anyways” Meiko cheerfully chuckled grinning with a full teeth smile like a monkey making fun of something.
“Still, might be better to avoid making a public mess here. Just because we’ve got a nasty record already building up doesn’t mean we should keep adding to it when there’s chance of avoiding it” Shimo concluded to which no one appeared to object.
“Well, you guys are welcome to stay here as long as you need. I’ve ran my own art smuggling operation for my gallery so if I was caught by the Syndicate I’d have been screwed big time. You gave everyone hope that those fuckers will be kicked out, maybe one day I’ll actually open my gallery publically” the painter and the owner of the house that everyone was staying in affirmed that there was no rush to leave.
“The public likes Syndicate…” Mana looked down placing the roll of pancake and syrup down on her plate and pushing it away. Remembering her inner pain made her lose all appetite. She had never thought that she’d see the day when people supported criminals running the whole ship just because they openly killed any criminals unassociated with them. The very thought that such a system would be acceptable to the public made Mana very sad and whacked her hope of someday making her dream come true right in the head.
“That they do… You have to understand, they’ve been controlled by a band of criminals ever since the village was founded. To them the Syndicate is just another political party…” the artist nodded looking at Mana with a sad stare as if pitying her sadness before standing back up and leaving towards the kitchen.
“Well, we’re not staying for too long anyways…” Mana concluded standing up and walking down the hall to pick up the bag that had the sphere inside it. The magician carried it back and placed it to her feet before drawing the little ball out of it and rolling it in between her open hands, examining the craftsmanship in it.
Notasa looked at Carnefici it was evident that she wanted to say something but was a little hesitant to do so. It must’ve been tough “ having two minds inside one’s head and constantly having to speak for both voices. Usually the powerful seals used for Jinchuuriki sealed the beasts away deep and had to be loosened for some of the beast’s consciousness to leak out. Communicating with the Tailed Beast required great mastery over the seal, one’s own body and great experience communicating with the beast as well as good relationship. Notasa’s seal was thin as a bride’s veil, Synth could’ve broken out at any point whenever she wanted to and could seemingly freely communicate with Notasa at any point.
“I’ve ran this past Synth and we agree that finding a master to strengthen the seal would be the right idea…” the musician spoke to Carnefici who just closed his eyes.
“There are no sealing masters in this village, it’s a relatively unpopular branch of specialization and it’s a dangerous world out there, my lady” he warned.
“Yes, I know that but… A journey like that would help me understand Synth and it’d get to understand me, it’d be a bonding trip but also it’d finalize our union. Synth doesn’t want to hurt me or kill me if she ever broke out of the seal, plus, with our powers combined what could we possibly have to fear?” the musician gave her bodyguard a hopeful smile.
Carnefici just shrugged, “You’re the lady, I’m just your bodyguard. If you wish to find a sealing master then I’ll follow you wherever you go. Although you underestimate what transpires outside these walls. Maybe it would be a good experience for you to step out for once and see this world for what it truly is”
“Before that, I believe I’ve made a promise” Notasa smiled to Mana and picked up the sphere from her hands. The musician observed the sphere and looked around it flipping it and rolling it around to see all of its angles, she then asked for a pen and paper to write some things down. It took the young woman a good half an hour to finish the puzzle and write everything she needed down.
“It’s quite a simple puzzle to any musically literate person, just a quite tedious one” she admitted. “You see in the ancient times music was written down with numbers and not notes, each note and symbol represents a number and this sphere has a grant total of ten missing pieces that represent the numbers you need”
Notasa handed the paper to Shimo who just rolled his eyes and put a couple of slashes with the pen in between the numbers. Separating the numbers into two groups of four and one group of two.
“It’s coordinates… Some pretty exact ones and they can’t be that old, less than a hundred years old for sure because they use the Guilman’s method of writing down coordinates” the ex-rogue concluded. Once he took a more accurate look at the coordinates his face shifted in annoyance as he rushed to the bags and pulled out a world map placing it on the table after taking all the plates and cups and utensils off of it.
Kouta stood up and compared the coordinates to the map.
“Oh no… It’s in Kirigakure…” he whined out, with good reason, the current standing of Konoha and Kirigakure was less than exemplary and even though Shirona’s rebellion was long since cut down its roots and united Kirigakure loyalists remained strong in the village. Even more, they were more than ever united in their hatred of the other ninja villages now that they’ve taken away Kirigakure’s autonomy.
“Not quite… It’s in the north-western part of the Archipelago. I think it’s in the Tako Reach region” Mana pointed at the supposed area with her finger. It was within the central area of the region which may have been the most dangerous.
“Awww! Sick! We’re gonna fight ninja pirates!!!” Meiko shrieked out, “I’m gonna go and get ready!” she yelled out and ran off and grabbed her bag running into the yard to do whatever she thought of doing.
“Tako’s Reach is a dangerous place, Mana. If I was you I’d think very carefully about just how much you wish to find that Box…” Carnefici added “Even when I was still who I was, we rarely treaded into the oceans, when we did we paid our dues to every sick pirate bastard we encountered. We’d have rather hungered to death than fought in the middle of the ocean. You do know that the Eight Tails is loose somewhere in the Archipelago living in the depths and sinking ships left and right. You have to wonder if whatever you wish to obtain is worth eight kilometers of journey to the bottom of the largest ocean in the planet in the grasp of a gigantic octopus-ox. It’s either that or chakra infused sword to the gut by some random pirate, make no mistake those sea-dogs are no slouches, they were all proven ninja before they went rogue…”
“Even if by any chance you do find that Box, I hope you know the dangers of using it?” Notasa added. “There is an opera written about a man who left his home as a child and was raised as a monarch, only to return to his rundown country with his uncle in charge. Witnessing the suffering of his people he made a wish to the Box but the spirit of the Box took his soul away and sealed it in the Box instead. It’s called “Murasuke’s Trial” and it’s about the selfishness of our own inner desires and the hope that they come true without any effort from our part. I’ve performed bits and pieces of it many times”
Mana’s eyes sunk to the floor and she thought for a while. She had no wavers in her heart except when things expanded to her friends. She wished to show Meiko the legendary Box of Ultimate Bliss, she also knew that without her chakra control back the magician had no point of continuing her life. And yet even knowing all those things Mana didn’t really wish to lead her friends into peril. She didn’t want to doom them just because she did something as selfish as asking the Box to fulfil her wish.
“Truth be told I have no other choice. I know that everyone left on this mission not because they wanted to but because the Fifth would’ve never let me go without them. I know that it is selfish of me to wish for my chakra control back but… Without it I have no point of living. Life without any hopes of ever accomplishing your dream just isn’t worth living to me. At any point you guys can go home and just label me as gone rogue… I will walk the distance till the end, wherever it leads” Mana replied looking at her friends who didn’t reply at first.
“You’re not bailing out on your promise that easily…” Kouta smiled before getting off the armchair and moving on to the pile of bags by the door.
“I know I hurt you a great deal back in Takigakure and I still think that I was in the right to do so. Sometimes the only right thing to do is the one that hurts the most. I still want to be your friend, Mana. And friends watch out for one another, we’ve been through a lot already and this one may just be the big one. I still want to be the sword that protects because only that kind of a person can eventually become the Hokage. A Hokage doesn’t back down on missions just because things get a little crazy, especially when their friends walk into them with their heads up high” Shimo followed by standing up and picking up his bags as well as Mana’s and left through the door to wait for the magician outside.
“The redhead already left, she’s the most energetic about beating up ninja pirates out of the four of you…” Carnefici quietly roughed out through his teeth with a relatively warm grin.
“Before you leave, may I just ask you one question, as one artist and friend to another?” Notasa asked to which the magician nodded.
“Have you ever truly wondered why your chakra went away? Meiko told me that you can use physical aspect of chakra but not the spiritual, which means your own mind is blocking it off. Before you make a wish to the Box that steals people’s souls have you ever really looked into yourself and asked if that was the only way?” the musician asked with worry and desperation behind her voice. She must’ve really believed that opera and its story, to Notasa whoever asked for a wish to be granted by the Box was as good as gone.
Mana’s eyes closed as opened half way as she avoided the musician’s stare. “I hope for all the best to you and Synth. I’ll be looking out for any epics written to praise your kind deeds as well as for posters of your upcoming tours in Konoha. Look out for me, I’ll be sitting in the front row” the magician just bowed and walked out the door into what was supposed to be the final chapter of the adventure to find the Box of Ultimate Bliss. That was it, they knew where the Box was supposed to be. It was now just a matter of walking to the shores and setting off through the largest ocean in the world and into the most dangerous and pirate infested part of the Kirigakure Archipelago where deep underwater, rumors said, the Eight Tails may have lurked after his last Jinchuuriki died years ago all the way in Kumogakure and the beast was chased into the ocean abyss of Land of Water.
Had Mana truly spoken to her own mind? Had she really meditated and looked deep into her own psyche asking the question why did she forbid herself to use chakra on a mental level? No. She never once did. Truth be told the magician was even going as far as to completely avoid her own subconscious and never peek around those parts of her mind. She always categorized and dealt with conscious thoughts, ones she could control and manipulate but what transpired on a deeper and much more intimate level made even Mana herself fear setting foot in there.
How could she not be afraid of understanding herself? There had never been a more suffocating and crushing experience than losing her chakra manipulation and throughout all of this time the magician knew, on some tiny inconsequential level, she imagined, that she was the one to blame for her own misfortune somehow. After all, she herself was the architect of the entire incident. She was adamant of facing Hisako, a vastly stronger opponent alone. She was completely fearless of losing her own life if it meant doing at least one heroic deed in the end. If it meant giving her existence and birth some sort of meaning even if it was giving a juvenile crime lord a chance to redeem himself.
Looking inside her own heart and asking herself of the reason why she was stopping herself from reaching the full potential and getting back on the road of running towards her dream required the immense effort and strength which Mana didn’t really feel she had. As the magician rejoined her friends and acted like all was well and they slowly began to tread towards the edge of the Sound Village and towards Yugakure further down east before they reached the port that’d have taken them to the Archipelago she realized that she was more likely to face an almighty demon of wish fulfilment and look into his sinister soul sealing eyes than look into her own heart.
“So… Yugakure is our next stop” Kouta said with a slow and low pitched tone looking into the midday sky.
“Don’t hold your breath… The place hasn’t seen any action since the Second Great War. Ever since they stopped dealing with ninja and became just a large settlement instead of a ninja village” Shimo replied, he was right, of all places Yugakure, the village with little to no walls or protection and residing in between long stretches of port towns from the east and Konoha and Otogakure from the west needed the least protection or competition in the ninja game. Neither were there hopes of seeing some action there.
“War strained many villages. Maybe it’s for the better that some villages decided to call it quits before the fate of Iwagakure and Sunagakure followed them and they were sacked to the ground” Mana finally pushed Notasa’s words away and got into the trip and the discussion at hand.
*****
Leaving Otogakure was not as simple as the team would’ve predicted. After they entered the village there was hardly any observation or control over their actions while they were there. Had such control been established many of Syndicate’s operations would’ve been in peril therefore it was not beneficial to the men and women of the Syndicate in charge. Now that Syndicate’s iron grip on the village loosened the officials began instantly reapplying that of their own.
After making their way through the damaged and smoky village districts where they had the misfortune of fighting last night the team finally reached the more industrial rocky plains with large machinery working the exhausted ground and supplying minerals and natural gas residing below the village. The loud and towering machinery worked right on the other side of the street of the poorest residential districts making living there very cheap but virtually a living hell of machinery noise. The depressed workers had nothing to lose so they drank in the local bars and brawled like there was no tomorrow. Maybe the men wished that there’d have not been one. After they woke the next morning with the heads still pounding from the beers and the literal pounding they had in their last night’s fights they’d have wanted to die more than anything. Especially so knowing that they had a full working day ahead of them…
Mana, Meiko, Kouta and Shimo were stopped by the borders. It was odd seeing control over the village reestablished virtually overnight and the four may have been in a little bit of trouble as their identities would’ve been established and the officials would’ve known that ninja of Konohagakure meddled with their affairs which would’ve been a public nightmare for Konoha and possibly spelled out “suspension” for all of them. Luckily enough Shimo knew one guard from his time training during his rogue days so they weren’t shaken much, the team was let go relatively easily right after Shimo paid for the man’s beer and spared some time for a refreshing catching up talk.
“Wow, they’ve established control pretty much overnight…” Mana scratched her head being genuinely surprised by how fast Syndicate’s grip on the village slipped after just one night and multiple ruined operations.
“Maybe the officials really didn’t like their Syndicate overlords, maybe the rebellion was always in the works and the Police Force was waiting for the mobsters to slip up so they could reestablish control. Then again, Syndicate had some amazing fighters amongst their midst, tough to imagine the Police Force stopping any of them” Kouta replied remembering his tough time in the tower. Usually the Police Force was comprised of low ranking ninja, reformed mercenaries or rogues that legitimized and started working for any given village. Sometimes there was one or two chuunin amongst the Police Force but they were usually the elite and commanding officers. The higher ranking ones rarely fought because they couldn’t properly control their chakra augmentations, common chuunin had the destructive power to ruin the planet with a single punch making controlling their immense power part of the ninja training.
“Make no mistake, they didn’t do it because of good intentions… The Police Force just saw Syndicate slip up and wanted to take over. At this point they’re no better than another criminal band. What else would you expect from a village founded by giving a bunch of criminals pardon and giving them high ranking positions in the village government…” Shimo laughed out ironically making fun of the high hopes of his friends.
“What’s wrong, Mana?” Meiko asked looking at the magician’s sudden change of mood. The ex-kunoichi really looked on the down, more so than it would’ve made sense given what had happened.
“It’s just…” Mana began wondering how better to put it, “We’ve travelled through most of the world in a straight line, walking across it and we’ve seen so much but… Even when we stopped to help nothing changed for the better” she pinned it all on the results of their travels instead of her own inner struggle and the question asked by Notasa in Otogakure.
“We had no chance of changing anything. Syndicate is implanted too deep in Tanzaku and Otogakure, they’re expanding even faster still. We had no chance of stopping the goddamn Nine Tails and Kouta’s father and those other ninja in Sunagakure were just too powerful for us. It was far too early for us to try and change anything but we still tried anyways, we did some good too. All those Justicars in Takigakure were casually destroying star systems and ready to destroy the whole damned world if it meant destroying all they deemed evil. You also softened the Sheikhate up changing its ways, remember?” Shimo tried to calm Mana down. He usually never tried so hard, it reminded Mana of how they were in the beginning, before both Shimo and Sugemi got tired of her and the way she always was.
It was just a couple of days of travelling before the team reached Land of Hot Water. It was a peaceful and varied land, it had no dominant appearance as it had both mountainous regions, plain grasslands and sandy beaches leading into vast and crystal clear lakes. If anything the natural views and untouched beauty of Mother Nature was glorious to watch and sleeping by the open sky in Land of Hot Water was similarly unmatched.
Mana continued to train Shimo in the art of quicker hand seals. She had to admit that the young man was a talented one, every time the swordsman performed a jutsu faster than Mana’s eyes could track a single handseal she saw that prodigious kid that graduated in the top percentages of students in the Academy. They barely even really spoke, what Shimo did in Takigakure just hurt too much and Mana helped his training just out of respect for Tanshu-sensei’s final wishes. Shimo then asked if Mana wished he returned the favor by keeping her own fighting skills sharp but the magician always found an excuse to politely refuse.
Meiko became Mana’s sanctuary in these excuses as to why she couldn’t train. It was always the promised training of Meiko. Mana began training Meiko longer and longer and push her friend to strive higher and higher. At this point Meiko was far higher in the genjutsu defense tier than most of her peers but just because Mana didn’t let up. She needed to be occupied the whole night so that Shimo got off her back and stopped asking if she wanted to train and so she pushed all of that on Meiko. It was cruel and the redhead was struggling but she thought that it was all to her favor and that Mana was just being a strict teacher so she bent to Mana’s pressure and as a result improved in leaps and bounds. Her chakra control was still incredibly unreliable, sometimes Meiko pulled off quite impressive feats of concentration and sometimes Mana fooled her with a simple finger redirection or Meiko messed up even the simplest chakra molding exercises that an Academy student could’ve pulled off.
“You think you could teach me to meditate, the way you do?” Meiko one night asked her. The team was pretty close to Yugakure that was located in the center of Land of Hot Water but they decided to set camp and sleep over instead of reaching the village in the middle of the night.
“I don’t think you could reach that stage in a reasonable time frame. Your concentration is still too swimmy” Mana tried to be honest.
“Swimmy? What does that even mean?” Meiko’s puffy lips pouted like those of a toddler being told that they couldn’t have the cookie.
“It means that you’re swimming around aimlessly when you need to float. You need to stop thinking about anything, you need to achieve total clearness of mind and… I’m talking to myself again, huh?” Mana noticed that Meiko’s eyes were chasing a glow-worm that flew around in the distance near the small river where a whole group of them were concentrated. The glow-worms here were like miniature light bulbs by themselves, their shining bellies were the size of a human fist making them effective distractions but ones no meditator should’ve been distracted by.
“Sorry…” Meiko laughed out smiling just like a toddler again. “Though you know, if I tried and failed at least I would realize how far I am from that level and I’d stop asking you to teach it to me…” she noted a fair point.
“Look… I’m not gonna show you how to meditate!” Mana grunted out a bit more angrily and desperately than she’d have liked to. The magician knew that Meiko would’ve wished to see Mana’s meditational stages and now that Mana deeply feared delving into her own heart and had that fear engraved within her mind she’d definitely delve there while entranced. It couldn’t have been controlled. A single slip of her mind would’ve taken Mana deep within her own body and made her face the reasons why her chakra was taken away, why Mana couldn’t confront her own spirituality and obtain the spiritual chakra control part back.
“Oh… Well… Then back to the concentration exercises?” Meiko asked looking at Mana with those sad puppy eyes as if she did something wrong and Mana was hurt by her words. The magician sighed, she couldn’t handle those eyes. She couldn’t handle the thought that her own friend was hurt by her own words. Meiko shared that same feeling with Mana and the rest of the team where each feared hurting their friends the most of all things. Even when they had falling outs they still felt really bad about it and felt like they were to blame inside, all except for Shimo, that young man blamed himself for nothing…
“Look… Fine. I’ll… I’ll show you how it’s done but I can’t talk. Talking and explaining it to you will only distract me and I’ll have to think about things to tell you and then it won’t work. You’ll have to observe me and understand what’s happening without my aid” Mana softly explained feeling sorry about her own fears making her too edgy and distancing from her friends.
“Sure!” Meiko barked out raising her fist into the sky energetically. She then peeled her wide eyes open and continued to keep them peeled and staring at Mana like the magician was about to show an actual magic trick.
Mana closed her eyes and took a meditative position by crossing her legs and straightening her back, the magician completely relaxed and pushed away all thought letting her mind slip into trance almost immediately. She used meditation so often as a child and even now that by now it came almost like an alternate dimension she had easy access to. Like a dream world she lived in but couldn’t quite yet bend to her will.
A black void encompassed Mana as she realized that she’s slipped into her own consciousness. The girl saw her own body in front of her as a map of sorts with stars and small planets symbolling her organs, systems and chakra network. Just as expected the blasted thing looked operational and fully capable of supporting proper chakra control. Mana had even accumulated leftover masses of chakra in those nodes from her time training and using physical chakra which could’ve expanded her chakra pool beyond her wildest dreams if only she could force them out and into her normal network flow. If only she could control any darned part of her life…
“Ummm… Space baby thing?” Mana asked around ethereally trying to find out if maybe that huge space entity she once encountered as she was dying was still there. No one answered, it either didn’t survive Mana’s dying process or was blocked off from her consciousness. Just another part of her body the girl couldn’t control. It was like her own body blocked her off of it.
“I guess I deserved it…” Mana forced her mind to materialize her in front of the ethereal imaginary map of her body and looked down. The girl just wanted to see her own body, both conscious and unconscious parts and speak to it. Just heart to heart, she didn’t care if her own body listened and if it cared or if it continued to hate and stay angry at her.
“I mean I’ve done nothing good my whole life while I had chakra. Most of the things I did were accomplished by other people while I was just there foolishly risking my life. I always try to help but then I set free the Nine Tails or… Things just don’t go how I want them. I used the chakra control recklessly, I endangered my own body and almost paid my own life as the ultimate cost in return. I guess I don’t really need to talk to any of the imaginary space babies inside of me to understand why what happened, happened. Just… Maybe one day… When I’m worth it and when someone I love is in danger, consider really hard and if I deserve it at that moment and… Please make me strong again…” Mana spoke to her own body fully knowing that no one was listening, she was quite literally talking to herself. At least last time there was a Space Mana to talk to, the two had a fruitful discussion that convinced Mana that her life was not in vain and that she could make it mean more still if she saved her own life.
Now she was alone… All alone.
Mana’s eyes shook and opened again. She whispered a question at Meiko asking if the blacksmith got anything from the demonstration but then she noticed Meiko sitting with her head rolled back and her drooling mouth open. The fact that the blacksmith was still sitting upright proved considerable restraint and wish to actually understand Mana but the blacksmith just couldn’t beat her nature of being the world’s cutest goof. The magician just sighed and gently placed her friend onto the soft grass.
“She went asleep like fifteen seconds into it. It was amazing really…” Kouta whispered into Mana’s ear.
“It’s okay, I didn’t expect it to go any other way. Meiko is an ass kicker, not a self-reflector. She can punch a Goddess right in the teeth then never question herself and sleep like a baby afterwards” Mana smiled looking at her friend before pressing her head against Kouta’s rough cloak that protected the boy from the night’s chills.
Kouta’s hands wrapped around Mana and pressed her firmly. “You looked pretty nervous about meditating? Any skeletons in the closet you wish to talk about?” he asked quietly as the two moved past Meiko leaving the blacksmith kicking about while asleep like a little puppy dreaming of chasing other little puppies across the great steppes.
“No, I’ve confronted those skeletons and I think we’ve started anew on… Better terms. Hopefully they can move out of my closet once I make enough to rent them a place elsewhere” Mana replied with an even greater smile resting her head against Kouta’s shoulder as the two sat to look at the running river and the dancing glow-worm swarms downhill. The magician had no idea when exactly she had fallen asleep. Kouta must’ve just laid her head down on the grass and laid down just a couple of meters farther from her as that was the position she found everyone after waking up in the morning.
*****
Yugakure was a disappointment. Not a depressing one but a strangely glad and liberating one. The village itself was completely unprotected from either side. It wasn’t even much of a village as it no longer fostered any ninja to make its riches from murder, theft and other unkind deeds ninja usually made money out of. It reminded Mana more of a small but sophisticated and rich pleasure town offering services and low quality entertainment like lesser known actors and musicians. A fine place to stop and relax and enjoy the pureness of the surrounding nature.
Mana somewhat expected that a Konoha representative may meet them there and ask for them to return back home. She even tried imagining a fighting scenario and thought about the best ways of escaping the representative, the magician thought of various chuunin and jounin she knew of that may have been sent to retrieve them. Analyzing the parts of their skillsets she knew and trying to come up of ways to evade them long enough to lose them. After getting into so much trouble and making so much noise Mana expected there to be some sort of consequences afterwards but it appeared that their involvement into Otogakure’s affairs remained unidentified and a complete mystery. For all anyone knew it could’ve been just a random Syndicate outfit wearing swordsman, just another leather jacket wearing young woman and just a random mercenary-like looking armored brawler that caused the public outcry and destruction of several important buildings as well as a whole district.
Just a week later the team was already close to one of countless small port settlements that made a living out of fishing the great ocean that opened up and ended only on the other side of the world at the most western sides of Land of Wind as well as taking people to the endless islands stretching throughout the ocean. The ocean itself had no known name, it was too vast to name it. Several sections of it had names however. All the way in the north-western parts laid the Tako’s Reach “ a region of two hundred and fifty thousand kilometers in length and about hundred and forty thousand kilometers wide where ninja pirates reigned supreme and prospered.
More to the south there was a safer but longer path to the Archipelago, most of the smaller and unprotected ships often took that path but those were torturous and long trips around the more straight but dangerous path. Then to the east laid the Land of Water and its Archipelago, the collection of islands both small and large that were too many to count, somewhere in the center of the Archipelago laid the greatest and the most famous island “ Kirigakure, one of the past Great Ninja Villages with a bloody reputation.
The air in the port town was very humid and somewhat salty, the structures had signs of erosion and moss typical to such humidity and the rising and fleeing tides. Mana decided it’d be wise to get used to that salty smell and humid air “ it was there to stay for quite a while…
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