White seemingly eternal bliss was everywhere where one's consciousness could reach. There were various strange voices, long lost memories, voices of people who once said or did something. Was this life flashing through one's eyes right before death? A blast of needles struck Mana's forehead forcing her to peel her eyes open. She didn't remember anything. The girl looked around, her floating vision and migraine didn't let her forget that something horrible must've happened but her mind was still in shatters.
"Jeez, idol-bitch, you really struggled like a beast, you know that? For a little bitch like you I didn't expect that much resistance, thought you'd claw my fucking eyes out." Hisako's soft voice reached Mana's ears making the girl turn at the raven haired woman. The woman's annoyed face leaned over entering Mana's sight of vision from above, her eyes flared up, catching all semblance of light that the fire nearby emanated and reflected it off like a colored glass panel.
Mana gripped her chest and grunted out, some throbbing sensation reminded her of something horrible having happened earlier. A young man passed right through, looking at Mana for a second and breathing out heavily. "Oh, you're awake… That's good, for a moment there I thought we lost you." he said acting as if he was someone Mana was supposed to know.
Mana sat up, still clutching her chest, only then she realized how cold she was – her uniform was full of fist sized holes all over, close to her laid her cards, all stacked in a steel tipped deck. When the magician was found her uniform must've been so singed up that all the hidden pockets couldn't hold her weapons inside. The girl took the cards and tried to find where she could've hidden them. Mana weaved a hand seal and removed a small pouch from the bottom of her hat unsealing it from father's seal. She had several necessities in there in case of an emergency as large as this.
Slothfully the girl placed all of her cards into the empty leather pouch, her body was shaking from the cold. Thoughts started flooding in, thoughts of what exactly happened, her memories were all jumbled up so it was tough to put them together. Mana definitely wanted to unleash a flood of questions because at the moment nothing at all made sense to her. It was like she woke up in a dream or something. The magician let her vision get straight, she let her eyes run around the small camp consisting of several sleep bags placed around a small fire.
"What happened? Why does my chest hurt so much?" Mana mumbled out through the cold that made her grind her teeth and shake. The magician moved in a little bit closer to the fire, Kiyomi smiled at Mana and hugged the girl. It was strange to see such expressions of softness and affection from the blonde, usually ninja didn't care that much about their comrades except the professional bonds or the ties of sharing ones village that tied them all together.
"Hisako stabbed you in the heart, I got really scared but then they told me that this guy here is a medical ninja I've no idea why he saw it necessary to put that thing into your chest, you may want to ask them…" Kiyomi replied. She looked pretty happy that Mana was OK but she didn't seem overly fond of the situation they were in, perhaps it was because it was Hisako and that strange young man that pulled the two out of trouble.
Hisako shrugged, she was eating something that looked like a fish cooked on a stick and it didn't appear like she overly cared about anything going on around her except for that fish. "I was walking down the forest path, thinking how I could return to you guys and help with the mission because I suddenly got the urge to actually do that mission and all. I didn't think how much fun it'd be killing all those criminals, it's basically a kill-all-you-want buffet of murder. Then I heard those strange whispers behind me, also that strange radio transmission, naturally my instinct told me something was wrong and I didn't take any chances, I started rampaging all over the crew of mercenaries."
The young man walked up to the fire and sat down, he stroke his messy and spiky blond hair and took off his dirty cloak tossing it to Mana. The girl looked at it and gratefully dug herself under it, she was freezing.
"You really didn't think covering Mana up while she was out? It's goddamn freezing and her clothes almost got torn and burnt off by that explosion!" Kiyomi angrily lashed out at the medical ninja boy.
"I'm a Quack" the young man shrugged.
"What's a Quack?" Mana wondered out loud, there was just so much information she needed to absorb: why did Hisako suddenly want to cooperate with the two girls, was it really just for a chance to murder all criminals freely, who exactly was this young medical ninja and where did he come from, what was his role in all of this, what exactly happened back in the battlefield fighting Hachi, how was she healed and how much time had passed after she passed out, what was the progress with the mission?
"A Quack is a rogue medical ninja, some of them are really charlatans however rogue ninja need medical ninja so a lot of Quacks are often more skilled than your average village medical ninja. Their methods are strange, often too rough and unethical to be used by village's medical ninja" Kiyomi explained taking a stick with a fish on it away from the fire and digging in.
"So I keep cutting everyone down with those guys completely unprepared, they didn't even hear that fucker's order to kill me till the end and all… Suddenly this Quack just stands there looking me in the eyes as I lunge at him with a sword, completely unfazed by all the murder and without a single twitch to defend himself. Naturally I was interested in his story so apparently he was some medical ninja apprentice who had his superiors killed in the field and he himself got kidnapped and passed around from one band to another as their personal Quack."
"So you decided to release him from his slavery?" Mana got curious, that was a very kind thing for Hisako to do…
"Fuck no, he's my Quack now!" Hisako started coughing after Mana's suggestion made some food get stuck down her throat. "So anyways, I pick the Quack up and kill every fucker in that mercenary gang while they were unprepared. Then I hear the transmission from the headset of that beheaded head and take her earplug, the bitch didn't even turn off the transmission so I heard most of the bullshit going on. Since my desire to murder those criminals was still there I decided to bail you two bitches out and start a new page, just until we're done with the mission."
Kiyomi finished the fish and wiped her mouth with her sleeve. "You should've seen that, Hisako rushing into the battlefield covered with blood and guts, rushing up to you and stabbing you in the chest, I thought she was actually murdering you."
"Nah, I may have been a bit too bitchy about that whole murdering thing, I'm still working on that decision… I really feel like we've connected, like we're making a progress here" Hisako replied starting another fish. Kiyomi squinted angrily at Hisako's joke suggesting that it wasn't funny to her at the slightest.
"Okay… So how exactly stabbing me in the chest saved me?" Mana asked completely confused. There were some more important questions, this didn't really matter that much but it really made no sense and distracted the girl's still hazy mind from the more important matters.
Hisako's eyes flashed, she stared at the Quack to explain it. The young man sat down close to Mana and removed an incredibly thick and large rod.
"Basically the worst nightmare for any medical ninja is an unconscious patient, you don't know if they just passed out, if they're completely dead or if they're in a coma. Medical ninja have a very limited chakra pool and wasting chakra on a comatose or dead patient is a bad decision putting it mildly, that chakra is better used making a run from the hunter ninja coming after you. Most Quacks use this sort of tool to stab their patient through the heart, the rod pulses with chakra and because of the pain and the shock it wakes them up, it'd also kill them normally but usually a good medical ninja can get that wound under control and it also makes healing a little bit more clear and an easier task. Good thing I had Hisako here to hold you still though, you were flailing pretty hard…" the Quack explained.
Mana didn't really understand any of it, maybe it wasn't that she didn't understand it but it didn't really make much sense. Then again from what she remembered seeing in the Konoha Hospital most medical ninja never woke up their patients, they just supplied a certain amount of chakra into healing them and if it didn't work they called them hopeless. Obviously their stats were always monitored and sometimes the condition stabilized even while the patient was unconscious but Mana had never wondered about those sort of things, to her medical ninja just sounded like the real magicians with their ability to bring people back to life and patch them up quickly.
"OK, so what's the status of our mission then?" Mana wondered, the fact that they weren't in Konoha at that moment must've meant that there was still hope that they'd complete the mission. The magician wanted to know how far they travelled so far and where exactly they were and if any new intel came up.
Kiyomi tied her long hair and sat up close to Mana opening up a small map of the Fire Country. The girl pointed at a random point. "This is where we were a day ago, we've moved to here at the moment…" she dragged the finger further to another point and then even further by a narrow inch, "This is where we speculate the kidnappers are in and where they're holding the hostage, we managed to catch a black market dealer passing through the area and he revealed some pretty sensitive information about a young purple haired brat being held in an underground bunker nearby disguised as a warehouse"
Mana jumped up rushing to the fire, "Why is this burning then? We're giving away our position, they're so close that they can definitely see us!" she yelled out starting to panic, Hisako tossed the fish bones at the magician which she managed to avoid, the stick with the bones hit a tree behind the girl and rolled down the hill somewhere.
"Calm your tits, that's what we're counting on. We don't want to engage the kidnappers in a fucking bunker, that's where they're holed in like fucking rats. They'll have trap seals in there or just ordinary pressure plate traps, we need them to fight us on our territory. Don't worry, I have a hunch for being ambushed…" Hisako smiled with a mouth full of fish. Mana sighed.
"This is a terrible plan…" she replied, "I mean I know they most likely knew there'd be at least a single party of ninja raiding them to retrieve the kidnapped kid but that doesn't mean we need to let them ambush us just to avoid playing by their rules"
Hisako didn't even honor Mana with a response, it was painfully obvious that the girl wanted to fight those kidnappers, she wanted her life to be in danger, she thrived in such situations. Suddenly Mana started to realize more and more about this young woman, about the Yoruma mentality in general. These people just wanted to fight, they didn't care who would get hurt in the process or anything like that, they didn't care much about the mission objective, to them the missions were just an opportunity to fight someone strong enough to get the village's attention.
"Plus, if they're so well bunkered in, they won't risk ambushing us in the first place. Did you forget that it's us who need to extract that young man, not the other way around?"
"That's what I told Hisako but she is an adamant young woman…" the Quack replied shrugging and sighing as if he was looking at it all like a big joke. Mana sat down and looked at Kiyomi.
"What do you think? Why are you suddenly agreeing with this plan?" the magician asked curiously, of all people Kiyomi was the fastest to point out the flaws in Yoruma because the Yamanaka couldn't stand those guys and how they just did whatever they wanted. The blonde winked slowly and turned her eyes away.
"She's our superior, she pulled our asses out of the fire. She wants the same we do, she wants for the mission to be completed. Sieging the bunker would require cooperation and trust and we have neither of those things. Surviving in this state of everyone for themselves just gives us better odds at both surviving and completing the mission" the blonde replied, despite her great annoyance by the situation it appeared like the Yamanaka truly believed in what she was talking about so Mana gave in.
"You know… I really liked you when we met, I looked up to you like this amazing great ninja I wanted to be more like. I still do. You're like my idol, like a big sister for me to look up to and shape myself to be more like. If you trust Hisako's plan, I'll go with it too…" Mana replied, trying to appeal to Kiyomi's own sense of what's right. If the Yamanaka just wanted to repay some sort of debt to Hisako for saving both of their lives this wasn't the right way to do it, it was the Yoruma who was repaying the debt for trying to kill the two when they first met.
"Look, I get it, idol-bitch, you don't want to get stabbed a bunch of times in your sleep, that's not what I fancy too much either. We will keep the night watch, cheerleader-bitch agreed with that." Hisako looked at Mana with those eyes that one's best friend gives you when he tries to tell you that peeing into the city hall fountain is a really good idea.
Mana looked at Kiyomi, "The only thing I see here that's wrong is you lashing out on me for calling you "Senpai" when you completely ignore being called "cheerleader-bitch"…" the magician gave in and sat down, the Quack handed her some fish and told her to drink some hot tea with some strange herbs he put in. He observed carefully while Mana drank it but only when it was halfway down her throat did the girl realize she may not have wanted to drink it, she looked curiously at the young man who smiled at her.
"Don't worry, it's just drugs…" he said through the world's most genuine and heartfelt smile.
Mana spat the second gulp out and almost spilt all of the tea out. The Quack jumped up to her trying to calm her down.
"Don't worry, it's fine, they will accelerate your natural ninja metabolism. Most people regenerate injuries naturally, ninja have incredibly potent out of field regeneration factors which are granted by them mastering their body through chakra manipulation. These drugs only enhance that… And… Might give you some side effects…"
Mana squinted angrily leaning closer to the Quack and clutching her fists. "Side effects?"
"Yeah, possible nausea, hallucinations and insomnia, it's really worth it" the Quack explained.
Hisako chuckled, "Don't worry, idol-bitch, he tried to drug me when we first met too…" she added.
"Umm… It may have been better to ask you this before you drank but did you by any chance ingest any alcohol today or have a history of heart sickness? Cause in that case you'll most likely die…" the Quack then winced with an innocent and begging forgiveness smile.
Late evening finally turned to night. The drugs that the Quack gave Mana with her tea actually helped her feel a little better about her pain, even if it wasn't intentional for her to consume them. Either way, it also gave her a massive case of insomnia. That was why to the magician those three hours just laying by the tree waiting for her turn to watch, when it was time to take over from the Quack were as gruesome as torture. Every time she looked angrily at the medical ninja who was watching and listening to the surroundings waiting to wake them up if something suspicious came up gave her an innocent smile back.
Finally it was her turn, Mana stood up and crept up to the Quack putting her arm on his shoulder softly and waking him up, he had been sleeping like a baby for the last forty minutes but since the magician was awake anyways she didn't bother saying anything. All of this goofiness that surrounded this Quack was almost a bit cute, he may have won a lovely smile out of Mana had he not successfully drugged her with insomnia drugs.
The girl sat down on the wet and cold feeling stump and sighed. This didn't feel very comfortable so she ran up the tree and settled down there. It'd give her more perspective to see a wider area, she could see both the lower and the higher levels from where she was anyways. Mana really believed that those kidnappers would come for them, she was almost certain about it even if before she theorized that they wouldn't. Maybe it was just a hunch, an instinct similar to that of Hisako's. Regardless of her personal fears, multiple attempts to relocate to get a better vantage point she heard or saw nothing suspicious.
Her watch must've ended because Kiyomi woke up and knocked on the bark of the tree where Mana was. The girl slowly and carefully climbed down.
"What the hell, Mana? I thought you were supposed to wake me up when my turn comes…" Kiyomi whispered rather angrily, still rubbing her sleepy eyes with her knuckles. Mana yawned, while she felt tired and kept yawning until her eyes started tearing up, she still couldn't catch a Z even if she tried.
"Sorry, those drugs just made me a bit sleepless so I figured that I'd just watch it until the end…" Mana replied, Kiyomi smiled.
"You're lucky, I actually got nauseous yesterday cause of that same shit… I'd really pound that Quack hard if he hadn't healed us from the point of dying." the blonde replied, she then settled down on the same log that the Quack was watching from earlier.
"Come on, I'll keep you company, I mean… May as well since I'm awake, right?" the Yamanaka smiled. Mana sat on her knees placing her back to a rock. She dug into the cloak that the Quack gave her as cold started sticking needles into her body since she stopped frantically moving around looking for better vantage points.
"So… That thing you told me earlier, about you looking up to me, treating me as your superior and all that…" Kiyomi suddenly brought up a topic after a couple of moments of silence.
"Yeah, I meant it." Mana confirmed it nodding at the blonde with a smile "To me this mission feels really strange, I was put on a team of two extremities, two older young women who are both strong and amazing women. Even Hisako-san has a certain amount of qualities she could teach me. She's probably more valuable to the village than I'll ever be because of her classic virtues. Then there's you – a slightly older, beautiful and strong and badass young woman who knows who she is, what she's doing and how she'll get to her goal. Yet doing it while following her own rules, your own personal ethics together with the code of a ninja…"
Kiyomi smiled and closed her eyes, for a moment the magician wondered if the blonde actually snoozed off but then she turned and looked Mana right in the eyes. "You're a silly girl, Mana, you don't need to shape yourself after us, you don't need to look up to me and sure as hell not to Hisako. You have your own life, your own nindo, sure you feel confused about everything, sure you think you're a lesser person because you see amazing people around you every day and you feel like you don't add up to them. You were taught by Tanshu himself and you feel like you will never rise up to his legacy, like you'll never fulfill his expectations. Truth is that you don't have to become a Sannin like he was, you don't have to become Hokage or whatever…"
"God no" Mana laughed out sticking her tongue out in comic disgust, "I'd never agree to being Hokage, it's just a symbolic post, you do paper work, you compromise with the Council that cares more about efficiency and money than people's lives. A Hokage needs to sacrifice people daily, send ninja away on missions they may not return from. I couldn't do that, I'd want to do everything myself but I couldn't leave the village because the Hokage is needed there at all times to manage trivial administrational matters. The big chair just isn't for me…"
"Don't spit at it…" Kiyomi smiled back "Your goal is becoming a hero, in other words, a symbol to people. A person who values all life, a person who treasures life and treats all life as being magical and by example encourages the world to change as well. A Hokage is in the best position to be that sort of a person, people automatically look up to Hokage and it's not because of the big hat they get to wear, it's because it takes great charisma and strength to gather enough people and trust to become one."
Mana closed her eyes and sat there silent, she understood where her friend was coming from but it still didn't change her stance on the seat of Hokage. She'd support any righteous and heroic Hokage with all her strength and heed their every order that didn't force her to be something she's not.
"My point is, you don't need to look up to us, don't chase me or Hisako or anyone else's image. Don't be like I was when I looked up to brother, to Hanasaku and failed. I failed to become a strong ninja like brother because he was always the wall of what I could achieve, that was why I couldn't help him at all. Same with Hanasaku, I tried to become more like her except the incompetent part and I still failed, Hanasaku made the team disband and I was an even lesser woman than she was because she was my goal. The person you are destined to be is without walls, limitless and knows no boundaries. If you make your ideal self the only wall to strive to rise up to, you'll have no walls or barriers, you'll transcend all others. Don't try to be your version of us, try to be Nakotsumi Mana through and through." Kiyomi finished her thought from before.
Mana lowered her head, "I guess… If I tried to be you I'd fail anyways, you have all those cool Yamanaka abilities I'd never manage to keep up with while I'm just… Me. You can be everything I can ever be and more…" she replied.
Kiyomi punched Mana in the elbow painfully.
"That's completely not what I meant. It doesn't matter if I'm an heir of a clan or whatever, it doesn't matter if you have a clan or not. I knew an Uchiha shithead who was an inch of a person that you are and that arrogance got him nowhere. He lost an eye and he then stopped being a ninja altogether donating his second Sharingan to his clan, having implanted normal set of eyes instead. For his arrogance he was punished with what he deemed the worst punishment ever, being ordinary, losing his Uchiha heritage."
Mana kicked a small pebble around, "Except he didn't" she added, "Your friend didn't lose what made him… Him. He just thought that he lost it with his eyes that's why he gave up on himself, he could've been just as skilled of a ninja with one eye or normal eyes if he just trained and worked hard and learned to deal with it…"
Kiyomi placed her hand on Mana's shoulder and smiled. "That's actually is what I meant, now you get it…"
The blonde smiled and stood up, stretching out. "Well, I think I'm off to sleep a little bit, I'll wake Hisako up, you may want to get up that tree again, I wouldn't want anywhere close that woman when she's woken up like this from her beauty sleep" Kiyomi said, making those last words sound especially mocking and comical. Mana giggled into her hand and observed the Yamanaka waking the Yoruma up, the swordswoman walked up to Mana and sat down to the same stone.
"The fuck are you still up for? Don't tell me, that fucker's drugs actually are keeping you awake!?" she thundered out loud waking the Quack up, annoyed the young man flipped on the other side and tried to go back to sleep. Mana didn't even answer that, probably because by then she had learned that Hisako didn't particularly care about that. The only person she cared about was herself.
"Hisako-san" Mana's gentle and softened voice reached the assassin's ears. The woman turned her head at the magician.
"Thanks for saving our lives. Kiyomi is an heiress of the Yamanaka clan, her life is really important…" Mana smiled at the woman.
"You fucktard, everyone's life is important. Your life, my life, her life, everyone's. That is why Yoruma kill, because when a person is dead nothing else matters, it's the ultimate "fuck you" to everyone. People can say how fucking amazing they are and how they defy death but truth is that they love life, that's because there's something everyone loves and that thing exists within life, ergo they love life by extension. Taking that life away is to the complete discretion of a ninja, it's an ultimate act of playing God and I'll be fucked if it's not fucking fun."
"I… I didn't realize you treasured life, Hisako-san…" Mana looked really surprised.
"Only an idiot doesn't and odds are if you're an idiot, you're dead or about to be, that's the world we live in. It doesn't matter if you're strong but it helps, doesn't matter if you've got a nice set of tits but it helps, the only thing that matters if you're fucking retarded or not… The only thing that ass-kissers get from life is a warm ass to crawl up in and live in while the "honorable" can all go get fucked. Killers live, victims die. If you don't love your fucking life you're a lot of things but a retarded fucknut is definitely one of them and if you searched the dictionary, retarded fucknut is another way of spelling victim."
"You curse a lot…" Mana smiled, it didn't really hurt her that much that her teammate did but it was just an observation, the girl really wanted to realize where this habit may have come from.
Hisako started wildly looking behind where she was sitting, trying to life the giant rock that she was sitting by, Mana looked really interested in what on Earth she could've been doing.
"What are you doing?" the magician asked.
"Looking for a fucking medal for this child fucking detective, with those fucking skills you should've become a Police Force officer, you'd look really tits in that tight uniform too, oh, you wear one anyways…" Hisako lashed out and then collapsed by the same rock. Mana broke a chuckle, it was clear that Hisako was trying to push the magician away and offend her but she wasn't doing a very good job. Or maybe it was just Mana who had gotten too attached to her newly met teammate to push her away because of something she said.
"Chuunin Exams… What were they like, Hisako-san?" Mana asked with the same smile that she greeted the woken up partner with.
"Eh, cut some kids to pieces, get a promotion for it… Simple as that…" Hisako replied.
"They let you kill people in there?" Mana was a bit surprised by that revelation.
"Fuck no, but you know, accidents happen, to some they happen every time in a row." Hisako smiled.
"I've never before met a person who was proud to have killed children" Mana looked at Hisako with a worry in her eyes. It wasn't a worry for her own safety or anything like that, she was worried for how twisted her friend was.
"Well I was a fucking kid back then, plus, when a kid picks up a weapon and comes at you, you don't give a fuck if it's kid or not, no, you give more fucks and kill them without hesitation because a kid doesn't give as many fucks as an adult does. An adult thinks about bullshit like "What if this fucker has a family, what if it'll hurt, what if this manner of death is inappropriate and wrong", a kid just fucking slits your throat because the good man down the street promised him a fucking ice cream stick for it, do everyone a favor, when you face off against a kid coming at you to kill you, kill the fucker."
Mana shook her head, "I would never kill anyone, no matter the age, no matter if they're good or not"
Hisako laughed out, "I'll come to your funeral, kid, that is if they deem your death important enough to give you one, sometimes they just dig the fuckers up randomly, outside the village walls. Only the strong and smart people earn a nice grave, that's even if your enemy won't cut your head off to show it off to their Kage…"
Mana looked at Hisako weird, "Wasn't that an ancient custom of Kirigakure, back from the Bloody Mist days?"
"Once a killer, always a killer, kid" Hisako replied. She then drew her sword nonchalantly and spun it to the side deflecting a spear flung her way from the forest. Mana jumped up and prepared for combat, with a loud whistling sound a wire attracted the spear back to the owner's hand cutting Hisako on its way back. The woman grunted, Mana already saw the bloodlust in her eyes… Hisako was already in her primal rage mode and she was beyond being reasoned with now…
"Everyone wake up!" Mana yelled out but she didn't even need to, her teammates got woken up from the first clang coming out from Hisako's sword deflecting the spear.
The ambush had begun!
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