Mana carefully navigated the poor district. To be entirely honest she had never even seen it being built here. This whole district of warehouses and storage places was supposed to be more of an industrial place, how in the world these people moved in here was beyond her. A man wandered down the alley, clearly drunk, Mana let him pass without showing herself to him, someone looking like her would've stood out in the district plus she couldn't risk being recognized. The kunoichi had to move fast if she was to make it to both lead the girl to safety and confront this Ooguchi guy.
Something worried Mana as she kept moving, slowly but silently and still unnoticed, the man she let pass kept stumbling forward and dived nose first into a bunch of trash cans - he was drunker than anyone could describe. The girl wanted to help him but she couldn't afford a distraction, it was quite likely that this soft and warm sleeping place was the safest place in the district for a while. What kept that small amount of fear rustling in her heart like a little tongue of flame was Ooguchi himself.
These people that gathered here were not a clan, they were not friends, they were a community, one with incredibly powerful bonds that no amount of torture could break. Mana had not yet seen the might of this Yoruma torture herself but if it was enough to make Shimo instantly dismiss torture as a viable option it must've been impressive. What kind of man gathers such amount of loyalty, even more so, does so doing crazy things like occupying a village district and doing crimes right under Hokage's nose, working with Kirigakure that had less of an approval rating in Konoha than Death God himself. He must've been a man of ideals, almost a cult-like leader, an icon to these people...
"Your mother wasn't from Konoha..." father's voice echoed in Mana's ear. She tried to resist the urge to sink in the memories of her father describing the wandering tribe that he met Mana's mother in, she had no time for that now. Either way, was her mother's tribe of people wandering from village to village similar to Ooguchi's crew? Mana didn't want to make any judgments before she met the man but what if they were the villains here by separating a community of poor people that have nowhere to go and no ideal to live up to, people that literally have nothing, people that were risking their lives and betraying their ideals just to make sure that their children are happy for one moment in their lives... That kind of person cannot possibly be bad. Inevitably Mana, Shimo, and Sugemi will not face off against bandits or animals trying to kill them but people, people with families that want their families to live in happiness...
Mana banged loud on the scrap door, a lady opened it - she wore rags and stank worse than Mana did when she was covered with centipede innards. "Excuse me, your husband sent me, he wanted to make sure you leave this district, it's going to go down today." the woman didn't look that sad or didn't even question Mana's words, she seemed to have a pack already ready to go, she gestured for the visitor magician to walk in and went to call her little girl. Mere moments later the little kid ran up to Mana with an actual piece of clothing which was a rarity - a raincoat and still held some sewn dolls. "Hey... You're..." Mana smiled and kneeled up to the kid so that she didn't have to look up all the time, "I'm Konoha's Sorceress and your daddy and I made a deal - you can see my show anytime you want and you won't have to pay anything, you can even bring your mom and dad if you want. Just please let's hurry..."
The kid looked ecstatic, this was probably the first time Mana saw someone love her shows that much, usually the public enjoyment was there but she never saw someone's eyes literally light up as if they were specks of stardust fallen to Earth. "Yay, I knew you're a nice person, Sorceress, when I find my third job I promise I'll buy my tickets like everyone else!" the kid shouted out. Mana's mouth opened to reply to that peculiar sentence and the horrible implications it had but she realized that she was literally wasting time here. "We'll talk later, please move to the gate, your husband is there waiting for you." Mana took some of her allowance money and handed it to the woman, "Rent a room in the village, sleep it over, we'll see how this goes. It'd be great if you went to the Administration and told them about this place and your situation in the morning."
Mana rushed out of the house with the woman following shortly and moving the opposite direction. This meeting made everything even more confusing, so people knew that their leader will eventually cause a downfall of this whole district they built here? Of course, they should've known, this whole idea of building a community inside a ninja village and living their own lives and expecting it all to be swell was stupid. Of course, the woman was smart and probably not even the only person here with a packed bag... This place started to make Mana sick, a place where even children had to work in several jobs and still didn't make enough money for basic survival needs. Just what kind of community this Ooguchi guy had here? Mana wasn't so sure she even wanted to resolve this peacefully anymore, she wanted that guy to say something, she was begging him to give her the option of fighting him and bringing him down. The genin quickly made way for the home where the man told her that Ooguchi was in.
*****
Shimo tried to hold back a little bit, he needed to compensate for the time that Mana would take to move the kid out of the district. It was likely that no danger would even come to her but if such was the will of the man and that was the deal that Mana made with him... It was important to Mana that everyone was safe, she was lucky to have Shimo as her teammate. Most ninja would find such desire for heroism and making sure that absolutely everyone from common villagers to even the enemies were alright absolutely annoying. Sugemi didn't care about anything but getting a manga made about him so... She'd be lucky to stay in the team with them forever, otherwise, she'd have more conflict on her hands than she deserves.
The boy moved in and stood back to the wall of the house he needed to enter. His was probably the most dangerous of the tasks - it was likely that the Kirigakure man was a ninja and a skilled one. Usually, only mercenaries, ninja or people employing mercs or ninja moved from one village to another. If that man was here it meant he knew how to defend himself or run away when things got hot. It was unfortunate that the Hokage had already left if this man was captured he'd be a good proof of Kirigakure's dark involvement in Konoha's criminal underworld. Then again, the only reason why this deal was taking place at all was that the Hokage and "Red Dog" Tanshu and "Vapor" Misu were no longer here. It might have been a good idea to set up a diversion in this situation, make those guys believe that things were worse than they actually were... Either way, he won't achieve anything in here. Shimo moved in to a side "window", silently tapping the surfaces and checking which layer was supposed to be removed and worked as a window space.
Shimo gently removed the large piece of cardboard and placed it on the floor inside, he leaped inside and rolled to stand up - he couldn't waste time being seen between the house and interior. As Shimo's head lifted off the ground his eye almost got a senbon lodged into it - a tall woman was standing with her hand pointed at him with four senbon between her fingers, Shimo almost rolled into her taunting stance. "What do you know... The anonymous tip was right, Konohagakure actually does know about the deal." the woman spoke with an arrogant tone using her other hand to stroke her shoulder length dark hair. Her eyes met with those of the boy, "You messed up, this is how little ninja die..." the woman said and thrust her arm forward...
*****
Sugemi kept running on forward to the place he was assigned to, why the hell did he listen to Shimo anyways? That idiot was in the way of his manga, what was his assignment anyways? To move the luggage with the money that Ooguchi was supposed to pay? That's repossession man's work, repossession men didn't get their own stories, no one wants to read about a repossession man. That asshole Shimo must want to interrupt the deal and get his own manga first, he just says that Hokage bullshit to others, just to move their attention away from the real goal. Even Mana got two jobs, how come she always got to do most of all in the missions? Just like in the Forest of Death when she got to do all of the actual work...
Then again, this wasn't a mission, money was important for the village, maybe he actually will get a pretty good word from the village to his manga publisher when he'll pitch the idea. After all, he will be the guy that recovers all of the money stolen from the people, he will be as much of a hero as it gets, he may even give everyone's money back to them personally! This was awesome! Shimo may have been trying to snag his dream but he'll end up snagging Mana's to fulfill his, that didn't really feel right, Mana was a pretty nice person, she didn't really deserve to get this shit pulled on her but it's all Shimo's fault anyway! Sugemi giggled to his own palm as he thought about it, the boy didn't bother to be too discrete - Sugemi thrust his punch to the scrap layer that served as a door.
"Ohhh, a little powerhouse... Isn't that cute?" Sugemi jumped backward to avoid a pillar of solid rock shooting out of the ground, the amount of force behind that thing shook the whole scrap house. A man with a rugged cape and a bandana and shades was inside with a cocky smile, what did this mean, no one was supposed to be inside! Did the guard play a trick with Mana? Did he lie about the actual locations? Mana was such a stupid idiot! She and her stupid belief that everyone was her friend, it'll get her killed one day and even worse - it'll get HIM killed once, maybe it's even in the process of getting him killed right goddamn now!
"Splitting your efforts to accomplish most assignments possible, or at least taking the money was a smart idea, we were fortunate to receive the anonymous tip..." the man spoke and made a handseal that made the rock structure disappear. Slowly, one step after another the man walked outside. "Oh no, you won't!" Sugemi shouted leaping forward with a handseal charging up chakra and wrapping his Shadow Tendrils around his fist "Shadow Fist Technique!" Sugemi shouted leaping forward as fast as he could and punching the man right in the face. The force of his blow sent the man backward right through multiple layers of scrap - Sugemi had to keep it contained, the man had some sort of Earth Release style that was dangerous to use inside such a house, by keeping it contained Sugemi might stand more of a chance and keep it quieter.
The man's forehead cracked, then his entire body started to crack as if it was just a cocoon. The entire body crumbled revealing an identical copy inside. Sugemi's eyes were open wide - he had never seen anything like that, this was not someone of his level would use, his technique had the serious ability to break some bones, to soak all of it up was some pretty nice defensive armor. The layer of the man's armor that collapsed changed into the dirt, the man smiled, "Nice technique, as you can see I have some of my own..." His half-exposed grin made Sugemi sick, he wanted to keep punching this guy but he shouldn't overdo it, one Shadow Fist used to take a lot of his chakra and while he has refined his mastery over the technique somewhat it still was easily his most costly jutsu. It'd be nice to finish it soon and without having to use it again, maybe two or three times if need be...
*****
Mana opened the door, slowly she proceeded to walk inside, this house was by far the largest. Even if they didn't get their tip from the gate guard they'd have still been able to somehow figure out that the largest house made entirely of large ad posters stuck onto the usual junk materials was the most important place in here. It was strange to not be able to hear anything. One step after another Mana kept walking forward, gently peeking after the corner and doing her best to spot the danger before it spotted her. The rooms were pretty dark - there was little to no sunlight getting in there from the outside seeing how it was covered blind. One room, however, had light coming from there, Mana bet that would be where this Ooguchi guy was.
The girl tossed a smoke bomb into the room. She leaped at the first person that was closest to her having pinpointed his location almost instantly before using her tool. Using her kunai Mana smacked him in the back of his neck. She then acted through hearing and seeing mere shadows of the people inside the smoke alone, Mana lunged forward and rolled to avoid the blow of a man targeting her as his friends were still trying to understand what happened. The magician cut the man at the back of his leg and punched him with her palm. Mana knew perfectly how long her smoke bombs lasted, she used plenty of those on stage, usually to announce her arrival. By then it was clear that these men were no mercenaries and definitely no ninja, they were just poor people to whom guarding Ooguchi was just one of their numerous jobs. That made the magician even more sick of it all so she started weaving handseals near instantly after taking out the last guy.
Mana pointed forward with two of her fingers sending a long string of channeled beam of wind chakra, it worked similarly to a blade, it was just much less piercing and efficient so it had no way of killing her enemy. Violence was a perfectly acceptable last resort kind of mean of achieving her ends but killing was out of the question for Mana. The sharp gust dug deep into the man's knee and he fell on the ground yelling, Mana tried to kick him in the face to finish him but he caught her leg and lifted it sending her down. He tried to crawl onto her but the kunoichi kicked him in the face. This was the second time that day she didn't perform as well as she could've in taijutsu - she needed to brush it up a bit, maybe invent her own style or something.
Mana's head turned up, her rough head count when she moved out to use the smoke bomb suggested that there was supposed to be another man there but no one tried to take her out while she was down. The wandering eyes caught a quite grotesque sight to behold, a morbidly obese man sitting on a collection of large pillows. He had an extremely overweight body but his arms looked pretty muscular and quite able to do some damage, his legs, however, looked minuscule and definitely undersized for the man. His head was the worst, it was easily the largest part of his body with his chin being almost half the size of his entire torso. Someone like that had to be the most important guy in the room. Mana rolled onto her chest and stood up, fixing her hair. "I can't goddamn believe it, Sugemi was right, this does feel like a goddamn manga at this point..." she thought as her eyes met those of Ooguchi.
"We need to talk, about all of this." she calmly stated as the man flapped his lips and licked them with his tongue, his minuscule legs moved just slightly pushing his body forward as he fell down on all fours with his bulky hands keeping up the weight. "I'd have liked to see your show, you're that magician, right? That or you just dress like a magician which would be quite retarded... I just don't leave the district too much, people tend to point fingers and laugh at me all the time." the man spoke as he flicked his head to the side to get his dreadlocks off of his face. "You are insufferable, Ooguchi-san... You found those poor people and gave them hope gathered them together into a solid community, then you made them build you a home, not just a house but a whole village inside of a village and then you made them work for you, employing them into multiple "jobs", even children, using them like nothing else but a cheap workforce... I wanted to talk to you initially, see if we could find a compromise, maybe you could have still called off your men from their "jobs" and canceled this deal... I'm sorry, Ooguchi-san, there is nothing to talk about with a person like you. This district will go down, its people will be free and will join the other villagers in an actual community, they will not be fueled by the need to survive but need to live better than they already do. And most definitely, YOU will go down and into Correctional Facility" Mana said with her anger coming up inside of her, her heart slowly growing hotter and hotter before her entire body was tensed and ready to take this man down, him and his entire... Whatever this madness was.
Ooguchi's body shook as the man laughed, then all of a sudden his hands tensed up, the immense arms pushed the large corpus of the man off the ground lunging into Mana, Ooguchi's mouth opened revealing blunt teeth - what a peculiar method of attack... The girl tried to make handseals but it was too late - the man's teeth drove into her body causing grievous injuries, her head was barely even hanging on a small thread of muscle that the man's teeth did not tear apart, her body was almost cut in half from the lower jaw slamming into her gut... Or at least that was what Ooguchi saw as Mana's illusion connected first and she managed to roll under the man's colossal figure. Mana thrust her palms repeatedly, slapping Ooguchi again and again, driving her palms into his back, making her rage drive her strikes, punching again and again using her palms until she was too tired and stumbled back. "Is that it, magician girl? I didn't feel any of it, I'm a pretty thick man you see..." Ooguchi mumbled as he turned around with a despicable smile that would make the devil himself claw his eyes out. Mana's face twisted in disgust as she lifted two fingers into the air and made a handseal moving it up to her chest, "You WILL feel this though..." Mana spoke as the man noticed his back and shoulders being full of explosive tags.
"I don't think I can punch you out, I'm not the kind of girl that would kill either but this would not kill you, as you said, you're a thick man, you have a layer of both fat and muscle that my punches sized up quite well, this wouldn't kill you but your life would not be comfortable from that point on... Seeing how we're sort of stuck in a deadlock, Ooguchi-san, let's talk..." Mana explained her intentions calmly, Ooguchi would have never listened to her before, now that she had his utmost attention and controlled the situation he'd be more talkative and willing to reach a consensus.