Light seeped into Mana's eyes with moderation as the magician finally opened her eyes the other morning. As the girl carefully and slowly sat up, surprisingly feeling very little pain, more like a minor irritation in her gut that was burning so overwhelmingly the last night that it made the magician desire the most unfortunate outcome for however long it lasted. It was the most painful night in her memory, being passed out yet overwhelmed by pain, she could remember very little of her last night's agony.
It appeared that her comrades could remember very little as well. Shimo was doing his best not to fall asleep sitting on the edge of his bed staring at Meiko who was just carelessly humming a tune silently looking at the ceiling, Kouta on the other hand looked quite dead making Mana sit up and reach over him, after feeling the air move in and out under the boy's nose Mana was calmed that he was only tired and resting.
"Good... Whatever it is. How does it feel to be back to the realm of the living? Kouta said you were on the line a couple of times last night..." Meiko grinned as if she was telling a joke. Mana was not particularly mad for the girl's lack of understanding of the severity of that situation, in this world, lethal injuries could've been taken away with a careless wave of a hand, depending on the waver's skill, obviously. Kouta was not quite yet tangling with the best of the hand wavers so he may have taken the whole night to heal the magician, still, he did heal her for which she owed the boy her life.
"It's becoming a tradition, sadly, as well as losing someone or something after I wake up making me wonder if waking up is even worth it in the process" Mana grunted out rubbing her eyes. Strangely enough, she was feeling really tired and sleepy despite being treated while only being somewhat conscious. It wasn't like she could've been blamed, the pain inside of her and the fever which was raging whole night made sleeping impossible so she got as little actual rest as her team.
"Maybe if you let us know of your condition this wouldn't have happened..." Shimo carelessly threw an offensive remark at Mana, at least he meant for it to be taken like that which was implied by his manner of speech.
Mana's eyes sunk down to the ground, there it was again, waking up back to life giving her something to regret waking up for, last time it was loss of her identity, half of her whole life was torn out from her with an iron grip leaving a giant bleeding gash of emotion and regret inside. Now it very well may have been the loss of her friend. Another one, anyways...
"I'm... Sorry..." Mana mumbled out, she wanted to yell out her reasons for why she didn't tell them anything but now that they knew... She still couldn't. Even when she knew that they knew everything it was still too painful to talk about that for her.
"Sorry? Kouta said it was like a miniature explosive tag detonated inside your gut, you had the contents of your stomach spilling inside of you infecting you and raising your body temperature to the point where it threatened to fry your brain in your own boiling blood. I think recklessness like this sort of surpasses what a "sorry" can fix" Shimo looked proper pissed off and he had all the reasons to be like that. He was angry at Mana and he had pretty much no sleep at all.
"Meiko is probably quite angry at you too, I had to knock her out because she almost leaped to your aid out there. All because you didn't tell us everything there was to know about the person we were supposed to bodyguard..." Shimo looked at Meiko encouraging her to yell her feelings out.
"I'm actually pretty mad but... I'm not that good with words so I don't think I can express myself properly. What makes me even angrier is that I can't punch you either without killing you now... Expect some jabs once you're back to shape!" Meiko replied almost like she was happy and excited. This young lady was so kind and warm inside that she didn't even understand what it felt to be angry. She didn't know that feeling before she met Mana... That was one of the notes for the "FML" notebook in Mana's drawer of her own psyche.
"I know I let all of you down, I'll understand if you choose to head home right now. You've got no more reasons to trust me anymore and, without trust in the person you must protect, there's no way you can travel to the other end of the planet for a box that may not even be there at all." Mana uttered letting all of her inner anger and sadness to take over.
"It's not even all that you need to know, there's another thing I lied about..." Mana opened her mouth feeling Meiko's hand on the collar of her shirt lifting her up.
"The main reason for me planning this mission was because I saw the love and excitement that Meiko had for legendary objects, I wanted to pay her back by letting her leave on an adventure and by letting her actually hold an item of legends in her own hands but... After this adventure I planned to use the Box of Ultimate Bliss to restore my chakra manipulation, this mission was doomed to fail from the start." Mana spilled the truth. She closed her eyes fully prepared to have her head blown off by Meiko's fist of fury.
Instead she felt the armoured kunoichi's arms wrapping around her. Shimo smiled looking down, it wasn't a cruel smile but one that a friend has when they realized that a friend of theirs pulled a friendly prank on them.
"You should've told us!" Meiko shouted out to the point where the rotten wood of the walls of the inn started to shake. "You should've told us, you dummybutt! None of us give a crap about that box anyway, you're our friend, Mana, just knowing that you need something is enough for us to follow you to the edge of the Earth."
"I couldn't tell you guys because... It hurts too much. I thought I got over it in those couple of months. When I was just working on my magic shows and just living my life like a normal person who couldn't spit fire and create illusions with just a look... When we left I suddenly realized that I didn't get over it, that I just hid it so deep inside that it grew like a tumor and that now it had grown hooks and spikes and trying to pull it out just hurts too much."
Shimo's eyes slipped down as he examined a little bug running the whole distance from one end of the room to the other before almost bursting into laughter. "It's because of things like this that I chose to become the Hokage instead of trying to grant women around me happiness. Still, I must say I kind of feel you, if someone ripped a part of me out and expected me to deal with it like it was nothing... I'd be as crazy as you too. I'm with you till the end, just promise you won't pick a fight like that again until you get your thing back".
Mana's sad eyes closed and her head slowly nodded. She was too hurt and too tired to even promise something like that out loud. Meiko let go of Mana and slipped out of her armor tossing it aside and sitting by it to check up on it. "So it's set then, we'll find that stupid box, no matter if it's not where Mana thinks it is, we'll keep on looking until we find it and we'll restore Mana's chakra! That's just the kind of adventure I looked forward to taking part in one day!" she yelled out with excitement.
Kouta's head lazily rose off the pillow looking at his teammates talking. "What's going on?" he asked.
"Nothing much, we're just forgiving Mana for not telling us she lost her chakra control and that we're following her to the ends of the Earth to find that blasted box," Shimo informed the sleepy medical ninja who flipped on another side and closed his eyes to sleep again.
"Definitely!" he shouted out before his breathing once again became peaceful and calm. Letting his friends know that he went back to his peaceful rest.
"Well then, seeing how you can't do what you normally do, we need to teach you how to fight properly..." Meiko decided after tightening a loosened belt that could have resulted in her armor just falling apart in the heat of battle. Her design must've still been a bit clunky but it was still beyond impressive for her age. Even old and experienced blacksmiths couldn't design a perfect suit of armor and while Meiko's was far from perfect it was quite impressive nonetheless.
"I know how to fight, I passed the taijutsu class in Academy...Barely" Mana tried to object but she knew deep inside that Meiko was right. The magician just didn't want to feel any more of a burden. She didn't want to keep her team back, she didn't want her team to get in trouble because of her or take too long barricaded in an inn instead of moving towards their objective.
"Just punching or blocking won't be enough. Your perception is crushed by the loss of your manipulation. Your agility was nothing to write home about even when you had it. If your Academy grades are to be believed... You need to learn a temporary style of your own. Your punches and kicks will only break your own arms and legs now, you lack brute force and speed, also the skill. It's nothing to fret over, knowing what you are hopeless at lets you focus on another department – redirection".
Shimo looked at Meiko impressed, "You know, you kind of sound pretty genius when you're talking about fighting... I'm kind of impressed and starting to get a little bit scared".
"You should see her talking about weapons and blacksmithing..." Mana smiled politely making Meiko blush and get angry. Mana knew that anger, that playful rage one felt when they've been scolded and brought down their whole life and then getting complimented on something.
"I'm smart you idiots! I just choose to be smart at very specific things! We'll start teaching you to redirect blows and focusing on using your opponent's overwhelming strength against them once I'm done maintaining my armor. It's not a tough style to pick up, I've seen some civilians being trained in it and quite a number of mercs who commonly fight ninja everyday use it. If some bonehead mercenary can learn it, you'll pick up on it quickly".
"We don't have much time, we don't have that much money left, less than a couple of weeks actually. If we spend it all here we'll have to sleep in the woods and the desert once we reach our objective. Mastering a fighting style will take many months..." Shimo hissed out annoyed. He must've known a thing or two about mastering fighting styles. Mana also didn't feel as skilled at physical combat as Meiko or Shimo so she would probably take whole years to learn something like that...
"That's why I'll only give Mana the basics, she'll train up on them on the road. We will take a week or two but it'll be worth it. Even if we find no box and have to move to another location Mana will be able to protect herself from at least the most basic or just underestimating and cocky threats..." Meiko explained.
Mana sat down and stretched out on her bed. She felt so tired and powerless without her chakra manipulation, would she actually be able to pull something like that off?
"Alright, I'll do my best, Meiko-sensei..." she said playfully.
"Keep pushing it, young lady, see what happens!" Meiko growled at her angrily still trying to patch up a small hole in her leather vest.
*****
Meanwhile, farther to the west, an outpost of ninja was at the peak of its awareness. Chuunin were trying to pick up the smallest hints of the infamous kidnapper of people who were active some time ago. There were just so few clues to work with! All the victims were completely random, some of them were just civilians, some of them were actually ninja of varied ranks, some of them were men, some of them were women, there were both adults and children in their midst.
It was only ironic that what troubled these ninja the most would not be what attacked their little outpost. Finally after six hours of watch duty the shift of the outpost watch shifted, the tired guards went inside and new guards took their place, the eight guards quickly split with two dashing off to protect each entrance and watching each possible side, each of them had a small road to observe as well to protect the caravans and civilians and all the moving ninja from the unidentified mysterious kidnapper.
They didn't want another little Honda incident on their hands... The civilians were already badmouthing the Hokage and the ninja enough as it was, they felt like for people able to move faster than an eye could track or striking with the power to blow up a mountain the ninja weren't doing enough to ensure their safety...
"Did you read that last report? About those brats looking for the Box of Ultimate Bliss?" one guard tried to start a conversation.
"Yeah, they always give those dumb "find something everyone knows doesn't exist" missions to kids, they never find anything though. Imagine if you found it, what would you do with it?" the other replied.
"I dunno, maybe ask for a promotion? I'm sick of playing watch duty, I went out on years of dishwashing missions for this? This is stupid"!
"Seriously, you wouldn't want your ex-wife to come back?" The second one tried to bite his friend a little.
"Dude, like if I had an ultimate wish fulfillment device, I would ask for a million things but my ex-wife... I could marry Lady Hokage herself with something like that!" The first one laughed out.
As the second one laughed together with his friend he saw his friend's head and half of what's below burst in a combination of blood and guts all over his face. The eyes of the poor guard opened wide as shock and fear took over, behind what used to be his friend's head stood a tall red-haired man with a mercenary vest and a headband of a nameless village.
A painful pinch took the shocked guard out, he was alive but felt overwhelming pain in the nerves of his spine. As he fell lifeless on the floor he saw his assailant – a strangely formally dressed Hyuuga woman, she must've pinched one of his chakra points and paralyzed him. The guard was sure that if he wasn't paralyzed and unable to feel anything he'd feel himself pissing in his own pants. That man... He was a Konohagakure jounin, one of the best... A Konoha jounin blew half of his friend up with just a punch!
"Hmmm, unrefined and brutal as usual, Kusagoro..." the Hyuuga woman whispered.
The punch of the red-haired Konohagakure jounin aiming for his crippled back was the final thing that the guard saw. Since he was completely paralyzed, he felt nothing at all.
"Hmph, I pulled my punch... I wanted to interrogate the guy but he blew up like a water balloon..." Kusagoro quietly cursed.
"That tends to happen when you hit someone with that much force, you need to learn control, what if you killed that girl your boy liked back then?" The Hyuuga woman scolded him again. Right then her eyes fell onto the blood all over the walls of the outpost entrance. She dashed right up to the wall, stroking the blood and reaching up to lick the leftovers before making a disgusted expression and shaking the blood off of her white tainted gloves.
"Let's move! Let's meet in the main room, where they keep all the files, I need to read up on what this girl was doing. She was too secretive for it to be nothing interesting and I need a worthy adventure to entertain me before I return to active duty." Kusagoro barked out his orders and his team disappeared right after the last word was said, each one found an alternative point of entry, infiltrating the facility silently and easily.
It was never built to withstand a high-level siege or to fend off a skilled infiltration effort, it was just a pile of bricks put up for the show so that the people saw the Hokage making an effort to stop that strange kidnapping maniac who was working locally.
*****
A young woman was working the cameras in the main room, she was alarmed by the loss of feed from one of the observation points right before the shift changed. She was trying to contact someone, but she heard sounds of combat, shouts, and screams, to send a pigeon she'd have needed to leave the room. She'd expose herself to the attackers and leave all these files that were most likely the target unprotected – it was her duty to see to it that they didn't fall into the wrong hands. But who on Earth would attack them? Who of such a skill level would be interested in encrypted mission objective files? They'd need to know the Konoha code of encryption and their reward for this difficult puzzle would be a bunch of gardening and local bandit band bullying missions.
The woman removed a kunai and pulled her short blade, given to her after graduating in the last Chuunin Exams, and trembled as she saw the sealed door getting blown out with a shoulder ram. A loud explosion echoed as the seals on the door were activated, the kunoichi guarding the files managed to hide behind the panels and monitors. As she peeked her head out she noticed an armored man, completely unharmed by the combined force of at least fifteen explosive kunai devices, who reminded more of a mechanical monster than he did a man.
He wore a strange combination of armor plates that looked rusted and ancient, he had no visible head as one of the plates simply wrapped around where his head was supposed to be making it look like the armour had no head, instead a powerful red glowing orb suggested where the man's face was receiving sensory input from. He barely even fit through the door, the woman leaped out and charged at the man as he de-armored to enter the room. As the heavy plates hit the floor they let out loud thuds that would've intimidated most opponents.
She was fast, landing an easy tag on the man's chest and cutting right into one of his muscles through his mercenary vest with her tanto blade, she tried a secondary swipe with her kunai but it was caught by the man and using her own momentum he redirected it right to her own shoulder before tossing the woman aside and clenching her weapon tagged with her own blood. The man licked the blood off of the kunai, the kunoichi growled and shouted in anger, pain, and frustration. She moved her shoulder length dark hair with a single pink strand out of her way, they were obstructing her vision and with all of her might, she tossed the tanto straight into the man's heart.
*****
Fifteen minutes later, the rest of Kusagoro's squad gathered themselves into the room. The gruesome sight that greeted their eyes was their comrade stuck to the wall by a short blade stuck in his chest and at least forty six more kunai all over his body. On the other side of the room a slender young chuunin laid dead with forty-seven bleeding injuries all over her body, all of them inflicted without damaging her chuunin vest, her white shirt which she wore under the chuunin vest was all soaked in blood.
"Goddang it, Mardith, I told you we've got no time for your stupid rituals in infiltration missions!" Kusagoro growled and let his friend drink something from his ninja pouch, the strange gooey purple liquid seemed to reanimate his recently deceased friend making him grunt almost pleasantly. As if he was enjoying the pain, as he pulled all the blades and daggers out of his body and fell down the wall.
"It's not like you needed it, we saw plenty heads busted by your armor all over the place, you did it just for the fun of it!" the man called Gokibure in Kusagoro's squad complained.
As Kusagoro carefully carried the gruesomely killed woman onto a bench and placed her there for a possibility of a proper burial which not all of the ninja stationed there would get he started running down the records of the recently received mission objectives. While he was doing it the Hyuuga woman crept up to the deceased body and picked it off the floor opening her mouth and reaching up to bite the woman's face off before shaking her head in disgust and dropping her.
"I never got your strange preferences, Remashi, I thought you told us you're a cannibal..." Gokibure spun his mustache playfully observing the mess they've caused by attacking this facility.
"Yeah, but I also feel really sorry for the people we kill, I was born with too powerful of a sense of empathy so I can never actually go through with it..." the woman whined almost bursting into tears.
Kusagoro smiled and slammed a large scroll back into the box, locking it and placing the same simple sealing technique. He turned around and fixed his damaged wristband that was still a little blazing from the fire technique he was almost caught unprepared by during the battle. Putting out the small tongue of flames the man laughed out loud and started slowly walking towards the exit from the facility.
"Our next target is... The ruins of an old palace in the Wind Country, the little lying brat is after something called B.U.B. her secrecy only makes me more excited!" the man couldn't contain his excitement. He was no monster, he'd have much rather not have killed all these people just to get his next destination but that was what he had to do. He was bored and now the village refused to give him more missions to fight to his heart content in, he needed something to do or he'd go insane and obtaining this B.U.B. was the next best thing!
"Don't you think they'll know we did this? I mean blowing people up with a punch is sort of your signature mess-up isn't it?" the large hulking man named Mardith complained, he just wanted an excuse to use his large hulking suit of armor to blow this whole place up leaving no trace it was ever here, to begin with.
"Shut up, Mardith! I told you I was pulling my punch! It's not as easy as it looks! There's no use staying here or doing anything with this place, didn't you hear? There's a security threat roaming around these parts, they'll just pin it on that maniac or whatever and they'll be done with it. No one will wink twice about a bunch of amateur ninja dying in a place with an unknown threat on the loose... Now let's move out, we don't know how much ahead this brat is and we need to catch up!"
The squad of four war veterans bonded by their common participation in countless battles, all of them recruited by Konoha for their ruthlessness and their reputation growing up like rogues and mercenaries, kept around just because of solidarity after the war was over. All four of this squad of warriors set out for the Wind Desert, without knowing yet that they are looking for the Box of Ultimate Bliss