The next morning came so peacefully and almost majestically, after all, there were no loud shouts, no smell of rotten food and sweaty men training overnight just to satisfy their inner desires to survive the next day. Mana's room was positioned, just like those of all champions of the Gauntlet, in a very comfortable position where Sun only barely let its rays gently stroke one's cheeks at only the later parts of the morning. Naturally, Sheikh probably had even more comfortable quarters but these were still much more sophisticated than any in which Mana has had the honor of sleeping in.
By the time Mana woke up, the fourth time that morning, everyone had already been up, eating or training or checking their kits and bags if everything was ready for the trip. It will appear so odd leaving this place... The reason why Mana had woken up multiple times that morning was due to inner pains, that so unfortunately always persisted the next morning after a fight, especially a big one, even more so when one had only their normal human metabolism. Mana tried to stay quiet about those pains, she didn't want to bother Kouta with what appeared to be a minor issue. The young man was already given more work than he signed up for, having to constantly drain his reserves almost completely dry.
"I'm surprised you're so quiet, Mana-chan," Kouta noted looking with a strangely happy expression on her pouty face still hiding under the covers, having just recently noticed that the magician was awake. "After all, after the beating you've taken yesterday the normal human metabolism should've torn you apart, I was plaguing myself with the idea of numbing your body today whole last night".
"I didn't take a beating..." Mana blushed, "That was the whole point of my training".
"Well, what damage you've avoided from your opponents you've dealt to yourself by overdoing it, as usual..." Shimo grunted still maintaining his sword and the hilt. The young Yuki appeared to have a new sheath, probably obtained it during the time that Mana got separated from everyone.
"Anyways, I don't really feel that bad, it's similar to a cramp everywhere at the same time but I can really take it, I've been beaten up worse," Mana replied finally jumping out from the bed in a nightgown she borrowed from Meiko and took her rags to head for the bathroom to change.
"We should get you some new clothes, maybe you should ask those ladies around the Sheikh for some spares?" Shimo tried to joke.
"Huh... I forgot you used to be a child womanizer at some point..." Mana smiled back at his friend. "It's fine, I saw the Sheikh's servants having prepared a full wardrobe for us, I'm sure we can buy some refills in our kits here as well, on my way being arrested I saw some small weapon shops," she added.
"We've already replenished our supplies, that's why we came to Agbarah originally. We didn't know about the whole "woman hate" thing but Meiko's fists soon made everyone reconsider trying to enslave us, we only asked around for you because we did everywhere we went..." Kouta explained showing a cartoonish drawing of Mana they've made on a small piece of paper that had multiple coffee stains on it.
"That's a really lousy drawing..." Mana laughed before disappearing into the small part of the room that was meant to be a bathroom section.
"Well, it's Meiko's, strangely enough, she was the best artist out of all of us, Shimo kept drawing stickmen with smiles and cartoon Sun on the corner that was also smiling, for a gloomy guy, the Sun in his pictures sure smiles a lot..." Kouta began to explain but Mana heard a loud pound to the head interrupt the medical ninja. The clothes that the Sheikh had provided for them were quite fancy and they'd definitely stand out in most places they stopped in so they may need to go shopping once they leave the Land of Wind.
"The hardest part was restraining Meiko from drawing you a mustache, she loves to do that..." Shimo added trying to justify the sudden stop of Kouta's recollection.
Finally, Mana rushed out with the colorful, white dress provided for her with a silly and very noblewoman-like plaid red tie on top. She didn't feel very comfortable in it but it definitely served better than her ruined shirt that was just a bunch of straps barely holding together and smelled of demonic dog piss and ear wax cream.
Unexpectedly a heart-stopping boom toppled the whole back part of Mana's room making Meiko's stiff training frame just fly in and slam against the wall where everyone currently was. Within incalculable fractions of a second, maybe just as fast as the flash of the explosion started Kouta leaped in and pulled Mana away from where he predicted the blast zone being, Shimo also prepared his blade for combat faster than the booming sound reached them but waited out for the small explosion to play out.
A shaking and dusty figure walked in, the man wore a denim jacket and ruined jeans with strange light brown stains on them, they had massive holes on them and his frame was still slowly singing with the residual flames from the explosion he just caused.
"What's up, little dudes?" The man chuckled stroking his messy beard that still had plenty of leftover food he had for breakfast, however, based on the smell that breakfast could've been had a whole month ago.
"The fuck!?" A loud yell reached in as a man ran in after the locked up and slowly singing explosive friend of his. "I thought I told you to stay still!" He shouted.
"Relax, man... Like... You're clearly not like... One with the nature, man..." the bandana-wearing bearded man who just blew up half of Mana's room smiled at his pursuer.
The man that chased after the strange looking explosive fool began to bow against Mana and apologizing, a little bit more and he would've begun to lick her shoes. The magician pulled her hand out from his grasp before he began to kiss it and still completely confused and embarrassed about the whole thing asked to know what was going on.
The man who was holding the bandana-wearing beardo began to mumble, he began telling some strange inconsistent series of events that suggested great shock and an inability to lie properly.
"Yo, little dudes, you guys are like... The guys that killed my friends, right?" The bearded bandana wearing terrorist calmly interrupted the unintelligible mumbling of his companion.
"You shut up! You're a prisoner of the Kazekage, just a Shaphac dog so stop causing an internal matter, you're gonna cause another civil war inside the Land of the Wind!" The man who kept a close eye on the explosive gentleman grunted.
"Oh, so you're the Shaphac guy? I'll assume the one that caused the giant explosion that separated us?" Shimo angrily asked beginning to put together the details.
"Shit... I am a ninja of Sunagakure, please leave this matter to us. This situation is already complicated enough as it is, please do not get Konoha involved too!" The man who was in charge of this beardo showed his concealed headband inside his bag.
A bunch of guards started to swarm around the room, Mana raised her hand stopping their assault as they were already brandishing their scimitars and spears to murder the hell out of their newly met Shaphac member.
"So you wish revenge for your fallen friends?" Meiko cracked her knuckles taking an offensive stance and preparing to go at it. Then her eyes wandered lower on a giant hole on the man's chest and all of a sudden her skin paled and her eyes shot wide open, Mana had never seen her friend so serious and so afraid all of a sudden.
"So... It's like that..." She uttered turning around and trying to dash before Kouta caught Meiko, it was clear that the medical ninja had to use all of his strength to keep the blacksmith where she stood, Meiko started throwing elbow strikes and punches his way
"You don't get it, look at the corner of his chest, it's a part of a seal mark, he's gonna blow himself up!" Meiko shouted out angrily but the bandana man just scratched the back of his head.
"Nah... That'd not be really cool... You're a pretty neat chick for recognizing that seal from just a small corner of it, heh, even I don't know how it works really..." The explosive man laughed out, he didn't appear in a very vengeful mood that day.
"It has the fourth circle of a sealing mark," Meiko grunted before pouting indifferently, trying to remain her composure, "I don't have to be a sealing master to recognize an S-Rank sealing technique".
"It is a seal of some sort, however from what I've gathered it is set off by this gentleman's death and the Kazekage very much wishes him alive and in his cell, so please, can we go, Lady Ascended?" The man begged Mana bowing to her respectfully, the guards finally tensed down and lowered their weapons, still adamant to stand there and see the situation to its resolution.
"Ummm... I guess..." Mana scratched the side of her head, still quite confused about what was going on, the only thing she could make sense of was that this man was apparently one of the Shaphac, a terrorist organization working inside Sunagakure that Shimo bumped into and that, apparently was responsible for splitting them.
"Wait up, little dudes, like... I just wanted to let you guys know, like... No hard feelings and all, right? I mean... I was at first kinda bumped last night and kinda wanted to blow this place up to Hell and all because I saw you guys were alive and all and I figured you'd have run into the Shaphac if you were so close, then this Suna dude got a message from his contact that I also heard that they were found dead and... Look, the point is... It's all cool, right?" The explosive Shaphac member tried to put his thoughts into words but it appeared that his mind was quite floaty and full of absolute hogwash most of the time.
"Ummm... Okay..." Mana encouraged him to go on.
"So like... I was like... "Whoa... Gotta blow these fuckers to hell", right? And then... Like... You gave that speech 'bout peace and shit, and man... Like... That's so damn tearful, man... I mean... Shit... If I ever spoke to those dolphins like one son of nature to another I'd like to communicate those damned words, right?" The explosives expert kept on rambling.
"Okay... Ummm... Very glad you liked it... Hope you continue to follow those peaceful ideals and change your ways," Mana tried to act like she knew what the man was talking about but she could barely tie all the knots together.
"You two should really go, stop pushing the Sheikh's patience." One of the Sheikh's guards angrily grunted out and so the Sunagakure ninja angrily yanked on one of the chains holding the Shaphac tied up and dragged him out of the half-blown room.
"Buh-bye, little dudes, hope to see ya some other time!" the strange bandana-wearing man waved with his tied hands and laughed out as he was being dragged away.
"Okay, so in this goddamn place we've confirmed that the Box of Ultimate Bliss, a magical wish fulfilment artifact exists, we've faced off against people able to blow up the world and saw ancient insects that probably hunted during the days of the First People, we've seen a bunch of political bullshit and saw Mana, a normal human, run around sixty thousand times faster than she should have been running without breaking a sweat but... That was by far the weirdest part of our visit in this Country." Kouta noted still standing in the middle of the rubble completely confused.
Meanwhile, Meiko was busy wiping the sweat off her face. That seal on the man's chest, whatever it was, must've been really scary to scare someone as careless and easygoing like that...
*****
It wouldn't have taken too long for the team to leave Wind Country, it was just a couple of days away from the border from where the team was currently. That being said the team still decided to have a couple of stops on the way. Mana expected some more obstacles in their way, maybe some more raiders or maybe Fennec finally growing a pair and attacking them directly and not raiding defenseless settlements.
Nothing of the sort happened. It was a peaceful trip to the closest pleasure town where the four could shop for some less snobby clothes and buy some spares for when theirs would inevitably get ruined again. They also bought some food, quite a lot in fact since the local merchants accepted some of their Audra steel chunks.
"So what are we gonna do about this massive bag of Audra steel? In an attractive ore shard form, no less..." Mana wondered feeling really bad about making suggestions since the last one was the equivalent of making a deal with the devil that seemed to have been resolved well but then blew up in their faces by escalating a desert maniac into a settlement raiding frenzy. At least now Fennec would finally get a serious look into by the Sunagakure's finest...
"For some reason, the shipment got stuck, the only reason why that would've happened would've been if the shipment got intercepted in Agbarah, in which case it most definitely wouldn't have been done by ordinary martial artists, or the transfer system was ruined and sabotaged which is quite likely. Either way, something doesn't feel right here, it is best we keep the bag close and carry it home by ourselves." Shimo scratched his chin.
"Are you assuming that the Kazekage is dirty and playing tricks on us just to get his hands on something like Audra shards? I don't think he'd risk Konoha relations on something that can be beaten by ordinary chakra imbued metals," Kouta objected.
"It is a bit of a stretchy accusation to make, especially when it has a more politically attractive alternative, still, Sheikh didn't strike me as the type to need or know of Audra shards. I'd say the Kazekage's involvement is looking much more likely." Mana also joined in on the conspiracy theories as the four were leaving the small pleasure town they were in with their bags full of clothes and supplies.
"Alright! So our next steps are clear – march into Sunagakure and kick the shit out of the Kazekage!" Meiko declared energetically to which everyone laughed out loud.
"I don't think so, Meiko... I don't think so." Mana cut her friend's dreams down.
"Yeah, it was a good joke though..." Shimo cracked a grin as the group walked off into the distance.
Soon the sandy surfaces were becoming rarer and rarer, the rocky and clay houses, as well as those of sandstone, were soon replaced by small wooden settlements. Mana's heart spurted in happiness whenever the group walked into a settlement and it hadn't heard of Fennec's angry caprices or if they appeared to have an ample defensive force ready to fight back the raiders. Some border towns even had ninja stationed there and ready to defend the settlements in case of attacks. Having in mind how close to the borders these towns were, the Kazekage must've been really viewing Fennec's threat seriously as usually leaders only sent small squads to the closer settlements to defend the places closest to the heart of their ruled territory for those mattered the most.
Finally, only a week later the first familiar and long waited for grassy crunch met Mana's sandal making her little heart shriek in joy. The sandy grounds of Wind Country desert were no more, no more raider camps, no more snakes hiding in the sand, no more creepy crawlies that hunted and creeped the magician out at night. The place they were in was a large country-like territory that was actually just a gigantic ninja village – Takigakure, also known as the Waterfall Village.
While the current scenery was that of desolate grasslands, soon the place would become a little swampy as some humidity would get introduced to the occasion, then the place would proceed to change again and again until it finally becomes the beautiful land of waterfalls that Takigakure is known for.
Based on what Mana learned in the Ninja Academy geography lessons – Takigakure was a large complex of watery lands with small patches of grasslands and colossal towering trees, the land was also very dangerous for anyone using boats to swim around as it was full of waterfalls that weren't deep enough to kill most crews but they would've definitely been too complex to navigate and would have lead to loss of one's ship all the time. The places were ship and boat traveling in Takigakure was even allowed was very limited.
Takigakure also had a very impressive defense system. Each of those large trees was full of complicated systems of tunnels and rooms and buildings, this huge waterfall forest was actually full of trees each of which could've hosted a competent defensive ninja force. Each of these towering trees was also a building for various purposes all by itself. Takigakure was mostly a very neutral territory, it rarely involved itself in conflicts and when it did nobody held any grudges because invading such a territory would've been tough.
The clampy and occasionally deep and falling waters that covered the ground, the towering trees that could hide anything one wanted it to hide, large enough to host an entire army inside it. Takigakure was mostly left to its own matters, the only reason it hasn't risen to the top of the ninja elite was because its ninja were actually quite average with very few making a name for themselves.
Mana hoped that the trip through Takigakure would be peaceful and without incidents, yet knowing their luck and how peacefully they left Wind Country once they left Agbarah to expect no trouble would've been optimistic and possibly even foolish...