Reading on history of the Great Settlement period was always quite the fascinating subject for Mana. After all, while reading the words "Great Settlement period" made it sound so ancient and integral to the entirety of the ninja village history, truth be told it happened less than four hundred years ago. Compared to the totality of the history it was a completely meaningless step that barely even lasted enough to be seen on a total scale of the cosmic totality. A miniscule space-dust in a vast universe that to the magician glowed deceitfully brightly because it was integral for her own existence.
Even if four hundred, give or take, years didn't sound like much on the historic scale, actually it was quite something in the hectic mess of recent history. The Hokage came and gone, from Fourth to Sixth, the reign of the Fifth breezing through in a record shortage of time. Most of the early heads of villages ruled for their entire lifetimes which were quite impressive. More impressive still having in mind their hectic periods during which they lived.
"Hey…" a shy voice alerted Mana that someone had entered the archive and wanted not to consult an old book but instead to talk to her. After the magician took a glance back she decided to close the book and divert all of her attention to Meiko who was tapping her foot impatiently. Normally the blacksmith would have annoyed the folks doing their research here with the annoying and repetitive foot tapping but she was lucky that it was sort of work hours and very few people fit the criteria of both being off work and giving enough shits to read ancient scrolls in the Konoha Archive.
"Oh, you're back already?" the magician exclaimed in surprise as she pointed a seat nearby to her friend. Frankly, it should've looked a bit confusing and offensive. After all the place was damn empty so if Meiko wanted to sit she needed no pointers as to where to settle down. Sometimes Mana did some technically understandable things that, given the social context were just too embarrassing to remember for no reason at all and this may have gone under the shelf of moments not unlike those very ones.
"We were just gone for a weekend. I mean tomorrow's the sign-ups for the exams… How have things been on your side?" the redhead asked. Mana had to get used to Meiko's moves no longer causing clangs of her armor clanking against other pieces as the girl was now wearing a much more casual tracksuit and not a single steel plate in sight. Meiko even looked a bit thin, if not somewhat tomboyish, without her armor, the magician was used to seeing this firm, stiff and masculine brutish shape whenever she looked at Meiko's armored frame which now simply was not there.
"Well… The Zairyo thing was kind of a bust. Picked up one new skill in particular but… Doing my own training most of the time, you?" Mana went on to be honest without going into too much detail. Maybe she should've – after all Meiko was a teammate and would've benefited from knowledge of the magician's ability to call on ninja animals as partners. Still, knowing Meiko, she'd have simply gone off rail and overly hyped over the animals and the ninja rabbits were so cute that Mana would've simply never shook Meiko off her tail, begging to summon more and more cute bunnies until Mana would've been dry. Mana knew her friend at least that well…
"Oh… Too bad." Meiko looked away extending her lips into an artificial duck beak with her eyes jumping all around the place. She smelled of ashes, oil and coals but also something sweeter, something very honey-like or waxy. If calls were to be made Mana would've guessed from Meiko's change of attire and still blackened cheeks as well as the collection of smells on her that she was working in the father's forge.
"How was training with Hokage-sensei? I bet you guys left me in the dust…" Mana tried lightening up the mood by commending her friend on her implied growth but she was very wary about treading those grounds. Normally, Meiko would've been training so close to Chuunin Exams, if she wasn't, and instead spent her time in the forge, it meant that either the work was of profound importance or that something really bad had happened out there.
"Can't vouch for that… I messed up a Transformation Jutsu again, it was a total bust. The only good thing to come out of that was that me and Kiyomi got to kick some nukenin ass of some wandering girl with an oversized sword and her creepy friend." Meiko mooed out almost humming the words as if she regretted sharing the experience but really had to do so. Mana sighed and extended her hand over Meiko's shoulder and rubbed it gently, trying to calm her friend down a bit.
"Did you take them in?" Mana smiled, choosing instead to direct the talk all the way to the nukenin fight because that way Meiko would simply not delve deeper into the darkness of her own belittlement as she often did when things didn't work out in the chakra control department.
"Nah, they didn't seem like doing harm. They were just looking for a fight or something, I don't think the zombie kid was even wishing for a fight but that swordsman girl was a savage…" Meiko sighed.
"That sounds like… Trouble, actually…" Mana sarcastically cheeked her friend's statement that the encounter was innocent when in fact it sounded anything but.
"I dunno, it just… Felt right letting them go. The blonde had the opening to kill us multiple times but something was wrong with her, she didn't strike me in the back or attack Kiyomi when she was lying down, she waited for us to face her or stand back up. She felt like… Not right in the head or something. Turning her in felt like putting down a sick animal." Much to Mana's frustration Meiko was beginning to sound less and less cheerful, luckily after she finished focusing on the moral implications of letting two rogue ninja walk free, something that couldn't have went very well with Kiyomi, implying she had little say in the matter, and focused on the fighting experience she was beginning to brighten up a bit.
"Oh, I can't believe I forgot…" Meiko then turned around and looked into her backpack, oddly she faked her hesitance to confront the magician with whatever lead Meiko into an over glorified library, of all places, and changed it into forgetfulness. "I made this for you." She smiled innocently before presenting the magician with a tool or a very blunt looking weapon.
It was an elbow-to-wrist long wand of very soft feeling, burgundy colored steel tip which shined from its sharpness and lead all the way to a narrowing which ended with an azure Audra steel orb on the top. It had a rabbit-like face decorated from a silver layered tougher material which made Mana suspicious. After examining the weapon she realized just what it was.
"You reworked it…" was all she said. Judging from Meiko's face the redhead understood and felt rather bad about it but still wanted Mana to have it. It was the sort of useless self-loathing Mana felt with the whole Kiyomi's wedding debacle, Meiko clearly understood that remolding Shimo's very soul into a wand could've been taken the absolute worst way but she didn't regret gifting it to Mana in that manner.
"I… I told you I was borrowing it, that I'd give it back once your hands were more suitable to wield it than mine. You're a magician, magicians should be using wands, not blacksmiths. I put a cute rabbit face on there out of the blade's hilt, it uhhh… Just seemed suited for a stage magician. It's completely chakra conductive also, it can take blows from conductive weaponry better than the original ever could, it won't break that way after a couple of blocks…" Meiko sat still, thinking over something in her mind, "Still… Don't… Go out of your way looking for ways to break it… It might just break if you toss it into a… Tailed Beast's condensed chakra blast or something…"
Mana's eyes teared up, she carefully placed the wand on the table by the books and hugged Meiko in gratitude.
"My father worked on that orb on top. It's what is known as "120%" alloy, Kirikuzu molecular tinkering and all, he condensed more of the blade into that one orb. It's really intensely pulsing with chakra every time you give it some, I dunno, maybe you'll use it for jutsu or something. I recon you telling me about something to catch the victim's attention when casting an illusion, maybe it can be used that way…" Meiko shrugged. Her smile betrayed that she was really glad that Mana didn't flip out over her melting Shimo's sword and making a whole new artifact from the materials.
"Awww… You were listening, really breaking my heart here." Mana smiled before examining the wand again.
The lights died out, only the natural reflection of the moon in the dark evening sky broke through the narrow windows of the archive. It was the archive keeper's fancy way of saying that the place was closing down for visitors. Looking at the moonlight made the magician a bit uneasy.
"Ummm… What time is it?" she wondered.
"I dunno, 'round eight, I guess…" Meiko shrugged.
The magician's face paled she quickly took the wand and sealed it inside her hat before flipping the thing on and picking up all the books in a rushing erratic manner.
"What's wrong?" Meiko wondered. "The signups are tomorrow at two-thirty…"
"No! I need to be at a show right now, this wand was so amazing that I got distracted!" the magician yelled out.
"Can I come?" Meiko followed the magician as she rushed to place the books in their right stands and then rushed out through the entrance door and to the keeper.
"I'd bully you into it if you didn't…" Mana laughed out, having someone with her now that Kouta was obsessed with training and Kiyomi looked like she had a couple of problems with the magician the last time for flunking them in the survival training felt really amazing. The loneliness and dealing with rejection by people around her these past couple of days made it really difficult to feel hopeful about the future and when the future inspired no hope there was a big problem which demanded quick changes.
Mana dreaded the next day to come, not because of what was supposed to happen during the day itself but for what it meant. The sign-ups for the Chuunin Exams was a rather formal procedure, their team was already signed up by the team's leader and approved by the village administration. Either way, even if the sign-ups were just a highly formal procedure it still meant that nothing would be the same anymore.
It wasn't that the Team Hokage wouldn't be children anymore, they were so far past that point that it was not even funny. It was that it meant that the village genin, if only for the duration of examination that could've lasted a whole month, if not longer, would be competitors. The only friends Mana would have were her team, her very own boyfriend was even her possible opponent in the exams. It was impossible to analyze and predict just what would happen during the Chuunin Exams, the tests were usually different each year with the patterns mixing or repeating every couple of years or so.
With a hesitant step, after a long and grueling morning of meditation training releasing all the pent up masses of built up chakra resources that were completely unused until a strong direct pulse released them into Mana's own chakra network, fooling her body that these were her natural chakra demands which greatly increased the produce of the resource in the future, effectively increasing her chakra level by a bit more, Mana treaded out into the village. Almost instantly the atmosphere outside was completely different.
The village streets were totally tidy, paper and neon signs were all over the place, hung up almost overnight with a good portion of them still being hung up. People unlike any Mana had ever seen before were walking around in ridiculously slow paces and pointing fingers at various structures, monuments and momentous places of the village. People of different colors, clothing, builds and facial features, people from all over the world and from far away. This felt so burning up bad inside. So many foreigners meant that this year's exam would be bigger than usual, more competition meant more chance to fail and higher up bar she needed to vault over.
Kiyomi and Meiko were sitting on a bench nearby Mana's place with ice cream in hands. Late autumn was a very curious time to eat ice-cream, Meiko usually ate anything that was in her path, no questions raised, so this had to be Kiyomi's idea.
"Mana!" Kiyomi shouted out jumping on her feet and quickly finishing up her ice cream before wiping her hands into a hanky she then tossed out. Even if the blonde had some pent up frustration over how the training with Hanasaku went, she definitely didn't show it now.
"Wow, big and varied crowd…" Mana uneasily replied after the greetings were out of the way, examining the influx of people wandering the streets.
"Yep! Have to be the biggest Chuunin Exams in fifty years! Judging from what I'm seeing even teams from Getsugakure have made it through the selection of teams!" Kiyomi shrieked out looking really pumped and excited about the event.
"Yeah, not really like you to get scared of crowds, Mana." The blacksmith curiously stated before finishing up her ice cream and then wiping the remains on her cheeks and lips into her sleeves, or with her hands to her trousers.
"No, I guess I'm a bit glad, really…" the magician shrugged. The three got together into an actual team and began their trek to the given out address of a small office building collecting the teams' own signatures. It was a very odd and highly formal procedure meant to affirm the members' own desire to participate in the Exams.
"Glad? You look like peeing your pants." Meiko pulled the magician through the cheek.
"I mean… The challenge is a bit daunting but… So many villages participating this year in Konoha's Chuunin Exams, that means that more villages than usual are considering themselves as Konoha's allies. The world is growing closer together and that's wonderful." Mana had to admit with a realization that calmed her down somewhat and made her a bit more willing to tackle the challenges ahead.
"Allies? Growing closer together?" a rude voice behind interrupted forcing the three to turn around and face the hooded figures. Their skins were of much darker shade than that of any locals, similar to that of Mana's yet nowhere near the complexion of a Kumogakure ninja. "Get real, a lot of villages simply can't put together their own Chuunin Exams and must rely on kissing Konoha's ass to rank their talents up. How much closer do you think Kirigakure is to the Great Villages, a village beaten into submission and denied this year's entry?"
The young man with a verily annoying voice which reminded the sound equivalent of a rusty sickle being rubbed against the brick wall if given voice removed his hood revealing a tattooed face with rich and thick locks of black as tar hair extending past his chest and back. His two teammates also removed their hoods, the female one with long and silky silver hair pulled her teammate back.
"Come on, Mr. Political Activist, let's not cash out checks we haven't even signed yet…" the young woman pulled the young man by his elbow further ahead.
"Doma has a point, though. All requests and applications were judged by Konoha Administration. What makes them good enough to tell the wheat from the chaff? Why did our team make the entrant cut but so many did not?" a much deeper and stronger voice of a man who still remained hooded spread across making Mana shake a little, something about the large individual just felt off.
"It's the fees, our village sent only the best teams because each additional team sent to be examined taxes the village more." The young woman started explaining it to her much more frustrated and trouble-looking friends as she quickly dragged the two far enough away for them to not pick a fight with anyone around.
"How is that okay with any…" Mana still held feint leftovers of the rebellious one's voice before they were too far for her perception to keep track off and the trio drowned in the surrounding cacophony of the crowd around them.
"Didn't see their headbands, I wonder what village these guys are from…" the magician finally shot the awkward silence its kneecaps off.
"A lot of poorer village ninja don't show off their headbands, it's not a thing to be proud of…" Kiyomi depressingly explained. "The meaning of the headband in general is as a badge of honor, they are worn and required by etiquette only during an honorable sparring match. Other times it's just a sign to identify someone by, a mean to draw labels."
The trio then resumed their trip to the sign up office. Oddly enough it was in a highly forgettable office building which was etched right in between two blocks of flats, a long queue was beginning to build up outside. Could've been more than a hundred people long and the waiting conditions inside couldn't have been overly comfy.
"Well, let's buckle up, here comes the toughest part of the exam – waiting in line." Kiyomi shrugged with a playful smile, it wasn't hard to tell that the Yamanaka felt fairly confident in her skills of passing the Exams and ranking up. Even with her immensely cautious nature Mana had to admit that Kiyomi was quite just in her expectations to rank highly amongst the examined teams. All three members of the Team Hokage had experience in spades surpassing that of most reasonable examined genin participants. They could've both held their own against Chuunin and sometimes even did. The magician only hoped that their overly confident nature, even if righteous one, did not turn out to be their downfall.
Chestnut Hanasaku had made it crystal clear that after the Exams the magician had nowhere else to go. For that reason Mana had to pass, no matter the cost. She's been through enough teams and had seen too many of them crumble, with a little luck Team Hokage could tumble the whole way through the treacherous pass before their wobbly bridge crumbles down…