Chakra sensory was a rare and an incredibly valuable ability. When Mana sat down in a meditative position and relaxed her mind, reaching out for it, she felt excited about improving her control over it. It was something unlike any other skill, one could not just been train it until they had it, it had to be born with and even those with the ability within them possessed it to various degrees. Some sensors could have sensed kilometers around themselves, identified specific chakra signatures to people they have met in their lives, other peaked at rather unimpressive ranges, being barely able to sense chakra inside one room at their peak concentration.
There was never anything particularly special about Mana, even areas where she excelled such as genjutsu and prowess of martial arts focused on evasion and counterattacking solely anyone else could just train harder and match, or even walk further than the magician. Chakra sensory was different, it was something that could've made her special, valuable to any team that had her. It was new feeling, feeling of self-worth and belonging. It was an exciting feeling.
Every morning of the week Mana spent just sitting down and accessing the chakra sensory ability until it came up easier and easier. Now she no longer had to worry about a hostile team attacking her or trying to take out her friends, that certain feeling of comfort, if made more bitter by the urgency to master the ability to a useable degree within a week, made training chakra sensory simpler.
Mana had it all along, she has always seen those weird flares, those strange spacial images inside her. She just never quite knew what all of it meant before. To her it was just a flashy visualization of some mind processes, too complicated for her to understand completely. Whenever she tried meditating those same images went first, by now Mana knew that it was the Ego stage of meditation – a visual representation of her own body, beyond laid what Mana used to call the Omnes stage – now known as the chakra sensory part.
The first couple of mornings of the week there was unrest inside her body as the wounds gathered in the Forest of Death were not that quick to heal up, once Mana's chakra level shot back up to full, however, things started looking up and she finally noticed the usual spacial serenity inside of her body. Whenever she tried expanding the horizons of her mental reach outside of that pocket little universe, she entered what she now knew was chakra sensory – the ability to perceive everything else but her own self.
There were so many tests that Mana had to do every morning, testing the reach of the ability, trying to perceive the specifics of the chakra she was seeing. Trying to access the ability more easily. Mana's mother was a good representation of smaller chakra signatures, those somewhat representative of the ordinary villagers, it was useful when knowing what to filter out and exclude, so that the image was clearer and more attention could be given to the larger signatures. Konoha was full of these small signatures after all.
Initially her own father's signature scared her, it was like she was floating completely naked in this dark void, positioned right in front of a large booming star. The size of the thing was beyond anything Mana had seen before, she had sensed something similar before, but that was earlier – when she was using sensory by accident. Now that she sharpened her ability day by day, with many more days, weeks and months of training yet ahead, she was able to make out more about what previously was just a blurry massive ball of light.
With some more touch ups, with a bit of expansion of scales and zooming out, in a way, using her sensory, Mana finally managed getting used to floating in front of this chakra signature mentally. She also started feeling comfortable enough around it to feel up what made it different from others of the same size – the ninja that passed by her home on their day to day activities. Her father's star was less round, oval and squished from the side, almost like an egg in a way. The patterns of maroon colored flames that burst all over her father's star also had their own pattern. One Mana had gotten used to and memorized.
Knowing how to memorize chakra signatures thusly made it simpler for the girl to memorize new signatures. She didn't know the names of the ninja that passed by her home daily but she was beginning to remember chakra signatures and gave them names of her own making, just to help her quickly memorize and identify chakra signatures of people she'd met before. Her reach of about 30 meters still sort of annoyed Mana. She was beginning to worry that it may have been her peak and that she may have been quite an unimpressive sensor, all things considered, something that'd have made the excitement of studying this new ability of hers all the more sour.
It could not have been her limit, as the magician soon found out, with daily bashing against the "barrier", Mana felt she was expanding it. Slowly, meter by meter every day, but it was budging. Just like muscles and jutsu, it had to be refined through training. That was just fine with Mana, training was something she could do and very much liked doing. Studying this new ability kind of felt like studying history in the Konohagakure Archive, in a way. It was a very fitting replacement for that hobby, which she was currently unable to indulge in.
One of the more important tasks for Mana's chakra sensory training was to gain access to the ability easier. She couldn't have taken the time to sit down and meditate in battle every time, even if she now no longer needed minutes on end of meditation to even reach the stage, having memorized the feelings and sensations that lead to chakra sensory almost pitch perfect. It was not as tough of a thing to do, as Mana thought it would be. Chakra sensory, apparently, was always meant to be more of a different kind of sensory ability so it was not too tough to bring it out to the forefront, still, Mana usually needed to focus quite extensively to access the ability, regardless of which way she went about reaching it. It was less than needed, less than Mana was comfortable walking to battle with and relying on.
After the mornings got spent training her chakra sensory at home, during the middays, reaching to early evenings, Mana went to train in the Training Grounds. It was really tough finding completely free of people places to train seeing how now the entire collection of Training Grounds was also occupied by genin teams from different villages sharpening their skills and improving their teamwork.
It was not like the magician was that afraid of showing off, she was an entertainer to her core so she rarely struggled just training around other people or when other genin came to train at the same training grounds. Some younger ninja, preparing for their Academy graduation exams or in their early years, commonly observed older genin train as the older genin were not yet in a whole other world but they were quite awesome to see working out and often times gave ideas for one's own improvement and training.
Several days later, just like the staff ninja watching over the Forest of Death stage said it would, a letter came. It had within some more details about the next stage. It was now known that thirty two genin out of ninety six that entered the Forest of Death, excluding the two stowaway nukenin and poor Ramen Destroyer Gwido whom they tagged along, had made it to the next stage. It somehow thinned the herds quite nicely… It also made Mana feel that gut pinch of worry because she needed to pass the next stage as well, it was only in the final stage that it was determined if one would be promoted to Chuunin. Only in the final stage and it was not victory that decided the promotion but instead the commission of highly skilled ninja composed of the host village's most skilled, respected and powerful, also honorary guests from other participating villages.
The physical training in the Training Grounds required the help of Usuzoku – Mana's rabbit summon, who, strangely, despite telling her she'd never see him again, always came out whenever she used the storage seal inside her hat. It was not easy talking him into helping Mana with her training…
"Ehhh… Ferget about it"! Usuzoku grunted, crossing his arms around his chest but not dispelling himself back home.
"You said you needed strong partners, that if the name of the Ninja Rabbits is to be out there, luring really strong ninja to re-establish the partnership web between ninja and the Ninja Rabbits you need a strong face", Mana reminded the rabbit, overcoming her impulse to break down over how cute Usuzoku's pouting face was.
"Das rite! We needs dem real ninjas, not stupid Hatchlin's like you"! Usuzoku glared with one eye angrily at Mana's direction. The magician noticed a pair of new scars over the rabbit's face, while they did interest her, she figured that it was sort of par for the course for the rabbit warrior who constantly expressed his hatred for pretty much everything living and picked fights with everything moving.
"Well, if I fail this exam, which I may very well do, if this training doesn't work out, you'd not have moved forward with that seeing how I'll remain a genin", Mana argued.
"Yer just lucky I really hate yer dumb face so I'll help freein' some space of dem tooths ya got in dere", Usuzoku squinted at Mana's direction.
"You meant sparring"?
"Ehhh… Yeah, sure…" Usuzoku shrugged.
"Well, before we start training, there's something we need to recover from the Forest of Death", Mana urged her animal partner to follow her.
And that was pretty much how Mana went about tricking Usuzoku into helping her search for her wand in the Forest of Death, as well as assist the magician every midday to early evening with the more physical aspects of her training. With Usuzoku's tracking abilities, unique perspective at searching and almost dogmatic hatred for pretty much every species the rabbit and Mana encountered, finding the wand proved to be one midday's job in the emptied Forest of Death.
Training with Usuzoku was another thing entirely. The rabbit swordsman was fast, his lower body was so tense and well-trained that it appeared that he charged instantaneously as the rabbit was behind Mana before the girl even registered her opponent having moved at all. His skills with a sword must have been neat. Usuzoku constantly belittled Mana for her hand-to-hand skills and the magician quite consistently tripped up over herself but she learned to realize something in the process. Meiko and Kouta were holding back tremendously when they trained Mana, Usuzoku did no such thing and while it hurt both Mana's face and her pride to get cut up and pummeled every day, she did ultimately enjoy the fact that she was at least facing the best of someone's abilities and learning to overcome them.
"I gotta say I'm impressed, Hatchlin'", Usuzoku grumped out one day, it was a particularly successful day where his world splitting feet hadn't yet met Mana's face and his sword had never forced Mana augment her body to prevent getting disemboweled. While Usuzoku came at Mana with full intent of killing her, it made the magician feel more respected as a ninja in her own right, someone who required Usuzoku's full skillset to be taken on. It was a liberating and inspiring feeling.
"Yeah, maybe today I won't need to see a medical ninja at all", Mana smiled, closing her eyes and feeling the chilly breeze in the air. That was before she felt an alarming sensation. It felt like an unstable wayward star of massive size, surpassing that of her father's, was heading straight her way, the magician stepped back out of instinct and not perception. She was glad she did so in a moment as Usuzoku's foot blurred right past Mana's face with a push kick that would have sent a moon hurling through space like a football.
"Dat sixth sense 'a yours is pretty handy, eh"? The grumpy rabbit noted in surprise that the magician avoided his surprise attack.
It was then that Mana realized something new about her sensory. Just like Spyder-Wolf's brain struggled to keep up with controlling all six arms efficiently, hers also must've had trouble managing six senses efficiently, it could only mean that only by shutting down one of her senses could she utilize her chakra sensory in this early relatively untrained stage. It was because Mana's eyes were closed that her chakra sensory worked like a charm, unlike it ever has before. This small instance of her chakra sensory helping her out also gave Mana ideas for more practical uses for chakra sensory.
It could have been a foolproof way of tracking movements she could not track otherwise, also of seeing what her eyes and ears failed to see. Then again, Mana had over fifteen years of experience of training her eyes, it may have been way too early to dream about her chakra sensory ever surpassing Mana's eyes.
"Still, yer sensory won't be ready by da time ye'll hafta fight", Usuzoku noted strictly, the rabbit was always brutally honest with Mana and the magician knew deep inside that her sensory won't be ready by just a bit over a week later after it was discovered.
"I have an idea that'll fix that", Mana smiled before allowing Usuzoku to return to the natural Ninja Rabbit habitat. Truth be told, she had no reason to smile about her idea, seeing how rather twisted it was. The trip to the Konohagakure Hospital that day was not an easy one, the girl found her legs halting and lingering multiple times.
"Ah, training injuries again"? The medical ninja seeing Mana's injuries, a middle aged, frail man with intensely thick glasses, wondered. "I do see a rather unpleasant overtraining experience in your record, I would've hoped it'd have taught you something". It was not even remotely the first time Mana saw that particular medical ninja that week in the afternoon check-up.
"I need you to disable my sense of smell", Mana shot directly to the point.
"Any particular reason"? The medical ninja removed and cleaned his glasses after closing the relatively small file containing Mana's medical records. "You have to understand, you are pushing yourself way too far with a recorded incident of overtraining. Then you come out with such an odd request… Your mental state has to be put into question. It'd be an easy procedure to perform, possible to reverse, still, unless there's a valid reason there's no way I'll authorize it".
"I've recently uncovered chakra sensory abilities inside me. I'm training them but they won't be ready to the degree I need them to be by the next stage of the Exams. I need to kill another sense to replace chakra sensory with it and alleviate the process for the brain to deal with. Smell is by far my least potent sense", Mana tried to put her decision into words but still the realization of how silly it all sounded had not escaped her notice.
"If that is the case, you may pick a stronger sense, like your vision, it'd instantly shock your brain into accepting sensory as the default sense. You've studied history, haven't you"? The medical ninja realized with a sly smile referencing an old practice of Kirigakure ninja administration of blinding their less potent sensors to make their access to chakra sensory easier as well as make them more accustomed and comfortable with the ability. It also made them immune to vision-based genjutsu as an added bonus.
"That'd be an overkill. Vision is integral to my taijutsu style, smell will be enough", Mana submissively looked down.
Being injected with the chemicals that were supposed to burn off Mana's nerves was profoundly painful. Despite being warned ahead of time it'd be, the magician still jumped up and began clawing at the back of her head like a madwoman. After a several seconds lasting boom of pain, followed by aches that persisted for a little bit longer, echoes of the burning feeling from before, Mana realized that there was only blandness to the sense she once took for granted.
"It is likely that chakra sensory will be automatically adjusted by your brain to compensate for the missing sense. Or, if that doesn't happen, you may need a little bit encouraging to make it work, how familiar are you with meditation"? The medical ninja asked after a whole series of questions about how Mana was feeling after the procedure.
The question honestly made the magician laugh.
"Just know that the longer you delay restoring the sense, the lesser the odds of the procedure succeeding and the percentage of your scent returning. The nerves can still be restored, recent advances in medical ninjutsu and technology are astounding, but only to a point", the ninja advised Mana but had she any doubts about going to these lengths she'd have not been allowed to even undergo the procedure. It wasn't like Mana would backtrack the progress and the sacrifice she'd made, for her – this was for good.
"I feel a little bad about this", the geeky looking medical ninja admitted, stroking the back of his messy, shoulder length, greasy, brown hair. "The Bloody Mist is a poor example to follow, it may be my license that pays the price".
"It's fine, you've helped me a great deal. I'll owe you if I rank up to chuunin", Mana smiled like she always did to her audience during the show, the carefree, bubblegum-pink smile of an entertainer. The only thing that scared Mana was her own indifference to the matter, she felt like she had conned nature itself that day to accelerate her growth. It felt nothing like she had just given up on a sense she used to have since childhood.
"I can only hope it won't affect Konoha Sorceress' magic shows", the medical ninja said for a farewell.
The world that greeted Mana outside the hospital was a strangely bland and somewhat depressing one. Droplets of rain were tumbling down from the dark and cloudy evening sky of the cold season. Mana remembered loving the rain, absolutely adoring it. The most ravishing part of it was the rainfall itself, seeing the frozen in time drops of rainfall showering everything and washing it all, coloring the surroundings in brand new, fresh colors. Another part of it, however, was the smells: nothing quite beat smelling the pines, oaks, birches and the cherry trees after a good summer downpour.
Nevermore.
Author's Note: And with this I'll be taking a week-long break before posting the Annual No. 2, before resuming the story, continuing on with the next stage of the Chuunin Exams. Luckily, this time, the Annual will take place within the right time-frame and there'll be no potential spoilers inside of it and it'll be a bit of a smaller self-cointained story, no alternate universes of world-ending shenanigans, you'll just have to wait and see. It'll also be around the same size as the last one so, hopefully, it'll compensate the wait!
Much love to everyone in this far! :3