After an affirming nod, Usuzoku disappeared in a cloud of smoke, returning to wherever Mana summoned him from. He really was not one for long-winded speeches, sentiments or after-brawl congratulations, knowing that, Mana let him go without anything but a grateful nod back. She knew so little about these ninja rabbits but she was beginning to rely on them more and more. Knowing how every sentiment needed a faked justification of the upkeeping a cool façade variety, as well as Usuzoku's prowess at close range combat, maybe a trip to the ninja rabbit home, masked as training, was due sometime in the future…
Seeing how Mana had trouble comfortably and easily walking downstage, the staff rushed to her aid, helping her get down from the wreckage of the arena. Kiyomi also ran to Mana's aid, congratulating the magician so often and so energetically that the details of each separate congratulation slipped the magician's notice. Given how dizzy and nauseous Mana felt and the innate weakness that would've claimed her if the fight continued ten to fifteen minutes longer, it wasn't something to feel particularly surprised about.
"That was amazing, Mana"! Was one of the calmer congratulations that Mana still managed to hear en route to the infirmary. One of the staff members overseeing the orderly procession of the Chuunin Exams stopped Kiyomi and told her something in a demanding tone that, judging from her face, greatly annoyed the Yamanaka but, with a displeased expression and arms tightly wrapped around her chest, she stayed behind.
"A B-Rank jutsu as well as the Summoning Technique, that's quite advanced for a genin"! One of the assisting staffers helping Mana to get to the infirmary spoke to her. It was just little talk to keep her mind busy and inform the staffers that she was still conscious and that her motor and communication, as well as sensory skills, were intact.
"I may have taken this exam later than most genin. I thought I was overtrained and overqualified, all of us in Team Hokage did", Mana mumbled in return just to calm the staffers down somewhat and help them do their job.
"What was that variation on the Summoning Jutsu though? You pulled your partner out of the hat"? Another staffer expressed surprise and admiration, judging by their tone.
"Leave it to Konoha's Sorceress to make a big show out of it"! The first one replied before Mana could muster up a response and calm her nauseating impulses. She may not have been concussed, comparing to Hisako's violent reaction to concussion all the way back, but something pretty bad must've been going on there.
"I don't like using jutsu I didn't invent, that being said, space-time ninjutsu like the Summoning Jutsu are a bit outside my reach to innovate on. I'd tell you more but a good stage magician never reveals her secrets", Mana tried to smile warmly to the staffers that did their job admirably while still finding kindness within them to take a step or two beyond just the duties of their job. She had no such principles though. She just felt a bit too dizzy to talk about storage seals and combinations of jutsu and chakra control efficiency at that moment.
A different duo of medical ninja greeted Mana in the infirmary. A female senior medical ninja with a young male assistant. The senior medical ninja quickly scanned through Mana's injuries with the Diagnosis Jutsu looking fairly worried about what she saw.
"This one's beyond our capabilities. She is in no danger though, now that the fight is over. I'll give her the basic active battlefield type Mystical Palm treatment, then we'll transfer her to Konoha Hospital", the senior medical kunoichi mentioned to her assistant who wrote it all down into the log of the exam notes. She then started listing a bunch of Mana's injuries to be written down and added to the girl's medical history once she was actually admitted to the Konohagakure Hospital.
"These cuts look fairly careless, did you lose"? The middle aged senior medical kunoichi wondered as she pointed at the lacerations gifted to Mana by Oto-B's scythe contraptions.
"No, I… I'm not sure how those happened. I was easily dodging these one time and then… Next thing I know, my body is cut up like that", Mana grunted in pain as the medical lady tried judging the wounds and deciding if they were minor enough to just be sewn up and healed naturally or if chakra needed to be used. There it was again… The economy of life and death. Mana saw it in the woman's eyes, the eyes of a skilled medical ninja, there was a certain worth to Mana's life and the woman was comparing that worth to the worth of the chakra she still had remaining.
"Do you need food pills"? The medical ninja snapped out of her deep thought process.
"Ummm… No, I'm fairly certain I still have a bit more than half of my chakra pool remaining", Mana curiously took the time to communicate with her own body.
"More than half"!? The medical superior raised an eyebrow, "You shouldn't be lying to the medical ninja, girl. Pride be damned…"
"If that's how the winner looks like, I'd hate to see the other guy. Probably got rushed to the hospital immediately", the younger male assistant smiled at Mana, he looked a bit more inclined to believe Mana's statement.
"It's the truth, I am training my chakra pool through meditation and specific physical exercise. I'm training both the spiritual and the physical sides. I'd say, at this point, there were two or three people in the entire gym hall with higher signatures than mine, Jinchuuriki excluded", Mana explained before the woman began patching Mana's bleeding cuts up.
"Hmmm, impressive… I know what caused those cuts, girl. I have seen it with my own eyes. People with extreme pain tolerance, powering through injury to the point where they become so obsessed with something they do not notice the fact that they are standing as nothing more than a crispy skeleton with their vitals exposed. There's a reason why pain management medical techniques are considered forbidden and it's kept to spiritual meditation and medication, herbs and pills. Pain is necessary, it's an alert mechanism and your body doesn't like being ignored", the woman gave Mana a lecture about pain, as adults tended to do, the ratio of lecturing was proportionately higher in the medical profession as well.
"I know… But", Mana tried to argue – a fatal mistake.
"But? There is no but, girl. What is more important than your own health? Didn't a young man just collapse dead in this very same exam? It used to be a pretty often practice to kill other competitors but even now when it isn't… You young folk are so obsessed with getting as high as you can as fast as you can that you completely ignore your own bodies and health", she kept on lecturing. At this point, Mana resorted to just nodding and taking the woman's words to heart. She did have more experience than the magician did, after all. Technically, Mana had no right to speak against her, not even a reasonable case to make against her arguments.
The door to the infirmary burst open with Kiyomi slowly creeping in. Something was wrong in her mind, she clearly had a package that she pushed deeper down as she sat closer to Mana and smiled like a big sister would.
"So, how are you doing"? She asked.
"Fi…" Mana was about to reply.
"Don't you even finish that word. Tell your friend, why won't you? Tell her the cost you paid going as far as you did. Honestly, none of you youngsters will make it past twenty naturally, even if some bastard doesn't kill you before that", the medical kunoichi interrupted Mana, the magician felt like the reasonable response would've been to be a bit offended by the woman's rudeness but… She kind of found the bluntness of the woman hilarious.
"Well, I got cut up pretty badly, my chest will probably stay scarred like this for life but… One step closer to the next rank", Mana smiled.
"I mean, it probably won't look this bad. We can restore the damaged nerves so you'll be feeling that pain in no time, I'm sure you can't wait", the assistant butt into the conversation with a joke, putting his notes and documents he put into Mana's file aside. "There are plenty of scar treatments that really show promise cosmetically as well".
Mana did recall just how much years of systematic medical ninjutsu visits to the Konoha Hospital helped her father's arms. Those were almost completely charred up when the man was first brought to the hospital whereas now they were just looking slightly scarred and pale. Still, there was always an extent of injury and scarring which went a bit beyond even those treatments and Mana did not feel like the kind of girl who would sit around the village for years, visiting the hospital just to remove the scars she could easily hide from her audience.
"It's fine, nobody will fall for you for your chest anyway, it'll be because of your smile and cucumber cheeks"! Kiyomi grinned with a manner of monkey-like smile that was more akin to Meiko's as she pulled on Mana's cheek teasingly. The magician fought back valiantly with a storm of playful slaps causing Kiyomi's pinching forces to retreat from their foolish venture of pinching the magician's cheeks.
"That was one impressive jutsu you used at the end, something like that doesn't just come up within one week. You've likely been practicing it for a while, how come you've never used it? It'd have helped us so much"! Kiyomi jealously laughed out, commending Mana on a great addition to her arsenal of techniques.
"Yeah, I had the concept in mind since the training in the Sun Disc arena in the Wind Country. Still, it was far too early to use it until now. I don't like to use that word but… It was kind of useless until just a few days ago. It's a defensive very close range technique transferred through touch so I had to polish it to the point where I wouldn't need any hand seals or excessive concentration to pull it off. It only reached that state very recently, even though I was forced to use it a couple of times in its imperfect state", Mana calmly explained.
"Well, we've done about as much as we can. You'll be moved to the Konoha Hospital now", the senior medical ninja informed the two teammates with a softened tone as even her strict heart was crumbling in front of the sisterly bond between the two genin girls.
"Yeah, I think I feel pulsing pain in my chest now…" Mana clutched her messy and stinky, molten flesh wound.
"Well, you did cauterize it with… I'm not even honestly sure what", the woman shrugged, "Humans usually don't just melt like this, I'm not sure just what that temperature you've exposed yourself to was and how much you've lowered your own defenses to cauterize the wound. That's for smarter heads than mine to figure out and deal with. You want a lollipop"?
"I'm a big girl already", Mana pouted, answering the woman's kind stare. After a pair of moments of pouting, the magician swiped the candy from the woman's clutches before stumbling to the wheelchair and letting the medical assistant remove her from the infirmary and begin rolling her down to the door, from where she'd be taken to the hospital.
"You look really… Down. What did those guys tell you after the match"? Mana wondered giving Kiyomi a warm look, one that invited the Yamanaka to share her feelings but didn't presume to be entitled to be shared anything with.
"They… Just asked me to wait and see the next match, you know, they didn't want the next possible competitor wandering around oblivious to the fact they'll need to compete in fifteen minutes", Kiyomi shook her palms at Mana with an attempt to defuse the magician's worries.
"That doesn't sound like something that'd claim the competitive spirit of Yamanaka Kiyomi, the poster child of the entire Yamanaka clan elite, trained by the greatest of the Yamanaka Resort", Mana noted.
"Yeah, that doesn't… I'm fighting next", Kiyomi shrugged.
"Really? Against whom? Partnered with whom"? Mana's curiosity made her jump up to the point where she inconvenienced the medical assistant transporting her.
"Oh, no one important. Don't worry, my partner is… Well, you haven't met him in the Forest, you were encased in crystal by that point, he's really strong. He'll be of great assistance, I'm sure"! Kiyomi quickly attempted to defuse the situation once again. Still feeling a little bit uneasy, Mana let herself get taken to the door, from where she was picked up by a duo of medical ninja with easy carrying seats attached to their backs.
After the party of medical ninja carrying Mana and a pair of other injured examinees left to Konohagakure Hospital, Kiyomi sighed heavily before placing her hands on her hips and slowly turning around and beginning a tedious and worrisome walk to the gym hall.
In retrospect, maybe Mana would've wanted to know that Kiyomi got the bad end of the draw and ended up needing to face a team that included Doma Nacasa of Team Phobos, the third member of the team Mana was so worried about. From what Kiyomi could gather from the bits and pieces Mana let her know, also, the biggest asshole out of the three, or at least, the most vocal one.
Then again, everything had to be translated from the original angle it came from – Mana's angle. Kiyomi didn't particularly feel any animosity towards a young man so enthusiastic about serving the best interests of his own village. Even if that placed him directly on a crash course against her, the Yamanaka could respect that. What else did matter besides the village? The Feudal Lord, maybe. The entire country, possibly…
Either way, sometimes Mana's moral principles really made things too murky to understand. The girl had a moral code and a way to see the world. That was respectable enough. It was just that this code was not too mature. She involved so many different variables and needless worries, problems of all sorts and sizes and degrees of ridiculous. This exam was somehow vitally important to her, for whatever reason, a dumb moral principle and her own self-drawn image of some childish "hero" she tried to become.
"Then again, maybe that sort of devotion to the exam is admirable in of itself", Kiyomi smiled while thinking to herself as she entered the gym hall and walked up to the completely empty corner that was previously occupied by her team. Now it felt so… Empty. Mana was probably already being rushed to get her treatment, Kiyomi wouldn't be surprised if Hanasaku-sensei just up and left after shutting down Quill B's hopes of killing Kres-T, feeling bored by the exam at this point. The woman did get bored rather quickly by things she had to see over and over again…
"Meiko", Kiyomi left the most worrisome for the end. Every time that the blonde thought about the grisly vision of the blacksmith charging in to face off against someone using the Third Gate and its bloody consequences it made her shiver. Kiyomi's care for Meiko was different compared to the worries she felt for Mana, burning hot to an almost illogical degree and choking up.
Kiyomi had to be snapped out from her daydreaming by a nearby standing Konohagakure ninja. Blushed, after apologizing with a bow of her head she ran up onto the stage and joined her partner – Jekleifer Kaguya from Team Corundum, someone who went from being a short-term opposing force to becoming a partner she would have to count on. There was simply no other way, her opponents were too strong to just power through by her lonesome.
"You just turn around and walk aside. I'll take care of those two all by myself easily"! The towering Zahafbit of Team Pahlavi bravely declared after raising his fist all the way up and shoving it up in Doma's face. Clearly looking annoyed by the idiotic confidence of his teammate, yet choosing not to clash with it just yet, Doma withdrew and calmly approached the tag scroll.
"Do you know this Zahafbit's abilities and fighting style"? Jekleifer wondered, feeling too familiar with Kiyomi and Team Hokage to go through the formal introductions.
"Sorry, I can recall Mana mentioning running into this guy's team, she probably knew it but… I forgot to ask her", Kiyomi played with her hair like a spoiled brat, clearly, she did not just "forget". She just did not want to talk to Mana about the opponents she'd be facing and be forced to either lie to a friend who was like Kiyomi's little sister at times or confess about having to face Doma Nacasa of Team Phobos and then make Mana worry all throughout her stay in the hospital. Something like that could not have been good for one's health…
"Well then, how shall we play it? As I recall you were the leader of your team, weren't you"? Jekleifer raised an eyebrow, clearly looking disappointed by Kiyomi's act, choosing to take it for granted.
"If memory serves, your abilities are actively hurting you too. However, yours is still one of the most powerful bloodlines in this hall. I say I wear both of those guys down, not switch. I let them eliminate me while I let them switch, again and again, then, when they're both weakened and treating the fight as already theirs – you do what you do best", Kiyomi pitched her idea in an uneasy mumble.
"I may have underestimated you before. If anything, your maturity and mind are matching that of a chuunin already", Jekleifer nodded submissively before walking back to the tag scroll and placing his left hand on it, waiting for when preparations would be completed and the fight could've started again on the newly rebuilt arena.
After both seconds tagged out and got sealed up in the sealing dimension, Kiyomi rubbed her itchy nose in nervousness as she was eyeing her opponent.
"I bet you say that to all the girls", she mumbled to herself just to keep her spirits up before a tough and purposefully a bit suicidal battle.