Konoha was rustling. The time for the finals of the Chuunin Exams has come. Both the local villagers and the foreign visitors, both those arriving for a pleasurable event of young ninja competing for higher ranks and guests of honor who came here for political reasons were buzzing all over the village.
Those of the villagers who still held idealistic attitudes towards the world would have found this common relaxing sense of enjoyment truly beautiful. For the first time in a while, villagers of every village and country around the world have gathered in one place just to feast their eyes at a combat extravaganza that only came around once in a couple of years or so.
Whereas the earlier stages of the Chuunin Exams have been shrouded in secret and closed off from the public eye, the trials of the finalists – the strongest of the strongest, fastest of the fastest, the cleverest and the most skilled of all other examinees were open for all to see and gaze at. For one day and one day only, all politics, feuds and battles, both in the open battlefield and political, got swept aside.
Even the newly elected Mizukage from Kirigakure that has recently regained its autonomy was marching across the village with his following party of ninja, who were both his protectors and his intent to later feast his ocular orbs at the magnificence of children or less successful young adults attempting to enter the rank of ninja maturity. Even those who did not know the man's high status from rumors of the papers would have noticed his massive height, undercut hair and immensely rich mustache line as well as his fine silk attire.
Wherever the visitors came from, wherever they were wandering about, all of their paths lead up to the north-western part of the village and the Chuunin Arena where the finals took place. Seeing how the main event of the day was about to start in an hour or so, the place was already filling up with clouds of people and was only about to become more hectic.
"Meiko!" Kiyomi shouted out, waving her hand towards a familiar blue-green tracksuit wearing blacksmith who now appeared to be walking on her own two feet rather firmly and looked back in her cheerful original shape.
"Yo!" Meiko replied with a cheerful nod before running up to Kiyomi, where the Yamanaka heiress took care in gently working her way through the crowd, Meiko was like a rampaging elephant in a forest. Plenty of people got brushed aside and were about to object before they saw the size and the build of the blacksmith girl who had just shoved them aside and swallowed their objections or even went as far as to blame themselves and apologize for getting in the way of the careless rampaging bull of a girl.
"I see you've recovered", Kiyomi smiled, her hair had grown much longer and more unruly, it was not tough to see that the young lady of the Yamanaka clan was occupied with her training to take much care in personal hygiene and grooming except for the most necessary emergency procedures last night before the match.
"You bet. I'm not sure if I should be fighting but…" Meiko pouted her lips around at various sides before frantically looking around. "I wonder where Mana is, she's gonna be fighting today, right?"
"You know her, she probably won't be showing up until right before the match, not with this many people to pester her. She's a celebrity after all", Kiyomi shrugged, feeling pretty wise about having predicted her friend's thoughts so sharply.
"Yeah, that would have actually been pretty smart", Mana's voice ringed right from behind Kiyomi making the blonde jump up and turn around at the speed of lightning. She hadn't even sensed the pressure from her friend sneaking up, granted, Kiyomi was no sensor but most ninja possessed an innate ability to sense danger to a limited degree and Mana projected none of it.
"What the hell happened to you!?" Meiko exclaimed before covering her abdomen in laughter. The magician barely reminded of her old self – covered in burns, swollen red skin and a cloth bound around the girl's eyes, her hair looked so incredibly messy that it appeared to hold branches with actual bird nests sticking out from them. Mana reminded more of a crazy hobo than her normal self.
"Oh, my eyes are really sensitive to light right now. I really hope they'll recover by the time I have to fight", Mana laughed out innocently like it was no big deal. Kiyomi's eyes twitched in surprise after she noticed the magician's skin slowly beginning to pale back to its original tanned shade in speeds that were almost traceable to the human eye, almost like she was regenerating right in front of her from severe skin burns.
"You're on food pills, aren't you?" Kiyomi muttered.
"Yeah, I've spent a lot of time training today, had to catch up on a lot of time I've wasted. Then it dawned on me that I may not be able to return here and I lost it", Mana laughed out again, as her head tilted up, Kiyomi got a glimpse of her friend's lifeless eyes under the cloth. It made the heiress' heart tremble in wonder just what kind of torment did the magician go through in her training. Despite the fact that Mana's eyes appeared lifeless, the magician had noticed Kiyomi concern with her eyes turning to meet those of her friend's.
"Return here? From where?" Kiyomi wondered just where did Mana get such intense burns. They were weak enough to suggest that Mana used active chakra augmentation to prevent getting completely melted away but they were consistent and present enough to suggest intense temperatures unlike any that can be found around the world.
"Oh, I was the in Rabbit Caves in Kusagakure. Zoku-chan reverse-summoned me there", Mana casually explained as the girl began making their way through to the arena and flashed their Ninja Registration IDs to the chuunin acting as guards.
"You're not on the list as an examinee", one of them sighed addressing Meiko, you'll have to join the main queue right there.
Meiko sighed, "I knew it and yet still I tried. I have no regrets!" she exclaimed loudly before skipping to the main line as if the concept of standing around for an excessively prolonged amount of time excited her.
"I thought summoned contracts can return to their original location at any time", Kiyomi curiously wondered.
"Yeah, I thought so too, it appears there's a time limit to how long one can spend in any given location. Then they need to be summoned again if they want to return. Usuzoku sent one of the messenger rabbits to Hokage-sensei but…" Mana tried explaining.
"That's not a very good idea", Kiyomi sighed.
"Right?" Mana shrugged, "She completely forgot she had to summon me using a Reinforcements Scroll today so I had to dash all the way back from Kusagakure. Didn't take me long but I wasted a whole bunch of chakra and had to blast through a whole bunch of trees. Had it not been for my chakra sensory I'd have never gotten home right, when you move at those speeds you can barely even see things".
Kiyomi sighed, then the magician noticed that something dawned on her, likely the fact that Mana just dashed from the other side of the world in a course corrective dash that couldn't have taken her that long to complete. Given how stopping to correct her course and avoid more sensitive obstacles were the only stops she must've made – the magician likely could've completed that dash in mere moments.
"So, then you reconnected with Kouta?" Kiyomi's cheeks blushed slightly, Mana was impressed, she sensed the elevated body temperature of her friend and heard her heartbeat rise, had she still had her sense of smell she'd have likely been able to smell the sweat and hormones emitted from her body but that was long since dead.
"What do you mean?" Mana wondered before tightening her blindfold as her eyes were beginning to water. She did not even need her eyesight for anything other than the match – by now she had learned to rest her eyes and rely on other senses such as chakra sensory, hearing and touch. Right now touch was especially strong, given Mana's sensitive slightly burnt skin that was still regenerating slowly.
"Didn't you know?" Kiyomi wondered, "He completed his internship and spends time working in the hospital now".
"Oh, I thought…" Mana mumbled something softly before turning away, her senses became all jumbled up and it suddenly became difficult to tell things apart so she slowed down and reached out for the walls around her to help her guide her way to the preparations room. "I thought he was going to follow his father's footsteps".
"I don't know about that", Kiyomi shrugged, "He used to be your boyfriend, didn't he? It's been one and a half month since you last talked, you should really catch up with him".
By that time Kiyomi had realized that Mana needed some help and helped guide her temporarily blinded teammate to the preparations room and helped her fix her hair from all the branches and wood chips that the magician had gathered. By the time Mana's senses got back into perceiving her surrounding accurately the magician noticed an odd increase in her teammate's heartbeat. She must have been considering something intensely, it wasn't healthy for her to worry about anything but the upcoming matches.
"Actually, Eiju hooked me up with some of his own pills. I figured he'd be conning the pharmacy for some of his own medication, given his habits, I blackmailed him into prescribing me some blue medical food pills to help me recover", Mana explained where she got the food pills she used to slowly recover her fatigue, chakra loss and bodily injuries.
"Let's just hope they finish working until your match comes up", Kiyomi worryingly exclaimed.
"They might. Say, when I told you about how I got back to the village, your heartbeat escalated but not in a way that would have made you scared. You have gotten much stronger that you were before, didn't you? I need to know, Stea is still by far the strongest genin in the building so I need to know how you'd rate my results" Mana asked straight.
"I haven't seen your results yet, all I see before me now is a broken and fatigued version of you. You returning back home on foot so soon is impressive but it's not completely outside my reach either", Kiyomi shrugged, her heart was calm, her chakra signature rustled like a calm flame as well. "Granted, I'd have likely never tried it, too wasteful and reckless in general to travel so fast".
Not even twenty minutes later more genin started gathering in the preparations room. Seeing how the kunoichi had a separate room from their male peers, a more select roster of ninja had begun gathering around. The first one to enter after Kiyomi and Mana was Vinda Calkem, the ruthless with a hint of crazy, dark punky haired and clothed kunoichi from Team Iocaste of Getsugakure.
The girl was a relatively short and frail looking one, if one ignored her more wild hairstyle and constant smug and sadistic grin that she walked around adoring, she'd have looked quite similar to Mana if the magician had adopted a more wild style of hair and clothes. Granted, Kiyomi knew that the two had little to do with each other internally. Where one disliked inflicting too much pain and damage in combat, the other took great pride and enjoyment in her destructive and corrosive abilities and blamed the damage she did on her opponent's own recklessness in accepting to fight her.
Seeing how neither Kiyomi nor Mana had any previous interactions with the sadistic young lady from Getsugakure she completely ignored the two girls, save for sparing a moment to lick her lips and smile when gazing at Mana's condition. It appeared to Kiyomi that this was a very cruel and rude way to act around people one didn't even know or have any grudges against. Then again, she was the one who showered a bunch of opposing opponents in acid until they ran out of chakra to neutralize its effects and the fight needed to be stopped so that the medical team could neutralize its effects for them.
Kiyomi glared at Mana who appeared to completely ignore the raven-haired punk as she changed into her dark sleeveless shirt and standard military trousers of the Getsugakure uniform. The Yamanaka wondered if that was because Mana could not see the cruel looks that the girl was giving the magician or because her friend simply did not care all that much about it.
A handful of moments after Vinda changed and started warming up and stretching out, Nanaba found her way to the preparation room, followed by Stea Tesprea. Both girls noticed Kiyomi and Mana warming up, Kiyomi by actually performing stretching exercises and shadowboxing whereas Mana just sat hunched over on the bench and stared blankly at the door.
"Heeeeey!" Nanaba shrieked out in a manner of affection and friendliness that, honestly, Kiyomi had assumed the two had not reached yet. Apparently, Nana thought differently herself.
"Greetings, you two", Stea nodded. Kiyomi looked at Mana worryingly, wondering if the magician actually had time to interact with the Getsugakure's favorite, seeing how otherwise there would be no reason for the kunoichi to even bother talking to them.
"Phew! I finally had my puppet arms fixed, that saga of the Chuunin Exams is officially over, I'm back at full strength"! Nanaba cheered on herself before posing a bunch of times like a caricature of the colorful superheroes in rice cereal commercials on TV or one of those more exotic wrestlers from Kumogakure.
"Mana… Are you going to be OK? Did something go wrong?" Stea instantly grabbed the bull by the horns. Something Nanaba completely ignored, proceeding to small talk instead.
"Oh, don't worry. I've given it my all during training, I'm on food pills and it should all go away in time", Mana raised her head up to look over at Stea's location, something that convinced the Getsugakure kunoichi that even blindfolded and suffering from some burns the magician was not completely powerless.
"You don't look like you had much sleep, honey! What happened! You really have been taking your training seriously, haven't you!" Nanaba shouted out in surprise before pointing at Mana in horror. This girl was a wild tornado of emotion and lack of subtlety, not too much different from a certain someone both Team Hokage kunoichi knew which appeared to entertain both of them at once.
"That's because I haven't slept, well, not completely, for the duration of the two and a half weeks", Mana shrugged.
"Wait, what!?" Kiyomi whistled in surprise before asking in shock.
"You see, it appeared that if I was to completely fall into a deep sleep, my augmentations could have gone down which would have meant I'd have been exposed to the entirety of the inhuman conditions of the Rabbit Caves. That is why I did not technically sleep. I meditated to rest instead. It did some of the job but…" Mana explained making Kiyomi feel uneasy.
It was true that, technically, Kiyomi trained extensively in the Yamanaka Resort. She continued her training with her uncle's assistants while simultaneously attempting to innovate on the Yamanaka clan hijutsu to finally take the next step that most of the more advanced ninja of her clan had taken. She had advanced forward by leaps and bounds, she was a totally different ninja now compared to the way she was before the Chuunin Exams but…
Hearing every bit of detail about Mana's training made Kiyomi curious about just how effective her training was. It also made her feel uneasy as if somehow, there could have been more she could have done. As if, somehow, she was the only one who slacked off and everyone around her was in this crazy new world, completely unknown to her and that, in just twenty more minutes, all of it would be made painfully clear to her. Suddenly, deep inside Kiyomi's own mind, everyone around her began looking so massive and mocking.
With a self-calming sigh, Kiyomi shoved those dark thoughts down. She did not slack off, she trained her ass off both before the semi-finals and during the last five weeks. She has transcended the line between just an average Yamanaka clansman and a pride of her clan by successfully innovating on her clan hijutsu. She was someone who eliminated both of her opponents in the semi-finals all by herself, the second one being one of the strongest genin in the Exams. Who cared if it was all due of a technicality, she was Kiyomi, the badass!
Someone banged loudly at the door, the sound of their boots walking away suggested that the person wasn't looking to gain entry into the preparation room but was looking to warn the kunoichi that the preparations were complete.
"That's odd", Mana softly spoke up. "I didn't sense Erumo around. She did proceed to the finals, didn't she"?
"Oh, she's messing around near the observational platform already, she came prepared", Nanaba waved her hand at Mana before standing up and stretching out. "Let's go, everybody"!
"We've trained for five whole weeks for this, it's about time", Kiyomi threw a pair of rapid-fire blows in the air before following Nanaba to the door.
"Mana, I hope that your training fatigue and wounds recover until the time of our match. Luckily, we fight last. Know that even if you don't regain your eyesight and don't fully recover, I will not hold back one bit"! Stea declared. Mana could hear and sense the seriousness emanating from the girl's entire body. Once the magician opened her eyes for a brief moment she could see the confident shapes of the figure of her opponent, illuminated by the light on the ceiling, standing tall in front of her, coldly looking at her.
"I know", Mana stood up and closed her eyes as they were beginning to itch and water from the influx of light flowing into them even through the blindfold. "You better not. I nearly killed myself training and cashed in some massive favors so that you show off everything you got and get promoted. I wouldn't accept anything less than that".