Mana bit her lip and cried out in pain. A stitch that Yushijin applied happened to touch another bruise by accident. One that she had acquired during the week. Due to her ongoing exhaustion, lack of time to eat properly or do anything but fight crime and meditate on how to better fight crime once that time of the weekly routine came, Mana found her wounds rather hesitant to heal by themselves as they normally would have.
"Sorry. Kouta usually did this stuff. I did not think you'd get as reckless as to body-shield the guy you're after." The young chuunin sighed. Regardless of his lack of experience in such matters, he was quite determined to patch Mana up by stitching the deeper cuts and applying the bandage. She was his responsibility to bring back to the village after all.
"Can't you do that time-freezing thing? If you time it right you can trick her mind, can't you?" Thumb exclaimed like a lazy cat, she was just hanging around the Security office without a clearly defined reason or destination at this point.
"Stitching is troublesome enough as it is. I don't think I have the focus to spare, also it would exhaust my resources quite extensively to use a technique this complex again and again just to make her skip the painful bits." Yushijin replied with patience.
"I could do this myself, you know." Mana pouted her lips.
"No. Your time is up. We're heading home after I'm done. I cannot stand any more delays or distractions." Yushijin cut it down.
"You guys did get pretty lucky that the monks happened to help out when they did." Sora finally approached the two Konoha ninja and a party of as of yet unclear allegiances. The officer was holding a bunch of documents, the present officers were working hard to protocol all the arrests and write up cases for the Diamond Hand Rings who were arrested.
"It was not just a matter of luck. It was something I figured out would inevitably happen after I heard the warnings from the monks who were relaxing in the gallery. Donyoku-san certainly overplayed his hand and overestimated his welcome." Mana shook her head. While she should have reasonably admitted that luck did play a part in how the higher-ranking monks reacted to the escalating situation in the top floor, she still wanted the credit she deserved for guiding the situation where it went.
"So that was why you got cut so many times on purpose? To make the monks more friendly towards you three?" Yushijin raised a curious eyebrow.
"Not quite. I genuinely did not want to just stand and let Donyoku die if I could have done anything about it. It was just that both factors played into each other," Mana shrugged, making the chuunin tending to her wounds prick her with the needle again. By now Yushijin had apologized to Mana enough times to this time just shrug it off and continue with the task he himself was so firm to complete.
"Things ended up quite well, all things considered. Apart from the small tension between the Shukuba Security and the Fire Temple over this scandal… I mean you three still were fighting inside their mansion after all. They're still not peachy about that." Sora insisted before walking off with his documents and getting back to work. All this hustling and paperwork would be something Mana would see for the final time as her need to stay in this village was now gone with the Diamond Hand finally being behind bars.
"Yeah, Itemi-san being brought to the hospital, the monks a bit mad but less so at us than they are at Donyoku-san for reneging on their deal and Donyoku-san resting in the cells and Raitoncide and Index in the Shukuba arrest house, ready for Tribunal…" Mana recounted.
"So the monks had some sort of a deal with the administration of Shukuba to have property here? Sounds a bit too shady for them to complain about it and raise too much noise." Yushijin sighed after tying the last knots of bandages around Mana's wounds and stretching his tired body out. He had plenty more wounds to take care of than he had initially thought when he demanded to let Mana check her wounds for a safer trip home.
"Whatever relations the Fire Temple has with Shukuba is no longer of interest to me," Mana admitted even if she knew it may have sounded a bit rude coming from her – someone who played a part in causing the tension between the Shukuba Security and the Fire Temple. There were bound to be some quarrels in the coming days of Shukuba reformation but those would not be quarrels where human lives were in danger, it would have been political quarrels behind religious figures and bureaucratic administrators – two kinds of people Mana could not have cared of any less, as long as neither group was in any danger.
"What about you?" Mana wondered looking at Thumb who was just kicking back and awkwardly staring at the ceiling, playing with her hair or clothes as she did so.
"Maybe I'll go to Eden to have my seals removed. After that…" Thumb could not finish the sentence.
"You will undergo grueling training to obtain what it takes to serve in the Shukuba Security proper." Shira rumbled out. "Your punishment is only delayed for as long as you are of use to the Security and in order for me or my men to fully trust you, you'll have to undergo proper training."
"You know how to make a lady all excited!" Thumb teased her possible future comrade, poking his strict dislike for criminals and obvious mistrust in Thumb's reformation which was evident every time the two interacted.
"You're no lady." Shira waved a handful of documents in the air. He was walking back when he did so but wanted to salvage his conversational standing by pointing it out.
"You two will get together well. The fact that he brought it up, to begin with, means he is looking forward to working with you." Mana smiled.
"Can't wait for seeing his mug running about and not being able to escape his watchful gaze every day until I retire or am permanently retired…" Thumb rolled her eyes with a grin of her own.
Due to Mana's still healing injuries after her unfortunate scuffle with Index and Raitoncide as well as the newly acquired ones in the mansion, the pace at which the two ninja were traveling home was somewhat diminished. What would normally be a twenty to thirty-minute dash in a hurry or a four-hour trip on foot at a casual, civilian pace may just end up taking longer than either of those.
"I can carry you on my back, you know. We would move faster this way." Yushijin suggested, looking at his side and seeing Mana struggling to keep even his reduced pace up.
"Wouldn't that be really weird though?" Mana wondered. The embarrassment of thinking about it made the slight ache in her ribs and her joints ease up somewhat as she diverted her thoughts from it.
"I am a Konoha shinobi carrying a fellow Konoha ninja who has difficulties traveling at an optimal pace due to injuries, who just happens to be of opposite gender. A gender difference, that, under normal circumstances, would prove rather embarrassing for both parties involved but under current ones would be rather reasonable in my subjective point of view." Yushijin stumbled with his words trying to sound as distanced from the topic as possible.
"Now that you put it that way…" Mana grinned while she let the topic just dangle awkwardly without her addressing it again.
"Yeah, I guess it would be pretty weird still…" Yushijin looked down before focusing his view back on the road ahead.
"So you've got another sword? Would it not be better to finally get a more definitive weapon that's made of harder stuff instead?" Mana teased her companion.
"Run all over me, why won't you? Just remember that our rivalry is still unsettled and I will be looking to settle things when you get better." Yushijin sighed clearly tasting the playfulness sauce that Mana meant her teasing to be taken with.
"Or we could meet sometime and train together. I'd be really interested to learn from someone who has managed to master an aspect of illusions I have failed to understand fully." Mana suggested. "I really care too little about rivalries or fights. It's all Stea and her silly titles."
"I might teach you the basics behind temporal illusions if you show me those brain illusions you do," Yushijin suggested. His voice did sound a bit bitter over Mana dismissing the rivalry that was of such great importance to him but he did sound relatively friendly with that suggestion.
"You mean the ancient way of casting illusions by attacking the opponent's brain directly instead of manipulating their chakra flow? Sure. It's a deal!" Mana nodded. She was happy to find common ground with Yushijin about something. It was evident that the young man extended some sort of offer of friendship to the magician as fellow chuunin. The kind of kinship that was very useful to two young chuunin whom the village promoted so recently and who dove into the crazy and stressful world of advanced ninja life all alone.
"You're missing your hat," Yushijin noted. "Your hair looks strangely chaotic without it."
"Yeah, I've noticed." Mana sighed, brushing her hair from her face for the whoever knew which time. "It was getting quite busted anyways so it will be an opportunity to replace it."
"So what's the story behind that shiny stick?" Yushijin looked at Mana with curiosity. "It busted through my sword without much resistance and it did not look like you coated it with chakra?"
"How much time do we have?" Mana asked, letting her companion know that it was a lengthy story.
"I mean… At this pace?" Yushijin shrugged.
"A fair point." Mana took a deep breath in to prepare better telling the tale of how she came into the possession of the wand and in a way that would have best conveyed its meaning.
"That's some story. Now it kind of makes sense why you're so obsessed with saving lives, no offense. I couldn't even begin to imagine what losing your mentor and then losing your teammate just years later feels like. An experience like that would change me…" Yushijin stayed respectful and reserved after Mana finished recounting the story of when she, Shimo, Kouta, and Meiko were looking for the Box of Ultimate Bliss.
"Don't misunderstand, please. I did not develop my nindo after losing half of my team to the cruel way this world is. I treasured life over everything else long before that. This is merely the origin of the wand Meiko made out of Shimo's sword." Mana clarified the confusion.
"I guess that is why I have not obtained this kind of strength. You had to go through a tough experience to obtain your Audra wand, if I am to gain some kind of strength that my peers do not possess, I would need to lose something as well." Yushijin pondered while looking ahead with a serious expression.
"That sounded pretty ominous. I do not believe that suffering inherently makes one strong all by itself. Most of the times I was broken down, I almost stayed that way and nothing positive came out of it unless I suffered to save a life, in which case it was worth it every time." Mana shook her head. She could not really understand how Yushijin could have listened to the same words that inspired one kind of feelings in her and then came out with completely different impressions.
That was just the kind of way that different life experiences changed a person. The interesting observation that everyone was so different that made life so valuable. Everyone was different, everyone was necessary.
"I guess I really did get hotheaded during the Chuunin Exams. We flipped out on you for doing what you did without wondering what experiences may have lead you to make that choice. I should have known that nobody makes stupid decisions for its own sake." Yushijin said.
"I did make a stupid decision, no doubts about it. I make mistakes all the time if you look at them from the side. That decision cost me the respect of my fellow Konoha ninja, the trust of the young man I love and plenty of pain. Just to prove to a point. It was a bad decision, all things considered, but it was one that I would repeat today, just like I would stay behind to fight crime even if it meant having a hole blasted through me." Mana managed to muster up a smile even though recalling the pain she went through, which these decisions caused, made smiling troublesome.
"I wonder if I can ever defeat you with you obtaining so much strength so rapidly through suffering." Yushijin let out a lingering doubt. One that visibly caused him a great deal of pain to admit.
"You can just wait a couple of years. The medical ninja treating me keep telling me that one of these days I'll end up killing myself…" Mana tried to make it into a joke but the angry glare of her comrade made her expression change into an apologetic one and turn her eyes away.
"This is no joking matter to me." Yushijin made it painfully clear.
Mana took a hitching and uneasy breath in before forcing it out before she resorted to asking.
"Why isn't it? Why do you need to make sure that you are the best at everything you do, why does it matter so much to you?" she wondered.
"Because I'm not like you. I don't see everyone as having validated their existence just because they were born. I want to prove that my existence is valuable. The only way to know for sure that it is so is to be really good at what you do." Yushijin growled out like a cornered animal. He did not really raise his voice but it was easy to see that he did feel cornered and a bit pissed for having to admit it this openly. It was clearly only because Mana exposed her own past pains that he even opened up this way.
"What better way to know you've validated your existence than being the best at something?" Mana left a rhetorical question lingering that nailed perfectly the sentiments that Yushijin carried pinned to his heart. "If it is that important, if it is a matter of validating your existence, I can give you that genjutsu competition you want."
"It would be of no use now. You want to make me see that all life is worth existing, you would never win that even if you could. Our dreams are simply incompatible with that kind of rivalry." Yushijin sighed before grinning once after a long while, "It pisses me off a little."
"I guess you're right," Mana answered his smile. He may have had a point. At some point when the battle got heated up and Mana saw the edge she had to reach out for to pull herself onto the victory plateau, she'd hesitate. How could she, knowing all she believes, destine someone who thinks like Yushijin for considering his existence worthless just because someone loudly praised for the same things he wants to be acknowledged for defeated him?
"One thing still does not quite make sense…" Yushijin wondered. "You said that you believe that everyone has already validated their existence just by being born. How come you try so hard to prove something to someone, why do you try so hard to prove yours if it is already proven?"
"Because I have to. It is the kind of people that try hard and prove all sorts of things to other people that gather inspiration. Those kinds of people are lauded as heroes and heroes inspire change. I don't want to yell loud and tell others to change, I want them to treat life as more sacred all by their own will." Mana answered. Over the massive amount of times she has had similar talks with Kiyomi, she had plenty of time during training to think her position through.
It was of profound importance that she did strengthen her will to stand by her nindo. After all, in a conflict, if one stops believing in their convictions, their spiritual strength and willpower wavers, which weakens their position in that conflict as well. One's emotional strength matters just as much if not more than physical in the type of battlefield that ninja fight in every day. Had Mana wanted to achieve her dream any less in any of the fights back in Shukuba, she would have worked and pushed herself just a little bit less and that could have been the difference between tearing the Diamond Hand apart and failing.
Finally, the Konohagakure gate was in sight. The two ninja slowed down before making a complete stop at the entrance to take in the sight of the epic gate structure openly welcoming passers-by inside and to breathe in that Konohagakure air.
"I really want to wash, eat something and get some sleep…" Mana rubbed her tired eyes giving her paled-out skin a little bit blood red as her knuckles rubbed against it before it returned to its usual shade.
"Sorry, I would really like to let you go but I can't. I need to bring you with me to report to Lord Sixth." Yushijin rubbed the back of his head. The tone of his voice was different from how he and Mana usually interacted with one another. It was almost friendly, like exposing a little bit of themselves on their way home strengthened their friendship and bond as two young, recently promoted chuunin. One they would both need and treasure.
"Yeah, I guess you're right…" Mana let her weakened hands dangle. She hunched in the complete powerlessness of realizing she still had to go through facing the Sixth before getting any rest at all. The jutsu she had worked out and was itching to start actually training would also not come to her all by itself. She promised Usuzoku to help the Ninja Rabbits with their conflicts as well as owed some magic shows before her audience completely forgot who she was.
"Don't worry, what you told me about my mission being just a façade made a lot of sense and I don't think that Lord Sixth will be in much of a spoiled mood to give you too much flak." Yushijin smiled before leading the way north.
"Yeah, hope you're right…" Mana groaned while dragging her feet like a captured prisoner behind her jailer, who was the only person keeping her from a shower, a meal and a long nap.