On their way to the Konoha Administration building the pair of ninja could not fail to notice the number of wanted posters for disappeared people on the board near the gate. It was not in any way a spike for the phenomena but what troubled Mana was that the mystery of these disappearances was not yet resolved.
When it all began it seemed to Mana that it was something ground shaking and better left for the village officials and high ranking ninja to deal with but the longer the mystery remained unsolved and the more weird clues surfaced, the more Mana wanted a piece of it. She was not sure if anyone of the disappeared people had died, some of them were found perfectly fine, in the case of Tanko Shigin – even improved.
And yet… It was possibly the greatest mystery Konoha has faced in a while, possibly even one of its darkest and strangest historic moments since the Second Great Ninja War. Thoughts of taking a crack at it seemed almost like moments of foolish, youthful vanity to the magician. Who was she that she thought she would succeed with what the village was failing to figure out for a couple of years now.
The Administration building was about as busy as Mana had remembered it being at this time of day. Given how an order to bring Mana back was issued and handed to a chuunin, a relatively intermediate rank of ninja, the magician expected some odd remarks of weird glances coming her way but none were issued. The civil servants buzzing in the Administration just kept on stirring whatever the building was cooking.
The pair even had to wait by the closed doors to the Hokage office before Lord Sixth would even see them. While waiting Mana could not help but imagine a great hero bringing back a heinous S-Rank villain alive with them and having to wait by the closed door before the Hokage could give a mission to children where they would have to clean dishes in Ichiraku Ramen. For obvious reasons the thought made Mana crack a grin even through her tired state.
Once the two had made their way into Lord Sixth's office, the man wasted no time before asking Yushijin to report.
"As you ordered, I've brought Nakotsumi Mana back with me. She offered no resistance but due to her engagements in Shukuba she was injured at the moment of my approach and we had to wait until she was fully recovered." Yushijin bowed on one knee while reporting, after being addressed.
Lord Sixth barely even wasted a glance to look at Mana, it did not appear that he cared all that much if Mana was home or not. The magician was beginning to feel like her hunch on the man's issued mission being just a precaution in the case of her failure was just confirmed.
"Could you please tell me about those "engagements", Mana?" Lord Sixth wondered, still working on documentation while he addressed the magician. Despite being sore all over, Mana kneeled on one knee to report on her work in Shukuba.
"I've completed the mission objective given to me. After I exposed the ones responsible for the money laundering scheme, I found out that there were bigger forces at play that threatened the lives of the Shukuba people and I decided to stay there and help." Mana recounted everything she already told Sixth in her messages that she sent the man. Given the whole fiasco with people in Shukuba Security being replaced with plants of the Diamond Hand and the hawks being intercepted at one time, she thought that starting from the basics would be best.
"That does not seem like your job or your jurisdiction, don't you think? You could have easily spoiled our favors with the Shukuba Security…" Lord Sixth remarked with a sour tone.
"During my investigation, I found out that Shukuba Security was mostly corrupt and working with the criminal syndicate. They were even somewhat involved with the movie-making scheme too and the conflicts between the Security and the Diamond Hand threatened to spill over as both innocents and both sides were taking casualties." Mana tried standing her ground. She had clear reasons and felt justified in everything she did but, as always, her reasons were not always taken the same way by everyone else.
"So how did that whole "investigation" go?" Lord Sixth asked, making a waving gesture with his hand as if asking Mana to hurry on a bit and include only the essential details.
"It has been busted and all members have been arrested and soon be transferred to the appropriate containment institutions," Mana reported.
"The Shukuba administration must have been so proud. I suppose that this will make further cooperation between Konohagakure and Shukuba Security easier." The man said in an almost sarcastic manner as if he knew something that Mana would have to inform him off and just wanted to play ignorant.
"Lord Sixth… The Shukuba administration was involved and was encouraging and profiting from the corruption ring. The administ… Governor of Shukuba was a treasured asset for the criminal syndicate. Due to widespread corruption within the organization, I had members I could vouch for assist me in disbanding the Shukuba Security with it being reformed currently and while the investigation progressed." Mana relayed the information that Lord Sixth undoubtedly had already been aware of. Someone who would have disliked hearing it as much as the Sixth did and did not know it would have shown a much more outraged reaction upon hearing it.
"So, I assume, you've learned your lesson?" the man raised an eyebrow, finally looking at Mana and not the papers he was filling.
"Lesson, Lord Sixth?" Mana raised her eyes to meet those of her superior.
The man sighed. "You've disbanded both the Shukuba Administration and the Shukuba Security. How long do you think it will be until both rot while they are powerless to get the chaos within the pleasure town under control? You may have very well doomed more people to die long-term than you've saved. Sometimes controlled corruption is better than unruly chaos, as an ex-Black Ops, I would know, sometimes the Black Ops seeded similar chaos in towns they wished to de-stabilize."
"So you did send Yushijin just to distance yourself from the affair?" Mana asked.
"I did. However, I suspected you'd fail just this way and I thought it would be a valuable experience for you – seeing everything around you burn down in chaos due to your actions. You are a talented ninja and, if you decide against an early retirement, you may just go far, I needed an opportunity to seed that lesson inside you and let it sprout by the time you're a jounin and I can fully trust you." Sixth finally returned to his documents, contemplating his next words and what else he would still require of the two ninja in his office.
"Lord Hokage, there is another thing. The Fire Temple…" Mana spoke up before the raised hand, still holding the pen that the man was working with silenced her.
"I know of the Fire Temple. I'd imagine so does the Feudal Lord. It is a minor issue and something the Feudal Lord won't care to even read about as well as something I can easily fix. Konohagakure and the Fire Temple have a long history of cooperation and something like the presence of a Konoha ninja during a scandalous raid will not do much in ruining it." Sixth dismissed Mana's worries over how that information would go through with the man.
"You two are now dismissed. I will let you know if I have a mission for any of you." Lord Sixth noted.
Mana gritted her teeth and her eyes sank with emotional dampness right after leaving the office. What little strength still remained in her rustled with such intensity that her little, clenched fists were shaking.
"Don't worry, Lord Sixth has not been in Shukuba. He just spoke out of his own experience. Experience acquired over years of destabilizing countries and towns, all that he knows of such matters comes from missions where destabilization was the prime objective. His view of the matter may be skewed a little." Yushijin tried calming Mana down by gently placing his hand on her shoulder. The girl collapsed on the armchair where a pair of chuunin were waiting before them and entered the office after Mana and Yushijin had left.
"What if I did ruin everything? What if everything in Shukuba will get worse or something worse than the Diamond Hand will surface and because of what I've done the town won't be strong enough to stop it?" Mana wrapped her quivering fingers around her sweaty and bandaged forehead. Slight tips of her vessels still pulsed, awkwardly jerking with pressure against her skin making the magician pull her hands away from them. She needed rest… Sleep, food…
"At any given moment everything past it can go infinitely worse. A rogue planet can hit us and blast us all into space dust. Someone, somewhere can go crazy and destroy our planet by just stomping on it pretty hard leaving us all wheezing on the vast and choking nothingness. To worry about something that is still a what-if and a speculation at best is to waste your time." The youth noted before advising that Mana finally did return home and got her long needed rest.
"Maybe you'll feel much better about it after. You sure as hell will see things more clearly after a good day of sleep." The swordsman let it be known before walking off on his own and leaving Mana by herself.
Everything after the report to the Sixth felt hazy. Like a white, thick shroud covering and distorting Mana's vision and the noises of the bustling evening town coming in muzzled like there was a sheet shoved into the magician's ears at all times. The more she approached the limit of her remaining chakra, the more the exhaustion made itself known.
Just as she expected, both of her parents were currently home. Mother was back from work. Father was resting in the guestroom by the television with the occasional break of sneaking into the kitchen by the medicine cabinet and rubbing his burnt arms with the herb ointments and downing those black market elixirs he was purchasing to numb the pain.
"Welcome home!" Father yelled out first. The man grunted during his attempts to get up from his comfortable seat through the burning sensations in his arms that were not yet calmed down by the settling in medicine.
"Mana! Welcome back!" Mother ran out from the kitchen, still wielding her greasy with some fish knife in hand. The woman leaped on top of Mana making the magician's hazy mind jump into a state of hyper-alertness.
"Knife, knife, knife… And there she goes…" Mana tried alerting her mother of the object she held in her hand while trying to wrap her arms around her daughter but the woman appeared to ignore it all and embrace the returning child. Be it a matter of great skill in knife-wielding, blind luck or experience, a bloody domestic accident was avoided.
"You were away for so long! We were beginning to get worried," the mother said before hurrying back to the kitchen.
"They don't tell much in the Administration. Some of my old service pals happened to slip some details about the mission being successful but there were some complications a couple of days ago," father patted on the magician's shoulder before leading her into the guest room and gesturing for her to settle down.
Mana just lifted her clothes up to show the large wrap of bandages around her waist and a whole assortment of scars and bruises all over her body. She had it all – kunai cuts, bumps, bruises, electric burns and some things she could barely even recount what they were.
"Should take some pages out of your old man's book. Stay back, let your plans and traps do the work." The father rubbed his stubble with unclear emotions. He did feel a sense of pride in his daughter, that much was evident but he was also quite a bit worried about the number of injuries on her. Given how he was a chuunin himself in his prime, Mana felt very humbled knowing that he had never seen or gathered injuries like these.
"Not always an option." Mana shrugged. "Most of them should be fine after some rest. Once my chakra returns to normal they'll return to a cute and pink scar tissue."
"Good thing the healthcare covers scar removal," Father grumbled before mother hurried back, having controlled the situation in the kitchen with the fish and the boiling rice.
"What was that about scars? That being said, you do look pretty roughed up, are you sure you're OK?" Mother began worrying. Given how even in her happy state she was running around the house with knives, it may have been the best for Mana's health to play it off.
"I'm really tired. I'll have my wounds licked tomorrow, first thing after a good night's sleep, I promise." Mana quickly jumped to her feet and dove under mother's arms. The woman attempted to grab hold of her only child and examine her injuries with a worrying mother's eye before the magician foiled her plans with her uncanny agility.
"Oh… If you're going to the hospital tomorrow, you may want to see your friends. Heard they've had a rough time and are recovering." Father noted. It was something that must have drizzled with the same batch of news when he asked his old friends to check into what they can find about Mana's mission. It was barely related so they were unlikely to know much more.
"Oh, right. Meiko's mother bought a whole bunch of tea from our café. What a sweet woman!" mother shook her head with regret and sorry that the two ran into a whole streak of bad luck.
"Meiko and Kiyomi are in the hospital? Why? What happened? How could they have gotten themselves injured if Hokage-sensei was with them? Then again…" Mana pondered to herself while she slowly ascended the stairs to the bathroom so she could rip those bloody clothes off and throw them out, change the bandages and maybe make some tea out of her father's painkilling herbs and hit the hay.
There was nothing to be salvaged from Mana's clothes, even her bandages were soaked with clotted blood and sweat and would have been most efficiently utilized by just being burnt in the garbage bin. None of her wounds seemed to be bleeding at the moment, Mana has been spending her time rather peacefully ever since she returned to the village so her body must have been slowly picking up the pace of regeneration. Once she actually gets some sleep and gets some of her chakra back those wounds will likely be too small to even waste the time of medical ninja…
Still, there went Mana's peaceful dreams. The whole time while bathing, changing her clothes, making tea, having some sushi rolls and heading back upstairs to finally get some sleep, Mana could not stop thinking about what could have happened to result in Meiko and Kiyomi being hospitalized. Weren't those two supposed to go back to simple missions? Those two were Mana's equals if not superiors in some ways, they would not have been taken out by just about any threat, especially with Chestnut Hanasaku watching over them.
In the late morning, when Mana woke up, she could not remember a thing she dreamt about. Despite the troublesome state of mind she was in when the magician went to sleep, she just passed out like knocked out, only to wake almost at midday the next morning.
Almost since the first moments, her bare feet slipped from the bed and onto the rugged mat under it, letting her toes wrap around the soft wool before placing all of her weight on the solid ground and getting back up, Mana felt herself stronger. Just over a single night of good, knockout sleep and a good evening meal her chakra had more than halfway recovered to its peak.
It went without saying that Mana would have rushed to the hospital. A brief visual inspection of the bruises and battlefield-patched cuts she had let her realize that the only thing troubling her would be the removal of the hasty threads from her sutured lacerations. It was quite unlikely that a medical ninja would have bothered wasting their time using medical ninjutsu on wounds this well healed and just an inch behind being completely closed up with scar tissue. Not unless Mana specifically asks them to, nicely.
After just a single night of rest and a good pair of hours in the shower and looking after herself, even the villagers were recognizing Mana on the streets again. Asking her when the next show would be, what was the deal with the cuts and bruises and all those exposed wounds on her or just nicely greeting on her way past them.
Just as expected, the medical ninja did graciously offer to finish up patching the wounds and a single dark blue medical food pill which should have helped her chakra levels return quicker than having to wait for another whole day, just in case she wanted to go back to training today. Mana did not argue much, letting the medical ninja do their thing and completely eliminating any signs of smaller wounds on Mana's body while the bigger ones required a prescription of yellow medical food pills to be taken this evening.
"This evening, Mana-san. Please remember it, from what you've told me, your body is already recovering from the stress of taking too many food pills too soon!" this was the only issue that made the medical ninja treating Mana's wounds all flustered and worried. It felt so good to finally be back home where being beaten half to death was halfway to death away from being a serious cause for worry…
Kiyomi and Meiko must have been hospitalized a good pair of days ago, as when Mana slowly stumbled into their room, the two were up to their usual tomfoolery with Kiyomi running around with Meiko's bag of snacks, yelling at the teammate that she'd have to give her a peck to the cheek before Kiyomi gives them back.
"And here to think I was worried…" Mana smiled, her voice was quite familiar to the duo, even after over a week of not seeing each other. The two turned around almost instantly before rushing to hug it out with the magician.
"What did you bring me!?" Meiko yelled out like a spoiled child during a yearly celebration making Mana rub the back of her messy hair in apology.
"Sorry, I was too worried about you two to get you anything today. Maybe I'll get something tomorrow." She tried making amends but, after this, she may have been a blood enemy to Meiko.
"So what happened?" Mana wondered out loud, finally making everything in the room get serious.
"Well…" Meiko let her voice linger while she recalled the best moment to begin her recollection of the crazy story.