Mere minutes after the nightmare ended and a friendly rustling of the nature inside and around the village took over the eerie silence the villagers began gathering to find out just what sort of tragedy befell the district of the Ninja Academy. The more the fleshy taint drew back to its source and liquefied, the bolder their approach. Preceding them was a squad of chuunin and four more jounin making it a momentous occasion – all eight of the active jounin were present in one place.

"What a horrible tragedy…" Someone in the crowd of the crying and grieving villagers cried out. There were plenty voices seconding that notion amongst the people.

"These were no weakling children. They were ninja-in-training, being taught to be ready to sacrifice their lives for their village." Kusagoro replied with a hint of coldness towards the villager but his expression was full of sadness as well. It was just one of his own signature style of sadness. Much more preserved. If this man ever shed tears, he did so in silence and in extreme moderation.

Mana glared at Kiyomi's direction. While the rest of the jounin and chuunin were managing the zone of the event, the magician slowly approached the seemingly unconscious friend of hers. She looked so tranquil. Now that the contamination that had taken her over ceased, Mana had no reservations about feeling her comrade's chakra and it was still slowly rustling in her chest.

She did not fail her friend completely. Regardless, the last words Mana said on the matter and the difficult call she made continued to boil in the magician's chest. It was at times like this that the girl felt glad that her friend was sleeping peacefully since she'd be too ashamed to look Kiyomi in the eyes if she was awake.

Back where the wall of ninja held the civilians at bay, the injured were getting treatment, and Shibari's body was being concealed and being looked at by Shinigami and Sin-Eaters to remove any unforeseen traps or complications after her unusual cause of death, Kusagoro approached Dorimi and pressed his hand against his shoulder.

"I feel bad for your loss." Kusagoro sighed. There was none of the anger and superiority or the aggression that the Jugo showed his punier colleague before or even a hint of the bully-victim relationship these two displayed earlier. Loss seemed to unite people like nothing else.

Dorimi just sighed. The platform of dirt he had created before using his unique battlefield morphing abilities and techniques crumbled to dry dirt. The man sat down on a piece of rubble, unzipped his flak jacket and rubbed the back of his neck with nervousness reeking from his movements.

"Were you two… You know?" The Jugo wondered.

"No, we were just close friends. Every achievement we have reached we have done together. We were each other's link with who we were. No challenge seemed too great because at any time we could look at each other and see someone just like the other walking with them right by their side." Dorimi replied. He smiled as his eyes closed and his memory wandered back to the times before.

"I lost my closest friends pretty recently too… Unlike your case, it was sort of my fault."

"Oh, that's not a very healthy thing to…"

"Can it. They left with me because of my wish to entertain myself. To look back before there were so many leashes and chains. They died out there while they were with me." Kusagoro interrupted his grieving colleague.

"I still think you really shouldn't blame yourself for that. That kind of thing just isn't healthy, Kusagoro." Dorimi shrugged while he rubbed his tired and beaten face with his hands. His hands were still shaking as an aftereffect of the horrors he had seen and felt inside that dreaded building.

"I've gone far past just blaming myself. I decided that all I could do was to carry on and do right by those memories. I feel bad for the loss of your friend, I really do, but one thing I won't let you do is just sit still and keep facing back while every obstacle ahead is bumping into your exposed back. You hear me?" The man spoke with a certain calm that felt both ominous and assuring at the same time.

"Yeah, Shibari probably would not have liked me dwelling on it for too long." Dorimi stood back up and stretched out before he walked off to join the cleanup effort. His ground-shaping abilities would have done wonders cleaning this place up as well as holding people away from a place that could have still been an active site of blemish, for all anyone knew.

Kiyomi's eyes moved. It looked for a moment like something was bumping from inside at a closed and locked door before busting it down. Almost at the same time, a familiar sight of a handful of ninja arriving at the scene met Mana's eye by alerting her sensory. While there appeared to be nothing of note to their chakra signatures, their bright and long hair almost insisted that it was a Yamanaka clan party that arrived at the scene.

Mana wondered if these villagers would have enough common sense not to throw themselves at the bright-haired brigade. People in the face of a horrific tragedy often gave in to their more primitive and fear-fueled selves and such people would not have needed much sense or proof to justify their flying fists and sharp objects that just got in their way.

Luckily, whether it was from the fear of the serious-looking faces and the considerable abilities and strength of the arriving Yamanaka party or their better senses triumphing for once, the villagers abstained from causing a ruckus and just let the Yamanaka through without any fight or mean-spirited comments.

Kiyomi opened her eyes, visibly weakened by the strain and drain of the experience she went through and clutching at her aching ribs. Her bright, blond hair flowed wildly across the ground where she laid, the only order they obeyed was good old gravity while it settled down somewhat once the girl sat up.

The Yamanaka extended her hand at Mana while the other still clenched at her sides. The magician had enough sense to help her hurting friend up but her entire nervous system was working through something of a short-fuse situation deep inside. Mana just could not force herself to look at her friend and, once her friend was distracted by the arriving Yamanaka party, when she finally gathered the strength to look at her friend, she saw nothing but confusion and betrayal in her face.

Once her friend was up on her feet and had the support of possibly the last support beam left standing, Mana backed up. She just wanted to disappear right now. She deserved to. If only she knew how long she hesitated before sentencing her friend to death, then she would know just exactly how crooked and rotten her soul was…

"I'm… I." Mana tried to apologize. After all, while she did not know what would happen that day, she was the one who called her friend up here for this experience. The shame was too great even for that simple notion.

"I probably said and did some mean things, huh?" Kiyomi rubbed the back of her neck looking just as ashamed as Mana was. She looked pretty glad that her friend at the very least helped her up.

"How much of what happened did you hear from inside?" Mana wondered while the Yamanaka were working out something with the other ninja and some of their representatives moved in to retrieve Kiyomi. Upon listening in to the serious conversations and reports going on back there Mana could pick up words like "moved" and "Yamanaka Resort" and something with Uchiha.

To hell with the Uchiha, even while the two clans have not been at the best of relationships right now, the entire village may not have liked Yamanaka all too much at the moment despite none of this being Kiyomi's fault.

"I… Everything. I was in charge of every word, every punch but… I felt different. Like… It all felt just so right to do… All my convictions, all that drives me… All of that felt like everything I was doing was just that." Kiyomi mumbled something out before a quartet of Yamanaka ninja approached and less than politely moved Mana out of the way.

"I'm… About what I said… I…" Mana tried to fight both her own inner destructive flames and the rather physical attempts of the Yamanaka to move her away from Kiyomi.

"It's okay, I probably would have said the same…" Kiyomi looked away. Her eyes and her face, once reminded of what happened inside that classroom, said the exact opposite. Once Kiyomi was quickly moved away by the blond blitzes of the Yamanaka ninja, Mana was left all alone in the rubble to contemplate on what possibly could have been irreparable damage to one of her most precious friendships.

"You did good kid. I may have underestimated you a bit…" Kusagoro's voice reached out for Mana's drifting mind with an attempt to drag her back. Up or down, it was too hard to tell…

"I better help with the cleanup…" Mana pocketed the entire conversation. Choosing to close it into a remote closet and work through her feelings of shame and regret.

After Mana immediately headed for the Administration to report on her mission, despite her less than ideal state of mind for such an efficient fulfillment of her duty, she was asked to go home and rest and report together with the entire group that has intercepted the tragic event and stopped it.

That was probably the first time that Mana saw what happened that way as a heroic thing in any way, shape, or form. In her mind, the event in the Ninja Academy was nothing but needless deaths of some children, her irreparably damaging the relationship between her and one of her best friends and the causation of the damage to the village that was caused as well as the injury or death of plenty of innocent civilians who did not evacuate in time.

From what Mana could gather from the reports on television and the papers, the casualties were few. A pair of handfuls of children in the Academy as well as several unfortunate civilian casualties. Father mentioned that some lower-ranking ninja also got injured with two even getting killed. Some of his old friends worked with the unfortunate shinobi during the incident and saw it happen.

As far as Mana knew, it was a tragedy. No matter how wide the intended scope of the tragedy was, how controlled the number of casualties was and how much potential damage was avoided.

Once the summon finally came in and Mana reported to the Hokage's office she was asked to join the ranks of the reporting ninja. Dorimi looked surprisingly fit. He had changed his look somewhat and Mana could feel that his chakra signature had grown a little. The increase in power was emanating from his body while the increase in skill was evident from the confidence he displayed.

Despite the growth in physical appearance and fitness, Mana wondered if the jounin was truly coping with the loss fruitfully. Such efficient gains in such short periods of time were not very healthy and tended to be reachable through very lengthy and grueling, relentless training sessions. As someone who was desperate to improve herself so she could fit her own merciless standards, Mana knew all about that kind of desperation…

During the report Mana mostly stayed silent, letting her more experienced and distinguished colleagues speak. After all, she was only present because of her closeness to Kiyomi and she somehow managed to squander even that. While the two were most likely still friends, she'd be naïve to think that their relationship would not change after what Mana had said. Even if the residual brutality and irritation from the exposure to the blemish of the kidnappers' chakra was completely removed from Kiyomi's system.

"Alright. We can take it from here. Thank you for your report and service." Lord Sixth nodded at the line of jounin and Mana, expressing his permission for the group to leave. "Could Nakotsumi Mana please stay for a short while to settle the matter of her mission?" He asked shortly afterward.

While the jounin vacated the office, Mana was left to awkwardly stare at the ground with her blank stare. She felt like after a good beating recently. The kind of beating that came after a streak of pointless vanity and the kind that humbled more than anything else.

"I don't think I need to tell you that there's no way I can pass this mission as completed?" Sixth shook his head. Truthfully, the man looked just as tired as Mana was despite not peeking his nose outside the Administration. As the head of the village, the duty of the Hokage was to ensure that the village was operational and handle the logistics of solving this incident rather than participate in it himself.

Regardless, while a blank of paper was weightless as a feather, as the boxes stacked on, they could have amassed impressive weights on one's consciousness and stamina. Especially when the papers were not just black printed word on a white canvas but reports of casualties and losses. Ones that the leader should have prevented or minimized.

"I understand." Mana bowed.

"I mean the objective of your mission was to substitute the Academy teacher but at the end of the day, there was no Academy left standing." Lord Sixth attempted to justify his train of thought to Mana as if the magician even needed a justification. She was no capricious child. She had lost that privilege long ago…

"Nobody is holding anything that happened against you." The Sixth's assistant was quick to pitch in. "It is important that you understand that this is just paperwork. We are quite content with your performance and, judging everything said in the report, we can tell that your superiors were rather impressed with your work. You held your own amongst higher-ranking ninja. That is commendable."

Mana wanted to smile and bow, try and at the very least lie about being grateful for all the words that were supposed to soften the impacts that were smashing her figurative ribs to figurative mush until nothing but bone dust remained. Even she was not that good of an actor. If an experienced entertainer couldn't smile and act through an experience like this, could she really be blamed for a lack of etiquette?

"Excuse me, Lord Sixth but… I'm just being curious, what will happen to Kiyomi?" Mana asked the only question where she did not need to lie about her emotions or fake caring. It was not even that she wanted or liked lying or putting on a mask, in fact, it made her hate herself, even more, every time she did something like that.

"The tensions with the Yamanaka are certainly high. In all honesty, they did not tell even me about their plans. It is certainly a very interesting situation…" the man replied. Mana was grateful that he, at the very least, understood the magician's need to know about the fate of her friend.

"Interesting?" Mana growled with a less than polite tone to use in front of a superior.

"Sorry… Old habits. I suppose now that I'm not the one destabilizing a country but the one who's supposed to handle the situation, I shouldn't express myself that way." Lord Sixth shrugged and rubbed his tired face. "In any case, a lot about the situation with the Yamanaka is quite confidential and I cannot entrust that information to someone who is not an A-Rank ninja."

"You mean someone who would be willing to snuff out the entire clan if need be?" Mana was not sure what got into her. The only two things that were going through her mind were the similarities between her own predecessors and the Yamanaka clan. Both were treasured before something unfortunate and out of their control made them lose favor at drastic speed.

It was no secret that the Uchiha were feuding with the Yamanaka after decades of unconfronted rivalry due to the incident of the lost Sharingan eyes. It was even less of a secret which clan Konoha would ally with if the two clans came to blows and which one would be out of the village's favor.

"The only reason I am not suspending you is because I know how hard this hit you. I will give you some time to deal with this, now get out of my office." Lord Sixth replied to Mana's less than desirable remark with a cold glare and a rather quiet tone for what the magician expected to be an actual outrage. As someone who worked in a unit of underground Black Ops, Lord Sixth really knew how to instill fear and force people to listen to him without raising his voice.

Mana removed herself as the Hokage ordered her to, finally finding inside her the decency to bow and excuse herself as per the proper reporting procedure. She did lose it in there… The magician had never really spoken to anyone about the painful history of her predecessors because she never really thought it was that much of a painful topic to her. It always sounded like just another chapter of bloody history, even if it had interesting ties to her own family.

It was not until signs of history repeating itself surfaced that Mana realized just how much of an exposed nerve this may have been with her. Maybe it was for the better that she was unofficially taken off-duty for a short while. She probably should have told Lord Sixth about the Yamanaka Resort and the history the place had with Kiyomi and the Yamanaka elite but, at the moment, she felt much closer to the Yamanaka than she did with her own home village.

That was a scary thought to foster. One that Mana quickly swallowed and buried under tons of ordinary worries.