The white of Mana's bedroom ceiling was beginning to blur and take shapes and appear in patterns in the middle of the night from the focus of the girl's eyes resting on it for an extended period of time. The air at this time of spring was still relatively chilly, especially so late at night so Mana enjoyed the artificial comfort of wrapping herself up in her bed cover.
There may have been a cause for sadness that night. The date with Kouta went relatively great and she didn't mess it up completely. While she was hanging out with the boy, Mana only had to half-ass her attempts at hiding away the way she really felt to manage that. That was one of the reasons why the magician loved that young man so much.
He had no business working himself over something completely trivial like this. Kouta was pretty sensitive and he had a nasty habit of often going out of his way to do something stupid for Mana. Then again, perhaps it was a bit hypocritical of the magician to think this way when she herself did the same thing constantly and viewed it as another one of her responsibilities to do so.
All sides of Mana agreed with the notion that Kouta was best seeing Mana happy and having completely moved past the insane battle with the Yamata no Orochi. As far as he was concerned, Mana forgot having lost a battle she bet her ideology on and it did not matter to her that the last material memento of her teammate was scattered all over Fire Country.
The magician sighed, she switched sides on which she laid hoping that there'd be more success in finally drifting away into nocturnal slumber, if not, then eventually, at the very least.
"This is pointless…" Seiga grumbled while a fist of a black, armored gauntlet blew past the walls protecting Mana's secrets inside her mind.
The economy behind that woman's mental assaults was impeccable. She knew at all times how much focus and effort was needed to blow past any defenses, she wasted no chakra, even now she did not generate an entire giant demon to decimate Mana's fortifications, she merely created its gauntlet – the only required part to efficiently humiliate Mana.
"I've seen babies with better skills at protecting their mind. That is the point of our training, isn't it?" Seiga worked herself up. "This was so pathetic I am beginning to wonder if I understood the point of this training right, to begin with."
Mana stood back up, massaging the pulsing veins on her temples and the torturous pressure on her forehead. This was just what she needed in her life, getting verbally belittled while the entirety of her mind was getting probed and sacked dry and leaving her with a mother of all migraines.
"Ma'am, it does not look like this training session is all that productive." The ninja overseeing the training and assisting in any way he was needed butt in. "Perhaps it would be for the best to call it quits for today."
"No." Seiga locked her arms tightly over her chest while her incinerating glare appeared to peel away everything Mana built around herself to try and protect her inner self without requiring any genjutsu or hijutsu to do so. "Not just today. It is pointless for you to come here until you sort out whatever's wrong with you."
Mana stood up with her eyes closed so that her tears did not show. Maybe Seiga knew that the magician was about to break out into them, maybe the blackness around them concealed the painful crystals in Mana's eyes well enough that without unnatural measures it was impossible to tell. Regardless, tears meant suffering and someone who was suffering was weak, Mana did not have the luxury to be seen as weak right now.
The magician bowed to the head of the Intelligence Division and the officer overseeing the training and head for the door. By now she's come to this dark room many enough times to memorize this place and not require help to find the door, even if the better senses would have still had a ninja of the Intelligence Division lead the magician to the door, by now they trusted her enough not to bother, it seemed.
Seiga's words were pretty cruel but… They were also resonating. Seiga was not a woman who would have just needlessly belittled Mana. There had to be something in her words, the magician had noticed a trend in the way she was being trained. Because Mana's entire soul was exposed to Seiga when her defenses crumbled, the woman spoke to Mana about those instances as if it was a state-kept secret, confidential information almost.
Then again, perhaps whatever laid at Mana's core was so ravaged and twisted that it turned the woman off from training the magician ever again since that would have entailed having to see that hidden away rot once more? Maybe the conclusion of the battle with Yamata just finalized the heist of whatever once laid in the treasure chambers of Mana's mental fortress?
No. Seiga was a woman who had been in charge of the Intelligence Division of a handful of years now, she had dealt with all sorts of criminals and madmen. The mental interrogation was mandatory to criminals that were being sent to Jigoku through the ordinary procedure which meant that there was more than just a possibility that Seiga had been exposed to the worst her village had to offer.
While some part of Mana would have been content on a very selfish and childish way if her own problems were proven to be so bad that they turned off a hardened woman like Seiga, on a deeper and more truthful level the magician knew that to not be the case. The key must have been inside what Seiga told the magician, while still keeping up her signature subtlety. Mana may have struggled to believe it but the verbal beatdown she got, in the end, was Seiga being subtle…
A pair of chakra signatures broke the magician out of her self-examining thoughts. The girl looked up and away, the signatures flared up in a suspicious way that very few signatures behaved in while inside a village. By now she was used to walking around a ninja village and feeling chuunin and even jounin walk around in their lax states, the warmth of their suns was beginning to feel almost tolerable.
It was not the size of these two signatures but rather the peculiar manner in which they flared up and then disappeared again that tipped the magician off. Mana held her newly made sealing hat tighter so that it did not slip from her head while she dashed up the building and onto a wire for a better vantage point. Chakra signatures were a lot like radio signals, all sorts of things may have interrupted a clear reading ranging from thick and dense objects to other chakra signatures.
The signatures happened to slip away. Given how they started out in a completely suppressed state, that was not too weird to believe. They flared back up and then just gone away. For some reason that really annoyed Mana, like a fly that kept one awake in early summer mornings. She had to check the place out at the very least, just to find absolutely nothing so she could return to her self-nagging.
"I'd be an ideal wife, really." Mana cracked a grin after that last thought. "I spend way too much time nagging myself not to satisfy my nagging quota…"
The magician's sandals firmly landed on the ground while a weak pulse of Wind Release chakra softened her fall. It was a much cheaper alternative to using chakra augmentation to weaken the impact of this aerial dive to the location Mana thought she last sensed the flare of chakra. What she found there was not what she expected to find nor was it nothing.
"Kidenshi-senpai," Mana spoke up with a hint of worry in her voice. A young man she knew from the Ninja Academy who was a year or two older than her and graduated during one of her more difficult early years was lying on the ground in the trash which was busted and scattered all over the young man, his little Pomeranian, and the alleyway.
He was completely out, his little fluffball was not though. It was barking at Mana quite passionately but it did not look aggressive, it looked frightened. Given the magician's own relative experience to getting one's ass handed to them in battle, she did not believe that Kidenshi's injuries were lethal. The girl tried her best at picking the young man up but doing so just with her physical strength would have been a fool's errand.
The elderly Pomeranian gripped the collar of the unconscious Inuzuka and took into the air. Mana was shocked to see the might and vigor in the little furball's movements. It lifted its vastly larger summoner clean off the ground and leaped all the way to the roof from the alleyway while in a semi-injured state.
Mana worked through her hand seals in less than a fraction of a moment and used the currents of wind of her Mystical Wings to elevate her to the roof after the canine.
"You'll work yourself to your grave if you drag Kidenshi-senpai around like this. Please let me carry you both." The magician pleaded the dog with a head bow. The dog just turned its head looking at Mana as if she was some sort of an idiot, then again, she was trying to talk to a dog…
This required an extra set of hands, whatever did this to Kidenshi Inuzuka of Team Walnut may have become the village's problem quite soon and Mana needed all of her rather massive chakra signature as much in fighting shape as it could have been. Augmentations were dangerous, of all people, Mana should have known it the best. The girl cocked her head aside, letting her new and shiny hat tumble down her shoulder and arm before she flipped it in the air again and placed her hand inside it.
A bright, azure glow burst from the end of the hat while Mana tried her best to pull Usuzoku or one of her new rabbit partners who have come to trust her after all the magician has done for the species out of the top hat. Instead, pistachio-brown fluff appeared from the sealing dimension while a very slick shape of a female rabbit burst from the hat.
"Ummm… Okay…" Mana blinked a pair of times in confusion. "This has really never happened before but…"
The female rabbit leaped at Mana and wrapped her arms around the magician's neck with a surprising amount of force. For all the irrational paranoia Mana had about chakra augmentation, she was forced to do all she could to survive getting her neck snapped and her back broken by this passionate display of affection.
"Oh my god! It's Nakotsumi Mana-san! I have been your biggest fan for like WEEKS!" the rabbit yelled out. "I even signed up with Usuzoku-sensei to train with him so that I could one day meet you because he's kinda like… I dunno… It seems you two have like a thing going on, like a working relationship…"
The rabbit then pulled out a letter from the behind pocket of her jean-shorts and handed it to Mana. Hearing the nervous barking of the little Pomeranian that still clutched its Inuzuka partner in its fangs making the barking end up coming out in an oddly tuned combo of both growling and howling, the magician opened the letter for a quick skim.
"She's your problem now. Usuzoku…" Mana mumbled to herself while she skimmed over the much briefer than she thought letter.
"Name's Usubane, ma'am! Not gonna let ya down!" the rabbit went as far as to playfully salute Mana before returning to her silly but very energetic grin.
"Okay… So… This may have been unexpected to literally everyone but, to let it slip, I am going to need you to carry that young man to the Konohagakure Hospital." Mana tried taking it slow with the overly energetic rabbit. There was this odd thing that Usubane did where she banged her ears against one another making this oddly powerful thud come out, it must have been an alternative to tapping one's feet on the ground of nervousness.
"No problem! Will be done!" the rabbit saluted Mana again before dashing to the unconscious Inuzuka and outright peeling it away from the jaws of the properly pissed off Pomeranian before flipping it on her shoulders.
Given how Kidenshi's dog was not quite in a playful mood, it leaped at Usubane with a defensive bite. Must not have wanted this rabbit it just saw for the first time ever handling its partner but Usubane's feet moved lightning-fast. Mana's jaw dropped from both the insanity of the ongoing situation and the awesome physical prowess of Usubane's lower body.
The magician leaped after the rabbit, she was impressed. Mana had to intensify her Mystical Wings and not only use the full hand seal version of the jutsu but also the proper name-calling of the technique to perform it in a perfected enough state to catch up to the heaven-piercing arrow of the Pomeranian ball of fluff. She descended back on the rooftop shortly, only to see that both Kidenshi and Usubane were nowhere to be seen.
After a heavy sigh, Mana examined the canine fur-ball only to see that while it was certainly shaken by the sky-reaching experience, it was mostly devoid of any injuries except those it had already sustained in the battle that ended up incapacitating its partner.
"Mana-san! I am tremendously sorry!" Usubane bowed almost a full ninety degrees, dropping Kidenshi off her shoulder in the process which forced the rabbit to take a sick nosedive down and pick the falling Inuzuka back up before kicking her feet off the ground and leaping back to the roof Mana was on. "I just now realized I have never been in this Konohagakure Hospital and therefore do not know the directions, ma'am!"
"It's… Fine. I meant I will show you where it was." Mana rubbed her tired and still tremendously hurting temples. "I am well aware it is your first time inside Konoha."
"Oh, that is very fortunate, because otherwise, I'd have been unable to finish my task and ended up disappointing Mana-san and… Oh boy… I would not like that! Nope, not at all! I'd probably throw myself off a mountain if I ever disappointed Mana-san!" Usubane bowed probably a hundred more times in a flurry of bows while doing her best to keep the shaking and unconscious Inuzuka tightly on her shoulder.
It was fortunate that the young man remained unconscious after all that free-falling and shaking because explaining this entire shitshow to him would have cost a lot of time. Without bothering to do anything that would further postpone Kidenshi's treatment, Mana took off with the Inuzuka's Pomeranian still tightly in her clutch. She could feel Usubane following Mana and staying relatively close.
This teen rabbit was quite energetic and physically impressively built. Her previously displayed speed and strength as well as precision, which was unlike anything fighters of her age would have been capable of, were also quite impressive. It was not too difficult to see why Usuzoku would have taken up training this teen but also it was not entirely impossible to see why he got rid of her this way.
"You did not correct me," Mana yelled out so that Usubane who was staying neatly in line behind her would hear.
The two landed nearby the Konohagakure Hospital in mere moments and rushed into the building, giving the Pomeranian as well as the Inuzuka to whoever took them off their hands before the teen rabbit could even deal with the magician's question.
"Correct you on what, Mana-san?" she inquired.
"On this being your first time in Konoha. It is not." Mana turned at the rabbit while locking her own hands over her chest, mirroring the intensity of drilling that Seiga showed her this morning. The magician had the experience first-hand of how scary that was when performed by someone whom you were even remotely admiring.
"Oh… Well… I may have… Been here before… But how would you know, Mana-san!?" Usubane started getting all flustered.
"These clothes have been bought in our second-hand shops. I shop for clothes quite often and have a deal with one of the clothes stores for production of my uniforms that keep getting busted up onstage or completely torn in battle all the time." Mana put together.
"Well… I may have… Watched over you from afar a time or two…" Usubane dragged her foot across the floor.
"Impossible, I would have sensed you." Mana raised an eyebrow. The possibility of her being tracked from behind was not entirely out of the question as even sensors could get tracked by ninja that suppressed their chakra or otherwise utilized some of the weaknesses that the unpolished chakra sensory possessed but it would have been quite difficult and very unlikely.
"Maybe, but I was pretty far away. A couple of times I almost stepped into your range, just to flirt with the idea of Mana-san noticing me but… I stepped back at the last second! It was so intense, my heart was pounding so hard!" the rabbit kept rubbing her flustered cheeks that, had she not been softly furred, would have been blushing, without a ghost of a doubt.
"Ummm…" Mana tried coming up with a way to properly respond to that.
"Plus, I'm not sure if you would have even noticed me even if I stepped into your range. I mean I would have felt like just your average ninja inside a ninja village, nothing wrong with that, right? Nothing suspicious about little old me at all!" Usubane grinned from one ear to another. The intensity of her reactions appeared to match those of a baby.
"Not to mention how you were swooning all over Kouta-san in those moments, I don't think you'd have noticed an ivory-whale crashing from the stratosphere right behind you." The rabbit waved her hand while laughing to herself. "You make such an amazing couple though! I want you to know, Mana-san, if anyone ever looks at Kouta-san the wrong way, I'm always ready to rough them up!" the teen rabbit declared with flames erupting from her focused and passionate gaze, nearly covering her rock-hard fist which she raised up as a display of her devotion to this noble cause.
This was inevitably going to be one of those affairs…