"Alright, so this just about does it with the tour of the place. My name's Kuribira Mikapen, I'm one of several assistants here. It's been my assignment to show you around a bit. If you have any questions, I'd appreciate them because I'm sort of running out of things to say…" the cheerful VP officer got a little embarrassed at the end.
"So I'm assuming you will want me to be plugged into that thing?" Mana wondered, pointing at the Liquid Village Sensory System.
"Ummm… Well… Not really, you see, you will need to read through and sign a bunch of manuals before you can do that. There's just too much that can go wrong. We also need to test your instincts and sensory before plugging you in." Kuribira replied. She was reacting with a sip of vibrancy to her gestures, which was both refreshing and a little bit nostalgic to see as it reminded the magician of an old friend somewhat.
"Truth be told, we had no idea just how familiar you'll be with what we do here and how skilled you will be. Obviously, someone of your experience and skill shouldn't be used for the menial labor we normally use the genin that come to work here. I should probably show you to the boss. He'll know what to do with you." The woman smiled ecstatically before firing off at the direction of an office far to the east and higher up, making her way through a couple of floors of stone stairs in cases lit entirely by torches.
"Boss, we have our recruit. Just one but what a recruit it is! Mana, this is Uzumaki Midoben" The woman grinned before turning and gesturing at Mana with an open hand as if showcasing the magician girl to her superior.
A man with a massive and spiky hairdo extending slightly past his shoulders turned at Mana, having been staring at a blinking colorless screen positioned on a space etched into stone. It appeared like a much cruder and more primitive version of the computers Mana saw around in Naruto's universe from way back.
"Hmph, indeed." The man closed his eyes. "It is troubling. The Golden Child and the star of the Chuunin Exams is an unexpected aide."
While the man turned around and let the long coat tied around his neck by its sleeves flip about, Mana noticed his formal wear and the peculiar striped vest that covered it instead of the usual flak jacket. Despite the fact that it may have just been a stylish fashion statement, the magician had an odd feeling about the piece of clothing. She also noticed a teacup-sized contraption hanging around the man's ear extending a small rod with a microphone grill at the end extending almost to the middle of the man's mouth.
While the boss of VP crossed his arms and lowered his head, allowing his slightly longer brown hair to cover his closed eyes as he pondered in thought Mana noticed the man's build. The chief village protector was a tall individual, a good head and a bit taller than the magician, even though the general fact was not much of a feat but the amount by which this fact was proven true was indeed notable in this case. His musculature also suggested at least adequate knowledge of physical combat or body training.
"Well… It cannot be helped. Give her the base briefing and let her out with some of the field operatives to work the streets just for today. Then we'll see where we can use you from there…" the man shrugged in a very undignified and un-leader-like manner. It seemed that even the usually goofy Kuribira looked a bit bemused and embarrassed by the odd gesture of her boss.
"With all due respect, Sir." Mana stepped out. This was pretty unorthodox from a lowly aide of an institution to do so boldly but all the cues told Mana she may have had a bit more bargaining space than usual. "I'd like to work on something pretty important to both of us. It is a possible threat to the village security and it is very important to me that it is dealt with."
"Oh?" the boss of VP called Mana's move letting Kuribira breathe a little bit easier after the scare that Mana gave her initially with her boldness. "I don't believe that you would have intel that the VP does not possess but humor me. In the case that you do, it may just prove to be interesting."
"A good week ago there was an incident within the village walls. A cult that functioned inside the village was exposed and brought into the light and the source behind all of the mysterious disappearances was unearthed." Mana spoke up. Judging from the look on the chief's face he was not amused by this, then again, this was hardly news even for a common villager at this point. It was hard to maintain something as literally ground-shaking as that hidden for this long even in a ninja village.
"I am most interested in finding and bringing the poor people that were being used in the plots of this cult. Cooperating with the Allied Ninja I already managed to help a handful of the disappeared villagers and maybe the rest are still not gone from the village." Mana explained. "This Liquid Village Sensory System seems very impressive, I am sure that it could be of great use."
"That's your problem." The Village Protection boss turned around, wrapping his arms around one another in a static position behind his back while he glared back at the static on his monitor that had recently changed the colorless and low-definition view. "You rush things too much. You've not yet read the manual of how the Liquid Village Sensory System works. if you did you'd have known that it has a certain set of limitations even while it is modeled after the most modern and amazing barrier-based village protection system ever made – the Kumogakure's"
"Kumogakure's?" Mana wondered out loud. "I'd have thought that Kirigakure would have the most amazing barriers given their long history with the craft and their prodigious Barrier Corps."
"Kirigakure ninja are still the best at barrier ninjutsu, however, Kirigakure can no longer properly pay their specialists after their fiasco at the most recent Kage Summit. The talent is leaking and it is leaking to Kumogakure. It is the type of political and military processes that Lady Fifth could not read into and because of it our positions weakened significantly." The man lowered his head again, staring at one of the somberly rustling candle flames on the wall.
"Well, if it is of any use to you, Sir, I have sensed the Congregation before. I am very confident that I can identify their signatures if I am within at least a good fifty meters on the ground. With the Liquid Village Sensory System, who knows how efficiently I could pin them down if they're inside our walls." Mana shrugged.
"Hmmm… Interesting. Regardless of this fact, my call does not change. Accompany some actual Village Protection ninja and help them however you can. I'll let their evaluation of your performance tip the scales." The man nodded.
The very first thing that Mana ended up getting involved in was accompanying a large and bulky ninja dressed in formal, Village Protection-type mesh of the Konoha uniform to the village gate. She did not get to find out too much about her companion shortly after they were introduced to each other given how much Kuribira was talking and how enthusiastic she was describing the fun they were having.
"So 'yer some real magician type, huh?" the giant asked giving Mana a limited glance with the very ends of his eyes. His voice was pretty goofy for his size and bulk, he probably sounded a little puny and screechy if Mana was to evaluate it while being pressed to a wall with a sword to her throat. The man also played with his tongue in his mouth a lot, almost like it made it difficult for him to breathe while lying still, which seemed unlikely given the size of the man's noodle.
"Ehm… Not really…" Mana squinted a little. She did not want to seem too harsh on the man but her shows were mostly appealing to literal children and, at some point, one should have figured out that she was all smoke and mirrors. Then again, that was not something she bragged about or something too innately obvious so perhaps this man was just a bit dense or just a devout believer in the mystical despite life being pretty damned mystical all by itself.
"Oh, shoot. That's weird. So yer just doin' ninjutsu then in front of people? And they pay you for it? That's pretty cool. I wish I thought of that…" the giant smiled, Mana was quite pleasantly surprised to see some genuine feeling behind that mimic. Too many ninja may have dismissed or mocked Mana for using ninjutsu on the stage and showing it off to common folk during her off-hours to great public appeal but this man seemed almost as dazzled by it as one would have been by actual magic being performed in front of them.
"I'm Chogen, Chogen Akimichi!" the man extended his massive hand. Mana was surprised to see while feeling the man's immensely powerful shake and seeing his mighty hand in the clear that this Akimichi ninja was pure muscle but not in the body-ailing way that most physical ninja achieved it. Chogen had a more strongman type of build. His facial hair was simply too much of an artistic statement to make out the usual Akimichi face-paint, which was the main reason why Mana took this long to identify the heritage of this man.
"I don't think I need to introduce myself, huh?" Mana blushed squeezing the man's hand. She's pressed Meiko's hand far too often to fall for the usual strongman presses the hand hard and almost crushes it routine. Even if it was not intentional, the magician was prepared for the show of the strength coming from her partner with subtle augmentations that prevented the agony while still being harmless enough to let a vague stream of pain through.
"Why?" Chogen opened his eyes wide. He genuinely looked confused. It appeared that there would be no end to social misunderstandings that day although Mana was not quite sure what it was exactly that she did wrong in this case.
"Ummm… You just spoke about my magic shows. "I figured you'd know enough about me, most of the people do, plus, didn't Kuribira-san introduce me to you the moment we were paired?" Mana replied looking a bit embarrassed by the fact she may have shown herself to be a bit arrogant by simply assuming everyone knew everything about her because of the relative fame she's garnered at this point.
"Ha! That's right!" Chogen rubbed the back of his head while he swung his other, free arm in a wild smack right at Mana's general direction. This was just another trait of people that behaved just like Meiko that the magician should have caught on to but, much to her great shame, she did not. The smack sent the magician flying forward and Mana had just about busted her face, nose-first into the dirt before her partner caught her by her waist. "Heh, sorry." He chuckled.
"I'm sure it happens a lot and you did not mean anything by it." Mana smiled, swallowing down the tremendous hurt on her own just barely registerable as existent pride. "So what is exactly that we're about to do? How can I help?"
"Oh? Nothin' too serious. Just take the statements from the gate guards about an incident, see what we can dig up today about that incident." Chogen grinned. He looked quite excited about what appeared to be a simple morning routine in his profession.
"Incident?" Mana blinked rapidly.
"Yeah, the Police Force let us know about some foreign goods found at the hands of local criminal small-fry. We've gots to catch the bad guys." Chogen stretched his massive hands out as if practicing said catching that he'd be doing.
Chogen was not the best source for information, it seemed, although from what she has been told Mana managed to piece together exactly what he was supposed to tell her. There must have been a smuggling element at play, some rogues have been bringing in foreign goods without dealing with the appropriate procedures involved with such a business venture. They felt like no custom check or taxes were necessary.
If these smugglers managed to slip their goods in without being felt up and registered on the Liquid Village Sensory System, they were a potential threat to village security and therefore a very important VP priority case. There was a hole in the protection system of the village wall, one that could be sold to potential enemies like the rogue ninja who could use it to freely slip in and out of the village.
Just like the boss of the VP implied, Mana had not read the manuals describing all the intricacies of the Liquid Village Sensory system but it was a combination of sensory and barrier ninjutsu. That implied that there was a barrier placed somewhere, Mana could only assume it was at the edge of the village territory, whenever that invisible and ethereal barrier was passed, the signature must have registered somewhere in the receivers of the system. That was the point of all those symbols that were lighting up when Mana first saw the massive liquid sphere before.
"Hey, it's the Village Protection, Chogen Akimichi. Tell us about anythin' suspicious ye may 'ave seen last week." The gentle giant spoke to the gate guard while Mana examined the village walls and the gate right in the center.
It looked just like another mass of concrete dyed snow-white with some classical-styled roof tiles on top. Truthfully, the fortifications of the village wall were far beyond that. They had to be if they meant to withstand even a mean glare at its direction from an average ranked ninja.
Mana was not yet too skilled with sensing the chakra present in inanimate objects too clearly but even she could perceive the immense force flowing through this fortification. At any given moment the wall was imbued with the chakra of worth a hundred strong ninja and the chakra was continuously resealed every time the wall was damaged even the tiniest bit.
To say that was it was to ignore the hundreds of intricate supplementary seals placed on the bunch of blocks. Some of them alerted the target facility every time the wall was as much as scratched, some of them emitted a weak sensory field all of themselves and some supplemented and observed the level of chakra still left imbued into the Konohagakure walls. And these were just the defenses Mana knew about. Even someone like Guru Ayushi chose not to invade the village and scheme from the shadows even while at his strongest and most confident.
"Listen, I can't tell you anything too special. The reports clearly don't indicate anything extraordinary having transpired at any point the last week." The gate guards squirmed a little. Technically the VP ninja were their superiors, not in any official manner but in more of an unwritten hierarchy that had to be maintained. Still, even these guys perceived that Chogen was not the brightest and most pleasant people to have bureaucratic sort of business with.
"Oh yeah? Well then, how did the bad guys have the things that the other guys gave them the things they had?" Chogen pieced together the type of sentence that'd give scholars nightmares while he pressed his hefty hands to his hips.
Mana approached the stand. With a slow and questioning gesture, she questioned the gate guards if she could flip through the records they kept of the entirety of last week's activities by the gate.
"Hey, come on, we can't just let anyone browse through confidential village information…" one of the gate guards objected, "Just because you make fun of our profession on the stage by playing ninjutsu off to shits and giggles doesn't mean you can ignore village rules."
"Maybe it's fine if she checks it out?" the other guard shrugged. "She is working with the VP, aren't you, Sorceress-san?"
"Yeah, let Mana check the book out. She's with the Protections of them Villages and the like." Chogen appeared to be getting irritated even if his behavior barely betrayed it. His tone turned a tad bit more irritated and his large eyebrows curled atop of his deeply squinted eyes to indicate great scorn in his system.
"Alright…" the gate guard relented. "As long as it makes you guys get off our backs. Every second we spend on this interview we're not watching the gate."
"Maybe that's how the smugglers got in?" Mana nonchalantly threw out while scanning the entirety of the gate guard records with her eyes. She had no time to take the information in the traditional way so she had to cheat a little bit and use some of her superhuman concentration and perception to scan through the pages at amazing speed. Such was a skill that the magician picked up due to the need to read a great amount of historical and mythical material while on a very limiting schedule.
"Impossible." The grumpy gate guard shook his head in objection. His reaction was not in the least offended which kind of suggested to Mana that he must have trusted his record-keeping skills a decent bit. That made the prospect of some smugglers fooling these two, or whoever watched the gate during the shift when the goods were smuggled in, a bit unlikely.
"Just as I suspected…" Mana sighed.
"A-ha!" Chogen threw his sausage-sized finger right at the gate guard's face. "Tell 'dem all abouts how they messed up what with yer smarts and the like!"
"They did not." Mana shook her head with calm. She felt a bit surprised by how immersing herself in these records, this mystery calmed her down. Her acting up and suffering father, her mother's hardships, her own unachievable dreams and all the endless responsibilities she had to live up to all just floated away. For the first time in a while, Mana's finger ran down the lines perfectly calm, without as much as a tremble. "These records are pitch-perfect. I'm not sure about the quality of the paperwork but what they've recorded is air-tight."
"See? I assure you the paperwork is solid." The first gate guard nodded with pride of his paper-keeping ability.
"That suggests one of two alternatives: cooked documents or the smugglers simply slipping past the gate guards and the village protection systems." Mana glanced at the two guards who gulped, more so while looking at the bemused image of Chogen clenching his enlarged fists than the accusations of the stage magician.