The crowd went dead-silent when Mana retreated to a small stand where a glass of water stood. There were some boredom and order to her step, before that moment the magician had been performing for well over half an hour making a short break almost necessary. They lowered their guards, they couldn't help it. It wasn't just the need for a break, a faint return to reality in the shape of their winged boots touching solid ground, it was also that their minds wanted to be fooled and by that point they've seen so much magic that things beyond their belief started losing their very special charm.

Mana flipped the glass over, almost gorging on the water that she, in all fairness, truly did need after so much time in the spotlight. She had spent so much time training her ninja art that the frivolous warmth of the stage and the dryness of one's throat following strenuous talking sessions became a problem for her once more, for the first time since her childhood.

A lonely card peeked its edge from the magician's pocket. Mana had made sure to seal some Lightning Release sparks inside of it to make it catch the attention of even the furthermost spectators. Playfully, the magician lowered her glass and looked down at the card. At the same time, the card disappeared in Mana's inner pocket. A mere matter of string-play inside and outside the magician's uniform. When she started out Mana felt pretty worried about using steel wire out in the open. She almost felt naked by performing the switch out in the open, the instinct of any novice magician was to conceal the trickery.

It took multiple times of getting fooled in the battlefield for Mana to realize just how tough steel wire was to spot out in the open, even in such illustrious lighting, especially for someone with untrained perception. These days Mana hated the idea of using steel wire from inside her uniform, contrasting the sentiment of the past, hiding string always left the risk of an awkward folding of her clothes to reveal the trickery and that would have just been sloppy.

Continuing the act, Mana reached in for her pocket where the curious card had appeared from and tried pulling it out from the pocket it has supposedly hidden inside of. What appeared for the audience as the young woman browsing the front pocket of her blazer concealed a snap of the magician's fingers from the inside, which unsealed something sealed previously. A burst of indigo light erupted from Mana's pocket with a brigade of young rabbits leaping out of her pocket and scattering across the stage, running off just far enough for their return home and the resulting smoke and the popping sound to not be visible to those that desired entertainment and trickery.

The stage shook, cracking multiple of the wooden boards under Mana's feet. Breaking her act for just a moment, the young woman glanced at the devastation she had brought upon Hiro, the manager of the hall, and realized she'd be compensating that. She should have practiced more, on more surfaces… Before Mana could even figure out what she did wrong here and ways she could have avoided this blunder and the resulting faltering and stumbling, a massive rabbit, a fur-ball just like the young that had appeared before, stormed the stage.

This particular youngster had a very odd, natural look to him, his fur took grass-like dark green hue that made him appear almost like a living forest monster in his current form. The young one roared just like Mana had taught him while workshopping the trick and charged at the magician, further shaking the stage to the point where Mana began seriously doubting if the structure would hold.

A loud crack and the feeling of weightlessness answered the question. At least Usukai canceled his technique, massively reducing in size and leaving a lovely image of a fallen magician halfway buried in rubble with a lovely, critter-sized bunny resting on top of her head. Mana couldn't stop grinning, for a bunny his age, Usukai had a knack for showmanship. Maybe she'd ask him to help perform in her shows more often…

Mana's eyes browsed the audience for a specific smile that would have been the perfect shining star to dye the entire night's sky with genuine, more human kind of magic. She couldn't find him, maybe she had fallen too low down from the stage, the young man was a short one, if he was in the back she'd have easily missed him…

"My whole damn stage!" Hiro's voice echoed through the halls. He was browsing for Mana because the man wanted to vent his feelings and have the magician an earful. The first handful of shows after her years-long leave of absence and she managed to destroy his entire stage whereas previously she barely broke a leg of a chair.

"Sorry…" Mana sighed when the manager burst into her office.

After seeing the gloom in Mana's face and the genuine regret over what happened the man just sighed and wiped the rage-induced sweat off of his balding forehead. He would have tried to teach Mana the lesson of summoning size-altering rabbits on a delicate wooden stage but he saw it crystal clear in the eyes of the magician that she had learned that lesson by herself… As well as some other things that bothered her at that moment.

"The audience wasn't as big as it usually is but… You'll get the primetime draw back if you perform consistently. Soon you'll be able to pay up for your antics and then some. For now… I'll send your mother the bill, just like I do your pay on a good day." Hiro nodded after placing his hands on his hips. The man examined Mana's cleaning room shack she used to prepare before turning around and leaving.

Some newbies may have expected the man to be the spirit of inspiration for his employees, someone who would support and build his talent up in tough times, ones like it was obvious that Mana was going through. Momentary as her grievances were…

It seemed like the magician had been sitting in her dark shack for hours. After a good half an hour she had turned off the lights because she both genuinely enjoyed sitting in the dark as well as would have regretted getting an actual earful from Hiro over wasting his hall's money even more. She got off pretty tame, all things considered. It was better to make it stay that way.

Mana sighed again, stood up and picked up the little handbag she had left over of stuff she intended to bring back home, whether for repairs or for safekeeping. While the shack was intended for storing the spares of the cleaner's uniform and the cleaner's tools, Mana did not use it for storage herself. It didn't feel like she had deserved that, even if she's been performing in this place and bringing in money for years by now.

Somehow it felt like she was building it all up back from scratch…

She had intended to wait here until the young man she searched so desperately earlier came up and waited for her to get ready after the show. It was a bit naïve to expect that she somehow just missed his eyes earlier when she browsed through the crowd for him. His signature was impossible to miss, even in a crowd, even if the entire crowd were ninja with distinct and overpowering feeling to their signatures… Kouta, of all people, Mana could tell apart.

He wasn't even in the building… Desperate to know the location of her boyfriend, the magician expanded the range of her sensory farther and farther. She could have kept going on up until expending it any further would have been pointless – she knew quite well Kouta was inside the village so even if she found out where exactly, it would be of little use. He was closing in… At least nothing bad happened to him, he was just late.

With a sluggish pace, Mana left the cleaner's room and went through the backstage corridors toward the main hall. If she took a turn and walked down some stairs she would make it out through the main hall, unnoticed through the side. Kouta was so late that he most likely forgot that Mana used the service corridors and would have most often left through the back door, he was rushing right in through the front.

"Hey…" Mana waved her hand with a blank expression on her face. She wanted to smile, to show the young man she wasn't mad at him for being late or anything. Somehow the lips just didn't move that way… She had to speak louder to overpower the blasting vibrations of noise coming in through the walls.

"Heh, sorry I missed your show. We can still do… Whatever's going on right now, right?" Kouta made some guilty eyes. A cheap technique, one he never had to resort before as long as the magician had known him.

"Brass Lupus is playing, as you may well hear..." Mana sighed. She hated their kind of music - grungy, angsty and aggressive. It could not have been the clashing ideologies that led the magician to perform onstage compared to those that inspired the musicians to do the same, must have merely been a coincidence, still, it was a fact nonetheless.

„Damn... I forgot my wallet..." Kouta felt up his pockets. His clothes were dirty and ragged, holed in multiple spots where he seemed to have been dragged through a mountain from the bottom down all the way to the top. „Don't keep keys and wallets with me when I spar. And I was too late already to change..."

„That's not a problem, I know most of them quite well if you want to get in, that can be arranged." Mana shrugged.

"Sure! I mean, I have to make up for missing the show." Kouta smiled. He was so oblivious that it was almost a bit lovely. Probably not lovely enough to compensate sitting through forty remaining minutes of blaring cacophony of noise.

"Can't believe guys from Brass Lupus remember you. Wasn't it like… Three years since you two worked in the same hall?" Kouta looked up into the sky with those dreamy and completely absent eyes that Mana fell in love with.

"Actually, most performers move on from Hiro-san's hall. They started out while I was away training. My absence probably helped them get noticed more. As the only entertainer to not move on to bigger halls or nicer managers, I'm almost the face of the place." Mana shrugged. She really expected her boyfriend to make a bigger deal out of her knowing a shooting-for-the-sky hard rock band. "We only met after I came back, I've had several shows already before today. They waited hours after their shows just to meet me."

"Really? You had multiple shows already? I don't think I've seen one in a while… Odd…" Kouta complained to himself, finally moving his eyes away from the sky and making a troubled face.

"Yeah… It's almost like it's my hobby, or something…" Mana grumped out with a squint directed at the young man.

"Damn… I didn't notice what a huge part of my life training with father became. It's only now that I have to balance my old schedule with my current one that I noticed it." Kouta laughed out. After having her boyfriend miss her show, come late on her date and then sitting through almost an hour more of music she loathed, Mana couldn't muster up anything resembling a positive reaction.

"You don't have to do anything. If you were busy you just could have blown me off…" Mana complained for the first time that evening. It was not something she liked to do. Being a famous entertainer has taught her to reserve her negative outbursts for the time she spent alone. It was a useful skill for all sorts of facets of life, not just performances.

"Yeah but… I feel like I've been doing it way too often. I mean we barely hang out since you returned. The few times we do meet – all we do is train." Kouta shrugged. The oblivion in his eyes was changed with something more particular, something resembling regret. That was just great, now Mana will never get over ruining the date for the only person truly enjoying it, just when it was beginning to show promise for improvement.

"Are you… Going on a mission anytime soon, by any chance?" Mana inquired after softening her voice and taking a pair of deep breaths, an attempt at achieving inner serenity disguised as plain exploitation of the chance to get some fresh air.

"Yeah… Leaving for Land of Snow on Thursday." Kouta nodded. "Why are you interested?"

"Wonder if I could tag along…" Mana shrugged. "If business is the only time we can relax, why not work together again, even if just once?"

"That's… An idea…" Kouta turned his lips around, shifting them from left to right as if chewing something rubbery in his mouth. "Yushijin was supposed to lead our squad, he's a chuunin and all… Maybe he would agree to take a break this once?"

"Doubt it…" Mana sighed. "We have a complicated relationship. He'd probably want to participate even more with me involved, just so he could constantly try and one-up me."

"This is pretty good, right? I mean, no fighting, just talking." Kouta turned at the magician with a dumb grin, his eyes still carried the guilt from before. One that originated from a place that the young man didn't know but one he felt regardless. It made for a pretty weird smile all in all, but it was one Mana loved.

"Yeah…" the magician pressed her head against Kouta's shoulder. "Pretty good."

"I'm leaving!" Mana yelled out, nearly bursting through the door with her ninja pouch still slippery on her thigh, requiring some fastening. She received the letter that morning, it was just a summon to the Administration, it could have been nothing. She could've been told that her request to be signed up on the squad sent out to Land of Snow was denied and that'd be all of her business in the Administration. Still, something whispered in Mana's ear that in the latter case she'd not have been contacted at all.

"Which kind of "leaving" are we talking about here? Leaving for a bite with Kouta or leaving to train away for three more years?" mother squinted at the magician, making Mana freeze up while the woman appeared from the kitchen. It was not usual that the woman would be home this late in the morning. Things in the Nakotsumi Café must have been solid and slow enough for the staff to handle it without the manager. Mother was clearly ready to leave as she was dressed for work.

"Don't know yet. If I'm sent off to Snow Country, I'll be back for the package I've prepared so I won't just disappear, don't worry." Mana shrugged, bending her legs by the knees a pair of times in subconscious compulsion to leave already.

"Just when you were beginning to do pretty good with your shows. Bringing in serious profit again." Mother sighed. It was just like her to disguise motherly concern under layers upon layers of financial talk. The woman knew how little Mana cared for it and how easily bored she got with money talk. That was the main reason why it was Mana's mother that managed her finances.

"I am paid for my missions as well…" Mana objected. "I haven't prepared an exact table for comparison, no charts drawn yet but… The stack of money is bigger than it used to be and that's all I can say about that."

"My God, when we're gone you're going to bankrupt everything into the ground…" Mother sighed.

"Don't go anywhere then…" Mana smiled before disappearing behind the door that just dangled about before slamming shut by their own weight.

Mother was right though. Bit by bit, her magic shows were picking back up again. She started out pretty much the same way she was when she first stepped on stage as a kid, with a little bit extra familiarity. Messed up a few tricks even, broke some hall inventory… It didn't take long for Mana to get back into the swing of things. The unpredictability of her shows only upped the thrill. An audience member never knew when the stage under Mana's feet would fail to support the giant rabbits rampaging on top of it or when the glass box Mana trapped herself in would crack and start leaking water…

Even if Mana had enough practice with her bag of tricks that she was always in control, the illusion of unpredictability was seriously upping the magician's fame again. A few more successful shows and Mana would be back where she once was, maybe even fill the halls again… People got too used to moving pictures at some point, there was something thrilling about live performance and they knew it, even if they didn't – they could feel it in their very bones.

Mana flashed the summon to the Administration clerk who just nodded with a smile and let the magician rush on along. Given how much time she usually wasted on route to anywhere inside the village walls with the villagers stopping her for greetings, questions or odd requests of all kinds, she was most likely late or almost so. It was a bad sign, given how she was the one who requested to be signed up for the mission.

The door to the Hokage's office was halfway open by the time Mana made it there. She peeked in to see all of Team Fir already gathered before fitting through the gap in the door. It was only when the magician saw the look on Erumo's eyes and whatever it was that Yushijin was protecting with his stern yet open face that she remembered how awkward her relationship actually was with Kouta's friends.

She did, after all, pretty much betray them once…