Naruto: Tales of a Ninja Magician

by Captain Claymore

A story of an alternate world where small changes long, long ago made a Ninja World of a different history and different people, different heroes, and different villains. Meet a young girl that tries to live a life as a ninja with a completely different set of ideals from the cruel world that surrounds her, trying to remain unchanged. A heavy focus on an OC cast.

590. Tales of a Ninja Magician Annual 4

A black and flaxen blur dashed across steep, rocky hills in an attempt to reach a cover before a one-way crossing to the Twelve-Headed Mountain. The Yamanaka pressed her back against the mountain cover and waited for the rest of the squad to follow. Kiyomi glanced at the corner and almost submitted to the temptation to take a peek, who knew, maybe she'd get spotted and be forced to kill every single one of those Red Hawks.

"That was amazing, Kiyomi." A jounin in a sleeveless leather top under his flak jacket commended his temporary squadmate. For someone as flashy and rebellious-looking as him, Kiyomi should not have been the one to be commended. It was one thing to conceal someone the size of a young adult and of a frail, feminine build compared to a fit, two-meter tall man in an orange-dyed mohawk. "Although landing from above would have been ideal in this situation. Nobody's expecting a sneak landing from above while residing atop of a mountain."

"Well, I took the situation in a bit different direction," Kiyomi smirked for a blink and then observed Meiko's approach. Instead of attempting to dash around in her clanging armor, the redhead took a downward plunge. The armored plates on the blacksmith's sides lit up, the trajectory of Meiko's fall began changing drastically until it resembled more of a diagonal, crescent shape. Before long, Meiko took it to the air above the cover spot.

A dull thud of a small scroll demanded the observer's attention. A muzzled poof and a lick of smoke unveiled a buzzing windmill shuriken that despite buzzing hard enough to pick up turbulent gusts of wind remained grave-quiet. In her wild dive from the skies above, Meiko trapped herself in the current and froze her fall. It took the blacksmith a few moments to land with grace and silence befitting a true ninja but she just successfully snuck up on a handful of Uchiha guards on the other side of the crossing.

The two kunoichi have gone such a long way since their origins.

"So what now? We've faced the Red Hawks before, if these are anything like the guys we faced, taking them on would make us waste too much time and stamina." Meiko wondered. While she did seem wary of the dangers of overextending, judging from her face alone, she was ready to jump into battle just fine.

"Sneak attacks. We can't let them open their Sharingan or else we'll never get a drop on them." Momoyu Fuma, the jounin assigned to oversee Kiyomi and Meiko's mission instructed.

"Have you fought any Uchiha before, Momoyu-san?" Kiyomi wondered. She'd feel a lot braver around a jounin leader who actually had stood in front of the kaleidoscope eye and lived to learn from the experience. It was equal part frustrating as it was awe-inspiring that even a lowlife mook like these guys could have awakened genetically acquired power within them to make even stronger foes struggle against them.

"Sparred with my fair share. Never was a fan of the arrogant bastards. Always looked for an opportunity to punch a crowd of 'em in the face." Momoyu grumbled into the mental link. One thing was for certain, Momoyu was a natural when conversing on the mental link. Either that, or he was just that experienced.

"Am I the only one here looking forward to doing our job – gather intelligence?" Meiko wondered. There was no grand surprise in the blacksmith's eyes when she asked it. The redhead knew just fine the kind of situation she'd be walking into and the people walking the same path alongside her.

"Intelligence, right… Still, can't spare those guys, the last thing we need is more Uchiha flocking back to their swarm with their Sharingan active." Kiyomi brandished a polished and custom-made kunai. One incrusted with lapis dust which was entirely counterintuitive knowing that the knife would soon be stained with blood.

"I have a better idea…" Meiko shook her head.

Momoyu took a wild leap upward, this time he did not restrain the chakra augmentations whatsoever, causing an intense rumble all over the mountainous platform. The Uchiha guards could not have possibly missed the sight of a boisterous jounin performing extravagant aerial spins, flips, and vaults before he prepared his palm for a strike.

"Earth Style: Ironheart Beat!" Momoyu chanted out, further adding to the loud and rash image that he was creating. It was not one that his appearance did not accentuate either…

The Uchiha leaned down and grabbed hold of the shaking, mountainous surface underneath their feet. Momoyu's combination of ninjutsu and taijutsu was amazing enough to shake both the minor mountain that the Konoha squad was hiding out on as well as the Twelve-Headed Mountain. The resonating shock from the impact of Momoyu's palm to the ground splintered the mountainous platform while Meiko slung a pair of scrolls onward.

One poof and cloud of smoke later, the very same Windmill Shuriken appeared, spreading wind currents strong enough to pick up the collapsing pieces of the shattered mountain as well as the plentiful dust and drive it all at the Uchiha bunch.

"We're under attack!" one of the guards grunted loud enough for the supernatural perception of the Konoha ninja to pick it up from their position.

"By whom? Iwagakure or Konoha?" another yelled back.

"Does it matter? Go warn the others!" the third Uchiha amongst the bunch instructed while the Sharingan of all four flared crimson. With flawless precision, the average ninja were elevated to the near god of taijutsu class as the Red Hawk guards avoided the horizontal shower of rock-shard shrapnel as if time had completely stopped for them or they had some unnatural ability to perceive future itself.

That was when Kiyomi's trump card hit them – an overwhelming nova of light from a flash bomb. The Uchiha covered up their eyes and grunted in pain and irritation as their flawless perception of the awakened Sharingan forced them to absorb every minor detail of the battlefield, leaving them open to details they'd have rather missed out on.

"String Reeling Jutsu!" Meiko mumbled to herself as she yoinked herself over the edge using steel wire. Kiyomi's custom-made kunai, this one made of obsidian, stuck into the rock and allowed the Yamanaka heiress to use it as a grappling hook on her quick ascent upward. Momoyu covered his body up with an intense burst of chakra that shaped itself almost like a swallow in-flight and dashed forward to the other mountain not too far in front while the collapse they were meant to cover, together with the mountain giving them solace earlier collapsed.

"You didn't leave any of them for me…" Kiyomi sighed in frustration, seeing all of the Uchiha knocked out and subdued by the time she ascended.

"Heh, heh…" Meiko chuckled. "You'd have killed them. Then again, I guess you can still kill them now."

"Forget it…" Kiyomi sighed. "They're beaten. I may operate on an Aku-Soku-Zan principle but I've no interest in killing unconscious people."

"Such emphasis on the Windmill Shuriken, I'm almost tempted to think you're trying to leave an impression," Momoyu smirked while looking at Meiko. While his face looked cheerful, the baggy eyes of the man and the permanent stubble he adopted to his signature, rough and macho style made him always look a little bit pissed and apathetic. He was also not the most expressive person.

"Such unexpected penchant for planning ahead and not killing anyone. I wonder if you're trying to leave an impression on someone else…" Kiyomi crossed her arms over her chest while she raised an inquisitive eyebrow at her friend. "Should I feel jealous?"

"Awww, come on, I'm just trying to grow as a ninja. The Chuunin Exams aren't too far away and all that strategy and not-even-trying, non-lethal style does wonders with the crowd." Meiko shrugged while rubbing her nose and blushing hard enough for the color of her cheeks to match that of her hair.

"Heh, I must say, I like you guys. What an oddball, talented bunch, I'd have loved to have trained you." Momoyu nodded with approval before turning towards the narrow pathway that spiraled all the way around the mountain, likely leading up to the very top. "Who has the honor of taking credit for all this fine work you guys do?"

"Chestnut Hanasaku…" Kiyomi looked almost too proud of herself to so casually namedrop Lady Fifth herself. While the woman may have been one of the more controversial Hokage, the full extent of whose political inadequacy was still being understood by the current Hokage, she was still one to have remained a Sannin for the longest time and she had still reached the most prestigious title of the Fire Shadow and being one of the less competent Hokage was still a legendary and life-defining achievement.

"Damn… Here I thought those were shoes I could have filled…" Momoyu brushed the question off while the trio took a leap and stuck to the side of the mountain. Most greener ninja would have been tempted to walk the rocky pathway in a line one by one all the way to the top just because it was there. It took some experience and an uncanny awareness of every skill in one's arsenal to instantly identify a perfect opportunity for a basic chakra control technique.

It was tough to know for certain how aware the rest of the Red Hawks were they were being raided. A lot more of the rogue Uchiha splinter group must have heard the rumbling and possibly even seen something. They may have been alert to something being off but they may not have necessarily known that Konoha had received intel about a Red Hawk base around Iwagakure.

When one thought of it, things were almost too perfect to work. Both Kiyomi and Momoyu carried that uncertainty around with them. It filled their movements, made them careful. The Uchiha handed village out this intel as a show of good faith. The mainstream branch was always invested in the demise of the Red Hawks, it was not difficult to see why. The Uchiha have had a tough history with the village. Always thinking themselves the superior breed of ninja, they've always been on the higher echelon of the village elite as well. Lady Second was an Uchiha.

These Red Hawks threatened to ruin all of that good faith for some petty grievance and ramblings of strength that may have sounded fulfilling but given the context could not have been more meaningless.

Still, it was their own that were being betrayed to the village. That seemed a bit too ruthless even to the apathetic and always logical Uchiha. Not to mention that the discovered base was located inside the territory of Iwagakure – a country that just so happened to be on a verge of crisis after the recently resolved Coltan conflict meaning that now was the best time to operate inside their borders without fearing too much retribution. Everything just lined up too perfectly…

An old and crumbling face peeked from the edge above, skin greyed out and saggy, long and greasy dark hair stretched out like shadowy tendrils. The only thing certain about this man was the crimson gleam in his eyes. One that turned everything around Kiyomi black in a blink and made the world around her feel weightless and empty. Had she not been completely paralyzed by a mere glare, Kiyomi would have been very afraid of being in total mercy of an Uchiha that wanted her dead most of all people alive.

Kiyomi embodied everything the Red Hawks preached. The supposed loss of Uchiha strength, their drive, and dominance in politics.

The face of the sinking Yamanaka heiress turned to her side only to see a red face of the moon flaring in the distance, one pulsing with corrupting red radiation and drawing ever closer to her, like a meteor. Donning a black symbol of crossed blades with space for one's pupil.

"Don't worry. I don't plan to kill you just yet." A voice woke Kiyomi up. The frightened eyes of the Yamanaka trembled, how could she of all people, someone specializing in genjutsu, working alongside one of the most prodigious experts of the craft in the village, a rising superstar even, someone studying Sharingan for any ways to better overcome her personal rivalries and grievances be paralyzed to such a complete and through extent?

She only broke out of the illusion when the shriveled old scrotum-face let her. Kiyomi always knew Uchiha to be powerful, she may have weaved a whole different yarn to the people around her, she may have dismissed the Sharingan knights and dissed them vocally but they were worthy rivals and a wall just an insurmountable as Mana's own more ideological fight against the brutal nature of the world. But this… This was different, it was not a show of power Kiyomi respected, it was one that she genuinely had reason to fear.

The elderly Uchiha stood surrounded by dozens of others. So many things were wrong with this picture: there were too many people in this base, they were far too prepared for the coming of the Konoha team, what was with this old man? For someone wielding such a mighty Sharingan, the elderly de facto leader of the Red Hawks stood with his eyes closed shut. He was not dressed in combat clothes either, he looked like a noble who had worn the same robe for a few months and not like an Uchiha ready for combat and prove his strength, as Red Hawks were supposed to.

"Only three? Konoha underestimated the intelligence we provided our weakling kin… Did they think they'd be raiding just another settlement of the order?" the elderly Uchiha wondered out loud while his subordinates grinned to one another, looking all too excited to hold Kiyomi, the princess of the Yamanaka, in their hands.

"You provided the intelligence?" Meiko dropped her jaw. It was about time that the blacksmith caught on to what was going on and why she was just incapacitated by a single glare of this man and now laid on her knees, tied down and her chakra sealed off to a certain level.

"But of course, I had hoped to lure the Uchiha and Konoha into my trap. I had been preparing a mighty illusion, one that would have incapacitated some serious show of Konoha's military force." The elderly man turned toward a crystal orb surrounded by ruby wings. While the orb spread no light of its own, looking at it stung at one's eyes because it had an unnatural quality of absorbing whatever light it had managed to catch and amplify it on its way out.

"That illusion you used on us. It was meant to be reflected off of the orb. I bet this orb amplifies the Sharingan genjutsu you Uchiha use." Momoyu spoke with a certain shade of moderate distaste that made the two genin almost feel safer about their situation just by seeing the jounin in their team, one who was stuck in the same predicament, look smooth and calm.

"I have not heard your name." the elderly man turned to Momoyu, his shut eyelids straightened their wrinkles as a show of strain being put on them, as if the Uchiha felt so surprised by how he was figured out by a relative nobody that he began to believe that this man was no nobody after all and that he merely had lacking information of the key players in the Konoha's roster of ninja.

"I have a rule not to give my name before I hear one," Momoyu replied with a tone of voice usually used by someone not forced down on their knees with a handful of armed opponents threatening to behead them at any moment.

"Only seems fair…" the elderly Uchiha smirked. "My name's Ahimari Uchiha. I am what you would call the leader of the Red Hawks."

"The leader!?" Kiyomi jumped up in surprise. Before she could even understand she was on her feet, the Uchiha safeguarding her brought the Yamanaka down to her knees with precise kicks to the sides of her knees and then shoved her face into the plateau.

"Correct. I bet none of you expected to walk into the true main headquarters of the Red Hawks and face the true leader of the group." Ahimari smirked. "It was bold to sprinkle that information to the Uchiha. We had to make it seem natural too. Even some of my own men did not believe in my vision. The only death of this affair that I regret is the man we had to purposefully allow the Uchiha to capture for the sake of extracting the intelligence out of him."

The leader of the Red Hawks turned his face to a blank point in the sky, his eyes remained shut yet he acted as if he could see everything around him just fine. Ahimari stood there in that state for a good while, long enough for the pause to become awkward.

"His… His hands are free!" the Uchiha exclaimed watching the Konoha ninja from behind. This proclamation was a surprise to Kiyomi as well, she looked to Momoyu, trying to understand how the squad leader managed to free his hands but also she tried to pinpoint the exact plan. Given how they've regained an inch of this meeting, that their chances of success in the mission objective was now an inch above zero percent and this would be a fight rather than an execution, she needed to be on the same page with the jounin from the get-go.

Scythes, swords, and fans hurried to attempt and end Momoyu but for someone so calm and gentle most of the time, the Konoha jounin was on fire when push came to shove. His movements were unnatural but fluid, he did not appear to care more for balance or safe options but favored risky and fluid motions. Because of that total faith in his own luck, one that would not favor him once and that would be enough to spell out his end, Momoyu weaved and ducked under every scythe, moved aside from every sword thrust and rolled under or vaulted over every war fan attempting to crack his skull.

Chakra flared up from inside the as nimble as he was a lucky ninja and in mere moments a glowing hieroglyph on the man's chest shattered like the glass of a busted window and the paper carrying the tag burnt up in thin air. Meiko was much better at abusing the chaos of the battlefield. The moment she saw a chance for a brawl, she took it, attacking wildly in all directions, nabbing a handful of Uchiha that attempted to hit Momoyu first.

It was either genius or just plain lucky for the blacksmith to attack that way – there was no way she'd have landed anything on an Uchiha with an active Sharingan while they were on the defensive. While they were invested in trying to halt the second wind of the Konoha ninja.

The initial explosion of violence and will to fight back for their survival had done wonders for the Konoha ninja but it could not have gone over anyone's head that it would be of limited success overall. It was easy to deliver a couple of surprise blows once or twice, even on someone wielding the Sharingan, if one played their moves and advantages right. In the end it would not matter, the enemy was too numerous, each individual enemy was no mere thug to be bullied but a worthy opponent on their own right and eventually the push from the Konoha ninja would halt, then the push back would begin and that would not end until the Uchiha swarm the Konoha ninja and leave just a handful of skewered bodies piled one on top of the other.

That was why neither of the three ninja was fighting to win or for any particular purpose other than escape the immediate danger, get into the clear, regroup and either flee or proceed with the mission. It was still possible to assassinate the Red Hawk leader, it was still possible to destroy the headquarters. Both of these options had to be evaluated. As soft as the current ninja system was, nobody wanted to return home from a mission empty-handed. Sure, the intel was wrong but an average ninja complained about wrong intel and a great one made something out of it anyway. It was just the kind of spirit of productivity that Konoha was flying high with…

"Almost cute…" Ahimari opened his eyes once more. Flaring out with the colossal, bloody moons that overwhelmed the totality of the dark, illusionary void and disabled everyone in the nearest vicinity in an instant.

Kiyomi had expected this. It was reckless for someone this powerful to use their illusion that affected everyone one's eye could see when the enemy was surrounded by one's own men but it was so very Uchiha to sacrifice one's comrades for success and greater power. Plus, it was not like the illusion was lethal anyway, while Ahimari did show some speck of regret over seeing his devoted followers meet their ends, this time he would not need to shed even those few tears.

"Don't worry, I got you." Momoyu's voice rung in Kiyomi's head on the mental link. The Yamanaka shook her head, she was almost certain that Ahimari's eyes had caught her in his stare but it appeared that Momoyu was faster even the eye.

"That was amazing!" Meiko's cheer translated as a migraine-inducing clamor on the mental link, as always. "How did you do that?"

"We've seen this man's ability already. If he lays his eyes on us – it's over, whether we look back at him or not. Getting some distance on him was the first thing I did." Momoyu explained as the cloned version of the jounin erupted into a spread of barbed wire, instead of the usual popping that dissolving Shadow Clones did.

Ahimari was both faster and more resourceful than to get caught by the expanding tendrils of wire. Even with his eyes currently closed, the old man bobbed and weaved around every strand of wire as if they were blows of an inexperienced opponent. The leader of Red Hawk jumped over the loops and ducked under the coiling attempts to strangle him with the barbed wire. He then turned right for the plateau of the Twelve-Headed Mountain where Momoyu and the Konoha ninja stood as if possessing some unnatural awareness of where the enemy was at all times.

"Very clever of you to exploit the area of effect of my own technique against my men." Ahimari declared. Kiyomi's feet rubbed against the stone in unease.

"Something's wrong. He's let us go off the jutsu before, didn't he? Could he be luring us into a trap? If we close in, he might release the other Red Hawks and then we'll be back where we started." She warned Momoyu. It was awfully presumptuous of her to assume that she had something of interest to say to a ninja far stronger and more experienced than her but this was no time for etiquette. A simple wrong assumption may have very well led to everybody's deaths.

"Maybe. If we can take out the organization's leader and end the Red Hawks, that's a chance I'm willing to take though…" Momoyu said. The man stood up from the cover and prepared to lunge forward. Mana would not have liked this man at all, beside Chestnut Hanasaku, Kiyomi had never seen a jounin act so recklessly and to engage an enemy of unknown ability with such ease of mind.

Momoyu spread his hands out wide, popping sounds with the ever-present company of smoke clouds revealed the unsealing of a pair of windmill shuriken. The Konoha jounin fired away with the buzzing, propeller-like trip of the infernal long-range projectile, a signature tool of his Fuma Clan. Two, four, six and then more, the windmill shuriken buzzed in an endless, murderous loop of a sharp-edged merry-go-round.

Even without using his gift of sight, Ahimari continued to dance around the projectiles, not only that, his face appeared to follow their trip with unmatched precision and skill while his body offered the minimal necessary movements to avoid having his limbs removed. That would have been the lucky outcome, a windmill shuriken was quite capable of deadly impalements on its wide blades, dismemberment if the tool hit its target in the limb at a right angle, disabling of the enemy if it managed to impale the limb or even a complete cut of a person into two if it hit them right in the middle.

And yet, due to his immense skill and agility that seemed far beyond his age, Ahimari suffered neither of these grisly fates.

"String Reeling Jutsu!" Momoyu barked out while fingers flexed out in the position of his hands stretched out, one he usually used to reload both his hands with new windmill shuriken from his seals. The mountain sunlight danced across the steel wire attached the ends of each shuriken that Momoyu had used. The Uchiha jerked and twitched but froze into place. His twitching head pulled to the side and in an uncomfortable degree to witness the collection of windmill shuriken stuck into the solid rock behind him.

If only Kiyomi could have seen this man's eyes, perhaps she could have known if he had felt duped then. If there was one thing that she did like about the Uchiha, it was when their self-importance crumbled before them and they realized how foolish they were to underestimate their opponent as they have. Now there was only a pair of closed eyes and the shriveled, puny eyelids that covered them.

"Lightning Style: Electric Swallow!" Momoyu yelled out as Lightning Release chakra erupted from his body and formed a construct of a bird-shaped avatar of lightning. Something about birds was very fitting for a lightning technique, the natural crackling and chirping of high-intensity jolt sounded just like a bird. The proud and majestic artificial fowl fluttered its wings and moved forward, breaking its avian forms to become just a lightning-swift bolt of lightning.

The residual jolts from the mass transferred through the steel wire, the jolt of lightning threw Ahimari back with almost frightening violence. The leader of the Red Hawks did not scream or grunt in pain, he just flew back from the sheer force of impact and the raw power of the bolt. Even when the electrified steel wire dug into his body where he was tied together and drew droops of blood, the Uchiha did not as much as bite his lip in discomfort. He looked dead before the bird even hit him.

"Checkmate…" Momoyu declared before reaching out with his hand and pulling on one of his steel wires hard enough to disrupt the entire chain and rip the Uchiha to shreds. Kiyomi and Meiko observed in unease, wondering when Ahimari would reveal it all to just be a grotesque illusion like Mana loved to fake out her friends and opponents alike but as more and more seconds passed, nothing of the sort happened.

"I don't think he's maintaining the illusion anymore. That would just be impractical…" Meiko was the first one to speak.

"If even Meiko, with all of her limited knowledge of the illusionary arts, thinks it's impractical to hold the illusion for this long, maybe she's got a point?" Kiyomi wondered using her voice to speak.

"Not so fast, look… The Uchiha he put to sleep are still out." Momoyu stated with a grim voice of his own.

"That's exactly it," Kiyomi argued. "If these men wake up while we're still here – we'll be in trouble. We lucked out to escape them once but to hope to outwit a handful of Uchiha is lunacy. This time they'll pay extra mind to every minor detail."

"Maybe you're right but… Something doesn't feel right." Momoyu shrugged, lowering his hands and letting the bloodied steel wire linger around the area, hanging from the tall mountain plateaus like spider webs now that no integrity of a human body kept them structured.

"Yeah, that was way too easy… Then again, all it takes in our line of work is one mistake…" Meiko shrugged, appearing to be the most eager to forget and forgive anything unusual had ever happened.

"Will you need to examine the body before sealing it?" Momoyu turned to Meiko.

"No need. Had there been any Curse Seals placed on this body, they'd have kicked off when he died, immediately after. Some Curse Seals have been known to even be enough to sustain life until they perform their function." Meiko replied with a surprising amount of brightness for her. The blacksmith, when told she was not the brightest person around, often said that there were a few very specific things she excelled at and she tended to not bother about anything else. Kiyomi was always impressed whenever her friend demonstrated that niche knowledge of hers.

"How so?" Kiyomi wondered, turning to the more experienced jounin for information.

"Meiko is a better seal user than I ask her. I buy and order my seals, my mastery over the subject is merely in using them." Momoyu shrugged.

"Seals are tied to execution triggers. Most are triggered when chakra is applied to them directly, some of them react to specific natures of chakra, like when Fire Release sets off most explosive tags. If a seal is set to execute after the holder's death, it does so without waiting for a more convenient time, immediately after the death." Meiko explained. "We have not seen any of the Red Hawks placing any traps on their leader's body, it's safe to say we do not need a Sin Eater at this time. I am confident I can seal him into a B-Rank or higher scroll."

Momoyu reached his hand behind his vest and set off a seal, with an awkward positioning of his arm, the man pulled out a thick and limb-sized green roll with kanji sticker right in the middle. The man handed the scroll to Meiko and gestured for the adept seal user to get to work while the two volunteered to stay in the back and watch the sleeping Red Hawks and their deceased leader.

"Maybe we should kill all of them?" Kiyomi raised the question that must have been dawning in Momoyu's mind as well. "What we have here is the chance to end the threat of the Red Hawks altogether. Doing it with such minimal losses would strengthen Konoha's position once the intel leaks out."

"True…" Momoyu nodded. "It would. But at what cost? How would the Uchiha clan, arguably our most respected and strongest asset react to the news that we've slain their kin in their sleep when they were unable to resist? We don't have the scrolls to capture all of them nor do we have the advantage over them to safely transport them to the village."

"If we leave them here, they'll just elect a new leader and continue their work," Kiyomi said with a tone as grim as it was tired. She was already annoyed by being the face of the conflict between the Uchiha and the Yamanaka that only at the moment existed in the minds of these lunatics.

"If we kill them we risk creating new splinter groups. If the Uchiha weaken, so does Konoha. The worst case scenario – the ideals of the Red Hawks go mainstream with the Uchiha and then we'll have a massive problem on our hands. We were lucky to avoid a civil war just a couple of years ago, there's no need to rush back into it." Momoyu appeared to be getting his mind more and more set on a decision the more he discussed the matter with Kiyomi.

Meiko stood up with the scroll fastened on her back and smirked at the pair. She turned around and examined the bodies of the Red Hawks for possible clues that they've been waiting for a sweet time to attack but if they were, that time would have passed long ago. Meiko had her guard lowered and the back of her neck exposed for a kill-shot for a short while and none of them exploited that chance. A chance they'd not get again.

"Alright, let's move." Momoyu waved for Meiko.

"With a bit of luck, that shriveled bastard sent all of his loonies into a coma." Kiyomi sighed. Lately, she's been doing the Zan to a lot fewer Aku ones. The blonde dashed to the large crystal ball and looked at it for a short while. With a lightning-fast reflex, the Yamanaka delivered a push kick at its core that cracked the orb on contact before sending it tumbling down the Twelve-Headed Mountain for certain destruction.

"Roger, Roger!" Meiko grinned with the smile that restrained a fit of cheerful laughter from the bottom of her chest and took off.

While their mission was not over just yet, the matter of transporting the scroll back to the village being just as sensitive and important, a rational examination of circumstances suggested that it would not raise anywhere near the number of difficulties raised by actually capturing the leader of Red Hawks and surviving his trap.

---

"You should have prioritized retreat." Lord Seventh sat back in genuine surprise and blew air out from his lungs upon hearing how the party of Konoha ninja was lured into a trap by the false intel leaked out on purpose by the Red Hawks. "Still, I am taken aback by your devotion and remarkable work."

The Lord's assistant approached the ninja and focused his attention on the storage scroll hanging from Momoyu's back. "This is the scroll that the body of the Red Hawks' leader is stored in, correct?" he asked.

"It is." Momoyu nodded. With an almost lazy-looking motion, the man let the scroll slip off of his shoulder and caught the thin string that tied it together in his hand. Looking glad to be rid of the literally dead-weight, the jounin handed the scroll away.

"What you've accomplished today is a monumental task." Lord Seventh repeated. Had the two of you been chuunin, I'd have considered you two for promotion to jounin for something like this.

"Awww, it's the thought that counts…" Meiko smiled and leaned back on her hands, by now Lord Seventh must have been at least somewhat used to the lacking professional etiquette of the blacksmith.

"Momoyu-san did most of the work. He was the one taking Ahimari one on one and he delivered the finishing blow. We were only there to support him." Kiyomi bowed.

"That was your role in this mission – to support Momoyu and I'd say your performance is to be admired." Lord Seventh nodded, holding up to his words. "I won't hold you three here for too much longer."

"That's a fair point, you two go take a breather, we came very close to getting killed today, closer than I've been in a while. I've forgotten how heavy that weighs on a young mind. Go and kick back, enjoy the lives you've fought to keep today." Momoyu turned to Kiyomi and Meiko. "It's been an honor working with you two, I look forward to working with you in the future as equals, with your skill and devotion to your work, that is inevitable. I will take up the paperwork duty and fill up the reports."

"Paperwork? How very unlike you, Momoyu-san." Lord Seventh's assistant noted. "Could the professional behavior of Yamanaka Kiyomi have rubbed off on your free-spirit?"

"Who knows?" Momoyu rubbed the back of his mohawk with a tired shrug. "Maybe I'm just growing soft in my old age."

"Come on," Meiko winked at Kiyomi, "Let's get out of here before he changes his mind."

"Maybe you two could stay here for a bit, there's something that happened in the village that you might want to hear about and it might be for the better that you hear about it from me." Lord Seventh sighed, gesturing for Momoyu to wait outside the office. The jounin shifted his eyes about, trying to deduce what this might have been about but the man then just sighed and left the office to mentally prepare himself for the grueling couple of hours of paperwork ahead of him.

"I guess we have been on an endless streak of missions lately…" Meiko leaned to Kiyomi and nudged the Yamanaka with her elbow. "I would not have been surprised if we returned to a version of Konoha from those science fiction movies…"

"Your friend and past teammate Nakotsumi Mana is in Jigoku." Lord Seventh did not waste any time to inform the pair just after the jounin left the office.

"What?! What happened?" Meiko took a pair of steps forward.

"What did she do?" Kiyomi almost synchronized with her teammate's words, missing the timing by just a beat.

"She beat Guru Ayushi half to death. He's left in a coma which he will not come back from. There is a bit more to the story than that but, judging from her words, it was out of revenge for what happened to her father." Seventh's solemn face persisted.

"What did happen to her father?" Meiko asked with the same desperate tone, appearing smaller and smaller every second in her own mind. The two were de facto best friends but the blacksmith just saw how unaware she was of what was going on with Mana's life.

"The details that reached me are a bit vague but he fell ill to some under the counter medication he's been buying from the black market for years now." Lord Seventh replied.

"Something this reckless does sound like Mana." Kiyomi sighed. "Then again, knowing her, she likely went into the fight to get herself killed like she does half the time…"

"Come on, Kiyomi, that's uncalled for…" Meiko objected. "Why is she in Jigoku if she hasn't even killed anyone? Isn't that place reserved for the worst of the worst?"

"Not quite, the law does permit an inmate to request a transfer to another facility. The requests to be transferred to a lower security facility are minded with much more attention than the other way around, most requests to be transferred to a higher security facility are therefore granted. Most of the inmates in Jigoku are the worst of the worst, some of them just wanted more lenient prison sentences." The Hokage sat back in his chair, weaving his hands together.

"Never would have taken Mana as someone petty enough to approach the edge of her beliefs out of revenge." Kiyomi looked down, her eyes quivered as she tried to put together where she and her magician friend stood from now on.

"She's disappointed all of us." The Hokage nodded.

"It's not that. If I think this way, Mana must be going through the same but a hundred times worse. She's always been very self-corrosive about these sorts of things. It's hard to even begin to imagine the world of pain and darkness she's sunken to, what she'll do when surrounded by the worst kind of people too…" Kiyomi appeared to be struggling over the control of her own body, an impression further emphasized by her shaking hands and feet.

"Can we somehow visit Mana?" Meiko pleaded with the Hokage using just her puppy eyes.

"I'm afraid that is impossible. Even I do not fully know the exact location of Jigoku. From the snippets I do know, it might not even be located in this dimension. Nobody but very select few individuals in the village working in the penitentiary system know the full picture of Jigoku. Not even the deepest, the most underground layers of Black Ops units do not know that information, if they did, there would always be a danger they'd lay siege to the facility in an attempt to free some of their own rogue colleagues." Uzumaki Midoben explained.

"So our friend's in the darkest place she's ever been in and we've got no way of reaching out to her…" Meiko stated things as she saw them.

"I only informed you two about this out of solidarity. I will be expecting the two of you to do absolutely nothing about this situation and let the criminal justice system run its course, am I understood? This information is a show of trust from my side, even if it is a quite public bunch of news, you hear of it from me because I trust you two to treat this situation like adults, like ninja." Lord Seventh replied.

"Yes, Sir!" Kiyomi stiffened her body up and barked out a confirmation. It was not a bland or an apathetic one. It was a confirmation filled to the brink with something much worse – forced emotions that the young woman imposed on herself to feel. Faked pride and trust in her own village over what truly rustled in her heart, faked severance of any bonds to a dear friend. Something much more toxic than mere indifference.

"Understood." Meiko jumbled it out, chewing the words like a child working cold and repulsive porridge in their mouth and throwing it all out in the open with just the same kind of resentment to the world that resigned them to the cruel fate of chewing something they wanted to have nothing in common with.

"Good. Nakotsumi Mana is strong and resourceful. If anyone can survive Jigoku and figure things out, it would be her. Have faith in your village and your friend, that's all I'm asking of you. Dismissed." The Seventh released the pair from his administrative clutches, at least until their services would be needed next or some unexpected, electrifying event was in the works.

"Damn, can you believe that?" Meiko still was in a state of a nightmare, experienced while daydreaming.

"It's easier to believe than I'd have thought it to be," Kiyomi admitted.

"All that mess with that Honda monster and the Ayushi cult… She must have really taken it all to heart." Meiko shook her head. "You're being really mean about it though. She's our friend, even if we can't support her face to face, we have to at the very least support her here. People knew who she was, Kiyomi, they'll never let her forget any of this."

"She's a big girl, Meiko." Kiyomi cut it short. "She can deal with the consequences of her own actions, there's no need for us to hold her hand through it."

Kiyomi wanted to believe that she was able to just sever all ties with the magician who was now an actual criminal. Not like all that fake stuff in the Chuunin Exams when she stole some supplies to save Meiko's hide, an actual criminal. Meiko may have thought it cruel for Kiyomi to speak her troubled mind about the matter but what would have been truly cruel was the heartbreak that Kiyomi would have experienced when meeting the magician again, having the Yamanaka's ideological principles in mind.

For all intents and purposes, Mana was a criminal. She needed to be eliminated but… Kiyomi did not even delude herself on that, she'd never even draw a blade to begin doing the deed. She'd likely just erupt into a bundle of tears and conflicted pain and collapse on the spot. She was a disgrace to her nindo… She has been for a while.

"Were you even listening to everything I say saying?" Meiko interrupted Kiyomi's core-deep thought process, forcing the Yamanaka to snap out of it all.

"Yeah… Sorry… It's just… Too much to deal with right now. I need to blow off some steam, wanna go to the Yamanaka Resort? What we need now is a training regiment, put together by people that know what they're doing and a resort environment to kick back and get the hold on our thoughts." Kiyomi suggested.

"That was where it all went wrong… Where we went to relax and then Mana collapsed and we got called up and…" Meiko spoke with a somber and sulking tone.

"That sort of gloom is exactly what Mana wouldn't like us to engage in. You heard the Hokage, there's nothing we can do to help." Kiyomi tried to reason with her friend.

"I guess…" Meiko shrugged. "I could use a good gauntlet spar to wear me off my feet and an all-I-can-eat right after."

"Alright! That's a date then!" Kiyomi shot her fist out into the sky.

---

The Yamanaka clansmen in the Yamanaka Resort appeared to be in a chipper mood. The news about the demise of the Red Hawks' leader must have reached them and while they had the mental fortitude to realize that by no means meant the end of the organization in question, they took their little victories where they could find them.

"Why the long face, Kiyomi-sama, have you not heard the news?" a Yamanaka guard patrolling the resort inquired when seeing the heiress walking around and wallowing in self-conflict. What the man took for sadness was just confusion and an attempt to put things together in the right shelves.

"I have now, you big spoiler, you…" Kiyomi sighed.

"Huh? What was that?" Meiko wondered, pointing at the guard with her finger as the pair passed and left the handful of patrolling guards behind.

"We need to visit my uncle before doing anything else." Kiyomi sighed.

"What? Why?" Meiko scratched her head.

"My uncle has finally settled on not passing down the clan to anyone else. I'm now officially the future head of the Yamanaka." Kiyomi explained. "Figured since the guards were so damn polite…"

Kiyomi waited for Meiko to explode in joy, to congratulate or show any sort of overblown reaction but the blacksmith just pondered hard on something before finally gathering the necessary guts to ask what's been plaguing her.

"Wasn't that always the case?" She said.

"I guess it was, now it's been made official though. Guess uncle has settled on having no more offspring." Kiyomi breathed out a heavy gulp of breath.

"You don't look like someone who's just inherited a clan…" Meiko noticed.

"That's because a whole myriad of ritualistic and traditional shenanigans are about to befall on my head and I can't even imagine how much of a hassle it's all going to be. I'll have to get married, for one. Given how it is integral that I do before I inherit the clan, they likely won't be wasting any time…" Kiyomi whined out with a chest caved under the impending responsibility and a heavy crown of tradition.

"I thought you wanted to get married." Meiko pointed out. "You're always every other guy you like…"

"You're the only "guy" I need…" Kiyomi nudged her friend in the arm with her knuckles and a warm smile.

Within her own mind, Kiyomi cringed herself at how horrible that sounded and felt so gracious to the universe governing every aspect of her life that it had made Meiko as oblivious as she was. Then again, maybe that very same carelessness and vacancy were why she had not yet picked up on the obvious nudges...

"Niece, excellent!" uncle's voice boomed through the massive temple he sat in like the mighty Thunderer in his throne. "It was unfortunate that the news was made public while you were away. You've skipped so much of what you could have been taught already."

"Oh, so you were going to finally get off your chair and train me then?" Kiyomi joked. She knew too well that was not what her uncle meant by training.

"Th-That's your uncle?!" the edges of Meiko's mouth dragged down like melting ice-cream. The blacksmith, who was known as a sizeable and fit youth in her own right, found herself dwarfed by the colossal man seated in his chair of marble and emeralds. "You look nothing like him…"

"Who's the outsider?" one of the assistants that safeguarded the exalted lump of flesh and, on occasion, scratched his back with one of her chain-hooks to wake the man up, inquired. The protective woman looked a bit antsier than her traditional and classy garb would have suggested and encouraged.

"Oh, that's Meiko. She's my friend." Kiyomi threw a pointing thumb the blacksmith's way.

"Another one? The magician is in prison and you've already found yourself a new best friend?" the second assistant raised an eyebrow. Her violet make-up glittered over her eyelids when the woman tried looking flippant towards her future heiress. That was just how these two were, as bold as a good joker entertaining a fat and bald king.

"Yes, believe it or not, the clan heiress of the Yamanaka clan has made more than one friend in her entire life…" Kiyomi replied, looking almost too proud of her own composure. She's spent far too much time before the semi-finals of the Chuunin Exams falling for the sharp taunts of these two women and having herself humiliated by the pair in front of her uncle.

"You know very well that was not what I meant," Uncle replied, interrupting the game he had seen all too many times, even when it was developing towards a direction previously unseen to him. "I've sent out messages to every clan announcing the news, you'll soon be unable to shake-off potential suitors."

"Hey, everybody, our little girl's all grown up and ready to be taken, first come, first serve through!" the green-haired assistant in an orange dress made some expressive remarks while moving and hopping around like a teenage idol, trying to distract her audience from the fact her music will have no ballads made about it by moving like a pint-sized mammal.

"That's not what the letters said… Although… Well, that's how they'll take it, for certain." Uncle very nearly stood up, leaning forward so that he could turn his head toward his provocative right-hand woman.

"Hey, Big Sir, we kind of came here to train and relax for a while after a big mission so if Kiyomi could not get married for a little while yet, that'd be great," Meiko spoke up. The eyes of the two assistants wished painful death upon the outsider with distaste that was uncommon to pretty much anyone around. The Yamanaka Resort was a protected district to be certain but it was a resort to anyone who was a friend of the blond masters of intelligence gathering and management.

"Well, there's one more business to attend to so… I suppose you can take a short time-out. We will get right to it afterward though…" Kiyomi's uncle scratched his stubble before shaking his index finger as if trying to get the Yamanaka heiress to swear to him she'd take her looming responsibilities more seriously in the nearest future.

"Sure, cute guys from all over the country trying to buy my hand with a cocktail of influence-bartering, winks, and wolf whistling… I can hardly contain the excitement." Kiyomi shrugged. "What's the business, as the heiress of the clan, I have a personal interest in something that would make you delay something you've already delayed so."

"The Yamanaka have been handed out the body of Ahimari Uchiha, the leader of the Red Hawks." Kiyomi's uncle declared. "While it is a great honor and an excellent show of affection from Konoha's behalf, it is also a pain in the ass to decide what to actually do with it."

"Huh? Why would the Yamanaka be given the body of the leader of Red Hawks?" Meiko turned to Kiyomi.

"More importantly, why would they take it?" Kiyomi squinted at her uncle. "Don't you remember all of this started from a conflict with the Uchiha, do you want to start another one by denying them the body?"

"Little Princess Kiyomi, not even a butt-cheek on the emerald throne and she's already making the big calls…" the orange-haired assistant in a red dress tried to cheek her future superior.

"Well, that's the odd part, they kind of agreed to it, suggested it, almost to the point of insisting." Yamanaka Bakuchi scratched his bald head, flicking his man-sized hair-bun when it got in the way. Judging from the man's irritation, there were certainly days when big-man Bakuchi wished he had not settled on the traditional chonmage hairstyle.

"And that didn't strike you as odd whatsoever?" Kiyomi objected. It was like the whole world had gone mad overnight, the Uchiha never shared their toys with anyone, even toys they had long since grown out the need for. They were not about to start unless there was something they could gain from it and anything that the Uchiha wanted hard enough to give something in return should have struck fear into the hearts of anyone hearing of it.

"Oh, come on… What's the worst they could do?" Bakuchi shrugged his shoulders.

"We've just crushed an ancient artifact that Ahimari would have used to reflect his Sharingan genjutsu and enslave entire armies!" Kiyomi lost the very composure she previously gleamed with and felt proud of. Not that it could have been helped… With this kind of rule, her uncle, as legendary and wise as he was up 'till now, would squander the whole faction into the ground before Kiyomi even got her hands on it, and given how much trouble she signed up for by being born to her parents, she damn well deserved a shot at calling all the shots.

"Is the Princess tired? Should we show her to her bed?" the green assistant leaned forward in a suggestive manner.

"Or is she just delusional? Should we show her to the infirmary?" the red assistant mirrored the movements of her sister in crime beat for beat.

"Point taken, Ahimari's dead anyway and it's not like the main branch of the Uchiha were too fond of their rebellious comrades. Do you really think I've never once interacted with the Uchiha and tried to mend things when the conflict was at the boiling point?" Bakuchi raised his eyebrow. Due to the fact that the man always held his mouth open and his teeth shut together, it was oftentimes tough to say if he was grinning or just doing his usual grimacing.

"You may have, provided they ever told you a lick of truth." Kiyomi threw her hands out in the air. "I see I'll have to change a whole lot of things when I'm in charge. And to think people thought you to be a strict and demanding leader…"

"You mean your husband is in charge, Princess?" one of the two assistants poked out her tongue.

The unwieldy, hardwood gate rumbled as a lone man managed to open them and enter through it. Given how that gate was designed with the immense size of Yamanaka Bakuchi in mind and usually took a gear mechanism to operate, it was an impressive feat of strength. The man held a Yamanaka clansman in his right hand, senseless and dragging across the floor but the entrant held the poor clansman by his throat.

"Where I can find Yamanaka Bakuchi?" Ahimari Uchiha inquired.

A blur of red and black flashed simultaneously, blitzing at the man at once in speed too much for even an average ninja to track yet subtle enough in their movement to not raise a hair on Kiyomi's head. The two assistants of Yamanaka Bakuchi moved in from the sides, one of them swiping her naginata while the other slashed with her chained hook in her left hand. The two blades crossed paths somewhere amidst Ahimari's flesh and the resulting clang signaled that the man should have been beheaded in an instant.

None of that happened, however. Ahimari stood there in the same position he had taken before, his head separated from his body yet not moving from its original position. The two assistants dashed back the moment that their instant-death tag team combo had failed. Once the blades left Ahimari's body, the man's flesh just stuck back where it was while the elderly Uchiha stretched his neck out as if it had just merely inconvenienced him.

"That explains why Momoyu couldn't kill him…" Meiko commented on the sight as if it was not the weirdest thing she had ever seen.

"I really must be getting old. Back in my day, people used to die when they were killed." Bakuchi slumped in his chair, appearing for a moment as if he had died there in his place. Then, in a violent outburst, an eruption of golden chakra leaked out from the Yamanaka patriarch leaving even the fleshy colossus dwarfed in comparison. What appeared as fat around the blobby biceps, forearms, thighs, and calves of the current leader of the Yamanaka soon turned to solid, rocky muscle. Each muscle the size of the tower bell.

"Oh…" Ahimari let go of the poor Yamanaka he was holding onto. The leader of the Red Hawks just swatted his poor victim aside, letting him tap the eastern wall of the temple. A Yamanaka victim used for information about the location of the Yamanaka patriarch, the final boss in the daring raid of the Red Hawk leader. "I'm almost wondering if I want any of this now…" he smirked.

"Oh snap, Master got out of his throne. Somebody's in trouble…" the assistant in a black dress peeked her tongue out for the invader. The charismatic pair withdrew with a barrage of backflips, letting the two kings duke it out.

Kiyomi and Meiko were forced to step back a pair of leaps too, the pressure emanating from Yamanaka Bakuchi was too immense to stand by his side, let alone in his way. One step at a time, Bakuchi walked forward, rumbling the ground under his feet and leaving indented sandal-prints on the stone floor.

It happened in a blink, one moment the two were staring each other down, the other Bakuchi was already in mid-air, all up in his opponent's face with his fist cocked back and ready to wreak some havoc in his own resort. For all intents and purposes – his kingdom.

Ahimari flickered and disappeared, confusing Kiyomi a decent bit but then the Yamanaka noticed Meiko's eyes staring at a point far off into the eastern wing of the temple and therefore followed her comrade's eyes. Much to her surprise, Ahimari entered the view once Kiyomi moved them long enough. It felt like the elderly Uchiha moved in an instant, the kind of momentary movement that was very unlike him, judging from the display back in the Twelve-Headed Mountain.

"A transportation seal…" Meiko mumbled. "This guy's no joke, the least potent transportation seal I know is an A-Rank technique."

"That would make him…" Kiyomi reacted to her friend's words.

"A seal master." Meiko nodded.

"Genjutsu and seals. No wonder he was such a slouch against Momoyu-san." Kiyomi said.

"It was a fancy trick, placing a transportation seal onto the neck of that poor man like that." Bakuchi cracked his knuckles. For someone his size, the Yamanaka managed his outlandish strength perfectly – his last punch dug through the ground like a drill, leaving a crater deep enough to crack through the mantle but narrow enough to barely be wider than the man's arm that formed it.

"Oh, come, why else would I have dragged this man around with me? I needed at least one free-escape card." Ahimari grinned. His full smile looked even more malevolent given that the man's eyes remained shut.

"And you used it to avoid just a single punch meant to test the waters… Well done." Bakuchi raised his fist up, all that explosion of golden chakra from before seemed nowhere to be seen until it all blasted outward again.

This time Ahimari snapped back to react in time, his hands swung in a wide guard before moving in to round closer circles around his core. A pair of a single sealing glyph appeared on both hands of the elderly Uchiha while he stretched his arms out and cupped his hands closer to where the two separate elements nearly formed one. A circle of glowing hieroglyphs appeared around the main sealing glyph, Bakuchi's arm disappeared into an unseen void halfway, as if he had just punched a surface of immovable waters.

In a backward wide swing to that which he had performed before, Ahimari spread his hands out, letting the wide sealing glyph close up and disappear. Bakuchi's eyes widened when he realized that half of his left hand was in a whole another dimension. The Yamanaka patriarch just stared at the stump he had for a smashing limb.

"Master!" the assistant pair yelled out, attacking simultaneously again. The green-haired assistant threw her hooks out from up in the air while the ginger one spun on the floor, head down, feet up, her naginata slicing at the feet and calves of the opponent at the same time.

Ahimari's right eye flared red with just a peek. Both of the two women collapsed on the ground and writhed for just a beat before struggling to stand up. Whatever illusion he had used on them, appeared sufficient to make both kunoichi wish to halt their revenge-driven attacks but given how invested they were in their movements, that sentiment also forced them to fumble on the floor in a less than gracious manner.

A mad swipe of Bakuchi's stump blew the upper half of Ahimari's body off clean. The beheaded and de-chested body twitched for a pair of heartbeats before a pair of chicken legs erupted from the waist. What remained of Ahimari flipped over onto the erupted chicken feet that scurried to carry the Uchiha farther away, where his body could reform.

"This was unlike before." Meiko noticed.

"Yeah, this time it's an illusion for sure, similar to Mana's illusionary escape techniques." Kiyomi nodded.

Given how the exact state of the scales was yet to be determined, the two subscribed themselves to the method of watching the enemy with hopes of noticing any patterns or weaknesses rather than engage him in a fair fight, given how, due to the vast difference in skill, experience, and genetics, any fight of these two against Ahimari would hardly qualify as being all that fair.

"Hmph…" a voice came out from the lower body of Ahimari that soon appeared to be just as human and normal as it was meant to be as his ridiculous looks faded away as a mirage. "I had thought that sneaking into the Yamanaka Resort would require extraordinary measures, even with my skill but I had thought that executing the infiltration would be the toughest part of my day. Perhaps you will claim these honors soon?"

"So that's why you played possum? Infiltration?" Bakuchi growled. It was unclear if the man was just that good at ignoring the pain of missing a limb or if he felt nothing whatsoever but he looked all irritation and no torment.

"Why should I explain myself to a dead-man?" Ahimari taunted his opponent, charging out head-first at the opponent that seemed physically superior.

"He's applying pressure," Kiyomi noted.

"On a stronger opponent?" Meiko turned the corner of her eyes at her comrade.

"Sure. It seems like Ahimaru can afford to get beaten however many times he wants to while uncle is bleeding out chakra and stamina from his arm loss." Kiyomi replied.

Ahimari and Bakuchi danced from up close, Bakuchi's response to Ahimari's summons for a devil's twist was ruthless, crushing and non-relenting. Any dash to attack from up above was met with a backhanded swat, any attempt to attack the mid-section resulted in Ahimari being crushed and pounded into the ancient stone tiles that were more expensive than most villages would have valued this high-ranking criminal's life. Any attempts at sweep the legs or hit the knees resulted in Bakuchi stomping Ahimari like a bug but nothing kept the relentless Uchiha down.

"You're right. We need to get as much data on this man as we can and attack the moment your uncle seems in danger." Meiko turned to Kiyomi.

"No. That's why those two are here. This man is dangerous, Meiko, I feel massive outcry outside, the mental link shared between the entire clan in the resort is broken, filled with screams and curses… This man delivered a significant blow on the Yamanaka Resort all by himself…" Kiyomi's face turned sour, she could almost feel each and every drop of sweat forming on her face.

Ahimari flew back, blasted aside by Bakuchi's soccer kick and got himself impaled on a collapsed column. Bakuchi turned half of his face to Kiyomi and grinned, or so it could have been interpreted, given his peculiar usual grimace.

"Don't get wrinkles on your forehead, niece, the suitors from the other clans will still need to fall for you." Uncle joked while Ahimari gripped the end of the battlefield he himself was responsible for devastating and leaving in a state hectic enough to get himself impaled on something that was broken and pulled his body off. The leader of the Red Hawks slumped onto the floor with a wet sounding thud before picking himself back up and turning his shut eyes at Bakuchi.

"Uncle, let us fight by your side." The assistants insisted.

"No. Go aid the clan. If I cannot handle a single impudent invader, I truly have shriveled and rotten." Bakuchi declared.

"You were always a dead man, in any stage of my plan, Yamanaka Bakuchi." Ahimari declared. "Believe it or not, I did not infiltrate your precious resort to get a shot at you. If the Red Hawks just laid siege to this place – I'd have gotten my shot regardless."

"If you're so confident, then why did you go through all the trouble of dying just to stand in front of me?" Bakuchi wondered. He had little to nothing to gain from standing around and continuously losing chakra and stamina, however, as the leader of the Yamanaka he had a responsibility to understand who and for what reason has brought war onto the steps of his clan's home. Kiyomi took note of that grand gesture from her uncle's side.

"It's not to face you, your clan was always to be crushed on our path to power. To reclaim the former glory of the Uchiha!" Ahimari declared and charged onward again, the Uchiha dashed up to attack Bakuchi's upper body but once again the backhand smack of the Yamanaka patriarch would have swatted the assailant aside like a bothersome fly. It would have, had Ahimari's body not dispersed into a fall of feathers. White, grey, brown…

"Explosive Sealing Method!" Ahimari yelled out while touching the back of Bakuchi's neck – a deadly weak spot in the defenses of the most ninja. The one place where no ninja wanted to be attacked because a successful hit to the area resulted in a kill-shot most of the time.

"No!" Meiko reacted to Ahimari sealing a decent chunk of his chakra into the back of the neck of Kiyomi's uncle, using a sealing method that once unsealed would have reacted in a blast as powerful as the amount of chakra sealed. It was a simple seal in terms of how generic it was but it was a complex seal to learn. In other words, a B-Rank technique that everybody knew of but few could actually pick up.

Before Kiyomi could reach out and lock her friend in place so that she did not make an emotion-driven mistake and open up, a forceful detonation of the seal sent both young women cowering from the brunt of the blast's force.

Once a handful of the raised smoke and debris settled, Kiyomi saw a chilling sight of Ahimari's face turned at her with his body shifted halfway to facing her as well. Of course, this bastard would target her next, she was the inheritor of the Yamanaka clan. If he meant for the total destruction of the clan, that would have made a lick of sense, as much of it as attacking the main sacred grounds of the Yamanaka did.

"I came here for you, Yamanaka Kiyomi." Ahimari declared, pointing his finger at the blonde as if he was staring right at her. Even as the man's eyes remained shut, Kiyomi had never felt someone pierce her soul quite like Uchiha Ahimari.

"Yeah well…" Kiyomi rolled her kunai blade in her hand before tightly grabbing its handle and locking herself in a knife-fighting stance. "Come at me then…"

Before Ahimari could fulfill his purpose, a bare hand reached out from the lingering smoke and wrapped around Ahimari's cheeks. As more and more smoke dissipated, the sight of Yamanaka Bakuchi holding his opponent in a dominating one-hand head clutch set itself into stone.

"My niece. What is your business with her?" the unfazed patriarch of the Yamanaka who must have himself possessed some unnatural powers of immortality to have survived a blast targeting a lethal pressure point in the body of any human asked.

"Isn't it obvious? I'm here to marry her…" Ahimari grinned, his cheeks forced their way through. The greatest struggle Ahimari has shown in this duel of fates was smiling while Bakuchi held his upper head and jaw with his entire colossal hand.

A rowdy popping sound, followed by wet drooping and a dull thud signaled the pressure-based destruction of Ahimari's head in the hand of his opponent. Using the opening of the downed enemy who was bound to return one way or another, the two assistants slipped out through the gate, first blitzing all the way to the upper floor of the temple to activate the gearwork that opened it under normal circumstances.

"When you estimated it would take my dead body for that to happen, you weren't wrong…" Bakuchi's voice thundered.

A dog-sized chicken burst from the beheaded body of Ahimari and ran to the north-western wing of the temple hall. The bird wheezed for a short while before dashing back at the location he ran away from. At this point, the Uchiha has shown enough illusions and sealing techniques for it to become confusing which was which.

"Crush that chicken!" Meiko yelled out.

"If he does, he might open himself up. It's unclear if the chicken is the illusion, maybe the dead body is an illusion and the real Ahimari is waiting behind one of the remaining pillars, waiting for uncle to strike thin air so that he could injure him more or worse…" Kiyomi explained her uncle's passivity. "Until uncle knows exactly what he's dealing with, it is best to stay put and watch, watch and, more importantly, learn."

The chicken took a dive into the headless stump he just burst from, resulting in a bloody splash. Regardless of how unlikely the feat of the chicken fitting back inside seemed, Ahimari stood back up and his head was back as it was meant to be, even the blood covering the Uchiha's face faded away in the shape of crimson dust in the evening breeze.

"Do not mistake my betrothal to your niece as a sign of affection for you lot. The destruction of the Yamanaka will result in the world once more acknowledging the Uchiha as the elite and dominant ninja clan they once were. Before the current disgraces in charge began groveling before the village playing the petty politics game. However, it would take more than just leveling this resort and killing everyone inside to destroy the Yamanaka, the clan is too widespread and too powerful." Ahimari explained while he got his body back in shape to continue the fight.

"You got that right. Even if they're not part of the main branch, the Yamanaka are all over the world. Even the Kirigakure branch alone would give you rogue dogs trouble." Bakuchi smirked.

"Exactly. Which is why I need more than just destroy an important headquarters for the clan. I need to subjugate it and what better way than marrying its heiress?" Ahimari spread his hands out in an arrogant wide-guard stance. It was a stance used for defensive redirections of the opponent's power-based attacks, the cockiness of one adopting it alone taunted the enemy to attack in blind fury and that must have been what he expected from Yamanaka Bakuchi. "The husband of the heiress will effectively rule the clan, if Yamanaka are led by an Uchiha, it's even worse than if they were wiped out, don't you think?"

"There is one problem though." Bakuchi swung his arm around to relieve some tension building up in his muscles. The man then tightened the clutch of his fist and took a wide stance, right foot and his only hand out in front. A mighty stomp that shook the ground and a declarative kiai that shook the heavens. "How can you marry my niece if you're not getting past me?"

"You have proven to be a troublesome opponent, Yamanaka Bakuchi, though that is to be expected, you are the leader of the Yamanaka's main branch. I have always counted in the possibility of using my eyes against you as something that was inevitable." Ahimari declared before covering his face with his hand. Despite the fact that the Red Hawk tried playing it down as an option he always had and could have used, Kiyomi saw it for what it was – a desperation move.

Ahimari was decent seal master and likely still had seals beyond one's wildest dreams up his sleeve, however, after seeing Yamanaka Bakuchi survive an erupting blast of chakra of beyond world-breaking proportions, coming from within the man's own body and one that was supposed to tear apart his most sensitive vital point to boot, Ahimari was wise to rule out seals as an option in stopping Kiyomi's uncle.

With the fingers of Ahimari's cover hand spreading apart, a red gleam penetrated the gloom and the shadows of the inner Yamanaka sanctum. Kiyomi had been a decent genjutsu user herself once, before realizing she was overshadowed in the subject by Mana and choosing to rather hone her physical arts and ninjutsu to provide her own use to her team instead of playing second fiddle in something Mana could cover to its fullest. Someone who understood illusions to the extent that Kiyomi did, turned her eyes away from the Sharingan before it even reached her perception – she predicted Ahimari's moves.

By avoiding the medium through which the illusion reached and affected its target, Kiyomi managed to resist the illusion to the extent that breaking it became much simpler. Somehow, it still drowned the world out into a void of black oblivion and the ever-present drain of red vapors converging in the air threatened to finalize the genjutsu by forming the abominable desert scorcher – the Sharingan moon in the void's sky. Before that could happen, Kiyomi managed to break through the illusion by playing with her chakra flow, escalating and halting it, then escalating it again to bust through any attempts to manipulate it from an external source.

It was a lot like raising waves of splashing bath water while washing oneself, bend one's knees and move one's bottom to the front, then back up, after sufficient repeats the flow of the unruly water will splash over the bath and infuriate one's parents as it likely did Kiyomi's. While it was an odd metaphor, the concept of breaking out of illusions was made easier to understand by it. It was how Kiyomi came to memorize and understand it as a six-year-old and what helped her grasp it even to this day.

Meiko was not as lucky. Kiyomi did not look into the blacksmith's eyes, worried that the Sharingan that reflected onto them from Ahimari could have reflected back to Kiyomi's own eyes, completing the chain and launching the assault of a full illusion, one that Kiyomi would not have had the necessary chakra to bust through. However, the static and lulled stance of her friend delivered the message clear enough.

"Let us see if your mind can survive the full brunt of the Sharingan's might!" Ahimari taunted Kiyomi's uncle. The spoken words calmed the blonde a little, helping her put together that the Red Hawk had not switched targets and was still occupied with eliminating her uncle. Kiyomi wanted to check how bad it was, if Ahimari had one of his Sharingan eyes active, both, if both of them had connected with uncle and if uncle had sunken under.

A surprised grunt made Kiyomi forget that she was not meant to lift her eyes that high up, she was lucky that uncle was the one shocking the Uchiha by grabbing hold of the Uchiha's entire body with his one remaining hand, two fingers wrapping over Ahimari's shoulders while the other two held the Uchiha locked down from the sides. The frail build of the Red Hawk leader as well as the massive difference in size between the two allowed for this sort of unique hold to happen.

"My mind… Perhaps once my body and mind have been separate, now, there is no such distinction!" Uncle roared out crushing Ahimari in his own palm like a plum. Instead of blood, guts and busted bones raining from the sanguine stain drooping from the mushed mass in uncle's hand, feathers landed with grace and ease onto the floor. With each tapping feather, Kiyomi could have sworn she had heard raindrops hitting the ground.

"Wha… What happened?" Meiko coughed up, even her lungs appeared to have been paralyzed by Ahimari's previous illusion.

"You've broken out. That means Ahimari used another illusion that canceled the first one out." Kiyomi explained what she was putting together at that moment, both to herself and her comrade.

"Dammit, how are we meant to fight someone we can't even look at or be looked at by?" Meiko cursed in frustration, realizing the great difference between the strengths of the two graduates of Team Hokage and the colossal fight of masterful shinobi transpiring in front of them.

"No. I don't think that's the illusion. Look…" Kiyomi pointed at a tiny, grey duckling running away from the opened clutch of Yamanaka Bakuchi.

"The duckling again. That would mean that he's using the same illusion, right?" Meiko scratched her head.

"I don't think so. Mana uses a similar technique. The crux of her illusionary escape is creating an illusionary duplicate while the real her slips out of the reality perceived by the targets of the illusion." Kiyomi reminded the redhead. As if prompted by that reminder, the duckling tapped back to the bloody stain upon which moment the bloody remains of Ahimari reformed around the prophetic waterfowl.

"I see…" Meiko's eyes widened. "The duckling returned to the place where the supposed illusion died, so it cannot be an illusionary escape technique."

"Uncle! It's okay, don't be afraid to open up and smash that duck next time!" Kiyomi yelled out.

"Huh… It appears I have been found out…" Ahimari grinned, scratching the back of his head. "So both of us have shown our true hands to each other. Perhaps the battle is in its decisive stages?"

"Do not presume to know the degree of my mental mastery!" Bakuchi grumbled like a thunderstorm, taking a mighty step forward and throwing his fist out in disgust of his opponent's fighting style.

"Oh, but I do…" Ahimari reached his fingers for his closed eyes and tapped on them. "The Sharingan, remember? The doujutsu of the Uchiha allows me to see and read what it would take hundreds of looks for even the wisest sage to perceive. Not even the tiniest details escape this eye. By using your ace technique to escape my Explosive Sealing Method, you've shown your hand, just like your infernal niece has told you about mine."

"I'll believe your boasting when I see a reason to!" Bakuchi grumbled, the Yamanaka patriarch spread his hand out and began moving it in a circle, reminding of a meditative breathing pose. The absence of the other limb sort of broke the balanced and graceful impression but the glow of golden chakra around Bakuchi's person intensified even more than in his usual, combat-ready state.

"As fast and slippery you think you are, not even you can dodge thought. Allow me to show you the ultimate heights to which I have brought the Yamanaka mental hijutsu…" Bakuchi growled through sheer effort that it demanded of him to stand and keep irradiating this impossible to believe amounts of chakra. No, not just that, it felt like the very essence of the man using the technique became transparent when Bakuchi's technique was in-use.

"Mind-Switch: Mindragon!" Bakuchi roared out while his golden aura withdrew within the transparent body of its wielder, making Bakuchi glow like a colossal, golden ghost while solid spikes burst forth through Bakuchi's chest while a draconic serpent with lion's mane and lucent, golden scales coiled itself around Bakuchi's fading body.

"I… I don't understand… It's a fancy technique and all but…" Meiko turned to Kiyomi. "Why is your uncle literally disappearing while he's using it?"

"I've… I've no idea…" Kiyomi wondered. She had some theories, mere ramblings of perhaps the technique requiring so much chakra and concentration that it evaporated the person using whole but… Such a thing hardly seemed possible, even compared to immortal men, resurrected by ducks sealed inside their bodies and whatever other wonders this godly level of ninja combat revealed.

The golden dragon created by Bakuchi's jutsu justified its described reputation as it scrambled at the confused Uchiha. What little uncle let out about this jutsu made Kiyomi understand it somewhat but seeing it had a whole different effect. Such was the nature of most bright ninja, showing a jutsu tipped them off to its nature, its strengths and weaknesses and it was not always necessary to be the one dealing with it in the first place.

The dragon was concentrated thought. So concentrated in fact that it was given shape in the material world. If the ages old saying of mind over matter was to be believed, Uchiha Ahimari was in for a scare, even the speed at which the technique traveled was notable. The speed of thought was the usual speed of most Yamanaka hijutsu but seeing it on something this massive and majestic, something that was only partially existing and partly still a stream of thoughts that its nature implied it to be and therefore more difficult to pick up, was much different than seeing it on the barebones mental projection of the Mind Body Switch jutsu.

Ahimari's hands waved in a circle, Kiyomi could recognize those movements because Ahimari was conjuring up a seal that he had used earlier. It was not necessarily just the ability to come up with new, unnatural seals that defined a seal master, but also how natural and quick the generic seals came out from their side as well. Most seal users needed a few seconds, material to sketch sealing glyphs on, time to mold chakra and apply it in just the right, sensitive ways. All it took for Ahimari to open up a sealing rift into another sealing dimension was to wave his hands in a circle.

The dragon coiled around itself. As if hesitating for a millisecond to cross the rift but then it dived right through, phasing through it as if there was no resistance to impede its path. It made a lick of sense, the dragon was as much thought as it was something material and something like thought transcended the material world. It was only because of the immense concentration of it that the mental projection was in any way perceivable, to begin with.

A blood-curdling roar of pain, gone was the façade of cool that the Uchiha adorned when engaging the outside world, walling off the incredible emotional sensitivity most of them were cursed by their nature with since birth. Ahimari was just a few pitches away from screaming like a scared girl as the overwhelming might of the Mindragon flowed through him, it appeared to be ripping the man's flesh and bits apart but despite the gruesome impressions, it left no lasting damage.

In a ghastly visage, appearing much like a ghostly possession, Ahimari flew backward as if fired from a cannon and left a great crater in the wall he hit. Mindragon was not done with the enemy just yet, it coiled and roared and continued to soar about the temple, dragging its poor target all over the place and leaving bloodied trails and ridges where Ahimari was dragged across. The entire temple started rumbling and threatening to collapse. With one, final roar of pride, Mindragon flung its target, reduced to a pathetic shell of a state across the room, busting into the wall on the opposite side of the room.

"Whoa!" Meiko gasped in disbelief. "You're gonna be able to do that too?"

"I… I don't know. This is something my uncle has accomplished with the same fundamentals that I have now. This is his power and no one else's. Now I understand what he told me before the semi-finals of the Chuunin Exams a bit better…" Kiyomi felt her chest to soothe her racing heart. The young woman looked utterly shocked to see her hand trembling before her own eyes. She was in no danger, this was the power of her protector and her blood relative, a man who would die before seeing a hair being harmed on her head and yet it utterly petrified her.

It was not to whom this power belonged to, it was a matter of the existence of such power that frightened Kiyomi.

"Wait… Where is your uncle!?" Meiko flipped out. Feeling like her friend was just being aloof, Kiyomi nudged her with the elbow and switched her attention back onto the battlefield. A barebones visual inspection betrayed the truth to be on Meiko's side – Yamanaka Bakuchi was nowhere to be seen.

"What the…" Kiyomi mumbled to herself before a spark of neurons working a certain way in her brain made her jaw drop. "No… No… This is… Impossible…"

"What's the matter?" Meiko turned to Kiyomi. Because the blonde was so unresponsive, the blacksmith grabbed her friend's shoulders and shook the Yamanaka heiress a good handful of times.

"The… The duck… We have to smash the duck…" Kiyomi uttered still in a daze. She now understood just what her uncle was and how he had survived the Explosive Sealing Method earlier but, despite that being a realization that quite literally shattered all previous understanding of how the world around her worked, the matter of dealing with Uchiha Ahimari still came first.

"I don't think there's any point…" Meiko muttered, raising her hand to show a whited out Ahimari lying sprawled out in the wall crater he was left in moments earlier by the raging Mindragon. "He doesn't look responsive at all. His eyes are open yet nothing's happening…"

Kiyomi focused her attention at the whites where the terrifying Sharingan once flared in Ahimari's ocular orbs but failed to see anything in them except for nets of bloody veins spreading from the edges. The condition of Ahimari's eyes deteriorated rapidly every second that the eyes remained open. Before long, puny trickles of blood started running down, bursting forth from under the man's lower eyelid and running down his shriveled face.

"Something ironic about an Uchiha born with both an innate potential for crippling genjutsu and such an aggressive eye condition," Kiyomi said.

Ahimari's chest inflated, something living was struggling to get out, the throat of the Uchiha followed, as whatever wanted to get out found a corridor to its way out. The movements of the sizeable lump weren't willful, had they been, the lump of flesh would have soon burst forth out of its bodily prison. It looked like a strangled body, jerking for its last breaths out of instinct rather than conscious attempts at breaking the asphyxia.

Meiko moved in a blur of red and green, punching the seemingly lobotomized Ahimari straight into the center of his body, busting his ribcage and reducing it to into a powder of bone dust. After that, it took just a light flick with a kunai blade to open the man up. Meiko spread Ahimari's chest open wider to reveal the grey duck flapping its wings and kicking about, blank and unresponsive eyes, blood and foam trickling down the duck's mouth.

"Smash it!" Kiyomi prompted.

Meiko took the bird into her hands and put it out of its misery. Despite the usual support to Mana's beliefs that the blacksmith displayed, she did not look all too conflicted about ending the existence as troubled and pained as that of the duckling.

"What the…" Meiko mumbled, looking into her hands.

"What is it?" Kiyomi approached the blacksmith.

"I crushed the duck, I'm sure of it but… I think it left an egg in my hand…" Meiko pouted her lips.

"Smash it too!" Kiyomi instructed her friend. For all they knew, the egg could have regenerated the duck, which could have regenerated Ahimari. This was now the world that they lived in, the exact nature of which changed day to day as new ridiculous concepts were introduced into their lives. All that a sane mind could have done was stride alongside the surface of the ever-expanding lake or risk drowning under to the depths of insanity.

"Agh!" Meiko groaned in pain upon crushing the egg. The blacksmith spread her hands out, revealing a thick, brass needle etched into the fingerless glove and, with its tip, into Meiko's hand. It must have been brimming with chakra to have worked its way into Meiko's skin. Kiyomi knew all too well how capable of taking a hit the redhead was, as well as dishing one out, when necessary.

"Why are all these random objects, brimming with chakra, sealed inside one another?" Kiyomi wondered.

Meiko rolled the needle around in her fingers, looking at it with disdain befitting an object that just pricked her finger. The eyes of the blacksmith brightened up, she shifted her look around from one point of interest, the brass needle, to the other – the mindless, whited out Uchiha with an open chest. The redhead extended her hand, holding the needle right up to the man's wound. The flesh tissue extended toward it, reaching out for it like thousands of miniscule, thirsty hands reaching for the last jug of water.

"I had a hunch…" Meiko sighed with relief. "He's sealed more than just his chakra into these objects. He sealed parts of his entire life-force."

Meiko placed the needle down on the ground and rolled it toward the fallen Uchiha. The needle rolled for a couple of flips but then the faint brass jingle turned to a wet slurp as yellow goop enveloped the needle, dull cracks signaled an eggshell that appeared out of thin air and formed the egg again, bone churning sounds followed the re-assembly of the waterfowl skeleton that soon turned to flesh and re-feathered. A bonsai tree spread its roots and branches from inside Ahimari's body, ready to contain the duckling once it entered its master's chest cavity and hid between its coiling like strands of DNA roots.

"Can we kill him?" Kiyomi asked the only question that plagued her mind.

"That was meant to be the idea – if you do, the seals provide the life-force and chakra to undo it. Given his skill, I'd say he made sure that the seals were self-sustaining, meaning that the chain could go on forever and ever, no matter how many times or in what method he is killed. Maybe killing him a thousand times in a split second could overload them but… The chain of seals is extensive." Meiko shrugged.

"But can we kill him?" Kiyomi repeated the question. This time, Meiko got the intended subtext.

"Oh… Sure, just break the last bit of the chain, and the whole thing unravels. If the tree is just twisted trunks of a tree it won't host the duck or regrow inside of a chest cavity. If the duck is just another duck, it won't leave an egg after it and if the egg is just an egg…" Meiko waved her arms about. She placed her hand onto the tree and focused a large chunk of her chakra to pulse through it. It did not look too different from breaking out of genjutsu, the way she went about it.

"Damn, I can't do it. It's like a marvel of machinery, this seal, it will take a great technician to both put it together and disassemble it." Meiko sighed.

Kiyomi placed an explosive tag onto the tree and pushed Meiko to the side, the tree roared and splintered in its demise, letting the duckling flop out from its remains on the ground lifeless. The blonde stomped the bird, underneath her bloodied foot laid a perfectly fine egg that she took and smashed into the ground, then she took the needle and handed it to Meiko.

"Breaking the last bit of the chain could be easier." She spoke wearing a blunt and cold expression.

Meiko looked back at Kiyomi as if she knew the truth, the fact that Kiyomi enjoyed continuously smashing every tiniest bit of Ahimari's life fragments over and over again. She was someone who had denied herself her principles for too long and this man was someone twisted enough to make up for it, even more, he was wicked and vain enough for the fact that it was possible to kill him again and again feel almost cathartic to the Yamanaka heiress.

Without starting a shouting match between the two, Meiko took the needle and tried her unsealing technique again. The needle lit up with murky blue light before something resembling an aura of blue shattered like a wall of glass on pressure.

"Well, what do you know?" Kiyomi raised an eyebrow seeing youth flooding back into Ahimari's cheeks. His grey facial hair and strands of silver amongst his greying head turned into even jets of black while the sugar-white returned to the man's eyes. The influx of life energy that the man had abandoned to prevent his own death did nothing to salvage his crushed mind.

"Is my niece regretting her decision to kill this man?" uncle's voice rumbled from behind, Kiyomi spun the kunai knife in her hand around and plunged it into Ahimari's chest, even if the man would have died from his open chest cavity not too long after his revitalization. That was not how he should have died, it must have been Kiyomi who ended him. Ended the Red Hawks that all started with her beef. "Perhaps his looks struck her fancy?"

"Don't be ridiculous, uncle." Kiyomi turned back to the looming colossus of the Yamanaka patriarch. "Is this your real body now, or another mental projection?"

"Wait, what?!" Meiko's jaw dropped from the revelation. "You mean your uncle has been just a… What do I even call it?"

"Yes. This body of his is just a mental projection, something he achieved through such a focused and world-breaking mind that it can conjure him in a location where he's not present. Apparently, it can even work well enough to allow him to sustain a fight." Kiyomi squinted at the aging man.

"Thank you for your care, niece, my hand is just fine…" uncle dismissed the underlying accusatory tone underneath his relative's words. "Had I truly taken part in this fight, it would not have been. I assure you, I will return to oversee the reconstruction of the Yamanaka Resort myself."

"I see…" Meiko scratched her chin. "So that's why he disappeared after using Mindragon."

"It's a majestic technique that demands utter concentration, it broke the necessary focus needed for my mental projection to exist elsewhere. Not to worry, I knew that you two had it handled. Even if you two were in danger, I had a hunch that the assistants would have given you a helping hand." Uncle shrugged while he turned to stumble toward his throne.

"I bet he only sleeps half the time because having his mental projection move around is too much hassle… Plus, he's always doing who knows what nobody knows where, which is why it seems like he's not listening to anything around him. I can't believe I didn't put it together sooner." Kiyomi shook her head.

"All this moving around and fighting gave me a mother of all migraines." Uncle lamented. "You wouldn't have a trip to Tanzoku in mind for the sole purpose of massaging your uncle's temples? I did save your lives…"

"Forget it, I and Meiko have a date." Kiyomi pointed her tongue out.

"The future of my clan…" uncle rumbled to himself in unease before resting his troubled head onto his bent hand.

"Why would I be present on your date? Don't you want some privacy for that sort of thing?" Meiko raised an eyebrow, oblivious to why Kiyomi was dragging her out of the temple by her elbow.

Even if it was not a fancy dinner and a movie, rather a whole night tending to the injured and calming the residents of the Yamanaka Resort that all was now well and that the worst was behind, also helping the reconstruction efforts and showing her face around where the crisis hit the hardest, time spent with Meiko put Kiyomi's mind at ease in a way that few other things did. Even if the brawly buffoon was oblivious to the fact to the highest degree, performing one's duties could not have felt more natural and pleasant to Kiyomi than performing them with Meiko by her side.

It will be tough saying goodbye to that once she will have to get married…