Three scrolls somewhere inside the abandoned facility erected on the training grounds. Approaching the premises required little care, Mana took care of the early steps with haste though once a couple of identical-looking tutor clones turned to notice her, waving with their hands to scare the magician away, Mana acted as if she shrugged and walked away.
One of the miffed clones approached the closed and fenced off gate to peek through. Tutor Onoyon would have likely failed her on the spot if the guard still laid eyes on her lingering about for the second time. There was no need for that. Mana had spent a few precious moments leaned down and pressing by the gate wall, running through what she saw during her first peek inside. There was no viable way of getting in through the front.
With a rushing strut, Mana ran off to hide behind another corner on the south-eastern side of the training grounds. Pressing her back to the wall, Mana peeked from the corner. The tutor clone seemed content to stop at just checking if the recruit wasn't stalling by the front gate after bumping into a fenced off and heavily protected entrance. The staircase leading to a rooftop of a nearby, useless building was just there, right in front of her.
After a hefty sigh, Mana rushed to it and pointed her finger at the lock. The Finger of Fate Wind Release ninjutsu pierced the lock and as the penetrating beam of wind dissipated, it tore the remnants of the steel lock apart enough for it to lose its integrity and fall apart. It was one of those rare occasions that Mana's starting fifteen jutsu that she perfected before the finals of the Chuunin Exams still came into use.
Heels tapped a bit louder at the metal gratings and rails than Mana would have liked, but nobody saw anything. The nearest guard must have been almost a third of a kilometer away, and despite her flashy appearances, she would have had to try to stand out actively. A peek through the pipeline extending over on the rooftop of the useless service building. Tutor Onoyon had prepared this training ground the way it was for the test for a reason. While the service building looked empty on the inside, it offered a platform for easier entry within the facility from the outside.
Taking a plunge down inside the facility's territory was possible. Containers stacked one on top of one another comprised for a lovely, pier-like vibe that was perfect for slipping in between two nearby containers or pressing oneself on top of one or just controlling the doppelgangers' field of vision while one moved around the yard and infiltrated the facility itself. Given the larger number of patrolling clones, sensing how much chakra each one had, one might have counted just how many guards were inside the facility.
It was fortunate for Mana that she was a sensor and could have accomplished such calculations without the use of reasoning that was just educated guesswork at best. There were about eight clones indoors. They'd be troublesome to deal with, as Mana was not supposed to fight them. Being caught red-handed and implicated was the deal-breaker for the test, being sighted scoping the area was a yellow card, but it wouldn't even cost her points. No taking out the clones, though. That was fine, Mana preferred as little engagement as possible anyway.
Plunging down into the territory while remaining concealed would have taken a much stealthier body than Mana. One could have defused the fall via a pulse of chakra, leaving their feet to counteract the forces working against one's body besides some chakra augmentation tempering one's lower body to withstand the forces at work without injury. Still, Mana didn't feel confident that she could pull all of that off without raising noise. Knowing her, she'd force her chakra pulse out in the shape of a gust of wind or even worse–a ring of flames. Fire was her nature affinity after all…
With just the right moment, when all the clones were looking away, Mana flung herself off of the service building rooftop, diving and aiming herself for two whole seconds in mid-air before entering the right trajectory for one container. The ninja magician spread her hands out, activating the Mystical Wings technique and swooping up just a bit to correct her dive and make it so her feet clicked against the top of the container stack with just a gentle tap.
"What's that?" a clone of the tutor responsible for the Black Ops test scratched his bald head. Unlike the original tutor Onoyon, these clones didn't have the metallic lower jaw brace but had enveloped their gorilla-like bodies and gruesome lower-jaw injury with black turtlenecks and Konoha-style flak jackets. Onoyon's signature tone of voice and lisping speech mannerisms caused by the injury translated through with his clones too, though the turtlenecks proved to be a viable replacement for his brace since they didn't make the man's speech unintelligible.
"Could be nothing…" another clone scratched his bald head. The man might have been nearing four meters in size. He was a ridiculous specimen that could have just vaulted up and grabbed the top of one container. From there he'd have been a couple of repeated leaps and pulls away from setting his sights on Mana.
"Come on, it's obviously something!" a clone of Onoyon, roleplaying as the guard, said.
"Okay, genius, how 'bout you climb all the way up there and check then?" the other clone chuckled in teasing of his implied colleague. Tutor Onoyon gave most of the students some chances, acted like he didn't see them a few times, ignored clues obvious to trained shinobi and didn't use the full extent of his extensive abilities as they would not have been available to a lowly hired hand.
"Screw that. I ain't getting paid 'nuff to snap my neck climbing. If it's someone with a pointy nose snooping around, we'll get 'em, anyway. They'll have to try to sneak into the facility, right?" the first clone shook his shoulders, and the two returned to their patrolling routines. Overhearing this talk gave Mana an idea, though it might have been too late in her plan to incorporate it.
Tutor Onoyon had his clones drop their patrolling routines if they engaged in conversation, which they were all too eager to do. They stopped and spoke to one another at every opportunity they had, including when they patrolled out of rhythm and bumped into one another. Mana watched one clone pass by the container she laid on before rolling off of it and slipping down a few rows of them.
The clone heard Mana's landing as she did nothing to mask it but, by the time he turned around to look behind him, she had slipped in between two rows of containers and was out of view. The clone didn't go out of its way to go back and check since he figured he'd do that on his next return to the location while patrolling. Heck, if Mana stayed tucked in that long–she'd deserve to get spotted inside the facility territory and being flunked.
With the clone disappearing behind the corner of a few containers to circle around its intended territory, Mana tip-toed to the corner and peeked. There was a trio of clones in between her and the facility door, but they all were leaving and the door was a straight dash from the corner. If she stayed here and hesitated some longer–she'd end up spotted by the first clone guard turning corner again. Dealing with the lock couldn't have been that bad–it might have even met the same fate as the lock warding off visitors from the service building staircase.
The dash seemed flawless at first. Just as Mana approached the door, she felt a clone intending to walk through it, breaking its patrolling pattern. A more agile and crafty ninja might have leaped over the door and stuck to the wall to observe the straggler as he passed by, Mana didn't trust her abilities to pull something like that off. She pushed inside the building, tackling the clone down while pressing her right to his mouth and placing her left over his forehead.
The clone's eyes rolled back, but his grunts became muffled by Mana's hand. The magician kept her hold despite the foam that came out from the clone's mouth, freaking her out. Her Magician's Touch resonated a few times, running in a circulating chain throughout Mana's body while the magician looked to disable the guard. Taking the clones out would have costed her some grade points as long as she wasn't spotted, but she didn't intend to take it out.
The lights in the warehouse went on moments before the clone in Mana's grasp burst into smoke. All the roleplaying doppelgangers walked into the facility, looking at Mana funny. The magician shrugged. Her face felt stiff as she didn't know how to voice her complaint about the fact that the man had stopped the test prematurely for no reason at all.
"I guess you flunked," tutor Onoyon shrugged. "It's a pass or fail kind of test. Pass gives you 20 points toward your six-month average while a fail gives you 0, just in case you don't know the drill."
"That's not fair," Mana objected, finally gathering the courage to do so. The veteran Allied Ninja was a fearsome presence that inspired dreadful respect within even students that looked at him favorably. A cast to which Mana had attributed herself until now. "You stopped the test."
"You attacked a clone," tutor Onoyon spoke without movement. His words were like a brick wall that would have taken a wrecking ball of adamant conviction to topple down. "Didn't I tell you guys that if you kill a clone–it's an automatic failure? The point of the Black Ops class is to simulate the experience of an Allied Ninja working inside the village walls–if someone pulls a stunt or a village ninja ends up dead while you're visiting–you're the prime suspect."
Frankly, it wouldn't have taken a body for a man looking like tutor Onoyon to be treated as a suspect. He had the sort of scarred and beaten mug that people would have instantly started pointing fingers at. It wasn't a question of right or wrong, just thoughts racing through Mana's head. All those lessons and tests she missed out on while struggling for her life on the hospital bed. She couldn't afford to fail another test right after the situation with the international law course. She'd have taken the L under normal circumstances. It wasn't like she was that high on self-confidence, even after the boost that being around Damisan daily inspired.
It was just that she felt like she was in the right–the tutor didn't have the right to end the test so early. The training ground lit up as the seals swallowed the service buildings, the facility and the surrounding storage warehouses and piers up. The recruits waiting around for the test to conclude and for their turn or those that have already passed or failed their tests and either cheered for their friends to do the same or sulked in their despair watched on as the situation developed.
"I didn't intend to kill the clone, nor would I have done so. You allowed the clone to dispel after taking damage where a normal human would have taken damage but not even knocked out. Then, you used the knowledge of that clone to let the other clones know that I infiltrated the facility and ended the test. That's not fair…" Mana pouted and turned away. Lately, it felt like she had to bite and claw through to every minor victory she scored. If she didn't wail and kick–she'd drown down under. Even if a man like tutor Onoyon stood in front of her and stared at her utterly unimpressed, she deserved a fair shot.
"Are you saying that the A-Rank Lightning Release ninjutsu wouldn't have murdered a normal man? Stop fooling around. If you keep trying to bullshit your way out of this, I'll inform the Regimental Commander on duty about it. I've no time or patience to deal with lazy, impubescent punks." Tutor Onoyon growled, becoming visibly peeved as opposed to just bored.
"My Magician's Touch jutsu doesn't kill anyone, no jutsu in my arsenal does!" Mana stood her ground. Her own raised voice terrified her deep down as her feet began going numb and the deadly frost crawled ever higher with each second. It wasn't clear if this was because she stepped up and strained her heels by trying to speak to a giant like the Black Ops course tutor or if it was psychological. "The whole point of that jutsu is that it shocks the target. It's precision and efficiency are its key perks that give it its high ranking. If applied to the brain for long enough–it not only stuns the target but makes them forget things. I've spent years making sure that effect works just right, I can bet all of my course points that I can make that clone forget he ever saw me if you didn't dispel it."
"Hmm… I've never heard of such a jutsu…" Onoyon grumbled to himself.
"That's because I created it myself," Mana thrust after a successful parry.
"In that case, I suppose that most villages would have no idea you'd pulled it out. Heck, I'd say that the poor guard wouldn't even complain about forgetting a few key seconds of their patrol." Onoyon sighed, wondering how he'd best go around rectifying this situation. "Fine, I'll make a clone and turn around. You work your magic while I make sure not to dispel it after it takes any amount of damage. Unless the strain on my chakra becomes too hard, of course. Show him a gesture, anything, maybe several fingers. If you can make him forget what he saw and if his memories have a lapse when I dispel it and I can't recall the gesture–you'll get a pass."
"Huh, Mana?" Shige-H exclaimed out loud, widening her eyes as the magician walked out of the cover and into the training grounds after the class. Most of the Stars had been training. Skaven did little team training, he just sulked in the shade beside a tree. Endo was missing and, usually, so was Mana. Even when Mana wanted to train, she usually did so inside the pocket universe, inside the magician's mind. "Sorry, if we knew you'd come to train with us, we'd not have started early…"
The leader of Stars clapped her hands, squinting hard in apology. Mana looked around, noticing that Damisan had been lacking a limb while Tomi's tiny foot had been dug into the side of Damisan's cylinder. Just the threat of her kicking it off halted Damisan's attempt to pound the immature brat on the head for whatever transgression she pulled on him before Mana showed up.
"Yeah, I'm still a bit… I don't want to train just meditating. I feel guilty when I'm not training at all, so I'd like to train with you guys if it's okay…" Mana pocketed her hands and turned her eyes away, feeling a bit of heat building up under her eyes.
"Really!?" Tomi shrieked out, pumping her hands. "You don't wanna train with Endo even after all the times he asked you to?"
"Definitely not," Mana shook her hands out in front of her while she blew cool air out from her lungs that had built up during her request.
"Good, maybe you can fry Tomi's brains with that jutsu you passed the test with and make her forget the name of the damned hyena that took my arm away!" Damisan seethed in sibling-like acrimony toward Tomi who only stuck out her tongue and crossed her arms, acting innocent.
"Sorry, no can do. When Hailu likes something–it's better to let him have it. I'm not taking his toy away from him, it'll break his heart!" Tomi said. Judging from the look on Damisan's face, it was an argument that he had heard before and responded to already. Not that it had any effect.
"IT'S! MY! ARM!" Damisan stressed and lingered on every word, delivering them with as much authority and volume as he could.
"So! Build! A! New! One!" Tomi mocked Damisan, repeating his speech.
"Look, I get it-you grew up with all those furry guys and that they've been the only family that you had but… That's exactly why I'm saying this–you can't let Hailu, or whatever its name was, play with that. It's not just a stick, it's a weapon. If he pinches on the wrong steel bar–he can spread it open or self-destruct it," this time Damisan struck gold.
"I won't use my Magician's Touch on Tomi-chan, but I could read her mind about where Hailu and the arm are," Mana suggested. She didn't enjoy taking sides, but the only way to lose Tomi's friendship for good was to hurt her ninja animal partners. If the Stars were Tomi's third family, her summons were an easy second.
"No need…" Tomi deflated and whistled, stuffing two of her fingers into her mouth and calling the overjoyed, rhino-sized hyena to burst out from far away into the forested area, past more than a few brushes and a creek passing by the training grounds. "Hailu. I know you like your new chew toy, but it's gonna be just like the time you ate a morning star. It'll make you owie when you do poo-poo…"
"I can't believe it. Does she even know how long it takes for me to replace a limb?" Damisan sighed, nearly collapsing on the spot at the sight of the careless handling that his prosthetic arm had been subjected to inside the cackling mouth of the massive ninja animal.
"Don't tell Hailu anything about anything blowing up–it'll only make him more excited. It's not just him, ninja-hyena are way wild…" Tomi whispered, stepping up to speak to Mana quietly to her ear. Mana encouraged Tomi's childish giggle with a warm smile of her own while the teen wrestled the scratched and drowned in slobber prosthetic arm and gave it to Damisan.
"Alright, I guess, with this we can regroup and start a new training phase? One that includes Mana, maybe?" Shige-H suggested, stepping into the middle of the circle.
"Mana." The casual mention of her name made the worn-out magician turn around. It was because it was Skaven calling her out in his usual nonchalant manner that Mana didn't jump up or feel startled by being called out to like that.
"Skaven, you know, you really should have joined our training. It's tiring and physical training isn't quite my cup of tea, but Damisan and Tomi really make it fun." Mana waited for Skaven to catch up to her while walking at his own casual pace.
"Never mind that. That jutsu of yours that you used to pass the test today–Magician's Touch. You can make people forget things with it, right?" Skaven got straight to the point. Mana had a mean feeling that he'd not have spoken to her at all had it not been for that.
"Well… Yes, in a manner of speech. Though I'm not sure why…" Mana tried to weave a reply.
"I want you to make me forget some stuff," Skaven cut her reply to pieces with a ruthless, verbal chop.