Mana could hear her own shivering. No matter how hard she rubbed her sides, from the shoulder to her hands and her hands together, she couldn't feel anything. A temptation to send a spark of Fire Release ninjutsu somewhere harmless popped up, but it was just a sign of desperation. The more that Mana's unkempt, wet hair clung to her own freezing body, the worse it got, despite common sense suggesting that something covering her from the cold to a limited extent should help.

The door to a nearby incinerated room with a half caved in ceiling surrendered to one good shoulder push. It helped that Mana could barely feel that shoulder or any semblance of pain that should have resonated through it after she lobbed her entire body at the door like that. It was necessary, though. The door wouldn't work after the Four-Tails attack and this little room that Mana prepared for the magic show and after it was nowhere near being prioritized for repairs.

Finally, the pleasant feel of needles prodding her every pore and spreading warmth from within as she rubbed her body in a white blanket made Mana feel better. While still whimpering and shivering and barely controlling the finer aspects of mobility, the, as of now, yet again, stage magician found solace in the limited coverage of a rough, recently washed blanket. She should have used something more weathered and sweat-smelling, yet softer… Still, one would have been rude to complain about that which may have literally saved their life.

Shige's voice breached Mana's solitude from behind a few seconds before the medical ninja shoved the door and forced the unraveled tin shred against the floor making the equivalent of a calf being slain with a dull knife while its mouth was still being sewn shut of door opening noises. Mana wanted to hurry and get herself dressed so that she didn't have to stand before her cell leader in her underwear, but… In her defense, she was frozen today.

"I'll be ready for training soon enough, just give me five…" Mana managed to stutter out while rubbing the coarse blanket hard enough to warrant comparison to sandpaper.

"Don't rush, I just came to see how you were doing…" Shige-H put up her hands defensively, trying to shake off the accusations of being a strict squad leader. "I wouldn't be surprised if you skipped training today…"

"If I heard that every time I got frozen… That'd be the first time I've heard it…" Mana tried thinking up of something clever to say but she was freezing out of her mind so rubbing her temples that felt like something had been stabbing rapidly from within and trying to get out was the best she could muster at the moment.

"Seriously? You haven't been frozen before? Not even during practice?" Shige-H looked like she was about to say something entirely different before becoming oddly curious about this bombshell of a fact.

"Nope. Didn't even rehearse this trick," Mana shook her head, feeling glad that she could put her body through that much exercise. This gave her a headache-inducing idea. The stage magician slipped out from her lone savior blanky and jumped onto her arms, forcing blood to pump all over her stressed arms and flood up and down her circulation circle by doing a few overhead push-ups.

"Are you serious? You could have gotten yourself killed? Mana, you can't even call that which you did today "tricks". It's not stage magic, it's a bunch of stunts," Shige-H went for the jugular while observing the magician's scar-spangled back and arms that looked like they wore scars for tattoos. More than a handful of punctures that were yet to cover with scar tissue decorated Mana's body while she resumed her trembling shortly after standing back on her own two legs.

"That's rich. You know that to criticize a show you have to have seen it, at the very least, right?" Mana turned to her friend while slipping into her shirt.

"Mana… We have seen the show. I have a feeling that you know that." Shige-H softened her tone.

"You're right, I'm sorry. It was easy to pick out the only handful of faces I know from an empty hall…" Mana made a quirky grimace while shrugging with her right shoulder and buttoning up. This was a real low-blow for a return to the stage. She had hoped to lift some absolutely ruined spirits with some stage magic but while she somewhat exaggerated with her defensive sarcasm just now, the halls used to be fuller back in Konoha where people literally would have liked it better if she choked on her breakfast and didn't recover.

"Look, Mana… I've heard about your show. I've never seen you during your prime as a stage magician, but I've had it described to me with vivid detail. The flashy act, the positive attitude that makes you want to go on with your life and pump your fists when the skies are pouring their hardest. The unbelievable spectacle, the illusions that make you question if you're actually sitting on a chair or if you're up in the clouds somehow… I've been told that even the smoke you used had vivid colors." Shige-H kept avoiding Mana's inquisitive glare as she looked up at the ceiling and the massive hole where it had collapsed, which was the only source of light in the room as if visualizing the phenomenon of energetic entertainment that she described.

"Sounds like someone I know…" Mana weaved a ribbon like a dressmaker worked a needle before grabbing the sandpaper-blanky and rubbing her chilly hair with it until her hands were crackling with static electricity yet even that crackling sensation felt like a step up from not feeling her own toes when she stepped in glass. "I'm just… I'm exploring new avenues of the craft. Can't really expect me to be the same all the time. That's how an act goes stale."

"Look, you've hurt a man, and you went to prison for it. You've seen your dearest friends whom you've trusted your life with say they don't want to know your sassy ass from the Hokage. You've been through a lot of hardship and it's hard to find that spark, that belief in the fact that life's worth it. It's hard to believe what you're preaching, I get it, so you just snap your teeth shut and keep fighting what you see as the good fight, hoping that maybe, one day, things will be the same again. All I'm saying is… There's a massive difference between uncoordinated, deadly stunt work and flamboyant extravaganza so don't expect the same reaction to both either." Shige-H walked up to Mana and pressed her hand to the magician's shoulder, leaning down a bit to feel like their eyes were on the same level.

Something was wrong. A loud shriek that lasted just for a second and a flash of white washed over Mana. For a blink… Just for a blink. It felt like it had been Meiko holding her hand on Mana's shoulder and talking to her. When the struggling stage magician looked up again, Shige-H had been reaching out to her with a worried face.

"It's fine… I just…" Mana muttered.

"You got your ass frozen without practicing the trick first and knowing if you could take it, yeah… That's the point," Shige-H sassed Mana with her hands on her hips. "I told the rest of the cell to take a day off. They could use it after all that's happened. I figured that I'd need to scan you over once or twice after this shitshow."

"I don't like chakra augmentation so sometimes I don't augment myself enough. It's a whole thing, it isn't a disease or anything, it's just a mental condition. It has burned me before…" Mana excused herself while slipping into her leather jacket and sifting through her hair.

"Just because it's psychological doesn't mean you don't need help for it, Mana. You shut yourself into an iron-maiden and used its mirror screen to cast an illusion onto yourself while you were in a straightjacket. You're giving me a heart attack if you're telling me you might not have augmented yourself for that trick to not get skewered when that deathtrap shut closed." Shige-H struck a motherly pose.

"It was supposed to snap shut fourteen seconds later. That was fine, I left myself thirty-two seconds of leisure escape time because I haven't practiced that trick either…" Mana shrugged.

"You'd sound a lot cooler if you weren't leaking from all the puncture wounds where you've shut the iron maiden halfway onto yourself to make escaping harder…" Shige-H sat down on the table while Mana collected all of her equipment with her.

"Look, I get it. I just wanted to do something good for the Allied Ninja. I've been wanting to get back into my magic shows for a long time now so I figured that maybe it would help pick up morale after our entire base got ripped apart by a titanic monkey chakra demon. I didn't know that I've lost a few steps here or there and… I should have guessed. I guess I recalled all the good times and the highs and I just felt invincible and… I just wasn't." Mana sighed, pocketing her hands both because she was embarrassed and because she wanted to tuck them into something to feel warmer. "Anyway, don't forget that talk we had after your lies were exposed. This feels an awful lot like you sinking your fangs in me as you did to Tomi."

"Mana!" Shige-H lashed at the magician with her voice just because she lacked the restraint in her to pull back her punch enough not to splatter the weary and frostbitten friend of hers all over this rundown room if she threw a wallop.

"I don't need your sympathy or your check-up. You better touch up on yourself instead." Mana turned away and leaned over a table, acting like she was looking for something when in fact she just didn't want Shige-H to see how embarrassed she was for letting it slip out.

This suggestion wasn't entirely unwarranted, though. While Shige-H received substantial medical help to treat her burns, the medical ninja didn't waste invaluable energy to treat her scars much more thoroughly than just to ensure her best physical condition. As long as the scars didn't affect her performance as per their estimation–they let Shige-H work on herself if she felt like treating them. The Stars leader worked on them a decent bit. She styled up her hair too, which got partly singed off by the wall of fire that Tomi pulled her out of as her ultimate act of forgiveness and good faith.

"Look, Mana…" Shige-H sighed and crossed up her own hands underneath her fur coat. "It seemed more than a little to me after watching that routine of yours that maybe you wanted to get hurt like maybe you hoped to entertain those people by letting them see you flirt with death and suffer. Just tell me I'm wrong and that'll be it. We can hit the bricks, we can train together or you can just tell me to flip off, your call, just let me know this one thing."

"But… They all hate my guts. Shouldn't they love that sort of thing?" Mana turned to Shige-H with her eyes sunken and her lip whimpering from some sensitivity, choking her up from the inside rather than merely feeling cold.

"Mana…" tears leaked out and ran down Mana's cheeks when Shige wrapped her arms around Mana and pressed her, squeezing them out. "You saved all of our lives and you risked your own to do that. I think it's safe to say that your assessment is more than a bit outdated. If anything, they're just as worried about you as I am. So… Yeah… If my friend is trying to kill herself on stage and hurts herself just to validate other people's hatred that doesn't even exist in the first place, yeah, I will do everything I can to fix that. Even if that means going back on my promise to you."

"I'm sorry…" Mana muttered. "Tomi… She… She thought of me as an older sister and… I've played along with that illusion way more than I should have."

"That's okay," Shige-H rubbed Mana's back.

"I had the seal. I had the power to seal away the Four-Tails I just… I could have raised those pillars sooner if I just… That monstrous chakra, I've sensed nothing like that so I just…" Mana could barely understand what she was whining about herself but Shige-H just kept on rubbing. It felt… Warm. Warmer.

"Don't do that to yourself. You keep doing it, you're a chakra sensor, vast chakra signatures are dangerous and they feel overwhelming to you and you stood before some of the largest chakra sources in the world. If you could have raised those pillars sooner, you would have. I know that because I know you. I'm a snake who did her research before slithering up to all of you and uniting us, remember?" Shige-H pulled Mana off herself and gazed into her as if trying to gaze right through the magician.

"Yeah… I guess I do always do this to myself. I don't know, it just feels like… Maybe… If I grill myself hard enough, maybe I'll grill myself into shape and… Next time… Next time it won't happen anymore. I'll stop failing people and letting them die." Mana rubbed her swelling up eyes at her crude leather sleeves.

"Man… There really shouldn't ever be a next time for any of us. I think one time when you have to step up or see people close to you die is one time too many for a lifetime already and yet… Whenever you feel like grilling yourself over this, just try to think for a second about all the people you ended up helping. The people that are worried as hell about you when you ask a Yuki clansman to seal a high-ranking ninjutsu technique of theirs into your card so that you can freeze yourself alive and thaw yourself out in front of a crowd with no chakra augmentation." Shige-H let go of Mana after nudging her shoulder with a knuckle gently and approaching the revolting steel sheet door to peel it off and gesture an invitation for Mana to come with.

"You said you were up for some training?" Mana looked up, realizing that with the crystals of drying tears still frozen in the corners of her eyes, she looked like a begging puppy.

"Come on, sister, you can't be that itching for punishment! We've just had a talk about you not doing this to yourself." Shige-H flexed her arm while smirking with half of her lips to tease her friend.

"I was thinking about settling things with you once and for all. You know, I've just… I've been in my fair share of cells throughout my career, but I can't recall one that I've led myself. Got to start somewhere. Plus, I was technically the one to negotiate with the Supreme Leader our new commendable position as a trusty premier squad for the reforming Allied Ninja," Mana teased her friend right back.

"Alright, alright, you want to call up the guys, make it official?" Shige-H raised her eyebrows, playing along with Mana's tease. "I'm a humble and honorable leader, I listen to all of your whines and I accept all challengers for my position."

"I wouldn't want to hurt your pride. We both know that deep down you're softer than Endo…" Mana shrugged after her coup de grâce with her ears flooding with her friend's laughter while the two trekked across hole-ridden halls toward the nearest decimated wasteland that was once a luscious and impressive training ground.

"Mana…"

"Yeah…"

"You know you can call me just Shige, right?"

"Is that how that works? Do I need to get permission? I've just been dropping that part left and right, maybe that's why Kumogakure folks were so stuck up with me?"

"Smartass…"

"Okay… Now I'm genuinely glad that we didn't get the guys here to train. This feels kind of embarrassing!" Shige yelled out, rubbing her elbow as she rose back on her feet after yet another trip up. In the good twenty minutes that they've been sparring, Shige-H hadn't landed one blow on Mana despite her best attempts.

"Your fighting style is very interesting. It appears to be centered on thinking your forearms are maces with rocks attached to the end and trying to smash your opponent with them…" Mana teased her friend while extending her hand to help her up since Shige had fallen down so many times by now that she might have genuinely needed help as before she just kicked back up and went right back at it.

"They teach medical ninja evasion, sort of like yours, but I've seen no one fight as you do. It's like you don't show any aggression whatsoever, let your opponent trip up, and then explode all at once with a counterattack. The heavier I wind up, the harder I get hit back…" Shige observed.

"Don't feel bad about it–as you've said, your fighting style's supposed to be more defensive and evasive, just like mine, so you were fighting a losing battle by pressing on the offensive. That flashy fists thing, very loud, very impressive," Mana placed her hands on her hips, stretching out her lips like a lioness commending a cub for squirting out a measly roar.

"That's right, I let you win on purpose, just to help you feel better about yourself after freezing yourself. Anyway, there's a reason I showed it to you. I figured maybe it warranted a better showcase than this but I hit you with it you'd have dissolved on a microscopic level so… I think it's time that I help you learn an Advanced Bloodline, Mana, just like my Unmaker Fist." Shige flexed her arm again, igniting the Unmaker flare around it for a second.