Surveying the battlefield was a bitter pill to swallow. The giant round crater jawed where Laoch blasted at Team Hokage in the beginning with trees continuously falling and sliding down as the inverted orb continued to sink further. Blood, rags and small fires didn't paint a better picture either. Mana just sighed before turning at Meiko.

The redhead just sat in dizziness spitting blood aside and doing some elementary battlefield patching up. She didn't look great but she was in no danger of dying like before. Kiyomi, on the other hand, switched between passing out and just laying sprawled in the dirt with each passing moment.

"Everyone's out cold, we did what we wanted to do…" Meiko smiled at Mana with a half toothed smile. The blacksmith was going to have quite a night at some point in her nearest future, teeth were painful to grow back – Mana had first-hand experience with that.

"No. We were stupid." Mana realized looking back at Kiyomi and then back at Meiko before examining her own injuries. Feeling up her own stamina and roughly how much chakra she could still spend informed the magician that she escaped this fight pretty cheaply. Most of the highly devastative moves just blasted her aside or barely grazed her and Meiko consistently protected Mana whenever that wouldn't have been the case.

"Why?" the blacksmith curiously looked at the magician, her eyes were almost childish. She really had no idea what Mana meant but she didn't object the magician but instead wanted to understand her position and maybe learn something. It was an admirable trait in a person.

"We kept on fighting well past the reasonable limit. This wasn't a life or death fight, we should've just retreated at any point, they should've also. This test is tricky – it punishes over-extending oneself. The clever strategy would've been for them to escape, heal themselves, while keeping our tracks in mind, before attacking us again. We have no medical ninja – we were at a disadvantage." Mana sat down as her own thighs were beginning to burn up with fatigue.

"That's their mistake…" Meiko shrugged before falling on her back and extending her arms, letting them sink into the softened and grinded dirt and ashes, picking it up and letting the mix sip through her fingers.

"No. It's ours as well. We were fooled by their relentlessness. At some point we lost the track of what's at stake. We won, but what did we win exactly? All we did was remove a person who may have attacked us to take me out but we didn't advance in the test at all. This isn't the winning strategy of this exam…" Mana complained before reaching to her pouch and removing a handful of medical food pills she stole from a team of genin previously.

"And you know what is?" Meiko wondered lifting her head off the dirt, her hair was messy and sticky as the ash and grinded sand mixed with the blood which her hair was soaked with.

"I am beginning to get a feeling… It's blitzing this exam – just like those two guys we met by the northern exit did. A team that wishes to pass shouldn't engage their hunters, they should evade being found while simultaneously diverting their efforts and resources into what's absolutely necessary – the targets. It's an exam of all that is essential to a ninja – the ability to evade enemies while completing an objective."

Mana continued to stare at the pills in her hand, rolling them around and playing with them like she played with marbles as a girl. She wasn't the most popular kid, she had few friends so she mostly played marbles with herself at home. The small group of friends she did have liked playing ninja anyways…

"Hmm? Anything wrong?" Meiko curiously hummed after stumbling back on her bottom and curiously staring at Mana's distress over the food pills she clenched in her hand.

"Yeah…" the magician smiled. "I felt so bad about stealing them. I hated myself for what I had to do. I hate myself for having had that thought or having honored it, having gone through with it makes my stomach churn…"

"It saved my life, probably…"

"It did…" Mana clenched the pills in her hands, her face turned away from the tightly pressed fist before her lower lip began to quiver, when her eyes finally opened they were wet and leaking salty tears that soon mixed with her blood into a dirty red cocktail that was both sweet, bitter and sour at the same time. "I wanted to return these, wanted it so much, thought maybe it'd somehow make what I did better…"

Meiko uneasily scratched the back of her hair making the sticky clogs of ash and sand crumble off of her hair like a blizzard of dandruff, except a bit less revolting, for whatever reason.

Mana picked herself off the ground before slowly but firmly walking up to Meiko and extending her hand with an open fist, the medical food pills gently rolled in the magician's hand.

"Mana…" Meiko uttered.

"I can't… You two need them, it wouldn't have made what I did any better anyways. The deed is done, you can't just return part of what you stole and change it. That's not how it works. What you do lives with you, the people involved may forgive you, you yourself may forgive yourself but… It never goes away."

The blacksmith reached out to pick up a green food pill but then Mana coughed before faintly rolling her hand to make a yellow pill, one of a pair, to roll outside the bunch. Slowly and with a hesitant hand the redhead took it and placed it into her mouth, looking sadly at Mana with each passing moment. With a painful cough she spat the pill back out covered with blood.

"I can't. The few teeth I have can't crack it… They hurt and start bleeding immediately." the kunoichi childishly complained before blushing. Mana could barely tell that fact seeing how dirty and bloodied her friend's face was.

Mana took the pill from her friends' hand and smashed it in her hand before gently dropping the gooey mass into her friend's open mouth.

"You need to treat her." Meiko looked at Kiyomi worryingly.

"Probably should've treated her first, she took the worst beating." Mana nodded in agreement.

Slowly the magician walked up to Kiyomi and smashed the last yellow food pills before opening her friend's almost lifeless mouth and dropping the gooey mixture of herbs, chemicals and actual food into her mouth. The blonde just uneasily rolled around in the settled cloud of ashes and sand. Medical food pills were no miracle medicine but they were a guarantee for a quicker and more successful treatment in the nearest future.

"As you were!" a firm masculine voice made Mana get kicked out the window of her own thoughts and plummet back down onto the reality around her. A tall and seemingly mature ninja in a colored bird mask and a black, long, leather coat stood in the middle of the battlefield. He wore Konoha's headband tied around his arm. "I'm here to pick these three up…" he added before pointing at the knocked out Team Sagitarii.

Mana's eyes sharpened and squinted suspiciously, in a lightning fast moment they turned soft and kind before she turned to Meiko and Kiyomi examining their quick recovery. She encouraged them to leave.

"Some battle you had here. All those dead centipedes, wolves, foxes and bears around you are all your doing too? Impressive for genin, must be at least thirty dead animals all around this place…" the masked ninja remarked before picking Laoch, Deargli and Clarmac up onto his shoulder.

"No. Must be my summon's doing, he's a B-Rank…" Mana confidently stated before turning to leave, only for her team to follow.

The medical pills didn't just magically regenerate her friends. Kiyomi was still clenching at her wounds, they no longer bled externally but they were still quite aching and would be for a little while more. The pill merely boosted her chakra regeneration and metabolism which would've accelerated the rate that her body recovered naturally, which was already superhuman to begin with.

"How long was I out? I can remember bits and pieces…" Kiyomi grumbled out before stroking her neck carefully so that she didn't invite any pain.

"A minute, perhaps a bit more." Meiko replied before stroking her own fair share of wounds and removing a piece of armor that was cracked inwards and was poking right into a flesh wound that the blacksmith had sustained. Now that not the entirety of her body was flaring up with unbearable pain the blacksmith could tell such pain sources from numbed spots.

"Damn, that ninja sure didn't waste any time. If he even was a Konoha staff ninja…" the Yamanaka remarked.

"I don't think he's staff either. I mean, for God's sake, he didn't even take the dog with him, doubt he even knew there was a dog. Must've been a transformed genin from one of the teams… Real staff members would've waited until we left to do their job so that they didn't disturb the natural progression of the exams. Think about it, have you seen any staffers so far? They were the ones who removed all the eliminated ninja, they also are to maintain order and observe the rules, few as there are… Staffers don't get seen, they're the real ninja here." Mana nodded as such was her impression as well.

"Hmm? Leaving the beaten and unconscious to a disguised ninja? That's ruthless, Mana!" Kiyomi sarcastically cheeked the magician.

"It was the best choice. There's no use for a team of ninja to just kill unconscious people off, it wastes time and effort. Plus our battle was loud enough to attract every team in this damned forest, we're wise to get out of there as soon as possible. I'm sure our battle was being observed by at least several teams from the halfway point."

"Hmm? Why didn't they attack us?" Meiko wondered, slowly she was beginning feeling pretty comfortable about the speed that the Team Hokage were travelling in.

"Because fighting us is not in their interests. We lucked out that neither of the teams to make their way there was anyone who is targeting us. Even if they were to target us – they must've known that this spot was pretty loud and by exposing themselves they risked attracting the fish after them as well. In that case it'd be six on three against the hunters…" Mana scratched her chin.

"Maybe they're tracking us right now?" Kiyomi glanced back. In agreement to her fears Mana stopped and began meditating. It took quite a while before she managed to reach out to her gift of sensory, halfway through the process of delving into her mind the magician wondered if maybe she couldn't just do it on will and every time before she did do it she was just lucky.

"No. No one's in the vicinity." Mana concluded after standing up and stroking her numbed and tired legs as sitting in a meditative position really began taking its toll.

"Wow… You really need to learn to pick up the pace of that!" Meiko whistled into the air as she carelessly laid sprawled out by a tree before getting up and yawning.

"Excuse me if my ability to tell someone's presence just from their unique signature and mark they leave in the force that holds the universe together isn't to your utmost comfort…" Mana raised an eyebrow.

"So then most of the people there were only there to obtain information…" Kiyomi suggested a theory.

"Possible, information is the currency of this exam. As long as they felt safe and confident they wouldn't be seen or taken out they would've had no reason not to check out that scorching pillar of sky piercing super-flames and all the sounds of earth-cracking explosions." Mana shrugged.

"But it'd have been the strongest teams, in an environment like that the ones that move the most freely and take chances like this are the strong. Weaker teams that struggle for their survival and are hiding wouldn't have taken the chance…" Meiko wondered.

"Yeah. And this information would only have deepened that gap as the strong and the bold hunters obtained another bargaining chip whereas the weak ones just enjoyed not being in the heat for a moment longer…" Mana acknowledged the irony.

"Still, I don't believe that Team Sagitarii are in danger of being murdered. Enough time has passed for the real staffers to reach that place by now. I don't know just what the goal of that transformed genin was, maybe he wanted to loot the unconscious, maybe he was looking for bloodlines to salvage for his village, couldn't tell for certain. Either way, the staffers would soon have arrived and taken the three completely unseen." The magician added

"Still… What if that guy was targeting to take one of us out up close? Maybe we should've kicked his ass? I mean transformed ninja can't fight seriously and keep up their disguise at the same time." Meiko voiced her opinion.

"True, that'd require too great of chakra control and precision the use of the Transformation Jutsu. Not something most genin could pull off, then again, I've seen at least two people pull of a damage sealing jutsu this week. An exceptionally skilled face-swapper wouldn't surprise me one bit…" Mana shrugged. "Trust me, if I thought for a moment that Team Sagitarii was in any danger at all, any more than that which we put them in, I'd not have moved one inch…"

"Yeah, I've known Mana long enough to vouch for that… Still, even if we did engage that guy – his team couldn't have been too far away and we'd have soon been overwhelmed in the chaos of everyone aiming to take everyone else out. We've already had too much ass kicking hitting us to survive anything remotely close." Kiyomi firmly put an end to that discussion.

"So we're still moving the same direction?" Meiko wondered, "Still looking for Menna, Tiwul and Tala?"

"Yeah." Mana nodded firmly before allowing her eyes to shift from firm determination to lingering worry, "Except now we have even less resources to offer them – I spent almost all of my sealed card decks on that chaotic ninjutsu combination…"

A heartfelt sigh came from Kiyomi's side. A soft touch on her shoulder made Mana look back at her friend's apologetic face.

"I know how bad you felt about those pills, I know you wanted to return them after this. I'm sorry you had to spend more of them…" the blonde whimpered out.

Mana's pale face smiled faintly, the tips of her lips twisted up but the sadness that ate at her from inside made it a difficult campaign to wage war for every smallest inch of that smile. Kiyomi's eyes wandered lower onto Mana's chest where a red spot continuously widened on an already torn and exposed part of Mana's uniform making the magician's remaining rags look even more pitiful and blood soaked.

"You need to treat that, a single green pill would…" she began.

"No. I'll see what I can do about it once we stop for a break." Mana cut the topic short before trying to accelerate but the dizziness from the moderate blood loss made the magician stop daydreaming about being cool and leading her team ahead and slow down a bit.

Kiyomi wanted to speak up again but Meiko shook her head. "Just let her work this out by herself. She always had plenty of needless things to worry about but she always works them out." The blacksmith whispered close to Kiyomi.

"That's not really how being a friend works." Kiyomi crossed her hands for a brief moment. The thought wasn't told but instead transmitted through the mental link from which Mana was excluded. A link of just two people so close to each other came to Kiyomi almost naturally, without much effort or hand seals.

"It is with her…" Meiko smiled.

A good half an hour later the girls stopped for a break. Their departure was so erratic and sudden that they needed something to slow down their pace. Kiyomi and Meiko hadn't recovered even remotely fully yet and Mana still needed to tend to her moderate yet not overly important injuries. Plus it was starting to get dark.

With a slow and soft motion, yet not nearly so as Mana would've wanted it to be, the magician peeled off the improvised cover of her wound. Quite thick expulsion of blood came out after the pressure was removed and the magician instantly felt dizzy, she was lucky to be sitting down. Strangely it didn't really hurt… Or maybe it did but Mana was so used to pain that a pain of this magnitude felt as numb as no pain at all… The chaotic and heart-chilling screams of Laoch echoed in Mana's ears from after she punched him in the busted arm. The magician closed her eyes and delved into her erratic and scary memories that came flooding before remembering that she was patching herself up.

"I haven't got too many medical supplies, bandages and such…" Mana admitted after returning. "If I tear one more string of my own shirt for a cover of a wound it'll be getting really cold at night…"

"And more skin for those buggers to suck into…" Meiko noted as she was catching bloodsuckers from the air at an inhuman speed. Entire flocks of them, young and matured sensed a night incoming and felt obliged to ruin the day of anyone foolish enough not to be hidden.

"Those pests aren't even remotely the worst part of it compared to the kinds of things I had to kill to keep watch of you while you were out, Meiko." Kiyomi smiled as she had a bunch of stuff just piled up and waiting for Mana.

The items were very odd looking long balloons that were pulsing full of water, a bunch of herbs and mushrooms and several slipper sized insects murdered by stab through the head shell. Kiyomi's stabbing power must've been either astoundingly precise to bypass the armored shell or amazingly strong to pierce it. Just a bit over a year ago Mana struggled piercing the shell of a single crustacean herself.

"What is this?" the magician yawned.

"I collected some water from a river nearby in these… Balloons… We can make a stew from them, Meiko was scared speechless of your cooking but, while we were waiting for you outside the Forest of Death before the exam, Kouta told me that it's something to try sooo…" Kiyomi bellowed suggestively.

"Okay. I'll do what I can with these." Mana nodded. She unsealed one more chemical heating bag from inside her hat to help heat the water. It'll be difficult to make anything tasty without proper heating of a fire but it wasn't impossible…

"Wait, don't animals usually poop into the water?" Meiko wondered out loud something she should've just kept inside.

"Usually a water source containing leeches and slugs is extremely contaminated, if that's what you meant. That's why I picked it up with my own sock to filter out the mud, and I contained it in these… Sterile balloons… And we'll be boiling the water as well. A ninja's metabolism is already extremely resistant to natural contaminants so whatever remains won't worry us." Kiyomi explained.

"Fine, I'll drink the water from your condoms as long as it doesn't give me explosive diarrhea in the morning…" Meiko suspiciously locked her arms around her chest.

Kiyomi bashed the redhead's head before the two started wrestling. "I told you those aren't condoms, they're… Sterile balloons!" the Yamanaka kept on yelling. Had the two been even remotely serious it wouldn't be much of a match but Meiko was somewhat hesitant to hurt her friend who was both physically weaker than her and also got the worst beating out of the three during the last fight.

"Whatever, why would you even bring condoms to the exam, you creeper!" Meiko tossed Kiyomi aside before the blonde leaped back into the fray of playful wrestling.

"Sterile balloons!" she screamed out loud.

"Calm down a bit, you guys." Mana warned them before not being able to help herself and breaking into a bit of composed laugh. She had plenty on her mind but watching those two bicker around about meaningless things made her think less about what really hurt to think about.