„Seriously"? Mother raged on after Mana explained her plan of spending the next two and a half weeks in a distant, unknown land, training with a bunch of talking, highly socially developed and intensely opinionated in many matters rabbits.

"I mean… Technically we had expected this before, dear", father shrugged, Mana may have forgotten her mother's oddly fiery temper but the man undoubtedly remembered it and tried pacifying the situation by reminding the woman that they'd expected Mana to leave somewhere unnatural to train.

"Yeah, that was before she got back to sound mind and almost turned her life around"! Mother yelled out. While her fury always kind of crept Mana out, she could understand mother's point, in more restrained and tempered words, at least… The magician had been leaving home so often that she may as well have not lived there anymore. "If you just followed your plan along you could've removed all the ryo from your account, bought yourself a mansion and settled somewhere more peaceful in weeks from now"!

The woman broke down in her own unique way – dropping on the sofa and angrily rubbing her temples and playing with her exotically unruly and dark colored hair. Most women in mother's shoes broke down in tears, Mana's mother chose to boil and simmer instead of erupting.

"I have a separate bank account"? Mana mumbled out confused before shaking the odd slip-up off since it had little to nothing to do with the situation. "Anyways, it's something I have to do. My opponent in the Chuunin Exams is fighting for a very noble cause, the only sure-way path of helping her is beating her in a very specific way, one that'd impress the council and allow her to show off all of her skills."

"That's what you always say. "Something I have to do"", father replied before sitting down by mother and keeping a watch on her so that she didn't remember her old more rampage-prone fiery ways. "You don't have to do anything, this is not one of your missions. The only objective in life is that which you set for yourself. You do realize that right? The way you've been living these past two and a half weeks – you were happy, you can't fool anyone trying to deny it".

"I was happy", Mana nodded before picking up her sizeable bag and flipping it over her shoulders. The bag could have weighed like another human being all by itself, not to mention the steel tools and supplies she has been carrying and a bunch of scrolls with training equipment. "I love magic, I love entertaining people and seeing them smile. I love making them forget the world they live in, if only just for a second. The world that can erupt with war, natural catastrophes or get destroyed if some sicko doesn't control their own power for one careless moment and no one could stop them. The world that can end at any second. A terrifying world".

It was too late to reconsider now. She had canceled all her shows in the morning, disappointing Mr. Hiro and her audience yet again. She had postponed this talk with her parents to the point where it was almost too late to leave. It was too late the moment she took Stea up on her plea and decided to help her and her village out.

"Most of all, I loved seeing you two happy. Your smiles made me happy as well. But if I don't do this, if I know for the rest of my days that I didn't do everything I could have done to save this many starving people… I'll never be happy again, that'll only result in a perpetual circle of mutual sadness for everyone", Mana didn't want to say anything more, she rushed away from home in a hurry because farewells made her tear up, always and consistently, yet somehow if she didn't say her farewells it was almost deceiving in a way. At the very least, it helped.

The sky was beginning to sink in its darkest. It tended to do that in winter. Mana looked up in the sky, feeling snowflakes grazing her cheeks and landing on them only to melt and mix into the girl's tears. A crushing pressure locked up around her, Mana could feel her body tense up in shock and automatically attempt to augment her body to compensate for her body being dragged through an interdimensional tunnel in order to instantaneously transport her to wherever she was reverse-summoned from.

Smoke began seeping into her nose and mouth in the most sensitive moment when the uncomfortable gravitational pressure ceased and Mana could feel her legs standing firmly in some sort of a cave, her head still woozy and her chest prayed for one bit of air.

"What is dat? Tears? What's de matter with yah? Grow up, for feck's sake"! Usuzoku's familiar grumble made Mana realize that her journey had already ended but she couldn't quite put her finger on where exactly she was.

"I think you messed up your reverse-summoning, Zoku-chan", Mana blinked a couple of times rapidly if only to affirm that what she suspected was true. "I'm blind".

A wave of laughter echoed in the room, making Mana grasp her ears, the sound began coming in more sensitively and it irritated her to no end. She was not even attempting to enhance her perception, it just naturally traveled more intensely.

"You are not blind, Nakotsumi Mana", a grumbling elderly voice of someone other than Usuzoku echoed through the strange room she was in. "The Ninja Rabbit Cave System is sunken in complete darkness because we're underground. Very, very deep underground".

Mana could feel it, the searing heat of the room she was standing in. The heat was so immense that it felt like if the magician shoveled some more of the stone and minerals beneath her feet she'd hit the outer core of the planet itself. Initially, the magician had attributed this to the bad performance of the Summoning Jutsu, now it all made sense. The magician adjusted her chakra network to enhance her perception and to allow her to withstand the seemingly unbearable heat better.

"Dat's why it may ave not been da best idea to come ere", Usuzoku growled apologetically, "If ye can't deal with da darkness and da…"

"No. This is great. Constant strain, always having to mind how I'm managing my chakra or else I'll break my network again, but if I'm not doing that – I'll die on the spot. This is just the kind of place I need", Mana shook her head, she wondered if her partners could see it. Then a loud cringe left her mouth, once her enhanced vision noticed the cotton-like puffiness of Usuzoku's fur. The warrior rabbit looked around in confusion as to what could've set his partner off to laugh so hard before looking at his own body and realizing the truth.

"Don't laugh"! He growled out. "Seriously, don't ya laugh at dis"!

Mana couldn't keep it in, the white and puffy cotton-candy like substance of the rabbit's fluffy skin made her bend over in laughter as her abdomen got locked up in pain. From now on, for two and a half weeks, she would have to mind it – the upkeep of her chakra augmentations, visual – to see, endurance – to not get fried instantly by this heat, surpassing anything that Mana had felt or seen before. When she is laughing, when she is sleeping, when she is tired after immense training. It will quite literally be an incarnation of hell but it was what was needed.

"Dammit, it's normal! It's what happens to our furs in winter"! Usuzoku shouted out, jumping in to brawl with Mana, to abuse her limited perception but the magician tumbled aside lazily, avoiding the rabbit's tackle and his attempts to kick her in the face.

"We've been told you are a genin, Mana, are you sure you can handle this heat? If your augmentations fail, if your focus is broken for one second or if your network breaks apart – you'll die instantly here. This place barely has breathable oxygen and its conditions are inhuman even for most lower ranking ninja", the familiar elderly voice feared for Mana's well-being.

"Don't worry, I've already had my network broken once, I won't let it happen again", Mana confidently shook her head before stretching out and realizing that the nearly non-existent oxygen has already turned into a problem.

"This… Doesn't encourage me one bit", the elderly rabbit chuckled, he was white and fluffy, similar to Usuzoku but Mana could not perceive his eyes as much as she invested into her perception augmentations. It was a short while before the magician realized that the elderly rabbit had none and that his eyes were covered up by excessive fur growths on his forehead and his massive moustache-like locks under his nose.

"It will be fine", a feminine voice of a rabbit to Mana's back-right replied to the elder's worries, "She can use the escape to surface really quick, Kusagakure is not that dangerous of a territory to be in"

"So the cave system is somewhere in Kusagakure"? Mana wondered.

"True, but our cave system is intricate. Even our own zealous young get lost in it sometime, we don't even know how a human girl will receive it. It's the size of a small country, after all", the rabbit elder shook his head worryingly.

"Small country"? Mana exclaimed in surprise, "No need to worry then, it'd take me a whole day to memorize it all. I'd rather spend that time training. If I die – that'll be a rather unfortunate and abrupt end of that".

"I can see why you like this reckless girl, she's just like you", the elder rabbit played with his moustache-fluffs of fur in disapproval, not all rabbits must have been as aggressive and rough-headed as Usuzoku, in fact, right now Mana saw not a single rabbit behaving in a manner in which Zoku was behaving around her. They sounded and looked like quite tranquil and peace loving species. That was quite glad to see… Mana was beginning to fall in love with the Ninja Rabbits a little bit more the more time she spent with them and they seemed very fitting for a contract she chose.

"Shuddup, old geezer, I dun like 'er at all, she ain't anythin' like me either"! Usuzoku angrily barked out crossing his arms over his chest in objection.


"Dis is gon' be a real pain in de ass", Usuzoku grumbled as Mana and him were making their way down a rocky, spiraling downwards tunnel that lead to the main cave that qualified as the "outside" of the entire cave system.

"It better be", Mana smiled cheeking her rabbit partner, "I need to be within an inch of death every day or else it won't be enough. Even if the training goes perfectly it may not work out at all".

"So wats yer plan"? Usuzoku wondered, "You just want to train with me to improve your physical condition? You want to live in the constant total darkness and in almost three thousand degrees of heat for two and a half weeks to improve your chakra control and help you learn to deal with similar situations in the future. That it? Do you have any spectacular techniques you wish to learn here?"

"No", Mana shook her head, "That'd take too much time, even if I did pick up a jutsu or two in here, I would never master them sufficiently to use them fast enough and easily enough for them to matter. What I want is to perfect myself to a full one hundred."

"Perfect yerself"? Usuzoku raised an eyebrow, Mana was impressed she could tell in total darkness.

"Yeah, most ninja tap into their latent potential with a jutsu, reach fifteen percent or so of that potential before the jutsu becomes obsolete in their eyes. They move on, find more powerful techniques leaving gaps in their forms. I do not seek to reach out for new heights, I'm going to master the ground I'm standing on. I'm going to master every jutsu I know, I'm going to master every skill I know to their peaks. I'll become Perfect Mana, if you will".

"Not to burst yer bubble, Hatchling, yer jutsu suck", Usuzoku sighed as the two left into the large yard of caves. Mana looked around in confusion, focusing more and more chakra into her augmentations to see the edges of this massive cave but it was tough to do so. Even more, the edges she could see lead to smaller tunnels that inevitably must have lead to more massive miniature cities like this.

"They are meant for specific means, also, if this works, they won't suck after we're done with them. This cave is massive. Just how many Ninja Rabbits are there"? Mana gasped after finishing explaining her crazy idea for training.

"Not as many as ye'd think. Dis whole place is the most occupied cave, there used to be two hundred thousand of us – we multiply pretty fast, our love heats up as fast as it goes out. Wars and abandonment caused us to relocate and every time we relocated in history we left massive empty systems just like this one behind. That's why we said the whole system spreads through the whole country", Usuzoku explained before leading Mana to a hollowed out mineral orb. "You can put yer things here, dis is where ye'll be settlin' down for a while".

"Is this your place"? Mana looked around, looking a bit surprised by how simplistic, yet at the same time very intricate these housings were. This entire cave system was nothing but a massive spherical gap filled with smaller hollowed out spheres of rock and dirt where rabbits settled in. "I was wondering, just how many rabbits that can fight are here? Maybe we could employ someone stronger than you for help. The signatures around this cave don't seem too impressive".

"We 'ave… Loads a dem really, amazing warriors all over da place. Ten thousand million a rabbits with sharpened teeth, ready ta tear into yer flesh an' soft choky furs dat're lookin' ta suffocate yer stupid face" Usuzoku mumbled out before Mana asked him to repeat more loudly and clearly but he just shook his hands angrily at her face.

"You don't have anyone else, do you"? Mana longingly asked in a manner that was more confirming in total horror than asking.

"Look, things 'aven't been goin' too well for us Ninja Rabbits ere, wars with Ninja Mongooses, getting almost wiped out by da Ninja Snakes who, coincidentally, also share affinity for caves, which caused us to dig deeper and deeper…" Usuzoku mumbled out with a sad voice. "Dere was no one from the peoples ere, or anywhere else, to help us out, not dat we needed it, we're all fine warriors, strongest dere are! De strongest, I tell ya"!

Mana reached out and placed her hand onto the rabbit's fluffy white head before stroking it. For a moment it appeared like Usuzoku's eyes were trying to make Mana blow up spontaneously where she stood but then he just lowered his ears in a submissive and demeaning manner and just looked away.

"That's fine, Zoku-chan, I'm here now. I won't forget this, whenever you're up to bullying some mongooses or taking your territory back from the snakes, I'll be here", Mana smiled.

"Are ye smilin' cause sometimes I honestly can't tell, its cause yer so stupid and your face is dumb", Usuzoku's voice trembled, he couldn't see because he was tearing up. "Anyways, don't tread south more dan two systems back, dat's where dat terrorist madman Usujitsa is blowin' stuff up. Nobody knows wat his deal is, if you hear stupid gigglin' and see his mindless, white, rampagin' face, just run north and deeper down into the tunnel".

"I'm not sure if I could tell him apart, honestly, you are all white to me, really", Mana shrugged apologetically.

"Why I oughta"! Usuzoku leaped right at her again trying to kick Mana's head off of her shoulders. The power in his thighs, in the leap at her and his speed was incredible. However, Mana was slowly growing more accustomed to the dark. She could almost hear pebbles being grinded into dust beneath his feet, the entire ground pulsing in shocks as the force in Usuzoku's feet was being transferred through it. That minuscule growth was just enough for Mana to avoid decapitation by a rabbit's massive feet.

Mana spent entire hours launching weak jutsu she learned as a child at Usuzoku, feeling how they worked, what purposes they had and getting more used to them than she already was. Using one needed to feel like flicking her fingers. Her useless starter dozen, or so she used to categorize them. They were not weapons, they were tools, each doing something useful but very specific for her: Mystical Wings let her generate wind currents to, sort of, fly a limited distance up, the rest had similar very contrived purposes and uses but were useless in any other situation.

All of that had to change. Every single technique she crafted as a child reading the basics of ninjutsu from a massive books that weighed more than she did had to be perfected and polished to where Mana could call upon them instantly and execute them perfectly. Not only that, they should've been elevated to a status of perfection in both speed and power. Just like Mana had improved the speed and maximum altitude of her Mystical Wings Jutsu over time, each of her starter dozen had to be polished and, honestly, that was the easy part.

Weak jutsu like that were easy to polish and improve. Mana was a kid when she made those jutsu, she used plenty of unnecessary hand seals when making them, she knew much less than she knows now and she had little to no experience on the field of battle, somewhere in her heart she had hoped to have none even when she changed the world… The tough part would be to improve her most recent jutsu, ones she invented and polished as a genin surpassing some chuunin in skill already. That will require literally bashing her head against the wall of her limits to do and, seeing the progress she made in a single afternoon, Mana was not feeling all too hopeful about it.


"Say, Zoku-chan", Mana whispered laying on a tough platform of minerals which substituted bed for the rabbits. The magician could hear Usuzoku putting layers upon layers of softened sand and dirt inside his rocky "bed" as if it was a bath being filled with water for comfort. Mana would rather sleep on the polished, literal diamond-hard minerals than sleep on actual dirt. "Is that elder guy in charge of the community"?

"Yeh, dere used to be dis other 'uge guy. I don' even remember his name anymore…"

"I'm fairly certain it's Usu-something", Mana interrupted her partner.

Usuzoku just painfully grunted something to himself before resuming his answer, "Anyways, he was dis uge guy. Like, a hundred a meters tall, he was de last a de ancient rabbits. Dey used to all be like dat…"

"So that's why your halls are so huge…" Mana mumbled to herself, "And he just left"?

"Ye, musta gotten sick a it all… Doubt he's even alive rite now, he's a big guy, if he as much as stepped on somethin' da whole Kusagakure would hear it", Usuzoku flipped over, face away from Mana. "De old geezer Usugiji was in charge ever since".

"Insane white rabbit terrorists, kaiju-rabbits… You guys would really be amazingly powerful if you all worked together", Mana sighed as she dreamily looked at the total darkness of the ceiling above her. She did a lacking job today, Usuzoku was afraid to let Mana get too worn up or damaged. He talked a lot of mean talk but deep inside his heart was as fluffy as his winter fur…

"Ye, yer de one ta talk…" Usuzoku grumbled half sneezing already. He was more right to reply this way to a human than he knew…