Early in the morning, Mana noticed a quick shifting of the shadows on the other side of the office. She was so focused on observing her new captive Finger of the Diamond Hand or looking out for potential assassins that a handful of civilian-level chakra signatures completely evaded her attention. At this point the weariness that Mana felt made her mind a tad slower and her minds blurrier. More and more did she catch her train of thought riding on non-sequiturs.

By now the Diamond Hand must have realized that something bad had happened to one of their Fingers. At least Mana presumed this much. If there truly was someone sent to keep the magician's new guest from talking too much, they'd have seen that the woman was being too calm around a self-declared enemy of the Diamond Hand.

"You going to invite them in? Maybe scattering the boys in black and blue was a hasty choice?" the burglar teased Mana. Her tongue stabbed through a bit deeper than the girl wanted it to be able to get. While the office was shut down, it didn't stop from some more ambitious people seeking out Mana's own attention. At some point, the magician may face the ire of groups upon groups of disgruntled people who were unable to rely on the Shukuba Security anymore.

"Stay here," Mana told the burglar, the magician respected the woman's intelligence enough not to have to warn her excessively about how much of a kick in her own groin it'd be for her to try anything funny now.

The shadows that were moving about an empty and rundown office of Shukuba Security belonged to the rookie squad that Mana called out to. From her first sight, she just about realized that it would not be a pleasant work environment, less than half of the calls she sent out were answered and even the four that did answer the summons looked disgruntled and more ready to laugh at Mana's face than face the threat in front of them seriously.

"In here, please." Was all that Mana could muster up to say at the time, her mind raced for ways she could win these four over. Even if her own mind kept switching between her need of a squad and the attempts to soothe herself, however this meeting went, she had to try to get these four on her side regardless on her own stance on things.

The four walked in erratically but then lined up in an orderly fashion, standing like soldiers hearing the speech of their general before riding into battle, except Mana didn't feel like much of a general at all. How could she convincingly plead to these four if she barely believed in her need for their aid herself. This was much bigger than her, she had to at the very least reach out, if she got rejected, the decision on how to act would be made for her.

"Four people? Well, at least you've got the numbers on the Diamond Hand." The Ring of Thumb chuckled to herself. Clearly, she had doubts about the ability of these four to apprehend the other Rings of the Diamond Hand. A sentiment that carried some weight, seeing how Thumb had encountered the other Rings and knew of their strengths and weaknesses and their identities. The burglar had no reason to lie or to build up the power and influence of her organization needlessly, she was a target of their wrath after all and survival must have been her core interest.

"Who is this woman?" one of the four rookies, a short yet athletic and very attractive young man with long dark hair tied behind his back wondered. His tone did not suggest respect or subordination but it was not mocking either. He sounded more on the open to suggestion side, very much on the verge of being won over. That was, of course, if Mana's people reading and listening skills weren't doing her in.

"She's one of the people spreading corruption and holding this town hostage – a Ring of the Diamond Hand." Mana answered the question honestly and with brevity, hoping that was the type of answer that the young man was looking for.

"W-Why isn't she locked up? All of the local arrest facilities are being unmanned, there is not a soul in the office, your aviary box is unattended to and there is a small crowd outside trying to reach you." The other rookie – a young woman whom Mana had already met before, the girl from forensics named Burgoniya who was less than willing to cooperate earlier. All of that spite and disbelief in Mana's abilities and actions were soaking into her speech.

"I'm… Short on hands currently. The reason why Thumb is unrestrained is that she found herself on the wrong side of her own organization's favor by stepping out of line and failing her superiors. We both think that she is living on borrowed time which is why it is beneficial for her to cooperate." Mana tried not to escalate the situation or lie. The fear and unease of screwing everything up was leaking into her tone and voice, how could she have missed a gathering of an entire crowd? It was true that they must have been a fair distance away – outside the building and they couldn't have been sizable enough to stand out of the usual movement of civilians outside the Security walls, while Mana was constantly on the lookout for threats with chakra signatures millions of times surpassing that of the crowd of civilians. Could have been any one of these, could have been all of those combined.

"That and the fact that I can escape any restraints, I'm just that good…" Thumb chuckled again, she was not helping Mana's impression in front of these rookies.

"So you're saying that you called out to us to do your dirty work like work on the local containment facilities, handle the paperwork, answer the mail and… Soothe irritated crowds of bemused people?" the fourth recruit, a ginger young woman of attractive looks and rather frail for a Security officer build exclaimed in discontent.

"I mean, it's not exactly different from what you'd be doing normally, given that you're a youngblood…" the first recruit grinned with half of his face. "Then again, maybe the people would be less on the edge if they did not have to find out about the collapse of the Security from their fleeing government official."

Mana stroke over her tired face with her palm, running it down her hair before pushing it back as it was beginning to flow over it uncontrollably. She spent so much time here sitting on her ass and watching a woman she could not contain but could not entirely trust yet either that she missed out on the shutdown of the entire administration and the Security Force slipping out into the open.

"You must have really pissed the Diamond Hand off if they hit you that low, well done, kid!" Thumb clapped her hands together with a playful and sarcastic cheer aimed at Mana's direction, suggesting that the Diamond Hand had finally had enough of Mana and hit her back where it hurt her just as badly – by turning the public against her while doing nothing illegal. They just exposed something Mana did not want reaching the public's attention until after she was done apprehending the Diamond Hand.

"This is absolutely pathetic. I'm out of here…" Burgoniya grunted before turning around and heading toward the door out of the chief's office.

"Wait, please. Look, I'm not doing this for no reason at all or just to promote myself or because the Hokage has ordered me to shut down the local institutions as a gross abuse of power. I did what I did because I saw the Diamond Hand taking lives, both literally and taking them hostage. I saw them treating human lives as inferior to their influence and riches. Treating life that way goes against everything I stand and live for and I cannot stand for it." Mana jumped off the seat, stopping the rookie in her tracks.

"I worked in forensics for a while, I had gathered experience for a position as an investigator in Security and the very next day – you dissolve the whole thing." Burgoniya gave Mana a spiteful glare, "Not the governor, not chief Chontai himself did that, a goddamn stage magician from Konoha decided to topple my livelihood."

"This… Diamond Hand… I assume it is some sort of a crime syndicate then?" the first recruit wondered out loud. "Correct me if I am wrong but this is exactly the opposite of a situation when you scatter the town's Security Force."

"I'm in", the red-haired young woman who stood fourth in the formation of rookies declared, pressing her fist to her chest and bowing her upper body. This came as a shock to Mana who was beginning to sense like being beaten down from all fronts and was starting to feel more and more hopeless.

"Wait, didn't you just start a family? You should be the first one to leave this foolishness behind, Toiya." Burgoniya switched the target of her ire from Mana to the young woman who decided to answer Mana's plea.

"That is exactly why I will work with Sorceress-san. Because of my family, because I want Shukuba to be a town where my family can live safely and peacefully. What happened to Okasune-san was terrible, her reputation being dragged through the dirt in the public one day after she lost her life. I disagree with Sorceress-san's methods but I, Toiya Kazama, will fight the Diamond Hand under her supervision." The red-haired woman declared.

"I am grateful for that trust. I will do my best not to fail it. However, please know that you are signing up for more than you know. Once this war with the Diamond Hand is over, it will be up to you to reform the Security Force as well. I am not a local, I shall have no role to play in Shukuba's reformation after the Diamond Hand's defeat." Mana nodded at the young woman who had signed herself up on the magician's side.

"Wait, isn't this woman an important figure in this Diamond Hand? How come you didn't ask her about the leader of the organization already? You could have known all of their identities and eliminated them already…" the recruit with the ponytail pondered. His voice was youthful and very soothing but the contents of his words appeared to continuously expose Mana's failures.

"She will not talk about that, I tried asking her about that. Also, I will not kill a single person in this war, just so we're clear on that." Mana found herself rubbing the tip of her foot against the floor, a thoughtless tick when she was ashamed.

"Why won't you talk about it, did your life not wager on that?" the ponytail recruit identified in his file as Sora Kanoji threw his hands up in the air. His brief and controlled outrage was well placed and Mana realized that she may have poked around the Thumb's resistance to mention names a bit too feebly.

"It's not that I won't, I cannot…" Thumb poked her tongue out, revealing a hieroglyph present, "The Middle Finger had hired some bigshot rogue seal-master to place one of these babies on anyone worth a shit in the Diamond Hand. Not even being able to tell anyone my own name is a bit of a bother, as you may imagine. Names of the Fingers are a big no-no. I'm not going to give up my life for it, saving my life is exactly why I'm playing on the other team, to begin with, boy."

Mana had seen similar seals, not quite like this one specifically, but seals placed on one's tongue. They limited the speech on certain matters and, as one started treading secretive roads, the seal began restricting the spokesperson's breath before killing the person if they told something they were forbidden by the seal to say. Konohagakure sometimes still employed this method of protection of information but only for the most secretive of matters, cases of national security or secrets the exposure of which would have threatened the lives of people or undermined the basic values Konoha stood for. The seals were removed immediately after they overstayed their immediate need.

Protection of such matter was too extreme a measure even for the highly secretive ninja, it would have had to be a rogue ninja who had applied such a seal without any hesitation as limiting one's speech in such a way would have been a taboo for any seal-master worth their title. Even more, a seal-master capable of placing such seals leaking to the black market was something the Hokage would like to hear about as well. Mana would have had to use the Aviary, not even the local one as local birds may have been identified and intercepted, especially when the Diamond Hand was this pissed off.

That left the matter of why exactly they were so ticked off at Mana and why right now. What had Mana done to earn their utmost attention right now. Had it been because of the governor or the shutdown of the Security Force, they would have exposed her to the public yesterday, maybe even earlier. An uneasy flame simmered in Mana's chest that whatever Itemi was doing behind her back had something to do with it.

"Well, this may be completely stupid and not what I signed up for at all but… I've trained for so long, went through years of internship in Tanzaku and all that… Turning down this would leave me jobless and that would be very wasteful. I, Sora Kanoji, will help you out, Sorceress, I guess…" Sora shrugged with hands in his pockets. While he did maintain formation, his posture and stance completely disregarded any Security regulations, that was to say, those Mana knew of. While this one agreed to work with her, he may not be entirely under her command.

Mana nodded in acknowledgment and gratitude regardless.

"You have been awfully quiet", the magician addressed the third recruit, a two and a half meter giant with a physically fit build and facial scars splitting his strictly regulation abiding buzz-cut in three places. For a young recruit, this third rookie looked like he was an experienced veteran.

"What is there to say?" he rubbed his nose, a telltale sign of feelings of some sort rustling inside his gut, it could have been a sign of both honesty due to social shyness or nervousness over his lies. The way Mana saw it, had the youth been lying, he'd have been better at it. "The person who busted Syndicate in Otogakure and a fellow survivor of their torture asks me to fight by their side. I was on your side before you even spoke up."

"Wait, what?" Burgoniya raised an eyebrow.

"I was interning in Otogakure for the last six months. The town's been overrun with Syndicate for four of them, the Police Force there was basically a non-existent charade. They surveyed information back to Syndicate sources and the criminals dealt with their competition accordingly. I did not play by those rules." The giant unbuttoned his uniform and lifted up his black shirt underneath, revealing a body riddled with scars all over his hardened muscles. "At some point my torturer got afraid that I'd not relent. They started scaring me about how good his torture supposedly was, how only one person managed to sit through it all without a peep. At the time I thought I was delirious, Konoha's Sorceress, a stage magician surviving torture?"

"The Chuunin Exams…" Sora suddenly interrupted the story with a snap of his fingers.

"That's right, after I saw Sorceress' name on the posters, I realized that this was no delirious dream. Konoha's Sorceress and her cohorts kicked the Syndicate's ass so hard over just one night that they shortly lost their power all over the region. Now she's here, in my hometown, ready to kick more asses. It does not get any more in, so to describe the manner in which I am in this. I, Shira Hayafu, will fight the Diamond Hand."

For a while now Mana has been plagued by this same feeling she could not shake off after telling on Kouta's team's location to Team Dunyazad during the Chuunin Exams. The feeling that she's been doing everything so wrong, and that she was so delusional that she could not even see how wrong she was tackling everything around her. This was the first time since the end of the Chuunin Exams that Mana had heard her being praised as a kunoichi and not as a stage magician.

Usually, her magic was the object of praise and success whereas Mana's work as a ninja got labeled with bemusement and mockery from everyone she met. People thought her being naïve and childish due to her dream, they mocked her for being a known stage magician and she's struggled being taken seriously due to her double occupation. This was probably the first time that Mana had managed to shake the foundations of her unease, just this once she was able to look at the events in Otogakure and what was going on here with a different light. It was a really good feeling.

"Well, as much as I dislike all of this. I will not go back to being an overpaid oracle reading bloodstains and body positions at forensics. All of this may be stupid, but it's the only option I have. I, Burgoniya Hogofuse, shall work with you." Just like that, the most skeptical of the four had also agreed to work with Mana.

"What are your orders, ma'am?" Shira inquired while tensing his body in a very official-looking pose, driving a knife over Mana's ears with the official way he addressed her.

"Please man the containment facilities. I am going to address that small crowd outside and assure the public that the Security Force is operational, I'll do my best to turn Diamond Hand's social assault at us back on them. I will need you here while I send a message to Lord Sixth about something and address the public. You will hear their complaints out and do whatever Security Force usually does, you must maintain the illusion that the Shukuba Security is functional, if with a slightly limited capacity." Mana sighed realizing the weight of the position she was now in.

In a way, she was not leading these people, not in a way a chuunin, which she was, should lead a squad of ninja. It was not even that these four weren't ninja, it was that Mana was afraid to take command and order them around as she would have thought fit if she was marking answers on a sheet of paper on a test. While her choice of assignments was somewhat sound, she was just shaking off responsibility while she was about to tackle it all by herself, just like she was afraid she'd do…

"Wait, containment facilities? Honey, I'm going with you. If Index ever decides to show her face around here, she'll redecorate this place with their blood before they even realize she's here, no offense, guys. I'm not leaving your side…" Thumb crossed her arms over her chest.

And so, at the end of the day, despite her most extreme attempts to not place herself in the situation where she'd constantly have to look behind her back and fear betrayal, Mana had ended up in just such a situation. The magician leaned in over Thumb's ear, having to slightly step up on her toes to do it.

"I know you can't mention any names, but your reaction when I mentioned the name of Yokotomo Donyoku told me everything. Itemi knows that name as well, even if you do end up betraying me, just know that the name is out there and it's all your fault." Mana played her highest card just to ensure Thumb's cooperation for a slightly longer amount of time she usually would have had it.

Even if Thumb was playing Mana, by showing the kind of violent and offensive reaction to the name before, the magician ensured that if she was ever betrayed, she could also place Thumb under lethal fire by telling whoever in charge of the Diamond Hand was that the name became known to her and the reformed Security Force due to Thumb's disobedient actions.