Telling Shira and Thumb that she'd message some Aburame she knew was easier to brag about than to actually do. Mana may have been quite a popular stage magician but, as a kunoichi, she had few favors to cash in and was not all that popular. The popularity that a known entertainer gathered was quite different to the intimate bond of friendship and mutual trust that ninja shared. A popular actor could not within reason just call for one of the people who knew them to go out for lunch or ask for their help, these were different things entirely.
Mana's exhausted mind could only muster up a pair of Aburame known to her. She may as well have sent one message to the clan district in general, just to see if someone was up for helping their colleague out. Given how Mana's entire going rogue was a charade of sorts it would not be completely impossible for her to receive help from the clan but due to such a factor existing at all the chances of it were as slim as they got.
The name of Aburame Juhi was one of the names that came up. Mana had known the cheerful kunoichi from Team Pine since Academy, albeit quite to a limited extent. The two had talked about vague topics just to maintain the sense of common fondness that many children shared at that age but it had never gone beyond that. Juhi was quite popular due to her very vigorous attitude and personality, she was not stuck up or vain, in fact, very few Aburame were. She was the second least reliable source of help.
The man whose help was by far the most plausible, even if the most did not mean all that much, in this case, was Aburame Yanagi. The man whom Mana met when she traveled to the Eden prison complex to retrieve Sugemi during the whole Kiyomi's kidnapping upheaval. Recalling all that it seemed like it was years if not entire decades ago but it could not have been farther than a pair of months back… The man would certainly recall the Konohagakure girl who involved him in a war between the Black Ops of Kumogakure and Kirigakure.
Mana did not ask for much, she did not have any leverage nor was it within reason or her personal principles to do so. All she wanted was some information about the Aburame pheromones used to trace money, the ways it could be removed and if the chemicals used in the removal could have been traced by some breed of insect or other methods. While the hawks may have been intercepted mid-trip, Mana did her best to describe the reason why she needed this help and what was at stake to the point if not slightly less in detail. The trip between Shukuba and Konoha would have taken five hours for a civilian to walk, far less for a caravan, a ninja or a speeding messenger hawk so Mana would not have to wait too long before replies came back.
After that came the difficult part… Asking Burgoniya for help or any possible tips about tracing a chemical used in the removal of money tracing pheromones. This felt the most difficult part of her role in this investigation for entirely different reason most people disliked talking to people who hated their guts. Most of the time, people felt this way because people hated being criticized or felt like such toxic discussions had nothing productive to bring. There was a reason why Konoha took pride in the comradery between their ninja.
Mana hated these conversations because hearing what angry and hateful people had to say only enforced the bad things and fears she already felt about herself, they validated those thoughts by proving to her that it wasn't just all in her head. Proving that people on the outside felt that way as well and that it wasn't just Mana being quirky, the exact opposite of what Mana often told Meiko whenever the blacksmith used to get discouraged about her own weaknesses.
When Mana entered the small wing of the building used for forensics, as limited as the department was in its size and usefulness, Burgoniya was conversing with a strange elderly woman of dark complexion, likely a result of dirt and not an actual tan, and odd fashion choices all around.
"Burgoniya, I need some help with the investigation," Mana spoke up, knowing full well the minefield she was walking into.
"Your energy radiates death and gloom, young lady, begone from these premises!" the dirty and messy woman flipped out, throwing her hands around madly in a desperate attempt to "accidentally" claw Mana in the cheek or to poke her eye out.
"On this, we agree, Gofuri-san," Burgoniya sighed.
Lazily evading a flurry of clawing motions from the woman and after restraining her hands by the woman's wrists Mana glared at the poor thing trying to figure out why she was inside the forensics wing. A place of science where outsiders were especially unwelcome with the term being used in an especially liberal definition included even other officers at times. It was easier to attempt and make sense of things all by herself than to try and ask Burgoniya directly.
"She senses aura and weird energies." Burgoniya noted, butting at and then eventually poking the woman with the back end of her pen that was usually located pressed in between her teeth.
"There's no such thing." Mana murmured. She was quite aware that Burgoniya brought this woman in just for the sake of this mock conversation and to play some sort of a sick joke on Mana, even if she was aware of the humiliating trap she was walking into, she did so nonetheless.
"It's about as reasonable as expecting one woman to spearhead the whole forensics lab, a wing that's already one step away from communicating with fucking ghosts." Burgoniya blew at the brown locks that fell on her face as she rushed to some calculations on a notebook she was making, likely having figured out the answer while making fun of Mana at the same time.
"No one asked you to do this, you took this up all by yourself, you know. I'm sure that other officers would appreciate your help with their workload while you leave the lab unhandled for just a short while." Mana tried to be about as nice with the forensics intermediate as her slightly past puberty mind that was beginning to feel the results of being severely deprived of sleep would allow.
"And yet it's the only thing I'm adequate at. You can go now, Gofuri-san, your use here is done." Burgoniya sighed while addressing the crazy old woman who left the forensics wing wailing her hands about.
Mana approached the messy table of the extremely passive-aggressive youngblood only to be greeted by countless same pictures, some of them having a ruler placed inside of it next to some object, quite accurate and impressive in artistic quality and realism sketches of dead bodies, various crime scenes and pitch perfectly recreated blood splatter drawings with intricate angles and geographical calculations that looked pretty much like hieroglyphics of an ancient language from afar. The closer Mana approached them, the more impressed she was by the scientific language and fluidity at which Burgoniya expressed her thoughts in mathematical form.
"Well, it does seem like you're doing some impressive work here," Mana noted, noting the countless stored pictures being analyzed as well as boxes of what seemed to be random objects, possibly evidence, being examined, as well as the highly impressive and fluid mathematical calculations on all of Burgoniya's sketches. Mana was no mathematical genius but she at the very least felt fluent enough to appreciate just how great Burgoniya was at her job.
"It's nothing short of educated guesswork. Hasn't it occurred to you why the forensics offices and the labs are so small wherever you go? Police Force or Security, whatever you call it, everywhere forensics is just what you give young and enthusiastic rookies to kill their spirit. You spend countless hours calculating the angles and distance of footprints, taking pictures of locations in both scorching heat, chilling frost, and downpouring rain as it washes away your clues and evidence mercilessly and all you can do is make a good guess." Burgoniya collapsed in a screeching chair with certain familiarity and comfort to the defective piece of furniture.
"The reason why I knew "aura" and "energies" that the old woman was reading was all hogwash is because I am a chakra sensor myself. I suppose it would be great if criminals left some sort of a trace at the scene of a crime, an essence of themselves that you could pick up and identify. Sort of like sensors identify chakra signatures?" Mana tried to appeal to Burgoniya's dreams and her likes. It did feel nauseating that even when she had noble purposes of befriending the young woman Mana used washed up Academy psychological tricks.
"Yeah… I think I've read in an article once about a forensics expert in Kirigakure who is of Hozuki clan descent, capable of ingesting blood samples and identifying people like that. I suppose reading people's "chakras" or "auras" or "kenki" or whatever, lifting some kind of rock-solid proof of someone's involvement in the scene of the crime would be pretty neat, would definitely make me feel less useless… What a load of bullshit," Burgoniya pushed a pile of papers and files so that they would topple over and scatter all over her miniature little closet of a lab. "What is it that you need?"
"We're after the stolen vault money." Mana scratched the back of her head while looking away from the inquiring and rather uncomfortable glare of the Security officer.
"Smart, you do know tomorrow's the tenth, right?" Burgoniya turned back at the toppled files, resorting to picking up what she had scattered in a moment of anguish and despair.
"The tenth?" Mana raised an eyebrow. The magician wondered if the woman meant the tenth day of the month, on her way to the labs Mana did catch a glimpse of the hanging paper calendars located all over the place in separate cubicles.
"Yeah, I guess it's hard to understand for a ninja, who gets paid for a job well done, but ordinary people get paid by the month. Tomorrow's the most common payday, it is modeled after the public model. Public institutions pay their servants the tenth of each month so a lot of business owners copied that without much forethought." Burgoniya explained.
This was really bad! The pleasure town was missing most of its resources and it was all controlled by the Diamond Hands. It was a hostage situation that even someone as generally disinterested in money as Mana could understand. Approaching the payday, people would be getting a bit on the edge and pushing their financial limits. Using the funds they now held hostage, the Diamond Hand could pretty much come out into the light and turn the entire pleasure town against anyone else, money, in this case, was the scepter of power. It would be Otogakure all over again…
"May have played into their hand by dissolving the Security Force, huh?" Burgoniya chuckled mockingly as she focused her attention on calculating something based on measurements and angles of a blood trace she had sketched and photographed.
"No, they just answered my actions with ones of their own, making my attempt at fixing this place work for them. They will do the same no matter what we do, it is how they act." Mana sighed. "The money is traced with Aburame pheromones. We think that the pheromones will be or are already removed, is there any way of tracing these chemicals to where the money is held?"
"Sure, for an Aburame. All sorts of insects are attracted to weird smelling trace removal chemicals, not even any specific ones. Chemicals like the ones that remove pheromones smell unique to them and insects do not have the brainpower to tell the difference between weird and what they like. They'll check it out regardless. Either get an Aburame here and have one use some of their creepy crawlies or catch the black market dealer that sold the chemicals and put a knife in between the socket and the kneecap." Burgoniya replied with disinterest.
Mana rubbed her tired eyes and her pulsing with pain and pressure temples, the dim light in the lab coming from extremely focused beams of light that Burgoniya used on her many tables made the magician a bit sleepy. A single focused application of chakra augmentation would have made it all go away but Mana was burnt one too many times by it. She did not want to do it unless absolutely necessary. Then again, if she would even know absolutely necessary if it came tolling bells was still unknown.
"The workday's coming to an end. You'll have to accept the town hating your guts tomorrow so sleep up, you'll need plenty of strength to plow through the bullshit coming at you." The brown haired forensics expert looked up at Mana with a hint of empathy in her eyes. In that one hint Mana noticed something. Something warm and friendly if one was okay with stretching the definition of that something out. More like empathetic pity.
"I'm not going to let the hard work of Shukuba's townsfolk go unrewarded. My workday does not end until the Diamond Head is toppled, this entire week just feels like… One big workday." Mana sighed before noticing the door opening up and Sora with Toiya peeking in. Their uniforms were slightly torn up with Sora's being almost completely riddled with cuts, some of which still bleeding and both of their faces shining with bruises and cuts.
"Boss brat, you'll like to see something…" Sora addressed Mana with his own hint of both submission and respect as well as belittlement.
"Do you have your hands full?" Mana looked at Burgoniya with curiosity.
"When you scattered the Security Force there were six active cases being investigated. This is twice of what is usually the norm for the start of a month and they are quite old, I suspect they were being frozen deliberately so… Kind of." Burgoniya shrugged.
"Alright then, I won't bother you with that, I trust you know what is best for the lab." Mana nodded and followed Toiya and Sora to where she was being called.
The two Security officers lead Mana through old but quite well-maintained wings and corridors of the Shukuba Security into the containment facilities, a place where people were being held before or shortly after being questioned and sent away into a specialized containment facility, kind of like Konoha's own Police Force's establishment did as well. One cell, in particular, stood out as it housed a middle age man with similar cuts and bruises that Sora and Toiya had on them.
"I'd appreciate someone telling me why I'm here…" Mana rubbed her elbow in unease as the silence of the injured Security Force kind of put her on edge.
"We're afraid your hawks did not leave the Shukuba woods," Toiya answered with lingering anxiety. "Whatever your latest message contained, the hawks were shot down by these two. The second one's already awaiting interrogation."
"We received reports from interested townsfolk of messenger hawks being shot down, we've got a pretty strong and active nature preservation movement who are mostly a big pain in the ass due to the town spreading farther and farther into the woods. Just this once, I guess, they did us a favor. Currently, all of our Security hawks are down so we will need to use the town's own Aviary for a while, at least until the four newly hatched ones can be trained." Sora explained.
"Sadly, we did not manage to detain them before they shot down your hawks…" Toiya added as the trio finally reached the steel door with barrier seal placed in the center of the interrogation room. "Had they not been focused on taking down your hawks, they'd have likely killed us. These guys are quite well-trained fighters."
"It's the Diamond Hand. They're putting a squeeze on us. With the town funds being missing, we won't be able to use the Aviary until the workers are paid. Then the mighty and kind Diamond Hand will waltz in on white stallions and pay them and just like that they'll have the communications of the town in their hands too." Mana mumbled out almost to herself entirely.
"Well, it's good that these guys kicked our asses so hard then – we know they're Diamond Hand, now all you need to do is to put a squeeze on them like your folk can do. Cut their gums, threaten their kneecaps, break and cut fingers… No wrong answers, really…" Sora shrugged before nodding at the shut door where one of the hawk-slayers was awaiting interrogation.
Mana sighed and was allowed into the room by the Security officers. When an authorized and recognized by the seal officer pressed on the sealing tag, the seal lowered the glowing barrier around the thick door allowing one entry or exit. The only shining beacon that gave Mana hope now was that she knew she wasn't lost anymore. Whatever she does, however this interrogation goes, she would not resort to torture and that strangely made things more clear for her, it actually inspired her even though it should have been a massive disadvantage in her case.
The poacher sat with his hands locked up and sealed, as well as his legs. His expression was tough but not completely devoid of emotion. He was no stone wall, that was to say he was by no means afraid of torture or a little of Shukuba Security trademarked rough-housing. He was expecting it, embracing it even. What his face emanated was confidence and a certain degree of smugness. He was feeling triumphant as all he had to do was sit here and get tortured until the dawn, then a little bit more until the entire town goes out of whack and his superiors gain control over it. Until the Diamond Hand becomes the new administration.
"Alright then… Let's begin." Mana smiled, her face shining with relaxation and clarity, with the fear of the darkness she may sink to in order to save this town being completely vanquished in her mind, for the first time, she could match the confidence of her enemy when she was staring it face to face.
