Thumb and Mana walked alongside one another at a casual pace in total silence. One in occasion took the time to look at the other with curiosity and intent to examine what was going through the mind of the other. Thumb was by far the worse offender of the two as far as this expression of curiosity was concerned.

"Okay, what is this weapon of yours all about?" Thumb relented at last.

"It's just a wand made of Audra alloy. It is almost the same quality of weaponry as an actually imbued with chakra weapon is due to the unnatural properties of the alloy." Mana tried to both not lie and keep the personal sentimentality out of it since it would most likely result in the burglar laughing it off and these type of painful and personal memories were not something Mana was okay leaving in the laughing matter drawer.

"Fair enough, sounds pretty impressive and yet…" the woman closed one of her eyes as she left the tease hanging in the air resulting in an annoying sound most similar to the mooing of a bored cow. "It is not quite like you to go out of your way and switch to the bad girls' team to get your hands back on it. No offense, but you're the last person I'd reckon be switching teams for a whole lot of power if you know what I mean…"

"It was once a sword. A sword that belonged to my teammate who was killed in action. It's a long story but it is the type of story that I cannot completely shake my input out of so I will never stop feeling at least partially responsible. My best friend took that sword after I gave it to her and made a wand out of it. It is extremely chakra conductive and perfect for casting techniques without needing hand seals due to Audra's natural properties." Mana explained, closing her eyes as if knowing she'd be laughed at in a handful of seconds.

"If it is so dear to you, why did you give it away to your best friend?" Thumb ran in front of Mana, turned around and began hopping backward instead of walking beside the magician.

"I felt much more guilt then than I do now. Seeing it by my side every day would have been unbearable, leave alone the fact that Meiko is a pretty good swordswoman. I would have brought shame to my friend by wielding his sword too…" Mana shrugged, feeling a little easier talking about it now. Somehow not even knowing or being able to find out Thumb's real name and knowing that the two would not be knowing each other for too long made it a lot easier to just spill the contents of her soul out clean.

"It's never just one reason, is it?" Thumb grinned before returning back to Mana's left side as the two made their way through the empty and dark Shukuba streets.

"You are more right than you believe. It is not just that it once belonged to my lifelong friend whom I feel like I've failed in life. It's that it was remade by someone I treasure and given back to me. Meiko is a crazy enthusiast of a blacksmith, the fact that she did that with me in mind… I think it's quite beautiful. Not only does the wand symbolize the path to peace that I will build wielding that wand in my friend's name, it also means the entirety of Meiko's friendship to me as well. I cannot let all of that get lost." Mana stated firmly.

"Ouch! Sounds like a pretty hassling way to live…" Thumb relaxed and stretched out before placing her chilled hands inside her pockets.

"What about you? You wanted to become a Shukuba Security and yet you ended up on a completely different side." Mana turned to her friend.

"It was not my lifelong dream or anything. It's just that I am looking ahead. Back then, acquiring these skills was the only way I could survive. After all this is over, the Shukuba Security is the only place they can be useful. Even if I wanted it as a kid, Security would have had little use of a hungry, dirt-poor, runaway girl with no standout skills." Thumb shrugged the topic off. It did look kind of obvious to Mana that the burglar was just trying it to seem like less of an interesting topic to talk about for the sake of it being left alone.

"I think it is quite wonderful. You will have all the tools to pick up the scraps after the Diamond Hand is done and do your own thing as its successor and yet you chose to make your town a better place utilizing skills you gathered along the way. It's great." Mana smiled gently.

"Well, that makes one enthusiastic supporter out of everyone…" Thumb sighed as the sight of the museum yard came into the view.

The two young women leaped over the gate, running up its surface before hopping over the pointy tiled top and landing on the inside. It did not appear like the museum had any security at all on the outside, Mana could vaguely pick up a pair of weakling signatures scattered from the other sides, likely patrolling guards without any cred or significant skill to speak of. Just unemployed townsfolk choosing a seemingly easy profession with no devotion to the deed they were about to do or too much qualification.

"Yeah, seems about right…" Thumb whispered after noticing Mana's attention being drawn away to the solitary wandering guards who could not even make out the figures of the girls from that distance in complete darkness in the middle of falling snow.

"The Diamond Hand has withdrawn from the place. It is under the town's control now, just like you predicted." Mana noted as the two disappeared from the yard and made their way into the actual building.

Meiko truly would have loved seeing this place from the inside. It had everything, historic architectural accessories like tiles used in ancient construction, paintings, pieces of old armor, both rusty and restored, weapons too.

"No way." Thumb almost broke out into a fully voiced yell before snuffing out her own noise and pointing her finger at a solitary figure standing by a strong, square-shaped wooden pillar that supported the building frame on the fifth floor.

Holding her aching sides and occasionally twisting her face in pain as they acted up, Mana followed her burglar pal up the floors as the woman bounced from one side of the exposed floor platforms to another using the square space in the middle as a tunnel for her ascent.

The magician had an ill feeling. This was not any Ring she had seen before and yet Thumb definitely was about as surprised to see this man, whoever he was, in here as she would be seeing a Ring. Did that mean that this aged, curly-haired and frail man with a flashy, silver-colored and shimmering, even in the dimly lit museum, disco jacket and pants was truly the Middle Ring? Even if he was, how come he was here when he no longer was in control of the place? How come Mana could not sense anything from him but the chakra she'd sense from a normal man? Was this Yokotomo Donyoku completely unimpressive in terms of his combat prowess?

Thumb almost lunged at the man's throat, aiming to grab it from behind and split it open with grievous, blood showering cuts that would have murdered him in moments. The amount of rage and desperation in the woman's face and movements was alarming.

The man cleared his throat. "How come I had a feeling I would meet the two of you here?" his voice was cold, no emotion or meaning behind his tone. Could he have just been so indifferent towards everything around him to speak this way? Certainly an odd fellow…

"So you're Yokotomo Donyoku?" Mana raised an eyebrow. "I wondered how come I could feel nothing special inside the museum when I fought your lackeys."

Thumb wanted to say something but her mouth froze in mid-speech, worried that her speech would trigger the taboo seals she had placed.

"We are going to take this guy in, right?" Thumb hissed instead.

"Hold on, this is too good to be true…" Mana looked around. She gestured for the young lady to stay here as she quickly disappeared and scanned the place on her own two feet just before reappearing where she was facing the Middle Ring only to find that neither of the two people she had left was presently there.

The brief flashes of light informed Mana of the reason why the two criminals had hidden away, one of the patrolling guards just walking about each floor with a large flashlight in hand had almost located them forcing both Donyoku and Thumb to hide.

"The wand isn't here," Mana mumbled with a bitter taste in her mouth. Donyoku clearly knew of the treasure his criminal lackeys had brought him. Now her heart was pounding hard whenever her thoughts settled on the wand possibly having been sold on the black market while she was out.

"I am a man of many skills, as you have noted, combat ability not being one of them. That being said, knowledge of history and geography is one of my skills. My knowledge of the politics, history, and geography was what helped me assemble the Diamond Hand and build it up to the highs it is currently reigning in." Donyoku once again spilled the text almost like he could not care what he was talking about any less.

"Bullshit, you've scattered your forces. You have nothing on nobody anymore and we are going to pick your lackeys off one by one before gripping tightly by your balls. Preferably using these very same hooks…" Thumb smiled almost like she was flirting with the man as she set off her hooked nails as she reached for the man's crotch.

"Too loud," Mana warned her companion about how much noise her temptation would cause. While not finding the wand was a worst-case scenario, especially with it being used as a bargaining chip by this curly haired idiot, it would at the very least spare her the notable trouble with the Shukuba Security. "Okay, I'll play along for now. What do you want for that wand?"

"Nothing at all." Donyoku shrugged. "I just had to be here to let you know I have it. Using my reasoning I suspected you had certain sentimental value to that tool, other than the great monetary value it was worth being pawned off."

"So you surrendered just to pull Sorceress' braid a little bit? What a great criminal genius this guy…" Thumb closed her hooked paw to slam the man against the wall and into some expensive looking painting.

"Surrendered?" the man wondered with that same a little scary degree of indifference even. "Who said anything about that…"

With a loud poof of smoke, the man that previously appeared to be Yokotomo Donyoku turned out to be some sly weasel-type lowlife with the ability to use ninjutsu to the same extent a little kid in the Ninja Academy could, utilizing the Transformation Technique to take the shape and face that his superior demanded him to take.

"What's going on here?" the elderly and a little bit on the plump side security guard ran up to the ruckus and the noise of the Transformation Jutsu getting dispelled. "Oh… Shukuba Security…" he muttered half to himself yet half out loud.

For a moment there Mana felt a little confused as to how the man jumped to that conclusion before she looked inside her busted up coat and noticed the Shukuba Security uniform she still wore. She was lucky to not only have that but also that the institution had a hand at the massive payday after returning the stolen town money back, which in terms gave a massive boost to its credibility in the eyes of the most of the public.

"Right… We had a suspicion something like this would happen. If you don't mind we'll book this guy." Mana pointed at the unknown factor her companion was busy suffocating softly with her wrist.

"Thanks, I seemed to have missed him there… Strange, I passed this spot just a couple of seconds ago." The troubled elderly security guard worried.

"Oh, it's alright, they're skilled those Diamond Hand guys. They have some ninjutsu training from the black market and rogues they pay, check the ceiling and the walls next time. They can stick to and crawl to those places too, like lizards or bugs almost…" Mana smiled for the elderly man as she encouraged with a gesture for Thumb to stop roughhousing the sacrificial lamb that the Diamond Hand offered them and bring him back to the HQ.

"Really? They don't pay me enough for wall-crawlers, really…" the man scratched his troubled head before waving farewells for the two young women and the third one they just picked up.

"You're telling us…" Mana shared a laugh with the man as they quickly made their way out from the museum grounds and into the yard before bringing their discovery back to the station.

"We were lucky to bolt out of there before the old-timer noticed you may be a little bit too young to be wearing the uniform of a high-ranking Security officer." Thumb chuckled to herself, holding the unknown rogue who was impersonating Yokotomo Donyoku firmly by his elbow.

"If he did not see the two of you sticking to the walls and the ceiling on his way forward while scanning the floor, his eyesight was shoddy enough… Plus, I think that I've matured enough to fool people like this…" Mana puffed her cheeks letting the slight blush give them a bit more color and make her face feel warmer in the cold winter snowfall outside.

"Don't lie to yourself, hun…" Thumb chuckled again.


After a brief interrogation session, Mana left the white and boring interrogation room scratching the back of her head and contemplating on the information she had acquired. Compared to the tough time she had playing chess with the poacher in the interrogation room, this session was a breeze. The information flowed as freely as a cut artery burst with blood.

"So?" Thumb raised an eyebrow. She was relatively interested in how the interrogation went, likely for her own self-preservation instinct as the sooner Middle Ring went down the sooner she could have breathed easy. Even Shira considered this session a pointless endeavor and only cared to sigh easier when Mana informed the man that they committed no burglary that night in the museum.

"He told me what I suspected he'd say. The Middle Ring found him by calling some old shots and using his contacts in the rogue ninja ranks. He himself is a small timer. He says he doesn't know anything about anything and was just paid to say and do what Donyoku-san told him to do." Mana relayed the info she had gathered with no difficulty as the man proved quite talkative.

"That's bullshit, I bet he's just saying that!" Thumb got flustered and rushed to push Mana aside and get to the more meaty and painful part of interrogating herself. With an easy pinch on a sensitive spot of nerve knots and chakra nodes located in her elbow Mana disabled the forceful approach of her companion and made Thumb back off with her unharmed hand rubbing against the numbed limb to ease the feeling of weightlessness and numbness.

"He has no reason to lie. If he was someone useful, Donyoku-san would have never just cut him loose like this. Even if he is anyone dangerous we'd only let him sabotage us by keeping him around." Mana tried to reason with her rather obsessive companion.

"Wait, you're letting him go!?" Thumb flipped out. She moved her hands in a swiping motion that made Mana worried she'd activate her hooks but she did only the motion and did not arm herself. At least she still had enough reason not to pick fights where they were entirely unnecessary.

"Yeah, we are already short-handed. We have no time to bother with the likes of him." Mana shrugged.

"Why would a random nobody just know the Transformation Jutsu?" Thumb growled, having let go some steam and calmed down as she locked her arms firmly on her chest and fired off blazes at Mana from her eyes.

"Why would he not? The Academy Jutsu are easy enough to pick up that we teach them to literal children. If someone looking to make profits on the shady side of business learns something like that they are considerably more employable. He's just a small-time loser thinking he can make a small buck. If there's someone to be blamed, it's me for not noticing his bad acting and indifferent attitude." Mana sighed as she massaged her own sore neck before grunting in pain after she bent her waist the wrong way and made her battle wounds ache again.

"You didn't know what kind of person Middle Finger was… Of course you'd be fooled by bad acting." Thumb eased a little bit on the pressure she applied to Mana's decision to stop bothering with this guy.

"The question remains – why did Donyoku-san bother in the first place? Why did he not just leave the matter be and let us wander aimlessly all around the museum looking for the wand? Is he the type to flaunt his intelligence and brag?" Mana kept troubling herself over it, seeing her expression it would have been made clear to anyone that she's been thinking about this and working herself over it for quite a while now.

"Actually… Yeah. He is not the type to needlessly confess or show his face around to the people he hurts but he is kind of a braggart. He enjoys the history and ancient treasure enthusiast persona he has created in the public and he probably would like to flaunt your wand as his newest toy right in front of your nose." Thumb admitted even as the admittance came with a lot of hidden frustration. Frustration not because of what she was saying but because she realized that Yokotomo Donyoku just acted like a carrot tied to a stick just for the sake of having some fun.

"Well, his true face has been exposed to the public now so… I guess games like this is all he has left. We would be wise to rest now. Tomorrow will be quite an important day." Mana smiled as her eyes looked both worried and a little bit sad at the same time as the corners of her lips curled upwards.

"Right… Shit. We're taking on Index tomorrow…" Thumb looked up at the white ceiling of the corridor the two were standing around in with disbelief. "I may be just playing a part in the Tribunal session tomorrow but… If things go sour, I promise I'll help."

"That's very uncharacteristic of you, I'd have taken you more for the material-girl, the type to slip away when things go wrong." Mana winked at the burglar as she opened the interrogation room and let the small-timer go.

"Good luck, ladies, I hope you catch that guy. Hopefully, we will never see each other again…" the man who just a couple of hours ago wore the face of one of Shukuba's most wanted people bowed his head with respect and waved farewells to the two young women. He was just about as detached from this as he was when he was badly impersonating Donyoku…

"Wow… I guess there is no honor amongst crooks." Thumb squinted her eyes feeling the irony of the man playing it nice with Shukuba Security while taking money from the Middle Ring and impersonating him, most likely, spreading just the same professional politeness.

Just as Mana showed the man the way out, feeling relatively good about the decision to let this man go as the manpower that Shukuba Security had at the moment was better spent focusing on the Diamond Hand instead of a measly breaking into a museum without the intent of looting anything, Thumb stopped her with a loud yell.

"When I was your age, I didn't take up being a burglar because I like shiny things or stealing stuff or the challenge of it. It just was the only crime where I felt as detached from what I was doing as possible. When you're nabbing things and everyone's asleep, it feels like nobody's getting hurt." Thumb spoke up. "I guess at some point I got lost. At some point, killing started to sound not too bad after all the stealing and fighting I've done when the first one did not work out."

"It's fine, I don't blame you. If you had killed me back then, I'm sure you'd have ended the troubles the Diamond Hand had with me quickly." Mana tried to smile but knowing she was talking about herself going through a murder attempt it did not go through nearly as easy.

"No, I wanted to stop for a long time before you came. I had heard about you when you and your pals plowed through the Syndicate. If I went out of my way to kill you because I misjudged how obsessed you were with slaying criminals. I'd have always been screwed so it seemed like a very comfortable chance to escape this life without paying back what I owe to the Diamond Hand: all the training, the surgeries…" Thumb looked at the floor with longing and sadness.

It was only then that Mana fully understood Thumb's actions with the gem. As a teen Thumb needed skills to survive and becoming a burglar for various criminal organizations would have been an easy way to acquire them. By the time she realized she was becoming someone else it was too late and difficult to leave, she owed too much to too many people. If she killed Mana, someone who may have tracked her long after destroying the Diamond Hand, and fled with the gem she'd have the chance to leave her life behind and the money to start fresh with the skills and modifications she gathered along the perilous and painful life of crime. Just like she had always wanted…

"As I've said…" Mana smiled, knowing full well that Thumb regretted taking Mana as a manslayer obsessed with eradicating criminals in her way initially, "I think your plan of starting over is wonderful."

Ever since meeting the burglar, something always did not add up to her story. Something always did not make sense, something always stayed hidden behind a mask of teasing and jokes with Thumb. Maybe that was why Mana kept on waiting to be betrayed by the burglar. Now that her feelings and motivation finally made sense to the magician she felt like she could completely trust her back to someone who earlier this week tried to kill her and made her fortune as a burglar…

Life was truly a living sheet of irony, full of oddities.