Shibari's funeral was nothing like the funerals that Mana had attended previously. Mostly because of how personal the entire affair felt. How out of place the magician felt standing in front of the procession on a sunny day, honoring a passed colleague she never really knew that well, just heard about.

Funerals were always painful and not only because of the obvious reasons. Mana could have attended a funeral of someone she knew even less than Shibari and still felt like she had just sold her soul. Burials were always about confronting her own failure to Mana as much as they were about grieving and honoring those that have passed away.

A jounin Mana had never seen before stepped up in front of those that have gathered and began telling stories about how he once dated Shibari but found her odd, goofy outlook on life completely insufferable. It just added to the common theme that the other jounin remembered about the woman – no matter if she was facing adversity or happiness, she always sassed and joked her way through it.

A person like that sounded like someone Mana would have liked to have known better. Even if most of the people who spoke about that trait of the departed as if it was somewhat of a quirk of hers and remembered only when the surfacing of that quirk was the absolute wrong reaction, the woman still sounded like a gift to the village to Mana.

The magician came and gone feeling like a visitor at yet another monument to her failure. Usually, a confrontation with inevitable things changing which laid outside her limits would have only motivated the magician to train, now it sapped whatever motivation or will she still had for the notion.

At least this procession felt somewhat more meaningful and personal than the burials of the other victims of the incident Mana had attended throughout that week. At least Shibari was honored and remembered the way she was instead of people speaking about how terrible the incident that claimed her life was and the eternal matter of politics around it. Blaming one clan or another, others yet blamed the mysterious kidnappers behind the disappearances. There were those that blamed Lord Sixth for failing to solve the mystery too.

The memory of those that have passed managed to dive under all that talk and sink into the abyss forever.


A flock of pigeons burst through the opened doors of a person-sized box where a magician had entered just moments earlier and which was now skewered with blades. Those who felt rather skeptical about the rather generic-looking trick the concept of which Mana had abused by now got a brief glimpse of the magician's skewered body dissolving into pigeons if they looked hard enough.

Good luck explaining that with smoke, mirrors or the box being segmented…

"Nice to see you back onstage." Mr. Hiro congratulated the magician in her little preparation room after the show. "Been a while but three shows in five days… That's quite impressive. I do enjoy the new edge of your shows too…"

"Really? I don't intend on keeping it. I figure people want to see something fuzzy and warmer in these times." Mana sighed. Thinking back, she was not sure how on Earth could showing off glimpses of her deceased body as a part of an illusion ever sounded like a good idea to her.

"Oh well, wherever it takes you. People can use some of your magical escapism either way. As long as you don't forget you're not a stranger in these parts." Mr. Hiro nodded his head with a smile.

"It has been a while, hasn't it?" Mana managed to smile back at the round, little man.

"It seems to have built up some anticipation. People will think you're the class act that I whip out during special occasions. Apart from the fact that I barely have a say in when you perform, they would not be entirely wrong." Mr. Hiro waved his hand, dismissing Mana's worries that she has been out of the magic game for a long time. "That's a pretty fun trick, the pigeons one. And they were all illusionary so I didn't have to work with actual animals. I have no idea what is it with animals and babies but…"

"It is a difficult illusion to learn but once it is mastered changing the specifics of the appearance of it is not that tough." Mana shook her head before standing back up from her chair and examining the preparation room for anything she may have forgotten to do.

"I guess I should consider teaching all my artists some ninjutsu. Just imagine, people creating entire movies through illusions and transferring them directly into people's brains!" Mr. Hiro made his pitch with a very enthusiastic gesture and a dreamy face.

"Illusions are complex. Exposure of one's brain to something like that for that long could inflict brain damage. It would seem to me like the kind of hassle you'd do your best to avoid." Mana advised. "Movies and television are doing pretty good. Stick to that for a decade or so before innovating."

"A decade? A decade ago plays seemed like a pointless avant-garde, dear. Just last year nobody could have imagined something like most of the technology since the boom. Though you're right, maybe the whole brain streaming thing raises too many questions." Mr. Hiro looked full of energy when discussing potential business ventures.

He did raise an interesting point. With the tech that Shikamaru handed Mana to bring back home to her universe, people may have gotten used to vast leaps in technology created through analyzing that one handbag and all the blueprints, replicating the tech from the samples given to her. Perhaps society was not meant to experience technology in such quick leaps…

"Hey, Mana!" Meiko's voice ringed in Mana's ear as the girl was leaving the building after waving farewell to Mr. Hiro who scurried away to manage some of the actors that were about to perform onstage.

"Meiko?" The magician blinked a couple of times. The blacksmith must have gone through a bunch of trouble to figure out that performers left through the back exit most of the time and gotten entry into the service corridors.

"Hey, I needed to see how you're holding up!" The redhead grinned with a mouthful of teeth. That cheeky little monkey.

"Doing my best to return some routine back to my life. There's only that much I can screw up before taking a break from all the excitement." Meiko appeared a little worked up over Mana's reply but seeing the smile on the magician's face when she said it the redhead just let it go.

"Oh… I…" Meiko clearly wanted to tell something but could not muster up the strength to do so. Had she not teamed up with someone who barely survived her life through her mental prowess and a literal mind reader, Meiko would have had trouble communicating at times. Still, the blacksmith was someone who was rather carefree so the fact that her speech was this paralyzed made the magician prepare for even more bad news.

"Did you like the show?" Mana tried distracting her friend from what clearly was slowly choking her from inside to say.

"Oh… I didn't see it. I wanted to but I had a time planning accident…" Meiko blushed a little while she apologetically stroke the back of her head.

"A time planning accident?" Mana raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah… I kind of thought I had time planned out but I got lost in it while I was tinkering and I only barely made it to here when I did." Meiko sighed. Given how impressive the speed of a ninja was, the blacksmith must have gotten absorbed in her craft for well over an hour longer than she planned to. That was some impressive devotion if anything was to be taken from this.

"Do… Do you know where Kiyomi is? I'll need to tell her this too, I guess." Meiko returned to the topic of the thing she needed to say. It must have been something of great importance to her friend if she displayed such amazing secret revelation ethics.

"I was told it was confidential information…" Mana looked down before leaning to Meiko's ear.

"Though I have more than enough reasons to believe she's in the Yamanaka District to protect her from whatever threats may come from the village or the Uchiha," Mana whispered.

"Oh… Weird, huh? That whole Uchiha thing… It always seemed like a dog barking at a tree thing with the Yamanaka and the Uchiha but now." Meiko looked up at a diner sign slipping away somewhere in her mind as she did so.

"Yeah, things got pretty tense there," Mana admitted. "I don't think it got tense enough for a full out spillover."

"That's good to hear. The last thing we need here is a civil war happening while we're gone. No Sannin to protect us and all…" Meiko looked back down and sighed again.

"Well, there's still Zairyo but that guy's never around to the point where people barely count on his protection as that of a Sannin's." Mana shrugged before something in Meiko's words dawned on her. "Wait, gone?"

"Y-Yeah, now that Hanasaku-sensei is retiring she decided to leave the village and wander around, you know, go full Ayushi-mode for a couple of years. She invited me to come with her and train. Given how I'm not on a team anymore since Team Hokage dissolved, Lord Sixth didn't even mind. It will probably be a while before I get signed to another team." Meiko finally revealed what was pressing on her chest.

"That's… That's great." Mana smiled and jumped in front of Meiko. The girl placed her hands on her friend's shoulders to make sure that she saw the happiness in the magician's face and how proud she was of Meiko. "Think of how much stronger you'll become, how much more experience you'll get."

"Y-Yeah but… We'll probably miss each other." Meiko shrugged.

"You know, I bet you will most likely get so many chances to nab some legendary weapon from some unruly nukenin gunning for Hokage-sensei's life." Mana winked.

"Really, you think so!?" Meiko raised her fists up to her chest in excitement.

"Definitely, you'll probably be allowed to keep them too. Hokage-sensei is not that good with weaponry after all." Mana knew how to make her enthusiastic friend forget all about her worries. It seemed that by now they knew each other forever.

Mana knew what she was doing. She was making saying farewell easier for her friend while causing Meiko to bury the outburst of emotions deeper below. They would inevitably surface later on. It would certainly be painful and the two would definitely miss each other but… Mana just could not bear to see her best friend cry.

"Wanna go eat something while we still got tonight?" Meiko wondered.

"You mean to watch you eat in fear for my own life? Yeah, I could occupy tonight with some of that." Mana nodded with a smile.


It was a common thing for Mana to have a spark of a thought grow into a full-on obsession. Not just any thought, not just at any time. It was a thought of something small and inconsequential during something important that she was doing. Something that would have taken hours to complete and, in the process of blazing on and growing out of control, the thought managed to distract the magician from that.

Mana put away the blueprint for another device for her magic shows and slipped into her sandals. If the thought of checking the mail would not let her work, she may have confronted it head-on and be done with it. After all, she was unlikely to see any mail for a while.

The mailbox was all bloated. Mana looked at it like at an unstable pustule about to explode before getting to work. Opening it without having the mail blow up all over the street was a true challenge and the subtlety that was required made Mana feel like some sort of a seal master working on disarming a trap seal.

Luckily, Mana was somewhat of an experienced savant at hand movements. She was a master of sleight of hand, after all. In just a minute and a bit, a whole box-worth of mail was lying on the magician's lap inside.

Mana did not know she received this much fan mail. She usually did not deal with the housework all that much, certainly not with managing the mail. If something addressed to her and important ever reached her, it was because her parents brought it to her and told her it was important.

The magician was not even aware that people sent mail to the performers they liked. She figured that when she stayed after the shows to interact with the audience that was pretty much the extent of her communication with the people that attended and enjoyed her shows. She wondered if she had ever offended anyone by not writing back but after reading through a couple of the letters she figured that none of them were really written in a way that expected a response.

The girl figured that just this once she could have gone above and beyond and written back to all these people. It didn't have to be anything fancy. Just seeing a letter one sent with one's feelings return in any shape would have felt great. Mana just had a reminder of that.

Despite settling on not going into too many details, Mana took multiple hours drafting replies to everyone before her tired eyes settled on one more letter she had not noticed before. The address looked somewhat familiar but the magician couldn't quite put her finger on it. Upon opening the envelope and letting her eyes run through it she quickly made a response and then set out to send all the letters away.

She lost a whole bunch of time she intended to be preparing for the show for but any time spent replying to people that enjoyed her shows or even people who didn't like it, if those people even wrote letters to her, and him could not have been considered a waste.

After the evening show, the next morning, Mana made a quick dash to the training grounds. He was already there by the time she arrived. The short boy of dark shades of hair, loose, hanging clothing and fit build stared with dreamy eyes at the reborn wonders of the Konohagakure nature in the spring.

"Didn't expect to hear from you, I'll be honest." Mana smiled at Kouta.

"Father told me what happened. Saw how many shows you were hosting recently too. Given how you're free so often these days, figured you'd miss that part of your life…" the young man turned around with a smile before raising his fist enthusiastically.

"You know me too well." Mana grinned.

"We met under same circumstances, didn't we?" Kouta replied.


The two were sitting on a rocky formation, observing the early evening sky. Training with Kouta felt refreshing. After the Chuunin Exams, she felt almost like the falling out that they had would never really stop feeling too awkward to see each other. They both behaved in baffling ways when intertwined with the ring of trust that love tied people together with…

"My father's gonna become a Sannin soon. They've made it official." Kouta smiled. The boy fell on his back and stretched his dirty, bruised and slightly burnt hands out wide while breathing with a full chest.

"You must be so proud. He really does deserve it." Mana turned back at the sky.

"He told me you saved his life." Kouta brought his body up higher on his elbows, trying to catch the magician's eyes with his own glare.

"I saved his mind, I guess. I didn't really know I was doing it, well… Maybe I guessed that I may have been…" Mana felt a bit of discomfort rising up when talking about that day again. Maybe it was just too soon since the day that she lost people and probably ruined one of the most important friendships in her life for good.

"He was pretty mean to you. He hurt you multiple times. It was really kind of you to do something like that." Kouta sat back up.

Mana did not reply. She just did not know what kind of an answer the young man expected to hear. Did he want to hear about how Mana made a friend out of his father? Which would not have been entirely true, even if she did say such a thing? After the man almost killed her twice in one month, she still felt a little uncomfortable around him and she was not a fan of how aggressive he tended to be around people.

"Anyway…" Kouta's face turned very similar to that of Meiko's when she had something she wanted to say but couldn't. Mana found that a little funny. "That technique… Completely wrecked me."

"Magician's Touch has been designed to protect me against close-range ninja. I may have been trained a little in self-defense but it does not make me a match for taijutsu using ninja in their field. I need to fight them off with my own strengths. You shouldn't feel ashamed for getting so countered by it." Mana glanced at the young man with a corner of her eye. In her experience, the ninja of the male variety who took pride in their warrior culture code did not take fondly being beaten, even in training.

"I uh… I don't think I'm gonna go to Konoha High to become an ANBU anymore. I think I did it to satisfy father most of all but it was never something I really wanted." Kouta admitted. Mana's eyes softened when she turned to him.

"I'm glad. I hope you can find a line of specialization you will enjoy and feel suitable in." Mana replied. Her voice got higher pitched in the end when she felt Kouta's hand slowly slip onto hers, pressing it softly against the rocky surface of the structure they were resting on.

Without hesitation, the magician answered Kouta's slow lean for a kiss after the boy overcame his shyness over the gentle touch. The sky was really beautiful in the spring evenings.