Mana usually hated the hospitals. Nobody cared that the food merely provided what was required for an organism to survive and rebuild, one had to deal with the inevitable influx of needles or medical ninjutsu treatments that, honestly, varied in quality. Sometimes, depending on what was being treated, the Mystical Palm treatment felt like a refreshing shower of ice-cold water in a hot summer day, sometimes it felt like some supernatural force assembling your bones together inside your body like a ship in a bottle.

Not only that, then there was the newly found solitude. Kiyomi and Meiko were out of the village for nobody knew how long, Kiyomi was gone until the whole Yamanaka and Uchiha tension settles, Meiko – until Hokage-sensei deems that there has been just about enough traveling. Eiju tried his best to remedy that, even through the signs of sickness he tried to hide, through intense headaches and nausea he still came to visit. Still, he had a full-time job to micromanage so Mana didn't blame him for anything.

For a village-famous entertainer, Mana sure felt a heck of lonely. Sometimes she'd have preferred being lonely, luckily enough, Team Walnut assumed the responsibilities of giving the village just about enough information to where Mana needn't worry about those things. She was questioned once and very off-handedly, just a meaningless procedure to close off a nasty page in the village history.

What could have been the end of Konoha and the birth of a new massive forest became just a page in the village news for a couple of days. Why would it not have? People and things tried to destroy Konoha or take it over almost every week, most of such stories slipped under the radar of the public for years and, frankly, even if they did come out, the public would get too bored by them all too soon.

Despite these feelings towards hospitals, Mana did enjoy her brief stay in Konoha's own just this once. Even the solitude that bugged her now more than it ever used to felt like not that big of a deal with what the magician had on her mind. More exactly, what she had managed to roll off her chest after the incident with the lanterns and the eco-terrorists intending to raise some natural scenery and not letting the village built in its place stand in their way.

By the time Mana could bravely, if somewhat slowly, walk out from the hospital and look around, she felt somewhat somber about what had plagued her consciousness for the last few days. And yet, for whatever reason, the magician felt like there was no need to yell about what has been simmering inside her from the top of a mountain. She hugged her parents, she had seen father more than once but she was surprised to see mother taking a break from work.


"We have to stop this." Kouta dug into his manju. His voice was calm and a little snappy even.

"I agree, I guess my magic shows are a bad time for a date." Mana giggled. Usually, she'd be in a rush home to get out of her uniform, into something stuffy and cozy like a blanket and watching the drops of rain running down her window. With Kouta, however, she didn't mind sitting around the hall and watching people walk in and leave the place, sometimes stopping for a brief chat.

"I mean, it's like you're dating the audience. I'd really like for us to do something that doesn't include you working." Kouta somehow managed to place an entire bun into his mouth at once. Sometimes Mana forgot what a food hog her boyfriend was. After the bun went down about as well as a full mouth of sticky bread with sweet, kiwi filling would go through the limited capacity of the human esophagus, the boy suddenly became a bit embarrassed and looked away.

"Sorry I didn't come to pick you up today or visit you in the hospital." He apologized.

"It's fine, you have an actual job that sometimes takes you outside the village, I get that," Mana replied. She did her best "it's not a big deal" voice and, honestly, in the rational part of her mind she really wanted to feel that way. Irrationally, however, she really wanted to see Kouta at least once during those days, even if it was impossible. "I wouldn't have come to pick you up from the hospital if that'd mean waiting for hours around your parents too…" she tried lightening the mood.

"I don't think you ever even met my mom…" Kouta pressed his lips together. "She's cared for you multiple times though, can't keep a straight face after coming back home after that."

"If I was conscious, she'd likely not be working on my case, would she…" Mana threw a rice cracker in her own mouth. "Damn… Missed a whole week of training."

"Father's been training me plenty. I could help you if I managed to slip out into the Training Grounds without him on my back." Kouta suggested. He looked elevated by Mana's change of topic. "He may be strict but he trained me a whole lot these last couple of weeks."

"Now that you're not training to become an efficient killer, you need lots of training to catch up to my expectations." Mana did her best Kusagoro impression.

"That was pretty good! If this magic gig doesn't work out or goes under, you may still have a chance at acting." Kouta laughed out. He was a lot like Meiko in the sense that he could not really hide his emotions that well even if he tried it all the time. Shyness, embarrassment as well as happiness or anger were all over his face. He was a poor Juugo, then again, he was being trained by pretty much the worst one ever.


A flashing image of blood red flashed through Mana's brain. Shortly, it seemed like her entire body froze up. The magician could no longer focus on the massive hill of the natural stone wall erected over the Training Grounds on the other end of the small creek that ran down it.

"I'm lucky to have the Seventh Training Ground all to myself at the moment. I need to make the best of it." Mana scolded herself for the anxiety she went through. The girl glared at her shaking hand before turning her attention back at the tall ridge of stone. Like a barrier for her to overcome, a wall to bust through that tempted the magician to lose control and give in to her more violent instincts.

It was tough to meditate and work on self-control with these dark thoughts and the anxiety working their magic on Mana. The girl pressed her palms together and closed her eyes, intending to slip into a meditational state and work on her chakra flow. That last scuffle with the eco-terrorist group revealed to Mana just how far away she was even judging by her strong suits from actual A-Rank ninja. She'd never make it to jounin at this pace…

There was no simple exam to take, no questions to answer correctly or one fistfight to win to make it there. At this stage, Mana was waiting for her chance. Just one chance to prove to the village that she deserved it. Maybe, just like her father before her, she would wait her entire career for just such a chance…

It was Lord Sixth. He didn't let her even try, after the last mission any communication between the village and Mana just severed. Even Seiga no longer bothered to train Mana and after being shut down once the magician didn't bother to show up at the Intelligence Division again. The girl's eyes shot wide open, tension pulsed through her entire body as it burnt up with all of the pent-up feelings while she worked through a collection of hand seals and breathed deep in.

Black, creeping rings surrounded the edges of Mana's vision, the girl had drawn in so much air that it almost made her pass out. Transforming this much air into Wind Release chakra would be difficult, this may have been a miscast… Something that rarely, if ever happened to Mana. All that the magician wanted to do was use her Friendly Gust jutsu, a technique she had created while still working through the last year of Ninja Academy and had completely mastered until the finals Chuunin Exams.

Just how disturbed did her mental state have to be to mess up this basic jutsu?

What came out from the magician's chest as she blew all the pent-up air out was completely different. Twisted and intertwined without any grounds for denying the connection with the jutsu Konoha had used against Mana. Just a simple peek at the howling pillar of twisting air made the flashes of red and white that Mana experienced inside the twister while being cut up resurface.

With a round blast, the technique dissolved leaving indentations in the rock, thousands of them all over. It was like the mountain was covered with stripes. Friendly Gust was created when Mana was just a child and she had never wondered for a moment if the technique was just an entry step into a much more complicated world of Wind Release ninjutsu. Mana placed her palms against one another, working on soothing and building up her chakra some more.


The magician stood in front of the information board that still had wanted posters old and new of all the missing people that started disappearing even before Mana, Meiko, Kouta and Shimo left to look for the Box of Ultimate Bliss. By now, it had seemed like such a normal part of Konoha's political life that the people barely even looked at the board anymore…

"Could it be? Our perpetrator?" A loud gasp coming from a tough, masculine voice right behind Mana. The magician reached out for the chakra signature of the man behind her with her sensory, choosing to react with the sense she was working on honing the most at that moment, one that was quite vital in the middle of the battle and that anyone gifted with this gift of chakra sensory had the responsibility to not waste.

The chakra behind Mana was outright massive! Also, it was not alone, Mana couldn't hold it. She stumbled forward onto the information board, pressing against it with her hand that still quivered while her forehead sprayed sweat all over. Even the gently warm spring breeze made Mana feel chilly when her bodily temperature rose as drastically as it just did. There may have been as much as four chakra signatures behind her of similar size, all of them overwhelming and making the chakra of Konoha and Dill feel like amateurs.

"Dammit, S-Crew, you're scaring the little girl." A more feminine in tone albeit no less masculine in its strength and confidence joined in.

"Not just any little girl, this is Konoha's Sorceress, did you forget her face from the posters so soon?" the voice of another man said. By then Mana finally had gathered the courage to look back at the sources of the intense chakra as the woman from before of a quite bulky build helped Mana maintain her balance and helped her find a bench to catch some air back into her lungs.

"What a disgrace, and he comes here on an investigation mission…" the one that the woman named S-Crew before joked about his comrade while the entire remaining crew laughed together.

"Are you okay?" the woman asked Mana, oblivious to the teasing of her colleagues. It was par for the course, it seemed. Otherwise, someone of her build and size would not have taken such teasing without any playful physical violence being offered in return.

"It's fine, I must have over-trained, that's it." Mana tried dismissing the woman's worries. Not only would telling her the truth that Mana had no idea what was wrong with her force the magician to actually confront a newly erected, very frightening demon in her closet, but it would also probably be pretty rude to blame something like that on a bunch of people that had nothing to do with Mana's condition.

It was not their fault they were this crazy powerful in terms of their immense chakra signatures. Mana may have flipped out even if she did not suffer a new batch of problems ever since leaving the hospital. It made so little sense, just when Mana finally got over the beating she took from Yamata no Orochi and found a confident answer to the questions he posed in her own life's experiences and memories of a very unexpected source, she was the least stable she's ever been…

"Oh, you're a ninja?" the woman grinned with a full-mouthed smile. She had a rather blunt way of speaking and a very odd manner of speech that sounded like something south-western. Something hailing from the more mountainous regions of the world.

Mana lifted her shirt that was hanging over her headband protector tied around her waist to reveal a little metallic shimmer when the Sun's shine danced on its surface.

"Damn, Rushira's pretty bad at this." Another one of her colleagues cringed into his fist. The bulky woman turned back with a clenched fist, grinding her teeth while trying to calm herself down and keep herself from lashing out. It was quite embarrassing to admit but over the whole ordeal with Mana's own mental problems and the loss of focus over the immense chakra of these four the magician only noticed the curious metallic braces on the woman's teeth at that moment.

The company that the iron-lady surrounded herself with was just as odd to see in these part as someone like her. One of her companions was a rather slim, very dark-skinned ninja with two headbands tied around each of his upper arms. One of them had the Kumogakure symbol etched on it but the other symbol the magician had not encountered before. It simply read "Shinobi".

The other two looked a little more to the ordinary side but they were not without their quirks. There was a rather dull looking man wearing a similar undershirt that the Konoha ninja wore as their standard uniform except his was white and he wore an Iwagakure style flak jacket on top. His hair, while quite stylish, would have been considered too girly for a Konoha ninja to try. It extended past his shoulders, curved to the sides, bent at the end, something that would have required a lot of care from his part to make it happen.

The final one was a giant, Mana would have only measured up to his waist and the large man looked to be the quiet one. He was smirking and laughing alongside his friends and he wore a standard Konoha uniform. Now that the magician looked at this man, she was beginning to recall more details about him. He was a local, she may have met him once or twice when meeting her father returning from missions at the village gate. He must have known who Mana was which meant he was just looking where this would take his colleagues and letting them have their fun.

"Now why would a local celebrity be into these missing people?" the one with the stylish haired posed with his fingers extended under the end of his chin.

"Lay off, Cailar, does she look like someone tough enough to drag a bunch of people underground and make them disappear?" the tall Konoha ninja crossed his arms over his chest while walking out in front of his slim Kumogakure friend.

"Well, she is a ninja…" the Kumogakure native spoke up from behind Mana. Just how did he get there? The last that Mana registered him he was behind the tall one and now he was speaking from right behind her? "Although she does not appear to be the physical type…"

The entire last sentence came in synchrony from various directions all around Mana. It felt like the man was all over the place and did not settle for a single location to have his body occupy it. He must have moved around Mana a good dozen of times before she could even register him having moved at all. With his incredible speed, not even the civilians that were casually walking by noticed anything incredible to gawk at.

"You guys are the Allied Ninja sent here to investigate these disappearances, aren't you?" Mana asked with a flair of certainty that more or less implied that she did not require an answer to that question.

"That's not bad, kid." The ninja with the stylish hair smiled with a pearly-white smile. "You may be sharper than Rushira."

"It's just about the only explanation why ninja from Konoha, Kumogakure, somewhere south-west and somewhere pretty cloudy, likely an island from the Archipelago or Kirigakure would all work together without tearing into one another." Mana sighed.

"In any case, you're not being blamed for anything, Sorceress, it's our first day looking into the matter after arriving in Konoha last evening so we're kind of looking for the end of the line to pull on." The Konoha giant patted the magician's shoulder. He did appear to have remembered having met the girl but he could not have remembered her name just yet. "We're better off leaving and not bothering this kid anymore."

The man gave his peers an unnerving glare as he uttered these words. This was the resolve in the eyes of a man who respected Mana's father enough to not want his daughter to have anything to do with the important and challenging work of the Allied Ninja.

"Take me with you," Mana asked with all of the inner grievances at the village for keeping her away from this task she placed the responsibility on herself to accomplish when she declared she'd one day become a Sannin surfacing in the shape of conviction in her voice. The girl moved her trembling hand behind her back and gently wrapped her free, less trembling hand around it to make herself appear more stable to these Allied Ninja that may have helped her get closer to a job she wanted ever since she became a chuunin.