Mana had no idea why she was so surprised to see the Konoha streets bustling with activity. Ninja buzzing about performing basic rescue jobs and fixing what was broken. There did not appear to be any Senju working their magic just yet, the ninja working on the rescue still were not sure if everyone was pulled out from under the wreckage before the unsteady ground could be fixed and buried for good. There was probably still evidence that the Konohagakure Police Force could find useful.

A quick scan of her surroundings with her chakra sensory suggested to Mana that the Allied Ninja were not around. That was quite odd. The magician certainly expected a whole lot of trouble after surfacing and was beginning to practice what she would tell those international investigators after showing her face to them not too long after leaving them to face the Spliced ninja.

Mana remained on the dirt, letting Axolkin just lie helplessly nearby while the Congregation gathered one by one to the surface. At least the wait until all of the people she intended to rescue gather provided the magician with an excuse why she could sit down and regain her breath for a short while. Once more than a handful of the Congregation started emerging from the sewers, the Konoha ninja finally got interested in Mana surfacing with the people she intended to rescue.

They looked quite grumpy and hostile. Perhaps the Allied Ninja tipped them off about what Mana did underground? That would have certainly explained it. Regardless of their overall negative attitude toward the magician, the chuunin were as of yet unsure just what they were supposed to do with the magician. Some of them grabbed her by the girl's wrists and intended to capture her and bring her to the Police Force HQ, some of them thought she was to be taken right to the Intelligence Division for interrogation while others thought that before hasty judgment of Mana's betrayal was to be drawn she should debrief the Hokage.

There was a man Mana wanted to see the least, however she kind of would have had to. The intelligence she found out was simply too massive and over not only her but pretty much any head in the entire world. Guru Ayushi had gone mad and traveled the world with the intent of recovering his old and dulled fighting senses as well as gathering new power, created a cult and now intended on flipping the world table before placing his much fancier one in its place.

"They don't seem to trust you very much. You betrayed Guru, you turned your back at being a key religious figure in establishing the new order, you've abandoned the creation of your own world without pain or misery…" Axolkin kept on babbling. He must have shed quite a lot of the toxic waste in his system to be able to talk this intelligibly. Still, his skin color did not look good and his body pores still sweated and leaked waste so the ninja and the village were in no danger from him.

"This is one of the Spliced ninja. These poor people are what's left of those that disappeared around the village." Mana tried to let the ninja know before they settled on a fate for her where she would be unable to tend to the people she worked so hard to rescue.

"These guys need medical attention." A chuunin noted giving the Congregation a sorry glare full of disgust and pity for the people they once were.

Perhaps after months if not years of slow and steady medical treatment the Congregation could be returned to their initial shapes. The physical wear and tear would be much easier to heal, a little bit of mending, a little bit of proper sustenance and no menial labor as well as limits for the religious rituals they could undergo. The mental changes would be much harder to work with, an entire tirade of brainwashing programming was to be cleansed, almost their entire brains needed resetting. Could a person still come out intact after such intense work and a complete do-over, even if curing the Congregation's mental state could be done?

It did not matter that much if she would be brought to the Intelligence Division, spend some nights at the Police Force HQ treated like a potential traitor or face the Hokage, as long as the Congregation was properly taken care of. Then again, perhaps she should have cared? Did she not want to take part in fixing these disappearances to become a Sannin? To become a figure, not unlike that which Guru Ayushi used to be, someone strong and wise enough to perform the legendary role which Sannin have been playing for years – serve as a weapon that never needed to be fired in Konoha's arsenal.

Mana glanced at her hands. For the first time in a while, they weren't shaking. It was so odd to see them calm, they have only ever been calm lately when the magician was blinded with anger like the time she found out that the Allied Ninja never intended on finding and rescuing their part of the Congregation and now, when she's resigned to whatever fate would be chosen for her with complete apathy. Were apathy and indifference really the best cures for fear?

Maybe what provided Mana with temporary tranquility from the anxiety that usually governed her actions and emotions and rotted her from inside, not unlike the Congregation were rotten by their devotion to Ayushi's mission, was not apathy and indifference to her own fate but instead the face of her own survival. Survival of odds much lesser and nightmares much more horrifying than ones that petrified her before. What was nearly dying inside a pollen dimension compared to what Mana has just been through?

In either case, Mana was just relieved and a little glad she had a moment of clear and consistent breathing without her chest locking up and her hands beginning to tremble. She would appreciate it for however long it would last.

"Very well, you may leave. You're temporarily suspended from all mission-related activity for however long it will take for you to recover from your injuries fully." Lord Sixth closed his eyes deep in thought of what just came out of Mana's lips. He should have been more horrified, he should have gone pale if not blue in terror after hearing something like the fact that Guru Ayushi had gone mad and actually had the power to back his insanity up.

"I thought I was suspended already?" Mana wondered out loud. "Does the term of my secondary suspension stack on top of the first?"

"You said such a thing, I did not." Lord Sixth found the fortitude in him to smirk with half of his lips before turning his chair around and looking at the village resting behind him as if this contemplating look was the final time he would see it like this. Calm and just a pair of streaks of smoke rustling far in the distance. The Hokage Monument in its full glory and the entire village brimming with something leaf-green and cheer-loud.

That meant that Mana was officially off of her termless suspension from before. She would be once more going on missions right after she recovers. Why would Lord Sixth make such a decision, moreover, why now? Was she not just found out as a possible traitor or a capricious child stuck between two allegiances? Just what was it that the reporting chuunin told him?

Or maybe… It was not the chuunin making their reports that supplied the man's information but the Allied Ninja. But these folk had no reason to tell the Hokage anything but condemning things about the magician. Did she not walk off recklessly with one of the leading figures of the Spliced ninja and the Congregation all on her own leaving them to fight by themselves? From the way it must have looked to them, Mana must have betrayed them and her village.

Unless they were sharper than that and saw right through her… Mana was so used being right amongst her genin peers her entire career that she forgot about the fact that she was no longer around them. Her best-laid plans may have just been featherweight ponderings for experienced investigators like the Allied Ninja. Were they truly ever fooled by her play like the Spliced ninja were?

"Is there something else?" Lord Sixth asked without opening his troubled eyes. His voice sounded raspy and tired. This was, after all, the middle of a pretty nasty work day. It was only after being asked this that Mana realized she has been still standing tensed up in the man's office all this time after being relieved and excused.

"Oh… No, I apologize, Lord Sixth!" Mana blushed and fell on one knee before intending to bolt from the man's office. The Hokage's voice stopped her in the middle of that ambitious motion.

"In that case, I am grateful for your work today. You found out about a whole handful of traitors working within the core of the village ninja roster as well as valuable intelligence about the disappearances. I am glad to have had my own person in that group while they conducted their investigation, even if I did not will it." Lord Sixth spoke up.

"Excellent work, but it could not have been too tough, those folks were quite odd-looking, one of them looked like an actual snake, to be honest…" the Hokage's assistant sighed.

"Who are we to judge what looks weird? What's trustworthy and what's not…" Lord Sixth joined in on his assistant's worrisome mood. "If I investigated everyone that looks weird amongst the ninja under my employ I'd have to imprison at least two-thirds of them. Even Mana's dressing habits make her a little bit weird… Have I ever told you about this one guy I worked with that wore the hollow head of an actual dog?"

The beginning of that discussion was the final thing Mana heard before leaving Lord Sixth's office. The man did have a point, it would not have been too difficult for a band of odd-looking spliced with animal cells individuals to join the Konoha's ranks, especially if they've been working for the village before they were experimented on.

This world was full of all sorts of oddities, some people were born different than others, some of them became different, gaining power through ancient and highly unorthodox ways. Even something as exalted and respected as the Aburame clan hosted swarms of chakra-leeching insects inside their children. Someone with a dark past like the one Lord Sixth had, someone who had seen the underbelly of such a world for the most of his ninja career would have much weirder tastes even compared to these things one considered normal in this crazy world.

Mana took great care in observing her body and attempting to execute all of her training moves perfectly. She did not have nearly enough left in her for an extensive or a productive training but she needed some light and straining session of movement to soothe her mind and if that was to be impossible – focus it somewhere else, at the very least.

A muzzled signature lit up in Mana's mental registry, one familiar to her but it seemed far too calm and controlled for the magician to worry too much about the uncomfortable conversation that was about to come. Instead of acting on her sensory input in any way, the girl just continued training while keeping a bit of her attention on the incoming Allied Ninja.

"I waited for you at the hospital, figured you'd be in a pretty bad condition and itching for some medical attention," Junichi said right after his feet lightly touched the ground. The control in his movements was so awesome that his body did not continue moving and lean forward from the inertia of his previous speed but instead came to a full and complete stop.

"Just a shower…" Mana replied while delivering a few graceful and slow kicks. At this point, she was stretching out and dancing more than sharpening her bodily condition but it was doing wonders for her concentration, or rather keeping it where it belonged. She did not have a tremble for hours now.

"I see. Rushira's been pretty banged up so I couldn't pick you up right after you were done. They did not tell me if you rescued the Congregation or not. Seeing how you're here and in a fighting condition, I'd say at the very least you've managed to survive." Junichi spoke in a different tone than the ones he used to refer to Mana with before. Softer, more fatherly. When Mana looked at him with concern after the revelation of Rushira's injuries, he calmly nodded his head and raised his palm to reaffirm the girl that things will be fine.

"No, I did it. The bunch you ignored most likely got tipped off that something's wrong and scattered though. Saved the ones I could." A strong jerk in Mana's middle arm made her arm twitch. It was both muscle pain and some strange nervous reaction to the emotional and physical disarray inside her body, either way, it made her move look awry and the magician felt ashamed of it, quickly halting her training and turning at the Allied Ninja.

"I won't presume to be in any authority to tell you to go and rest up but that would be what I would do in your shoes." Junichi rubbed the back of his head while turning his eyes aside. He was not very good at talking about anything that was not related to professional activity or scolding people for what they were doing wrong. That made this conversation profoundly awkward.

"I will." Mana nodded.

"We were all pretty impressed with your performance. We held you back and yet you performed just like a part of our squad. If you ever considered attempting to become an Allied Ninja – you'd have our recommendations." Junichi even managed to squeeze out a compliment for Mana and nodded his head a little. He was not treating the magician as a child anymore. She was no longer a young starlet or a daughter of his old friend in his eyes.

"That would have meant a great deal to me some time ago." Mana turned her back and sat down on the grass. It felt chilly as the spring evening winds caressed it and blew away any built up warmth the blades may have accumulated over time. "When I read about a squad of ninja who knew no borders, I was looking up to you guys. I thought that gathering a group of the most exceptional individuals from each village who would work on matters too grand for any single village to tackle alone was an amazing idea, you were beyond just heroes in my eyes."

"That's not exactly the case, I suppose." Junichi sighed. The tall man folded himself nearby where Mana sat down to rest a little. "The villages still distrust the Allied Ninja. The organization is more of a dumping ground for ninja they don't want around their own village. Regardless, most of the time they are ninja of considerable skill since none of the villages want the headache of bothering assigning the Allied Ninja a new member too often, once the old one dies."

"I am the last person to garner meaningless bonds for a formless shape that is one's village. A pointless ideal that is meant to just keep people in line and predictably stupefied. Still, today I've seen the Allied Ninja turn away from people it could have saved while the village ninja did their best to rescue as many of them as they could, even if that meant letting the people responsible go sometimes. I may lack the Will of Fire but I have to say that working alongside the village protection ninja, maybe the Barrier Corps sounds much more alluring right now." Mana admitted.

Speaking her mind this way did not come easy. Confronting the idea that one's heroes may have been overly idolized and that it was entirely the fault of one's own and one's naivete was properly bitter. Regardless, it was something that needed to be spoken.

"I'm sorry." Mana's face turned sad while she looked down, pushing the falling hair off of her face and the few rings of bandage that covered her busted forehead. "Earlier today, I should have been truthful. I should not have led you guys to chase monsters and confront the black market drug dealers at once. I keep thinking that maybe… If we did that… Maybe we'd have saved more people this way."

"I must admit, hearing you dismiss the threat of black market painkiller drugs rampant across the village did sound suspicious. Added to the whole Ayushi's cult affair… I wish I could apologize for suspecting foul play from your part but… It was the only logical conclusion, then again, perhaps when things are too obvious as in this case, someone is being framed." Junichi grumbled more akin to his usual tone.

"It's my father. Ever since he's been sidelined after his injury he really needs every little bit of help he can get dealing with the pain from his burns. I know that ignoring the black market painkillers was wrong but… Plenty of people use them to great effect. By now it has become an inseparable part of their lives. I suppose it was selfish of me to wish for my father to remain lulled by the lack of pain and the need to confront his state." Mana wrapped her head with her own hands, attempting to relieve the pressure from inside with external pressure. Her forehead was pulsing and her chest was choking up with various different emotions swelling up inside.

"Selfish? How?" Junichi wondered. "In my experience selfishness comes when one is thinking about themselves, not the pain of others."

"I'm my father's daughter. It's my responsibility to do what's best for him and help him in his time of need. It is selfish of me to trust my responsibility for a jar of pills." Mana replied finally gathering the strength and stability to look up at the cloudy sky.

"I am not entirely in the clear myself. I knew that you were dismissing the painkillers as a viable lead the whole time and yet I did not call you out, even more, I supported your push to investigate the monster more immediately." Junichi replied. "Truth is, I knew all along just how ridiculous of a lead the monster thing was. I am still amazed that it led us to Little Honda but… I knew that if we tackled the black market immediately we'd shut the case down immediately and it'd be it of this. We'd be going back to HQ and leaving Konoha. Just when I returned and saw my family again…"

"You should be with them now," Mana suggested.

"I still have a couple of days before Rushira recovers. She was pretty reckless, I'm beginning to think she knew all along I wanted to stay for a little bit longer and got herself injured on purpose…" the man smirked in an action that the magician thought completely impossible for the Konoha veteran.

"She's eager to impress you. I know all too well how that feels." Mana's eyes softened as her memories drifted back to the first time she met Uzumaki Tanshu and her inner conflict with Chestnut Hanasaku that may have mirrored the chemistry between Rushira and Junichi perfectly.

"Regardless, even my family could not keep me away from the responsibility of talking to you now. You're an amazing ninja, take care and don't try to shoulder too much at once. Advising you this is the best I can do, even if I know you won't listen anyway…" Junichi smiled again, knocking it out of the park completely before putting his hands into his pockets and dashing off.

A chilly spring breeze attempted to tear the leaves off of the rich treeline surrounding the training ground Mana was in but the bond between the trees and the leaves was strong and the leaves persevered, despite their shakes and quivers. Mana looked down at the holes and tears in her uniform and sighed. The evening was getting chilly and her eyelids were beginning to gravitate towards one another quite strongly.

Mana was getting drowsy after this long and rough day.