Something shattered downstairs. Mana closed her eyes, breathed in and out. It should have stopped her chest from quivering which often led to mild shortness of breath. Few things could stress her out to this degree so lightning-fast. Father did not join her in the tinkering session yesterday. Being the brain behind Mana's crafty hands was a part of his coping process.
It would have taken a fool to misidentify the rumbling thunder raging downstairs, only someone to be called that would have misidentified the voice of their own father. Mana jumped off of the bed and slowly moved to the door, pressing against it. She was fighting the worse parts of herself, the fear behind opening the door and walking downstairs, talking to father and helping him.
She's been running from him again, just like she was initially. Hell, she's been running away from home for a while now. Not purposefully but home tended to lately be just that place she seldom crashed at when she was not busy fending off people and things trying to murder her for one reason or another. Such was the job, that was not as big of a problem as one may have thought but did Mana really have to be as devoted to it?
Moreover, how could she truly confront her father when she was the one who helped shut down the source for his relief. The painkillers and experimental herb mixtures that Ayushi's cult has been selling for years now were no snake oil, they actually did help people and Mana's father was the shiniest gold nugget amongst the examples. Guru Ayushi was one of the most powerful and certainly the most experienced ninja alive, there may have been very few things he could not do or did not know. If he wanted to cure pain – pain had a reason to sweat.
Things would be so much different, so much easier if she had nothing to do with shutting down that part of the black market. Mana forced herself to peel the door open, she was struggling against her own body so much that controlling her strength from ripping the door out so hard that the resonating shockwave tore the entire house down was a genuine challenge. Ninja were taught control over everything else, power was not worth using if one could not control its flow and direction and Mana was still struggling.
Mana had pushed back opening the door to meet the storm cloud of responsibility that she had skipped the entire conflict between her parents and father was just haunting the second floor and heading to the master bedroom like a phantom.
"Are you OK?" it was a bad question. Mana regretted it almost instantly. It would have been the worst thing to ask father normally and this was not the father she knew and loved, this was one of her most loved ones struggling with pain problems.
"I was, then some asshole burnt my hands," Father grumbled.
Mana turned her attention downstairs, trying to reach out to her mother's signature with her sensory. Try to see if it had any subtle or changes to it that may have implied great sadness or raging ones that may have implied fury. Both were equally as likely with that woman. Maybe if mother was jounin with a chakra signature the size of a Sun, Mana may have noticed the flow of her chakra working differently but not that of a civilian…
She was not quite at that level yet. It was an all too painful reminder that Mana was getting all too often recently.
"Is there something I can do to help? Maybe some other herb mixture that can ease it up somewhat?" Mana wondered. She would have helped her case if she did not sound so guilty when clearly was not. Either way, it was not like the girl could have helped the way she felt. Once again, she was not at that level of self-deception.
"Don't bother. Next thing you know I'll get hooked on it and you'll leave and I'll have to live without it again…" Father snapped back at Mana with a restrained but quite spiky tone. If the magician didn't know any better, she'd have thought that father was blaming her for leaving on missions or other ventures so often, amongst other things.
"I'm not leaving. I really want to help…" Mana stepped up closer to the pain-ridden man but then mother walked up with an envelope with the village's seal.
"Don't make promises you can't keep. That's why you're having such a hard time keeping up with all the responsibilities…" the man replied before shutting himself inside the bedroom.
"Great… Now who knows for how long I can't go in there… It's the master bedroom…" mother complained, wiping the sweat off her face.
"At least it's just the late morning." Mana tried lightening up the mood but one could have only lit up so many candles inside a dark guest room. She pressed two extended fingers while holding her free hand in a hand seal position while she unsealed the village seal and let the sheet of paper lazily unfold in her hand.
"You've got a job?" mother wondered. "Will you be gone for long?"
"I don't think so." Mana closed her eyes and sighed before folding the sheet of paper neatly. "But without seeing the mission I can't be sure."
The walk to the Administration building was just about as confusing and stressful as staying at home and trying to comfort her father, whose pain was growing every day he spent without the substances he was taking. Mana knew the risks, rather knew the certainties when she was busting Guru Ayushi's cult, at least for the most of the time. Even if things sort of escalated all by themselves, she did the right thing. Still, seeing her father angry and miserable made it feel so wrong…
"She says "Get away from me, you knaves!". her face says it, doesn't it?" a dark-skinned guest from Kumogakure pointed at Mana's expression and smiled at his girlfriend.
"It's okay if it's a bad time, Sorceress-san, we didn't mean to trouble you." The girlfriend bowed her head in apology before Mana snapped out of the trance she was under and remembered that she was in the middle of talking to a pair of fans that saw her more recent show. People were coming to see her from abroad, as far away as Kumogakure. Had the surrounding circumstances been not so gloomy, it would have been a cause for great celebration. Mana's act has been getting pretty big.
She didn't make it… Damn it! Mana could move faster than even superhuman ninja could perceive, she could probably dash to the other side of the world in mere moments if she had to move in a straight tunnel and felt certain nobody was attempting to intercept her and yet she couldn't reply to a pair of bumbling and goofy tourists.
Just as Mana was about to apologize and try and smile more, try to be more like the image of an idol she wanted to portray, the duo was gone, admiring some building. What would they think of her? That's she's some spoiled Konoha brat that made it pretty big? It wasn't even the self-image that Mana wanted to preserve, it was the fact that she let these people down and made them feel uncomfortable that plagued her. She should totally walk up to them and apologize, that's the right thing to do…
Mana tapped her foot impatiently by the Administration building wall, right in front of the Hokage's office. The group of ninja waiting just like the magician was quite sizeable, perhaps having the Hokage deliver every mission personally or through his assistant in his office or by entrusting it to another Administration public officer was not the best strategy to hand out missions.
There should have totally been a handout station with a bunch of rooms with a bunch of boxes. When they've been alerted, or even without alerts, just daily, ninja would check those boxes and, if they had a mission, they'd simply take the file out of the box. Would save so much time and if they stopped using the local Aviary for mail delivery and alerting ninja – manpower and village resources… She should not have been thinking about this, this was the Hokage's job and his job was the last one Mana wanted.
Then again, while waiting in a line, without any chance for her amazing chakra manipulation prowess to speed this bureaucracy up, what exactly was she supposed to think about? Perhaps her feeling too embarrassed to approach the duo of Kumogakure tourists earlier and chat with them smiling like she's at her own wedding was a neat start? Mana sighed, giving the rest of the ninja a glare. Everyone was giving everyone glares so it did not even feel all that embarrassing.
"Do you sometimes wish to commit mass-genocide when waiting in line?" a blond chuunin leaned in to Mana's side with a gentle smile. "It's okay if you do. When waiting around in-line is the only acceptable time to have those kinds of thoughts…"
"Hello, Mana, I trust it you're well rested? What have you been up to during all the free time?" Lord Sixth wondered with the file laying neatly prepped up right in between the two. Neither the Hokage nor Mana reached out for it. It was like a mystical object that separated both of them but, in a way, it also had power over the two of them.
He was wondering, in his own way, if Mana kept up with her training, perhaps not only maintained her pre-injury condition but picked up some new tricks along the way. As a true Black Ops veteran, Lord Sixth approached problems and questions with complicated detours in an attempt to sneak up from behind them.
"I'm ready," Mana answered. She did not wish to brag or speculate about how productive her training was. She did not want to get into her arising family issues or her mental state. She was stable enough to take up work. Something new may as well have distracted the magician from the nightmares of everything she saw in the tunnels under the fruit shop of Ayushi's cult or when she almost died at the hands of some rogue eco-terrorists.
Lord Sixth and his assistant just glared one at another awkwardly. "Well, I suppose that's all that matters, isn't it?" the latter fixed his glasses before walking up in front of the Hokage's desk and picking up the mission file, officially handing it down to Mana.
"A C-Rank mission?" Mana raised an eyebrow. This was not entirely unusual for a chuunin to see but she had expected something a bit more dangerous. The type of missions that challenged her as a genin may not have served as sufficient distraction for her current plagues.
"Yes well… Given how the entire Academy just up and exploded, we have a massive lack of genin who can take care of the small-fry missions. Given the more stable condition of the world until recently, we've been handing down upper ranked ninja some more menial and easier missions once in a while. Plus, I figured that it would be just symbolic for you to pick up work starting small." The Hokage found it necessary to explain himself despite the fact he did not truly need to. He could have, at any given point, just called subordination and demanded Mana to start the mission at once.
"VP?" Mana asked after skimming through the small paragraph in the mission description. "I am not familiar with this acronym."
"That's because it is a new one. We used to have the Protective Service serve as both our Barrier Corps and ninja operating inside the village walls and protecting the village from invading threats. As one of my more recent decrees I've separated the two, now we have our own Barrier Corps, similar to that of Kirigakure, as well as the remaining branch of Protective Service called Village Protection – the VP." Lord Sixth explained with a lingering smirk.
"I see. I will get to work then." Mana nodded, closed the file and bowed the upper half of her body displaying great respect. Most ninja received their objectives while bowing to the ground until they've been put at ease, after which point they sort of stopped upholding the etiquette whatsoever. Mana was so worried about it after the mess-up with the Kumogakure tourists that she would have been literally unable to just up, turn and leave as most would have done in her place.
The mission was nothing special, just as its rank suggested. One of the more often assigned missions for slightly more experienced genin was assisting the village's institutions, sort of a mandatory internship. Some assisted with small-work in the Konoha Hospital, the Police Force constantly needed dirt-cheap labor force both in the office spaces handling paperwork and on the streets assisting the actual Police Force ninja. This mission was perhaps more meant to a genin right on the verge of taking their first chuunin exam – experienced enough for these internship gigs and a bit more distinguished than to shred and rewrite paperwork whole day at the Police Force.
Mana knew little of what to expect assisting the VP for the period of three days until the end of the week. At least mother won't get worked up – Mana would remain within the village walls. It's been a while since her last official local mission. It's been a while since Mana was on a mission in general… One for which she would receive credit and get paid for anyway. She was assisting other ninja with their missions for so long that she completely forgot that her assistance meant nothing to her own cred.
Without wasting too much time, being completely prepared to move out right after receiving her objective, Mana walked up to the VP headquarters. The entire branch of the organization was located inside of the same mountain where the Hokage Monument was. Mana was only vaguely aware that the mountain had hollow parts where an organization could fit into. Then again, it would be simply so symbolic for the watchful eyes of the VP oversee the village through the eyes of one of the Hokage faces…
Mana showed the mission file to the first person meeting her, a young ninja wearing the Konoha flak jacket but not the black undergarment under it. It was quite usual for ninja that saw little to no field action. Some folk in the Administration wore casual clothing under their flak jackets, similarly to this woman.
"Y-You're…" she uttered, covering her mouth in surprise. She must have thought that letting it gap in surprise was not too lady-like.
"Yes. I am also a ninja." Mana nodded with a smile. She did not have to remind someone of that for the longest time after the finals of the Chuunin Exams when she truly showed her own villagers what she was capable of and that she was not just playing ninja and was the real deal.
"Oh, yes, we are aware. We've heard you were also a sensor. That is incredibly useful to us." The woman sounded pretty excited but she was muzzling her voice, likely so that she did not disturb the other ninja working quite diligently hunched over their tables, flipping through reports, files and examining items. "When we requested someone for assistance, we did not expect someone of your usefulness. We sort of thought we'd get some kids you can entrust to copy documents and browse the archives."
"I can do all those things as well." Mana shrugged.
"Oh no, heads would roll if my superiors found out we had a capable sensor on our hands with a head to boot and wasted that opportunity." The woman laughed gently before shaking her head. She must have found Mana's joking suggestion quite ridiculous in the more comedic way.
The magician had to hand it, she was quite impressed by the steel and rock structure etched right into the mountain. Judging purely by her own sense of direction, the elevator that was raising them was already passing through one of the Hokage's faces. Her eyes widened and bulged out even more when the extremely resilient-looking door of the elevator snapped open revealing a massive orb of liquid just floating in mid-air.
"This is the Liquid Village Sensory System. It is a combination of Barrier Ninjutsu and sensory. I'm not sure just how familiar you are with it, but there's a massive, ethereal barrier around the village people can just pass through. By tuning our sensors in this machine we can have them operate their amazing talents at efficiency they've never been able to tap into before, being able to read into countless signatures as far as the barrier goes." The woman explained while leading Mana to the ninja sitting with slightly overwhelming-looking headgear on their faces and tight, black bodysuits all over. As they sat there mumbling to one another, symbols and numbers popped up and floated all around the gigantic liquid sphere above their heads which all of the sensors were plugged into.
"How potent exactly is your sensory?" the woman inquired.
"It depends. Concentration and the size of the signature matters. I guess I could squeeze out a good kilometer worth of range if I really focused on it." Mana shrugged. She was beginning to feel like the lack of sensory-type ninja in the village which was entirely out of everybody's hands to control was being placed just on her pockets.
"Well, holy hell! Spoken like a true sensor, our guys keep beating around the bush too, don't you?" the Village Protection kunoichi grinned at the two sensors nearest.
"If she offers you a job, don't take it, your legs do get a bit sore sitting here like this all day." One of the guys plugged in jested. It was impressive that he had the levity in him to joke around while being plugged into something outright epic like this and focusing on sensory.
"So you want me to do this then?" Mana pointed at the sensory machinery while the one-woman-welcoming-committee smiled and shook her head.
"A little bit of everything, perhaps. Who knows, maybe at the end of the week we will offer you to join us. I get a real "Village Protection" type of vibe from you for some reason!" the enthusiastic kunoichi pointed her elbow at Mana a pair of times.
For a bunch of dead-serious people doing humorless and vital work, these folk were pretty lightheaded with the way they behaved at work.
