"Thank you for your time and effort. You've done a remarkable work, far beyond what we've expected to get when we ordered that mission." Boss Midoben spoke in a tough and official tone. Mana felt like a miserable soldier who lost everything they had and stood in front of a spokesperson who just told them how grateful the village was for their sacrifice.

"Little Honda. There is no investigation on him, is there?" Mana spoke with bitterness in her voice. The last days working for Village Protection were spent patching up barriers and getting bled dry of her chakra to the point of exhaustion where she barely even wanted to chase after Honda at the end of the day.

"If you ever decide to work for us in the future, and, obviously, we'd like to see that, you could use some attitude adjustment," Midoben observed. "You were at the front of the line this whole time, working on the field, observing the chakra signatures on the system, watching the barriers. You were the investigation all along. I thought that after checking every nook and cranny you would have gotten the clue already. Age is an ugly thing. Holding back such potential."

Mana looked up to meet the eyes of the boss of the Village Protection. She was not sure if she should feel pissed, used or surprised by the way she's been used and how exactly the Village Protection was searching for Honda.

"Honda is a monster, was that not what you reported to Lord Sixth? An abomination of experimentation with the size of a house and the mind of a toddler, does that strike you as the type to evade our detection? The reason why we're not all over Little Honda is that he is not a threat to the village, because he's no longer inside the village." Midoben stated, pouring with boldness and bluntness.

"Did you pick up on him leaving?" Mana wondered.

Midoben turned around, he refused to entertain this topic any further. The man showed as much after he picked up Mana's documentation and handed it to her. A report of everything she's done for the Village Protection, a glowing recommendation for a future application and a little something that Mana noticed carrying a sealed envelope stuffed in the middle. It most likely would not have submitted to attempts of being opened without the handiwork of the Hokage's Assistant.

"I look forward to employing your services in the future." Midoben turned his head halfway back to let Mana know she could leave anytime she chose to.

"That's only if I choose to work with the Village Protection in the future." Mana almost growled out. This was not quite her way of talking to people or handling things but if there was one type of people that pissed her off more than people that enjoyed taking lives it was people who looked the other way while declaring themselves stout defenders of life.

"You will have no other choice. Your dream is to go high, is it not? Jounin, Sannin, Kage… Whatever it is, you are not from a clan influential and powerful enough to get you there without a proper specialization. There is more to being a Kage or a Sannin than just leaving on field missions. Sometimes, to gather trust and influence, you need to sit down and grind a little." Midoben turned his head back at his candles, he may have been smiling or gritting his teeth, from where Mana stood, she could have never told.

"Nothing builds more trust than the cooking ninja. You can't eat empty promises of protection." Mana was getting sick of the office and the man running it. Midoben was not a bad man, likely he was not even a bad ninja but Mana wanted to confront Honda and bring him back home so much that, the way this man has been holding her back from it, he embodied every obstacle in her way.

The head of the Village Protection did not reply, he barely twitched a muscle but Mana could have sworn he was grinning even if she could not see it. It was a social feeling of understanding that went a bit beyond just seeing or sensing something like one's chakra signature. It was much more ethereal.


"Well… Mission completed." Lord Sixth casually remarked after flipping the folders Mana submitted. "You know, I did sign you up for this mission for a reason. I normally would not just hand out C-Rank missions to some of my better chuunin."

The assistant opened the hibiscus-colored envelope by pressing two of his fingers at the glowing seal glyph and releasing the seal. The man's eyes ran down the contents before handing the letter down to Lord Sixth. While Lord Sixth was far too experienced in the art of lying, given his career in the Black Ops, the assistant was not. Mana could read him like a historical volume. Something in that letter was quite displeasing.

"It was a recruitment drive then?" Mana wondered. She needed a distraction, the last thing that needed to happen now was the trio inside the Administration office looking at each other and wondering who saw what off of whose face. "I think I'll hold back for now."

"I see…" Lord Sixth folded the letter before reconsidering and pressing it in his fist. "Do you have any plans for the future then? You seem to be training fairly intensely lately so I was wondering if you were leaving to train abroad. Your ex-teammates are without a doubt getting the training of their lives right now and you may want something more than the casual intensity of the training grounds."

"I do intend on leaving on a training trip, with your permission, Lord Sixth." Mana bowed her upper body before returning to her previous state. "But before I leave, there is a matter I must settle. This Little Honda debacle weighs to heavily to let me clear my mind."

"We do not have any missions planned on pursuing him at the moment so whatever you do – you'll do without the backup of the village." The Hokage's assistant announced.

"No missions? But Little Honda is the face of the entire disappearance catastrophe. It became so infamous because of Little Honda and the villagers will only once again feel safe if Little Honda is returned and healed." Mana was careful not to worsen her relationship with Lord Sixth any more than she already had done before. The last thing she needed now was a suspension.

"Perhaps. But in my opinion, time without a single disappearance will have just the same effect without the wasted manpower chasing a genetically altered monstrosity." Lord Sixth observed. His face was really serious. Serious in a way that clever people would not have attempted to probe deeper. Mana was anything but smart but in this case, she had to play smarter than she's been doing up until now. Both her chance of confronting Honda as well as ever as much as dreaming of becoming a Sannin was on the line.

"Also, a child." Mana let it out in an almost pleading tone.

"The situation with Little Honda is quite unfortunate. Even if he is alive and out there, somewhere, we simply do not have the manpower to afford the ridiculous quest of catching him. Need I remind the person who helped settle the matter of the fact we won't have a batch of new genin for a couple of years now while the field tests our current roster of ninja and thins their ranks every day?" Sixth's assistant replied.

"I understand…" Mana sighed while bowing her head submissively again.

Lord Sixth looked almost relieved to hear the magician's submission. He crumbled the previously sealed envelope and the letter within with his fist before tossing it over his shoulder and right into the half-full bin.

"If you do not plan on leaving immediately, given our limited manpower situation in mind, you would be wise to expect to hear from us again in the nearest future." Lord Sixth advised the magician before releasing her. Mana bowed to one knee before departing the Hokage's office and disappeared into the busy fray of the bustling Konohagakure Administration.


"Fire Style: Hitsuke!" Mana chanted while blowing out a stream of superheated air from her mouth. She aimed the stream around and aside of the little creek, around a damaged tree stump before letting the point of the target envelop a small bush not twelve meters away from her.

Slowly but assuredly, the bush caught flames. Almost at the same rate as if the magician had popped a handful of sparks on it with flint. The trick to set something ablaze without the use of a highly concentrated ray of sunlight, a lighter or a flint was nice for a magic trick, which incidentally was Mana's area of expertise, but it was by far Mana's least powerful ninjutsu techniques.

Even if the girl knew she was being silly to get disappointed in the lack of success of developing a jutsu in just a handful of days, something that may have normally taken anywhere from months up to a lifetime, she had expected more of her elemental affinity nature. It seemed like Mana's entire body and mind was not in complete sync and pushing her from the back like they used to. There had to be reasons for that. Maybe she was still holding back because she did not feel like repeating the whole burning off half of her face experience from a week back?

"What's wrong, kid?" Hiro hummed with confusion and almost petrifying panic. "You never just stopped a show early."

"I'm sorry, I know it's bad for the finances but… I need to run just this once!" Mana slammed her palms together in a pleading gesture and bowed.

The sensation she felt on the stage was immense! It was no usual excitement of a little bit of magic in her life or stage fright either. It was the abyssal fear of drowning, chest locking up, lungs desperately pounding at the ribs trying to tear themselves apart just so some more air could vent into the airway through the holes. Even if that was not entirely how breathing worked… It felt like sifting into an infinite desert of quicksand, like floating in front of a blazing, giant star in the middle of space, eyes rolled back and whited out from its magnificence and the absolute death that laid in being around it.

Mana had to fight every inch of the way so that she did not faint outright. She could not have been the only sensor to pick that up. Still, she would have been a fool to expect assistance or reinforcements, she worked alongside some of the most accomplished sensors in the village and knew none of them saw chakra the way she did. They'd have analyzed its size, its intensity and not the taint reeking from it. To them, chakra was just a number on a table and truly high numbers could have belonged to any of the insanely powerful ninja in the village.

The magician dashed out, quickly bouncing in between the walls of two buildings and swinging atop cables to reach the rooftop level. Using acrobatics and natural grace and swiftness instead of chakra augmentation, she will be needing every bit of her strength soon, if tips were to pay off.

Mana dashed across the village, right toward the chakra signature that nearly knocked her out of her boots and failed her magic trick. That would not have been the first time that Mana messed up on stage but it would have certainly been the first where she did not have a clever quip to play it off or a ploy to act like that was all a part of her plan, like good entertainers should. The illusion of hiding mistakes was just as important as the illusion that was meant to impress.

That was Little Honda. It had to be. Nothing else was this rotten, this abominable and this much against the natural laws of nature and the way chakra worked. Nothing else invited as much pity. It was not Little Honda's fault that it was the way the boy was, inside the mind of a horrifying abomination of flesh and whatever unnatural means held it together, was a boy who may not have been aware of what had happened to him. Honda invited as many tears in Mana's eyes as he invited tongue-sticking in disgust.

It was the memory that guided the magician's path. Like a beacon, one that usually was not entirely trustworthy and flawless but, due to the coloration in the beacon's light and the figurative stench emanating from it as well as the ugly shadow that it cast when Mana gazed at its light, it was just enough to lead the magician out the village gate and into the untended wilderness.

She had a handful of hours until the village gate closed and she'd be suspected of something due to her position as a ninja. She needed to make the moments count. Luckily, the late spring provided with plenty of daylight for her to explore well into the later hours.

Had Mana been a civilian, nobody would have batted an eye about her departure – she'd have been free to go wherever, since she was a kunoichi with valuable intelligence, however, she was, oddly enough, more limited with the freedom of movement, even with the ninja villages in as grand of relationships as ever.

Mana blurry image stabilized at her complete stop in front of a gaping hole. Like a jaw of a toothless demonic serpent, the sewer spilled mucky weed and goop of mysterious nature, washing it all away with foamy, dirty water. The industrial demonic python was a slobbering one… Regardless, Mana stepped into the depths of its path, planning on ending up somewhere underneath the village sewer system at some point.

She was wandering completely blind here. Honda's signature disappeared just as quickly as it rose up. All Mana had was the memory of some of the worst feeling in her gut she ever had being somewhere inside this maze that spilled into a little creek outside the gate. The girl's skin was rebelling, picking up in goosebumps, sticking the little hair up like a band of bloodthirsty bandits raised their swords at the scent of a good plunder.

"Not the best memories of this place, huh?" Mana spoke to herself, letting her voice leave her mouth in a whisper that emanated and bounced off of whatever it found and turned out much louder than the magician initially wanted it to be.

All this nausea in Mana's gut, all this violent counter-reaction to entering these dark and damp labyrinths was well-justified. The last time Mana was inside this place she bathed in some chemicals meant to conserve biomaterial and the natural depths of the sewer. The rational part of the magician understood the more instinct-driven desire to get out well.

Still, she threaded on.

Taking almost random turns, just going wherever the sense of direction and memory of the noxious chakra signature led her. Little Honda felt so detestable that even after the disappearance of his chakra there was slight "aftertaste" lingering in the area. It was by no means traceable from inside the village but now that Mana closed in on the sewer where Honda was supposed to reside in, she felt it.

Amongst other, not too surprising things. There was a handful of civilian signatures nearby. The magician once again found an excuse to use some of her superhuman speed to trek this dark and damp maze to catch up with the civilian signatures. They were moving and fast, for a normal person. As if frightened by someone or something. It was about as good of a clue as any, it may have very well been the only chance Mana had at catching Honda. If the boy could have been caught at all, that was…

"Wait!" Mana yelled out before appearing in front of three civilians, their yellow tracksuits were drenched in blood and their helmets were cracked. It looked like they were supposed to have portable flashlights in their pockets but no light came out from them, they also looked pretty wet and dirty, suggesting that they were not all too subtle and precise in their navigation and often slipped off the more stable, if a little slippery metal grates and into the flow of sewer-water below.

"Holy shit… How did you find us? You're a ninja, right?" the villager spoke quietly as if trying not to alert someone or something. "We thought we were all by ourselves here…"

The trio was gasping for air. One of the three was knee-deep in sewer water and was less running rather than simply shuffling against the flow. All of them looked pretty drenched, it was moments like these that made the magician appreciate her lack of a sense of smell.

"Keep it down, I'm not sure a single ninja, some child, can stand up to that thing." Another sewer worker slammed his dirty and wet palm against the mouth of his colleague without considering the fact of what it was he was doing and its implications. All three of the men were too frightened for their lives to care about something as trivial as common decency and cleanliness.

"No, this is good, she came in here, meaning she can take us out of here, right?" the third raised a point that made Mana's heart shatter like a panel of glass that was hit with a hammer by an overacting, capricious teenager.

"Y-Yeah… Let's go…" Mana's head sunk deeper while she grit her teeth. It was not the fact that she had an obligation to rescue these three that made her feel so crushed, it was the fact that she was letting Honda go on her own free will. After all, was it not the obsession with the result instead of the steps along the way that separated Mana from the creator of this monster?

"I thought we were goners. What was that thing? It tore through people like it was tearing paper…" one of the workers sighed with relative ease for the moment.

"I think it flat out ate Rurise…" another added. "What if it intended to eat us next?"

"It didn't… I saw Rurise drip from the beast's mouth, it did not seem to like his own actions too much either…" the third reflected. "That's it, I'm moving to décor industry…"

Mana wanted to object to the three talking so leniently and copiously but she would not be tracking Little Honda through sound anyway. These men just saw that which gave Mana nightmares, the least they could do was speak about what was on their mind…

The more immediate thought on the magician's mind was – could she protect them if Little Honda really was still after them?