The gate leading up to the Tribunal hall was relatively puny while looking from one side through the gapping fangs of the demon inviting one to step inside. Once one did, however, the end appeared to be nowhere in sight. It made almost no sense, it took Mana couple of minutes to cross the corridor utterly sunken in darkness which she could see both ends of from the outside being so close that she could reach out from one end and have it appear on the other end.

The Council sat at the father end of the hall. Right up front a V-shaped row of heavily armored and physically impressive samurai armed with long and thick weaponry wrapped in rags and resting on their backs was protecting the entire fold. It was tough to say exactly what their choice of weaponry was, especially when Mana was not quite the expert on the matter, all she could tell from the general appearances was that the gear was heavy, the sort that a tube-shaped boulder would remind one of.

Behind the V-shaped vanguard stood the unarmed samurai with only the chest-armor and flags decorated with various symbols of the villages found on each of the respective countries. The samurai holding each banner had differently styled armor, Mana's hobby in reading about history and legends allowed to identify the fact that these were different armors that the samurai wore during different seasons or different battlefield conditions. It was a nice touch changing the gear up like that to accentuate the differences but also the supposed unity between the countries, just like these samurai, the Voices may have adopted different gear, representing different skills and allegiances, but ultimately they were all just people with common a common starting ground.

The main squad of samurai surrounded the stand where the Council sat in a diamond shape. It would have allowed them to perfectly repel an attack from any side, even if a ninja managed to give them the slip. Why one would be as foolish as to take on this many samurai, when a single ninja would not have lasted too long against a single samurai in a fair fight was beyond the magician but these men had their jobs and they took them seriously. Their speed, their battlefield awareness would have allowed them to repel even the trickier attacks and the hi-tech gear "borrowed" from Kumogakure would make them much more difficult to fool with illusions. Technology had no chakra nor brains to pinch, after all.

Mana bowed with the greatest respects in front of the Council, moving up a good eight meters away from the first row of the heavy-geared samurai that comprised the vanguard of the protective formation. Like that she both showed respect and displayed to the samurai that she was going to stay right there during her testimony which made some of the more tensed up man-containing-shells relax somewhat. The range in which Mana was in would have been classified as "long-range" in combat theory, most attacks, ninjutsu and genjutsu included would have had decreased efficiency and killing potential from that range unless a ninja specifically modelled their skillset to work in long-range. Needless to say, from the long-range, the samurai had optimal reaction time to intercept anything foolish that might come to the magician's mind as well.

"Welcome, Voice of Konoha. We are glad to have you testifying in front of this Tribunal." The Fire Lord greeted Mana. Perhaps such was the protocol, each Lord mainly questioned the ninja falling under their employ, with the rest only butting in if they had some spontaneous questions plaguing their minds.

"It is a greater honor to stand here, representing my profession as a whole." Mana bowed with the greatest of possible respects being shown again.

The h-word made the captain of squad fourteen of the Divine Retribution squad squint in pain with a pale face. The only present signs of life in this zombified man were the bloodstains on his patched gut that was so recently let out on the floor and the dark spots over his eyes. Somehow, this man was still in the process of bleeding out after his seppuku with no literal deadline in sight.

"We are exploring the profession of a ninja, what being a ninja means as well as discussing their necessity at this point in time. Before we can make an accurate judgment, we are attempting to understand who the average ninja are as people. It might allow us to better realize the kind of people we place so close to us under our employ and expose our own backs to. Would you mind telling us about your upbringing?" the Fire Lord asked.

"My family is fairly unusual, both of my parents are alive and I have a loving home I can return to after work." Mana admitted without her heart skipping a beat. It was only after she finished answering the question that doubt and gloom clouded her face, for someone who described her family and home that way, she's certainly been avoiding that "loving family" and "safe home", choosing to trade it away for absolute death and danger every time the choice was posed. Perhaps the people that made the ninja profession were to be properly studied…

"Are both of your parents ninja?" the Fire Lord's successor narrowed the question, as if attempting to catch Mana on a hook that the magician was oddly unaware of. The question was fairly simple and yet the tone of voice it was asked in was almost leading into danger. The way that ninja commonly cornered people they questioned…

"No, Esteemed Tribunal, my father was a ninja before he was forced to retire, my mother manages a small but popular café in Konohagakure, the Nakotsumi Café." Mana replied, just to see if the bait would snap with iron teeth around the jaws reaching out for it. Feeling almost curious about the direction she was being led to.

"Did your parents influence your choice of profession?" the Fire Lord asked.

"Directly or indirectly. As we've seen today, vanity in honor can be just as powerful of a motivator." His son elaborated before turning his eyes at the bleeding-out samurai captain standing outside the formation in the corner.

"I cannot say they did. If anything, in the beginning they tried gently leading me outside of the path but it was not their resistance that spurred me onward either. The way I saw the world did." Mana shook her head. It did not appear to be an entrapping question in any way. At least not yet. She could not see just yet how exactly was she to "save" ninja per se.

"Could you elaborate?" the wife of the Earth Lord asked.

"Well… It has come as a point of much mockery at my expense but… As a child I viewed chakra as something magical in nature. A gift to do magical things given to select people, back then I could not tell between the ability to manipulate chakra and chakra itself, I did not understand that everyone possessed chakra but it could have been learned to be manipulated. In that way, I viewed ninja as knights of responsibility, given the magical power and burdened to protect those without it. I found that beautiful, I wanted to become such a knight myself at all costs."

"I can see why you were mocked, this is a childish way to view ninja and what they do." The Fire Lord's successor closed his eyes while striking a smirk.

"The mind of an eight-year old usually is…" Mana replied with a little bit of shade, doing her best not to imply that ninja were guided into the path too early but also feeling obliged to parry the verbal thrust at the basis to her nindo.

Whereas the Lords of Lightning, Fire and Earth all smiled collectively, the Fire Lord's successor looked less than amused by Mana's reply, mainly because it exposed how ridiculous his approach to trying and besmirch Mana's ninja way were. After all, like it or not, Mana was one of the more famous and well-known ninja, mostly because of what she did on the side, while not wearing her headband protector. If the young man could have exposed Mana's very essence, the core idea that got her out of the bed and carried her through the cruelest battlefields, he could have attacked ninja themselves.

A nindo was, after all, the ribbon that a killer used to wipe the remaining blood of their victim off from their face. To some it was the shroud that allowed to avoid bloodying their pale faces altogether…

"If we're done talking about loving homes over here, I'd like to ask about something interesting I've noticed in this Voice. Is it true that you have not killed a single person throughout your entire ninja career?" the Lord of Lightning asked, his eyes flared then squinted and turned as if he was transitioning from a sharp insight into a hilarious joke.

"I have not. It is my ninja way that no life in this world is unnecessary, therefore, as a human I am incapable of deciding when a life's purpose has been served to its entirety. I don't think any human is. For that reason, it is not up to me to decide who lives and who dies." Mana admitted. Her words didn't rush, she was in no hurry to be cornered by men and women that valued efficiency and saw ninja as tools. A dagger that refused to pierce someone's heart may have been found useless to those that only thought it needed for such a goal.

"Really? If humans cannot decide such a thing, who or what could? Are you in any case religious?" Water Lord leaned forward, letting his long facial hair mold out from his beard and fall onto the table like wet noodles.

"How did you come across this information, Lord of Lightning?" Earth Lord turned at the direction of the afro-rocking royalty that sprawled in his throne-like chair as if had just been promised to be fed grapes and be crowned. "For the sake of objectivity we were not given much intelligence from the villages. Questioning the Voices is part of the procedure, that is far too keen of an observation about an average ninja. One operating outside the land you govern, no less."

"You're just pissy about that little coltan squabble of ours…" Lord of Lightning waved his hand in the air in a dismissive gesture before leaning forward and turning at the respected old man. "If you must know, I checked a bingo book. Kills of each ninja greatly boost their bounty and this girl's bounty is far too low for someone of her rank. Especially when you also count out her value as an acknowledged stage magician and what it adds to her fame and her bounty."

"Can we stop this childish quarreling. If I might inquire this of the Voice, how does this creed of yours work with your profession? Hasn't it ever forced you into a conflict with the authorities? Have you failed any assassination missions because of it?" the Fire Lord tried to jump past the inevitable fighting between Lords of Earth and Lightning and back to the questioning.

"Leave that alone, of what use is a ninja that picks and chooses what kind of mission they will and won't do?" the Wind Lord grumbled.

"It is true, if we see ninja as tools in the Feudal Lord's disposal, with that tool harboring these "nindo" that get in the way of them living up to their purpose, it makes ninja sort of irrelevant…" a politician lacking the drapes of a Feudal Lord nodded and observed, sitting on an identical chair to that of the Feudal Lords but far off to the left to the Water Lord.

"We can bark out questions here all day but it will all be for naught if we don't at some point shut up and let the girl answer them…" the wife of the Earth Lord spoke up, raising her voice just enough for her to be heard but not to a volume that would have made it sound rude.

Truth be told, Mana loved this disarray. It let her think these questions through, gave her a few moments to try and evaluate things, try and look for a way that would have let her both be truthful and save the ninja order that already had a handful of sold souls speaking against it and an entire stand of undecided or opposing self-important people with fancy hats discussing the fate of.

Religion… Where was the Council going with this? Was it an attempt to tie her down with lunatics like the Jashin cult? Some way to question her objectivity and morality? Well… It barely mattered each way, with this Mana would not have to bend the truth too hard.

"I don't really consider myself too religious. Maybe as a child I was, often attributing greater things that defied my understanding to being magical, handed down to us by Magic. I guess if you stretched that out hard enough, you might consider that some sort of a God but I've never presumed to speak to it, understand it or expect anything from it." Mana shrugged and shook her head at the same time. It may have been best if she was as truthful as she could be while also trying to answer direct questions as vaguely as possible.

"As far as a clash between my loyalties as a ninja and my ninja way go. I've never been given an assassination mission and I've always been capable of solving every conflict without killing anyone." Mana tried to shut that obvious trap hole down as obviously as it was dug up in front of her.

"But what if you were given one? What if the Hokage insisted sending you on one?" a representative of the civilians, a face Mana had seen on television while running around the house half-naked, scurrying for various small things while her father was watching it.

"If you were the Hokage and needed someone dead, would you send someone who hasn't managed to kill anyone in five years of service? Someone who has entered conflicts between Black Ops units that resembled literal war zones and somehow managed to not claim one life during that experience? Someone who was incapable of killing a weakened monster that has eaten, flattened or otherwise murdered people from her own village? Someone who pulled every punch she has ever thrown, being all too careful to calculate every eventuality because with each thrown punch she was dealing with forces capable of events on a cosmic scale?"

"I suppose not…" the civilian activist submitted before clearing his throat. "But they could, in theory…"

Not even the most adamant members of the Council organizing the Tribunal session joined in on the pitiful attempt at continuing this string of the argument. Some of them pointed their eyes down, the Water Lord dragged his stiffened fingers over his face before returning to observing the testimony given.

"You are a known stage magician in Konoha. A famous one at that." Fire Lord initiated the next question.

"Yes, the Mizukage has suggested inviting you to perform in Kirigakure as a fund raising venture." The Water Lord joined in all of a sudden.

"Despite having ceased your performances in recent years, how can you truly function as a ninja while performing as a stage magician? Aren't being a celebrity and a ninja a bit mutually exclusive? How can you go underneath the underneath when you are constantly in the limelight every time you work in Land of Fire, even beyond the Land of Fire borders…" the Fire Lord concluded his thought, a social and verbal vanguard on the transgressions possibly deemed acceptable by an average ninja, ones that he was joined in by the Fire Lord on.

"You are right, Esteemed Tribunal. My status as a stage magician has made me ridiculed amongst certain criminal circles and looked down on in combat to those who are aware of it. That does not mean however that I cannot function as a ninja, it merely forces me to adapt my approach. I don't hide in the shadows, I hide in the limelight. I am exposed so often that nobody in their right mind would think I have something to hide, not only that, my status as a stage magician opens new doors for me, ones closed to other ninja."

"Really? Like what?" the Fire Lord's successor tried pressing Mana to make sure he was not being bullshitted by empty words. Even in his tender age, when the young man looked very malleable indeed, this one appeared strict enough as a true Feudal Lord should have been. As a ruler of an entire country, a Feudal Lord had the ultimate responsibility matched only by that of the other Feudal Lords. It was not the mere rules of being forced to devote oneself and respect the lordship that made Mana respect their authority but the presence of the ultimate responsibility on their shoulders, whether they liked it and fulfilled it or not.

"For example, I could enter Kirigakure at any point using my stage magician persona as an excuse, using the "fund raising venture" as my ticket in. How many ninja could infiltrate one of the five greatest ninja villages by sneaking in? As someone with some experience in sensory barriers protecting these villages, I can attest that none of them could do that." Mana shut down that topic ruthlessly by tying it up to a previously brought up point. She had three years to sharpen not only her skills, Guru Ayushi would not be attacking her as a kunoichi, he will be questioning her, comparing what he was doing to Mana's voiced ideals and accusing her of being a hypocrite. When that time of confrontation came, Mana must have made herself sure to never stutter and have no answers as she sometimes did when discussing her nindo and her choices with Kiyomi.

There was a brief rustle among the council. Mana feel a bit worried that she may have shown herself too arrogant by speaking that way to the Tribunal but those councilmen that weren't impressed by Mana's answer were amused by the wit of it.

"It appears that every backdoor leading to your nindo has been properly enforced." Earth Lord observed. "Some of the fellow Feudal Lords, certainly the civilian representatives, see ninja as mere tools of the Feudal Lords' government. What do you think about that? Is hiring a ninja the same as swinging a sword? Do you see yourself as a tool at our employ?"

This question was trickier than Mana saw it when the old man stopped speaking initially. What was she supposed to say? That she was no tool of the Feudal Lords? That was one vain and controversial thing to say to the Council that included literally all of them in it. It would have made a decent case for the unruliness of the ninja and untie the mouths of all the civilian politicians who wanted ninja gone from their lives and that strived to be the link between the village administration and the Feudal Lord instead to make idiotic claims of a ninja rebellion seeking to overthrow the Feudal Lords being inevitable.

Then again, if Mana admitted the ninja to be nothing more than tools, she'd be dooming them as well. It certainly cost much more to maintain a village of ninja, to micromanage plenty ninja villages on each Great Country and it most definitely caused more misfires, nasty and often bloody side-effects than maintaining an arsenal of swords.