It used to be quite complicated at the start to tell just how injured a ninja was based only on their chakra signature. After all, chakra was not directly linked with one's well-being, injury to one's physical or spiritual self merely obscured one's chakra control, not one's signature directly. One's life force and one's chakra were essentially two different things and they only crossed paths in one, very specific case – death. Only death affected the size of one's chakra signature, that is to say – snuffed it out completely. Death removed all traces of what is both physical and spiritual without return.

With time Mana had learned to tell the approximate amount of injury that a ninja's body has suffered, however, while only needing to peek at their chakra signature. It had less to do with how large or small the signature was, but rather how intense it was. The chakra circulation of a healthy person was vivid, like neon paint flowing through a series of transparent tubes, flushed out and then pushed back in at great speed, quenching the bodily need for spiritual and physical energy.

The chakra circulation of an injured person was just like the one of Mana's mysterious Iwagakure opponent – slowed down, it was as if the bodily and mental bile was tired of its one job and therefore flowed at the pace of snail that was not even particularly hungry. The chakra resources available to the ninja remained somewhat the same, however, their control may have greatly faltered because of the thirst for efficient circulation.

It was because of that relative familiarity with how the chakra of someone hurt beyond the fighting point would have felt that the magician stayed floating where she was. The use of her Mystical Wings Jutsu was beginning to slowly chip at her remaining chakra but the interest in her opponent's state and the vigilance of a possible attempt to counterattack forced Mana to remain afloat in mid-air and just stare at her opponent. Something changed fundamentally in her chakra…

A bang derailed Mana's thoughts and forced them to center on the woman once more, a task made vastly more difficult by the clouds of dusty smoke spreading from the woman's location. The change that Mana detected in her opponent's chakra was not that of increase or decrease, it was the complete halt of that which was slowly consuming it. The end for the spy's Transformation Jutsu. Finally, with her doubts and worries ended, the magician pressed her feet against the wall of the Eternal Fire and began scaling the tall, boiling hot, metallic surface of the structure, looking for an entrance that would have allowed her to catch up to her comrades.

A violent shake followed by a cascade of deafening, tolling clangs made Mana bend her knees in a struggle to maintain her balance while standing in an unnaturally static angle on the surface of the structure. The semi-conscious opponent of hers slipped off of the platform and plummeted from above. After having seen what emerged from the cloud of smoke Mana got confused for a moment, wondering if she was perhaps attacked by another enemy. The magician was so worked up, in fact, that she missed the timing of when the falling shape whizzed right past her and plummeted to the lake below.

Mana kicked off of the platform and dove down, having to use the Mystical Wings once more to break through the limits of terminal velocity and catch up to the slim, masculine shape of the plummeting true form of the Iwagakure spy she had just fought. With a firm grip of the spy's belt, the magician changed her direction and lifted the man back up onto the platform. With a confused glare, she looked over the real shape of the bloodthirsty spy who managed to rile Mana up so much.

A pale and slim body, decorated with sloppily maintained, greasy, shoulder-length hair that may have given someone an illusion of the man being somewhat feminine or androgynous in body build from a significant distance or if one lacked the necessary eyesight to really tell. Mana sensed the rumbling inside, the chakra of Kiyomi, Meiko, and Hanshin were all fluctuating, slowly but surely depleting. It was not a reason for great alarm, such was natural if they were involved in a fight.

Mana herself struggled to maintain a steady breath, having pushed herself farther now than she's ever done in a while. Usually, the special training that boosted her chakra size to unnatural size for such an unremarkable, clanless kunoichi such as herself allowed the magician the luxury of never spending too much effort, this time, it was different. Just that last, ace in a hole trick required her to split her chakra into two by cloning herself while imbuing the clone with Lightning Release chakra too, then having the clone use the Fire Style ninjutsu too...

While Mana became capable of amazing things, those amazing things took amazing tolls on her as well…

The young woman leaned back, wrapping her fingers around the knife-wielding wrist of her opponent who leaped at the first opportunity of a lowered guard. Not having a knife stuck in the side of her neck was as easy as following the recovery of the semi-conscious spy with her sensory the entire time, expecting the attack while the magician was still in mid-air, in fact, then, responding when the enemy attacked with greatly diminished vitality.

Mana thrust her palm at the elbow of her opponent, aiming to break the knife-wielding hand but he dropped the knife and swiped with the other hand, catching the weapon using the free hand. The magician felt a sharp, lightning-like impulse of pain washing over her abdomen, spreading just like shiver-inducing electricity right down to her spine, then – warm blood rushing down where it felt like freezing just a moment earlier.

She was so slow… She forgot how sluggish using out too much of one's chakra made a person after so long of not having approached her limits. There was no strength left in neutering the blade either, any attempt to augment Mana's body to let the blade just slide across the skin like it was made of stone would have resulted in either complete waste of chakra and a failure of identical results of not having tried at all, or a complete fracture of Mana's chakra network.

With this searing pain in her gut, Mana resolved to settle things up close with the spy. It was for similar reasons that she did not neglect her taijutsu training, she just was not exceptional at it…

Her opponent thrust the knife aiming at Mana's neck right after the first successful slash completed, the magician leaped aside, attempting to at the same time move behind her opponent and put him in a hold. She needed time to get used to the injuries she's gotten, she needed to slow down the pace of this bloody brawl. Another excruciating impulse of pain seared at the side of Mana's neck, forcing the magician to instinctively cover the bleeding cut with one of her hands.

Regardless of the successful explosion of the rage present in the heart of this man, Mana had managed to slip behind him while he invested all of his movement, all of the chances he had to just blindly attack the magician. The Konohagakure kunoichi felt strength building up in her thigh. Using all of the tricks she's learned from the ninja rabbits in utilizing lower body strength, the magician's knee shot out aimed at the lower back of her opponent.

Mana had intended to break it or at the very least cause enough injury to paralyze her opponent waist-down. That was her only choice, the man was close to the verge of death and any continuous punishment she would inflict would tempt fate further. It was self-evident that the magician needed to find a way to disable her opponent from fighting further, close to the point where any body would have collapsed in on itself and refused to move.

Luck was simply not on the kunoichi's side, however, the back of the Iwagakure ninja bent in an awkward angle while the man spat blood of darkened hue out from his mouth. The man's eyes shot open wide and he failed to find the strength to land gracefully. Due to his continued moving forward, the Iwagakure ninja would have plummeted down again. Mana grunted in pain as her gut lit up with thousands of little, heated needles that all dug into her skin while she reached out to grab her opponent and stop him from falling.

As she laid on her front, holding her weakened opponent, Mana felt something sticking to her torn clothes. It did not take a genius to realize that she twisted the cut on her gut in a bad way and found herself aggravating the bleeding even further. The forceful rub of her wound and the tension on her bleeding neck did not help Mana either. The white glove that she wore on the hand that covered the wound on her neck was totally soaked in red.

A feeling as curious as it was frightening crept up the magician's back in the form of shivers. Her ears picked up a rustling noise below while her chakra sensory screamed for the magician to let go of her opponent since they were attempting to use a ninjutsu. Why would he not? He still had plenty of chakra, it was just that control over what resources the man still had would have been greatly lessened.

Mana closed her eyes, shutting down any thoughts of what she had to do, any rational analyses of her condition and what she could and could not accomplish. Any ideas of what was best and what would have kept her as comfortable and safe as possible in her current condition flew out the window. With a battle cry, Mana swung her opponent all the way over onto the staircase and slammed him into the boiling-hot, metallic wall of the Eternal Fire.

The eyes of the man whited out, the hyperventilation of an intense and brutal close-range brawl turned to a wheeze as multiple of the spy's ribs shattered into smallest chips from the force of impact and the entire building of the Eternal Fire tolled like a skyscraper-tall bell. Mana collapsed right nearby her opponent, looking at the gloomy sky above and wondering when the spy would muster up the strength to climb on top of her and plunge his kunai into her heart. As moments passed on and on, it appeared like nothing of the sort was possible.

At last, the body of even her most willfully driven opponent had thrown in the towel. Mana turned her head to the side, feeling the cut on her neck burn up again. The face of her opponent was blanked out, his mouth was agape. Without rush, so that her injuries did not cause too much agony on every movement, the young woman sat up and tore some rags of her magician's uniform to wrap around her abdomen and her neck. What little remained of her chakra struggled but somehow managed to fend off the mortal danger of losing too much blood.

A soft laughter, full of inner pain, with the frustration, that it intended to mask beaming through with relative ease, echoed at the heights of the Eternal Fire. Mana turned at the downed Iwagakure spy with a moderate surprise of how vigorous her opponent still was. While the input from her chakra sensory calmed the magician's worst fears of having to keep on fighting through the man's intense willpower, given how he was well past any bodily limits of movement and his chakra circulation testified of that, the fact that the spy was still so lively was nothing to scoff at.

"Heh… I figured… If I'd keep pushing on… Eventually, you'd stop fighting back… Thought you were squeamish…" the spy cheeked his own unsuccessful attempt at ending the life of the stage magician.

"Almost worked," Mana admitted, sitting down on the staircase just to get back a few breaths. Even if she wanted to support her friends right now, it would have been for the best if she did not overdo things and ended up dragging them down by getting captured easily in her weakened state and exploited for the victory of the opposing side. As much as Mana wanted to hurry and prevent the potential bloody outcome, stop the documents from being signed at the top floor, she had to get oxygen back in her lungs to be of any use.

"I guess… My body failed me again… Then you lack the guts to finish me off, just my kind of luck…" the spy cursed his own fortune. Mana closed her eyes and let her head nod down, her cold and sticky hair fumbled awkwardly all over her face. If she dismissed all the aches and the sticky feeling of blood all over her body, she'd almost feel as cozy as if she was in her bed back at home. The draw of the stony platform to just collapse and sleep up was so strong and so tempting…

"Do you… Hate your own life?" Mana raised her sunken face and pointed her gaze back at the downed spy. If this were true, even if she could just rush on ahead, Mana would likely stay just so she could understand what it was that this man was feeling.

"What do you think?" the Iwagakure ninja covered up his face with his palm, his fingers bent so that their tips dug into the flesh of his face and the joints in the middle pointed sharply at the beholders from the outside.

"I see… So that is the source for your animosity towards others." Mana sighed. "I was not aware that you were ashamed of your real face."

"Is this when you teach me that I should be who I really am, accept the way I was born and learn to love it? If so, spare me the morals and just run on ahead. Your allies could really use your aid, as much of it as you can provide in your current state." The spy growled at the magician showing that same animosity from before. The man evidently regretted not having been able to kill Mana and fix the mistake of revealing his true face to someone on the outside world.

"Who cares?" Mana shrugged. "Ninjutsu gave you an option to become someone else, someone you always wanted to be. I won't lie that I understand what you're going through but the way I see it, may as well use it the way you want it and live the life you wanted to live. All I know is that nobody wants to live the life of spite. Whether you live as a man or a woman, what's important is that you and the people around you are happy."

The spy looked shocked by Mana's words. Due to the naturally twisty facial structure of the muscles on the man's face that made him always look grumpy, whenever his face could be seen from under the tendrils of his long, dark hair, it was impossible to tell if the shock sent pleasant shivers or just drove the unfortunate man deeper down into the cauldron of hatred.

"You live in one dreamy world… One where people around you accept the person you are, as weird as you are." The spy stretched his hands out, his hands dangled without any strength left in them above the abyss leading into the whirling and foaming showers below. The artificial lake had been evaporating into thin air, getting absorbed into the soil it washed as well as found some crevices to leak into. Soon the area where the lake stood shortly would turn into a mushy mess before the dirt bath dried out and, in a day or two, returned to how it once was.

"If people mock you for the way you are, if they hate you for who you want to be and how you reach out for that life, just as they've mocked and laughed at me for the way I am, these are not people you should stay around or worry yourself with. These are hateful people who would most likely hate you as a man just as much. Unless you find someone that accepts you, you won't be much different from those people that made you grow thorns." Mana breathed a heavy breath before standing back up on her feet and stretching out. She sensed the nearest chakra signature around the place and then scanned the structure for potential points of entry.

It was difficult to find the right one, the entire structure of the Eternal Fire was littered with black, hollow pipes that may have led to separate parts of the building just as much as they could have led to absolutely nowhere. Just like the staircases decorating the innovative and artsy structure, some of them may have just ended on a dead-end and in that case, Mana would have wasted even more effort as well as chakra having to power through the heat. It was impossible to see too much through the mist of the evaporating lake from below…

In this current predicament, the only way to find a passage that led anywhere was to manually search for a passage that led to somewhere, one pipe at a time. If the less fortunate and confused man lying beside her could read into Mana's situation and her thoughts, maybe he could apply that same idea more in his own life. With a powerful leap Mana soared upward into the thick mist, she saw a pipe that spread ghastly howls as air passed in and out of it and grabbed hold to its ledge. The pain in her gut very nearly made her lose grip and plummet below. It took all of the magician's strength to not let go and power through the pain in her hand from the heat spreading through the holes in her white gloves and burning her skin.

With only thoughts of moving forward and not stopping for second thoughts, Mana pushed herself into the pipe and finished her less than gracious ascension with a roll before stumbling forward and onward ahead, to wherever the pipe led.