"I'm taking you to the beach…" Meiko mumbled while sitting in front of the massive window and finishing up what was left over from her lunch that, honestly, should have served multiple people. Judging from the blacksmith's tone, it was evident that the kunoichi was feeling like a little friendly mockery towards her friend was in order.
"I thought you weren't all too interested in the beach." Mana turned to the blacksmith, breaking her attempts at resting through a meditational trance, rather than good old sleeping. Focusing to enter any meditational stages was impossible with both of her friends talking one over another… Then again, Mana knew the true reason she couldn't focus – her mind was an utter mess.
"True, but Kiyomi was so hyped about it that it kind of began drawing me in too…" Meiko sighed with a face of disappointment and sadness.
"Don't fret, guys!" Kiyomi declared shortly after entering the room in a fabulous strut, a walk that could only have belonged to someone who thought to have brought her friends triumph and joy. "I've consulted with my cousins and they believe that the weather will be perfect for a day at the beach tomorrow!"
"Oh, joy…" Meiko let out the most half-assed declaration while pushing a meatball around her plate with chopsticks.
"Is that sarcasm I hear, young lady!?" Kiyomi approached Meiko and grabbed the blacksmith's ear. Careful so that she did not hurt her friend too much, the Yamanaka twisted the ear in a soft angle. Enough to cause discomfort but nowhere nearly enough to disfigure the object of her self-evident affections. "Who taught you this?"
Meiko and Kiyomi started play-wrestling. While Meiko's physical strength was second to nobody's in her age and weight range, dealing with impressive physical strength was the very fundamental of the art of wrestling. Shifting and repurposing force laid the foundation and handling strength, positioning and weight of one's opponent was the icing on the visually delectable cake. Even if Kiyomi's background in wrestling came from CWF television shows and fan magazines, the barebones proved to be enough to tangle with someone of Meiko's caliber while the two were playing around.
"If we're not going anywhere and it's all the same… I would like to train a little bit. You trained here during the Chuunin Exams, right?" Mana stood up from the pompous and too cushy for actual comfort armchair and yawned.
"Ummm… Yeah. Uncle's sleeping in the main, ceremonial hall but the dojos to the west and to the east of the main hall are usually only occupied by my cousins. You should be fine if you train there." Kiyomi shrugged after letting Meiko go of the arm hold she had the blacksmith in. The Yamanaka's thighs slipped off of Meiko's neck where they were previously wrapped, attempting to drain resistance out of her friend while the pressure around the blacksmith's arm doubled every passing second trying to make the redhead tap out for the sheer pleasure of Meiko submitting.
Chest felt aching. For some reason, no matter how much Mana breathed in and out, oxygen didn't seem to satisfy the demand and every passing step felt like Kiyomi wrapped her thighs around Mana's own throat and not that of her best friend's. Some odd itchy feeling kept bugging the magician's eyes as pressure accumulated around them in the shape of bags. Soon enough, those would provide Mana all the make-up needed to make the outlines of her eyes more pronounced…
A loud hiss distracted the magician from her session of self-pity and an attempt to get her body acting in order. The magician looked up and let her eyes scan the place. Her chakra sensory registered nothing of note around her – just the usual mid to high ranking Yamanaka going about their day to day routines. Some spent their time in the resort relaxing, others chose this place to train. For some reason, the elongated corridor Mana found herself in began feeling lonely. There was no reason for it, however, fear burnt in the magician's heart that if she cried out right now, nobody would answer even though her sensory registered some Yamanaka clansmen as close as the next door to the right.
A black blur that Mana could not even see but felt like it was there distracted the magician, forcing her to turn back and let out a pathetic whine in fear. She did not feel that presence with her sensory, rather with some unexplained, almost supernatural feeling that came out of nowhere. With her fear changing to irritation at the time being wasted, Mana escalated her clacking at the wooden floor walk to the nearest dojo.
Something peeked at her!
Up further, from the corner. A good eighteen to twenty meters forward, a bald head peeked from the turn to the left. It was a questionable and blurry enough sight for Mana to doubt her own sanity rather than worry for her own life but something in the magician's deeper, more primal impulses kept screaming for the magician to vocalize her fears.
The magician's pace was almost equal to a well-paced, civilian run. A chilling hiss stopped the girl in her tracks. To her left was an open shower cabin. The doors were opened and the magician could not make out from her current angle if it was a male or female shower room, likely it belonged to one of the dojos but what the young woman felt absolutely certain of was a pale, humanoid shape with sharp teeth growling and hissing at her. It looked almost like…
"The… Dwellers from Takigakure…" Mana muttered as her vision turned blurry. All that the magician could feel was a burning desire to not die here. To keep on living so that she could apologize to an apparent survivor of an event she regretted so much. The last thing that Mana could recall was the mighty thud against her chest. Her heart pounded like a hammer attempting to bust out from inside. One more push and her chest cavity felt like it may have burst…
Voices spreading information that was impossible to make out woke Mana up. Her eyes felt heavy. At any point, if given leeway, her body felt like snoozing off again for whoever knew how long. Unlike the environment that the magician could last recall, the one she woke up to seemed familiar. As if she had spent an alarming number of days recovering there or a great number of hours on check-ups.
She was back in the Konohagakure Hospital. For just how long was she out? Then again, depending on her condition, Kiyomi and Meiko may have rushed and used their true movement speeds to get Mana here. It would have been risky transporting a deadweight body this way and exposing oneself to possible ambushes, traps and becoming a beeping signal on the radar of every ninja looking for speedy and careless targets but the pace may have been of utmost importance.
"Ah, Mana-san, you've recovered!" a nurse declared with the full volume of her voice that aggravated Mana's symptoms. Pressure lit up around her temples, her head felt like being popped by a pair of gigantic tweezers pressing at its sides and forcing the contents out through every available orifice. It was an awful feeling – Mana could almost feel her brain matter leaking out through her mouth, her ears, and eyes but it never actually came to pass. If it had, perhaps she'd have been freed of that detestable feeling.
"Anzu-san…" a medical ninja raised an eyebrow at the nurse, disciplining her.
"Oh, sorry. It's just that Mana-san… Or, rather, all of us were so lucky that Guru Ayushi himself showed up when he did. I don't think anyone else may have treated those symptoms and dealt with the venom." The nurse sighed in relief. The woman looked more overjoyed to see Mana conscious and alive than Mana herself was to wake up in the hospital.
"Ayushi-san!?" Ignoring her own pain and nausea, Mana sat up. Just like it was when waking up in the morning after resting one's head under the covers, the pain of light seeping through one's eyes grew weaker in its bite the more time one spent getting accustomed to it. Similarly, whether it was due to Mana's supernatural ninja metabolism or because of the medicine used to treat her through the effect of the venom that so nearly killed her, the paralyzing symptoms turned more manageable with time. While the improvement was minuscule at that moment, Mana saw them turning even more acceptable later that same day.
She needed them that way, the day of fate had crept up on her. If Ayushi truly was back in Konoha, she needed to confront him about his activities and stop him just like she trained to for the last three years.
"Yes. We'd have never even identified the nasty toxin that was killing you if it was not for Guru Ayushi's infinite knowledge. He just snapped his fingers and realized that the venom came from a wild tribe of raiders far up north, in the Land of Snow." The nurse looked to be in the ninth heaven. "I just wish your family and friends could have been here to greet you."
"My family and friends?" Mana asked.
"Yes. They were quite devoted to seeing you awake and welcoming you back. Wonder of wonders, as it usually happens, Kiyomi-san and Meiko-san got called out on a mission early this morning and your parents took their first break in several days to get something to eat…" the nurse sighed. Judging from her reaction, this was a relatively common occurrence with patients and their dear ones.
"Indeed, Ayushi's methods are insane but his skill and results are just as legendary as his reputation suggests. After ingesting just a droplet of the venom and feeling the effects on his own body, Guru Ayushi surmised as to what the antidote would be sooner than I'd have snapped my fingers. What's even more impressive, it was a long-term venom, according to Ayushi-san himself, it was not supposed to show any effects whatsoever except for minor irritation of the skin for the first couple of days." The medical ninja tried somewhat combining briefing of his patient as to what had happened with the praise to the legendary medical ninja.
"Where is he now?" Mana jumped to her feet. Her mind felt wobbly, the world around her spun and acted very woozy, however that must not have stopped her. She'd suffered under the plague of too many lives she'd failed to save. There would be no more.
"Well… If you must thank him personally… I'm not sure… It isn't the best idea for you to move around too much, Sorceress-san." The nurse tried gently directing the magician back to her bed.
"If you must leave, it is standard protocol that we brief you on what the possible complications of your injuries might conclude in…" the medical ninja blocked off the door with his own body.
"Fine. Do that, but I must see Ayushi-san as soon as possible!" Mana ground her teeth and stretched out in her bed, preparing to sit through the necessary fluff so that she could get to the object of her obsession for the last three years.
"Very well, if that is your call. The venom you've been subjected to was a slow acting one. In larger quantities, its effects may be accelerated and it may have driven your heart into overdrive and had it burst immediately after reaching the bloodstream, however, given the small quantities, it was something that takes multiple days to kill the victim. It was a natural extract from an underground dwelling species of cave spiders called pomengranushka. It works as a more volatile brother of adrenaline – it kicks everything inside your body into overdrive, driving your body to its limits slowly, over multiple days before it gives up and caves in. That would have happened to you as well… What was even worse – the injury through which the venom had entered your bloodstream was treated and we had not even considered venom until Ayushi had come." The medical ninja briefed the magician on the basics.
Despite the whirling flames that drove Mana to roll out of the hospital bed, get dressed and run off after Ayushi, wherever he may have been. The young woman took a moment to look at her pale skin and weakened body and paid proper respect to the fact that the last day she could remember very much may have been the very last one for her. That was why her body refused to patch up the cut on her cheek – that was why it expanded and swelled with the black, branching out bits of corrupted blood vessels around it. By treating that cut, unknowingly, she may have very much signed her own death warrant, then again, she'd have never known…
The Black Scorpion was a crafty bitch. Giving up her children and giving Mana just enough time to get them to safety before the magician kicked the bucket. While lethality and deceit were not traits that the magician admired in any way, Mana truly underestimated that woman.
"The clothes that you arrived in were actually Yamanaka property so they claimed that silk kimono. We can issue some of our charity clothes that we sign the homeless and poor out with. It should help you get home, at the very least." The nurse shrugged.
"That would be great, thank you, I will make sure to return them once I change." Mana nodded.
"That will not be necessary at all! That's not how charity works…" the young woman smiled, shrugging off the necessity physically by shaking her hands in front of her.
It felt surprising seeing the door to her home survive the hearty push after she had unlocked it, Mana bolted to her room in an instant and began preparing herself. Blood rushed through her entire body, for a moment there the symptoms of nausea and resonating pain began fading into the background as the itch around her temples coming from the heart-stopping worry that she might forget something important took the forefront.
Mana was not heading into a battle. She would very much like to meet Guru Ayushi and realize that he was very willing to compromise, that he realized that his crazy human-experimentation, drug-dealing cult was taking her ideals way overboard and disbanded it on the fly. She would even not hold it against him in any way, while the criminal justice system oftentimes seemed like a scapegoat for the magician's go-to solution while minding her peace-driven ninja way, it was not like she followed it by the letter or relied on any sort of written rules to govern anything. Mana wouldn't lose sleep knowing that a man who had committed wrongdoings escaped unpunished as long as she truly knew he's changed.
The thing was that she knew better than that. She's bumped into thousands of brick walls trying to run at them, hug and smooch them only to end up with her mouth and nose busted because, as it turned out, brick walls were hard and tough to slam against, no matter how hard one loved it on the inside. Guru Ayushi will take it as far as he was capable of taking it – Mana knew it because he subscribed to her own philosophy, a sick and different, much more radical version of it, though hers nonetheless. Mana would take it to the extreme to do what she thought was right, so will Ayushi…
How did one leave home while knowing they might not come back. Odds were Mana won't. She's trained for years for this one battle, read and analyzed countless historic sources and mission debriefings recounting the few snippets and details remaining of Ayushi's battles from his time as a Konoha ninja. Archives so old they were no longer even held secret. Abilities so ancient and outlandish that they hardly seemed relevant but… Mana devised a plan nonetheless. She did not have the proper time to make it a sure-thing, flawless in execution but she'd have to ace it when the time comes. Otherwise…
"You're awake?" Father's voice reached the magician.
"And you're leaving!?" Mother's was soon to follow.
"I heard Guru Ayushi saved my life. I wish to thank him." Mana lied, quite adequately, for the first time in her life. Had she did so as badly as was her usual case, she'd have had the fight of her life on her hands and nobody wanted to die against a legendary ninja knowing they've pushed away the people who were there from the beginning to the bitter and tearful end. It was this thought that granted Mana the strength and the skill to lie in a convincing manner.
While she was very glad of the outcome, it was scary and detestable at the same time. If Mana somehow survived this, she'd need a long look at the mirror and a lot of contemplating about if all of this was still worth it in any way. If she was no longer the right person to fight for her ninja way, perhaps it was best to hang that flag and call it a day. Maybe try and pass it on to the next generation, someone worthier of the banners' colors?
"Oh, I see…" Mother sighed in relief. Just this once Mana felt overjoyed by the fact that she concealed most of her gear and played sleight of hand tricks on the battlefield instead of flaunting her craftsmanship and skill like, say, Meiko did with her bombastic, full set of heavy metal, kickass armor.
"That Guru Ayushi guy sure is something." Father smiled. "Didn't you say he was behind all that pain medication from behind the counter? Then he goes on and saved my little bunny's life too…" the man wrapped his arms around Mana's head, less than graciously but Mana had long since forgiven her father lack of proper arm control, removed her top hat and pecked the young woman at the top of her head.
Father's grip tightened. Almost as if he was trying to choke the magician out but Mana knew better. Strong enough to force herself out of her out of fighting shape father's grip, yet gentle enough not to cause lasting damage to his brittle bones and too bad a pain to his burnt arms, the trickster slipped out of the man's grasp and observed in horror, together with mother, as the man's skin turned pale while his visible blood vessels blackened.
As the skin of Nakotsumi Tsukumo turned powder-blue, the man's eyes whited out and he collapsed in a state of tremors. Knowing a tad bit of first-aid but nowhere near enough to help her father, fearing that in his jerking and uncontrollable state he may have done something harmful like bitten his tongue off, the magician shoved her fist into the man's mouth when she found the opening and held it against the chomping teeth. Mother nearly gave out on the spot, in her current, engaged state, Mana would have been of no help in the long run so mother needed to get over herself and call help.
Luckily for everybody involved, Nakotsumi Kei was made of sterner stuff than just to give out on her knees and cry as her husband died in front of their eyes. The self-made manager of Nakotsumi Café dashed out for help as Mana winced in pain every time her father's teeth drilled through her hand, which she purposefully did not augment so that he did not suffer any further damage to his teeth or his gums. It seemed like she was managing her father and keeping him from choking or biting his tongue off for eternity but soon enough the medical ninja showed up.
"That's… Not really how that's done…" one of the few responding medical ninja scratched their head after seeing Mana's white glove stained with her own blood.
"I… I didn't know what else to do…" Mana exclaimed, staring at a blank point in the floor. Her attention wandered from one point to another, no focus at all. The world around her shook and spun without any sense or control as the magician herself did her best to stand perfectly still.
"Well, did the trick. We'll take a look at it in the hospital. You'll probably want to be there by your father's side…" the medical ninja sighed, knowing full well from experience how relatives were in such situations.
Mana looked up at the medical ninja and nodded without a moment's hesitation. She clasped at her pulsing with pain right hand and looked on at her kitchen window as if it showed anything more than what was behind it. Whatever she was going to do, this, her family took precedence right now. Mana's come too close to losing her father already, even if it was through no mistake of her own. This time, she will do it right and be by his side when it counts.
