"You okay?" Kouta looked up at Mana's face. He stopped his Mystical Palm treatment to do so.
"Yeah…" Mana threw back the most half-assed reply she could. In her defense, having her treatment just halted out of the blue just so her boyfriend could question her emotional state kind of hurt the chances of keeping up her composure and capability to lie.
"Okay…" Kouta nodded. Emerald light lit up his extended hands again and the magician felt the comfortable warmth of the Mystical Palm running down her body. It felt like warm needles piercing her skin and warming up every stiff and hurting bit of her. Ironic recalling that, for the most part, the jutsu used to feel like a refreshing spring of water running down her entire body, like standing underneath a waterfall in midsummer.
The soothing properties of a skilled Mystical Palm Jutsu were always what the patient needed the most. Because she spent so little time inside her Faith's Judgment technique, Mana only suffered small bruises that were easily healed. Just a little shine on them and the buggers closed up like eyelids before sleep.
"So what happened in there? We assumed you had some sort of a plan but then you didn't return… We weren't sure how hard we should be fighting the Kumogakure ninja. Yushijin made the call to watch for ourselves and take the enemy out, the enemy being the tribesmen. We didn't kill anyone, I don't think the Kumo ninja double checked our targets either." Kouta shrugged. He cared so much to reassure Mana but the magician had already accepted the losses she failed to prevent.
It hurt that he thought filling her head with empty dreams would somehow remedy the situation. Just after shouldering the colossal meteor that she's partially responsible for the mass casualties in Iwagakure, Mana came to learn that after the many years of training, not that many things have changed in terms of her becoming the hero she wanted to be. No matter how much strength she acquired, no matter how many people she met and how many allies she gathered, people still died all around her and she kept on failing to try to stop that.
"That's one nasty jutsu you've been hit with." Kouta looked serious while examining the cuts over Mana's body. "Not too deep but so widespread…"
Mana rolled her eyes. If only she could have rolled away everything that's been pressing against her chest like one giant boulder like that.
"It's okay. I get it. Just… We didn't fail, or anything and… I don't want you to remember the only official mission we went out on as something depressing, you know?" Kouta shrugged. Just like the youth Mana remembered falling in love with, he failed to keep up eye contact and he looked profoundly saddened by Mana's state.
The magician centered her thoughts around the handful of babies that she had saved. She did her best to remember that in the end, even the previously considered savage and heartless leader of the tribesmen chose to let go of her last sons and daughters, have them grow up surrounded by entirely different ideals than the ones she hoped to instill as long as they got to grow up at all. There was beauty in that. There was hope in that. Enough, at least, to help Mana smile.
Pushing Kouta away now was the last thing she wanted. It would have driven her into an even deeper abyss.
"This one… On your cheek. It doesn't heal, what the hell gave you that?" Kouta gently rubbed the cut on the magician's cheek, the last resort of the black scorpion before she entrusted the legacy of the tribesmen to Mana.
"It's nothing… You must be running low or something. It doesn't even hurt, just itches." Mana shrugged, dismissing it. The last thing Kouta needed right now was to sweat over a skin-deep scratch.
"No, I know how important removing the scars is to you, you want to perform onstage, don't you. I'll give it another go." Kouta insisted.
"Fine but… I'm gonna have it removed back in Konoha either way so… Don't sprain anything." Mana sighed.
"Well... For better or worse…" Yushijin looked up at the Konoha gate with mixed feelings. "Go have a proper rest. I'll go to Hokage's office and submit the mission report because it's what a true leader would do."
"Say, Mana… I know it's a weird thing to ask you and you won't like it but…" Kouta poked the tips of his index fingers against each other, overcome by hesitation to ask her of something. For a moment there the magician had her heart sink to her heels in fear of him pulling something stupid like asking her to marry him or something. "Could you check if my father's back in the village?"
"Yeah, go break a leg, hopefully, not literally." Mana faked a smile while seeing her boyfriend off with her glance. It was not that she could not justify this sort of obsession that bothered her, it was that she could. The two needed to exchange cool field stories, compare scars and try arm wrestling one another.
"Speaking of dads… You think Tsukumo-san could show me a thing or two someday?" Erumo looked to her right to try and catch a glimpse of Mana's longing eyes. While only the edges of her glare could connect with Erumo, the magician noticed a much friendlier and more natural glare returning to her. The two shared a lot and overcome even more during their brief time working together.
"For the sake of keeping up the dream of an underappreciated hero genius in your mind, I'd advise you not ask him of that. He's lost the precision of his arms, the one thing that made him part of who he was. Now he can only relive that part while he's helping me work on props for my magic shows." Mana replied.
Magic shows… That was a touchy subject. It never used to be but… Somehow Mana felt completely drained of any desire to catch up on the quota of entertaining an audience that she's missed. Something about all of the self-hatred boiling inside didn't inspire the best of performance moods.
"Pity. Hope I can still catch you for some sparring in the Training Grounds. I used to enjoy the pair of checkmate games we used to have after the Chuunin Exams." Erumo shrugged. She gave Yushijin a warm look which the confused youth answered with a nod similar to that which he offered Kouta before the Juugo ran off. At least, unlike the medical ninja of his team, Erumo saw the visual acknowledgment, even if it wasn't the one she's been looking for.
"Mana… I'll miss our genjutsu training. I've learned a lot about the basics I've overlooked from you. Learned a lot more respect for the art I've been relying on my entire career." Yushijin raised his clenched fist in a half-bent arm, reaching it out for a bump.
"You were not the only person to learn something from it. Maybe in a year or two something cohesive will come out from the temporal perception concepts you've shown me." The magician mirrored the movement and answered the call for a comrade fist bump.
Father eyed the magician. It was rare of him these days to care about anything enough to acknowledge them on a bad day, this may have been one of the better days as the man stood up and approached Mana, nodded his chin at her as welcome and hugged her even.
Mana rubbed her tired face at her father's chest just to absorb this moment. She did not have that many of these and she knew that having her be away for so long so often was agonizing for any parent to go through. Especially when one knew of the dangers one had to go through. Even if they allowed themselves the luxury to forget, the same pain that made Mana's father's hug feel sluggish and almost as if the man felt repulsed by the magician reminded both the head and the heart of the Nakotsumi family about the stakes every day.
There was nothing repulsive about Mana to her father, the magician knew that. It was just that the control of his arms was giving and taking. At this particular moment in time, it appeared to be much more interested in the latter. The ratio of the two was also unfair, as the patriarch of the family often allowed his most treasured folk know every once in a while, that only made the few moments of serenity he did get all the more precious.
"How are they?" Mana asked. She was itching to reapply the genjutsu on her father's brain to numb the pain at least a little bit. By now she's practiced it for so long as a side-project that she could have it work almost passively but before she could do that, it was for the better to scope out how he was doing without it.
"There are days when I wish some asshole didn't burn my arms to a crisp." The man admitted.
"Humor. That's… Good." Mana stepped further and examined her father from top to bottom. He looked a bit ragged. He hadn't shaved in a while, his hair was uncut and his clothes could have used a wash. Then again, when most movements that demanded precision caused the equivalent of the pain of one's hands being burnt to a near coal-like state all over again, hesitation to engage in chores was to be expected.
"The specialists I've been seeing say humor is like a natural coping mechanism. I've heard from my work days that torture hurts less when you're in a snappy mood too. Something about chemicals in the brain… Then again, my sickness is caused by a signal reaching my brain so it all is starting to feel like a bit of the hair of the dog." Mana's father shrugged.
"Specialists? You haven't been seeing a medical ninja? Don't tell me you've been buying that over the counter stuff again?" Mana placed her hands over her hips. Right now she was too tired to hide her frustrations. Not many things could prove themselves more pressing than the mental pressure of the mass murders she failed to prevent recently but… This was father's health. Saying it's a special case would have been just it.
"What did you expect I'd do. Treat myself with humor? A witless old mutt like me? I have to read a book to know how to joke and even then most of the jokes scatter from my brain just like all those fancy taijutsu moves do the first day out of Academy." Tsukumo ground his teeth. He was pissed but he did not look too willing to truly let his demons out.
"Yeah… You're right, I shouldn't be talking. I promised I'd help you deal with it, I've picked up something to help and then I'm just gone most of the time." Mana sighed and sat down in the sofa that gave her father solace both during the sacred moments of idyllic boredom and the excruciating resurgence of his pain.
"Hey, reflecting everything in on yourself ain't healthy. And this comes from a guy that chugs that over the counter shit for pain management." Father sat down nearby and turned the television on for static while he silenced it down to an incomprehensible mutter.
"So Ayushi's lackeys are back in the village then? Don't know any other crew brave enough to smuggle under the counter medicine into one of the most powerful ninja villages." Mana sighed, rubbing her tired face while she allowed herself the less than elegant luxury of stretching out and yawning.
"Dunno, don't care. If it keeps the pain away, that's enough for me. Plus, Guru Ayushi ain't the worst person to buy drugs from. Wasn't he like the icon of peace and wisdom for the longest time, I'm sure it's just you who's obsessed with him." Father placed his own legs onto the table while tuning up the noise on the television just a little bit.
"I'm very alarmed by how casually you admit being addicted. Just gone out and said it's drugs…" Mana looked at her father. "Plus, I wasn't the one who made him look bad. His own sick cult ratted him out."
"Are you trying a new look? Have to say, scars on the cheek are more of a guy thing. Plus, I'm sure that the only people on stage donning scars are evil geniuses. Planning on changing your stage face?" Father leaned in closer to check on Mana's left cheek itch.
"Nah, Kouta said it just doesn't heal. I'll probably have it checked sooner rather than later though… Not sure I'm feeling up for a stage return just yet." Mana shrugged.
This felt nice. Just relaxing in front of something that actively rots her brains alongside one of her most beloved people alive and talking with no secrets.
"Good day, Mana. Did not expect to see you so soon, let alone on your initiative. I hoped that you'd try and get some rest after your last mission." Lord Seventh admitted. The man sat with his back straight and his body relaxed. The Seventh Hokage leaned a bit to the left with each successive swing of his chair.
"There's something that Yushijin left out of his report," Mana admitted while weaving a pair of hand seals and placing her hand on the bottom of the hat. In a bursting gleam of violet light, a handful of Usujitsa clones leaped out, each holding a dead silent baby in their hands.
It was slightly frightening summoning Usujitsa in the middle of the Hokage's office. This unpredictable bringer of calamity may have detonated at any point and while the Hokage would have surely survived the blast. It would have been of considerable strength and size to be taken either as gross incompetence from Mana's part or a genuine attempt at the Seventh's life.
"What are these babies, are they okay? I have had my fair share of babies and aren't they supposed to be far louder than this?" the Lord Seventh jumped to his feet so that he could examine the toddlers wrapped in rough sheets that the Ninja Rabbits provided to them.
"Yushijin may have reported that all of the tribesmen were eliminated. That is not the case. I have saved these babies from their hive. Their leader surrendered them willingly." Mana pointed at Usujitsa. She waited for the Hokage's move.
It was a moment of much inner tension – the Hokage may have decided to eliminate these babies then and there. That would have put Mana at odds with her own leader as well as her own home village. It was an undesirable situation. As much as the magician was preparing herself for that eventuality last night, she had only plotted out a few moves ahead, knowing full well that she'd stand no chance at either escaping the village or taking its ninja on. Her resistance, while well thought-out and valiant, would also be vain.
"Alright. We do have an Orphanage we can place these kids in." Lord Seventh nodded without any significant flare of emotion in his eyes or his expression. From the looks of it, the man was expecting something far more severe to come out of the magician's mouth. "That is, of course, if you don't have other plans for them…"
"No. Their stay inside my sealing dimension and then their relocation to the New Rabbit Caves was always just a temporary solution. I'd be more than glad to give them up. I just thought it would be more of an issue…" Mana shrugged while rubbing her elbow.
"If I had wanted the tribe of raiders eliminated, I would not have sent a ninja infamous for her refusal to take a life out on the field. I wanted the situation dealt with, which is why I sent someone who may have come up with a more… Creative way of settling things." Seventh smiled. The man gestured for his assistant to take the babies over from the magician.
"Team Olive is here waiting for their mission. Shall I assign them the mission of delivering these to the Orphanage?" the assistant inquired.
"That would be just excellent." Seventh grinned and nodded.
"Well… Sorry to disappoint you in that case." Mana bowed before the Seventh Hokage and then prepared to leave.
"Have you disappointed? I sent you out to surprise me and I definitely did not expect you to show up in my office with a bunch of babies." Lord Seventh smiled. "Take some time off, you look like you've taken some damage. If Kouta could not heal it, it may be because your body is breaking down under too much strain. Rest up."
"It's just an itch." Mana dismissed the cut on her cheek that refused to go away for the longest time. Since its inception, it had actually even grown a fair bit although its growth had stopped at about one and a half of its original size. It was turning thinner and closing down a few days after the wound was gifted but then it kept at its current length.
Usujitsa grumbled on their way down. The reason why Mana did not let the rabbit disperse back to the cave system was that she wanted to settle something. She could not just promise a known explosive horror some friends and then take them away like this. Not if she wanted to not find a country-sized crater where the Forest of Death was one day.
"This was so sudden!" a nun shook her blushed face with her palms on her cheeks. "Thank you so much, Konoha's Sorceress. These kids are in the seventh heaven right now. You haven't performed in so long and then you just came here to give them a show!"
"It was not my finest work, I may have gotten a tad rusty," Mana admitted shyly. "It's just a cocktail of a bunch of my old routines. These kids deserved more…"
"Did you mean it? The thing you said about the rabbits coming to play with the kids?" the nun wondered.
"That's actually a part of why I decided to perform here so unexpectedly to both of us. I wanted to introduce the kids to Usujitsa. He's… Capricious and a lot like a child himself…" Mana explained while Usujitsa was gently gnawing on her thigh, likely in annoyance of her speaking this way about him. "He can also be very dangerous but what he wants most of all is acceptance and friendship. As long as he can hang around these parts, he will not be a danger to anyone."
"I see." The nun smiled. "He is a lot like the usual family member of our Orphanage, in that case. He will fit right in."
"You heard that? I haven't taken your friends away from you, you can see them whenever you feel like it." Mana turned to Usujitsa who just shined his crystal eyes at the magician with a widely gapping and a tad slobbery mouth.