There was a sense of dread and irritation that accompanied the light that flooded into Mana's eyes every time she peeked her head outside. The combination of the two, rushing through the pain that substituted blood and traveled up and down, circulating throughout Mana's vessels, caused the magician's head feel like something hard was thumping from the inside.
The thumping sensation could only have been counterweighed by the opposite of a trampling sort of pain. One that flushed in from the outside and one that, oddly enough, felt familiar to the magician. Despite the fact that closing her eyes and looking back at what happened caused her to suck more and more of the terrifying mixture as if through a straw, delivered right into her system, Mana trod on, or rather back.
Segments of her clash with Ayushi remained intact, the bloodshot eyes of everyone trampling Mana into the dirt, everyone corrupted by Ayushi's jutsu. The Soul Release buzzing through and introducing itself to Mana through excruciating amounts of pain every time a skull whizzed by close enough. A pair of chakra signatures lit up, not too different from the people coursing through the corridors on a normal occasion but one of them was at least an average ninja and both of them were all too close to Mana's ward for their appearance to be a coincidence.
"What that cloaked man said was true." The nurse turned at a middle-aged medical ninja. "Konoha's Sorceress is awake."
"It seems so." The medical ninja nodded. The pair approached Mana together, the nurse began checking on the readings of the machines connected to the young woman as well as the recorded data of the past readings while the more experienced medical ninja ran his hands through Mana's body with a blue-hued scan of a Diagnosis Jutsu.
"By now we were beginning to accept the reality that you may have never woken up. The leading theory was that you went comatose like your father. We did not detect any traces of drugs in your system but you have been in plenty of missions that ended with a painful visit to the hospital so reliance on pain killers was not something we ruled out from the get-go." The medical ninja recounted while scanning Mana.
"So quiet…" the nurse expressed her worries. "Do you remember anything? Guru Ayushi was found near you when the barrier lowered, he was in a perfectly fine condition but… He's in a vegetative state. Do you know what happened to him?"
"Don't overload her memory all at once." The medical ninja scolded his colleague.
"B-But. We need to know if she's mentally okay. After something like that…" the nurse objected.
"Asking her for her name will do for starters." The medical ninja replied before concluding his scan. "Although… I must say that your injuries baffle me. You're just fine from the inside. It's a rare occasion that a ninja emerges from a battle and passes out without a scratch."
"Sir, the scars…" the nurse looked at her superior.
"Right!" the medical ninja rose his finger up with the joy of recollection fresh in his eyes. "There were injuries, bruises of sorts… We could not heal those, no matter what we did. We know you like to spare no expense on cosmetic treatment, I understand that given your public standing but… I don't think it is possible to heal those."
Mana lifted her gown to look at the irksome source of aches on her sides. It looked as if her flesh would have been entirely blown off and then promptly reattached, bruises overflowing with underlying blood masses and rings of black and purple. It was days since she donned these scars, courtesy of Ayushi's Soul Release, and yet they did not look much older than minutes old. The medical ninja was right to call it the way he did.
"We can put you on a list to see a higher ranked medical ninja, that might show some…" the medical ninja began trying to soothe Mana's mental disarray as if she was a burn victim but the magician just let her hospital gown slide back on top of the eternal scars and just sighed.
"It doesn't matter," she muttered.
"D-Don't say that, Sorceress-san, don't think that this is hopeless…" the nurse tried to cheer her up.
"No, I no longer have a stage magician career to speak of. It literally does not matter." Mana replied. "When can I leave?"
If Overcoat's proposition was to be taken at face value, she may have had a few days of freedom left. It may have taken a pair of days for the whole charade of an international Ninja Tribunal being put together which gave Mana those few days to make good of the life she still had.
As someone who had just surrendered all traces of her old life, Mana didn't feel all that distraught about it. Then again, why should she have felt bad? For three years she's been convincing herself that when the time to face Ayushi came, surely she'd die if she won't step over her ninja way just this once, now that she's survived, giving up on what she's regained just felt sort of natural. It was much easier to give up a cookie when the cookie jar was stolen for years and you'd made peace with the fact that the cookies were gone.
"Mana-san, there is another thing…" the medical ninja fixed the collar of his shirt. "Your body is currently at a frail state. Even if your body returned perfectly healthy from the… Incident… But something happened in there. Something that may have caused these eternal scars. If you ever suffer similar life-threatening injuries, your body might not recover. There will be nothing life-threatening about them, they will kill you."
It was a good thing that Mana was taking a leave of absence from active duty as a Konohagakure kunoichi, it was much worse that she was heading straight to prison during that leave.
"I'll have that in mind. When can I leave?" Mana insisted.
"Well… Given how your condition seems stable, we have no legal grounds to hold you here so… Whenever you decide it's for the best." The medical ninja shrugged and traded wary glances with the nurse.
"Not much remained of your uniform but… This sort of conundrum is a common occurrence, we'll issue you some charity clothes." The nurse nodded.
Mana got the strangest sense of déjà vu, here was to the hoping that her return wouldn't be half the shit-show that her last return home was.
An attempt to return home quietly may have been naïve in retrospect. Mother was busy in the kitchen. Poor thing. With her entire life flipped like a table where a temperamental gambler had just lost his life's savings, the woman tried to maintain as much order, have things make as much sense as possible. Even the television box was working non-stop even though nobody was there to watch it. It must have been running for some time as the screen was flickering once in a short while, not often enough to be serious but just enough for it to be an irritation.
Mana tried to be gentle with how she closed the door. She wasn't sure why she was working this hard to conceal her return, it was not like she could have avoided her mother forever and it would have been for the better to spend all the time she could with mom before the time for the Ninja Tribunal came.
The self-preservation instinct kicked in. Mana tried to sneak past her mother but that was as stupid as her better judgment kept screaming from the bottom down it to be. The manager of a popular meeting spot in the village, the Nakotsumi Café noticed Mana instantly, as a savant at attracting clients, she'd have been a lousy businesswoman to not notice a potential client and lifelong fan making their entrance.
"M-Mana?" mother muttered.
"I really thought I was being quiet…" the young woman rubbed her elbow, unable to muster up the strength to look her parent in the eyes.
"How could you?" mother shook her head. She then repeated that question that Mana had hoped to be rhetorical with an escalating rise in the volume of her voice. "After your father went into a coma, had you no more cruel things to do to me than almost dying yourself? Do you have any idea of how it all looked from the hospital window? That giant, red cube, the lightning and the sky turning dark, the spreading mist and the panic…"
Mana had never heard Ayushi's might being described from an outsider's perspective. Even when the man had built up all of these means to protect the outside world, rather than do harm to it, it was not difficult to see how it could have been taken the wrong way by an outsider.
What was the daughter to say to her mother in these sort of cases? Everything about these past few weeks was just all sorts of messed up, Mana nearly dying to an exotic strain of venom, then coming back to life thanks to a miraculous save only to see her father collapse to a deep sleep he will never wake from, then she runs off to fight one of the most powerful ninja to have ever lived in recorded history, nearly gets herself killed again, only to return to her mother for a few days until the Ninja Tribunal works its stage-play and hauls her to prison.
How was Mana to even begin to break this news down?
"I'm… Sorry," was all she could muster. It was beginning to seem like survival was just another cruel way for Ayushi to torture Mana, in moments like these it felt like the Game of Souls was still ongoing and the torture to make the magician surrender was still onboard.
Mother's hands wrapped around Mana and squeezed the young woman hard. Despite how much it hurt having the itch and the nagging torment of the wounds over her body exasperated, the magician did not dare complain, she not even as much as winced in pain. She owed her mother all the hugs in the world for the heartbreak she was about to once again put the woman through. It was for the best that mother knew nothing about Mana's dealings, there was no way the woman's bleeding heart would have kept the secret from spilling and… A hunch suggested that Overcoat's superiors were not people to toy around with.
Maybe Mana would have, but she'd die before putting her mother on their crosshairs. It was very easy making this promise, given how many times dying would have been infinitely more convenient compared to living and picking up the pieces.
"What were you even thinking!?" mother groaned. "Running off like that…"
"I was…" Mana was about to humor the less than gracious lie weaved up for her just before mother interrupted her.
"Well… It doesn't matter now. What's done is done, we still have each other and that's what counts." Mother nodded a pair of times, she looked desperate to convince herself of that childish dream. It seemed that the woman knew that it was only a matter of time before Mana ran off to another mission and barely lived through it. Mana knew of a whole another thing that would part them in the nearest future…
"I… I think I'm going to retire from ninja work. Do you think we will make it somehow without that? I mean in terms of money?" Mana wondered. Just trying to make her mother as happy as she could have been before the inevitable roll downhill.
"Re-Retire?" mother raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah. That brawl shaved something off of me that I will never get back. The medical ninja said I will never be the same again and… I'm just… Tired of it all. Fought as much as I could, saved as many as I could. The only other sacrifice I have to give is my life and… In the state I'm in right now, big fat good that's going to be worth." Mana bit her cheeks on the inside of her mouth in bitterness.
"Well… I have a hunch that… We will be just fine. I approve of your decision. Your magic shows will not be the same without your… Father… Helping you but…" mother barely kept herself together.
"Actually…" Mana rubbed her foot across the floor, wondering just how she was to break the news. "I don't feel like in a very magical mood so… I don't think I'll be doing any shows soon."
"Of course, dear." Mother wrapped her arms around her again. With a smile through a waterfall of tears, the woman pushed Mana off of herself while still clutching her daughter's arms tight. "You've grown so tall over the last few years, taller than me, I haven't even had the chance to notice…"
"I'll make it up to you, mom… Somehow…" Mana sniffled a pair of times. "After everything is over, just… Promise you'll be there and give me a chance."
The two embraced each other and stood that way for what seemed the entire night through. Maybe nights only lasted a minute when each one counted down to an inevitable price that Mana signed herself up for paying.
"So what do you think the play was about?" mother spoke up after over three hours of the two sitting perfectly still.
Seeing a play performed at Mr. Hiro's hall by some of Mana's old friends was a nice mother-daughter activity, in theory, however, given how little the two have interacted with each other, Mana wondered if she was truly putting the best time in what she had left. Half of today she's barely looked at her mother at all, this was the first time they'd spoke to one another since their activity started.
"We can ask the guys that were in it." Mana shrugged while navigating the hustle and bustle of the after-show halls to approach the stage. She did it slowly enough for her mother to read her movements and follow even though she used to know this stampede well enough to navigate it like a master assassin sneaking up on their hit.
"Mana… Abusing power and relationships, as usual, I see…" Kinzo, one of the better-known actors of the troupe smiled at the magician's direction, noticing her curly, ravenous locks, the rest was pure instinct.
"I find having less and less of both these days decided to use the best of what I still have." Mana shrugged, surrendering to the play of a malicious schemer. Perhaps there was a time when these guys and multiple other troupes, as well as entertainers of other crafts, may have truly seen Mana as such a person. The magician believed their relationship has evolved since those days.
"I still can't believe you know a troupe of actors performing on prime time." Mother covered her mouth, looking proud of how Mana's life as far as it was unrelated to the ninja side of her duality had developed.
"This is my mother." Mana was not that good with introductions, her own or those of the others. In her defense, she spent most of her time getting into life-threatening situations and recovering from them.
"Oh, yeah… Aren't you in charge of that… Establishment?" a friend of Kinzo's Mana once had known the name of but had since forgotten, given how the roster of Kinzo's group tended to change and evolve over time, giving her a whole lot of names to remember.
"Nakotsumi Café, yes." Mother nodded.
"Awesome, we hang out there all the time, refining scrips and rehearsing. Maybe we can get a discount?" Kinzo joked.
"I can see that some of you folk have even worked for me once." Mother examined the happy group of entertainers gathering together and then nodded with vigor. "I'm sure we can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement."
"Excellent!" Kinzo laughed out.
"See? You used to say I never do anything for you…" Mana teased her colleague at another kind of work a bit more.
"I was a different kind of man back then. I saw a kid hogging all the spotlight and I thought that she's had to have been greasing some hands to get there. I should have known that Hiro's Hall was no land of equal opportunity, it was a meritocracy and you had a whole lot of merits to earn you that respected time slot." Kinzo paid his dues, partly responding to Mana's quip, partly apologizing for any past mistakes both of the two may have made. He may not have known the deeper meaning behind Mana's reason for being here and spending her time with her mother but this meeting worked out just perfectly.
"In your defense, I did grease a whole lot of hands. I'm not that good with money, but I'm fairly certain I made a lot of it for a lot of people." Mana shrugged, searching for one pair of pockets with her wandering, awkward hands in her casual outfit but finding none. She was so used to wearing her uniform the whole time…
"Yeah, I always wondered why you didn't just retire in a mansion atop the Hokage Monument and smoked money until the end of your days." Kinzo laughed out together with his band of merry men and women.
"Awww, come on, I wasn't earning that much money…" Mana sighed.
Mother coughed, something must have been stuck in her throat. After a brief talk, what remained of the Nakotsumi family turned to the alleyway that Mana used to take all the time after shows rushing home, every time when she did not want to run into anybody.
"So what's all this about?" mother turned to Mana with a face both filled with bliss and serious at the same time. It was a face that would have tolerated a healthy lie the least of all things. "Sure, we both had an epiphany with Tsukumo's near-passing but… You're spending an unhealthy amount of time watching out for your old lady."
This was the time to tell her, this had to be. Postponing it any further would have only ended up in tragic heartbreak.
"I… I am in a bit of trouble. It's about my fight with Guru Ayushi. A village official came to me in the hospital, it's why they did not let you in. They're investigating into it and… They may be calling up a Ninja Tribunal." Mana really wanted to have some pockets to stuff her unruly hands into at that moment.
"Oh my god…" mother gasped. Unlike before, this one was much emptier and more hollow deep down.
"In the worst case scenario, I may be looking at the termination of my ninja license and a couple of years in Rengoku," Mana admitted. That much Overcoat did not say explicitly but Mana had managed to sew together from bits and pieces. Sure, the whole Tribunal would be staged and the needed people would be told what to say and paid up for, maybe convinced by other means by pulling some leverage but… Believing that she'd be serving in Eden which was more than a containment complex rather than an actual prison or that she would not receive a punishment amounting to at least a year would have been childish in either case.
As the two women emerged from the alleyway and mixed into the crowd of the evening-admiring Konoha villagers, they appeared together, embracing each other as if it was their final evening together. That may have been a strong overreaction but Rengoku was not a place to be underplayed either. Paying up for what she signed up for required a certain amount of mental preparation, after all.