Naruto: Tales of a Ninja Magician

by Captain Claymore

A story of an alternate world where small changes long, long ago made a Ninja World of a different history and different people, different heroes, and different villains. Meet a young girl that tries to live a life as a ninja with a completely different set of ideals from the cruel world that surrounds her, trying to remain unchanged. A heavy focus on an OC cast.

771. Tales Of A Ninja Magician Annual 6

A quintet of blurs bounced around the dull landscape of stony plains and howling vortexes of dust storms. It seemed like the turbulent and capricious gusts brought about little nuisance, if any at all, to the enigmatic shapes that moved unimpeded throughout the northern vastness of the Land of Lightning. The location was simply too vast and barren for any ill souls to act upon their malicious intents, so the team of Allied Ninja didn't restrain themselves, either.

"Are you really okay with this?" Skaven's voice reached Mana as the half-shaved Nara closed in on her right and looked at her, as if he didn't trust the answer that she offered him and had to find out the truth from her directly. "Returning to the Fire Country, I mean. I wouldn't imagine that the bounty on your head there would have become any smaller in the months you were gone."

"We've all got bounties on our heads," Endo sneered at the pair from behind. "Both the participants of the black market and ninja from other villages alike want ninja dead. If you don't have a bounty on the Bingo Book or the black market–you've been wasting your time."

"I've got no choice." Mana shut the question down. "The Supreme Leader gave us an order. She was well aware of the risks and yet she sent me as well as the rest of the Stars, anyway."

"That's grim. You always have a choice, Mana. It's your choices that lead you to the Allied Ninja, after all." Shige observed from ahead of the formation.

"Are you sure about that?" Mana scoffed. "It was a choice between being the most hated person in the room, wondering if an assassin after my life will succeed today or tomorrow or changing my life. I'm not sure I'd call that much of a choice."

"My fellow settlers betrayed me to Fennec's group." Damisan said out of nowhere, attracting Mana's and Shige's attention while the other two continued to move toward the Land of Lightning border. "Everything that had happened to me since then came as a result. I shouldn't have survived or recovered, but I did. Fennec and his gang? They went on to "liberate" other settlements and claim more desert land. I'm with Mana here. There was no way that I could have looked anyone in my settlement in the eyes after that. That part of my life burned away alongside most of my face."

"Humph…" Endo smirked, restraining his instinct to cackle.

"What's with you, scumbag?" Skaven turned to the least-liked member of the Stars, voicing what Shige and Damisan had felt when they looked at the samurai apprentice with eyes that searched for an excuse to lash out at him for what he had done.

"You guys are pitiful. I guess I might be the only one who came to the Allied Ninja on my own free will. It doesn't seem like any of you had much of a choice. Maybe that's why you can't handle being expendable…" Endo replied with cockiness exuding from his expression.

"Maybe that is why you're such an asshole. Because you choose to be one." Skaven replied with an apathetic look and turned his attention on to the road ahead. Endo tsked with his tongue in reaction, though the instant dismissal of the argument from Skaven's side sort of defused the conflict before Endo even joined it.

---

One might have considered choosing not to take the caravan across the mountains and to wander the frozen taiga and mountainsides of the Snow Country might have as a perilous decision. Moving at breakneck pace would have cost about as much chakra and stamina as spending the night in cold that could have frozen one's own eyes solid if one kept them open long enough. Still, it was a path rarely taken and someone taking that path would have been tougher to track.

Mana slipped her thighs and knees under her jacket and blew hot air into her hands. She'd have liked to train some and she could certainly use the physical exercise and heat but if the plan was preserving stamina until they got at least to the Fire Country, that would have been counterproductive after all the trouble the Stars went through already to avoid attention of foreign agents. Her emerald eyes turned to follow Shige, who stood up and left the smoldering tongue of heat to walk all the way to Endo, who sat alone farthest from the central fire.

"Are you… Freezing?" Damisan wondered, pointing his mechanical index to Mana. His joints were slow to respond and a certain frosty grunge spread from them, suggesting that Damisan's prosthetics weren't entirely immune to the effects of frigidness.

"Yes… Shocking…" Mana looked around as an invitation for her friend to do so as well. Maybe he wouldn't have needed to in order to get the clue as the wind howled plenty as it was.

"No, I mean… Your chakra reserves are probably the largest out of the group. As someone who doesn't specialize in taijutsu, I'd have guessed that your chakra augmentations would have been enough for you to stonewall the cold with no trouble." Damisan shook his hands out in front of him.

"We're supposed to be preserving our stamina. Plus, I don't enjoy relying on chakra augmentation. I've been burnt before." Mana replied with a deep quiver at the bottom of her frosted lungs. Snowflakes no longer seemed to burn her chest from within and sting like tiny needles upon entry, which couldn't have been a good sign.

"You mean you purposefully resist it?" Damisan gasped. "That's dangerous. You know your body uses it to protect you as an emergency measure, right?"

"I'll take my chances…" Mana rubbed her hands.

"Now it makes sense," Damisan snapped his fingers in a personal Eureka moment. "That's why Ion took you out the way she did. She knew that you purposefully blocked off your chakra augmentation."

"I'm glad my near-death experience has entertained your curiosity." Mana muttered before shutting herself in entirely in her jacket. It barely helped, but it was the thought of being wrapped in something that counted. Mana noticed Damisan glaring down at the excessive, almost curtain-esque robe that he wore.

"I'm fine…" Mana's shaking voice announced from underneath her leather wrapping.

"That's okay, I don't feel heat or cold anyway, my skin's dead to those sorts of feelings already and I've actually designed my own extremities so…" Damisan began slowly unraveling, but Mana stood up and turned around.

"I said I'm fine." Mana slapped back in a less gracious tone than she would have liked. Damisan had always been incredibly sensitive about revealing any patch of his body, so the last thing that she wanted right now was to feel both cold and pitiful about giving cause for Damisan to relive his many panic attacks of becoming undone before observers.

"What you've done… It's despicable. It's a betrayal of our trust and as the leader of Stars I'd like you to come to me if you're feeling dissatisfied. I'm here to help you, Endo. If you want to prove anyone anything, it's my responsibility as your squad leader to help you with that." Mana overheard a reserved series of morals that Shige was flinging at Endo.

"Oh? So, if I came clean to you about what had been plaguing me, you'd have helped me then? You realize that part of being the best involves achieving everything yourself." Endo snickered in mockery of Shige's proposition.

"I wouldn't have helped you violently beat down your own comrades, I'd have helped you self-actualize and express those feelings in a better way." Shige hissed back before noticing that Mana had walked past them. "Think about it next time," she flung nonchalantly before walking off.

"Hey, Romeo, can't you see Mana's freezing? Can't you spare her some of your rundown threads you've lugged along instead of taking some helpful supplies?" Skaven cupped his hands together and howled at Endo as a jestful jab. It was a mystery how the rest of the Stars found out about the fact that Endo kissed Mana in the heat of their battle, but the magician had suspicions that the secret had left their inner circle even.

"Shut up, I'm expressing my respect to Mana by letting her suffer through her experience and grow stronger because of it." Endo scoffed at the suggestion, as if it was the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard.

"Thanks… So thoughtful of you…" Mana rolled her eyes. Honestly, she wasn't sure she'd have accepted comfort if it came with the package of knowing that she owed Endo anything because of it.

"Well, I'm not being entirely selfless," Endo shrugged, cradling a stick with a tiny cooked rabbit on it that had been becoming cold and gathering jelly on it from its juices on sight. "I'm merely strengthening my rival more so that they give me more trouble and strengthen me as a result as well."

"Samurai…" Shige sighed.

"Men…" Mana muttered to herself.

"We're just ripping each other's throats out…" Damisan turned his frost-garnering head decoration to look down at the accumulating layer of snow underneath. Not even the puny flames could compete with the crater of wetness around it and required minutely maintenance to keep it going.

"It's part of our charm," Skaven shrugged.

---

"What about you?" Endo turned his stabby glare to Skaven's back. "You're headed to Fire Country too and you've got ample history with the place. That thing Ion's father said, was it true? Are you actually a Black Ops agent?"

"Guys, can we not insult each other based on what a murderous psycho told to get us infighting to make his job easier?" Damisan clapped his prosthetic hands together, turning to the two of his comrades who stood in a straight line from each other.

"Come on, aren't you curious what a Black Ops agent might be doing in our midst? What about you?" Endo turned to Shige-H who had remained awfully silent in this whole exchange, focusing her attention on the Fire Country treetops and potential traps that could have struck from any corner seeing how the Stars had multiple targets attracting enemy attention in their ranks. Mana's head, as well as their mission objective. "Didn't screen your wonder boy well enough, huh? Or did you actually know that when you took him in?"

"Don't be ridiculous and stay on your guard." Shige-H dismissed the blunt and aimless accusations.

"Well… I suppose if he wanted to assassinate anybody, he'd have already done it. He has both the stones and the skill to do so." Endo crossed his arms and shut himself off, doing the exact opposite of what Shige told him to do as an objection.

"Did you just compliment me?" Skaven squinted, not liking how bitter it tasted. "We've already fallen for a trap, haven't we? I'm under an illusion this very moment, aren't I?"

"I wish your hair was a fucking illusion…" Endo sneered with familiar mockery before returning to seek for potential danger.

---

"Ah, Allied Ninja! Welcome!" a pair of Chuunin, a man and a woman jumped up at the check-in station, waving to get their attention. While their faces were unfamiliar to Mana, she noticed a meek genin girl swaying her hips around in boredom whom Mana very much knew.

"Maiya?" Mana approached the young lady whom she once taught Academy class to as part of her mission objective. "What are you doing here?"

"Ah!" the flustered kid coughed up as she choked on her surprise. "Sorceress-san! I'm here on my mission aim to accompany you around the village and see to it you get all the local help needed!" little Maiya bowed her head with wide and almost manic stare. Poor girl. Her nerves must have been killing her. "I… I didn't expect that you would accompany the Allied Ninja. That makes my role somewhat pointless, doesn't it?"

"No one's pointless, kid." Mana threw it back while looking around her home village. If she stopped letting her mind roam and humor her nostalgia, she'd have to confront the matter of just how much she still believed that statement after all these years. It could have been just sheer instinct that led to Mana throwing it out like that.

"Well, there have been a few fresh developments and changes to the village layout since you've left, some unknown places opening and old places closing. I assure you I may still be of use!" Maiya bowed again, as if requesting Mana's permission to accompany them.

"Who's the chickpea?" Endo hissed after leaving Shige-H to settle matters with the village officials and walking up to Mana.

"Ch-Chickpea!?" Maiya leaned back, taken aback by the unusual title. "Not sure if it's meant as a derogatory term or if it is your way of informally addressing me. I would actually prefer if we kept matters formal, as this mission is very much a formal matter to me. Though I can safely guarantee that my past acquaintance with the Konoha's Sorceress will have no effect on my objectivity and formal etiquette!"

Little Maiya, she's always been a bit of a stiffer, a geek and a stickler for the rules. Mana only had a handful of occasions of meeting her outside their first meeting in the Ninja Academy, namely seeing her face in the crowd during her shows a few times. She was still such an odd one, always came alone and never stayed after the show, even though she clearly had a good enough time to warrant a constant presence in the audience.

"She is the ninja that Konoha assigned to guiding us around. If you need anything or want to know anything about the village, she's briefed on it. I've done a few missions like this at her age as well." Mana shrugged it off.

"A brat? Alone? That's unusual for Konoha." Endo scratched his head.

"Indeed!" Maya rubber collar with a self-righteous expression decorating her proud face. "I've eagerly sought for an opportunity to gather a few missions on to my file before I've even been assigned a team officially. Very few genin get lucky enough for such an opportunity and even fewer get high-profile missions such as this!"

"High-profile? She's a glorified tour-guide…" Endo squinted, looking down on the kid.

"Picking fights with the locals again, I see. Indeed, an apt opponent to prove to the world that you are indeed the best, we don't want to start from the thirteen-year-olds immediately, got to build up the challenge gradually, right?" Skaven yawned while the rest of the Stars cleared the matters with the Chuunin guards and reassembled.

"I still kicked your ass, punk…" Endo crossed his arms, looking more defensive about it than he should have, all things considered.

"Um…" Maiya raised her index finger in confusion, yet she seemed too nervous to ask what was on her mind, likely because nothing positive would have come out of her seeing this dysfunction amongst the Allied Ninja.

"Don't mind them, dear!" Shige-H smacked the back of Endo's head while playfully shoving Endo's cheek to turn his head aside. "I've heard that Konoha has assigned you to help us out here, am I right?"

"Yes, please do not take this as a sign of hostility or mistrust, though. I assure you it is not Lord Seventh's intention!" Maiya nodded. "My name is Kinami Maiya, I am a Konohagakure genin!" the brat reported with an artificially stiffened upper lip.

How naïve little Maiya still was. She must not have realized that the only reason that Seventh handed her out on this mission was because he needed someone absolutely harmless. Someone from the locals to monitor the Allied Ninja while helping them out, yet someone so incapable of threatening them and of such ridiculous intimidation factor that the Allied Ninja would immediately rid of any suspicions of Konoha trying to guide their hands and control their presence.

Nothing declared benevolent intentions like willingly sending the world's most inept assassin for the job.

---

"So, our emergency provisions, I assume you've prepared them then?" Shige-H turned to little Maiya, figuring that while she was a harmless figurehead, she still should have had at least the most elementary knowledge and awareness on something.

"Well…" Maiya hummed it out, leaving her reply lingering in the air.

"You know what we're talking about, right?" Damisan leaned out from behind the Stars' leader, letting his prosthetic hands slip out from under the cloak to rub a phantom ache against his temple. It was a foolish venture given his metallic skull decoration, shielding the sight of his face from the rest of the world, or rather, shielding Damisan from their sights.

"Well…" Maiya appeared taken aback and somewhat frightened by the unusual appearance and vigor of the prosthetic-donning ninja.

"Heads up, we're about to be attacked," Mana warned everybody.

"Attacked!?" Maiya jumped up, dropping her bag from her shoulder and scrounging up and gathering notes and loose sheets from the dirt. It looked like had been struck by a case of hardened bowel movement which she was far too young to experience. "No way, not on my first official mission! Let's see… This scenario… Huh?" she muttered as she ran through both physical and mental notes at the same time.

Damisan stumbled forward, as if hit by an ethereal force from behind. His limbs twitched awkwardly before he regained full control over his body and grabbed hold of Endo's collar, pulling him back from stepping on a ceiling tag that would have set-off a steel wire trap.

"In the middle of day, in the center of the village!?" Shige-H rolled back her sleeves and turned around, ready to cut loose. Of all the times to do so, the Stars' leader couldn't have chosen a worse time. "Where are they, Mana?"

"Circling us. Calm down, I might have an idea what this is all about." Mana raised her hand up, trying to ease her squad down some before a blond-haired woman in a jade-colored dress with golden decorations burst forth in a flipping vault from the nearby roof, taking a diving thrust of her hand toward Mana. As the stage magician weaved back, she noticed a vocal and dull thud against the ground, suggesting that moving her thighs aside and giving the assailant leeway was the right choice.

The whirling woman swiped again and again, now aware of the invisible threat and her much longer than suspected reach, Mana evaded her swipes as if she'd have evaded an armed opponent before crossing her arms in a butterfly-shaped blocking motion and stopping the kunoichi's hand in mid-air. A hefty knee shot made Mana's vision blur and left her breathless while the opponent threw repeated kicks, punishing the magician for lowering her guard and assuming the best intentions from the opponent. Just as a tornado kick would have brought Mana to a dishonorable position flat on her face and fallen before her opponent, the woman's calves cut through a shapeless mass of flower petals.

A whirl of air scattered the petals along, gathering them around the attacker and letting them set all over her. In a blink of an eye, what seemed like gentle flower decorations with a silky-smooth touch became fluttering paper tags with explosive sealing glyphs on them. Mana's true shape manifested from the remnants of some petals. The magician clutched at her ribs, suggesting that she took more than a few of the head assailant's kicks, having underestimated both her skill in taijutsu and how far she will take this show of force.

"Are we done here? Whatever you were trying to prove, have you proved it?" Mana asked with a neutral hand seal hanging in the air, threatening to use her illusion and leave her opponent unconscious if she didn't settle this childish caprice down.

"Yeah, I guess we're done for now." Kiyomi smirked as Mana let her go of the illusion and let the paper tags slip off of her before dissipating long before they even touched the gravel-based road under their feet.

"Inuzuka Kiyomi?" Maiya's jaw dropped as the blonde ran her hand through her hair to reset them to the lovely, orderly curves they laid in before she became engaged in this hand-to-hand exchange. As the woman showed herself to the Allied Ninja, a handful of faceless drones in black flickered in around her. They had bestial Oni masks around their jaw and dark red goggles covering up their eyes even though their entire faces were wrapped in the leather bodysuit that they wore.

"Okay…" Skaven's curiosity broke out in a husky mumble.

"Inuzuka?" Mana turned her head to her friend and longtime partner.

"Now she wonders. You've been missing for quite some time, Mana, why don't you wander off for another year and see how many more of your friends get married in the meantime? Seems just like a thing you would do." Kiyomi waved her hand, looking defensive about not letting her friend in on the little secret sooner.

Mana was about to say something, but words became stuck in her throat. Her mind shot blanks and her mouth dried out. What was she meant to say to Kiyomi after all this time? After they both avoided one another, Kiyomi was one of the few old-time acquaintances to never reach out to Mana after Mana returned home from Jigoku. The magician just assumed that she had burned her bridge with her friend and idol from early in her career.

"Do you know this woman, Mana?" Damisan wondered, pointing to Kiyomi.

"Point your finger at the Lady again, see what happens," one of the leathery-clad nobodies stepped out from behind Kiyomi and in between the self-puppeteering ninja and his mistress.

"Nothing. His fingers are all mechanical," Endo sneered at the drone. "He breaks his entire arms all the time."

"Kiyomi I…" Mana reached out to her friend, who was losing interest in her and was looking for the leader of the Allied Ninja group. Mana's hand became limp and slipped back down by her lap when Kiyomi turned around with dulled out eyes.

"Don't waste your words. Just to be clear–we're no longer friends. Still, I don't hate you or want to eliminate you on sight like the rest of the criminals. Too much has happened between us for that. For now, I'm just going to do my job and point you in the right direction. That Meiko, honestly, what did she think would happen if she sent us here?" Kiyomi said before placing her hands on her thick laps and shaking her head.

"Meiko sent you here?" Mana raised an eyebrow, baffled.

"She did, she's gotten herself a position in Village Protection. Seeing her sending agents of the Inuzuka-Yamanaka Zaibatsu to intercept a few Allied Ninja, feels to me like abuse of her authority." Kiyomi ran her hand over her locks, flipping them up and away from her eyes.

"Village Protection sent you to intercept us? Why? I thought Konoha struck a deal with the Supreme Leader…" Shige-H rubbed her eyes with her index and her thumb.

"You're right, though it would appear that there is still some business that the Village Protection wants to settle with you. I'd head right there if I were you." Kiyomi raised her hand to point at the Hokage Rock, staring down at the villagers from high above in the northern section of the village. Mana hadn't noticed a new district of the village settling up above the Hokage Rock with tall, sky scraping rails still reaching to rake the sky further on the horizon.

"What are my orders, ma'am?" Maiya blinked rapidly as she straightened her back, stiff as a board before Kiyomi. The Yamanaka looked down at the petite shrimp and sighed. The mistress of the Yamanaka–Inuzuka Zaibatsu turned at her drones and waved at them in dismissal.

"I'll assist young Maiya in making sure that the Allied Ninja party reaches the Village Protection. There's no need for you guys to come with. We'll be attracting enough attention to ourselves as it is." Kiyomi ordered her men.

"Are you sure, ma'am?" one of her drones turned to Skaven, who began scanning the bunch of faceless googly eyed men with confusion why he was being singled out.

"Don't worry, I know Mana well enough to know she wouldn't let this Root lapdog assassinate me, if that is his true goal here." Kiyomi repeated her dismissing gesture with more gusto. "I can't leave it up to little Maiya to guide around a bunch of elite ninja and we don't want our guests to feel like they're under military surveillance either. I'll handle it myself."

"Yes, ma'am!" the drones kneeled before Kiyomi in sync and flickered away. After the puny trickles of dust that they've raised cleared out, it was as if there was not a single sign they were here at all.

"Ro… Roo…" Skaven tried to mutter what was brought up and attributed to him, looking confused, but he became even more stunned and pale when he found himself unable to pronounce those words.

"Are you insane? Do you want to get yourself killed?" Kiyomi placed her hands on her hips, waving her finger in scolding the Allied Ninja resident punk. "Don't just speak about your masters like that, haven't they taught you how the Curse Seal you wear works? I've never taken the Root to be this sloppy though maybe they just see you as extra-expendable."

"The Root…" Mana muttered to herself before placing her hand on Skaven's shoulder to calm him. "Don't talk about it. A lot of things are making sense now but you wouldn't have wanted to understand all of them. You've gone through a great deal of trouble to have me bury those memories for you."

Skaven nodded, looking non-too-happy about this, but it wasn't like he had much of a choice. How was he supposed to find out about his past from this all-knowing Yamanaka woman when he couldn't even say the name of his past employers without choking up? Trying to find out how they worked or why they sent him to the Allied Ninja in the first place would have killed him for sure, at this rate. The seals were in no rush to let up after Skaven stopped talking after all. Maybe they had a mind of their own and wouldn't have stopped strangling him at all, eventually.

"You're incredibly knowledgeable about the village matters." Endo couldn't keep his eyes from Kiyomi's back. There was nothing surprising about him not trusting the Yamanaka. She was from a whole different village and Endo started out not trusting anybody he met. Kiyomi just went that extra mile and started out attacking them. "More so than any grunt should know."

"Kiyomi-san is no mere grunt. The Inuzuka–Yamanaka Zaibatsu has all but replaced Konoha's own intelligence division. Intelligence is the one thing village turns to the Zaibatsu for these days!" Maiya observed with a know-it-all look on her face.

"I still can't believe you got married." Mana looked up at the clouds. It was one of those feelings she wasn't familiar with yet, she just hadn't the time to experience it properly, the feeling of time past, life moving on and days of one's life lost and behind. "It doesn't look like you're out of action though, your taijutsu is sharper than ever. I had a tough time evading your attacks."

"I'm not discussing my married life or the village affairs with you, Mana. It wouldn't be very professional of me to do so. Besides, I distinctly remember you crashing and ruining my last wedding." Kiyomi rebutted with her eyes turned away. The Yamanaka only looked back with a sassy look at the last reminder. No matter how wide the schism between them has grown, their mutual experiences working together and times they've saved each other's lives would still keep them connected on some level.

"I'd really like to meet your husband sometime," Mana sighed. "It feels like I've gotten so out of touch with this place."

"You are an Allied Ninja," Damisan pointed out the obvious. "You're not supposed to plead allegiance to any village and protect them all, ignoring political or economic circumstances."

"He's right, Mana. My family life is none of your business, neither is yours any of mine." Kiyomi shut the matter down.

"So, you're into slaying criminals, huh?" Endo inquired with a grumpy expression.

"I still live by Aku-Soku-Zan, yes." Kiyomi replied with a look back at the distrustful swordsman. "Mana's case is unique, though. She's paid her dues before I could get to her. I don't quite believe in redemption besides the one at the other end of a blade but those are the rules of the society we live in. If I slay that which Konoha doesn't consider evil, I'll become evil myself."

"Heh, I may like you after all," Endo smirked.

"Would you really have killed Mana if you had the chance to do so before she was imprisoned?" Shige-H wondered. There was a notable lack of belief in her voice in what she was hearing.

"Maybe not. As I've said, we've done too much together, we've saved each other too many times for it to have to end like that. Evil is more than just the blank label of being a criminal. I don't believe that Mana is evil, she just makes poor decisions. That's been the only consistent thing with her throughout her life." Kiyomi replied while the group made their way through the village streets.

Despite Kiyomi's wishes for the group to keep a low profile, it was near impossible to do so, seeing how Mana used to be public enemy No. 1 in the village, Shige-H had a dark skin alien to these lands and she dressed and kept her hair in an extremely flamboyant manner, Skaven modeled himself after the textbook definition of a punk and Damisan was a three-meter-tall human puppet with a skull mask for a face. Even in the ninja world that unified the out of the ordinary and made them feel normal, welcome and quite at home, this group just couldn't meld into a crowd to save their lives.

"If memory serves, you've had a stint working with the Village Protection yourself, isn't that right, Mana?" Kiyomi crossed her arms under her chest. "I'm sure you can take it from here."

"Really? You don't want to see…" Mana was about to ask Kiyomi about the fact she looked so resistant to the idea of a Team Hokage reunion but an authoritative and cheerful voice interrupted them, prompting the two young women and the Allied Ninja squad and the meek, geeky genin accompanying them to all direct their attention to an athletic young woman with shoulder-long tiger-colored hair and the smile to buy the entire world with waving at them by a steel staircase platform.

"Yo! Been a long time. I was wondering if the Allied Ninja would send you!" Meiko smiled like a fiendish little monkey. She had a way of getting under one's skin and then somehow winning a person over, regardless. A silky, warm blanket in human form.

"What were you thinking? Sending me after them?" Kiyomi looked up right Meiko in the eyes. Even if Mana could see the flustering washing over Kiyomi's cheeks, the woman maintained a cold and irritated look, even though it was mostly artificial.

"Heh, sorry 'bout that. I guess I just kinda thought it'd be fun getting the band back together, meeting each other after all this time. It's a one-of-a-kind occasion after all…" Meiko rubbed the back of her head and excused herself with her body language, even though her vigor didn't at all sell the impression that she was sorry one bit. "Oh, right, you can go now. Your mission's complete. We'll take it over from here."

"R-Really?" Maiya gasped. "I barely got to do anything at all!"

"Nonsense, I'm sure you were great!" Meiko gave the kid an enthusiastic thumb-up with a full-teeth smile. "Now, this becomes an official Village Protection business it's above your paygrade, kid. Don't worry, I'm sure that we can arrange a commendation note for the village administration for you."

"If it's all the same for you, I have some more important business to take care of as well." Kiyomi glared at Meiko with her arms still crossed.

"Aww, come on, Kiyomi, we haven't had time to catch up since the wedding. Plus, these Allied Ninja folks will need some help to carry the supplies through the Fire Country. We could use your hand and knowledge of the activity beyond the village walls." Meiko said. Mana couldn't believe how sharp Meiko had become over the time that she hadn't seen her best friend. Then again, Meiko had always been smart. She was just smart in some very specific areas.

"You have knowledge of nukenin and mercenary activity beyond the Konoha borders? That is incredibly useful information, we'd really appreciate it if you helped us out then." Shige-H turned to Kiyomi while Maiya stood on like a rooted tree by their side.

"I know you would. Regardless, that information is not yours to rely on." Kiyomi turned her nose away from the Allied Ninja.

"Come on, think of all the scumbags you'd have the chance to eliminate. You know your friend is pretty popular with many lowlifes and bounty hunters out there, right?" Endo teased the blonde, though Kiyomi remained adamant. In fact, she looked almost offended by the very thought that the swordsman thought such a simple attempt at manipulation would work on her.

"If I worried myself with every dirtbag out there, I'd drown in blood and guts before I'd accomplish anything useful." Kiyomi dismissed him. "Those supplies your leader negotiated with our village are yours. How you get them back to your HQ is your business entirely."

"That's not quite the case." Meiko winked her left eye and turned the left corner of her lips up. "Technically, we're in charge of handling the supplies as long as they are within the Fire Country borders."

"Tsk, you knew that the whole time, didn't you?" Kiyomi pointed her finger at Meiko. "You just tried moving all the pieces together so that somehow this would feel like old times, like Team Hokage is all back together. Well, it's not! Team Hokage died when Mana beat the crap out of the most beloved old geezer in the world, when the Zaibatsu came to be and you enrolled in Village Protection!"

"Meiko-san, I will do my best to help the Allied Ninja get their supplies to the Fire Country border!" Maiya bowed with the entire upper half of her body.

"Don't be ridiculous kid, you're barely out of the Academy, you've got no business sticking your nose out of the village gate." Kiyomi hissed at the young girl. Even though she sounded mean-spirited, it was only because their trio had burned sufficiently with just that same experience and they wanted to spare this beacon of the new generation of that same branding of what the real world outside the comfort of the village walls looked like.

"It ain't that bad. We haven't run into a single mook on our way here," Skaven shrugged. "Honestly, it was a little surprising. Almost like someone's cleaned the place. Like they were waiting to ambush someone though they never did."

"They may wait for you guys to move with the merchandise. If you suspect an ambush, we may need all the hands we can get. Those are Konoha's supplies until they leave the border, Kiyomi. Like it or not, we're responsible for them." Meiko approached her friend and stared her right in the eyes.

"We are now that you got me involved in this." Kiyomi turned away and relented, spitting sizzling venom with her tongue, regardless of her submission. "I liked you better when you had a thumb for a brain. Becoming an adult has had the worst influence on you, Meiko."

"Not to intrude on your catching up but… Where exactly are the supplies?" Shige-H crossed her arms. "We've tried finding out from Maiya but she didn't have that information for us."

"Oh, you've arrived here sooner than expected. We'll have them ready for you by midnight. You can leave in the morning." Meiko pointed out.

"If we expect an ambush, it would be better if we left immediately when the supplies are ready," Skaven suggested.

"Aren't you a Nara? You won't be fighting at full efficiency during the night." Kiyomi brought it up.

"It's a full-moon. My disadvantages will be minimal in the moonlight, plus, I've got ample flash bombs for that very purpose." Skaven shrugged.

"I guess moving through the tundra of the Snow Country rather than taking the caravan over the mountains has saved us some time, even if it wore on us." Damisan scratched his mask. It was only when Meiko's ears twitched after the metallic clang of Damisan's fingers scratching the steel surface that she turned at the skull-shaped helmet with a drooling tongue and hungry eyes.

"The craftsmanship… It looks amazing!" Meiko shrieked as she charged to turn Damisan around, examining every inch of his gear and decorations.

"Wow… You… Seem to have an eye for this sort of stuff…" Damisan chuckled in discomfort, clearly inconvenienced by Meiko's enthusiastic check-up, but not wanting to reject the dreamy-eyed blacksmith.

"Some things never change…" Mana sighed to herself.

---

"So, how high up the VP ladder did you get?" Mana wondered while the group moved on past the crucial midday hours to examine the supplies. Meiko suggested that there was a slim chance of the supplies being ready before the sunset and, because of Damisan's rich face and Endo faking his disinterest while sneaking peeks left and right when he thought nobody was looking, they were taking the longer, scenic route.

"Not that much. Only been at it for a few months. They're probably still holding some load back on me…" Meiko rubbed the back of her head, looking modest, yet animated. "This is the sixth case that I've had since I've started working. Most of my work on VP comprises ambitious brats trying to stick their nose in for the bragging rights about having snuck into Konohagakure with their friends or plastered mercenaries wandering in by accident."

"Wandering into a secure ninja village with the second, if not currently the strongest, military in the world and by far the most stable economy and the highest population?" Shige-H turned to Meiko with a shift in her eyebrows because of someone wondering if they heard the last sentence right.

"Happens more often than you would think. The guys are just wandering about, from one neck of a bottle to the next, and they won't notice stumbling into a ninja village and slipping their nose into a cozy little bar near the wall. When the world's blurry enough for you, outside and inside establishments don't look too different, or so I've been told," Meiko shrugged and elaborated.

"You would have been better joining the police force," Kiyomi muttered while lacking the engagement to look at her friend. "It will take years for you to get anywhere within the Village Protection. You don't have that kind of patience."

"No way!" Meiko objected, crossing her arms. "Police Force barely even handles any dangerous work. I wanna do something more important than just disciplining drunkards and unruly hooligans. I want to do my part in protecting the village, just like…" Meiko turned to Mana before becoming flustered and letting her eyes dart off wildly in all directions as she sought for a suitable completion of that sentence. "Just like a hero," she concluded at last.

"I approve of this decision," Mana nodded, looking bluish, because her friend felt as if she had touched a hot kettle when she nearly called Mana a hero. She had never expected to sense a divide between herself and Kiyomi. In fact, the last they've met, it felt like Meiko was one of the few people to still support Mana in everything she did, yet somehow her new friend now felt so… Alien.

"Anyway," Meiko waved it off, doing so in quite a rush, not letting Mana's approval linger in the air as if it would have left a notable stench in the atmosphere, "Aren't you going to go home and see your mom?"

"I… We're on a mission, Meiko. That would be selfish." Mana jumped up at first before looking at the gap between her toes that tried to rub through the soles of her sandals from awkwardness.

"Are you sure? We're literally just checking up on the supplies, it's a really wild chance that they're ready. You could easily slip in and out and see everyone you want to see." Meiko raised her eyebrow. This time it was the redhead who felt like she was talking to an alien.

"It completely slipped my mind that you have family and friends here, Mana!" Shige-H turned to the shriveling ninja magician as well. "You should totally go see them. It's not like you're going to get lost or anything and we've got entire hours left until we leave. Who knows when we'll be back here… You said it yourself back when–we will not see an end to extra assignments in a while until the Allied Ninja get back on their feet."

"I'd really rather not…" Mana rubbed her elbow, making her sleeve let out a leathery squeak. "This mission is incredibly important to the Allied Ninja. If this doesn't work out–the entire recovery plan goes out the window."

"What is wrong with you?" Meiko yelled out, raising her hands over her head as if she needed to look any larger than she already was. "It's like you're trying to hurt people on purpose! First you just jump up and move to a whole other part of the world without warning, as if we haven't shared a history together, as if all those times meant nothing! How can you be so mean to your mother? Do you even have any idea how hard it must be on her? Barely having seen her kid grow up before she had gone off who knows where, doing who knows what while the rest of the village shit-talks her all the time!"

If only they'd have been alone. If only Mana would have had an opportunity to talk to Meiko and find out what this was about without the rest of the Stars. The true reason she wouldn't see her mother, why she was afraid to stick her nose in the Konoha Hospital to check up on father, she may have trusted Meiko and Kiyomi with that but… The Stars were far too fresh in her life for a cut this deep, they've scratched, bit and clawed each other too thoroughly lately, exposed too many nerves.

"Look, everyone, I think the supplies are ready!" Maiya yelled out, pointing at a massive pile of construction materials wrapped over and positioned all over a yard of the warehouse district.

"That's way too much! How are we going to transport them all the way to the Allied Ninja HQ?" Shige-H scratched her head. Mana sighed as if an infernal imp had just vaulted off her shoulders and she no longer had to tread around the sensitive grounds of incredibly thin ice that the topic Meiko brought up made her to tip-toe on.

"Oh, don't you worry about that! I told you guys that we're in charge of the supplies until they leave Fire Country, right? We'll just load them up on the railway and send them going off to the east!" Meiko smirked, placing her knuckles on her hips as if she just declared something amazing.

"The railway. That could work." Endo scratched his chin. "The railway would make it harder for bandits to attack us as well, it would provide us with some terrain advantage as well."

"I have a feeling, solely based on how this topic won't descend from the top of your head, that you actually hope that we're attacked." Damisan pointed to his ally with an accusatory squint.

"Why not? Thieves or assassins, I'm happy to send all of them to the underworld!" Endo grabbed the hilt of his blade, showing pride in his straight stance and vigor by drawing it by a few centimeters before letting the handle tick pleasantly at the edge of the sheathe again. "With every assassin we kill, there'll be fewer for Mana to worry about. That's why you're so pissy about seeing your precious family, aren't you?"

Chilling needles skewered Mana's spine. She stretched her face awkwardly freezing in place at the return of her much-dreaded topic. Endo, that bastard, why did he go on keeping something troublesome like that at the top of his mind? Couldn't he just let it go? Everyone else was about to do so. Just as it occurred to Mana that maybe Endo's suggestion wasn't that bad of an excuse to waggle in front of everyone's eyes and shroud the topic once and for all with, everyone just moved away from it.

"That won't work. The eastern railway might head around the mountain range of the Snow Country from the eastern side, but it's far from complete. It doesn't even reach the southern side of the mountains." Shige-H objected.

"Wow, it's almost like Kumogakure should care more about their logistics and transportation rather than pump their ryo into their military all the time." Kiyomi rolled her eyes. "In either case, the supplies will be out of our hands by then. Out of our hands and out of our responsibility. We'll have kept up our end of the bargain and surpassed it by a wide margin. Our deal only included handing the supplies off to you guys and waving you farewell. Now you'll get a fine train ride service until at least southern Snow Country."

"This is ridiculous! What do you suggest us do, push the whole train home through one of the largest and least hospitable wastelands in the entire world?" Shige-H turned to Kiyomi. The two looked like they will go to war over this.

"Why not? At least you won't need to worry about Mana's reputation for getting all of you killed entirely because of her." Kiyomi shrugged.

"Actually, since the journey back will take us more than a couple of weeks, I might use some of the construction materials to tinker something up. I don't know, maybe we can use the rich Land of Lightning minerals to propel the train and use magnetism to carry us the rest of the way, maybe I can design propeller blades strong enough to ride the rest of the way or maybe I can just stick a rocket to it or something…?" Damisan pondered to himself, slipping out his prosthetic hand out from his body-surrounding cape to ponder while Meiko dashed to the scarred ninja and grabbed hold of his arm.

"Is that a metal arm!?" Meiko shrieked. "I'll help you cover up your return trip if you let me help you work on a prototype of this!"

"Wait, you're coming with them? You don't expect me to come with them, do you?" Kiyomi pointed to herself, making a sour expression at her blacksmith friend.

"Sure, we're coming at least until the Fire Country border. Don't worry, we can make the trip back in four to six hours flat." Meiko waved her hand at it.

"Maybe you have nothing better to do with your four to six hours back in VP, but I have a whole underground war going on with… And I've already babbled too much…" Kiyomi hissed in frustration, grabbing her temples and rubbing her tired eyeline.

"I'm coming too!" Maiya declared. "Making sure that the Allied Ninja get everything they need and that the deal goes forth smoothly is part of my mission objective too!"

"Kid, you've got a D or C-Rank mission with this. You've already gone above and beyond it," Kiyomi advised the young kunoichi, but determination beamed through Maiya's lenses like they were a lighthouse.

"Alright, guys, the supplies are ready for you, but we haven't loaded them up yet. It'll just take a good pair of hours!" one of the more important looking warehouse workers yelled at the grouped-up cluster of ninja.

"Just great, more waiting around." Endo turned his head away, leaving Kiyomi in the dust with how little he wanted to do with this situation.

"Cheer up, Endo! You know, if you do the math, technically, Konoha is still a good couple of hours ahead of their schedule so they're still saving us time, if you look at it that way," Damisan pointed out, finding an opportunity to stick out the forearms of his prosthetic hands out through his cover and making Meiko's eyes luster.

"He must be your "actually" guy…" Kiyomi snickered. "Everyone has one, I guess."

"So…" Meiko turned to Mana, pressing her knuckles to her hips to where it looked like the blacksmith would squeeze herself out through her mouth like a toothpaste. "Don't tell me you're going to just stand here and wait!"

"I mean… What if something goes wrong, what if bandits attack and try to steal the supplies? What if they've paid off those very workers and they're loading them up the wrong railway only to be taken somewhere else entirely?" Mana shrugged, feigning innocence with a sub-par excuse.

"Okay… I'm doing this for the very last time ever." Kiyomi's voice echoed throughout Mana's mind. She recognized the familiar tone and mental vibrations. Mana had never felt nostalgic for a bunch of painless head pulses, but there was a first time for everything, it seemed. "What's up with you right now?"

"Yeah! The good old communication line!" Meiko's voice boomed through the mental space, whipping up a migraine comparable to someone hammering repeatedly at a gong inside of everyone's heads. "See, Mana? You're even making Kiyomi worry!"

"You misunderstand me, Meiko. I couldn't care less about Mana's family troubles or that cringe drama queen act she's constantly working through. Right now, she's acting suspicious, and it's a potential liability to the success of our mission objective. Knowledge is kind of my gig, so I want to know why." Kiyomi relayed on the three-people-exclusive mental link.

Mana grit her teeth. She could feel her own nails digging into her hands, and no matter how much they shook, it didn't help. Mana sent a pulse of chakra, a crashing wave that was meant to wash Kiyomi out of her mind. Not that different from how Mana would have dispelled an illusion and given how well-regarded her specialty in illusions was, there was no surprise that Team Hokage's presence in her mind disappeared in a blink.

"That's cute." Kiyomi's voice filled Mana's thoughts again. "When I realized you leave me in the dust in terms of genjutsu, I left the discipline alone. I'd advise you do that same thing instead of trying to compete with me on the mental plane."

"Leave my head!" Mana yelled out loud. The Stars all turned to her with the entire spectrum of looks, each member considering Mana their own unique degree of insane. "I'm not a liability to this mission. I don't want to visit my comatose, possibly dead, father in the hospital or the cemetery, for that matter, and I don't want to see anyone else either! There's a reason I've left this village and the villagers behind and it's because most of them wouldn't mind reading about my death in the morning post on the announcements board by the village gate and a whole massive bunch of them wouldn't mind doing the punishing. It took a while, sure, but I've come to where I realized I hate this place and these people too! This is the village that slaughtered my mother's people and I've given away all that I can give for it anyway, there's nothing but the taste of blood and bile in my mouth here. You don't need to mind probe me to find that out, Kiyomi!"

"Wait… Mind probe? She can do that?" Endo blinked twice, igniting Endo's mistrust in someone was that easy. He was the type of guy to want to kill someone, declare he liked and agreed with that same person later, then go right back to hating their guts again for the slightest of reasons.

"Oh shit, what if she's probing us right now?" Damisan grabbed his head. "I should have known, Konoha is the home of the Yamanaka clan, all of their most prominent and powerful members live here! I should have insulated my face for mental attacks… Can you even do that sort of thing?" he turned to everyone, looking for any hints to a potential answer but nobody gave him one. Most of them didn't know, while the rest didn't care to give him one.

"W-Wait… You hate Konoha, Mana?" Meiko's eyes shook and her eyebrows sunk to a grimace of profound sadness. It was the closest to the infamous puppy eyes a human could get. "Does that mean…?"

"I didn't stutter once, saying it all, did I?" Mana turned her eyes away. Her feet started moving all by themselves, taking Mana away. There was no way that this entire warehouse complex would have been enough to get out of Kiyomi's range, but results didn't particularly matter at this point in time–just the struggle did.

It was easier to be hated; it was so much easier to lie and push people away. She's been doing her duty as settled on with the Root over a year ago for so long and she's been doing it so well that drawing heat became second nature to her. If only she inspired that much inspiration and adoration as a hero when she still was one…

"We could kill her, you know." Endo's voice came from behind. Mana would have lashed out at him, but her words froze in the back of her throat as the full realization of what he just suggested with a straight face hit her.

"What?" Mana's right eye twitched.

"I mean, sure, it's a different village and all, but the two of us are strong. We could take that woman. That redhead, she's probably trouble too, but I can see it in her eyes–she's weak for you. Call it friendship, or whatever, she's not ready to get what it takes to be the best. You and me, we could take them." Endo clenched his fist and extended it toward Mana, who just squinted her right eye and pointed at him.

"Are you suggesting we kill both my best friend and longtime friend and idol whom I've always looked up to as a kunoichi and sabotage the only chance at recovery to full power that the Allied Ninja have?" Mana asked directly.

"No, but it will help if you keep that in mind. It always helps me when someone's annoying me." Endo shrugged.

Mana smacked her forehead, just to feel some sharp, slapping sensation and pain that could distract her from the chuckle that was coming up. Everything had been building up–her frustration, her disability to put it into words, the ever-widening schism between her and her friends, old and new alike, that Endo felt genuinely charming right now and Mana found it cute he gave a shit about how she felt at the moment and the fact she currently felt like she got along better with Endo, of all people, than her old friends whom she shared life debts with multiple times over.

---

The obsidian, howling and blowing automaton rolled on constructed, dug-up hills where Fire Country's labor force had extended a railway rolling over cut-up, artificial planes and ravines flowing with snorting rivers. The industrial juggernaut blended in with the dark blue night's sky and the marigold moon provided the only lighting to the nocturnal scene that nature could provide. Not an artificial light source for countless kilometers as the train rolled on in an arrowing precision to race around the Snow Country mountain range.

"So, what's your deal?" Meiko pointed to Damisan, bashing the silence over the head with a hammer that way. A few interested parties opened their eyes from meek half-slumber that they kept watch in. It was fortunate that the carrier train had a few wagons that were suited for transporting a handful of humans and that the Konoha and Allied Ninja parties didn't have to sit atop of raw construction materials during the daunting trip.

"Me? Oh, I just like to be included in everything…" Damisan pointed to himself. While his expression was impossible to tell underneath the skull-shaped mask, his tone sounded curious and soft from underneath it.

"No, I mean your looks. You look like a massive, mean guy, but you hide your body underneath that gown. That's one badass mask, but I don't really see a practical use to it. It doesn't seem like its material is any tougher than your own noggin when you augment your toughness with chakra augmentation," Meiko pointed out.

"Oh… Oh, a tragic attempt at my life has left my body horribly scarred after the settlement I lived in was attacked by a scourge named Fennec and his men. Fennec had been staying there for a while, having grown fond of my home village. I came back there for a little breather after my promotion to Special Jounin in the art of puppetry. While I was a local, someone of my fellow settlers reported the fact that I was a Sunagakure ninja to Fennec and he treated me as he does the Sheikhs, the Wind Feudal Lord and the Kazekage–as a living hand of his sworn enemy and retaliated against me. My own settlers gave me up. They cheered as Fennec's men executed my parents and my little sister for trying to prevent my own execution and strung what they left of their bodies on poles as an example. When Fennec tore the flesh off my bones, one coarse grain of searing sand at a time, like sandpaper, the settlers I pulled pranks on and who used to sell me fruit and borrow my family zest and sugar howled in pride as if Fennec was torturing the Kazekage himself. You can understand why after my survival the settlement meetings were a bit tense…" Damisan scratched the shell of his mask as if it was a part of his actual head.

"Fennec?" Meiko pondered, turning her head up and shriveling her face like a raisin. "I seem to recall that guy. Ah! He was some renegade plaguing the country while we were looking for the Box of Ultimate Bliss!"

"He was once a mercenary under the employ of one of the Sheikhs. The Sheikh he worked under was inept, born into his riches and thriving regardless of how well or how bad he was ruling. Fennec basically had to do all his hard work, strategizing and ruling for his master while the slob continued the allow the high life to pamper him further. At some point, Fennec developed a philosophy that one's position in life had to correlate directly to how capable one is, so he had the army he commanded for half his life execute their master and they left to unite the entire Wind Country desert under his command so that they could demolish the Sunagakure and end the Sheikhate system and throw the Wind Feudal Lord to a pack of jackals too." Damisan said. The usual goofy cheer that persisted in his voice.

"A piece of advice," Kiyomi spoke up, still lacking enough care in the ongoing situation to open her eyes and gaze at the ninja she spoke with, "Don't tell Mana that you could have stopped some dirtbag like that but didn't. She'll just blame herself for it, like she always does, and fuck everything up for everybody because of her crushed spirit and constant internal drama. It's how she is, it's what she does."

"Kiyomi…" Meiko was about to object, but she simply didn't find any words to do so.

"Weren't the two of you teammates? Your incarnation of the Team Hokage is well-regarded in Konoha history and more than justifying the wild expectations placed on a squad led by the Hokage." Maiya barked out a meek objection.

"That's true. I'm just stating the fact, since you lot will have to work with her. She's a powerful ninja but mentally she's a wreck. I don't know if she ever was all up there to begin with or if the impressive work she's done left her that way. I didn't accompany Mana on all of her missions, though if I wasn't such a softie and if I was a more efficient intelligence officer, I'd have advised Konoha to liquidate her long ago. She's too powerful and too unstable in her current condition." Kiyomi shrugged.

"And what exactly, beside wishing that you'd have asked to have her killed, have you done to help her as her friend?" Shige-H wondered, knowing full-well she'd get under Kiyomi's skin that way and manipulating her voice to sound as silky and flaunting as possible.

"Mana wants to fix the world. She wants to prevent anyone ever from dying, from suffering misfortune or pain. Whatever you do, however you try to help her, it's of no use. She'll just sulk and find a thing to hate and blame herself for, regardless. Frankly, a liquidation would have done her a favor. Don't you think it hurts me too to see her that way? Meeting her now it's… I have hoped that Mana had kept her personality after going through Jigoku, but… Maybe that was naïve to think that way. She's become… Well, every bit of hate she gets, justified or not, she seems to absorb and issue back as a thorny cloak these days. She's changed a great deal since I've met her." Kiyomi finally became engaged in the subject when the door rolled open and the young woman who had unintentionally become the focus of the conversation walked from the wagon in the back.

"Mana-san, you've come to join us? That wagon back there isn't operational, so there's no light in there. You and Endo-san should join us." Maiya nodded with a joyous expression.

"No, we're about to be attacked. I sense chakra signatures around us." Mana informed the group, prompting them to jump up and begin preparations. Only Maiya remained seated and blinked a few more times before freaking out. Despite her terror, the young lady began trying to calm herself, blowing her cheeks out as her face became red. She had hoped that holding her breath would make her body run out of juice to fear with.

"How many?" Kiyomi inquired.

"Five. I'm quite confident about that assessment. They're all dangerous, lower A-Rank tier ninja. Their chakra is rather distinctive, each has their own distinct feeling to them. I'm sure I'll never confuse them for anyone ever again." Mana replied.

"Do you have any idea who that might be?" Meiko wondered.

"None. Their level of skill suggests them to either be village ninja or…" Mana let her first call linger.

"Assassins." Endo walked out from the wagon in the back, stretching out his neck and swinging an ancient-looking hilt in the air that evidently lacked a blade.

"Holy cannoli, is that…!?" Meiko whited out and dropped to the ground with a foamy mouth before scurrying back on her knees and crawling up to Endo, performing his preparatory kata with his unignited legendary weapon.

"Sword of the Thunder God, yes." Endo nodded. "I have bested its owner, or rather, the man who had stolen it from its previous owner and the Allied Ninja are too messy at the moment to notice it and confiscate it from me for themselves. That's fine by me, the sword and I have formed a certain connection and I've grown quite fond of it now."

"I mean… There were a few other elements involved in "besting its owner"…" Damisan shrugged.

"Yes, yes… You guys helped out at times to even the score against a man with a legendary sword." Endo waved his hand in dismissal.

The train just stopped in place. Weight and gravity all disappeared at once as the front wagon sent its inhabitants flying, things were far worse with the back wagons as inertia called for them to continue booming onward while an unseen, ethereal force had stopped the front already, causing them to fly and tumble, scattering the construction supplies all over the area and causing general wreck and mayhem. The armored window of the front wagon burst as the Allied and Konoha ninja burst out to meet their attackers.

Just like Mana assumed, there were five of them. Their appearances had been remarkably familiar to her. Especially the man in the center, who had fiery flares fading away in the surrounding air in the strange, vague form of a horned fiend. The man had been black as coal and had a rocky layer of texture for skin. Ghastly faces of men and women in their final, dreadful moments decorated that very same coal-black skin. Smoke had been spreading from the screaming, open mouths of those faces.

"Nakotsumi Mana, Konoha's Sorceress, to think that you made your way back to the Fire Country and made things that much easier for us." The coal-man with an open, white shirt spread his arms to the sides, showing off his well-tempered as it was disturbing chest.

"The Nine Tales Gang…" Mana hissed. "We don't have time for you!"

"The Nine Tales Gang?" Kiyomi wondered. "I'd have thought that a mercenary group of your renown would have had better intelligence. Mana had successfully passed through the entire Fire Country and made her way through Konoha, we're reaching the Fire Country border now by train as well, you took your sweet time to attack."

"You misunderstand." the devilish coal-black man with a horn growing out on the back of his head that resembled a ponytail type of growth when one flexed one's eye at it long enough shook his head. "We knew that the Konoha's Sorceress and her group were here the whole time. We were just biding our time for the perfect conditions to attack. She's worked her way through half of our group already, it's about time we take her seriously enough for our biggest guns."

"Five of you…" Mana ran her eyes, counting the entire group, including a tall and bulky, bare-chested man with triangular, curly brown hair and a beard nearly reaching the ground, an attractive, tall and fit young man with curly, blond hair, a woman with a silky, white dress decorated with white feathers and a tall yet gaunt old man to whom the rest of the gang barely measured up to the lower waist to. "So, you've brought the entire gang here."

"That's right, though you're the only one we care about, it seems like your allies at the Allied Ninja like you too much to let us just take your head and claim the bounty on it." The coal-black man explained.

"What are you waiting for, Varan! Do the headcount, will you? They still outnumber us by quite a margin, go ahead and eliminate the Sorceress already!" the towering, skin hanging on top of a weathered skeleton shook his fist over the clustered group of mercenaries and assassins.

"I won't be this easy to eliminate!" Mana took a fighting stance, in a blink a handful of cards with sealing glyphs on them slipped out from under her sleeve and into her hand but the man called Varan raised his hand up, pointing his finger at the marigold-colored full moon as the mouth in the center of his chest spat out a mouthful of slobber, as if belching up after eating something that didn't agree with it.

"These guys are seriously freaky…" Damisan winced in disgust.

"You're the one to talk…" Endo gave his ally a mocking glare from the sidelines.

"Stay back," Meiko instructed Maiya after seeing her horrified reaction to the gruesome display of body horror from her unnatural opponents. "This isn't the type of opponent you can fight. Find a place in the wagon you can hide in, we'll have to put that train back on the rails and keep it going after we're through with…"

Before Meiko could finish her sentence or the hand of playing cards with various seals in them could leave Mana's hand, the mouth that had just belched up bodily fluids slipped out a transparent, blush-colored crystal ball that levitated in mid-air until it became level with the Moon. The trace of black circles decorated the reflection of the moon. The circles halted their rotation, revealing themselves to carry the markings of a multitude of tomoe.

"The Sharingan?" Kiyomi's eyes became focused in a blink. While before she thought little this group of mercenaries, identifying the calling card of a hated enemy from her past had a tendency to change such attitudes.

The blush crystal orb released a beaming shine from its core, one that enveloped the orb and, strengthened by its reflective qualities, enveloped the entire area, swallowing all before it in white. Damisan charged onward and through the overwhelming flash. His skull mask assisted him in overcoming the blinding effects on the flash and he had taken on the offensive as he charged onward with a hook of his prosthetic hand that leveled the entire area, rooted entire trees out and left a wasteland of a forest growing on the sidelines of the railway tracks.

"He's gone…" Damisan grit his teeth. "Their leader is gone. Why attack us just to escape?"

"He's not the only one that's gone!" Meiko yelled out. "Mana's gone too!"

"What!?" Shige-H turned to where her ally was meant to be, right before her, but neither she nor the enemy leader appeared to be in sight.

"What's that?" Meiko looked up and pointed at an iron pyramid erected all the way on the horizon with its peak standing so tall up that it seemed to touch the bottom of the full moon when viewed from where they were looking at it from.

"There's no use in these guessing games," Endo hissed, igniting his Sword of the Thunder God with a wrathful hum of the electrical current passing through the ancient hilt.

"It's true, one of these goons is bound to know something." Kiyomi agreed, taking a fighting stance and preparing to eliminate the enemy to find out what they knew.

"There's no need for that. It's clear that Mana and that horned punk are in that stupid pyramid. Let's just carve our way through these nobodies and knock!" Endo pointed his Sword of the Thunder God at the remaining members of the Nine Tales Gang.

"I like the way you think." Kiyomi smirked.

---

Mana opened her eyes when the light didn't feel like it'd claw them out if she did so anymore. What she saw before her was the last thing she expected to see when she recovered - the idyllic sights of a bustling ninja village. The shock was so profound that Mana's arm shook and lagged behind her intent to lower by her side. The young woman gazed about in all directions.

"Konoha? So this is clearly an illusion…" Mana muttered to herself. She clapped her hands together and concentrated an outright monstrous amount of chakra underneath her feet. An overflowing force made the busy Konoha street rumble and split open as indigo-colored jets ravaged it and a dome of energy formed around Mana. The people rushed away from her, looking baffled. The magician split her palms and lowered the hands. She hadn't seen an illusion even she couldn't break out of lately.

The haziness of mind, that was a common component of most illusions, had been absent. Usually, illusionists employed it to fool the mind better, make it more malleable and susceptible to primal emotions such as fear. Hardened ninja veterans may not have feared childish body horror, but when one's mind had been clouded enough–they'd have wetted their underwear writhing on the floor before it.

Mana blinked once and dashed to the side. A woman dressed in black leather, wearing provocative make-up and holding her blond hair in a youthful ponytail, glided in a straight line. Kiyomi's hand had been pointing like the tip of a spear and Mana could sense focused chakra around the area, suggesting that she had formed one of those ethereal, mental blades from before. Mana hadn't seen that technique used much, but just seeing it here and now seemed enough to understand it better.

"Kiyomi, what are you doing here? Why are you attacking me? Also, what are you wearing?" Mana inquired, wondering if this was her friend who shared Mana's illusion, a likely circumstance given all of them had been enveloped by the flash of light that served as a medium for the illusion, or just a version of the Yamanaka heiress from Mana's own mind.

"You have no right to scare people like that, now die!" Kiyomi hissed, vaulting toward Mana with uncontrollable swings of her palm. Awareness faded away and the magician's stare dulled out when a red slash colored her dirty sleeveless shirt and split it nearly in half. Not being able to see Kiyomi's mental weaponry was proving to be a massive problem, though as she observed her friend closer, avoiding her attacks became a simpler matter. Keeping close attention to Kiyomi's palm and hand movements and employing imagination served as a fine method to assist Mana's first-rate evasive skills.

"Shit, I actually have no clue…" Mana grit her teeth. There didn't seem to be anything wrong with Kiyomi–she had the exact, unaltered chakra signature. She didn't appear to be just a figment of the illusion and nothing about her felt wrong. Was this illusion simply on such a high level? If that was the case, Mana had met her match, if not her superior, in terms of the illusionary arts.

"You've strayed from the path of righteousness. You've become evil and as such I must slay you immediately!" Kiyomi barked out, charging at Mana again. The magician weaved around the invisible mental weaponry by following Kiyomi's hand movements. Finding an opening to weave her own hand seal, Mana crafted a meek illusion of her own.

"You!" Kiyomi pointed her mental blade toward a nearby, illusionary young man who had just spilled his drink on the ground and dropped the paper cut on the floor. "Litterer! Your evil knows no bounds, I shall eliminate you at once!"

"Okay…" Mana muttered to herself from atop of a nearby roof, where Kiyomi didn't have an immediate sight of her. "How in the world did that work?"

Something was seriously wrong, but also absolutely breathtaking about this illusionary world. It was clearly a genjutsu, though not one that Mana could break. This would have made it easily surpass A or even S-Rank, though this peculiar version of Kiyomi with her characteristics dialed up to 11 squared didn't feel at home within the confines of a high-ranking illusion. Usually, an illusionist strived to create a perfect copy of the world–it made it harder to identify and break out of the illusion. It also served as a showcase of an illusionist's skill. It displayed their uncanny observation and meticulousness.

Mana expanded the range of her sensory to its very limits, encompassing most of the village, but she couldn't pick up on any of the familiar chakra signatures. Namely, none of the Stars or the leader of the Nine Tales Gang who cast this illusion. There was just one way of finding out if they were anywhere in the vicinity. If the one they called Varan actually had the power to duplicate an entire Earth and scatter the individual captives of the illusion apart, that was a fearsome ability.

Not to mention–with each passing second Mana could have been leaving her actual body unattended, depending on how this illusion worked and if this truly was her own mental self roaming this illusion as she had feared. Time may have flowed slower within this illusionary realm, or so Mana presumed, since there would have been no reason at all for the Nine Tales Gang not to decapitate her immediately after the illusion took hold of her. If the physical body of Mana's got killed, her mental self would have blinked out at the same time of her death. This may have truly been a race against time, despite how strangely peaceful this village seemed.

The sight of the Hokage Mountain in the distance blurred as Mana felt the taste of blood in her mouth. Something rough hit her back, and it became impossible to tell up from down. She was rolling off the rooftop. Kiyomi dashed up in a blink, holding a mental blade by the hilt in her left hand and ready to finish the job. She had her right hand in the position of flinging something so she must have flung a handful of mental kunai at Mana when the magician tried making things here make more sense.

"There is nowhere in this world that evil can escape from me!" Kiyomi proudly proclaimed.

Feeling the gravity intensify under her feet as just pulling her body off her knees became a meddlesome chore, Mana stumbled on both feet and wiped the blood from her mouth. There were a handful of bleeding wounds on her chest and abdomen, even though the mental kunai had evaporated during Mana's fall.

"Fine, how about I don't go anywhere then?" Mana sighed. "After all, isn't that why you guys are so mad at me? Because I always prioritize everything else, whatever world-shaking crisis I'm working on resolving currently instead of us?"

"What… What is this? You're not talking your way out of this, servant of evil!" Kiyomi took a sword-fighting stance while holding a mental blade in a high stance. Mana breathed out and focused on the here and now, forgetting the big picture. That was when she saw. Clear as day. Kiyomi's mental blade. These mental objects that Kiyomi could produce were part mind but also chakra. Mana's chakra sensory enabled her to see them if only she paid close enough attention to them and to the matters at hand.

"I'm not trying to. If you think killing me will solve anything, go ahead. Better you than some lowlife mercenary who trapped me here," Mana encouraged Kiyomi by opening up her stance.

"So, you accept your just execution, foul demoness? Wait… Lowlife?" Kiyomi straightened her back and allowed her mental sword to evaporate into thin air. "You mean that there is an even grander evil scheme afoot? Very well, I shall postpone your immediate slaying if you take me to your mastermind at once!"

"Aww… I always knew you had a soft spot for me, no matter how much I disappointed you." Mana smirked, clutching at her wounds.

"You're of no use to me dead right now, take this!" Kiyomi pulled out a jar from the back of her leathery underwear. Mana stared at the jar of ointment with discomfort, wondering where it was and if it at all mattered, given how everything around her was just an illusion anyway. Helping Mana treat her wounds and looking somewhat reserved about having caused them in the first place was a nice restart to their beautiful friendship.

"Do you think you can help me find Meiko?" Mana looked up at her oddly flamboyant friend.

"Meiko? She works as an errand girl these days at the Village Protection…" Kiyomi pointed at the Hokage Mountain where Mana last sensed Meiko's signature in, before getting skewered by mental knives. "You really need to bandage that."

"I'd feel terrible about taking away more clothes from you, it feels like you're in especially short supply in this world." Mana blushed while slicing her leather jacket to ribbons and tightening the straps around her wounds the best she could. "Now, we may not have much time, let's hurry!"

---

"Please, guys, I really can't let you pass any further! Mrs. Mikapen is really gonna be mad at me again if muck this up too!" a tall yet frail-looking geeky girl in thick glasses shook her open palms that should have been massive enough to slap a yokozuna away.

"Ugh… What happened to you, Meiko?" Mana scratched her head. "The changes in this illusionary world seem way more massive than I thought. It would have taken decades to degrade your body to such a puny shape, if you had any bulk at all here…"

"You don't have to be offensive about it just because I didn't let you pass, Konoha's Sorceress. Just because you're a big-shot starlet and all, it don't mean you can just waltz inside an administration facility like that and do as you please." Meiko fixed her glasses twice, tilting them up and sliding them higher up her nose. They were hefty enough to weigh and slip further down the slope.

"Forget her. She is useless and weak. She is in no condition to stop us from finding the evil mastermind and slaying him, and then you." Kiyomi crossed her arms, taking bold yet slow steps forward to trigger a response from Meiko that would justify a violent response toward the nerd.

"Y… You're right!" Meiko bawled it out. "I am useless!" she collapsed on the ground and crawled to a table corner where a frustrated Village Protection ninja tried to get some work done. "All I'm good for is nothing, and that's why Mrs. Mikapen won't trust me with any actual work! I even screw up getting her coffee right, for Pete's sake!"

"Meiko, can you take your mental breakdown literally anywhere else?" the frustrated Village Protection ninja grumbled, running his hand up and down his face nervously.

"Huh…" Mana scratched her head. "This must be your gimmick then?"

"Gimmick?" Kiyomi turned to Mana.

"Yeah, you're dressing provocatively and take your Aku-Soku-Zan to a ridiculous extent whereas normally you used to be sort of cool about it and get your urge under control, Meiko seems to lack her physical might, cheerfulness and confidence." Mana pointed out. "I have serious doubts if any of you are truly sealed here with me, otherwise, I'd have noticed some drastic changes to my personality as well."

"If this is some sick way of avoiding your righteous execution, I swear…" Kiyomi reared her teeth.

"Calm down, please." Mana waved at her friend and kneeled beside Meiko, lightly tapping her shoulder. "It's okay. We're not the enemies of the village, you're helping the village and doing your job well by helping us."

"I am?" Meiko rubbed her glassy-looking eyes.

"Don't do this, Meiko, these guys are just trying to talk you into something stupid again," the groaning Village Protection ninja from nearby spoke up. "I'm gonna have to report you to Mrs. Mikapen if you assist these ninja."

"Do so at the peril of your own head!" Kiyomi raised her hand, manifesting a mind-sword in her hand at once with just a quick yet focused thought.

"Please, time-out, you two!" Mana reached out for the two of her friends. "Meiko, we need to use the Liquid Village Sensory System. I think that a dangerous criminal might be somewhere beyond this village. If I use my own sensory abilities with the assistance of the Sensory System, I can expand my range to the entire Fire Country. He must be somewhere nearby, I refuse to believe it that Varan would just drop me here and have no representation of himself."

"The Liquid Village Sensory System? Oh boy… That's… That's… No way, you guys, I can get into so much trouble…" Meiko began nervously chewing on her fingernails that looked like they had gone to town on already in the past.

"Varan? So that is the name to righteousness' pain!" Kiyomi cracked her knuckles.

"Please don't do that, you're making the chances of developing arthritis later in life skyrocket!" Meiko grabbed her head and pulled on her hair.

Mana's gaze dulled out as sheer terror took her over. She jumped up and turned around, knowing exactly where her nemesis was. Still, regardless of the fact that her enemy had revealed himself to her and answered the question about whether or not he himself inhabited this world, his location made Mana's heart skip multiple beats at once.

"What's wrong, rat?" Kiyomi inquired.

"I think it's a case of sudden constipation. It affects 0.40% adults each year. It is a real day-bleaker, let me tell you this…" Meiko pulled up her glasses again.

"He's… Here…" Mana's lips went pale as she whimpered. "In Konoha… At my home."

"Huh? If you knew where he was all along, why did we go on this wild trip and wasted time with this dweeb!?" Kiyomi flipped out.

"Name-calling, yes, very mature…" Meiko rolled her eyes. "Also, not even that good at it, it seems. Do you honestly think I haven't heard "dweeb" before?"

"I'm this close to never stopping stabbing you…" Kiyomi pinched her fingers.

"Ooh, such a big girl! You know that you'd have to kill yourself then, according to the Aku-Soku-Zan, right?" Meiko fixed her glasses, looking mighty-smug as she pointed it out. "W-Wait… Why are you still looking pissed?"

"Because I'm still seriously considering it." Kiyomi growled with a silent grunge.

"Why would he come to my home?" Mana pondered, despite her primal instincts demanding that she dashed there at once, ignoring all speed limitations and safety. She hesitated to follow-up on them.

"Obviously to slay your entire family as revenge for snitching him out." Kiyomi seemed glad to stop having to look at Meiko and return to something useful.

"Yes, yes, but… He must know that my mother is illusionary. She's a version of my mother from this world, not my actual mother. He must also know that I know that…" Mana began pacing to the front and back of the office.

"Can you please cease this at once? It is very distracting." The Village Protection ninja directed his eyes to Mana.

"And you said all those mean things about me!" Meiko crossed her arms. "Schizophrenia - the genuine challenge to any developed, modern society. I'm still waiting for that apology, by the way."

"Look, you nasty little fop, I don't give a shit about any of your mental problems and whatever, but your mother and father may not be bad people. They don't deserve to become the object of punishment meant for your deviant ways."

"You're right, this is my chance to see my parents again, hopefully together and happy…" Mana nodded in gratitude before charging toward the door. She could feel Meiko and Kiyomi following not too far after, and Mana dispersed into flower petals as soon as she left the building, hurrying toward the location where Varan's monstrous chakra still loomed.

"Varan!" Mana called the man out before her body fully reassembled. Meiko and Kiyomi flickered beside her, appearing as her reinforcements as Mana slammed her shoulder to the door, hoping that she wouldn't have to face a scene that she'd be reliving again and again in her nightmares.

Varan sat in the armchair before the turned off television set, crossed legs as he confidently stretched out across the armchair. The man turned his head to acknowledge Mana's entry, though he didn't attack her, just continued to gleam his ugly grin her way.

"What did you do to my parents!?" Mana yelled out. "I don't care if they're illusionary, I won't let you hurt them!"

"Your parents? They've long since died in this world. Haven't you caught on yet? This is your nightmare world. Your friends' characteristics are the exact opposite. One of them hates your guts and wants you dead while the other never thinks herself worthy of your presence. I can barely contain my excitement when you find out how your other friends turned out. Damisan might just be my best work yet and that guy was particularly hard to torture, seeing how life already sort of did enough of that for me in the real world." Varan laughed out as he stood up and dusted off his hands.

"What did you do?" Mana cursed the man in her mind in ways which she wouldn't be caught speaking out loud.

"The Uchiha have an ancient legend of a technique powerful enough to take over the entire world–the Infinite Tsukuyomi. Dream and reality become one, an entire world peacefully slumbering with the caster as the master of their dreams. Sadly, that is just a mere legend as far as I've been able to figure out. Still, a version of such a technique still exists–the Limited Tsukuyomi." Varan spread his arms out.

"You mean you've created an entire world of dreams just for me? Even if such a jutsu affects just one person, it's far too powerful to pull off to any single ninja. You'd run out of chakra and die just trying to pull it off!" Mana growled in defiance.

"That's where I must thank you, Konoha's Sorceress. That is to say–your stunt at the Katabami Gold Mine." Varan laughed out as he revealed the same blush-colored orb from before. "This mineral from the Katabami Gold Mine contains all the Nine-Tailed Fox's chakra I need to execute this legendary technique. You are a victim of your own defiance though, not even in your wildest dreams could you break out of this technique without a Tailed Beast of your own."

"A Tailed Beast of my own…" Mana's lips whimpered as she became engulfed with clarity of what she had to do.

"That's right. You are a tough opponent, Konoha's Sorceress. You've beaten multiple members of my crew already, prompting such a drastic response and for that I commend you. However, this illusionary world is meant to be one you would lack any will to live in. Why not just lower your guard and accept your fate, stop struggling and subjecting yourself to it? You cannot escape… What are you doing?" Varan continued to pontificate before seeing a top hat manifesting in Mana's hand as the ninja magician stuffed her hand inside and unleashed a flare of jade light from within.

"A rabbit? Come now, there're no rabbits under your employ that can match a Tailed Beast in chakra!" Varan taunted Mana with a flamboyant, confident pose. He maintained it unbroken until a bestial tail overgrown with thick, red fur burst from within the hat and a turbulent vortex of jade flames whirled out.

Mana's entire house crumbled down to ruins. The skies became murky as smoke from the rampant emerald flames had shrouded them. As lightnings cracked, shadows of a tremendous beast lurking inside the shroud became apparent for a brief moment of the flash. Varan stared up at the colossal beast in disbelief. He looked down at Mana with an inquisitive and furious glare, as if demanding to know what Mana had unleashed upon him.

"Break us out of this world, Four-Tails." Mana ordered. An ethereal, sky-raking aura of four open fingers and one of them closed down, manifested around the Four-Tails as its resonating roar dispelled the shroud surrounding it and made it thrash its own chest in the open, in its full glory. One of the four open fingers bent down, leaving only three.

"You have a Tailed Beast sealed inside your hat!?" Varan shook.

The Four-Tails smacked its hands together alongside Mana. As Mana's own chakra surged in powerful, ground-shaking jets, forming a round bubble of energy around her, so did the Four-Tails. Its chakra was many times more powerful and massive, exploding in an electric green aura that forced the surrounding air to boil in hellish heat. Their combined chakra clashed with one another and became synchronized, working as one to shatter the Genjutsu World.

"Even with a Tailed Beast, you'd have to shatter this entire dimension to break free! This isn't just a mere illusionary world, it's an entire alternate world of its own! A separate dimension of its own!" Varan clenched so that the booming combined energy storm didn't blow him away. Smoke and flames began rising behind the leader of the Nine Tales Gang. A hard to discern shape of an avatar of flames with devilish horns and fortress-sized hands placed them in front of its master to shield him from the forceful aftereffects of the collapse of this dimension.

An all-consuming flash enveloped the Genjutsu World once again, disassembling it and unweaving it like a knit scarf when one pulled on a loose thread, leaving nothing but meaningless wires of thoughts floating in the aether. Mana opened her eyes, turning around and seeing chains binding her arms and legs as she hung suspended inside of what appeared to be an obsidian-colored pyramid. Weaving a one-handed hand seal, Mana cast the Academy Rope Escape technique, freeing her arms and legs from the binds at once.

Just in time, as Mana's feet touched the ground, the pyramid began to collapse, one building-sized block at a time. The magician's mind still felt hazy. She bounced around, trying to avoid the falling blocks from pinning her to the ground. Judging by their weight, they weighed more than they appeared to weigh and they already felt like each one of them could weigh down the scales compared to a mountain.

Mana had misjudged where the next block would go. The roof collapsed inward. The blocks already looked dark inside this dimly lit prison, and Mana still couldn't get her vision to work right and see straight. A booming blast above her head decimated the block that would have squished her weakened body and soul. Meiko gave Mana a thumb-up, having pummeled the block apart. She landed nearby Mana and flipped the magician over her shoulders like a firefighter carrying a victim of a house fire. Mana barely had the time to scoop up her hat.

"Phew, you gave us a scare!" Meiko snickered. "That Damisan guy is way-cool. His gauntlet just flung me over here when we saw the pyramid start collapsing like whoosh!"

"Thanks." Mana nodded her head.

The Nine Tales Gang and the Stars, as well as the Konoha party, had all been still battling it out all around the collapsing iron pyramid. Kiyomi received a mean backhand slam from a muscular, bare-chested old man who had been surrounded by an aura of Lightning Release Chakra Mode. Reeling, the young woman wiped the blood that had covered her eyes and nose while the old man soared in the skies to slam down and leave Kiyomi just a bloody stain.

"Mind-Body Disturbance!" Kiyomi yelled out, placing her hands in the Yamanaka hijutsu position.

A slithering adder wrapped its body around the airborne, buffed out old man. The serpent must have been one of the Nine Tales Gang, since otherwise there were too few of them compared to how many had attacked before. With a forceful flex of his muscles, the old man ripped his own teammate apart, leaving bloody chunks of the adder slamming down on the ground with wet thuds as goopy mahogany mass rained down from the sky.

"Look what you made me do! Now you will feel the power of my wrath! Perun's Spear!" the old man performed a few taijutsu kata in mid-air, before shooting his palm with a directed aim toward Kiyomi as his entire Lightning Release Chakra Mode armor had extended downward toward the young woman as a beam or a penetrating spear.

"String Reeling Technique!" a high-pitched, childish voice filled the air. A strong yank pulled on Kiyomi's mid-section, whirling the head of Yamanaka-Inuzuka Zaibatsu away from harm's way where the thunderous spear collided with the ground and erupted in a lightning storm that blitzed out with upward lightning bolts, lashing back out at the sky and electrifying it with its tense voltage.

"Maiya…" Kiyomi muttered in light surprise.

"I may not be able to fight on your level, Kiyomi-san, but I do know my fundamentals." Maiya pressed her fist to her chest as a plight to her superior to allow her to assist her.

Damisan had been firing rapid barrages of heated kunai in the air, trying to pin-down a beautiful young woman with shiny, white, feather wings. The entire lower body of the woman had become one with her dress, it seemed, as it flashed so brightly that her lower features became impossible to discern. Whenever the woman performed an exceptional aerial maneuver, she left trails of raining, bright, white feathers.

"Damn it, can't get a hit on her at all…" Damisan grumbled to himself as his gauntlet had run out of kunai to throw at the woman and clicked with empty air a handful of times. The robe of the self-puppeteering ninja had been torn off during the ensuing battle and he now fought with his scarred body entirely exposed. Just his face remained hidden under his favored skull mask.

"What a terrifying monster, you are." The airborne woman scoffed at Damisan's injuries, covering herself up as if to put up a wall between her and the scarred shinobi. "Does anybody wish to switch, I am terrified…"

"Shut up, Gulbay, we're outnumbered already and Peron ripped Fomu apart! Not to mention my Iron Mountain collapsed…" a mega-sized, skin and bones old man struggled with hammering down his massive limbs at Shige-H, who answered every slam and stomp with an attack of her own, proving to be more than a match for the old man's attacks.

"Dance of the Seedling Fern!" the old man croaked, stomping his foot on the ground and creating a forest of ten-thousand, steel-tough bones all bursting from underground and aiming to skewer Shige-H. Shige's scream filled the air, followed by grunts as the woman struggled to swim out and force herself off the pikes that had impaled her and drooled with her blood.

"You're mine now!" the old man yelled out, slamming his fist down at where he saw an opening to finish off his injured opponent but Shige-H had slipped off of her impalement and scurried off into the depths of the bone forest. This time it was the shriek of the old man that had filled the air as he had punched into his own spiky forest and left a few mean scrapes where tree-sized bones stuck out like splinters from his oversized fist.

"Don't think you're out of the woods yet!" the reeling old man stomped at the forest of his own creation, causing a quaking impact that leveled the entire thing and shattered the adamantine bones from the pressure of the shock wave, flinging Shige-H away. By the time that her opponent had flung her like a rag doll, Shige-H had healed more than a few of her impalement wounds and her hands gleamed with an emerald light of the Mystical Palm, though the light had died out when she scraped along the ground.

"We must hurry, Konoha's Sorceress had escaped the Limited Tsukuyomi!" Varan warned his gang and crossed his arms, enveloping himself in a sky-reaching blaze that began taking shape as a powerful form of Armor Ninjutsu. Varan took a devilish form of a flame-colored demon of gaunt body build and tremendously sized horn formations hanging from the side.

"Meiko, can you get me through that armor?" Mana turned her head up at her airborne friend, who had been using the chakra storage seals inside her boots to float over the battlefield, looking for the best fight to join in on.

"Going straight for the leader, huh? Alright, I've been upgrading my Reactor Gauntlets for just such a mission, you know!" Meiko nodded with an enthusiastic grin on her face as she flung Mana over her head, letting the ninja magician to activate her own Mystical Wings jutsu and sustain flight while Meiko punched her two knuckles together, activating two sealing glyphs drawn over the back of her fists.

A whirl of basic-colored chakra enveloped Meiko's hands. Loud clangs filled the air as Meiko's Reactor Gauntlets formed from a lesser sum of its parts around Meiko's fists and forearms. The redhead struck a flashy pose once she had completed forming the weapon, but she wasn't done yet. Clashing her gauntlets together, Meiko enveloped them in a coating of Fire Release chakra, improving their size and power of their projectiles at once. It was a step toward an Armor Ninjutsu of Meiko's own. Meiko flexed her body, allowing the whirl of chakra that had assembled the Reactor Gauntlets to envelop her entire body and a myriad of steel clangs filled the air as Meiko assembled the entire Reactor Suit.

"If this can't break through–you're gonna need another plan!" Meiko turned to Mana, who observed her best friend with respectful silence.

"So it would seem…" Mana nodded.

"Reactor Annihilation!" Meiko wound up both of her gauntlets back before taking a brutal dive like a human missile toward Varan's armored titan form. The leader of the Nine Tales Gang had been engaged by wreaking havoc upon the battlefield, too engaged in other matters to notice the speeding human missile of mass destruction coming his way.

Meiko collided with the armored demon, releasing a flash of resonating flares and an entire storm of sparks in each direction. A savage shock wave flung Meiko away as a backlash to her tremendous strike, though Mana was impressed that Meiko's newly built Reactor Suit withstood the collision with little trouble or even a scratch to it.

"Not done yet!" Meiko called the leader of the Nine Tales Gang out as he had turned to what seemed to him at that moment as a mere gnat trying to suck on his richer than thou blood. Meiko's armor began to peel away, though it didn't fall off or collapse–merely restructured into a cannon barrel surrounding both of Meiko's arms. A core of pulsing heat lit up at the deepest end of the cannon, displaying a shine of remarkable luminosity at the other end.

"Nova Reactor Cannon!" Meiko yelled out, firing a pulse of blaze-colored plasma from her reformed cannon. The infernal plasma bolt collided with Varan's armor and drilled into it with a shimmer of sparks. With each successive rotation around its axis, the bolt emitted another shock wave and eventually, loud cracks filled the air.

"Impossible!" Varan proclaimed as his armor broke and with a hefty breaking noise, it began falling on its back with a gapping hole in its chest.

"Now, Mana!" Meiko turned to the magician who dived toward Varan with a sonic boom.

"As if!" Varan yelled out, throwing a cross toward the diving ninja magician. His devastating cross splattered Mana into an air full of paper tags. "Damn it, up to her tricks again!" Varan cursed as his demonic armor avatar lit up at the eyes, unleashing a blaze of eye beams that appeared to act like a stream of liquid, molten steel in consistency. He nabbed more than a few of the paper tags, but they disappeared as the illusions that they were.

A single, serene paper tag slipped through the hole of the armor, calmly landing atop of Varan's forehead. After his next blink, Varan realized Mana's illusion left him smothered with paper tags from head to toe. The upper half of Mana's body manifested before him out of a handful of paper tags. At that point, Varan knew he was just talking to an illusion.

"I'm done fearing my home, meeting my own friends. I'm done being afraid of setting foot in my country and I'm done being afraid of you hurting anyone I care about. Get off my back, old man." Mana hissed and collapsed into a whole storm of paper tags that covered up Varan whole before detonating in his mind all at once.

"Wow, that guy's armor is way cool, but he screamed like a little bitch," Meiko turned to Mana, who still stood beside her. Due to using another technique that demanded high focus of her, Mana couldn't keep up with her Mystical Wings so Meiko held Mana by her hand suspended in the air as the two observed Varan's colossal, demonic armor falling apart as its master fell down on the ground in a state of genjutsu induced coma.

"Varan! Shit!" the thunderous old man called Peron by his peers turned to his helpless leader. "Konoha's Sorceress has escaped Kautalos' mountain and Varan's Limited Tsukuyomi, retreat!"

"Uh-huh, that's definitely going to happen!" Kiyomi taunted her opponent and allowed Maiya to start the attack by weaving a few hand seals and crossing her arms before her.

"Multi-Shuriken Jutsu!" she chanted out, unleashing a hail of wayward ninja tools. The first flurry that reached Peron bounced off of his rock-hard chest muscle. Their speed and penetrative abilities effectively neutered by the Lightning Release Chakra Mode.

"You will regret sending out a child against me," Peron raised his fist up, ready to send another Perun's Spear down to obliterate the naïve little girl whole.

"Art of War!" Kiyomi yelled out, weaving a Yamanaka hijutsu seal and sending out her own consciousness. This exposed a far more valuable target to old man Peron, and he was quick to exploit it and adjust his strategy, still, switching targets proved to be minor hesitation that he would end up regretting, as Kiyomi's consciousness bounced about the field of multi-shuriken, ricocheting off of them until Peron could no longer keep up with the usually slow advance of a disembodied thought.

The bulky old man covered up his head and screamed out in pain as a head-splitting migraine took him over and drove him to his knees. So strong was the headache that it even distracted Peron from the necessary focus to maintain his Lightning Release Chakra Mode and left him just a writhing and screaming man.

"I'll kill you… Cave in your heads… For this…" Peron wheezed as he returned to his feet when the headache was beginning to let up a little. The old man looked up at the first sight of Kiyomi he saw and exploded with the booming might of Lightning Release Chakra Mode again. "Perun's Spear!" he yelled out, throwing a jolt of penetrating and devastating electricity at Kiyomi. The spear perforated Kiyomi's chest, incinerating her entire chest cavity before detonating in a lightning vortex that utterly obliterated the remains until not a sprinkle of ash remained. "You faced Peron unprepared, now you won't leave this battlefield at all!"

"I'll take my chances," Kiyomi's voice rung in Peron's head as the petrified old man threw his head all around him, trying to determine where it came from. Another body of Kiyomi appeared behind him, then another to his side, another one directly in front of him, another one to his right.

"H-How? I saw you die!" Peron shook in his military boots.

"The cream of the Yamanaka crop can produce weapons or items with the sheer power of thought. Manifest them as mental weaponry. I've learned to create mental clones, avatars of my consciousness conceived entirely through thought. Just like my uncle, except a lot more stylish." Kiyomi taunted her opponent as each of her mental avatars produced a mental blade of her own and lunged at the shocked and worn-out opponent. Peron coughed up blood as mental constructs pierced his body from all directions, perforating his internal organs as if they were very real.

"Eliminate evil immediately," Kiyomi muttered to herself as her mental avatars faded away and the Yamanaka swiped her hand aside, dispelling her own mental katana.

The gorgeous Gulbay continued to swipe around in mid-air, avoiding Damisan's attacks, shrieking in terror at each attempt of the scarred ninja to close distance. She weaved a hand seal, dispersing a handful of feathers that she had let fall while she dashed around. Damisan quivered as his entire world sunk into darkness. The self-puppeteer slumped over, as if consumed by slumber.

"Temple of Nirvana!" Gulbay chanted out. "To provide a state of peace, complete freedom of suffering and detachment of worries of the cruel reality. I am such a benevolent woman to grant a horrid man such as yourself this pleasure."

"You know, many people have tried to kill me, but the whole name-calling thing tends to really get under my skin…" Damisan looked up, stretching out his neck.

"What? But how?" Gulbay gasped in disbelief. "You should be asleep, you cannot dispel genjutsu when you are asleep!"

"Sure, maybe if I hadn't met Mana in my life, I'd have fallen for such a trick, but I've installed a special countermeasure that shocks me when it notices special signs of me being under an illusion like a false sense of tranquility." Damisan pointed at his skull mask. "A good electric jolt was all I needed to shake off your illusion. I guess now you'll have to set up your technique by scattering those illustrious feathers of yours all over again, huh?"

"Damn you!" Gulbay cursed, wrapping up her head in her hands, as if about to break down. "I won't let you get those ugly hands over me! I won't let you taint my beauty and elegance that way!"

A wet, fleshy sound made Gulbay blank out for a second. With a shaking, terrified expression, the woman turned to her right to see her right wing utterly decimated by a swinging Sword of the Thunder God that had flown from behind. Before the dazzling kunoichi could recover from the first injury, the sword swung around and returned to Endo's grip by splattering her other wing as well. The wings collapsed in a nova of white and red sparks, suggesting that the wings weren't actual parts of the woman's body, just a chakra construct.

"I see you're having trouble landing a punch on this broad. Hurry up and finish her off already," Endo said while Gulbay plummeted from her flight.

"Sure thing," Damisan nodded with a smirk underneath that skull mask of his that nobody could see, "Ninja Art: Rocket Punch!"

Damisan's prosthetic forearm detached from the rest of his artificial hand and slammed into Gulbay's left cheek, nearly blowing her head off her shoulders from the thunderous impact. The woman's eyes whited out and most of her teeth flew out like fake pearls from a cheap necklace. Her face swelled up like a balloon, leaving her extremely lucky to have passed out and not having had to deal with this sum of injuries.

"Now to help…" Damisan was about to suggest assisting Shige-H with the giant she was struggling with but gleaming with azure-glowing fists Shige-H had leaped into the air, before the titanic Kautalos.

"Unmaker Fist: Shooting Star Cascade!" Shige-H yelled out, punching thin air with a flurry of blows while each strike produced a projectile of an Unmaker Fist flare, as if the fist had actually connected despite being nothing more than an enhanced airwave of pressurized air. Kautalos shook and stumbled, rattled and overwhelmed by the barrage as his flesh decayed. The old man clutched at his grievous wounds before shaking in a violent spasm, vomiting up blood and collapsing.

"Huh… I guess she had it handled…" Damisan shrugged as the Stars and the Konoha ninja alike gathered to count up their losses, lick their wounds and find out how to proceed with their mission at this point on.

---

"No way, this train's a bust…" Meiko fell down on the ground and stretched her hands out, as if basking in the moonlight on the ground somehow provided her with strength.

"That's a given. Those Nine Tales goons de-railed it pretty hard…" Kiyomi sighed. "The hopes of fixing it were slim."

"I'm pretty sure we're strong enough to put it back on the rails." Mana scratched her head, looking embarrassed about the fact that the people that derailed their supply train were targeting her.

"It takes a bit more than just putting a train back on the rails and pushing it to fix a train, Mana…" Damisan squinted at the ninja magician, making his small eyes disappear under the cover of his mask entirely. "I'm very disturbed that you don't know that."

"I'm not very tech savvy, I'm afraid…" Mana chuckled, with an apologetic gesture meant to ask for forgiveness for having wasted everyone's time with her suggestion.

"I don't think we're gonna get this baby going again without going back to Konoha and resupplying. This train needs some serious patchwork. I didn't exactly load my seals with train materials, you guys." Meiko growled, sitting up and wiping the sweat off her forehead. The two of her and Damisan had been grinding at the impossible task for a while now.

"Well, I guess we're going back to the village, huh?" Mana shrugged.

"Huh? Aren't you worried to leave all this stuff here?" Maiya dropped her jaw.

"Why? We can't move it by ourselves, it's marked village goods. Whoever's gonna scoop them up will get in a heap of trouble having to bring all of this junk back to their HQ, then they'll have the constant rush of Konoha ninja on their tail trying to rob them of it. It's more trouble than it's worth for tons upon tons of mere construction supplies." Kiyomi replied.

"I'm surprised you're so eager to give up and head back to the village." Shige-H placed her hands on her hips. "Just this evening you were in quite the rush to get out of there. Don't tell me you'll sleep at your old house too?"

"I might…" Mana fell flat on her butt, letting the weight of the time that they had on their hands, the distance they've already traveled and one that's left to travel fall upon her shoulders. "I've realized something while I was stuck in that Genjutsu World."

"Genjutsu World? You mean that iron pyramid that the massive old geezer sealed you inside?" Kiyomi turned to Mana. The rest of the ninja settled down to gather some strength before their inevitable trek back to Konoha.

"Yeah. The real master of the illusion was Varan, the leader of the Nine Tales Gang. I think that the old man merely sealed us inside that pyramid to give Varan some privacy until he killed me inside of the Genjutsu World." Mana explained.

"It's a lame genjutsu in that case. Trapped himself in it too?" Endo cackled in mockery.

"He did so for a reason. The Genjutsu World was meant to be so horrible that it crushed the target's will to resist their own death. I was lucky to have… Options… To break out but I could see living in that world for more time having a mind crushing effect on me, eventually." Mana said.

"So what was it? Were you naked and all the Kage issued a decree to not sell or give you any clothes, exposing your imperfections to the rest of the world so that they may mock you and laugh at your humiliation as they break your sloppy inventions and you feel your inventive mind collapsing sprinkle by ashy sprinkle?" Damisan wondered.

"Not everyone has the same nightmares you do, Damisan," Skaven answered, settling himself closer by the group after being forced to serve a more supportive role in the previous battle because of limited amount of light limited to the moonlight being available out here in the wild.

"No, in a lot of ways it was quite similar to the reality I live in right now which is what prompted me to wake up and change some things." Mana admitted. "I haven't had the most time to explore that world and meet every one of you but… It seemed like my parents were long gone in that world and I've become a spoiled starlet of sorts. From the sounds of it, I wasn't on the best of terms with Kiyomi or Meiko. It didn't seem like Kiyomi had met me before in that world while I've had some very negative and snobby experiences with Meiko."

"That's it?" Kiyomi broke through her facade of apathy with a tilt of her eyebrows. "I figured the enemy would place you in some post-apocalyptic scenario where you failed to save everyone and everyone was dead or something… This feels… Oddly tame."

"The best illusions are always hard to tell apart from reality. Create a cosmic event, a quasar about to swallow up the world and the target will realize something's wrong immediately–it's too drastic of a shift. Have an ally approach and take them out quietly and you'll succeed with the objective though." Mana explained. "I wanted to apologize to all of you for how I've been acting. After I left prison, I thought I'd just return to normal and resume my life again like nothing had happened but… When I faced all that hatred it… It changed me, rather, I let it change me."

Mana placed her hat, looking upward. The Stars reacted with nervous ticks. Shige-H yanked on her collar while Endo gulped down a heavy mouthful. Neither of them wanted to see Mana calling out the Four-Tails. They didn't even know yet that Mana had already made a request of the beast and used out one of the four remaining orders.

"Don't worry, I will not call on that. I'm going to unseal something way, way scarier to me." Mana smiled, looking just as nervous as her friends. After reaching over the hat and activating an azure seal at the bottom, Mana pulled out her old magician's uniform that she had only been using on select occasions while on stage.

"Your uniform?" Meiko scratched her head. "How's that scary for you?"

"The reason I didn't want to return home and face my mother is because I've failed to live up to a promise I made her. I've made friends, but I didn't move out from the hateful shell I've hidden inside of when I met the brunt of Konoha's hatred. I was afraid that if I'd return still wearing leather, still cold and eccentric, she'd be sad that this is the new me now. The thing I feared the most was to wear this again and corrupt the memory of how I used to be by being a different person when I wear it. Then the old Mana who tried to treasure human life and help everyone she met and be nice to everybody and believe that nobody's life was useless would start eroding with every second that this new me wore this. Then, after enough time, I'd be all that's left. The only, last one." Mana sighed and placed her folded uniform before her, bowing to it as if it was a sword that she had abandoned but had to pick up and wield again.

"That's okay. I didn't really hammer home just how hard it must have been for you to serve in that prison for half of a year with the worst of the worst and then return home and face all of that. Maybe I was selfish too, wanting you to just get yourself together and make it be like old times." Meiko sighed.

"No. I'm the one that strayed." Mana shook her head firmly. "My entire life I believed that if I just was the person I wanted everyone to become, everyone would just change following my example. The reality is that I've fallen into the ironic pitfall of becoming the reflection of the surrounding hate instead. From this day on, I promise, no matter how bad it feels, how hurt I feel, I'll be that example I set myself out to be. Even if my nindo is determined to fail before I've even started out on that path–I'm going to walk it to the end because that's my path and it's the only path I can see walking down."

"Okay, if we don't start walking, we'll never get to Konoha." Skaven pointed his thumb toward the direction where Konoha laid thousands of kilometers away.

"Hang on. I've messaged the Zaibatsu scouts. They'll get the big dogs here and use their sleighs to help you take the supplies all the way to the Allied Ninja HQ." Kiyomi declared out of the blue.

"Huh?" Meiko blinked rapidly a few times. "You could have done this the whole time?"

"Of course, I've been keeping up the mental link with the scouts at the Yamanaka Resort this entire time. I've sent the request just now and they've dispatched the Inuzuka with the larger breeds of ninja dogs that thrive in colder and desolate climates to assist. Managing two clans alongside my husband has its own perks, after all," Kiyomi replied with a calm expression.

"Wait, you mean that was always an option for you and you just held out!?" Endo grumbled, shaking his fist over his head. "You damn cheapskate!"

"I will not send my people away on a dangerous assignment threatening both the ninja and their hounds. Not for a bunch of Allied Ninja I've never met. I will for a friend though…" Kiyomi turned to Mana with a poker face brimming with all sorts of feelings, all of them so subtle that it would have taken a master interrogator and still pictures to read them all.

"Thanks." Mana nodded with a heartfelt smile. "Once I get my World Magic Tour off the ground, maybe you and your husband can come to the show and I can finally meet him?"

"Don't know, he's never been a big fan of magic so you'll have to absolutely dazzle to impress him." Kiyomi acted off all cool. Though the fact that she didn't shut Mana's attempt at moving closer to her old-time friend and her new family was all the approval in the world that Mana needed to set out on her new path that she'd walk with no one to spite.