It was said by many that becoming a ninja made a young soul mature and grow up way too fast. Maybe it was for that reason that graduating from the Academy made one emancipated and therefore considered almost an adult. Mana could certainly feel that sort of maturity she’d have likely never had if she hadn’t become a kunoichi. For example when the Hokage approached her talking to Mana about taking her under her wing in a squad, all that the magician could think of it were the implications of what was told to her.
“Wait, so now that you quit… Is the seat empty? Will the Council place a substitute soon enough?” Mana worried about the political state of her village more than about the exciting possibilities that being taken in a squad by the Hokage provided.
“Wow, you’re really weird, I’ve just told you that I’m gonna train you and all you can think about is all that boring political stuff…” Hanasaku pouted like an offended child, one who was promised a lick of their favorite ice cream but given none.
“Sorry… It’s just” Mana tried to explain and apologize but she just didn’t know how to explain the importance of these things to someone who while sat in the big chair for so long didn’t appear to know the importance of it. The ninja villages were in the middle of discussing the Kirigakure autonomy, if the Hokage suddenly disappeared from these negotiations their opinion and history would undoubtedly be overshadowed by the interests of other villages.
“It’ll be fine. They’ve found a suitable substitute. He’ll do just fine, even if no one even knew he existed until like a month or two ago” Hanasaku waved her hand like it was no pressing matter, where the woman began stretching out like preparing for a workout right at that moment after witnessing Mana’s puzzled expression she explained.
“You see, he was a Black Ops operative. When he joined it at a very young age his records were wiped and he had very few notes to begin with in his file. One day he just waltzed into my office and declared that he was ready to take over if I was willing to do the right thing and resign. Going from a Black Ops operative to a public office seems pretty extreme but he looks competent enough to handle it, more chances than I ever had…”
“Can’t anyone else see how shady that is?” Mana scratched her temple feeling a bit confused, more so that no one else batted an eye where she saw tons of problems.
“Maybe, the Council likes him, they wouldn’t have minded me staying a bit longer or maybe even serving full term but… That place was seriously beginning to strangle me” Hanasaku shrugged, “Now can we fight already?” she almost begged Mana.
“Wait, fight!?” the magician yelled out in surprise.
“Obviously! I’m enrolling you into my squad, unlike Kiyomi who will be the second member, with you I only have Tanshu’s vouch to go with. I need to know of your abilities to decide about how the squad will function, what I need to teach you and who the third member should be” Hanasaku slammed her own fist into her palm raising a strong gust of wind that made Mana clutch and struggle to stay on her feet. This woman was not only inhumanly strong, she was illogically strong even by ninja standards, judging from rumors, even by Kage standards.
“I really see no use for that…” Mana said uneasily, it wasn’t that she was afraid of the woman, on some internal layer she was, the most important feeling was the absolute confusion as to why this clash was even necessary.
“If you don’t fight me and show me what you can do I’ll just pick Yoruma Hisako as my third member” Hanasaku blinked as a tease.
“Wait, I have no qualms with that. Hisako-san is a great kunoichi and an amazing swordswoman. Plus while she is… Rather… Odd, and curses a lot… I feel like the two of us had bonded a little” Mana smiled as she still refused to take a defensive battle stance.
“Didn’t she stab you which almost killed you? Thoughts throwing her name around would tick you off but it appears to be harder to do than I’ve initially thought” Hanasaku cocked her head to the side baffled by Mana’s feelings towards the Yoruma. “Anyways, I was bluffing, one of the main goals of my squad is to pass the upcoming Chuunin Exams. They were supposed to happen in a couple of weeks but due to the whole Hokage switch they’ll likely be postponed for a couple of months more. Hisako is already a chuunin so she’s not a suitable candidate”
“Great, then we don’t really need to fight, you’ve undoubtedly seen my file and you know all about my abilities. You’re just making up reasons to fight people, Lady Hokage. During my time in Wind Country I’ve come to understand the importance of martial arts and sparring, and I know that paperwork was suffocating to you but neither of those are reasons to brawl needlessly” Mana turned around and began leaving the training grounds. While she did wish to join Chestnut Hanasaku’s team and be trained by one of the most powerful ninja not only of her time but all time she just saw no reason in fighting this woman.
“Earth Style: Staircase to Heaven!” Hanasaku shouted out slamming her fists at the ground, Mana turned around in shock that the Hokage would just attack her. Didn’t the Fifth know the immense difference between their strength? If Mana got hit by a single technique of this woman she’d undoubtedly die unless Hanasaku restrained herself to a barely understandable by the human mind degree.
The rumbling of the ground beneath her feet made the gravity feel like it was multiplied hundreds of times. Mana wished to step aside, roll aside, jump sideways or otherwise avoid the technique but the quaking ground simply kept her firmly stuck on the shifting dirt. Sky reaching pillars made of dirt and rock shot up throwing Mana up in the air, the girl knew that Hanasaku purposefully aimed to erect the pillars right beneath her feet just so Mana didn’t get hit by them, just thrown upwards.
Mana’s hands went through a collection of hand seals quickly trying to activate her Mystical Wings technique and form a wind current beneath her feet which would allow her to carefully float and land without needing to augment her body to withstand the fall.
“Careless!” Hanasaku’s cruel shout interrupted all of Mana’s thoughts as her downwards slam sent Mana’s body helplessly slamming into the ground. The Hokage moved right up to Mana’s face at such inconceivable speed that the girl had little time to even process her thoughts, reacting was another matter entirely. With a cloud of smoke what first appeared like a broken and dead body of a young kunoichi was revealed to only be a broken off piece of the rocky pillars as Mana quickly substituted her body with the chunk of rock.
“She’d have really killed me with that… That force of impact was all transferred perfectly through the dummy’s body” Mana realized as she looked at the stone dust blown off of the crater by the rude noon winds.
“Wind Style: Ozone BB!” Hanasaku shouted off as she landed on her feet, transferring all the force of her landing into a quick diagonal kick. A slicing wind projectile fired off from her feet, a concentrated blade of pure wind pressure cutting through the whole artificially grown forest of the training grounds. Mana leaped up and hopped around the falling trees before landing in the open. The immense cover that the forest gave her was now demolished with a single kick.
Mana breathed out intensely a couple of times before fixing her clothes and dusting them off. She hadn’t had such a needless and extensive workout for a while. While Hanasaku was holding back, with each attack she was actually trying to kill her. If those rock pillars had hit Mana they’d have busted through right her weak childish chakra augmentations and crushed her body into mush. If she was actually hit by that slam she’d have exploded into a bloody stain that’d have dyed the ruined rocky surface of the training grounds crimson red. That wind projectile was powerful enough to slice through millions of Manas with same chakra augmentation power.
Even if she held back while at the same time hitting just hard enough to completely obliterate her genin opponent, the woman actually attacked slowly, she didn’t overwhelm Mana, she timed her offenses giving the girl just enough time to formulate plans, to evade. In her own twisted way Hanasaku must’ve actually been observing the responses to every attack from her potential student.
“Not bad, any genin would’ve gotten hit already…” Hanasaku smiled with a monkey-like full teeth grin.
“Wait… You mean you were actually trying to hit me, you weren’t testing me?” Mana blinked a couple of times in shock.
“Sure…” Hanasaku shrugged, “Obviously I’m holding back as much as I can but… I’ll hit you soon enough if you don’t counterattack”
“B-But… Those hits would’ve killed even a chuunin. If you didn’t correctly transfer the strength and carefully angle of that kick it’d have split the whole planet in two…” Mana slapped her forehead.
“Huh? Really? Oh well… I guess I was out of the teaching game for too long” Hanasaku once again goofily smiled. Kiyomi had a lot of weird tales to tell about this woman during their time working together. It was very clear that the described incompetence of this woman which made the Yamanaka princess grow up as strong as she was wasn’t overblown.
“Had I not been taught advanced evasion techniques and superior perception of enemy attacks by Kouta and Meiko I’d have never even seen those hits coming. They’re at least fifteen times faster than the fastest punch I’ve seen a martial artist throw in Sun Disc arena and Lady Hokage is still just fooling around. This woman is insane…” Mana began getting more serious and in a far-off layer of her heart fear for her life was beginning to spread like a cancer.
Mana prepared herself, took a proper defensive stance just like she was taught. She had never expected to become this good at not getting hit, granted, had she not been this good she’d have met her end.
“You’re really tense…” Hanasaku’s voice once again surprised Mana as it came right from behind the magician.
“I’ve no time to evade…” Mana closed her eyes, she had too much fear in her body, it was like she locked herself down under ten thousand locks. In fear of death her body began augmenting itself on top of the normal layers of chakra. She knew it was all useless. Hanasaku just tapped Mana on her shoulder…
“Don’t worry, I’ve messed up much worse on my other students, this one time I’ve split this Uchiha kid clean in two at his abdomen with a much weaker kicking technique but I patched him up. Eventually… I’m not as good at treating others as I am treating myself” Hanasaku laughed out.
Mana threw a wild elbow strike back at the woman’s nose. She knew the extremely sensitive spot where the nose always broke, no matter the augmentations it was a certain weak spot. Defenses always worked at butchered rates when hitting certain vital points and when Kouta taught her about evasion it was brought up as a potential counterattack target.
Her elbow just felt like hitting a brick wall. Mana even screamed out in pain as she couldn’t even feel her arm and Hanasaku didn’t even look like she cared much. The magician leaped up and kicked with both of her feet right at the woman’s chest trying to use the force to kick off and further away from the woman, once Mana did so she performed a roll and examined her shaking in pain arm.
“That was a sensitive point, wasn’t it? I’m a medical ninja too. I know certain vital points are only augmented at 25% efficiency compared to other body points. But if your opponent is aware of your attack target they can simply augment their weak spot with more chakra to balance it out” Hanasaku taunted Mana.
“See? You didn’t want to fight and ran away from the fight. That is why I took an early advantage and now you’re fighting on my terms” the woman began explaining to Mana in a motherly tone. “I know you don’t like fighting, I know you…”
“Shut up!” Mana shouted out, Hanasaku’s eyes widened in surprise that she was so rudely interrupted but then the magician regained her composure, “Hokage-sama” she added the proper honorific.
“No!” Hanasaku’s voice once again rang right behind Mana, the magician turned around throwing another wild swing, a slick sound of steel slipping through cloth of her sleeve betrayed the hidden steel tipped card in Mana’s sleeve. The magician aimed at the woman’s eyes, to blind Hanasaku, the woman was told to be able to regenerate lethal injuries to the extent that she barely ever bothered to dodge on any battlefield. She accepted all harm and dished out it back a thousandfold to the confused and scared opponent.
Hanasaku wasn’t there!
Mana felt a firm grip slam her head to the ground. The Hokage predicted her successfully predicting that she’d once again shock the magician with her speed and once again blitzed the magician by moving right in front of her, now behind the counterattacking magician. Lady Fifth was just as invisible to Mana as a ninja, as ninja were to her as a civilian.
“No… You need to hear this. You cannot avoid fighting altogether. We ninja are tools. That means we do what is told, we serve the purpose of any tool that the client needs. Sometimes that role is of a blade, sometimes we need to fight, we need to kill. I know that my thick younger brother tried hammering it into your head…” the woman tried explaining the lesson she’d heard a million times already. Throughout her entire childhood, throughout the Academy, from Tanshu-sensei and her own teammates. They all said the same and a part of their ideology Mana had accepted and taken as her own “ she always needed to come at their opponent with full force, intending to kill but never finishing it.
Mana slapped her hands together right in front of her face that was being shoved into the dirt, with her bleeding forehead being grinded into the soil Mana’s free lips began to whistle a melody.
“Sweet Lullaby Jutsu!” the magician shouted out and she felt Hanasaku’s grip on Mana loosen. The girl lifted her head and slipped it out from the woman’s grasp rolling aside and removing another steel edged card placing it right up the woman’s eyes. Even while holding this advantage, even when she appeared to have won the magician knew she hadn’t. It was clear as day that Mana would never finish Hanasaku off and the woman was infamous for her skill at using medical ninjutsu on herself exceptionally well. Even while the Hokage was paralyzed, even with Mana holding a blade by the woman’s face she had lost. Mana’s only options were to wound the woman nonlethally and see her heal herself or to stall for time and waste chakra prolonging the illusion. Both kunoichi saw that so the magician relented.
Mana cancelled the illusion.
“You are telling me nothing I have not heard a thousand times before. I’ve learned that sometimes I need to fight, I’ve learned that in order to respect my opponent and win sometimes I need to not hold back and fight to kill, I always do. I have no problem with fighting, no problem with hurting my opponent, maiming or disabling them but I will never cross the line, I’d rather die. No life is unnecessary, that is my nindo, my Ninja Way!” Mana calmly explained to the surprised woman.
“Well…” Hanasaku smiled in pleasant surprise as her eyes closed and looked down, the medical ninja picked herself up from the dirt and gently wiped the dust and dirt off of her kimono. “It appears you’ve greatly matured from your experiences. While your refusal to take lives will always make you one step weaker from what you could become, because somewhere in the back of your mind you’ll always have voice begging you to hold a fraction of your strength back, to have mercy, I believe you’ll still make a fine ninja and a great addition to my Team Hokage” the woman admitted.
Mana bowed with the upper half of her body.
“But we need to talk about that honorific…” Hanasaku almost begged Mana playfully.
“Well, if Hokage-sama is troubling to you, I suppose I can relent and call you Hokage-sensei” Mana smiled and bowed her head, as a first submissive act towards her mentor. This was the best possible solution to her not having a permanent and stable team problem “ with Team Hokage’s formation maybe she’ll even have a shot at the Chuunin Exams…
“That’s fine enough, I suppose” Hanasaku shrugged her shoulders still clearly feeling uneasy about the way she was being addressed. The woman didn’t appear to have trouble being called Hokage when she actually possessed the title however once she quit being called Hokage must’ve not felt right.
“Those illusions…” Lady Fifth once again asked for Mana’s attention with an inquiry. “They were unlike any genjutsu I’ve ever encountered, I know how to defend against genjutsu just fine but… I felt like that technique completely disarmed me. I couldn’t just dispel it as easily as the others…” the woman noted recalling the experience.
“During our trip in Sunagakure we encountered a sort of ancient insectoid creatures. They used strange primitive kind of illusions, instead of targeting chakra networks and shifting their flow the creatures attacked the victim’s brain centers. I began learning such manner of illusionary attack even before I regained my chakra, I’ve been working on it more still now that I am at full strength. As long as someone has a functional brain my techniques will affect them, the smarter the person is “ the more convincing and potent the illusion as the target’s own brain is more efficient at fooling them” Mana explained feeling excited about talking of her progress in the field of genjutsu.
“Hmmm… But people say I’m not that bright…” Hanasaku scratched her chin in confusion.
“And yet you still had slight trouble fighting it…” Mana nodded. “Ninja have evolved too far and this primitive manner of defense is very effective, something I’ve learned from my trip to another universe “ it also works on beings without chakra quite flawlessly”
“Can’t imagine seeing many of those…” Hanasaku replied. She was right enough, it was fair to expect that fighting omnipotent and omniscient god-people from another universe was a one-time occurrence.
“So… Kiyomi had quite great grades in Academy. That eliminates one genius requirement, you had average grades which means that I still need a dunderhead” Hanasaku was working that fairly slow brain of hers.
Mana smiled, “May I suggest someone fitting that description? I know that most ninja teams are composed of two males and a female but we already have two females and… This girl perfectly fits the physical brawler who can take a couple of punches or be dipped in magma and keep on swinging need of our fragile team”
Hanasaku clenched her fist and raised it up energetically looking excited, “A girl-power team, I like it! Give me a name and I’ll look into her!”
“Wakizashi Meiko. And… It would be quite kind of you to not tell her I recommended her. Meiko often feels a bit self-loathing when things don’t quite go her way and knowing she made onto a team because of her friend’s recommendation would really make her feel bad” Mana said before jumping high up in the air and carefully and subtly landing on a still barely standing log and settling down in a meditative position. It appeared that Hanasaku had seen all she wished to see and was going to leave the magician to continue her meditation now.
“Got it!” Hanasaku confirmed it and disappeared with a loud popping sound followed by a puff of dust and smoke leaving Mana alone with her thoughts in the training grounds.
Mana had a lot of training to do if she was going to excel in a team of peers she admired and respected so much and Lady Fifth herself!
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