Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Journeys We Make

Lies Meant To Protect

"Forget? Wait, you mean you want me to use my Magician's Touch on you on purpose?" Mana's right lower eyelid twitched. It was such an unorthodox request that she wasn't sure if she should just continue to feel confused about it or to submit to the repulsion that crawled its way out through inside of her throat.

"Yeah, that's right. That's how it works, isn't it? You hold your hands over someone's head, zap 'em, and then they forget things. There are things in my past I'd like to forget forever for some peace of mind." Skaven nodded, turning his eyes to the right. He knew how weird this sounded. Some part of him was ashamed to ask this of Mana though, given his unusual request, there may not have been another person who could have helped him.

"That's not at all how it works." Mana shook her head. The tone of her voice rose, though she couldn't help it. What Skaven asked her to do was reckless. "It's true that I made this technique with a stray, naïve thought that it could have someday been used for bringing people that have strayed a long path from decency back into the humane society. A better method to treat them rather than to do away with them. I've dispelled that idea entirely when I saw how painful and crude the technique truly is."

"If it's pain, that's no problem at all. Pain I can handle." Skaven insisted. "Even excruciating agony beats those voices and faces haunting me day after day. Think about it, haven't you ever failed anyone?"

"All I do is fail people. One way or the other. I've gotten so good at it that it won't break my heart one bit to say no." Mana shook her head and dismissed her fellow Stars member, turning to walk away and pleading to the surrounding universe that Skaven would leave this alone. She knew better, she wouldn't have left it alone had she been in the Nara's shoes.

"Then you know what it feels like. I'm not a kind person. I've hurt and killed people all throughout my life, but I wanted no one innocent to get hurt. And yet... At some point, I could no longer find misguided excuses why people that died and suffered all around me were guilty of anything. Not even one, flimsiest thing. Do you have that one thing that you hate most of all?" Skaven looked up with lost eyes.

"Yeah," Mana didn't hesitate.

"Has it ever dominated your life? Become a second-nature companion of your every step to where it feels like you've been cursed with it because you hate it so much? Have you ever felt that perhaps you deserve its load on your back because of how rotten of a person you are? But even then... Why did the innocent people have to pay for my penance? It makes little sense..." Skaven's wide-open eyes stared at his shaking hands while his knees wobbled and his skin turned pale white from a sicklier shade Mana knew him for.

Why was he saying all of those things? Why did he speak in a way that made this abhorrent thing feel so right, and how did he have such an open wide and straight path to Mana's soul as if he had been inside its chambers before? What a cottony tongue this ex-criminal had. Making nothing less than shocking a young man's brain repeatedly, torturing him for the sake of permanent mental crippling sound so liberating and dignified.

"Yeah. I have a way of imagining what that feels like." Mana put it softly. People she knew and loved, people she vowed to save and help, ended up dead far more often than Mana helped them out. A lifetime of heroics wouldn't excuse her for dragging Shimo out halfway across the world just to die. And for what? To realize Meiko's lifelong dream? To return the control over Mana's severed chakra network back? How could any of those things even compare to the worth of a human life? Just a drop in what was becoming quite a fussy torrent.

"In that case, how can you be so cruel? You owe me, have you forgotten? Maybe the rest haven't told you? They would have put a rubbery ball with tubes and gear work inside of your chest, resuscitating you back to life as an asthmatic cripple. You'd have lived as a husk, just a fancy poster to bring more cannon fodder at the doorsteps of the Allied Ninja. That's all they see you as. It isn't any business of mine to ask if it's any better than Konoha, but I'm asking you to repay the debt of going out of my way to not make you yet another screaming voice in my head. Just another howler saying it's all my fault. If I'm to change my way, I can't have those nightmares coming with. I know it would only be right, but I also know that I can't handle it." Skaven truly pleaded with both his tone and his sorry facial expression. Just one nasty thought away from spraying tears and breaking into a weep.