Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Journeys We Make

Five Fingers Straight Up The Bumhole

The square outside the window was slowly becoming crowded with people. Swarming was slow for now, but it was bound to pick up soon enough. The first ones to come came as stragglers, the lone wanderers who either wanted to make it early for the graduation or who just had nothing better to do with their time but stand around and see the action building up one brick at a time before the ceremony finally kicked off.

"Mana-nee isn't going?" Tomi leaned over Mana's bed where she just laid slumped like a sack of straightened bricks. The wild girl slipped an Allied Ninja uniform on and even straightened her hair out into two proper pigtails hanging to the sides instead of the wild, spiky haystack she hauled around on her head.

"There's no use in going," Mana mumbled in return and switched her shoulder to turn to the other side. She still had told no one that she had failed the graduation test. It just sort of never came up throughout the entire four days separating the test and now. It might have been entirely on Mana, but no occasion just felt right enough to drop that bomb on everyone after denying them of it from the get-go.

"Finally, someone who understands how pointless the whole thing is..." Skaven smirked. "I've been telling everyone the whole time. There's no way they won't graduate us just 'cause we skip some stupid lump of speeches, right?"

He still had the uniform on, though. Because she switched sides, she ended up looking right at Shige-H and Endo, both of whom seemed to see right through Mana. Shige-H had an uncomfortable look of clarity in her eyes whilst Endo just looked mad as always. Mana wanted that maybe just this one he could relate to her and would just stop looking at her like she was responsible for the fact that his mentor tried to kill him in a cage hanging in an active volcano every day since his childhood. That is to say, the same way Endo looked at everyone.

"Alright, guys, go get us some neat places. This will be your first mission as Stars, graduated Allied Ninja and no longer mere recruits," Shige-H looked around the room with an encouraging fist pumping. While Tomi's glee had settled somewhat after looking right at the Stars leader, she still jumped off her bed and ran off first to follow the command. It wasn't as much that she was following what Shige-H told her to do, it was more that Shige's command had officially unchained the little wildling who was picking and pulling her stuffy collar the whole morning. "You too, Damisan, don't think you're not included in this first assignment."

Damisan's cylinder had a picture of a bright young man with a graduation uniform giving the photographer a peace sign with a smile that accurately expressed the infinite potential that the young man had for his future from this grand point on. In the few days he had, Damisan had rebuilt his arms and legs the way they used to be, armed and ready to fight alongside his Stars comrades.

"Are you sure you're going to make it to the opening ceremony, Mana? You haven't even taken your clothes out from the bag yet and I don't mean to sound ironic or douchey but you look a bit like a mess and I only say this because you usually really care about your appearance..." when Damisan's artificial limbs rubbed against one another they let a grungy, metallic clang out. The worry that Damisan expressed now seemed to threaten to pop his fingers out as they cracked with a gruesome crashing noise once in a while.

"That's not her uniform in there, you dolt," Endo growled. "That's her stuff."

"Nice going, looking that far up ahead that you've packed your things for the first mission..." Skaven smirked with an indifferent shrug as he dragged his feet to the door without a care in the world.

"Okay, I'll go help Tomi get us the places to hear the speech out then. With my looks, it'll be easy... That was a joke..." Damisan mumbled, adding the last part when it failed to brighten up the mood as the atmosphere in the room was getting heavy which was why Shige-H asked everyone out. With hefty stomps, the self-puppeteering ninja left the room and hurried to the square.