Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Journeys We Make

Monkey In A Hat

The Four-Tails tried expelling emerald flames from its mouth again, but its mobility appeared to have been crippled to merely flexing and twitching. Ethereal tendrils of golden energy extended from the peaks of each pillar while Mana clapped her hands together "Om Mani Padme Hum" she chanted out as the ethereal tendrils surrounded and sealed the prison around the Five-Tails. The Five Pillars peaks began raking the ground they stood from, carving the ground as they moved in closer.

Once the Five Pillars finally surrounded the Five-Tails, their upper halves bent up, creating an appearance of a hand that had captured the Five-Tails within its grasp while the pulses of golden energy still burst in all directions. Power of a technique so ancient and so powerful that not even a Tailed-Beast could defy it. With the seal locked in place, the Five-Tails could once again thrash about, but there wasn't much use to it as nothing it could have tried doing would have left the containment field around the Five Pillars Seal.

"Now you're free from Rakugi's control over you. You don't have an excuse to hide behind anymore but we both know you'd have done every single thing you did, isn't that right?" Mana looked down at the Tailed-Beast, still hovering in the air where the pillar she stood on once was. The magician swooped down, feeling a heat wave pass her when the raging Five-Tails shot out a tongue of emerald flames her way, flames that hit an invisible energy barrier and dissipated, washing all over itself as punishment instead and calming the beast down.

"That's right, I've read about you. You see, I've met one of you before. The Nine-Tails..." Mana mentioned as she approached the hand-like cage that the Five-Tails ended up in.

An ear-splitting roar echoed for kilometers on end, spreading far and wide through the empty Lightning Country wasteland in all directions until the bustling mountain ranges of Kumogakure stopped it in the north or the snowy mounds of the Snow Country in the south did. While the beast knew full-well, it wasn't able to hurt Mana from within the cage, it still had boundless fury to express toward the ninja magician, and releasing these vociferous growls and yells was the only way it knew how to do that.

"Not a fan of Nine-Tails, are you?" Mana closed her eyes and nodded a few times before turning her attention back up at the beast that begged the universe for a chance to slip its hand out of the jade cage and crush this annoying brat standing right in front of it with its bare hands. "When I was younger and less experienced, I ended up releasing it from its imprisonment. It was at a tough spot, being endlessly drained and tortured, abused for nefarious goals by greedy people. When you look at it from that perspective, I can see why the Tailed Beasts aren't so fond of us."

The colossal monkey grabbed the jade fingers and released a maddened howl as it tried splitting them apart with its bare hands. Everything about this situation tipped it off: the fact that the seal it feared the most of all things once again came into play, obstructing its freedom and will, that it was snared and at the mercy of a mere human it hated so much and the fact that this human was just posturing and lecturing him despite being younger than some parasites making the Five-Tails' back itch this very moment were.

"I ended up releasing it. Everyone kept telling me what a massive mistake I did and how I would regret it. The Nine-Tails is by far the strongest and the most fearsome of you, isn't it? Even with that in mind, for the longest time, I was perfectly fine with my decision. Maybe I was even feeling cocky about it. The more days passed with no news of a settlement or a village leveled to the ground by that beast. But... The more experienced I've grown, the more I started second-guessing that call. I kept reading up more and more and more about you, finding out as much about each one of you as humanity knew. I guess it's because I just really, really wanted to be sure I did the right thing there." Mana scratched the back of her head, rustling her sticky with blood dark hair.