Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Journeys We Make

Tales Of A Ninja Magician Annual No. 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.