Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Journeys We Make

Someone Worse Than Endo?

"Stars... Come to my tent," one of the new Regimental Commanders approached the Stars from behind, separated from the party of benevolent spirits seeing Damisan off.

Mana accidentally caught Shige's wary glare. Endo, from the looks of it, just needed a pointer. A direction to move toward and he didn't much care where said pointer came from or where it led. It already devoted him to follow the woman in the short and sleeveless black tank top. Shige-H gave the Supreme Leader an inquisitive look.

"Yeah, I was buttering up your asses for this but I guess that dumb cunt Boriya has other methods..." the Supreme Leader pulled on the beak of her military hat to hide her tired eyes and walked off back toward the command tent. This left the Stars few options but to follow the woman into her tent just as she requested. Technically, as Allied Ninja, they were subordinates of any Regimental Commander.

What nobody expected to see in the tent of the kunoichi with camouflage face paint was another young woman. This one was a handful of years younger than Mana, which already placed her as a couple of handfuls younger than the rest of the Stars. She had an attitude of a brat, apparently, for when the Stars entered the tent, the brat just sneered at them once before turning away. That was a curious way of looking at a group of people one had never met before. It would have been hard to forget having seen this fancy hairdo of locks this bright yellow. The eye-catching sharpness of the color would have left even Kiyomi's natural look in the dust. Hair this exotic was either an artificial work of art or a genetic trait of a clan.

Just not any clan Mana has ever heard of.

The Regimental Commander approached her chair and unfolded it to take a seat beside a stretched-out, shabby table. The conditions after the Four-Tails' attack had been this dire that leadership sat on unfolded steel chairs and worked on unfolding campsite tables. Just like the rest of their subordinates, even the leadership slept in bags, as evidenced by a couple laying on the left side of the tent.

"We haven't met yet. My name is Boriya Chromium. I am the new Western Regimental Commander. This young lady here is a fellow Allied Ninja. I've brought you here to assign you four your new mission," Boriya ran her hand over her short, white hair and slumped in her chair, testing its mettle as the poor thing cried out in sharp-pitched agony because of the rashness of the woman's butt-slam.

"An Allied Ninja? Someone your age must be a rookie, yet I've never seen you before," Endo turned to the blonde. What interested Mana more than this girl's identity or credibility as a kunoichi was Endo's interest in her. Endo cared about very few things, which is why he was so blazing passionate about the few things that riled him up. Just what could this spike of interest have been about?

"She is a rookie. In fact, she's only joined us a few days ago," Boriya nodded. Seeing the alignment of Boriya's face paint, Mana wondered which country or village she could have been from. The camouflage nature of the decoration was obvious, though it would have only concealed one in very few environments. A swampy one or perhaps some underground mine?

"Then how is it possible that she's working alongside us? Are we supposed to take a prep course recruit with us on this supposed mission? We've just returned from a mission that would satisfy one for a lifetime, so we'd rather not do survival or training drills. My team is a few members short and exhausted," Shige-H pointed at Mana and Endo. Their clothes and cleanliness have seen better days.

"You're not in it for no survival drill," Boriya grit her teeth. Her right eyebrow twitched, which was difficult to tell because of the camouflage paint obscuring even her thoroughly trimmed eyebrows. "This is going to be even direr than your last job. I've been told you were ready to cut a schedule that no Allied Ninja squad has ever performed on before. Was I wrongly informed?"