Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Journeys We Make

Two Heads Richer

Before the Stars could have headed out back to the Allied Ninja HQ, Shige-H insisted that they checked on the peacekeepers and how the captives were doing. She didn't do so out of care for the two captured rogues, even though Mana cared immensely about at least one of them. Shige's care was in the fact that she'd have to report the mission to Regimental Commander Boriya so she'd need to know if those two were a threat to the future stability of the region and if the peacekeepers could handle the two of them on their own.

"This is a waste of our time," Endo said with a grumble. "We should've just killed both of them."

"I agree..." Asuka raised her index finger. Endo beamed a squint her way. "I mean, both of them had been crippled and lost all will to fight. They serve literally no use to any political or military goal and just exist to potentially cause trouble for the peacekeepers. They're both liabilities."

"You're too quick to judge something that carries the weight of severing a human life," Shige-H objected instead of Mana. The medical kunoichi replied while Mana had been struggling against an expansive mass of proverbial cookie dough, lacking any sweetness and expanding without end with its yeasty flavor. Asuka's remark was more a dig at Mana's response to her yesterday than a genuine wish to kill the two captives. That much felt obvious. "It would also be detrimental to our objective. We need to help maintain stability in the region while Earth Country and Lightning Country work Iwagakure's situation out. We don't have any right to execute prisoners of the local peacekeepers, so it would only cause tension."

"Yeah, maybe, but that high-ranking peacekeeper lady is an ex-Black Ops, so she's smarter than most. She knows the value of trimming the fat," Asuka shrugged.

"Gwirlon-san had no choice in the matter. He hardly even comprehended what he was doing and didn't have any particular opinions about what people told him to do either," Mana replied.

"It will never fail to baffle me how affectionate and defensive you are toward people that maim and try to kill you," Endo grumbled. While he wanted to speak up and support the matter of executing the captured rogue ninja, he stayed quiet, likely because of his distaste for arguing alongside Asuka. At last, he found a way to both bite Asuka by lumping her amongst those whose executions he advocated for and speaking up his mind.

"If I stopped tolerating you and defending you, no one would tolerate or defend you and that just doesn't sit well with me," Mana beamed a mean look at Endo, jabbing his way in return by reminding him he had a role to play in attacking and hurting most of the Stars himself and has fought Mana on at least two occasions. Endo stayed quiet for the rest of the trip, which felt longer than it needed to.

It felt longer because of Mana's condition. Though the magician refused to form the missing parts of her leg as armor ninjutsu or to float using Mystical Wings. It may have been wiser to use one of those two methods. It'd have been faster for one. It'd have also helped Mana reconnect her severed chakra nodes and rebuild her network into a full and functional connection. Not to mention that it'd have kept her ninjutsu skills sharp and given her focus training while on the only thing that passed as her time off these days. Still, because of a feeling of expansive emptiness deep down, something that felt so vast and full of nothing of solid feelings that could have been defined and spoken of but also hurt by how widely it blew out in Mana's gut, Mana felt like she'd rather just go limp.

"You guys are still sticking around?" Prim-S crossed his arms. Because of a few nasty bruises he got during all the conflicts involving the enemy ninja, starting from Krown and moving onward the time frame, he seemingly stayed to attend to the reception alongside a younger-looking recruit. "We thought you'd be long gone somewhere else already."

"We just wanted to check up on the prisoners for the mission debriefing when we return," Shige-H explained. Prim-S shut down the curious looks from the younger kunoichi by his side and walked out of the reception cubicle to accompany the Allied Ninja. The peacekeepers that were aware they were working alongside Allied Ninja appeared to respect the discretion.