Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Where We Come From

Tale Begins: Enter Nakotsumi Mana

Some say that whenever one makes a choice there is another world that coexists where one chooses differently. When one follows this confusing thread, far in the reaches of the void that separates these worlds, one can find a world very different from the one they know. A world which is inhabited by different people, a world that is defined by a different history created by countless choices differing from any other world like it. This is a story of such a world!

A young girl was standing on a cardboard box with some trash in it, one not unlike many more that could've been found across Konohagakure, especially in the spring season when people were tidying up and throwing out the trash that they had as leftovers from winter. The substance and contents of said box mattered little to the twelve-year-old girl, only its location in the central district of the village. The actions she performed on the said box were quite unlike what any common villagers had seen before causing crowds that couldn't have been called as small to gather around the child and observe her peculiar behavior.

Konohagakure was a ninja village through and through, people that lived in it may have lived under the illusion that it was no militaristic establishment however they weren't quite right. The village made its due from ninja performing missions for both its villagers and the village itself, most of the time ninja faced off against other ninja and no place, that benefits from violence and conflict can be called non-militaristic. As many rights these villagers enjoyed, as believable as this illusion of peace was - they lived in the village of hired muscle that did not shy away from killing. Perhaps that was why this girl proved to be so interesting to the audience.

The girl with of slightly tanned skin and dark hair, tied behind her back with a forehead protector with the Leaf's mark carved into it, wearing a casual flowery black dress similar to what normal girls of her age wore and sandals was performing tricks for the audience's amusement. Her performance consisted of tricks both simple and utilizing ninjutsu, something that not that many people have seen before. Ninjutsu was made to be a tool of murder and stealth, a tool of accomplishing the task at hand and this child was using it for the amusement of the audience, making harmless but highly visually appealing sparks, using her natural affinity for sleight of hand as a kunoichi to quickly hide and reveal objects. The public ate the little girl up...

The girl opened her eyes in the morning as Sun felt its need to blast all of its luminescence into her closed eyes slightly earlier than the young genin would've loved it to. She scratched her tired eyes and sat up looking around the bright room, her somewhat annoyed and tired eyes slipped back to the piece of cloth illustrating one of her favorite books that was hanging on her window, acting as a cover, as a mean to protect her from the light. The girl's hand reached up and tore it off with a quick pull, "Thanks, I'll remember this, Shikio-kun..." she thought sarcastically thanking the character who was depicted on the cloth. The illustration was one of his iconic battles with the Kirigakure ninja which was currently hard to believe when in reality he failed his duty to protect a young girl from sunlight in the morning. Life was truly unlike fiction...

"Mana, when will you get down!? You don't want to be late for your "One-Time-Thank-You-Tour", do you?" father's voice echoed from below. The man was a chuunin of Konohagakure and had quite the powerful voice, he was more of the intellectual type so he had that certain shade of confidence and strength to his voice without making it sound too husky and dark. He had the perfect voice for a teacher but he used it to berate the opponents that fell into the traps of "Konoha's Great Trapster", as he was known, instead. The only reason why Mana knew all of this was because sometimes father's friends gathered and they kept telling the girl all of the stories, always sounding so proud of all the violence, always making her doubt just how much of content of those stories was true. Surely Hibiki-san couldn't jump fifteen meters in the air to catch the scroll they were supposed to retrieve, right?