Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Where We Come From

Mana's Bad Day

Sometimes, when a very special event is transpiring before one's eyes, one often knows that things won't be the same as they were anymore. Such was the feeling when the village saw the Fourth Hokage surrounded by four of his most trusted and most powerful ninja in the village head out. Surely something revolutionary was going to happen, a historic flip-the-table moment which would change everything, allies and enemies will be made and a clash was unavoidable now. Some people fooled themselves thinking that this was going to be just another Five Kage Summit but one should've known better.

To Mana it was almost apparent that something bad will happen, there will be no peaceful resolution to this, otherwise, why would Hokage choose to take four of the most amazing ninja with him? He only took two of the Sannin though, the third Sannin was away on another mission. From the rumors that were going around, it seemed like she was in Kirigakure which put her life in extreme danger. If something awful transpires at the Kage Summit she will suddenly find herself to be the most wanted dead person around. Maybe it was for that reason that Hokage took so many not only strong but wise people, trying to solve any possible conflicts through intimidation of power and inevitable destruction if someone decides to become an enemy of Konohagakure.

Seeing Hokage and his four guards leave through the village gate made that sad and depressing atmosphere, the feeling of uncertainty was everywhere, the eternal and immovable peace that the Fourth had achieved was now trembling like a wobbly leg of a kitchen table. Just one wrong rude move will send all of the food crumbling down on the floor, reverting the families sitting around it to savages that either eat off of the floor or go to bed hungry. That was not even the worst part, the worst part was that everyone accepted it, just sighed and went back home, such wide acceptance of the fact that conflict and war were almost inevitable was what made Mana's heart hurt the most.

These couple of days from her training with Tanshu-sensei and the day when she received the letter to come pick up a mission Mana did her best to buff up the amount of magic shows she did. The people of Konohagakure could've used some entertainment to turn their minds away from war. Some could've said that Mana was an awful girl for making double the amounts of shows, after all, people were shaken by the events and very unsure of their futures. All she had to do was show off and she'd have swayed them to her side, that was true, she saw a lot of new faces coming at her shows, far more matured people and far fewer children. Slowly she would become Konohagakure's mainstream source of entertainment, perhaps that was her calling, not being a ninja?

After all, Mana was not part of a clan, not some super amazing genius ninja that had mad skills and always made perfect choices, she often failed and struggled immensely in her ninja work, working out her physical shape felt like literally killing herself. Still, she was thinking a lot about what Tanshu-sensei told her - she had an entirely different mindset from a common ninja. Her unique ideals combined with her background and experience of being a stage magician - prodigy at creating illusions and playing with audience's mind made her a very different kind of ninja. All those shows could've just been viewed as Mana's own kind of training, she was sharpening her mind and making new ways to deceive her opponent in the battlefield, after all, having no set of fancy eyes, no special unbeatable techniques made her have to rely on her skill in deceit and lies. Was that the skillset of a true hero? Probably not... Just one more thing to make the girl feel like she's failing her dream, as small as insignificant as such thoughts were.

Finally, the magician got another letter instructing that she had to come to the Konohagakure Administration with her team and that they would be getting a mission assigned. No Hokage, no sensei. Somehow it felt like they were just playing ninja at this point and with no figures of authority in the village it seemed like nothing was right anymore, everything just invited more and more questions. Nights of peaceful and long refreshing sleep were few and getting even fewer, training was the thing that often helped to exhaust both Mana's body and her spirit. Still, often the girl found herself waking up and wandering around the house, looking at the dark night sky and thinking what's ahead. Things like war and changing the world were not something a twelve-year-old girl should worry herself about but it was too late. She entered the ranks of people considered murderers and tools, thinking of anything less than that would've been a mistake.