Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of What Defines Us

Golden Child

A deafening wave of applause and a standing audience followed the conclusion of Mana's stage magic show. The magician bowed as always and waited for a sign from offstage assistants that the mirrors that surrounded her had been removed and she could freely leave. Had she not done so she risked walking right into a mirror screen bumping both her nose and her pride. She made that mistake during practice, turned out Mana was rustier than she'd thought.

It made sense that the public ate her return up. After all, Mana's sleight of hand improved immeasurably during her time training with the martial artists of Sun Disc arena. Her perception and general motor control were actually multiplied billions of times after training with Meiko and all of those improvements were multiplied incalculably still when Mana's chakra control returned. The limits of her current abilities still remained untested...

After the worker offstage gave Mana a thumb up the magician carefully and slowly bowed again and again while catching one of the multiple roses thrown on the stage and playing with it like a playing card, letting it shift through her fingers. At this point, she was just showing off. The girl took a moment to sigh in relief after she left the stage and entered the corridor leading up to the small cabinet she used for prep before the show and trivialities after it.

Mana was glad that the audience ate her show up like never before, while the audience was much smaller compared to the heights of her magician career it was to be expected – it was her first performance in many months and with events like those happening in ninja world distracting the common villager she was bound to be forgotten until she made an actual lasting legacy.

"Wow, kid, gotta say... Wow!" Hiro – the owner of the hall where Mana performed clapped for her after letting himself enter the cabin. Normally, he'd have risked running into a performer changing but by now he knew that the magician didn't view her uniform as a stage accessory but actually like a part of her daily attire at times. Mana took her craft seriously, she was a stage magician on the stage, off of it and on the battlefield as a ninja.

"I'm glad you liked it, Hiro-san, how did we do?" she asked with a smile while putting her various still functional stage props into a large duffel. It probably weighed a ton but to Mana, it was barely anything. The more her chakra control advanced, the more casual enhancing her body seemed.

"Well the audience was smaller than usual but... It was to be expected from a return performance. If your show today is any indicator – the whole village will be talking about you pretty soon. Just don't go missing for such a long time and you'll be world-famous." Hiro began singing her praise, while some encouragement was usual for people making Hiro money but he didn't usually praise someone thusly. Mana sensed a speech coming up. She waited for a "but" but it didn't come, the magician just turned her chair around and crossed her arms over her chest looking curiously at the hall manager.

"Look... Here's your payment for the show." Hiro scratched the back of his sweaty neck that made his flowery Hawaiian shirt seem like it was submerged underwater for a good minute or two as it ran down lower to the short and chubby man's body.

"That's not how we usually do things. I thought you're paying my mother, not me. She's managing my funds. Did something change?" Mana curiously asked just looking at the large pile of cash right in front of her face.

"Well... Not really, your mother is a brilliant manager, you'll know what I mean one day but... You're really important here, just wanted you to know. I gave you this smelly dark cabin when you started, just a kid in a flowery dress doing silly magic tricks. During this whole time, you could've left, found a better place where you'd be respected but you didn't. Now when you got pretty big... You're kinda my big moneymaker, even when you're not around people know my place mainly cause of you. I just wanted you to know you're being appreciated and... That, as stingy as I am, I appreciate loyalty from my entertainers." Hiro uneasily explained just shaking the thick pile of money.