Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of What Defines Us

Blood Soaked Tears From our Fears

Mana's thighs still shook in pain and burning exhaustion as she made her way downstairs to the lower parts of the hospital. The weight of her backpack dug into the girl's shoulders and whereas, normally, the pain would've only kicked in a good hour or two in, now it began irritating the magician's skin almost instantly. Fixing the still bandaged swellings on her face and moving one band away from obstructing her eye Mana looked around trying to find her friends.

"The young Yamanaka lady left with the Konoha party already. It looked like the young lady wanted to wait for you to recover but the Sannin were insisting that she left with them. Chestnut Hanasaku insisted that the prisoner boy was returned to Eden as well, as soon as possible, so, I'm afraid, you were left alone to return home." The medical ninja explained to Mana, looking a bit proud he had successfully predicted the girl's predicament like some sort of genius of inductive reasoning.

It made sense, while a little disappointed with it, Mana didn't really feel angry about it. Kiyomi was the person around whom this whole story rotated, it made sense that Konoha would want the girl back immediately, that the Yamanaka clan would wish only the strongest ninja immediately secure the well-being of their future potential heiress. Still, Mana only departed from the village originally to see her friend and get to spend some time with her. While the two did mess around for a while in the Yamanaka resort it was all surrounded by the drama of bounty hunters being sent after Kiyomi which didn't let Mana lower her guard for a moment.

The magician just sighed looking around for any friendly face but then seeing none, even with the medical ninja scurrying away to check some emergency, she just shrugged and headed for the door. On her way there the magician checked her pockets feeling a couple of clanging coins, not nearly enough to hire a rower back to the continent.

"Hey, where the hell do you think you're going, all alone!?" Sugemi's angry voice made Mana turn back rapidly as she was shocked to hear a young man she heard having left her behind not too long ago.

"I thought you guys left?" the magician asked with a longing and still a bit banged up and raspy voice.

"Our clones did..." Yanagi smiled walking out from the canteen with a dumpling and a cup of soda being suspended in air by a briefly intelligible swarm of black insects. "I made a pair of insect clones to follow the mean lady and her friend and make it look like we left with them..." he spoke barely intelligibly as bunch of his food he was still munching flew out from his mouth as he spoke.

"You couldn't have fooled the Sannin with such a trick..." Mana looked away sadly wandering if her friends got into trouble.

"Obviously they weren't fooled, still, they didn't mind either. If they did find Yanagi out they didn't object so it's basically the same thing as them letting us stay..." Sugemi waved his hand at Mana's concerns before wondering what was next.

"We head back, I need to put this sword by Shimo's grave..." Mana declared with determination even if her voice was still weak and wavering. "What about you two? Are you going back to Konoha with me, Yanagi? If you showed your face around the Administration maybe you'd get noticed and considered for promotion."

Yanagi embarrassingly rubbed the back of his messy hair, "Nah, I've had my fair share of trouble. I thought that by becoming someone important despite not being the kind of person whom everyone usually considers important while reaching out for recognition I could be free. You know, the whole nobody becoming somebody thing, it felt like true freedom. Truth be told, I guess deciding what you want to do, ignoring the public expectations for you to succeed, even if you want to stay where you are for a while, is the true freedom. Being pressured and expected to achieve greatness is really the greatest prison of all. I realized that after some while of being pummeled by the Imarizu out there... If I ever want to reach out for a more intense life, I'll just ask to be transferred to a higher security prison complex whenever I feel like it." The Aburame declared.