Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of What Defines Us

Hands Better Than Mine

Mana annoyingly rubbed her temples to attempt and alleviate her massive headache. This was possibly the absolute worst day to have a headache on. When it hit her it appeared like a bear trap had shut closed on her upper skull driving sharp spikes that bashed through the bone and dug into the very core of her brain, from there it transformed into a more worm-like shape as it burrowed around like a malicious pest with an outright evil intent to cause the carrier more pain and suffering.

"Something's wrong?" Kiyomi curiously inquired. The two girls have been waiting in the Training Grounds No 32. A very peculiar place that appeared like a typical decorative oriental garden and was artificially kept in a constant season of autumn by the Senju clan members working in the maintenance. While the Senju clan was a highly spoken of and rather elite club of amazingly vital and just as strong physically ninja with the added ability to manipulate trees on top of that, not all members were as elite and exceptional as the mostly spoken of golden apples.

"It's nothing, to be expected, honestly..." Mana forced herself to smile for her friend as she looked through the thick cover of falling leaves right into the noon sky. While waiting around for her sensei on the first day of training was not encouraging at the slightest, Mana still preferred it to the awkwardness of standing in front of Hanasaku herself this whole time. The woman had acquired a dislike for Mana whereas before she carried great expectations and a playful curiosity of just how far the magician would go. Standing in front of such a person for hours couldn't have been pleasant...

"To be expected? If you have migraine, that's a serious ailment. They don't authorize migraine patients for the field, it disrupts the chakra molding process, you know... You can't augment your abilities with migraine which will get you killed!" Kiyomi expressed her concerns in a motherly fashion.

"It's nothing like that, I do not have migraine. It's just that I've been practicing my illusions whole night yesterday, ever since I came back home. It's part sleepless night, part exhausted from being pinched and targeted brain centers acting up..." Mana explained as she rubbed her forehead once again in a desperate wish to ease up the acting up pain that just came and gone acting as it pleased.

"I see..." Kiyomi finally looked like she accept Mana's explanation, granted, the magician had no idea as to why she even had to explain herself or why her teammate didn't just accept the first version of explanation insisting on having the magician elaborate on what she's been doing last night. "You've been practicing your illusions on yourself? Hitting your own brain? That's dangerous..." she concluded. Her tone was odd. It was like she wanted to express concern but was worried to sound overly protective making her sound rather insecure.

"Have you been seeing Eiju again? You focus way too much in the medical aspect of things..." Mana sighed as the pain in her very brain finally eased up, it felt almost pleasant in a way, like a longtime cramp finally letting go and the body regaining a full use of an integral body part and flooding the system with happiness hormones in the process.

"If I was I'd never talk about the medical aspect of things. He's too careless in his job to warrant it being an actual topic he speaks about..." Kiyomi smiled. Her lack of a defensive reaction actually told Mana more than her actual reply. If Mana was asked the same question she'd have likely have gotten overly defensive, even aggressively so, even if she consciously tried not to do it. Comfort in such a question implied that there was no way back for the two of them at this point.

The orange, yellow and red leaves began wildly rotating in a circular pattern in a highly orderly manner as their team leader – the Konoha Sannin known as Chestnut Hanasaku landed on a small decorative bridge arcing over a little creek. The woman's landing was so swift yet so delicate that she raised not a single one of the layers on top of layers of leaves beneath her feet. Hanasaku wore a light and short flowery dress with the typical of higher ranking ninja protective vest on top of it. Her hair was actually tidy, verily unlike her usual self. The time spent as the Fifth must've made the woman more serious towards her view of the world.