Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Games of Body and Soul

Requiem

The news of Burgoniya's murder could not have hit Mana at a worse moment. One would have thought that even for someone attached to everything that the human life stood for losing someone they were not getting along to such an extent with would have felt at least a little bit easier. It did not. In fact, remembering her final conversations with the woman made Mana only feel worse about the whole thing.

"Ma'am..." Shira acknowledged the fact that Mana's collapse was lasting an alarming length of time.

An uneasy feeling of blood pulsing in her forehead as it passed through from anguish and fury was a poor accompaniment to the blazing pain in the magician's heart. It was a good thing that she was young and while her core was being relentlessly pummeled from all sides, it persevered the siege. A heart any older or weaker would have easily burst into bloody mush.

"She did not wish to go..." Mana mumbled out. She spread out her fingers from cups to rakes as she grabbed her wild hair, all just to try and calm down the storm inside her chest.

"She was a Security officer. She knew what she signed up for. Out of all the rookies, she wanted it the most. She knew a safer service, one analyzing evidence behind a desk and yet she wanted more." Shira tried speaking in a less formal manner as he saw it being necessary. His tone softened appropriately.

"I told her to go, I told her she was needed there..." Mana cried out, her head trying to force out blood through forceful contact with the table beneath it muffled the sound somewhat.

"She was needed. The money would not have been recovered without her." Shira nodded.

"If I won she would not be dead." Mana lifted her head up, tears running down and her lips quivering. "I failed her."

Thumb looked at Shira, the woman looked confused and there was no reason for her not to be. The Diamond Hand must have been used to changing up its roster, someone got too ambitious - they were killed, someone told something they were not supposed to say to people who were not supposed to hear it – they died. Death was a daily routine not only for the leader of the thievery Finger but to anyone who called this ninja world their own.

"That's foolish, kid, you know it is." The woman squatted down so her eyes could look at Mana's from a lower level and so her hand could reach the magician's slumped and weak shoulders. "Nobody is to blame for someone dying but the person that does the deed. Index would be pretty pissed for you taking her credit like this."

"Look, this is all pretty sad and all but no one ever came back from the dead over someone crying hard enough over their dead body." Muriya stepped up and in front of Shira, trying to swerve the conversation into what he saw as a more productive direction.

Mana's eyes blanked out. Once again fate played a cruel trick on her, bringing her back from what should have been certain death only to show her she had not suffered enough and there were still ways it could bend her spine against its edge. Ways that were agonizing but precise enough not to break it.

"What my husband wanted to say is..." Muriya's wife stepped out in front of her husband, rudely silencing the man by pressing her hand against his mouth and barely restraining the desire to smack him, "You cannot bring your comrade back to life, all you can do is do your best to move on. Make sure that nobody else follows her."

"Truth be told, I'd feel much safer if Index did follow your friend right down to Hell..." Muriya fixed his tie, looking a little bit offended that he was silenced that way but not enough to make too much of a fuss of it. Even when his kids were not around, as they were lead to the cells where the Shukuba Security housed them in and let to doze off in peace, the man's glare did soften whenever he looked at his wife.