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

Always, the Rain

A person just died. Not just any officer determined to lay their life down for the sense of duty they felt in their heart. For the meaning of purpose that made their life feel fulfilled. What bullshit. As if life even needed justification... The person who laid their life down was a mother of a young family who probably had no reason to be in the Security Force while this conflict was going on at all.

And what did Mana know really? The magician stood back up as she wiped her tears and looked out through the window at the weak winter sunlight doing its best to melt through the lockdown of snow and ice. She never even thought that there would be a need to put the rookies on the front lines like this...

"Why? Why did you do that, Toiya-san?" Mana whispered to herself seeing the glass in front of her react to the warmth of her breath by steaming up.

Craving for the winter frost to refresh her thoughts again, the magician pressed her forehead against the window and closed her eyes. She used to be so confident and cheerful about everything. Whenever her fellow students in the Academy or her elders heard about Mana's dreams of changing the world, they always thought it was just a phase, just her immaturity, and childish nature. Was this the moment when it became clear to Mana too? Was this the moment when it was best for her to give up and change at last?

It was easy to think of changing the world when washing the dishes at Ichiraku or picking herbs was all that Team Oak had to do. When the worst that her failure would have brought was a smaller pay and a very irritated shop owner. Now it felt like it was always supposed to feel, this was the plain, which Mana had always dreamed to stand on. Hold her own against the cruel world she lived in, thinking that the act of standing in front of it would impress it enough to steer aside in the direction she chose for it.

Mana let her eyes briefly lift and narrow rays of light flood her senses that were becoming quite fond of the dark of her closed eyes. The sun was hiding behind the rainclouds and, little by little, it was becoming apparent that it would soon begin to rain.

It was so comforting returning back to the days where she could see the smiles of Shimo and Sugemi stretching out like the reverse arcs of a rainbow. When all three of them were about as young physically but much less experienced. There were times when it felt like things were much better when that experience was absent, even though the lack of experience felt like the problem at the moment. The more experienced Mana grew, the more mistakes she made and learned from, the more the gap between she was and where she wanted to go looked.

More people were flocking to the Tribunal building, a handful of Security officers rushed outside to keep them out as they were becoming braver the closer the rain got to them. Some of them gave in and decided that this Tribunal session was not important enough to get wet for, it did deserve a slow and attentive read on tomorrow's paper at best. Others only became bolder as Shukuba Security increased in presence.

This would have been a great moment for a hero to stand up and face the crowd. Talk to them and calm their fears, give them something to satisfy their curiosity and ensure them that justice will be served to those they feared. Plenty of those people craved violent penance for the Diamond Hand, even those who aided Security in uncovering their ploys and unraveling the organization, a hero would have reasoned with them as well. A hero that Mana wanted to become but could not muster up the strength to measure up to. Mana's arms and legs slipped down the windowsill, she lacked the strength to do her duty as a hero.

Would they even want to see a spoiled crybaby who couldn't even protect those closest to her? Who dropped all of her cleverly put up defenses and halted all of her strategies after just being shown a little tease of her friend's memory. She was so hopeless, a little slip of Shimo's legacy and she froze up completely.