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

In Between The Forgotten Chapters

Something didn't feel right. It was not that the cloud-like softness under her head felt painful or bad in any way. It was just that Mana was simply so used to sleeping on actual hardened minerals and rocks or getting roughed around by the battles she ended up in that feeling soft, warm and cozy made her snap out from whatever clouded her mind and open her eyes.

The magician laid inside a warm room with the early spring Sun beaming down through the windows and feeding the nice orchids on the nearby window. Something about this made no sense. Mana looked around and once the people sharing the room noticed the magician's eyes they smiled in return with warmth in their eyes, unlike anything Mana could remember for a while. Recently her life's been about reptilians, venom and saving herself and others from not getting eaten or killed just for someone's fun.

"You've woken up. That's great." The middle-aged lady near Mana's bed smiled at the magician. "Usually medical ninja don't feed people pills like that, I was worried that you may have been in a dire condition. I mean, if you're like that and I'm in the same room as you, how bad were my kidney stones actually, huh?"

The woman chuckled to herself, she just tried to lighten up the mood but the confusion Mana felt made her feel a little past the laughing point. She didn't feel bad about just looking around with those weird eyes instead of smiling for the kind woman who spoke up to her but... It was just the genuine way she felt. The need to find out where she was and how things ended was just too great.

"Medical ninja? You mean I am in a hospital? This does not look like Konoha..." Mana mumbled before trying to stand up. Almost instantaneously a gruesome collection of sights flashed through her mind. Her own legs crushed and broken, the bone ground and splintered inside and blood that fed her own well-trained muscles with oxygen spraying all over the hardened magma before instantly evaporating from the heat.

She had no more legs, did she? This was one of those nasty awakenings when she realized that while she was alive, life would no longer be what it used to be... Just like back then, when she lost her chakra control and she thought she had no more chance of being a ninja. Mana feared of looking under her covers and seeing her legs completely busted up and mangled or completely gone but she felt the soft and warm touch of bandages against them – at the very least they were still there.

Slowly and with a very hesitant glance, Mana peeked under the covers and noticed that while her legs were bandaged, they were not something she'd see in one of those horror pictures on the television or in a play. The girl sighed with relief. She was not sure just how well her legs still worked, just how much functionality she retained but at the very least they were still there and somewhat intact.

"Konoha?" the woman to Mana's left grinned, "Oh, no! This is Kusagakure. I'm not sure why they'd bring you here if Konoha is all you know. Seems to me like it would be counterproductive, Konoha is a pretty big place with a whole bunch of fancy medical ninja. Guru Ayushi is from Konoha, isn't he?"

"I... Yeah..." Mana rubbed her eyes with her knuckles before dragging her hand over her face. She wondered if she should stand up and look through the window to outside. She tried making the subtle motions of standing up and her legs, while a little bit aching, barely acted up. She could, at the very least, move them.

"Oh, maybe you shouldn't do that just yet. I'll call the medical ninja for you." The woman to Mana's left smiled before blowing into a wooden pipe of sorts that carried the airborne tune to an, as of yet, an undetermined location outside the ward. Shortly after a male medical ninja entered the ward at a moderate pace.

"Did someone need help?" he asked. Mana tried memorizing the man's unremarkable features like his well-stricken, light brown hair, his stubble or his glasses but the eyes of Kouta, shyly staring through the narrow gap between the almost shut door behind the man was all she could focus on. Once their eyes met, the Konoha ninja rushed into the ward and ran up to Mana, embracing the magician in a hug.