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

Follow the Deer-Man

Mana's eyes raced across the countless alleyways, paths and possible turns. It seemed like the grotesque, barely living people that the Allied Ninja sought answers from could have been in any single pocket of shadows, hiding in any building that was not overly lively at this time of day. Her eyes working overtime and brimming with focus was only a triviality, her sensory was the real ace that the team of Allied Ninja bet on.

"T-There!" the girl's eyes opened wide in shock of picking up a distinct, all too familiar signature. "They're over there." She looked back at the Allied Ninja who were following her. Most of them looked about as surprised as the magician was that Mana managed to find them this easily. It was like the black ones were barely even hiding after eluding their pursuers in the sewers.

"Why would they regroup again after losing us?" Junichi mumbled to himself.

"It must be a trap of some kind. Perhaps they have another ninja with them to fight us again?" Rushira raised a valid point.

"Is there a stronger signature with them?" Junichi asked the magician without offering her the pleasure of a look when she was being addressed.

"There is not. However..." Mana looked back, to the east, the west and the south as similar signatures popped up all over the range of her sensory. "I'm picking up more and more groups just like this all over the village."

"Maybe they're all gonna surrender after seeing how kickass I was?" S-Crew joked while rubbing his nose that got itchy from his boastful type of humor.

"Or they are trying to split us up." Junichi closed his eyes before looking back at Mana with one of his strict glares. "They seem to be pretty desperate about splitting us up recently, aren't they?"

"Don't we just need any single one of them?" Rushira wondered. "It does not really matter if they're grouping up all over the village, does it? We can just attack any group, snag any one of them and leave them. They won't offer much resistance in their state."

"From the size of their chakra, I'd say they are just as strong as normal civilians." Mana provided her ally with additional information. She just wanted to supply her group with as much support as she could to shake off the unwelcome reputation of a possible traitor. "Although, we do not know just who those people are. They seemed to be bossed around by that ninja back there, maybe they aren't really in control of their actions? In that case, we should try and rescue as many of them as we can."

"So, basically, what you're saying is – let's split up, to confront all of the groups, right?" Junichi looked at Mana with a mean glare.

The girl swallowed a tough gulp. Her hands began trembling but, with a tap of her foot, she managed to play it off as anger and desperation. She desperately wanted these Allied Ninja to trust her but when the choice was between saving some poor people who may have been experimented on and kidnapped for some unclear purpose or looking good in front of international ninja superheroes, as far as Mana was concerned, it was not a choice at all.

"Yes. Those people were unrecognizable. Given how they were being treated like cattle or slaves, there is a reason to assume they may just be the missing people. If that is the case, we should recover them as well as uncover their abusers." Mana spoke up while pressing her quivering left to her chest with her right palm. Her voice was trembling so her feeble attempts to look strong may not have gone as successfully as she wanted but, as the threat to human lives began to slither more and more of itself on the table, the way she appeared to others began mattering significantly less to the magician with each passing moment.

"In that case, let's split up. One person per group, capture the walking corpses and move on to the other group. There are chuunin patrolling the village, they should take care of the captured ones once they're in your control while you move on." Junichi, much to everyone's shock, agreed to Mana's plead.