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

To Protect and Work in a Mountain

Something shattered downstairs. Mana closed her eyes, breathed in and out. It should have stopped her chest from quivering which often led to mild shortness of breath. Few things could stress her out to this degree so lightning-fast. Father did not join her in the tinkering session yesterday. Being the brain behind Mana's crafty hands was a part of his coping process.

It would have taken a fool to misidentify the rumbling thunder raging downstairs, only someone to be called that would have misidentified the voice of their own father. Mana jumped off of the bed and slowly moved to the door, pressing against it. She was fighting the worse parts of herself, the fear behind opening the door and walking downstairs, talking to father and helping him.

She's been running from him again, just like she was initially. Hell, she's been running away from home for a while now. Not purposefully but home tended to lately be just that place she seldom crashed at when she was not busy fending off people and things trying to murder her for one reason or another. Such was the job, that was not as big of a problem as one may have thought but did Mana really have to be as devoted to it?

Moreover, how could she truly confront her father when she was the one who helped shut down the source for his relief. The painkillers and experimental herb mixtures that Ayushi's cult has been selling for years now were no snake oil, they actually did help people and Mana's father was the shiniest gold nugget amongst the examples. Guru Ayushi was one of the most powerful and certainly the most experienced ninja alive, there may have been very few things he could not do or did not know. If he wanted to cure pain – pain had a reason to sweat.

Things would be so much different, so much easier if she had nothing to do with shutting down that part of the black market. Mana forced herself to peel the door open, she was struggling against her own body so much that controlling her strength from ripping the door out so hard that the resonating shockwave tore the entire house down was a genuine challenge. Ninja were taught control over everything else, power was not worth using if one could not control its flow and direction and Mana was still struggling.

Mana had pushed back opening the door to meet the storm cloud of responsibility that she had skipped the entire conflict between her parents and father was just haunting the second floor and heading to the master bedroom like a phantom.

"Are you OK?" it was a bad question. Mana regretted it almost instantly. It would have been the worst thing to ask father normally and this was not the father she knew and loved, this was one of her most loved ones struggling with pain problems.

"I was, then some asshole burnt my hands," Father grumbled.

Mana turned her attention downstairs, trying to reach out to her mother's signature with her sensory. Try to see if it had any subtle or changes to it that may have implied great sadness or raging ones that may have implied fury. Both were equally as likely with that woman. Maybe if mother was jounin with a chakra signature the size of a Sun, Mana may have noticed the flow of her chakra working differently but not that of a civilian...

She was not quite at that level yet. It was an all too painful reminder that Mana was getting all too often recently.

"Is there something I can do to help? Maybe some other herb mixture that can ease it up somewhat?" Mana wondered. She would have helped her case if she did not sound so guilty when clearly was not. Either way, it was not like the girl could have helped the way she felt. Once again, she was not at that level of self-deception.

"Don't bother. Next thing you know I'll get hooked on it and you'll leave and I'll have to live without it again..." Father snapped back at Mana with a restrained but quite spiky tone. If the magician didn't know any better, she'd have thought that father was blaming her for leaving on missions or other ventures so often, amongst other things.