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

Dangerous Caprice

"Could you please describe me the place you were attacked at? I need to find that thing and keep it from hurting anyone else." Mana asked the three men once light made her eyes burn up with irritation.

"You're going back? You're crazy! That thing will eat you up like it did Rurise!" one of the sewer workers objected.

"That creature is a child trapped in a monster's body. It is confused. It rests inside a dark and smelly sewer so it is scared. It likely cannot control its own strength." Mana was justifying her own stupidity to herself as much as she did it to the sewer workers she had led outside. "I'm going to lead you to the gate but I need to go back and find it."

"Confused things don't eat living people up. It is dangerous more than anything else." Another worker objected to Mana's idea.

"It's near Filter 72-B, a crossing between Iguana, Skink and Komodo channels." One of the three let it out. His voice was not happy but after seeing the determination blazing in the magician's body the man apparently had decided that pointing her in the right direction was the correct thing to do.

"The sewer channels have names?" Mana expressed her curiosity that merely tried to mask the rising sense of dread in her chest.

"Of course they do, do you know how massive a sewer system is?" the worker replied. "You just take this pipeline and go straight until the fourth fork in the road, then turn right, then turn right, left and take the utmost right in the final fork, should take you to the right corner, you cannot miss it."

"Yeah," Mana sighed. "It's only all dark, stuffy with dirt and filled with turns and forks... How could I possibly get lost?"

"Hey, it's your choice to go back in, not ours. We're not going back to work 'till we see the pictures of that thing dead on the info board." The first worker took a deep breath of the freshened up air of the great outdoors. Speeding a little, but not too much so that the workers would lose track of her, Mana led the workers back to the village gate.

"Whoa! What's wrong with them?" one of the gate guards rushed up to the party of bloodied and scared workers. The gruesome sight was beginning to slowly terrify the surrounding civilians as the gate was usually a point of interest for their curious glares, the time was not exactly fitting for people and caravans to come in and out freely like during the trading rush hours.

"They've been attacked. There were multiple casualties. Whatever attacked these men is lurking in the Konohagakure sewer system. I'm going back after it." Mana quickly gave the gate guards the gist of it.

"Wait, no! You need a proper response squad, weigh in the threat, let the Administration decide on how many ninja are needed. You may be completely outside your league!" the gate guard objected.

"There's no time. We need a quick first response before Little Honda gets away." Mana refused the notion with a sense of calm in her face. Honda only peeked his head out for a brief moment, letting his latent, rotten chakra out for a split-second before disappearing. Who knew when he'd appear again and when he would – casualties would follow. That was something Mana would not allow, even if the cost for this approach would be her own life.

"We're not letting you go off after that thing alone, Konoha's Sorceress." The second gate guard blitzed to Mana from behind. By the time Mana's body realized that she had to prepare for a brawl, she was already cornered and all she could do with this information was to follow it happen with her sharpened senses.

What was she supposed to do? Engaging these two would once again get the magician in trouble, in the best-case scenario she would get suspended again and deepen the mutual distrust between her and Lord Sixth even more. In the worst-case scenario, she was looking at Ninja Tribunal, probably indefinite suspension or prison time. Given that this was not even Mana's first time acting up in front of the Hokage's authority and decisions, she'd not be in any position to expect softer blows coming her way.