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

Counting the Losses

Usubane took a brief moment to glance back. She was not the one in the duo that possessed the gift of chakra sensory but there were other ways of telling that the magician was not keeping up with the rabbit. This proved especially odd given how motivated the girl seemed just a moment ago to reach the epicenter of the corrupted chakra which, as she did with many more things, Mana blamed herself for.

"What's going on?" Usubane yelled out, doing her best to yell over the sounds of confused and busy streets below.

"Give me a hand here," Mana asked with a soft tone as she used her Mystical Wings Jutsu to lift herself up so that she could reach a trapped villager, waving in a balcony that had its steel bones exposed while its concrete flesh crumbled to the streets below chunk by measly chunk. The man barely even registered getting lifted off and placed on the ground but he must have been used to ninja as he waved to Mana while she rushed on to the next person in need.

"You're not going to try to rush me?" Mana closed her eyes just to prepare herself mentally for the discomfort that would inevitably come from getting scolded or belittled for wasting time on rescuing villagers instead of confronting the cause that kept generating new cases of civilians in need faster than Mana could aid them.

"Why would I?" Usubane huffed before she lifted off a massive part of the fallen building that trapped a family of four in their basement since the fallen chunk of the building covered their escape up and left them buried. "I don't want you getting yourself killed. Rescue as many people as it seems necessary. I'd much rather help you with saving humans than getting yourself maimed or slaughtered."

"Thanks." Mana did not confront Usubane about her dislike of the magician's idea of confronting Honda herself instead of doing what most lower to average ranking ninja were doing – dealing with the aftermath of those few instances where the monstrosity reared its head and did some damage.

It took a while to reach the end of Honda's clear-cut path of destruction and mayhem. Mana stubbornly helped every single villager in her awareness on her way to the Hanada gambling house. The sentiment of what may have been her resting place belonging to the man associated with the earliest bits of her ninja career did not completely elude Mana's mind.

"I smell something..." Usubane sniffed the air.

"There are people fighting inside. Honda's one of them. This is strange, there were supposed to be more signatures than this..." Mana looked to the nearby totaled buildings with worry in her voice. A smoldering fire of corrupting panic took its place in Mana's chest, arresting her breathing for a moment as she rushed to the destroyed building directly to the east of the Hanada's gambling house.

"Is she?" Usubane gasped looking at the grotesque sight of a lifeless body with greyed out eyes. The awkward position of the girl's neck suggested that it was snapped.

"I sense nothing from her... I knew her a little from the Academy." Mana closed her eyes and pressed her trembling fists tighter. The fear in her chest changed to a different emotion that just for a moment made the magician's fists still and clear with purpose. Given how dangerous this emotion was to Mana's chosen way of life, the magician quickly quashed it.

"It's not your fault, Mana-san." Usubane tried catching Mana's eyes. "You weren't dilly-dallying exactly, you were saving villagers. You didn't know that it was this Hyuga girl or those villagers."

"Come on. Let's see fates of whom else will haunt me." Mana replied with the clear hint of swallowed grief in her reply. It was self-evident from the way that the magician was avoiding Usubane's eyes that the girl was struggling to keep her eyes dry.

Before the duo of a girl and her trusty rabbit could move into the Hanada gambling house with purpose and planning, Tanko Shigin burst through the roof of the tall building. He did so before spiraling off so high above that the very detail of his spontaneous and highly unorthodox exit from the building as well as the altitudes he was soaring in were visible only to those with advanced ninja-like perception.