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

From Messenger Hawks to Just Messenger

"I'm really glad to see you. Isn't it crazy how we just happened to butt into one another?" Kiyomi smiled while looking at the barely cloudy sky with dreamy eyes.

"Not really." Mana shook her head with an aura of serenity around her. "I figured you would be coming back today, there was really just one place you could have come to. It must have been difficult not to be able to attend the funeral because of clan grievances."

"Oh, you have no idea!" Kiyomi grumped out. "Still, I'm glad to put it all aside now. I'm glad that things didn't escalate and break out into a full-on conflict."

"It seems naïve and foolish how sure we were back then it would..." Mana closed her eyes, feeling a bit embarrassed about the childish worries that people in charge would not be able to keep their egos in check and would risk so much for another war. It was especially foolish to think this way while being a member of the generation that never experienced war, thinking thusly about the generation that had. Then again, certain professions and certain people reveled in war so perhaps the idea was not all that insane...

"You speak as if there's no conflict in the world right now." Kiyomi's eyes got serious as she looked on ahead.

"True, I've heard about Iwa and Kumo. Seemed like such random countries to ram horns against each other." Mana sighed.

"So do you feel responsible for that one too?" Kiyomi teased the magician, figuring that she would receive a foolish joke or a somewhat unnerved, negative reaction but Mana's face turned genuinely sour.

"I'm not sure, honestly. It was me who brought back all the blueprints and samples of the technology that partially escalated the feud. Had it not been for the dire need of coltan, maybe the conflict could have been avoided." Mana gave a vague shape to her inner worries.

"Who could have known how crazy everyone would go over the technology... It's like our entire worlds changed in a just a handful of years." Kiyomi sighed. "Though I must say, I think I kind of see the way you feel about fighting right now. People of mountainous regions, the only places in the world where coltan can be mined from fighting on those very same lands, destroying that very same mineral they are trying to provide in the process..."

"Coltan is not the most painful victim of this conflict," Mana noted. "Your return wasn't a surprise to me, Meiko's however was." She changed the topic in a heartbeat.

"Wait... Meiko's back too!?" Kiyomi flipped out, her face covered with a smile while her cheeks blushed ever so lightly. A somewhat predictable reaction given how close the two girls were.

"Yeah, we're heading her direction right now." Mana nodded calmly.

"Wow, your sensory must have gotten crazy!" Kiyomi complimented her friend. Not only was the magician able to trace Meiko returning from outside the village but also pinpoint the blacksmith in the middle of a busy ninja village in one of the busiest times. The old Mana would have covered up her head and complained of being unable to focus while surrounded by so many massive signatures but this new Mana looked completely unfazed by it, almost like it was a no-factor.

"I've trained it quite extensively. I did not pick up many new techniques but I have sharpened some of the tools I already had." Mana winked slowly in confirmation. "Using sensory in tracking is just the first step of the sense. It can be so much more."

"What do you mean?" Kiyomi wondered.

"Well... I can see it, but I can't quite yet grasp it. All I can say is that just like you can sense signatures, you can sense parts of them as well. It's something I still am working on, sadly." The magician sighed before loud noises of the feminine sort reached their ears. After moving the curtains before the entrance to Yakiniku Q, the sight of a red-haired wanderer that could not have seen a shower or a comfortable bed in months almost standing atop of the table she was eating off of.