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

Land of Fire In Land of Fire

Mana hated running off on Kouta, especially so when she hadn't quite been the ideal dating partner and when they had to substitute the more casual dating activities for training. Even if Kouta ended up enjoying it more than initially expected, in the end, it still felt really scummy of her to pull that and just disappear. Still, the summon from the Konoha Administration sounded rather urgent. It's been a while since Mana received a term of appearing as soon as possible to receive her objectives along with the summon. Not to mention one so tight...

A combo of familiar chakra signatures hit her field of sensory, as much as Mana would have liked to say her hellos to Kiyomi and Meiko, she should have probably just hurried on ahead and seen what Lord Seventh had to say so urgently. Why were those two hanging out together anyway? Usually, when they hung out they at the very least invited Mana out as well.

Talk about bad timing. Just on the day when Mana scheduled her comeback magic show... If the mission was this urgent to be taken off the village's hands, it likely had a very tight deadline. Those had the nasty habit of not leaving any time for side activities like magic shows and entertaining the village.

Kiyomi and Meiko were moving in a rather odd trajectory... Mana stopped on top of a transmission tower and looked at the direction far behind her. Where her friends were, had the magician chosen to take a huge, diagonal nosedive in that direction. The two were not hurrying but they almost certainly were headed towards the Administration as well. Could it be? No. If they were issued the same mission, they'd surely have picked up the pace...

Mana blitzed away, appearing by the Administration's doorstep almost instantly now that no buildings or peaceful civilians laid in her way. When the whole journey was just to dash forward and she did not have to mind what's in her way. Inside the village, she could let loose a little, while the distances that required traveling weren't all that impressive, there were no ninja that could have picked up on a high-velocity target and gotten curious or traps laid out all over the place. The sensory units in the Hokage Mountain may have picked up a spike in Mana's chakra activity but they would not pay it any heed, just a ninja on a rush to get somewhere fast, that was all it was...

Usually, the magician would not have registered a presence of an unfamiliar chakra signature as anything of note, the Administration was buzzing with people whom Mana did not know nor had a chance to be around their chakra signatures to get fond of them and familiarize with their feel. This one... This one burned and blazed, it was massive and it was... Rotten. No. That wasn't it. It was black but it was not evil. This was such an odd sensation, such a peculiar combination of mixed feelings that the chakra put out that Mana stopped in her tracks and blanked out for a second.

"Hey! Mana's here!" Meiko's voice broke the magician out of her trance. "Don't tell me Team Hokage's back together!"

"Maybe she'll be leading our squad, now that she's a big and fancy chuunin and all..." Kiyomi teased the magician.

Meiko wrapped her elbow around Mana and handled her around as if the blacksmith was wrestling an alligator before removing the magician's hat, placing it on top of her own long, red locks and rubbing the top of magician's head enough to cause irritation and a little pain but nowhere close to hurting the young woman seriously.

"I have no problem with Mana leading us, she's pretty brainy after all!" the blacksmith smiled with her trademark, carefree and almost monkey-like grin.

"You guys are here on a mission too? That doesn't necessarily mean we're on the same mission. Mine has a tight deadline which I'm... Missing..." Mana just realized before turning to the direction of the Hokage office.

"Yeah, ours has one too, that's why we figured you'd be leading us. The big man wouldn't just let us out on something important like that without a higher ranking leader to watch over us and, face it, we just work together like a charm..." Kiyomi shrugged. As much as Mana's instincts yelled at her to hurry up and ask the two to let her talk to Lord Seventh first, given the tight term she was issued, the magician just relented and followed the short trek upstairs with her friends. Closer to that dark but oddly neutral-feeling blaze...