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

The Frequency of Spirit and Broken Twigs

The open pipe through which Mana crawled continued to shake about together with the quakes plaguing the entire structure. Unlike a few of the other ones that the magician crawled through, this pipe did not appear to send waves of heated gas, howling as it made its escape to the outside. In her crawl, Mana had only her chakra sensory suggesting which direction she might find either Kiyomi, Meiko, and Hanshin or where the document was being signed to rely on.

It did not take long for the Konoha kunoichi to hit the end of the pipe. She flipped over on her back and gave the structure a good, hearty kick. Despite the heat from the surfaces Mana was rubbing against having cauterized the wound on her gut, together with some burns all over the magician's body where her chakra augmentations faltered, the gut of the young woman lit up with burning impulses the moment she put more strength into her kick.

Perhaps too much strength. After Mana kicked the end of the pipe, the entire end of the structure exploded from the pressure outward and sent the injured young woman plummeting a good fifty meters down to the nearest hard surface. Luckily, the chakra augmentations lazily flowing through the magician's body to keep her mostly unharmed in the ungodly temperatures of the ventilation pipes of the Eternal Fire served as enough of protection against the fall to only cause moderate discomfort in her sickly feeling bones all over and some bruises as the magician gone through a long table circling the entire hall on her way down.

It was less than a ceremonious and dignified way down. At least it served as a decent distraction. Mana tried to gather the strength to pick herself up and confront the Iwagakure ninja but, much to her horror, her arms wobbled and gave in halfway, every time she tried applying more force to her movement, such as when she needed to stand back up, her limbs began feeling numb and just collapsed.

"The Konoha ninja! They've found us here! It's all over now!" someone was in the process of freaking out despite their highly advantageous position. What sick irony, Mana managed to follow her chakra sensory right to the hall where the document was being signed but she was in absolutely no condition to stop the signature from being put nor to do anything else but to witness the failure of her mission.

"Calm yourself. She doesn't look to be in any condition to stop us." A man in long and spiky black hair observed Mana's writhing body from a safe distance after bolting over the steps to where the magician had plummeted down. "Although if she's here, the others might make their way here as well. I would advise you to stop fucking up already and sign the document properly."

"When we planned this, I did not count on the Yordalar politicians being this bad at signing documents. This is your one job, is it not?" a feminine voice referred to the handful of cowardly Yordalar representatives that must have been the collaborators who would surrender their own country to Iwagakure's management. Not too much different from the way Kirigakure had lost most of their autonomy temporarily a few years back, except Kirigakure had no say in the matter whereas Yordalar appeared to surrender willingly under the illusion of a democratic election distracting the folk.

"Well, it is not our fault your draft of the contract was faulty. If we sign the wrong form of contract, it will be treated as void by the international community and I thought the whole point was to legitimately have Yordalar move under Iwagakure's wing." The previously cowardly politician objected.

"He's right... There will be no point in all of this if we sign the wrong form of a contract. Keep drafting the thing, you..." the Iwagakure spy with long and dark hair pointed at the cowering collaborators, "Sign the contract as soon as it is done. Soon enough we will have more problems on our hands than Konoha, I hate to admit it but if the Yordalarans discover what's going on..."

"You're a bunch of foreigners. The worst they can do to you is to cast you out, it will be our bodies hung from a tree upside down!" one of the politician collaborators cried out.