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

Shattered Lives / Better Call Overcoat / Problem Bites

There was a sense of dread and irritation that accompanied the light that flooded into Mana's eyes every time she peeked her head outside. The combination of the two, rushing through the pain that substituted blood and traveled up and down, circulating throughout Mana's vessels, caused the magician's head feel like something hard was thumping from the inside.

The thumping sensation could only have been counterweighed by the opposite of a trampling sort of pain. One that flushed in from the outside and one that, oddly enough, felt familiar to the magician. Despite the fact that closing her eyes and looking back at what happened caused her to suck more and more of the terrifying mixture as if through a straw, delivered right into her system, Mana trod on, or rather back.

Segments of her clash with Ayushi remained intact, the bloodshot eyes of everyone trampling Mana into the dirt, everyone corrupted by Ayushi's jutsu. The Soul Release buzzing through and introducing itself to Mana through excruciating amounts of pain every time a skull whizzed by close enough. A pair of chakra signatures lit up, not too different from the people coursing through the corridors on a normal occasion but one of them was at least an average ninja and both of them were all too close to Mana's ward for their appearance to be a coincidence.

"What that cloaked man said was true." The nurse turned at a middle-aged medical ninja. "Konoha's Sorceress is awake."

"It seems so." The medical ninja nodded. The pair approached Mana together, the nurse began checking on the readings of the machines connected to the young woman as well as the recorded data of the past readings while the more experienced medical ninja ran his hands through Mana's body with a blue-hued scan of a Diagnosis Jutsu.

"By now we were beginning to accept the reality that you may have never woken up. The leading theory was that you went comatose like your father. We did not detect any traces of drugs in your system but you have been in plenty of missions that ended with a painful visit to the hospital so reliance on pain killers was not something we ruled out from the get-go." The medical ninja recounted while scanning Mana.

"So quiet..." the nurse expressed her worries. "Do you remember anything? Guru Ayushi was found near you when the barrier lowered, he was in a perfectly fine condition but... He's in a vegetative state. Do you know what happened to him?"

"Don't overload her memory all at once." The medical ninja scolded his colleague.

"B-But. We need to know if she's mentally okay. After something like that..." the nurse objected.

"Asking her for her name will do for starters." The medical ninja replied before concluding his scan. "Although... I must say that your injuries baffle me. You're just fine from the inside. It's a rare occasion that a ninja emerges from a battle and passes out without a scratch."

"Sir, the scars..." the nurse looked at her superior.

"Right!" the medical ninja rose his finger up with the joy of recollection fresh in his eyes. "There were injuries, bruises of sorts... We could not heal those, no matter what we did. We know you like to spare no expense on cosmetic treatment, I understand that given your public standing but... I don't think it is possible to heal those."

Mana lifted her gown to look at the irksome source of aches on her sides. It looked as if her flesh would have been entirely blown off and then promptly reattached, bruises overflowing with underlying blood masses and rings of black and purple. It was days since she donned these scars, courtesy of Ayushi's Soul Release, and yet they did not look much older than minutes old. The medical ninja was right to call it the way he did.

"We can put you on a list to see a higher ranked medical ninja, that might show some..." the medical ninja began trying to soothe Mana's mental disarray as if she was a burn victim but the magician just let her hospital gown slide back on top of the eternal scars and just sighed.