Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Where We Come From

The Fifth

As the councilman spoke those words it was almost like the world started shifting beneath Mana's feet. The young genin even took a small half of a step back right after the news were delivered. Her first reaction was to deny it all, just yell from the top of her lungs that this must've been a stupid joke or that the councilman didn't have all of the information. Who could ever have killed sensei? Even if sensei had his arms tied down he still could've competed with the best of the best, he did so even as a teen, didn't he? He was the strongest Konoha had to offer, he was immune to death, wasn't he!?

Sugemi beat Mana to her first sensitive and sentimental reaction. "How do you know that? Sensei was the strongest ninja I've ever known so unless you've got a solid reason as to why he could've died I'm gonna pound you hard, just know that before you answer!" fist of the Nara shot forward and then up trying to touch the ceiling, sadly the boy lacked the needed height by a wide margin. The councilman was obviously prepared for all those inevitable questions, he looked tired and quite busy but he still took the time to reply the questions replies to which he'd been working out since he first read those fateful two letters.

"Another Sannin – Misu of the Vapor had betrayed the Hokage and Tanshu, we don't know much details but apparently Tanshu killed Misu but collapsed to his own injuries, the Hokage was killed in a battle with the Mizukage. That is all I can comment on that news for now, at least for you, please understand - children have no place in these matters even if they are ninja."

Shimo's stare dug down into the ground, he also looked like he was going through the denial stage, Mana wanted to comfort him but... She kind of was a mess herself. An ally died and she not only wasn't strong enough – she had absolutely no chance of stopping it. She lacked the age, rank, strength so that she would have been there. It was safe to say that there was no conceivable way for her to prevent those deaths from happening. 

Lacking strength was not the painful part, one could always have grown stronger and smarter. Inevitability, being unable to change anything because things just happened sometimes was the most painful part. Even if she could travel at the speed of light and make the most powerful ninja explode upon impact she'd have been unable to save her sensei.

Mana turned around and started stumbling out of the office, she leaned onto her cane with all of her weight to the point where her shoulder just burnt up and her hand quickly started feeling numb. The emotional and psychological pain, combined with her own impairment almost made her let go of her cane, just slip and fall down, what did it even matter? If one was powerless to change all things. If one was unable to save their treasured ones from dying what did it matter? What was her life to the Universe if she just exploded right then and there into a wild mash of blood and guts? Tears started running down Mana's cheeks, the girl was afraid to admit it that those were very selfish tears.

This pain and misery in her heart were not because her sensei had died, it was because she just found out that her lifelong goal was pointless and completely out of reach, not only for her, it was out of bounds for anyone. Tanshu spent so much time telling Mana that it was all so pointless, that she could have never saved everyone and that heroes were just in fairytales, then perhaps this death of his was his final lesson – saving everyone was impossible, to have such a goal is to be doomed to fail. 

Now Mana finally realized that her nindo was literally rigged to blow up in her face upon her own death. Her entire life would just be hearing about people close to her slipping away without her having any chance to change anything. It would hurt even more since she had made it her lifelong goal to change something about that.

Mana carelessly wiped her premature tear away and postponed her mental breakdown, she was in a middle of a mission briefing, after all, the magician turned around and crept back into the office. She noticed that Sugemi and Shimo were pretty angry about it too and that the councilman was waiting for the three of them to get over their first instincts.