Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Where We Come From

A Prelude to a New Adventure

The way home was filled with people wishing to congratulate Mana on her successful show or just straight out stop her to say hello. It was weird how people functioned, the girl couldn't really understand the thought process behind just stopping a person to greet them but she enjoyed it and smiled back and greeted everyone who did so. These were the people that the magician loved most of all things in the world, it was nice to get at least a slight shine back at her from them.

Feedback for her deeds was not something she got as a ninja, ninja's work is a secret one and most definitely a dirty one. It includes things that should never be thanked for or congratulated for, twisted and evil things. Yet deep in her heart Mana knew that the work they did was necessary, all those missions she did for the people was the hard work. It was a dirty and nasty work but it was something that needed to be done, somehow being appreciated for working on a different field entirely felt like living on a permanent "easy mode" of sorts...

Evil had to be fought, there were plenty of bad people around the village walls, people who were buying and selling other people like kittens, people who killed, who rudely took the responsibility for deciding over life and death from the great order of the Universe. As much as Mana still wanted to believe there was Magic – a deity that oversaw all that happened and weighed its heavy hand on all things... After seeing what she saw it was apparent that either there was no Magic, no God or Goddess to weigh the right and wrong and decide for us, or that it was not a kind and loving Magic.

Yet the prospect of decision making, the prospect of herself being the only person responsible for everything going on with her life... It was a scary one, a terrifying one that claimed the teenager's breath every time she tried to wrap her head around it. If she is the only one to blame for all the failures, for everything bad happening around her... No. Maybe that's the right way. Only by realizing that the only reason something is bad is that she wasn't strong enough to change it into better can Mana truly change herself and the world.

But was this change necessary in the long run? She was weak now, she could no longer shoot bolts of lightning from her hands, she could no longer weave illusions to trap her opponents in. She was just what she was – a weak human, below even the potential and power of a normal adult, she was just half of what a human woman was... 

A halfling surrounded by super people, by people who could survive what couldn't be survived, people who could do all sorts of things, people who were strong enough to change everything and yet all they did was kill, maim and abuse that power. The greatest curse in the universe was to know the truth and being unable to make everyone see it.

Mana stopped by the door to her home and looked behind her, she saw young kids with Konoha forehead protectors run down the streets. Young genin embarking on their first missions, not unlike Mana and her friends did not too long ago. It all went so wrong so fast... Mana was now depowered to the extent where she felt like being crippled. 

Shimo was a wanderer without a purpose to his wandering, someone who did something he deemed wrong looking for redemption which was impossible to be found because the thing he tried to find redemption for was not something one needed to be redeemed for in the first place. 

Sugemi was a prisoner, a man who took his power for granted and decided that he knew the one true way as to how to do things. A once silly and naïve man crippled by a loss. Death affected people in the strangest of ways.

Normally the weak hated the strong. It was natural really, Mana opened the door and sighed as she took off her blue blazer and gently hung it on the sofa, relaxing and stretching out. She looked at her damaged leg which was now healed perfectly as if no damage even befell it. There was a certain jealousy that the weak had for the strong, the salmon always despised the bear, from the viewpoint of the salmon the bear was evil but from the bear's point of view it was just doing what it needed to do to survive – killing the salmon.