Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Where We Come From

Bloom for Bliss

The very next morning Mana felt excited to check on Meiko's progress. The redheaded blacksmith was pretty confident that she could finish working on Mana's device overnight but somehow the magician just couldn't really believe that the strange girl could actually do it. After all, the device had a bunch of complicated gear-work as well as its visual enhancements such as engravings and various decorations meant to make it more visually appealing than a bunch of scraps. There was also plenty that the magician wanted to know about the blacksmith herself.

Meiko was apparently the Kirikuzu blacksmith's daughter, he did look at her with a great amount of fondness and love and did address her as his daughter but she didn't take the clan name from her father. More so she looked very little like him, having only taken his muscular structure from her parent. 

When the topic of her inheritance was brought up Meiko didn't deny being of the clan of famed Kumogakure blacksmiths but she did bring up the obstacle of being unable to use the manipulation of the Kirikuzu iron dust. That meant she really had roots with the clan and normally should've been able to do it, there was something really interesting hidden in the girl's origins.

After spending quite some time meditating and then taking a break to visit the archive and read up on some ancient history. The magician girl loved reading up on the Settlement period, it happened somewhere during the lifespan of Princess Satsuhimasa of whom Mana read during her mission to discover the hidden archive. 

Princess Satsuhimasa worked together with Senju Gan, a man who would later become the First Hokage. Reading on the relationship and deep kinship of the two was refreshing, however, it was about during that period that the reputation of Satsuhimasa started to dip into the gutter so the stories of the two were filled with strange inaccuracies left there by purpose. It took plenty of logical skills as well as skills of deduction together with a rich background in history to put the pieces together.

The Princess and the First had a very interesting mentor-student relationship. The Princess was seen as a living legend and Gan was someone who was taught under her wing and grew into quite a wise and remarkable ninja himself. He was really brave and powerful, known for the crushing strength of his Wood Release ability second only to Satsuhimasa's own. 

It was said that Gan's Wood Release could rip through tempered steel and once ground a meteorite headed towards into a storm of beautiful falling stars, still, when compared with Satsuhimasa's destruction of the Moon using her Wood Release, Gan's own paled greatly. It was like comparing an exceptional prodigy to a legend. Gan may have been the King of Ninja but Satsuhimasa was on the level of being called a Goddess of Ninja.

Just as the collections of books turned to recalling the succession of Gan by his wife Uchiha Hakari – the Second Hokage, Mana put the books back and glanced through the window only to see the night changing the day and the slothful dance of the snowflakes going down taking over the view. Having put the books together and taken all of her notes and other things she took with her Mana dashed out.

"I'm astounded by your ability to restrain yourself from eating in the archives..." the librarian smiled at Mana fixing his tie and glasses as he jumped up to see the girl out with his eyes.

"If you found someone eating there you'd clip their head off" Mana joked giving the man a wink. The man lifted his hand wielding his scissor blade and clipped it playfully, the girl just barely managed to contain her giggling and ran out.

"It's quite chilly outside, should've taken a sweater!" the archive keeper tried to let the girl know but at that point, she already bolted to the streets. The man just sighed and sat back down, flipping his table light to illuminate his own book – "Tales of Shikio the Great". The man took great pride in the edition of the tales without the bare-chested version of the main character on the cover, that usually attracted too much attention and giggles from the visitors as it was basically an image of a topless well-endowed man and the keeper loved to enjoy his book in peace.