Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Where We Come From

Canned Cat Food of Space-Time

Shimo felt surprised by how much more loud and hectic the streets of Sunagakure were. He couldn't help but scratch his head and lean away from some of the particularly noisy stands and entertainers. The swordsman wondered just how strange it should've felt to Mana, someone whose secondary profession as a stage magician had similar origins to these people yelling their prices on the street. There were even some who were bold enough to approach him and demand payment from him because he overheard their stories or their comedy which was inevitable seeing how it was leaking from the top of the man's lungs.

"You're not getting a single ryo from me and while you're arguing you're missing profit from fools who'd fall for it..." Shimo always answered, or something of such fashion. After all, he had spent over a year wandering with his sensei throughout several closer regions of the world and he's seen and done a lot of strange things that taught him of the survivor's mentality.

That being said, that very same survivor's mentality would have demanded from him that he ceased satisfying Mana's need to regain her chakra and Meiko's need for adventure as well as Kouta's need to stick himself as deep up the magician's good side as possible. The only reason why Shimo went so far beyond his mission objective, even going as far as providing his services for the sake of a supposed extension was that he decided to change himself. His confusion of what kind of a man he wanted to be was supposed to be over, he wasn't just a survivor anymore, he would no longer just merely live for the sole purpose of living as long as possible.

First of all the boy entered the Aviary, it took a while to code his message just in case, these hawks used for message delivery looked quite strong and well fed, their feathers, even while lacking in color, were shining brightly. Still, as fast as a bird can possibly get they would never outrace even an average ninja, while snagging them in mid-flight was a challenge, every message was in danger of being intercepted and Shimo wasn't sure if their team was still tracked by Kusaguro's squad or not. He had little to no reason to believe that they weren't. Still, having the fact that their enemy was a Konoha ninja meant that whatever code he used it would only give them time, not a certainty that the message will remain a secret...

Shimo attempted to honestly explain the situation, he wrote in his report that they had not found the box and encountered the opposition of unidentified alignment, doing the best he could to go into detail about the skillset of the woman in red. He also included the information about Sunagakure's cooperation with the mission, included all the known clues about the actual location of the Box and asked for an extension of the objective. He decided to be smart about it, instead of asking for an extension of the objective to find the Box itself, he only asked the Hokage for permission to extend their objective of confirming the information's validity before returning home. It was much more likely that their mission would get approved that way, especially having in mind that he reported about the opposition.

The Yuki swordsman sighed, he wanted to report on Kusagoro's involvement with the mission, he really did but the new man he wanted to become was yelling from inside his part of the brain that it was a bad idea. After all, all he'd be doing would be tearing up Kouta's family and also it would be an equivalent of signing on the Hokage's refusal to extend their objective as well as her demand for their return to Konohagakure as soon as possible. Kusagoro was a very dangerous threat as a man with a high ranking in the village with experience in Black Ops unit of the village – the ANBU.

After the report was done the young man left the Aviary and headed towards the commercial section of the village, that is to say, just about any region of the village. After several looks around and disappointments such as quality of the craftsmanship not being satisfactory or the shop owner refusing to craft weapons for a foreigner, the young one had appeared to have hit a brick wall. Shimo decided to ask around and if needed pay some locals to know where he could have found someone willing and able to make custom weapons for a foreigner. In that particular case, his experience in the streets got him a little benefit at last. After shaking a couple of merchants who appeared to operate in a very questionable part of the village the swordsman got a couple of them to talk.