Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Where We Come From

Leaving Sounds of Silence Behind

Hey, don't know if you noticed but this chapter marks the #200 milestone! Decided to make this one 2x sized due to that occasion. Hope you enjoy it!

By the time that Mana woke up the day was well past its middle. One could've expected at the very least that much from how the team spent the whole last night doing a great many things that ended up leaving the Sound Village pretty shaken up. The sight through the balcony was an intimidating one, one of the largest, towering skyscraper buildings in the village was brought down, the whole district where Synth was summoned last night was in smoldering ashes even though the Lesser Demon saved all the injured as well as kept the dying from going over the line when asked by Mana to do so.

For the first time in a while, Mana didn't feel a crushing leftover of past wounds, the pain that made it difficult to imagine how the rest of the day would go. By now, having been just a normal civilian for months the magician had gotten used to the frail human body. It was tough to imagine how she could've taken the ninja metabolism for granted during all those years. Luckily enough due to Melobi's effort, Mana could make the bed she slept in and get dressed without any pain. Having in mind the literal torture she went through last night it was impressive.

By the time Mana got dressed and descended to the main guestroom below where everyone was having breakfast and, it appeared, waiting for her, everyone was already ready. The things were packed and stacked close to the door, everyone was just sitting around and looked happy to see Mana finally woken up and ready. The magician was a little scared to be entirely honest.

They've been chasing this box for so long. The four have been in so many places and experienced so much throughout all of this time and now they had all the cards they needed in their hand. All the four needed to do was to make the play and find out where the Box was exactly. Mana settled down and had some pancakes for breakfast, eating something made by an actual housewife who knew what she was doing felt really odd somehow, tasty nevertheless. It made Mana think about how much she missed cooking herself. Everyone hated when she cooked on the road because, frankly, Mana wasn't as good as she told herself she was. The young one lacked experience, something she could hopefully fix in time.

"It was strangely affectionate of you to show that much love last night... You've never hugged me openly before" Mana smiled to Kouta during the session of small talk when each member of the team recounted their adventures in Otogakure. The girl, of course, referred to when Kouta hugged her after getting back to his senses and over his injuries. While the two did awkwardly talk about the topic of their feelings towards each other neither of them made an actual step to illustrate their firm intentions towards those feelings.

"Yeah, well... I met a woman last night that helped me open my eyes. Helping her cleared up a lot of things for me." Kouta replied with a smile stuffing another pancake. Meiko and the medical ninja continued to eat the second breakfast using Mana needing breakfast-company as an excuse to stuff their cheeks full of food. These two were quite the heavy eaters when they had plenty of access to food...

"It might not be wise for us to stick around this place for much longer. Right now the whole Syndicate chain of operations is unstable and it is highly possible that they're losing their public grip on the people. The village officials will view it as an opportunity to take their village back." Shimo tried to hurry everyone up and leave the village. There was a lot of truth in his words, they were ninja of a completely different village after all. If the village re-established order and found them scooping around or made connections between them and the destruction last night the Hokage might have some explaining to do. Ninja have been suspended for far less than this.

"Well, we've made messes everywhere we went, we're in a whole stew of them anyways." Meiko cheerfully chuckled grinning with a full teeth smile like a monkey making fun of something.