The week after the event at Hanada Estate was different from the kind of life Mana was used to, despite that it was still relatively peaceful. Parents were quite nervous and worried about the girl’s injury, her eye and the entire right side of her face was pretty swollen and looked funny for a couple of days after. Ninja had unnaturally amazing recovery rates compared to ordinary villagers, chakra manipulation required complete mastery of one’s body which also unlocked new levels of body recovery speed, still, it hurt and Mana was ashamed to look just like she was punched in the face, ironically enough that was pretty much what happened...
Despite that unpleasant experience things went quite smoothly, she got a little closer with her parents, father told Mana the story of his own first mission to oversee a construction being finished and having to protect the object from vandals that kept trying to spray paint on it to leave their mark on the world. One couldn’t really blame people like them, both young and old wanted to be remembered, to feel like their life mattered and in the world where life is thrown away casually such feelings were only multiplied hundredfold.
According to father, one day the construction workers were working on the upper floor and his team had to oversee the work being completed, unfortunately no one noticed the nest of hornets swarming up in the trashed rotten wood that was used for the construction so within seconds the entire floor was flooding with angered hornets. The man claimed to have been stung so many times that he fell down through the unfinished floor right to the first floor and as he tried to stop his fall he cut his arm on a steel beam leaving a giant gash on his arm. He must’ve told the truth because father actually showed Mana the scar.
The point of that story was lost to the young genin, however. Of course there were many thoughts that Mana had about the story, perhaps father wanted that she didn’t feel bad about having been marked in her first real combat encounter, maybe he just wanted her to know that his first job was even worse, maybe he wanted her to know that even the most trivial and simple assignments could go wrong and cause injuries worse than actual fighting scars? Either way, when the time for Mana’s big performance on stage came her face looked pretty much alright, just a slight black mark on her cheek that could’ve been wiped out by make-up. The young magician wanted to look her best for the occasion after all!
Mana’s Friday show went great, the hall wasn’t really full or anything, out of several hundred seats in the great hall about forty were filled and for a first show the manager was impressed. Of course the girl had some prior experience and some people knew her already from the time she performed on cardboard boxes that must’ve been the reason why she attracted some people – they were just people that occasionally checked her out when her shows were free. A part of the girl felt bad for charging money for the shows, her shows started as an idea, idea that ninjutsu was not a tool of death, it was not something that defined a person but rather was defined by the person that used it.
When the young one brought this question up to the manager of the hall he just shrugged, “Don’t worry, kid, money ain’t the problem here. Your prices are half the price of the plays people watch here, I wasn’t sure how to promote your stuff because no one did crazy things like that. That probably was why so few people checked you out the first time – they didn’t know what the hell they were getting into, now that voices will spread people will start to come.” The manager was named Hiro, he was a nice short and elderly fellow, his eyes were always squinted and his hair was already grey, his face was filled with wrinkles and he always wore that weird flowery orange shirt. He couldn’t have been older than late forties, maybe it was what the stress of managing all of Konoha’s artistic and entertainment environment did to people.
Just to feel better Mana asked Mr. Hiro if she could let in people for free some time, the man just waved his hand and laughed. “You’re the boss of your own shows, I just own the hall you’re renting so as long as the rent is paid, do whatever you want. I’m telling you though, you’re gonna be big when people get used to this, don’t waste the chance by giving people free stuff.” Apparently Mr. Hiro had a nasty reputation about him with the common folk, not like they hated him or anything but he had the rep of being quite the old skinflint and made money from everything he had the chance to. It wasn’t the bad kind of rep, more like something people always made fun of and pointed fingers at, but then waved their hands and left the hall with a “Classic Hiro…” in their lips.
Having moderate success with her magic shows made Mana more excited about her ninja life, she started to train more, exercise both her physical state and meditate to improve her mental state and to better understand her body. The magician was a prodigy at meditation, ever since her mind managed to defeat her own sickness from back when Mana was even younger. From what the girl had heard her mother say, mother was not from Konoha originally, so when she settled down with dad and when Mana was born the two were crushed when they found out their baby had a rare mental disorder.
As a young child the Nakotsumi kid had the disorder that prevented her from understanding facts and relating them to a process. She could see the stars in the sky but she could never understand how they worked even if she was directly told that, the kid just couldn’t relate the explanation with the actual process being explained. It was a disorder that made people into outcasts and they lived short lives as they had few friends and failure to understand basic everyday science made them extremely prone to unfortunate accidents. The parents did their best to help Mana, they weren’t too rich or anything so they could only talk to the kid and try to make it easier for her but nothing really worked.
One day the two spat out whatever they were drinking when they heard the girl playing with toys and other children outside, they ran out to ask Mana how was that possible because usually those plagued by the disorder could not play with toys and imitate real life scenarios because they simply lacked understanding how they worked which made it difficult and the girl just told them that she knew how things worked – magic made everything work. As the girl then spoke with her peers she was told of ninja, people that risked their life to protect lives of everyone and someone everyone admired. To the four year old Mana these ninja were champions of magic, enforcers of magical will. Mana herself wanted to be a ninja but her mental disorder made it impossible.
Despite their best attempts to talk Mana out of the idea to be a ninja her parents still enrolled her into the Academy when she was six, they figured that eventually their daughter would quit when she found her dream life to be unattainable. They were right – Mana absolutely bombed every test and failed at everything, her sensei in the Academy however took a liking for her, he wondered if this was Mana’s lack of skill or her disorder that prevented her from succeeding and he taught the kid how to meditate, focus on one’s own mind and work things out when they became too confusing. That was the breakthrough the kid needed, just couple of years later Mana managed to completely overcome her mental disorder and for the first time managed to think like an ordinary kid, she still kept clinging to her ideals of all life being magical but she did finally realize that magic didn’t exist, she made it up to explain things she didn’t understand.
Still, magic made everything so beautiful, so perfect, considering all life magical made the kid appreciate it more, knowing how it worked sort of made Mana feel empty and feel like life was pointless. So just out of respect for her old ways the girl still upheld her beliefs of magic being sacred, chakra being magical in nature and that those with exceptional gift to manipulate chakra were champions of magic with the duty to protect those that could not. After all of that, the young Mana managed to graduate Academy with average grades, the test she took was weird due to her refusing to use any Academy techniques because they “weren’t hers”. That story was for another day as the magician kept pushing those memories away.
Finally after a short while meditating and training every day the moment that the girl waited for came – the Nakotsumi household received a letter which informed Mana that her team was assembled and that all the newly made genin were to be sorted out into teams the next day. The letter had in it the time and place where the girl needed to come, it didn’t really tell her about who exactly were in her team. Not that the girl would’ve known those people if she was told that, she wasn’t too popular in the Academy because most kids considered her “weird” and since she rarely got a perfect grade she wasn’t one of those “cool kids” that aced everything from calculation classes to physical exercises.
Sleeping was hard for the young lady, she kept recalling the events at Hanada Estate as that was her only experience with actual ninja life. Will all missions be crazy like that? She would have died in there if that Jounin didn’t bail her out, what if in the actual battlefield there’ll be no one to watch her back, what if she’ll hesitate to hurt an enemy again and she’ll get killed? Now that she herself was a ninja, now that she had some experience over the whole thing the magician understood her father’s work a lot better, he left to missions all the time and Mana for some reason was rarely worried. Somehow she just always assumed that he’d be back in one place, she took his return for granted. It was decided, tomorrow she’ll smother the life out of her old man, stop taking people she loved for granted, and there was nothing he could have done to help it.
The next morning, after scaring the hell out of her father by hugging him for an extended period of time and having breakfast Mana ran off to the Academy, the sorting process was supposed to take place in the large classroom that could contain all of the students inside. It needed not to be said that the girl was excited and worried at the same time, there was a certain shade of unknown about how things will go, what her teammates will be like and what her sensei will be like and how will she handle life as a ninja. By now the kunoichi had at the very least accepted that she’ll be made fun of for her beliefs and desire to never take a life. That was not a great mindset for a ninja to have after all, even when she told that her Academy sensei he just laughed it off and told her that a lot of kids babble about that but they always “grow out of such nonsense”, according to “real ninja” lives had to be taken, the justifications of their casual murder were quite different, sometimes they killed out of fear, fear that their enemies would hurt their loved ones, sometimes it was just rage, to some it just felt good to show off all of their power and crush their enemies…
The classroom was full when Mana came in and no one really noticed or said anything about her entering and finding a seat in the right side of the classroom, further away from the window. Some kids near to where Mana sat down congratulated her on her shows taking off and told her that they will never miss a single magic show, that made the girl feel a bit better, after all she finally was acknowledged for something she did, her magic and using ninjutsu just for entertainment no longer looked “weird” to some, there were people that actually enjoyed that sort of thing.
One by one each team was picked off, a Jounin entered the classroom and read names off a sheet of paper to pick up their students and upon being called out the kids just stood up and ran towards their sensei, running off to bond and train with their team. After an entire hour of sitting around listening to names of other people and seeing their joy of finally being real ninja, Mana found that she was left sitting with two other boys in the classroom with no one coming in to read their names. What did all of that mean? Did that mean that nobody wanted her and those two other genin? Was she back in the Academy now? The girl’s little heart started jumping despite her desperate attempts to calm down.
“Don’t worry, that bastard is just late…” Mana heard beside her as the boy who said it – one of the two that were left together with Mana in the classroom, placed his hand on her shoulder. His voice was strange, it was already starting to get more mature and strong but it was also pretty soft, most likely because the boy deliberately tried to restrain it and soften it to sound nicer. “I mean we already got our photos taken, graduated the Academy and got all the paperwork done, Hokage would be pissed if he had to do all that paperwork again to write us back into the Academy list…” the boy just smiled with a thumb up. His strange nice and polite behavior made Mana smile a little herself.
The kid was a rather tall individual with crazy white hair, he wore glasses and a rather formal-looking for a ninja attire, the other one sitting in the middle row was the complete opposite – small and slim in build, had black hair and wore some weird earing. “You better be right, future rival, otherwise I’ll be pretty pissed for wasting my time sitting here doing nothing… I’ve got manga to read back home.” the short boy grunted out, his voice was much more husky. “Future rival?” the tall white headed one asked curiously as he didn’t leave Mana’s side. “Yeah, that’s how teams work in all the manga, the guys are always rivals with each other, whether they want it or not…” the boy replied as he relaxed and kicked back pulling out a small magazine out of his book filled with black and white pictures as his eyes started wandering around.
“Huh… He’s a weirdo… Anyways, I’m Shimo, maybe you wanna go somewhere after this meeting is over with?” the boy asked as he leaned curiously by Mana’s side making her feel a bit uncomfortable. The slim one cracked a grin, “I see, so you’re the pervert type, I mean you gotta be the generic manga pervert because you’d have to be one to be in such a rush…” Shimo then dashed up to him and started angrily but without trying to hurt the boy just lightly rub his knuckle into the otaku’s head. “What was that?! You’re calling ME weird!?” this reaction made Mana genuinely amused as she covered her mouth and laughed out a bit. Maybe these two will be fun after all…
Suddenly the door burst open directing everyone’s eyes at it, everyone expected the sensei to finally come pick them up. To everyone’s surprise and much confusion it wasn’t a Jounin that entered but the Fourth Hokage. The man’s white Hokage cloak and the hat that he always wore behind his back hanging around, reminding everyone of his status could not be confused, just like his shoulder length grey hair, it was a very unique color because the man was probably just in his mid-thirties and his head already looked grey. As the man burst into the room he started huffing heavily making everyone even more confused.
“Sorry, guys, your sensei is a real jerk, I just met him hanging out and doing nothing which made me suspicious so I forced him to come pick you guys up, just wanted you to not leave without meeting up with him, jeez that guy… Sorry again, I hope he’ll make it up to you… Though knowing him… Probably not…” the man scratched the side of his hairy head and laughed uncomfortably, he then just turned around and left as if nothing had ever happened. The three genin were pretty confused when they didn’t know anything of the team’s status, they were confused even more when they saw the Fourth, now when they realized that the Hokage just dropped by to tell them to keep waiting it all seemed even weirder.
Mana kept looking at the door, expecting it to open any moment, at some moment she even got over the small brawl and then making up of her teammates as the two were now just slobbering over a dirty manga, apparently dirty manga had something that appealed to both perverts and otaku so their interests finally came to one. These two now seemed pretty tight, the magician wondered if she will ever find something to talk about with those two, she didn’t read manga that much or went on dates. She wasn’t really an unattractive girl, just a little young and her slightly darker skin tone and wild curly dark hair required an observer of much more exotic tastes. Plus she always was a bit weird…
Just as Mana kept wondering if she’ll be getting along with these two goofballs the door burst open and a man in an unzipped jounin vest and black cloak, similar to one Hokage wore just without the village insignia entered. He had shoulder length brownish hair that had some shades of red in them, his eyes were pretty rough looking as they didn’t suggest the man being too nice of a guy. He just opened his eyes forcing Shimo to jump up and the otaku boy to drop his manga on the ground. Mana had to say she was pretty intimidated by the man’s look alone too.
“You guys, come with me…” was all he said as he turned around and started walking into the corridor in quite a pace, without even slowing down to wait for the kids to make it down the classroom and out the door. This was one fellow that didn’t fool around!
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