Mana took careful and planned steps so that she didn’t trigger the overwhelming onslaught of pain which would’ve sent her grunting on her knees. When the cut in her gut was moved it let itself be known by completely crippling the youngster. Each and every step was agonizing but it also took the girl closer to her team, to where she could’ve gotten help. Mana wasn’t sure how far away from her team she was. She’s been tracking the Nekomata member for quite some time and she was moving at her top speed which was nothing short of a speeding vehicle. Then again the woman could’ve lead her in circles…
Mana didn’t know what was worse “ the pain she felt with every step or knowing that an incredible amount of steps she needed to take was left. Each and every step took her closer to help but the number of total steps compared to each individual step just made her getting to her final goal that much more impossible. Mana tripped on a large root and fell onto the mossy ground. The girl whined for a while but picked herself back up. She felt pain but none of the release that dying offered “ she was very much going to survive it but having the suffering in mind it was not much of a relief at that moment.
The magician took a brief moment to examine her wound, it didn’t appear to be bleeding, it used to spit blood in torrents before slowing down, then completely closing in. Such was the ninja metabolism, injuries like this tend to heal quite fast as long as the ninja was out of battle and let their chakra circulation enhance the natural processes of the body and treat the wound somewhat. This wasn’t some sort of a miracle, it didn’t work in a middle of battle but it also didn’t take care of the wound, it just kept it from killing the ninja. One stronger bump, one irregularity in one’s chakra flow could’ve reopened the wound again and that would’ve made it all worse again.
Mana’s steps were trembling, her entire body was fighting off the impulse to take another step. Her mind was determined, completely set in stone with its decision to make it back to her team in the camp. Her body gave up however, it wanted for the pain to stop, the battle itself didn’t exhaust Mana but having to power through the pain of her various injuries tired her physically. Taking each and every step took a toll on her, it not only made her power through pain but convincing herself started to tire her mind as well, her iron will started appearing less iron every second.
“Ugh…” Mana grunted putting her back by a tree and sliding down on her butt, she looked onward into the darkness of the forest and felt the first gentle rays of light warm her cheeks. These weren’t her final moments, not yet, this was just a trial for her to power through, it was something she had to do, a pain that was inevitable for her to continue existing yet this trial felt so impossible. She may have tracked the woman for hours, how long it’d take with this turtle’s pace to come back? No… It wasn’t worth it! She was just a useless weakling, she trained for so long yet she hesitated to fight the cat woman with her very best from the start.
“Really? Of all the people to prove me right, you’d disappoint me the most…” Mana heard Tanshu’s voice and noticed the man’s brownish locks and thick beard in front of her, wearing the same messy clothes he always did and looking with all of his disapproving glory at the teen girl.
Mana didn’t respond, she just turned away, that was how it happened, huh? At some point everyone encountered a challenge that was so strong and made one suffer so much that they had to turn away, give up on their lifelong dreams and become the grey mass that comprised this world.
“Where did all that bullshit about everyone’s life go? Were you just showing off? Were you just a filthy all-talk little shit!?” Tanshu started yelling at Mana. The magician was so tortured by her own exhaustion and pain that she didn’t even question the appearance of her dead mentor in front of her. Mana breathed in and out.
“Hisako-san and Kiyomi-san are alright, they’re stronger than me, they’re smarter and they’ve been doing this for far longer. Hisako-san went through more pain and loss than anyone deserves to, she’ll handle her trials, Kiyomi-san is the most amazing ninja of her age I’ve ever seen, if anyone can survive this it’s her and if she can’t I sure as hell can’t help her… I give up…” Mana started mumbling under her nose, imagining that this phantom of her mentor heard her. That was it huh? That was her breaking point? What would her friends, what would Shimo and Sugemi think about her if they saw her broken like that?
Sensei’s imaginary phantom arm passed through Mana’s cheek, the girl’s mind forced her to turn her body to the side where she was slapped by her own imagination.
“This was never about Hisako and Kiyomi, this was about you! You keep talking about how important and sacred everyone’s life is, what about YOUR life? You’re throwing it away, you see a person with a sacred life inside of their heart dying and you’re giving up on that person, you’re giving up on yourself… Stop embarrassing yourself, you know I’m just in your head, there’s a part of you that hasn’t given up yet, give in to that part, put it on the wheel…”
The teen magician turned at where the ghost was supposed to be but it wasn’t there, it never had been, it was just Mana’s injury that forced her body to start seeing things that weren’t there, things she’d have liked to see. Mana let her head rest at the rough bark of the tree, she looked down at her wound and saw that the blood mark was already darkening “ the stain wasn’t fresh, Mana carefully removed what used to be her shirt from her wound and looked at it “ it’ll make for a pretty nasty scar…
Cold raindrops fell on Mana’s forehead, it wasn’t a rain but a drizzle, it took a great quantity of raindrops before they gathered into a big chunk of water that ran down Mana’s face.
“Not gonna make it easy for me, huh?” Mana looked at the sky, she used to believe that there was this energy in charge of everything, this certain Magic that gifted parts of its own being into each living being, giving more to some, less to others and those with more of Magic inside of them had a responsibility to compensate that difference by watching out for those with less of it. Maybe those beliefs formed little Mana’s hero complex…
Despite not believing in that thing for quite some time, maybe there was still more of it inside Mana than she have realized? She still sometimes sarcastically spoke to something, something greater than everything else. She had the full understanding that her cries of pain, her questions and her sarcastic thoughts all didn’t reach anything, they didn’t amount to anything, they weren’t being listened to. No one cared about those things but it was so easy to believe that someone did, naïve but easy…
Mana grunted and clutched her scar, some rain water running down her torn clothes washed some blood off of the wound, the cold raindrops sort of refreshed the girl to stand up and keep moving. Mana always loved the rain yet it wasn’t like the rain made her stronger, it wasn’t that some supernatural force of nature sent it there, it wasn’t that rain picked her up all by itself. It was just something that happened, despite being the simplest explanation, that there was no causality for this event and resurrection of Mana’s spirit, the cancellation of her inner surrender, it was much harder to believe in the simpler things because people hated the idea behind them.
The magician kept on walking, it hurt a little less now that she accepted this pain, this responsibility and no longer fought against herself. Fighting against pain and cold was much easier than fighting against oneself. Tanshu-sensei… Tanshu-sensei’s phantom, whatever that was… It was right. Mana’s life mattered, it mattered just as much as the life of anyone she strived to protect. That meant that Mana was responsible not only to someone else but also to herself, she was responsible for keeping herself alive, she had to become a hero for herself as well as everyone else.
All this time Mana knew it, she knew that gap in her logic that her own mind was just as sacred and that she was throwing it away. Throwing it away was the easiest thing to do, some part of Mana wanted to just change the world and die right after it so that she wouldn’t have to face that world. But if she gave up one herself that would’ve made Mana actually fail at the very least one person “ herself. Even more, as the architect of this new world, one where all life mattered and was protected Mana was responsible for all of the problems in that world. She’d have to answer the cries of hatred of every mother whose children would be killed by killers who were left alive because of Mana’s ideals.
“Forward… Only forward…” Mana whispered to herself, biting into her lip until blood was drawn, the pain was difficult to take but it was her responsibility, all of this was. The Fifth gave her an assignment to save that boy, she was integral to this three person team, without Mana the mission would’ve been impossible, or so Lady Hokage believed. Apparently the magician was also responsible for the mission, for the lives of everyone in her team and the boy kidnapped, she had to come back successfully.
Why was she so silly? Why didn’t she just explode with all of her new skills from the beginning? Why didn’t Mana just dropkick that tree down where the Nekomata woman was, why didn’t she blow her away by overwhelming her with her new techniques? The magician could’ve won that battle much faster, it was just her inner kindness that prevented Mana from unleashing that anger and power inside her. Once again, even after the lesson from Guru Ayushi and her own endless training and moralizing that she had to always fight with all she had and that it was OK to fight, Mana found herself holding back because she was kind.
Mana felt a bit warmer… Almost like someone placed their hand on her shoulder. The magician turned to the side, no one was there, she was all alone… The young kunoichi kept on walking until she heard a familiar voice.
“You’re so rude, Mana…”
The girl turned back, happy to hear that voice again but… Something was wrong. Behind her stood Shimo with his usual messy dung green kimono and his significantly longer hair. This was not Shimo, it couldn’t have been, Mana imagined how Shimo would have looked now many times and she had imagined him just like that. This was her own imagination again, she must’ve twisted her gut a bit too sharply and caused her wound to bleed again. Mana stopped and coughed up, she was definitely going to catch a cold out there…
“Fine, what do you mean?” the girl honoured her own mental projection with a reply. Talking to oneself seems like a really good idea when one suffers from a fever and is slowly bleeding out. Especially when one is out in a middle of nowhere and has to cover hell knows how many miles on foot without the ability to sprint.
“Your enemies, you disrespect them all the time, you play around and keep your strength back. Even if you believe inside that fighting is the right thing to do, face it, you know it! You already know that you’ll change the world by punching the person who wants to preserve its twisted ways out, that’s the only thing you can do, you are not a medical ninja, you’re not smart enough to write laws and make contracts between countries… You’ll make the world violence free with violence, you’ll try to change it by fighting the people who threaten it. The reason you’re so bad at it is because you don’t just fight the people you need to fight, you fight yourself as well.”
“We both know Shimo calls me “Mana-chan”…” Mana replied lowering her head and avoiding the observation, her own mind was giving her a moral lesson and the girl knew that no one hit harder than her own mind because she knew exactly what was wrong with herself.
“Everyone’s life is sacred, there is no evil people, just people with different ideals and some idolize the entirely misguided things… I get it, of all people I, who is part of you, really do… But tell me, if they decide to fight you, what right do you have not to honour that decision? If a person decides to fight, it’s their decision, they bring the consequences upon themselves and that’s where your responsibility over their well-being ends. When the first punch is thrown, you make sure you beat them down, you do whatever it takes to win and then you decide if you kill them or not… We all know which you’ll choose every time!”
Shimo’s last sentence sounded so soft. Mana turned back at the phantom with her face full of tears, her lips were shaking.
“Come back some time… I miss you… Aaaand I’m talking with myself again…” Mana sighed realizing that the man she had imagined Shimo to be now had disappeared already, her ninja healing factor had already fixed whatever was wrong with her, cleansed the minor sparks of infection, started working on that fever. It won’t cure those problems but it’ll make them tolerable.
“If they decide to fight, it’s their decision…” Mana repeated to herself again, continuing to walk on. The drizzle started settling down, it was so barely recognizable now that the magician could barely even feel the freezing drops of rain hitting her red and heated from fever cheeks.
A loud scream pierced the forest’s depth, Mana scratched the wound trying to pass around a bush but scratching her abdomen with a branch, she cried out pitifully again and stopped, standing by the tree for support. After a moment of precious self-pity Mana pushed her body off of the tree’s salvation, she could’ve just stayed by that tree and enjoyed its fake and treacherous sanctuary. That would’ve meant giving up, going back to all that responsibility shit. While Mana acknowledged all of the responsibilities she took by her own free will, that didn’t mean that she liked to be reminded of how numerous they were.
“I think the problem is in how you view the battles…” father’s voice echoed, it only made sense that Mana would once again start seeing things since she reopened the wound and even made it seem nastier after bumping into that bush.
“You view them as battles, you take them seriously which is why you always have that idea of possible outcome of killing your opponent. You need to find a way to trick yourself, make yourself think differently before you get used to that prospect that someone might die. There’s no shame in that fear, there’s no single thing more worth our fear in this world than death, whether it be ours or that of others…”
Mana didn’t reply initially, she loved to hear father’s voice, it reminded her of home, reminded her of the calm and cosy pleasure of looking through the window in her oversized winter sweater and seeing the bleak and gritty rain and cold from the warmth of her home.
“You mean like a performance? Stop having a giant divide between my magic shows and battle?” Mana then asked her father’s image but realized it was no longer there. She was alone, yet she fell for the illusion that she wasn’t three times in a row. The idea that there was someone in the world that gave a shit about your pain and your regrets was so tempting that it made one fall for the same trick three times and the magician was sure she’d fall for it as many times as it’d have happened…
“I guess that was the idea the whole time, use ninjutsu as an art, not a tool of murder. May as well treat fighting as art too… Look out world, here comes the girl who’ll pull a rabbit out of a hat in a middle of a fight.” Mana sarcastically mumbled under her nose.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Mana heard a familiar voice but she didn’t turn back, it must’ve been just another phantom. She just kept walking, it was then that the magician felt a cold hand on her forehead and someone picking her body off of the tree and putting it around her shoulder. Mana lifted her head and saw the Quack holding her straight.
“Whoo boy, seems like you got yourself messed up a bit, shit… Here I thought I wouldn’t need to… You know… Use actual medicine. Sit down here, this has to be done here, just let me…”
The young boy reached for his speaker and pressed his ear, turning the headset on.
“Hey, my lovelies, I found our little magician, she’s injured but I can get her singing in a jiffy. Stay clear, I might need to use some medicine here, my stitching is a bit rusty, I just always popped some pills… I’ve no idea how medicals actually do it…”
“Okay are you kidding? Tell me you’re kidding? I saw you down two flasks of what smelled like rice wine earlier! No way, I’m going there, what’s your location!?” Kiyomi’s loud voice could’ve been heard from the one earplug that was out from the Quack’s ear. The young man must’ve loved having just one in his ear as it let his other ear stay vigilant of everything around him.
“Fuck that shit, am I the only one alarmed by him saying “in a jiffy”? What sort of a jinglecunt says that?! I let this fucker treat my injuries! A man who says “in a jiffy” cleaned my infection…” Hisako’s voice also followed shortly.
Quack pulled the plugs out and shoved them in his small bag.
“Sorry there, lovely, I’ll just shut those two tigercunts up, the only thing I let to mess with my medical hand when I stitch is alcohol…” Quack sat down and made some hand seals, a small jet of water rose from the man’s little flask inside his bag and wrapped around his arms, it got blacker and blacker and then the water just darted to the side, black as tar.
“Alright, now you…” Quack made some hand seals and pointed his arms at Mana’s wound, more water shot out and covered all small scratches and the big gash on Mana’s abdomen. They all soon blackened too and then flew to the side only to disappear as they’ve been absorbed into the dirt. Mana felt her fever falling back, her wounds also somehow felt… Fresher… It must’ve been some sort of cleaning technique. Quack started breathing really hard, he must’ve been tired.
“How are the others? Are you okay? You look tired…” Mana got worried.
“Hold it… Going in…” Quack silenced Mana putting his needle into her wound, strangely enough Mana didn’t see any thread in the needle, it must’ve been some strange ninja tool specific for Quacks. Mana bit her lip in pain, honestly when her entire body was pulsing and aching getting one’s wound sewn didn’t feel half that bad but it still made her wriggle a little bit.
“The two are peachy, well they sort of weren’t, I helped them get there, Hisako was a bit messed up and had her chakra flow all tangled up, fought some sort of a leecher cunt or something, the blonde got herself messed up pretty badly too so I wasted most of my chakra healing them. Sadly I’ll be out of commission for two days but the sword swinging one is adamant on hurrying with the siege of that damned bunker. That means I will be only as helpful as conventional Quack medicine can help you, no medical ninjutsu mumbo jumbo…”
As Quack explained he was almost done. The young man pulled some pills again and popped them, his skin paled and dark rings dyed around his eyes, the young man ran to the corner and threw something up, this was the first time that Mana saw him do that.
What exactly was going on with this young man?
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