Sometimes, when a very special event is transpiring before one's eyes, one often knows that things won't be the same as they were anymore. Such was the feeling when the village saw the Fourth Hokage surrounded by four of his most trusted and most powerful ninja in the village head out. Surely something revolutionary was going to happen, a historic flip-the-table moment which would change everything, allies and enemies will be made and a clash was unavoidable now. Some people fooled themselves by thinking that this was going to be just another Five Kage Summit but one should've known better.
To Mana it was almost apparent that something bad will happen, there will be no peaceful resolution to this, otherwise, why would Hokage choose to take four of the most amazing ninja with him? He only took two of the Sannin though, the third Sannin was away on another mission. From the rumors that were going around, it seemed like she was in Kirigakure which put her life in extreme danger. If something awful transpires at the Kage Summit she will suddenly find herself to be the most wanted dead person around. Maybe it was for that reason that Hokage took so many not only strong but wise people, trying to solve any possible conflicts through intimidation of power and inevitable destruction if someone decides to become an enemy of Konohagakure.
Seeing Hokage and his four guards leave through the village gate made that sad and depressing atmosphere, the feeling of uncertainty was everywhere, the eternal and immovable peace that the Fourth had achieved was now trembling like a wobbly leg of a kitchen table. Just one wrong rude move will send all of the food crumbling down on the floor, reverting the families sitting around it to savages that either eat off of the floor or go to bed hungry. That was not even the worst part, the worst part was that everyone accepted it, just sighed and went back home, such wide acceptance of the fact that conflict and war were almost inevitable was what made Mana's heart hurt the most.
These couple of days from her training with Tanshu-sensei and the day when she received the letter to come to pick up a mission Mana did her best to buff up the amount of magic shows she did. The people of Konohagakure could've used some entertainment to turn their minds away from war. Some could've said that Mana was an awful girl for making double the amounts of shows, after all, people were shaken by the events and very unsure of their futures. All she had to do was show off and she'd have swayed them to her side, that was true, she saw a lot of new faces coming at her shows, far more matured people and far fewer children. Slowly she would become Konohagakure's mainstream source of entertainment, perhaps that was her calling, not being a ninja?
After all, Mana was not part of a clan, not some super amazing genius ninja that had mad skills and always made perfect choices, she often failed and struggled immensely in her ninja work, working out her physical shape felt like literally killing herself. Still, she was thinking a lot about what Tanshu-sensei told her - she had an entirely different mindset from a common ninja. Her unique ideas combined with her background and experience of being a stage magician - prodigy at creating illusions and playing with the audience's mind made her a very different kind of ninja. All those shows could've just been viewed as Mana's own kind of training, she was sharpening her mind and making new ways to deceive her opponent on the battlefield, after all, having no set of fancy eyes, no special unbeatable techniques made her have to rely on her skill in deceit and lies. Was that the skillset of a true hero? Probably not... Just one more thing to make the girl feel like she's failing her dream, as small as insignificant as such thoughts were.
Finally, the magician got another letter instructing that she had to come to the Konohagakure Administration with her team and that they would be getting a mission assigned. No Hokage, no sensei. Somehow it felt like they were just playing ninja at this point and with no figures of authority in the village it seemed like nothing was right anymore, everything just invited more and more questions. Nights of peaceful and long refreshing sleep were few and getting even fewer, training was the thing that often helped to exhaust both Mana's body and her spirit. Still, often the girl found herself waking up and wandering around the house, looking at the dark night sky and thinking what's ahead. Things like war and changing the world were not something a twelve-year-old girl should worry herself about but it was too late. She entered the ranks of people considered murderers and tools, thinking of anything less than that would've been a mistake.
Mana was surprised to see her teammates the next morning, she met them at the entrance to the Konohagakure Administration. Shimo wore a small blade behind his back, Sugemi wore a different attire choosing to wear more flexible and fitting for taijutsu attire, both of the boys also allowed their hair to grow messier longer which signaled that they may have been training pretty intensely since graduating. Did Mana fall behind after devoting most of her time to shows? Was she ever on their level to begin with? Just how well did they do in their training? Maybe the two actually gave sensei trouble and Mana just got special treatment from him because she was just a puny kid with pink cotton candy on her mind? No. Tanshu-sensei was not the kind of person to smile and say that everything was alright when it wasn't, that was one of the reasons why he was a person whom Mana respected a lot. If she would've been a useless link to the team he'd have told her that.
Shimo looked confident, he smiled with a full teeth smile and ran up to Mana first. "Hey, Mana-chan, don't really see what sensei told you during the training. I suppose you won't tell me how you did either?" Sugemi grunted, Mana was genuinely surprised he was not consumed by his manga and acted so smug, almost like Tanshu-sensei. "It's her attire, Shimo, she tried to dress more comfortably for missions but it seems like now she doesn't care about it anymore, whatever sensei told Mana, it helped her gain confidence and realize her role in the team. Then again, judging from the number of shows she had this week I'd say she is planning to quit being a ninja..." Mana walked past the two without saying a word. She just slowly turned back with a slight smile and looked at them rushing them to come with her. The boys picked themselves up and entered the building with her.
Differently from before, the missions were being handed out in four separate offices by one of Hokage's assistants. Assistants were mostly lower-ranking ninja anyways that excelled in office duties, they were not the first choice to protect the Hokage but they were more than competent to fulfill his duties of administration work during his absence. In fact, there were fewer people around the offices which suggested that the four of them were doing way better than Hokage was doing alone with their aid. One of the assistants invited the four into his office and handed the file forward, he waited for a moment as there was no leader to come to pick the file up, sensei was gone...
Mana looked around with a bored look as her two teammates kept stepping forward slightly but after seeing the other trying to take a step stopped and backed down from taking the lead. "Oh for God's sake!" she laughed out and stepped forward to take the file. There was tension between the two boys for some reason, it was quite natural, this was the first time they had the chance to butt heads, they had to choose a leader and that made them wonder about who was stronger, more competent to take temporary command. They both trained incredibly hard, they each were the strongest people in the world in their own minds right now because that was often the case after training. Training required a challenge to follow just so one had a clear image of where they were on the feeding chain.
"What's the mission?" Shimo asked curiously leaning over Mana's shoulder as she opened the file after leaving the office. It was a relatively simple C-Rank job for a team of genin but the administration had to hand them one - their team was incomplete. While normally sensei did nothing anyways but his presence was the greatest asset the three could have, just the thought that at any time he could be turned at for help or advice was the best thing ever. Now he was away and they had to handle it for themselves. It would've been better if Shimo and Sugemi didn't act so weird with each other and didn't want to show off each other's fruits of training and just what sensei told them.
The mission was to scare off or beat up some thugs that were bullying people around the entertainment hall where Mana hosted magic shows. Apparently, the group of bandits targeted villagers that came to see shows and plays and they were quite bold. Such boldness inside one of the most powerful ninja villages could only be described as stupidity and the three genin would've easily handled a couple of untrained bandits, even if they weren't at the moment the most functional team ever. Shimo and Sugemi barely even spoke, not only to each other but also with Mana, the girl had plenty of possible ideas what could've caused this but... She had to know!
"Okay, what the hell is this? Why aren't we talking?" she asked, this wasn't the usual soft and kind tone she used, Mana was really quite annoyed by this situation as the two boys were her friends, probably some of her only relevant friends at the moment as she had no other friends just fans of her shows. Sugemi pouted and turned away, Shimo looked annoyed but at least he spoke up, "We're just... A bit tense that's all." Mana kept looking him in the eyes, almost forcing him to continue. The fact that he spoke up at all signaled to her that Shimo was at least willing to talk about what was going on, was it something sensei told them? Was it something they told each other while waiting for Mana? Was it something she did?
"Well... You did most of the work last time, we were just there, sure we got to fight some animals but you saved all of the scrolls. Tanshu-sensei told both of us that, that we fought pretty good but fighting isn't what it's all about and that you were right in that mission to put the objective first. That doesn't bother us but... Both I and Sugemi trained hard because we don't want to fall behind, we want to be strong and able to complete the mission by ourselves too if it came to us."
Mana shook her head, she still couldn't understand what the hell this was about, "So what? It's my fault that I happened to stumble into the archive and got stuck in there because that stupid bug had the whole place fall down on him?"
Shimo looked away, "So are you really quitting being a ninja like Sugemi said?"
Mana almost yelled out "No! Sugemi is an otaku, he keeps talking about manga characters or events that probably don't even exist and he thinks everything around him is just a manga story waiting to be written. He's my friend but he's the last person I'd trust to make deductions like that."
Sugemi's voice broke out "I'm... Right here... Guys."
At least talking about it for a little helped the boys ease up a bit and they started talking to each other again. It must've been nothing else but a strong sense of responsibility, they had mistaken Mana's luck for skill and wanted to keep ahead, truth was that luck was a skill which couldn't be matched. It wasn't even good luck, to be honest, how can one possibly call getting chased by a hungry centipede and getting stuck in an ancient unstable library and then having to escape its fall by digging through centipede guts good luck? It wasn't skill, it wasn't luck, it just happened... At least the magician knew that the boys trained hard, she still felt guilty for taking sensei's word for granted and working on her mindset the most instead of training her body or trying to learn new techniques.
"We can wait here," Mana said, "Usually there's this group of actors doing historic plays until about midday." Sugemi and Shimo nodded, "It's good to have someone who knows the place and what's going on here." Shimo said. "We can wait in the alleyway and take those guys down quick and pretty after they show themselves. If it's just a small group we can handle them, I trained my taijutsu so I can do it alone, they'll make a manga about it and call it "World's Most Handsome Crimefighter and the other guys","the Nara exclaimed as he rushed to the alleyway. Despite hating conflict in general Mana had to admit - she was quite curious to see how much stronger her friends had gotten. She only worked on her chakra and only kept up her physical condition, most work went into her magic shows and mastering sleight of hand.
This was going too easy, just as people started to leave the three noticed a group of four following a pair of young men. Shimo and Sugemi took double time to get into positions - they wanted to show off and take those guys out in one swoop which pissed the magician off. The safety of the villagers was all that mattered! Mana shouted "Get away!" and charged forward. One of the bandits didn't have enough time to react and the girl simply leaped past him leaving a slash in his chest using her kunai, the man fell down on the floor yelling in pain and shock of it. Mana tried her best to take on all three of the bandits but the best option would've been to be defensive - that was not an option, she had to get in between the victims and the bandits so she leaped forward and while dodging two blows and kicking one of the bandits aside leaped forward placing her kunai up to the other's throat. She turned her eyes away instructing the victims to leave. That was her mistake.
As her attention returned Mana felt a sharp blow on her cheek and her light body got thrown back, just barely the magician held her balance. "Just great, another bruise..." she thought as suddenly the bandit's face got twisted in pain. Shimo was on the ground right behind him - he flashed behind his back so fast! The bandit fell down on the floor, the two others tried to run but Sugemi's body landed right on top of one and hit the other. The body of one of the bandits made a lot of scary cracking sounds and the man yelled out quite loud. He must've been in pain. Shimo approached the magician and looked at the bruise on her cheek and her cut lip. "You OK?" he asked gently as she turned around and kneeled by the injured bandit.
"You two... I can't believe it! Can you stop doing this bullshit and focus for just one moment?! While you were aligning yourselves for a "cool strike" these people could've been injured! I don't care which one of you is stronger, you can play Rock-Paper-Scissors to settle it for all I care... These are actual people at stake!" she kept complaining while she improvised a tourniquet for the man's open fractured leg. Sugemi's attack looked cool but he was way too rough. Their objective was to intimidate the thugs if possible, while they did not back off after Mana's warning that was no excuse to cause that sort of injury just to look cool. "You mean like Kakashi and Guy from that manga?" Sugemi smiled arrogantly, he still thought that he was right and proud of his awesome jump.
"None of those are a) real people, b) fictional characters, at this point I'm sure you're making up names!" Shimo yelled out, he knew manga better than Mana so he could at least argue with him about those things, none of that mattered to the magician. She breathed out lightly as she managed to somehow control the man's bleeding, at least until medical ninja would show up. Mana stood up and looked at the villagers that were still waiting around the corner just to see how it'd play out. "Could you please find some ninja patrolling and see to it that these men get help? We have a mission debriefing to do." she tried to ask softly. "Wait... You're Konoha's Sorceress, right? Are you working with ninja now?" one of them asked, "I am a ninja. I am both a ninja and I do magic shows." Mana replied. "No offense, but you're not that good, you should ask your friends to teach you how to fight..." the other one butt in.
Mana got annoyed and backed off, she sat by the wall and gently stroke her forehead with her fingers, trying to calm down. This day was annoying her immensely with her friends acting like a bunch of brats that wanted only to look cool and didn't care about people and the people she was supposed to be helping valued their violence over her worries over their safety. "Whatever, I'm off..." Mana thought standing up and heading towards the Administration building when Sugemi stopped her. "Hey... Ummm... I was thinking. These men... They had to work for someone right? Like... A big bad crime guy right? Like in all the manga all criminals work for bad people that have a bunch of art and cats and stroke the cats while looking at art. How about we beat that guy up and take him in too?" the boy came open with his idea making the magician suddenly prefer silent treatment over his ideas getting vocalized.
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