"What were the questions about, really?" Mana persisted. Usually, it would not have been her interest to dig too deep into something that was in the beginning fenced off from her, not this business. The enigmatic element present in Jagaimo's story made Mana power through her usual locks that prevented her from digging until the golden shimmer of the precious intel she needed or the blazing heatwave of having dug her way into trouble.
"You're not gonna let this go, are you?" Jagaimo whined. "Even if I wanted to tell them anything about that thing of mine that I'm doing here, they would not have given me the chance. No need to nag me over it… Yeah, I tried toppling the ninja system, big whoop… What's in it that's so interesting for you?"
"I have a theory…" Mana admitted with a hearty sigh while Tokui was being questioned inside. "There are way too many villages and lands missing. It could be because they are small and rather insignificant but I have a different idea. I believe that the villages that have sent Voices here all have something in common."
Jagaimo looked away like it was the dumbest thing he has ever heard, at first, then his eyes turned back at Mana without giving the magician the satisfaction to see the entire face of the young man. A moment later, after a pair more blinks and a deep sigh and an eye-roll, Jagaimo finally asked, "Okay, pretend I'm interested too now, what's this theory of yours?"
"It's a bloody incident. Konoha has been attacked three years ago by a creature that came from inside the village and has never really disappeared since its release. Despite the monster roaming freely in the village's streets, the authorities pretty much did nothing about it. The response of the Hokage after the monster started rampaging was correct by the books but not by the eyes and ears of his villagers." Mana explained. "I have a suspicion that the rest of the villages may have had incidents, not unlike the one with the monster Honda."
"I don't think there's been something unusual in Kirigakure, not something that stands out of the ordinary. In the mist-covered slums there it's bloody murders most foul every hour of the day. People disappear, people get murdered… Less so now than back when I was a sprouting little lad but… Still happens." Jagaimo shrugged. "They do make a bigger deal out of it these days. A year back there was this one loon who just went to work, got sick of everyone's shit and just started wasting people with a box knife and a pair of scissors to cut flowers. Even though twenty blokes probably got stabbed while the authorities and the media chatted about this event, it was all over the tellies and the papers."
Mana and Jagaimo looked at each other with blank stares for a pair of moments before Jagaimo looked away and scratched his neck, looking a bit guilty.
"Yeah, I guess I see where you're coming from now. Though they didn't pry too much into that. They were all into my early life and the like, like what's my childhood and my current home like and the sort of questions like that." The street rat squirmed, resting his buttocks atop a windowsill and almost pressing falling locks against the cold window.
"What was your childhood like?" Mana sat in front of the young man, her own eyes wandered outside as well as she was enjoying the gloomy melancholy of the heavenly spray from the clouds above.
"That another one of your theories?" Jagaimo smirked while turning back at the magician. Mana acknowledged the gesture by mirroring the Voice's smile herself.
"No, just genuinely curious. I guess if you did not have the brightest of times early on, it would make sense why you'd want to change everything about… Well… Everything." Mana replied seriously to the rhetorical question while turning her eyes to the drizzle outside. "I know a bit about feeling lost and scorned and wanting to lash out, feeling unsure whom to lash out at so you start lashing out at pretty much everything, hoping that if you turn this one random stone, your situation will maybe miraculously change."
"You do? If memory serves you're a big celebrity back in your village, not that that's not its own can of beans but… How could you know that? What about my slender body full of ribs that were broken more times than I can count on my hands and have had knives slipped into them more times than their collective sum is so relatable to a famous stage magician the aristocrats are willing to throw money at to hire to perform?"
"There are more ways than living a spiteful life to know a specific kind of spite. My father was forcefully retired by Kirigakure ninja… Well… Probably Kirigakure ninja… It's a long story… Either way, the pain from his injuries has caused him a similar kind of agony. He's started distancing himself from one person after another, wondering which relationship, which social distraction might have been causing his torment."
"Sounds stupid." Jagaimo blurted out after Mana looked at him, the young man shrugged, "Sorry… But it does. Not that I'm blaming or anything just… I mean, you can't wait for rational reasoning from an injured person, sure but… Just because stupidity is excusable, doesn't make it rational, you know?"
"No, you're right. It was absolutely stupid." Mana's glare softened.
"Was? So I get it your big, relatable story has a happy ending?" Jagaimo raised an eyebrow.
"I've trained a whole lot the past three years, it was not training focused on strength but at a particular set of skills that was supposed to settle the matters that keep dragging me underwater when I'm trying to keep swimming. A plan to stop a certain person, learning to use a newly surfaced ability of mine that I've long since neglected but that's always been a part of who I am, the final part was learning to treat my father's pain." Mana explained while looking at the white gloves sheathing her calm and steady hands. For the first time in many years, the magician knew the direction she was going in, not that the stops on that path did not utterly frighten her but the knowledge of said stops and the ability to prepare ahead made those adversities almost liberating.
"You've learned to heal something like that?" Jagaimo leaned his body back, he was reacting in disbelief and for good reason.
"Magicians do not heal, they trick," Mana replied with a regretful but also accepting smile. She regretted lacking any sort of skill in medical ninjutsu needed to help her father but she also accepted that it was a weakness she possessed and that acceptance helped her build a new path onward.
"That's cruel… But, I guess, if it works…" Jagaimo shrugged. "I can tell you what I've told those geezers in there, my own childhood was as much a blast as it was terrifying. Been on the streets of the Spume for as long as I can remember, no parents, authorities of any other kind to answer to. Only the fear of pissing off the wrong bloke and getting stabbed in the back fifty-six times over it to keep my budding street-rat mentality in check. I won money and lost money through gambling, either way, the people I've won from or lost to went after me for their money."
"So you've had no home, no family to relate to or to assist your growth? That sounds lonely, most of all…" Mana closed her eyes. It was true that she was often left all by herself, sometimes she pushed people away because she was afraid to pull them as deep into things as she herself was but it was frightening to imagine how it would have felt to have no one to turn one's thoughts to for strength. No parents back home, no one to love and no friends to look up to and look forward to meeting again. Momentary slips of the consciousness stream in these directions helped it return to its rightful path more focused and intense than ever.
"There have been homes, had to abandon them. There were people, they've either betrayed me when the conditions were too tempting or carried their devotion into the grave." Jagaimo looked down and scratched the back of his neck. It seemed like the young man had not properly looked back at the troubles he'd been through and evaluated them fairly himself. All of this time he had taken pride in the things he's survived, it did not look like he'd analyzed them and drawn conclusions from anything that's happened to him though.
To analyze something, one must have opened the wound up and poked around inside. Even when the pride in the scar was great, some just disliked that sort of pain altogether until the dislike grew into fear.
"So did you become a ninja to escape this life? Ninja make enough for you to not have to live in the districts that built you up and they are quite often away for a prolonged amount of time, seems perfect for someone trying to escape." Mana asked.
"Heh, not really. I became a ninja for the source of income. By the age that kids graduated I was already hardened and ran for my life countless times. To get paid all I had to do was survive and I was really good at that. Sometimes I even got paid for failing the mission, it was a concept I was completely entranced by – being rewarded for failure… Back then, in my experience, failing meant you didn't make it through the day. In this world, things were tough, sure, but failing only meant death if you actually died in the field. It's crazy when you think about it."
"From a gambler's perspective, I suppose…" Mana shrugged.
Jagaimo laughed out, from the heart, genuinely and deeply. Mana's eyes turned back at the young man and away from the rain as if questioning him about the gesture. He showed no desire to restrain or hide his fit of laughter from the magician which suggested to her that he wanted for this outburst to be seen.
"Heh, when the village sent me here, I thought they were pulling my leg at first. That was how sharpened my survival instincts were. I thought they were setting me up to dispose of me. Almost pissed my pants, I'm pretty good but probably not good enough to face off against actual village-hired killers. This was one time I had thought that just being aware of the set-up would not have done it. Who could have known that this all was actually for real?" Jagaimo laughed out again. Speaking through his laughter in a struggle. It was such a macabre thing to be laughing about.
"Why would your own village want to kill you?" Mana raised an eyebrow but then looked down. She was not on her own best terms with the village not too long ago, right before the entire Honda matter, the Wandering Ninja people she came from were all slaughtered by her own village too. It was such an insane revelation when she and Guru Ayushi had uncovered it that Mana still could not process it and deal with it face to face. The notion stopped seeming so insane all of a sudden…
"Because I'm sort of a loose cannon, at heart I'm still a gambler… You know what I mean?" Jagaimo made a begging-puppy face.
"You gambled with village money? You used village funds to fuel your addiction?"
"Not fuel, satisfy. When you put it like that, I almost feel like a criminal or something… Back in the day the thought of my own folks sending a hunter-nin after me seemed almost absurd, now… Geez…"
"It is a crime, actually… Not one you should be killed for, mind you, but I cannot believe it that you've never faced Ninja Tribunal." Mana shook her head. "How else could you have ever possibly interpreted village giving you money for free before sending you on a mission? Whom did you consider yourself in their eyes else if not a criminal after you had gambled it all away?"
"A smooth operator of village finances?" Jagaimo's face changed to one of almost cartoonish and faked guilt. "Plus… I would not say that I've NEVER been cornered about this."
Mana blinked a pair of times while staring at the young man.
"I mean… The big cheese yelled at me, a bunch of other fancy-dressed folks wondered if they should imprison me or kick me out of the village altogether. The watch of the… "International benefactors"… was a bit too tight for them to just off me on the streets like the good old Bloody Mist days at the time, I would have been of no use to them in prison because I'd have been funneling more public funds away from them. At the end of the day, I was someone who was a bit of a drunkard and a gambler but I got things done most of the time because of the failure-fearing instinct that has kept me alive all these years. That's why they kept me around. Once in a while, I might gamble something away, piss some people off and get slack for it but most of the time I fulfill the objective because that's what I get paid the most for…"
"So do you still live in the slum districts?" Mana wondered.
"You can take a man out of the Spume but you can't take the Spume out of a man…" Jagaimo shrugged with eyes that Mana tried to see guilt in but failed to do so. For the sake of the young street-wise ninja, Mana hoped that it was because of her own shortcomings in reading people and not the fact that such feelings were absent altogether.
With a stomach-churning noise, strong enough to overpower all the present conversations lingering in the air while the Voices were engaged in small-talk waiting for their turn, Tokui appeared from behind the gate, once again moving the impressive fangs of the demon with his own strength. The short servant lady leaned under the moving fangs while the much more massive ninja entered the waiting room with a face that looked about the same as the one he carried into the Tribunal hall.
Even if some question posed to him by the Council did rile the Kumogakure ninja up, he was skilled enough in deception to hide it from most. Most but not Mana, with the combination of her chakra sensory and natural observation abilities, the magician did notice a slight discrepancy with Tokui's chakra flow. It felt slow and calm but artificially so. Almost the same as the breathing of someone who was just frightened by a scurrying cat diving out from a corner was still – it was still but its serenity was faked and the flow of the motion was vibrating with the lingering aftertastes of the previous emotion.
"He's your type or something?" Jagaimo wondered, noticing Mana staring at the emerging Kumogakure ninja who traded uneasy stares with the Voice of Iwagakure as he passed her.
"No, he was shaken up by something in there but he managed to play it cool…" Mana relayed the fact that her curiosity stemmed from her wanting to verify or quash her theory.
"Big deal…" Jagaimo sighed.
"It is a big deal. Tokui-san is a big and pretty iron-faced individual. There are not many things that can frighten him or drive him off-balance. Some sensitive matters were discussed in that Tribunal for certain." Mana affirmed her previous worries.
"You can tell it that well?" Jagaimo leaned forward in curiosity, placing his elbows on his long, puny thighs as he rested his heads atop of his palms that he placed in a sprouting position. "I guess chakra reflects more than just one's strength…"
"Not quite. My perception is a result of a combination of all of my senses, included but not limited to chakra sensory." Mana replied.
"Could the Voice of Konohagakure please make her way to the gate?" the servant lady bowed her upper body, inviting Mana to the chewer of the figurative demon. Her Kage gave her greater responsibility than those of the other Voices, obviously, that responsibility was fake, if Mana failed at her mission, there will be no Hokage to impose punishment on her and she will not have to answer to any rules for all those ancient codes shall be abolished. Despite that, responsibility was something Mana took as something more than this or that kind of deal, hers was a mentality different from that of a gambler.
She cared not for the potential outcomes of the responsibility as much as the ultimate meaning of it. The only parts of the failure to live up to the responsibility on her shoulders that bothered her were the parts that motivated her to stand back up when her body failed to raise her back up and when her spirits told her to stay down and die. The only important material parts of the responsibility were the things that one still had to lose that motivated but did not strike the fear of failure into Mana. Failure was sometimes inevitable but without accepting its inevitability one won't properly deal with the responsibilities that originated said failure. It will become not only highly possible, but failure to accept the inevitability of failure will also materialize that failure all by itself.
It was not all too different from the Bushido followed by the samurai. Mana could not recall it by heart as she made her way into the well-lit and closed off Tribunal hall through the mouth of a figurative, artistically gorgeous demonic entity, but the general idea of the only way to survive an upcoming battle being to walk into it accepting you may not survive it strike a chord of acceptance with the young woman. As did the follow-up part of making death certain if one feared death and tried to avoid it by any means…
After three years it was time once more, time to go to work…
Author's Note: I wonder how people that have followed the story so far are responding to this little diversion of the story. It is more important to the overall narrative than it seems as it introduces some people that will come in later and require prior introduction and it also covers some of the events that transpired during the three-year time skip too. It also displays a more experienced and calculated and one-track-minded version of Mana that's more focused on her main goal of stopping Guru Ayushi than anything else but it is sort of lacking in action, I imagine that most fanfiction readers don't really care about story arcs about Tribunal processions :D
In any case, Shadow asked me in a recent review if I have an idea if my fanfic will have a final chapter or if I'm just winging it and seeing how far I can take it. I could not quite reply in a private message and I don't want to write it in a review of my own story (which I have done before but it's not my preferred way of communicating with readers, should consider taking a page from Wattpad (I know, ewwww, but hear me out here...) and implement some sort of way of communicating with readers on a chat after each chapter. ATM it sort of feels like besides Author's Notes and private messages there isn't really a way of communicating with readers.
To answer that question - yes, I do have the ending of the story planned, in fact, I had the entirety of the story roughly planned out ever since I started it. Some events and arcs have spanned much longer than I planned them out to last, which is a common issue for writers as I have heard, even Kishimoto himself has experienced this problem and spoke of it to the writer of Boruto some time ago in an interview. There is always a possibility that I will lose all passion and ability to write the story at some point, maybe I'll experience more technical problems like last year but of the more long-term kind, I do sometimes feel pretty worn out by my full-time (sometimes extra-time even) job and my own personal problems to work on the story as I would want to work on it. Regardless of what comes up, I won't just leave this hanging. I might drop some of the planned out events, I might just finish the story at an earlier point than intended (aka DB should have ended after Pilaf Arc effect) but I will not abandon it, that's simply not my style.
I know this story isn't too popular but it never has been and I never expected it to be when I started it. For that reason, I do not believe there is a degree of a dip in readership and people that liked and followed the story jumping ship that would make me abandon it as well. It is unfortunate whenever I lose the few readers I do attract but I've been losing people and having people ignore this fic for about 3 years now so I won't suddenly just realize nobody is reading it all of a sudden and drop it :D
Hope this answered the question, also, I really hope that Shadow will get to see this, given how I could not reply to the question directly and had to leave a note...
