Chapter Text
"Congratulations, it seems you're about to have a whole new world of sponsorship opportunities open up for you," Asuka turned to Ryoku Genshi, referencing the fact that the severely impaired fusion baller was now the final pro athlete competing for the establishment of the World Sports Games left in the Succession Tournament.
"I know that this is a selfish request, however… If it is all the same to you, I would like for Damisan-san to be the one assisting me," Ryoku Genshi bowed in Damisan's direction, pressing his forehead to the bench. The only reason the athlete could pull something of the sort off was that some impatient audience members began getting off their seats and heading toward the exit.
"This might no longer be possible," Shige-H interjected. "We need Damisan to provide Mana with a new, fitting prosthetic for her future match. Given that the number of competitors has dwindled up to half of what it was at the beginning of the second round, it's almost certain that she'll have to compete tomorrow."
"I've made some blueprints for some things. Mana doesn't exactly require an entire arsenal packed into her leg. All she needs is to be able to maintain balance. There's not really a reason I shouldn't be able to multitask, although I'm not sure I can provide you with all the prosthetics you need as I did for your previous match. I'm also about to be somewhat short on materials. I can only make do taking apart my old puppets for so long," Damisan leaned back and stared at the approaching evening sky, turning redder by the minute. Just like a wounded man, the sky bled more and more until eventually it'll have nothing more left to bleed and then it will go black.
"In other words, if someone approaches you with an offer, you better take it," Endo sneered in Ryoku Genshi's direction, somewhat disapproving of the young man's groveling but respecting his hustle of staying in the competition and defying the odds in his condition. A far cry from the wild youth who mocked people less fortunate than him just a few months ago.
"Ladies and gentlemen, while today's fighting has officially wrapped itself up with this explosive resolution of the eighth match, we'd still like you to stay in the arena and grace us with your attention for just a little bit longer!" Rajul spoke up, making the Stars turn their attention to the part of the spectator stands where the loudmouth commentator set himself up.
"What's this now?" Shige-H tsked.
"There's something that we need to report about the brackets of tomorrow's matches! Something has come up recently and we've neglected to inform you about a slight change in the brackets. One of our contestants is removed from the Succession Tournament!" Rajul reported. Immediately after his lips pressed together and put silence on the throne, the audience began rustling and waving their hands in the air. Some of them wondered what was going on internally, while others voiced their doubts about the contestant being removed from the bracket, the replacement, and the reason for this development.
Evidently enough, the Agbarahans loved themselves a fair and cohesive competition just as much as their ruler did.
"I understand all of your concerns, I do, but… Unfortunately, I cannot name the competitor that's being removed from the bracket. The reason is… Well… Nobody seems to remember who they are. We all remember that they fought valiantly in the battle royale and their second round match and that they scored victory, however… Beyond that, no one in our staff has absolutely any memory of them. There's no mention of their name in any records either, as any attempts to mention their name results in unintelligible gibberish!" Rajul lifted a scroll that allegedly contained records of all combatants, their match history, and other stats, pointing at a spot on the scroll.
Mana squinted her glare, augmenting her perceptive abilities by using chakra to peer into the face of the scroll. Quickly, she sifted through the symbols until only a line of undecipherable rubbish greeted her gaze and sent a trickle of cold sweat down her parched and heated back. There was no question about it–this was supposed to be Bogemu Uneyotsu, who was removed from existence in a very crude manner after his loss in the Game of Life and Death. It was a question of how long Mana would be able to remember him, given the universe correcting its own course like this to repair these quirky paradoxes.
"Today, we've stuck alert posters, asking this contestant to reveal themselves to us and claim their position in the tournament. We've had nurses and support staff filter through the Agbarmahal palace, the infirmary, and Agbarah town, but we've found no trace of any such contestant. It is under these ridiculously bizarre circ*mstances that we have been forced to find a suitable replacement, and we believe we've found just the right person!" Rajul turned to the audience, scanning the spectator stands for a sight of Mana. Because of the vastness of the colosseum building and the limitations of human vision, the announcer appeared to struggle with this task.
"Who is it!?"
"Explain yourselves!"
"We knew it, Bishiyari, the Supreme One, is back in!"
"Tempted as we may have been to offer the Supreme Salvari, Bishiyari, a second chance, both the Sheikh and the Supreme One felt like this went against the competitive spirit of the tournament. Therefore, we found another replacement. Please, welcome to the arena the Second Goddess of the Sun Disc arena, the winner of the Ascension Gauntlet, a spectacular young woman who managed to defeat all the top martial artists of her time in the arena, despite being a rookie. Some of you may know her as "the Gladiatrix", those of you who have traveled abroad may have heard about the Konoha's Sorceress–Nakotsumi Mana!" Rajul raised his arms and spread them apart, inviting Mana to make her way to the arena and introduce herself to the audience formally before she has an official match tomorrow.
"What? A new competitor?"
"Put her through another battle royale! Make her earn it!"
"Of course, it's another ninja…"
Mana heard too many negative and disgruntled observations around her, leaning forward and trying to appear small so that, by some chance, nobody noticed her. This was exactly the type of reception she ran away from back home in Konoha. Maybe she was cowardly to do so, maybe she was selfish for wanting to start anew someplace fresh and different, then, Mana felt a firm hand on her shoulder.
"Go on, we both know you're meant for the stage," Shige-H smiled, radiating warmth and encouragement.
Mana let out a barely intelligible groan, fearing the worst. It was only when the idea that none of this would be over until she made her way to the arena made itself apparent to the ninja magician that she stood up. Damisan's hand brushed against Mana's, barely pinching it with his thumb and holding it in his hand.
"You don't have to do this. If you just sit down and pretend none of us are here, they'll have to assume we've left the arena with the rest already and give up," Damisan suggested.
"No, Shige-H-san is right," Mana sighed, brushing her elbow in awkward discomfort. It was so easy for her to excel when she was known and admired. Ever since she first stepped up on that cardboard box back home, people thought she was just cute and quirky at first, but then they began admiring her sleight of hand and hustle. Then, Mana invented an entirely new art form to wow the crowd with before going big. But all of that was easy. There's nothing to it to walk out and take the stage when there's not a single soul alive that hates you. This… This was a true trial of Mana's spirit.
After sighing to herself, Mana spread her arms apart and elevated herself off the ground with a whirling air current. By now she's used Mystical Wings technique enough to not even need to speak the jutsu's name or make any hand seals. Mana tried to accompany her entry with some flare, some sparks, and a touch of stage magic, but then she began struggling against her own long skirt that wrapped around her leg like a rose, leaving a somewhat ridiculous display of a young woman awkwardly soaring from the spectator stands to the center of the arena, accompanied by sparks and dancing wisps of blue flame, only to occupy herself with stiffly stuffing her skirt and veil down from running rampant.
At least there was so much chaos and outrage going on in the spectator stands that Mana couldn't single out one insult being hurled at her or her very presence in the arena being labeled as one. It's been a few years since Mana's performance here and it felt like it happened a lifetime ago to Mana as well. Who knew how few people who witnessed her Ascension Gauntlet from back then stayed in Agbarah to see what it would become? Many of them must have fled once they got the chance, those few veterans who stayed behind could do little to overpower the negative sentiment pouring from the audience.
Mana opened her mouth to speak up, but, for the first time in her life, she felt like some dry lump was stuck in her throat. Instinctively, the magician caught herself pinching and pulling her dress down to conceal her missing leg, but the blowing desert wind did enough damage to make her modestly dressed shape look strange and the proportions of her lower body to look otherworldly. This felt like one of those bad dreams of standing naked in front of a stage that Mana heard other artists tell her about while preparing for shows and felt fortunate enough to never have had.
"My, what a stormy reaction!" Rajul raised his voice, proving once and for all that, when he spoke, it was indeed him that commanded the narrative in the arena. "Either way, Nakotsumi Mana will not be competing for any faction, since she is aligned with a few of them. You could label her a magician, a Salvari, or a kunoichi, however, because of the absence of our mysterious combatant, unless we can receive word of their true identity and proof of their existence, and that they're who they claim to be, the Second Goddess will take the place of the mysterious, vanishing contestant.
"Are you doing okay?" Damisan asked Mana backstage. Because of the outrage amongst the spectators of the matches, Mana chose to let the audience scatter and vacate the premises before she hovered to the backstage hallways with her head sunken down and eyes moist with misery juice. Like it was snot during a cold, Mana felt the tears soak into her eyelids and vanish wherever they came from as she looked up in her most honest attempt to lie.
"I will be," Mana changed her answer, submitting to the fact she was a lousy liar when the thing she lied about hit close to home. "It's been a while since I received a reaction like that. Not since Konoha, after I was released from Jigoku."
"They'll come around. If there's one thing we can always rely on, it's your ability to turn heads and put smiles on people's faces," Shige-H squeezed Mana's hand before Damisan whisked her away into his embrace and kissed her head. When he pressed Mana's head to his chest, it felt like it became brimming with gravity that recalled her floating consciousness and grounded it.
"I know you'll probably reject any notion of help from me outright, but what helps me in moments like these is the joy of making those assholes stuff and choke on it by proving all of them wrong," Asuka mumbled while looking away from the rather emotional reunion.
"Hmph… It reminds me a lot of the first time in Sun Disc," Mana chuckled through the barrier of tears, forcing the streams she did her best to hide while laughing through them. "If anything, they're a lot less murderous than back then."
"They just forgot who you are. Make sure to remind them tomorrow, Mana," Endo gave Mana the solemn look of a strict teacher, expecting their student to excel in tomorrow's test or not bother showing their face in class.
"They don't seem to realize that the Mana imprisoned in the Five-Tails Statue, fighting for the Chaos Factor, was also me. If they oppose my participation now, just imagine what it would be like if they knew I had a chance at winning it all and I blew it," Mana rubbed her elbow, trying to collapse in of itself in embarrassment.
"Hey, watch it!" Endo pulled Mana in by the collar of her dress, tilting her so that their eyes couldn't look away from each other and the tips of their noses almost touched. Damisan grumbled in objection, but Endo scolded Mana with his piece of mind before the engineer of the Stars could step up to oppose it. "You saved my hide and fought off the entire world, telling it to go screw it! That impressed the f*ck out of me, so don't make me regret respecting you by giving me this sh*t!"
Just so that he didn't come to blows with Damisan, Endo shoved Mana into him so that the puppeteer wrapped his arms around her from behind and secured her from tumbling or falling over. "I too have been rejected and pushed away, called useless and abandoned. My strength and my sword were the only things I had left to my name, and so I came to associate my worth in this world with those two things. I don't care what it is, but you have to get your sh*t together and take all of them prisoner like only you can."
"While Endo is passionate and intimidating, I believe he is also right," Ryoku Genshi nodded. "You said it yourself–they don't know you've earned your place in that arena in the battle royale. Once you win tomorrow's match, there will be no ignoring you any longer. They will have no other choice but to accept you."
"Not that I don't trust Mana or anything…" Shige-H shrugged. "But Mana doesn't really have to win. Our priority is still finding and defeating the remnants of Fennec's mercenary crew. There are still a few mysteries we have to uncover before we can do that, though."
"It's about Death," Mana said, looking up with eyes that had trails of black, smeared makeup around them. "The magician nobody can remember, he used an ability to capture people and trap them inside of his game. One of the contestants in the battle royale was Death itself and it ended up trapped inside of Bogemu-san's game."
"Assuming that's not bat-sh*t insane…" Endo scoffed. "What about it?"
"Ryoku-san said that those mercenaries died during the battle royale–I suspect that they indeed should have died, however… Because of Death's capture and entrapment in the game… Well, Death couldn't quite claim them. That's why they're walking around and still working at whatever it is they're up to," Mana spoke her mind.
"So… The very concept of death was, for a time, banished to a different dimension, making death null and void? While that would explain why there's a bunch of dead people running around and causing havoc, well… That's just a massive leap for us to take on even your word, Mana. Especially with the option of those guys being copycats being on the table and it being a much simpler explanation," Shige-H scratched her neck, struggling to accept the idea that this supernatural mumbo-jumbo was indeed now part of their everyday worries. She would, after all, have to report all this to the Supreme Leader when they made their way home.
"Is it simpler, though?" Endo asked in a frustrated tone of voice that sounded like a bag of stones being dragged across the ridge of a saw. "I mean if you consider all the implications–the fact that these mercs had willing copycats ready to replace them with identical skill sets who happened to be here just in case and who didn't take part in the tournament? I'd believe the fact Death was taking an involuntary vacation over that nonsense."
"So…" Asuka spoke up, leaning her head to glare behind her and straight at Mana, earning the magician's undivided attention while Damisan held her close to him with his right arm wrapped around her, caressing Mana for comfort. "The game is over now, right? If we kill those undead assholes now, they're gone for good, right?"
"Yes," Mana nodded. "While there is no protocol for whatever Bogemu-san did, so there's no way to know for certain, Death was freed from the game after Bogemu-san lost. While I wasn't too excited about that, perhaps that was for the better, given how much trouble just a brief period of absence brought. There is no reason to think that Death wouldn't claim them now that it's freed from Bogemu-san's game."
"I'm just surprised Death will wait that long…" Endo leaned his head back in his arms, looking off at the bustling Agbarah town as the crew left the Sun Disc premises and headed toward Agbarmahal to cool off, prepare for tomorrow, and rest for the night. "If I was Death, I'd be hunting after my targets and all the marks I've missed first thing after I'm free."
"Heh, that's not really what's going to keep me awake today. I wonder why Death itself came to take part in this tournament in the first place. Someone like Death itself doesn't sound like someone who needs something in particular," Ryoku Genshi wondered, somehow making light of the fact that, for a time, he was competing in a tournament against the metaphysical concept of death itself.
"Who knows, I'm not really tight with Death, you know, and I prefer to keep it that way," Mana sighed.
Lined up and together, holding on to each other for sympathy and support, the Stars went off and disappeared into the hallways of the massive Agbarmahal as the guards watching the palace entrance crossed their arms, blocking off entry to those that didn't belong or didn't have the permission to enter.
The approaching end of the day also marked the end of the second round and the beginning of the quarter-finals of the Succession Tournament.
Author's Note: This feels like a good way to leave the story as I take my "hiatus" and begin working on the ninth Annual chapter. This one will be special, because it will be the first Annual to be a two-parter, in the sense that it will tell a semi-complete story, but it will have a "sequel" of sorts in the form of the tenth Annual next year. Each of these two Annuals will be a satisfying, self-contained story, but they'll also be part of a single, bigger story together. As for what the Annual will be about, without spoiling too much, I can only say that it will be a "What-if" type of story, so you won't need to jump around or wait in order to read it, you can pretty much read it whenever you like. It will also not be canon to the main TONM universe, but it is an alternate timeline and a part of the TONM multiverse. Who knows, maybe it will cross over with the main timeline at some point, depending on how much people (and I) like how it comes together.
I'll keep up with my activity on my other story, but the next update for Tales of the Ninja Magician should come out only on 2024-06-25 when the ninth Annual comes out. After that point, the story will continue as usual.
