Upon return into the ship, Tororo made his way straight to his room; where he would continue his research. He was slightly on edge, but only because he was expecting two hyperactive and probably hormonal teenage girls to come crashing into his room for some reason or another. So when there was a knock on the door, he nearly jumped out of his skin in surprise.

"Come… in?" he essentially questioned the door, suspicious as to who was behind it.

To the tadpole's relief, it was Zoruru who entered the room.

"What kind of reaction to a knock on the door is that?"

Tororo slumped his shoulders in relief.

"Thank god it's only you…," he sighed "What do you want, Scraps?"

Zoruru chuckled at the hacker's obvious relief that it wasn't the two girls now staying with them, before pointing to his leg.

"I have a screw loose" he explained.

"What else is new?" Tororo replied, gathering the tools he used to work on the cyborg's metal side. Zoruru didn't even dignify the joke with an answer.

"The annoying green thing was running around after me, declaring some sort of 'undying love' for me and tackled me so hard that she managed to catch a screw on my leg and now it's loose"

Tororo nodded with a grin and beckoned him nearer so that he could inspect the leg. He knew of Karara's notorious and very infamous sporadic crushes, and was not surprised by this 'assault' in the slightest.

"You know, that 'thing' is the daughter of the most influential man on Keron" Tororo chuckled.

"I couldn't give less of a flying fuck if I tried" He replied as he watched Tororo re-attached the screw and reinforced it using some contraption Zoruru worryingly didn't know the name of; proof that he relied on Tororo to much for his maintenance. Not that the cyborg was bothered, or even aware of it.

Tororo eventually packed away his tools and nodded to Zoruru, letting him know he was allowed to leave, though he kept his eye on the assassin as he inspected the screw, encase he had somehow done something wrong. Not that he doubted himself.

"She'll get over you in about a week, I'd say" Tororo spoke up as Zoruru began to leave the room, referring to Karara.

"I should hope so. I'm afraid that if she stalks me for too long I'd just eventually chop her head off or something. THEN I'd be fucked" Zoruru replied, rolling his eye as he opened the door, before stepping back and furrowing his brow.

"Leave me alone, you bloody kids!" He hissed. A quiet chuckle could be heard after that.

"Don't worry Zoruru, it's only me, and I'm not here for you anyway" came the familiar, carefree sounding voice of Chiroro.

Zoruru side-stepped out of the door and comical sound of the ninjas running could be heard, as he must have spotted the other twin somewhere down the hallway. Chiroro took his place, and awkwardly knocked on the door despite her being in the room already.

"Sorry to disturb you, just wondered if I watch you work some more?" she asked.

Tororo was about to say no. How interesting was watching someone type crap onto a computer screen anyway? She was bound to get bored and start fidgeting or making conversation. But that was before he noticed her subtle body language change when the sound of her sister calling for her rang in the halls of the ship. Her hand had begun to inch towards the door, and she looked as if she suddenly felt unsafe in the halls, where her sister was loose. Tororo wasn't sure if he felt pity, or whether it was a gut reaction, but he slowly nodded his head.

"…Go on then… but be quiet, I won't appreciate being distracted" he mumbled.

Chiroro smiled, now visibly much more relaxed as she pushed the door shut behind her. She made her way over to the bed the hacker was sat on, but pulled out a stool from beneath a nearby desk, covered in all manner of beakers of chemicals, and watched from the side, which Tororo was secretly thankful for.

He tried to continue with his work; which was sorting out the data he had gathered the day before. He was trying so hard to concentrate, but he just couldn't. It wasn't that Chiroro was irritating him – she was sat as good as gold on that little stool, not making a sound and just watching contentedly. It was his natural inquisitiveness. He was curious as to how Chiroro could preach about how much she loved her sister, and how she would do anything for her, yet displayed such obviously contradictive body language, which made her seem, uncomfortable, annoyed or maybe even embarrassed when she was around her.

Of course, he wouldn't ask her. He was rather proud of his uncaring image; it made people stay away from him in the long run. Besides, as mentioned previously, he didn't want to start any conversation that would distract him.

"Needed to get away from your sister?"

His mouth had a mind of its own, it seemed.

Chiroro looked at him in confusion. She wondered why on earth the salmon hacker was suddenly interested in starting a conversation with her, and about her no less. Judging by the expression on Tororo's face, he was thinking the exact same thing to himself.

"Oh no, it's nothing like that. I honestly just wanted to watch you work again" She replied in a way that told Tororo to drop the conversation, but his curiosity seemed to overpower every other conscious thought in his body.

"you looked pretty uncomfortable just then"

Chiroro didn't say anything, only raised her eye in question. Tororo suddenly felt put on the spot.

"You tell everyone that you love your sister, and you'd happily do anything for her, but your actions don't necessarily mirror those words" He continued, choosing his words carefully.

She frowned and looked down.

"Of course I love her. She's always there…" she mumbled, not quite ending her sentence.

"In my opinion, she's just using you" Tororo interrupted, before screaming at himself mentally at his absolute stupidity. He couldn't believe what he had just said. He smacked his forehead with his palm in embarrassment.

To his surprise, she only attempted a weak smile.

"It's ok," She said "I know… she does kind of use me… but it's ok. We're sisters; we have to be there for each other"

Tororo paused, not wanting to ask the next question but knew he would anyway.

"When was the last time she did anything for you? Has she ever actually done anything for you at all?"

She didn't reply, just furrowed her brows a little more as she continued to stare into her lap.

"I reckon you should just refuse to do what she says next time she asks you" He said.

She looked up at him with a torn look on her face.

"I… you wouldn't understand… I just can't" She said, voice becoming coarse, like she was holding back emotion.

"Why?" he asked, with as gentle a tone as he could muster. Chiroro took a deep, shaky breath before continuing.

"This is gonna sound so stupid… But I think I must have some irrational fear of people being angry with me or something… I get so worried about that happening, especially with Karara… if she hated me, I don't know what I'd do…"

Tororo frowned again, but was finally able to keep his mouth shut in favour of Chiroro regaining her composure. Chiroro just sat there for a while in silence, trying to control her slightly uneven breaths while Tororo watched her patiently.

"Is it weird?" She asked eventually. Tororo tilted his head slightly.

"No" he replied, simply.

"I feel pretty stupid and weak about it" She murmured. Tororo shook his head at her.

"You aren't weak, Chiroro. Take me as an example, I've basically been pretty negative towards you since I met you, and you've been brushing it off as if you weren't even aware I was doing it. You're pretty strong for just putting up with me. Most people either beat me up or just leave me alone when I act like that"

Chiroro looked up at him and smiled again.

"Thank you, but I can see how uncomfortable it is for you to try and be nice to me, you don't have to, you know"

Tororo wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. He just continued to watch her.

"But… the fact you even bothered to ask… it was really sweet of you"

Tororo went red and looked a little flustered.

"I was just curious"

Chiroro didn't reply, just continued to smile at him as she got up from her stool.

"I'll leave you to it, buck private" she said as she left the room.

Tororo just sat still for a minute or two before falling backwards onto his bed.

"Damn it, now she thinks I care or something! Why can't I just keep my stupid mouth shut?" He grumbled to himself, before sitting back up again and attempting to continue his work.


Pretty soon, night fell, and Garuru realised that he needed to decide where the girls should sleep. Taruru had offered his room, which Karara had immediately rejected, as she thought it was wrong to sleep in the same room as the opposite sex unless you were romantically involved with them. Zoruru had disappeared 'mysteriously' not long after the discussion had begun, and Tororo was not about to volunteer his living space. In the end, Pururu put forward the idea of them sleeping in the control room with herself as the supervisor, as she personally didn't trust them in her room. Garuru agreed, not realising what an absolutely stupid idea it had been.

o0o0o

Not used to the unfamiliar surroundings, Karara lay wide awake glaring at the ceiling with tired eyes. Glancing out of the corner of her eye to her right, she spotted her sister, who was curled up in a sleeping bag propped up slightly against one of the platoon member's stations, probably Zoruru's, sound asleep.

The green tadpole grumbled quietly before glancing to her left, thinking that maybe she could tell Pururu about her difficulty getting to sleep, only to find that she too was out for the count in her chair.

Karara whined groggily. She decided that no good would come out of just lying there wide awake, trying to force herself to sleep, so she stood out of her sleeping bag and rubbed her weary eyes. Shuffling around aimlessly, it wasn't long till she spotted a shiny thing at the front of the room. She approached it, in a trance like state because of her tiredness, to get a better look at it. It turned out to be a small control panel with a series of five buttons on it. They each had a little symbol on them, and were placed just below the words 'LOCK DOWN' in large, red text. Of course, Karara wouldn't be Karara if she didn't press one of them, and press one she did.

THUNK

Everyone in the room jumped out of their skin, the two who had been asleep having been woken up by the deafening sound.

"What the heck was that?" Chiroro groaned, shaking her head dizzily in a bid to wake herself up a little more.

"Karara-chan… you didn't… did you?" Pururu gasped, pointing at the control panel the green tadpole was stood next to.

"Um… maybe…" Karara replied guiltily.

"You've just quarantined someone's room you silly girl! Didn't you see the words 'lock down'?"

Karara gritted her teeth nervously, before rubbing her eyes and taking another look at the button she had pressed. It had Tororo's symbol on it.

"Looks like I put Tororo's room in lock down… oopsie" She admitted. Chiroro sat up at such a speed that it would have been comical if it hadn't been for the situation.

"Tororo's in trouble? We have to help him!" She cried. Karara would have poked fun at her sister's reaction, but even she realised how inappropriate that was at this time.

"Well, there's no use just standing here, we need to get to Tororo's room" Pururu instructed, leading the two groggy tadpoles out of the cockpit.

Upon reaching the hacker's room, they found that Taruru, Zoruru and Garuru were already stood around the door, having obviously reacted quicker than the girls.

"Tororo! Are you alright in there?" Taruru yelled at the door, before his voice was drowned out by the metal on metal sound of Zoruru's almost frantic knocking on the door, visibly worried for the young hacker.

"You two stop making such a racket. The door is internally sound proof; you wouldn't be able to hear a bomb go off in there. However, Tororo can hear all the noise you're making and probably has a splitting head ache about now" Garuru grumbled with a face like thunder, clearly not appreciating the midnight wake up call.

Pururu walked up through the group with a stethoscope and held it up to the door.

"Honestly, Pururu?" Taruru chuckled, incredibly still finding humour in the situation despite being woken up at two in the morning. Pururu simply glared at him with an exasperated look.

"Shut up Taruru, it's worth a try," She grumbled at him before turning her attention to the door. "Tororo? Tororo, can you hear me?"

Surprisingly enough, she could actually hear him through the earpieces of the stethoscope.

"YES I CAN FUCKING HEAR YOU!"

Pururu fell away from the door a second before putting the stethoscope back up against the door, and just caught the end of his rant about him having 'the biggest fucking headache to ever happen in the history in the universe'.

"I get it Tororo, you're very tired and don't appreciate the racket" Pururu replied, gently. She heard a faint sigh through the ear pieces.

"Can you negate the quarantine for me?" he asked, sounding very tired and fed up.

"We… don't know how to…" Pururu admitted sheepishly.

"That's what I thought…," Tororo mused "I'm not sure it would be easy to teach someone how to do it…" Pururu frowned at the response, but quickly came up with a response.

"Well, we could always request sergeant major-"

"I'll teach someone!" He growled.

Pururu smiled triumphantly, amused by Tororo's stubbornness, but stayed quiet and listened to Tororo's explanation.

"Got it?" he asked eventually. Head spinning, Pururu tried her hardest to remember everything Tororo had just said, and failed.

"I'm sorry Tororo, it's too early in the morning for me to take in that much information" She admitted.

Tororo huffed at her reaction and went silent. Pururu waited patiently.

"Get Chiroro over here" He asked finally.

"W-what? Chiroro? Why her?" She asked in utter disbelief.

"Just put her on whatever you can hear me through. She seems to be a pretty fast learner" He mumbled, sounding a little embarrassed. There was a short silence.

"Chiroro?"

"Just do it, yeah?"

Pururu shook her head to further show her disbelief before motioning for Chiroro to come over and handing her the stethoscope. Putting the earpieces in, she smirked as she heard his grumbles of defeat, but decided not to highlight it, he was in a bad enough mood as it was.

"Alright, Tororo, what do I need to do?" she asked, only letting a little bit of mirth show through her words

Listening to what Tororo had to say intently, Chiroro surprised even herself with how much she understood.

"It sounds boorish, but I'll give it a go" Chiroro sighed in a jokily pretentious way.

"My hero…" said Tororo, Voice dripping with sarcasm.

Chiroro chuckled before returning the stethoscope to Pururu and making her way back to the cockpit, Taruru and Karara following her curiously while the others stayed stood by the door to Tororo's room.

Once back by the control panel with the five buttons that Karara had been prodding at just minutes before, Chiroro only stood and stared at the front panel of the controls in wonder.

"…How do I open this?" She asked herself thoughtfully. She looked behind her to Taruru for guidance, only to watch him shrug his shoulders, which told her that he knew just as much as he did. In the end, Chiroro settled for simply prizing it open with her fingers. Waving her sore hands about, she eventually ducked into the panel and got to work, attempting all the instructions Tororo had reeled off to her.

Taruru and Karara looked on in silence, the latter of the two feeling absolutely awful for all the trouble she'd caused just by letting her curiosity get the better of her. Taruru was slightly worried about his childhood friend, who could very well electrocute herself or something if she did something wrong. He'd always know Chiroro was smart, but he wasn't sure mechanics was her thing.

It didn't take long for Chiroro to emerge again, bizarrely enough with a completely black face.

"Right, I think that's it" she said, rubbing her hands together, ready to be proud of herself if she'd actually done it right.

"What the hell was in there, a chimney?" Karara asked, referring to Chiroro's face.

Chiroro wiped some of the blackness off her face and looked at it closely.

"It's not soot you fool, this isn't a steam train! I think it's oil… I remember being sprayed by something but I assumed it was water from the hydraulics…" she explained.

"Stop being smart already, shouldn't we check to see if what you did actually worked?" Taruru interrupted before running off back to Tororo's room, the girls following close behind.

Upon return to the room, the trio were relieved to see that the door had opened, Tororo slumped on the door frame having nearly fallen asleep again, the three elder frogs looking on at him and asking if he was alright. Taruru pushed through them all and nudged Tororo in the ribs with his foot.

"Tororo! Wake up! Chiroro saved you, aren't you going to thank her?" Taruru said in a very overly dramatic way. Tororo grumbled at him in annoyance, however one look in Chiroro's direction set him off into a fit of laughter.

"Pu pu pu! What the hell were you doing in there, you're filthy! Pu pu pu!" He managed between his own peals of laughter.

"I'm sorry, but you didn't tell my how far you wanted me to turn that tube thing so I just assumed I should turn it all the way!" Chiroro complained.

"Pu pu. You imbecile. You're gonna help me fix it, you know"

Chiroro merely raised an eyebrow at him.

"You're welcome" She said sarcastically, before yawning and returning to the control room where they were staying, Karara and Pururu not far behind, the latter ranting to the former about 'not touching anything'.

Tororo smirked as he watched the rest of the platoon leave to return to their own rooms, before picking himself up, closing the door and flopping onto his bed to try and catch up on sleep for what little remained of that night.

A/N

I finally posted another chapter to this story. The truth is, it was already written up when I posted the first chapter, I just thought that I was gonna abandon the story, but it seems one or two of you are interested in this, so I spent my entire morning typing this up at my grandma's house to classical guitar and opera music. Yeah.

This is the longest chapter I have ever written for anything ever. It's also longer than all of my one shots (this chapter is 3209 words long 8'D) aren't you proud of me?

Hope you like this, you gaiz. If you do, I might even write another chapter for it, WHO KNOWS.

So yeah, proof that I'm still alive. I've got other stuff I'm writing, including the first chapter to another story which I am NOT typing up now because my head is killing me and I need to keep an eye on my ninja dogs. Hopefully be writing more soon, bai gaiz :3