"Explain away, it's not like I have much choice," Mana crossed her arms. That wasn't entirely truthful, she may have tried leaving Skaven's mind though, given his superior knowledge and mental training, he'd have been just as capable keeping her here too if he employed his shoulder into it.
Skaven stuck out his tongue, revealing a sealing glyph. While Mana hadn't seen this particular sealing glyph, she was familiar with the general idea behind placing a powerful sealing technique on one's tongue and why it would make one hesitant to talk honestly. Although Mana thought herself to have much better judgment, the way she looked at Skaven softened and her arms weighed down beside her while she took two careful steps to observe the seal from closer up.
The sealing glyph disappeared behind Skaven's chompers alongside the tongue that it was decorating. The air around the two mental projections became heavy and turned heavier still with each passing moment. Skaven's impeccable control over his mental realm might have stumbled once or twice. At least now Mana had a clearer clue why Skaven kept some things a secret. Still, whether or not his life was on the line, nobody enjoyed dealing with people keeping secrets significant enough to protect in such a drastic way.
"Shige-H mentioned that you were a part of a band of outlaws. In my experience, bandits protect their secrets using far more brutish methods." While Mana couldn't hope to understand the secret that the sealing master placing this seal meant to protect, she could at least learn of the surrounding circumstances.
"That's because the Hellhounds weren't the ones that gave me this glyph." Skaven replied, spreading his arms out. While Mana's skills in reading people suggested his body language to imply truthfulness, such was the eternal problem with this enigmatic young man. He had an aura of shadows about him. He could have easily known how to pretend and adopt a body language of honesty, just as he manipulated his own mind like a master interrogator.
"A village then? The Allied Ninja wouldn't have taken a bandit in so you defected and offered a village your services, hoping to legitimize." Mana rubbed her chin with her thumb and index finger. With Skaven's mouth being sealed, literally sometimes, she had to do a decent amount of figuring out by herself with Skaven only serving as a waypoint toward the truth.
"That was a very perceptive leap." Skaven noted.
"I'm familiar with the general idea of resocialization, believe it or not…" Mana sighed as her memories flowed back to Eiju, a Quack who chose sickness and eventual death as a legitimate medical ninja under Konoha's employ rather than continuing to live long and prosperous as a Quack.
"I suppose someone who's so adamant about keeping her enemies alive would try to learn all about something like that and constantly have it on her mind. In any case, it was a village that gave me this seal." Skaven nodded.
"I suppose there's no point in asking why. A criminal approaching a village to work for it wouldn't be trusted as long as they drew breath, no matter how many times they've been useful." Mana scratched her head.
"He who turns around has already showed he has the capacity and the drive to do that. It's a wise decision, but it's not why the seal was put into place." Skaven massaged his throat, feeling a light pressure around it as the speech began creeping up to the subject of the secrets that the seal protected. "Regardless of the reason, I'd ask you to abandon this for a more opportune time. Now that we're here, I'd like you to tell my reasons of why I asked you in here. If you understand where I'm coming from, maybe you'll still choose to help me? If not because of the sense of debt for saving your life, then because you're just that kind of person."
Mana tsked her tongue. The tendency on random people she meets to have done their homework and possess vast masses of intelligence on her personality and accomplishments outside that which people might have known within reason, namely her career as a stage magician, was becoming irritating. Shige-H wanted Mana for her gang. She was looking for a specific kind of people, so it made a modicum of sense for her to research the new recruits. Skaven too, though?
"As we've already established, I possess a certain corner of my memories that reflects certain information that I cannot reveal to anyone under any circumstances. When I saw and heard you pass that Black Ops course test, I reflected on the circumstances we find ourselves in. Us all as Stars. At any point I can become incapacitated and with you–a casual mind roamer around, those memories, those secrets aren't safe anymore. That is the conclusion that I have come up with." Skaven said.
"I see. You wanted me to be aware of that corner so that if the need ever came to visit your mind, with or without your permission, I wouldn't expose those secrets and doom you to an asphyxiating death?" Mana concluded.
"Not quite. While, if you refuse to talk to me again, that is a favorable outcome in my situation still, I actually need you to make me forget those secrets because that is the only way of truly keeping them safe. I've come to realize that you're an interesting person to be around, and events fall into place around you that not even the most intelligent man on Earth would have precautions for. Who's to say that another assassin won't try to claim your head and that my memories will never become endangered with exposure in one way or another?" Skaven said.
"There is such a possibility, I suppose. Your mental training is profound, second to none, matching if not surpassing the head of Konoha's Intelligence Division. Still, all that training will be null if you're unconscious when your mind is being probed or if an interrogator of matching skill challenges you. Or if this theoretical assassin numbs your mind through extensive physical torture…" Mana admitted.
"You see? It is too dangerous for me to keep those memories." Skaven nodded.
"But those memories are there for a reason. Granted, I've no idea what that reason is, but they can teach you valuable lessons or warn you about something. Are you sure that you won't miss them? Can you even imagine your life without them and think their absence won't change anything?" Mana wondered.
"Trust me, with the Stars back in action in full-roster, whatever lessons those memories teach me and whatever uses they serve are of to me are completely irrelevant." Skaven had a cocky smirk on his face that wasn't a usual denizen of the album comprising his worn facial expressions.
"One thing's still a bit baffling to me–how come you don't just cut those memories off yourself. Someone with your mental training should be able to just seal off those prospects and cut those memories off through meditation." Mana asked.
"True, but that always leaves those memories there and therefore the potential for them to resurface. That's too dangerous for me. I'd rather cut them out in a more violent, permanent way." Skaven nodded.
Before Mana could agree, a sharp shriek cut through the entire mental plane. A high-pitched, psycho noise of shredding blood thirst. It didn't come from the prospect of his memories that Skaven wanted to forget either. It was on the opposite side, on one path that Mana could have sworn led out of his mental fort entirely.
"What was that?" Mana couldn't let go of her own head for a few seconds, asking while sharpness returned to her dull stare and color returned to her eyes. The suddenness and terror of that noise was beyond compare. It was human but also just a little alien, just enough to freak Mana out in a way that only monster Honda did with his similarly human features and voice.
"It seems I'm not as much as a master of my own mind as we've thought." Skaven sighed, turning toward the southern rainbow-reflecting pathway with a troubled look. "It's impossible to keep everything under lock at all times, especially when there's another mental projection inside of your mind."
"You'd rather keep that with you? Just what sort of mysteries are the ones you want to forget?" Mana asked, knowing full-well that one could only interpret her question as rhetorical.
"Oh, yes. That's something I never want to forget. It's one of those… Educational memories, you see. Now, how about you sever that direction off for good, huh? I'd wager that you'd be able to do something like that while inside my own mind?" Skaven turned to Mana with an inquisitive glare.
"I might, but that wasn't our original deal. It's dangerous for my mind to be anywhere else but where it belongs and fully focused on the jutsu." Mana's voice trembled.
"Nonsense, from here you'll be able to see exactly where to cut and what to fry. You'll have a front view to the light show. Plus, if anything goes wrong–you'll suffer the consequences alongside me too, right?" Skaven teased Mana with a smirk, but Mana's glare sharpened in display that she wasn't about to take this as some sort of joke.
"I can try to multi-task. I've never done so before, but then again I've never been this precise with what I send to oblivion either." Mana sighed, dragging her hand across and back her messy hair. She wasn't sure just how much of that insurance policy gag Skaven meant for real, but she will honor whatever portion that was. "It might be for the better if you stay here. It'll hurt and with your Ego here it'll hurt a lot less. Barely at all, if you're good at distancing yourself."
"Speaking from experience as someone who's experienced torture?" Skaven raised his right eyebrow. In his light-blue eyes, Mana saw the search of a common soul from someone who's been through more than their own fair share of torture sessions. Just what was this guy's life?
"Something like that," Mana nodded. She didn't have to go into the details, just the look in her eyes and submissive body language that portrayed the fearful respect she had to those sections of her own memories was enough to sustain Skaven's appetite for companionship and connection with a kindred soul.
While Skaven would not admit it openly, he must have known a bit about sheltering himself off from physical pain while hiding inside of his mental fort. Inside one's mind, time was a very fickle thing. One could skip right through hours upon hours in mere seconds, or seconds could have lasted for an eternity. Time was at its most relative inside the mental plane. Problem was that mind was at its least stable during worrisome physical duress, which made controlling the flow of time in one's mind difficult. Skaven might not have wanted to be alone for what he felt like an eternity of shocking torture, but lacked the bravery to admit it to a girl.
Mana closed her eyes. Her mental projection flickered in and out of existence. Skaven realized that he had to let go of any attempts at controlling her coming and going and removed his influence from Mana's dealings. That was bold of him. She could have very easily taken a peep inside of his undesirable room and looked at a flash of his skeletons before he recognized she did that with his limited amount of control and perception of her mental projection.
"Um… You're see-through." Skaven extended his hand, poking it right through Mana, who looked as if she was just an afterimage of her previous reflection. He spoke in a louder tone than usual, checking if Mana was still here and that she could still hear him.
"I'm trying to stabilize in between my body and the Magician's Touch jutsu and in your mind…" Mana's translucent image reported. It was then that a resonant crack smashed at the bridge separating the section of his unwanted memories and the central part of the junction where all of those regions came into connection. Skaven's fearful expression, shocked by the suddenness of the lightning strike, glowed paler still in the lightning's flash. As the young man turned around, he saw a chasm that grew larger and larger as more and more of his bridge collapsed into nothingness.
"I felt that a bit…" Skaven's mental projection rubbed its head, even if it was a mere phantom. "Shit, I'd back off the second you zap me with that if that's how bad the shock is."
"That was the idea, originally…" Mana grunted through severe effort as a branching out wall of lightning bolts smashed into the region, like a foot kicking a door down, but Skaven's memories didn't budge. "I need to cut more connections. I'll need you to tell me some details about those memories. Something they're associated with, something that won't choke you up too bad."
Skaven thought long and hard on how to help Mana with it. He shrugged and shook his head, "Maybe I can show you?" was all that he could suggest.
"Charades? I won't know until you try?" Mana panted through the pressure that was making her head split and even her mental image wobbly in the knees.
A tree began taking root from where the chasm between the central junction and the forbidden section was. It was just a predecessor of a grander image to come as the tree began twisting and bending like the world's most stubborn and massive vine as more and more trees burst forth from the abyss down below and the sprouting forest began turning one around the other. The choice of a single oak tree felt odd and rather obscure and too abstract to mean something specific to Mana but the fact that the tree appeared to have no origin anywhere down under in the black void below and seemed to just spring into life before them from the tip of their roots and go up from there gave Mana a little clue.
Cracking and snappy fields of golden static began reacting around a few of speedways, also some marble-texture staircases that went down before connecting to another pathway, all of them ultimately led to the same direction. Mana focused as she'd rather not stop the procession halfway. The lightning storm laid a deafening siege, attracted to the fields of snappy static and reduced those paths, bridges and tunnels to rubble until the entire walled off section of Skaven's mind separated off the imperceivable force holding it suspended and collapsed into construction material as it joined the furious vortex of the storms guarding Skaven's mind.
"How are you feeling?" Mana's mental projection returned to its fully visible form as she let go of the part of her mind needed to maintain focus on the jutsu. She had to admit that snapping and cutting this way, with part of her mind present inside the mental fort, felt way more precise though she'd not have risked it had Skaven nod requested it specifically.
"I'm… I'm not sure…" Skaven coughed up in pain, he couldn't even stand up straight without Mana's help. "Did I flip the junction over by accident?"
"No, I think you're just feeling dizzy right now." Mana looked around to make sure she wasn't just talking out of her hiney on this. "Everything's just right. I'm impressed, actually."
"Well, it's just a few years of my life I can't vouch for, nothing major…" Skaven grit his teeth as he winced in pain. It was his best shot at accessing his memories that Mana had cut off.
"You remember what we've been doing here?" Mana's eyebrows sunk down as her mouth went ajar.
"Sure, I've got those memories of our conversation intact. All that I can't remember is what I asked you to cut out. Nice work, mind surgeon…" Skaven tried to smirk, but he looked too weak to muster it up.
Mana breathed out easier, feeling content that she didn't screw this one up in a major way though she would have been perfectly fine never doing something like this again. Her job here was done so after making sure that Skaven could straighten his back and stand on his own two feet, she tried relaxing and returning to her body.
"Skaven, you're still holding me here. I can't return." Mana sighed.
"Oh, sorry… I'll try loosening it up a bit. I was under a lot of pain. I strangely can only remember very little about it. Shit must have been intense enough to make me white out naturally." Skaven looked concerned about it at first, but then shrugged and dismissed his worries. It was only that his grip on their mental projections hadn't loosened one bit. It was as if something inside Skaven's mind held them in their tight grip and just didn't let go.
"Skaven… You're scaring me right now." Mana teased the young man who she thought was her friend though now, with all those questions and secrets, she just didn't feel all that sure about it.
"Um… I tried to disperse my Ego, thought maybe it would give you more rights to change and shift things around in my mind but… Nothing. That's odd." Skaven looked up into the sky and began looking around.
"Well, you're under a lot of stress right now. Your Ego might not seem like it, but your body, your subconscious must be howling. It's not at all surprising you've lost complete control. It doesn't take much to expel us out of here, I'm sure it'll return to you sooner rather than later," Mana sighed.
Being stuck inside Skaven's mind wasn't how she planned to spend the rest of that day. Especially with the host being too exhausted to stay in control and his base, more primal instincts slowly filling in the gaps of control where skill and training retreated temporarily. The bestial, high-pitched howl filled the air again, followed by the noise of bony chatter. Although a noise as subtle as chatter shouldn't have reached their ears, this was the mental plane and weirder things than inconsistencies with the volume of sound had happened.
"Shit! I really hope I don't end up driving both of us mad or leaving us comatose and stuck here forever." Skaven began scanning the surrounding environment frantically. Mana had to admit that even she was feeling the shaky railing underneath and hearing the steel wrangle as some sick, supernatural force tried tearing or breaking the entire junction apart.
"Your mental fort is collapsing in of itself. If you don't calm down and take control–it will fall apart and then it's just your wild, untethered mind. We'll have to kiss our mental selves goodbye if we get stuck in between your imagination and subconscious. Get a hold of yourself!" Mana tried slapping some sense into her fellow Stars member, but he looked drained to a state of a pathetic husk.
This won't be a mere inconvenience. It'll be a desperate race for the grand prize of getting to keep their sanities intact!