Tomi dashed up the spiraling staircase on all fours. All traces of decency and etiquette, of dignity, had fled into their little clay huts and slammed the shutters, hiding their immediate families because the shroud of solitude was creeping in from outside the covers of the forest surrounding the village of Tomi's psyche. In submitting to the terror that the dark need for validating presence to come forth, Tomi granted loneliness an almost corporeal form. A dark and bubbly, noxious cocktail of fear and solitude.
The teen hadn't visited the library except to pick Mana up or ask the young woman who had become her de facto older sister to call out her rabbits and entertain her as if it was Mana's calling to do so. In that moment of need, Tomi promised herself that she would never take Mana or the ninja rabbits for granted. The sweaty and terrified teen browsed the library halls, throwing her head around like a hyperventilating mare that could pick up the scent of blood on a wolf's fangs behind the brush.
There she was. The magician had been brushing up on her taijutsu skills, ironically enough, with a tome that required a strongman to move around. Judging from Mana's eyes, she wasn't all that into the read so the tips of Tomi's lips tilted and twitched in an upward direction. Telling herself that she was doing her older sister a grand favor by giving her a chance to entertain her instead of reading that dry fluff was just what the wreck of Tomi's self-confidence needed to shuffle up to Mana's table and place her dirty with grains of black soil hands on the square piece of wooden furniture.
"Tomi?" Mana looked up with a stumped look on her face. "Is everything okay? You look pale and sweaty."
The magician stood up and pressed her palm to Tomi's forehead, feeling up her temperature. She must not have found a reason to continue this line of questioning any further as Mana sat back down and waited for Tomi to speak what was on her mind.
"I'm… Mana-nee, I'm lonely!" Tomi yelled out, rubbing her knuckles one into the other as her legs wobbled in a heroic struggle to keep the young teen from collapsing as she was breaking down into tears. Her mental state while running away from the core issue seemed as stable as the well-being of an emotional fugitive could have been while saying it out loud was like an equivalent of turning to face the creeping demon shroud.
Mana's eyes darted to the other readers and the Allied Ninja in charge of maintaining order in the library as she took the tome on martial arts theory and slipped it into a massive gap on the bookshelf. The magician grabbed Tomi by her hand and dragged her out of the library. It was once that the library door shut behind her that Mana slowed down her pace and stopped completely, pressing her back against the wall while turning to Tomi.
"Lonely? What do you mean?" Mana wondered.
"Well…" Tomi sniffled. "I… Something happened and I can't… I can't…"
Mana tried to be patient but there were visual cracks in her facial language like the elongation of the line her lips hung in and a light roll to her eye movement that made the image of her older sister whoosh a mile away as the black shroud of solitude began crawling over the bloody skies and seeping through the cracks of the wooden door.
"You… You were studying… For the test. You can't fail it…" Tomi muttered, still failing to explain what was on her mind. "I'm sorry, Mana-nee…"
"No, it's just… I don't understand what's going on. I'm here for you, that's what Stars mean to all of us, isn't it?" Mana pressed her hand on Tomi's shoulder and leaned down. She was treating Tomi like a child. Still, Tomi couldn't blow her cheeks out despite it. "What's going on with you? Do you want me to summon someone to play with you?"
"I… I can't… I can't summon anyone, I can't feel them," Tomi looked down at her awkward sandal that she was dragging across the floor as if trying to scribble her feelings down for Mana. That's right, Mana was a summoner too. She could understand what having a blood contract was like–the constant feeling of togetherness and bond. Kinship but also duty as well.
"Your chakra control must be going awry. Maybe it's an after-effect of the gas we've breathed in during the test? You were quite hands-on with that venomous salamander, after all," Mana smiled with accusatory, almost motherly eyes that were meant for a child who ate too many sweets despite her best attempts to warn them and was suffering from intense belly aches now.
"No, no, no! The salamander wouldn't do that to me. Animals don't do that kind of thing to people, they don't… They're not cruel… Not like people are, they wouldn't do this to me…" Tomi paced up and down the nearest staircase with hands intertwined in her spiky, green hair.
"Whatever the case is, don't worry. You can't sever a summoning contract. That's why they're not that easy to sign. You've signed it with your blood and that's for life," Mana replied with a kind expression. This made Tomi's racing heart stop for a breather and her breathing to gain a steadier rhythm. Tomi stepped up without thinking and grabbed hold of Mana's throat like a branch she intended to pull onto as both her arms wrapped around the magician's neck.
The young woman wavered on her feet but stayed on her feet by ramming against the wall behind her. Tomi felt a light pressure against her back too, but she felt too embarrassed to open her eyes and show her tears. The rascal shoved off of Mana as fast as she was to cling hold to her neck as she ran up the staircase railing and grabbed hold of the upper level of the railing. Her pull might have seemed less gracious than usual because of her mental state and teary eyes, but it was the fastest way for Tomi to run away.
Shige-H told Tomi to try talking to someone. Her tone would have almost suggested that this health crisis was a chance for Tomi to do something out of the ordinary. As bottomless and pitch-black as the hole Tomi felt swooping down was, when both Shige-H and Mana assured her with so much warmth and care that everything will be alright, Tomi couldn't help but feel like the shroud was melting away like a paper splashed with handfuls of water over it.
Shige-H wasn't in the room, but Damisan sat hunched over something barebones on his worktable with sparks flying every way and metallic frames scattered all over his bed. Sometimes Tomi had no idea how the fellow Stars member could sleep in his bed with all that junk he just haphazardly flings on it. Sometimes it smelled of oil and something burning from the other side of the room and Damisan wrapped his head in his pillow and covered himself, most importantly his face, up when sleeping. Tomi had to pinch her nose and belch just thinking about sleeping that way through the night.
"Oh, hey, Tomi," Damisan turned around. He might have smiled, or he might not have. The poster boy stapled onto the cylinder he had over his head was smiling all the time. "Did you find something to do with all your free time?"
"Um…" Tomi rubbed her elbow. She turned away, even though Damisan couldn't have seen that much of her embarrassment from under that cumbersome thing. "Can I do something for you? Maybe help you out with something?"
"Huh? Nah, I think I've got this whole thing covered! This isn't anything special, just repairs and some improvements to my arms. You really shouldn't be asking someone that's missing a limb, that sort of stuff, one might take it as being offensive, you know…" Damisan replied with a cheerful tone and turned back to his tinkering. The fingers of his prosthetic twitched as he tinkered installing a new compartment in there. After a stint of silence, Damisan turned around with a vigorous kick. "It was a joke, Tomi, I was just kidding."
"Oh…" Tomi faked a chuckle, even though it was the last thing on her mind. Why would Damisan decline to give her something to do? Didn't he want to be friends with her? Maybe he was just being shy. It wasn't like Tomi was always the nicest to him. She used to decline sharing food with him. Granted, she declined to share food with everyone except a select few, it was just that Damisan asked her for snacks more than most. "What you're doing?" she asked as the teen stepped up on her toes to look over Damisan's shoulder.
"Oh, this? Just slipping some new compartments every time I repair my limbs. I guess you could say it's how a guy like me does training," Damisan laughed out after that last observation before turning his attention back to his arm. His forearm had an entire roll of steel wire unraveled on the table, and working with it seemed like neural surgery to someone glancing at it from over the shoulder.
"I'm not bothering you, am I?" Tomi muttered. Damisan dropped his tweezers, distracted by the sudden question slashing through the curtain of silence, but he picked them right back up and got back to it. "It's just that… I had thirty-two friends this morning, and now I'm back to square one. I'll never make a hundred friends like that and, to be honest, a hundred friends was just one of many landmarks. I figured I'd have expanded that landmark to a thousand or even a million by the time I get married."
"U-huh…" Damisan squeezed out while operating some very thin wire and switching it between different vein-thin compartments they were meant to connect to. Every time he installed a new compartment he had to attribute a new thread to connect to it so that Damisan could activate them with a command just like the rest, just like every movement of his hand was. "You know, if you're looking for numbers, I can make you an entire army of friends. When I first woke up, in pain, smelling of charred flesh, not able to feel my arms and legs, the first thing I thought of is that my puppets would be my only friends, the only people that could look at me and accept me. The problem was–I couldn't quite control them because… You know, the whole no arms and no legs situation…"
"Puppets for friends?" Tomi squinted, deep in thought.
"Yeah, by the time I got back on my feet, not literally, of course, when I had a new set of arms to command my puppets with, I sort of didn't care about puppets anymore. I've found a couple of people who truly cared about me and could look at me the way I was. Not even a hundred puppets could replace a connection with one such person. Let me tell you something. And when Shige-H accepted me into an actual human group with stuff like pre-lecture banter and sitting together during breakfast–forget about it!" Damisan pumped his prosthetic arm that wasn't yet being dissected on the table. "It's almost like I'm not a revolting lump of flesh without arms or legs or something… Of course, you know, I am, and trying to stand up without attaching my legs will absolutely result in hitting my head at the floor hard."
"But I'm already a part of the Stars, and I'm still feeling lonely…" Tomi admitted with a sorrowful tone while her eyes couldn't move off her feet.
"Oof… Can't say I know how to help you out with that one. My life's been on an upward shoot ever since the Stars have included me in something!" Damisan turned his covered-up head back before returning to his hunching over the evening work. "You said you wanted to help me, right?"
"Yeah, that's how I befriended all of my animal friends! They all told me what I had to do, I did those things, and we became friends!" Tomi nodded, clenching her hands together to her chest in ecstasy that she was about to make a friend. The first step of a hundred.
"Not sure that's how it works though… Hearing that sort of makes me hesitant to ask you about anything. We're friends already. We've watched over each other's backs. If you don't like me, think I'm a horrible monster, or think the fact I don't have any arms or legs is funny and that I'm just nature's comedy act–that's fine too. Friendship isn't really about mere errands you run for people," Damisan turned around after this grand speech to look at Tomi but he bent his head to the side after seeing the little brat looking quite grumpy at beaming a flaming glare back at him. Without saying a word, Tomi bolted out of the room, leaving Damisan to wonder if he said something wrong yet again.
Endo was still in the training grounds, manipulating atop of his double-bladed sword planted firmly into the ground while the samurai apprentice maintained his balance atop of it by standing over his head with one arm pressed against the blade's tip. It was a feat of chakra control, concentration, and raw power of one's chakra network, mental toughness just as much.
"Endo, Damisan's being a prick and he thinks he's too good to be my friend, will you be my friend?" Tomi yelled out after approaching this vertical line of danger, determination, and fortitude.
"Get lost, kid. I'm practicing to prove that I'm the best," Endo squeezed out a reply through physical strain building up in his chest and translating through sweat drops as the young swordsman began pressing his arm repeatedly as an increase to the difficulty of his exercise.
"Come on, there has to be something that I can do to make us friends! There's something you need, right?" Tomi hopped like an outraged little bunny.
Endo breathed out and pushed his body off of his predicament, flipping in mid-air and drilling through the altitude he created to land beside the teen. He glared down at her from his superior height, looking down at her with a hateful stare that softened up to something blander. Endo always looked bored and lost all of his intensity when he was being merciful.
"Fine, if you're offering freebies here, I could use a sparring partner to sharpen my skills a bit," Endo scratched the back of his head. "Consider yourself forewarned though, training to prove that you're the best means pulling no punches!"
"Sure!" Tomi nodded twice with little stars in her eyes.
It was late. Maybe the Allied Ninja on duty at the library would have let Mana stay and take over, as long as she locked the place down after herself and agreed to keep watch over the order in the place while she studied. In any case, Mana just didn't feel comfortable asking for those kinds of favors from people she barely even knew. Heavy steps reached her and the metal railings shook, sending reverberations on-touch.
Curious as to who might have been wandering the hallways this late, Mana stopped and waited to take a peek. The chakra approaching her felt oddly familiar in terms of substance, but its size was different, so the magician didn't feel entirely sure about making such a bold prediction. It was only when the figure of little Tomi emerged from the corner with a swollen right eye, cracked lip, and cuts all over her, her rags barely hanging on a string extending over her shoulder, that Mana realized she was wrong to doubt her first instinct.
"Mana-nee…" Tomi muttered with a weak tone. When the teen tried smiling, the magician noted that the teen was missing a tooth. What was even more surprising than her battered appearance was a large gecko stretching over Tomi's back like a backpack. It didn't appear as if though it was helping at all. For all intents and purposes, he was just another passenger for little Tomi to piggy-back to the upper floors.
"I see you've got your connection to the chakra network back," Mana noted. It took much faster than it took Mana's own connection to return, then again, Mana might have severed it in a more meaningful way compared to little Tomi and she couldn't quite vouch for the quality of shock that caused Tomi to regain her connection.
"Oh, yeah… I guess Mana-nee and Shige-H were right all along–I did just need to wait a bit and sit tight. I wish I trusted you two more before signing up to get pummeled by Endo. He doesn't hold back at all in training…" Tomi looked to be over the clouds to stop walking the steps and to just relax and talk to someone.
"Yeah, funny thing, sometimes things people say to you are worth listening to. Are you headed up? I can conjure a little twister to carry you there faster," Mana pressed her hands over her hips.
"No, it's fine, I'm really enjoying this. I really am! I don't think you need to summon anything either. After spending an entire day alone, I'll never have enough of my friends being here with me," Tomi shook her head.
"Alright, you're the boss of you," Mana shrugged. "Just remember that your animals weren't the only ones trying to help you. If you can't reach them, for whatever reason, or if their help just isn't enough, you can always rely on us too."
"I guess…" Tomi nodded.
The next morning Mana found Shige-H inside the infirmary, wiping sweat off of her forehead and resting after a volunteering session of Mystical Palm treatment. The other medical ninja were leaving the resting room to get something hot to drink and maybe a bite to eat but given how Mana couldn't have stumbled into the infirmary by accident, Shige-H stopped herself from leaving and just crumbled onto a nearby chair with half of her medical equipment still hanging loosely on her.
"What's up?" the curly-haired kunoichi wondered.
"You did it, you gave Tomi the herbs with that tea you shared with her. You made her chakra control wobbly," Mana thrust for the jugular immediately. Frankly, she didn't have any proof, Shige-H could have just as easily dismissed the whole thing by claiming that this was because of the salamander venom that Tomi breathed in and Mana wouldn't have been able to object.
"Yeah, I did it." Shige-H nodded. She didn't look too proud of it, but the ease at which Mana pressed the Stars leader to be honest about it shocked Mana a little. "Don't worry, I knew exactly what I was doing. The dosages were perfect, and I made sure to disturb her network temporarily. I didn't expect anyone to figure it out, but it makes sense that it was you. Skaven's the only other guy's bright enough, but he doesn't care remotely enough to try putting that intelligence to work on something like this."
"Did you even see Tomi yesterday? She was absolutely crushed," Mana grit her teeth though she tried keeping her lips sealed as much as possible. She figured that she'd get the most honest answers by not giving Shige-H an excuse to ramble on and on about "being calm" and "not giving in to her feelings".
"I bet she was. The girl's perception about friendship is all twisted and jumbled up," Shige-H sighed and turned to stare through the window as if the two were discussing whether and not the fact that Shige-H gave her own squadmate, her friend some herb that robbed her of chakra control for a few hours. "I've spoken to Endo about it, it doesn't seem like she walked the path I directed her toward."
"Is that what it was all about? Some delusion of mental help?" Mana crossed her arms while keeping her gaze sharp as a spear, driving a mammoth to the edge of a cliff and keeping it there.
"I've told you all that all of you have problems. All of you have weaknesses as ninja and genuine problems as people, and I intend to help all of you. Endo struggles to validate his own existence because his master has hammered it home that only the strong may survive. Damisan still feels insecure about the way he looks and his impairment, despite our support. You can't get over your hero complex yet, at the same time, you're still hurting about the distrust and pain you faced coming from the very people you entertain and serve. Skaven still might not have realized that his chase for freedom is the only thing keeping him from realizing he's been free all along. Tomi views friends as mere numbers on a chart and friendship as a system of errands you do for your so-called friends."
"And you? What are your problems?" Mana tapped her foot subtly, shifting her weight onto her right side. "Who's going to help you?"
"If you want to come clean and tell the others everything–feel free. Though I'd like you to consider the fact that it very well might tear the group apart. It won't just set everyone back on their misguided paths as ninja and as people, it will only deepen their wounds and, likely, make them impossible to help in the future because any attempts to help them will associate with me and my well-intended deception," Shige-H sighed while looking back at Mana with begging eyes. That damned snake! She knew how to make Mana dance to her tune too well.
To think that she even told the magician exactly what trait she will exploit before turning on her puppy-eyes and asking Mana not to fail this bunch of people she thought she was growing close to and has come to accept as her new squad already.
"You try pulling any of this on me and I won't just come out with this. I'll put you to sleep and, being the self-proclaimed expert on me, you know I won't care all too much when you wake up. You will though, you'll wake up and you'll smell the shambles you've left on things." Mana set her terms with shady bluntness. "If I find out you're out to harm anyone else, I'll spill the beans on the spot and let the others decide what they want to do with the truth."
"I… I understand. I do see that I made a mistake and got overly excited with my attempts to help Tomi. I should guide them as a leader and set my own example instead of as an architect employing deception. I'll… I'll tell Tomi myself. I can only hope that she understands," Shige-H nodded.