"Huh? Work for you?" Damisan leaned back, rattling the large cylinder over his head. Despite a grand emotional shock to his system, the attractive face on the poster stapled to Damisan's headgear continued to gleam a starry smile. "You mean like a join a gang or something like that?"
"Boy…" Tongo's lips became tight and one struggled to push the other away so hard that it seemed like they'd erupt into smoke at any point in time. "I won't hold it against you, 'cause you don't know any better, but I run a tight and orderly regiment, and comparing it to something as deviant as a mere gang shames you by even suggesting it."
"Oh…" Damisan muttered. It might not have been visible to the outside because of his nature of covering himself up as much as possible when he didn't have immediate use of his prosthetics, though he scratched his elbows with still imprecise finger twitches underneath the cloak. "Well, I'm sort of already engaged with the Stars…"
"I've seen this answer coming, and yet, frankly, I can't help it but feel disappointed, son. You'd have a bright future under my leadership and, frankly, the unit needs you just as much as you need us for some discipline to straighten your back out as opposed to buffoonery you've been up to with these miscreants," Tongo locked his arms up behind his back while ranting to Damisan. The lumbering Hoshido scratched his ear, feeling enough irritation by his act of primal cleanliness to close one eye while doing it.
"You need me?" Damisan muttered, slipping a peek of his forearm out from under his cloak as he reached up for his lip out of instinct.
"Your rocket hands are hecking cool, man," Hoshido barked out with a grungy tone, pointing at Damisan's peeking forearms that had its most impressive features hidden away.
"You spoke out turn, maggot!" Tongo scolded his larger companion by turning around and looking up, spraying from his mouth as he berated the crude and tough bruiser. "In any case, Hoshido's observation was correct. Your rocket arms are an asset I desire in my ranks. The ability to spit barrages of highly explosive projectile weaponry on the battlefield is an essential to any functional association, military, social or otherwise."
"Well, I guess I'm not engaged with the Stars full-time…" Damisan revealed the entirety of his artificial right arm to reach behind his wobbly cylinder and correct it into place. "And I never thought that somebody would want me as an asset, say I'm essential, even…"
"Want? Son, I'll outright have you, one way or the other!" Tongo pointed his index finger, hardened, wrinkled, and filled with scars from cuts of steel wire. A sign of hardship and a very specific, passionate way of puppeteering one's manipulated tools of murder. "If one invents a way to shoot missiles from their forearm at a semi-automatic rate of firing, they owe that ability to be used for the betterment of the world, whether or not they like it. You've joined the Allied Ninja so you're halfway there already. Don't stray from the right path."
"Geez, I won't lie, you're kind of intense, mister. I've already made commitments with the Stars, but I want to help you out too. I'll work with you as long as it won't clash with my other commitments," Damisan nodded with a vigorous fist raised to seal his determined proclamation.
"Well, prior commitments are a sacred deal, I can't fault you for this decision. Sticking to your word is just what a man must sometimes do. I am glad that you saw reason and committed yourself to the sacrifice of blasting away all obstacles in our way as a part of my regiment, however. I'll be relying on you and the honesty of your service, son," Tongo nodded and turned to walk away. Hoshido turned and walked behind his commander, looking more confused if he could talk again or not rather than content.
"Jeez, I guess I'm gonna be a part of another gang… Sorry… Regiment?" Damisan shook his head, walking back into the room.
"You don't look too excited. If it's such a hassle, why did you agree to it, to begin with?" Skaven raised an eyebrow.
"It's not a hassle! Tongo-san said he needed me and that I am essential to his plans!" Damisan clenched his hands as if fully intending to punch at the wall of disbelief standing in his way until it shattered into puny debris.
"So?" Skaven wondered.
"So… My entire life after I lost my limbs and got burnt, people either looked down on me, hated me for forcing them to acknowledge that I was alive and part of their reality, or were polite enough to ignore me. After being ignored for so long, I cannot stand idly by when I am needed!" Damisan turned down to look at his shaking and twitching prosthetic frames, stumbling to his worktable bit by bit.
"Whatever you say, man." Skaven shrugged and turned toward the window and away from Damisan for a quick snooze until the band came back from wherever they were.
"You agreed to WHAT?" Shige-H grabbed and pulled her hair down by the handful, coming as close to tearing them out as it was imaginable.
"Tongo-san is making a cell of recruits, sort of like us but, according to him, not nearly as disorderly. He's probably in it for the same reasons…" Damisan explained later that evening when the gang came back and readied themselves to go to bed.
"Are you sure you trust him?" Mana wondered. "I don't know him, but he seemed like a nut job observing him perform in the exercise. I've seen men like him all my life. The enjoyment he had for crushing his opponents was something eerily similar to the atmosphere in Jigoku. Frankly, I have little trust for a man who feels the need to hide their eyes while acting this way."
"Wow, Mana, class-act!" Damisan gave his friend a thumb-up accompanied by a bit of bitterness in his voice. "I would have expected a low blow like that from Endo, but not you…"
"Even when I'm not saying anything at all, I do something wrong…" the Endo grumbled to himself while ironically shaking his head. He sat in a meditative position with his legs crossed up and appeared to be reflecting on something with focused eyes, almost like running something specific through his head. It was only the direct mention of his name that brought him back to Earth.
"That's not what I meant, Damisan," Mana's voice softened up. "I meant that, usually, people that talk about discipline, law, and order but hide their souls behind masks use those words as armor coating their sadism. It's up to you who you work with, it's just that I'm worried about you working for a man like that."
"With!" Damisan stuck his index finger up. "I'm working with Tongo-san!"
"Get real!" Shige-H slammed her palm down onto the cupboard, shaking it up and nearly disassembling it into busted planks with a mere passionate love tap. "There's no working with when men like that are involved. You'll just be following his orders! He doesn't care about you or want to help you at all! He'd tell you to take your cylinder off and parade around if he could stick explosives up that thing and throw it at someone."
"Maybe you're just jealous that another guy's putting a band together? Worried of a little competition, 'cause the guy showed himself capable on the battlefield?" Endo smirked while poking at the sides of his leader. Shige-H scowled at him with something guttural seething within her.
"I wonder where Tomi is, I'm sure that the way she handles animals and doesn't care about or trust people too much would have impressed Tongo-san…" Damisan looked around while testing the precision of his prosthetics at the same time.
"I don't know, Mana said she could sense her chakra signature somewhere in the western section of the facility. She must be sleeping outside, in the training grounds. I'm a bit worried about that, but she won't let me anywhere near her," Shige-H groaned in frustration, recalling yet another sign that her group was having the rug yanked from left and right under its feet.
"Well, you tried to emotionally manipulate her into doing something she hates, filled with a self-righteous belief that it's good for her without giving much thought into what she wants…" Mana shrugged. "All things considered, sending ninja rhinos on a stampede directed at your general direction every time you're within sniffing range is a very adequate response from a teenage girl."
"I… I know…" Shige-H looked away, rubbing her elbow nervously before picking up her brush and giving a few long drags of it across her hair. "Look, Damisan, I'm glad about the fact you've found more friends. It's just that I'm worried that they might not be seeing you quite like you're dreaming about them seeing you. I just want to ask you to cut it loose, if you find that relationship to be detrimental to you."
Skaven smirked while sitting on the windowsill and gendering at the night sky on the other side of the window and insects of various sizes tapping against the glass, on a desperate destination toward the light.
"Sleeping outside, huh? You trying to help the kid really messed her up and sent her spiraling back down the decency scale. Now here you are lecturing Damisan too, causing tension on the joint without being aware of just how close to snapping it is. You really should take more cues from me as a leader and just kick back already," Skaven explained the source to his hilarity.
"Since when are you speaking to any of us without being spoken to?" Shige-H sighed and shook her head. It was so apparent that she took his words to heart and kept reflecting on just how right they might have been at the moment that it didn't matter if she wanted to conceal that fact or not.
"If a rooster is sticking his beak into the boiling pot, give it a good kick in the ass, is all I'm saying…" Skaven shrugged, distancing himself from the social scene by eliminating all traces of feeling or care from his face and just continuing on observing the spring outside.
"Um… Yes, recruit Tongo?" tutor Vikara of international ninjutsu pressed her bottom against the edge of the table while crossing her arms. When the slender and short woman hunched or posed inward, her hands disappeared inside the long and thick sleeves of her red sweater. With her arms crossed, she had to blow lightly and nudge her head to move her slick, blond locks from falling over her eyes. For a Kumogakure native, Mana would have thought her to be more aware of the local weather and not lug around these massive sweaters all the time.
"Pardon the intrusion upon your educational provision of vital intelligence, ma'am, but I was under the impression that you were about to announce the end of lecture survival exercise and I wanted to make sure to line myself and my platoon up before any other volunteers might pop up," Tongo declared.
"Oh, that's very considerate of you, though this rush to grab the bull by the horns is quite usual for this part of the course. Where were you four months earlier when everyone still hesitated to volunteer?" the tanned woman chuckled to herself and moved toward the board to explain the rules of the upcoming exercise. The woman flipped the board over to reveal a rather impressive chalk-on-board rendition of a demonic face gazing upon the lecture hall and the recruits therein.
Mana had seen the Rashomon gate before during the search for the Box of Ultimate Bliss in the Wind Country. A seemingly impenetrable barrier that, at the time, they scaled rather than try to get through. It would not have taken a genius to realize that the purpose of this exercise would be to penetrate this barrier.
"The Rashomon Gate serves as one of the finest defensive techniques and the most powerful barriers to break through in the known ninja world. It would be rather cruel to request that you would try to bust it using the object of today's lecture–the treasured Kumogakure sealing techniques alone so you can use any assortment of techniques learned in this course to dispatch of this barrier, however, dispatch of it you should if you wish to earn those invaluable, clutch, final month points," tutor Vikara slammed her hand against the board and the daunting fangs of the Rashomon, leading the recruits outside and into the training grounds.
"So, what's the plan, Tongo-san?" Damisan turned to the puppeteer field commander, pumping himself up with palm-punching underneath the cloak. He already loved the initiative that Tongo showed, and he'd rack Damisan up with enough points to where he'd only need a minimum passing grade on both the written test and the survival exercise at this rate.
"Don't speak out of line, maggot!" Tongo reprimanded his comrade with a stiff upper lip glare. "It is the responsibility of the commander to devise a strategy and relay as much intelligence as he deems necessary. My plans may be none of your business, maggot, so you will act as you are told and surrender to my command! Am I understood?"
"Oh… Um… Yeah…" Damisan rubbed his prosthetic palm, feeling phantom tingles run down his prosthetic limbs as if they were his actual arms and legs from the embarrassment.
"You!" Tongo pointed to Hoshido behind him, just giving grumpy looks at the towering, demonic wall in front of him. "Go and give that wall a good beating and don't stop swinging until it's down!"
"B-But… Commander. The Rashomon will repel him…" Damisan was about to argue before a smack hit and nearly sent his cylinder rolling across the ground. The jolted ninja clutched to his accessory and stumbled on his knees, hyperventilating after the only thing between his face and the rest of the world nearly slipped off.
"Excuse me, maggot, but has hell frozen over yet!? Then why do I hear you speaking, let alone questioning my order!?" Tongo leaned over his kneeling subordinate and began knocking on Damisan's cylinder as if it was a door that Tongo requested entry from. "Sometimes I wonder if you can even hear how much I love you over this massive rubber johnny you're wearing!"
While Tongo scolded Damisan and the fallen ninja did his best to get back to a stable mode of breathing, Hoshido howled through the air and slammed his hammering fists onto the front of Rashomon with a resonating battle roar. An electric jolt lashed through the air as a transparent, ethereal force repelled Hoshido down on the ground, and the wall remained as unmoved as ever.
"Good! Continue!" Tongo demanded. "As for you, princess, if it's alright with your sensitive ass, I'd like you to stand up and hit that damn gate with the only thing you're good for! In words you can understand, stop whining and play me an artillery polka already!"
"But… Hoshido is right there in the blast zone…" Damisan wheezed, short of breath that the panic he was in robbed him of.
"Useless!" Tongo flat out roared into his face. "Why don't you go over there and cry a river on that goddamn wall and see if your tears at least corrode it somewhat then, you third wheel of the whole goddamn human race!"
Again and again, Hoshido ran into, tackled, and hammered at the Rashomon, but physical attacks appeared to be utterly null against it. Whatever mystical chakra-based protections coated it, it didn't look like even Hoshido's siege could put a dent in the gate. Eventually, even the boundless stamina and toughness of Hoshido had to run out.
"Taijutsu's no use, huh…" Tongo muttered to himself. With an authoritative yank, he pulled on a handful of steel wire strings that lit up with an azure light of base chakra flowing through them. A gaunt puppet of a weathered mannequin strapped with dead human skin, donning a black, tattered cloak danced in crescent swoops above the puppeteer commander before landing before him. It opened its black cloak, revealing eight empty holes inside. Tongo pressed his hand to the puppet's back.
"Fire Style: Head-Mincing Pain!" Tongo yelled out as the six holes lit up with infernal fireballs and howled as they drew air inward and bolstered the might of the projectiles that it spat out. The wild barrage of devastating fireballs detonated in chain explosions and sent Hoshido rolling on his back with his front singed and yet the same disgruntled look on his face frozen as if stamped on the center of his face.
"Impressive, the Fire Country's Head-Mincing Pain…" tutor Vikara chuckled to herself, acknowledging one of the techniques that she's showcased during these past six months of international ninjutsu class that meant to give recruits access or, at the very least, knowledge of various hidden techniques they might encounter working all around the world.
Yet, when the blast cleared out, there was not a single scratch on the Rashomon, regardless. A hate-ridden scowl formed on Tongo's face as he walked up to Damisan and sat down beside him, placing his hand on Damisan's back as he pointed at the gate.
"I order you to detonate your arms. Missiles enough won't cut it. Physical force won't work against it, detonate your arms now. Hoshido is out of the danger zone now, you're good to go," Tongo ordered with a solemn tone. He wasn't yelling at Damisan anymore, but this total apathy and distance from what he ordered the young man to do might have just been scarier.
"B-But my arms… I'll… I'll have to build them from scratch and… The prep course exam is in just a few weeks!" Damisan stood up.
"Gutless, to think I have ever needed you in the first place!" Tongo growled, swinging both of his hands up and down. A metallic rip reached Damisan's ears while the entirety of the recruits gasped in terror. A feminine, spider-like puppet had slashed with its scythe-shaped legs to remove Damisan's prosthetic arms clean. Tongo kicked his own comrade down with a push kick to prevent opposition, but Damisan just laid there as if the puppet had carved his heart out.
"Let's see…" Tongo cracked the compartments open by force and pressed his palm onto a sealing glyph, lighting the hand up with a blue flame-like jet at the other end. "Maggot, make sure this connects to our target!" he ordered while handing the hot-tailed arm-shaped missile to Hoshido, who just grumbled and ran off toward the Rashomon with both of Damisan's prosthetic arms in hand.
Grave silence reigned supreme before a sphere of white enveloped the battlefield. Once the heat subsided, only shatters of Rashomon's black face riddled the floor. Smoke rose from Hoshido's unbelievably tough exterior as the human-tank coughed smoke up, having just run across the entire battlefield with two extremely devastating explosives in hand and slam-dunking them into the gate's mouth manually.
"You had so much potential, son," Tongo looked down on the utterly broken, armless Damisan. "So much destructive force held back and restrained by that soft core of yours. I call people maggots to mock them, but given your revolting true form, you truly are just a maggot. Well-armed maggot, but a maggot nonetheless. Squirm back to your gal-pals and cry to them about how mean I was to you and how wet your panties are."
Hoshido stared down at Damisan with bruises, burns, and still smoking as if he had just stepped out of a literal field of immolation. From his grumpy look, it was impossible to tell what he thought of his expelled comrade, but the two remaining members of Tongo's cell approached the tutor who came in to evaluate them.
"Well, I'm not sure I recognized that method of dispatching of the Rashomon…" tutor Vikara scratched her head.
"That waste of space over there is a puppetry user. Those invaluable arms of his were akin to puppets. Self-destruction is a signature Wind Country puppeteer trick, I assure you of it as I've studied the Wind Country's puppeteers with admiration and read the memento of all those magnificent bastards as an aspiring puppeteer myself from a country with undisciplined and shabby puppetry traditions," Tongo explained himself. Judging from tutor Vikara's expression, that explanation was enough for her.
Tongo and Hoshido would have walked away had they not bumped into a disgruntled wall of Mana and Endo staring up right at Hoshido's unscathed scowl and Shige-H burning with deep-seated hatred toward Tongo like nothing Mana had ever seen before.
"You can scoop up your little shit over there, sorry, even turds have the properties of floating that this sissy does not," Tongo replied, staring right back at Shige-H, both group leaders knew all too well that neither side would harm the other without a good excuse to do so as they'd be courting instant expulsion from the organization otherwise.
"Come back up, big guy, you're getting dust all over yourself!" Mana dismissed her scornful glare at the behemoth of Tongo's cell and approached her fallen friend, helping him up by scooping him from the ground and raising him up so that Damisan could sit up. This experience devastated the poor guy–he didn't say a single word.
"Can you imagine, the arms like that on every single S13G3 Unit? Sublime! That sack of shit, most powerful military force in the world all gone down to the bottom alongside the useless brick that it is," Tongo sighed, shaking his head. The voice of the puppet commander faded out into obscurity once the duo left Mana's field of view and the livid magician postponed her wrathful roar until a later time when Damisan wasn't in such desperate need of picking up.