"You seeing alright in that?" Skaven asked. Once in a while his eyes couldn't help but turn to his shaky friend, who began growing more and more accustomed to his situation and thirsty for punishment to the thieves that took his precious cylinder with each step.
"I don't need to see, I need justice," Damisan groaned, yanking on two pieces of bandage that had slipped off of the lousy configuration covering up his face. "This is wrong. You don't do something like this!"
"Bet you'd have liked to have repaired those hands of yours by now…" Skaven blew his lips out, realizing that if a fight truly was to break out, against everyone's best interests, he'd be stuck with a comrade with a useless set of arms in combat.
"Maybe, if I was looking for a fight. We won't be fighting. We can't do that. I will not fail everyone. Shige-H needs us to help her keep this team together, I can't even begin to imagine how lousy I'd feel if I got you kicked out because of me," Damisan shook his head, picking up a slipping ring of cloth and wrapping it over his head and tying a knot of some loose ends hanging down from his head.
"You know, I can't quite remember why it is that I came here to the Allied Ninja, right? It might have been that memory wipe thing we did with Mana, I guess my reason was related to something that she deleted. Either way, it won't really drag me down that much to break a few rules and pay the price," Skaven shrugged and turned an apathetic pair of eyes toward Damisan just to show him he meant every word he said. "So… Do you know where we're going?"
"I know where Tongo's room is. He might be at the lectures putting Hoshido into more danger for points," Damisan tried clenching his fists but his shoddy, metallic frame arms didn't clench the whole way. Only the very tips of his flimsy fingers touched each other as they hooked over to form a metallic ring on each hand.
"Right… There are lectures going on at the moment," Skaven looked up with an unapologetic look before letting curiosity weigh his face down and to the left to look at Damisan. Skaven didn't have even the smallest doubt that asking Damisan to waltz into a hall filled with recruits was the worst thing he could think of right now. The poor guy couldn't handle it, no matter how hardcore he tried acting.
"Who knows, maybe they've got your cylinder in their room?" Skaven shrugged.
"Y-Yeah… Worth a shot," Damisan nodded. They both knew that this wasn't true. There was no way that a despicable schemer like Tongo would have stolen Damisan's cylinder only to leave it unattended in his room. The two hastened their step. All things considered, Damisan was lucky that most of the recruits inhabiting these floors were occupied at the moment and they weren't bustling as they'd usually be.
One thing that neither of the duo had expected was to not only see Tongo and Hoshido sitting in their room, but a Regimental Commander accompanying them there. Hoshido sat holstering the cylinder underneath his armpit while his ugly and always disgruntled scowl just stared blankly at the door. His grumpy look didn't change for a second even when the two ninja walked through it and realized that they might have just entered the lion's den.
"Regimental Commander Harcel?" Damisan's stance became stiff and jittery in the joints. The seasoned ninja turned toward the two entrants with a light squint and strict, stiff lips. His right eyebrow arched over his eye, well above how his left one hung.
"Right on time," Tongo's lips twisted upward on the left side, making his teeth peek through the crack slightly.
"Hmm… His arms indeed look useless. Oh well, we'll find out soon enough," Regimental Commander Harcel turned his nose up, looking at Damisan with suspicious gawk.
"Those two stole my cylinder! I can't go anywhere without it, I need it!" Damisan raised his shoddy arm and pointed it, still clutching the tips of its fingers and looking more fitting to scoop trash out of a pond than combat.
"Wake up, man. Harcel won't move a finger to help you. He's here to make things worse for us, in case you haven't noticed," Skaven said in a carefree voice while sneering at the Regimental Commander. "So how about the bear trap snaps shut already and we go along with whatever Tongo's plan here actually is. What? Did he blame Damisan for something?"
"Indeed," Regimental Commander Harcel sang out with a melodious hum. "Recruit Tongo informed me of the worst crime that an Allied Ninja can pull off under our noses–weakness. Apparently, recruit Damisan refuses to rebuild his arms and threatens the solidity of our military potential. No village has feared Allied Ninja yet and with a display such as this, that is headed nowhere even remotely toward change in the future. Well, not if I can do something about it."
"Commander Harcel, can't you see that Tongo just wants my arms for his puppets? He wants to arm his puppets with my prosthetics," Damisan pointed to Hoshido and Tongo, who stonewalled this accusation. Where Tongo was too ruthless to take it to heart, Hoshido was too blunt.
"And he will have it if you are too weak to protect your limbs. If you're too weak to protect yourself, I've no objections to recruit Tongo forcing you to enhance his puppets, as long as it leads to the superior military power of our organization," Harcel crossed his arms, making his fancy robe go all wrinkly which was an unnatural look for it.
"No way this is really happening!" Damisan's head sunk down as he began quivering. A putrid stink of sweat and something guttural and quite rancid reached Skaven's way, making the Nara give his fellow Stars member a caring look, a drastic change from his usual attitude.
"Okay," Skaven smirked and pocketed his hands. "But how do you know Tongo is stronger than Damisan? How can you know for certain without having them settle it?"
Hoshido stood up and walked out in front of Tongo and Harcel, walling off the two men with his massive frame and displeased look that continued to stare on at a blank point in the room while his plump lips blew out alongside his eyebrows taking a sharp plunge down. The big guy wanted to be a part of the brawl if one was to break out, that much was for sure.
"Skaven," Damisan turned to his friend with a shaky tone.
"Don't worry, I can speak pretentious old geezer with his pants squeezing way too tight better than anyone else," Skaven smirked before returning his challenging glare back to Harcel. While the Regimental Commander hated Skaven's blatant disrespect to rank, being someone who valued strength over everything else, he saw the weight of the Nara's words.
"Well then, I suppose it is settled. If the Stars agree to it, you will take part in a very special survival exercise to settle this matter. Just like it should always work. It just so happens that the odds are fair, two on two," Harcel observed, stroking his shriveled, long, and sharp-shaped chin.
"This was your plan all along," Damisan pointed his finger to Tongo, who walked out from Hoshido's side. "You took my cylinder, trying to provoke me into challenging you to a fight so that you could legally bully me into upgrading your puppet army!"
"Men do not try, maggot, men do!" Tongo straightened his back, still measuring up only halfway to Harcel's chest, let alone the towering marvel that was his living tool. "State your conditions, Regimental Commander, we'll beat the Stars at any drill."
"Well… I suppose we could try a siege scenario. I shall unseal the prop construction site and place a container filled with scrolls in what would have been the main hall had the building been completed. The Stars can try to protect the scrolls while Tongo and Hoshido can serve as a siege team, your aim will be to topple the building down after claiming the scroll container from within," Harcel nodded to himself, deciding on the drill that the two teams would clash in to settle their differences.
"I'm sorry," Damisan grit his teeth. Skaven could hear snappy cracks from all the way on the other discarded armchair placed in this prop tower that they would have to defend. "I dragged you into this nonsense and now I'll be ruining everything just because I resisted everyone's advice and didn't rebuild my arms."
"Don't let that asshole get into your head," Skaven sat up and leaned forward, intertwining his fingers as the Stars waited for the Siege Team to start their assault on their tower. The rules of the drill forbade them from doing anything until the Siege Team made the first move and, in theory, this should have been balanced out because the Siege Team couldn't have just toppled the building–they needed their prize too. "This was never our game to win."
"What do you mean?" Damisan turned to Skaven. The Nara rebel tried not to notice the little crystals gleaming in his friend's eyes.
"Tongo's little puppet elite unit is called the S13G3 Unit, isn't it? This whole thing's a sham. Harcel hates our guts 'cause we're not what he sees as Allied Ninja material and that's all there is to it," Skaven explained his way of seeing things with a bitter grimace. "He knows that you're not at your full strength, he didn't make Hoshido give you back your cylinder, he didn't give you time to rebuild your arms. Up we went, and we went right to the training ground, the sooner he disciplines us the better."
"Even worse…" Damisan sniffed.
"No, it's not. Fighting from this position is where I've got home-field advantage. What's wrong with you? I thought you would too. Note that feeling, that bitterness that this injustice brings out, and draw it together with your breath. Take it in and breathe it out, let it fuel you and burn you up. You'll be surprised how strong it will make you," Skaven walked up to the missing window and glared outside. He couldn't see a living soul out there. He'd have figured that Tongo would have flooded the building with his F00T Units just as a distraction. Maybe surrounded it with his precious elites.
"I don't think I get it how that works…" Damisan admitted, letting out a nerve-wracking metallic shriek when he rubbed his throwaway arm with his other prosthetic limb.
"What do you mean? Don't you want to wreck every single S13G3 dolly he sends against you and make his time as miserable as possible repairing them all?" Skaven smirked as he turned back to his friend. Both of the Stars' ninja spread their feet out, skidding them against the floor while their eyes whited out in shock. The entire tower they were watching over threatened to collapse merely from the wild earthquake that rumbled its basis.
"What is that?" Damisan rushed to the window, staring out with renewed vigor in his moves. The shock he had when the earthquake caught the self-puppeteering ninja off-guard returned when he saw a black cart-shaped unit the size of the entire Allied Ninja Headquarters rolling up on them in a direct collision course.
"What the shit? I've never seen a puppet like that. It's like if a shopping cart had a baby with a suit of armor and that baby ended up over a hundred meters tall!" Skaven grit his teeth, staring at siege machinery of destruction rolling up on them. At this rate, they'll get flattened for sure.
Damisan yelled out in pain and fell on his front, nearly tripping Skaven up at the same time. Armored puppets with insectoid masks began flooding the room and showing off their tricks. Some of them fired off wild jolts of electricity from tesla coils enhanced by Lightning Release chakra sealed into their armor, some of them fashioned some good old flamethrowers or water spouts hard enough to drill through a diamond.
"F00Ts!" Damisan whined out on the ground, rolling on his back.
"Wreck them! They're trying to drive us out of the tower!" Skaven rolled his kunai in his hand before grabbing hold of its handle and stopping it in battle-ready position before taking off with a wild kick that blew the black helmet with compound eyes vizor clean off and exposed the wooden, featureless headpieces underneath while Skaven cut up the nearest F00T apart by opening up his armor like a tin can before flinging his kunai at the back of the flamethrower-using one prompting it to resonate with a firestorm spanning the entire room.
Thinking this would have been enough was just dreaming. Even with the smoke and heat still in full force, lightning arrows were buzzing all over the place. Damisan raised his feet and kicked at the legs of a nearby F00T Unit. While the kick had been successful and tripped the miserable puppet up, snapping its knees by the center, the footman puppetry unit appeared to operate as quadrupeds too by relocating his arms and legs to work like those of a spider as he crawled over Damisan and its buggy arms and feet began hammering at the fallen ninja from all directions.
"Shadow Prison Jutsu!" Skaven roared out, enclosing a good handful of F00T Units inside of a bubble of liquid blackness that rose from the shadows of the gloomy room. Slamming the sphere of shadows at the wall by swinging it like a morning star, Skaven flung the F00T Units out and under the impending wheels of Tongo's destruction machine.
Damisan was about to stand back up after Skaven's outburst freed him, but then he pressed his ear down to the rumbling, wooden floor of the abandoned tower. He didn't need to say a word–the fact that he heard more and more F00T Units flooding the premises was self-evident from his reaction and the fact that he cared to listen for so long.
"They're trying to drive us out. Hoshido is likely already inside too. This is a two-front scare tactic. We're supposed to leave this room and the scrolls while Hoshido scoops them up," Skaven grunted, looking out through the busted wall he was very much responsible for and stared ahead at the rolling cart of colossal destruction.
"I'm done being afraid," Damisan stood up, tearing a handful of his cloak off to get more freedom for his skeletal metal arms and his feet that were his most powerful weapon now when his arms had been downgraded a thousand versions back. "Whichever way they got in, I know exactly how we'll send them out."
"As scrap metal," Skaven sighed and turned toward the staircase that rumbled and clanged with wooden and metallic noises of thumpers and blades alike.
Damisan detached one of his feet and raised them up to aim them at the entryway. With a flick of a trigger, he fired a jet of chakra that would have normally helped him levitate or to move around the battlefield hastily but now it only served as a forceful blast to leave the shoddy construction meant to serve only as distracting or annoying footmen scatter and fall back down the staircase they climbed up in pieces.
As arms and cannons began bursting through the cheap, plaster walls, proving that the F00T units weren't willing to always use the door, Damisan curved his hell-spitting leg to curve his blast and welcome the attempted entrants with worse manners than their counterparts.
"Careful, you're going to slice the whole tower into two at this rate," Skaven worked up a smirk while leaking his shadows outside of the holes that Damisan's hell he gave the invaders made to stab at anything or anyone willing to try entering the same way someone else had already failed to enter through. Like a ring, Skaven's shadowy tendril wrapped around Damisan's bursting beam of base chakra before spiking out in each direction and expelling drop-shaped projectiles in the other room that led all the way into the main hallway they had to watch.
"I've never seen any Nara techniques like those!" Damisan blanked out as the fuel in his prosthetic leg began running short and he needed to replenish the shake stored in the seals to use a destructive blast like that again.
"Yeah, well… If I did what those stuck-up pricks in the clan told me to, you'd never have seen them at all," Skaven sighed easier while kicking up a board into his hands and rushing the door to slam a pair of F00T Units creeping into the main hall.
"Hey, it ain't looking that bad out here," Skaven's voice reached Damisan who punched his feeble metal arm through the wooden floor and pulled on it, leaving the prosthetic arm stuck into the floor while it fragmented into metallic pieces separated by steel wire. As Skaven rushed back in, followed by the remaining F00T Units, the improvised fragments of Damisan's metallic arm detonated, spreading steel wire and slashing the rushing puppet platoon up into lifeless chunks littering the main hall.
"I don't know why everyone called these arms useless, to be honest," Damisan gave Skaven a lively thumb up with his one remaining hand.
This friendly chatter was not meant to continue for much longer as a pair of arms burst forth from underground and grabbed hold of Skaven's heels, pulling him down and through the wooden floor. Another sheet and another one as the assailant seemed to keep breaking themselves down alongside Skaven with energetic thrashing and a general influx of grand bodily weight.
"Yeah… Was wondering when I'd bump into you…" Skaven grunted. His voice had a sprinkle of whining as he stood back up, feeling a nasty bump in his shoulder as in an instant the two ninja had ended on the bottom floor. Hoshido stood back up without saying a word. The silent bruiser just shoved a hefty grindstone off of his body before picking it up and smashing it over his head as a demonstration of his toughness. Or perhaps the grindstone merely got in his way.
Either way, the one time Skaven got involved in something for anyone else than himself, he had his hands full with this freak. While a tad ironic, knowing his fortune, Skaven had seen this feat of bad luck coming from a mile away.