"You, tin-can, how exactly did you rip Tomi out of there?" the Empress pointed an authoritative finger to Damisan, who just continued standing turned to a blank point in a seemingly infinite space. After this didn't work, she turned her pointing finger to the pretty princess in a flowery dress, "Extract that information from him with your affectionate chaff."
Shige-H scratched her cheek and stepped out in front of Damisan, caressing his cheek, which didn't seem to have any sort of reaction. "Damisan, could you tell us how you rescued Tomi from thin air, pretty please?" she clapped her hands together and winced, hoping for the best.
Without explaining himself too much, Damisan cut a sharp turn and raised his hand up. His forearm detached from the rest of his mechanical arm and shot out straight into one of the many floating playing cards. Once it punched into it, there was no shock, nor was there any notable reaction or resistance. The arm simply entered the card through a soft, rippling surface. After entering the pocket mental dimension found inside that card, Damisan reeled his forearm back with a shrieking, metallic, reeling sound. The forearm connected with a loud thud rather than a pleasant click, which was more common to Damisan on the material plane.
"I see, so each card leads to a different pocket dimension inside of tutor Ridworth's mind. Can you sense where Endo is, pretty please?" Skaven tried mimicking the facial gestures and tone of Shige-H, but Damisan remained ignorant of the Nara's existence. It took Shige-H noting the social cue and once again using her gentle and aloof nature for Damisan to roll around and then come to a halt.
"I guess he can't. Who can blame him? Endo might be inside of a dimension located inside of a pocket dimension. I don't know if there's a radar imaginable that could have such potent tracking," Skaven scratched his head with an irritated expression.
"Ah, but this is a wonderful thing, an adventure throughout plentiful dimensions, hunting down hundreds of beasties! I relish this opportunity!" Tomi pressed her heels together and saluted the sky that remained littered with giant cards that served as portals to different locations within tutor Ridworth's massive mental fort.
"Then we will continue ripping dimensions apart one by one, seeing if we can find the test answers or Endo first." The Empress declared. "You," she pointed to Shige-H, "Inform our puppet on wheels that it is to let us know if it gets a whiff of where Endo might be."
"You really don't need to be that way, Damisan can hear you just fine…" Shige-H squinted at the Empress who already began walking onward in search of the perfect first dimension to hop into. Once there, the plan was simple–destroy as much of it as possible and cause as much general mayhem as possible until tutor Ridworth's mind unravels. Then, after they gain complete control over the mental fort, they can simply manifest the test answers before them and get the perfect score.
"What a spectacular place to blast in all directions!" Tomi pumped her fists before her, marveling at the view once the Stars' feet touched one of many floating stone blocks. The blocks flew in various altitudes, flowing in rivers of vibrant colors inside of a dimension of the void the size of which was difficult to determine because its colors scratched the eye to look at for too long.
Lines or crimson and shamrock, outlined with thick black, extending on a white basis so overflowing with colored decorations it was difficult to single out in the entire pattern. The rather plain stone blocks that they floated on were a welcome reprieve from the sensory overload of just looking around.
"Well?" Skaven turned to Damisan. The scrap man shot out its hand and pulled itself to another passing-by block.
"Where do you think you're going!?" the Empress hissed and Tomi raised her thunder-stick to blast her comrade into pieces.
"Just give me the word, m'lady!" Tomi smirked, unable to contain her excitement even if she was to blast at her own friend.
"No, wait, I think Damisan is just getting a better vantage point to scan the place!" Shige-H stepped out in front of Tomi, defusing the jockey's excitement, and thus she lowered her strange weapon. Damisan spent an entire rotation of the block's journey atop of it before shooting his forearm back down and hooking himself back to the other Stars.
"Endo is not here," Damisan reported in an apathetic, mechanical voice.
"He can't be this hard to find, I mean there may be a vast number of pocket dimensions and chambers inside them, but there aren't enough recruits to occupy all of them. In terms of dimensions with life signs in them, there should only be a handful of them, unless tutor Ridworth really stretched out ranks thin…" Skaven theorized. "Our odds of running into Endo aren't all that small."
"Hey, can you guys hear that? Sounds like… Whistling or… Howling?" Shige-H pressed her hand to her ear, leaning to her left as if she couldn't see a grey vortex of turbulent wind coming at them. The whirlwind did a decent job standing out from its colorful surroundings in its path toward the platform where the Stars had found their sanctuary.
"Wind? I can't shoot at the wind!" Tomi stomped her foot in impatience.
"It doesn't appear that these whirlwinds are the only ones…" the Empress turned around, locating at least six more tornadoes, just like the one that initially caught the Stars' attention coming right at them. Just as the Empress began going through hand seals, a rough impact sent her flying off the stone block. With seething hatred the Empress looked up upon her fall, knowing well enough that it led to surrendering her mind to the owner of the fort.
It had been Damisan that rammed her and pushed her off though just as the Empress was about to curse the tinman for its betrayal, a steel head slammed from up above, taking a hefty chomp out of Damisan and leaving only a dismembered arm spitting out plastic foam slowly fall nearby while the steel head lifted off and floated away. A shadowy tendril wrapped around the Empress' arm, pulling her back onto the platform while Tomi cackled with maniacal laughter as she began taking aim and unleashing hell at the dozens of floating steel heads over them.
By that time there was no way of resisting the whirlwinds and they began tearing the stone platform to mere grains of gravel. Despite how little of a desire to provide these stone heads with the pleasure of hearing her grunt of scream the Empress had, she couldn't help it since it felt like her very mental essence was being torn apart chunk by chunk in all directions, just like the stone platform that became mere dust.
A wind current flushed from down below, catching and swooping up a young woman in a stage magician's uniform as she hung in mid-air, surrounded by steel heads. Mana had little idea of what was going on but she knew that these heads had done something terrible and that she'd have fallen down into that colorful void had she not woken up in the middle of the fall and hadn't activated her Mystical Wings Jutsu.
One of the steel heads opened up with a metallic snap. A plump man in a tuxedo and top hat, dark of skin with a honey-colored mustache and a stringy line of hair falling off the back and each side of his head while the top remained utterly bald. The man had worn a monocle and held a walking cane and pressed the tip to the tongue of the statue head which he stood inside of.
"So you are the cause of this ruckus. Recruit Mana, was it? I'm afraid I'll have to disqualify you from the exam for cheating. It's disappointing, I must say. The Allied Ninja have a strict no-forgiveness policy so you've shut the doors for you ever joining the Allied Ninja again with this stunt, young lady," the Kumogakure native of dark complexion said.
"Cheating? What are you talking about? The last thing I remember was the beginning of the final exam and putting on one of those bowl hats with the sealing glyph on," Mana objected.
"What's this? Hmm… What an odd case, certainly your appearance inside my mental fort doesn't quite make sense, I believe that you've fallen to your doom alongside your friends from the Stars group. Then again, there would have been no way for you to wake up all by yourself as well… You've completely changed appearances too. Tell me, young lady, are you suffering from multiple personality disorder by any chance?" tutor Ridworth inquired.
"What? No… Not that I know of," Mana shook her head. "I mean, an inner universe inside of my meditational world has an alternate personality called the Empress inside it. It took me a lot of time to understand her, but she's an imagined version of what I might have become if I didn't live by my Ninja Way. I don't think it qualifies as a multiple personality disorder…"
"Hmm, perhaps not, but… What a curious case. You really should have approached me with that before. I wouldn't have let you take the exam in that case." Tutor Ridworth pulled on and rolled his mustache in between his fingers.
"What? That's not fair! Why should I be singled out and not allowed to take the exam after I've worked so hard to pass it?" Mana objected.
"You misunderstand, dear girl, you see, this mental fort is a prison to the minds of the recruits. It extracts all malicious impulses, their worst fears, and keeps them imprisoned and locked down. In that way, we don't have to watch out for the recruits cheating because they partake in the test almost on autopilot, with only their best qualities and intentions in heart. Had I known about your unique case, we'd have arranged a different way for you to take the exam," tutor Ridworth pointed out, raising up the other end of his stick and pointed at each of his steel heads.
Upon being pointed at, each steel head snapped their jaws open, revealing a member of Stars in their unique, mental avatar only seen within the confines of such a peculiar mental fort as tutor Ridworth's.
"So you're saying that the Empress took control over me and I became just like them?" Mana pointed to Shige-H and Damisan and Tomi one by one, finding it difficult to recognize her only friends as of late in their unique appearances.
"That is quite correct. Because this Empress is more than your mere fears, because you've given her a more tangible body and a piece of her mind in the past, she's displayed a far greater level of awareness and power, one that even my well-crafted fort couldn't contain because it wasn't designed to deal with something like that. She set out to unravel the very fortification of my mind, it seems. This Empress has even freed some other recruits. She'd have been subdued once she fell down into this infinite void but it appears that has only shifted her back into the original mental avatar–you," tutor Ridworth finished summing up the mystery that he had just put together himself.
"But why would the Empress do something like that? I think the last time I noticed her, she just wanted to take over my body and become dominant. Why would she set out to cheat on the graduation exam?" Mana pondered out loud.
"That, my dear, is not a question you should ask me. Now, I'd like for you to just close your eyes, relax and return to your body. I'll watch over you taking the exam on the material plane for the rest of the test, I think," tutor Ridworth explained.
"Yeah, I guess that's for the best," Mana looked down. She wasn't sure how her body managed to deal with the test on autopilot, but she at the very least had the comfort in knowing that it had been doing something while the Empress was busy on her wild goose chase inside someone else's mind.
A cerulean stream washed over Mana as stars began rushing in her direction, escalating in speed until they became just blurry lines of lights buzzing past her. The magician opened her eyes and gazed upon an empty sheet of paper before her, gasping and covering her mouth in shock. Alarmed by this reaction, tutor Ridworth approached Mana and looked down at her test.
"Well, it appears that your unique situation has posed yet another hurdle on you. Your body had been completely dysfunctional the entire time. It appears you'll have to start the exam from scratch. You'd better hurry too, you've got fifteen minutes left," tutor Ridworth pointed out while directing both their attention to the gigantic clock in the middle of the room.
On the last day of the prep course, tutor Ridworth handed out everybody their test results by giving out the graded sheets of paper. They all looked equally terrible as the exceptional and perfect scores alike had linings, corrections, and comments in red just like the failed ones. Mana wasn't sure why her gut had been trying to eat itself, she already knew that she failed it. She had completed just four assignments out of the six given in the remaining time, and she was only sure about having done one of them right.
"Hmm… I feel like I could have done better," Tomi scratched her cheek and rubbed her sleepy eyes, showing off her result of 13/20. No matter how hard she might have scolded herself, it didn't matter–she had passed as getting a score higher than 10/20 was all that it took. Anything beyond that was just the cream on the top, as it wouldn't have translated into any perks during one's service as an Allied Ninja.
"16/20, I think it's a serious statement. Then again, unlike most of you, I worked hard," Endo dangled his graded exam sheet before both Tomi to his left and Damisan to his right. It was only when he had turned to Damisan to gloat over him he saw Damisan's result being 17/20.
"Well, I guess I did alright as well, celebrations are in order, huh, Endo?" Damisan bowed his head respectfully before Endo grabbed hold of his cylinder and began rubbing his knuckles and knocking into it, shocking the whole thing like a rung bell while Endo expressed his frustration at being outdone by someone who was just "a freak" in his eyes. For an ass-hat like Endo, the apprentice samurai was being quite soft on Damisan though with his nudging and teasing.
"Whatever, tests are a relic of the past systems anyway," Skaven sighed and pushed away his sheet with a shine of 13/20 etched on the lower right side with red. "It's no efficient way to grade a student's progress whatsoever."
"I don't know, I think it's quite alright," Shige-H playfully cackled before proudly displaying her 20/20 result to the rest of the Stars. "None of you now have any right to complain about me being the leader anymore! I believe I have proven to be the most capable commander of our pooled forces."
Everyone continued to discuss their results with cheerful banter. It was a sentiment shared across the entire classroom and, frankly, the tutor himself didn't really feel like impeding that as any lessons he might have had to teach them would have been completely useless as they wouldn't really come to use in any exam except that of life itself.
Mana folded her exam sheet in half and slipped it into her pocket. She should have been one with the rest of the bubbly bunch, chattering and cackling. Engaging in playful banter about how she didn't recall taking any test at all and it just felt like she took a long sleep except, in her case, that wasn't it at all. She had to grind and work on top of the past couple of months of hard work to catch up to the rest who were working hard and studying while she laid comatose because an assassin had shot a hawk through her chest from a high caliber cannon from far, far away.
That was just her life. Nothing seemed to work out, she couldn't even fall asleep and let her body take care of the exam, having to worry and sweat for some of the most grueling fifteen minutes of her life just so she could hide away her 6/20 result and hope that nobody would notice the fact she existed and asked her about her result. In that case, at least she was lucky that most people still didn't like her guts because of what she served a full prison sentence in a place actually called "Hell" for.
"Mana, you're being awfully quiet…" Shige-H turned to her, abandoning the playful teasing and banter amongst the Stars that all just drowned out as if Mana had been listening to it from eight meters underwater.
"Sorry, I'm glad you guys aced the test so well. I'm really proud!" Mana turned to Shige-H, directing the course of her thoughts toward her genuine happiness for the few friends she had made in this place. It might have been because of all the excitement of the occasion but Shige-H didn't take this response as the least bit suspicious, she just nodded with a warm smile and wrapped her arms around Tomi and Mana, pulling them in closer for a group hug.
Mana glanced to Tomi, who seemed to loathe just being in the same room as Shige-H just a few weeks earlier and it didn't look like the young lady had been all that excited about touching the woman that lied to her and temporarily caused the worst mental trauma in Tomi's life just to teach her some lesson but she at the very least accepted it as a good thing. Mana decided to do the same, allowing Shige-H to manhandle her for a few seconds before all the excitement died down some.
That was how being social seemed to work. It felt like she had no right to be sad or to even mention the fact that she failed the exam in a downright humiliating fashion and spoil everyone's fun and a good time. Everyone was happy and thus Mana had to be too. It was a rough time, an equivalent of the feeling of one's innards being pulled out and ground against a pavement that was heated in the summer sun, and maybe because of this repulsive grittiness, Mana failed to remember why she enjoyed entertaining people, to begin with.
Then again, when she was on stage she didn't feel like puking all blood out of her. She was just as happy as the people in the audience, and she just wanted to make people who felt like she did right now feel a little better. That was the difference.
Either way, the Allied Ninja, the Stars, it all just turned out to be yet another place she didn't belong to. Was there even such a place anymore to begin with?