A fusillade of thunderous, ground-shaking blasts forced a struggle out of Damisan to stay on his feet. The wall right in front of him separating him from his abuser as of late blew apart, reducing to mere sheds and debris. Feeling the rough rubbing of bandages against his disfigured face and the imminent exposure of his true self to the elements, if the bandages take any more needless damage, Damisan stood up and approached the hole that Tongo had left in the tower.
"Run and hide maggot!" Tongo's voice echoed from atop of his walking fortress of automated destruction. It had only been a few moments before that Hoshido dragged Skaven down and the entire building had been shaking ever since. As much as Damisan wanted to check up on his friend, he'd be leaving the scrolls for the taking and just opening the tower up for Tongo to come in and do as he pleases.
No. Damisan had to leave this matter up to Skaven. He could no longer stand here and hide. The longer he stood still and watched, the more comfortable this bully will feel walking all over him and taking what belongs to him. Tongo took Damisan's cylinder. Now he's going to rip the bandages off too and parade, showing his crushed target off to everyone whether or not they liked it.
A stiff, metallic arm buzzed through the air and grabbed hold of the first ridge it could cling up to. With a string reeling sound, Damisan swung himself up and over the walking mechanical fortress and landed firmly atop of the wooden platform on top surrounded by a barred railing. Damisan straightened his back and stared right at his baffled abuser with a determined look.
"My cylinder. Give it back!" Damisan demanded.
"Well, well. Finally grew a pair, did you?" Tongo replied, moving his arms behind him. This was a deceitful motion, Damisan knew. He was a puppeteer himself. When the walking fortress stopped in place, there could have been no other reason for it other than Tongo needing those extra fingers to operate something else.
The first F00Ts came with a blur and riding the sounds of rustling cloth. With Tongo controlling them directly, with his own hand, instead of relying on control panels inside his walking fortress, the F00T moved like specters. Silent and instant, like death itself. Two whole ranks above the danger level that those previous ones were, although limited in numbers because Tongo only had ten fingers. A hammering thud sent Damisan stumbling back. Tension on the bandages paralyzed him in terror.
The F00T that socked him had grabbed hold of a bandage end and threatened to rip it off. With Tongo controlling these guys in a more personal manner, they had all the cruelty and ruthlessness of their master instead of acting in a generalized, distracting manner like before. Damisan dashed forward, activating the jets in his prosthetic legs to send him flying forward so that the pull on his bandages didn't unravel the full view of his face. He received a cross to the center of his ribcage for the trouble. Two more F00Ts kicked Damisan about as they dashed in all directions before the fourth one rolled over the first one and kicked Damisan in his ribs, sending him sliding across the platform and slamming into the railing.
Damisan cried out as he almost tipped over the rail, but with a thrust of his prosthetic feet into the rails, he sent himself flying back into Tongo's legion. They moved in blurs, like riding the perpetual high of Body Flicker, and shuffled between each other in a confusing manner. Despite his best attempts, Damisan just couldn't land a blow. Two F00Ts blitzed in from each side, smashing Damisan's head in between two steel arms, throwing a wicked power blow to his jaw.
"Let's see if we can muck up that mess of a face up some more, shall we? You can't possibly care, being this ugly to look at already," Tongo mocked his opponent who just stumbled forward with whited-out eyes before popping and disappearing into a cloud of smoke. A broken F00T unit fell on the ground, severed from its strings. "What?" Tongo bent his head to the side, observing one of the F00T units he sent to rush the tower earlier being used against him as a substitution target.
"Tongo!" Damisan yelled out, rushing at the bemused puppeteer and bypassing his legion. Before Damisan's steel frame for an arm could sock his enemy, however, a Nelson hold from behind locked around him from underneath. With the handicapped ninja subdued, the other three rushed in to throw wild fists. Once they were done inflicting their ruthless beat down, the first F00T snapped its back to deliver a suplex and leave Damisan downed and battered.
"You've come unprepared, maggot. That is why you face humiliation and defeat now!" Tongo proclaimed while his F00Ts surrounded him from each side. Featureless and faceless ballistic dummies wearing greyed out, ghastly rags as they leaned over their master's shoulders in a declaration of everlasting protection until their dying day. "You're useless on the battlefield. You've got no stomach for it. Not that you're useless in general. Your skills are still worthwhile in enhancing my platoon. With your invaluable rocket arms, your self-destruction seals, with your engineering on my S13G3 Units, our faction would be invincible! That is your use, son."
"I… Already told you… Give me back… My cylinder!" Damisan yelled out as he rose on his feet and put up his puny frame-arms.
"I will do no such thing. It makes you weak, it helps you lie to yourself. You're ugly, you need to accept that and deal with the hand you've got. Maggots that dream to fly only live to feed the birds, maggots that do as they're supposed to and wallow in their dirt are useful for a myriad of things," Tongo shook his head. "If a little of shock therapy is what I need to break your spirit, I'll take that as my mission objective!"
The F00T units buzzed over Damisan's head, rotating like vultures and wailing on him from all directions. A pair of F00Ts just flew around, thrusting their punches like automated pistons wherever they aimed while the other one used the chance of Damisan's wobbly defenses to grab hold of the bandages over his head and rip them off, the other one used the chance to wrap a string of them around Damisan's throat and slam him over his head and hold the handicapped ninja in a chokehold.
"You are paying the price of disobedience. Beaten and humiliated by mere F00T Units, as if I'd let a lowly maggot even scratch my precious S13G3s. I've found that punishing an unruly dog with increasing severity eventually makes them obedient. We'll test that theory right now, then again, a dog has more brain than a maggot," Tongo grumbled as the F00T Unit raised Damisan up and over the rails, showing him off to Regimental Commander Harcel down below as nobody else was there to witness this authorized training drill. "First time you disobeyed, I punished you with a scolding, the second one–a beating, third one–I'll unravel the entire childish dream world blanket you've wrapped yourself in and expose you to the true world around you."
Damisan reached out with his stiff and malfunctioning steel frame arm. Tongo stopped talking to appreciate the slowly dying out light of his opponent. Obviously, the puppet commander didn't intend on killing Damisan, though if he had passed out, he'd have made for a fine showcase to the other recruits once they leave the lecture and come rushing outside in search for some fine, summer entertainment. Damisan's hand formed a straight hand, like a living blade, before turning and twisting outside the joint and bending backward with a rapid, steel-hard chop that etched into the head of the F00T holding him.
With a mad battle cry, Damisan grabbed hold of the railing and pulled himself up, grabbing the wobbly F00T while the puppet commander had lost control over it and ripped it into two with his own prosthetic hands. The ones that Tongo had ruled out as useless, the ones that he had thought Damisan would achieve nothing with, and the ones he had categorized as Damisan mocking him.
"So, you've torn through some junk…" Tongo spat aside in distaste when Damisan charged onward, riding the burst of chakra jets from his prosthetic feet as he delivered a ruthless charging kick that tore right through all three of his F00Ts. Something that Damisan felt was that Tongo's grasp over them had loosened as time went on. It was a common occurrence for puppeteers to lose a bit of focus with time. Besides that, arms usually went numb when employed for a longer time, even more–chakra that the Puppetry Jutsu demanded swelled up with time. Demanding more and more as time passed. It made sense that he'd call it quits with mere F00Ts already.
Damisan's shaky hand reached over the few strands of bandages still protecting his face from full exposure. Everyone could have seen his true face, it was just figurative protection from exposure, and yet… Damisan pulled the hanging, helpless string to his chest and pressed it close to his heart before returning to a taijutsu fighting stance.
"That's just fine, these are pawns serving their commander's master goal!" Tongo extended his hands out again, calling an entire platoon of F00Ts, all under his control. Damisan didn't dally until they could overwhelm him with their uncanny speed and mechanical precision. He slid across the ground with his elbow raised over his head, igniting his feet again as he delivered a crunchy strike to the gut of one F00T and bent it awkwardly over its broken torso.
Riding the jet of chakra flames, Damisan turned around in a circle before rolling and launching himself like a human cannonball over the back of the broken F00T and into the entire legion behind him. The footmen of Tongo's command all shattered and flew apart like bowling pins hit with the heaviest ball the joint could provide, launched at the top speed. Tongo's fingers moved and bent, twisted and turned, sending more and more F00T as the commander felt an ever-increasing resistance from his opponent.
Dispatching of a handful more F00Ts, Damisan's freed, greyed-out eyes set their gaze upon his precious cylinder. He took a gamble by diving after it, but he only hit a massive, steel shield erected before him like an impassable barrier. A blitz of rapid spear strikes from behind the shield tore Damisan up and a hefty thud of the shield sent the whited out Damisan sliding back and falling on his back with stab and slash wounds where the spear's tip did its worst.
The first S13G3 Unit has joined the battle, mingling in from out of nowhere with the small-fry. With stuttering motions, the phalanx-themed puppet took one step after another, willing to either push Damisan off of the walking fort with its massive shield or impale him on his spear if the handicapped ninja continued to resist.
"So, you wish to walk down this path, maggot?" Tongo taunted Damisan from behind the advancing guard. "What could a mere savage has-been puppeteer from a nation fostering a sick tradition of carving puppets out of dead people have to say that's of any value here? A challenge to the rock-hard military might of the Kumogakure puppetry tradition will show you just how backward and behind the times your puppetry style really is. But then again, you can't wield actual puppets anymore, you're the only dolly you can play with the way you are now, boy."
"Tongo!" Damisan roared out from the bottom of his chest. Something was bubbling inside him, and it was something he just couldn't hold in anymore. He raised his foot up, positioned his arms in an X-shaped blocking motion while a ring of flames burst forth from the connecting point of his prosthetic leg and the rest of his body. "I'll make you pay!"
"Empty words," Tongo muttered. "That's fine, I'll teach you the discipline of a first-rate military platoon."
"Sun Lotus Foot!" Damisan bellowed as his prosthetic foot detached from the rest of his body, rocketing on a trajectory toward the phalanx puppet. Despite the puppet's determination to keep advancing with its shield up, Tongo's broken posture of cool that he maintained betrayed all that he was thinking.
The entire platform lit up with a raging ball of flames and ripping shock waves. A dreadful sense of weightlessness snapped Damisan out of his troubling fall soon enough for him to shoot out a hook hand and grab hold of something sticking out in this massive fortress puppet. Bits and pieces of the S13G3 Unit Model: Phalanx still crumbled from the roof of the fortress puppet. A closer look made Damisan realized he had halted himself before a wall filled to the brim with cannons. Not wanting to be ripped apart, the handicapped ninja swung slowly, landed himself back down on the ground, wincing at his hurting body before a violent rupture robbed him of his senses again.
This time it was because of the whole tower behind him going up into flames. The raging firestorm and surging destruction that was looking for any excuse it could find, any breach or gap to slip out and into freedom commanded the entirety of Damisan's attention while the handicapped ninja wondered if his friend got out from this blast in time.
"You've gone and done it, spat me in the face, and became my enemy No. 1, haven't you?" Tongo walked out from the clearing. He was luring him in, Damisan knew it.
"Took you a while to figure out. I don't want to work for you, Tongo, all I want to do is get my cylinder back and break enough of your things for you to finally get off my back. For the first time in years, I want nothing to do with something," Damisan replied, hopping on one remaining prosthetic leg he had.
"Heh, I was wrong to categorize you as a maggot. Maggot is a term I use to refer to anybody beneath my rank. You're not like everybody else, you're just an armless, legless, pathetic excuse for a ninja. You're no maggot, you're a human-worm," Tongo mocked Damisan openly, calling the one-legged ninja out for another confrontation.
Damisan had no more space in his mind for a reason. He hopped onto his arms and scurried, swinging his remaining leg around like a scorpion's tail, hoping to stomp it right into Tongo's face and shatter his skull, send some teeth smile and doom him for a fate similar to that of Damisan's own. Make him just like that, which he mocks with a spirit of meanness behind the notion.
Collision! Damisan looked up and identified a featureless puppet, signature style of Tongo's, wearing a feminine wig and swinging a massive pair of scythes around like a mantis while walking on top of two chokuto blades. Damisan clanged his prosthetic foot in a collision with the cross-shaped swipe of the two giant scythes as he rolled forward to pass around the feminine puppet and launch himself at his true enemy.
More and more S13G3 Units blitzed in from the woods, infuriated by the destruction of an S13G3 Unit, Tongo was now out for blood. That was just fine–so was Damisan. An elastic tail filled with razor teeth buzzed right past him but Damisan rolled over it, jumping back on his foot to block a pair of incoming sword strikes from a speedy, colorful puppet with a vibrant color scheme of neon blue and a cocktail-pink jacket and the owner of the sawing tail who rushed onward with a sword now that the razor tail attached to its head missed its mark.
A marble with an explosive tag fell from up above while a burly puppet with mace-hands slammed at it, sending like a baseball careening toward the advancing Damisan and sending him skidding back. His scarred and sewn together flesh, his disfigured face all exposed to the public. So severe were the wounds of his past that fire didn't seem to catch on anymore to his flesh as if the gods themselves decided this poor man has had his fair share of punishment in his past and didn't let him burn any more.
A winged puppet that had dropped the explosive marble swooped down with razor talons, aiming to scoop out Damisan's eyes but only grabbing hold of his skeletal, steel arm. The feminine scythe puppet rushed in alongside the speedy blitzer of eye-challenging color palette, looking to behead Damisan now that his arm was stuck in their winged compatriot's hold. A rending sound filled the atmosphere, but it wasn't one of Damisan's beheading. It was Damisan ripping the steel arm off while he weaved a hand seal with his remaining hand and detonated rods of black coal sticking out from his metallic arm.
The detonation was nowhere near as intense as the earlier one, but it had served its uses. The appearance of these puppets was frighteningly human but not enough so, just enough for it to look creepy when one gazed at their featureless faces, their corpuses grazed and bent out of shape and joints dislocated. Tongo yelled out in frustration as his treasured army had been unraveling before his eyes.
"Sun Lotus Foot!" Damisan yelled out, taking aim directly at Tongo now that his precious S13G3s struggled to return to their feet. He'd take a pound of Tongo's flesh for his transgressions if it was to be the last thing Damisan would do. As his foot detached from his body and flew off like a missile toward the stunned puppeteer, a wooden and metallic collection of rattling sounds made themselves apparent behind Damisan as a feminine puppet in a white kimono with red lotus motifs disassembled and reassembled itself in front of Tongo to take the blast for him.
Once the blast cleared out, only patches of cloth and handfuls of black brush hair fell as remains of the sacrificial S13G3 Unit. The puppet appeared to be mostly useless and reserved in combat, yet incredibly hasty to sacrifice herself and efficient in doing so, suggesting to Damisan that this was its primary purpose. With the S13G3 Unit Model: Courtesan left as rags of cloth, it seemed like Tongo was about to become even more unhinged and Damisan had only one arm left to burrow himself out of the hole he had made.
Before Tongo's horde could ravage him like a fatty maggot assaulted by a murder of birds of prey, a black, sharp, triangular shape took it to the air, filled with six malicious eyes on each side from behind Damisan. The S13G3 Units all fell lifeless for a second while Tongo looked up at the frightening display that demanded all of his attention.
Regimental Commander Harcel stared right at the pair of recruits with unconscious Hoshido hanging and wrestling against the mouth of a shapeless, black aura with red eyes leaking out from Harcel and forming a rising, six-eyed raven's head behind him.
"Will you stand down by your own accord, or will you need additional encouragement like your comrade here?" Regimental Commander Harcel raised an eyebrow. To be frank, Damisan was also curious about that, but the lifeless S13G3 Units that flopped around him never fully returned to life, instead choosing to crawl off into the bushes with their twitchy limbs where they disappeared into clouds of smoke. Even the walking fortress dispersed into the tallest pillar of dust that Damisan had ever seen. "Good." Harcel nodded.
"Well, the tower's destroyed, but you don't have the scrolls, the collapse of the tower ruined them. That means you both lost. That being said, I did like what I saw of your strength. I believe that with guidance your groups can both serve the Allied Ninja well in the future. Do not skip your lectures for petty squabbles again," Regimental Commander Harcel nodded as he turned to walk back to the headquarters. "Oh, and if I find out that you are brawling it out again and harming that limitless future potential you offer to the organization, I'll dispose of you myself."
"Well, with that sort of positive reinforcement, who are we to disagree?" Skaven grumbled with a weak tone of voice as he barely kept on his feet. Harcel walked off carrying Hoshido, knowing full-well that if he let go of the massive brute, he'd not stop swinging fists until either he or Skaven was dead with how much their battle had stimulated his simpleton's brain. Finding himself alone before both of his opponents, Tongo chose to just walk away.
"Nothing but trouble and losses with you, you're like a curse of bad luck. A rotten soldier just like your looks would suggest," Tongo shook his head, resigning himself of this bullying Damisan business as it had cost him two of his precious S13G3 Units and his pride as an undefeated puppet commander.
"So, back to the dorm?" Skaven wondered, looking at his one-armed friend.
"Actually, if you could just… My cylinder must have fallen off somewhere in those brushes. Please?" Damisan wanted to clap with his hands in a request, but his friend just sighed and resigned himself to some more annoyance before he could call this a day.
"Yeah, I guess we can't parade you around looking like that… You've had rough day enough as it is," Skaven mumbled to himself, stepping over the nearby bushes where the walking fortress had disappeared from sight and left the cylinder to fall down from the top of its roof.