Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Journeys We Make

The Second Challenge

Damisan watched over the unconscious body of his friend. It hadn't been so long ago that Skaven did him one of the greatest solids that anyone had ever done for him. Few experiences felt as crippling as being so confident in one's skill, smart enough to outplay a lousy fate that robbed Damisan of his limbs his skin only to see that all of his skills amounted to nothing with his friend sleeping peacefully in front of him.

This serenity was a farce. Skaven didn't react to Damisan's voice. Nor did he pick up on anything else. The medical ninja insisted that he's going to be just fine and will recover in time though they were just as eager to let him because Skaven didn't feel the injections from the medicine they administered or the torment of the medical ninja shifting his bones back into place underneath his skin and his flesh.

"Hey..." a voice reached Damisan from behind him. It was a familiar, strong, though still on the range of feminine vocal tones, call. With metallic thuds, Damisan turned around and flashed the appearance of a metallic mask covering over his head like a mask. The puppeteer hadn't figured out how best to attach a poster to this facial accessory so he just had a paint job of a daisy done over the front. Both Shige-H and Mana told him it sort of killed the cool tone of his skull-like mask.

"Leader!" Damisan stiffened, clicking his heels together and forcing his prosthetics to drag and rub against the floor with a metallic shriek. "I thought you were training with Mana."

"I was. Teaching an Advanced Bloodline is a slow process. It won't come immediately, it may not come to her at all. Then again, Mana is talented, certainly deserving the title of the best, amongst the select few..." Shige-H rubbed her chin.

"Leader... Did you come here to check in on Skaven?" Damisan wondered.

"What? No. The medical ninja said that his condition won't change, isn't that right? There's no use in just standing here drooling over his unconscious body. He'll come back to his senses when he does." Shige-H waved her hand away at the static body of her comrade.

"Did everything go well with the training? You're acting a bit... Strange..." Damisan leaned his head to the side.

"The training went fine. I expected slow progress all along. Mana will do fine with the few pointers I left her with. She should just work them out by herself. I've been meaning to talk and train with you today, Damisan." Shige-H looked up right at the hardened white plastic concealing Damisan's surprised eyes that laid underneath the skull mask of steel.

"Me?" Damisan pointed to himself with his mechanical index. The self-puppeteering ninja did a remarkable job rebuilding his artificial limbs as his finger and his joints let out a pleasant hum when they bent. "That's such a strange request..."

"Strange? How so?" the leader of Stars bent her head to the side as well, putting her ally on the spot like that. "We're crewmates, there's nothing unusual in us training together. We've done so many times all throughout the past six months. Granted, this wouldn't be like those team-building exercises, this'd be a more... Personal time for us."

"P-Personal...? I'm not sure you're aware of it, leader... But... You're kind of sending me mixed signals here and you're lucky I get what you mean because that's one thing you're not allowed to be confusing on..." Damisan rubbed his prosthetic fingers on the pristine mask he donned instead of the old and dangling cylinder that used to get stolen and held hostage against him all the time. This was the reason he substituted it in the first place.

"I'm sorry, I just figured you'd be... You know... Happy to be included. Either way, calling me leader all the time sounds like a mouthful, doesn't it? You can call me just Shige." Shige-H pointed to herself with a thumb while gleefully turning her mouth upward and showing off her pearly whites.