Who the hell names their daughter Salt!?
Sha Nagba Imuru [Omniverse SI; Currently in Naruto]
- Thread starter Endfall
- Start date
The Pain that Binds
Heterostasis
keep on keeping on
you are the pieces
where tautologies contradict
Fireshadow
intermezzo - a key, a scroll, a cipher
you are (not) an uzumaki
Endfall
A zero on the singularity.
- Location
- Somewhere else.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Last time...
"And?" Tobirama Senju seemed genuinely nonplussed. "This is a Shinobi village. Recover quickly."
And with that, without any noticeable change, the Hokage disappeared as completely as the Samsara breaker had appeared. Without a sound, without a motion, and without a trace.
The ANBU turned to regard me silently for a moment, then also vanished.
Moments later, there was a knock on the door.
A pause.
Then the door slid to the left, and through it walked someone I had thought dead.
It was Shio.
The conversation was a blur. I don't remember it. Words were exchanged. Time passed. Eventually, someone shook me slightly, and said my name. Listlessley, I looked up, and into a child's face. She said something in japanese. She was as tall as a grown woman.
No, I was as small as a child.
It took me a moment to translate a sentence back. "I'm sorry, what?"
The girl - Shio, her name was Shio - repeated herself. "Kaede, are you alright?"
Kaede, I thought, the name feeling still in my mind. Is that who I'm being, now? Obviously.
Well then I should reassure the hallucination.
"Yes," I said, almost subconciously, then, "No. No, I'm not." How can you be alive? I wanted to ask. I knew you were dead. How can you defy that knowledge?
"Well... what's wrong?"
"I..." But how could I even explain it without making myself seem too weak to be worthwhile? I closed my eyes, opened them. That was... No. No, I wasn't getting stuck in this trap again.
I put my pain aside. I could take notes on how badly I had miscalculated, later.
For now... for now, I was going to be the best friend I could be.
So it would hurt me to destroy it. So I would break everything for the right reasons, instead of my convenience.
This life would have been easier if nobody cared. The thought came involuntarily - and of course it would have been easier. For someone like me, living as a process was far more natural than attempting true humanity.
It was far emptier, too.
As hollow as Earth had been after the Tetragrammaton fled, and took their flock with them.
As the cities that nature had never taken back,
that never rusted, or crumbled.
that mausoleum that was once called world
I shuddered involuntarily.
There was only one thing left to do.
I opened my mouth and said, "I though you were dead."
"What?" Shio's reply was as quick as it was sharp. I forced myself to meet her eyes, looking at the awareness behind them, so utterly out of place on a face so young.
"Yeah," I smiled, not bothering to hide the bitterness. "I know. Pretty stupid, yeah?"
I didn't expect her to throw her arms around me, and consequently, I wasn't able to keep myself from stiffening up, just a bit. A moment later, I managed to make myself relax. This was supposed to make me feel better.
"Why?" Shio asked, as she withdrew.
I took in a breath, remembering those moments, days ago.
"You showed up, as usual, and we trained for a bit. The conversation took a turn in an odd direction. You... asked me how I could even exist. Someone like me. At our age. You didn't get it. I responded with a little fable that meant everything; nothing. You reacted in a way that made no sense. It was petty, manipulative, inept. And that sort of made me look twice, and notice a bunch of other discrepancies. That girl... she was someone under henge, right?"
"She was," Shio said, nodding. "I don't remember any of this."
"Thought so. Thought so then, too - so I took a live Kunai she had brought with her, and threatened her with it. And she didn't act like you would've. I just got complimented about some kind of trick she thought I did, a sealless kawarimi, and..."
I trailed off. Shio was looking at me, her face white as a sheet, mouth open, and... she knew something I didn't. Or the idea that I was willing to threaten her...
No. That was expected of shinobi, in such situations. Trust, but verify was almost a moral principle. She knew something
"That idiot," she whispered.
She knew the identity of the impostor.
"Who."
Shio shook her head. "Look, this..." She trailed off, shaking her head. "This situation is at least half my fault. Let me try to make things right. Please?"
Trust. You owe it to her.
I really did, didn't I? I closed my eyes, and slowly relaxed every muscle in my face and body back towards nothing. Half of all emotion was in the expression.
"All right. Okay. Fine." I opened my eyes, and after a moment, continued.
"After the impostor fled, I tried to find you for about... a day and a half? No dice. I probably overgeneralised from the mastery of the kawarimi when I assumed an infiltrator had specifically killed you to steal your identity. Are allied nin faking your friends a common thing in the Shinobi world?"
Shio seemed to light up, and I absently wondered what about the question was so invigorating. Then, that moment of unguarded happiness faded into a confusion.
"How did you get that from... No, you don't know that person." She murmured, shaking her head. Then: "No, it's not really common, but - the idea of a spy killing me to target you? Breaking village security, letting you realise this, leaving you alive... Isn't that just a bit strange? Isn't it far simpler to assume a prank?"
Not if Kirigakure decides the best thing for them is you, dead, I thought, then discounted it. It was true, but it had nothing to do with why I had made the choice to believe Shio had been killed.
I had made that choice because...
because...
Because it had made emotional sense. Because I was someone who knew how to smile, when things fell apart.
Idiot.
I refocused myself on the external world. "I guess so." Then, more forcefully. "Yeah. I wasn't thinking clearly. Sorry."
"Sorry?"
"For this," I gestured around me. "Why do you think I'm here?"
"I heard it was Chakra exhaustion."
"...yes and no. I've completed Darkness as the Sun -"
"YOU COMPLETED IT!?" The outburst was so explosive it left my ears ringing and a moment later, the door to the room slid open, a doctor with pure white hair and striking ruby-red eyes standing in the frame.
"Oi!" He said, "Keep it down in here. Some of the ninja around you are seriously wounded!"
Shio bowed, and mumbled a quiet, "Sumimasen."
I stared. At the doctor.
Comic-book albinism? What the hell?
A moment later, the door slid shut, and Shio grabbed my shoulders.
"You completed it!?" She hissed.
I shrugged. "Yeah. It only took you a month, right? Is it really so unbelieveable that I got it down in five weeks? C'mon," I smiled, "Give me a little credit."
"Haha... yeah. Sorry," Shio said, rubbing the back of her neck. "It's just... Wow. That's great! So when are you coming back to class?"
I glanced at her for a moment, just long enough to make it clear that I knew what she was doing, then let the change of topic pass.
"I'm going to be released in two days. I was made to understand that I would immediately be accepted back into the academy following that. Looks like we can start our plan in earnest, soon."
When Shio left, my last distraction left with her, and her absence only highlighted what had happened over the last few days.
It was not pleasant. I had told Shio the truth, but it was really... hollow. Actions, yes, but the context... I had told her what I could, because if I had gone any further, I would have lied to her.
And, I don't know - maybe someone could have lived through that experience and said, "Yes, I acted well, there," but I just didn't have the conceit. How could I?
In a single stroke, I had gained a minor power that I had probably never needed, and lost the pure chakra of death - the single most decisive advantage-in-potentia I had. But that was as nothing compared to the way I had lost it. Before, I could have made myself the image of a useful, loyal Konoha citizen who believed in the dream of the village, a person Senju Tobirama would have felt comfortable regarding a pawn.
Instead, I had demonstrated that I was a reckless child who had wrought a contract with divinity - a contract that meant I would always have a higher calling than the Fireshadow's petty dreams.
I hadn't been planning. I hadn't been thinking. I was so used to a world completely devoid of humanity that when they reappeared, I had treated them as nothing more than scenery. Folly.
I could not continue on like this.
The mistakes I had made hadn't been small, but this... waste, setting myself on an essentially ballistic trajectory and reacting to avoid pain was just so...
Childish.
And where the hell had it come from?
Nonexistent self esteem aside, I was the sort of person who had never cared about how unpleasant reality might be, only what was it, and how to embrace it most tightly. No matter what.
No matter what.
I had lost -
...
Well that was it, wasn't it? I had lost. Just like everyone else. And unlike them, when the Tetragrammaton had come, and reconciled the world, I refused to accept their eutopia, and let go of the pain.
I had grown to value the wholly arbitrary suffering of an entirely uncaring world, because that was the true nature of it. And then, all the good that had counterbalanced that was eaten by our self-made gods, and they left, leaving only the truth behind.
Why had I let things go?
Why not? I had lost it all before.
I grinned. How easy would it be to let myself actually believe in that excuse?
I laughed once, darkly, and threw the sheets off as I stood, and strode over to the window. Standing there, I stared into the night, hands held behind my back.
It was raining. A million, billion tiny ballistic trajectories. Just a little less abstract than mine. The light shining up from the village painted the clouds a dim orange in a way that, as always, half of me felt was subtly wrong. Beneath those clouds, that same light conspired with the rain, making even the haphazard construction of the village beautiful; the reflections acute, and bright, highlighting the contours of the world.
There was no continuity between the choices I had made in my first life - embracing both pain and truth - and the choices I had made in these last two weeks. What I had done... I had rejected my ability to reason for the sake of finding mere familiarity. The same instinct that kept a spouse returning to an abuser.
I... had changed. Somehow. Somewhere. Where, perhaps, one day I would find. I could guess how.
Isolation is not good for a human being.
Nor was what I had done to win it.
And... also...
I didn't want to admit to it.
But really, it made sense.
I could understand this world. It's logic. Its reasoning. I could. Shio could not do the same with mine. And then, earlier, when Tobirama Senju had used killing intent...
As half of me had wanted to die, even then, I could still think rationally.
But in that moment, the entire world had become senseless.
How can I be myself, I thought, if I could not embrace even this?
"I am Akino Kaede," I said the words. Nothing in the external world changed, once their sound passed. The rain continued to fall. "Not just instrumentally. I really am her."
My soul.
My reasoning.
My alien mind, from this alien world.
...how could such a thing not alter me, to the most fundamental level?
I smiled, as the refraction of the light changed; becoming blurry, in a way that half of me, as always and ever felt was off.
And that was reality. And this was the truth.
What I had been running from all this time
I was not an Uzumaki.
Neither was I █▟▚▜▌ ▓▉░▙▁▆.
I was Akino Kaede.
I laughed. "There was someone I forgot to mourn for, after all."
Nobody answered.
"But of course, they wouldn't have wanted anyone shedding tears for them, would they?"
Nobody came.
I let the sorrow go. "No. 'Always and ever onwards.' That was what they thought... Right?"
Nobody grieved.
I had changed. From the origin unto this day
I had changed in a way so severe that the only real answer to, "Am I myself?" was, "No."
But, well, so what, I thought. This is now. Against the winds, forever
I was not myself?
Then, I would become her. WE ARE THE ROAD TO ULTIMA GREY
"Sure," I said, smiling openly as I watched him move about the room. "I'm doing better now."
Akeda stopped and managed to glare at me, smiling all the while.
"I've seen battle-hardened chunin less weary, though most don't have the same skill at deflection. Doing better. Yes; that's true. Tears are a good path to release stress."
I opened my mouth, ready to lash out at the man and. controlled. my. self.
Barely.
I would not react.
I would not react.
I had reaped just about enough from reacting.
"Did you really have to watch, physician-san?"
Akeda blinked. Evidently, I had surprised him again.
"Watching is my job. Healing is instrumental to that. Now, would you answer my question honestly? That's all the payment I ask."
I sighed. Honestly... a proto-psychologist?
"No. I'm not feeling better at all."
He cocked his head to one side in an oddly birdlike motion. "And yet you've filed for discharge early. Why?"
I looked out the window, across the village, beyond the sky, into a dead world...
And turned my back on it, meeting Akeda's gaze.
"Because I chose to."
chapter end
Notes.
Yep. Not dead yet. Never will be. So this is a more proper start to the next arc...
Finally, right? Sorry for the multi-month delay. The factor that caused it isn't likely to be a problem again.
Ever.
Mors delenda est.
"And?" Tobirama Senju seemed genuinely nonplussed. "This is a Shinobi village. Recover quickly."
And with that, without any noticeable change, the Hokage disappeared as completely as the Samsara breaker had appeared. Without a sound, without a motion, and without a trace.
The ANBU turned to regard me silently for a moment, then also vanished.
Moments later, there was a knock on the door.
A pause.
Then the door slid to the left, and through it walked someone I had thought dead.
It was Shio.
The conversation was a blur. I don't remember it. Words were exchanged. Time passed. Eventually, someone shook me slightly, and said my name. Listlessley, I looked up, and into a child's face. She said something in japanese. She was as tall as a grown woman.
No, I was as small as a child.
It took me a moment to translate a sentence back. "I'm sorry, what?"
The girl - Shio, her name was Shio - repeated herself. "Kaede, are you alright?"
Kaede, I thought, the name feeling still in my mind. Is that who I'm being, now? Obviously.
Well then I should reassure the hallucination.
"Yes," I said, almost subconciously, then, "No. No, I'm not." How can you be alive? I wanted to ask. I knew you were dead. How can you defy that knowledge?
"Well... what's wrong?"
"I..." But how could I even explain it without making myself seem too weak to be worthwhile? I closed my eyes, opened them. That was... No. No, I wasn't getting stuck in this trap again.
I put my pain aside. I could take notes on how badly I had miscalculated, later.
For now... for now, I was going to be the best friend I could be.
So it would hurt me to destroy it. So I would break everything for the right reasons, instead of my convenience.
This life would have been easier if nobody cared. The thought came involuntarily - and of course it would have been easier. For someone like me, living as a process was far more natural than attempting true humanity.
It was far emptier, too.
As hollow as Earth had been after the Tetragrammaton fled, and took their flock with them.
As the cities that nature had never taken back,
that never rusted, or crumbled.
that mausoleum that was once called world
I shuddered involuntarily.
There was only one thing left to do.
I opened my mouth and said, "I though you were dead."
"What?" Shio's reply was as quick as it was sharp. I forced myself to meet her eyes, looking at the awareness behind them, so utterly out of place on a face so young.
"Yeah," I smiled, not bothering to hide the bitterness. "I know. Pretty stupid, yeah?"
I didn't expect her to throw her arms around me, and consequently, I wasn't able to keep myself from stiffening up, just a bit. A moment later, I managed to make myself relax. This was supposed to make me feel better.
"Why?" Shio asked, as she withdrew.
I took in a breath, remembering those moments, days ago.
"You showed up, as usual, and we trained for a bit. The conversation took a turn in an odd direction. You... asked me how I could even exist. Someone like me. At our age. You didn't get it. I responded with a little fable that meant everything; nothing. You reacted in a way that made no sense. It was petty, manipulative, inept. And that sort of made me look twice, and notice a bunch of other discrepancies. That girl... she was someone under henge, right?"
"She was," Shio said, nodding. "I don't remember any of this."
"Thought so. Thought so then, too - so I took a live Kunai she had brought with her, and threatened her with it. And she didn't act like you would've. I just got complimented about some kind of trick she thought I did, a sealless kawarimi, and..."
I trailed off. Shio was looking at me, her face white as a sheet, mouth open, and... she knew something I didn't. Or the idea that I was willing to threaten her...
No. That was expected of shinobi, in such situations. Trust, but verify was almost a moral principle. She knew something
"That idiot," she whispered.
She knew the identity of the impostor.
"Who."
Shio shook her head. "Look, this..." She trailed off, shaking her head. "This situation is at least half my fault. Let me try to make things right. Please?"
Trust. You owe it to her.
I really did, didn't I? I closed my eyes, and slowly relaxed every muscle in my face and body back towards nothing. Half of all emotion was in the expression.
"All right. Okay. Fine." I opened my eyes, and after a moment, continued.
"After the impostor fled, I tried to find you for about... a day and a half? No dice. I probably overgeneralised from the mastery of the kawarimi when I assumed an infiltrator had specifically killed you to steal your identity. Are allied nin faking your friends a common thing in the Shinobi world?"
Shio seemed to light up, and I absently wondered what about the question was so invigorating. Then, that moment of unguarded happiness faded into a confusion.
"How did you get that from... No, you don't know that person." She murmured, shaking her head. Then: "No, it's not really common, but - the idea of a spy killing me to target you? Breaking village security, letting you realise this, leaving you alive... Isn't that just a bit strange? Isn't it far simpler to assume a prank?"
Not if Kirigakure decides the best thing for them is you, dead, I thought, then discounted it. It was true, but it had nothing to do with why I had made the choice to believe Shio had been killed.
I had made that choice because...
because...
Because it had made emotional sense. Because I was someone who knew how to smile, when things fell apart.
Idiot.
I refocused myself on the external world. "I guess so." Then, more forcefully. "Yeah. I wasn't thinking clearly. Sorry."
"Sorry?"
"For this," I gestured around me. "Why do you think I'm here?"
"I heard it was Chakra exhaustion."
"...yes and no. I've completed Darkness as the Sun -"
"YOU COMPLETED IT!?" The outburst was so explosive it left my ears ringing and a moment later, the door to the room slid open, a doctor with pure white hair and striking ruby-red eyes standing in the frame.
"Oi!" He said, "Keep it down in here. Some of the ninja around you are seriously wounded!"
Shio bowed, and mumbled a quiet, "Sumimasen."
I stared. At the doctor.
Comic-book albinism? What the hell?
A moment later, the door slid shut, and Shio grabbed my shoulders.
"You completed it!?" She hissed.
I shrugged. "Yeah. It only took you a month, right? Is it really so unbelieveable that I got it down in five weeks? C'mon," I smiled, "Give me a little credit."
"Haha... yeah. Sorry," Shio said, rubbing the back of her neck. "It's just... Wow. That's great! So when are you coming back to class?"
I glanced at her for a moment, just long enough to make it clear that I knew what she was doing, then let the change of topic pass.
"I'm going to be released in two days. I was made to understand that I would immediately be accepted back into the academy following that. Looks like we can start our plan in earnest, soon."
When Shio left, my last distraction left with her, and her absence only highlighted what had happened over the last few days.
It was not pleasant. I had told Shio the truth, but it was really... hollow. Actions, yes, but the context... I had told her what I could, because if I had gone any further, I would have lied to her.
And, I don't know - maybe someone could have lived through that experience and said, "Yes, I acted well, there," but I just didn't have the conceit. How could I?
In a single stroke, I had gained a minor power that I had probably never needed, and lost the pure chakra of death - the single most decisive advantage-in-potentia I had. But that was as nothing compared to the way I had lost it. Before, I could have made myself the image of a useful, loyal Konoha citizen who believed in the dream of the village, a person Senju Tobirama would have felt comfortable regarding a pawn.
Instead, I had demonstrated that I was a reckless child who had wrought a contract with divinity - a contract that meant I would always have a higher calling than the Fireshadow's petty dreams.
I hadn't been planning. I hadn't been thinking. I was so used to a world completely devoid of humanity that when they reappeared, I had treated them as nothing more than scenery. Folly.
I could not continue on like this.
The mistakes I had made hadn't been small, but this... waste, setting myself on an essentially ballistic trajectory and reacting to avoid pain was just so...
Childish.
And where the hell had it come from?
Nonexistent self esteem aside, I was the sort of person who had never cared about how unpleasant reality might be, only what was it, and how to embrace it most tightly. No matter what.
No matter what.
I had lost -
...
Well that was it, wasn't it? I had lost. Just like everyone else. And unlike them, when the Tetragrammaton had come, and reconciled the world, I refused to accept their eutopia, and let go of the pain.
I had grown to value the wholly arbitrary suffering of an entirely uncaring world, because that was the true nature of it. And then, all the good that had counterbalanced that was eaten by our self-made gods, and they left, leaving only the truth behind.
Why had I let things go?
Why not? I had lost it all before.
I grinned. How easy would it be to let myself actually believe in that excuse?
I laughed once, darkly, and threw the sheets off as I stood, and strode over to the window. Standing there, I stared into the night, hands held behind my back.
It was raining. A million, billion tiny ballistic trajectories. Just a little less abstract than mine. The light shining up from the village painted the clouds a dim orange in a way that, as always, half of me felt was subtly wrong. Beneath those clouds, that same light conspired with the rain, making even the haphazard construction of the village beautiful; the reflections acute, and bright, highlighting the contours of the world.
There was no continuity between the choices I had made in my first life - embracing both pain and truth - and the choices I had made in these last two weeks. What I had done... I had rejected my ability to reason for the sake of finding mere familiarity. The same instinct that kept a spouse returning to an abuser.
I... had changed. Somehow. Somewhere. Where, perhaps, one day I would find. I could guess how.
Isolation is not good for a human being.
Nor was what I had done to win it.
And... also...
I didn't want to admit to it.
But really, it made sense.
I could understand this world. It's logic. Its reasoning. I could. Shio could not do the same with mine. And then, earlier, when Tobirama Senju had used killing intent...
As half of me had wanted to die, even then, I could still think rationally.
But in that moment, the entire world had become senseless.
How can I be myself, I thought, if I could not embrace even this?
"I am Akino Kaede," I said the words. Nothing in the external world changed, once their sound passed. The rain continued to fall. "Not just instrumentally. I really am her."
My soul.
My reasoning.
My alien mind, from this alien world.
...how could such a thing not alter me, to the most fundamental level?
I smiled, as the refraction of the light changed; becoming blurry, in a way that half of me, as always and ever felt was off.
And that was reality. And this was the truth.
What I had been running from all this time
I was not an Uzumaki.
Neither was I █▟▚▜▌ ▓▉░▙▁▆.
I was Akino Kaede.
I laughed. "There was someone I forgot to mourn for, after all."
Nobody answered.
"But of course, they wouldn't have wanted anyone shedding tears for them, would they?"
Nobody came.
I let the sorrow go. "No. 'Always and ever onwards.' That was what they thought... Right?"
Nobody grieved.
I had changed. From the origin unto this day
I had changed in a way so severe that the only real answer to, "Am I myself?" was, "No."
But, well, so what, I thought. This is now. Against the winds, forever
I was not myself?
Then, I would become her. WE ARE THE ROAD TO ULTIMA GREY
second of the number : connected and assumed
Sensing the change, the man in white leaned back against his clay throne, a let out a shaky breath.
"Feeling better, Akino-san?" The man with white hair and red eyes smiled at me in a way that felt just ever so slightly off.That had been far, far too close.
Later, I would learn his name: Akeda Tohru. A medic, a scholar, and a man who did not believe in peace through inaction."Sure," I said, smiling openly as I watched him move about the room. "I'm doing better now."
Akeda stopped and managed to glare at me, smiling all the while.
"I've seen battle-hardened chunin less weary, though most don't have the same skill at deflection. Doing better. Yes; that's true. Tears are a good path to release stress."
I opened my mouth, ready to lash out at the man and. controlled. my. self.
Barely.
I would not react.
I would not react.
I had reaped just about enough from reacting.
"Did you really have to watch, physician-san?"
Akeda blinked. Evidently, I had surprised him again.
"Watching is my job. Healing is instrumental to that. Now, would you answer my question honestly? That's all the payment I ask."
I sighed. Honestly... a proto-psychologist?
"No. I'm not feeling better at all."
He cocked his head to one side in an oddly birdlike motion. "And yet you've filed for discharge early. Why?"
I looked out the window, across the village, beyond the sky, into a dead world...
And turned my back on it, meeting Akeda's gaze.
"Because I chose to."
"Because I chose for you to," the Breaker whispered.
chapter end
Notes.
Yep. Not dead yet. Never will be. So this is a more proper start to the next arc...
Finally, right? Sorry for the multi-month delay. The factor that caused it isn't likely to be a problem again.
Ever.
Mors delenda est.
Last edited:
The Axiom of Choice
Endfall
A zero on the singularity.
- Location
- Somewhere else.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Well, this took embarrassingly long. But, not as embarassingly long as And Silence is taking.
The basic reason is that I got stuck in a revision loop. For those of you who haven't ever experienced one, it's like this: Write something, revise, sleep on it, read the revision to make sure there are no problems, there are minor problems, revise, sleep on it, read the revision to make sure there are no problems - but you're more paranoid now. There are problems. Revise. Paranoia intensifies ftw, revise ftw, repeat cycle for a few weeks ftw, feel that the entire thing is hatefully bad and awful ftw, revise, revise, revise.
It's awesome.
Here's the chapter.
.
.
I opened my eyes. Morning light poured in through the window of the hospital room, along with the mnemonic drone of cicadas.
"Ah, the obligatory unfamiliar ceiling."
I frowned.
"Should have said that two days back, na? Shit."
Previously, I had been aware of my split nature, but yesterday, I had at last acknowledged it. Now that I was aware of it, the dualism in my thoughts was as clear as morning dew.
Or so it felt.
While I could use both parts of myself, there was a gap between the each of us. I thought, I remembered, but my reactions, muted and controlled, were not my soul's reactions. To that part of me, it was all too fresh and new - and scars that had healed decades ago kept being torn open if I so much as thought the wrong way. A gap between knowing, and understanding. Likely due to the more developed, experienced nature of my - for lack of any saner term - wavefunction-soul (because where the hell was my quantum brain?) - it was doing a lot of heavy lifting. Too much, since, apparently, I had somehow managed to survive for over half a decade without managing to import the fact from my local soul that, oh, yeah, I was thinking with two...
Two what, exactly? In local terms, it would be two souls. In global terms? Self? Mind? Concioussnesses? No - all of those were wrong. The duality existed, but it was maddeningly subtle. Two sets of values, two sets of thoughts, two sets of reaction, but they were all of them unified. So -
"Why not soul?" I muttered. The thought continued unvoiced: I mean, what with my local brain, my soul, and the wavefunction-soul from Res, I had already transcended dualism. In fact, if the brain was conscious, then there were three... Ha. Hahahaha! Why not, why not; let's be the Yahweh!
Shaking my head in an attempt to clear whatever remnants of sleep had inspired that thought, I sat down on the floor, legs crossed, and let my self fade a bit; just enough that I was without any particular inclination. This...
It had to be done.
I needed to understand my soul - the new one. I needed to understand my soul - the original. We both needed to be facets of a whole; perspectives, instead of individuals.
We needed to become each other. And to begin with, my soul needed to become more like me. The gravity of my experience was too great for my older half to become much like my soul.
So... From half of me, I spoke.
The content? You could sum it up as, this is how the world ends, this is how the world ends, this is how the world ends, not with a whimper, but a silent smile. NIHIL EST.
Yes. Quite. It was just like that. The only difference between this moment and my earlier breakdown was that, this time, I wasn't overriding my better nature.
I was telling it why I had become worse.
The main thing I learned from the entire experience was that I had underestimated just how estranged from human nature my thoughts and inclinations had become. Calmly, I felt as half of me relived the death march my first life had been, a bright start followed by a series of increasingly meaningless images. The other did everything it could to block it out.
Calmly, without moving even a bit, I felt tears begin to fall from my eyes, and the faint echo of horror.
Then - I let my dissociation slip.
And simultaneously observed as one part remained a rock in an ocean of indifference, while the other sobbed and sobbed.
Who was I?
I was the middle.
And the contradiction was too much - the perspective disintegrated, and I shuddered, fighting to remain still, nauseated by the mix of conflicting emotions and impulses, the tug of war between make-it-stop and so-it-goes, and the we-need-we dictating everything -
This was going to take time.
But, that was fine. If it had worked instantly, it would have been wrong to begin with. Forging a greater self was something few people ever attempted, even in the strangest and last days of Resian society (which had passed long before the Transcension), when two stranger's minds could melt into and out of each other as easily as crossing beams of light.
Mixing thoughts for a few moments was one thing, though. Making two people one? Really, that was something nobody did without serious medical assistance.
It took me the better part of an hour to regain total, absent, control of myself. Then, I let myself fall back into the same state, and did it again.
And again.
And again.
I continued, defining half of myself; drawing the boundary of who I had once been, feeling out the choices, the differences, the reactions, the me of old and the younger half. By the end, the tears had stopped, and I had moved to earlier memories. Common ground. A shared perspective. A foundation to build a true self on. If any existed at all - it could only be there. The end of my life was too...
Idiosyncratic.
I had probably somewhat tarnished the innocence of the newest half of my self. I didn't know how I felt about that. On one hand, if I couldn't understand myself, it was only a matter of time until something like this happened again. On the other, if I ended up becoming nothing more than an echo of my older half...
I hoped there was middle ground. I really did.
After all.
There are some things that you can only lose. It would be nice, if a whole part of me could still have them.
Subject: Akino Kaede (clanless)
Rank: Civilian (Academy Conscript)
Sex: Female - Yin-Normative
Age: 6 years, 11 months
Height: 4 shaku, 5 bu
Description of Case: Subject delivered to Konoha Medical approx 2100 by ANBU operative Hawk in a state of extreme chakra exhaustion. Condition deemed life-threatening; care ordered by operative. At 2331 subject's heart stops beating. Medic Akeda ressucitates. At 303 subject's heart stops beating. Medic Akeda ressucitates. At 602 subject attains semilucid state; reports pain diagnosed as extensive burns across entirety of keirakukei; opium administered by Medic Yuiki. At 630 subject noted to be breathing irregularly. At 641 Subject ceases breathing. Medic Hiro'o ressucitates, and assumes primary responsibility; Medic Yuiki reprimanded. Compound sedative administered by Medic Hiro'o at 1200; to be repeated daily. No further complications.
Addendum 27-Water-671: Subject's chakra remains somewhat toxic. Symptoms identical to chakra wasting encountered in 551 AS following the Uzumaki clan's failed attempt to [redacted]. Expected mortality within no more than twenty years. - Medic Shinsō
Addendum: Subject shows signs of long-term genjutsu damage. - Nidaime Hokage
Of course, the records held more information than just that; but none of it was important.
I looked up to Akeda who was watching me with statuesque calm. "Why are you showing me this?"
He blinked, once. "Why should I not?"
"As a ward of the state, I doubt I have any particular right..."
"Ah." Akeda smiled, thin and foxlike. "You're correct; but as this documentation is not classified, my sinecure here provides considerable leeway."
"Your... sinecure?"
Akeda leant back against the wall, "Of course. Did you think that we provided healing services to Konoha freely?"
'We,' I mouthed. "You're not a regular member of Konoha's forces, are you?"
"No. Not in the least. I - we - come from the Imperial College in Hinokyō. Areas like this - places where chakra users are common - are special. We don't know how, or why, but where many such individuals congregate, everything else tends to concentrate as well. The capital, with it's samurai, temple monks, and even us, is similar, but established. Also, while there are far more individuals with chakra-capacity, the density and proportion is less, and the effects, likewise. This place, though, hasn't existed for more than thirty years. Here, one can study the establishment of everything." He shrugged. "Such an opportunity to study is very rare. We could not ignore it. Naturally, the Revered Hokage understood this, and granted our request to come and study such things. In return, developing Konoha's medical knowledge and providing medical services was the least we could do."
Translation: It was the price agreed upon. Also, it wasn't an answer. "Interesting," I said, then decided to test the waters. "but that really doesn't answer my first question."
"Doesn't it?" Akeda asked, smiling without any real sincerity. "A child your age has no business noticing that level of deflection. I say this, I show you your records, and you show every sign of understanding them, if not the reaction I anticipated. Figure it out."
Well, when it was presented like that...
"You study geniuses."
Akeda nodded. "Among a few other things."
"Then, why are you studying me? I'm not a genius. Maybe a bit smarter than my peers, but only -"
"Don't patronise me, Akino-kun. We know."
Yeah. I hadn't expected that to work.
I had made a mistake regarding Akeda Tohru. He wasn't a psychologist. He was something like a scientist. But at the same time, he wasn't what Resians would have understood as one.
How to put this?
He watched things, pulled them apart, but didn't tend to do any experiments - or rather, those that he did do lacked any proper controls. A natural philosopher halfway between the fallacies of aristotelianism and the modern way.
In this case, he had wanted to determinine the limits of my comprehension, and, should it prove sufficient, to observe how I reacted to the news of my probable death - something he informed me was not forged for the purpose. I had a feeling being told all of this was a continuation of his study.
The entire scenario didn't particularly endear me to him - so I didn't waste any time telling him that my reaction was bad data. Instead, I questioned his judgement, just that little bit harder, and he responded by enumerating the very many discrepancies between my behaviour and that of a normal six year old, along with which of those positively indicated that I was a genius. That list went back months, and left me feeling very, very exposed.
If nothing else, it was instructive to learn just how much information I had leaked, while also gaining a definition of what genius meant by everything it was not. The term actually seemed to mean something entirely other from what it meant on Terra Res.
It wasn't about insight. It was only about how fast someone could learn. If I had understood everything correctly - if - then to be a genius was to learn every possible domain of knowledge faster than everyone else. And uniformly so.
I had no idea how I had managed the combination of serendipity and unluckiness necessary to sell that impression to Konoha's passive intelligence apparatus. Perhaps I hadn't, and Akeda was just given pieces that supported the picture. I didn't know.
Meanwhile, according to Senju Tobirama, my mind showed signs of genjutsu damage. It was one thing to know that I was not myself. It was quite another to know that a man who held the power to kill me with a word knew it just as well. I could only hope he didn't have any understanding of the actual depth of that wrongness. If he did, well.
It was one thing to do what he was doing to an inexperienced, reckless child. To someone who was fully mentally adult - to someone that Konoha's propaganda meant less than nothing to - he would...
What, exactly? Defect sooner, probably, but his plans almost certainly included my death anyway. Rule zero of dealing with a divine contractor - if you plan to kill them, don't say so where they can hear you. A god might be listening in. Don't say it at all.
Make them agree to walk into their own death.
The only good thing about this was that however far the timeline of Naruto had progressed, the Yamanaka should not have the ability to read memories just yet. I had -
The world stuttered, and I jerked, having drifted off for a second. I shook my head, and after taking a second to remember where I had been, continued. Method of determination blank, ramifications of the Hokage determining, or just fabricating detailed information about my mental state. Consideration of this information.
I wondered if leaving open the possibility that he was mistaken was for the sake of my sanity, or a sign of my lack thereof.
A thought occurred. What I had done - and everything I knew - suggested that divinity was innately beyond human means, here. If that was the case...
Then I doubted that the methods employed by Rinnegami in getting me this body were so approximate that there would be traces. I wasn't myself, but - what if that had nothing to do with the genjutsu?
And hadn't I been hallucinating, there at the end? The Breaker's voice?
What if I hadn't been hallucinating at all?
I felt my jaw tighten. He could have done it. Could have raped my decisions into a facsimile of his liking.
But, why? My behaviour was disgraceful; not effective. I had systematically broken every great opportunity afforded me. I had actively damaged my ability to ever reach the potential that he seemed so enamoured of.
I was gong to die young, and I had given myself the illness that would kill me. And that wasn't exactly conducive to his stated goal of torturing me forever. I doubted it would stop him, but it would be inconvenient.
Who, why, how, to what end?
Questions, and all of them, uniformly, without any coherent answers.
I sighed, and continued walking down the hall.
Until I had those answers, I decided, I would simply hold myself responsible for everything.
A bored looking chunin met me in the lobby of the medical centre and escorted me directly to the academy. He didn't introduce himself, of course. Hahaha, naaaaah.
My freedom of direction was gone. I was being railroaded. I would obtain the Uzumaki Libraries, full stop. It didn't matter what I wanted; having agreed, the terms would now be enforced. Had I disagreed, the terms probably still would have been enforced by even more overt coercion.
The chunin stopped at the gates of the academy and prodded me forward with what I was coming to recognize as killing intent - the paradoxical desire to just shove a knife into your throat so the person aiming it at you stopped wanting to kill you.
Fortunately, compared to the Hokage's, it was nothing. The sensation ceased just after I walked through the doors, at the precise moment they closed. I paused.
Interesting. At a later date, I really did need to investigate if killing intent was limited to line of sight. Chakra... wasn't. That alone suggested little, but if killing intent wasn't a chakra based ability, then what -
Congratulations, I through to myself, a bit dryly, you've become so fascinated by a death threat's mechanism that you've ignored the ramifications of it.
The most important of which: Konoha definitely no longer considered me one of her own.
You do not transmit to an ally the intent to murder them, after all.
Nice.
The genin reservist manning the desk, a man less an eye and an arm, told me that classes were already in session. Consequently, I was made to wait for nearly two hours, listening to increasingly outlandish war stories until, finally, a harried looking chunin escorted me to Ueda Rokurō's office, where I was made to demonstrate my chakra.
From my experiments in woodworking, I already knew how to manipulate it into my hand. It was gently, like so, like moving a muscle, but only imperfectly, like a thousand sentient feathers I could control, but only imperfectly. It was perfectly like nothing, but it wasn't like nothing, perfectly.
It did not come with ease. But it did come. One moment, my hand was just a hand. The next, I had dove into the truth of what I had taken for yin, of what I understood was death, and pulled that tattered thing apart, reweaving it into the lie that I was mortal, and whole. Around my hand, barely, barely there, the air distorted, and flickered, subtly darkling.
I lowered it to Ueda's desk, placing it against a sheet of paper.
A second passed, and it did not disintegrate. When I lifted my hand, that page came with it, held by a supernatural grip. Nodding once, he had me jerk my arm in random directions several times - probably so he could check to see if I was actually using chakra or just a grip technique. Finally, he nodded, and quickly wrote a note on a slip of paper, sealing it with a hanko stamp.
That was all there was to joining the academy again. I suspected that the Hokage might have greased the wheels - but even if he hadn't, the village had a pressing need to turn young bodies into young corpses as fast as possible. The academy facilitated this.
More bodies were always welcome.
Class?
Normal. Being wholly detached from existing social structures was very occasionally useful, like that. The only odd thing was that Shio wasn't there.
The day ended. As I slowly walked towards the gate - where there would, no doubt, be a chunin waiting for me, I slowly turned an old passage over in my head. Focusing on nothing as I let my unconcious minds integrate data.
call me raksha, call me shinma, call me titan
deva mortal god
call me what you wi
A pair of arms threw themselves around me. I almost locked up, but managed to respond to the attack appropriately, turning the grapple into an overhead throw -
And slammed Shio against the ground in front of me.
Oh.
Shit.
Ohshitohshitohshit!
I had been walking towards the exit of the academy, with one foot in the real world and one foot in fantasy, and -
"Shio!" I dropped to the ground, kneeling at her side. "Are you okay!?"
She blinked, not focusing on me, looking at nothing. "Ow," she said at last, as I stared at her, still horrified. "That... wasn't taijutsu." She focused on me. "Really, Kaede?"
I grimaced and stood, offering a hand. "Sorry." After a moment, Shio took it, and I pulled her up. I think the entire thing was more for my benefit than hers.
She dusted herself off, not meeting my gaze, for a moment. Then finally, she sighed, and half smiled. "Don't worry about it. I just... It's good to see you back?"
After that? I thought, with mild incredulity. I tried for a genuine smile, and found myself settling for a genuine fake, corners of my eyes crinkled upward and everything. Another skill from another life. It seemed to set her at ease.
"It's good to be back," I said. "Not that I didn't start enjoying our little sessions, but well, you know." I made a weighing gesture with my hands. "Progress, progress."
"Yeah..." Now she was the one looking uncomfortable. "Listen, there's someone I want you to meet. Can you be in Room 15 in ten minutes?"
I shrugged. "Yeah, of course. Who are they?"
"Um... I -" Shio bounced slightly on the balls of her feet. "-want that to be a surprise? Maybe." What. What?
She turned, beginning to walk off, then drew to a halt and turned back around. "Hey, promise me one thing?"
I bit my lip. I hated committing to something blind, and this was giving me all kinds of weird vibes, but...
I wasn't going repeat my mistakes. People were people. If I couldn't treat them as such, then I -
- took a deep breath, and nodded. "Sure."
"Give him a chance."
.
..
...
He was the one.
The impostor.
Let's advance the conversation to the next node.
"I promise I will."
"Good. Then - see you there!"
And with those words, she vanished in a burst of chakra enhanced speed far to excess of anything I had ever seen from her before.
To the air, I asked, "Was she just protecting my ego, or...?"
Nothing answered.
It was... a bit endearing, if she had done it to spare my feelings, such as they were. I couldn't really think of any other coherent reason her to hide that skill.
I shook my head, as I turned, and began walking back towards the academy building. It didn't matter.
Things were moving ahead.
As for the boy, I'd give him a chance. After all, didn't I owe him a certain amount of gratitude for setting this entire thing off? I felt like I did. And I could suppress my darker feelings until he tried breaking faith with me again.
Yeah, why not? It wasn't as if I'd have to wait forever.
Re-entering the building, I made my way to Room Fifteen, and leaned back against the wall, eyes closed, enjoying the silence.
In time, the sound of small footsteps echoed outside the door, and then, it slid open.
A boy walked through the door, followed by Shio. I casually gave him a once-over.
Pale skin, charcoal-black hair, otherwise asiatic features. Gracile. Probably trained speed more than strength. Conservative fashion sense - an old clan? Then, I felt it. It was barely, barely there, floating in the background. The smallest, tiniest amount of killing intent I had yet felt.
Less the intent to murder than a naked blade.
Less a plummet to death than l'appel du vide.
Just... there. Undirected - a calm killing intent. In refinement, in quantity, in level of threat, it was inferior to even the chunin's from earlier, and compared to the Hokage's it was the difference between heaven and earth. Even so - it unsettled me. Because, there was no target. He just didn't care. Everything that existed, existed to be killed by his own two hands. Everything that someone else killed was stolen from him. This boy... my eyes snapped up to meet his own, startlingly amber ones - and my thoughts were cut off, as he began to speak.
"Hello," he said with a smile that fully reached his eyes, that intent not weakening even a little. "I'm Orochimaru. Please take care of me."
The basic reason is that I got stuck in a revision loop. For those of you who haven't ever experienced one, it's like this: Write something, revise, sleep on it, read the revision to make sure there are no problems, there are minor problems, revise, sleep on it, read the revision to make sure there are no problems - but you're more paranoid now. There are problems. Revise. Paranoia intensifies ftw, revise ftw, repeat cycle for a few weeks ftw, feel that the entire thing is hatefully bad and awful ftw, revise, revise, revise.
It's awesome.
Here's the chapter.
.
.
SNI
I opened my eyes. Morning light poured in through the window of the hospital room, along with the mnemonic drone of cicadas.
"Ah, the obligatory unfamiliar ceiling."
I frowned.
"Should have said that two days back, na? Shit."
0500 Hours
Previously, I had been aware of my split nature, but yesterday, I had at last acknowledged it. Now that I was aware of it, the dualism in my thoughts was as clear as morning dew.
Or so it felt.
While I could use both parts of myself, there was a gap between the each of us. I thought, I remembered, but my reactions, muted and controlled, were not my soul's reactions. To that part of me, it was all too fresh and new - and scars that had healed decades ago kept being torn open if I so much as thought the wrong way. A gap between knowing, and understanding. Likely due to the more developed, experienced nature of my - for lack of any saner term - wavefunction-soul (because where the hell was my quantum brain?) - it was doing a lot of heavy lifting. Too much, since, apparently, I had somehow managed to survive for over half a decade without managing to import the fact from my local soul that, oh, yeah, I was thinking with two...
Two what, exactly? In local terms, it would be two souls. In global terms? Self? Mind? Concioussnesses? No - all of those were wrong. The duality existed, but it was maddeningly subtle. Two sets of values, two sets of thoughts, two sets of reaction, but they were all of them unified. So -
"Why not soul?" I muttered. The thought continued unvoiced: I mean, what with my local brain, my soul, and the wavefunction-soul from Res, I had already transcended dualism. In fact, if the brain was conscious, then there were three... Ha. Hahahaha! Why not, why not; let's be the Yahweh!
Shaking my head in an attempt to clear whatever remnants of sleep had inspired that thought, I sat down on the floor, legs crossed, and let my self fade a bit; just enough that I was without any particular inclination. This...
It had to be done.
I needed to understand my soul - the new one. I needed to understand my soul - the original. We both needed to be facets of a whole; perspectives, instead of individuals.
We needed to become each other. And to begin with, my soul needed to become more like me. The gravity of my experience was too great for my older half to become much like my soul.
So... From half of me, I spoke.
The content? You could sum it up as, this is how the world ends, this is how the world ends, this is how the world ends, not with a whimper, but a silent smile. NIHIL EST.
Yes. Quite. It was just like that. The only difference between this moment and my earlier breakdown was that, this time, I wasn't overriding my better nature.
I was telling it why I had become worse.
The main thing I learned from the entire experience was that I had underestimated just how estranged from human nature my thoughts and inclinations had become. Calmly, I felt as half of me relived the death march my first life had been, a bright start followed by a series of increasingly meaningless images. The other did everything it could to block it out.
Calmly, without moving even a bit, I felt tears begin to fall from my eyes, and the faint echo of horror.
Then - I let my dissociation slip.
And simultaneously observed as one part remained a rock in an ocean of indifference, while the other sobbed and sobbed.
Who was I?
I was the middle.
And the contradiction was too much - the perspective disintegrated, and I shuddered, fighting to remain still, nauseated by the mix of conflicting emotions and impulses, the tug of war between make-it-stop and so-it-goes, and the we-need-we dictating everything -
This was going to take time.
But, that was fine. If it had worked instantly, it would have been wrong to begin with. Forging a greater self was something few people ever attempted, even in the strangest and last days of Resian society (which had passed long before the Transcension), when two stranger's minds could melt into and out of each other as easily as crossing beams of light.
Mixing thoughts for a few moments was one thing, though. Making two people one? Really, that was something nobody did without serious medical assistance.
It took me the better part of an hour to regain total, absent, control of myself. Then, I let myself fall back into the same state, and did it again.
And again.
And again.
I continued, defining half of myself; drawing the boundary of who I had once been, feeling out the choices, the differences, the reactions, the me of old and the younger half. By the end, the tears had stopped, and I had moved to earlier memories. Common ground. A shared perspective. A foundation to build a true self on. If any existed at all - it could only be there. The end of my life was too...
Idiosyncratic.
I had probably somewhat tarnished the innocence of the newest half of my self. I didn't know how I felt about that. On one hand, if I couldn't understand myself, it was only a matter of time until something like this happened again. On the other, if I ended up becoming nothing more than an echo of my older half...
I hoped there was middle ground. I really did.
After all.
There are some things that you can only lose. It would be nice, if a whole part of me could still have them.
0900 Hours
Subject: Akino Kaede (clanless)
Rank: Civilian (Academy Conscript)
Sex: Female - Yin-Normative
Age: 6 years, 11 months
Height: 4 shaku, 5 bu
Description of Case: Subject delivered to Konoha Medical approx 2100 by ANBU operative Hawk in a state of extreme chakra exhaustion. Condition deemed life-threatening; care ordered by operative. At 2331 subject's heart stops beating. Medic Akeda ressucitates. At 303 subject's heart stops beating. Medic Akeda ressucitates. At 602 subject attains semilucid state; reports pain diagnosed as extensive burns across entirety of keirakukei; opium administered by Medic Yuiki. At 630 subject noted to be breathing irregularly. At 641 Subject ceases breathing. Medic Hiro'o ressucitates, and assumes primary responsibility; Medic Yuiki reprimanded. Compound sedative administered by Medic Hiro'o at 1200; to be repeated daily. No further complications.
Addendum 27-Water-671: Subject's chakra remains somewhat toxic. Symptoms identical to chakra wasting encountered in 551 AS following the Uzumaki clan's failed attempt to [redacted]. Expected mortality within no more than twenty years. - Medic Shinsō
Addendum: Subject shows signs of long-term genjutsu damage. - Nidaime Hokage
Of course, the records held more information than just that; but none of it was important.
I looked up to Akeda who was watching me with statuesque calm. "Why are you showing me this?"
He blinked, once. "Why should I not?"
"As a ward of the state, I doubt I have any particular right..."
"Ah." Akeda smiled, thin and foxlike. "You're correct; but as this documentation is not classified, my sinecure here provides considerable leeway."
"Your... sinecure?"
Akeda leant back against the wall, "Of course. Did you think that we provided healing services to Konoha freely?"
'We,' I mouthed. "You're not a regular member of Konoha's forces, are you?"
"No. Not in the least. I - we - come from the Imperial College in Hinokyō. Areas like this - places where chakra users are common - are special. We don't know how, or why, but where many such individuals congregate, everything else tends to concentrate as well. The capital, with it's samurai, temple monks, and even us, is similar, but established. Also, while there are far more individuals with chakra-capacity, the density and proportion is less, and the effects, likewise. This place, though, hasn't existed for more than thirty years. Here, one can study the establishment of everything." He shrugged. "Such an opportunity to study is very rare. We could not ignore it. Naturally, the Revered Hokage understood this, and granted our request to come and study such things. In return, developing Konoha's medical knowledge and providing medical services was the least we could do."
Translation: It was the price agreed upon. Also, it wasn't an answer. "Interesting," I said, then decided to test the waters. "but that really doesn't answer my first question."
"Doesn't it?" Akeda asked, smiling without any real sincerity. "A child your age has no business noticing that level of deflection. I say this, I show you your records, and you show every sign of understanding them, if not the reaction I anticipated. Figure it out."
Well, when it was presented like that...
"You study geniuses."
Akeda nodded. "Among a few other things."
"Then, why are you studying me? I'm not a genius. Maybe a bit smarter than my peers, but only -"
"Don't patronise me, Akino-kun. We know."
Yeah. I hadn't expected that to work.
1000 Hours
I had made a mistake regarding Akeda Tohru. He wasn't a psychologist. He was something like a scientist. But at the same time, he wasn't what Resians would have understood as one.
How to put this?
He watched things, pulled them apart, but didn't tend to do any experiments - or rather, those that he did do lacked any proper controls. A natural philosopher halfway between the fallacies of aristotelianism and the modern way.
In this case, he had wanted to determinine the limits of my comprehension, and, should it prove sufficient, to observe how I reacted to the news of my probable death - something he informed me was not forged for the purpose. I had a feeling being told all of this was a continuation of his study.
The entire scenario didn't particularly endear me to him - so I didn't waste any time telling him that my reaction was bad data. Instead, I questioned his judgement, just that little bit harder, and he responded by enumerating the very many discrepancies between my behaviour and that of a normal six year old, along with which of those positively indicated that I was a genius. That list went back months, and left me feeling very, very exposed.
If nothing else, it was instructive to learn just how much information I had leaked, while also gaining a definition of what genius meant by everything it was not. The term actually seemed to mean something entirely other from what it meant on Terra Res.
It wasn't about insight. It was only about how fast someone could learn. If I had understood everything correctly - if - then to be a genius was to learn every possible domain of knowledge faster than everyone else. And uniformly so.
I had no idea how I had managed the combination of serendipity and unluckiness necessary to sell that impression to Konoha's passive intelligence apparatus. Perhaps I hadn't, and Akeda was just given pieces that supported the picture. I didn't know.
Meanwhile, according to Senju Tobirama, my mind showed signs of genjutsu damage. It was one thing to know that I was not myself. It was quite another to know that a man who held the power to kill me with a word knew it just as well. I could only hope he didn't have any understanding of the actual depth of that wrongness. If he did, well.
It was one thing to do what he was doing to an inexperienced, reckless child. To someone who was fully mentally adult - to someone that Konoha's propaganda meant less than nothing to - he would...
What, exactly? Defect sooner, probably, but his plans almost certainly included my death anyway. Rule zero of dealing with a divine contractor - if you plan to kill them, don't say so where they can hear you. A god might be listening in. Don't say it at all.
Make them agree to walk into their own death.
The only good thing about this was that however far the timeline of Naruto had progressed, the Yamanaka should not have the ability to read memories just yet. I had -
1030 Hours
The world stuttered, and I jerked, having drifted off for a second. I shook my head, and after taking a second to remember where I had been, continued. Method of determination blank, ramifications of the Hokage determining, or just fabricating detailed information about my mental state. Consideration of this information.
I wondered if leaving open the possibility that he was mistaken was for the sake of my sanity, or a sign of my lack thereof.
A thought occurred. What I had done - and everything I knew - suggested that divinity was innately beyond human means, here. If that was the case...
Then I doubted that the methods employed by Rinnegami in getting me this body were so approximate that there would be traces. I wasn't myself, but - what if that had nothing to do with the genjutsu?
And hadn't I been hallucinating, there at the end? The Breaker's voice?
What if I hadn't been hallucinating at all?
I felt my jaw tighten. He could have done it. Could have raped my decisions into a facsimile of his liking.
But, why? My behaviour was disgraceful; not effective. I had systematically broken every great opportunity afforded me. I had actively damaged my ability to ever reach the potential that he seemed so enamoured of.
I was gong to die young, and I had given myself the illness that would kill me. And that wasn't exactly conducive to his stated goal of torturing me forever. I doubted it would stop him, but it would be inconvenient.
Who, why, how, to what end?
Questions, and all of them, uniformly, without any coherent answers.
I sighed, and continued walking down the hall.
Until I had those answers, I decided, I would simply hold myself responsible for everything.
1200 Hours
A bored looking chunin met me in the lobby of the medical centre and escorted me directly to the academy. He didn't introduce himself, of course. Hahaha, naaaaah.
My freedom of direction was gone. I was being railroaded. I would obtain the Uzumaki Libraries, full stop. It didn't matter what I wanted; having agreed, the terms would now be enforced. Had I disagreed, the terms probably still would have been enforced by even more overt coercion.
The chunin stopped at the gates of the academy and prodded me forward with what I was coming to recognize as killing intent - the paradoxical desire to just shove a knife into your throat so the person aiming it at you stopped wanting to kill you.
Fortunately, compared to the Hokage's, it was nothing. The sensation ceased just after I walked through the doors, at the precise moment they closed. I paused.
Interesting. At a later date, I really did need to investigate if killing intent was limited to line of sight. Chakra... wasn't. That alone suggested little, but if killing intent wasn't a chakra based ability, then what -
Congratulations, I through to myself, a bit dryly, you've become so fascinated by a death threat's mechanism that you've ignored the ramifications of it.
The most important of which: Konoha definitely no longer considered me one of her own.
You do not transmit to an ally the intent to murder them, after all.
Nice.
The genin reservist manning the desk, a man less an eye and an arm, told me that classes were already in session. Consequently, I was made to wait for nearly two hours, listening to increasingly outlandish war stories until, finally, a harried looking chunin escorted me to Ueda Rokurō's office, where I was made to demonstrate my chakra.
From my experiments in woodworking, I already knew how to manipulate it into my hand. It was gently, like so, like moving a muscle, but only imperfectly, like a thousand sentient feathers I could control, but only imperfectly. It was perfectly like nothing, but it wasn't like nothing, perfectly.
It did not come with ease. But it did come. One moment, my hand was just a hand. The next, I had dove into the truth of what I had taken for yin, of what I understood was death, and pulled that tattered thing apart, reweaving it into the lie that I was mortal, and whole. Around my hand, barely, barely there, the air distorted, and flickered, subtly darkling.
I lowered it to Ueda's desk, placing it against a sheet of paper.
A second passed, and it did not disintegrate. When I lifted my hand, that page came with it, held by a supernatural grip. Nodding once, he had me jerk my arm in random directions several times - probably so he could check to see if I was actually using chakra or just a grip technique. Finally, he nodded, and quickly wrote a note on a slip of paper, sealing it with a hanko stamp.
That was all there was to joining the academy again. I suspected that the Hokage might have greased the wheels - but even if he hadn't, the village had a pressing need to turn young bodies into young corpses as fast as possible. The academy facilitated this.
More bodies were always welcome.
1421 Hours
Class?
Normal. Being wholly detached from existing social structures was very occasionally useful, like that. The only odd thing was that Shio wasn't there.
1611 Hours
The day ended. As I slowly walked towards the gate - where there would, no doubt, be a chunin waiting for me, I slowly turned an old passage over in my head. Focusing on nothing as I let my unconcious minds integrate data.
call me raksha, call me shinma, call me titan
deva mortal god
call me what you wi
A pair of arms threw themselves around me. I almost locked up, but managed to respond to the attack appropriately, turning the grapple into an overhead throw -
And slammed Shio against the ground in front of me.
Oh.
Shit.
Ohshitohshitohshit!
I had been walking towards the exit of the academy, with one foot in the real world and one foot in fantasy, and -
"Shio!" I dropped to the ground, kneeling at her side. "Are you okay!?"
She blinked, not focusing on me, looking at nothing. "Ow," she said at last, as I stared at her, still horrified. "That... wasn't taijutsu." She focused on me. "Really, Kaede?"
I grimaced and stood, offering a hand. "Sorry." After a moment, Shio took it, and I pulled her up. I think the entire thing was more for my benefit than hers.
She dusted herself off, not meeting my gaze, for a moment. Then finally, she sighed, and half smiled. "Don't worry about it. I just... It's good to see you back?"
After that? I thought, with mild incredulity. I tried for a genuine smile, and found myself settling for a genuine fake, corners of my eyes crinkled upward and everything. Another skill from another life. It seemed to set her at ease.
"It's good to be back," I said. "Not that I didn't start enjoying our little sessions, but well, you know." I made a weighing gesture with my hands. "Progress, progress."
"Yeah..." Now she was the one looking uncomfortable. "Listen, there's someone I want you to meet. Can you be in Room 15 in ten minutes?"
I shrugged. "Yeah, of course. Who are they?"
"Um... I -" Shio bounced slightly on the balls of her feet. "-want that to be a surprise? Maybe." What. What?
She turned, beginning to walk off, then drew to a halt and turned back around. "Hey, promise me one thing?"
I bit my lip. I hated committing to something blind, and this was giving me all kinds of weird vibes, but...
I wasn't going repeat my mistakes. People were people. If I couldn't treat them as such, then I -
- took a deep breath, and nodded. "Sure."
"Give him a chance."
.
..
...
He was the one.
The impostor.
Let's advance the conversation to the next node.
"I promise I will."
"Good. Then - see you there!"
And with those words, she vanished in a burst of chakra enhanced speed far to excess of anything I had ever seen from her before.
To the air, I asked, "Was she just protecting my ego, or...?"
Nothing answered.
It was... a bit endearing, if she had done it to spare my feelings, such as they were. I couldn't really think of any other coherent reason her to hide that skill.
I shook my head, as I turned, and began walking back towards the academy building. It didn't matter.
Things were moving ahead.
As for the boy, I'd give him a chance. After all, didn't I owe him a certain amount of gratitude for setting this entire thing off? I felt like I did. And I could suppress my darker feelings until he tried breaking faith with me again.
Yeah, why not? It wasn't as if I'd have to wait forever.
Re-entering the building, I made my way to Room Fifteen, and leaned back against the wall, eyes closed, enjoying the silence.
In time, the sound of small footsteps echoed outside the door, and then, it slid open.
A boy walked through the door, followed by Shio. I casually gave him a once-over.
Pale skin, charcoal-black hair, otherwise asiatic features. Gracile. Probably trained speed more than strength. Conservative fashion sense - an old clan? Then, I felt it. It was barely, barely there, floating in the background. The smallest, tiniest amount of killing intent I had yet felt.
Less the intent to murder than a naked blade.
Less a plummet to death than l'appel du vide.
Just... there. Undirected - a calm killing intent. In refinement, in quantity, in level of threat, it was inferior to even the chunin's from earlier, and compared to the Hokage's it was the difference between heaven and earth. Even so - it unsettled me. Because, there was no target. He just didn't care. Everything that existed, existed to be killed by his own two hands. Everything that someone else killed was stolen from him. This boy... my eyes snapped up to meet his own, startlingly amber ones - and my thoughts were cut off, as he began to speak.
"Hello," he said with a smile that fully reached his eyes, that intent not weakening even a little. "I'm Orochimaru. Please take care of me."
Last edited: