In a dark and dreary compound set beneath the earth was the cry of suffering. Physical torture is common in the ninja world, but emotional torture is what must truly be feared. Even more so when the 'torture' is but a side effect, rather than a means to an end.
Sakon and his twin brother were engaged in a battle for their very lives. As with all things they were told to do by their leader, failure meant certain death. The fact that there was never an expectation they would succeed was irrelevant. The fact that their order was something that no sane person would consider was unimportant. The fact that even by Sakon and his brother's twisted morals what they were doing was an abomination to all of life was merely a consideration that would get them killed.
"Do it." The elder of the two brothers was much calmer than the younger, having resigned himself long ago to such a fate as death. "It is the responsibility of the wise elder brother to sacrifice himself for the foolish younger brother. You will do his will, and will be that much stronger for it. I have been with you all these years, you are ready."
Sakon's fist buried itself in his brother's chest. "Do you really think I'd let your lazy ass get away with such a thing? You and I both know that this 'elder brother' shit is a farce, you just don't want to be saddled with that kind of responsibility!" Sakon laid harder into his brother's form with every word, tears forming at the edges of his vision. His blows getting weaker with every strike. "You said you'd always be there, that you'd make sure everything was fine!" the last blow barely more than a soft tap.
"If that is how you want it, foolish brother of mine... This wise elder brother shall grant you your wish!" Ukon took this opportunity to hit Sakon in the face with his full might, the cursed seal upon his forehead blaring to life. Quickly jumping into his advanced state of transformation a crimson red demon leaped into Sakon's very self. Sakon's body reacted violently to being invaded, he himself quickly jumped to a state that mirrored his brother's, before forcing himself to revert to his normal form.
After several seconds Sakon only knew pain. His entire being felt like it was bathed in a strong acid. Slowly but surely his skin began to fall away piece by piece, as his cells were slowly ripped from his body and discarded. A small bubbling of the skin began to form all over, before the various areas of moving flesh began to converge. The various bubbling masses all moved to his left arm, finally becoming one bloated entity puffing out the skin nearly an inch. Sakon could feel the whole process, as if someone were forcing highly pressurized water through his body underneath his skin.
This feeling amplified as the skin in which the mass rested changed to a sickly blood red. Once the bubble reached a point in which it might burst it receded slowly back into the body. Sakon could feel his capillaries bursting, and a burning soreness of a bruise set in along his entire upper arm. When the bruising sensation reached its peak the lump changed color to a matching black and blue. Thusfar the pain had been something similar to what Sakon had experienced in his life, as a person who trained to fight and kill it is not unusual that he would be familiar with bruising, or the feeling of pain.
That all changed when the lump changed to white. Whereas before there was merely destruction of cells that could be mimicked by a harsh blow from a blunt object, now it was a feeling of a wound being opened, doused in the burning of alcohol, and then having salt rubbed into the wound. Then repeated over and over again several times per second. Sakon's very nerves and pain receptors were being told to experience pain, all the while his arm slowly turned into one giant abscess of disgusting misshapen flesh. Lymph and dead cells altered both its biological structure and color as the ratios of various chemicals and proteins shifted and changed through the process of being manipulated by an outside force.
After the half a minute that was more painful than even the trials he went through in acquiring his cursed seal Sakon finally thought that the worst had passed, he was beginning to become numb to the consistent pain as adrenaline flooded his system in response.
After a minute he began to laugh at how slow and long it was taking and in a fit of hysteria called out to mock his brother's pitiful attempts to eliminate him. "Is that all you have Ukon? I know you can do better than this!" There was only silence in response. The mass of disfigured flesh sunk deeper into the arm until it was almost invisible. Sakon actually began to worry that his brother had hurt himself while invading his body.
It was at this thought that his world once again became hell. Before it was merely a general feeling of pain, strong, but unspecific. More like a feeling of soreness taken to its extreme. What he as feeling before could be likened to a very wide sledgehammer. Painful and with great force, but little more than that.
The mass that now comprised the place that used to be what his tricep began to move. It shifted from its place in his arm to the end of Sakon's fingers. As it moved whatever areas it passed through warmed immensely, like an extreme fever. The increase in heat only increasing the sensitivity to the uncomfortable feeling. Eventually it rested at the knuckle to his thumb.
With a soft hissing sound and a pop, Sakon's fingernail literally exploded off of the fingernail bed. Due to the fact that he had been looking directly at his hand the nail literally flew into his face, along with a small splatter of blood. The tip of his thumb had literally been blown open, and pulped tricep muscle and fat slowly leaked out, with the pressure increasing and dropping with the beat of his heart. Each of his fingers proceeded in kind until his hand was leaking fluids from all his digits. After this the blob of destruction shifted quickly to his other arm repeating the process, and then moving down to his toes to do the same there.
While the toenails were being clipped one by one the larger mass still in Sakon's arm moved to a new location. Crawling slowly the mass of destroyed cells worked its way under his skin across his chest. As it passed atop Sakon's heart the mass quickly changed trajectory upward, following the contour of the ribcage. Eventually it made it to the collarbone, here the mass began to thin itself into a long line rather than a blob. Using this new shape it snaked its way up his neck, during this time the pressure against Sakon's throat increased, as though someone was feebly trying to choke him.
Ukon had always been fond of killing enemies via choking, or drowning. It had something to do with the elder brother's fear of not being in control. Sakon nodded his head in slight approval without a word to indicate that he approved of his brother treating him in such a manner.
Sakon resigned himself to his death as the snake of flesh began to wind itself ever longer around his neck. It was at this point that the last of his toes was finally relieved of its burden of bearing a nail. The feeling of pain throughout his body was mostly consistent at this point, a warm distant sense of being melted from the inside. He thought it probably should be painful, but the massive amounts of endorphins and adrenalin pumping through his veins as a last-ditch effort of his body to keep him alive as he entered what was probably a state of psychological shock.
"He-he." Sakon thought. "Shock is such a strange term, it evokes a sense of being related to electricity, but really it is much more like the unnatural calm of a still body of water, or of perfect silence.
Silence... Sigh Lance? What would a lance made of sighs look like?
It definitely wouldn't look like my fingers right now. Look at them just letting my life flow from them...
When I die I think I'll cut my fingers off to punish them for not doing their job of keeping my blood inside of me properly.
I wonder how long it'll take Ukon to finish this up, everything is getting boring...
And dark... Did he have one of the others start dimming the lights? That seems weird, even for him and his strange control issues." Sakon tried to blink intentionally and noticed a problem.
"Huh... I never thought I'd get to feel what it is like to have no eyelids... not blinking when you are trying to is weird. How am I supposed to make it dark with no eyelids?
Dark... Wait, darkness!
Why is it that only the left half of the room is dark? The lights all seem to be on now that I look at them...
Oh COOL! He must be in my brain!
Well, well brother dear. Point goes to you... I guess we CAN alter people's perceptions with our powers. Too bad we didn't figure it out sooner, would've been cool to see what we could've done with something awesome like that...
If you can hear me Ukon you should totally figure out something awesome to do with this!
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Oh! You could totally use it on Tayuya! I know you totally had a crush on her, even if you'd never say it. You always had a weird masochistic streak a mile wide... Probably why you always spent your time healing me, even though it was more painful to you in the end...
I always wanted to thank you for that y'know. Taking away all my pain so that I could focus on my goals. I say my goals because I always suspected that you never really wanted any of this... life. All the ninja-ey stuff, and the 'All hail lord Orochimaru' bullshit. You were always the practical one that way.
But you still went along with it for me.
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I know it's weird to say-, correction, to think this to you while you are tearing me apart from the inside, and killing me in the process but you really should have just left me to my whimsy and gone on to do whatever thing you actually wanted to do. Being the best older brother...
Actually. Fuck you. You are like fifty seconds older than me, where the hell do you get off calling yourself the 'older' brother, like you have actually been around longer than me. For all I know you were the egg-bubble that split from me! You are only older because you shoved me out of the way to get out of our mother first...
Bastard..."
At this point Sakon had already collapsed onto the floor, a heap of mutilated flesh and bulging pustules his thoughts becoming slowly more incoherent until even his mental chatter was reduced to an incomprehensible babble. Until finally an hour after his brother lunged into his body his conscious mind faded, and his thoughts stopped. The very last thing he thought before fading into darkness was a single phrase he would never utter anywhere his brother could hear it.
"Thanks... Ukon... no. Thank you very much! Onii-chan!"
AN: I try to keep my notes to a minimum but i'll put a little bit of info here for those who want it. I haven''t yet decided exactly where I want this to go, and as such have not decided on a main character. I have a very very vague sense of where I want the story to go, but no idea yet how I want to get there. I am going to try and keep each chapter as small as possible (my goal is to release thousand-ish word chapters on a regular basis, but given what happened to my only other ongoing fic... well we'll see).
I will use future AN space to try and explain what it was I wanted to have the reader get out of the chapter, and any improvements that get recommended may make their way in here.
This chapter is supposed to start out making you squirm in pain, as you attempt to sypathize with Sakon. Then shift into a disjointed free-flow of whimsy as his conscious slowly degrades. Finally ending with a tragic heartwarming one-liner at the very end.