Ikustaka
"White Side Speech"
"Black Side Speech"
"White Side Thought"
"Black Side Thought"
Chapter 1
Along a dark road on the outskirts of the Hidden Cloud Village walked a very strange man. He stood around 6' 8", and had an awkward stride. He wore a large black cloak covered with lightning bolts, and on his back was a large staff, in the shape of a rose. But the strangest two things were: 1) he had rose petals protruding from his neck, and 2) the right side of his body was completely black, with his right eye and the right side of his mouth closed, while his left side was a normal tan color.
He continued his stride as if he had some great purpose that he had to attend to. Soon, he'd come close to his target. In the distance, he saw the shape of a man, 6' even with a large build, cutting down trees for wood.
Then, rose petal man, Keikyoku, stopped and began to get a look of concentration on the left side of his face. Immediately, he began to emit a strange mist from all over his body, and it began to spread out. Within the next minute, it'd grown large and dense enough to be of use to him.
Keikyoku began to walk again, and the mist magically followed him, keeping him in the center of the mass. Even then, Keikyoku was still putting more chakra into it, increasing its size and strength. It didn't take long before the fog began to circle the burly man.
The man quickly became cautious, and held the axe in a fighting position, ready to be used. Keikyoku expressionlessly closed the distance between him and the man, and spoke.
"I am here because the Ikustaka wishes to make use of you," he said politely, "please do not make me use force."
The man sniffed the air, and turned to Keikyoku with an feral glare.
"I ain't going anywhere with you," he practically yelled, "I know what you want, and you won't get it without a fight!"
Then, the near-crazed man rushed Keikyoku, using his axe as a weapon. Keikyoku simply used his great speed to dodge the axe as it was swung. But, Keikyoku could see the werewolf in this man: the greater than average speed, strength and dexterity.
But, Keikyoku could also tell that the man wasn't trained in ninjutsu, only taijutsu. That would make it easier.
He continued dodging, until the man seemed to get an increase in his speed and was able to almost keep up with the rose-petalled man. Just as soon as he'd gotten the boost, though, he began to slow, and Keikyoku allowed himself to smirk. The mist was doing its job, and draining the man's chakra.
The man quickly realized that something was wrong. After a few seconds of thought, it appeared that he'd ascertained the source of his chakra loss. He immediately turned, and made a run to try and get out of the mist.
He ran as fast as he could in a random direction for several minutes, but, still, the mist surrounded him. He had become baffled up until the point where Keikyoku rose out of the ground not ten feet behind him.
"You bastard," the wolf-man uttered in grim realization, "you can move through the ground faster than I can run. . ."
Keikyoku simply nodded and stepped closer, "You can still give in, and come peacefully."
"Never, you damn freak!" he yelled and began the transformation that marked his bloodline. His mouth shot forward into a muzzle, as the rest of his body began to grow fur. He also began to sprout claws and his teeth became razor-sharp. Keikyoku could hear the cracking of bones as the man's were re-knit in a new way. Finally, his ears moved to the top of his head, he sprouted a tail, and his eyes took on a yellow color.
But, Keikyoku barely noticed any of the transformation. The man's battery had thrown him over the edge of his self-control. The eye and part of mouth on the left side of his face had begun to close, as the eye and the part of his mouth on his right side began to open. The wolf-man finished, he began to stare into the red eye of absolute rage.
"How dare you insult me, you godless son of a piggly-ass whore! You will fall in defeat!" yelled the black side of Keikyoku, or 'Yoku' as he preferred to be called.
Instantly, Yoku launched into a full on attack to the werewolf. Wolfy was fast, but he was nowhere near as fast as a pissed-off Yoku.
He tried clawing at the man as Yoku ran circles around him, but was only able to catch air. After quite a few misses, it was obvious that the wolf-man was becoming frustrated. Strangely, this frustration only gave the wolf more power. A not-so-lucky hit later, and Yoku was on the ground without a left arm.
Yoku became extremely mad by this point. When the wolf tried to claw off Yoku's other arm, he found himself unable to complete the slash. He looked up dumbly to see a thorned vine wrapped around his right arm. When he looked back down, he saw that Yoku had extended the vine from his index finger.
Then, Yoku extended three more from his other three fingers. Soon, he had the wolf-man off of the ground, a vine around each wrist and a vine around each ankle.
Yoku then flicked his hand and the wolf was slammed into a nearby tree. The tree seemed to absorb the wolf-man into itself, and, not long after, the only thing showing was his ugly face, with his mouth covered up of course.
"Capture complete," Yoku said scornfully. But, before he gave control back to Keikyoku, he walked over to another tree, and lay his hand on it. After another look of concentration, Yoku could feel the natural energy start to flow into him. His missing arm quickly began to reconstruct itself, and was soon fully functional.
Then, Yoku relinquished control, and the left side of the faced had opened up again, inversely closing the right side.
"You should have just came peacefully," Keikyoku spoke to the caged wolf.
First he absorbed the mist, reacquiring his own chakra and separating the wolf-man's chakra to a different area of his body for steady, then he lay his newly fixed hand on the tree, and Keikyoku and the tree began to descend into the earth. After a few seconds of darkness, and a quick-transit jutsu, they came upon the underground catacombs that housed Ikustaka's test labs.
Keikyoku approached a nearby member, Talon, a man with a falcon beak instead of a mouth, feathers covering his whole body, and fully functional wings sprouting from his arms, and asked if he knew where Shade, our leader, was.
"She's where she always is, Keikyoku. Now, if you don't mind, I have work to do," he answered without moving his beak at all, or even looking at Keikyoku, before he was on his way.
Keikyoku was used to such reactions from people, so he went to the place that Shade could normally be found: the dark room.
A few hundred feet below the surface sat the test labs, and another couple of hundred feet below that sat a gigantic room that had no light at all. This was Shade's room, as it was where she was most powerful. Very few could even see in this room, making even more deadly to those entering. There was also no door, limiting the entrants even farther to basically me and Shade.
I reached the wall that I normally used, and began to use my jutsu. The moment I reached the wall, I began to move through it. It was a thick wall so it took several seconds before I reached the other side.
I entered the room so big that no one even knows its exact size, and began to use my Tougyo, my bloodline that gives extraordinary control over my chakra, to send out bits of chakra that bounced back and gave me a picture of the room, sort of like sonar. I quickly deduced her location, and Shushined over to her.
"What news do you bring me?" Shade spoke in her flat emotionless tones, similar to Keikyoku's but filled with far more hidden malice.
"The werewolf has been detained, and my tree has taken him to Lab G for testing, as requested," Keikyoku answered in his own emotionless tone.
"Very good," she spoke halfheartedly, as if she didn't really think so, "you may go," then before Keikyoku could leave, "I might drop in later."
"As it pleases you," Keikyoku replied, and took his leave.
After Keikyoku had given the news, he'd immediately quick-transited to his home underground near the Grass Village. The place was a sort of large underground plant preserve, using top-of-the-line lights that mimicked the sun's rays.
The entire area was full of every plant species you could think of, plus a few that had gone extinct until Keikyoku had revived them. With these resources, he'd been named the medicinal herb provider of the Ikustaka.
The only reason he'd put this collection together was to try and cure himself of his dark side, Yoku, that had grown so powerful those many years ago. Keikyoku began to remember that day when his parents had told him that he was adopted. How he'd almost completely decimated the whole Bakeyo clan, the wielders of the artificially made Tougyo that had to be given to its members by the elders.
He remembered how Yoku had taken control and killed his adoptive parents, who he had still loved deeply.
He pushed such thoughts away, and went back to the concoction he'd been mixing, using Meladona root blended with Rose stems to try and counteract a sample of Yoku's brain tissue, and revert to what it was. Unfortunately, it simply burned up, the tissue sample completely unaffected.
Keikyoku had seen too many failures like this to get bent up by it. He just moved on to his next idea, without a word on the previous failure.
"Still no luck," came the flat voice of his boss. Inversely, how he was the only one that could get into her room, she was the only one that could get into his home. He turned to see her walking out of one of the few shadows present in his sanctum.
"No," he said, finally showing a small bit of his frustration.
She didn't say anymore. Keikyoku had a chance to allow the man he used to be resurface, and began to admire the sight of his leader. She had long, brunette hair, about to mid-back but currently in a ponytail, with black streaks through it. She stood at a 5' even, almost two foot shorter than Keikyoku, and was leanly muscled with a sexually appealing figure. Her face was sharp, with sharp cheek bones and baby blue eyes rounded by red. All in all, she was quite beautiful.
But, Keikyoku wasn't that man anymore. Now, he simply made a small acknowledgment of it, and started to hope she would leave soon. He had things to do, ideas to test.
He was momentarily caught off guard when she rounded on him, and began to press her body against him suggestively. She rubbed his arm with her petite hand, and stared into his eyes with her baby blue's.
"What do you say we have some fun?" she asked, putting obviously faked emotion into the question. On any other man, it would have worked. But, Keikyoku knew this game, and he hadn't lost it yet.
"Nice try, Shade," he said with an extremely small chuckle and slight smile, "but you still haven't gotten there yet. You are getting closer, though."
She returned his smile with a smirk of her own, but, a split second later, it was gone. Then, she was back to business.
"Naro was bitten by our new inmate a few minutes ago," she returned to her flat tone, "we need a cure for the virus."
"I have it," Keikyoku left and came back with a box of viles that were filled to the brim with red liquid.
"The dosing would normally be one vile," he recited while handing over the box, "but, for Naro, I would suggest two."
She nodded, and back-stepped into the shadows, seemingly sucked up by them.
Keikyoku turned back to his experiments, and began the next one.