Hey everyone; here's a new story after a longggg time. Did anyone think I was dead? Well, for those of you who are new, I guess you don't even know who I am, so it would be a little weird if you thought I was dead. Anyway, as always, I love a review of any kind, but my favorites are the ones that offer constructive criticisms. If you don't have time for that, that's fine, too. Thanks for reading!
By the way, this is number 94 in my quest to write a 100 promts challenge. If you wanna read the others, just check 'em out.
Summary: She is a genjutsu master. A stupid thing like reality won't get in her way.
From the first time Kurenai casts a genjutsu, she knows there is no going back. The rush, the high that came from creating her own world, her own rules, is invigorating. She doesn't even know where it came from; just a spring of thought bubbling in the back of her mind that she figured could hardly hurt her to try out. It was a simple genjutsu, a one-layer parlor trick her sensei was able to break through in a second. She didn't like to think about that, though. What mattered was that she had caught the proud old man at all. A gennin, whose career dragged itself mere fingertip lengths away from the academy doors, had snuck her untrained mind behind the eyes of a grizzled veteran jonnin. She had lost the spar that day, but she gained a lot more.
The fifth time Kurenai casts a genjutsu, she knows she is officially addicted. Addicted to cotton-candy colored roses that grew thirty feet tall, and hooked to vines that could dance with her better than any partner she has ever had. She is nine and the world is beautiful, and magical, and she wants it to stay that way forever. Her sensei, the grizzled old man whose eyes she had snuck behind once again, and clamped down with everything she had, could see that, too. In the brief minutes, not seconds this time, she lets him enter her world again, he saw the love with which she shaped each flower petal that wrapped around him. That was when he knew there was no going back, either. The old man bundled her and her jewel-bright colored world and dropped her at the feet of someone else, whose world was even more elaborate than her own.
The first time Kurenai uses genjutsu in battle, she has already lost count of the numbers of times she's danced in the vines, or played in a garden of diamond-dripping weeping willows. This time, though, there is no time for fantastical flora or grand greenery; there is only horror, disgust, nausea, that a monster is in her world. And she wants him gone, gone, gone. Surely this is not what her magnificent gift is for. She hits him in the back of the head so hard he passes out for a week, and awakens with no memory of the genjutsu he was put under, or much else.
She refuses to feel sorry.
A few years later, and, for the first time, someone uses a genjutsu against Kurenai. In the beginning, there is only curiosity as she explores the treasures of someone else's mind. Then, suddenly, there is anger. Horrible, malicious anger that shakes her and courses through her mind, shriveling everything in its path. Not that there is much to shrivel; his mind is a place of ugly desolation, and she doesn't like this. She doesn't want to see this person's twisted mind. She wants to get out, now, she thinks as she gathers this pitiful excuse for a world in her hands and flings it back at the scumbag who treats her art like trash. It is probably wrong to want him to suffer. She doesn't care.
Instead of beautiful blossom gardens, her mind now constructs flower petal shurikan, sharp enough to cut through a man without his even noticing. Her rose bushes have wicked thorns jutting out of then, as do her vines. And even then, they are still the lush fairy colors of her childhood. She cannot bear to create something that is not beautiful. This is her world, and even if she allows outside experiences to change it, she will never let them take it away from her. They will not change it; they cannot have it. This is her world.
By now Kurenai is thirteen and a chunnin and there are few firsts left in her genjutsu future. She's gone on missions and been caught in many genjutsu and snared even more prey in return, like a Venus Flytrap. She is a poisonous plant, alluring and deadly, and everybody knows it. There is one first that she hopes forever to avoid, though. She has never had to kill anyone, and she does not want to. Her world is still beautiful, and magical, and she wants it to stay that way forever. But, unfortunately, reality does not belong to her, and she is sent out of the village, her world safely locked in her pack and carried around on her back. Kurenai sees black eyes and red blood and hears something (what in the world could that be? She can't quite make it out.) in the distance, but it doesn't matter. All that matters is that this man is getting closer to her, and he is smiling, and she doesn't like it.
What happens next is strange, and bizarre, and she swears she doesn't like it, either. There is a blur of red and green and black in her peripheral vision, but all that matters is the blank look on her opponent's face, and the surprising amount of resistance in front of the kunai in her hand. There is a release, and she finds herself wrist deep in a man's chest, while also being soul deep in his mind. He dies inside of her; in her mind, and she swears sometimes she can still feel him lurking there.
The next few days are spent in her mind, in her special world, searching every crevice to see if he has managed to store himself away somewhere. It is alright, she is now a genjutsu master; she doesn't need reality. Her world is still as beautiful and magical as it has always been, and she starts to wonder if maybe this is okay after all. Somewhere along the way she remembers meeting a little brat with eyes spinning red eyes, and a beautiful mind, and a world of his own she wouldn't mind spending some time in. As she drifts in and out of these different worlds, glimpses of a boy with dark skin and a laid-back smile stick in her mind. He is something reality has that she cannot recreate, no matter how hard she tries. He is something that makes her consider a more permanent stay, rather than her usual brief visits to the "real" world.
Over the years, things happen, and time passes. At least, on the outside it does. Her world is still beautiful, and magical, and she wants it stay that way forever, like it always has been. Sure, some of her roses have begun to tint a lush, ruby red and she water her vines with blood a bit more often than she likes, but it is okay. She has learned to share her world, however briefly, with her victims before they die. Kurenai takes solace in knowing that those she kills die happy. She is also sometimes gratified to see that, if she gets lonely, they are always waiting in some hidden corner of her mind to talk to her. She is not sure that is healthy. She is not sure she cares.
Now Kurenai is a jonnin, and instead of firsts she starts to worry about lasts. She refuses to wear those ridiculous green flak jackets, because she is a genjutsu master and not plain like this reality, and she refuses to be mean to her gennin team, because she is a genjutsu master and not cruel like this reality. And both her lives are okay. The world is cold and she sees fewer and fewer familiar faces around her, but that is okay. Her world is even more beautiful, and magical, than it has ever been and she wants it stay that way forever, because now there is a new guest who enjoys spending time with her there. He is calm, and jovial, and infuriating, and if he weren't there she sometimes thinks she would just break.
So when his students come back coated in tears and ashes, all she can think is this is ironic. And, bastard, what a cop out. She wonders if she should be more distraught than this. But she honestly isn't, and can't be, and she can't feel, and she doesn't want to. If she feels, if she sees, she'll know he's not there, and the reality she tried so hard to belong to simply won't fit anymore. So she runs, and she enters that ruby rose world that he spent so much time in. Trying to catch him, catch him and hold him and make him stay, dammit.
But there isn't enough to latch onto. She doesn't have enough to make him stay, and she never has. There isn't enough of his beautiful smile, or his relaxed laugh, and she doesn't remember exactly what his calloused hands felt like in hers. How can she not remember? No matter how many times she tries to recreate him, he is never right. Her memory is always off, and she can never pump enough chakra into her mind to make him stay, to make him right. Not when this thing inside her is eating all of it. And she knows she should be strong, keep his legacy safe, but she doesn't want to. She just wants her world to be beautiful, and magical, and keep him trapped with her forever in her wilting ruby garden. She wants the trees to rebuild themselves, and the flowers to stop dropping, and that horrible crimson strain to stop spreading over everything. She wants to pretend it wasn't her who took a weed whacker to the shining oasis and hacked it down, because, here, in her mind, she can. Here, in her world, she may just be able to have him back.
She is Yuhi Kurenai, the genjutsu master. Fuck you, reality.