"I've got to get out of here... I wish Kimimaro was here... I hate this!"
He huddled into a ball on that small bench of his. Not only to heighten the drama of what he was feeling, but also because he was feeling cold. His cell was cold.
Even though he had spent over two years inside this rusty cell of his, he had never felt so cold or lonely. He huddled himself closer in a vain attempt of warmth.
"I've got to get o--" "Juugo! Quiet down!" Said prisoner looked up from between cell bars, those rust-colored eyes seeing cold, heartless red ones.
Standing before him, unsympathetic and soulless, was his warden, Uchiha Sasuke. He always had those special eyes turned on. Always had his kekkei genkai, the Sharingan, activated, seeing every move, every gesture made from inside Juugo's tiny, frigid cell.
His curse mark spread instantly. What pleasure it would bring him to gauge out those Sharingan eyes and drop them to the floor!
With a certain battle cry of "Die!", Juugo altered his arm in a spiked piston-like ram, lunging at Sasuke from behind the bars. To defend himself, the Uchiha coolly placed a hand on the bars, sending Raiton chakra surging through them and electrifying his assailant.
Only slightly singed, Juugo fell to the ground with a breathless groan, the curse mark quickly receding from his face.
"Next time... I won't go so easy on you." With that, the damned Uchiha left. With his back turned, Sasuke allowed a smirk that only belonged on the face of a sly bastard like himself.
Sayuri awoke to a quickly disintegrating darkness. The sky and clouds were a light gray with a few dark gray hues.
She opened her eyes slowly, deciding that it was indeed twilight. Her body felt sore for some reason. And she willed herself to get up, but knew that pain would follow right after.
What happened here? she thought, trying to think over the past events of earlier. After resting a while longer (and fighting with herself to get the hell up), she managed to turn on her side. That in itself hurt tremendously.
Blue eyes lowered to a blurred body she couldn't recognize at first.
Who's that? It took energy that she didn't have, but she finally managed to focus her eyes more, and saw a complete mess of yellow.
That must be hair... she surmised bitterly, now only slightly remembering what happened.
That was the bastard that left me sore-- damn him!
After a while more of throwing extra curses at the unconscious body to her left, she decided that she was still too stiff to walk. So she crawled on hands and knees over to him, albeit quite slowly.
When she came close enough to feel uncomfortable, she couldn't help but stare dumbfounded at him for a while. It almost made her suspect that he would jump up at any moment and scream "surprise, hmm!"
Contrasting from her inane suspicion (because everyone knows unconscious bodies cannot do any such thing), he remained still. Deciding she was safe from any unwanted attacks, she crawled a bit closer, noticing that his hair was in quite a mess.
It was sprawled around to each side, and a large amount of it was falling into his face, covered in blood and sweat.
She absently reached over and brushed it away, resisting the strong urge to yank it harshly. Then, her eyes drifted down to his shoulder. It was also caked in dry blood. Oh yeah... that kunai wound... she mused bored.
She went lower, to his hands.
"What is that?!" she gaped at the strange tongue on his palm, shuddering instantly. He had used clay... Did he mold it with those mouths?
Then she heard a footstep behind her.
Namida stared down at the blue-haired girl as she jerked around. "Oh, it's just you..." She gave a sigh of relief. Then, she broke out into a wide grin, exclaiming, "I'm Sayuri! What's your name?"
Namida narrowed her golden eyes in thought. Was this 'Sayuri' girl planning something...? She was too quick to accept her.
"My name is Makoto," she lied smoothly.
The name had been given to her out of nowhere. There was no way she was going to use her real name. She knew nothing of this kunoichi or of this village in general. There was a chance of 'Sayuri' being a spy and tracing her back to Takigakure.
This blue-haired girl was a complete dingbat. She had automatically given away her name and had dropped her guard until she heard footsteps. But then again... this was her village, she could afford to give away her name in this territory.
Her eyes slid over to the leftover and charred lumps of hardened clay from what used to be a bird. Then, one ANBU member. He was hammered into the ground, his neck bent at an impossible angle. His leg was bent backwards partially around a tree, and his mask was covered in blood, dirt, dry clay, and melted flesh. His face was completely melted off, revealing a few decaying cheekbones. She didn't want to know where the eyes could have gone...
"Hey," Sayuri blinked, her eyes gazing at the same thing Namida was. "Where's the other ANBU? ...Maybe he's alive! Maybe he got flung somewhere into the forest. We should go look for him," and she immediately stood up, then winced.
Namida flicked her golden eyes downward to the blonde. "What about him...?"
Any smart shinobi worth their salt would have simply slit his throat and moved on. But a cunning and mischievous shinobi would probably want a hostage and some answers from said captive. Sayuri, mind you, usually was driven by the first thought that popped into her head, so her decision was rapidly becoming more and more apparent.
Namida stared at the other girl; she had a weird look on her face.
The cerulean-eyed girl leaned back over the blonde, grabbing his arm, she bent his wrist back and forth, stopped, then did the same motion until a crack was heard.
Grabbing the other wrist, she did the same, and Namida heard the same crack. Now both his wrists were broken.
"That should teach him," the Iwa-nin smirked and turned back to Namida. "Now, we should find that other ANBU member."
Namida just faintly nodded, and the two headed northward. And not even two steps later, Sayuri turned to Namida with a bright smile.
"Now... tell me again... What's your name?"
Caroline tilted her head back slightly. "A castle in the sky..." She closed her eyes, then reopened them again, turning away from the window. "Ojisan, is there any such thing?"
"Tch. No," was the Raikage's reply. "And stop calling me Ojisan."
"Why do you say it's not real, Ojisan?" the black-haired Kumo-nin inquired, innocently tilting her head to the side. He shot her a look, then cleared his throat.
"Isn't there something you could be doing?" The Raikage shot her another look before dipping his fude back into its suzuri and brought it to the scroll again.
She blinked innocently again. "No."
He perked his ears at that before scrambling around for something on his desk. "Here. I have a mission for you."
The Kumo-kunoichi walked towards the desk, peering to look as her kage scribbled down the rest of the message on the scroll, made a hand seal, then stamped his palm down. He didn't hesitate to quickly wrap it up, tie it, and shove it into her hands, barking out, "Deliver that to Konoha."
She looked down at the scroll, tugging on the tie on it slightly. "What is it for?"
"I sealed a jutsu inside it. Don't open it. It's not for you."
She looked down at the scroll and then back up at the white-haired kage. "Are there any other mission statistics?"
"Hmm?" he grumbled. Then again came a lame reply, "Uhh... don't die on the mission. Yeah, that's all. Take however long you want. (This was a lie.) If you don't return in a month, I'll send a team after you."
You think it'll take me months to deliver this? Caroline thought skeptically, giving the kage a look.
"Couldn't you have just sent a messenger bird for this job?"
"Human feet are faster than those of an animal."
"That's a lie and you know it."
"Get moving."
Huffing, she decided to drop the conversation and leave. She uttered a "Bye, Ojisan," before leaving, making sure to quickly close the door.
"Stop calling me that!" she heard him call, but the door was all ready shut.
She loved getting the last laugh.
"Death and pain are the enemies of man."
Sakima had always heard that from the other shinobi of her village. That fact had been drilled into her at a young age.
"Stupid." Sakima bent over the male she had just killed. "I don't mind all the blood, but when it sticks to my fingers that pisses me off."
But she couldn't care less. It was a Jashinist's job to kill, and pain and death were welcomed with open arms.
She believed that all the Yugakure citizens just repeated that philosophy because they were a bunch of egoistic, greedy tourists who thought they knew everything. The tourists that had filled up Yugakure all seemed to look down on people like her.
Too busy leading their 'lavish' lifestyles, I suppose. Sakima told herself. But all that was beside the point.
She bent downwards, grabbing onto her scythe's hold and furiously ripping it from the corpse's slippery flesh. Upon inspection of the weapon, her face contorted into a look of disgust.
"Ew..."
She cleaned the scythe of its blood by swiping it through the air a few times, then stabbed herself, falling to the ground.
Though her eyes were closed, she wasn't dead. She had just gone into 'ritual mode', and she quickly uttered a curt prayer to her 'god' before letting her mind drift.
Around the time when the stars rolled out onto the blanket of sky, Sakima's silver eyes snapped open, pupil immediately retracted by the light of the stars.
She sat up, looking around.
"Damn it!"
She had moved a bit too quickly and had dragged the scythe (still buried in her chest) across the dirt below.
Regarding the pain of the movement, she cursed under her breath, then wrenched the weapon none-too-gently from her chest. That made her utter a small groan, but otherwise, she said nothing.
"I fell asleep again..." she decided, trailing off. This wasn't the first time she had during a ritual, either. Luckily, no shinobi had sneaked up on her and ambushed.
When she peered to her right, she saw the corpse still lying in the dirt. It had already begun to rot.
After staring in silence, she reached into her back pouch, retrieving a small book and pencil. The book was full of names of the people she had killed and the people who were going to be killed.
She didn't really want to be called a bounty hunter, but since she traveled alone, she had to do something that would keep food in her stomach. (Even though eating wild berries in the forest was nice, sometimes she liked to treat herself to curry.)
Pencil in hand, she crossed off the name of the man that laid beside her, then glanced down at the next person on her 'hit list'.
The name Kasaiken Kochou was printed.
Yumi scanned the alleyway of corpses, her face its usual perfect mask for her weariness. The creatures had seemed limitless. Once fifty of them had been killed, two-hundred more appeared.
The task of killing them all was too tiring to do alone. But of course, she had had help.
She glanced back towards the man without the chakra-circulatory system. His form had completely changed!
Now he himself looked like some kind of demon, but she could still pick up on his chakra pattern, and was able to decipher him from the other monsters.
As soon as her eye met his, he whisked around and left. Nothing more done or said, he just left.
It wasn't like Yumi to go chasing after people and questioning them, and at first she was going to let him go. However, she needed information about this case. He seemed to be educated enough, and he had helped her out with those creatures, too. It was very unlikely he was on their side if he had been killing them off alongside her.
"Excuse me," she caught up with him (he wasn't very fast...), her tone as serious as his. "Might I ask which village you are from?"
"What does that information have to do with you?" he snapped.
"I'm doing an investigation on the case that happened in that alleyway. Do you have any information on it?"
"..."
"What village are you from? Are you Konoha's ally or enemy?"
"That doesn't concern you."
"I respect your privacy, but if you are an ally of Konoha, then you should clearly state such." Then I could finally stop talking to you... she groused mentally.
"..."
"Could you at least tell me your name?"
"What might yours be?"
"Seiji Yumi of Konohagakure."
He paused, almost as if he were thinking about his next move.
She stared, trying to squeeze some information from him. And at last, he convinced himself that no harm would come to him if he told her, so he did.
