So, this is the end of the two-part prologue, and the writing style will become more normal/standard (however it's described), without the present tense and with more dialogue.
Happy Holidays everyone!
Iruka wanders with no destination in mind. One place is no better or worse than another, and he only occasionally comes across people in any case. He is in the wilderness somewhere – anywhere – it hardly matters. He has nowhere to go. He has nowhere to return.
He grows hungry. The supplies in his pack last a few days, and he takes the time he has left to observe the animals. Iruka knows better than to make assumptions about plants that appear edible, particularly in a world that is so dissimilar to his own. The white dragon bush and the white jade bush, after all, appear nearly identical, though one is poisonous and the other is famed for the tea made with its leaves and flowers. Iruka is neither reckless, nor depressed enough yet to give up and leave his fate in the hands of chance, or fate, or spirits. He is stubborn enough to survive in the face of extreme ignorance, though he does not yet know what he survives for.
Iruka's observations are not enough. Not quite. He has so far identified only a handful of berries and roots that are safe to consume, and supplements the diet with fish and small animals caught in his snares. A book, an actual guide to the flora and fauna of the world, or at least the region, is necessary. When he finds a road that is more a trail than anything, he follows it to a small town. There is no bookstore or library, but at the general store he barters for the guide he requires, and stays a few days to listen and observe. Knowledge, as he has come to understand, is power; at the moment, he is uncomfortably powerless.
Iruka does not have the funds for room and board, so he does odd jobs around town, mainly cleaning and repair work. He lingers in cafes, listens with gentle smiles and soft encouragement to the people he meets, and if he cannot manage sincere happiness, at least he can be friendly. Iruka's sharp, clever mind whirs, storing what information and speculation he can before leaving three days later. He still does not know – cannot quite understand – what "shinobi" means, but he did not dare to ask for clarification. It is obviously an important, well-known occupation, and Iruka does not dare draw attention to himself by asking, or by remaining longer with the small, insular town.
The plant guide becomes worn with use as Iruka studies it, compares pictures and descriptions to reality. He has not dropped dead, nor become ill, so it must at least be accurate.
He does not know what to do with himself.
Iruka wanders aimlessly – inland, he thinks, having discovered that he is on an island in a land known as Water; it is appropriate, and surprising, and sad, and he aches with the unfamiliarity of it. He cannot remain in the woods and the meadows indefinitely, certainly not when winter arrives. But can he afford to remain within a town? Can he not? He will learn little of this world beyond the flora and fauna of Mizu no Kuni, if he becomes a hermit in the wilderness, provided he does not die of winter cold or worse. He does not think he can afford ignorance.
But where will he go? The island map showed only small towns, and there he will never be able to blend into a crowd; he will draw the eye always, stick out as a stranger. Iruka needs a large city, not even so large as Ba Sing Se or the Northern Water Tribe, where he can have access to books, a library, and be simply another face among the crowd.
The mist plays tricks with his eyes, though Iruka does not dare bend it out of his way. Something insists that he keep his waterbending abilities secret ("Down with the benders," whispers a voice from childhood nightmares), and later he will be glad several times over to have listened to his instincts. For now, however, he occasionally sees figures, people in the distance, and sometimes hears the clang of metal against metal. What makes him almost desperate to know, to research and understand, is that even in broad, clear daylight they seem to disappear into thin air, or to move at speeds greater than a human should be able, though he concedes that distance and perspective may have something to do with the phenomenon. Perhaps they are only men; but perhaps, just perhaps, they are spirits. Perhaps they can give him answers, or even – he does not dare hope – send him home.
One day, he finds what he is looking for. Rising from the mist, several mountains set as a background, is a large city. Iruka does not know why it did not appear on the map, particularly considering its size, but he hardly spends much time in contemplation.
He watches from the cover of the trees, notices that the few visitors to the city appear required to show papers at the gate, and his heart sinks. He has no papers, has no idea what might happen to him if he should admit to it. Even if he were allowed to apply for entry, how would he answer the questions that would be sure to follow? The only geography he knows of this world is the little gleaned from a public map in a store. Iruka knows nothing about politics or people, economy or society. A child, he knows, will be far better informed than himself.
Instead, Iruka attempts to sneak in a few days later, nearly halfway around the city in an area where he is almost certain no guards are present.
This is a mistake, and he pays dearly.
Of course he would never have been able to see the guards, much less sense their presence. Of course he would never be able to enter unnoticed. Of course his presence near the walls had not been overlooked. Iruka, then, was too ignorant to know the futility – and danger – of his actions.
Kirigakure is not kind to potential spies, however foolish they appear. And innocence means little when a lone, weak foreigner wanders into the hands of Torture & Investigation, practically volunteering himself as a test subject, or training tool.
Iruka has never been tortured before. He has never felt such pain, and no longer tries to refrain from screaming in a futile show of defiance, because he is long past caring what they think of him. He had hope, once, that they would allow him to leave once he had proven not to be an enemy or spy. That hope is long gone, and he knows that when they release him it will be because he is dead.
And so he escapes. The details are hazy, but he runs, and by some miracle they do not find him. He staggers, sloshes across streams, and falls to the ground when he can no longer go on. Clear, running water quenches his thirst, and he chances a root vegetable raw, because he does not dare to light a fire. He passes out, and when he wakes he follows the stream until he judges himself far enough from any pursuers to chance a meal. Sunlight glitters on fish scales, and without any fishhook or spear, with his body as battered and bruised as it is, Iruka can only rely on waterbending if he wishes to catch his meal quickly.
He takes his stance, motions deliberately, and…
Nothing.
Panicked tears gather in the corners of his eyes, his breath escapes in harsh pants, and he repeats the movements.
Still nothing.
What was wrong with him? What had his captors done to him? How was this possible?
He is free. He is free, and something is wrong, and he bites down sharply on his lip in confusion and fear, drawing blood…
The torture chamber's walls shimmer and appear around him, and Iruka jerks in alarm, crying out as his injuries are jarred. His wrists and ankles are chained to an uncomfortable chair, and Iruka has no idea what has happened, how he has gotten there, but the screaming agony of imprisonment and torture after his taste of escape and freedom is almost more painful than his open, burning wounds.
Iruka breaks. His mind shatters a little each time he is trapped in what he has discovered to be some sort of illusion, as they taunt him with escape, or even home at the south pole. He does not know what sort of…of bending, of magic, this is. But he discovers a way to tell whether his seeming escapes are reality or delusion. By the fifth time they catch him in the illusion, he confirms that if he cannot bend water, what he sees is not real. By the seventh time, Iruka confirms that sharp, sudden pain can bring him back to reality.
Time means nothing to Iruka. All he knows is that if he does not escape soon, he never will.
When they bind his hands with rope and wire, instead of metal, when the man on duty nearly drowns him in a barrel of water and then revives him, again and again, he knows that this is the best chance he will get. Gagging, coughing up water, he jerks his bound hands up, and the water shoots up into his torturer's face, hardening into ice to suppress any shouts that would bring the other guards running or call forth a jutsu.
Words, he has discovered, are part of what brings forth what seems to him to be magic; hand signs are the other half.
Before his torturer can take another step, Iruka slams a small, slender spear of ice into his throat, and watches dispassionately as he collapses in a puddle of blood. His search of the dead man for weapons is awkward with bound hands and broken fingers, but Iruka amasses a small collection of knives and what he believes are called "shuriken".
Iruka gathers the water in a layer around his body, and hopes that the glow of healing is not too noticeable. The burns, open wounds, and internal bleeding heal for the most part, leaving behind a network of thin white scars and extreme tenderness where the worst of the damage had been. Broken bones, on the other hand, have always troubled Iruka, and he has no time now to set them and speed up the healing process. He must escape; he is not sure how much longer he can last otherwise.
It is desperation and the advantage of surprise that allow Iruka to slit the throat of the guard outside of the chamber with no one the wiser. He limps, body aching, until he reaches the grate that leads to the sewers, leaving behind a third dead body and gaining a stab wound in the shoulder for his troubles. By the time the alarm is sounded he is beyond hearing, beyond caring about the stench of the sewers, and only sheer bullheadedness keeps him on his feet and bending the polluted liquid from his path.
It wastes energy, perhaps, but if he does not continue bending, he cannot prove to himself that this is real and true and not delusion.
The sewer eventually leads him to a river and, not knowing what shinobi are capable of when it comes to tracking, he remains within the river. He pushes through his exhaustion and heavy limbs, bending the current to bring him faster to the sea – because surely the river leads to the sea, to open water, and perhaps an escape.
The night is dark, the clouds hiding the moon and stars when Iruka collapses on the riverbank, passing out in exhaustion with his lower body still trapped within the current. Even the cold and pain cannot bring him to wakefulness, and when the first light of dawn stirs him, his body aches and screams in pain. He is not certain how long he has been unconscious, and does not dare linger to set his broken bones, not until he reaches the ocean.
Iruka is lucky that an island is just barely visible in the distance, and aims for the far shore with little thought or care to what creatures might lurk in the water. Desperation and fear keep him moving; the island seems not nearly far enough from Kirigakure, and so he stows away on a boat, hardly caring where it goes so long as it is away.
Only then, en route to Yu no Kuni, does he realize that he has, for the first time in his life killed another person. Not just one, but three; living, breathing people, his torturers and captors, and he saw only their cruelty, but that wasn't all they were, was it? Perhaps they had families; they must have been loved? His thoughts scatter and skitter, as he sobs into his knees, because he hates them, pities them, wanted them to stop, never wanted them to die, never wanted to kill, though he wished at times they would drop dead and leave him alone. He is broken, Iruka knows it, they broke him, mind and bones, so much of his blood spilled and splattered. He bites down on his torn, dirty pants and tries to stifle the noise threatening to emerge from his throat.
He grasps for something, anything else to distract his thoughts, realizes and takes the time to mourn his lost possessions, the last material remnants of his home world. There is an emptiness in his heart as he thinks of the ivory choker his Sifu Kaito had gifted him.
The stories are all that remain. These, at least, have been burned into his memory; first as a child who loved them, then as an orphan in the streets to alleviate his desperately lonely nights, and now as a tortured prisoner who uses them to keep himself sane.
Danger is not through with him in freedom, and Iruka is not so foolish as to think he is safe. He is unlucky one evening, months later, and falls prey to a group of bandits. He hesitates too long to defend himself with more than his fists and knives, and at least one of the bandits is – or was – shinobi. Iruka cannot keep up with any sort of shinobi, he knows this better now, though he does not give up.
For his efforts he is rewarded with something like a giant shuriken slamming into his back, and the loss of what few possessions he has managed to acquire. The fuuma shuriken – he discovers the proper term later – barely misses his spine, and cracks two of his ribs, leaving him prone on the ground, groaning in agony. They leave him for dead; had the rain not been pouring in sheets throughout the night they may have been right. With every drop that lands upon his gushing wound, the skin and muscle knit ever so slightly back together.
Iruka attempts to lift himself onto his elbows and drag himself into a better position. Instead, he nearly gags on the pain, bile rising in his throat and darkness creeping in his vision. He stops moving immediately, lets himself collapse and simply try to breathe, because if he passes out he may never wake up. He is not one who can heal in his sleep.
Nearly a day later, when at last he can move without risking unconsciousness, he staggers slowly toward a nearby road and follows it away from the bandit camp, in search of someone he can beg for bandages, or a shirt, as the one he wears is soaked through and heavy with blood.
And then, Iruka determines, he will search out someone to teach him the limits, and the most basic skills, of a shinobi.
It is not an easy task he has set himself. No Hidden Village will be likely to teach him, even if he dared to near one, or managed to enter without some form of identification. This seems to leave only the missing nins, the criminals and deserters, and Iruka cannot trust them as far as he can throw them, even were he to find one willing to teach him, which is far from likely.
He does find one, eventually, older and without the madness or sadism he senses in other missing nin. The man does not give his name; he is not kind or patient, and is reluctant to impart knowledge and skill. Iruka learns a little bit about chakra, though not now he can access it, and a little of the taijutsu, though only a few katas, and a little about the countries and people of this world. He takes all he hears with a grain of salt, learning that it is best not to question the gruff older man directly, and in exchange Iruka hunts, and cooks, and takes care of the camp.
Eventually, less than a month after meeting him, Iruka and the missing nin part ways, more or less cordially. The shinobi has been hired for some sort of job Iruka knows is highly illegal and may ruin the lives of innocents, and Iruka will not follow.
Iruka passes through town after town, listening to the people, browsing through libraries and bookstores, and slowly increases his knowledge of this strange new world. He skims every book or scroll he can discover relating to religion and the supernatural, but there is surprisingly little to find. They are not, it seems, a very religious people, despite what the spiritual energy element of chakra may imply, never mind the familiarity with death among shinobi. The bijuu are, it seems, as close as the people come to the existence of spirits on this mortal plane, and they seem to think very little of the tailed beasts; Iruka can, to a point, understand the fear, and even hatred after reading about the madness, power, and destructive capability of the nine bijuu, although as an outsider he does not feel so keenly or personally. In any case, nothing he reads suggests that any of them would be able, much less willing, to send him home. The longer he remains within this world, the less he believes he will ever see his again.
As time passes, Iruka focuses less on returning home, and more on making his way within the Elemental Countries.
He is wandering a tourist town in northern Yu no Kuni when he sees the white-haired man behind the women's bath houses. Iruka pauses, astonished by the man's audacity, before examining him more closely. The man has a tall, powerful frame, though he is currently hunched over and giggling perversely as he peers through the slats of wood. At this angle, his face is in profile; Iruka can make out a red line running down from his eye, as well as a hitaiate in a style slightly different than any other he has seen. Two important points stick out to the waterbender: the man's hitaiate does not have the slash denoting missing nin, and the symbol on the hitaiate is not affiliated with any village so far as he knows, and he has made it a point to be able to identify the symbols of all Hidden Villages.
Iruka's considers the man for another moment, his mind flicking quickly through explanations, scenarios, and plans. The corners of his mouth twitch, just a little, and it is the first time in quite a long time he feels…not quite happy, or content, but…hopeful.
If he is lucky, he has finally found his shinobi teacher.