Hello all! Sorry for any confusion in regards to my posts - I'm having a few issues (does anyone know how to make it double space? Any time I try adding another line between paragraphs, it deletes them! so I apologize if this chapter is a little... squished.) Also - thank you .hoshi.na-chan. for the review! And please, keep them coming everyone. I would really appreciate any feedback.
She stood in the doorway. In the dark, she could make out the bed before her and the body lying deep in slumber within it.
" Just walk in and do it. It isn't so hard… think of it not as destruction, but as creation. You're creating new chances for the people of this village; you're creating food for the creatures of the earth. It isn't death, it's opportunity." The man stood next to her, whispering in her ear the entire time, trying to sooth the little girl's nerves.
In the dark before her, in the bed that held the body she would kill – no, she would use to create opportunity, a small familiar snore broke the silence. The girl didn't cry, though inside her body screamed at the wrongness of the situation. Even Nan-chan, her inner friend and demon, felt slightly ill at what they demanded of the youth. Her hands trembled as she pulled a kunai from her belt. Slowly, she moved towards the bed, her little bare feet sure and steady despite her terrified disposition.
Could she really do this? It wasn't a matter of could or couldn't… she knew, inside, deep in her heart of hearts, if she could not – they would kill her. Nameless, only seven years old, and terrified of the fact that if she died now, she never would have existed at all… they left her with only one option. She pulled the blanket down to her sister's shoulders. This, her twin – her best friend, her everything. The only person who had given her identity… She lifted the kunai to her own hand – then stopped and thought better. If she were forced to kill her with their Kekkei Genkai, it would be from the blood closest to her heart. Slowly, the young girl slashed a deep cut in the place right above her heart, wincing at the pain – both physical and emotional - that instantly seared her. Maneuvering her hand, she leaned forward slightly so the blood would fall through the cut she'd just made in her shirt and chest and into her palm. After a handful, she leaned back again and looked at the blood. Her eyes shined a strange, pearly color and the blood began to dance in her hand, moving like a cobra to the flute. Slowly, it moved from her fingers to the bed, leaving no trail but looking like a long, shiny red rope. It wrapped around her twin's neck, tightening, cutting off the oxygen…
The snores stopped.
She shuddered from the memory, surprised to find her hand had subconsciously moved to the scar that still remained beneath her shirt. She yanked it away and instead pulled a kunai from her belt, but found herself unwilling to use it. Inside, Nan-chan sighed – but whether it was with disappointment or relief, the girl could not tell.
She exhaled silently and slipped the kunai back into her belt. This memory… why now? Why would it stop her from finishing her mission here, at this place of all places? She'd assassinated so many… made so many… opportunities. Yet here, she stood in the doorway of a complete stranger, someone who she knew nothing about, and could not bring herself to kill him.
She forced herself a step further into the room, moving on silent feet trained for eleven years since that night. The girl pulled the kunai out again, placing it against the palm of her hand where countless scars overlapped themselves. The ultimate defense… Gaara of the sand could use his sand to defend himself and that was great… but she, she had two defenses, making her nearly impossible to hurt. Not only did Nan-chan give her the shield of blades – similar to Gaara's defense, it allowed her to control a patch of demonic grass, extremely malleable (at least for her), but harder than any metal known to man; if that failed and she were injured, she could control her own blood and use it as an extremely strong shield. However – as useful as her defenses were… they did not protect her from most medical ninjas, and a few others who knew her weaknesses. She shuddered, remembering the first time she'd seriously fought Kabuto…
" Orochimaru will hear about your disobedience. One of his supposed 'perfect weapons' and you can't even kill him? I'm disgusted." She awoke from her reveries with a start, turning to look at the shadow in the window. Unsure of how long he'd been there, she brandished her kunai at him with startling surety.
" Don't threaten me." She snapped, not even trying to justify her failure. He snickered quietly. Both of them were speaking below a whisper, mere brushes of air from their lungs painting the words.
In an extremely uncharacteristic move, he leapt towards the bed, and in an incredible show of speed, she met him there. The kunai in her hand moved in front of the one in his, blocking it away from the sleeping man – in consequence, the point slid down her blade and into her hand. She suppressed the pain, gritting her teeth and giving him no satisfaction. Her free hand pushed him away and into the desk across the room, a spray of blood marking his path as the kunai pulled out of her skin. He caught himself against a desk, knocking over a vase of flowers and several books. The man, his blue hair whipping about in an invisible wind, caught them before anything but water could splash the floor. Both looked at the body in the bed, but it barely stirred. Blood dripped down to the ground and she gave him a vicious smile. He shocked her by returning the look.
" You think I don't know what you can do? You're a mere child – a broken tool who can't even do as she's told." He whispered, his yellow eyes narrowing with derisive humor. She still did not show an emotional response – he was trying to get her to lose her cool… little did he know, internally, the struggle had become out of hand, his insults meant nothing against that emotional backdrop. Behind her cool mask she became more and more lost as the seconds passed. The consequences of her actions rattled her insides.
Years ago, she had sacrificed her sister's life for her own, now… she was paying back the deed by sacrificing her life for a total stranger's. The moment she had blocked the blue-haired man – no, the moment she had blocked Akahiro's kunai, she forfeited her life. A sorrowful moment filled her mind, a knowing that no matter how many lives she did not take, no matter how many lives she saved – it would never make up for the "opportunities" she'd created. But as a weapon, what did she have to make up for anyways? No… that was wrong, she was more than a weapon… wasn't she?
Still, if she were willing to sacrifice her life – she would make it worth it. Gathering the blood spilt from her hand, she whipped it around herself in harsh strands. It appeared like licorice barbed wire – but not nearly so cheerful. She swung the thin ropes forward, slashing at the man who had hired her, Akahiro. No longer would she deny his name – no longer would she acknowledge him only as the hand that wielded her. Inside her, Nan-chan seemed to jitter with glee. Despite the years they'd spent together, she could not tell what the demon felt excited about – the potential for spilt blood, or the sudden change in her host's demeanor.
A blast of fire took her off guard, cauterizing the wires she had swung at him and making them useless. The smell of burnt blood filled the room and the flash of light momentarily blinded the two of them, causing her to hissed in irritation. Behind her the body in the bed began to stir. Akahiro and her both snapped around to look at him and without thinking; she instantly called up the Demon grass. It grew in a neat, blackish forest in front of the bed, bending down and around – effectively surrounding the yellow-haired boy, and blocking the poisoned needles the blue-haired man shot at him.
Unfortunately, it left her completely vulnerable and Akahiro took advantage of it. With her attention on the well being of the stranger, he used the mere seconds to perform a succession of hand signs. From the ground, the spilt water formed into several icy orbs; six of them – each perhaps two inches in diameter flew at her, slamming into the chakra points of her body, cutting off each vein of energy one by one. The chakra infused ice orbs were quickly followed by a whirlwind surrounding her body, preventing her from jumping or moving about the room.
The second purpose of the wind became clear when she thought of using her blood – it'd pull it all out of her body. She'd heard of this jutsu, but never seen it… he used the wind as a suctioning tool to pull all chakra from within it to make itself more powerful, fueling the wind to highly destructive speed. Her Kekkei Genkai meant her blood had its own second chakra source, it couldn't be stopped by hitting the normal chakra points on her body, but – if she tried using it as a shield, she'd activate that chakra and the whirlwind would pull it all out of her body, leaving her a bloodless husk. The ice however held the chakra only in the very inside crystals – enough to fuel them, but not enough for the whirlwind to pull out.
Instinctively she used the kunai to try and block them, but the first two simply snapped the metal blade into pieces and continued on to her body. The shiny orbs broke and cracked bones; some shattered with the impact and turned into needles that continued to cut into her like long dangerous wasp stings. The girl cried out, unable to use her blood to protect herself, unable to move the demon grass from its protective cocoon around the man she had been hired to kill, unable to do anything but take the pain within the whirlwind. Slowly, she could feel the orbs of glassy ice stop their attack, a burst of heat from Nan-chan melting them instantly to useless drops of water, the whirlwind cancelled out by one spinning in its flow in the opposite direction.
Her byakugan and sharingan both undeveloped proved useless – capable of nothing but keep track of the orbs and place her hands in front of them to stop fatal blows, but they'd never actually served to protect herself... No wonder Kabuto hated her… she'd been a waste of their most precious Dna...
No wonder so many men feared this man… he hadn't even used a fraction of his energy and he'd laid her down like a broken doll, she shuddered to think of what else he could do.
She didn't want to do a check on herself, didn't want to see how bad the damage was… she could feel the broken bones in her hands from trying to block the ice from the more vulnerable parts of her body, the rest, she just chose not to try and note for the time being. Slowly, she stood back to her feet – not even having been aware of falling. Nan-chan lent her some of her chakra, letting it flow and begin to slowly heal some of the wounds, though she refused to let her use it to attack the man. She didn't understand Nan-chan's refusal, but then… dazed and suffering from a major concussion at the moment, trying to process reason wasn't coming easy.
" The only reason I choose not to kill you – because I think it will be more entertaining to watch you suffer at the hands of Orochimaru. And, what was that medical ninja's name? Ah – Kabuto should get a kick out of dissecting what remains of your body. Though – as useless as you prove to be as a weapon, I'm sure your worth as a test subject would be menial as well." He laughed loud and clearly, the whispering no longer necessary. His voice, once rich and cultivated – came across harsh and cold with hatred and sadism. She watched him disappear out the window, holding onto consciousness long enough to observe the Demon Grass dissipate and the man she'd protected leap forward with a kunai directed straight at her heart.