In the Key of Regret

In the Key of Regret

"To me the start was when I was sixteen," Kane began, slowly, speaking casually, avoiding with deliberate care becoming a storyteller, a skill she knew well. "That was about six and a half years ago now."

Himei Onna nodded, accepted both the information and the kunoichi's chosen method of retelling. Whether or not she was pleased could not be measured.

"I had been made a special jounin only recently, and I could not fight or wield jutsu in the ways of others of that rank," as Kane recited she noticed her observers patience. It was clear the dark miko would wait for the explanation to come, rather than pre-empt with questions. "My skills were not in combat, but intelligence. I have few gifts," Kane, having been raised an orphan, had never been one to praise herself, it invited harassment. "But I have a talent for disguise, for taking on the role of another, and had amassed a substantial record as a spy."

The other woman's eyes bored across the firelight, momentarily seeking after something, and then relaxed again. What they found, Kane could not reckon.

"At that time Iwa had learned that there were major changes taking place in the Rice Field Country, the opening moves to events you surely understand as well as I." The founding and subsequent destruction of Orochimaru's Hidden Village of Sound had been writ large across the ninja world, and deep into the Sand, though Himei Onna gave no sign of caring, one way or another, not that Kane had expected it of her. "At that time though we knew little, and needed to know more. So the Tsuchikage ordered me to go to Rice Field Country, to pose as a rogue ninja, and to join whatever was happening there, so that I might watch and report."

"I do not know how much experience you have with deep cover work," Kane suspected not much, this woman surely could not have the restraint for such methods, her skills lay elsewhere. "But this was particularly high risk even for such operations. Though I knew even then that I would not be the only agent sent, I had the identity of no one else to work with, and no contacts to report to. All returns of information were handled by dead drops in pre-arranged locations. The Tsuchikage showed me great trust in sending me, but the risks were severe." Kane was still proud that she had been chosen for the mission.

"So you joined Orochimaru," Himei Onna remarked. "And you survived to escape him later, an accomplishment in its own right," her eyes sparkled with firelight. "Yet that is jumping ahead. What did you do in his service?"

Kane recognized the unspoken instruction to advance the story, and also the kindness. Nothing in the request required that she comprise Iwa's hard-earned intelligence, which she dared not do. "He made me one of his lieutenants," she might have shuddered at the memory, that cold white-skinned man with the snake eyes presenting her with rank and command in his name, if what had come later had not been far more terrible. "I was not part of his inner circle, and I am glad of that, but I was well placed. I trained other ninja, young boys and girls, working to build their skills for battle." Seeing a silent request in her audience's body language Kane elaborated. "We worked especially on jutsu using sound, techniques that were rare, and used only in rudimentary form by most of the villages. I believed then that he did that to try and make his sound village seem more legitimate, and to affiliate it with an element as the other villages do. Now I am not so sure."

Kane wondered if the other woman would press her on her suspicions, but it seemed to wash over idly. It was hard to fathom, declaring that you had secretly worked as a spy in the service of perhaps the most infamous ninja criminal in half a century and having the equivalent of 'that's nice dear' returned. She wondered if the woman could tell her what it felt like to swim in a pool of blood.

Instead Himei Onna surprised her by directing the conversation forcefully, presciently. "During that research you did something unacceptable."

It had not been a question and looking into those eyes Kane was glad she did not know how the woman had known, even as she was heartened that she had. "I did many things in Orochimaru's service that I regret, but that were part of the mission, things that had to be done." She paused, struggling. She had never told anyone else the details of this before. Not the Tsuchikage, and not any of the other ninja who had tried to help her afterwards. She had known they could offer nothing but the same false platitudes to duty she had given herself a thousand times.

Himei Onna promised something different. Only from one who would not turn away from the darkness might she receive an explanation for what to do when forced to bear it. "There was one thing though, one incident…" Kane stumbled, trying to find a way to explain. "We were working on a new jutsu, a sonic attack, and I developed an idea, something very powerful, but I could figure no way to make it work with chakra, there was no existing means to supply the strength needed. So I went to Orochimaru, he was a genius after all, perhaps he could provide the answer." Her teeth clenched, remembering that snake's smile, his callous look as he considered the problem, the experiment. "He had a solution…he…"

"You killed someone who did not deserve it," Himei Onna supplied, her voice impatient, bored. "They are rare; I would suspect a child, under the age of seven, with one or no siblings, loving parents in the countryside…"

"How could you…" Kane felt horror blossom somewhere deep inside her. She felt suddenly nauseous, woozy, as if the ground were spinning.

"Killing the innocent can open a gateway to all kinds of things," the woman laughed, shrieking in frightful delight, a cacophony of depravity Kane could not answer. "If they were not so troublesome to locate I doubt there would be any left," she smirked.

Hearing the words Kane saw it again, the moment she had relived so many times. All those three years under the white snake's orders had blurred, most of it faded away as all the jobs did, all the assumed names, but this remained as clear as ever. The little girl, wearing a muddy smock, a beautiful little face, streaked with a wall of tears. "Do it," Orochimaru had commanded, and Kane had known he would kill her if she didn't, not out of suspicion, but because he couldn't tolerate seeing what he thought 'weakness' in his minions.

So she had grabbed the girl's mouth with her left hand, silencing the screams, and then plunged in the kunai, between the ribs, ending it in a single blow. Her eyes had been closed, but the bloodstained body in the mud was always there. "Yes, I did," Kane admitted to the miko's triumphant glare, barely glimpsed through her own bitter tears. "A little girl, she couldn't have been more than four."

"There would have been a ritual afterward," the miko's voice carried through the darkness, rasping away the layers of bandage Kane had wrapped about her heart, exposing the wound completely. "To create a link. Blood I suspect, that seems Orochimaru's style."

She did not speak only nodded, and chocked down the bile that flooded her mouth at the involuntary recollection of the salty, rusty taste, the little sake cup carved with the red liquid seals. She would never remove it from her mind.

"Very well," Himei Onna's voice returned to level, bland speech. "And after?"

"You need to hear more?" Kane managed, distraught.

"You are certainly not done telling me," the shinobi miko shrugged.

Gathering herself together again, Kane sat back up, peered for a long moment into the remnant of the flames, the darkness now overtaking them, and continued. "I went on in Orochimaru's service after that. The jutsu worked, though using it always felt a little bit like dying, and I avoided it."

"When I was nineteen Orochimaru mobilized us all, except for the youngest students," Kane's voice steadied, moving into history that was more common, legitimate, away from the intimate moment she could not stand. "He said we would attack Konoha, and conquer it, that we would be ninja lords." Kane shook her head. "He made many promises, that the Sand would fight with us, that he would disable most of the defenders and kill the Third Hokage himself. Most of his followers, the disgruntled young men close to my age, believed this, or even if they didn't, simply wanted to strike at a target. They lacked the patience to serve Orochimaru."

"I had my doubts," Kane explained. "I wasn't sure success was possible, I had memories of the Leaf's ferocity during the war, even though I'd been very young then." Kane recalled those tense days, having sent the message alerting Iwa, but receiving no counter-orders, having no choice but to attempt to aid the attack. "I wasn't ordered to run, and in some ways I'm glad of it. Three years is a long time, and I don't know what abandoning everything before the plunge would have meant. So, I went with the column."

She recalled the marches, the furtive advance on secret routes through the Fire country, courtesy of the knowledge of Orochimaru and other traitors, the lax security overall from the rich ninja of the fat lowlands. Iwa would never be invaded so easily, she'd made sure of that when she came back, the least of the lessons of that campaign. "Orochimaru made me a strike team leader, commanding three platoons, but they weren't the men I knew. My own students and friends had been younger, they'd stayed behind. I still don't know what happened. I suspect most died later." It was regrettable, Kane had not liked leaving so many behind, but serving Orochimaru was a bad gamble all around, nothing would change that.

Looking out in the darkness, her eyes alit by glowing embers, Himei Onna said nothing, casually interested, a story that had happened to someone else. It was amazing, for rumor said this woman had almost caught Orochimaru's deception in Suna, that she might have prevented all that followed save she pursued north instead of south. Where Kane mourned friends left behind, even though she had deceived them completely, the sharp-souled miko was utterly indifferent to the deaths of her own countrymen, perhaps even her relatives.

"You surely know the details of the battle as well as I," Kane continued. "My own part was small and Orochimaru did not tell us the full plan. I attacked, and led my men, and we penetrated well into the city. I don't regret any of that; Konoha and Iwa are not friends after all." Kane felt no trepidation in saying this, even though Konoha and Suna were friends. It would not move the shriek woman to more than amusement. "Then the battle went bad, Jiraiya of the Sannin appeared, like he'd fallen out of the sky, and I retreated."

Himei Onna raised an eyebrow, obviously questioning that simple result. It was a fair gesture, only a handful out of the more than one hundred ninja wearing the sound colors had made it out alive from the debacle.

Now Kane smiled, for she had turned disaster into opportunity that day, and was proud of it. "I found a dead leaf ninja, and dragged his body into a marsh, so it would not be found for months. In the chaos of those days impersonating him was easy. I learned everything about what had happened that day, including how Orochimaru betrayed his servants." She felt bitterness and anger over that. Kin and Zaku, two young ninja she had trained with, Kin in fact a friend, given up for a single jutsu. Such a personal grudge was weakness, but she still hated Orochimaru for it. Damn the snake bastard!

"How resourceful," the miko commented, stirring the embers so they popped and sparked. "No doubt you slipped away easily when the chance came."

Kane nodded, feeling no need to mention that she had been forced to kill her so-called partner from the Leaf to make good that escape. Doubtless the other woman could guess at this and had glossed over it to preserve the deniability of them both.

"I went back to Iwa afterward and things were the same, but not," There was no proper way to explain what home looks like after three years away, three years in which you are neither alive nor dead, but only an agent, drifting in the shadows of the ninja world. "There was praise for what I'd done, learning most, though not all, of Orochimaru's secrets. The Tsuchikage gave me time to rest, to take another duty, almost half a year. I proctored at the chunin exam, a pleasant, idle, pointless thing to do." Himei Onna's biting smile echoed Kane's sentiment.

"That was all fine, but things went bad after I went back on espionage duties," the watcher's face was impassive, though it seemed she must have anticipated they way things were going. "I started having awful dreams, flashes of pain, suffering, death, tormented things, wretched. They would go away wouldn't stop, but only got worse, and I saw flickering images in mirrors, my own face, decaying, distorting, bleeding, and more, terrible things."

Himei Onna put up a hand. "The one innocent girl, or others?"

"Others," Kane answered, and she knew the strangeness of that statement. "I never saw the girl at all, not even in a dream." It made no sense. If she was haunted by a vengeful ghost, and that was surely possible, she had heard of it, knew of jutsu that affected such creatures, why should see only see other people?

The eyes of the miko sparkled with delight at the confusion and pain. "Of course you would not; the truly innocent do not torment their slayers. What of your jutsu use?"

"That is the worst part," Kane admitted. "The rest, it is hard, but all ephemeral, it can't touch me, and I can override it and conduct my duties. My jutsu though, all the sound jutsu, they've changed. Whenever I use the sounds it burns through my body, tugging pulling, like something is trying to jump free with the noise."

"An apt description," the woman's feral eyes held a strange alien hunger now. "Almost literally true, in some sense."

"What?" Kane was dumbfounded for a long moment, and her voice, when it came, was terrified, child-like. "There are ghosts trying to pass through my body?"

"A moment," she held up her hand, close to Kane's face, and the Iwa kunoichi could see the calluses of weapon work there, and the string-work of a musician. "First I wonder. What do you think of your crime? Are you looking for forgiveness?"

"No," Kane shook her head, looking down into dying embers. "It was unforgivable, I had no choice, but it was still unforgivable."

"You had a choice," Himei Onna corrected, almost as a schoolteacher might. "There is always a choice, even death is a choice, but that is irrelevant. What do you seek, if not forgiveness?"

The question was unexpected, strange, both in content and tone. It was forthright in its acceptance of evil, so dastardly open. Himei Onna was not interested in penance, contrition, or even seeing Kane embrace her action, she was looking deeper. "I did that to complete a mission," the special jounin replied slowly, sounding her words out in her own mind, knowing the depths of her listener were not something even a skilled reader as she could plumb. "To serve the village, because serving the village is all I have, then and now. That is my purpose, and I want to fulfill that purpose, and the purpose of this curse, or whatever it is that I have consummated upon myself."

"I see, how very interesting." Himei Onna locked gazes with Kane, pulling her vision into the black morass of her eyes, blotting out flame, moon, and stars. "You are not cursed Tsuchi Kane, you are a conduit," the voice was unceasing, it did not abate or pause for comprehension, but plowed forward heedless of what it buried beneath it. "The ritual you completed used an innocent's loss to access the wrath of the dead, to bind their screams to your sound. Those torments are powerful indeed, and mighty techniques could be built from that."

"The thing you did was outside the natural order, neither yin nor yang, but your regret has brought the yin into you. You are not of the yin, like me, that is not your path. You are a ninja, who stands at the pivot between, as you ought, but you let the yin into you. Normally this would not matter; you would return to yourself, the I overwhelms urges one way or another. Men control their deeds, good and evil. They are not made to do it by forces without. It is your work that sets you apart."

Kane could only partly grasp this and wanted to beg for clarification, but she could not stop or speak against that voice, not in that moment.

"As an agent of consummate disguise you spread yourself apart, becoming different people, different identities, building them and casting them off into the world when they are done like worn kimono. The core is weak, trembling, Tsuchi Kane, named for earth by default, and the chime, which brings sound by letting the wind pass through. You have made a link to the wrath of the dead, and now it is passing through the door you represent."

"It is possible to slam a door of this kind shut, to place a barrier within your soul, but it would destroy the sounds you have developed, and likely you entirely. Beyond this, I would not do it anyway, I find the angry dead screaming abroad an invigorating concept." She laughed then, shrieking at the moon, delighting at the pain of others.

"What will you do then?" Kane demanded, terrified now more than she had ever been before.

"Give you purpose, since that is what you wanted, isn't it?" Her smile then could have accompanied any crime, no matter how terrible. "It is what you expected isn't it? Darkness cannot defeat darkness, but it can be re-channeled. Stay put now. Focus on the embers."

Kane, confused and worried, but committed as she had come this far, did as the yin-soaked shinobi miko demanded. Her eyes bore down upon the red-flecked lumps of gray, watching them slowly fade to nothing, cooling past the point of incandescence, struggling to survive, to burn and devour just a little longer.

Low, beginning in an almost inaudible murmur, Himei Onna began to sing. Her voice held no false sincerity now, only a rebellious revelation of sound and fury as it grew and surged in crescendo. Here was the true music of one who runs before the wildfire and the whirlwind, who has looked to the destruction that complements every act of growth and bowed down before it. Yin energy was essential to the world, the complementary half to the yang, but it was unfamiliar, alien, and in this raw expression, terrifying.

Himei Onna's voice grew, unleashing ancient words that passed over Kane's ear as thunder, her eyes glued to the embers she was unhearing, letting it swirl and settle about her without resistance, knowing the die had been cast, the disguise donned.

With sudden silence the shriek woman's song was done, and the fire died completely.

In darkness Kane looked up to the other woman, stranger now than she had been at the beginning. "What did you do?"

"I have set a curse upon you," she answered, a schoolteacher again. "You will hear the voices of the wrathful dead. In most men this is used to torment them and drive then over the edge of sanity, but for you it should provide a way to channel the darkness within."

"How can I do such a thing?" Kane did not understand, and it was hard to look kindly upon someone whose idea of help was placing a curse upon your soul.

"Use your control over sound," Himei Onna shrugged, curiously amused. "I'm sure it will take some experimentation, but if you give them an outlet, and perhaps targets for their rage, the other manifestations should cease. Regardless, you'll have plenty of time to figure it out, with the effort I expended on that curse it may last for decades." She laughed again, and got to her feet as the sky whirled about her and Kane cowered not in fear, but in awe of the uncanny lack of restraint in the woman.

Himei Onna turned away, slipped through the brambles, and did not look back. Only for a moment in the darkness did Kane see her truthfully; the walking staff she carried was a bloodstained naginata, and the body that outwardly seemed no more than a decade older than Kane's twenty-two years had already begun to crumble from within.

Everyone pays a price, the kunoichi realized again, only some are more willing to charge the account than others.

It was well past midnight, and Kane struggled with exhaustion, but she was not willing to sleep in this clearing, there was no need for additional reminders. She marched herself a short distance through the grubby woodland before collapsing on a bed of moss.

For the first time in many nights she slept without mind-shattering howls invading her dreams.