Mind Made Up
The situation was grim. Hitomi had apparently betrayed her teammates in favor of her father, and was now heading back to the village. If she succeeded in getting her way, they might never see her again…
"Hitomi why? Don't you recognize me?"
"Uchiha bitch! How dare you hit Jiro!"
Hayato rushed towards Hitomi in the Jyuken stance. "Byaku-"
"Hayato don't!"
He stopped with a bewildered look on his face. "She kicked you into a wall, and you don't want me to hurt her?"
"When I looked into that man's eyes, my mind became clouded. I'm sure that is what happened to Hitomi! Her actions are not her fault."
"Well, well, well," muttered Uchiha, Atushi. "You resisted my jutsu. No one has ever done that without a Sharingan before. Then again, you weren't the target; you only received a fraction of the effect my daughter received. So what do you think of my Total Hypnotic Eye Jutsu? I made it myself, an extension of the Sharingan's Hypnotic Eye Genjutsu. Normally the Hypnotic Eye can only pull of minor suggestions, things the enemy might do any way, making it good for nothing except subtle influence of the flow of battle. But this technique uses the link between the mind of the Sharingan user and the victim of his Hypnotic Eye Jutsu to establish total control over the victims mind."
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because the technique is so powerful that even if you know it is coming, know exactly how it works, and can even use the technique yourself, you can't block it. The only thing that can stop it is Sharingan, but you can't use it if I don't tell you to after I hit you with the jutsu. So you have to be using it before I activate my technique or you're doomed. And none of you can use Sharingan."
"Jiro, we have to stop her!" cried out Hayato in vain. Jiro would not hurt his friend.
"As soon as this battle is done, I'm going to make her spin a sad tale of an enemy ambush, and how they had killed you before her very eyes. Hitomi, kill them."
"Yes father."
No, there's no way to stop this jutsu! But I can't hurt her, not after she offered me friendship, laid her life on the line for me against Masato. Not after she trusted me…
"Hitomi, you don't want to do this."
She made three hand signs. "Ninja Art: Sink Into the Abyss."
The ground around Jiro seemed to be sinking. He tried to escape, but clawed hands came up from the ground and held him in place. The sky was turning red, and the earth beneath his feet grew hotter.
Its just Genjutsu, it can't kill me. But while I'm lost in my own mind, she might! I can't move my hand to make hand signs, can't focus my chakra!
He sank deeper and deeper into the ground, until his head was submerged. For a terrifying moment, he couldn't breath, and he forgot that it wasn't real. Then his head sank all the way to the other side, and it only got worse. He saw around him a seen of fire, smelled the brimstone. He looked down to the clawed hands, only to discover that they belonged to demons who measured over seven feet high. An imp came up to his face, and spat in his eye.
"Welcome to hell."
XXX
All was darkness, Hitomi didn't know where she was, who she was, what she had been. She couldn't shake this feeling of being completely and utterly alone. She couldn't bear to be alone.
Then a voice shone through the darkness. It said, "Well done Hitomi. Now finish them off."
The voice was the one thing she remembered completely, everything else was less than a dream. She didn't remember what it had told her to do, couldn't remember who it belonged to, but most importantly, when it was around she couldn't remember what it was like to be alone. She would do anything for the voice, laugh with it, cry with it, steal for it, and even kill her own father for it. But the voice never asked anything of her, nothing more than to play a little game. She couldn't remember what the game was about, but she knew it was fun, and it made the voice happy. The voice she would laugh with, cry with, steal for, or even kill her own father for a mere whisper.
Who was her father? She couldn't remember him, but she felt as if it might not be as big a deal as she had thought it would be to kill him for the voice. Hadn't he done something unforgivable to her, ask something of her that she could not give? If only she could remember…
"What are you waiting for, do it!"
The voice had interrupted her thoughts, what were they again? Oh well, they weren't important. Who cared about something as trivial as thinking anyway? What really mattered was that the voice had been angry. What was it that it had wanted her to do again? "Do what, father."
What a silly word, father. What did it mean? She hadn't the faintest idea, but something told her it was important.
"Kill them Hitomi, kill them!"
Hitomi, wasn't that her name? Yes, she thought it was. Suddenly she had a name. Did other things have names too?
"Kill what father?"
"The children, the ones I told you to kill."
She felt this horrible pain in her eyes, a burning that wouldn't stop. It seemed to bring her attention to focus. "Kill what children?"
The voice began to sound suspicious. "The boys, the filthy Hyuga! Hayato and Jiro!"
The things in their game had a name now, and so did she. The burning her eyes just wouldn't go away. But the things had names, didn't that make them important? Weren't they more important than the nameless voice?
"Damn it girl, this is your father talking to you! Kill them!"
She felt betrayed; the voice she would kill her own father for was her father! But did it matter? They had promised nothing. She could just as easily kill her mother if it wanted her to. Yet she held on to this feeling of betrayal, felt that it was important. The pain in her eyes flickered between sharp and dull.
"Kill them!"
"N-No father."
The pain stopped flickering, becoming sharp, but she fought past it.
"Kill them!"
"No!"
XXX
The world around Jiro vanished. The injuries, the pain, the blood, all of it went away. He was instantly back in the world of the living, but how?
How have I been brought back from the dead?
Amidst the pain, the torture, and the fire, Jiro had forgotten that he was not really dead. He forgot that what he saw was nothing more than Genjutsu, his mind had abandoned his last bit hope what had seemed like ages ago. Slowly, he came back to his senses, and opened his eye.
What he saw was nothing short of amazing. A large amount of energy seemed to be gathering in Hitomi's eyes.
"What is this?" cried Atsushi. "No, impossible, I'm in control here!"
Hitomi's voice was shaky, "N-no, you're n-not!"
Her eyes changed.
"Sharingan!"
She fell to the ground panting.
"How did you manage to break my control?"
"How could you do that to your own daughter?" She got up, her Sharingan still gazing with malice. "I thought I was going to die in that place, alone, without even the slightest idea who I was. And you know what sickens me the most? When your voice ordered to do something, it felt like I had finally found a friend! I'll never forgive you."
She formed three hand signs. "Ninja Art: Sink Into the Abyss!"
The moment stretched out for a long, painful time, and then there was a laugh. "Haha, ha ha ha ha! Foolish girl, your Genjutsu is useless against the Sharingan!"
"Maybe, but this isn't."
Jiro gave out a cry of joy. "Masato!"
"Sorry I'm late, traffic was murder. Now then, Mr. Uchiha, do you feel my finger on your back? Hope you do, because if so, you know it is pointed strait at your heart, at an angle aiming well above the heads of my Genin."
"What do you plan to do?"
"Do? I plan to kill you if you so much twitch, unless I tell you to. Are you partial to anything, I prefer lightning myself."
"For what reason do you plan to kill me?"
"You're lucky you didn't twitch. My student, Hitomi, did not posses Sharingan yesterday, or even this morning. Now she does, indicating that her life, or those of those close to her, was threatened to a degree that only the Sharingan could save the lives at stake. Congratulations, you made yourself more of a threat to my students than I was, and we did the bell test."
"Sardonic bastard."
"Don't tempt me."
"It is not your place to judge whether or not a ninja dies, unless it is part of your mission. I am not your mission. On what authority, or even what evidence, do you threaten me?"
"That would be mine."
A man walked out from behind Masato.
Jiro whispered the name, "Sasuke."
"As the world's foremost expert on Sharingan, I except Masato's evidence. However, you are my responsibility. Want to play a game?"
Masato walked away from Atsushi, while Sasuke disappeared and reappeared behind Atsushi's back.
Surprised, Atsushi said, "So fast!"
"The game is a race, to your new home, jail. If you win, you get to live inside your own personal cell for the rest of your life. If I ever catch up to you before then, you get hit by a very powerful, very pissed off Lightning Edge!
"The race starts, now. Sharingan!"
Atsushi ran for his life, while Sasuke made hand signs, and placed his hand toward the ground.
"Chidori!"
A ball of focused lightning the size of an average human's torso formed in Sasuke's hand, with a ton of energy over flowing. He gave chase at full speed, until they were out of sight.
"The Chidori, so powerful…" said Jiro in awe.
"Well time to go, "said Masato, "to the former country of the sound."
XXX
A/N: Next time, how to find a place when you have no idea where it is? Seems pretty straightforward, but is it too risky? What is Jiro's plan?