Spineless

We have breached 700 Reviews, and this story will be a year old in June. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

Anyway, the Blood War is due to end in the beginning of June 1013, and this chapter picks up in the early days of 1012, meaning there's year and a half of mission left to go before the Blood War is over.

Also, someone left me a copy-pasted Review over fifteen chapters, and I'm pretty sure it's a bestiality lime. Please refrain from doing more of that.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or PJO

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January 6, 1012 A.S.

Unlike last year, Shin'en did not get any Christmas presents.

The reason for this was because he had literally nailed his door shut and hadn't come out in two weeks. The reason for that was because he remembered quite well not just Sachiko's rampage, but the situation he had been placed in, the gas, the panic, the dick halfway down his throat—a dick his stomach had digested because Sachiko had swallowed the damn thing whole.

That weighed on a person's psyche, and a child going through something like that?

Forget it.

Shin'en wasn't talking to anyone. Not even Sukina.

Who was pissed to high Heaven with Arashi for willingly and knowingly putting Shin'en in that situation in the first place. It was her temper that kept the leader at bay from barging into Shin'en's room and whipping his little ass back into shape for the job he had signed on to do.

And so two weeks had passed with Shin'en holed up alone, and Yūrei continued to do their thing without him, killing people left and right.

However, all things came to an end, and Shin'en's alone time was on that list.

Sukina's hand burst through the wood, and she ripped downward, splintering the whole door apart. "Alright, kiddo. You've more than enough time to yourself, and I can smell your nasty butt from the lobby. Time for a bath and a short vacation."

Shin'en did indeed smell, mostly because he had been stabbing himself all over his arm like he had when Kimiko was having a meltdown in his mind, and so all that blood was all over him and his sheets, and not only that, but he hadn't ever changed out of his Sachiko attire, which was also caked in a fine layer of blood itself.

The demigod just gave a Sukina a blank look with eyes devoid of life.

Sukina walked right up to him, grabbed his ear, and yanked him out the door. Not even the shock of having his ear nearly torn off was enough to get brain functioning again. Sukina lead him through the summer home, past the other three Ghosts, didn't look at them, went right out the door, through the trees to the waterfall, and threw Shin'en into the cold liquid.

He came sputtering out a second later. "WHAT THE HELL!?"

Then he paused. "Where am I?"

"Planet Earth, Land of Water, the Main Island, a stream fed by a waterfall," Sukina answered.

"Oh…" Shin'en blinked. "Was that all a dream? The facility?"

"No."

"Oh. Gatou and Sachiko are weird, and they won't leave Kimiko alone, and Hiyumi has to make them back off, and they're all too loud."

"Make them be quiet," Sukina offered.

Shin'en stopped and thought about it. "Okay," he said simply.

Then he closed his eyes and concentrated, imagining the four voices in his head getting sealed up in thick layers of ice. Steadily, the voices faded, going into a decrescendo of defiance and pleas of no as they were sealed up again. When he was done, Shin'en sighed in content.

"That feels better."

"Good. Now clean yourself up. You smell like a corpse."

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Now with his head back on a little straighter, Shin'en and the rest of Yūrei were gathered in the front room.

Sukina clapped her hands together. "Alright everyone, on account of all the hecticness that has plagued our life for the past few days, I hereby declare this to be a beach day, so pack your beach stuff and let's go!"

Bullock and Yūwaku disappeared so fast they left vague smoke shapes of themselves. Shin'en looked between Sukina and Arashi, before he went to get some stuff from his room. The former two held a staring contest for a little bit, before Arashi exhaled and left for his room to gather some things. Sukina pumped a fist in victory.

An hour later, Yūrei was all by themselves on a secluded beach with a clear sky overhead and a warm breeze blowing through…and they just had fun. If you happened on them, you'd think they were nothing more than a group of teenage friends—Shin'en being someone's little brother…or sister, depending on the light caught him based on your perspective—having a good day at the beach.

Granted, superpowered friends, seeing as how all of them were using their chakra to spice things up.

However, there was more significance to this beach than just having a relax day. This was the very same beach that Shin'en used to come to with his brothers and sisters many years ago, when he was still at the orphanage with them. He had grown up here, going from a baby that was carried along by one of the older orphans, to a toddler learning how to swim in the shallows, to a child teaching other toddlers how to swim.

And he didn't even realize it.

The whole time he was there with Yūrei, the whole time he was laughing and playing and having a good time, he never once gave any thought as to where he was. To the host of invisible onlookers, those had been watching all this time, this fact was heartbreaking.

The fact that Shin'en's mind was so addled by Yūrei and the war that he didn't have a clue that he was a place so revered by him long ago.

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Shin'en dreamt that night of his sister, and it was one of the dreams he found to be the most interesting: a dream of his sister when she was younger than him.

Persephone looked about six or seven, her raven hair held in place by a blue headband, her clothes simple and bland. She was at a daycare by the looks of the room and all the other children and toys, and a teenage supervisor there in the corner wearing a set of scrubs, her attention focused on a blue device she was holding between both her hands as she periodically looked around the room.

It made Shin'en feel weird seeing his sister shorter and younger than him.

Persephone was standing by herself, bouncing on the balls of her feet, a hand twisting the hem of her shirt. Her eyes were darting around the room, her standing at the very back of it, giving her a view of everything. She looked nervous. Her first day, perhaps.

Little Persephone swallowed and went over to a group of boys who were playing with actions figures of characters Shin'en recognized as Justice League superheroes.

"Can I play?" Persephone asked the boys.

They stopped in their playing and all of them gave her the stink-eye.

"We're not gonna let a girl play with us," one of the boys said. "Go away!"

Persephone glowered, stood up, huffed, and went away. The boys went back to their playing, though they were only mashing the toys against each other. The daughter of Poseidon approached a group of girls playing with dolls.

"Can I play?" she asked.

The girls stopped in their playing and gave her the stink-eye.

"We already have enough people," one of the girls snapped. "Go away!"

Persephone glowered, stood up, huffed, and went away. The girls went back to their playing, though they were only pretending like they were having tea. The daughter of Poseidon approached a mixed group of boys and girls, all of them with cards in their hands, and a deck in the middle of their circle.

"Can I play?" she asked.

"We just started the game," one of the boys said. "You can't just come in after the game is started. You can play after we're done, though."

Persephone's mouth set into a thin line. She knew from experience that waiting was not something she did very well. It was often she found herself having to wait for the bathroom, and she would just go into the boys' one. She usually got in trouble for it, but she didn't understand why.

The little kids all got in trouble when they pooped their pants, and she was not about to poop her pants, and the boys' bathroom looked just like the girls' bathroom, so the big deal escaped Persephone.

She walked away from the group playing Go Fish.

That left only two other parties.

Persephone went for the bigger of the two. They were weird to her, their hair for one, all frizzy and bunched into several sprigs that jutted out everywhere, and their skin was dark as the hair on her head. She figured she might find friends in this group, since their hair was black like her hair; all the other kids' hair were shades of blonde and brown.

However, some of the girls noticed her approaching, and the whole congregation looked at her in synch. Persephone stopped, and turned around. The message in their eyes was very clear: go away.

That left only one other party, and it was a little girl with strange hair. It was red, it just couldn't be real, and she had a bunch of dots on her face—those couldn't be real, either. They were oddities to Persephone, and base human nature was to avoid things they didn't understand or comprehend.

That, and the red-haired girl had gotten hold of a bunch of colored markers and busily doodling all over herself.

That was also weird, and Persephone was going to steer clear of that.

Shin'en watched as his sister approached the supervisor, who was nose-deep in her device. The demigod moved over and saw that the woman was busily playing a game of some kind, directing a battle between a mutant orange lizard and a mutant yellow bird with a thunderbolt motif.

"Uh, ma'am?"

The woman jolted in surprise, her concentration so strong she hadn't realized Persephone was standing there.

"What's up, kiddo?"

Persephone swallowed, aware of how dumb this was going to sound. "No one…no one will play with me…and…I'm…and I'm bored."

The older girl blinked, the expression on her face being "that is not my problem, go away," but she realized that she had a job that required her to interact with children, and she needed to do it. Her eyes scanned the room, seeing things Persephone's inexperience didn't see.

The rowdy boys with their toys. The prissy girls and their dolls. The average kids playing Go Fish. The black girls all surrounding themselves, coming from a black-dominated neighborhood making them predisposed to those of their own color, and the really rich girl over there in the corner using herself as a canvas.

The teen's face drooped, as she had been told once before to stop that girl from coloring on herself, and if she ever did, that it all needed to be cleaned off ASAP.

Remembering this, the teenager made that her priority, and sidelined Persephone's predicament.

"Uh, go play with those blocks until a get back."

She set her device down on the chair she was sitting in, and went after the redhead.

Persephone watched that episode for all of two seconds, before her eyes became glued to the toy sitting in the chair. She picked it up, and tried sounding out the name written at the bottom. It was hard because the letters wouldn't be still.

"Guh…Guh…Game…Game…Doy…? No, Game, uh…" her eyes screwed up, and she never got the chance to finish her exercise, because the device was ripped out of her hands by one of the earlier mentioned prissy girls.

"It's a Game Boy Advance, stupid," the lead girl snapped. "It's only for smart people who know how to read, not dumb little babies like you who."

With her limited lexicon and wit, all Persephone managed was a sharp, "I'm not a baby, and I'm not dumb."

"Yes, you are," the girl retorted. "You can't even read. Only babies and dumb people can't read."

"I'm not dumb," Persephone stated again, an edge in her voice.

"Then you're a baby," the girl reasoned. Then she spoke to her friends, grinning maliciously. "Check her diaper, sees if she's wet."

The girl had three extra little hellions at her command, and they all moved in at once to grab hold of Persephone so they could do who knows what to her, and at the onset of the threat, Persephone's body just…moved.

At the slightest twitch of the other girls' muscles, four thousand years of inborn battle instincts grabbed hold of six-year-old Persephone, and what did she do? Did she rush forward to grab the Game Boy and use it as a bludgeoning weapon? Did she break out into a display of martial arts, and Neo these bitches? No, and no.

What Persephone did was grab the chair and buy four for the price of one.

Shin'en put his hands over his head and started clapping rapidly with a flat expression.

Now, even with his limited understanding of the stupid laws of this world his sister lived in, he knew she was going to be in big trouble for what she just did, and he wanted to see how it would all play out. Unfortunately, the dream ended.

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Shin'en's eyes popped open as soon as Sukina's hand touched his door handle, and he was sitting up in his bed when she opened the door. The blank expression on her face told the boy that what she was about to tell him was going to make him very unhappy.

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He was right. What he had been told made him very unhappy.

"So you're going to make another personality in me because Mei said that morale is getting low among the Rebels, and she ordered you to find a way to come up with a solution, and your solution is to make another personality in me!?"

"Yes," Arashi answered with a straight face.

Shin'en's whole body went bright red, his eyes catching flame, and steam erupted from his ears with the sound of a train whistle.

Yūwaku grabbed a nearby bucket of water and doused him with it, causing steam to billow around his body. Shin'en turned a very angry look at the blonde.

"Hey, you were about to burn the whole place down."

"Well, if you get told that the grand plan to boost morale for a bunch of murderers is to get made up as a cute and perky preteen nurse girl, I'd like to see you not burn down the whole place!"

"It could be worse," Bullock coughed into his fist. "You could've been made up as a teenage nurse girl, and then you'd be a sex icon."

"I still am going to be a sex icon!"

"Yes, but for less people."

"And those are going to be the weird people!"

"And you can kill them if they try anything," Arashi said, as if this made the whole situation okay. "Now, stop your bitching. You swore an oath to do whatever it takes to kill Yagura, and part of killing Yagura is cutting his army down to size, and to cut his army down to size, we need soldiers that have the will to fight."

"We exist," Shin'en snapped.

"We cannot be everywhere at once."

Several poofs of smoke obscured the room, and when the smoke cleared, dozens of copies of Shin'en all glowered at Arashi, who remained unfazed.

"The plan has been made and it will be executed as I see fit. Let's get started."

Shin'en growled, getting fed up with everything. He was here for the sole purpose of killing the Fourth Mizukage, not playing dress up.

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December 9, 1012 A.S.

The Rebels had hardly been impressed with Nanako, the little girl cosplaying as a nurse. Bubbly, happy, perky, and a ray of sunshine though she may have been, cute as well, and young, reminding many of a little sister or a daughter, these men and women were hardened by combat and made cynical by death.

Still, their personal feelings on the matter didn't at all matter to the Co., who made everyone attend a one-on-one session with Nanako, to spill their guts out and relieve their shoulders of all the burdens they carried.

Touji stared flatly at the loli before him. She was cute, and she was young, with a round face, big round eyes, a short stature, a slim body devoid of mass and baby fat, striking blue hair that glittered in the light if it caught it just right, and ocean-blue eyes. She wore a nurse costume—white stockings, white opera gloves, the button-down shirt, and the little white hat, all framed in red—and she had a clipboard and pen with her, ready to jot down notes.

"Listen, kid," Touji started, but was interrupted.

"Nanako. My name is Nanako, and you will call me such, 'kay?"

Touji's nose wrinkled upwards towards the left. "Fine, Nanako, listen…I don't care why you're here, I don't care who you are, I don't care at all about you. We could fall right under attack this moment, and you could get half your head blown off, and I wouldn't care. I've seen too much to care about some kid like you."

Nanako scribbled some stuff down on her clipboard, and then said in a very quiet voice, "You killed a child."

Touji looked stricken.

Nanako continued. "It weighs heavily on you. If I had to guess, you hardly get any sleep at night because you keep seeing that child's face in your dreams. You're haunted."

Touji stared at the little girl, mouth slightly agape, and then he settled into a sneer. "Good job—gold medal to the brat with the insight. Yeah, I killed a kid; it was a few months ago, Yagura was employing a new tactic, using a bunch of brats that he sped-run through the Academy, giving them basic skills and knowledge, hoping that we couldn't bring ourselves to kill children on the battlefield. Well, it didn't work, and now I can't sleep at night wondering," Touji's voice broke, and he swallowed, "wondering if…wondering…"

He couldn't bring himself to finish his sentence.

Nanako got up and placed her arms around the man's head, and pressed her forehead to his. She whispered comforting words to him, and soon enough, Touji was letting his soul out to a complete stranger, someone less than half his age. It didn't matter, it just felt great to finally get these things off his chest.

Hours passed, and more people became counseled by Nanako. The girl was a worker of miracles, with an intuition sharp as a sword. She could pick out the problems people had like a professional architect finding structural flaws, and then efficiently go about solving those problems.

The problems were generally the same: a person that they killed, a person they saw die, friends, family, lives they left behind, terrors over what life was going to be like if this happened or if that happened, and Nanako always had the answer, whether it be a powerful piece of words, or an inviting shoulder to cry on.

A whole platoon saw the little nurse in one day, and a whole platoon found themselves willing to give their lives in protection of the little nurse. She had this air about her that you just liked; it got into you, nestled inside you, and it was warm, fuzzy, and comfortable. You didn't want that air to leave.

Like Mei had wanted, morale was rising as the psychological burdens were lifted one by one.

Days passed, and then weeks, and then February was there, with Nanako being ferried from encampment to encampment by elite guards. By now, word had spread of the little nurse among the Rebels, and this new location was very eager to see for themselves if she was everything she was hailed as.

Nanako did not disappoint.

However, as amazing as she was in helping people with their mental problems, a surprise attack by a small remnant of Loyalist forces launched a surprise attack, and while the killed no one, they injured many before being eradicated. That was when Nanako's bodily knowledge was brought forth.

"He's got internal hemorrhaging around his stomach. Create an incision so the blood drains out."

"Shrapnel's in her upper arm and parts of her neck. She's lucky not have had her vertebrae severed."

"She's got five broken ribs on the right side of her body, one's almost poking her lung. We need to get the bones back in place or she might drown in her own blood."

"His leg is broken in three places with a blood clot heading upwards. We need to move now."

Up and down the way Nanako went, giving diagnosis and orders on what to do, often operating herself. By the end of everything, several people looked well on their way to being mummies, but no one was dead.

"Spineless cowards," Nanako muttered to herself, though it was heard by those in earshot. "Attacking by surprise, not giving any time to at least prepare, tch—cowards."

The medical tent was a big place, with many openings for entry and exit. There were dozens of tables set up for patients to be put on, and many of those tables were occupied.

"Hey, don't sweat it, kiddo," someone said from a nearby table. He was a young man, more bandages than anything, and the air around him had him pegged as the happy-go-lucky kind of person. "If they're sneak-attacking us, that means they don't have the muscle to take us on in a fair fight, so they have to show how tiny their balls are and pull a fast one on us. I think it's a sign of how awesome we all are."

Nanako's lips upturned slightly. "That's a great way of looking at it."

The young man grinned, then he said, "Hey, I've got a joke. You want to hear it?"

Nanako shrugged. "Sure."

"So, this woman joins a caravan, and she's carrying her baby with her, right? She goes up to the caravan leader, and asks to make sure she can stay. The leader says it's okay, but he also says, 'That is the ugliest baby I've ever seen!' Now upset, the woman goes to the back of the caravan, and a guy says 'You look mad. What's wrong?' And so the woman says, 'The caravan leader insulted my child!' And the man says, 'That would make me mad, too. You should go back up there and tell him what you think of him. I'll hold your monkey for you.'"

The young man finished with an expectant smile.

The entire tent just stared at him, before one guy started cracking up, and the domino effect took over until everyone was laughing, even Nanako.

Truth be told, she was rather depressed herself. The past month of going from place to place, meeting so many people, getting to know them, their stories, their troubles, she bonded with them. They were her friends. And she was never going to see them again. That weighed on Nanako, and so this opportunity to just laugh and enjoy a good time, brief though it may be, was a welcome opportunity.

And so the little nurse laughed.

SQUELCH!

The laughter halted immediately as warmth splashed across Nanako's face, and something went flying into her mouth. She jolted, and the sounds of the world faded from her ears, becoming distant and warbled. Her eyes slowly cracked open, focusing on the background. Chaos, Mist ANBU cutting people down left and right, screams, blood, death.

Then her vision focused in on the foreground, and she was terrified. The top half of the young man's skull was missing, and Nanako saw the tops of his bottom teeth, his tongue, and the opening of his esophagus. She reached to her mouth, grabbing hold of the dangling string, and she pulled it, dragging the thing in her mouth out of there. She stared, shell-shocked, at the eyeball she was holding by its optic nerve.

A shadow suddenly fell over her, a shadow with arms raised in such a way that in might belong to one about to deliver a killing strike.

'Spineless…' Nanako hissed in her mind.

Fear and terror immediately gave way to hatred and fury, and she invoked her divine powers.

The Mist ANBU behind her suddenly convulsed and screamed as his spine was torn completely free from his tailbone, his skull, his ribs, and body in a glorious shower of blood. He collapsed in a heap. And Nanako did the same to all other Mist ANBU that she could feel. All across the encampment, the Loyalist forces were stumbling the ground as their backbones were torn out of their bodies.

In seconds, everyone was dead.

In seconds, hovering above their corresponding corpses, were their spines, dripping in blood and slowly spinning clockwise.

Nanako surveyed the death around her, all the lives she had just saved, all the lives that were now gone because of the sneak-attack by the now-literally spineless cowards, and she fell to her knees and sobbed.

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Next chapter ends the Breaking Point Arc.

I've finished my set goal for AC:OD of upgrading all my legendary gear, which means that I have nothing else to do with my time besides homework and writing. Lucky for you guys.

How was the scene from Persephone's childhood? Do you want more scenes, or more focus on Shin'en in the Bloody Mist?

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