Another chapter that's very reinterpretative of canon, a lot, and when I mean A LOT I really mean it. They tend to be my favs so hope you enjoy them too.
In a short lapse of time, I felt how my whole existence tumbled down.
I managed to be promoted to Jonin, without seducing anyone, clearly I'm not that kind of person. He treated me like anyone else, a thing I respected, because I didn't want him to display a special treatment towards me when being evaluated. Not long after, Yuki also applied, and he managed to be promoted without much trouble. I was sure that if everything stayed normal some other friends of mine could have applied, but quickly came the first political crisis that the regime of my loved one had to face, and that affected me more than It should have. I kinda had an idea that there were red clouds plowing through the nocturnal sky of our desert, but I wasn't expecting them to turn off the moonlight so soon. I should have been more cautious, and should have thought about the fact that violence didn't wait for you to be prepared. It attacked, in the deepest place of your fragile heart, without waiting for you.
It was the worst night of my life. I was coming back from shopping for our dinner that night, and I somehow felt that something was wrong with our village. I dared to look at the sky, and I swore I'd seen a withe stain, but when I cleared my eyes, I saw nothing. I didn't know if I was about to have the worst bad trip ever, or if the wind's hitting and the sand were impregnating my skin while trying to kill me.
I tried not to think about the issue on my trip back either when I helped my dad prepare the food. Still, the night's air continued to unsettle me, so much that my body felt the same as It did that night in which the red haired boy allowed the raccoon's instincts to get away. Of course, that clearly disturbed me. I managed to have dinner like always, or at least as relaxed as I could be considering I still thought something horrible was about to happen to me and everyone around me. It was a very strong hunch, I usually didn't have them, but this one was about to throw away all my mental stability in seconds.
Not much happened during the next half hour, and we could have a very normal dinner. My mother quickly went to sleep, since she didn't like to stay up late, and my father stayed reading in the living room. I myself went to my room, trying to think of the idea of sleeping was great to make me stop thinking about my unsettlement, and to sink deep in the oniric walls of my subconscious. Stupid of me, had no idea that that night they would recieve me with open arms, to show the worst parts of my wanderings.
Suddenly, close to midnight, I swore I felt something weird in the air. It was as if the desert's sand was again being impregnated with weird properties, as If human blood was trying to stain its natural characteristics. In that moment that disturbed my smell that much, I got out of bed. Next thing, the sound of an explosion almost broke my eardrums. It was weird, because it wasn't the first time I heard an explosion, but somehow this time was different, it was as if it preceded the detonation of so many bad stuff that were about to happen to my world, not precisely late.
I went to my balcony, disturbed, and I looked at the sky. I saw a spectacle that was very far from anything else I hoped to see in the sky of our village. A huge sphere of sand, which I knew perfectly who it belonged to, was battling against that white stain I had seen when shopping. I couldn't see very well who was the one controlling that thing that looked like a bird, he seemed like a blonde boy, but I managed to see the red stains that invaded the black hood he had. My psyche was visibly altered when it realized that the thing that had appeared in my vision field wasn't any kind of hallucination, on the contrary, It was a threat. Threat which was thinking of attacking a person that was very precious to me. I was about to throw myself to the roofs of my village, so I could intervene somehow. Who did he think he was to be attacking like the boy I liked? Over my dead body. But before my teenage stupidity could do anything else, my father went out the balcony, visibly forced by whatever that was happening in the skies that were above us.
"Isu!" exclaimed him, looking at me as if his life depended on that. "Are you okay?"
"Dad…" was the best thing I could muse, trying to process the shock that happened when knowing my guts were right. " I don't know what's happening… the bird… explodes… and the sand goes into…"
"Isu! Calm down and don't despair. Everything's gonna be okay."
"No!" I shouted, deep into desperations and drama "It's not gonna be okay! Something horrible is gonna happen, I know it! I have to go help him, I have to keep him from getting hurt!" I said, trying to throw myself to the air, but my father stopped me before I did anything else, grabbing me with loads of strength.
"No Isu! I'm not gonna allow you to intervene! You have to understand that his honor as a Kage is on edge here! If you get into this you're gonna stain his honor and you will make him seem helpless!
As you can imagine, my teenage self didn't like to hear that at all, less coming from my father, who had no idea who the boy was as I did.
"I DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT HIS HONOR! HE IS IN DANGER AND I WANNA HELP HIM!"
"YOU'RE NOT GONNA DO IT!" he shouted at me, and I knew that when he screamed like that he had lost any patience with me. "And not because of the honor! I'M NOT GONNA ALLOW YOU TO GO THERE IN A SUICIDE MISSION AGAINST THAT GUY! I've heard some very nasty rumors about that organization, and If I'm with you I'm not gonna allow you to risk your life like that.
"I CAN DEFEND MYSELF!" I shouted at him, since I was feeling very underestimated by my own father, and I didn't like that much, because If he underestimated me. Who else was gonna doubt in doing the same?
"I KNOW!" he shouted "BUT YOU'RE STILL MY DAUGHTER AND YOU LIVE WITH ME! I DON'T WANT YOU DYING ISU!"
That last claim was the one that managed to calm my mess of emotions, and made me believe (partially) what all this problem was about. The honor of my friend wasn't of importance to me in this fight, but my father was right about something, if he as our leader couldn't face this boy, who belonged to an organization that seemed very awful. Who else would do so?
I perceived the air in my surroundings. My father stopped grabbing me with firmness. I simply looked at the sky, while observing that spectacle of sand and explosions fusing itself in what looked like a painting done by the most frenetic and insane artist in existence. It was frightening, seeing again violence grabbing our beautiful but hostile night skies, turning them into an ominous and harmful place to human existence. I even started to believe in the idea that the combination of gasses and grains of sand was gonna end up infecting the whole air of our village, and all of us were gonna die of inanition. Once our bodies were dead on the flood, the blond boy would throw a bomb and that would end up drying all our water and our organs, buring the skeletons under the rubble, them waiting for the desert to eat us, leaving all of us to forgotten doom.
The tears freed the few liquid that I had left on my body. If my psyche was controlled by my emotions wholly, I was capable of hiding under my bed sheets, crying when thinking that a best place existed in this lord, which didn't have anything to do with subjective shit. But there was nothing I could do in that moment, more than observing how everything was about to die. My brain started doing confabulations, thinking about what could happen if I intervened, but everything led to my perish. I also knew that, because of my job, I shouldn't be scared of death, but my father had a point, and it wasn't very coherent diving into the possibility of dying that easily. When I imagined how my body would have been left after being crushed by those bombs, the idea seemed even more horrible.
Nevertheless, as you can imagine, I didn't want to stand there still. It wasn't doing me any good, and I cried without emitting any sound, while knowing that someone was hurting the boy that I dedicated all my love to. I wanted to do something, even if I couldn't move from there, I wanted to give that invader something.
After my initiative, my brain had a great idea. An idea that It wouldn't take me long to regret, because it left me out of everything important that concerned this issue.
I tried to get the blonde boy into a genjutsu. I had never tried to do one so far from the target, but I was that desperate so being that one the only way I could find to help the leader, I did so.
First it seemed like nothing had happened. Then I felt how someone's gaze shook at my eyes, and I also did it in the process. Suddenly, I was transported far from the desert. Everything seemed dark, but shaded, as if everything was a painting with wet paint. The raccoon was nowhere to be found, and If he was there somehow, I was incapable of seeing that. My attention was totally focused on the explosive blonde, and my goal was to stop his wrongdoings as soon as possible.
"Who are you?" he exclaimed with a very annoyed tone. "What the fuck do you want?"
I didn't much like the idea of having conversations with my enemies, mostly because when that happened there was always the possibility of getting attached to their causes, and that wasn't something I wanted.
"I want you to die" was the only thing I could tell him, since I didn't want to give the explosive invader more information.
"I see," he mused, "Over my dead body! Now you will face the explosion of my art!" he said, while a mouth that came out of his hands swallowed a lot of clay, and then lots of spiders came out from there. If I didn't knew that they were bombs, I would have thought they were cute. "HA!".
He threw them at me. I avoided some, others not, but they didn't damage me, because he was in a world I had created, and he had no idea where the hell I was, so he couldn't really damage me. I felt how my face deformed and returned back to normal, while I ran above the air as if under my feet there was some solid floor there. My body lost and gained form, I didn't want to imagine what it looked like, so much that I thanked the raccoon wasn't there. Just when I felt that the iris of my eyes were about to stop seeing because of them being consumed by the meat of my cheeks, while my arm also didn't stop bleeding and whose veins went out of the places they should be, a gale whipped the blonde's face. I saw how his prominent fringe moved, and how his skin abandoned his face, so much that only a horrid red eye was covering his factions while his eyes were about to be consumed.
Nevertheless, none of that was real, it was only a suggestion of mine to believe that was really happening, something like a gale skinning someone's fact. If that happened someday, I just hoped that they didn't say I was doing forbidden jutsus, because I didn't wanna become a criminal.
But I didn't have time to think about that, because suddenly, his face was restored. He smiled evilly at me, and he again throwed his clay creations. The spiders got attached to my face and my body, threatening to strip me of all my body's nutrients. Either way, before they could do so, they vanished, and the focus the blonde directed towards me went outside. I saw how suddenly one of his arms turned to ash, while a strange force gulfed him totally and dried all his body.
The last I could perceive of that blond boy, was the suffering that implied. Because after that, so many things happened that I doubted they had anything to do with the scene that was happening from the view of my window.
I didn't even have time to enjoy the fulfillment of damaging the one that was mistreating my loved one, because not long after I saw myself in a cave. I had never seen it, but I could perceive there was something weird, since the wave that transmitted me was even more ominous than the one I had felt that night. There were a few shadows, and I couldn't distinguish the face of anyone very well, because they seemed to have faded. Somehow, someone came close to me, someone that had very appealing eyes. They were violets and were surrounded by circles. Easily they were the most beautiful eyes that I've ever seen. Or I would have thought that if it wasn't for them amplifying all my field of vision, and suddenly it looked as if nine sets of eyes were looking at me. The walls of the cave were covered by the violet eyeball, and suddenly he talked.
"I don't know who you are" mused a deep voice. "but you're not welcome here. I don't know how you dare to profane our purification places. Since you had the nerve to come here on your own, it's clear you must be taxed with pain…" he mentioned while I felt how he analyzed every part of me "Well, your suffering doesn't stop growing. Prepare to submit yourself to the nine ways of pain!" exclaimed the eye, or whatever it was.
Then I felt how, out of nowhere, my body lay down, and nine stakes stabbed me throughout my body while they pierced me. Two in my legs, one in my genitals, two pierced my stomach, one my heart, one my throat, piercing throughout all my mouth, and the other two in both my eyes. I didn't even have time to cry, because the only thing I felt at that moment was the pain of a thousand infernos together, while my body was getting drained of his blood.
"Purge your feelings! Purge your suffering! Purge your love! Accept the removal of your emotions and go to the purest state of your existence! Reward your life with the pain the other people suffer everyday!" exclaimed the voice of the eyes.
I wanted to scream that I wanted, that the only thing that I wanted was peace and tranquility. But my throat was also being pierced, so I couldn't say a thing. Seconds seemed like hours, and I claimed intensely for getting out of there, without saying it, since that violet eyed-enth wasn't gonna accept that. The pain continued consuming me, while my brain prayed for someone to come save me, and could also cure me so my body would rest. Either way, the help never came.
I didn't know how much time I was there, because I suddenly felt how I got away from the violet eyes gaze, and the stakes were leaving my body. I was still full of holes and hurt, but someone I managed to stand. Then I saw a figure, and then I found Mika.
"Hi Isu" she told me, and for some reason, she had her mouth sewed in a way that it seemed like she was being forced to smile. If it wasn't because my genitals were severely damaged, I would have surely pissed myself after such a horrid vision. "Have you accepted your truths?"
"No… I don't want to."
"You know perfectly that you want to." she said while she came near me and surrounded me with her arm, like embracing me. That wasn't at all an action I expected from Mika, but for some reason, she was doing so, and as you can imagine, that disturbed me even more. "You long for all this removal so the most perfect version of yourself can be of use to your loved one. And he doesn't even think that! He is so busy thinking of fighting over his honor! Don't you know that being a ninja means not to get lost in emotions?! What are you doing with your life, Isu?!
"No… Shut up! You're not Mika!"
"Maybe I'm not, but I'm the version of Mika that you're scared of, and you're convinced I exist." she said, piercing towards my eye-holes with her fingers, that were stained with blood, which also had pieces of skin. Again, if it wasn't because of the damage my throat had, I would have puked right there. "Surrender to this place of your soul Isu! That will stop you from suffering and you can live without those illusions that damage you! It 's easy! You just have to eat Yuki's jaw!"
I thought I had heard that wrong, but she didn't even leave me time to get shocked, because next thing, with the arm that wasn't on me, she grabbed the head of my best friend by its hair. He was asleep, luckily, and he didn't seem very disfigured, but that sight was horrid enough to make my vision altered, and my throat started hurting even more.
"WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM!" I shouted, surrounded by the idea that I could not drop tears or liberate my anguish.
"It wasn't me… It was him." she said alluding to someone that wasn't present in the scene. Next thing, she threw the head on the floor, went down, and she proceeded to cut the jaw of my best friend, pretending that I effectively ate it. I didn't want to look, so I looked elsewhere. What I saw there was even worse.
"MHAHAHAHAHA! HUMAN HEAD! DELICIOUS!" shouted a roaring and rough voice. Suddenly I could see a bloodthirsty presence, one even worse than Mika in her killer mode. It was the last thing I wanted to see in that situation, it was the fucking raccoon, totally transformed, looking at me with those very intimidating eyes.
Before I could choose between facing the raccoon or eating the teeth of my best friend, the arm of the animal grabbed me. Then, it engulfed me. Either way, my body wasn't crushed by his jaw, I somehow survived. After that I realized I had fallen in a weird squared room that seemed surrounded by sand. There appeared the presence that I least wanted to face in that situation. The red-haired boy turned to stare at me. But his eyes weren't the usual light-blue that I liked so much, they were the eyes of the raccoon. I got visibly scared, and I wanted to run, but his presence intimidated me so much that I couldn't move.
Next thing, he came near me. I think he'd never come this close to my body, and for a second the most irrational part of me was thinking he was about to kiss me and get me out of my suffering. Clearly that didn't happen. I noticed that despite the fact he was shorter than me, he still managed to intimidate me with those blood-thirsty eyes and a gaze that didn't show the littlest piece of empathy for my person.
The arm of the raccoon consumed my loved one extremity. He grabbed me by the neck, and he lifted me while he choked me. Nothing of that sensation was nice to me, and it contributed to make me feel how my throat ripped more and more. His expression did not change, and I felt he enjoyed me having me like that. I just wanted his nice self to appear, but it seemed like again, the raccoon had killed that part of him.
I was about to be left without air, when his other arm was consumed by the sand of the raccoon, and he finally talked to me.
"So useless." he mused without much interest in me. "Die."
Finally, he stripped my head from my neck, slowly and painfully, piercing through all the veins that linked my torso with my brain, ending up breaking my spine, and leaving me, effectively, devoid of life.
Y'know after finishing my reread of Naruto I actually think what I write makes more sense than those fucking last 40 or so chapters of the manga goddamit I don't even know If I want to try that mix of drugs that Kishimoto surely took when writing that shit. Kishimoto you suck, you wrote such a bloated final arc that I have no fucking idea what to do when this fic gets to that point in the story.
Ok nobody cares, again me ending chapters in an awful note, but well, see what the future forsees for poor tortured Isu.