Regardless, thanks to all who review, and some answers:
Meggido: Funny that you would compare Ise's enhanced senses to the Byakugan, since sight is probably his weakest sense. Regardless, I like using the senses because I think its not what you'd think about first upon seeing a guy who's part shark, but they may be his most useful and effective bloodline power. The trick he used in the last chapter is effectively sensing with a lateral line, a series of pressure sensitive organs that almost all 'fish' have.
EvilP: Actually, I'd thought about the whole electrolysis, hydrogen and oxygen explanation, but while yes that does produce a tremendous amount of heat through an exothermic reaction, its not really burning, that would be more a series of explosions, while Mizuho definitely creates sustained flames that you can stand in and burn like a combustive fire.
Chapter 14 – Desolation Inside(concurrently)
The inside of a sandstorm might well be likened to hell on earth, and this was what awaited Yi in her flight. Wind whipped, the sand struck her as a thousand lashes in the first few moments, and blood blossomed all over her body. Her clothes were torn apart beyond recognition, if she had been able to even see them. Vision was limited to a matter of inches.
Yi fell to the ground after the first three steps, but it offered no protection, for that sand lashed at her with equal force, and there was nothing solid.
I must act, or I will die! She tried to shout the words, but could not force her mouth open now, so all was internal. Her cry was desperate, for Yi had no idea how to survive within the boundaries of a sandstorm. How would anyone survive? The thought flashed through her mind even as the sand seemed to answer that survival was impossible. She thought desperately, even as pain grew in her, and she knew that soon she would be able to do nothing but howl until death claimed her. I must act now!
There were no ideas. Yi tried desperately to pile sand before her face with her hands, but it was blown away almost as fast as she put it there, tearing into her flesh. I need something more solid, a barrier that will resist the sand. Wood, or stone, that could stop this, she knew, but no such thing was present for her. Yi's mind was scattering, and she came swiftly to doubt her course. Why am I here? She wondered suddenly.
The answer was quick enough, though it called forth a vortex of memory in its own way just as painful as the sands tormenting lash. The grass ninja, the grass country, Mizuho, my father, on and on it went, the desperate course of her journey, by when she passed over the grass ninja she recognized something. How would they survive?
It was a telling question, and Yi knew the answer already. They would conjure plants to form a barricade. I must use my own powers to form a barricade; Yi seized on this idea for a second, and then all but abandoned it in desperation. The stinging pain had grown greater now, and she could no longer even keep her eyes open as slits. She buried her face in the sand beneath her, desperate for a respite. Here is nothing here but sand! What can I do with sand? I am doomed.
Flat on her stomach in the sand, her back and hands and legs bleeding and getting worse moment by moment, Yi realized she was dead. I will face death with my eyes open, at least. She decided.
With her face still against the desert sand, Yi opened her eyes slowly, wanting to see death come for her.
She saw only sand, but in the fading light beneath the sandstorm it glittered as the last glimmers caught it.
Why should it glitter like that? She wondered, mind foggy, and then remembered something.
In the compounds of the Mizain the families made as many things as they could for themselves, from clothing to weapons to tile to glass. Glass made from riverbed sand.
Glass is melted sand! Yi realized it with a flash, and suddenly she knew how to build a barrier. She brought her bleeding hands over the exposed metal of her remaining canteens, and let them dribble down onto the sand, shaping the now muddy sand before and about her as she did so, forming a small depression just tall enough to block the merciless wind. It would soon be swept away as nothing but wet sand, but she was not done. She exerted her will and the last of her chakra, eyes closing in surrender to the death that would claim her if this effort failed as she did so.
"Mizuho!" It was the barest croak, but the water embedded in that sand heard the word, and it obeyed the command of the blood. It burned, searing with unbearable heat for a moment, burning away to steam in seconds, but leaving behind something far more than simply sand, a shield of glass.
It was not the glass of windows, no, it was a crude, shapeless mess, but it was solid and crystalline, holding shape and strength against the lash of wind. Yi dug down blindly in the sand with that glass around her, until her strength exhausted herself completely, and collapsed into darkness.
The sand howled for hours, making even the barest movement impossible for all who lived, so the Yi lay ensconced in her glass protection not more than two hundred meters from where the eight grass ninja sheltered behind vegetation barricades against the solidity of rock. They were unaware of each other, and unaware of their closeness, but there was one who was not.
The sandstorm ruled above the sands, but not below their surface, even as the dunes moved. Below that sandy surface another figure sheltered, one greatly worried by the current events. Yi…what is happening? Shiro rested beneath the protection of sand above him, walled beneath the surface of the desert and shielded because he no longer breathed. You escaped the grass ninja, but do you still live? It was a question that haunted Shiro, who had seen Yi collapse inside her tiny shelter of sand and glass even as he had marked the far more secure grass hiding place. When the sandstorm is done Yi will be vulnerable, and the grass ninja will simply collect her broken body. It was something Shiro had no intention of allowing. He had long protected Yi from the hunting grass ninja, saving her for trap after trap with nothing more than his blade and his eyeless gaze. Five ninja had died on that blade, staring into the blank face without eyes, hesitating one moment too long. Those men had died so that Yi could escape, and Shiro would not hesitate to kill more, but he could not attack the ANBU. Even he could not move about in the fury of the sandstorm, it would scrape him down to nothing but bone, and leave him unable to move but still existing, a fate worse than any death. I did not come here to end that way, but I must protect Yi. There will come an opportunity.
Shiro had placed his sword up against the surface of the dune, and he could tell the strength of the wind by its force of vibration against his grasp. This gave him a much clearer estimate of the power of the howling wind than anyone looking out or trying to hear might have, and among these ninja who were not desert dwellers, it allowed Shiro to plan an action. The wind will abate in time. I must wait.
So the shadow-souled ninja waited hours and hours under the endless howl of the hellish winds, sand screaming above with all the fury of the end of the world itself. A power of nature mightier than even the greatest of the ninja could wield. It would have been humbling had anyone but the shadow-souled been watching, for Shiro's emotions were deadened to nothing, and all he felt was a desperate need to protect the presence he felt mere yards away and above him. The one he must protect, his Lady Yi.
It took sixteen hours, fourteen minutes, and fifty-five seconds, well into the morning of the next day, for the wind to abate sufficiently for Shiro to act. The sandstorm still blackened the sky, and the wind still howled with great power, but it so longer had the strength to rip through cloth and skin, and though a normal man could have still done little, the limits on the actions of the shadow-souled were lesser.
Slowly Shiro dug himself free of the sand, and in the storming winds he moved over to the place Yi rested. She lay in motionless repose, her clothes torn all but apart, and the peasant's sack she carried ripped open. Dried blood covered her back and hands, and her face, but she still lived, Shiro could see her rise and fall with each breath. "Yi…" he whispered.
Standing with the wind between himself and Yi, Shiro grasped Yi's wounded body and pulled her up. He cradled her head against his chest, providing a small pocket of air so she could breathe freely. She did not stir, being too exhausted and wounded to move, something necessary to Shiro's work, for he could not reveal himself to her.
Then, carrying Yi against him, marching backwards so his back took the painful rasp of the sandstorm lash, Shiro proceeded to walk southwest, moving free of the storm slowly and carefully. It was slow progress, for his feet had little purchase on the sandstorm deposited sand, but he proceeded. It took four more hours, but he worked free of the storm, into the burning light of the desert sun.
Now he had another problem.
Yi was wounded and battered, and all Shiro saw that she no longer had any water with her. He carried none himself, past the need for nutrients, and so could not help her. She cannot survive on her own here, but I cannot aid her now, nor can I let the grass ninja come to catch her. What can I do?
Shiro stood motionless over Yi for a time after depositing her in the somewhat cooler shadow of a desert rock face. He could see nothing to do. There was no water source nearby that he knew of, and he could not simply drag Yi in a random direction. I suppose I must go and look for water. It was not an effective solution, but the bond laid over Shiro did not allow him to do nothing, so he set off to the west, searching for any sign of water, desperate and hopeless that he would die with his purpose unfulfilled.
The heat of the desert did not impede Shiro's shadow-souled stride, and so he walked fast. Thus, he was several miles to the west when his bond to Yi told him that her position compared to his had changed, that sixth sense revealing that she had moved. Can she be walking about in that condition? Shiro could not know, and he could only turn and run back, straining to move fast over loose sand that offered the feet little purchase. By the time he returned all would already be decided for him.
Yi awoke to the blissful touch of water on her broken lips. She licked up that heavenly wetness quickly, and opened her mouth further. More water presented itself, and she gulped it down hurriedly, squeezing it through her parched throat, not yet questioning what was going on. This process repeated itself three more times until Yi, rejuvenated, found the strength to open her eyes.
Blinking slowly, brightness flooded her vision as the desert sun swept over everything. Yi slammed her eyelids back down, and then opened them only the barest margin. Her eyes lacked much shielding, for her eyelashes had been smashed and broken by the sandstorm. Finally, however, vision returned in some semblance of normalcy, and Yi saw before her a man.
She realized swiftly that he was a ninja, for he wore the brown and tan of the Sand ninja, with their strange hourglass symbol on his forehead protector, the only part of his uniform not touched by the omnipresent sand. The sand ninja was at first ordinary looking, but Yi then noticed his staggeringly sharp eyes and the long white scar streaking down his face from left ear to the edge of his mouth. "W-why?" She managed to croak at last.
"Ah, good, you can speak," the sand ninja brushed his gloved hand over her face, knocking away sand and blood. "I was worried you had lost your voice for a moment." His voice seemed kind of the surface, but even confused as she was Yi could detect a strange hungry current beneath his words, and looking into those sharp eyes she saw it there as well. "May I ask what happened to you?"
This confused Yi even more, for she did not know what had happened. It's midday, or nearly so, she realized, looking out, but what happened to the sandstorm? She looked around her, but saw no trace of her glass crèche. She was leaning up against a rock she could not remember in the least. "I don't know…" Yi answered at last. "I was in the sandstorm and…"
'The sandstorm," the sand ninja smiled, and it held amusement and something more, something darker. "That explains a lot."
"Wha-" Yi began, and then she looked down at herself.
She no longer appeared as she had for the time of her travels in the grass country. Her peasant's clothes were all but destroyed, with only bits and pieces of cloth remaining, so that she might as well be naked before the gaze of the sand ninja. Yet, little enough skin was exposed, for much of her body was coated in dried blood. It went in streaks down her stomach, and her forearms were stained completely red. "How…" she muttered. "If my wounds were this bad…"
"I have a little bit of training as a medical ninja," the sand ninja told her. "Not enough to heal all your wounds, but at least to close some of the cuts.
"Why heal me?" Yi asked reflexively.
The sand ninja ran his hand along Yi's chin, his gloves molding carefully as he caressed her skin. "I could not leave such a lovely desert blossom to wilt in the sun."
Yi jerked back from his touch with a shock. He wants me! It was almost a gasp inside. She was not naïve, having learned of the relationships between men and women both from teachers and experience, but among the Mizain, where relationships must be carefully planned against the specter of incest, for their relationships were complex and close, such feelings had always been firmly suppressed. This man's obvious desire, for now Yi understood that was the hunger in his eyes, was a shock. She did not know how to react.
"The clothes you are wearing are ruined, but I found some in your pack," the sand ninja tossed it to her. "You should put them on before the sun burns you."
Yi reached down into the depths of her pack, and saw that the money and food she had kept there was gone, likewise the extra weapons she had stored there, leaving nothing but her old ninja uniform, the one she had not worn for all her long journey. There is no choice. I must wear it now. I cannot go against the desert in nothing but my skin.
Slowly, feeling the still raw scrapes and lacerations as she did, Yi put on the old ninja uniform, the brown with streaks of blue and red that marked out the Mizain colors.
As she did so the sand ninja continued to watch her, and Yi could feel those hungry eyes on her body, but also something darker beneath them. "That is an unusual uniform," the sand ninja spoke idly, but Yi could tell the comment was pointed. "I do not think it belongs to any of the countries I am aware of."
"I'm from far away," Yi answered quickly, but she knew it was meaningless. He knows I'm a rogue, and he took my weapons. She realized now that her canteens were gone, and she had emptied them all anyway. The full truth of her situation dawned on her now. I am his prisoner. Yi recognized this, but she looked at the sand ninja and smiled, as if he was her only savior. "Thank you for helping me."
"You must have been thrown against the rock in the sandstorm," the sand ninja decided, muttering the words to make the odd situation more reasonable. "But it seems to have protected you more or less. Still, nearly miraculous."
Yi, having no idea how she had reached this place, or even where she was, could only nod. "What now?" She asked, anxious for him to tell her what would happen to her. I need to make some plan to escape this man, Yi realized. I won't be anyone's prisoner, not anymore! I've suffered too much to lose my freedom now!
"We cannot stay here, and you still need to recover," the sand ninja looked off to the southwest. "There is an oasis not far from here, we will go there."
"Alright, lead the way," Yi told him, feeling her body complain when she stood, but resolved to move. I need this man to get me to the oasis. Then I can do something. Until then…
"I am Owano Dai, what's your name lady kunoichi?" the sand ninja, Dai, asked her as they began to walk over the sand.
"Mizain Yi," was the simple reply.
From a high dune an eyeless gaze swept down on the two figures. Yi…the thought was filled with regret. What trouble has seized you now? Shiro looked on this with an echo of sadness and failure, recognizing by his uniform that it was a sand ninja who led her forward. A new problem, with the old one not yet gone. Shiro shook his head, for as he looked south he could see, miles off in the distance, that the sandstorm had stopped, and the grass ninja were coming.
"Ah…blissful…" Yi sighed deeply, letting water roll out of her hair and down her back. Indeed it was blissful, even if cold, this small pool that formed the center of the oasis. Water trickled slowly out of the side of a tall rock face here, flowing down and into this pool before draining back under the sand. The pool was small but deep, and the water warm at the top and frightfully cold at the bottom. It was not the best of water, filled with the substance of rock and sand, but this gave it perfect qualities for cleaning. Yi had jumped into the pool within moments of reaching the oasis, taking this one chance to clean the accumulated grime of the desert and many days before away. Most importantly she rubbed away the dried blood that had covered so much of her skin. Beneath that caked redness the skin was raw and tender, pink with newness, but Yi felt much better seeing that. I am whole again, she thought, her body recovering some simply from the very touch of water, even as she still felt weak and exhausted.
Down once more Yi dove, this time shaking her hair fully free of the ties she had put it through for walking. Spinning in the water she forced her hands through it, scraping the sand out of the red locks, pulling as much damaged hair free as she could, restoring those long strands, the one part of her heritage she still took pride in, to something resembling their proper form.
When Yi surfaced her red hair with its bright streaks of aquamarine blue caught the bright desert sun and glistened, shinning free with a glossy power. Yi spun about at the surface and then exited the pool, walking onto the hard earth here as water dripped from her.
She found herself staring into the leering eyes of Owano Dai. The sand ninja did not even bother to hide his perception, he leered at Yi up and down, walking his eyes slowly of the dripping wet Mizain girl, searching every place that fabric clung. Yi had never been looked at like that before, and she found it horrifying and frightfully stirring at once. Little though her experience with the relationships of men and women might be, Yi believed she was at least a little pretty. She had long been told she resembled her mother, a woman of great beauty, and her form was trim and motion fluid from ninja training. Yet it was one thing to believe you might be attractive to men, to catch quick glances from strangers, and to note twinges of the eye toward her, compared to this visceral onslaught of raw, crude, desire. It had been present before, when Dai had looked upon her tattered and all but naked form in the desert, but that was nothing compared to this. This man hungers for me, the realization plunged a cold feeling deep down in Yi, and she was terrified of Owano Dai suddenly, knowing her dire situation. He wants me…and there is nothing to stop him. I am his prisoner, a rogue, and there is no one here, no witnesses. A searing fear spiked in Yi then, followed by a spasm of rage. She knew suddenly why the sand ninja had chosen to save her, a rogue, when he could have easily let her die. He is going to take me for his desires, and then leave me for dead in the desert. No! She wanted to scream, even as Dai's gaze continued to measure her. Anger flared, and Yi reached out for her power with that anger, but as she did so coughing wracked her, and she felt chakra slip free of her grasp, unwilling to obey commands.
Anger died, and Yi sank to the ground. Only by long control did she avoid crying. My powers are still exhausted; they will recover soon, but by then it will be too late. Searching herself she found only faint glimmers of chakra remained, not enough to fight and win against this ninja who had taken all her weapons and was skilled enough to travel the desert alone. I am dead. Yi clenched her hands into fists, and then slowly released them, hopeless.
"You are indeed a desert rose lady kunoichi," Dai remarked, his hungry smile fixed on his face. "But now I wonder, since we are resting here, how you came to be so lost in the desert?"
I might as well tell him, it doesn't matter now…Yi thought, but she found that there still nestled a spark of resistance in her. Yes, I'll tell him, perhaps it will buy some time to think of a way to escape him. "It is a complex story, from places far from here, are you certain you wish to know?"
"Oh, yes, quite," Dai chuckled. "I am curious indeed to know the source of such a gem as yourself."
Dai's words were smooth, but his smiled, with its cruel hunger and terrible promise, never wavered. Is he mocking me? Does this amuse him, to toy with me like this? Yi struggled to keep the anger from her face, but failed. Dai's smile only widened.
"I was banished from my home, in the jungles to the north," It still hurt that Yi could describe no further from whence she had come. "My father cast me out as a sacrifice for the clan."
"A sacrifice? How cruel a father, and how foolish, to sacrifice such a shining ruby." Dai frowned in mock seriousness, but his eyes sparkled with amusement.
Damn you! Yi almost hissed. "He had his reasons, and he was a cruel man, a terrible man. His children were nothing more than tools."
"Hmm…that is indeed tragic, but what happened once you were cast out?"
"I wandered, a lost ninja, with no home or place to go. I made mistakes, and was branded a criminal, perhaps rightly," Yi might have hated speaking to Dai, but there was something worthwhile in telling her story, even in such an oblique way, to another human. Still, she wished desperately it were not to this man, this way. I want someone to listen to my words and believe me. "As a criminal I was chased, and I wandered as a fugitive, always barely escaping, lost and hopeless. They chased me into the desert eventually. I could not escape them, or death them, so I fled into the sandstorm, and after that you found me."
"An unfortunate story, are these pursuers still after you?" Dai asked.
"The grass ninja? I suppose, I'm sure they survived the sandstorm." Yi did not think anything of the question until the words were already out of her mouth. It was only then she realized their dual implications. The grass ninja were indeed still after her, that trouble remained, but far more critically, she had just confirmed Dai's need to get rid of her.
"So you are still pursued, little flower, a pity that," Dai's eyes went cold. "I had hoped to keep you here in this vase until I grew tired of you, but it seems I shall enjoy your blossom for only one day."
The remark so sickened Yi that she spat at his feet. "Enough of your damn pretense." She infused her hatred into every word. "Do what you planned and have done."
Dai inched forward toward Yi, and his right hand darted out like a snake's to grab her left. She tried to twist away reflexively, but his other hand moved just as blindingly fast, and grasped her right hand. "Do not think me crude simply because I come from this wasteland, little Yi. You are a delightful little thing, and I will take my time enjoying this."
Yi kicked, twisted, and struggled, but Dai held her fast, and then he spun his wrists in both hands, and drew his thumb along the inside of her wrist. As he did Yi felt all the strength drain from her limbs. She could still move, but she no longer had any force to strike, and so she could not fight back with any force.
Dai smiled with pleasure. "I told you I had some medical ninja training. This technique is used on the wounded to prevent them from harming themselves, but I have found it has a most pleasant other use as well."
"Damn you…" Yi whispered as the sand ninja's face closed in on hers.
"Oh, come now," Dai muttered, taking the gloves off his hands. "You had already been uprooted by the sandstorm little flower, do not begrudge me making a bit of use for you after that."
Dai ran his fingers along her chin, his touch smooth but utterly repulsive to Yi, making her shiver, though she lacked the strength to resist him at all, he brushed away her grasping hands with the simplest of motions, as if batting away an insect. His control of the situation was absolute, and he reveled in Yi's powerlessness.
Moving her head slowly, Dai brought his mouth to Yi's face, placing his lips on hers. Yi felt the cruel heat on his mouth seep into her, as his caressed her lips with his own. She felt polluted and vile, and forever tainted. My first kiss from a man outside my family, and it is this! She tried to scream, but Dai smothered her cries and stole her breath.
As the kiss continued, infusing a cruel heat not her own into Yi's lips even as the revulsion rose in her to become something she felt she could not contain she could only scream inside. Damn you! No! Not this! No!
Dai's tongue brought Yi's mouth open, and his own tongue moved into her mouth, and she felt the damp wetness of his saliva on her tongue. It struck her own with a horrible shock, ripping her defenses apart even as she knew this had only begun. Her mind fell away, trying to push the scene aside, but she could not erase that sense of wetness, the cruel heat, even as she tried to summon any desperate strength to shove him away.
Yi's limbs failed her, even as Dai's hands moved to grasp her body, and all she could sense was a revolting wet heat of his tongue upon her lips.
Heat…wet…The two thoughts seared Yi's mind with all the force of the sandstorm of yesterday, and her anger condensed into something far more potent, a raw, over-boiling desire for destruction.
Yi's limbs had failed her, but she retained control of her body for Dai's sickening amusement. Now that served her, as her tongue shot into the sand ninja's mouth as well. Dai's eyes went wide in surprise and amusement, but this had happened before, as his prey surrendered, so he did not react.
Mizain Yi was not his prey, and he forsook the one chance to save himself.
The body is a barrier to the conduction of chakra, a seal from without, the boundary of the self that prevents manipulation by another, but it is not a perfect barrier. There are always holes, and if another is allowed within, the barrier is breached and there are no defenses.
Yi's tongue surged into Dai's mouth, and touched the saliva, the water, on the inside of his throat. She closed her eyes and let her anger release itself, as it desired. Flaming.
Dai jolted back, and he screamed, the sound breaking through the desert afternoon and echoing off the rock face, a sound of abject pain and horror that was suddenly silenced in midcry. The scream failed him to become a croak as his throat was shorn away by burning fury. He ran in circles, staring upward at the sun, and clutching his neck even as the fire burning within him, spreading every second as the power of Mizuho ignited his body from within.
The sand ninja was silent at the end, as flames burst from mouth, nose, eyes, and every pore, consuming him from within to leave nothing but charred ashes drifting to the rocky desert ground.
Yi's anger had evaporated at the moment of Dai's terrible scream. Hearing that abject and absolute agony, the horror evoked by a fire that should not be, she felt all her furry drain away. Unable to move with any strength, she could only lie softly on the ground as she watched the final moments of this man, feeling nothing but empty pity for a man she had hated as nothing else only moments before.
"By the gods…" Yi whispered when it was finished. "What am I, what is this power?" The words were soft, but they seemed to fall dead in the desert air, as if the desert refused to accept Yi's claim to ignorance.
She recalled then the phrase the samurai had used for Mizuho, not knowing its true name. "Demon fire they called it, am I a demon then?" Yi sobbed, face in her hands, even her cries weak. "A demon, a heartless creature whose touch is death. Is that what I am?"
Yi lay sobbing until she could sob no more, until she felt empty of everything. When that was done she rolled into the shadows beneath the rocks and let the exhaustion claim her as the desert sun came down in the west, staining the land bloody, or as if the fires of Mizuho should cover it.