The Pit
(Don't own Naruto or Boruto, just my own characters. Enjoy)
The peace of the next morning was being constantly broken by the sound of crystal clashing with iron. Touka and Zeko were having a spar with their moms watching over them. As usual Zeko was using his hard hitting strikes and his grapples to breach Touka's defense while she used his force to drive her own attacks. Zeko managed to slip his leg around hers and drive her to the ground but she rolled, and threw him onto the ground beneath her. She held a kunai above his neck and smiled innocently to further rub salt into his wound, Zeko only pouted as the blade drew closer towards him. The boy knew that she wanted to hear him admit defeat but was far too stubborn to admit it.
Touka lurched forward when something hit the back of her head and the boy beneath her capitalized on the distraction to completely flip their roles and wind up straddling Touka. The boy held his hand out and caught the kunai that discombobulated his partner, and now it was his turn to smile at his captive as he finally managed to redeem himself from his embarrassing loss… as underhanded as his win was. "I win Touka-chan!"
"You cheated!" She tried to lash and knock him off but the boy's physical strength was far greater than what it should be at his age, she barely made him budge in her attempts to free herself.
Yuno walked up and squatted beside the two kids, her brow raised all the while. "There's no cheating in a fight. Whenever someone is most sure of victory is when they're vulnerable." She motioned for Zeko to move which he did. "This one goes to him, even though you hit my daughter in the back of her head Zeko-kun…" The glare he was receiving directly contrasted the tone of voice that Yuno had and of course Zeko responded by stepping back with a nervous smile on his face. Yokano quickly caught her son in a tight hug from behind.
"Don't worry Zeko-chan! I won't let her do anything to her future son in law." Zeko's face could be compared to a tomato once he connected the dots of what his mother meant, and when he glanced at Touka only to see that a blush ran across her face as well. "Touka-chan's just too adorable to not be with Zeko, he'd be the perfect little housewife." Zeko went completely blank while the two adults started to laugh.
'Starting to think you're just a living joke.' The voice snapped the boy back to reality and let him see that his mom was still laughing. His mind finally decided to let him remember that he had yet to tell her what the entity within him had said so he walked up to her and tapped her arm to get her attention which was immediately put onto him.
"I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings Zeko-chan it's just really cute thinking of you two together." Yokano was still giggling even as her son shook his head but her and her best friend stopped their laughter to stare at him in surprise once he uttered six words.
"The thing in me says 'hi'."
In all of his near eight years of being Yokano's son Zeko had never seen her so utterly shocked, she nearly looked afraid when he paid more attention to her features. "He- He said hi to me?" Her son nodded.
"Touka, we're going to go shopping." Yuno decided to leave with her own child so that Yokano could sort out her own.
"Zeko…" The boy knew it was important since the honorific was dropped from his name so he listened attentively. "Has it been hard to sleep lately? Or have you been falling asleep out of nowhere?"
Not only did he nod but he had something to say as well. "For a few months now he hasn't let me sleep well Kaa-chan."
Yokano sighed as she decided to kneel down to come closer to eye level with her son. "You noticed that you have a lot of chakra right? Well there's more than just your heritage to thank for it." She patted her thighs and Zeko quickly laid his head across them. "He's of the wind and sand, the demon tanuki, much stronger than the nine tails thinks…" She sneered as she said the last part which only caused a rousing round of cackling from said demon tanuki. Zeko reached into his mind and searched hard for what a tanuki was but couldn't remember anything about what it could be.
'That's why I've missed that woman!'
"He said that's why he misses you. Kaa-chan what are you trying to tell me?"
Yokano smiled and exhaled softly since she knew that what she was going to say but she also knew that she wanted to wait until he was older to find out, but of course what he was hosting decided to open his big mouth far sooner than she wanted. "I went through it all too. Used to be that they were forcefully put into humans but now it's to protect them from… Nevermind. Zeko, just like I was, you're a jinchūriki host of Shukaku."
The boy recalled the name from his exam and remembered that it was related to a bijuu but in the end he still didn't know what one was and he could only hope his mother would explain but she couldn't get another word in since Akira decided to appear with a swirl of leaves trailing behind him. "Zeko it's time for The Pit." Zeko sprung up while his mother froze in place. As the two turned to leave they were grabbed at their ankles by sand.
"The hell did you say?! Ya never told me you were taking him there!"
Akira sighed and stopped fighting to move away instead walking towards his wife. "You know he let most of them get away, with everything he's going to go through he can't afford to-"
"He's not even eight yet! He can enjoy being a kid first!" The sand around her started to shift to match her aggression and yet Akira was as calm as a gentle stream. He locked his eyes with hers even as the sand around them shifted violently and she slowly calmed down. "Why does he need to go through it? I never even went through it but I've seen how it changes someone!"
Zeko could barely see his mother behind the form of his father as he stood in front of her but he could just barely make out the change of her facial expression from her slowly receding anger to shock and what almost looked like fear, a single tear trailed from her left eye as Akira turned around and passed his son. 'Why's kaa-chan crying?' He almost went to console his mother but the calling voice of his father made him leave entirely as Yokano composed herself alone.
"He forgot his cloak…"
After ten minutes of walking Zeko found himself with his father just on the other side of the canyon that their village resides in. When they arrived there was an elderly man waiting for them with two kids that had red towels around their shoulders flanking his sides, Zeko's eyes almost lingered on the kids but his father quickly turned and tied a blindfold around his eyes. "Zeko you will not take this off until I tell you to, alright?" The boy nodded but his enthusiasm for training was snuffed once he had to choke back the urge to lose everything he'd eaten up to that point once a pungent smell finally reached his nostrils.
Akira continued towards the older man and bowed his head. "The boy ready Akira-san?" His voice coarse like gravel due to his age and yet it commanded respect. His left arm in a sling
"Yes Uso-sama." Akira responded deftly. 'They had to choose him to oversee didn't they?' Akira guided his son, who was grimacing from the smell, towards him. The boy finally found his father's arm and grabbed a hold of it.
"Tou-chan what do I have to do blindfolded?" He received no answer to his question which only served to send the boy into greater unease. Akira looked ahead and saw that the hole ahead of him was filled with… Death. Masses of flesh from the wildlife in the desert, chitin from giant scorpions and even a few human limbs decorated the bottom of the pit with maggots and larvae crawling among the cadavers.
"All you have to do is climb out." Before the boy could ask questions he found himself falling downwards for a couple seconds and landing with a loud squelch.
The first thing to happen was painful vomiting from the horrific stench Zeko found himself in, the back of his throat burned as bile passed through his mouth. Even when he was done he couldn't stop dry heaving but when he tried to wipe his face he found that he was slowed down from whatever he was in, and when he felt the writhing of things along his skin he panicked. No matter what he did he could feel crawling along his body and when he finally managed to feel the soft, squishy, vile, fetid flesh surrounding him he screamed.
He moved backwards trying to push the masses of decay away from him but only started to work himself deeper into the pile of death that surrounded his body, the feeling of crawling all over his skin only made his imagination push into overdrive as he managed to pin himself to a wall. He felt like he was face to face with a monster- No he felt like a devil was before him as it's children lined his skin and got their own samples as their father stood ahead of him, with razor sharp teeth ready to bite into his small body, and he tried to climb the wall only to slip and fall back into the pit. The mass around him moved to contain him but he fought with everything he had to free himself and he heard something behind him. "H-Help m-"
His mind didn't even process what it said as much as he focused on the fact that whatever he was in was now speaking to him, trying to lull him back into the hole of demons, and he lost everything. Zeko frantically pulled himself up and the first thing his hand touched wasn't the wall but a hard lump that he decided was the skin of something lurking beneath the decay and it wanted nothing more than to take the flesh off his bones.
He started climbing up once he could grip the wall, the squishing of whatever was lining it made his stomach turn in disgust but he kept moving upwards. He managed to make it halfway but his luck turned bad when he grabbed onto something completely smooth and his curiosity got the better of him, he felt the object until he ran his hand down and started feeling the soft feeling of whatever he'd been fighting his way out of but he didn't stop exploring what it was. His hand finally met something jagged and he ran his fingers along it and once he managed to piece together what he was touching he froze. 'It feels… It feels like-' His foot slipped and he got sent right back down into the waiting mass, unfortunately enough he managed to figure out that he'd been touching the skull of someone else who didn't escape the monsters of this pit. He struggled to get up even as he could feel the monstrosities of the pit grazing his back and trying to pull him backwards.
If Zeko wasn't panicked before then he was finally pushed over the edge once he felt something fully grab his ankle, he abandoned any sense of direction and scrambled forward and slammed into a wall but he wasn't deterred by it since he could imagine that every demon behind him was picking what piece they'd get to have since he could hear whispers all around himself. He started to climb up the wall with his tears joining the fluids that soaked the blindfold over his eyes and his mouth slammed shut from fear of swallowing the hellscape he was forced into, even the walls of the pit weren't safe from being lined with the same substances he was stuck in but the squirming of whatever was on him pushed his body upwards in hopes that they would let go once he was away from whatever demon sent them.
Zeko nearly fell again when something grabbed him from above two somethings by the feel of it but he calmed down once he felt that they were, like him, human. He was pulled out of that horrible place and once he could he simply laid on the ground and whimpered even as he felt wriggling all over his body. He tried to calm down even as he pictured the monsters finally making it out and dragging him back into the hole. "Zeko I want you to take your blindfold off." Zeko didn't move even as the same hands that helped him out of the ground held his body up, his desire to move was low since he knew the monsters of the pit were waiting to see that he was alive.
"It would be a shame if the boy broke. As much of an asset to the village as he'd be made completely useless? Disappointing to think about." Uso voiced his opinion as the kids did their best to help Zeko.
Akira feared that his son may have been mentally destroyed after his ordeal and just the consideration of it crushed his very soul, not because he was upset that his village would lose a shinobi but because he would've taken it too far for his son's sake only to lose him in trying to help.
A hand moved. Zeko's hand moved towards the blindfold and brushed his matted, dripping, red tinted hair out of the way as he pulled the filthy cloth off of his face. He managed to crawl on all fours towards the opening in the ground and his trepidation grew as he got closer, knowing that a demon would snatch him away once he managed to look over the edge but he wanted to put some type of face to what he experienced… He needed to know what was down there with him.
He finally reached the edge of the hole and took a deep breath as he poked his head over the ledge… But the impact of his fear stopped dead in its tracks once he saw that not only were there no demons, nothing in the hole was alive except the white grubs that even now were on his body. "W-Where are the demons? Where are the monsters?" The temporary redhead was genuinely confused at the lack of everything he thought was with him. The hole was barely fifteen meters across and only around twenty deep, the scattered bug parts and some pieces of people that weren't alive didn't compare to the harrowing thought of what he imagined came after him while he was trapped.
"There weren't any monsters down there boy, just death. Nothing in the pit could've hurt you in the state it's in." Uso said as the kids went back to his sides.
Zeko racked all of his mind and actually started to feel embarrassed because of how he acted. He felt like he was going to be met with the face of something that had a thousand teeth waiting to rip into him but instead he really could only see the dead parts of animals the desert hosted and a few parts of people that were probably long gone. He looked at his arm and felt that the wriggling was courtesy of some maggots. "But I heard something ask for help down there!"
"Oh, that was probably one of the idiots who tried to kidnap you the other day. I think his name was Kinro but it doesn't matter anymore." Akira waved off the voice and Zeko actually was dumbfounded. His imagination really twisted what happened so far that finding out the truth shook him out of his terror, he looked back at the two kids to see that they were still scared somehow even though it wasn't anywhere near as bad as what his mind put him through.
Even as Akira started talking to Uso the boy just stared into the hole that was devoid of monsters or demons. "Uso-sama I'm almost scared to ask why you put those kids through this, they're barely older than my own son."
"I'm one of the elder council members Akira-san. If I deem it necessary for them to do it then they will, but that aside I was informed of their high level chakra control and figured that medics would need to be used to seeing the worst of what a battlefield can have on it." He motioned to his arm which was also wrapped in bandages and to his right leg. "The Fifth Great War left me like this because I didn't get to a medic in time."
Akira winced at the thought of what could've happened to the man since he heard of the battle he was involved in. "Still you managed to hold off 2 members of the Konoha suicide squad until they burned out entirely. I barely did that with one before I met- He's still transfixed on the pit isn't he?" Uso looked to see that Zeko was in fact still scanning the pit for any trace of monstrous entities, even as his hair and clothes started to harden, no matter how hard he looked he couldn't find anything. At this point he was only doing it to excuse his freaking out but it looked like he wouldn't get that liberty. The feeling of his father's hand matting his hair even more brought his attention away from the hole.
"There really weren't any monsters?" Akira chuckled and lifted his son into his shoulders, the height feeling just as empowering as always to the boy.
Akira turned to Uso and nodded his head. "We'll have to speak another time Uso-sama, we need to get home and clean up." The white haired man and his rust haired son managed to smile as they walked away from the old man who cracked a smirk at their departure.
'They're both good for Suna.'
"NO! Ya can strip down right there cause I'm not cleaning that off my floor!" Yokano was brandishing a wok to a very nervous Akira who still had his messy son on his shoulders. The two were now both affected by the now dried flesh with Zeko having much more along his shirt and pants while his father was mostly dirty at his upper body. "Ya both stink and it's not coming into my house." The two males of their household stood outside of their door with their matriarch brandishing her cooking instrument, they complied and decided to remove everything down to their underwear before brandishing their arms in a, 'You happy?' gesture. She stepped aside to let them in and eyes their outfits with nothing but disgust. Sand gathered around the pile and moved it into a metal bin beside the door. "Zeko-chan needs new clothes anyway."
'Was a longer day than I thought it's almost six.' Akira thought as his son went upstairs. Yokano closed the door behind her and crossed her arms at her husband.
"So how did traumatizing my son go?"
Akira laughed and shook his head at the question, of course his wife didn't share the feeling. "Our son continues to surprise me. I was… not happy when he came out. I nearly cried thinking that he snapped but once he looked back down he was surprised that there weren't any monsters coming after him." His wife was not placated by that but he did notice her body relax some.
"Doesn't change that you threw him in there. You can't change my mind about this." Yokano's eyes were set on her husband and they weren't forgiving.
Akira looked at his wife and knew that he should have been upset at how angry she was over his actions, of course he didn't forgive himself for putting his son through it but he knew it was a necessary evil in the end. As he stood in front of Yokano he could only form two words. "You're beautiful."
"Huh?" The redhead blanched at the completely unexpected statement and turned around once she regained her composure. "Trying to be nice to me won't make me less mad at you!"
The sound of Akira moving closer to her helped her be prepared for when she felt his muscular arms wrap around her waist. "I can't help that you being mad at me makes you look stunning. I really am sorry for what I did but we both know why I had to."
Yokano felt herself relax more in the embrace of her husband and as her face gained a light blush she managed to speak through her pout. "I'm still mad at you for it."
"I'm ok with that since I deserve it. I always think I have the mesmerizing eyes but when you looked at me a little bit ago I thought that I was so lucky to be with you, not only are you amazing to be around but that look just draws me in more." Akira gently moved his hand to her jaw and moved his face towards hers as he turned it.
"I hate it when you know what to say to me." She relented as she moved her head towards her Adonis. Their lips were right across from each other and their bodies inching closer, despite his top having such a putrid smell before it didn't seep into his skin… Yokano could smell how her husband smelled of spices and charcoal, she could feel her husband's excitement pressed against her.
"You two have a room."
The speed at which Yokano and Akira separated would have made lightning jealous. Akira made sure to face away from his son while Yokano nervously smiled at him. "Shouldn't you go wash yourself off Zeko-chan?" Her son wasn't appeased by the smile and only looked at his very embarrassed father before answering.
"I wanted to know if I should prepare the bath for Tou-chan too but it looks like you'll clean him yourself Kaa-chan." Yokano wanted to curl into a ball on the floor at how embarrassed she was being called out by her son for what she and her husband may or may not have been prepared to do moments ago. "Thank you for picking up my cloak and I'll leave you alone now." No really she wanted to disappear off the face of the earth entirely for what just happened.
'Almost saw something you shouldn't have brat.'
"Shut up, can I just enjoy cleaning this out of my hair?" The sight of the putrid gunk draining from his hair gave the boy some odd satisfaction but the taunting from Shukaku is something he could do without. "What are you anyway? Kaa-chan didn't finish earlier."
There was silence after Zeko asked the question aloud, the demon tanuki was either going silent or he wanted to be elaborate in his answer. Zeko waited and waited as he finally scrubbed the mess from his hair and got to see white in the mirror again. 'It's like she said, Shukaku of the wind and sand is who I am. That's all you get to know for now so ask Yokano-chan after your dad's done banging her.'
The boy managed to find something equally repugnant as the smell of the pit and it made him dry heave just as badly from the idea alone. "I hate you." Shukaku cackled at the statement. "When I find out how to make you mad or grossed out I'm gonna do it all the time." Zeko poured water over his head and shook it free, suds releasing themselves from his white locks and flowing freely down the drain on the floor.
'Same way your dad does your mom all the time?'
That would nearly be the second time today that the boy would be sick.
Author's Notes: The inspiration from the pit came from the story, Rotted Rowan by Darkpetal16. Their work is incredibly good and I recommend giving it a read. Not sure if I stated it or not but this story has some AU elements because we don't know exactly what happens between Boruto and Kawaki just yet so I decided until we know it just never happened here. See ya next time
