I do not own Naruto.
Zetsu names her the Gedo Mazo, and it's one of the last things Lien hears with human ears for a very, very long time.
She's not as aware of it as she should be. The passing of time is strange in this form, because she cannot read any clocks, and it takes a while for her branches to even begin sprouting, let alone turning their leaves toward the sun. Time is a not a concern to her, not really. She's barely even awake in this form, caught between the half slumber, half awareness that comes when she sheds herself of her previous form. She has little mind for keeping track of things outside her immediate concerns and the presence of her cousins fades entirely for a while.
Instead, Lien is occupied with new senses. It's hard to describe them with words, she finds. How does one describe hunger when one has no stomach? It's like an emptiness, but one she can feel in every rigidly lined cell of her body, a distinct lack of something that pushes her roots to grow further, to search harder to fill her. She consumes, taking in every drop of water she can, and every nutrient in the soil she can reach. She grows, and it becomes harder to sate that emptiness in her cells, that hunger like sense, and so she searches out more.
There's something in the earth, something in the water, stone, and everything around her. Something she couldn't see before, but can't absorb enough of it in this form. It's energy, pure and unfiltered, a raw chakra that seeps from everything around her. She takes it almost greedily, and that aching tiredness she felt before seems to fade the more she gets. The nature chakra is a balm to her, giving her the strength she needs to finally begin budding leaves.
And oh, what a strange feeling, growing leaves. They are soft and flexible when the rest of her remains rigid and unmoving. She can feel things she could never feel before as they emerge. The softest changes in air current, the chemical composition of the air itself. She can turn and twist them to gather what little light there is in the cavern, and she swears, it feels so very right.
Then, wonder of all wonders, her expansive root network touches anothers, and suddenly Lien is tumbling through six thousand trunks, a ghost speeding behind curtains of peeling bark and branching boughs. It floods through her in an information overload much like the one she once shared with Ino, only instead of a merging of two minds, it's like she's a tiny piece slotting back into a single grand one.
Her roots are suddenly every root, a network spanning across the land. Her trunk is no longer singular, but every trunk, shoot, sprout, and stem for as far as the land reaches, and she's everywhere.
She reaches deep down into the planet through the length of some sturdy taproot, slithering farther than any other living creature has ever thought to go. She's climbing higher and higher in the branches of a distant canopy, aching to feel the sun against her in the form of a broad, saw-toothed leaf. She's the fragrant flowers blooming full on the branches of fruit tree near the killing desert sands, and the tiniest sprout pushing up past the topmost layer of soil to begin its life.
There are others here, big and small, the minds of these things. The sentience that is so alien that it escapes observation, and is written off as nonexistent. The trees have names unto themselves, words that aren't spoken, but communicate clear enough anyway. They don't welcome her, but they do not shun her either. They are as they are, and they accept her as she is here as well. They are playing small roles, singing in quiet voices to a tune few can hear in the choir of the entire cosmos. The sounds of the trees are almost entirely drowned out by the songs of the stars, but they sing nonetheless.
Lien is reminded of something as she does this. Trickles of memory that seem too far away. She can't recall it exactly, the way one can't recall being an infant very clearly. Yet there is something rattling around inside her, the instinctual feeling of clouds around her, below her grand height. A great crevice in the ground, and the sensation of being one among many. An old wonder, and forgotten awe.
Sublime as it all is though, it is not meant to be forever. There is only so much she can process, only so much she can be as Lien before Lien melts away and becomes something else entirely. The memory of the Dao's rejection of her unbecoming is warm in her mind still.
It comes as a relief then, when a call reaches out for her in the depths of the one among many. It is a peculiar sensation, not unlike the string she uses to pull herself across worlds. A sharp tug on the chakra she has collected, one that draws her back. With soft sighs of lamentation that come out as the groaning of wood, she disengages from the complete awareness to slide back into her own trunk.
It feels...more right, but not quite correct. Not even the same as it was when she made it.
She is wooden, yes, made from branches and bark, but she has been reshaped. She can feel limbs, can sense great arms and legs folded into the lotus position. A new body, with nine eyes she is too tired to open, and a mouth with teeth. She is gargantuan now, her back hunched where it braces the cavern walls, her head bowed. Half tree, half titan. New blood runs through her shell, curious cells that are human, but not hers.
Even stranger still is what she can feel dangling off herself. She is full of things, corpses that are trapped inside her hold, wrapped tenderly in the embrace of her sprawling roots. Parcels of flesh her new form takes substanance from, the same way it takes nutrients and water from the earth.
Only, she could never feel the nutrient from the soils the way she feels the echoes of these bodies' minds. The dead hang from her branches, the curious human cells grafted into her body molding their forms like putty into a single shape. White clones with green hair, little seeds of undead life, bastard fruits.
She pulses in shock, seeped in the energy she has absorbed, and the Zetsu seems to sense this. She can feel it there, not exactly human shaped, more liquid than solid. Even more than that, she can feel another still. The one who called her back, who summoned her mind and brought such changes upon her form. He is familiar, she thinks. The man who once saw her when she was remade by the Dao, the black haired friend of the man who declared himself her father.
"Zetsu," she calls to to the other being without words, her consciousness extending to touch her companion's. "Zetsu, what is this?"
Zetsu doesn't answer her, not directly. Instead it caresses a length of bark with a tendril as if to console her, hiding in the darkness of this new place, away from the eyes of the other. The other being soothes her with gentle brushes of its inhuman hand, scratching out words on her bark.
"Gedo Mazo," it scrawls against her, so small compared to her new body's size.
"Gedo Mazo, Madara returned an old body to you."
"Many bodies," she mourns. "Many souls."
"You know how it is here," Zetsu tells her comfortingly, sliding along her tangle of roots and branches. "The violence, the strife. They will fall, and in one way or another, return to the earth. Decay is natural, and their bodies will nourish something else as they were nourished. It is part of the cycle. Part of your Dao."
"Zetsu…"
"You are part of nature, more than before. What difference does it make if you gain sustenance from the corpses, or a tree a thousand miles away?" it asks her.
She does not answer.
"If it because of the form you once took, do not despair. The skin you had was not you. You were never human."
That one, that aches inside of her. It's a raw hurt, but a distant one. She wants to protest, wants to say that she was, and that she is, human. However, she stops before she starts because how can she make that argument now? How can she say that when she travels worlds, when her roots are tangling with others underneath the stone and soil? How can she say she is human when she has branches that span for meters outward, and leaves that crave light? When this feels so right?
"The Shinju gave chakra to Mother, and the world received it from her in turn. This is simply chakra returning to you," it soothes.
She shivers as much as she can in this form, and it comes out as the rustling of vines, her sigh the sound of creaking branches. She has no eyes to see with, but she can feel the man, this Madara, place a hand on her gargantuan form. It is a weathered palm, and she suddenly realizes that it must have been a long time since she visited her physical form. Years must have past since she took the shape of a child. Decades perhaps. It's the longest she's ever spent in this world, but it feels like almost no time at all.
"He is old," she says, and Zetsu agrees. Its body vibrates in a manner that might have been a hum, were Zetsu human.
"He is not done though," Zetsu advises. "His body fails, but his mind still has strength. When he connects to you, show him. Make him believe."
She doesn't understand what Zetsu means, not really. Not until Madara guides her aerial roots into his own skin of his own free will, and she knows him inside and out. Her mind brushes his, and she sees his hate filled heart. He is aching with vengeance, convinced of his own righteousness and power, and brimming with hurt.
He doesn't need to hurt, she thinks. Not when this world isn't real yet.
She will show him that. Convince them all. She'll show every lingering shade inside her body, every leftover ghost that haunts her branches, that this world is a dream. She'll make them believe in her world, give them a new perspective with an old body.
"Wake up, everyone," Lien whispers, and the legion of souls whose bodies are hanging from her branches murmurs and wails. Madara himself senses this, senses her and all of them, and he opens his mouth in protest.
"Hush now," she commands, gathering the souls together in mass to experience everything as one, and sending them on their way.
Which leaves her and Madara to watch.
Franky doesn't want to believe what Ino told them.
She thinks it's actually kinda stupid, the whole body snatcher, mind switching nonsense. That happens in bad sci-fi novels and t.v. series. It is never supposed to be real. She's not so far gone that she doesn't process the irony of that statement, considering she has done both, but that was over there. In the other world. Not here inside her own.
She's...not tired exactly. Weary fits better. She's weary, kinda shocky, and she needs time to process this all, but she also needs to confirm whether or not her cousin is her cousin. So here they are, driving around the restaurant parking lot to the back, staking out her cousin's break area like some wanna be cops.
Funnily enough, never in her life has she understood Lien's complete lack of interest in partners or children more though.
For a teenager, Ino isn't all that bad. She's handling the situation with more aplomb than any of them, actually. However, she's still very much a teenager.
"Switch the radio station one more time," Franky threatens, going to slap the girl's hand away and turning the radio off. She dodges the swat easily, but stares at Franky with startling blue eyes that plead innocence. She's squashed in between the two sisters, riding cozy in the middle of the bench seat.
"There's so much music though," she tries to explain.
"Not now," Theresa scolds, rubbing at her temples. It's been a trying morning for all of them, and to be frank (hah), Franky doesn't have much patience left.
"Seriously though. We only get music at festivals, or if we know someone who play, maybe if we get lucky on a mission, or it just happens randomly. It's all live and with the same instruments. You guys have so much diversity, so much choice-"
"Ino," Franky snaps. "I get you might be used to this, but we aren't. Let us have this."
The fey girl frowns, but she relents, slipping in the backseat once more. She fidgets occasionally, like she's uncomfortable with the confined space, but honestly Franky is just happy the girl didn't puke. She didn't give any signs of being upset, but her pallor changed at least three shades when they started driving, taking on a green hue.
Wizard assassins apparently can still succumb to motion sickness. Or claustrophobia. Or something, fuck if she knows a damn thing at this point.
They wait, the engine idling and AC blowing. The silence is actually a bit stifling, but Franky prefers her tension to mount in the quiet instead of to the tune of twenty different genres of music. The tempos never quite match up to mounting dread.
And it mounts. It piles high and heavy on Franky's shoulders. She keeps having to touch things to remind herself that she has hands. Then she has to check and make sure they are her hands, not some wrinkly old man's. She keeps remembering being water, for her body being a loose thing stretching thousands of miles above and below ground, remembers being aged and weathered, her joints tired and sore, remembers being a mere thought in someone's head when he dug her out of his skull with his fingers-
She grits her teeth and sets her jaw. It will be okay. It will be fine.
As if to spite her, the moment the thought crosses her mind, Theresa slaps her shoulder. She looks over at her sister, who is staring out of the car at something near the back door.
It's Lien, staring right at them.
It's...wrong, somehow.
"You know, we never got close to it before now," observes Ino placidly.
It waves at them, still dressed in the prep-cooks apron, which Lien never wears outside because it's against regulation. There are stains all over the front of it, and it's sleeves are rolled up its thing forearms. Her body is still dressed in the clothes from yesterday, looking wrinkled and frumpy, but what is most unsettling is the complete lack of expression on Lien's face.
It starts walking toward the car.
"I think I understand why you told me to leave it alone now," Ino says, sounding disturbed.
"Shit," Theresa hisses. "Shit."
Franky agrees. The walk is all wrong, fluid and confident, eating up ground with quick strides of short legs. The focus on her cousin's face is unfamiliar, the efficiency of her movements is too quick. Too clean. Lien walks like she has nowhere to be in particular, and she gets distracted easily by seemingly nothing at all sometimes. This thing walks with murder in its steps, a calculating look in its eyes.
It's mouthing something at them, a foreign word.
"Chakra," Theresa breathes. "It's saying chakra."
"Fun fact," Ino decides to pipe in, eerily calm. "Your world has little to none of it. However, everyone in the car does."
Franky fumbles with the gear shift for a second, trying to put it in reverse and get the hell out of here. Something in her chest is screaming at her, telling her that it is dangerous. That whatever is inside her cousin is wrong.
A hand slaps down on the hood, and she jolts in her seat. Theresa lets out a pained sounding wheeze.
Ino leans over and rolls down the fucking window.
"Hey there," she greets, and it's only now that Franky realizes they've been speaking in the damnable almost-japanese of the other world. For a second she's afraid that it's taking over everything, that this can't be happening-
-But it is. This is happening. This isn't a dream. She has to remember that.
"You know, you look like our friend, but there's a lot in that head," Ino continues, her voice perfectly chipper and calm. It's astounding how in control she seems, but from inside the car, Franky can see her hands trembling on the window crank.
Ino is afraid of this thing.
The thing says, and it grins, showing far too many teeth. Suddenly, Franky longs for her cousin's half smile with all her heart.
"Yamanaka," it wheezes, and it sounds like too many voices trying to gain control of one throat. It's all wrong, a body fighting with itself. Or a hundred minds fighting for one body.
"And you are?" Theresa spits, fury in her tone, but she too is suspiciously still.
"Many," it answers. "She made into one."
-And suddenly Franky is seven again, sitting on a hard wooden pew in the middle of church, while her friends father sitting straight and stern while the preacher reads from Mark.
"'What is your name?' Jesus commanded the demon," the voice in her memory reads. "'Legion,' answered they in the body of a possessed man, 'For we are many.'"
She is fresh out of miracles though, and there is no Jesus in the car to cast this demon out.
"Why are you here?" Theresa demands of it, even though her sister is ready to convert religions on the damn spot.
It tilts its head, huffing something that might be a laugh.
"She wants to show us," it tells them.
There is no doubt in her mind who the she is. Lien has been doing something horrible. Something vile and repugnant against nature itself to further her goal. Why would she think this is okay? Who let her think this was a good idea?
"Show you a dream?" Ino asks, her voice firm.
It laughs again, that terrible sound. For an abomination against nature, it sure is humorous in demeanor.
"We were human once, we were whole," it says. "She made us this. Made us all white. Made us hungry."
"That is the most ominous thing I have ever fucking heard," Franky adds, her hand creeping around the gear shift, her foot hovering just above the gas.
"Shiro is a good name," it murmurs, almost to itself. Franky wonders how this thing got through the door to the restaurant, let alone got through several hours of prep cooking. It's creepy as all fuck and she hates it. Hates it with all her heart. "Your chakra feels tasty."
"Alright. Shiro is a good name. Can you tell us about Lien?" Ino asks, totally ignoring that last part. "Maybe what time you're from? What happened to you?"
For a second, Shiro loses focus like it's mind is shorting out and it doesn't understand the question.
That's when Franky elbows Ino back into her damn seat, cranks the gear shift, and floors it. Shiro jerks away as the car spins into motion, peeling apart from the thing in their cousin's body, because no. No. Franky refuses to die like a white person in a horror movie. When some creepy body snatcher starts mumbling about hunger and how tasty shit could be, she's out.
Theresa makes a protesting noise, and so does Ino, but Franky has enough sense for all of them. No. They are staying clear of Lien's body until this is all figured out.
AN: We give thanks to Siartha for betaing once more, and also helping me find some sort of direction for this chapter. The research I did on the senses plants have was both enlightening and startling, also. Thanks to all you reviewers, and my lurkers, favoriters and followers as well.