Woooh! I'm actually happy with this one!

This one gets a little dark people, so prepare yourselves!

Jiro had always heard the whispers that drifted around the clustered and clucking groups and into the eager ears of those who were eager for gossip. He knew that as ninjas grew in fame they were given names that would carry a certain specific and deadly identity that would easily strike fear into their enemies' hearts, names that were given to them to be held with pride.

There was his father the copy ninja, the three sannin, the yellow flash, and so many numerous others that people took some pride in, their strength and power carried along parallel to those names in a way that Jiro knew they had reason to be proud of.

His name, the one that drifted along the whispers and tickled his ears in a sickening way, was one he that he only felt disgust and a bitter kind of acceptance towards.

Doctor of Death.

He had, since he was a child, always known that he would be a doctor, that his hands would be blessed with the serene power to heal and that he would save lives and fight death itself if he had tom, all to save even the smallest life.

He had never, however, expected to look down upon those healing hands of his and see the blood dripping off of them, staining them like an inky and depraved tattoo that he could never be free from.

He who had dreamed of being an angel while saving lives and bringing peace instead found himself as a reaper- his kunai as his scythe and his pure white doctor's coat his cowl. The battle field became his home and his hell, the lives he took so easily –like child's play- became weights that tore at his tainted soul, their lifeless and perceptive eyes following him where ever he dared to go, their dying cries gnawing at his sanity.

He knew that there was no number of lives that he could save, no amount of purgatory or repentance that could ever save him or wash away the thick gloss of oily blood that covered him from head to toe and made his reflection unbearable to even look at.

But perhaps what tore at him the most, destroying any feeling of pride he would have held for himself or what he did, was that as he tore through those people -rendering their flesh in two, their life's blood pouring almost poetically from the wounds he made so terrifyingly easily- there was a small feeling of almost… elation. A sense that this was what he was good at and what he would always be good at, no matter what.

He had been taught since childhood to know every secret of the body, to know what connected to what and know what was needed and what could easily be taken and yet still leave life. He knew the body's innermost workings and as such knew an infinite number of ways to kill. Torturously, painfully, slowly, he was well familiar with some ways that could even force a well-seasoned ANBU to look away in an attempt of self-preservation.

He disgusted himself.

He was often sent on missions that were so violent and animalistic in nature that only the top of the ANBU could be sent, and no one ever questioned why he went on them without the ranking. It was understood and relatively unquestioned that he was capable, especially after those who doubted saw him kill.

The sight of his heavily lidded eyes piercing the soul of his prey and leaving them immobile and helpless, his face a mask of cold indifference as he ran towards his target, the sight of his doctor's coat flying behind him as he came in for the kill, a pure and terrifying white that would soon carry an almost artistic blend of blood speckled lightly on the blank canvas as evidence of his victory.

They all understood after they saw him at work.

He was death itself.

They made their way through the trees silently, the leaves not even daring to stir abnormally as they flew by, perhaps feeling the overwhelming sense of death that stuck to the two so closely and intimately, like the scent of a lover's perfume on their skin.

They were wraiths as they flew to their target, not even seeming to land on the branches as they ate up the distance separating them far faster than any mortal could have ever dared to believe possible. There was no conversation, no eye contact or signals that the two shared to communicate, and this lack of even acknowledging each other's presence was one of their most questioned feats.

But like understood like, and the knowledge the two men had of each other went deeper than even their dirty and twisted souls.

Without a word or warning they descended on their target, taking out the battalion of well-trained nin easily, cutting through their flesh as if it were warmed butter, each hit they made a merciful killing blow as they worked through the throng of desperately fighting men and women systematically, nearly taunting them with how absurdly easy it was to bring death to people who had only moments ago believed themselves to be above it, the last sights that tortured their eyes being brief and terrifying flashes of black and white.

When all was said and done and the small clearing was bathed liberally in blood, broken bodies crumpled to the ground like discarded dolls, barely three minutes had passed for the two men to rid the world of nearly thirty poor souls, tainted that they were.

Jiro took a deep breath, wondering at how neither the thought nor the sickly sweet and heady scent of blood and death bothered him anymore.

They brought the corpses to a pile in the middle of the clearing and into a nicely sized indention Jiro had made using one of his mother's preferred chakra blows, and as his partner prepared the bodies Jiro took a cigarette from his pocket and lit it, inhaling the bitter smoke and relishing the way the nicotine twisted his stomach.

Turning his head Jiro looked into the steady white eyes of his partner, the only other person whose soul was just as corrupted and distorted as his. They stared at each other in silence for a minute before Mino quietly spoke up, his voice dry.

"Smoking kills."

Jiro snorted, his lips twisting up bitterly at the macabre humor. He and Mino had been partners for years, passing over and then destroying the line of human morality time and time again, side by side as they became more and more like the demons they were believed to be. They had seen each other murder in the darkest of ways, torturing and twisting what had once been mortal men. They knew every shadow that shifted in the deepest recesses of their souls and they had heard every cry that tortured each other's gnarled hearts.

And because of this knowledge, because of this closeness that only they shared, a bond that went deeper than anything any normal person could comprehend, they never let it be known that they even knew each other when they stepped outside of the death painted battlefield.

That ugliness, that horrible and twisted demonic look that they could see hidden in each other's eyes, the look that they saw reflected back at them whenever they were forced to look into a mirror, was something they never wanted their loved ones to know of lest it taint the precious happiness that they could no longer hold for themselves.

They were murderers, they were unworthy of being happy.

With a few quick hand seals Mino lit the forms of what had once been brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, mothers and fathers and friends alight. Jiro exhaled another lungful of smoke and breathed in the suffocating bitter and rancidly sweet smell of burning flesh and boiling puddles of blood.

Even this didn't bother him anymore.

When he had first realized how numb he had been becoming Jiro had panicked and one night –in a fit of desperation- had taken to drinking. His body had naturally taken to metabolizing the toxins in the alcohol but he had drank so much that he managed to outdrink his body's response, but then it had inevitably caught up with him. After that it got so that no matter how much he drank he was unable to feel that rush of feelings that came with being completely inebriated. He hadn't even been able to get a good hangover.

He had abandoned that and had picked up smoking, throwing up violently every time he had taken a drag of the bitter smoke. But that had slowly gotten better as well, the smoke only making his stomach slightly uneasy now so he knew that it was time to give it up too. After that had come sex, but even that had gotten old and he only felt dirtier when he woke up unable to even remember if he had asked the girl her name. And what was left?

Drugs? No, not only would his mother destroy him but it would only end up like the alcohol. Cutting? He'd been trained to take on hours upon hours of physical torture, so something as flimsy as that could never work. There was simply… nothing.

All he wanted to do was feel something other than the abysmal darkness that was swallowing up every last feeling or moral he dared to still possess after all of the years.

"That it does." He murmured, flicking the cigarette into the fire to burn alongside everything else he could no longer feel.

This one was for my dear little precious salemboy94 who is moving somewhere without internet for two whole years (I would die) and will be unable to read anymore (But if you tell me your adress I'll send them to you by mail! Hahaha! ;P). Thank you for your support and sweet words, and I wish you the best of luck in your endevors my sweet darling.

Also, this is showing a bit of the reason for the "More" that Mino needs, as mentioned in chapter 57. I'll be writing more later that will explain him more in depth.

See you around (Maybe in two years?)