Chapter 3
Up until this point I had never realized waking up could be this difficult. It felt like my whole body was underneath an ocean of molasses. Slowly I managed to wake and my thoughts and memories came back.
I remembered the seal array. I remembered the attack.
The second I remembered the needle and the reaction it caused I froze. I had felt my whole body spasm. I had felt my heart clench unrelentingly and stop beating. The cloth had already lowered my breathing to nothing.
I was supposed to be dead. There was no way I was supposed to survive an attack like that.
As I came to that realization, I recognized how bad this situation could be. Remaining absolutely still I focused on what my senses where telling me about where I was. Impossible to miss, was that I was completely naked and had been thrown in a corner of the room.
I quietly thanked whatever Angel was looking after me. I had ended up facing the wall, and it had most likely hidden my waking. The floor beneath me was cold, damp, brick and so was the wall in front of me. The condition and temperature of the wall and the floor suggested that I was in a cellar. The sounds coming behind me told me I was not alone.
Whoever was behind me sounded like they were cutting into a very large piece of meat. The smell of blood was overpowering and my imagination provided me with all sorts of disturbing scenarios.
Unfortunately, as my mind began churning through the little information I had to work with I began to realize my imagination was probably actually quite accurate. The blood I smelt was very fresh, there was no under smell of the Cadaverine that would be present in flesh even a few hours after the animal had been killed. The potency of the smell also told me there was entirely too much blood. Any meat bought in a store would have been drained first and personal hunting in the forests surrounding the village was strongly discouraged.
There was also the fact that my gut was telling me it was a human body my attacker was cutting.
For a while, I just lay there trying to gather any more information on my situation. I was fairly sure there was only a single person behind me. I had briefly toyed with the idea of using chakra sensing but I decided against it. Even though the chakra I would need to produce would be minimal, I was not in a situation that encouraged any kind of risk taking.
I decided that the body was on a table. The way the sounds echoed in the room suggested that the room was not cluttered.
After twenty minutes (in which I had realized that the body wasn't being cut, but skinned) the rooms other occupant started making his way in my direction. I had already decided on my course of action and waited until the person was close enough.
My heart was trying to beat its way out of my chest but I did my best to ignore it and focused on the heavy footfalls that got nearer. Just as the steps stopped in front of me and I rolled around and opened my mouth. I had time to register a young, male, face, twisting in shock.
The second I turned to face the man I flared my chakra and with a deft twist of focus I released the matrix of energy that I always kept in my left lung.
The Art of Success had hinted at this technique, but painstaking research and experimentation had allowed me to recreate it.
Within my left lung, under a matrix of my chakra, I kept hundreds of cubic decimetres of chakra-laced air compressed and sealed. The technique meant that in an emergency I could use an exhalation based wind technique instantly.
A blast of air rocketed out of my mouth with the roar of a thousand lions. It hit the man like a train, picking him up and carrying him the 20 metres to the far wall where he slammed with punishing force.
Even prepared for the effects, I felt incredibly dizzy. The release of air from within me had introduced a massive amount of new air into the sealed room. The pressure had skyrocketed in the room pushing against my chakra enforced eardrums and causing my head to spin. My peripheral vision told me that the door of the room had blasted out to relieve the pressure.
I made sure to split some focus on it, in case there were others in the house who would have certainly noticed that. The rest of my attention was focused on the man in front of me, who had quite amazingly recovered and was running at me in a drunken path.
He seemed to be bleeding from every orifice. His nose was smashed beyond recognition, and to be frank I had absolutely no idea how he was standing, yet alone running.
I used the time of him crossing the room to activate The Requiem and prepared a second technique without handseals to telegraph. Half way to getting up by when he reached me, my enemy used the momentum of his run to swing a booted foot directly into my chest. I fell away from him in a roll and prepared myself.
Let the fucker think he had scored a hit.
I had caught leg, surreptitiously reducing the force and used the contact to administer my second technique.
I glanced up from my roll and saw my attacker snap his head around, alarm written all over his face. My sound based genjutsu had activated making my attacker hear the phantom sound of hundreds of kunai racing through the air behind him and surging his adrenaline to induce panic.
Using the opening, I blasted myself at him. I had a second to see him realise his error and begin to face me again when my chakra layered knife hand slammed into his throat. We crashed into the floor, his spittle and phlegm covering my face as his trachea collapsed under the blow.
My body was still weak from the lethal chemicals still floating in it, after a second of rolling the man somehow managed to plant his legs between us, and kicked me off him. I managed to reduce the force of my landing by tucking into a roll.
Looking up I saw my attacker staggering to his feet, his ears and eyes trickled fluid and his mouth sprayed a bloody mucus as he coughed into the floor.
I realised the man must be an expert at instantly strengthening his body with chakra. Every one of my attacks had been a finisher. Fuck, I had half expected that knife hand to decapitate him!
Still, he was not in a good way and I wasn't done yet. Giving him no time to recover my hand felt around floor around me for anything. I grasped onto something metal and heavy. Swinging my arm, I used chakra to enhance the contractions of the muscle groups. The metal... bed pan? whizzed out of my hand at tremendous speed and struck the man squarely in the head with a ringing sound, sending him sprawling. I surged towards him on shaky legs.
I scrabbled on top of him sitting on his chest. He instantly tried to wrestle me off but being completely naked worked in my advantage, as he had nothing to grip. A few seconds of struggling found me with my hands clenching around his head. The skin on skin contact confirmed my suspicions; I could feel him running chakra through his body to strengthen it.
Seizing my advantage, I pushed my thumbs deep into his eye sockets turning the soft tissue to pulp. I ignored the messy gurgle he let out as his destroyed throat tried to scream. Rocking my whole body with the motion, I picked up his head and slammed it into ground underneath us.
Again and again I slammed his head with the force of my entire body into the ground.
Finally, I felt his motions still.
For a few seconds all I could hear was my breathing, sharp and deep with exertion. I allowed myself to relax, when suddenly a shot of fear went through me...the door! I had allowed it to drop from my attention!My whole body twisted around drawing an excruciating pain from my side but I ignored it in favour to straining every sense I had on the , it was empty.
I spent a couple seconds stretching out my awareness to the rest of the building. We were alone and I breathed a sigh of relief.
Having settled that I looked down to see what had hurt so much when I turned. Confusion raced across my mind as I saw a scalpel jammed into the side of my stomach, blood coating half of my left leg. The second I realised it was there, pain started radiating from the wound. Figuring it must have happened in the final stages of the fight, I took a few second to channel chakra to area causing the muscle to clench unnaturally around the knife, reducing blood loss.
My whole body sagged, and a wave of nausea mixed with exhaustion washed over me. I just wanted to crawl into hole and sleep for a century but I rejected the desire. Turning my attention back to the man in beneath me I nearly vomited at the sight. His eyes were a bloody mess, his mouth and chin were coated in chunky mucus and his ears trickled. In his stillness, I appraised what I had done to another human being, my stomach suddenly treacherous.
Snapping my thoughts into place, I gave my head a little shake. I would need to secure the enemy and then call for help. My fingers flowed through four seals and the chakra I brought to my hands flared a pale green. I placed one hand on the man's head and the second on his solar plexus. Running the diagnostic jutsu through him, I determined the man was not dead but in a coma. The swelling in his brain told me the man would probably live an hour more if he went without treatment.
Trying to remain as clinical as possible I took his first finger into my hands and with a twist, I broke it. I quickly came to the realization that there was a world of difference between reading about the correct way to secure a captive and actually doing it.
I steadily went through all of his digits, each snap sending a shiver up my spine. Finally, I ran the diagnostic technique on him to confirm that he was in fact still in a coma. Relatively happy I rose on legs that shock so thoroughly my teeth chattered and finally I was able to appraise the room with my eyes.
It was in fact a cellar. The far wall had massive fissures running through it from my windblast technique. The table had been sent to the floor in our struggles and there was the gruesome sight of a skinned male lying on the floor next to it. The fight had scattered the contents of the room all over so it was hard to determine the exact use of the room however, what I could gather did not look good.
Scrolls lined with blueprints where everywhere. The room was peppered with an assortment of cutting implements and a strange thick substance seemed to have cracked from a large container and was now covering a portion of the floor. Finally, I spotted what I was looking for. Peeking out from underneath a toppled drawer, I saw the gleaming metal of my wheelchair.
Falling twice on the journey I covered the distance to the chair. After lifting the draw set I felt a huge bout of relief at seeing all of my belongings heaped together. I didn't bother getting into my clothes. In the state I was in that would take far too long and time was of the essence. Instead, I placed my hand underneath the seat of my chair and with a careful application of chakra I released the storage seal hidden there.
With a quiet poof, my metal cane appeared in my hand. I would have preferred the chair right now but I needed the mobility (however limited) and plus I needed to get up those stairs. From one of my pouches I withdrew and exploding tag and some heavy-duty wire. After making my way back over to my captive, I carefully used the wire to tie his broken fingers backwards and attach them to his wrists. I then pulled his arms behind him and tied his wrists to his ankles. Finishing, I stuck a low yeild exploding tag over his manatasian tenketsu bundle. Satisfied that if he somehow managed to wake he would be unable to move and that if he gathered any chakra at all he would blow himself up I started to make my way out of the cellar.
The journey out of the house passed as a disjointed blur. My vision swayed and my walk was unsteady. Every step sent a wave of pain through my legs and collecting in my wounded side. All I really seemed to be aware of was the sound of my own laboured breathing. I staggered outside, the morning sun greeting me. Griping the second exploding tag I had taken with me, I prepared it and flung it skywards. The deafening bang sounded almost heavenly to me and knowing a patrol unit would investigate soon I allowed myself to sink into unconsciousness.
