Author's note: This is an idea I had with Abberation. I don't know how far I'll get with it, but I wanted to try it out.
Dark clouds gathered over the horizon, moving languidly, pushing and morphing into larger and darker monsters. Their appetites knew no bounds as they cannibalized each other, bodies stretching, graying, dimming, and assimilating. There was no light that leaked from above. It was as if all was sealed off under their amorphous, clogged, wall of bodies.
Below the mass of clouds was a woman cloaked in black, standing on an island shore gazing up into the sky. Despite the pathetic, dreary sight before the cloaked woman, she could not withhold the zeal that trilled in her. It sung in encouragement, in brilliant fierceness. It was victory in its purest of form.
When a rumble of thunder roared its way on the sandy, island shore, booming like a rain of paper bomb kunai over a target, quaking her ears, trembling her skin, she reveled in it. Her ruby painted lips curved at the ends. She had secured the first steps to her victory.
It had taken her years to arrive here, from fighting the wars of her adopted homeland and growing in a world fiercely devoted to the survival of the strong, to getting the timing right and following the movement of the stars, tracing their ancient and historical firmament patterns of old, but she had prevailed. The life she had lived had prepared her for this very moment.
Finally. I have arrived!
Her amber eyes took hold of the placid blue ocean, unsettling still as it softly lapped on the shore, now muted by the dark grayish clouds. She could envision what lied across those dark waters, what was hidden behind manmade structures, behind the greed of human hearts, was her true birthright. She would claim it! She would grasp it with her fingers around its throat and choke it until it surrendered on its knees.
The sound of a soft swish came behind her of gentle landing feet settling in the soft sand. She didn't change direction as the voice of her subordinate rang to her from the ground as she kneeled before her. "Master Bái, we have booked passage across the sea. The captain said it'll take quite a bit of time before we reach –"
Bái silenced her with a wave of her hand. "Time matters not. Waiting matters not."
Bái inhaled the warm, moist air through her nose and then exhaled it deeply out her mouth. Her breath, along with her chest, shuddered with anticipation she could not still. She refused to let it be still. She let it rage through her. She had been waiting a lifetime to stand on these shores, longing to breathe this air and feel the energy of nature around her.
She could endure a bit more if it drew her closer to her goal.
"Our goal is in sight," Bái declared fiercely. "I waited so long. After so many years…"
"I quite disagree. Time matters when money is involved. It is the currency that opens doors," came a dark and cold, gruff voice. "The language of fealty and power. The only currency that truly matters in the world."
At this voice was when Bái turned, moving her amber eyes from the ocean to the two figures behind her. She felt her subordinate stiffen for a moment beside her, as did her other three kneeling bodyguards, wary eyes watching two black-cladded people. There were two figures standing across from her, dressed in black cloaks of patterned crimson clouds that swayed gently with the wind along their shins.
The one that spoke, the green-eyed pupilless man, whose eyes were pronounced on his masked, brown face, gave her a blank look. He was the tallest of two, and the tallest one of their entire groups. His lavender-eyed partner only came to his shoulders – they all only stood at his broad shoulders.
"You doubt me?" Bái questioned pointedly.
"I don't know," the green-eyed man said. "What I do know is I don't have your time. If I find this is all for naught, I'll kill you. Money is the only thing that matters, and time is a certain luxury we're all not afforded. Especially my time as I lack little patience for things that lack monetary value."
His overt threat was said as if he was making mundane conversation. It did not seem to sit well with her subordinates as killing intent flooded from them, a thick corrosive atmosphere that yearned for death. The killing intent gathered and blanketed over the two men. They shrugged it off as if it were a light cloak. They were able to do so as their power was too great to tackle, alone that was.
Men of their caliber are always slow to kowtow and even more unruly to discipline, Bái thought. Power. These men only yield to unbending power and strength. They hold basic instincts of animals.
Bái let her eyes roam over the tallest man until they stopped at his slashed village headband. And yet, they have not survived in battles and wars for all these years, evaded capture by the skins of their teeth, if they had just let their instincts rule them.
A scoff came from the man next to him, his lavender eyes contrasting to the green-eyed pupilless man. His black hair was as dark as charcoal and parted in a zigzag that stretched across his cranial; the rest of his black hair cascaded down to his shoulders and back. The parted hair in his front were held by two white tubes.
His eyes looked insatiably bloodthirsty as they drank her in. He looked at her unblinkingly, unflinchingly, as if he was man ready to stake his claim on her, conquer her, and then bathe in her blood. He was probably imagining her death. The only humanity that reflected in his eyes was destruction.
"Money matters little to the heart," he spoke in a rich, soft tone that oozed charisma, if not something else, something unstable and volatile that grazed the surface. "Money cannot rival the gratuitous pleasure of battle and blood. For violence is man's primary nature, their pinnacle of expression and their evolutionary tradition. Through conflict we manifest. What greater challenge is their than fighting for one's life? A good death is often seen as a miracle, especially when one puts their life on the line."
The green-eyed man gave his partner a flat look, but, in that look, that seemed innocuous on the surface, spoke multiple levels of anger. All of it was contained and restrained by sheer will, but some of it still leaked out, and it curled Bái 's stomach. Bái could also feel the fine hairs on the back of her neck rise and stiffen.
"Shut up. Your base instincts for wanted slaughter and grandiose speech are nothing more than infantile, like Hidan's. I'm surprised Leader found such an infuriating partner for me for this mission. If you irritate me, I'll kill you," the green-eyed man spoke calmly.
Bái could tell it was not a lie. These men never made idle threats they could not keep. The green-eyed man's look promised death. Bái was sure, even if they were partners, he would make true on his threat. A small annoyance, like an ant on a scroll, a child in their way, could mean certain death. It just depended on their mood.
The lavender-eyed man then laughed loudly at the threat and waved his hand dismissively, his green painted nails flashing in the air like leaves caught in a gust of wind. "Don't put me in the same class with that low-born mongrel. The man cares not for the beauty a battle can instill. He only wants to rip and tear to satiate the desires of his sadistic god."
He then grinned at the green-eyed man, stretching his lips until it was animalistic, like a beast. "Now, if you would like to fight, I would never deny you. My blood is boiling hot for a worthy challenge."
Seeing and hearing enough, Bái interrupted. She needed them alive and in good condition than at each other's throats. "Enough! The money will be yours of course so long as you do what I have ask. Don't think for a second I haven't forgotten. You and your organization will get your share. Just remember – you cannot take money to the grave, but you can immortalize yourself in the annals of history, into legend."
"Into legend?" echoed the lavender-eyed man, laughing lightly. He looked delighted by that prospect, eyes stretching and shining in eagerness, in madness. "I think I like the sound of that."
The green-eyed man harrumphed. He seemed to scoff at that notion. "Immortalize myself in history? A fool's dwelling. I just want wealth, nothing more. I don't give a damn if history remembers me or not. I'll outlive the historians and scholars, and their wayward, misguided pens that write history. I have already experienced more bloodshed and wars before any you were a thought, before history was already written."
Bái felt her kneeling subordinate begin to stand but placed a firm hand on her shoulder. No, it was not the time for battle. That could wait when their goal was fulfilled. They still needed these men – or monsters – for this job.
Bái had remembered the green-eyed man had stopped being a man a long time ago when his name became synonymous with infamy and murder. He was nothing more than a murderous mercenary outcast she had hired, a thug with no village or loyalty. He was a traitor to his village, to his people, to the very things that gave honor, and only loyal to his dark urges and lusts. Violence ruled him.
It was the other man who gave Bái pause. She did not know anything about the lavender-eyed man, only that his insatiable need, his desire for violence, to test himself, was what propelled him. He wore no headbands that signified his belonging to a hidden village or any attached mercenary group, unlike his darker skinned comrade, besides the red clouds of his black cloak.
But he can be controlled like a marionette, Bái thought. Violence and greed for insatiable men were cyclical: They always needed more, demanded more, at the cost of their own agency. In the end, great men had fallen to their own vices throughout history, time and time again. It would be the same for them.
Her subordinate stilled for a moment and then relented as she fell back to her knees. Bái gave a disarming smile at the green-eyed man, who returned it with dismissive indifference. He looked willing to indulge her, for now. "You'll get more than your fill of wealth and riches and your share of battle. As long as you follow my orders, I'll guarantee you more wealth than you can ever imagine."
The green-eyed man-monster snorted and narrowed his eyes. A gripping feeling came, almost strangling in nature and deeply primal. It sought to burrow and snake its putridness into Bái's heart, its tentacles long and sharp, ready to poke and then render flesh into blood-splattered pieces. She kept her heart from racing despite the sweat she felt gathering in her palms. It was an awful, ugly feeling. Fiendish and dark.
"Promises are like thoughts: ever shifting. They cannot be trusted, unlike money. Money binds. As do debts," the man said after a moment. "I'll say this, Master Bái: Don't make promises that you cannot keep. Don't tempt the unknown if you are not fully ready to pay the cost."
His unyielding, unblinking stare turned chilling like hardened ice. It made her skin crawl as she felt a foreign pressure build in the air. "Otherwise, you might not live long enough to fulfill them."
The lavender-eyed man merely smiled at her. It froze her blood. "For once, we agree, old man."
Bái took a deep breath and shrugged off the feeling. She felt her shoulders loosen but still tense enough to react. She knew she was stronger than this. She had to remain calm and be a wall of fortitude against these fiendish men. They deserved nothing less than her best.
The price may be high, but it is nothing that I cannot purchase, she thought surely, that I cannot overcome. And the price was surely worth everything she had. It was steeped in blood, but she would willingly drown in it to attain what was hers.
She returned her gaze to the ocean, ridding her sight of the baleful men. Their dark aura remained a reminder of their presence, a miasma of dark energy lingering in the background. She could feel their gaze burn into her, looking for weakness. They would be watching her more closely from now on.
A slight wind blew the smell of salt and sea into her nose, and she pushed back whisps of her obsidian black hair that fell in her face. Unobstructed, amber eyes narrowed on the horizon, her destiny lay ahead, across the isles through vast, blue ocean. Horizons were endless, but they all had numerous stopping points for travelers. She would make sure, when the time came to disembark at her last point, she would be ready claim absolute power.