Transition
Sakura is perceived from the perspectives of others as she changes during the years into something else entirely. The people near her follows her transition closely and when she starts abandoning everything she held dear - she gets closer and closer to her goal.
Chapter 20
Ripped Eyelids
Through the Eyes of a Goddess of Death, a Prodigy and a Cloud Watching Boy
The Old War Veteran in the Cabin, Kurotsuchi Miura
He couldn't move. His eyes were glued to the large stage scene. The dancing pair had removed their masks and their unnatural glow and beautiful presence shone upon the civilian crowd. Miura found himself unable to do anything but to watch in admiration.
His work as the Priest of the Forgotten Temple in the village had been fruitful. He had called for the Gods and they had come. A sense of power surged through him. He felt like he could do anything. This proved his place in the world. He had contact with the Gods. That meant he truly was the Transcriber written of the in the Holy Scripts.
He clutched the pendant around his neck. The little piece of jewellery was comfortable in his palm. He hesitated, then opened it. Inside, there were two little oval shaped pictures. Blurry, black and white and too light, since they had never afforded a better camera. Amaya smiled at him and the omnipotent feeling he had felt moments ago vanished. What had he been thinking? He was a humble man. He was a kind man. He was an unselfish man.
He was just a man, loving a dead woman.
The Goddess of Death, Izanami
They danced until the end of the music. When they finished, the devotees clapped their hands once.
"Praise the Lord of Light!", they sang. "We praise your return. We will follow you until the end of the world. We thank you for coming back to us. As humble servants, we will devote our lives to you. We hope your presence will shine down upon us and cleanse our sins."
The crowd sang and then bowed to the Gods and scattered like leaves in the wind. They knew they had no place to talk to the Gods and they left them alone. Izanami glanced at the God at her side, then looked away. They'd contact the Priest later.
"Let us meditate for a while. You can focus on making Sakura agree to giving herself to you. I will do the same with Sasuke. He still hasn't signed the contract." Izanagi said and flew up on a rooftop. Izanami followed and settled besides her former lover. The moon she had once created seemed so far away, like a little blob of dim light in the distance.
"Yes."
She breathed and then the world quietly fell away and she was back inside her mindscape. The swirling smoke prison containing Sakura's presence was still there, and Izanami dissolved it. There was a little sound, a click, like the sound of a door coming shut inside the void, but Izanami thought it might be a sound of the outside world. She still hadn't gotten used to keeping her mind and the real world apart yet.
"Let us walk." Izanami said as she fastened heavy and large chains around the girl's throat, hard enough for the girl to barely breathe. Somehow, however, the girl seemed different when Izanami dragged her out of the smoke prison. She was more fierce in her green eyes. Izanami didn't care, though, since the girl would be broken by the end of the day.
"You betrayed me. A-and that god, Izanagi, have taken over Sasuke's body- Didn't you hate him?" Sakura choked, clawing at the chain which dug deep into her skin, leaving red marks and bruises. She had understood their scheme.
"I do. And I accept him." Izanami lied as she created a portal door with the flick of her hand. It was much easier to do now with a body of her own, she'd never been able to do it before. But now the girl provided her with mental powers and she used them thoroughly. With a bit of concentrating, and borrowing a whole lot of Sakura's mortality, the seals of the Hakai Key appeared. Izanami smirked.
A few spell words in the Dead Tongue, strengthened by the Runes she drew with chakra and the seals collapsed, revealing a little silver key. Izanami took it from its hovering position and put it into the lock. She turned the key and a creak shivered through the door's frame.
The portal door opened in front of them and revealed a cosmic space with a staircase of iron stretching downwards into the far distance behind its frame. Izanami put the key inside her yukata's pouch. Sakura looked at the door which lead to the Soul Path and her eyes widened at the sight. The stars glinted and clouds of comet dust slowly withered away into blue and purple colours.
"That doesn't make any sense, shannaro. And what's that scary door leading to? Space?" Sakura said as Izanami started walking through the door, dragging Sakura behind her.
"Nothing ever makes sense. Walk with me." Izanami said. The girl hesitated for only one second, realising she couldn't do anything to stop it, and then they strolled down on the path of the large staircase, that stretched to their sides far enough to seem never ending. The steps were built of iron and was shaped to a smooth surface, almost slippery in its forgery. The large doors at the bottom of the staircase became visible as they walked downwards, the gates to hell a welcoming sight to Izanami.
"Where are we going?" Sakura asked. Izanami didn't answer her, but Sakura pressed. "What did you do to Miura-san?"
Izanami said nothing.
"Izanagi is manipulating you, I'm sure of it." Sakura commented quietly as she walked besides the demon goddess down the steep staircase. Izanami scowled.
"You know nothing." The fallen goddess clipped, her voice sharp and bloodied like the sword she embodied. Yet the girl didn't waver.
"But can't you see? You wanted to rip him to shreds! He left you! How can you not see it? He's gotten you back with a few simple words. You're not the Goddess of Death that craves blood anymore. You're just-"
"Careful with what you say, bearer." Izanami growled and yanked the chain around Sakura's throat hard, choking the girl. But the pinkette pressed and gasped and got out a few words that completed a sentence.
"You- know m-my name a-and it is n-not bearer. What- what happened t-to you?" She choked on her words and clawed at the chains around her neck.
"I realised that I love him and always will, and I will always hate him and try to kill him. In any way... You have no choice but to follow my orders, girl." Izanami said and dragged the girl downwards, coming nearer and nearer to the gates to hell. The girl tripped over a step and Izanami yanked her up again.
"W-what happened to our contract?" She said, her voice tight.
"The contract is binding but it doesn't say anything about what I can do to you, as long as I don't kill you."
"Izanami-sama-"
"Be quiet. Follow me." She yanked the chains again and Sakura stumbled after her, down to the gates, the end of the Soul Path stairs. They had finally reached the Gates to Hell. The large two doors that held all the evils in the world was an intricate work of solid black stone, the most powerful gates through all dimensions.
Izanami sang in the Dead Tongue and the gates opened eerily slowly and creaked in the silence. The heat and cold struck them and Sakura fell on her knees as her eyes was met with the agony of all lost souls. The screams of pain and laughter rang inside their minds.
"We're going to Hell." She choked. "You're dragging me to Hell."
Sakura shed silent tears as her body shook and she stared inside the gates of the dead.
"Yes." Izanami said and smirked a slanted grin. "Welcome to my home."
Izanami yanked the chains, Sakura stumbling after her and they passed through the Gates of the Dead.
"From now on, all that will be in your head will be dark things." Izanami said and her voice echoed within the walls and pillars of the palace they arrived inside. The entrance to the palace was plain in black stone and an altar was placed at the entrance. A demon guardian came up to them with wide eyes from behind the altar, and went down to the ground hard, bowing as far she could. Her grey wings folded and cowered around her body, her thin grey tail slipped between her bird-like legs in true submission connected to the ethics of demonic hierarchy.
Her name was Myobi and she was the head of the guardians to the palace entrance and she administered whoever came in and out of the Black Crystal Castle.
"My honored Mistress Izanami-sama." She breathed heavily, the sound of her voice was like fingernails scraping on stone. "You are back with us."
"Inform the others of my presence, Myobi. This will be a short visit since I cannot stay for long here, with this mortal girl's mind as a transmitter. I need to speak with Bishamon, summon him for me. The Grim Reaper as well." Izanami ordered the guardian demon,
"Bishamon-sama probably already knows you are here. I'll get the Grim Reaper." Myobi said and she instantly shot off into the darkness, her silhouette looking like a bat in the distance.
Seconds later, the rotten ground convulsed and a demon the size of a mountain rose, stones crumbling from his wild features, his ugly face in a grim snarl. He had horns in a twirl at the sides of his head and his hairy ears were long and pointed, sloping downwards. Absentmindedly, Izanami noticed Sakura freeze at the ugly sight of Izanami's temporary successor.
"Izanami-sama." He rasped and bowed, his dark voice rumbling through the Palace entrance, his large goat like head bobbing down. "Welcome back. We have been waiting a long time for your return."
"Bishamon." She replied and nodded in a polite greeting. "I'm here only for a short time. I need to know the current situation here, so let's wait for the Reaper to join us."
"Yes. He's currently digesting the last batch of souls in his stomach, so he will join as soon as he can."
Izanami turned to the guardian demon, and Myobi who had just arrived back shrank at the Dead Goddess' full attention.
"Grim Reaper is on his way." Myobi said quietly. Izanami nodded, then yanked Sakura's chains so she stumbled in front of the two demons. Sakura shivered when she looked up at the huge demon, and Bishamon's yellow eyes caught her in his gaze.
"Organise a welcoming party in the Dungeon for this girl, let Commander Ling treat her first to the bronze plate of dead fruits. She's a special guest so I want extra attention to her visit. Then I'll join to watch her fall into the Pit." Izanami said and noticed in her peripheral vision how Sakura visibly paled. Most souls did, when they realised they were to eat the dead fruits. They worked as proof to the soul being truly dead and rotten.
"I understand that the girl is to be disposed to the Dungeon, mistress, since it is for those who have blood on their hands. But, Izanami-sama, the Pit are only for those who have taken the lives of a thousand men! They are the most sinful souls, real mass murderers!" Myobi said uncertainly, knitting her claws together nervously.
"Oh, that she has. Haven't you now, Sakura? That last explosion you set off in that Umegaki village killed more than you knew. Refugees from the Country of Snow hid under the houses. Her count is at 1008."
Sakura's viridian eyes widened and became glazed with understanding and contempt and hate for herself. If she had been in her true body, her heart would have collapsed at the knowledge.
"Well then. Come here sinful soul, the Dungeon's cave is expecting you." Myobi said hesitantly, accepted the chain from Izanami and grabbed Sakura's feet with her claws, swung her into the air and shot off with her wings.
Bishamon grunted and watched Sakura disappear hanging from Myobi's claws with a choked cry in her throat into the black sky.
"Who is she, this female young human, who has succeeded in earning your full attention?" He growled.
"A little girl who has proved to be resistant. She must agree to my contract, where she'll give her body and mind to me, and what better way to break her than to have her here?"
"She must be strong, for a mortal." Bishamon snarled. "But she will truly break in the Pit."
"She's different." Izanami said quietly. When she turned to Bishamon, his yellow goat like eyes scrutinised her.
"No mortal can resist your whispers. None can. You should be aware, that the girl might have Kami blood or Youkai blood running through her veins-"
Silently, a shadow appeared before them, disrupting Bishamon's speculation. A tall and slender man with a black suit elegantly walked up to them. He was outrageously clean and he smelled of nothing. His face was obscured in blackness below the brim of a tall hat and he bowed to Izanami. The Goddess felt shivers crawl on her skin. Death always had that impact on her.
"Grim Reaper."
The Foxy Boy, Uzumaki Naruto
Stars blinked in the silent night. The Kyuubi container shivered in the coldness and huddled closer to the little fire. Jiraya sat beside him and they were comfortably quiet.
"Boy. Have you heard about Sage mode?" Jiraya broke the silence and Naruto looked up from his borrowed scroll on the Academy's history. Jiraya's expression was serious for once. Naruto scratched his chin, absentmindedly thinking about shaving the three day old stubble, and then he glanced at the old man.
"What's that? Dattebayo, another of your farting technique for constipation? I don't want to do that again, it got so messy."
The Cloud watching Boy, Nara Shikamaru
He had been approached by Kakashi, and Shikamaru had accepted to join the Retribution Task Force. He was put on the same cell as Neji and another Jounin kunoichi called Yuka. Yuka was a former ANBU as well, so her experience in the field was sufficient. She was quiet and had light strawberry blond hair in a short pixie cut, her eyes were a darker shade of brown and her skin was tanned. Shikamaru hadn't cared to get to know her. All he needed to know was that she was proficient in genjutsu, senbon casting and chakra sensing.
Their first mission together after a few team exercises was to follow a lead on Sakura. A lower rank Konoha nin had seen a young girl in a village with pink hair and had reported it to Danzo. Kakashi had picked up on the report and dispatched them to the village called Ishigakure.
They travelled fast. When they stopped to rest for two hours in a forest clearing, for sleep and food, Neji took the first watch. Yuka ate her protein bar quickly and then went to her mattress to sleep, without a word.
Shikamaru ate his rice, then washed the bowl and then stuffed it into his backpack. The night sang with birds and crickets. He found that he couldn't sleep. They were so close now, closer than they had been for weeks.
Neji sat with his legs crossed on a tree branch and Shikamaru jumped up to join him.
"We might be able to catch her this time." Shikamaru commented as he settled besides the prodigy.
"It's strange though, don't you think? Sakura is smarter than this. She wouldn't flaunt her hair color like that if she didn't want to be found. I feel like she must have wanted us to come to her." Neji said quietly.
"I've thought about that as well. Maybe she's ready to tell us the truth?" The Nara replied and shuffled his back against the tree.
"All I can do is hope." The Hyuuga prodigy frowned and knitted his hands together. "I can come up with a few reasons for her defection. My first theory is that the demon inside the sword succeeded in turning her into a killer, into her marionette. With her excessive count of kills, it's plausible. My second guess is that she was set up. For what reason, I don't know."
"That would make sense." The Nara said contemplatively.
"We'll just have to find out." Neji nodded. "I hope she'll be approachable this time."
The Goddess of Darkness, Izanami
The meeting finished smoothly with Bishamon and the Reaper. The situation was under control in the Netherworld and recently, mostly thanks to the wars and the assassins, loads of lost souls had arrived. It had kept them busy and they had recruited a few to the ranks.
Izanami spotted Sakura and Myobi from her large oval-shaped mosaic window inside her office. The girl looked like a ragged doll, hanging limply from Myobi's claws as they settled down on the rotten ground at the entrance. Sakura crumbled to the ground in a heap of ripped flesh and stained skin, but Myobi had no patience for the tortured girl.
Sakura was lead back by Myobi and they arrived inside Izanami's office, the girl yanked along with now bloodied chains. The pinkette's appearance was dirty, her hair burnt crisp at the edges and her skin had become paler in the fires and had patterns of ugly blisters. Sagging pink ripped flesh hung from her cheek. Being force fed dead things had left her mouth smeared with grey and brown gore and her eyes were blank, barely green. Her arms had been marked with the tattoos of the Dungeon which showed she had been there for a session. The tattoos had been carved with sharp stones from the cave, black obsidian ones, and they had formed an apple with blood colouring its ripe surface.
Sakura was let go of the chain around her throat and looked around the castle. Izanami glanced at the pinkette. The girl had changed now. She did not look frightened anymore, only... Ravaged, empty and at a loss of words, but all the same she was quiet. Accepting her fate, although not willingly it seemed, but all the same she stood straight. It seemed the burden of her death count had made her think she deserved what she been through in the darkness of the Dungeon.
Izanami smiled at the girl.
"You will fall into the Pit. The demons down there are first graded trainees, and the Pit is their final exam for becoming High Class demons. For each broken soul, they achieve one point. For turning a soul into a Hell worker, two points. For turning a soul into a low class demon, ten points. For breaking you, one two hundred points. So believe me, their full and complete attention will be on you. When you emerge from therein, we will head back to the mortal world and you will sign the contract where you will leave your body fully to me." Izanami pointed to the hole of the Pit in the middle of the large dome, the hole much like a wide well, but much more exquisite in its detail of sculptures surrounding it in marble. There was a platform in front of the hole, where Izanami could stand and view the pleasantness of torture.
"It is what it is." A dirty Sakura said, her throat thick with emotion, and she went to the edge of the palace and peered down into the hole in the ground on the platform. Down on the carnage of mutilated bodies moving around in the black fires, screaming and howling as they were tortured. The souls each had an encrusted cell with different methods of torture in each. They bathed in seas of blood and severed body parts floated down to the bottom of the endless abyss, the Styx river flooding through the cells.
"When I fall, I won't be the same anymore. Is this what you want from me?" She turned her head and looked back at Izanami. Searching for guilt or compassion mayhaps, but that was all but futile. Izanami was the epitome of darkness. She had none of those useless emotions. Sakura fidgeted as a scream faintly broke through the silence from the Pit. It echoed within the dark palace walls.
"I want you to break and give yourself wholly to me. When they gouge out your eyes, when they mark your body with fire and blades, when they pick out your teeth one by one, when they burn your fingernails, when they drown you in blood - you will realise you are nothing. You will become my servant and give your body to me, wholly. The Merge didn't work because you regretted it. That's why this is necessary for your loyalty."
Izanami smiled and she knew it was horrifying, when she felt her skin fall from her face in shreds, revealing parts of her skull and maggots crawled through her empty eye sockets and blood poured from her mouth and her teeth changed into triangular sharp teeth like a canine. She was, after all, a demon. It was what she was, and always would be.
"I... have no choice, I see." Sakura mumbled as her eyes widened at Izanami's changed appearance. The stench in the air was suffocating.
Izanami was in a split second behind the girl and all she needed to do was push and she would fall into Hell's Pit.
"No need." Sakura said as she looked back at Izanami's long black fingernails reaching out for her back, her fingers more like claws than anything, and the girl grit her teeth. Izanami was astonished when she watched the girl jump with a shout of 'shannaro'. A deafening silence filled the palace halls and Izanami stood still. Then she walked to the edge of the hole and looked down. She saw the pink hair at once.
Five demon trainees gathered her into chains from her crouching position on the ground, led her into a glass cell and clipped a brace on each of her ankles and wrists, then they hung her up in the air. She struggled.
The first demon, a low class female of the Tichuan family, was to start the torturing process. It was protocol that the most prominent demon trainee was to start. Her grey skin was flecked with dark spots formed like eyes and Izanami recognised the female demon. She was the prodigy trainee Kirai, known for her eloquence in illusions and getting the souls to do whatever she wanted them to do in the illusions. She inflicted pain to them, so much they would have died many times over if they had been directed at their true soul body.
The best part of Kirai's illusions was that she allowed everyone else to see the ghost of the illusion. Izanami saw Sakura's ghost image of herself be released from her chains, her real body hanging limply from the true chains, unconscious. Sakura looked warily around her, not quite realising why they had let her go right after chaining her. Kirai smiled heartily and made a few hand seals, then she went to her glass desk and her computer. The images of it hovered in the air and Kirai pushed a button.
A man protruded from the ground and rose himself up on his hands. He sprouted like a plant and shook the gravel off his shoulders.
"Sakura-chan, darling?" The tall man said dumbly. The pinkette caught her breath.
"Dad?"
"Kill him." Kirai said mercilessly and smirked. Sakura shook her head, her eyes unbelieving.
"Are you insane? I won't kill my father!" She yelled. "Dad, are you okay?"
"If you don't, he will flay you. Your father is not the same here, you see. He will remove your flesh with his fingernails and leave only muscle tissue behind. All for your own good." Kirai said solemnly, with a slanted smirk on her thin blue lips. Izanami watched attentively.
Then man walked up to her and spread his arms, as if he wanted to embrace her, but when Sakura jumped into his arms he grabbed her throat. She choked and he pinned her down on the ground.
"Sakura-chan, baby, this skin is ugly. I'll change it for you. Red suits you better, haven't I told you? You stopped wearing the red Qipao dress I bought you. Why? It hurts father's feelings." He said heartily and started digging his fingers deep into Sakura's thigh. When he flayed her thigh in a gory mess of blood and skin, Sakura shoved him away.
"What are you doing? Dad!" She grunted as she tried to stop the blood flow and tried to gather up her skin which hung loosely from her thigh. The man got up again and walked slowly to her, looking down on his daughter with a light smile.
"I want everything that is good for you. You know that, Sakura-chan dear." He replied and bowed down to continue the flaying, his hands covered in her blood. Sakura scrambled away, dragging herself on the ground, tears streaming down her face.
"No, please, dad." She hiccuped. "It hurts!"
"Kill him, or else he'll flay you." Kirai said soothingly.
"I can't kill him!" Sakura breathed, but as the man bowed down, her reflexes got the better of her. She kicked the man at the side and his ribs shattered. He coughed red liquid and fell down flat on the gravel. He wheezed a little, then his eyes died. Sakura stood paralysed at his limp body.
"Dad?" She tried. "Dad!"
"Good work, little girl!" Kirai said as Sakura huddled her father, hugging him while trying to heal his punctured lung. But it didn't work, since Kirai didn't allow healing inside her illusion.
"You're not finished yet, little killer." The demon said and flickered her finger in another hand seal. Sakura startled as a hand gently grabbed her shoulder. The girl turned her bloodied face around and up, and her eyes widened.
"Mom!" She sobbed. Izanami saw Sakura's mother stagger behind the girl, a knife behind her back.
"Mom, I killed dad, I killed dad..." Sakura rambled as her mother embraced the girl, patting her head.
"It's alright, Sakura. I will make it right. You will suffer like you made him suffer." Her mother soothed and Sakura looked dizzily up into her mother's eyes.
"What?"
Sakura's mother nodded, then she pushed her daughter down to the ground and started slowly carving with a butcher knife on Sakura's abdomen. The screaming started again.
Blood trickled in the illusion and Sakura experienced the same pain the illusion showed her she should. She tried pushing her mother away, but the older woman refused to stop.
"Mom, stop, it hurts." She wheezed and tried to push the woman away, but it was futile. "Stop!"
The pinkette's eyes had turned bloodshot and she seemed to have gotten to the end of the line of pain tolerance, her throat sore from screaming.
"Sakura, you didn't get the highest score in the Taijutsu exam. How are you going to graduate from the Academy? Only the best will survive. You'll be crushed if you continue disappointing me like this." The woman said sternly, and shoved the knife into Sakura's stomach, then she jabbed it in again. Sakura screamed, then her eyes turned glazed, unseeing. Blood spluttered from the wound.
"Mom, mom, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, mom..." She hiccuped and made a short work of her own mother, with a quick hit at her mother's throat, stopping the older woman's oxygen flow. With the knife still in her stomach, the girl wobbled up from the ground. Sakura's mother clawed at her throat as it caved in, imploded, her eyes bulged and she toppled over in a wheeze. Sakura cried harder.
Kirai applauded sadistically and Sakura couldn't speak.
"Well done, little sinful soul! Let's see, from your childhood memories, what more do we have?" Kirai laughed and tapped her computer, with different images of Sakura's memories coming up. Kirai decided on one image and clicked on it. A blond girl materialised and looked baffled, her head turning around. Then her icy blue eyes found Sakura standing in front of her.
"Sakura-chan!" She said happily and she smiled. But her teeth were sharp, like a shark's, and her eyes showed only an appetite for something more. "You look good today. Your hair is so beautiful, like cotton candy. I'm a bit jealous, why don't you share that beauty? I just want to... bite you."
"Ino- no!" She shrieked. "Please stop this!"
"Don't you see? If you don't kill your oldest friend, she will start eating your flesh."
"Ino, don't!" The pinkette cried helplessly as Izanami watched the ghost of an illusion show a teenage blond girl smile with madness, and she bowed in to Sakura's neck and pinned her to the dead ground.
Her first bite with her sharp teeth of Sakura's flesh sent the pinkette's head back and she howled in pain. The blond ghost swallowed and continued to gnaw on Sakura's collarbone.
"You're so yummy, Sakura-chan." Ino squealed with Sakura's illusionary blood dribbling from her grinning mouth.
It ended in minutes with Sakura giving in to the pain and with a horrid tear streaked face and bites all over her chest and throat, she caught the blond ghost's throat and choked her. Ino fell down on Sakura, dead and strangled, her tongue gliding out of her mouth.
Sakura shuffled up and pushed the body of Ino away gently. She watched the three dead bodies of the people she loved on the ground and her hollow face was contorted in hurt.
"I don't want to do this… please, stop." She sobbed. But Kirai never allowed anyone to rest with her illusions going. Especially not now, when breaking Sakura's soul granted two hundred points. If she did break Sakura, Kirai would probably only have to spend another ten years in the Pit, and then she'd graduate. It was truly a motivating factor for the gore of her illusions.
"Here, let's see who you looked up to as a child..." Kirai chuckled, clicked on an image on the computer screen with her long claws and a man emerged from behind Sakura. She turned around, injured to a point where she would have died five times over, but since this was an illusion she'd live forever.
"Kakashi-sensei, no, I can't..." She trembled. The silver haired man dragged down his face-covering mask underneath his chin and a skull was revealed underneath, showing half his face being that of bones and his left eye spun with the Cursed Eye. Sakura faltered and took a step back, shivering uncontrollably. Then he charged her with lightning bolts pulsing in a ball in his hand.
"Sakura, you should just have stayed a medic. You're worthless. A maggot. Contributing to nothing, only holding us back." He whispered and thrust the lightning bolt into her chest. Blood spurted from her mouth, the stench of burning flesh spreading in the glass cell.
"Ugh." She squealed, then looked into Kakashi's eyes, watching his face as her own contorted into a grimace. The man smiled with his skull mouth, his red eye spinning crazily.
"Kakashi-sensei, I'm sorry. It seems I can't die." The girl said hollowly and shoved her chakra enhanced finger into the man's Sharingan eye. The man howled in pain and tried to step back, but he was stuck in her chest cavity with his hand. Blinded, he fumbled with another Chidori in his other hand, but Sakura wouldn't let him. A chakra scalpel shaved his throat and blood gurgled from it, he tried to breath but only blood spurted from his jugular. Sakura wrenched his hand away from her chest and she looked down on the clean hole in her body.
"My heart was burnt away..." She mumbled.
Kirai frowned at Sakura's stillness, but then she made another array of hand seals and a blurry figure appeared in front of Sakura. She looked at the figure and her eyes hardened. With a hole in her chest, with knife carvings on her body, with bite marks on her torso, with flesh sagging from her thigh, she shook her head as if she was fine.
"No. Not him. The only man you cannot make me kill, is him." Sakura suddenly growled. Izanami couldn't see the ghost image of the man she refused to kill since it was too blurry, and then suddenly the pinkette whispered the strongest dispel word. "The fuck, I've had enough! Nothing you've showed me is real, dammit! Kai!"
The illusion disappeared and the bodies of her loved ones shrivelled away into black grains of sand. Her ghost illusion of herself disappeared back into her real body chained to the cell's glass wall. With a sickening crack, she broke her ankles and wrists and slithered through the chains. She healed herself instantly.
The demons were too surprised when she ran up to them to even grab weapons. Sakura kicked Kirai so the demon spiralled into the river of blood, and she roared as her chains crumbled. The vicious pinkette then succeeded in taking hold of a whip and a small knife and she battled dozens of winged demons, snarling in the chaos of bodies and blood and pain. She shattered her glass cell with a blow and splinters of glass flew everywhere.
The demon goddess drew a breath. How? The girl had broken the illusions, the chains, her weakness. Izanami couldn't believe it as she watched Sakura, who was hurt beyond repair in her psyche, shoved a demon's head into the ground and it splattered with brains and gore.
The Goddess raised an eyebrow in surprise. Breaking the illusion and breaking the glass cell - she hadn't expected that from the girl. She had just killed off her family and friends. How could she even stand up?
Izanami wondered how long the girl would fight. She wondered when her spirit would break, because it would. The demons would catch her and they'd be as unforgiving as they could be. Izanami found herself not being able to take her eyes off the girl. She fought courageously. She was brave. When a demon was about to slice a sinful soul with a sword inside his open glass cell, oblivious of the escaped vicious pinkette, Sakura was there to take the hit instead of the pained body which had once been a human.
An uproar started when the girl's blood trickled down her face. The souls had started watching Sakura fighting the demons as their own torturers had joined the battle and they had been left alone on their torture tables. The bodies that had once been humans tortured to pieces, their spirits broken, saw the girl for what she was. A glimpse of hope.
The demons found themselves battling the sinful once-humans, raising their broken fists against them, throwing themselves over the monsters in sacrificial purposes. Sakura took the lead and yelled orders. Chaos erupted like never seen before in the pit. She cut through the chains keeping the stronger souls contained and they screamed as they were free, even for just a moment. The stronger ones roared and killed as they found whatever demons was in their way. In their wake, crumpled winged bodies quivered in the seas of blood, the black fires licking their lost limbs and stubs.
The winged demons called for more help and so hundreds of demons flapped into the pit, like a storm of bats they covered Izanami's line of vision. Izanami realised she was not even mad. What that girl had done was simply amazing.
A medium class demon flapped to the fallen Goddess' side, the gash of a whiplash trickling blood down his greyish face diagonally, his face distorted by an iron hard grimace.
"Izanami-sama!" He said and bowed down deeply. "Requesting backup from the Three Headed Wolf and the Reaper Apprentices!"
Izanami snorted.
"Are you saying you are that inadequate you are not even able to handle one little pink haired girl?" Izanami asked with a voice that could shed skin from bones. The demon gulped and looked down on his bird like feet.
"She is too strong. And she sparked a rebellion amongst the lost souls." He growled lowly, flapping his wings nervously.
"Very well. Send the Wolf and the Apprentices." Izanami snarled and flicked irritably a maggot away from her shoulder. "You incapable low class demon."
"Yes, Izanami-sama. Most appreciated, Izanami-sama." The winged demon bowed gratefully and flashed away with his large grey wings, headed to the dispatch team of demons.
"This will be interesting," Izanami mumbled. "Let's see if the girl can prove to be a useful piece instead of a broken mind."
A roar erupted as ten demons flapped around and held the restraining chains connected to the collar of the Three Headed Wolf, the beast snarling and wreaking chaos as she saw it make its way into the Pit from the Styx River where it was let off its guarding duty for this special occasion. It was flinging bodies to the sides, as if they were trash dolls. The Grim Reaper's Apprentices walked in a strict line towards the pit, their hooded faces masking their hideous skulls that could pierce through and condemn a soul if looked upon. They walked silently and slipped down into the hole, one after another. They were probably categorised ability-wise in the lead, Izanami saw.
Izanami strolled to edge again and peered down at the enticing sight of carnage. The condemned souls had more guts than what should have been plausible, some even escaping the boiling lava kettles with the skin burnt off to join the fight. The girl had formed sections of the souls, as if they were soldiers, and roared orders to the stronger ones that had taken commanding positions.
The demons had no prior training to take on a human battlefield and a vicious pink haired girl, so they mindlessly slashed their way through the thousands of sinful souls that had raised their fists against their captors.
With Izanami's sharp eyes she saw the souls gathering as Sakura caught their attention, a vacuum had been created in the war of human souls and demons. Then she stood in the middle of the agonised souls, the tortured and trapped, all condemned to eternal suffering, they huddled around her like flies to the torch. The glass like bodies turned their ravaged heads towards her, their hollow eyes looking at her as if she was sun light. They were blinded by her presence, since she was not dead nor condemned, yet they couldn't stop looking at her even though she hurt their eyes.
She was burning to them, but her fire was not painful. It was giving and bright, enticing, lustful almost.
"Aren't we all broken?" She said and imbued silence upon the sinful souls. Izanami found herself listening just as intently as all else of the souls. The demons fidgeted, looking around for the back-up. A revolution of the souls had never happened in their trainee lifetimes.
"Aren't we all shattered pieces? Pieces that plays a part of a filthy world. Pieces that do not know why we shattered. What part we play." Her voice was crisp and clear. Strong, Izanami found herself thinking.
"It was never supposed to end like this. The pieces that never fit." Then her voice grew louder. "But I can give you a purpose. I can never make you whole again, I can never take away the pain you have endured here, but I can make the pieces come together. I can be the one to give you freedom for this one time. To fight back. If you trust me with your tortured souls, I will give you all I can."
The crying of souls chimed like unsynchronised bells, with renewed resolve, turned to the demons that were trying to catch their breath and chaos erupted yet again. More fiery than before. More... Violent.
Izanami saw a pattern in the warring battle. The sinful souls of past humans looked at Sakura as their saviour. They sacrificed themselves for her. When the Wolf came slashing through the bodies of the souls, screams and howling blended together in a cacophony of pain. The Wolf was efficient that way. The apprentices were more calculated and swung their sickles in half moon shapes, cutting off heads of souls sickeningly smooth, and some using their scythes menacingly. Killing souls only meant they were back into the Limbo, so they would be back soon and sorted through thoroughly.
Sakura made her way to the Wolf of Destruction, through the blood of demons, the Wolf saw her and its three heads rose up to howl. Wolves usually howled to the moon in battle cries, hence the Wolf howled to Izanami. For all wolves howled in truth to the goddess of night.
"Go, puppy. You may eat her. She's been a bad girl." Izanami chided down into the pit and the echoes of her voice reached the ears of demons and past-humans alike. And the three headed Wolf. The beast snarled and clipped its jaws at Sakura, who evaded it yet there was another wolf head there, its yellow eyes searing. Then in a movement as the second wolf head was about to swallow her, she thrust a knife into one of its eyes. The beast growled in pain as the blood poured out of its socket, yet that didn't hinder it. In a flash the third head's jaws were wrapped around the girl's arm and it ripped.
The Hell Hound growled in appreciation, spitting out the girl's arm into the river of blood surrounding them, the second head howling in pain at its lost eye.
Izanami frowned. Sakura's eyes became sharper and she saw the girl smile. Blood poured out of Sakura's stumped arm and swirled down her body, but then the blood started forming a pool of liquid at her side. The red form gained features and then Sakura had an arm of blood, boiling and pulsing. Claws protruded from her blood fingers. The girl looked up at the Wolf and smiled, her petal hued bangs sliding in front of her eyes. Canines became visible in her teeth. It wasn't Sakura. It looked like her, but it… wasn't.
Izanami stalled. The demons stopped fighting to watch in horror at the girl's arm. The Blood Transfiguration technique was only something a High Class Demon could do.
"Are you turning into a demon, Haruno Sakura?" Izanami whispered. The Goddess knew it was possible, some sinful soul becoming darker through the torture and gaining demon-like features, later to join the ranks of her demons. And it was impossibly hard to transform a human soul into a demon. Also, that only happened every five hundred years, and they always were in the lower ranks.
"What are you-", Izanami breathed as Sakura roared and slashed with her arm of blood at the Wolf, cutting its third head off with her claws. Sakura laughed as the Wolf's blood soaked her, raining down upon her like a heavy down pour. Madness made her laughter hitch and cut.
"I'm Kaira." Sakura nodded lovingly through the blood rain.
"You may have met me before but didn't notice. Sakura is my other half. I step forward sometimes. Outer opened my door, finally, and we switched places in the smoke prison. She's onto saving Hime." She said and looked directly up at Izanami, catching her off guard since it was a long distance up from the Pit to the Palace. Through the distance and everything, the girl looked at Izanami.
"I do everything to protect Sakura, even though she doesn't know it. I will even become a demon for her, since I love her. And since we truly are one."
Sakura blossomed and her skin shone like black crystals, her eyes turning white, as if her pupil sucked the green out of it, and she roared. She couldn't be human, Izanami thought wildly. Chakra gathered around the blood pouring from her red arm and Izanami realised the girl used blood as her Element. Mortals shouldn't be able to do that. Wings of blood convulsed at her back, boiled and the liquid stabilised as it took the form of a dragon's wings. The lower rank demons shrank away from her, the souls stilled in confused fear.
"I won't let her be tainted. I want to keep her smile!" Sakura, no, Kaira shouted. "I will take all of this pain and hide it in me. She will never see this darkness. She will never know I killed a thousand men for her. She will never know I killed our father. She will never know of the dead fruits I ate. She will never know I became a demon for her."
Demon Sakura gripped a sword at her feet, a heavy and ugly war sword, and flapped her wings of blood. Pearls red like wine dripped from them as she shot off into the air, unsteadily at first, then she gained control of her new assets and flew in a heartbeat up to the hole to the Palace. Izanami backed away from the hole as she saw Sakura emerge.
"You will pay, bitch." Kaira snarled.
"I don't know what you are babbling about, Sakura, but you cannot fight a Goddess." Izanami snapped. This wasn't supposed to have happened. A split part of Sakura having taken her place? How had she not noticed?
Izanami was nowhere near her full strength. She knew she could handle the demon turned girl, but it would cost her unnecessary strength and she had to save it for her quest to get her true body back.
And a newly created demon was too powerful.
Kaira's war sword came down hard, and Izanami easily avoided it. She threw a dark power bolt towards Kaira, but the girl demob only let her blood arm take the hit. The blood swallowed the dark power ball and sprouted and convulsed at the absorbed power. Izanami decided then as she saw Kaira's furious snarl become more and more inhuman.
"Let's make a deal." Izanami rasped as she spiralled backwards when Kaira swung the sword at her, following closely.
"You're funny." Kaira snarled as her blood wings flapped. "Do you think I could ever trust you?"
"It's a binding contract. If I sing it in the Dead Tongue I cannot go back on my word."
"What are the conditions?" Kaira growled.
"I will leave Sakura's body. In exchange, you stay here." Izanami said.
"I'm going to stay in Hell?" Kaira asked, her eyes widening. Then she bit her lip and folded her wings of blood. "And you'll never bother Outer again?"
"Yes. And you will never contact her again."
"I- I will never come back to her?" Kaira breathed, her eerily white eyes turning hollow. "I see."
"Will you accept the terms?"
"Yes." Kaira gave in and the finality of the decision of becoming a true demon settled on her grim expression.
Izanami let out a breath. Then she sang.
"I promise to leave Haruno Sakura alone. I will never whisper dark things to her. I will never touch her again. In return for my oath, her dark part will stay and serve in Hell. The binding will never fade. The Netherworld has heard my oath and it will last!"
The grounds rumbled and the palace swayed by her powerful words. Black spikes shot off from the ground and spiked Kaira's body. She screamed a guttural sound and Izanami smiled.
"Get out of her body. Now." Kaira wheezed as blood gurgled from her mouth.
"I will. Have a happy time here, Kaira, split part of Sakura. For all dark eternity." Izanami cooed and then Kaira vanished into the ground, thrown back into the Dungeon with a screech.
Izanami felt the oath surge through her and she had no time to do anything else than follow the pull back into the real world. Her Hakai key appeared in her hand and she reluctantly opened the portal back. The pull was strong.
"Farewell, my dark world." Izanami said and looked back to the palace. Then her oath pushed her through the door and her breath was caught. Her mind swam and then she stabilised quickly. For one second, she saw through Sakura's eyes Izanagi stare at her, then she was shoved out of Sakura's body and back to the sword. She hit it hard.
She felt how Sakura's body fell limply to the rooftop, and Izanagi's eyes were full of surprise. He then proceeded to take hold of her prison at the grip and he appeared inside her sword's mindscape.
"What happened?"
"Something unfortunate, but I'll overcome it." Izanami gasped. The anger within her started to boil slowly. "Sakura have a darker aspect. They traded places and the aspect developed demonic powers. She was a threat to my true body in Hell if she was let loose. So I made a deal with her, in the Dead Tongue so it's binding, and she agreed to staying in Hell in exchange for her host's freedom of me."
"Oh." Izanagi frowned.
"I'll just find another usable body that is easily disposed of." Izanami growled. Anger burnt in her eyes.
"Do one thing for me." She asked of him. Her fury was visible to him now.
"My love, if I do, what will you give me?" Izanagi raised an eyebrow and his handsomeness struck her, but she didn't care anymore.
"My forgiveness." She replied quietly.
"That means more than this world to me. What will it be?"
"Scrape the girl's memory for me. It's what matters the most to her. Without it, she'll be nothing but a shell."
"Anything for you, my love." Izanagi whispered in his baritone voice, and he disappeared from the sword's mindscape, leaving her alone again. Izanami let her breath out, a breath she didn't know she had been holding.
And he was back just as fast.
"She's not there." He murmured, his eyes confused as he hovered down to her.
"Excuse me?"
"Her core mind is not within her body. It's gone."
Author's Note
Hey guys!
Long time no see. Tell me what you think of this chapter! Darker, now wasn't it? Lighter times will come though, so bear with me :D
Cheers!
Fascalia