Tiger Ram Horse Snake-
-No. Do it again.
Tiger Ram Horse Snake Dragon-
-And what next? Do it again, this time from the top.
Tiger Ram Horse Snake Dragon Rat Ox-
-Remember now, what Chūnin Aslani said.
Tiger Ram Horse Snake Dragon Rat Ox Tiger.
"Are you just going to stand there, or are you taking your rations?"
The cook's gravely voice grates across Shirong's ears from the other side of the row of wooden tables, ripping him from his reverie like a bandage being pulled away from crusted over, blood-caked skin. Shirong's gaze shoots up and to the left, away from where it had previously been tilted down into the muddy slurry that was the ground and towards the figure that stands parallel to him across the mess tent's distribution line.
It suits the man, really; he's a shinobi, like everyone else here, but when one has a chance to take a good long look at the flesh of both the living and the dead, one is able to imagine a story for them, because here no flesh is unmarked. The Chef, as Shirong has dubbed the man, has earned a title of his own to distinguish himself from the rest of the walking corpses that Shirong interacts with on a daily basis, mostly due to the fact that he looks like one himself.
No flesh here is unmarked, indeed, but that is only one, more simple way of describing the phenomena, really. It manifests in the coarse dirt coating their faces, the dried blood spattered under their eyes, the rips in their fatigues and the scratches in their headbands. Walking corpses they may be physically, but they still live yet, with working limbs and whole faces, and that is the difference between them and the corpses. The Chef, however, looks to be one of the few that has been chewed up by the war, shoveled into the maw of that steel beast alongside all of the corpses, and come out still alive.
He looks to be dead; perhaps that's why The Chef is here, pouring soup and handing out bread instead of on the frontlines. Alongside the black, uniform fatigues and headband of a shinobi of Amegakure is swathe of bandages covering the left half of his face, and another on the hand of the same side… or at least half of one, anyway. Through every gap in the slowly unwinding gauze, Shirong can see the raw, wet red and black of a harsh burn, blood and flesh glimmering in the half light of day as The Chef offers Shirong the daily rations of thin soup and stale bread with his shivering hand and a half.
"...Thanks." Shirong intones, eyes moving down towards the meal as his gloved hands extend to take it gingerly from The Chef's hands. The man just grunts, causing a shift in his bandages, before turning to grab another bowl for the next shinobi in line, and Shirong takes that as his cue to step away from the distribution table and find his own.
He wades into the rows of tables, and is yet again grateful for the fact that meat is rarely served here. Shirong doesn't really mind the smell of cooking meat, but the smell of burning, of flesh and metal, of bone and stone burning to ash all the same under Konoha's bombardment is fried into his nostrils, and Shirong often finds himself losing his appetite whenever he thinks about it for too long, which is precisely why he doesn't think about it if he can help it.
Not that Shirong has really had the time to, lately. Eat, sleep, train, repeat; his mind is far away from the battlefield, until it isn't.
His table, his table, another one of his small corners of solitude in the din of the world, beckons from its spot at the periphery of the large tent, and Shirong settles onto one of the wooden benches with practiced ease. It creaks under his weight, like it always does, and Shirong sits alone. Alone with his meal that Shirong eats with practiced ease, hands shoveling food into his mouth without a second thought.
Tiger Ram Horse Snake Dragon Rat Ox Tiger.
Practiced ease and second thoughts, but not first thoughts. It's getting easier to remember. Rote repetition at nearly every waking second Shirong can spare is wearing grooves into his brain, creating pathways that get easier and easier to slip into each time that Shirong steps down them. He's always had somewhat of a photographic memory, even now, even then, so it comes as no surprise that Shirong is able to imagine the scene in his mind's eye with perfect clarity.
Fire Style: Flame Dragon Bullet.
Chūnin Aslani had deigned to show it to Shirong only once. Chakra wasn't something that could be spared for just anything around here, but a demonstration to a student was more than a good enough reason. Tiger Ram Horse Snake Dragon Rat Ox Tiger. His gloved hands weren't fast, really, and maybe that was Chūnin Aslani slowing down so that Shirong could see, but the way they moved with familiarity and confidence as they formed the signs made up for their easy pace.
And then, heat.
It was one thing to hear about a Jutsu discussed in passing from one of the older shinobi, it was another to hear the boom of the elements as they clashed against each other on a distant battlefield, but it was another to see it with your very own eyes. Animation didn't do the sight justice. It billowed from Chūnin Aslani's mouth as easy as he breathed, because that's precisely what he was doing, flickering from neon blue to searing white to furious orange as the pillar of flame lanced across the length of the field towards its target. The straw man, a simple dummy with no features to make it a person, a creation of Shirong's under Chūnin Aslani's instruction during an idle moment, hadn't withstood the blast at all. Simple material like flesh and chaff alike couldn't in the first place; it was there one second and then gone in a blaze of blood orange. The scarecrow was dead, a pile of ash mixed into the smoldering dirt beneath the charred, wooden frame that still remained.
Tiger Ram Horse Snake Dragon Rat Ox Tiger. Fire Style: Flame Dragon Bullet. We'll focus on Ninjutsu for now, Shirong, is what Chūnin Aslani had said to him after turning the straw man to dust, since I don't know a thing about Genjutsu and Taijutsu would be a waste of time if I'm getting you into fighting shape any time soon.
It was easy enough to memorize the names of the hand signs, to imitate the hand signs themselves, and all Shirong needed yet was an opportunity to use what he had learned to perform the Jutsu himself. To perform a simple enough technique, only B-ranked, but still useful on the battlefield offensively. To perform a Jutsu with the power to melt flesh in such a way that only charred bone was left of a soldier, to light villages ablaze so that their inhabitants would become refuges in a foreign land and never return, and to scorch the earth so that nothing would ever grow in the fields of blood and salt.
Him, performing this Jutsu. This power at his very fingertips, and in the hollow of his lungs. Fire, in his heart, like that of Konoha's.
Shirong thinks, as he stares down into his empty wooden bowl, that he might wish Chūnin Aslani had taught him an Earth Style-technique first.
(but this is what you wanted, right? the power to survive, even if it means someone else loses the game?)
He squashes the thought and stands to his feet in a flash, shaking the bench beneath him as Shirong grabs his bowl with tightened fingers. It's not worth thinking about things like that, especially right now. A strange game, that Shirong is forced to play anyway. It's him or them, and if it came down to the wire, then...
Well, Shirong already knows the answer to that.
(but do you have the guts to kill? to do it with your own two hands? you don't know that particular answer to that question, do you?)
For a moment, Shirong thinks that it's only the whispering in his head that's reached a fever pitch, but as he returns his bowl to the canteen staff and makes his way out of the tent, it occurs to him that it's not him. Not in the sense that he thought it was, anyway. The buzzing is there, like it always is, but isn't the apathetic, muted hum of the world that Shirong feels from sunrise to sundown. No, this is fear, this is excitement. A static crackle zipping through the ambiance of the camp. Something is happening. The other shinobi eating at the canteen know to, their eyes flickering to and fro everywhere but where their meals, and as Shirong wades into the rows of tents surrounding the canteen, he can see ninja who have stopped in their tracks to listen to the disturbance to their daily routine with raised eyebrows.
Screaming. It's screaming, in the distance, that grows closer with each passing step Shirong takes towards the main drag of camp. His boots squelch in the mud beneath him, far from the only pair of feet that are going in the same direction as him, and he can see some of the other, older shinobi following behind him, and some in front of him, like sharks entranced by a hint of blood in the water. That's what the whispering is; it isn't just in Shirong's head, it's all of them, confused by the interruption into their routines, whispering to each other about the howling. Eat, sleep, work, repeat. Is it finally time to fight?
Shirong hopes it isn't.
(because then he might have his answer sooner than he wants)
Squelch squelch squelch.
The walk to the center of camp through the mud feels like an eternity, but it's probably only a few minutes. The screaming grows louder, until it's the only thing that Shirong can focus on, beyond the barest assumptions he can glean from the sound. It's a man, probably, maybe in his mid-twenties, and-
He's a Konoha shinobi.
The gleam of his headband in the gloomy half-light of midday is the first thing that Shirong's eyes latch onto, and is immediately followed by the spiral etched into the center of the sheet of metal. The spiral, stamped into so many of those headbands, tied around some part of a corpse's body, scattered on the battlefield alongside so many of their own dead. That spiral, and the blonde boy who bears it, and all of his friends who do the same.
His friend. His lover, maybe. Neji Hyūga and Hinata Hyūga, is what Shirong's eyes register as the shinobi's features flood into his gaze. The shinobi is not them, Shirong's mind supplies in an instant, but he's a Hyūga nonetheless, with blown-wide, lily white eyes that have no pupils to identify him as such, and skin the same shade to match underneath the mask of ochre and crimson crusted to his face. He's garbed in the heavy, green flak jacket of Konoha's Chūnin and the uniform navy jumpsuit of their standard forces, but what really tells the Hyūga's story is the spattering of blood painted across his front, or the way his right leg bends in an odd manner at the knee, or how a deep gouge in his left arm exposes raw, severed muscle and tendons to the light drizzle of the sky as two stone-faced Ame jounin drag the Hyūga through the mud by his arms.
He's a prisoner. They're rare. Konoha rarely takes prisoners, from what Shirong's heard, so neither does Ame when they get the rare chance to. So what is this one doing here?
