Strangely, it is warm inside of his tent.

Outside, though, the rain pours down in sheets from the black sky in beams of glittering silver, pounding away at the flimsy canvas surface of his tent like a storm of cannonballs pounding away at the walls of a grand fortress during a midnight assault. He has made it so that the ragged edges and flaps of his tent are sealed as tightly as they can be, locking him in a dusty flask of stagnant air and choking heat.

And yet, despite both of these facts, Shirong cannot sleep.

Ideally, he would be. Ideally, he would have fallen asleep hours ago, once he finally hauled his carcass back to his tent after enduring the torture that Chūnin Aslani has deemed "training". Shirong can't exactly blame the man, though; there's so much to do, and so little time, as what Commander Guozhi said was right. The enemy doesn't forgive weakness. One cannot afford to be weak, not here, not now. To become something, one of many shinobi capable of weathering the thunderstorm of steel and fire that is the enemy, in such short time requires effort. Lots of effort.

And pain, as well. Lots of pain.

Shirong stares at the ceiling of his tent from where he lays atop his cot, counting the shadows of the rivulets of water coursing down the exterior of his shelter with a steady gaze as his muscles scream and bones groan. It's a mere whisper to the sounds Shirong has heard come out of the mouths of dying men and women as they writhe in the muck like beetles flipped atop their backs as he steps over them, though, and so he doesn't pay the complaints of his body any mind. The flesh is weak, but the mind is willing, and that's really what is in control here, so what does Shirong really have to complain about, anyway? He is laying in bed, and they in the ground. If Shirong was in their position, he thinks that he would want a warm place to sleep in as well.

Not that he is getting much sleep at the moment, though. There is so much to do, and so little time.

Shirong knows, quite well, too well, the salivating possibility of just getting up right now, at the very moment, walking out of his tent and making a break for it. He might even make it, too, if he's careful about it. The night watch is always looking for threats from outside, and there are little shinobi to spare looking for deserters. The ones up right now, too, are also busy enough with their own missions. What are the chances of them seeing him creep around in the darkness? What are the chances that they would care even if they did spot him?

They are high. Too high. And that is precisely why he cannot leave.

This place is like a beehive (a proper comparison, Shirong's mind supplants, even if he has never seen one with this pair of eyes), stirring with activity at every hour of day. Every minuscule twitch of muscle, tilt of gaze, and errant word is directed towards defeating the enemy. An escape attempt of any kind, at any time, would be a waste of time that would only earn Shirong a spot back in the training brigades for defeatism shoveling shit and getting lashes.

And there's no telling what the enemy would do to him if he made it to their lines, anyway. Shirong has no interest in finding out if the stories and rumors surrounding Konoha are true.

(but he already knows the answer, doesn't he?)

Maybe. Maybe not.

And that's something that Shirong really can't wrap his head around; the fact that he is here. He is here and they are there. Even though that blonde shit isn't here at the present moment to wreck things personally, he will be, and so will all his orbiters. Some of them are even here now, the great and illusive "them" being those men and women who will hoist the boy atop their shoulders and ferry him to victory atop a mountain of corpses through their own actions.

Their shadow looms long, long enough to poison Shirong's mind with their darkness if he thinks about them for long enough. Konoha as a whole is a writhing mass, but even the hydra (or perhaps dragon?) has it's many heads. Shirong can see their faces, dancing among the images branded into the back of his eyelids with red hot iron.

Their reputation... precedes them, even without an entire universe's worth of knowledge and information contained within the small confines of a human skull. One cannot wage war without knowing their enemy, and Monsoon as a whole has become intimately familiar with their enemy and their methods.

They are the ones who wage said war, after all.

The Third Hokage. The Darkness of Shinobi. The Toad Sage. The Slug Princess. The Great White Snake.

And on and on and on. Konoha was notorious for producing monsters like them, but they were the ones who drove the great machine of war forward like a coachman whipping the horses pulling his carriage. Entire villages, razed to the ground, and foul poisons dumped into the rivers that cities drank from were the loudest of the accusations, to say nothing of the whispers that Shirong knows are true.

(the great tangle of shadows that is ROOT and the mad experiments of their partner are just a few that comes to mind)

They are here, prowling in the forest of the world like beasts in search of fresh prey. Shirong is walking through their garden, intruding on their territory, and that is punishable by death. They are jolly giants, clad in green and grey as they stride the earth, smashing anyone and everyone in their path beneath their heels without a second thought.

It doesn't matter that they are friends, family and enemies to Uzumaki Naruto, because anyone who is anyone in this world is no friend of Meng Shirong's.

-

"-Again."

Shirong heaves a breath, the hot taste of bile scathing the interior of his mouth as he does, and just barely manages to keep the vomit from spilling out from between his lips and onto the ground in front of him. His clenched, muddied fingers dig into the coarse and threadbare fabric of his pant legs, and the stomped slurry of mud and grass swirls in his vision as Shirong braces his hands against his knees and tries his best to keep himself from keeling over.

He can feel Chūnin Aslani's stare burning into the top of his head from above, and his shadow looms long in front of Shirong because of the slight rays of pale daybreak that pour through gaps in the cloud coverage and speckle the deserted range with flecks of gray-white light. He can feel the ache of sore bones, the twinge of taught muscles and the throbbing of bruised flesh. Shirong can feel it, but like many other things within his vision that is somehow so big and yet still so small, it isn't really there at all, isn't it?

This looked so much easier than it actually is.

That is, perhaps, the only coherent thought that occupies Shirong's mind during this momentary lapse of focus. Every other one is cocooned in thick, slimy cauls that are tinted with the primal feeling of exhaustion and hunger. Shirong has stopped caring about what kind of slop is served in the canteen on a daily basis; Whenever this torture ends, Shirong is going to eat so much of that runny soup and stale bread that his stomach is going to burst.

But, alas, there is more of this to endure, more of this to fumble his way through like a half-blind man in a cave, and so Shirong takes one last gasp into his screaming lungs and prepares to begin again as his eyes turn up towards the sky.

Although it is the middle of Uzuki (April, he tells himself, a word, foreign on his tongue during the quiet moments but all too familiar during them also) and the clouds that hang fat in the sky year round have barely begun the process of parting and introducing summer and all it's oppressive dry season, the sun still hangs in the sky (like it always has, no matter the flesh feeling it's scathing rays) and gifts the Land of Monsoons it's first touches of warmth. It is... omnipresent, like the rain and the moon and that damnable, itching feeling of Shirong's own skin, and he can feel the sun's rays on his skin, warming and burning his flesh all the same in one beam of light, much in the same way that he can feel the low hum of the earth, of the deep wells of sleeping energy beneath the soles of his boots and deeper beneath in the soil.

It's this, this sensation, the thrum of life flickering at the edge of Shirong's vision, that he feels, pure and simple. Chūnin Aslani said that he was a sensor-type, but this is so, so different from that. That feeling, the feeling of being a sensor-type, now that Shirong knows what to call the low, constant presence of people and their energy hovering at the edge of his vision, is merely like seeing. This is feeling, as if Shirong himself was grasping the tendrils of billowing smog within his veins with his own two hands and pulling himself towards their source.

This, is chakra.

It roils within his skin, pouring out from the center of his heart in rivulets of smoldering magma like smelted steel does out of a blast furnace, the flares of flame pouring out from it's vents and into his spidery networks of veins in a pronouncement of smog. Ash congeals within Shirong's veins, building up and hardening by the second, and the inferno reaches a fever pitch as he suddenly can't breath-

Shirong lets out a storm of coughs, the acrid taste of decay assaulting his taste buds as a small plume of smoke pours out from between his lips in curling wisps, and this time he does not succeed in keeping himself from vomiting. Viscous acid coats the roof of Shirong's mouth as he dry heaves onto the ground, with strands of mucous dangling from his teeth as he does so. It only takes a moment to wrench back control of his muscles, and Shirong lurches upwards, gritting his teeth as he forces his stomach to get under control.

His gaze meets Chūnin Aslani's, and at the very least, Shirong can tell that this has pleased the man.

"You looked like you were about to burst into flames." The man comments simply, and Shirong somehow musters the strength to roll his eyes.

"...I felt like I was about to." Shirong responds once he finds the stamina to do so, and Chūnin Aslani makes an appraising hum.

"Mm. Fire, then. Anything else?" Silence falls over them, and Shirong is suddenly very aware of what it's like to be squeezed into the proper shape of his body once more. Not perfectly fitting, itchy at the edges, but entirely what he is used to. Not the feeling of... pouring out, his mind boiling in the heat trapped in his skin like a model ship trapped and tossed around in a glass bottle filled with water.

"...I... don't know," Shirong eventually mumbles, before adding, "...I guess... chakra, maybe. In the ground, just sitting there, not doing anything."

"Probably Earth, too," Chūnin Aslani snorts, "What else should I have expected?"

Shirong knows well enough that Chūnin Aslani doesn't really expect an real answer for that question, but he still wouldn't have said anything anyway if he had the spare energy to make flippant comments. Maybe Chūnin Aslani did expect something, though, because an awkward silence radiates between the two of them for a moment until Chūnin Aslani heaves a sigh, shutting his eyes in airy acceptance.

"Well, it's still something to know. At least your natures being common around here makes the process of turning you into a proper shinobi so much easier."

So much more boring, is what Shirong thinks he really means. It's not putrid disgust that poisons Chūnin Aslani's voice, but he does sound a hair... disappointed. A part of Shirong, not as small or quiet as he wishes it was, is also disappointed. It's yet another one of those feelings that swims in the pit of his gut, screaming at him to know his place. Chakra Natures (the paltry term that Chūnin Aslani explained to him, that Shirong already knows, like he knows many other things he should not know in the shadows of his mind, that they give to experience of feeling your blood harden and blaze with congealed energy) for the shinobi of Amegakure are nearly always Fire and Earth, born from volcanic peaks and deep valleys that form the borders of the Land of Monsoons.

Painfully average, yet again. But this is a good thing, perhaps. It only means that leaving this all behind will be all the easier when Shirong sees an opening. There's no reason in looking for a deserter during a time like this if he's painfully average, after all. Why spare the resources to go looking for a run of the mill shinobi when one can just train another to take their place?

But still, still, there's that childish part of him that is oh-so disappointed, and Shirong isn't exactly sure why. Why he should be irritated to not have power that he will never use? To have talent that will never be used to slaughter and destroy even more of this world? To be someone of importance, to be needed?

(because that would mean that you were special, of course. it's silly to think you have any inherent worth to this world when they already have their heroes, anyway)

"That's enough training for today," Chūnin Aslani says, and Shirong is suddenly aware of the downward grimace stretched across his face, "You look like you're about to tip over."

It's not disappointment that Shirong is feeling, really. It's just that he's angry at how unfair this all is, that much he recognizes. They drag him here to play their game and then don't even have the courtesy to deal him a fair hand? Cheaters is what they are, every last one of them!

(a strange game, and the only winning move is not to play. so don't play. just take your kunai and be brave about it already. it won't hurt a bit)

...But that's for cowards. That's letting them win, these cheaters, and It's his life, his, his, his. No one can take it from Shirong, no matter what skin is draped across his bones or name is branded to his soul. All of this slaughter, this destruction, this war, is meant to feed into the ambition of a singular boy's. Countless souls fed into the great maw of the boy chosen by the hand of fate itself, their guts eviscerated by blades, their flesh torn to shreds by kunai and shuriken, their bones turned to ash and broken by jutsu in a split second.

So Shirong won't win, and Shirong won't lose, and Shirong won't opt out. He'll play along, and then flip their board. Topple their pieces, and make this life his own, his to possess and his alone. Not the blonde brat's, or any of his lackeys, or anyone else in this damnable world.

His.

"...No."

Chūnin Aslani raises an eyebrow.

" 'No' ?"

Shirong tilts his gaze up and stares into Chūnin Aslani's golden eyes.

"Train me, Sensei."