Okimi

Once again, they were in the massive crater where they'd been separated from Takara. The Corruption often looped back on itself. Yuki had used a wind technique to blow away the acidic smog. She was waiting at the top of the crater while the leaf shinobi talked at the bottom.

She'd agreed to spill her secrets once they were alone and now here they were, alone. But was this really a good idea? Well, it's not like things could get much worse, so she'd might as well fess up and attempt to repair relations.

"Let's start with the easy part," Okimi said. "The forbidden techniques I know were taught to me by a man named Orochimaru before the leaf took me in. I later learned that he was a missing ninja from Konohagakure."

"What other forbidden techniques did he teach you?" Kurotenshi asked.

"Well, he didn't finish teaching me most of them, but there's one that let's me take over someone's body and one that brings back the dead. That one requires a sacrifice. And I could potentially impersonate a person completely if I cut their face off and wore it."

"That's so fucked up." Kurotenshi said.

"It's not like I've actually used the first two."

"You used the one where you cut off people's faces?" Kurotenshi averted his eyes and shook his head.

Okimi shrugged. "Would have been a waste to just eat 'em without getting in some practice first."

Kurotenshi gritted his teeth. "So, you said that was the easy part. What's the hard part?"

This was bound to come up sooner or later. No way they'd believe she'd just been lucky to find so many corpses. "We've gotten about 5% of our food from found rations and 75% from the bodies of the Corruption's victims."

"What about," Kurotenshi said as he counted on his fingers, "The other 20%"

"Sometimes there were no remotely fresh corpses or sometimes they were corrupted. So you know how sometimes I scouted ahead? When I found people in the area, well, I made them die."

Kurotenshi gaped at her with a mixture of rage and shock.

"That's too much, Okim..i" Miu said. "You went too far." Miu was digging her nails into her hair.

"The reality is, those people were too weak to survive in the Corruption anyway. Better for some to survive than none."

"We could have banded together, eat whoever dies first."

"You know that that's a bad strategy, Miu. Starved people don't yield much meat, plus they'd be eating our food the whole way. I did consider that and ran the numbers part-way through. We'd have starved if we'd done even that."

"Maybe we're going to die anyway," Kurotenshi said. His face was full of horror, full of despair. "We're no closer to getting out than when we started. Then what will all those people have died for?"

"On the contrary, we've eliminated many possible zones as exits. We're narrowing in on the true exit."

"Just leave me here." Kurotenshi said.

"What?" Miu said.

"I won't eat any more food you give me. I'm too weak to survive here. I've only survived so far because you pity me."

"Do I seem like a person who has an ounce of pity?" Okimi asked. Well, she did sort of pity him, but that wasn't why she'd kept him alive.

"Then Miu pities me and she wouldn't just kill me and eat me like you would have if she wasn't here."

"I won't force you to eat, but I will drag you by your hair if I have to," Okimi said.

"Whatever."

"There's one more thing," Okimi said.

They had once gone 12 days without food before Okimi had found the old man, so she let Kurotenshi go that long, hoping his hunger would eventually cause him to cave in.

She found the old man in the Corrupted Meadow.

Where once there were delicate flowers of every color, their petals now wilted and blackened, releasing a sickly sweet odor that hung heavy in the air. The grass, once lush and green, now grew in tangled clumps, sharp thorns protruding from its twisted blades. It seemed to reach out hungrily, as if seeking to ensnare anything that dared to step upon its corrupted soil.

The trees, once standing tall and majestic, now bent and contorted like grotesque sculptures. Their branches extended towards the sky in twisted angles, casting eerie shadows that seemed to dance and writhe with a life of their own. The leaves, once vibrant and alive, had withered and turned a sickly shade of black.

Yet amidst this desolate landscape, Okimi noticed a small patch of untouched ground. It stood out like a beacon of hope, a shimmering oasis amidst the darkness. The grass here was still green, the flowers bloomed with their original colors, and a gentle breeze whispered through the branches of the nearby trees.

The old man was sitting there in a patch of flowers when she found him.

He was sitting in a meditative pose. Okimi made herself tangible. Where before she had had ghostly hair, now her entire form was transparent and glowed. A spectral scythe formed in her hand. As Okimi approached him, he plucked a corrupted flower. As he held it up to her, the crimson chlorophyll returned to its natural green. Thorns receded. Gnarled black petals unfurled and became a pure white.

Then the man spoke, "The Corruption lives within us all. But only those who allow it into their hearts will succumb to it. And only one pure of heart can undo it.

Okimi plucked a corrupted flower of her own. She focused on it, one of the techniques she'd been developing, the one Takara had warned her against, one that could alter another's soul. The corrupted features dissipated and the entire flower became a ghostly shimmering white.

"Right, because I'm so pure." Then she slashed through his neck with her soul scythe. It passed through his skin, but his soul head then fell to the ground. "You have an amazing power, but you're full of shit, old man.

She'd said that back then, but had she just told herself that because they were so desperate for food? When she thought about it, what he had done was completely different. She could transform a thing by altering its soul, but she could never restore it to what it had originally been.

She had told Kurotenshi and Miu about her ability in the crater, though she hadn't mentioned the old man. Kurotenshi had been angry that she could have fixed his legs this whole time, but of course he'd predictably refused to let her do it.

Now they were in the meadow once again. Now Okimi was standing right where the old man had been.

"Why did you stop?" Yuki asked.

"How about this, Kurotenshi. You eat someone who's evil."

Kurotenshi thought for a moment. His stomach rumbled.

"I guess I could, but I'll be the judge of whether they are evil."

"I believe you've already made a ruling on that," Okimi said. Though she was about to shatter that perception. She pulled the Kusanagi from her mouth.

"Wait, wait are you-" Miu started but she didn't grasp what was going on until Okimi had already completed her task.

Okimi held out her left arm and chopped through it.

Pain flashed through her, overwhelming her attention. Miu said something, but she wasn't listening.

Kurotenshi gawked at her for a moment that seemed to go on forever, then tears began streaming down his face. "This. This is because of me." His eyes sank.

"Fire." Okimi said through gritted teeth.

"Fire?"

"Stop being useless and cauterize my wound!"

"Oh, right." Kurotenshi placed a hand over Okimi's wound, a hand that glowed blue as he healed the wound.

"Or heal it. That's even better," she sighed.

"...I'm sorry, Okimi," Kurotenshi said, "I just. I just wanted to hold onto our humanity. I didn't want to become like my father."

"What about your father?"

"He was a bad guy. He killed the eighth hokage and then he fled the village. He abandoned us. He abandoned me."

"Do you know why he killed the Eighth?"

"The night before he told me that he was going on a trip. He said something like 'one day you will understand,' but I don't understand. No one would give me a straight answer. All I know is that my father is a criminal and a murderer."

"Sometimes it's necessary to kill. People always kill for a reason… and whatever that reason is, well the eight could be the real villain for all we know. But speculating won't get you anywhere. When we get back to Konoha, I'll find out the truth, Kurotenshi."

Kurotenshi wrapped his arms around Okimi. In this chair, he only came up to her torso, so he was burying his face in her stomach as he bawled.

Okimi crinkled her face, but with a deep sigh, she allowed this. She even gave Kurotenshi a pat on the head.