"Just how deep underground am I?" Kiyomi asked herself. She did her best not to make too much noise and telegraph her location too clearly but she needed some auditory stimuli in this almost screeching, dead silence. The constant tension and worry over the possible impending attackers were beginning to wear on the kunoichi's mind.
The blonde noticed a squirming white-coat inside of a small room with busted windows and no light. Had it not been for Kiyomi's exceptional, superhuman perception in the dark, the likes of which all chakra-users had to some extent, and the very odd, seemingly purposeless actions of the slouched man as well as his well-maintained, white coat, he'd have gone completely unnoticed.
Kiyomi didn't think it to be a wrong idea to enter the room and check on the man. His presence here seemed odd, given how the man she met previously felt confident and truthful in his statement that everyone had bolted after the ruckus started to rise up above. Not to mention the fact that her opponent would have had limited use in a living target.
"Hey, you, did you see a woman run past here?" Kiyomi asked. She didn't feel like going into more detail than this, it was not like the man would have had the chance to see any unusual women running about with the whole black market facility evacuated.
"Huh? Oh, yeah, I hid under the table." The man jumped and turned at Kiyomi, his jerking reaction made him push down a bunch of metallic tools that scattered all over the floor and push the cold corpse on the very same table halfway off of it.
It appeared that some of the scared black market dealers left some of their tools and even bodies they were working on intact when they ran away. At least those dirtbags knew the trouble they were in when Kiyomi's own village came gunning after them. The girl felt a little proud of the reputation of her village and the fear it instilled in these scumbags.
"Chances are, she had no use for you. The distance between us must have increased if she's no longer placing talismans on the living… Where is the largest concentration of dead bodies here? Tell me and maybe I'll let you loot these tools." Kiyomi ordered the criminal.
She was no idiot. This guy was no big fish, judging from the scribbling, almost like the type of sound a scurrying rat would make, noises coming from this room, this man was not working on this corpse. He was looting the tools left behind. He's smaller than small-time and completely unworthy Kiyomi's time, let alone her wrath, at least at the moment.
"Oh, two floors down, there's an entire basement where a bunch of useless bodies are dumped. They're used as emergency blood or organ supply but by themselves, unless a professional emergency strikes, they're quite worthless." The white-coat pointed at the floor.
Kiyomi's hand moved too fast for the man to perceive it even if the room was well-lit. Her backhand smack right to the side of the man's face knocked him out cold. Maybe he'd wake up with enough of his brain unscrambled to get his butt out of here before clean-up takes place, maybe not, this shitstain was no longer Kiyomi's concern.
"Worthless?" Mana uttered feeling breath leave her chest.
"Yeah, he was kind of a scumbag. That is why I knocked him out." Kiyomi assured the magician with defensive hand gestures.
"Say, you're not softening the story, by any chance? Like kill that guy because of your Aku-Soku-Zan and then just lie to me while telling the story back, just to make me feel better?" Mana wondered.
"No, he wasn't much "Aku" for me to "Soku-Zan" at that moment." Kiyomi shook the implication off without looking too offended or caught. As far as Mana could tell, her part of the story seemed to sound legit.
"Yeah, if anything, Hanasaku-sensei did most of the killing in that brawl." Meiko nodded.
Kiyomi finally found a long and steep stairway that was just stuffy enough to trigger some never-before-felt sensations of claustrophobia in her belly. Even if Kiyomi was not overly flustered over these kinds of places, she did feel a bit uneasy descending into somewhere completely devoid of any reflections of light, even the faintest emergency light bulbs or any white whatsoever, in such a tight and steep staircase.
It was not like a long fall down a steep flight of steps has ever killed a ninja…
Omase would be quite a different opponent if she did find any dead bodies down here to use. When used on living people, her talismans were only half-assed in terms of efficiency. There was always that feeling like Kiyomi was impacting it with her own will, like her own sensory and nervous input was severely slowing down Omase's commands. With a dead body, there would be no such input, just complete control…
A decrepit and rotten face of hollowed out, black eyes appeared right up in Kiyomi's face. The kunoichi lifted her leg up for a vertical kick but the corpse moved like a whole different beast to what it could have possibly been capable of when he was alive. It was almost like Omase transferred a great deal of her own skill into each corpse she enacted her influence on.
The crooked and broken fingernails of the rotten carcass dug into Kiyomi's flesh as the controlled deadman pressed on its physical attempt to claw and press Kiyomi's guts and eyes out of her body like some tube of paste. These things were strong, not only that, they had little trouble navigating or seeing past their own nose in this absolute darkness.
The rotten one leaned in for a bite, emanating his stench of death all over Kiyomi's face. A whole bunch of others started body-piling over the one of them that had the most success, the Yamanaka could not see them but she could certainly feel the weight of the group adding up on top of her. The kunoichi pushed her assailant further with little sharpness or forceful movement, just slow and methodical force, applied through maximum possible surface so that the corpse did not fall apart. The girl pushed her bent knees under the body on which the rest were beginning to pile on and pushed with decent might.
The pile scattered across the surprisingly spacious room. Kiyomi knew that the talisman user herself had to be in this very same room as well. It was more than likely that increasing the distance between her and so many subjects she'd drastically multiply the amount of chakra the technique cost her with to keep going.
Despite the room being completely sunken in oblivion, describing which the word "shadows" would be to imply it had any light to cast that shadow, to begin with, Kiyomi could only see a good hand's reach in front of her, with her perception working its superhuman-finest. She would be looking for a needle in a haystack like this…
Still hoping to stumble onto her desired target, the Yamanaka pressed onward, punching and kicking her way across the rotten corpses abandoned even by the black market dealers as useless "organ safes", just in case a better alternative did not present itself… As grim as this reality was, as absolutely nauseating the essence of the room was, as bloody disgusting shoveling through these corpses with nothing but fists and feet, sunken and covered in bio-goop was, the Yamanaka pressed on. A criminal needed punishment. Her brother would not have stopped in her shoes!
Nothing. The bodies appeared to go limp and dead once more after they wore down in the dragged down process of combat, hands and legs offed, heads offed or their core completely splattered across the room floor. After a good pair of combinations, the floor of the room began getting a bit slippery. Just another thing to worry about in this odd position Kiyomi found herself in. At least Omase would not risk wasting chakra on more of her talisman-sealed ninjutsu inside – not without risking destroying most of her own bodies and bringing this entire building on her.
While at the world-breaking scale such outcomes would not kill the criminal scum all by itself, even in the worn out state, it would at the very least hurt and that was solace enough for Kiyomi to keep her spirits up while she was burrowing through the dead trying to recruit her into their ranks.
"Enough!" Kiyomi screamed out loud, grabbing her own hair by a handful and slashing at them with a kunai out of her pouch. She lobbed a good chunk of her hair in the air before weaving a bunch of seals, encouraged by her lack of punching and kicking them to smithereens, the dead immediately began clawing and gnawing at her but the Yamanaka willed herself to take a little nasty for the sake of the better outcome.
"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!" Kiyomi chanted out, restraining the output of chakra as far as she could so that she did not inflict too much damage to the room or the building she was in. She seemed to recall seeing Mana use a similarly weakened Wind Release jutsu to carry explosive tags across, strands of hair were even lighter than that which meant it would only cost her coins to execute.
The hair scattered across the room, it had to. Kiyomi centered the severely weakened wind-blast right at the center of the handful. After the hair was successfully delivered across the room, she used her knees and elbows to fight off the dead that were beginning to crawl all over her in vain attempts at strangling the life out of her, punching, clawing and otherwise inconveniencing her.
They were surprisingly successful at that task as well – Kiyomi could feel some loose teeth in her mouth, warm torrents of blood coming from her busted nose and forehead and every passing moment yet another handful of nails tore into her, wherever their owner found spare space through funneling and borrowing through their own colleagues in attempted murder.
"Yamanaka Hair Trap!" Kiyomi declared while raising her hand in a hand seal position.
"W-What the…" finally, Omase's voice ringed in the ears of the beginning to starve, self-proclaimed criminal hunter.
Finally, the hot, repugnant breathing up in her face, the rotten fingernails and falling apart bodies no longer tried to crawl all over her and smother the life out of Kiyomi. The fight appeared almost over.
"What's a little trimming of one's hair, compared to capturing one such as yourself?" Kiyomi spoke almost to herself as she could barely make out a vague direction of the woman's voice. From the safety of her ninja pouch, the girl removed a yellow marble and cracked it in her fingers, throwing it at the ground shortly after.
A flash of light emanated from the orb, giving some more faint details to Kiyomi about the exact location of her target. Using something like that with almost a dozen of dozens of super-powered corpses crawling all over her would have been troublesome, she may have lost an eye, let alone the nose she got broken in just the mere moments it took to entrap the woman.
"While I hold my hand up in this sealing position, you will remain trapped. That would normally make me unable to use other techniques or two-handed attacks but… Luckily for me, the Yamanaka hand seal used for the hijutsu is just a two-handed version of the same seal." Kiyomi explained to her opponent. She raised her hands up and pointed at the position where she last saw her opponent.
"Mind Switch: Art of Catastrophe!" Kiyomi chanted out. Her voice was shortly followed by a ghostly howl of her consciousness leaving her hand seals and entering the body of her opponent, moving up to the very center of her mind and then, through awesome injection of more and more chakra… Expanding. Expanding some more and more, as far as it went.
A hollowed and horrified scream reached even the curious ears of Meiko and Hanasaku outside with the two instantly turning at the nearest hole in the black market building.
"Kiyomi…" the blacksmith mumbled out with the sentiment of friendly concern seeping its roots deeper and deeper into the girl's chest.
"Come on, let's check on her," Hanasaku grunted with a hint of something Meiko had not yet seen in her mentor – pain combined with a hint of desperation.
It was not something that would be unexpected to be seen in the tone of a member of a military unit that fights for their life for little to no recognition daily. Every fight, every twist and turn in any given mission could have cost one or their treasured ones their lives and such hesitation before taking needed steps was very much welcome in the voices of anyone who called themselves human, amongst other things.
And yet, it was never a part of Hanasaku's voice, never before…
"Are you sure, sensei? You don't look too good, maybe you should sit tight and heal a bit. Watch over that enemy Sin Eater, maybe?" Meiko suggested. "The enemy Kiyomi ran off to fight was the weakest of their group, I am sure that both of us could handle her."
"It's fine." A reaffirming voice of Waiso ringed in Meiko's ears when the young man landed by her side. Moving at a remarkably fast dash from where he was observing the battlefield right up to the two kunoichi and their prisoner. "Move in to assist Kiyomi. I shall watch over the Sin Eater, it would be troublesome to drag him around and into battle in total darkness down there, would it not?"
Meiko shifted and rolled her eyes, her tongue kept moving in her mouth as tells of her intent to find a reason to shut her teammate down. The pale skin of her mentor, the constant grunts of pain and the darkened grey color of her lips really scared Meiko, perhaps more than having a chakra-cloaked chain crushing her throat did just a while ago.
"Thanks, you sure you can handle him if he misbehaves?" Hanasaku worked up a smile and a nod. To the Sannin the Sin Eater looked trustworthy, she judged herself capable to stretch even more and finish this clash even after all she did already. Meiko wondered if that was reason enough for her to swallow her bad gut feeling and just trust her mentor's leadership.
"Who in the world would misbehave with the prospect of Chestnut Hanasaku chasing them down to the ends of the Earth for it?" Waiso smiled with a kind and completely trustworthy grin. "Plus, I'm still fresh and, if anything, I can take a punch myself."
"We'll leave it to you then." Hanasaku nodded while she rushed off and into where Kiyomi chased Omase in. Meiko followed. The Sannin was moving a bit slower than usual and clutching her gut. The position of her torment shifted every short while to the sides or her chest with the woman's hand moving accordingly. It appeared odd to Meiko that her mentor was not using Mystical Palm or her other medical ninjutsu techniques to improve her situation at all.
Luckily enough, there were supposed to be no further combat tests. The sight that greeted Hanasaku and Meiko in the middle of a dim hallway was Kiyomi sitting by the wall with a bunch of blunt force trauma and scratches covering her body as if she had just fought off a pack of super-powered wild animals. The Yamanaka was still holding the ends of darkened emerald locks in her grip.
Somewhere down the line, the blonde must have grown weary of dragging around her deceased opponent by her hair and therefore she pressed her back and bottom to the cold and currently abandoned lab corridors until her vigor returned. Omase looked quite grim. Trails of bloody tears were staining her face. The gothic sight of crimson lines dragged down from her nose, her eyes and her lips.
It was as if the entire inside of her head almost exploded but her skull just barely managed to contain it. Like a bloated can of rotten, conserved goods. Whatever technique Kiyomi used to dispose of her opponent, it was mighty and quite lethal.
"Should have left her." Hanasaku huffed out. An uncomfortable sense of dread crawled up Meiko's chest once more, hearing the exhaustion in her mentor's words. A bit of exhaustion was completely usual to anyone having just bested multiple wanted criminals of average to high ranks but not to her specifically.
"Maybe. What about the rest?" Kiyomi stood up, finally letting Omase's hair slip out from her tight grasp.
"Beaten or… Left the battlefield and the edges of known space." Meiko dragged her hand across her hair, trying to awe herself with her mentor's feats so that this mission returned its sense of normalcy for once.
"The Sin Eater?" Kiyomi raised an eyebrow while the three moved back towards the hole in the black market point.
"Waiso is watching over him," Hanasaku informed her student.
"Huh? Can he really handle it? He's kind of a wimp and these guys really made us have our hands full." Kiyomi wondered.
"The enemy looked really shaken up and unwilling to try and run away. Plus, I'm sure Hanasaku-sensei would catch up to him and capture him in no-time." Meiko smiled. "So… You had no choice but to kill your opponent?"
"No. I chose to kill her. Unlike the Sin Eater, she is useless to us." Kiyomi shook her head with a sense of resolution and determination. While the Yamanaka heiress often spoke of her dream to eradicate the criminal element, she rarely acted on them quite like this. "I assume the asshole has a pretty good excuse for surviving? Like only him being able to open the seal in the scroll or something?"
"Something like that…" Hanasaku confirmed Kiyomi's fears.
While all three women had their own personal worries, which on a rare occasion peaked at a degree where one could have categorized them as legitimate anxiety, it was nothing compared to the shock of the revelation, which became evident once they left the black market point and into the clearing.
Where the kunoichi left Waiso watching over the enemy Sin Eater only laid a corpse. Not one of Waiso, one of Nejin, the enemy Sin Eater. The man had his head twisted in a misshapen manner like a tendril of something cosmic and almighty had snapped his neck applying enough pressure on it to make the criminal's eyes pop out right before his untimely and highly gruesome demise.
"I appear to have been caught red-handed, huh?" Waiso sighed. The Sin Eater removed his glasses and tossed them aside.
Author's Note: Sorry for the long wait between updates.
It was sort of a Force majeure type of thing. My PC died and I simply had no technical means of updating the story for the entirety of the time I was off. Please rest assured that my resolve to finish this as well as passion writing the story is the same, if not greater than it was when I started working on it. The story is planned very far ahead so there is pretty much no point in assuming that there are any writer's blocks or creative issues. Maybe I could have let the few people who gave my story a chance for this long in on it but I don't think there is an optimal way of informing one's followers of such circumstances.
In either case, my PC is repaired now. None of my files, including most of this chapter which was completed prior to the untimely demise of my hardware, were lost meaning I could finish the chapter up as soon as I got my hands back on it. Hope you forgive me this long vacation I was forced to take!
As a minor note. I've been re-reading some of the early 100s chapters and noticed there were some very odd typos and mistakes there. I will do my best to fix them, I will attempt to do a full-story revision but I'm not sure how long it will take, given its size... It is really discouraging to me, given how I run each chapter through multiple proof-reads as well as the whole revision of the early chapters I did way back.