"I… I can't keep it for long…" Skaven complained, grabbing hold of his head and exclaiming in pain as his back stretched and bent back as an instinctual jerk in reaction to the pain and the stress of fighting against himself.
He was too tired. It would have been for the best if he had slept this off and recovered his weary mind from the strain that it experienced during the banishing of his memories. Now he was a mess inside of his own mind and just as screwed by this situation as Mana was. The magician girl dashed up to Skaven, grabbed hold of him by weaving her arms under his armpits. She kicked off and took flight by converting her desire for her and Skaven to survive this ordeal into pure willpower–the currency for power inside of anybody's mind.
"You're flying…" Skaven muttered the obvious.
"Yeah, your weakened mind can't fend off my willpower anymore, so be a treat, and don't put up those blocks anymore," Mana said.
"Sorry… If that's going to happen, I won't be in much of control over anything." Skaven admitted.
"Yeah, I know. I was joking in the face of disaster. It's the only semblance of control I had exhibit sometimes." Mana sighed with a worried expression as she bolted through the many teal circuits looming over the various mental bridges on the collapsing junction.
"You're taking us inside my memories," Skaven spoke out after he realized Mana's plan.
"It's somewhere else than here, and that's the only criteria I'm looking for," Mana confirmed it while she turned around to avoid smashing into the top of a circuit as her swooping motion picked up speed drastically. With each circuit passed, the surrounding shrouds became blurry and one-note, and the pathway of glistening steel became even flashier and even more rainbow-like.
Without Skaven's impeccable control over his own mind, not only was the military-tier order toppling in on itself, but Mana found it possible to pass inside his memories without Skaven's permission as well. His Ego was becoming weaker by the second, though that had to be only temporary. The dreadful roar and bony chatter filled the air, this time closer. It felt as if whatever the source to this abhorrent cacophony of noise was would just now grab hold of the two young adults and crush them into a bloody stain in its gigantic grip but, in a flash of white, the junction and the mental nebula all disappeared at once.
"That thing…" Mana finally gathered enough strength to speak up after a session of panting, while gentle blades of grass caressed her thighs and subtle pokes of sunlight breached through the leafage and tickled her face. "It's a nightmare of yours, isn't it?"
"Something like that…" Skaven nodded, looking up at the sky with the shriveled up expression of someone who had just emerged after having spent more than enough time underwater to drown any lesser man. Once he recovered from the immediate haze and dizziness, the Nara sat up and ran his hand through his hair with a clearer look in his eyes. His willpower was slowly coming back to him. Just how long would it take for them to bust out, though?
"Why didn't you ask me to cut it out too?" Mana shook her head, exploring the space of this memory as it had plenty of space that did not involve the event that etched itself inside of this recollection. Usually, this happened with notable events where plenty of experiences relating to the surrounding environment played just as much of a part as the event itself.
"I told you already–I want him haunting me. It reminds me what I'm doing all of this for. Don't you sometimes waver? Wonder why get out of bed at all that day?" Skaven wheezed out, clarifying that whatever he just went through in this rough transition inside his own memories had a compressing effect on his chest cavity.
Mana looked away, noticing a young child in a loose, blue jacket and fishnet shirt. Even though Mana knew that this rascal could have only been Skaven because of similarities in the facial structure and the fact that she was roaming his memories so it wouldn't have made sense for them to notice anyone but the Nara himself, present Skaven looked so much different from his child self.
In the past, Skaven didn't look all that much different from most Nara. Healthy body complexion, a rather slim body build, and luscious black hair that he held in a spiky ponytail behind him. This must have been before the sum of Skaven's experiences converted him into the half-shaved, decrepit punk he looked like right now. Bags under his eyes and unhealthy, turning to a shade of banana grey skin included.
"This is… Konoha." Mana took no time at all in recognizing the familiar woods just outside the village she grew up in. "I didn't know that you belonged to the main, Konoha branch of the Nara clan."
"How could you? I made it my mission to reject as many people as I could with my attitude and my appearance." Skaven stood up and ran his hand through his half-shaved hair, staring at his own younger reflection playing with shogi figures on top of a flat stone. Whatever he was doing, playing actual shogi wasn't a part of this process. Young Skaven used a piece to prance around the stone like a horse while another one supposedly breathed fire on it, as evidenced by the kid flicking the "horse" away with his fingers.
"Son, what are you doing?" an older Nara sporting a full-beard ran up to his descendant and pulled on his hand, noticing the scattered shogi pieces of an incomplete set. "I was just about to show you around the Nara Clan Forest."
"You've noticed me slipping away, didn't you?" the little rebel pouted his lips while blowing out his cute cheeks.
"It's not like you were being subtle. You've scared away the deer with your dinosaur-feet clapping against the dirt. Are those shogi pieces? What are they doing here? Don't tell me you've slipped some into your pocket to practice some moves?" Skaven's father picked up the scattered pieces, examining them. "While admirable for an aspiring strategist, this is not the time for that, Skaven."
"Those stupid herbs are boring!" Skaven yelled out, lowering his tiny fists and pressing them clenched to his sides as his resonating voice signified his stance against his shocked father. "That's all that we're doing, looking at some stupid grass. Who cares what's doing what? I don't care about that junk, anyway. And deer? Deer are stupid, what kind of clan symbol is a deer?"
A clap followed by a husky cough coming from the side of the hurt boy falling on his knees with a dull look in his eyes and a trace of blood that Mana could taste herself on her own lip as well, lingering on the boy's face. Skaven's father approached his blanked-out son, looming in front of him like a brick wall as he gave the boy a stern look.
"You will silence yourself instead of talking rubbish like that, boy," he hissed out in a silent tone, and yet, despite the limited volume, it reached all over the woods and seeped into Skaven's ears like venom dripping from a serpent's fangs. "You are a descendant of a major branch of the Nara clan. I expected my son to have outgrown this childish foolishness."
"Shut up!" Skaven screamed out right at his father's face as he jumped on his feet. "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! I'm sick of your stupid boring shogi, I don't give a crap about some stupid weeds or wussy deer! Those dumb-ass pieces of that dry board game are too boring to even have any edges to slit my wrists with so I don't have to act like I give a shit about its stupid rules!"
"It goes like this for a while…" Skaven tried to pull the visage of these memories away like a blanket covering a wall, but Mana's willpower hammered it down as she kept watching. Without as much as a twitch to his face, Skaven's father began digging his fists and feet into his rebellious son. There was no anger in his movements and every single blow was pre-determined, considered, and weighed. They were meant to hurt, but not to maim or leave any marks.
"While what your father expected of you wasn't at all like that which people would want out of early teens, neither is the vitriol you showed to your father." Mana sighed heavily.
"It felt so good. Being angry, being able to yell what I thought right into the face of that stuck-up asshole." Skaven smirked, running his hand through his greasy hair with ecstasy on his face. Seeing those memories from up close inside of them was just like reliving it all over again, as opposed to merely recalling them as distant flashes.
"I've noted it before–the cruel expectations of children brought up in esteemed ninja clans to justify the clan's reputation. As a child, I wanted to have been born as a part of a clan too, instead of being just a nobody born to a clanless chuunin and a café owner, but I'm not so sure anymore." Mana sighed, helping Skaven tear a hole inside of the fabric of his memories to push forth further. The more unstable the mental fort, the easier time they'll have busting out at the end of the day.
"Yeah, having a childhood is pretty cool. With my old man hassling me with what to say, what to think and feel, and when, it felt like his choking me out every passing day of the week. No wonder I kicked that life in the nuts and joined a gang, huh?" Skaven shrugged as he stepped over the tear inside his own memories onto the other side.
"I didn't have much of a childhood either way," Mana admitted with her crystalline gleam forming in her eyes. "I was way too weird for some, far too unimportant for others."
The Skaven kneeling in front of a masculine ringleader wearing a bodysuit of leather adorned with what seemed like actual skeletal remains as accessories looked a lot more similar to the current Skaven. He had a much different hairdo with his black hair falling over his shoulders and the Nara earrings missing from his ears. Instead of the rather expensive jacket that he wore before, he hid his fishnet shirt under a bunch of rags that looked like he made them out of straw potato bags.
Behind the kneeling, troubled youth stood a handful of men in black, full-body bodysuits of glistening leather that only allowed the ovals of their faces to beam to the outside. Even then, they had all traces of facial hair meticulously removed to appear about as monotone as possible and one of the three held a snappy, four-men-long whip rolled around his hand while the big one cradled a massive mace with a steel fist on top of it where the bashing tip was meant to be. Each finger of the steel fist had a metal ring on it with a spike instead of a jewel.
"That's a pleasant look, punk!" the leader of Hellhounds chuckled to himself, opening himself up for a fit of pleased laughter. "But just because you're submissive and can follow orders, it don't make you a Hellhound, you know."
"It doesn't? I'll do whatever it takes. I just want to be free to do whatever I want whenever I want. So sick of following rules, but I'm willing to learn and obey to become one of you!" Skaven straightened his back. Cold sweat ran down his face and there was no making out of his pupils inside of his wide eyes. "I'm willing to work for and earn my freedom!"
"Earn? That's good. I like that word." The leader of Hellhounds who swung his pair of silver ponytails over a head of long, spiky black hair about like a deer swiping its horns struck an ecstatic pose as he wagged his hand at the looming figure of the largest out of his bodysuit-donning goons. Just as Skaven had been stretching out his back and begging for acceptance, the giant had been preparing to reach with his mace over Skaven's throat and strangle him with a gleeful, adoring simper, but he drew back at the command of the leader.
"Tell me, brat, what do you feel right now?" the whip-holding bodysuit goon cracked his whip before throwing it at Skaven and tying its end around the young man's arm before he manipulated the frightened youth to the floor and dragged him around like useless, wet rag to clean the sticky floor with.
"Hurting, afraid, lonely, sir!" Skaven cried out. Blood poured down his face from his busted nose and the place where being dragged across the floor knocked a tooth out, but his expression was also one full of determination to survive and flourish. Any amount of punishment, as long as it came alongside the freedom to live his way free as a rogue, was worth it compared to the mockery and disappointment of his clan.
"These feelings. They permeating the atmosphere." Mana noted.
"Yeah, you can imagine how much I wanted this. As crazy as it's looking from here." Skaven nodded.
"No. That's not it. These feelings feel fresh. You're feeling them right now, filling these memories with them. There is something missing in this, something that you've felt at the time, something at the corner of your mind that's missing from this picture." Mana shook her head. She had thought it to be another one of Skaven's enigmas, but the Nara looked to agree with her and began pondering on it. There was nothing in what Mana saw him do that would have suggested he was half-assing it and that he didn't care to find out what was lurking beneath this void inside of his memories.
"Sorry, no good." Skaven shrugged. "Anyway, there's no use staying around here and watching this drivel. Let's keep romping."
As the Nara tore a new one inside the center of his memory, Mana took a moment to stare at the brutal initiation ritual that had been transpiring without them to keep watch over the constantly looping memory. Skaven had been gritting and writhing in pain on the ground as the whipping bodysuit goon had dragged the new initiate closer to the leader who stomped over Skaven's head.
"You haven't earned the feeling of being afraid. You haven't earned the right to feel pain or to be lonely. Shit like that gets punished in our midst!" the leader stuck out his tongue while dropping a short blade by Skaven's side and leaning down to yank the fallen Nara by his hair. Feeling like she's seen enough, Mana stepped into the breach and kept breaching through until she reached Skaven, who by now had regained enough strength to burrow through his mind by himself.
"That blade. What did that punishment entail?" Mana asked when she caught up to her fellow Stars member.
"My father cut my ponytail when I pissed him off enough. It's basically the worst kind of humiliation a Nara can endure. It's rare that a Nara who lost their ponytail gets to return to the clan's good graces. I'm not sure what Fukaji wanted me to do with it, but I trimmed my hair the way you see it today, and seeing me look dead inside was enough torment for him." Skaven explained. "I like this memory. I'd like it if we stuck around a little more."
Mana found this declaration peculiar given how the memory had been in the same rundown and dusty room as before, however, unlike before, the place had not even a sprinkle of nocturnal serenity about it but was instead drowning in cinders. The walls had splashes of blood decorating them as if someone had turned a sprinkler on and directed it to the halls on purpose.
"We've gotta scram, you idiot. The Konoha ninja, they're butchering us all!" Fukaji hissed out in a whisper so that his voice wasn't overhead by anyone committing unseen atrocities, outside of which there were only agonizing howls and momentary wet splatters. An occasional, miraculous, vocal shimmer of steel cutting through the air pitched in as well.
"I don't know, leader…" Skaven slowly stood up off of his perched position and approached his leader within an arm's distance. Fukaji's eyes widened in painful shock and he looked down. Skaven didn't wait around for the leader of Hellhounds to notice the blade in his gut and he thrust it upwards, opening his leader up in a shower that covered Skaven in red. "I just don't know if I've earned the right to be afraid yet." Skaven finished his thought.
"Y-You're… With…" Fukaji tried speaking, but he was slowly drowning in his own blood lying on his back.
"I'm not with them, I was the one who tipped the ANBU off." Skaven wiped his chokuto before swiping it to remove the drips of blood that persisted in their choice to remain stuck on his blade. "You, the Hellhounds, even that freak, man-eater Mukihone. I've told them all about it. At least you can now live up to your names."
The sound of tearing cloth distracted both Mana and Skaven, who at the time was still adoring the memory like someone jammed to their favorite tune after not having heard it for a decade. It was an open mouth filled with rows of worn-out and chewed-off teeth. Blades of bone cut through the fabric of the memory space while muscular, goldenrod-skinned arms reached inside to grab hold of the two waiting about. The infernal chatter of bones clanging one against another and against rock, steel, and wood one at a time drowned the atmosphere out, though this time it came alongside the smell of rotten corpses that emanated from the mouth.
Just as Mana's body stiffened up in terror of the closing teeth chomping her in half vertically, the diamond dust whirlwind ripped her and Skaven away from the reach of the featureless, fleshy cream-colored monster and carried them off. Being cut away by diamond dust howling inside of a tornado was hardly a superior fate to being gobbled up, but Mana felt it being a more dignified way of going. Everything went black for a second just as the tearing force began pulling on every inch of Mana's skin and ripped off her clothes, shredding them to bits in a second.
"It's okay," Skaven's hand rested on Mana's shoulder. The magician jumped up and sat up, looking around the room. "I ripped us out. Mukihone gave us quite a scare, but we'll survive. Sorry you had to go through this and thanks for the memories you've dealt with. I won't forget this."
Skaven didn't talk to Mana for the rest of that day.