"Hey, you, freaky guy!" an athletic young man with shoulder-length denim-colored hair with sky-colored tips pointed a bandaged rod-shaped weapon that the clasped in his hand at the crawling magician that had burst out from underground because of the overwhelming burst of Signal Man's searchlight. "You got rowdy there! I lost track of the vacuum cleaner guy because of you, so you'll have to take his place!"
Kotsuzu Yabure, the lich of Tonika Village, turned the upper half of his body, stressing his spine as the luminosity of the area didn't let his shadowy cloak persist on him. This exposed the twisted and bizarre musculature of the faceless humanoid and revealed jagged protrusions coated in dry and thick skin lined up over the magician's spine.
"A ninja?" Yabure chattered, noting the Kirigakure headband hanging tied around the youth's neck. Having locked sights on his opponent, the Kirigakure ninja pulled a second bandaged rod from his back and crossed their tips against one another as his combat stance. "I usually like ninja. They're full of false courage, so their panic lasts for ages before their hearts give out. This really lets me get into their heads and get their terrors rolling. This is kind of a bad time though, so, just this once, I'll let you turn around and find someone else to play with."
"You're stoked about fear, huh?" the blue-haired Kirigakure ninja smirked, clutching the handle of his bandaged blade. A metallic clink prompted something to shift around in that blade, and both of his bandaged swords ripped through their bandages. Something was off, though. Both swords seemed like normal katanas just a second ago, though wrapped in bandages. The swords that ripped free from bondage looked like oversized, dulled cleavers that couldn't have possibly fit underneath those wraps or looked the way those swords looked before. "That's too bad. The boredom of this will kill you."
A burst of dry and husky laughter clamored from within the oppressed lungs of Kotsuzu Yabure. The faceless lich bent his lower back out of shape, breaking his body backward and adopting a reverse all-fours stance. His head turned around to make his smile flip upside down on the opposite back of his face while the shifty lich skittered off with a rapid shuffle of his twisted limbs. The Kirigakure ninja covered his eyes at first, terrified that his opponent's shift in position would flaunt his junk in his face, though the flight response in his opponent made the Kirigakure swordsman exclaim and point his clobber-cleaver at his skittering opponent.
"Where're you going? Got a game of shogi to play or something?" having realized that his opponent had no extremities, just a rough patch of skin covering the area, therefore he was in no danger of fracturing his sensitive psyche, the Kirigakure ninja clenched his swords and placed them behind his back as he dashed off after his skittering foe who shuffled in between hectic brawls in the arena and shot straight for the trench and the pointy rock ridges in the center of the arena.
Having reached the edge of the rocky protrusions, the swordsman stopped in a skid and looked up. Then began scaling the rocks with careless leaps and bounds. That was when a forest of semi-transparent, shadowy hands emerged from the other side. The trench and the surrounding ridges provided Yabure with enough shade to form his shadowy constructs, even though they were wobblier than his peak by heaps. Airborne, the Kirigakure ninja covered himself up with his clobber-cleavers as the washing wave of shadowy fists slammed into him. The lashing shadow hands had no struggle bypassing his oversized, dull cleavers and found their way to his jaw, throat, ribs, and waist.
A washing mass of dark appendages all molded together into a larger, interconnected construct of chained rings with a clawed, armored hand attached to the end. Despite its impressive appearance and sophisticated build, the color and texture of the limb was still transparent as a mere shade was no equal to the complete darkness in which the lich was used to operate. The hand locked around the face of the airborne Kirigakure ninja and swung him around with a metallic clang of the interconnected shadow rings. Having sped up the spin to thousands of Gs more than was necessary to break the neck of an ordinary person, the gourmet of horror released his pursuer and sent him flying on a trajectory to disappear over the horizon, let alone out of bounds of the arena.
Bandages slipped out from within the indigo-colored leather jacket with fuzzy fur collars and bottom. They surrounded the clobber-cleavers and began pressing tightly against them. The rods swelled up with fleshy bulging sounds and something drastic shifted inside before the bandages tore again and revealed elbow-length knives cutting out from within the bandages. The shinobi's denim trousers tore in the middle too, revealing matching knife blades popping from the guard on his knees.
The Kirigakure ninja entered a wild spin, becoming just a blue blur and gathering a silver-colored gale around him as it appeared as if he cut through the force sending him flying toward the horizon and hovered riding the air currents back toward his foe who perched atop of the rocky pillar. Because of Yabure's faceless head, it was impossible to note if this drastic weapon surprised or even vexed the lich or did the shift in the fighting style of his opponent that led to the ninja's survival in the competition.
"Steel Release?" Yabure chattered with his long and pointy teeth when his opponent rushed to attack him but the living whirligig only slammed into a rocky pillar, reducing it to petty pebbles while Yabure skittered elsewhere.
"A handy Advanced Bloodline for a swordsman, huh? Whenever you slip into a close-distance brawl, you can mold your weapons into something more suitable for close-range engagements…" the Kirigakure ninja snickered. "You're not too shabby either, luring me into a shady spot where you can fight back, then waiting until I'm airborne before striking…"
The lizard-green eyes of the Kirigakure ninja darted down, alarmed by something brewing underneath his feet. Shadowy tendrils wrapped around his legs all the way up to the knees and locked the ninja in place. Twisting and snapping his joints, the faceless lich of Tonika village rushed onward like a water strider skittering across the shadow. The blue-haired ninja grunted as the rushing lich tripped and flipped him up by rushing past his knees and calves with a crawling chop-block tackle.
An ethereal shadowy tendril smacked the Kirigakure ninja to the back of his cheek, sending him airborne while the chains with clawed armored gauntlet hands grabbed hold of the swordsman's collar and swung about, slamming him everywhere they found the spot on. Yabure was crafty, knowing that his shadowy constructs lacked the substance to inflict much damage out in the desert sunlight, he used the environment and mountains to wallop his opponent instead.
The chain rings wrapped around the ninja's limbs and sprawled him out in the air. So dangerously close to the reach of the radiant desert sun, where Yabure's dark constructs would've disintegrated in a snap. The faceless lich hummed as he let his semi-solid shadowy hand carry him across from the peak of the rocky pillar to where he had trapped his opponent in.
"Curious… Have I found myself in a hopeless corner out here in the elements, or could there truly not be a speck of fear in your heart?" Yabure chattered in frustration, as he couldn't employ his usual trump card of drawing strength from panic to employ his illusions against the enemy. Something usually made him invincible as his foes spent their time and effort fighting shapes and noises. "Contrary to how the saying goes, there's nothing to fear about fear itself, so what gives…?"
Yabure's fingers dragged across his opponent's chest, slicing his bare pecks open as if with a scalpel. The Steel Release user winced in pain, but the grunt soon turned into a chuckle and a smug grin of excitement changed his pained expression. The pain made the young ninja see red and close his eyes, though his smile never turned upside down. What was supposed to look black and bleak had a diagonal slash of flashing red instead.
Screams and popping embers, the smell of burning flesh and pooling blood that was so fresh in the youth's mind, filled his receptors. Even if he had changed from the little boy he was back then, that little boy ran back home because the red-hot mark that seared the inside of his brain paralyzed him. He remembered running and so he had no other choice but to run whenever returning to the Inoshi village. If only the man he was now could return to that time and fight the Funato Clan invaders, he would.
Even if everything in his power commanded him to run back and kill those disturbing the peace of his village, those that cut down the serenity of his childhood alongside his fellow villagers, the grown man in the body of the boy he was back then fled back to a round straw shack. The shack where his family lived. Whenever he needed to flee here to avoid torment, panic, and agony, every time the Kirigakure ninja hoped that what he'd find back home would differ.
There were so many stories about people creating false memories to protect themselves or techniques to implant false memories to control other people. Even if he was never that kind of fighter, preferring the plain brawling in his fighting style, the Kirigakure ninja hoped every time that maybe he would create some sort of false memory and would find his family hidden and safe. Instead, what he found each time was all the same. Limp bodies of his family, blood and viscera everywhere. The sadistic faces of the invaders that found it easier to kill his family than bind them and carry them along with the rest of the captives.
"Takao…" mother's gargling voice struggled to reach her petrified son with a tip of the sword stuck in her chest from the back. The Funato clansman stomped on her and forced the sword out, barely able to keep his balance from the rough pull of his blade and the floor being greased with blood. After gaining his balance back, the Funato clansman turned to the boy. The invading kidnapper did the best he could to make a face approachable to a kid, but all the blood soaking it and the sadism still frozen in it, mixing and stirring alongside his faked goodwill, made him look like more of a monster than the snarling ogre that treated Takao's mother like a doormat earlier.
"Come closer, kid. Don't be afraid. You're not a coward, are you? You can still save your mom, but if you run away, she's dead for sure…" the savage lied through his teeth with a sweetened voice. He leaned down and extended his hand, signaling that he'll help Takao get to his mother through all the innards and blood that made walking straight indoors so difficult.
At that time, on that day, Takao was the most afraid he's ever been and he'll ever be. He didn't want to be afraid; he wanted to know exactly what to do, and how to save his mother and his village, but he wasn't that kind of person back then. Back then, he was exactly what the dirtbag from the Funato Clan described him as–just a cowardly boy, fleeing for his life like nothing behind him existed. When he turned to run, he heard the kidnappers, plunderers, and manslayers turn to pursue him, but a few of them tripped on the thick pool of blood while others stopped to not trip on their comrades.
"That kid's gonna get away," a loud and crude voice still lingered in Takao's mind.
"So? A kid's not gonna do a lot of work, is he? He'll just be a deadweight anyway…"
"Unlike his parents, the kid's a coward, cowards ain't even worth killing," a risen murderer wiped his stained face and cut the back of the shack open to breathe some of the familiar air of plunder in and return to kidnapping every able-bodied man and woman in the settlement and put them to work in the plant or the shipyard of their headquarters.
And so, Takao ran, he ran so far away that he didn't even notice the skies over his heads shifting to a bright morning sunrise and the unspoiled nature of Habanero Island shifting to the gloomier and grey asphalt of Kirigakure. The militarized training grounds where he failed to meet his team in time for their first mission. Takao collapsed, pressing his hands to his knees and panting intensely while sweat dripped from his forehead. Who in their right mind would decide to meet at 5 AM, anyway? What could have possibly changed if they met a few hours later and why would alarm clocks need to be wound up so damn often?
"Takao Kenbuta!" an authoritative voice barked out and made Takao straighten his back like a torrent of boiling water ran down it. He was no longer in a militarized open training field, but inside of an old-timey, round administrative building. The Mizukage's assistant called him inside after the Tribunal had discussed his crime of failing to wind up his alarm clock and disputed his fate. With a stiff upper lip, the young man entered, sweating on the forehead and bubbling in his gut.
"You are accused of a gross case of improper performance of your duty, which makes for an apparent violation of the Shinobi Code. You failed to group up with your team, which prompted them to leave without you. The Tribunal did not find clear causation or correlation between your actions and the horrible fate of your team, seeing how they perished in an enemy ambush that was well prepared and equipped for a full team of ninja, nevertheless, your gross negligence and its consequences showcase behavior we do not tolerate in our shinobi!" a chunky man with yellow, lion-like mane and full, thick facial hair ruled.
"However, because of your age and inexperience, also, the circumstances that we've established in our investigation that, for all intents and purposes, the only reason you are alive is because of your improper performance of your duties as ninja, our allies from Kumogakure in the Tribunal could not in their right mind recommend your termination and execution. It is because of those circumstances that we sentence you to four years in Ruamiru Prison,"
At the very least, Takao's behavior before being sentenced was a lot alike to his attitude in the present day, so he never had to hope or wish for a different angle or outcome. In a blink, the minimalistic and somewhat regal official facilities where the Ninja Tribunal took place substituted with dark and damp walls. Iron rods struck the mossy stone floor, layers of chain fence and barbed wire wrapped around them and helmed, armored guards with gas masks all too alike with the equipment of the Funato pirates that plundered Inoshi village took the place of civil servants and the foreign spies and lapdogs trampling over Kirigakure's sovereignty at the time.
"Look at that, guys!" a burly, bare-chested man in a brown cargo vest and a torn, moss-green beanie on his head spread his hefty arms and looked around him where prisoners pumped their fists in the air. "I guess I hit this guppy so hard that I got his whole life flashing in front of his eyes!"
Takao remembered Toritan. He was the man that Takao had to pummel into the ground to get into the prison's "reformation" program which was basically just a big, mean fighting tournament inside barbed wire cages. Toritan got a few good licks in, so memory may have been shady, but if Takao got it right, the guy had extensive body modifications. Forearms infused and bolstered with solid cement, knuckles, and cartilage replaced with steel spikes… Just about every dirty surgical trick in the book. On that day, Toritan found out that these kinds of modifications went both ways and could hurt him just as much as they put the hurt on his opponent.
The kneeling and bleeding, disgraced ninja yelled out and charged forward, swinging his right. Instead of Toritan, an obese, spiky-haired blond man fell flat on the ground. Takao leaned back and braced for impact by putting up a block of his forearms, withstanding the slashes of clawed gauntlets of another opponent before knocking out a white-haired ninja with red and gold face paint on his rear. Releasing all of his pent-up feelings, Takao released a flurry of hits, knocking out a different opponent with each one and building himself up from a hurting, orphan youth to the shinobi of Kirigakure who learned to never be afraid again by thrusting himself headfirst toward unforetold horrors life flung at him and confronting all of them with an iron façade of irony and mockery.
"Sorry, we just don't have that sort of relationship, pal…" Takao yelled out, making Yabure's jaw drop and his slicing fingers freeze before opening up another mean gash on the tortured shinobi's chest. Bandages emerged from Yabure's body, each one weaved with a tiny speck of various minerals under Takao's control to make them respond to the shinobi's command. A wrapping tied around Yabure's throat, around his left thigh and right arm, while more bandages wrapped around the blades Takao had produced earlier.
"Shit… You must be insane! Aren't you afraid one bit?" Yabure hissed while the pressure around his throat put a real squeeze on him, but that wasn't the real threat here. The bubbling and swelling rods of iron under Takao's employ transformed into oversized cleavers, though this pair had been sharpened and polished. In prime condition to rend and sever flesh.
"Seiryu Spin!" Takao chanted out, cutting through the malleable grip of the shadowy tendrils since the shade provided them with only a limited level of fortitude. The blue-haired swordsman began spinning with his cleavers pressed to his forearms again, drastically switching angles and altitude as the spinning grew out of control and a silver gale formed around him. The bandages around Yabure's body didn't let him escape the whirlwind, and the spin of their user pulled the faceless lich right into the heart of the storm of blades.
"Simply incredible, Kenbuta Takao has sent the lich of Tonika Village flying! But it doesn't look like he's in any condition to exploit this opportunity to eliminate the fearsome member of the magicians' group! With Kotsuzu Yabure flying out of control to the other side of the arena and Kenbuta Takao plummeting straight down, it's hard to imagine these two meeting without having to fight through hordes of hungry opponents smelling their blood in the water to do it!" the announcer reported while Yabure Kotsuzu flew out of control to the very outer edge of the arena, sliced and riddled with deep cuts that drooped with thick, gelatinous blood of darkened cherry color. The faceless lich landed in a gruesome slam against the edge of the arena that bent his body out of shape, severely bent backward as if his spine didn't exist.
Takao flopped on the ground with his back, wheezing in pain and grumbling as the rise from the ground was heavy and painful. Just like the announcer had predicted, rows upon rows of hungry competitors seeking elimination of an easy, worn-out target lined up in front of Kenbuta Takao, Kirigakure ninja. Just like back in prison, nothing but hostile and bloodthirsty faces surrounded Takao.
"I just can't finish a battle today, can I?" Takao sighed and raised his swords while bandages wrapped around them to provide them with a shape that their master needed the most in this case.