2. THE OUTLAW
A proper history of ninjutsu is incomplete without the mention of the Uchihas. Irascible, arrogant, prone to bouts of madness, perpetually battle hungry and eager to commit bloodshed over the most petty grudges. Yet for of all of their flaws, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to credit them for the widespread usage of ninjutsu today. They rose to prominence nine hundred years ago, as a group of mercenary ninjas tracing their lineage from the Sage of Six Paths. Colloquially they were known as the Aindras. It was around this time that Tenji the sixth hired them to subjugate all the other tribes in the continent under their chieftain Matarisvan. Arduous as the task was, they succeeded in annexing almost all of the landmass save for the islands of Kiri and the impenetrable Uzushio. The effect was tremendous and it's consequence are still felt by all shinobi and civilians to this day. All languages and cultures other than those of the ruling caste eventually dwindled away. Shinobi went on to replace the common soldiers as the warrior caste par excellence. And every daimyo who sought power and affluence started to hire some clan of ninjas or other for his ends. However, as it is with every tale, this one had it's own subversive twist. It was later found out by the emperor's nephew that their king had been reduced to nothing more than a mind controlled puppet of the genjutsu of Matarisvan's sharingan. This discovery would pave the road for the great Senju rebellion that, though it would take a century to crystallise, would in time lead to the destruction of the unified empire.
Posterity allows us to judge Matarisvan without the emotional bias of his contemporaries. Wicked as their root was, his conquests did unify all of the continent from Earth to Wind to Fire to Lightning under a common tongue that would further be adopted by the Hozuki and Kaguya clans ruling the islands of Water. Alhough consigned to general anonymity for his sins, his memory is still celebrated in the very name of the Uchiha - after the warfan he proudly carried into every battle.
Chukaku
Ninjutsu and how it came to be
Fire Temple Library
A very shirtless masked man stood on the rooftop. On his left shoulder was an unconscious girl wrapped in the cloak he was wearing just minutes ago.
"Should you be kind enough to hand the missy over here, we'd let you go. So how about we settle it like gentlemen, Mon flaneur."
Sasuke looked around. Four men stood surrounding him, all pointing their guns at him. Further a bit behind him was a sniper scurrying about, looking for a spot from where he could be killed without hurting the girl, he guessed.
"Who sent you? DEM? JGSDF? CIA? Talk."
The guy in front of him, who was presumably their leader snorted. "You don't get to give orders here brat." He shuffled the gun towards his face. "We are the ones with the weapons and the power here. Less talking and more doing. Put the girls body on the ground and raise your hands up in the air like a good little boy."
"If you understand the importance of this girl, what made you think challenging me was such a good idea?"
"We know you can absorb Maryoku. These weapons aren't realizer bullshit, just good old guns that kill very human, non spirit beings like you. Now leave the girls body on the ground. We don't have the time to be wasting on you." His finger almost moved to pull the trigger. He could also feel the sniper behind him getting ready, his camouflage territory almost blaring as he prepared to shoot.
No time to talk, huh?
So be it. He was hardly a conversationalist.
'Chidori'
He threw the comatose body up in the air. Before the guy in front of him could pull the trigger, he was in his guard, his surrounded by plasma ripping apart his foe's miniature territory. Disarming him of his defense he kneed him hard enough to make him belch blood. In the blink of an eye, his sword cleanly cut apart his gun and the chidori in his right hand pierced his heart and he moved on towards the other three.
Two of them were without territories. He disarmed them both with a split kick and pierced their throats with well placed kunais.
The lightning cackling in his right arm materialised into a spear of plasma and pierced the territory, gun and heart in one shot. On verge of death, his opponent valiantly pulled out a sword of laser and rushed at him before being unceremoniously cut down by him.
This leaves only one.
He braced for impact as phantasmal rib cage surrounded him, the sniper's bullets ricocheting off the spectre.
His sharingan had memorised the trajectory.
He caught the falling girl in his arms safely.
'Time to hunt.'
Alexandre Moreau swore as his bullets rebounded off a giant ghastly phantasm leering at him. Out of all the craven nonsense he had suffered throughout his life, this had to take the cake.
And to think it had started off as such a simple mission too. A strange boy was supposed to incapacitate a girl. He just had to kill the boy from distance while his comrades collected her body. And now he was witnessing a giant ghost rushing in broad daylight to kill him.
A lesser creature would have still tried to run in fear, to pathetically cling to life even for a few extra moments. But he had spent too long on the battlefield to have any such delusions.
As the ghastly odokuro paused in front of him, he gave it the biggest defiant grin he could, while the realizer in his brain transmuted his body into a bomb.
"Au revoir, connard!"
And then his world was fire.
He looked at the flames with a disinterested eye peeking out of the maskhole. The girl on his shoulder was safe which had been the priority from the start but his opponent blowing himself up before he could genjutsu him for information had been disappointing. Though it wasn't even the first or second time this had happened, now that he thought about it.
'Whatever.'
He looked around with his sharingan. Buzzing about he could see the tiny robots spying on him.
'Chidori senbon.'
He waved his right hand and hundreds of cyan needles emerged out of it. Each of them hitting and neutralizing miniature robots the size of flies.
"Ratatoskr." He audibly muttered.
He pulled off his right glove and bit his thumb. The blood oozing out of it summoned into air a golden eagle of normal proportions.
"Inuwashi. Scour the skies for anyone sneaking around."
The majestic bird nodded and took to the skies.
Uchiha Sasuke used it's signal of affirmation as his opportunity to make his exit.
Lurking in the shadows, a heterochromatic girl let out a giggle.
He looked again at the sprawling libretto around him. As much of a pain as it was to sneak around in this city with Ratatoskr, DEM and spooks of half a dozen intelligence agencies crawling about, what came ahead was the actually difficult part.
The darkness was vaguely illuminated by carefully placed candles. Two circles of carefully arranged kunais at whose centre was the semi-conscious body of a naked girl. The ground and her body were scrawled with characters written with his own blood, which were scattered around as six intersecting lines whose point of intersection was her abdomen.
Kakashi had made it seem a lot cooler and easy, he mused idly. But then again, Kakashi did that with a lot of silly things.
Now that he wasn't busy drawing the characters, he noticed her body. He could make out her supple breasts, thin waist, wide hips and fleshy thighs in the dim candle light. Her feminine figure stirred up unwanted emotions in his psyche. Feelings of lust and desire, his innate attraction to women that he deliberately kept suppressed because there was always someone he needed to kill first.
'And look where that has brought you. Alone in another world with just more enemies to hunt, and more adversaries out for your blood. Should have just gotten laid when you had the chance, at least that way your race wouldn't have died with you back in the elemental nations.' An internal voice balked at him.
Another was mortified at the cruelty of beating up a girl that had done him no harm, of suppressing her powers that, whatever devastation they brought, were due to no fault of her own.
He suppressed both of those voices. Now wasn't the time for waffling about. The woman who had brought him to this world had pleaded with her dying breath to stop the spirits from causing anymore devastation. He might be apathetic and cold, but he did ultimately owe her for saving him from dying of starvation in the dimensional void.
Besides, his knees were already soaked in blood. Sealing away her powers wouldn't even be amongst worst sins he had already committed. Against either an innocent or a woman.
He steeled his resolve and went through the hand signs. The symbols came to life and etched themselves into a circle around her abdomen.
"Evil Sealing method. Complete."
She screamed.
11th April, 20XX
"This event marks the first prominent space quake alarm in Japan in last two years. The previously recorded case was in the Tokonosu City which resulted in it's complete obliteration save for the one survivor Shizuka Marikawa. In this instance however, the superior preparation and prudence of JGSDF has allowed us to avoid any loss of life -"
The LCD abruptly shut down due to the ire of the girl in the hospital bed. She threw the remote on a nearby chair.
"You should know better than to take out your anger on helpless things, you know." Sitting on the nearby chair, eating an apple from the basket meant for her was a woman in mid twenties. She twirled the remote.
Captain Kusakabe Ryouko, the commanding officer of AST.
"What happened to the spirit?"
"Why, you should know that much at the very least. You were the one that drove it off, after all. Squad leader Tobiichi Origami bitterly fought the spirit and forced it to flee by the time I arrived with the reinforcements. That's the story we are giving to the higher ups. You better memorise it" She ordered playfully.
Icy blue eyes glared at her vehemently. Ryouko shrugged.
"We all need our pay checks, girl. The spirit's signature has entirely disappeared. Which means it has retreated to it's home dimension. All of your team members avoided critical injuries. They will be out of hospital in a few days after Realizer treatment and some physiotherapy. That's as good as it gets for a mission failure. So cheer up. We are all relying on you for future encounters. Don't let this personal failure be anything other than a stepping stone to future success."
"That's not what I -" Origami tried to say, but stopped in frustration of the sheer futility of it all.
Afterall, even if she ignored the complete mission failure. Even if she ignored the spirit getting away from her unscathed. How could she get over the simple, meager fact? That, it hadn't been a spirit that had vanquished them. It had been another man entirely. One with neither the powers of a spirit nor a magician. The outlaw with the luminiscent scarlet eye.
Tengu City Central Park
An indistinguishably dressed man sat alone on a bench. His presence however was still conspicuous due to the absence of any other human in the broad daylight.
He was eventually graced by the company of a fairly distinct person. A beautiful blond male whose face wouldn't be out of place on the cover of a fashion magazine.
"My, what desolation. Public places are always empty a few days after a spacequake alarm. Breaks my heart to see it every time." He sighed wistfully.
His compatriot disagreed. "Solitude of this sort is good for those in our business. You never know which stranger is a wolf waiting to pounce on you."
"True, true. So? What news from the grapevine did you bring me this time, Informer-san?"
"Elliot Baldwin Woodman has been spotted for the first time after his disappearance a month ago."
This piqued the blond's interest.
"So he wasn't dead afterall, huh? Figures. Ratatoskr only ever managed to retrieve Karen Mather's corpse. Would it be presumptuous to believe you have any idea where he could be right now?"
The other man grinned. "So long as you adequately pay up."
The flaxen haired man put out a stash of notes on the bench and pushed it towards him.
His counterpart grinned and started talking again. "Virginia, United States. Somewhere near CIA headquarters. Rumours are Asgard electronics have informally agreed to start mass producing combat realizers. Americans are probably sick of British monopoly in the sector."
"Seems quite implausible to me. Mr. Westcott for decades refused to bend the knee to american MIC. Why would he stop now? He never struck me as the type of man to abandon his principles in a moment of crisis."
The informant shrugged. "Dunno. Maybe DEM and MI6 are getting to him while Washington is playing the hard ball. Ratatoskr is done and dusted either ways. Especially after Reine Murasame went AWOL. He doesn't have a lot of options besides security of american military. Principles are the first things to be abandoned when they start weighing you down."
The light haired man shook his head. "We may have met only a few times but that's not the kind of impression he ever gave. Mr. Woodman was many things but he never was a coward who would abandon his ideals to save his own skin. Something peculiar is going on."
The informant snorted. "The world doesn't really care what you think of it, and often neither do people living in it. Any ways, I have already told you all that I knew. You aren't paying me for my idle speculations after all. I will tell you more if I learn anything, at the appropriate price of course. Till then, Mr. Kyouhei." He then stood up and left.
General Kiritani looked at the documents laid out in front of him with something resembling fear in his eyes. Now, he wasn't the sort of man who often showed emotions. Or at the very least, emotions that made him look weak in any capacity. He hadn't been always like this either. He could remember with vivid clarity a time when he was a spirited young lad, frolicking around without a care in the world. He laughed and cried and swore like any one else. His father may have been poor but he was dutiful and passionate about his trivial job in the navy. His mother may have been prone to sickness but she was still caring and loving and full of smiles that made all his unease disappear. It was with the benefit of posterity that he could could confidently say, that life may have not been particularly easy back then but he had still been truly happy. Until that event happened of course.
Eurasian Sky Disaster, or at the very least that is what people called the first of the series of space quakes that had ripped apart East, Central and South Asia. Hundreds of millions of people had died in the carnage, with nearly a billion people dying in it's aftermath due to the complete disruption of economic and logistical chains. His father had been among the former while his mother was among the latter. Now that he was secure enough financially he could look back at those days of despair, economic recessions and unpaid loans with a reminiscing smile, but it had been pure hell back then. Cities and nations were laid to waste, Russia and China abruptly ending their brief stint as global powers. But new institutions arose as well. Realizer chips were conjured out of ether by the whiz kid Westscott and DEM industries rose to prominence single handedly demonstrating raw military superiority of combat realizers in contrast to existing weapons. The primary antagonists of global American hegemony were no longer Soviet or Chinese communists but British conglomerates threatening monopoly on Realizer manufacturing. And they would have accomplished so if Baldwin hadn't defected to the Americans and established Asgard Electronics. In a way that fateful space quake hadn't just damaged the old world but utterly destroyed it. The world of common sense had died and with it so had his morality, all that had been left was a world of wondertech, miniature apocalypses and abominable spirits.
"Umm, Earth to sir..."
His musing was interrupted as his assistant cleared her throat.
'Right. Back to business.'
"So did you run a background check on these corpses."
"Yes. Two of them are locals, the other three are foreigners with an interesting background. Former DGSE hitmen who defected and started making their living as mercenaries. Among the material confiscated from their bodies are simple realizers that can create fairly primitive territories. We have contacted French Consulate for more information. Upon your suggestion, on account of evidence pointing to their killer being a non spirit, we are indeed considering hand over the case to Tengu city police from Internal Security."
"But before that, there is something we need to show you."
He followed her into the hallway. The LCD was connected to a USB containing extracted data from the recorder of the primitive european CRU of the sniper. Most of his body had been transmuted into a bomb and so very little of anything of him remained, fleshwork or hardware. A part of him wondered what the point of killing himself was if he still left evidence for others. His mental query was suddenly answered by the screen.
What he saw in the last two seconds was displayed in front of Kiritani. A masked figure with a cloaked body surrounded by a massive upper half of a skeleton, with demonic horns and glowing eyes, leering right at him.
"What the actual actual fuck."
"Are you still sure about transferring this case to the local police?"
"Didn't you say perpetrator was a non-spirit."
"Indeed. Captain Kusakabe claimed that Tobiichi Origami had already driven the spirit into other dimension by this time which is further corroborated by her signals disappearing before this event could have taken place. No other spacequake inducing wavelengths were observed at the time this should have taken place. Whatever this phenomenon is, it isn't one we have observed before."
He pinched the bridge of his nose.
'Just my luck. It had to be under my watch that some demonic freak chose to brutally murder five men for no reason at all.'
What he needed to do was absolutely clear now.
"Send picture of that stupid mask to every member of JGSDF member under my command. I want this criminal scum, this wretched outlaw to be nabbed ASAP." He barked the orders to a chorus of yessirs.
Decades ago otherworldly existences had ripped apart his world. It had taken him a lifetime for him to put it back together wholesale. He'd be damned if he let the cycle repeat itself again.
She dreamed the dreams of a boy who loved his brother, father and mother. Their family often had markings of internal discord but then again which one didn't. His loving older brother almost never had time for him. His admirable but cold father was always somewhat distant to him, his warm and loving mother was in many ways still alien to him. Yes, it may not have been a happy family, he may just have been ignorant. But whatever it was, it would have been preferable to this nightmare.
"If you wish to kill me, hate me, despise me and live in an unsightly way. Run and cling to your wretched life. And some day when you have the same eyes as I do, come back and face me."
His greatest tormentor, his greatest protector. That wretched and admirable older brother who condemned him to a million lifetimes of agony by merely letting him live.
She woke up from the nightmare.
"Did you have a comfortable sleep?"
She looked at the source of the voice. A golden eagle was lying on the drawer, keenly looking at her like she was some toy of interest.
She shrieked.
"I'll take that as a no, then."
Taking the commotion as his cue entered a very recognizable and punchable face.
"How is a bird talking like a human?" She asked him.
"Really, that's the first thing you ask from your abductor? Such blatant speciesism is disheartening you know?"
Her abductor chose the silence as his moment to reply "He is a ninja bird, one that I had contracted and kept sealed in a scroll on my right wrist. After Hagoromo banished me, I can no longer summon my old contracts from my home world save for him."
"That doesn't explain anything." She grumbled.
"Have you tried not being stupid?"the bird quipped.
"Enough, Inuwashi. No need to befuddle her further. I will take it over from here. Also here's your reward." He threw a fish at the eagle.
The predator caught it in his mouth and disappeared in a puff of smoke.
In a moment the her mood changed from perplexion to unyielding rage. She coalesced her maryoku to form a sword and threw it at him.
He sidestepped it with contemptuous ease.
"What did you do to me? Why does my innate power feel so hard to control? And more importantly-" she peeked at her body beneath the blankets to confirm "Why am I naked, you filthy lecher?"
He shrugged. "Your power allowed you to indiscriminately cause these space quakes that I was asked to stop. Also your clothes disappeared when I absorbed your chakra – maryoku, I mean. If I allowed you to flee this dimension you would have just caused another space quake whenever you returned. So I needed to seal your power to avoid all that indiscriminate destruction. Kakashi's technique came in surprisingly handy. I just needed to alter the jutsu shiki to seal the power source"
"And what gives you the right to steal or suppress my powers? And do you really want me to believe that you – who struck down several humans so cruelly – care about their well being?"
"Strength. I vanquished you and took your powers. If I hadn't done that someone else would have eventually. Both americans and british agencies are looking to capture spirits for their own ends. I indeed don't care about the people, however the woman who summoned me here did. I am merely fulfilling her dying wish."
She scoffed. She could see the contempt he held in his eyes when he talked about "people".
It was at this time that their glare off was interrupted by a loud noise. One coming from her abdomen. Her stomach was growling in hunger from a day of exhaustion and being deprived of her maryoku.
"You must be famished. Here put one of these on, I'll treat you to something." He threw at her a bag that on further examination contained several sets of women's clothing. He continued, "I'll be waiting in the hallway ... um, what was your name again?"
"Don't have one. Give me one."
He stared at her with his one eye agape.
"I said I don't have a name. So give me one." She repeated.
"How about Sayuri?"
She glowered at him in disapproval.
"Hana? Reina? Asami? Fumiko?"
She disapproved of each one of them.
"Etsuko?"
That got her eyes to shine. "I like the sound of that one."
It was decided then. Etsuko she was. That's what her name would be.
General Tsukamoto looked at the crater before her. That was all that remained of the Tokonosu city. In the previous two years, no attempt had been done at ever rebuilding it. And for good reason. Tokonosu had been haunted even before being reduced to dust by the space quake. There had been rumours of undead mucking about before they were all incinerated by that spirit.
Efreet. Her flames had scorched all the residents of the city save for Marikawa. Shizuka had somehow managed to flee the city before it's complete obliteration. Her interrogation by internal security had managed to reveal plenty of juicy bits of information about what had gone down. She had been completely hysterical and claimed that their compatriots had all become undead one by one. Komuro Takashi, Miyamoto Rei, Takagi Saya, Hirano Kohta. All that had been left were her and the daughter of Busujima household. Saeko. Once seeking the safety of her father she had been torn apart to find him among the walking dead too. Supposedly that had been the straw that broke the camel's back. She had made a contract with the Phantom and chose to sacrifice the city to prevent the rot from spreading any further. Since then she had been the most sought after person by the intelligence agencies the world over. A human who had been confirmed to have had possessed the power of a spirit. The general public already believed her to be dead alongside her father and Marikawa had been directed by internal security to not disclose of her to the public.
Yet for all that, there had been no sighting of her. It had been as if she had disappeared into the thin ether. That is, until now. She looked at the crater with the binocular to confirm the visuals on the screen. And there she was. The seifuku of Fujimi High, the slit skirt and the katana sheathed at her waist. She didn't look a day older. But what had been even more peculiar were the results of the spiritronic harmonic analysis. The wavelengths of her space waves weren't at all angel like.
On the QLED, was displayed a simple phrase – "SS class threat, Demon King Asmodeus."
A/N: Merry Christmas and Happy new year, everyone! There just aren't many stories on this website with Sasuke as the protagonist, so I decided to write one for myself. Expect the updates to be sporadic.