"Your fury thrills me, fills me with liquid fire. Come now, rake my face with your nails, gouge my eyes and tear my skin. If you hate me so, then rip out my hair! Toss me on your pyre and watch me burn! Show me the passion you hide from your family, from your precious Kami. Savor my abuse and draw the Master's gaze!"
—Partial translation from an eroded torture transcript. The nameless woman, the first recorded prophet of Jashin, later sentenced to death for obscenity, indecency, and blasphemy.
Chapter Two: Haze
Ino's chest heaved, breathing in all the air she could gulp down. Sore, everything was sore, aching, or burning; from her well-defined biceps to her abs and calves, everything hurt—even her butt. Face flush, hair matted and tangled, sports bra half-dark with sweat—she felt disgusting. She was in desperate need of a shower. She had thought being a trained ninja would have given her an edge in endurance, but even so her body had given out, leaving her to eye the arched ceiling of their personal gym.
Was she really so out of shape, or was her partner just a freak? She already knew the answer, but her mind incessantly barked the question anyways. She eyed her with disdain.
The other woman was a riot of colors blended into harmonious divinity—her skin rich caramel, one eye a deep and gentle blue, yet the other a vibrant green. Her hair was long, straight silver, tied at her neck and flowing past the small of her back. A long sarong of lavish, sheer material tightly tied to the wide flare of her hips, a shawl of the same majestic white wrapped around her shoulders, falling just beneath her otherwise bare breasts.
The older woman stood on little toes in a perfect pirouette, only now stopping and taking notice of Ino's exhaustion. There was not a single bead of sweat anywhere, her breathing not the slightest bit elevated in the past three hours.
"Enough dancing for today?" She asked, feigning ignorance.
It took a second to pick apart those words from the haze of a thundering heart. "I'm…gonna…hit you." Ino gasped between heavy intakes of air.
The woman cradled her face in absurd fear. "Oh my, whatever did I do to deserve such a thing!"
The woman was suddenly over her, odd-colored eyes peering down at her with a smile. "Like some help up, or do you want to go on?"
Ino chewed down several gulps of air with a mouth dry enough to pass as sandpaper. "Help… me… up." Her pulse was louder than thunder.
With a pleased smile, she reached down and hoisted the sprawled woman up as if she weighed nothing. Within a few seconds, a bottle of water cold enough to sweat was handed off to her as well. "Drink," she ordered Ino. Half the bottle was gone almost instantly.
As Ino drank, the woman walked behind and started fixing her hair. Over the course of the dance lesson, her wild mane of beautifully kept, but still unruly, hair had become a messy, tangled parody of its original luster. Half of it was stuck to her shoulders and back; the ends now plastered to her inner thighs thanks to her stint on the floor. "You're a mess," she said while pulling all of her hair back into some functional ponytail, gently combing through it with fingers to get out the biggest knots, and then tying it off with Ino's thoroughly abused scrunchie.
"There. That's something." The woman said, still motherlyly fussing about Ino's back, from adjusting the ponytail to untucking the fabric of her shorts clinging to her shaking thighs or fixing the awkwardly bunched-up top.
By second nine, Ino had finished her water. Her body felt like a heavy boulder supported by a couple of quivering sticks set on fire. A push, a breath, a feather drifting onto a single shoulder, would be enough for the weight to give way, crumpling to the floor again.
Oh, she had vastly overestimated herself. She'd be fine, Ino had said, pridefully stating that spending most of her life as a ninja had given her great endurance. For the first hour, that had been true enough; the second was when the burning and mild sweating had started; and the last one had taxed and stretched muscles she forgot even existed.
It was her own fault, mostly, that she was so thoroughly drained. She had been the one to pester Inanna about a dual performance. Of the relatively small congregation, one of the highlights of the meager few hundred patrons was Inanna's monthly performances. The way she danced across the stage like smoke, clad in little more than sheer wisps of silk or cotton, was hypnotic. It wasn't until Ino first saw the woman dance that she truly appreciated the difference between sexy and sensual.
The crowd ate from the palm of her hand, puppets with their attentions eagerly pulled by her fingers and toes, plucked by a fluid body roll, and stretched taut in desperation at a knowing, powerful smile and dominating eyes. Despite never being fully naked, even if only technically, Inanna riled up the crowd more than any other. Back in her teens, Ino had seen girls vigorously shaking their butts in a thick crowd, only to grab a handful of desperate horndogs. With a simple, artful arch of her back, Inanna commanded hundreds. Even clothed, the way she contorted or emphasized her silhouette made nude dancers seem modest.
In a flash of bravery, Ino finally admitted to Inanna, one of the people closest to her heart, that she wanted to try and dance alongside her one day. To move like she did, to dominate a crowd so subtly, to command every man and woman's eyes with nothing but movements and expression. In her heart of hearts, it was hard to say if it was because she wanted to be closer to Inanna or if she was envious of just how superior she was. Maybe a poisonous cocktail of both and more.
That had spiraled into this first lesson. She had been pushed several times to stop, but Ino was nothing if not persistent. That stubbornness had helped during her ninja and medical training; it had even landed her a husband. Naruto, as bright and strong as he is, was denser to the opposite sex than the core of a star.
His old problem with women was actually sad, if she thought about it for too long.
Pretty fingers suddenly plucked the empty bottle from her weakened grasp and tossed it to the side without thought. It sounded like it hit something metal over towards Naruto's bench press, but caring was a luxury she hadn't the energy for. Multicolored eyes swayed from side to side, circling, inspecting her condition. Inanna eyed her quivering body with disappointment.
"Oh, my sweet, I should have stopped you sooner," she pointed out, thinking out loud. Hands tenderly gripped Ino's shoulders and guided her towards a nearby lounge, easing her weak body down. "We'll do more later."
Ino was less gasping and more just heavily breathing now. "Same time tomorrow?" She gulped out, more as a joke than anything else.
Inanna chuckled, delicately checking the younger woman's pulse at her neck. "More like next week." She parted bangs looping down into light green eyes, clicking her tongue in mild disappointment. "I should've stopped you sooner, but you looked so into it." She surprised her with a boop to her nose. "What did I tell you about trying to keep up with me?"
One of the bright sides of already being flushed with exhaustion was that it made embarrassment a bit less obvious. "I know… I just didn't think I was so out of shape."
"Oh, trust me." With gentle fingers on her cheek, Inanna turned the pale girl's face towards herself. "Your shape is perfect as is. No one can keep up with me, not even that husband of yours. You should know this by now."
Ino's face fell a little, her pride a wounded animal trying to limp away without being seen. "Yeah. I guess you're right."
The older woman saw the face and snickered. Poor thing was embarrassed about biting off a little more than she could chew. She leaned their cheeks together in comfort. "Speaking of which, I'm sure he's gonna be plenty mad at me for tiring you out," she fake pouted.
There was something about that sentence that made Ino pause. A slight tone underpins everything—an implication buried under a tease. "Wait, is he back?" Inanna smiled devilishly. "How long?"
"Oh, I don't know, an hour? Something like that. I'm not too good at this whole 'keeping time' thing." Inanna emphasized her point with air quotes, just to put salt in the wound. Originally, when she sensed Naruto's return home, she figured that he would come by to greet them sooner or later, but he never did. She'd been curious as to what was keeping him, but his wife was just too distracting.
Ino leaned between her legs and groaned, like a caretaker at her wits end with an unruly child. "Great! I was gonna have dinner ready and everything! And I'm gonna be even more late now since I gotta shower. Ugh!" She grunted in annoyance.
"What's wrong?" Inanna leaned against the arm of the lounge, leaving a little space between them. "If you're that concerned with time, get something going, then take a shower."
"Because I'm nasty and smell like a kennel." Ino lifted her arms and sniffed for emphasis. The odor was a punch to the face. She coughed. "Oh god, that's awful."
The darker woman's face was too close too fast a second later. Ino tensed in surprise. She inhaled deeply. "Really? What I smell is rather pleasant."
Now the blushing was stronger than training or exercise. She could feel it. "Ew! Don't sniff my sweat, you perv! No one wants to hear that!"
"Really, 'cause I know someone who does," she sang, giving Ino a playful wink. The blush got worse. "Besides, you're way too battered to be doing anything like that. Just go out to eat."
That earned an annoyed groan. Ino chose to ignore that first part. "It's midnight; there's no one open now. Besides, I wanted to have dinner at home for a change. It's so rare for all three of us to be free at the same time." She pouted, disheartened.
Oh, right. She had forgotten about that little detail. Time was not something she paid much attention to. Inanna then got up, delicately taking Ino's clammy hands, cradling them like she would fragile porcelain, and guided her to stand on still-quivering legs. "Okay, change of plans then. No more of that pouting, sweeting, as adorable as it may be. You go freshen up and I will deal with the rest."
Before Ino could respond Inanna twisted, moving around and back in between her and the lounge with the seamless fluidity of swirling water. The soft fabric twisted and brushed across her body, tickling like the strokes of a feather duster across naked skin. Fingers gripped onto her hips from behind, cold on her flush skin, sparking comforting jolts of electricity down her spine. "Now," her voice whispered into her ear, close enough for the blonde hair on her neck to prickle. "Shower. And remember to keep it on the cold side; don't want you passing out."
The hands gently pushed, urging her several steps forward. Ino turned around to protest.
The woman was gone, like an imaginary friend suddenly unremembered.
…
When Naruto first entered his home it had been dark, empty, and clean. Passing the kitchen to his right, he noticed that it seemed untouched for a while. Shoes left on the tile by the door, he inhaled the familiar fragrances of home as he scuffled across wooden flooring, passed walls lined with pictures, and stepped down into the living room. He could still hear them, however, lingering from a set of stairs to his far left. A random scuffle, a groan, a moan, or a laugh breezed down from the second floor, telling him that they were still here and in good spirits. He would let them enjoy whatever they were doing while it lasted.
On the wall perpendicular to the second-floor stairs was a grand bookshelf, tall as him and several more in width, packed with hundreds of books and scrolls, sectioned into a series of neat squares and rectangles instead of plain shelving. This collection spanned every possible variance, from political science to history, pulp fiction, trashy romance, straight smut, cookbooks, psychology, mythology, and many more. This was a combination of both his and Ino's collections, gathered in a single spot, both for convenience and as a nice centerpiece for the room. A few ornaments decorated the shelves: pictures, carvings, figures, and other such things. One of these trinkets was a wooden box, bigger than a standard paperback but smaller than a hardback, decorated with an inverted triangle at its center. Naruto took it from the shelf and stuffed it under his left arm.
He turned around and made his way towards the center of the room. As he passed a large, two-tiered coffee table, he saw something that made him pause. His weapon rested against the longer of his two couches, leering at him with a face that almost begged to be picked up and used.
A mace of worship, given to Naruto by Inanna as a weapon. Its wooden shaft was ancient yet firm, a chunk of living history reinforced with metal and properly decorated for veneration. Filigree and lush, thorny vines were tattooed along its length, swelling at several points in clusters of swollen grapes. Its centerpiece is a gilded face, more than a skull but without much detail, crowned with a circlet of pinecones, clutched by four figures positioned in the four cardinal directions, two men and two women, like a claw gripping a lump of crystal.
This divine artifact was more than a simple cudgel, however. Thyrsus, while neither sentient nor sapient, certainly had some rudimentary intelligence and would give pleasure or pain to whoever it struck at its own whims if used thoughtlessly. A single strike had brought ninjas to their knees, backs twisting, eyes rolling, screaming in ecstasy as pleasure ruptured blood vessels. Others less fortunate had felt agony so extreme that some felt death was a better alternative. It took deliberate concentration on Naruto's part to pull back whatever extreme it wanted to indulge in, and even greater effort if he wanted to spare an opponent either. More than that, Thyrsus seemed to have some animalistic awareness, pulsing and throbbing in what he assumed to be excitement at approaching dangers, like a proper adrenaline junkie, even if Naruo himself was unaware of them. More than one ambush or assassination had been foiled by the club's alertness.
It was with this weapon that he bested a five-tailed monster. That day he had learned Tailed Beasts do, in fact, feel pain, and their screams were terrible things.
It was a partner, as much as a weapon could truly be, and the people it allowed to wield itself could be counted on one hand. Naruto picked it up, balancing its weight in his dominant hand. Sure enough, a warm, phantom sensation of pulsating veins enveloped his fingers, as if powered by a mini-heartbeat.
Was it simply eager to be used again, or was it possibly angered at the thought of being left behind in favor of the spear? Could it even know such a thing? It wouldn't shock him if it somehow did. He questioned why it was down here in the living room and not in the master bedroom, where he always kept it when not with him, but wrote it off as another mystery he would never solve.
"Relax," Naruto murmured. "You were too far away to grab. I'll bring you with me from here on out, alright?" The warmth gradually receded. Naruto didn't actually know if it could understand him or not. Inanna was annoyingly cryptic when it came to this sort of stuff. He assumed it was similar to how dogs responded to the tone of their master's voice rather than the words themselves, but that was just an assumption on his part.
Naruto leaned it against an arm of his couch and plopped himself down on a luxurious chair, big enough for three people to squeeze onto. Its black leather was soft and smooth to the touch, plump with the highest quality foam the Land of Fire had, with amazing back and neck support. At first, he had been skeptical about this thing being worth the money, but Ino had been right all along, as she so often was. As much as he loved their bed, losing this chair would hurt so much more.
After unbuttoning his suit vest and sighing in peace at the release, Naruto released the latches sealing his box. His hands fiddled within for a few seconds, preparing something, before pulling free another gift of Inanna's.
The pipe looked to be carved of ivory bone, with the metal mouthpiece being outlined by gleaming gold and purple and the opening end bending upwards to act as the filling bowl. Words of strange origin were delicately etched onto the surface, so fine that only by holding it to the eyes could they be seen. Odd forms of serpentine creatures and feminine things were more obviously seen, though still fine and masterful in detail.
The friction of super-dense chakra concentrated on a fingertip was enough to ignite his chosen poison for the night. Inhaling, he let the world around him be flushed away. Tingling sensations danced at the edge of perception, tracing his skin with gentle massages that could somehow be both real and imaginary simultaneously. Phantom fingers rubbed his temples and stroked his scalp; the blood rush was real enough, as were the tendrils of pleasure coaxing his muscles to soften. Setting the box aside, Naruto sighed in relief back into his beloved chair, pipe languid against his chest, blue eyes fluttering shut, and let the stresses of today drift away.
Smoking was probably the most normal vice of his. He had it under control now, but years ago, when he and Ino had first been outed, it had been much harder. During that awful time he'd relied on it to keep a straight head, dependent on the high to get him through another uncertain day. In retrospect it had only made things worse, but that was a wound long healed and scarred over by now. Ino and Inanna both had helped with that. The blends he smoked now were all recipes given by Inanna: mixes of various plants, distilled mushrooms, and the like. All of which were much safer than anything he tried during those dark days. Nothing she had given him was more dangerous than any alcohol on the market.
He also had Jashin's guidance to lean on. The Third Pillar states: Deny yourself freely, for as fallow fields yield the richest harvests, pleasure gathers its sweetest strength when restrained. Jashin emphasizes the importance of allowing yourself time to recover and rebuild your desires. Just as a field needs time to rest before producing a bountiful harvest, so too does the body's capacity for pleasure. Vices need not be denied, Jashin teaches, but channeled into productive forms that enrich your life rather than dictate it, through mindful, ritualistic indulgence tempered by stern abstinence. Naruto did not dictate when to smoke, but he demanded of himself two weeks, at least, before another light. He could go months without smoking at all. Four years ago, that would've felt like an impossible hell.
Naruto pulled at the lever of his chair to kick out his legs and fully recline into the softness. He closed his eyes and floated away. Time passed—how much he could not say, floating on that current of smoke. He might've been sleeping. As his eyes remained closed, the finger-like sensations grew bolder, more defined, becoming startlingly real. Whispers just on the verge of imaginary cooed around his ears, tingling his scalp with their closeness, sending jolts of electricity down his spine. The words were incomprehensible, but the tone was anything but: loving, sensual, encouraging, the impossible voices sang to him…
Then it all stopped. The sounds, the fingers, even the blood rush. Naruto jerked to awareness at the sheer abruptness.
He wasn't alone anymore. A woman stood just out of reach of his chair.
She was too beautiful to exist, and that was not mere poetry. She was uncanny. Face too symmetrical, with hips like an old fertility idol rendered into perfect flesh; she was an unnatural thing, but the kind that drove people mad with lust and admiration rather than fear and uncertainty. A scar, the only imperfection to be seen, was under her right eye, a rune of an upside-down triangle held like a perpetual teardrop. From a distance the mark gave her face a certain character, as a single mole added to the mature allure of a woman.
"Inanna," Naruto muttered, rubbing at his adjusting eyes. "Don't scare me like that."
Her smile was enchanting, showing off too-perfect teeth. "Apologies. Ino will be down in a few—taking a shower."
Naruto slowly settled back into the chair, in a more comfortable position. "So, how was your night?"
"Fun! The crowd was especially rowdy today."
"More so than normal? That scares me, hehe." Naruto chuckled nervously.
"Oh, they were randy alright." Inanna's spine bent, bending backwards unnaturally low, as if more fluid than bone or muscle, the crown of her head a whisper away from touching the ground through her pooling hair. She looked from between her own legs at Naruto with a sly, wicked smile. "I don't think there were enough Hetaira to entertain them all!"
A tongue slithered from between plump, glossy lips—longer than two middle fingers—and forked like a snake, though not as thin. The wet muscle writhed theatrically in the air, twisting and undulating with teasing promises, then sensually curling back into her mouth. "Their desperation, their excitement, was such a sweet morsel!"
Naruto looked at her with a smile, but it was awkward. Inanna's mood shifted, her face falling into contemplation. She had been with the two of them for a few years now—for her, it was hardly even a blink of an eye, yet their connection was potent and soul-deep. Even without probing his mind, she could read the hesitation eating away at the unusually rigid expression of his face.
Inanna contorted her body, twisting her torso then her hips, crouching on her hands, supporting her body with a single leg. Her movements were unbound by mortal joints or rigid mechanics, with all the freedom of smoke drifting through the wind, the curves of her body flowing like the soft bends in a river. Despite this, her head never moved, her bi-colored eyes locked onto Naruto as she shifted her body's direction. Were she any less alluring, the show would have been outright disturbing.
Now upright and facing him, she sauntered over, his eyes glued to her's in melancholic contemplation. He was trying to hide it, but failing. She stopped, spotting the staff at the corner of her eye with casual surprise, and reached out for it.
She picked Thyrsus up by the haft. "Such an impatient thing," she mumbled like a scolding mother. "It seems to be in a sadistic mood." He didn't know how she could tell. There was a time back in the Hidden Mist when Naruto battled one of their Seven Great Swordsmen. A strong man, hardened by decades of murder and war, with a larger than necessary blade. A single crack against his fingers had been enough to cause the man to break down into tears, at which point he cleaved off his own hand to end the agony. Apparently, the pain of a freshly chopped limb was a relief in comparison. For as changed as Jashin's service has made them, not even he or Ino would be able to take the full brunt of Thyrsus's sadism. Yet.
Inanna brought the head high and clapped it down onto her own open palm. The slap of skin was too loud for his taste. Naruto's jaw sagged open at the craziness. Her whole body stifled and heaved with labored breathing, but she did not cry. She mewled like a kitten. For a short time she just stood there, basking in a gleeful glow, sucking in air, as aftershocks wound her exposed muscles taut, twitching and swaying. "Such sweetness you give me, Thyrsus," she sang, like she had just tasted the most indulgent dessert. "Now behave." Naruto looked at her with eyes wide in shock.
It didn't take too long for her heaving chest to regain its previous composure. "There," she eventually breathed out in a shaking voice, wiping a thin line of drool from plump lips with her free thumb. She returned it to the arm of the couch. "That should keep it satisfied for a while."
Naruto forced words to come out. He was desperate for anything to fill the silence. "It would be nice if I could know my own weapon as well as you do."
She wiggled a painted nail at him. "In time, little fox, in time. Until then, enjoy the mystique, the not knowing. Fascination is a pleasure unto itself, and so easy to lose."
The familiar scents of warm sandalwood and spiced honey snaked into his senses as she closed the already short gap. She perched herself on the arm of his chair with the causal grace of a desert cat, her subtle laughter a musical chime threatening to lull him asleep. Soft fingers combed through his hair, then down over his whiskered cheeks.
"I guess Ino's earlier call was more trouble than she initially thought, huh?" She was too perceptive for her own good, Naruto growled in his mind. When in more depressive moods, it got under his skin that the women of his life had this uncanny ability to know his psyche better than himself. It was like being denied the privilege of private thought.
Instead of verbally responding, his lips, still tingling from the phantom touch of the pipe, twisted into a reluctant smile. Without needing anything else, she understood. Of course she did. Her touch, a familiar haven, tugged at the back of his head. He fell toward her lap, sinking into the familiar warmth and scents her body offered.
Her fingers, cool against his forehead, brushed away a stray wisp of smoke-laced hair. "Let all those thoughts drift away," she murmured, her voice a loving purr. He mumbled something—a vague echo of the anxieties the pipe smoke hadn't been able to suppress.
Her wandering hand slithered over his shirt, slowly caressing the ridges of his back and side muscles with a comforting warmth and tenderness. A sigh rippled through his chest as he buried his face into her thighs. Her hand dipped into his hair, kneading away tension with all the magic of a comfort spell. The world shrank to just the rhythm of their breaths, troubled thoughts nothing more than wisps of fading smoke.
Inanna made a come-hither motion with a painted nail. The surrounding smoke all coalesced into a concentrated smear, pulled by will alone, directly against her face. With a deep breath, she took in most of what it had to offer. "Ah," she signed out in understanding. "Lyaios. The perfect thing for an agitated mind."
She patted the head in her lap. "No need to say what it is. The Great One watches over the two of you, his first prophets in over a thousand years. Follow the path you two have chosen, and you'll find him there. As the First Pillar states: 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Love is the law. Love under will.' Can you do that for me?" She asked softly.
"... Yeah," he mumbled into her stomach. It was half-hearted at best.
"Good." She gently pushed his face away from her lap to stand. "So long as you do, you and Ino will never be separated again." She patted the creases off her fabric. "Speaking of which, I know it's late and all, but would you be a doll and cook up dinner tonight? That dance lesson she wanted has her barely able to stand. It'll be a nice distraction from... well, whatever it is."
Naruto was taking a deep inhale of his pipe as she talked. Still nothing, like he was smoking water vapor. When he spoke, clouds wafted from his mouth and nose. "Of course…" A cough interrupted him, jerking his shoulders, hacking up a fine mist. "Of course I will. We should have plenty of stuff in the fridge."
Inanna clapped her hands together. "Good. I'll be at the church and let you love birds talk things out tonight." She turned on the balls of her bare feet, as if making to leave in the middle of their conversation.
Naruto perked up at that. "What, why are you leaving now? You can be here when we talk about it."
Inanna gave him a coy smile over the shoulder. "Tempting, but best saved for another time, lover boy. Whatever is running around the pretty head of yours has nothing to do with me. Catch up tomorrow, yeah?"
She didn't let him answer. With a snap of long, slender fingers, the feelings returned—no, they gushed, as if held at bay by a dam, built up, and released on command, flooding Naruto's mind and drowning his soul. Heaving waves of relaxation weighed him down into the chair as eye-glazing stimulations licked up and down his form, from toes to the crown of his skull.
She smiled at Naruto's groans and sighs, giggled, and turned to walk away. She was facing a wall but strode confidently towards it, like it was a door that would open for her anyway. Her body broke, first like beads of sweat running, quickly growing, cascading into ectoplasmic colors of running wax. Her body fell apart, oozing and seeping into openings and crevices that did not exist. In just a few heartbeats, there was no sign of her ever existing at all.
Except her voice, softly cackling like a playful succubus that had cast her spell. Her cooing words echoed in the minds of the drifting Naruto and the hair-lathering Ino in the shower at the same time: Till next time, my sweeties
(End of Chapter Two)
Author's Notes: So… umm, I can explain myself, lol! I would like to say I had some excuse for this being late, but the truth is I was just running through my games. Spent around sixty hours between Dark Souls 1 and 3, another forty for Stellar Blade, and now I'm doing replays of Elden Ring, re-platinuming to refresh before the DLC drops next week. Simply put, a lot of my writing time was eaten up by all that. At least this chapter is 5K words, so it's a bit beefy to compensate, I hope. I'm gonna try to bang out the next chapter of Spiraling before the DLC drops, because I have no clue how long that's gonna take me, and I don't want it to be delayed any more, but no promises.
So yeah, other than that little PSA, how was this chapter?