Okimi
The blood churned as more hands breached its surface, skeletal fingers scraping and clutching at the air.
The heads emerged, dripping with fresh ocean blood, their expressions twisted with pain and betrayal. Their eyes—cloudy, yet unmistakably accusing—fixed on her with unwavering intensity.
"You stole my life!" one corpse rasped, its voice gurgling as blood dripped from its lips.
"You ripped me apart for scraps!" another snarled, its half-devoured face grotesquely dangling by sinews.
Okimi's pulse thundered in her ears as she tried to steel herself, but her knees buckled under the weight of their words.
"I did what I had to!" she shouted, her voice cracking.
"Who gave you the right to decide who lives and dies!? You should have died. I should have lived!" a voice from somewhere in the deep said.
"You don't understand—I ran the numbers…"
"Numbers?" a third figure sneered, its head lolling unnaturally to one side. Its mouth stretched wide in a chilling grin. "That's all we are to you, numbers. But we had loved ones, hopes, and dreams. All gone."
"I didn't—" Okimi began, but her words faltered as the figures crawled closer, pulling themselves onto the rock. Their limbs contorted, bones snapping audibly as they dragged their broken forms toward her.
The air grew colder. The crimson ocean below began to solidify, tendrils of frost spreading outward from an unseen source. The blood-ice crept toward her rock, its edges jagged and glistening like shattered glass.
Okimi unsheathed her sword. Jagged. Corrupted. This was Nora's sword. "Stay back!"
The corpses only laughed, their voices pocked with madness.
"You think you're the victim now?" one spat, its voice rising in fury. "You'll join us soon enough, Okimi."
Another lunged, clawing at her ankle. She swung the sword instinctively, its serrated blade slicing through the corpse. The figure crumbled into a pile of ash, but another took its place almost instantly.
The ice crept closer, its pace relentless. The blood ocean became fully crystallized. Now the approaching corpses were simply walking across the ice from all sides.
"You thought you could leave us in whatever hole you shit us out into," a voice boomed, a dissonant choir of her victims. One of the figures, taller and more grotesque than the others, rose above the crowd. Its face was a shifting mass of all the people she had killed, their features blending and twisting in an endless loop, yet all sharing one incriminating detail: they were covered in bite marks. "But we are part of you now," it continued. "We are every bite you took. Every life you ended. You can't fight us forever."
Okimi swung again, her sword cutting through the mass, but it merely reformed, its laughter echoing in the frozen air.
Okimi felt the cold biting at her heels, but she couldn't retreat—there was nowhere to go.
Her breaths came in short, frantic gasps. The faces of her victims closed in, their hands reaching, their voices a deafening litany of condemnation. The sword slipped from her fingers, clattering against the ice as Okimi sank to her knees.
"I didn't want this," she whispered, tears freezing on her cheeks.
The largest figure leaned in close, its many faces contorting into a singular, grotesque grin. "Neither did we."
A blade of pristine bloodless ice swept through the mass of corpses to her right, their forms shattering like crystal ice mirrors. To her left, a tail of flame danced through the air, scalding the corpses and producing… the disturbingly pleasant and familiar aroma of roasting meat that made her mouth water against her will.
Through the chaos emerged Kurotenshi and Yuki, their movements perfectly synchronized as they cut through the mass of writhing bodies. Steam rose where Kurotenshi's ghostly legs touched the frost-covered ground, each step melting perfect circles in the ice. Yuki's movements were fluid and precise, her ice techniques creating crystalline fractals that trapped and shattered the advancing corpses.
Kurotenshi
Kurotenshi shook Okimi. "Okimi! Okimi!" But she only continued laughing, that mad look on her face.
Yuki placed her hand on Kurotenshi's shoulder. "Right now, what she needs from you is the other arm."
Kurotenshi looked down at his hand. He'd forgotten he was still holding Miu's arm. His fingers were digging in so he loosened up his grip and took a deep breath.
Right now it was easier to just follow instructions than to think. He placed the arm over Okimi's stump. The same stump that was… his fault. No. He couldn't think about that now. He carefully applied his medical jutsu, and let the warm green light fuse Miu's arm to Okimi.
For a while, he just stared at Okimi's arm, now moving as she squirmed on the ground. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Yuki, her eyes full of tears.
"Hold on to these, Kurotenshi," Yuki said. She handed him an armful of weapons: Miu's wooden sword, her Corrupt Saw Blades, and Nora's serrated sword. Then, she picked up Okimi and threw her over one shoulder. Over the other, went Miu.
"Okimi. She's been like this. I think. I think it's my fault," Kurotenshi said, whimpering.
"What do you mean?" Yuki asked.
"I think my sharingan was corrupted inside the dragon. It's normal for the sharingan to change, but this… I think they've turned into something evil. I should cut them out. I should cut them out now before they hurt anyone else."
Yuki looked into his eyes appraisingly. She placed her hand on her chin before speaking. "Kurotenshi, I'm not going to be as nice as Okimi was. If you try to do anything stupid to yourself, I'm just going to freeze you and drag you back to your village," she said, crossing her arms and puckering out a lip.
Despite the situation, Kurotenshi couldn't help but laugh at the word 'nice' being used to describe Okimi. "I know. No more crazy stuff. Okimi's going to get better, and then she will fix my eyes."
Kurotenshi stood up. "No more detours. We avoid people and get back to Konoha."
He'd said that, but it had been slow going… until Kurotenshi remembered that he could summon horses. He'd been cut off from summoning since he'd been in the corruption, but now it was back up.
When nightfall came, Yuki said, "We stop here. We need to regain our strength after that fight."
"We need to get back and warn the village," Kurotenshi said.
"How far is it?"
"...A few days travel normally. Maybe one more day by horseback." Kurotenshi admitted.
And stopping did give him time to address a different issue. So, begrudgingly, they set up camp in that shrubby flat dry terrain between the desert and the forest.
Not long after, they sat by the campfire, eating roasted meat from a boar Yuki had killed. As he bit into the tough meat, the succulent flavor of pork filled his mouth. It was pork! He hadn't had something so delicious since he'd entered the corruption. But the best part was, it wasn't people. For a moment, he let all of his problems melt away like a tender cut of meat, which this one decidedly was not, but that hardly mattered.
And then he looked at Okimi, who lay next to him. She'd grown more silent, but would giggle and twitch every now and then. What was most concerning though… He placed his hand over her forehead. She did not have a fever. Quite the opposite; she was cold to the touch. "I've been thinking, Yuki… if it was my technique that made her like this, I should be able to undo it, right?"
"Do you think you really can?"
"I don't know. What if I just make it worse? My eyes are corrupted. I don't know if I can control them."
"You need to turn your eyes back on. Get a feel for them. Figure out what you can do. They are a part of you; you will know whether you can help Okimi."
"I believe you, but how do you even know that…" Kurotenshi looked up towards the sky. This time, he wouldn't risk harming anyone. But he was then struck by the beauty of heaven's tapestry, the stars and nebula that admonished the night sky. He'd been longing for the light of the sun for sun long, he'd forgotten about the other beauty he'd missed, that which could only be seen at night. Then he felt a wave of guilt that Okimi and Miu could not look at this sky with him. Could not taste the succulent pork.
He had to wipe away a few tears and compose himself once again. Then, looking back up, he activated his eyes once more and felt them, different, more powerful. He concentrated on the flow of his chakra. He could indeed feel that familiar putrid energy of the corruption flowing into his eyes… and out of them, up into the sky.
He tried to remember how he'd felt when he'd looked at Okimi. Yes… it felt like… madness. Like some of the zones he'd felt in the corruption. He'd been too full of anguish before to figure out what it did, much less control it, but this time… "I can control it. I can help Okimi."
Yuki sprung to her feet, "Really!?"
Kurotenshi grabbed Okimi's hand, then held out the other for Yuki.
Kurotenshi and Yuki took their positions beside Okimi, standing back-to-back in a triangle formation. Kurotenshi held Miu's Saw Blade in a white-knuckled grip, while Yuki's hand flowed through one-handed seals, ice crystals forming in the air around her.
But the ice continued its march across those sanguine waters, closing in on them. Yuki made hand-signs, staring intensely at the blood ice, yet it seemed to ignore whatever command she was giving it. As the ice began to overtake the human-like forms, rather than slowing their march, more aberrations splintered off from the existing circle of foes grew tighter and tighter.
And their taunts kept coming, many lost in the cacophony of almost-human voice, though some rang louder than others, "Do you even remember my name?"
"I never knew your name!"
"Even worse. We were never people to you. You slaughtered us like animals."
An elderly man's voice trembled with rage. "We offered you shelter from the storm. We shared our last scraps of food with you. And you repaid our kindness with death!"
"You told us you'd lead us to safety," a young woman's voice boomed. "We trusted you. Our whole group trusted you!"
A gargling of voices converged and delivered their judgement, over and over: "Murderer! Butcher! Monster! Murderer! Butcher! Monster! Murderer! Butcher! Monster!"
"I'm sorry I ate you!" Kurotenshi said, tears running down his eyes. Where he swung his saw blade, the bodies retreated a bit, giving them some small respite in their otherwise unrelenting advance.
Okimi's eyes widened. She knew what she must do. She muttered, "This goes against everything I am, but…" She inhaled deeply, hands trembling. Why was this so terrifying? She's faced monsters, Nora… she'd even pushed her fear away enough to deal with Koumovadra. She could do this?
Okimi felt a hand on her shoulder and looked over to see Yuki smiling at her. Yuki's nod was the push she needed to awkwardly stumble into her next sentence: "Eating people. You people. It was…It was fucked up, okay! It was so fucked up what I had to do." Tears began welling in her eyes.
Kurotenshi was staring at her like he'd just seen an apple fall up.
"I pretended like I didn't care. I held everything together because I had to. I had to for so long and…" Okimi's words broke as she starting sobbing.
Kurotenshi placed a hand on her shoulder. Yuki took Okimi's hand.
"I-I… you're more to me than a tool, alright Kurotenshi."
Tears began welling in Kurotenshi's face as well. "pretended, huh? I'm so stupid. I fell for it. I called you evil."
"Weak. I'm weak. I've finally broken. It's all over for me," Okimi said.
Kurotenshi snort-laughed through his tears. "You're the strongest person I know."
"No one is invincible, though," Yuki said.
"Look," Kurotenshi said.
Okimi raised her head. The bodies had retreated and the ice was melting. "Can I still survive like this…"
"You keep doing whatever you have to to survive," Kurotenshi said. "Just be honest with us."
"...and with myself"
The sunset was now visible over the blood ocean. Was it even an ocean of blood, or was it just illuminated by that lovely evening light?
Kurotenshi took her hand. She took Yuki's hand, feeling a strange weight lifted.
There was a bright light that seemed to fill the entire space, and the next thing Okimi knew, she was lying down, staring up at the night sky. "I just had the weirdest fucking…"
She looked at Yuki and Kurotenshi standing over her. Kurotenshi's eyes changed from that strange new sharingan form back to normal.
"...genjutsu. Or a corruption thing," She finished.
If you've made it this far in, first of all, thank you! You must have enjoyed my story to have made it this far. Second, I wrote a book, unrelated to Naruto. If you like my writing though, I'd appreciate your support. This site does not allow links, but you can find it on Amazon if you search "Baby Eater by Colette Bellard."