His words felt empty within his place. Karumo emerged from the chair in a lingered fashion and began to walk forward in the empty abyss of it all. He spoke outwards in his similar sarcastic and snarky fashion as if he were defying the place he was in.

"This is certainly fun..."

The words let out but nothing else came in clearly. There was no sound despite his voice being clear within his head and for all of it, he was omniscient of everything like watching from above it all but still perfectly in control of himself. He was powerless and yet felt like a god in this world. Maybe it was pride, making him realize his own arrogance in his death but he couldn't even be certain this was death. Everything felt real, and that was just the problem. He felt it. As he patted his hands against his shoulder and brushed his hand against his jacket, it was all a real sensation.

He hadn't felt it for decades, not since the last time he'd visited a place like this. Much more different, and much more haunting. Before, it felt like a restraint. He had lost his sense of touch, after he and his family were attacked. His mother, father, and brother were all brutalized before Karumo himself had the sharp edge of a katana tear through his back and spine. Lucky to even walk, Karumo lost his sense of touch and as he sat in his unconsciousness, he couldn't even begin to contemplate the restraints in life that would follow him.

But here, it felt like the weight of his life was being lifted from him. The weight of the world and everything was freeing up. He stepped even further and found himself at a sort of translucent wall. Pressing his hand into the soft material that warped and bubbled, he pushed within to be greeted by the horrific scene in front of him. The one that had brought him here before. Watching the horror as it unfolded. The purple eyes of Karumo's older self widened in shock and horror, anger even before his attention was broken by a younger version of himself.

"You know what this is, piece it together." the boy looked up. The younger version of Karumo was no longer on the ground but instead standing beside him and looking up at him. His eyes were solid purple with black pupils, undeveloped and inexperienced. Yet, he spoke with confidence and made no move towards Karumo.

"This is the death of my family. A memory, seeing it over like they said. So I am dead?"

"Probably not yet." the boyhood Karumo spoke as he began to walk to the still image of the bandits who were impaling his mother to the ground. The boy walked towards the bandit and looked at his person from bottom to top.

"That's not what I meant. You know what this is, what did we learn here?" he turned back to the adult Karumo who was frozen in place. Able to move if he wanted but not able to draw his own conscious into doing so.

"How important family is?" Karumo's eyes would squint in confusion as he looked towards his younger self.

"You're not getting it. What's the point of growing up if you don't learn anything..." the boy seemed to jump off a tree stump and fall to the ground, hardly seven years old at the time. He sighed and walked back towards Karumo.

"Here, you learned revenge." The final word seemed to echo out around him as if it were reverberating from a trumpet in a closed room nearby. It haunted him as the scene shifted.

The voice grew more mature as the room and image spun, Karumo crouched to avoid it, hide himself from it but was merely subjected to the rant as he fell victim to it all.

"You dedicated your life to it early on, remember?" A much older version of himself, a teenager emerged with a headband and a sour look on his face. Staring in a mirror as he tied it to his head, a single line in his eyes, the very first advancement of his clan's kekkai genkai visible.

"Look at all of it, all the time you wasted and energy you spent. Lives lost and friends gained but for what? What did you gain from your revenge? Your pursuit of wrath? It earned you nothing!" The teenage Karumo punched and shattered the mirror as the adult Karumo saw himself in the remains of the mirror behind the broken glass, panic grew on his face as a flurry of images and memories passed by him. His teenage years, missions spent with Fukai and Harichimo as they hunted down bandits and criminals and then beyond that to becoming leader of his clan. An angry look still on his face as the world stopped and Karumo ended up staring face to face with his teenage self.

The two version of himself staring at each other, Karumo broke the silence for a minute as his heart felt like it was racing.

"So what is this? Death, or some poor lesson to learn from my psyche?" his breath was short and anger slid off the tip of his tongue as he stared down his younger self.

"You were always so good at these and now you're hopeless. You can learn whatever you want or nothing. You're not here to tell yourself what to do, you fool..." the teenager left off and turned his back away from him, stepping into another translucent wall and paying no mind to his adult self left standing behind him.

---

The real Karumo kept locked up and laid down on a rough cot in some darkly lit room in whatever forsaken place. An IV dripped from his arm and he muttered in his unconsciousness. He was alive and twitching occassionally, kept all by himself in an underground cavern of rooms and hideouts to be bargained with when he recovered. Unluckily for them it had been many a month since the proud Tsuchikage had fallen asleep, and little other than murmured words gave any real sign of his condition.


[1049 words]

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Faint... so very faint. And stale, but it was there. Could she really afford to doubt now? Pressing forwards she would stride deeper and deeper beneath the bust streets of Iwagakure no Sato. So very far below the surface, miles she expected. But with each step, two familiar scents grew thicker. One like the sweetest poison she knew ouh so well yet hadn't actually smelt it, not truly since his blood littered soaking into the vial sand and the other? A scent she recognized but in many ways prayed it was not of whom evidence pointed. Only venom laced her taste buds as she moved closer. For miles she would walk, coming into contact with nothing but dirt and rocks, following far off scents, the footprints but not the far-off noises, for sounds was as good as any desert mirage when deep within tunnels, the sound echoing and spreading, enough to cause disorientation to the nest of minds if followed. Though used to solitude she now longed for contact, to find the owners of the scents that only grew thicker the further she walked. No maps within the village had shown such elaborate tunnels, be they documents from the library or the university, not even in the Tsuchikages office, she had been to all three, memorized and categorized all of the information on the tunnels that were available to her, be they public or private. No, the only bit of information she had gleaned had led her to a familiar group of whom she encountered once before, that seemed to pop up far too much for her liking, leaving a bitter taste upon her tongue.  

With the multiple sounds, from muttered voices to the groan of bowing wood within the tunnels, ricocheting about the surrounding area’s it would be the disturbance of pebble clattering and skidding along the ground that would alert her to the incoming of someone or something, giving her the chance to change her direction as a small effort of chakra pumped throughout her body allowing her clothes to stick in place to her form, hugging her curves closely as she stepped up the wall before lowering her body close.  with her chest lightly grazing the dirt of the wall she would place her hands down to crawl the rest of the ways onto the ceiling. It would be there that she would wait silently for the individuals to appear around the corner, making sure to stay in the dimmest edges of the dimly lit tunnels.

Dressed in attire that heald a sharp resemblance to her usual cloths around the time of preparing to travel to Sunagakure no Sato, black combat trousers and boots, the trousers tucked and held by standard army issue bungies whilst her top half was dressed in an olive green t-shirt with thin red trimming and her black jacket, whilst that was reminiscent of her past she no longer bound her chest and now wore anbu armour beneath the clothing and now the left side of her face and head were covered by a black veil, held in place at  the top by loops, that had been woven into her snow coloured strands, whilst the bottom connected to leather straps that held about part of her neck and head yet all for that time being would be covered by her anbu mask. The anbu mask only being able to be described as... disturbing, as though flesh had rotted back, peeling the lips and eyelids back with its skin stretched all too tightly, even to the touch it would feel like a corpse, safe to say, not the face you would want to come across. The flesh, mainly of her left side that had been left bare would bare just a small amount of the brutality that her body had endured, showing in the form of deep scarring, the discoloration in the alabaster flesh evident even in the insipid glow of the torches within the caves. Keeping her the majority of her hair pinned tightly in place in a bun would be three of her senbon, whilst Amai and Tetsu sat in their old places, one strapped to each thigh within their sheaths whilst a senbon rest, pinned within each of the sheaths. The two forms of Ripa tsume would be found at the base of her back, angled for easy access when required, the final senbon tucked in the sheath of one of the blades. Her right hand ungloved would hover over one of her Ripa tsume blades whilst her gloved left hand gripped tightly to a small white object as though her life depended upon it, enough for the nails of her thee remaining fingers to dig into the flesh beneath the glove itself.  


Remaining in place and still, she would wait until the people emerged around the corner, simply chatting and enjoying one another's company it would seem, unaware that death had marked them for being in this place. Waiting until they had passed by her, leaving the corner behind them for around twenty meters as to which she would follow after them, crawling silently along the wall, when was it that she had begun to hold her breath? Pausing above them when they did, she would watch them as she tucked the small white object into her deep pocket on the left side of her trousers ensuring its safety as it touched against another object. Catching the end of their conversation would have her snort, girl problems apparently. Such normal conversation for a group of adolescents. Yet the snort would have them all peer up at her, the look on their faces showing the fear as their eyes set upon her masked face. The shock and panic giving enough time for her to drop down allowing her form to spin in the air of her decent, removing both of her Ripa tsume blades from their sheaths she would rend down their forms from their throats to their chests, splitting the skin open with a brutal ease enough for the flesh and muscle to protrude as the wounds immediately gushed their thick crimson essence. Their bodies would remain up for a few seconds as her form straightened out, facing off the remaining male before her as their bodies seemed to drop to their knees and then the ground in slow motion. Now, would he choose to fight or would he choose flight?

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Word count: 1214.