Daraku had been in Kirigakure for a while now, not yet feeling the need to return to Sunagakure. He figured that he had traveled a far distance and he deserved to stay if he wanted to. Sunagakure wouldn't be in any danger without him, to his knowledge, so there was no hurry back anyhow. He smiled absentmindedly as he walked, thinking about dismal things and feeling the usual desire to kill. His emotional state could be described as a mixture of profound calm and the intense need for excitement and exhilaration. The voices danced in his brain as he walked, each singing a distinct melody. Some were of a melancholy tone, some were overly ecstatic, but unlike most of his hallucinations, these sounds weren't recognizable. It was as if he had a host of strangers in his mind, attending some grand celebration that only he seemed to be uninvited to; he wandered around the edges of the scene, listening to the idle conversations as they enjoyed themselves entirely ignorant to his presence. How curious that in his own thoughts, he didn't feel at home, and more often than not was retreating to the depths of their paranoid crevices and dwelling on his deteriorating mental state without even realizing that the world outside was beckoning to him.

Despite knowing that medically his hallucinations were probably more of an illness than a constant spiritual epiphany, Daraku chose to endure them rather than to seek treatment of any kind. They were believed to be Yashika's doing, since it was implied that she had put him under a genjutsu, but clearly it was something more. She had been dead for over a week and yet Daraku's auditory hallucinations were not gone, although they weren't as severe as they were before. This meant that either he actually did have schizophrenia or the genjutsu had permanently affected his mind. He didn't bother to treat or even acknowledge the symptoms either way; his denial was the only thing that was louder than the voices themselves, at this point. He probably looked like a madman to those who saw him pass by. The outside world around him breathed with activity as he moved through and eventually past the village and out into the wilderness, passing the trees and entering another patch of dense mist. A loud crack snapped him back into reality and he looked down to his feet to find he had stepped on a twig and snapped it. He stared down at the twig contemplatively, knowing full well that it held a deeper meaning to him than what it actually was. Something very complex and symbolic, surely, but regardless it was enough to keep him enthralled and staring down at the twig with a brooding sadness that lingered for a while. He finally took another step and moved on, continuing into the forest but never forgetting that twig. The ninja sighed and slid his hands into his pockets. The mist around him progressively grew more and more dense until finally his vision was rendered useless and he wasn't sure which direction he was going in. All he knew for sure was that he was in some forest on the outskirts of Mizu no Kuni, and if his knowledge of the Mizu no Kuni landscape was correct, that meant he was likely in the "Nukenin Graveyard", as locals called it.

By now, Daraku knew that the voices tended to subside only when there was another sensory input that was more demanding within range; his instincts and real perceptions took over slowly and everything seemed to be silent, with the voices long gone at this point. Something was nearby, and approaching the context of the change. He wouldn't have characterized this as a sense of impending danger, but it was certainly something to be cautious of, whatever it was. He got into a defensive position and stood completely still for the slightest of moments as his body underwent extreme changes in less than a second, and his senjutsu chakra took full effect. Sage Mode immediately granted him more capabilities, and among them was a passive sensory field. He used this to discern his surroundings through the thick mist, which he now knew wasn't natural and was rather the product of the Hidden Mist technique. His absentminded smile became an ecstatic grin as the realization that a ninja had followed him out into these bloody woods came to him. A fresh kill, already! He could hardly hold back the glee as he spoke aloud. "Fucking dumbass. You'll be dead before sundown, I can guarantee you that, but before I get to carve you up, can I ask why you're after me, exactly?" The silence hung in the air as he waited for a reply, but he had already decided that he was too impatient to wait for long. If he didn't get a good enough response within the next few seconds, he would happily obliterate these woods and everything in them to kill his predator. The bloodlust fueled him like oil to a wild blaze.

Training:

Daraku never received a response of any kind, but he heard the figure shift in the surroundings, moving about at breakneck speed. He mimicked their movement as best he could and sprinted through the mist in chase of the illusory target. He speed increased in steady tiers until he was moving near 20 m/s, far into the forest yet still trapped in the mist for some reason. It was no average Hidden Mist technique, by the looks of it. But he pressed on, not letting the disadvantage affect him all that much as he pinpointed where to strike. He stopped his sprint abruptly and ducked to the left near a fallen tree, pivoted his foot so he spun in a full 360 degree turn, and held his blade out to slice the opponent as he did so. Blood trailed from the tip of his sword as it was dragged across bare flesh mid-swipe, hopefully in a vital area. A loud thud sounded as the silhouette hit the ground and let out a pained wince. "What, you thought you could just sprint around and not expect me to anticipate your movements? I'm a sage and a trained assassin...don't underestimate me, pathetic fuck. Now get up." he kicked the fallen person and they rose to their feet, coughing violently. Daraku's weapon seemed to have sliced somewhere near their stomach or throat; they were coughing up blood. With the dense mist present, he couldn't discern their facial features but he could make out a pair of oddly faded pink irises. The life had been drained from them and all that remained was a hollow scorn that was reflected back into Daraku's like a sinister mirror. Daraku knew the one who had those eyes, although their last encounter had led him to believe he had killed her; maybe he had in a sense, as she had lost the same vitality she had previously carried.

"Yashika, how are you alive? I killed you, after I realized my uncle was dead...I know I did." The Sannin was now experiencing a strange fear and considered the possibility that she may have been invincible. Maybe she was a "weapon", like he was. Maybe she wasn't as human as she seemed. The mist began to clear over time until the sun shone through and rays of light fell over them like warm blankets in the bloodied forest. Yashika's wound was now fully visible, a gash from her lower waist, across her stomach and stopping near her right breast. The scene replayed in his mind as he imagined the sleek weapon's lethal surface gliding across her flesh effortlessly, resulting in the gore that was painted in front of him. Despite the severity of the wound, Yashika was unfazed and only continued to stare at Daraku with disdain. "What, you think that I couldn't fool you with a Genjutsu? It was easy enough staying disguised as your uncle for all that time, and I could've gone on longer if I had wanted to. But that didn't fit the plan and I needed to alert you as soon as possible, get you stuck in this game of cat-and-mouse. So, what's the best way to get out of the sticky situation that ensued? Make you think I was dead. And you believed it! How gullible of you, poor guy." Daraku gave her an angry snarl as he forced his weapon, Nisebi, up to her throat. Remaining blood from the previous room continued to drip from it even then. "Shut up. You killed the last support I had. I have a clan to protect but nothing to live for. You can keep trying to trick me like the illusionist you are, but eventually you'll be on the end of my blade and you'll die alone," he said as applied more force to the sword so it pressed her neck a little harder. He leaned in close to her ear. "Tell me the truth. Why are you after me? I know it's not because of my one night stand shit with you. There's something more to that and I want to know what it is." Yashika let out a laugh that mellowed into a sigh before whispering back in a monotone. "Akihiro's legacy. Don't you know? It's the perfect curse, and we're after it. The secret to getting it, though...is your death." Daraku blinked, giving just enough of an opportunity for Yashika to wrench her arm from his grip.

The illusionist swept her hand across Daraku's face, leaving cuts from her sharpened nails. She followed through with a kick to the back of his leg so that he fell to his knees and finally a kunai in his chest. She took a step past him, preparing to escape, but even though mortally wounded Daraku reached out and grabbed her leg, pulling hard enough for her to collapse. Silk sprayed from his pores in long, thin threads that wrapped around her until an entire cocoon had formed and she was trapped inside. Taking a deep breath, Daraku then activated Creation Rebirth, letting his chakra system regenerate his cells to bring him back from the brink of death. When the deed was finished, he was left with a corpse inside of the now blood-red cocoon, and he was also covered in his own blood from the kunai that had stabbed his heart. The pain was unbearable, so he lay there for a while, staring down at the scene. Yashika was dead for sure this time, as his senjutsu chakra had sensed her life energy fading away slowly. She had either bled out or suffocated, but which of the two didn't really matter. There was something disturbing about how real the situation felt; he wasn't happy about having killed someone like he usually felt; he wasn't having hallucinations or hearing voices like he usually did; he wasn't in some half-conscious berserk state like he was when he thought he had killed her weeks ago. He was just empty and distraught, unable to look away from the corpse. The rest of his life was finally coming into his full view and he recognized it for what it truly was. It wasn't a genjutsu. He was crazy, a psychopath who killed for pleasure and heard voices in his head. He was unstable and dangerous. He used to think that those who came after him were the real bad guys, but he had been the true villain all along. Yet he still felt compelled to defense his case, to say everything was ok, and he, the ironic hero, would triumph in the end...this legacy, the legacy of Akihiro Ishido that Yashika and whoever "we" was were all after...Daraku shut his eyes tightly.

Once Daraku regained his energy, he stood, and examined the cocoon carefully. He removed the small scroll from his back pocket and used it to summon Jun, the small moth that had helped during his Senjutsu training. He also released Sage Mode to let his body relax. Jun fluttered about, happy to see Daraku but unsure of what to do of the mess. Daraku spoke with a serious tone. "Tell the Dusk Moth Sage that I'll be visiting him soon, I need to ask him if he knows anything of my father's past. It's important, I need to know of Akihiro Ishido's legacy and if my father was of any significance to that then it could fix everything." Jun replied with a sullen "alright" and was gone in a burst of smoke, just as quickly as she came. Daraku picked up the massive cocoon with the body inside and began the long trek back to his inn; he would have to use his kekkei genkai to stay hidden and keep from looking suspicious, but he kept his calm. The voices in his head had finally ended their celebration and had returned to their stagnant commentary in the back of his mind, and his patience. He had schizophrenia, there was no more denying it. As he walked off into the dusk with the corpse over his shoulder and away from the trees, one of the voices gave a hearty laugh and confirmed his assumption. "No shit. You're fucking insane." it said, in a perfect replica of his father's voice.

Daraku missed the way things used to be, desperately.

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