1 Just....Let Go. - (Open/No Kill) Sat Dec 21, 2013 6:07 pm
Tenmei
D-rank
"Tenmei? Hey, are you okay?"
The young female opened her eyes and looked to the familiar dust covered window. A few beams of light had escaped the coverings of the pale, moth eaten curtains and shot towards the wall like sabers cracking through the darkness, dimly lighting the small two room house.
She remembered this place well. With the larger than necessary table that had one too many cushions and the slightly broken bathroom door, hanging vicariously on it's top and middle hinge; it was a place she had often dreamed about back when she was little. Back when her life seemed to have a few less complications and one too many confusions.
She almost missed the time she had spent questioning the snowflakes.
"Are you okay?"
Once more, the young girl's attention was brought back to the window. But this....this time where was a man standing there.
He was taller than most of the other men she had seen wandering about the village, and was built like he had been training and fighting for years. His skin was a darker shade of brown, his hair as black as the coals in the fire place; but those eyes...they reminded her of swirling pools of mercury. A type of silver she had never seen before. It was strange. But not as strange as his attire. Even though it was snowing outside and the air inside these walls was enough to tickle the goose bumps over her arms. he was only wearing a thin open vest top and loose trousers which looked similar to the ones she was wearing herself.
“Dad? Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”
She remembered that smile too.
Almost hesitantly, reluctantly he lowered the curtain and walked over to the futon where she was lying, bundled in a cocoon of woolen blankets, and placed a warm hand on her forehead. Shifting away the tangled dark raven strands that framed her softly narrowed features.
That feeling...that niggling at the back of her mind; pulled at another memory. Another scene just like this.....and suddenly she was thirteen years old again. Snuggled up on the thread bare futon with her head resting lightly in the man's cradling lap, the edge of his fingers caressing warm tinged lines down her innocently blushing cheeks.
It felt so good like this. So comfortable....so right; the younger child simply forgot the about urge to fight the heaviness of her lids...how tired her eyes had become. Soon...the temptation to fall back to sleep became too strong. Persistent. And Tenmei no longer cared about fighting for those snow flakes.
“No. You have to stay awake Tenmei. You aren’t well”
“Why? I feel fine”
His smile faded along with the light from the fractured window, as he picked up her own hand and gently guided it.....placing it on her forehead where his own fingers were but a moment ago. But she was as she said she was. The female felt normal. Fine. Sure, Tenmei was running a little hot but that was normal. The Sotsuji could not remember a time where her skin had not been feverish to the touch.
But then she felt it..... Her eyes went wide, filling with a stinging mix of tears and panic as she looked to her father who slowly, pulled his hands away and took a step back. Looking down at her just like he had done many years ago. With that same expression of sadness...of pity. Of complete and utter helplessness.
"I'm sorry. You can't fool me, my little candle. I know how you are feeling. I can feel it too....and those voices in your mind. I am so sorry Tenmei. They were not lying"
She had tried to forget about it. Pretend it had never happened. Blanked it out from her memory and gone to sleep telling herself over and over again that it wasn't real. That it was all a lie....
It didn't work. It had never worked. Tenmei still remembered those past few hours as if she were reliving them again...and again.
She had just gone out for a simple walk along the beach. Tea in one hand, a handful of sand in the other, feeling the grainy substance slip through her fingers. It was a simple feeling. The ice water grabbing at her ankles, the salt bitten air playing with her breaths: she had nearly missed the sudden pain that stabbed through her chest.
Of course, then, she thought it was nothing. Just a recovering ache which could be cured by some hot tea and a day of sleep. But as she stepped through the door a voice....two voices talking as one, chimed in through her thoughts. "The Lady Mizukage....has fallen" they had whispered to her. "We are so sorry. We need you to stay strong."
But those words stole every ounce of strength she had left.
No energy to move, not even to close the door Tenmei was frozen there for what seemed like hours. But a shuddering breath broke the spell, and gravity reached out to claim her. Then....the special Jounin sunk to the unforgiving floor boards and waited in shaking sobs and uncontrolled tears until sleep had wrapped her in it's merciful embrace.
She never wanted to wake up again
"She is gone Tenmei. They are all gone. Kichirou hasn't forgiven you for beating him in the exams. He waits in Suna because he knows you wont go back there again for a while. Strafe is tired of having to rescue you over...and over again. Masanori. You couldn't save him either could you? He died saving you from that man. But you couldn't do the same for him. You weren't strong enough. Just like you were not strong enough to save Izanami. That little boy so much like her. If you had opened up and accepted him sooner....you may have saved him too. But he is gone.....they are all. Gone."
"Please stop. I don't want to hear this anymore"
"It's okay to be hurting Tenmei. It's okay. You lost Aya. I know she was more than a friend. She was family. You miss your family, don't you? Me, the old man. Who do you have left? Who is going to take care of you now.....when they are all gone? Who is going to save you when they find out that it was you who let this war happen?"
"No...no one..."
"That's right, my little candle. But it will be okay. Just let it go.
Let it happen...."
But she couldn't. She wouldn't.
Despite the pain...the aching through her chest and lungs; the young female scrambled from the mattress, the woolen blankets falling from her shoulders in a tangle of dust and loose threads. There had to be a way. There always had to be a way. But there was nothing here.
The wooden table was as bare as her desolate pantry and nothing would come from the rickety taps. Tenmei tried running for the windows, the doors. Catching splinters at her feet as scampered like a frightened mammal for the way out of this house sized tinder box.
But the windows were just out of her reach...and when she grabbed the door handle...when she pushed against the fiber of the solid barricade to break free in to the cooling night mist; the door burst in to flames. Filling the open space with white hot tendrils that licked and whipped at anyone who would try and break free.
There was no way out.
It was all around her: the acrid stench of smoke intermingling with the musty, stale air. The taste of something vile at the back of her throat.
The young girl tried to desperately to hold it in. Force back the feeling that welled inside her stomach...her chest. The feeling that grew with every inhale of burning oxygen....it wasn't working.
The oil treated matting started to smoulder beneath shaky steps, the clothes that clung to her placid skin started to singe at the edges. Her skin was growing darker with every passing moment of panic...and the pain. The stabbing, aching...throbbing pain in her head, her stomach...
“Dad! What do I do? I can stop it” Tenmei desperately pleaded, looking up to the man who had taught her everything she knew. The very being that had been instructing her for years on how to stop this from happening and control the raging furnace inside her.
“Father! Please! I don't want it to happen.
Please make it....make it....”
He was gone.
'I'm sorry Mei. There is nothing I can do.'
The pain....was incredible. Unbearable.
Tenmei tried to turn, run for the mirror in the next room to see how far she was gone. To see her skin darkened in to a tender red. The rippling of pressure beneath the encompassing surface....
but she couldn't move. She couldn't....breathe. Tenmei slammed her hands to the side of her head and let out a scream.
Her fingers gripped at her hair, her nails drawing blood across her palms. Not even that weak sense of balance she had been maintaining could support the weight of the pressure. Her skull was going to crack open. Her skin was going to tear from her muscles. She was going to fall apart just as they did. Just as He did.
"Daddy help me!!"
Tenmei. Screamed.
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It was just a dream
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Tenmei had not yet fully opened her eyes when she leaped from the bed early that morning. One hand on her stomach, the other over her mouth, stumbling, tripping across the tatami matting floor through the house. She had only just made it to the bathroom in time to keel, half bent over the toilet bowl and release what little she had consumed in the hours before. It tasted vile. The clenching and unclenching, the churning and twisting. Again, again and once more... she emptied out the entirety of her stomach. Until there was nothing left. Nothing inside but the deep, empty, pit inside her abdomen which reached to devour her from the inside out. She never should have woken up. She never should have moved.
Tenmei wanted to sleep forever
But with a heavy sigh and a shaky hand, Tenmei felt around her corner of the room. Searching for something to grip on to. Something to get her back to the faulty excuse she knew as balance.
To say she felt awful was an understatement. Her head throbbed with the force of a migraine, her stomach continued with it's torture. And while her head swam and span her vision out of focus, she could still feel the sickly damp sheen that tried and failed to cool the fever which clung to her skin like damp sheet. But none of this....not one of these ailments could compare to the pain that lingered about her chest.
The stabbing knife which leaked an unparalleled pressure around her heart. Filling her with a numbing nothing.
"....It's okay to be hurting Tenmei. It's okay. You lost Aya. I know she was more than a friend. She was family...."
Tenmei hauled herself up on to the faulty excuse she knew as balance and braced herself against the cracked sink. She switched on the water, waited for the rickety pipes to give her some relief....when her dulled grey eyes found the small sized mirror, mounted half halfheartedly on the wall.
No. No no no. Please....NO!!!!
Tenmei. Screamed.
It was there. She could barely see it at first...but it was there.
The darkening of her lightly tanned skin. The red flare that spread from her centers. She could see the light traces, rippling under the flesh like someone had lit her veins on fire and they wanted to be free. They wanted their escape. Tenmei needed to escape
Pulling her hands from the black marked porcelain, the special jounin turned for the door and headed towards the balcony and the cooling... soothing, early morning mist. It would save her. It had to stop it.
One step. Two steps....and her legs froze underneath her. Locked from the pressure that came from within her bones. The heat that tore through her muscles like jet fueled adrenalin.
'Tenmei....what are you doing? You can't fight this this. Not this time.
They had to let go, and now so do you'
'I can't. I don't want to. Please don't make me'
'Why not? There is no one left here for you. No one left for you to protect. No one left for you to live for. Come and join me.
It will all..... be okay'
'No..I....'
'Let go'
It was gone. Control over actions. Control over her emotions.
Tenmei didn't even know she was able to move until her fingers had wrapped themselves around the hilt of her dagger and pulled it from it's resting place...before slamming it viciously. Painfully in to the meat of her thigh. Not even the scream that tore and scraped at her shredded throat could express the pain that attacked her nerves.
But this time.....This time it was enough.
Before he could tell her to stop. Before the ground could grab at her legs and feet once more, the female was sprinting out the door, tearing through the fog that tried to claw away at the heat on her skin, as she ran and sprinted with every last bit of energy she had; away from the village as far as she could go.
She could feel the pressure building inside her. The pain in her head...her chest...her stomach. Building and growing until she felt like it was going to tear her apart at the seams. No howl of agony could wake her from this nightmare. No hand could comfort her. He was right all along. There was no stopping it this time.
And then....
Tenmei let go.
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The eyes of the village, watched it happen...
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The explosion was nothing like anyone would have seen before.
A fire ball pluming like a beautifully chaotic red and white flower, spawning and blooming from the within the depths of the forest. Nothing living would be untouched. Nothing within forty meters could have escaped it's fiery wrath. Every tree, every flower. Every nesting creature that had failed to sense the incoming destruction was simply.....gone. And in their wake, in their place was a flame, so intense...so uncontrolled that even the air itself; the skies behind the clouds of smoke; wavered and ripped to the heat coming from ground.
And then it would spread. Like a hungry beast on a rampage, it would spread and it would grow....and it would not show mercy to any who would dare attempt to stop it from taking out the entire forest. It would not stop for anything.
She would not stop
But a young messenger wouldn't see this.
Barely at chunin rank: He had been assigned here by the twins to help out with some medial tasks to keep the place organized while the war was going on. Cleaning, taking the kage's messages to people who needed to be told their missions. Running on supply errands when the occasion called......and that was when he heard it. Along with the entire population of the village hidden in the mist, he had heard it and turned to the tree line to see the explosion just as it reached it's zenith. It was beautiful. Deadly. And he knew who was responsible.
As fast as his youthful speed could carry him, the young boy ran to what was left of the administration building and sought out the Twins, and anyone who was around to hear....who was around to help.
"Please! Anyone! There was an explosion just outside the village. A fire. And I think it's Miss Sotsuji. If we don't hurry. If we don't stop it in time. It's going to wipe out that entire forest......
Someone! Anyone! Please!"
- 40/200:
Name: Wild Fire Technique
Canon/Custom: Custom
Rank: B-S (+1 from clan)
Type: Offensive
Element: Katon/ Fuuton
Range: 50-150m
Specialty: Ninjutsu
Duration: 3
Cooldown: Once per thread
Description: Not a technique, but instead the effect of a Sotsuji clan member losing cognitive/ subconscious control over their own inner heat. Heat builds up in the user calling their chakra into it and expending it outward after an incubation period of 2 posts, before burning off all of the user’s stored chakra in a single mighty flare in every direction over the following post and dealing damage based on how much chakra was expended.
After the jutsu ebbs the fire becomes natural flame, and will grow and spread naturally if moving across flammable sources (wood, plants etc) and can be put out by any suiton technique which can affect the burning area. However should the user die, their heat is released uncontrollably, expending 100% of their remaining chakra into a detonation. The waves travel at 60mp/s. Damage is dealt based on the following chart:- Damage Chart :
B Rank (+1)
80 chakra: Range: 20m. The user after releasing this jutsu, erupts into a 5m high pillar of flame, with a 2m wave rolling along the ground at 50mp/s, igniting everything within radius and causing third degree burns to all afflicted areas within the initial ten metres and second degree for the remaining ten. The heat is enough to ignite flesh causing victims to burn over time with natural flame until it is extinguished, or until there is no fuel left to combust… This technique can be neutralized by a B rank Suiton technique, leaving nothing but steam, but A rank and higher techniques will power through the heat
A Rank (+1)
160 chakra: Range: 40m. With an extensive sum of chakra the user detonates it outward at 70mp/s, the heat no longer stable enough to become a pillar, the heat erupts outwards as a massive fireball, bursting everything it touches into intense crimson flames Dealing fourth degree burns on impacted areas and third degree after the initial 20 metres. The heat is enough to ignite flesh causing victims to burn over time with natural flame until it is extinguished, or until there is no fuel left to combust… This technique can be neutralized by an A rank Suiton technique, leaving nothing but steam, but S rank and higher techniques will power through the heat
S Rank (+1)
240+ chakra: Range: 100m. The user loses all control using this application, and falls unconscious after for the remainder of the thread, or until the end of combat. Their heat and chakra gone completely awry, causes the user second degree burns over 100% of their body and expands a blast outward at 90mp/s which vaporizes impacted targets within the initial 50 metres, leaving only ash. The heat level so high it appears as a red chakra like energy, too hot to generate flame least it be on the very edge of the blast, leaving only ash in its wake. This technique can be neutralized by an S rank Suiton technique, leaving nothing but steam, but SS rank and higher techniques will power through the heat.
**On Death: The user's chakra gets released instantly without the need for a 2 turn build up
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Last edited by Tenmei on Wed Jul 23, 2014 7:45 am; edited 1 time in total