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Just Danger Out of Place | Potential NSFW Mon Aug 13, 2018 11:00 pm
Hika
D-rank
The cold night set into the expanse of the Land of Wind. A house I knew not surrounded me, but at the least I could see something familiar. That contradiction which I welcomed was the night sky. Even as the rime the day wouldn't insinuate crept on what little plant life remained in the area, I clutched my now bare chest as I allowed my body to do the work that others took for granted with shirts and ceilings. My trembling would not cease even if I had willed it, but at the moment there was nothing but gratitude for those basic bodily processes. My form had few traces of natural insulation remaining on it, not due to exertion but by involuntary caloric restriction. It was a sight I never would want to look upon in the third person: a half-clothed eighteen-year-old shivering for his life. It overtook me again.
The need for survival.
I wouldn't make the night if I kept on in a ruined abode like this. 'Twas, however, the best choice available in a large radius since my previous choice of housing was reduced to a similar state. I couldn't bear to have stayed there, though. Not with my actions still weighing on me. That pit in my stomach remained even after I'd deserted the reminders of my folly, but remaining among the scorch marks or broken walls and floors would have done me even less good.
There was one place I knew that would let me sleep easy and warm me to my core. It was a bit of a jaunt outside the village walls, but in the current state of the place.... venturing a small bit into the wilds was no less dangerous than residing within.
In the endless dunes, vicious beasts. In the glimmering ruins, many a beast all the same.
My only reprieve was the odd person that didn't immediately attack me. And I couldn't even manage to keep those around.
Ah, good. I was wondering where the guilt had gone for a moment.
That feeling would, I had hoped, be washed away along with my fatigue and chills. Walking in the elements was all at once preferable and worse than staying still. I was generating more heat, my core seemingly immune to the gales that danced along the sandstone path, sweeping up the most minute particles in an aimless twirl.
My arms could not keep themselves warm, however, and I must have looked something pathetic, an almost-man walking alone hugging himself in desperation.
I had made my way to the stairs, a firm granite doorway sealing the place shut. A peer beyond the door let me hear not a thing except the faint flowing of water.
Even the betrayals and abominations of the past left some inkling of hope for those who were abandoned in the crossfire.
And that allowed me to pry open the nearly-sealed door with some chipping and a double-handed, low-angle push backed by my whole body. The kind that left my feet dragging along the ground as a single shove wasn't enough - the kind that showed I was weak. If anyone were watching right now, I must look quite silly.
That's just fine, nonetheless. I deserve whatever I get after the hell I've put another human through. Unintentional hell. At least I can bear with tangible guilt and imaginary shames before I allow myself some respite.
The left door budged after about a minute of slamming my shoulder against it, kicking, and even getting a running-start tackle against it. In the end, a couple knocks and chips to the very top and bottom of the obsidian frame were all it took. And then complete darkness -
A few focused beams of light from the moon that waxed over me but a few moments before. I pushed again, sealing the entrance behind me in hopes that it was as difficult for the next intruder as it was for me. The beams of light, seemingly focused by the glassified ceiling-portions, were intense but hardly provided a breadth of illumination to the room. I ended up closing my eyes, projecting my hearing just a bit before me to scope out the room by the sounds of the running water. Where did it come from, and where was it muffled? The important part was finding my way without stubbing my toes or smashing my face against a wall.
That kind of pain was the work of demons. Not even I could muster up the will to inflict such sudden, maybe relatively minute, and yet concentrated suffering to an individual.
My efforts availed me to the surprisingly well-lit room of baskets and towels, relatively untouched if a tad sandy. The top towels provided a good barrier for the rest to be in usable condition.
I didn't bother following normal procedure, though I took a basket with me for my things later. The next door brought me to the bathing area, a small stone room with lowered drain-areas for dumping water over one's head with buckets. One could naturally fill them by pulling a stone lever in the wall, one I couldn't help but test promptly. A panel in the ceiling began to leak as the rushing sound overtook the room in a throe of echoes.
And then the wall exploded.
To be precise, the wall panel, not entirely spared from the destruction of the village and partially fused-together, burst open from the water pressure when enough had accrued in the aqueduct system.
It had filled the lowered wash-area to flooding, and I was at least clean. Even if my only remaining clothes, a pair of linen trousers, were now soaked.
I disrobed properly, not bothering to use the cube-shaped basket I'd brought with me to hold my now-sopping pants, instead opting to use a small drying-rack one would presume was intended for towels. I naturally swapped them with the one I'd put on there when I'd entered. A small door on the other side of the room led me to a corridor, winding and odd in its construction but eventually arresting my movement before a door in a tiny sort of antechamber. Countless bottles and tiny wooden boxes no more than the size of my hand populated the small tables on either side of the open doorway, the formerly curtain-adorned door now barren, though to my sight's benefit. I gave a mental shrug as I took a bottle that smelled pleasant and whose contents gave a pleasant if very new tingle to my skin.
I emptied the walnut-sized bottle into the beautifully-lit spring, just deep enough to allow one's shoulders to submerge, but no more. Once crystal-clear to the very bottom and very lightly giving off a mist in the cold, the contents - which I had more jettisoned into a straight line across the entire pool of water than delicately poured - erupted the water into a light effervescence, the new stirring of the fluid creating a billowing mist that reached even to me, three paces forward. As I let my breath drink deep of the initially-chilling air, that sensation... I realized it wasn't caused by the outside temperature, but whatever I'd put into the water.
And stepping into it was heavenly. The effervescence had died down to an intermittent tickling bubble along my currently-rough skin. Light scars in the process of healing decorated my back, neck, and left wrist. The pale shine traipsed along the surface of the water that graced my lower legs, and I could see my own reflection for the first time, true - unwarped by the glass that plagued that place many used to call home.
My form was not like many who still resided in those walls. I was barely a trained individual, more formed by the environs I had endured up to this point. My figure was lean, toned, but far from built. I'd been mistaken for a girl when I dressed to encourage the mistake many a time before, my waist in profile curving in lightly below my chest. My experience with running away must have showed - that waist curved out behind me at my hips. Everything below the proverbial belt was obviously tense, I could grasp one of my thighs and feel it hard as steel.
I lowered myself into the water and helped myself to a cathartic sigh. The water, heated by the unrelenting sun in the aquifers below, caressed each curve and corner of my legs, filling the space between as I allowed my hair to become waterlogged as well. Behaving well to the side, it moved very little as I sank further, allowing my trim but hardly bulging chest and arms to find their way beneath the surface as well.
I closed my eyes and was greeted by fire.
The reality before me pleased me, but the water urged me to relax every part. The mist swirling around the spring caught the moonbeams, spreading them in a soft light around me that I could....drift away to.
Silencing that sudden outburst of my subconscious, I willed myself to unwind. To let...it all....flow away with the water. If I could affect others' minds so well, it should be no different for my own. I want...to relax. I want to feel good again, in every respect. My body aches, my spirit groans with self-reproach.
I don't want to feel like this any more. Even good is a stretch. I'd be fine with okay. Anything.
But for all his begging-to-threatening, he's the one who won't get out of my head.
1645
D ~> D-1, 325 words
D-1 ~> D-2, 400 words
D-2 ~> D-3, 450 words
D-3 ~> C, 525 words
C ~> C-1, 575 words
C-1 ~> C-2, 600 words
C-2 ~> C-3, 700 words
C-3 ~> B, 700 words
D-1 ~> D-2, 400 words
D-2 ~> D-3, 450 words
D-3 ~> C, 525 words
C ~> C-1, 575 words
C-1 ~> C-2, 600 words
C-2 ~> C-3, 700 words
C-3 ~> B, 700 words
Hokage: 
Kazekage: 
Raikage: 
Tsuchikage: 
Mizukage: 