FtGoG Snippet: Mouse sees the Wind fall - part 4
Part 3 here: https://asksythe.tumblr.com/post/159451523190/ftgog-snippet-mouse-sees-the-wind-fall-part-3
She stills as she hears this. The expression on her face grows hard and cold and sad for a split second, before it thaws, softens as she studies him and sees nothing but honesty. She draws back a little and starts with a simple statement.
“My power…. It’s growing.”
A power that can wipe out a continental population in its infancy, is now still growing. Mouse thinks to himself. It says something about her that he is more concerned about the way she speaks of her power as if it is an entity separated from herself rather than the actual content of her declaration.
She allows the Lord Kazekage a moment to think about this statement before forging on.
“My enemy…I have no words to describe him to you. His nature or… what he could do. Remember that one guy, that soul eater, who tried to kill you and failed? And you tried to kill him in retaliation and you did kill him but somehow he never stayed dead? Somehow he just keeps jumping from one body to another, like… a snake… shedding its skin, but the things he sheds is not skin but bodies?”
“Orochimaru.” There is frustration in the Lord Kazekage’s voice… and not a small amount of grudging respect. In their world, strength begets respect, regardless of the atrocities committed. That the disgraced Sanin of Konoha has committed an act of war against Sunagakure does not change the fact that he is one among the strongest warriors of their world.
A tiny smile appears briefly on her face as she savors his frustration, the parts of him that aren’t the unfeeling, implacable leader of a village of trained soldiers. But it disappears in the blink of an eye, chased away by thoughts of her once enemy. She presses on.
“Magatsuhi…” There is something in her voice as finally, she puts a name to this great enemy. Some dark emotion too complex and contrary for Mouse to nail down. Not entirely fear, perhaps some hate, a pinch of revulsion, a hint of sadness, and something more, something else. An unnamed something that lies at the crux of it all, in between hate, revulsion, sadness, fear. “… is similar… I suppose. The way a shark is to a goldfish.”
Lord Kazekage raises an eyebrow at that comparison. There are not that many individuals in their world who can stand on the same level as Orochimaru. When one takes into account the disgraced Sannin’s vast knowledge and genius as a Ninjutsu researcher and inventor, there are even fewer such individuals. To have him be the little fish in her comparison. She must know Lord Kazekage’s silent question. She knows him too well to not have seen it, but she doesn’t even pause, doesn’t second guess herself, doesn’t backtrack and rephrase her statement. Instead, she forges on.
“He was born… partly from humans, from our darkest parts, from our malice and our hatred and our thirst for violence, but he never was one of us. He was… an entity far beyond your tailed beasts, powerful beyond compare, cunning, ruthlessly determined, and possessing a patience that comes with a lifespan measured in centuries. He was all but unkillable even to Midoriko, the most powerful of us.”
“Even when it appeared that he was crippled and sealed away for good, he found ways to slip through the bars of his prison, even if it took him hundreds of years, even if he had to borrow the hands of creatures so much lesser than him. He rose, again and again, in different forms and under different names to visit maladies on the humans he despised. He was a disease, a mockery of humans. In some places, people revered him as a dark god, a devourer of the sun. As eternal as he was dreadful, immovable, unchangeable, a shadow that awaited the absence of light. I have battled divine spirits less powerful than him. I… the only reason I could even stand against him is because of a quirk in our power’s interactions. Because from the day I was born, he held a part of me, and I held a part of him, and so it was I alone that could truly hurt him.”
Well, that didn’t sound ominous at all, signs Eagle. For once, Mouse finds himself agreeing. Mouse’s imagination, a pool of combined thoughts and subconsciousness from the seven hosts that make up his gestalt sapience, draws an ugly picture from this description. Something more powerful than a tailed beast, equipped with the mind of the snake Sannin and the spite and malice of the most craven members of their shadowed world. A worrisome enemy indeed, if what she says is true. Mouse has no reason to doubt the Miko, but bias gets the better of even the most logical humans.
She pauses, draws a long breath. The act of speaking of things held in secret for so long tires her more than she thought.
“How did you kill him?” asks Lord Kazekage.
She smiles in response. It is not a nice smile, but one filled with bitterness.
“I didn’t,” she says, then goes on to explain. “In the aftermath of our battle, I broke his heart and shattered his soul into a million pieces. But even then, I had doubts. How do you kill a shadow? How do you wipe out the malice in the hearts of men? You may spend your entire life trying to pursue a futile cause. He was something that we weren’t entirely sure could truly die. He was a child of humans, born from the dredges of our hearts. Our violence and malice nurtured him. If there was even a shard of his soul left in a world filled with filth and darkness to nurture it, then, there was a chance, a microscopic chance that he would one day rise again. I knew this. I thought of it, even as I fought him in those seven days and seven nights. What is death to a creature like him? I could harm him, hurt him, but he needed no air to breath, no light to see, no grounds to stand on. He did not even need a physical body. He could feel pain, but that would only feed his hatred of humans. To truly end him, I… I did something unthinkable.”
Uh oh… thinks Mouse, already seeing where this is going and not liking it one bit. At once he recalls what she has said she did earlier. He thought it a figure of speech, but it seems it is not.
“Once the dust settled and I made sure that nothing remained of Magatsuhi’s physical shell, I scooped up his broken soul, and devoured every last piece of him.”
She pauses once more, leans back into her chair, turns her eyes skyward—“How do you kill an unkillable entity?” she repeats the question to the silent chamber. “It’s simple. You infect him. You corrupt him from within. He drew strength from the purity of his purpose. So… I… infected him… with myself.”—and then back at Lord Kazekage.
“Us humans are inherently flawed. Though we seek purity of heart and of purpose, in truth, we are tainted with life. We know love and loss, sorrow and joy. We are easily swayed by doubts, regrets, distractions, temptations. Magatsuhi didn’t know any of this. He was like a child in that regard. I wielded my humanity against him. I cut him with my human joy and sorrow. I crushed him with my human doubt and regrets. I corrupted him. My humanity became his death.”
She stops there, looking out the window behind the Lord Kazekage. The sun has set over the horizon of the village. She watches the last light stretch in a single fiery line across the open vista. In the distance, the sounds of great bells ringing, reverberating through walls and stones, white smoke rising from red brick chimneys. In the air are the scents of spices and bread fresh from the ovens. A symphony of life arises from the village ground. It is autumn, the third autumn Sunagakure has ever witnessed. She sees red leaves floating in the wind. A gentle breeze ruffles the papers on his desk.
In the rafters, Mouse fidgets with nervous anxiety. He doesn’t know what to think about all this. Souls, demons, the human heart wielded like a weapon against an entity beyond even the tailed beasts. They all sound like nonsense to him, but the Miko’s power is something very palpable. He doesn’t know what to think. It is almost like the Miko’s old world does not function by the same metaphysical rules as their world. He cannot even begin to imagine what that world is like, where souls are weapons unto themselves and young women like the Miko can send monsters like the Biju packing with the barest efforts.
She’s a Jinchuriki! Eagle signs, which then prompts Diamondback to look over to its comrade in what is likely annoyance.
Oversimplification. It states with a single, curt gesture. The Miko is entity far more complex. Different metaphysic system. Different methodology. Different starting parameters and outcomes.
Tomato tomahto, replies Eagle. She has got a thing in her and it’s a dangerous thing. She’s a Jinchuriki, same as Lord Gaara. No wonder she has a soft spot for him.
Mouse ignores his bickering comrades in favor of carefully observing the happening going on below him. Despite the disturbing connotations of the Miko’s statement, Lord Kazekage appears remarkably calm. Unlike previously when she told him of her seventeen million people body count, this time, he doesn’t even bat an eyelash. In contrast, he looks as though he’s expected this and appears deep in thoughts.
After about a minute or so, the Miko makes to say something, but he holds out a hand in a stopping gesture. He stands up, and walks to the side of his large desk, takes out a hip flask and two brass cups in a drawer, pours himself a cup, pours her a cup. He hands one to her. The liquid inside is a glossy rose gold color and carries a faintly sweet scent. Something to calm her frayed nerves. Something with which to soothe her parched throat. She has been doing a lot of the talking and it is obvious that she will be doing more momentarily. He sits down, drinks from his own cup, and gives her a look as if to say ‘go on’.
She frowns at him, but eventually brings the cup up for a sip. The sip turns into a long gulp, and then before long, her cup is empty. She looks at it, then back at him. The mar on her brows goes away. A wan smile blooms on her face. It is pregnant with a tenderness that makes Mouse want to sneak out of the room and leave them be.
He nods. ”Six years old. That wine’s been in my drawer longer than you have been around here. You shouldn’t drink so fast. Good wine is to be savored. Besides which, I don’t normally share.”
She puts the empty cup on his desk. “When I first came here, I wasn’t even at drinking age yet.” Her voice turns a little accusatory. “You taught me all the vices of adulthood.”
“Would you rather learn them from someone else?” he parries right back. Setting the flask aside, he makes a vague gesture pointing at her.
“So… this Magatsuhi… you talk of him in past tense, but you don’t act like he’s already behind you. Is he in there?” There is the barest stress on the last word of this question. Pointed intention.
“A piece of him. A vestige,” she says simply.
She takes a moment to think things through. “No,” she says finally. Laying a hand on her heart, she explains. “We are bound, he and I, in ways that you can’t comprehend. This is not a seal like the one you used on Gaara… nor anything anyone in this world can hope to replicate. He’s no Biju waiting for my lapse of control to escape and wreak havoc upon our village. He’s a part of me now, and we… we are never to be separated.”
She takes another moment before continuing on, addressing concerns yet unvoiced.
“He’s a shadow of himself, a speck, a shard. It’s not even coherent… or sentient for that matter. Even when he was whole and at the peak of his strength and I was younger, I was still his equal in power. I suppose… if it had a few millennia, it might grow into something that could actually threaten me, but… “
She looks down at her hand, at her unmarred palm, an expression on her face like she’s seeing something that used to be there.
“… But I’m not an eternal thing like him. I’m only human you see. I don’t live that long. When I die, I will take the last shard of Magatsuhi with me to the grave.”
Immediately, an image came forth from the shared well that serves as Mouse’s repository of memories—an event not that was long ago witnessed by a host of Mouse’s consciousness. The Miko, looking slightly younger than she is now and holding onto an unconscious Jinchuuriki, stood beside the Lord Kazekage in the council chamber. She extended a hand and told him to cut her open. Blood welled from the wound in her palm, ran down her bare, pale arm, dropped down onto the floor. It made a sound like breaking glass. In that memory, Mouse hears her voice crisp and clear.
I am made of flesh. If you cut me, I will bleed like everyone else.
Back then, this was said to reassure the anxious council members in the wake of her swift defeat of the Shukaku—something not even Lord Kazekage could do, at least not with such contemptuous ease—but Mouse sees now that the meaning of this statement runs far deeper than any sitting in that room could ever imagine.
There’s a brief spell of silence, one broken when Lord Kazekage speaks next.
“And this thing about your power growing?”
She doesn’t answer. Not with mere words anyhow. Instead, she turns to the window behind him. She doesn’t do anything, doesn’t gesture with her hands nor frown in concentration. She gives no sign that she’s doing anything at all, anything beyond sitting quiet and motionless in her chair and looking at the skies above the village. Nevertheless, something happens. Something twists in the empty space between her and the skies. Something vast and heavy and infinitely beyond mortal comprehension. At once, the clouds darken. The skies become overcast. A shadow overtakes the setting sun. Bolts of lightning streak the suddenly overcast skies. A rumble of thunder that shakes the cups and rattles the papers on Lord Kazekage’s desk. And then, it rains.
A thick, gray curtain poured over the village. A torrential downpour the likes of which Mouse has only heard about in some far off land where the skies cried three hundred and sixty-five days out of a year.
“The last gift from my dearest enemy I suppose. Or a curse… This used to be difficult,” she says, her voice somehow still clear and audible above the sound of the rain. “The first time I did this, it took everything. But now…”
As suddenly as it started, the rain peters to a stop. Some invisible pressure leaves the room.
Lord Kazekage regards the Miko then the skies with pondering slowness. “Impressive,” he says finally, with a casualness that is more fitting for a conversation regarding the weather than phenomenal feats of power. “But what does this have to do with the boy… and the mother? What is the point of all this? You didn’t just tell me you house the fragment of an eldritch abomination for nothing, did you?”
His questions jolt Mouse’s thoughts. That’s right. All of this talk of demons beyond even the Biju and world-rending power, all these secrets unveiled, but she has yet to answer the one question that started this all. Why?
Why did she ask to see the widow? Out of a sense of responsibility? Of guilt?
There’s something else here. Something more. She’s waffling, dragging her feet. She is a child hesitating to confess to some naughty deeds.
In his thoughts, Mouse goes over the event that precipitates this talk between Miko and Lord Kazekage. An attempt on the Miko’s life. Not the first one, there have been many more before that, ever since she made her position clear to the council and the village at large. But the first that she knows of. And the hands that delivered that attempt, a child’s hand. The move is well calculated. The dissidents in the shadow well knew whether it succeeded or not, they would still have struck a blow against someone they viewed as an existential threat to the village.
Mouse peers into the Miko’s face down below. A lovely face that would not look out of place in Wind’s royal court, young in features, but her eyes are old. Something passes through in her expression, and she says.
“Because I needed to see… that they were real, as real as you and I. I needed… to stop pretending that there weren’t consequences to my actions, to my existence. And you…need to know…”
She withdraws something from the pocket of her dress, presents it to him. A bone pendant, speckled with blood. The child’s missing pendant it seems, the one the widow has been asking about, her gift to her son on the day of his graduation from the academy. The Lord Kazekage frowns, but she offers no more explanation.
“You have been hiding things from me,” she says softly. Despite the statement, there’s no hint of accusation in her voice. “What do they call me when your enforcers aren’t around to make sure they are nice and quiet?The Calamity? Bloody Maiden? She who walks on the bones of children to preach peace to a mercenary village? So many names for only one person. I know them all. I’ve heard them all.”
He freezes, face hardened in the blink of an eye. She’s not supposed to know that, any of that. That was an explicit order to all those who are allowed to interact with her. For her to know means that someone somewhere went against an order from the Kage. In other times, perhaps this could be overlooked. But in this time when ideological struggle threatens to tear their people apart? She smiles again in the face of his suspicion.
“Your people are well-trained. None of them tattles. But I don’t see the world the same way you do. People who are dead to you…”
“… aren’t dead to me. And the dead don’t need to obey the Kage’s orders, do they?”
Lord Kazekage takes the pendant from her. He looks at it for a brief moment. Has she been keeping this since the day of the failed attempt?
“So now you know,” he says finally. “But does it change anything? To know that you aren’t loved by everyone in this village, that someone even now is plotting your death, that people died and will keep dying because of your actions… or your inactions. Now that you know, has your dream changed? Will you stop waking up tomorrow and go to work on your crusade? Has anything changed at all?” He looks at her long and hard. “No. Nothing has changed. It doesn’t matter that the world itself is against you. It doesn’t matter that everyone else tells you, you are crazy for even trying. You aren’t someone who will let that stop you from doing what you believe in.”
She shakes her head in response.
“Context changes everything. And you… still don’t comprehend what I can do.” She pauses once, looks out the window.
“I feel them,” she says. “Their thoughts are thorns, and they think of me always. They have plans, and they know now that they can hurt me… even when you protect me, even when you shield me from the consequences of my own actions. If I stop holding back,” Her voice grows quiet, heavy, as if the thought of it alone is difficult to conceive. “… I can just reach out and… “
She stops there, unable to continue until Lord Kazekage prods her.
“And… what? You can just reach out and do… what?”
She doesn’t say a word for a full minute. When she finally does, it is with a quiet, almost muted voice.
“I can make it stop.” She looks at the bone pendant in Lord Kazekage’s hand. “I can make them stop. I won’t even need to step a foot outside of this room. Their minds are like clay. I can touch them, change them, and they won’t resist at all. Not like you.” Then up at him.
That moment, it feels as though every drop of Mouse’s blood curdles in his veins. He thinks of what she implies, the consequences. The many rationalist personalities that make up Mouse’s gestalt consciousness scream in protest. This is insanity. She is talking of something so far above what they have seen thus far in this world that it bothers on being surreal. If this weren’t the Miko, he might have thought her a liar. But the more cynical personalities in him call for caution. This is the Miko. This is a power that managed to uproot seventeen million souls in the surge of its first awakening. Nothing is ever simple with her.
“I can… change this world… with a thought,” she whispers and in her eyes, it seems like something finally breaks. Her words, soft and quiet as they are, rebound in the chamber.
“No more violence. No more war. No more senseless death. No more child soldiers being given an illusion of a choice and forced to fight in the place of adults. No more little boy assassins like the one that died because of me and we will never have to face another grieving mother like we had to today. This world… “
Her voice breaks as something spills forth from beneath her usually moderate veneer. Anger, frustration, a cutting fierceness that she seems to display only in the face of Lord Kazekage…. And beneath even that…. teeth, and claws, and thorns, and eyes that looked up from the depth of the abyss.
Something ripples through the air. A quiet scream tears through space as everything visible and not seem to warp. Something stretches. Something tears. The fabric of spacetime is bent and twisted to its very limits. Something vast and terrible is trying to come through to their end of reality, beckoned by the sound of her voice and the black fury in that one word of hers, and the sheer weight of its presence is pressing down on Mouse with the sharpness of a thousand steel blades. Mouse’s hand twitches around the handle of his kunai. Useless. There’s nothing he can do, in the face of this dark goddess. Useless! For the very first time in his artificial existence, he feels the touch of terror.
“But I can make it right again. You always talk of the ends justifying the means. So what does it matter if I need to mold a few… if I need to…”
But it appears he won’t need to do anything, because suddenly the Miko comes to a jolting realization, as if remembering herself. At once, the dark fire in her face abates. Reality reasserts itself as she crumbles in her seat, trembling in fear and shame. Her cheeks are flushed and her breath comes from her open mouth in wet, heavy gasps. She looks away from a pale-faced Lord Kazekage and finally, Mouse sees a tear sliding down the curve of her cheek.
“But that’s… the beginning of the end, isn’t it? Road to hell and all that…” She whispers, voice hoarse, almost broken. She gets no reply from Lord Kazekage, only a heavy silence. Another minute passes as she slowly collects herself.
“That… is why I needed to see the widow, and why you need to know. I needed to see that she was real. People are not… clay… to be molded.”
A/N: Just a bit more and then it’ll be finished. My status update coming up next for the people wondering why I dissapeared for an entire month.
