The Fall of a Ghost
Captive Mermada Au, as promised ~~
Warnings: body horror,
Prologue
The moon taunted him.
Its white crystalline light illuminated the small clearing, letting him see everything except for a way out. The calm water twinkled playfully in the moonrays; a direct contradiction to the rising fear and panic that curled wickedly in Madara’s chest.
The thick canopy above only allowed a few openings of light through and made it difficult to see exactly where the moon was. It had been at least a few hours since he’d initially awoken, but he couldn’t be sure.
The area was somewhat circular with a medium sized pond in the middle. The water was surrounded by rocks, making it look man made amidst the colorful flowers and soft grassy floor of the forest. It was as if someone built it there on purpose. But for what reason? And why was Madara brought there?
The area felt wrong. The trees were too still and too quiet. The rustling of small animals was missing as was any breeze. It was unnatural and incredibly unnerving. He couldn’t see any type of wall through the trees but there had to be one. It felt nothing like it should.
The Uchiha’s limbs were weak and slow to respond. His legs were entirely useless for any productive movement and he could only hold his hands up for a few seconds at a time and only a few inches off the ground. It felt similar to chakra exhaustion, but he could feel a healthy amount of energy saturating his tenketsu points. It had to be the result of some sort of drug. There didn’t seem to be any other reason for his immobility.
Thinking was as challenging as walking through quicksand and as soon as he gained some sort of train of thought he lost it. He did not remember what happened prior to his capture nor who might be responsible. Flashes of battle and screams from his clansmen were all he could recollect and that told him little. He had engaged in many battles over his young life, he could be recalling a fight long since passed. There was no familiarity that would suggest it was recent.
The wait for something to happen slowly ate away at his patience and the fear would surely drive him mad by morning. It was a torture that took its time tearing him apart. His chakra did not respond to him like it should. He could move it, but not in a significant enough way to form any type of jutsu. Using it to sense was impossible as well. There could be a shinobi hiding anywhere around him and he wouldn’t know. He was useless, vulnerable, and helpless.
There was no escape, no way for him to get out or even hide. He was truly and completely trapped. Had he been taken by blood-line thieves? That wouldn’t explain why he still had his eyes. Unless they wanted to try and torture him into awakening a stronger form of the sharingan. He had been briefed thoroughly on the abominable practices of certain shinobi groups. If it came to it and he had the chance, he would carve out his eyes and slit his own throat before letting anyone steal the Uchiha’s dojutsu. It was his duty as an Uchiha shinobi.
Madara steeled himself and pushed away the swelling of emotion in his throat. He would stand strong and endure whatever trials may come forth.
He was the Uchiha Clan heir and he would fight and die with honor.
Where were his clansmen? He was certainly not taken from the compound, he must have been on a mission somewhere. Solo missions were incredibly rare and only high ranking shinobi were given them. Madara had been given the lead, but he’d been sent out alone. So, what happened to the others? Were they killed? Captured somewhere?
Guilt joined the molten cocktail of emotions, he had failed his clansmen. He prayed to Amaterasu to protect them wherever they might be.
Time trudged on in the strange clearing he found himself in. His foggy senses remained piqued and alert for signs of approaching shinobi while his mind continued to descend deeper into imaginings of what was to come. It was maddening.
Not hearing or seeing anything was more horrifying than finding something in a way. The silence was eerie and more than once Madara made a soft sound just to double check that he could still hear.
Would he be left there to starve? It seemed like such a waste but was horrifying nonetheless.
With time the fog in his mind started to clear, lending credence to his assumption that he’d been drugged. Soon he would regain his strength and he could get out of there. The hope was small but much needed.
The moonlight inevitably gave way to the soft oranges, yellows, and pinks of the rising sun. Madara watched through the trees with solemn acceptance. Would this be the day he died?
With the first true rays of sunlight came the slow looping steps of someone approaching. Madara swallowed and tried for the hundredth time to move in any way. He was still too weak to defend himself, or even sit up.
The young Uchiha stayed as still as possible and waited.
The steps came right up to him, stopping just a few feet from his head.
“Uchiha,” a man greeted from just out of sight. Madara didn’t recognize the voice. His chest moved with heavy, panting breaths as fear gripped him. Finally, he would meet his captor, but it might spell his end. Madara was determined to face him bravely and kept his expression as neutral as possible. He would die with honor.
“Who are you?”
Instead of answering, the man walked around until he stood at the Uchiha’s side. Madara would never forget his face for as long as he lived. The white bandana tied across his forehead, holding back his short brunette hair was immediately familiar. And those eyes… although they were the same color as Hashirama's, they looked so different. The man’s eyes were bottomless and void of emotion. Hashirama’s eyes were warm, friendly, and kind. How was it possible that they were family?
The man was Butsuma Senju.
So then, he was under the claws of the Senju clan. Did Butsuma capture him or someone else? Why was he outside rather than in the Senju compound prison? More questions arose with the reveal of his prisoner but one was more important than all others.
“What do you want?” Madara asked, fighting to keep his voice steady. The slight quiver of his lip belied the truth. He was terrified and for damn good reason. Without use of his limbs or chakra there was no chance he could best the other man. He might not have been able to even with his chakra.
Butsuma had never shown an interest in him before. In battles he focused on going after Tajima and never bothered with him or his brothers. He knew as heir that there were always risks of being targeted, but there were no signs. No warnings.
The Senju loomed over him, expression void of emotion. Madara felt like prey being eyed by a predator. His muscles seized painfully and his breaths came out in short, shallow puffs. Everything about the man was making him want to run.
“That’s not important right now. I am just here to make you a little more comfortable.” From his pocket, the Senju withdrew a scroll. He unraveled it and pulled out a large seal written on pristine white paper. Madara was not a skilled fuinjutsu user nor did he recognize the pattern from any of the tools his clan used. The foreboding twist in his gut told him it was nothing good.
“What is that?”
Several more seals were taken from the scroll, Madara counted over a dozen in total. His heart pounded against his chest, something very bad was about to happen.
“You’ll see,” the Senju sneered, a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. Butsuma kneeled down close to the younger man and took the largest seal in hand.
“Wait!”
Butsuma didn’t hesitate, he tore the Uchiha’s mantle and slapped the seal onto his lower stomach, right over his chakra core. The effect was immediate. Madara cried out and his muscles tensed, pain coursed through him like electricity.
The seal melted into his flesh, imprinting the ink onto his skin. Every other seal the Senju clanhead placed did the same thing. On his arms, his legs, his neck, all of them carved a place onto his body. A large hand grasped him by the nape and threw him over onto his stomach. Several more seals were placed along his spine, causing the most severe pain of them all.
His chakra surged and twisted underneath the ink, obeying the silent order of the seal master. It was unnatural, he had never felt his chakra move like that before.
“Only I know the key to undo this jutsu,” Butsuma warned, voice light with sadistic excitement. “You will obey me or remain this way indefinitely.”
Butsuma flickered his chakra and activated the technique with a singular hand sign. The Uchiha’s world exploded with white hot pain far surpassing anything he’d felt before. His bones snapped into pieces and moved within his flesh like they were sentient. A cold emptiness dripped into his stomach and slashes of heat tore across his sides. He was in too much pain to pay attention to any one thing. His body in its entirety was writing in agony. Every part of him from his head down to his feet.
It was like being burned everywhere all at once, inside and out. He had no control of himself, it was like someone was sticking their hands in and moving things around carelessly. Madara was only a witness to the mutilation.
Mercifully, he blacked out at some point. His body was unable to take so much pain.
He was only out for a few short moments. Madara’s vision slowly returned to him and he saw the glistening water through the space between Butsuma’s legs. The ache in his body had subsided a little, but not enough to stop the pained jolts throughout his frame. It felt like his nerves had been fried and his muscles turned to mush.
His chakra still remained collected below the seals but it was no longer actively doing anything.
“Beautiful,” the Senju breathed. Madara couldn’t find it in himself to look at him. Even if he did he wasn’t sure he could lift his head.
In his peripheral, he saw the man reach out.
The brunet’s touch burned his thigh and Madara jerked away. When he did, he realized that something was seriously wrong with his legs. He looked down and…
Icy horror filled his veins, and dread pooled in his stomach. It had to be a genjutsu, there was no way what he was seeing was real. In the place of his legs was a long scaly tail. “[What did you-?!]” Madara tried to speak but all that came out was a shrieking, trilling sound. He cut himself off in horror. What happened to his voice?
Butsuma smirked, “no one will ever believe you are Madara Uchiha. You will be nothing but my pet, my plaything from now until I am done with you.”
Madara could do nothing to stop the older man from grabbing his wrist. With a grunt, Butsuma yanked Madara across the grass, dragging him towards the water.
The new sinewy appendages protruding from his hips and back pulled painfully beneath his weight and he whined. The sound was completely foreign and reminded him more of a canine than a human.
Butsuma carelessly dropped him into the pond without another word. The water was strangely warm and crystal clear.
Madara tried to tread to keep from sinking but his limbs were still too weak. He sank further and further away from the looming figure of the Senju clanhead. His lungs burned with the need for oxygen and Madara desperately looked around for a way to get back to the surface. Every little movement of his tail caused bone deep pain to shoot through him and his arms weren’t strong enough. There was no way out.
He was going to drown.
Madara closed his eyes and thought of Izuna. About how he would have to grow up alone, having lost all of his brothers. He apologized over and over in his mind and just before he slipped into unconsciousness, he prayed to Amaterasu to protect his little brother.
—-------------------------------
A persistent throb roused him. It wasn’t located in one spot, instead it ran up and down the entirety of his spine. Madara groaned and blinked his eyes open with great effort. His body wanted to rest, but danger bells were ringing loudly in his head. The events of the previous night came flooding back to him like a punch to the gut.
Several things occurred to him all at once. He was alive, he was underwater, he was breathing, he had use of his arms, and he was being held prisoner by Butsuma Senju.
The Uchiha jolted upright and looked down at himself. Just like he had seen the night before, his legs had been replaced with a long dark tail. A fish tail. He was a fucking fish. From his fingers protruded black claws that were incredibly sharp upon contact and his fingers and hands had a dusting of dark scales. The scales were concentrated at the tips of his fingers and slowly thinned out towards his wrists.
It was disorienting. His immediate thought was that he was a monster. Butsuma had mutilated him so thoroughly with his seals that he would never be who he once was. His family would never accept him like this.
It was a lot to take in and Madara thought his skull might crack from the migraine it caused. He looked upwards and found that it was daytime and that Butsuma was no longer standing at the edge of the water. Was it the same day?
At least the absence of his warden meant he would have a moment to collect himself, if that was even possible. Horror and terror continued to grip Madara’s heart. It felt like he was on borrowed time, like he would be snared at any moment. Like as if just out of sight, a shinigami loomed, waiting for his time.
He took a deep breath and tried to remember his training. He was a shinobi, he would endure this. Somehow, he was alive and he would make every second count. Butsuma had said there was a way to undo the jutsu, so there was a way to return to his normal form, it wasn’t hopeless.
First things first, how the hell was he breathing? The Uchiha looked down at his chest, it rose and fell with his breaths, but he did not exhale bubbles, in fact, he did not exhale out of his mouth at all.
He inhaled through his nose or mouth and then he exhaled through his… ribs? There were three flaps of skin over very sensitive divots between his rib bones on either side of his body. When he exhaled, there was a soft pressure release of water there. So, he was breathing water? Did that mean he couldn’t breathe air anymore? He had yesterday after his… transformation.
Theorizing didn’t matter right now, he was beyond that point. He didn’t have the tools, nor the time to strategize. What did matter was how he was going to get out of there. The only way to find out was to reach the surface.
Experimentally, he moved his tail, flicking the end. It was far more sensitive than his feet were and much bigger. As weird as it was, he would need it to get to the surface, so he practiced moving it. Coordinating the movement of the top of his tail with the bottom was a trial and error process.
While his legs had knees separating the top and bottom, there were no joints between the two halves of his tail. It was mostly muscle and he would need to move them independent of each other.
With clumsy movements, Madara managed to swim upwards a short ways before a jolt of pain stopped him. The strain of moving even so little made his newly realigned bones and muscles protest heavily.
Slowly, he sank back to the soft sand at the bottom of the pond. The pressure of the water was both an ally and an obstacle. It made it more difficult to keep moving, but when it stopped, the water didn’t allow him to fall back to the bottom as violently as he would have on the surface.
The overall pain had decreased significantly since the night prior, perhaps he just needed to wait a little longer and he would be able to move freely. In the meantime, he would practice swimming within the range that he had.
Short, gentle movements were the easiest to tolerate and Madara slowly got the hang of gliding along the floor. He found he could use his arms to help claw his way forward and to help change direction. The fins sprouting from his tail and back were thus far useless. He couldn’t figure out what they were for and every time he tried to use them he either hurt himself or it had the opposite effect of what he intended.
Within an hour or so he had become fairly proficient at coordinating the movement of his tail. But still, trying to swim too quickly or suddenly caused a lot of pain.
Madara didn’t give up practicing. Every time he wanted to quit or rest he thought about Izuna. He didn’t want his brother to be alone under the tyranny of their father and clan elders. He had to escape and get back to the Uchiha.
With each renewed sense of motivation, he got a little farther.
By the time the last few rays of sunlight danced along the surface of the water, his hand broke through. His claws dug into the stony shore and he hauled himself into the air.
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