Title: Dreaming of Sunshine

Summary: Life as a ninja. It starts with confusion and terror and doesn't get any better from there. OC Self-insert.

WARNING: Blood and violence. I mean, more than usual.

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Chapter 129

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Let me tell you what I wish I'd known

When I was young and dreamed of glory:

You have no control:

Who lives, who dies, who tells your story

~ Hamilton; The Musical

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Aoba and I stripped ourselves of anything ninja related – our headbands, our flak jackets, my clan symbol… and all our weapons. We sealed them away, so they were still at hand, but I felt supremely uncomfortable. I'd never been in such a perilous position with no weapons at all – heck, it had been months since I'd even left the house without my kunai pouch.

I even, reluctantly, undid my very identifiable braid and let my hair hang loose. It was immediately whipped about by the wind that barely existed, tangling up and flying into my face. Forget looks, any kunoichi that fought with loose hair had clearly mastered an arcane and mystical art.

Aoba threw his arm around my shoulder. "Don't sweat it, little sister," he said. "We're just two totally civilian travellers heading to the famous hot springs for a holiday."

I tried to relax my shoulders. "Absolutely civilian, nothing to see here," I agreed.

We doubled back, heading south until we hit the main highway from Land of Fire to Land of Hot Springs. It was pretty quiet, actually – a side effect of the border stalemate meant that we'd been funnelling anyone who didn't need to go this way away for months now. The lockdown would only increase that… and if it came to outright fighting? Well. Only those brave, stupid, or utterly without options would try and cross that.

We hashed out our cover as we went – nothing complicated, and we'd already had a stash of Intel Division fall-back excuses on tap, but it wouldn't be a good idea to contradict each other, and with increased ninja presence in the area it would be a good idea to have harmless reasons why we were poking our noses into things.

And despite our precautions, we didn't run into any signs of Cloud ninja on the way. I didn't even sense any. That didn't mean they weren't watching from a distance, but clearly this invasion was still in the 'secrecy' stage and not the 'outright occupancy' stage.

We arrived pretty late in the afternoon, close to sundown. The main tourist destination in the Land of Hot Springs was a town that had once been the Village Hidden in Hot Water – only now there were no ninja left. They'd sort of just… faded away and the village itself had been prosperous enough to survive without them. They were a buffer nation, though, directly between Land of Fire and Land of Lightning and things were probably about to get very rocky for them.

But on the road to the town, I paused.

"Something up?" Aoba asked, quietly. He turned, facing me so we were covering opposite directions.

I hesitated. "I'm not sure," I said, reluctantly. My chakra sense was reliable but it was hard to put into words things that didn't have direct cause. I just felt them. "I sense… it's nothing concrete. The chakra around the town is a little weird. That happens sometimes," I hurried on. "It could be a natural thing. Caused by the hot springs, maybe? It's kind of… heavy. Muggy."

"You sure you're not talking about the temperature?" He asked, jokingly.

I nodded, taking the question seriously. "They could be related – Land of Snow was." I shrugged. "It could be nothing. Sometimes it just happens like that. 'Weird chakra' has only been mission relevant for me once." I tried to lightning the mood, then had to reconsider. Land of Snow had turned out to be mission relevant at the end, with the generator. "Well, twice." And the monks at the Fire Temple- "Okay, three times."

"Okay," Aoba said. "Weird chakra things. Noted. We'll keep our eyes open."

"Yeah," I exhaled. "Let's do that."

And we were only just slightly north of Land of Fire, but the difference in temperature was astonishing. I was fanning myself with my hand as we wandered in to find a hotel and my clothes were sticking to me in totally unpleasant ways. Part of it was that I wasn't able to temperature regulate with chakra like I would have if I wasn't playing at being civilian, but it was just so damn humid.

"And you can grab towels for the house hot springs at the front desk any time!" the nice older lady running the place said to us. "They're lovely to unwind in at the end of a long day travelling."

"Sounds perfect," Aoba told her, and he nudged me with his elbow as we went down the hallways to our room. "We should totally investigate that. Who knows what kinds of secrets are hiding in the water."

I gave him a look that tried to be scandalised but was mostly just amused. "Are you implying we took a trip to the Land of Hot Springs for the purpose of visiting the hot springs?"

He grinned. "I'm just saying, we have to seize the opportunities that are presented to us."

We did anyway, after getting something to eat because everything was shut. For a tourist town, it was dead quiet.

"Relaxing," Aoba noted, sliding into the water. He was still wearing his sunglasses, the nerd.

It was, but I wasn't going to tell him that. "Boring," I sighed, leaning back against the rocks and watching the steam rising into the air. "You'd think there'd be a little bit of nightlife."

"What a wild party animal you are," he deadpanned. "Oh wait, where was it you wanted to go? The library?"

I yawned and flicked water at him, half-heartedly. "Shuddup."

The hot springs rocks were clearly sized for people who were taller than me, because I kept sliding down them into the water. The third time I ended up with water up my nose and being laughed at for it, I was done.

"Alright, I'm out," I declared, hauling myself out of the water and padding back to the changing rooms. The hotel host was in there, changing soaps and cleaning up, and I gave her a sleepy smile as I went past.

I got changed and started to use the towel to dry out my hair and stood-

And immediately the world went white around me, bright, too bright, fuzzing around the edges, and I was too too hot and my blood was pounding beneath my skin –

Attack?

My chakra surged, even as my knees buckled and I hit the ground with a clatter, knocking against one of the bathroom stands.

But there was nothing. My chakra was fine. It pulsed through my body chasing away the strange moment of weakness. I even tried to discretely check for poison, but came up negative.

"Are you alright dear?" the host asked me, clearly concerned. She hurried over, hands reaching for me.

I gave her a weak smile. "Just stood up too fast," I said awkwardly.

She nodded in understanding. "It's the heat," she said, and guided me to a stool. "You just sit there, I'll get you a glass of water!"

She hurried away.

"Shikako?" Aoba called, warily from outside. I had no doubt he was prepared to spring into action. "What happened?"

"I'm fine, niisan!" I called back, hoping the reference to our cover would convince him I was telling the truth and not lying under duress. Now what to say… 'I tripped' would probably just put the alarm meter right up. "I was practicing some new dance moves!"

"Brothers worry, don't they?" The host said, handing me the promised glass of water. "Now, you drink that right up! It's so humid you don't really notice it, but people get dehydrated very fast around here!"

Was that really what it was? I was so used to my ninja body being a finely tuned weapon, bursting with so much chakra that things like 'standing up too fast' and 'not enough water' didn't really affect it at all. Not in such minuscule amounts, anyway.

"Ah, so embarrassing," I said, playing it up, just a fraction. It was embarrassing, but my natural reaction would have been to pretend it had never happened. "Thank you, Oba-san."

There was a distant ringing noise, like the striking of a bell.

"What's that?" I asked, even though I could have guessed.

"The monks!" She replied, brightly. "They do some kind of prayer service that ends with ringing the city bells. It used to be quite terrible – they'd ring them at midnight! Can you imagine? But people kept complaining so they got earlier and earlier and now they ring them at dusk. And at dawn in the morning."

"Ah, my brother is going to go see them tomorrow!" I said. "It sounds really boring."

She laughed. "Maybe if you're young. You'll see them anyway, if you're in town. They march through the streets a couple of times a day. For prayers, they say, but it's mostly to collect donations."

"Ah," I said, finishing my glass of water and swinging my feet. I wondered if there was an easy way out of this conversation now.

"Is your brother the spiritual type?" she asked, curiously.

"Oh, no," I said, easily sliding into the cover we'd worked out. "He's a book writer! We're looking for ghost stories!"

"Ghosts!" she feigned shock. "How scary!"

I nodded, eagerly, trying to portray nothing but a harmless teenager. "We were in Bird Country before! Did you know, the prince died because his advisor betrayed him and then his ghost came back to seek vengeance!" I paused. "Or that's what they said."

It wasn't like many people knew the real story anyway. It sounded good, and that was the point.

"Well, I don't know anything like that," she said, clearly thinking about it. "Yugakure has been so peaceful for a long time! Maybe Old Yama will – he used to work with the ninja, when they lived here. If there's anything that sounds like ghost stories, it's ninja!"

I beamed at her. Perfect. "Just what I wanted to hear! Thanks, Oba-san!"

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The next morning, the sound of bells woke me.

"Ugh," I muttered, dragging myself upright and nearly tripping on the tangled bedcovers. "Make it stop."

Aoba groaned and threw his forearm over his eyes, not even trying to get up. "I haven't slept this badly," he rasped, "since… I don't even know. A long time."

I staggered to the bathroom and tried to drown my face in the sink. The cold water worked briefly to wake me up, but it only made me aware of how unpleasant I was actually feeling. My nightclothes were sticky with sweat. My hair was frizzy. I'd somehow managed to pull a muscle right between my shoulders.

"Ow," I said, pitifully, completely unable to reach it and make it feel better.

The first two problems I took care of, with a quick, cold shower and securing my hair in a braid. The pulled muscle, unfortunately, didn't go so quickly. I traded off the bathroom and started trying to stretch, hoping to loosen it enough to not be painful.

"What are you doing?" Aoba asked, bemused, once he was done getting ready. He stretched too, and I heard his shoulders click.

"Ow," I repeated, just as pitiful the second time. "I pulled a muscle. Right on my spine."

"I'm not a medic nin," he said, "but I'm pretty sure the spine isn't made of muscle." But he stepped behind me and started pressing down, hands deft and sure. There was chakra in his hands and it started to sink into my back, easing it up.

"That's better, thanks," I said, sighing.

He snorted. "At this rate, we won't have to worry about Cloud ninja. This place'll kill us."

"Changed your mind about it being the perfect vacation spot, huh?"

We split up, Aoba going towards the temple to see if the monks had kept any records of the ninja here and I went towards the library to see if they had any old newspapers on record – or any records of the ninja from the village at all. I was pretty sure Hidan had been from around here, and I was pretty sure that that would have involved murders, so I was hoping there was some kind of trail.

I saw the monks that I'd been warned about, a group of them moving through the streets and chanting. They even had music to accompany their chanting, some tapping staves to the ground, others carrying small drums. But most interesting to me was the path of chakra that travelled along, stamping the same purpose into the earth day by day until it left a mark behind. I could have followed their circuit around the village with my eyes closed.

Still. That wasn't why I was here. Chakra based mysteries could wait until after I had information.

At the library, the librarian showed me to the microfiche and newspaper stashes and even suggested a few years to check out in response to my 'ghost stories' prompt.

There was even a cat sleeping on a nearby chair that I went to pat.

"Aw," I said, hand freezing in the air. I looked for the librarian.

She misunderstood my look. "He's very friendly; you can pat him."

"No, um," I said awkwardly. Poor kitty. There was definitely no movement of his sides as he breathed. As in, he was definitely not breathing. "I don't think he's very well?"

"Oh, Chibi," she sighed and came closer to lay a hand on his head. "You missed Mimi that bad, huh?"

She scooped him up and took him away and I scuttled back to the microfiche and tried to look very, very busy.

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I met up with Aoba for dinner. We picked up something to eat at a food cart and found ourselves a very quiet spot to catch up.

"Does this symbol mean anything to you?" he asked, wiping his hands and pulling out a square of paper with a hastily drawn triangle-in-a-circle on it.

"Yeah," I said, then repeated it again, more sure. "Yeah. That's the cult symbol."

He tucked the paper back away again. "I thought so. I found a few places marked with it – I'm going to go and check them out."

"Okay," I said. "I'm going to try and talk to the people that the lady at the hotel mentioned. Maybe some of them will remember the ninja that used to live here."

"I'll meet up with you back at the hotel," he agreed. "Maybe we can investigate the hot springs again, eh?"

We split up. The temperature was getting a little more comfortable now that the sun was going down, but it was still so damned oppressive. And I was a person that was far more comfortable with heat than cold at that.

I passed a monk sitting with a donation bowl and threw a few coins in, the same as the other passers-by were doing. Out of curiosity, my feet fell onto the path that the monks had walked around the town. It looped, a full circle, centred perfectly around the Temple.

There was something… there was something strange about it. It didn't feel like the monks at the Fire Temple, I mused as I walked.

Obviously, I didn't expect them to feel the exact same. They were different people in different places following different spiritual paths…

And yet.

Maybe it was just that this one made me feel uneasy?

The chakra of the Fire Temple had been patient. The kind of patience that came from an unhurried life, where every day brought more of the same. Constant. Ceaseless.

This was. Something else.

Patience, still, but a more watchful kind, maybe? The feeling of waiting for something. Of anticipation.

I finished the circle and branched off inwards, choosing one of the two paths that intersected with the rim of the circle in a 'v', another street through the town that they had filled with fading echoes of their will.

I could hear the chanting of the monks, starting to rise now as they began evening prayers.

I stopped.

I was walking in a straight line.

The circle had had three points where this path had crossed it, each a 'v' leading in two directions. If I overlaid those two facts in my head-

A circle with a triangle inside. The symbol of Jashin.

Oh goddammit. They'd been hiding in plain sight. The monks were the cultists.

There's a hell of a lot of them, I thought, a little uneasily. But they could hardly all be as dangerous as Hidan. Most likely very few of them had any power at all. And they had no reason to know we were here, or that we were ninja.

Apart from us nosing around potentially looking for a cult of Jashin.

I would just… wait for Aoba to come back and we would make a new plan. Simple. No problem.

From my left, just into the woods outside the town, there was a burst of screaming birds and rustling feathers as a hundred crows tried to take off. Fire sparked and smoked filled the air.

"Shit," I said, clearly and distinctly. "Great timing, Aoba."

I spun, ready to leap off and get involved in whatever fight was going on –

And the world went out from underneath me.

My legs buckled and my palms hit the concrete with an awkward smack as I failed to compensate for the unexpected weakness. The world seemed bright and fuzzy and I couldn't get enough air.

I watched as, across the street, two children playing catch both faltered and swayed and went down. Their ball bounced away, rolling past me and down the road.

"Oh," I breathed, and forced myself up onto hands and knees. It took so much effort – to think, then to act, like every decision was suddenly an insurmountable task, a Sisyphean calculation before I could move – even though my pure and visceral reaction told me what I wanted to do.

"You fuckers."

There was nothing wrong with my chakra, was the thing. It was untouched and responded to my call. But even with it, every movement felt like I was trying to lift the world, like I was fighting a vortex at my back, like every step was worth a hundred miles.

The kids were breathing, when I reached them. Slowly and shallowly, but they were breathing. Their skin was cold and clammy, and their pupils were blown wide open when I peeled their eyelids back to check, and they wouldn't wake.

My chakra was fine. Whatever they were pulling from us, it wasn't chakra.

And that really wasn't as reassuring as it could have been.

I couldn't sense anything. Not chakra, not physical energy, not spiritual energy. That didn't leave a whole hell of a lot.

Not unless they were, in some way, pulling pure and unadulterated life energy out of us. And that was…

I didn't even know what that was. 'Life Energy' was such an obscure topic that I'd never found any information on it that wasn't clearly referencing chakra instead. The only reason I even considered it to be a real thing and not needless spiritualism was because I remembered Chiyo's reanimation technique. I thought it was some kind of more fundamental energy, some kind of combination of soul and body that became life but that-

That didn't help me now.

Whatever it was. Something was making me weak, physically sapping my energy and mentally sapping my willpower and concentration. Something I couldn't identify or counteract.

I didn't want to abandon the kids, but if this was affecting the whole area then I couldn't rescue everyone inside it. I needed to get out and regroup.

I just had to… get up, first.

Overhead, the city bells started to ring.

The sound reverberated, deeper than could be physically possible, rattling the air until it seemed to strike something deep inside. Not inside me. Inside the world. Some vital, unknowable aspect of the fabric of reality, so base that it was never considered.

The second peal of the bell stripped it away.

Like a layer of gauze I had never known was there. Like a new colour had been revealed to me. Like the world had gone thin and transparent.

Like a barrier that had protected us had been lifted.

And I saw beyond it.

This oppressive cloud of chakra, hovering around this town, it wasn't natural. It wasn't heat. It wasn't even some dastardly ritual the cultists were doing.

There was something out there.

And it wanted in.

I was on my feet, fear overriding the paralysis, panic putting motion back into my muscles. I fled. There was nowhere I could look that I couldn't see it, pressing up against the world, like a-

Like-

I had to get out. I had to get to Aoba and we had to leave.

But I hit the line of the circle – the one that the cultists had walked around the city every day for years until it was strong enough to do this – and couldn't pass it. It wasn't a barrier, not how I knew them, but the energy in it burned. My arm went numb when it hit, the chakra system as blocked as if a Hyuuga had done it but more frightening because I couldn't even feel it any longer.

It might as well have not been there.

And then there was a monk. A Jashinist.

The very same one I had given coin to, only hours ago.

The terror, blind and overwhelming, found a human target and transmuted into something I could act upon; I was suddenly furious. How dare they? How dare they do this? How dare they lie in wait? How dare they bring this shadow of evil into the world?

I yanked my lightsabre out of hammerspace and sent a wave of lightning towards him, blinding and bright.

The bell rang a third time and my lightning froze, hanging in mid-air like a beautiful sculpture, still lightning, a contradiction of itself. The world around us warped without moving, the angles seeming wrong, a nightmare place, a dream turned bad. The sun jerked in the sky, leaping forward and back and hovering in multiple places at once.

"Under the power of Jashin, time and space come undone!" The Jashinist shouted, exultant. His face seemed to glow with triumph. He opened his mouth, wide and wider than a human mouth should have ever gone, a gaping maw to swallow the world and something horrible came out.

The Thing That Was Out There reached through him. It spilt into the air. It was an oil slick, if you removed all the ways that oil was natural. It was poison, if you removed the ways poison was unwitting. It was pain without cause. It was suffering without respite. It was death without life.

It was. It knew. It did.

I froze, transfixed with horror beyond that of anything I'd ever felt before. I had no words for what I was seeing. Nothing beyond the instant, horrible comprehension of what it was.

Jashin.

I opened my mouth and started to scream.

The sound jolted me out of my trance, woke me enough to fumble back to reality. I put my lightsabre away, threw kunai with exploding notes as a distraction. One went off, one didn't, the lightning surged forward a foot and stopped. Unequal, uneven. Unreal.

I fled backwards, struggling to find footing that changed even as I moved. Stone crumbled underfoot, reality unmade in fits and starts. Upwards, downwards, a foot, a mile, flat or right angles – it changed, it changed and it was wrong.

My heart beat pounded in my ears. My chest was tight. I couldn't breathe.

I didn't know what was going on.

I couldn't think of any way out of this.

Get out of the circle. Get away from this. Run.

I raised my hand to my chest, gripped my necklace through my shirt. Maybe. Maybe. Even if it didn't work, numbness and fire were less horrifying than what waited behind me. Around me. Everywhere.

I pushed chakra into the stone and changed.

Around me, reality warped. It reset. It restored itself. I sang with the song of Gelel; the collection of natural energy that was this world, that belonged here, that was grown of this place and by it.

I was real.

But so, so small.

I had a sliver of stone made with a fragment of a god and the last beat of a human heart.

And that wasn't enough to make it right.

And - as I dove across the circle of the Jashinist seal - It saw me.

It LoOked Upon Me.

I stumbled away, human again and so empty, the world unmaking itself under my feet once again. But the forest was so close.

I just had to get to the forest.

I was nearly there. I was so close.

And three figures emerged out of the woods, darkly dressed. One had Aoba slung over his shoulders.

I threw myself forward.

And everything went dark.

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I drifted, dreamily, back to consciousness.

If reality had fractured, how did you know what was real? How did you know if you were truly awake, if the nightmare was outside you?

The Temple seemed real. Or if not real, then solid. Powerful. A towering monolith in a world where nothing was stationary any longer, where time and space were both concepts to toy with, to stretch and discard at whim.

And it was thick with the smell of blood. Warm and heavy and rich, like we were standing inside a pulsing heart.

I gagged on it, iron in the back of my throat and painfully squinted my eyes, trying to see the Temple itself and not the spectre of the god hanging over it.

And wished I hadn't.

It was real blood. Real blood from real bodies, people, chained to the walls or lying discarded on the floor, split open and bleeding out, bright fresh trails smudging into rusty red covering the floor or sluggishly seeping into the giant etched symbol in the stone.

A circle with a triangle inside. The symbol of Jashin.

At the point of the triangle there was an altar. A single man stood there, bare chested and smeared with blood, holding a glittering ceremonial knife and he was so empty, so inverted against the world that Jashin looked through him-

"Is this it?" he asked, voice surprisingly light and breathy. "Put her here!"

I was moved, limp and ineffectual, to the point of the triangle, next to the alter. The monk dropped to me the ground and locked my hands behind me.

Handcuffs, I thought, ridiculously. How mundane.

"What about the other one?"

Blood started to soak into my pants immediately, a creeping red tide. I tried not to look up, not to think about where it had come from. Tried not to watch the bodies being kicked away, or more being brought in. Tried not to wonder how many people it took to produce this much blood.

"He's a ninja, isn't he?" the leader said. "Chain him up."

Fear is the mind killer. I tried to keep breathing, keep myself still and unnoticeable. I had to assess the situation. I had to stay calm. I had to remember everything I'd learnt, everything I'd been taught and experienced.

I took all that fear (no matter how important and life preserving) and Split it, shoving it deep down inside. I needed to be able to move. Not be paralysed with terror. Took all the horror and got rid of it. Took the panic and buried it.

Step one, get free.

I was handcuffed. My hands were behind my back.

I could do that. I twisted my hands around until they found my hair, and flicked open the clasp that Ino had given me for my birthday. The one with a lock pick hidden inside.

My hands felt weak and clumsy and I felt exposed, totally on display. It was a wonder that they didn't notice. Didn't see.

Step two 'get Aoba' and step three 'get out of here' were a little harder to put into motion.

They strung Aoba up, chains around his ankles and affixed to the ceiling. Exposed, away from walls or weapons, right out in the middle of the room. Not far from me, but reaching him without being attacked by the rest would be…

Impossible.

I swallowed. Buried the fear.

Aoba was starting to stir. I could see his eyes moving, see them start to flutter open.

(They'd taken his sunglasses. What bastards. He'd have to get new ones.)

He seemed dazed. He looked around but didn't seem to see. I straightened, a little, dared to move with so many enemies around, just so that I could catch his eye.

I saw the moment he recognised me.

I saw the flash of horror. Of despair.

I saw the collapse of hope into resignation.

No. No. We need to get out of here! He couldn't give in. Couldn't just say that there was nothing we could do. I needed him to-

And then the leader stepped forward and slit his throat.

"No!" I protested, shocked.

They turned to look at me. I'd blown my cover. But I moved, anyway, too late and too desperate and charged forward towards them. Blood slipped underfoot and I was weak and clumsy but focused.

Aoba! Aoba!

He thrashed, eyes wide. His neck-

(Even if I reached him, even if I had time, could I heal that? Could I?)

Hands grabbed for me. I snarled. I grabbed it back, slid low and twisted the person over my hip and threw them to the ground, following up by stamping down on their face with all my weight. Bone crunched.

And the Jashinists-

-cheered? Like a crowd at a football game. There was a rising atmosphere, the anticipation, the violence.

"Bloodlust! For Jashin-sama! For Jashin-sama!"

"No!" I howled, but I could see it too, how my actions were only feeding the power in here, the ritual, how the Jashinist was healing already, bone crunching back into place, a euphoric smile on his face.

The leader blocked my way. He looked amused, entranced – not afraid. I was just… I was just a bug in a net. Nothing.

I slammed into him. They wanted blood? Fine.

"Touch. Blast." I couldn't feel my chakra but I had my will. I wouldn't let them stop me.

It exploded. The scorching heat was close enough to catch me, but I barely felt it. Couldn't let it stop me.

He fell back, chest a charred mess and I stumbled into Aoba, hands planning a barrier seal that flickered badly into being. It would hold. That was enough.

But my hands failed to summon a healing jutsu. There was nothing, when I tried to direct my chakra.

Chakra. Chakra. Please!

It wasn't working. It wasn't working.

Panic threatened to consume me. He was gurgling. Not breathing. He was dying by slow inches. I had to do something. There had to be something I could do. My hands were red. Caked in it.

A sound.

I turned my head. Watched the leader rise, charred but whole. He was still smirking, still amused. He grabbed a staff from another cultist and slammed it once, twice, three times into my barrier.

It broke.

"To be a priest of Jashin is to know death!" he declared. He spun the staff. I watched it twirl.

I couldn't move. Couldn't leave Aoba. Couldn't dodge or flee.

Could only brace myself and wait.

He struck. The blunt end slammed into my abdomen, and for a brief moment, it was just pure crushing force, the impact sending waves of pain rattling across my body. Then further, it burst skin, pushing in and in and through until I was impaled on it.

I gasped, hotcoldhotcold with pain. I blacked out. I swam in it.

And-

hello little god, it whispered, echoed, transmitted with the pain that I couldn't escape. I could feel it now, feel the way my suffering was giving it strength, feel the way it was slowly, slowly snuffing out Aoba's life.

This wasn't the Shinigami. The Shinigami killed because it was death, the inevitable entropy to which all things descended. It was impersonal as a fact. It just was.

This was not like that. This was hatred and bloodlust and spite and pain, all condensed into one being. It was the idea of them, greater than the things themselves, spread between people, saturating the air.

I trembled. "Go… to… hell."

The cultists dragged me to the altar, holding me upright because I couldn't stand. The pain was intolerable but I couldn't pass out again. Wanted to but couldn't. I was connected to it, now, part of this terrible and awful ritual.

The leader took the goblet from the altar and held it beneath Aoba, collecting the last rivulets of blood.

(I watched the light fade from his eyes.)

"To Jashin-sama!" He declared and held it high. "To the last sacrifice for the new world!"

He dipped his fingers into the blood and painted the symbol of Jashin on my forehead. I jerked my head out of the way, thrashed and spat at them, no matter how much it pained me, but they held me in place.

It burnt cold. I felt it seep into my brain. Saw more than mortal eyes were ever, ever meant to.

I buried everything into the black.

your death will open the gate, Jashin whispered and delighted in the horror and pain that that caused in me. No matter how far back I pulled, I couldn't get away from it.

There were fingers, prying my mouth open, and I discovered that there was still horror in me, after all.

"No," I moaned. "No."

He tipped the cup.

I gagged on it, bile rising in my throat. It filled my mouth, out of it, down my chin and neck and front. Smeared across my cheeks.

Jashin roared in triumph, echoing in my head and bones. It was pain. I was pain. There was nothing in this whole universe but pain.

all of this is mine and i will destroy it

But there was-

There was so much in this world that I loved. That I didn't want destroyed.

I found the will to raise my head. "No."

They weren't looking at me. They felt the closeness of their god. They were only inches from success, from the realisation of the horrible thing that they wanted.

They didn't know-

I had been here before. I had knelt, bleeding and dying, before the coming of a god. Gelel had been life, and I had let it in but there had been another option. There had been a way, a plan, a seal.

Chakra didn't work here, now. But my seals still did. In this place of gods, willpower still counted.

And I knew that seal. The instructions were right here with me, sealed into my flesh.

All I had to do was set it.

It would kill me, but … I was going to die here, either way. There was no way out. I had nothing. No chance, no choice, no hope.

Only me.

"No," I repeated, voice just a whisper. But certain. "This place is not yours." My eyes started to fill with tears, welling up so very easily.

"Oh, it is," the leader assured me. He picked up his knife. "This is just the last step."

My first tear fell and hit the ground like a tombstone slamming into place. Black ink blossomed from where it hit, spreading out and out and out like a creeping infection.

"Your problem," I whispered. "Is that you think the greatest power lies in blood."

Blood carried chakra, was necessary for life. It was powerful. And it was stable which was why we used it for seals. But tears – that carried everything life was about. And I was banking on that being more, being enough to highjack this ritual, to overwrite it, to fuel my seal instead.

The other tears that fell were useless, desperate things, calling for home and family but I couldn't stop them. They just fell.

My seal pulsed with energy. The centre of the room started to collapse inwards, a single black point that would swallow us all whole.

"No!" The leader screamed even as Jashin howled in my head in impotent rage. He thrust his staff down into the ink on the floor, their combined will meeting mine in a furious titanic clash.

I feel backwards, into darkness, to protect myself.

And the seal-

-broke.

The power, gathered but no longer contained, controlled, did what a broken failure of a seal always did.

It exploded.

I watched it, numbly, in the flicker frames of still time, my last moments stretching into a bizarre infinity; the black ink of the seal turning sheer white, the stone cracking apart with the force of it, the air turning hazy and hot.

And then-

Something inside yanked and tore me away.