“Have you ever heard of the Ryuu Weapons?” he started, opening up his different colored eyes once more to stare at the two-way mirror. “Items of great power each capable of ending the world all on their own, my…well, I guess our clan, since we’re also talking about Rei here, were once nomadic. They scoured the known world and parts beyond searching for ancient weapons left behind after a great war between the gods. After finding these items, they would seal them away using ancient techniques long since lost. We had no desire to use them, only to hide them and keep anyone else from using them as so to protect the very world. This worked out for well over a couple thousand years, with the knowledge and location of the weapons held only by two people: the High Elder and the clan leader. Even then, the latter was only allowed to know where they were located.
“A little over a hundred years ago now, my father became the head of the Ryuu clan and learned of the weapons. At the time, the clan was falling into shambles and the legacy of their purpose becoming lost to time. The Elders wanted it that way. Their goal, I think, was to eventually die off with the knowledge, leaving my father with only the locations to protect for one more generation so that the powerful world-ending weapons would be lost time time and man. Dad, having been a go-getter from birth, wanted the clan to flourish instead.
“A very long story short, he dragged the clan towards the Ice North, far above where man was supposed to set foot, where a weapon called the Ashura Blade rested. During that time the clan all but fell apart, most of them dying from the conditions of the journey itself, the rest fleeing my father’s obsessive madness; which I believe is where your Ryuu Clan came to be founded. When he finally found the sword, it instantly possessed him and broke his mind. Turned his obsessions to be great and remembered as a hero into a twisted nightmare…and then he killed everyone who had followed him. The only survivors where myself - a newborn, my mother, and a handful of blood relatives…” Tama sighed. His past was something he hadn’t had to stop and explain for many decades, and its painful memories remained ever as tender as they were when they were seared onto his psyche.
“Fast forward about…oh, forty or so years later. My mother was the only survivor of that perilous journey but still met her eventual end by my father’s hands thirteen years after we settled in the Wind Country. I, however, survived due to protection of Sunagakure who had no problems running Dad outta the desert. One day, he returned out of nowhere. Set to fulfill some vague prophecy by killing me, and my half-brother Toraono Michino. Yet, once again, Suna stepped in and killed him before he could finish either of us.” Tama spoke the event in half-truths, as his father had very much managed to finally kill him. It was the first time he had broke FATE, time, and resurrected himself through the help of his brother. It’s what eventually lead to the whole reason he had control over time in the first place, but that was another story for another day.
“In his death, as the Ashura Blade shattered from the battle, he turned his obsession into a curse to inflict upon the entire clan. I think that, he was trying to curse me, or at the very least my brother, to carry on his will. However, because we’re both blooded to him, and most of the Ryuu Clan was not, the curse took hold of them over us. Anyone who takes the Ryuu name itself runs the chance to suffer Teng’s Curse. Those born into the clan under the name are twice as likely to suffer it.” Tama’s hands clenched into fists.
He had originally meant to cure the curse. He had the power, the knowledge, and the strength for many, many decades to do just that but, instead, he simply created a “vaccine” for it instead. A cure, which, he had never once handed out to his family. Pride and Hubris, the two key traits of a Solar Ancient kept him from following a more altruistic take. He wanted payment for saving his own family, or at least, the cursed blood flowing through his veins did; and no one could afford the amount he wanted. Nor could he actually use it to fully rid the Ryuu clan of the curse as it was made from his own blood. Even in death after being fully drained of his life blood, he could have cured maybe 10% of the actual clan; a cure that would fail after a single generation. This tidbit, though, he kept to himself. He had a better cure in mind that would actually remove the entire curse itself. He just needed someone who was versed in manipulating souls and raising the dead; two things he no longer had any power to do.
“But! The sword itself ate ol’ Pops. I have what remains of the Asura Blade, with my father’s soul trapped within it. All we need is to pull his soul out, infuse it into a body, and then force him to unleash the curse. Easy as. Imagine it, if you will Raikage-sama: the talented and powerful Ryuu Clan, no longer affected by their greatest weakness. I don’t know who Rei is personally, but I can assume that your desperate want to help her means that she is precious to a many people in this village, and that the Ryuu Madness has done a number of both her, and her kind. I can…no, I will save them. If it’s the first and last decent act I’ve made in the last hundred years, then so be it. Throw me in prison, let me rot, execute me - just, let me undo what my father did…and in return, all I ask is that you keep your word on not wishing war against my home...”
