Blood gurgled in Shinjo’s throat as he struggled to breath, and as Miro’s fingers pushed their way into the hole in his chest, a shameful whimper escaped past the blood flowing from the boy’s mouth. Tears welled up from the pain to flow down his cheeks. He had lost, and rightfully so. Giving into so much of his anger and passion, the hubris of his talent in believing he could truly beat a Sennin, and the naivety of his attacks had landed him in this situation. As Shin stared into the swirling abyss of his sensei’s Sharingan, he could only imagine how long it would take for him to recover from this set back. The world in his blurred vision began to show cracks until the scene exploded into fragments of his imagination, and he was thrown deep into a lifeless void….
Until he sat up screaming covered in a cold sweat. His heart was beating 90-to-100 and clothing stuck to his body. His hands touched his body looking for scars of the wounds, wondering how long he had been out, only to find no scars anywhere. Even the ones he had proudly earned from sword training. His skin was soft, his muscles gone, and with a cool summer breeze from the window of the bedroom the boy slowly realized he was in tickled his bare neck, Shin realized his hair was…short. Shinjo tried to leap out of the bed only to find his feet tangled in the sheets, causing the boy to fall onto the floor with an ungracious ‘thump’. Barely a second later a man threw open his door and came roaring in with a hand-ax and a look to kill; a look that quickly softened at the sight of the boy on the ground.
“Shin! You scared the shit out of me boy! I thought there was someone in here trying to kill you with all that screaming!” Shinjo stared at the man above him in disbelief. Standing at nearly six-foot-four, wearing a simple house kimono, stood his father that had been killed by his own hands years ago. He smelled like the timber he was known for working with instead of the alcohol that had rarely left his side. His hair was also uncharacteristically shortened, and instead of the wiry frame of a wasting alcoholic, were bulging muscles of a true lumberjack.
“D-Dad…?” the boy asked in a voice higher than he had recalled having as he continued to stare in disbelief. Quickly, tears of confusion welled into his eyes.
“Hey, hey. It’s okay now,” said the parental figure as the man dropped his ax and swooped down to lift Shinjo from the blankets and hold him close, “It was probably just a really bad nightmare. Do you remember anything about it?” The boy could only shake his head as he genuinely felt everything about that horrible dream life slip away.
The Student’s life began anew. He woke back up a few hours later in the early morning to the smell of a delicious breakfast. Eggs and sausage baked inside of a cornmeal based pastry. It was expensive for their family to eat, but he suspected that it was because of his fiasco last night with that weird dream. He couldn’t fight the small knot of guilt sitting in his stomach over the idea of his family spending extra money on him just to make him feel better, but, also couldn’t at all mask the excitement over getting to eat his favorite food. As he clambered down the staircase into the kitchen he saw his mother pouring the mixed batter into a glass dish to be slid into the wood-burning oven. She had beautiful raven hair and the most enchanting red-hued pupils that he had ever seen. Supposedly she was from the Uchiha clan and had a lot of pull in their country; if she wanted it. Yet, had instead decided to settle down with a run-of-the-mill lumberjack foreman who ran his own little business near the coast. Their life wasn’t glamorous, but, then again that mattered little to them. Instead, it was all about their Little Shin.
“Morning sleepy,” his mother half-chided as he had apparently slept in. Shin half-recalled that he was supposed to be up doing his chores already before his tutor came by, but before he could even stress about it his mother informed him that both things were nothing to worry about today because of the rough night he had.
“There you are champ,” called his father already sitting at the table eating a hearty plate of nothing but breakfast sausage and black coffee, “Almost considered dragging you out myself! Come on over, sit down!”
The entire day went on like this. Everything Shin could have ever wanted in life was real. Simplicity, a loving family, and a set course in life instead of the chaos of the life that he held in reality. One day ended, another began, then it too ended. In the genjutsu trapped world he wandered in the boy lived nearly a whole month of bliss before his ego finally started to crack. Inside of that world, every now and again, he would see a black cat with weird eyes. Sometimes the cat was following him on his way to play with friends, sometimes the cat would appear in the corner of his bedroom as he tried to sleep before vanishing when he got up to see if he was seeing things. Then, one day, the cat landed square on the table during his breakfast, sat in front of his plate, and spoke,”
“This isn’t real,” it said, “You’re losing yourself.” Yet it came out as a weird yowl that he understood before his father sushed it away with the back of his hand.
“Damn cat,” his old man chided, “real problem with strays around the ports these days. Heard Old Man Kagami had one the fish on his line stolen the other day.”
“Ka…gami…?” Shinjo said as he stared at the cat running out the open back door to his home.
Miro?
“Yes, Miro,” spoke another cat as Shinjo turned his head towards it to find himself transported instantly into the living room where he did basic studies. The teacher there was a tall skinny man with long blond hair and two-different colored eyes. The lesson was on science, and super complicated for no reason it seemed.
“Miro is your sensei, and the woman who is tormenting you right now. Break free, Shinjo.”
“Tha hell! Who let dis cat in ‘ere?!” yelled the tall blond as he stomped his boots at the cat to chase it back out the open door again, “Now, as I was sayin’…hey, kid. You payin’ attention?!”
Cold sweat coated his body. Clothes clung to his flesh. Once again Shin sat up in his bed drenched and holding up a shaking hand except that it was covered in blood. He could smell death in the corner of his bedroom. He tried really hard not to look at it, but he couldn’t fight his eyes puling over to the gruesome scene of his dead family. He stared at them, no longer in his bedroom, but from the outside of a window of the same house he had grown up in. Inside was a skinnier version of himself with a katana, hacking at the body of his father, except that his father looked nothing like his father. He could feel his breath starting to quicken, and his heart race.
“That’s you,” the cat spoke again, this time appearing on the windowsill, “You murdered your father after he killed your mother, Shinjo. You killed your godparents when they revealed themselves to be enemies of the state. You are a warrior, bathed in the blood of human souls. Wake up!”
Something caught in his throat. He started to cough violently holding his hand to his lips until he felt warm blood washing over it. The boy pulled it away to see once more his real hand.
“That’s right…I’m not a boy…” his mind echoed. The talking cat was slowly reminding him of his sins, of the thing that he had become. He looked down at his body and once again found the muscles of his training, the scars of the same, and the callouses of a swordsman’s hand eerily drinking in the blood he had coughed into his palm. “I’m not a child…I’m…a killer.”
A soldier. A teenager who has suffered more than most adults did by their thirties. A genius. A promised tool for a village of other soldiers to fight and protect in their chaos torn world. So that he could try to keep other children from suffering as he had. It wasn’t a dream, an ideal, his creed, or a promise to keep himself from falling into the abyss; he already had. It was just a simple justification for why he wanted, no, needed to continue living. Otherwise, why bother?
Shinjo coughed blood at Miro’s face as her fingers filled in his wound as he still sat gazed beneath the powerful genjutsu. He was still well lost in the world she had created, and yet, the black chakra cats of his dojutsu technique had started to slowly work their way out from the corners of the room. The cowering they had shown at her display of power had slowly turned into a reflection of Shin’s willpower as he fought against the Genjutsu. Then one suddenly darted out from behind a pillar to pounce at her, and at the last second, turned into a katana to break her line of sight and reflect the Sharingan in its mirrored finish back at her.
[MFT]
