Yuuto sat in a run down home, the red lights providing just enough space to grant him privacy.
Though the Kazekage had instructed him to remain in the upper levels, the residential districts, looking like this made that impossible.
Yuuto looked like a monster. He was not unaware of his predicament.
He would make it up to the Kazekage, of course, in due time.
For now, he had to focus on the task in front of him.
Yuuto lowered his gaze to the floor where his summoning scroll lay unraveled, its length covered in various monster parts arranged with deliberate care.
He examined each piece in turn. Sand shark hides, rubbery and thick. Malleable bones harvested from their frames. Lunar angelfish tissue. Shockbound eel segments. Pixie remains. Gryphon parts and more.
Monsters that were unique, rare, even mythical. Creatures that once lived and breathed, now reduced to components, sorted and stacked into neat piles.
Yuuto moved to the door and checked the hallway once more.
He leaned out just enough to look both ways, scanning for movement. The large house that had been converted into a hostel served as a temporary base for travelers and mercenaries alike.
The building itself was a piece of trash, rotting wood and filth that had clearly gone untouched for months. The owner had been more than happy to let Yuuto stay the night for fifty thousand yen, on the condition that no one else came near the top floor.
So far, so good.
He would need complete concentration for what came next.
Yuuto closed the door and surveyed the room again, taking stock of the limited space. It was not ideal, but it would suffice.
Along one wall, his puppets stood lined up, compact and motionless, arranged to take up as little room as possible.
He crossed to a cupboard in the corner. Resting atop it was an old wooden box, dark and stained like iron-set cherrywood. Dust and cobwebs clung to its surface, evidence of long neglect.
It had seen the passage of time.
Yuuto carried the box to the center of the room, placing it beside the massive scroll layered with summoned remains.
He opened it and removed another summoning scroll. This one was worn and used, its surface riddled with tears and webbing. He ran his fingers along the top, handling it with care before setting it aside and looking down at it, memories rising unbidden.
Becoming this accursed thing had never been his intention, nor something he had wished for. Still, Yuuto had never allowed regret to stop him.
Only death would do that.
If he wanted to grow stronger, he would have to take greater risks and apply every fragment of knowledge he possessed. He would need to create techniques that truly embodied his evolving power.
He had once been a puppeteer who specialized in ninjutsu and summoning. Though much of his ninjutsu was gone, he had trained himself in every tenet of the shinobi arts.
Adaptation had always been his greatest strength.
This, then, would be another adaptation. No, an evolution.
Yuuto removed the bindings from the scroll and slowly unraveled the aged paper, taking care not to tear it further. Once open, he placed it atop the monster parts and released a controlled surge of chakra, reaching deep to draw out what lay sealed within.
Smoke flooded the room, dust rising as it spread.
When it cleared, a small body appeared.
A brown monkey, preserved in a vat filled with fluid.
Yuuto stared at it, a genuine smile spreading across his face.
Kento.
One of the last gifts his grandfather had given him before he was murdered.
Kento had been more than a pet. He had been Yuuto’s closest companion, a constant ally, one of the few beings in his life that had never betrayed him. When Kento died, regardless of the means, Yuuto had resolved to bring him back.
When he first gained the Dark Sage ability, however, the things he resurrected were always wrong. Twisted. Corrupted by necromancy.
Only those with large, well-developed chakra systems returned intact.
Kento had not possessed that.
He had simply been loyal and brave, dying to shield Yuuto from a fatal strike.
That loyalty burned brighter than anything else.
Now, with few allies and fewer people he could trust, Yuuto needed someone to watch his back.
Puppetry was powerful, but it had limits.
During his journey to the Wind Country, Yuuto had come to realize many things. Chief among them was the need to redefine his techniques and how they would take form.
Cursed chakra had become his foundation. Over time, it felt less foreign, less cursed, more assimilated. To others, it remained ominous and oppressive.
He could manipulate it with ease now, as naturally as his former style.
Through his genjutsu training and his study of The Art of Shattered Reality, Yuuto learned how belief could be implanted into something, anything.
He began extending his will into objects. His chakra, shaped by intent, opened paths he had never considered.
Much of this came from Nanjirou’s cursed sword, soaked in blood, and the samurai’s lineage within him. It awakened an affinity for weaponry that had always been dormant, something etched deep into his soul.
With new possibilities before him, Yuuto resolved to attempt something revolutionary.
Jusei Zōkei. Cursed Life Sculpting.
In theory, it would function like his Chimera kinjutsu. A synthesis of multiple techniques into one.
He could no longer access the Impure World Resurrection. Severing his connection to the Reaper and being purified by the Lady of Raiden had ensured that. For all the good that did him now.
Still, he understood the core principles. The Reaper grasped the soul. The soul was bound and returned. Flesh was reformed using the corpse as a blueprint, its biological data anchoring identity.
That was the foundation. Yuuto would need to alter it to suit his new abilities.
As a Chimera, he could access and absorb biological data, even entire beings. He could replicate traits and pass along genetic instability through his techniques, something he had only recently discovered.
Kento was dead. His soul was likely gone. So how could he bring him back?
Luck, absurd as it was, provided the answer.
Yuuto had encased Kento’s body in medical ninjutsu immediately after his death, pouring every ounce of chakra he had into preservation until they reached Cloud. With the aid of the medical captain, fluids were used to maintain the body afterward.
So the body remained intact.
But preservation alone was meaningless.
The revelation came from Nanjirou’s corpse. While consuming it, Yuuto had experienced fragments of the man’s life. Flashes of memory that faded quickly, yet left an impression.
In that moment, he had been in perfect sync with the man’s DNA.
So what if he applied Creation Jutsu, as he once had as a Dark Sage, and replaced the soul with DNA?
What if the foundation was biological memory, reinforced with something more stable, more cohesive, infused with countless forms of chakra?
Circumstance had guided him here.
Yuuto began by selecting pieces of flesh from the pile. He approached Kento and gently lifted him from the vat, placing him amongst the pile.
Then he delicately lifted his arm. Being sure not to roughly handle him.
Channeling the Scorch Element into his fingertip, he severed the limb with a clean cut.
He turned to the mounds of flesh and glanced down at his torso. The second mouth salivated in anticipation.
With a weary sigh, he fed the flesh into it. The mouth consumed eagerly, reducing it to a black, viscous biomass.
Memories flickered briefly, but Yuuto rejected them. He could not afford to lose control.
Then he placed Kento’s arm into the mouth.
The flood was immediate.
Memories of Kento and his grandfather surfaced. The academy years, time spent traveling to Cloud. A home they built together.
Then came fear. Tinges of pain, desperation, and anxiety washed over him. The moment of death stretched longer than it should have. Yuuto felt it all, forcing himself to endure it.
At the same time, he activated the Divinity Seal. Instead of a pattern, two eyes opened in his palm, an unexpected evolution.
He initiated Energy Transfer while simulating genetic instability. The technique targeted Kento’s body and the surrounding monster parts. Ordinarily, he used this to prime biomass for consumption.
This time, he redirected it.
Flesh bubbled and forms collapsed. Everything dissolved into black biomass.
Once satisfied, Yuuto knelt and activated the Sacrificial Rite. Instead of extracting traits from another, he turned it inward. His skin blistered and shimmered, as if seared without melting.
He placed one of his other hands onto the biomass.
Drawing upon every strand of genetic data within him, he released it. Millions of sequences flowed into the mass, yokai traits binding it together.
Yuuto shaped the curse carefully, threading his chakra through it and saturating it with belief. Not borrowed belief, not imposed doctrine, but something personal and immovable.
There was no soul for him to retrieve. Nothing waiting in the afterlife to be dragged back by force.
So he would make one.
Not in the traditional sense, not something clean or sanctified. He would sculpt it, layer by layer, from everything that remained. Memory, instinct, biology, and will pressed together into a single form.
A living puppet. A companion.
A cursed life born not from dominance, but from love.
The mound of biomass responded.
At first it only quivered, surface tension breaking as ripples passed through it. Then sections began to rise and collapse, half-formed shapes struggling to define themselves before sinking back into the mass. Yuuto tried to guide it, forcing intent into every pulse of chakra, but control slipped through his fingers more often than he liked.
Despite all the theory, all the preparation, this was still a gamble.
Cursed chakra flooded outward, slamming into the walls and floors like crashing waves. The structure groaned under the pressure, boards shuddering as belief itself pressed against reality. Anyone nearby would have felt it instantly, an overwhelming presence that crushed thought and froze the body where it stood.
Time stretched unnaturally.
Minutes dragged by, each one heavier than the last, until Yuuto could no longer tell whether he was breathing in seconds or hours.
Then everything stopped.
The pressure vanished all at once, as if the room had exhaled.
A violent surge followed. Chakra exploded outward from the center of the biomass, shredding rotted furniture and hurling Yuuto across the floor. He struck hard, the impact knocking the air from his lungs as debris rained down around him.
Smoke swallowed the room.
For a moment, there was only ringing silence.
Then came the sound.
Thick, labored breathing, wet and uneven, like something choking on its own existence. The noise scraped against Yuuto’s nerves as it echoed through the haze.
Slowly, the smoke began to thin.
In the center of the ruined room stood a silhouette, roughly the size of a man. It swayed slightly, unsteady, as if struggling to understand its own weight.
Yuuto pushed himself upright, eyes fixed on it.
“Kento?” he said, barely louder than a breath.
As the last of the smoke cleared, the figure came into full view.
Something was wrong.
Eyes opened across its form, blinking independently, adjusting to the light. Too many of them. Far more than there should have been but all symmetrically aligned.
The creature let out a roar, raw and furious, as if pain and rage had been fused into a single instinct. The sound slammed into Yuuto, not just through his ears, but through his body.
He felt it inside himself.
As though whatever he had created was still tethered to him, screaming through the same blood and belief that had brought it into being.
It lunged at Yuuto grabbing him, its speed and strength was faster than he could anticipate.
The creature gripped him in its arms and spun, disorienting Yuuto. He felt it release its grip, letting gravity do the work.
He had no time to prepare himself, no time to truly piece together everything that was happening.
"Shit" Yuuto mumbled as his body careened toward the wall, blowing through the side of the run down house.
This house was situated in a side road, a place not overly traveled but not empty. People shuddered, on edge and shocked from the apperance of what seemed to be a demon in full view.
Like a hot urge, he felt hostiliy and anger pointed at him, like he could feel the vicious intent towards himself internally. As if instinct, Yuuto raised his hand, summoning chakra threads and pulling Kagami towards him.
The blue Puppet bursted through the other side of upstairs room's wall, coming straight to its master's aid. The puppet extended an arm and raised a shield just in time, as the creature dropped to the ground, slamming Kanebo's body (a large sturdy tank like puppet) at Yuuto like a weapon.
The puppets clashed, while both combatants growled at eachother.
Dominance would be decided here.
[MFT]
Though the Kazekage had instructed him to remain in the upper levels, the residential districts, looking like this made that impossible.
Yuuto looked like a monster. He was not unaware of his predicament.
He would make it up to the Kazekage, of course, in due time.
For now, he had to focus on the task in front of him.
Yuuto lowered his gaze to the floor where his summoning scroll lay unraveled, its length covered in various monster parts arranged with deliberate care.
He examined each piece in turn. Sand shark hides, rubbery and thick. Malleable bones harvested from their frames. Lunar angelfish tissue. Shockbound eel segments. Pixie remains. Gryphon parts and more.
Monsters that were unique, rare, even mythical. Creatures that once lived and breathed, now reduced to components, sorted and stacked into neat piles.
Yuuto moved to the door and checked the hallway once more.
He leaned out just enough to look both ways, scanning for movement. The large house that had been converted into a hostel served as a temporary base for travelers and mercenaries alike.
The building itself was a piece of trash, rotting wood and filth that had clearly gone untouched for months. The owner had been more than happy to let Yuuto stay the night for fifty thousand yen, on the condition that no one else came near the top floor.
So far, so good.
He would need complete concentration for what came next.
Yuuto closed the door and surveyed the room again, taking stock of the limited space. It was not ideal, but it would suffice.
Along one wall, his puppets stood lined up, compact and motionless, arranged to take up as little room as possible.
He crossed to a cupboard in the corner. Resting atop it was an old wooden box, dark and stained like iron-set cherrywood. Dust and cobwebs clung to its surface, evidence of long neglect.
It had seen the passage of time.
Yuuto carried the box to the center of the room, placing it beside the massive scroll layered with summoned remains.
He opened it and removed another summoning scroll. This one was worn and used, its surface riddled with tears and webbing. He ran his fingers along the top, handling it with care before setting it aside and looking down at it, memories rising unbidden.
Becoming this accursed thing had never been his intention, nor something he had wished for. Still, Yuuto had never allowed regret to stop him.
Only death would do that.
If he wanted to grow stronger, he would have to take greater risks and apply every fragment of knowledge he possessed. He would need to create techniques that truly embodied his evolving power.
He had once been a puppeteer who specialized in ninjutsu and summoning. Though much of his ninjutsu was gone, he had trained himself in every tenet of the shinobi arts.
Adaptation had always been his greatest strength.
This, then, would be another adaptation. No, an evolution.
Yuuto removed the bindings from the scroll and slowly unraveled the aged paper, taking care not to tear it further. Once open, he placed it atop the monster parts and released a controlled surge of chakra, reaching deep to draw out what lay sealed within.
Smoke flooded the room, dust rising as it spread.
When it cleared, a small body appeared.
A brown monkey, preserved in a vat filled with fluid.
Yuuto stared at it, a genuine smile spreading across his face.
Kento.
One of the last gifts his grandfather had given him before he was murdered.
Kento had been more than a pet. He had been Yuuto’s closest companion, a constant ally, one of the few beings in his life that had never betrayed him. When Kento died, regardless of the means, Yuuto had resolved to bring him back.
When he first gained the Dark Sage ability, however, the things he resurrected were always wrong. Twisted. Corrupted by necromancy.
Only those with large, well-developed chakra systems returned intact.
Kento had not possessed that.
He had simply been loyal and brave, dying to shield Yuuto from a fatal strike.
That loyalty burned brighter than anything else.
Now, with few allies and fewer people he could trust, Yuuto needed someone to watch his back.
Puppetry was powerful, but it had limits.
During his journey to the Wind Country, Yuuto had come to realize many things. Chief among them was the need to redefine his techniques and how they would take form.
Cursed chakra had become his foundation. Over time, it felt less foreign, less cursed, more assimilated. To others, it remained ominous and oppressive.
He could manipulate it with ease now, as naturally as his former style.
Through his genjutsu training and his study of The Art of Shattered Reality, Yuuto learned how belief could be implanted into something, anything.
He began extending his will into objects. His chakra, shaped by intent, opened paths he had never considered.
Much of this came from Nanjirou’s cursed sword, soaked in blood, and the samurai’s lineage within him. It awakened an affinity for weaponry that had always been dormant, something etched deep into his soul.
With new possibilities before him, Yuuto resolved to attempt something revolutionary.
Jusei Zōkei. Cursed Life Sculpting.
In theory, it would function like his Chimera kinjutsu. A synthesis of multiple techniques into one.
He could no longer access the Impure World Resurrection. Severing his connection to the Reaper and being purified by the Lady of Raiden had ensured that. For all the good that did him now.
Still, he understood the core principles. The Reaper grasped the soul. The soul was bound and returned. Flesh was reformed using the corpse as a blueprint, its biological data anchoring identity.
That was the foundation. Yuuto would need to alter it to suit his new abilities.
As a Chimera, he could access and absorb biological data, even entire beings. He could replicate traits and pass along genetic instability through his techniques, something he had only recently discovered.
Kento was dead. His soul was likely gone. So how could he bring him back?
Luck, absurd as it was, provided the answer.
Yuuto had encased Kento’s body in medical ninjutsu immediately after his death, pouring every ounce of chakra he had into preservation until they reached Cloud. With the aid of the medical captain, fluids were used to maintain the body afterward.
So the body remained intact.
But preservation alone was meaningless.
The revelation came from Nanjirou’s corpse. While consuming it, Yuuto had experienced fragments of the man’s life. Flashes of memory that faded quickly, yet left an impression.
In that moment, he had been in perfect sync with the man’s DNA.
So what if he applied Creation Jutsu, as he once had as a Dark Sage, and replaced the soul with DNA?
What if the foundation was biological memory, reinforced with something more stable, more cohesive, infused with countless forms of chakra?
Circumstance had guided him here.
Yuuto began by selecting pieces of flesh from the pile. He approached Kento and gently lifted him from the vat, placing him amongst the pile.
Then he delicately lifted his arm. Being sure not to roughly handle him.
Channeling the Scorch Element into his fingertip, he severed the limb with a clean cut.
He turned to the mounds of flesh and glanced down at his torso. The second mouth salivated in anticipation.
With a weary sigh, he fed the flesh into it. The mouth consumed eagerly, reducing it to a black, viscous biomass.
Memories flickered briefly, but Yuuto rejected them. He could not afford to lose control.
Then he placed Kento’s arm into the mouth.
The flood was immediate.
Memories of Kento and his grandfather surfaced. The academy years, time spent traveling to Cloud. A home they built together.
Then came fear. Tinges of pain, desperation, and anxiety washed over him. The moment of death stretched longer than it should have. Yuuto felt it all, forcing himself to endure it.
At the same time, he activated the Divinity Seal. Instead of a pattern, two eyes opened in his palm, an unexpected evolution.
He initiated Energy Transfer while simulating genetic instability. The technique targeted Kento’s body and the surrounding monster parts. Ordinarily, he used this to prime biomass for consumption.
This time, he redirected it.
Flesh bubbled and forms collapsed. Everything dissolved into black biomass.
Once satisfied, Yuuto knelt and activated the Sacrificial Rite. Instead of extracting traits from another, he turned it inward. His skin blistered and shimmered, as if seared without melting.
He placed one of his other hands onto the biomass.
Drawing upon every strand of genetic data within him, he released it. Millions of sequences flowed into the mass, yokai traits binding it together.
Yuuto shaped the curse carefully, threading his chakra through it and saturating it with belief. Not borrowed belief, not imposed doctrine, but something personal and immovable.
There was no soul for him to retrieve. Nothing waiting in the afterlife to be dragged back by force.
So he would make one.
Not in the traditional sense, not something clean or sanctified. He would sculpt it, layer by layer, from everything that remained. Memory, instinct, biology, and will pressed together into a single form.
A living puppet. A companion.
A cursed life born not from dominance, but from love.
The mound of biomass responded.
At first it only quivered, surface tension breaking as ripples passed through it. Then sections began to rise and collapse, half-formed shapes struggling to define themselves before sinking back into the mass. Yuuto tried to guide it, forcing intent into every pulse of chakra, but control slipped through his fingers more often than he liked.
Despite all the theory, all the preparation, this was still a gamble.
Cursed chakra flooded outward, slamming into the walls and floors like crashing waves. The structure groaned under the pressure, boards shuddering as belief itself pressed against reality. Anyone nearby would have felt it instantly, an overwhelming presence that crushed thought and froze the body where it stood.
Time stretched unnaturally.
Minutes dragged by, each one heavier than the last, until Yuuto could no longer tell whether he was breathing in seconds or hours.
Then everything stopped.
The pressure vanished all at once, as if the room had exhaled.
A violent surge followed. Chakra exploded outward from the center of the biomass, shredding rotted furniture and hurling Yuuto across the floor. He struck hard, the impact knocking the air from his lungs as debris rained down around him.
Smoke swallowed the room.
For a moment, there was only ringing silence.
Then came the sound.
Thick, labored breathing, wet and uneven, like something choking on its own existence. The noise scraped against Yuuto’s nerves as it echoed through the haze.
Slowly, the smoke began to thin.
In the center of the ruined room stood a silhouette, roughly the size of a man. It swayed slightly, unsteady, as if struggling to understand its own weight.
Yuuto pushed himself upright, eyes fixed on it.
“Kento?” he said, barely louder than a breath.
As the last of the smoke cleared, the figure came into full view.
Something was wrong.
Eyes opened across its form, blinking independently, adjusting to the light. Too many of them. Far more than there should have been but all symmetrically aligned.
The creature let out a roar, raw and furious, as if pain and rage had been fused into a single instinct. The sound slammed into Yuuto, not just through his ears, but through his body.
He felt it inside himself.
As though whatever he had created was still tethered to him, screaming through the same blood and belief that had brought it into being.
It lunged at Yuuto grabbing him, its speed and strength was faster than he could anticipate.
The creature gripped him in its arms and spun, disorienting Yuuto. He felt it release its grip, letting gravity do the work.
He had no time to prepare himself, no time to truly piece together everything that was happening.
"Shit" Yuuto mumbled as his body careened toward the wall, blowing through the side of the run down house.
This house was situated in a side road, a place not overly traveled but not empty. People shuddered, on edge and shocked from the apperance of what seemed to be a demon in full view.
Like a hot urge, he felt hostiliy and anger pointed at him, like he could feel the vicious intent towards himself internally. As if instinct, Yuuto raised his hand, summoning chakra threads and pulling Kagami towards him.
The blue Puppet bursted through the other side of upstairs room's wall, coming straight to its master's aid. The puppet extended an arm and raised a shield just in time, as the creature dropped to the ground, slamming Kanebo's body (a large sturdy tank like puppet) at Yuuto like a weapon.
The puppets clashed, while both combatants growled at eachother.
Dominance would be decided here.
To anyone joining, feel free to have some fun with the setup, however at this point if you are on the street, you'd be seeing Yuuto dueling with with the creature, the creature literally slinging a large puppet around by the leg like its a club
[MFT]
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