A heavy rain slammed against Sunagakure’s steel walls as a rare monsoon rolling in from the South roared against the desert that slowly drained it’s strength. Moisture desperately needed by the desert’s natural beings rejoiced in the storm, but inside the great military village it was a problem. Flooding in the Underground was already being reported as sewers overflowed onto the streets and water just continued to cascade from above. Members of all three branches were working hard to save people and attempt to keep business from flooding as leaders from every part of the military barked orders at their soldiers to move faster. All, but one leader of ANBU.
Uzu laid back on a hospital bed, skin death pale with an oxygen tube in his throat to assist his breathing he the man finally began to look his age. The cancerous blood cells that housed a great deal of his latent power was destroying his body non-stop now after his fight with the infamous rogue assassin known only as “Yong”. The battle had been far more than he had been prepared for, and in a foolish decision decided to throw all of his power at the man in an attempt to stop his terrorizing of their village but, after the fight, the cancer of his body he had unleashed to stand toe-to-toe was now doing as it had always been destined to do; kill the unkillable Uzumoreru Toushin. His burst of strength was all that kept him alive in the fight, and now it was taking its toll for doing so. His vitals were low, and it was more than clear the 70-something year old man was only clinging still to this world out of sheer willpower; even unconscious as he was.
Outside the room was a seven-foot tall mahogany giant that was to be Touhsin’s future son-in-law, Toraono Michino; dressed in training gi he had clearly been wearing for days. Ever since the report of Toushin’s sudden admittance to the hospital, the man looking to be the next head of his clan dropped everything and moved to stand guard at his sensei’s door. Within only three hours of the news breaking, Michino had stopped over seventeen different attempts on Uzu’s life, and had been forced to end the lives of two of those assassins. The giant martial artist was incredibly angry, and was in no mood for anything but Sunagakure’s best in making sure that Toushin either survived this ordeal, or died peacefully. So, when his purple irises turned and saw a one super infamous Ryuu Tama making his way casually towards Michino, hairs began to raise on the back of his neck.
Tama was something of a harbinger. If you ever saw the scientist lurking around your bedroom in the hospital it was 90% certain he was there to fuck with you. Be it through pranks, morally subjective experimental recovery, or just trying to get a personal sample of the person for his own twisted ends, to see the scientist walking towards Uzu’s room was not a good sign. These two brothers never got a long and were constantly at each others throat for one thing or another; the palpable irony of them being literal neighbors was not lost on Michino. As his half-brother neared, the giant of a man stiffened up and quickly looked his smaller sized older sibling in the eyes and spoke in a deep, commanding tone,
“No.”
The scientist, dressed in a three piece suit with an old lab coat adorned over it, simply looked back up at his brother with a smile. His hands were behind his back and the miss-matched eyes of green and blue stared back up shaking with mischievousness. His right hand raised up to touch Michino’s impossibly thick muscles on his side to push him away. The scientist was one of the hospitals’ bigger names in terms of healing ability, but the younger sibling knew full well that Tama was up to something. The Toraono reached his massive hand to clutch around Tama’s wrist, and with even sterner look he repeated himself one more time,
“No, Tama. He deserves peace if he can find it. Leave. Him. Alone, you amoral bastard.”
The scientist put a hand to his chest as if to clutch at pearls and sighed dramatically…before suddenly trying to push the seven-foot tall, three-hundred pound warrior out of his way. The results was the sounds of breaking bones as Michino casually twisted his wrist and snapped Tama’s arm in half. Surprisingly, the doctor didn’t scream in pain at the sight of bones tearing out of his skin. Instead, another Tama appeared above Michino with his fists raised above his head to come down on the giant’s skull; this one was met with a fist to break his nose.
“I’m wise to your goddamn time tricks, brother. I will happily break every bone in your body again and again until you learn your lesson to quit meddling where it’s not needed!” Michino roared at the temporal doctor as his left leg kicked out to break a third Tama’s knee. A sudden rapping on the window behind him made the martial artist turn around and inside was his brother with a cocky grin waving his hand. Looking beyond he saw the open window that allowed wind and rain to buffet in suddenly. The lights flickered as a roll of thunder shook the building. The Toraono’s heart dropped into his stomach as he drew his leg to kick down the door and rush the scientist but the three clones he had been spending time breaking grabbed his body and pulled him down to the floor,
“Tama don’t do it! Let him be! You can’t keep changing destiny, it’s going to destroy us all one day you fucking idiot!
The giant roared in a defiance that shook the hospital harder than the thunder outside as he pulled out the demonic heritage inside to give him strength. A ruby-skinned demoness appeared behind one of the Tama-clones and ripped it in half as Michino smashed the skull of one and threw the last out a window some twenty feet away at the end of the hall. Michino and his soul-sister Owari both rushed forward at the door and all but turned it into splinters as they both struck it…but they were too late. Inside of Tama’s hand was a syringe with the needle already embedded deep inside of Toushin’s chest. Tama’s mismatched eyes shook with madness as he pushed the plunger down with his thumb, forcing a viscous golden liquid down into the assassin’s heart,
“Sorry, but, I have to see if it works. He’s the only subject who has the correct cellular make up to even have a chance at surviving. If he’s possibly going to die anyways, might as well give him a fighting chance, don’t you thin-”
Tama was cut off suddenly as his younger brother vaulted over his sensei’s body and smashed his head into the brick wall with a cry of frustration. He pulled Tama’s broken and bloody face out of the wall, then smashed it back in, twice, three, and then a fourth time before Owari finally grabbed his wrist with a small plea. Michino was breathing hard, his eyes glowing a venomous purple as he held his older brother’s pulp for a head in his right hand. He cried out once more before flinging the body out of the window Tama had come in through to drop some three stories down and splat against the flooded concrete. Despite the brutal violence that would of easily been a murder on anyone one else, he knew his brother would not only survive the beating but probably mock him for it later; Dr. Ryuu was effectively immortal. No amount of violence or body destruction could even come close to killing the scientist, so it was everything to Michino that he did his best to just stop the scientist’s plans.
A sudden noise behind him caused the martial artist to turn suddenly to see Uzu convulsing on the hospital bed. The old man’s eyes were opened with sheer terror as the seals on his body that held his cancerous blood in check appeared on his flesh before burning away into ash. Another seal, one placed there by Yong, also appeared and burned away. Black blood suddenly erupted into the tube that was supposed to help him breath as the heart rate monitor read a flat line. An eerie ear piercing sound echoed into the air as Toushin’s body convulsed a few more times before dropping suddenly onto the bed. The light in his golden irises faded as his flesh turned purely ashen. Michino’s heart dropped. A weakness took his knees as he dropped down on them staring at sheer disbelief that his brother literally just came in and straight killed Uzumoreru Toushin. All the strength in the world and he still couldn’t stop one idiotic mad scientist from being a bastard. Tears welled up into the giant’s eyes as he covered his face in shame, the demoness putting an arm around him in solidarity as they mourned at the death of a great man.
Two days later a funeral was held. The coroner called the death was due to heart failure brought on by a mix of Toushin’s cancer and whatever mysterious fluids Tama had injected into his body. A number of tests were ran on Uzu’s blood the night he was killed. There were chemical compounds that had never been recorded before, but an eye that knew the signs of Ancient genetic makeup saw exactly what the mad scientist was up to; he was attempting to turn Uzu into a Hybrid…again. Or, at least, that’s what the higher-ups could only guess at as they released a report that simply stated that Tama poisoned the legendary old assassin instead; no one really knew for sure. The doctor’s body was never found though an imprint of where his body had fallen on the concrete below collaborated with Michino’s story. What the man truly planned was still, and probably would forever remain, a full mystery.
At least…for a little bit it would.
Pain was the first thing he felt. Sharp, stabbing, needles in every pore pain. Toushin couldn’t open his eyes, breath, or barely even think, but he knew the pain. Finally died and went to hell, was his first thoughts. It wouldn’t be outside of his karmic alignment to be sent to such a painful eternity for his life. Touishin had been a terrible father, a man who had forced children to commit murder, and laid more lives to rest with his own hands than most could fathom; after awhile he stopped counting. Yet as Toushin focused himself towards the pain he also found other senses starting to come back. He was…suspended inside of something. Fluid. Really, really thick fluid. His sent a command to his hands to move but they only twitched. He was already exhausted from just the act and quickly a black sleep that numbed the pain took over his body.
Again, he awoke to pain. This time it burned. He could feel his entire body being bathed in flames and Uzu tried to open his mouth to scream, but his lips did not move and no sound came from within. He tried to move his hand again, twitched his fingers, and fell back into unconsciousness. This happened time and time again. He awakened to a new pain, struggled to move, and fell back into the inky blackness of ‘nothing’ after a few seconds. Yet, somehow, Toushin kept his will and mind together through it. Ever moment he woke up, the assassin started mentally counting while trying to move through the pain, and every time he did so the count got higher. Before long it occurred to the old killer that he was healing. The movements became stronger, the pain less, and his mind cleared. After he had counted ten-thousand and eight-hundred seconds, his eyes finally opened.
Uzu’s eyelids jerked opened suddenly, though he was only able to open one eye fully as the left struggled. His vision was blurry, but he could tell he was inside of a glass tube of some kind floating around in golden fluids. From outside the tube his ears caught the sound of a chair scrapping against stone and an overhead light being turned on as someone jerked at a chain. The light revealed a laboratory with other tube like structures like the one he floated in. His eyes focused in on the face staring at him and for the first time felt an emotion other than confusion; it was anger.
Long blond hair cascaded down like a gentle waterfall over Tama’s shoulders as he leaned in with mismatched eyes to stare at the assassin in a jar. In his hands was a wooden board and a pen, writing down only the kami knew what as Tama began to talk. Amazingly, Toushin could hear everything he said through the thick glass walls,
“Well, well, well! Look who is awake and looking absolutely frisky! I was…worried there for a moment, legit concerned. The formula I used at the hospital had a fifty/fifty chance of just straight killing you and even I thought it did at first! By the gods, you sure as hell looked dead. Took a lot of effort to dig you up too! Did you know they actually have 2 whole ANBU elites guarding your tomb?! Also, you got a tomb, thought you should know. Not just any ol’ grave for the great Uzu! I thought they didn’t have enough manpower to spare, but, here we are huh? Literally had to dig underneath the whole damn graveyard, took me like…eight hours. It sucked butt, however, I was able to finally confirm a heartbeat! Looks like the formula was doing it’s job by keeping you just barely alive despite the cancer. Ahh, but this is probably too much for you right now, right? I’ll tell you the rest next time. Night-night!”
The scientist reached up to the side of Toushin’s tube and withdrew a cord that had a little red button on it. Pushing that button a few times forced Toushin’s waining consciousness to waver and quickly found the inky dark taking his mind again. Once more the pain and now confusion faded as he drifted back into sleep. Another undetermined amount of time passed. Once more Toushin awoke to pain, but this time it was very dull, like an ache. He sent the command to move his body and found it following the command without a single hitch. He swung his arm back and forth a few time to get a baring for the liquid’s thickness and placed his hand against the glass wall. Toushin, with eyes still closed, extended his fingers until his middle finger was the only one touching the glass. Then suddenly his wrist twisted and his hand balled into a fist in the same timing that struck the glass. He suspected by the thickness he originally felt it would take a few strikes, but a single attack and the tube containing him exploded out wards forcing all the fluid out onto the floor as it rushed towards a dip in the ground and drained out through a tiny grate. Uzu’s leg touched solid ground and immediately buckled a little as he realigned with gravity; but they did not fail him. Reaching a hand up he pushed down the liquid off of his eyes and slowly opened both. The quality of them both shocked him with pain as it took on a vision that his brain could barely handle,and he quickly clapped a hand over his face as a sudden inertia took his balance. The assassin fell out of the tube and onto the shattered glass that stuck painfully into his flesh while IVs ripped themselves out of his veins. Ignoring the glass, he slowly dragged himself out and stepped over the shattered tube towards where he had heard the sounds of a scraping chair the last time he was conscious. As he walked towards the memory of a sound, the glass stuck inside of his body was being pushed out and wounds he had self inflicted were already stitching themselves together and healing without leaving a scar. He moved the hand away from his eyes slowly to adjust them to the darkness and watched in full amazement as red blood sucked itself back inside. After a a moment he finally came across light shining down onto a table with two chairs. Flopping down into one as a weariness took him he finally looked at his body through half-shut eyes and found that he once again looked young, despite his actual age, and was lacking any form of clothing. His addled mind moved from his skin to the table, and saw on it a plastic bag with condensation inside clinging to something. A quick few sniffs from his nose and his body recognized it was food; a sudden ravenous hunger over came him.
Without wasting time he grabbed the sack and tore open the container within to reveal a plate of fried rice and teriyaki pork. With bare hands the assassin scooped at the food and ate it faster than anything he had ever in his life with all the grace of a wild animal. The heat of the food did little to bother his hands as the nerve endings healed as fast as the food burned them. As he finished and let out a large belch, he sensed someones presence and turned his head to see a rather pissed off looking scientist.
“I knew I shouldn’t have left that there. Just a gut fe-” his words were cut off suddenly as Tama found his experiment barring down on him suddenly with a large shard of glass pressed against his throat,
“WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?!” the assassin screamed with a young voice that made his heart race even more, even as the scientist just grinned.
“Ah…it was a success! Months and months of experimentation and living off the grid! It wasn’t a waste! Uh, can you get off me? I’ll happily explain.”
“…nah, I think I’ll just kill you instead,” the assassin stated coldly before jerking the broken glass across Tama’s neck. Blood sprayed against his face as the scientist made a very satisfying gurgling sound, but it was soon followed by a clear, “You can’t kill me Toushin. No one can anymore,” from behind. The assassin flipped off the body of the scientist’s corpse to see…the scientist just standing there, as sure as shit. He looked down again at the corpse and saw it slowly fading into the background as if it had never existed or the event had never happened and time was correcting itself. Uzu looked back up to Tama’s eyes again and found only a deep ocean of misery, while the doctor only had a mad glee. Taking the chair not covered in fluids and broken glass, Tama sat down and reached into the back to grab a plastic bowl full of soup and broke the seal before taking a long sip.
“H-how…how long?” Toushin asked, really not wanting to hear the answer.
“About a year, more or less. It’s been rough too, on me at least. Apparently stabbing the head of ANBU Intelligence was the straw that broke the camel’s back concerning how much Sousuke was willing to let me get away with. Not that he really had a choice. The entire Corps rose up after you died and took matters into their own hands. Before you were in the ground my house, my trailer, and my office had all been ransacked. I lost…Toushin, I lost a lot for doing this. 90% of my hard research was torched as ‘blasphemous to mankind’, and the other ten was apparently too precious information to torch so it’s bound up as ‘forbidden research and jutsu’, now. All that’s left to my name is this lab that hasn’t been found yet in the middle of nowhere, my personal black book that Chiyoko had, and a little cigarette case of scrolls that is mostly filled with actual tobacco now. Looking back on it, I really should of taken Michino’s advice and just let you die, but my pride got the better of me again, so, here we are.”
Something about the way Tama spoke didn’t have the grandeur it normally held. It was shook, struck down, even kinda sad. Qualities that befitted a human more than an Ancient. Toushin’s eyes slowly adjusted to the small light and he got a better look at the scientist’s face; abject misery was all he could read on it. How many times had he died? How many times had Kana slid her blade across his throat, punched it through his chest, or any other method of death his apprentice knew? He had no doubts at all that most of Tama’s current weariness was due to the girl’s chase as she’d be the one with the most to lose from his death. Toushin let out a sigh and reached to stroke back his hair a little when he realized that the light refracted off the color more than it normally would. Moving the lengthy locks before his face, the assassin let out a small gasp when the strands were a familiar deep red. Holding out his hands he also didn’t recognize his palms, the way the muscles in his arms flexed, or really his entire body. The eyes looked across the table towards the remorseful scientist,
“…what do I look like?”
“Kinda like a male version of, her, but with more rugged features…and taller,” Tama replied, knowing exactly who he was thinking of.
“…and why, do I look like her?” Toushin asked with teeth starting to grit.
“Because…I couldn’t fully resuscitate your corpse. By the time I was able to get to you, a lot of your body was dead and rotting. The blood flow the heart kept moving was just enough to keep your brain barely alive. So, I had to carefully cut away rot and graft on clone parts until you had a full body again. Adjusting my backup clones’ bodies until they were finally accepted by your body destroyed my entire stock. The right arm is from #3290, both legs are from #0022, parts of your back are from #’s 0301 and 0305…so on, and so forth. Eventually I found the pattern that allowed me to freely graph, but it still wasn’t fully accepting. So I used Ame’s collected DNA structure and…ah, altered yours a little. Once I did that, all the body parts just attached like Legos…only now you look like you could of been her brother instead of her lover.”
“Will I always look like…like this?” Uzu said with some real concern in his voice.
“As you age again, I imagine the body will become more yours than clone, and will further push away the similarities. I had to rewind your ‘mortal clock’ so to speak with some serious Jutsu, and now you’re in a late teens’ body. I don’t know why you look so sad, most people would kill to have their old mind in the body of a teenager.”
“Because I never intended to leave beyond my sinful life, you fool. I was supposed to die defending my beliefs, and let it be done with that. You might as well forced me into a hell where I have to redeem myself with a new start, and I hate it Tama. All I wanted before was a good death…now all I want is…food. Gods above I’m starving, why?”
“Lots of reasons. Come on,” Tama finished his soup with one long draw and stood up, “I’ll show you the rest of the shack and the kitchen while I explain the finer details.”
[Uzumoreru Toushin: Currently Retired]
Uzu laid back on a hospital bed, skin death pale with an oxygen tube in his throat to assist his breathing he the man finally began to look his age. The cancerous blood cells that housed a great deal of his latent power was destroying his body non-stop now after his fight with the infamous rogue assassin known only as “Yong”. The battle had been far more than he had been prepared for, and in a foolish decision decided to throw all of his power at the man in an attempt to stop his terrorizing of their village but, after the fight, the cancer of his body he had unleashed to stand toe-to-toe was now doing as it had always been destined to do; kill the unkillable Uzumoreru Toushin. His burst of strength was all that kept him alive in the fight, and now it was taking its toll for doing so. His vitals were low, and it was more than clear the 70-something year old man was only clinging still to this world out of sheer willpower; even unconscious as he was.
Outside the room was a seven-foot tall mahogany giant that was to be Touhsin’s future son-in-law, Toraono Michino; dressed in training gi he had clearly been wearing for days. Ever since the report of Toushin’s sudden admittance to the hospital, the man looking to be the next head of his clan dropped everything and moved to stand guard at his sensei’s door. Within only three hours of the news breaking, Michino had stopped over seventeen different attempts on Uzu’s life, and had been forced to end the lives of two of those assassins. The giant martial artist was incredibly angry, and was in no mood for anything but Sunagakure’s best in making sure that Toushin either survived this ordeal, or died peacefully. So, when his purple irises turned and saw a one super infamous Ryuu Tama making his way casually towards Michino, hairs began to raise on the back of his neck.
Tama was something of a harbinger. If you ever saw the scientist lurking around your bedroom in the hospital it was 90% certain he was there to fuck with you. Be it through pranks, morally subjective experimental recovery, or just trying to get a personal sample of the person for his own twisted ends, to see the scientist walking towards Uzu’s room was not a good sign. These two brothers never got a long and were constantly at each others throat for one thing or another; the palpable irony of them being literal neighbors was not lost on Michino. As his half-brother neared, the giant of a man stiffened up and quickly looked his smaller sized older sibling in the eyes and spoke in a deep, commanding tone,
“No.”
The scientist, dressed in a three piece suit with an old lab coat adorned over it, simply looked back up at his brother with a smile. His hands were behind his back and the miss-matched eyes of green and blue stared back up shaking with mischievousness. His right hand raised up to touch Michino’s impossibly thick muscles on his side to push him away. The scientist was one of the hospitals’ bigger names in terms of healing ability, but the younger sibling knew full well that Tama was up to something. The Toraono reached his massive hand to clutch around Tama’s wrist, and with even sterner look he repeated himself one more time,
“No, Tama. He deserves peace if he can find it. Leave. Him. Alone, you amoral bastard.”
The scientist put a hand to his chest as if to clutch at pearls and sighed dramatically…before suddenly trying to push the seven-foot tall, three-hundred pound warrior out of his way. The results was the sounds of breaking bones as Michino casually twisted his wrist and snapped Tama’s arm in half. Surprisingly, the doctor didn’t scream in pain at the sight of bones tearing out of his skin. Instead, another Tama appeared above Michino with his fists raised above his head to come down on the giant’s skull; this one was met with a fist to break his nose.
“I’m wise to your goddamn time tricks, brother. I will happily break every bone in your body again and again until you learn your lesson to quit meddling where it’s not needed!” Michino roared at the temporal doctor as his left leg kicked out to break a third Tama’s knee. A sudden rapping on the window behind him made the martial artist turn around and inside was his brother with a cocky grin waving his hand. Looking beyond he saw the open window that allowed wind and rain to buffet in suddenly. The lights flickered as a roll of thunder shook the building. The Toraono’s heart dropped into his stomach as he drew his leg to kick down the door and rush the scientist but the three clones he had been spending time breaking grabbed his body and pulled him down to the floor,
“Tama don’t do it! Let him be! You can’t keep changing destiny, it’s going to destroy us all one day you fucking idiot!
The giant roared in a defiance that shook the hospital harder than the thunder outside as he pulled out the demonic heritage inside to give him strength. A ruby-skinned demoness appeared behind one of the Tama-clones and ripped it in half as Michino smashed the skull of one and threw the last out a window some twenty feet away at the end of the hall. Michino and his soul-sister Owari both rushed forward at the door and all but turned it into splinters as they both struck it…but they were too late. Inside of Tama’s hand was a syringe with the needle already embedded deep inside of Toushin’s chest. Tama’s mismatched eyes shook with madness as he pushed the plunger down with his thumb, forcing a viscous golden liquid down into the assassin’s heart,
“Sorry, but, I have to see if it works. He’s the only subject who has the correct cellular make up to even have a chance at surviving. If he’s possibly going to die anyways, might as well give him a fighting chance, don’t you thin-”
Tama was cut off suddenly as his younger brother vaulted over his sensei’s body and smashed his head into the brick wall with a cry of frustration. He pulled Tama’s broken and bloody face out of the wall, then smashed it back in, twice, three, and then a fourth time before Owari finally grabbed his wrist with a small plea. Michino was breathing hard, his eyes glowing a venomous purple as he held his older brother’s pulp for a head in his right hand. He cried out once more before flinging the body out of the window Tama had come in through to drop some three stories down and splat against the flooded concrete. Despite the brutal violence that would of easily been a murder on anyone one else, he knew his brother would not only survive the beating but probably mock him for it later; Dr. Ryuu was effectively immortal. No amount of violence or body destruction could even come close to killing the scientist, so it was everything to Michino that he did his best to just stop the scientist’s plans.
A sudden noise behind him caused the martial artist to turn suddenly to see Uzu convulsing on the hospital bed. The old man’s eyes were opened with sheer terror as the seals on his body that held his cancerous blood in check appeared on his flesh before burning away into ash. Another seal, one placed there by Yong, also appeared and burned away. Black blood suddenly erupted into the tube that was supposed to help him breath as the heart rate monitor read a flat line. An eerie ear piercing sound echoed into the air as Toushin’s body convulsed a few more times before dropping suddenly onto the bed. The light in his golden irises faded as his flesh turned purely ashen. Michino’s heart dropped. A weakness took his knees as he dropped down on them staring at sheer disbelief that his brother literally just came in and straight killed Uzumoreru Toushin. All the strength in the world and he still couldn’t stop one idiotic mad scientist from being a bastard. Tears welled up into the giant’s eyes as he covered his face in shame, the demoness putting an arm around him in solidarity as they mourned at the death of a great man.
Two days later a funeral was held. The coroner called the death was due to heart failure brought on by a mix of Toushin’s cancer and whatever mysterious fluids Tama had injected into his body. A number of tests were ran on Uzu’s blood the night he was killed. There were chemical compounds that had never been recorded before, but an eye that knew the signs of Ancient genetic makeup saw exactly what the mad scientist was up to; he was attempting to turn Uzu into a Hybrid…again. Or, at least, that’s what the higher-ups could only guess at as they released a report that simply stated that Tama poisoned the legendary old assassin instead; no one really knew for sure. The doctor’s body was never found though an imprint of where his body had fallen on the concrete below collaborated with Michino’s story. What the man truly planned was still, and probably would forever remain, a full mystery.
At least…for a little bit it would.
Pain was the first thing he felt. Sharp, stabbing, needles in every pore pain. Toushin couldn’t open his eyes, breath, or barely even think, but he knew the pain. Finally died and went to hell, was his first thoughts. It wouldn’t be outside of his karmic alignment to be sent to such a painful eternity for his life. Touishin had been a terrible father, a man who had forced children to commit murder, and laid more lives to rest with his own hands than most could fathom; after awhile he stopped counting. Yet as Toushin focused himself towards the pain he also found other senses starting to come back. He was…suspended inside of something. Fluid. Really, really thick fluid. His sent a command to his hands to move but they only twitched. He was already exhausted from just the act and quickly a black sleep that numbed the pain took over his body.
Again, he awoke to pain. This time it burned. He could feel his entire body being bathed in flames and Uzu tried to open his mouth to scream, but his lips did not move and no sound came from within. He tried to move his hand again, twitched his fingers, and fell back into unconsciousness. This happened time and time again. He awakened to a new pain, struggled to move, and fell back into the inky blackness of ‘nothing’ after a few seconds. Yet, somehow, Toushin kept his will and mind together through it. Ever moment he woke up, the assassin started mentally counting while trying to move through the pain, and every time he did so the count got higher. Before long it occurred to the old killer that he was healing. The movements became stronger, the pain less, and his mind cleared. After he had counted ten-thousand and eight-hundred seconds, his eyes finally opened.
Uzu’s eyelids jerked opened suddenly, though he was only able to open one eye fully as the left struggled. His vision was blurry, but he could tell he was inside of a glass tube of some kind floating around in golden fluids. From outside the tube his ears caught the sound of a chair scrapping against stone and an overhead light being turned on as someone jerked at a chain. The light revealed a laboratory with other tube like structures like the one he floated in. His eyes focused in on the face staring at him and for the first time felt an emotion other than confusion; it was anger.
Long blond hair cascaded down like a gentle waterfall over Tama’s shoulders as he leaned in with mismatched eyes to stare at the assassin in a jar. In his hands was a wooden board and a pen, writing down only the kami knew what as Tama began to talk. Amazingly, Toushin could hear everything he said through the thick glass walls,
“Well, well, well! Look who is awake and looking absolutely frisky! I was…worried there for a moment, legit concerned. The formula I used at the hospital had a fifty/fifty chance of just straight killing you and even I thought it did at first! By the gods, you sure as hell looked dead. Took a lot of effort to dig you up too! Did you know they actually have 2 whole ANBU elites guarding your tomb?! Also, you got a tomb, thought you should know. Not just any ol’ grave for the great Uzu! I thought they didn’t have enough manpower to spare, but, here we are huh? Literally had to dig underneath the whole damn graveyard, took me like…eight hours. It sucked butt, however, I was able to finally confirm a heartbeat! Looks like the formula was doing it’s job by keeping you just barely alive despite the cancer. Ahh, but this is probably too much for you right now, right? I’ll tell you the rest next time. Night-night!”
The scientist reached up to the side of Toushin’s tube and withdrew a cord that had a little red button on it. Pushing that button a few times forced Toushin’s waining consciousness to waver and quickly found the inky dark taking his mind again. Once more the pain and now confusion faded as he drifted back into sleep. Another undetermined amount of time passed. Once more Toushin awoke to pain, but this time it was very dull, like an ache. He sent the command to move his body and found it following the command without a single hitch. He swung his arm back and forth a few time to get a baring for the liquid’s thickness and placed his hand against the glass wall. Toushin, with eyes still closed, extended his fingers until his middle finger was the only one touching the glass. Then suddenly his wrist twisted and his hand balled into a fist in the same timing that struck the glass. He suspected by the thickness he originally felt it would take a few strikes, but a single attack and the tube containing him exploded out wards forcing all the fluid out onto the floor as it rushed towards a dip in the ground and drained out through a tiny grate. Uzu’s leg touched solid ground and immediately buckled a little as he realigned with gravity; but they did not fail him. Reaching a hand up he pushed down the liquid off of his eyes and slowly opened both. The quality of them both shocked him with pain as it took on a vision that his brain could barely handle,and he quickly clapped a hand over his face as a sudden inertia took his balance. The assassin fell out of the tube and onto the shattered glass that stuck painfully into his flesh while IVs ripped themselves out of his veins. Ignoring the glass, he slowly dragged himself out and stepped over the shattered tube towards where he had heard the sounds of a scraping chair the last time he was conscious. As he walked towards the memory of a sound, the glass stuck inside of his body was being pushed out and wounds he had self inflicted were already stitching themselves together and healing without leaving a scar. He moved the hand away from his eyes slowly to adjust them to the darkness and watched in full amazement as red blood sucked itself back inside. After a a moment he finally came across light shining down onto a table with two chairs. Flopping down into one as a weariness took him he finally looked at his body through half-shut eyes and found that he once again looked young, despite his actual age, and was lacking any form of clothing. His addled mind moved from his skin to the table, and saw on it a plastic bag with condensation inside clinging to something. A quick few sniffs from his nose and his body recognized it was food; a sudden ravenous hunger over came him.
Without wasting time he grabbed the sack and tore open the container within to reveal a plate of fried rice and teriyaki pork. With bare hands the assassin scooped at the food and ate it faster than anything he had ever in his life with all the grace of a wild animal. The heat of the food did little to bother his hands as the nerve endings healed as fast as the food burned them. As he finished and let out a large belch, he sensed someones presence and turned his head to see a rather pissed off looking scientist.
“I knew I shouldn’t have left that there. Just a gut fe-” his words were cut off suddenly as Tama found his experiment barring down on him suddenly with a large shard of glass pressed against his throat,
“WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?!” the assassin screamed with a young voice that made his heart race even more, even as the scientist just grinned.
“Ah…it was a success! Months and months of experimentation and living off the grid! It wasn’t a waste! Uh, can you get off me? I’ll happily explain.”
“…nah, I think I’ll just kill you instead,” the assassin stated coldly before jerking the broken glass across Tama’s neck. Blood sprayed against his face as the scientist made a very satisfying gurgling sound, but it was soon followed by a clear, “You can’t kill me Toushin. No one can anymore,” from behind. The assassin flipped off the body of the scientist’s corpse to see…the scientist just standing there, as sure as shit. He looked down again at the corpse and saw it slowly fading into the background as if it had never existed or the event had never happened and time was correcting itself. Uzu looked back up to Tama’s eyes again and found only a deep ocean of misery, while the doctor only had a mad glee. Taking the chair not covered in fluids and broken glass, Tama sat down and reached into the back to grab a plastic bowl full of soup and broke the seal before taking a long sip.
“H-how…how long?” Toushin asked, really not wanting to hear the answer.
“About a year, more or less. It’s been rough too, on me at least. Apparently stabbing the head of ANBU Intelligence was the straw that broke the camel’s back concerning how much Sousuke was willing to let me get away with. Not that he really had a choice. The entire Corps rose up after you died and took matters into their own hands. Before you were in the ground my house, my trailer, and my office had all been ransacked. I lost…Toushin, I lost a lot for doing this. 90% of my hard research was torched as ‘blasphemous to mankind’, and the other ten was apparently too precious information to torch so it’s bound up as ‘forbidden research and jutsu’, now. All that’s left to my name is this lab that hasn’t been found yet in the middle of nowhere, my personal black book that Chiyoko had, and a little cigarette case of scrolls that is mostly filled with actual tobacco now. Looking back on it, I really should of taken Michino’s advice and just let you die, but my pride got the better of me again, so, here we are.”
Something about the way Tama spoke didn’t have the grandeur it normally held. It was shook, struck down, even kinda sad. Qualities that befitted a human more than an Ancient. Toushin’s eyes slowly adjusted to the small light and he got a better look at the scientist’s face; abject misery was all he could read on it. How many times had he died? How many times had Kana slid her blade across his throat, punched it through his chest, or any other method of death his apprentice knew? He had no doubts at all that most of Tama’s current weariness was due to the girl’s chase as she’d be the one with the most to lose from his death. Toushin let out a sigh and reached to stroke back his hair a little when he realized that the light refracted off the color more than it normally would. Moving the lengthy locks before his face, the assassin let out a small gasp when the strands were a familiar deep red. Holding out his hands he also didn’t recognize his palms, the way the muscles in his arms flexed, or really his entire body. The eyes looked across the table towards the remorseful scientist,
“…what do I look like?”
“Kinda like a male version of, her, but with more rugged features…and taller,” Tama replied, knowing exactly who he was thinking of.
“…and why, do I look like her?” Toushin asked with teeth starting to grit.
“Because…I couldn’t fully resuscitate your corpse. By the time I was able to get to you, a lot of your body was dead and rotting. The blood flow the heart kept moving was just enough to keep your brain barely alive. So, I had to carefully cut away rot and graft on clone parts until you had a full body again. Adjusting my backup clones’ bodies until they were finally accepted by your body destroyed my entire stock. The right arm is from #3290, both legs are from #0022, parts of your back are from #’s 0301 and 0305…so on, and so forth. Eventually I found the pattern that allowed me to freely graph, but it still wasn’t fully accepting. So I used Ame’s collected DNA structure and…ah, altered yours a little. Once I did that, all the body parts just attached like Legos…only now you look like you could of been her brother instead of her lover.”
“Will I always look like…like this?” Uzu said with some real concern in his voice.
“As you age again, I imagine the body will become more yours than clone, and will further push away the similarities. I had to rewind your ‘mortal clock’ so to speak with some serious Jutsu, and now you’re in a late teens’ body. I don’t know why you look so sad, most people would kill to have their old mind in the body of a teenager.”
“Because I never intended to leave beyond my sinful life, you fool. I was supposed to die defending my beliefs, and let it be done with that. You might as well forced me into a hell where I have to redeem myself with a new start, and I hate it Tama. All I wanted before was a good death…now all I want is…food. Gods above I’m starving, why?”
“Lots of reasons. Come on,” Tama finished his soup with one long draw and stood up, “I’ll show you the rest of the shack and the kitchen while I explain the finer details.”
[Uzumoreru Toushin: Currently Retired]