She was back home. Home was not in Sand. It was not in Soons or even Sora. It was not with Nao or the Sovereign. It was home. It was not a quiet house, it was a small, messy place that was full of life and laughter. There had to be six kids, the oldest being 10 and the youngest being about 3. She was making food, it was some sort of indescribable stew. It was meat to a minor capacity and a heavy portion of vegetables on the stove-top being left to simmer. She was the oldest, at least it could be presumed. Her line of sight was higher than that of the other children there. The kids were running beneath the table and chairs, screaming and squealing as if they were murdering one another. As most children do, they played a game of cat and mouse, of hunter and prey without realizing.
"You're in charge!"
A role bestowed upon the eldest there, the ten year old.
"Man the stove Koran, I am late!"
Her household was not the place she felt the most comfortable, no. That was the prelude of course, the fact that she was back home. Like any dreamscape she was there somehow and she did not even realize that it made no sense. That she should not be there. That logically she could not be there. She could not be there because they were all dead but that is a story for another day. This was a time from before, a time when she thought she knew fear and pain but she was wrong. A time where she was 'safe' or at least the safest she ever was. She would rush through the cobbled streets, the people had stern faces and expressions. Their eyes never met hers, they never did. They always looked over and past. It was cold and no it was not safe. She thought that the scariest things she ever saw lived in Otogakure. She thought her greatest barrier would be her impoverished lifestyle and her large family of depends because her parents could not keep it in their pants and surprise-surprise were also never around to deal with the 'fruits' of their lust.
No, this was not where she was the most comfortable, it was merely part of the narrative.
She would make her way to a great Dojo, she never looked up at the sign. She did not need to, she knew the way. She knew the house. She was also late. She would not hesitate as she knocked on the door, if she dallied it would only be worse. Before the door even opened she tried to genuflect at the doorway but the door opened and as she tried to kneel a knee would make contact with her jaw. Her mouth would snap shut and rattle her head. She would feel a *crack* in her jaw. Yes, it was broken She knew well the feeling and she was sent tumbling back. It was Master Chiro, he said something to her but her head was swimming and she did not even hear the words. Her head had hit the stony ground hard and she could taste blood in her mouth. She was not in shock, this had happened before and in fact he was in a good mood if it ended there. She was after-all 5 minutes late. It was a sign of disrespect and he tolerated none. His ego was the only thing likely more fragile than the then teen's jaw. Yes, this was a memory being recycled into a twisted horror by Roku's illusion. Oddly enough this was not a dream even in its virgin state.
"aster-- I am hawrry I disresected the Order."
She could not move her jaw, it was the best she could do. A kick to the rib that she refused to yelp in response to. The door was left ajar and the teacher she hardly even looked at would walk away. In fact the did not even see his face, she was too busy staring at the floor and then the sky but as he left she would see his back. She often saw his back. It was a kimono, he was a traditionalist. Dark blue this time, it was always a dark color but rarely the same. There was a giant symbol on his back. It was the symbol for the Ranger Order.
"You're getting too old to be a screw up. Fight or die, I do not care which."
That statement might sound dramatic but it was quite the contrary. She was in training and so were many others. Training consisted primarily of fighting each other. By the end of the day a broken jaw would not be her only broken bone. She was scrappy and perhaps a bit desperate, being a member of an Order meant something in Otogakure. There was no option for failure and pain was simply a part of her life. It was a part of all of their lives, at least here in this Dojo where they trained until the sun got low. When they left, everyone was wordless and emotionless. Indifferent even if they were suffering. You did not show weakness, that was how you got yourself killed in Otogakure. Of course they were just kids. With one another, when the adults were not watching. When they found a hidden alley or underpass, one they all knew they would congregate taking slightly different paths, thinking themselves clever.
They were not clever, they were kids.
Hidden stash of cheap booze, cigarettes and bad jokes. This was comrades, at least the down time between fighting. They were pitted against one another to see who would shine, who would be worthy to be accepted into the Order and who was not worth their efforts, It was a constant competition between them as long as they were in the public eye, but this was the one brief moment where she could be a teen. Where she was not responsible for her parent's fertility. Where she was not being assaulted or assaulting someone else to gain favor in an Order. This was where she felt safe. Even with scrapes and bruises, broken bones that would mend by morning. She was a quick healer. All of them were. Then they would fight again. It was through pain that they would be forged into something worthy, of something capable they claimed. She believed it because she knew nothing else. They all believed it. Despite the chaos and the pain, this was the best part of her life.
Of course, this was a dream and she would not remember that these kids are all dead too.
This was where Roku's cruelty took over and spirited away what would have been considered a 'dream' as sad as that might be. From the floor and the walls, long tendrils of darkness would slither out and take shape. Hands or claws, to her they were more like claws. and they would begin to rip through the middle mass of all the people she cared for. Her allies. She was if nothing else, loyal. She was willing to leap through the nine layers of hell to bring back an ally, to free them from the clutches of her enemies. To even save them through force against them if necessary. Then there was a deep, disembodied laugh. At least it was a terrible noise she associated with Mikaboshi, bereft of charm and warmth but in its own way possessed a terrible mirth. Roku did not need to feed her this narrative, it was not far from the truth of what had happened. At least what she was told had happened. A lie for another day of course, she was the designated survivor of her class, An honor she never knew, she was told an Ancient killed her peers but that was a lie. It was what fueled her reason to come to Wind Country. It was what compelled her to join the Sovereign and it was what gave life to a hate that before was merely a prejudice fed to her by her parents and superiors. It was through pain she, like so many others like her were forged. With a specific, uncompromising hate for Ancients.
She would see a fate she had imagined so many times before. She would scream, both in her vision and audibly. It was a terrible guttural noise. Her feet seemed glued to the ground. She wanted to take arms, but dammit in this dream she was not moving or at least not fast enough. It was just blood and gore, rivers of it. Even the sky changed. There were no words, just screams. She tried to say their names, but the words never came out right. She searched for her weapon, forgetting she never had one. Just her hands and sometimes a stick. Crude implements of war. As she looked down, she would see them -- the damned and dead. She never cared for the Sovereign or the Cabal as much as she did for her fellow Ranger apprentices. There was never the same warmth, not from her. Still, she did not want them to die. They were not worth much but she would have died to protect them. But they seemed better at dying than her.
"And they were supposed to be Rangers?"
This was of course a nightmare, but a logical mind would not know it. Mikaboshi's mask would be cast away, revealing the face of an aged man. The Diamyo, whom had not aged as long as she knew of him. Yes, he always appeared the same in all her years. Never aging, never changing. It was not a steady course, it was a stagnant pool. His laugh was different, not nearly as dramatic but still cruel. There was no blink, no turning away in a dream. Everything was shown with vivid detail and color. In the vision, the hybridization was taken literally and from the gloom that composed the body of the Jashinist Ishii Shiro, hundreds of dark, twisted hands would reach outwards outwards. Within their grip would be the hundreds of orbs, not figures. That was not how it was done, it was souls not bodies. The souls withdrawn and then not pushed into but fed to a living target. But this was a nightmare and she could not question it, her brain could not fathom the logic. it was bodies here. Bodies of Ancients. The shadow hands slam the Ancients into the fallen bodies of Avaron's mates. The transition process, nothing like the ones she had seen, the convulsions and the fevers, the terrible dreams, the screaming pain and the likely death. No, they rose again from the dead. Something to celebrate if you were anyone but an Otogakurian as they rose mixed as her brain followed the obvious symbolism involved here.
"We are malleable now... We are malleable Nao... We are malleable now, and soon you will be too."
Her heart was pounding. It was in agony. It was getting hard to breathe, She did not even know if she was screaming, if she was saying the words that she intended. There was no threats she could make, she could not move. She could not fight. Stay away? Leave them alone? Stop? Perhaps it was worse that the words were not coming out. Perhaps it was worse that they were and they were unheeded. It did not matter because she was an irrelevant. She was an irrelevant and they were coming for her. Did she beg? Scream? Cry? She didn't, not because she was brave but because she was stunned. Because she was numb. There was nothing she could do, nothing that would or could make a difference. She just wanted to die. Death seemed better, quieter, less bloody. Hell, it sounded like a fucking vacation.
Then it would end. In the blink of an eye, it would start all over again. As if it was a bad dream or a terrible vision one put in the back of their head. There was something foreboding about it or it was a thought that would make you shudder and you would lock it away. Try to live the life your were living but the instance would play out again. They were dead, ripped apart. She was numb from the start, from the first instance. It was not the numbness that he would achieve in this hopeless scenario, in this nightmare. No, she would start to change the scenario or at least try. A different alley. A different underpass. Attempt to get the crew to scatter early, but to no avail. The fate was always the same. So she would move back to an earlier time, turn on them herself. Kill them before the shadows came, but the shadows simply came earlier or rather just late enough to allow her the fate of feeling that she betrayed them for what ends as the result was the same but their first blood was on her hands. Earlier and earlier, to even the dojo. It mattered not, the shadows came. The Ancient taint and the curse. The perversion of it all. It did not matter because it was going to happen. It always happened, not matter who she killed. Who she sought to change the course of events. Who she begged or tried to make a deal with. So she lived it out, over and over again in this sadistic cycle of death and then sin.
It would end eventually but she could not be certain how long she was there. When it ended a final time, scripted just like the first -- intervention was useless and she gave up a long time ago. Suicide simply started the cycle sooner, the shadows would come and she would just lay there trapped inside her corpse and watch. Because yes, she tried, numerous times. She had his, Roku's new eyes but she was not looking at him. She looked past him. She was not focusing on him, but she was standing. There was nothing to say, she saw where she was. Back in this hell instead of the other one. Her cell, mostly empty less the broken, forgotten plate and the bones of vermin. "How... like your kind," she announced with an uncharacteristic calm. She was pale, shaking and covered in sweat. "Did... you know, I..." Of course he didn't. She would kneel down and grab the bones of a rat, a rather large one. Back in its day perhaps the king of rats, the size of a chihuahua. She would take its skull, the meat was stripped away long ago and she would smash the skull against the floor, cracking the bone in half. "Does not matter, it does not," work that way. She did not finish the sentence but she did not even notice. She was rattled.
Lateral lines wrist to elbow deep.
Yes, this was suicide.
The jagged bones were not sharp enough to be painless but she was not right. She had not been right for a long time, but there is a different between being mis-wired and broken and she was now the later.