It had been a week since his return to the waking world.
No one had even so much as bothered to hunt him down or try and contact the scientist, making him believe that he wasn’t near as famous as he had thought. During the past week of life he had uncovered a startling truth about himself and the bloodlines that ran through his veins. He had also managed to recover enough documents about his past to prove that he was Ryuu Tama and got re-registered into the Militia. After that he got a low-level job at the hospital that he demanded though they wanted him to be head over much more. It took the scientist far longer than he wanted to admit to convince the hospital big-wigs that he wasn’t at all his complete self and that he needed something basic to do before someone gave him responsibility over someone else’s job.
With the service at the hospital secured and the paperwork filled out he was then able to begin renting a studio apartment. It had enough room for a ‘queen’ sized bed, a single row of cuboards, a sink, an oven, and a coffee table and there was still just enough room for a television set but for the life of him he couldn’t think of why anyone would want one.
The apartments was one of the last complexes that wasn’t destroyed or ruined beyond repair from the Cabal attack and next to no one lived in any of the adjacent rooms. Just about everyone had moved out to the surface after the attacks and the village was expanding beyond the Maw; which was something of a strange culture shock for him to see. Not because he had many memories of living in the cave but due to natural habit from doing so. Something inside of his conscious told him that it just wasn’t natural and thus he couldn’t bring himself to actually live outside of the remnants of Old Suna.
It was Tama’s first day off. He had pulled a few consecutive shifts in the ER and his entire body was physically exhausted. He could feel aches and pains in places he had forgotten could even hurt and regardless of the damn thing running a hundred miles a second his mind had an edge of fog to it that continued to remind him of his own mortality. Despite this something felt right about what he was doing. Not so much the saving lives part or diagnosing an illness as something that required a doctor’s attention or not but...just the general hold over a human’s life gave him...a thrill?
No...that’s not right..., Tama thought to himself as he laid on the couch. It was the only single piece of furniture in his studio and was the same couch from his ruined home. He just couldn’t bring himself to get rid of it and managed to clean/refurbish it in under six hours. He had the choice between this thing and a very large bed yet for some reason the cushions he lounged on now felt far more comforting than the room to roll around a bed would have offered.
Of all the paths he could have taken in regaining his powers he had chosen the slowest and easiest. After the run in with his father he knew that there was a lot left for him to still relearn before he could begin putting himself back into the fame of Suna’s elites; if he had indeed been so. So he decided to stay low and act like a low-level shinobi until he could get enough power back to continue on naturally. So far it seemed either Sousuke didn’t care or no one had actually informed him yet for some strange reason. No matter the reason he was glad for it, if nothing else, than it giving him a chance to rest.
His mind continued in such inane paths of neutral thought in the attempt to force himself asleep until the sound of paper sliding against the ragged carpeted floor tore his attention away. Looking down at the floor he saw a large envelope sealed shut with a ninja tag. Without a sound the scientist gently pushed off the couch and seemed to glide along the air over to the mail where he landed in continued silence. His slightly thicker than before fingers gripped the edge of the envelope and lifted it closer to his face to examine the explosive seal that kept anyone without proper training from opening it.
Despite his addled mind a single glace told his gut that it was the most basic of explosive seals and with a single slide of his finger down the middle of the kanji the seal caught fire and blew away, leaving the mail itself undamaged. Tama took the string in his fingers and untied it around the little button and with a gentle squeeze of the edges popped open the envelope’s top and reached in to remove the papers inside.
After about ten minutes the scientist stood up and walked over to his couch and lifted a cushion off. He kicked the wood frame and covered bottom of the couch popped open. He pulled a steel table from out of the couch like a futon and within seconds had a full long table at his disposal. He took the contents of the folder and meticulously spread them out over the sleek metal surface as he began to study each piece carefully. He had no idea who thought it was a good idea to send him this but the information inside was a BINGO book entry; a dangerous criminal that had to be hunted down by someone slightly more clever than your basic Chunnin grunt. What surprised Tama was that someone in the government felt like he was good enough to catch this guy. After only a few seconds of studying the papers the platinum blonde felt a little worried. The guy had managed to kill two ANBU while escaping, was deep in political conspiracy and...had a taste for the forbidden arts.
It was that last thing that fully caught the scientist’s attention and suddenly he realized why someone had sent this to him. Last week had been really busy in trying to catch back up with everything, but something he had learned really quick was that his recorded methods of medical practice were looked at with skepticism due to how many links to the forbidden arts they could have; there was no proof but Tama knew. Even despite some of his findings had been really scene changing - like his work on the mysteries of the chakra coil and chakra coil transplantation - not a lot of doctors quoted Tama or used his work in their medical practice simply due to the possible dangerous links it had. However that link to this man in the BINGO book rang bells and his gut told him capturing this guy alive would be very beneficial to recovering at the very least a part of his memory. Plus the difficulty of the ranking meant there would most likely be a fight which would allow for him to get a better handle on his combative prowess. He had no idea how good or bad he would be at fighting at all, even if some part of him felt a little too bloodthirsty at the thought of actually fighting.
After a good ten more minutes of studying every bit of information he was given the scientist concluded that the man would be hiding in either Soon or near the merchant port. He grabbed his lab coat, slung it over his rather non-descript t-shirt and pants, slipped on his standard issue sandals and walked out of the studio apartment.
About three hours later Tama found himself traveling with a small caravan towards Soon. His ratty wide-brim hat kept the sun from his face and shoulders while he used the lab coat to cover the rest of his body from the heat. It seemed odd to be outside of Suna and not see so much as a gust of wind in the distance. Today was a flat heated day with not a single gust of air to give anyone a reprieve. Being a long-lived person of the desert the heat didn’t bother the scientist in really any sense and his closed eyes showed movement behind them as he quietly scanned the surface thoughts of every person traveling through the desert with him.
Being that his opponent was a man who really good at blending in the only thing that the scientist could think of to help locate him was hoping to land upon the right thought with the right person. He was aware that his chances were small in actually finding the guy with this method but it was the least invasive way he could think of. Ever since his encounter with his father Tama knew that he needed to be as quiet as possible about revealing himself unless he wanted to attract the wrong kind of attention from Soon. There was an unspoken tension at the ‘gates’ of Suna when he mentioned his destination to the guards. They doublechecked his paperwork immediately after speaking of where his whereabouts would be and while at the time, he thought they were just being thorough, enough time had passed that it occurred to him there was possibly something more sinister going on between the two cities.
They were almost right on the gates of Soon when his mind slip across another’s that gave him a moment of suspicion. The male’s surface thoughts were all about confirming his next step in being able to claim a special heritage that would give him the power he finally deserved. Before the caravan could fully reach the gate Tama got up and hopped off and into the hot sand. To avoid complete suspicion he continued to walk alongside the wagon until the thoughts became strong enough for him to be right beside the guy. Looking up he saw a young man with short cropped hair not too far off of color from his own. He took special attention to the eye color and face shape before walking a little faster than the vehicle deciding it was going to and made it to the gates first.
He checked in with the guards and immediately disappeared into the crowd before making a large circle back to the front to avoid being followed. Once there he kept a close eye on the caravan as it stopped and everyone unloaded. The man was there but didn’t enter the city and instead began to walk directly north of the city gates and into the desert. After waiting three minutes Tama gathered up and sneaked back out of the gates to begin following the thin trail left behind.
It only took Gosu about thirty minutes to reach his destination and Tama another three to fully catch up. He took his time to sneak through the dunes using the neutral colors of his clothing to help blend in with the hot sand. As he finally reached the top of the last dune he looked down to see a set of old ruins that stretched out for some ways making it the size of a small village. The dilapidated buildings seemed to be mostly made of stone though there was some beach wood frames still standing here and there. The scientist’s mismatched eyes looked long over the land but could not find the man he had a very close eye on until just three minutes ago.
Tama’s eyes widened in realization by the time Gosu’s body silently lifted itself out of the sand. The assassin’s eyes were wide and his pupils were shrunk in pinpoint accuracy of attack. His pale hands were clasped together in a finished seal that poured wells of chakra into the sand around them. In the blink of an eye the two shinobi had started their fight with the scientist being at a rusty disadvantage to a man who had been on the run for only a month.
An angry green eye shifted up and stared directly at Gosu’s causing the air around the scientist to shift in a strange manor. His gut told him to leap and with all fours did he push off the ground as Old Power began to simply echo off Tama’s chakra coil and into the air. Even as spears of sand tendrils began to appear and strike down they began to wither and wilt in power as they got near the dark energy.
After a full two seconds had passed the Suna scientist’s feet touched the ground.
In what would seem like a blur to the untrained the two shinobi flickered away from each other and towards the ruins to use as their battleground. The first thing Tama flew towards was a long row of ten foot thick stone pillars and began to weave back and forth between them. Long and powerful waves of sand lifted and crashed behind him as Gosu flew through the air using the sand to propel him along over the scientist. Eventually the assassin caught up and began to run along the top of the pillars while hovering maliciously over the running silver haired man trying to get a good bead on his movements.
Two small waves of sand began to run along Tama as he weaved in and out, striking at his ankles and missing only just so as he did this to dodge any major attack from above. Gosu was quick and quiet, befitting of a true assassin, but was ultimately at a disadvantage so long as he stayed close enough to a mind reader. The scientist was plotting ever three or four steps ahead and could make calculations with far more clarity knowing a general idea of what the opponent had at their disposal.
He’s going to lift a large wave at the end of this row and pincer me in with a second wave from behind. Above me he has just enough dirt on himself to send out chakra needles. Can’t doubt that with the skills he’s displaying right now that he couldn’t hit something vital as I tried to escape up...
Tama stopped suddenly right before the pillars ended and turned to face the wave that suddenly exploded from the desert. Bracing himself with his right leg he kept a forward position as his hands came together with the agility of a professional scrolled his hands through thirty seals before ending on the dragon seal. The pores of his flesh opened up and chakra exploded from around in in the element of wind before forming an invisible fist that punched a hole and a wind tunnel in the wave large enough for Tama to leap into. With the added speed of the air he flew through the hole that closed with the exact speed that he guessed it would. Landing on top of a slanted pillar the Suna shinobi stood there with his feet fixed firmly to the flat top with chakra. Gosu stopped his pursuit, turned, and with a clasp of his hands canceled out some of the chakra he had poured into the sand. The two shinobi stood on top of the pillars and faced each other at about ten yards apart. The assassin lifted a cigarette to his lips and lit it up before taking a long inhale to vent out a small frustration that came with facing a mad scientist.
At ten seconds Tama raised his hands to form seals again.
Gosu dashed forward to close to gap between the two fighters as his opponent flashed through multiple seals. He was already furious that his opponent had managed to trick him out of half of the chakra he had used for his techniques. Though he also thought the Suna ninja was absolutely an idiot for giving him time to light a cigarette. It gave him a two prong advantage in not just the little trick for making his technique ‘real’, but allowed him to pulse an even larger amount of chakra into the ground. It would grant him a speed advantage that would most likely catch the silver haired doofus off guard; as it usually did with most targets.
Tama’s heart was racing like he had never remembered feeling before. He was in a real life or death battle with a man he was intended on capturing, but a strange kind of battle lust had woken up from the pits of his stomach. The scientist’s eyes held a certain kind of calculated sociopath matched with a face that held a grin of pure ecstasy. Even laughter began to bubble up in pure mirth as he pushed off the flat top of the slanted pillar with enough force to knock it off and meet his opponent halfway. Right as they reached seven feet from each other their techniques exploded. A large amount of chakra exploded from the scientist’s body to cause massive friction in the air to form electrical bolts while Gosu shot six tendrils of sand to spear at the neutral clothing in vital spots.
Thirteen seconds passed.
While it was a close call as to who was a faster ninjutsu user the bloodlust that suddenly affixed the Tama caused him to honestly miss a beat. A spear of sand lanced through his left shoulder and lifted him from the pillar to throw him into a building frame made of the petrified beach wood. He could feel his left leg shatter, his back crack, bits of his right hand broken and bend at bad angles, and then finally the landing that broke what little of his left shoulder that the sand tendril didn’t. He still had good enough sense to land tucked into a roll and was able to minimize the impact damage by tumbling and crashing into other bits of building before coming to a full stop against a pillar. He landed against the pillar with his back facing the hot stone. Blood began to drop down from the back of Tama’s head as he attempted to breath with a punctured lung. At fifteen seconds Gosu leaped out of the sand in front of him and clasped a strong hand around his throat. The cigarette was still somehow lit and with a deep inhale he breathed a thick fog of it at the Suna ninja causing the mild mental status effect that completed his ultimate technique.
“Time for you to become sand.” was all the assassin said as a swirling torrent of air and sand began to lift the beaten shinobi up against the pillar. As he reached the top he could see the flurry of diamonded sand that he had feared was still tearing things apart on the surface.
While it had been a relief to know the the Malstorm was no longer a force to reckon with, to see it starting to tear apart his clothes and body in a painful bloody mess wasn’t exactly helping with the issues he had about leaving the cave in the first place. Things had really changed while he was asleep if some asshole had managed to gain control of that terrible power that kept the Wind Country on lock-down for so long, and while it still pissed him off that he had to step this fight up to full power after only twenty five seconds at least he knew he was up against something truly powerful.
Despite the sand around him almost just simply breaking off the broken fingers completely he raised his right hand over his face and began to chant in a strange language that started to pulse the Old Power off of his chakra coil again. The sands swirling around him and holding him up began to thin out and push away as his chakra began to shift between human and Ancient. Porcelain bone began to form from a black and gold laced energy flowing from the palm of his hand to form a quarter of a mask over his left eye. As soon as it settled against his flesh power exploded out from it and wrapped the scientist in a cloak of chakra. He glided down towards the surprised assassin who began to step back as a strange uncalled for fear began to gnaw at his stomach. He couldn’t explain why but as soon as his opponent dawned the mask made of his concentrated chakra his entire being said, oh hell no.
Gosu knew it for what it was; a forbidden technique. It called out the ancestry of a mortal’s bloodline at it’s most powerful to become the shape of either a weapon or armor. So long as the user of the chakra that created it wore the item they could wield their ancestor’s power on top of their own for a very limited time. It was a technique known as the Death Mask Breath but it was one of those techniques that was forbidden not because of how powerful it was but more because of the dangerous backlash. It could cause death in anyone less powerful than a Kage, and even then there was a good chance that someone of that caliber would still be hospitalized for some time afterwards. Despite knowing that there was something wrong about the power radiating from Tama’s Death Mask form. It was purely unnerving and seemed to be not of this world. The assassin kept backing away as his opponent gradually landed on the sand without a sound as a thick layer of visible black chakra seemed to mute any noise he would naturally make. After a single step in his direction, Gosu retaliated by screaming a primal rage from the core of his soul; something he had never done before. Doing this caused all of his chakra to pour into the sand and spear Tama’s body with seven spears, enclose him in a coffin shaped prison of sand that crushed him and then finally opened a maw of swirling sand to bury the body with all in about the speed of two seconds.
“Not even close to being fast enough.”
A beam of light exploded from Gosu’s chest causing blood to gush out of the sudden hole caused by Tama’s photon jutsu as he stood behind the man exuding the same fell-touched chakra that had caused his opponent to panic. The assassin laid their gurgling his last as he used the last of his muscle control to land on his back. He looked up at his murder. The mask had been pulled off and his power returned to normal levels but instead of collapsing into a coma as the jutsu was supposed to backlash the youth had simply been turned into an old man. That...is so weird...
The final thoughts of Tama’s first real meal.
[MFT][Topic Entered/Left]
No one had even so much as bothered to hunt him down or try and contact the scientist, making him believe that he wasn’t near as famous as he had thought. During the past week of life he had uncovered a startling truth about himself and the bloodlines that ran through his veins. He had also managed to recover enough documents about his past to prove that he was Ryuu Tama and got re-registered into the Militia. After that he got a low-level job at the hospital that he demanded though they wanted him to be head over much more. It took the scientist far longer than he wanted to admit to convince the hospital big-wigs that he wasn’t at all his complete self and that he needed something basic to do before someone gave him responsibility over someone else’s job.
With the service at the hospital secured and the paperwork filled out he was then able to begin renting a studio apartment. It had enough room for a ‘queen’ sized bed, a single row of cuboards, a sink, an oven, and a coffee table and there was still just enough room for a television set but for the life of him he couldn’t think of why anyone would want one.
The apartments was one of the last complexes that wasn’t destroyed or ruined beyond repair from the Cabal attack and next to no one lived in any of the adjacent rooms. Just about everyone had moved out to the surface after the attacks and the village was expanding beyond the Maw; which was something of a strange culture shock for him to see. Not because he had many memories of living in the cave but due to natural habit from doing so. Something inside of his conscious told him that it just wasn’t natural and thus he couldn’t bring himself to actually live outside of the remnants of Old Suna.
It was Tama’s first day off. He had pulled a few consecutive shifts in the ER and his entire body was physically exhausted. He could feel aches and pains in places he had forgotten could even hurt and regardless of the damn thing running a hundred miles a second his mind had an edge of fog to it that continued to remind him of his own mortality. Despite this something felt right about what he was doing. Not so much the saving lives part or diagnosing an illness as something that required a doctor’s attention or not but...just the general hold over a human’s life gave him...a thrill?
No...that’s not right..., Tama thought to himself as he laid on the couch. It was the only single piece of furniture in his studio and was the same couch from his ruined home. He just couldn’t bring himself to get rid of it and managed to clean/refurbish it in under six hours. He had the choice between this thing and a very large bed yet for some reason the cushions he lounged on now felt far more comforting than the room to roll around a bed would have offered.
Of all the paths he could have taken in regaining his powers he had chosen the slowest and easiest. After the run in with his father he knew that there was a lot left for him to still relearn before he could begin putting himself back into the fame of Suna’s elites; if he had indeed been so. So he decided to stay low and act like a low-level shinobi until he could get enough power back to continue on naturally. So far it seemed either Sousuke didn’t care or no one had actually informed him yet for some strange reason. No matter the reason he was glad for it, if nothing else, than it giving him a chance to rest.
His mind continued in such inane paths of neutral thought in the attempt to force himself asleep until the sound of paper sliding against the ragged carpeted floor tore his attention away. Looking down at the floor he saw a large envelope sealed shut with a ninja tag. Without a sound the scientist gently pushed off the couch and seemed to glide along the air over to the mail where he landed in continued silence. His slightly thicker than before fingers gripped the edge of the envelope and lifted it closer to his face to examine the explosive seal that kept anyone without proper training from opening it.
Despite his addled mind a single glace told his gut that it was the most basic of explosive seals and with a single slide of his finger down the middle of the kanji the seal caught fire and blew away, leaving the mail itself undamaged. Tama took the string in his fingers and untied it around the little button and with a gentle squeeze of the edges popped open the envelope’s top and reached in to remove the papers inside.
After about ten minutes the scientist stood up and walked over to his couch and lifted a cushion off. He kicked the wood frame and covered bottom of the couch popped open. He pulled a steel table from out of the couch like a futon and within seconds had a full long table at his disposal. He took the contents of the folder and meticulously spread them out over the sleek metal surface as he began to study each piece carefully. He had no idea who thought it was a good idea to send him this but the information inside was a BINGO book entry; a dangerous criminal that had to be hunted down by someone slightly more clever than your basic Chunnin grunt. What surprised Tama was that someone in the government felt like he was good enough to catch this guy. After only a few seconds of studying the papers the platinum blonde felt a little worried. The guy had managed to kill two ANBU while escaping, was deep in political conspiracy and...had a taste for the forbidden arts.
It was that last thing that fully caught the scientist’s attention and suddenly he realized why someone had sent this to him. Last week had been really busy in trying to catch back up with everything, but something he had learned really quick was that his recorded methods of medical practice were looked at with skepticism due to how many links to the forbidden arts they could have; there was no proof but Tama knew. Even despite some of his findings had been really scene changing - like his work on the mysteries of the chakra coil and chakra coil transplantation - not a lot of doctors quoted Tama or used his work in their medical practice simply due to the possible dangerous links it had. However that link to this man in the BINGO book rang bells and his gut told him capturing this guy alive would be very beneficial to recovering at the very least a part of his memory. Plus the difficulty of the ranking meant there would most likely be a fight which would allow for him to get a better handle on his combative prowess. He had no idea how good or bad he would be at fighting at all, even if some part of him felt a little too bloodthirsty at the thought of actually fighting.
After a good ten more minutes of studying every bit of information he was given the scientist concluded that the man would be hiding in either Soon or near the merchant port. He grabbed his lab coat, slung it over his rather non-descript t-shirt and pants, slipped on his standard issue sandals and walked out of the studio apartment.
About three hours later Tama found himself traveling with a small caravan towards Soon. His ratty wide-brim hat kept the sun from his face and shoulders while he used the lab coat to cover the rest of his body from the heat. It seemed odd to be outside of Suna and not see so much as a gust of wind in the distance. Today was a flat heated day with not a single gust of air to give anyone a reprieve. Being a long-lived person of the desert the heat didn’t bother the scientist in really any sense and his closed eyes showed movement behind them as he quietly scanned the surface thoughts of every person traveling through the desert with him.
Being that his opponent was a man who really good at blending in the only thing that the scientist could think of to help locate him was hoping to land upon the right thought with the right person. He was aware that his chances were small in actually finding the guy with this method but it was the least invasive way he could think of. Ever since his encounter with his father Tama knew that he needed to be as quiet as possible about revealing himself unless he wanted to attract the wrong kind of attention from Soon. There was an unspoken tension at the ‘gates’ of Suna when he mentioned his destination to the guards. They doublechecked his paperwork immediately after speaking of where his whereabouts would be and while at the time, he thought they were just being thorough, enough time had passed that it occurred to him there was possibly something more sinister going on between the two cities.
They were almost right on the gates of Soon when his mind slip across another’s that gave him a moment of suspicion. The male’s surface thoughts were all about confirming his next step in being able to claim a special heritage that would give him the power he finally deserved. Before the caravan could fully reach the gate Tama got up and hopped off and into the hot sand. To avoid complete suspicion he continued to walk alongside the wagon until the thoughts became strong enough for him to be right beside the guy. Looking up he saw a young man with short cropped hair not too far off of color from his own. He took special attention to the eye color and face shape before walking a little faster than the vehicle deciding it was going to and made it to the gates first.
He checked in with the guards and immediately disappeared into the crowd before making a large circle back to the front to avoid being followed. Once there he kept a close eye on the caravan as it stopped and everyone unloaded. The man was there but didn’t enter the city and instead began to walk directly north of the city gates and into the desert. After waiting three minutes Tama gathered up and sneaked back out of the gates to begin following the thin trail left behind.
It only took Gosu about thirty minutes to reach his destination and Tama another three to fully catch up. He took his time to sneak through the dunes using the neutral colors of his clothing to help blend in with the hot sand. As he finally reached the top of the last dune he looked down to see a set of old ruins that stretched out for some ways making it the size of a small village. The dilapidated buildings seemed to be mostly made of stone though there was some beach wood frames still standing here and there. The scientist’s mismatched eyes looked long over the land but could not find the man he had a very close eye on until just three minutes ago.
Tama’s eyes widened in realization by the time Gosu’s body silently lifted itself out of the sand. The assassin’s eyes were wide and his pupils were shrunk in pinpoint accuracy of attack. His pale hands were clasped together in a finished seal that poured wells of chakra into the sand around them. In the blink of an eye the two shinobi had started their fight with the scientist being at a rusty disadvantage to a man who had been on the run for only a month.
An angry green eye shifted up and stared directly at Gosu’s causing the air around the scientist to shift in a strange manor. His gut told him to leap and with all fours did he push off the ground as Old Power began to simply echo off Tama’s chakra coil and into the air. Even as spears of sand tendrils began to appear and strike down they began to wither and wilt in power as they got near the dark energy.
After a full two seconds had passed the Suna scientist’s feet touched the ground.
In what would seem like a blur to the untrained the two shinobi flickered away from each other and towards the ruins to use as their battleground. The first thing Tama flew towards was a long row of ten foot thick stone pillars and began to weave back and forth between them. Long and powerful waves of sand lifted and crashed behind him as Gosu flew through the air using the sand to propel him along over the scientist. Eventually the assassin caught up and began to run along the top of the pillars while hovering maliciously over the running silver haired man trying to get a good bead on his movements.
Two small waves of sand began to run along Tama as he weaved in and out, striking at his ankles and missing only just so as he did this to dodge any major attack from above. Gosu was quick and quiet, befitting of a true assassin, but was ultimately at a disadvantage so long as he stayed close enough to a mind reader. The scientist was plotting ever three or four steps ahead and could make calculations with far more clarity knowing a general idea of what the opponent had at their disposal.
He’s going to lift a large wave at the end of this row and pincer me in with a second wave from behind. Above me he has just enough dirt on himself to send out chakra needles. Can’t doubt that with the skills he’s displaying right now that he couldn’t hit something vital as I tried to escape up...
Tama stopped suddenly right before the pillars ended and turned to face the wave that suddenly exploded from the desert. Bracing himself with his right leg he kept a forward position as his hands came together with the agility of a professional scrolled his hands through thirty seals before ending on the dragon seal. The pores of his flesh opened up and chakra exploded from around in in the element of wind before forming an invisible fist that punched a hole and a wind tunnel in the wave large enough for Tama to leap into. With the added speed of the air he flew through the hole that closed with the exact speed that he guessed it would. Landing on top of a slanted pillar the Suna shinobi stood there with his feet fixed firmly to the flat top with chakra. Gosu stopped his pursuit, turned, and with a clasp of his hands canceled out some of the chakra he had poured into the sand. The two shinobi stood on top of the pillars and faced each other at about ten yards apart. The assassin lifted a cigarette to his lips and lit it up before taking a long inhale to vent out a small frustration that came with facing a mad scientist.
At ten seconds Tama raised his hands to form seals again.
Gosu dashed forward to close to gap between the two fighters as his opponent flashed through multiple seals. He was already furious that his opponent had managed to trick him out of half of the chakra he had used for his techniques. Though he also thought the Suna ninja was absolutely an idiot for giving him time to light a cigarette. It gave him a two prong advantage in not just the little trick for making his technique ‘real’, but allowed him to pulse an even larger amount of chakra into the ground. It would grant him a speed advantage that would most likely catch the silver haired doofus off guard; as it usually did with most targets.
Tama’s heart was racing like he had never remembered feeling before. He was in a real life or death battle with a man he was intended on capturing, but a strange kind of battle lust had woken up from the pits of his stomach. The scientist’s eyes held a certain kind of calculated sociopath matched with a face that held a grin of pure ecstasy. Even laughter began to bubble up in pure mirth as he pushed off the flat top of the slanted pillar with enough force to knock it off and meet his opponent halfway. Right as they reached seven feet from each other their techniques exploded. A large amount of chakra exploded from the scientist’s body to cause massive friction in the air to form electrical bolts while Gosu shot six tendrils of sand to spear at the neutral clothing in vital spots.
Thirteen seconds passed.
While it was a close call as to who was a faster ninjutsu user the bloodlust that suddenly affixed the Tama caused him to honestly miss a beat. A spear of sand lanced through his left shoulder and lifted him from the pillar to throw him into a building frame made of the petrified beach wood. He could feel his left leg shatter, his back crack, bits of his right hand broken and bend at bad angles, and then finally the landing that broke what little of his left shoulder that the sand tendril didn’t. He still had good enough sense to land tucked into a roll and was able to minimize the impact damage by tumbling and crashing into other bits of building before coming to a full stop against a pillar. He landed against the pillar with his back facing the hot stone. Blood began to drop down from the back of Tama’s head as he attempted to breath with a punctured lung. At fifteen seconds Gosu leaped out of the sand in front of him and clasped a strong hand around his throat. The cigarette was still somehow lit and with a deep inhale he breathed a thick fog of it at the Suna ninja causing the mild mental status effect that completed his ultimate technique.
“Time for you to become sand.” was all the assassin said as a swirling torrent of air and sand began to lift the beaten shinobi up against the pillar. As he reached the top he could see the flurry of diamonded sand that he had feared was still tearing things apart on the surface.
While it had been a relief to know the the Malstorm was no longer a force to reckon with, to see it starting to tear apart his clothes and body in a painful bloody mess wasn’t exactly helping with the issues he had about leaving the cave in the first place. Things had really changed while he was asleep if some asshole had managed to gain control of that terrible power that kept the Wind Country on lock-down for so long, and while it still pissed him off that he had to step this fight up to full power after only twenty five seconds at least he knew he was up against something truly powerful.
Despite the sand around him almost just simply breaking off the broken fingers completely he raised his right hand over his face and began to chant in a strange language that started to pulse the Old Power off of his chakra coil again. The sands swirling around him and holding him up began to thin out and push away as his chakra began to shift between human and Ancient. Porcelain bone began to form from a black and gold laced energy flowing from the palm of his hand to form a quarter of a mask over his left eye. As soon as it settled against his flesh power exploded out from it and wrapped the scientist in a cloak of chakra. He glided down towards the surprised assassin who began to step back as a strange uncalled for fear began to gnaw at his stomach. He couldn’t explain why but as soon as his opponent dawned the mask made of his concentrated chakra his entire being said, oh hell no.
Gosu knew it for what it was; a forbidden technique. It called out the ancestry of a mortal’s bloodline at it’s most powerful to become the shape of either a weapon or armor. So long as the user of the chakra that created it wore the item they could wield their ancestor’s power on top of their own for a very limited time. It was a technique known as the Death Mask Breath but it was one of those techniques that was forbidden not because of how powerful it was but more because of the dangerous backlash. It could cause death in anyone less powerful than a Kage, and even then there was a good chance that someone of that caliber would still be hospitalized for some time afterwards. Despite knowing that there was something wrong about the power radiating from Tama’s Death Mask form. It was purely unnerving and seemed to be not of this world. The assassin kept backing away as his opponent gradually landed on the sand without a sound as a thick layer of visible black chakra seemed to mute any noise he would naturally make. After a single step in his direction, Gosu retaliated by screaming a primal rage from the core of his soul; something he had never done before. Doing this caused all of his chakra to pour into the sand and spear Tama’s body with seven spears, enclose him in a coffin shaped prison of sand that crushed him and then finally opened a maw of swirling sand to bury the body with all in about the speed of two seconds.
“Not even close to being fast enough.”
A beam of light exploded from Gosu’s chest causing blood to gush out of the sudden hole caused by Tama’s photon jutsu as he stood behind the man exuding the same fell-touched chakra that had caused his opponent to panic. The assassin laid their gurgling his last as he used the last of his muscle control to land on his back. He looked up at his murder. The mask had been pulled off and his power returned to normal levels but instead of collapsing into a coma as the jutsu was supposed to backlash the youth had simply been turned into an old man. That...is so weird...
The final thoughts of Tama’s first real meal.
[MFT][Topic Entered/Left]