The footsteps of a man echoed from the paces of a beast, fingers draping at its' sides as the claws it hid so well ached to be free and across the gentle throats of the vermin that deluded themselves into thoughts of humanity. These were criminal elements, those who would defy the gifts set in front of them and bite the hand that fed them until it could taste the marrow. Animals like himself but of a very different stripe, whether a zebra was black on white or white on black a human was always some type of gray on gray. These were the uncomfortable realities that settled heavily in the air which was already thick with quiet curses and even quieter prayers, uncertain as the petitioner was that they even deserved to be heard.
"He's down here, unexpecting a visitor but I doubt he'll complain." The caretaker said, adjusting his 'belt' as Yukiin's ears prickled at the sound of the metal that he was doing a poor job, deliberately, of concealing. They didn't need to threaten him, but they certainly felt like they did. That was how they all were, these 'soldiers' were little better than dogs on leashes that would bark and bay in the way closest to legal line that they could away with because they felt empowered. They were wrong to feel that way but far be it from a medic asking for a favor to tell them as much. Access to the jails to see an associate, someone who was family in a sense.
Devouring the unstirred slush of human misery, these vital dregs that composed his form beneath this real yet false flesh...they brought with them ideas, memories, and identities that were not his own but which coalesced into a composite that he now had to associate with his name. If there was enough Yukiin left to call it Yukiin, nobody knew it but him.
"Thank you for the courtesy and hospitality, I won't be long." The amalgamation responded, waving off the guard and his 'belt' with the verbal flourishes that he had learned to utilize to guide humans away from him. They liked to be told what they wanted to hear, like time frames. It made them leave him sooner and he really didn't care to have them around him for longer than necessary, their bright flames of life and chakra were dulling in pain but they were still a nuisance. The strain on his form feeling their heat lessened with every passing day and maybe in time he could learn to tolerate them enough to enjoy their company but for now it was strictly business.
When the other shinobi had finally taken his leave, Yukiin approached the cell by dragging a claw across the metal bar to awaken the prisoner inside who had apparently decided to sleep to pass the time. His sentence was a bit too long to really bypass in slumber but it was an interesting tactic regardless, just one he didn't have the interest in humoring right now.
"You told them you were innocent right?" Yukiin inquired, face a block of cold marble as a voice familiar to both of them but not that which belonged to 'Yukiin' snaked its way into his ear slowly but deliberately.
The prisoner stirred, eyes open, body alert, feeling that he was under attack. The human body reacted to stress the same way regardless of the source of it, always treating it like a threat whether the trigger was best handled with that reaction. Normally you wouldn't bolt up in a sweat because you heard the voice of your dead son reaching out to you but if you were human? These types of things happened. Strange animals...
Maybe Osuteno was right, he had lost something becoming this thing.
Maybe Yukiin was wrong to even care about losing it. Looking at this decrepit creature, rotting away before him and locked in a cell that was going to become his tomb filled him with a sense of dread and satisfaction knowing this would never be his own fate. If disconnection from this strange species was the cost of never having to look at his own fate in such squalor then he embraced it happily...but still, those memories calling this man 'father' reached out from the mental tar pits to claw at his consciousness. They were too weak to usurp him, they had no real will only influence, but these intrusions were still annoying.
"Is it...is it really you?" The man spoke cautiously, fearful of the reality before him.
Byakko, Yukiin smiled with an expression that wasn't his, a twinkle in the eye that belonged to some foreign jewel that had been wrenched from its home and socketed into his growing crown. Each glimmering humanity bringing him closer to the fullness of their kind but they did not, could not, displace and thus was forced to expand so that he would never be one. You could add put one jewel in the headdress but a new socket emerged. Never ending, never filling, and never finishing.
In short, the light of his son's eyes flickered out into the prisoner's but its brilliance was dulled in the presence of so many others. The old man recoiled, not much to the unobservant but the sticking of his hairs, the scent of his sweat, the shaking in his muscles that was ever so subtle to avoid upsetting the man on the other side of the cage...why was he so scared of his son?
Well, that was easy enough. He killed him.
"Why the long face dad, you look so shocked." The smile dripped off.
"You can't be...you're..." The prisoner stammered.
"Dead? Still am." Yukiin retrieved a scroll from his pocket, pulling the written record from it. "They have you in here for selling without a permit I see, but that's only what they told you to get you to come here without too much of a fuss."
"What do you mean?" A pale face asked.
"You know what I mean; I actually tipped them off about your little incident involving the murder of your wife and son...sorry, mom and me. Guess that has a much longer sentence and you'll rot to death in here. The only reason I'm here is because my memories are unfortunately befuddled by he whole dying thing so I need to know the results of your experiment."
The man was stammering at him, brain processing everything in a way that was really slowing down this information session. It would've been so much easier to just open him and eat the only part of him worth saving, that hunger was always simmering after all, but the manacles of the law were a much more effective barrier than cage bars that he could fit a talon through.
"You want to know what happened? I don't understand..."
"Raiden's mercy, how is this difficult? You tried to conduct illegal, occult, business with an attempt to force a foreign spirit into two available hosts. This killed them, but I am uncertain if you succeeded prior to their deaths and you would be the only one capable of really knowing that."
"...no, something wasn't right. The chakra just...difused or something..." The man tried to explain, though his lack of shinobi training and knowledge made itself evident as he made a hand gesture like an explosion that didn't conform with the usual results of these types of rituals. So he was just stupid and got the information wrong, such a relief.
"Probably the second-hand books, controlled information that leaks onto the black market is usually just an ANBU sting operation or deliberately dangerous so you unfortunate criminal elements just kill yourselves trying." Yukiin sighed, brushing his hair back as a silvery tendril placed a frozen coffee stick between his lips. "No worries, I'll make better use of your brain then you ever did."
The prisoner tried to inquire but found his lips with a talon pressed against them, quieting him as the shinobi took his leave of the place, ignoring any further shouted questions at him until he reunited with the posted guard he'd spoken with earlier to hand off the scroll he'd borrowed and pick up another one - a request form for the corpse that would result from his execution the following morning.
What kind of monster wouldn't reunite father and son if given the chance?
Certainly not this kind.
"He's down here, unexpecting a visitor but I doubt he'll complain." The caretaker said, adjusting his 'belt' as Yukiin's ears prickled at the sound of the metal that he was doing a poor job, deliberately, of concealing. They didn't need to threaten him, but they certainly felt like they did. That was how they all were, these 'soldiers' were little better than dogs on leashes that would bark and bay in the way closest to legal line that they could away with because they felt empowered. They were wrong to feel that way but far be it from a medic asking for a favor to tell them as much. Access to the jails to see an associate, someone who was family in a sense.
Devouring the unstirred slush of human misery, these vital dregs that composed his form beneath this real yet false flesh...they brought with them ideas, memories, and identities that were not his own but which coalesced into a composite that he now had to associate with his name. If there was enough Yukiin left to call it Yukiin, nobody knew it but him.
"Thank you for the courtesy and hospitality, I won't be long." The amalgamation responded, waving off the guard and his 'belt' with the verbal flourishes that he had learned to utilize to guide humans away from him. They liked to be told what they wanted to hear, like time frames. It made them leave him sooner and he really didn't care to have them around him for longer than necessary, their bright flames of life and chakra were dulling in pain but they were still a nuisance. The strain on his form feeling their heat lessened with every passing day and maybe in time he could learn to tolerate them enough to enjoy their company but for now it was strictly business.
When the other shinobi had finally taken his leave, Yukiin approached the cell by dragging a claw across the metal bar to awaken the prisoner inside who had apparently decided to sleep to pass the time. His sentence was a bit too long to really bypass in slumber but it was an interesting tactic regardless, just one he didn't have the interest in humoring right now.
"You told them you were innocent right?" Yukiin inquired, face a block of cold marble as a voice familiar to both of them but not that which belonged to 'Yukiin' snaked its way into his ear slowly but deliberately.
The prisoner stirred, eyes open, body alert, feeling that he was under attack. The human body reacted to stress the same way regardless of the source of it, always treating it like a threat whether the trigger was best handled with that reaction. Normally you wouldn't bolt up in a sweat because you heard the voice of your dead son reaching out to you but if you were human? These types of things happened. Strange animals...
Maybe Osuteno was right, he had lost something becoming this thing.
Maybe Yukiin was wrong to even care about losing it. Looking at this decrepit creature, rotting away before him and locked in a cell that was going to become his tomb filled him with a sense of dread and satisfaction knowing this would never be his own fate. If disconnection from this strange species was the cost of never having to look at his own fate in such squalor then he embraced it happily...but still, those memories calling this man 'father' reached out from the mental tar pits to claw at his consciousness. They were too weak to usurp him, they had no real will only influence, but these intrusions were still annoying.
"Is it...is it really you?" The man spoke cautiously, fearful of the reality before him.
Byakko, Yukiin smiled with an expression that wasn't his, a twinkle in the eye that belonged to some foreign jewel that had been wrenched from its home and socketed into his growing crown. Each glimmering humanity bringing him closer to the fullness of their kind but they did not, could not, displace and thus was forced to expand so that he would never be one. You could add put one jewel in the headdress but a new socket emerged. Never ending, never filling, and never finishing.
In short, the light of his son's eyes flickered out into the prisoner's but its brilliance was dulled in the presence of so many others. The old man recoiled, not much to the unobservant but the sticking of his hairs, the scent of his sweat, the shaking in his muscles that was ever so subtle to avoid upsetting the man on the other side of the cage...why was he so scared of his son?
Well, that was easy enough. He killed him.
"Why the long face dad, you look so shocked." The smile dripped off.
"You can't be...you're..." The prisoner stammered.
"Dead? Still am." Yukiin retrieved a scroll from his pocket, pulling the written record from it. "They have you in here for selling without a permit I see, but that's only what they told you to get you to come here without too much of a fuss."
"What do you mean?" A pale face asked.
"You know what I mean; I actually tipped them off about your little incident involving the murder of your wife and son...sorry, mom and me. Guess that has a much longer sentence and you'll rot to death in here. The only reason I'm here is because my memories are unfortunately befuddled by he whole dying thing so I need to know the results of your experiment."
The man was stammering at him, brain processing everything in a way that was really slowing down this information session. It would've been so much easier to just open him and eat the only part of him worth saving, that hunger was always simmering after all, but the manacles of the law were a much more effective barrier than cage bars that he could fit a talon through.
"You want to know what happened? I don't understand..."
"Raiden's mercy, how is this difficult? You tried to conduct illegal, occult, business with an attempt to force a foreign spirit into two available hosts. This killed them, but I am uncertain if you succeeded prior to their deaths and you would be the only one capable of really knowing that."
"...no, something wasn't right. The chakra just...difused or something..." The man tried to explain, though his lack of shinobi training and knowledge made itself evident as he made a hand gesture like an explosion that didn't conform with the usual results of these types of rituals. So he was just stupid and got the information wrong, such a relief.
"Probably the second-hand books, controlled information that leaks onto the black market is usually just an ANBU sting operation or deliberately dangerous so you unfortunate criminal elements just kill yourselves trying." Yukiin sighed, brushing his hair back as a silvery tendril placed a frozen coffee stick between his lips. "No worries, I'll make better use of your brain then you ever did."
The prisoner tried to inquire but found his lips with a talon pressed against them, quieting him as the shinobi took his leave of the place, ignoring any further shouted questions at him until he reunited with the posted guard he'd spoken with earlier to hand off the scroll he'd borrowed and pick up another one - a request form for the corpse that would result from his execution the following morning.
What kind of monster wouldn't reunite father and son if given the chance?
Certainly not this kind.