Open The Dissonant Descent

[Goro]

The residential district felt wrong. Sunagakure was breathing through its surface vents again as the village stationed itself above ground for the seasonal rotation and Goro hated every second of the transition. To him the open sky was a threat. It was a vast and empty weight that offered no ceiling and no comfort. He much preferred the deepest tunnels where the air was stagnant and the walls were close enough to touch. Down there he was just another shadow in the Tsuchigumo hive but up here the sunlight caught the odd angles of his poncho and made him feel like a freak on display for the world to see.

He walked with his shoulders hunched and his primary hands buried deep in his pockets. Under his tunic the bone bracer Shinda had given him sat heavy against his sternum. He had been training until his muscles spasmed because he was trying to find that shinobi feeling again but the peace of the tunnels eluded him today. The village was crawling with a strange and jagged energy. Surface rotations always brought out the weirdest travelers who were people who didn't mind the heat and the grit if it meant selling their oddities to bored genin.

Goro pushed through a cluster of gossiping merchants and stopped.

In the center of the plaza a woman had set up a stage draped in magenta silks that looked like they had been dragged through a dozen different countries. She wasn't a kunoichi or at least she didn't look like one but she had a crowd of tough guys and curious kids gathered around her. She was talking about the mind and the unseen weight everyone carried. She claimed she could peel back the layers of a person's soul if they were willing to let her in.

"I cannot force a warrior to see what they do not wish to see." she said while her voice carried a strange and melodic hum. "You must accept the descent. You must choose to let go of the handles."

Goro watched her and felt a weird magnetic pull in his gut. He was tired of the physical grind and he was tired of feeling like he was just a collection of extra arms and bruised knuckles. He wanted to know if there was anything else under all the labor and the silk. Before he could talk himself out of it he stepped forward. The crowd parted as they looked at his six arms and his red eyes. They whispered the usual things but Goro didn't care. He stepped up onto the wood of the stage while the boards creaked under his weight. He looked at the woman without offering a name or a greeting. He just gave her a short and sharp nod.

I'm ready, he thought. Show me what's actually in there.

The woman stepped into his personal space and she was close enough that he could smell something like burnt ozone and old paper. She tilted his head up and forced him to lock eyes with her.

"Don't fight it, little spider." she whispered.

For a split second her eyes did something impossible. The pupils didn't just dilate because they shifted and bled into a crimson pattern that spun like a slow motion hurricane. It was the last thing Goro saw before the plaza and the sand and the sun were snuffed out like a candle in a gale.

[MFT: 573]

 

[Goro]

Inside the Illusion

Goro was no longer twelve years old. He was tiny and his skin felt pale and slick while his extra limbs were nothing more than weak and twitching stubs on his sides. He was back in the hive but it was not the sanctuary he remembered from his youth. It had transformed into a cold and infinite labyrinth of jagged stone and wet darkness. He was crawling on his hands and knees while the sharp rocks cut into his palms but he did not feel pain from the wounds. All he felt was the massive and hollow vacuum in his chest that tore at him, pulling him apart from the inside.

"Mom?"

The word felt like ash in his mouth. He had never seen her and he had been raised by the collective as a nameless among thousands but here in the red tinted darkness of his own mind the... desie... the need for her was a chemical reaction.

He scrambled through the tunnels while his small voice echoed off the damp walls. He was looking for a hand to hold or a warmth that did not come from a shared heat lamp. He was a lonely and unfinished animal calling out for a ghost. He began to sob with a sound that was wet and desperate as he reached into the shadows for a woman who had never existed in his life. The darkness of the hive seemed to stretch on forever and it mocked him with every empty turn he took.

---

Reality

While Goro was lost in a decade of manufactured agony the residential district of Suna was watching an act, play out in the light of day.

Goro had walked off the stage without even looking at where he was going. He was wandering through the middle of the street with his eyes wide and vacant while he stared at things no one else could see. His six arms were splayed out in a grotesque fashion as they reached and grasped at the empty air. His fingers were twitching as if he were trying to find a grip on a cliff that was not there. He was bawling with a raw and ugly sob that broke his voice into a jagged curdle and made the hair on the back of the necks of the bystanders stand up.

"Mom! Where are you? Please!"

The scream was guttural and it ripped through the afternoon air. He stumbled into a vegetable stall and knocked over a crate of cactus fruit but he did not even flinch at the impact. He just kept walking while his tears left muddy tracks through the dust on his face.

He looked like a broken doll that had been wound up and left to run into a wall. People backed away with looks of pity or disgust as the six armed boy of the Tsuchigumo clan wandered like a ghost through the midday sun. He was screaming for a mother who had been dead or gone since the day he was hatched. He was a child again who had been stripped of every bit of shinobi pride and he was showing the whole village the hollow hole where his heart was supposed to be.

[MFT: 542]

 

[Sabaku Rika]

The day for Rika had been a busy one. She had a patrol, a few reports, and a nap or two. She was strolling through the district, her hands in her pockets as she glanced up at the sky. It was just another hot day. "I should take on another mission..." Rika spoke, mostly to herself. She was kind of bored. A mission usually scratched that itch. Though the last one she went on still made her feel off. It was some sort of hallucination or something that was haunting her. She wasnt sure. "Probably something not in the dunes..." she mumbled with a sigh as she rubbed the back of her head. The echoes she saw didn't feel like a hallucination. It was vivid. Real. She had avoided that area ever since.

Rika was wearing an off-white, cropped, long-sleeved shirt with a collar high enough to hide her mouth. She wore olive green cargo pants that partially covered her off-white boots. The fabric was thin, made for heat. Her hair was styled in a twin bun half-up do. Within her black hair, there were visible strands of white or platinum blonde.

While Rika was walking, she heard a cry. Someone crying for their mother? Rika tilted her head and looked towards the source, and saw a boy about her age, sobbing, while walking. She noticed the six arms and how people moved away from him. "Huh," she didn't really think about it, she was already moving towards him. As she got closer, she realized he was nearly a foot taller than her. He was a big kid... The arms didn't bother her. It was something she had never seen in person before.

Rika stopped in front of him. "Hey, you okay?" Rika asked as she tilted her head to one side. Trying to see if there were any visible wounds. Her sixth sense was buzzing; something was off. There was something off with his chakra. 'What did I walk into now..' She thought to herself, her brows knitting together.

[Topic entered]
[Using sixth sense and sensor]