Someplace Else. [Now]
"You changed him. You cheated."
The umbrage in the female voice was as plain day as she spoke, her words dripping with contempt as her eyes remained locked upon a silver globe that hovered daintily in the air before her. Slow dark blue and purple smoke billowed out from beneath the globe covering the ground in a thin but persistent veil of dark, acrid-smelling vapor. Tall and remarkably beautiful with long bright grin hair that fell straight back across her shoulders and back, the woman wore a concerned and disapproving look upon her attractive features that she fixed squarely upon the creature that "sat" upon the air on the other side from the softly glowing globe in front of her.
"What else did you change?"
In stark contrast to the soft beauty of the woman, the creature that was opposite her was a ghastly, repugnant beast. Vaguely reptilian in features with scales that were the same color of the smoke that wisped around their feet and a small layer of stubble growing around it's muzzle-- the creature only smirked a toothy, dishonest grin back at her which was highlighted with faux outrage of his own.
"Only his hair Princess, calm yerself. This whole thing wouldn't be as fun if'in he looked 'xactly the same, would it?" It laughed and the act caused the fat around it's neck and jowels to jiggle repulsively. "'Sides, not fer nothin' but yer side never stipulated nothin' in tha rules about me not bein' allowed ta interfere. Tha's yer mistake, not mine."
The woman continued to stare daggers across the space between them causing a few empty but tense moments of silence passed between them. After those moments passed the creature let forth a drawn out sigh of both disappointment and boredom at being taken to task on manipulating the rules between them after the bargain had already been struck.
"Ah fer cryin' out loud yer kind nevah could 'ppreciate a good hustle. Arright, arright I promise I won't interfere no more."
It leaned forward as it spoke, taking a long drag from an equally foul-smelling cigar as it did before filling the air between them with a billow of the blackest smoke. Leering down into the shimmering depths of the viewing globe that sat suspended in the air between them a shark-ish grin grew across it's bizarre and awful maw.
"But I ain' fixin' his hair."
| The Dune Sea, The Middle of Nowhere. [Now] |
Pain greeted him as he awoke. It exploded across his face and sank deeply into his forehead, nestling in the space behind his eyes causing his entire head and face to ache even before he opened his eyes to the soft shafts of sunlight peering through gaps in... a tent? His vision blurred as his eyes opened, he wasn't quite sure what he was looking at immediately but as his vision began to clarify he indeed recognized the "ceiling" above him to be the inside of a tent structure with small amounts of sunlight peaking in through tiny gaps in the woven fabric that the tent was constructed of. It was warm but not hot yet and by that he could tell that it was likely early morning given how bright it was. It meant that the sun had not yet had the opportunity to heat the desert up from the dark of the night but was certainly at it well enough to make sleeping any further, even within the shade of the tent, an unlikely prospect even if his head didn't feel like a herd of armatunks had stomped on his face.
Slowly sitting up, he couldn't remember how he'd gotten here. Or where he was. But perhaps more startlingly, he could not remember who he was. He remembered that he should have a name and that he should remember it. After all, what sort of weirdo didn't have a name or weirder still had one but just couldn't remember it? Reaching up, the man who could not remember his own name carded his fingers through his hair and as he did it sent a shiver down his spine causing him to pull his hand back quickly as though he'd just unexpectedly touched something which was very hot. Looking down at his hand, he found it strange that he should have such a large, disheveled head of hair. It wasn't that he could remember what his hair was supposed to be like-- much to the contrary as he strained to plumb the depths of the strange sense of disorder and utter wrongness that had washed over him --but rather that it simply felt like it shouldn't be. Like waking up to find out that your house which had been the same color for many years was suddenly a vastly different color. Just as with the fact that he could not remember his own name, he could not remember what his hair was supposed to be like.
How did he know that it was wrong? Maybe it had always been like that... and he'd just forgotten?
No, that made no sense. How could you just forget that you had longer hair than you actually did?
"But then, people don't usually forget their own name either." He reminded himself aloud, confirming that he did in fact still remember how to speak.
There were lots of things that he still could remember. He'd identified that it was early morning through a small number of factors about his surroundings. He remembered enough to diagnose his surroundings as being in the desert and that it was early morning from the confines of the tent he was laying in. There were plenty of other things kicking around in his memory too that he found strange but inapplicable to his current situation... but nothing about his identity or what he had been doing up until now. Why was he in this tent? Was this his tent? His family's? Had he been kidnapped or in some kind of accident?
Hell, was he dead?
Throwing himself back into the blankets that were laid out on the ground of the tent and into the large pillow, he looked once more at his right hand as he raised his arm above his body and reached towards the ceiling. On the back of his hand there was a curious tattoo that was shaped like a trio of commas or... fireballs? They were pictured in a swirling pattern and as he looked upon it he found that the symbol jogged... something in his memory. He couldn't remember what its name was but he knew that it was an important symbol of a desert faring family of hunters. Maybe he was a part of that family? Why else would he have something that was important to them tattooed on the back of his hand? It wasn't much to go on but it was something, at least and that motivated him at least to fully extricate himself from the blanket that he was under. Nude from the waist up, the man was dressed only in simple woolen slacks and a pair of rudimentary socks and nothing else which was perhaps appropriate because it certainly mirrored how he felt about himself at that moment. Sitting up, he pushed the light blanket off of him and that was when he heard the first noise from outside the tent.
It was difficult to hear and he couldn't make out the words but he knew arguing when he heard it. Heated voices went back and forth about something in an urgent way prompting the man with no name to snap to his feet with a precision and grace that was surprising even to him. For a moment he couldn't help but let the frustration of not knowing rise again. Was there a purpose to the muscle memory that he had to move in the way that he had? He hadn't even thought about wanting to get up that way, it had just happened. As soon as he'd realized that he wanted to get up he found his legs snapping up beneath him and pushing his body up into a crouching stance that was coiled to go to his feet at a moment's notice. Once more the voices rose, this time louder than before, and shook the man from his thoughts as he rose and made his way to the tent opening and walked out into the sun for the first time since awaking to find that he was devoid of anything that one might describe as a defining memory.
Outside of the tent he'd woken up in there were a number of other tented structures braced against a large rock outcropping at various angles. His tent was the closest to the edge of the large rock structure which was why it was getting the light that it was but the others penetrated deep into the crevasse that existed between the large stones that rested against each other. Here and there were small fire pits, some of them still with glowing embers from the night's watch and others with budding flames for the morning tasks. The man's vision swept the camp looking for the source of the arguing voices when he spotted them after a few moments several feet inward towards the depths of the crevasse. A number of men, armed from the look of it, stood around a much larger number of people who were kneeling or sitting on the ground around where they stood. Even for a man with no recollection of his own identity it didn't take much to understand that the men who were standing were not from this place simply from the way that some of those sitting on the ground looked up at them or in most of the people's cases didn't look at them at all. No steel was drawn but the man knew that often times in situations like this the threat of steel was almost as dangerous as the blade itself.
Another detail for the rapidly growing list of things that he knew for which he could not conjure a reason for why he knew it.
The other source of the arguing voices proved to be a shorter person, a young man that was not sitting on the ground with the rest of the others but was clearly a member of their number from the way that he was dressed. He had a look of defiance in his eyes and on his face as two other armed men held him by the shoulders and elbows, preventing him from moving even though he jerked his body emphatically with each word that he said. The man still couldn't hear what they were arguing about but as he took a step forward one of the armed men glanced away from the spectacle in front of him and took notice of the newcomer to the scene prompting him to nudge what looked to be the leader of the group.
None of the armed men were particularly remarkable in any way. Dirty faces and greasy hair the lot of them, dressed in hides and scavenged metal armor. The nameless man recognized them as desert scavengers-- men that made their living by pulling whatever things of value they could from the desert and off of the cold corpses of anyone unlucky enough to cross one of their bands. The leader of them had quite a bit more metal on his body than the others, he'd at least managed a series of metal bands around his stomach from someplace in the past where the others were lucky to have leg guards or vambraces on their arms. With a roll of his eyes, the leader of the scavengers gave a kick to one of his subordinates and two of their band began advancing in the nameless man's direction with their hands on the leather-wrapped hilts of their blades.
Two opponents. Both men, armed with a short blade each. Left opponent with a pistol strapped into a harness across his chest for easy access. Likely a couple of hidden knives on their persons.
The one without the pistol had a cloth wrapped around his head likely concealing an eye injury. The other walked with a hitch in his gait.
The man sized each of them up as they advanced on him, his mind rattling off details about them as he examined each of them. He could tell that neither of them had any martial arts training just from the way they walked, from the way they carried themselves. They were jumped up thugs with knives and guns. No apparent threat to him.
That thought surprised him the most as it crossed his mind. No threat to him? One of them had a gun.
One of them slowed and yelled something at the nameless man but he wasn't listening. He was preoccupied with his own thoughts. With the absurdity of the way his mind had tapped into a depth of experience to tell him that neither of them were any threat to him even though his conscious mind could reach none of it. Where had that information come from?
They finally reached arm's length of the man and as one of them snarled something vile and reached forward to take the man by the arm, he took a step forward.
In the span of a heartbeat, the man's fingers curled into fists and lashed out striking the first scavenger who walked funny and had a firearm strapped to his chest three times, once across the right shoulder, once square in the chest and then the third blow striking him in the stomach. He then turned and stepped forward past the scavenger's grasp who seemed to be moving in extreme slow motion as the nameless man assaulted him and delivered a similar salvo of knuckle strikes to that one as well. The scuffle was, all told, a little less than two seconds long but when those two seconds passed both of the scavengers that had advanced on the nameless man were sent a few inches up into the air from the force of the strikes that had hit them and launched backwards, scattering them across the rocks in a heap.
A single crackle of energy played across the nameless man's right shoulder but he paid it no mind-- that was normal, wasn't it? It felt normal even though he knew it made no sense to feel that way.
Looking down once more at his hand, the nameless man was pulled back to reality by the shouting command of the scavenger leader. It was only two words but they were shouted at a volume that made it impossible to misunderstand or fail to hear him.
"Kill him!"
The scavenger leader and six others which had by now emerged from the depths of the crevasse all reached to various places in their gear and drew a truly staggering array of different firearms. Most of them were crude pistols which were only good for a single shot before needing to be reloaded but there was at least one rifle among them and the captain of their little brigade who had clearly hoarded the best spoils for himself clasped a silvered revolver in his hand that the nameless man recognized could be used for a number of shots before needing to be reloaded. Before any more words could be exchanged between them the rock formation was flush with the cracks and pops of discharged firearms and the bullets each cut a killing path through the air at the unarmored man that had felled two of their group with a handful of movements.
Once more time seemed to come to a terrifyingly slow crawl for the nameless man but as the smoke from their volley subsided the scavengers were met with a sight that filled them with terror. The man was seemingly unharmed by their barrage of shots and as if to punctuate his point the man raised his right clasped fist and threw the bullets which they'd just fired at him back at them, scattering them across the stone surface of the crevasse before them like a bag of marbles.
There was a pregnant moment of stillness between the nameless man and his would-be murderers as they observed in stunned disbelief that they'd just witnessed a man pluck every bullet out of a volley of shots out of the air and then casually throw them back at the men that had fired them at him. They lived in a world where they hypothetically knew that men who were capable of feats like that but it was another thing entirely to witness it. Especially unexpectedly in the middle of no-where in a small desert camp that they thought they'd already subjugated.
Finally the moment passed and the majority of the scavengers decided to risk it with running past him. The man without a name made no attempt to reach out and stop them as they ran past him because in truth he was just as mystified as they were with how easy it had been to pull those flying bullets out of mid-air. Like second nature, his hand moved without his mind even needing to think that he'd wanted to do it. Casting his eyes back up at where the scavengers had been standing-- only their leader was still present, a mixture of disbelief, anger and fear upon his face.
"You're one of them. Those shinobi from Sunagakure..." Demanded the scavenger captain, the dead silence of the crevasse and the tension of the moment making it easier to hear his words as the nameless man began to walk forward towards him. "I thought... they said y'all weren't comin' out this far no more... we didn't... I... I..."
The man's facade of stability rapidly shook apart as the nameless man drew close to him, his fear finally overtaking any indignation or anger he felt at being humiliated in front of a people he was about to plunder, murder and maybe worse.
"Sunagakure."
That word caused the pain in the man's head to race. His head pounded like someone had struck him with a hammer as he formed the name of Wind Country's shinobi city-state on his lips. He didn't recoil from it but he couldn't help but bring his hand back up to his head in response to the pain that once more blossomed to the surface across his face.
"Yeah... you're one of them, right? If not... maybe we can, you know. Work something out here? The slave trade's almost dead out thanks to the old Kazekage an------"
The man ceased hearing the scavenger captain's meaningless negotiating as his mind swam with new words that made his head hurt. Shinobi. Sunagakure.
Kazekage.
Finally coming back to reality, he came back just in time to hear the captain's last few words but they made no sense to him given that he had failed to hear anything else the pitiful man had said. Scowling, the nameless man reached forward and grasped the captain by the front of the tunic he wore and flung him through the air, over his shoulder towards the mouth of the crevasse where he smacked hard into the stone, skidded for a few feet and then simply lay still. If he were still alive he showed no indication of it but the nameless man was too focused on checking on the people that were huddled in the back of the cavern.
For the next few hours, the man got to know the people that had pulled him from the sands and nursed him back to recovery. They spoke the same language but... not completely and communication was difficult between them but they managed to figure out some basic things. They said that the man had fallen out of the sky on a ball of fire and that they'd pulled him from the crater miraculously unharmed but otherwise had no answers about who he was and why he'd... apparently been riding a falling star. In thanks for chasing off the scavengers that had apparently taken the small town by surprise while their hunters were out in the sands the remaining members of the tribe furnished him with supplies and food and a rudimentary map of the region that they'd taken out of the supplies from the defeated scavengers.
If anything, the scavengers had given him a goal at least. The name Sunagakure hurt his head. He wanted... no.
He needed to find out why.
[One and done-- Topic Entered and Left]
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