death do us part | [Mission, Murata]

Mission:

Lachesis wasn't a stranger to death; as one of the last surviving jounin still active in Konohagakure, she'd cleaned up corpses, boarded up homes, and not to mention her stint with the now defunct Torture and Interrogation department. There were numerous stages of decay; thinking about it clinically made it easier to swallow. Her ice release had almost single handedly run the hospital morgue until the bodies could be identified. Real life faded to memory, memory faded to dreams, and those were heavily compartmentalized until she never had to think of them again.

One thing she never could forget, though- the smell. Cadaverine, methanethiol, hydrogen sulfide, and dozens of other gases made up something she never felt she could scrub out of her clothing.

The room was boarded up, littered with small pieces of evidence that someone had been here before her. The surroundings she peeked out of a crumbling wall were near identical to the Yugakure she had visited in her dreams the past few nights. The night was sickly warm and humid, and perhaps it contributed to the smell of decay. She clenched her fists, feeling the delicate metacarpals creak beneath the force of her grip. She wore simple toeless boots, dark flak pants, and a long sleeved shirt emblazoned with the swirl of Uzushiogakure- anyone would likely be able to identify her as a Konoha nin, though her rank would be difficult to guess.

Lachesis pushed herself off a tattered cot and looked around with more detail. Her hair was down- roughly reaching to between her shoulders- and she had nothing to tie it back. No weapons, no armor; just a faint impression of chakra and the lingering realization that failure here could (and likely would) have disastrous consequences in the waking world.

A faint sound caught her attention. She grabbed onto the edge of a dangling plywood and yanked it off with a harsh crack. Splinters dotted her fingers with little pinpricks of pain. There were people outside.

No, that was wrong. Their motions were all wrong, their flesh marbled with purple decay. They were the source of the smell.

Whether they were an Edo Tensei gone wrong or the results of a horrible experiment, Lachesis knew that their quality of life likely wouldn't be high enough to feel guilt over self defense.

Or, at least, that's what she told herself. The Yuki hoped she didn't find any familiar faces. Inhale. Exhale.

The room had a door. She walked over briskly, pushing it open.

What were the requirements to wake up? Each dream had something. The splatter puzzle, or-

...

There was someone else here.

[WC: 438]
[Total WC: 438]

Murata stands in a ruined kitchen and stares warily at Lachesis out of the corner of a scarlet eye. She clutches in one hand a kitchen knife half-claimed by rust. The house is eerily still. The smell carries with it a sense of decay that matches the environment.

A rattling gurgle comes from in front of Murata. The dark-haired woman pulls her gaze away from Lachesis, turning towards the small window above the sink, most of the way boarded up. Something bleary white and moving all over thumps against the foggy glass. Thump. Thump. It pulls away, leaving maggots wriggling on the glass, and there's faint, weak scratching against the boards. Then, silence.

"...did you just wake up?" Murata asks, voice thick and nasal, staring at the window for a few more moments. She turns, finally, towards Lachesis, and in the dim the Yuki can see the blood running down from the young woman's nostrils and soaking the front of her turtleneck. Murata sniffs and wipes at her nose, grateful that all she can smell at the moment is iron. Each of these dreams has left her naked, in a sense, parted from the armor she's held close at hand since she was a child. She clutches the knife with pale knuckles, the only piece of steel she has to rely on.

222

Lachesis turned to the stranger with deliberation.

Carefully, she did not make any large or threatening motions. At best, she was… Wary. These nightmares had escape conditions, she had come to learn, and more often than not, there were others with her completing the same objective.

Was this her ‘partner’?

Her gaze flicked to the maggots slowly tumbling off the mud stained glass, then back towards the stranger’s bloody nose. She looked like she had been here for quite some time… After a moment, Lachesis didn’t necessarily lose her tension, but something in her seemed to relent.

“...Yes. Take it you’ve been lucid for awhile?” her voice was soprano, oddly contrasting with her large frame and generally curt features. The jounin wouldn’t provide any more information than necessary- name, bloodline, and even age were out. But at least some modicum of trust would be required to make it through the dream.

A pause, then a heavy exhale. She listened for movement outside and only answered upon confirming none, save Mister Maggot at the window. “Call me what you want. Pretty sure it’s just the two of us regardless.” the Yuki scratched her nose, taking a further look at the ruined kitchen. She deliberately skimmed over a crayon drawing taped to what was once a fridge.

She would listen to Murata’s (not that she knew her name yet, don’t sue) response, should she have one, before speaking up again. “Any clue what we’re supposed to do here? Clear the town, make it to a certain point, or…” were you just dropped off the deep end? Lachesis trailed off awkwardly. She didn’t have a weapon or anything, so she doubted if things came to conflict that she’d come out on top.

Maybe there was a piece of rebar around somewhere…

A sigh left her lips after a moment. What a mess.

[WC: 309]
[Total WC: 747]

"Define lucid!" Murata says. "Alright, Kurumi. You can call me whatever you want, too." She flips the knife expertly in her hand, a little bit getting used to the weight of it, a little bit showing off to her new partner that she is either competent or stupid. She doesn't hurt herself, so hopefully it comes off as the former more than the latter.

She leans forward and opens the curtain further, clearing dust from the glass. She gestures outside. "I don't know if clearing the town is realistic." Outside is... a mess of rot, corpses crawling over one another, clawing weakly at the buildings. Murata doesn't look too bothered about it. In her other nightmares, the 'walking corpses' are still people, still suffering. These... are not. When she'd tried to reach out with her Ninshu, she'd been greeted with the equivalent of radio static in her brain and this nosebleed for her trouble. Death, but angrier.

Crash!

A window behind Lachesis shatters, and Murata tenses, gripping her knife in her hand. "Behind you!" she warns - and Lachesis feels the chilly breath of one of the corpses on the back of her neck. Oh, so some of them are fast.

200
TWC 422

Walnut, huh?

Objectively, Lachesis thought it was pretty high up on the nut tier list, so she’d give it a pass. She flexed her fingers, reaching for stirrings of chakra that no longer had enough substance to grab hold of. The crunching of glass behind her lacerated her back and neck, but didn’t leave any wounds as intense as when she veritably swung around hard enough to slam the rotting figure into the wall. Her hand bruised dark with the effort, and little bits of brittle glass splinters were embedded into her skin. This was too hellish to be a nightmare.

The jounin looked down at the corpse, now struggling to move since its back was partially pierced on a bit of rebar. It couldn’t have been more than fifteen. It caught her eyes for a moment, a blink of awareness meeting her own, and for a moment, she came to a horrible conclusion. Whatever had happened to it- to him?- he was still alive, if only barely.

Whatever had happened was leeching off him like a parasite- eating and eating until there was nothing left to take. She was a genjutsu user, a former torturer, and by no means a good person, but this sat horribly in her stomach nonetheless.

Another flash in its eyes. She reached out delicately, taking the corners of his neck in her hands, and snapped it near vertical with a violent jerk of her wrists.

The body jerked once, twice,

and then was still.

…

Inhale. Exhale.

…

“...Any suggestions beyond waiting it out?” she spoke up after a moment, massaging the bruised fist with her hand. “The noise might’ve attracted more. Could we stick to the roofs, maybe?” no point in disguising the ninja shit regardless. Life or death took a definitive precedence over her reservations.

[WC: 303]
[Total WC: 1,050]

Noticing Lachesis' discomfort, Murata steps towards the corpse and closes its eyes. The static does not greet her, this time - only the peculiar silence of an empty vessel. Beside her, Lachesis feels like an autumn frost, crisp in the air and pale on the grass.

"There isn't anything there," she says, dismissing that spark of awareness. "Just a trick of demons or sorcery."

To a shinobi, 'sorcery' is a pitifully superstitious way of describing their work, but in this nightmare Murata's old habits return. It's much like a dream to have her feel like a younger version of herself, in ways. In this context, of a nightmare that does not follow the rules of their world, she feels much like she did in her youth, when demons and sorcerers were things beyond the understanding of a single mortal life. It was simpler. Feeling the contour of a vast unknown scares her.

"Taking to the roof is fine by me."

Upstairs, out the window, and up the peeling paint to the cracked tiles. Yugakure stretches out before them, dark and foggy, only occasional lights breaking the dark and illuminating the occasional shamble of a corpse below. The night belongs to the dead, and every once and a while they howl - almost soundless, like a noise too low or too high to hear, on the edge of perception. Murata perches atop the chimney with her knife in hand, watching, feeling with her senses for that hint of oblivion that would mean that they're watched or pursued.

"What did I ever do to be reborn as a demon?" Murata says, with a sort of amused self-pity. "...tell me about yourself, Kurumi. Feel free to lie. I don't think I'll remember in the morning either way."

Once she is either rebuffed, or has heard a story from Lachesis, Murata will tell a bit of her own. For the moment free of her responsibilities to Kirigakure, the never-could-be monk returns, with a captive audience and much on her mind. 

"I feel a kinship to them. Not to be melodramatic," she says, still keeping a keen eye on the wandering zombies below, tone amused. "A demon inhabits my human body, and I am to do its bidding until fate is done with me and I am free to work towards my penitence. Do shinobi ever think of Chakra like that? As something that was done to you against your will, or without your full understanding of what it would mean? The villages do such a thorough job of normalizing constant conflict, so I would not be surprised if such a thought is uncommon."

"It's such an astounding capability for violence, isn't it? Was it worth it for the Sage to gamble on the goodness of people and lose? Those below us, that must be a work of some foul Chakra," she says. "I wonder how much they suffered."

482
TWC 904/2,000

The dubbed Kurumi followed Murata wordlessly onto the roof. Demons was a word she was oft familiar with; in times past, the Yuki clan had been seen as accursed. The ability to bring premature winter, to take fingers and toes and limbs days after an encounter, and the ability to kill a town’s food supply in one swoop was despised by any civilians, and rightfully so. Lachesis rubbed her bruised fist absentmindedly. The increased bloodflow would likely make it worse, but she doubted she’d wake up with anything beyond mild aches and a rapidly fleeting memory.

After a few moments perched on a crumbling roof, she let herself slowly relax. Anything coming would likely be picked up on quickly by the two of them. The stranger didn’t seem like an immediate threat, and besides, she doubted being killed here meant death in the waking world. A particularly loud wail echoed from far away.

“What is there to say?” she answered sharply. After a moment, she folded in the barest amount. The situation had her on edge, and alienating her only company wasn’t something she was particularly eager to do. Something small- that’d be appropriate, right? “...I never expected to live past age twenty.” was what she settled on after a moment. “Parents come from different village type deal. Other people knew, and let me knew they knew. My biggest worth was maybe having kids with a bloodline.” she stayed quiet for a moment, debating her next phrase. “In truth, I’m afraid to die. I’m not sure what I live for, but…” many words came to her lips, but ultimately, she remained quiet after the declaration, listening to Murata’s parable.

Philosophy wasn’t her strong suit. Lachesis didn’t know shit about it, but… if the stranger wanted her to give her two ryo…

“I don’t know,” she added bluntly. “About the chakra thing, anyway. Things are pretty shitty back on the home front, and it’s… Tiring.” The dreams didn’t help, obviously. “As long as there’s more than one person in the world, there’s going to be conflict. And it fucking sucks.” at that conclusion, she scratched her nose awkwardly, wiping off dirt, grime, and a few specks of blood onto her face. It wasn’t a particularly deep comment to add onto the stranger’s dilemma- but she wasn’t too good at the people thing. Maybe all she wanted was for someone to listen?

“Why does the Sage get to decide that for us?” she settled on after a moment. “Isn’t conflict just another form of change? Don’t- don’t get me wrong. The whole violence thing is pretty shitty. But- shouldn’t our aspirations, morals, and ideals change with the times? Isn’t it unrealistic to hold all of humanity to the same standard?” she let loose a steady exhale. Despite the cold temperature, her breath did not fog the air. Her temperature never run hot enough. A consequence of her chakra, but one she was born with. If misused, it could be terrible- but right now, it was harmless.

Hell, in the right circumstances, it could be downright useful.

“The village system is flawed,” she settled on after a few moments. Her treason would go unnoticed in the waking world, but some part of her knew Murata was unlikely to disagree. “Chakra’s been weaponized for hundreds of years. But I think it’s mistaken to believe that’s its only use. The same jutsu that causes an avalanche could irrigate a field in minutes, or repair a dam.” She tapped her fingers- an obvious nervous habit.

“I’m not a good person. But- I think people are generally good. They just have to try.”


[WC: 606]
[Total WC: 1,656]