A Requiem in the Deep Sea

Saturn Yamanaka, or rather, Saturn Sentobi found himself rowing a narrow wooden canoe deep in the dark blue sea, miles from the shore of Mikadzuki Beach. The Sun was setting and the clear Mikadzukian sky shimmered in pink and orange hues of iridescent light. He had bore witness to something hideous, a ghastly sight that haunted him and shook him to his very core. He had only known Captain Bartholomew Rogers for a few moments, but in that time he had discovered a shimmer of hope in the soul of a banished man. Yet, his light did not burn brightly enough to save his life, and the captain had made a decision on behalf of a stronger shinobi, one that would seal his fate with the valor of the sea. That shinobi had been Saturn's senior and compatriot, the whale shepherd, as Saturn would come to call her in his mind. The foul stench from the captain's corpse that was traced to his spilled out guts and frothing mouth left a stark aftertaste on the tanned shinobi's nose. He could still picture the mutilated body of the man whose mind he had briefly possessed laying lifelessly on the wooden deck of his pirate ship. The look on his first mate's face and the fear that was instilled into the eighteen other members of Bartholomew's crew was the realest thing that Saturn had been in the presence of since he witnessed the death of a certain someone else who had been a lot closer to his heart. Yet, his flowing emotions in the moments that followed had been no different than when he had run for his life from his childhood home all the way to Lightning Country on his Buddhist horse from the stables in his abusive father's compound in Konoha.

 Saturn had once again chosen to flee from the scene of the crime. Although he never did find out what happened to the killer in Konoha or how he suffered the wrath of Jashin, the beach side killer was on the loose and free to roam the sea, and even break bread with Saturn should he run into her one evening in The Drunken Kage Bar. The Genin was conflicted with the idea and his brain struggled to comprehend the implications of the blurry line between self defense and murder. His heart was pounding profusely and his sweaty hands shook just as they did on that pivotal night in Konoha that had changed the course of his life. His cold, distant, icy blue eyes gazed out lifelessly into the horizon towards the setting Sun as he rowed the two wooden oars on the narrow vessel that he had taken out from the pirate's ship. His instructions to the nineteen remaining members of the late Bartholomew's crew were stern and crystal clear. They were to drop the anchor and remain on the ship without exception until a male red breasted merganser with a slightly redder beak than normal flew two rounds around the ship overhead and then perched on the first mate's left shoulder. The call of the female is a rasping prrak prrak, while the male gives a feeble hiccup-and-sneeze display call. Saturn had lectured the crew while he was still on the ship with them. Their fear was fresh and they were averse to defying the orders of the whale shepherd's present subordinate, but Katsuyori one of her loyal summons remained with the ship to make sure that none of its occupants jumped overboard to flee. And if this parrot returns to the ship without the company of a red beaked merganser, that means I'm dead, and you may do as you please. He had told the crew before embarking on his quest, taking with him one of the pirates' big green parrots still in her metal dome cage.

 Earlier in the day, Saturn had been in a group of four shinobi assigned to cover lifeguard duty when he deduced a bold hypothesis. The lifeguards had professed to the authorities at the beach that the cause for their absence was consuming badly cooked shrimp. But Saturn thought better. Four lifeguards had no business allowing themselves to consume bad shrimp. The shrimp in question had to have become bad for a reason. A massive shark in the water with a ferocious appetite had driven the shrimp population closer to the shore and as a result, their intestines carried more deposits of anthropogenic pollutants than usual. The locals were acclimated to a high quality of shrimp. When uncleaned, the new batch caused problems in the locals' bowels. This was Saturn's theory that he was determined to test at the end of his shift, before the pirates showed up and his evening took a turn for the worse. 

 Saturn was now rowing in pursuit of a predator that he had predicted. He was blissfully unaware of the team assigned to hunt the threat in question and the reported cases of missing persons around the particular area that he was patrolling on the borrowed canoe. The Genin decided that the crew in their misshapen ship was in no condition to fend off the horde of sharks, - or perhaps a lone leviathan of a shark - that had to have disrupted the ecosystem. He had already failed to save the life of one forsaken soul  but now he was willing to put his own on the line to ensure that the nineteen souls that survived the unfortunate encounter with the Cetacean sage would be granted a fair chance at redemption and a safe passage back out into the sea without being claimed prematurely in their vulnerable state by an unexpected outlier. Besides, if Saturn could prove to himself that his theory about the monster was right, his day could still perhaps be saved.

 "Blimey!" 

The caged bird cursed by Saturn's new pair of pirate boots while he oared. Paying no mind, he oared again, and waited patiently for something to happen. 

---

WC: 996

As the Sun sank further into the horizon, the clear cerulean Mikadzukian sky began to flower thick clouds of dark grey. The waves' crests rose higher as Saturn ventured deeper out into the sea, lifting his canoe up making him brace and grip the side of the small boat. The troughs sank deeper, driving the boat harder into the water's surface making it rock, rattling the metal cage that contained his feathered hostage. The light was eclipsed behind a brewing storm, encompassing the area in a brighter orange illumination than before, with a touch of pink still. A light drizzle had already begun to fall, and glow of shimmering lights in the clouds followed by an echo of a distant thunder confirmed that the weather was indeed shifting.

"Heave ho! Heave ho!"

The loud green crested cockatoo gave the order to Saturn from inside her cage. Glancing sternly at the bird, the sailor scowled at the bird before striking the metal cage with one of the oars making it ring before issuing a stark warning.

"Shut your beak, Sharkbait! Lest me hang you from the Yardarm and feed you to the fishes!"

The bird purred like a cat as the young blonde man kept beating its cage with the oar, until a sight in the sky caught his attention. An object seemed to leave a meteor tail behind as it crashed from ways up in the sky from where he had seen lightning just moments earlier. Taking his Pirate Hat off - it had a long feather of an ostrich sticking out from the back like a ponytail - Saturn clutched his leather tricorne to his chest. With his other hand, he held his oar over his back on his shoulders as he gasped, tracking the object in the sky.

 "No way! Could it be..? an Angel!"

He exclaimed, before promptly hearing the splash that was made when the ocean parted to give way to the crashing body.

Splash!:

"An Angel would sound cooler hitting the water..." Saturn sulked before peering out into the horizon. There, with his naked eyes, he could see the faint image of a man flailing his arms, seemingly swimming towards the canoe. "He's swimming? A civilian?" The shinobi tensed up before putting his tricorne back on and picking up the cage with the bird inside. Then, he pointed it in the direction of the swimmer before his eyes rolled back into his skull and the parrot's own did the same. Saturn's eyes were limited in their capacity to see far out into the sea on their own. The bird however, was more adapted to picking up the movement of objects far out into the sea. Relying on this principle, the Genin had used the parrot as a flashlight of sorts to peer further out into the horizon for a moment, to scout if there was any danger or if the person that lied ahead was in need of his assistance. From the sharp eyes of the bird, the shinobi witnessed Majima Nara as he stepped onto the water's surface after swimming halfway to his canoe.

This guy is a shinobi? Aw fu-

Saturn relaxed as the eyes of both passengers of the canoe came back down from their skulls, and the parrot vocalized her lamentation at being made into a torch for those few seconds. Her words, however would fall to deaf ears as the Yamanaka was feeling a little woozy upon returning his mind to his own body. "Shut it, Sharkbait!"

"Sink Me!"

He cussed and gritted his teeth, before planting the tips of his middle and index fingers on his sinus and looking down at the sea, closing his eyes in annoyance. The object of his contempt was not the approaching shinobi, but it was his own circumstances. Throughout his day, the young man's mind had been bouncing back and forth between two contrasting ideas. One was that the beach and all the events that had transpired on that day was all a dream, and Saturn's real body was sleeping soundly in his flat in Kumogakure. The other was that the beach was quite real and his life had been changed forever following the trials and tribulations he had faced along the way. There's no way in hell, Saturn thought, that Yagi-san and Hiroki-sensei would believe his wild tale if he told it to them the next time they met at The Drunken Kage Bar. Previously having had a strong conviction that the beach was now real after witnessing the death of the captain whose hat he took the pleasure of looting, Saturn was now once again unsure upon seeing a man fall from the sky. That kind of thing did not normally happen in the real world, he thought. His eye twitched, the nerves on his temple pulsed and his heart pounded loudly as Majima took his time getting all the way to the canoe.

As Majima spoke something about his piss and Batholomew's ship out in the distance, Saturn's eyes opened and peered into the dark haired shinobi's soul. He listened patiently and reached out and placed two of his hands on the shinobi's shoulders, leaning in towards his face as he talked. His hands were gentle and there was no trace of animosity in his gentle grip, but the expression on his face was that of a man who was visibly wearied by the curveballs that the day kept on throwing at him. He likes sleeping, hot springs, animals but not cats, winning... Saturn narrated in his mind as his attention drifted from the words being spoken to him. He did not need to use his chakra to learn the likes and dislikes of another from this close. Even if all of this is a simulation, someone put in a lot of thought behind every character.. As Majima finished speaking, Saturn kept his left hand on the shinobi's shoulder and winded his right hand back, taking aim for the darker ninja's cheek. He did not have an immediate answer for Majima's inquiries and he was going to slap him instead to check how he would respond. To check if he was in a simulated reality that kept throwing curveballs at him all day to see how he would react. He was paranoid and at this point strongly suspected that the people around him were actors. Before Saturn could swing his palm at his compatriot's cheek, another vessel came into view from the side, catching his attention. Still holding his palm behind his body ready to strike, he turned his head to see the incoming ship.

He squinted his eyes, and suspected that he recognized the familiar figure standing at the front of the bigger vessel. As they sailed closer, there was no doubt about it. The man leading the crew was none other than Yagi Raiten'no - one of Saturn's friends, and a mentor who had taught him how to use sensory techniques. Lowering his hand, Saturn sighed again and looked down. He was now standing on the water having left his boat behind. The pirate boots that he wore kept him on the water's surface at no cost to his chakra pool. The man in front of him, Saturn realized, had a valid reason to mistake him for a pirate. He reached for his flask and took a long swig from the dark rum he had swindled from the crew that he had left behind.  "Yagi-san? I get it... You think this is funny.." Saturn palmed his face and took two small steps towards Yagi's ship - Majima still within arm's reach. He chuckled in a desperate act of defiant psychosis, "Scallywags... The lot of ye! You're running a rig on me, aren't you? And this imposter, ye, Scourge of seven seas, is in on it too!" He pointed a finger at his compatriot on the ship, accusing him with a stern look on his own face.

"Ye can't fool Me, landlubber and son of a biscuit eater are ye, Savvy? And the bird.. ye ever heard of a chicken nugget?"

"Blimey!"

The rage in Saturn's heart brewed as he stepped back towards the canoe and grabbed the metal bars of the dome cage. He was prepared to break out of his dream at any cost necessary. Just as his hands clenched two bars on the metal cage, a loud splash interrupted his tantrum. The splash this time had come from below. A beam of lightning cracked the sky above the three Kumon shinobi, but all eyes were on the monster that had reared its head - and most of the rest of its body - from the depths of the ocean. Yagi and his crew had been accurate in pinpointing the location of the beast that they were hunting. The sight in front of Saturn now was the embodiment of terror. A massive shark had snapped his canoe in half. One half of the wooden vessel's body was clenched in the sharp teeth of the leviathan that had made its move. The shark took a vertical stance, and from its snout to its muscular midsection that emerged from the water it was at least twenty feet long though more of its body lay hidden underneath the surface of the water.

Grabbing Sharkbait's cage with one hand and the back of Majima's collar on his jacket, Saturn reacted quickly to leap backwards towards Yagi's ship and as far away from the shark as he could with both of them within the short time that he had to make a decision. Before they could land, the monster crashed into what was left of the borrowed rowboat, its sheer size creating a massive towering wave and sending it towards Saturn, Majima and Yagi. The water slapped Saturn first, but he maintained his grip on the cage. Right on cue, heavy rain poured down from above in sync with the roaring thunder.

When the cold water slapped Saturn's face hard halfway into his backwards leap, he froze. The water terrified him. Especially ever since he saw for himself the wrath of the deep sea, and its terrors that could cause a man to spew out his guts and blow his eardrums up till they spewed out too, the ocean was his biggest fear. And yet now, as though he had manifested his source of fear into reality - or more likely he had pushed his luck too far and taken his detour on the beach a little too lightly - he was ensnared by the ocean's grip. His heart pounded in his chest and he shut his eyes, expecting to free fall into the bottom of the sea. He was about to pray when he felt a tug on the back of his collar.

In the nick of time, the young man whose face he had nearly slapped had pulled him back from the crashing wave, all the way to Yagi's ship. Saturn landed on his behind and the metal cage bounced before rolling to the ship's edge. There were more urgent matters at hand. Dusting himself off, Saturn wiped his face and turned to the dark haired Majima, who was making comments at him already before he could unclog his ears. He shuddered at the horrors that were incited in him upon feeling the water flood in. His pirate hat was knocked off of his head and it layed on his side. "What makes you think I'm responsible for this?" His thank you came out in the rudest tone. You saved me out there, He wanted to say, but rubbed his eyes and got back on his feet to assess their current situation. There he was, the man who had just saved him, throwing the ship's arsenal into the deep blue sea. And now you've killed us Saturn looked annoyed, but he tried not to let his pessimism show.  Walking over, he placed his pirate hat on Majima's head and then glared out into the horizon, and his vision blurred as he chuckled and then broke out into laughter, laughing at their dire stakes.

His laughter grew even louder when Yagi started yelling, and that's when the ship was rocked by the megalodon. Stumbling with the force, Saturn barely stayed on his feet before sobering up and immediately paying all of his attention to Yagi. Saltwater..? That's right.. I was drinking all the way here from the ship.. Saturn thought to himself, looking out into the ocean - plenty of saltwater there, he thought. The crew was yelling and heaving behind them, and the chaos did not give any room for the traumatized young Genin to slip a word in. Never go full retard... The words rang in his head, and his mind seemed to buffer. The crew was clearly struggling. The fin of the leviathan was slicing into the deck at an alarming speed. The smaller shark seemed to have retreated to recalculate the right angle to approach the vessel from without harming its own ally.

"Hold your fire." Saturn leaned over and fixed his cold blue eyes on Yagi's with strong conviction. No more needless suffering, no more deaths where I can help it, he thought, witnessing the struggling crew and Yagi's injuries. "Give me one minute, at the most." He had an idea. Turning to the side of the deck, he stared into the sea and took a second to prepare himself before forming hand seals in quick succession - Tiger, Horse Ram... In a blink, two physical bodied copies of Saturn stood next to him on either side, each donning Saturn's stunning good looks but both slightly misshapen in their faces so that neither were quite as handsome as the original. Using his kunai, Saturn cut his forearm making blood drip to the wooden deck of the ship. Wasting no more time, the three bodies beelined right into the ship's edge and dove into the depths of the shark infested waters below.

Upon hitting the water, the shark - the big one - immediately noticed the scent of blood. Expending no effort, the massive beast chomped down the fit blonde man who landed first, snapping his spine in two. In a puff of smoke, the body disappeared, luckily for Saturn it was just one of his clones. Diving deeper into the ocean floor was another. Looking up at the distracted shark who looked for the meal that it thought it had killed, this figure was 19 meters below the shark's belly. Unrelenting determination helped Saturn hold his breath while hand seals were formed again. Rat - Ram - Snake - Tiger - Bird - Ox. He was not holding back. With this technique, he had created a rift in space, 20 meters below the shark's belly, in the body of the ocean. This created a deep trough, pulling the ship closer to the seabed but the vessel was just out of reach from Saturn's technique. The shark, however, was in range and was pulled deeper into the sea towards the Genin and the rift that he had created with his space time technique. It was a strong technique but it was not going to hold the shark for much longer. However, Saturn Sentobi was the type to think of the bigger picture. He wasn't some mere beast killing indiscriminately out in the ocean.

Above the water, the trough that was caused levelled out, but the storm was raging. There was no sign of Saturn, and no sign of the sharks.

As the massive predator was dragged towards the rift, one able bodied swimmer performed one more set of hand seals to complete only the first phase of his grand scheme. Tiger, Snake, Horse, Ram, and a specific hand seal that was almost unique to the man himself. With those invocations, the pupils of the shark rolled back into its skull. It was possessed. The slightly less handsome clone that Saturn had summoned immediately snatched the unconscious body of the original as it began to plummet deeper into the ocean floor upon losing consciousness. Swimming like his life very much depended on it, Saturn's clone dragged him closer to the shark's body, tailgating its propellors as it made its dive even deeper into the sea.

The massive shark had senses that were completely foreign to Saturn. It was nothing like possessing a bird, a cat, or even a monkey. Its gills helped him breathe underwater, a sensation that he had never felt before. He could taste his own blood from the bait that he had taken from his own body. And he felt an insatiable longing for the flesh that he came to associate with the smell of human blood. In the ocean, he could sense with his smell and taste the cruel amount of victims that the duo of sharks had already claimed from miles away. Most importantly, he could sense the drifts in the water around him guiding him to the smaller shark, the one that had wrecked Bartholomew's canoe. It was pitch black. How he managed to pull of the stunt that he had devised to get into his new host body was beyond him.

Swimming at an impossibly fast speed, the clone struggled to keep up while Saturn focused on the hunt. He was going to kill these beasts who had caused so much suffering. This particular one had attacked Yagi just a while ago, he learned upon inheriting its memories. The worst feeling was the helpless empathy that he felt towards the shark while gaining the memories of how it had killed its countless victims. In a fit of rage, his jaws clenched on the side of the unsuspecting smaller shark's hide and chomped down, ripping into its flesh, causing its blood to sputter and ooze, turning the sea red in a patch a few hundred meters from the ship above. The bigger shark emerged from the sea with the smaller in its jaws, their flailing fins and tail were only seen for a moment before the bigger dove back into the sea, leaving the smaller specimen's body snapped in half on the sea's surface. Red was all one could see anymore beyond the storm.

The shadow clone, Saturn's servant, brought his original body back to the surface, laying him on one of the pieces of wood that the Senju clansman had conjured into the sea to aid the crew in their battle. He broke out into a cold sweat when he woke up, looking around frantically. There were no visible signs of the remaining shark, but it had broken free from Saturn's vice grip on its mind. He had gained its instincts, and he knew that it was a matter of when, not if, the shark would return to kill them all.

"It's coming from the right!"  

He shouted out his warning to his compatriots on the ship, from his wooden raft below.

WC: 1490

TWC: 4139

"You wouldn't get it.." Saturn groaned weakly on Majima's back, in a condescending tone although he was on the verge of passing out. So far he had told no one about the true extent of his niche powers. Keeping it that way had its own advantages although it made the skilled Genin more inclined to show off when given the chance. He opened his eyes just a little to see where he was being taken, and he saw the ship coming closer and closer in his vision. "No, wait, turn around! No! No, no, no, no, no!" The shinobi yelled helplessly on his back but his words would fall on deaf ears as his compatriot would escort him to the very ship that the colossal shark was presently beelining at. Although he had warned them, it would appear that he had been unclear and hysteric after emerging from the dangerous situation he had put himself in in the water. As they came up from the ladder into the deck of the ship, Saturn ejected from Majima's back, falling to the wooden floor of the deck first, and then getting up on his feet and looking around frantically for the monster that was headed their way.

 As he looked, he saw that the Jounin, Yagi had already located the beast and taken aim. Lightning cackled at the shinobi's palm as he stared into the heart of the leviathan that had claimed so many lives in its wake. Quickly regaining alertness, Saturn rushed to the edge of the ship and planted his hands on the side as he watched the massive shin of the monster as it sliced the ocean in its path. The storm at this point had cascaded into an onslaught of endless, loud rain. Thunder roared in the distance and echoed all around them. The Sun had set, and the strongest light that encompassed the deep blue sea was that casted by the techniques used by various members of the crew. His heart pounded in his chest as he watched Yagi leap off of the vessel at the charging killer. He had asked if they could help him penetrate the sharks innards - a weird request, but he seemed to know what he was doing.

 Thinking quickly, Saturn leaned over the edge before he covered his mouth and used a simple technique to throw his voice ahead of Yagi [1]. Although thus far he did not dabble in puppetry, he had picked up a few tricks in his journey that could be useful in odd situations. After all, odd situations were this Genin's specialty. Imitating the chirping sound made by his mentor's chidori, he made the shark hear its fatal lightning two meters ahead of Yagi's actual position in his trajectory. This caused the beast to rear its head from the ocean a moment too early, and open its jaws in anticipation of the attack from its renowned nemesis, only to find that it had now inadvertently opened a direct path to its gutter. 

WC: 504

TWC: 4643