The storm clouds overhead krak-thoomed with peels of thunder. Lightning crackled and pulsed inside the storm like a newborn chick trying to break out of its shell. A particular bolt, as if drunk or confused, sizzled at the edge of the cloud line and then roared down to the ground. It traveled slower than natural lightning, despite the boasts of the soul it carried with it. The unnatural lightning cratered into a wet, sandy beach, leaving behind heavy scorch marks and a shivering, laughing Gushiken Ren.
His worn, sodden with rain body collapsed almost immediately. Ren’s one eye stared wide and unfocused as he choked out manic chuckle after chuckle. Some of the laughter wasn’t actual laughter. In between exhales he spat up pieces of metal and wire, black smoke erupting from his lips and fading out into the atmosphere as he gagged. Ren rested with both hands splayed out from his body, chest raising and falling with each desperate breath between his bursts and fits of expulsions. His mind went blank and he passed out several times over the course of hours.
When Ren finally did grab hold and anchor his consciousness, the storm likewise became less severe. The thunder mumbled above him as he sat up, and pulled up the leg of his pants to see the damage. The curse Endo left on his leg still lingered just a bit, as evidenced by the blackened skin that ran across his skin. Ren gave the tainted flesh a slight tap with his knuckle. All things considered that might have been ill advised.
His body tensed up as if it was about to seize again and for one stomach churning moment Ren thought he might have just killed himself. But the tension didn’t last long, and a moment later relief came to every cell in his body. The leg was tender but the killing chakra entwined with it had lost its window of opportunity. After a few minutes and some further preparatory flicks, Ren was satisfied that standing on the appendage would not kill him. With no immediate threat to his person he used one hand to rub against his face, and the other against his throat. The Jellyfish lived.
“I told ya so!” Ren didn’t know who he was spitting out such a proclamation to, but it felt earned. He rolled around on the beach for a bit, testing his muscles. The wet sand was getting all over his undershirt and hands, but every sodden breath felt like a gift. He realized he was cold and regretted leaving his coat on that corpse on Endo’s sinking ship. Despite that Ren’s entire body felt like...well, felt like he had been struck by lightning and survived. And somehow he’d even managed to sneak a few hours of nap time in!
Ren struggled to his feet and fumbled around in his pockets. He found what he was looking for, but disgustedly crumpled what he found: cigarette pack, empty. His massive sword, sinking on Endo’s vessel. He had his health, but not much else.
No smokes and no swords. And no coat.
The longer Ren stayed awake and sober, the more his ‘health’ felt like less of a consolation prize. He couldn’t pretend it wasn’t going to happen any longer. Konkaji Senmitsu was definitely going to find him, and blowing up Endo’s ship and the lightning storm almost certainly pointed the swordsman right at Ren’s current location. An uncontrolled explicative burst from his ashen mouth. “Fuck!” He had lived. He was reborn. He just had one last thing to do before he could close this chapter behind him -
The chapter that had started when he felt that spiritual call to climb that mountain -
The chapter that started when he made a contract with an entity beyond his understanding -
The chapter that started when he realized he had lost his ninja way -
Jellyfish had to kill That Man known as the Flame and claim back the title of Legendary Swordsman from the traitor-turned traitor-turned traitor that was Konkaji Senmitsu.
And he had to do it with nothing but the clothes on his back.
Some hours later, the evening’s storm continued to rumble and blustered as the sun set. Eventually some of the black-gray clouds began to part. They revealed the pristine black Water Country sky above. The multitude of stars hanging in the air almost shined brightly enough to cast shadows. While the moon couldn’t be seen its presence was still evident from the backlit clouds that swirled around the isolated island.
Then a sight not uncommon to the clearer sea skies zipped across the heavens. A shooting star, like a flash in a pan, shot through the inky blackness. A few minutes later, another came. A minute after that, a pair. The intervals between each streak of light shortened bit by bit, until soon a full blown meteor shower shot across the tiny window in the parted clouds.
While such a rare spectacle was certainly possible on a normal night, as the intensity of the light show grew it became clear the phenomena was not of natural origin. Indeed, the clouds hadn’t separated out to provide a convenient window to the display- the storm was forced back, as each plummeting spark of light singed and flamed on its descent to earth .
From the ocean horizon and silhouetted by the curtain of falling fire walked a man. He approached with a casual saunter, despite his feet splashing on the surface of the water he tread upon, and one of his gauntlet-covered hands rested on a sword hilt on his belt.
Kinobori/Kabenobori no Jutsu (Tree Walking / Wall Walking Technique)
Requirements: Power 5, Control 4, Reserves 4
Description: By focusing chakra into the feet and keeping it balanced, the user can walk up against vertical objects and cling to its surface. This technique is passive and does not require any jutsu usages.
Stage Three: The user may walk across water or other liquids as though they were solid surfaces.
We are the fire of the forge, and we shall consume them as one, belly and bowel, until nothing is left but ash.
A brief memory crossed the mind of Konkaji Senmitsu as he approached the inexorable force that drove him towards the desolate island. Once, he apprenticed in a similarly isolated place. The recollection brought a sour scowl to his otherwise expressionless face.
Then Senmitsu pushed it aside, as he always did, and his eyes began to scan the shores for where fate drove him towards.
Wind danced around the island, sucking at the branches of the palm trees and sending a shivering noise washing over the sands. Vibrations in the air matched the lapping waves of the coast. Like a thousand rattlesnakes sending out a warning, the meteor storm blew away the last remains of Ren’s skybound salvation. There would be no zapping himself away this time, with no lightning to ride.
The air thrashed, going this way and that, until it came to a head, two fronts violently colliding with each other. Thermal heat rose and the breeze shot upwards, pulling up trails of leaves and disrupting the mist that hung over the empty island. Some of the thousands of unmarked little crab-infested patches of dirt even blew away, much to the chagrin of the denizens that lived beneath it.
As That Man approached the coast, the slow patter of Ren’s applause greeted him. The shark-toothed shinobi sat on a little rocky outcropping a few dozen feet up from the sands of the beach. Ren to was backlit by the falling fire, his broad shoulders eclipsing the light source as he clapped.
“That’s a cool trick,” Ren’s voice sounded groggy and hungover, though he was only one of those things. He stumbled, his fatigue apparent, as he leaned forward and pushed himself off the edge of the cliff. He landed with a soft plop on the wet sand, and then outstretched his arms as if welcoming an old friend to his estate.
Ren’s preferred battlefield, a trash island full of biting gnats and detritus eating bugs. It was just like home to him.
“You look about as good as I feel, man.” Despite having spent not a small amount of time coming up with the greeting, Ren’s weakened voice left a lot to be desired from the delivery. “Seems like our mutual friend Endo used your power to blow up some of Kirigakure. How does that feel, huh? To have some other man playing with your detonator? Bet you feel reeeeal violated. Or maybe you liked it.”
Senmitsu remained silent, observing Ren with the same detached look he started both of their previous encounters with. The Flame had not yet been sparked.
The Jellyfish rubbed his chin, encouraged by the legendary jounin’s apparent disinterest. “Hey, I don’t blame ya. Part of being a shinobi, right? Letting strange men manipulate you and use you like a whore. Can’t be any different than how the Water Lord treats you. How much longer are you going to keep swallowing whatever load he gives you?”
The sunken, vacant eyes of Senmitsu flitted over Gushiken Ren. As though his brain still processed the man’s statement, Senmitsu raised two fingers and scratched his unshaven stubble.
“Hearing you talk about swallowing is rich.” He pointed with his gauntlet covered hand right at Ren. “You sound a bit off. Eat something that didn’t agree with you?”
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Senmitsu’s hand balled into a fist and something released from inside, like a wave of invisible force. The tattoo across Senmitsu's chest began to glow with the same light of the stars above.
Stage One Soul Forge
Kon-konpon - (Soul Root)
Jutsu Requirements: Power=2, Intelligence=2
Jutsu Description: This technique requires no hand seals, and is instead activated by expelling chakra from a tattoo. The tattoo can be of anything, but must be somewhere on the face, and it glows when this technique is used. Any item in the user’s inventory except soul armor can be instantly summoned into their hands or onto the appropriate body part regardless of its current location. The ability to summon an item comes from familiarity with it, and spending a few hours with a mundane item is enough to make this possible.
Across space and time, Ren could feel it. Not just deep down in his bones, but something beyond even that. The ache. A longing for a different life, a different time, and different circumstances...and the cold iron bolts fastened through cuffs that penetrated between the bones of his forearms, trapping him to Senmitsu’s dying curse. Ren both knew it, and didn’t. Like a memory in a dream, where it wiggled and snuck away from him every time he got close to it. That other world, that other place: the Calamity. Did it ever exist? His tether to it grew weaker and weaker every day. Like a backstory that didn’t exist anymore. Was he better off pretending it had never happened?
Did Ren want to hold onto a world that no longer and could never again exist?
Senmitsu’s chakra infiltrated Ren’s body and reminded him that for now, at least, that parallel life still held some hooks in him. He looked down at his hands and could see it, the unmistakable pattern from his dreams. The same ones he had every night since he had woken up back in Kirigakure after climbing that mountain. Blackened dots of blood were wiggling up through his skin, sketching a tattooed pattern on his skin. It was the same design of That Man’s gauntlets, a mirror imitation of the Konkaji tattoos which adorned the Flame’s body and granted him his own magnificent powers. Light flickered under Ren’s skin, illuminating his bones through the red glow of his flesh. Those spiraling symbols then erupted in small lesions. Liquid fire had been poured across his arms.
Gushiken Ren gritted his teeth together, locking together his jaw and refusing to vocalize his agony. His jagged teeth rattled in his skull. Pain. Pain. Pain that couldn’t be forgotten. He tried tensing and relaxing the muscles in his arms, but to no avail. The sickening vibration swept over his blood and Ren fell to his knees. Now even this reality seemed impossible to hold onto, as Ren felt his vision begin to black out.
“Go ahead and rest, Jellyfish. I myself have gotten plenty.” Senmitsu yawned with an exaggerated slowness. “Lately I’ve only been having nightmares where I die, but not last night. Last night was something special.”
Fire. Burning, incredible fire tore up Ren’s insides as trans-dimensional shards, a reminder of a different time, worked their way free. It was boiling up his throat, and he realized the detonator was coming up too – a thousand little shards of blasted metal ripping up his throat and trying to wiggle out of his cells.
Above him the faux meteor shower continued. Each streak seemed to glow brighter than the last.
“There’s a rubbish old Konkaji tradition where you devote prayers to your ancestors. Not since I was a child have I believed in such tripe, but in my dream, a familiar shadow came to me. You want to know what they told me?”
Ren couldn’t hold it in any longer and let out a howl that sent the swarming crabs scattering away as a pulse of energy swept across the beach all at once. Iron and steel ripped free from Ren’s face, and throat, between his teeth, up through his arms, all with a shower of blood that hung in the air in one spectacular burst.
Again Senmitsu’s fist clenched and he twisted it, reveling in the sensation.
“They showed me a technique not recorded in any Konkaji archives.”
“And they told me to use it to kill you.”
Senmitsu expected to reclaim his detonator but got quite a bit more instead. How could he have known that Ren was also harboring the remains of Narke, that swords from his dreams, inside his own flesh, when Ren himself didn’t know?
Senmitsu, with idle interest, swirled the broken bits of metal around in his palm without understanding what he just reclaimed. “It’s a bit flashy for my tastes, but who am I to turn down a hallucinated family member? How about it, Mister Jellyfish? Seems like you can barely handle even this. What a shame.”
The last bit of that memory yanked away from Ren as the metal glittered in the air, trapping his own blood in a webbed nexus before gently floating over to Senmitsu’s balled fist. That was it. There was nothing left for the Flame to take back.
Ren fell to his side. The wet sand at once felt like an immediate relief before it sent electric shocks of pain in the myriad of open wounds on his arms, as salt and dirt mixed in with his blood.
If he had a quip, it didn’t come. The sound from his mouth was a ragged whimper.
The streaking lights above cast the mangled pieces of metal floating in Senmitsu’s hand in a myriad of twisted shadows. He studied the mess for a bit, far more interested in watching Ren writhe than inspecting his recovered goods. When his attention did return to the blood soaked remnants of something he almost tossed the whole mess aside without any further thought.
But a lingering scent grabbed hold. He turned the metal scraps over in his hand, like a child inspecting the broken shards of a toy they themselves demolished. That Ren had destroyed the detonator wasn’t surprising. The iron and steel twisted between Senmitsu’s fingers now, though...
The thought was too impossible to comprehend. That his mortal foe Gushiken Ren was wallowing around like a beached dolphin only further convinced Senmitsu of the fraud. He drew his sword, his Void. The black blade reflected no light at all, even from the light show dancing far over their heads. “Is this another cheap trick?” With his other balled fist Senmitsu ran the scrap metal over the razor edge of his weapon. “Will you show me a vision of hell next? Perhaps pretend to trap me in a bubble? Genjutsu are so worthless compared to the purity of steel-”
He froze with his hand still scraping the iron across his blade. There was no change. There was no change.
There was a shift in Senmitsu’s tone. Was it fear? Confusion? “This...how did you have this? No object is immune to the effect of the Void except the Void itself.” He lifted his sword up to his eyes and inspected it, and then finding no answers, he gave it a powerful swing through the air. Senmitsu’s face twisted into a dissatisfied frown. It wasn’t just Ren’s scrap metal that Senmitsu retrieved. The memories he took- that he shared with the man bubbled to the surface as well.
“I remember it. I was so certain- I felt so sure it was just a bad dream.” Senmitsu drew his blade across his dirty gauntlets as if testing its edge. “I recall...some punk dragged me down into hell. While I roasted and screamed he wore my skin like a suit.” A sharp metallic ringing filled the air as he flicked the end of his sword with his fingers. “And he made my children into his own. Wielded my weapons like a usurper wears an unearned crown. Disgusting. Unforgivable.”
Another memory flashed through Senmitsu’s mind. He was back with his mentor’s wife, at the scene of the massacre. -how could you even say that, after what you did! How could you even suggest-
Senmitsu shook his head as if doing so could quiet the thoughts. “When I'm done with you, Gushiken Ren, there will be no more nightmares. No more memories.” He leveled his sword at the chuunin. “I came here to kill a man, not a ghost. You’re flesh and blood all the same. If you want to die with any dignity, stand up. Not that it makes a difference to me.”
Hot bile flooded Ren’s throat. He gave a hard swallow, and a shuddering exhale. A building pressure in his gut competed with the burning, aching stinging in his throat where metal tore free. Ren thought he had grown used to this type of nausea in his adulthood as he abused his body night after night on grog and other cheap alcohol...but getting drunk was one thing. Terror was another.
The threat of a shinobi swordsman, a living legend, content on cutting him down one-on-one, didn’t bring the thrill and excitement Ren thought it would. Rather he realized, strangely, his body’s reaction was very much like a sudden detox. The metal extracted from his body, from his very soul, must have been poisoning him. Adrenaline fought back against the nausea, bringing on a moment of lucidness as Ren leveled his single eye onto the other man. As the meteors danced around the Flame in the sky, streaking like howling wounds in the heavens, Ren felt the distinct feeling of vertigo.
“I guess I’ve been askin’ for this,” Ren said. “Bitchin’ and moanin’ all the same...”
Ren stood up straight. He wore an expression of resolute intensity, not the giddy smile he used when fighting Endo. He popped his neck, grit his teeth, furrowed his brow-
-and let out a belch that escaped him completely involuntarily. It was a total reflex as Ren had done a hundred times before, he brought a finger to his lips and struck a little pose. An apology that he used each time it had happened before, in front of superior officers. Oops, silly me, a little drunk again. However, he stood now on a ruined beach strewn with dead plants, debris, and crabs. His tattered uniform gave no impression of dignity. Even his eyepatch was scarred and covered in small cuts where the metal had been torn from his flesh. A parody of his former self, a walking corpse. Gushiken Ren must have died on that mountain, certainly – for what stood here was someone else. He wasn’t his memories. Konkaji Senmitsu just relieved Ren of any remaining hooks that life had left in him.
“You know, I wonder how many people you sent to the underworld? An’ worse, you didn’t have the good nature to kill ‘em all fair and square like this – face to face. Came all the way down from your mountain to kick around a buncha islanders. Fulfilling some wild fantasy, huh? Taming the savages?”
Ren spit to the side, and somehow felt better. Resolve or – pride? - was welling up in his chest. There was no time to be feeling sorry for himself. Not like this Konkaji standing on a Water Country beach like he owned the place, complaining about what? Being killed in another life? Pathetic.
Ren would stare death right in the little smug eyes. “Well, when I send you back to hell, tell your ancestors to pick a better champion next time. One who does less whining.”
He pantomimed reaching for his sword on his back, where there was none, but he held his pose as if waiting for the draw. “Well? Don’t leave a savage like me waiting. Come and kill me like a man!”