Legend

Spoiler:

Scurry. Skitter. Sniffle. Paw at an old, discarded bone. It was a small one, a runt amongst runts. Likely hid from the others to avoid being devoured, only came out to gnaw on the scraps. More scraps than usual of late. Much mourning at the death of the Alpha, but then much feast. Gorging. Began to rot before it had all been eaten. Full for first time in long time. But then food gone, and back to scurrying, back to hiding. It stopped to sniffle, pawing at something. Thin, cold against paw, stretchy, smelled like old blood-

The cub didn't even have time to squeal as the wire jerked upwards, the coil wrapping around its thing, fragile neck, lifting it into the air. It wheezed, twisting and turning, jerking to and fro, dangling in the darkness. After one final, choked whimper, the struggling stopped, and it hung loosely, not even a twitching paw to betray life. The wire went slack as the creature was dropped to the ground with a soft thud, before a shadow, a darkness within the darkness, dropped with eerie silence onto the cold stone. As a final precaution, a short axe, it's filthy, blood-encrusted edged lost in the darkness, sunk into its neck, at the base of the skull. The body shuddered a final time.

The shadow worked quickly in the darkness, moving with an eery, practiced ease. First work the axe, taking the rest of the head off. Out comes the knife, slit the soft belly. Organs, entrails, viscera spilled onto the stone. Shadowed hands worked quickly, sorting and pulling out yet more organs. Kidneys, discard. Stomach, intestines, trash. Liver, quickly tucked away in a small, only marginally clean sack, as was the heart. The rest, discarded, left to leak on the cold stone. The knife continues flashing through the darkness, a snick here, and incision there. It flashed back into its unseen holster, and then the hands simply gripped and pulled, peeling off the beast's rough-furred hide like wall paper. Once pulled, discarded.

Looping the legs with wire and hefting the corpse over its shoulder, the shadow darted off into the darkness, silent, fleet feet pacing across the ground at dizzying, blurring speeds- not that any of this was visible in the darkness of the mountain. Following unseen signals and check-points, the figure secreted itself deeper and deeper into the tunnels. It stopped, casting its senses out. Focusing. Straining. A few runts, a prowling Omega, but nothing close enough to be a threat. Its hand reached out, tracing along the wall, before finding it; the roughly hewn bone plate, indistinguishable from the stone in the darkness, stolen away from the corpses of beasts long dead, taken down by the jounin of the doomed team that had met their fate so many years ago.

Pulling it aside, the figure ducked into the small tunnel, almost inconsequential, pulling the boney door shut behind him. He moved carefully, shifting around carefully strewn wires, wires leading to bony spikes that would lash down and impale the first unwary foe to trip them, quickly reaching the small, sequestered cavern within. But it was no safe haven, and the figure did not relax in the slightest as he set aside the corpse and organs, hands slowly forming a few simple seals. A dry, cracked voice quietly spoke the name. "Kaijūdentō." A small orb of electric light appeared in the figure's hand, and revealed the gaunt, devastated figure of Takeshi Gouka.

His coat hung limply on his thin frame, the edges tattered and ragged, the coat itself decorated with holes. The once green inside showed splashed of dark, rusty brown in some places. Who's blood, only Kami would know. His shirt clung tightly to him, outlining the faint traces of ribs, highlighting the near starvation. The front of the shirt was torn open, revealing a well and wicked looking scar across his muscled belly, the faintly blackened edged revealing a hasty cauterization. The flesh around it was pale, too pale. Worse still was the young man's face.

A deathly white mask, spatter with blood, clung to it, a large portion of the porcelain, from forehead to cheek on the left side, missing entirely, revealing a tired looking, sunken and gaunt blue eye. Said eye looked aimlessly around, coming to rest on an upturned skull, the lower jaw missing and the skull cavity filled with a meager portion of water. He licked dry lips, but restrained himself, hand stretching out to stick the little ball of light to the wall. He had the means, the jutsu, to procure water, but the liquid rush inevitable reached the ears of the wolves, and he did not have the means to keep more than a small supply on hand at any time. 'I should have brought a canteen.' Gouka thought dully. Not the first time he'd thought it in the past... week? Two weeks? A month? A year? Time had no meaning down in the darkness. There was only survive, sleep, survive a little longer.

He turned from the water, hand reaching up to carefully detach his mask while the other reached for his knife. His lone remaining dagger, pride of his father, the edge dull, the blade crusted in dried, rust-like blood. He turned to his latest kill, intending to finish the job of dissembling the corpse, now that the worst of it was done and it had little left to offer a scent. "There's no point you know." Gouka ignored the voice, blade digging into the corpse, slicing through tendon and bone. "She has no reason to believe you survived. No one, has any reason to think you're alive." He cut more angrily into the wolf, tearing apart bone and muscle. "You have nothing to accomplish but to die."

"I know." He spoke quietly, angrily, through gritted teeth, pulling off a leg, cracking open the ribs. "I resigned myself to my fate when I blew the tags and threw myself at the Alpha. That doesn't mean I will quietly roll over and let it happen." A soft sigh echoed in the tiny chamber. "You did your duty. You protected a valuable asset of the village-" "That's not why I did it dammit!" He snarled, jerking around. In his angry haste, the dagger spun around, jarring the skull bowl of water. He curse, dropping the blade as he caught it before it could spill its precious liquid. Realizing as well how loud he'd been, he quickly cast his sense out, then breathed a sigh of relief. No Raiju had been close enough to hear the outburst, or if that had, weren't moving towards his location.

He breathed heavily, sides heaving, as the voice spoke again. "No. You saved her because you wanted to protect her. To protect her, like the sister you failed to protect so many years ago." Gouka stiffened at the insult, hackles rising, but he controlled himself. He restrained himself. "You are going to die down here, Gouka. You are going to die, because you chose to be human. KYOBU do not, cannot, afford themselves such mercy. And now, you will pay for it."

Gouka said nothing more, as he returned to the task of quartering the carcass, firmly ignoring the voice. The voice gave a soft snort of disapproval, but said nothing more.

Legend

Spoiler:

The little ball of lightning had long since gone out, and Gouka did not bother to re-light it. Even on the brink of starvation, his task was no easier, and being able to see made it no better. Only in darkness could he muster the nerve, and even then, only when the hunger pangs were particularly fierce. It was a natural conclusion of his trapping, of his death sentence. There was no light under this mountain. There were no green things. There was nothing for a fire to consume or feed on. There was only the darkness, only the beasts, only the reaper. It was only with the spice of hunger that Takeshi Gouka had been able to subsist off the diet of raw, blood-drained flesh.

The first bite had been the toughest. It had left him curled in his little hole for days, stomach wracked and wretched, hoping his heaving would not attract the attention of the predators. Their flesh was stringy, tasteless, faintly bitter from the build ups of lactic acids the beasts no doubt produced hunting each other. Predators, animals from the top of the food chain, rarely had any succulence to their meat, and these wolves, trapped and starved and forced to cannibalism, with so little fat on their flesh, had even less to offer. And yet, Gouka had still eaten, still consumed, as he was about to do to the freshly plucked heart he held in his hand.

He knew, vaguely, from memories of survival training in his academy classes, so long ago, what parts of a fallen foe were generally safest to eat. The heart, strong, tough from all the blood pumping, rich in iron. But raw. So very raw. Only in complete darkness, and after a few shuddering breaths, could Gouka bring the tiny organ to trembling lips, teeth sinking into it like an apple from hell. The tough meat resisted his bite, but eventually yielded. Even in the darkness, Gouka closed his eyes as he took in what meager nourishment the nightmarish meal could provide. He did not care to think of how much weight he'd lost. Did not care to dwell on the dreadful toll the bloody diet was taking on his body. Could not bring himself to wonder how much longer he could survive without the essentials that only fresh, succulent fruit, leafy green things, could bring to his body, and would never be found in these creature's wretchedly stringy flesh.

So far as he was into the caverns, the explosion of the tags did not register as even a faint vibration in his ears. He did, however, pause, as he felt the barest sensation of two impressively large chakra signatures brush against the edges of his sensory range. The rest of the half-eaten heart dropped from his hands as he turned, closing his eyes, casting his senses out. 'What was...' There, at the extreme edge of his range. A flickering sensation, as if of a large source of chakra just barely out of sight. He shuffled around in his cavern, collecting his meager assortment of gear. If another Alpha has emerged from the depths of the mountain... 'Well, I was going to die sooner or later.' Gouka thought grimly, slipping on the meager remains of his mask, and with it, the Jestre persona. 'Maybe this one will know how to chew...'

He moved to the entrance of his little abode, stepping over the wires, placing himself behind the bone door as he crouched down, fully concentrating his senses. The task was helped as the signatures moved in closer, stepping much more readily into his range- and further, fluctuating their chakra as they began to engage several of the wolves. 'Two. Near jounin level chakra, one head and shoulders above a kage.' He thought distantly, semidetached, as his hands unconsciously found their way to his remaining weapons; one dagger, and a blood-stained, well used tomahawk. 'Wind between the both of them, lightning on the lesser, fire on the larger. Definitely not Raiju. Who could possibly...'

It clicked. After nearly three weeks of sleep deprivation and near starvation, Gouka's weary mind was running more than a little behind. Even if  he had only developed this ability while trapped in the suffocating darkness, even if he had never truly felt her chakra before, the roiling mix of anger, fear, worry, and desperation, combined with the sheer mass of chakra, meant that he would never in a hundred years fail to recognize it. Fail to recognize her.

Kirima.

The bone door blew off the the entrance, landing with a thunderous crash across the tunnel, so violently did Gouka kick it off. Before it had even sufficiently cleared the air however, Gouka had already been running, the crash barely outpacing the tail-end of his torn, tattered coat. A gamut of emotions ran through his worn and weary mind. Surprise. Elation. Worry. Happiness. Fear. Anger. He was glad she came back. He hated that she came back. Why did she come back? Why did she risk returning to the hell he'd given himself up to save her from? He tore off through the tunnels, plunging heedlessly into the suffocating darkness, following twists and turns and evading broken bones and stones from sheer muscle memory- and when that failed, sheer reflex kept him from breaking himself on the ground.

'I am expendable. Why did you come back for me?'

All his life, it'd been a creeping sensation. A slow, driving realization, that had solidified on his introduction to the KYOBU Black Ops. He was expendable. Another tool in the arsenal. And yet for some reason, the world sacrificed itself for him again and again. He should have been still-born, and yet it was his mother who passed into the darkness. His father had been consumed by the wolves that even now had failed to take Gouka. Tsume, his sister, had passed into unending dream, an unawakening coma, for all he'd tried to save her. His sensei, Shoru, had blinked out like a candle in the dark, gone and forgotten, without a trace, in the world of Black Ops. The world Gouka now resided in.

Any one of these people should have lived. Takeshi Haruka. Takeshi Hiro. Ningen Tsume. Yamamoto Shoru. And now, a deep fear overtook Gouka. Fear that Hanzoku Kirima and Mikado Kaze would add those names to the list. Add those names to the silent graves of the people who had died for something as useless, lifeless, and expendable, as Takeshi Gouka. Not again. Never again. A shadow is only darkness without the warmth of the light.

His only warning was a sudden flare of chakra. He skidded to a halt, leaning forward as his momentum nearly overtook him, and the crackling bolt ripped through the air just over his head, close enough to make his hair rise. In the briefest of flashes as the bolt passed, Gouka's keen, perceptive eyes, took in the sight before him. The ambush that had been waiting in the dark.

At least a score of younglings. A handful of Omega's, eyes mad with hunger. And a single, coal black Beta, but the flecks of white in its patchy, tattered fur was all Gouka needed to know it was growing, evolving. Turning into another Alpha. The next Alpha. So strange. So very strange. Even as heedless as he'd been in his rush, it was still surprising. Gouka was a perceptive individual, very little escaped his notice. He had the unique ability of a sensor ninja, always able to detect his foes by their chakra signature alone. That they could have escaped his notice, that he could have run right into them...

'... Huh. They learned to suppress their chakra. Clever.'

The bolt flashed past and darkness descended in a roar of thunder and a howl fury and a flash of steel and a glimmer of fangs.

Legend

Spoiler:

Darkness. Pain. Silence. Gouka was adrift in a sea of his own nightmares, only dimly aware of the world around him. He'd fought.... How many of the beasts? Twenty? Thirty? A nightmare without end. Weakened and battered, he had simply collapsed against the wall, too battered and beaten by the long weeks of starvation and sleep deprivation and constant fighting. Too much for such a weary soul to bare. He was only dimly aware of a faint light, of familiar voices, of a flicker of light.

'Sleep... Sleep would be nice...' His single exposed eye cracked open, gazing dimly at the scene before him. In the darkness and dim light, he could only just make out the form of Mikado Kaze. And while he couldn't exactly see her, he could feel the comforting presence of Kirima's chakra, sense her worry and fear. His eye drifted back shut as Kaze's hands began to move in. 'Sorry to worry you.... Kitkat...' He was drifting once more into unconscious, when a vileness slammed into his mind's eye, his physically eye-snapping back open as his hand snapped up to clasp around Kaze's wrist as his palms placed against Gouka's chest.

It'd been unmistakeable, some sense of... wrongness, in Kaze's chakra, a perceptible, blood-thirsty killing intent, and a palpable sense of struggle. If they hadn't been in such close proximity and Kaze hadn't been actively sending his chakra into Gouka, he might never have noticed it at all. His gaze sought out Kaze's in the darkness as, in a barely perceptible, dry, cracked whisper, he spoke. "What the hell is going on inside you head, Kaze?"

And then his eye rolled up, his grip going limp, as he slipped into unconscious.

(OOC: Blarg, short post, but it's been 4 days and I wanted this done with quick like. Assuming nothing untoward happens, Gouka is unconscious for the rest of the topic, so your next posts can be "Dragging his scraggly, unconscious ass out of the cave and hightailing it back to Kumo)

The explosion had done it's job well, a shower of rubble and shrapnel sending the scurrying claws yelping and skittering back. The earth rumbled into silence, as a red-haired, grief-stricken woman dragged her unconscious, ebony-haired companion way. In the silence and the darkness, unseen, and never to be seen again, a tousle of blonde hair poked out of the rubble, coated with dust, before with a shift and grind, that too was covered by stone. A fitting burial cairn in that dark, lonely hell. Perhaps it would discourage the predators within, and grant him some small dignity in death. Perhaps not.

The red-head and her ward were drawing farther and farther away. The beasts, hungry and drooling at the scent of blood, were slowly marching back forward, ravenous for a fresh meal, for meat and flesh of something other than their own kind, for prolonging their hellish existence just a little while longer. By any means necessary. Claws scrabbled at stone, giving way to vicious yelping as they fought for the privilege of unearthing the fresh carcass. Without warning, a portion of the cairn blasted away, stones flying with terminal velocity into the pack, killing many where they stood. A sickly, vile, serpentine coil of chakra lashed out, tainting the very air, killing yet more as the beasts yelped back into the darkness, the pure stench of the vile chakra enough to ensure they never returned this far again. Mikado Kaze's final rest would be undisturbed.

The Hebinoo was not finished yet.

In the final moments of Kaze's life, the seal holding the serpent in check had weakened, sufficient for it to shatter free of its accursed prison. But the act had cost it greatly, and even now, a free-form creature of chakra, it could feel its existence rapidly draining, feel the inexorable tug of the Temple of Suijin once more. It needed an anchor, a host to keep it on the mortal plane; and far in the distance, it could feel one, just barely clinging to life.

The dark tendril of chakra lashed out, wafting insubstantially through the air, slipping through mere cracks in the stone to the outside, precious life essence draining away by the second. In moments, it was a barely substantial wisp in the air, invisible to all but the most dedicated and chakra sensitive of eyes. The Serpent King stretched and strained, rushing after the departing pair. It passed over the Nibi host, holding no desire to trade its freedom for another seal and a vicious room mate, the invisible tendril sinking into the prone, limp body of Takeshi Gouka.

The unconscious lad's face twisted in the faintest of grimaces as the vile chakra tainted his coils, but the Nibi host, drained, grief stricken, and lacking sufficient sensitivity to chakra, would not notice the invasion of her comrade. Truth be told, even a sensor nin would be hard-pressed; the effort of breaking the seal, driving off the beasts, and stretching itself the vast distance, had drained the Serpent King utterly; by the time its essence came to roost within Gouka, only a bare shadow of its chakra remained, barely more than a flickering consciousness.

Within the confines of Gouka's heart, dark coils came to rest, wrapping tightly as the drained Serpent King slipped into hibernating slumber. It would need to regain a great deal of energy before it could properly take control of its new host. Were it of a physical form, its serpent visage would have been seen to twist into a terrible grin as it fell into slumber. YOU FOUGHT WELL, MIKADO KAZE. BUT THE SERPENT KING WILL NOT BE DENIED.

[END?]