Naruto: Dreaming of Sunshine

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There was nothing wrong with my chakra, was the thing. It was untouched and responded to my call. But even with it, every movement felt like I was trying to lift the world, like I was fighting a vortex at my back, like every step was worth a hundred miles.

The kids were breathing, when I reached them. Slowly and shallowly, but they were breathing. Their skin was cold and clammy, and their pupils were blown wide open when I peeled their eyelids back to check, and they wouldn't wake.

My chakra was fine. Whatever they were pulling from us, it wasn't chakra.

And that really wasn't as reassuring as it could have been.

I couldn't sense anything. Not chakra, not physical energy, not spiritual energy. That didn't leave a whole hell of a lot.

Not unless they were, in some way, pulling pure and unadulterated life energy out of us. And that was…

I didn't even know what that was. 'Life Energy' was such an obscure topic that I'd never found any information on it that wasn't clearly referencing chakra instead. The only reason I even considered it to be a real thing and not needless spiritualism was because I remembered Chiyo's reanimation technique. I thought it was some kind of more fundamental energy, some kind of combination of soul and body that became life but that-

That didn't help me now.

Whatever it was. Something was making me weak, physically sapping my energy and mentally sapping my willpower and concentration. Something I couldn't identify or counteract.

I didn't want to abandon the kids, but if this was affecting the whole area then I couldn't rescue everyone inside it. I needed to get out and regroup.

I just had to… get up, first.

Overhead, the city bells started to ring.

The sound reverberated, deeper than could be physically possible, rattling the air until it seemed to strike something deep inside. Not inside me. Inside the world. Some vital, unknowable aspect of the fabric of reality, so base that it was never considered.

The second peal of the bell stripped it away.

Like a layer of gauze I had never known was there. Like a new colour had been revealed to me. Like the world had gone thin and transparent.

Like a barrier that had protected us had been lifted.

And I saw beyond it.

This oppressive cloud of chakra, hovering around this town, it wasn't natural. It wasn't heat. It wasn't even some dastardly ritual the cultists were doing.

There was something out there.

And it wanted in.

I was on my feet, fear overriding the paralysis, panic putting motion back into my muscles. I fled. There was nowhere I could look that I couldn't see it, pressing up against the world, like a-

Like-

I had to get out. I had to get to Aoba and we had to leave.

But I hit the line of the circle – the one that the cultists had walked around the city every day for years until it was strong enough to do this – and couldn't pass it. It wasn't a barrier, not how I knew them, but the energy in it burned. My arm went numb when it hit, the chakra system as blocked as if a Hyuuga had done it but more frightening because I couldn't even feel it any longer.

It might as well have not been there.

And then there was a monk. A Jashinist.

The very same one I had given coin to, only hours ago.

The terror, blind and overwhelming, found a human target and transmuted into something I could act upon; I was suddenly furious. How dare they? How dare they do this? How dare they lie in wait? How dare they bring this shadow of evil into the world?

I yanked my lightsabre out of hammerspace and sent a wave of lightning towards him, blinding and bright.

The bell rang a third time and my lightning froze, hanging in mid-air like a beautiful sculpture, still lightning, a contradiction of itself. The world around us warped without moving, the angles seeming wrong, a nightmare place, a dream turned bad. The sun jerked in the sky, leaping forward and back and hovering in multiple places at once.

"Under the power of Jashin, time and space come undone!" The Jashinist shouted, exultant. His face seemed to glow with triumph. He opened his mouth, wide and wider than a human mouth should have ever gone, a gaping maw to swallow the world and something horrible came out.

The Thing That Was Out There reached through him. It spilt into the air. It was an oil slick, if you removed all the ways that oil was natural. It was poison, if you removed the ways poison was unwitting. It was pain without cause. It was suffering without respite. It was death without life.

It was. It knew. It did.

I froze, transfixed with horror beyond that of anything I'd ever felt before. I had no words for what I was seeing. Nothing beyond the instant, horrible comprehension of what it was.

Jashin.

I opened my mouth and started to scream.

The sound jolted me out of my trance, woke me enough to fumble back to reality. I put my lightsabre away, threw kunai with exploding notes as a distraction. One went off, one didn't, the lightning surged forward a foot and stopped. Unequal, uneven. Unreal.

I fled backwards, struggling to find footing that changed even as I moved. Stone crumbled underfoot, reality unmade in fits and starts. Upwards, downwards, a foot, a mile, flat or right angles – it changed, it changed and it was wrong.

My heart beat pounded in my ears. My chest was tight. I couldn't breathe.

I didn't know what was going on.

I couldn't think of any way out of this.

Get out of the circle. Get away from this. Run.

I raised my hand to my chest, gripped my necklace through my shirt. Maybe. Maybe. Even if it didn't work, numbness and fire were less horrifying than what waited behind me. Around me. Everywhere.

I pushed chakra into the stone and changed.

Around me, reality warped. It reset. It restored itself. I sang with the song of Gelel; the collection of natural energy that was this world, that belonged here, that was grown of this place and by it.

I was real.

But so, so small.

I had a sliver of stone made with a fragment of a god and the last beat of a human heart.

And that wasn't enough to make it right.

And - as I dove across the circle of the Jashinist seal - It saw me.

It LoOked Upon Me.

I stumbled away, human again and so empty, the world unmaking itself under my feet once again. But the forest was so close.

I just had to get to the forest.

I was nearly there. I was so close.

And three figures emerged out of the woods, darkly dressed. One had Aoba slung over his shoulders.

I threw myself forward.

And everything went dark.

.

.

I drifted, dreamily, back to consciousness.

If reality had fractured, how did you know what was real? How did you know if you were truly awake, if the nightmare was outside you?

The Temple seemed real. Or if not real, then solid. Powerful. A towering monolith in a world where nothing was stationary any longer, where time and space were both concepts to toy with, to stretch and discard at whim.

And it was thick with the smell of blood. Warm and heavy and rich, like we were standing inside a pulsing heart.

I gagged on it, iron in the back of my throat and painfully squinted my eyes, trying to see the Temple itself and not the spectre of the god hanging over it.

And wished I hadn't.

It was real blood. Real blood from real bodies, people, chained to the walls or lying discarded on the floor, split open and bleeding out, bright fresh trails smudging into rusty red covering the floor or sluggishly seeping into the giant etched symbol in the stone.

A circle with a triangle inside. The symbol of Jashin.

At the point of the triangle there was an altar. A single man stood there, bare chested and smeared with blood, holding a glittering ceremonial knife and he was so empty, so inverted against the world that Jashin looked through him-

"Is this it?" he asked, voice surprisingly light and breathy. "Put her here!"

I was moved, limp and ineffectual, to the point of the triangle, next to the alter. The monk dropped to me the ground and locked my hands behind me.

Handcuffs, I thought, ridiculously. How mundane.

"What about the other one?"

Blood started to soak into my pants immediately, a creeping red tide. I tried not to look up, not to think about where it had come from. Tried not to watch the bodies being kicked away, or more being brought in. Tried not to wonder how many people it took to produce this much blood.

"He's a ninja, isn't he?" the leader said. "Chain him up."

Fear is the mind killer. I tried to keep breathing, keep myself still and unnoticeable. I had to assess the situation. I had to stay calm. I had to remember everything I'd learnt, everything I'd been taught and experienced.

I took all that fear (no matter how important and life preserving) and Split it, shoving it deep down inside. I needed to be able to move. Not be paralysed with terror. Took all the horror and got rid of it. Took the panic and buried it.

Step one, get free.

I was handcuffed. My hands were behind my back.

I could do that. I twisted my hands around until they found my hair, and flicked open the clasp that Ino had given me for my birthday. The one with a lock pick hidden inside.

My hands felt weak and clumsy and I felt exposed, totally on display. It was a wonder that they didn't notice. Didn't see.

Step two 'get Aoba' and step three 'get out of here' were a little harder to put into motion.

They strung Aoba up, chains around his ankles and affixed to the ceiling. Exposed, away from walls or weapons, right out in the middle of the room. Not far from me, but reaching him without being attacked by the rest would be…

Impossible.

I swallowed. Buried the fear.

Aoba was starting to stir. I could see his eyes moving, see them start to flutter open.

(They'd taken his sunglasses. What bastards. He'd have to get new ones.)

He seemed dazed. He looked around but didn't seem to see. I straightened, a little, dared to move with so many enemies around, just so that I could catch his eye.

I saw the moment he recognised me.

I saw the flash of horror. Of despair.

I saw the collapse of hope into resignation.

No. No. We need to get out of here! He couldn't give in. Couldn't just say that there was nothing we could do. I needed him to-

And then the leader stepped forward and slit his throat.

"No!" I protested, shocked.

They turned to look at me. I'd blown my cover. But I moved, anyway, too late and too desperate and charged forward towards them. Blood slipped underfoot and I was weak and clumsy but focused.

Aoba! Aoba!

He thrashed, eyes wide. His neck-

(Even if I reached him, even if I had time, could I heal that? Could I?)

Hands grabbed for me. I snarled. I grabbed it back, slid low and twisted the person over my hip and threw them to the ground, following up by stamping down on their face with all my weight. Bone crunched.

And the Jashinists-

-cheered? Like a crowd at a football game. There was a rising atmosphere, the anticipation, the violence.

"Bloodlust! For Jashin-sama! For Jashin-sama!"

"No!" I howled, but I could see it too, how my actions were only feeding the power in here, the ritual, how the Jashinist was healing already, bone crunching back into place, a euphoric smile on his face.

The leader blocked my way. He looked amused, entranced – not afraid. I was just… I was just a bug in a net. Nothing.

I slammed into him. They wanted blood? Fine.

"Touch. Blast." I couldn't feel my chakra but I had my will. I wouldn't let them stop me.

It exploded. The scorching heat was close enough to catch me, but I barely felt it. Couldn't let it stop me.

He fell back, chest a charred mess and I stumbled into Aoba, hands planning a barrier seal that flickered badly into being. It would hold. That was enough.

But my hands failed to summon a healing jutsu. There was nothing, when I tried to direct my chakra.

Chakra. Chakra. Please!

It wasn't working. It wasn't working.

Panic threatened to consume me. He was gurgling. Not breathing. He was dying by slow inches. I had to do something. There had to be something I could do. My hands were red. Caked in it.

A sound.

I turned my head. Watched the leader rise, charred but whole. He was still smirking, still amused. He grabbed a staff from another cultist and slammed it once, twice, three times into my barrier.

It broke.

"To be a priest of Jashin is to know death!" he declared. He spun the staff. I watched it twirl.

I couldn't move. Couldn't leave Aoba. Couldn't dodge or flee.

Could only brace myself and wait.

He struck. The blunt end slammed into my abdomen, and for a brief moment, it was just pure crushing force, the impact sending waves of pain rattling across my body. Then further, it burst skin, pushing in and in and through until I was impaled on it.

I gasped, hotcoldhotcold with pain. I blacked out. I swam in it.

And-

hello little god, it whispered, echoed, transmitted with the pain that I couldn't escape. I could feel it now, feel the way my suffering was giving it strength, feel the way it was slowly, slowly snuffing out Aoba's life.

This wasn't the Shinigami. The Shinigami killed because it was death, the inevitable entropy to which all things descended. It was impersonal as a fact. It just was.

This was not like that. This was hatred and bloodlust and spite and pain, all condensed into one being. It was the idea of them, greater than the things themselves, spread between people, saturating the air.

I trembled. "Go… to… hell."

The cultists dragged me to the altar, holding me upright because I couldn't stand. The pain was intolerable but I couldn't pass out again. Wanted to but couldn't. I was connected to it, now, part of this terrible and awful ritual.

The leader took the goblet from the altar and held it beneath Aoba, collecting the last rivulets of blood.

(I watched the light fade from his eyes.)

"To Jashin-sama!" He declared and held it high. "To the last sacrifice for the new world!"

He dipped his fingers into the blood and painted the symbol of Jashin on my forehead. I jerked my head out of the way, thrashed and spat at them, no matter how much it pained me, but they held me in place.

It burnt cold. I felt it seep into my brain. Saw more than mortal eyes were ever, ever meant to.

I buried everything into the black.

your death will open the gate, Jashin whispered and delighted in the horror and pain that that caused in me. No matter how far back I pulled, I couldn't get away from it.

There were fingers, prying my mouth open, and I discovered that there was still horror in me, after all.

"No," I moaned. "No."

He tipped the cup.

I gagged on it, bile rising in my throat. It filled my mouth, out of it, down my chin and neck and front. Smeared across my cheeks.

Jashin roared in triumph, echoing in my head and bones. It was pain. I was pain. There was nothing in this whole universe but pain.

all of this is mine and i will destroy it

But there was-

There was so much in this world that I loved. That I didn't want destroyed.

I found the will to raise my head. "No."

They weren't looking at me. They felt the closeness of their god. They were only inches from success, from the realisation of the horrible thing that they wanted.

They didn't know-

I had been here before. I had knelt, bleeding and dying, before the coming of a god. Gelel had been life, and I had let it in but there had been another option. There had been a way, a plan, a seal.

Chakra didn't work here, now. But my seals still did. In this place of gods, willpower still counted.

And I knew that seal. The instructions were right here with me, sealed into my flesh.

All I had to do was set it.

It would kill me, but … I was going to die here, either way. There was no way out. I had nothing. No chance, no choice, no hope.

Only me.

"No," I repeated, voice just a whisper. But certain. "This place is not yours." My eyes started to fill with tears, welling up so very easily.

"Oh, it is," the leader assured me. He picked up his knife. "This is just the last step."

My first tear fell and hit the ground like a tombstone slamming into place. Black ink blossomed from where it hit, spreading out and out and out like a creeping infection.

"Your problem," I whispered. "Is that you think the greatest power lies in blood."

Blood carried chakra, was necessary for life. It was powerful. And it was stable which was why we used it for seals. But tears – that carried everything life was about. And I was banking on that being more, being enough to highjack this ritual, to overwrite it, to fuel my seal instead.

The other tears that fell were useless, desperate things, calling for home and family but I couldn't stop them. They just fell.

My seal pulsed with energy. The centre of the room started to collapse inwards, a single black point that would swallow us all whole.

"No!" The leader screamed even as Jashin howled in my head in impotent rage. He thrust his staff down into the ink on the floor, their combined will meeting mine in a furious titanic clash.

I feel backwards, into darkness, to protect myself.

And the seal-

-broke.

The power, gathered but no longer contained, controlled, did what a broken failure of a seal always did.

It exploded.

I watched it, numbly, in the flicker frames of still time, my last moments stretching into a bizarre infinity; the black ink of the seal turning sheer white, the stone cracking apart with the force of it, the air turning hazy and hot.

And then-

Something inside yanked and tore me away.