Mana glanced over the shimmering at the bottom abyss. The treasury of malevolent vibes that attracted her to take a careless step, do something reckless and something that without a doubt she’d never do anywhere else in the world. A couple of times Mana examined the contents of her bag trying to determine a suitable course of action.
She had some explosive cards in her pouch, the blast would be strong enough to leave holes and crack the entire surface of the walls she’d be scaling down. Then again, the blast would quite likely shake this whole place and Mana didn’t like the odds of starting a small explosion inside an old pyramid. It seemed like a good kick would dislodge some of the bricks in these walls. The thought of getting crushed by the whole roof of pyramid collapsing began strangely attracting Mana, her arm reached for the cards but then the magician fought the evil impulses that surrounded this place.
It was like the box itself wanted to see its finder kill themselves trying to reach it. The ex-kunoichi browsed her bag some more and noticed she still had some old bandages left, if she tied several layers together she’d possibly have something quite strong to descend down with. Then again, looking down it seemed unlikely that she’d have enough bandage to last the whole trip down. It was much closer to reality that she’d run out of the makeshift rope and then panic, maybe the evil impulses making her wish to end her own life in this place would get the better of her… It was way too risky. Then there was still the risk of the bandages being too old and worn out and tearing halfway down. That would without a doubt excite that infernal box.
Mana crept up to the edge, courting death so closely that half of her feet lingered off the solid ground and her body wavered freely above certain doom. Just one weak breeze would’ve tipped her over the balance and sent the magician tumbling down. The girl’s conscious returned making her jump back in fear so fast and without care that she tumbled over and opened some new bruises bumping into a wall behind her and tripped over a small crack in the floor. This place was evil, either this pyramid had some strange curse seals placed on its walls or that Box emitted some immensely powerful chakra, evil and vile chakra. As a civilian Mana was much more affected by it just like she was by the Intents of those Justicars.
“Wait… I’m not thinking clearly, there’s a passageway halfway there, there has to be. I’m looking at the Box from the top but if it’s the basis of this whole pyramid then I can approach it from the sides instead from the top” Mana realized. This evil presence within these walls made the magician completely struggle to think a single rational thought. This was perhaps the clearest idea she had in a while, what with all those crazy attractions to the countless ways she could’ve died in this place.
“It’s just another protection mechanism. There’re no traps here, that’s because the owner knew the Box could protect itself…” Mana kept convincing herself, “You can handle it. You want this, more than anything. It’s the last hope to get your life together… You want this!” the girl tried to pick up all of her remnants of will and stick them together into a plaster castle that could hold back the water flooding at its walls. The difference was that it wasn’t toy soldiers that were at risk “ it was Mana’s life, in a way also those of her friends as well.
The thought of the people fighting for her making this final stretch invited strength back to Mana’s mind like nothing else. This newfound burst of will made the magician almost slide down the staircase edges until she thought she’d reached the necessary height. Mana tossed a couple of explosive cards after swiping them in the air, usually ninja tools required a fantastically simple ninjutsu technique to set off but Mana’s cards were supposed to activate upon coming in contact with something after they were activated by swiping them. This deck was, at least…
A deafening boom shook the bricks beneath Mana’s feet making her flip over and tumble down the basis and onto the jungle floor. The magician slowly picked herself up and examined her re-opened wounds looking at the nasty marks of blood she left on the rocks as well as the grass she was standing on. She’d need some serious disinfectant treatments after this…
As expected several layers of these large bricks cracked and collapsed, Mana moved aside as small pebbles began to roll down making way for the larger constructions. Finally the upper corner and part of the edge of the Box of Ultimate Bliss was exposed to the clear and fresh jungle air. Mana observed that malicious and yet equally beautiful obsidian black reflect sunlight off of it like a pitch black colored gemstone. The box looked almost like it was made of dark colored marble but Mana knew that it was merely a matter of appearances. It was old and most likely made of only the First People knew what… Also only the First People knew what sort of seals and contingencies were placed on this Box. If its purpose was as a wish fulfilment device, there should’ve been no purpose in traps being placed on the Box itself though…
Mana approached the Box step by step scaling the ruined yet still climbable staircase and touching the Box gently. The girl stroked its edge and its surface and yet… Nothing happened. This was certainly the Box and it looked old and evil enough to be the real thing and yet… Nothing happened still, no matter how gently or hardly she touched it or if she thought about her wish to save her friends or her wish to gain back her chakra control. Nothing.
“Shit… It wants chakra to be set off. It needs chakra to be activated” Mana realized much to her despair and sadness. To regain what she had squandered away she needed the very thing she lost… The cruel irony of fate must’ve been having the day of her life!
*****
“Dad!” Kouta shouted at the direction of his father who continued to stand around hands locked on his chest granting more of his attention to the spiked demoness fighting his son than his actual son.
“I’ve come here to extract you. Technically my objective includes saving all of you but if you let them die by being a little bitch “ it’s your problem, not mine. I’m gonna get paid one fourth of my completion reward anyways” Kusagoro closed his eyes and explained with complete seriousness and disgust in his face.
Meiko screamed out in pain clawing at her arms from the shoulder to the elbow. Sweat and blood began pouring out of her pores in immensely troubling amounts. The blacksmith was put through agony unlike any other, one that would force idealistic fools and clever opportunists alike beg for quicker death. Anyone would’ve chosen absolute death over what the redhead was going through.
“Every moment you beg for my help your friends suffer. You’re disappointing your wench for letting this kid die… I can’t wait to see her eyes when she realizes her boy-toy is a huge disappointment incapable of saving anything” the father cracked a grin through his disgusted face. Bonny remained observing the amazingly odd situation transpiring in front of her. A man just descended onto the scene, one that looked quite strong and fresh but he refused to fight her even though the young boy she and her sister aimed to drain dry was his son?
“Fine!” Kouta grunted out clenching his fists together. Rage began pouring out the boy’s eyes in the shape of teardrops, not numerous enough to disturb his vision but certainly prominent enough to be seen. Kouta’s pores began opening up, what little chakra he had regained began pooling up and exploding in a wild demonstration of expelling all of his chakra in a single burst. “I’ll save Meiko myself!” he shouted as some wet rag he tried to smack in his father’s face.
The boy kicked off the ground rushing at his opponent “ Bonny. He didn’t care if those spikes penetrated and infected him, he barely even cared if he died. His own father took him for some little experiment, his own father showed such unspeakable disgust in his own son! Such examples of fatherhood were unforgivable, Kouta would be everything his father was not if given the chance of parenthood.
The boy’s body tried changing shapes, he tried to expand the size of his toughened wooden textured fist or to create a chakra cannon and blast it up close right in Bonny’s face but his body barely changed its texture or size. His hands did not change at all, rather his own body cancelled the technique upon realizing it’d be too costly. It was a subconscious attempt of Kouta’s to not kill himself trying to impress his father even though he wished to show his father that technique he acquired in Otogakure… The Rising Piston Fist.
Kouta’s punch moved in between spikes just at the last moment, oddly enough Bonny did not extend the spikes which would’ve skewered the boy and made him a human pin cushion. The punch turned the woman’s face almost a full 180 and sent her off her feet. In mid-air the boy flipped over his front and tried stamping Bonny into the ground, maybe, just maybe his feet would change now and he could fire the chakra cannons off his feet as he stamped the woman to the ground?
Bonny’s arms shot up and into the ground breaking her fall, using the repurposed momentum the virus demon she had turned into kicked off the ground driving the spiky feet right into Kouta’s gut mashing his organs to a fleshy porridge and forcing the boy to throw up blood. The spiky devil did not follow up on her assault however letting Kouta slide back to where he attacked the woman from.
“Hmph… You’re too weak to attack and fight her head on. Whatever damage lucky shots inflict she’ll heal back at the expense of your friend” Kusagoro explained, somehow his twisted mind assumed that his son would still give a crap about what his father had to say at this point after slapping him in the face like that and refusing to use his world shaking power to help.
“I may hate his guts but he’s right, Kouta…” Shimo said, his voice was weak, still husky and pain ridden but silent. It sounded like his friend had already accepted the hopelessness of the situation. Like he knew it was all over and was now ready to give up already.
“No! It’s not over! I won’t let Meiko die! I want to become a medical ninja because that’s what would spit in my father’s face the most and medical ninja don’t let other people die! What would Mana-chan say to me if I let her friend die!?” Kouta roared out, his eyes were almost whited out as he was trying to find resources of chakra to use for augmentation that simply were not yet there. His pill was slowly forcing his chakra network to rejuvenate and metabolize it all faster but the rate at which he wished to come back was simply too fast even for the medical pill he had taken.
Suddenly the boy’s eyes returned to normal. His mouth opened wide in shock before shutting into an expression of anger as he grunted and grinded his teeth in frustration. The boy realized what he had to do “ what his father wanted him to do. Father must’ve known that Kouta had grown enough to use his clan techniques at a basic level however the tremendous leap he wished Kouta to perform in order to save Meiko… Still… It was the only way.
Kouta’s body straightened out, his hands weighed down and twitched as he portrayed his own helplessness to his opponents. Bonny’s spiky shelled head twitched as it eerily twisted and cocked back and forward, sideways and back. The sister must’ve been confused about what all of this was about. Shimo’s eyes sunk to the ground, he saw the acceptance of demise in his friend’s refusal to stay in his fighting stance, in how much blood dripped from Kouta’s mouth and the wound in his abdomen.
“I know you don’t want to infect me…” the young Juugo’s mouth moved finally breaking out of acceptance and shock. “That’s why when you kicked me you didn’t possess me like your sister infected Meiko, that’s it isn’t it?” the boy asked.
“No! Read says that their bloodline allows only one sister can only possess one person at a time, she ordered you to stay quiet and await Shimo’s turn!” Meiko screamed out the message that her parasite whispered into her mind.
“With every passing moment your friend is being leeched dry. She only has minutes left in her current state, she’s half dead already. Make the play or let her die, the difference between your power and that of the sisters is already too great and getting greater every second” Kusagoro warned Kouta as if the medical ninja needed further warning.
“I see, so you didn’t possess me not because you did not want it but because you literally could not. But it’s me you’d like the most, right? I am injured now but I am still the least injured out of us all, my father excluded, he’d be too much trouble for you, huh?” Kouta asked staring at the spiky parasite with a serious and cold expression trying to think through the ways in which he was to do what had to be done.
“It would be impossible! Your father would protect you!” Meiko screamed out relaying the message, slowly her skin was beginning to pale more and more and her voice began to weaken, death’s cold and long fingers must’ve already began to wrap around the blacksmith’s throat.
“No, because I agree to grant you my body as an exchange for Meiko’s life. Spare her and I’ll let you drain me. I have a feeling my father follows me and won’t interfere…” Kouta replied, “I am still kicking hard enough to feed you back to full strength, you know that right? How much more power will Meiko’s injured and tired body grant you? Why would you nibble on fish-bones when you can eat a whole set of sushi?” the medical ninja tempted the parasite to reveal herself.
Meiko’s body shook and chilling bone cracking noises followed as Read’s head disappeared inside Meiko’s body. Creepily the poor girl writhed on the ground before a spike protruded from her chest making her scream out in pain, a malevolent stream of chakra fired off of that spike as the whole protrusion exploded into a black liquid which seeped out of Meiko and then took the same spiky virus shape which her sister took except blazing red hair broke from the back side of the demoness’ neck.
“Just for clarification, I don’t give a fuck if the parasite revealed herself, I’m still not helping…” Kusagoro whistled carelessly crossing his hands behind his head with a grin on his face.
“Come on in then…” Kouta taunted the parasite ignoring his father’s attempts of misguiding the boy. Read’s body blurred as the woman charged at the young man, her body stopped to acquire the needed focus but at this point she had leeched off so much strength and life out of Meiko that the Juugo couldn’t have opposed the woman even if he wanted to. Read’s spiky arm slammed right into Kouta’s forehead peeling a nasty bruise open as the woman was absorbed into the young boy’s body instead. Meiko just laid completely passed out from the unholy pain she was just through.
The body of the young medical ninja bent over and almost fell onto his knees. Kouta closed his eyes and tried to single the pain out, ignore it while the affliction was still in its baby stages. He had to pull something inhuman off, something so evil and so destructive, something that while completely despicable made him accept his legacy as a Juugo “ just what his father wanted.
Kouta could no longer single out and tolerate the pain. His body weighed down but the boy clutched it up as hard as he could doing his best to stay on his feet as his muscles tensed up and his whole body shook in pain and focus. The boy closed his eyes and felt the taste of blood in his mouth deciding to focus on that. The absolute rage aimed towards his father, that complete and focused desire to bash the man’s head in with something big and as heavy as a planet. Also Kouta chose to focus on the bloodlust he felt towards the woman currently afflicting his body and leeching off of it like some demonic parasite. Someone who possessed a bloodline just as abhorrent as Kouta’s but spared no second thought about embracing it… She had to die.
Die!
Kouta’s chakra simply blew up, dark purple streams of chakra erupted from the boy’s limbs soon fusing into a singular aura explosion of dark chakra. Black spots began accumulating all over his body covering his skin and once the boy’s eyes opened he realized that the transformation into an ancient and primitive bloodlusted Juugo warrior had already begun. His mind was somewhere else, fading into the package of thirst for blood, carnage and fighting. He had set off the part of his bloodline he had hoped to never touch “ the Cursed Seal that his entire clan carried in their DNA.
Kouta’s eyes began wandering off since there was no one in charge of his body anymore. He could hear a wild scream of murder but not the one like the millions of voices in his head screaming bloody murder. This one was different, familiar somehow. Almost like Read’s own mind and cells were screaming as they were destroyed on a level too small to comprehend inside of Kouta’s body. As blood began to run down Kouta’s mindless shifting eyes and the boy collapsed on his knees roaring in rage and bloodthirst the head of Read’s that appeared on his back after he was possessed turned to a wooden-like statue and then dispersed to dust into the raging winds caused by Kouta’s malevolent chakra leaking out.
A mouth broke open in Bonny’s lower part of what seemed to be her sealed again face. The shell covering that part crumbled and slowly began growing back as the transformation was supposed to cover her up completely.
“What… Did you do? Where is Read? No Read… Only… Silence… I’m alone. All alone!” she screamed into the sky before seeing Kouta’s chakra fade out and his evil transformation time out while the boy collapsed onto the sand.
Kusagoro’s face was shifted in surprise and disbelief. “H-He actually did it… I didn’t expect him to do it… I thought…” he mumbled unintelligibly under his own nose before Shimo asked him for a clarification of what happened.
“You may not know yet but everything in this Universe is brimming with chakra. From every human being alive to space bodies and stars burning in the skies. The Juugo legacy is to be able to absorb the chakra around them. To store that natural chakra like a battery and being able to use it for these destructive blasts. However the natural chakra is evil, it is primal and basic and it changes us. Makes us angry and bloodthirsty, when we consume too much of it, when we deny us restraint it changes our very bodies. That’s why our bodies change like they do” the man began the explanation as he walked up to Kouta and picked him off the ground, the man placed a blue food pill into the boy’s mouth and forced him to grind it with his teeth.
“Yeah, so let’s say that’s how your bodies change and how you’re able to waste all that chakra in those blasts you do, but what was THAT?” Shimo asked.
“That was what happens when we allow that change to affect our entire body, when our chakra pool becomes one third natural chakra our whole body begins to change uncontrollably. What Kouta did was only the first stage “ he absorbed chakra around him until the chakra he absorbed was approaching the majority and it began affecting his very cellular structure, his essence became that of someone else entirely. A warrior thirsty for blood” Kusagoro concluded looking at his son as he opened his eyes and his wounds closed up from the expensive food pill he had just consumed, inferior only to the black medical food pill “ one of the priciest ninja tools one could carry in their kits.
“Father…” Kouta whimpered as he struggled out of his father’s grip and stood back up beginning to dust his clothes.
“Why? Why did my sister disappear?” Bonny still wept on her knees, in a grieving way only a loving sister could grieve.
“Because we are what our chakra is. If a man’s chakra pool was somehow obtained the chakra of a dog, replacing his own, he’d become a dog, not just appear like one, he’d be one. Your sister feasted on my molecular structure, my very life force which was filled to brim with natural chakra of nothingness. In the end, since she was no Jugo she became what she ate “ nothingness” Kouta concluded his father’s speech without knowing it was made in the first place.
“That is the curse of being a Jugo. That was why our clan was banished and hunted by Otogakure to near extinction before they realized that their unique bond with nature around them could’ve helped them practice restraint from their bloodline. That they could focus on their bond with nature and all living things instead of fighting…” the medical ninja said as he looked at the shocked face of his teammate as Shimo was handed a green food pill by Kusagoro which he then consumed. The Yuki’s body began slowly regenerating some of the heavier wounds it had sustained.
“It’s over, Bonny…” Kouta slowly and with profound sadness in his voice for what he had to do exclaimed.
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