[Kyodai Utsuwa]

The roads between the villages were not always safe places to be. Nukenin, bandits, beasts, and simple, lesser disasters brought by weather and circumstances made sure of that. And even those immune to death were not immune to danger.

It was a simple thing. Outnumbered by opportunistic highwaymen, preying on those unaccompanied by shinobi, and villages without their protection. Utsuwa's attempts to explain that they had nothing of material value were not well received. Neither were their attempts to share understanding of Jashin, nor of their own constant and inevitable pain. When one, perhaps sarcastically, had agreed to receive a blessing, they were especially displeased when Utsuwa had plunged a finger into the man's leg, opening up an artery. Jashin's blessings were seldom received with an open heart. But perhaps it would be a seed planted, that would sprout into despair. Enough to drive them into the arms of their god.

Utsuwa had fought back, and the blood and flesh on their fingertips was evidence of that. But they had been outnumbered. Defeat was inevitable. Irrelevant.

It had taken longer than the bandits had expected. A blow across the back of the skull would have been enough for most to be rendered insensate. But Utsuwa had stood up. A slash across the chest, rending cloth and flesh, would have given most pause. A spear through the chest, grazing a lung, should have been enough. But Utsuwa rose again and again, determined to give proof to the gift of their god, and to educate the unbelievers on the true state of affairs.

Thinking themselves to be dealing with a ghost or worse, the highwaymen had bound their hands with rope, then wrapped a rope around their neck. Hoisting them up to hang from a branch, their belongings scattered on the ground beneath their bare feet, blood dripping from the broken spear haft still lodged in them, and the gash cut across their chest. Their belongings had been cast across the ground in frustration - sacred scrolls, worthless to the unenlightened. Surgical tools in a rolled-up case. A journal left open, face-down in the dirt. Tattered clothing. Their tengai-gasa, torn from their head when this had all began.

They swayed in the breeze, highwaymen long since scattered to the winds. Perhaps, if they thought Utsuwa a ghost or apparition, their words and deeds would remain with them. They tested the knot around their wrists, but could make no progress. Unable to slip their bonds, nor to slip the noose around their neck. They could perhaps pull themselves free, but they could not breathe, and strength soon left them. Vexing. But if they would hang here until the rope frayed or rotted, such was the will of Jashin-sama. For a small mercy, their neck had not been broken. A boon of being so light. And they had not taken their medallion from them, their still and silent body still proclaiming the providence of Jashin.

They passed into meditation, heartrate slowing to a crawl as their attempts to breathe halted entirely. The bleeding largely stopped, blood barely circulating through their body. Half-open eyes blinking but once every few minutes. Chissoku no Junkyōsha was a simple technique, yet utterly beyond any Shinobi. Now, to wait until something changed. Fortunately, they had memorized enough hymns and koans with which to pass the time, even deprived of their scrolls and journal.

How long did it take for rope to rot...? The sun was warm on their cooling body. The rope dry. They would be here for some time.

[Kisei Sachi]

Kisei Sachi🌸

"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now."

Two figures traversed the road between the grand city of Hohei-Cho and Kusagakure no Sato, their footsteps accompanied by the gentle humming of a tune of the wind flowing through the grass. The younger Kisei, a bubbly pink-haired kunoichi, happily followed her older cousin-like brother along the path, sakura smoke billowing from her kiseru pipe. They were on their way to visit family before the upcoming Chunnin Exams, and Taka, being the perfect person to supervise Sachi during her travels, accompanied her as she wasn’t allowed to go alone due to her rank. Despite his busy schedule, Taka had made time to travel with her, for which Sachi was grateful as it allowed her to visit her parents before the Chunnin Exams. She couldn't leave the village often and so seldom visited her family in Hohei-Cho

On her back, Sachi carried a pack of various items for her parents and other family members, multiple gifts for her short stay. Though she felt it was a bit much, she wanted to give when normally she couldn’t. "My parents are hiring a caretaker for the house now. I’m happy they’ve decided to get some help. Father has been quite stubborn about it, but he caved after Mother had an accident,” Sachi explained, making some small talk about the many going-ons within the family.

"Speaking of my dearest father, his greenhouse collapsed during the last rainfall due to the heavy winds. He lost a couple of personal crops but some of our family on the Nakahara side had said they’d come and help fix it. He also said that he wanted to introduce me to a kiseru maker even though he’s given me Obaasama’s kiseru pipe. "Oh and-"

"Hm!?" Sachi froze in her tracks, removing the kiseru from her mouth as she scanned her surroundings. "Do you smell that, Taka-niichan?” She put out her pipe and closed her eyes, sniffing the air. "It smells heavily of blood.” The metallic scent was unmistakable, even when masked by the smoke from her pipe. "How curious…”

It wasn’t uncommon for terrible deeds to be committed on these roads, but Sachi, naturally curious, wanted to investigate. Moving back and forth on the path, she noticed a few items in an area just slightly ahead, obscured by thick shrubbery and trees. Before saying anything to her cousin, she darted towards the area carelessly. As she ran towards the items, the smell of blood and flesh intensified. Tunneling on the items, she picked them up to examine them closer before scanning her surroundings again.

Sachi’s expression shifted from puzzled to startled as her blue eyes fixated on the ghastly figure before her. Just a couple of meters to the right was a person with a plethora of wounds, hung from a tree by a noose, spears still protruding from their body. The girl couldn’t move; her eyes were transfixed on the mangled figure despite the grotesque nature of the situation. She could feel her skin crawl, her body wanting to turn away from the violent display, but she couldn’t move. The more she stared, the more the sight imprinted itself into her mind, a vivid image she couldn’t shake even if she desired to forget. Her recall was simply too powerful, the layers of inner flesh that were exposed, the dried blood that poured out onto the scene, everything that she saw was now a part of her, forever.

"Eh!?” Sachi noticed the blinking eyes of the figure, breaking out of her trance. "H-how?” She was fairly knowledgeable about medicine, most of her time in the academy was spent studying medical texts, but it didn’t take a doctor to determine that this level of damage would usually be fatal.

"This person is still alive!” Sachi exclaimed, her voice trembling with shock and concern as she alerted her cousin, running up to the figure. Despite her shaken state, she was determined to help, although not entirely out of goodwill.

–🌸-

Attempt by Necro
Tags: Kisei Takatō と Kyodai Utsuwa

[Kisei Takatō]

Takato had not slept for three days. He dozed, here and there—would close his eyes in one place and awaken in another, or blink to find that thirty minutes had passed. This was the way of things. But dark things began to swim in the corner of his vision and he felt, as the hours whittled by, more and more like a small and writhing thing piloting a slow and inflexible sack of muscle and sinew. He could feel his veins thrumming beneath the paperthin caging of his skin. His blood pulsed lethargic, aching. He was to take Sachi to Hohei-cho to visit her parents. He would pay his mother a visit while they were there; she always helped to soothe his nerves. Maybe, finally, he would be able to sleep. Only half-listening to Sachi as they walked, his mind drifting like debris along a river’s current, he reflexively stopped when she did. Jerked back to the present, the here-and-now, he smelled the thick-heady iron-scent that Sachi described. A desperately-needed shot of adrenaline coursed through him. Adrenal gland working overtime to compensate for what the rest of his body lacked; he was, perversely, grateful. Mind over matter, except for when the mind failed, and meat was all you had. "Wait—” Taka started to say, but she was already gone, darting off towards the source of the smell. He caught up quickly, gaze reflexively sweeping over their surroundings, looking for traps, wires, knives, ghouls, spirits. He saw the body before she did. It swayed gently; he looked it in the eyes and watched it blink at him, only once. Dark things scraped along the edges of his vision; this, he assumed, was as unreal and intangible as all the rest, an unwanted sight conjured by an exhausted mind painting visceral nonsense across the insides of his eyelids. But then Sachi saw it too, and he realized with twisted relief that this was not a result of his mind committing atrocities unto itself: it was real. "Sachi,” he said, a stern and unyielding command to stop. It was a tone he had never taken with her before. There had never been a need. The likelihood of the hanged person being alive still was slim to none; the blinking, surely, was a grotesque joke issued from the humorless lips of decay. In the unlikely event that they were alive, Taka had little to no desire to know what could survive strangulation, impalement, untold hours baking beneath the sun. If they were doomed to find out, then it should be at his hands, not his vulnerable young cousin’s. "Exercise caution.” He pulled a kunai from a pouch at his hip and gestured for her to step back, away, behind him. "We can help, but carefully.” Once she was safely away, he would toss the kunai at the taut length of rope, slicing cleanly to allow the corpse to fall free. He held Sachi by the shoulder and watched closely for whatever was to come next.

Kyodai Utsuwa Kisei Sachi -- 507

LAIKA OF THQ

[Kyodai Utsuwa]

Meditation passed as new voices entered their awareness. They didn't stir for a long moment, body still unable to move well without any breath. With the rope constricting their throat, and with some damage to a lung likely, that was to be expected. Rather, when they were recognized for a living body, and not a corpse, their only responses was a slight widening of the eyes, and a faint smile.

They were exercising caution. That stood to reason. Even shinobi likely did not encounter the deathless too frequently. But they seemed willing to lend some aid, regardless. Utsuwa would make certain to repay them in kind.

The tossed kunai cut the rope, and the small body of the Jashinist hit the ground with a thud. With their hands still bound behind their back, they could not arrest their fall, save for landing on their feet and knees, instead of pitching forward entirely. Their throat was still crushed and bruises and abrasions lined the flesh. It took a few attempts, but, releasing their simple technique, air filled their lungs. It took raspy, shaking breaths, as their throat opened up once again.

But they did not look pained. They were not doubled over, not moaning in agony. They simply knelt in the dirt, patiently taking the time to reclaim the ability to breathe. The blood flow resumed, now that the heart beat more rapidly, and blood continued to stain their torn and shredded clothing. They closed their eyes, and took one great breath, holding it, then exhaling. At least they intended to - the exhale turned to a cough, as blood issued from their mouth. Ah. Their lung had been grazed. A mild inconvenience.

Paying no heed to the mortal gash in their chest, nor the spear haft still jutting out of their body, nor the spear point emerging from their back, they rose steadily to their feet, hands still bound behind them.

"I owe to thee a debt of gratitude, ye travelers and heathen," Utsuwa said, voice raspy and strained. They smiled widely, and dipped their head in a shallow bow, the movement spilling yet more of their blood onto the earth. They coughed again, blood dribbling out of the corner of their mouth. "Full willing am I to repay this debt, with what grace the beneficent Jashin-sama hath bestowed unto this unworthy vessel, and yet-" They took a moment to spit out blood, still smiling politely, eyes wide with elation and curiosity. "And yet I would ask a further boon of thee. Canst thou loose me from mine bonds? Anon, I wish thee no harm, save for the harm thou ask of me. Thou hath my solemn vow." Utsuwa turned, to reveal their hands, bound together by crude but tight knots of rope.

[Kisei Sachi]

Kisei Sachi🌸

"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now."

Before she could get closer, her cousin’s tone of warning made her body freeze, her trance and carnal desires of curiosity taking a small break as the younger Kisei realized she was doing anything but exercising caution. Now, having traversed multiple places in Nohara no Kuni for missions, the familiar roads gave her immense comfortability but it was a false sense of security proposed by her eidetic mind.

"Understood," Sachi responded, conveying her acknowledgment. She positioned herself behind her cousin, fixating her gaze on the diminutive person who hung before them, estimating an 80% certainty that the figure was still alive. Her mind was relying on assumptions after it had scanned the body that hung, running through her encyclopedia-like knowledge. The young bibliophile had noted that many stories of blinking corpses were made to entertain. She did, however, read an account in which the body underwent a phenomenon where the muscles of the deceased became stiff, and that stiffness usually set first in the eyes. Interestingly, the living corpse in front of them displayed some features of the dead, that is, they didn’t breathe initially and the body was as if, the person had cut off their circulation for the blood was not pooling as the deceased would.

Gazing a the person with prying eyes, Sachi noted that the person was abnormally, almost uncannily so. A normal person sustaining such wounds would succumb to the pain eventually. She had never seen a person bear it as if it was a normal everyday occurrence–maybe a similar case being the tough-skinned Uzumaki Clan but those injuries were so severe that even the Uzumaki Clan would’ve become unconscious at this point. It was so odd, the body not regenerating nor healing either. Sachi's understanding of available equipment and jutsu for complete pain relief was limited, and even those within her knowledge were not accessible to the general public. Interrupted from her musings, her bright blue eyes lit up as the person started to speak, a string of words that were a mixture of religious vocabulary and formal traditional language.

The genin recognized her peculiar ability to recover from gruesome sights, attributing it to her overpowering curiosity over fear. Aware that she tended to speak without restraint, Sachi stopped herself psychically, covering her mouth with her herb-stained hands to keep herself from replying or asking questions, her excitement nearly bursting out of her small frame. Taka-Niichan was the wiser one and knew it suited the situation to inquire if the individual was safe, despite Sachi wanting to help the enigmatic stranger. Keeping herself contained, the girl said nothing and waited for Taka’s directive, scanning the area with only her eyes as she observed the items again and then around to see if anyone was watching.

–🌸-

Attempt by Necro
Tags: Kisei Takatō  と Kyodai Utsuwa

[Kisei Takatō]

The body smiled, and Taka felt sure that this must be a nightmare: some masochistic machination of wayward chemicals. But it was not to be. Sachi, thankfully, was obedient, saving Taka himself from a premature heart attack; but her curiosity was undeniable, and he could feel her practically vibrating behind him with excitement. She was not as disturbed by what they were seeing as he was, apparently, though he didn’t know whether to chalk that up to an iron will, a lack of experience, or just plain morbidity. They spoke archaically—Taka’s first thought was that the twins would be obsessed with them, Kaito and Saito’s vivid imaginations and constant playacting aping the exact mannerisms that this deathless person seemed to exhibit so naturally. It should have made him more suspicious, but he found himself counterintuitively disarmed. They were being very polite, after all, and it seemed unreasonable that someone who spoke in such a way as not doing so purposefully, in a way that indicated a kind of charming childishness to Taka’s perception. Jashin tickled something in the back of his brain, but he could not for the life of him remember why or where he had heard it before. Information stowed for later. It was not without caution, but Taka stepped forward to cut their rope that bound their hands together. He lingered for an extra few moments, a security measure in case he had read the situation wrong—but if no violence was forthcoming, he would stow his kunai and step away, inclining his head to Sachi in silent permission to engage. She would be better able to offer treatment to this stranger than him, though they somehow didn’t seem to be in any pain. He pulled out a bottle of yocha, pressing the ceramic bottle into the stranger’s hands. "Herbal tea,” he said, a gravelly intonation. "It will help your throat. What happened?”

Kyodai Utsuwa Kisei Sachi -- 319

LAIKA OF THQ

[Kyodai Utsuwa]

Utsuwa didn't bother to stretch their arms after they were loosed, despite the ropes being tight enough to leave bruises. Instead, they hung loose at their sides as they studied their erstwhile saviors. They were tempted to strike, to take advantage of that moment of the lowering of the guard, but it passed. They had given their word, and it wasn't their place to give pain to the unsuspecting.

They took the offered flask of tea, with a nod of gratitude.
"Mine throat requireth not succor, yet thy generosity is appreciated." They blinked, and tilted their head. "Doth it not lead thee to suffer? 'Twas not but a few bells past that knaves waylaid me, driven by avarice, then by fear. They tore my body, and, when they learned I could not die, did raise me aloft." They raised the tea to their lips to drink. It mattered not, after all, if it was poisoned or tainted.

The action seemed to take some effort, and they looked down at the broken spear still jutting out of their body. The damage to their organs was a bit more severe than previously thought. Blood still oozed from open wounds. Even their deathless form would need some convalescence after this. And more than a few stitches. But there were more immediately pressing matters.

Utsuwa offered the flask back to its owner. "What wouldst thee do, were I one of those selfsame knaves? Ah, but I digress. What the unbelievers do to this body mine is of no moment. Not they, nor thee, nor thine." They took a step back, and held their open hands to their sides, bowing slightly. Their eyes turned to the smaller and younger of their saviors. Their eyes sparkled with excitement. "'Twould appear that thy companion hath aught to say. Pray, child and sinner, give voice to thy queries, thy exhortations. I, Utsuwa, humble servant of Jashin-sama, shalt endeavor to answer thee. So that thou may yet know suff'ring, and the means by which to escape it."