Brothers of Different Mothers
It was just a little after midnight and, as per usual, the Underground was bustling with night travelers. Most of the crowds swayed towards the Red Light districts as the drunk cat-calls could be heard from nearly a block away from the ‘entrance’. Other members of the crowd were swiftly throwing hoods on, covering their faces with masks, or a combination of the two before ducking towards different alleyways; they sought the Black Market.It wasn’t easy keeping the Sunagakure ANBU off their tails, but the nobles who looked for twisted pleasures the Red District no longer held, the drug trade, the illegal shinobi prosthetics market, and the weapons trade in general went through painful lengths to assure their business. For the most part, so long as you didn’t practice in Skin Trade, staying under the radar was rather easy…however for those who went down to seek body parts…
Ryuu Tama, a scientist of the arcane and creator of the Chakra Coil Transplant surgery, waited at the very end of one of the alleys these cloaked individuals walked. The the man himself, normally someone who looked to be in their late 30s, looked to be about twenty-two as he leaned against a brick wall. His hair was a cold silvery-white and pulled back into a neat ponytail that started at the nape of his neck. Tama was wearing a green turtleneck over a pair of high-dollar slacks, down into a pair of hand tailored dress shoes; over all this was his signature lab coat. In his left hand he held between his pinky and ring finger a cigarette, and adorned to the third digit was a white gold ring that gave off an eerie presence. The youth inhaled deeply before letting out the sun-dried tobacco into the air. His heterochromatic eyes stared off into the distance, distracted by something.
No one else turned down the alley, and anyone who tried found themselves right back where they started as the man at the end carefully used his new found powers over time. Not so much the current timeline, but his own, meaning someone had to see him first to activate it; however it was proving incredibly useful. The skips didn’t give off any presence as the chakra required to toy with just the fringes was nothing. Not to mention every time he pulled the strings back a few seconds what little chakra he used would then suddenly disappear. So long as he kept doing this in small intervals, nothing was likely to catch his scent.
Yet he almost jumped out of his skin when his brother spoke.
“Hey, I’m back, and I officially hate you again.”
“Jeez-oh-mighty we need to really put a bell on you! Kami be damned you’re going to scare the life out of me one these days little brother.”
“And the world would be better for it, here,” Michino replied as he shoved a briefcase at his older brother.
The younger brother, in this case, looked to be the oldest. Though they were both giants, standing at seven-feet tall, Michino had an edge to his physical form that Tama did not. It was clear which one related closer to the Toraono clan as the younger brother’s flesh was as dark as the shadows he hid in. The other hand gripped a silver staff that was carved from the branch of an ancient tree deep in the heart of the Godsfall. It served as second leg he missed from his left side that his loosely tied robe hid. By all means the two siblings looked like literal representations of night and day, but they did have a common gene in the elf-like shape of their ears. Tama took the briefcase and gave a dramatic bow before walking back towards the thralls of the street; Michino stepped back into the shadows and began to hobble the back way home.
It was rare for the two brothers to get along in any shape, as they had created a troubled past from the short time that they had known each other. Yet Michino wasn’t heartless, and his older brother knew exactly how to use that.
Unknown to many who step into the entrances, there are invisible barriers that alert the ANBU to certain chakra signals. Tama is one such a man; his brother was not. And though stepping through the Grand Palais wasn’t something the Toraono was keen on doing in the first place, he was aware of how desperate his brother must be to beg of his help; hell to beg at all, it wasn’t in the scientist’s nature. So here the dark skin male was, hobbling through the bad parts of town to help out a sibling who probably didn’t deserve it.
Ten minutes later Michino was on the edge of the area, heading through the housing districts where there was a fine mix of both abandoned and running apartment buildings. It was a strange shortcut that lead back up towards the surface and just a few streets short of his girlfriend’s apartment. Yet at some point he had stopped feeding chakra into his staff and the silent taps of wood had grown loud. It wasn’t until he felt the presence of violent intent did he realized he had done so and that there was a group of people following him. The Toraono slowly came to a stop and turned casually to look at a group of at least five fully grown men; not a teenager among them.
This was a small gang of adults who had probably dropped out of the military while they were Genin, and made use of their skills in the bad part of town in the worst ways. Usually these consisted of teenagers who were more bark than bite, but the adult gangs…they usually shot first and asked question after looting the corpse. Michino slowly lifted his right hand as he began to channel a little charka into his fingertips, a technique he used to write ninjutsu into the air as his brother did in order to save the lack of two hands. The question was if he could write it out fast enough.
But those worries were squashed under a different kind of stress when he looked beyond the gang that threatened him and saw the silhouette of his brother; another who was infamous for shooting first. Now the Toraono had a choice - let Tama do his thing which was likely to land him in prison, again, or try to warn the men.
“I have no idea what it is you seek, but I warn you, if you don’t stand down then the man behind you is going to-”
Before he could finish a cocked lever slammed down the hammer causing a spark to ignite power. The explosion forced out a small led ball that shot through the air faster than most objects could be thrown, even by elite shinobi. A gun. Something Michino once had no problem dodging, now he could only watch as the bullet flew at him as he tried to react in time.
But he couldn’t. He felt the tug and noticed the world around him warping as he slid back into a standing position and the bullet reversed its course. The Toraono mouthed his regrets when the gun shot was suddenly silenced by the screams of the gunman as his equipped hand flew through the air trailing an arc of blood.
“Shit,” Michino swore as he quickly wrote down special sigils into the air that flickered and zipped into the shadows at everyone’s feet. Half a second later the form of Ryuu Tama materialized. He was younger, his hair was wild, he stank of serious body odor, and there was a wild aura of insanity that radiated off the scientist. Even his clothes, where were pristine, now had the look of something he hadn’t changed or washed in weeks. The Toraono shifted his fingers and activated the ninjutsu that created a mass of shadow hands to reach up and grab his brother to pull him down.
“I said run, dammit, I can’t hold him for long!”
The scientist struggled against his restraints, and the sibling knew they would only hold him long enough for him to regain an ounce of his sanity. The six-foot tall teen who was bent down was his brother’s most mentally unstable form. It was almost a completely different person all together, a boy tormented by the power he had awakened far too soon. Two of the gang members took heed, the injured and a friend, but the other three were set on advancing…
