He didn't know what he'd been expecting when he'd first seen the village on the horizon but even though things seemed widely abandoned now that he was drawing closer to the town he knew he had to press onward. There simply was no other option but for him to stop and rest. Finding food and water in the desert had been challenging but had not proven impossible thanks to a laundry list of survival skills that the nameless man could not account for thanks to the sizable gaps in his memory. It was almost as if someone had taken a sponge and used it to erase any of the significant parts of his identity with razor precision. People and names and locations were hazy and unreachable; like trying to remember something that was on the tip of his tongue but that he couldn't quite reach.
It was infuriating to say the least. The information was in there or at least something that explained why he was like this. The dull pain in his skull reminded him of that with every aching pulse of pain that echoed through his head.
The outskirts of town were barren enough but as the nameless man approached deeper into the frontier village he found nothing to defy his expectation that the town was abandoned but the further he ventured into the center of town the less sure he was that it was a safe plan to stop and rest. The small town was thoroughly abandoned but... there was something wrong about it. Things discarded and tossed away but not in a casual manner. The instincts that the nameless man couldn't explain but had quickly learned to rely on simply to survive his time in the desert were screaming at him that he was in danger. That this was not a safe place.
While he couldn't connect the instinct to any particular events of importance, the man knew in the back of his mind that Wind was a dangerous place and that the deserts were a voracious animal that gorged itself on the unwary and the foolhardy. He liked to think that he was neither of those things but in the end people that tended to fall into either or both of those categories rarely possessed the self-awareness to recognize their own faults.
Even so, as that sense of dread and unease settled in on him he stopped just outside the center of the town and took a moment to simply take in his surroundings. The town was relatively large for a frontier town and had probably at one time boasted a fairly impressive population for what amounted to a flickering candle of civilization in a black sea of savagery and nature. The map that he'd recovered from the scavengers indicated that he was still quite far from any places of true civilization and the truth was that he was simply beat and traveling further with his mind and body so tired was a combination that was sure to spell disaster for him. Picking purely randomly, the nameless man selected one of the wooden structures and slowly approached it, wary with caution and ready to react if something dangerous jumped out at him.
But nothing did.
The house seemed just as deserted as the rest of the town for better or for worse but was one of the better surviving buildings. The desert was a harsh place for buildings and because of the climate and the strange patterns of weather and wind structures required constant upkeep and maintenance simply to have a chance at staying together. The wear on the surrounding buildings was considerable even if one put aside the other less natural appearing points of damage that were scattered throughout a number of the buildings.
Starting with the bottom floor the nameless man set about clearing each of the various rooms of the house-- starting with the floor level, then the upper levels. There was no reasonable way to construct a basement in such places like these and that made the man's work all the easier by paring down the number of rooms he had to explore. Short of the enduring eeriness of finding no signs of people having been present for some time, he found nothing of note as he explored each of the rooms and by the time he'd finished clearing out the first house the sun was beginning to dip low in the sky. He'd intended to check out more of the surrounding houses before bunking down but it was a stroke of luck that the first one he explored was both in good shape and void of any... less than friendly animals or apparitions.
Settling in the top most floor, a storage attic of some kind it seemed like, the man disrobed from the uncomfortable and hot body wrapping that he'd been given by the tribesmen that he'd saved and set his pack down on the floor. He'd very briefly considered setting a small fire for light but in a sun-dried wooden house like this such an act was only asking to be entombed in a fiery inferno though at this point the man was beginning to question whether or not that would even be dangerous for him. He'd come across a veritable procession of hungry predators as well as other bands of ne'er-do-wells of an ill weal on his journey so far and dispatched most of them with a frightening amount of ease. There was a strength that came packaged with the instinct for fights that he seemed to possess and he had to admit that it scared him more than a little bit. The conclusion that he had been some kind of warrior or martial artist before losing his memory was at this point undeniable but each time thoughts such as these crept back into his mind during quiet and dark moments his mind wandered back to the captain of the first group of scavengers he'd taken on.
Shinobi.
Sunagakure.
Kazekage.
Those words played on repeat like the scratch of a broken record in the back of his mind complete with discomforting jolt each time the set of names repeated in his memory. They were clearly important words to whoever he had been but he had no idea what they meant. The leader of those desert bandits seemed to have identified him as a shinobi of Sunagakure because of the prodigious ease with which he'd dispatched the other members of the scavenger band but the nameless man simply couldn't grasp why those words held the strange importance to him that they seemed to. With an inconsistent rapping noise upon the roof and the windows, the sounds of a rare desert rainfall coming down upon the roof of the building he was holed up in began to echo throughout the building bringing the man's eyes to the windows of the dark attic and the darker still wilderness outside them...
"Ohohoho come'on now. A rainstorm in tha desert? Now who's tha cheater Princess?" Complained the squat face of the lizard-like spirit creature that loomed over the globe of silver light, his glowing eyes framed by plumes of dark smoke as he wheezed.
"You are vastly overestimating my abilities if you truly believe I am able to affect his location from where we are." Returned the bright-haired woman replied sharply. Her response came quickly as though she'd been ready for the her repugnant companion to make an accusation against her.
The reptilian spirit scowled and grumbled as he shifted his position even though he wasn't truly "sitting" on anything physical. His sinuous body plunged deeply into depths of the smoke beneath them and simply... disappeared. From where they were positioned it might almost look as though he were affixed to the floor itself but the way he writhed around occasionally to get a different angle at watching through the large globe of light made that conclusion a dubious one at best. He knew that the response she'd given him was accurate even if this turn of events sourly affected his mood.
"So lemme get this straight. Yer sayin' this rainstorm is jus' a coincidence? Tha' it just happened ta start rainin' now of all times with him lookin' all sad and wistful out a window like a dumbass?"
The woman's face drew into a scowl at the reptile's words but she didn't reply quickly enough to let her disapproval of what he'd said affect her own response. She was smarter than that and he knew that but it was still amusing to push her buttons whenever he could. After all it wasn't like she could just leave and it had been a long time since he'd enjoyed such attractive company.
"That is what I am saying, yes." She replied simply, looking into the silver globe.
Now that was interesting. She probably didn't know it but the reptile had been studying her in their short time together. He wasn't just pushing her buttons for fun; he was learning about her as he did. Putting together how she acted, how she reacted. How she talked.
And how she lied.
"Honey there ain't no such thing as coincidence. You know that and I know that." He grinned sinisterly as a jet of coal-colored smoke erupted from his nostrils following an especially long drag on his seemingly never-ending cigar.
It was a blink and you miss it sort of event. So quick that the man didn't catch it the first time but as it began to repeat through the dripping rain on the windows, the event became more and more obvious until it was impossible to miss. Small crimson pin-pricks of light appeared in the gloom of the abandoned town then disappeared just as suddenly, seemingly without pattern as they winked in and out of existence. It wasn't until the larger blots of red light began to appear that the nameless man understood what it was that he was looking at out in the town square and the realization that he knew what the phenomena he was observing was brought a shudder to his spine. The rain falling was washing away the surface layer of the sands which had blown in without the care from the townsfolk and covered much of the debris from what the man had assumed to have been an exodus from the town but as the damp sand shifted under the weight of the rain he came to realize that he was wrong.
The people of the town hadn't left of their own free will. In fact, they had never left at all.
The sands boiled and shifted as the reanimated populace of the town began to claw their way to the surface, awakened by the rhythm of the falling rain. The man couldn't see them terribly wall through the falling rain and the dark of the cloud cover but scores of beaming red eyes had their gaze fixed on the window of the building where he was staying making it abundantly clear that they knew he was here somehow.
His heart pounding his chest as his mind raced, the man considered his options. There was no way of knowing how many of the creatures were lingering outside and so realistically attempting to stay in his hiding place and hope they couldn't find him was perhaps his most prudent option but the way that the horde seemed to already know he was here did not bode particularly well for that plan. A crashing sound on the lower levels of the home brought a swift end to any illusions of safety that he might have had as well as scratched any options which were not "fight" off of the list as he knew he'd only have minutes at best before they made their way upstairs.
Which might be generous considering the sound of their claws on the stairs, he reflected as the sound of scrabbling claws on wooden stairs echoed up the hall and filled the attic.
Since his encounter with the scavengers the man had spent some time exploring the depths of the abilities which were at his fingertips and even though he didn't understand why he possessed the training and abilities that he did he found that he was able to recall with crystal clarity every step of a breadth of combat experience which he had no memories for which to account for. The first wave of the creatures crested the top of the stairs into the attic and for the first time the man got a good look at what they looked like. The creatures were reminiscent of walking skeletons except for the way remnants of gaunt, blackened flesh clung to the bones like plastic wrap pulled too tightly over an inner frame. Red energy pulsed from inside them up through the desiccated and paper-thin skin of their chests and through the empty eye-sockets giving their entire bodies an unearthly glow as they jerked and clamored over each other to grasp at the source of the life energy they sensed lurking within the house.
Wasting no time, the man launched forward and planted his foot into the chest of the forward most of the creatures taking it up and off its feet and sending it backwards into the group of ghouls that were pushing forward from the stairs trying to get up into the attic. Though the actual impact did little to impede the creatures who pushed forward despite the one of their number that was catapulted back into them it gave the man a few moments to make a few gestures that focused and channeled his chakra into unleashing a torrent of bright blue lightning into the body of the first ghoul that had been thrown down the stairs.
Covered in rain as they were there was a moment of sizzling steam and horrid screaming as the lightning coursed through the body of the ghoul before the creature's body was consumed in a bright blossom of blue-white flame. The ninjutsu attack helped stem the tide of creatures coming up the stairs but by the time the ignited monster was fully engulfed in hungry flames that threatened to spread to the other creatures if they attempted to push their way past where its ruined body was presenting immolating the wooden stairs several of the monsters had made their way into the room and surrounded the nameless man forcing him to fend off their feral assaults as best he could without armament. Grabbing one of the creatures by its arm as it swiped it's claws at him, he pulled it forward and threw it over his shoulder through the window at his back and out into the open air of the night as three more of the ghouls rushed in to fill the vacancy left in the small attic by the one which the man had just defenestrated. At the back of the attic he could hear more of the creatures filling the stairwell as they began to make their way over the corpse of the first one that had been the subject of his lightning attack to fill even more of the small space with their hungry wails.
Glancing over his shoulder, the man realized that the only way he could hope to escape this situation without being overwhelmed was to leap through the now open window gap that he'd created. There was no way of knowing how many more of the beasts were lurking outside but at the rate he was going currently the room would be at capacity with raking claws and hungry teeth in a few moments and he'd be surrounded with no way out anyway. Gesturing through a few more hand signs that jumped up into his memory, the man created an arcing blade of energy that slashed through the creatures closed to him forcing them to recoil and give him enough space to turn and leap through into free fall.
It wasn't until the man got out into the air that he realized for certain how much trouble he was in. Beneath him was an ocean of rapacious red eyes and gasping, hungry mouths that shrieked and moaned as they watched the source of their hunt come flying out of the building trailing cinders and chakra.
"He is the storm."
Time stopped all around him as he flew through the air, beneath him an ocean of teeth and claws waiting for him to fall to his demise under the unrelenting tide of their hunger. Lightning flashed through the clouds overhead for the first time signalling that the rain storm above had evolved to something greater and setting the stage for what seemed like a brutal and imminent death for the man even as his perception slowed to a crawl. This same thing had happened the first time he'd come face to face with danger-- the scavengers in the desert village. When they'd approached him and threatened his person there had been a literal spark of instinct that had pulled memories of battles fought in the past to the forefront and powered him to an easy victory over foes that had no idea they were so vastly outclassed. In a similar series of events, the man's life was once more in jeopardy but on a much grander scale. In the confrontation with the scavengers, they had merely been threatening him. There was no threat here, only the promise of certain death when he fell closely enough to the horde beneath him for them to reach him with their rain-slick claws.
Instinct to survive crashed into his conscious mind like an tidal wave of angry surf and as though to illustrate the rush of muscle and spirit memory roiling within him arcs of golden lightning crackled along the surface of his shoulders and arms causing him to shine like a beacon in the rain and darkness of the storm. His jet-black hair flickered with particles of radiant chakra as his body filled the air around him with ambient energy and in the short real time it took for him to fly from the edge of the window out into the air and fall low enough for the creatures to finally touch him his body had completed a transformation into an electrified inferno that trailed serpents of steam and smoke behind it as it fell back down to the sands.
Rolling in mid-air, the man caught his stance just as he landed and as he opened his eyes he saw that none of the creatures were keen to reach for him any longer as those that did were turned to ash by the voracious gilded lightning and flame that coruscated around his body.
Thinking only about surviving the night and destroying the creatures that were attacking him, the man raised his hand above his head and for a moment the swirling aura of elemental chakra condensed into a sphere before rapidly expanding outwards, consuming everything around him at a terrifying pace and cutting a slash of golden light into the air that pierced the heavens above, slicing the storm in two to reveal the bright moonlight of the night time above it.
The event was over in seconds but the result would last for a great deal longer than that. The rain ceased to fall around the man as the storm had been broken by the sudden outpouring of natural energy and chakra that his body had produced and all around him for hundreds of feet were shards of jagged fulgurite-- sand turned to glittering glass by the intense heat of his attack. There no longer was any sign of the creatures that the man had previously been under attack by and in truth there was no longer any sign that there had ever been a settlement in this location. What tiny reminders of the buildings even still remained were encased in fulgurite deep enough that it was impossible to take notice of them without knowing that they were there beforehand.
Looking about at the devastation he'd caused the man's breathing began to come fast and labored at the realization of what he'd done. Who was he to command this sort of power? Who was anyone to have power like this? He knew the answers to his questions must lay in the city of Sunagakure that he'd been journeying to but... now...
Now he was no longer sure he wanted to know the answer to those questions.
[I purchased a Discovery of Contract of Your Choice card which I am cashing in here for the Elemental Contract. Thank you.][/quote]
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