The Lone Child <Private/Mikaboshi>

[Toraono Michino]

The day had started in what appeared to be up to standards as Tama left the apartment his mother was given. There had been the casual breakfast, the normal awkward silence between the mother and son, and the haste taken to gather his things and leave. Since unlocking his powers the boy’s study sessions became nearly double and within the short month since the unused power was tapped he had gained a massive amount of knowledge. He had also created a major breakthrough in his experiments to control the chaotic nature of the power constantly rolling inside of him. A purple gem had been the success of an explosive concoction of chemicals and his blood, creating a gem in which would help tone the strength inside of him into a manageable state given his current mortal capabilities.

Today would not be a day of study and creativity, nay, today was a day of finalizing a creation. Tama had spent most of the last night and into the wee hours of the morning perfecting the blueprints for the ring that would hold the gem. The careful studies of old rune magic and how to inscribe them into metal had taken most of his precious time up last night. The books were rare and so far he had only found them available in shady stores that dotted the deeper parts of Suna. Not to mention expensive, and that is without the coin he had spent bribing people for the location of the store; being a kid sucked. Somehow with the meager savings he had collected he was able to buy the book, but the time spent had left him little time to study if he had ever decided to cram sleep in his schedule.
In truth the poor boy had only a good hour’s worth of sleep from collective “cat naps” through his studies.
The door to the apartment was opened quickly and just as fast returned to its resting place. Despite the lack of sleep Tama was already on the move in the attempt to get away from the depressing mood that hung in the living quarters. His feet shuffled in the direction of the railing for the second story balcony and his legs followed suit before taking him to the edge. Pushing his hand down on the rail he used the muscles he had gained from the physical training he slipped into his study time, (sometimes during), and lifted the rest of his light frame up into the air to launch himself over the iron guard and descend towards the ground in a true shinobi fashion. Using the knowledge he had absorbed from the homeless old genin he shifted his own chakra into his legs to help absorb the impact of the ground. Without skipping a beat the boy started to take his stroll down towards the center of town in the direction of the market.

It only took Tama a good fifteen minutes to reach the rising buzz of the market place. The streets were packed with the early morning goers and the mixed smells of businesses starting up to life hung heavy in the air. Now, he had an appointment with a local silversmith that was renowned for his ability to create special jewelry that had unique hiding compartments or turned into weapons and things of that nature. Sadly it was still a niche market even in a village full of shinobi who could actually use that kind of stuff, but since there was no real need for it due to lack of any serious dangers his business had been slipping. Of course it was Tama’s opinion that the silversmith was in poverty due to the fact he was an alcoholic and had three kids as a single parent; that and his shop was in a terrible location.
Locating this man to make an appointment had been really easy due to the fact he was regular at the bar the boy worked in, (since it had the cheapest malt liquor), and striking a deal had been even easier. Basically the man needed something to add extra…pizzazz, to his store to get more customers and being the genius that Tama was he was able to bribe work from him in trade for some documents that he had “found” in that old shop he got the Runework book from. They were the deeds to a rundown shop that everyone ignored in the near center of the bazaar because it was always “closed”. In truth the owner of the shop had died some years ago and instead of having his next of kin resubmit the property papers back into the government he simply told them to “hide them”; or at least that was the boy’s theory. In reality he had no idea why those deeds were shoved in between the books but they had been really easy to simply fold and shove in his pocket.
Originally he had planned to use the deeds himself to create a shop in which to sell his random inventions to make some extra cash to further extend his research but they made for an epic bargaining chip as well.

Tama turned his head left as he heard a gruff voice call out his name. Turning towards the sound of his name over the sound of a bustling bazaar he saw the tall rugged looking silversmith waving at him from a distance, standing in front of his beat-up shop that was on the edge of the bazaar and the Back Streets. With only a second’s hesitation the scientist made his way through the crowd over to the man dressed in little more than dirty pants and a thick apron. His hair was a mat on top of his head, his beard similar but on his face, and his breath already smelled of cheap whiskey.
“It’s about time you showed up boy,” the silversmith said with a grin in his voice.
“Didn’t get enough sleep, was up all night finishing the blueprints for the ring.”
“Yeah, yeah, ring. Whatever. As long as you got…those…ya know, ‘building plans’ you promised?”
Tama reached into his satchel and removed the three brown parchments that held the lettering to promise the owners of that paper a building and land. He handed them over to the man’s grubby hands and his face beamed up with a light of joy,
“Aye…these are real alright. Got the Sunagakure Stamp and everything. How did a kid of your age even come across these?”
“Best you don’t know, just make this for me,” Tama replied as he removed another group of parchment and handed them to the silversmith. He placed the deed into his apron pocket and began to look over all the work the boy had done in the plans to create the ring and found himself really impressed. The measurements were spot on, the design was simple but elegant, and even the setting for the gem was drawn out in great detail.
“Well, can you do it?”
“Aye lad, aye I can make it all right. It’s going to take me at least six to seven hours to fully create. Normally this kind of thing would cost someone a bloody arm n’ leg, but I owe yah one kiddo. If you want to stick around my kids are in the house…”
“Thank you, but no thank you. I have other projects afoot that need attention while you’re working on that.”
The smith simply nodded and quickly walked back into his shop to head towards the forge in the back to get started smelting the required metals.

The first step of his plans for the day was completed. Reaching down towards his belt Tama patted the hanging pouch where his golden coin hung in waiting and found the purse to be about a fourth of the way full. It was a saddening realization that he had spent almost a full pouch worth of gold on trying to locate a book and purchase it but he surmised there was still enough there to get him a drink. Turning his feet towards the Back Streets his body followed, moving in the direction of the old run down bar that he worked and his lab was located next to.
The swinging doors to the bar were nearly thrown open as the boy entered in a manner that was almost cocky. He strolled up to the bar counter and hopped up on one of the stools there before smacking his palm against the warped wood in an annoying attempt to get the attention of his boss,
“Hey! Leekrat Breath! I need a drink here!” Leekrat was a type of severely smelly rodent.
“Kid, you have no idea how…”
“Much you love me? I know it. Now where is that drink? Thinking gives quite the thirst!” The owner mumbled something terrible under his breath and reached under the counter to pull out alcohol, a strong whiskey beverage, and the shot glass to go with it. Tama looked up at the man and raised an eyebrow which made him growl before putting those things back under the bar and going into the back to fetch his young employee a bottle of water. The youth placed a few of the shiny gold coins on the counter and pulled the cork from the glass to consume the fresh liquids inside.
“So did you hear about the latest news smartass?”
“You mean the one where you have to pay extra to hookers to get laid? Old news Boris,” the boy replied after finishing his long swig.
“No,” the barkeep said after his flesh tinted itself red in anger, “The one where a group of shady looking thugs came in here asking for you.”
“Oh yeah?” Came a chuckling reply.
“Oh yes, they called themselves Red Influence. Apparently they said you killed one of their boys.”

The humor in Tama’s face melted away as a chord in his memory was plucked. Red Influence was the name of the gang of the man’s soul he had taken a month ago. The memories had never showed him that the group was still running but it wouldn’t be a surprise if the remaining members after the ANBU raid reformed and just never picked back up the homeless man possibly thinking that he was the rat that got a lot of them killed.
“Did you…tell them anything?”
“You damn straight I did you little prick. Told them where you lived and everything.”
“You’re an ass Boris,” Tama said as he chugged some more of the water and hopped off the barstool to run out.
“MY NAME ISN’T BORIS!” was all he could hear as he dashed out of the bar.

Well this just screwed with his plans. He was going to drink that water, go into his lab, and take a nap until the silversmith was done with his work but the new information entered into Tama’s brain turned him into a panic mode. He had no idea if his mother could defend herself at all since all he knew was her to be a seer. His fleet feet moved his body fast through the Back Streets and through the Bazaar once again as he desperately turned his head back and forth looking for any sign of trouble before turning down the alley that would take him straight back into the apartment housing his family was stationed at. As he ran down the street it felt like it kept stretching out and he was getting nowhere, forcing him to pick up his speed into a full run that made him kick up dirt in his wake. Exiting the ally he faced his entire body left to look up at the second story of the apartment complex to where his door was. It was closed, thank the makers.
It took him a moment for his heart to regain calm and his breath to return to normal before he finally decided to ascend the stairs to check on his mother. He really didn’t wish to step back into the apartment knowing that when he got in there his mother was probably going to raid his ear on the number of things that he had forgotten to do chore wise for the past week and that his general studies had been slipping a little; which was not true at all but she assumed it. The boy was always fiddling with something that didn’t look like homework at all.
Tama’s feet reached the last step up the staircase leading to the second floor when that feeling of absolute dread soaked over his body. The general cold air of the cave suddenly got colder as his two-toned eyes looked up to watch as, in silence, his door fly of the hinges in slow motion followed by a gout of flame and explosion. His breath which had finally gotten back to normal picked up once again and a deep fear gripped his heart as his feet dug into the concrete walkway and threw his body forward in the direction of the fire.
In what felt like eternity he made his way to the impressive heat of the flames and dived into the building without even second guessing himself. He knew that she had not gone out yet, it was still too early for shopping for supplies and she didn’t have to report to the Bazaar for work for at least another hour. The flames licked at his flesh and singed his hair as he entered the inferno of a home that had been bathed in some kind of flammable substance; fires did not spread this fast from just an explosion.

The apartment was little more than a two room, single bathroom housing with a living room/dining room/kitchen. Once down the first hall from the entrance Tama would find himself in the large living area that was covered in destructive heat. His eyes quickly began to scan over the area looking for his mother but found instead the burning signs of a struggle. Dents in the walls, blood on the counter, and the body of a man he did not know in the corner by the sink…and a trail of blood leading back into his room. Without a second’s guess he dashed across the burning room and kicked open his door with a burst of chakra to find his mother curled up beside his work desk with one hand on a wound that soaked her clothing in blood and a handful of papers in the other. He quickly ran up to her and lifted the hand from the wound while screaming her name over and over again, but the hand he lifted was cold and wet. With a drenching fear his eyes followed up her body to the face that held no light in her eyes, just the blank stare of why?

Tama’s breath dropped to nothing, he heard nothing, and saw nor felt anything but the building righteous fury in his gut. The face of his dead mother stared back into his own and his heart began to accelerate as that rage started to flow through the rest of his body until his breath started in a pant. A scream of sheer anger rent the air. Judgment flew out the window as nothing but a cold calculated fury replaced his normal collective self. His left hand reached out and snatched the papers from his mother’s hand and gathered as much of his scroll work as he could fit into the satchel before storming out of his room, taking only a second to look back at the lifeless body of his mother to reignite his fueled anger. The heat of the apartment had grown to nearly unbearable levels and sure enough the scrolls he was carrying were starting to catch fire. As quick as he legs would take him he ran towards the entrance once more and threw himself out of the flaming apartment, the momentum taking him over the rails and down the ground where he landed with a roll. Another explosion followed as the flames finally reached the gas that had provided the cooking for the stove destroying his little apartment and starting fires no doubt in the next two that his home had sat between.

Slowly Tama straightened himself up as the stinging tears of tragedy and anger burned his eyes, washing away the soot from his face as they streamed down. He stood now in this cave as the last surviving member of the Ryuu Clan and the thoughts of his next move would no doubt cause the end of his bloodline but this child would have his revenge…and his boss was on the top of a list of people to meet.

 

[Mikaboshi]

The last month had been busy for Mikaboshi as well. Since the fall of the former ANBU Sennin and his own elevation to the position, Mikaboshi had overseen the transition of the ANBU headquarters from beneath Keystone Prime and into the Obsidian Palace. There had been a great deal of renovations since Mikaboshi had taken over the complex but primarily the retrofitting of the two above-ground levels into an administrative level and his own personal study. But the true task that had been before him was to bring the inmates of the prison under his control. He was now the warden and the prison had been without one for some time leading the scum and villainy contained within the prison to coagulate into their own societies with their own leaders and power structures. To assert himself within that power structure, he had been required to make a show of force and intimidation to make it clear he was not kidding. In a single night of darkness and blood Mikaboshi had swept into the first two levels of the prison and laid low any who stood up to him leaving the remaining gangs with the living memory of his brutality. He knew that he had made enemies that night for his slayings but it would be some time before any in the Obsidian Palace would be able to overcome the fear inspired by many from his sudden and merciless descent into the shadows. Following the first night Mikaboshi had remained sequestered within the Palace for a little over a week making his intentions and rules perfectly clear. They would be allowed to maintain their pitiful lives the way they wanted so long as they never went against his word. And he had used the mutilated corpses of the inmates which were less interested in listening as a prime example of what would happen if they did. With his authority made clear in the levels of the prison which would respect such petty intimidation, Mikaboshi had returned to the surface and left the prison in the care of the appointed guards which were now inducted into the ANBU guard and allowed access to their facilities as necessary.

Following his return to the surface, Mikaboshi's first desired task was to track down Ryuu Tama and check in on his would-be apprentice. With nearly a month having passed since their fateful meeting in the gloom of Sunagakure's alleyways, Mikaboshi wondered how the boy had progressed with the power that he'd been given. Tama had been given a rare gift and had his potential awakened before it would have naturally been unlocked for him. It was an unnatural process for a human being but it was not Tama's humanity that Mikaboshi was interested in. Tama had blood of an extra-human being in his veins and Mikaboshi intended to bring that out of him. What sparked such altruism in a being such as him was strange but it was not the first time. On occasion when he'd encountered youth who showed potential of having blood which was purer than their filthy human bloodline Mikaboshi took them under his wing to show them the way to rising above said humanity. Perhaps it was a subconscious need to make up for the way he had betrayed his people so many years ago, even though he consciously felt no remorse for it, but the Betrayer did not really care for the reason why. That he felt it was enough for him. Tracking down Tama was not especially difficult. Like all members of the Sunagakurian military, he had a file within the archives of the ANBU with a listed shinobi number, class and residential address. The file did not specify if Tama had been attending his classes or not but that was immaterial to Mikaboshi as long as Tama possessed a good reason for overlooking possible accumulation of knowledge from his instructors. The knowledge that human instructors would possess and be willing to pass on to a student was limited anyway. The only reason that he'd advised Tama to continue his classes was so that none would grow suspicious of his sudden jump in strength.

Mikaboshi was still several blocks away when the sound of the explosion first reached him. Narrowing his eyes, Mikaboshi quickened his pace causing his body to flicker in and out of the shadows as he sped through the streets which were thankfully clear enough this night. There were other pedestrians but they knew well enough to avoid a masked shinobi who was heading towards the sound of an explosion. That either meant that there was a battle on-going at the scene of the explosion or there had been some sort of accident. Dancing through the air, Mikaboshi ascended from street-level to the rooftops as he ran and laid eyes on the burning second floor of Tama's building. Mentally going over the address that he'd taken from the archives, he surmised quickly that this was Tama's home but he did not sense the presences of any but Tama within the building. Folding his arms across his chest in the still air of the cavern, Mikaboshi glowered over the burning building waiting for Tama to come out. After all, if his would-be student was incapable enough of handling himself to be felled by a fire then he was not worth his time. After a moment or two, Tama burst through the door to his apartment just before another explosion went off. Unfolding his arms, Mikaboshi silently sent out his will through the shadows of the cavern and animated them enough to contain the flames of the building. He had made an oath to Seitoshi that he would protect Sunagakure, after all. He could not very well simply let this portion of the village burn. Lifting his hands, Mikaboshi gestured and the airspace around the flames which licked at the buildings shuttered and simply froze as darkness loomed in around the light it shed giving the flames a very distinctly eerie appearance. Dropping his hands to his sides, the Betrayer stepped forward off the edge of the building and his form flickered for a moment as he shadowstepped from the ledge to a few feet away from where Tama was beneath his railing..

"I surmise you have made enemies since our parting." Mikaboshi reasoned, looking up at the still flames as he spoke. "You will need to respond to them in kind, naturally."

 

[Toraono Michino]

Through his barely controlled rage a small bit of his willpower broke and started to seep back into his being. The tingle was welcome at first as the energy began to very slowly heal the burns suffered on the boy’s body. The pupil of the left eye was slowly starting to turn into the reptilian slit causing the sensation of certain creatures available to his otherwise mortal senses. He felt the stillness of the flames before he turned his head up to look at them. In any other scenario he would been absolutely fascinated by the technique his master used to still the inferno; a firm hatred stamped out his curiosity. There would be time to ask later, he realized when this said master appeared before repeating the very idea that had been on Tama’s brain.
Briefly he wondered if Mikaboshi was telekinetic.
“Aye, that we will master. Or I will if you see me fit to prove myself to you. I want to make sure that the leader of these bastards see the child they betrayed before utterly destroying them…”

Tama turned away for a moment to control his emotions. He was basically asking an ancient to let him do his own thing due to an inferior design due to emotions. The boy was better than this, smarter than this, more conniving than this. The child breathed in once and let go of the air and of his anger. Vengeance would come, without a doubt, but it didn’t need to be rushed. It should be calculated, planned, and executed with the utmost prejudice. Having calmed himself Tama turned his face back to the mysterious mask of his mentor and began to speak when a shock cracked through him.
Holy energy once again began to leak out from his skin, swirling into the air and causing his skin to heat up faster making the poor youth glow a soft golden color.
“There is one problem though, I haven’t gotten my powers under full control. I have the solution in the works for full creation I simply have to wait for the, ergh…silversmith to finish the ring and I can complete the Rune Binding ceremony that will allow the ring to filter my overwhelming strength.
“Only problem is the ring is still very much being crafted so I have only one other solution – I need a soul. When the soul was freshly assimilated into me I had full utter control of my newfound strength, but as the days went by it slowly started to become more, and more uncontrollable…and I think I might be channeling a dead ancient through my eye…which is why it’s so hard to control right now. I don’t quite have the physical form to wield that strength yet.”

Despite the odd painful stinging sensation the uprising powers caused inside of him he held a look of absolute seriousness. Unlike the other employees to Mikaboshi’s soul feeding Tama was only asking of it as a last resort and had none of the cravings, at least not yet. His brain was constantly moving and working that he very rarely considered eating actual food, let alone odd food.

 

[Mikaboshi]

Looking down to Tama, Mikaboshi regarded him silently the youth swore his vengeance. As always, the Betrayer thought on the human capacity for wickedness. It was amazing how creatures which as a race prided themselves as being righteous and good were capable of such anger and hate. Beings like Mikaboshi were what they were by nature. He sought power and dominated others because that is what his purpose in the world was. While Mikaboshi was not above acts of altruism, at his core he was a being of tyranny and pride. It had always been and would always be that way with him. Humans however possessed a curious capacity for change. Even the most good-hearted of men and women could be tempted to evil with enough of the right leverage whether that be playing upon their own pride or, in Tama's case, the anger of loss. Occasionally Mikaboshi had wondered if he might apply such a tactic against Sousuke and turn him into an ally. Sousuke was a man of virtue but even he would have his emotional limits eventually. Going further, Tama explained a part of the plan he'd concocted to control his powers. Something to do with a creation of a silver ring and a rune binding. It sounded as if Tama intended to create a sieve to hold back his energy, one that he could activate when needed to release bursts of power into his body. It was a sound plan and the Betrayer found himself approving of the idea. Such short applications of his strength would allow him to grow used to the power over time, releasing it in larger bursts each time he used it. The sieve would need to be replaced from time to time as his power burned through it but Mikaboshi did not intend to share that information with Tama. It was his scheme and the Betrayer had every intention of letting his student learn of said plan's limitations on his own.

"If you require a soul, then perhaps you should harvest one." Mikaboshi reasoned, his hands clasped behind his back now as he looked down at Tama and slowly began to pace around to behind where his student stood. "What stops you from doing so?"

Above the two, the inferno that had been trapped within living shadow dimmed under pressure from the darkness that Mikaboshi had encased it in. Flames were a strange element to the shadow. While flame chakra could be used to create shadow elemental techniques, in the scheme of the elemental courts the Flame Court had always been an enemy of the Deep Court. Allies with the Solar Court, Fuujin's ilk and kin, the Flame Court had made itself a nuisance to Mikaboshi and his shadowy denizens on a regular basis. Whenever a vein of magma found it's way to the caverns of the deep, an inevitable clash between the two occurred with Flame Court elementals spilling into the shadows where they did not belong forcing Mikaboshi to sally forth with his own forces and do battle with them. It was during one such incursion that the Dark King had acquired the Black Blade from a noble member of the Flame Court. They had never forgiven him for that particular slaying nor for holding the Black Blade hostage the way he did. Mikaboshi had often wondered if his obstinate theft of the Black Blade from the Flame Court had played a part in Fuujin's decision to seal him within it. The Ancient of Sun and Sky had always been a spiteful bastard. Shifting his weight as he stopped behind Tama, Mikaboshi continued to look down at his apprentice as he waited for a response to his question.

 

[Toraono Michino]

"Because you never taught...me...ah. I see."
Of course it had never occurred to the boy that he could harvest the soul he needed himself. Always the child had simply assumed that Mikaboshi had a special technique to do his work and that down the line he would be taught himself. Yet with his mind set in the gear of trying to figure out how he could do it himself the left eye that held a strange power was slowly awakening to the point that the world viewed from that side seemed a little…grittier. Tama closed his right eye and took in the full surroundings of the new world, seeing a strange extra level of reality through that iris. The eyeball drifted up towards the fire that was turning his home into ashes to see the truth of Mikaboshi’s shadows, that in a way they lived as if it was a piece of his actual soul keeping the fire trapped in a stasis like form. Through the blackness that controlled the flames he saw the tale-tale glimmer of a soul.
The youth shot a look at his master for a moment suspecting foul play from the shadow elemental. Did the master orchestrate this attack in order to train him into becoming more powerful? In theory Tama didn’t even need the souls to strengthen his powers but to be used more as a filter like the ring would be once finished; though extra souls assimilated into his body would no doubt strengthen his mortal form. For a moment he simply stood there and stared at Mikaboshi with the realization that his general attitude towards mankind would allow him to easily set up such a scenario.

Shoving the paranoia aside for the moment Tama realized that it was too little, too late. If indeed his master was behind this terrible emotional destruction there was nothing that he could that would bring his mother back. He decided that he would be a man of the future instead of feed into his strange delusions, and if he ever did find Mikaboshi a part of his plot, vengeance was still a viable outlet down the road. The young scientist turned away from his shadowy master and ascended the staircase once more and began to glow a brighter light as he neared towards the writhing black. Without fear the boy plunged back into the inferno watching as the illuminating light of uncontrollable power seemed to part the shadowy sea; by either his own will or Mikaboshi’s, Tama wasn’t sure.
His open left eye scanned through the burning waste to see a periwinkle blue light darting around the flames within a tight circumference of the dead gang banger’s body. The Ryuu sensed the elaborated fear of the soul as the original owner of it seemed to panic not realizing that he was truly dead. The pathetic ideal of it made the boy grimace in remembrance of the homeless man that had nearly beaten him to death over some damn metal; his fellow gang members would rue this day. Walking towards the panicked soul Tama reached out to grab it but felt simply a cold aura rush through his hands instead of being able to grasp it. The scientist tilted his head for a moment and completely forgot about the fact that he was in a burning building, quickly using his brain to its full potential to figure out how it would be he could grasp at the blue light himself.
An idea came to him rather quickly though it had terrible dangerous consequences if he did it wrong. Reaching out his hand once more the boy unleashed every last bit of will power he had been using to hold the golden energy back, causing the entire burning apartment to burn a bright golden energy that seemed to strictly push back the shadowy flames until an entire area around him was clear of every element but the one he was haphazardly wielding. The blue light of the soul began to slow it’s movements down to that of a snail, and in that moment he closed his hand into a fist, forcing every last bit of his released will power to focus all that holy power to surround the soul.
Perhaps it was because he was watching with nothing but the special eye but the idea went off perfectly. The holy energies that surrounded Tama quickly began to close in and trap the blue light until a golden shield surrounded it. His hand opened back up and grasped the first part of his revenge list easily this time, lifted it towards his mouth and shoved it in there; he really had no other method to absorb it.

Tama could feel the warming heat of his own energies slowly flow down his throat and into the pit of his stomach, where a strange reaction occurred. Centered once again with the core of his chakra coil the shield was released and like a spider who had caught a fly the energies in his coil reached up and grabbed the soul to be pulled down into the very pit of his strength. The brief image of the con being pulled into a blinding light briefly flashed through the boy’s vision and as if on que he slapped his hands together and made two seals that he had been taught in class – the dragon seal and the monkey seal, key sealing symbols. The formation seemed to automatically draw the holy energy into his hands and filled them with a strange light that was the color of the soul he had literally eaten. Placing his hands on his stomach where he felt the energy starting to burn out he brought the image of a timer in his head and formed the dog seal followed by the dragon and monkey again to activate the powers on his hands. The blue light slowly melted away and gravitated towards the place where he had been touching to create a black ink marking of a circular set of kanji on his clothing appeared for a moment before seeming to fade away. Of course this was the first time the boy had tried out this manner of technique so he had no idea how long the timer on his seal would last, but he could at least use the soul as a filter for his power to have precise control over it for a time until he was forced to tie it into his own strength permanently.
With that being over the first order of business was to actually put what he had risked his body and clothing again to do. Closing his left eye he commanded his chakra to filter itself through the seal he had created and the bursting rays of light that had surrounded him slowly began to dim until a small golden aura outlined his form. The black shadows that had been engorging on the flames slowly began to return back into place, still keeping a small enough distance away from the boy to keep from touching him. When he reopened both eyes he began to start towards the door again, taking only a second to look back towards his mother one more time, seeing the brief twinkle of a purple light. His head nodded as if to answer someone and turned back towards his destination – revenge.

Tama exited the same way he had before by vaulting over the railing and back down to the ground. He landed with such silence that only the dirt on the cave floor drifted away from his feet. He was on Mikaboshi’s left, looking up at him with renewed confidence in his master and pride of his own ingenuity. A minute finished ticking off the seal and a slip of a memory entered Tama’s mind, showing him a number of times that the man had loved to consume an alcoholic beverage made from underground cacti grown in special greenhouses. It was a top shelf beverage that was hard to afford for a bar but the owner of a certain bar often bragged about being able to keep up on his supply of it; mostly because he charged way too much for it. The burning light of vengeance lit his eyes once again as he finally spoke,
“Forgive me of my earlier demands, I seem to be more self sufficient than I give myself credit for. If you wish to accompany me on my…‘good deed’ I promise to try to keep you entertained.”

Hoping that he had spoken well to the ancient being he turned away and started his way to go meet a man he mockingly called “Boris”.

 

[Mikaboshi]

As always, the unchanging face of Mikaboshi's mask revealed no answers to the unspoken questions that Tama had flying through his mind about the Ancient's involvement with his mother's murder. The Dark King simply continued to look upon his apprentice, his eyes smoldering behind the surface of that unblemished white visage but almost equally unreadable. It was true, even though Tama did not know it yet, that Mikaboshi's claws were beginning to sink into the hearts of the criminal element in Sunagakure. The reach of the ANBU Sennin was long and it's bite deep for those that chose to ignore the warning that had been sent to ground by him. The ultimatum which had been delivered to those living beneath the surface in the Obsidian Palace had also been sent out onto the street to make the point that no criminal, inside or out of the Palace, would be allowed to defy the Hand of the Steward. Many resisted. With the days of the soft-handed Hotaru too clear in their memories, they believed that they could continue as they always had. Things such as lack of proof and evidence would not stay the fangs of the Betrayer. His conscience was not weighed down with such petty things as guilt over the demise of innocent men for in the eyes of Mikaboshi "innocent men" was a concept at odds with itself. Mankind was not innocent nor were they deserving of his pity or mercy. Watching Tama arrive at the conclusion that Mikaboshi had set before him pleased the Ancient. Tama had only not realized his ability to hunt souls on his own because he had made foolish assumptions about his nature. As Tama ascended the stairs, so too did the shadow of his master-- parting the flames with his will as they did. The shadows bent and grappled the frozen flames away from Tama and Mikaboshi but did nothing to reduce the heat of the slavering immolation. Fire would always be hot and while Mikaboshi could restrict the growth of the flames, he could not change their nature with shadows alone.

In the moments of bursting light, the specter that followed behind Tama let a low hiss escape it's lips as it's true nature was revealed in the light. Scores of long sinuous black appendages hovered around Tama, erupting from the wraith's back as if they were the many legs of a terrible arachnid, each ending in horrifically long-fingered hands that were as white as bleached bone. The wraith's body likewise changed as the light touched it, melting away the vision of Mikaboshi's leather armor in favor of simply a form of black... skin? It would be impossible to tell with the nature of the shadow but simply looking upon it would give the distinctive impression that Mikaboshi's body was equal parts living darkness as it was "flesh". As the false-face of Mikaboshi's mask melted away in the piercing light that Tama's body exuded, his face became visible for the first time... or rather the lack there-of. Though his "face" retained a sense of bone structure beneath white-bleached taut skin, it retained no recognizable feature. Though the shadows receded at the light, it seemed only to draw in the grasping claws of Mikaboshi's hideous shadow that had following Tama into the room even though the young man seemed almost entirely unaware that the transformation was taking place around him. Then finally as the light faded, the shadow's reaching fingers disappeared back into the gloom that descended once more on the house and the shadow of Mikaboshi returned then to the appearance that all others knew the Dark One as. Looking up to the house as Tama leaped from it, Mikaboshi narrowed his eyes behind his mask thoughtfully. The element of the power that Tama had unleashed was distinctively in opposite alignment with that of Mikaboshi's own. He knew that from the sensation he had felt from his shadow coming into contact with the light even though he had not stood at ground zero himself.

"Forgive you? My young apprentice, you have already paid the price for your foolish assumption." Mikaboshi explained coolly. It was an allusion to the death of Tama's mother but did not insinuate one way or another if he'd been behind it but it wasn't a difficult jump in logic to make. Gesturing by unclasping his hands and outstretching his arm and hand to the street, Mikaboshi instructed Tama to lead on. "Walk on."

 

[Toraono Michino]

The time it took for Tama to reach his destination seemed shorter than it should have been. The entire process seemed like a short blur even though the boy had indeed done as his master instructed and simply walked there. The silversmith had tried to hail him but the call fell upon deaf ears as his mind went about predicting the violent scenarios to come. Now that he was here looking at the swinging doors of the bar he could feel a small cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. The boy was truly about to commit outright murder against another human being, something he hadn’t ever done though had seen plenty of in his life. His hands felt a little shaky as they reached up to touch the old wood of the doors and a small voice inside of him told him no, it’s wrong, but once he pushed them open and crossed the threshold it disappeared. These fools took away too much from him so it wasn’t vengeance that he was extracting from the criminals so much as it was hot justice he was planning to pour in their laps; at least it’s what he told himself to steel his nerves.

The bar keep looked up from cleaning a glass with a dirty cloth which in truth was doing nothing more that smearing whatever was on the rag into the cup. A mean grin on his face told Tama that he knew exactly what he had done though was probably unaware of the extent. With a slow walk that spoke of purpose the boy moved himself from the entrance to the barstool where he would take a seat and place his elbows on the counter and clasp his hands together before his face.
“Oh so quite now are you brat? Get yourself a well deserved beating didn’t you?”
“Faces. I want faces Boris,” Tama said after a moment of silence.
“What the hell are you talking about? Faces? You mean names right?”
“Names are impractical. They are a fancy word to make your tongue attempt to add something personal to a face that is otherwise marked for death, Boris.”

It took the bartender a second to register what madness the scientist was speaking of when it dawned on him that it had been weeks since Tama had actually called him by his real name. In a panic the man threw the glass at the child’s face and turned to run out the back door that would lead into the quite unused kitchen/apartment that he lived in.
The glass never reached Tama as the sudden view of cowardice in this man drew out his anger which in cause turned the holy energy inside of him active. A golden glow fused with the boy’s frame and his hand snapped up to catch the glass. The energy infused hand revealed a new power in the child as it read the alchemic make up of the cup and with a ‘twitch’ of his mind turned the glass into its purest form by outright destroying the molecular binding; sand was all that left the boy’s fingers.
The boy slammed his fist down on the counter causing the destructive energies to spread out down through the woodwork’s cracks and suddenly expand turning the bar into an explosion of wooden shrapnel. Tama slid off the edge of his seat and back into a standing position with a deathly calm and with the same calm walked back into where Boris had tried to escape.
A rather girly scream came from behind the wall lined with liquors and warm beers followed rather quickly by a fat man crashing through his merchandise and onto the floor. Glass embedded itself in the man’s skin as he tried to stand up shuddering before the sudden raw power of the student. He tried his hardest to make it to his feet but the sudden snap of a knee breaking kept that from happening as the youth’s foot crashed down on the bartender’s leg; ‘Boris’ screamed again as he rolled on his back to face the child.
“Faces, Boris, I want the faces of the men who came here. I want to know every last thing that you know about these men,” Tama said as his odd left eye focused down on the weeping bartender, “If you won’t tell me then I will find out. I will break, slowly, every last bone in your body until nothing remains of your body but a mess of blood and flesh. Then I will devour your soul and learn every last…oh wait. Yeah that would be faster.”
“W-what do you –“ the man tried to replied as nothing but sheer fear echoed through his pupils but was interrupted by a small hand clasping over his mouth.
The old fat man tried his hardest to pry away the child’s hand from his face as Tama poured burning holy energy into his mouth then at the last second caused it to expand; the result was extremely messy to say the least.
Yet it gave him the desired effects as a blue glowing light slowly began to lift away from the now headless body. With the ability to be able harvest souls now he didn’t even need to go through a lengthy interrogation, such things were but trivial to a man who could view the life burned into a soul he would devour. Using the same technique he had to take his first one Tama grasped the greasy looking soul of ‘Boris the Bartender’ and simply ate it as he had done the first, but instead of performing seals to trap it down and use it as a filter he simply assimilated into the holy energy that was flowing rather freely through his form.

Memories rushed into the child’s mind showing him the rather abusive childhood the bartender had endured. These memories showed the scientist nothing of what he was looking for as he could care not for how the man ended up to the grease ball he had become, he only care for what he knew. It didn’t take long to filter through the life of alcohol, abuse, awkward sex, and cheap living before he came upon today. Carefully Tama witnessed the faces of the men who had come to talk to Boris about the boy who worked for him, watched as at first the man had nothing to say but quickly gave up information when roughed up a bit. Those faces burned itself into his mind as the bartender’s last panicky memory of being killed by a child drifted away into nothing. The golden power around the boy became more oppressive for just a moment but he was able to tone it down by using the first harvested soul to up the filter a bit more to suppress it again.

“It seems we will be making our way down deeper into the “Back Streets” of Suna my lord. The scum have housed themselves in an abandoned warehouse as cliché as it is.” Tama said as he placed a hand on his forehead and taking a side step in weariness. He hadn’t used so much of his powers in one day before and it was starting to take a physical toll on the child’s body but he decided to ignore the weariness; there was justice to be served.
In truth the extensive use of the powers was doing something remarkable by aging his physical form. Already the boy had grown a few inches and his body seemed to become more lanky as it was beginning to go through mid puberty. He would discover this amazing price for using so much of an Ancient’s power after this affair was over, but for the time being all that burned in Tama’s mind were the faces of the men who killed his only family.

 

[Mikaboshi]

As they walked away from the building, Mikaboshi gestured behind him with his hand and the shadows strangled what remained of the life from the once large inferno. Though he said nothing to Tama of it, he enjoyed the act of squelching the flames more than most others would have because of his history with the Flame Court of the Old World. He did not even know if the Flame Court still existed as Homura had been significantly weakened by his battle with the human king Primus but even still. The act of thumbing his nose at one of the largest of the Ancient Courts brought pleasure to the dethroned Mikaboshi. Putting it behind him, the Hand allowed his physical form to slip partially into the ambient shadows of the street causing his form to fade from sight slightly and grow translucent. It was a technique that he had found useful in his days free from the Black Blade roaming the streets of Sunagakure. It was far from true invisibility which was much harder to maintain but it was significant enough to cause casual on-lookers to mostly overlook him entirely. Their eyes were adjusted to see only things that they were trying to see while attempting to peer through the darkness. Tama would be able to see him well enough still but that was mostly in part to the fact that Tama already knew he was there. People who were ignorant of his passing were more likely to simply ignore him entirely and go about their day. Soon the pair came upon a small bar and though a man attempted to get the attention of Tama, his notice quickly came to encompass the monstrous Mikaboshi that walked silently behind him and it seemed as if he decided better than to press into attempting to obtain Tama's attention.

The dramatic scene between Tama and the man that he'd called Boris played out with no intervention from Mikaboshi and strictly speaking even less interest for his part. He could not care less if this insect of a man lived or died and his pleads for mercy from Tama managed only to affect Mikaboshi in that they made him impatient for the man to die. Apes. Thought the hateful old shadow as he disdainfully observed Tama harvesting "Boris"'s soul. He did however note that Tama placed little to no value upon knowing someone's name. That was something he would have to correct, eventually. Names were powerful things in the world of spiritual magic. Knowing a being's name gave you a connection to it, even if it was a weak connection, that could be exploited for all manner of other uses. Humanity as a rule discounted so many things of the old world which had once given them power-- most notably being the concept of faith. It amused Mikaboshi to no end that so much of Man had discarded the idea of faith as power when it had been the concentrated faith of the First Men which had given the One King so much power. Power enough to battle beings that humanity once thought of as gods. Faith, names... things which were so ephemeral to humankind held great untapped power. A lesson for later, concluded Mikaboshi. Once more narrowing his eyes through the holy energy, Mikaboshi could feel the mortal shadows around his body being stripped away by the light leaving his will and the purest of dark to remain in it's stead-- the same cluster of long spider-like arms that had been outstretched from the wraith earlier. Once more consumed by the eating of a soul, Tama likely failed to even notice the hideous change in his master but with now his third human soul devoured, would Tama even care that he studied under a monster?

He was well on his way to becoming one himself, after all.

Watching with interest at the changes which wrought over Tama's body, Mikaboshi thought little of it. As he'd explained to Tama at the outset, human bodies were never meant to consume the souls of their own and as such performing acts like that would wreak strange and perhaps unpredictable consequences for him. If the least of which was that Tama lost a few years of his child-hood then he was ever fortunate. One of the young men that Mikaboshi had attempted to teach had lost himself rapidly to the Hunger and in accordance with his loss of mind he also lost his human shape as well becoming a monstrous beast in both heart and body. Finished at last with his second meal of the day, Tama turned to Mikaboshi and explained the findings of his butchery.

"You kill too quickly, my apprentice." Mikaboshi chided as he instructed for Tama to continue upon his course with a gesture. "In situations like this, you are not simply killing for revenge. You are killing to send a message to others that would come against you. This," Mikaboshi gestured to the corpse of "Boris" behind them, "sends no message at all. Your "Boris" could have been robbed. Or killed by government shinobi. Fear and theatricality are among your strongest weapons against weak-minded men that you would use as tools. My agents in this city serve me out of fear but not for their lives. Even the greatest fool knows that once their death is come their suffering is over. They serve me out of fear of the things I will do to them before I kill them. Ensure that your next kills are as much lessons to your foes as they are revenge for your mother."

 

[Toraono Michino]

It had finally come time to fine tune the child with the incredible power, though the lecture was far from what he had been expecting. When the master had said, “You kill too quickly,” the boy knew he was in for a beating for diving into the fight so deeply. It was his first kill in front of an adult and in all actuality his first real kill. People have died around Tama before, people have died because of him, but this was the first death that he himself had caused. The retrospect of the entire situation was actually extremely mind-shattering for the teenager as his quick adapting mind entered the next level of thinking mudded by the sudden rush of hormones that were lash backs of the sudden aging process the child was being forced through.
The next paragraph of words that came out of his master’s mouth just seemed to take that mental chaos and set it in order. Finally there was the lesson, what he needed to do to become stronger, the wisdom of an ancient being passed down unto a mortal. The boy lived for the pursuit of knowledge, and to be given by a creature that had seen the complete uprising of man? There could be none better.
Tama nodded slowly as the creature spoke, taking in and burning into his soul every last word Mikaboshi said.
“Yes my lord. The fury of my vengeance blinded me but for a moment. I promise it shall be carried out…painfully, from now on. So,” he said as he wiped the blood from his face a little, “I do believe I shall carry on. Damn, but do my feet hurt!” the sudden teenager complained to no one really when his over-grown feet stood up into boots that were far too small for him; he doubted that the creature of death and shadows that tutored him really cared. Of course upon seeing his master’s true form a moment of fear went through his body and shocked his very soul, but then again even the hardiest of warriors would of felt the same sting. Tama was just glad that thing saw it fit to teach him rather than devour him and that it was on, at least in some small level, his side. Without wasting any more time in the bar the boy took the information he had absorbed and slowly made his way out of the bar and onwards to the next target.

What Tama had right now in his head was faces and the general knowledge from the bartender that they ran their operation out of a warehouse deep in the darker depths of Sunagakure’s streets. It was originally set up as a massive storage unit but quickly degraded into a ghetto for the homeless and runaways of their society. It was such a dark and terrible part of the society that most of the people who lived closer to the Maw often pretended it didn’t exist; which was true in a way. The Gullet and its residents very rarely interacted with those closer to the top, at least up until recently. For a reasons unknown the thieves and groups of rebellious adolescences began to become more violent and bold in their targets. No doubt this was causing a bit of uproar with the citizens towards the policing faction and was probably why Mikaboshi was accompanying Tama on a task that should have been trivial for a being of such age.
Perhaps he was just bored enough to watch a creature wreak their vengeance.
The youth didn’t care either way. If he was to be a tool for settling the dispute between mouth and bowel then so be it.
Tama’s eyes scanned the dark streets with his lone left eye, watching through his enhance pupil the full clarity of what little light there was had to offer. There were a few rare faces that moved in and out of the mostly empty streets as he lead the shadow deeper into the Gullet towards the long unlit alleys leading back towards the warehouses and where a great deal of this population lived. Of course the pained-foot teenager didn’t make it down far before one of those random faces accosted him.
The Ryuu could feel the cold sting of the blade break into his skin and in pure response the youth gripped the wrist with his right hand and twisted with a sudden burst of energy. A nasty crack echoed into the streets followed by a scream of pain and terror.

A lone man on the balcony above the teenager and his shadowy master watched in mild interest as he sipped on a cup of warm tea. He wore what appeared to be rather fine clothing for a resident of this area but it had all the dirt and stains one would have when associated with the Gullet. With a raise of his left hand and a couple of finger snaps three more enemies joined the mugger all in a simultaneous attack.
A blinding golden light exploded from Tama as he ripped away the knife from his mugger and set in on the temporarily stunned goons that had been summoned from the darkness. The creeper above chuckled in mild amusement as the boy tore into the three attackers like a wolf into lambs. The rumors had been true after all, a boy that could wield the power of the Ancients. Of course they had not been entirely true since the boy was now a teenager but the stranger was witnessing the golden aura of one of Ryuu’s greatest heroes. With a satisfied smile he pushed himself off the wall he had been leaning on and quietly made his progress back around to the staircase where he would, instead of walk down like a normal person, leap over it and float down. When he touched ground he lifted his hands up to the air and chanted something in a long forgotten dialect before touching the air before him with his right index finger. As if poking the very dimension itself the air around his finger seemed to oddly bend around it, and with a quick jerk turned the punctured air into a great maw that closed down on the man as if eating him then completely vanishing. The wave of energy it gave of nudged Tama briefly but he ignored that as he continued on with his current task.

Beaten, wounded, but not dead the mugger and his three assassin friends all laid around in the street around the boy moaning defeat. Carefully he walked towards each one, grabbed a piece of clothing, and dragged them out of the ‘open’ street and back into a deeper alley where he wouldn’t be seen. He lined them all up one by one against the wall, at least the best he could with broken men, only with the lone exception of the last attacker as a man he recognized from the bartender’s soul. That man had his arms and knees broken and sat up on a box with his back against the wall. An adrenaline solution that the boy had been carrying around just waiting for the chance to use it had been injected into his chest with the needle embedded there. With a deathly slow walk Tama approached the man and spoken in a simple, firm, tone,
“I will give you four chances to tell me the location of the Red Influence headquarters. For every time you lie to me I will remove an organ from one of these men here and force feed it to you,” the teenager placed a golden hand against the muggers chest and spoke calmly, “Where is it?”
[Sorry this took so long Mikaboshi. D:]

 

[Mikaboshi]

[No worries! But this gentleman? The one with the tea? I didn't say he could leave yet! : D ]

With the noise of the snaps from the observing tea-drinking man, Mikaboshi's gaze was drawn to him. This man was in charge to some level. His minions did not simply respond to his commands, they responded to demeaning commands from him. He ordered them like one might do so a trained dog rather than a human being. Grinning slightly behind his mask, Mikaboshi decided that he liked this man to some level. With Tama distracted by the on-coming assassins, Mikaboshi's form faded backwards into the darkness, turning translucent and then disappearing entirely as he stalked into the shadows and followed the tea-drinking man as he left the scene from where he leaned against the wall. The darkness oozed out of the building from where he floated from and as the man landed soundlessly on the ground and began to chant, the corporeal form of Mikaboshi began to slither out of the ambient gloom around him. His words of ancient power would have summoned a rift in space allowing him to disappear without a trace if he'd been left unmolested but Mikaboshi was hardly in the mood for simply letting the man get on with his business. He had watched Tama brutally kill one man and had briefly observed his apprentice kill another.

He was hungry.

Lifting his hand as the unknown sorcerer before him summoned the rift, Mikaboshi crooked his fingers into a claw-like motion and then rapidly closed them into a fist causing shadow energy drawn from the space around them to crush in on spiritual matrix of the man's spell. The rippling effect disjointed itself and as the fangs of the spectral maw appeared they melted away just as quickly as Mikaboshi threw a proverbial wrench into the man's spellwork. Spellwork was a funny thing like that. Even the most powerful of sorcerers or shinobi could have otherwise elegant spellcasting ruined by the influence of another. All it took was a swift or sharp enough injection of foreign energy into a spell to muck with it's purpose and cause it to fall apart. Mikaboshi had no idea how much power the nameless man before him-- in fact he really didn't even know if he was a man --possessed and was not eager to attempt a tug of war with his will just yet. Not without getting a measure of him, first. It was so much simpler to simply destroy the framework of his spell and keep him from leaving than it was to attempt to hijack the spell as he would have with a known lesser sorcerer.

"You were quick to exit the stage without introducing yourself." Mikaboshi whispered, his raspy voice carrying through the blackness with complete clarity despite it's low volume. "Rudeness is something I've come to expect from your kind but I'll not suffer it this time. Turn and face me."

He issued commands as if he were in control of the situation. He was, after all the ANBU Sennin and the Hand of the Steward to say nothing of his status as the once king of this domain. Mikaboshi was among the strongest of spell-weavers in the Wind Country and had little reason to believe that just because this man knew words that were beyond him that he was still not inferior to the former Ancient of Deep and Shadow. Casually clasping his hands behind his back as he had become known for doing, Mikaboshi's body language spoke volumes about how at ease with the situation he was. Even if the man before him turned and did not recognize the mask which had slowly started to become something that was the fare of sleepless nights and deep nightmares for many of Sunagakure's citizens, he would likely know by the way that Mikaboshi stood that the Ancient thought nothing of his situation and surely held no fear of the man before him. Absent-mindedly, Mikaboshi wondered how Tama fared against the assassins that the tea-drinking man had sent against him but decided quickly to put it out of his mind. If Tama survived, excellent. If not, there were other things that Mikaboshi had to occupy his free time with.

 

[Toraono Michino]

When the portal closed in front of the mysterious stranger the most curious thing occurred; his smirk turned into a grin.
Of course he had felt Mikaboshi’s presence and had hoped against all hope that the Ancient would make a move against him if he felt his power echoing but never expected anything to come of it, the man simply assumed that the shadowy creature was more focused on turning the child into a real killer. A man could kill another man with the swiftest acts of vengeance, but the old creature was tutoring Tama in the proper manor that had the man retained his sanity would of tried to put a stop to.

After all, Tama was his son.

The dirty man slowly turned towards the creature questioning of his manners and then committing an act of rudeness himself by daring to compare the man to humans. The very thought irked him a little as he slowly turned towards the shadow, a strange electrical current slowly running up his nice clothes to push the dirt and grime off his clothing and make it look dry-cleaned. He reached up towards his head to remove a fancy looking hat that would let loose a wave of messy white hair in the same color tone as his son’s then tossed it aside as if trash.
“Why, I’m a creature not too far from yourself in a manner of speaking,” the man responded, “Far from that of a human though. I only retain this shape because It chooses to keep me in this form to torment the remainder of the clan that kept It sealed away for so long in that lonely icy cave. My name is Ryuu Tengokai, Last Chief of the Ryuu Clan, its destroyer, and the current wielder of the Blade of Ash</B><i></i>.”

The talking was done; it was time to speak in action. With a quick jerk of his arm Teng reached up into the air and grasped it, pulling once more at what seemed like the very dimension itself but instead of creating something in which to escape through he jerked from space itself the weapon that has been known to bring about the apocalypse of the entire world three different times in history. It was black, blacker than anything should be, and the guard was in the shape of a multi-armed dark goddess of chaos. A strange suffocating power flowed into the air from it creating a feeling of doubt and doom as if being in the very presence of the weapon sucked out all feeling of hope and it would quickly began to spread throughout all of Sunagakure the longer it remained in this dimension. Teng raised the weapon up above his head and with a simple swing brought about a spell of powerful darkness without even so much as an incantation and aimed it at the creature to test just how much control he had over that element.
“<B>Manipulation is such an easy thing when you don’t need to even speak to cast spells…even if you manage to drive me away, shadow, I cannot be killed and the criminals of this village will rise up to destroy everything, it is what I have commanded them…”

Tama was using the cleanest part of one of the men’s shirt to wipe the blood from his hands. He would have to give the man he recognized credit for being a stalwart, but after eating two livers, bits of intestine, and a heart he finally broke in both sanity and his tied tongue. The boy put him out of his misery after carefully explaining to him that this never would have happened if happened if they had simply stayed in their little corner of the world and promised that it would be the last time his soul ever made the mistake of existing.
Tama watched as the souls slowly began to escape in panic from their corporal forms and hover before him in a glorious warming light that tested the strange appetite that was growing more and more. It was a hunger that the mortal had to force himself to fight in knowing that there could be no good thing in absorbing so many souls in a day despite how strong they made him. The scientific thought process that ruled the teenager’s life warned him that too much of a good thing always had a drawback no matter what. In the creation of his ring he had to survive explosion after explosion as he learned that the strange unnatural holy powers he wielded laced his very life source and it was quite volatile. Instead he decided to be a good apprentice to offer the souls of these tormented men to his master incase he wished to feast while decided to make a promise to share the spoils of the warehouse when they reached its location, but when he turned he found that the shadowy figure was nowhere in sight.

It was a curious thing for his master to simply disappear like that but he probably had some business to attend to and decided to leave Tama to his own devices having felt that he had molded him enough for the day. Looking at the souls again with a hunger he decided then that just one more before the battle with the bandits in the warehouse would do him good when he felt that pressure darkness of Ash. The memory of his birth triggered and he felt the sting of evil twist his body again as he had when he was but a newborn. This was the thing that had destroyed his clan and forced him and his mother to wonder the world in the search of a home that would keep them…this was the thing that had drove them here. A spark of unspeakable fury raged deep inside Tama’s soul and without even deciding how to handle this situation his feet decided for him and took him in a sprint towards the evil.

 

[Mikaboshi]

Mikaboshi said nothing at first in response to Teng's likening of them as similar. He claimed that he was the wielder of the Blade of Ash, a weapon not unlike the Black Blade-- a sword of concentrated hate and power that had been passed down throughout the centuries. Even during his time as Ancient of Deep and Shadow, Mikaboshi had been aware of the Blade of Ash. Possessed of his own Ancient-forged runeblade, Mikaboshi had never sought out it's power as he'd viewed it as beneath him. Having never known a fool thick enough to attempt to conquer a weapon which was said to drive it's master insane with hate, Mikaboshi could only guess at the weapon's power. At the height of his own strength, the Ancient would have squashed Teng like the flea he was and taken the sword from him like an adult taking a toy away a child which they would inevitably hurt themselves with but things were different now. He no longer wielded immortal power and with his strength so atrophied, Mikaboshi considered tactical withdrawal. But for all his pragmatism, this revenant had claimed that they were similar. He spoke of his human names with a tone that was intended to impress the Ancient. Was he supposed to fear the name Ryuu? Or even know it? It was a human name after all. But the most important part...

He had insinuated that they were equals. Immortal or no, Mikaboshi could not simply allow such a claim to stand. Disgraced and imprisoned. Shackled to the will of a human being. But for all that he had lost, Mikaboshi still had his pride.He was an Ancient Lord. Even if the being standing before him were an Ancient as well, Mikaboshi would have considered himself above such a being. The world had changed even more than he'd thought since his imprisonment, he decided, if otherworldly beings could not simply recognize their betters. And so it was time for an abject lesson in humility. Watching as Teng "drew" the Blade of Ash from the air itself, Mikaboshi felt a rush of energy surround the other being not unlike the ambiance of the Obsidian Palace. It was a draining presence that weighed heavily on the souls of those around it, instilling them with dread and despair even as it pulled at their very life energy. Letting ravenous wave wash over him, the dead lips of Mikaboshi's fleshy coffin of a body curled up into a smirk behind his mask. He wondered absently if Teng knew that because of his heritage, his "chakra" as they called it could not be wrested from him. His power came not just from his spirit in the way that chakra did from a human's soul but also from the shadows around him and from the world itself. His mortal form could tire from wielding that energy as it was not a native thing to this sort of flesh and steel golem but the energy that Mikaboshi wielded could never be taken from him against his will.

Unleashing a blast of unhallowed power at Mikaboshi, it appeared as if Teng wished to add some form of poetry to his insult by wielding the power of Mikaboshi's preference against him. With almost an inaudible snarl, Mikaboshi decided that he hated Teng just a little bit more for his presumption. The fool really believed that they were not only similar but equals. Staring into the on-rushing abyss of Teng's dark spell, Mikaboshi once more sent out his invisible will and hijacked the purpose of the spell. Blade of Ash or no, this spell was of darkness. And darkness belonged to Mikaboshi. Stopping in mid-air, the spell seemed to fold in on itself for a moment as it struggled to continue seeking out the Betrayer but it's resistance lasted for only the duration of a blink before the mass of hungry shadows which the spell had coalesced into froze in place where it was in the air. Still making no move, Mikaboshi continued to stare at Teng as the mass of elemental energy hung in the air suspended by Mikaboshi's will.

"You? Like I? Nay." Responded the Ancient at last, his eyes flashing behind his mask becoming golden candles in the shadows that writhed like serpents around his body. Behind him, small points of burning gold light began to wink into existence which mirrored the burning embers of his eyes. If Teng could see through the mass of darkness, he would see the motes of light were attached to small bobbing heads and gaping jaws which were beginning to appear out of Mikaboshi's shadow. "Allow me to educate you. You are a child to me. Possessed and driven mad by a power beyond your ken but a child none the less. Even temporarily deposed of my throne, you will kneel to me before the end."

And with that, Mikaboshi inclined his gaze up towards the shivering mass of shadowy chakra that he had commandeered from Teng causing it to freeze perfectly still for a moment before exploding outwards into several ribbons of dark energy that immediately began to reach towards Teng with the intent to constrict and tear him apart just as they had towards Mikaboshi only moments before.

 

[Toraono Michino]

Teng watched Mikaboshi’s counter in a fascination that was so much like his son’s it seemed creepy.

Sheer madness screeched from the blade as it’s attack of shadows was held suspended by a master of the element in shadow. The man knew of the Shadow Lord’s power from the knowledge stored within the weapon he wielded and wasn’t surprised at all when the creature began to flaunt but a fraction of that old strength. He couldn’t help but feel a bit of disappointment when the screaming blade told him that this wasn’t the creature’s full strength either and the look was planted firmly on Teng’s face. He watched in almost boredom as the shadows plunged back in after him, grasping after his limbs and biting into the flesh of his mortal shell before slowly pulling him apart in a gory scene of blood and guts.

Yet the blade remained hovering in the air, long after the hand gripping it had been torn to shreds by the strength of a true controller of the shadow element; though it had stopped screaming. The weapon just seemed to float there maliciously as it waited for the shadows to recede back into their natural form before slowly dripping down and tapping the pool of gore with the tip of its blade. The mess was all pulled back together and formed into a giant ball of thick blood that floated there but for a moment before a pale white hand shoved itself from the red orb and grasped the hilt of the weapon once again. The orb reformed itself into a humanoid shape as a black current of electricity began to race from the arm across the body to fully add flesh and clothing in seconds. Tengokai, torn to shreds and reborn before the shadow lord rolled his wrist around and popped his neck in that cocky manner that Tama had managed to inherit,
“A bit more control than I was expecting over an attack sent out by It, but I suppose that’s what to be expected from an Ancient Lord, but please don’t try to bore me with tearing my body apart. I’m sure you have much more unique ways of killing a man…and I want to know them all.”
Teng swung the weapon before him in an “X” pattern creating divots in the ground before him in that pattern before tapping the center with his foot. The “X” exploded with pure non-elemental energy that was sent in Mikaboshi’s direction with a quick switch of Teng’s right and left feet.
Using the energy attack as a distraction he listened as the sword whispered to him tid-bits the previous owners had known of the Ancient Lord and what attacks to use to really piss him off. With a hop out to the right he swung the blade in an upwards arc once again causing a sudden blast of heat and fire to come rushing at the shadowy ancient behind the pure energy, then erupted his body into a mass of flames to disguise his approach into a melee range attack with Ash itself. To be struck with the blade’s power is said to be extremely overwhelming, to be struck with the edge spelled instant defeat nigh instantly for almost any creature.

Of course it mattered little how strong Mikaboshi was or how much he’d be able to overpower Tengokai. The longer the Blade of Ash existed in this realm with the constant use of energy surrounding it, the closer to a calamity the people of Sunagakure would be nearing. The stronger the energies of the six elements around it grew the strong the weapon was able to become and suffuse into its owner, which also brought the creature that created the weapon closer and closer to being able to shatter the barrier between its hellish realm and that of the mortals. There was actually a pulsing madness from the blade that told of this to anyone within the area who had the perceptions of such things; Tama was one of them.
The boy rushed through the alley and used the chakra in his body to amplify his jumping ability and cleared an entire building to land on its roof to give him a vision of the battle he could feel make his soul quake. When he landed his eyes were instantly drawn to the massive amount of shadows, blood, energy, and then fire that was tearing apart a run-down part of the city. His heart raced when he closed his blue eye and focused the energy into his green to activate the ability of his eye that would grant him a stronger vision. The world became sharper in seconds and almost gave him the ability to see further than most humans were capable of, and it was just enough to catch the vision of the white-haired warrior that was doing battle with his master.
His heart seemed to freeze in his chest as Tama recognized the features of an older version of himself and instantly knew that this was his father. How did he get here? He was supposed to of been left to die in a frozen tundra to pay for his crimes for destroying the Ryuu Clan. The frozen heart began to beat once again as fury pulsed into his veins. This was the man who had been in part of his creation and near destruction and anger made him want to join the fight but an unknown fear was gripping his heart. He couldn’t fathom being able to compete with the explosive amounts of power that were being wielded with such ease…

 

[Mikaboshi]

Watching with interest as the blade began to regenerate Teng's physical body, Mikaboshi's head rolled to the side slightly. Truth be told, he had not expected the kill to be so easy when he'd reflected the chakra-based assault and as such had not trusted the outcome of that attack to any degree. In battles such as theirs, it was only too easy to create scenarios of potential weakness in order to launch some form of surprise attack. As such when the ribbons of blackness had eviscerated Teng's body into bloody scraps, Mikaboshi had prepared himself for the inevitable counter-attack that would come... though even he had to admit that he had expected something different than Teng being resurrected by the power of the Blade of Ash. Watching the blood run up from the ground and be molded back into a humanoid shape, Mikaboshi decided it would be useless to continually go for a killing stroke. If the Blade of Ash had the power to resurrect Teng independently once, it would have the power to do so again and with a weapon as powerful as it was it was a safe bet to assume that it could continue doing it for as long as it required Teng's physical form to serve as it's vessel. Scowling as Teng scribbled an X into the ground and cast an energy burst in his direction that shared that shape, Mikaboshi raised his hand and the darkness pooled just before his fingertips creating a thin barrier of power that could almost have been mistaken for a sheet of silk with it's slight transparency. The shield was sufficient enough to stop the power of the non-elemental attack but the flames that followed behind it shredded through the barrier and blasted into the Ancient sending him skidding backwards from where he'd been standing.

Flames.

Reeling from the burning power of Teng's attack, Mikaboshi's body quivered for a moment as Teng approached with his blade and slashed at the shadowy Ancient. The Blade of Ash bit deeply into the shoulder of Mikaboshi's body and slashed easily through it... too easily. In that moment the golden light of Mikaboshi's eyes winked out and the entirety of his body turned entirely black before exploding into a flock of black birds, each bearing the same sextuplet sets of eyes that the hissing jaws of shadows which surrounded the battlefield wore upon their visages. The birds disappeared quickly into the gloom of the cavern leaving Teng seemingly alone but for the still looming presence of Mikaboshi. It was clear that he was not gone; not yet. But neither was he invisible. The shadows did their best to hide their master from his opponent, wrapping him within their dark embrace and masking his physical presence.

"I believe I am finished with you now, Tengokai of the Ryuu Clan. You had my curiosity at first to see what you were capable of but you aren't worth even that. Your sword is where your power comes from and you would be worthless without it." Explained the voice of Mikaboshi, coming from each of the gibbering fangs that belonged to the various twisting tentacled mouths before they all began to lash out at him, biting and gnashing with their razor-sharp fangs. Of course, the teeth weren't real. Not in typical sense. The teeth of his shadowy apparitions could not harm the flesh of those that they bit into but any seized by them would be held in place, anchored by their very soul as the hungering maws tore away at the victim's spirit power.

If any of the mouths managed to bite into Teng and seize him fast as they intended to do, they would force him to his knees as they did any who they grabbed-- an effect perfected by Mikaboshi if only to add insult to injury against those that he battled. Only then, if Teng were grabbed and forced to kneel by the gnashing teeth of his apparitions would Mikaboshi intentionally reveal himself once more, materializing out of the shades themselves with those eyes of his blazing through the dark and his hands once more clasped behind his back. Though it may not have seemed so at first in the darkness, Mikaboshi's armor was significantly burned in various places with pieces of it's leather fused together and charred black from his close encounter with the flames. His mask, being made of dutifully resilient material, was naturally unharmed but the hood that helped serve to mask his indentity was burned around the edges and still smoldered with a few cinders hanging on. "You see, I happen to know a great deal about artifact possession, being that I am intimate with a living artifact myself. Resurrecting your physical body is quite easy for a weapon such as the Blade of Ash. But your spirit? Your soul? That piece of you that exists in there still which makes your decisions and guides your actions? That... well. It cannot recreate that. Nothing can, in fact. It is why truly resurrecting the dead is impossible. Soul energy, once expended, cannot be recovered."

[The last paragraph is obviously conditional based on whether or not Teng is bitten by any of the mouths.]

 

[Toraono Michino]

Tama watched from his higher ground as his master was pressed in battle to fight the man he assumed was his father. The boy’s mother never spoke much of him save that he was a master of the lightning element and had the Hero’s Blood pumping through his veins. So far he hadn’t seen a single use of the electrical talent that his insane father had supposedly been known for but could tell that the white hair man below was a foe to be reckoned with. Tama’s hand gripped the sides of his pants as he watched on anxiously.

Teng let out a joyful hoot as his fire and blade pierced the opponent’s defense but was unable to revel in it for long as the shadowy creature disappeared and reformed behind him to induct yet another attack while speaking a threat that caused a serious expression to cross the man’s brow. The warrior assumed a defensive stance as the fanged shadows grasped at his limbs, each being swatted away almost playfully with the blade until one of the creature-esk attacks managed to latch onto his ankle. Nearly instantly Teng dropped down on one knee as he felt the very lining of his soul tear away from his body a little. The world began to become suddenly very cold and death loomed down the alley away from him revealing the ultimate weakness of the Blade of Ash; or at least what normally would be for a weapon of that make.
The blade detached itself from the warrior’s hand to hover close to the grasped limb and swung in an arc to remove the limb in a spray of blood and pain as it cut the very soul itself. Of course the Teng screamed from the utter cold pain that was having one’s soul cut away and fell back as his hands went to clutch the sudden bloody stump. That piece of Teng, that small piece of soul would be all that Mikaboshi would be feasting on tonight as the weapon also pierced itself into the wound and began to glow a terrible black.
Energy began to reveal itself in the air only to be sucked into that terrible darkness turning the blade into a liquid form that wrapped itself around the wound. As if on que Teng smirked and raised up his stump into the air to allow it to slowly spread down leg and onwards down so that the black inky substance began to wrap itself around his entire body. A piece of his soul was cut away from his body, meaning that in time the creature that controlled him would be able to open a way up through that missing piece of his vessel. The black humanoid form on the ground that seemed to be grinning as if he won began to quickly sink itself into the cave floor, defying the very laws of this dimension to make an emergency escape. Only a simple word was left to the denizens of the deep,
“Soon…”

As cliché as it was.

The feeling of utter dread and terrible apocalyptic panic quickly faded away from the area, lifting a weight off his shoulders as Tama tried to collect himself. Being a witness to the great powers of two terrible beings was enough to loosen the bowels of any man and being that he was mortal Tama had felt that shake of his soul.
Slowly the boy began to make his descent from the roof to the location of his master unsure to how his real condition was after such a battle. Perhaps it was easy for the shadow to face off against Teng, but to Tama, a mere child to true battle, it looked equal. His hurried footsteps carried him across the street to stand before Mikaboshi, looking up into the hollow looking mask with human concern.

{Sorry this took me so long. Being an adult sucks, long story short.}

 

[Mikaboshi]

[No worries mate. It happens to everyone.]

Even as the Blade of Ash maneuvered to slice Teng's limb that the biting fangs of Mikaboshi's vampiric aura were gnashing into, Mikaboshi silently watched in interest. Supported by the power of the Blade of Ash, Teng was too powerful to simply destroy outright. He needed to be spiritually bled out if Mikaboshi were going to truly defeat him. He could destroy Teng's physical body again and again and likely gain no real distance against him. Even if he destroyed Teng again it would only interfere with the process of consuming his spirit. Despite common lore to the opposite, souls possessed logical natures in many ways. Namely speaking, the connection that any given soul possessed to their physical vessel was one that could be measured by the strength of that spirit. If a being's spirit was particularly powerful or willful, removing the soul could be challenging or even in some cases-- as was the case Mikaboshi's spirit energy --impossible. In Teng's case, his body held together only because of his soul and the power of the Blade of Ash. Not unlike any other muscle in the body, putting a soul under constant stress was a method of strengthening it and that principle had made Tengokai's soul very durable. But as durable as it was, the Blade of Ash tore through both spirit and flesh as it freed Teng from Mikaboshi's grasp and then absconded with him through reality itself. Mikaboshi could have very potentially interfered with that transportation just as he had the first time Teng had attempted it but he had no reason to do so. He'd shown some of his hand already to Teng by forcing him to retreat but more importantly had made his point. He would take no disrespect from a mortal that played at being something more than his station allowed.

With Teng removed from the equation, Mikaboshi stopped to assess the damage he'd taken from the battle. His armor had taken the brunt of the fiery blast that Teng had sent at him but he'd still managed to procure a few rather serious burns for his body. Unlike the average human being however being burned was not something that bothered the Ancient much. It was not a wound which affected his capacity to fight much and though it was unpleasant Mikaboshi was not unaccustomed to pain. Having already had a physical form destroyed by Fuujin and his spiritual form painfully sealed within the steel of a sword, pain was a constant partner of Mikaboshi's throughout the years. Lifting a hand to brush at the still smoldering embers that clung to his armor and hood, Mikaboshi turned his attention to Tama as the young man arrived on the scene with a look of concern on his face. Distantly Mikaboshi wondered how much of the battle with his father Tama had witnessed but quickly decided it was unimportant what the boy knew about his father's fate. It did however strike him as interesting that Teng had referred to himself as the last of the Ryuu Clan. It could mean several different things in relation to what he knew about Tama but it was too early to arrive at a conclusion just yet. He simply didn't have enough information and making a conclusion based off of a single nugget of information was bad policy.

"Your expression speaks of concern. It is unwarranted. My opponent, though powerful, was out of his depth with me. I have sufficiently corrected his misjudgment." Mikaboshi replied casually as he flicked the last of the burning embers from the ruined and fused remains of his leather coat. He would need to have Sousuke engineer a new one. "Have you accomplished what you came for here?"

 

[Toraono Michino]

“Aye, that I have,” Tama said as his concern for the master of his powers was unwarranted. The very power that had roared through the darker parts of the cavern had given the boy a bit of a constant shake as his soul tried to align itself back in tune with the mortal realm. It appeared that being around Tengokai’s very presence had an ill-effect on the boy, as if the very aura that was cast off of his father weakened his very being. The child’s face was far paler than it should be but determined not to let this insane day get the best of him the scientist turned his gaze away from the master’s mask to look down an ally to their far right. He raised his hand and pointed out down the way,
“It was revealed to me that the clan of bastards hide themselves in a warehouse down this alley. I suspect we will be met with some resistance but I don’t believe it to be of too much concern…to you anyways.”

So here was his first real mission. It was something of a revelation to the boy as he stalked down the allyway towards the “abandoned” warehouse in search of his mother’s murderers. His body was pushed against the wall as he inched towards the end of the concrete wall and poked his head around the corner to take a quick sweep of the area with his bi-colored eyes.
The area before the master and student was swarmed with the enemy and they weren’t as rag-tag as those that were killed before these men lead the child to believe. Patrols kept constant surveillance of the area as men equipped with rather new looking equipment paced back and forth while windows had been opened on the upper levels giving the enemy a rather wide view of anything coming to attack.
With an intellectual mind that had been gifted to the boy he could tell that this was far more refined than any street gang had the right to be, there was something deeper to this. Of course really any person with a bit of training could tell that this was a military base of some sorts and that there was a rebellion on the hands of the cave dwelling people.

So two good things would come of their destruction it seemed.

Tama was only worried about one of those things but reason over-road vengeance and told it him it wouldn’t be a bad idea to leave a few of them alive. Despite reason the child was still planning on killing most of them as ruthlessly as possible and the very idea of someone who had just aged into their teen years within the past hour would go forth and lay waste to entire base by themselves, but here was the amazing scientist working on a strategy in his head to overcome the enemy.
With a few theories rotating around the boy decided to make his first move by pulling off his shirt, grabbing a trash can lid, and buffing the hell out of the interior until it had become reflective. Setting the trashcan lid in front of him he moved into the center of the alley and rolled the lid back and forth a few time before giving it a mighty heave into the middle of the guard patrols. As soon as the lid was rolling its way into battle Tama placed his hands in a reverse seal below his stomach and focused the energies of his chakra coil up into his left eye. By doing this he opened up a little the connection between his mortal body and the ancient in another realm so that the true holy energy could bleed through and activate the latent powers in his blood.
A gaudy explosion of light created cracks in the walls that made the alleyway turning the attention of the mercs to watch in confusion as a boy walked out of the ally appearing completely normal save the strange markings that now surrounded his left eye. Calmly Tama walked up and then past the bandits towards where the trashcan lid was swirling around in a circle in the attempt to stop the momentum Tama sent it out with. His right hand reached out and grasped the lid and lifted it slightly off the ground. This action was met with the guards all turning towards the boy while slowly drawing weapons and inching closer. It was apparent that they were stunned by the sight of a shirtless child to simply walk up amongst them to retrieve a lid, but it was also apparent they had orders to kill anyone who intruded as not a single man stood down.
A smirk lifted the left of Tama’s face as he tossed the lid in the air waiting for the reflective side to face down towards them. Raising his left hand up with two of his fingers pointed at the lid like a gun he shot out a bolt of his holy energy to shine so brightly off the reflective part of the lid that it created a miniature sun inside the cavern for a few seconds. Beams of extremly bright light shined down to blind the entire outside camp of guards before Tama took on his next attack which was in the likeness of his master.
Mikaboshi had an ability due to such powerful elemental control he could become that element and move between them. The idea itself seemed entirely profound but it wasn’t going to stop the genius from attempting something close to it. In the few seconds that the mini-sun blinded his opponents Tama used his unwieldly chakra to further force open that gate built in his eye until the holy power in his blood synergized with his energy-makeup. In a single second Tama was the light and to anyone with the ability to watch the shiny event unfold it would make the boy appear at every single location the light touched at once. With the simple push of his hand forward as if in a strike the light went from a vertical shine to a sudden horizontal flash that tore through the flesh of the men there like…well, lasers. There was no blood, just a courtyard full of men mostly cut in half with their wounds cauterized so that they suffered rather the attack brought instant death or slow; hell some might have even survived if they were so lucky enough to do so. However those that screamed in the sudden shock of losing a limb began to run towards the alley in which Tama had come from like fools – for that was where the mastered watched his pupil when last he looked. The boy himself had been transported from the grounds up into one of those open windows as a glowing wraith of holy vengeance. His form vanished from sight as he stalked his way inside but not the light that his body was glowing from.

Screams of pain and anguish followed sudden bursts of light that flashed out of cracks in the building as Tama made his way through the forces inside. The building itself seemed to shudder with the extreme amounts of raw power that ravaged through the warehouse as the boy tore into his full vengeance, annihilating every last single man and woman that resided there rather they be foe or refugee – nothing escaped him.
In a matter of minutes the boy walked out of the entrance of the building calmly as he held before him a glowing red soul of what he had assumed was the leader here since he was the most well guarded. Walking into the middle of the courtyard the boy drew into the dirt a holding seal that activated when he placed the glowing red soul inside of the circle. He then closed his left eye and forced his body to shut down everything lest he be completely devoured by the holy energy that raged through him. The radiant light that had shined off of him completely blinked out of existence leaving an unwounded teenager before the destruction behind him that dropped to the ground out of pure exhaustion from both a mix of sudden starvation and dehydration as the energies had literally forced his body to go through such a sudden aging process. He looked nearly skeletal compared to what he had when this day had begun and paler than any living being had the right to be.

“A soul…for you my master…the richest of them all…” were his last words before his mind completely shut down unable to hold his body conscious any longer.

[Topic Left – Not sure if I’m back from inactivity but I really wanted to finish this thread. *_*]