New Arrivals

[Niro]

Sai's 'sermon' at the inn in Aroma Country was his first success at coming away from the performance with another believer, whether it was fledgling or an enthrallment like his own. The Toukai and the Nara, Daisuke, had vanished beneath the cover of night and the aid of multiple horrible thunderstorms sweeping through the dense foliage making up Aroma Country. The woods were nearly flooded but the pair trudged through the mud and roots as they made their way south and away from the village containing the mangled and twisted bodies of Sai's audience. Aroma Country soon turned into Wind Country and the climate seemed to mock them even further. While Sai had lamented the density of the flora and fauna in Aroma, traveling through Wind made him regret the thought. They had tried to travel through it for several days before giving up after being attacked by a gigantic lizard and forced to cross the border into the Heart Empire.

The pair slept in shifts during the day in trees and abandoned homes or shacks while traveling at night to avoid the patrols throughout the country. More than once did Sai or Dai have to wake the other up and the pair flee from their temporary base as samurai caught a whiff of them. At least the weather in Heart was more hospitable than Aroma or Wind; the weather had been clear and the temperature warm enough to sleep outside but not freeze at night. The trek through the countryside eventually brought them to a small town of Socha. There the two were able to mingle into the local populace as war refugees from Wind and gain employment performing manual labor during the day.

At night, Sai performed experiments utilizing Yalda's gift in the sewers of the town. The pair kidnapped men, women, and even children in the middle of the night and brought them down to be inducted into Sai's grand audience. One of the caverns deep within the sewers contained a laboratory set up; a platform made of stone and wood with several tables filled with beakers of different colored liquids lining it. Off to the side, tables with straps to secure any test subjects. Torches lined the walls of the cave, a sickly gray material keeping the wood secured to the stone.

Sai sat at the table in the middle of the platform mixing spores with different types of chemicals to test their response. The latest batch of test subjects had rejected the previous concoction almost immediately and self-terminated in the process. While he stayed back to work on a new formula, Dai had gone out to procure a few more subjects for the next set of testing. It had been a few hours now and as the last drop of the chemical in his left hand fell into the vial of the chemical in his right, Sai could hear footsteps and the sound of someone, or multiple someones, being drug towards him.

"How was it tonight? I trust you had...little issue?" Sai asked, his eyes moving from the reacting chemicals to the figure at the cavern entrance and focusing on them in the low light.

[ThatGuy]

Daisuke had been quite busy obtaining fresh test subjects for his new friend Sai. They both had been spending the majority of the day doing manual labor, but their real work started at night. They both played to their talents. Sai experimenting with “Yalda’s gifts,” and Dai making people disappear. Both of them could easily overpower anyone in the village and drag them into the sewers, but it was a bit too high-profile and, honestly, rather boring. Daisuke found it much more entertaining to figure out a way to trick people into coming with him. Given his appearance, it was difficult to do so without someone noticing him talking to those who would go one to disappear, or at least it would be difficult, were he not a trained shinobi. With transformation jutsu and a few honeyed words, he’d been able to manage a steady supply of test subjects.

His catch of the night was a man and woman with a young child desperate to escape a particularly predatory loan shark. Their debts had piled up to the point where it was only a matter of time before one of them was sold, either whole or in pieces. Daisuke approached them under the guise of a man willing to smuggle them out of the city for a price. After they paid him what little they had left, he lured them a ways out of town and knocked out the man before tying up and gagging all three of them. There was an entrance to the sewer outside of town that Daisuke walked the woman and child through as he dragged the man’s unconscious body alongside him. With their arms bound and her husband held hostage, there was little the woman could do but obey Daisuke. When Sai greeted him, the Nara gave his friend a large smile before presenting his haul for the day.

“I grabbed a three-piece family meal for Yalda! They’re in so much debt that no one will question their disappearance. A bit too easy if you ask me.”

Feeling daring, he tossed the unconscious man to the side and cut the rope binding the woman’s arms. She immediately reached up and undid her gag before letting out a scream for help. Daisuke simply tilted his head and watched. The horrors of Yalda’s gifts elicited much louder screams than she could muster. For now, at least.

“We’re the only ones who can hear you down here. Even if that wasn’t the case, do you really think there are people in Socha capable of saving you?”

Sai might not have liked it, but Daisuke needed to have his fun. Things had gone far too smoothly, and he’d barely gotten a chance to soak in the family’s despair. He let out a chuckle as the woman grabbed her child and attempted to run away. Dai’s shadow shot out and made contact with hers, binding the woman in place.

“Who told you that you could leave?”

“Fuck you!”

Daisuke shot her the same look that a mother would give a disobedient child. He started to move his, and the woman found herself forced to mimic his movements. Slowly, he forced her to wrap her hands around her child’s throat.

“If my puppet won’t dance, I suppose they’ll have to put on another show.”

“Please! Don’t!”

“Hmm… I want an apology.”

“I’m sorry! Just please stop!”

He took in the scene as he pretended to think about her plea. If it wasn’t for the need for test subjects, this is normally where he would have ended things. With a mother being forced to kill her own before joining them shortly after, the agony of the situation was more than enough to get Daisuke the high he craved. Suddenly, he let go and raised his finger in an exaggerated motion before excitedly turning to Sai, the woman still mimicking his movements.

“Idea! If the hosts keep rejecting the gifts and dying shortly after, what if we found a way to share the burden. A wa-”

“PLEASE JUST LET US GO!”

“SHUT UP!”

Daisuke dropped the mimicry jutsu and put the gag back in, still leaving the woman bound by her shadow. As much as he’d like to hear her beg a bit more, he had more important business to attend to.

“Would the resilience of, say, three people be able to hold a single gift? Is that even possible?”

[Niro]

Daisuke had certainly done well in procuring three more subjects for Sai to test his newfound knowledge in combination with Yalda's Gift. Sai stood up with the vial in his hand, the spores interacting with the mixture of liquid within and began to bubble and it from a dark pink to a disgusting green. The various chemicals he had been able to steal and scavenge from Socha's industrial and medical buildings were only truly usable due to the accompanying medical and chemical textbooks and literature he had pilfered as well. With both the knowledge and the materials, he had been fervent in reading through the texts and applying the things he learned from them in real time to his subjects. Now was another opportunity to test his budding knowledge.

Just like the prostitutes, transients, war orphans, drunks, and unaccompanied children who wandered into the sewers, these vermin were those who wouldn't be missed by society. Sai walked across the space and crouched over the unconscious father as the woman screamed and Daisuke puppetted her. Her screams bounced off the walls of the cavern but it wouldn't matter. The pair had carved out a tunnel from the main sewer and made their own unmapped pathway until luckily breaking through to this cavern. Even if someone did become suspicious one of the subjects had gone missing, navigating to this unmapped area deep within the sewers would be impossible for normal people.

Sai's dirty fingers groped at the man's mouth before parting his dry lips enough to dribble a third of the contents of the vial between them and down his throat. Some of the vile liquid spilled over his lips and down his face only for a light sizzle to follow the trail as the acidic compounds within burned at the man's flesh. The man's eyes shot wide open and began to splutter in pain as the liquid worked its way down his esophagus and into his stomach. He stood up frantically only to immediately kneel over in pain and begin to scratch at his stomach before tumorous growths erupted from each of his orifices and then more burst forth from his stomach, splattering his entrails everywhere. Strangled, desperate gurgles eventually faded away as Sai moved to the child paralyzed in fear. The poor thing offered no resistance as Sai pried its mouth open just like its father and poured a smaller amount down its throat.

The screams of desperation coming from the mother only grew more insane as she realized the fate of her husband would also befall her child. Sai wasn't one to not share so as she screamed again, he poured the remaining liquid down her throat. The burning reaction of the mixture garbled her screams as blood began to pool and escape her mouth while the child doubled over first and fall on the ground where it twitched for some time before falling still.

"Disappointing. Even with so little, the subjects expire."

The mothers screams continued even as growths began to explode her mouth, eyes, nose, and ears. She clawed at the tumors as they sprung forth while futily crawling to her child. The growths seemed to stop and stabilize as she scooped the child in her arms before a final death wail escaped her destroyed throat and mutated form. Her stomach exploded like her husbands as growths erupted forth and she fell back and the light left her eyes.

Sai clicked his tongue in disappointment. All three had perished, again. He stood up and turned to walk back to his set up only for the sound of chewing to catch his ear. Sai turned back to find the child, insanely mutated but alive, now chewing on the exposed entrails of his mother.

His skin and hair had instantly bleached from the stress and the chemicals stripping his body of melanin while his mouth had morphed into something more akin to a frog as his throat and thorax expanded to a grotesque size while attempting to consume an entire leg of his mother. Sai had stepped closer and freed the light of the flames lining the laboratory platform from behind him. No longer in shadow, the mutant screeched and scuttled off on all fours into a dark corner in the room.

Sai began a low chuckle which eventually turned into a hysterical laugh. So, it could work after all.

"I guess that answers the question for us."