Riverside Barbecue

[Sia]

The blood witch and Shuichi traveled through the village with ease, exiting out the gates and into the mountainside with nothing of concern happening to them. They conversed amongst themselves for a while, chatting idly about this and that before finally drawing closer to their destination. A bonfire, a gathering, a cookout, whatever you wanted to call it, a rife little social event for having fun and eating endless amounts of food. Maido and Shuichi performed a quick series of hand seals and then the two of them were separated from one another, Shuichi's form melting off of their shared body and splitting out into its own entity, leaving Maido behind. The difference in appearance between the two of them was stark, and Maido wondered what the process of them splitting apart might look like from the outside point of view.

Shuichi's dark figure took off, wandering into the crowd, and boy was it a crowd. Maido was surprised, she hadn't expected this big of a turn out for something taking place outside of the village, yet her eyes could not deceive her. There were easily hundred of souls here, she didn't even need to use sensory to count it out. The music was loud, the people were louder, and the smell of smoked meat, charcoals, and sweat hung in the air. Maido kept track of Shuichi for a little while, but eventually decided to just let him do his own thing and paid him no mind. No need to keep a leash on him, after all. She wondered if Kotaru had been invited, and if he were invited, would he even attend? Surely he had more important things to do.

Maido worked her way through the crowds, taking in the scents and listening to the music as she made her way to the river. The water was so clear, almost iridescent even to the point she considered it may be being manipulated by chakra. For a moment her eyes squinted at it, then she decided it didn't matter. Realizing she was very inappropriately dressed for a swim, she performed a quick series of hand seals and her clothes melted away entirely, leaving her quite nude for just a moment before a bathing suite materialized onto her body, a feat which gained a few whistles and woos from the few that happened to see it, and Maido shot a cheeky grin in the direction of those particular men, but otherwise paid them no mind as she stepped into the water.

[Kao]

It was certainly unlike Kotaru to take the time to participate in anything even resembling recreation. He had much more important duties than to visit a small yet bustling village on the banks of one of the largest rivers in Earth County. There were plans to put in motion, lands to take, and people to kill. Information had to be gathered to make his and Tatsuo’s plans go as smoothly as possible. And yet, despite his protests, he had a duty to his countrymen, the average citizens who lived their lives in the protective shadow of Iwagakure no Sato. It was one of the many burdensome things that came along with his title that he was, even now, not completely used to.

The Akari had visited this village once before, years before the outbreak of the Great War. He was a mentor to a younger member of his clan then, and he had needed a break from the responsibility and strain of training up a boy who was likely to be slaughtered by his own kin. It was quiet then.

But now the village was vibrating with activity. The crowd parted naturally for him; even people who were accustomed to shinobi typically avoided him, so the effect was seemingly tenfold in this almost exclusively civilian town. Despite this, Kotaru didn’t garner much attention as he wandered the streets. The people were much too busy playing and celebrating to give much notice to such a severe, brooding young man. That happened to be the way that the man preferred to navigate through life.

Eventually, after indulging in some of the festival food, he made his way to the nearby river and away from the much smaller crowd enjoying river activities. The man sighed and closed his eyes only to be immediately disturbed by the sound of obnoxious wolf whistles. Kotaru opened his eyes, expecting to see some random village woman.

Instead he saw the impossible.

A familiar figure was wading into the water. His heart rushed to his throat. It took a lot to unnerve Akari Kotaru, and it so happened that the image of his dead lover was one of those things that could shake him to his core. Without realizing it, he took a step forward. Then another. And then he was ankle deep in cold water with his eyes wide open and hands slightly shaking. He performed kai, but the sight of her didn’t disappear. She was real.

”No fucking way…Maido?”

[Sia]

Turning in the water with otherworldly dead grace, Maido saw Kota and her dead heart stilled, then whimpered and wept as she did. Her mind raced with wild thoughts as she recounted her lost days. Her vision soared and blurred as images flashed through her mind of crying, pain, explosions and dying, aging. So much aging. She'd been through so much in such a short time, years wasted by like it was nothing, vanished in the blink of an eye, hundreds of years flown by before she could even register what was happening. She'd died, yeah, she'd died, real, and properly, a few times now, and it had been miserable. She broke, she saw Kota and tears streamed down her face as her lip unfurled in a downward curl. Her lip trembled and she cried, wept like a small child. She didn't know what to say, she didn't know what to do. There were so much to say, so much she needed to tell someone, so much she needed to confide in...someone. Kota was here, and he was real, he wasn't an illusion, and Maido had certainly had enough of illusions at this point.

She took a step forwards in the water and then another, eyeing him up and down and wondering just whether or not it was another trick. It had been a while since she'd seen someone she'd recognized other than Shuichi, but he was nowhere to be seen at the moment. She walked towards Kotaru and just put her hands on his chest and she caved. Tears came out, and Shuichi's heart ached hard from far away in the crowd, as though he had been stabbed in the chest and the back simultaneously. He wept and wasn't sure why, his heart crying out in pain and sorrow as tears welled up in the corners of his eyes. Was this from Maido's doing? Maido stared at Kotaru as raw chakra leaked out from her bodies eyes, taking on a liquid iron form as her tears turned to iron and then rust against her porcelain face. Her otherwise pale skin had color now as raw chakra and emotion fueled rage into her host body followed by sorrow, fear, separation, and vengeance. She stared at Kotaru for a moment more, longingly, then sheepishly she turned away, bashful and embarrassed. "I fucking died Kota..." She began, and sorrow was replaced with anger.

[Kao]

He didn't understand what he was seeing.

Kotaru was someone who always listened to rumors. He was proud of his job as a bannin and leader of Jousai, and part of that job was to gather information. His life lately revolved around sorting through rumors and finding out what was true and what was bullshit. Most of his work was for the good of Iwagakure. But there were times he used his connections and talents to keep up with those who were important to him who weren't part of the village. At the top of that list was Maido. He was, for all intents and purposes, in love with the woman. It was more of an obsession and an unhealthy one at that. But it was still a form of love, and it was the only type of romantic love he'd ever known.

So when he'd heard a rumor that she'd died in a blaze of glory and rebellion, Kotaru had done everything in his power to covertly confirm it. And, to his knowledge, he had confirmed that the woman was dead. It tore him to pieces, but he had never allowed himself to break down about the loss in any way. He wasn't that type of person; instead he shouldered his grief and soothed it by throwing himself into his work. It had happened before: lose a woman he loved, work, work, work, then suddenly reunite with the aforementioned lover. It had, strangely enough, happened to him more than once - more than twice, even - and each time it happened he found himself surprised and unsure of how to handle the situation.

The initial shock of seeing her seemingly back from the dead had almost settled when she placed her palm on his chest, and just like that a shockwave rocked his body all the way to his fingertips. Kotaru's expression was confusion mixed with relief as she began to sob. When she turned away from him he immediately wrapped his arms around her. "I heard," he murmured, lowering his face to her neck so that he could feel the smoothness of the skin there against his lips as he spoke. "Looks like you managed to overcome that, unsurprisingly." Her skin felt foreign in a way, but at the same time there was a familiarity in her turbulent emotions. In that moment he felt that this being truly was Maido; no one could replicate this kind of instability.

Kotaru's hands wandered to the small of her back and he pulled her in close. He could feel her rage boiling beneath her skin, and the sensation excited him. But he knew he had to keep her calm. So instead of allowing her to unleash her emotions and possibly flatten the entire area, Kotaru scooped her up and dashed across the river's surface. On the other side was a large inn that would be largely empty that time of day given the festivities. The man held her close as he scaled the building and climbed through the window of an empty room on the top floor, and he wordlessly laid her on the bed. He took a few steps back, and his eyes drank in every inch of her near naked body before meeting her eyes. It was her, but something was off.

"What happened to you, Maido?"

[Sia]

She almost jumped out of her skin when he touched her, she had, in all her days, never known Kotaru to be very comforting. She certainly hadn't expected it, but then, perhaps even the great Kotaru was not immune to the distress of a crying woman. She certainly had jumped though, the lightest noise of surprise escaping from her lungs as Kotaru pulled her close. His face against her neck was far more comforting than she could have thought for a man as vicious as she knew him to be. It was almost shocking that he wasn't teasing her...yet? She didn't particularly have time to think about that, her thoughts were riddled with doubt, anger, and frustration. She couldn't think clearly at all, drunk on infatuation, relief, and anger mixed all together in an incomprehensible mess of a mind that had been shattered and torn to pieces. It hadn't made her stronger, it broke her, she would have fallen to her knees but she didn't even get the chance before suddenly she was in motion, scooped up by the Akari.

Maido impulsively moved to jump out of his arms at first but found she quite literally didn't have the strength to do so, much to her annoyance, and merely accepted her new position. She was weak, useless, how would Kota ever love her now? How could he? She was a broken fragmented piece of a woman, a fraction of what had once been greatness. In a few moments she found herself laid across a bed and she took in the room of the inn momentarily before her attention focused back onto the Akari. "Well...I had to hijack a new body, unfortunately this one is still alive and not at all happy to be turned into a woman." She said quite bluntly, with a rather deadpan expression upon her face as though she has grown tired of explaining the situation, but then a curl furled upwards in a snurl and she transitioned into a smile. "This body is much weaker than what you're used to... much weaker than I am used to. I'm so...frail now..." She looked away from his prying gaze. "I'm sure you could find something fun to do to it if you felt so inclined." She did wonder why exactly he had brought her to a bed, but the truth was that the bed actually felt lovely against her skin, as though she'd actually really needed a bed and just hadn't known that yet. Perhaps it really was time for her to rest. Perhaps.

[Kao]

Ah, so that was it. This new body was still technically alive; it still possessed the kind of warmth that Maido had always lacked since she tended to lay claim over the dead. Somehow it didn't suit her. The Blood Witch was meant to be timeless, ageless. Taking a body that had not yet ceased to age and still had some biological function seemed more abnormal to him than the times her she had melted away into a mass of blood and tentacles. Her choice to choose a living host interested him much more than her choice to use a male body. At her mention her host being "turned into a woman," he merely raised his brow slightly, almost imperceptibly. He had never cared before about the sex of the bodies before she inhabited them and changed them to her liking.

But at her mention of her new weakness he frowned, and a shadow darkened his expression. Part of the draw was her strength. It complimented her beauty and cruelty and made him devoted to her in a way that no other woman - no other person - could elicit from him. This revelation wasn't welcome news in the slightest. He didn't return her smile. "Yanno, I couldn't put my finger on it at first. But now that you say that, there's no need for you to explain how weak you are right now, Maido. Now I can practically smell fragile you are. Carrying you here felt like holding an infant. I thought it was because I couldn't believe you're alive, but-" Without warning a single tendril of his melashiin erupted from the base of his spine and quickly closed the distance between them, its pointed end coming to rest mere inches from her throat. "Now I know it's cause you're less than a fraction of what you once were."

For a moment, he couldn't hide his disappointment. Kotaru knew she'd have to rebuild herself from the ground up. But instead of dwelling on her misfortune he eventually returned her smile with his own smirk. "What fun could I possibly have with such a weak version of you, hm?"

[Sia]

She blood witch turned iron leaned back against the bed lazily and didn't answer the Bannin right away, her eyes rolling slightly into the back of her head as her head drifted to the side and her hair flopped around. She propped her head up using her right arm, her hand a cushion beneath her hair and ear to support her. In a way she looked rather bored, but that wasn't really the case. No, she was just...devoid of energy. Maido had had a full life. A very full life, a longer and more full life than most could ever possibly even dream of. She had seen it all, she had done it all, there was nothing left in this world for her to do. There was nothing new for her to experience.

Maybe then, death was not such a bad idea. Maybe, it was time, maybe she had done enough. How could she think about such things now, with Kotaru right in front of her? She turned her attention back to him, sitting up on the bed and crossing one leg over the other as they dangled off the side of the mattress and she made very deliberate eye contact with him. "I'm sure you could think of something." She said rather abrasively, her tone not at all hiding her annoyance in any capacity. Her lip furled, trembled even, as did her eye brows, and her face in general. Her posture was, as it were, condescending in a way. As though she still believed herself a noble. It was the way she carried her shoulders, her head held high proudly, as though she was looking down at him even though she were the one sitting.

"Just..." She said finally, staring into his eyes, then his lips, then his chest, then she looked away for a moment before she looked back and her gaze focused on his horns. "Kill me." Was all she could let out.

[Kao]

After he had set her down on the bed, Kotaru had sat atop the thick, peeling wooden sill of the open window. A chilly breeze drifted into the room, making the stray dark teal strands that had fallen free from his ponytail dance lazily around his face. From his perch he scrutinized her movements and her expression. Her posture was everything he remembered of her - that calm, calculating arrogance that she had as a result of decades upon decades of life still emanated from her pores. Had she been her normal self, he would have skipped the pleasantries and “how have you been”s and he’d have ravaged her there instead. But with her in this sorry state, sex wasn’t at the forefront of his mind.

For a long moment, he said nothing. Kotaru stared at her blankly as what she asked of him sunk in. Eventually his face twisted into a grimace that barely concealed disgust. “Oh gods, you’re pitiful. Why the fuck would I do that when I just got you back?” No, he wouldn’t kill her. He wouldn’t rid the world of her exquisite savagery. Just as he was about to chastise her, the door opened with a loud creak, and a tall bushy bearded man stumbled inside. Seemingly intoxicated, he looked from Kotaru then to Maido. A horrified look of realization swept over him, but just before he could run screaming out of the door Kotaru sneered.

“Well well.”

Another deadly tentacle of his melashiin snaked from his back and in less than a second it was across the room, impaling the newcomer and pinning him to the wall. “Perfect timing! Your name?” His question was answered by a wet gurgling, and the stranger feebly grasped at the shin in an attempt to free himself. The shin began to glow with a faint green light as Kotaru healed the man from the inside, but only just enough to keep him from bleeding out. Blood trickled down the tendril, adding a vibrant red hue to the deep crimson appendage. He hopped down from the windowsill and took a few steps toward the man, who whimpered as Kotaru approached. “Let’s call you Maido. The hair is all wrong - red instead of white - and your beard is disgusting. But we gotta work with what we’ve got sometimes. Isn’t that right, Maido?” He looked over his shoulder to the woman, indicating he was talking to her and not their new friend.

“Think of this guy as a surrogate Maido. We can kill him together. And if that doesn’t help,” he said to his paramour, a devious grin spreading over his lips, “we’ll find someone else who will.”

[Sia]

She had to give it to him, in all her many, long years, it really did seem like perhaps no one has ever seen her the way Kotaru did. He just...got it. Where others saw Maido as a bomb, he saw her as an entity. She couldn't help it, but when the door opened she immediately jumped to her feet, not particularly expecting to be surprised while half naked on a bed. Metal began to coalesce around her, it broke outwards from her skin like shards of iron coming to life and fluttering around her person, circling around her body and forming into an incredibly intricate armor. It was beautiful, regal, majestic. It appeared to be a full metal version of the armor and cloak that she used to wear back in her Kirigakure days, with the pauldron in the shape of a wolves head and all. As she rose, her left arm rose too and the palm of her hand faced the intruder, but then Kotaru started talking and Maido let out a laugh.

An uncontrolled belly laugh, Maido took a moment to compose herself before her left arm slowly moved upwards, and a surge of chakra permeates the building, and suddenly Maido became very astutely aware of just how much metal there was everywhere all around her. A film of silver chakra manifested over her eyes and she stares at Kotaru and the area around her, discerning the metal from the non metal with a glance.

Her body contorted suddenly and burst into a mass of metal shards, which flew around the room before gathering around their intruder and beginning to take on the appearance of several different pieces of a suit of armor, except that the pieces were very noticeably lined with spikes. The pieces of armor soared through the air, impaling themselves upon the man as Maido began to simultaneously equip herself to the man and kill him at the same time. In a moments time, she had encased the man in a metal suit and stabbed spikes into him from every direction too. Maido turned her head all the way around a full three hundred sixty degrees, a feat which was easy for her to do while she was a suit of armor. After all, a suit of armor could be moved any which way she pleased. However, the man's head was not naturally capable of such movement and the act of the helmet forcefully turning his head in such a manner definitely finished off whatever life was left in him.

The suit of armor released itself from the man, who's body crumpled to the floor with holes all over it, the head looking the worst of all, the neck having been turned and scraped against the spikes.

"You're going to get in a lot of trouble if anyone learns you knew I did this and you didn't report it." Maido said finally after a moment of consideration.

[Kao]

Kotaru’s vibrant eyes near sparkled in dark delight as Maido unleashed her frustrations upon the stranger. Just before her armor wrapped itself around the man, the bannin pulled back his tentacle and wiped the blood on the bedsheets before coiling it behind him. She was magnificent. When she was done with him she chuckled at her cruelty. There was no one else he could be like this with. Not Tatsuo, nor Mitsuo or Natsumi. Those three saw the good in him despite his predilections for inflicting pain and suffering. He was grateful for their guidance; he could have easily ended up a rogue or dead at a young age. But the past few years his pent up darkness was becoming more and more difficult to keep at bay. The wars helped; he could be a bit more unrestrained against Iwagakure’s enemies and there never any repercussions for burning combatants to a crisp, or for breaking their minds until they were mere husks. His need for bloodshed and torture, especially lately, was similar to a pubescent boy’s near compulsive need to relieve himself at any opportunity. But he was a bannin, a so-called leader and role model, and he was now infamous and easily recognizable. But with Maido he didn’t need to hide behind duty and professionalism.

With a toothy grin he replied, “Report to who, myself? Did you forget who I am, Maido?” He closed the distance between them and waited for her to unattached herself from her victim. When she did he would place a hand on the back of her neck, and with the other hand he wiped the blood from her cheek. “Fine. ‘Lord Akari, there’s strong evidence that Maido, formerly of Kirigakure, has spilled blood in the countryside.’ Do you know what I say to that?’’ He kissed her then, long and passionately as he pulled her close. It had been a while since he felt his tongue against hers, and his body immediately reacted with warmth and electricity. He felt himself growing hard but willed it away; now wasn’t the time, not with her mental state.

“Let her.” He took half a step back and looked down at his shoulder, then down at his clothes. Quite a bit of blood had splattered on him, but it was nothing he wasn’t used to. “In all seriousness, if it’s not against Iwagakure, I do what I want. Besides, with you so much weaker than you were before, I think you should report to me.” He smirked at this, interested in seeing her reaction that yes, she was technically his subordinate now. Their relationship dynamic had always been more of the opposite. After all, she was the only person who could get him on his knees. “Are we done here then?”

[Sia]

Her eyes flickered with silver as her body pieced itself back together finally, the last little shards forming into her fingertips as her hands shot forwards. A pair of metal gauntlets cast forwards out of her hands, colliding with the body and dispersing into a cloud of metal shards that rifled into the body and began further turning into smaller shards that did the same thing, before a chalky dust-like mixture began to form around the shards as well, soaking up the liquid and overall doing a rather crude but incredibly effective job of just hacking away and dissolving the body with a mixture of metal and chalk in what was best described as a metal paste with glitter in it made of metal? It was an interesting take perhaps, but one that she deemed scientifically sound enough to work as she had formulated it.

No sooner had she accomplished the task and reverted to a shardlessesque, more humanoid form had the demonist held her close in an embrace on the lips that caused her iron porcelain skin to blush quite so very visibly as though there really were blood underneath the surface of her wicked mask of a face. Her eyes widened "Oh!" She thought to herself suddenly and relaxed against her will, her shoulders slouching for the first time in, well, ages. This was, probably then, the real Kotaru, or was it not? She hoped it was the real one. He pulled away and she tensed up again, her eyes darting around the room and surging with a flicker of silver chakra as she scanned the metal around the area again intrinsically, then stared straight into Kotaru's chest as he spoke, then up to his mouth and eyes, then his forehead, then his horns, then his mouth.

"Hm." She said finally when he finally finished, and that was all that she said for the time being as the metal around her body shifted, becoming thinner and fading into her own body as it parted around and slurried flicked and shot back and slithered and hindered itself into a more frail and fragile sort of form. Something a little more akin to a dress, and while it looked nice with its black that clung to her neck so tightly it likely would've been annoying were she not a conditioned prude of a woman, or made of iron, some combination of both likely did a good job of making it easy to wear. The dress finished forming around the rest of her as the shards of armor that made up her body and the suit of armor shifted around to adjust and reconstitute into a shape that she desired, though shards of iron fluttered around the room like angry metal bugs beating against the walls and occasionally against Kotaru himself.

Angrily, Maido's body surged with chakra and she began to speak.

"I don't even know why you brought me here." She said finally after a long moment of silence and staring at the wall next to Kotaru rather then at Kotaru himself. Metal covered her face then, a dark metal sheet that protected even her forehead, it was not unlike a fencing mask except that it was so dark. Against her white hair it stood out so starkly yet the dull grey surge of Kouton that shot out of her neck and down into the rest of her body care without warning.

"Looks like my time here is up anyway...I'd like to say it was good to see you again, except...It really wasn't." Maido said, gesturing towards the death. "And to think...I was enjoying a nice barbecue...."

Maid's body surged with the kouton chakra visibly, a silver glow beginning to emanate from her body as a fiery metallic aura that leaked into the air around her.

"I...I need some time. I don't know what you're playing at but something's not right."

She stared at him for a long time silently and couldn't help it, she looked sad, as though she could cry again at any given moment. The timing was just never right for them it would seem, things just didn't quite match up.

Maido's body exploded very lightly and she became still, turning into Kouton dust a few moments later and losing her shape entirely.

[Kao]

There was a long moment of silence. Kotaru stared at her, expecting her to either say that her bloodlust was sated or to suggest they continue the fun. Hell, he thought she might even make some salacious demand of him. He had thought of half a dozen ways to turn her down and make sure he had successfully stopped her from flying off the rails or breaking down in his arms again. Eventually he would have settled on telling her - ordering her - to report to him periodically. She was in the body of someone living, and she was in Rock Country. There was a lot of room for her to cause chaos here as she grew and learned to be alive again. Kotaru would have ordered her to do her best to behave while she was within the borders of his country. He was too busy to keep a close eye on her, but he thought he could try.

But to his surprise, she was suddenly angry with him. The bannin jerked his head sharply backward as if she'd struck him, completely taken aback by her change in tone. "Wha- I brought you here cause you were crying, Maido." He thought he'd been right in whisking her away from crowds and prying eyes and ears. Didn't people like to cry in private?

Before he could explain himself further, Maido created a mask between them. A mask, but it felt like a thick wall towering between them both. The woman spat that it hadn't liked seeing him and stung much more than he thought it would. Kotaru's brows furrowed and he raised his hands, palms up. His gaze momentarily flickere to the blood and gore that she had caused, and his simple confusion turned into potently exasperated disbelief. Saying nothing - he was at a complete loss for words - the Akari watched as she again looked despondent and then poofed, leaving behind a shimmering metallic dust.

''What the hell was that?' He dropped his hands to his side, bewildered. It had been so long since a woman was upset with him that he'd forgotten what it felt like. In fact, he wasn't sure he had ever experienced Maido being mad at him. Not seriously, anyway. Kotaru replayed the scene over and over again in his head, and each time it made less sense than the last. Maybe, he thought, it had something to do with the hormones that came with being in an actual living body again. That thought was more than a little misogynistic, but he truly didn't get it. Sighing, he looked around the blood soaked room and shook his head.

This day would eventually result in a headache-inducing amount of paperwork.