Beat the Devil's Tattoo

[Toshi]

It had been a long night, much longer than Aya would have liked. Not to mention boring.

With her companions dispatched like they were little more than afterthoughts and her scroll in pieces, Aya knew it was time to play nice. The color had somewhat drained from her face when she watched the codger of a Nara put a strange, rust colored pellet of chakra through Kuga's head, yank her scroll away from her grasp quicker than she could react, cut her precious tool in half with that same rust colored chakra, and then declared that he was a former Hokage.

Even if he was bluffing about the Hokage thing, the Nara was too much to handle on her own. Especially without her scroll. Aya had stood there, a calculating look wrinkling her brow, as she weighed her options. She could have made a move towards the unconscious brat, used him as a hostage, but the Kunoichi reasoned that she'd never make it to the kid before Mr. Hokage intervened in a way that was detrimental to her staying alive.

Aya also remembered that before the fight had even started old man Nara had tried to talk his way out of it. For some reason he didn't default to killing his opponents like the Tiny Terror, who had dispatched Kinomaru without so much as blinking. So all logic pointed to her cooperating for as long as she needed to and then trying to escape when the codger's guard was down.

It's not like she harbored any love for her employer anyway. When the cards were on the table, Aya would choose her own skin over anyone else's. It was part of her charm.

Finally the blue haired Kunoichi raised her hands and sighed, her heavily lidded eyes rolling in exasperation. "Fine. What do you want to know?"




Many hours later the blue haired Kunoichi found herself sitting on a rock and watching the Nara pull out a travel-sized parcel containing a portable tea set. He'd started a small, crackling fire and poured some water from a canteen into the quaint, battered metal tea kettle before placing it on a flat rock resting in the embers.

Aya's hands were bound in front of her, the rope interlaced between her fingers to prevent her from weaving any seals, but the Nara hadn't touched her otherwise. In fact, It was almost aggravating how amicable he was being towards her considering they'd just been trying to kill each other.

Even stranger, he hadn't asked her a single question while they waited for dawn to break. Which, thankfully, it was. But what was he waiting for? Was he waiting for the brat to wake up? At that thought, Aya glanced over at where the boy was laying on the ground. The Nara was sitting partially between her and the boy, no doubt to defend his ally if she tried anything stupid. The codger had bundled up a small towel and rested it under the brat's head before taking off his sturdy traveler's cloak and draping it over his body like a blanket. The Kunoichi swore she even saw the old man tuck his ally in a little to make him more comfortable.

Then her heavily lidded eyes rested back on her captor, a supposed Hokage, rummaging for a moment before producing a few small, stackable cups. They had tiny tea leaves and hearts painted on them.

"Do you keep an emergency tea set on you all the time?" Aya asked, staring at the Kage with something between annoyance and disbelief.

Tousha shot the young woman a quizzical look. "Do you not?"

The Kunoichi sighed angstily. "Please just kill me," she said, her expression one of shallow anguish. "This is cruel and weird and I hate it."

Tousha smiled like a fool at his captive. "Maybe after breakfast," he said, pulling out two tea bags and holding them up so Aya could see. "You strike me as a Tea Country Morning kinda gal, but I have peppermint too if that's more your speed."

Aya groaned and hung her head limply. It looked like it was going to be a long day as well.

[Kao]

Kotaru rarely dreamed.

Most nights the bannin enjoyed pure unconsciousness when he slept. Fantastical sequences eluded him, passing him over and leaving him in silence and darkness instead. He didn’t mind a mostly dreamless existence. Once or twice he’d even joked that the “Dreams are a wish your heart makes” bullshit didn’t apply to him. And on the flipside, in that world of nightmares, whatever horrors his mind could conjure up were channeled into his genjutsu. Those experiences were meant for others, never him.

Kinomaru’s poison seemed to turn that on its head.

At first the Iwa bannin thought he was dead. The emptiness that greeted him after his body hit the ground was different than anything he had ever experienced after losing consciousness. This darkness was immeasurable. Endless. Everything and nothing all at once. Kotaru neither stood nor floated in the void. There was no direction, no left or right or above or below. It wasn’t comparable to an out of body experience. The Akari had no body to experience, and there was no boundary between himself and that emptiness. For hours or years - he had no way of knowing how much time had passed - Kotaru and that endless darkness were one and the same. So surely he was dead, and every theory and belief regarding life after death was wrong. There was nothing there to greet you when you died. Absolutely nothing.

And then there was an explosion of agony. No matter how much Kotaru opened his mouth to scream, to beg and plead for someone - anyone - to make his lungs stop melting within his chest, no sound permeated the black expanse. No, he wasn’t dead. Not yet. But something certainly wanted to end his life. It writhed and lurked in the emptiness around him, slowly filling that space until it wasn’t the silent abyss Kotaru felt pressing in. It was the faces and eyes and fingers and tongues of Death.

He fought. He wasn’t ready to die, not by a long shot. He struggled and bared his teeth against the shroud that threatened to devour him. Even when he grew exhausted the young bannin didn’t stop fighting. Then finally, finally, the encapsulating void loosened its grip on him. Kotaru felt a thread move past him, fragile and thin, but that thread felt warm and familiar and alive. He grabbed it, pulled and tugged at it, instinctively knowing that it was his only chance to find his way back.


When Kotaru opened his eyes he was immediately greeted by a pounding headache. A groan rumbled in his chest, rising to his throat until it passed his lips in a high pitched, almost imperceptible whimper. He could feel a layer of sweat coating his skin, made worse by what felt like a heavy blanket tucked under his chin. When he moved to pull himself out of the too-warm cocoon, he found that he couldn’t lift his stiff, heavy arms. He felt like he was being both squeezed and boiled from the inside out.

“What the fuck.” The words were no more than a whisper as he turned his head very, very slowly towards his companions. Another groan reverberated in his throat before he added, “I forgot you’re useless when it comes to healing, Tousha.”