Naruto Saigen Roleplay

For the second time in her life, a fourteen-year-old girl ran through a nation at war. Two wars between the same two nations. Hachiya Kotori had been a child of eight when the armies of Hi no Kuni had fought through the passes of Earth Country and forced her from her home during the Fourth Great Shinobi War. Now the same armies were back, six years later, surging across the borders of Earth Country and shattering resistance on their fervent march towards Iwagakure no Sato. They sowed ruin in their wake like salt to the lands and lives of Tsuchi no Kuni’s citizens wherever they passed.

The armies of Fire Country had come unexpectedly, invading under the banner of their bold new Hokage. Awai Fanho was the name on the lips of half the nation, a whispered curse for what he wrought upon them. While Iwagakure’s finest and the armies of Earth dispensed justice in the south, repaying ancient wrongs dealt by their largest and longest antagonist, Wind Country, Konohagakure and the nation of Fire had seized their opportunity to strike their exposed flank. She’d heard that Fire and Wind had been staunch allies during the Great War, and again during Earth’s border war with Wind just recently, but this time Fire had decided to strike Earth directly rather than simply reinforce or defend their ally. Iwagakure could hold, she was sure; the Tsuchikage himself had returned to defend his nation. But the path to Iwagakure was a different matter entirely. Relatively few shinobi remained stationed on the border, and none of a calibre with a Hokage or his chosen elites. With their main force directed south, fighting through the deserts towards Sunagakure, Earth Country’s defensive southern perimeter was nothing compared to the mobilised might of Fire Country’s concentrated strength. The battles along the border had been brief, decisive, brutal. And not at all in Tsuchi no Kuni’s favour.

Worse still was the encore a few days later. The Hokage had staggered the nation—a greater surprise, perhaps, than his decision to invade in the first place—by masterminding a sudden and organised retreat from the walls of Iwagakure, almost immediately after Fire’s arrival. Like a storm they came, wreaking carnage and contentious fury, like a storm broke against the great walls, and like a storm passed and was gone, leaving desolation in their path. His armies had shown their force, their willingness to come so far and strike so hard, so fast, if they felt the need to. But they had not come to conquer, or else had found themselves unable to pay the requisite price to try. Whatever the reason, they had quickly returned the way they’d come. Iwagakure had been spared their hunger for battle. But the villages and border garrisons in their way had not. Could not.

Kotori arrived at the mountainous border town of Ikata the morning after the retreating army’s passage south. She knew the town well—she’d lived here for a year or two as a refugee herself during the great war—but the scene that greeted her arrival felt entirely foreign. The town had burst its seams since her time there, swollen from the constant influx of refugees back then until it hardly resembled the small town it had once been just a decade prior. She’d seen part of that happen during the great war. But she had not seen it ruined. The remnants of hard-fought battle lay all around her; the wailing and sobbing of the wounded, the empty-eyed and hungry stares of the displaced and discarded, the detritus left behind from the overcrowded massing of refugees and their search for security. A rare commodity when the great nations took to the field. Even if the main battles had not taken place here, the carnage left in their wake had washed up here all the same. And that was why she’d been sent to Ikata, experienced handlers and protection detail in tow: To finally put to use the divine powers of the Phantom Beast of Life. To do what she could for the ailing and the lost.

Her heart went out to the downtrodden people she passed as she came into the town proper. She remembered being one of them, not so long ago; lost, alone, and terrified beyond all reason. Scenes of the previous war would forever be etched in her mind in the same way she now saw the strife etched upon the faces of the people around her. This time, however, she wasn’t the helpless one. She might not have the power to stop an invasion, but she could help these people. A little, here and there, to ease the burden of their suffering. She strode towards the centre of the town, moving through the gathering crowds and huddles of displaced people as she reached the central courtyard. There she found the town hall, one of the largest central buildings, and pushed her way inside. The few armed men still standing loomed nearby, but all stood aside at the sight of her Iwagakure headband. Within she found the worst of the afflicted. Lines and lines of people, some in beds of all styles, but most lying on improvised cots or pallets. Many more lay on the floor with barely a sheet or armful of hay beneath them. The majority were men of fighting age, clearly soldiers rescued or returned from the front. But women lay among them, too, even a few children. More than soldiers came to harm during invasions, clearly.

A large man with grizzled hair glanced across the room at her as she walked the aisles of wounded, and when he’d finished tending to someone’s bedside, strode over to meet her. He too clocked her headband as he came close, and his body language immediately changed. Hope, instead of annoyance. He wiped red-stained hands on the long apron and sized her up and down while she nodded a greeting.

“I’m Kotori, from Iwagakure. Chuunin. The village sent me here to help however I can. Are you in charge?”

The man grunted, and up close, the tiredness in his eyes was clear. But he held himself tall all the same, and wore the weariness like a crown. “Just you?” He shook his head, frowning. “No, the Mayor is upstairs. But you won’t get much use out of him, to be honest. I’m the surgeon, Kawamori Ichio.”

“A have a dozen with me, all medical ninjutsu users. We can help. And my escort can lend their hands, too.” She felt small beneath the man’s gaze, and gladl turned away for a moment to wave her guards into the room. “Use them however you see fit.” She hesitated, feeling obliged to continue but not sure how. “I… I’m not an iijutsu user. But I have a different power that may help. Show me to the worst of the wounded, please.” Ichio frowned again, and clearly wanted to say something more, but thought better of it after another glance at her headband. She might be young, might be small, but she was still a shinobi at the head of a relief party. Eventually he nodded and turned to lead her deeper into the building.
“Right you are. It’s this way. The worst are upstairs. But you won’t like it.” He slowed for a few paces and looked back at her over his shoulder, resignation clear in his expression. “For most… There’s not much to be done.”

He wasn’t wrong. Once upstairs he led her into a series of chambers which had been made up as a makeshift intensive care ward. The moans were worse, here, and the beds packed tighter. Most of the figures she passed were missing limbs—frequently multiple—or seemed to be all but deceased already, with the ugly white pallor of the heavily bled and their ragged, intermittent, sucking breaths. The few open eyes that she could see were unfocused, delirious. Her stomach turned as she followed Ichio down an aisle of cots only to have to stand aside as two assistants hauled a corpse, wrapped in a stitched bedsheet, past and away. The ripe, curdling smell of a festered gut wound lingered in their wake.

For the next four hours she did what she could for them. Accessing the power of Nolosha no Ukiyogenma came relatively easily to her now, especially in circumstances as dire as these, where the Genma herself felt driven to help the ailing. Kotori had slowly come to learn of the beast's compassion for humanity; while there would always be a mote of resentment there as well, Nolosha unlike most of her siblings saw potential in the race of their captors. She looked upon humans like a god would their creation. Not as equals, certainly, nor even worthy of their full attention, but still worthy of some. Worth protecting, watching over, safeguarding again harm. A self-serving indulgence. With this opening of the genma's power, Kotori moved from cot to cot, eyes aglow with golden hues and with golden chakra leaking from her hands as she cupped their wounds, wove restorative Life into their bodies, advanced their natural healing or reversed that which had gone awry. It was slow, taxing work, but each success contributed to a growing feeling of hope, and of purpose, within. She was doing some good, and it felt like it was slowly easing away the burden she’d been living with these past few years.

But not all was well. Many were those she could not save, and that failure began to weigh heavily upon her. Far too many were beyond her skill to heal. She’d push waves upon waves of golden-hued chakra into their bodies, devoting drawing precious time and energy to them that could’ve done wonders for others, elsewhere, only to produce minimal or temporary results. Sometimes the lifeforce remaining in their bodies was too weak, the will to keep fighting too far gone, or the injuries simply too demanding to heal. Some had given up, their minds and bodies broken beyond repair, and the Life chakra she pushed into them passed like water through a sieve. The first time this happened she was stooped over a mangled mess of a man with two missing legs and burns across most of his remaining flesh. His hair and face had been incinerated, leaving only blistering red flesh which sloughed off around him, and he’d long since stopped moving as the blood continued to seep away into the bedding beneath him. Her jutsu had no lasting effect. De-aging the flesh wounds, removing the surface damage, only caused them to well up again moment later. Invigorating his lifeforce brought him briefly back to lucidity, where his gutteral howls and convulsing had her screaming for help to hold him down and for drugs to sooth him. But then he’d slip away again. She tried again and again until Ichio appeared by her side and seized her small hands in his, and gently but forcefully pulled her away.

She collapsed into him, then sagged and dropped to her knees. She had no more tears left to shed, and instead sat there in stunned, crushing silence while the body in the bed beside her shook, gasped, then fell limp. She felt numb, empty, hollow, as the ragged breaths came further and further apart, then ceased entirely.
“In cases such as this,” he explained matter-of-factly, his tone weary, “we can only ease their passing. I'm sorry, Kotori.” He gave her hands a reassuring squeeze.

She sat motionless until he eventually turned to leave her be, when she momentarily tightened her grip on his hands. “But… No… I should be able to save them. It is possible. I just… Just need to keep trying. I gotta figure out how…” She looked up and met his sad eyes, and the gentle shaking of his head.

“Not everyone can be saved, Hachiya-san. This is the hardest and truest fact of my trade. You have to understand, and learn to recognise, when it’s okay to let a patient go. Not only when someone’s wounds are too severe, or when a body is too weak to withstand treatment. Sometimes it’s cold economics; where the effort to save one could be better used to save two, or four, or ten other patients with lesser injuries. Or when saving the body would not save the mind, and all will be for naught. Or a dozen other circumstances.” She wanted to argue, but she could see the truth in his eyes, hear it in the silent cot beside them.

It was a lesson she struggled to learn as the day went on. She saved many, helped more, but the ones she could not began to add up. Her exhaustion and sadness turned to stress, then to anger, then to weakness. Then to anger at her weakness, at her inability to achieve what she wanted. What she needed. What she knew was possible through Nolosha’s power. Tiredness and dejection built in her with every patient, but all those she could not reach built it higher, and higher, until it became an insurmountable wall. Then she shut down, hunching in on herself while sitting on the edge of a now-vacated cot. The room was quieter now, partially thanks to her, though new wounded were still arriving in trickles. But when she pressed her hands against her ears, she could just about block it all out. Just for a moment.

In that silence, Nolosha reached out. Kotori could feel the warmth of the genma welling up inside, like the feeling of incoming tears, but not necessarily ones shed in sadness. She breathed deeply, trying to settle her racing thoughts and listen.

"Why is it you weep so, child? Why do you feel you must save them all?"
"...Because I know you can. We can. We have the power to help these people. Why shouldn't we want to use it?!"
"At what cost? I can feel them, girl. The ones you fret over are already mine. They are not lost. Do not weep for the dead. They will be at rest."

Kotori's breath caught. "...What do you mean, 'yours'"?

"I've told you before," Nolosha's lecturing tone became snappy. "Death is simply another part of Life. Two sides of the same coin. One cannot exist without the other. Life is meaningless without Death; it is necessary for all things to ever live. It should not be feared so by your kind. It's embrace is to be cherished, offered and welcomed freely."

Kotori thought on this for some time, weighing the genma's words while the bundle of emotions that was the sealed beast within waited, patiently, for her to understand.

"Even so, shouldn't we try? If someone can be saved, if I can do it, it's worth the trying. I believe that."

"At what cost?"

She hesitated again, thinking back to the surgeon's words about people whose minds and bodies were already spent, regardless of the strength of the Life within. Perhaps, sometimes, that would be the case. But not always. For the rest, she had to give them her all. But before she could form that conviction, Nolosha interrupted her line of thought.

"No, daughter, no. What cost to you?"

"Any cost!" No hesitation this time. What was her life worth if she couldn't even save another? This was her purpose as a Jinchuuriki. Nolosha felt the passion of her belief, and the warmth swelled, simmered like a sun beneath her skin.

"Very well. I believe in you, my daughter." She felt an accord forming between them, an understanding and sharing of purpose, from both sides. Nolosha had wanted to hear her conviction, she realised. "Embrace the power, Kotori! Allow me to shape the flow of your chakra, and surpass these mortal limits!" No longer afraid of the genma, she gladly accepted, welcoming the burning rush of power that now coursed all throughout her body.

Some time later Ichio returned and found her, still sitting motionless on the side of the cot, her face blank. He gave a slight huff, betraying his lack of surprise, but then he caught her eyes. Alive, and full of passion. She turned her head upwards to meet his gaze, and smiled. Gods, she smiled, even with blood covering her clothes, with weariness worn plain on her young face. It was his turn to feel overwhelmed by the sheer power of her presence, unlike anything that it had been earlier. Unlike anything he'd ever encountered. A feeling of deep serenity washed over and through him, filled every last crevice of his soul, invigorated every corner of his being. All tiredness was gone beneath the radiance of the golden halo around the girl's head, and he fell to his knees, staring after her as she rose and walked away. He would remember her grace, and her power, for the rest of his days.

Kotori too felt the nimbus of power. The surge of chakra from Nolosha effectively rejuvenated her, restoring her spent energy, removing her fatigue, heightening her senses and infusing her with a wellspring of new, exotic golden chakra. Everything she'd spent, and more. It felt limitless, and she was alive in a way she'd never known possible. She walked among the rows of injured who remained in the makeshift ward, and a radiant veil stretched outwards like a cloak of light around her. Those she touched, even so much as a light brushing of fingers on a forehead or arm, had their wounds and bodies de-aged long enough to fully undo the battle that had wrought them. Gaping holes stitched themselves shut beneath her gaze, lost limbs began to suddenly regrow, splitting apart their bandaged stumps with new, pink flesh. Eyes opened, refocused, and breathing eased then caught again at the sight of her among them. She reached further into that well of power, drew it around her, pushed it outwards until it embraced half the room in its comforting halo of Life.

There were still those few whose bodies would not react, those with shoulders already passing through the doors of death. But Nolosha’s words sung to her, and staved away the fear and loss. I can do this much and nothing more, she told herself, and that’s okay. It was enough to try, and do what she could for those she could. To do what was within her power. And what power! She walked the room twice, until all living faces were free of their pain and suffering. All eyes were fixed upon her, mouths agape. Even Ichio, frozen in the act of applying gauze to a chest which now showed not a trace of even scar or bruise. Then she left, taking the stairs down to the halls below of lesser wounded, and passed them by. Then to the streets while her connection to the genma held and the incredible power endured. She did not see the people falling to their knees in her wake, or the tears fresh upon their cheeks. But she kept walking, head high and stride unbroken, while a local girl began throwing flowers in her path, and when unbloodied soldiers, newly risen, began to bow and kiss the ground as she passed.