[Open][PVP]Bring Him Back

[Sia]

The trail wasn't so cold as it turned out, and Maido walked alone today. For this task, she didn't bring Hisayo and Kayoko. Where she lacked in willpower for her own craziness, they surely were not prepared for the task that lay ahead. The head hunters had sent her on a suicide mission. There was no coming back from this one. She stepped into the sand, long ago having set the boat she arrived on aflame. She doused it in liquid gasoline, then set it aflame with a match. The boat had burned splendidly, she knew, and she floated the rest of the way, leaving not a single footstep for her entire lone journey. She stalked the brush, and kept two senbon in her hand. She was old now, and frail, and she wasn't ready for the demands.

Maido wasn't a hunter, she was an interrogator, truth be told. That was her title, her reason, her being. "That's foul." Maido heard Hisayo say in her head. That's what Hisayo would say if she knew Maido's assignment. Track down and find Shio? Maido was the least suited for the task. Never the less, her orders were her orders, and should she succeed she knew the bounty would be great. She would give it to Hisayo, she supposed, and wish her well on her endeavors. Her will too, she reckoned after a moment of thought. Yes, that was still in play. Hisayo would be quite well off either way.

She forgot Hisayo then and wished her well, and then began to forget the others. Her emotions faded, her memory evaded and she walked through the sand alone. The eldest Muramasa came upon a house, careful to skate the air effectively. She left no traces of her presence, for out here the village defenses were quite nonexistent. She didn't have a clue where Sunagakure was, but she knew it was far from here. This place, was deserted, in the dessert, with only fresh tracks barely being blown away. Maido eyed a great crater in the ground, where the sand was pink and it looked as though an act of great violence may have occurred. Maido skated faster through the air, then channeled her chakra and extended her senses, reaching outwards from around herself in a great two hundred meter radius. She sensed one soul, in the house, no...two...She sensed two souls. No, two cores. Two cores, one soul. How ironic, she thought to herself. She moved quietly, turning invisible before being sent flying through the air and following the footsteps away.

In the light, Maido continued to keep her sensory, for it was beginning to get much harder to see, and thats when she saw him. She wasn't quiet, she landed in the sand with a loud thud, a good fifty meters from Shio and couldn't bring herself to make eye contact with him as she put on her white Mask. "I'm sorry, I didn't actually think they would kill me this way." She channeled chakra and threw a needle at his hands, turning invisible as a sickly mist began to encroach all around her, launching forth in a mighty red and green coffin that spewed equally colored mists, launching forwards at Shio whilst Maido remained behind it invisible, using the coffin as cover to break line of sight entirely as she floated across the dunes without leaving footsteps. She pulled out two needles and slammed them into her eardrums, deafening herself, then looked at Shio's shadow instead of his body.

[Ace Trainer]

The trip back to Iron Country would be short, which Shio had mixed feelings about. His entourage had been set to meet him at the next town up, as he had been training with Lii on his own. He'd enjoyed his time in Wind Country thus far, and while he'd be returning not long from now, he wasn't too thrilled to be leaving at all. He'd found himself quite fond of the people and the weather, though not more fond than Iron. He certainly wanted to spend more time there, at least. But he would in due time.

He would be surprised, then, as he walked that a senbon would strike his hand as he walked, embedding itself into his palm. Lifting it, he held his hand up, looking at the senbon and then turning to see the cloud of red mist forming at a distance. An attack? Blood mist, from Kirigakure no less. He furrowed his brow together, letting the information sit in his mind as the chakra in stomach began to well up as he channeled. He couldn't see anything through the blood mist, which he would expect would remain true for his opponent too. There was really only one person this could be, Maido

He would finish channeling, releasing a flare of chakra, confident Maido would sense it and the genjutsu would start.

SpoilerShow

Death
B-rank Overlay Genjutsu
Doing a series of hand seals, Shio will send a surge of chakra towards an individual, if they sense it Shio will capture a target in this overlay technique. Immediately the target will suddenly feel an intense pain as a kunai slides across their throat, slicing it open. For 3 posts the target will feel the life slip from their bodies, bleeding from their throats, then the genjutsu ends.

[Sia]

It didnt take long for the genjutsu to take hold, immediately Maido froze and began to lose sight of many things. Shio became less apparent though her coffin seems to unphase him as a knife found its way towards her throat. Within the illusion, she stumbled forwards and tumbled as her throat was slit open, but continued to make her way through the encroaching red mist as blood spilled from her throat. She felt as though she were dying, she felt a great pressure in her throat area. It didn't stop her, Maido continued forwards invisibly within the illusion as she circled around towards Shio quietly with her throat bleeding. Red tendrils began to stitch the illusory wound together as she smiled beneath her mask.

Within the illusion, she performed hand seals and sent forth a large coffin of acidic chiton mist towards Shio as she drew closer from her invisible position within the fake mist. The coffin would fly at great speed and begin to spew acidic, regenerating chiton most violently in every direction as Maido remained blissfully unaware that she was within a Genjutsu. She stalked invisibly and closed her senses, inching further towards Shio and remained just within range of the mists capabilities and began to channel chakra.

†Acid Coffin Trap
B-Ranked Acid Chiton Ninjutsu
Performing hand seals, Maido will cause a coffin filled with many sharp spikes and made of acid and chiton to exit from her mouth, up to 15 meters by 15 meters by 15 meters, launching it as well as a volume of acidic blood mist 30 meters by 30 meters by 30 meters towards them at a strength and speed of up to [control]. The coffin will attempt to close in on them with a strength of up to [control], flying out up to 60 meters from Maido. The acidic blood mist will regenerate, encroach, and dissolve through material for up to 6 posts, eating away at the fogged area as well as anything caught inside the coffin, which lasts for up to 6 posts.

[Ace Trainer]

As Maido stitched the wound up within the illusion, they would find that no amount of repair would actually fix it, blood continuing to pour out from it, and likely her life beginning to feel as if it was dulling. To be honest, Shio didn't think this genjutsu would do much if it truly was Maido, which was becoming more and more apparent. He was buying himself time, though, as he thought through the situation. He knew how he would take her out, but seeing the breakdown in her plan of attack would be helpful in executing it. Maido was not someone he could go head-to-head with, at least not without putting himself in a fair amount of danger.

She repeated the first attac she had used, the coffin coming forward at him and spewing acid and blood. He would do little in response, allowing it to envelope his illusionary body and all but ignoring it. It was his overlay, stuff like this was fake and would have little effect on him. Maybe if it had been scarier. But for now, he wanted the chance to analyze the technique, it seemed Maido was able to control it to some degree.

"what does dying feel like?", he would call out to Maido, unsure of her exact location. Now he couldn't see her because he was within the coffin, but it didn't really matter. It was all fake, he knew that, but she didn't. At least not yet.

[Sia]

From her position, she saw very little of Shio and she crept forwards within her acidic mist as the illusion continued to bleed her throat. She found that her tendrils did little to repair it indeed and her movement slowed for a time as she adjusted to the sensation. She didn't necessarily shrug it off, for she certainly began to feel something like dread. But why? Where was it coming from? The wound was not fatal, and physically examining it yielding that nothing special was occuring.


Shio called out and Maido didn't hear it, having deafened herself. She felt as though she were dying, but also knew it couldn't possibly be true. Her core was well protected, it must be a trick. But when? She hadn't seen any signs of triggers, she'd been so careful she had thought. She retraced her steps and thought on it longer and her pace slowed. She cleared her mind eventually and decided it didn't matter.

From her invisibility, she stepped beside him and dropped her hips below his, attempting to shuffle her right leg around his left from behind to trip him whilst she attempted to stab into neck with the needle in her right hand.

[Ace Trainer]

Maido's attack continued, and he had no way of placing her. His call out to her had gone unresponded to, which interested him. She could be ignoring him, but what he knew about her he had a feeling that wouldn't be the case. Could she have deafened herself? This was why this technique was helpful to him, he could at least feel things out. It seemed Maido wanted t go toe-to-toe, however, because he'd feel a sudden attack on him. He'd ignore it, letting her strike him and acting as if it did nothing, the needle in her hand stabbing into him with no effect.

"Ah, you're invisible.", he mused out loud, now able to piece the information together. That was helpful to know.

The genjutsu would be ending soon, his mind going back to the initial attack Maido had made. The coffin would still be flying towards him when it ended, but now he knew a little more about what the attack would be like. He would have time, and he began thinking about it. Maido was planning an attack, and she'd be invisible, he'd need to be ready.

[Sia]

Maido's ghost needle sank into Shio's neck with little resistance and he made no efforts to stop her from tripping him, her leg colliding with his as she threw her weight into him and pivoted her heels and hips, digging sharply into the sand in an attempt to throw him down. She moved quickly, breaking her supposed invisibility as she did this and found after a moment that the world became different.

She hung her head, heavy with headache. She was disoriented, and glad for a moment to realize she was invisible and behind cover once again. She watched with ache as her acid blood coffin from before the illusion sailed forwards towards her target and she fidgetted nervously as she peered out from behind it, careful to not look directly at Shio as she invisibly walked behind the flying coffin.

[Ace Trainer]

The genjutsu was coming to an end, and Shio centered his mind for a moment as it terminated, returning him to the real world and faced with the coffin flying forward at him. There was ample distance between them, even with his lower speed he was able to start to strafe out of the way from the direction the coffin was heading. He knew now that Maido would be invisible, and had no way of knowing where she would be. He anticipated that Maido would proceed behind the coffin as she had before, so he would stop, now repositioned, and allow the coffin to approach him as he braced himself, once again channeling chakra into his gut and preparing for his next move.

He had no reason to think Maido wouldn't attempt a similar sneak attack, but strafing out of the way partially would tell him if Maido still had her sensory active, if not, he'd need to rely on other types of genjutsu. But if she could tell where he moved, then she was still tracking him and he'd have other options.

He'd continue to channel, and as the coffin was about to hit him, Shio would take a stance and thrust his hands forward, activating the gloves and allowing them to split the coffin. His glove's powers would stop the effects of the mist from degrading them, and split it enough to keep his body safe. The coffin would be moving fast enough that the encroaching and repairing effects of the mist would be too slow to strike his body still, resulting in a bubble effectively being formed around him. Now it was just time to see if Maido would attack.

SpoilerShow

[Split]
D-rank Taijutsu
[Hanzi’s Fists][Rigid Structure]
Utilizing the ability of Hanzi’s fist, Shio will hold both hands out palms touching, with one hand pointed forward and the other slightly angled out and facing downward. This causes any ninjutsu his hands touch to split, moving around his hands rather than striking him. The angle of his hands causes the break created to split completely around his body protecting him from harm unless the jutsu can double back from where it came to hit Shio from behind.

[Sia]

From her vantage point, it appeared to Maido as though Shio wanted to die. He sat there as the coffin flew towards him, and stuck his hands out, though gloved to rip it apart. However, it's chiton properties would activate, and the coffin would begin to regenerate and attempt to close around him anyway, spewing acid mist across his body without abandon as Maido sat behind it from her invisible perch in the sand and did nothing.

She merely watched then as the acidic mist closed in closer on Shio and he was forced to deal with its acidic and regenerative properties. She reached for another and withdrew it, but did not throw it, instead, she grabbed her cloak and wrapped it around herself defensively and willed its fluid form to take shape causing it to leap upwards from the ground around her and begin to spread out around herbin every direction for and wide. It would smack out in a flourish. Spiraling outwards around her as she twisted and fluttering towards Shio and obscurrigmng her further from his vision as it broke apart into many large chunks, several of them many meters wide in size as waves of chiton. It dispatched from the swing of her cloak, gargantuan waves of blood that impossible to see through.

[Ace Trainer]

As the coffin would regenerate, Shio would step forward through it, and with a sudden and intense force throw his arms out with the into the blast away the two sides of the coffin he had created. The momentary contact with the coffin sear against his skin, his arms immediately turning red, but the coffin being broken appear. It would begin to reform and Shio would launch his body forward, only for a wave of red blood to come flying forward at him. He would nod, now was the moment. Releasing the chakra he was channeling, he'd place his hands against the bloody wave with the gloves gripping it, and find himself suddenly transported away to a blank room.

"Hello Maido.", he'd say to her.

Maido would find herself in the same empty room as him, nothing around her, just a vast empty white-ness. He'd return her hearing to her in the moment, "Defeaning yourself was smart. Tell me, why are you here?", he'd ask her. Within this overlay, he'd manipulate nothing yet, giving her an opportunity to speak freely. If Maido chose to attempt to move or attack, he'd let her, his body ghosting away and reforming opposite of her again. For now, he just wanted to talk.

SpoilerShow

[Heat Death]
S-rank Overlay Genjutsu
Prerequisites: 50 Willpower
Shio will channel chakra, then touch his target, capturing them in the overlay. In the moment that happens the target will suddenly feel their vision warp, the world becoming oblong and strange, as if looking at it through a fisheye lens. Everything will fade to white and the target will be left sitting in a room with Shio sat opposite of them. For the next 15 posts, the duration of the genjutsu, they can speak, move, and even perform techniques. However, Shio is in full control of their entire sensory-motor system. He can bring them excruciating pain, and soothe immediately after. Control their movements, stop them from speaking. He also has complete control of the reality within the room, allowing him to summon visuals, create events and happenings, and otherwise warp the reality to whatever he would like. Additionally, Shio has complete control over how time passes within this reality, allowing him to make it feel as if only minutes have passed, or entire centuries. This technique is taxing on the user and stuns their chakra circulatory system, disabling the use of jutsu after it ends for 1 post.

[Chakra Touch Initiator]
A-rank Genjutsu Technique
Prerequisite: [Emporer Hanzi's Fist][Touch Initiator][Sensory Initiator]
Due to Emporer Hanzi's Fist, Shio is able to directly touch chakra, and has learned to combine this skill with his Touch and Sensory Initiator. When Shio is wearing the gloves, he may cast and initiate [Touch] genjutsu by directly touching an source of chakra currently being controlled by an individual. rather than the individual themselves. When it does so, it operates as if he has touched them, their own chakra sense carrying the genjutsu back to them. This does not work on fire and forget techniques.

[Sia]

For a moment Maido died and felt the comfort if relief for the first time in decades. This death was different, she materialized in front of Shio in what she would describe as a subtle and non descript room. She looked around and took in its appearance and saw Shio standing plainly before her, and she removed her mask and greeted him as plainly. "Hello Shio. Did I die? This doesn't...." Her voice trailed off and she gestured about with the mask in her hand as her cloak shifted beneath her and formed into her throne. She sat on it, cross-legged, then willed another one to form immediately and slide across the floor to end next to Shio, this second throne turning to face towards Maido as it traveled.

She gestured towards it politely and spoke again finally. "This is... close, but not quite the same as when I reincarnate into my other cores, so I am not certain that I am dead." She walked around suddenly and felt the floor with her bare hands. "It feels pretty real, the images are vivid, the touch sensation is perfect, but the memories that you recall can never quite be mimicked I think."

She turned back to him and sat down again, crossing her legs and propping her chin on her hand. "I commend you on the technique. Of course I deafened myself...you have the voice." She put heavy emphasis on the last word.

"I have been sent on a suicide mission, an impossible task for me alone to attempt. You have been found, Shio, and you have misbehaved. To be honest, I am surprised the Konoha and Suna ninja didn't respond to your presence here in the country. Perhaps they are more afraid than they appear for all their talk."

[Ace Trainer]

Shio smiled at her softly, even almost fondly. She began to calculate what was going on and he let her talk through it until she came to the conclusion, "You'd be surprised what I can mimick.", he responded coyly. She acknowledged his background with a comment on his voice, a skill he'd abandoned long ago for new gifts. It seemed the information Kirigakure and others had was a bit outdated. He rubbed the side of his head for a moment while Maido spoke some more, a suicide mission. Against him. It seemed she wasn't confident, though that was fair.

"Well, I'm sorry I'll have to do this to you. But, to be fair I was invited to Sunagakure with open arms. I am the Taishou of Iron Country, a leader. Diplomacy is the name of the game. It seems our home country has forgotten that."

He paused for a moment, thinking more. Freezing time for Maido, locking her in place while his own consciousness processed the information before him. He would need to exhaust Maido, or better yet, destroy her, during the course of this overlay to ensure that the fight did not continue. But he also had to think about what information he might need from her. Would she even have any? Time would resume for her, and he'd vanish, reappearing suddenly directly in her face, pain shooting through her any body as if every nerve was on fire. An intense and powerful pain that would surely be worse than almost anything a person could experience, "Why are they killing you this way?", he spat at her, a sudden and intense rage overcoming his face.

The entire world would turn black around them, the infinite space around them expanding even further as Shio seemed to grow and Maido seemed to shrink,

"ANSWER ME.'"

[Sia]

To Maido, the world grew dark. Her better half recoiled and her ability to move or interact with the world ceased to function. Pain wrought her body, but nothing she hadn't felt before in her three hundred years. She had died in so many vicious and horrible ways already. "I am sure you are more capable than you appear." For a moment, everything paused, then Shio moved about quite quickly and poised acid to her with his words, to which she truly didn't have a real answer to give. She considered it for a moment, embracing the pain, for it was the Kirigakure way. She owned it, made it her own, and still it defeated her. It smacked into her soul with a force she was not prepared for, a violent, acidic touch that wrecked through her blood much like her own venomous techniques.

She spoke finally, her body writhing with a level of pain she was not prepared for. Like a thousand acid jutsu burning into her soul, Maido whimpered. "Wouldn't it be awfully clever of them to not tell me that?" She said and laughed at his face with her bright red glowing eyes. Her sharp canines smiled at him though wincing eyes, a faced that displayed anguish but eyes which burned with rage. Rage, hatred, anguish, pain, and fury. She felt them all them, brought forth by Shio's genjutsu. It was just like when she had died, his experience was quite similar, as it turned out. As though stuck in a loop, she experienced the pain. Constant, not throbbing. Not sometimes, not every once in a while, constant. Constant pain. She could not escape it, she could not turn it off. There was no toggle, no mercy, no tap out, no switch to flip, no fuuinjutsu to kai.

[Ace Trainer]

It was good Shio didn't have an actual face in this illusionary world and his expressions couldn't actually be percevied by Maido, because if he had been in front of her she would have seen a wave of frustration and even further anger pass through his face as she gave an answer that made it clear he was not going to get very much information out of her. Perhaps part of his frustration was that he knew Maido was just operating as a weapon, as they had all been taught to be, and he felt a bit of guilt over murdering her this way. To a degree, he felt a bit used, Kirigakure having him do their dirty work for them, either Maido died and they got rid of her which is what it seemed they wanted; or he died and they at least had one perceived problem out of the way.

His false body would disappear as Maido would find the pain she was experiencing subsiding.

"Very well.", were the only words that would echo through the air around her as she would find her feeling of touch vanishing all together, her sight, though it was only showing her the void they were in, vanishing as well. No scents, or not even the taste of her own mouth would remain. Maido would find herself devoid of any sensation except sound, a loud buzzing in her ears. It was hardly a big sound, but it was the only thing, and its simple level would feel defeaning for her.

"There is something I've learned, and its that people of our power are often not easy to kill. They are usually quite resistant to the very nature of death, and if what I know of you is true, that is only doubly true for you. So, you're going to tell me how to kill you.", his words would cut through the buzzing sound, brining some sense of place to Maido while he spoke. If she attempted to speak he would mute her, not giving the opportunity.

"And before you reject that, I'm going to tell you why you're going to tell me. This is not real, we both know it. But for me, when it ends, it will feel as if only a few minutes passed. But here....I can make time take as little or as long as it needs for you. When it ends, I will remember where we were, I will likely be covered in a bit of blood, but I'll be able to walk up to you and kill you. Because when this ends, for you, 2000 years may have passed, 4000 years may have passed. The centuries you've lived will fade away to nothingness. When I'm done you will remember nothing but the void you are in now. And the pain you've experienced."

As he said pain it would come back, Maido would feel as if lava had been poured down her proverbial throat, her entire body literally on fire, melting from the inside out. And then he would take it away again, returning her to the nothingness but the buzz.

This would go on for a year, he'd leave her in the buzz for what would feel like a single year for her. Hardly much time in the long life Maido had lived. But the buzz would never end, there was no sleeping, no breaking from it. Constant, endless, buzzing, with no escape. No way to mute it, no way to quiet it. Simply there, to drown out every thought, every idea, every minuscule piece of information that moved through her brain. Then he would let her speak, "So you're going to tell me how to kill you. And I'm going to do this to you. And it is going to be hell. And when it's over, I'm going to kill you. And if you don't tell me how, and if you don't let me, I will bring you back here. And I will do it again. And we will repeat this process, for millenia upon millenia, until one hundred thousand years have passed and you don't remember what your own name is. And we'll come back, and you'll be a vegetable, and I'll kill you anyways.", his voice would echo through her brain.

And then he'd let her speak. Now was her only chance for peace from this.

[Sia]

Maidos feeling of touch and sight vanished, as well as scent and taste. Somewhere like when she was in-between death, she found this the most neutral and easy to tolerate of the states Shio had inflicted upon her so far. In the void, it was much different than a battlefield. Yet, it wasn't something Maido hadn't been used to. Shio's words were music to her ears. Save, were he a liar it could bare quite badly for her. Maido spoke into the void and closed her eyes, calmly talking to the ghost of Shio is her vicinity within the illusive realm he had conjured. Used and abused, abusive and obtrusive, Maido had much to say to him. "I feel like I was sent on something in a manner in which...There was no hope for me, Shio, there was no return of me. Yet, you do not know how to kill me? Surely, someone as smart as you could figure it out? I am not all that different than you. I have a...heart."


Her words hung heavy in the air and she shifted weight slowly, then spoke again after a moment. "You know, it doesn't really matter." She said, but then cut herself off and changed the subject. "You can kill me, I will even let you, if you are fast enough." She smiled into the void and opened her bright red eyes once again and her face exclaimed with bliss and delight, "It's quite easy really, you just have to get rid of my cloak and destroy my heart. I think you'll find it quite troublesome, I think Hisayo told me it has like ten layers of tentacles around it or something ridiculous like that." She said and attempted to shrug.

"Don't let me hug you..." She said after a moment in all seriousness. "I would never hug you unless it seemed necessary...but if I hug you it is because I am going to die, Shio, and my coding doesn't allow me to fail the mission even if I die... You may have heard that that is how I took several other lives..." She said. "I truly do not think your genjutsu will be the defeat of me," she admitted after a moment. "I think you will need to sink my own senbon deep into my heart or I will rise from whatever illusion you spell upon me and do bad things." She laughed again.

"Of course, I could be wrong...After all, I suppose one solution to this could be that you use some sort of mind trickery to turn me on the mist. That would be awfully clever of you, wouldn't it?"

[Ace Trainer]

Shio let her talk, be was unamused at her ranting. He got the answer he needed, and suspected, and that was good enough for him. The truth was this technique was designed for the resilient, the shinobi with capacity similar to his own. And it was meant to ignore all that, to drain away any capacity for resilience, any hope, any sense of self, to leave nothing but a husk of a person left. And if that is what he had to do, he would do it. And he had known from the moment he realized who he was fighting that that would be the case.

He had a few tricks up his sleeve, but the first was time and pain and nothing else.

He'd let another decade slog by for her, nothing but the buzzing. Periodically, with no sense or reason to it, the intense and incredibly pain he'd created for her would return for days, only to vanish as quickly as it came. Sometimes it'd return immediately, sometimes it'd vanish for weeks. But inevitably, it would return, and persist, and then fade once more. A decade of this, and then finally he would speak to her again.

"You think because of the elongated life you've lived that time will not degrade you. But it will, it will erode you away, just as any other. After long enough in nothingness, you will start to lose yourself. You'll start to forget. Its very easy."

And just like that, time would pass. A decade, then a century. Then another. And another. And he would leave her in the nothingness, with the nothingness. Not intervening. Leaving her with nothing but the buzz. He contemplated what she said, turning her against Kirigakure. But was that really an option? No, he didn't want to do that. Well at least, not yet.

[Sia]

Just like before, she finally caved. After the first century, Maido immediately turned everything off. In essence, she did what had to be done to the best of her mental capabilities to become a Fushinkou, mimicking their entire personality, jutsu complex, mentality, and traditions to the best of her knowledge and capabilities. She began to run training simulations in her head, she passed the time welcoming the pain, writhing in it excruciatingly and thinking of what violent acts to commit once she broke free. Eventually, some sort of pseudo-passing out happened, yet she instantaneously awoke due to Shio's influence and the sensation continued all over again. It reminded her, finally, of a death loop, yes. He had found some bit of the sweet spot and it was getting quite close.

She was silent, mostly. The thought to herself about noone, having already erased them from her mind before she found Shio in the desert. Her cloak rustled in her mind's eye, and she began to imagine it turning black and disappearing. She fell asleep from time to time, when the pain allowed her to. She imagined that she was in the water, floating, with her back to the depths in her face to the sky. She imagined the mist, encroaching inwards all around her and blocking out the sun. The pain brought her back, breaking her meditation and ruining the simulation within the simulation. She said nothing, and took it as it was, for it truly was what it was. She had nothing but time, and nothing but her minds. Two, two to go nuts with, no wonder she was a loon. Perhaps then, after this ordeal, Maido might be quite crazier after all. Perhaps though, she'd remember nothing. She wondered how long the illusion would last. She had already lost count. It truly didn't matter to her, for eventually she was degraded and indeed she did cave. The Fushinkou method was to be the way.

[Ace Trainer]

For Shio, what Maido was experiencing lasted for only a few moments. In it he contemplated what he would have to do, and the idea she had positied. Turning her against Kirigakure was an interesting one. Transforming her into some type of weapon, just as they had done. But, he wasn't confident he could do this, at least not in a meaningful long-lasting way. And really, what use would it be? He'd turn her against Kasai and Shiv and Shinjiro and others? To just die at their hands instead of his? Nothing would come of it. He knew that.

So when about 500 years had passed, he stirred her. Slowly her sight would return, then her sense of touch, taste would come, and she'd find herself against in the simple white room, the buzzing coming to a slow and quiet stillness.

"Wake my child.", he would say to her. But as she would be allowed to stir, the world around her would vanish, and instead Maido would find herself in a small village, in the body of a child no older than 7, stirring from their bed as the sun peaked through her bedroom window. Birds would be chirping outside, and she'd find a figure she was sure was her dad before her. And here....a new life for Maido would begin. For here, Maido would experience every day as this child. Going through life as her, playing with friends, helping in the family's smithery where her father made tools for the farmers of their village. She'd run their small shop with their mother, help with meals, and slowly she would age. She'd celebrate birthdays and weddings, travel to neighboring villages for festivals.

A life.

This was the next phase. For the next five hundred years, Maido lived new lives. There was no manipulations here, none of Shio's influence. Maido could make whatever choices she wanted, live life however she chose. And when it ended, a new one began. Friends, families, loved ones, pets, children, jobs, education, all of it was new. And Maido lived a different one each time. He would erode away any sense of her original identity that he could. Conflating and confounding it with new lives. He was sure she was resilient, but this wasn't meant to be brute force, it was subtle, gentle, and slow, draining away her original identity for new ones. How many lives could Maido live as someone else entirely?

[Sia]

She woke, finally, as a child of Sunagakure. Alone in the sand, she played by her lonesome and said little to noone, save for her father. Eventually, through her father's encouragement, she enrolled into the academy and became quite feisty. In dreams, memories of being Maido would rush back into her, and it was when she met a mysterious stranger with a red cloak that all of the pieces started to piece back together. Maido was now within Sunagakure, deep within its walls as Maido, her mind having been finally awakened. The young girl's hair turned half-white, and Maido immediately disguised it through a proper transformation technique, then went out of her way to obtain some dye and deal with this little issue.

She became a genin of Sunagakure, and kept her identity hidden for a long time. Even the greatest sensors of Sunagakure were unable to tell that Maido had infiltrated the village, she even met the Kazekage and smiled to his face. In her past life, she had only heard of the man. Her past life? What did she mean by her past life? That night, Maido meditated before she slept, and her inner fragmentations manifested themselves for the first time in a long time. "Where have you been?" She asked her better half, then resumed her meditation. "Oh you know, just...locked away, staying away for ole times sake. Waiting for the right moment."

"Very well then."

Many years passed, and Maido made several changes to her body over that time, tinkering with it as she delved deeply into the experimentations and secrets of Sunagakure's puppetry styles and combined them with her own knowledge. Eventually, she even took to learning Kuuton, and Sand style, then secretly abducted a Hizashi clan member and ripped out his heart, then infiltrated the village archives and subtly removed all records of him ever existing. Somehow, despite all the odds, she got away with it, and began to enact vengeance with her new village-destroying puppet body. Her inner-half was quite pleased, and extremely delighted with this development.

Already quite capable of destroying a village when she was a Kirigakure shinobi, she really went all out with this new body. One day, during a coronation, Maido performed hand seals from behind a wall and summoned a two hundred meter wide acid mist for the first time in seventy six years, since her rebirth. It immediately spelled doom for the entire area, as she immediately infused the mist with chiton and caused it to become quite difficult to remove as it regenerated to quickly when the Jounin and Bannin attempted to deal with it.

Too, she merely summoned more, having six clones of herself each cast the technique in various locations throughout the village simultaneously. In all, the mists encroached and created a giant blanket over the entire village over the course of minutes, leaving nothing untouched save for basements and the chakra reinforced. What shinobi were equipped to fight within the acid mist met maido finally at the Kazekage's office, laying in wait for her in ambush when she arrived. The room flew into action the moment she soared through the window, but Maido, having achieved a penultimate sort of form for herself utilizing Sunagakure's Kugutsu and Puppetry secrets, murdered the entire room almost immediately.

Gears, razors, wires, poisons, acid, sand, kuuton, and chiton all shot around the room in a tornado of violence, Maido's body opened up into many sections. As wires and cables that leaked acidic fluid and poisons exited Maido's puppet body, it toar through the room with such great velocity that is shredded everything in its path, the Kuuton chakra pulling the Jounin and Bannin in the room directly into the razor wire, which shredded them all into chunks almost immediately, save for the newly crowned Kazekage.

Maido rested her hand on his shoulder. "Relax, just let go." And then the two of them began sparring. At first, it appeared that Maido had the upper hand. She summoned many weapons from her body, and materialized many others out of acid, sand, chiton, and raiton. Jounin and Special Jounin from the village had arrived, sending puppets and clones from afar only to be met by puppet clones of Maido rising from the rubble around the village, halting their advances quite quickly. The acidic mist continued to encroach, devouring the buildings of the village despite the efforts of the Hizashi clan and as well as the efforts of the Crystal users. Eventually, the chaos ended when Maido plunged her hand, covered in acid, straight into the chest of the Kazekage and gripped their still beating heart.

"Become God."

Light purple chakra enveloped maido's body and encircled the Kazekage, filling them with Maido's kakujutsu chakra and violating their right to autonomy. Their heart ceased to exist, replaced by a a heart-sized box. Maido ripped it out of their rib cage, and tossed it on the ground. Without the knowledge of creating a new body out of an element, the Kazekage now struggle to do anything more than sit on the floor as a heart-sized core, notably, a rock that looked somewhat like a long brown turd. Maido stared at it for a long while, then smashed it beneath her foot, killing the Kazekage. Her inner half scolded her for being reckless.

She stepped into the mist, letting the acid eat away at her body, her work done. Eventually, it worked its way through her armor, her fake body, her mechanisms, her innards, and then finally her core, and she began to die once again. Painfully, she drifted into a sleep for what felt like a long time at first, but she quickly realized, under her current situation, what with Shio controlling her sense of time, that perhaps it really wasn't that long after all. She had no real way of knowing...

She stirred, and opened her eyes, seeing her father before her with a smile on his face. She took his hand and they walked together down the well lit streets of a prosperous neighborhood within Kumogakure. She looked at his dark face and beamed when he did, the two of them happily ordering ramen together and enjoying it at a quiet little shop in an otherwise noisy part of town. The two of them had such a great time, laughing and cutting up and enjoying their meal together. They left the ramen shop eventually and walked to the festivities. The annual lunar festival had begun. Maido danced around excitedly with childish delight, her black dress flowing around her as she stepped in tune to the beat. Her fragmented half appeared before her and they conversed for the rest of the walk. They decided that she would stick around more often, and for the rest of the illusion Maido's inner manifestation never left, staying right by Maido's side and goading her for allowing Shio to catch her in the illusion.

Years passed, and Maido was a shinobi again, though not by choice. This time, she had been living peacefully with her father and staying in hiding when Kumogakure's civil war had begun. She had kept her presence hidden, hiding with her father within the walls of Kumogakure and begging not to be found by the world, having found some nice sort of life for herself finally. It didn't last, for by pure accident, Maido's home waz ransacked and razed, sparking her to retaliate to the fullest extent of her capabilities. By that time, she had infiltrated Kumogakure deeply, and her display of Jikiton combined with Chiton proved too powerful for even the cancel culture squad to handle. She intentionally went out of her way then to possess the body of an Ishiguro, and utilized their elemental affinity in combination with her own specialties and some kakujutsu and tenkujutsu magic, to manifest a summon spirit capable of utilizing denjiton. With it, she slew the entire Ishiguro clan in one night.

Women, children, husband, shinobi, it didn't matter. Maido entered the clan compound and summoned three spirits that day. Yggdramasil, the great tree, erupted into the clan compound and immediately began to spread its roots, destroying the housing structures and sending vines outwards to grab those that attempted to flee. Substiwolf created clones of itself for similar effect, tracking down stragglers and eating them, sometimes while they were still alive. By now, Substiwolf had lived many many years, and its capabilities had grown to the point where when it was summoned, it and it alone turned the tide of battle. As it came into the compound, it had created twelve clones of itself, and each of them had created a space/time realm of varying effects and overlaid it onto the real world. Mass panic immediately ensued as Substiwolf spread out amongst the entire village, bringing its various hellish space/time realms into fruition around the village. She emerged, angry, from the Ishiguro compound, with half white and half black hair, her cloak flourishing for the first time in many years outwards from her body.

It was the Raikage who killed her, Hayate. After a battle that lasted several days, Hayate finally landed a blow that pierced all the way through Maido's cloak and struck into her core, a great blast of lightning piercing down from the heavens and shattering it into many pieces, a violent and excruciatingly painful death.

This time, Maido woke up in a small minor country, she presumed it to be Aroma from a glance. She walked around with her dad and saw many would-be chuunins eager to take the exams. She listened to them as they smack talked each other and giggled with her father. They grabbed a sweet treat and made their way to the arena, crowding in with everyone else into the bleachers and awaiting the first match to begin. Her father had placed many wages on this years Chuunin exam, apparently, and was eager to see the results of the matches for all the wrong reasons.

The two of them sat together and watched the match, and the entertaining world of shinobi enchanted them. Prospectives lined up in numbers at the gates, and it was a large turnout, this shared exam. Shinobi from all corners of the world had flocked to attend the sight, and a sight it truly was. Maido's father made a good bit of money that day, and they enjoyed a bit of novelty that evening, eating much nicer than they had for quite some time. She sat across from the table and looked at her father, longingly, and remembered what he was truly like, recalling him in her mind's eye and finding that he was quite accurate to the description. She shrugged, and continued to eat at her poultry, enjoying its smoky flavor.

Later, the two of them went and got dessert treats, nice egg cupcakes with just the right amount of eggs to bring the flavor forward subtly. A few years passed, and Maido enjoyed a nice and quiet life with her father within this particular instance within Shio's illusion. She went to school, she studied hard, she made her father proud, he had no idea who she really was. They enjoyed fishing trips together often, in an Iron boat of Kirigakure origin, that Maido gifted to her father upon returning from a trip out of the country one month. In this life, Maido found peace in family for the first time ever. The father she had never known, she had found a bit of refuge in, thanks to Shio's illusion. Her inner manifestation was even a bit quiet now, and only more kindly reminded her to escape the illusion.

She wept when he died this time, and felt sorrow rather than the anger she had felt in his first death. Though she certainly knew it was an illusion, the experience was still all so real and overwhelming. She thought of the Fushinkou and scolded herself, but the tears continued to roll down her face. She cried until she had a headache before she cried until she fell asleep. When she woke, she gathered wood and cloth, and arranged a funeral pyre for him on his wooden boat. She placed his cold body upon the wood, and performed hand seals for the first time in many years, sending a spew of flames towards the wood and accelerants underneath, causing an inferno to go up as she pushed the boat out to the sea. She watched it for a while, sitting from his iron boat.

Eventually, she got bored and began to channel chakra, then exploded violently from the inside out, destroying an entire one hundred and twenty eight meter area around her with great force, sending sand, blood, and ocean water everywhere, raining from the sky. When she next awoke, she found her father and her mother walking alongside her in the forests of Konohagakure.

Aside them, three canines of various appearances. One large black one, another large but brown one, and a tiny mottled one. Maido clutched Chimaru to her chest as she leapt through the tree branches with her parents. They were returning from a trip outside of the village and heading towards Maido's favorite restaurant. The chef started, and whipped up a treat right before her very eyes. Sat between her parents, she looked at them and tears filled her eyes as she remembered her real ones not even remotely as fondly. What an illusion, she thought to herself. She nibbled her food then, gingerly eating at the ginger-laced rice and chicken. She dabbed the egg yolk sauce with her chopsticks and took another bite.

Maido enrolled into the academy, and with the help of Chimaru graduated with no problem. For her birthday, her parents took her out of the country and they visited the great Sunagakure. Maido visited the library, the museum, and one of the rather fine temples and overall had a rather splendid time of it. Maido went on to do several oddball missions here and there and scouted out the layout and terrain of the village as a supposed hobby in the mean time. Eventually, though one chuunin exam had gone by since her graduation to genin, Maido took the chuunin exam. By then, Chimaru had grown to be quite large and had multiplied into thirteen total beings, and Maido spent almost all of her travelling with them in a pack. He was ferocious, being mostly black, with a white underbelly and light tan markings on his sides and tail with long pointed ears and a very narrow, long snout. He was also quite rigid and strong, broad-shouldered. Solely utilizing one ninjutsu in tandem to Chimaru, Maido slaughtered the chuunin exams. Subtly utilizing her secret chiton techniques to control her animal companions purposefully and masterfully, she sleuthed her way through the exams with absolutely no problem.

She moved up to Special Jounin and declared her specialization as tracker for the rest of this life, never bothering to work her way up the Konohagakure ladder, finding home and refuge in the wonders of the forest. She kept in regular contact with her parents in this life, for they got along splendidly. They attended her graduation ceremonies, her coronations, they were active in her life in ways that weren't a hindrance or hamper, and were generally pleasant to be around.

She enjoyed this life, this fake illusion Shio had brought before her. She continued to be a tracker ninja, and found great success as a hunter ninja as well, using her thirteen dogs to track down would be defectors from the village before they ever got very far. She allowed herself to age, she even took a husband this time and loved him dearly and truly. They had three children, two beautiful boys and an equally wonderful girl. They grew together somewhat close in age, and they each wished to become shinobi some day. Maido, oddly, discouraged this lifestyle for them. They chose it anyway however, and Maido felt the loss of a child. A pain she otherwise had no way of sensing, this was a new and horrible sensation which Shio had wrought onto her. She mourned, more than she had ever mourned before in any of her lives. As she cried, the very area around her began to dissolve as acid spilled out from all around her body. It warped the land, the buildings, the environment, the people. Maido's ugly sobbing was the death wail that brought acid mist to Konohagakure that day, finally revealing her presence to the village. She was surrounded immediately and took no notice, continuing to sob loudly on the floor of her house as acid flooded the room, mists of it pluming outwards violently.

The next noise that came out of Maido can only be described as roaring, as her very human form began to change as a red cloak spat outwards from her neck, surrounding her entire body at once and flowing outwards a great two hundred meters and knocking down every building behind her in the process instantaneously. Almost, but not quite simultaneously, Maido became two hundred meters tall. Now a bipedal wolf, made entirely of chiton, she loomed over the village and began to wreck havoc aimlessly. She channeled chakra and swung her arms, causing a large section of the village to be immediately flattened under the weight of her more powerful Acid ninjutsu. A large wave of Acid came crashing from the sky, blanketing the village repeatedly and blocking out the sky. It hit Maido too, whom paid it no mind and immediately began regenerating the damage away. Her rampage continued for several days, and it was found that when she made an effort, she was truly an unstoppable force. Eventually, on the fourth day, a particularly skilled shinobi managed to sneak up to her without being sensed and plunged a chakra-affecting poison into her body, paralyzing her and causing her core to sink to the ground. It was promptly destroyed without hesitation under his boot.

Maido awoke once more, this time sitting at a table with both of her parents and sipping hot black tea by a fire. She eyed the shop merchant and other patrons suspiciously from over her mug as she sipped it and listened quietly to the world around her. For some reason, she was nervous, and on edge. She looked out the window just in time to see the explosion across the street, which rocked the foundations of the surrounding buildings and caused immediate panic in the very busy streets. She was the first to react, hastily disappearing from the area without a trace as memories surged through her mind. She remembered Hisayo, Kayoko, Shinjiro, Kotaru, Shio, and Shiv. She moved quickly, startling the nearby villagers that were unaware of her capabilities, she was in a small frame. Her parents were startled too, but not for long, as they too sprang into action and began to drag people to safety as Maido did. Surprised, Maido said nothing as she examined her new parents while they worked alongside her. Another explosion rocked what Maido now saw was a very small village in a place far from Kirigakure. Whatever was happening, it seemed almost like an attack, the explosions were so...human. Inner Maido manifested within Maido's consciousness again, as she had been doing for so many years straight now. "That looked like a fuuinjutsu explosion."

Maido squinted her eyes and inhaled the smoke, then breathed out a light green mist that began to encroach the surrounding area, bringing comfort and soothing pains, cuts, gashes, bruises, and wounds of the civilians in the vicinity. Maido's parents were taken aback, unaware their child was capable of performing such feats. Maido looked at them silently and her eyes began to glow red as she spoke to them. "Where am I?" She said to them as her cloak extended outwards from her body, shrouding her appearance as her hair braided itself in two white braids, neatly draped on either side of her head. Her cloak shifted upwards over her head and then covered the rest of her, revealing only her face. "Dungeon Country." The male said to her after a moment of hesitation. "Thank you, are you under attack from anyone that you are aware of at the moment?"

"Yes."

"I see...Then I will grant you my protection."

She turned and eyed the second explosion, opening her senses and feeling out around her within a great two hundred meter range. She sensed many souls, but only a few that were worthy of being truly noticed. She began to move towards them at frightening speed. She sensed a surge of chakra from one particular source, and homed in on its location. She performed hand seals, and a tendril of red chiton shout outwards from the palm of her hand and grabbed the targets entire body, beginning with their hands and enveloping them in the red fluid before violently yanking them all the way backwards towards Maido and slamming them onto the ground at her feet. She opened the cocoon, and the man gasped for air and wheezed.

"Hello there, why are you blowing up this village?"

The man said nothing, and so Maido performed a fast series of hand seals and the cocoon grew teeth around him and closed partially. "I was ordered to."

"By who?"

"The Mist."

Maido laughed. A nice, rich, hearty laugh. After a moment she spoke again. "Okay...I guess I'll kill the mist." She said with a smile and departed hastily. A few weeks passed, and she traveled alone, thinking of her old friends from centuries ago and recalling the last few lives she had lived within this most marvelous illusion. My, how Shio had grown. Truly, if he were capable of such illusions as this, he was no longer the small boy she had once known. Eventually, she arrived to the mists of Kirigakure by boat and made dock at one the many Muramasa's yards. She settled in and took her time to adjust and once she had become adjusted to the mist of the island, her work began.

First, she gathered Hisayo and Kayoko, then decided to grab Shinjiro and Vorashu as well. For her plan to work, she needed someone that would follow her into absolute hell with no questions. She gathered the four of them together in a quiet house in the Muramasa compound. "I need your help..." She began, "A village I respawned in was attacked maliciously by Kiri...I have already done some digging and it was uncommissioned." She cleared her throat. "I am tired of these games. I'm going to go hurt some people. I'm not going to tell you who it is, and you can never ask me about."

Shinjiro leaned forwards in his seat. "So...when do we leave?"

Maido woke up in a bed, her head ringing. That had been a painful death. Her mind raced with memories. What happened? She thought back, and after a few minutes it came to her. The five of them had set out in secret almost immediately, and no one had known Maido was back in the village, she had managed to maintain her cover while considered a missing ninja, so what had happened? Nothing, really, things had gone exactly according to plan, then Maido had gotten bored and started fighting with Shinjiro in a light sparring match while the others watched. It was way later, after the mission, after some time had passed. Eventually, she had gotten cheeky and utilized a sacrificial-style maneuver, intentionally capitalizing on her bodies immortality to take a hit in order to land one, which Shinjiro punished immediately by killing her, knowing fully well that she would respawn and not be slighted by the incident in any way.

But did he have to do it so well?

She rolled over in the bed and stared at the pale walls. "Nah, this won't do." She channeled chakra and exploded, rocking the entire building with a great force as she immediately died and respawned somewhere else again. This time, she looked around and found herself alone in a forest, save for a large stag that stood across the way, staring straight into her eyes. She raised her eyebrows in expression, meeting its gaze. It was a magnificent creature, a truly beautiful sight to behold. Maido looked around and began to take in the details of her environment and realized that she was in the underground forest of Iwagakure. Immediately, she channeled chakra and altered her appearance, turning her hair and eyes black as well as her cloak and clothing, covering almost all of her skin, save for her neck and face. Her face too, then changed, her cheekbones shifted, her lips, nose, eyebrows, chin, eyes, everything moved around just enough to change her appearance entirely. She was still remarkably beautiful.

Years passed, and Maido had assimilated herself into Iwagakure quite easily, hiding her presence as an outsider much easier than she anticipated. In time, she enrolled into the academy, maintaining an image of a lowly genin to all but a very select few, her closest of friends. In time, she made friends with many in the Akari clan, and even nurtured a friendship with Akari, Kotaru. She spent a lot of time at a nice, well-established petting zoo, enjoying the variety of animals and the conversations with their caretakers a great deal. Inner Maido was around a lot this lifetime too, goading her throughout the way for not escaping Shio's illusion as well.

Eventually, Maido ascended the ranks of Iwagakure, and took to learning Kouton and with it developed a wide variety of techniques, including a liquid variation of it, which she combined secretly with her own chiton techniques in order to allow her Kouton to regenerate. With this special Kouton, Maido quickly became a celebrity amongst Iwagakure shinobi, and no one even knew her real name. In a blur, more years passed and she spent a great many years meditating. She spent it in an underground lake, within an underground forest deep within Iwagakure. Her body was now made properly of blood and iron, and she spent the years in a trance drifting throughout the water with occasional visits from others that she never interacted with, save when eating or cooking. She did pause once, and had a long a fruitful fuck on a full moon and conjured through reverse kakujutsu, a real body with which to have the child before carrying it and assuming back her previous body of Iron and Blood, with eight cores. Several were missing, she had scattered them throughout the planet in a fiendish and whoreish style of manner.

Her next several years of meditation were a true struggle, as she died a little and loved a little more with each passing day. She shied her child away from the shinobi life, yet they chose anyway, and Maido's memories flourished. She cycled through them in broken meditation after a while, and recalled them all specifically. In time, she transcribed them in fuuinjutsu into her own body in a most spectacular fashion. Cho, her child, and the mother came to visit daily for the longest time. The mother came to stay for quite a while, truly, they lived, heretically in the underground forest, deep in an underground cavern, a small house Maido had built over time through hard work and the use of her summon Yggdramasil. Eventually, the child visited less often, but did choose to take up the mantle of changing her name to Maido, and began donning a cloak of liquid iron, with beaming red eyes like Maido's. Younger Maido went on many missions, and became something that older Maido was not, subtle. She moved in the shadows, she moved quite quietly. Indeed, younger Maido was a different breed of broken mold that inspired a new generation of shinobi rivalry between Iwagakure and Kirigakure.

Elder Maido continued her meditation more lightly for a while, cycling through her memories for a long time and emblazoning them into her mind. She stirred a cauldron made of iron and filled with chiton, and brought forth acid bubbles and mist that spewed horrid wretched things into the night. After a while, she took the stag as a familiar, and kept to herself as best she could and stayed out of trouble. Younger Maido spent a lot of time going on dangerous missions where she played an odd roll of being a very explosive ninjutsu-style user with a very quiet personality and subtle appearance. Younger Maido went on many missions with Akari clan members and even one that become Tsuchikage, they remained great friends through her immortal years and she loved him as a brother. In time, Younger Maido rose through the ranks of Iwagakure and became a Bannin. Though offered, she declined the position, instead preferring to act from the shadows and be a menace to society as her mother before her.

One day, Younger Maido asked Elder Maido to spar, when several people had happened to be visiting the underground forest and had gone to one of its riverbanks, finding the two Maidos there. Recognizing them immediately, they had many questions, seeking wisdom and guidance from Elder Maido and training from Younger Maido. "Fine, fine, I will train you, but, you should see who the real master is first." Younger Maido rose from her kneeled position and threw a kunai at Elder Maido, whom didn't move at all. She turned into a plume of red mist, which immediately encroached and filled the entire forest. It then turned grey, and had bits of liquid iron floating within itself, suspended within the droplets of mist. It turned hard then, and rained down like diamond needles, though Elder Maido exerted control over them and made them pause before falling to the ground, falling softly rather than harshly. She performed hand seals, and the needles on the ground shot upwards in a swarm, assembling together into a swarm of wasps that buzzes with a horrible metallic sound. They swarmed younger Maido, whom struggled to fend them off for a moment before she too performed hand seals and sent forth a flurry of iron in a barrage, a large dense sphere of liquid iron that impacted hard and carried great weight, crashing the swarm of wasps down as Elder Maido tripped Younger Maido onto her face, then taking a single step and disappearing sixty five meters away and landing on the water. She rose her arms, channeling chakra, and a great Liquid Iron Spider Octopus rose from the depths beneath her. Its head was eighty meters tall, and its eight tendrils reached deep into the water, stretching out another one hundred and twenty meters each from its head, with a large, vicious beak in between.

It squirted ink into the mist, turning it black and dying it, clinging to the iron. After a moment, Maido performed some hand seals, and the Iron within the mist thickened, condensing into eight pyramids and flying towards younger Maido. Younger Maido dealt with the great Spider Octopus, but not very efficiently, it was a real menace to fight. She struggled, and was quite winded, sore, and generally exhausted by the time she was done. Maido's inner half laughed at her, but Maido paid it no mind at that moment.

There battle went on for a good twenty minutes, and grew quite ferocious, before eventually Elder Maido sliced her acidic polearm directly through younger Maido's body, ending her swing just before it would have collided with her core. They both smiled sheepishly, then laughed it off and had a great rest of their day together with their students. After training this new young group for quite some time, Elder Maido resumed her meditation in isolation for many years.

Eventually, after many years, Maido longed for something different. Something truly awe inspiring, something wicked. Shio didn't fail to please, for in a short time it would seem, for time was so relative, a great owl appeared before her and spoke with her for quite some time, and they shared many stories and drinks with each other as elder Maido's mother came to visit them every once and a while. After many more years, Elder Maido was finally satisfied with the state of her fragmented consciousness, her meditation coming out quite prosperous. She sighed, then began to channel chakra and exploded in a secluded area, satisfied with her life lived there. Her memories flashed before her eyes, and she recalled everyone so vividly as the acidic mist took her away. Eventually, as fate would have it, she found herself living within Kirigakure again. She lived a life quite similar to her usual ones, but spent a lot of time dancing as well as fishing. Essentially, every other day she would go dancing and then the next fishing, and established quite a good life for herself doing this whilst also being a shinobi.

One day, she went out on her Iron boat, with her Iron Butterfly at her back, her cloak shaped to her body. By lantern light she sent the boat quietly downstream, beckoning the fuuinjutsu to activate with her hands. Silently, after a few moments, she docked the boat with a bit of rope and took the lantern and her hooded figure could be seen walking down the street just barely within the mist, illuminated by her lantern. Inner Maido walked beside her, jeering at her with a smirk as she pulled her hood own down and twirled about, singing to Maido as she did so. Maido gave a polite smile but said nothing, her face returning to a somber and grim expression almost immediately as she walked through the mists. She found her way to a bar, and met with her associates there and had many laughs and drinks with them late into the night. They smoked, and had a quite lovely roudy time with each other celebrating their mission success.

The next week, they went out on another assignment that went just as smoothly, but was much more entertaining. She continued this life for some time, support the Head Hunter Division while undercover and remaining as incognito as possible for a long, long time while she perfected her craft, utilizing the different ninjutsu she had learned over the many years and the help of her inner half to bring into fruition great and disastrous ninjutsu. Spurred more haphazard by Shio's illusion, Maido developed many techniques over the years with the help of her friend.

Eventually, this too came to a close, and Maido spent her final days within this part of the illusion conversing and working alone with only herself and her inner half.

[Ace Trainer]

Shio watched through the various lives Maido lived. He imagined this is what a god felt like, having the presence of mind to understand multiple lifetimes of illusions without experiencing the passage of time in action. It was a strange duality to be cognizant of as it was happening. In truth he found himself a little frustrated, surprised to some degree that Maido was able to retain the self through several hundred years of new identities. He'd set out a pretty clear path for her to follow to take away from her and somehow what had happened was....nothing like that. It was mildly annoying, but not worth his effort to disrupt. He had grown a bit impatient and was just ready for this to all be over with. At this point, he was ready to just get back to Iron Country so he could commence the next steps to everything he was doing.

In the final moments of the illusion, Shio would flash Maido through a few more hundred years of experiences. Flashes of her real life, flashes of random events, scrambling any presence of where exactly she was. Occasionally, he'd throw in some aspect of himself, aiming to blur the line where their reality was and where it ended. When the genjutsu ended, Maido would almost certainly be quite disassociated from what was happening around them and he'd have a window of opportunity.

And in an instant, the genjutsu would end.

Shio's fist would finish connecting with the blood wave, and another punch would follow up with it. The two punches of [46] strength would be enough to break through the massive wave, throwing Shio forward through it at Maido's exposed body. There were no techniques here, no tricks, he wouldn't be able to yet. And as he flew forward at her he'd throw one more punch, aimed right at her chest. The cloak had been used for the wave, and his punches would have disrupted it enough to make it unusable, a flaw in using a single technique in this manner. Her defensive cloak had lost power when used for an attack, exposing her. If his punch landed, it'd blast away her weak artificial body and leave the core there for him to demolish.

[Sia]

Maido's inner half had coached her through the illusion splendidly, never letting her falter from her true identity. Such was the nature of havin a voice inside of your head that was uniquely your own but couldn't be turned off, and consistently goaded you into doing horrible unspeakable things. As such, the illusion passed by Maido with little effect. She was constantly and consistently reminded of whom she was, and try as she might, her inner-half wasn't going to go away. The genjutsu ended, and Maido was quite disoriented. She fell forwards slightly as it ended, reeling from the experience as she attempted to compose herself, but it was too late.

Shio had already disrupted her cloak, and he was moving in on the assault. There was, essentially, nothing for Maido to do, except allow him to finish her off. She was beat, if Shio didn't finish her, the acidic mist would. She smiled at him wearily and made eye contact as he punched towards her, channeling chakra throughout her entire body in a violent surge, turning her skin red all over. "Thanks for the memories, Shio. Do something wise...with my bounty." She said, before she violently exploded from the inside out, siding a large concussive force outwards from her body in every direction, destroying her core and obliterating her entire body into nothingness in the process.

Body Blast
S-Ranked Ninjutsu
Prerequisite: 50 Ninjutsu
By channeling chiton chakra into a target that has at least a quart of her blood inside of them, Maido can cause them to quickly turn a very dark shade of red before violently exploding from the inside out at the end of the post with a strength of 50. This explosion covers an area 128m x 128m x 128m.

Target: Self

[Ace Trainer]

Shio's strike would connect and Maido's body would begin to turn a dark red before suddenly exploding with a great force. Shio's body would be thrown back by the force of the explosion, sending him sprawling against the ground 40 meters or so away from where she exploded. He'd cough, forcing himself to his feet, adjusting his glasses that had somehow survived the explosion without breaking. Taking them off and rubbing them against his shirt in an failed attempt at cleaning them, he slowly walk back towards where she'd exploded from. Staying slightly on guard, he had gathered that the explosion was not simply a defense mechanism but something more terminal.

Placing his glasses back on his face, he'd release a heavy sigh as he picked up several pieces of her shattered core and slipped them away into his pocket. It'd be the little proof he had of her death. He supposed collecting a full bounty would be unlikely in this case, he had little proof that these shards of glass were truly here aside from his own reputation. But it would be a nice reward nonetheless, not that the Taishou was in desperate need of money.

He'd sit on the ground now, releasing a heavy sigh. This was a less than ideal series of events, it seemed he was now on Kirigakure's radar, unsurprising after what Aimi had done. Perhaps they were going to start locking down on their more high tier missing ninja, something they had usually been a bit lackadaisical about. He would need to accelerate his approach on these matters if he wanted to secure his safety. If Maido had been sent after him, he was sure an escalation for force would only follow.

Shio would sit for a while, letting his body slowly repair the damage it had incurred from the explosion. Already his healing had cleared up the wounds from the acid, and he could feel a bone shifting back into place in his ribcage, having not even noticed that it'd been dislodged in the first place. After an hour or so would pass, the young Taishou would push himself to his feet and begin walking again. He needed to rejoin his team and get to work.