Another Page Turned

[Niro]

Ashura was laid back in the middle of one of the training grounds in Sunagakure no Sato. Today was one of the rare days he hadn't ran off to find Indra first and bother him. After their poor showing at the Chuunin Exams, the duo had earned quite an earful not only from the village officials about how they'd be entrusted with great power and had failed to show it off but also by their parents about how they'd been promoted in a single go. Ashura wasn't sure how Indra's parents had been but with his being some hot shot Hizashi in their youth, he had gotten two earfuls. One from both of them.

It had led him to training in this stupid sand pit all morning. He had kept trying to focus on transmuting something into...anything else but his concentration just wasn't there. Even Janesisu was quiet today, ruminating in her own thoughts as his poor mood was quite unlike him. He had even tried to switch it up, maybe train some new Kuuton jutsu or even a Kaenton one but each and every time he tried just found the motivation to do so lacking. It felt like something was wrong with him and after trying so many different things to try and get into a groove and fail, he had resigned himself to laying back in the sand frustrated nothing had gone his way this morning.

[CDF]

This is much harder than anticipated.

Hito couldn't help but offer himself an empathetic smirk as he stared up at a familiar yet strange sky. For the first time in 20 years, he was back in his home village and it was arguably the most overwhelming thing he'd ever experienced. It's not that the village changed much; a voice within him was actually pretty irritated how little had changed. It was that he had been out in the wild both corporally and mentally for so long that living in an ordered society larger than a small nomadic camp felt as insane as being lost within mental dimensions.

Knowing he wasn't about to be recognized soon and that he had plenty of time to make his reentry, he went to the simplest, clearest space in the city he could find and just meditated while sitting in the sand. The longer he sat and the more relaxed he got, however, the harder it became to pull himself back to reality. He was always a few errant thoughts away from drifting mentally into a memory or potential future and only 10 minutes of meditation later, he no longer even maintained his body.

His heart plopped onto the sand pit and was covered by the remaining sand of his body that collapsed on top of it. Within, Hito mindwalked through the times that never and always existed where he was in metropolises, searching in particular for his favorite version of a future bustling Suna. At this rate, he wouldn't come out of his escape for another few hours

[Niro]

Truly, nothing went his way this morning.

Ashura let out a loud groan of frustration in conjunction with raising his hands in the air off of the ground before letting them lazily fall back down and kick up a small cloud of sand. Sitting here wasn't going to do him much good. Lamenting his poor choices and lack of training wouldn't either. With a loud sigh, he finally resigned himself to getting up and going to get a bite to eat at least.

Ashura sat up from his spot on the ground and pushed up and onto his feet before patting himself free of any sand that had clung to his clothing. It was always the worst when he came home and there was sand in places he wasn't even sure had a chance to be exposed to the grainy bits of rock. Considering where he lived, the worst was daily. Sticking his hands in his pockets and hanging his head, Ashura began to trudge through the sand and drag his feet through it as he went to exit the training area.

Only to trip and fall over something!

Ashura flailed with his hands in his pockets and let out a short yelp before landing face first in the sand with his reward being a mouth full of it. He quickly rolled over and began to spit over the dreaded substance, globs of saliva ridden with it sent flying from his mouth as he tried to get the gritty pieces out of his mouth.

"Man, what'd I do to deserve this?" He groaned as he looked around for whatever he tripped over, only to see a preserved heart in the sand? What the...

[CDF]

Hito's consciousness, deeply immersed in a meditative state, remained unaware of the physical world around him. His heart, the singular remaining piece of his material existence, lay exposed in the sand - an oddity in the otherwise mundane landscape of the training ground. As Ashura stumbled upon this bizarre sight, Hito's senses, though dulled by his deep mental journey, registered the disturbance. A slight tremor in his spiritual connection to the physical world prompted a flicker of awareness to this moment in time and space, reminding him that he was here and now.

The heart gave one deep pulse in the sand, began to emanate a faint, shimmering golden aura that rose up with the sand around it, carrying the heart into its appropriate position in the rapidly forming humanoid that could hear the young man and was responding to him before his head had even completely formed out of the sand.

"Forgive my abrupt appearance," Hito's voice resonated, calm yet resonant, as if echoing from a distant realm. It was also a little crackly from lack of use over the last year. Mentally, he was making a note to create some self-regulating consciousness programs to keep his mind alert enough to at least avoid turning into sand or getting tripped over by a random child

"I sense your frustration, young one. The desert sands are unforgiving, but they also teach us resilience. What troubles you on this day?" Hito looked down at him with a curious but mostly apathetic face, like an adult vaguely interested in the toy a child's playing with. This had the potential to be more interesting and manageable than reintegrating into the village.

[Niro]

Ashura's own crazy galaxy-like eyes, nowhere near the normal appearance for anyone, were used to seeing outlandish miracles each and every day. He was a shinobi and although he didn't, he knew a few who controlled the elements like they were extensions of themselves. Plus, he had a gigantic spirit demon capable of creating anything sealed within him, after all. The sight of a man slowly forming from the bottom up out of the sand around the heart on the ground he had tripped over wreathed in a golden glow was definitely something to add near the top of things. A puzzled look on Ashura's face came across and stayed there even as Hito talked, the boy flabbergasted by the elders appearance even as he was hunched over and looking up from the ground after attempting to rid his mouth from the gritty grains of sand.

He was really regretting not meeting up with Indra before training now. Just so he would be believed when he shared what he saw with the other boy. There was no way now.

"...You're made of sand? That's gotta suck..." Ashura lamented as his tongue ran across his teeth and found more of the substance for him to spit out at his hands and feet. The frustration of trying to clean his mouth of the grit only mounted on top of those already simmering underneath. It finally boiled over with ease once the man asked and Ashura was quick to spill.

"I failed my first chuunin exams and now everyone is mad at me is what! I let everyone down and it sucks." He explained as he pushed himself to his feet and wiped his hands on his knees. "Everyone was expecting me and Indra to do really well but we got eliminated in the first bit of combat. Not my fault we just get to train with dummies all day! They never let us do any real missions..."

[CDF]

In his cold, robotic voice he shrugged and replied reflexively. "Like all things, it has its perks and disadvantages."

As was his default, Hito's face didnt reflect even a flicker of emotion at the response from the young boy. There was no surprise at the boy's unique appearance nor any empathy reflected when he told his story. Behind his placid face was an equally calm mind registering the fact that this boy was likely the current host to Janesisu. He searched with some difficulty in his fractured memory to decide if he's actually met Janesisu in this life, or if the nebulous familiarity he has for her comes from knowing about her in this life and brushing up against her existence in his mental travels.

Regardless, he'd encountered a surprisingly important and powerful member of his village already. Seeing and hearing the boy's frustration, a far-away voice within him reminded him of the concept of empathy and that he was speaking to a child. Making some mental calculations, lowering his defenses and scaling back his personality to one that's easier for a child to digest, Hito sat seemingly on air a split second before a chair of sand formed beneath him. Simultaneously, he reached an open palm out towards Ashura's direction and his chakra pulled at the many little sands of grain that littered the host's body.

As the sand flowed from him to the ground, Hito finally spoke.

"Seems to me that's a rather strange reaction from your peers." Hito gave a light, encouraging smile. It felt strange on his face and he could feel the forced neurotransmitters triggering within his mind, a reflex from even fake smiling that he knew would help him in further loosening up and donning the personality kids preferred. Somebody that spoke to them like they were adults, but also were patient enough to allow for them to be the emotionally dumb children they were. "The chuunin exams are designed for most people to fail, and considering you're walking around with one of the most powerful and difficult to control entities in the known universe inside of you, I'd say you deserve some slack." Smiling now more naturally and genuinely, letting the neurotransmitters flow, Hito did some light channeling and flicked his hand, causing another chair to emerge from the sand. It was exactly the perfect height for Ashura to sit comfortably and it was diagonally faced towards Hito, giving the young man the option to sit and look at Hito while easily being able to look elsewhere for comfort.

"I would assume being Janesisu's host is why they only let you train with dummies? And is that why you both failed, insufficient training?"

Hito resisted the distaste in his mouth. He was starting to feel feelings, as was normal when he played a part. The warm personality was not something you could just fake, for the time you wanted somebody to interact with that personality, you really had to truly be that personality during that time or the inauthenticity would be felt, especially by children and their superior pattern recognition. So in this moment, his inner self was uncomfortable by how much he sounded and felt like his old self. It was familiar in a way that did not bring him comfort, only sadness.

Simultaneously as he spoke, a part of his mind replayed what the boy just said and noticed something. Adding a bit of amusement to the medley of emotions, Hito spoke again before he could answer the first questions. "And am I mistaken or are you more upset about disappointing everyone than you are about actually failing the exam?" This was a bit tactless, he realized as the words came out. Not something he would have ever said in his prime. In his prime, he would have made that observation inwardly and slowly led the potential pupil to water by making them realize how much stock they're putting into the desires of others vs their own success. He had a lot of work to do to be a master of human interaction again. Did Hito even want to be that again?

[Niro]

Weird. Every sense in his head was screaming it to him. Strange. Abnormal. It was like looking at what a machine thought a person was like.

His brain kept screaming to him something was off about the elder crafted from sand in front of him. Even looking him dead in the face, it felt like he was looking at someone familiar to a person but not quite. But, just as his senses told him something was up, they also told him the man was familiar. He HAD seen the face before, somewhere. Ashura just couldn't remember where. The feeling only increased even further when an unnatural smile broke across the elders lips but it didn't reach his eyes, something he had grown accustomed to spotting after seeing the council do the same thing to him time and time again since Janesisu had been sealed within him.

Sirens began to really go off in his head once the man alluded to knowing who he was and what was sealed within him. So far, only the Kazekage, Indra, and others on a need-to-know basis were aware of what was sealed within his stomach behind layers and layers of fuuinjutsu and tenkujutsu. The fact this man wasn't one of them and was someone he had never met had turned this simple meeting into something a little more serious in the boys eyes. The lack of obvious intent from the man was what kept Ashura interested and accept the sand chair rather than decline and run off while spouting some nonsense.

"More than that, there's really no one around to train with besides Indra. Everyone who could be a sensei is off trying to secure the border or prepare for the worst some other way. She and I get along fine, if anything she reminds me of one of those fancy luxury cats. Sleeps all day and active at night, she'll pop up in my dreams if I need her or she needs me." Ashura looked out over the sound as Hito went on again, the restrained look on his face loosening as he nodded along to the man's words.

"Exactly! but I can't tell them that. They'll just think I'm selfish and they might try to take her away. Indra and I knew we stood no chance compared to the other genin teams, one of them was double our size! Four people in a squad! We just graduated, like, 7 months ago. What were we supposed to do?"

[CDF]

For a moment, he could feel himself be split into three versions of himself. Simultaneously they existed, talked and thought within his mind.

Version A was the one that had started this interaction and had been in control. He was at first just avoiding the negative feelings generated by his hormonal and neurological systems whenever he considered heading into town and doing the things that had to be done to reintroduce himself to society. Now, however, he was realizing that this was a genuinely interesting interaction and possibly the first time he'd been interested in a conversation in years.

Version B was hard to describe and pin down. It felt like a gust of anxious, restless energy mixed with a sense of curiosity and nostalgia. It felt like an early version of Hito's consciousness when he first got lost within his own mind and began to unconsciously travel through dimensions with just his spirit and conscience. Version B came into being solely as a manifstation of these feelings and to prevent them from pulling Hito's mind and focus back inward, lest be devolve into a sandy thinker again.

Version C was the remnants of what Version B couldn't contain, and all of Hito could tell it was just getting started. Feelings of irritation, anger, neglect and pain swirled within version C. it was a reflection of both Hito and this young man's negative emotions, within it was a desire to rage and fight and destroy every authority and person within this village that caused them any kind of distress. Version C was not logical, just the manifestation of all the mental junk Hito couldn't clear so instead he kept temporarily busy and isolated, screaming to itself within the blank ether.

Version A's ThoughtsShow

It was amusing to watch the waves of emotions and reactions playing through the boy's mind and across his face. He was so controlled for somebody so young, but he could hide nothing he felt from somebody like Hito. His skin might as well have turned color as he went from caution, to shock, to even greater caution before settling into a scared form of relaxation as he simultaneously acknowledged Hito's threat level and accepted his lack of visible intent. He was clever, but not as jaded as most hosts. It was interesting how childish and adult he was at the same time.

A child pscyhologist would have a field day researching how the different genma personalities affect their different hosts. In this life and in this realm, Hito never interacted directly with Janesisu, but he had read much about her and knew all about the characteristics of her hosts. Beyond this life in his seemingly infinite astral travels, he brushed up against her like he did with all the genma.

Every indirect experience told him the Genma was one of the most benevolent ones to their hosts, and it wasn't particularly known for cruelty or violence. That thought brought an empathetic burst of gladness within his system, further increasing his desire to continue and particpate in this conversation.

Version B's ThoughtsShow

We are the Hito of today. Today is now, in the sand, sitting on this sand chair I made. I'm sitting across from a young stranger that I just met, and he's a real person. An actual skin and bone, flesh and blood human being. Citizen of Suna, the village I'm returning to in hopes of helping. This is right now. This is right now. This is right now.

Verson C's rantingsShow

WHY THE FUCK IS ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL FUCKING ENTITIES KNOWN TO MAN JUST HERE PLAYING ALONE IN A SAND PIT? HOW COULD IT BE THAT SOMEBODY AS POWERFUL AS I COULD JUST STROLL THIS CLOSE TO THE VILLAGE WITHOUT SETTING ALARMS? HOW IS IT THIS BOY IS NOT ONLY ALONE BUT ALSO NOT EMOTIONALLY SUPPORTED ENOUGH TO HAVE THESE FEELINGS AND THOUGHTS? WHAT ARE THESE PEOPLE DOING

AND WHY DO THEY SEEM TO HAVE FORGOTTEN ME? WHERE ARE MY STATUES? 20 YEARS IS NOT A LONG TIME, HOW DARE THESE HEATHENS

While Version A was the one in control of this interaction and doing all the talking, the other two versions were there within him. It was like Hito was talking to the young man in a crowded party with two very loud people to either side of him. Had he not manifested the versions, it would be even worse. But still, it was hard to think and it was hard to hear. Hito tried to keep the struggle from his face, but he could not prevent the repressed spasms in his face or the slow tapping of his index finger on his leg, an anxious body movement he would have never exhibited in his youth.

As the boy mentioned -HEY LETS ASK HIS NAME SO WE CAN STOP THINKING OF HIM AS BOY- the responses of village leaders, Hito made a mental note to find out why the village was in such a state. He made no effort to keep the look of distaste at the information from his face, however.

"That's certainly a problem that needs rectifying. No ninja should feel a lack of suitable mentors, much less one in your situation. A training partner is good, but if all you have is one, you will begin to mold each other in negative, codependant ways that will harm you in battle." He felt like he was quoting something but did not want to risk searching his memory for what it was, lest he get detoured. "Luckily you have such a good natural relationship with your genma."

Almost as suddenly as a snap of his fingers, Version C's emotions leaked into Version A. Hito's soft voice hardened a little as did his facial features. He tried his best to minimize the transition, but it was what it was. "I don't know about this Indra fellow, but you have access to enough strength that you could take on four jounin, even at your age. Have you considered that? Regardless of what other people think or expect, do you realize how powerful you could be right now?" Finally catching his tone and softening his energy again, Hito continued. "But the village can't expect the performance you could give if they aren't providing you the training required. So tell me what should have happened" HIS NAME ASK HIS NAME, I ALREADY TOLD YOU TO ASK HIS NAME "Tell me your name and tell me what should have happened. If you had a teacher and training partners and access to your full potential, how would you have won?"

we're talking too much. Who are we to think we can tutor or mentor, what if we say things that just make things worse? What if we turn this host against his village because we create resentment? What if we just scar ehim off by being so weird and talking so much? We should probably leave soon.

[Niro]

Ashura listened to the words coming from Hito's mouth but it wasn't like he could really imagine any of it, as he was. The potential the robotman was talking about was something far away from his current skills and powers and he had no clue what it would look like realized. Sure, he could transmute things from one thing to another but right now it didn't feel like the skill was enough to take on four jounin like Hito was talking about.

"I don't know. The host before me wasn't someone I was introduced to before it happened so it's not like I got an idea what they were capable to do. Best I can do right now is change things from one thing into something else. Ashura explained, his hands glowing with chakra as he touched the sand chair below him. The sand began to change into concrete with a touch and over the course of several moments the transmutation would complete. "Issue is, I gotta be able to touch it! Not always the best idea to run up to an enemy or a jutsu and just touch 'em..."

"Indra's my team mate, he's just lik-" Ashura caught himself half way, basically spilling the beans his team mate was the host of the other Genma in the process. Realizing staying here might not be a good idea given he had already spilled two high level village secrets to some random old man he had met in the training grounds, Ashura began to scoot off of the chair he was on with an awkward laugh.

"It's about lunch, my mom's gonna kill me if I'm late. Cya gramps!" He lied through his teeth with a smile and an awkward laugh as he took off towards the village proper and out of the training grounds.

[CDF]

Hitos smile was genuine and almost held relief as he watched caution grow to its boiling point in the young man. His display of power was wonderful and interesting, holding Hito's attention naturally and without strain. He would never get tired of seeing such a thing. Probably.

Yet still, even in this moment of full focus and awareness, there was a bubbling discomfort in his mind this whole time that now reached a peak. Hito could almost ... swear that the chair was looking at him. Like it knew how badly his brain was broken right now. Like the fact that he had been hallucinating this entire time...

He was never made of sand. It was suddenly so obvious to him and the memory came back cleaned up and fixed of delusion. Ashura was here and Hito just approached him by surprise, but for some reason created a parallel scenario where he didnt have to inatiate the conversation.

It was no wonder he was leaving in such a rush, and he was right to look ashamed about not having done so sooner. Indira, huh? Clearly the other host judging by his story and now his reaction. If Hito could mantain his composure for more than a moment, he would have to talk about that later.

For now, he did the bare minimum he could: smiling patiently and waving goodbye. He knew they would meet again.