Playing in the Sand [Closed]

The day, while new, held a note of sadness. His time in the Hidden Village of Sand and the surrounding countryside was not at last coming to a close. He had met a few people, made a few new friends, and reconnected with Sei, someone he did not think he would have ever seen again. His time had been emotionally enjoyable without a doubt, though it had come with a fair amount of practical worth as well, primarily in the way of him having signed a seal with some of the legendary snakes of the Ryuuchi Caves, thus allowing him to perform the summoning technique to call upon these allies in battle. He doubted that he would ever have use of such a thing, but it was nice to have the option. He scoffed inwardly at the boy, Neah, the young chunin so willing to give out so much information about himself, his past, his family, and his abilities, all for nothing. He neither knew Gen’s full name, nor his last name, nor his place of living. No, the snakes would likely prove utterly useless in all honesty, but one could never be certain, and either way he had made what could be a valuable connection with that boy. Everyone had their uses.

The foolish youngling had spent an awfully long time staring idly at the dumb scroll he has signed however. Normally this could be simply passed off as some kind of weird perk, though the older man had had to sign his full name, or at least a close approximation of it. Senju, Gen. Yogensha Senju was not, contrary to the belief of literally everyone who knew him, about him, or had even heard of him vaguely, a man who liked his clan. While he could not say with certainty that he hated the clan, it had placed a vast amount of undue pressure upon him, something that he did not enjoy in the least. He had been born of greatness, had had greatness handed to him and thrust at him, had been expected to do great things, and had been bred for greatness.

Luckily for him – and probably unluckily for the clan as a whole – he had lived up to these expectations.

So probably the boy did know his last name, which was a bit annoying, but not as annoying as the absurdly erratic behavior he had displayed. Upon having signed the stupid scroll, Gen watched as the boy about had a heart attack with his eyes and quickly huddle the scroll away from the older man, turning around to shield it from his eyes and then pulling out a knife and a small container made of what appeared to be glass. The unmistakable sounds of the blade, or perhaps the container, scrapping along the paper floated to Gen’s ears, grating on both his ear drums and his nerves. As it seemed, the dumb little bastard was attempting to literally scrape some of his clansman’s and direct superior’s blood off of the fucking paper for gods knew what purpose. Gen could guess, of course; the dumb kid was probably some kind of medical shinobi of a very depraved nature and afflicted by utter insanity, a DNA junky who wanted to imbibe all kinds of weird genetic material in the hope of gaining power, or both. There was really little else that could explain his insanity. He then attempted to, presumably, cover his tracks by throwing the kunai at a spider. How this helped, Gen could not fathom, but he played it off just the same. There was not enough blood on the page to be of any use regardless and it would dry quickly in any event, especially out in the hot desert sun.

Still, it irked him greatly that the kid was trying to steal his genetic material in such an overtly obvious and downright offensive way. Gen would need to keep a closer eye on this annoying child. He shifted his gaze downward, allowing his hand to dip into a pocket and pull out the snake scroll the kid had given him. He thought for a moment, weighing his options. This would be, easily, the easiest way for him to ensure that he could almost permanently keep tabs on the kid. The exertion of a bit of chakra would see the creation of a vast collection of tiny spores, created by mutating his own cells into plant matter with the powers of this own birthright, the wood release. The spores were so small as to be invisible and much like the spores of a tenacious mold: hardy to an absurd degree and sticky. This, combined with their ability to rub off on people, would allow them to stick to the kid when Gen eventually found him and returned the scroll. The spores would stay with him then indefinitely, allowing the man to always track the kid and activating into mutated wood clones only if Gen willed it or, if in some kind of extreme circumstance, Neah attempted to take the life of Yogensha. Satisfied, the young man slipped the pouch back into his sleeve, storing it away for safe keeping until it returned to his master.

Sei had been a different story, showing him the wonders of the bathhouse that he now owned and operated. Gen had mixed feelings here, as on the one hand he was delighted for Sei to the point of pride, an odd emotion that seemed to refuse to resolve itself no matter how much he grappled with it. On the other hand, Sei was tied to a village which Gen could rarely visit and which may not always be on friendly terms with the Fire Nation. War was not simply inevitable, it was expected, a constant of a world run by shinobi and full of people capable of destroying an entire village. This… made Yogensha sad, another emotion that he rarely, if ever, felt and he, again, could not entirely puzzle out why he felt this way. Sei was great, sure, but Gen knew lots of great people. Why should he be special?

All in all though the trip had been nice, relaxing in most every way, informative, oftentimes funny, odd and uncomfortable in places, greatly useful, and full of potential for the future. But, alas, the time had approached for young man to depart; he had been away long enough and could not simply abandon the village nor his other half. Even now he could feel his somewhat weakened state taking a toll on him, bringing him to a place of less power and barring him from enacting some of the very strongest techniques in his arsenal. And, of course, he was interested to see if the beast visited him and his other self or if he was currently the only one receiving visions. And so he prepared to depart, gathering some of his things up and making sure he had the proper supplies for the journey ahead.

Before he did, however, he sat down briefly to meditate once more, reflecting upon all the things that had happened to him over the course of his time spent there and all the things he had learned. In particular, he went back to the gifts he had been given. The beast returned with sudden though by now expected rapidity. It still retained the utterly jarring and mind bending effect that was its way, yet such a change in the atmosphere and his own fabric no longer was something that he did not expect and in some ways he may have even looked forward to it. No, he definitely looked forward to it. He wanted the madness of it, wanted the chaotic calm of those huge, glowing eyes, wanted the beautiful tentacles and the delicate suction cups which could pull a face off. He wanted it badly, deeply, perhaps more than he had ever wanted anything in his entire life.

The thing shifted minutely and with it the world went cold. The sensation was different this time, different than when he had done this before. No longer did he simply receive knowledge directly to his brain, or rather, he still did, but he could feel his body now. He could not before. The beast had done something, had stirred a chill in the air which resonated with the young man’s very body. It grew deeper, more profound and powerful until the young man shivered, until his teeth chattered and his body shook violently, until the cold consumed and numbed him entirely and he could not feel his fingers. On went the cold still, freezing the water from the air into a sheet like mist, freezing the ground and the sky and the rain, making it hail. The boy shivered on until he could not any longer, his body becoming totally paralyzed with the cold as a frozen wonderland, much like a white washed hell scape, descended upon the land.

And then it was suddenly gone, replaced instead by the now groping tentacles of the huge, gigantic beast before him. Its reaching hands and fingers moved all over, swallowing up the world as easily as it always did and reducing all to blackness and nothingness, like the great void of a starless night. However, this time it was different because thing hand changed and things were not going about in the same general manner that they tended to whenever the great beast of the beyond showed up and so Gen felt the slightest tingle of unease at this new progression and change in the normal rituals of his meditation. He did not have much time though to feel these things that he was feeling because the tentacles in a truly unusual and totally new way apparently had decided to turn their attention upon him, the young man most commonly going by the name of Gen.

They surged forward, faster than he could fully keep track of and then were suddenly upon him, nearly without any sort of warning. They closed tightly around him then, his body seeming to create a natural barrier of chakra around him though the tentacle mass closed in quickly, constricting him in his newly formed bubble. It was quite like being in a clear shell and having the walls slowly close around you. The young man’s arms and legs quickly shot out to the edges of the barrier in an effort to slow the inevitable but was soon thwarted, the barrier cracking under the pressure and the thing crushing him entirely. Once this had occurred he was nothing, no where, floating as a vast consciousness devoid of any physical form and in a world that appeared unformed. He was in a void, was a void, had become a thinking void of limitless potential.

When finally he was release, Yogensha flexed his body, noticing that almost no time had passed in the outside world during this bout of his meditation, and noting a few new ways in which his mind had been further stretched and expanded. He also noted a few new gifts he had been given. His journey home would be made even easier and swifter with his ability to simply merge with the ground and local plant matter and zip to anywhere that he could desire while completely masking his chakra presence. Truly, Gen was shaping up to be the ultimate spy who would be able to infiltrate nearly any place with easy, bypassing security without even thinking about it. Additionally, the newly received gifts of his expanded mind would serve him well in upcoming battles of any sort. He alone could shape reality to his will and no one would resist such a power. No one would resist the beast. And so, with that, he would leave, exiting the village with smiles and waves, chatting with a few people on the streets who recognized him from his food purchases and wishing the guards at the gate a good day and safety in their future endeavors. He thought of Sei once more and with a final look cast over his shoulder he resolved to return.

With that, his having completed his packing and his meditation, having thought back on what had happened during his time in the Land of Wind and the Village Hidden in the Sand, Gen would thus depart. Nothing more tied him here and, even if he were for some reason yet bound to the place he could not stay. The Leaf beckoned him back to his homeland and while he could resist such a call, it would be foolish to. Were he to stay away too long he may be branded a traitor which, while not the end of the world, would not bode well for him or any of his political leverage or mobility. Missing ninja could do many things, but work within the system was not one of them.

As he walked, he felt a weight bare down upon him, a kind of increased gravity that increased with time. He examined it as he moved, feeling it grow stronger and stronger until it eventually stopped, resting at an uncomfortable level. He found himself moving much slower, little more than a sluggish pace as compared to his usual motion though he could push a bit past this should he desire. He selected a small pebble from the ground, picking it up and pressing on it, fully crushing this thing as he did, reducing the poor thing to little more than some extra sand. He smiled and, with those massive glowing eyes sprouting in his head, realized that once again he had been touched by the beyond.

The plants of the legendary Land of Wind and in particular the place commonly and most normally referred to as the Village Hidden in the Sand were a hardy bunch capable to sprouting up in the most inhospitable and strangest of environments. They were most certainly and assuredly few and far between in that there were not many of them out and about because of the unfortunate climate of the place which was generally not very conducive at all to the life of plants of their continued growing or even their continued existence. In fact the climate was harsh even to the people of the land in that they too had to struggle against the elements and fight for food and shelter and even more often because of the extreme scarcity of it they had to of course be constantly fighting for water. The desert drank all the water around and sucked it all up where ever it could be found which was even more dangerous because it rained so infrequently there that there was never a whole lot of water around to be had by people or plants. It was a dangerous time and place indeed with water as such a scare resource.

However there were still plants of various sorts and even sometimes flowers that existed in the place. Of course people would always keep their little plant boxes all over the place by hanging them in their window sills or putting them out in their small lawns or placing them in hanging pots on their fences or other pole like structures. So the people still had at least some of the types of flora that the man was more accustomed to from his home in the Land of Fire or to be even more specific the Village Hidden in the Leaves for he was a shinobi of the leaf and a powerful one at that. He still liked to look at the flowers though and so he was at least a little bit comforted in the fact that he could look down streets though they were usually the streets on which the richer people lived and of course see all of these lovely plants that reminded him of home. It was not the reminder of home though that brought comfort for he did not have a special love for that place as over any other specific place on the wide earth but it was rather the plants themselves that comforted him because he simply liked plants. He enjoyed looking at them and smelling them and occasionally growing them, though he was not always patient enough to allow them to fully grow without the aid of some of his special Senju chakra.

It was not these potted plants though that held the great bulk of the man’s interest. No, they were banal, lovely to be sure, but nothing so interesting that he could not simply observe them whoever he wanted and fully at his own leisure at any time that he so chose simply in the confines of his own home village and where there was no real threat of danger or immediate attack by a hostile shinobi. He was certain that no one here other than Sei knew that he was in all reality and in fact a shinobi from a foreign village but he wanted to be cautious just the same like he almost always was and parading around in a dangerous foreign land just so he could look at a bunch of flowers would do him absolutely no good whatsoever. No that would be most foolish in every possible way that he or anyone else could imagine. So no, it was not in fact the plants that all of the rich citizens of the Village Hidden in the Sand of the great nation of the Land of Wind put in their house planters that interested the young man.

It was of course instead and in fact the plants that grew up in and around the desert and which seemed not to care all that much about the awful and hostile and terrible climate and conditions of the Land of Wind and they seemed to be able to survive wherever they went even without water though that was probably unlikely because of course a person could easily just assume and in fact probably should assume if he or she is going to be smart about the thing that the plants were just getting their water from somewhere else or were really quite very good at keeping the water locked inside of their flesh for very long periods of time and that it was because of these impressive and mysterious qualities that the plants were totally and fuly capable of surviving in the dreadful and terrible conditions of the desert that surrounded and engulfed the Village Hidden in the Sand hence the name of course and the Land of Wind.

Gen had been studying those plants for some time now while he moved about the village and the place of the locations that were outside the village but that comprised places like the outskirts of the village or other places in the land that were near the village or perhaps even those that were not anywhere near the village. He had learned much about the plants and their habits, about their roots and how long and deep they were and how they easily penetrated even the most dense of soils. It was impressive to say the least the way the found purchase in such strange places and how they were able to live and acquire nutrients and such even in such poor soil. While certainly the Land of Wind was nothing like the agricultural tycoon that the Land of Fire was, they were still able to grow at least a few things here and there even if most of those things were just weeds.

The plants that grew all over in the desert though that were of the most interest to the man most commonly known as Gen but whose true and full first name were Yogensha if one wanted to call him by his proper name was that of the magnificent and interesting plant known as the cactus. While seemingly boring these thing were terribly amazing because they had such thick skin that blocked the loss of water and such other dangers provided and perpetrated by the deadly desert sun which was quite amazing for the plants since it allowed them to survive. They also had a juicy rind like quality about them that reminded a person of a kind of water melon rind but that was filled utterly with water and plant matter and that if a person had a knife he or she could simply cut open the plant and drink the water that was present in the plant and it would allow the person to survive in the dessert in a pinch if he or she had neglected to properly prepare for a long journey that he or she was taking.

Another thing that was amazing but more well known to the general public even those people who were not from the Village Hidden in the Sand or who were not even from the Land of Wind at all was the plants known as cacti were covered in very powerful and surprisingly tough barbs make of some kind of strange plant matter which allowed them to fend of predators without even moving. The barbs were actually quite painful and seemed to have some kind of way of staying in the skin of anyone who had the misfortune of touching the things and it looked like upon closer inspection that they did this by having some kind of backward facing tiny barbs all along the very surface of the barb which made it extremely difficult for anyone to simply pull them out of his or her self and which also made them even more painful than they already were. Gen wondered if perhaps the things had some kind of poison on them that caused them to be so painful but it seemed that they did not.

And then as he was there looking at the very interesting and intriguing cactus plants and some of the other plants that were strewn all about the Land of Wind the thing came in all of its interdimensional and extradimensional glory. The thing was huge as usual, undulating and indefinable in every conceivable way. Its tentacles were suddenly everywhere when before there had been the wide vista of the desert and the cactus and other plants and the village and all other manner of crazy things to be seen. Now there was only the vastness of the beast, floating about in its own persona dimension, endless and incomprehensible and unfathomable in its entirety and its endless, magnificent horror and beauty.

”Take it.”

The voice echoed all around, distorted and broken as if by water or as if a chorus of discordant voice all spoke together but not quite in perfect unison, their word beginning at slightly different times or ending at slightly different ones. It was, as was the creature’s way, both deeply unsettling and of a mind shattering mesmeric beauty.

”Take it. Take their power, absorb it, destroy it, imbibe it, become it. It is yours, your right. You alone have this mastery, have this power. So take it, use it. This world, that plant, your body, meaning: they are all beneath you. They are yours to play with. So take your power and reshape the world. Or destroy it. Or simply ignore it. It is your choice and yours alone.”