Slow Decay [p,nk]

The rain... well, that was why this village was called what it was. The endless downpour of liquid water that defined the identity of the people and the very place itself. Kozai was, even after all these weeks, still managing to suppress his chakra to levels that would be undifferentiable from that of a normal civilian. Even the best of chakra sensors wouldn't be able to recognize that he had once been the leader of a village, and especially not that he was a former researcher. They would not have been able to tell that he had even been a man who could take the strongest of punches.
Kozai had given up.
After years of work, illness, stress and duty, he had lost his ambition to learn of new bloodlines. Lost now, as well, was his other self, completely drained away during the doldrum days in Ame. His lab coat and katana, Hyakkasou, were hung up in his hut. At least, when he wasn't maintaining them. Oddly enough, he felt content. Somehow, it brought him a feeling of peace to not have to always be thinking about a hard problem, even though his subconcious was always analyzing, always looking for the details and making calculations. Well, that was the consequence of being a ninja.
At the moment, he was standing at the doorway of his hut. He wore dark civilian clothing, a loose black T-shirt and pants. His shoes were worn, a result of the garden he was cultivating a little closer to the wall. At first, he was going to do some experiments on the plants... but then, he lost all desire for it. As mentioned before, he had given up. For him, there was no longer much point in doing scientific inquiry. He had changed that much in the time that had passed.
He gazed up at the sky, the rain running down his hair and face, looking at the clouds.
"About 1.6 inches of rain", he mumbled, barely registering that he was doing so. "Classified as 'heavy' rain. Predicted an additional .3 inches by nightfall, perhaps .5, leading to... violent rain." At that point, he realized he was talking to himself. He stopped mumbling. He knew it was a bad habit, especially now that he had actual neighbors. The destitute people out here he would have once despised, but now he felt a form of unity with them.
They thought that he was some kind of strange madman who had come to town. His strange behavior and incomprehensible (at least, to them) mumblings would make him seem insane to these folk. He hadn't socialized with them, as he told himself, because they would reject him, as an "odd one". However, this was just an excuse. Deep down inside, he knew he was afraid of them. Not because of the possibility that they could overpower them, but because they were strange to him. He had never, in his life, been forced into an environment of civilians. And now... he was the odd one out.
He lowered his head to a level position, scanning the area almost out of habit. He fluxed his chakra slightly, almost undetectably. He longed to use his techniques again, to be even a healer, a doctor, someone who he used to detest the most... but couldn't. Slowly, Kozai was losing not only his drive to learn, but also his drive to live.
[WC 569]

Later, Kozai shut the book he was reading, and dumped it into the return box outside of Ame’s somewhat dumpy library. He had taken the luxury of actually going to the library. Sure, the staff there had given him a strange reception, but he was the "crazy neighbor", after all. This had been his first visit to an Amegakure library in quite a while. He hadn’t had the pleasure of doing this kind of thing since his last visit, when he had come here the first time. He walked through an aisle, then picked out a book that said “Medical Treatises” from certain years. Regardless of how much he had lost interest in research, he still liked to read these kinds of books. They helped to ease the boredom of fixing leaks in his hut, or simply lying there, staring at the ceiling. He walked out into the rain, putting the book under his jacket. Kozai walked quickly, his head down, avoiding eye contact with anyone around him. He hoped that Li or Corin weren’t around to see him. He didn’t want to be a part of their world any longer, the blood-colored world of the ninja. Rather, this grey world of rain would suffice. It didn’t demand of him, it didn’t drown him in its requirements. Most of all, powerful wind ninja didn’t monitor what he was doing at all times. Even now, though, Kozai didn’t know what had happened to Echo. Part of him wanted to find out, however.
The whole world was raining when Kozai first entered Amegakure. Back then, he was more of a scientist, but also extremely mercernary, caring about money. To the extent that he knew that foreign hotels and such were expensive, he avoided them like the plague. But where to stay, he wondered.
When he reached the outskirts of the town, Kozai looked around. This place was like a ghetto of sorts, except it wasn’t closed off from the surrounding town, and it was more rural than urban in nature, but then again, a suburban, rural ghetto on the outskirts of a heavily industrial city was about as unnatural as it could get. He closed his eyes, picking out the minute chakra signatures of the people milling around in the houses. Well, more like huts than houses. They weren’t much more than thatch or jungle-wood establishments of at most three rooms each. His own hut was just one larger room. As it was, Kozai did not require much for his subsistence… had lived on less before, during his visits to the Land of Fire and, his endurance was not THAT low. The area in front of the huts was a rather convoluted idea of a neighborhood, further reinforcing the idea that this place was a ghetto of sorts. The “neighborhood” had no roads, but rather, an almost grassless, and absolutely treeless area that functioned as a kind of twisted cul-de-sac. The huts were actually much farther apart than your average houses in your average suburban neighborhood, however.
In the Land of Fire, ironically enough, Kozai mastered the usage of water. It was here that his journey to gain sufficient power ended, and his journey of learning and self-realization began. From here on outward, he learned of power… and of great sacrifice, loss, and gain.
Kozai walked down the beaten path, and entered his hut. He tossed the book on his cot, then poured himself a cup of water from the jug on his small “desk”. The cup was really just a hollow coconut, taken from the jungle at his own leisure. The “desk”, was just a square piece of wood attached to his cot.
He pulsed his chakra slightly, and the drink grew colder. Despite his exertions of chakra in the past few days, no one had come for him. Perhaps they really had taken his “no duties” stipulation as hubris rather than humility. Regardless, it worked for him. He was left well enough alone, and he was more content than he had been in quite a long time. He fluxed his chakra slightly, and frost formed on the surface of the glass. Sighing, he put the cup down. The frost slowly began to melt in the hot hut.
At best, he thought, he could live like this another eighty years, maybe more if he actually tried. However, what would it accomplish? His happiness, sure, but what would he fill his time with? His mind turned to recent events. He might develop a new technique or two, but to little fruition in the end. And who was there to talk to but his neighbors? His neighbors… his most immediate ones were that family. He thought about them less and less objectively nowadays, which he wasn’t sure was a good thing or a bad thing.
The tired-looking man, slightly unshaven. Thinking about him, Kozai tapped his forehead and began to draw upon his observational powers. Looking at his clothes, the man was most likely right-handed; this could be demonstrated by the different stresses of cloth upon buttons on the man’s filthy overalls. His nose shape determined that this male was not a native Ame villager. In fact, he was most likely not from a northern village, eliminating the possibility of a former Iwa worker, or a Yuki drifter. No, more likely one of those homeless Tenga man who sought new possibility in Ame, but found none. He seemed to take care of his family as best he could, so Kozai instantly eliminated (within reason) the possibility of vagrancy. Clearly, more analysis was warranted, but he didn’t want to pry too much. He was still polite, after all. What was the most interesting about this man, though, was his identical expression to that of his daughter… a grim, sort of determined yet sad expression. Kozai had seen that before, on the faces of the academy inadequates. This was a person, he thought, who had seen the worst of life. Yet, he still maintained integrity… amazing.
Now, his wife was a slightly different story. She seemed loyal enough from what Kozai had seen so far, but he didn’t know as much about her. Even though she should have been as readable as her husband, she was actually far from it. Kozai didn’t think she was “mysterious”, just more like… generic? No. Nobody was truly generic, he knew that much. She was just modest, he supposed. Discrete. He considered the multiple reasons that a sensible woman like her would have fallen for a man in such a social situation, but he once again lacked sufficient data to make any overt conclusions. One thing he noticed was how she seemed less suspicious of him than her husband was. Did this mean that she could evaluate his character? Had she noticed him doing something that had changed any initial impression of him? Kozai sat up, rubbing his forehead, grunting slightly. He would just have to talk to her, try and understand her at some point. All his dealings with women before had been failures, but they had all been single. This one, it seemed, was already married and had a family. Perhaps she would be easier to deal with.
The son honestly did not seem like much. The average little child, somewhat self centered. However, he was probably undergoing what seemed like a “hard childhood”. One of poverty, need and want. A dash of concern went through Kozai’s mind at this, one of the first unselfish pieces of emotion he had had in a while… these seemed to be more and more frequent as time went on. The boy could be a strong worker, but… well, Kozai had other observations but those would have to wait. He noted that the boy had a great attachment to both his parents, to the extent that he depended upon them for emotional support at points, but that was irrelevant. The child was of the age where such things were normal for his mind. If this did not change when he got older, however, then that might be an issue. Given the current environment and social and economic variable, this was not entirely an impossibility. He hoped that the parents he had just analyzed would be up to the task. An out of control adolescent male was a force to be reckoned with, and Kozai knew it… he had even been one, once.
The girl, however, was interesting in particular. From his chakra sensory, Kozai could find that her chakra signature was unsually large for one of her physical ability, and the fact that her parents did not appear to be ninja. So, an anomaly in the midst of civilians? Her age was perfect too… just coming into understanding of what she would be capable of. Kozai wondered if her parents knew what entering her into the ninja academy would do. She would be well cared for, and their assets could be channeled elsewhere. Were they even aware of the potential she had? Kozai doubted it. At this point, he wondered if he should tell them… But then again, every time he intervened in something, it ended up messing things up. Would his presence corrupt her? She seemed solemn and vulnerable, but it was sometimes those very people who ended up surprising you in the end. Kozai knew… he had met people like this before. That blue-haired girl had become somewhat of a monster under Arcanis’ influence, and it had taken Kozai’s help and counsel to help her out of her state. At this point, however, he felt somewhat indecisive, a rare feeling.
In his younger years, Kozai was quite the berserk young man. As the host of a mental disorder that produced a dissociative identity named “Avarice”, he made a mess out of Iwa. This chaos continued until Kozai found a different channel for Avarice… that of academics. Before that, however, Kozai was one of those people with a strange sense of entitlement, the kind of person he now hated. He believed that because he was powerful, he had already earned everything that he had and more. This went even to the extent of encroaching on other people’s lives and such, which was something he amended later. As an academic, however, Avarice slowly began to disappear, consumed by the curiosity and interest of Kozai’s new outlook on life. However, his life was still harsh and cold, as was his heart. Iwa’s destruction changed his life forever, as it forced him to interact with the people of Ame. With this, the shell around his heart began to crack, and he began to move toward the light. When he found out that people were looking for him, however, he began to hide from them, attempting to conceal his location and lack of real activity.
He got up from the bed, and heard it creak as he stood. His frequent walk in the jungle and his hunting trips among other things gave him the actual ability to maintain his muscle mass. This resulted in his not having to worry about his physical fitness. Being a ghetto man meant that he needed to keep fit, and this was true for most men around the area. He combed back his slightly damp hair, pulsing his chakra slightly to cool the air. It was slightly comforting to do this, as the jungle air was prett hot most of the time. Water and wind chakra made ice, but even the slightest pulse of hyouton chakra, at least for Kozai, could cool the air around him to the right temperature he needed it to be. It was, he thought wryly, like organic air conditioning. But then again, he had only met one other Yuki clan member in his life time. What if he was the last one? He found that musing over this brought him closer and closer to thinking about historical extinction patterns, and the spiral of extinction. He shook his head, clearing those thought away with ease, now.
The spiral of extinction, Kozai knew, was an ecological phenomenon. That is, a population ecology concept. This one, in particular, dealt with the situations in which there was some kind of genetic bottleneck. A genetic bottleneck occurs in this particular situation, when there are few Yuki clan members left in the suspect population. As a result, genetic diversity is decreased massively, and this requires inbreeding in the population. Inbreeding leads to the creation of a new generation, which expands the population temporarily. However, this new generation has an increased number of individuals with homozygous recessive genotypes, resulting in the population being more and more sickly as the generations progressed. This would culminate to a point where the population would decrease as a result of non survivors that lost their lives due to sickness and increased vulnerability to environmental factors. This forces the population to decrease, due to the simple fact that most of its members are now dead, and cannot create a larger next generation. This brings the population back to square one, with a smaller population than before. As time goes on and on, the population is sent around the cycle again and again, earning it its current name.
It was at this point that he resolved to go visit his neighbors. He had come across them once or twice, but other than that, he had avoided people like the plague. An obvious social barrier existed between him and the others, and it bothered him just a little. Well, more than that. Kozai had changed to the point where he wanted to get to know this dirt poor family. To think that even they interested him… Kozai was no longer the proud person he once was. The interest he felt in these people wasn’t a malignant interest. As demonstrated, it was more of a kind, concerned interest. What people would probably call a “normal” interest. He remembered the family who he had tortured and killed as a young child, and the other family that he had experimented on only a few years later. How much had changed since those dim, murky times. Was this what people called “growing up”? Well then, he liked to think he had matured a while ago, but was willing to accept that his time around, he was changing for the better rather than the worse. He wondered what old Avarice would say if he was still around.
He got up at the moment, and looked out his door. The rain was even lighter than before, a mere sprinkle. It was always, there, but its intensity varied from time to time. He took Hyakkasou off the wall, and brushed water off of it, then sealed it into his wristband as he often did when going out. Having a masterwork katana in full view was never good, but having one stored away and ready for use was almost always a good idea. He turned around, and looked out again, at the dirty, suburban area… his home.
[Total of 3070 so far, not done yet]

At that moment, there was a scream from outside. Kozai snapped to attention, his chakra senses and Coriolis Revelation assessing the full detail as he rushed outside his hut. The whole family was outside, and crowded around the girl. The man looked blanched, and guilty, while the scream was from the mother. Kozai rushed forward.
“What happened?” His deep voice would carry to the family as he briskly walked toward them. They turned, and surprisingly, stepped aside. Perhaps it was the sudden pressure they felt, which would actually be the massive chakra that he was outputting in preparation for the worst.
The worst was indeed what he got. It appeared that the girl, who he had developed a fondness for, had had a rather large log dropped on her leg. With a mere flick of his arm, Kozai cast aside the log, to find that her leg had been fractured. She was breathing, but appeared to be unresponsive, which gave Kozai cause for concern. He hesitated slightly. Saving her would mean using chakra… dared he do it? After all, he had gone through all this trouble to hide himself from the ninja world. This would most certainly mean getting back into it.
Suddenly, at the site of the girl in front of him on the ground, Kozai suddenly realized… he no longer cared. He might have to leave Ame, but letting this girl die was not a thing he wanted to happen. His face hardened, and he spoke.
“Get her inside, on a bed. Don’t change the position of her leg. Hurry!”
Without speaking, the family moved, picking up the girl and rushing her inside. Kozai followed close after, pulling up his sleeves. In his mind, there was no longer any thought of hiding, merely actions, merely procedures of things to do. Was this not like combat? No time to think, no time for sophistry. Just movement, and the necessity of the person in front of him. In this case, it was an injured patient. In combat, it would be an enemy. Kozai was not trained from the start to be a medical ninja, but he probably better than most out there. However, all ninja were trained in the art of field medicine. Even if Kozai administered chakra at this point, it might not go well for her. He needed to treat for shock, and make sure she was stable.
He applied the mystical palm to her leg, and began giving her chakra. At the same time, he would start knitting her tissue back together, accelerating the healing. He only had so much chakra, but he gave as much as he could. Rubbing her forehead, he attempted to revive her. Restore blood flow to extremitites, he thought. Restore consciousness. Keep her brain safe, above all else. Suddenly, she woke up.
[3500, not quite finished]

She blinked blearily, and opened her eyes. A little color had returned to her face, and Kozai felt much comforted seeing her conscious again. He patted her head gently. She mumbled slightly, then looked at him, her expression curious and solemn.
“Wha…?”
Kozai smiled at her, more of a reassuring gesture than anything else. He noted that her bone was already repairing. That was a good sign; she was being receptive to his chakra. At the very least, he would not have to go through extra chakra expenditure for her. He was also happy that she was healing. She would definitely live now…
“There was… an accident, child. Your leg was broken, and now you need to rest. Please, don’t over exert yourself. I’m currently healing your leg.”
She put her head back down, but looked at Kozai’s hand. Her eyes widened.
“How…?”
Kozai chuckled slightly. This child had what he lacked, or had lacked for much of his life: a sense of wonder at the unknown. He had read of a school of philosophers who valued this sense of “wonder” so greatly that a large portion of their poetry and writings were essentially songs praising such a concept. Kozai could never comprehend that.
“Don’t panic, I’m merely healing you using chakra.” At this point, Kozai sighed. The family came back in (they had gone out before), and stared at him, their eyes wide. Oh, he would have to come out into the open now. Before he did, however, Kozai came to a conclusion. He had to become a shinobi again, even if it meant going back out, outside of Ame. He couldn’t hide from who he was anymore, not even for the sake of his own psyche. He closed his eyes softly, then snapped them open. Now for the explanation.
“I’m a former shinobi, not originally from this village. The technique I am using to heal her is the Mystical Palm technique. At its basis, it just helps her to heal faster using my energies, as it were. But its certainly not magic of any sort.” He paused as he checked on her leg again. The muscles and membranes were now knitting back together. Excellent, now he just needed to wait. “I’m glad I was around when I did… otherwise you might have had to pay a pretty heft hospital bill.”
At the point, the woman spoke up.
“You won’t require payment??” The question didn’t seem suspicious… that was odd. It was more like… she knew he would be kinder than this. However, Kozai was not one to pass up an opportunity like this. He had the chance, here, to change this girl’s life forever… to make her even more than she would ever be. He tuned into his chakra senses just to make sure, and analysed all of their chakra signatures. Most of the others in the room had signatures that were about a twentieth of his, but hers… hers was about a fifth, four times as much.
[4000 WC, almost done!]

Kozai would speak up, taking a graver tone as he did so. “As I’m sure you’ve been told, ninja are those that use chakra to produce what are seen by others as… miracles.” This would be said as he looked at the parents specifically. The father nodded.
“Yes sir, that’s something we’ve all heard.”
Kozai turned back to the girl, and spoke, for the first time in a while, from his heart. “Your daughter has an unusually high chakra level. Especially for her young age, her chakra level is… monstrous. Even when I was around her age, my chakra was perhaps only half of this.”
This was true, this girl had more potential than he had had as a child.
“Well, I… don’t want to interfere with your family. However, I believe that she would have a much better future if you sent her to the ninja academy. Tuition wouldn’t be a problem, the ninja academy welcomes young talent like her. She would have access to experience and opportunities that some children can only dream of at night. And of course, any money she earns can be sent to support you and her brother. If you like, you may send her there.”
The parents looked at each other, then back at him. As they did, he noted the smooth skin of the girl’s leg close up. He stood up, noting the improvement in the girl’s complexion and body temperature. It appeared that morbidity had been prevented and that a normal body state had been restored.
“We’ll think about it.” The man said. “Of course… we can’t repay ye enough. Please, accept something, at least.”
Kozai shook his head. “I used to do everything for personal gain. Now, the only thing I would do this for is for that girl’s continued health. Good evening.” With a smile and a nod, Kozai would leave, stalking across the grounds to his hut. The run had intensified strangely, like some malevolent force of water was seeking Kozai out, trying to invade his territory. As much as he liked the rain, he knew that something was up as he neared his hut. Coriolis revelation, which worked particularly well in rain, told him that there was someone behind his hut. His senses sharpened, he could detect several other chakra signatures now, ones that were about chunin or jonin level. Shit, they really had found him after all. He made some handseals, activating Kamikaze, which ripped up the person in the back of his hut, killing him.
With that, Kozai started running into the jungle. The chakra signatures that had been watching him before converged on him now, following him at a slower pace. Did they mean to out run him? No, that couldn’t be possible… they knew they were slower than he was. In that case, they meant to tire him out, or more likely, lead him into a trap. Kozai reached a clearing, where he diverted to the left. Kneading his chakra, he created a shadow clone.
The clone would go out into the middle of the clearing, only to find that the clearing was covered with explosive tags hidden mere inches below the ground. Of course, Kozai had already detected that something was wrong with the topology using Coriolis Revelation. What a useful skill. It seemed that some of his pursuers had been stupid enough to get caught as well, but two or three still followed him. He spun, placing his feet against a tree, never stopping motion. Pushing off, he spun a handseal and fired a suidanha at a target. The cry of the now dead man told him he had made a hit. He slammed into another man, lariating him so hard his neck snapped and his head popped off of his body. Bouncing off of another jungle tree, he drew Hyakkasou from its sealed place in his wristband, drawing it and beheading the final opponent. He sat down, gasping. He checked a couple of times to make sure that there was no one around, then caught his breath. He had eliminated all threats… but they were sure to come after him again. He groaned, putting his head in his hands. Kozai had basically asked for this, too.
He could almost hear Avarice’s old advice, something that had faded from his memory, but the lesson of which still resonated in his mind at this moment. He should not have sacrificed of himself for that girl… he should have just left well enough alone…
NO!
Kozai almost shouted out to the jungle. He was NOT that person anymore. He gritted his teeth, and walked back to the village. He felt more alive than he had in years. Despite the fact that he had just slaughtered a whole squadron of village ninja, he felt that he had done so in self-defence.
Before, he would have reveled in this new feeling, and the power that he now felt. Indeed, he knew that he had increased in proficiency. The rain was violent now… and so, for the first time were the emotions in Kozai’s heart. He didn’t want to leave, to cast aside this peaceful life. He didn’t want to turn his back on Li Dian’s dream. Most of all, he didn’t want to leave behind the girl. He wanted to see her grow, to develop into someone better than he had been… than he was. A ninja who would do Amegakure proud.
However… that was not to be.
“Goodbye…” he murmured softly, as he moved his hands together. With that, a tornado would form, a gentle erasing one, sweeping away the hut and garden that he had worked so hard to build. When he was done, it was like no one had ever lived there. With that, he turned his back on Amegakure. He smiled… not an ambitious smile, but not a kind smile either. It was a smile of hope, of anticipation. He couldn’t wait to see what was out there, what was next!
[TWC 5000!
Mastered Genesis Surgery
2500 ryo
Closed.]

Denied because why would I let Kozai be happy?

Approved