A Taste of Humanity [NK]

http://naruto-role-play-rpg.forumotion.com/t39739-nrpg-spooktacular-event

Spooktober Mission 2: IT’S ALIVEEEE!:

Earlier...

Natsume flipped to the next page of her book with a sigh. It had been grey and cloudy all day, and as she took a brief break to glance out the window, she noticed it had started to rain. "What a bleary day." She was midway through the page when the door to her room slammed open.

"Natsuuuu! You agree with me, right?" Her brother charged into the room and hopped on to her bed. Thankfully, she had gotten used to the fall of his footsteps, and had expected such eccentricities. "Right?" He stared at her.

She blinked at him and lowered her book to her lap, her finger marking her page. "Agree with you on what?"

He slapped her leg. "About that thing! That franken person." He rolled over and gestured wildly in the air. "You've heard about it right? That medic nin guy, Sakamoto or somethin', making a person out of corpses?" He shuddered. "So creepy! I'd join in on killing it, but that's not my style."

She frowned. "What do you mean 'join in on killing it', Kouma?" She blindly searched for a bookmark and slid it into her place in the book. "Is there a mob?"

He at least had the decency to look sheepish about it. "My friends at school said there were some people getting together to hunt it down... They invited me..." He looked up at her desperately. "I said no, though!"

She shook her head and gently pat his head with her book before putting it on her bedside table. "Good. Stay inside tonight, okay? Tell dad I will not be home for dinner for me, okay?" She strapped on her pouches and her shoes, not needing much time to prepare as she often relaxed in her work attire at home. With a kiss to Kouma's forehead, she jumped out through her window, and jogged towards the hospital. Sakamoto was a medical nin and would probably be there—and he might have some information to spare about the whereabouts of his creation. Natsume was still torn about her position on the creation, but she knew she had to find it before the civilians did, if only to protect them from something that might be dangerous.

Now...

Natsume stared up at Sakamoto, her lips pulled into a tight frown. "Would you like to elaborate on how you do not know where your creation is, Sakamoto-san?"

The man looked back at her with tired, but wild, eyes. "It's as I said, genin. He is not my creation to control—he is free to develop himself and explore as he wishes." He shrugged. "I am certain he will be fine even if a group of civilians attacked him."

She bit back a snarl. He was her superior. "I am not worried about the safety of your creation, Sakamoto-san. I worry for the civilians. Will it hurt them?" She narrowed her eyes as he nonchalantly shrugged.

"If he does, it is in self defence, isn't it?" He smiled. "If a civilian attacked one of our shinobi, the shinobi has every right to fight back, even if it means killing them. Right?"

She shook slightly. "Those are two fairly different circumstances, Sakamoto-san, and you know it." It was hard to keep her voice even and controlled, and though she could manage that, she could not keep the glare out of her eyes. What if her brother had joined the group? He would have been killed. And this man could not care less. What kind of ninja cared so little for the people of their village? The very people he was tasked with protecting?

He gestured to the hospital exit with an amused smile. "If that is all, genin-chan, feel free to leave the premises. Or be escorted out. Which do you prefer?"

Her nails bit into the flesh of her palm as she clenched her hands into tight fists. "Good day, Sakamoto-san," she seethed through gritted teeth. She ignored his barbed reply and stalked off to the door, trying to compose herself. With her head clouded with such furious thoughts, she did not notice that another person was on their way through the hospital door.

She walked straight into a solid body. "Ah, my apologies!" she cried out instinctively and turned to grab the other, in case she had knocked them over.

"Hoshi!" She frowned as he gestured behind her, towards the doctor, while talking about a created being. But... it wasn't... here? She turned and squinted at the odd sight. What a gruesome creature. Sakamoto smiled at her—"That lying little fiend!"—even as his creation roared and charged at him. Zyxis reacted before she could, though, and stood in front of the smug doctor, trying to calm down the creature through speech.

... and it worked?

It stuttered to a stop, tiny arms flailing as it tried to avoid hurting Zyxis, but its eyes were still focused intently on the doctor behind him. "Rhgaurughh," it moaned, hanger-pierced head drooping sadly to one side.

Natsume frowned and inched closer to the odd creature, man, thing, or whatever it was. "You actually understand us?" Her nose wrinkled as the stench of rotting corpses grew stronger, but her fascination overwhelmed her disgust, so she continued to get closer.

It moaned once more and nodded.

Shivers ran along her spine. "It's sentient." She shot another brief, but meaningful, glare at Sakamoto. How could he do this to anybody? "What a horrible existence." She found some paper and a pen nearby and held it out to the creature. "Can you write?"

It flailed its tiny arms, then tried to reach out for the pen. Midway, the doors slammed open once more.

"THERE IT IS! IT'S ATTACKING ONE OF OUR SHINOBI!" The mob was lead by a red-faced man that stunk of cheap liquor and cigarettes. As Natsume tried to correct the situation, he continued to yell, easily speaking over her. "GET IT!" He tried to charge past Hoshi, who was still closest to the door.

Sakamoto had fled down the hallway, already halfway out the window. The creature, in the chaos, had followed after him.

Natsume had been in close pursuit and, though she had not been able to—or perhaps was unwilling to—stop them, she had managed to tag both of them with a tiny dot of a seal. One to the doctor's hand and the other to the creature's neck. They disappeared through the window and Natsume turned around, blocking the way to the window so that the mob could not try to pursue them through that avenue.

She looked over at Hoshi, her mind still wild with thoughts about what she had just witnessed. After all, mere moments before he slipped through the window, she had heard the monster speak. Real words, this time. "Kill... me..." Then it was gone and Hoshi was telling her and Zyxis to go give chase while he held off the mob.

She hesitated; not for Hoshi's sake, as she knew he was strong enough to handle himself, but for the civilians. Would he hurt them? "I will just have to trust that he will not make that mistake again." With a frown and a nod, she hopped out the window and followed after Zyxis. He was faster than she was, but she knew their precise location. Before he could fully disappear, she would yell out the direction she felt them heading in, her hands locked in the Ram seal. With that, he was gone.

She slowed to a stop on top of one of the rooftops and sighed. Zyxis was simply too fast for Natsume to keep up with, so she would be better off supporting Hoshi. Knowing that, she turned around and made haste back to the hospital, where most of the mob was still gathered. "I am back," she said quietly as she appeared through the window once more. She glanced at the broken pitchfork then to the approaching mob. "Do you have a plan for handlin—?"

She was cut off by the arrival of Zyxis, who was accompanied by a groaning Sakamoto, held over his shoulder. That was fast. She lifted a brow. "Then, I suppose there is no need for a plan." She looked over at Sakamoto and inspected his bloody nose and bruising eye, then looked back at Zyxis with a slight frown. The mob was slowly dispersing, mumbling with disappointment but otherwise satisfied that the monster was gone. "Did you not handle him a bit roughly, Zyxis?" As she said that, she would go through three hand seals and gather her chakra to her palms. Her hands glowed green as she passed them over his face, slowly healing the bruising. "I can not do anything for the nose," she said. She paused as Sakamoto snarled. "Nor for your teeth." Not that she was all too upset about that. He deserved it.

She rolled her shoulders back and made sure everybody had left the hospital, so that the medical staff could go back to their normal workflow. Then, she followed after Hoshi and Zyxis as they walked to the missions office for the hand in. She looked at Zyxis as he spoke up. "Leaving so soon?" She cocked her head to the side, slightly saddened, but nodded in acceptance regardless. To Hoshi, she would offer a slight smile. "May you also have 'better luck' this time, in regards to your... prize." She would reach for one of the chests and weigh it in her hands before opening it. She rose a brow and its contents.

"Hm. I will head home, then, and drop this off." She waved at Hoshi and left through the window, her mind elsewhere.

...

Natsume did not, in fact, plan to head home yet. She unravelled one of her scrolls and easily sealed away the chest in to the paper surface, then tucked the scroll back into her belt loop. Her job was not yet finished, after all.

She brought her hands together into the Ram seal once more and focused on the two marks she had made earlier that day. Sure enough, the two signatures were now split up. One of them, Sakamoto, was being directed to some sort of holding cell in the center of the village. The other, the monster, lingered just by the village borders. Her hands clenched as she thought about what she would have to do. "'Kill me', it said." Slowly but surely, she brought her hands apart, and then sprinted off in the direction of her mark.

She arrived near the borders with a kunai in her hand, her eyes on the look out for a monster of limbs and corpses. It was not all that hard to find it. It sat, still, against a tree. It looked at her, eyes wide and searching. She looked back, her golden eyes wavering. It knew. She knew.

It would die tonight.

She kneeled before it and mumbled some prayers to the Gods above. "Let their souls find peace." She helped them lie down comfortably, closed their eyes, and attempted to slit neatly across their throat. It was not enough to kill it immediately however, and it flailed and struggled as pain overwhelmed it. She sobbed and slashed again, going deeper and harder than her first attempt this time. She hit an artery, and her eyes fell shut as blood sprayed her and the stench of rotting corpse grew worse. Its cries seemed to echo infinitely until, finally, eventually, it died.

She spent the rest of the day digging that grave with her bare hands, cracking her nails and sobbing as she thought about what she had done. She had hated it; hated the drip of blood across her face, the screams of pain as they tried so desperately to cross the line of living and death. "Forgive me," she begged as she lowered the mish mash of limbs into the hole. "Forgive me," she sobbed as she pushed the dirt over the body, unable to burn their corpses. "Please... Forgive me."

How long had she sat out there, crying and hobbling to the side to vomit up her guts? Long enough that vomit turned to dry heaving, certainly. Long enough that her tears eventually dried and all that came out were her broken, dry sobs.

But eventually, she would be fine. For now, she would just have to focus on getting home. She did a simple Chakra Cleanse to remove the blood, and then took the rooftops on her way home, her golden eyes dark and wide. None of the shinobi passing stopped her; they did not dare, for many knew the look of a Genin with their first kill under their belt.

She would be fine. She would have to be.