Twisted Pinwheel

[Grosstoad]

" . . . Where can I get a mask like yours? Want to trade it for some glitter?"

 

[Chibi-Reaper]

Mio has just been a little too impressive for her own good, lately.

 

[Irked]

Welp time to make friends with Tobi in order to not get shanked.

Wonder if our gloriously golden little godling could get assigned a Zetsu minion if we do well enough (admittedly it would be there to kill us if we do something Tobito doesn't like as well).

Edit:

Mio has just been a little too impressive for her own good, lately.

Click to shrink...

oh....does this mean Tobi came to us intead of Itachi? this should be amazing.

 

[asdx]

Mio has just been a little too impressive for her own good, lately.

Click to shrink...

Oops

 

[Pipeman]

The fuck? What is Tobi doing out in the open? Is the Massacre happening right now, and we just misjudged when in the timeline we were? Or is he just screwing around?

Click to shrink...

I mean, he can teleport, is familiar with the place and good enough to easily stay undetected for a bit.
He basically has completely free rein of Konoha to come and go as he pleases. Not to say the massacre isn't happening now, but it doesn't have to be.
We did after all just get Kabuto's attention, which might have gotten Orochimaru's attention, which might have gotten Tobi's attention, even if Tobi isn't just keeping an eye on the Uchiha and its most obviously malcontent member for good measure.

 

[theqwopingone]

"It's like that." he says. "Medical chakra is difficult to keep a grip on, so to speak. It has almost a will of its own, in some ways, like it wants to be used. But while it can be very useful, there's an alarming array of potential side effects or results from flawed usage. Cancers, accidental death, 'healing' the nostrils of a broken nose shut... in order to make effective use of the technique, it generally takes a lot of training time. Which is why once your specialty is obviously medical jutsu, you're a little boxed in..." Kabuto says, seeming a little wistful. "It's particularly dangerous to try and heal yourself, too, unfortunately."

Click to shrink...

I wonder if we can cheat by keeping it outside of our body while not using it.

"Hi there." the mystery man in the swirling orange mask says, voice peppy and upbeat.

Click to shrink...

I wonder if we can make some of our chakra extend into his world. We could probably do fun things with that sort of leverage.

 

[Dragoon45]

Even if he's interested in us, I'm surprised he showed himself to us. Is he going to go all the way and kidnap us into the Akatsuki or just kill us for missing the massacre?

 

[Ψυχή]

Even if he's interested in us, I'm surprised he showed himself to us. Is he going to go all the way and kidnap us into the Akatsuki or just kill us for missing the massacre?

Click to shrink...

Then two roads down, you get plucked off the street and find yourself looking into a strange mask

Click to shrink...

He did just bodily pick us up and hold us up to his mask, sssoooooo... *shrug*

 

[Irked]

Even if he's interested in us, I'm surprised he showed himself to us. Is he going to go all the way and kidnap us into the Akatsuki or just kill us for missing the massacre?

Click to shrink...

He is obviously here to adopt us and teach Mio how to be fabulous in exchange for helping him complete his plans.

 

[theqwopingone]

He is obviously here to adopt us and teach Mio how to be fabulous in exchange for helping him complete his plans.

Click to shrink...

"Strike that. Reverse it."

 

[murklins]

I hope Mio makes a new friend so very, very badly. She should be as courteous and nice as she can possibly manage, which isn't much, because she's Mio.

 

[Vox De Harlequin]

I think Mio and Tobi would get along.
I mean, he's already wearing orange!

 

[Koled]

Tobi was probably here to get his daily season of his favorite soap opera aka Kakashi mourning at his grave. And since he was already in Konoha hey two birbs with one fireball.

 

[angelofwhim]

[jk] *cock head*

*eididic memory activate*

"uncle?"

 

[Tackyseven]

[jk]That was so COOL 6-year old fan girl mode activate

 

[JadeKaiser]

Well, at least we're probably not gonna get killed when the Uchiha Massacre happens. I mean, it'll be because we got kidnapped to go participate in the Lunatic Eyes Moon's Eye Plan, but...

Hey! That might not be so bad! I mean, it would actually be pretty in-character for us to just go along with it for kicks and giggles, at least for the time being. Probably try to hijack the Genjutsu that was supposedly at the end of it to just make us into the supreme ruler of the world, or something.

 

[Grinningmadhatter1]

Or you know, we could be getting spared, then mind wiped, to keep us as a promisibg recruit.

I wonder if he knows about the eidetic memory.

Also, was that Tobi knocking on the door earlier then?

 

[Hyp3rB14d3]

He has a sharingan. Why wouldn't he know about the eidetic memory?

 

[Guile]

[ ] What's up, Incredibly Suspicious New Friend?

 

[inverted_helix]

[ ] Put me down at once future minion #5.

 

[Snake/Eater]

[X] What's up, Incredibly Suspicious New Friend?
-[X] I'm totally digging the mask, who do i have to kill to get one?

 

[Dragoon45]

[X] What's up, Incredibly Suspicious New Friend?
-[X] I'm totally digging the mask, who do i have to kill to get one?

Click to shrink...

We aren't actually voting.

 

[Chibi-Reaper]

"Uh. Hey?" you say, uncertainly. "Listen, it's neat that you could grab me before I could tell you were there and all, but I'm not exactly impressed, and I'm going to start screaming 'rape' in a second now."

"Oh noooo..." the masked man says, tone patently false. "I'll need to finish quickly, then-"

Normally you might make a crack about 'finishing quickly', but this is turning into an alarmingly serious situation, and you suck in a breath to yell. You don't know the guard patrols too well, but someone has to be close by, right?

You don't get a chance, only give in to the sudden overwhelming need to move, and then realize that you're feeling woozy and your side is all wet.

You don't understand it at first. But it's because your arm is off. A little above the elbow, in fact, and blood is spurting out of the stump before you get a grip on it and hold the flow shut.

"Whoops. Missed." the masked man says, not seeming to be at all put out by that.

It's the sort of chilling cavalier attitude that says either he doesn't care if this is interrupted, or he knows the patrol routes a lot better than you do, and it won't be. Neither are good things.

Even so... you feel the actual, real coils in your body, that you were born with, starting to wither off in that arm. But the fake ones, the ones that you created... they're still there, pumping chakra through the severed limb. A finger twitches in response to your focused will.

Then, brow drenched in sweat, your arm grabs at the masked man's throat.

"Wha-?" he says in response.

It doesn't have anything special going for it, as an arm, aside from being yours. And you don't have the leverage or power to actually strangle him with it. But it serves as a distraction for you to get off the roof, flickering down to ground level where there might be- where there is not a single bystander to be found, apparently!?

"Someone help!" you yell, as phantom pains shoot along your missing arm and the crackling, burning limb is dropped to the ground.

"Tricky!" the masked man says, almost approvingly. "This is almost a shame..."

You flicker just out of his grasping reach, again and again, the two of you playing a malevolent game of tag, for keeps. The second he grabs you, you already know it's all going to be over. It was and should have been all over from the moment that you saw the funny mask, and if you were an ordinary academy student then you'd be dead a dozen times over by now.

Even your escape.... He's not struggling to keep up. He's not exerting himself to catch up, either. He's letting you run yourself out until you fall, for his own amusement.

How the hell did a monster like this get inside of Konoha's walls?

You eventually see a pedestrian and for a fleeting moment you think that you might have made it. As if bystanders and witnesses might change the outcome of this.

"Help!" you yell.

... Not one person turns their head. Nobody, walking down the street, seems to see you at all.

"Please..." you whisper, realizing the situation with a dull spike of fear in your gut. Genjutsu.

"Did you hear something, mama?" a curious child asks her parent, as you drop to your knees in a small pool of blood.

"...? Hear what, honey?" the mother answers.

The masked man lifts you up, from behind and by the back of your shirt.

"And that..." he says, as the world slowly swirls away, to be replaced by a bizarre, dark expanse of crystalline blocks and prisms, sparkling ominously. "... is that. I don't know where you learned puppeteering, but being able to sneak little tricks like that... it really is better for me to cut this off short."

You struggle, kicking and thrashing, and almost slip your shirt off before the man changes his grip to your neck.

"Don't be so glum, chum! You're not going to die right away." he says, bringing you up to one of the prisons, and then slowly forcing you... into it, and through it, in some way you don't understand. His voice from outside takes on an echoing and nearly indistinguishable tone.

"I might need your eyes for later, after all, and I don't have the preservatives ready yet. Just sit tight for now." he says, and disappears.

It's cold.

It's cold and dark.

You're... scared. The bleeding... it's slowed, in this thing. You can't... can only move a very little at a time. And the struggle is exhausting. There's a heavy pall over the area, a weight dragging you down.

As if... you should just... sleep....

... You can't give into it yet. You struggle with all your might, to no avail. What can you do with only one arm?

Maybe... you don't need it, to escape. Maybe. You have only one shot at this. If you're unlucky... then you might just die anyway.

You have to bet everything on everything falling just into place. Perfectly. That the actual flesh of your hand isn't important for making hand-signs. That the fake coils you made with that arm are close enough to the real coils. That you can survive this kind of an escape route.

Over what seems like the course of hundreds of years of painful struggle, you bring your hand and false coils together, forming seals slower than you ever have in your life, even back when you hardly understood what a hand-seal was.

Boar. Dog. Bird. Monkey. Ram.

And you leave your prison behind.

But as you look across the endless expanses of light mist, withered and gnarled trees, and the blood dripping from your arm mingles with the blood trickling across the stones and broken blades that make up the ground, flowing into a river of red under a red sky, you wonder if this is any better.

There's a skittering clicking sound nearby, as something moves through the mist. In the distance there are howls and wails. Something big looms up behind you, and you move, flickering away from the point of impact and up a dead tree.

Then, from a little distance away, you watch as the great and dusty skeleton of something too big to be a man and something like the centipedes from the forest of Death, but with the head and face of a human crash together, the skeleton's blade chipping away chitin and the monster's claw not finding purchase on dry bones.

They scream at each other and start fighting.

And you can't think of any word to describe the place that you've summoned yourself to that fits better than 'hell'.

---

Early End Arc 1: The sweetly fleeting Springtime of Youth.

Beginning Arc 2: Flower of Yomi's Hundred-Demon night parade.

---

The problem with summoning blind was that you would practically only ever see two results: either return as a contracted summoner of some kind, or you would not return at all. Of those two, the second was a more likely result by far.

It left you stuck in a situation where you could only go home by proving yourself suitable to contract with, but unable to determine how to prove it, or to who, much less if you even could. In this realm of blood and malevolence, how...?

The first weeks of surviving the place were... a trial. But while blood did not quench your thirst as well as water, and you were far from anything resembling a friendly diner or food stall, there was... enough to subsist.

You survived. If barely. And in surviving you managed to stay just a little bit ahead of the vast and disquieting assortment of things that wanted to eat you.

There was no chance of rescue coming. Rescuing yourself... might even be impossible, if you couldn't forge a contract with something.

In a place like this, you had to first focus on surviving each day as it came, and leave the possibility of going home for if the opportunity came.

For now, you had to make and meet smaller goals.

-

[ ] You needed to find, or take, a better place to rest than snatched fitful naps in the boughs of dead and dying trees.
[ ] You needed to fix or replace your arm, somehow. You'd managed to keep infection from setting in, but even so...
[ ] You needed to find a better source of food and drink than licking trickles of blood off the ground and eating maggots and worms.
[ ] ??

 

[Plotvitalnpc]

Well that went downhill fast.

 

[Snake/Eater]

in hindsight i am glad that i didn't say i was willing to pay an arm and a leg for the mask.

[X] You needed to fix or replace your arm, somehow. You'd managed to keep infection from setting in, but even so...

 

[DuskAtDawn]

Funny, PlotvitalNPC. I was going to say it escalated, which somehow despite being a complete opposite of going downhill, means the exact same thing in this case.

 

[Biigoh]

[X] You needed to fix or replace your arm, somehow. You'd managed to keep infection from setting in, but even so...

 

[SpaceJelly]

[X] You needed to fix or replace your arm, somehow. You'd managed to keep infection from setting in, but even so...

 

[Plotvitalnpc]

[X] You needed to fix or replace your arm, somehow. You'd managed to keep infection from setting in, but even so...

 

[Winged One]

[X] You needed to find, or take, a better place to rest than snatched fitful naps in the boughs of dead and dying trees.

Fuck the arm for now, fuck the food for now, we need shelter.