Description: A young man wakes up alone, in the burnt out wreckage of his own village. A message from another life is the only thing left in his mind. All the while, fragments of a past he is not entirely sure is his assail him. What would you do if all you had left was an ideal?
** "Naa. Do you suppose we're all just made to fill a role in the world?" **
** "I can fix it, when I grow up, I'll fix.. everything." ** "The world is broken. It rewards the fools that don't deserve what it offers. You don't reap what you sow... do you?" ** "Nii-san. Wake up." ** "You have a way of finding the ends of my blades..." ** "The world will recognize this truth of mine." ** "I will find you in the next life. You're strong. Strong enough for me to acknowledge as ... an excellent partner." ** "Sei-kun, you'll be late. Wake up!" ** "You said that it was your destiny to lose everything. Is that my destiny too?" ** "You gave me an ideal. A purpose." ** "I thought it might be better, if I didn't exist." ** "Aaa, Seishirou, you're such a lazy one! Wake up!" **
** "What cost is justifiable to be something more than you are?" **
~ ~ ~ ~
The first and only thing he was aware of was the ringing in his head slowly subsiding.
The sky was a crisp and vast shade of clear Maya blue. The grass and ground was cold under his body, but he felt as if he had been asleep for a century. Was he dead? Like bottled lightning, his mind ran through a litany of possibilities in the time for him to blink the haze from eyes that should be sore still but were not. The snap to thought was automatic, and the calculative process was deeply analytical, a speed of intellect bordering on instinct. It did not feel correct to him, depersonalized, as if he were in someone else's mind. The speed at which everything came together to him made so much sense, and yet... an entirely alien sensation.
He had been asleep for a long time, at the edge of death. The ringing in his ears was nothing but a distant memory. An explosion, certainly. He was intimately familiar with the impression.
Only when the young man slid up off the ground onto his feet did he notice the utter disaster all around him. What used to be the strong "steel and silk" construction of a village hidden in the forest had been blasted into charred, burned out wreckage. The fire had been out for long enough that the scent of fresh char no longer haunted the air, and the sky was clear. Everything that could burn, did, and did so long ago.
And the only thing that he could remember of the wreckage was that it was once his home.
= = = =
His heart beating quickly, the young man struggled to gather himself, taking quick stock of his possessions before reciting something. It was the only thing left in his mind, old words dry with the taste of repetition, as if he had trained to do so all of his life.
"I am Seishirou Ryouhara," he started quickly.
"I am the last light of the Ryouhara shinobi clan, and the strongest practitioner of the familial style, 'ninkougakujutsu.'" Absently continuing to speak the only thing he could remember to say, the young shinobi patted his pockets quickly. Going through the reams of protective layers covering his body, he found each fold in turn to be empty, until his hand settled on one cold piece of metal in a hidden pocket at his back. His heart was pounding in panic, as he slowly realized that there was nothing inside of his skull, nothing at all except fragments of ideas and thoughts, all overridden by that single line of speech, heavy with an importance he did not at all understand.
What could have gone wrong?
"With my ability, I represent the cold and the destitute, those left behind by this world of tyranny, those known as 'roudoushakaikyuu,'" he continued, using an old word to represent the working class, a term that meant everything and nothing to him at once. It was infuriating. Withdrawing the small hunk of furnished metal, he examined it. It was an exquisite case, crafted by the hands of genius artisans. As he flicked it open, only then did he hear the ratchet and click of a thousand tiny mechanisms winding up. Gears and springs wound around and behind a small enclosed glass disc filled with water. The disc formed the face of the mechanism, which itself seemed to come alive.
For a moment, Seishirou was vitally concerned that the device was the source of the explosion, and was about to finish its job. Instead, the mechanism inside released a red tint into the glass casing, swirling in the water suspension until it formed an arrow, pointing off in a direction that was, at a glance, clearly not north.
Looking up in the direction indicated by the mysterious device, Ryouhara narrowed his eyes. Just at that moment, he thought he saw--or maybe it was he remembered?--a person, calling him into the treeline. Long raven black hair slipping into the night, a sublime laugh, and the faintest impression of her clothing. It was blazoned with what he understood to be the symbol of his clan: three leaves, swirling in the wind. She called to him, and then disappeared.
No matter how far he looked, he was alone in the wreckage.
"I and mine are the unseen hands of history. There is no limit to this. The shadow war will go on forever," he finished the mnemonic, breathless.
"... and there is still work to do."
Log created on 07:25:54 12/06/2014 by Seishirou, and last modified on 17:10:58 01/14/2015.