There was a week till the Shinjit tournament. That was what had just been announced a few hours ago.
Kai Yuki let his back rest upon a nest of wild thick grass as he looked up at the starry night sky.
Bron was by his side.
"Am I weak?"
His eyes quivered upon memories.
"Or am I unlucky?"
Kai dismissed the solemn silence from Bron.
"Maybe I'm just nothing."
Kyoto had gone to rest early. A hollering gust of smoke rose out of the tiny stone infrastructure. Kai had felt like resting elsewhere for a short while.
"You are nothing."
A hiss slithered into Kai's right ear.
Another hiss slipped into his left ear almost immediately after.
"Worthless, even."
"A pawn to even those only slightly above you."
Kai looked around in confusion, his body trembled from this voice. For a reason, he did not know why.
"You couldn't even protect what was dear to you with a heart to the stake."
Kai's teeth gritted.
"What right do you have to taint and berate me?"
The voice ignored Kai's words and let slip something that caused Kai's figure to freeze like time had been stopped.
"But I can change all of that."
Kai couldn't shake off a harsh feeling of fraudulence. It hung to him like oil.
"Who... who even are you?"
Kai's eyebrows furrowed as his head swung around, in search of the voice within his ears.
"I am your greatest hope as well as your last hope."
"The only one you can trust in all the lands and the only one who you can ever hope to win through."
"I am your last."
Kai shrugged, color returning to his unpigmented pale face.
"I don't need a last. Rather, I'm still at the start of my journey."
"Maybe when I'm at death's door I'll consider lending you some of the limited time I have left."
Kai felt like scoffing.
Who did this voice think he was? A fool?
He had lost pride not brain cells.
"Spiritual existences these days..."
Kai walked off with a snark on his face. Bron floated by his side bluntly. The starry sky relentlessly stood firm above them.
The heaven seal on Kai's neck shrunk a little, rotating a bit in the process as a real sharingan would.
As Kai descended into the village hidden in the grass, Kai noticed an odd density of people present.
Some were drunk and red-faced. Others were glum and dead-eyed. Others seemed far too awake for the ghostly hours.
Kai enjoyed walking around alone away from the devourers of the world.
His mind had been escorted to a far kinder place.
As Kai walked throughout the village hidden in the grass, he noticed an open-doored house.
The inside of the house was a nostalgic yellow.
In it, a healthy and somewhat mature man who must've been in his early 50s patted a small boy of around 6 on the back. A wife came in from behind with baked goods.
The three all laughed.
Kai felt estranged and bewildered. The cold wind never felt more ostracizing.
The entire joyous family laughed heartily again and again. Pushed on by some invisible drive.
Kai wasn't depressed or affected by their happy atmosphere but by something else.
Their voices were just in hearing range for Kai.
"Otou-san? You used to be a shinobi right?"
The boy no older than 5 looked up with a huge grin on his face.
The veteran shinobi looked down, a light smile engraved onto his face.
"Of course! I even kept my old esteemed Kunai."
The wife intercepted.
"Dear... don't get Dona involved in all of that-."
The veteran hushed her with a loving smile.
"No worries dear, I've still got it."
He took a kunai off the wall and began twirling it in one hand.
The boy looked at it and his mouth gaped.
"Woah..."
The kunai suddenly slipped from the man's hands.
"Opf."
The man's face blanked out as the kunai threatened to fall into his boy's face. His body wasn't what it once was. The kunai would scar the boy indefinitely.
Just as the man watches tragedy fall before him, a figure appeared in a mirage.
He held the kunai in his right hand, seeming to have swooped in and retrieved it.
The man's face instantly turned to graciousness.
"Thank you so-."
"Hey."
Kai's voice had turned ice-cold. He was no longer a warm and prideful boy.
He was a killer.
"Why didn't you drop the kunai that day?"
The man's face scrunched up in confusion.
"I'm sorry. I don't understand what you're saying."
Kai looked down, his eyes screeching bloodlust.
His mouth ran rampant.
"These golden engravings..."
Kai turned the kunai revealing a small set of golden words engraved onto the back of the kunai.
They translated into 'lest they fall.'
"The shineless metal this kunai possesses."
Kai kept on examining the kunai unmindful of the now angry Veteran.
"It was you."
Kai's head turned shakily. Not from fear or trauma. But from how badly he was holding himself back.
"You killed them."
The man's mouth jerked around in uncertainty.
"I'm sorry but are you sure you haven't gotten the wrong person? I've retired as a shinobi for the hidden mist long ago."
Kai held his tongue.
"For you, it may have been long ago."
Kai tugged his sky-blue robes down, revealing his bare neck.
On it was the curse mark and a long faint-red slit that had once been a deep gory red line of blood.
"But to me, those events replay every night."
"And my scars scream out whenever I remember those who did not show mercy that day."
"I know it was you. You assisted the death of the Yuki."
Kai pointed the kunai to the man's neck. His scars still stinging and clouding his mind.
The man instantly stopped raging putting his hands up as his souring face turned into wrinkled pleads.
The boy started wailing as the wife began shrieking loudly
"Why shouldn't I kill you right here? Right now?"
Kai's mouth twitched.
"An eye for an eye? You killed my parents so I'll murder his."
Kai nudged his shoulders in the direction of the boy.
His past was controlling him like a puppet.
The man had several displeasing lumps in his throat.
"Listen... I didn't know that they had a goddamn child okay?"
Kai had unknowingly started activating ice release. The entire room drastically dropped in temperature. Frost began to surface on the walls and the man started shivering not from fear, but from the cold.
His teeth gritted as his eyes clenched down.
"What do you want?"
He held his voice back to a curse. He didn't dare shout at an angered and emotional armed maniac.
Kai had no tears. Rather small glints of frost had crystallized on his eye-line.
He looked forwards mercilessly. His voice was somewhat whiny and childish compared to his other cold-hearted lines.
"I want my parents back."
Kyoto was conversing with his shadow clone. The two looked identical, spoke with the same tone, and even did the same subtle gestures.
"Why are you assisting the boy?"
The real Kyoto raised his eyebrows curiously.
"Because I can, and because I know how it feels to be alone in the world."
His clone was relentless.
"Why did you lose to Minato Namikaze?"
Kyoto laughed dryly.
"Because I'd rather not destroy Konoha again."
His clone kept on going. Kyoto felt his resolve to stop Kaguya growing as his beliefs were re-affirmed.
"Why did you not eliminate Nagato right off the bat?"
Kyoto gave an answer that had been prepared by Hokage-Council officials through dedicated research.
"Because he was just a catalyst for the rinnegan with ample chakra reserves. They would've found another catalyst, maybe even another Uzumaki."
Kyoto's clone paused before letting out the big question.
"Why are you trying to save the shinobi world? What holds you to that duty? Isn't it all doomed if you just give up?"
Kyoto sighed.
"Because..."
"I am the one who brought back Shibai."
His clone was silent. It nodded before vanishing into a mist of smoke.
The smoke felt warm.
Kyoto sighed feeling memories rush back into him.
Flickering sights of a vaporized leaf village. Memories of himself, on the ground as a figure, stood far away. Meddling with things that shouldn't have ever existed.
Reviving beings that should've stayed ascended.
Kyoto clutched his right eye. The sight of the scribble demon shifting formed in his mind.
"Are you enjoying this?"
The demon was unresponsive.
"Cool."
Kyoto rubbed his eyes as he lay down. He had a cunning feeling that he would have quite a distorting dream. But he welcomed said dream.
Any reminder of the atrocities that he had committed would only reinforce his drive to save the shinobi world.
Any sight of those he had killed would be a reminder to not let them die again.
He welcomed the challenge of his past as it pushed him forwards, into the future.
Kyoto shut his eyes lightly as the steel grip of sleep knocked him out clean.
And so the blocked tunnels representing the histories of Kyoto and Kai were slowly unclogged.