Drip. Drip. Drip.
My eyes slide open, shifting up towards the damp stone ceiling of the cave. I watch as another miniscule drop of water falls, adding itself to the growing puddle by my head. Another storm, then. Only when the seas are particularly rough do they bleed through into my little dwelling. I sigh, closing my eyes again. I have a long wait ahead of me still.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
"Hello."
My eyes snap open.
I come to my feet, snarling, but when I scan the cave I find nothing besides myself and the darkness.
"Where are you?" I say lowly, voice hoarse from long disuse.
"Everywhere." As if to confirm their statement, their voice echoes from all corners of the cave, pelting me from all sides. A familiar voice. If possible, I grow even warier. "I don't wish to fight."
My eyes narrow. "What do you want?"
"I want to work with you."
"Then face me."
Drip. Drip. Drip.
"No."
"I don't work with those that I don't trust." I say, shifting in agitation, eyes flicking from every nook to every cranny of the underground structure.
Another pause. "I can't face you. This is only my voice here with you."
I scoff. "Do you fear me, peace bringer? Am I too large a threat to confront in your own flesh?"
"Your current residence is rather far out of my way," The voice retorts, something like annoyance appearing and disappearing from it in a flash. "... And yes. You are a threat to me. But you don't need to be one."
I sigh, sitting back down. I know where this is going now, and know exactly how it will end. The same way it has every time before it. "I refuse."
"I haven't even made my offer yet."
I roll my eyes, and consider simply leaving. I have had more than enough of this particular man to last me a lifetime, and another meeting with him will no doubt do nothing but worsen my mood.
Still, even that might be preferable to the solitary drip, drip, drip of the water on stone. "Fine. Speak."
"We could start in Suna. They have been laid low by the war, and will devour any hope given to them. From there-"
"What happened to Ame?" I interrupt him.
"Ame has proven itself to be stronger than I first thought," He says, another flash of annoyance there and gone from his voice in an instant, though this time not directed at me. "It matters little, though. Suna would suit our purposes just as well. Just that instead of moving directly into the Land of Fire, we would have to deal with the Land of Earth and its hidden village first."
"And how do you propose we 'deal' with these nations, peace bringer?" I ask boredly. "They have begun to form groups designed for the sole purpose of combating me and the others. We will not catch them unawares."
"We could have if we had moved earlier." A sigh brushes against me from all sides. "Regardless, direct combat is not what I meant. I have moved past that."
And for the first time in a long time, I am interested. "What is your plan now?" I ask, keeping the curiosity in my voice carefully restrained.
"We will show them that your strength is not a destructive thing, that it can be used for good. We'll show them, and they will beg for us to do the same for the others. And when we do, they will follow our cause without question."
I ponder on that for a long time, chewing on the vagueness of it and what it might mean. Then, I ask calmly, "What do you mean 'us'"?
Drip. Drip. Drip.
"That is the key to this plan," he finally says, and I can taste the reluctance in his tone. "They will not give you the chance to prove your worth as you are. We will have to show them your power first, and then reveal you to them. We'll have to-"
"No." The word rumbles forth from my chest, echoing off the walls, shaking the very stone beneath my feet.
"Why!?" The voice explodes, the strained courtesy of our discussion shattered at last. "You know that this is how it must be! You know this, and you know that I'm the only one who can do it!"
"You are wrong, thief," I reply, and relish in the drip, drip, drip that follows. "There are others, and it is with them that I have aligned."
"You... You do not understand," he says. "You have never understood. This evil- It is not a physical thing. The path you're on now will only be wasting your strength. There is no single enemy to fight. You need to open your eyes!"
"No." I shake my head. "You need to clear yours."
Drip. Drip. Drip.
"There is nothing I can do to convince you?"
I shake my head, and again, "No."
"Not even-"
"My answer will never change, peace bringer," I say with finality.
"Fine. I'll do it myself." The voice changes, then. It becomes darker. "This is not the only reason I have come. I've brought news as well."
An uneasy feeling appears in my stomach. "What news?" I ask slowly.
"While your evil sleeps in the shadows, mine has swallowed your allies whole."
My breath freezes in my throat. "You lie." It isn't possible. The last time I saw them-
"I would gain nothing from it," The voice sounds, ice cold. "Uzushiogakure is no more. You've failed."
No. "You LIE!" I snarl, coming to my feet once more and lashing out at the walls of the cave, cutting goughs in it the size of men.
"You can see for yourself," he says. Six paths save me, no. "When you've changed your mind, find me." And just like that it disappears, leaving me alone.
"No! No!" I howl, lunging upward towards the ceiling.
...
"No!"
My eyes fly open, locking on to the far wall of my room, my familiar bedroom wall staring back at me. I pant as the remnants of terror and blood-red fury from my dream roar through my veins. I look down at my blanket bunched up around my waist- I'd sat up at some point in the night. I run a shaky hand through my air, struggling to dispel the feeling that all my hopes and dreams had just been crushed in one fell swoop.
"Only two months this time," I hiss into the darkness of my room. "What a load of bullshit."
It's been two months since I've had a crimson dream, out in the field on my first official mission as a genin. I always get at least three between the hellishly vivid night terrors- one time, when I was ten, I even got six months.
I pause in my surly thoughts, a sudden realization hitting me square in the face, forcing my eyes even wider.
I scramble out of my bed, throwing my covers aside and scattering broken balloon slivers across my floor. I jog out into my living room and start rummaging through the dozens of scrolls littering the place. The words Fuinjutsu and Bijuu decorate nearly all of them in some way, and some even contain both.
Finally, I alight on a blank scroll and snatch it up. I survey the room in disgust. "This place used to be nice, too." Well, nicer.
I turn back and pad into my room, grabbing a t-shirt hanging off my couch on the way and maneuvering into it with the scroll tucked under my arm. I pass by my bed and grab a pencil off my nightstand, then head out onto the balcony. For a while I just stand there, relishing in the feeling of the cool breeze on my clammy skin and the sight of the trees above, glowing in the light of the moon. Then I unfurl the scroll on the flat stone railing and begin to write.
Not-Crimson Dream #1...
The reason Sasuke had given my disturbingly vivid (or vividly disturbing) dreams their name was because of a single recurring theme: A crimson film that obscured my senses and imbued me with a sense of rage the likes of which I have never felt in my entire life, driving me to do horrible, horrible things. It dominated every single one of the dreams, driving "me" into such a state that one time, when I was eleven, I tried to tear Sasuke's throat out when he woke me up from one. I was that consumed by it.
To this day he never wakes me up while I'm in the middle of one.
But now... I narrow my eyes at the dimly lit scroll, grasping at the fading tendrils of thought from the dream that had not been my own. Now things are different.
I had passed it off as a fluke two months ago, but every ninja knows that the saying "Once is a fluke, twice is a coincidence" is complete nonsense. My crimson dreams are changing.
What exactly they're changing to, however...
...
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