chokuto

[He doesn't like feeling trapped. Only through discipline does he remain calm, clamped down on nagging anxiety like a fist even as it threatens to boil up in his blood at the provocation of those words.

Because they are true. His interest doesn't matter, if the course of his thoughts—and his own actions so far—have told him anything. Yet yielding such a weakness to this man, whoever he is, is out of the question.]

Maybe not. But I have no intention of giving them the satisfaction of my compliance.

[The wear and tear of these last several days shows on his face, an exhaustion underwritten with uncertainty and shadowed with deeper, private helplessness. At least in the Netherworld, he could isolate himself and await the end. Here it's impossible. Even in the dead of night, in an empty room, another man has found him.]

Is that really what you're looking for? Then you won't have any issue elsewhere. Plenty are willing enough.

（ he laughs, the sound half a huff of exhalation and hardly amusement at all. ）

Oh, yeah, yeah. Fuck your way to the top, get a wish granted, whole nine yards. I've seen enough weird cosmic shit in my time not to begrudge people playing the game.

（ and also to guess that no wish comes without consequences, but that's a darker thought for a more cynical time. the sort of thing that comes out over something stronger than beer. and for now, he'll keep it to himself. see, games don't really matter to him much at all — much less the sort played with human lives. ）

Lot of willing bodies, ay fam, hook a fella up, etc. But I'm just the teensiest （ he lifts a hand, fingers pinched to indicate a modicum of space between them. teensiest ） bit pissed about the duress part, though.

[The way this man speaks is—confusing, crass, and Sasuke's mind parses it through the fog of his own fatigue, grasping for meaning at the heart of context. The line of his brow furrows with the effort, frustration momentarily off-balanced.]

I don't believe that wish will be so easily granted. [An unintentional echo of Cy's cynical thoughts, but it comes honest—demonstrating his own rumination on the idea—because in a place where gambling is such a prevalent fixation, how could anyone trust such a promise?] Your anger is pointless. They'll go to any extent to force our obedience. Even the food and drink is tainted. It's a luxury, that such an act could ever be willing.

[Consent, what is she. No matter what part of his mind rails against the circumstances, determined to rebel, he's not a fool. He's not naïve. He suspects it is going to happen to him, and he also is not so deluded as to imagine he will have a pleasant experience.]

I won't be docile. I'll see first what they're truly capable of doing.

Edited 2024-01-07 23:58 (UTC)

（ and he just. laughs. shakes his head, and exhales a steady and exaggerated whew in a stage whisper, the sort of thing an actor would do onstage to express exasperation with an overbearing spouse for audience ears only. ）

'My anger is pointless' but your lack of docility isn't, huh? Duly noted.

（ there's no offense here, just a wry amusement that masks a very real and sudden anger that his congenial comment about being pissed can't even touch. not at the kid — but at what's inferred by that matter-of-fact statement about how being willing is a luxury. it's couched in the sort of blunt resignation that people use when they're trying not to lose their minds over casual, everyday horrors that accompany — well, kidnapping and sexual extortion, to start.

you know, for some people? getting whisked away to some paradisical 'hunger games but make it horny' (and maybe?? less murdery??) is probably high on their fantasy kink list. fuck, he's already seen a few people who are surprisingly DTF regardless of circumstance (do they not teach kids to ask questions these days? asking for a friend) and that's fine, those aren't the ones he'd be worried about anyway.

but whoever's pulling the strings and hauling in kids like this fully deserves a kick in the dick, actually. metaphoric dick or otherwise. ）

You got a name, Mr. Brightside?

I didn't say it wasn't. [His own lack of docility, he means, but—no. It still is, because he is circling the cage in anticipation of the punishment that lies ahead. And he cannot seem to escape it. Not in the Netherworld, not here. If he thinks about it in the context of his own penitence, perhaps this is the least he deserves.] ... Never mind.

[So he is pointlessly angry. Somehow, it's worse to know another person feels similarly, because it threatens that tenuous corner in which he has put himself, apart from everyone he's encountered in the resort so far. Few faces, fewer names.]

For what reason? Are you hoping we will become familiar? [Sasuke turns abruptly because there is no exit, not without using force or jutsu and he can't risk it in his current state. Back to his locker, a hand begins retracting his own items, yanking on the nondescript sweatshirt, dark head poking through the neckhole in vicious one-handed tugs of fabric. Water bottle under the arm; bandages in hand; towel over shoulder.] You should keep your distance from me, whatever you are.

[That tainted aura still lingers in the Rinnegan's superior sight.]

Under the ulterior influences of this place, I will be dangerous to you.

[He won't make the mistake he did before. Laurent—who is likely gone forever, and who bitterly hated him to the end.]

（ on a normal world, amidst normal people, he clings to a veneer of a like life. just a guy. unageing, unchanging, undying, normal. he's been running for almost ten millennia now, never staying in the same place too long. avoiding worlds with the sort of advanced tech that could track him or put a stop to his comingling with the locals. it's not like he refuses to tell people what he is as a matter of principle — if he's close to someone, if he cares, he'll tell them. it's better than just walking out one night when someone gets a little too suspicious about why he doesn't look a day older or why he never seems to cut himself shaving or any of the other million little tells he knows he has.

but a place like this? with no vested interest in keeping his mouth shut, cy's largely ambivalent to the fallout that might ensue.

he watches the kid turn and head back to the locker like he's pacing in a cage, and tilts his chin up faintly. ）

I'm not really one for hoping. （ haha, anyway — ） And besides, we're already familiar...ish. We're having the most fun we can with our clothes on, according to the brochure.

（ he points meaningfully to his watch. look, there's a whole paragraph about clothed, nonsexual conversation. ）

Okay but now I just gotta ask. You can tell I'm a 'Whatever, TBA, Mysterious Entities Gone Wild' over here, but you're still that confident you're the dangerous one?

[Familiarish. Is this fun? It must be a palely delivered joke, because Sasuke feels as far from it as if he stands on the edge of a knife, ready to plunge to his awaited doom. Another nightmare, or another dream. A reel of all his mistakes pitted against the guilty, awful pleasure of intimacy that will never be real.

His gaze skates back, studying the man's Watch, then again away, jumping as though from hot coals. He can't look at that face directly without seeing it above him. He torments himself even in his own mind.]

It's true, I can't tell what you are, nor do I know how strong you might be. I'd have to battle you to determine that for myself. [His hand tightens, a flex of fingers that whitens the knuckles over rolled bandages.] But I don't see any reason to believe you would try to kill me. Perhaps that will change, if your own life is threatened.

[It should be arrogance—once, it was some desperate child's best attempt at it—but now Sasuke's face wears a look of resignation more than cocky confidence. That, if coerced, he will fight but not to win. He will fight to kill.

He speaks plainly:]

I've hurt people before.

（ alexa, play hazard to myself by p!nk. ）

Oh, no thank you on battle-adjacent bullshit. This （ a broad gesture to the length of his own body with one hand ） is a firmly no-bueno-combat pacifistic principality. If the next words out of your mouth have any intention of being some weird philosophizing treatise on how a pacifist is just someone who hasn't been pushed far enough, fair warning, I will chuck you in the cold end of the pool.

（ it's said with a cheeky little salute, just to top it all off. ）

I've hurt people before too. You wanna compare notes?

[HELLO???]

No.

[A pacifist? Somehow, the light-hearted and frankly idiotic response rips Sasuke right out of the depths of his own spiraling thoughts.]

So are you dangerous? If you refuse to fight, it sounds like that won't be an issue and my first assumption was correct. [Why did you even ask?] Fortunately for you, survival here doesn't depend on our physical strength.

（ you're welcome. ）

Ah, danger's all relative. Any human with a sharp stick can be dangerous if they've got sufficient motivation.

（ notably, not a yes. also not a no. why is he like this??

but he does push himself out of the doorway and schlep over to the adjacent bench near where the kid is doing his best to occupy his hands and time Pointedly Elsewhere. he moves like a dancer — purposeful and confident in the occupation of his body, nothing wasted. at least until he opts to sprawl across the bench rather languidly, long spidery legs crossed at the ankle on the floor. a tripping hazard, if the kid isn't careful when he turns around. ）

And I think you mean 'fortunately for you.' You have, in the course of five minutes, warned me you'd be a danger to me, and followed that up with a blithe announcement that you've hurt people. Oh no! Between the two of us, you're clearly way more worried about it than I am.

（ he leans back on his hands. smiles. it is somewhere between the knife's edge of congenial and cruel. ）

So what if I could offer you perfect certainty I can't be hurt?

[His mouth closes, pressed into a fine and flat line, wondering how this interaction has devolved so badly, so quickly. Frayed nerves and sleeplessness lend to the hair-trigger of a temper—and the man in front of him, who he has never met before, is oil and water to the calm, isolated quiet he's sought by coming here at such an hour of the night.

Unmoving even as the exit reveals itself in the open doorway, he watches that intentional movement, tracking it, questioning the ease at which it adopts that messy splay of limbs on the bench. He should leave.

He doesn't. Perhaps because it would require him to step over those crossed ankles, or else circumvent them entirely but going around, and the idea is so ridiculous he can't coax himself toward it.]

I don't believe you. [Yes, there is worry to cause harm, a sorely bruised wound agitated by recent nightmares. Sasuke wishes he had stayed his tongue; he feels chastised to have it pointed out, and worse that it is now known.] Prove it to me.

( another time, another place, he might feel badly about getting the kid pinioned by what's clearly a desperate, morbid curiosity. but that time is not now and that place is not here beneath the unflattering florescent gleam of locker room lights. )

I did say offer. Usually that's part and parcel with proving.

( just gonna keep pointing out your inconsistencies because That's What Heroes Do. )

A'ight. Pick a weapon.

( neutered as his powers are, summoning weapons is always more an instinct. he can feel the pull of them in one of the training rooms not too far from them — aching to be put to use. )

[Listen, he needed to be the one to demand it.

But, a weapon? Suspicion rises in Sasuke, as reluctant to trust as he is to let this go without seeing it to the end. The air in the room feels changed—heavier, their banal environment unworthy of this threat of violence.]

Tantō.

[Chosen half to see if the man knows what it is, and half because... if it was him, if he meant to turn a bare weapon upon someone to see how (if) they bleed, this is what he would choose.]

（ give him a second, this requires some Math. the distance away, the volume of air in the room, the specks of gathered dust. his eyes close briefly, brow furrowed, and then he pulls. tendrils of some manner of energy, void-touched, flickering between a black so deep it seems like an impossible trick of the light and an electric violet, as illuminated as its spectral opposite is chthonic.

the weapon manifests in one hand, and the magic — because he's never bothered to call it anything else — falls away. one tantō, as dramatically ordered. the blade is in the osoraku style, the tapered point cut to a vicious edge.

he draws it without flourish, and sets the wooden scabbard to one side. he can feel it sing beneath his hand like a homecoming chorus, and there is a quiet sort of ease with which it fits across his palm. like it was made for him. there's a twist of annoyed revulsion that follows — it's not overwhelming, fuck knows he's had a long time to really dig into the meat and potatoes of exposure therapy, here, but it's something he's frankly still glad he gets. the day he picks up a weapon and doesn't instantly hate it is going to be a fucking dark day for all things mortal in the universe.

he scratches an itch with the tip of the blade, just above one ear. ）

See, here's the rub. If I stab myself somewhere, you're going to convince yourself it was a trick. Sleight of hand. Maybe I'm some grand illusionist fucking with your head. So, first thing's first （ he flips the tantō in his hand, rests the blade against his forearm and offers it out hilt first to the kid. ） You gotta make sure it's not a fake blade. Then you can pick a place, somewhere fatal. I'll do the stabbing, thanks, I don't need your weird guilt complex on my conscience. You can just stand there and look pretty.

（ he pulls a face, a sort of grimace. ）

And let it be known for the record that I am like, in no way into this. Masochism really isn't my vibe, which you'll understand the hilarity of in like thirty seconds.

[Out of instinct more than conscious choice the Mangekyou Sharingan wakes within his right eye, vision red-stained and sharpened, attention acutely narrowed on the man in front of him at that first stirring of colored energy. It is not chakra; he's unable to track it, cannot sense its flow or pattern through the body, but it stains his visual field nonetheless. A dark, unnatural smudge across his perception beyond understanding. He feels the first needles of frustration.

And then the blade materializes out of nothing. No seal. No jutsu.

Sasuke has seen strange sights now in both dimensions he's visited, but nothing like that. The heaviness of the air is more pronounced, a restlessness like static electricity. Or is that only him?]

My eyes will be able to tell if it's a trick. [Illusions come to die under the eyes of an Uchiha. He is certain of this, but otherwise doesn't argue.] Fine. I'll hold it, and you can do the rest.

[Sasuke steps in, disliking that his heart rate seems to hike with this shortened proximity, pulse pounding in his throat. He doesn't know why he should feel this way. Violence is the beginning and end of a shinobi's existence.

He finds the proffered hilt of the tantō, grasping it with a battle-callused hand, familiar and practiced. He angles it up, up—and decidedly nestles it between the ridge of ribs, over the heart, angled to pierce the aorta vessel pumping vital blood within. Fast and efficient.]

Here.

[Also, thanks for telling him you're not going to get horny over this... like he was worried... In this setting, though, it probably matters.]

Edited (specificity) 2024-01-08 04:21 (UTC)

Nuh-uh. Hands to yourself. I just wanted you to see it's real.

（ yes, he bats sasuke's hand fully away after the spot is chosen. shoo. he knows the angle, and needs no guidance. the tantō is lowered, briefly anticlimactic, as he rests it across his knees and peels his shirt off overhead. no point getting it bloody — fine apparel is apparently reserved for the higher-than-gutter rankings.

as he folds it, neat and tidy. sets it aside. ）

On the infinitesimally small chance this actually punches my ticket, you probably want an ounce of plausible deniability to your name.

（ he winks, and then in one smooth motion draws the blade back up left-handed. lets the tip of it rest briefly against his skin, and on the exhale it's thrust abruptly home. there's no hesitation to it, no fear — he may as well have just been sliding the blade back in its saya for all the ceremony he gives the act.

not the most dramatic way he's shown off his immortality. that involved an exploding starship, once upon a time. but this isn't not up there, either.

the blade parts and pierces and severs all the yucky human bits, connective tissue, cartilaginous costal and the arterial cradle of the aorta. he nicks a rib, which is annoying mostly because it sends shockwaves of pain up his sternum that go beyond just ow, stabbed, sort of a low thrumming vibrato of pain.

but he can feel his body's rejection of the injury almost immediately. the way it starts to heal around the blade, immortal offense at the intrusion.

cy lets it go (what, it's not going anywhere, he's gonna sword-in-the-stone this bitch) and then just does a little waggle of his fingers this kid will absolutely not understand as 'jazz hands'. ）

Look, ma, no hands.

（ hey, the kid didn't ask him to puncture a lung. ）

[For all of the casual bravado of that remark, this time fear does hook itself somewhere deep inside of Sasuke—because if he's saying something like that, if there is even the slightest chance this will not work, what will he do? Doubt chases like a dog, because what if he has found someone crazy enough to hurt themselves past the threshold of capable return for the sake of... a point? A stupid point, nothing that even matters, curiosity and disbelief driven by sleep-deprived distress. Who knows the extent of how their abilities work in this dimension?

That guilty conscience is raw and eager to fester. The man was more right than he knows not to allow Sasuke's hand on the hilt.

It happens, and neither the Mangekyou nor the Rinnegan glimpse anything unusual but the hole of a wound, outpouring blood around the silver stake of a blade sunken into human flesh. And it stays there, immutably fatal, and the living man speaks. He heard flesh tear; he chose a spot that should create a waterfall of endless, gushing red. Yet it's like a blocked pipe. It doesn't bleed long at all.]

That...

[Stepping in, Sasuke lifts his hand to slick flesh around the embedded tantō of the man's chest, fingertips smearing in an exploratory touch.]

You healed? I've seen it before, but—this is too fast.

（ touchy little fucker. though he has the benefit of foresight here — he's willing to guess this is a rare moment for someone who looks like he'd rather eat a porcupine backwards than yield to anyone.

sasuke might find he runs hot, beneath that touch. hotter than a human, though not entirely beyond the tolerances of possibility. elevated body temperature like a constant glut of fever in a body that was never made to last as long as it has. he doesn't know if he was like that before iantha worked her magic. before she called dreaming into reality, and reality into dreams, and made him both prison and prisoner. ）

Yeah, it sucks. It sort of heals around the blade. Means it hurts just as much coming as going. You do not want to guess what decapitation feels like.

（ although, despite that caveat, he doesn't actually pull it out the old fashioned way, he just calls it back to his hand. the wound, barely bleeding, seals itself over with no evidence of violent passage save the sunset smear of blood beneath the kid's hand. but cy hasn't actually shooed him away this time, taking no issue with letting him poke and prod to his clearly traumatized little heart's content. ）

So, do the magic eyeballs say I pass muster?

（ look, the weird purple eye he initially assumed was some sort of stupid cosplay contact aside, he literally watched your other eye get weird red whorls. they are magic until further notice, thank u. ）

[Decapitation. It follows that if severing even the heart will not kill him, neither will decapitation, but Sasuke has never encountered an ability of regeneration so powerful. Immortality he has seen, though that too only through chakra; Hidan of the Akatsuki comes to mind. Sasuke's knowledge of him is minimal.

This is something else.

His hand drops away, taking a smear of hot blood with it, wiping it on the towel that hangs off one shoulder. Then he tosses it at the other man to use for the mess, head turned away.]

You shouldn't have done something so risky without being more confident in the outcome. If you hadn't tested the extent of your capabilities in this dimension before, you could have actually died. [Only Sasuke would tell someone to stab themselves and then criticize them for it afterward.] My eyes can't track you as well as they should, and they are unable to identify exactly what sort of power you wield. But yes. You aren't bluffing.

[Suddenly, he is exhausted. He doesn't know what this was truly meant to prove. That it is impossible to hurt this man? He shouldn't even have considered trying.]

（ he catches the towel, one corner of it winds around his wrist and makes a damp smack against his wrist. it gets used to wipe the blade first, which he sheathes, and then the messy smear across his chest. his thumb fans out against the cotton fabric as it pinks with the stain, and then he shakes his head and balls it up. it gets tossed to the nearest bin. ）

Oh, I was plenty confident in the outcome, don't you fret. I've been at this a while. It was an 'infinitesimal' in the mathematic sense. 'An indefinitely small quantity, a value approaching zero'.

（ look he has been a math nerd for as long as he can literally remember, no he will not apologize. ）

Name's Cy. Cyram if ya nasty.

Cyram.

[He's trying the foreign name, managing it well on a first attempt, due in part to the activation of the Sharigan as it mimics movement of the man's mouth. He is tempted to argue—that even abilities he was certain he possessed had failed to work in the past, and certainly here, but all of the energy seems to have drained out of him like a sieve.

A step back. His hand lifts, rubbing his face, leaving a print of Cy's blood on the ridge of a cheekbone where he'd failed to wipe all of it off his fingers.

And finally he lifts his head, looking at Cy directly. The red bleeds out of the right eye but the left remains strange, steadfast purple.]

Do you recognize me? [It's an abrupt question he's likely to soon regret.] Have you seen me before?

（ that is... an interesting question he's probably going to turn over in his mind later. truth is, his memory is so fucking shitty at the best of times he has no idea if that's a legitimate possibility or not. even his grasp of the last few days is shaky, mostly spent drinking (not drunk) or finding people to fool around with in dark corners.

was this kid one of those random conquests? that would make this a weird fucking encounter, if so. cy crawls his way back into his shirt, and then leans back again, palms flat on the bench, legs outstretched. he fills space comfortably, without seeming to have done it on purpose at all. clucks his tongue once, and then: ）

Buddy, I don't know you from a hole in the ground.

（ he makes a little 'eh' gesture with one hand, palm-up in something that's almost a full body shrug. ）

Doesn't mean much, though. And you've got blood on your face （ he touches the same spot on his own cheekbone, smudging his thumb in the direction of the smear on sasuke's. ） — might wanna tidy that up. Or don't. Sometimes it pays to be that guy who'll walk around wearing somebody else's blood, man, fuck if I know.

[He keeps the question non-specific enough that Cyram won't know that he means in a dream. Of course they have never met, physically, in person. Yet he can't risk revealing the plague of his nighttime hauntings of thought, so this is the test.

The outcome is one of disappointment, but it isn't pointed directly toward the man. Of course it is only this place toying with his mind. It could be nothing else. Sasuke's expression closes, eyes falling away, demeanor coiled once more into a knot of directionless frustration. Unthinking, he scrubs at his cheek with his forearm to remove the blood but comments no further on it.]

Forget it, then.

[And he whips around, intent on ending the interaction by walking out the door now that the way is unbarred.]

Okay, World's Most Cryptic Bitch.

（ but it's said with an amused huff of breath. there's no real exasperation there, just a roll of his eyes and a wow, was I that bad in my hot topic bitch era, actually? and as the kid beats a hasty retreat — ）

Literally stabbed myself to satiate your curiosity here, pretty sure that ought to at least warrant a name. Otherwise I will call you CeeBee, forever. （ as he lights up another cigarette (just be thankful he didn't light it off the dying embers of the last one, in his usual custom) ） Fair warning.

[He stops at the threshold of the room, holding himself there—unwilling to turn back around, as if it might trap him.]

You offered.

['CeeBee'... what a stupid name.]

Sasuke. [Short, blunt. He's not trying to hide his identity; there would be no point.] Uchiha Sasuke.

[And then he walks out.]

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cw: whatever the fuck this thread is actually???

cw: blood/kinda gore HOW DID WE GET HERE

I HAVE NO IDEA ACTUALLY BUT JUST (CW FOREVER)

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