025 -- [Action || Voice]

[endgames]

[When Shikamaru heads down to Asuma's apartment Monday morning, he finds it empty of everything but Kurenai's things and a silver lighter standing on the table. It's wrong, but he doesn't give in to the false hope.

Of course it would stay. Even though Shikamaru gave it back to him, the lighter stopped being Asuma's the moment he picked it off his dying body.

Kurenai must've stepped out before it happened. She's a ninja, and not so senseless to have left the door wide open and run off in her grief. And so he waits for her, and tries to find his words.

After he leaves Kurenai, he has to tell Ino. Team 8 he'll find in person too - he has a request for them on top of this. It's been too long since they've heard a stir from their enemies.]

[It's well past midnight before an announcement comes, after he's made this post and spent a few hours going over the discussions there. When people are either busy with the information he gave them, or asleep.

He smokes a cigarette on his way back to his apartment in the night air, putting it out before he steps into the building, his posture falsely relaxed until he steps into his own room.]

Sarutobi Asuma is gone. [There's a pause and- no, he doesn't think it was mentioned.] Also, Haruno Sakura returned to her world a few weeks ago, for anyone who knew her.

Funnily enough, I haven't seen that masked Akatsuki guy in a while either...

[Too many people to filter that too. It's vague enough, but anyone who needs to know should get what he means. It would have been better news if he'd known before.

He'll answer journal comments in the morning.]

Comments

[endgames]

Yeah. [Oh yes, laugh at his life's ambition, and how Luceti likes to keep tearing it and the people involved to shreds. It's cool.

Well, it's at least a distraction. There's only one story left after this, after all. He digs into his pocket to find the lighter.]

[generalflirt]

Taking a widow here without her kid? Wow, that's just comically villainous. [He laughs some more here. He's tired. He's tired and the reaction he's having to this is showing it plainly]

[endgames]

And then send back her dead lover. Now she has neither of them.

[Just talking for talking. He doesn't know what he feels to Masaomi's reaction... if he thinks about it, he knows he's not doing it to be malicious. Masaomi's his friend, and it's because he's his friend that he's being dragged through the pits just like he is.

But it's too easy to hear his laughter in place of that right now. Shikamaru opens and closes the lighter, just to hear the metallic click.]

[generalflirt]

It's true! It would have been kinder to make her vanish too. [More laughing... but it dies down quick enough. He looks over at what Shikamaru's doing] Just so you know, no smoking in here.

[endgames]

[He wouldn't, he hates the smell too much. He doesn't want it lingering in places he hasn't intended it to. Keeping on doing what he's doing is answer enough to that.

It kills him to realize it, but Masaomi is right. He swore to look out for her, but he could stand as her bodyguard twenty four hours a day and still not be able to help her. And to get her over this again...

It's not that he won't try, or that the others won't try, only that he can see his best efforts will likely end in failure. She has to be able to pull herself some of the way too.]

[generalflirt]

Far kinder. After all, no one can pull you through grief.

[That's said darkly, and then he exhales. Okay, so now it's time to move on. Move on to the end of the story. He waves his hand at Shikamaru. Tell him about Asuma. The end of it]

[endgames]

[His eyes flicker back up at that comment, blankly, but he nods. Closes the lighter in one hand.]

You remember those Akatsuki guys I told you about, I'm sure. They remain a huge threat to the world, but for a time there were more than a couple of them. The Land of Fire instated a group of twenty platoons, tasked to hunt them down. The Niju Shotai.

All of Team 10 was assigned to this task, though we were split up. Ino and Chouji were assigned to a squad with two special jounin, and Asuma and I were on another with Izumo and Kotetsu. Weird guys, but good chuunin. Asuma was captain of the squad.

One day, we got a lead on Akatsuki activity. Two men in the signature cloaks had attacked the Fire Temple, and slaughtered all of the monks within. The twenty platoons were dispatched. Our squad stopped by the ruins of the temple, where the monks who were away were collecting the bodies.

There was only one they could not account for: a monk named Chiriku. He was a good friend of Asuma's, the only other one of the Twelve Ninja Guardian who had survived the coup as he did.

[generalflirt]

[Nod. ...Terrorists have a signature cloak? Oh well]

[endgames]

Like Asuma, Chiriku's body had a bounty on the black market. We realized it could have been taken to an exchange point, and alerted the four closest squads to stake out the locations, while we headed to the fifth. Our location turned out to be the one.

We thought we had gotten very lucky. When we got there, one was sitting outside like an idiot, while his partner was inside. Should've been easy as pie.

[He counts off his strategy - it was his, after all.] Asuma was the bait, and lured him into position. I nabbed him with my shadow. Izumo and Kotetsu came from the sides with their swords, and stabbed him through while he couldn't move.

[If it had been anyone else, that should've been it.]

[generalflirt]

[There's a but here. But he smiles in spite of himself, that's a sound strategy]

[endgames]

As it turned out, it was useless. He was immortal. We just alerted his partner.

[generalflirt]

...Wait, like. Seriously immortal? That exists?

[endgames]

Apparently. It was a shock to us too. Cut off his head, he won't die. He'll just keep cussing up a storm. Burn his body to ash, he'll come back anyways.

[It's here he realizes that for story-telling's sake, he can't keep avoiding referring to them by name.]

That's Hidan. The ability was something granted to him through his religion of Jashinism. The belief of which is "Kill thy neighbor". His partner was Kakuzu, a man just as hard to kill. It was lucky for us that Hidan was an idiot, and wanted to fight us for his own bloodlust. If his partner had joined the battle earlier, we all would have died.

[generalflirt]

A religion made him immortal.

[...Wow, how magic. And "kill thy neighbor?" Wow, what in the fuck]

[endgames]

The technique his religion taught him made him immortal. The more you kill, the longer you live, but it has to be in a specific way. [He stops picking at the seam of the chair now.] ...there's a ritual involved.

[generalflirt]

[...And it worked? But that's not much more fanciful than chakra techniques. He nods. Following. So the guy traded lives]

[endgames]

We didn't know that part, when the battle broke out. [He has an eidetic memory, you know. It's east to play back the tape.]

All we knew was that he was immortal, and that the only one who stood a chance in fighting strength against him was Asuma. He took the lead, put Izumo and Kotetsu on covering me in case that Kakuzu guy got any ideas. And I provided back up with Shadow Sewing. It's a formation we'd practiced.

[Which Masaomi has surely seen on drafts and such. But he pauses now.]

[generalflirt]

[Hm. Hindsight makes that seem silly, but alright, that makes sense. Go on]

1/2

[endgames]

...I suggested a more effective formation. Asuma refused.

[Just keep that in mind. He doesn't think he needs to elaborate.]

[endgames]

So anyways. The battle gets underway, and Hidan draws a symbol in the ground with his own blood, see? [He thrusts a hand out suddenly as he talks, violently. Tracing the image in the air.] A triangle in a circle. And all the while he's ranting about how everything's set up. That the ceremony can begin.

[Shikamaru lets his arm fall back down, staring flatly.]

It was an intense battle for a while, but it changed drastically all of a sudden. Hidan's weapon was a triple-bladed scythe. Cumbersome for him, but hard to dodge. Eventually it drew the smallest bit of blood.

Even as Asuma was setting up a counter-attack, he got very excited. He ate the blood; licked it off the scythe. And then instead of dodging Asuma's fire jutsu, he runs into it to stand in that circle from before.

When the smoke clears, his skin has changed colors. Black and white, like a walking skeleton. And Asuma's burned in the exact places that he is.

[generalflirt]

[...Oh. So he made himself into a voodoo doll? That's just spooky, and his eyes widen. But he. nods]

[endgames]

If Hidan was a psycho before, after this... well it's something else. When he stabs himself in the leg and Asuma takes the damage too, he's laughing like he's getting high off it.

["Hurts good doesn't it? Attacking the vitals is a fucking waste! This pain, this is the shit! As the other dies, their agony radiates through my body! And living through is pure ecstasy!"]

Laughing, and talking about where to stab next like a kid who can't decide what candy he wants at the store. I held him with the Kage Mane, though, before he could do anything.

And when I figured out exactly how it worked, I dragged him out of the circle. It broke the curse. And then I stabbed him through to hold him in place with Kage Nui, and Asuma cut off his head.

[He laughs, bitter.] But you already know that didn't work, right?

[generalflirt]

[Ah, of course he does. But severing a head didn't work? Jeez.]

[endgames]

No, no. He still bitches and moans from the ground, of course. [The smile fades again, and he sighs.] That's when his partner finally gets involved. Lightning bruiser type. He incapacitated Asuma and...

[Getting ahead of himself again. He starts flicking the lid of the lighter again.]

His body was, in essence, like that of a rag-doll only held together by thick black threads. He could control these, and one use of it was to reattach body parts. He put Hidan's head back on, and then we were fighting two of them.

Or well. Kotetsu and Izumo were. They took on Kakuzu and tried to protect Asuma. Asuma just worked on avoiding Hidan's scythe again.

[generalflirt]

[Wow that sounds desperate. Where's the backup]