Kyotoumaru Uchiha
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As Kyo ran after Senna toward the southeast corner of the forest he saw the image of Mizuki and caught the sly grin that his friend had used to flash him all too often appear across his comrade's face. Nostalgia flooded Kyo's mind at first, but there was something sinister beneath that grin. It held no true emotion. It appeared only Kyo had picked up on this with his Sharingan, as Senna was solely focused on reaching their friend.
In the distance to the northwest at the heart of the forest, an explosion of epic proportions. Normally the chaos would have triggered Senna's emotional sensory abilities even from that distance with such pain and surprise from such a large bomb. But not now, now she was only focused on the image of their comrade. She wanted so desperately to believe he was alive and well. Kyo's eyes flickered over to the explosion, but returned his focus to Senna as his protective instincts would not allow him to lose sight of her. Moments later he could see a rain of what appeared to be water sharks cascading down upon one end of the forest of death. Within seconds, a large concussive blast flattened the other side of the forest of death.
What the Hell is going on here?! Is this part of the fucking trial?! No.. It can't be. That first explosion was the Kage's observation tower. These are orchestrated attacks meant to be positioned during the Jonin exam for the purpose of distracting us long enough for whoever is pulling the strings to accomplish something... but what is that something? His mind was racing to figure out the enemy's next move, but with his focus split between his surroundings and the image of Mizuki in his mind he could not think clearly. He could only ponder for a moment that it was no coincidence that Mizuki was returning at the exact moment these attacks were carried out on his home before his thoughts were interrupted. He was powerless to help his village.
Suddenly, the chase stopped, the cloaked puppet stopped in the center of a clearing and turned to face Kyo and Senna. His face looked exactly as they had known him, aside from two thin black lines coming down from the eyes, as if to mock them, as if the creator could have easily erased them but wanted to show them just what had become of their friend. They were reuinited. It was just as Senna had wished for the night that Mizuki disappeared. Right? Of course not. This was not what she wished for. Not at all. Whoever-
No, whatever- this
thing standing before them was, it was not Mizuki, the mischievous, yet kind-hearted friend that had been a part of their squad for years who always poked fun at Kyo and Senna's relationship. "
Mizuki..." The name sounded distant even to her own ears as she whispered his name. It was as if a bomb had gone off and dulled her eardrums. And a bomb had gone off in front of her. Reality had exploded before her very eyes. A tear fell from her left eye and hit the earth of the Forest of Death. The denial of the truth set before her was written all over her face.
Senna tried to rush toward the puppet, but Kyo put his hand across her chest and stepped in front of her to protect her.
Clink! The brief second of metal scraping together as a hundred shuriken all flew from the trees behind them. With Senna behind him, the tripwire that Kyo had activated by taking that protective step in front of Senna triggered the malicious trap around them. How had he let that go unnoticed? His Sharingan could have easily seen that. His emotion had taken ahold for a moment and he couldn't help but to do what he thought was best for Senna. And now the trap was not aimed at him, but with Senna behind him the shuriken coming from the trees were aimed mostly at her. A jolt of Black Lightning left his feet, his Sharingan pinpointing the trajectory of every single shuriken in a fraction of a second. His reaction was peak, precise, and perfect. Well... as perfect as that situation could have turned out.
The seals on his wrists activated, his katana appearing in his hand and a kunai in the other. Using these tools combined with his lightning-accelerated reaction and his Sharingan he spun around while using his sword and kunai to protect Senna from every single incoming shuriken, taking her to the ground as he spun and using his own body as a shield for her. He was not so lucky, several dozen shuriken had struck him from various angles. He only had enough time to protect himself from those that would have struck vital points on his body. He rolled off of Senna and dug his katana into the earth, his legs wobbling as he struggled to stay standing. He dropped to a knee, several shuriken sticking out of his back and several dozen small lacerations across his arms and legs. He was losing a decent amount of blood, but nothing life-threatening had befallen him.
Senna quickly gathered herself and dusted the shuriken out of Kyo's back. "Are you okay?!" She knew he would be fine. A green glow covered her hands as she placed them upon his back, and his wounds slowly began to heal. Her head snapped up toward the cloaked figure of their friend. "Why would you do this to him, Mizuki?! What the hell is going on?!" She cried out. All the confusion was getting to her. Kyo winced in pain as he tried to explain that there was no way that Mizuki was inside of that soulless thing. But something caught him offguard. From one knee he dropped down to both, his grip on his sword loosening just a bit as he could feel himself struggling to stay upright. "
P-poison.." He croaked as his eyes narrowed in defiance, glaring at the soulless puppet. The shuriken were not meant to kill Senna nor Kyo. It had all been perfectly planned. The puppet had stopped at the precise spot in the clearing that he knew he would be chased to in order to spring the trap on them. Not only that but whoever was controlling this thing knew that Kyo would step in front of Senna to protect her, and would also throw himself in the way of the shuriken to protect her. Actually, the trap was meant to hit both of them without fail. It was simply impressive that Kyo managed to stop every single shuriken from touching the girl he loved. Unfortunately it was this selflessness that sealed all of their fate.
"
Senna... Why did you abandon me... Senna...." The coarse, raspy voice that came from the puppet was not of Mizuki's. Whatever was left of him was being manipulated by someone else, that much Senna could see. But why then did the puppet raise its hand out in withering desperation, as if to cry out to her in pain? Senna felt nothing from the puppet. Nothingness. A cold, empty void of blackness surrounded its existence. Confusion flooded her mind. Was this really the remnant of her friend reaching out to her in his final moments of life, if this could even be called life? But it looked just like her friend. There was barely anything to indicate otherwise. How could it not be?
"
Mizuki..!" It grew from a whisper to a hoarse cry, she was choking on the inevitable fact that she had to accept that this, whatever
this was, was what had become of her friend. Nothing, not even the death of her mother, had prepared her for this: seeing one of her closest friends of her life turned into a husk of life that was not truly dead, their soul mangled and trapped in a realm of half-existence into a shell of their former selves, with no emotion, nothing but an afterlife of servitude to
WHAT?! Senna couldn't figure it out. She couldn't feel anything beyond the lifeless human puppet of her friend that stood before her. No bad intentions. No evil. Nothing that she had felt when Mizuki disappeared in the forest just yesterday. Her ability to sense emotion, the only thing she had ever grown to trust in this world, was completely useless to her in this moment. She had nothing to go on but what she felt, because it was the only thing to feel, other than Kyo's fear that clouded up the background of her thoughts.
Senna took a desperate step forward toward the shell of her friend. Another tear hit the ground, this time from her right eye. "
Senna, that's not him!!" Kyo called out with agony in his voice. "
Don't fall for it!" He spat, helpless against the situation. His arm twitched, barely able to move anything. The poison was coursing through his veins, paralyzing him. Soon her face scrunched up in a river of tears as she tried to fight back against the overwhelming sensation of helplessness that overtook her. "MIZUKI..!!!" She cried out, her feet compelled by emotion toward the image of her friend. She stepped forward, tears now pouring from her eyes. She wanted nothing more than to save her friend. All her life all she ever wanted was to help those around her. She didn't know what he had become, she had never known anything like this in her entire life. This forbidden art of human puppetry... she didn't even know to call it that, all she saw was her friend, as lifelike and realistic as ever, only void of any soul that had once inhabited the shell of a being that stood before her now.
A horrifying grin came over the puppet's face as Senna ran toward the husk of Mizuki. Its master knew exactly what went through the girl's head. He could see his tactics working, everything from start to finish had gone almost entirely according to plan. The shuriken were meant to poison the girl as well and Seijuro had planned to have this little facade over by now, but Kyo was quite the specimen. He was the wrench in Seijuro's plans. But the puppet master was not phased by his heroics. The situation was still in his control, and nothing could take that from him now.
"
SENNA, DON'T!!!" How Kyo was managing to scream with his motor functions numbed was nothing short of a miracle. He was using all the strength he could muster not to falter during this crucial moment. She needed his help. She was trapped in her own mind, unable to rely on her sixth sense to see what was really going on. She couldn't feel any malicious intent because there was nothing to feel from a puppet. All she saw was the friend they both wanted back so desperately. She didn't want to believe he was dead. But Kyo saw the trap that they had been caught in. They were but prey to whoever was controlling them now. They were actors on someone else's stage. His eyes widened as he watched helplessly as the girl he loved ran straight into Mizuki's arms. It was the most painful sight he was ever forced to witness. As Senna ran into the puppet she wrapped her arms around him, tears falling onto the jet black cloak the puppet adorned.
Before Kyo's very eyes, six knives shot out of Senna's back. Her clothing was immediately painted red from the holes going straight through her chest. The puppet's ribcage was rigged to protrude outwards, the rib bones sharpened into daggers. "
STOP!!!" Kyo cried out once more but it was far too late. Senna's jaw dropped, her arms falling lifelessly to her sides. Her eyes stared straight ahead, far past Mizuki, far off into the void of death. In her last moments she coughed, her blood staining the black cloak of her killer. She turned her head to look back at Kyo, her mouth covered in blood, eyes wide with fear and sadness. She mouthed the words "I'm sorry" before resting her head on the puppet's shoulder just as her eyes drifted away from this world.
For a moment nothing happened. The world was still for a split second and it was all over. His love was lost. Kyo could not hear the pounding of his own breath, only the beat of his heart accelerating like a war drum in his chest. "
AAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!" Black Lightning erupted around Kyo. His arm shook as he pressed himself off the ground. His legs quivered however in but a moment the Uchiha was on his feet, a torrential cloak of jet black lightning surrounding his body. He may have been poisoned, incapable of sending natural signals from his brain to the neurological receptors, but by creating his own electrical impulses through his lightning armor he was on his feet. He was used to the chakra control necessary to increase his reaction speeds with his Kuroi Raiton no Yoroi but this was on an entirely new level of chakra control. The feat he was pulling off was something you only heard in stories.
His fists clenched tighter than they ever had even if he couldn't feel them. Blood ran down his knuckles as his nails dug into his numb palms. This way of movement was not perfect, he was clearly overdoing it with this strain he was putting on his nervous system and his muscles. He was incredibly tense, his teeth grit shut in fury.
CRASH!!! The sound of thunder collapsed upon the earth as Kyo took a single step forward toward the puppet. His arms quaking with rage, a bolt of lightning erupted from the earth at his feet, ripping up a good portion of the ground around him in his wake.
~
Impossible!! This is unheard of! This mere child has found a way to overcome a complex poison of the Dokugami clan and is using his remaining strength to stay and fight... instead of running from death, he will overclock his body and embrace the same fate as the Akizakura girl.. No... I think he truly believes he can win here.. Well, let's see what you've got, Uchiha..~ The puppet of Mizuki removed Senna's body from the daggers coming out of its chest and held her in its arms on display for Kyo. In hindsight, this in-your-face display of 'haha your girlfriend is dead' was probably not the smartest move. But it certainly achieved Seijuro's goal, it brought the most out of the Uchiha.
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A scarlet river ran down the right side of Kyo's face. Agony and hatred gave birth to an inhuman scream the likes of which Kyo never knew was within him. Senna's lifeless body was dropped like a rag doll as Zetsumei dashed backward, throwing his cloak off as it was destroyed in seconds as Kyo appeared in front of him, tearing through it with a mass of black lightning. Before the cloak could touch the ground, Kyo was kneeling beneath Senna's body before it could hit the ground. He looked down at her as a tear of blood dropped from his eye and rolled down her cheek. He shut his eyes so tight that they hurt as he laid her body gently upon the ground.
"
YOU!!!" He opened his eyes once more as he whipped his head over to face the puppet again. This time a stream of blood came from the left, looking directly through the puppet and for but a moment the eye of insight saw the puppet master. Seijuro felt this for certain. A split second later a massive thunderclap was heard as Kyo gathered his remaining chakra into a flash of black lightning that created a scar upon the earth for a hundred yards in front of him, cutting through the forest.
Kyo's arms shook with rage and quivered from the fatigue of his body being pushed to its physical limits. True tears rolled down his face, mixing with the blood from his eyes. The pain he felt from them and from his body beign thrust into overdrive was numbed from the poison. A curious cocktail, as he could not sense just how far he had pushed himself. In fact without Senna there to heal him, at this very moment, without medical attention, Kyo was going to die. Part of him knew this. And he did not care. Not without the love of his life. He had nothing else to live for. If it were up to him, he would die right here with her. And so he gave up. The last remnants of electricity fled from his body, whether he willingly dispelled it or he had run out of chakra after purging several kilometers of forest into Hell was of no importance. He dropped to the ground, his arms still cradling the girl he loved with all of his heart. She was all he had ever wanted. There was but one regret he had in life, and that was his failure to protect her.
