Dream Synecdoche [t][o]

[Naitome]

<sub>--| He opened his eyes to look into a full-length mirror that crept out of the wall with the legs of small children, and held up a single hand. In reaction to silent commands, his fingers dissolved before him. Index to thumb, each whirled away into nothing but sand. They broke apart and became individual grains tied in to a malicious consciousness. They thinned at their edges.


They became momentarily a fine powder and then elongated. His hand became a claw…a weapon. It solidified back into the consistency of flesh. He inspected his work. With a tiny oscillation of chakra,he allowed his new claw to dissolve into a cloud of black sand.


It looked as if his hand had been blown off. As quickly as it had spread apart, the explosion of dust seemed to halt in mid air. Naitome squinted. With a small sigh of concentration, his ‘normal’ hand began to reform. A few seconds later, the first of tiny manipulations had been undone, and without any understanding of pain, he held up his other hand to repeat the process.

From the wrist up, the other dissolved as well, but this time would not become a disorganized particulate mess. He ordered the iron powder that was his body to shift around itself. Not to disassemble, but to simply flow into the next form. The hand sprouted spikes of loose sand. The spikes solidified into firmness moments later.

He unraveled the new form just as quickly as the last. He was not in a hurry, merely concerned with efficiency, as his chakra flared out to encompass his entire arm. He registered shock, seeing himself clad in his brother's metal suit, where the ‘armor’ he now wore seemed hard and durable. He only need imagine it breaking apart to notice a change. It grew tiny cracks along its surface, then lost all color, blending into the seamless black of the shadows.</sub>

[Naitome]

<sub>--|He stood naked but unashamed (!). There was a light dusting of floating magnetic chakra waving with intent. It was held just above the threshold of 'flesh' giving him shape by willpower alone. His mind stretched out then. It mimicked the fading tactile impressions of armor that had become his floor, grew cracks that branched out like the arms of some ancient tree and settled into nothing but more dust.

The false water that composed his eyes seemed to run down the sides of his face as he...let go...just let go he thought to himself. Energies animating conscious metal flowed into a twitching kinetic lump. Its edged smoothed suddenly, then hardened and grew serrated edges like razors, ran up and down the length of sand that was Naitome's true self. Still capable of clear thought, he imagined his own hand, then increased the scale dramatically as a nervous particulate shift sought simulacrum creation hungrily. The pile of sand broke itself apart as quickly as it had been formed.

He became a single human hand. It's digits began opening and closing reflectively with programmed zeal. The nails of each finger, now seeming as subtle and supple as flesh, grew ambiguous and darkened. They began spreading into malleable claws. As they appeared, they were erased; a battle formation that the absence of enemies forced the young man to see as illogical and unnecessary. The clawed hand braided itself into the sand along the floor and he grew in size.

He became a pair of hands, where something like an arm seemed to slowly explode from the junction of a wrist. It looked as if some monstrous thing was reaching up through the dirt. His hastily cobbled together image wavered in a light wind distributed through this random house by chakra and thought. Something like a pair of eyes burst from the twin palms. First two, then four, then sixteen...the handsome face many had seen snarling around the village burst free of sand moving like clay in the refracted evening light.

He stepped out of the enormous hands, dragging with him eyes that broke apart into a granular mess immediately after movement. This previous form, these hands that were so much like his own and yet so different for not having them, collapsed with a relaxed thud into nothing. He was wearing her familiar kimono yet again; but it lacked color and texture, like paint laid over power. He shook vigorously as more metal grains fell to the floor and a splash of color returned him to 'normal'.

He would continue.</sub>

[Naitome]

<sub>--|He began walking in slow concentric circles, centering himself on a half-emptied vase of natural sand. He held his hands out over the top of the object every four revolutions, depositing a larger and larger amount of his sand-self inside of it with each consecutively smaller circle. in only a few minutes, he appeared to be just a pair of legs pacing the shack without an upper-body. Unperturbed, the legs continued this ritualistic motion until the vase was full; half sand, half iron powder with the sentience to push itself onwards.

In this way...at this time...he was not really a 'he' at all. The thing he'd become had no true gender, and as a wisp of mixed sand slowly uncoiled from the vase and began to take a shape, he would test the limits of his imagination. The sand clumped together sporadically, bunched corners of rough strewn desert and purpose vibrated into recognizable shapes. He became a featureless humanoid bulge of dune-lands spreading faster and faster into something...someone distinct. The speed of his transformation is unsettling.

He was getting better.

A young man took the place of the Sunagakure Shinobi. He was average in every way; dark hair and eyes, medium build, with simple black clothes that would prevent him from standing out in a crowd. His face elongated at the nose, was pushed out, became sand for only the briefest of seconds before splitting into a series of flailing tendrils that pushed and pulled at each other like combating siblings.

The tentacled mass did not distract the motion of this new Naitome's hands. Slowly, but with confidence and expertise, he brought them up to his neck and pushed at the base 'flesh' of the exposed skin. They pushed through. The arms dissolved, creating two additional tentacles that sprouted hesitantly before falling back down into a shower of sand. As slowly and methodically as these changes were made, from his feet charged a sharp spike jutting from the earthy chassis.

His core imploded as the spike tore through the very body that provided its mass. The stone that was his 'heart' thundered violently with effort as, surprisingly, the sand around the house pulled itself towards Naitome's 'body'. Each tiny particle was suffused with energy. Each tiny particle climbed over its brethren to collect themselves into a several meters high statue....then became suddenly the Kazekage or a sword or a bear.....he moved silently from one shape to the next with dizzying complexity until...

...with monstrous grace the house shook and the sand fell to become nothing more than dust on the floor. There was no one to be seen.</sub>

[Naitome]

--| There was an amalgamated lurch/sway as the floor of the simple sand house shivered. It strained against its bracing, began cinching itself inexorably towards its own center. Something like a whirlpool began to form in the earth. A multitude of iron rose. A bird rustled and pulled itself free of the false desert connected by a tether of leathery sand flesh forming texture from fractured memory.

The bird split open, burst. It became a flock of smaller birds discolored to match the coal black of their surroundings. Each bird plummeted into the sandy floor in turn. Each gave a nearly inaudible >pop< as it became dust, twitched, and was absorbed further down. The whirlpool reformed momentarily, directed by the Genin's thoughts.

He was conception given life. There was insidious movement and the sound of something rough dragging itself newly into the world. An enormous wing pushed itself through the floor; five meters high it crashed back down and became briefly a tree whose leaves were near endless copies of Naitome's own palms. The hands elongated, grew arms, pulled at the faux bark of their form. It looked as if it would rip itself apart as a chasm split the 'bark' and

everywhere...everything....spread....

The entire tree dissolved in a flash as a particle cloud of iron sand twisted in on itself and settled back into the lone Sunagakure genin of the area. Naitome stood perfectly still as chakras still mixed about his body. He held a single hand out to steady himself, not even truly aware as a thin pillar of sand rose up obeying silent commands and formed a sort of cane. He looked down in shock, then shook his head vigorously. The cane dissipated and he looked out, as if seeing the odd house for the first time.

He did not breathe, but if he could, he would be out of breath anyway.

His heart seemed to be crushing itself of its own accord. He calmed the channeling physical and mental force that propelled him through each change and relaxed his arms at his side. He seemed to inhale, but it was only out of habit, a tired deception born from a life among Those Awake, and once he felt more settled, his chakra flared out once more.

He walked to the door of the house.

Twist.

Click.

The door opene--

HE WOKE UP.

[Jae]

Naitome Kagirinai received +50 EXP

[Naitome]

<sub>--| He found himself suddenly (inexplicably) in a strange place; walls of dark metal seemed to stretch up and into the clouds themselves and banners hung, barred windows too narrow for even a child to escape from formed a patchwork mockery of viewpoints scattered up a massive tower framed by an empty dirt field. There were others around him. The sky was dark and the sun seemed unable to pierce the dread of other malcontents shuffling noisily about the square, chained to a strange machine. It sat like some squat little deity, tethered cables outputting a single electric whine through an atmosphere congested with repetitive motion. The men and women around him dug into the earth with shovels that appeared as beaten and uncared for as as themselves. There were...things crowding large looking posts in each corner, spread at least a mile in every conceivable direction. If he strained his eyes, he could make out distant hills, but they were covered in blood caked sand congealed to stinking mud.

He was bound to the machine as well. A prisoner.

An old man strode out from a centralized square of low buildings accompanied by a small red eyed child. The two could have easily been family; they resembled each other in a way too peculiar and exact at such differing ages to be anything other than clansmen. They stood at a podium of worn away wood as the old man spoke sternly and with some authority to the assembled onlookers. Naitome listened.

"For those of you who are new here, there are a few simple ideas i wish to impress upon you. Make no mistake, you are indeed a prisoner, your life as you knew it has ceased to exist, and you now move as instruments of a single man's will. That man is me. I am the Warden here, and though you are not required to address me as such, you are required to answer any question I care to ask in as quick and polite a manner possible.

You are being held here, quite simply, to dig. I have no obligation to tell you what I am looking for. None of the tower guards are either, so asking them is pointless. You will dig and dig and dig more, or you will die.

This--"

He said, indicating the child next to him,

is the sole guard of this prison. His name is AU-2. Those who do not wish to dig will face him in combat.

If you are able to defeat him, you may leave. Thousands have tried.

None have succeeded."

The prisoners around Naitome did not even look up from their work, instead regarding their respective instruments as if they'd suddenly become the most interesting things in the world. Naitome took a few steps forward, his magnetic field searching at the machines base as he drew nearer to the podium. A hand suddenly found its way to his shoulder just as he prepared to call a tiny bit of iron sand from the gourd still attached to his side and blindside the small boy.

"Don't do it mate. It's not a joke; that thing up there ain't no kid, and its killed hundreds of us all by itself. Don't make waves, dig when they ask, and stay out of trouble."

a dust covered man whispered to him between clanging reverberations of his shovel.

Naitome scoffed.

I am a shinobi of the Hidden Sand, he thought, I will not exist in fear.

The old man turned to walk back inside, and it wasn't until he'd almost re-entered the main building that Naitome drew close enough to gain anyone's attention. AU-2 stared at him with a look of cheerfulness so out of place that it was unnerving. Without words, Naitome charged ahead in a blur, the metal from his cable ripped apart by his magnetic field and turned into a sharpened iron spike that launched itself towards the 'warden'.

"Don't--"

AU-2 said, still smiling, as the projectile seemed to disintegrate far before touching anyone. Without giving him a second to think, the small boys foot...then hand....then knife....then foot again...found Naitome's chest in a concentrated rhythm of force that knocked him down and left a bleeding gash leaking his life onto the ground. He collapsed suddenly, painfully. He didn't understand.

"--do that."

AU-2 finished, his eyes blazing red as the warden stepped back and moved to Naitome's side, looking down with contempt.

"What...who...are you...?"

Naitome asked, choking.

"My name..."

The Old Man started, almost like a question

"...is AU-1."

Before he blacked out, Naitome got the impression he might be a prisoner for quite some time.



[RETIRED]</sub>

[Fuck Yeah!]

/Approved