tampered | Log: Ongoing

Log: Ongoing

When; Tuesday, June 10th. Mid-afternoon.
Rating; PG as of yet.
Characters; Itachi [

fistsofjustice]
Summary; Itachi's grand - or not so - arrival.
Log;

The world comes. Comes steady. Steadily. Light like explosions, cold hard steel-screaming explosions and Itachi knows he's dying and dying men have no sense of up or down or top or bottom but.

Something - isn't right.

Moments before, Sasuke. Sasuke. Everything he had forsaken for that one moment. Gathering his negative nonexistent minus zero black Amaterasu-ridden chakra into his fingers. To press against Sasuke's forehead, to transfer the power that shouldn't have been his to begin with and to die.

To die. With dignity, to die.

But there is no warm buffer of Sasuke against him, concrete like shards of ice against his cheeks, no Sasuke, and the chakra burns in the well plate of his dying shell.

He can taste ash and blood - Uchiha blood, cursed, tainted, monstrous - in his throat. Blindness is of no consequence, and the world is full of butterfly-shaped amorphous color and he's a genius but he still doesn't understand what has happened.

Sasuke was strong, but not this strong. If Itachi had been at his pinnacle, Sasuke would still not have stood a chance. There's no way that Sasuke could have created a genjutsu this strong. So that the world has morphed into something else and the pain, ohgod the pain is like a crescendo of not-music noise at the back of his skull and Itachi would be dead already if he didn't have something so important to do before he could let himself go --

Protect. To protect, oh how grotesque the concept was (to protect meant to kill, to kill to protect) and yet here he was, dying after a lifetime of nothing and Sasuke had gone before Itachi could fulfill his last wish.

Irony. Irony of ironies.

Itachi's jaw tightened and his mouth spread in a liquid, serpentine smile. And now, Madara would kill Sasuke, Sasuke empty of the power that was rightfully his. Once again Uchiha Itachi would have failed.

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It was difficult work to keep the small apartment stocked with food, even with just Lina and herself left. Zelgadiss never ate much as it was save for tea, but between Lina and Amelia food shopping was nearly a daily occurrence.

And so it was, arms stocked with food bags, that Amelia wil Tesla Saillune nearly tripped over Uchiha Itachi, almost unable to see over the top of them. As it was, her foot ran into his leg, her bags slipping from her hands. Soft -- that wasn't a stone, that was a *body.* But a body lying in the middle of the street? A strange place to take a sunbath, and she opened her mouth for both an apology and a rebuke.

"Ah, I'm sorry, I . . ."

It was the smell of blood that caught her attention first, coppery and cloying, clinging to the roof of her mouth. It was strong. This was no sunbather indeed.

"Sir??" She was in a crouch immediately, checking his pulse. "Sir, can you hear me?"

A voice - mild, warmly-pitched. A woman's. Not-Sasuke.

Itachi's vision drifted, grey-black-white. He opened his mouth to respond, but words wouldn't form on his tongue. The taste of his own blood was nauseating, distracting.

He moved, shifted minutely, eyes wide unseeing. His blood-matted hair trickling down his neck, him feeling nothing.

Warmth, somewhere. His wrist? Itachi's fingers curled, but that was the only response that surfaced.

Okay. Subject was unresponsive, plainly quite wounded, and Amelia really didn't like that pulse. A small shudder went through the girl's frame -- certainly she'd dealt with this before, and certainly it was something she knew how to handle, but it wasn't *often*, fortunately, and still it struck her . . . the sightlessness of the eyes, the blood reeking and seeping away from the body.

But he was still alive, and that stood for something. That was something she had to prolong.

"Resurrection!"

White light spilled from Amelia's palms into Itachi. Slowly the spell would gather energy from the surrounding environment, using it to increase the speed of cell healing beyond its normal capacity, causing blood cell supply and skin cells to stimulate towards health, causing energy to teem through the body. Still, it was a difficult spell, and slow. It would be some time before it was complete.

She panted quietly, throwing her full concentration into it. Anything around her was ignored.

Color flitted soundlessly away, and light replaced it. Ah, it hurt. Agony. Like being pulled apart, cell by cell, feeling his stomach clench into a needlepoint, his eyes burst into liquid, his hair crackle with flame, his fingers peeled from his hands. Too much light, too much warmth, too much of everything and Uchiha never made a sound when they were in pain because shinobi were strong -

Itachi's spine creaked as he curled into himself, the vestiges of himself displayed in the form of an animal, nothing more, nothing less, capable of no higher thought. Vision failing, hearing blocked out, taste overwhelmed with this cursed blood.

(But there was something so familiar about this. Flashes. Memory - sun like a clear cut garnet-stone in the sky, Mother's chakra flowing into him, healing small aches. You are the pride of this family. Healing, but first came agony, before the flesh knitted back together, before the chakra channels redrew their routes.)

Itachi convulsed against the concrete, his eyes rolling to the back of his head. Nature defined death, and this - whatever it was - was attempting to defy nature. Of course there were repercussions.

But death was not Just to Amelia's mind. Not when one had the opportunity to live. Though a dim part of her recognized his pain, Amelia pressed on mercilessly. If she did stop, he likely would die. That was the danger of the spell -- if not done quickly enough, the victim could die, bleeding out before the holes were mended. It was slow, it was painstaking, but she pushed through it, drawing energy from the outside into the being in front of her.

Only when she finished did she sit back, gasping quietly, watching him for any signs of life. Quivering fingers rose again to check his pulse, this time at the neck. Hopefully those convulsions hadn't done him any further harm.

In the bag beside her, ice cream from the dropped and damaged carton had melted a damp hole through brown paper, mingling with blood.

((ooc: Should be completely healed physically, but I'm not sure how it'll completely work with chakra, since that seems key to the Naruto world. He'd likely still be at least somewhat weaker. I estimate it probably did *something* for the chakra, but isn't 100% compatible. I'll leave it up to you, though, how much you want. I'm flexible.))

Awareness came with a start.

The aftereffects of that great and resounding pain remained. Itachi's eyes opened, starkly red against the pallor of his skin. The automatic use of the Sharingan in and of itself was painful, but it was second nature.

His mind worked methodically at the problem presented before him. Minutes before this, he had been under the spray of rain, with Sasuke standing statue-still before him. With disease and death on his tongue, moments from enveloping him. And now he stood, weak but wretchedly alive, his chakra stores empty but slowly replenishing itself.

"Who are you?" Itachi finally asked, dead-pan. He had propped himself up on his arm, but his limbs were trembling even with that small exertion.

This was not even the same country that he had fought Sasuke in. Either Madara had caught the both of them in an elaborate jutsu or he was going mad. Itachi blinked, once, twice, but his vision didn't clear. The girl was small, seemingly non-threatening, but she had been strong enough to bring him back from the verge of death.

Ah, he was moving! Amelia's smile was immediate, the girl herself completely unaware that she was being assessed as to whether or not she was a potential threat. The smile verged into a beam, watching him. Another battle won and Justice served!

"Ne, ne, try not to move too much yet. Take your time! I'm Amelia -- I'm a Healer for Justice. How are you feeling?"

"Why did you heal me?" Itachi murmured, ignoring her question and continuing to gaze at her dispassionately. It was as if time and space itself had warped, leaving him in a new location, with someone that was decidedly not his brother.

The girl seemed almost empty-headed in her cheerfulness. A lesser man would have lowered their guard, but Itachi trusted nothing, no one.

"Because you were wounded." Amelia might have thought the answer was obvious, but she needed to be patient with the man -- he had, after all, had a very close call. Not surprising that he might have been confused. "I think maybe in a few more minutes you would have bled out completely. Everything should be all right now, though. Your body should have regenerated, so you shouldn't have to worry about anything opening up again. It's just you've been under a lot of strain, so it's not really any wonder that you're probably still feeling not so good."

"I'm sorry I can't do anything about the blood. I don't think your clothes can be saved."

To call this situation illogical was being foolishly gentle. If Itachi had been a romantic, perhaps he would have believed this to be the afterlife: being healed by a relatively pretty girl in what seemed to be a relatively peaceful setting.

But he wasn't, and so the situation only prompted suspicion.

To offer a thank you would have been the norm. Itachi pushed himself to his feet, ignoring the fine, delicate tremors that shook his frame. His clothes ripped, soaked with blackened blood, his hair caked with dirt, the Sharingan-red matching the blood on his face: he must have made quite the sight.

"Where is this?" he finally settled on asking. He kept his tone quiet, polite, but there was still a distinct sense of wariness about him.

((ooc: Not to worry. I keep checking back. :) ))

Relatively pretty? Amelia would be quite indignant at such terminology if she knew. She would have him know that she was darn cute. But although a romantic herself, she was hardly thinking of the situation in that way, eyes following him anxiously as he rose, staying seated, craning her head back to watch him. "Sir . . . !"

Men tended to be stubborn, didn't they? Zelgadiss would likely have done the same thing, shaking off wounds as though they were nothing. Biting her lip, Amelia cut off the rest of her protests for the time being. It wasn't that he *wasn't* healed, after all, but in her opinion it would have been far better if he took it slowly.

"This is the City," she offered instead. "It's a place between worlds, I think is what people say. People from all kinds of places and times and lifestyles end up here. Everyone gets drawn here somehow, though nobody knows how or why. Some people are alive and some people aren't. Once you're here, though, you can't leave -- or even if you do, a lot of times you come back."

Nonsense, all of it, utter nonsense. A city that drew in people from other worlds: what was she attempting to do, pull wool over his eyes merely because she had been kind (or stupid) enough to heal him? Itachi's monotonous expression turned severe as he watched her.

She still seemed sincere enough, though her wasn't in the best of shape, perhaps his sense were playing tricks on him. Maybe he had been knocked unconscious in the fight with Sasuke and somehow Madara had found him. Maybe Sasuke was in Madara's clutches now, and this girl was merely a distraction. Genjutsu. And Itachi didn't even have the chakra to dispel the illusion, even if he was sure that it was one.

"Madara sent you," Itachi murmured, and the three tomoe of his base Sharingan spinning around his pupil.

Blink. Blink, blink. Amelia remained where she was (though in truth she was beginning to get a crick in her neck looking up at him that way). "No? I've never met a Madara." She pointed towards her groceries and the melting ice cream, sweatdrops commencing. "Groceries brought me. I just almost tripped over you. That's all, really."

. . . Were his eyes changing? This was a little unnerving. Eyes weren't supposed to do anything like that.

"Sir, maybe you still aren't feeling too well . . ."

"Please don't come any closer," Itachi said, calm even as confusion overwhelmed him. He was light-headed, weak from the aftershocks of pain, and exhausted. He had been looking forward to the end, when he could leave everything in Sasuke's hands and bid farewell to his own meaningless existence.

And yet, here he was, being dragged through Madara's aslant schemes once again.

She remained non-threatening, but Itachi would not hesitate to disarm her if she made any sudden moves. Or attempt to disarm her, anyhow. "Where is Uchiha Sasuke?" he asked, and if he had just a whisper's worth more of chakra he would have spent it with the Mangekyou. As it was, he could barely manage standing upright and upholding the Sharingan in its basest form at the same time. "Your loyalty to Madara is foolish at best, miss."

"I don't *know* a Madara." Amelia was frowning slightly by that point, wavering between concern and faint irritation. "If he's in the City, I've never met him. I don't follow anyone's schemes except sometimes Lina-san's, and those don't involve any blood at all -- just sometimes explosions. If this Madara is the one who hurt you, sir, I can assure you that he is no friend to Justice -- and therefore certainly no friend of mine!"

She rose -- slowly, her legs wobbling a little. "I won't come any closer if you really don't want me to -- even though there really isn't any need for it. And I don't know a Uchiha Sasuke, either . . . but if you want me to, I can help you look for him."

Itachi's instincts had been honed to perfection since he was a child. There was either something radically wrong with his own senses or the girl was telling the truth: she was no more dangerous than she appeared to be.

He finally released the Sharingan, his gaze wide and black as he once more studied her carefully. "You are convinced of the fact," he said, gently, and the exhaustion showed in his face despite his usual bland facade. "And yet your story is almost impossible to believe."

Tension eased away from Amelia shoulders -- tension that she didn't even realize that she'd been holding in. "It is," she admitted. "It *is* hard to believe, isn't it? But it *is* here; you're in it now. I think the only way to really start to understand it is to experience it."

And it got even stranger than what she'd revealed, but . . . perhaps best to give only a few mindbenders at a time.

"You're going to need a place to stay, too . . . There are apartments all around the city, but you need the money here and things -- and if you're alone . . ." Hesitation, and a short laugh. "It's not too nice to be alone here."

Pause. "You can come with me if you want -- for a night or two? It's okay; we've got the room right now. And it's good to have a place to rest while you look for the people you talked about. And Lina-san and I could help -- or at least answer any more questions."

Somehow she doubted he would accept, but . . .

Itachi fell silent once more. Apathy had become easy for Itachi to maintain, but it would not be difficult to forget his general dislike of humanity in the face of her optimism. That boundless righteous idealism: it would one day be her downfall.

At the same time, however, if any of the nonsense she was spouting did hold some amount of truth, the only way he was going to get any answers was if he did have an inside source. And she was innocuous enough: she had healed an S-class criminal without knowing what she was doing, after all.

"I... would not mind. Thank you."

Heal first, ask questions later. And besides, he *seemed* nice enough, right? Just a little paranoid and shell-shocked, and if he'd nearly been killed by someone, she could suppose that was rather understandable.

Surprise blossomed on her face at his acceptance, only to be followed by an immediate beam. "We'll take good care of you, I promise! Just don't mind Lina-san. She has a temper, but she's a very good person, mostly."

Her attention flickered towards her groceries as she moved to recollect them. "Mou, the ice cream melted . . ."

"Oh -- I don't think I asked what your name is, either! I'm Amelia."

((ooc: And unfortunately I have to grab some sleep again -- will check in tomorrow as usual!))

"Itachi," he responded, not finding it necessary to give more than his first name. If Sasuke was around here somewhere... perhaps it would be best if his presence was never realized. He should have died, but this sweet, foolish girl had prevented that from happening.

Kindness was not something that came easy to Itachi: he had been raised as a perfect soldier, and kindness was not in the code of the shinobi. Now that his duty to Konoha had finally elapsed, it was a little easier, however, to bypass the "rules" and return to what he should have been, before his circumstances changed everything.

"That was on my behalf," he interjected, gaze directed towards the fallen groceries. "You are offering room and board, perhaps you will allow me to take care of such errands in the future."

It was awkward. But he would bide his time and see how the situation played out. If this was just a genjutsu, if this was all part of Madara's scheming, he would kill her without regret.

"Itachi-san." Amelia beamed up at him, gathering the remainder of her bags together.

As to his offer, normally Amelia would have said no immediately -- and started to. He was a guest, after all; guests should not have to be required to do anything. Reconsideration, however, made her pull the word back unformed. "Maybe it's better if we do have an arrangement -- Lina-san might make you try to pay otherwise. So okay -- thank you."

Lina. That might be the difficulty to all of this. How would the other girl react to Amelia bringing home an unknown man without asking?

. . . They'd cross that road when they came to it.

"Ne." She stood, prepared to lead him on, glancing back to the bloody stain. "How did this happen to you?"

Itachi bowed his head politely, following a few steps behind where the girl's shadow fell lightly against the pavement. His tired muscles screamed when he moved, but he ignored the momentary rush of nauseating pain. There had been worse, and there would be worse in the future.

"Perhaps I will tell you another day," Itachi said, hands shaking involuntarily as he moved to zip the front of his blood-soaked cloak. He was alive, but he was certainly not in good shape. SHe had healed his external wounds, but the disease that had been eating away at him for months before the showdown with Sasuke still throbbed angrily at his brow. If Sasuke did not find him once again and kill him, the disease would.

He left his answer at that. For all her supposed good intentions, she was a stranger and quite possibly an enemy. "This "Lina-san"; she is your roommate?"

"Sou . . ." She looked back over her shoulder at him as he denied her request, expression curious and discerning. Well, he had a right to his privacy, of course, though it was a little worrisome.

Of course, if she had just recently been nearly killed, she might not want to talk about it either.

Were his hands shaking? The furrow between her brows deepened a little. Had she not gone far enough with the spell? It had certainly *seemed* like it. She was confident in her spell-casting, particularly her healing abilities. *Maybe* he was still just tired, but . . .

She made the silent determination to keep an eye on him.

"She is." All this thought had taken place in the matter of a moment, and her smile returned promptly. "She's from my world! She's been a friend for a long time. We saved the world together a couple of times, along with Zelgadiss-san and Gourry-san. Oh -- Zelgadiss-san is our other roommate, but he's not there right now." Her smile flagged a little. "I hope he comes back soon."

((ooc: Do you mind if Amelia makes a post about the presence of her new guest?))

Very -- expressive. It was easy to read children, who wore their emotions on their faces like crimson banners, allowing any passer-by to glean precious information about their mental state. She was not a trained warrior, then, however powerful her healing skill may have been. Smile, eyebrow furrow, smile again, it was like watching a reel of film.

Emotions had never ceased to fascinate Itachi, who had purposefully maintained a black slate of a psyche for as long as he could recall.

He listened half-heartedly to her chatter, even as he focused his attention inwards in an attempt to calm his still-racing pulse. This weak, weak body, fallible flesh and bone, it was - disgusting.

Itachi merely nodded in reply. He had become accustomed over the years to using the different shades of silence as his reply. And there was no reason to change that now.

((ooc: Just making sure you didn't have anything in mind yourself. :) I'll get something up tomorrow.))

Amelia, in truth, was a fighter as well as a healer, and certainly not a bad one at that, but without cause to use her skills, she had no need to act as anything other than she was -- a gleeful sixteen-year-old more interested in romanticism and her next meal than combat pursuits. No need for otherwise -- for her thus far the City had been a peaceful place. Itachi, by contrast, even through his blankness, seemed to have an aura of expectation to him, as though anticipating something ten chess moves ahead of them, as though inwardly planning towards it. She found her eyes slipping sideways to him often as though to check -- as though she expected him to reach a conclusion.

"Here," she announced at last, pausing in front of one of the buildings. "We're in #31, so no stairs to climb or anything. You can have a bath if you want, and we can try to find something that will fit for you. Was there anything else you wanted or needed to know?"

A nondescript building, nothing of particular consequence. Regardless, Itachi cataloged it carefully in his mind - with illusions, you never knew where the key to breaking them lay.

He would intrude on the girl's kindness until he was able to find out what was actually going on, find Madara, and end this farce. Even if this Amelia did wish harm upon him, he was in no shape to fend her off: it was best to keep his enemies close and his eyes open.

Itachi dropped his head in thanks, tactfully ignoring the glance askance she leveled at him. But he did have one question. If, by some infinitely small chance, she was actually telling him the truth... then if there were others from his world here, that would make this whole situation egregiously worse. "You mentioned that individuals from different - worlds congregate in this city. Is there any sort of directory of the city's inhabitants available?"

Wide eyes. "That's a really good question. And I think it would be really good to have. It's just sometimes the people who live here appear and disappear so often that it's really hard to keep a list. I know Kuchiki-taichou kept a list of all of the deceased people and people with spiritual abilities, but that's really not everyone. It might be good to ask on the network; people do a lot of things here, and *someone* might keep a record. Or if you're looking for someone in particular, you might ask on the network too."

"Oh!" Balancing a bag on one hip, she managed to maneuver enough to work a small device out of her pocket. "You should have one of these too. They're for posting to the network either with your voice or by typing -- kind of like writing. The network lets you send messages for everyone in the City to see. We have things called computers for posting messages too, but everybody gets one of these devices, I think. They just appear when you come."

((ooc: Amelia's been in contact with Sasuke in her most recent post here: http://fistsofjustice.livejournal.com/5402.html :) She'd pass on the info about Sasuke's position to Itachi as she promised.))

This 'Kuchiki-taichou', then, would be someone he would have to seek out in the near future. And the small electronic device that the girl had pulled out: it was small enough to fit into one of his many hidden kunai pouches, and it looked light enough for him not to have noticed the addition.

Skeptically, he withdrew his hands into his robes and methodically searched through the pouches. And in a few minutes, he had resurfaced with a device almost identical to Amelia's.

This was ridiculous. The concept of such a place was ridiculous. What was even more ridiculous was the fact that he was beginning to believe the girl's story. Uchiha Itachi was the master of illusions - even in his state he should have found a flaw in this genjutsu if it was one. And yet: there was none. Either Madara was dangerously stronger than he had initially believed, or there was a grain of truth to the girl's words.

"Have efforts been made to find out if this - network - is monitored by an outside source?"

((ooc: Unfortunately I need to grab some sleep, but I'll check in tomorrow to continue!))

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Log: Ongoing

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