Chapter 6: Unremitting Bombshells
"No," Her response is swift and desperate; she holds her head in her hands as his words and responding grin hit her like a wicked backhand.
The revelation isn't new or shocking; it's damning. Is what it is. She had tried to delude herself into believing the truth, and here it was coming back with a shark-like vengeance.
The look on her face must speak volumes because he's responding to her statement and laughing before she can even utter a word.
"Don't let yourself fall deeper into that delusion, darling. He laughs as if breaking her intentional one-way view of the world wasn't as big as she was making it out to be.
Athena thinks of wooden kunai and the way her brain stuck to words that should've held no meaning beyond fiction, and she shudders.
She thinks of bone-chilling shock and deep-seated denial as the world seems to tilt on its head.
She thinks of truth, of reality, and of accepting it all as she slowly forces herself into a standing position.
She doesn't know how long she stands there—if it's a few minutes or a mere five seconds—but when she steps forward, it's with a purpose she doesn't fully understand.
She doesn't bother trying to avoid the poisonous flora as she moves, ready to test one of many theories that had rushed through her mind as soon as he implied, as soon as the world implied she was in an anime, of all things.
She plucks a piece of the poisonous grass from the ground below her feet, twisting the small thing between her index and thumb fingers before placing it on her tongue and swallowing it.
It should take a couple of minutes before the plant begins to settle into her system. Death, or at least paralysis, should follow a short time later.
The Lycaon lookalike doesn't even try to stop her, instead laying on its paws and watching her with unadulterated glee.
She stands and waits as he watches calmly from the side. A whole fifteen minutes pass in nothing but silence, and as it hits the twenty-minute mark, she giggles.
In the silence that echoes around her, she laughs, tugging at her hair with an anxiousness she hasn't felt in a decade.
She laughs and laughs and laughs some more, nearly choking on the sound of her own voice as it echoes across the silent clearing, breathy giggles escaping her as she hastens to clamp down on her hysteria.
She still can't believe what's happening right now. The effects of heartbreak grass that were almost instantaneous after ingestion hadn't killed her despite having been in her system for fifteen minutes.
"Why aren't I dead?" She mumbles, and it feels like an echo of the first time she gained consciousness in her new life.
"Oh, this is your mindscape, dear." He chuckles. He fucking chuckles. "Nothing can hurt you here. "
They watch each other for a moment, neither of them uttering a sound as his words grate against the shambles of her sanity.
It's really the silence that makes her lose it; she's always been one to exercise restraint and patience, but after all this, restraint and patience were the least of her worries.
"In my mind?" She hissed, straightening to her full height, hysteria flying right out the window along with any hold she had on her sanity. "Are you fucking kidding me? This is supposed to be my mind?!
And better yet, if this is supposed to be my mind, why the fuck are you in it?"
Wait-
"Does this mean that in the beginning, when I was forced to move, couldn't react to pain, and was basically consumed by my emotions, I was in my mind the whole fucking time?"
Yes but-
But what?!" She says, teeth bared in a snarl as she chokes down something between a laugh and a sob. "What could you possibly tell me that could change my views on the situation?!
I died, my friends died, my family died, and now I'm here in an anime!"
"What could you possibly say to make this better, to make it worth the time I've spent grieving, to make it so that I-" She chokes, clamping down on the hollow laugh that almost escapes her.
He growls; it's not threatening, but it's not nice either. He's standing to his full height now, towering over her; he's trying to intimidate her, and it's not even working. He's glaring down at her, and she's glaring right back, and despite the flare of emotion she'd shown a mere second ago, she's calm.
"If you would just let me explain, you'd have some answers by now."
She thinks about telling him to shove it, about wondering the poisonous land until her vision turns dark, but that wouldn't get her any answers, no matter how much it appealed to her aching heart.
"You are going to sit back down, and I'm going to explain, and once I'm finished, we'll discuss this like the rational, intelligent beings we are.
Understood?"
She nods, logic overruling emotion as she stares back. He motions her to his side, and the two settle themselves back on the ground, an apparent distance between them.
"When you died, your soul and the souls of two others were brought to me. I don't know by whom or by what, nor do I know why.
I was given four instructions before each of your souls was whisked into this world.
The first is to aid you in all endeavors you may want to fulfill, whether they be good or evil. But seeing that the world you live in now isn't all that black and white, you'll come to your own conclusions about that particular instruction.
The second was to be a guide, confidant, and friend.
The third is to give and lend you my power to aid you in your future.
And the fourth is to let you three, your offspring, and anyone of your nature be the only ones to wield my power.
You were the eldest of the three souls and the last to be told what you are being told now."
The grass feels hot beneath her palms as she takes it all in. She half expects him to get up and prove it to her, to show her, but he doesn't, and as something heavy settles in her gut, she knows he's speaking the truth.
Someone had put her and them—because there were two others—here on purpose. Someone had taken their souls from somewhere and brought them here.
But it still didn't make any sense. She didn't care for anything else; she didn't want to know how or what right now. All she wanted was a who and a why, but she wasn't going to get those either, so she had to focus on now.
"Why you?" she asks quietly. She's drained; she can't even bother being angry anymore. "Who even are you exactly?"
"I don't have a name. But at one point, a long time ago, I was called
She runs a hand through her hair as his tail brushes past her leg.
"I know what a tailed beast is and who we, the tailed beast as a whole, are." He continues solemnly. "I've never met the others, but I've watched them from above the stars and over the mountaintops.
I've seen how my brothers and sisters have been treated, the lives they've lived, and how they live now. I know of them, but they do not know of me. They have forgotten me.
Humans are the ones who gave us that name, and though they said it with fear, my brethren and I made it our own. We knew we were dangerous, but my fellow beasts never let it define them. It was humans who made them lose themselves, whether out of fear or a need for control. It was they who made them what they are now. Some retain their intelligence, while others just barely grasp it.
They don't even know about my existence. The humans and tailed beasts They believe that only nine exist. Before Hashirama, there were thought to be ten. The humans don't know of my existence, but I believe it's time they learn more about us than of us."
He glances at her face, but she seems much too absorbed in his words to really take it into account.
"The three of you coming here wasn't a mistake, that I am certain, knowing that the three of you were different but not the specifics of how I chose to keep an eye on you until I could speak to you face-to-face.
You three were born on different days at different times in different places, and despite being the last spoken to, you are the oldest of the three.
You three have somehow retained knowledge of your past lives and can easily remember almost every scene that has happened in ours. That almost photographic memory has more to do with who brought you here than any connection you may have to me. Though you won't be losing it any time soon. "
"Who are the other two?" His eyes glowed. "Do you know them? Could they be my family? My friends?"
"I don't know."
Beyond the canopy, the stars seemed to whisper in wonder.
"You'll meet them later in life, seeing that I'll be guiding you to each other."
She nods, storing that small tidbit of information for a later date and forcing down the flutter of hope she feels at the mere prospect of those other souls being her friends.
"So what now?"
"Now you wake up."
Her brain is going a thousand miles a minute after he dropped bombshell after bombshell on her ass. His telling her to simply wake up flies over her head completely, compared to every other piece of information that's been said.
"It's been five months since you've been here, but to you, it must seem like only a few hours have passed by."
He shakes his head non-pulsed by her sigh, even having the audacity to roll his eyes at her once he stops, if that's even possible.
"Time flows differently here, seeing as you have yet to master the ability to adjust it.
During the first month, your body was recovering from being brought here, and during the following four, your body went into autopilot, keeping up the notion that you were a healthy infant child."
She jumps up—damn him for always distracting her with his long lecture-like explanations—looking to find a way out as he drops yet another bombshell on her ass.
"Fuck, what month is it?"
"August. Relax. Just imagine a way out."
She closes her eyes for a moment, shakes her head, and sighs again. He let her be. After a moment, she looks up at him.
"Imagine a way out?"
"A portal, a door, a bed that you have to wake up from—you haven't been here long enough to be able to get out of it easily, so this is the next best thing."
After everything, she didn't really give a damn how she got out. Her tongue felt like lead in her mouth. The area had taken on a dreamlike quality, and the tailed beast sat in front of her like an avid gossip, delivering the latest news.
She nods slowly and imagines the door watching as the once-empty space procures one into thin air.
She walks up to it, sighs, then turns back to him with a small smile that quickly turns into a grimace on her lips. "Earlier, you said you didn't have a name. When we talk again, would it be okay if we three souls gave you one?"
She doesn't wait for his response, turning back to the door and stepping through it without a backward glance.
*****
She wakes, she readjusts, and again she goes forth.
Time moves forward, and eventually so does she. She's still mourning despite the small hope that her friends could be out in the world somewhere; she just learns to hide it better.
Her new parents don't deserve the shitstorm she's gonna introduce into their lives. Dealing with a baby is one thing; dealing with the weird shit she's gonna bring is another entirely.
So at some point, with the continued persuasion of the wolf beast in her head and her own determination, her grief is placed on the back burner.
She learns her name and more about her new life, and eventually, she starts getting used to being in the world of anime.
Because knowing she's doomed if she doesn't take the ninja route and knowing if she was given the choice, she would take it anyway because she wouldn't last as a civilian truly does wonders for her mental state.
*****
Athena, now formally known as Marcella Variety Rai (she could never figure out why she was given such an unnecessarily long name), had obviously transferred her luck, or lack thereof, to her new life. Because that's the only way she could explain why the Fourth Hokage of all people was in her house.
His presence alone screams trouble and death—lots of it.
She's sure she isn't living with a bunch of criminals, and by the way, the Hokage, Minato, is smiling at them—at her—so she can easily deduce that he's fond of her family. But there's a worry behind those beautiful blue eyes—one that, if she remembers correctly, is entirely justified.
He's wringing his hands and running a hand through his hair—obvious signs that, despite his smile, he's stressed about something.
Plus, it's like what? Late September? It's obviously time for shit to hit the fan.
Kushina's going to give birth in a few weeks, and he's obviously busy with all the preparations, so why is he in her house?
She listens to the conversation between her parents and the Hokage, and as her hackles rise, her eyebrows rise higher. She has the almost undeniable urge to slowly clap at the two. She stares at her parents, extremely important, influential, and dangerous people who just so happened to give birth to her.
Her mother and father are powerful people with political sway in the village; hell them being her parents alone solves so many of the problems she thought she was gonna have in the future.
Her father's the second Jonin Commander and her mother's the Anbu Commander, and that doesn't even make sense to her because the only Commander that even remotely comes to mind during the entire series is Shikaku, and even then it's not much.
They're talking about contingency plans in case something goes wrong, setting up a perimeter, and such, and all she can do is sit and do babyshit while Shinsaku and Reiko potentially sacrifice their lives.
Like, really, what the fuck is she supposed to do? She can't speak; she can barely grasp the language in its entirety; she can't even show them. She can't do anything.
They'll be preparing for the possible release of Kurama; they won't have time to take care of her, much less pick up on any signs she could send.
They were here preparing for a possibility, while she was waiting for an inevitable reality.
In the series, only a select few knew of Kushina's Jinjuriki status; her parents weren't a part of that select few, and she isn't even sure if they existed then. Her presence in the world and, most likely, the presence of the two other souls were already changing the flow of the timeline.
*****
The screams were deafening, and the roars of the nine tails overhead were both horrifying and frightening, but as her father ran across the village to who knows where, she stayed silent.
Lips pressed together into a hard, thin line, Marcella stares. She stares up at her father, passing his face and the moonlit trees behind him to stare at the nine-tailed fox with the Sharingan eyes.
Some part of her, in the deepest depths of her fractured mind, pales at the images that she sees: the death, carnage, and destruction the nine tails had caused; the trampled bodies that littered the streets; the screams of both horror and fear the people released.
Inwardly, a part of her truly does express its horror for her situation and the situations of the people around her, but the part of her that had somehow been through worse, that had been pulled into the arms of Death himself, places a facade of calm against her features.
She knows that if she were a normal child, there'd be screaming and tears, but she's not a normal child, and she never will be. She's made sure that her parents were quick to catch on to that fact in the last few weeks.
So yeah, here she is, silent as a fox—pun intended—in her father's arms, surrounded by his fellow ninjas as they rush through the forests of Konoha to who knows where. Helping whatever comrade or civilian they stumble upon as they do so.
Only when they reach their destination, a makeshift shelter filled with both civilians and ninjas alike, does she react, and even then, it's nothing compared to what she feels in her heart.
She doesn't shed tears, nor does she pity those who have fallen; instead, she prays. She prays for those who die, for those who have lost, and for those she knows will lose. She hopes and prays for a future that will be worthy of all the sacrifices and people who will be forced to bow to fate.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone