Yellow Wallpaper
Of all the places you should never wander into this was the least impressive.
Out of all the forests in the Land of Fire it was only the second largest, if the immense woodland around Konohagakure wasn’t counted, appeared to only contain fairly common kinds of trees and, although it ringed the stubby shape of a rusty red volcano cone the top of it was no larger than the surrounding hills.
Still by his own admission Suigetsu would rather walk waist deep in sewerage than have to pass through that faded red tori.
Sasuke, as usual, insisted on going straight towards it with no indication what-so-ever that he thought the peeling red-painted gate was anything more than a relic of some long since dead civilization.
The ex mist village swordsman crosses his arms.
“Hey, hey Sasuke! Why do you always insist on going to such stupid places? I thought we were supposed to be finding Akatsuki, not going on a trip back into enemy territory because you miss a bunch of trees.”
The Uchiha merely glares at him, the deadly gleam of those crimson eyes a forewarning.
Yet, for once, that threat isn’t enough to silence Suigetsu’s complaints.
He hates this place; just being near it rubs him the wrong way for reasons he can’t quite put into words.
“I have an informant here.” Sasuke explains and steps through the gate.
As always Karin follows her crush with depressing swiftness leaving Juugo to throw one last look back at him as he too steps through the gate.
Suigetsu grinds his teeth angrily, the act actually putting more of an edge on each sharp fang before angrily plunging through the gate and after his team-mates.
He hated being coerced into things.
Even the trees here pissed him off, he could swear he heard them laughing.
“This is the last s**t hole I’m going to let you drag me to Sasuke…” The swordsman mutters under his breath so that only the person he has just caught up to can hear him.
Juugo gives Suigetsu a concerned look.
“Are you-…” the former medical experiment starts to say apprehensively before Suigetsu cuts him down with a glare and a slight snarl.
“I’m fine. It’s this place. We shouldn’t be here.”
“I like it” Juugo says simply, taking a deep breath and spreading his arms. “This forest makes me feel…calmer.”
A goldfinch lands on one of his outstretched hands. The tiny bird preens for a moment before taking wing again back off into the trees.
Suigetsu grinds his teeth again.
This place in no way makes him calmer; in fact he’s desperate to kill something.
“Hey Sasuke, find your informant and let’s get out of here.” He snarls, startling the bird Sasuke had been approaching.
With a crimson-eyed glare in his direction the Uchiha swiftly sets of following it and forces his team into a run to keep up.
Suigetsu swears freely as he jumps over water-filled puddles, side-steps around protruding tree roots and being slapped in the face by leafy tree branches that Karin lets spring back on purpose.
He slices every one of them in half, just for the spite of it, as the avenue of foliage bends and parts into a clearing.
There a small circle of grass surrounds a solitary tree isolated from the rest of the forest.
The bird, a hawk with pure black feathers lands on one of the protruding branches and smugly fluffs its feathers.
Leaning against the trunk of the white poplar tree is a single figure, outlined by the dappled sunlight.
He smiles, closing his eyes and tilting his head to the side slightly which causes a shift in his rough cut white hair.
“Kaze-” Sasuke starts to say, taking a step towards him with a practised care but he gets no further before a flash of purple darts past him, the delayed rush of displaced air causing a slicing wind that tosses up the fallen leaves in its wake.
A wordless roar pushes ahead of it; a pure scream of anger and pain and hatred from behind pointed teeth.
The albino has no time to move as Suigetsu changes his grip on the executioner’s blade to a two-handed killing stroke. The swordman’s foot touches the circle of grass and the albino doesn’t even have time to flinch before the blade bites into his shoulder. The hawk takes flight with a cry of alarm, shedding black feathers as the severed arm falls to the grass.
The man staggers backwards, eyes open now in terror, as the sword drinks in the dark blood that spurts from the wound and he fumbles for a shuriken.
His other arm is shorn clean off; the shattered stump of bone visible as the man’s pathetic screaming fills the clearing.
The Executioner’s blade sweeps in low, severing both legs at the knee and he falls, down, down into the bloodstained grass.
Suigetsu plants a foot on his chest and cuts away the remains of the still living albino’s legs, hacking away at the flesh until there is nothing below his waist but a bloody pulp before cutting away his shoulders and slitting open the pale belly until the blood freely flowed, until the swordsman’s hands were bathed in red and the scarlet rivulets ran down his clothes and trickled down his face.
He licked the blood off his pointed teeth as he mutilated the face.
First the tongue cut straight from the mouth until the frantic cries became choked with blood, then the nose because soft tissue was always so much fun to hack away, next the scalp and the bloodied white hair came away so easily to the blade, followed by the ears then the albino wouldn’t be able to hear even his own screams anymore…
Lastly he finishes the job others had started and fully scoops out the blinded eyes then throws them aside.
Yet the man was still alive and panting with exhausting Suigetsu lays the executioner’s blade against the pale bobbing throat to let the terror of death grow in him before smashing it down hard enough to splinter bone.
The head bounces free from the body and with a convulsive twitch it falls still.
It is all over now…
Suigetsu falls to his knees from fatigue, letting the blood-splattered blade fall still to the grass with a soft sigh.
What was there before this circle of grass and the mutilated corpse before him?
He vaguely remembers others had been there but blooming in the dark was other memories, memories he had not thought about in such a long time…
