Phoenix

[Jake]

Go.

[Guest Phoenix]

For many peaceful years, a serene exiled demon has remained dormant in the epicenter of earth. Zotenshuu gained reputation as the Slaughterer of Realms, has finally gained a lucky break, as his chance to overcome the realm with fear inched closer to judgment.

Village elder had recorded that during the years known as the "Primordial times", the world was thrown into a vicious war, only to be concluded upon the abolishment of an extraterrestrial creature called Zotenshuu, attempting to purge the world of the evil known as mankind. Utilizing all of the resources available to mortals at the moment, they were able to seal the colossal demon inside a crystallized chamber, which was then buried deep into the center of earth.

Through the passing of several years, erosion, planet plate movement, and years of volcanic eruption had forced the crystal chamber to arise to a deserted mountain.

All creatures require a source of fuel to convert to energy in order to accomplish any goals and task they are destined to accomplish. There are many kinds of source that many different creatures uses to live, some uses water, sun, food, and even some use air as a source of energy.

Creatures of this caliber feed off fear, ill will, and greed, where a sufficient amount is available due to the current state existing in the world. Zotenshuu while isolated in the crystallized chamber was able to draw enough power to resist the seal, a testament of how ghastly things have gone in the world.

Speak of such happenings were quick to meet villager ears, which was condemned to remain as low-key as possible. Any notifications of such ‘rumors' would lead one to immediate silencing either through prison-hold threats or undisputed force. Issued secrete institutions were organized in order to keep track of such monstrosities and conclude them as soon as possible. Kidnappings became frequent, yet alien to the ears of society as they attempted to capture a suitable experimentation to envelope the rising demon.

Through many large scale testing, many were proven – Useless. Disposed as quickly as they were detained, obviously keeping such abominable occurrences from the Hokage. It would seem the emotional distress forced into the minds of the captured occupants proved invalid and usually ended up corrupting the childrens' mind to a deadened state. But of course, there was always that thread of success that lingered upon most if not all projects – This thread was named; Seigetsu Exodus.

"The inevitable displeasures forced into my mind have left me void of other blissful sentiments. Pleasure, joy, sadness, even fear… All these notions are now completely alien to me, as if I had never ever experienced anything else but misery in my life. Erasing all traces of my preceding lifetime in order to develop an object of wonder, these men were cruel but cunning nonetheless.

My now wretched existence locked within these walls of confined darkness, left me clueless to reality. Yet, to be honest, my eyes had progressively grown accustomed to the lack of illumination as well as the distressing realism I had. Whether it was a penitentiary I couldn't tell; no chains, no guards, no metal bars, only that inexpressive door, which every so often, opened to let anonymous people in to nourish me. For a reason, that door kept calling me, taunting me to open it and step on the other side. Inescapably, I was pulled towards that door, an unexplainable, tantalizing sensation which constantly lured me towards it. What form of divinity lay beyond that door?

Eager to know, my body refrained against it. Paralyzing my very capability to move, the stillness mocking my very efforts. Maybe their pleasure was even more overwhelming, imagining me living with this handicap until my very last breath… They were probably still laughing and boasting about what they are making me endure… Because of them, even moving my neck and opening my mouth to eat was an insuperable ordeal.

Still, even with the powerlessness cramped within me, there was always a way. Help, help was needed to quench my curiosity.”

Months have passed; the temporal phenomena were tremendously splendid for all its worth – an alternate universe by which truth is alluded to fiction and it all comes around like the eternal return of living dangerously. Plots reveal themselves at the end of the day and they had nothing to do but scrape it off their history.

”While part of me cursed that physical inaptitude and weakness which barred the road to that door, the other subconsciously felt relieved. At first, I couldn't explain that absurdity, that reaction of ambivalence which tore my psyche into two. But then, I started to comprehend: that something found on the other side of the door was pleading me to come and grab it, which I badly wanted to do. Yet at the same time, there was a slight anxiety, Hesitation - Why? It was a second chance.

The prospect of embracing a new life, It was being presented as if on a silver plate; but wasn't it too good to be true? Where was the catch? And suddenly, their satisfied expression flashed through my mind. Vengeance, only for this, it was significant, captivating on the risk. I was finally ready to accept any conditions in exchange of what was being offered to me, something I still dreaded to relive. It would seem, all this time – I was frightened to live again.

Arms outstretched to reach for the door; Exodus acknowledged his new existence but felt as if he had made a pact with the devil himself and sold his essence to him. Shrugging those thoughts from his mind, the desecration of this institution would undergo without further disturbances.

----

His closest thing to humanity slid weak fingers against his skin, reaching towards his crimson eyes as if amazed by the sight of them. Blood marred his now impassive face as Exodus morbidly wondered on how the other could still be standing while his companions of scientists were left slaughtered against the walls. Bloodied hands clutched at his shoulders and looked up at his unmoving features that knew the end and reflected it back at the supposed father-figure without fear or judgment.

Over the rush of the river of blood that tunneled itself through the liquid ventilation systems, Exodus heard the blood-stained shrapnel fall uselessly to the ground. He was tempted to ask why the scientists didn't just cut out these damned eyes that shielded a darkened abyss that Exodus reviled. "There," the lasting scientist laughed a gurgled snicker as a crimson finger tenderly traced one scar while looking with a bit of awe into his new-found eyes. The laugh was a bloodied one too, one that could no longer move him. He finally turned from Exodus, gently pushing him away after staining his cheeks red with blood, a tribute to the past. With a stumbling walk, the other then knelt by the compilation of corrupted scholars that lay without the breath of existence. "How symmetrical, boy," He'd comment humorlessly and then depart this life with an ironic smirk on his face as he pitched face first onto the metallic flooring. It left Exodus feeling as if all the emotions he had ever known or was taught floated down the bloodied ventilations, drowning in the roar of the currents.

He finally returned to an emptied home that night drenched in the cold waters of the river that could not cleanse him from either the power-high of quenching the demons' thirst for purging evils or the bloodied feel that left a stain in his mind. His eyes were emptier after that night and he became more distant then before, though no one could have imagined such was possible. He saw the world a bit more differently, through tainted eyes of sorrow.

Deep down, his actions were justified. Of course he was relieved of punishments when such experiments were revealed to the high councils surrounding his case, but appreciation was secretly decorating the deaths of the scientists of this operation, as it kept the village and possible a good portion of existence from complete and total obliteration.

Now --

No one will see this but a dead man: Seigetsu Exodus is human. No one pities him but the dead, yet that is also a path he has chosen for himself. Even though most people know that Exodus is, in fact, biologically a man, very few acknowledges him to be more than a monster and even less will forgive him for not being able to be more.

So in steed, Exodus gives all his secrets to the dead. The living rarely interests him, but that too was his decision. After all, he was the one embedded with power and freedom over companionship and a cage. But then, Exodus rarely shared those moments because he had chosen what he did to be where he was. The key that he used to unlock himself out of the destiny others had set for him may have been in the stale and stagnant blood of his people, but he knows that he had never failed to give them anything they didn't want, not even in the very end.

After all, proving that he was the best suited for his role in this existence, death became subject to his morale code…They just never expected that he would turn his blood-dropped eyes on them.

===

The opening sequence of a lifespan is often divided into several paths. But it's not up to the individual, the owner of his or her own lifespan, which path he or she is going to take. Life is not what you make of it; it's what others allow it for you to be. But in this case, the individual has a past already written for him by birth. A past that is unequalled. Because of it, the boy has far less paths to run down in his own lifespan. But the decisions have already been made by bystanders as the individual goes through life. The crossroads have already been passed and he will never cast a look upon them ever again. Because of that which was bestowed upon him, he was destined to live a life where he was the burden for everyone…

Friendships were present, but were forced, or based on trust, which was destined to decay. What was needed to break that, proved to be too much. Where insanity beckoned, the boy was destined to grow. His own existence has a great share of bad experiences. Forlorn friendships, betrayal and hatred, he had received all that and more. He walked in his old villages, being stared at, by gazes that pry, they yearn for his death, but he could not comply. He no longer had hope and decided to fade away, but there was enough pain to live another day.

There is a downside to everything, common knowledge, but for him there was nothing but a downside. Still, he lived, filled with darkness and despair, with one lingering thought…

"Wouldn't it be nice if everyone would just die?"

--

Life came back to him like a cold breath ushered into his lungs. His senses narrowed to a knife-tipped point as he soon came to rest on the ground – clawed feet literally lighting up everything for miles as they touched. His already preternaturally keen vision sharpened and exploded in carmine. He could feel the heat of the sun, all-consuming and omnipotent, rising out of his chest like a budding supernova. The beast which would forever be apart of him, which was him now, filled his entire body – barely contained and needing release from the tethers of this simplistic form.

His eyes fluttered open and the once calm and beautiful orange hue flowed into the next spectrum of color - the ardent ruby which would eradicate life in an inferno of purifying flame. Six muscular and lithe tails spilt off from the blaze he held in an erratic, jerky spasm. Each languidly and sporadically shifted about one another like angry vines that thrashed against the ruined landscape and slashed outwards at the ever-closing circle of enemies. They had no idea who they so carelessly approached.

Necks cracked, bent awkwardly at angles almost inhumane, and literally blew apart in ivory and organic fragments. Another swished flick of his tails. Spinal columns bowed in every direction because he would make them bow to him. They should have treated him with the respect he desired! The bodies fell around him in awkward parodies of veneration accompanied by loud, sickening snaps or liquid pops. Another swish and vermillion effluents dance across the sky and splatter on his body. Another. Heads cave in and reveal grey matter to all as they fly from shoulders like casually tossed balls. Another. Limbs were torn asunder in splattering of dark, dark reds. And another. Fleshy, chaos-made bodies were eviscerated and turned into slabs of meaty ruin.

The Six-Tails smiled and stretched it's new limbs...

The chaos beasts closed in again, the smarter ones keeping their distance. An eruption of pure, flesh scalding heat eroded the very the earth around him and melted the landscape into molten oceans. Another smile and a simple flick of his wrist. The sun blossoms on his planet in a silent scream. Crags of fiery terrain rose and fell and killed everything around him for miles. He screamed a name foreign to his tongue and desperately tried to remember why he cared about a trivial person that had come to past. The souls were warring now, one trying to devour the other's memories while the other desperately clawed at salvation.

The Six-tails always won these battles.

He narrowed his wondrously frutescent eyes. A moment later, and the Six-tails let its power loose. His essence erupted outwards in an orb of air infused with heat a thousand times hotter than the center of the sun. Hrm... So it was weaker when it fused. Fancy that. Flesh melted around him in sickly, fluid sounds. Bubbles popped and organics leave bodies in wisps of burnt air as the orb that originated from him created a dome of impenetrable flame and burning air five miles in diameter. He was the sun beside the sun, and he loved the power coursing through him.

The Six-tails smirked and flexed it's ‘muscles'. How much power did it still retain?

Scarlet titanian flames flared out from this dome of screaming, hissing flame. He levitates like a rising star of flame and glory and lets the fires twine about him form like quicksilver. The mellifluous ardor that rained from the sky tamed in one sluggish, drawn-out moment and the thousand crackling meteors halted in mid fall. He controlled the flame, not like some weak mortal pawn, by like a god.

A fiery orange and dark red column of heat erupted from his sensual, vast body. His feather isn't red anymore. It's gleaming, molten gold. The tips of the flames touched the very top of the sky and filled it to its brim without visible effort. The darkest of reds intensified and rained down lines of passionate flame onto the earth like raining pain. Tendrils of magma poured out from the main stream of fire that emanated from Zotenshuu and slowly washed over the desolated land. Nothing could escape him. Nothing. Not even those that fly. Façades in the shape of draconic maws arc over and surf the waves of magma with wide, jagged mouths open in hunger. Bursting eruptions of power swallowed four of the five stone behemoths weathering the molten tide and turned them into so much melted stone. The dragons devour all in their path that the molten river misses and close around any who seek escape by flight.

The Six-tails has chosen its method of destruction - purge the world of Everything filled with Taint...

And then, Exodus thought to himself. "One day this dream shall prove to coerce with reality.”

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| Z o t e n s h u u |

In all the world their is but one remaining phoenix. A rare breed of Male that every several hundred years, constructs an enormous nest and with flaps of its colossal wings, It will ignite; burning itself alive, only to emerge from the ashes from a miraculous sun tinted egg, once more. Zotenshuu is that Phoenix, the bird of glorious, golden wings and scarlet feathers, long, thing beak, and magnificent eyes of flame. Six, vast tails protrude from its body, orange, red, and yellow producing a fire-esque coloring to them, as they float behind the bird, keeping an extensive flight. It is immense, perhaps the largest raptor to be seen, and boasts dominance over flames and winds. Often times known as the ‘God of the Scarlet Wind', Zotenshuu is passive unless disturbed. It is said that it's cry produces famine and fatigue within the human world, and that its tears can cure any wound. Zotenshuu's legend claims that he illuminates the paths of destiny, being the marker proof that fate has no hold on the human spirit, but will mislead those whom curse him. He is worshipped among the Leaf Country, sacrifices of food and water being penenace for their sins. Zotenshuu is known to fly backwards, guardian of the past, and is capable of seeing the future when it ventures forwards.

Edited August 7, 2005 by Phoenix