Seeing White and Blue

ϟ-Prolouge - The Nibi-ϟ

The woman ran through the moonlit forest. Her long blonde hair was stained blood-red as her fair-skinned face was blemished with cuts and bruises all over. She brought her arm to her bloodied chest while the other one flopped beside her.

"She's over there!" a man yelled.

She sucked her teeth as she attempted to pick up the pace, but to little avail. The trees' black silhouettes were a blur as she felt her thundering heart in her ears. Her muscles and wounds begged her to rest and every breath was torturous. The whistling world around her started becoming clearer and she felt her speed lagging.

No! She grimaced and willed herself to move faster again. Her legs shook with every step she took, her muscles rebelled; they were unwilling to move anymore... as much as the woman wanted them to.

She grunted as she felt a burning sensation in her back, followed by a wave of aching as she collapsed to the floor. She heaved on the ground as her vision began to blur and her back dripped with blood.

"Don't kill her!" a man yelled. "We need that beast inside her."

The woman strained to get up. She gritted her one working arm against the dirt before it was stomped on by a different man. "Where do you think you're going, Nibi?"

"I am not the Nibi. My name is Yugito Nii, a proud Kumo Kunoichi—"

The other man kicked her face. "As far as we're concerned, you are the Nibi."

Yugito's vision refocused as she stared into the piercing blue eyes of the man in front of her. The full moon's light illuminated silky silver hair that fell down his fair-skinned forehead marked by two red dots staring down at her like a second pair of eyes.

She caught a glance at the headband hanging around his neck. It was a stark silver, easily visible in the moonlight, it had three gritted, diagonal slashes on its center.

Dokutsu...? Yugito thought before attempting to glare at him, but her vision failed once again as the silhouette of the other man came into view, and she went unconscious...

Almost instantly, she awoke once again; however, her environment was vastly different than what she expected.

Yugito sat up. My body... it's completely unharmed, she mused inwardly as she looked around. She gazed upon the nearly endless expanse of shallow water, shadowed black by the endless, featureless void above her.

There was only one feature of note, a massive cage surrounded by fog, radiating a cobalt blue light from the center. Yugito sighed and got up fully. She walked towards the cage, pushing against wave after wave of heat to get to the center. The closer she got, the shallower the water became, and the more it boiled.

Eventually, she reached the center of the fog, stiffening at the sight behind the cage. A massive feline sat like a sphinx directly behind the cage's bars. Its ethereal cobalt blue fur of flames rose and fell at the rhythm of the beast's breath.

Yugito trembled as the feline's face moved closer to hers. Its heterochromatic green and yellow eyes looked stoically down at her, each of which was the size of Yugito herself.

Yugito stammered. "Hello, Nibi."

"Hello, Yugito," the Nibi responded in an ethereal, feminine tone. "What brings you here today?"

"I... was just knocked unconscious," Yugito said shakily.

"What are you implying?" the Nibi asked sternly. Its coat of flames intensified, causing the surrounding water to boil and steam even more.