Euphoric Dysphoria [A Naruto Fan Fiction]

Chapter 2 - Kiyone

Chapter 2: Kiyone

She was trapped.

Trapped in a red cocoon—a warm, suffocating, smothering, darkness, tinged with the red of flesh.

It was wrong—so, so, wrong. She shouldn't have been here. She shouldn't even have a conscience—the last thing she remembered had been the sound of metal smashing against metal, and the horrible shattering of her own bones—

And then she had died.

But there she was—alive. She wasn't even sure if it could be called that. She kept on slipping between consciousness, subconsciousness, and unconsciousness. The rare moments when she could actually think were marked with throbbing bursts of pain from her brain, causing her to quickly give up—she couldn't even seem to hold more than two trains of thought at a time, much less put them into proper words.

Time passed—that much she was aware of—the tiny grains of what seemed like years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds, all slipping through her fingers like water through a hole-filled cup. No matter how she desperately grasped at them, they never stayed, never waited, falling into an endless sea of unknowns.

It changed, one day—she wasn't sure exactly what changed, or why it did, or how it changed—but she knew that it did. An ingrained instinct, embedded deep into her bones, her soul, told her that it was time for her to leave, and what would happen afterwards was of no consequence.

She obeyed.

The fleshy walls that had been encasing her then moved, tilting and shifting, squeezing and contorting, as they pressed against her, pushing her out of whatever cocoon she had been in. For the first time since her death, a thousand thoughts swam in her mind, and she felt her skull splintering—perhaps not literally, but it certainly seemed close enough.

Someone howled in pain; an ear splitting scream that echoed on endlessly. Tortured gasps plagued her ears as soon as she was able to hear—the voice of a woman, she dimly registered, and it was loud. Another cry soon joined the melody of agony—the high-pitched wail of an infant; newly born.

As her throat started to burn, she realised that the wail was her own. But she couldn't stop—not when the gunk that was covering her was wiped away, and not when someone wrapped her up in warmth. The cries only ceased when something was shoved into her mouth, and a warm liquid ran through her throat—food.

She choked. Something in the back of her mind, the more mature part of it that had lived for a whole thirteen years before dying, told her that something was very, very, very, very, very wrong, and that she should get whatever was feeding her out of her mouth as soon as she possibly could because it was Very Wrong.

But she was hungry, so she didn't.

In the distance, an exhausted voice named her, breathing out the foreign syllables that spelled out her new title.

"Kiyone."

She never waited long enough to listen.

Darkness fell.

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She blinked, wide away despite her best intentions. Violet eyes stared up at the ceiling above her with frustration swimming inside, as she aggressively shoved her sister's foot off of her leg.

She was Kiyone now—the daughter of two people she still didn't really quite know. The thought that she had new parents let the acrid taste of guilt fill her mouth, and the idea that she may have stolen away the body of what was supposed to be a normal girl had affected her much more than she thought was possible.