Nebula's Echo (a Naruto Fanfic)

Chapter 45

My eyebrow twitched as I heard Ren's isane cackling at his words. I only glanced at Kakashi one more time and then kept my face straight as I started taking my shirt off. As I threw the blood-soaked garment away and stepped into the circle, preparing to get down, I heard Ren's increasingly horrendous and almost... lecherous cackles, with some words like bl-action and others coming out in between the creepy sounds of laughter.

What is that stupid bird doing? Seriously.... So dumb.

I sighed inaudably and sat down in the center of the circle. Immediately, Kakashi stepped forward and put on a pair of shackles on both my arms and legs. As each shackle clanked shut on one of my limbs, Ren's weird cackling grew worse. By the time Kakashi started to use his own blood to draw signs along the circle around me in geometric shapes, I was already annoyed enough to cut up some chicken and eat it nice and crispy for dinner.

Just you wait, chicken cutlet... your fate is coming for you!

Kakashi continued drawing markings with his blood, and soon he reached me. My arms, back and chest now had lines of blood-markings running along them, all converging at the spot where I knew that "curse-mark", as well as Ren's seal, were.

Ren's weird cackles hadn't stopped at all since the whole ordeal began, and it was as if she got ingested with chicken blood whenever Kakashi was particularly close to me, touching me or standing over me. I think I've developed a trauma.

I never want to be touched by Kakashi, or have him stand over me, again! I won't live through the humiliation!

At my thoughts, a certain dumb bird exploded in laughter so hard, death was starting to spill from my eyes.

If only she had a physical form... she'd be so dead!

Just as I was imagining all the different ways to cut that damn bird up, Kakashi stopped drawing and stood up in front of me. When my bloodthirsty eyes met his, his widened in surprise for a moment before he shook it off and started doing handsigns.

I huffed.

And then I screamed.

The pain was terrible. Like a thousand small worms, all worming their way into my skin, and then travelling under it towards the cursed mark on my shoulder. I watched, almost delirious as the blood-patterns and signs on me and around me slowly started moving, like snakes, and gliding towards me, over my skin and converging at my shoulder.

The sight was shocking and the pain was incapacitating. Through all the overwhelming sensations, I didn't even notice the sudden silence in my head, or the soft feeling of warmth slowly seeping into my heart; silent, deadly, but soothing. Familiar.

Fighting the pain, I opened my eyes slightly and gazed at my shoulder, watching as all the blood-signs gathered together in a string around the curse mark. As the blood-seal dug into my skin, isolating the curse mark, I could see the shadow of a bigger, more complex and more sinister seal appearing. With it's surfacing, a cold feeling of power, calm and death rushed through me. But before it could even fully manifest, the mark faded again, taking with it all the sensations of cold and strength. I somehow instinctively knew what happened.