Chapter Text
Chapter 1: At Least You’re Not Dead
Shisui wakes to the sensation of cold, damp stone, and bound arms and feels a moment of deep, bitter despair--Danzo has him , has something planned --but Indra's bones his left hand is killing him, that kind of deep ache that means something is badly damaged, and sure, he jumped from a waterfall, but he doesn't remember getting that kind of injury there , and he reflexively opens his eyes to look--
Well.
Well.
Isn't that a surprise?
Because he can see just fine, which is sort of amazing for someone who's had his eyes ripped out. And now that he thinks about it, yeah, he can feel his sharingan right there where it should be. So.
"Am I dead?" he wonders out loud. "Did I fuck things up so damned badly that I ended up in some kind of Hell instead of the Pure Lands?" The heavily armed and armoured guards that he can just barely see from his position doesn't answer, to nobody's surprise. The armour doesn't look like anything any shinobi would wear though, more like the kind of gear the daimyou's ceremonial guard would wear, or other samurai types he guesses. Hard to move around in anyway.
Of course if the point of them is to provide a physical barrier that a prisoner can't move through, they might just be effective. Barely. A little. For a while. The thought makes Shisui want to giggle, but then the hysterics he's been fighting ever since he woke up alive and intact--aside from the weird green glowing bullshit in his hand, what the fuck --also kind of make him want to giggle, so that's nothing new.
Instead of thinking about that, Shisui turns his thoughts to escape; he'll probably wait until someone comes along to tell him why he's locked up in here, but then he's out . He doesn't have his hitaiate or his mesh, or his holster, or any obvious weapons, but he's still in his usual clothes otherwise, which means hidden ninja wire and exploding tags hidden between layers of cloth although somebody found the senbon in his shoes and pants' seams. He can feel the tags and wire when he shifts though, and though they shackled his hands too far apart to make a hand sign, the shackles are old, and not very sturdy--he can feel the traces of rust against his skin--and if worst comes to worst, he can always use a genjutsu on the guard, although signs (he has his eyes ahahahahaha) point to these people have no idea they have an Uchiha and he doesn't intend to enlighten them if he can help it.
There's a knock on the door, and the guard on the door steps forward, letting Shisui get a good look at the crest of a flaming sword he's wearing on his armour, and also letting the door swing... inwards, okay, now he knows where the hinges are. Thank you very much for the information.
In through the door comes a stern-looking woman, with short dark hair and a scar on her face that reminds Shisui of his mother. Great . They look nothing alike but he'll never be able to unsee it. Though maybe there is some connection, since the crest on her armour is like an eye radiating chakra. Huh. Right on her heels is definitely the person who relieved him of his senbon: red hair, hidden, like half her face, in the shadow of her hood, dark purple clothes, and a light warchain tunic(?) that doesn't even whisper as she moves.
Great. Maybe they are professionals. Of a sort.
Professionals-of-a-sort it soon turns out, with whom he does not share a single blessed word . They're not faking it, either; Quasi-Shinobi Lady probably could, but Definitely Not Ma has the short temper and forthright bulging muscles of a dedicated frontliner, and why bother with subterfuge when you can hit things instead AND have a friend to do the sneaky shit for you? Yeah, Shisui knows the types.
The pair of them pace around Shisui, saying threatening--and not-threatening--things in their language, and he gives them his very best look of blank non-comprehension. And then Definitely Not Ma grabs his left hand, and Shisui reflexively yelps and yanks it away--
"What the hell lady?" he demands. His hand sparks, and another surge of that unfortunate kind of pain surges up his arm, making him hiss, and swallow back against the pain.
His words--and his reaction, but mostly his words--bring them up short. Quasi-Shinobi looks at him and says something in another, equally incomprehensible language. Huh. More than one in common parlance? That's unusual. Shisui shakes his head.
"Nope."
Not Ma tries yet a third what the hell , and again he shakes his head; that seems to be universal, thankfully. The pair of them argue again, and Quasi-Shinobi stalks off, leaving Not Ma to pull Shisui to his feet. She keeps talking as she exchanges the bar shackle for wrist bindings, which is nice, because he can slip them in like three seconds, and his hands are together if inconveniently placed for handsigns. He can do it, he totally can, but he might dislocate something still.
He memorises the path as they go, not that it's a terribly complicated one: up the stairs, down the hall (weird architecture, lots of stone, rows of benches, something at the far end that makes him think of a shrine), out the door--hello sunlight--and--
"What the fuck is that?!" 'That' being the glowing green thing in the sky and oh no that's why everyone's so... so stroppy with him. Shisui looks at his hand. Looks up. Wriggles his hand around so he can hold it up and yep same--
He staggers, and bites back a scream as that sickening badwrong pain in his hand, shooting up his arm, into his shoulder. Part of him notices distantly that the green thing in the sky pulses and crackles in synch with the green thing in his hand, and he has a distant feeling that he's fucked.
He was fucked anyway, he was dead , but he's had a few minutes of being maybe not dead, and kind of liking it, and he's really not into that whole being dead again thing.
(Besides. Like this. Maybe he can get back to Itachi. Maybe he can help, somehow.)
Oh. The pain actually drove him to his knees, he realises, as Not Ma kneels in front of him, and takes his hands with a--considering the circumstances--surprisingly gentle touch. He can still feel the strength under her gloves, but it's nice, for a moment.
When she's sure she has his attention, she points to the green thing in the sky, says one word, and repeats it again, firmly.
"Breach?" Shisui repeats obediently, and she nods.
"Wow it's been like, twelve hours since I saw a face like that ," he quips, nodding to one of the scowls. Not Ma says something in reply, and he doesn't know the words, but he knows the tone, the looks, and he's a pretty smart guy: they blame him for something. And if he has to guess, Shisui would say that the thing they blame him for? Is big, green, and connected to his hand. With another sigh, he lets his shoulder droop a little, and makes himself look at least at young as he is. Some people won't be fooled, but most of the people here are civilians who have no idea he's an Uchiha (despite the prominent crest on his back; he knows those looks, and that hostility, and they have little in common with these looks and this hostility), and will probably start feeling uneasy when they realise he's a 'child', or close to one in age.
A pair of gates open for them, and Shisui follows Not Ma out--until she turns toward him with a knife. He doesn't sense any hostile intent, but--
"Whoa, wait," he says, holding his hands up between them. With an impatient scowl, Not Ma points to the bindings, and makes a cutting gesture--okay, Shisui gets it, but instead of letting her cut, he slips the bindings, and trades them for the knife, vanishing it into a pocket with a cheeky "Thanks!"
She takes a step towards him, a note of demand in her words, and Shisui puts on his best 'confused innocent' face. He can tell she wants to say something, but she doesn't waste time trying, instead just pointing at him in a 'just you wait, mister!' kind of way, and gesturing sharply for him to follow.
More out of curiosity--and desire not to die by mini-Breach--than anything, Shisui does.
Even though he half expects it, he’s still disappointed that their path leads toward the mountain—and the Breach. The path was wide and well-trod, but covered in snow, hastily improvised cavalry-blockades set at regular intervals, soldiers positioned behind them, archers paired with spears, and not a shinobi in sight--just ordinary soldiers. There were signs of battle here and there in the scuffed up snow, but not nearly as much blood as he would have anticipated had they been faced with a similarly-sized force.
Not Ma leads him up and around the mountainside, and the mini-Breach in his hand almost drives Shisui to the ground again with a sudden crackling surge. Not Ma exclaims, and mutters something to herself. Shisui straightens, and tips his head toward the bridge he can see ahead.
"I'm guessing that's the way to go?" he asks, exaggerating the question just a little. Not Ma just gestures for him to follow, a little impatient now that he's back on his feet.
From this side of the ridge, it's easy to see that the Breach isn't just sitting there, looking terrifying and making his hand hurt. It's throwing out green fire, and rocks, and--one of them slams into the bridge just as Not Ma starts to lead him across it, and Shisui reflexively catches her, and leaps back to solid ground. He puts her down before she can start to demand he do so, and then moves to reflexively parry the--monster or whatever--that goes for their backs. Yeah, all he has is a pocket knife, but that's honestly more than enough.
Not Ma spits something that sounds like a curse, and draws the sword at her side; a quick glance shows fine steel, polished and sharp. Good. She snarls something, and dives into the fray. Without a word, Shisui follows her, covering her back, and darting to-and-fro--
It gets easier when he sees a short sword with a double-edged blade glittering in a pile of detritus in the chasm formerly crossed by the bridge, and leaps down to lay claim to it. A quick second glance shows longer blades, a scattering of arrows, and an odd-looking staff; he grabs a handful of the arrows, and uses his shunshin to cross the distance to Not Ma, and take out the monster leaping for her back. She pivots on her heel, and he moves with her, ducking as she raises her shield, and then rolling under it and throwing the arrows like cut-rate kunai into the monster that meets him there.
Like the rest so far, it melts into some kind of goo, and not a drop of blood. It explains some of what he saw back in the ascent. He waits a moment longer, and when there's no sign of anything else coming, he moves, and gives Not Ma her space, and reflexively leaps back, blade held parallel to his arm in a defensive stance, as Not Ma demands, with use of gestures and a stern voice, that he disarms.
Shisui makes a point of looking exaggeratedly around, ending on the patch of good that marks the one that almost had her, and says very firmly, "No."
If she insists, he thinks, things could get annoying; Not Ma is the one who knows what's going on here, and Shisui would really like to know what's going on here, he really really would. (He would like to get back home to Itachi, to his clan and his village. But how? He has no idea. He has had no chance to get an idea.)
She gives him a thin-lipped look, and even without his sharingan Shisui can see the moment she capitulates, before she resheathes her sword, and nods.
"So what was that? " he asks, gesturing at the smears of goo that were all that remained of their foes. She glances at the mess, and back at Shisui, and says one word, very clearly:
"Demons."
"Whatever the hell 'demons' is," Shisui mutters to himself. Gooey monsters, not summons... he can go with 'demons'. The sounds of sudden battle erupt ahead of them, and Shisui doesn't hesitate to hurl himself ahead, shunshin carrying him to the vantage, and then into the fray, a glance all he needs to take in the fighters: a bald man using a staff of all things to sling his jutsu without taking time to use a single hand sign, before moving into close combat with the staff itself, and a short, broad man with a crossbow who moves nimbly through the battlefield, fighting with tools and traps as well as the crossbow, and all Shisui can think is finally, some shinobi.
Not that there's anything wrong with the kind of straightforward warrior Not Ma is, he supposes, but they're harder to work with. More likely to disapprove of point blank fireballs and poisoned senbon. Not guaranteed to—Not Ma is working well enough with the two they’ve joined—but more likely.
And it’s easy to duck, and let the chill of Baldy’s (kekkei genkai? It’s ice, it must be) jutsu pass over him to impact the cloaked monster, to turn on his heel and snap an arrow from his hand in tandem with Shorty’s crossbow. (It’s a nice crossbow. A serious specialist’s weapon, if he can use it at point blank like that, and at range.)
It also lets him see where Not Ma excels—defence and counterattack, drawing attention to herself so that others can take advantage of the openings created. That takes guts. And skill to not end up so much bloody meat paste in the process.
The last of the cloaked monsters falls to a combination of Shisui’s precise strike, and Baldy’s hyoton jutsu—definitely channelled through his staff, what a great tool, Shisui wants one, on principle—and then the shifting crystal formation that resonates with the mini-Breach in his hand shifts , and form a shimmering pane of green light that looks like nothing so much as a window into... he can almost see it, and so he activates his sharingan. He doesn’t think anyone is looking.
There’s another place on the other side, something his mind can’t quite make sense of, not in the bare seconds he has before Baldy’s snatching his hand—how is he so fast?!—and pointing it toward the Green Window, before pulsing his own chakra very precisely into the mini-Breach.
It pushes and pulls through the visible connection like a needle through cloth, using some power outside Shisui—but inside the mini-Breach in his hand, until it closes with something that is almost, but not entirely, unlike having a joint snapped back into place by a raiton jutsu. It leaves his hand tingling, and he pulls it away from Baldy, and shakes it, opening and closing his fingers to ensure that they continue working.
He can hear Shorty and Not Ma exchanging words behind him, but it’s Baldy who has most of his attention still, watching him care for his hand. He says something that Shisui mostly doesn’t understand, though he mentions ‘Breach’. Shisui understands that one.
“For the record, I don’t understand a word you’re saying, except ‘Breach’,” Shisui says. He watches Baldy and Shorty both carefully, but sees no response from either. Until Shorty rolls his eyes and walks over, says a handful of words, and then repeats the last of them:
“Varric Tethras.” He points to himself, easily meeting Shisui’s eyes. (He reminds himself that it’s not a sign of either bravery, foolishness, or trust the way it would be back home.) Repeats again: “Varric.” And yeah , Shisui gets it , he likes you, Varric.
“Shisui,” he responds. “Just ‘Shisui’ is just fine.” A short bow, and, “Pleased to meet you.”
“Ah,” says Baldy, along with some more nonsense. “—Solas,” he finishes, inclining his head around his staff. Shisui returns the nod.
“Cassandra,” Not Ma says shortly, and then another string of nonsense—although he’s starting to recognise words, if not their meanings, around the different accents.
“—hurry,” Cassandra says, after several other words. Shisui is starting to recognise that it means a need for haste, and she leads the way again. Shisui takes the middle, along with Solas the ninjutsu specialist, and lets Varric of the fantastic crossbow take the rear.
It’s a minor miracle, but they don’t encounter more than a couple more creepy goo monsters as Cassandra leads them through ruins and rubble to another big bridge, fortified and provisioned, and an incredibly tempting target for any intelligent commander. Shisui would send a squad to lay explosive tags along the underside, and take the whole thing out in one go. Nobody would ever know they were there.
He doubts the ‘demons’ have anyone to do that, but the idea that they could keeps his mind sharp, even through the incomprehensible yelling and gesturing. He gives it no more than half his attention, instead rummaging about for this-and-that in the supplies. He finds what looks like rations, and after checking with Varric—point, mime eating, tilt head curiously, get a laugh from the short man—he starts eating as much as he can.
Other things—string, a handful of nails of the old-fashioned, individually forged type, that sort of thing—find their way into his pockets. The best finds are the roll of paper, the bottle of pre-mixed ink, and the spool of wire. It’s not ninja wire by any means, but it’s not useless either, and he has an idea—
“Shisui!” Cassandra calls, and waves him over to the table with her, Quasi Shinobi, and Angry Shouting Council Man. Not that Shisui really has any idea who he is or what his position, but his hat is quite big, and rather fancy. He starts snarling angrily again when Shisui approaches, but since Cassandra and her partner are ignoring him, he can’t be more than a blowhard; civilians trying to butt in on a military matter. Which is all well and good when they aren’t in the field causing problems in an active battlefield . Shisui chooses to ignore him as well.
One introduction—Leliana, now that’s a tongue-twister—later, and they have him looking at a map, and, ah, that’s what the debate was about.
The map shows two routes to... the Breach, he guesses. One is direct, and involves a mass of forces—he thinks—and... no. No. The other, coming at it obliquely, through a passage in the mountain, looks better. He taps his finger decisively.
“The mountain path,” he says, and hates that there is a tactical discussion that he can’t be a part of. He might need to let the sharingan cat out of the kekkei genkai bag sooner rather than later, but until he needs to, something is telling him, don’t. Listening to his instincts has generally done well for him—except that time it got him killed, but, details—and so he goes with it.
They nod in agreement, and start to take off, but Shisui isn’t about to let that happen so easily.
“Leliana,” he calls. “My weapons?” He points to the spot on his hip where his pouch usually sits. And then to his seams, and then his shoulder where his tanto lives. Finally, he taps his forehead. Pointedly. Her lips curve up, very slightly, and the hitaiate and two of the kunai come his way, in a nice, deliberately telegraphed toss. The kunai join the short sword and the pocket knife, and the hitaiate gets tied back to his forehead where it belongs.
In return, he offers her the handful of arrows he has remaining, and she takes them with a wry nod.
He hopes the rest of his stuff is back down in the town he was locked up in. He’ll be very disappointed if it’s gone. Still, even having some of his gear back helps. It helps so much .
More words that he doesn't understand are exchanged, and then his team is ready to move out.
Climbing the mountain is harder than he expected, since literally none of these people know how to walk up a vertical surface. There are ladders and platforms, but they’re slow , and even the apparently unflappable ninjutsu specialist Solas is shocked when Shisui just goes right on up. And then right back down with a shunshin, and he says,
“Anyone want a ride?” gesturing to all of them, and then his back, and then up the side of the cliff with a grin.
He's not surprised when Solas immediately takes him up on it, and Shisui takes the pointy-eared guy right on up with the familiar zipping ease of the shunshin. It leaves him briefly laughing with delight, and yeah, okay, Shisui appreciates that. He asks a question--about wall-walking, his gesture toward the wall of the cliff, and walking fingers making it clear--but cuts off an answer, even as Shisui shakes his head, and points at the Big Green Thing In The Sky. He grins, and shoots a salute, and shunshin's back down.
It takes a little more persuasion, but not a lot more, as time is, in fact, short, and Shisui is, in fact, the fastest thing any of these people have ever seen. He knows that for certain.
Cassandra, for all her nerves, only takes a moment to regain her bearings; Varric takes even less time, which some might think odd for his apparently-grounded nature, but appearances can be deceiving, and the short man has vast wells of resolve.
A quick series of gestures has the marching order: Shisui on point, as scout, followed by Cassandra, then Solas, then Varric as the rear guard; he’s nimble enough, and has the range to counter no matter where an attack might come from.
The nature of the cave becomes clear at they enter it: an old mine entrance, not long abandoned. There are still old crates of supplies about, and other scattered leavings that might be useful, and between demon attacks, Shisui snags a few things--more nails, a short length of rope, maybe twice Shisui's own height, a crowbar... That last one he almost leaves behind; it's too long and heavy for him to manage in a situation like this, but Varric takes it from him with a particular gleam in his eye, and word of what sounds like 'thanks'.
Cassandra stops him at one point, when the exit of the mine is in sight, and after yet more pantomime, he has several vials of something red like blood, that he thinks is... healing? Or something like a soldier pill? He's fine so far; hopefully he won't have to try them in a combat situation.
Exiting the mine leaves most of the party blinded; Shisui's eyes are better than that, and so he's the first one to see the bodies laid out before them. They look dead; their chests don't rise and fall. A quick look with his sharingan while everyone is behind him confirms his suspicion, as there is no chakra circulating through them.
He shouldn't look back at his companions. That's a bad idea, asking for trouble. Shisui kneels, and checks the pulse of one of them, and catches a glimpse of crackling green chakra moving beside him just as he deactivates his sharingan. The shape resolves itself into Solas, as Shisui looks over, briefly meeting his eyes. The other man shakes his head, and stands, and a moment after checking the dead woman's pulse--nothing--Shisui does too.
A rock burning with green fire hurtles right for them, and Cassandra pushes to the front, a forceful kiai in her voice as she thrusts her shield out in front of them. Her chakra expands briefly into the shield, in a way that makes the air shimmer around it, deflecting the rock, and leaving licks of green fire dancing on the ground around them.
Shisui gives a low whistle, and claps Cassandra on the shoulder.
"Nice," he starts to say, but there's a scream in the distance, and instead he snaps: " Keep up! " not even thinking, for a moment, that none of them can understand him. He moves; maybe these aren't his people, but they're not not his people. And if he can do something to help, he will.
It's a good thing he moves so quickly, too; a small group of people in the same uniforms as the dead behind him are holding off--
His sharingan activate automatically in response to the sudden threat , and his hand moves on its own, catching spindly sharp talons on the edge of a kunai. He draws the short sword with his other hand, and shuts the sharingan down, even as he spins on his toe and forces chakra into the blade, and slashes the demon in half vertically. The blade cracks--cheap metal, even non-chakra metal should be able to take more than one hit--but it does for that demon.
The blade snaps on the next strike, but it damages the second demon. It takes one of Varric's arrows, and one of Solas' chilling ice jutsu, and then Shisui feels something-- protective settle on his skin, a faint blue shimmer shifting over him--Varric too, he notices. The short man says something over his shoulder to Solas. Probably a thanks; he's heard that word several times now.
He takes notice of the rift hovering over them then, shifting and crystalline, and he wonders...
...for about five seconds, and then demonic talons are glancing off of his upraised arm. So that’s what Solas’ jutsu does. Nice . Shisui wonders if it’s some aspect of his hyoton or if anyone can learn it? It’d certainly be nice to add to his collection. Especially since it seems like he applied it to the whole party at once.
The demon trying to slice his arms to ribbons is identical to the one he just dispatched: long, spindly limbs, long, spindly torso; fingers and toes and teeth like knives, and a tail like a whip with a razor at the end. And all an acidic green that almost matches the breach.
It lashes with its tail, and slashes with its claws, and Shisui uses his shunshin to escape, landing well outside its reach—only to see it sink swiftly into a pool or a portal of some kind beneath its feet, and it’s only the fact that he just that fast that allows Shisui to shunshin again, avoiding what would have been a nasty blow.
And. Where he’s standing now gives him a clear shot at the remaining demons, with no allies in the line of fire, and Shisui’s Ma didn’t raise an idiot.
His hands fly through the signs, and then the demons are introduced to the old Uchiha standby: goukakkyuu no jutsu.
Shisui makes it big enough to fill the entire area without allies.
As it turns out, it is super-effective.
“Next time self, just open with that,” he mutters, and, sensing that it will be effective now, he pushes chakra into the mini-Breach in his hand, pushing and pulling the way Solas demonstrated before, until the thing finally closes with a burst and a sharp crackle.
The soldiers they rescued babble their probably-thanks, before taking off on Cassandra’s direction; he can follow the cadence of her voice if nothing else. The party is cautious about approaching him; he can hear it in the crunch of snow under their feet--and the lack, he notes, under Solas'--and Cassandra's telegraphed hand coming to rest on his shoulder.
Her voice is stern, but not angry, although her gestures around the battlefield are sharp and chastising--right, right, 'warn your allies before you drop a giant fireball Shisui!' He's only heard it a hundred times. And--
Solas clears his throat, and says something, pointing out to the Breach--oh yeah. It's. Probably. Uh.
"Right," Shisui says. "Let's get going." There's another series of ladders down the cliff face, but climbing seems like too damned much work to him, so like a gentleman, he offers an arm to Cassandra first. She seems almost startled, but takes it, and braces herself for the shunshin, clearly a fast learner.
He takes Varric down next, but is stopped by Solas when he returns for the bald man.
"Shisui," he says, catching his attention and gesturing to the battlefield, and then offering him a blue vial, like the red ones from Cassandra earlier. A little more pantomime--Shisui is getting so sick of this --and he thinks he gets the idea: medicine to restore chakra reserves.
" Thanks, " he says, using their word. Solas smiles, and then takes Shisui's arm, and lets himself be taken down.
And down here, there terrain can only be described as unnatural : Jagged black rock thrusts into the sky like a disordered doton on a lava field. The effect is magnified by the green glow coming from cracks in the rock, as if it were some bit of the Breach made into lava. Around the first corner, there's a dip in the path, and a scattering of burnt corpses, some still flickering with green fire, all caught in moments of pleading or prayer. It's a little unsettling, even for someone like Shisui, who has seen and done so much that a few scorched bodies really shouldn't even register.
There is something here though, that is deeply unsettling; it makes his skin crawl, and his eyes itch, and the thing in his hand pulse. He flexes his hand to try and ease the sensation, and looks around again.
More bodies than he thought at first glance, most burnt, some old bones, one in... what looks like one piece--the odds are low, but he's over there before he can think of it, checking the man's pulse. He shakes his head when Cassandra catches up. She curses, and looks over the area--the jagged rocks, the bodies, the wrecked masonry in the middle of it all...
"Hey, Cassandra," Shisui says, catching her attention. He points to himself, to his eyes, to the area. "I'll look, you-" he points to her, to her eyes, to her shield "-cover me." He doubts there's anything here that even the legendary Tsunade could save, but it'll nag at him if he doesn't check , and he feels like it will Cassandra, too.
"Varric! Solas!" she calls, and gestures them into formation as Shisui starts methodically combing the field. Another short sword finds its way into his belt, single-edged and slightly curved, but much narrower at the tip than any sort of katana. He can still use it, and it's way better than not having it with these demon things around.
There's nothing else that catches his eye--certainly no survivors --except one scorched, skeletal corpse, bent backward by the heat, green fire licking out of its eyes like some macabre doujutsu, and it feels so profoundly unsettling, his blood rushes in his ears, and he feels sick --
"-- Shisui! " Cassandra's voice is sharp, and just outside of his melee reach. Oh, he likes a smart person. He squeezes his eyes shut, and shakes his head, and then opens them up and points to the body with the burning eyes.
"That is superbly creepy," he says, and gives a theatrical shudder. " Creepy ," he repeats. Points at another body, at the jagged rocks, at the green fire: "Creepy, creepy, creepy. "
Varric chuckles.
" Creepy ," he says, no doubt their word for 'creepy', excellent, he now speaks five whole words of the language!
"Okay," Shisui breathes, and points toward the Breach. "Let's go."
The path leads past the fallen man from before, the only one not burnt or bones, and down a short flight of stairs, into a hallway that has seen better days, cracked and battered as it is. There are more bodies--parts of bodies--but nothing that stands out, no weapons or usable parts. A feeling of dread starts pooling in his chest, and Shisui listens to it, and starts stringing his nails along the wire as they go along. The wire likely won't conduct his katon the way ninja wire would, but it's still steel wire, and iron nails, and he can use them to create a raiton cage, with even a tiny baby jutsu for tiny babies.
Beside him, Varric asks a question, gesturing to the trapwork in Shisui's hands, and he grins.
"It's for a raiton cage," he explains. "Raiton-" he raises a finger to the sky, and describes a zigzag line back down "-cage-" and makes a cage with his fingers. Varric makes an interested noise, and nods, speaking two more words. Shisui doesn't think he completely understands, but he definitely gets the gist.
And then, around the corner... there it is.
Ghostly green fire swirls between the Breach in the sky, and what looks like an inactive? rift just above the ground. They're clearly connected, almost tied together somehow, and Shisui's hand aches . He rubs the palm absently as he stares up into the green. Vast stones spin there, and things--demons, maybe--move between them in a near-hypnotic dance.
Once again, he chances using his sharingan, and the overwhelming blaze of green is lit, ever so briefly, by a dazzling rainbow of chakra.
"Wow." Whatever happens next, Shisui will always be glad he took the chance to look at that .
The soft scuff of the politely-loud footstep of an allied shinobi draws his attention, and Shisui deactivates his sharingan as he turns to see Leliana and a squad of her people coming up from the other direction.
"Shisui, Cassandra," she starts. Her words sound relieved to Shisui's ear. They exchange words that mean little to Shisui, so he hops up on a ledge to get a better view of the area below. Cracked ground and green flames, wisps of shadow and light, and nothing nice about any of it at all.
"Hey, Cassandra, Leliana," he calls. "I'm going to scout." Points to his eyes, and gestures in a circle around the area. He doesn't wait for a confirmation--though he sees Cassandra's nod--before taking off, sticking to the tops of the walls and the broken terraces.
Halfway around, he pauses so that whoever is following him--soft feet, deliberately not silent--can catch up. He's expecting Leliana, or maybe Varric, so when he turns and sees Solas ... He think he's surprised, but he remembers that flicker of Solas' chakra out of the corner of his eye, the same crackling green fire that surrounds them as thickly as the air itself. The way he was able to push his chakra into Shisui's hand, and into the mini-Breach in it.
Nobody can see them from here.
Shisui narrows his eyes.
"Solas," he says.
" Yes? " the older man replies. Or that's what Shisui thinks he's saying anyway, given previous conversations and context clues... He's going to give himself that sixth word in his vocabulary. Six words is still not enough to convey any nuance, but fortunately, for this, none is required:
"Breach," Shisui says. Points aggressively at his hand. "Mini-Breach." Briefly he crosses his fingers together, and Solas nods, again saying:
" Yes ." He draws his breath to continue, but Shisui interrupts him with a rudely pointed finger, saying:
" Solas. " And then links his hands together.
Solas goes pale. Guilt crosses his face, and disbelief, consternation, scheming, indecision--microexpressions all, there and gone in less than a rabbit's heartbeat, but Shisui is an Uchiha , and even without using his sharingan, his eyes are keener than most. He doesn't think he's missed much, even in the eldritch green light of the Breach.
His hands tighten on his staff, and Shisui makes a hasty decision.
"Wait," he says, holding up a hand, fingers up, palm flat; hopefully it's a universal gesture like head-shaking. He points to the sun, and gestures from horizon to horizon. "We'll ta-- AHH! "
The Breach crackles, and spits out more flaming rocks, and Shisui's hand spits out more flaming agony, spiking all the way up into his shoulder, and his heart is racing and he can't fucking breathe --
Senbon in his joints--
Razors peeling his skin--
Fireball right to the face --
Shimura Danzo--
It stops.
It stops enough that he can get back to his feet with Solas' help, and then stand on his own after a moment.
"Fuck," Shisui breathes, and then pushes it down, away; he can break down later.
" Ir abelas ," Solas says, and he sounds very sorry; maybe that's what it means. 'I'm sorry.'
"Later," Shisui says again, and after a moment of hesitation, Solas inclines his head in agreement. "For now, the Breach ." This time, Solas nods more decisively.
"Breach," he says, pointing up at it, and slowly drawing it down to: "Rift." He counts on his fingers, " One, two, three, " is what Shisui guesses. Solas holds his fingers up, and then taps them on his forearm, with three different words--and then again, the same words, and yeah, Shisui gets it, ordinal numbers:
" First, second, third, " Solas says, and Shisui nods. A flicker of an almost-smile crosses Solas' face, and he points back down to the huge rift below. "First Rift," he says.
"Ah." Shisui is starting to get it, he thinks. Solas holds out a closed fist.
" Closed ," he says. Opens his hand: “ Open. Open rift, close rift. Close rift, close Breach. ” And then Solas wobbles a hand back and forth, and says: “ Maybe. ”
Yeah. Yeah, okay, Shisui gets it. Shut down the first rift, and it’ll shut down the Breach. Maybe. He’ll take maybe living over for sure dying in horrible agony. He nods.
“All right. Let’s do it.”
He jumps down, and heads for the rift, ignoring Solas’ alarmed cry, and the more distant ones from the rest of the squad. Cassandra’s a big girl, she can find her own way down. So can anyone capable of doing this in the first place, even if, as Shisui suspects, it was an accident. Or partially an accident. Regardless, Solas is either the best actor Shisui has ever met (unlikely; that’d be that double-crossing fucking Danzo), or he’s not the kind of man who would fuck shit up this badly on purpose.
The rift and its connection to the Breach are even more impressive up close; it’s hard to believe that anybody managed this on their own. But Shisui’s going to have to try to shut it down on his own. More or less.
He can see— feel —why Solas said to open the rift first: it feels unstable, jittery, jagged like glass in his hand. If he pulls it open, it’ll be. Big . But probably just feel like an open rift. Which means demons, he supposes. He can deal with that.
Solas’ light footsteps come up behind him, and a little to the left, and even as Shisui raises his hand to start pulling the rift open, Solas stops him, his cool touch gently stilling Shisui’s hand.
“Wait,” he says, and then, “ Wait. ” He uses his staff to gesture towards where Cassandra and Varric are working their way down. Huh. That’s a surprise; Shisui would have thought Varric would have wanted the height advantage like the other archers.
They stop once, hesitating, and Cassandra reaches out toward something only she and Varric can see—
Genjutsu. He can’t tell what it is from here, but like hell is is Uchiha Shisui going to let some enemy catch his team like that. Swiftly he disrupts his chakra, forcefully enough to affect everyone here, including Leliana and her archers. It doesn’t seem like they were caught in it, but better safe than sorry.
Solas gives him an incredulous look, and glances at his hand—at the thing in his hand—and Shisui shakes his head. Seriously, have these people never heard of disrupting your chakra to break a genjutsu?
"Shisui-" ' was that you just now? ' Or something like that, he guesses, is what Cassandra asks--not quite demands--when she reaches them. Shisui shrugs; he doesn't actually know what she's asking. Her lips thin, and she nods her understanding; there’s no way he can explain anything right now.
Turning to Solas, she asks a question about the rift, about the Breach. Solas nods, and gestures to Shisui—ah, he’s supposed to explain? He can do that.
“Open rift,” he says. “ 正確と close rift, close Breach. Solas と言った ,” he finishes, gesturing up at the huge rift above them churning with instability and shifting rocky protrusions.
It makes his entire arm itch , and it makes his hand burn , and Shisui needs a day or three to get this under control and locked down, but does he get that? No. Shisui doesn’t get nice things, like Itachi and two weeks of leave. He gets horrible things, like being unexpectedly alive without Itachi, and nasty green things in his hand.
Oh well.
Shisui takes a deep breath, and shuts it all away. He has a bad feeling about what he's about to do, and he doesn't need his own thoughts and feelings and hopes and dreams and wishes cluttering his mind while he does it.
He channels his chakra into his hand, and through the mini-Breach, following the instinctive connection between it and the rift--and faintly, the Breach further up. He looks at his hand, and then up to the Breach, thoughtfully; if he had more chakra, he could reach it, too, he thinks, and files it away for later. He doesn't have enough to reach it without killing himself, probably, so it can wait.
The rift is right here, and very reachable, and disturbingly easy to re-open. He thought it would be like picking a seam, but it's more like just pulling a pin, and the whole thing falls open.
He takes the risk, once again, with everyone else at his back, to watch the rift open up with his sharingan, to watch as something so big it can best be described as hulking slips through--
Smaller things move beyond it, in a space that his mind can't quite grasp , for all that he can see it just fine... It feels like looking at somebody else's dream. Honestly Shisui wants to see more, but he doesn't get the chance; the big spiky demon lashes out with a raiton whip--he sees it, how the demon casts it, before he deactivates his sharingan, and he tucks that away for later consideration--that he has to dodge, and laughs with an impossibly deep voice, and yeah, Shisui's gonna just his that with a fireball, and cast out his wire with nails, wrapping it around the demon, catching in the plates of the creature's armour.
Then he has to get out of the way again, dodging a massive fist that swings way too fast for something that big. Varric, Leliana, and her archers are methodically filling it with arrows, but it's not very effective; the demon just laughs, and casts its lightning whip again, swinging it almost lazily, knocking over most of the squad.
Solas manages to get out of the way with a shunshin of his own, one that leaves a cold breeze swirling around his feet as he lands near Shisui.
"Shisui," he says. "Rift..." He shakes his left hand jaggedly, and, oh , there's an idea.
Shisui flings out a hand, and connects his chakra to the rift again, before sharply disrupting it. It sends out a crack of green light, and drives the demon to its knees. Cassandra gives a rallying cry, and a moment after Solas strikes it with his icy jutsu, Cassandra throws her chakra into a massive shield bash, cracking the demon's armour.
This is Shisui's chance, and he takes it: his raiton is nothing to his katon, but he can manage something that can hit the wire, and follow the channel of the nails to get under the demon's armour.
It roars, and throws off the swordsmen picking at it, rising to its feet again.
"Hey, Solas," Shisui says, and flexes his left hand pointedly, as he asks, "Again?" Solas glances at Shisui's hand, and--
" Fuck! " Shisui exclaims, grabbing Solas, and using the shunshin to move them both out of the way, over near Varric. "Look!" He points to the rift, where more demons--smaller, but still able to stab you in the back, so to speak--are coming through.
Varric says something that sounds like a curse, and so does Solas.
Shisui just drops another fireball right on those smaller demons, and yeah. They're nothing to his goukakkyuu no jutsu .
He’s almost glad that the big demon means nobody can stare at him for long, because they sure want to.
“Hey, Solas.” Shisui wiggles his left hand again, and gets a nod. This time, he calls out something to Cassandra as Shisui disrupts the rift—says something to Varric too—and they’re both ready when the demon drops to its knees: Solas hits it with his hyoton jutsu, and Cassandra pours her chakra into the shield bash.
Shisui is expecting something from Varric, but it’s not an exploding quarrel from his crossbow, perfectly timed with Shisui’s raiton-wire-nails technique. The other archers do the same, and as soon as the lightning dies down Cassandra strikes with a great kiai, and—
That does it, the demon goes the way all the other have, just... bigger. And when no more seem to be coming from the rift, Shisui reaches for it again, and starts pulling it shut.
And pulling.
And pulling.
It pulls back. It eats at his chakra for every ‘stitch’ he puts in the ‘tear’, as if he’s repairing something much, much bigger.
The rift is connected to the Breach far above, he knows, and he knows that that has to be what’s draining his chakra like this, when he barely noticed any drain at all from other rifts.
It’s almost enough to make him stop; Shisui knows he doesn’t have enough chakra to close the Breach. It takes conscious effort to keep going, and even more effort to keep the Breach from draining his chakra dry, but the rift closes, its connection with the thing in Shisui's snapping shut so hard his vision goes grey, and.
He feels cool hands catching him.
Varric's voice-- Cassandra's voice--
A great shockwave rolls through his body seconds before it rolls greenly across the sky, and despite his best efforts, Shisui loses consciousness.