A/N: The following chapter dives deep into the darkest corners of Noa's past. It contains depictions of extreme violence and intense psychological distress that will be very disturbing to most readers. If you prefer to avoid this content, please skip to the next chapter. The story will remain perfectly clear without it. Your mental well-being should always be the priority.
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The guard hit the floor, his body twitching as dark blood rapidly soaked the office's imported rug. The blonde target stared at the corpse in absolute horror. The color drained from his immaculately groomed face, his heart plummeting as he realized exactly what was about to happen. He began to shiver uncontrollably, his designer glasses tumbling to the ground as he desperately thrashed against my grip.
I didn't give him the chance. I piston-whipped him with the heavy nail gun, feeling the satisfying crunch of his nose breaking under the metal. Planting my boots, I leveraged my weight and drove every ounce of my muscular build into a brutal throw. He launched backward, his spine slamming against the edge of his massive desk with a loud crack.
He dropped to the floor, eyes bulging as he suffocated on sheer agony, entirely unable to breathe or make a sound. The clock was ticking. Working swiftly, I hauled the two dead guards inside and pulled the heavy office door shut.
I scanned the room. As expected, paranoid and corrupt men like him did not keep security cameras in their private sanctuaries. "I am so unlucky," I muttered. "I have to do this fast, so I won't get to enjoy it nearly as much as I did with your two friends."
The blonde man finally gasped, managing to draw a ragged breath through the paralyzing pain of his ruined back. His gaze welled with terrified tears. "Please... I... I don't want to die," he wheezed, his voice trembling. "I will give you anything."
I chuckled, stepping further into the office. "I do not care for anything you have. Just know that these are the final moments of your life. You are going to leave this world in excruciating torment, and you will go straight to hell for more of it."
The man's eyes went wide, and a dark, wet stain quickly spread across the front of his expensive trousers as he weakly tried to push himself backward. Meanwhile, my attention landed on something far more interesting resting on a display mount, a signed titanium baseball bat. A wide, hollow grin stretched across my face. I pulled it from its base, giving the weapon a heavy test swing to feel its balance.
I turned back to the target. He was weeping hysterically, his begging dissolving into unintelligible, wet sobs as I slowly approached. My muscles ached from the predatory grin locked onto my face, a reflex I could not suppress. As the dark rage boiling inside me fully surfaced, I felt my true, monstrous self finally stepping into the light. I raised the heavy titanium bat, but then I froze, doing my best to hold the dark urge back for just a moment.
"I got carried away the last two times and did not care for much besides hearing them scream," I said, my tone eerily calm. "But if you tell me one thing, I promise to make this slightly faster than I intended." My prey shook fiercely, lying completely helpless in his own blood and urine. "Why did you have to go that far with my sister? What you did to her... it was beyond cruel."
The man looked frantically around the space, desperate for any sliver of hope. His gaze darted toward the desk near him as he tried to distract me with the details.
"We... we didn't plan to," he choked out, each word fractured by a gasp of pain. "She was just... a nameless high-end escort. She refused... to do what we wanted. Someone hit her... hit her too hard. Her head snapped... teeth shattered. She was still alive, but we knew... we knew that we could not let her go... she was going to die right there..."
He coughed, spitting a glob of blood.
"One person... did what he always wanted to try, and we just... got swept up in the bloodlust. We knew with our money... we could get away with it. Just hire a cleanup crew... but she got found."
The void in my eyes became so intense that they must have looked like two hollow, black pits. The blonde man thought his cruel confession had worked. As my gaze wandered, my thoughts consumed by a chaotic storm of rage and guilt tearing into me, he believed I was finally distracted, which had been his goal all along. With a sudden burst of panicked adrenaline, he stretched his hand toward the desk, lunging for a gun taped underneath.
I didn't even blink. I swung the titanium bat with devastating, bone-crushing force. It connected with a sickening CRACK, snapping his forearm completely in half. He shrieked in agonizing pain, writhing helplessly on the rug as the lower half of his arm dangled loosely by skin and muscle.
"You won't get away with this!" he screamed, his voice a pathetic mix of unadulterated fear, distress, and impotent anger. "This won't bring her back. You will die and join me in hell for what you did! You are just like us."
For some reason, that made me chuckle. Short, intermittent laughs bubbled up from my throat as I brought the heavy bat down hard across his ribs. The titanium shattered bone on impact. He shrieked, the left side of his chest visibly caving inward under the force of the blow. With every panicked, ragged gasp he took, I could hear the broken bones grinding together beneath his skin. He started choking, and with a violent cough, a fine pink mist of blood sprayed from his lips as he struggled to pull in air. A jagged, blood-soaked point of a snapped rib tore straight through his expensive shirt, protruding from the now blood-stained fabric.
For some reason, my chuckles quickened. Rage mixed with hysteria, turning his words into the funniest thing I had ever heard as I swung the bat low. The titanium met his left knee first, shattering the bone on impact. I immediately brought it down on the right, crushing the joint until it visibly caved into a deformed, bloody ruin. He tried to scream, but his mangled ribs stole his voice, reducing the sound to a choked, gurgling sob and wet, ragged gasps. His legs jerked uncontrollably. I could hear the destroyed bone grinding against itself as blood poured freely from the torn skin.
My laughter turned into sobbing, my emotions completely uncontrollable. The boiling rage made everything feel unreal. Nothing made sense anymore as I brought the bat down on his head. It slammed into the side of his skull, shattering bone and sending a burst of blood spraying from his ear. Laughter and weeping twisted together into a manic sound as my mind fractured. The next swing caved in his forehead, splitting the skin wide open.
I brought the metal down again and again, obliterating the top of his head. The skull visibly deformed, caving inward as bone shards and gore erupted outward with every relentless hit. My hysterical wailing almost drowned out the loud, blaring fire alarm overhead. My entire coat was drenched in crimson, making me look like a demon dragged straight from hell, laughing and crying all at once.
Eventually, my arms grew heavy and tired. I slowly raised the bat one last time, sticky threads of thick blood stretching between the ruined corpse and the titanium barrel. The body twitched violently for a few seconds before falling completely still in a rapidly spreading pool of dark blood.
My eyes snapped open, and I shot upward, gasping desperately for air. Frantic, I wildly scanned the darkness. Shisui instantly abandoned the oars, flickering to my side in the blink of an eye.
The horrifying echo of my own manic, weeping laughter still rang loudly in my ears, igniting that dreadful shadow in my heart. I could feel it trying to claw its way back up my throat. I scratched fiercely at my ears, my fingernails drawing blood as I desperately tried to dig the phantom noise out of my skull.
My heart hammered against my ribs. Catching a glimpse into my past, into who I once was, the damage I had inflicted on my own psyche, and the countless lives I had ripped away, made that nightmare feel like a sledgehammer. It was battering at the fragile new life I had built here, trying to shatter the foundation of who I was desperately trying to become.
My skin grew feverishly hot, and I broke out in a cold sweat as my heart raced completely out of control. The world blurred and trembled violently around me. My entire body shook right along with it, completely trapped in that suffocating space between the nightmare and reality, the phantom smell of blood still thick in my lungs. But cutting through the blinding, disjointed panic, a clear voice reached me. Two strong hands clamped firmly onto the sides of my head, acting as a physical anchor dragging me back to the present. My unfocused eyes, shaking and darting wildly around the darkness, finally locked onto Shisui's face. His expression was etched with deep concern.
"I am here for you," he said, speaking slowly and deliberately to pierce through the ringing in my ears. "We are out of danger. Take a deep breath and focus on my voice."
Inch by inch, the severe shaking weakened. My vision stabilized. I forced myself to use my meditation techniques, dragging measured breaths into my burning lungs. Eventually, the sweating stopped. The raw edge of panic dulled into a lingering exhaustion. I was still wired, surveying the boat, but I was back in the real world.
The Land of Fire was visible on the horizon, but Shisui had abandoned the oars entirely to stay anchored next to me.
"It is okay to feel that way, you know," he said softly.
I looked at him, my mind still half-absent. I strained to focus on his words, but they felt muted, like I was underwater, as I fought to anchor myself back in reality.
"I would actually have been far more worried if you had no reaction to killing so many people all at once," Shisui continued, his tone reassuring. "You saved my life yet again, Noa. And your own. There is absolutely nothing wrong with what you had to do back there."
He leaned back slightly, giving me space but keeping his attention on me. "You know... Itachi and Kakashi had no reaction to their first kills. None. It usually indicates that something is, or was, fundamentally broken inside of them. But your reaction? It is the natural one in my opinion." Shisui offered a small, conspiratorial smile, lowering his voice to a hushed whisper. "Just do not tell them I said that."
I wanted to give him a genuine chuckle to ease his worry, or to show my appreciation for him being such an amazing sensei and a true friend, but I could not muster the energy. The shadow of that dream, that memory, was still clinging to my throat. I could not tell him the truth. So, I just sat quietly, focusing entirely on the rhythm of my breathing. Shisui did not press me for a response. He simply remained there, offering his silent, steadfast support as the gentle waves rocked our boat.