WARNING THIS CHAPTER DOES GET GRAPHIC, THIS WILL ALSO BE THE CASE FOR MANY FUTURE CHAPTERS, SO IF YOU DON'T LIKE GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS THAN I RECOMMEND YOU STOP READING!
Chapter 6
Meeting
Inside the second shelter
As the family walked through the small, cramped room, they witnessed how badly the attack of the Nine-Tails was on others. Upon witnessing this, Blade realized that real people are getting hurt, and he finally sussed out that he needs to stop looking at this new life as a game or an anime and start seeing this as real life.
Blade feels something small, smooth, and warm touch his hand. He looked at the source of this abnormality, which turned out to be Orphita.
"Blade, do you have a boo-boo?"
Shocked by the sudden question, it took Blade a moment to regain his ability to respond.
"N-no, why would you ask?"
"You are crying."
The fair-skinned boy quickly felt his face, which had been soaked in his tears. The boy, whose hair is now just starting to sprout, had no idea why he would be crying.
Pulling his hand back, he looked at it for a second, and looked back at Orphita while smiling.
"Oh, guess I am. It's nothing, perhaps I've been holding my feelings back too long. Haha."
Blade let out a fake chuckle; thankfully, the young mocha-haired girl did not catch it. Even so, Kaizer and Ranni caught it and made a note to interrogate Blade later so that they can ensure their only child is okay and not traumatized from what happened that day.
He felt an empty void when looking at the people whose lives had been ruined because of Nine-Tails. The feeling that the empty void represented is one that Blade had long forgotten.
The quadrad spotted a vacant spot in a somber corner that was covered in webs of spiders long dead. Kaizer used weak and light water and fire jutsus to clear up the somber corner that they chose to sit down at.
Orphita was the first to sit down, bringing along Blade in the process; Kaizer and Ranni sat down on each side of the children.
Where they were sitting was a stone bench that was created when this shelter was first built. It was cold, but better than the alternative of being on the floor or standing for hours. Despite the coldness of the bench, Orphita was overly eager to sit down.
"She must have gotten tired from standing and walking so long." Thought Blade while he sat by Orphita.
"Father, how long do you think we will need to stay here?" Blade asked.
"Let's expect to wait until tomorrow night. Why do you ask, Blade?"
"I was just curious, nothing more, nothing less. Thank you. Orphita, you must be tired. Why don't you try to sleep? You've been through a lot; it would do you some good to rest."
"B-but what if I wake up, and you are gone?" Orphita asked while tearing up.
The family of three all hugged and reassured her.
"Don't worry, Orphita, we will not leave you, even if we leave, we will bring you along, I promise," Ranni said in a smooth, calming melody.
"O-okay, I will try," Orphita acquiesced to going to sleep.
The small, mocha-haired girl spread out on the bench, using Kaizer's Jōnin vest as a pillow and Ranni's heather colored robe as a blanket.
"Okay, Blade, we need to talk about your intelligence and your ability to use advanced sealing jutsu. Tell us why and how, we will accept you no matter what the circumstances are, so please tell us." Kaizer stared straight into Blade's ashy-grey eyes, which looked like a tunnel with a faint light.
"O-okay, I will tell you. I am-" Blade is about to speak, but what he saw was slowly disappearing until it was gone.
What lay in front of Blade was not his mother and father, but a desolate space that was pitch black. This space had nothing in it but a giant red moon, but the moon was ephemeral. The giant blood-red moon looked as far away as usual, but Blade was able to see the details of it easily with his bare eye.
The moon soon turned into a young-looking person who was wearing a pair of shorts that seemed a little too short and a jacket with blood moons all over it. They began to float down, and when they were eye-level with Blade, they finally looked up, revealing their crimson-scarlet red eyes with a full moon as the iris.
"Hello, young Blade, I am Tharlun."
Tharlun landed softly in front of Blade, who had a perplexed look on his face.
"W-where am I!? Who are you!?"
Tharlun's mien was that of a child's; their face was soft and round, and they were also bubbly, but Blade felt something off.
"We are in your mind scape, which is now my home, since I am stuck in here until you have enough power to part with me and control your powers by yourself. Also, I already said who I am! I am Tharlun!"
"O-oh, how did I end up here? Were you the cause, Miss Tharlun?"
Being called 'Miss' by the young Blade made his body involuntarily jump back hundreds of feet, surprising the young boy, who looked bewildered. When Blade focused on the Moon-person's face, why did Tharlun look like 'she' was about to spit out blood?
"Why does Blade think I am a girl!? I am clearly a very, very masculine man!" These were the thoughts of Tharlun as he flew back in the air. "I hate being called a girl. I've been called one all my life, even when I was at the top, people still looked down on me because of the way I dress and my face."
"Tharlun, d-did I say something wro-" Before Blade could finish his question, Tharlun manifested right in front of him.
"I am a man! A fucking MAN! YOU GET IT, LITTLE ONE!?"
Blade was taken aback for a second as Tharlun, who was just five feet and seven inches, had shrunk down to be just barely taller than one-year-old Blade and started violently shaking him.
Blade finally was able to let out a shaky, "Okay, sir," before Tharlun stopped shaking him and grew back to his previous height.
"To answer your previous questions, you ended up here because I pulled you up here, tehe. We need to talk, you can not tell your "parents" that you are a transmigrator."
Blade finally dropped his act of being a child who was smart, and went back to his personality from back on Earth.
"How do you know? What are you? And why shouldn't I tell them the truth?"
"I know this because, well, I live in your mind, dummy," Tharlun said as he bent over and flicked Blade's forehead. "I thought you were smarter than this. Did you only put up a front of being smart on Earth, and you just made yourself so delusional that you actually believe it?"
Blade was shocked, not at Tharlun being correct, actually, it was the opposite; he was more shocked that Tharlun would think that. Blade never thought of putting on a mask, well before he was transmigrated, at least after that is a different story.
"Hahahahahaha, you really don't know anything. I would never put on a mask in my old world. There was no point to it; I was already scary looking."
Tharlun thought for a second, "Can I not actually see all his memoys? No, that's not possible. I should be able to see everything his brain has experienced. Did he maybe lose his memories?"
"Tharlun, you have yet to answer all my questions. What are you, and why shouldn't I tell them the truth?!"
Tharulun let out a sigh of impatience and annoyance, "I do not know what I am, nor do I remember anything past when I awoke in your mind realm, a year ago. The reason why you shouldn't tell them is that they won't believe you; they will believe that you are crazy and have an illness, leading to them locking you up and torturing you."
As Tharlun said this, the environment around them changed to Blade's office from back on his world, Earth, when his name used to be Arc Umi. It was a nice office, it was carpeted and had a chair that had wheels and could spin, the desk was mahogany, and Arc had pictures of various landmarks; had he been to those landmarks, no one knew.
Blade was shocked at the change, but he quickly adapted, sitting down on the soft chair that appeared under him to sit on. Once he had heard Tharlun's explanation, he started to understand, but he still thought telling them had a chance at working.
"You don't know that for sure, they could think that I have something wrong with me, they won't do anything."
"Have you not noticed? There are no people in this village who have any mental or physical illnesses, not given by time as a shinobi."
Once Blade started thinking about it, the more that Tharlun made sense. Blade has never heard of anyone with a mental or physical illness that did not come from being a shinobi or develop while older. He finally realized that he had never heard a mention of anyone born with a mental or physical illness.
"While you do have a point, I do not know of people born with disabilities, that does not mean they are thrown away, I just probably haven't seen enough of the village to see people disabled since birth."
Tharlun, realizing that it's best not to push further, reluctantly let the topic go, saying,
"Fine, fine, it's up to you whether you want to believe me or not. I do want you to err on the side of caution, even if you don't believe me."
While he was talking, Tharlun raised his left hand up, resting the elbow on the mahogany desk, while subsequently resting his left palm on his tilted face. His squished cheek made Blade think of a baby's cheek; something else Blade had noticed was that Tharlun had a small smirk on his face.
Blade stood up while the chair underneath him disappeared as quickly as it had first appeared.
"May I please return to the real world so that I may tell my parents?"
Sighing, Tharlun stands up not long after Blade, and he returns the mind realm to normal.
"Yes, you may, but do keep my words in mind for when you tell them."
Tharlun begins to weave hand signs that are infused with yinyang chakra, at a speed that the young-bodied Blade couldn't keep up with. Once he finished his hand signs, he calmly and silkily spoke the words, "Furtive Psyche Return."
Once the sound of those words finished, Blade began to feel his blood boil all the way from his feet, to his thighs, to his heart, and neck, and finally his boiling blood reached his brain. His feet, thighs, heart, neck, and brain began to swell. Once the boiling reached the top, it had nowhere to go, so his skin began to bubble, chunks falling off one at a time, and blood started gushing out of him. After what felt like a minute, Blade's body finally exploded, covering everything in his sticky crimson red blood. Beyond the blood were Blade's bones, shattered and fragmented all over; even though they were originally white, they are now a mix of red and white. Blade's heart and other organs were still beating and functioning.
Tharlun started to float over the splattered Blade; his blood resembled that of a full moon, with his bones the stars. It reminded Tharlun of the night sky he remembers from many years ago. Tharlun then saw Blade's organs spewed about, somehow all of them were intact, and still trying to function. Even Tharlun had no idea how Blade's organs could still be functional, well, that is a lie; he does know why Blade's heart is intact and functional despite swelling and exploding.
Tharlun calmly and smoothly said, with a deeper, more mature voice, "He has a strong heart; this will be good."
Blade's heart was beating between forty-nine bpm and fifty-one bpm. His heart kept beating steadily, no matter what happened to them; his heart and other organs would never be harmed, nor would they stop.
When he exploded, he felt no pain; he felt nothing. But before he could think of what actually happened and process that he didn't feel pain, he was brought back to reality only three seconds after his father asked him the question, "What is he?"
Blade was not fully prepared for his answer, yet he knew that he must answer quickly.