The rain hammered against the rooftops of the Kuoh suburbs with sharp, freezing strikes.
Jin walked down the alleyway leading toward his apartment. He was dragging his left leg. It no longer responded to him. The nerves were dead, scorched wires inside a failing vessel. His right hand was pressed against a jagged tear in his side. Blood seeped between his fingers, mixing with the rainwater and turning into pale, diluted ribbons on the fabric of his ruined coat.
He did not remember being hit.
He searched his mind. He found the store. He found Sona's cold eyes. He found Xenovia under the streetlight.
Then. A void.
A white, sprawling gap like a hole in a film strip. There had been the sound of screaming. The sound of metal parting flesh. But the faces were erased.
System Warning: Neural integrity 79 percent.Purge: Childhood memories (Year Five).Reason: Escape Protocol: Silent Step initialized.
Jin stopped and leaned his back against a cold brick wall. He closed his eyes. He tried to see his mother's face as she smiled at him on his fifth birthday.
Nothing. Just white static. A high-pitched, electronic roar screaming in his ears.
"We paid too much today." Jin whispered.
His voice was a rasp. A dry rattle in a parched throat.
He didn't know why he was being hunted, but he could feel them. On the rooftops. Behind the dark glass of the windows. There was a heavy scent of incense cutting through the rain. A holy, clinical smell. The Church didn't send renegades this time. They sent the Purifiers.
Suddenly, the air turned electric.
A bolt of light struck the wall above his head. Bricks shattered into white dust next to his ear.
Jin didn't turn around. He didn't have to.
Threat detected: Purifier Class.Quantity: 4.Status: Encirclement.Required Toll: Consciousness (Two hours).
"No." Jin said. He gripped the black stone in his pocket. "Not yet."
But the System did not wait for his answer.
The pain exploded in his left eye. A bolt of ice was driven through the optic nerve and into the center of his brain. Jin fell to his knees in the mud. He let out a muffled scream, biting his tongue until he tasted the heavy salt of rust.
The Sharingan flared.
It wasn't a transition. It was an explosion of black energy that didn't belong to this world. The three black commas spun within the crimson pool with a violent, chaotic speed until the borders between them vanished.
In that moment, the rain stopped falling.
Jin saw the four Purifiers. They wore heavy white armor. They held silver swords coated in a bright, azure light. They were moving slow. Impossibly slow. He could see the twitching of their eyelids. He could hear the frantic drumming of their hearts.
He saw the future before it happened by a fraction of a second.
His body moved like a piece of the dark.
He didn't use a hand or a foot. He used the warped energy produced by the System. A white, blood-stained light erupted from his right hand.
He lunged.
The first Purifier didn't even have time to raise his shield. Jin's fingers, stiff and cold, drove into the gap of the helmet. He felt the wet crunch of bone. He felt the heat of the light as the man's soul was extinguished.
Jin didn't stop. He couldn't stop. He was a passenger in a dying machine.
He turned. He ducked under a silver blade that was moving through the air like thick syrup. He drove his elbow into the second Purifier's chest. The armor cracked. The man was thrown backward, his ribs shattering under the impossible pressure of the Void.
The other two stopped. They saw their comrades fall in seconds. They saw the boy with the bleeding red eye.
"Cursed..." One of them gasped. He raised a silver cross. "The Uchiha... the line of the damned..."
Jin didn't hear them. He only heard the static.
He raised his left hand.
The air in the alleyway began to twist. It warped around his fingers like a whirlpool.
Protocol: Great Fire.Cost: Immediate.
Jin's chest locked. He felt his lungs shrivel. Every ounce of oxygen in his blood was pulled toward his throat.
He didn't breathe fire. He breathed death.
A sphere of black-violet flame erupted from his lips. It didn't burn. It erased. It consumed the rain. It consumed the air. It hit the two Purifiers and turned their white armor into gray ash before they could scream.
The alley was silent.
Jin stood in the center of the scorched stone. The rain began to fall again, hitting the hot pavement and turning into thick clouds of steam.
He looked at his hands. They were covered in white ash.
What happened.
The static rushed in.
Jin blinked.
He was standing in the alleyway. The wall was scorched. There were four piles of gray dust on the ground.
He looked at the dust.
He didn't remember the fire. He didn't remember the fight.
"Kurosawa?"
The voice was soft. Trembling.
Jin turned his head.
Asia Argento was standing at the entrance of the alley. She was holding her yellow umbrella. Her face was white. She looked at the dust. She looked at the blood on his vest.
"Jin-san... what did you do?" She whispered.
Jin looked at her.
He saw her green eyes. He saw the yellow ribbon.
He felt a sudden, violent surge of hunger.
Prey located.Bio-matter required.Take it.
Jin took a step toward her. His left eye was spinning.
"Asia..." Jin said.
"You're hurt." She said. She didn't run. She walked toward him, her hands reaching out. "You're bleeding again. Let me help. Please."
She reached out and touched his hand.
The golden light flared.
The parasite in Jin's head roared. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated greed.
Jin grabbed her wrist. His grip was too tight. He felt the small bones shift under his fingers.
Asia let out a small cry of pain.
Jin leaned closer to her neck. He could smell the life in her. He could feel the neural restoration waiting for him. One bite. One drain. And the static would go away. He would remember his mother's face. He would be human again.
He opened his mouth.
His teeth brushed the skin of her throat.
What is my mother's name.
He searched one last time.
The image of a woman appeared. She was holding an apple. She was laughing.
Don't. She whispered.
Jin froze.
He shoved Asia away with a violent force. She fell back, hitting the brick wall. Her umbrella clattered onto the wet ground.
"Run." Jin gasped.
His body was shaking. His left eye was bleeding so heavily he could no longer see out of it.
"Jin-san?"
"RUN!" He roared.
Asia scrambled to her feet. She looked at him with a mixture of terror and heartbreak. She picked up her umbrella and ran out of the alley, her footsteps splashing in the puddles.
Jin collapsed.
He hit the mud. He pressed his face into the cold dirt.
Neural integrity: 72 percent.Warning: System reboot required.Cost: The girl's name.
Jin reached for the name.
Asia.
He saw the golden light. He saw the yellow ribbon.
Then, the white static hit.
Who was she.
He searched.
A girl with a ribbon.
What was her name.
Nothing.
The name was gone. The memory of her touch was gone.
Jin lay in the alleyway, surrounded by the ash of four men he didn't remember killing.
He reached into his pocket. He pulled out the black stone.
He held it against his forehead.
He was a ghost.
He was a vessel.
He was an Uchiha.
And he was hungry.
A shadow fell over him.
He didn't look up. He didn't have the strength.
"You're a mess, Jin Kurosawa."
Akeno Himejima stood over him. She held a black umbrella. She wasn't smiling. Her violet eyes were narrow, focused on the piles of ash.
"The Church is going to burn this city down to find you." She said. "Rias wants to keep you. Sona wants to cage you. But I think you're already dead."
Jin didn't answer.
He closed his eyes.
He tried to remember why he was crying.
He couldn't find a reason.
The rain kept falling.