Expiration - Crossing of the eighth gate, Catastrophic Breakthrough.  With the battle in full swing, with friends and allies at each other's throat, and fighting for the deepest root of despair.  Truly, if victory was to come of this, it would have no part of us, with the hell that stained these hands.

Folding my arms over my chest, I focused, harnessed and embraced the spirit of the familiar.  A forbidden pressure that promised to smite that which bore the conflict.  With the tragedy threatening to tear my consciousness asunder, My arms were split.  A wave of force consumed me, and devoured all that it touched.  It clawed at the mountains, churned earth, and shattered the reef in all directions.

Those ships that lingered on the ocean previewed a dome where their armies were brought to rest.  There were no survivors, as what was alive was absorbed by the isle.  Dead or alive, the hand of death sealed them all.

Thunder cracked.  My chest seized.  A silent scream, as my lungs clung to scraps of air.  The pouring rain broadcast it’s sympathies, drowning out my sputtering.  My surroundings lurched.  The gentle nudge and creak at the edge of my senses.  Dimly lit, in the corner of my mind.  A dreary humble town, on the verge of collapse.  At an ungodly hour, folks- my folks- began the journey early.

I stumbled back as wave after wave humbled me.  Was it just a dream?  Was it my dream?  A life lived in shadow, stark memories that felt alien even as every dip of the cart spooked me like an elk.  I had to know.  Was there anything left behind?  Something I could hold on to, to draw strength from?

A rift of the night air was just beyond my hand, pulled aside even as I worked my way through the dark.  My breath hitched as a pair of eyes gazed back to me.  My eyes dampened, and a cold sweat exploded across my awareness.

“Are you alright sweetie?”

In the hour before the light of dawn emerged, the cart came to a stop.  A timber wall stood out from the treeline, and prying eyes circled the wagon.  I worried about a scrap of leather against my chest.  Hyper aware of the space around me.  What one person was capable of, driven to the height of my imaginations.

Some part of me willed to defend against it, as though I had a chance, nay a responsibility to do so.  My hands felt small and frail, yet found new ways to dominate the coarse sheet.  I was grateful to find those fears were never realised.  The cart resumed it’s wobble.  Not for long, but by the time I was approached, I’d felt my sense break apart, and the night beckoning.

Weeks passed, and I found myself taking shifts.  It might have been a novel feeling, to attend classes tailored to a crowd.  It didn’t bother me though, and I plowed through whatever came up to come to terms with where I was.

The somber village.   Real.  The face that came with it.  Also real.  The clown colored soap box, with the craning old geezer.  I was beginning to question the line between ridiculous and real with that one, but that was how this place handled immigrants.

Relatively speaking, the place felt gigantic, and yet it was all contained within that wall.  Since that night, I had never seen it from the outside.  Some said that only a fool went out to the woods, where monsters and bandits lurked, and warriors went out to subdue them.

It’s these same people who gossip, that I feel cause way more trouble than it’s hyped up to be.  After all, I’d spent a good deal of my life out there.  I’d rather work on the here and now, should anyone come visit me in the present.

Day to day life has been about going through the motions, getting used to what I have going for me, and putting it to good use whenever I find the opportunity.  I hadn’t made a lot of friends, not without going out of my way.  It was also still early though, and I think I might find a way to break the ice before long.

On the way home, a flicker of light caught my eye.  For a moment, I thought it might have been a stray reflection, but then the strobe cast across the road again.  It was coming from my apartment.

Two steps fell languidly, spurred on by the strobing light, I quickly made my way to the apartment front, and tugged away at the door.  The flash of light dimmed a moment later, and I caught the form of my father shift in the other room.

Between caution and the voice of someone else, I froze in my tracks, “Still not jogging the old memory, eh?”

A weight shifted.  My ears caught a presence behind, but my whole side went up in an armlock.  I howled in protest, and a moment later, my dad spoke my name.  The guy who had me dragged me into the other room, and I met my fathers eyes.  His desk had been trashed, and a few boxes of old junk had been opened and strewn about.

My survey was cut short, as my captor pressed my head against the table.

“We’re kinda pressed for time now, so without further ado-” The second burglar raised his hand, and a stark blue light bathed the room, “The prototype.”

“Please, you can threaten me, but you won’t find anything like that here.  I barely got a look at the thing myself.  I was just a brick layer!”

A cold ridge pressed against my neck, and all of a sudden my instincts clawed their way toward my brow.  These guys would kill me to get what they wanted.

“I will- don’t!  Look.  I- I can draw you a print.  Maybe scrape a piece of the design, if you don’t hurt him.”

The guy behind me spoke, “Count on it kid.” A blunt strike hit my neck, and I blacked out.

My arm twitched, and I found the prying grip replaced with cord.  Two men now loomed over my father.  One lean, and the other heavy set.  The former seemed intent on studying what my father wrote, while the other listened silently.  He glanced over in my direction briefly, and cocked an eyebrow.  Shifting his weight to regard the rest of the room.

My temper flared.  The set of my shoulders widened and seized in quick succession.  A croak as the thin frame of the chair cracked  I pulled my arms loose from the bind and felt my wrists pop and I rushed forward.

The big guy reacted, although he hadn’t expected to see my hands free.  The smaller man cocked his hand, and a strand of lighting arced towards me.

With one arm, I reached out.  A scar of midnight formed and the voice of the chair echoed throughout the kitchen.

Cabinets and fixtures split apart as the walls deformed.  A wave of pressure fractured the lighting bolt, and continued to plow into the grown men.  Big guy seemed to stumble, while the little one flicked back hard enough to slam his head in the door frame.

In a matter of moments, I was the only one left standing.  Three involuntary steps later, my legs gave out.  My heartbeat pounded against my ears, and applied pressure through my torso.  I was afraid for a moment that I might have been stabbed.

Then the big guy moved.  I heard him brush through the debris, and whine in protest.  What was it going to take.  A dull thump, and the brushing stopped.  A heavy crash took its place.

My father collapsed against the desk, holding a hand to his hip, and struggling to stand.  A mallet dropped to the floor as he did, “You should have stayed put.  How did… what did you-” The floor creaked beside me.  I flinched, but the hands that gripped me were not unkind, “I’m so sorry.  This mess, it followed me here?”

He was messed up.  Enough for both of us.  With a bittersweet relief, I passed out.

Wind release: Great Explosion.  Charged over a period of time, a pool of energy is folded in on itself.  The pressure spikes and becomes unstable, devastating the immediate surroundings, and burning through the elements evoked.  Sacrificial technique - Destroys medium.

Water release: Depth projection.  Warps a constrained space, bending structures and shifting weight within.  Strains chakra allocation, preventing genjutsu or ninjutsu from working effectively.