Blackened Blood

It had been one year since my self-exile from Elkwood, and it had been three weeks since I was cursed by Shinobu in my quest for power. I knew who it had been to cause the worldwide destruction, whether or not anyone would believe me was a different case. I knew the Raksaka would be in my future, whether it would be me chasing them, or they chasing me, and I could not endanger my friends. Without telling them, I abandoned my best friends in order to protect them. My childish ways were gone, as was the state of the world that I had come to know and love. With the anarchy that had recently been stricken into the world, so too was realization stricken into me. I knew I would have to get stronger, to matter the cost. Revenge against my father now mattered more to me than anything in the world, and in order to become strong enough to face him, my personal ties to the world had to be broken. Friendships left behind, a village left unprotected, and all of it was necessary for my goals to be accomplished. I never thought a year ago that I would be here today, in a village that barely any men knew existed, letting my anger settle in under the watchful eye of a foreign samurai.

I never thought that today I would begin training on an evil and forbidden concept. I never thought that I would begin the training of my blackened blood.

I began learning how to access the power of the curse mark first without destroying my body in the process. Usually, when I would succumb to its power, it would be out of anger and not out of control. It caused excrutiating pain on normal occasions, so I wanted to work on ridding myself of that. It would take patience.

I began letting the curse mark creep into my system, and the tattoo began slowly spreading across my skin like a disease as it glowed red with chakra. I could be the power slowly enveloping my body, taking control of almost every cell in my muscles, but this time, it didn't hurt so bad. I took a deep breath in order to keep moving forward, because this was not going to be an easy task in any way. I could feel my Sharingan wanting to break out to fight the curse mark back with its power, but I held it at bay at the same time as I held the curse at bay. I began sweating, trying not to let the curse take me over all at once, trying as hard as I could to ease into it. I could feel it latching onto the chakra system around my left arm and neck, and slowly to my left abdominals.

(Just sorta realized that I never finished this training, which isn't entirely bad since I know more about the curse now anyhoo, so I'm going to finish it before I use it in battle again)

"Ah, there you are," came a strange voice from deep in the recesses of my brain. It was a suppressed, quiet voice that I was barely able to make out, but wouldn't you be able to hear any voice that wasn't your own inside your own head? Not knowing what it was, I thought that I might be locked in a genjutsu or something, so I used my Sharingan to check. After a few moments of staring off into space, I saw that it wasn't a genjutsu, and that I, in fact, was going crazy. "Who's there?!" I said out loud, whirling back and forth trying to figure out where the voice had came from. A few more minutes went by before I accepted that I might have hallucinated through pain, and I began to focus on restraining the curse mark before it happened again. "I'M HERE! HA HA!" The voice grew louder inside my head, and as I heard the yelling inside my brain, the tattoo shot across the rest of my body and pain flared every which way. I knelt to the ground, too stunned from the pain to move. Now I knew what Shinobu had meant when he told me I would have to 'restrain more than the pain,' I had to literally hold off another being taking over my brain. Could this voice in my head be the voice of the curse mark?

I then realized that in order to talk to this thing, I would have to talk through my head as well, as it seemed to be where he was talking through. "Who are you? Are you the curse mark?" A few moments went by of silence before I could catch a response from it. "Am I a curse mark? What a stupid question. You really are an idiot, aren't you?! Ha ha ha ha!" He broke off into a cackling laughter. This guy was really a condescending little prick, wasn't he? I began to get annoyed at two things. The first was that there was a foreign voice in my head, which would mean that I would no longer be able to live up to the phrase "being alone to one's thoughts" ever again for the rest of my life, because like the tattoo on my back, he was permanent. And the other reason I was annoyed is because I realized that not only was the marking on my back permanent, but so was this guy's arrogant personality, and I would never be able to rid myself of it lest I choose to die. "Just answer the question," I said intolerantly. "Very well, peon, I'll answer. You asked if I was the curse mark? No, rather the mark is what resembles the curse that is me! Wording me like I'm a skin blemish is hardly accurate, you ignorant fool. Now... Feel pain and bow down to me! Ha ha!" He began cackling into laughter once again as the pain spread to my entire body, and senseless rage began to fill into where my regular, rational thoughts usually rested. I slowly began to realize what he was doing. He was trying to take over my body!

I began to fight back the pain with everything I had. I stood back up onto my feet and clenched my fists, randomly letting off strange-sounding demonic howls into the sky above me. Kneeling was a sign of weakness, and I realized that with how pompous this demon was, I would not be able to show a single sign that I was weakened before his power. I had to force him to know that this power was not his anymore. It was my body, and my soul, and that made this power my power. "My body will never be yours, demon. Now fall back to the depths that you crawled from!" I heard another resoundment of laughter as the pain and stress on my body worsened, and I wanted more than anything to let my knees buckle so I could clench every one of my muscles as I rolled on the ground shouting in pain, but I kept myself standing tall despite the colliding force with my mind. "You think I had to crawl in misery to get here?! No! You beckoned me, and nearly held me by the hand as you guided me here the minute that you accessed my power! MY Power! MINE!" My muscles felt as if they were going to melt off of my flesh, and I let loose a demonic laughter that seemed to echo throughout the entire arena. The demon almost had me. I had one final spurt of strength left in me however, and I was not about to let this thing take me over, or it meant I would be finished. If I couldn't handle putting down this asshole, then how would I be able to protect Takoda? Hebi? The rest of my class? I couldn't. I had to do this for them. "NO! THIS IS NOW MY POWER! ALL MINE! NOW BOW, VILE CREATURE! BOW TO YOUR NEW MASTER!" With a flex of strength and a scream, I overwhelmed the pain in my body, and it slowly but surely began to fade as the mark began to recede back into the tattoo on my left shoulder blade. "This isn't over, Uchiha..." I heard echo through my mind as my thoughts began to take over once more. I had done it! I beat him! But with his warning, I knew that if I ever tried to draw more power out at once than I just did.. things would be much worse.

The pain finally wore off, and I fell to my knees, and then rolled onto my back, staring at the sky. I felt like I had been hit by a bus. "Shinobu's never going to believe this one.." I said out loud as I slipped into a deep nap. I think I had earned a nap, after all. I looked forward to the next time I could use this power for good. It felt well that I would be able to use this power for good at all. It was the power of a demon, and I knew for a fact that using it for anything but absolute evil would piss off the pompous moron lurking in my thoughts, and I wouldn't want it to be any other way.

Final word count at 1,551; Curse mark stage 1 = Mastered