Threat Elimination Protocols: Active

[Okor]

Okor chuckled as the strange mutant ran off, raven-like wings flapping in the unnaturally still air of the Nexus, adding an additional spring to their exuberant steps, each stride taking them further from the ‘living’ hulk of necrotic flesh. He could only guess what The Smiling One’s prerogative was for bringing so many young children to his prison, but at least they were largely protected from the cruelties of the world by the curse of eternity blighting their veins. Bones and rusted steel alike cracked and creaked as he looked over the blank canvas that made up this realm, autosenses registering and logging a strange figure on the very edge of his vision, an obscured entity observing the gathering storm. A mere voyeur, or something more? It was a question that, like all things, would be revealed in due time. Of more immediate interest was the young woman hovering near the edge of the gathering, her clothing ragged and torn, the signs of recent conflict evident.

There was something familiar about her, but he just couldn’t put a finger on…

The Plague Marine saw her companions, the ephemeral iridescence still clinging to their bodies, the near-identical features.

One voice. Two mouths.

Ururu. The child from the road to Minas Trith. Fresh from the trials of that damned Graveyard, it would seem. The rotting revenant began to move forward, corroded warplate aiding mummified muscles in his journey across nothingness. His thundering footsteps tore the youth’s attention away from their current engagements, their recent creations orbiting their progenitor. He stopped several strides short of her, his massive frame looming over the trio, worms and maggots wriggling beneath desiccated hide as a cyclopean eye the size of a fist bore down on them. With a voice like granite slabs slamming shut on effluence-filled sarcophagi, the Ancient Warrior spoke with the weight of aeons behind his words.

”Ururu. It has been… much time, since we spoke.” He ground out, his speech distorted by the twisted vox of his helmet.

“Y-you can speak?” Questioned the shinobi, only her impressive discipline and training stopping her from taking a step back from the ambulant abomination. “I thought that you…. Nevermind. What’s this insanity all about?” They spoke, waving a pale arm towards the assembled killers.

”We hunt an Oathbreaker. Uchiha. Do you... Know him?” Coughed the Plague Marine, his pestilences briefly wracking his ravaged corpse with spasmodic respiratory seizures.

What little colour present in her skin drained from her face on mention of the name, petite fingers digging into her palms, her voice raised in a spark of momentary anger and confusion. “Sasuke? But he’s a hero-”

A claw, dripping with corruption, raised itself to stop her protest, skeletal digits clad in naught but the thinnest tainted vellum ceasing her proclamation.

”Whatever crawls out of that Graveyard is no… Hero.” The Champion spat, his head shaking at the sheer absurdity of the idea.

“He’s the greatest legend of my world, there’s too much to learn from him for you to just-”

”If you seek to learn from a coward and a betrayer, then you slander yourself. I have witnessed you forge a great… beast, from naught but stone and your will. You can create wonders. All this… failure can teach you, if how to consign yourself to ignominy. Whatever made him great, whatever made him worth listening to, was left behind when Omni took him. Every mortal failing, every hint of cowardice your legend once possessed, was severed from your hero, and brought here. This is… not Uchiha. This is the slag of his soul, the darkness and the treachery that he did not have. It is a wraith, a farcical parody of a legend blighting his name with every breath he takes, tainting the truth.”

He took a shuddering breath, some not-yet dead part of his brain remembering the need for oxygen as four tumorous lungs struggled to claim it from the poisoned air inside his helmet.

Olive hands placed themselves on cocked hips concealed by the child’s leather cloak, a near-mocking smile painting itself across their scarred face. “Talking from your own experience, are we?”

The gangrenous giant leaned in closer, hissing through cracked, blackened monoliths. ”Have you not… felt it? Not all of us makes the journey to this prison. Perhaps it is merely a weapon, or some… esoteric technique. But it never is. I could fight a Harlequin to a standstill, but now-”

“Harlequin? Like a clown? That doesn’t sound particularly threatening.”

”When they are as old as I, with the wargear of an Empire older than… the stars, capable of turning a man into a husk filled with red slurry, they become noticeably more… dangerous. I watched them dance across the field of battle, I met them blow for blow, psychic might pitted against my blade. And yet, in this accursed realm, I struggle to parry even a young child. I have seen beings incapable of feeling fear, flee from mere mortals. The Smiling One strips us of our memories, of what we once were.”

“That is what he has done to your... Hero. They have been stripped of their nobility, filled with treachery, and tossed into this prison to vex us. With every breath they take, they… profane the legacy he had yet to leave. They sully his deeds, corrupt every act they would ever do.”

“And they are the only Uchiha this world will ever know. We will never know the lives he saved, the apocalypses averted. While this pretender traipses across The Omniverse, he scrawls his… sacrilege across another page of history, ensuring that your realm is ruined in our eyes. His every step brings shame, his every word is tainted with his… lies. The wraith that dons his face is nothing more than a mistake.”

The leprous legionnaire loomed over the small child, pestilence seeping from every pore as he spoke.

”Pick up your blade, Ururu. Make the world as it should be. Make it a world where… Heroes don’t run. A world where warriors have the courage to face death.

Make it a world worth living in.” Finished the marine, an infected oculus wearied by ceaseless centuries of war looking into Ururu, awaiting the Shinobi’s choice.