towerofanimus | 1st String | Exploring the Tower

Entry tags:

1st String | Exploring the Tower

Characters: Kankuro and YOU!
Setting: Room 3-06, various other points of interest.
Format: Starting out with prose, but I'll follow your lead if you'd rather action tags.
Summary: A really grumpy puppeteer wakes up and explores.
Warnings: Pottymouth? Will update as appropriate.

[Room 3-06]

Well, that was one of the more unpleasant awakenings Kankuro had experienced in his life -- and he'd had more than his fair share! Sleep paralysis, his mind informed him, even as he looked about the room to get his bearings. Not something he'd ever felt before. If he was lucky, he never would again.

But that paled in importance next to the location. This was not where he'd left the war! Nor was it his cramped but familiar room in the Facility...

So it wasn't home, wasn't the Facility -- this was somewhere else altogether, some new fresh hell he would have to learn and endure. And one where it looked like he wouldn't even have the same level of privacy, if the other beds in the room were any indication. He wouldn't have that refuge of locking himself away from everyone.

He forced himself to calm, to push aside the thought of roommates as a minor irritation, inspecting the room around him more thoroughly. The trunks at the foot of the bed -- he would explore his in a moment. These letters, meanwhile...

He picked them up and started to read, and only a minute or so later had his conclusion.

"Bullshit."

[Cafeteria]

Dressed and painted up, it was time to head out. The first stop? Food.

So this was it for his first meal, huh? Kankuro stared at the bowl of oatmeal, making a decidedly unimpressed face at it. It didn't seem all that impressed by him, either. Truth be told, he was reassured, in a vague sort of sideways way, at how unappetizing it looked. He'd grown up with desert legends full of the dangers of enchanted food offered in unnatural realms, food that transformed you or bound you away from your people and your home, but those legends always went out of their way to cast the food as seductively appetizing. The whole point was you wanted to eat it, enough that you didn't think about the dangers or the consequences. This? Well, if it was meant to be temptation, it was doing a piss-poor job of it, in his estimation. He wouldn't feed this crap to a jackal.

Though maybe this place just believed in the stick, rather than the carrot. Forcing you to starve to death or vomit up anything else you ate until you dug into the oatmeal... well, he would have to eat sooner or later. Starving to death over and over didn't exactly sound like his idea of dealing with another twisted, unnatural imprisonment.

He stuck the spoon in the mess, then stirred it around a few times. Food wasn't supposed to look like that, like some lump of half-watered clay...

[The Art Gallery]

Now that he'd eaten, Kankuro was set to do some exploring. This place was a hell of a lot more extensive than his last torture chamber away from home, and as a consequence, he's warier. There's a big mass of something wrapped in white and carried by a strap slung over his shoulder -- for those who know him, yes, he's gone back to his old way of carrying a puppet around for this first session of exploring, and those who know him well can probably guess at why.
He found his way to the art gallery, and decided to take a look through it. At first, it was just a curiosity, whetted by his interest in all things artistic. Much of the art showed him worlds far different from his own, some of them filled with fantastic machines or warriors. That was pretty cool. And art in general did fascinate him. But as he kept moving deeper into the gallery, through the maze of walls set up to display the most art possible, he noted the paintings getting darker, more twisted, more grotesque.

For a while, it didn't bother him. He was hardened to a lot -- both as a ninja, and as a child growing up watching his psychotic little brother squish people who annoyed him. Hell, the twisted Akasuna puppets were his favorites, ever since he was a little apprentice picking out his very first. He liked dark and ugly.

But then he came face to face with an image he couldn't make himself enjoy. His own face stared at him blankly from the canvas, brilliant purple paint in the same design he'd brushed onto his skin not two hours ago laid here not over flesh but over finely-polished wood -- a joined mouth with a faint hint of metal gleaming from between the barely-parted lips -- inhuman glass eyes full of mute horror.

It was his nightmare from the Facility all over again, and he recoiled with a quick, shaking few steps and a faint clatter of puppet joints.

[The Cathedral]

Well, this was better than the art gallery -- and better than most of the other floors, at least so far as he can tell. His world didn't have buildings like this, but all the same, something about it appealed to him, and he paused there, staying close to the staircase, just listening to the wordless murmurs and taking in the majestic structure. Here, he could pause and just try to let his thoughts settle a little.

The murmurs didn't faze him much; he wasn't moving far, and the murmurs stayed murmured, the feeling of the invisible, silent presences keeping their attention off him. A good place to find a puppeteer with his mysterious bundle.

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His small smile was a wry one, humorless. “Did you really expect a peaceful locale, Kankuro? The Doctors… they never promised any prosperity.” That was an understatement.

Peaceful…

On a sudden impulse, he briefly closed his eyes and teleported both of them to the twenty-fifth floor, where there was a quiet, seemingly harmless meadow. It was unoccupied at present. A fitting setting for news that might be disturbing.

They stood next to each other, and here, under much better lighting, Gaara studied his brother more closely. He didn’t look any different from the last time he remembered seeing him, but he knew from experience that mental scars were usually concealed.

“…Temari isn't here," he revealed, his gaze staring forth blankly, "She may still be at the facility. ...How long did you remain there? After my termination.”

Kankuro took the change of location with equilibrium; in the meadow, he looked around briefly before settling his attention on his brother. If Gaara thought this was a good place for a conversation... well, he believed him, even if the whole thing was damned unnerving.

Quietly, he ran a couple chakra threads to Karasu, and the puppet began to quietly look around as they settled to talk. It was distracting, but Kankuro felt safer this way.

"... Termination." He focused on that word, lips tight around it. Gaara had been...? To all the hells with the Consortium then, for well and for ever. He'd lost Gaara once and letting him be taken again was a blow. "... I'm sorry, Gaara." Once again, I stood by helplessly. Having Gaara here, sitting beside him, definitely alive and active, kept it from being the agony it could have been, but it still roiled bitterly in his belly. Gaara had been terminated in the Facility.

He watched the puppet moving around, and felt a foreign urge to smile at the sight. It stirred up memories of when they were living in Suna, passing each day with some semblance of normalcy. He turned his head away to chase off that strange sensation.

The redhead glanced over at Kankuro with curiosity at hearing those words. He had thought the Doctors might have tormented his siblings with a video of his body being incinerated.

“You didn’t know?” He blinked in confusion. They could have left at the same time. Only Temari would know, since she apparently stayed behind. “You don’t need to apologize,” he replied quietly, and then, almost childlike, poked his brother in the arm, “Idiot.” It sounded like a mild chastisement rather than a real insult.

Karasu was comforting, a heavily armed and venomous security blanket. Sasori was by far the more powerful puppet, and his scroll was tucked into Kankuro's sash, but it was Karasu, his oldest (and most heavily modified) friend, who rode his shoulder and had worn his face for the morning's exploration.

"I didn't," he confirmed quietly. And if he hadn't known Gaara was terminated... "I got sent home," he said quietly. "Must've been about the same time, I guess." Which made it worse. He, Kankuro, one jounin among many, was returned to Suna, while Gaara, the Kazekage, the most important of them, was...

He remembered the images of just what happened to the terminated, and fought a quiet wave of nausea. Gaara...

“Sent home…” he repeated the words softly, knowing the truth. Kankuro hadn’t really been sent home. The Doctors terminated him, and then created another clone with more implanted memories. “…I suppose. We weren’t… entirely on amicable terms, at that time.”

That was yet another sore subject of discussion. It didn’t seem like they had very many pleasant things to discuss, Gaara mused silently. At least, he felt a small sense of relief that his brother came to the tower with one – or more – of his puppets. He wasn’t unarmed; they were less helpless here than at the facility.

Eventually, he had to tell him, despite his reluctance. He never did like lying.

But as he looked over the deceptively peaceful setting in front of them, he thought, just a little while longer. Strange, when he was so accustomed to cutting straight to the truth and state things bluntly, with no regard for the consequences after. Who knew how long they would remain here, this time? Even more so, it felt unnerving to live without a distinct purpose.

Gaara finally broke the silence by asking, “What questions do you have for me?”

Not really on amicable terms. That was one way to put it. They'd patched up some of the issues from Kankuro's bitter words during his week of cruelty, but those wounds had only scarred, not truly healed - and then the divide had been driven wider by later events. Kankuro winced, thinking of it. His fault, most of that.

"Maybe we didn't," he said quietly. "It was all... it was all that place, though. The Doctors. I never -- I never -- meant it." The look in his eyes was dark and intense. "Believe me." Please, hovered unspoken at the end of it, his thoughts resting on the war, on his brother and sister both far from him, facing dead enemies who could not be killed. At least his squad had handled Deidara...

He fell silent again. Questions? Hundreds of them tumbled over each other in his mind, and yet, he could voice none of them.

Finally, quietly, "...Who else is here?" Temari wasn't, by Gaara's words - damnable, that. They needed to be together, the three of them. If Sai or - could it even be possible? - Tasuki were here....

He stayed quiet, unsure of how to respond to that claim. Maybe Kankuro hadn’t meant what he said, but that didn’t excuse Temari and Shikamaru’s actions. Though, was it truly wise to open up old wounds right now? No.

He lifted his head, and their eyes met for a moment. There was only sincerity in his voice as he told him, “I don’t harbor ill will toward you, my brother.” He was angry with the circumstances, saddened by the burden of loss, but none of that was Kankuro’s fault.

Once again, his gaze shifted off to the side. This question, he could answer without too much difficulty. “There are quite a few inhabitants from the facility. People have theorized that there is a connection between the facility and the tower.

“From our world…” a brief pause, “Sasori of the Red Sand. That is all.”

Sasori. Kankuro settled back a little, frowning. The news was less disturbing by far than it had been when Sasori had arrived at the facility -- but then, between the facility and his return home, he'd come to quite a different place with regard to the maker of his puppets. But just because he had didn't mean that this Sasori knew of it -- that much, he knew full well.

A number of different questions or comments suggested themselves to him, and he finally asked quietly, "Have you had any contact with him?" The first question -- because it would tell him a great deal about where things would stand if -- when -- he encountered Sasori himself.

He nodded and revealed, “He doesn’t know who we are. From his time point, he has only recently left Suna. Eventually, I will tell him about his involvement with the Akatsuki. For now… we will simply coexist.”

There was something he had been wondering about ever since his arrival and he voiced the question now, “Do you know… if the war has progressed? In our world.”

From so far back as that? Kankuro frowned on hearing it. On the one hand, Sasori wouldn't remember him - none of that smooth taunting from the Facility. On the other hand... he wouldn't remember him, and that included the sense of simpatico that Sasori had given him on the battlefield, the understanding. The recognition of Kankuro as a successor.

Hard to say how he felt about that. And only one way to solve it. He would need to seek Sasori out and speak with him.

But he tucked that away for later. "Yeah. The war's been joined. Madara's got some fucked-up jutsu going - brings people back from the dead and controls them, makes them fight for him. My squad just finished dealing with Sasori and Deidara - and a couple others besides - when this place grabbed me."

A frown creased his brows. “Revived from the dead?” Most of the Akatsuki members had been killed by that time, as he recalled. “The enemy is displaying signs of desperation and vulnerability,” he remarked coolly.

“Did you… encounter Temari or myself while in our world?” He asked with a mildly uncomfortable shift. “Or our other allies?”

What was his other… his real self doing in that world?

"Yes." Kankuro nodded. He could answer -- no, not with surety, but at least with some confidence. "The last I saw of you both was when the divisions of the army parted. Since then... I don't know what's happened. My division was an advance strike, so we're separated from the main body of the battle." His words naturally placed it in the present tense -- after all, he'd only just left them, just had Deidara vanish from within his Kuroari.

He paused though, looking to Gaara. "Back home... you're doing just fine, little brother." General of the whole damn shinobi army... he was so damn proud of how far Gaara had come.

The Suna ninja sighed quietly, barely visible. There were still reasons worth fighting for, to win the war. Their world wasn’t destroyed. It had to be a lie, another gross tactic of manipulation.

“......”

That isn’t me, was his initial response to Kankuro’s claim. It was someone being impersonated.

He lowered himself to the ground, sitting on the realistic grass. Absentmindedly, he reached out and grazed one of the Crow’s arms, tugging on it briefly. He needed constant reminders that this wasn’t an illusion.

With a flick of Kankuro's fingers, Karasu actually reached out to Gaara, one wooden hand clasping lightly against Gaara's arm for a moment, the motion accompanied with the soft, familiar click of wooden joints. This puppet was nearly as much a part of their team as Kankuro himself.

The silence wasn't entirely unexpected, but Kankuro sensed the building storm behind it; quietly, his hand replaced Karasu's on Gaara's arm, a little squeeze, a connection built between them. Touch had power, especially for those who were not casual in their contacts.

It's all right, little brother, he wanted to say. As long as we're together, we can take on anything. But the Facility had beaten that sort of naivete out of him.

He almost smiled at the gesture. He could feel the corner of his lips starting to curl up, before seeming to lose luster and fading.

But he didn't want Kankuro to think that his attempt went unnoticed. His own hand lifted, reaching up to grasp onto his brother's arm in return. The warmth felt foreign; he needed a minute to take it in, wading through the mental confusion. Ever since coming to the tower, he had very little physical contact with others. It would time to get used to, if the opportunity was even there.

"What do you..." he started, and then trailed off; there was no easy way to start this conversation, "What do you remember last from the facility?" No, he needed to be more specific, "What did the Doctors or Val tell you."

The Doctors or Val? Kankuro didn't actually recall having any direct contact with Val -- so that was a no. And the Doctors -- no, nothing there either. So he shook his head. "Told me? Nothing. After... after Tasuki was terminated, I don't remember much." He shot an apologetic glance at Gaara. "Flipping my shit at you and Temari, mostly. Talking with Sasori, some. And... I think I was out of it a lot. Then I was back home, and I didn't even remember the Facility until now." A little shrug behind it.

His hand stayed on Gaara's arm, though. He could feel the tentativity there, had seen the way Gaara's smile started and then faded before it even truly formed. Gaara was in shit shape.

That's what big brothers are around for. If his brother needed him, he would be there, always.

Tasuki, he recalled with a visible grimace. Kankuro had also lost his lover. How had he been able to cope with it? Had he already returned to being functional, or was he just better at hiding his pain?

It was likely an uncomfortable subject for his brother, but he couldn’t help asking, “Do you still… think about him, often?”

He retracted his hand, but shifted over on the ground, moving a little closer. His gaze skipped briefly toward the puppeteer, before gazing out across the meadow again.

Back there, Gaara had asked questions like this, too. Trying to understand, Kankuro knew -- trying to feel his way through a world of emotions that weren't intuitive or obvious to him.

So as far as he was concerned, it was big-brotherly duty to explain it to Gaara, even when it was something he'd really rather keep to himself and pretend he wasn't feeling.

"Think about him?" Ever since I got here. "I didn't fucking remember he existed until I woke up here," he reminded Gaara. That particular little gem of irritation seemed to be common between this place and the Facility. "Whole time I was home... well, you know how it works. Never thought I'd left our world." And then he'd gotten here and the whole thing had come rushing back to him.

Right… Kankuro didn’t remember because the memories hadn’t been implanted yet. It was cruel to force those memories and emotions on him. He could have remained blissfully unaware, if the Doctors had just left him alone after terminating him. What was the purpose to all of this?

He was cruel to remind his brother of those same memories, Gaara realized with a grimace. It would be better if he tried to figure out a solution himself. Then he wouldn’t have to hurt anyone else because of his own lack of understanding.

“Evidently, sometime after our departure, the truth was revealed to the residents of the facility,” he finally disclosed, tipping his head down to stare at the ground, “The truth about their origins. Ours as well.

“You don’t remember because the memories had yet to be implanted into your mind.”

Kankuro had been about to open his mouth and say more, to answer Gaara's grimace with reassurance. He was pissed off about the memories, stinging from Tasuki's termination and the newly-regained darkness of the Facility, but he never intended to push his brother off lines of questioning when it came to how to manage emotions. Those were lessons Gaara needed...

But he stopped as Gaara began speaking. Those words hinted at... but he wasn't going to take hints and run with them. Not from Gaara. He would listen only.

"Implanted." The hell was that supposed to mean. And their origins?

He nodded slightly, keeping his expression coolly neutral to banish any hints of insecurity. This would be difficult to hear, but Kankuro needed to know the truth. It was equally difficult for him to voice; he hadn’t fully come to terms with his true identity, even now.

“Everyone in the facility is a clone of their original. We were created by the Doctors, and implanted with false memories.” He lifted his head, his eyes staring far out into empty space. “That is the reason people seemed to have come from different time periods. The Doctors chose what memories to implant in individual specimens. For those that returned home and came back to the facility, they were terminated, and a new clone was created to receive more memories.”

Terminated. Clones implanted with false memories. Returned home and came back meant died and a new clone made.

Kankuro rocked back, his mind racing. Died and came back, died and a new replacement, a different clone, came back... that means Tasuke... yes, and that means me. Implanted with false memories. Neither of us is real.

It was a long time before he could answer, trying to wrap his mind around it. Trying to examine his memories, to try and feel some artificiality about them. He had returned home just recently, just up until now... so... did that mean everything before he woke up in that stupid white suit was a lie?

No. How could it be? His body told the story, his muscles were appropriately developed for a shinobi, his chakra was trained and controlled, his muscle memory exquisite.

"... The Doctors told you this?" he asked finally, when he could swallow around the cold feeling in his gut. Just a clone, just a clone...

He reached over and tentatively placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder, squeezing it gently in comfort. Even if they weren’t biologically related, and with all these false memories, Gaara couldn’t automatically start thinking of him as a stranger. He had been conditioned to believe Kankuro was his brother, and Temari was his sister. They had all the same abilities as their originals. For shinobi to have fallen to the ultimate deception… it was rather ironic. Then again, they weren’t really shinobi.

He shook his head. “Ishtar told me. She is my friend. We met at the facility.” He fell silent for a moment, recalling her words. “During an invasion, the residents broke into the medical bay and came across the pods that are used to create clothes. They gathered information from the computers. I have questioned other facility residents that were transported to this tower… they corroborated the story.”

Gaara glanced up at Kankuro just then, frowning with concern. “…I’m sorry. I am disturbing you.”

"Damn it." Quiet words, echoing with frustration and pain, but Kankuro accepted the hand on his shoulder, raised his own to cover it. His brother... no, not his brother, if Gaara's words were true. Just another clone from a pod, implanted with memories of people who'd never laid eyes on the Facility...

"No." He let out a breath. "No. I'm not going to just... just give up who I am, who I know I am." Because that couldn't be true. No matter who had said it, no matter what... it couldn't be true. He was Kankuro, jounin of the Sand, and no one could take that away from him. "Disturbing, yeah, but..."

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1st String | Exploring the Tower

[Art Gallery]

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