27 Uncle Tobi

"It cannot be seen, cannot be felt,

Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt,

It comes first and follows after,

Ends life, kills laughter."

(J.R.R. Tolkien, There and Back Again)

xxx

-October 17th, 06:39 PM-

The pitter patter of the rain created a shield around me. The water never quite touched my skin, instantly repelled by my too-big, stolen yellow raincoat. I cupped my trembling hands together and caught the falling water, noting the faint presence of energy in it – natural energy, my mind supplied. My gaze unwittingly strayed onto the tallest building at the center of the village, onto the grotesque humanoid face with long, jutting tongue that overlooked the village, where the chakra burnt the brightest, as vibrant as the morning sun.

A loud cough forced me out of my stupor, again. We had been at it for a while now – me, drowning inside my thoughts, whilst the man just stood there, staring at me, as if I was something that he couldn't comprehend – as if I was something awful.

I supposed I was.

"So..." I cleared my throat, "you're not a kidnapper, are you? I'm guessing we're related…? 'Cause I don't think my mum would've let me go otherwise." When Mikoto, without even an ounce of thought, handed me to the infamous Uchiha, I did not bother to act surprised – I could not muster the will, actually. At the time I had failed to sense their presence, but the Tree could – more than that, it had managed to spy on their little conversation. To say that I was shocked by what I'd heard would be an understatement.

"Oh I am definitely kidnapping you. A friend of mine loves to eat naughty little monsters."

Heh. Monsters. Weren't they all?

My eyes roamed over the deserted park – a dark, lifeless nook that smelled unbearably like piss – a perfect place to commit something shady. It was tucked behind tall, concrete buildings that had so many pipes running on their walls they lost what little aesthetic value that they once might possess. Considering the village's extremely fudged up weather and lack of forestry, the excess rain water had to be diverted somewhere to avoid mass flooding and insect infestation – gutters and drains alone would not be enough – thus came the pipes, which seemed to directly channel the water into the large lake that surrounded the village.

The uncomfortably high humidity of the village left little to be desired. Not only did it increase the prevalence of many airborne allergens, it also increased the density of the air, thus creating more resistance to airflow in the airway, resulting in an increased work of breathing. I wondered if that was part of the reason why so many ninjas in this place wore rebreathers – besides the obvious dabbling with aerosol poisons. Shortness of breath could not be good for their profession, though it would be more ironic if their rebreathers were to malfunction and choke them with their own breath–

The masked man coughed, again.

I heaved an irritated sigh. "What are we doing in Ame, Mister? My brother said this place likes to be left alone. Someone might punish us for sneaking in."

The man shrugged. "My associates are the leader of this village, I'm sure they won't mind us. As for why we're here…" I watched as the man approached me with purposeful strides. My body went tense, arms ready to lash out even though any attempt of resistance would most likely be futile. Curiously, instead of maiming me in fifty different ways, the man lifted me and deposited me on the park's rusty slide. He then crouched in front of me so that we were at the same eye level. "Your mother wants me to talk to you about your," the man made a vague gesture with his left hand, "upsetting behavior. That in itself is hypocritical, but who am I to judge, hmm? So, talk."

I plastered a plastic smile. "Sure, but you have to tell me who you are first. I'm not supposed to talk to strangers, you know," I gestured to his mask, "especially one that looks like a kidnapper."

I tightened my grip on my knees when the man's visible eye narrowed in mischief. With a dramatic gesture the rogue ninja unfastened part of his mask and revealed his scarred and bitter beyond words face. Hypertrophic scars spanned horizontally over the visible side of his face, though the man did not seem to suffer from any facial nerve damage, since he was able to grin like a damn shark. I almost snorted, if the man expected me to be scared by such scars then he must have never seen teratoma with both eyes and teeth on it. That, was the real stuff of nightmare.

Histologically speaking, if I cut him up and inspected samples of his skin tissue under microscope, I would probably find a thicker than usual epidermal layer, with disarray of basal epidermal cells and thinner collagen fibers in the dermis.

I inwardly wondered if I could use yin release to rearrange his collagen bundles – and subsequently his epidermal layer – into something that was closer to normal tissue. Though if given the chance, I would have preferred to utilize treatment with mesenchymal stem cells instead, what with their ability to repair and replace cellular substrates, attenuate inflammation, increase angiogenesis, and enhance migration of reparative cells; just to see whether I could do it or not.. Granted, both methods could backfire and develop into squamous cell carcinoma or something more malignant – certainly not a bad way to get rid of the older Uchiha. But for now…

Tentatively, I positioned my palms over his scarred skin and palpated his temporalis and masseter muscles. Those muscles relaxed as the man's grin loosened, replaced instead by barely concealed confusion. There was no deviation on his lower jaw, I noted.

"Mister, do you experience hearing loss?" A history of conductive hearing loss might reflect Eustachian tube dysfunction from weakness of the tensor veli palatini muscle, which was innervated by a branch of mandibular nerve – the nerve which I currently inspected.

The man stared, perplexed, but he humored me anyway. "I don't believe so…"

"Any dry eyes? Perhaps… Hmm…visual blurring in cold places…?" Cold temperature, e.g. cool wind, might trigger episodic visual blurring from corneal edema in the eye, suggesting an underlying trigeminal neuropathy.

He blinked, unconsciously wetting his eye. "Not really."

I hummed. "How about diminishing taste, any difficulty in chewing?"

"None."

I removed my hand from his temple and trailed my other hand from his jaw into his forehead, my touch feather-light. I then dug my currently uncut nail into his skin at a random interval, though the man did not even flinch. I was not sure if it were due to sensory loss or due to the fact that I was pathetically weak.

"Have you experienced…" What was the Japanese equivalent for that word again? I shrugged and continued in English. "Recurrent, intense, sharp, stabbing sensation on your face?"

The man did not deign me with any verbal answer, but the fact that he looked like he wanted to squeeze me like a bug told me enough – that, and the minute twitching on the skin around his eye, cheekbone and jaw.

Brief trigeminal neuralgia attacks could be triggered by talking, chewing, teeth brushing, shaving, a light touch, or even a cool breeze. The pain itself could be quite severe – a patient once described that it felt like electrical shocks – but judging by the man's track record (just look at his face, duh), I doubted that he would seek proper medical help. It was either that or the man simply dismissed his pain as a result of his traumatic injury.

I was not sure why I did it, but without a word I turned my back on him and climbed onto the top of the slide. I huddled into myself there, where the playground's faded canopy could shield me from the rain.