Vescrutia: Legacy

The sterile air of the laboratory hummed with the quiet thrum of advanced machinery, a sound that grated against the ancient soul of the shinobi arts. Moroha Chikage stood before the containment cylinder, a monument of glass and steel filled with a viscous, amber-colored goo. Suspended within was Jao, motionless. But Moroha was not deceived. Even through the dense gel and reinforced plasteel, he could feel the power radiating from the man, a thrumming, predatory stillness that promised violence. Jao was a caged tiger, and the bars were beginning to bend.

Tendrils of Moroha’s own power, the Kurenai Joki, a crimson vapor as beautiful as it was lethal, coiled around his arms and drifted lazily through the air. It was the ultimate failsafe, the pride of the Chikage clan, a mist that could bewitch the mind and, more importantly, shield the soul from the predatory gaze of the Shi. It had served him flawlessly during his infiltration, turning guards into allies and allies into distractions. It had worked against Yin and Yang, the patriarchs of this den of snakes. It would work against Jao. Moroha was certain of it.

"You got a reeeal nasty aura about you," Moroha said, his voice laced with the casual arrogance of a man who had never known true defeat. He turned from the tank, his gaze sweeping across the consoles and server racks that lined the chamber. "There's no faking it, the shadows course through you."

He had to admit, he was impressed. He’d always regarded the Denkoushi as underdeveloped Neanderthals, primitives blessed with special eyes and little else. Yet this facility, hidden deep within Basilisk Way beneath the Mek Mountains, defied that prejudice. The seamless integration of arcane arts and bleeding-edge technology, the silent, deadly sentinels he’d disarmed—it was a level of sophistication he hadn’t thought possible.

It explained his grandmother Zua's cautious interest in them and clarified how they had managed to topple the mighty Owaki clan. But this tech… it wasn't of Edoan origin. The design philosophy was alien, impossibly efficient. They had help, Moroha concluded, filing the thought away for later.

He spun on the ball of his foot, a fluid, practiced motion, and faced the tube once more. "Listen, we have two ways we can go about this. The easiest way is if you don't try anything funny, and I won't have to hurt you. Which would mean doing things the hard way." The threat was delivered with a smirk, a flourish of unshakeable confidence. "So? What’s it gonna be—"

In the space between one heartbeat and the next, everything changed.

Jao blinked. A single, deliberate motion. The violet gleam that had been a passive threat beneath his eyelids ignited, shifting to a burning, malevolent crimson. Moroha’s Crimson Vapor was already tightening its ethereal shield, prepared for the familiar psychic pull on his soul. But this was different. This was not a pull; it was a cascade.

The very air grew heavy, pressing down with the weight of a collapsing mountain. The unseen realm, the barrier between what was and what could be, groaned audibly under the strain of a sudden, overwhelming authority. It was the power of Subjugation, a dreaded sub-ability of Jao’s unique dojutsu. Where the standard Danketsu was a sniper’s rifle aimed at a single soul, Subjugation was an artillery strike, an area-of-effect that shattered the will of all within its range. Moroha's Kurenai Joki, designed to deflect a single, targeted assault, was now battered by a psychic monsoon.

His confidence evaporated, replaced by a cold, numbing shock. He felt the cascading force of Jao’s will, a torrent of cursed, dark magic that bypassed his soul and slammed directly into his mind. It was a violation so profound, so absolute, that his body locked in place. He was a statue, a puppet whose strings had been seized by a new, infinitely more powerful master.

It will be my way…

Jao’s voice was not a sound, but a command imprinted directly onto Moroha’s consciousness. Moroha's fingers typed in the precise alphanumeric sequences required to disable the containment field, codes Jao had spent months patiently decrypting from the inside, subtly manipulating Eridin's A.I.O.N.S. nanites to feed him data.

"So that is how you accomplished this… like a true shinobi," Jao’s thoughts echoed, laced with a cold, academic curiosity as he sifted through the surface memories of the tactical brilliance of Moroha's infiltration. The mist-controlled guard caused a diversion, the transfer to Anna, Eridin’s cousin, using her intimate knowledge to cripple the power grid and sever the sentinels from their master network. Cunning. Admirable, even. And utterly futile.

With a final keystroke, the console flashed green. A hydraulic hiss filled the chamber as the amber goo began to drain, revealing Jao’s lean, muscular, bio-mechanical form. The sedative that had kept him inert was losing its potency, and Jao could feel his vigor returning, accelerated by nanites in his bloodstream that were actively devouring the foreign chemicals. He flexed his index finger, pointing it at the glass wall of his prison. For a breathtaking instant, the tip of his finger glowed with condensed power, and then the reinforced plasteel shattered, exploding outwards in a shower of crystalline shards.

Jao landed on his feet, stumbling for a moment before righting himself. From the base of his spine, a stream of liquid metal flowed, coalescing slowly into a segmented, nano-plated tail. The appendage, wicked and serpentine, slithered through the air and coiled around the throat of Moroha’, lifting him effortlessly off the ground.

"The simplicity of the mortal mind will always baffle me less than their blatant arrogance," Jao’s voice, a low and menacing baritone, now filled the room. His burning crimson eyes bored into Moroha. "Oh? A Chikage. I have not sampled your ilk in eons. I thought you had all died out, like the vermin you are."

Through the terror, a spark of Moroha’s defiance remained. His eyes glared back, a final act of rebellion. "No, I suppose not. Vermin are nothing else if not resilient," the tail tightened. "Did you think you could capture me… without ever setting foot in this place?"

Jao’s lips curled into a predatory smile. He understood. This was not Moroha. This was merely a vessel, a meat puppet animated by the Crimson Vapor. A remote instrument. But an instrument was still connected to the musician.

Jao’s eyes, burning with mystic might, flowed seamlessly from crimson back to their venomous violet. In that moment, he displayed a mastery of his Dojustu that defied all known conventions of the Shi clan. The attack wasn't on the host. It was on the connection itself. The scarlet thread of mist that bound the guard to the true Moroha, hidden leagues away in the land of Edo, became a conduit for Jao’s true power—the soul-stealing gaze of the Dankestu Mugen. Like a hacker being able to trace an IP address. Shocasing the techno arcane evolution taking place within Jao. Defining naten as if it were a binary code.

Miles away, in a darkened safehouse, the real Moroha Chikage was confronted.

The sensation was not pain, but the unraveling of will, a shredding of self. It was the feeling of being dragged into a black hole. He felt the essence of the Nether Serpent, Aphosis, reach across the impossible distance and sink its ethereal fangs into him. It was a vastness he could not comprehend, a void within an abyss, a conscious universe of eternal pandimounim. His meticulously constructed arrogance, his lifetime of training, his identity as the proud Chikage heir—it all crumbled into dust before this absolute, cosmic horror.

Panic, pure and primal, seized him. This was not a battle of shinobi arts; it was a struggle against oblivion itself. With a guttural cry of terror and exertion, Moroha performed the most desperate act of his life. He severed his own Anthem. He took a "knife" to the very fabric of his power, violently cutting the Kurenai Joki’s connection to its host.

The feedback was excruciating. It felt like abruptly tearing off a limb, a psychic recoil that threw him across his room and left him gasping on the floor, drenched in a cold sweat, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He was alive. He was free. But he was terrified. For the first time, Moroha Chikage knew fear. Despite the trouble in his hand, where one would expect a scowl, there would be a smirk....

"How... exhilarating...."

Back in the laboratory, the light in the guard’s eyes extinguished instantly. The body went limp, a discarded doll, and fell to the floor as Jao’s nanite tail uncoiled. Jao, now fully possessed by the ancient will of Aphosis, savored the lingering taste of absolute terror on the psychic winds. It was a shallow victory; the prey had escaped the trap, but the fear he had instilled was a worthy appetizer.

Just then, the heavy blast doors at the far end of the chamber hissed open. Two figures entered, their silhouettes framed by the harsh hallway light. One was an old man, his face a mask of hardened resolve, an aura of biting cold emanating from him. The other was younger, his body already shimmering as the nanites of his SLAYER exosuit began to crawl over his skin.

Yin and Yang. Grandfather and Father.

They saw their prodigal son, their greatest weapon and most terrible curse, standing free amidst the wreckage of his prison. They saw the lifeless body of Chikage’s puppet at his feet and felt the oppressive, dark energy brimming from him—a soul freshly devoured and hungry for more.

There were no words. There was no need for them. This was the moment they had dreaded and prepared for since the day Jao was born.

Yin slid into a low, coiled stance, his hands open. A visible frost immediately began to crawl over his knuckles, crackling softly in the silence. Rhyme Style, the art of cold, the master of a thousand freezing palms.

Beside him, Yang’s transformation was completed. The sleek, black plates of the SLAYER suit locked into place, and the vents on his gauntlets began to glow with the promise of incandescent heat. Sinder Style, the embodiment of fire and fury.

Cold and heat. Father and son. Two generations of the Shi clan, standing against the third. They prepared themselves for a fight that would not only define their own fates, but the fate of their clan and of Edo itself.

Before them, Jao smiled. A true, horrifying smile.