Chapter 95.4- One Thousand Hands

And then he felt the pull at his soul as the teapot began to eject him. He landed on the ground, crouched, feeling aches all over..

But he was an abbot of the Wind Temple. Pain was an old fiend of his. He rose to his full height, not paying much if any attention to the creaks and pops that came from his bones as he did so. He rose and walked out into the village proper. With every step he took, he felt his friend begin to stir.

“Control yourself, Shukaku” he said, and thankfully, that was enough to keep him at his best behaviour for the time being.

The first sick person they met was a woman.

“I am so sorry, young one” He said, reaching down to console her. Except that the second his skin touched her, the seal on her neck began to unravel. He felt his body be flooded with Shukaku’s chakra. He choked off the urge to kill her and focused on doing just enough to help her.. he could do good here, and he focused only on that. Shukaku’s chakra called to the seal on her neck like like called to like, and it flowed across her skin smoothly until it wrapped around Bunpuku’s wrist and burned itself there, creating a mark that he would bear for the rest of his days.

One down, a whole village to go.

So he continued. He walked down the streets, and where he found the sick, he healed them. And slowly and surely, once they fully recovered, they began to bring more and more of the sick to him. And that was how he ended up here, in the middle of a market, healing people one after another. The seal spread through touch, he had come to learn. And the seal was not a disease like he had initially thought. No. Shukaku’s power allowed him realise just what the seal was and it was even more insidious than that.

The Konoha sealmasters, for who else could it be but them— had made a seal that created an advantage. It gave whoever bore it the power to intake natural chakra from the very air. The seal was a boon to all, but without the training to handle that natural chakra, it acted as a poison to the shinobi infected with it. And the seal spread by touch. A feat that Shukaku had been cackling about for long enough that it was clear it was supposed to be something difficult to do. These were geniuses by all means, and they had turned their genius to focus on destroying a people, a society.

Why? For war? Was this war? Bunpuku had never fought in war, but he had helped in more than one battle’s aftermath, and rarely had he ever seen such blatant callousness and disregard for the value of life.

“Bunpuku-sama. There are more coming from the hospital. Are you clear to heal to heal them?” The first girl that he had healed asked. She had somehow nominated herself as the one to speak to him of the lot.

“For the last time, Mina. I am no lord. I am merely a man who can help. And I remain just that, a man who can help. Let all those who are sick come to me. I will give them rest.” He said, taking the burden unto himself just like he had taken the burden of holding Shukaku when noone else could.