Chapter 42- Terror

Hiseo, the archbishop of Jashin, sat in his throne with indescribable anticipation. His gray hair was neatly combed back, and he sat with graceful poise, seemingly at peace with the world.

Jashin had finally sent his blessing unto the world, and Hiseo would be the first to cast his master's stroke across the canvas of the impure world.

Bliss. Hiseo felt it. This surely must be bliss. Only the blessings of Jashin himself could elicit such wondrous sensation. In only a few scant hours, the sun would come up, and the plan would start in its entirety.

In a few scant hours, Hiseo would be elbow deep in the blood and viscera of those disgusting heathens that populated Yugakure. How dare they?! Yugakure is where Jashin, blessed be his name, revealed himself to the world. These fucking disgusting humans refused to recognize his greatness. How FUCKING DARE THEY! They deserve everything they will get. They will cry for mercy and the sweat release of death soon enough, and Jashin, blessed be his name, will only deliver unto them infinite pain. It would be beautiful. It would be divine. Everything would be right in the world once again, and it was only a few scant hours away.

It was so close. He could almost taste it in the air. Soon enough though. It wouldn't take that long. He just had to wait a few more hours.

Hiseo chuckled to himself, he was spinning himself up something fierce. he was a shinobi priest of Jashin, and he had to be composed until all steps in the plan were truly in motion. If he were to allow his mental state to compromise the mission, the crusade, the prophecy, at the eleventh hour due to a moment's inattention, Hiseo would never forgive himself, and even worse, Jashin would denounce him, and no matter how many offerings he made unto his God, Jashin would never look upon him favorably again. Hell, true Hell would be brought upon him, and he shuddered at the thought. To no longer feel the love and suffering of Lord Jashin, to no longer feel the kiss upon his mind that made him whole. To live without the constant companionship of his loving god. It would be unthinkable, the pain that wracked him at night as he sent his prayers unto Jashin, blessed be his name, all of that would fade away, and Jashin would never once again cast his malevolent, warm gaze upon him again. Unthinkable, incurable, unendurable. Banish the thought. Banish it. Get rid of the thought. ALL MUST BE QUIET. It must not root within his mind. He cannot live without Jashin, he cannot die without Jashin. Jashin is all there is. Only He will bring purity to the Impure World. We are his agents. His arms. His legs. We are his will.

And Hidan is his blessed son. How great the blessing of Jashin upon Hiseo that Jashin would choose Hiseo's own wife to birth the blessed one. Hidan would bring Jashin to bear against the impure world, and even though Hidan was only six at the moment, there was no single member of Jashin's Flock that were more devout, more studied, and more blessed.

Hiseo felt no envy for his son though, as envious as his position may be, only immense pride that it was his own progeny that had been brought into the world to bring Jashin in, and even better yet, Yuriko had died in labor, smiling until the end as she bled from every orifice on her body as she birthed the chosen one. It was what Hiseo loved the most about her, so devout, and so beautiful. Her prayers were exquisite. Always.

What Hiseo did envy was Hidan's mission. Oh how he wished he could do what Hidan would do today, the day of reckoning. It was the most holy of devotions. It was everything that Jashin wanted. Oh how Hiseo wished he was his son right now. His mission was simply the best.

Hiseo shuddered at the thought and rued his fate. However, he consoled himself with his own mission. To be the orchestrator of it all was a close second. It would be enough, and even Hidan's prayers would be credited to Hiseo in some way, shape, or form. That would have to sate him.

Jashin would be proud. Jashin would reward him greatly for this. Hiseo mused to himself at what Jashin may offer him for success. It would be wonderful. It would twist him, corrupt him, shatter him, and it would be everything he could ask for.

A man suddenly appeared before Hiseo, and Hiseo recognized him immediately. It was his second in command, Cardinal Ryuto.

The cardinal bowed before getting down to one knee and lowering his head. When he looked back up to see the impassive face of his leader, Archbishop Hiseo, Ryuto noted the mask of indifference and stone that met his gaze.

As Ryuto broke into a feral grin, so did Hiseo's mask. Hiseo could tell it in the manic smile of his long time friend and follower.

Though they both knew, Ryuto was a shinobi, so he still made his report.

"Hiseo-sama, It is with great pleasure and anticipation that I inform you of the first success in our day of reckoning.

Acolyte Uko was on watch with his heathen companion gate guard at the spring source this evening, and he was able to share in a bottle of poisoned sake with his friend. They both died following thirty minutes of seizure and rapture, allowing Acolyte Priya to enter the spring source.

Acolyte Priya spread the agent into the source before slitting her own throat as an offering unto Jashin, blessed be his name."

Hiseo snorted in appreciation. Ryuto exhaled through his nose with a little more force than usual.

Hiseo chuckled, Ryuto laughed, and soon enough the both of them were laughing hard enough to have tears spill freely from their eyes.

Today was simply the first step in the providentially short journey to bring Jashin unto the world. They both knew that the end times were nigh. It was only a few hours to sunrise, and Heaven would be rent upon the masses.

As they shared in a boisterous, body-wracking laugh, the pair of long time friends also shared the exact same thought.

Today is the day that I offer him unto Jashin. Amen.

The first day of the year always was always a quiet affair in Yugakure. The town liked to bring in the year with a tremendous celebration festival, and to say that the alcohol flowed freely would be an understatement. So when the morning came around the next day, people were subdued and tired, having spent all their energy already.

Luckily the people of Yugakure had the greatest hangover cure in the world right in their backyard.

The Hotsprings and homegrown Tea did wonders, and anyone who woke with a pounding head and aching body could be right as rain within an hour or two.

Suffice to say, the onsens that dotted the village were swamped with people, and friends who had drunk themselves into a stupor laughed and joked with one another over their drunken antics the night before.

People had their favorite onsens, and some people had been opening their year with the same onsen for decades. It was tradition. And one didn't mess with tradition, it became tradition for a good reason.

Almost everywhere in the village was at peace. Except for the Hospital.

Chief Doctor Hakase sat there, sweating bullets and was on the verge of a panic attack.

About 30 minutes after sunrise his first patient rolled in.

Old Lady Ling had shown up dead, brought by her daughter Miko, who had found her collapsed and covered in blood when she woke in the morning. Ling was 90 years old, and though her death was not a complete surprise, the fact that it was particularly gruesome had stirred quite the discussion among the night shift.

Old Lady Ling had thrown her entire stomach up, and died of blood loss in combination with her digestive juices destroying her diaphragm and lung tissue. Undiagnosed stomach cancer? It was an enigma. The night shift was talking about until about an hour after sunrise, when 5 patients came in with the exact same symptoms as one another.

All five were sweating uncontrollably, and were reporting dizziness. Within 15 minutes, they were reporting tunneling vision and tingling in their extremities. In that 15 minutes, 8 more patients rolled in with headaches and profuse sweating.

The day shift came in, and thanks to the new 13 patients in the emergency room, Hakase actually had to order his night shift to stay past turnover to help man the Hospital. Something like this was simply inconceivable.

30 minutes after the first five had showed, they were unconscious, and 18 more patients had shown up.

By this time, Hakase was declaring a public health emergency and invoking Plague Protocols. He had sent two runners to the Village head's office, but hadn't received any reports back.

Hakase was running up and down the halls of the hospital, running down differential diagnoses, trying to identify the pathogen that was spreading like wildfire through Yugakure, but he was absolutely drawing a blank. Nothing fit the description.

As he ran the hallways, stabilizing and admitting patients, the minutes ticked by and more and more people started filtering in. Always the same symptoms, dizziness and profuse sweating first. Devolving into tunnel vision and tingling in extremities. Followed by coma.

He currently had 22 people that had slipped into unconsciousness since entering with sweating and dizziness.

34 people were still conscious but had come in with the same symptoms, in varying degrees of severity.

He finally put part of the puzzle together when one of his patients that had fallen into a coma started vomiting blood.

Old Lady Ling had died form the exact same disease, he was willing to stake his life, his career, and the entire population of Yugakure on it.

Besides, if it was infectious and airborne, he was already a dead man, so he had truly nothing to worry about.

Hakase ran into the morgue and started performing the autopsy himself.

He didn't even bother to scrub in or don his disposable cadaver cover-alls meant for autopsies, he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and started cutting.

The first incision was from the center of the pelvis all the way up through the belly button, ending at the sternum. He put his scalpel down and reached for the bone shears.

As he brought his full weight to bear on the tool, Ling's ribcage parted with a noisy crunch, and had soon enough clipped through the sternum bottom to top. Once he reached the top of the sternum, he made two more cuts towards the armpits, turning the single incision into a sort of Y-shape that opened Ling's pelvis, abdomen, and chest cavity.

He held the incision open with a couple staples using flaps of skin around the pelvis, and used a ratcheting expander to keep the ribs open.

As he searched through the gore and viscera that pooled within her cooling body, he tried to narrow down the disease.

There were no identifying symptoms, no necrosis, no inflamed organs. Though Ling's organs were in several pieces now, none of the pieces showed any signs of disease beyond that of normal senescence.

As far as Hakase could tell, Ling had simply vomited so hard that her stomach and visceral organs started tearing themselves apart.

During his examination, one of his interns ran into the room.

"Doctor Hakase, we've had 18 more patients in the last 15 minutes. We're running out of beds and even with 3rd and first shift here, we're unable to handle all the cases."

Hakase kept his head down and continued his autopsy.

"Go into my office. In my desk, in the right hand drawer is the lockbox containing the all hands flare. I've waited for the village head long enough without reply to unilaterally declare a medical emergency.

The combinations is 6-3-4-1-2-2-2-7-4-5. Fire the flare. All medical personnel, including second shift and those on leave will report to the hospital ASAP.

Do you understand my instructions?"

The intern nodded seriously with a slight look of terror on his face.

"Yessir. I understand."

"Good. repeat the combination back to me."

"Yessir. 6-3-4-1-2-2-2-7-4-5"

"Good, now go. I'm busy here."

The intern scrambled away ass fast as he could scurry, almost tripping on the first stair as he ran up from the basement of the hospital, where the morgue is, to the main floor.

Once he was on the stairs though, and outside the perception of Doctor Hakase, he slowed his pace to a calm walk, and his previously panicked look faded to a cool indifference with the hint of a smile.

He then leisurely climbed the next three flights of stairs to Doctor Hakase's office, where he found the flare and fired it from the roof of the hospital.

He then sat down on the rooftop and rolled a scroll out on the floor.

A few dozen paper tags were found within, and very methodically, he activated each one before placing it on his body, primed and ready, but hidden from the casual observer.

The gleam in his eye sparkled, and he started back towards the emergency room and triage center where the vast majority of patients and medical personnel were.

And once he got there, he started treating and stabilizing patients as he waited for the off duty and second shift personnel to come in.

Doctor Hakase, oblivious to what was occurring above him in the triage center and emergency room, was elbow deep in gore, sorting through Mrs. Ling's remains, searching for the last piece of the puzzle.

He was at the end of his rope when he finally saw it. His initial observations of her skin has made him think it was a beauty spot, by out of the corner of his eye, the spot took on a iridescent sheen.

Hakase thought he was imagining things, but he investigated still. On the right side of her neck, where her lymph node should be, the beauty spot had sparkled.

He inspected it, and under a closer observation, the mark was actually not as round as he suspected from a distance, but had tiny striations radiating out in a spiderweb pattern.

Hakase quickly grabbed the scalpel in the nearby surgical tray and excised the area. As soon as he cut into the lymph node, a mercurial substance poured from the incision, and Hakase truly devolved into a panic.

With trembling hands and a racing heart, he started dissecting the thigh of the cadaver. As he cut into the muscle, nestled deep within was another lymph node, slightly swollen with an unnatural black color.

As he sliced into the second node, once again, a thin mercurial substance issued forth.

And Hakase confirmed his initial suspicion. Poison, obviously deadly, transported across the body via the lymphatic system. He had been so focused on the GI system, he had overlooked it until now.

Hakase dropped his tools and started running towards the stairwell.

As he opened the door to the main floor, he heard a muffled cry.

"PURITY FOR THE IMPURE WORLD!'

Hakase saw white and knew no more.

At the town square, a mini celebration was going on.

All the stall owners and restaurants that had been operating for the festival reopened for this one morning and tried to offload all their surplus as decadently low prices.

It was a complete zoo of an event as spinsters hunted for the greatest deals and mothers drug their children around, looking for a gift or two to bring in the new year, all marked down of course.

A young woman, maybe a year or two past thirty had her hair in a messy bun, and the bags under her eyes told her story.

As she walked around the morning leftover festival, her three kids were pestering her at every opportunity. She hadn't gotten enough sleep the night before.

Her husband had decided it was a good decision to finally introduce the kids to some new fangled drink called "Soda Pop" and the kids had been banging off the walls all night.

Still though, she look fondly at her children as the gallivanted around the town square, seemingly enraptured by every hawker selling ceremonial fans or masks that were made for last night's New Year's Festival.

As she gazed over them and smiled the soft grin of a satisfied mother, a voice caught her attention.

"Koko! I didn't know you came to the morning events!"

Koko, the disheveled mother of three, immediately recognized the voice. She whipped her head around, and broke out into a smile as she saw her long time friend Mitsune.

"Mitsune, how are you? It's been forever!"

Mitsune, a woman of equal age walked up and hugged Koko.

"What are you talking about? We had dinner back in....

Oh my god it has been forever."

Koko warmly returned the hug, and playfully slapped her friend on the shoulder as the two ladies let go of each other.

"Look at you, You look absolutely stunning! You're practically glowing.

What happened, don't tell me..."

Koko's eyes immediately darted towards Mitsune's left hand, and she immediately spied the ring with a large and colorful gem set prominently within.

Mitsune flashed an embarrassed grin and brought her hand up to show off the ring.

"Katsuo finally asked me to marry him! He got me this ring!"

Koko squealed in happiness and embraced her friend once again. As she shook Mitsune from side to side, Koko started interrogating her.

"Oh my god, you have to tell me all about it.

Was it romantic? Was it cute?

Where? When? How? I just have so many questions."

Mitsune, stll trapped in Koko's arms, opened her mouth to speak when it hit them.

With a thundering clap, a pressure wave surged through the town square, shattering the nearby windows and blowing out the eardrums of a majority of the people there.

A dust cloud mmedately whipped up and screams broke out in the cloud.

It took Mitsune a second to come back to her senses, and when she finally came to, she was still in Koko's arms, except the both of them were now on the ground.

Mitsune's ears were ringing and Koko was trying to say something to her, but her vision went dizzy after hitting her head on the ground.

She couldn't read Koko's lips, but the woman was obviously screaming something at her.

As the ringing in Mitsune's ears abated, she started to hear slivers of what Koko was saying.

"why... suffering... my purity... is reckoning."

She didn't get most of the words and was staring at Koko in confusion.

That's when Koko craned her neck over and sank her teeth into Mitsune's neck. Mitsune started thrashing around, but Koko's teeth held firm, and as her friend whipped her head back, Mitsune saw that Koko had a chunk of flesh stuck within her teeth and blood covering her face.

The next sensation Mitsune felt was a light headedness and a soothing warmth that spread from her neck down her chest and stomach. She wasn't exactly sure what was going on, and her thoughts were becoming addled. Mitsune closed her eyes.

Koko got back to her feet and stood over Mitsune with an enraptured look on her face as she licked the blood from her lips.

She pulled the main control tag out of her pocket and flared her chakra through it.

Approximately 30 seconds after Medical Intern and Acolyte Hosuke martyred himself at the hospital, Acolyte Koko put the next phase of the plan into motion.

Strategically disbursed around the town square where hundreds had gathered this fine morning were 27 agents. 11 Mothers and their 16 children.

Around the edge of the market, next to every building was a large barrel of pitch and kerosene with four explosive tags and four incendiary tags on the bottom of the barrel.

On each of the agents were over ten explosive tags, hidden by the naturally circulating chakra of each person's chakra system. Each agent also carried 10 sealing tags.

The sealing tags should go off a quarter second earlier than the explosives and drop about 50 pounds of senbon and shuriken.

Koko, having activated the main control tag, spread her arms wide and gazed into the sky as if she could see through the dust.

She whispered to herself.

"All glory unto Jashin."

And five seconds after she activated the tag, the glory of Jashin was brought to the Town Square as every single explosive and incendiary tag in the area detonated.