Finally got time after an english exam. I breezed it. It's the only subject I didn't need to study much for. And now I have a five day holiday.. Yay!! And sorry for being so late!!! I am always procrastinating but I promise I will try to find more time from now on.
Anyway, watch out for intense scenes in this one.

***
𝑸𝑶𝑻𝑪:

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒐𝒏𝒍𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒔𝒉𝒆 𝒌𝒏𝒆𝒘 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒂 𝒑𝒊𝒕𝒄𝒉 𝒅𝒂𝒓𝒌 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒍𝒅 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒏𝒐 𝒍𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒕𝒐 𝒈𝒖𝒊𝒅𝒆 𝒉𝒆𝒓.

***
She was wrong.

A scoff almost made its way to her throat at how confident she was that nothing in this world would hurt her more than she had hurt herself, but even that felt painful. The stifling sting rising in her throat made even a fraction of breath horrid. She clenched her jaw, only to find her teeth chattering against each other with the intensity of the pain in her wounds. Regeneration could only help as far as her wounds, not the seething sensation travelling inside her nerves, throughout her body. She tried her best to alleviate the scorching heat in her arm, which no longer went any further than the elbow, ending at an abrupt stump with red skin, and cells trying to braid themselves together so painfully slowly. She sang songs with incoherent wordings that only came out as a series of gasps and moans; it being too excruciatingly painful to actually spill a word. She counted, not bothering to stop once she started. It was not only her body that was broken, but her mind. Her eyes had lost the glint in them; white and red sockets with previously bright sapphire dead leaves, not dancing around in wary anymore, stood in place instead.

Her mind was a fuzzy station of unintelligible ideas, immutable muttering, images of past, hazy faces, songs, calculations, dreams and whatnot.

One such particular dream she remembered. One which wasn't actually a dream, but another memory seen from the present point of view. Where she was still three, hopping on her little legs, fingers snaked around her mother's, whose face's features she couldn't discern. Her father stood in proximity to her child-self, hand entangled in a similar manner. She could only watch the exchange from a distance. Her voice, her sight, her pleads went unnoticed. She wanted to stop time right there, plead for the girl that was supposed to be her past, to not get enthralled in the web of the man's lies. But there existed a separate emotion, stranger than any she had felt in quite a while, when she saw the family... smiling.

Envy.

She couldn't help but envy the family of three, smiling with no care of the world. The kid had a family. She didn't. The only thing that surrounded her was the web of lies fed to her and the monstrosities that fed on people's innocent hope. The only thing she knew was a pitch dark world with no light to guide her.

Why?

Why couldn't she just be as carefree as the little kid before her?

Where did her own happiness lie?

The questions lost their echo amid the sound of winds whirling, the sweet scent of the familiar Kuboshi magnolia tree, its leaves dancing in the air, twisting and descending when the wind died down. She was surprised she remembered it, albeit at some hidden corners of her consciousness, her first day at school. How she just wanted to steal the moment to herself, how she felt her heart clench at–

The sounds of footsteps trailed her away from her thoughts, leaving them hanging just like her. She was still exposed, body still tied by something she couldn't name. She had the imagery in her minds, those long metals jingling when she moved, but what were they called? She didn't remember. Neither did she concern herself with the too familiar footsteps of the man who had turned her beautifully crafted body into a disgusting mess. With one arm missing, it was her other and only arm that pulled her body weight up. The skin on her calf was missing, and as soon as she acknowledged it, it finished regenerating.

She moved her gaze to her arm, which was now up to her wrist, and then surveyed her body with an apathetic expression. The man before her was silent, unmoving from his spot as she busied herself with gazing at the now mostly healed body. That meant it was time. Time to get new wounds.

Kite was before her, ditching the white lab coat and in simple white hoodie and black sweatpants. Casual. Only until the scalpel he held in his hand which was not that casual. With a smirk, he held the metal weapon on her neck, and she forced her eyes shut, awaiting the pain that came, the same pain she had endured for ten days, losing most of her sanity, not like she had much to begin with. The metal ran down her skin, splitting the white porcelain sheets into two as it did, blood running down the wounds as the metal lowered, stopping just above her cleavage as Kite took a moment to admire his deed, eyes scrunched low in the most nauseating way possible and lips pressed to contain a squeal of pleasure. Yes, that guy eyeing her was a psychopathic sadist with the need to peel skin about once every few hours. That was not for any samples, not for research, just plain fun. A pastime activity for the guy. But he had told her it had more to it than that, and she had listened. Probably because she was already out of wits at how agonizingly slowly he was running his sharp blade through her skin to enjoy the feel of it, or it could be that she had no choice but to relent. What it was, he promised to tell her later.

"I can't express how amazingly satisfying this is." He clenched his jaws after he said the same damn thing for about the fifth time the same day. "You would have spared yourself a little comfort if you had kept your damn mouth shut. I didn't want to show this side of mine to you."

He snickered and her silence prevailed, just like it had been for ten days in his presence, sparing the painful moans and howls of pain when she couldn't contain them.
Tears ran down the side of her eyes as she bit her lip to suppress a wail when Kite twisted the scalpel in her kidneys, screwing it over and over as blood spilled out like waterfall staining his white hoodie and hand, and seemingly fawning over her reaction.

"But, as I already told you, it has more to it than the pleasure I feel on seeing you tortured," he planted his gaze on her, "as to why I hate you so much, it's because you are the daughter of the sick man who is the root of all this."

She couldn't deny most of it, except the word 'sick', and she mentally scoffed under the pretense of the tear-stained face, and features pulled up tight to endure the stab going deeper inside her with more crimsom liquid rushing out of the hole.

𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘴 𝘴𝘪𝘤𝘬 𝘢𝘴 𝘩𝘪𝘮.

"But the other reason is," he started, enjoying her reaction to the treatment he was subjecting her to, "we discovered the reason of your strength and your insane thinking are the same."

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘖𝘞𝘈𝘕 𝘱𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘴... she frowned at the ridiculous attempt to call it discovery.

"Your self harm."

𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵–

She choked on nothing, fear seeping into her paler than usual face.

𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘥𝘪𝘥 𝘩𝘦 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘴𝘢𝘺? 𝘐𝘴 𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘢𝘯𝘦? 𝘚𝘩𝘪𝘵 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘵 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘵 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘵 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘵 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘵...

Her mind resorted to cursing as a measure to calm her racing nerves down. How could it possibly be that her self-harm made her powerful? Yes, it did make her insane, but being powerful had nothing to do with that.

Seeing her unresponsiveness, he pulled out the scalpel from above her kidneys and stabbed them into her abdomen, as she cried out loud, startled at the sudden assault – some of her guts spilling out when he retracted his blood-stained, red-black hands with pale, red meat pieces lying over it – and slowly reduced back to whimpers, as he found his own mouth being pulled up in amusement.

As she sniffed, he continued, "We knew already that pain is what makes a POWAN stronger. The regenerative power comes into play; the more they are in effect, the more effective they become. Our own experiments verified that but nobody could stand the amount of pain in addition to the pain of the body being adjusted to the changes inside." His calm voice gradually turned feisty, crazily terrifying as his breaths muffled his words, "something, we needed something, just something to... to get the thing to fucking work. Haha... ha ha... you know what we found?" His vicious sneer haunted her eyes, his bloodied finger jabbed her collarbone, "it's your dirty blood. Your dear grandpas were both doing something to alter their disgusting blood. And you inherited it, somehow, with more effectiveness than any. Bingo!" He clapped his hands, "we found it. The thing we had been searching for. Then what?! We just had to lure you into an alley, just make a damn POWAN we were controlling do the job and ta-dah!" His sly grin toned down into something akin to mischief, but the repulsiveness of his face never left him, "However, you escaped with so much as a scratch, but look at what we made."

He stretched his hands, his bawling laughter echoing in the room as Asami's face was pulled into a distraught, distressed expression. Her eyes widened with the utmost pain at the sudden revelation.

"A REAL HALF-POWAN!" He announced to particularly no one, the only sound in the room being his demonic laughter. The silver-head gasped, lips trembling and slightly parted. She breathed more than once, slow and steady, but her hammering heart never calmed down. It hurt. Something stabbed her chest, the weight on her body proliferating like she would crumble beneath it. Her widened eyes never relaxed as she gazed at the man before her. Neither did her trembling jaw.

All the pain, all the hurt, all the damage to her heart, all the hatred, all the dejected feelings, everything... was because of this monster.

He was the one who made her another monster.

______________________________________

Did it!

Ngl, I cried at the last point when I imagined Asami's pained expressions. How betrayed she must have felt even from someone she didn't trust an ounce. Ah damn!
Moving on, how was the chapter?? Let me know if you liked it?
Was the scene with the blood too intense??
I am excited to see where this goes next.

Also, A very happy birthday to my Naruto!!!🥳🥳🥳. I don't know what age he turned this year but I wish he lives forever!!😭😭 Love you my foxy, little fishcake!!