Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bloodborne.

Dusk stretched violet fingers over an orange sky. Clouds, almost purple in the failing light, loitered in the air like chandelier pieces.

Four huge faces carved into the mountainside overlooked Konohagakure. In the dusk, their eyes were blotted out by shadows; their solemn faces turning sinister in the low light. At night, the local children would close their bedroom curtains so they wouldn't feel those huge, dark eyes staring at them in their sleep. A red tower stood beneath those huge, haunting faces. The Old Man sat in its throne. In his youth, the village below had carved his face into the mountainside to acknowledge him as its leader. His was the third.

The Old Man stared out his office window, smoke from his pipe curling around his face, eyes fixed on the pencil line of the horizon. Stacks of yellowing paper gathered dust behind him. Beneath him, he could hear the hum of chatter and clattering carts and slow rumble of countless footsteps as the village began to sleep. The sounds made his stomach roil.

Milk eyes glimpsed the moon, full and pale as a barn egg. The tobacco at the end of his pipe sparked into red embers. Then the Old Man clapped his hands over his eyes.

His body shuddered. He felt like a house with broken windows and torn wallpaper, with the creaking floorboards. And the old ghosts waiting to be exercised. A place ready for the wrecking ball.

The Old Man peeked through his crooked fingers; unable to look away. Milk leaked down his cheeks in thin streams. His teeth clenched so tight he thought they might shatter. His robe was suddenly three sizes too big for him, falling in folds around his papier-mâché body.

He covered his eyes again.

Go away, he thought, please just…go away.

Above the burning village, uncountable screams warbled and twisted, rising and falling like the giant waves breaking against the shore. For a moment, the village sounded like a single, conscious entity being burned alive, each crack and groan of wood splintering under the weight of the flames a plea for mercy.

The Third Hokage stood on the top floor of the Konoha's General Hospital, staring out one of the windows, one foot tapping the floor. He was in the Emergency Room's waiting section. Each tap of his foot made a slapping sound as it echoed down the empty.

A fresh peel of screaming made Hiruzen grimace. He could feel his body lean forward, ready to leap back into the fray. Yet he held himself.

A shaky-legged Genin with eyes the size of plates had called Hiruzen from the battle. His successor had ordered him to come. Ordered him away from the front lines where at that moment hundreds of Shinobi fighting and dying; their screams joining the chorus of terror rising across the entire village.

The Kyuubi—a natural disaster given form—howled and thrashed under the distant full moon, nine red tails pin-wheeling through the air—swatting the Shinobi from its flanks.

The Konoha-nin looked like fleas bouncing on the monster's red pelt. Like circus fleas. Hiruzen felt a giggle grow in his throat. He coughed harshly to stop it.

"Thank you for coming on such short notice," someone said behind him.

The Third spun around, ready to give his successor an earful. Stopped.

It's skin was the colour of candle wax. Blonde cotton was plastered to its pallid forehead. Painted on eyes stared from their holes. For a moment, Hiruzen thought he was looking at a recently raised dead man.

"Thank you for coming," Minato repeated.

Hiruzen's mouth clicked open, then snapped shut. A fresh verse of wailing broke free from the burning village. It fractured his paralysis.

"Thank you? THANK YOU? OUR PEOPLE ARE DYING, MINATO! BURNING IN THEIR BEDS! CRUSHED UNDER THEIR ROOFS! AND YOU ARE JUST STANDING THERE LIKE A CHILD HIDING BEHIND HIS MOTHER'S SKIRTS!"

He inhaled to speak again, but suddenly found there was no air to breath.

"I am still the Hokage, Hiruzen," Minato growled. "I am still your Hokage, Hiruzen."

He stepped forward, looking up into the Third's face with the sort of menace a cat might show the cornered mouse. "This is my village. And I will save it…" he pressed his face close, "...when it suits me."

Suddenly, the Third could breathe again. He staggered to one side, the room spinning beneath him, and caught himself. When the world stilled, Hiruzen looked at his successor.

Where had that come from?

The doll ran a hand over its face and sighed. "I'm sorry, Sensei," it said, sounding like a parent apologizing to his teary-eyed child after a spanking, "but there was something I needed you for. Something that will save us."

"What?" Hiruzen asked.

The blond doll's ears perked for a moment. Murky blue marbles darted back to the ER. Then it looked at him.

"That…child was born."

The way he said it made Hiruzen shudder.

"Minato…what happened?"

The wax doll smiled nauseously. The Third was almost surprised when its face didn't crack.

"I told you, Sensei," it said, holding up both hands, "I became a father…and a widower…all in one night. What an accomplishment, huh?"

Hiruzen's face drained of all colour. His mouth opened to speak, but there were no words.

The doll looked at the Emergency Room's double doors. Its face twisted for a moment. Then it turned and trudged through the closed double doors.

"Step into my parlour," it said.

The Emergency Room was a blank atrium bordered with white sheets. Stainless steel surfaces gleamed under harsh overhead lights. Equipment: an IV drip, a basin for washing up; a tray decked with scalpels and scissors and a bone-saw; a silent heart monitor, lay strewn like a corpses. The scent of blood and disinfectant wafted through the air.

Hiruzen looked at the tray and thought that if someone awoke in a locked room with the same tray of equipment, they might piss themselves. He crushed the urge to laugh.

Then he saw the room's centrepiece.

The operating table was a stainless-steel coffin with struts at one end to keep the patient's legs elevated. There were sheets pulled over its occupant's face, but the midsection lay bare. Her belly was pale and swollen; a barn egg with its red yolk exposed in a long seem up the middle. Stomach and liver and kidneys were naked to the sterilized air. Blood dripped down the sides of the table, forming puddles.

Drip…Drip…Drip…

Fire slicked up Hiruzen's throat. He curled over and vomited. It spilled over his feet, soaked into his sandals, made warm, squishy strings between his toes.

When he was finished, Hiruzen used a small water jutsu to wash the cooling mess from his feet.

"That was unworthy of me…I apologize," he said, cheeks on fire.

Minato was on the other side of the operating table. One hand stroked his wife's covered face.

"Don't worry about it," Minato said, not looking at him. "I was worse."

Needles pricked at the back of Hiruzen's eyes. Heat, unbidden, welled up in his tear ducts. He dashed his corneas with a finger.

"Minato…what happened?"

"Don't ask stupid questions, Hiruzen," Minato hissed.

"But the seal—"

"The seal weakened during the birthing. There were...complications."

"Complications? How? Kushina never even had a fever."

The Fourth's eyes darted to a silent corner of the room. And that same chill tickled Hiruzen's spine.

"It…killed her."

Hiruzen's mouth clicked open.

"Minato, you can't mean—"

The doll spun, clapping its hands over its ears.

"GOD, WOULD YOU SHUT UP!?" it said, eyes burning like candles in their holes. Its wax face crumpled with rage.

Hiruzen recoiled..

His successor lowered his hands. Shook his head like a shaggy dog. "Sorry for that," he said, his face mannequin calm again. "I just can't stand that thing's constant wailing."

Hiruzen's eyes darted to the corner Minato was facing. There was a cot there—hidden behind white curtains. Silence.

Temporary insanity brought on by grief. That had to be it.

"Minato…"

A roar drowned out his following words and shook the room. The ceiling cracked. Plaster dust sprinkled atop their heads. The Third Hokage started as if he'd been struck, spun on his heels, and stormed towards the exit.

"We don't have time for this, Minato!" he said. "We need to stop the Kyuubi from reaching the village before the citizens have escaped!"

A hand stopped him, and a bolt of anger tore through the Third's veil of calm. He spun back, his fist raised to his snarl.

"The Shiki-Fuin."

Hiruzen felt his anger drain out the bottom of his feet."You can't do that!" he cried. Hiruzen grabbed his successor by the shoulders and shook him. "You'll leave your child fatherless!"

"THAT THING IS NOT MY SON!" The Fourth cried, upper lip retreating to bare teeth. "IT KILLED MY WIFE! THERE'S NO WAY THAT THING EVER CAME FROM ME!"

Then he grabbed The Third's arm and pulled him towards the silent crib.

"Here! You look at it! You look at it and you tell me it's my son!"

Minato ripped the veil off the crib with his free hand, and thrust his predecessor forward. Hiruzen hit the edge of the crib stomach first, and almost nose-dived into the crib. He stopped just short of head butting the newborn. Later, he would be glad he had not touched it.

The Third reeled. His brain was suddenly alive; the each individual part writhing independent of one another, like his skull was full of writhing maggots.

The thing in his crib greeted the Old Man with all of its glowing eyes and screamed.

The crunch of wood and the tinfoil taste of blood teased the Old Man out of his memories. He had bitten clean through his pipe. Its splinters lay across his tongue like angel hair. He spat them out into his hand in a warm, red glob of blood and saliva. The Old Man grimaced and wiped the mess on his lap. He then tossed the remnants of his pipe into the waste-basket beside his desk.

He frowned. Blaming the moon for misfortune was the occupation of fortune tellers and festival swindlers. Yet the sight of it made his stomach quiver with the same mixture of fear and infatuation he'd felt when he'd first courted his wife. The comparison left him uneasy.

The Old Man opened the bottom left drawer of his desk. A dozen identical wooden pipes clattered against each other as it opened. He picked one, stuffed fresh leaves into the end, and then clicked his fingers. A small flame appeared atop his thumb. He lit the tobacco and breathed deep. A fine mist coalesced around his mind, dulling any further thoughts of the pregnant moon…and the past.

Eye's that could make crows fall dead from the sky peered around the corner. She had just split off from her friends, just as she always did when she went out in that black dress, the one that barely reached her thighs.

Who are you trying to impress, huh? Not even an hour later and you're already looking for fresh cock? Whore!

He remembered her brown eyes, the way her dimples deepened when she laughed, that deep chuckle in her throat when she came. She said she loved him. Said that she would always be with him. Then she leaves him at his first mistake?!

He had been drunk. He'd told her so. That whore from the bar had been eyeing him all night, the one with the blonde hair and the eyes like a cat in heat. He'd told her so. Told her how she had taken him back to her place and had her way with him. He'd been too drunk to resist—he'd told her that too!

Most men would have never admitted it! They would have let the dead horse lie! But he was better than that! He had told her!

She said she needed some time alone. To get her head together.

And what does she do? Goes out almost every weekend in that little black dress and grinds on other men! Gets drunk off her head! Probably has three of them dripping down her legs as she does!

The thought of her with another man was…it was…

He'd kill her! He'd kill her! He'd rather see her dead!

She was coming. He could hear the heels of her shoes clacking against the the dirt. He stepped back from the alley's entrance and let the darkness swallowing him.

Click-clack…click-clack…click-

Those heels—he remembered the nights when he would come home and she would be wearing them and nothing else.

Click-clack…click-clack…

Those eyes…that body…he'd sworn every night that he would mark every inch of her for himself. Now he was finally going to finish the job.

Click-clack…

The moon hung above the alley entrance; so full and so huge he could almost touch it. She appeared in it, a black figure in a disk of silver light. He surged forward on silent feet, his arms outstretched, hands curled just right to wrap around her neck.

The woman let out a muffled whoop as she was pulled into the darkness.

He thrust her against the wall with a satisfying smack. She grunted, began to fall, righted herself. Then the hands were around her throat.

To her credit, she didn't beg. She knew from the moment those hands began to squeeze—the thumbs digging into her windpipe—that this wasn't about money. This wasn't even—god forbid—rape. Those hands meant to kill, and only to kill.

She clawed at them, leaving long red streaks across the skin. When their grip tightened—calluses on his palms scraping at her throat—she clawed at his face, hidden by the shadows. Her black nails dug bloody wells just below his eyes before the face pulled away.

She tried to gasp but no air came. She went back to work on his fingers again. She wrenched at them, tried to pry his thumbs from her throat, to dig under the digits and pull them from her one by one. But his grip was iron, tungsten, cold steel. He exhaled and she gagged. He stank like a brewery!

She supposed that her own breath wasn't much better. The irony would've made her laugh if not for the danger at hand.

Her heart wrenched as he told her of his affair. For a moment she thought she might cry out, beg him to tell her that it was just a cruel joke, that she'd misheard him; something, anything but that!

His shame—plain across his flat face—was the damning last straw. The truth had been like being bathed with a bucket of cold water. Her skin flushed cold, and the wrenching in her heart became a sharp shard of cold glass, twisting with his evert word. Yet inside, behind her burning eyes, below her heart, her guts were set to boil.

He'd explained how sorry he was. How much he wished he could go back and change things. How much he loved her. And all she could think about was how much she wanted to reach inside his warm corpse and rip out his tepid heart.

But then she stopped, and the fire in her guts turned cold. It was like the cold glass in her heart had smothered the flames. Logic, her last bastion of sanity, took hold.

She was a scientist; a top researcher for Konoha's Research and Development division. She did not fall into fits of rage, or burst into tears. No. She was a scientist and she would approach the problem the way she'd been taught to, with no emotional attachment.

What better way for a scientist to approach a problem than with the scientific method? She had a problem: her lover had cheated. And he had graciously provided the hypothesis: He'd been too drunk to say no. Now she had merely to put his hypothesis to the test.

The experiment she proposed was simple.

If she could go to one of the sleaziest establishments in the Red-light District, and if she could get blackout drunk and dance with strangers and still say no when they wanted to take her home, and she would make sure that they wanted to take her home, then he had no leg to stand on. It was only logical.

The look he had given her was half-way between hurt and horrified.

She sent him home and began to iron out the details.

The experiment would take place over the next 3 weeks. This was unavoidable because she only got the weekends off. She still had to work, no matter how broken her heart was.

There were stipulations, of course:

1. He was strictly forbidden from contacting her.

2. He was to escort her to her destination each time.

3. He would then leave and not return until he had to escort her again.

If, she added, she or her friends caught him outside or anywhere near the chosen establishment, then the experiment would be considered a failure and their relationship—whatever was left of it—was over.

She didn't need an escort, of course. She could have gone with her friends or on her own. She could have simply not gone at all, if she chose to.

But then... she wouldn't have gotten to see his face; wouldn't have felt his eyes ravage her body as they walked; wouldn't have seen the way he had to hunch over to hide his erections. But most of all, she wouldn't have seen that angry and helpless expression he wore when she told him, "good night," and walked away.

That first night something ripped loose from her. Each time she spotted some woman slink past, their dresses clinging snake-skin tight to their hips, she thought of that woman with the blond hair, who had laid her hands all over him.

Suddenly she wasn't drunk enough. The sake scorched her throat as it went down at first, but by the sixth cup she could no longer feel her throat. By her eighth cup she'd somehow wobbled onto the dance floor. In the crush of bodies, all warm and close, there was no shortage of dancing partners. She pressed into welcoming arms. Hands reached teased at her soft places. She welcomed them.

An hour or two or more passed. She was handed more drinks, some sake, some coloured and sickly sweet, clutching at her throat as they went down. She passed from one partner to another. The world was a whirl of faces and colours and hands. Finally, the lights all blinked out. She found herself up against a wall in a darkened alley. Hot, moist breath tickled her neck. Hands reached down, past the hem of her dress, pressing at her thighs, searching, up...up...up...

Then the hand was gone. The man that had her up against the wall cried out. He stumbled back, clutching his hand. She stared dumbly at him, conscious only of how much her feet hurt. Then she saw something glitter metallically in the darkness. There was a kunai buried in his hand.

A breath she didn't know she had been holding left her. Her friend said: "I think you've had enough to drink." For some reason she found the words incredibly funny, so she laughed.

The following 2 outings produced similar results. Each time her friends stopped her from doing something she would regret.

Thanks to her sore feet, the third walk home was slow, even slower after she'd confirmed that, yes, she was fine, and yes, she would go straight home and her friends' paths finally diverged from hers and she was allowed to be alone.

And alone, thoughts swirled as they tend to do, and she thought of him. A warm pain lanced her heart. She was glad for it. Weeks ago, the thought of him made her skin grow cold, and the pain was sharp, and stung like wasp-stings in her heart. The pain was still there, but under the pain was warmth. Warmth and pain at the thoughts of him.

She cradled her hands over her heart. Let the warm sorrow thrum through her and felt it fade.

She would speak with him. She would go home, get a good night's sleep, and they would sit down and work through this problem like adults. Her face burned slightly as she realized that maybe she wasn't the best example of that, but she chalked it up to momentary insanity brought on by emotional strain. Emotional strain brought on by him. She smiled. She'd remind him of that as soon as he started acting childish.

She felt herself pick up speed, lighter than she'd felt in months. She strode briskly, ignoring her aching heels. She didn't notice the man until she was slammed against the wall. And by then it was too late.

Tears leaked from her boiling eyes. Burning needles pierced her lungs. Her face felt like a balloon ready to pop. Her feet kicked the wall behind her; within in the echo chamber of the alley, they sounded like the skittering of giant centipede.

Still those hands squeezed. She tried again, tearing at his fingers with hands made of paper, but there was a manic strength in them that seemed without end. The man grunted, his grip crushing her windpipe.

Her face felt like it was ready to explode. Veins popped on her forehead. Her eyes bulged from their sockets as she rasped for air that would not come. Her vision swirled. She toppled end over end as vertigo took hold.

This was it. She was going.

Even then, underneath the inferno of her starving lungs, she felt the warm pain in her heart. And she thought of him.

His hands jerked and a sound like a tree branch being snapped over someone's knee echoed through the alley. She stopped struggling, but he kept squeezing until something warm and wet trickled through his fingers. He released her. She slid to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut and landed in heap. Her head, now bent in a perfect right angle at the end of her neck, stared face up at him. In the darkness they looked like polished river stones.

He stared down at her for a long time. The only sound besides the wind howling past the mouth of the alley was the sound of his breathing. His chest heaved from his effort. His shoulders and back jostled bulged and shrunk like the muscles in a stallion's legs. Then they began to shake. His head bowed low. A strangled noise escaped his throat. His sobs were carried away by the wind.

It was as he turned to leave that he saw it; a flicker movement out of the corner of his eye. He spun. The back of the alley was silent and dark as a tomb. Nothing breathed back there.

"Who's there?"

Nothing.

He took a step, squinting. The alley was too dark to see. For a moment, he considered leaving. But what if there was someone there? Someone passed out, or a bum who'd been sleeping? Impossible. He'd made sure the alley was empty when he went to wait. There was no one there.

But still...

He walked further into the alley. The dark swallowed him.

And then there was screaming, loud and high. And the sound of tearing flesh. And the screaming became that of an animal's. And then there was tearing sound like wet paper being ripped in half. And the screams turned to wet gurgles. And then, to nothing. And the tearing of meat continued for quite some time thereafter.