Inbox: Ximilia

[singlelogbridge]

// Wei Wuxian

TEXT • AUDIO • VIDEO

XIMILIA

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[singlelogbridge]

[Hold on.]

When it was distributed? By the gods?

[blackfire]

A thousand years ago, a goddess named Kaguya fell in love with a mortal. She would go on to have two sons, the first in our world with human blood to have chakra. However, the world was war-torn, as humans sought each other's destruction with generations of endless war. One of her sons, who adopted the moniker 'the Sage of Six Paths', thought that perhaps humans might be able to understand each other's sorrows, pains and fears if they had access to Ninshū, which is the original and purest form of Ninjutsu. It is a method of using chakra to connect with one another, to use that connection to know without words what one is thinking and feeling. He gave chakra to each living thing to that end, and spent his time as a wandering priest nurturing those pacifist ideals.

（ but, as you know, humans. ）

Unfortunately, one of his own sons learned to weaponize chakra, and that knowledge overtook the Sage's peaceful intentions. From this, shinobi clans developed. Alliances, partitions. With chakra, war happened on a broadened scale, with more death and destruction than he ever could have foretold.

That son was my direct ancestor, Indra, the first progenitor of the Uchiha clan.

[singlelogbridge]

You know it should probably surprise me to hear that you're descended from a god, but somehow it doesn't.

[Anyway] So the introduction of chakra was meant to bring peace and harmony to humankind, and instead humans twisted it into a weapon. Unsurprising but still tragic.

Your Ninshu sounds like the empathy I perform on the dead, though I suspect it's far more potent. Connecting with the dead is easy in comparison to connecting with the living.

[blackfire]

I cannot say. The knowledge has been long lost.

[singlelogbridge]

[He nods even though Itachi can't see him. It's been a thousand years. Who knows which parts of the story remain true and which have become only legend, let alone what has been lost along the way.]

Sorry for all of the questions, I couldn't help myself. The stories about how humans came to use spiritual energy are many and varied in my world. I'm not sure what's myth and what isn't.

Aiya, I've gotten so far from what I wanted to say at the start though. I like your new username, Itachi.

[blackfire]

Discerning fact from fiction is often just as much a matter of opinion as it is truth.

（ the statement about liking the username goes... unremarked upon. ）

[singlelogbridge]

[It's what he expected, and it's enough that Itachi doesn't hang up on him for it. Not that he expected him to after all this time, but still.]

Hmm, you mean I'm not an evil mastermind who curses crops and eats babies, and spends all of my nights seducing innocent maidens? The legends lied???

[blackfire]

（ all of the awful tales told to frighten children into obedience about the exploits of uchiha itachi, as it happens, are entirely true. exaggerated, perhaps — but true at their core. what horror can be improved upon, when it comes to a man that murdered his own kin? ）

Hm.

Well, I have never seen you interact with an innocent maiden.

Perhaps there is something to these tales after all.

（ gallows humour for two. ）

[singlelogbridge]

[He gasps in delight.]

I am telling Gwen.

And who has time for seducing anyway? I spent all of my days being nagged at by Wen Qing and being her personal pin cushion! But we've already covered that part.

[blackfire]

Gwen would agree with me.

（ would she?

idk, probably. ）

Perhaps, then, I should have focused on the startling lack of crops aboard the Ximilia.

（ them curses at work ig. ）

[singlelogbridge]

Ahaha, you think you're very clever don't you. And what about the babies?

[blackfire]

（ he can joke about the other things but really did not want to touch on, you know, the murder of infants for obvious reasons. ）

I think you likely have better culinary taste than that.

[singlelogbridge]

Glad to know you have some faith in me.

Hey, one more question for you I meant to ask earlier. The characters in front of うちは on the poem you gave to Gwen. That's your name, right? That's "Itachi?" Is that the only way its written?

[blackfire]

The characters are katakana. They are shorthand fragmentations of kanji, illustrating sounds rather than logograms.

鼬 would be the representative kanji of my name, though the pronunciation differs in all but kun'yomi.

（ its native reading. ）

1/3

[singlelogbridge]

2/?

[singlelogbridge]

3/4

[singlelogbridge]

[What the fuck]

[singlelogbridge]

Are weasels auspicious?

[blackfire]

They represent death and ill luck.

[singlelogbridge]

[It's bad taste to rag on someone's name and there was probably some reason for it. Maybe it was a family name. Maybe the honor of naming him went to an extremely elderly relative. Like extremely elderly. Maybe it was an accident. He can't believe he's just been casually calling his friend weasel this whole time.]

Ah. Well. Perhaps your parents had a different sort of encounter with a weasel. And anyway, you haven't brought me any ill luck.

[blackfire]

（ he can hear those gears turning from here, and so — ）

There is a clan of ninja weasels.

My grandmother had a contract with one of them, credited on numerous occasions with saving her life.

Cultural connotations aside, weasels have long been friends and allies to my family.

[singlelogbridge]

[Oh thank GOD Itachi, he was grasping at straws over here.]

A weasel who defied expectations and rose above the assumptions made about it! I understand. Noble character matters far more than presumptions.

[blackfire]

（ death and ill luck suit him far better, but — ）

You were that concerned for me, I see.

（ you weirdo. ）

[singlelogbridge]

[Don't make fun of him, he was struggling!]

Not concerned! Who am I to question the name your parents gave you? But I may have been ready to start brainstorming a courtesy name for you. Maybe.

[blackfire]

A name is just a name.

（ a body is just a body. both are simply tools. ）

But I appreciate your （ his...? ）you-ness.

（ nailed it...? ）