#it's 3:30am and I haven't read this post back but fuck it

[strangefellows]

[MAJOR CANTO 6 PART 3 SPOILERS UNDER CUT DO NOT CLICK IF YOU HAVE NOT GOTTEN PAST 6-43]

I'm sorry I'm running on not much sleep I was up til 3:30am and i still haven't beat the final boss but I needed to post this because I feel like I've been validated and i'm still screaming about it

So you know my theory? My controversial ass Limbus theory? The one about Dante? (if you look at the tags of this post you'll know lmao) WELL BOY DID THIS FUCKING CHAPTER DO ME A SOLID.

SO REMEMBER THE FUCKING PART OF THE FUCKING CHAPTER WHERE DANTE GETS A NEW POWER

First of all, the fact that they go "hey wait, can't I also slow down or speed up time too" when I've been yelling about how similar their powers are to the TT Protocol in Lobcorp as part of my Evidence is. A lot to cope with.

And then they activate it. And then it shows this fucking screen.

and i was like hold on was that--

and then it goes into the fight and we get the HEY, DANTE HAS A NEW ABILITY NOW, and I'm going fucking feral so I click on the tab to look, because obviously I'm going to, and what do I FUCKING SEE

THIS.

Now, in case it's too blurry to read -- and I'm still unsure of what the top bit says (aside from da'at, I CAN SURE SEE THAT) -- but I CAN SURE FUCKING AS HELL READ THE NAME HOKMA

EDIT I FINALLY CRACKED AND GOOGLED THE WORDS THEMSELVES INSTEAD OF BEATING MY HEAD ON A TRANSLATOR AND OH MY GOD

a clearer image:

roughly 'eitz ha da'at tov vernah' -- so i googled that and it's a bit misspelled a transliteration BUT!!!!

HAHA HOLY SHIT LOOKS AT ADAM AND WHITENIGHT AND EVERY SINGLE PARALLEL WE GOT IN LOBCORP TO EXACTLY THAT MAN. MAN.

and two things to point out here: one....the logo?

LITERALLY EXACTLY the lor hokma symbol

and two? the way the branches branch out to and around the symbol? let me give you a little illustration

or rather...

yep. YEP. YEP YEP YEP.

so i'm putting my FUCKING MONEY on all of dante's future skills forming a sephirot tree and representing all of the sephirah with their symbols and everything

and also, like. circling back to my theory.

UM, OKAY, SO DANTE IS GETTING POWERS BASED ON THE SEPHIRAH NOW? OKAY I'M PRETTY SURE THAT'S SOLID ASS EVIDENCE OF THEM BEING AYIN.

brb going insane. i mean it's not conclusive, i won't be arrogant and say i'm 100% confirmed right yet, i won't do that until we have like actual onscreen Proof like a flashback or something like that, but this is pretty heavily leaning towards my theory....

we'll just have to see i guess~!

[silverstarlightwrites]

An alternate AU to this one that occurred to me just now

Team Seven take the mission to the Land of Waves. On the bridge, they fight Zabuza and Haku.

On the bridge, Naruto dies.

Something in Sasuke breaks, and he goes berserk. Haku and their ice mirrors scream as they flashboil in the black flames Sasuke summons forth, and it takes only a howl and a wild gesture to send Amaterasu blazing across the bridge to consume Zabuza and Tazuna as well. The stone melts underneath them, while Kakashi snatches up Sakura and flees, and it’s not until Sasuke feels the weight of wet clothes - crushing Naruto’s body to his chest, bloody and so absurdly hot - that he realises the bridge has disintegrated, and the water is burning.

It’s instinct and desperation that let Sasuke to douse the fires he’s conjured, and even then it aches and tastes like blood and acid, and he’s sinking when Kakashi whips across the surface to catch him, the moment the flames are gone.

Sasuke cries into Naruto’s chest, and refuses to let go. Sakura is cold and silent, and she neither speaks nor eats for the grim, slow trek back to Konoha. And it is slow, even further drawn out by the constant fluctuation of chakra from Naruto’s corpse, carried awkwardly and painfully by Sasuke alone.

It’s not Naruto’s chakra, of course. Kakashi dreads the inevitable questions, resolves not to lie when they come, and somehow their absence is even worse.

The moment they walk through the southern Konoha gate, there are Anbu all over them. They pry Naruto’s body from Sasuke’s arms, despite his shouting and kunai, despite the way Sasuke’s eyes ignite into blood red to fight-- But he doesn’t summon Amaterasu again, doesn’t expend the chakra he doesn’t have to try and kill their own. Sakura touches his shoulder, just two fingers, and her face is pale and hollow when she shakes her head, but it’s still more interaction than she’s allowed for the whole trip, and Sasuke obeys her. Blinks his eyes black, slumps in place, and then sags against Sakura.

She catches him, and he’s shaking, and she stares over his shoulder, unblinking, at the Anbu wrapping Naruto’s corpse in chakra-absorbing paper scrawled endlessly with Seals.

Kakashi isn’t sure what she sees, and he isn’t sure he wants to know.

One Anbu stays behind, and they instruct the gutted remains of Team Seven that the Hokage wants to see them. Kakashi can’t bring himself to intervene when Sasuke snarls and lunges, or when Sakura lets him. Doesn’t step in when Sasuke tells them to Fuck Off or when he punches them weakly in the chest - and the Anbu clearly thinks he’s simply not going to get involved, because when they try to catch Sasuke’s wrist they aren’t expecting Kakashi to move. Too fast to be safe, too fast for the chakra use not to burn.

Sasuke leans back into Kakashi as the Anbu trips, and Kakashi feels himself close his hands on Sasuke’s shoulders. “Don’t touch my kids,” he hears himself hiss, and if he doesn’t quite know when he accepted them as his then he doesn’t quite care either.

One of them is dead, and they won’t be permitted to mourn him properly because of the beast caged inside him without his knowledge.

The thought makes Kakashi sick. It all does, all of it. Konoha’s abuse of an innocent child, Kakashi’s complicitness in allowing it to happen. Hiruzen’s cruelty in allowing it also.

In allowing all of it.

Sasuke has lost enough.

The Anbu doesn’t need telling twice, and they leave Kakashi to cajole his kids into seeing Hiruzen. It takes more effort than he’d care to admit. Just physically, the three of them are a wreck - and it’s worse emotionally. Mentally.

“You let them take him.”

It’s the first thing Sakura has said since Naruto died - in a burst of blood and scarlet chakra - and Kakashi suddenly thinks he’s never felt anything so cold as her voice. When he meets her gaze, it’s like drowning.

“I had to. The Hokage will explain.” Because Kakashi is bound not to. By an oath that maybe he shouldn’t have taken, by a promise extracted by force. Why shouldn’t he tell them?

He doesn’t, of course. He scoops Sasuke up, and despises that Sasuke simply allows it, and offers Sakura a hand as they start walking. Sakura ignores it, striding ahead with her back too stiff and her hands clenched too tight. The walk to the Hokage Tower, while significantly shorter, is the same as the trip from Waves to Konoha.

Hiruzen ushers them into his office, tearful, and Sasuke struggles stiffly out of Kakashi’s grip. Red flickers and whorls through his eyes, and it’s impossible to know if he’s fighting to ignite his Sharingan or if he’s fighting not to.

“I’m sorry.” It’s low and mournful and wet. It’s insulting.

Sakura snaps. She flies into a rage, screaming obscenities. Her teammate is dead, and she’s never experienced loss like this before, and gods but she watched it happen, and no pitiful, pathetic ‘I’m sorry’ can ever undo that. That Hiruzen even tries sends her over the edge.

Nobody stops her. By the time she burns out, the office is torn apart, papers scattered everywhere and the desk overturned. Sakura has scratched her nails bloody against the woodwork. When she collapses to the floor and howls, Sasuke finally approaches her, sinks to her level, and wraps his arms around her.

Perhaps he understands, then. Perhaps a hug - so tight as Sakura clings back that it may be the only thing holding her together - is all he wanted after the horror of his clan’s slaughter.

Kakashi catches himself wondering if Sasuke ever got that hug, but he knows the answer.

Of course he didn’t.

Hiruzen explains to them what a Jinchuriki is. He explains the basic concept of a Bijuu, and gives them a short summary of the Nine-Tails. They take it blankly, too much to process over the top of their raw grief, but they look to Kakashi as if searching for confirmation and Kakashi nods. Tells them it’s true.

And then, because it’s not enough, it’s pathetic an explanation, he hears himself continue.

Because “He deserved better. We failed him.” Hears it spin, feels more than sees the way Sasuke and Sakura twitch and shrink, and then corrects himself. His own voice is like tar in his throat.

“You failed him.”

Sasuke and Sakura follow him out of Hiruzen’s office, and Hiruzen doesn’t try to stop them.

Kakashi sets the pack to watch them when they all end up at the war memorial. It wasn’t exactly a decision to go there, of course, but it never really is. All eight ninken are there already when they arrive, and they encourage Sakura and Sasuke to collapse and curl up with them, but Kakashi resists. He has something else to do.

And it’s dark by the time he comes back, his kids and his pack all bundled up in his far-too-tiny apartment, but he wakes them all the same. Demanding Naruto’s body back hadn’t been easy or clean, and the results of the chakra-draining done to preserve as much of the stray Nine-Tails chakra bleeding out of where it had torn free upon Naruto’s death is... messy.

Naruto’s body stays wrapped up the way Kakashi walked out of the Anbu Blue Vault with it. Only his head is visible, and his hair is knotted and matted with blood and oil, but it doesn’t stop Sakura from running her hands through it, or Sasuke from laying his head against Naruto’s chest.

Not enough people come to Naruto’s funeral. The whole fucking Village should mourn him, the child who protected them from the Nine-Tails for his entire, short life. His loss should have been overwhelming - it should have brought all of Konoha to a fucking stop.

But it doesn’t. Umino Iruka attends, and he’s quiet but he weeps ceaselessly the whole day. Sakura and Sasuke seem to welcome his presence, so Kakashi doesn’t nothing to discourage it.

Hiruzen shows up, perhaps halfway through. It takes all of Kakashi’s still-wan strength to hold Sakura back from trying to maul him, and Sasuke doesn’t fight one way or another when he lights up his Sharingan at the Hokage’s approach.

“Go. Away,” Sasuke snarls at him, and for just a moment it seems like Hiruzen might scold the boy, who’s been stripped of his family in half a dozen different ways, over and over again, as if he’s expressing his grief incorrectly, and that moment is all it takes for Kakashi to speak over all of them.

It’s the voice he used as the Hound. He hasn’t heard it for years. “You should go, Hokage-sama. You don’t want to make me choose a side here.”

Because Kakashi is loathe to fight Konoha at all, let alone its leader, but he knows without a doubt that he will. For Sasuke. For Sakura. If ever the decision must be made, Kakashi knows he will turn on Hiruzen in an instant if it would protect his kids from ending up like him.

Konoha would not make a broken blade out of Sasuke. It would not strip Sakura of her soul.

Orochimaru comes. He seeks out Sasuke, and the power he offers is too tempting for Sasuke to pass up - but he refuses to sneak away in the dead of night. Team Seven’s progress has halted in the aftermath of Naruto’s death; Hiruzen has tried several times to full the gap in their unit, but Sakura and Sasuke vehemently refuse to accept one, and Kakashi does not make them. He will not.

Naruto cannot be replaced. The gap can never be sufficiently filled.

And so comes the morning that Sasuke asks for their company in leaving. He’s been suffocating under Konoha’s weight for a long time, Kakashi realises that morning, and he’s finally reached his limit. Kakashi doesn’t try to talk him out of it; he won’t succeed. There’s no point. Revenge has been his motivation for so long that Sasuke will never quite learn how to give it up, and now he has so much more for which to seek vengeance.

It will only be Itachi first. After that, all of Konoha is culpable for Naruto’s death, and the endless suffering he endured before it. Kakashi is not fool enough to think he can change Sasuke’s mind.

Sakura agrees on the spot. She’s unrecognisable from the bubbly genin Kakashi took custody of from the Academy. She’s gaunt and messy and angry, and she’s forsaken her friends in order to follow Sasuke into the dark. She’s clinging to him, ferociously, in a different way than she’d tried to before.

She’s clinging to Sasuke the same way Kakashi had clung to Rin - how Rin had clung right back - after Obito’s death. Sasuke is her constant, her reassurance that Naruto’s absence won’t just be for nothing, that someone is going to pay for it. That she’s going to help make that happen.

You don’t want to make me choose a side, Kakashi had told Hiruzen, as if they were words of fucking prophecy. Because here are his kids, minds made up, choosing a side that Kakashi would rather flay himself than join - and yet, here he is too, and he knows already he’s going to go with them.

Choosing against Konoha tastes like ozone and fear and self-loathing, but choosing against Sasuke and Sakura is unconscionable. Even this, even this, Kakashi will do. Watching them die is a terror that keeps him up at night, a nightmare with its hands around Kakashi’s throat, a dread that’s getting ever colder. That this might lead to that outcome takes his breath away.

But the thought of not being there is even worse. Konoha forsook Sasuke when his family was wiped out, and Konoha forsook them both once again when they came home bloodied and shattered. Konoha has gone on the same as always, as if nothing even happened, and it always has when the whole world was supposed to shatter and didn’t - with Obito’s eye in Kakashi’s skull and Rin’s blood on Kakashi’s hands - and that truth does absolutely nothing to stay Sasuke’s hatred or Sakura’s wrath. They are young and angry and wounded, and there is no words Kakashi can say that will convince them to reject the power on offer, no matter how dangerous and untrustworthy the source may be.

And he refuses to let them do this alone. Everyone will want their heads, but Kakashi has fought and killed the best of them, and if - in the end - his only purpose is to protect his remaining kids, where he failed to protect the third, then perhaps the Hound yet serves a purpose still.

So Kakashi selects a kunai, and helps them score through their Konoha hitai-ite, and lets them lead him into hell.

[bloody-maiden]

I did the elevator ritual. I think something followed me home. I haven't slept properly in days.

Hi NoSleep! Makayla again. The feedback on the hooded man honestly blew me away, thank you for showing such an interest! Glad to see me endangering my sanity is entertaining people. (I’m absolutely joking).

Link to the Hooded Man ritual I did on Wednesday night:http://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/2mxfmk/so_i_did_the_hooded_man_ritual/

So, like two comments told me to do the elevator ritual, and I’d honestly never heard of it before this, and I was seriously intrigued. Read up on it, and it honestly didn’t need that much preparation so I figured it’d be quick and simple. It was honestly one of the most nerve wracking things I’ve done. (I did on Friday night and had every intention of uploading this on Sunday night, but shit broke loose).

To anyone who isn’t familiar to the game, should probably read this: http://blahknow.blogspot.ca/2013/08/games-you-dont-want-to-play-3.html

There is an apartment building about a five minute walk away from my house and it has 20 floors, so finding a building wasn’t an issue. I started walking there around 4:30am, since I didn’t want anyone to up and around and using the elevator. That would be a bitch to be honest. Everything was dark and silent and getting in wasn’t a problem. There was like one security guard outside the gates, but he didn’t seem to care much since I’m a tame looking 20 year old white girl; probably looked like I was coming back from a late Friday night party. Summonin’ demons n shit in your general vicinity, son.

There were stairs on the right and three elevators on the left, and everything was quiet. I got into one of the elevators (the one in the middle) and did the 4-2-6-2-10-5 combo, I won’t bore you with the details. When the elevator stopped at the 5th floor, I had to hold in a fucking scream because the “girl” was standing there almost in my face, and I had to try really, really hard not to stare her right in the fucking face. She wasn’t even a girl, she was more of a halo of dark energy that glowed really brightly, if that makes sense. I don’t remember much about her which is pretty fucking weird. She was wearing a dress of some sort though and had short dark hair.

I’ve done Ouija boards, I’ve done rituals, hell, I didn’t even panic like this during the Hooded Man, but being in that elevator with that girl made me internally freak out like nothing else. I shakily pressed one, and boom, the elevator started going up to the 10th floor. And instead of being relieved that I was doing it right, it made me panic for no fucking reason. The doors opened, right on the hallway of the 10th floor. I’ve never seen it before, in normal circumstances, but it was so…dark. I couldn’t see the end of the corridor, but right at the very end, I could see this strange dark glowing light. I shakily stepped foot out of the elevator, and in my head, all I could hear was a stupid whiny girl’s voice going, ‘Where are you going, Makayla?’

Of course the ritual said to ignore it, so I did, and leaving the girl standing there, I started walking down the hallway. As I progressed further past, the glowing light at the end of the hallway illuminated the space around me. The apartment doors on either side of me were rusted shut, like they hadn’t been opened in years, and as my eyes focused to the stupid darkness, I figured out that the red light was in fact a glowing cross. Not the Jesus crucification cross, but like, an addition sign if anything.

It was uneventful, for the most part, but the air was heavy with something, and it was making me really fucking antsy. Also, it felt like, the more I walked towards the cross, the more it grew away from me. I was pretty fucking determined to get to it, until those stupid doors started banging and rattling and knocking and it was the most terrifying fucking thing, fuck my life. No ritual has ever made me book it to the elevator like this one. Thank god, I took care to take the one I came in, because I couldn’t think straight at the time. This might even sound rushed because I don’t know what the fuck I was doing, I just wanted out. I don’t even want to write about it. I reached it fairly quickly, and I swear to god, I fucking stabbed that call button like nothing else. It took like ten fucking decades to show up, and those doors didn’t stop rattling until I was inside the elevator and hazily doing the combo.

I have never been more relieved to reach that first fucking floor. Everything looked normal, no more heavy air, no more darkness, security guard was still there, and yet I couldn’t stop fucking panicking. I ran home so fucking fast, and I know it sounds embarrassing now, because I didn’t even do anything, but I could not stop crying. I think the guard thought I was on something.

I got home, I watched a movie to make myself feel better. I even started writing the first part of this post, so if the first part sounds…cheerier than the second, it’s because I wasn’t as terrified then, as I am now. I even remember replying to someone’s reddit comment, saying I had done the ritual and I was alive and well and would write about it the following day.

I think I passed out around 7? Because I don’t remember falling asleep.

I woke up on that floor.

It was so fucking terrifying because I had been on my couch, and the ritual had said that if you made it home you wouldn’t be taken back, but yet there I was, passed out in that stupid carpeted hallway, with the air heavy around me, and no sunlight anywhere. There was no cross, but the panic I felt was like nothing fucking else, and I swear to god I’ve never run home this fast.

I didn’t even want to remember it, I didn’t want to write about it, I didn’t want to do anything, which is why I procrastinated making a post for so long. Something about this ritual fucking unhinged me, and although nothing happened the second time, just waking up there made me fucking nope. Today I finally built up the nerve to write about it, and I feel a bit better now, but I’m so fucking panicky and I feel so followed by something and I have no idea why. There’s nothing THERE. I haven’t slept properly since Sunday night, I feel like there’s someone looking at me all the time, and I want it to STOP.

A lot of people wanted me to do the midnight man, 3 kings and hide and seek alone, and I had plans to do the midnight man tonight, but after how shaken I still am, I think I’ll hold these off until the end of the week.

Thank you for the feedback, thank you for reading.

MAKE IT STOP. MAKE IT STOP. I FEEL LIKE SOMETHING'S GOING TO JUMP ME I FEEL LIKE THERE'S SOMEONE IN MY HOUSE, EVEN THOUGH IM HOME ALONE. STOPSTOSPTOP.

by reddit user Makayladoesrituals (Source)