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Orochimaru miscalculated. It wasn’t something that happened often which made this all the more horrific.
Danzou had gone to check on the sannin’s progress. With the failure of 47 of their 60 subjects, Danzou had ordered the mokuton project be shut down and the remaining subjects disposed of. Orochimaru insisted on studying every failure, trying to determine what went wrong. Danzou was of the mind that the mokuton would never accept a new host. It wasn’t like the sharingan. It didn’t adapt to the body, but rather forced the body to adapt to it and none, but a Senju were capable of surviving that. Not even Senju blood guaranteed success. It was too diluted after all these year.
Danzou found Orochimaru unconscious, surrounded by shattered glass and a tangle of thorn bushes. Instead of persevered corpses, towering oak trees shattered the roof and cracked the foundation of the lab.
“What happened?” Danzou snarled, shaking Orochimaru awake.
The sannin had a dazed look on his face and it took him several seconds to reginster the destruction around him. A slow smile spread across his face. “It worked,” he croaked out. Several of his ribs were broken and he hadn’t been this beat up since Jirayia had dragged him along to spy on some bathhouse and Tsunade found out.
“Obviously,” Danzou snarled. “Where is it?”
Orochimaru just shrugged and looked around for his notes.
“Is it loose?” Danzou demanded.
Orochimaru glared at the older man. “Obviously,” he sneered. “The subject likely won’t survive long, not burning through chakra like this, but if I can find my notes I should be able to replicate it.”
Danzou’s fist slammed into Orochimar’s jaw and the sannin dropped like a sack of potatoes. Danzou didn’t want to replicate this. This was a disaster. This was uncontrollable raw power. It didn’t matter how long it took this power to consume it’s host, for now the mokuton was loose in the world. Konoha’s greatest kekkei genkai was alive again and it would be so easy to steal.
Danzou left Orochimaru in the ruins of the lab. He figured if luck was on his side, the rest of the roof would fall in and save Danzou the trouble of dealing with the mad scientist.
---
The boy ran through the woods. He didn’t know who or what he was, but the word boy felt right.
Really, the boy knew very little. He knew he was supposed to be dead, same as the others. For a brief time, they’d all been alive and linked. One by one, the boy had felt them die.
The energy that had linked them burned too bright through their veins.
Now, it ran hot and sharp in the boy. He could feel it with every beat of his heart and breath of his lungs.
The power that twisted and settled itself around his bones called to the forest. The trees and plants swayed at the boy’s passing. His bare footprints filled with wildflowers.
The boy came to a fast, wide river. On the bank, an oak tree twisted and bent itself to make a bridge.
The boy swayed on his feet, exhaustion settling around his shoulders like a cloak. He blinked a couple times and forced himself to climb onto the tree bridge. He needed to keep moving. He didn’t know where he was going, just that both he and the power inside of him needed to get away from the place that had bonded them.
On the other side of the river, the boy waved his thanks to the tree and it stood back up as if the boy had never passed this way.
The boy was too tired to run now. He staggered forward, pausing to rest every few steps. The longer he lingered, the taller the grass and underbrush around his legs grew.
When his legs became too heavy to lift, the boy collapsed to the forest floor and curled himself into a ball. He never noticed that the trees were different here.
The white trunks were like ghosts in the thickening fog. In the distance, the river grew wider still and thundered over a great waterfall with the force of a hundred streams before finishing its journey to the sea.
---
2 hunter ninjas, the elite forced of the Village Hidden in the Mist slipped through the dense, inland fog. “Word has it the Konoha Anbu have been active near the border,” the taller one said with a deep low voice.
“We’ll need to double check that they haven’t crossed the river,” the smaller said to her partner.
“So soon after the last war? You don’t think they’d dare…” the man trailed off. A strange chakra prickled his skin.
The woman held up her fist, signaling a stop. She’d sensed it too.
Slowly, silently they moved towards the source.
In a clearing only a quarter mile from the river that formed a natural border between Fire and Water country, the 2 hunters found the source of the strange chakra.
Ferns, normally knee high at the most towered 6 feet tall. The air hummed with energy. Just standing in the clearing seemed to ease weary muscles.
“It’s so alive,” the man breathed.
His partner shot him a glare for breaking the silence.
She slipped into the ferns, nudging them aside gently, carefully to not make a sound.
In the center of the clearing, cradled in a bed of green ferns and wildflowers was a boy.
The hunter stepped closer and frowned.
The boy couldn’t be more than 5 or 6. Hewas barefoot and the soles of his feet were cut and bloody like he’d been running for some time. His legs were scratched and bleeding like he’d fought his way through dense underbrush. Other than a thin, white shift he was naked.
It almost looks like a hospital gown , the hunter thought. The closest hospital was in Kiri, a day’s run away, unless Konoha had decided to build one in the wilderness of Fire Country.
The boy whimpered in his sleep, but didn’t wake.
The hunter frowned behind her porcelain mask and then knelt down beside the boy. Logic said he must be the source of this incredible chakra and the reason for the insane plantlife. Just being near him, she felt smothered by energy.
Logic also said the boy was small, injured, and in need of medical care.
The hunter reached out and laid a hand on the boy’s forehead. He was burning up. Gently, she smoothed the sweat soaked brown hair out of the kid’s face.
He leaned into the touch, but his eyes stayed close.
Next, the hunter felt for his pulse. It was light, fast, and irregular. Like his heart was desperately trying to keep beating.
That made sense. The hunter couldn’t even imagine the amount of chakra it would take to do this.
“You need to stop,” the woman said softly. “Relax. Stop burning your chakra. It’s killing you. You’re safe now.” She didn’t know who she was talking to. The boy clearly couldn’t hear her.
The ferns overhead swayed in a nonexistent breeze. They brushed the hunter’s head. A vein wound its way up her ankle and the hunter had the distinct impression of being evaluated.
“Let me help you,” the hunter said.
The chakra faded from the air. The plants stilled.
The hunter looked down at the boy. He still hadn’t stirred, but there was a hint more color in his ashen cheeks.
Carefully, the hunter slid her hands under the boy and scooped him up. She held him to her chest and walked back through the ferns to her partner.
“I think I found what the anbu are looking for,” she said.
The other hunter frowned. “If that’s the case, I’m not inclined to give him back,” he muttered. “Kid looks like he just came from the frontlines.”
“That’s not for us to decide,” the woman said. She kept her voice emotionless, but at the thought of handing this child over to Konoha she held the boy a little tighter. “Whoever he is, he’s important. We need to get him to the hospital.”
---
It took 3 days for the boy to wake up. Konoha never contacted Kiri about a missing child.
When the boy woke up, he didn’t speak. Doctors and shinobi both tried to get him to explain where he’d come from and what sort of power he possessed.
A second team of shinobi had been sent to investigate and found a train of abnormal plant life from the riverbank to the clearing-- wildflowers not native to Water Country, trees growing in odd and twisted shapes, abnormally large or dense undergrowth, and black berry bushes full of fruit months before they should even be blooming.
The 2 hunter-nin who had found the boy kept an eye on the rumors.
More concerning than his refusal to speak was the boy’s refusal to eat or drink. He fought the doctors when they tried to give him an IV, but the strange powers he’d displayed in the first didn’t activate.
After he bit a nurse, the shinobi assigned to guard him intervened, pinning the boy down so that he could be sedated and given an IV for fluids and nutrients.
The boy continued to decline.
After a week, a small, dark haired woman signed the visitor logs and presented the guards with a scroll from the Mizukage. She was to be allowed to speak to the boy.
The hunter-nin wore her face like a mask of its own, face impassive. A faint trace of a smile always on her lips and a pale blue dress gave the illusion of youthful innocence. No one ever noticed the muscles beneath the dress and they were so quick to call the way she moved “femine grace.” How could such a pretty, sweet, little thing be a trained killer?
The woman surveyed the boy’s room. It was bare and spartan, the white walls and the white tile did little to combat the perpetual gray skies Kiri was known for.
Various machines beeped and hissed, monitoring the boy and administering different medications, trying to keep him alive.
The hunter-nin stepped closer to the bed.
The boy was pale and listless. His eyes were open, but dull.
The woman reached into her pocket and pulled out a carefully wrapped bundle. Inside was a 4 inch long stem with a dozen small blossoms on it.
Shinobi tears were one of Kiri’s most beloved wildflowers. The small plants were common, but only bloomed every few years, sending up a tall stalk that hung heavy with little blue blossoms like teardrops. The flowers were covered in fine hairs that caught the light and gave them a permanent silvery sheen, like they were covered in dew. The leaves of the plant had mild healing properties, but the blossom was said to be far more potent.
For years, gardens had tried to cultivate them in greenhouses without success. The plants only grew wild and had a preference for the sites of old battles. Some hypothesized it was the iron from old blood in the soil.
The hunter-nin told the boy as much. She thought she saw a spark or recognition and life in his dark eyes. The woman set the flower on the boy’s chest and turned to go.
“They like chakra,” the boy mumbled.
The hunter turned back to the boy. “How do you know?” she asked.
“They told me.” The boy shifted to grab the flowers off his chest. His movement was sluggish.
At the boy’s touch, the flower seemed to shudder and from the scrap of a stem the rest of a plant sprung into being.
The boy smiled sleepily and relaxed back into the bed.
The hunter knew that somewhere, doctors and shinobi were observing this through cameras. She wondered if they had realized the significance of this yet. There was only one jutsu that could do that and it was supposedly extinct.
“You need to eat,” the hunter said softly.
The boy shook his head.
“You’ll die if you don’t. The doctors are trying very hard to keep you alive. You should at least meet them halfway.”
“Don’t want to live like this,” the boy mumbled. He stared up at the ceiling, but his fingers twitched, itching to rip out the tubes and needles.
The hunter-nin nodded. She could understand. She stepped up to the bed and reached out to tap 2 of the IV ports. “You eat and drink and these will go away.” She gently touched another in the crook of his elbow on the other arm. “Take the pills they give you to prevent infection and this one can go too.”
The boy narrowed his eyes at the woman. His memory of being made was hazy, but he remembered deals like this. They never ended well.
“If you don’t fight the nurses when they come to check you, they won’t need to keep you hooked up to all these machines. When you’re better, we’ll find you a home.”
“You’re lying,” the boy mumbled.
“I give you my word as a shinobi of the hidden mist.”
“You’re the one that found me in the forest, aren’t you?”
The woman nodded.
“What’s your name?”
“Nariko. What’s yours?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember anything from before they made me.”
Nariko nodded. “Names are only as important as you make them. I’ve had several in my life. What do you want to be called?”
“Tenzou,” the boy mumbled. He didn’t know where the name came from in his subconscious, but it felt right.
“Alright then, Tenzou, welcome to Kirigakure. You’ll be welcome here.”
---
Over the next week, the boy improved and the hunter visited him everyday.
The Mizukage took a distinct interest in the boy and the woman who had managed to pull him back to life.
A summons from the Mizukage was rarely a good thing, but Nariko walked in with her head held high.
Yagura was a small man with cold eyes. Some said you could see the beast that shared his body just behind those eyes and in the cruel twist of his smile when he fought. He was the first jinchuuriki to earn the title of Kage and his reputation preceded him.
The Mizukage regarded the hunter-nin before him for a long minute. She was small and slender, but muscular. She carried herself with pride, wore the uniform like it meant something, and kept her forehead protector well polished.
There were blue and white beads braided into her hair beside the strip of metal spikes that kunoichi with long hair often wore. The beads were the mark of the nearly extinct Yuki Clan. She was bold to wear them openly.
The Mizukage liked the woman. She showed no fear when she knelt before him and returned his stare.
“I have a mission for,” the Mizukage began. “The boy is an asset. I want him to serve Kiri willingly.”
“He may not be fit to be a shinobi.”
“There are other ways he can serve. To steal the Senju bloodline from Konoha is the accomplishment of a lifetime.”
The hunter nodded.
“You will guard him and train him if he can be trained.”
“Why me?”
The Mizukage smiled. Bold indeed, he thought. “For someone like you to serve Kiri, you must truly believe in the village and the job. I want that passed on.”
Nariko dipped her head in acceptance and the beads in her hair caught the dim light in the Mizukage’s office. “My love is for the people of Kiri. I will do whatever must be done to protect them.”
When Nariko was gone, the Mizukage kept thinking over her last words. They had almost sounded like a threat.
---
3 weeks after he’d been found in the woods, Nariko kept her word and led him out of the hospital.
As if fate itself was rooting for the boy and the hunter, the ever present mist thinned and the sun painted the world golden. Light refracted through the water and glittering rainbows danced across every surface.
Nariko saw Tenzou’s eyes go wide and heard his breath catch. His little hand tightened in hers.
“Welcome to Kirigakure,” Nariko said. “It’s not always rainbows, but there’s good people here. It’s a place worth protecting.”
Tenzou nodded even as clouds pushed inland from the coast and cast the city back into gray half light.
It took the better part of a year for Tenzou’s powers to stabilize. He rarely spoke about where he came from. His backstory was something Nariko pieced together from things said after nightmares and the way certain sounds and smells made the child freeze and his eyes go blank.
Nariko knew nothing of the mokuton, not even it’s proper name, but she knew well enough about kekkei genkais and the way power ripples beneath your skin. She taught Tenzou to meditate, not to erase the emotions that caused vines to bind and trees to grasp, but to wield those emotions like a blade.
“For people like us, emotions bring us strength. Anger, fear, regret, they all help us to seize control,” Nariko explained. A dagger of ice grew in her hand and the air in her little house turned cold.
Tenzou shivered, but his face was eager.
“But remember, you must always be in control or your power will turn against you as easily as your enemies.” A wave of frost coated the room and Nariko’s eyes flashed ice blue. “The easiest way to control these emotions is to reframe them. Rage at injustice becomes love for the justice. Fear of loss becomes love for that which is precious.”
Tenzou nodded. He didn’t really understand then, but still the words stuck in his chest. He trained in the back garden. At first, Nariko had to go out in the evenings and cut back the wild brambles that Tenzou favored when he lost control, but those incidents came fewer and further between. They never wanted for firewood or fresh vegetables. Shinobi Tears and other herbs grew up through the grass like weeds.
---
A year and a half after arriving in Kiri, Tenzou told Nariko he wanted to be a shinobi, like her.
Nariko nodded and set the paperwork in motion, her face impassive. Tenzou was too young to notice the change in his caretaker and she was careful to never reveal what she thought of that decision. She already knew that Tenzou would pass the academy’s graduation exam, whether he wanted to or not. Power like his, and like hers, had its own will to survive.
---
Tenzou excelled in school, but struggled on the playground. The other children saw the beads in Nariko’s hair when she walked him to class.
Rather than worry over the children who threw dirty looks and occasionally punches, Tenzou focused on catching up. He spent his breaks reading, trying to make up for the approximately 6 that were stolen by Orochimaru.
Tenzou wasn’t the only kid to spend his time out of class alone. There was another boy whose kekkei genkai was written on his blue skin, golden eyes, and wicked sharp teeth.
No one dared sucker punch Kisame, even under the cover of a crowded hallway, not after he bit Arashi.
3 months into his time in the academy, Tenzou slipped out of the building while his classmates were still teasing and bickering and made a run for the old willow tree that overlooked the lake where they learned to swim.
The other kids thought the tree was haunted. If Tenzou occasionally gave fuel to that particular rumor, no one needed to know. The branches reached the ground and hidden inside, Tenzou could study in peace.
Tenzou pulled out A Complete History of the Third Great War , settled against the trunk, and lost himself in the reading.
The rustle of branches startled Tenzou. He slammed the book shut and jumped to his feet, kunai in hand.
“Easy,” a familiar voice mumbled. “I’m here to hide too.”
Kisame limped under the protective cover of the tree. He was nursing a split lip and a rapidly swelling black eye.
Tenzou’s eyes widened, but he put the weapon away and sat back down.
Kisame picked his way over the uneven ground and twisted roots to settle against the trunk to Tenzou’s right.
For several minutes the only sounds were Kisame’s ragged breathing and Tenzou turning pages.
“Are you okay?” Tenzou asked.
Kisame growled in response.
“You don’t scare me,” Tenzou muttered back.
“I should,” Kisame snapped. His words came out a little slurred around his teeth.
Tenzou always wondered if Kisame cut his own tongue often.
Kisame felt something brush his leg. He stared down in rising horror as the willow roots rose out of the ground and tangled around his legs.
Kisame’s head whipped around towards Tenzou. The brunet was smirking into his book.
“Point taken,” Kisame snapped. The roots retreated back to the ground and Kisame brushed himself off.
“How many of them did it take?” Tenzou asked.
“Only 4,” Kisame sounded disappointed. “After last time, I was told last time if I maimed anyone outside of the exams that they’d expel me.”
Tenzou sighed. There wasn’t really anything to say to that. Kids were vicious sometimes. If was a fact of life in the bloody mist.
“So why do you let them beat on you?” Kisame asked.
Tenzou shrugged. “I don’t use my jutsu without a good reason. If there was any risk of my being killed or seriously injured, it would intervene.”
Kisame nodded. “In my clan we call that the biting instinct.”
“I don’t have a clan.”
“You’ve got someone who cares about you and that’s better.”
Tenzou frowned. He knew the kids liked to pick on Kisame for his clothes. They were always a little bit dirty and well patched. Tenzou never saw him with lunch and on exam days when parents and clan heads were invited to watch the proceedings, no one who looked like Kisame was in the audience.
Kisame leaned back to rest his head on the trunk. “So can you talk to plants?”
“Sort of. They don’t use words. It’s more feelings. And they don’t really mark time or care about human things.”
Kisame grunted. ‘Smart of them.”
“Can you talk to fish?”
“No, but I have a summoning contract with sharks and I can talk to them.”
“Cool.”
Kisame shifted and couldn’t totally suppress the hiss of pain.
Without thinking, Tenzou put his hand on the ground and a Shinobi Tears plant sprouted into existence.
Kisame watched the plant grow and burst into bloom.
“Chew the blossoms. They speed up healing and are a mild painkiller.”
Kisame frowned at Tenzou, but the other kid still had his eyes on the book. Kisame wanted to ask what this would cost him, but didn’t for fear that the offer would disappear. Of all the people to owe a favor, Tenzou wasn’t a bad option.
Kisame stripped the flowers off the stem and chewed them awkwardly with teeth that weren’t meant for the job.
The pair didn’t say anything else and walked back to class in silence when the break was over.
---
The next day, a group of kids cornered Kisame against the building after school. He fought like a wild animal, no pulled blows, but 6 on 1 is still 6 against 1. Four of them dragged him to the ground and pinned him so the others could kick him.
Kisame clenched his jaw to keep from biting, squeezed his eyes shut, and tensed for the pain. It never came.
Someone screamed and then all of the others screamed. The weight on top of Kisame vanished. He opened his eyes in time to see the kids running and what was definitely a branch disappear back beneath Tenzou’s cloak.
The brunet was grinning.
Kisame knew that look. “Thought you were some kind of a pacifist,” Kisame mumbled. He rolled onto his hands and knees and climbed to his feet.
“Never said that,” Tenzou said.
Kisame just shook his head. The kid talked to trees, he was allowed to be odd. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
The next day, Tenzou came to school with green and blue beads braided into his hair. He still took his books outside to read during break, but no one bothered him again. No one was stupid enough to challenge 2 kekkei genkai.
Usually Kisame stretched or practice sword forms while Tenzou read, but sometimes he’d ask for Tenzou’s help with homework. Kisame was a genius when it came to fighting and tactics, but math and english didn’t come naturally.
Tenzou was a good, patient teacher. In turn, he’d ask Kisame questions about Kiri. Having grown up here, he knew the politics and history better than Tenzou could ever learn from a book. Kisame also had a better understanding of people than anyone liked to give him credit for.
---
At 12, under the willow tree, Tenzou shared a secret with Kisame. Nariko was out of the village on a mission, so there was no one waiting at home for Tenzou and Kisame never seemed to have a curfew. This meant they lingered beside the lake watching the faint sunset through the mist and talking.
“I don’t want to kill anyone,” Tenzou said it softly.
Kisame sighed heavily. He wasn’t surprised, but he couldn’t share Tenzou’s feelings. Really the only person he would hesitate to kill was Tenzou. “What will you do at graduation then?”
“I don’t know. If it’s a close call, I’ll bite. I don’t think I’d feel as guilty about it then.”
Kisame snorted. “2 problems with that. One, you’ll still blame yourself. It’s the sort of person you are. You hate things that aren’t fair and nothing in the bloody mist is fair. Two, it won’t be a close call unless you make it one. You can snap someone’s neck in under a second with a vine or root.”
Tenzou didn’t say anything. Kisame was right. He could feel it.
Kisame stretched out on the grass and smiled up at Tenzou, all teeth. “I could just pull a Zabuza and kill them all so you don’t have to.”
Tenzou punched Kisame’s arm. “Then they’d almost definitely make us fight.”
Kisame’s smiled faded. There was the one thing he kept making himself not think about.
“They won’t match us up,” Tenzou said. He hugged his knees to his chest. “They rank the class from most useful to least and fold the ladder in half. The whole point of the graduation exam is to eliminate the weak. We’re both at the top of the rankings.”
Kisame huffed. He didn’t want to say that he was afraid they might use this as a chance to get rid of him. Yeah he was useful, but he also had a reputation for being reckless and violent.
“Someday I’m going to change all of this,” Tenzou whispered.
“Tell me about it?” Kisame asked. He always liked Tenzou’s plans.
“No more bloody mist. Only the top half gets to graduate. If you think you deserve to be in the top half, you can challenge for a spot. Matches to submission. If there’s an occasional accident, it’s still better than half dead. There’s a point when a forest is small enough that if you cut down half of it, the whole ecosystem dies off. Kiri’s close to that line.”
Kisame nodded. It made sense.
“Improve shinobi conditions-- better standard gear, more say in missions, and give a bigger portion of the mission payouts to the shinobi. It’ll incentivize more people to become shinobi and decrease mission mortality rates.”
Kisame liked the sound of that. “Thrive, not just survive.”
Tenzou nodded. “Increase trade and use the taxes to beef up the hospital and the port. Really bring the village into the modern era.”
“You’ll make a good Mizukage,” Kisame said.
“And you’ll make a great swordsman.”
Kisame smiled again. “Tell me more about your village.”
“Better housing, even if I have to build it myself. I’ll bring back the festivals and holidays from the history books. It’ll give people something to look forward to. We can revive the old traditions, dances, songs, food. Did you know there used to be a moon festival where they served honey cakes shaped like sea life and danced around the tidepools at moonrise?”
“Only problem with that is that I can’t dance,” Kisame teased.
“It doesn’t seem so different from fighting,” Tenzou waved off Kisame. “If people knew their history, if they remembered their culture, I think it would cut down on the prejudices against clan shinobi and kekkei genkai.”
Kisame sighed. “That’d be nice, but it’ll take more than just some dances and good food. There’s a lot of bad blood.”
“It’ll take showing everyone we aren’t monsters.”
“It’ll take a real Mizukage.”
---
Tenzou was right about their graduation exam and so was Kisame.
Tenzou froze short of a killing blow.
The other teen didn’t hesitate to try to put a sword through Tenzou’s chest.
Tenzou closed his eyes and the mokuton in his blood bit.
Bones snapped like wet wood in the unyielding grip of an oak tree.
Kisame didn’t hesitate. He made it quick and clean and held his head high when the whispers began.
Nariko slipped sleeping powder in Tenzou’s tea that night, so neither of them would have to suffer the nightmares.
---
After graduation, Kisame was promoted to an apprentice swordsman.
Tenzou was invited to the hunter corps. He declined. He’d rather people saw his face. He’d prefer the marginally greater freedom and choice that with a forehead protector, even at the cost of lower pay and a displeased Mizukage.
The 2 saw each other rarely, but whenever their paths crossed Kisame would smile and Tenzou would nod, a silent agreement.
Kisame took Samehada when they were 18. Tenzou was a chuunin. He was never cleared for missions outside of Water Country, one of the steps to becoming a jounin. He should have been a jounin years earlier, but the Mizukage didn’t approve the promotion.
Tenzou was well known in Kiri and the rest of Water Country. 2 years back a hurricane had obliterated several smaller towns and heavily damaged the hidden village. Tenzou repaired much of the damage single handedly. It made him popular despite the beads braided into his long, brown hair.
Between missions, Tenzou worked in the garden behind he and Nariko’s home. These days, he preferred to do the work by hand rather than letting loose his powers. There was something rewarding about seeing the garden flourish under gentle and precise care as opposed to forcing it with chakra.
Kisame was rarely in the village. His missions took him all over Water Country and even beyond its borders. He was the Mizukage’s favorite swordsman. People said his name in hushed whispers, but more often they called him the Demon’s Dog.
Nariko continued to serve in the hunter corps, but when Tenzou turned down the mask her career stalled. It didn’t bother Nariko. She never aspired to lead and she had the respect of the people she fought beside. That was all that mattered. That and the way Tenzou still smiled when he was up to his elbows in dirt.
---
At 19, Kisame received an order from the Mizukage. The other swordsmen were plotting a coup. It extended into the hunter corps and the jounin. Kisame was to eliminate them all.
Kisame needed a drink.
The bars willing to serve a Hoshigaki were few and far between. There was one near the academy that would usually serve Kisame if he was willing to sit quietly in the corner.
Kisame was nursing his 5th beer when another man slid into the booth opposite him.
“You actually trying to get drunk or just make people think you are?” Tenzou asked. His hair was a mess, half out of the braid and there was a smear of blood of mud across the bridge of his nose. Kisame couldn’t tell which. In the dim light. Kisame figured he must have come straight from a mission.
“Does it matter?” Kisame grumbled and waved at the server for 2 more mugs.
“It does to me. If you’re actually trying to get drunk, I need to be worried. You pretend to get drunk so people let down their guards.”
Kisame snorted. Tenzou wasn’t wrong.
When the mugs arrived, Kisame pushed one towards Tenzou. “How’d you know I was here?”
“The trees told me.”
Kisame smiled into his drink, because of course the trees told him. “You ready to be Mizukage, yet?” Kisame asked. He said it as a joke, but his smirk didn’t reach his eyes.
Tenzou frowned.
Kisame slid the mission scroll across the table. “I’d have done it already if it weren’t for you.”
Tenzou shivered. He knew Kisame wasn’t lying. Kisame didn’t lie. ¾ of the way down the scroll was Nariko’s name. Tenzou rerolled the scroll and passed it back to Kisame. “What are you going to do?”
“Get drunk and deal with it tomorrow assuming the Mizukage’s still breathing and Samehada doesn’t decide to eat me for letting down my guard.”
Tenzou sipped his drink and watched Kisame over the rim of the mug.
“Don’t give me that look,” Kisame muttered. “You know I don’t have your moral compass.”
“That’s almost an army,” Tenzou said softly.
Kisame closed his eyes. “I don’t do subterfuge. I don’t do cloaks and daggers. I’ve got a giant, maneating shark for a sword. I like fighting people, not assassinating them, and I hate politics.” He was dangerously close to whining.
Tenzou rolled his eyes. “Shinobi are all involved in politics.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t expect to have to think about it.”
“So don’t think.”
“When I don’t think I bite,” Kisame muttered, sounding childish even to himself.
“Who do you want to bite?”
“I can’t bite him. Jinchuurki have bigger teeth than I do.”
“Not when they’re muzzled.”
Kisame narrowed his eyes.
Tenzou set his hands on the table. “There’s a name for my jutus. It’s called the mokuton. I read about it in an old book from Konoha. The first hokage had it and he used it to cage the Ninetails.”
Slowly a smile spread across Kisame’s face. He usually liked Tenzou’s plans.
---
It was a mostly bloodless revolution.
The hunters stood down when a woman with blue beads in her hair stepped between them and the boy who’d become her son. There were streaks of gray in Nariko’s black hair now. Every other masked shinobi in the room owed her their life at least once over and no one wanted to fight the last great kunoichi of the Yuki Clan.
Any hunters with split loyalties stood down when a redhead stepped up beside Nariko. “Been waiting a long time for this sempai,” Mei murmured.
The jounin and chuunin saw Tenzou, the man who kept them fed when an extra wet spring rotted the wheat in the fields and almost killed himself to raise a roof over their head before winter set in, and either laid down their weapons or moved to his side.
The swordsmen never expected to follow the Demon’s Dog against the Mizukage, but he’d proved himself in battle and they hadn’t had a reason to say no when he threw the mission scroll at their feet. “No more lies,” they had agreed.
The Mizukage only put up a token fight. Tenzou’s mokuton pierced the chakra cloak and pinned him. Kisame swore a look of relief flashed across those delicate features in the heartbeat before Samehada slammed home.
---
At 20, the new Mizukage was younger than most. He was also unexpectedly progressive. In less than 2 years the bloody mist was starting to shake the nickname.
The delegation from Konohagakure had come to sign a trade treaty. Hiruzen sent his most trusted advisors.
When the Konoha delegates walked into the room, the man at their head froze. Danzou recognized the chakra in the air. He’d felt it once before, 14 years earlier in Orochimaru’s lab.
Tenzou saw the man freeze and frowned. The face was half remembered, his time in the lab more like a bad dream these days, but there was no mistaking the way the mokuton under his skin itched to explode.
To his right, Kisame stiffened at Tenzou’s frown.
To the left, Nariko fingered her senbon. She still remembered the way Tenzou described the monsters in his nightmares as a child-- bandaged eye, scarred chin, dead expression.
Tenzou took a deep breath and smiled. “Welcome to Kirigakure. I’m Kiri no Tenzou, the Mizukage.”
Danzou’s blood ran cold, but he stepped into the room and took a seat at the table.
---
The anbu found the Mizukage alone, on the edge of the village, like he’d been waiting for them.
2 of the anbu had black hair and the third had silver. Danzou stood behind them.
In the gathering dusk, 5 crimson eyes glowed. Tenzou knew that glow from his nightmares.
Tenzou appeared unbothered. “I’ve always wanted to the sharingan in person,” he remarked. “May I have the honor of knowing who’s trying to kill me?”
The 3 anbu shifted uncomfortably.
“The thing in your blood belongs to Konoha,” Danzou said coldly.
Tenzou laughed. “Kami, I used to have nightmares about you. Meeting you in real life is such a let down.” His teeth flashed in the dark. “You’re just afraid what happened here will happen in Konoha. You have a lot of secrets to hide, don’t you.”
Tenzou’s gaze shifted to the 2 dark haired anbu. The taller had a wild mop of curly hair. The shorter had long, dark hair. Tenzou had a guess as to who the Uchiha were. Shisui had a flee on sight order in all the elemental countries and rumor had it his little cousin, Itachi, was a prodigy and at 13 the youngest anbu in history. The silver hair and single sharingan would make the third anbu Kakashi Hatake.
“Why don’t you ask him what he’s hiding before we start calling it the bloody leaf? Why don’t you look under that bandage?”
---
Danzou never made it back to Konoha. Just across the border into Fire Country a knife found its way between his ribs. The 3 anbu all attempted to claim credit, but who was actually responsible became a non-issue when little Itachi showed the Hokage a mission scroll.
In the following year, Hiruzen stepped down and was replaced by the 5th hokage-- 20 year old Shisui Uchiha.
Kiri and Konoha formed a mutual aid agreement. It’d take another 5 years to get the other elemental nations to sign it, but peace came without war.
---
A year after Danzou’s death, the Akatsuki began their rise to power. Chasing the unsealed Threetails proved to be their downfall.
The creature was not unguarded and the sharingan is not the only jutsu to manipulate a chakra demon.
When Madara felt Hashirama’s chakra surge, he threw caution to the wind.
Tenzou was no Hashirama and he didn’t fight like him. Tenzou wielded a wooden blade and danced like someone who trained besides the world’s greatest swordsman. Madara died and the truth came out as shinobi tears bloomed across the battlefield in the middle of Kiri.
Amegakure braced for an invasion from Kiri, for retaliation. Instead, the Mizukage arrived in the city a week late with a treaty that recognized Amegakure as an equal village. Tenzou apologized on behalf of his nation, like the others Kiri had taken its battles to Rain Country in the last war. The scars still ran deep, although less so now that Tenzou had spent a week going from town to town.
Rumor had it everywhere the Mizukage went, he left a trail of bridges, buildings, and pretty blue flowers.