Chapter 008 – The Will of Water
[Time skip: Half a year later.]
Half a year was all it took for Zabuza to carve through the selection rounds like a knife through flesh. Half a year to prove that the genius was, in truth, a monstrous genius, or perhaps the persona of genius was only ever a mask for the monster.
Six months of pain, of despair, of learning to take and deliver suffering until both became second nature.
During that time, he dissected and absorbed the Korihana's style. They were a branch of the Yuki, but where the Yuki molded grand illusions of ice, such as mirrors, walls, prisons, and AOE techniques, the Korihana had taken a humbler, harsher path.
They either forged ice into weapons or wove it into their flesh. Every punch, every kick carried the bite of winter. Every touch sapped strength, spreading frost through the enemy's veins.
They could drag a man into winter with a handful of blows, leave him too sluggish to raise a blade, too weak to breathe.
They used Hypothermia as a weapon, and the cold as a poison.
But their strength was also their weakness. The Korihana lacking the inheritance, and the refined control of the Yuki, had been forced to take such a crude path.
Their survival hinged on raw Taijutsu skill, a weak fighter could never show the full potential of their art.
Only at the higher levels, such as a jōnin did their style bloom, but few managed to reach that level, before then most had already fallen, either absorbed into the Yuki, killed in battle, or crushed by the bloody churn of Kirigakure's war machine system.
Zabuza had consumed one of their elders. The man's assassination tricks, his mastery of silent kill techniques, and use of ice-forged weapons that left no trace, were clever, even ingenious.
But to Zabuza they reeked of smallness, they're playing too narrow, too safe.
Ice like water was not meant to be clever, it was meant to be savage, deceptively beautiful, and insidious.
And Zabuza wanted to show the world that potential.
On this day, after six months of grinding through the trials, Cat came to him. Still wearing his ANBU operative's mask that helped him give nothing away.
"The Mizukage demands your presence."
Minutes later Zabuza found himself not in front of the Mizukage's office, but inside a chamber in the depths below the tower—a cavernous room lit by damp torches, their flames hissing against wet stone.
At the far end sat the Third Mizukage, the Bloody Mist's de facto ruler. He was smaller than Zabuza expected, lean build and compact, but the pressure the man was giving off, and that filled the room was crushing.
His eyes glittered with the cold sharpness of a man who had seen too many corpses, perhaps laid most of them down himself.
He didn't speak at once. He studied Zabuza in silence, chin resting on his palm, as though weighing a blade whose edge he could not yet see.
Finally, he gestured.
"Come closer, Zabuza Momochi. I've been told you are a prodigy, and I have been looking forward to meeting you myself."
Zabuza's voice was flat when he answered. "I am indeed a prodigy, Mizukage-sama. But just being a prodigy shouldn't be enough to earn an audience with a man as busy as yourself."
Zabuza wasn't one to undersell himself, and his statement made the Mizukage's lips twitch faintly. "That is indeed true, and you're every bit as blunt as I have been warned. The truth is that you stand out for reasons beyond mere talent. And I would rather make a few things clear to you before someone decides to open your throat in your sleep."
The threat was delivered as casually as a greeting.
No Kage ever rose to his position without blood, and none ever will, and especially in Kirigakure power is literally built on mountains of corpses.
"I understand, Mizukage-sama," Zabuza said calmly with a steady pulse. "What are these things that worry you?"
Zabuza wasn't afraid by this idiotic attempt at a threat.
After all, death was no real threat to Zabuza, his physiology as an Ogre made killing him one very difficult task, nearly impossible, and additionally as someone who is a transmigrator he has died once already.
So there is nothing to fear, after all, dying is merely a part of life, and nothing that should be feared excessively, the worse outcome by comparison would be, if they sealed him, burying him alive in darkness, experimenting on him until time itself forgot his name.
Death by comparison was just an inconvenience, not the end.
Zabuza stepped forward, his footsteps echoing off the cold stone, until he stood directly before the man's desk.
"First," the Mizukage said, voice almost full jovial, "your cannibalism. Personally, I don't care. But you'd better keep it under wraps. I can't have one of my underlings leaving behind half-eaten corpses around."
"I understand," Zabuza replied with a nod, he already had assumed that they'd have found out about his peculiarities.
He went into a forbidden section and killed an inmate, and that too by using his hands and teeth.
"The second point to talk about is, are the clans. I don't care if you join one or form your own. But I will not tolerate insubordination. You've clawed through the selection in record time. In just half a year, without the backing of a clan, you survived the training that made us infamous as the bloody Mist. You are now eligible for the academy. But before I let you walk through those doors, I will be giving you a choice."
"What choice?!"
"You can either join the academy and walk an ordinary Shinobi's path, or you can choose to become a weapon for Kirigakure and for me.
We don't need just another rabid beast who will turn on his master the moment it suits him?"
Silence stretched long between them.
At last the Mizukage leaned forward with narrowed eyes. "Tell me, boy. Will you submit to the village? Or will you place your own interests before the villages, and betray it the moment ambition bites deeper than loyalty?"
Zabuza had been waiting for this, he knew early on that the Mizukage was an idiot.
Well, not an idiot, but rather someone very narrow minded.
Why else would he kill his own subordinates for having an opinion of their own, why else would he make them fight one another to the death to train them, why not send them out on missions to get them bloodied?!
For weeks, Zabuza's dreams had been filled with the life of Heihachi Mishima, the man who fought demons as a mortal, who built a business empire that was able to dominate the world, who was cold blooded enough to throw his son from a cliff to test his will.
Zabuza had seen all that made up Heihachi, re-lived every memory of his. Heihachi's main power had never been the Mishima style Karate, the lightning chi, nor his iron fists, but the refusal to stay put, and rot from hesitation, or be indecisive.
Mercy is death.
Hesitation is death.
Indecision is death.
That was the will of Water. Relentless. Adaptive. Absolute.
"Mizukage-sama," Zabuza said at last, voice even. "All men are beasts, this is their nature. You know it, and I know it too. They bite and claw, and when they lack teeth, they sharpen stones and wooden poles. Either killing or dying along the way, and in the end, the strong shape the new order. Meanwhile, the weak drown in it, and become nourishment. You ask if I will betray you, or the village. I say betrayal only exists if power falters. If you are strong enough to hold the leash, there will be no betrayal from me. Only submission."
The Mizukage's lips curved—neither in amusement, nor in recognition, but rather in disgust.
"I see. You believe in might makes right. I can accept that. But the village is more than power, Zabuza. It is our means of survival. The clans claw and fight, forgetting that they still need this land, these walls, this name. Without unity, we are all like blood in the water, not even enough to be remembered. I don't demand loyalty for my pride. I demand it because without it, we all die."
"Survival," Zabuza echoed. "That is your creed, Mizukage-Sama?"
"It is the only creed," The Mizukage snapped. "In the ocean, the strong devour the weak. But even the strong eventually drown if they swim alone. Even the strongest amongst us will eventually die and rot when they stand alone."
For the first time, Zabuza smiled, thin and sharp.
"Then perhaps we agree more than we differ, Mizukage-sama. You want the survival of the village. I want the strength to guarantee my survival. Our aims align. My strength feeds the village's survival, and the village, in turn, feeds me. Yes?"
Neither man's gaze wavered.
Finally, the mizukage chuckled softly, leaning back. "A beast who thinks himself a man. Good. Better than a man who thinks himself a beast."
Zabuza inclined his head—not bowing, never bowing. "Then, Mizukage-sama, we understand each other."
"Indeed we do, Zabuza-kun."
That night, lying in the dark, Zabuza replayed Heihachi's life yet again. The man's triumphs burned into him, but so too did his failures. His obsession, his hunger, had ignited an endless chain of blood and steel, and in the end, it even consumed him.
"I will not repeat his mistakes," Zabuza swore to himself.
Meanwhile, in his office, the Mizukage sat alone, his expression dark.
The meeting had not gone as he'd hoped. The boy had dodged submitting, but agreed to an compromise, but only for now. His words had carried too much audacity, too much will.
Zabuza Momochi would never agree be a mere pawn.
And that was a problem. There are only so many seats at the table. For someone to take one, another must vacate it.
Zabuza had made it clear: one day, he intended to claim his place.