Itsuki Kaguya, Land of Hot Water
A warmth spread out from my glowing hands as I carefully observed the inside of the man's skull with the Diagnostic Jutsu. I needed to be direct here, precise. While the operation itself wasn't too complex, it can easily lead to the destruction of the new organ that I was trying to implant.
While paying close attention to the moving image that was being live-streamed into my mind, I simultaneously activated the Mystic Palm Jutsu, carefully threading my Chakra around his new, soon to be attached eye, and into his optic nerves.
It wasn't just Dojutsu that can be swapped around like trading cards in this world, those were just the legendary pulls. If you weren't lucky enough to unbox one of those? No worries, there's always the commons. Anybody's eye is up for grabs here, and unlike limbs, they are much easier to reattach thanks to ninja magic.
People who lose an eye but manage to survive the injury usually only have minimal, if any, damage done to their optical nerves. Which can easily be grown back and tricked into attaching itself onto a new eyeball.
Finishing up, I did one last check to make sure every nerve was connected. "Hmmm, yep. All done, Tageshi." I pulled my hands away and watched the now heterochromatic Jonin rapidly blink his new green eye, a contrast to his blue one. "Is your vision normal?"
The tall, pale-skinned, brunette man sat up from the bed he was lying down on, "hah. Yeah. Yeah, seems to be working just fine. Thanks for that, little bone man." He was grinning now, looking around the room with his old eye closed. "How's it look?"
"Here," I handed him a hand-held mirror. "It's a fashion risk, but I like it. Props for picking out a different coloured eye." I gave him my review, "but it's missing a cool scar." The guy had been very lucky. A senbon lodged directly into his eyeball but he had managed to stop its momentum in time before it became fatal.
Tageshi sighed, "I wish there was one. God damn tree-hugger couldn't leave me with a battle scar." A dark smirk pulled on his face. "I left him with a hell of a lot more than that though. Hahahaha."
After I had finished listening to him bask in the glory of killing his enemies, I carried onto the next patient.
I had been here for over a week now, and had yet to be sent on a single mission. I was getting restless. I had it in my head that I would be sent out almost immediately after I arrived, but no. "I can't just send you on any mission, brat. You've never taken one before," Ay had told me. "Soon," he said.
I had been spending most of my time putting the long hours of learning the healing arts into practice by helping out with the injured shinobi in the med bay. While far from the best in the camp, a title which belonged to the head doctor, my skills in Medical Ninjutsu had grown leaps and bounds since I had begun. So, I was more than qualified to take off a share of the workload in the wards.
Walking over to the next bed, I saw a purple haired woman, with a healthy amount of bandages around her torso and a sling on her right arm, squinting up at me with tired eyes. "Here to put me back together?" She wheezed out with exhausted sounding lungs, trying to make light of her situation.
She had been part of the same patrol group as my last patient, who managed to limp their way back to the camp after running into a Konoha group. A scan on her showed damage to several organs and broken bones, which had been treated enough to not be fatal, but needed proper healing to help her fully recover.
The Hidden Leaf was being pushed to their limits in this war. Unlike in the first where they at least had Kiri fighting against Iwa with them, they were now against every major village in the elemental nations. A war on four different fronts, with every minor village in between being forced to pick a side or become collateral.
Wars between villages this powerful are largely based around S-Ranks, which Konoha are fortunate enough to have in spades. They are the leaders of armies, the gods of the battlefield who wipe out any in their path. We were all just fodder to them.
The only way to stop such a threat is to match it with one of your own, and Konoha had eight such ninjas.
On the Suna front, Konoha had Sakumo Hatake leading their forces, against the entirety of an old First Kazekage's Suna (the only Kage of his generation still alive) and his village's three other S-Ranks, and notably a young boy with control over iron sand.
On the Eastern side of the Land of Fire, Kiri had been laying waste to much of Konoha's territory after the sacking of Uzushio, which previously acted as a garrison that protected the fire country's coast. Danzo has taken charge there, surely committing unspeakable war crimes against the bloody mist, if such a thing existed in this world. The Third Mizukage, a powerful Yuki, had three more Kage-tier shinobi in his forces, but Hiruzen himself was known to occasionally make an appearance on those battlefields with how close they were, terrifying the Mist into a retreat.
The deadliest front was, without question, the mess that was the Land of Rain. Hanzo, Jiraiya, Tsunade, Hanzo, Dan Kato, Onoki, the five, six and seven-tailed Jinchurikis, did I mention Hanzo? Because fucking Hanzo is there. The Rock village had allied with Taki, who to my surprise, were currently tailed beastless, as Kusa had the seven-tails and were working with Konoha. Apparently Onoki had promised to aid Taki in their goal of obtaining Kusa's Biju for themselves.
I was pulled out from my mental ramblings by the sound of someone clearing their throat behind me.
A young, bubbly Genin, only a few years older than me, who had walked in whilst I was helping the woman and had started patiently waiting from the other side of the room. She had been vibrating in anticipation ever since I had finished and begun pondering to myself a few minutes ago.
"Mr Itsuki!" Her bright smile was rushing towards me now that she saw she had my attention. She grabbed my hand and began furiously shaking. "I'm Ami! Hi! It's so great to finally meet you! I've been looking everywhere but you've always been so busy whenever I tried! Like yesterday when you stabbed that guy in the leg in the sparring ring and had to rush him to the hospital! Wow, to get to see the creator of the Bone Swords use one himself! I've always wanted to-"
I nodded along as she rambled on, offering "yep"'s and "mhm"'s as I tuned her out, going back to my thoughts.
The remaining front was what I was currently dealing with in The Land of Hot Water. Kumo, led by the two-tailed Jinchuriki Kasumi Nii and a teenage Ay, with an alliance with the Hidden Frost village, are fighting the Hidden Leaf and Hidden Steam village. We were contending with Orochimaru and his second in command, Suisen Uchiha, son of Kagami Uchiha.
Physically, this Uchiha, who I'm guessing was Shisui's father, was not on the level of an S-Rank shinobi. But he did have one thing going for him, being that he's the only person alive right now with the Mangekyou.
In this war, Kumo had brought a force of 18,000 shinobi, with the remainder staying in the Land of Lightning, and the Frost village had provided 8,000. We outnumbered Konoha, but that definitely did not mean it was an easy war to win.
The variety of specialties that their different clans provide them are almost unfair, and had made the war drag on for years almost in a stalemate.
"-to tell you that Commander Ay wanted to see you!" My attention was once again brought back to the girl at that.
"...Wait, he wants to see me? He wants to see me for a… a mission? …Enemies all for me?" I squeaked out, almost salivating at the thought. I grabbed her hands and started bouncing from foot to foot. "Is it finally time!?"
"Yeah! He's in his tent waiting for you right now!" She matched my excitement and jumped along with me.
"It's time! Bwahahaha!"
"Bwahahaha!"
It's happening! It's finally happening! I can already hear their screams!
"I gotta go see him!" Wasting no more time, I slammed down a foot, hard, leaving behind a hole in the middle of the ward as it went straight through the ground, and sunk into the bones below.
…
Bursting out from the centre of a room on the other side of the camp, I caught a glimpse of the surprised face of the room's only occupant. "You have a mission for me!?"
As I landed on the ground and grinned at the man, Ay stared at me for a few moments before his face scrunched up, "dammit boy, stop doing that! Learn to use the damn entrance like everyone else!"
That was the other thing I had spent my time on. Every day, I would spend some of my Chakra on the ever-expanding Bone Zone I had placed under the camp.
This wouldn't be our permanent location, we had already travelled into a different area once since I arrived to lessen the possibility of an ambush. But on the off chance that we still were, I elected to make a giant Bone Zone that encompassed our entire force.
With the seals we had in place which camouflaged the entire zone from any sensors and Dojutsu users trying to peek inside (seals which every village has, and ones I assume Danzo uses to hide Root), they would be none the wiser about it until they got skewered the moment they step inside.
To say that Ay was a fan of the idea would be an understatement.
"But it's good practice, Ay! I had to search through the whole camp just to find you." Not a complete lie, since I did sense the entire camp, but I already knew where he would be.
The teenager rubbed his forehead and grumbled, "you're gonna find a Lariat to the face next time this happens." He sighed, and his intrigue began to show, "nevermind. At least you're done covering the camp in your Bone Zone, I expected that to take longer."
"I could've done it in a couple of days if I used up more of my reserves," I sat down on one of the chairs in front of his desk. "I'll start expanding out the perimeter tomorrow."
Ay chuckled and shook his head, "almost makes me feel bad for them. Those bastards have no idea what kind of monster we have deployed with us."
The burly teen pulled out a map from a nearby shelf and laid it flat on the desktop, taking a seat opposite me, "since you're here before the others, I may as well explain the importance of this mission." Ay crossed his arms, "tell me, Itsuki. What are the two resources every shinobi village needs to function? Resources that, if damaged enough, will see that village collapse."
"Well, ninjas?"
He held up a finger, "that's one."
"...Money?"
Ay shook his finger in my direction, a pleased look on his face. "Money," he said. "A village out of ryo is a village soon to crumble. But, where exactly do we get our money from?"
"Importing goods and selling them to villagers, taxes, bounties, but mostly from missions." I listed off everything from the top of my head.
"That's right. And in a shinobi war, the money that funds a village is just as viable of a target as attacking their shinobi." A smirk came over the commander, "and unfortunately for the Steam Village, it's become all too easy for us to exploit that weakness since we broke into their country."
Kumo had destroyed all of the outposts the Leaf and Steam alliance had stationed on the border of Frost country some time ago. They had all been replaced and fortified with Frost shinobi, and some from the Hidden Cloud.
Ay continued, "it may not be as glorious, but it will push them out of the war." He began counting off from his fingers, "Increased taxes, increased desertion, increased banditry around the country. And that's just to name a few of the problems they're dealing with. It's all mounting on the heads of the Steam's Kage and this country's Daimyo to submit to Kumo and recover from this while they still can."
I tilted my head at that, "you don't want to take over their village?"
He shook his head, "the Hidden Steam are small fry. There's not shit there for us compared to what Konoha has. Full control over their village would be nice, but it would take too much of our time." Ay's vision turned to the location of the leaf on the map, "Konoha is the goal in this war. Their Jutsu, their Clans, their fortune. Everything that they have will be added to the might of the Cloud."
"Just like the Uzumaki's," I agreed with the vision with a nod. "But, how the hell do you plan on dealing with the Hokage?" A prime Hiruzen Sarutobi was the stuff of legend.
"What? No faith in us, boy?" Ay looked mildly amused. "We have our plans; my father will need to play a key part in that battle." He pointed back to the table, "But we've strayed off topic. To cut off their supply of money, we have targeted any missions we find that are taking place outside of their village, and we've attacked transports going towards their village from the Daimyo."
Chatter was heard outside until a few people walked in. In the centre of the pack was a man I had met earlier today, "Tageshi?"
I had just transplanted a whole eye into this guy thirty minutes ago. Is he seriously taking another mission already?
That's fucking hardcore.
The Jonin nodded at me with a smirk, "sup, bone man. Looks like you're following my lead on your first mission."
More people followed him, filling the room with 12 shinobi all in front of Ay. Myself, 10 Chunin and just Tageshi as the single Jonin.
"Good, everyone's here. Some of you are already familiar with this type of mission," he looked at some of the more experienced nin. "It'll be the same as those times. Those dumbasses have fallen for it again."
Tageshi snorted, "they took another fake mission?"
"That they did," Ay grinned. He pointed to a town labelled on his map, "we paid some of the local bandits to terrorize this town, here, a few hours away from camp. They destroyed their crops, killed their livestock and beat the townspeople." He turned his head towards one of the Chunin, "eventually, with the support of the townsfolk, Hana here Henged into one of their civilians and convinced the mayor to ask the Steam Village for a mission."
He ran a finger down towards the Hidden Steam Village, "we've confirmed that they have taken the mission. They've sent out a squad of five Genins and a couple Chunins. They're escorting the mayor back to his town and will arrive tomorrow. Then they plan to begin their hunt for the bandits. Your mission will be as follows…"
…
We had reached the town after a few hours of high-speed travel and had all Henged into civilians. I had been quiet for most of the journey here. All things considered, I felt very conflicted with what we were about to do; my anticipation for the mission had been cut short the moment I heard it.
I understood why it needed to be done, hell, I could even respect the play from a cold, logical standpoint. But it wasn't something I could say I wanted to be a part of.
There were a few, unwritten rules in this world that shinobi from all over follow, such as, if a Tailed-Beast rampages inside someone's village, rival villages will not use that as an opportunity to launch a war on them.
They may take advantage of this new weakness, sure, like Kumo attempting to capture Hinata knowing damn well that Konoha could not launch a proper retaliation. But they would have never attempted an all-out attack on the leaf. These rules were followed for the good of everyone.
Who's to say that your allies in that low move won't turn on you next when your Jinchuriki loses control?
It was a level of basic decency that you know you could expect from one another.
During peace times, that is. Right now, absolutely everything was on the table.
The stakes were just too high; you only needed to look at the Uzumaki's to see proof of that. So however low you wanted to go to one-up your opponent was just fine, because they were willing to go even lower.
Ninja wars were all about assassinations, sabotage and ambushes. Anyone could be a target, even the Daimyo's themselves. Large-scale battles did happen from time to time, but they were rare things. The vast majority of the fighting comes from much smaller skirmishes.
But nobody suffers in these wars more than civilians, and I was already beginning to see proof of that.
We had spread out near the entrance of the town, milling about among the locals near the river which passed through its heart. As far as towns went, it was on the smaller side, likely populating just over 1000 people judging from the number of buildings scattered around us.
1000 people, whose haunted eyes each told a sad tale in the reflection of the gentle stream that passed below.
The damage the bandits had done to this place was clear as day. The malnourished, worn faces of the people matched that of the broken buildings. None would meet my eyes as I walked past, everybody content to keep their heads down, lest they provoke any more torment.
I could see the cleared-out fields of one of the local farms in the distance, as well as the empty pens for the livestock. That was their biggest problem. Food could easily become a scarce thing in a country that was turned into a battleground, and gathering anymore from neighbouring villages was a dangerous task.
Turning back to the street in front of me, I spotted a small girl stepping towards the river with a bucket in hand. Her sunken cheeks were prominent on her face as she bent down to collect her fill from the stream, the frailness of her body clear in her slow movements.
I paused in my tracks at the sight, confliction wracking my mind. The tense silence of the town was almost haunting in my ears as I stared at the scene. In the corner of my vision, I spotted my Jonin leader across the street disguised as an old man with a walking stick, unbothered by the happenings around him.
The only people I wanted to kill were enemy shinobi. Someone who would put up a fight and try their best to do the same to me. But this girl was not that. She wasn't an enemy. Just a malnourished child, trying to survive at an age that couldn't have been any older than mine…
Fuck it.
Marching over, donning the form of a taller, stockier civilian child, I closed the distance between us. If she heard my footsteps, she didn't react, not until I loomed over her and kicked over the filled bucket from her hands, right into the stream.
"Hey-!" She started as she faced me.
"Get out of here, kid," I stared down at her, not a shred of mercy on my face.
"But please, I haven't-"
I flared out my killing intent, just a flicker, the barest amount I could muster to not alert my presence like a beacon. To any kind of shinobi, this would be brushed off as a joke, but to a civilian. Not so much.
The girl's pleading was silenced immediately as she had frozen in place. I peered into her soul and made my message as clear as possible. "Run away right now. If I see you again, you'll be dead."
I let up my killing intent and watched her stumble back, falling to the floor. With tears creeping from the corner of her eyes, she scrambled herself back to her feet and sprinted away.
A hand fell on my shoulder as I watched her go into the distance. Turning back, the disguised and stern face of Tageshi greeted me.
"Hn," I shrugged him off, not caring about what he had to say.
…
Koda, Genin of the Hidden Steam Village, Land of Hot Water
Koda was having one hell of a time. Sure, the mission was only a C-Rank, a classic bandit extermination, but compared to the danger he had been facing ever since he graduated? He prayed for times like these.
And they came few and far between, in fact, the village hadn't gotten a single mission in a whole month. He himself had only ever been on three ever since he graduated a couple years ago.
And it was for that very reason that, even though it was a simple mission, it was something that they could not fail. And he wouldn't let his village down!
"Ha!" Koda punched his fist out, startling the town mayor they were escorting. His entire team looked alert for a moment, eyes darting to survey the area, before shooting him an unimpressed look.
He cleared his throat, "uh, sorry?"
The nice old mayor sighed in relief that there was no danger approaching them.
"Try to control your tourettes, would you?" His Genin teammate, Enteru, snickered at him.
Koda stuck his tongue out at the boy.
"Stay focused, Koda," Sota, the Chunin who had joined his team for the mission, reprimanded him. "We'll be arriving in twenty minutes."
"Sir, yes, sir!" Koda saluted him, confused at the sigh he got in response.
It didn't matter. Nothing could ruin his good mood. A chance to take a break from all those fights with Kumo, and save a town while he was at it?
He'll be a town hero by the end of this.
'Ooh, I wonder if they'll name something after me.' He quietly hoped to himself.
They approached the town soon after, just as Sota had said. He remained in position, at the rear of the diamond formation around their client, joined by Sota, beside the mayor was Mai and Enteru, and at the front was his Chunin-Sensei Isamu. In the trees on either side were Tobi and Mei, watching their flanks.
Squads were pretty big in the Hidden Steam compared to other villages, mostly because they didn't produce enough Jonin to use them as Sensei, and usually had to make do with Chunins instead. But having larger squads helped to boost the overall strength of each team.
The mayor had described what the bandits had done, but it was clearly a downplayed version. Even from outside the town, Koda could see the smashed windows of the buildings and the hopeless looks of the people in the distance.
He hated Kumo. He hated them with every fiber of his being for what they had done to his country and his village. Everything that he was seeing he blamed on them. The Hidden Steam were the police of this country, and without them being able to take on missions, this was the result.
The sentiment seemed to be shared when he looked around at his squadmates and saw their hardened expressions.
Oh yeah, he'd make Kumo pay for this.
Stepping past the entrance, a certain heaviness seemed to lift from the shoulders of the townspeople. The street vibrated with whispers all around with relief being clear in their voices upon seeing his team. They were saved; whatever horrors they had to endure would all be over soon.
"He made it back! Mr Mayor has returned!" Someone called out.
"They're here! The Ninjas are really here!"
"Please! Help us Steam Shinobi!"
Koda spotted a woman at the back of the growing crowd emerging on their location, lifting her daughter onto her shoulders and before pointing at them, "look sweetie, these are the kind people I told you about! They're here to make everything better!"
Mai punched a fist into the air, "you guys don't gotta worry about a thing!"
"Yeah, now that we're here, you can count on us!" Tobi joined in.
Koda couldn't help but smile, he even saw his sensei Isamu's lips lift up at the corners.
This is what being a Shinobi was all about!
Before Koda could comprehend what was happening, a small blur darted across his vision, vanishing as fast as it came. So fast, that he almost brushed it off as something from his imagination.
But that was the moment he realized his sensei and Mai had disappeared along with it.
Turning his head to his right, he was met with the bloody scene of a small white-haired boy, standing in front of his teammates with his arms raised. Mai and Isamu-sensei were both lifted into the air against one of the stone buildings, impaled with some kind of long white weapon sticking out from their chests, their eyes wide as they struggled to breathe.
'What?'
His hazy mind couldn't process the screams that rang out through the street, his focus was completely on the sight before him as he stood still.
In the next moment, he watched their bodies burst.
Smaller versions of the same white spears seemed to puncture through every inch of them, erupting out from inside of their bodies. Like a doll stabbed full of needles, he saw their faces become unrecognisable in an instant as they were skewered.
Blood gushed onto the child like a waterfall, but he didn't seem to care as the white blades slowly retreated and he pulled back his arms. The unmoving bodies of his teammates fell to the floor.
'But how did that…?'
The boy turned around, his white hair now crimson red above his emotionless expression. But there, underneath all the blood, he saw the infamous twin dots that centred his forehead.
"Kaguya…" Koda whispered.
"Koda!" His eyes moved over to the sound of Sota, the remaining Chunin on his team, fighting and losing against four enemy nin, "snap out of it and run away! Go! Now!"
Koda didn't respond, and merely turned his head back at the unmoving Kaguya boy who watched him in silence.
This was him! The person who had been causing his Village so many problems! And he just murdered his team!
Koda snarled, and began making handsigns, "Water Relea-!"
His arms were sliced off at the elbows, as the Kaguya appeared in his face in an instant, his bone covered arm arced across in a slash. The pain and shock made Koda stumble back as he began to wail in pain, only to be silenced by the white spear that punctured his heart.
His vision quickly darkened, and in his last moments he met the eyes of the uncaring monster that had killed him.
…
Itsuki Kaguya, Land of Hot Water
I thought I would feel something more when I finally claimed my first kills, but right now, I couldn't find it in myself to feel much of anything.
I wasn't happy or sad about what I had done. The only emotion I felt was annoyance as I looked around.
Our Jonin leader Tageshi, along with three other Chunins had dispatched with the last Steam Chunin. The bodies of the Genins and the Mayor were laid out across the street.
But along with them, were many more corpses of the townsfolk. In front of me, I watched as one of the Chunin mowed through the civilians with his Bone Tanto. Further down the street, I saw a plume of fire engulf one of the buildings, with people screaming as they tried to escape the flames.
We had all stashed away our headbands for this mission. Anonymity was key. Kumo were of course the most likely suspects, followed by the Frost. But it could have also been rogue nin, or talented bandits. The point being, nobody could label Kumo with anything after the war was done.
The mission was three parts: to eliminate all enemy ninjas, to kill any witnesses, and to further destroy the town.
Nobody could know that I had been here. That I had left Kumo and taken to the battlefield. We wanted to keep that hidden for as long as possible. So, everyone nearby had to be killed, with no exceptions, as they might've seen me use my bloodline.
But, even if they hadn't, even if I refrained from using the Dead Bone Pulse and kept up a Henge to cover my face, they would've been killed anyway. My being here was just another reason.
Kumo wanted this to be an example to Hot Water country. That whatever problem you may be facing, hiring ninjas will always make it far worse. So, even though the fight was over, we needed to make it appear to have been much more devastating.
The surrounding part of this town and everyone nearby would be obliterated, along with some of the rest. The survivors will live as a message to others to not repeat their mistake, making it even harder for the Steam Village to get missions.
The nearby screams began to die down as ones in the distance began to pick up along with the flames. Charred corpses littered the street as the river ran red.
And maybe the destruction here, like in many other places, would make the Daimyo reconsider staying in this war. Maybe he cares about the people of his country enough to make the Hidden Steam pull out. Or maybe he doesn't.
It didn't cost Kumo much to try either way.
AN: Oof, that got a bit dark at the end there. But ninjas aren't good people. They're actually pretty bad. And nothing brings out that bad quite like a shinobi world war, which takes dark ANBU missions and makes them commonplace. And like I said, there will be big battles, but from how I envision ninjas being at war, most of the time it's small skirmishes, ambushes, assassinations etc. But there will be big battles.
Future missions will be more light hearted, and of course more dangerous.
Also, fights from Itsuki's perspective will tend to be more hack-and-slash, Deadpool-like action movie type violence. But enemy POV's, especially weaker ones, will be described in a more horror movie violence way to give some insight into how others actually see him.