The wind howled across the charred battlefield, where ash mixed with blood and smoke. War was constant no villages, no unity just clans clawing at each other in a dance of death.
And then, a coughing fit.
"Damn... This some strong shit."
The voice croaked low and mellow, vibrating like smoke through a bamboo flute. A man stirred amidst the corpses. He wore loose-fitting samurai robes tinted with purples and gold, and his long braided hair was tied back with strips of hemp cloth. His blade long, sleek, yet strangely decorated with burning incense rested beside him.
His eyes opened, red and half-lidded, like he hadn't slept in years.
"Yo... this ain't Long Beach..." he muttered, blinking at the bloodied sky.
He sat up slowly, feeling grass between his fingers. No cement. No studio. No blunts.
Just war.
Then the memories hit. The overdose. The party. The blunt that shouldn't have ended. Now... this?
The trees around him rustled. Or maybe they didn't. He squinted up at one.
"You seen that shit, huh?" he said to a crooked old tree. "Told 'em I was too high to die. Guess I was right."
The tree, being a tree, said nothing.
He laughed. A deep, echoing laugh. "Name's... nah, that name dead. Call me..." He paused, lighting a smoldering stem he pulled from his robes. Smoke billowed from his lips, curling unnaturally in the air before forming the faint shape of a leaf with a crown atop.
"Call me zassō. The last samurai of smoke."
A crow cawed above as if it had heard the name and didn't like it.
---
zassō wandered the wasteland, blade on his hip and a pipe always in hand. His swordsmanship was unorthodox fluid, unpredictable, like someone who danced with ghosts. But his true power was his Cloud Style Jutsu: mist-like smoke that drifted in with the scent of kush, making enemies dizzy, disoriented, hallucinating visions of their dead or their sins.
One bandit leader laughed at him once, calling him "just a drugged-out fool."
That leader screamed hours later, babbling about a tree that whispered his childhood sins back to him before he slit his own throat.
zassō didn't even draw his sword.
"You ever talk to a willow tree?" he'd ask travelers on the road. "Real cool cats. Just gotta know how to listen."
Most avoided him. Some followed him, curious. One a teenage orphan named Hako stayed close, thinking Zassō was a prophet sent by the gods of green to change the world.
And maybe he was.
Dawn crept slow across the rice fields, soaking the horizon in hues of honey and rust. Birds chirped like they hadn't heard screams the night before. Zassō sat cross-legged on a flat stone beside a thin creek, robe loose, eyes red, and his pipe burning a soft ember like the final glow of a setting sun.
He was talking to a bush.
"See, you get it," he said, gesturing with the pipe, smoke curling into the morning air like ghostly fingers. "World's trippin'. Clans killin' each other over blood and pride, but you just... stand there. Vibes immaculate."
The bush, small and leafy, rustled in the breeze.
Zassō nodded solemnly. "Damn right."
Behind him, Hako watched in silence. The boy was maybe fourteen lean, dirty from travel, and carrying a rusted sword too big for him. He didn't know why he followed the man. Maybe it was the voice. Or the smoke that sometimes shimmered like heaven. Or the fact that this stranger didn't treat him like a tool or a threat. Just... like another tree.
Hako finally spoke. "You... really hear them?"
Zassō turned slowly, pupils dilated, smile lazy. "You mean the green choir? Oh yeah. Loud as thunder sometimes. Especially when I hit the mushrooms. Last week, old pine told me I need to stop eating fish with eyes too close together."
"…Right."
The samurai rose, stretching like a cat. The pipe never left his hand. The embers never died.
He looked down the valley. "You know what I'm thinkin', kid?"
Hako didn't answer. He knew zassō would say it anyway.
"I'm thinkin'... I build a village."
Hako blinked. "A what?"
"A village, lil sapling. A real place. No clans, no bloodlines, just peace, trees, smoke, and space to talk to bark without folks lookin' at you sideways."
"You're serious."
Zssō smiled.
Dead serious.
Elsewhere…
The Uchiha camp burned through the night. Not from enemy attack but from within. A young shinobi had slaughtered his own team after claiming "they had roots growing from their eyes and the trees were screaming."
It wasn't genjutsu.
A faint trail of lingering smoke was found on the edges of the camp.
Unnatural smoke.
And one witness a shaken guard spoke of a tall man with braids who walked through the haze laughing, speaking to the corpses like they were old friends.
They called him the Cloud Phantom.
Back to Zassō…
He chose a quiet patch of forest, far from clan borders, where mist hung low and the soil was soft. He named it Smokebush Hollow. One clearing, one flat rock, and one crudely-carved wooden sign that read in jagged kanji:
"Welcome to the Hidden High."
No one lived there but him and Hako.
But it was enough.
That night, around the fire, Hako stared at the flickering flames. "You really think people will come? To this?"
Zassō exhaled a long stream of smoke. It curled upward, forming a spinning leaf, then a mushroom, then faded into the dark.
"They will," he said. "Lost folks always smell the fire. And the green. They'll come. When they tired of killing. When they need peace. Or when the trip hits hard and they see things that make 'em question who they are."
His voice dropped to a whisper, deep and soothing like velvet soaked in whiskey.
"Or maybe they come to find themselves in the fog."