Prologue
Muffled words and damp snow crunched methodically next to Kaiza's ear. A white-dusted bush shook past his sightline, where a splay of frozen pebbles stabbed his face like ice-needles. He moved to cover himself, but his body had locked solid. He groaned and sensed a twisting pull on his shoulders. Another hard tug backward, and a mound of glacial material collected around his head.
He was being dragged across the ground.
Kaiza swayed from various states of consciousness that morning but came alive when he ripped his mouth open to scream. A black layer of frozen blood cracked across his lips and down his chin.
"Wait-"
Sunlight reflected off the snow into his eyes and he couldn't tell where he was. He searched his memories for the previous night. At first, all he remembered was the ice. Where was the ice? He lifted his head when the kidnappers ignored his protest. The block was leaning on its side against the ground, still nearby. He needed to stand up. He needed what was inside.
"I have to get that ice, Let me go!" he grunted and coughed. His body wouldn't move.
"You're very sick." a woman lectured Kaiza. "We need to get you warmed up."
"What were you doin' huggin' an ice block, friend? You're gonna die of hypothermia!" a man laughed.
"It's a baby." Kaiza stated weakly. His eyes closed against the blinding sun and he stopped moving across the ground. They'd placed him inside a warm cart.
"He's insane." The travelers sighed amongst themselves. A wet rag bit the old blood off his face, waking him briefly.
"Yuki." Kaiza spoke through clattering teeth. "It's Yuki…"
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xxx
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Kaiza stood rigid as a statue while he narrowly avoided vomiting.
Wisps of snowy fog cut through the young man as he watched the orange haze shrouding his village. Dancing figures of smoke appeared to tear at the ground like spirits desperate to retrieve their lost bodies. Bodies which littered the earth around him.
Kaiza's numbed arms swung to his sides, not caring for the prized game landing by his feet on the hard ground. How long had he been stuck like this?
He instantly knew why this happened. The reason, tucked quietly in the storage of his brother's home.
Kaiza took his first step into the arctic graveyard. Snow began to race around him, pelleting his face as he trudged through. He was hypnotized by shock, unable to look away from the bodies half buried in snow. Many familiar faces twisted with silent screams, many were slashed across the neck and torso, some were burned into the ground with their homes. No one had escaped far before they were cut down by mysterious enemies. Except…
"Hey!" He cried out and leaped into the wreckage of a burned home.
A trembling body stood several feet away from Kaiza but the floor gave in, sending them both through the shallow splintering base. A log uncomfortably jammed into Kaiza's shoulder and he debated whether or not to just go to sleep. How easy would it be to just fall asleep and die? Fatigue begged him to close his eyes and give in to the increasingly cozy burrow.
"D-Did you know?"
Kaiza's eyes shot open.
"Hiro?" He rasped, "What are you doing? What happened!" The sound of coughing was his friend's only response.
Kaiza threw his arms out of the sharp wood and he dragged himself from the floorboards. He placed his bloody hands firmly onto Hiro's shirt and pulled.
"Don't t-touch m-!" The man shook facedown into the ground.
"What are you talking about? You're going to die out here," Kaiza yelled, "Where is your coat? Hurry up!" He turned the fading man upward, but the face looking up at him did not resemble anyone he knew. It was a rabid animal, hatred seared into the pair of deep-set eyes and white foam froze onto it's cracked lips, "Did y-you know?"
"What? Did I know what?" He shook Hiro in and out of consciousness, but he could no longer speak. With the last bit of strength he had, he reached his frost bitten arm toward a particularly damaged house and he closed his eyes for the last time.
Kaiza slugged his fist against his face; but it was pointless. He took several moments to silently apologize. All of this…it was his fault.
He stumbled out from the broken flooring toward the house where Hiro pointed: His brother's home. It was completely crumbled to the ground.
Kaiza didn't understand the risk before pleading with his family to rescue a certain woman, so many months ago. A person that many others wanted dead.
They had found her with a baby- trapped in an unforgiving storm and ravaged by starvation; Yuki clansmen. More often called "scourge of their land", anyone with a strange manifestation of power: Kekkei genkai. He could not weep for his own men, but for the woman who lie in the streaks of her own cursed blood, he broke.
Kaiza nearly threw up again, but there'd been nothing in his spasming stomach to empty so he merely dry heaved in pain. Underneath the floors was a small room, where the woman's body laid. Her hair was as black as the ash surrounding them, gray eyes wide open. Her misshapen corpse remained in a sideways fetal position but her head hung backwards, exposing a gash that nearly severed it from her body. Ice unnaturally spiked out from around her. One of the projections cracked and collapsed to the ground and Kaiza lurched backward.
He observed the woman closely, unsure if he'd ever see another one like her again. Kaiza wondered if she had witnessed everyone's murder before her own. Perhaps she'd seen and felt responsible, maybe she let them kill her in the hopes they'd spare the others? Perhaps not. He only knew she was not inherently evil.
So where's the baby? Kaiza wasn't particularly looking forward to seeing the corpse, but needed to know.
A large furrow in the ground beckoned him. It started near the house and remained as a perfect solid line in the snow as far as the fog allowed him to see. He didn't care if it were a trap, he just wanted to know…
It only took Kaiza an hour of walking before he discovered several obnoxious noises deep in the stark white forest.
He peeked carefully over a hill near a trickling excuse for a river, and he saw them.
A quick flash of hot anger sparked inside his body before tallying them up. Only three people? Took down his whole tribe? Three men were hacking at a large block of ice, miserably failing to reach the contents inside, which Kaiza could only guess was the other possible survivor of the assault. Yuki.
"Shit this block isn't breaking!" He hammered at the cocoon once more, not even earning himself an icy kickback.
"The kid is frozen solid." A fourth man spoke in startling proximity to Kaiza. Dammit! Four. "The- Rat- probably just killed it before we got the chance." Hesitation on every spoken word.
"You don't know that." The biggest guy of the group spat at the solid ice, "It could be protection."
"Yeah, when you want something dead, you better make sure the head is off its body…" A scrawny guy made a slicing gesture with his thumb against his own throat and cackled.
"Fuck me then!" The nearest man yelled out, "We'll just keep it! I'm sure it'll thaw out real quick right? It'll thaw out a dead-ass-worthless baby we spent all day killing."
"What's your problem?" Scrawny man chuckled.
He scoffed back at them, "Come on guys, this thing is over 100 pounds, lets just throw it down the river or something."
"You'd risk letting one of those creatures survive? I could kill you just for thinking that…" The mood turned sour against the fourth man and he gulped nervously, stumbling more over his words.
"Its just annoying- is all- I mean really. The kid's gonna die anyway. No food or air, the chakra in there isn't a never-ending life force." he pressed his defense.
"Can I knock his teeth out, boss?" Silence.
It sounded like a joke at first, but once the big guy nodded his approval the young man screamed out. "Wait!"
No! Shit!
Without thinking, Kaiza took hold of a branch in front of him and drew back, snapping the bark off and grunted with pestering fear. What am I doing?!
"Hey! What's that?"
Kaiza covered his mouth but his jagged breathing couldn't be stopped, who in their right mind would surrender their hiding spot to these senseless men? Suicidal!
The three of them screamed out different threats, something about promising to end it quickly, or painlessly. It all jumbled together into unintelligible anger. It shouldn't be too tough to outsmart them right? Kaiza prayed and jumped out with his arms in the air, "Sorry! Don't attack just yet." A nervous laugh followed.
"Hm, this is too weird," Scrawny-guy laughed through the tension, "We must have missed you back at the nothing-town, huh?"
"Hey, he does sort of look like em," the big-guy agreed.
"You think I'm one of them?" Kaiza interrupted with a scoff and shook his head, "This is just great. I wasn't planning on getting involved but you guys sort of forced me to when you stole what's rightfully mine."
"Yours? Alright moron, I'd suggest turning around and walking your ass back to where you came from. That or you can stay and get carved. It's your call." They seemed to advance on Kaiza each moment he glanced at the ice block, running back would be a death sentence…
"If I die you'll never get to that baby." He stood tall and confident, betraying his fear. Their eyes still held disinterest, but at least they quit advancing. He guessed he'd only get one more chance to hold their attention.
"I-I know how to kill her."
"Really," The weapon-guy leaned back on his axe. "This'll be good."
"I'm serious. You idiots got to that village before I had the chance to sneak in their house." Rein it in a bit Kaiza, "I walked away for one second and you ruin the only chance I had! There's no way you're gonna get into that fortress now." He held his breath, begging not to close his eyes or fall to the ground. He had to hold onto some sort of dominance here. So much for reining it in...
"Oh yeah?" The boss-guy twirled a knife around his finger, "So how do you suppose we kill it?"
"I was going to wait until they were asleep tonight, catching rats off guard is the fastest way to get rid of them." He caressed the surface of the ice, indeed seeing the clouded image of a child tucked away inside. Be alive!
"Now I've got all this bullshit to burn through. And we'll need a powerful fire-based shinobi, nothing else can break through this ice." The group of men stood silently, contemplating what Kaiza had said. He had very limited knowledge on the ninja lifestyle and hoped he could get away with what little he knew.
The scrawny guy piped up, "I know a couple of guys back in the mist village, you know, the one who made those bombs for the rat-lover's houses. I have a couple left here, lets blast them!" The weapon-guy swiped the precious bombs away from his comrade.
"You sure we can't just cut through it? I spent a lot of money on those things…" He asked toward Kaiza. Good.
He needed to get them away from the ice soon, or else he won't get much farther than this.
"No. It can't be just any ordinary bomb, I've seen this kind of barrier before." The leader rolled his eyes.
"Listen to me carefully, I happen to have some connections; if we can get to them we'll find a real easy way inside." The boss-guy finally held up his hand.
"Just who are you, again? Are you working for somebody?" Their suspicious gazes worried Kaiza, it was time to get into character for real.
"I'm no one. Just trying to give back as much to the land of water as I can. Those kekkei-genkai rats were responsible for the death of my entire family." A couple of the idiots cheered.
"Yeah I hear ya on that! Fuck those rats."
"That sucks, you're still a kid yourself." Big-guy handed the knife to weapon-guy and walked over to Kaiza, patting the guarded man on the back.
Kaiza touched the man's shoulder with disgust, hoping to translate that feeling into believable racism. "They stole my life from me, it's only fair to take theirs too, right?" He kicked over the block of ice, hoping the precious cargo was still safe. Strangely enough, the sympathy card won them over.
"Here, have a meal on us, you look starved." Fourth-guy offered.
"What were you even eating out there? The forest's got nothin'."
He sighed, "I dropped everything when I came back from hunting what I could. The scene disturbed me a little bit to be honest." Fourth-guy raised his eyebrows and Kaiza continued, "I almost thought it was the woman who burned down all those houses. Scared the crap out of me."
"We'll make sure you get your food back as long as you can help us get rid of this witch." Rat and witch? Real creative asses we've got here.
"I promise you, we'll get in there before tomorrow's over." Kaiza decreed.
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xxx
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"And then you killed 'em?" The man questioned, his eyes gazing at Kaiza with something akin to speculation, disbelief, and even a touch of amusement. Kaiza didn't want to say, but their bodies were only a short distance from them. He glanced in the direction of an axe handle sticking cockeyed from a blanket of snow; buried into something unspeakable.
"I had to protect her." He felt disgusting and uncomfortable, even in those luxurious furs they'd surrounded him with. His mind had blanked and he felt like a new person. He would be a new person now; there was nothing left of his old life. He gripped hard onto the dense warmth.
"How?" The man pushed further, hurting Kaiza worse than the slash on his face.
"-Patience." Kaiza muttered. He couldn't bare to imagine those lifeless faces- even if they'd been pure evil.
"I'll be damned. It really is a kid in there." The woman yelled to them, peering into the dripping transparent ice.
"Got that chisel with ya? We don' need to be pullin' along a deadweight." the man grumbled loudly. Kaiza bounced up in the cart when the man jumped off. He was thankful for the distraction, and relieved to know that they weren't planning to leave her behind.
"Let me help." Kaiza shifted himself to sit and the woman ran back to them, searching frantically for the instrument.
"Is it yours?" she asked as her partner backed their cart to the statue. Kaiza refused to look away from it.
"-Yeah." he said.
It took no time to release the baby from the fortress. The woman wrapped her in their thickest furs and nestled her in Kaiza's arms.
She wasn't crying.
"You don't mind us being here?" Kaiza asked, assuming she was still alive.
"Don' be stupid." his unknown rescuer reassured him. "We know a couple places that couldn't care less about any of that keka gen-whatever stuff."
"Thank you," Kaiza trembled with the whimpering baby.
Then she cried.
AN- See you soon for chapter one. Would love some constructive criticism/ any feedback you got for me! Thanks