Isao Kaguya, holder of the much feared Shikotsumyaku, and last known survivor of the entire feared Kaguya clan.
The Kaguya were wild, and barbaric, war-loving and cruel to a point. Isao and his younger brother Kimimaro spent most of their lives in a cage, because they were feared for the bloodline that they had inherited. Their father, outraged that his two sons had inherited the bloodline that he did not, would often beat them nearly to the point of death.
They both could have, of course, used the Shikotsumyaku at any point to kill their father, and nearly everyone in their clan, but they hoped beyond hope that one day they would realize the two of them wanted nothing more than please them, and to live outside of a cage.
But one day, their father came to their cage, and told them that they would finally be able to leave, at least for a while, because they were going to attack the Village Hidden in the Mist, to prove their superiority to the village. And so they went with their clan, fighting brief skimishes with Kirigakure forward troops, slowing their progress while the village prepared for the coming battle.
When they finally reached the village, Isao and Kimimaro were sent at the front of their line, and forced to protect themselves, and kill any Kiri-nin that would try to stop them.
At first, it seemed as if they would win, Isao and Kimimaro were terrifying in battle, even with nothing but raw instinct powering their bloodline, they decimated the Kiri-nin. But eventually, they grew to be surrounded by the Kiri-nin, and the rest of their clan were dying, one by one. But still, Kimimaro and Isao now fought to protect each other, until a man wielding a great zanbato focused on fighting Isao, while his brother was surrounded.
This man was a legend among the shinobi world, non other than Zabuza Momochi himself, a member of the Seven Swordsman of Kirigakure, and nicknamed "The Demon of the Bloody Mist" for his combat style.
Isao however, knew nothing of the man, but could feel from the arrogance in his stance, and the way that he seemed to wield that gigantic sword like nothing was a testament to his strength. Zabuza dashed at Isao, his sword being swung horizontally.
Seeing the power behind the blow, Isao manipulated the bones in his arm outward, coating his arm in bone as hard as steel, and braced himself for the impact.
When Zabuza's zanbato hit, nothing could have prepared Isao for the amount of force behind it. The bones covering Isao's arm shattered like glass, but did it's job and kept his arm from being cut clean off. However, Isao was launched sideways by the blow, tumbling nearly three dozen feet in the dirt until he came to a stop, effectively taking him away from his brother, as Zabuza advanced again.
Zabuza was fast, much more so than Isao would have expected from a man his size, wielding such a large sword. Isao was constantly kept on the defensive, always dodging or just barely deflecting the zanbato away from killing blows. But Isao was wearing down fast, and he could tell that Zabuza was only toying with him, before Zabuza finally struck faster than he had before, catching Isao with the side of his blade, throwing him painfully through a cluster of trees, Isao managed to coat his back with a protective layer of bone to prevent major damage, but could still feel the force of the impact running through his body every time he ran straight through tree after tree.
After what felt like an eternity, Isao finally stopped, crashing into a giant sycamore tree, falling painfully onto his stomach in front of the tree. Painfully, Isao rolled over onto his stomach so that he could breathe, as much was allowed by his shattered ribs, so Isao used the last remaining bit of his chakra to reform his ribs so that he could breathe. But in a flash, Zabuza was in front of him, his monstrous zanbato poised ready to cut into Isao's throat, and Isao had no energy left to defend himself.
Zabuza smirked confidently down at Isao, "You have one Hell of a great bloodline boy, and great instincts in battle. I am going to offer you a deal Kaguya, since your family is all dead, except maybe that other bone controlling boy, I will take you back to Kirigakure with me, keeping you secret from the other ninja, and train you to be my own living weapon." Zabuza took his zanbato away from Isao's throat, only to swing his full force down at him, but then stopping an inch away from his forehead, "If you refuse, I will simply drive Kubikiribocho into your head and move on."
Isao stopped for a second to think, 'What life is worth living when all of my family is dead, when my brother will probably be dead as well?' Suddenly an idea burst into his mind, "I will accept, but only if you find my brother and ensure that he is allowed to leave, and can walk away free."
Zabuza grinned, "Done." Zabuza flashed through a few hand seals, and a water clone drew itself up next to Zabuza, and bent down and threw Isao over his shoulder, and soon they were dashing back to where the original battle was, which ended nearly a kilometer from where their battle had taken them to.
As they ran, Zabuza began to ask Isao a bunch of questions, "Tell me boy, what is your name, and how old are you?"
Isao, weak after the fight, responded almost too quietly for Zabuza to hear, "My name is Isao Kaguya, and I am almost 11 years old now."
Zabuza seemed content with that fact, "And your younger brother back there?"
Isao stopped for a second, coughing up a small amount of blood onto his hand, no doubt coming from internal injuries from bone fragments that had punctured something, "My brother's name is Kimimaro Kaguya, and he is only 8 years old."
"Well you had better hope that your brother knows how to survive in this world then Isao, Mizugakure is not a friendly place." As Zabuza finished talking, they finally came into sight of where the battle had taken place, only to find that there was no longer a battle taking place.
Zabuza stopped a ways off, "Stay put here, if the other men see you they will try to kill you, you and brother killed a lot men back there. I will go see if they captured or killed your brother already, but he isn't anywhere around here any more, he either took off or was captured."
In a second, Zabuza was gone, off talking to a man who was barking orders around at the others, obviously heading the cleanup of the battle. For a few minutes they exchanged words, the other man laughing before Zabuza dashed back towards Isao and his clone, after the other man went back to barking orders.
When Zabuza got back, Isao was instantly questioning Zabuza, "Where is my brother? Did they capture him, is he dead? Did he already get away?"
Zabuza silenced Isao with a glare, before responding, "Your brother took off after the leader of your merry gang of barbarians died, a few men took chase, but gave up after he killed another one of them with bones he threw from the tips of his fingers. Your brother is probably safe, assuming he can survive out here."
Isao felt a few wandering thoughts, wondering if he should try to run away from Zabuza, and find his brother, but he knew there was no chance of that happening, at least not yet. "My brother will be fine, anything is better than being trapped in a cage until they let us out to kill people."
Zabuza stared at Isao strangely for a second, before shaking his head, "Whatever the case boy, your brother is free, so you will come back with me to the village. I am going to train you to be one Hell of a ninja, but in return you will follow my orders to the letter when I give them."
Isao nodded his head, "Yes sir."
Isao spent the next six months quietly enduring the constant training that Zabuza would throw at him, while during his own free time learning to control his bloodline Shikotsumyaku, controlling his bones in different ways to provide a defense and offence at the same time.
He stayed at Zabuza's house, staying out of sight from any but the other members of the Seven Swordsman of the Mist, and Zabuza's two followers, Gozu and Meizu, the Demon Brothers. His life stayed pretty constant, the training was hard, but Isao enjoyed the freedoms he had, even if he was stuck staying within one compound, it was better than a cage. He taught himself to read and write, with occasional help from Zabuza, and he could eat food that gave him a balanced nutrition, and he lost the under-fed and malnourished look that he had had before.
Over the time he stayed there with Zabuza, he saw how Zabuza had the strong and edgy version of himself that he showed to other people, but there were moments when Isao could see a different side to the Demon of the Bloody Mist, one that cared about how his village was suffering under the dictatorial leadership of Yagura, the Mizukage. All of the Swordsman cared, at least on some level.
This was no more clear than when Zabuza burst into the house one night, furiously ranting about how Kisame Hoshigami had assassinated a large amount of Yagura's followers and then tried to kill the Mizukage himself, but failed.
This marked a change among the swordsman and the Mizukage, Isao could no longer train in the training room because the noise could be heard from the outside of the house, and all of homes of the remaining six swordsman were under observation by the Mizukage's most strict followers.
The Mizukage no longer trusted any of the Swordsmen, who all held animosities towards him, all of them resented the Mizukage, especially Zabuza, who's only problem with Kisame having attempted a Coup de Tat was that he had not involved the other swordsman, and had instead acted alone.
A month later, Zabuza and Isao were sitting down to eat together when Zabuza finally broke the lock that he kept on his own thoughts, and opened up to Isao, "I plan to assassinate the Mizukage, and establish myself as the Godaime Mizukage, and use my membership in the Seven Swordsmen to back my claim. With Kisame now gone, I am the strongest member of the Swordsman, and if I can kill Yagura, I will be the strongest ninja in the village."
Isao stopped for a second to think on that fact, "Do you plan to use the other Swordsmen to help you? Kisame acted by himself as well, and he failed. And facing the facts, he was stronger than you are, and he could not do it alone. All of the swordsmen hate Yagura, if you plan to do this, to kill Yagura, let the others help you do it, that way you are almost guaranteed to succeed."
Zabuza stopped to think about that for a second, absentmindedly chewing his food as he thought, "I thought about that already, but I don't think I trust any of them to not try to kill me afterwards to take the spot as Mizukage for themselves."
Isao too, had to stop and think for a moment, "But what if you didn't become the Mizukage after all of you kill Yagura? Yagura used to have an advisory council beneath him that ran the village, what if the six of you agreed to share power over the village? You all hate the way Yagura runs the village, and you all want change for the village. Kisame thought that he could do it by himself, but he proved that not even he was as strong as Yagura. You could all work together to kill Yagura, and then establish the Seven Swordsman of the Mist as the ruling class of Kirigakure."
Zabuza stopped to think on the proposal for a moment, before shaking his head, "I don't think any of them could be fit to even help lead the village. Jinin is blindly aggressive, and would never agree to sharing power. Ameyuri would be a fine leader, but she is almost dead from cancer. Jinpachi and Kushimaru are as heartless as they come, and while they hate Yagura, couldn't give a damn about the village in general, plus Raiga plans on just leaving the village with that kid he found, Ranmaru."
Isao absorbed that knowledge, realizing that if Zabuza was going to try to assassinate the Mizukage, he would have to get help that wasn't from the other swordsman. "You could try to contact Kisame, I am sure that you kept in touch with him after he left the village. Plus the Demon Brothers would help you in whatever you asked them to, and that is not to discount me as well, I may only be 12, but I would help however I could."
Zabuza thought that over, "Maybe I shouldn't look to assassinate the Mizukage, but instead try a different kind of coup de tat, I could try to gain a following in the village, as the next strongest ninja in the village, I have the power and renown to try to gain enough support to force Yagura off of seat as Kage, if I got a large amount of the shinobi population behind me."
Isao nodded, "That could work as well, almost none of the ninja want Yagura to lead the village any longer, and I would bet that a large amount of shinobi would jump at a chance to remove Yagura from power."
Their talking done, both of them soon settled into a silence as they quietly ate the remainder of their dinner. It was an extremely important moment, because the two of them, a Swordsman of the Mist, and his apprentice had just laid down plans for a revolution.
This moment, however, was completely shattered as the door into Zabuza's house was busted in, and from down the hall in the kitchen, the two of them could hear a number of people begin to race into the house.
The two of them were up in an instant, and Zabuza had his Kubikiribocho in hand a second later, motioning for Isao to follow him, as they both turned and ran through the other side of the house, and upstairs to the upper floor, and then out onto a balcony that extended off the side of the house, and were soon dashing through the rooftops.
The Kirigakure Anbu were close behind however, closing distance rapidly until Isao began to shoot missiles from the tips of fingers at them as they ran, catching one of them by surprise, sending him tumbling down onto the streets below. The other Anbu began to chase at a farther distance, seven of them in total now.
Isao and Zabuza ran as fast as they could, heading towards the outskirts of the village down by the docks. As the two of them ran however, there were several other figures seen dashing through the rooftops, and Zabuza could easily identify Ameyuri, Jinpachi and Kushimaru running from almost two dozen more Anbu in close pursuit.
Isao seeing the three other swordsmen running from Anbu quickly called out to the three of them, so Zabuza and Isao changed their path to intercept the other swordsman. As all five now continued to run, Ameyuri informed Zabuza of what was happening, "Something set Yagura off, Anbu had my house surrounded before I knew what was happening, as I was about to be overwhelmed, Jinpachi and Kushimaru arrived to intervene, but we had to run when more arrived. We are all being targeted, they tell me Jinin is dead, and Raiga left the village before all of this happened."
The five of them continued to move as fast as they could for the docks, Isao struggling to keep up with the much faster shinobi, but somehow managing to do so. By now, there was nearly three dozen Anbu in pursuit of the group, and as they reached the docks, they wordlessly agreed to make their last stand, Zabuza enhancing the natural mist of the evening with his Kirigakure Jutsu.
For the Anbu, it was like watching the swordsman and the boy with white hair suddenly get swallowed up by the mist, but when they reached the mist, all that could be heard was their screams.
Three dozen of Kirigakure's elite Anbu ran into the mist after the swordsman, none of them left it alive. When Yagura himself arrived minutes later, it was to find the swordsman gone in the mist.
Author's Note: First of all, I want to say thank you to those of you that read the whole chapter all the way up to this point, all the way through to the end. This is the first thing I have posted on this site, I have a lot of other fan fiction written already, but I never had the courage to post any of it up until this point, after a friend of mine started posting his own work too.
If you guys could, please review or pm me, let me know what you think of the premise of the story, how I did, if there were errors with the timeline of canon, I did a lot of research into this, such as when the Kaguya attacked the hidden mist village, when Zabuza and the other swordsman left the village, and a few other things. Which, of course I ended up changing how the swordsmen, other than Kisame, end up leaving the village, so that hardly ended up mattering though.
And most importantly, please let me know what you thought of my writing, was my grammar fine, was it the best thing since sliced bread? Please let me know.
