Disclaimer: I own not a thing, except perhaps a humble admiration and certain fervor for the sadly fictitious Kaguya Bonedancer himself.
Summary: [Kimimaro would die the day he ceased to dance.] [KimimaroCharacterStudy]
Author's Note: This is, in some ways, a repost. I've moved my account, you see. So if you recognize the fic, but not the name, know that this is indeed my story; I've just relocated it. ^^
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Bonedancer
By Karasu
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"The shattering sky and soaring blackness
Torn by the wind, my eyesight fails.
Centennial blood-feud, the craft of war
Transcend even death itself.
Cut down the humble, cut down the meek
Cut down the pious, Bonedancer."
~~~ Enochian Crescent
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Kimimaro was spinning.
He twisted in midair, sucking in a quick breath that tasted of blood and fire, before lashing out with his leg and shattering the faceless Mist-nin's spine with one blow.
The man choked at the impact, before shuddering, dropping his weapon, and crumpling to the ground, bleeding from his grimacing mouth and broken back.
But Kimimaro took no note of this. He took no note of the heat on his face, no note of the blood matting in his hair, no note of the hot, coppery, cloying flavor swirling on his tongue, dripping from the side of his mouth.
The whole experience was otherworldly, ethereal, so beautiful. The young Kaguya, amongst the dying screams and bleeding corpses, felt a vague seed of satisfaction --- deep, powerful satisfaction — plant itself in his body, in his bones. He twirled amongst the brawling crowd, evading the swords and flames; dancing so gracefully.
There was screaming. Fire. Blood was everywhere, splattered across the ground like macabre paint, licking the sides of the blazing buildings, pouring from the wounds of the fallen and from the battered bodies of those still fighting.
He sliced the jugular of another faceless frame, another pointless sack of blood and gore. They gurgled, falling to the ground like a bag of meat, splashing Kimimaro's sandals with blood.
He was numb, his mind simply shutting itself away while his body acted on pure instinct. Spinning, twisting, slashing. A mindless cycle that his small, eight-year-old body endured while it numbly spun, dodged, leapt, danced, and killed.
Killed.
Yes, there was killing. Lots of blood, and death, and killing. So much screaming. His mind was far away, perhaps still back at the Kaguya lands, still huddled behind those steel bars and sealing tags.
He flipped his body upwards, and for a moment he felt like he was floating on clouds, so soft and slow in the sky, the sweet blue sky he hadn't seen in many, many years, before snapping back into his own mindless reality and stabbing his next attacker with his bone-dagger. Through the heart, of course. It was over very quickly, and Kimimaro immediately pushed the spasming hunk of faceless flesh to the ground before it got too much blood on him.
The cycle continued. Fire, stab, screaming, kick, spinning, slash, twisting, shouts, dancing, leaping, dodge, ripping, stabbing, flames, blood, blood everywhere, screams, slashing, flipping, jump, slash, stab, stab, stab, twist, burning, yells, dance, ducking, dodge, fire, and blood.
Fire and blood.
It was everywhere.
And the only thing Kimimaro could do was twist and duck and dance and stab and spin.
Kimimaro was spinning.
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It was something not widely known outside the Kaguya Clan. A secret of sorts, a clan secret. Or perhaps just something that nobody had ever bothered to investigate, out of fear.
Twin crimson curves, framing dark eyes. A double blot of sinister red, settled just above the brows, chillingly reminiscent of drop of blood, falling from the sky to land on pale skin.
It was something not widely known, that, despite their vicious disposition and bloodthirsty natures, the Kaguya were especially gifted in the art of fūinjutsu.
Sealing.
Seals were like tattoos. Decorative, deceptively so, and packed with unseen power. Seals could entrap jutsu, weapons, even demons, for the use of the user. Seals could store power, steal power, measure power. They could feed off chakra, shut down a nervous system, anything the user desired and could imagine. They splashed across skin, bold, artistic markings, anywhere on the body, like a small, simplistic painting.
The eye markings of the Kaguya were not simply that; markings. They were seals, of course, applied at birth with the purpose of measuring the individual's range of power and strength; a measure of the individual's Shikotsumyaku abilities.
Kaguyas with small, thin, unextraordinary markings never amounted to much, the seals around their eyes never picking up on anything useful to use in battle. Weaklings, in other words, who were used as the clan servants and positioned out in the front line of battle as human shields.
Kaguyas, on the other hand, with large, bold markings that distinctly framed their eyes with wide crimson curves represented the true prowess that surged through the veins of the Kaguyas. These individuals were rarer, far rarer, but were revered for their power and feared for their abilities.
And lastly, most importantly, there were the Kaguyas whose markings exceeded them all.
There was only one such Kaguya.
From infantry to childhood, his markings flourished, exceeding the size of which they should have been. Bold, red, and eye-catching, they marking him off as the most powerful Kaguya in centuries, without even trying.
The others feared him. A little boy, a little boy who was confused as to why the people seemed to avoid him. His wide, jade eyes wondered why, why it was that he was suddenly so alone. His family, his clan, cowered from his gaze, bewildered as it was.
Unbeknownst to him, the large, crimson circles painted on his brow and the sharp, bloody shadows under his eyes spoke for themselves. The little boy was as powerful as a Kaguya in his prime; a child with the powers of a man.
They locked him away. He was useful. But he was powerful. Powerful enough to be dangerous, for he did not know how to control his power. He was a little boy, and nothing more, who had been gifted — or was it cursed? — with extraordinary power he had never asked for. He was a little boy, who never had a chance to see the world, and never would. But lastly, he was a little boy, who craved human attention, just like anyone else, a gentle, graceful thing, with wide, melancholy green eyes that stared longingly into the night from behind the cold bars.
And still, the others feared him.
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Kimimaro did not know who his parents were.
At least one of them must have been a Kaguya. Otherwise, he would not have the Shikotsumyaku, no kekkei genkai blood running through his veins.
But one of them, and he was very tentative in this assumption, could not possibly have been of Kaguya origin. His mother? His father? He had no clue.
But...
Where else could his snowy, silky white hair come from? His pale, moonlight skin, so fair it seemed almost translucent at times? His wide, green eyes, like jade, emerald, and the new grass that sprouts in spring? Where else? Though he had spent little to no time in the presence of his clan succeeding his imprisonment, he knew for a fact that no white haired, pale skinned, green eyed individuals (male or female) had ever existed in Kaguya history.
The Kaguyas were known for their stocky, tanned, and dark-eyed features. Their hair was dark. Black, dark brown... it varied, but never anything lighter than brown. Their builds, even the womens', were bulky and muscled. Meant for brawling and destroying in large numbers. They had genetically tanned skin, usually marred by a multitude of scars and abrasions by the time they reached the age of ten.
But Kimimaro was none of these things. He was slim, pale, and green-eyed. His hair was white; the color of doves and snow. His body was lean, meant more for speed, agility, and stealth than for melee fighting. He had no scars, perhaps because he was so rarely let out of his cage, but nonetheless, his skin was smooth and creamy and completely unmarked.
Kimimaro was beautiful. But it was a wilted beauty. A lonesome, hateful, and pallid sort of beauty. He was a camellia overshadowed by a hedge of thorny weeds, trapping him on all sides. His beauty was a caged one, a sad and empty one.
What kind of parents would turn their backs on their child, their own blood...? What kind of parents would leave him, such a beautiful, wilted thing, to rot in the proverbial hell that was his cage? What kind of parents would have had the gall to bring him into this world, giving him this life, and then abandon him?
What kind of parents? Huh? Huh?
Kimimaro did not know who his parents were.
And Kimimaro wanted to keep it that way.
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Plants were Kimimaro's favorite part of nature.
Gracefully beautiful and softly delicate, but endlessly persistent and hardily resilient, especially when it mattered.
They thrived, pushed their way up through the ground, even in the harshest of conditions. They remained eternally lovely and ethereal, even in the ugliest of company. They died, as all living things eventually must, but always grew back one way or another.
Kimimaro admired plants.
He wished he could be like them, as odd as it sounded, as odd as it seemed to want to be like a plant, of all things.
He liked to familiarize himself with them whenever he could; when he moved, when he ate, when he fought. Flowers and plants were a part of Kimimaro's character.
When he moved, his stride was flowing, like the swaying of long grass in a slight breeze. His movements were undulating, like bamboo, strong, flexible, mesmerizing. His finger were dextrous, graceful and pale and long, with quick, calculated movements like the fluttering of a sakura petal drifting to the ground on the wind.
When he ate, his posture was perfect, straight and strong, but relaxed, like a pine tree in the midst of winter, it's elegant branches covered in snow. He was a venus flytrap, snapping up his food quickly, but in a way that intrigued rather than disgusted.
It was when he fought that he was most like a flower. He was a viscaria, asking, 'will you dance with me?', so graceful, and so deadly. He was a willow, flexible and sharp. A larch, prickly and dangerous. A clematis, a curling vine and killing flower. A seedling fern, shooting up from the ground in the early spring.
But most of all, he was a camellia. Pure and perfect and oh so grateful to the man who had saved him. Plucked him from the ground where he had originally grown, where he had been watered sparingly, and then only with water filled with anger and loneliness. He was grateful, just like a camellia.
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Kimimaro had one --- and only one --- philosophy that he had followed for all of his life. It was the one thing he had not learned from Orochimaru, and had not picked up from his darkened childhood. It was the one thing that he in himself had always believed, and always followed through.
The battlefield was not, in fact, a place where blood was shed and where weapons were crossed.
No.
From before he could remember, Kimimaro had always believed that the battlefield was not simply that, a field where a battle took place, but instead a stage, meant for performing and for finesse. The battlefield was a stage, where two people would dance, dance until one of them could dance no more.
And that was his philosophy.
He didn't mind that it sounded so feminine, so unthreatening and so un-shinobi-like. Because those who could not understand the dance never lived to dance again; Kimimaro made sure of that. He did not feel like he needed to prove his dancing to the world, for he knew it's true power for himself, and that was enough for him.
But of course, it was always rather satisfying to see the looks of shock and disbelief on the faces of the those who had fallen to his flitting, tasteful movements and deceptively graceful strikes that always broke limbs and slashed though flesh, despite their elegant disposition.
His dancing was dangerous, unorthodox, and beautifully unyielding. Fluid, precise steps and swift, elegant movements always confused his enemies, who, more often than not, didn't understand the dance and thusly tripped and fell in mid-step, clumsy and fearful in the face of such a different fighting-style.
It disgusted him every time he saw it, and the last thing his victims ever saw before they died was a small, sad smile, carved only with bitter longing and the fallen hopes that had once been filled with eagerness, eagerness to dance and see if his opponent could dance as well.
Kimimaro never did find anyone else who would dance with him. In the end, they all fell, having been graceless and dependant on skills that he himself consider petty in the faces of grace and suavity.
They had all fallen before him, leaving him bitter and lonely, the last act on the stage.
All alone.
And that was why he refused to partake in any other forms of taijutsu; his dancing was his, and his alone. He would dance until he could no longer move his limbs, no longer see the space in front of him. To cease his dance, would be to cease his life. Kimimaro would die the day he ceased to dance.
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In the end, Kimimaro was content.
He wasn't happy. Wasn't sad, wasn't particularly anything, really. The last little burst of anger, of energy, had actually been very satisfying, at least up until the blackness consumed his vision.
His life had been a hard one, forged of hate, loneliness, and desperation. His childhood had been a dark, cold, and cramped one, filled with days of numb resentment and pointless killing. His adolescence, spent with Orochimaru-sama, his savior, his reason for going on as long as he did, had been spent training, wandering, and serving his master.
His death was abrupt, and painful. And so very final. He was the end of a bloody history, the last of a vicious race.
But, as the dark consumed the light and his lungs finally failed, Kimimaro had never felt more alive. He was content, drifting away into the dark ocean lapping at his feet, forgetting all about Sabaku no Gaara and Rock Lee of Konoha.
Forgetting his hateful childhood, his numbing adolescence.
The waves swirled around his shins, the darkness soothing his mind.
Orochimaru-sama's face drifted on the edge of his thoughts, and he felt the echoes of a feeling called gratitude, before the waves swirled up to his stomach and the snake-sannin's face vanished from his memory as well.
In the end, Kimimaro was content, as the black waves swept over his body and his brief fifteen years of life at last came to a soothing halt; the last of the Bonedancers finally fading away into the beckoning blackness of death.
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There. All done, I suppose.
See, as the author, the thing I really wanted you, the reader, to see was just how lovely a character Kimimaro was. He lived and died in a very short time. He appeared to us in an even shorter time.
But you know, the first time I saw this character in action, flying through the trees like a pale ghost, I thought, 'this character is beautiful'.
He was villain, a brainwashed one a that, but he wasn't evil, like his master, or power-hungry, like Uchiha Sasuke was. He wasn't bright and energetic like Naruto, nor weak and unimpressive.
But he was beautiful, and curious, and oddly stark in a way that him irrevocably interesting.
And then he died, just like that.
And still, his death was a graceful one, a death that I just couldn't forget. Even if Kimimaro is fictional, and I mean, hell, the whole thing is fictional, I kinda wish that he got some more credit, a little more light.
He danced with his bones, and in the end, they danced with him. And then I danced with this pale, green-eyed little plotbunny.
— K
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