Kaiza stood rigid as a statue while he narrowly avoided vomiting.
An orange haze shrouded his village from view, snow hovering over the town as though it were massless fog rather than frozen flakes of water. This fog resembled bloodied spirits tearing at the ground, desperate to retrieve their lost bodies. Silhouettes of his family and friends marred the earth. Fear chilled him to the bone, numbing his entire body. The small bundle of game he had captured dropped to his feet and his arms hung to the sides of his body, not quite feeling as though they belonged to him.
A wooden beam fractured and an avalanche of brick collapsed, causing the poor soul to cower underneath his own arms. There was no one left; if only he had been there to stop this…
He launched the dead prey into the smoke and cursed this cruel winter. Kaiza couldn't have been there to protect them unless he were willing to risk their lives to starvation.
"Hiro." He whispered. Frantic puffs of breath escaped him as he willed his friend to appear. His hunting partner had only returned a few hours earlier than him, now he was alone. Kaiza's heart sank and mind raced; he should have made Hiro wait until they were finished clearing out the extra snares. They didn't need to split up, that's the reason they hunted in groups right?
Were there any survivors? Only the haunting crackles of fire answered and Kaiza forced himself to take a calming breath.
What happened to Hiro? His knuckles turned white as he braced for the answer. He would have to enter the terrifying reality to find out.
Who could have done something like this? The war was over! He pondered the question, but deep inside, Kaiza knew. There was one reason, hidden quietly in the storage of his brother's home.
After an unknown amount of time passed, 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.
If he were there when it happened maybe he could have stopped it, but their food stores were severely depleted. There wasn't enough to feed all of them, and traveling merchants hadn't stopped by for weeks. Their supply runners inexplicably disappeared a week ago and he'd finally conceded to the idea they had died somewhere along the journey.
The village could have lasted only several days longer by rationing, so Kaiza and the others needed to hunt. They'd go in several different groups, each gone for a couple days at a time, picking from the already desolate forest. When it was time for his rotation, he had no choice but to leave, even what little they brought home would be life-saving.
He couldn't have been there to protect them.
"Hello?" He called out hoarsely. "Hiro!" He braced against the intensifying wind as he sluggishly stepped inside where his friend's home used to be, now a skeletal pile of ash. The foundation cracked and moaned against each step, but he only hesitated once the wood warped downward.
Kaiza froze, deciding whether or not to turn back, but newfound hope triggered his inability to give up.
"Hey!" He cried out.
A trembling body stood several feet away from Kaiza but the floor gave in, sending them both through the shallow splintering ground. 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 from the uncomfortable campsite and extra hunting 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 only response.
Kaiza's 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 the other's face; but the man he'd spent most of his young life with had given up. They were about to survive! It was not fair to the others, but there was nothing else they could do. They would have been able to spite their enemies by living!
Kaiza took several moments to silently apologize to his closest friend. This was all his fault…
He stumbled from the disaster toward the house where Hiro pointed: His brothers home. It was completely knocked to the ground.
So, the day had finally come.
Apparently they knew from the start something like this would happen. 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 rescued her and a newborn from an unforgiving winter storm and starvation; Yuki clansmen. More often called the 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 crumbled.
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 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. His expression deadened. One of her icy 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. This poor person embraced by death, 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 they were not inherently evil.
So where's the baby? Kaiza wasn't particularly looking forward to seeing the corpse, but it would save a lot of pain to resolve the question.
A very large furrow in the ground seemed to answer Kaiza's internal question. It started near the house and stayed as a perfect solid line in the snow as far as the fog allowed him to see.
He ignored the obvious idea of it being a trap. Based on his previous observations, he figured they thought no one was left to follow them. Hopefully.
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 red-hot anger sparked inside his body before tallying them up. Only three people? There they were, 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 emanated from 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!
Kaiza couldn't help wondering if this kid was just along for the ride by force, he almost appeared to be defending that baby.
Without thinking things through, Kaiza snatched at the branch in front of him and drew back, snapping the bark off and grunting 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?
The three of them screamed out different threats, something about promising to end it quickly, or painlessly, though Kaiza knew it was only an attempt to save them the few minutes it would take to hunt him down.
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 one of those other people," 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 like an animal. It's your call." They seemed to advance on Kaiza each moment he glanced at the ice block, turning around 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, 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." Kaiza held his breath, begging himself not to close his eyes or fall to the ground. He had to hold onto some sort of dominance here.
"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. Please 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 has 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 sign.
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 must have been rough, 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 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 dumb-asses we've got here.
"I promise you, we'll get in there before tomorrow's over." Kaiza decreed.
xxx
Throughout the rest of the night, Kaiza kept their attention on him as best he could, guiding them as far from the ice-block possible. As they bunkered down to sleep, he summoned up the courage he needed to go through with his disheveled plan.
They hadn't fully trusted him yet to keep watch over the group so he had to stay up and wait until the designated watchman got distracted. Kaiza had managed to find a sizable rock and launched it into the trees, careful not to wake up the rest of the snoring bastards.
Fourth-guy, who he had planned this for, jumped with panic and held a knife close to his body as Kaiza quickly put his head down.
He muttered something Kaiza couldn't make out and could hardly believe his luck as the guy left the group to search for what the sound could have been.
He had to work quickly.
They had hidden away their weapons well so Kaiza unfortunately had to go with his back-up plan. Spending far too much time rolling the block of ice quietly to the group, he picked up the mass as high as he could and launched it over weapon-guy's head. It smashed in like a paper bag and Kaiza reached down for the axe underneath his body.
The friends woke up shortly after, of course.
"What the fuck is going on?!"
Kaiza screamed and smashed the axe down on top of boss-guy. Scrawny-guy ran at him from behind and knocked both of them to the ground. Kaiza's new weapon lay just out of reach as he felt his breath being stolen from him.
"You fucking rat-lover! I knew you were one of them!" He screamed and Kaiza saw stars dancing in his eyes.
Fourth-guy screamed and scrawny-guy looked away, briefly loosening his grip around Kaiza's neck. He was able to grab the axe and slashed at his neck, but Kaiza lost his grip and the sharp edge cut into his arms.
The fourth-guy was nowhere to be found and scrawny-guy held onto his neck violently thrashing his other arm at Kaiza. He got a few good swipes at his face but Kaiza felt no pain.
Scrawny-guy quickly lost consciousness and Kaiza wrestled with the idea of removing his head for good measure. "That's the only way to make sure something is dead, right?" But he was too exhausted to move and just had to hope that his consciousness was lost forever.
He hugged block of ice close to him, trembling against its frigid roughness. Then he slept.
Kaiza awoke shortly after with a start and jumped to his feet. No sign of fourth-guy anywhere. He must have run away for real, having no real loyalty to the crew, just as suspected.
He observed the large block of ice closely seeing if he could find the child still inside. He wasn't surprised to find her still snuggled in the ice but there was something off about the block. A large crack happened right down the center with smaller ones spiderwebbing from the main line. What is with this ice?
Kaiza chipped away at the already broken block all day long and managed to pull out a frozen child once the sun finally set. So she really is dead. He fell to the ground and sobbed hopelessly, demanding what all of this was meant for. Normally Kaiza was a firm believer in everything happening for a reason, but this was all senseless death.
He cradled the child in his arms, desperate to warm her back to body temperature.
He fell asleep again.
Somewhere during the middle of the night, the weakened man smiled. Paternal instincts fired through him as this was the first night he heard Kaiya cry.