The Beginning
Kidoumaru had always been a man who liked to see things through to the end before moving on to something new. Thus, it was only appropriate that any story he told began with a proper beginning and expanded from there. If he were to tell his own story, for example, he would begin with the customary I was born in… I grew up with… Kidoumaru, however, didn't like telling his own tale. There was something about it that just felt so incredibly lonely and exhausting, like the end of a long adventure abroad, or watching the snow dance its way to the ground, blanketing the earth. No, it was the tale of the Sound Five that Kidoumaru had always wanted to relay, because really, there was nothing lonely about that.
And so it was that Kidoumaru was the first of the Sound Five to be recruited by Lord Orochimaru, after Kimimaro of course, but then again, it somehow seemed as if the pale boy had been there before time itself and would be long after there was nothing left but time.
Kimimaro was strange like that. He sometimes reminded Kidoumaru of a fixture – some beautiful, sharp ornament – rather than a human-being. Or maybe just a rock – impersonal and cold. Kidoumaru had never been really good with metaphors.
The second to arrive had been Sakon and Ukon. The first meeting had turned out to be rather unremarkable, after Kidoumaru's initial shock at being greeted by two heads on the same body and Sakon and Ukon's surprise at being presented with three equally grubby hands to shake where there should only have been one.
Shortly after Sakon and Ukon, Lord Orochimaru had come across Jiroubou while on some obscure mission, and had brought him back to the village to add to his rapidly growing collection of misfits. This time around, the introductions were awkward to the point of being painful, as no one was willing to look anyone else in the eye, much less talk and bond and play and all that other crap normal nine-year-olds were supposed to do in the company of their peers. Of course, whether or nor "normal" applied to the five boys assembled was a highly-debatable question, starting with Kimimaro's ability to rip his own spine out and use it as a whip without so much as batting an eye and concluding somewhere along Kidoumaru's six arms, but not before traveling at a leisurely pace along the highly-scenic route of Sakon and Ukon's shared body and Jiroubou's… well… Jiroubou in general.
The last to enter the team had been Tayuya, and what an entrance it was. As soon as the introductions were out of the way and Lord Orochimaru had left his young students to their own devices, she proclaimed Kidoumaru a freak, deemed Sakon (and Ukon, but he was sleeping) a fairy, christened Jiroubou a fatass, and announced that she hated them all in a language so colourful, you would not expect it from the mouth of the most hardened of criminals, let alone that of a gawky, nine-year-old girl with pigtails and ribbons to boot. Then, leaving behind a scandalized Jiroubou, a pouting Kidoumaru, and a scowling Sakon, she had stalked off to torture small animals, or whatever it was Tayuya did in her spare time. As for Kimimaro, insulting him was always a vicious affair for the Sound Five's kunoichi, performed on a regular basis, as long as the Kaguya prodigy was out of hearing range or asleep.
The weeks following the completion of the Sound Five found the children mostly ignoring each other, unless Lord Orochimaru ordered them to train as a team or to spar against one another. They had an unspoken common agreement to stay out of each anothers way that was largely accepted, though Kidoumaru never minded breaking it to play Shougi or Go against Tayuya, who had turned out to be a brilliant strategist, despite the multitude of insults she would hurl at him periodically, and Jiroubou always seemed more than happy to sit quietly and listen to Sakon rambling on about some great exploit of his, Ukon interrupting every once in a while to point out the parts that Sakon was exaggerating.
Kimimaro mostly kept to himself, unless he was in a particularly good mood, in which case he would offer his younger teammates a few quiet pointers on improving their reaction time, or their awareness, or something else along those lines. He didn't want to be the leader of a weak team, he would say, but Kidoumaru always suspected the older boy was just a tad bit interested in the welfare of his teammates, even if just a little.
And so, the six of them – because Kidoumaru always made it a point to count Sakon and Ukon as individuals – formed the infamous team that would one day be known as the Sound Five, and later, the Sound Four… even if there really were six of them all along.
Author's note: Well, here it is. The first chapter. I hope you guys liked it. I recently discovered my love for the Sound Five and wanted to write something about them. I plan on posting the second chapter soon, though it might take a while as I'm going on vacation and won't be back for three weeks, which means that my only hopes for updating during that time would be through internet cafes. In any case, be patient and bear with me, please. I intend to finish this series, and I most certainly will be writting in my free time during the vacation.