Notes
Shout out to ShearBolt (from ArchiveOfOurOwn), she (I think it's a 'she') is an awesome author who has a knack for bittersweet endings and cuddly smut (does that even make sense?). If you'd like a taste of her writing, I suggest trying 'The rookery' by her.
P.S. no smut here.
"Tou-san, I know that you're a little rusty but, can you teach me weapon releases?", a tiny read head bobbed over the kitchen counter, an earnest squeaky voice calling out.
A woman in her mid-forties sighs from behind the counter, "You're a bad influence antha."
Off to the side, past the living room, on the veranda is an old blond with another young purple-blond girl, both chuckling in mirth. "Whatever you say, dear."
He turns around, half-facing his other daughter, "So, A, rusty? B, Why the sudden interest? C, we both agreed that baby-voice is cheating Aka-chan."
The redhead replies, this time in a mature, but shrill tone, "A, I haven't seen ya use anything beyond your sword in forever. B, From what I've heard, no one else fights the way you do, it's cool. C, you said that pressing the advantage in aggressive negotiations is always a good thing?"
"She's got you there anatha." The older woman notes vindicated.
"Awww," the blond makes a show of pouting, "whose side are ya on Sumire?"
"Akane's. Best keep her equipped nae?"
"Alright, but it won't be easy. You up?"
"I am asking, ain't I?"
It was a distant memory for Akane.
She had taken after her father, preferring arms over hand-to-hand, her sister had taken after her aunt – Himawari – preferring hand-to-hand over arms.
Why was she reminiscing right now? Cuz he was dead. The unbeatable chaotic mix of sunshine and ice, the wildly immature but wise, the insanely skilled shinobi that was her father was now dead. Killed while dimension-hopping looking for fights.
When she had come back with the body three days ago, Kaa-san was out on a mission. One day ago, when her mother had returned, Akane had told her the grim news. Her mother had promptly walked to the fridge, pulled out a bottle of the strongest sake they had, sat on their couch, all prim and proper, and sipped the bottle till she finished it. Kaa-san couldn't even get up off the couch without help after that.
And now she was writing a eulogy with her sister by her side.
"Tou-san is what most would consider a good person but a bad example . . . I still remember that day five years ago when I saw tou-san really let loose for the first time."
His daughters were run ragged, mud and blood caked on their foreheads, bruises dancing across their arms, and the bastards who did it had the gall to stand before him and smirk. First, it was the church of Boro, and now the Liberation army. Militant groups and mislead followers. Contrary to popular opinion, Blondie believed the church of Boro to be the terrorist blueprint, not the Akatsuki.
Not that it mattered now, injury and death were par for their profession. It was acceptable and expected, but combat didn't make people disappear for two weeks. Combat didn't make people skinny. Combat didn't leave you with this extensive bruising. This was a deliberate act of anger. An act of vindication. An act of revenge. Willful torture was not something he was willing to accept.
There would be consequences and these bastards would be the example.
"His sword morphed into his infamous blood scythe, it was the only warning of incoming carnage. No one heard his whisper of 'shi-kai.'"
He ran his left hand along the blade of this now unsheathed nanjato drawing blood. In response, more blood pours out the hilt, forming a smooth cylinder over the blade, a man-sized wicked curve shooting out from the blade-turned-handle's end.
He puts his entire body into throwing the head of his scythe as he holds the base of the scythe firmly in place as a pivot, the arc cleanly cleaving through the man ahead of him, with not a sing drop of blood splatter.
"All the blood splatter from his swings were just absorbed into the blade, blood leaking out of cleaved bodies after they hit the ground. It was absolutely horrible . . . Such unfiltered killing . . ."
He lets the scythe fall from overhead, the blade slicing a woman down her skull through her pelvis, exiting out the middle, embedding itself into the rock underfoot, handle parallel to the ground. With a swift burst of chakra, he sends a spinning burst of blood at the terrified girl ahead, out the scythe head, blowing her in half.
"And that wasn't even the worst . . ."
A few more pieces of sushi later, the blond man sets his scythe head against the ground, handle vertically up, like a knight would hold his sword.
"Ban-kai," he growls lowly.
In the blink of an eye, a spiral of squiggles rolls out from the head, an ocean of blood pours out of it, inundating everything.
"Once he let his ban-kai loose, it was a literal blood bath."
Oceans of blood. Every single drop of blood he ever absorbed into his scythe, is brought to bear. A swirling mass of ever-shifting death – spears, blades, whips, kunais, literal asphyxiating tidal waves, it was all there – ripping people apart, assimilating their blood into an ever-expanding arsenal.
In the midst of this storm, our blond throws his scythe and lets momentum do the rest. Again and again and again.
Some duo thought it was a good idea to execute a two-pronged attack. The untouched blond brings his scythe to the side of the first one, blade against his ribs. And then shoots the second, the recoil propelling the blade toward him, chopping the former in half. Hurricane aside, his every swing or shot kills at least two people simultaneously.
"As a shinobi, I accepted death as part of my life . . . but, but . . . Bloody storms with body parts for fish? It left me, no, us scared of him."
Channeling chakra, the blond hefted up the scythe – head to the right – to block a kunai strike with the handle. He fires a blood bullet next, relieving the assailant on the right of his head, a slight shift with the handle held in place has the recoil launch the scythe into an explosive spin, cleaving the kunai attacker. He continues the spin, halving the last militant bitch behind him. The scythe head crashes into the earth at an angle.
He lovingly runs his hand across the shaft whispering, "Thank you, Chimiko." The waves of blood recede, his scythe flows back into his nanjato's hilt, as he sheaths it with a sigh.
He turns to look for his daughters and sighs again, it's going to take a lot to help them process this - the almost white, blood-drained body parts littered around them, the sheer magnitude of violence.
"It took about a month with Yamanaka-san to get to a point where I could maintain a normal conversation with him, it took a little longer for Ari. It took much, much longer for either of us to understand his intentions."
Two girls tip-toe down the stairs, the kitchen just off to the side, the red-haired one stands to the side of the entrance, her sister resting her head on her shoulder. They are eavesdropping on a conversation they didn't quite expect.
"Kushina, Sumire, do you get why I did what I did?"
The sound of pouring milk into coffee decoction, the sound of sugar thrown into milk. The clinking of steel against porcelain as coffee is stirred. Their mothers' morning ritual. They didn't need to see to know that it was them.
Scraping sounds - a chair along the kitchen counter is pulled back.
Someone sits.
"Kiddo," there is a pause, "there should be consequences for messing with our family."
"But," a lighter voice takes over, "you really can't expect them to get over it that easily."
"Um, so, you don't blame me?" moments of uncertainty like this weren't foreign incidences to the sisters. They were rare, but they made their father all the more human.
Ari's biological mom, Sumire, replies first, "There would be no point blaming you anatha, we need to stand together for them."
Akane's own mother replies next, "I'm too far gone to even find what you did wrong. We gotta give them time to process it though, don't beat yourself over it kiddo. That said, I'm surprised Ari is taking it as well as she is."
Their father replies with a happy-ish forced exhalation, "She's only one year younger than Akane ya know?"
"But, she did spend a lot of her time with Himawari, hasn't seen you one-on-one as much. I'm pretty sure she considers you invincible and immortal."
Blondie laughs, "doesn't everyone?"
No one replies to that particular question and the conversation quickly drifts over to more mundane things. The sisters make their presence known and join in.
"About a year later, my team and I took it upon ourselves to rescue an Anbu team who were walking into an ambush. The brass had told us to head off, that it was too dangerous. We of course ignored those orders, and I do not regret that in the slightest."
Down the alley is a bunch of stripped and mutilated bodies, all bearing clear signs of torture – physical and sexual – missing fingers, ripped-out hair, and caked blood. Gangrene. All coated in a layer of mud, grime, and kitchen refuse.
Two of the three young shinobi gag and the third pull them into the shadows of a side alley, covering their mouths and keeping them reasonably quiet.
A man moves by to inspect the dump site.
The red-haired girl's move will have saved the others. Their survival will result in the last Anbu member surviving with a few limbs lesser. Prosthetics had advanced far enough to be an effective replacement, the missing limbs wouldn't matter.
"You see, tou-san's blood bath left me scarred, but my parents also made sure that I had enough time to rest and recover from it physically, mentally, and spiritually. That prior experience is why I didn't freeze or gag when were on a mission to save those Anbu, even though we were too late and most were dead. All killed in gruesome fashion. We would have been next if I had frozen up."
Red-haired Akane, and purple-blond Ari sit with a blond, whiskered man up in the trees atop the Hokage monument. The trio are taking in the majestic red-violet sunset with wispy clouds streaked across it. Half an hour of the older man sitting in silence, the younger girls chattering, the stillness and quiet alien to them.
Blondie cuts in with a question, "Peace or conflict? Which do you think is better?". His eyes are still fixed on the horizon.
Ari thinks it rude of him to just barge in and break up the conversation, but she can live with it. "Peace. Obviously."
"But why?" her sister cuts in.
"Eh?! What do you mean 'but why'?" Ari sounds outraged. Just a teeny tiny bit though.
"That's actually a good question ya know?"
Of course, her father was amused with the way this conversation was going. "Cuz then people don't die? I like my friends very much. Thank you."
Blondie chuckles in a voice that would portray him as a teen and not a fully grown adult, "But where's the fun in that Ari-chan?"
The girl in question folds her hands, bites her lower lip inward with knit eyebrows over her big eyes, and stares expectantly at her father. She was seventeen. She looks thirteen. Overall, she looked more cute than anything else.
The blond man gets up, "First home gets answers and ice cream."
The very next instant has his hurtling through the air and down the cliff-face.
Ari wants answers. She's quickly airborne while her sister's yelling something about unfairness behind her.
She reaches someone's roof head first, arms stretched out. On making hand contact, she tucks into a roll. And another roll, just to be sure. A chakra-powered hop. Breeze past her face. Pedal-to-the-gas run on some other rooftop. A jump, hand placed on the upcoming face-level railing, legs swung over onto the walkway. Jump, run, slide, run, run, roll, vault, slide and roll on fall, Dad ahead.
The blond is just leaning against the entrance, not a hair out of place, smiling.
"Tou-channn-"
"Unfair? Please . . ." He had a good-natured smile, but it only made her annoyed, "I'll tell ya anyways, chill. Let's just wait for you sis."
He holds the door open for her to enter, and then follows after her.
Sometime later would find all of them sitting on the couch, her sister and father with coffee and her with hot chocolate.
"Remember the last time we ran home from the Hokage monument girls?"
"Not really, we do it once in a while ya know?" That's just like her sister, more curious, less annoyed.
"Yep, and I keep track of the timings and pretenses."
The old blond holds out his hand, there's a small poof of smoke in his palm and there's a malnourished scroll in there. Ari accepts the paper.
"Why don't ya read that out for me and your sis, Ari-chan?"
Her other mother – Akane's actual mother – was curiously viewing the whole conversation from the sidelines. She probably was in on what this was all about going by her expression.
"Ok", Ari unrolls the scroll, "fourteen minutes, casual run. Thirteen minutes, thirty seconds, ice cream. Thirteen, twenty-eight, ice cream. Fourteen, hot chocolate. Eleven, not getting dinner." Ari looks up, the list is pretty long.
"Okay, so when's your fastest improvement?"
Ari scans through the list, "Um . . . Uh . . . Here. Nope. One sec," she unrolls a bit more of the scrolls, "We went from nine to under four minutes under the threat of having to live in the yard for a week."
"Precisely." Blondie seems jubilant. "Conflict drives improvement. Conflict hurts, yeah, but if you get time to recover, you recover stronger and better than before."
"But too much conflict and you won't have time to recover. It'll be the end of the road" purple-blond shoots back.
Akane's mother chooses to reply, "Yep. Too much conflict and we all die, too little and we stagnate. Alternating periods of both and we good."
"Provided the conflict isn't so bad, you don't have a 'next time' to recover for." Her father feels the need to clarify.
"My father always believed that conflict and violence were necessary. If given enough time to heal and recover, conflict is what makes us stronger. A peaceful world is one in which we weaken and stagnate. A constantly conflicted world is one where we die of attrition. Balance is beauty. That is what he believed in. That is what I believe in."
"As a result, some of my fondest memories of him are ones bathed in violence and bloodshed. In these times where the great nations try to maintain peace . . . "
"Nae-san, I don't think that's the best way to go about tou-san's eulogy." Ari finally chimes in a low tone after remaining quiet for so long.
Akane crumples the entire sheet in response. Her hands are subtly trembling.
They would have to rework this . . .
They would have to learn to accept his death . . .
They would have to live in the aftermath . . .
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Notes
Yes, yes, updates for 'J for Jourgan' will be coming up soon.
Feel free to write derivative works based on this fic. All I ask is that you mention that this fic was your inspiration and link back to it somewhere. I do not own any of the characters from either the Naruto/Boruto franchise (Kishimoto, Ikemoto). That should be pretty obvious, this is fanfiction after all.