Chapter 16 – For What Purpose?
(morning)
The desert looks different, wet. The long dunes of sand no longer held their gloss and shine, but instead were drab, empty. The landscape had changed from something brilliant in harshness to something seemingly out of place, a thing that had no right to be, the wet desert. Muddy dunes that left sand clinging to sandals and feet, hazy mist seeping upward to be burned away with the sun, runnels of water streaking down sand that rejected its wet caress, these were not things of the desert.
"What a strange thing this storm has done," Ise muttered, staring out at the changing landscape from atop the tall rocks called twin spires. "A pity it has delayed me though." He had spent the night among the high rocks, fearing the sand after the dunes had shifted and buckled under him in the rain, not wanting to challenge that sliding and quicksilver landscape by himself. "I hope I am not too late." He looked out from atop the rocks in the morning sun, and peered to the southeast, looking for the oasis. "It must be among those badlands in the distance, the rocks there could hide water." It was hardly enough of a clue, but as the water that now covered the landscape bled away in the sun Ise hoped he would be able to smell the water when he got close.
He walked for a long time, most of the day, forced to double back often in the shifted landscape, and finding no easy straight paths through the badlands. Still, with the mist present for the whole morning Ise did not mind, the rain yesterday had healed the desert's damage to his gill slits, and slicked the sand off his scaled skin, so he now felt refreshed. The mist blocked the sun well enough, and it was almost a pleasant walk this day, if not for the urgency to pull Ise on. A strange landscape, this wet desert, but I could grow fond of if it were not so rare, Ise thought in a reflective moment.
It was late afternoon though, and the mist all gone, when Ise sensed what he had come to find. Water, his nose told him it well enough, his shark senses sharpened by the days in this desolate place, and he could sense it. Water filled with salts, water in rock. He could smell it, lying to the north of him. I've gone too far, Ise realized, and he doubled back in a hurry, seeking out the oasis. I hope they are still there, though surely no one would have moved in yesterday's storm. Ise did not know whom he expected to find yet, his quarry, the grass ninja, or even other sand ninja, but he was certain he was close to the end now, one way or another. I have been delayed, and many things must be settled now, I will find out what I must do.
The shark-blooded ninja heard the water before he saw it. A steady sound, the low gurgle of water falling free of rock, it was a welcoming one to Ise in this mostly waterless land. He hurried forward, but was as always aware of what might be around him. Still, it was with some surprise when he saw a girl rise from the water before him, rising to stand on the surface of a small pool. She took one look at him, and spoke a single word. "Stop."
Ise stopped, and examined the situation. He saw the pool, and he also saw eight things scattered before it, black and strange looking, with a horrid smell. What in the world…then the shark's sense told him. Dead men, burned. With that the situation fell into place. So those were the grass ninja, and this girl is the Mizain.
The shark-blooded ninja gazed on his quarry for the first time. He saw the marks first, the ones Mizukage had told him of, the red hair streaked with blue, and the sharp red eyes, but he also saw past them. An oddly beautiful girl, Ise was surprised. There is a sharpness to her features, but a fiery strength within, and she has a lovely face and gorgeous hair. Yet, it seems she has been crying, Ise noted the dark circles beneath her eyes and the salty streaks running down her face. This is the Mizain I have been sent to bring back? He made no judgments yet.
As Ise stopped the girl looked at him strangely. Her head turned and eyes narrowed, and Ise could see the suspicion in her, raw and ragged. She has had a hard time, he realized, and looking at the grass ninja's bodies he suddenly realized just how hard.
"Who are you?" she asked.
It was a simple question, but Ise considered his answer for a moment, considering the many paths he might take. He was in unknown ground here. His original mission had been to bargain with the leaders of the Mizain, or those who knew their secrets, not to capture a lone girl. Yet he knew this would likely be his only chance. He decided he might as well tell the truth, there was no use lying in the empty desert. "I am Hoshigake Ise, of the Hidden Mist Village."
"A Mist ninja?" she walked to the edge of the pool. "Come closer, five steps."
Dutifully Ise took five steps forward, bringing the two of them to a distance suitable for a real discussion. He noted now that the girl was indeed beautiful, in a harsh and lonely way, the kind of young lady who would be perfect for a statue of a sailor's widow, looking forever out to sea, a tragic figure, isolated, but strong. He also noticed that though she wore a ninja's uniform it was in the colors of no country, and she wore no forehead protector.
"So you are a Mist ninja," she blinked. "But why are you here?"
"Well, the heart of it is that I am to find you, Mizain," Ise replied evenly.
"Find me!" She was instantly defensive, and her posture changed from hesitant to ready to strike. Ise saw her fingers curl strangely; bringing the outer two fingers down. It seemed an unusual motion. Then she seemed to rethink something, and her head twitched to bore straight at him. "How do you know my family?" It was a harsh demand, and there was the promise of violence if Ise did not answer.
"I'll tell you the full story in a moment," Ise said. "But what is your name? No one else has discovered it, and the grass ninja had no kind names for you."
"I don't deserve kind names," she replied sadly, and Ise watched the strength seem to fade out of her almost totally. "I suppose it doesn't matter anymore. My name is Mizain Yi."
"Mizain Yi, very well," Ise committed the name to memory. "Mizain Yi, on the orders of Mizukage, leader of all ninja of Hidden Mist I am charged with bringing one of your family with me to join the Mist ninja. I believe you are the one to fulfill that mission."
"No!" the response was so immediate and so filled with raw emotion Ise almost stepped back. As he watched he saw tears come down Yi's face. "I'm not going to be a captive!"
"That's not what I said," Ise told her hastily. "You would be a ninja of Mist, it has been determined your talents could be of aid to us, but you would not be a captive, you would be a ninja."
Yi looked away for a moment, and then spoke almost to herself; at least, Ise thought he would have been unlikely to hear if he relied on a normal man's hearing. "Father, I had almost forgotten, this is the purpose you sent me away for isn't it, to go with the Mist ninja? But I won't be your captive either, no, I won't. I've paid too much for my freedom to give it up."
"Freedom?" Ise turned the word over in his mouth as if it were poisonous, even as Yi looked up at him in shock that she had been overheard. "Ninja are never truly free. We have the freedom of the self, but freedom comes through service. You cannot be free without loyalty. Not if you are a ninja." Ise said the words firmly, the lesson his uncle had taught him. "Besides, to bloodlines like us, freedom is an illusion, something denied us."
"Bloodlines like us?" it was an accusation.
"Apologies," Ise replied. "I'd forgotten." He brought his hands together and dispelled the henge mask.
As the smoke of dissipated chakra cleared Ise expected to see a look of revulsion on Yi's face, as everyone who saw him for the first time did, but what he saw surprised him, for her eyes held only curiosity. There was no horror in Yi's gaze; in fact Ise saw her looking at him with some desperation. "Freedom is an illusion? You would know the truth. I can see it. You have seen the world, right? Lived among other ninja. Is it really an illusion? Please, don't say that."
That sadness unnerved Ise, for he knew it, it was the same cry that plagued him, the maddening unfairness of being born with a bloodline. Here at last, this girl understands, we are seeking the same answers. He felt like the worst man on earth for what he said next. "There is no freedom for us, or if there is, it is only as monsters. I won't be a monster, I'll give up the freedom do be my own master if loyalty can hold me human. There is only a place for us if we serve, and without a place we are nothing, but I think you already know that."
"No," Yi whispered, and shook her head. "No, I don't believe it.' She was no longer speaking directly to Ise. "I don't believe that, and I won't go back with you, you won't take me back."
"I cannot allow that," Ise replied, terribly sad. "I must obey my orders and try to take you back, even against your wishes."
"Fool!" Yi shouted. "You think you can! Don't you see the bodies of the eight grass ninja I killed? Do you think you can succeed where they failed?"
The remark would have been far more biting had Ise not already figured out the answer to that particular puzzle. "Unlike them, I know what I face," He told her. "It is not raining today." He spun his spear around in his right hand, and fell back into a fighting crouch, the sharp head extended forward. "I don't want to fight you," Ise told her with regret. "But I will complete my mission; it is all I can do."
"So that is what you believe then," Yi snapped back. "Fine, fight me, prove you can beat me, show me that you're right." Her hands moved slowly through a sequence of seals, and she stepped back to stand over the center of the pool. "Beat me, and I'll go with you! Lose, and you die like the others!" she cried out in a voice that hardly seemed her own, so raw it was with brutal anger.
Ise nodded, waiting for her move.
Yi's seal sequence completed and her right arm shot forward, palm out. "Crashing Spray no jutsu!"
A wall of water surged toward Ise, and with only one more word it became something far more dangerous. "Mizuho," Yi spoke and the water burned.
Ise saw the Mizuho for the first time, that lurid red flame atop the blast of spray, a thing impossible and unearthly, something that should not be, water become fire. In that moment Ise, understanding the nature of water in a way Yi's previous opponents had not, grasped the central lethality of Mizuho. It requires no force to kill; a single drop could be lethal. There is no way to dodge.
One moment to determine. One moment to react. The shark-blooded ninja flashed through seals of his own, drawing on chakra held ready in anticipation of Yi's attack. "Water Wall no jutsu!"
The burning blast of crashing spray met a solid wall of blue water a foot before Ise. Water smashed into water, and the blasts canceled each other out. Burning water splashed everywhere, but only to the side, it did not pass beyond the barrier of Ise's water wall. The moment the blast died Ise slid right, rolling over the sand and coming up to throw twin shuriken in his left hand.
Yi sidestepped across the pond and struck the shuriken aside with a kunai.
"Not so easy!" Ise shouted as he circled right, considering his next move. "I am not like the others, water is not my enemy."
Seeing this Yi's face widened in shock for an instant, before the impulse was crushed down beneath anger. "Then you will see my true power!" Water flowed up over her body, coating every surface with a thin translucent layer.
Ise watched in surprise. What is she doing?
Yi brought her hands together, both in the crooked seal of Mizuho, touching fingertip-to-fingertip index fingers pointed to the sky. "Mizuho: Burning Liquid Skin!"
"By the sea…" Ise whispered, as the coating of water caught fire over Yi, her body covered in a liquid barrier of death dealing power.
As Yi stepped forward the water moved with her, and when she reached down to her weapons, that coating flowed over them. Yi grasped three shuriken, and her face, distorted into a demonic visage by the flames, broke into a hellish grin, split as wide as her head. Then she threw them.
Mizuho did not lend itself to a normal throwing technique, instead Yi threw so the shuriken spun in three dimensions, spinning off streams of burning water from each of their eight star points, creating a death dealing field of flaming liquid in all the air they traveled through.
Ise watched their approach, and decided on his own counter strategy. I'm not going to just sit here and block. He could feel the shark's urging behind him, find and opening and strike. Now!
Fiery droplets spiraled through the air, seeking anything they might, hungry to find a surface and burn in. Ise, running right, tossed his spear into his left hand, placing it between him and Yi. He spun it in his hand once, and then tossed it into the air, even as he struck his feet into the packed sand hard, jamming his sandals and bringing his hands together in seals. His body still faced away from Yi, but he turned his face into the space between them, the spinning torrents of water just about to reach him.
It was an innate reaction; he did not even have to think to channel the chakra to his legs even as he brought his hands together. "Shark's Spit Missiles!"
The great blast of shark teeth cut into the air, the tiny razor edges numerous enough to match the many droplets of water, and to cut through the incoming stream and shuriken. Shark teeth's do not burn swiftly, and even as water droplets set them aflame they continued on their streaking paths to strike in a Yi.
Now, she must block, Ise waited for his opportunity, grabbed his spear out of the air, and made ready to strike from above.
Shark's teeth, tiny brutal serrated edges, all aflame and startling now, a buzzing cloud of black-red fury in the air, screamed in to hit Yi's body.
The Mizain stood there, and the shark's teeth struck the shield of water. Hit it, slowed, and, all their force dissipated, fell softly to the water's surface. Yi's head jerked up to stare straight at Ise, her eyes wild beneath their glossy cover. "Water Element: Sea's Torpedoes!"
Bad! Ise realized he was in trouble as the pond boiled and spat forth a quintet of watery spears, burning and furious. He knew this technique, and what it would do. Arcing through the air he was unbelievably vulnerable to those missiles that would track and burst apart. He changed plans in near panic. I have one trick that can save me. His left hand slid down the spear haft, finding the catch and pulling it loose, as he whipped his spear across before him, making use of his provision of the day before.
Ise had left his spear exposed during the long rain, and water had seeped into the gaps between each of the wooden segments, preserved and compressed into small disks of liquid, a surprise he absolutely required now. "Great Water Razors!" Massive buzzsaws of water surged forth, as tall as a man, fueled by strength Ise barely knew he had, but drawn forth in the face of that burning danger, the shark in him refusing to die yet.
Buzzsaws impacted burning torpedoes, and blasted away with tremendous concussive force. Water from the pond surged up and over Yi, protecting her from harm.
Ise was thrown back, slamming into the ground some distance away. He slid across the sand, his tough scaly skin scrapped and all the breath driven from his body. He rolled to his feet gasping and with blurred vision, but he forced himself to move. Standing still is death! He recovered swiftly, and he was furious with himself as he saw Yi, still encased in that watery cocoon, unharmed. I underestimated that technique. But how can I get around it? The water beneath her will defend her from any distance technique, and if I get close she'll burn me to ash. His mind roved desperately as he ran spinning and rolling in case Yi decided to attack him.
She is hesitating, why? Ise wondered. Perhaps she doesn't want to kill me? No, I cannot bet on such a thing, maybe she simply has no good technique for this range. He believed he was likely safe as long as he stayed away, but Ise knew that was no solution. In time she can simply charge me, and I must attack, but how? It was clear enough that his water jutsus would not work as an attack, and all his shark based techniques were taijutsu maneuvers, and all but useless against such armor, even with his spear's reach. Her only vulnerability is the water; I need to attack from below, but how? Then he realized what he could do.
"Why do you keep running?" Yi called with mocking laughter. "Why don't you come and face death?"
"A shark does not go to death without his jaws clamped down!" Ise called back, knowing what he must do. He had never done it before, but he knew it was possible, it was one of the many things he knew he could do, he knew as the shark's voice had grown in him. I can do this, I will, but it will cost me. Ise knew that, he reached back into himself, felling the shark essence swimming in the core of his being, locked in the sea of his blood, and he called on it now, more directly than he ever had before, demanding the allegiance of his blood.
"Enough!" Yi screamed. "Die! Windblown Spray no jutsu!" She slammed her feet into the pool's surface, blasting water into the air and calling wind to take it over the land before her. It was normally a technique suitable only to obscure vision and spread water about a battlefield. Aided by Mizuho it created a deadly cloud of water to immolate everything within it.
I needed a distraction anyway…Ise thought with a mind only partly his own now, the rest had joined with some far more primordial, a force far more ancient than anything of man, something that nevertheless regarded the power of Mizuho as hideously unnatural and spurred it to rage. "Water element: Wave Blast no jutsu!" The attack brought out a widespread surge of water before Ise, running behind the wave's crest, but it was a deception. He had husbanded his chakra carefully, even as he drew upon reserves he had not known he possessed. The wave blast was weak, its force minor, but it was enough to sweep through that effect of Mizuho, and Ise rolled in behind it, charging straight at Yi.
Wave met spray and water covered all for an instant, obscuring vision, confusing hearing, and making everything impossible to know, but Ise was only going straight.
Spray cleared a moment later, and Ise's right foot slammed into the rock escarpment marking the edge of the pool. He scraped his left hand over the scales of his right forearm, striking hard enough to draw tiny runnels of blood. Then he brought his hands together and slammed them down to that stone just as Yi leaped to strike him down with flaming limbs.
"Summoning no jutsu!"
For a moment everything stood frozen, as Yi streaked in over the pool to burn the completely open Ise away and chakra marked with blood streaked out through the stone.
Then it made contact with the water.
The pool burst outward from beneath, and Yi was seized by a massive form that slammed through her, a form caring nothing for the singeing it received from the touch of Mizuho, a form that came on upwards until gravity finally pulled it back down.
It was a shark, smashing Yi's body with its nose, and slamming her against cruel jaws, moving to bite down.
"Don't kill her!" Ise cried desperately.
Crashing down to the pool now, the shark shook its head and jerked Yi out, smashing her into the ground. She lay there, water and saliva slowly dripping off of her, dazed, and confused.
Ise was next to her in an instant, rolling her over.
She looked up at him in surprise, and extended her right arm feebly, not really seeing.
The shark-blooded ninja took the Mizain's hand in a strong and steady grip, and pulled her gently into a sitting position.
"You!" it was not really a voice, more an expression of harsh emotion given words.
Ise turned to see that it was the great shark, lying in the dispersed water of the oasis pool, which had spoken.
"Why have you brought me to this blasted wasteland little child?" the shark's voice, if it could be called that, was full of an unquenchable destructive thirst, a refined need for killing. "And you have stolen from me the kill of victory. What gives you the right to deny me, the expression of your blood?" The voice called Ise to horrible account, for there was something in it that demanded satisfaction from him, a demand he could not ignore.
"I required you for my mission!" Ise shouted back, as loud as he could, trying out of some innate need to attempt to equal the shark's mighty voice. "I am a ninja, and I can call upon all of my gifts when it is required of me, and you have no rights over me! Being a ninja supersedes blood!"
The shark's cold eyes, cloudy mirrors of Ise's own, focused in upon him carefully. Its great jaws opened and closed, driving water to leak out before it into the sand. Then it laughed. "Ha he he he. You have a strong will, little ninja. Best you keep it, for there is no bargain between us, forget, and you will belong to us." It laughed again, a sound deep and cruel, promising only death, revealing the shark as a thing utterly lacking in mercy or care for others, predator only. Then it vanished, slowly fading back to whatever fearful ocean from whence it came.
The force of adrenaline and fear, all that had supported Ise since he used the last of his chakra in the summoning, left him, and he fell back on the sand, empty.
"You're a shark…" It was whispered softly, in a voice Ise barely recognized. He looked up behind him to see the drenched countenance of Mizain Yi, looking at him with a strange combination of few and awe. "I was right, you do know the truth."
It took a moment for Ise to see it, with all the water streaming down Yi's face. She's crying. Tears poured down the girl's face without stopping, and she sobbed weakly.
"You know the truth, there is no freedom for us," the sadness in her voice was infecting. Ise had never seen a girl break down before him like this, and he was concerned. "No freedom, so everyone I hurt, everyone I killed, it was all pointless. Pointless!" Yi howled at the sky. "I am a murderer, there's no reason, why? Why this way?"
Ise looked at Yi as she collapsed with her head in her hands. I have to do something. This is the girl I came to find. Ise knew that for certain, he had seen her power, and her great strength, for he knew her chakra was not used up even now. She is the same as me in so many ways, but she has no anchor as I do. What is there I can do?
For a long while Ise simply sat there, heart troubled, as Yi cried into her hands, looking for anything he could do. Finally, impulsively, he lifted her chin with his hand. "Look at me," he told her.
Yi looked up at him, and Ise was struck by her face. Its sharp beauty shattered by the destruction of her tears. She peered into his cold shark eyes, seeking desperately for something, and Ise knew she could not find it there. Seeking to fill the moment, he spoke. "I won, which means, as we agreed, that you will come back to Mist with me."
"Yes, but what does it matter?" Her voice was utterly devoid of hope now.
In that moment Ise recognized his own voice, his own thoughts after he killed the grass ninja by the river, and then he understood the situation. Even as he did so, he recalled something, held beneath his flack jacket, a thing the Warlord had sent him forth with on the very first day, and he knew the time to use it had come.
"It matters more than anything else," Ise spoke softly to Yi, reaching into his flak jacket. "By ourselves you are right, it is meaningless, and our sins pile up to drown us all, but, a ninja is different, our sins are not our own, they are a part of the inheritance of a whole world, the necessity of our actions."
Yi was listening to him very carefully, and Ise knew that his words, though clumsy, held her attention, even if she was not convinced. Then he took that thing from his flak jacket and placed it in Yi's hand. "And now, you are a ninja once again."
She looked down and saw what Ise had placed there, a piece of cloth with a plate of metal attached, marked with four waving lines: a forehead protector of the Hidden Village of Mist.
Tears in her eyes once again, Yi looked up at Ise, and it seemed she peered through him and past him in that moment, weighing everything upon her. "Are you certain?" she whispered, and if not for the shark touch upon his ears Ise would not have heard.
He merely nodded.
Slowly and carefully Yi wound the cloth around her head, and tied it tight, bringing the metal piece to rest solidly on her brow. "Thank you," she told him softly when they were done. "Finally I have somewhere to go."