a note from the desk of ethereal damsel
Renovation Part 5: I cut out the flashback with Kaya's dad in it. (Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I decided not to make him Zabuza's brother; I thought I was going to develop that into some sort of plot device but it just didn't work.) I thought that the flashback was somewhat pointless, unless it was simply out of place. I might work it into the plot again in some shape or form.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. The only characters I own are Kanzaki Kaya and her relations, Kirei and assorted children and adults from the Village Hidden in the Clouds, and Aoyama Kiyoshi.
The next day, Team 7 arrived at Konoha late in the afternoon. They all headed home; weary with the past day's events. Kaya fell almost directly into blissfully dreamless sleep when she got home.
Kaya awoke the next morning to see the sunlight streaming through her window amid dancing motes of dust. She slowly extricated herself from her bed sheets, changed into her fishnet shirt and capris, and tied back her curtain of long brown hair with her forehead protector.
It was not until then that the full scope of the days' past events hit her fully. She had been too tired as of yet to have taken on the burden of pondering her self-worth, but now her mind was shouldering that burden as it always did. She tried to stop it from wandering into realms she knew were forbidden. But it never heeded her for long. She distractedly pulled on her mother's coat and her sandals and headed for the village bridge.
The rest of Team 7 was already there. Except for Kakashi, of course. He arrived earlier than usual, and looked around at them all, smiling. Well, they guessed he was smiling because of the way his eye squinted slightly, but they couldn't be sure due to his mask.
"You all performed exceedingly well on our last mission. Even though, technically speaking, it was a vacation. You were all willing to put your lives on the line for each other, which is something I think is commendable. Therefore, I'm taking you all to Ichiraku. My treat."
"Yahoo!" proclaimed Naruto, pumping his fist in the air. "RAMEN!"
Sakura smiled too, and even Sasuke looked vaguely pleased. Kaya was just happy to be able to finally relax and enjoy herself with her friends.
As they all sat at the ramen bar, eating and chatting happily amongst themselves (except for Sasuke), Kaya realized something. The last remnants of her family were no longer in existence and she would never get over the pain of her loss. But sometimes, just conversing with her teammates and her sensei made her feel whole again. Here were a few souls who really, truly cared for her. And dwelling on this thought was enough.
"Kaya? Kaya? Are you okay?" Naruto's fuzzy blond head loomed into her subconscious and dragged her from her speculations.
"Who? Me? Oh yes…yes, I'm fine…" She then noticed that the entirety of Team 7 was looking at her rather concernedly, for she was staring dreamily into space, stirring her miso soup absentmindedly with her finger. "Sorry, I was just thinking…" she added, grinning sheepishly. They all went back to eating, while she returned to her thoughts. All of this reminded her of the first friend she had made, before her parents died and the entire course of her life was changed.
"Today is your first day of classes at the Academy, Kaya. Now, play nicely with the other children, be attentive to your sensei, and above all, try your best."
"I will, Mother! I shall strive to live up to the Kanzaki name!" declared Kaya as her mother tied back her nearly shoulder-length hair with a violet bow. Her mother had kept it short when she was little.
"I know you will. Go make me proud." Kaya stooped to pick up her school bag and began heading for the door of her family's apartment, but her mother swept her into her arms and kissed her on the cheek. Kaya giggled and her mother laughed too, her eyes, so similar to Kaya's, sparkling.
"You are growing so quickly. It won't be long before you are too tall for me to pick up!"
"No, mother, I'll never grow another inch!" Kaya called as she departed at a run.
Soon she had arrived. She headed directly for room 25, where her sensei and classmates would be congregated, ready to start the first day of their careers as ninjas.
"Welcome!" said her sensei, a tall, dark-haired woman. "And you must be Kanzaki Kaya! It should be interesting to see how you develop. Your family is known for their lightning techniques. Who knows, under my tutelage you may even develop a new one!"
Kaya smiled and then headed for an empty seat by the window. There she withdrew a book from her school bag and began to read.
"What're you doing?" a rather dirty little boy sitting next to her asked curiously.
"I'm reading A Child's History of the Village Hidden in the Clouds. Would you like to read some? It's really interesting…" But the boy had already turned to talk to the student on his other side. His apparent disinterest did not dampen her spirits, however. She continued to read avidly, without a care in the world.
"Alright, everyone," called the sensei over her chattering students. "Settle down, settle down…" And so began Kaya's first day at the Academy. She learned some of the basic fundamentals of taijutsu and was introduced to the use of kunai. By lunchtime she felt as though a whole new world of exciting possibilities had flung wide its doors for her.
"I can't wait 'til we learn to execute some of those paralyzing lightning jutsus my dad practices!" the dirty little boy proclaimed. "The chakra goes zap and then your opponent goes BANG and then you can pummel them into a bloody pulp…"
"You know," began Kaya, "that our first Hokage was the one to introduce those jutsus? That's one of the reasons he was hailed as such a genius; he created a whole new branch of defensive lightning techniques…" She trailed off, for no one was listening to her. But she just shrugged her shoulders and smiled brightly as she headed for a picnic table where she could dine on her lunch alone.
Lunch was held outside on picnic tables of pinewood, and in the shade of the very trees that yielded that wood. The Village of Cloud's Academy was built on the fringe of the nearby forest, so that its students would have plenty of room to practice their techniques.
After Kaya had finished her lunch, she asked her teacher if it would be okay to walk a bit farther into the forest during their fifteen-minute break, which was held after lunch. Her teacher said it would be alright, so long as she didn't wander too far, which Kaya assured her would not come to pass. And so, she skipped off into the trees.
After having walked far enough to be surrounded by a relative amount of silence, she sat down beneath a pine and began again to read A Child's History of the Village Hidden in the Clouds.
The Blitzen Haze technique is one perfected by generations of the Kanzakis, who are the only group of ninjas suited for it. The Kanzakis have no Bloodline Limit, technically speaking, but many of the jutsus they have developed could be considered a sort of group of Bloodline Limit techniques. This is due to the fact that the DNA controlling the structure of their retinas has mutated over the thousands of years they have practiced these jutsus. Their retinas are not imprinted, even temporarily, by any amount of light.
Also, due to the nature of their chakra, they can use their own bodies as human capacitors. The chakra in the middle part of their bodies changes its atomic structure in order to act as an insulator, while the top and bottom portions become positively and negatively charged. This is accomplished by the chakra forcibly gaining and losing electrons with the aid of particles in the air. Since they will then have a positively charged top, a middle that acts as an insulator, and a negatively charged bottom, they can conduct electricity. They do so by using their specially structured chakra to absorb solar energy from the sun by way of the tenketsu. Once this has been absorbed, the electric field generated by the positive and negative portions of their bodies has such intensity that it repels the negative charges on the earth's surface deeper into the earth. Therefore, the surface is then positively charged. With any normal capacitor, the lightning generated by their bodies would ground itself. But the Kanzakis have the ability to direct the flow of this electricity, using the strength of their chakra.
"Whatcha readin'?"
Kaya leapt about a foot in the air, startled by a voice she had never heard before. She whipped around to face a girl with gingery hair and strangely yellow eyes.
"Hiya! I'm Kirei!" She was about Kaya's age, but considerably shorter than her. Despite her unusual appearance, she seemed friendly enough.
"Uh…hi!"
"What's your name?"
"Kanzaki Kaya."
"Wanna play with me?"
"Okay!"
They played what seemed to Kaya every game she had ever known: hide and seek, tag, hopscotch, and countless numbers of her other favorites. Kirei never seemed to tire, and when Kirei was around, Kaya didn't either. Too soon it seemed though, that Kaya heard her sensei calling for her.
"C'mon, Kirei!" Kaya called over her shoulder to her newfound friend as she headed back for the school. "Why don't you come with me to the Academy?"
Kirei's face fell, and she began to trace rather elaborate patterns in the dirt pathway to the school with her sandal.
"Don't like it there."
"Why not?"
"Just don't."
"But then we can always play together, Kirei."
Kirei opened her mouth to speak, but—
"Kaya, get away from her!" It was Kaya's sensei, and the expression on her face was one of mixed fury and terror.
"But--but, Sensei—"
"Come with me, this instant! Don't you know who that girl is?"
"Yeah, I do," said Kaya defiantly. "She's Kirei, and she's my best friend."
"No, she's not. You're not to speak with her again," Kaya's sensei said flatly.
"What…?"
"That girl," said her sensei, pointing a shaking finger in Kirei's direction, "is the vessel of a demon."
By this time, Kirei's yellow eyes were welling with tears and her tremulous gaze went from Kaya to her sensei and back again. She turned from them and began running down the path as fast as her short legs would carry her.
"No!" Kaya cried. "Come back!" But before she could follow, her sensei had put an arm on her shoulder.
"I will not let you follow that monster. Let the wretch run to whatever place she wishes to terrorize."
"But…she's my friend…"
Kaya never saw her again.