Chapter 2: A god's last breath.
Fandom: Naruto
Genre: Romance, Friendship, Comradeship, Loss
Characters: Tetsu, Genjo, Mujihina, Kiryoku
The Four Executioners.
It was a name that was only whispered among the ranks of Sunagakure as the army of Kiri made camp in the desert. The night air was cold, surprisingly so for a place known for it's harsh sun… Silence filled the air, except for the whisper. The whisper of the Suna-nin, wondering when the Four Executioners would come for them. When the four lunatics that cut swathes through their armies would descend on them as well.
The whispers were even worse in the Kiri ranks… It was whispered that the Four Executioners were actually siblings, and the children of Jashin… That no normal human fought at their level, their intensity. It was even whispered among the more foolish Kiri-nin that they were gods. Gods of war. The Kiri-nin feared them, even as they praised them. They feared them, because they knew the Four Executioners were monsters. They lived for blood, they lived to kill, they lived, in no simpler terms, for war.
Mujihina, the glass demon. She was the only one who gave orders to the others. Not even the Mizukage could command them, not safely. She had a Kekkei Genkai that wielded glass, and she was feared for her ability to shred opponent's completely using small shards of glass whirling at high speeds.
Kiryoku, the childish demon. Not much was known about her Kekkei Genkai, but her understanding of chakra was unrivalled, and despite her childish behavior and appearance, she was just as much of a monster as the others… When she wasn't clinging to my shoulders of course.
Genjo Shukira, the serpent demon… The man who increased his chakra by devouring the flesh of his victims. The man who regrew entire limbs… The man whom I suspected to be half snake… It wasn't hard to see why he was feared.
And then there was me… Tetsu Narimasu, the Iron Demon. I was considered the least threatening of the four, because while I was infinitely more savage in battle, if you weren't worth my time, I wouldn't kill you. I was feared for tying my opponents into bundles with Nuibari, than having my summon, the Abassy known as Akamundai, drop the bundles into the village my victims came from.
Together, we were the Four Executioners.. The four gods of war.
But even gods must have an end…
And so here I was. Lying in the dirt like a used rubber, a shard of glass in my side… I'd nearly killed Mujihina due to some stupid Genjutsu… And she'd been forced to kill me… Still, there were worse ways to die than being killed by the woman you loved… Even if she didn't truly love you.
She said she loved me… I could feel her tears dropping onto my face as she bent over me, as she told me she loved me… She was my goddess, not just of war but of beauty… I hated it when she cried… Her smile was so much more beautiful.
I wanted to wipe away her tears, and tell her everything would be alright, but I couldn't move my arm… My head throbbed from where I'd lost part of my ear during combat, but it was nothing compared to the pain in my arm and chest… I didn't have much longer in this world.
But I couldn't die… Not yet. Muji-chan was in danger… Why hadn't she listened to me? I'd tried to tell her we didn't need to be here… We didn't need to fight… We had no reason to fight these people, there was no honor in killing such weaklings… But she wouldn't stop until she'd killed them all.
That was how I knew… She didn't love me. She loved the way I crushed through my opponent's armor with Kabutowari. Or how I used Kubikiri to make executions a public spectacle… She especially loved how I used my sharp, needle like iron teeth to rip into my opponents flesh… But she didn't love me.
Kiryoku loved me more than Mujihina did… Kiryoku wouldn't have cared whether I fought or not, she would have loved me all the same… But the moment I didn't want to fight, Mujihina turned her back on me.
I wished I could take it back, all the times I'd broken Kiryoku's heart… I'd never love her the way she loved me, but I could at least try to be more gentle about it… If being rejected by Mujihina taught me anything, it was that a broken heart is far more painful than any missing ear or glass spear.
I had loved her since the first time we fought together… I could never explain it, not in a million years, but she had looked so beautiful that day… I couldn't help but fall in love. Every woman I'd dated since had been to make her jealous…
I'd spent all my time trying to get her to just go to dinner with me, and she kept giving me tests, kill this many people, beat me in a sparring match… No matter how many tests I completed though, she never went to dinner with me…
All those years of flirting, wasted… But at least I'd gotten a kiss… I'd told her I loved her, and she'd kissed me… For one short moment, the world ended. It was just me and the woman I loved, no war, no nothing. But then I'd suggested we go home…
How could I have been so stupid? I pushed away the only woman I ever loved because I didn't want to kill weaklings? No… Because I knew one of us would die. I'd known since we started this war… And the thought of losing her was more than I could bear.
But she'd laughed at me, laughed at my cowardice… She'd turned her back on me, and told me to continue killing… And I had. I'd killed everyone I could, because I knew that any one of them could be the one that killed Mujihina…
I loved her more than anything, and I'd gone against my principles, my beliefs, the beliefs of my clan! All so that nothing would happen to her… And in the end, it was me that nearly killed her… The one person I couldn't kill…
And so she'd had to kill me. It was a bittersweet ending… Now I knew that nothing would happen to my Mujihina, my queen of glass, but… but this would be the last time I see her. The last time I feel her hair on my face, the last time my hand moves across her soft skin… I painstakingly moved my hand to wipe her tears away, shaking my head as she told me she would be better.
Her words left no doubt in my mind that she did love me… She wanted to be better, she wanted to go home, as long as I didn't leave, she would change… But she didn't get it. She could never understand, I slowly came to realize. I didn't want her to change… I'd known she'd say no to going home… But I had to ask. I'd known I would die here, but I had to try… Because she was my Mujihina, and nothing would happen to her if I could prevent it. Didn't she understand she was already perfect to me?
There was a crowd of Shinobi around us now, and I worried for Mujihina's safety… Would they kill her when she was so vulnerable? No… They had gathered because they knew my time had come. One of the gods of war was dying…
My life flashed before my eyes as I lay there, and I was stricken by how pathetic I was… I'd clung desperately to a title I didn't deserve, hunting voraciously for the swords I had no right to wield. Spent nearly my entire life chasing after a woman who rejected me time after time, only to get killed the one time she didn't reject me…
I'd pushed away my best friend, when she only ever tried to love me… No matter how depressed I got, no matter how heartbroken, Kiryoku had always loved me, always tried to cheer me up with those childish antics of hers… Annoying as she was, she'd tried…
And the only other friend I had… I barely talked to Genjo. I'd never wasted the time on him, and that was another regret I held… I wished I'd taken the time to get to know them. They were my comrades, my friends… And I didn't even know Genjo's full name, or Kiryoku's favorite color… The only one I ever took the time to know was Mujihina, and that was because I loved her…
I wished I could go back… Undo it all…
Almost like a gift from whatever gods there were, more memories came, memories that I didn't recognize… A wedding, with both me and Mujihina kissing with Genjo as best man and Kiryoku as the maid of honor…
Mujihina carrying my son into the yard as Genjo and I foolishly tried to cook the fish we'd caught before, burning the food beyond all recognition… Walking in on my son trying to slip his hand under Kiryoku and Genjo's daughter's shirt as they kissed, and laughing as he blushed…
I realized I was seeing how things could have been… How they should have been… I saw my kids, my grandkids… I saw myself wearing a Kage headdress… I saw Kirigakure, at peace at last, thanks to the gods of war known as the Four Executioners…
But it was all fiction. None of it would come true now, and my father had always taught me to forget about foolish pipe dreams…
I reached my hand up, pulling Mujihina into my chest, ignoring the pain that flared in my chest as the shard ripped through more ligaments, filling my lungs with blood. I kissed her forehead, shaking my own head. I whispered in her ear then, in a voice so soft that I didn't think she could hear it… But it was all I could manage, talking hurt to much.
I told her I loved her... But I tried to make those words mean so much more. I tried to pour all of my guilt, all of my love into those words… I tried to let her know that I was sorry I couldn't have kept her safe, couldn't have been stronger…
My hand slipped off of her head, landing in the desert sand as my head dropped back… Whether Mujihina received the full message, or merely those three words that failed to sum up my true feelings, I didn't know… But the crowd around us took a collective gasp, and a few Kiri-nin cried, while others merely watched in awe, realizing what I'd done… I'd given Mujihina the rarest gift in the world. A god's last breath…