( KUROTSUCHI )
Kurotsuchi let the katana slide slowly on the whetstone, her trained ears picking up every imperfection of the blade, while her eyes remained close. She didn't have time for sleeping, and while being rested meant a lot, the working conditions of a weapon could mean the difference between life and death.
So, there she was, breathing slowly, almost meditating, while her eyes rested, trying to pick up on the beauty of her movements, on their harmony and necessity.
Over the constant lullaby of Kurotsuchi taking care of her favourite tool, the sounds of the camp were strangely muted, and justly so: ninja were quiet beings outside the safe confines of their village, and she knew that she was far from home.
She grew up without war, and the difference between the world before the Crush of Konoha and after was a stark one: from missions that required her team to come and go from Iwa, to being stationed among colleagues she didn't know on a territory she was unfamiliar with ... She sighed, raising from her crouched position and opening her eyes, examining the glistening blade under the rays of the sunset.
Beauty could be found often enough, if only one bothered to look.
She dried it with a cloth before sheathing it and walking back to the tent she had been assigned, where she dropped down and finally felt like she had done enough to warrant some rest.
Three hours later, she left the tent and joined the wave of Iwa nin running silently over the barren ground, moon and stars granting enough light to move, while training and enhanced senses allowed them to correct their balance and pace in order to not fall.
Her long legs started crunching ground at a pace nobody her age cold hope to keep, chakra expertly twirling in her coils as she skipped over stones and flanking some of his compatriots.
In all of that, her breath was measured, calm, through her nose, she took lungful after lungful, oxygenating her blood and keeping her muscles into a state of languid relaxation ready to be turned into a coiled spring about to ... well, spring.
Kurotsuchi allowed herself a self-deprecating smile over her admittedly bad pun, but even then not a sound left her lips.
She had never been in a war, but likely every other ninja of her generation she had heard stories, even more so than many others, given which family she belonged to.
She knew that Konoha had been on the backfoot during the previous war, that they were about to break, that no matter what, Konhagakure no Sato had never stood a change against the might of Iwa. Peace Treaties had been signed because of ... him.
Every mention of him had been a curse, the Yellow Devil he had been renamed, a symbol of unstoppable death. No, that's not it. She shook her head briefly, the rhythm of the run lulling her into deeper and deeper thoughts.
It wasn't like the Fourth Hokage had been the only one that incarnated death while on the field, her own grandfather had donned the mantle of Annihilator without regrets, his technique of particle dismantling had left undeniable marks in the ground and souls of witnesses.
Not survivor, there never had been a single survivor of his technique: when you were enclosed in the white barrier that denied the limits of her grandfather's target, you were gone, less than dust, motes of half gone memories.
The Fourth Hokage had been terrifying and unfair for a whole different reason: there was no defence against him, that had been recounted and explained clearly.
The God of Shinobi, Hanzo the Salamander, Rasa of the Gold Sand, the Third Raikage, all had been people that had made themselves known once more during the previous war: their techniques polished and effective, not a movement wasted, taijutsu, genjutsu, ninjutsu.
Getting close meant death through crunched bones, getting distracted for less than a split second meant being too late to avoid a lethal blow, facing them alone meant being suffocated by their presence alone: monsters.
All S-rank were monsters, that was renown and obvious, but even against the impossible odds presented by the existence of said monsters, big enough numbers could hold them back, other S-rank could go toe to toe with them, they could hold each other back.
The Devil had broken that pattern. Against great numbers, he cut through like a knife through water, against a single S-rank, he held a line, passed wich he could be inside your guard before you could blink, when an S-rank tried to hold him so that the rest of the respective armies, mostly acting as a support, could try to decide the battle.
The last configuration had always been the one to refer to when in the greatest battles the S-ranks of the villages going at each other, leaving the regular jonins and chunins to decide the battle proper.
The Fourth Hokage could attempt a lethal stab at his opposing S-rank and kill four 'regular' shinobi on the other side of the battlefield while his first attack was countered.
There was no chance, no technique, no honest confrontation, even based on the loose rules of engagement that counted more or less as a tradition among the Villages: against him, there had been no hope.
Then he had died, apparently fighting the Kyubi no Kitsune, the Greatest of the Nine, and the God Of Shinobi had taken back his seat, and now her grandfather was dead.
'It's our greatest opportunity since the Kyubi's attack or the Uchiha Massacre' had been the voice circulating through the troops sent to Konoha, even selected genin like herself had been informed about the plan. It had been cunning and appropriate, falling on the leaves' backs like the avalanche that Iwa could be.
Then her grandfather had died, and apparently, their Sandaime had seen the battle trough, denying whatever hope of crushing victory that there had been. Tsunade Senju had taken up the mantle of her sensei.
Senju, born from monsters, someone that 'officially' had retired and had been getting drunk in grief in the Land of Fire. Kurotsuchi had to withhold a scoff.
As if. S-ranks didn't randomly pop out of nowhere, either the stress and pressure of the rank pushed them to become missing-nin, or their loyalty to the village grew through the years to the point that they couldn't conceive a threat to their home to exist.
War had been unavoidable then, Kurotsuchi knew that much. But even when she had first been informed of the plan, her mind had gone back to her first chunin exam, back when she was ten.
...
We got lined up with the single group from Konoha, and I knew that we would have to show to the world the difference between laid back and soft tree huggers and the hard stone of us Iwa-nin.
I exchanged glances and nervous gulps with my teammates, we would give them hells, the one in blue armour should be the first to go down, and I signalled so to the others, if he was such an idiot as had made himself out to be before the beginning of the challenge, either he was the most dangerous.
And thusly had to be taken down while we were still fresh, or he was an idiot, and a quick strike down would weaken the resolve of the other two Leaves.
The female was a brute kind, it had been obvious from their exchange, and we had been told that she was an Inuzuka, one of the valued Bloodlines from Konoha that paired each of their shinobi to a dog-nin, and since she there hadn't been one, Kurotsuchi knew that she was already on the back foot, so she would go second, leaving the unknown for last.
Kurotsuchi had known that in the ninja world, it was to kill or to be killed, and when the time came and her team acted, they failed.
Kurotsuchi remembered that he had simply disappeared, no blur, no telling twitch of his muscles, no genjutsu. He had downed the three of us, not lethally, before we could even start to bring our act together.
"Attacking someone you know nothing about is the pinnacle of stupidity." he told us, his expression and tone expressing clearly his boredom and ... disappointment? "What would your families say?" he had stared at Kurotsuchi while he asked that rhetorical question, and she had known that he knew about her grandfather.
My mind had been forced to reboot after our failed first attack, we had to retreat, to run, we were already dead ... and he was...bantering with his teammates? What the fuck!? Didn't they deserve at least the courtesy of being killed with some form of seriousness?
"You are not deep frying the Tsuchikage's grandaughter while we are in Iwa, Shin." their team leader clearly stated then, once more locking eyes with me. "Besides, Kuro-chan looks kind of cute, with her pigtails and whatnot."
He knows my name. She remembered thinking, shell-shocked. That was beyond the information he could have gathered on his own, or that even his team and Konoha had access to before the beginning of the tests.
Maybe voices regarding the presence of the Tsuchikage's granddaughter could have been picked up in the waiting rooms, but her name?
When questioned about his reasons and motives, he had appeared offended, almost disgusted at the thought of killing. "I didn't come to Iwa to kill children."
The words had cut her legs, almost making her crumpling to the ground. It had to be some kind of trick, a ploy, a set up. And yet, the Leaves, that clearly had been far more capable than one could have credited them for, didn't even spill blood.
...
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