Fanfiction jr. : Of He Who was "strongest", 20_truths, Sandaime Kazekage
Title: Of He Who was "strongest"
Character/Pairing/Group: Sandaime Kazekage
Rating: PG-13, hints
Disclaimer/Notes/Whatever: Sandaime Kazekage, Sasori, and all that is from Naruto belong to the genius that is Kishimoto Masashi.
1.) The pain came when he was four, and he would remember the moment distinctly: having gained ingress into his family’s armory, he was fully intent on merely spiriting away several of his older brother’s unused sparring puppets, when a sudden, blinding agony overcame him. It seemed to burst out of his skin, and it rang in his ears so that stumbling, he tripped on a low stool and fell with a racket on the sand-rough ground. His chest tightening impossibly, he spewed a fan of blood against the floor, before losing consciousness.
He woke up in the hospital, and to the faint scent of something metallic in the air.
2.) He would also remember one other thing in his childhood, that made him, at the tender age of five, understand that he was different and that he would follow a separate way from his peers. It was war, and the village needed its children to be as sharp as the kunai they wielded, well-prepared for the gruesome nuances of the field. “A will like iron and the persistence of a sandstorm” was the common slogan of the time.
Being the youngest in his class, it was no surprise that an adult kunai slipped in his child’s hands, when they were asked to handle the weapons of war in the Academy.
3.) It fell, but not without cutting a sure, deep wound on the back of his left arm. The blood that dribbled out, dribbled freely, seemed to pool about the fallen kunai greedily. It was the scent he would never forget, and the colour: a rich, deep rust that looked black in the glare of the sun.
4.) “There is much iron in his blood,” the medic had explained to his uncle (who was his only guardian), and from where he pretended to lie sleeping in the infirmary room, he saw the lady shake a vial of his sample in emphasis. “There is an abnormal amount of it that evades explanation. This is perhaps what causes his bouts, when the blood thickens too much in his system. Whether it will affect the boy’s performance, perhaps hinder it in any way, cannot as yet be told.”
5.) And he knew then, as his body stilled beneath the thin sheets, he knew that he would lead no ordinary shinobi’s life; he knew, with the great sadness of understanding how one’s life must henceforth be, that as long as he felt the pain beneath his skin (the throb in his palm when he pressed a shuriken to it, leaving a star-shaped imprint), so too would there be iron.
6.) And with iron comes life, and with iron comes blood, and with iron comes the will that would carry the people of the Country of Wind to victory. His classmates held kunai; he decided that he would be a kunai, a jur blade, an iron weapon to cleave Sunagakure’s enemies in two.
7.) He cut an impressive record in the Academy, up to when he claimed the Chuunin title at age ten, which surprised many of the older, prouder teachers. He was particularly known for his ability to throw a kunai or a shuriken without seeming to touch it. He would whip out a weapon from his holster and throw it in one smooth gesture, as if the metal magnetized against his very skin.
8.) He would never tell them how painful it was when he did this. He would never tell them how he mastered this technique on his own, having observed how receptive his skin seemed to be to metal. For with pain comes the weapon, he realized, and if he had to be a weapon, he had to endure pain.
9.) He saw his first Jinchuuriki when he was thirteen. Stationed by the outer playa with his newly-formed team of Tokubetsu Jounin, they watched the decimation of five whole teams of Konohagakure shinobi, as the frenzied girl unleashed Shukkaku in a blinding flurry of sand. The image latched on, and never let go; later, when he trained on his own, he would conceive the idea of a jutsu that would be one of his village’s most powerful, and that would ultimately become his signature.
10.) When he mastered the art of combining his chakra with his body’s natural magnetisms, his skill with blades was unparalleled, and he rose immediately in the ranks of the Sunagakure Military. He seemed to be able to control several weapons all at once, in a stunning display of discipline and precision. For this, he was often sent to faraway missions, mostly to Iwagakure, where their allies sought their aid.
He would not tell them how it was all a matter of mastering the poetry of pain.
11.) When he mastered the art of converting his own blood to solidified iron filings similar to the sand that the Jinchuuriki manipulated, he was the top candidate for Kage, in a village threatening to cave in to its formidable opponents. With chakra, and with the exposure to open air, the impurities in his blood hardened, but maintained a metallic graininess that he could easily control.
Many of course thought that the Iron Sand magically appeared from his mouth, in the unreasonable way most “powerful jutsu” simply seemed to make things happen.
12.) His ailment inevitably became his asset, and it allowed him to rise to the most powerful seat in his own village. He was in the prime of his life. It did not allow him, however, to do the one thing he had wanted to do, and the one thing that had caused him great sadness when he knew that what he had in his body would dictate the way he would live.
He would not tell them how he still visited his family’s armory from time to time, to look wistfully at the old puppets of his now-dead older brother, and how a part of him still wished he could perhaps control wood and string and chakra instead of so much iron and blood.
13.) When the child with the solemn eyes came to the funeral of two of his best majors (killed by the cunning White Fang of Konoha), a fondness for the orphan formed almost immediately. When the boy followed his grandmother into an emergency meeting of war almost immediately after the rites, he surprised many people by allowing the boy to sit in the room, albeit in a far corner.
He noticed the wooden dolls the boy was handling rather deftly, but said nothing of it to the boy’s grandmother.
14.) “Very clever indeed,” he remarked amusedly, when the child had presented him with a crude, wooden replica of what verily seemed like himself-his characteristic long, shaggy hair tied up to a knot. It was a foot high, and he could see the simple, yet skillfully attached contraptions of the puppet. He turned it over, and held back a smile at the sight of a crude signature. “Scorpion?” he asked.
“My name is Sasori, Kazekage-sama,” the boy answered, and there was an unnatural calm in the boy’s tone that did not quite sit well with him at first. “And I wish to be a puppeteer.”
15.) Nevertheless, he was the boy’s principle sponsor at the Academy. What would be known years later as The Great Ninja Wars was only beginning, and in the fires of war emerged strong steel, shinobi geniuses made mature by fighting. Konoha had spawned what people began calling the “Tensai Sannin”; Iwagakure’s Flying Brigade had caused many victories in their part; and the warlike fighting families of Kirigakure had begun to move.
And Sunagakure? It had its Sandaime of course, who was iron himself, and who could form, out of his blood, a vast array of weapons at his disposal. Its Sandaime, the strongest that had ever been.
16.) The Niidaime before him had died without a plan for succession, which was why a council held power before he came up to the position of Kage. He did not want that to happen; no, not especially in these times, when a putsch could very well be plotted right outside one’s doors. He was quite sure that he wanted to leave his role to one who had talent and who, he believed, had ambition and strength of character.
17.) The child Sasori continued to impress him, and he would not tell them how his ideal replacement now had a face in his plans, one with solemn eyes and hair as rust-red as the sands the boy was named after.
18.) The Sandaime remembers many things, but he will never forget the second most numbing sensation he had ever felt in his life, when he felt the sharp prick of something small against his palm. They had been talking, he and Sasori, about the possibilities of elevating the teenager to the rank of major, a feat unheard-of even in the eve of war.
“I thank you greatly, Sandaime-sama, for the honor.” Sasori had said quietly, and it would only be the subtlest hint of treachery in the boy’s voice that would warn him. The young man was a puppeteer after all, and his body was his best device-his voice, his face, his eyes. On the palm of the hand that the boy extended to him-the hand he had taken many times when he had looked into Sasori in the Academy-was a small wooden needle; a toothpick, a splinter, that he could not detect, imperceptible in the falling light.
19.) It had been poisoned of course, this single, seemingly harmless point dripping with a concoction that diluted the iron in his blood like so much acid. He could not feel his hands, or feet, or fingers. He tried to summon the bile in his belly, the aching sensation of something that wanted to burst forth, but felt nothing. He tried to reach for a kunai, but his body felt like cold lead.
He tried to summon pain, and when it did not come, he understood what was to follow. There was no great sadness this time, as he lay on the ground very much in the way he lay, many years ago. There was only stillness. And with stillness came death, soft and bloodless and wooden.
20.) They had searched for their Sandaime’s body feverishly, for the succeeding three days. Chiiyo had commanded the scout teams of the Puppet Army to comb the country clean. They had reached as far out to Tea Country, and some even dared to infringe on the borders of hostile Fire Country.
He would not tell them how he had spent the last three days in the quietness of one of the army’s very own labs, with Akasunano Sasori, soon to be the genius puppetmaster and maker of Sunagakure. He would not tell them how black his blood looked like, when Sasori bled him out, like iron, sluggish, full of pain. He would not tell them that despite everything, he had felt a strange peace, in the absence of agony, under the tender artistry of a puppeteer’s hands.
He would not tell them that he would have demanded Sasori’s ascension despite-no, precisely because of what the boy did. He would not tell them how this great act of betryal to village and country transformed him to a weapon--quite literally--he had always driven himself to become.
He could not.
Author's Notes:
- art and story by me, although idea for presentation belongs to domlandbubbles, who started it with a very heartwarming Akamaru 20 Truths.
- I took a lot of liberty with this one. :3 I'd imagine the Sandaime to be sensitive to metal things, but not to wooden things at all, which is why a splinter was used to prick him.
- Naruto, Sasori, and the Kazekage belong to Masashi Kishimoto. Le sigh. D:
Character/Pairing/Group: Sandaime Kazekage
Rating: PG-13, hints
Disclaimer/Notes/Whatever: Sandaime Kazekage, Sasori, and all that is from Naruto belong to the genius that is Kishimoto Masashi.
1.) The pain came when he was four, and he would remember the moment distinctly: having gained ingress into his family’s armory, he was fully intent on merely spiriting away several of his older brother’s unused sparring puppets, when a sudden, blinding agony overcame him. It seemed to burst out of his skin, and it rang in his ears so that stumbling, he tripped on a low stool and fell with a racket on the sand-rough ground. His chest tightening impossibly, he spewed a fan of blood against the floor, before losing consciousness.
He woke up in the hospital, and to the faint scent of something metallic in the air.
2.) He would also remember one other thing in his childhood, that made him, at the tender age of five, understand that he was different and that he would follow a separate way from his peers. It was war, and the village needed its children to be as sharp as the kunai they wielded, well-prepared for the gruesome nuances of the field. “A will like iron and the persistence of a sandstorm” was the common slogan of the time.
Being the youngest in his class, it was no surprise that an adult kunai slipped in his child’s hands, when they were asked to handle the weapons of war in the Academy.
3.) It fell, but not without cutting a sure, deep wound on the back of his left arm. The blood that dribbled out, dribbled freely, seemed to pool about the fallen kunai greedily. It was the scent he would never forget, and the colour: a rich, deep rust that looked black in the glare of the sun.
4.) “There is much iron in his blood,” the medic had explained to his uncle (who was his only guardian), and from where he pretended to lie sleeping in the infirmary room, he saw the lady shake a vial of his sample in emphasis. “There is an abnormal amount of it that evades explanation. This is perhaps what causes his bouts, when the blood thickens too much in his system. Whether it will affect the boy’s performance, perhaps hinder it in any way, cannot as yet be told.”
5.) And he knew then, as his body stilled beneath the thin sheets, he knew that he would lead no ordinary shinobi’s life; he knew, with the great sadness of understanding how one’s life must henceforth be, that as long as he felt the pain beneath his skin (the throb in his palm when he pressed a shuriken to it, leaving a star-shaped imprint), so too would there be iron.
6.) And with iron comes life, and with iron comes blood, and with iron comes the will that would carry the people of the Country of Wind to victory. His classmates held kunai; he decided that he would be a kunai, a jur blade, an iron weapon to cleave Sunagakure’s enemies in two.
7.) He cut an impressive record in the Academy, up to when he claimed the Chuunin title at age ten, which surprised many of the older, prouder teachers. He was particularly known for his ability to throw a kunai or a shuriken without seeming to touch it. He would whip out a weapon from his holster and throw it in one smooth gesture, as if the metal magnetized against his very skin.
8.) He would never tell them how painful it was when he did this. He would never tell them how he mastered this technique on his own, having observed how receptive his skin seemed to be to metal. For with pain comes the weapon, he realized, and if he had to be a weapon, he had to endure pain.
9.) He saw his first Jinchuuriki when he was thirteen. Stationed by the outer playa with his newly-formed team of Tokubetsu Jounin, they watched the decimation of five whole teams of Konohagakure shinobi, as the frenzied girl unleashed Shukkaku in a blinding flurry of sand. The image latched on, and never let go; later, when he trained on his own, he would conceive the idea of a jutsu that would be one of his village’s most powerful, and that would ultimately become his signature.
10.) When he mastered the art of combining his chakra with his body’s natural magnetisms, his skill with blades was unparalleled, and he rose immediately in the ranks of the Sunagakure Military. He seemed to be able to control several weapons all at once, in a stunning display of discipline and precision. For this, he was often sent to faraway missions, mostly to Iwagakure, where their allies sought their aid.
He would not tell them how it was all a matter of mastering the poetry of pain.
11.) When he mastered the art of converting his own blood to solidified iron filings similar to the sand that the Jinchuuriki manipulated, he was the top candidate for Kage, in a village threatening to cave in to its formidable opponents. With chakra, and with the exposure to open air, the impurities in his blood hardened, but maintained a metallic graininess that he could easily control.
Many of course thought that the Iron Sand magically appeared from his mouth, in the unreasonable way most “powerful jutsu” simply seemed to make things happen.
12.) His ailment inevitably became his asset, and it allowed him to rise to the most powerful seat in his own village. He was in the prime of his life. It did not allow him, however, to do the one thing he had wanted to do, and the one thing that had caused him great sadness when he knew that what he had in his body would dictate the way he would live.
He would not tell them how he still visited his family’s armory from time to time, to look wistfully at the old puppets of his now-dead older brother, and how a part of him still wished he could perhaps control wood and string and chakra instead of so much iron and blood.
13.) When the child with the solemn eyes came to the funeral of two of his best majors (killed by the cunning White Fang of Konoha), a fondness for the orphan formed almost immediately. When the boy followed his grandmother into an emergency meeting of war almost immediately after the rites, he surprised many people by allowing the boy to sit in the room, albeit in a far corner.
He noticed the wooden dolls the boy was handling rather deftly, but said nothing of it to the boy’s grandmother.
14.) “Very clever indeed,” he remarked amusedly, when the child had presented him with a crude, wooden replica of what verily seemed like himself-his characteristic long, shaggy hair tied up to a knot. It was a foot high, and he could see the simple, yet skillfully attached contraptions of the puppet. He turned it over, and held back a smile at the sight of a crude signature. “Scorpion?” he asked.
“My name is Sasori, Kazekage-sama,” the boy answered, and there was an unnatural calm in the boy’s tone that did not quite sit well with him at first. “And I wish to be a puppeteer.”
15.) Nevertheless, he was the boy’s principle sponsor at the Academy. What would be known years later as The Great Ninja Wars was only beginning, and in the fires of war emerged strong steel, shinobi geniuses made mature by fighting. Konoha had spawned what people began calling the “Tensai Sannin”; Iwagakure’s Flying Brigade had caused many victories in their part; and the warlike fighting families of Kirigakure had begun to move.
And Sunagakure? It had its Sandaime of course, who was iron himself, and who could form, out of his blood, a vast array of weapons at his disposal. Its Sandaime, the strongest that had ever been.
16.) The Niidaime before him had died without a plan for succession, which was why a council held power before he came up to the position of Kage. He did not want that to happen; no, not especially in these times, when a putsch could very well be plotted right outside one’s doors. He was quite sure that he wanted to leave his role to one who had talent and who, he believed, had ambition and strength of character.
17.) The child Sasori continued to impress him, and he would not tell them how his ideal replacement now had a face in his plans, one with solemn eyes and hair as rust-red as the sands the boy was named after.
18.) The Sandaime remembers many things, but he will never forget the second most numbing sensation he had ever felt in his life, when he felt the sharp prick of something small against his palm. They had been talking, he and Sasori, about the possibilities of elevating the teenager to the rank of major, a feat unheard-of even in the eve of war.
“I thank you greatly, Sandaime-sama, for the honor.” Sasori had said quietly, and it would only be the subtlest hint of treachery in the boy’s voice that would warn him. The young man was a puppeteer after all, and his body was his best device-his voice, his face, his eyes. On the palm of the hand that the boy extended to him-the hand he had taken many times when he had looked into Sasori in the Academy-was a small wooden needle; a toothpick, a splinter, that he could not detect, imperceptible in the falling light.
19.) It had been poisoned of course, this single, seemingly harmless point dripping with a concoction that diluted the iron in his blood like so much acid. He could not feel his hands, or feet, or fingers. He tried to summon the bile in his belly, the aching sensation of something that wanted to burst forth, but felt nothing. He tried to reach for a kunai, but his body felt like cold lead.
He tried to summon pain, and when it did not come, he understood what was to follow. There was no great sadness this time, as he lay on the ground very much in the way he lay, many years ago. There was only stillness. And with stillness came death, soft and bloodless and wooden.
20.) They had searched for their Sandaime’s body feverishly, for the succeeding three days. Chiiyo had commanded the scout teams of the Puppet Army to comb the country clean. They had reached as far out to Tea Country, and some even dared to infringe on the borders of hostile Fire Country.
He would not tell them how he had spent the last three days in the quietness of one of the army’s very own labs, with Akasunano Sasori, soon to be the genius puppetmaster and maker of Sunagakure. He would not tell them how black his blood looked like, when Sasori bled him out, like iron, sluggish, full of pain. He would not tell them that despite everything, he had felt a strange peace, in the absence of agony, under the tender artistry of a puppeteer’s hands.
He would not tell them that he would have demanded Sasori’s ascension despite-no, precisely because of what the boy did. He would not tell them how this great act of betryal to village and country transformed him to a weapon--quite literally--he had always driven himself to become.
He could not.
Author's Notes:
- art and story by me, although idea for presentation belongs to domlandbubbles, who started it with a very heartwarming Akamaru 20 Truths.
- I took a lot of liberty with this one. :3 I'd imagine the Sandaime to be sensitive to metal things, but not to wooden things at all, which is why a splinter was used to prick him.
- Naruto, Sasori, and the Kazekage belong to Masashi Kishimoto. Le sigh. D: