-Hunting History [C][Kin]

[Not Masakuni]

-A Moment Of Discovery

Where is it?

It had to be around here somewhere. Fushoku Shiro stood atop the grassy knoll, amber stalks waving in the breeze. Below him, one of the few fields in Kusa no Kuni that had escaped the war's destruction sat quietly. In the distance, a bamboo forest reached for the sky. At the very edge of the field, where gold grains met green leaves, a small village straddled the border between forest and plain. It was a quiet little place, a collection of one-story buildings made of timber, mud, and thatched grasses.

All in all, it was an unremarkable place. There would be no reason for him to go there, normally. However, there was something that drew him to this place. Something unique that set apart this little village from any number of little communities that dotted the nation. Here, in this unnamed village, was a grave. This grave was, like most, a simple reliquary for a dead body. However, there was more to this grave than the rotting bones of the fallen from the great World War, seven years ago.

This grave contained information.

Shiro hefted his pack and set it more fully against his back. Light steps took him down the hill, heading towards the village. Hopefully, he hadn't been mislead. The information that had lead him here had been difficult to obtain. Hours and hours of his time had been wasted away, digging through histories of the war. All of the readily available information was vague. None of it went as far as to name the kinjutsu, only describe in feathery terms the causes of death for shinobi in the nation. What lead him here was only a passing reference in a medical journal.

Killed in Kusa no Kuni, near an unnamed village on the border of the Bamboo Forest. Evidence suggests the involvement of a unique fuuinjutsu...

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[Not Masakuni]

-A Moment Of Understanding

Shiro set foot on the well-packed dirt on the outskirts of the village. There was only one road in the village, linking almost half of the village's house into a single lane. Where he stood, the road simply disappeared into the high grass of the countryside. The road continued ahead of him for almost a hundred meters, where it rose into a simple earthern bump at the edge of the forest. Shiro narrowed his eyes at it. Likely, it was what he sought. He took a step forward, his pulse quickening slightly.

“You, hey! Stop!”

Shiro ignored the old man. Wrinkled and bald, his gray beard was starting to fall out as well. He moved with a hobble, leaning heavily on a cane. He stood in the middle of the road, as though to bar the path to the grave. The young shinobi narrowed eyes at the old man, who responded with a glare just as fierce. Shiro sighed, shifting his weight. He didn't want to hurt an old man, but he had come too far to be stopped by propriety and moral foolishness. He locked his gaze on to the old man.

“Don't stop me, old man,” He said, his voice low with warning. “I need what's buried in that grave. They killed our people.” The old man regarded him with thoughtful eyes. After a moment of silence, he stepped aside, his eyes solemn. Perhaps he knew he couldn't stop a shinobi much younger and more fit than himself. Or perhaps he, too, wanted revenge on those who had torn their nation apart. He didn't have to voice his reasons to Shiro. His cooperation was enough.

“Make sure they suffer.” The old man's voice was weak and raspy. His eyes, however, were as hard as diamonds. Shiro nodded once, and then continued down the path.

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[Not Masakuni]

-A Moment of Gravedigging

Thump.

Shiro's boots made a heavy sound in the dirt as his shadow fell over the earthern mound. It was a simple affair, nothing more than dirt piled together and packed down into a miniature hill. At the peak was a simple, rusted ninjato, its blade thrust halfway into the dirt. Hanging from the hilt was a ragged old headband. The symbol of Kusagakure was still visible on the tarnished metal. All was quiet around the little memorial. The dried up remains of an old bundle of flowers sat at Shiro's feet.

Another one of us, cut down.

He ignored the boiling in his blood. The time would come for passion and release. Today was not the day. Quietly, he bowed his head, whispering a little prayer to the gods for the soul of the warrior buried before him. He lifted his head with a mournful sigh. It did his heart ill to do what he was about to do, but it was necessary for the future of their village. “I'm sorry, comrade,” He whispered, setting his pack down beside him. He withdrew a small folding shovel, opening it up and locking the head into place.

The body wasn't deep within the mound. Before long, the first bone was revealed. He tossed the shovel to the side, wiping the sweat from his forehead. He closed his eyes, murmuring another soft prayer and willing his chakra to circulate through his body. He focused it down into the dirt. It was thin enough that, with a little imagination, he could think of it as sand. With a supreme effort, he pushed it aside with his will, surfacing the old skeleton. Dressed in raged clothes and shed of it's flesh, its visage was grim and stark.

Clutched in its ivory fingers was a dirty little book, its pages barely attached to the spine...

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[Not Masakuni]

-A Moment Of Study

Shiro gently withdrew the book, careful not to break any of the skeleton's fingers. He regarded it silently, his heart quivering in his chest. His source had been right. This was what he had been looking for. He gathered up another mass of chakra, using it to push the skeleton back into the ground, packing the sandy dirt into a proper burial mound over it. He regarded the tattered memorial for another second, his lips sealed tightly. He bowed to his fallen comrade before turning away from him, striding away across the dirt.

Thank you.

His fingers reached for the dirt-stained cover, trembling slightly. With as much gentleness as he could muster, he opened it. He scanned the first page, reading the flowing script. It was a journal, just as the shinobi had been described as keeping. He had been a soldier in the war, fighting for Kusagakure against the forces of Konohagakure on the eastern front. He turned the pages lightly, scanning for any reference to the fuuinjutsu user that had eventually taken his life.

'Today, we moved seventeen kilometres to the south. A small exploratory force from Konohagakure was discovered by our scouts, and we were set to exterminate them. We should have had a five-to-one advantage over them. As we got there, however, it turned out not to matter. They had someone with them who evened things out. Clearly one of their best. He took out fifteen of our ninja himself. He had some technique that allowed him to be everywhere at once. We couldn't pin him down. For now, we await reinforcements from the reserve forces.'

“Evverywhere at once,” Shiro mused. “Sounds promising.”

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[Not Masakuni]

-A Moment Of History

Step.

Shiro's feet had taken him far, that day. In the distance, the sun was falling underneath the horizon. The village had been left behind in the distance. The old man had said nothing as he saw the book in the young shinobi's hands. He had simply bowed his head, his expression solemn. Now, Shiro stood in the shade of a copse of tall trees and giant mushrooms, all the remained of a once great forest. All around the small pack of trees, the ground was scorched black, the aftereffect of some unholy flame flung by a careless ninja.

Shiro sat down on his stool, staring into the depths of his fire. After a moment, he slipped the book out of his pocket, opening it again.

'That bastard took out half of my squadron today. Everywhere you look, he's there, as though distance means nothing to him. I made him pay for it today, however. We managed to kill another seven men. He's down to barely a dozen now. We hold the advantage in number still, though only just. But more importantly, today I gained a bit of insight into how he does what he does. Whenever he appears, it is always at a place that he has previously thrown one of those weirdly shaped kunai...'

Shiro let out a low breath. That made it clear. This was the man who had decimated the entire eastern front of the Kusagakure army, during the Second World War. Everyone had heard of the demon from Konohagakure who had single-handedly forced the western front to retreat so that they could reinforce the eastern front to fight him off. No one was entirely sure how he had done it, save for those who had fought him. Of course, they had all died. Unless you could raise the dead, you would never know.

That is, unless you knew where they kept their journals...

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[Not Masakuni]

-A Moment of History, Part II

Shiro turned the page.

'We managed to capture one his men, today. He wouldn't talk, at first, of course. He was resistant to torture, but thankfully Aiko's Genjutsu was enough to break him. I hope I never get on her bad side.. Anyway, we got some good information out of them. As we thought, they had no real objective, aside from harassing us. Their mission was to damage us enough that the western forces would be forced to withdraw to support us. I wouldn't have thought it possible for one man and a few small squadrons under his command to pull it off, but he's doing it. He's... unique.'

'His technique is called Hiraishin. It is a forbidden type of Space-Time Ninjutsu that allows him to teleport to a special seal. He's placed that seal on all of his kunai, allowing him to be anywhere that one of his kunai is. It's a startlingly powerful technique, if it is as simple as our captive says. There's no special requirements, no restrictions. If the seal is present, he can teleport to it in the blink of an eye. I never imagined that anyone could have such a mastery of fuuinjutsu and space-time techniques. Shortly after interrogating the guy, we recovered one of the kunai. I destroyed the seal, but not before making a harmless copy so that we can study it. I hid it to the south of the village we're operating out of at the moment, in a cave about a hundred kilometres south. Tomorrow, we're going to take him down.'

The pages beyond that were blank.

“South of the village...” His heart was starting to race again. “How fortunate.” It was as though the fates themselves were looking out for him. He had already been heading south, angling back towards the heart of the nation, where the Yonbi was rampaging. He grinned, closing the journal and slipping it back into his pocket. Tomorrow, he would make his way to this cave. It was only another thirty kilometres south, if his calculations were correct. His calculations were always correct, of course.

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[Not Masakuni]

-A Moment Of Darkness

Shiro dug through the underbrush, cursing. It was especially thick in this area. Giant fungus grew all around, casting huge shadows that blotted out the sun. He was one hundred kilometres south of the village where he had discovered the journal, exactly as it had described. There were little mounds of stone all around this area, creating little hills and ravines in the depths of the forest. It was the perfect place to hide something. Any pile of rocks could be concealing a cave entrance, around here.

It was likely why Shiro couldn't find it at all.

He grit his teeth, digging through the thick ivy, pulling it back from another mass of stones. This was the fifteen pile he had investigated. At this point, he was ready to find nothing but solid stone again. This time, however, his efforts paid off. A small crevice, just wide enough for a man to fit into, gaped in the stone. Beyond it, pure darkness filled the hole. Shiro slid off his pack, striking a torch and tossing his gear in through the hole. It was too thin to get through while wearing his gourd.

He slipped in, holding the torch carefully away from the tall grasses. After a few moments of struggling, he was in. The cave was small, barely bigger than a single room. It was empty, save for a stone shelf at one end. There, a strange, three-pronged kunai sat. On the rough-hewn walls around it, ruined sheets of paper were pinned into the stone. Shiro came closer, gazing at it curiously. This had to be the cave he was looking for. He set the torch into a small divet in the wall, securing so that he could use both of his hands.

This has to be it...

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[Not Masakuni]

-A Moment Of Frustration

Hiraishin Shiki.

The rest of the scroll was ruined by water damage. He could see the edge of an intricate seal, but not nearly enough to piece together what had been lost. Shiro sighed, stepping away from it. He wasn't going to be able to use this. It was way beyond his ability to understand. He was as good as any average shinobi at understanding how seals and rites worked, but this one looked more complex than anything he had seen before. Even the one corner of the seal he could see was infinitely more complex than the entirety of every other seal he had seen combined.

He cursed, kicking at a loose pebble. It clattered away into the darkness. He had been so close! Here was a scroll containing the secrets of a lost kinjutsu right in front of him, and it was destroyed by seepage in a mouldering gap in the earth. It wasn't fair. Not in the slightest. He spit out another curse, descending into a stream of foul words. He hadn't come this far to be defeated by the poor choice of a hiding spot for one of the most important techniques of all time. He grabbed one of the unruined scrolls, looking over it with renewed vigour.

“Come on, give me something.”

'Kakura of the Hidden Leaf did not invent the Hiraishin technique. Repeated interrogation reveals that he is simply the successor to the technique. He learned it from a master, who is the original creator of the technique. It was designed, apparently, as a weapon to defend against the insanely destructive power of Bijuu by relocating their attacks, rather than trying to neutralize their unstoppable might. Supposedly it is a person not much older than him. The subject has little information about the subject, and his imagination has confused the result of Genjutsu-based interrogation considerably. The best we could discern is that this master is still alive as of the Second Great War, and that this person is not necessarily beholden to Konohagakure. Perhaps we could use this person to our advantage?'

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[Not Masakuni]

-A Moment Of Enlightenment

Still alive.

So there was another, still living, who knew the Hiraishin technique. Shiro looked over the scroll again. If he could find the one who invented the technique, he could learn it for himself, and use it to take revenge on those who destroyed his nation. He could turn it against a village that had once used it against them. He would have to find out where this person was, of course. His journey was far from over. He had an inkling now, though, of what he had to do. There was an attainable goal on the horizon.

To defend against the power of the Bijuu..

“Shukaku,” Shiro said to himself. The One-Tail. With this, could he restrain the beast? He had seen it in action, under the control of a Jinchuuriki, during the war. He had seen the power of that beast. He wanted to control that power, so that it could be used for the good of his nation. He smirked to himself. Well, for his good as well. But what was good for him would be good for those who held his loyalty. That much was obvious. He took his torch and lit the scrolls on fire, destroying anything that would allow another to learn of the technique's origins.

He slipped out of the cave, shouldering his pack. Above him, the sun was reaching its highest point in the sky. Like that sun, he and his nation would climb above everything else in the sky, burning them into submission. Never again would he let his people be oppressed. The Five Great Nations. The Yonbi. Both of them had destroyed a village that couldn't fight back against them. He would turn their own strength against them. He brushed himself off, facing to towards the west.

“I will find you,” He said. “And you will teach me.”

-Exit

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[tigaevo]

+85 Masa lol and good luck on flying thunder god.

[tigaevo]

x2 Happy Birthday NRP +85