Welcome to the next chapter, this one went through a few revisions as I had to rethink what I was doing for this part of the plot. Ultimately though, I think it's fine, perhaps not as good as I wanted it to be in my head, but part of writing this at all is getting over that feeling and pushing past my own personal criticisms of my writing. So having said that I hope you enjoy and tell me what you think.
The Kami despise a coward.
Eight years ago Kojirou ran from his death, now eight years and a family later it's arrived again.
He knows he can't run this time, there were really only two options at this point: die against Hanzo of The Salamander or die against Onoki of the Two Scales. There was of course the third option to die to a horde of grass shinobi by refusing either, but that would put his family in even more danger than they already were.
Walking past his field, he felt strange knowing that just a short few months ago he had stopped working on it, leaving his wife to tend to it in his absence. It was supposed to be a temporary arrangement while he trained again, it wouldn't be temporary.
As he came upon his family's small farm house on the edge of Kusagakure he froze, simply staring at the outside of the small building, just basking in the glow of what he had built.
It wasn't that long ago that he was just another drunken war vet whose life was in shambles. However, like always for Kojirou Ishida, the past would always come back to haunt him. Breathing in deep he steadied his resolve and walked inside, taking off his shoes and quietly sliding the door shut behind him. He found his wife and daughter sitting next to each other at the kitchen table, he couldn't help but stare at the pair.
His daughter had fallen asleep at the table, her head laid across her arm. Mizutori always looked more peaceful in her sleep, when awake she usually had a sad and tired look on her face, as if the world was always pressing itself down upon her.
Now though, there was none of that, just a sleeping child enjoying a rare moment of rest after a long day of work.
His wife looked worried, he had consoled her as best he could before he left, but they both knew what was likely to happen.
"I'm back." Ashina quickly looked up from the book she was quietly reading to see him standing in the doorway. The hug she gave him after she got up from her seat made him feel empty.
"How did it go? Did he…" She trailed off after a moment, his face probably told more of a story than he would like, he has always had trouble with that.
"Well, I'm not being sent against Hanzo." She perked up for a moment. "I'm instead being sent against the Third Tsuchikage." Her face crashed down, she wasn't a ninja but she was from a shinobi family, she knew what fighting a Kage meant for him.
"When are you going to leave?"
"The day after tomorrow, he is allowing me that much at least." Ashina glances in the direction of Mizutori who was still sleeping. "How are we going to tell her?" Kojirou sighed before walking over and crouching down next to his daughter, she had gotten so tall already.
He'd never see her fully grown.
"Hey Little Crane, let's get you to bed. Come on up ya get." Kojirou said while picking her up, shifting her onto his back.
She mumbled something about him being late. "I know, but we can talk about that in the morning, I'll have something new to show you I think." She nodded into his back, clearly still too tired to really understand what was going on.
Father and mother had been tense today, both clearly having something on their minds. My best guess was that it had to do with why father had been summoned by the Daimyo, possibly with the war that was now assured according to Musashi's words.
So here we were, both sitting side by side on the steps to his shrine like always, mother was here like yesterday as well, which was odd. I had assumed that that was just due to the test, but perhaps she'd be making it a more regular thing to be present in my training.
"Well, I suppose it's best to just get it over with huh?" Father sighed before glancing over to me and continuing. "Yesterday I was given a mission by the Daimyo, I'm going to be fighting a… tougher opponent than I'm used to."
Ah, I see.
It could only last so long I suppose.
Father went to explain further but I cut him off. "Do you think the enemy will be too strong, father?"
He paused at my words, looking at me oddly for a moment before sighing again and looking towards mother while nodding.
"Yeah, probably." He almost whispered.
Father clears his throat before suddenly standing up and speaking loudly. "And that brings me to why I brought you here, one last lesson in case the worst happens." He makes a gesture to mother who hurries back to the house.
I slowly stand up from my sitting position, conflicted as to who it was I am supposed to be at the moment, Mizutori the student or Mizutori the daughter. Sometimes, to be honest with myself, I wish I could just be Malenia again, she had learned early on that there was only one person she could protect.
Only, she failed him too, didn't I?
"Here, this is yours, remember? Carry it with you always while I'm gone." Father comes back from inside the shrine with both of our swords, pushing mine into my chest, I grab it numbly.
"Today, I'll be showing you a technique that I created myself when I was younger." He went on to explain how it was this technique that had convinced his teacher to take him on, and so he wanted to pass it onto me.
I try my hardest to listen carefully, I do, it's just surprisingly hard right now.
Mother comes back from the house with a bird cage, an occupied bird cage. "So, on that snowtop hill I thought to myself, how could I hit the sparrow if it could simply move around the blade. Well I figured it out, I would need at least three blades swinging at once."
This was perhaps an odd time to zone back in, why was he trying to hit a bird again?
Hiken: Tsubame Gaeshi
It was official, father has gone insane.
"Wrong, again."
Hiken: Tsubame Gaeshi
This was frankly not possible, how was I supposed to swing three times at once, that simply didn't make any sense.
"Again."
Hiken: Tsubame Gaeshi
This wasn't like Malenia's Waterfowl Dance, that move was and is a lot of things, primarily a very complicated mix of sheer impossible speed and actual literal magic, not enough to register as a true spell, it was an Ash of War more tied to her blade than to her actual skill, even if she could pull off an almost proper one even without the blade.
Either way this wasn't that, I had even tried to haphazardly pull off a Waterfowl Dance without Malenia's native magic, it was almost perfect.
"Impressive, but still wrong, again."
Hiken: Tsubame Gaeshi
From above then to the right then to the-
"Too slow, again!"
Before this had started, father had given me a slip of paper that he had told me to channel my chakra into, it collapsed into a pile of mushy rotten wood pulp of course, but before it did that it had split into two pieces.
He had said that that was important, it meant I was connected to the wind in some intrinsic way.
Hiken: Tsubame Gaeshi
I didn't really understand how me being connected to the wind had anything to do with this, and when I asked he had just laughed and patted my head, telling me to think on it more.
Come nightfall though, I was forced to admit defeat.
Father still patted my head and congratulated me on my progress. "It took me far longer to even pull off what you are doing right now, don't be discouraged."
"Now, how about I show it to you one last time before bed. Copy it to memory Little Crane."
He readied himself into his stance, there was no opponent on the other end, apparently the little sparrow was reserved for when I was training; it would be too easy for him to hit it. He stood still for a brief moment before subtly shifting his hands and quietly saying out loud the name of the technique.
"Hiken: Tsubame Gaeshi"
From the top, from the left, and from the right, I actually, literally could not see the individual swings, he just… swung three times at once.
With one sword.
What did father say ninja called their illusion's again, Genjutsu? Perhaps this was just an elaborate trick he was playing on me.
After his display we went back home, mother made tsukemen, father and mine's (in this life at least) favorite dish, it tasted of ash.
After we had said our good nights and headed to our separate rooms I couldn't help but ponder why this was bothering me so much. I had lost allies before, I had even lost family members before.
Father wasn't even a member of Marika's divine lineage, surely his death should matter less than those. Yet, despite that, this was clearly bothering me more than the death of any of her myriad relations before had.
There was a flash of his face, I put it out of my mind; father's death is and would be painful, but it couldn't be compared to my failure with him.
Eventually hours later, close to sunrise, I forced myself up from my bed. I hadn't really been sleeping so I decided to do the one thing I did know how to do.
Achieve victory.
Perhaps being able to perform my father's technique before he left on his mission would help me achieve some sort of balance in emotion.
Kojirou woke slowly, despite beginning his last mission today he couldn't help but feel almost serene right now. It was a perfect morning; there was a slight comfortable chill in the air warded away by the covers and the warm body of his wife next to him. He could hear a bird chirping not far away, enjoying itself in the morning due.
He got up, careful not to disturb his wife, put on his morning robes for the last time, walked past his traveling gear he had carefully set next to the door in their room and found himself in the kitchen.
Kojirou was never a big fan of tea, but decided that just this once he should perhaps act like the samurai he once was. So, he got out the teapot and carefully selected his cups and leaves for the morning.
Somewhere in the process Ashina had woken up and joined him for tea. Once it was done they both decided to sit on the front steps to their house, just enjoying each other's presence in the cold morning light. The sight of his small rice field in the morning sun brought a smile to his face as Ashina laid her head on his shoulder.
The comfortable silence was broken by the sound of distant shouting from the direction of his shrine.
A girl's shouting.
After a moment where he and Ashina both glanced first at each other then back at the entrance to the house, they both slowly got up and wandered over to the sound of their daughter's shouting.
What they found made Kojirou's eyes widen.
"Hiken: Tsubame Gaeshi!"
They found Mizutori at the foot of his shrine, still practicing his technique.
She was panting heavily and her hair was in a mess, she was moving sloppily from exhaustion and compared to last night's quiet pronouncements of Tsubame Gaeshi, she was shouting it at the top of her lungs.
But all that wasn't what made Kojirou so surprised.
Next to the shrine there was the cooling corpse of a sparrow cut down mid air.
She clearly hadn't noticed them as she quietly muttered to herself between her pants before loudly shouting once more.
"Hiken: Tsubame Gaeshi!"
She struck the air, and to his amazement, three times at once. Tsubame Gaeshi was a simple technique really, the only thing it required was a basic clone jutsu that he had stolen from a shinobi textbook that he had 'found' back in iron.
As you struck the target you would create the clones that would strike in two other directions making your opponent think three strikes were coming at once, when in reality only one was real.
Mizutori wasn't doing the clone part obviously, she couldn't have known how to, and that was the amazing part.
No, instead she was 'simply' cutting once and forcing the air to cut the target in front of her in the same way her blade would. That should have been nearly impossible; most jutsu utilizing the cutting aspect of air required something to guide it like a knife or fan or at least should have required hand seals; he could only pull off his bastardized singlehanded clone seal while holding the sword.
Hell, he had only really shown her the technique so that she would have something to chew on for the next while after he was gone, not honestly expecting her to get it anytime soon. The chakra paper that had told him what her nature was, was just to satisfy his own curiosity, though she had clearly thought it was important to the technique somehow.
"Hike-" She was cut off by the sound of him laughing at the absurdity of his daughter. She stopped mid sentence and turned towards him with surprise written on her face, still panting heavily.
After a moment she drops her sword and bows towards him before saying, "I'm sorry, father."
Still chuckling to himself slightly, he asks her why she was sorry, she only responds with, "I could not figure out the technique before you left."
"Figure out the technique!? Little Crane, forget Tsubame Gaeshi, what you were doing right there far surpasses that little trick!" He quickly walks up to her and picks her up, swinging her into the air laughing the whole while.
"Look at you, nine years old and already beating your old man at his best, trust me little crane, you have nothing to be sorry for." After setting her down he patted her on the shoulder and nudged her to the house.
"Now, how about we all enjoy some tea in the time I have left."
Soon after that proud and happy moment Kojirou Ishida left for Stone.
He would never return.
Father died an ignominious death, not one worth covering in my thoughts. According to the daimyo, when my mother and I had been summoned after his death, he had managed to even draw blood against the Tsuchikage before being cut down shortly after.
He said it like it was an impressive thing to manage, personally, I'd have rather been impressed by my father achieving victory against all odds.
Yet, if Malenia the severed couldn't beat the odds against fate, what was a mortal man like Kojirou to do?
So here I sat, a scant week after he left, on the steps to his little shrine that would eventually fall to ruin as neither my mother nor I worshiped his gods. Mother had taken it as well as could be expected, she had cried of course, but she hadn't mourned for long. She probably thought it was best to try and show strength for my sake.
I won't deny that it did help to have someone else to lean on.
"Good morning, Ishida-chan." I was brought out of my thoughts by the sound of a familiar man's voice, Musashi. I glanced at him shortly before looking back towards my father's rice field.
He grunted, I could feel the smile drop from his face before he made his way over to sit next to me.
"It's a terrible thing." I quirked my head towards him. "Ah, what happened to your father I mean." he said quickly while rubbing the back of his neck.
After this there was an uncomfortable silence in the clearing, "We were friends you know, Kojirou and I."
"We didn't know each other long but after the war we bonded like old war buddies, he told me himself about having you, he was so proud, all 'Musashi look at what I've done' and 'what have you ever produced you shitty ninja'." I won't lie, that sounded nothing like father.
Both the impression he was putting on and the words he was saying, father just didn't talk like that. The man looked at me, probably expecting me to indulge his inane desire to chatter incessantly.
After a while of him continuing to pester me, he gave up talking at me to address why he had come.
"Well, you see before Kojirou left he told me, 'Musashi, my friend, after I am gone I want you to train my daughter, talent like her's should never be left to fester.' and so here I am, following up on his last wishes." he was gesticulating as he talked, his hands flailing about wildly.
I personally doubted his words, if anything he was just sent by the daimyo himself, I wasn't stupid, father had been killed because he wouldn't fight, so now they wanted someone else to take his place.
I had already decided that I would fight though, therefore his subterfuge was unneeded. After all, what purpose would my life have if I couldn't even beat an accursed bureaucrat at his own game.
They would have their warrior, and I would enjoy victory against my opponent.
Who that opponent was, of course, would be different depending on if you asked me or the daimyo.
"-and I know that it will be weird being taught by someone who's not your father, and also not a samurai, bu-" I decided to interrupt him lest he continue to keep talking.
"Then let's fight." I said while standing up, grabbing my sword which had been resting next to me, training was why I came out here after all.
I could see a smile grow on his face, "Right, I suppose it would be a good idea to see where you already are in your training, so I can know what to teach you." He sounded far too eager to fight a literal child, prodigy or no.
As I unsheathed and laid out my sword to the side I could still hear him talking as he unsheathed his twin swords opposite me.
"Now in order for this to work I'm going to need you to come at me with all you got, really try and kill me, you kno-" I decided that I was done listening.
I rushed at him, swinging at him with a simple downwards stroke. He caught it surprisingly well considering I had surprised him.
I backpedaled in order to create room, he had the advantage up close.
He tried to follow, but a simple swipe from the left to the right had dissuaded him from trying to close the distance. However, before I could attack again I was forced to react to a strange whistling sound coming from behind me.
I just barely managed to dodge the odd knife that had come from the woods behind me. Looking behind me I was thrown for a loop as I saw the man in front of me was also behind me.
"Keep your eyes on the enemy!" I effortlessly blocked the front musashi's swing, now on the defensive I realized I might have gotten too used to fighting an honorable opponent.
Throwing off his blade, I tried to go for a kick only for another knife to interrupt my attack.
Stopping mid kick I hopped backwards on one foot, dodging the knife and spinning to regather my footing, I was now pointing towards the Musashi in the woods.
I rushed forward, I could hear the original ninja running behind me. The one I was rushing tried to pull out its own swords before I got to it, it would be too slow.
I felt the tip of my sword enter his skin with my thrust, however instead of a shower of blood like I was expecting, I was instead caught off guard by a sudden cloud of smoke as the man I stabbed simply 'popped' for lack of a better term.
Remembering the original ninja coming from behind I dashed to the right while ducking low, spinning on one foot while low so I could bring my sword forward to force him to quickly block.
At the sound of our swords clashing I couldn't help but smile, this feeling would never be topped.
The feeling of fighting and winning.
Using the force behind my momentum I pushed him back, his hasty defense being thrown back by my blow. I was surprised, however, when after getting past his blades I didn't in fact find the soft and supple flesh I had expected, but instead the cold and unforgiving harshness of a log of wood.
I will admit to running purely on instincts at this point, completely lost as to what to do next, as my opponent was simply gone from where he once stood.
I eventually decided to simply reset my guard and wait for my opponent to make his next move, ceding the initiative for once.
"Well, Kojirou-san clearly taught you well I'll give you, and him, that." His voice appeared behind me from some distance, deeper in the woods his clone had hidden in.
"But, if solid basics is all you have, then I'm afraid that that just won't be enough, not when an enemy like the one who killed your father comes after you."
"Doton: Sazareishi!"
The ground rose up around me, and before I could get away, trapped me in a mound of solid earth, leaving only my head and shoulders out in the open.
"Lesson one," I felt the cold edge of a sword push against my neck as he and his voice suddenly appeared in front of me. "You will be fighting shinobi, not samurai, we won't just use a sword or fight honorably."
I felt him pull his sword back from my neck as he got down from the mound of dirt I was trapped in. Now that I knew where he had been, I could see another clone of him in the woods, its hands were together in the shape of a seal, likely holding the jutsu together.
"Saying that though, you still did pretty good you know, all things considered." he sheathed his swords and turned away from me, likely considering the fight over.
He would have been correct, but I knew something he didn't.
"Tell you what, I'm going to go get a drink and when I get back, I'll let you out and we can go over what you can do better next time, hmm?" As he said this he looked at me askance with a slight smirk on his face.
Taking my silence as an affirmation he turned away from me, after two steps I activated my trump card. A bright scarlet light filled the clearing as my sword revealed itself, its point poking through the mound, with a simple flex of my wrist the enhanced blade easily sliced through the earth around me.
I pushed off the mound landing behind him with one foot on the ground, I raised my sword high behind my head, one foot still in the air.
"Hiken: Mizutori no Mai."
After my father had told me what I had actually done while attempting his technique was not fail, but create something entirely new. I had decided to attempt to replicate the waterfowl dance again.
I quickly found that with the assistance of the cutting wind, it worked just as well, if not better than it did in my past life.
"So, tell me Musashi-san, what is your opinion on the young daughter of our sadly fallen samurai friend?" Asked the oldest shinobi council member, Jinbe Mizuji. A bear of a man who was renowned for once having drowned a Hozuki, a clan equally renowned for being able to turn into water, when asked how he had done it he had always refused to explain further.
"Yes, do tell me when she is ready for battle, the front is becoming harder and harder to control and with Konoha busy against Kumo's offensive, I'm afraid we may have to start sending in the genin teams already." Remarked Shikoso Kamo placidly, the Kamo family was of distant relation to Konoha's Nara clan. While most of the family had lost any real connection to the leaf's shadow manipulators, they did still have their intelligence. As such, Shikoso was chosen to be Kusagakure's main strategist during the war; he had so far performed admirably, though not without complaints about his heartlessness.
There were in total seven members of the Kusagakure shinobi council, most of which were currently out in the field. The only one's not out being Shikoso, Jinbe, and Musashi himself.
Shikoso because he preferred directing teams from the village, and Jinbe because he was getting on in the years and was being used exclusively as a last line of defense for the village, in case the worst were to happen.
Musashi was only here because he was on order of the daimyo to get Kojirou's young daughter up to fighting shape before going out again.
He will admit to at first being dismayed by his orders, Musashi was a man who loved to fight, and he will also admit to not having really believed the now departed ronin that his daughter was 'almost as good as him'.
So, he had gone to the Ishida household almost dejected at being wasted away teaching a cripple while a war was being waged so close by.
It had really only taken one attack from her to change his mind, and her last attack had indeed nearly killed him, if he hadn't used a substitution jutsu for a second time, he would have been killed for sure by her 'Mizutori no Mai'.
It almost made him laugh, naming a technique after yourself almost always turned out to be a joke of the arrogant.
A flash of scarlet light flared in his memory.
"Well, if I'm being honest with you Jinbe, I think Mizutori Ishida is a monster of a girl who could probably overtake all of us in a few years." The part he hated about saying that is that it was true, every single attack she had pulled off was perfect. The fighter in him loved it, to think that there was a warrior in grass who could possibly grow even stronger than him. The ninja in him was suspicious though, frankly, it would be impossible for some chunin to pull off what she was doing, hell, a jounin might find it hard to use wind chakra as effectively and easily as her 'dance' had.
But ultimately, the ninja at war in him decided that no matter how Mizutori Ishida had gotten as strong as she was, she was still an asset to be used.
"Really now, strong praise from a battle maniac like you, Musashi." He nodded in affirmation at the older man's words before turning towards the other shinobi in the room.
"It's my recommendation that we find a use for her on the front, Shikoso." The Kamo heir raised an eyebrow at him.
"And you aren't just saying that because you want to get back to the fight?"
The image of a rotting log flashed in his mind's eye for a moment.
"Not this time, no."
The strategist hummed for a moment while looking upwards, fiddling with a shogi piece as he thought.
"Well, if you think she would work already, then I think I know of an assignment I could give her." He looked down and smirked at Musashi.
"An easy one, of course, we wouldn't want to lose the daimyo's last pet samurai so early on after all.
