Reborn in the Mist

There were a lot of developments in the village but very little required my personal attention all the time. As Mizukage my place was behind the desk and at worse underneath a war camp tent, only in the direst times would I be asked to grace the field of battle and I was content to take advantage of the time and space that left me.

Something about war, no matter how insignificant the opponent, made me eager to get stronger and end it in one fell swoop. I recognized it’s what lead to my prodigious debut in the Third Shinobi War but here, in the Daimyo’s civil squabbles the stand isn’t mine to usurp, at least not yet.

I doubted there’d be a need for anyone beyond the Swordsmen, Jounin-Chuunin squads and my dedicated ANBU waiting to pull the trigger on Baron Watanabe and Tetsuya’s kidnapping. Once there was an opportunity to nab those two all the violence would become redundant, for now though the violence raged on without me to even witness it.

In an effort to fulfil the ‘get stronger’ furnace of energy within me, I used my self-given day off from the office to delve into the carton of Fuuinjutsu texts and scrolls Harusame had delivered the very same day I requested them. He was excited to watch my growth and left a note pointing out what topics I should start with and where I should expect a challenge.

After three hours of recusing myself in the Mizukage library within the Tower I let out a groan, stretched my stiff muscles and smacked my lips as the bore of ancient Fuuinjutsu masters and the dust of scroll surely as old as them began to run me hungry.

As per Harusame’s suggestions I started out at the very beginning; theoretical study. Well, actually, the true beginning was chakra control and understanding as with all facets of jutsu, but I wasn’t going to waste my time reviewing academy work I’d already become second nature with.

The theoretical study included learning the thousand and more kanji and symbols used to practice even the barest Fuuinjutsu. Understanding the meaning and principals behind them was crucial even before getting to practicing the right draw strokes for each.

I felt like overwhelming work because it looked so dense and I was a bit discouraged to continue after the hour mark passed; I was the Mizukage, there was a ton of other things I could be overseeing personally right now. But that was just an excuse, looking for a reason to procrastinate what I immediately found out was a patterned language.

Sure, there were some symbols that stumped me and had nothing to do with the first pattern I identified but like with most languages there were symbols, words and such that held special status. It was no different here; a recurring symbol was that of ‘bind’, which seems obvious considering the subject, but then because of the subject that symbol only means to bind a small living thing no larger than a rat if I understood what I was reading.

Using other ‘bind’ kanji in place of that would cause the seal to fail woefully. There were set paradigms to the language of seals and as I quickly got bored and hungry, I read ahead to find out these paradigms can only be customized or recreated by a fluent master.

Before the past three hours I would’ve continued to claim I learned how to craft paper bombs during the war but now I see I merely memorized one specific pattern of paper bombs. There were a multitude of seals for paper bombs and even the single one I knew, at the moment, I couldn’t identify all the properties and functions of the kanji willing it to explode.

However, it inspired me to continue working. I’d feel especially good once I understood what I was blindly scribbling onto seal paper. And even better once I could understand the little scribbles that poked out on the Tower, though that might take a while longer than my most pressing goals for picking up Fuuinjutsu.

I couldn’t sense either Yin or Yang chakra from the little classwork I skipped to but that was to be expected, I’d barely managed to seal the pencil and eraser for a minute before the seal broke open and I had to pick apart some unholy combination of lead and eraser dust from the grinded sawdust of the pencil.

It was a little funny because I’d done everything to detail instruction but apparently that was the point of the very first bit of classwork the scroll on sealing objects gave— failure and its consequences. It helped keep me cautious going forward but I couldn’t help thinking about how much damage an intentionally botched seal could cause.

I was some ways away from intentionally breaking my seals though, right now I merely focussed on memorizing a handful of kanji and symbols that I’d be using to practice until I felt confident enough to move onto areas I was truly interested in— Binding and Barrier Seals.

Much like my favouritism with the [Water Release: Water Prison] I was intrigued by the possibility of rendering my enemies immobile before they’ve even had a chance to raise a kunai. Once I got bored with my start at the basic storage seals I flipped over to learning about binding seals.

As I still restricted myself to the theoretical with a few classworks, it didn’t take more than two hours for the symbols and kanji I’d memorized from storage seals to become redundant. But that was okay, I felt like I’d made a lot of progress already even if this was what Harusame considered novice level in his Academy.

When it came to binding seals there was a lot of debate and discourse over the ethics of imprisoning living binds to certain extents. Back then it was some cause of commotion to even bind a prisoner to his cell with Fuuinjutsu, many called it demonic, cruel and unnecessary. Now it’s merely standard protocol.

Still, there were some points of contention that were inherited today, chakra binding seals being one of those, after all, it was one thing to bind a man but to bind his chakra was to steal a part of him, wasn’t it?

I felt a little icky reading these parts as I freshly recall my standing orders for the Kaguya clan. The Bloodline seals were more or less chakra seals when I thought about it. It barred their chakra from moving and growing a particular way, essentially robbing them of what should be a natural part of their existence.

Unfortunately for both myself and the Kaguya, Kirigakure wasn’t ready to have even a single one of them running around unleashed. Reina Yuki was working as a friendly face for them and I supported her efforts as Mizukage as much as I could, not that it did much. The memories of the Kaguya attack were still fresh in the populace, the property damage even was yet to be completely undone.

I let out a deep breath and pulled my thoughts away from them. In time they and the Yuki would be an inseparable part of Kirigakure and its denizens would have difficulty picturing the village without them. It was all a matter of time.

“Yagura-sama.”

Junichi’s voice startled me even though I’d sensed him come in about twenty minutes ago. I looked over my shoulder to him and he smiled sheepishly with a scroll in hand, “Owl-san asked to deliver this to you, sorry, I should have waited.”

I shut my eyes and rubbed my temples as I grasped the scroll. I knew Junichi had done little but prepare himself to utter those very words during the twenty minutes he lingered so I didn’t disparage him, I only wished he were a bit braver and thus, more efficient; I could have gotten the scroll twenty minutes ago.

Unravelling and reading it brought me a satisfied smile to my lips. Juzo’s team was spearheading the war effort it and I looked forward to getting more reports like it from Kisame and Fuguki before the ships with our liberation forces arrived on the islands.

My stomach let a low growl and I decided, “Let’s go get lunch, Junichi, my treat.”

“Really? We can visit the open grill place that just opened, I hear they’re really good.”

“Are they now? Well, why not, I love me some grilled meat.”

Hiya!