When Zabuza received the orders, he was unable to believe them. For a second, he thought that the Mizukage had made a joke for the first time in his life. It would be more likely than for Shikigami, the most loyal ninja in Mist after Zabuza himself, to turn missing-nin. The man Zabuza knew would never undermine the war effort against Mist’s worst enemy at a critical juncture, nor choose to lead dozens of innocent souls to their inevitable doom. Zabuza simply did not understand.
But it wasn’t his task to understand. His task was simple: hunt down and capture or kill every last one of the missing-nin, Shikigami included. And Zabuza, the implacable hand of the Mizukage’s justice, knew neither mercy nor forgiveness.
Zabuza moved slowly, patiently, touching water without leaving ripples. His silent step, honed over decades of hunting traitors, made cats sound like chakra mammoths. One by one, he had wiped out the ring of sentries protecting the central base identified by their Hyūga guide. If he could cut down this last one without letting him raise the alarm…
Naturally, the boy didn’t notice Zabuza until he was within perfect decapitation range. To his credit, he tried to duck, even as his mouth opened to call out an alert—but that didn’t work so well when there was a barrier of steel between his lungs and his vocal chords. Zabuza caught both parts of the sentry and soundlessly lowered them into the water. In the back of his mind, there was a flicker of curiosity as to what kind of predator would come for them first.
He made the call he had been taught by his Leaf guides, that of the lesser excoriating woodpecker. Guards down; safe to proceed.
There was no need to wait for the others to catch up, he decided. They would only get in his way. Instead, Zabuza would spearhead the attack, striking terror into the hearts of his enemies until they fled screaming—straight into the waiting arms of his allies. The lower ranks would be lucky to stay standing after receiving the full force of his bloodlust; he only needed to concern himself with Shikigami.
Zabuza stalked onwards. Finally, the main base came into sight, with half a dozen ninja, mostly kids dragged into betrayal by Shikigami’s impossible iniquity, milling about as if nothing was wrong. Shikigami was in the middle, digging through a pack of gear. Until that moment, part of Zabuza had still hoped the reports were wrong.
Zabuza’s danger sense triggered just in time.
That had been a close one. Shikigami’s mastery of traps was second to none. Had a blade of grass not been randomly stirred in just the right direction by the wind, even Zabuza would never have spotted the ninja wire.
Zabuza looked closely. He was fairly sure there’d be several other such traps between him and the target. Should he go around? No, that would leave the traps for the rest of the team, and he was in no position to warn them given that they’d breach the perimeter any second now. But given how Shikigami usually spaced his traps…
Zabuza took a slow, deep breath to centre himself. Then he charged.
Running with the speed of the wind, he deliberately tripped wire after wire in a perfectly calculated pattern. A series of earth-shaking explosions rang out behind him, each just too slow to catch the agile hunter-nin. The final one, twice as powerful as the rest, launched him high into the air.
But as he came down, something moved beneath the surface of the water. A chakra alligator, alerted by the noise, opened its mouth to welcome the unexpected snack.
Zabuza landed neatly on its head, his feet between its eyes, then sprang off again before the monster could react. He performed an elegant front flip through the air—
—and straight onto the nearest genin, feet striking his rib cage and crushing him against the ground as he cushioned Zabuza’s landing.
The assembled missing-nin gazed in mute horror at Zabuza, silhouetted against a curtain of intense flames, with a stunned chakra alligator slowly sinking back into the swamp behind him and a barely-alive ninja writhing at his feet.
Shikigami recovered first. “Go!” he shouted to the others. “Destroy the rest of his team with our traps and superior cunning!”
He looked Zabuza in the eye, his killing intent sharp as a blade. “I’ll take care of this one myself.”
“Why, Shikigami?” Zabuza demanded. “How could you betray our dreams? Why did you cast aside the future we were going to craft together? Our vision of a reformed Mist?”
Shikigami’s killing intent wavered.
“I… I didn’t want…”
Then the light went out of his eyes.
“Enough talk, Zabuza. You must die for the glory of Hidden Swamp!”
Shikigami raised his arms in a motion that filled even a man like Zabuza with momentary dread.
“Secret Paper Art: Death Wish!”
A thousand origami cranes streamed forth from Shikigami’s sleeves, each with razor-sharp, poison-tipped wings. To suffer even the slightest cut would be to die in screaming agony as one’s arteries combusted from within. It was a risky move that consumed a lot of paper, but that didn’t matter since Zabuza had never heard of anyone surviving it.
The cranes formed into a tornado that advanced on Zabuza, walling him off from Shikigami while leaving him with no way to evade. An ordinary ninja would have died right there. But Zabuza, with his insight that was even sharper than the crane wings, recognised the pattern of the cranes’ movements. It was similar enough to that of the less lethal techniques Shikigami had used during their countless duels, and he would not let it get in the way of his mission.
He spun around the assaulting cranes, making hand seals as he went.
“Byakuren’s Uppercut!”
A massive torrent of water rose from the surface of the swamp and slammed into the paper tornado, its breadth such that it was able to catch every last crane and reduce them to a soggy, chakra-inert mass.
But Shikigami, ever a gifted warrior, had used his attack as cover to prepare an even more powerful move.
“Secret Paper Art: Papier Machete!”
The Death Wish had certainly been threatening, but this was the technique Zabuza had hoped never to have to face. The blade in Shikigami’s hand had an edge sharp enough to cut through anything, perhaps even the Throat Cleaver. Shikigami could alter the layers of paper within it to extend it into whatever length or shape he needed, even as it remained light enough for effortless manipulation. His swordsmanship had never been on the same level of Zabuza’s, but with an advantage like this, it might no longer matter.
Then again, Zabuza was far too wily to meet every challenge head-on.
“Water Element: Hiding in Mist Technique!”
Within seconds, the world around them was plunged into a dark abyss. Where ordinary mist wrapped one’s surroundings in walls of grey, Zabuza’s signature technique was dense enough to banish light altogether. Unseen, unheard, Zabuza stalked his prey using the arts of Silent Killing passed down by master hunter-nin through the generations.
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He listened to Shikigami’s anxious movements, taking the time to determine the man’s stance and where he was facing. When he was finally certain of the opening he was hearing—
Shikigami’s blade nearly took him apart.
Zabuza beat a hasty retreat into the darkness.
It had been close for a second, very close. Zabuza had forgotten just how damn malleable that paper sword was—better than the finest steel, Shikigami had boasted—and Shikigami had briefly turned it into a huge scythe, big enough to sweep the entire area around him whether he could see it or not. There was a heavy thud as a horizontally bisected tree fell to the ground.
But that trick wouldn’t work again, and Shikigami knew it. He withdrew his chakra from the machete, and recycled the paper for a different technique.
“Secret Paper Art: Ōgi!”
Zabuza had cause to curse Shikigami’s flexibility one more time as a few blasts of wind from the oversized paper fan cleared away the mist, revealing Zabuza’s position.
Enough tricks. Without his special machete, Shikigami was no match for Zabuza’s peerless swordsmanship. Zabuza zoomed into striking range, aiming to cut the betrayer in half.
Shikigami ducked under the blow, then sidestepped the next. Moving with the desperation of a man possessed, he avoided attack after attack, until he finally stepped in close—nearly losing an arm in the process—and delivered a devastating gut punch that had Zabuza staggering back in shock.
But Shikigami didn’t follow through. A brief flicker of clarity passed through his eyes.
Then he groaned as if every word was being forced out of him. “I must… kill… the hunter-nin… at any cost…”
He flicked his hands through a series of hand seals, trembling as if some part of him was willing himself to stop.
“Forbidden Paper Art: Shiki-Ōji!”
Zabuza shielded his eyes as a vast cloud of paper, surely more than one person could possibly carry, whipped itself into a frenzied storm around Shikigami. What emerged from the storm was no man, but a towering demon formed of unnatural white flesh. Its serrated claws promised to maim and rend asunder with a single slash. Its sharp angles and cruel curves seemed perfectly formed to deflect blows and transfix any enemy who came too close. And the eyes… they were Shikigami’s eyes, or they must have been once, but now they burned with a fierce alien hatred for Zabuza and for all that lived. It was as if Shikigami had spent all his chakra to create this monstrosity, and in doing so sacrificed his ability to bend its will to submission. Instead, it had consumed him.
There was only one choice for Momochi Zabuza, as a hunter-nin, as a warrior, and as a friend. He hefted the Throat Cleaver, and prepared to grant Shikigami the only redemption he could.
“ZABUZAAAAA!”
“SHIKIGAMIIIII!”
The two warriors charged at each other, one a flawless streak of grey, the other a roiling onslaught of white. The exchange of blows as they moved past each other was too fast to see, too deep to feel.
Zabuza fell to his knees as blood poured from dozens of gashes all over his body. The Throat Cleaver fell apart in his hands.
“So… even as a missing-nin, your resolve was stronger than mine.”
But behind him, there came an eerie whispering sound as thousands of strips of paper unravelled with no more chakra to bind them together. Zabuza turned to see them slowly being dyed red with Shikigami’s blood.
Wounded, drained, he slowly crawled over to Shikigami’s body. “Why, Shikigami? Tell me, why?”
Shikigami looked up at him. “Zabuza? It is you, isn’t it? I’m so sorry…”
“Shikigami?”
Shikigami’s eyes were clear again. “I never meant to, Zabuza. It was all her. She took control of me with her genjutsu. Made me do terrible things…”
“Who?” Zabuza asked, his mind already racing ahead to the answer.
“The Red Witch.” Shikigami coughed, and more blood spread over the remains of his paper armour. “Who else? She manipulated us. Lied to us. Used her powers to force us to obey. Then, when she realised her plan had failed, she took her apprentices and fled.
“Zabuza, please… I know I have no right to ask this of you, but… find her. Hunt her down. It’s the only way to clear my name.”
Zabuza nodded grimly. “I will, Shikigami. I swear it. I will find her and make her pay.”
“Thank you,” Shikigami whispered with the last of his strength. “Zabuza… my brother…”
They were his final words. Zabuza, cradling Shikigami’s body in his arms, looked up at the uncaring heavens.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
The battle must have been over by then, as it took only a matter of seconds for another Mist-nin to react to the scream.
“Captain Zabuza, sir? Do you need urgent medical attention?”
“Got hit by a pepper bomb,” Zabuza said quietly. “Damn eyes won’t stop watering. Somebody fetch me a dry cloth.”
-o-
“Yukino. Explain.”
The sailors’ rapturous applause cut off instantly.
Yukino looked up at the wrathful form of the world’s deadliest hunter-nin looming over her without apparent concern.
“Just training for my future role as team biographer, Zabuza. Somebody needs to record our adventures for posterity, and you’re not exactly the writing type.”
“Huh,” Zabuza grunted with annoyance. “That is not remotely how it happened. ‘Shikigami’ wasn’t even his real name.”
“Good to know,” Yukino grinned. “I’ll be sure to fix the story for next time. So what was it?”
“There will be no next time,” Zabuza said flatly. “I do not have adventures, I do not need a biographer, and if you make up one more story about me, I will not hesitate to feed you to the next kraken that comes along.”
“Oh, so they are real, then? Awesome!”
Zabuza cracked his knuckles suggestively.
“Hey, maybe we should switch up the genre next time!” Yukino exclaimed. “How about murder mystery? No, wait, that won’t work—you’re always the killer. Maybe fairy tale. The noble hunter-nin rescues the beautiful maiden from the clutches of the evil queen of the yaks. Ooh, I bet I can liven it up with imaginative hand gestures. No, wait, even better: romantic comedy! Will you help me practice kissing so my descriptions are more realistic?”
In what was by now a practiced movement, Zabuza casually shoved Yukino overboard.
“Pfuegh!” Yukino spat salty sea water out of her mouth as she used chakra repulsion to clamber to the surface. “What do they even put in this stuff?”
Zabuza glanced down at her. “Oh, and Yukino? We don’t need a team biographer—because we’re not a team.”