Bloodied Hands

...

Zabuza is dissatisfied with the ruling of the 4th Mizukage, Yagura Karatachi. He disagrees with many policies and how things implemented in the country. And recently he had become even worse. He exploited poor people, and would threaten those who voice out against him. It gets worse so much the shinobi village is known as Village of the Bloody Mist due to his rule. Zabuza decides to go for a coup d'etat as soon as possible with more supporters in hand.

Zabuza and others launched an assassination towards Kagura, however the attempt failed because he is betrayed by few of his supposed allies.

Zabuza become a deserter of the village and become a missing-nin. He along with others flee away from the village while still keeping hope of rebellion in the future.

Zabuza quickly fetch Shou and Haku after months leaving them. He explained the brief situations, telling them now he is a missing-nin and hunter-nin would hunt them as well; plus the Executioner's Blade is still with him.

He crossed the border with his current allies to Land of Fire. He and the team eventually decide to become a mercenary ninja with the main goal of collecting enough funds for rebellion in the future. Despite failure in the previous time, Zabuza still have high hope. Especially with Shou and Haku growing stronger each day.

Although Zabuza is a missing-nin of Kirigakure, but as a rogue ninja he and others would accept jobs at lower price compared to Hidden Village. Especially jobs that are, not so moral.

At first, he does missions from legitimate professional people. But at some point, for the sake of getting funds he starts receiving tasks by various people who are in shady deals, even accepting assassination jobs on innocent people. He also goes to kill people and ninjas with bounties on their head in the black market, or hunt missing-nin of other shinobi villages with bounties on their head.

At times he comes back with injury here and there. Perhaps he had started to take riskier missions. Haku and Shou are really worried for him and strengthen their resolves to train harder and be useful as soon as possible.

Haku gains interest in medical knowledge and medical Ninjutsu seeing Zabuza hurt. He hopes to treat Zabuza with that ability.

Zabuza hears the request and just gives him to his acquaintance, an underground medical ninja to teach him by giving some money.

His tool can be more useful this way, he thought.

Shou remembers Haku using senbon and accurate use acupuncture point later on due to integrating his medical knowledge in his fighting style.

For Shou, he is not that interested in that. It's not, his style. He remembered Haku only use the senbon to incapacitate Naruto and Sasuke in the show.

And he wasted most of his chakra moving around between mirrors unnecessarily. In Shou's heart, he wants to be decisive. But when that time comes, can he really go for the kill at first sight?

He knows he couldn't… his heart can't bear it. Naruto and Sasuke in only at his current age. They are kids. They are literal kids. It's understandable Haku wouldn't be able to kill them.

He is not a monster. He doesn't want to be one.

He's afraid, to be honest. He can just, brace his heart for the future while training.

But for now, he is interested in being a sensor ninja seeing the team composition. He thought, in different ways he can avoid unnecessary killing by being a good sensor.

And thinking about the team composition, it seems right. Zabuza is the DPS, Haku is learning to be a healer, and so he can be the team scout to fill the gap in the team.

Upon request, Zabuza had a headache because it's a difficult request since he can't find anyone willing to teach Shou. Among his allies they don't have a specialised sensor somehow.

"It's difficult. I will think about it. Just keep training as usual meanwhile".

Shou nods but he already gave up on that.

However, in the next 3 months Zabuza surprised him out of nowhere saying he found a teacher for him. It's an acquaintance of Zabuza from the mercenary circle who went to join him to hunt a strong ninja with a huge bounty. His kekkei genkai is troublesome and he needed a great sensor and so they teamed up.

And thus, his acquaintance agreed with the right payment.

Shou really feels grateful to him. Zabuza really cares for them doesn't he.

Zabuza thought this makes his tool even better, even he is not aware he had already viewed them more than mere tools.

Shou is taught the training method to be a sensor ninja to detect opponents based on their chakra feel (wavelength), and volume, and he also learns a sensor technique of water element.

Body of Water Sensing Technique is a technique that senses the body of water around the user up to kilometres away. Although the weakness is that the opponent can hide in water like river, lakes and the ocean but only in certain circumstances would people fight near a lake or sea. And even then, as long as they don't dive into the water it's still detectable. Shou thinks the technique is actually OP to detect presence, although it cannot measure the strength of the opponent since you only sense the existence of the opponent.

How can you erase water in your body? It's almost impossible. The caveat is it's a very difficult technique requiring massive chakra control and concentration. However, Shou is confident he can learn it. He can't waste Zabuza's hard earned money.

This technique should be coupled with the traditional chakra sensing to gain more info and confirm it.

Mr. Chiasa, the mercenary in question, lent Shou some ball shaped metal object that can contain chakra. He guided him on how to use his chakra field using Ram seal to help him focus on moulding his chakra field.

Shou can feel its like he has a sensing organ in a radius around him. When he expands his chakra field its as if he stretching out his limb – it takes a lot of effort and concentration. When the chakra field meet the ball with chakra, he can feel an interference.

"Chiasa-san, I can feel the ball. It's behind the tree over there". Shou pointed at the tree on his right.

Chiasa is genuinely surprised. What a talent. First time doing it and he can already sense it few meters away.

It requires chakra to mould chakra field, Shou practiced for 2 hours before he is completely exhausted.

Chiasa decides to let him practice by himself for few months since Shou only needs to expands his range of chakra field first before proceeding. He gave Shou the plan, and target of distance he should be able to 'sense' another chakra field gradually training it until 500 meters as a baseline before changing the training method.

Over the months, he improved and would increase the distance gradually and eventually reaching the baseline target. It's really quick, he thought. Mr. Chiasa instructs Shou to reduce the volume of chakra inside the ball gradually at a fixed distance to increase his sensitivity.

And then there's also the method to detect two different balls with different chakra signature. Zabuza and Haku helped him to fill up the 2 chakra balls and hide them.

Zabuza also starts to bring them both on commissions and bounty hunts on genin to chunin level after he is satisfied with their progress. It's equivalent to C-rank missions. He does want to risk fighting jonin or elite jonin since they might injure Shou and Haku – he can't guarantee their safety.

They both watched from afar how Zabuza deal with his opponent. His body flicker technique is really at a high proficiency level that most of the time the opponent never even realised they are dead until Zabuza already cut their body in two.

After few times accompanying him, Zabuza decides its time for his tools to kill for him for the first time.

"Zabuza-sama... if it's not necessary, I don't want to kill innocent people". Haku said to Zabuza. Shou also supported this.

Zabuza thought about it. It's only to train them and the pay is too little for him anyway. So it shouldn't matter if they only kill bad people.

"But at my command, even if they are innocent, as my tools you have to kill them".

"Yes. I will Zabuza-sama. We are your tool". Shou replied immediately.

"Yes. If Zabuza-sama orders me to, I would kill them". Haku reinforced this notion.

Zabuza nods. Good kids.

There are indeed many missions that involve defeating evil people even in the black market and underground channel. Whether it's revenge or betrayal or protection, there are requests and commissions. Especially killing missions. Evil people gain enmity of many people, naturally there's a lot of it. It's often the question of 'price' since somehow good people never seems to be able to spare a lot of money to kill someone they deemed evil.

Zabuza browsed through the mission requests at C-rank level in the black-market request centre. Oh. This seems easy for them.

It's to kill a genin ninja who had defiled someone's daughter. Even he wouldn't bat an eye to casually kill this guy if they ever passed by.

After reading the details, Shou is determined.

"Zabuza-sama… I want to do this alone".

For Shou this is perfect for his first kill. Shou insisted on killing him by himself.

He explained to Zabuza how, Haku had killed many people years ago. He had failed to protect him and that's why this time he wants to take a life himself for the first time.

"Back then, I let Haku kill everyone… I want to this by myself this time".

"Shou...". Haku only now realised his little brother had blamed himself for that time.

Zabuza nods at him and pats his head. He asks Haku to stay and keep practicing, bringing Shou to the designated location.

Zabuza taught him the importance of vigilance, and also to catch the opponent off guard.

A hundred metres away, Shou sees the house of that genin he's supposed to kill.

Zabuza tells him about how to assassinate the target with silent killing. To observe the target habit, place of visit, kill them in deserted areas to prevent being noticed, hide your chakra, use transformation jutsu ect.

Shou and Zabuza followed the target. The target is seen going out to eat and having a lot of drinks and seems drunk. As he returns home, Shou decides he would sneak in and kill him.

He tells Zabuza about his 'plan'. There's no plan its just directly to kill him in his sleep.

To kill directly huh... If it's Zabuza, normally, as an elite Jonin, his opponent is at least jonin and therefore going directly to kill them in the middle of the night while they are sleeping and drunk won't work usually as battle hardened ninjas usually are vigilant in their sleep even.

But since it's a genin nobody, this is completely fine. He does explain this all this to Shou in case he gets too overconfident.

"Go. I will wait for good news".

Shou nods and hides his presence by suppressing his chakra.

Zabuza nods seeing it and feeling the dim presence, as if he's an ordinary civilian so it won't attract ninja attention much. But it can be improved better since not existing at all is the best but he knows Shou is still young and there's still a long time to train.

Shou reached the front door. He used the Body of All Water Sensing technique and sensed the target inside. He can feel if the body of water is moving or not. He keeps an eye on him while he wants to break in.

He conjured water with chakra to fill in the keyhole and freeze it to make a key and open the lock easily.

Zabuza watched from afar and felt quite envious of the kekkei genkai of Ice release. It's so convenient. Usually, he had to take his time to silently creep his way in. Otherwise, he would wait the target to come outside.

Shou enters the house and closes the door. He detects the target didn't move at all, asleep. He quietly enters the target bedroom and sees the target sleeping in his boxer.

He went close.

He took out the Kunai he had from his waist.

The target is still sleeping peacefully and still hasn't noticed he was about to die.

Shou's heart is racing fast. It's the first time he would kill someone. And seeing the target is sleeping peacefully like this, it seems really despicable.

Only one more step.

Haku had killed a lot of people. Shou memories replayed the scene where many dead bodies and impaled and frozen by Ice Spikes then. The ice covered in red, the black-red coloured snow. He remembers everything again.

He felt the frustration and fear in his heart. His hand starts shaking while holding the kunai.

Haku… I am sorry for letting you bear such a burden.

… It's time for me to bear the burden as well.

With tears in his eyes, he struck decisively with a jab right to the larynx.

"Kuh-". A hoarse intangible sound sounded right after.

His kunai pierced through the throat in one strike. Blood splashed onto his cheek. The feeling of flesh being pierced by his kunai is engraved onto his hand. With shaky hand he pulled the kunai out.

The man had opened his eyes in shock, and he couldn't even utter a word before he's dead.

Or not... He sees the head moved a bit before it stays still. Maybe he is still conscious after he got stabbed in the neck. But he will die from blood loss, as his brain loses oxygen and that's when he truly dies.

Ah. Why am I thinking this so deeply?

I killed him.

I had killed someone. Shou realised he is crying at this moment. Haku must have been hurt like this...

He became a monster... He killed someone.

At least… he killed another monster… That's the only solace he can give himself at that moment.

Shou wiped his tears away. He lost even more of his innocence from now on. The path of shinobi, is really bitter in reality.