The stale odor of sweat permeated through the air, the uproarious chorus of kiai's in sync to the melody of a single man, their valiant conductor who brought order to the intemperate nature of their motivity. This was the class of master Toru Hachibana, the only true successor of the Chōwa No Toreta Tenohira(Harmonious Palm) taijutsu style. Toru was something of a cult hero in Fuzenkagure as he did not charge children for lessons in taijutsu, the opportunity to be a mentor who could provide structure and safe shelter to the children was enough of a payment for him. In a place like the Village Hidden by Sin it would be proper to be skeptical of someone who seemed as angelic as Toru but there were no dark secrets of skeletons in his closet he was a philanthropist who wished to spread the teachings of his deceased master. There were small moments where Toru would think of his master and it would almost bring a tear to his eye as he yearned for his master to see all that had been built in his name, to see how his star pupil was doing all he could to help the people of Fuzen.



The dojo was very traditional, being rather modest in size with the majority of the space being clad in padded surfaces with polished wooden finishing. There was no door and only a curtain in the entranceway, the reason being two-fold. Firstly Toru did not want this space to be closed, he wanted it to be open and inclusive to all, this was part of his effort to reach the hearts and minds of the youth. He wanted to show that if the children and their families trusted him then he would trust them completely in return. Secondly while this was a place to teach the fact was that this was a place where self-defense was taught and if Toru could not defend this place from threat or harm then to call himself it’s master would be indecorous.

"Yo! Where is the bosu of this place?"

The emanator of this most informal intrusion was a young man of tall stature with silvery lilac hair, a red scarf around his neck, and who was otherwise adorned in bad attitude. Respect was a foreign concept to him and it showed as he walked onto the mat with his shoes on, a most disrespectful thing to do in any dojo, ignoring the gasps and whispers of the students.

“There is no “bosu” but I am the head instructor of this school. All are welcome in this place, but I would very much appreciate it if you took your shoes off. Cleaning filth from these mats is quite a chore.” Toru was very polite in his speech but the air was much different, much more tense as he put emphasis on the word “filth” as he spoke to the obtruder. Toru did not care about disrespect toward him, he was far too humble for that, but to disrespect the chapel of the Harmonious Palm was an entirely different matter to him.

“I don’t see a mat, short stack, this is just a stage to me.” He began to hop up and down before breaking into some light stretching and bending. “Now I usually don’t pick on tiny old men but considering you’re the bosu of this joint I’ll make an exception for ya.”

“I don’t see a mat, short stack, this is just a stage to me.” He began to hop up and down before breaking into some light stretching and bending. “Now I usually don’t pick on tiny old men but considering you’re the bosu of this joint I’ll make an exception for ya.”

Martial arts are a distinct branch of taijutsu in that they are a specialized form of combat meant for sport and can be taught to people who can not use their chakra. One of the oldest traditions of martial arts was for practitioners to challenge the head of a dojo in what was known as dojoyaburi, or dojo storming. Usually dojo storming was done by a rival instructor in a bid to assimilate one another’s students, but there were rare cases where a challenger would ask for something else instead.

“I don’t think youth is wasted on the young but there are exceptions to every rule.” The old man still spoke with a polite tone but there was now a fire in his eye. He wanted to teach the imbecile before him the meaning of respect. “As you are the challenger I will leave it to you to decide the reward you will not receive.”

The pluckiness of the old man and the fire in his eye brought a sheepish grin to the pallid haired obtruder and returned the fierce gaze in kind.

“I need some beer money.”

“I need some beer money.” The words were spoken clearly and did not have an ounce of forceful alacrity. This caused the glare of Toru Hachibana to sharpen as what he was willing to write off as a boy drunk on machismo and bravado had now escalated into a far more egregious crime against the school of the Harmonious Fist. The blatant disrespect that was shown to the chapel of the Harmonious Fist, a place whose doors were open to all, that sought to better the lives of the youth of Fuzenkagure, this haven was being invaded over “beer money”.

“You will need to take those shoes off on this stage as it belongs to the Harmonious Fist and I will not duel with a challenger who doesn’t respect the hallowed halls of the Harmonious Fist.” Toru had a stern and grave tone which was in stark contrast to the “challenger” who simply scratched his head before he began, “So what you’re sayin is that if I come over there and just straight rock your face with this here hammer”, the white haired young man cocked his fist with his hand almost like a gun, “you won’t fight me because I’m wearing shoes?”. There was genuine bewilderment at the concept of unrequited violence if he doled it out on the old man over something as trivial as shoes.

“You either respect the rules of this dojo or I won’t accept your challenge, and if there is no challenge then there is no prize. You’d be assaulting a senior citizen in front of a room of witnesses which would be a crime. I don’t believe they serve beer in jail.” The cogent points Toru had raised impressed the salience of the situation on the would be challenger.

“That’s not really what I was expectin' you old joyless fuck.” He grumbled and mumbled as the wind had been taken out of his sails. The challenger just wanted some quick cash as his usual means of making a quick buck involved going to a woman he didn’t much care for, she was quite stodgy but at least she wasn’t old and would give him a fight whenever wherever, she also had a stockpile of alcohol.

“Well bosu you really know how to be one big ass flaming energy vampire. I mean a guy shows up for a dojo rush and you start talking about shoes, crimes, and cops that’s some real petty shit.” With that said he turned around and started to head for the exit leaving everyone in the dojo perplexed, but the most confused of all was Toru.

“Just who in the world are you….”

The young man spun around on his heel and drove his thumb into his chest as he began aloud,“I’m K.O. Kazama and I’ve decided not to kick your ass for beer money on account of you being a boring old fuck.” The collective jaws of the students and their sensei dropped to the ground as the raucous stranger simply left.

There’s a loud puff as smoke surrounds the two men but they don’t stop moving away from the monster, leaving the slithering figure that emerges from the smog to catch up with them. Even clueless about what was going on, Inugami manages to appear poised as he follows after what the mess of a person he would never call a master.

His white body floats in the air, a few inches above Chisato’s head, as the demon sticks his black nose in the air, looking down on the blond. “You dare call me again, filthy mongrel? Have I not made it clear you are to cease our contract at once?”

Chisato formed a rude gesture with his hand at the elongated wolf demon. Inugami merely turns his head in distaste at this, ignoring the human’s curses. “I would if I could you piece of shit,” Chisato shouted at him.

“Enough,” Hotaru intervened before Chisato could piss off Inugami. The thing had a fickle enough nature without being tested by Chisato’s equally twisted attitude. “How much to drive that,” he tugged Chisato and jumped, right in time to avoid being tackled by the monster covered in black miasma; the creature crashing into the dirt, withering the grass that grew there. “Away from us?”

“More than your shallow pockets can give.” Was Inugami’s immediate answer. “That thing smells foul, hell will freeze before I willingly approach it. Besides,” the wolf added with a condescending glare. “I don’t take requests from poor people; I don’t want to catch fleas.”

“You FUCKING-” Chisato growled and pushed Hotaru away so he could grab the wolf demon by his muzzle, ignoring the raging snarls he got in response. “I need to keep 3 fucking part time jobs just to-”

His words died when the monster was suddenly upon them, its body stretching up high in a giant wave of miasma and, Hotaru could only guess, black larvae. It looked like it was going to crash right on top of them if they didn’t immediately jump away at the horrifying sight; the miasma separating itself from the ‘body’ just long enough for both Hotaru and Chisato to see the nightmare fuel that it usually hid.

“What the fuck?” Hotaru questioned, baffled. There was a large…ball of humanoid figures linked, or rather, tied together in a bloody knot. Arms and legs wiggling endlessly was probably what kept the monster moving. Some heads peeked out with ghost pale faces and hollowed eye sockets, mouths open in perpetual screams.

“Oh hell no,” Chisato’s eyes widened in horror and threw the wolf demon at the monster’s direction.

Inugami had barely a second to understand what was happening, before he caught himself and exploded in a ball of flame that burnt the monster’s skin. It seems, without its miasma, the gore underneath was very susceptible to fire damage as a painful screech echoed through the whole village. The sound so high it made Hotaru double down in pain, hands pressed against his ears.

The surprise attack seemed to work in setting the monster’s attention on Chisato’s summon however, and the wolf yelped when he found himself suddenly having to float away as fast as he could, the monster fast on his trail. “I’M GOING TO HAVE YOUR NECK BOY!”

Chisato simply flipped him off as both he and Hotaru moved to run the opposite way.

“I can’t tell whether it’s drawn to chakra, movement, or what…” Hotaru commented once the two had slowed down to a jog. They needed to either find where that old man and Sayuri had gone, or at least find someplace to crash through the rest of the night. He still needed to have a look at Chisato’s wound and daylight would be better to give fighting that thing another go. “It had no eyes.”

“It literally had no eyes,” Chisato frowned and shuddered at the memory. “I can still feel that shithead drawing on my chakra so we should be good for a few more.”

Their breaths were ragged; it’s not that they’d fought all that hard but the adrenaline rush had began to fade, leaving behind only the mental pictures of what they’d seen. His mental fortitude somewhat strained with the night’s events, Hotaru’s first reaction was to draw the Kinryuu when a soft ‘pspsps’ came out from a narrow, black alley. A pale hand followed, waving in a beckoning manner and then…Sayuri’s face appeared.

Hotaru almost slashed his katana, if Chisato hadn’t promptly started shouting at her. “Sayuri, you fucking bitch! You trying to get yourself killed?!”

Despite her passive attitude to anything that happened this far since she’d joined their team, Sayuri now showed clear signs of being annoyed at the both of them. “Tch!” She stepped forward and glared at them, going as far as to slap the Kinryuu’s blade out of her sight. “I risked my life staying out here so I could guide you back to the hideout!” She admonished them both. “A thank you would have sufficed.”

She didn’t give them much time to react before she turned and started to stalk towards what Hotaru assumed would be the hideout. He wasn’t inclined to apologize but he did feel a little bad and pushed Chisato into behaving himself when he leaned closer to whisper. “The hell crawled up her ass and died?”

“You were to follow that old man,” he said instead, in lieu of asking for an explanation.

“I did,” Sayuri promptly replied, though she didn’t stop moving; leading them to a somewhat smaller house, where a carpet uselessly hid a wooden door on the ground. She opened it to reveal an old step ladder that faded into darkness, shouting could be faintly heard down in its depths. “It was actually the villager chief we met,” she explained as she lead them down the steps. “He was out to try and fight the monster; though he would most likely end up as a sacrifice instead.”

“Wait, what?” Chisato interrupted, not really understanding what she was saying. “This a cult or something? Because we had one of those before and it’s not a good memory.”

“No, no,” Sayuri quickly reassured him, shaking her head though they couldn’t really see her while all of them descended. “Apparently, the monster has been successfully stalking them in their hideouts and has been taking victims every night and day for the past month…I head counted them,” she whispered and paused for a small second, feeling the weight of the situation. “Only about 10 of the original 1037 villagers are left.”

“Fuck,” Hotaru cursed through his teeth, knuckles going white. “Why was the mission only handed out now?”

“Well,” Sayuri tried to think about it as well. “We also came here expecting a bear attack of sorts, it’s possible the original request for support didn’t explain the situation clear enough. Regardless,” she moved on. “That’s why I went to pick you guys up; most of the houses and other existing hideouts are actually already destroyed.”

For a moment, they descended in silence. They wouldn’t have been able to find a place to rest, that creature would have found them, is what Hotaru perceived from what she was telling them. After a minute, they all reached the ground, still in the darkness until Sayuri pulled out her phone to light up an underground passage. Hotaru opened his mouth, wanting to thank her for coming to get them, but Chisato interrupted before he could.

“What does that have to do with that old fart though?” He tilted his head, frowning as he followed the girl down the passage.

“Mr. Kodama,” the girl emphasized the name, chiding Chisato’s rudeness. “Planned on giving his life so the remaining villagers had a chance to hike down to the neighboring village. It seems the monster gives it a day or so of rest after taking someone.”

The girl’s clear annoyance at this mirrored Hotaru’s thoughts. Had they successfully hiked down to the next village, it would soon start falling victim to the monster again.

Hotaru’s quick head count amounted to 12 people once Sayuri lead them all inside the multi room underground bunker. Of the 12, 3 were elderly people, sitting by a large table with a pack of cards; 2 were middle-aged men, including what he now recognized as the mayor, peering at the newcomers with some apprehension; and 6 children of various ages, from toddler to teenager, surrounded the single adult woman who looked exhausted. From the voices, Hotaru figured she’d been the one arguing with the mayor before their arrival.

He expected the kids to run towards Sayuri, calling her big sister with happy faces, but only the limping dog approached her as she let both Hotaru and Chisato head further into the room in front of her. An awkward silence their only welcome. Hotaru didn’t particularly care though, choosing instead to swipe his eyes across the bunker.

The room was mostly bare, save a few trinkets and toys the children probably used to entertain themselves with. Shelves lined most of the walls, he assumed once filled with food; however, there seemed to be few cans of soup left, and only five containers with water. It made sense the mayor had tried to get them all an opening to run away; they would be running out of food and water soon enough.

He heard a ‘thump’ and saw Chisato bend down next to his backpack, rummaging through it. “Y’all look like a sorry bunch of weaklings,” he said. The kids wearily hid further behind the woman as he passed by and nonchalantly threw his week’s worth of rations at the table. His gaze softened a fraction. “We drove that thing off for tonight, so fill up and rest plenty.”

Hotaru nodded, proud of Chisato for taking the initiative to help them. Sayuri, he noticed, had an almost smug grin aimed towards the mayor, who kept his eyes down on his feet. Still, there was no gratitude from the villagers, no happiness or joy. They all looked resigned, exhausted from the amount of time they’d spent in fear for their lives. Hotaru grit his teeth and bowed. Once he was back in Konoha, he would find out exactly how long these people had been left like this since their SOS request and who had fucked up to such a degree. For now, all he could do was apologize.

“We apologize for the delay in coming here,” he wouldn’t offer any excuses, even if they were valid ones. “We ask that you wait a while longer while we do everything in our power to take care of your issue.”

Chisato had returned back to his side by the time Hotaru straightened up. One of the elderly around the table got up, an older woman who needed a cane to slowly cross the room towards him. She extended her hand towards him and Hotaru took it, reminded of his own grandmother back home. “I saw my children and grandchildren be taken one by one by that wretched monster,” her voice broke, shoulders shaking as her frail hands grasped Hotaru’s with the strength of her grief. “It’s a sin that I am still alive but these children…” the old lady looked back at the kids. “Please, save them.”

Hotaru gave her hand a squeeze. “We’ll save all of you.”

“Dude, why do you have to be so gay all the time.” Chisato yawned, moving back towards the door, picking his backpack up on the way there. Sayuri already leading the way out. "Let’s go already."

Hotaru sighed at his team mates’ lack of sentimentality and gave the lady another squeeze, smiling at her. “We’ll keep watch outside for the night. We head out at first light.” With that, Hotaru got his own rations out for the villagers and retreated to follow his team outside the bunker.

Sayuri seemed to already have a makeshift camp already set out in the hall, closer to the ladder that had brought them out. She was lighting the lamp, shedding some light on the bedroll and backpack she’d already set up, by the time Hotaru caught up. Both men followed her lead, rolling out their own sleeping bags and forming a triangle around the lamp. He had to confess his surprise when the girl got out her own food and shared with them. Chisato accepted his quietly, but Hotaru was about to thank her for his when she saw her shoulders tense.

“We need to eat,” she argued, glaring at him as if he was about to chide her instead.

Chisato rose his hands, palms out. “Chill woman, nobody said anything.”

Sayuri gave a small hmph before setting down on her bedroll. Chisato was already digging into his food so Hotaru just settled down and did the same. The meal was silent and awkward, illuminated by the faint glow of the lamp, and even when they were done eating, Sayuri simply collected their trash into a small bag and quietly took off her shoes before hiding into her sleeping bag, back turned to them.

“Inugami went back,” Chisato idly told him as he took off his own shoes. “I’ll take first shift.”

“Let me have a look at your arm first,” Hotaru asked, motioning for Chisato to get his arm closer to the lamp. There wasn’t any blood coming out of his wounds, the acid having sealed the wounds as it burned its way into the skin. Hotaru whistled at it. “You really ought to start thinking before doing.”

“That’s what you’re here for,” Chisato shrugged, unbothered by the wound or the pain as Hotaru did what he could with his First Aid technique, lavender chakra glowing around the wound as it worked to put back together what was within its power. “What? You think I keep you around for your dashing looks?”

“You motherfucker," Hotaru laughed. "There's something called gratitude. You should try it sometime, might find it refreshing.”

They both suddenly cut off the banter when the sound of footsteps neared their camp. A flashlight lit the way as the dog neared them, making a bee line for Sayuri and settling down next to her, his master following shortly behind. “Came to check up on ya lads,” he told them, lowering himself down to the floor and turning the light off. “If that’s alright with ya.”

“Good,” Hotaru told him after exchanging a look with Chisato. “We have some questions.”

“Alright!” The mayor slapped a hand against his thigh, sitting down cross legged on the floor in front of them. Hotaru worked on healing Chisato’s arm as the old man spoke. “I’m open to any questions you lads might have, but I can’t promise I’ll be able to answer all of them.”

Hotaru nodded. He understood they hadn’t really been in a position to study the situation. “You can start by telling us exactly how this all began then.”

The mayor reached up and took off his hat, scratching the hair underneath. “It all started a couple of months ago, during the rain season…”

“Things were tense between all of us; the rain hit our fields pretty heavy this year and most of our crops were withering away. Our village lives off our produce so we were bracing ourselves for a pretty hard year. When Shizuku barged into the community hall screaming about her husband going missing, we assumed he had lost any hope of providing for his family that year… Every now and again we’ll lose someone that way. Even as the mayor, I don’t have much power to help the lower income families around these parts.”

“We couldn’t just leave poor Shizuku hanging though, so we rounded up most of the man and went out into the forest looking for his body. We found it…rather, we found pieces of it, scattered around.”

The mayor grew silent, his eyes darkening as the memory kept him from being able to speak coherently for a minute. Hotaru frowned but it was Chisato who spoke up, calling the man back to the present. “I’m guessing he didn’t cut himself up into pieces himself.”

Hotaru reached out and slapped the back of his friend’s head, but the mayor didn’t actually look bothered by his words. As if no joke could penetrate the horror of what he’d seen. “No, he did not. It didn’t look like a bear had done it, either but, at the time, we didn’t have no other answer for it. We brought back as much as we could of it back home and told everyone it had been a bear attack.”

“Is that when you messaged Konoha?” Hotaru asked, needing to know how long the Tsukitani had been waiting for their help.

The mayor sighed. “No, lad. But, knowing how long it took y'all to show up, I sure damn wish I had.”

He had the right to be angry but, behind them, Sayuri cleared her throat; signaling she was still awake and listening. The mayor looked down at his hands with a heavy sigh and breathed out an apology that Hotaru waved away so he could continue the story.

“For a while, everything went back to normal. We held a funeral and quieted down any suspicion about the attack; Junko was already having enough of a rough time, facing life without her husband and with a baby to take care of.”

Neither Chisato nor Hotaru needed to ask; they knew neither the widow nor her child had made it out alive, by the tremor in the mayor’s voice. “She didn’t need any more tragedy in her life.”

“A few weeks passed with nothing happening…until we had another missing person reported to us. The cases just kept piling from then on with a week, sometimes two, between each disappearance. All of them were from people who had gone into the woods, most of them we couldn’t find with search parties but…the ones we did…they…”

“You don’t need to describe the gritty details,” Hotaru told him kindly, reaching out to pat the older man’s shoulder. The mayor took a deep breath and nodded.

“We began discussions of whether we should contact Konoha on this or not then; nobody in their right minds believed it to be a bear or any kind of animal by then. We figured we were being attacked by a psychopath or something…so we issued a law. No one was to head into the woods for any reason and we created a village wide curfew to ensure every villager would stay indoors at night. For a while, it worked; for three weeks no one went missing…however,” the mayor’s eyes hardened and his hands curled into white knuckled fists.

Confused, Chisato looked at Hotaru who filled in the blank. “Since no villagers went into the woods, the creature must’ve come to the village.”

The mayor nodded, his eyes filling with tears at the next part. “Little Suzume went to visit her friend and was on her way back home when that…thing, came out of nowhere. It wasn’t as big as it is now but it was enough for us to know we weren’t dealing with anything normal. You see a lot of things when you leave in these rural parts and that monster…well, you lads saw it for yourselves.”

Both young men nodded, their faces grim as the mayor recounted the events leading to them being called. “That’s when we finally decided to send word to Konoha. Mind you, we don’t have any of your technologies here so we could only send a written request.”

“You don’t mention a monster in that request, though,” Hotaru interrupted, recalling the content in the copy of the message they’d received along with the mission brief.

“We didn’t want you to shove it aside thinking we had gone cuckoo, lad,” the mayor explained, frowning. “Suppose it had the opposite effect instead…y’all probably didn’t think it was urgent enough.”

“You didn’t try fighting back?” Chisato scoffed, raising an eyebrow.

“We did,” the mayor nodded. “That’s how most of us died. When little Suzume and her dad got taken apart right in front of our houses by that thing, we formed ourselves a mob and went after it. Lost more than half our village that day. The creature will leave us a lone a couple days if it feeds but, otherwise, it’ll comb the village clean. Most of our houses and buildings are destroyed…this is our last hidden safe place but we heard it slithering over our heads yesterday.”

“That’s why you went out,” Hotaru nodded, seeing the whole picture in his head.

“I wanted to give Shizuku and Koya a chance to get the kids out. The elders wouldn’t be able to leave quick enough but we wanted to at least save the kids.”

“That…” Chisato’s voice faded as he looked at the older man with newfound respect. “Takes some seriously large balls, old man.”

“Chisato!” Hotaru chided him but the mayor only chuckled, if a bit sadly.

“We got no idea what that thing is or why it started targeting our village,” the mayor whispered, hand over his eyes. “Maybe the Gods are punishing us…”

Hotaru shook his head and Chisato shrugged. “Go be with the rest of your people. Come tomorrow, we’ll see about hunting that thing down,” he assured him.

The mayor nodded and got up with a small grunt, whistling for the dog to follow him back into the bunker. The pet wagged his tail a few times, and rubbed his muzzle against Sayuri before heading back as well. The mayor’s eyes rested on her figure for a few seconds before he turned his back. “You have my apologies for what happened earlier, missy.”

He didn’t explain what he was apologizing for before he went back inside.

Chisato glared behind him. “The fuck is he apologizing about Sayuri?”

Surprisingly, Hotaru also found himself worried. He had just left his female team mate in the company of a strange man…but his blood cooled when she answered a few seconds later, with a tired voice. “Nothing gnarly, don’t worry. Just a small unpleasant issue I had to fix before I could go get you.”

She left it at that and they mostly trusted she’d be enough of a princess to be crying if something truly bad had happened. But Hotaru took the chance to finally speak his mind. A bit shaky and a bit shy, but honest. “Thank you, by the way.”

“…you’re welcome.”

Chisato, on the other hand, stared at both of them with a judgmental face. “You two are so fucking gay.”