Fuyuki Hōzuki/Mission Journal

## B-Rank Missions

### Fuyuki Shinden: Ode to Mercy

It had started as just any other mission, his task had been to infiltrate Kusagakure and discover the secrets of their strange assortment of Jutsu, a scheme in which he had succeeded with little issue by employing the countless tools at his disposal. Water was the most abundant element on the planet, even moreso than the element of earth itself and with Fuyuki's mastery of the Hydrification Technique any individual droplet could contain entire libraries worth of secrets. When that droplet fell on people Fuyuki could through his Liquid Knowledge learn thousands of things about the structure of their body and where they'd been and what they'd done. Such matters were often unnecessary, however, as all air around Fuyuki was suffused with innumerable water particles that bore the imprint of his chakra. So the very thing that enabled life allowed Fuyuki to extinguish, reshape or control it with but a conscious thought.

He'd never needed to visibly enter the village at all but simply extended water outwards to gather information from thousands of different sources at once, as though he was reading the canvas of life itself to decipher its countless mysteries. Eventually, he found shinobi with ties to what he was seeking and from their first breath in his presence they were his. Water droplets inhaled through their mouth and nostrils was expertly manipulated and expanded into spreading throughout every fibre of their body, killing them in an instant and controlling their recently deceased bodies through their nervous system and musculature. When he first invented this application, his use was somewhat crude. Still, now he could form an inner skeleton made of water to move their bodies as he desired, even to the point of making their eyes appear lifelike and attentive or keeping the body from even realizing its own demise. Creating a facsimile of life in the corpse to help it better blend in with the environment.

From a distance of more than a mile, Fuyuki manipulated the two shinobi expertly and assumed control of their bodies and transmitted his own words through their lips to request to see the required scrolls. Afterwards, he manipulated them like puppets and made them retrieve the items. When other shinobi flocked to deter them once their apparent betrayal became evident, Fuyuki repeated the process on the newcomers. Like his first set of dolls, the newcomers could not resist breathing in his presence, an instinctive act that both sustained and doomed them.

Every individual water droplet within a radius of more than a mile was an extension of his will, his body, his corporeal form was just the mask he wore at this point of mastery. It did not reflect his true self which extended outwards for miles in every direction.

Just that simple act of breathing allowed Fuyuki's chakra and his essence to suffuse their bodies from the inside out like a microscopic parasite, from there they'd lost everything without ever even knowing the stakes. Fuyuki ended their lives without remorse nor fanfare, a simple droplet expanded and crushed their heart and brain from the inside. It was quicker and easier than snuffing out a candle: no pain, no real understanding of what happened, nothing but death.

Yet not a single body would hit the floor under Fuyuki's watch as at the instant of death he seized control of muscles, tendons, veins and sinew and manipulated it expertly into whatever form he needed to imitate life. Each individual spoke was necessary with proper pitch and movement of their lips, yet with an uncanny red gleam in their eyes, as their irises filled with blood. Individuals that took notice were killed in much the same way and joined Fuyuki's entourage of marionettes. In essence, they were basically Water Clones of Fuyuki who wore the shell of their host as a disguise.

In the end, the shinobi handed over every secret they could find turned into helpless traitors to their own cause before the power of Fuyuki's mastery of the most quintessential of all elements. Fuyuki was not at all content with his lot, even with the scrolls well in hand, for he'd chanced upon a bit of fascinating information. Four three-man teams of Kusagakure Genin had graduated and were moments away from receiving their headbands and starting their proper journey as shinobi.

Through his Liquid Knowledge, he could plainly see them, and by manifesting a billion eyes attached to individual motes of water in the air surrounding them, he could plainly observe the ceremony as it proceeded. At the moment they were civilians, and so he graciously waited until the height of their pride and joy, when they attached their new headbands to their foreheads and marked themselves as Genin, and thus marked themselves as warriors.

The instant that happened he ended their lives, Fuyuki took no pleasure in killing civilians and avoided it when he could. Still, it was merely the pragmatic thing to do to kill these young seeds before they could grow into something that might endanger Kirigakure's supremacy in the shinobi world. Fuyuki had no pity for them, and he had no sympathy for their shocked and distraught instructors who watched the lives of twelve children end in an instant, he had no pity for they would share the same fate.

A moment after sixteen outwardly impeccable corpses lay spread across the classroom. Fuyuki made it painless of course, he had no cause to engage in torture, besides he was keenly aware that one of those dead Genin could've been his own students and although no student of his would be permitted such weakness he would prefer that their end came swiftly if it came at all. Unlike these twelve crushed fledgelings, his students would receive proper instruction.

Dismissing the animated corpses that had by now successfully retrieved the object of his mission, Fuyuki became keenly aware of the parents of the deceased and their immediate family, they would surely be heartbroken. Employing the information gleaned from Liquid Knowledge Fuyuki found whatever blood relatives they had in the immediate area and killed them too painlessly to spare them the anguish. He did the same for the children and spouses of the instructors, orphans were such pitiful things, after all, this was his kindness, this was what he called mercy.

### Fuyuki Shinden: Ski Retrieval Mission

The lone figure approached the group of enemy shinobi on his own and made no efforts to disguise his movements or play at stealth, such things were expected of a shinobi. Still, they were wholly unnecessary for a member of the Hozuki Clan who had mastered the Hydrification technique, Fuyuki's body perfectly reflected and refracted light as he walked closer to these adversaries to be. It was ultimately meaningless in his eyes, but there was merit in approaching unseen if it could be managed even if he knew he would be spotted by their sensors regardless.

It made them overestimate their position even if they had no reason to do, and that made them prone to error and poor judgement. As Fuyuki suspected, the sensors noticed him more or less immediately as he got into range. Truthfully it was practically impossible not to do so considering that his Water-Heavens Convergence would be visible as a gargantuan sphere of chakra. It expanded from his comparatively microscopic frame across hundreds of meters in every direction, with his mastery of the Hydrification Technique it might as well be an extension of his own body. Undoubtedly they knew that being inside it was hardly ideal yet so massive was its size that it seemed impossible to avoid doing so, especially since it moved as Fuyuki did.

He graciously granted them the opportunity to prepare and dropped all pretences of stealth by making himself fully visible to their primitive senses. Such brazen disregard for them seemed to unnerve his opponents, it was just as well that they had the decency to fear him, after all, Fuyuki had become quite famous these days, and even other villages spoke of him in impressive terms. His monikers were many, but he preferred being referred to as the Dragon of the Hidden Mist, it had a nice ring to it. It communicated his prowess quite nicely, particularly his mastery of the Water Dragon Bullet which formed the cornerstone of his arsenal given how he could wield, conjure and shape it with the utmost ease.

Six water dragons swam through the battlefield at Fuyuki's command, manoeuvering between enemy lines, their maws agape as they brought man and woman to ruin in their jaws - flesh, bone and muscles were annihilated upon even a glancing touch. He didn't attempt to destroy them all at once, however. He rather amused himself by making them believe they had a chance at abating his assault when one of his Water Dragons shot towards a large group of shinobi. They each performed hand seals to summon a succession of earth dragons to strike his own conjured dragon and true enough however great his mastery of Water Release the fact remained that water was at a disadvantage against the earth. Yet, it took a large group of shinobi to best his water dragon.

It was halted in mid-air as it crashed against the approaching onslaught of earth and bit by bit it began to lose all form of cohesion and was filled with mud and grime until it sloshed to the ground in towering waves of mud that covered much of the battlefield. Impressive work by all accounts but their hopes were cut short when the earth split asunder underneath them, and a gargantuan water dragon emerged from below with jaws wide enough to instantly consume the entire regiment of fools in one fell swoop. As it devoured them, all their bodies lost all sense of shape, and they disintegrated away until they became reddish-black blotches within as their bones were ground down to nothing.

They stood their ground despite the massacre and regrouped with their remaining forces. One by one each nodded at the other with their hands flashing a staggering number of hand seals, a practice that Fuyuki had long since eschewed due to his mastery of the element he wielded; he did not have much time. Still, Fuyuki Hozuki was a man who valued hard work and perseverance even when, no, mainly when it was hopeless. It proved an absolute strength of character, and he could not reasonably ignore such conviction, it would be quite unfit of one who once had nothing but resolve with which to live.

Six pairs of hands formed the same seals at dizzying speeds, and the earth roiled around them before shooting out towards Fuyuki as six roaring dragons of mud and bedrock issued towards the lone shinobi, each was inferior to his water dragon individually. Still, together their strength was much improved that much was true. Yet it was not nearly enough, perhaps if they'd possessed a greater mastery of the Earth Release maybe then they'd stand a better chance but when Fuyuki conjured his dragons of water and had them clash with theirs, he knew the result was obvious. True, two of his dragons were overpowered and dispersed into mud, and the potency of the third dragon was halved, but the fourth one annihilated them all in a single gulp, he made their deaths swift out of respect for their bravery.

With the rush and ebb of summoned tides, the battle was over, and Fuyuki set his sights upon the horizon where the shinobi transporting Ski were making their way towards Kumogakure with the greatest of haste. Fuyuki's student had been captured during a run-in with one of Kumogakure's top shinobi, and nothing could be more of an upset to Fuyuki's upcoming coup'd'tat of Kirigakure. It would seem that the boy had much to learn when it came to combating Genjutsu. Fortunately for the boy Fuyuki was a man who guarded his investments jealously, and while Ski was hardly necessary to conquer the village he was an essential rallying point and resource. Controlling the Jinchuriki of a town meant holding a large portion of the village's military potential and Ski just happened to be the greatest Jinchuriki of them all. Naturally, he would not accept anything less from a student of his, especially one who had taken so readily to his lessons, he had turned out well enough he supposed.

The aspiring Mizukage's body stood in stark contrast to the overwhelming powers at his command, for even after almost four decades, it was frail and weak and unable to sustain the rigours of combat. Despite being lauded as the most powerful shinobi in the world, and a veritable god to his lessers, Fuyuki's physical capabilities were mostly nonexistent. And he could never hope to outrun even the typical academy student much less seasoned ninja entrusted with the mission to bring a captured Jinchuriki back to their village for extraction. His reserves of chakra themselves were pitiful by any modern metric as well; nothing about him was exceptional save for one thing. Fuyuki's chakra control remained his only saving grace, honed over decades unceasingly to allow him to employ Ninjutsu despite his significant weaknesses. When that proved insufficient on its own, he had sought out and mastered Water-Heavens Convergence.

Water rushed forth from the earth and pooled in the sky forming bizarre streams and coursing rivers that slithered through the air and down to merge with Fuyuki's body which readily took to these waters and began to alter its shape into a gargantuan water dragon. It was much like those he so readily summoned in combat for he'd long since found ways of conquering his weaknesses, relying upon his most incredible talents to do so. The dragon roared as it surged forwards and split the sky like a living tsunami, washing away everything that opposed it in its single-minded pursuit of Ski Hoshigaki and his captors. Trees vanished tracelessly in its passing and buildings and bridges were reduced to smithereens only by brief contact with the immense forces at play. Pretty soon a path of unadulterated destruction followed in the wake of Fuyuki's movements, barren dirt and bare ground carving a line through the previously lush woodlands.

Up ahead his quarry had taken note of him as he would expect, he could sense the water in their bodies, could feel their increased heart rate, practically taste their sweat and noted their worry and fear and he relished that feeling. It was reminded him how far he'd come since his days rummaging through texts in the Hozuki Clan's libraries hoping to unlock some secret or other to earn the approval of the clan elders so that they would grant him the [[Hydrification Technique]. The very thing that could make his life bearable and allow him to function as a shinobi, despite how long it had taken him to convince them to put their faith in a cripple none could argue the results. His brothers barely existed nowadays due to the sheer scope of Fuyuki's shadow, and that was just as he preferred it, he was the finest scion his clan had ever known, and he had achieved it through ceaseless work and effort.

His opponents who had dared to challenge his ambitions; however unwittingly by interfering with his students would come to learn this fate first-hand as Fuyuki took a sudden turn. In the span of barely a second, he'd torn through hundreds of meters worth of forest and cut in front of them, where he immediately dispelled his draconic transformation to their surprise. Thinking themselves to have the advantage, perhaps due to misunderstanding the suddenly dispelled change as being a sign of low stamina the foes laid down Ski. They lunged at Fuyuki, and the first one barely managed to get within his reach to lift his sword before he'd turned both of his eyeballs into liquid and driven them through his skull and into his brain through the eyesockets.

The second fared no better although he jumped back to attempt to stay out of range of Fuyuki's immediate field of control, it was entirely hopeless; however given the sheer scope of his influence. Still, at least he had the right idea. Nonetheless with the slightest gestures possible Fuyuki coalesced water droplets into a nigh-invisible blade of highly pressurized water and sliced him in twain with a casual twitch of a finger before he tired of the facade and similarly killed the third foe.

Within the scope of seconds, his student was freed, and Fuyuki once again assumed the form of a water dragon, but this time he'd carry Ski Hoshigaki safely back to the Land of Water.