"Are you insane? You could've killed her!" Temari glared at her brother, she knew Kankuro wouldn't be able to keep distant from the catty girl. So if he can't do his job, she will. She ignored her sibling's question and flung a few more Kunai at the small neko. Crow appeared and took the blow for Shizi, the wide trio of eyes looking down at her as the metal impaled the wood with a dull thud.
"That's the point, baka! You had orders!" Using her large fan, she knocked the Puppet away and went after Shizi again, the said female pushing Kankuro back so she could draw out a Kunai and a few Shuriken as her huge fan slammed into the dirt where she was before. Using the Shuriken, Shizi forced Temari towards the back edge of the clearing.
"Shizi-chan, you're injured! Summon me and I'll help you heal quicker!" Jingxiao screams in her mind, the girl silently agreeing and replacing her Kunai before crouching low to the ground. As she stretched back her arm, pain burned down her spine- she forgot the Kunai in her back. Shizi growled in annoyance and reached back to rip the weapon free from her body with a sickening sucking noise. With the nuisance gone, Shizi summoned her reaper and prepared to fight the blonde Sand Kunoichi. During her one month allotment of time for preparations, Shizi took private sessions of her own to figure out how to construct Jutsu specifically for her and Jingxiao.
"Wind Scythe Jutsu!" Temari calls out and swings her fan at the girl. Shizi buries the spinal edge of her reaper into the dirt, a smile of devilish amusement curling her lips.
"Earth Barrier Jutsu." The ground around her weapon slithered up from around the blade and created a wall that stopped just above her head just as the Wind Scythe Jutsu reached her, the airy blades buffeted back by the wall. The ground returned to its place as she wretched the weapon from the wall she created angrily, returning to her original battle stance.
"Why are you attacking me, Temari? I've done nothing to you. You're the one invading my home."
"It's not about you, it's about my idiotic brother. You were given extensive orders not to get attached, baka. I warned you many times what would happen if you followed through with your idea, but you didn't listen to me. Now she has to die, as ordered by the Kazekage himself." Temari vanished from her spot in front of the two, reappearing to Shizi's left with her massive fan opened for the attack. Shizi jumped out of fatality range of her blow, but the edge did cut into her shoulder, bright red blood staining her white fan and running down the neko's arm. She vanished again, coming from behind her to slice up her spine, the curved edge of her fan making the would-be straight line become a diagonal wound from her right hip to her left shoulder blade.
"Why didn't you dodge that, you know you very well could have." Jingxiao scolds Shizi like a father in her head.
"I want to try a new Jutsu."
"It's not that Jutsu, is it? You know you'll die before you can try that, right?"
Shizi ignored Jingxiao's warning and let the blonde Sand Shinobi slice her up like a butcher to a fresh piece of meat. Once Temari had tired herself out, she stopped to admire her handiwork and be proud of her damage she inflicted- though she wished it was on someone other than the neko, but she had orders and she had to obey unlike Kankuro. The afore mentioned male was frozen, staring in horror at the bleeding mess his tiny friend had become.
"Temari, what the hell is wrong with you?! That isn't killing her that is torturing her!"
"It wouldn't be this way if you had just done as you were told and stayed away!"
"Still, you didn't have to do that to her! If you wanted to kill her then do it quickly, don't make her suffer for this!" Laughing caught their attention and they looked over to see the catty girl doubled over in painful laughter. "Shizi? Are you alright?" She straightened up at his voice.
"Perfectly fine, I just think it's funny that you talk about me like I'm already dead. And I wanted to thank you, Temari."
"Thank me? For what?" Shizi smiled maniacally and wiped a handful of blood over the silvery blade of her reaper before executing a session of hand signs and starting her Jutsu.
"Body Combination Jutsu." The mass of blood floated off her skin and became a sphere of crimson around her until it exploded onto the ground, making a ring of words around her in red. Her body had become a mix of her and Jingxiao. The blade had split and protruded from both her forearms, the tip facing backwards, and the staff looked to be shattered all over her body like compound bone breaks poking out of her skin. Her tail she gained from her usual transformations had become a strip of shards of metal, the entire thing one killer whip.
"You wanna play, Temari?" The girl looked horrified, but attacked the girl anyway. Shizi vanished and her bladed arm sliced through her shoulder- like Temari originally wounded her. This was the case until Shizi backed off from the bleeding Sand Kunoichi. Once she deemed Temari no longer a threat to herself, she turned to Kankruo, the said male stiff with fear that she was going to attack him like she did to his sister.
Instead, she lets the Jutsu run out and she returned to her original transformations. Her neon green eyes rolled and she tumbled to the dirt, the Puppetry Master catching her as she fell, careful of her wounds all over her body. Just before she was totally unconscious, Shizi reversed her summon on Jingxiao.
"Kankuro, if you want the Kazekage to forgive you, kill her now." He stated at his sister in horror and protectively held her closer to his body, her head bumping into his collarbone. "He'll kill you if he finds out you disobeyed him!"
"Then keep your mouth shut, Temari. Go find Gaara, I'm going to take her to a hospital, or Kakashi. Whichever comes first. I'll catch up soon." She grumbled but complied and they parted ways. He found her guardian first, the silvery male having beaten his foes and his so-called rival and gone looking for his charge.
"What happened?" Kakashi demands, his Sharingan eye trained on Kankuro in case he attacked either of the Leaf Shinobi.
"She fought my sister. I think she tried a Jutsu- Body Combination Jutsu she called it." The Jonin immediately took her from him and looked her over for signs of dangerously low Chakra levels.
"Thanks for bringing her. You should go, before another Shinobi comes by and sees you." Kankuro nodded and vanished, Kakashi instantly sprinting around the village to find a hospital willing to accept her. He found a small hospital that did, and he was forced to wait in a whitewashed waiting room until a doctor told him the fate of Shizi.
It felt like an eternity before a man in a white jacket with a clipboard pushed open a thick door, calling for the family of Shizi Yemao. He stood and anxiously waited for the doctor to reach him.
"How is she?" The medical Shinobi was silent for a long time, eyes cast down at his clipboard. Kakashi was surprised to feel the backs of his eyes sting with the threat of tears at the idea that Shizi had died. She would've been so alone.
"She'll live, but have a few scars. Especially on her back. She's lucky, a few more inches and she would've severed her spinal cord. You can visit your daughter tomorrow."
"Ah, she's not my daughter." The doctor looked unconvinced, pointing down at his clipboard.
"Says here, your her legal caretaker under the authority of the 3rd Hokage."
"Yes, but she's not my child."
"In the eyes of the law and medicine, you are her father." Kakashi sighed in defeat and scratched the side of his head anxiously.
"I can stay with her, right? She'll freak out if she wakes up and there's nobody there she knows." The doctor nodded and told him her room number before vanishing to another patient. As Kakashi walked down the halls in search of Shizi, he thought on what the Medical Shinobi had said.
She might not be his kid, but he has taken care of her for what feels like her entire life. It was a shock to realize, but once he did, it felt like something he had known all along. And seeing her in the medical cot with her wires and tubes just made it more concrete.
Kakashi Hatake loved his daughter, Shizi Yemao.
YOU ARE READING
Beautiful Monsters
Fanfiction"The true measure of a Shinobi is not how he lives, but how he dies..." Shizi Yemao's pretty smile hides her secrets and her pretty eyes have cried too many tears. It's scary what her smile has come to hide, and she has gotten better at hiding the...
