Ketsueki Satou, his story started out quite differently then any normal baby born from a woman’s womb. He was birthed, only to become a sacrifice in a small rice village. Above the service, the village appeared to be normal. Yet, within its inner circle of villagers. Masked by smiling faces of elderly and young to the travelers that passed was a cult of demon worshipers. They held meetings every night on the full moon. To howl their prayers to their gods of darkness. One in particular, was a demon who feasted on blood of the living. A creature, twisted in form. Its face was like that of a man, its hair tendrils of darkness. It's lips thinned and cracked, tongue of a snake and fangs elongated to sink into flesh. It's skin gaunt and its nails that of an eagles talons.
The towns people prayed to this creature, they would call it Ketsueki. Ketsueki Satou. And so they worshiped this demons name. Forcing a young girl, scared and confused. To mate and bare the demon a child. The girl did not have any choice, she was taken by a man almost twice her age. And in months time, a healthy baby boy was born. Only to be snatched away from the mothers arms and placed upon a cold precipice. An alter of blood, the elders of the village were going to kill the child. To appease their gods thirst for bloodshed. Madman, crazed human beings.
This demon was pleased when seeing the child sat upon this small throne. From the darkness of the under earth. As the knife was brought against the child's neck. A women screamed, a child cried. Blood was spilled. And the creature rose from the darkness, it bared its fangs, hissed and spat upon the humans who bowed to it. “Despicable.” It whispered with a slithering tongue.
The demons hand raised and slashed at the cultists. Killing men who embraced their death, feeding upon their blood. Leaving but a dead child, a weeping mother who cradled it. The village was burning around them, dead laid littered about. In a field of rice. The demon looked to the women, it's eye sockets were hollowed. Its voice echoed with a hissing cry. “Give me the child...it shall live...it shall keep me to this world!” It cried out as it moved forward.
Yet, as its mother. The women pulled the dead child away, screaming at the demon. “Leave him be! Let him die, I would rather him not live then in this horrid world to be your plaything!” She drew the ceremonial dagger, the same one that sliced the child. Swinging it madly at the demon. But it's strength was far beyond her understanding as the monster rushed her, grabbing her wrist, breaking it and pulling the knife away from her. Licking the stained blood upon the knife. He gingerly tossed the blade away.
“It will do nicely, it's blood is sweet. Innocent blood. So ripe, so ready to be filled with hatred!” It cackled and laughed maniacally with glee as the mother weeps, guarding the child with her body. Yet what was a monster to care? It simply torn her body apart. A bloody baptism.
As the demon finished his meal, licking his thin crusted lips with a bloodied tongue. Picking the juicy parts from between its fanged teeth. It looked at the child. Poking it most curiously with its long pointed nail. “I see...Lets try this then...” He laughed as the demon began to push dark chakra through the dead boy. Pumping the body with blood from its dying mother, shocking the nerves and heart with over whelming power. The demons blood healed the neck wound, reviving dead cells of the body and enriching them with Ketsueki's own chakra. He was slowly reviving the boy, but better yet. He was waking up the host body, he did not need the mind. He merely needed a vessel. But as the demon was pushing his soul and power into this small fragile figure, it began to move. It began to breath.
The child was alive once more. It's soul so pure and innocent. Its cry of distress sent shivers through the demon. It was as though the child’s soul was molding itself with the demon. It began to panic, the demon tried its best to pull away. Not understanding what he had done. It was too late, as the demon was pulled slowly into the child’s soul. Destroying the demons physical body.
But creating a living cage for it, inside the tiny screaming baby boy.
As this event happened in one night, it merely took a few hours for the neighboring village to see the giant flames of the destroyed rice village nearby. It was seconds that a few young man, trained in Shinobi arts came running to find a gruesome scene. A massacre, a field of death. And a small child, wrapped in bloodstained cloth. One of the men who came to investigate the destroyed village. Took the child as his own, with his wife the small shinobi family raised the child.
They gave him a name, Kaneba. Touji Yet as a baby, he did not speak. He did not talk till the age of six, when his adopted father called his name and the boy turned with a reply. “My name is Ketsueki...” He stopped and so did the parents, it was his first words from his lips. His name, and later on from Ketsueki Touji to Ketsueki Satou when he left the village and went out to live on his own.
But before that time, we must speak of the boys development. Being the harbinger of a demon gives you not only a great power, but also a greater curse. Everywhere he went, tame animals of the village would turn on him and try attacking him. Everyone around him grew ill and verbally abused him. Calling him the demon child Ketsueki.
Throughout the years Touji was abused both physically and verbally. Even by the parents that brought him up. The man who claimed to be his father. Beat him when drunk, a man who lived a life as a contract ninja had some scars to wear. And he took out his misery on the poor boy. The mother, not even caring turned a blind eye and deaf ear to the child’s screams for help.
It was on one night, at the ripe age of sixteen when Touji stayed outside for fear of his fathers beatings, a wild dog attacked the boy. He had nothing to defend himself, he was afraid. Scared and frozen with fear. It was then, that he felt it. He was going to be killed by this dog. His fear of death, brought out something. Something deep in his chest churned.
The next thing he came to was the screams and horrified gasps of villagers who came upon quite a scene. Touji had lost consciousness. Enveloped with a sense of rage, he fought the dog with his bare hands, getting cut and bitten. He finally took the dog by the head and snapped its neck with a rough headlock. But he did not stop there and then when people came outside due to the commotion.
They found the boy taring into the dogs neck with fanged teeth. Touji was drinking the dogs blood, feasting on the corpse of a dead animal. The town was in a riot, the parents that once took the infant in was now driving a mad young man out of the village. He got away with a few minor injuries. Stab wounds from pitchforks, large welts of bruising from the thrown stones and slash marks from the sickles they hurled at him.
He escaped their grasp, only wander in the wild, like a beast for three whole years. Living off blood that now plagued him with hunger. His stomach would refuse meat or vegetation. It only craved for blood. With such a diet, his body withered away. Making him gaunt yet his height and growth gave him more expansion of frame.
As a Twenty year old, the name Satou came to his mind. The villagers would be hunting down Ketsueki Touji. Not Ketsueki Satou. So he changed his looks, changed his mannerisms. Yet still, the strange powers and hungers grew. He could physically see it, the dark aura just gently layered on his skin. Like a intensely thin black mist that covered him.
He felt stronger as well, his hand went cleanly through wood trunks so thick even a hundred chops from a finely sharpened Axe could not cleave as deep with one swing of his hand. It excited him, thrilled him as he used this strength. This power to kill wild animals. To train himself.
Learning ninja arts from his fathers books, he trained in the basics of Ninjutsu. And every time he used an art, his darkness would change it. Making the technique more deadly and terrifying.
In time, over those three years. Satou grew to become a strong individual. Socially awkward, but strong none the less. It was at that time he traveled, leaving his mountains and forests behind. To mingle with society. He then found himself in Konohagakure. It was there, on a day of festival. He met his lover. Nokaba Sukinoshi. A pretty girl who served ramen at a local inn. Silly to say, the both of them fell in love at first sight.
Though the boy was awkward and the girl so forward with her feelings, the two had begun their lives together. Now, we skip a couple years. Passion, love and secrecy kept them together. Of course, Satou fed his dark hunger for flesh and blood on the local animals outside the village. Then he would travel into Konoha to see his beloved Sukinoshi.
Satou would use the pelts of the animals he killed as a means of mercantile access into the village. So he would freely come and go as he pleased.
Years had more so passed, the lovers kept together and on a joyous night they eloped and left the village together on a journey of matrimony. He built a small cottage, in the forest for which he grew up in. Feeling as if it was his home and will always be as such. They lived a comfortable life. His wife grew food and sold flowers in the village. As he sold pelts and skins to make profit to buy supplies and food.
A calm, peaceful life.
Till he had grown to the age of twenty six. A night a fire, a night of death. He had left with his load of pelts, kissed his beloved Sukinoshi goodnight was off to the village. Unaware of the bandits waiting for him to leave.
It took him several hours to get to konoha and bag with all the food he brought, his face lit with happy thoughts of laying next to his wife in their warm bed.
But it was as if the fates deemed him damnation. When Satou returned to a smoldering ruin of his home. His beloved wife laid dead in nude before him. Defiled, stripped and disfigured with mutilation. He stood their in horror, dropping everything he ran to her.
It began to rain. The rain washed over the flames, It washed the blood away, the tracks, the evidence of this crime.
It washed over Satou, his cries of pain and agony muffled by the storm above. Silence.
After a much weakened state he was left with burying his wife. He buried her where he had found her. His soul broken. It was then he began to hear whispers in his head. A hissing voice.
“Kill them all...” It snickered as Satou's body began to change once more. His skin became pale, his eyes held a dark sinister glare to them, a soft velvety red. His canine teeth had sharpened and the length of them resembled that of the beast that changed him years ago. His hair grew long and wild. Much like the tendril hairs of the monster that ruined his life since birth.
He was slowly turning into the Demon itself. Giving into the dark urges. He wandered the world. Killing anyone who dared raise a weapon to him. His body littered with wounds, feeding on the ones he killed to survive but another day. Yet, he wished to die, while the beast that laid dormant in him wanted only to push him forward.
He soon found himself, dead of exhaustion, months without rest. Fighting, killing. He collapsed at the gates of Amegakure, following the rain. Following his thread of humanity.
It took time, but he awoke inside the village. In a hospital room, his body recovered. But his mind was fragmented, glimpses of death haunted him. His thirst for blood inexplicably got him into trouble. He had then created a bond of friendship. At a pivotal point, he could hear the voice again.
“Kill them! Feed on them!” Hissed the inner demon.
He replied within thought as he stood in the middle of the village. No. They are, my friends. It was then, he stopped killing. Stopped drinking the blood of living creatures.
It was then the demon opened up more, spoke to him. Taunted him and pestered his sanity. But, he was glad. He knew now what he was. What cursed blood he held and what sickening realization came to him.
He only thought of himself mad and sick man, but really. He was just a monster. And with that, his mind began to turn. He could recollect every past memory when he accepted his true self. The memories of his childhood, and that of the demons awakening and merging of his body. Their souls had bind together, a sickening entangled web of humanity and demonic blood.
He collected the memories of his fake parents and the people that had chased him for being a monster. A demon child.
And then, came his beloved Sukinoshi.
A man in his late twenties broke down and cried in those streets after so long of being cold. Being frozen in the rain. He saw her again, in his mind. Illusions of his sanity had waxed away. He chased after the girl. Crying out to her to stop, to forgive him. He ran from that village. Ran from the friends he made, ran for who knows how long. The world changed while he was locked away, within his own mind.
Eventually, he wandered to the mountains of Cloud. Cold and desolate, he scaled it all. Chasing after Sukinoshi, it was then he found the gates to Kumogakure. Collapsing from exhaustion. He was a fractured man. His clothing was dirtied and ragged. His body covered with wounds, his face a mess of facial hair and long dirtied locks of blood stained black hair.
But, even kumo accepted the broken. And he was whisked away to the hospital for treatment. Only to escape a night after and run into more trouble.
He found himself in the dead of night, panting heavily with pain. Searching for her. The images playing back in his mind like a broken home video. The happiness and sadness mixing his mind. Making him crazed. It was at that point he heard a commotion as three men appeared before him, carrying weapons and a small child. Saying the boy was the offspring of a former Raikage and would get a good price on the slave market.
In a second, Satou was on top of one, ripping him apart with his bare hands, feasting on one of the mans organs. The other two were horrified by this display of power and savage murder. One struck at the demonic man. His blade stabbed deeply into Ketsueki, his blood spilled quickly as he stood, pulling the bade from his body, he turned his attention slowly to his attacker and then ripped his arm clean off with his free hand.
The mans screams were loud and annoying, angering the demon even more as his foot slammed into the kidnappers throat, silencing him and putting him flat out on the ground. The third dropped the child and ran for his life but ended up running into an old mans blade, Rurou Kotsurugi had been asleep when they kidnapped the boy and gave chase. Cutting the kidnapper down and merely walking past as if the action meant nothing to him. His attention was on the boy as he scooped the sleeping child into his arms. A heavy sleeper indeed.
But as his attentions stayed on the boy, he felt a sudden rush of sickness when hearing the dying gurgles of Ketsueki's latest meal. Kotsurugi turned ever so slowly, to see a brutal display of disgust. Satou was ripping open the mans throat and gorging himself on the blood and neck muscles. The kidnapper died slowly.
With a prayer Kotsurugi fled from the scene.
A body hefted over his shoulder and sleeping child in his arms.
Ketsueki was soon taken to Nanjirou Temple. It is here he Sealed himself away. Locking his demonic powers with the command of the Nanjirou Elder. Though, it is only time before he finds himself a “Master” to serve with his dark demonic powers. Satou craved for more. He took to the Elders aid to teach him the ways of Cloud Shinobi, their History, Culture and Lifestyle. To begin with basics and ultimately join Kumogakure as a Jounin in a short span of time. With his completed training as a cloud Shinobi, the Old Shinobi Kotsurugi removed his headband from his long flowing white coat and handed it to the Demon. "I'm to old for this life, though I still hold true to Shinobi life. I'm giving you this as a symbol of you're allegiance to this village and you must swear on your life to keep its people safe. Even from yourself Satou."
The old mans words meant something, more so it meant he had a place here, a purpose. Maybe it will save him, to be forgiven and find redemption in the Clouds.
