The rain drifted down from the heavens above, the sky a dull grey that comforted the young shinobi. As he walked through the mug, his geka keeping his feet as clean as possible, though Kaito knew he knew he would need to clean his feet and sandals once he arrived at his destination. Coming to a stop over a kill to take in the view of the lake, Kaito breathed slowly, closing his eyes as the sound of seagulls called out overhead, their squalling piercing the sound of the rain every few moments.

"Kaito, Kaito, don't stand on that rock honey, we don't need you breaking your arm." His mother shouted at him from where she sat on the beach with her own mother. Of course he hadn't heard her and climbed the rock anyway, standing next to his best friend Asahi as they looked out over the lake together.

The memory faded and Kaito opened his eyes, a saddened smile on his face at the almost forgotten memory. Asahi had always been there whenever Kaito came to his grandmother's house. They had been best friends quickly, as only small children seem to be able to manage. Kaito couldn't remember the amount of times he and Asahi had ended up with red ears from his grandmother scolding them, but it had always been worth it when he was with Asahi. Letting the memory slip from his mind, Kaito turned and continued onwards to his grandmother's house, not wanting to stand out in the rain for long, lease he caught a cold.

The young shinobi had recently come face to face with something that he needed to confront. Kaito had questions, and the only two people that could give him answers were dead. Osoroshī, Akaihana, Kaito's mother, had disappeared on some mission, having been declared KIA, though if Kaito's theory was true, his mother would have never told him what he needed to know. Osoroshī, Kirura, Kaito's grandmother, she was the one he needed right now. His grandmother, not matter how strict or at times cruel, had always been there for Kaito when he was little.

"Baba, Baba!" Kaito screamed his little lungs out. The old woman with the white hair appeared a moment later, pulling the door open and slipping into the room in her nightgown. Kaito had been having nightmares every night for a week. His mother had gone off to some minor village to provide medical aid after a natural disaster and it was the first time Kaito had been without his mother for more than a day or two. It'd be another couple months before she would return, but Kirura held her grandson every night as he cried. There was nothing to be said to the child, Kaito had to learn to cope on his own, but Kirura made sure she was there for him every night, always waiting outside his door for him to call out for her once the nightmares began.

Kaito had been having similar nightmares as he had back then. The had started once his mother was declared KIA, and mostly consisted of nightmares of his mother's restless spirit wandering forever unable to find peace due to not being buried. Kaito accepted his mother was dead, knew it in his heart to be true, but not being able to bury her was more than he could bare. Osoroshī, Akaihana deserved to be buried next to her mother, as was their family's custom. If nothing else, Kaito hoped to put his mother's memory to rest so that she might know peace.

Kaito had felt a strong urge to revisit his grandmother's home on the lake. It had been years, around the time he'd joined the academy that he had last come to this place. His grandmother had been a cruel woman at times, always chastising him with a switch or the occasional backhand. But Kaito had been a well behaved child, so it had been rare for his grandmother to feel the need to discipline him, and even though he feared the old woman to an extant, Kaito had also known the love she felt for him.

Kaito could still hear his mother and grandmother arguing when they didn't think he could hear them. Both had wanted the best for him and both of them had different ideas on how to go about teaching him the path of the shinobi. Still, both woman had been loyal shinobi themselves, and they had each showed Kaito what they expected from him even at a young age. From his mother's lessons on responsibility and dedication to the people of Mizu no Kuni, his grandmother had told him stories of war and battle, attempting to mold his young mind into that of a warrior.

Their family had always been shinobi of the Hidden Mist, even when the village had first formed all the way back during the warring states period. His grandmother had always told him of stories of the Osoroshī before the founding of the Hidden Mist, and how they had been wanderers. The Osoroshī had never been a large or well known clan, their most famous feat was literally surviving a genocide to find acceptance in the Land of Waves as shinobi of the Hidden Mist village. After what Kaito experienced on Spider Island, he knew there was more to this story, and he had come back to his grandmother's former home in the hope that he might find something there.

Whatever it was that had happened on Spider Island had changed Kaito, awoken something within him. He had no one left in this world to show him what these abilities meant or how to use them. Kaito had already decided on a path forward, he would do as all shinobi must, study and develop his skills to refine them into something useful to the Hidden Mist. It didn't matter if he had to walk the path alone, or if he never managed to get the answers he sought. The legacy of every shinobi was meant to be one of despair.

Kaito spent the first few hours cleaning his grandmother's house. It'd been in general disrepair for years now, though it had been mostly untouched by vandals. It was fortunate, that old Osoroshī, Kirura had been a humble woman, her home wasn't all that large and it should only take Kaito a day or two to get it back up and running. He'd deal with the garden and the yard tomorrow, right now he needed to get out of the rain. Doing what he could to clean the inside of the house would do the genin some good, as he hoped it would allow him to clear some of his thoughts. Before dropping his stuff in his old room though, Kaito stopped to admire the pictures of his small family on the wall. There were plenty of pictures of him with his mother as a young child, but there were also a few of his mother when she had been younger too. The one that Kaito had always loved the most was the traditionally painted portrait of his grandmother with her husband. Kaito's grandfather had died when his mother was a child, and since Kaito never knew his father either, it always fascinated to imagine what his grandfather might have been like.

Quikly pulling himself out of his thoughts, Kaito set about hunting down a broom before attacking the front porch. There was a bit of a wraparound, but the entire property was so small that it might as well have been a single porch. His grandmother's real wealth had been put into her forge in the village, as she had retired from her life as a shinobi to become one of the greatest weapon smiths of her era. She had always promised to forge him a sword once he graduated the academy, but she had died well before that had been possible. Cut down on this very porch even, Kaito remembered as he swept the steps. The day his grandmother died, Kaito had demanded to go with his mother as she tended to the villagers. Another group of bandits had attempted to raid Kirura's forge to steal her valuable weapons, only to find themselves outmatched by the old kunoichi.

Many of the villages had come to her aid and been injured or killed, so Kirura had forced the battle out of the settlement to avoid more danger from befalling the innocent. The man that had eventually killed his grandmother had also stolen her katana, known as Sakenomi. One day, Kaito hoped to locate the sword, not that it was anything overly special, but he wanted to return it to his grandmother, by burying it next to her grave. Kneeling down, Kaito ran his hand across the floor boards where his grandmother's body had been. It was the closets he'd ever get to hugging her again, simply remembering her wasn't enough. He felt like he was gonna cry, but instead Kaito just ended up feeling guilty at not being able too. He would have cried when he was younger, hell he had cried at her funeral. It just seemed wrong that he didn't at least get teary eyed.

Whatever had happened to him on Spider Island, the tears of blood, the black talons sprouting from his fingernails. Kaito was not longer the same as he had once been. He was something darker now, not quite apathetic, but it no longer seemed sad to him, the death of his grandmother, Where he would have once thought only of the lose, he now saw her as a hero, making sure the bandits left the villagers alone, even it meant her end. That was the type of shinobi Kaito wanted to be, someone that would do anything, sacrifice anything, for the people he had sworn to protect.

Once Kaito had repaired the rope pully on the well, thankful that the water was still clean, he had gone ahead and swept and mopped the house. Just about everything had needed a good dusting, but he wasn't planning on staying long enough for that to matter. Having fresh water also helped in Kaito's efforts to cook dinner. Having picked up some food for a few days in the local fishing village on the way here, Kaito prepared a simple fried mackerel with rice and saki for dessert. After earning himself a bit of a buzz, Kaito found himself going through boxes in his grandmother's study. Old documents, summing scrolls, and plenty of ceremonial looking kunai, he noticed a floorboard that sounded a bit off.

It was easy to tell the floorboard was some sort of space for hiding things, as it was just under Kirura's desk. Pulling the wooden board away, Kaito found something that made his heart melt, and he finally felt a tear leave his right eye. In the small cubby hole, Kaito found the blanket his grandmother had knitted for him when he was born, the grey and white blanket had been torn and tattered with age, but it still felt like he was truly hugging his grandmother when he held it tight. It wasn't until he moved to throw it in a box of stuff he wanted to take home with him that he saw the blood. Bringing his hand to his face, Kaito realized the tears he had cried were blood.

Falling backwards in horror, Kaito also noticed a small wooden nob on the underside of the desk. Wiping his face on a spare cloth, Kaito returned to the study to pressed the small button, as a door he had never seen before pulled into the wall before sliding into a space in between the wall. Kaito's blood went cold as he peered down the stairs behind the mysterious doorway. This had to be the sort of thing he was looking for, the answers he was seeking. He'd always known there was more to his grandmother than she had ever shown him, it was easy to tell, considering how far his mother had gone to keep Kirura from telling him whatever it was.

After finding a candle to give him some sort of light, Kaito made his way into the hidden chamber under the house. He came to a door marked with a bloody handprint, it would have shocked him under normal circumstances, but with all the weird blood things happening in the past few days, Kaito was actually kinda relieved. What was off putting to him though, was that he knew it was his grandmother's blood. Kaito had no idea how he could know such a thing, but it was like he could smell his grandmother's presence in the old blood stain. Running his hand across the strange symbol, Kaito heard a voice deep in his mind. "Use the Blood." It whispered, almost sounding like his grandmother as he pushed the door open and entered the chamber.

What he saw when the door opened nearly frightened him. There were multiple skeletons chained to the wall, various instruments designed for torture, and a strange alter looking stone table in the far edge of the room. Other than the firelight from the candle, the entire room was awash in an eerie red light from a crimson stained glass window above the alter. Upon the alter was a large leather bound book with a red handprint on the cover. A quick peek reveal the text was also written in blood as the book fell open to a page depicting a fiendish looking black tree. The Jubokko, Kaito wasn't sure how he knew what it was called, but he did. In a flash, memories of his mother telling hims stories of the legendary demon tree that feasted upon the blood of mortals came to his mind. It was like a genjutsu being broken as so much came flooding back to him.

The genin fell to his knees in front of the alter, crying tears of blood at the realization of what had been done to him. His grandmother had always tried to tell him something, Kaito had always known this, but he never realized she had actually managed to tell him. His mother, the woman he had trusted so much, one of the only two people in this world he had ever loved, had betrayed him. His mother had been placing him under genjutsu since he was a small child, attempting to cover up anything he found that might clue him in on their family's true legacy. A legacy of blood. With the only witnesses to Kaito's emotional breakdown being the skeletons of long forgotten souls, Kaito was left to regain control of himself on his own time. "Use the Blood." The voice said again, this time Kaito was sure it was his grandmother, somehow speaking to him from beyond the grave.

Kaito had half a mind to ask the voice how, he was suppose to use the blood, but he wasn't superstitious enough to believe he would get an answer. Instead, he returned to the book, foregoing cleaning the bloody tears from his face, as the smell of his own blood was somehow comforting to him. The book was titled The Blood Sages of the Jubokko Tree, though the first few pages was an ancestry tree designed in the likes of the demonic Jubokko itself. There were hundreds of names listed, most either marked off as being dead or were from so long ago in the past that it was certain they had died. The only ones not marked off by a line of blood through their name, was his own name and those of his mother and grandmother. Biting his thump enough to draw blood, Kaito dipped a fingernail into the red liquid before crossing out two of the three names not already marked as deceased.

Kaito spent the next few hours reading as much of the book as possible. Most of it seemed like legend and myth, though a lot of it was rather interesting Kaito doubted some of the things had actually happened. A lot of it started to change from myth into fact once he got to part about the formation of the Hidden Mist however, and the role the Osoroshī clan had played in it.

The Jubokko and the nearly invincible Blood Sages that worshiped the demonic tree were said to have been born from the blood enriched soil of the many battles wages long ago before the formation of the five great nations. Tales of the tree stealing the souls of the dead and using their ghosts to lure in the living so the street could kill and feed, were just as terrifying to Kaito now as they had been back when his grandmother had told him of such things.

The guardians, or more accurately, the wardens of the Jubokko, known as the Blood Sages, were a group of twelve shinobi and kunoichi that had banded together to defeat the vampiric tree. Failing in this task, the twelve realized that the only way to stop the bloodshed of the Juboko was to drink from it themselves, stealing the blood it so craved until it was starved to the point of going dormant. From then on the Blood Sages, with their increased lifespans, guarded the Jubokko so that none might fall victim to it again, and thus reawaken it to feed again.

As with all legend though, the Blood Sages grew twisted, corrupted by the blood they drank until they too began to thirst for more. Once they started to cause wars and slaughter entire villages, there was a civil war between the Blood Sages, weakening the group to the point that they were unable to defend themselves when the various clans came to hunt them down. Only one Blood Sage survived, or so their son did. Osoroshī, Osen firstborn of the Osoroshī Clan and the great herald of his people. Kaito had never heard of this individual before, even from his grandmother, so he didn't put much weight behind what all was said about him.

Kaito skipped a bit until he got to the part about his ancestors helping to found the Hidden Mist village. Apparently, the Osoroshī were the original ANBU of the village, or so the book claimed. Kaito wasn't foolish enough to believe everything he read after all. Regardless, Kaito read on, discovering that the Osoroshī had been required to hide their abilities they inherited from the Blood Sages, out of fear of what people would do to them if found. There was some information that spoke of other prominent clans knowing of the Osoroshī and their abilities, but apparently all members of the Osoroshī clan had been recruited into ANBU. It made since, all these years of suspecting his mother to be a Hunter-nin, and his grandmother had always displayed a similar level of prowess as a shinobi, even in her old age.

The part that made hid the saddest though, was how it seemed the clan had nearly killed itself off. So many members of the clan went insane with something called a Blood Frenzy, which Kaito could only guess at, that the other members opted not to have children, and a few even actively hunted their family down or killed their own children to avoid being discovered themselves. Without the Jubokko to grant them the legendary powers of the Blood Sages, the Osoroshī clan became little more than Hunter-nin and assassins for their village, their strange abilities, and reluctance to use them, only pushing them deeper and deeper into the shadows, until they were all but gone.

Kaito closed the book, he had had enough reading and personal discovery for the evening and his head hurt. Putting the book back onto the alter and moving to leave the small room, Kaito prefiely traced his hand across the sigil on the door before closing it and making his way back into his grandmother's study. He needed a good amount of saki right now, but he also knew that wouldn't really help him at all. Opting to just go to sleep for the night, Kaito went to wash the bloody tears from his face before finding his way into his bed. With a renewed love of his grandmother, as well as even more questions than before, Kaito drifted off into a sort of twisted nightmare. He could clearly see the Jubokko tree, the mangled roots seemed to poke through the grown as if to say hello. Standing on either side of the tree was his mother and grandmother, both wearing an ancient set of armor colored crimson with blood and looked as if rusted. Both shinobi held katanas at the ready, facing each other as if ready to do battle. Just as Kaito called out for them to stop, they two woman transformed into demonic looking monsters, with fangs, horns, and talons for claws. Their armor transcribed with glowing red runes, and their katanas now dripping with blood. Kaito screamed for them not to do it, but in a flash the two people he loved most slew each other at the base of the Jubokko tree.