Zakuro Tetsukawa

Character Description

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Future Use - Timeskip:

Basic Information

Character Name: Zakuro Tetsukawa
Gender: Male
Age: 23
Height: 5’11”
Weight: 182 lbs
Personality: For the most part, Zakuro has a relatively calm temperament, able to keep a level head in most situations.  He finds honing his sword skills and taking long baths to be particularly calming.  When in the midst of combat, he almost always takes the situation with absolute seriousness.  While Zakuro isn’t particularly cruel, being a part of the Bloody Mist for most of his life, he has no qualms taking a life.  He is also a bit hypocritical and realizes this.

Basic Info Continued

Village: Kirigakure
Rank: Jounin (former), Rogue-Nin
Weapon(s): Shinzo (Sword with a broken blade), Typical ninja gear (kunai, shuriken, etc.)
Fighting Style: Zakuro is a master swordsman and has been trained ever since he was a child, much earlier than he was taught ninjutsu.  He also knows a wide variety of water style jutsu and can nature transform to use wind style to enhance his sword fighting.  In particular, Zakuro is proficient in creaking water blades.  He makes use of this to temporarily “reforge” the blade of his broken family sword by making a blade out of finely weaved and held together water.  He can use the malleability of water to alter the length of the blade and is able to extend it great distances so long as he has the chakra reserves.  

History

Zakuro grew up in Kirigakure always admiring the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist.  As his family traditionally practiced sword fighting, he trained especially hard in order to achieve his goal of becoming one in the future.  His father, Kenjiro, was also a great admirer of the swordsmen, to such a degree of reverence, one would think it bordered on worship.  Despite this, he behaved as a father would and raised his son to be a great swordsman and successor to their traditional sword style.  

In the main room of the house, a brilliant katana way displayed.  It was a family sword passed down for generations and kept in pristine condition and was said to rival the blades of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist.  Despite what the family might like to say, in reality, it was just a well-made, but perfectly normal sword.  Knowing no other way of life, Zakuro killed his first person, a classmate, in order to advance on to the rank of Genin.  Throughout the years he continued to train with his father and other Chunin and Jounin from the village, eventually becoming a Jounin himself.  He reached the rank of Jounin at age 20.  

Zakuro visited home often, and one day, news came for his father that he had been formally recognized and had a chance to become one of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen, but he had to leave for the counsel immediately for deliberation.  The family was overjoyed and Kenjiro, wanting nothing more than this his whole life, obliged.  Two days later Kenjiro returned to their home, the Executioner's Blade strapped across his back, and a stern, almost sullen, look on his face.  The blade did not appear to be in its normal condition, and seemed to have the end of the blade broken off.  Zakuro’s mother, Yashiro, welcomed her husband home just before being sliced in half.  

Zakuro, just in the other room, heard the commotion and ran to the entryway only to see his father wielding a blood soaked Executioner's Blade, slowly returning to its former glory via its power, and his mother, dead on the floor.  Horrified, he fell backwards, just barely missing the Blade as it swung for him.  Zakuro stumbled back into the main room, fleeing Kenjiro.  He reached for the family sword and pulled it from its scabbard.  He went to block a downward slash, but upon contact, the Executioner's Blade shattered the blade of the family sword, Shinzo, causing the Executioner's Blade to be deflected enough to miss Zakuro.  While the majority of Shinzo’s blade was gone, there was still about eight inches or so near the hilt.  While Kenjiro was recovering from the deflected swing, Zakuro manages to reach with his remaining sword and slice off Kenjiro’s sword hand.  

In his agonizing cries, a mix of pain and shouts of how he can never use a sword again, he revealed that the counsel put him up to this.  The only way he would be allowed to serve them as one of the Seven Swordsmen would be if he could repair the blade with the blood of his own family, so that they knew they could trust him.  Zakuro was horrified both at his father and the village.  While he himself had slain his fellow classmate to become a ninja he did not expect his father to turn on his own family and for the village to order their deaths for something like that.  Enraged at his father, he used a crude version of his water blade technique on his family sword and decapitated his father, losing faith in his village and his former goal of becoming a Swordsman of the Mist.    

He took the Executioner's Blade, realizing it was not something he could properly wield, and tossed in in the middle of the lake next to his house.  It may not be impossible to retrieve, but anyone would have a hard time finding it, even if they had a way to breath underwater.  A small form of retribution against the village leaders that he would have to settle for. Zakuro took what he could from his house and left the village, silently.  He spent three years on his own, wandering and further honing his skills and perfecting his water blade technique that spontaneously came to him, and keeping the broken blade as a memento of the good memories he had with his family, and a lesson of how the lengths people will go for their ambitions.