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Chapter 67 - Arc 4 - Brawling in the Streets: One Step At a Time
🕑 Added 2024-08-04 22:34:09 +0000 UTCNot a fan of curb stomps like this, it always feels awkward to write, so this chapter took me a bit longer than most. That being said it's also significantly bigger than most chapters... well, percentage wise.
As always, thank you for your support.
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The first steps into the sewer system are the most impactful. Sakura’s nose dies instantly, but Neji and Tenten are clearly bothered if the looks on their faces are anything to go by. It’s pungent, and Sakura hates to admit that it’s just not that big a deal for her. So she won’t, they don’t need to know, she makes a gagging face herself to throw them off the trail of her degenerate years. She’s beginning to think the many times Ino made her try a perfume or a product weren’t about finding her ‘scent.’
It goes to show that love is dumb. The thought makes her smile brightly to herself even in encroaching darkness. It’s so damp around, the stream isn’t sticking to just the center between the two paths.
Ino's so good to her. Her entire team is. Neji and Tenten are good to her now too, maybe she can make friends if she’s given a good chance? She just needs time to show that she’s a good person, or, maybe that’s the wrong phrasing.
“Ambush up ahead.” Neji’s words catch her off guard and cause her to stumble in place.
“Ambush?” She asks, quirking her brow between him and Tenten, and then following Tenten’s leading gaze down a tunnel to their left after Neji makes some hand signs she doesn’t personally recognize. She can appreciate having a translator, but she doesn’t understand why he’s not using Konoha basic when an unfamiliar team member is around. Perhaps he’s worried about Konoha missing nin catching his signs? But then, if Tenten tells her anyway why not just say it? She chooses not to question Neji further at the moment, there are far more important things about. “Why down there?” she points down to the darkness, “that’s not even the right way to go if we follow the conventional path the dungeon has pushed us on so far.”
“That is true,” Neji agrees, nodding slowly while his Byakugan vision swirls and fills him with a world of information, “we could walk right past them if we wanted, and that is likely their intent. They probably plan to come from behind and pincer us with the rest of their forces later on.”
“So it’s bumble into them and fight now, or deal with their planned ambush later,” Sakura surmises, taking a deep breath of the stagnant, stale, almost acidic air, and placing a hand on Hunger’s handle for confidence. There’s something magical about the way it’s capable of making her feel safe in any situation, and it’s probably not the part of the sword that’s magic. If Tenten is to be believed, Hunger brings about despair and destruction, it breeds hatred and unease, paranoia blossoming until the sword is turned on anyone in sight.
She feels comforted in a very real way. It makes her wonder if it’s not that she’s immune to it in some way, but that it’s genuinely not treating her the same as it does everyone else. What if it’s one of those, the sword chooses its owner, situations? Could it have been made by some celestial smith thousands of years ago, roaming around the world in search of its one true master, and it just kinda lowered its standards over all that time until she was good enough?
All self doubts aside, her system chose her for some reason, maybe she is special. Whatever the case, she lets go of Hunger a moment later. She’ll draw it if things turn bad, she wants to get used to using other sources of power for now. A few hand seals pass, and she has two water clones forming to her side. Because water is one of her main affinities, she’s learning Water Clones as naturally as one might learn to swim. Figuring out hand seals for them shot her ahead, but the important fact is that she’s getting better at them every single time she summons them. She’d have water clones mastered by now if she hadn’t spent so much chakra on other matters, or if she was home and could use every bit of Chakra she has and then pass out for a few hours.
They’re not quite the full version of the jutsu yet, but at Proto-Level 5 she recognizes herself in them. They are one step away from being so realistic it’s awkward they don’t have clothes. They might already be there, but Neji hasn’t said anything… Then again, Neji can see through clothes.
She’s just about to ask Tenten if it’s weird yet, as a good sense of progression, when Neji makes a few random hand seals. “Look alive,” Tenten says, “the front group has entered the sewer system, it seems we’ll have to deal with both if we wait too long to engage the first group.”
If Naruto were here she’d suggest they set traps, as is, she needs to train that skill for future situations like this. The list of things she needs to learn is getting so long she’s not sure when she’ll ever find the time. “Let’s go then.” Sakura says, already lifting her hands and summoning her multi-elemental sword to her hand, before summoning a few more to float around her. Three, four, five, six-
She finds her body violently rejects the idea of a seventh, it’s too much for her to control at once and she stumbles in place, feeling nausea for even trying. It’s also a lot of chakra to expend, and she can’t help but want to smack herself upside the head for forgetting that. “Yeah, that makes sense.” She grunts to herself, shaking her head as she approaches the path they need to take.
Tenten’s already got a scroll ready. Neji starts pointing out targets for them with quick and nimble hand movements, and before long she has a pretty good idea of what they’re up against. Four Chunin and three Genin spaced around the dark corridor in front of them. They likely can’t see either, and are using some form of communication to know when they need to rush ahead and meet them from behind. Seven enemies, four of them a higher caliber, that’s not a great number for three genin to fight, but the element of surprise is very useful. They trusted that they wouldn’t be seen so much that they put themselves at a huge disadvantage, which means they somehow don't know about Neji.
With a count to three, she lets loose the swords floating above her with a snap of lightning that blows up the charges on their backs and sends them shooting forward like bullets. A mere moment later, Tenten lets loose a horde of weaponry from her scroll that looks more like a river of metal than anything she’s ever seen in her entire life.
.
The pathway in front of them is flooded with attacks, the darkness meaningless before the light provided by the sparks and igniting swords she’s sent down it. They shoot down towards where Neji pointed out the Chunin were, and while she watches two slam into hastily put up stone walls - a consequence of not having figured out how to make them spin - she hears several sickening thuds and slams, and even sees one person pinned to the floor. They don’t last long there, their screams drowned out only by the roar of the flames that overcome them from her activation of the sword jutsu’s flame element.
[16/20 Genin Killed]
[3/10 Chunin Killed]
On their initial attack, they’ve made their problem a lot more even, and she’s already sprinting down the hallway to continue the attack before they get their bearings.
[4/10 Chunin Killed]
Tenten’s volley picks off someone else before her third step. Even if that’s her sole contribution to this fight, she’s done more than any Genin should be expected, now they just have to do a whole lot more or get buried in this dungeon without any hope of anyone recovering their bodies.
If these are real people, that’s the fate they’ll meet too. She finds an odd comfort in the fact that leaving them all in a puddle of rubble doesn’t bother her. She’s already halfway down the pathway into the darkness by her third breath, and her sword has automatically slashed out and knocked several kunai away even though she couldn’t see them, like they were simply winds to be swept aside.
She sees it the moment it starts, the very nature of a dark corridor like this is that when a giant flame starts snaking its way down the way and filling the tunnel with scorching chakra, it’s visible to all, especially someone like her who’s actually deep in the dark tunnel. They probably intended a giant spiraling flame filling the land with cleansing rage to be intimidating, but for her, all it means is she slams a hand down on the stone and is suddenly engulfed with the powerful reinforcing sphere of Rollout. She continues flowing down the path, the spiky dirt around her getting hardened by the heat instead of broken, and she doesn’t slow for anything.
Having Neji’s eyes would be super helpful here, maybe she should research some way to see outside of her direct vision, especially with how dark it is inside of Rollout, but such thoughts hardly matter to her right now. What does matter-
[17/20 Genin Killed] is the crunch her ball makes as it treats someone like just another part of the terrain. A shot of lightning pierces the ball at her side, and she releases her protective circle of dirt just in time to move out of the way of another shot. She scoops up some of the dirt from Rollout and finds herself creating a second smaller sword from it as instinctively as breathing. The first one from earlier still rests in her palm, a little too large for the two sword style, but then she’s not trained in using two weapons anyway. She quickly adds the extra two elements to the short sword needed to make it her flying version, and flings it off with a snap of her fingers. She hears it clang against a weapon, and activates its fire, using it to light up the area enough for her to see her enemy. The steam that flows off of it is enough to force them to drop their own weapon, good, she thinks, she moves in.
Two enemies left, both with headbands have slashes through them. Suna and Konoha, it seems the alliance between them is strong enough even their missing Nin work together. A girl and a guy, brown and black hair respectively. It hardly matters to her enough to take in any more detail, because the reason she made the two water clones arrives, late but better than never. They’re so damn slow…
One after another, water blades begin to impact the two in front of her, forcing them to divert their attention from just her. It’s a fairly low effort use of her clones, but it’s more than enough to push them out of their comfort zone and stop the one girl from grabbing her discarded equipment. If that’s the only use she gets out of the Water Shuriken Jutsu, she’s happy. The next part is even more important, Tenten joins in on the barrage, forcing them back just as she cancels the flame and removes their vision.
This part is important, because she’s no longer needed. She stands with her sword at the ready to automatically react to things. Even if she fails the reaction test, it’ll still tell her where the attack is coming from, and she trusts herself enough to finish the reaction herself against two enemies being swarmed with projectiles in the dark.
It’s not her job anymore.
“Gurkha-”
“Tomok-gllu-”
Their bodies thumping to the wetness below is more than enough for her to know the job is done.
[6/10 Chunin Killed] The actual tracker is a pretty good secondary indicator. She discards her stone construct, cutting the power to it to conserve energy for the next batch, “good work, Neji.”
One of them can see in the dark, and kill via basic touch.
She doesn’t need to do everything, she just has to make it look like she’s the main threat long enough for him to cut off what made them human from the rest of their body.
She summons a tiny spark of flame so she can see, as she gets looking through the corpses.
“Are you sure now is the time for that?” Tenten asks, despite using the light to gather her own volley of weapons up.
“There’s another group coming for us, right?” Sakura asks, “I need to find out if they have anything worth taking before we possibly have to run for our lives. Besides, the last time I put off looting I forgot to go back!”
Comments
Mest450
Looting while you can is smart in most rpgs. Unless you get a bonus for speed in dungeon clearing.
Christopher Cummins
Ino was always there.
Dopplerdee
In retrospect Ino has a will of steel and is also kinda crazy.
