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Chapter 53 - Arc 4 - Brawling in the Streets: Magic is Real
🕑 Added 2024-07-04 07:18:31 +0000 UTCOkay, it's here, woo!
Safe rooms are conquered and the plot is progressed a bit, finally.
I needed those few days, they were very helpful, and I think the story will be better for them. Tomorrow's chapter should still be on time.
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“Okay, I guess it’s time.” Sakura stands in front, Neji falling into a stance, while Tenten readies the giant bomb that she calls a ‘grenade’ like she has no idea what a grenade actually is. Lifting the hammer in one hand, ready to grip it with the other the moment the door is actually open, Sakura turns the metallic knob of the door and jumps back in an effort to pull it open while getting the hell out of the way.
Palms smack against metal, and the sight of an endless horde arrives for all. It’s so thick, they’re trampling over each-other. The horde falls over itself, pressing onwards and charging them like they hold the key to their undead curse.
The thing is, they’re not actually moving. The corpse hands press against where the door was, and they bang against absolutely nothing without making even the slightest progress inwards. In fact, they find the shuffling dead are repelled like there’s actually a door there, “uh-huh.”
Sakura takes only a moment to realize what’s happening, this room has some kind of spawn protection. She readies the hammer in both hands and swings it with full force towards the first group of zombies in front of the barrier-
-cling-
-clang-
Sparks fly at her and her entire body shakes. One does not normally slam their weapon full force into an indestructible wall, and her arms ache in a way that makes her wonder if she broke something. She falls back on her ass without ceremony, and she finds herself staring at the unharmed apocalypse with wide eyes.
“Oh, that’s not good.” Sakura gulps.
“So the barrier is on our side too. I wonder how we are to get out then, slow graceful movements? I could try to slow down Jyuuken?” Neji ponders.
“That would probably work, but I worry about that moment where your fingers are outside the barrier, since they could grab you and drag you through,” Sakura says, “I have a better idea.”
Experimental jutsu normally shouldn’t be a kunoichi’s first instinct when on a mission, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Since Kakashi taught her how to make her own jutsu, she’s experimented with quite a few concepts. More Pokemon moves, for sure, but most of it’s been wasted efforts that only barely manage to contribute to anything but her affinity training.
One thing that wasn’t a complete waste of effort was her work on alternative versions of the clone jutsu, and working with Ino a little helped that effort a lot. She makes the hand seal for the basic clone jutsu, and calms herself. It’s more difficult to do it this way, to focus outside of reality and exist in a way that rejects it all and sinks deeper into the pool that is the subconscious. But Ino would whack her with a stick if she wasn’t zoning out properly, which did in fact make it harder to zone out, who’da thought being whacked might not be the best way to learn meditation. Regardless, she’s gotten pretty good at this for fear of getting smacked in the name of training and possibly not so repressed rage. Ino has things to work through, just like she does. It’s all one balancing act centering her in her place in the universe.
It’s that kind of thought which allows her to distance herself just enough that the beings that pop into existence beside her are not normal clones. They’re more see through, less there, and when they march through the barrier they do not immediately dispel upon being grabbed by the horde. To be truthful, they’re not even grabbed by the horde, they flow right through them and keep going down the hall.
The mass of rotting flesh that follows them has Neji and Tenten celebrating, but for Sakura, it’s hard to find her way back. She can’t just dispel them which’d cause the monsters to come back, and she can’t very well maintain it while thinking, so she just kind of exists.
“I thought clones dispelled on being touched?” Neji questions her. And when she doesn’t answer him, he places a hand on her shoulder, and shakes her.
She hears them pop outside the door, and shoots back into focus to see him looking at her with a confusing amount of concern. “Huh?”
“What was that?” Neji asks.
“I modified my chakra in the process to focus more on the illusion aspect, so that they could go through them.” Sakura explains. “It took a lot of work, and the Yamanka clan’s specialty is probably mostly who should take credit but…”
“You can do that?” Tenten gasps, “you can modify jutsu?”
“Your sensei hasn’t taught you how to make your own jutsu yet?” Sakura asks, and finds stares from the two elder genin. “We need to go, I can hear them approaching as we speak.”
She doesn’t have to tell them twice, they’re outside of the safe room before she finishes her next breath, her own now sluggish and slow heart beat only makes her trail behind them by a little.
It’s then that Tenten does a spin, “hup!” and one of her giant metal sea mines flies over the enemies’ head, landing on a group and disappearing into the mass.
“Should we get back in the safe room?” Sakura can’t help but ask, but her voice falls on deaf ears. Deaf mostly because of the shockwave loud enough to bring static to her vision and make her question if reality is really reality. Her legs quiver, her body shakes, she loses balance, and shredded limbs fly into the air ahead of them like they’re at a very gruesome concert. She finds it hard to stay on her feet even while leaning against the wall, but that’s okay, because the enemy has shrunk tremendously.
There’s so much devastation, so much horrific was-possibly-human-once-sludge, it spreads through the hallway like a cleaning service working in reverse. “What the hell.” Sakura gulps, watching the few remnants that weren’t blown to shreds get taken down by an overeager Neji and his graceful death touch.
“Gruuuuuhhh-” A quick look behind them shows that another monstrous group is shambling towards them from the opposite side of the hallway. Whether they’re attracted to the sound, or whether they’re just evil and can detect humans is not for her to figure out right now.
Right now, her priority is to follow Neji to the next safe room.
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“Well this is freaking awesome.” Tenten and Sakura find themselves staring at each-other with reddening cheeks, as the realization sets in that they’re not so different. After-all, that was both of them just now.
Neji rolls his eyes at the two while they contemplate their jinx, and who indeed owes the other a soda, but no one can deny that what’s in front of them is in fact, freaking awesome.
On the surface it looks like a normal metal box, painted green for seemingly no reason but very much just a box that happens to be made out of metal. There’s some strange words on it no one can read, and the quality of the box is very good, but it is in fact just a metal box. There’s nothing magical about the box, there’s no crazy decals on it or warnings or even a sci-fi mechanism for opening it that would require them to sacrifice something in return for its boon.
It has a latch, and it opens, and that’s it.
What’s inside the box though, is mind boggling. Cylinder, pump, slides and a graciously smooth grip, Sakura finds herself staring at a combat shotgun from a modern video game. It’s black and militant, like the kind you’d find in a proper FPS with an emphasis on gritty realism despite almost nothing about it being realistic.
It has three boxes of ammunition, and even an instruction manual on how to operate it, which is also written in a language none of them can decipher so it doesn’t matter at all.
“You want it?” Sakura asks Tenten, giving her a quirked brow and an awkward smile, “I don’t think I need another close range option.”
Sakura finds herself lacking in oxygen almost immediately, an issue that doesn’t dissipate quickly. The older girl inexplicably, and without warning, wraps her in the tightest hug possible and is refusing to let go.
In fact-
She trusts her, she just kind of closes her eyes and lets the lack of oxygen help her nap.
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At the next safe house, Sakura decides to stay outside and stand guard, waiting for Neji to get reading. Tenten also seems to want to guard, meaning the two of them stand on each side of the door, crushing zombie skulls with a hammer to each of them at every opportunity.
They don’t need a break yet, and they don’t need a horde growing outside the door, gnawing at it, just because Neji wants to read the documentation they’ve been given.
He says it’s important for the mission, and that the info he’s gathering on this Fierro person is very important, but she’s not so sure.
What she is sure of, is that Tenten is still giddy and jittery from getting her new weapon.
“What’s the difference between that shotgun and your gun?” Sakura asks, “they look different but they both shoot, right?”
“As I said earlier, my gun couldn’t shoot these rounds,” Tenten begins to explain mid swing at an encroaching creature, “my gun is practically a black box with some rudimentary powder inside. The concept is the same, but there’s so much distance between what entertainment shows us, and what we can really do.”
“But you called it a Glock.” Sakura reminds her.
“Glock doesn’t actually exist, Sakura, my gun can’t even break the sound barrier. It’s just a fun phrase I came up with, it’s a brand you see in games and movies a lot.” Tenten actually snickers at her, like she’s the dumb one.
“Well, sorry, I didn’t know that.” Sakura huffs a little, but quickly brightens up at her next thought, “you play games? Do you want to play sometime when we get home?”
“Uhhh, sorry, I don’t play with people who have anger issues.” Tenten gives her a pitying gaze that makes her skin crawl a little.
“I don’t have-errr, I guess I do, but…” Okay so attacking Neji cost her a potential gaming buddy, that really sucks, but at least she didn’t say no forever, she just has to learn to control her temper!
Soon enough Neji steps out of the room, and she marches into it before they leave so she can loot what he didn’t grab. Which appears to be everything, as even with the Byakugan he appears to suck at finding items. She finds another First-Aid Spray and some more ammo for Tenten, the mystical bullets, as the girl puts it. The dungeon is being quite generous with these healing items.
Tenten wants to stand guard alone at the next stop, so Sakura finds herself in the safe room taking a breather and stretching out a little. It’s so dull, this trek is just move and read, move and read, crush a skull and loot. That might be kind of cool in a game, but in real life she’s finding it lacks the same looter shooter grind dopamine rush that keeps her going day after day. The loot is nice, but it’s not an endless armory or thousands of bolts for her crossbow, so she feels like she’s rolling poorly in a gacha.
Tenten got a good roll, that was nice.
“Why are you reading all of this?” Sakura asks the focused boy, “does it matter at all?”
“It does.” Neji says with vehemence, “these are the research notes of that Dark Meister, he is clearly the one summoning the horde.”
“So, these weren’t people?” Sakura asks before allowing herself a sigh of relief, “that’s good.”
“No, they were… he’s summoning their souls back to their bodies and then repairing the bodies so that they’re only mostly dead instead of completely decayed. He’s been using the endless horde of the dead this village had in its graveyard. This note says he also went to other graveyards of nearby villages, so this is the result of generations of dead from multiple places. It’s been a several year project where he’s grave robbed basically every corpse around, and has been storing them in an underground facility he stumbled across. He believes it may have been one of Orochimaru’s research facilities.”
“Seriously?” Sakura groans to herself, she’s not even going to question Orochimaru, that’s the boogeyman of Konoha, if something nefarious is happening it has to do with him every time. It’s only fitting he’s involved here somehow, even if only indirectly. “What’s that have to do with genin and chunin and rebels and stuff?”
“I haven’t read enough yet to know, but this is probably a test run. If a few small villages can give him this much power, and it works, with some help and the graveyards of Konoha he could probably take down the village. Or at least cause enough damage we struggle to recover for a while. Every death would add to his army, while we’d lose power.”
“You think he might seriously have eyes on Konoha?” Sakura asks.
“No, probably not, a single Jonin would just have to get lucky and find him to kill him, that’s too much heat for a guy who’s probably only chunin strength himself. Still, no chakra techniques we’ve ever found can raise the dead like this, he’s achieved actual magic, and that’s far more interesting than a few zombies and the threat they pose to civilians.”
“He’s also probably not a real person, but a simulated one made so there’s a boss to this dungeon,” Sakura says, “so why are the main objectives, the genin and chunin even here?”
“Padding?” Neji suggests, “content is hard, and giving us a good fight or six on our way to him would add a lot of it.”
“No, no, not from a design perspective, I mean like, why are they involved? Like as people, if he likely doesn’t exist, how did they get roped into this?” She questions with an irritated flailing of one of her hands, “we know they’re real.” Unless they aren’t, what if the genin and chunin are out and about in the real village and they’re killing fake versions like back with Gato?
“That entire question hinges on an assumption that is flawed at its core,” Neji says, “if we assume he does exist in the real world, the entire experience makes sense. It’s simple, we should keep it simple.”
“But then magic exists.” Sakura points out.
“Sakura… we’re in a dungeon. An actual dungeon. We have already moved significantly further in this house than there was space for us to move, this home is bigger on the inside than the outside. There were levels at the front, and threats of scaling, and we’re locked in here behind magical barriers and an endless horde that is likely much bigger than the actual amount of zombies at hand. Magic exists.” Neji looks away from his reading to stare her down.
And something cracks in her a little.
Something important.
Her bolts are magic, this system is magic, the dungeons are magic, magic… exists.
And not just as a cool phrase to describe unexplained chakra, they are in a magic place, trying to fight a magic person. Despite seeing proof right in front of her at every turn, her own rationality has actually stood in the way of it properly clicking. She’s assumed her system is localized, but what if it’s not? What if there are other forms of magic in this world, and she’s merely one pawn in a much larger game of magic nonsense?
What if she’s not the protagonist? She might need to take things even more seriously than she has, and that’s terrifying.
She gets up to start searching for loot again, and finds nothing but ammo, and a bar of chocolate.
She thinks she’ll eat it now. She could use some comfort.
Comments
Christopher Cummins
"What if I'm not the protagonist!?" - Famous last words.
Dopplerdee
Oh Sakura, you can only run from implications so long.
