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Chapter 48 - Arc 4 - Brawling in the Streets: Found a Dungeon
🕑 Added 2024-06-22 19:24:10 +0000 UTCSakura needs to get her head on straight, and these Genin aren't helping in the short term. Maybe long term though?
I'm actually ahead again, so yesterday, instead of rushing to get it done and post it before too late at night I was playing games with friends and taking a much-needed day off.
Because the rush wasn't there, that mental connection saying "Today's Friday, post a chapter!" just uh, wasn't there. So sorry about that. I had it, uh. I have Sunday and Monday's Chapters done already too, so if those end up late feel free to DM me or comment on this or something.
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Sakura’s head is still pounding from the adrenaline when they decide to go back out. Sharing reports was quick, and Tenten handled them so that Neji and Sakura didn’t have to have a conversation so soon. She’s sure it’ll be fine, he doesn’t seem like the type to hold that kind of grudge - weirdly enough - and he promised to look the other way. She’s still quite embarrassed about flying off the handle like that, but with a calm mind, she can determine that it probably wasn’t the sword that caused her to lose it, even if it didn’t help.
Neji hit a button of hers she didn’t know she had, she’s been so much more vulnerable to other people’s feelings since her charm started rising and she hasn’t been put in a stressful situation where it mattered yet. Turns out she’s empathetic all of a sudden, and that’s difficult to deal with for a girl who didn’t truly understand others even had feelings just a few months ago. Well, she did, analytically, but it’s one thing to know something and another to understand something.
She understands now, and it hurts. She’s just lucky it was Neji that set her off and not some poor rookie Genin Inuzuka training with his dog too hard or something.
“Thank you.” Tenten’s words cut through her thoughts, and drag her back to reality. Her tone is stiff, her body language false and only there in the hopes her dumb ass can’t tell the difference. A few weeks ago she might have been fooled, as is, it’s a pretty poor thank you, but as sheepish as Sakura feels at being lied to so blatantly she can’t help but understand.
This is probably what lying badly looked like. Tenten wants her to understand she appreciates what happened but doesn’t know how to communicate that with the understanding that she isn’t actually grateful to her. Which makes sense, Sakura probably just made their team dynamic worse, not better. If she wants to make changes she needs to talk to Gai, not attack Neji with a sword in broad daylight.
There’s also the part where she cut one of the dead in half, to get the power to punish Neji, for killing said corpse. There’s no way Tenten viewed that as a positive. She looked like an axe murderer, and still feels a little like one too since she hasn’t had time to get clean.
“Do you think we’ll complete this quickly or long term?” Sakura asks.
“It’s gonna be a while, Neji’s hot-headed but he’s too reserved at the same time to make use of his temper productively.” Tenten explains. “It’s better than him being mad all the time, but without leaning into it, there’s no way we can complete this mission quickly.”
“I noticed,” Sakura admits, “he’s clearly grappling with his own motivations. He wants it done, and wants them dead, but he’s not willing to give an order like ‘hunt them down and kill them all.’”
“I’m kind of happy about that,” Tenten admits, “but, maybe that’s dumb.”
“I don’t think it’s dumb to be happy that your teammates are people you want to be paired with.” Sakura says, “but I also think he needs to choose one. You can’t be flippy flopping on something like that, you’ll just make both sides angry with you and get little done except arguing. Murders or captures, doing both is just dumb, and I’m pretty sure no one that chooses captures without practical motive is ever getting to Jonin. Maybe Chunin…”
“You’re one to talk about picking a path, you just went at him then apologized.” Tenten points out.
“I’m twelve.” It’s her only defense.
She doesn’t have many of them, but that’s a good one she should use more often.
“Yeah, well…” Tenten’s cheeks puff up a little at her reasoning. “I dunno about promotions, Gai doesn’t go on killing sprees just because it’s more practical, and he’s a Jonin.”
“Hmm…” She doubts that fact. He’s probably just being less violent in front of them because it’d be very hard to train them if they were terrified. The man’s goofy attitude has a practical purpose, but then, Kakashi’s not killing people all over the place either and he doesn’t care about scaring them even a little bit.
Is she wrong?
She needs to talk to Kakashi when they get home. He’ll probably have a better answer for her than anything they’ll come up with, even if he is a dick.
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Their steps take them in circles around the village. It’s not particularly large, and it’s barren so there’s no one to run into or bother. She would love for a brawl to break out in the streets any moment now so she could bleed off some of her anger at Neji and herself - literally - but as is it doesn’t seem like the enemy is taking things lightly. There’s caution in every breath, and Sakura is becoming very aware, very quickly, that they’re not advancing this mission without going inside somewhere.
Which is why her feet take her to the town center. She doesn’t plan to charge in, but maybe standing at the enemy hideout - it only makes sense to pick the biggest most important building - will draw some aggro and bring a few to them.
No such luck. She feels a little dumb standing here, waiting for nothing to happen and still being disappointed.
“What in the hell?” Tenten shouts, just as Sakura gets reading. She ignores her, this is more important.
[Dungeon: Rebel Base, Level 26
Party Level: 17
Warning: Your Party Level is being divided by 3 but you only have 2 members.
You will die if you enter this dungeon.]
She checks her own party contribution level, and finds she’s hit level 23, which means Tenten - by quick math - is 28. Jeez, Tenten appears to be the weak one on the team, which means she started a fight earlier with someone who’s like level 30, easily. She’s lucky to be alive.
“What the, what are you doing? Why are you not reacting to this?” Tenten hisses. “What the hell?”
“Huh?” Sakura tilts her head at the girl, still doing calculations and pondering just how much work she needs to do to prepare for this dungeon if they decide to tackle it, when Tenten grabs her head by force, and shifts her view to look at the dungeon screen. “What?”
“Are you not seeing this?” Tenten asks, a tremble to her voice making it warble like she’s got a little water in her lungs.
“Seeing what exactly?” She tries to look around it, maybe-wait, didn’t Sasuke see the screen? “Oh, you can see it.”
“Yes I can see the, is that supposed to be news?” Tenten hisses hard, the s sound travels, “Wait just a moment, you’ve seen this before?”
“Oh boy.” Sakura sighs to herself, somewhat long and mournful. It seems like anyone she goes on a mission with might just be shown her game system. Dungeons are just visible. “This is a dungeon, it’s a space outside of reality that contains our targets.” She’ll need to talk to Kakashi about this, maybe the Hokage, action needs to be taken before all of Konoha knows about her. Perhaps they should limit her partners, or only let her go without her team to very close places without much potential exploration?
It’s dumb in hindsight, but she’d genuinely thought that Naruto and Sasuke could see the first dungeon’s entrance because they were her teammates officially, and her power accepted how much she trusted them. Now she feels stupid, and Tenten knows.
[Quest Obtained: Clear the Rebel Base
Your party has noticed that no one but academy students are out and about, and determined that the brass of the problem are inside the rebel base dungeon.
It’s your first time with a One-Shot Dungeon, so be prepared as they are very different. One-Shot Dungeons are self-contained adventures that are normally significantly longer, contain multiple parts, and are more brutal than normal dungeons. Expect to spend several days clearing it.
Of course, if you’re too scared, starving them out over a few weeks will likely work too. Assuming no one’s sneaking them goods, like a ninja.
Rebel Base Dungeon Cleared: 0/1
Reward: Mission Completion, +1000 Affection score with Neji Hyuuga, +1000 Affection score with Tenten Higurashi, +1000 Affection score with Lee Rock, Recommendation of Sakura Haruno for Chunin from Maito Gai during grading phase of next Chunin exam]
Those rewards are great. She’s not completely sure what affection scores really do but she can say with certainty that she needs every point after the crap she pulled earlier. The more this team likes her, the less likely they are to make a big deal about it and put it in the mission report despite what they said.
She’s not dumb enough to think Neji won’t go back on his word in an instant if she screws up again. He might have been lying in the first place, her charm isn’t high enough for her to trust her own instinct that says he won’t. He probably just wanted to keep the peace while they are on an actual mission together and didn’t want to lose her fighting strength by sending her home right away. But if she can make friends and mingle and make them very much like her, it’s possible her actions only get to the Hokage in a private report - of which she’s sure everyone will be honest with because lying to the Hokage is really stupid - which would mean that the Hokage would be the only one that knows. If the Hokage is the only one that knows, it means he can deal with it with his own discretion instead of having to worry about what kind of statement forgiving her or being lenient might bring about.
Next there’s the mission’s completion - which is amazing, obviously - and Gai’s promotion recommendation. It’s said you only need 3 Jonin recommendations - four if you count your sensei - to promote after the exams are finished, that’d be a third of the promotion before she’s even entered the exams. Your own Jonin sensei’s recommendation is required, assuming you have a Jonin sensei, but by even sending you to the exams they are recommending you and it’s rare that they get rescinded so she can assume she’ll already have his.
There’s just one problem. Dungeons are rated for three people, there are four people on this team. What even happens if she tries to bring a fourth? And does she want Neji to know about her power? Does she want Lee to know? Does she even want Tenten to know?
“Outside reality? Like inside a sealing scroll?” Tenten asks, musing her from her thoughts in an instant.
“Yes, kind of exactly like that. We’ll find our targets, loot, and a challenge inside. Think of it like a living structure trying to answer our mission on its own.
“That’s… What the fuck.” Tenten says.
“You pulled a Glock, I still think that’s the most distressing thing here.”
“It was Glock-o-Clock though.”
Comments
Dopplerdee
Fucking Glock-o-clock
