Chapitre 231: CH_7.13 (231)
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The link is also in the synopsis
———
.
'Take a deep breath,' Takuma said to himself.
He groaned as another hot stab assaulted his head. There wasn't a worse time to get a headache than when he was surrounded by unknown hostiles. A part of him wanted to find out about the first person who had triggered his headache, but he could see a trap when he saw one.
The unknown shinobi had set the police station ablaze in hopes of drawing out the culprit behind the Bentetsu police station bombing, and Takuma had played right into their hands. He had to escape regardless of what he wanted because capture wouldn't mean good things for him. Fortunately for him, his hood was concealing his face from view—as long as he could shake them off, he could escape without the possibility of a sketch of his face plastered around the town.
"We're leaving," Takuma said, still trying to calm himself down.
Takuma and his clone jumped off the rooftop into a side alley and quickly headed towards the police station street, where the crowds gathered. Without a word, both of them used the Transformation Jutsu to turn into two young women in an attempt to blend into the crowd.
Transformation Jutsu was easy to detect when one was looking for it, but the difficulty spiked when the adversary was looking at a crowd from a distance. They consciously chose to transform into women in an attempt to throw off their pursuers.
"Stay," said Takuma.
"Are you sure?" asked the clone in the form of a young woman.
It was an extremely risky move to stay in the crowd instead of instantly taking off—but Takuma expected the pursuers to look for people leaving the crowd. They moved away from the side alley entrance as that area would be looked at with the most suspicion after people walked away from the scene.
"Yes," Takuma whispered as he stared at the burning building for an excruciating fifteen seconds. Every second that passed was one where he thought that the unknown shinobi would jump down to surround them.
"Okay, I think this is enough time," said the clone. "This is what we're going to do. I will go ahead and try to cross the roadblock to make a scene. Use that commotion to slip away. Agreed?"
The street had been closed off for safety as the firefighters tried to contain the fire.
Takuma nodded after a second of consideration.
"Go," he said,
The clone in the disguise of a young woman took a step forward before unexpectedly stopping.
"What happened?" asked Takuma, thinking the clone must've spotted something.
"… You've got that headache, so I don't know if you noticed it or not," said the clone, "but do you recognize their tactical gear?"
The clones were different from himself in various ways. Even though they were complex creations, at their core, they were simple simulacra of the user. Unlike Takuma, who focused on the middle-aged man and his intuition headaches, the clone's first order of business after seeing the masked figures was to ensure Takuma's safety. It was a noted factual observation that the clones didn't have strong self-preservation instincts unless ordered to, as they knew their life span was limited from conception. They would put the original before them in every matter and were highly receptive to orders from the original.
There could be many reasons why the clone didn't get the same headache as Takuma. Perhaps the clone didn't care about finding out the truth of the matter at the moment, or he didn't have a good look at the man before he spotted the masked figures, which caused his priorities to switch.
Whatever it was, it allowed the clone to focus on the many different things that Takuma missed in his fluctuating mental state.
"What do you mean?" asked Takuma.
"Their tactical gear… it's exactly the same as the assassins from that night," said the clone.
Takuma's entire world screeched to a stop. He stared at the clone through wide eyes, while the memories of that rainy night flashed through his mind. He recalled the assassins' gear, washed in the yellow light of their fire ninjutsu. The clone was correct; the assassins wore the same black and grey tactical gear he had just seen a minute before.
A phantom pain flashed through Takuma's left leg, reminding him of the injury that had given him so much trouble; he had to arrive at Camp Banana with a walking cane. He grabbed his leg tightly and bit the inside of his mouth as the spark of apprehension from getting caught in a trap surged into a choking swell of fear.
"Get a hold of yourself; you've got to make it out alive," the clone pinched Takuma's arm.
Takuma looked at the clone, who was still transformed as a young woman, and took deep, calming breaths.
"Go. I'll be fine," he said.
The clone wasted no time and pushed through the crowd towards the road back on the street corner. Takuma turned to walk away from the scene, and as expected, he heard a loud commotion. He ignored it and kept walking away. With the thoughts muddling his brain, it took him all to stop himself from tearing away at full speed—he couldn't even walk briskly because it would be too fast for a civilian.
Takuma stopped when he heard a faint whistle coming above him. He immediately side-hopped and pressed himself against the nearby building. A moment later, a kunai stabbed the pavement where he stood.
He could tell that the clone was still alive, but the distraction ploy had failed. Takuma dropped all pretence, shed his disguise, and bolted away at full speed. The civilians yelped and exclaimed at the scene of a seemingly normal young woman turning into a shady hooded figure. They screamed when another kunai descended from the sky, stabbing the pavement close to them.
Takuma ignored them and pressed forward. He glanced to the side and saw a masked pursuer, with orange highlights on the white mask, sprinting from rooftop to rooftop, keeping up with him. Takuma changed course very abruptly and turned into a narrow alley off the main street.
The unmasked man, the leader of the masked group, dropped down to the other end of the alley from the sky, cutting off Takuma's route.
"Surrender," said the leader.
Takuma dug his heels into the ground to stop and course corrected towards the adjacent wall. He leaped up the exposed brick wall and ascended as fast as his legs could go. The leader launched a kunai at Takuma and he spun in a quick, complete rotation, catching the kunai. Before gravity could take effect, Takuma was back on the wall and climbing to the roof.
The orange masked figure leaped from across the street and landed on the rooftop while Takuma was pulling himself up. Using the kunai he'd caught, he formed bogus hand seals to trick "Orange-Mask" into thinking he was applying ninjutsu to the kunai. The masked man dove to the side to evade the plain kunai instead of deflecting it.
Takuma didn't stop and directly leaped to the next rooftop, but he didn't reach it. The leader appeared beside him and kicked him completely off course. Taken by surprise, Takuma managed to raise his block, but was hurled towards a building across the street.
"Gah!"
His back smashed against the wall, crushing the bricks and cement. Takuma stuck to it and continued his escape from his pursuers. He ran around the building before dropping down to the street level, and tore through alleyways and bends, sticking close to the building walls and hiding within the long, arcing shadows.
It was reminiscent of the night of the assassination attempt. He was running with pursuers hot on his tail. Back then, he didn't like that it was raining, but right now he really wished it was. Yu was drastically smaller than the Hidden Leaf village, and a big commotion could have the enemy forces come down on him. To make things worse, Takuma didn't know Yu as well as he did the Hidden Leaf. He couldn't go towards the industrial district with the factory base, nor could he go towards Chinatsu's house—and those were the two areas he knew best.
For the first time since he had been in Yu, the city felt truly hostile. He cursed himself as he sprinted through the streets, unable to lose the pursuers—he shouldn't have gone out alone. He saw shadows leaping over the buildings and the sound of footsteps as they pursued him like he was a game animal.
The sounds grew closer. He glanced back to see the leader on his tail, a few metres between them. Takuma exerted himself to boost forward when Orange-Mask appeared at the other end of the alley.
Takuma immediately switched to running up the walls again.
On the ground, the leader weaved hand seals. He breathed out a thin stream of fire, cupping it between his hands to form a long spear in his hands. Takuma saw the leader cock his arm back for a javelin throw—he wasn't going to catch that. His danger instinct tingled, telling him that dodging it narrowly wouldn't be enough.
Takuma's mind moved faster as he cycled through his recollection of the street in his mind as his eyes were locked on the leader's spear.
'Window'
Takuma glanced at the window one story above him. As the leader heaved the spear, chakra flooded into Takuma's feet and expunged out of the soles of his feet. The wall underneath his feet cratered as the wall/tree-walking technique was overloaded, and Takuma was propelled off the wall.
Crash! The glass shattered as Takuma went through the window pane less than a second before the spear reached his position and exploded. The fiery rush of flames managed to enter through the window and he would have been consumed by the roaring fire if not for his forward roll onto the floor.
Takuma had no time to look back and stumbled forward into an apartment bedroom. He hurried out of it in search of an exit, having taken one step to run into a pudgy woman holding a kitchen knife to his face. In one fluid movement, he disarmed the screaming housewife and threw a kunai with an explosive tag out of the broken bedroom window.
It exploded right outside the window ledge, damaging the building and the room, but it bought him a few more seconds before the pursuers came in.
He looked down at the screaming housewife who quieted under Takuma's gaze.
"Shut up and hide," he said before hurrying deeper into the house. He saw an old woman closely hugging a five- or six-year-old girl in a living room, both of whom looked terrified. Despite the twinge of guilt in his chest, he had no time to calm them down, so he ignored them.
The apartment was small, and he immediately saw the front door up ahead. He was halfway through it when his peripheral vision caught the sight of a large bucket full of water through an open bathroom door.
Takuma took the risk and weaved hand seals for the Water Style: Eight Tentacles. Just as he finished the hand seals, the leader stepped into the bedroom through the hand seal. Their eyes met, and both of them immediately drew and threw a kunai at each other. The kunai collided in the narrow hallway, a few feet away from the housewife, who screamed and dropped to the ground in fear. In the living room, the little daughter started crying as the grandmother hugged her tighter.
Takuma backed up toward the door and threw three shuriken toward the leader. He deflected them with a kunai while the water inside the bucket rose up in a freeform blob and flew at Takuma, who smashed through the front door into the open corridor.
The leader threw a kunai through the house as Takuma vaulted over the open corridor. The water blob attached to Takuma and sprung out two tentacles that caught the kunai. As he jumped down, he saw Orange-Mask run into the street from around the corner.
Takuma bit his lip in frustration.
He could feel that his clone was still alive and by the looks of it, had taken two out of four pursuers away from him. Despite that, Takuma felt that as long as he had these two after him, he wouldn't be able to escape.
The situation was only getting worse. Takuma's directional sense was average in all purposes, and he was already confused about where he was. For all he knew, he could have subconsciously leading them to the industrial complex of Chinatsu's house. The longer he was on the run with his focus on shaking the pursuers, the worse thing would get. Even if he wanted to get some help by going close to Chinatsu's house in hopes that the team would notice, he wouldn't be able to find his way quick enough.
He needed to eliminate one of them if he wanted a fair chance at escaping, and between the two, Orange Mask not only felt less threatening, but Takuma also had questions he wanted to ask the leader about how the man related to his past.
"Looks like Orange Mask has to die," he muttered.
.
———
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Chapitre 232: CH_7.14 (232)
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The link is also in the synopsis
———
.
As Takuma jumped from the apartment corridor, he considered his situation. Orange-Mask was waiting for him on the ground, and the leader was only a few seconds away inside the apartment. He was continuously being cornered and desperately needed something to change if he wanted to escape.
There was no use mindlessly running around hoping something would change. Doing so would only tire him out; he had to make the changes himself.
He listed out the problems plaguing him.
The combination of Orange-Mask and the leader had him trapped well, so the solution was to get rid of one of them. Orange-Mask was the obvious choice because Takuma wanted to interrogate the leader in the future. Once he got rid of Orange-Mask, there would be much more space and time to shake the leader off his tail.
But he had to separate Orange-Mask from the leader if he wanted to eliminate him. To do that, he needed to make sure the leader couldn't back up his subordinate.
The solution? Get familiar with his surroundings.
He couldn't miraculously install a map of Yu in his mind instantly, but he could build a map of a single block fairly quickly. Instead of running blindly, restricting himself to a limited area was a better choice. The downside was that Orange-Mask and the leader would also become used to block the more time they spent in it—but there was no other alternative.
Finally, there were the two other pursuers he had to consider. They were chasing his clone, but that could end at any moment—he expected it would happen soon because the clone was weaker than him. It was only a matter of time before the other two masked pursuers joined the hunt, and if that happened, his already bleak chances would plummet to zero.
He had failed to escape death last time and had to be rescued by a passing jonin. Deep in enemy territory, the only thing waiting for him was a kunai in the dark and the high likelihood of torture if he was captured. Moreover, his limited area plan also made them easier to find as they were in the same location.
Time was an important factor. He had to kill Orange-Mask and escape the leader quickly. Otherwise, backup would arrive, sealing his fate.
As Takuma landed on the ground, he threw a smoke ball toward Orange-Mask, who rushed toward Takuma with his sword drawn. He cut the smoke ball down, causing it to burst into a cloud of black smoke. Blinded, Orange-Mask skipped ahead and swung his sword, but it slashed the air. Takuma could've retaliated inside the smokescreen, but he chose to run away.
It was time to play cat-and-mouse.
.
-.-.-
.
Inside the apartment unit, Kon ignored the crying woman begging him to spare them, walked through the unit, and left through the front gate.
His plan to lure the culprits behind the police station bombing had been successful. He had to sacrifice a few lives to taint their image, but it was at an acceptable cost. It was fortunate that Yu didn't have a native shinobi population, so it was very easy to locate the two hooded men peering down at the scene from the rooftops.
Though he had to say, the one he was following was quite slippery.
From the corridor, Kon saw Orange-Mask step out of the haze of black smoke, looking for the target. He looked around and saw a glimpse of the target entering an alley, giving chase by running on the apartment building. He saw the target closing toward the exit to the alley. Kon pushed chakra into his feet, shattered the bricks beneath him.
"Got you," Kon whispered as he drew his sword to cut down the target.
But to his surprise, his sword cut through an afterimage. It was the Body Flicker Jutsu. By the time his feet touched the ground, the target was several metres away from him and was heading towards another alley.
"…Really slippery," Kon whispered to himself—but he didn't mind it; he had been in the city for months, and it was getting dull—a hunt like this was just the pep-up he needed.
Kon used the Body Flicker Jutsu himself and flashed forward. He saw the target was once again running up a building and followed him to the rooftop and across to the next one. He drew three kunai and threw them at his target. It was a mistake to be in such an open area. Plus, the target was in mid-air with no means to change direction. Once again, he was met with an unexpected result as the kunai passed through the target's body without resistance.
Then, the target's disappeared into nothing while he was in the air.
The answer evaded Kon for a lengthy moment before he recognized it to be the Clone Jutsu. It was a basic tactic taught in Shinobi Academies worldwide with nearly no use in the real world because illusory clones didn't cast shadows, which was an uncanny tell—but the target's clone was mid-jump, eliminating the shadow problem.
A vein throbbed on Kon's forehead; he wasn't pleased to have been duped by such a simple trick.
———
.
Thanks to the Clone Jutsu, Takuma had bought himself a few precious seconds. He looked around, memorising all he could about the place. They were in a residential area with small apartment buildings. There was an alley between each building, which provided excellent access and gave him a lot of options. He was on the street, which made him highly visible, so Takuma quickly went towards the alley nearest him. As he was about to enter, he noticed a shadow in his peripheral vision.
It was Orange-Mask.
Takuma increased his speed and dashed through the alley when he noticed that the alleys between the buildings were there for garbage as there was a garbage collection corner in every alley.
He had an idea. Takuma jumped into the garbage collection corner and knelt down beside the garbage.
He heard the footsteps grow closer until Orange-Mask ran past him. Takuma jumped Orange-Mask and threw an augmented punch towards the man's face. Orange-Mask ducked under the punch and stabbed out with his sword. Takuma dodged with a quick step back before going in with a counter augmented-punch.
Orange-Mask pulled his torso back to get out of the punch's range—and evaded more of his strikes when Takuma tried to follow up with an agile combo. His skills weren't a surprise, given the skills of the assassins he'd fought.
However, he was no longer the same shinobi he was that night.
He punched out the final strike of the combo that Orange-Mask avoided by pulling back his torso and getting his sword into position for his counter, but it didn't matter as Takuma turned the final punch into a second-form augmentation. The chakra flowed out of Takuma's fist and crashed into Orange-Mask's face, shattering the mask and revealing the black balaclavas underneath.
Orange-Mask stumbled back a few steps.
The water tentacles snapped forward and wrapped themselves around Orange-Mask's wrists. Takuma pulled Orange-Mask toward him with the tentacles and went for a stab with a kunai. Orange-Mask resisted the pull, broke free from the tentacle's grasp, and pulled his sword up. Sparks flew as the metal scraped against metal. The kunai missed the Orange-Mask's chest but left a shallow scar on their left shoulder.
Takuma jumped back to avoid a sword slash, but four of his tentacles, wielding kunai, went ahead. Orange-Mask's sword turned into a blur as he dealt with an onslaught of five tentacles. He couldn't dodge the three shuriken Takuma threw with his hands, though. The shuriken struck Orange-Mask right in the chest, but he knew they weren't enough.
Takuma moved in to strike the killing blow: a stab aimed at Orange-Mask's neck. But before he could connect, Takuma sensed a heat and heard a sharp screech. He jumped back, and a second later, a fiery spear impaled the ground between him and Orange-Mask.
He followed the trail to find the leader standing horizontally on a wall.
———
.
Kon followed the sound of clashing metal and looked down from a rooftop to see Orange-Mask and the target fighting each other. The Eight Tentacles was a curious choice of jutsu, but from the looks of it, the jutsu was being well-utilised.
He waited for a few moments longer to watch the exchange conclude. It was clear that Orange-Mask was being pushed back. He silently descended onto the wall and weaved hand seals for the Fire Release: Fire Spear. Kon wanted to wait until he had a clean shot, but when he saw the three shuriken hit Orange-Mask, he threw the spear immediately before the target could move in and land the finishing blow.
Unfortunately, the target jumped back, avoiding the spear.
Their eyes met, and Kon tried to glean their face through the hood to no avail. It cast too much of a shadow. Kon's hand twitched. One command and he could explode the fire spear, but with his subordinate in the blast radius, that wasn't an option.
Orange-Mask raised his sword above his head and swung for the target, who kicked him back before he could swing down. Orange-Mask went through the wall, leaving a hole in the building. The water pipes in the walls snapped and started spraying water everywhere.
Kon was surprised at the display of strength. He even felt the entire building shaking through his feet.
The target threw an explosive tag into the hole. It blew up, further damaging the building. When Kon saw the target turn to run, he weaved fingers into hand seals for another fire spear. By putting distance between him and Orange-Mask, the target had allowed Kon to deal some real damage of his own, and from the looks of it, the target had realised it.
He stopped and formed hand seals of his own. Kon smiled as he put more chakra into the jutsu than before. He pulled his arm back and threw the spear as hard as he could. It screeched as it ripped its target with a smokey trail. At the same moment, the target slammed his hand onto the concrete floor that split apart for the ground to rise and cover him in a dome. When the fire spear struck, the impact fractured the dome. It withstood the explosion but broke down immediately after.
Kon drew his sword and jumped down. He would cut down the target the moment he emerged from the dome. However, as the dome crumbled completely, he realised that the target wasn't inside. By the time he reached the ground. He stared at the empty, half-destroyed dome for a few seconds until the answer struck him.
It could only be the Hiding in the Rock Jutsu.
Kon immediately sprinted in the direction the target was previously running. The jutsu only allowed travel in straight lines—and with buildings everywhere, their underground foundations would block alternative routes, leaving only the alleys and streets as viable paths.
———
.
Takuma appeared above ground next to the alley. He broke into a run and headed towards another alley between the buildings when he felt his clone die. Hedidn't know the clone's location or how far away he had pulled the other two pursuers from him—but he knew that the clock had started.
Takuma entered the alley and, halfway through, looked back to shock himself when he saw the leader dashing into the gallery. He hadn't expected to be caught that quickly. The leader blitzed through hand seals and breathed out an orb of fire. Takuma thought the orb would chase him, but it just floated in front of the leader. The leader threw a shuriken through it, it emerged, completely alight.
Takuma knew he didn't want to be hit by that.
He jumped to the side to evade it, but the shuriken burst into a ball of scorching fire beside him. He moved the water tentacles forward to protect him, which they did—but instantly evaporated.
Now, Takuma had a concrete reason for why he shouldn't get hit by it. He glanced up at two small balconies that opened on the far side-alley. He jumped up the first floor and knelt inside a balcony to get some cover. The leader narrowed his eyes and threw a shuriken above the balcony.
Takuma saw the flaming shuriken fly above him and immediately formed an umbrella with his water tentacles. He was protected, but lost even more water. He thought about it for a moment before standing up and drawing a shuriken. The leader threw another flaming shuriken the moment he became visible, but this time, Takuma met it with his own. They clashed for a split second before both went flying in a small, self-contained explosion.
Takuma smiled, but knew he wasn't safe. He couldn't just keep standing on the balcony deflecting the leader's flaming shuriken. Orange-Mask could arrive at any point, and he would be cornered so he had to be on the move.
He blocked another flaming shuriken with his own before jumping to a second-floor balcony of the opposite building. Knowing he was going to be mid-air and thus, unable to change his direction, Takuma was ready to deflect another flaming shuriken, but as he leaped up and across, he noticed the leader 's fire orb move—it was on the right because Takuma was standing on the right, but now as he was going left, the orb moved along with him.
Takuma realised something. The leader had to throw the shuriken through the orb to convert it into a flaming shuriken, which meant he had to adjust the orb's location to be in the trajectory of the shuriken—however, the orb was relatively slow to move.
He could outrun it.
The moment Takuma landed on the second-floor balcony, he immediately jumped to the opposite third-floor balcony—and as he expected, the orb which had just got in position to strike the second-floor balcony, couldn't move quick enough. When it reached the third-floor balcony, Takuma was already on the roof of the three-storey building.
He would be out of sight just for a moment. He weaved through hand seals. Chakra accumulated in his lungs, and his chest widened as he took a deep breath. The jutsu was primed, ready to be launched. Takuma recalled the leader used a sword and used his shortened tentacles to retrieve five shuriken from his weapon pouch.
Woosh! The moment the leader jumped to appear over the roof, the tentacles simultaneously launched the five shuriken. As predicted, the leader used his sword to deflect them—an easy feat for him—but it still meant his sword was engaged, leaving him no defensive option other than to evade.
However, the leader was in mid-air, and couldn't change his direction.
Water Release: Wild Water Wave
Takuma shortened the spread of the wave and concentrated it into a straight spray to increase the offensive output. And the distance between Takuma and his target was more than double than it was now between him and the leader —they were close enough that it was really going to hurt.
The concentrated spray of water slammed into the leader head-on. He was pushed back, and with no foothold, he dropped down the building. On his way down, he hit his chest on a balcony railing, and then hit his head on the side of the balcony.
'This was it,' thought Takuma.
This was his chance to escape.
.
———
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The link is in the synopsis!
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
200+ Classement
Power Stone 
109 Power
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