Chương 19: Chapter Nineteen
Pre-Chapter AN: Hey, thanks for reading this. It's literally my favourite thing to write these days. Enjoy the chapter, and let me know how it sticks if you enjoy it. After reading this, you can either wait until next week for the next chapter or read the next three on Pa Treon right now and keep reading as I write. Have fun with this. Also, if you haven't checked out my other story (Gamer of the Desert) yet, please do so. It's also set in the Naruto universe. It's an SI into Gaara with some gamer elements. I can guarantee you'll love it. It's also much farther along than this one, so gives you something to really sink your teeth into. Also, I have a prologue (and now the first chapter!) to a new story up here now. It's a crossover where a variant of Dr Doom from the MCU gets inserted into the Harry Potter Universe into Harry's body on the day he gets chosen by the Goblet of Fire.
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"Are we going to talk about how much of a clusterfuck that was?" I allowed her voice wash over me as I tried to focus on what I was doing. The mystic palm was essentially a magical jutsu that could speed up healing within the target tremendously and with the blood pills I had on hand, I'd been able to save Toshiro's life, but things still weren't finished. I didn't have the chakra reserves to close the gash completely that framed his body, so that meant I had to do things the old-fashioned way. In this case, that meant stitching him shut.
"Hey, Fancy eyes. I'm talking to you" Still, I ignored her words. I could talk to her while I worked. Stitching up a wound was practically child's play with the kind of shit that we learned in the academy, but I was still using the opportunity to get my thoughts in order. I was foolish. All of it had been my fault. Going back through what happened, I could see just how unsure everyone had looked in my mind's eye. Even back then, I'd noticed it, but I hadn't cared. I wanted to pretend that I'd done it because I cared about inter-village relations or because I'd cared about making allies with the Mist. But the truth was much more embarrassing. I had a crush. I saw a physically attractive woman, and all my higher-order thinking flew right out the window. It was stupid. So fucking stupid.
"Answer me, damn you" This time, she tried to move to reach me, but she froze in transit. I sent a grateful glance over at Shika, who was watching the whole thing with wide eyes and shaky hands. She hadn't been ready for this, I realised. Combat with jounin. None of us had truly been, but she was the least ready. In the edges of my vision, I'd seen Uzume step in more than a few times to save her life from their opponent, who wielded the thunderswords like they had been made for him.
Both of them had been so dangerous. If the fight had lasted any longer, we would have lost. And the fact that they were so strong was also a cause for concern. There was no way they'd died in that.
"You know, you almost killed us over there. If I hadn't seen you charging up that fucking thing and warned Shika in time, you'd have managed to kill all three of us." She said, and the words hit like a truck. Still, I ignored them as I moved the needle in and out of Toshiro's body, working with a strong backstitch to ensure that the wound would not open when he began to move.
"And you almost killed us when you decided to trust that fucking ice bitch" now she was screaming. Still, I remained silent. She was right. She was completely right. What could I say to oppose her when I knew that everything she said was valid? I agreed with her.
"That's enough, Uzume" Shika stepped in again as I went through the last bit of the stitching that I needed to ensure Toshiro was truly out of the danger zone.
"What? Why?"
"I'm the team leader here. Shori's actions, just like yours, are my responsibility. I was the one who ultimately made the choice to trust them and follow Shori's lead."
"You know as well as I do that you only did that because he's Shori. Fucking golden boy of the Senju Clan who can do no wrong," She turned away from Uzume to face me now, even as I did not directly look at her, keeping my focus on Toshiro's form.
"Well, you fucked up Shorirama Senju. You fucked up today, just like you did last year with the-" She cut herself off as she realised what she'd been about to say. But it was much too late for that. The words had already hit, and they'd landed with devastating effect. I knew how many people had died that day. No matter how much Granduncle Tobirama tried to hide the numbers and ordered the Senju and Hyuga attendants to never mention that day, or how he ensured there was no publication of the figures in any of the archives I had access to, all I'd had to do was find someone to ask under a henge. I tried to ignore it, sweep it under the rug, but she was right. My mess up had killed over a thousand people. And now today I'd almost killed someone I truly cared about.
"You just better hope Toshiro lives through this because if he doesn't, I'll kill you myself" This time, when I lifted my head to hers, I could see the worry in her red eyes. Not just worry, but rage. I deactivated my byakugan both to test a theory and to see her without the harsh clarity that the doujutsu brought with it.
"Toshiro will be fine. Won't even have a scar" I said to her with a smile that I really wasn't feeling and also wasn't trying very hard to sell.
"Good. Now an apology?" Something about my face had calmed her down, and the screaming was finally done.
"I'm sorry. To all three of you. I thought we had a chance of making an ally with the Mizu shinobi, so I ignored my common sense and all the warning signs. Konoha needs allies, and that is partly my fault, so I blanked out once presented with a chance of solving the problem I'd created myself." I told her next, while waiting for it to happen. I checked my reserves, unsealing and swallowing a soldier pill with the same concealed movement.
There was no chance the movement had gone beneath Uzume's notice, and she merely raised an eyebrow at me.
"Just need to make sure I have enough chakra at hand for the journey home"
"As team leader, there's no way we're going back today. I'm just about dead on my feet" Shika's words seemed to be the signal, and I spotted it just out of the corner of my eyes. A shard of an icicle that formed right next to Uzume in a second. I substituted the both of us and stood in her position and allowed the Executioner's blade to sail to the side and took great pleasure in slamming the rasengan, half formed as it was, right into my opponent's midsection. The attack, formed with more power than rotation, sent her flying into the distance. With my newly activated byakugan, I could see her teammate retreat from the shadow he planned to strike at Shika from to catch his teammate's flying form.
"How?" The sharp toothed man asked, and I took pleasure in the confusion on his face.
"You bastards. You knew who we were. Right from the beginning. Maybe even before we were sent on this mission in the first place. You saw us coming, and you staged most of this to get us in a position where you could ambush us." I accused.
"Ha. Good reasoning, kid. Very sharp as well. Asami will probably be pissed at me telling you this since it's her plan to brag about, but her fault for getting knocked out so easily. Yeah, we knew you were here from the moment you spoke to the Mayor. We watched as you searched the office later on and then found out what was going on. Once we figured that out, we sent the Chunin that was assigned to us to attack your team while dressed as a shinobi from Yugakure. He was supposed to leave an impression and then escape, but you lot proved to be more tenacious than expected and somehow captured him. Of course, he had the good sense to kill himself before you got anything from him. And then we killed the Mayor to make sure he couldn't give you any information and then drew you into the ambush. Of course, you ended up proving harder to kill than expected." He said, giving the story of how we'd been played as fools from the very beginning with an amused expression on his face.
"But how did you manage to get around pretty boy's byakugan? Those aren't easy eyes to fool".
"Yeah, they aren't. But he uses them like a child, and my nose is better either way".
"Nose?"
"My name is literally Hohojirozame" He said with a deadpan expression. Great White Shark. Makes sense.
"Now, next question. Why are you being so loquacious?" Shika asked, pinning him in place with her coal-black glare.
"Delaying you until the platoon of chunin stationed nearby come around to see what exactly that massive explosion was. From what I can smell, they're about two and a half kilometres away. Well, out of your range, kid" He said, addressing the last part to me with a smile on his face.
Fuck. My eyes met Shika's. I formed a single seal and bathed Hohojirozame's position in flames even as I reached down to chuck Toshiro on my shoulder and begin running.
I body flickered once, and then twice, and thrice, making sure to cover massive amounts of distance with each usage of the jutsu, but not so much that I lost track of my teammates. Hohojirozame was definitely still alive. So was the platoon of Chunin chasing us. That made a minimum of 25 chunin and one jounin after us on foreign soil. That was our opposition. Our strengths, on the other hand, were few and far between One soldier pill had given me roughly a quarter of my total chakra capacity back-enough to fight or to run, but undoubtedly not for both and not with Toshiro on my back. Uzume, to my eyes, had roughly a third of her capacity intact. That made her the freshest out of all of us in that respect. She was also physically in better shape than Shika.
She was the logical choice. I tossed Toshiro at her, and nodded when she caught him without stopping, and I turned around. "What are you doing?" She screamed out at me as I body flickered away. She was a smart girl, she'd figure out what I'd deduced in no time. We had no chance of outrunning them. Not now that I could see them at the very edge of my vision. Not now that I could see two of them split up to take Yuki from Hohojirozame's hands and allow him to join the chase. Maybe if Toshiro was conscious, then we'd have had more of a chance, but he wasn't. And waking him up to get into this would be a terrible idea. Now I just needed to figure out how I was going to delay them without turning this into a suicide play. I looked around me, taking note of the trees in the sparse forest and began to feel the very beginnings of a plan form in my mind.
XXXXXX- CHIHIRO
There were five of them in his team. Five teams altogether in this damn forest, and it felt like there weren't enough of them to find the damned Konoha nin. From the moment, they'd stepped in, it had been one problem after another. First of all, there was the fact that they had gotten lost twice. Both times, they'd been under some form on insidious genjutsu that had made them retrace their steps twice. Once, they'd even ended up getting so lost that they'd run into another team and begun fighting before they collectively snapped out of the genjutsu and realised that they were being played.
Hohojirozame-sama was somewhere ahead of them in this mess leading the charge, but they hadn't been able to even catch up to him or get a message across to him. All they had to do was hope that he found whoever was going this before they got to kill even more of his comrades. With that thought, he stopped as he noticed a familiar marking on a tree for the second time. "Kai" He intoned, snapping the genjutsu, and realising that he'd somehow wandered away from his teammates. He turned to begin searching for them, but never made it far enough as he fell to the ground with an arrow sticking out of his throat.
XXXXXXXX- AKUMA
He managed to swipe his katana in time to slice the arrow that was sent at him in half. It had just been luck that he'd noticed the path of the arrow in time. Zumi and Zuma, fucking bastards, had not been so lucky. The arrows flew with no sound to give off their locations, and they also flew with no rhyme and reason as to their origin point. Zuma had been killed by an arrow from the south, and Zumi had fallen to one from the West. The one that almost killed him had come from the east. That meant-
"North" Both he, and Pakumi said at the same time, turning in time to push Kira out of the way of the arrow that would have done her in. Okay. One arrow from each of the cardinal points, they could deal with that. That was his thought process until the floor beneath his feet stopped being floor.
He pushed his massive frame, trying to struggle out of the mud, but it was futile. The more he tried to force himself out the deeper he sunk. "Kuma!" He heard his teammates call out for him, but he could not listen to them. Could not think. Could not breathe. There was just so much mud. Mud everywhere. Mud that his mind's eye replaced with dirt from that day. The day they'd buried him alive. He pushed and pushed, crying out just as he did that day. But unlike that day, there was no one to help him. All that he saw was darkness as the mud consumed him slowly and completely.
XXXXXXX- KIRA
Weighed down by the mud, neither her nor Pakumi had managed to deflect the arrows that flew for their throats in time. Instead, they got to stare at each other for their last, painful seconds of life as they died as they had once hoped to have lived. Together.
XXXXXXXX- KISUKE
"This isn't going well," he whispered to their jounin commander, Hohojirozame-sama.
"How many gone so far?"
"Just over half"
"And you say you can't trace the bastard?"
"No. His chakra is everywhere. It's almost like he's managed to spread his chakra signature across the entire forest at the same time. None of it even feels stale. It feels like he's continuously outputting from all those places at once".
"I'd have removed your head from your body for your incompetence if he wasn't doing the same thing to my nose as well. Shit!" Hohojirozame had never been the most even-tempered nor level-headed of superior officers, but there was something almost manic about his movements now.
"I can sense the others at the edge of my range. I say we leave this forest and go after the Uchiha and Nara. They are still worthy prizes," Ichimaru's voice spoke out, saying the words on everyone's mind.
"The only scalp that Mizukage-sama is interested in is Shorirama Senju's. Anything less might as well be an insult to him. So either you help me find the damned Senju brat like I brought you for, or you shut the fuck up".
XXXXXXXXXXXX- HOHOJIROZAME
Five of the most skilled sensors that Kiri had on active duty out of the village, including himself, and thy struggled to make heads or tails of the Senju brat's position. Something told him to make the run for the lesser prizes, but it felt too much like giving up own a hunt for him to tolerate, and it was still much too late for that. He was sure that if they started to head after the others, then the Senju would use the opportunity to escape and then there would be nothing worth anything for their efforts. The Sharingan was a worthy prize, but only if they managed to get it before the girl destroyed the eyes herself. It was what her clan was famous for, after all.
And then there was the fact that the others were gaining a massive amount of distance, and he doubted he'd be able to catch up to them before they managed to signal more treehuggers. He smelled another four of his men cross from the land of the living, and he resisted the urge to scream in frustration. Heading in that direction would yield him nothing but wasted energy and dangerous traps.
"Set the forest on fire" He finally gave the order that he'd been resisting for so long. The Land of Waves was prime geography that the Mizukage was keen in grabbing up for himself in the next war, so he'd been hesitant to cause any meaningful damage to the ecosystem but the disappointment of returning without the Senju was infinitely greater than any disappointment the Mizukage would develop at them ruining parts of the Island's ecosystem by getting rid of the windbreaker trees that made the place any good for agriculture in the first place.
"A pleasure," Ichimaru spoke out and began weaving seals for a fireball jutsu. By his sides, both Kisuke, and Kosei did the same, but aimed at different directions. For his part, Hohojirozame commanded the very lightning in the clouds to bend to his will and dropped several lightning bolts on key pieces of foliage, setting them on fire and spreading the fire far and wide.
In no time, they were forced to shift positions, as he and his men left the burning and smoking forest behind. More and more fire came from several directions as the fire spread further and further. Eventually, the forest itself was burning and there was black smoke all around it. The Senju's chakra signature began to disappear from the forest. When the fire had burned to the end, the chakra signature was gone. The boy had not left the forest according to his senses, and he had the strongest feeling that the boy's dead body would not be found in the ashes.
"Kill the fire and search the ruins for the Senju" He ordered, even knowing that there was no chance that the boy was in there. If not the smoke, then the sheer heat would have forced him out. The boy was as strong as anyone Hohojirozame himself had ever fought, so there was no chance he fell to the flames. No, something else had happened. They'd been had.
A/N; A complete chapter. As I said earlier, the next chapter comes up next week or skip the wait and read the next three along with daily uploads on pa-treon. For the pa-treon, you can remove the hyphen between pa and treon and google it then search for my username- Oghenevwogaga. Or you could copy the link in my bio and remove the spaces before pasting in your address bar.
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