The Sword of Stone Ch 2
Shock and Awe
-40 hours later-
Tamako didn't notice when they crossed the border separating the Land of Earth from its neighbors. There was nothing demarking it, not even a natural barrier of some sort: no river, canyon, mountain range, forest, not even a sign. She only knew they were in a different country thanks to her sensei telling her.
The farther south they had traveled from the Village, the less familiar everything had grown. Tamako had called Iwagakure her home her whole life, and the other two times she had left it she hadn't ranged more than ten or twenty kilometers away. She knew the mountains around it well, but the thick forests and occasional stretch of verdant tundra surprised her. She'd never seen so much open space. The horizon being visible so far away was alien to her; over the course of the first day, as they'd gotten farther and farther from home, Tamako had started to feel like the distant sky would swallow her. Everything was so flat.
Her teammates hadn't betrayed similar feelings, and neither had their sensei. They'd just trudged on, keeping up the ceaseless kilometer devouring jog-leap that shinobi were trained to maintain for long-distance running. It amazed Tamako that they could cover so much ground so quickly without tiring out. Chakra was an incredible thing.
"We're past the Land of Grass now," Hideaki said, and Tamako turned to look at him. It was late in the afternoon, and the sun burned down on them from the horizon, casting angry yellow light through thick grey clouds. The team was moving across a plain, interspersed by cracks in the earth and the occasional tree. Grass and moss covered everything. Tamako had never seen a desert, but this is what she imagined one might look like if it were damp.
Hideaki was behind her, Takeshi to her left, and Yui up ahead.
"We didn't go through it?" Tamako asked, and Hideaki shook his head. "How do you know?"
He shrugged, his wide shoulders seemingly straining against his blue jacket. "I memorize maps," he said.
Tamako raised an eyebrow, shifting the pack on her back. It didn't make a noise. "For fun?"
"I suppose," Hideaki said with another shrug. "They're interesting. For example-" he pointed east, "-if I'm right, there should be a canyon that starts about four kilometers in that direction, called Shattered Rock." He paused, scratching at a scab on his nose. "Well, Shattered Rock Canyon. One of the longest in the Nations: it runs all the way to the Hanguri Gulf. And it's quite deep. No one has managed to map the whole thing."
"No way!" Takeshi, as he often did, slammed into the conversation. "What made it?"
Tamako bit her lip. "Takeshi, that's basic stuff, you know," she said, desperate not to sound too patronizing. "It was probably erosion, especially if it connects to the gulf. Or maybe a tectonic shift-"
"Actually," Hideaki chimed in. He was still subdued, but for once Tamako heard something like coyness in his voice. "Shattered Rock Canyon is man-made."
Tamako stared at her teammate. She was sure she'd misheard. Takeshi whistled.
"No way," he said. "That's…"
"He's not messing with you," Yui said, and Tamako jumped. Their sensei had appeared just behind her, leaning over her to catch Takeshi's gaze. "Are you, Hideaki?"
The squat boy shook his head. "No ma'am," he said quietly. Tamako found her hand fiddling with her hitai-ate, and snatched it away. "The canyon was carved out nearly seventy years ago by Hashirama Senju, during a battle between him and forces led by the First Tsuchikage."
Yui grinned an discomforting grin. "Sounds about right."
"Sensei," Tamako said. "The… the First Hokage really carved out a canyon that big?" The idea made her dizzy. The Hanguri Gulf was over a seven hundred kilometers away; carving out something that long and deep was completely ridiculous. And the Shodai wasn't even a Doton user, as far as she knew.
"Yeah," Yui said, far too casually. "All the Kage are pretty amazing shinobi." She locked eyes with Tamako. "And besides, he had quite an impressive Kekkei Genkai."
A Bloodline Limit. Yui winked, and Tamako felt her guts twist.
"Wow," Takeshi said, smiling widely. "That's nuts. Good thing he's dead then, huh?"
"That's for sure," Yui said. "But hey, that's practically ancient history now." She looked to Hideaki. "So, Mr. Map Guy, if you're so sure we're past Grass by now, where should we be?"
Hideaki frowned. "We should have passed into the Land of Rain a couple kilometers back. I am curious why we did so without issue." Tamako looked around, along with Takeshi. He was probably thinking the same thing as her. It didn't feel like they were in another country.
"Oh, right," Yui said, and for the first time in hours she slowed to walking pace. Her genin fell in alongside her. "Well, it's pretty simple. The Land of Rain technically extends pretty far north, but really, the territory doesn't belong to anyone." She gestured around at the plains. "Most of this area borders Stone, Wind, Grass, and Rain. To them, it's essentially neutral ground. Though…" She smiled. "Lots of the battles were fought around here. People only care about it in times of war."
Tamako and her teammates stayed silent at that, and Yui let the silence soak in. "We're almost there," she eventually said. "You all made good time." With that, she began to jog.
The team picked up the pace once more, following their teacher. Tamako barely took note of where she was going, leaving it up to instinct to guide her steps. She was too consumed with what her sensei had said just a minute before.
'And besides, he had quite an impressive Kekkei Genkai.''
As Tamako ran, she glanced down at her right hand, flexing it and watching the shifting of her tendons and muscle. She focused, chakra welling up inside her like a rush of boiling water, a spot the size of her thumb appeared on the back of her hand. It was silvery and slightly reflective, and as Tamako concentrated it spread across her hand until it eventually covered the everything up to her wrist. Her hand grew a tad warmer, insulated from the elements, and Tamako shifted it again, watching her knuckles rise up against her hardened skin as tendons operate normally despite their metal coating.
For what seemed like the hundredth time, Tamako marveled at her hand of steel. As with every time she saw it, she couldn't but consider what the Tsuchikage had told her the day she had graduated the Academy, not so long ago.
###
An hour later, Yui stopped once more. As far as Tamako could tell, they were still pretty much in the middle of nowhere. The sun had entirely set by now, and everything was covered in shadows. Nevertheless, Tamako's eyes cut through the dark. Off in the distance, perhaps about ten kilometers away, she could see a rather tall plateau, around which the plains seemed to drop off. It was the only landmark of note.
It was pouring rain. The downpour had come extremely suddenly, a wall of water cutting the world in half. Tamako was soaked, and she didn't like it one bit.
"Here," Yui said, and everyone came to a stop behind her. Tamako groaned under her breath, lifting the heavy backpack she was carrying to give her shoulders a bit of room.
"What's here, sensei?" Takeshi asked. "There's nothing."
Yui chuckled, and began making a series of hand signs. She ran through about twelve too fast to follow. Tamako hadn't seen her sensei use a technique that required that many before. Without a word, the woman pressed her palm to the muddy ground.
There was a rumble. Distant thunder. But just a second after that, there was a much closer rumble, and a mound rose out of the ground before Yui's hands. It grew taller and taller, yawning like a dripping mouth, and within moments a tiny hill with a deep hole dug into the earth had raised itself up in front of Tamako's sensei.
"C'mon." Yui walked around the hill, fearlessly striding down into the earth. After a moment of hesitation, her genin followed. Tamako expected a slick slope, but instead she found herself walking down neatly spaced stairs cut out of stone. It wasn't a long flight, only descending about twenty-five feet, but by the time Tamako reached the bottom what little light had been on the surface vanished entirely.
"Can't even see my hands," Takeshi mumbled. For once, he didn't sound too cheerful. Somewhere in the dark, Yui chuckled. Then, she knocked on something. It sounded like wood.
A door opened, and Tamako blinked, not understanding what she was seeing as comfortable light spilled into the cavern.
"Hey, you made it!" A tall man with a flack jacket and a burnished red goatee popped into view, and Tamako made an undignified sound. "Huh, Yui Tono? You're doing a supply run?"
"Well," the woman stepped forward, into the light, "me and my genin." Tamako and her teammates followed her, all blinking at the sudden light.
"Pffft." The man, probably a chunin, made it very clear what he thought of that. "Lucky you."
Tamako looked around. Hidden down twenty-five feet below the ground was what she could only call a cozy listening post. The room they were in had a decent ceiling, about nine feet up, and the floor formed a perfect square, each wall about twenty feet long. All things considered, it was rather spacious, with everything carved of perfectly smooth stone. Furniture as well: a long table with a bench, cabinets, even a desk. There was an open book laid on the table. It reminded Tamako of her living room.
And it made perfect sense. She didn't know why she'd never considered how obvious it would be that Stone's listening posts would be underground. It almost annoyed her.
"Damn," Takeshi said, looking around. "This is pretty cool."
"Yeah, for the first week I'd say," the chunin said as the genin shucked their backpacks, placing them carefully by the door. "After that, it starts to feel a little cramped." He paced over towards the packs. "Hey, you guys bring some biscuits? I've really been craving some biscuits."
"We should have some." Hideaki opened up his pack and started rifling through it, careful not to let anything spill on the floor. "Hmm. Might be near the bottom."
"Anything interesting going on?" Yui asked. She walked over to the bench and lounged out on it. She didn't look like she'd just run through a rainstorm. Tamako joined her, resting her feet. "Where's your partner?"
"He's taking a nap." The goateed chunin gestured towards the only other door in the room, which remain closed. There weren't any beds in the room, so Tamako assumed the door led to where the lookouts slept. "As for anything interesting going on, yeah, actually."
"Oh?" Yui sat up a bit more; Tamako did the same. The chunin nodded.
"Yeah. Already sent a report to the Village, obviously, but this week's been busy," he said, jerking a finger over his shoulder. "Been hearing a lot of movement over by Amegakure. Tough not to, really."
The post must have been equipped with some sort of seismic tool, or perhaps one of the shinobi there had a technique for it. At any rate, Tamako understood what the man was saying after a few moments. They'd been observing a lot of movement through the ground.
"Hmm. Any idea why?" Yui asked, leaning forward. The man shrugged.
"None. But it's mostly stopped now. The last few days have been-"
There was a massive CRACK, like a hammer the size of a city had come down without warning. The entire room shook, bits of the ceiling falling. Yui was on her feet in an instant, with Tamako right behind her. Both Takeshi and the chunin lost their footing. Hideaki stayed still, on one knee.
"Everyone okay?" the chunin yelled from the floor, and more bits of stone fell from the ceiling. Tamako's ears were ringing; she hardly heard him.
After a second of pure confusion, the other door to the room burst open, and a man wearing shorts and nothing else stumbled out, a kunai clenched in either hands.
"Attack?!" he yelled, looking around with wild eyes.
"Jeez! Man, put the knives down!" the chunin yelled, staggering back up. Yui looked around, her eyes narrow, and without a word headed for the exit. Tamako stumbled after her. The woman rushed up the stairs, now slick with rainwater, and Tamako continued to follow.
Yui burst out onto the surface, and Tamako right after her. The woman looked around like a hunting dog.
"That way," she said curtly, and then she was off, sprinting through the mud. Tamako chased after her. She'd been running for a minute before she realized the rain had stopped. The night was silent at first, but as Tamako ran she started to hear distant sounds; smaller bangs, almost like explosions. Slowly but surely, she started to catch up to Yui, panting from the effort. By the time she had, four minutes had passed; the time had slipped by her in bits and spurts, unceremoniously vanishing. The distant noises had ceased.
"Sensei!" she shouted, and Yui looked back at her, not slowing her pace. "Where are you going?!" They were both getting closer to the plateau Tamako had seen earlier; it was only a couple kilometers away now.
"We're finding out what the hell that was!" Yui shouted back, and then doubled her pace. Tamako struggled to keep up, her legs pounding furiously through the mud and puddles left by the abruptly banished rain.
"Should we really be heading towards-?!" she started to say.
Then, beyond the plateau, something detonated.
The explosion was so loud that Tamako didn't really hear it so much as feel it. It slammed her backwards, making her bare her teeth and bring up one hand to cover her ear. Her entire body vibrated with the sound, pressing in on her organs and raising goosebumps on her neck. She'd never heard anything so loud in her life. It utterly dwarfed the earlier sound.
There was a moment of shocked silence, as though the world couldn't believe something had dared to be so loud, and then another, extraordinarily different sound followed the first. It was ridiculous, Tamako thought. How could any sound exist after that? But it came nonetheless.
It was a roar, dominating the night and sending Tamako's heart pounding harder than it already was. She felt like it would burst. The sound was as though all the predators in the world had come together in one grand orchestra. A primal fear wormed up inside her, something she'd never felt in her life.
Run away, the true fear said.
You're nothing more than food.
"Sensei!" she screamed again, and this time is was more a plea than a question. And this time, Yui actually stopped, looking back. Tamako finally caught up to her, doubling over, her hands on her knees and her breath bellowing mutely in her ears.
She looked up, and found Yui looking down on her. The woman actually looked concerned.
"Tamako," she said. Her voice sounded so quiet now; Tamako had to strain to hear her. "Don't be afraid. I'm here." Tamako nodded, but she didn't feel any safer.
"We have to keep moving," Yui said. She put one hand on Tamako's shoulder; in the other, she held a kunai. There was a tag wrapped around it, covered in unrecognizable kanji. "Stay behind me, okay?" She didn't wait for a response. Instead, Yui was off once more, stalking towards the elevated ground, only minutes away to someone with the speed of a shinobi.
Tamako hesitated for just a moment. Ahead was terror… and her teacher. Behind her was an expanse of empty black. It didn't take long for her to decide to follow Yui instead. At least then, she thought, she wouldn't be alone.
The world slipped into turgid time as Tamako slunk by her sensei's side. She had no idea where her teammates were: presumably, they were waiting back by the post, with the other experienced shinobi. What had they thought of her and their sensei running off into the dark? It was only now that Tamako realized Yui probably hadn't meant to be followed. Instinct had carried her after her teacher.
Why had she done that, and not her teammates?
'You were born to be a shinobi.'
Was there more truth to that statement then she'd realized? Tamako had never seriously thought of herself in that capacity. But just now, she'd run towards what was almost certainly danger, along with her teacher, instead of doing the sane thing and hunkering down. That wasn't normal.
The thoughts made the time pass rapidly. Tamako hardly noticed just how fast the world was slipping by.
They were halfway up the slopes of the plateau, mud cascading under their feet and small scrubs tumbling down the hill as they were uprooted, when the sun rose again with a tremendous keening shout, followed by a deafening slap. Tamako tensed: it sounded like a prelude to a massive explosion, like what had come before. But the follow-up blast never came. Instead, the hill lit up with new day. Tamako looked up and beheld a silent ball of fire hanging low in the sky, only a dozen kilometers away. A second later a wall of hard air slammed against her, a tidal wave of invisible force. It failed to force her back even a step, but it was impossible to ignore.
She looked back and saw her own shadow stretched for dozens of meters, snaking far away to the east. And then, as suddenly as the light had appeared, it fled. The shadow was swallowed by a greater black; the night returned, darker than ever. Tamako turned around. Her teacher had stopped dead in her tracks, and the enormous ball of fire had vanished.
"Bijuudama," Tamako's teacher whispered. Yui wasn't looking at her; she seemed lost in her own world. "That's impossible."
"Bijuudama?" Tamako asked. She'd never heard the word in her life, but its meaning was obvious: Tailed Beast Bomb.
"Just a bit closer," Yui said. But this time, when she moved, she moved with terrific caution. Slow, so much slower than she had before. With seemingly no choice, Tamako followed her once more. Cold sweat dripped down her neck, and her knuckles were clenched so tightly they'd surely gone white.
When they finally reached the top of the plateau, it only took a few more seconds of walking to reveal what lay beyond it. Tamako wouldn't call it a valley, but the entire area was lower than the plain they'd just come from. It was dominated by a massive lake, wide and dark, and an equally huge city that lay in the middle of it.
But the city was gutted and broken. Even from ten kilometers away, it was obvious to Tamako that it had been subject to unbelievable destruction. Most of its buildings, massive constructions of steel and concrete, had been cast down into rubble, and huge gashes were carved in the cityscape, obvious channels of absence where an unbelievable amount of material had been stripped away, or simply ceased to exist. One such channel spanned more than half the city, a straight line where the dense urban buildings gave way to a wasteland.
It was like a paper bag ripped to shreds, or a ribcage torn open, its bones scattered. Looking at the scale of devastation made Tamako's throat tighten. Steam and smoke was everywhere, along with an occasional distant flickering light. Her mind couldn't fully wrap around what she was seeing: the corpse of a city, cast in shadows
"What…" the words slipped out of her mouth, barely a whisper, as her sensei looked on the wreckage with a grim face. Slowly, one of the few unmarred buildings in the city, the tallest of them, toppled at a terrifying glacial pace. It had probably been brought down by some structural damage rendered invisible by the distance; Tamako could only watch in horror as it collapsed in slow motion, slamming into the wrecked city with a dull rumble.
"Amegakure," Yui said, and Tamako wrenched her eyes away from the city to her sensei. The woman's eyes were narrow: she betrayed nothing, but Tamako knew in her gut the woman was feeling something similar to her. "This was Amegakure."
The Village Hidden in the Rain. Tamako couldn't believe the listening post had been so close to it. Then again, it had been underground. It made sense to be that bold when it could easily avoid detection from a smaller village with less skilled shinobi, like Ame.
But that hardly mattered now. Something had turned one of the minor villages into a wasteland, and Tamako had no idea how.
"Tamako, we're leaving." Yui turned and strode away, and Tamako almost stumbled over her own feet turning after her.
"Why?" Tamako asked. "Shouldn't we-?"
She stopped herself. What could they do? Try to help foreign shinobi? Run down into the Village without knowing what had destroyed it, and recently, judging by the noise and light? It would be foolishness at best, suicide at worst.
"We need to return to Iwagakure," Yui said, moving into a run. "The Tsuchikage must know. Immediately."
And so without a word in protest, Tamako Shirogane turned her back on the shattered Village and fled into the dark.