A/N: I apologize for the slower pace in this chapter. A lot of things require set up.
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MYK-ON: Glad you like all this stuff! The real meat of the story is starting up now too. :3
Cover image by: u/BendyWend
Disclaimer: I own this stuff, except for the Naruto-related parts.
Chapter 4: In the Palm of My Hand I Hold Their Lives
I told my pink-haired nurse to rest. I wasn't in danger any more, and it wouldn't be more than a day before I was good to go. Plus, there was no way Sakura had slept, and all of this stress was bad news for someone who did so much for the squad. Closing my eyes, I thought back to the day Kakashi-sensei promoted me.
"You're joking." He was silent. Please tell me you're joking." He shook his head. His Sharingan pierced me, analyzing my reaction.
"Here's your new patch. And here's some paperwork you need to fill out." I was secretly delighted, despite the billion reservations that screamed in my head. It had always been my dream to be a general like Jiji, and being Gunso was a step in the right direction.
But the press of responsibility started to weigh against my mind. I'd be leading my friends that I grew up with, trained with. Their lives were under my control, to do with as I saw fit.
I sat down hard.
"There's no one else?"
"Nope."
"No one?" He paused, pretending to think about it.
"Nope."
"Not even teme?"
"Despite his sheer proficiency, he is too cold and distant. Prefers to work alone, and has a questionable psychiatric history regarding the death of his family." Kakashi recited. I knew it was from a report some underling gave him.
"Sakura-chan?"
"Reports indicate that she would be unsuitable for the role. She might be one of the most capable of you idiots, but her psychological profile does not lean itself towards leadership."
"Neji?"
"Questionable personal philosophy. Believes fate is a reasonable explanation for the direction of his life. You know how the Cadre feels about that."
"Fate is the invention of lesser beings too weak to live for themselves." I recited. I was shocked the oft-repeated phrase hadn't been effectively drilled into Neji yet.
"Shino?" His spiky grey hair shook again.
"Like Sasuke, tends to be a loner. He's intelligent, sure, but slow to speak his mind. Communication might be a serious issue."
"Lee?" I asked, shuddering at the thought.
"General… eccentricity aside, I was legitimately concerned he might force the squad to train during active missions." I snorted.
"Shikamaru then, definitely. He's not that lazy, is he?"
"You underestimated him. Plus, his grades were even worse than yours, even though we all know it was a lack of effort on his part." There was a pause.
"Kiba?" We shared a laugh, before I took a deep breath, wiping a tear away from my eye. I sobered again, remembering the position I was in.
"There's...really is no one else...is there?" He shook his head, smiling with his eyes, since his mouth was covered in a perpetual facemask.
"They're all yours, Naruto." He put a hand on my shoulder. "And you deserve them. You're a good kid. A good Marine. They need someone who cares about them. They need you." His words filled me with pride. Kakashi wasn't one to praise lightly (when he deigned to praise at all).
"Thanks Kakashi-sensei!" I was happy then, and again when my squad (my squad!) congratulated me. But that night, looking up at the bare barracks ceiling, sleep eluded me. I had been given an enormous responsibility. The lives of my comrades.
It was then I couldn't help but remember most warborn didn't make it past thirty.
Back from my brief reverie, I shook my head with a small smile. Kakashi-sensei was somewhere in this infernal city too, slinking around just like us. Truth be told, I missed him and Jiraya-sama, slave drivers though they were.
They both pushed us so hard to do better, to be better. At the end of each day we trained with them, I always felt stronger than the day before. Sure getting smoked nearly every day for six years kind of sucked, but it sure as well worked. Oh, and the terabytes of porn they had between them. Finding all that was an interesting day for the Konoha 12, I'll tell you that much. And they weren't demonic, like… like Anko-sensei.
A loud snore rumbled behind me. Sakura had crashed, falling asleep in her armor under a camouflaged field blanket. Amusingly, it was not built for someone of her size, and her feet poked out from underneath.
I stood and stretched. Feeling a small burn in my stomach, I checked the bandages that wrapped my torso. No blood, thankfully. Sakura knew her stuff. No doubt my muscles were hard at work stitching themselves back together with the help of some of her medical wizardry.
What was the rest of the Konoha 12 up to? Looking around, I found that Shikamaru had fallen asleep as well, more out of laziness than actual exhaustion. Ino gnashed her teeth on a k-bar, an iron ingot that Rationing and Supply tried to pass off as chocolate. Kiba and Shino were playing Go on a data slate. One look at Kiba's face was all I needed to know how bad he was losing. A war raged above our heads, but since we'd been trained to deal with such things for most of our lives, it wasn't much more than a change of background noise.
Hinata sat by the entrance, field stripping and cleaning her Type-72 Marksman's rifle (the same one Sasuke used). Another rifle lay against her seat, primed and ready to go. She was on watch duty. A good decision to put her there, considering her cybernetic byakugan and associated gen-mod allowed her to see heat signatures, infrared, as well as possessing a zoom function. I decided to keep her company for a little bit.
"Ho, Hinata-chan." Not looking up from her cleaning, she gave me a big smile.
"H-have a seat, Naruto-kun."
"Will do." I sat down on an ancient bench, the plastic bending under my weight. She didn't stop her work, but she turned to look at me. She wasn't wearing her chest plate or pauldrons. Instead, they were stacked into a neat pile beside her, crowned with a helmet. Cleaning was dirty work, and she apparently preferred to do it in her fiber-mesh shirt. On her right shoulder was a circuit-board tattoo that rippled over lean muscle, stretching all the way from her elbow to her neck.
"Forgive me, but... you shouldn't be up and about so soon." I laughed, rubbing the back of my head.
"What, you want me to miss out on the entire mission?" She giggled a bit, dipping her cleaning rag into some oil.
"No, but you mean a lot to us. A lot to me." She faltered a bit, realizing what she said. "A-a-anyway we don't want anything to happen to you." I felt my face heat up considerably. She said I meant a lot to her? Why would she single herself out? More importantly, why did she think that way? Of all the Konoha 12, I spoke with her the least, trained with her the least. Mostly, I'd just seen her from afar, driving herself almost as hard as Lee. And that one day we had leave, she wore that white sundress-
"Naruto-kun?" She had caught me riding the train to la-la land, and pulled me back. I waved my hand, dismissing her concern.
"I-I'll be alright. Med-foam will have me up and running in no time." I paused. "Did you hold my hand the entire six hours?"
Her fist clenched suddenly, rag bunched up in her grease-stained fingers.
"I... uh...um..."
"I'm not complaining! I'm just... uh. Curious."
"Well... ah-" I heard the rasp of tires sliding against a dirty road, and the protesting squeal of brakes.
Hinata snapped up her spare rifle, while I drew my pistol from its holster. The doors above ground were thrown open with a creaking groan. A shout rang down the stairs.
"Tadaima!" It was unmistakably Neji. He had a way of speaking that made him sound calm even when he was shouting at the top of his lungs.
"Okari." Hinata called back, lowering her rifle. I did the same. After a few seconds of trampling boots, they appeared at the bottom of the stairs. They were dirt-stained and bloodied, but alive and ecstatic. Neji was the first one down, synthetic eyes flicking between his cousin and myself. Unlike his Hyuuga relative, he preferred using his byakugan for close quarters combat, and carried a semi-automatic 'Ripper' R-11 Shotgun, which -true to its name- could rip damn near anything to shreds.
"Report, Neji!" He snapped a salute. The rest of my comrades didn't care too much for shows of respect between ranks (we prioritized effectiveness over professionalism), but Neji was the exception to a lot of things. Hinata covered her amused smile with a hand. I suppressed my own urge to laugh. He took everything so seriously!
"Right away, Uzumaki-gunso!" If I recall, he was still a little upset over being passed over for promotion, but it didn't stop him from addressing me with my full title. I shifted on my feet a little. The name Uzumaki-gunso always felt weird to me -especially when uttered by one of my friends.
"First and foremost, we engaged several patrols of rebel regulars. They were killed to a man. During the first of which, Tenten," he nodded at the smallest of the Kosenjobi, "suffered shrapnel wounds from a grenade. Her helmet caught the most of it. The bandages make it seem worse than it is." He said. Like Shino, he kept his voice even, but relief exuded from his last statement. With a big, toothy smile, Tenten flashed me a 'peace' sign, bandages wrapping around the left side of her face and under her ruined helmet.
"During the second engagement, we encountered another squad of Marines." The rest of the Konoha 12 had gathered behind me to listen to Neji's news.
"They helped us mop up, but they were needed elsewhere. After that, we decided to continue our original objective: to locate and destroy the comms jammer." His eyes closed for a second. "We were partially successful." A ripple of excitement wormed its silent way though my squad, "We found it, but it was too heavily guarded to assault with my reconnaissance squad." I brought my hand to my chin, thinking.
"You took pictures?" I asked. He allowed himself a smug smile.
"Of course." Tapping some buttons on his data slate, he sent me some pictures he had taken with his byakugan. Nifty pair of eyes, they were. From what I could see, it was under heavy guard, and locked deep within a walled compound. I gave a low whistle. Two tanks sat steadfast between machine gun bunkers. Guard towers watched over the place, sporting huge spotlights, and were flanked by even more MGs.
"Anything aerial?"
"Six more over." Flicking through the pictures, I got a better view of the jamming station. A plan started forming in my head.
"These were taken from an apartment building about two klicks away."
"What are the chances of calling in some support?" I asked.
"Low." Neji said. "We only got in touch with that one squad from Kumo, and that was in passing. Before we found the jammer."
"It's likely we're the only ones who know where the jammer is." Sasuke added.
We could take it down. It wouldn't be easy, but it would make our lives a hell of a lot better if we did. Chances were we'd blow through our ammo in the next three days, and without that, we'd be walking corpses. Not to mention a lack of orders, communication, enemy troop movements, etc.
"Tenten," I said, addressing my wounded comrade, "can you fight?"
She unwrapped her bandages in response. Neji took a step forward to stop her, but hesitated. Her face was flecked with tiny wounds that drizzled thin trails of blood down her face. She gave me a small smile.
"Just a flesh wound, Gunso." I nodded Sakura forward. She dabbed some med-foam on the cuts.
"Alright. Since we're all good to go, we'll be assaulting their jamming station."
"We will." Sakura said, wiping excess foam off Tenten before turning to glare at me. "You'll stay behind." I was about to retort when the rest of the squad piped up.
"Yeah, you'd probably be better directing the whole thing from that apartment building."
"You're too wounded to be of any real use." Kiba added helpfully, a wolfish grin almost reaching his ears.
"You're outvoted, dobe." Sasuke said, smiling a rare smile.
"I don't remember this squad being a democracy." I said, huffing.
"I don't remember you enforcing an autocracy." Sakura countered.
"Rrrg, fine!" I admitted defeat. Hinata stepped forward.
"I will accompany Naruto-gunso. I can get a good firing position from there."
"You guys don't even know what I have planned!" I said. Not that I minded being paired up with Hinata...
"Enlighten us then, O Gifted One." Sasuke said, voice dripping with sarcastic venom. I turned to him with a vicious grin.
"Oh my god." I paused for dramatic effect. "You're still bitter that I beat you in Assault Tactics." My squad laughed, a happy ringing that echoed throughout Station 135. It brought an even bigger smile to my face.
Sakura tapped me on the back of the head. Guess she hadn't completely outgrown her 'Sasuke is perfection' phase.
"All right, all right, here's what we'll do." I pressed a few buttons on my data slate, sharing Neji's pictures with everyone.
"As everyone can see, there's four entrances, each guarded by a few machine gun emplacements, and these two," I said, circling the gates, "have two guard towers. These two tanks will be a problem, but we all know tanks without infantry support are easily destroyed."
I drew an arrow on the northern entrance. "Fireteams Nine and Ten will load up our stolen rebel Landsknecht with charges, and ram it through that gate." I held up my hand before anyone could protest. "We'll put a brick on the gas pedal or something. When it does, it should take out the emplacements, as well as those guard towers."
A few thoughtful looks.
"It'll be like kicking a hornet's nest. They'll all focus on you, after you bruise 'em up a little."
"Clever." Shikamaru said, already deducing the rest of my plan. I grinned.
"Sakura, along with Fireteam Eight, will approach from the south end. While their attention is focused elsewhere, they'll scale these guard towers. With the help of those spotlights they can blind the other emplacements. Then, being on those towers, they'll have perfect firing angles on the rest of them. It's child's play to mop up everyone else, and destroy the jammer."
"And what about me?" Sasuke asked, clearly upset at being left out.
"You'll provide sniper support from this building here." I pointed at a building about four klicks away.
"Hn." He managed, clearly pleased. He was such a typical sniper. Loved being off on his own.
"And since you're all adamant I won't be left alone, and since she made an excellent point, Hinata will accompany to my position and provide sniper support too. Any questions?" Sakura spoke up.
"What about the tanks? You think they'll have the presence of mind to take out the guard towers, or leave the compound and come hunting?" I thought about it, brow furrowing.
"I don't think so. If they get smart, however, Kiba has his friend Akamaru to help." He patted his rocket launcher affectionately. "And if they leave the station to hunt us in the street, they'll be doing our job for us."
"Yosh!" Rock Lee shouted, pumping his fists up and down. His horrific bowl cut practically shook with excitement. "They will not know what hit them!"
"Easy there, champ." Tenten said, calming her ecstatic teammate. Or at least trying to.
"If we want this to work, we'll have to wait until nightfall." Shino said. I nodded.
"We leave at dusk, which should be in about four hours. Everyone, rest up and get ready to go." They obeyed, dispersing to clean their weapons or catch a quick nap.
I flexed my fingers. It wouldn't be easy, but having fleet support would be worth it. Hinata caught my eyes, a smile on her face. Noticing I was looking at her, she gave a small 'eep!' before turning back to her cleaning, a blush creeping up her face.
I rubbed the back of my head, also flushing. Women are so confusing.
A/N: I would know.
Anyway, things will start to pick up VERY quickly from here on out.
Hold on to your butts.
