Chapter Twelve up!! It's going to get a little more action-ey now, so enjoy!!

--MC

TWELVE

Sneak Attack

When Tenten and I returned from our shift watching the clearing, all we had found out was that the guards that had switched—hourly—were neither alert nor diligent. In my opinion, we should storm the guards, break my father out from the dungeon, set fire to the shack, and run away before anyone found us. But Tenten said that now I was being the reckless one and we had to follow Ryo's plan.

Whatever.

We relayed everything we learned to Ryo, who sent out two more people. It wasn't long until noon, and we had a light lunch. I was starting to anticipate the fight that was sure to come, and I could tell everyone else felt the same.

Then two of Ryo's men came running back to camp, announcing, "They're bringing him out! They've got a guillotine!"

Guillotine! I leapt to my feet, awaiting Ryo's command.

"Alright, everyone," Ryo said, seeming completely relaxed. "This is the plan: we're going to wait at the edge of the clearing until the moment the leader—whom we have fortunately found out is a man in a black suit—gives the command to release the guillotine. I'll give a signal, and Tenten will take out whoever is going to operate the guillotine with a shuriken. Then, just as they see their comrade fall, we take them full storm. We don't know how powerful they are, so be on guard, but don't exhaust yourselves right away. Raevynn, you'll be in charge of freeing Lord Hyuga, and once the last enemy is out, we'll torch the shack. Got it, everyone?"

"Wait." It was my mother. "I don't think Neji should see me right away."

I didn't understand, but apparently Ryo did. He nodded. "Cover your face with a cloth or something."

My mother looked around. Fortunately, one of Ryo's men happened to have a large black cloth and he gave it to her. She wound it neatly around her head to conceal most of her face and all of her lustrous hair.

"Ready now?" Ryo said.

We all nodded with resolve in our eyes.

"Then, let's go."

Ryo led us in a quiet dash to the edge of the clearing. We made sure we were concealed by the bushes and trees and watched the happenings in the clearing.

There was a guillotine, all right, with a sharp and shiny blade suspended in the air. My father was just being led out from the dungeon by two guards. These guards, unlike the slackers we had seen previously, were garbed in black uniforms with a small "Black Dragons" insignia on the breast pocket. The small crowd of twenty or so Black Dragons that had been drawn out was similarly dressed.

I heard Mother, who was crouching next to me, gasp at the sight of her husband, whom she hadn't seen for thirteen years. But we all stayed still, frozen with trepidation.

My father was led to the guillotine and two more uniformed men strapped him in. I could only guess at what was going on in his head.

A bead of sweat formed on my forehead. The sweltering sun was shining brightly above us, and it seemed as if it were testing us with the heat.

There was a man dressed in an expensive-looking black suit standing next to the guillotine. I wondered how he wasn't perspiring with this temperature and his ridiculous attire. The man began to speak.

"Lord Hyuga, it seems your village has abandoned you." His voice was mocking and condescending. "What do you have to say to that?"

I couldn't see Father's face; he didn't say anything in response.

"Well, we're going to get out the Byakugan either way." The man paused to snicker a little. "Got any last words, Lord Hyuga Neji?"

"Yes." My father's voice was soft, but filled with hatred.

There was a pause. A breeze alleviated the heat, and it blew past without anyone in the clearing saying anything.

"Well, what are they?!" the black-suited man exclaimed.

"Go to hell."

The Black Dragons leader dropped his jaw for a millisecond; then seemed to regain his composure. He didn't say anything for a while, and I could see his men tense up with anticipation.

"Well, let's not delay this any longer. Cutter?"

A thin man with a knife in his hand stepped forward.

Ryo held his hand up, palm forward, as if signaling "pause."

My heart beat with nervousness and my eyes were trained on Ryo's hand.

From the clearing, I could hear, "Why don't you cut the string."

Ryo's hand twisted so that the side was pointing at the clearing, and Tenten unleashed two shuriken that buried themselves in the thin man's neck. The man fell to his knees before slumping on the ground, his blood pooling in the dirt.

My mother flinched at the sight of murder.

We burst out of the bushes, taking the men by surprise. Ryo immediately went to the man in the suit and killed him before he could respond.

There were thirteen of us and over twenty of them, and it seemed that we were a bit outmatched. The Black Dragons were experts with taijutsu, and soon were overpowering all of us except Lee. But soon it would be time to test their gen- and ninjutsu skills.

Meanwhile, my mother had freed my father, but Father didn't know who his masked savior was, only that she was with us. The moment he got off the guillotine, he activated his Byakugan, and joined the battle.

Presently, I was exchanging blows with a short, stocky man that made up for his size with speed and energy. He was undoubtedly my superior in taijutsu, but once I tired of martial arts, I tried out a few illusions on him.

Generally, kunoichi are good at genjutsu, and I was no exception. I decided to use the most irrelevant-to-the-battle genjutsu in my repertoire to confuse my enemy. Putting together a few hand signs, I said, "Dancing Flowers Illusion!"

Immediately, twirling pink, white, and yellow flowers started falling out of the sky, dancing and swaying as they drifted downward.

The effect was just as I had predicted. The Black Dragon looked up, wondering at where the flowers had come from. This opened up his neck, and I immediately gave him a roundhouse under the chin. He was sent backwards; stunned for a second, but once he regained his balance his eyes were dancing with anger.

I called off my genjutsu and faced the Black Dragon.

I was surprised to see my opponent start doing hand signs, and rolled on the balls of my feet, ready to leap off the ground, duck, or jump to either side. The jutsu he chose was an Earth Style one that churned the ground underneath me into quicksand.

Being unable to leap into the air off of quicksand, I opted for a cartwheel to the side, efficiently knocking another Black Dragon in the head with my heels. Once I was on safe ground, I did a few of my own hand signs, commanding a gust of wind at my opponent with my Sword of the Zephyrs technique. I could mold the winds into a sharp arrow of wind, and aimed them right at the Black Dragon's solar plexus.

Though I didn't have the Byakugan and couldn't see the tenketsu (chakra node points), I had been taught enough about them to know that the solar plexus was where many keirakurei (chakra veins) crossed each other, and though it wasn't a fatal spot to hit, it would cause a lot of pain.

My opponent had the wind knocked out of him and was sent flying, to land on his rear end and slide along in the dirt a ways. There was a grotesque, bloody wound in the center of his stomach. He was paralyzed for longer this time, and I was bracing myself to deal the final blow when Ryo came hurtling out of nowhere, exchanging taijutsu blows at the speed of light with a Black Dragon. He happened to see the man I had knocked down, and threw a kunai into his head without breaking from his fight with the other Black Dragon.

I dropped my jaw, and Ryo gave me a sly smile. That was when I was taken by surprise by another Black Dragon. In a classic move, he whacked the back of my head with a branch. A few strands of my hair, which I was wearing loose, got caught in the branch and were plucked right out of my head.

Infuriated, I whirled around, ready with a barrage of punches. As he wheeled from my blows, I brought out my fighting kunai. Knife against branch—I was about to laugh, but the man apparently didn't think it was funny because he continued to try to fight with the stick. I chopped his branch to bits within moments, and was about to go for him when another Black Dragon kicked me in the back of the knees.

God, why hadn't I been watching my back? I dropped to the ground for a minute, but somersaulted between the second man's legs, my hair flying behind me. When I got up, I turned so that I wouldn't lose sight of them and did a few back-handsprings to put some distance between my opponent and myself.

The first Black Dragon, who had whacked me with the stick, was now engaged in combat with Kiba and Akamaru, and I was left with the guy who had kicked me.

In the next few seconds, I planned a few moves ahead and went to work. I leapt into the air, grabbed a few shuriken, and started to whirl in midair until I was a blur. This was a move Tenten had taught me. It would have been easy, had I had the Byakugan, to aim while spinning, but since that was unavailable to me, I had to take a random guess; I hadn't mastered aiming while rotating just yet.

But I didn't need to see my target. The shuriken was meant as a distraction, and, predictably, the man was distracted. He watched the shuriken embed themselves in nearby trees and some other Black Dragons in the clearing, but when he turned back to the spot in the air where I had been whirling, all he saw was a patch of sky.

Then I was coming at him from behind, and everything went just as I planned. He turned around when he heard me, but wasn't fast enough to react when I crouched at kicked him in the face, sending him off balance and leaning backwards.

The man yowled and whacked at me blindly, but I was already gone. Thank god for the speed workouts Anora's father had put us through recently, and for the running I had done searching for my mother. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to do this.

Thank you, Sasuke, I thought to myself as I kicked the man on the back from behind, sending him into the air a little. That was all I needed for my improvised version of Sasuke's Lion's Barrage.

It was difficult to move fast enough to get in front of the man to force him higher into the sky. I moved as quickly as I could and gave him a humongous thrust with my foot, sending him upwards off the ground. But once the man was in the air, all I had to do was leap up and get on top of him. Three meters above the earth's surface, I aimed a barrage of kicks and punches at various spots on his body, and just before he came back down to the ground, I used ninjustsu to command a gust of wind to slam him into a tree, knocking him out.

I knelt on the ground to catch my breath. I had never been one with particularly excellent stamina, and hoped no one would attack me before I had the chance to make sure my opponent was dead. He had blood tricking out of his head, and when I checked his wrist, there was no pulse. Tenten had been the one who taught me about "subtle killing." It wasn't out of a shinobi's code of conduct to kill, but in my whole career as a kunoichi, I had never killed anyone in cold blood (only indirectly pushed them off cliffs, used ninjutsu, drowned them, etc.).

The battle was gradually turning in our favor, and I teamed up with Tenten to take down another Black Dragon. By that time, all the Black Dragons had been killed and their carcasses littered the ground.

We all turned around to look at each other, catching our breaths, and suddenly the door to the shack burst open and four ninja dressed entirely in black—facemasks and hoods included—appeared in the doorway. They immediately jumped in different directions and ran at top speeds in a circle around us.

I was getting ready for a ninjustu, but all the black-wearing ninja did was keep running.

All of a sudden I got the gut feeling that this was a trick. Around me, others were getting the same idea. We leapt out of the circle that our enemies were making around us as soon as possible.

But that was exactly what they had been expecting.

Suddenly a black-clad ninja was upon me, and I could feel his kunai's cold blade against my throat. Before he could move, though, I gave him a good kick between the legs. Immediately, the ninja doubled over, giving me time to regroup with my comrades.

When the ninja came at us again, we were ready with ninjutsu galore. Ryo used a Shadow Doppelganger jutsu, and his clones teamed up against one of the ninja. After beating him up a little, the clones kicked him into the air. I summoned a Sword of the Zephyrs and drove it straight down into him, cringing at the result. Ryo nodded his head at me in acknowledgment of my assistance.

Meanwhile, everyone else had taken care of the other black-clad ninja and soon their three bodies were mixed in with the carnage of the rest of the Black Dragons' men.

The afternoon was turning to evening, and the air was finally cooling down with the sunset. Kiba and Lee went into the shack to check if there was anyone left. There wasn't

The battle was over. I had to admit that I was disappointed. I had been expecting more from the Black Dragons.

All of us except for Mother, who was still wearing the facemask, heaped the cadavers of the men around the shack. We shoved the guillotine over to be burned, as well. Then Ryo stood facing the vulgar pile of death and did a few hand signs. He used a Fire Style jutsu to set fire to what had once been the Black Dragons.

The fire didn't catch right away, but in a few minutes it was burning bright and strong, the same color as the setting sun. We all stood around, watching the flames dance and lick at the sky. The stench of burning flesh filled the air, and soon nothing was left of the shack and the Black Dragons' corpses but a pile of smoldering ash.

When Ryo was pleased with the effects, he did a Water Style jutsu and doused the whole thing with water.

I sighed. It seemed like everything that had started with my father getting abducted had come to an end.

No, the story's NOT over, if it were that would be totally boring and anticlimactic!!!! So don't even think it's over!!! Lol. Chapter 13 will be up soon!

--MC