Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Death?

The blinding mist took his teammates by surprise. He could still perfectly see the three ninja rushing towards him. He spread his own black mist outward until the two mixed and his began spreading like a poison towards the three approaching ninja.

"Do you have this Gereso?" He heard Merawako say from behind him.

"Yes. No need to worry." He said calmly.

"Good we'll just stay here and defend ourselves." Tadei said.

Pulling out and throwing ten kunai, which were all blocked, confirmed that all three of them could see in the mixed mist. He kept one in each hand and leapt towards the approaching enemies. They all attacked in a practiced formation, it seemed so different from team seven who just attacked using little organization in attack patterns. He was quickly put on guard when met with the organized attack was being pushed back until he saw one of Merawako's cards fly past him and stop just past the three attackers. Boom! The explosion caught the three off guard and Gereso had time to pull out three spiked chain heads and toss them out towards his opponents. Two of them were smart enough to not look at the chains, the source of his genjutsu, but the third was stunned after looking at the chain that had come close to him. Six more chains went flying in three groups of two all aimed to hit the one caught in the genjutsu.

The were able to block four of the chains but the last two hit their mark pinning the third to a tree, a chain had gone though his right leg and the other in his left arm. He looked up at his teammates, and knew they weren't going to help him get free until they took Gereso and his teammates out.

Gereso thought of another plan and decided to go on the defensive and see if he could get them to run out of chakra before he did. He pulled back and spread out a layer of black mist and formed it into a solid wall they would have to break though. He saw they come towards him and begin to attack with kunai but they didn't even scratch the barrier. They both stopped and one pulled out an exploding note and placed it on the barrier, Gereso created eight more under that layer before the note exploded. After the explosion he was met with a kunai which shattered the last remaining layer. This isn't going well. He looked around and saw that Merawako had lead Tadei to the trapped ninja and watched him slit his throat with a card. At least that's done. He jumped towards the other two pulling out his last eight chain tips and sending them towards them. They were able to block all of them but then saw that they had played right into his hands, he had lost all of the weight from carrying the chains and was now at least three times as fast as before.

Merawako and Tadei had moved to the top of trees and hand seen just what was happening, the cloud of white and black mist had spread nearly a mile in all directions drawing attention from at least twenty nearby ninja. Pulling out a deck of cards he nodded at Tadei who followed suit pulling her swords from her belt.

Gereso too had reached the top of the trees by punching one of the lightning ninja all the way to the top. The ninja still had mist coming from his body. They're attracting attention from everyone around! He pulled a kunai out and stabbed the ninja in the neck and watched as he fell to the water below into a pool of sharks who had been attracted by the light of the mist. Do they even know what they are doing? The white mist must have been giving off a glow like a light bulb and it would attract attention from miles around, ninjas and sharks would soon be swarming here like flies. The last ninja waited for him in the cloud, calmly arms folded and looking right at him. I guess I could talk to him.

"What do you want with me?" Gereso asked approaching the ninja with caution.

"I have a message for you." He said blandly. "You're brother has restarted a war between our clans and we will see revenge for what he has taken from us, in the form of your death." He pulled something from his belt that Gereso couldn't see. "This weapon is invisible to the people of our clans, it does nothing but absorb light not reflecting any at all. Very useful to kill with something your enemy can't see." Gereso inspected the weapon again, he didn't see through it just around it like the weapon wasn't there.

The ninja through the weapon and Gereso watched the slight distortion it made in his sight fly through the air. To the ninja's surprise Gereso caught it. Gereso jumped onto the same branch as him and moved towards him the weapon pointed at him.

"You caught it how?" He sounded surprised.

"I could see the distortion around the weapon." Gereso said pointing the weapon at him.

"There is no distortion, I just see past it." The stunned ninja said looking at him. "You can see light distortion your eyes must be…you're the one…" The weapon shot through the air from Gereso's hand. Gereso didn't care about what he was about to say but the ninja's last words had caught his interest.

He looked up and saw that Merawako and Tadei were fighting the crowd of ninja above.

Merawako was tossing cards with little thought beyond charging the cards with wind chakra and aiming quickly. He had taken out ten ninja already but many more were coming and he was growing tired again. Tadei was fighting three opponents at once and had already taken out twelve ninja. She too was slowing down.

Gereso moved quickly grabbing his chains that were still nearby. He threw them towards several groups of fighting ninja. Luckily the golden chains caught their attention and they were all caught in the genjutsu. The sudden use of so much chakra was too much for him however and his vision went black and he fell.

Three days later

Merawako was looking at him from a nearby branch smiling. "Good job with the genjutsu, we were able to take out most of them after that."

"We?" Gereso asked looking around to see at least thirty forest ninja.

"They met here after the start of the exam, safety in numbers right? Unfortunately we need to get moving, some of the genin from rain and mist found us yesterday and they've been moving ninja here every hour. We expect them to attack by tomorrow." Merawako explained. His cloths were brown with dried blood and mud, his hair was cut in a short military style.

"What happened to your hair?" Gereso asked.

"When you went down I jumped towards you, and some idiot thought he would have a go at my head with his windmill shurikin, luckily he missed my neck and took most of my hair, after that I just cut it short." He rubbed a hand over his hair. "You should see Tadei, she has swamp brown hair." They both laughed at the mental image.

"We got some of your chains but sharks had gotten to some of the bodies that were attached to some of them and well…" Gereso laughed thinking of the sharks that must have eaten the heavy chains sitting at the bottom of the swamp unable to move properly.

"Anything else?" Gereso asked.

"Hungry? I could get you some food somewhere." Merawako offered.

"That would be nice. What do we have?"

"Don't ask and I won't have to know." They both laughed.

Later that day the nearly hundred ninja were moving towards the west, they could hear that ninja were following them and doing nothing to mask their presence.

"There are probably a hundred and fifty of them coming quick!" Someone yelled from the front. Another shout came from the back and suddenly there were hundreds of jutsu flying through the air. Team seven had been in the center of the group and suddenly they were running towards the bottom of the trees. There was nothing they could do they were nearly out of weapons and they were in the middle of a war zone. Merawako looked at the water and smiled, he did a large number of hand seals and several muddy dragon shaped jets of water shot from the swamp. The watery beasts launched through the air and began attacking enemies.

"Get all of the forest ninja out of here! Don't worry I have a plan." He looked hopeful but something about his face seemed off. Gereso and Tadei gathered as many forest genin as they could and retreated as the water dragons covered their retreat. Gereso returned to get Merawako, the enemy were closing in on him, nearly a hundred ninja. Merawako smiled looking at Gereso. "Run, but remember me eh? Take care of Tadei. Tell sensei I'm sorry I didn't make it. After this I'll be a hero people will remember forever." His smile was wide, his eyes wide, his senses acute, Merawako opened himself fully drawing as much chakra as he could, a large spear went through his stomach and pinned him to the branch he had been standing on, the water dragons pushed Gereso away and pulled the now panicking ninja in. They formed a giant swirling sphere of water which then disappeared the water raining down towards the swamp with a huge amount of blood with it.

Gereso saw the bodies fall to the ground dead, Merawako stayed pinned to the tree unable to move and probably dead also, he had used the chakra in the water to make wind chakra then leave the water and cut into the ninja. Gereso stood for what seemed like an hour watching the bloody corpses fall into the water or onto stronger branches. Merawako had not moved that entire time.

After returning to the forest ninja group he found that they had lost twenty ninja including Merawako.

"What was the Namikage thinking?" Someone asked that night.

"He wanted us to stop a war, most of those ninja are higher level than genin, most are Chunin, some may even be Jounin, there are probably students out there. If we stop them all then we can avoid a bloodier battle with the water country later and show that we are better than the other villages, this will make them afraid of us." Gereso said looking at the ninja and his two teammates.

"Did he tell you that himself? You three thought you were better than us didn't you? Now your friends dead, he's the one who killed most of them, what do we do now?" Gereso pulled a kunai out and threw it at the other ninja who blocked it and laughed. "You are so much weaker than he was, you have no chance of finishing the Namikage's stupid plan. Look how many of us are dead because of him!" An older ninja stood up and pushed the loud mouth ninja against a tree trunk.

"Usually more die! Two years ago one fourth of us were dead by now! He told us what to do so we could survive, this is making us better ninja so we don't have to be fodder just in case we do go to war. He saved your worthless life and your mocking him! The Namikage planned this, now the person he gave the weapons we were supposed to use to kill the rest of them is dead!"

Deep in the forest in a small clearing green chakra filled the air as nearly ten ninja brought a forest ninja who was nearly dead back to life. His short read hair and shredded clothes told the sound ninja that he was Merawako Ahuya, they brought him into a healthy state and put new cloths on him and waited for him to wake.