For a moment Naruto could only stare. Chakra burned differently from any other kind of fuel. It burned magnesium white. It was like starlight in the day, a mural of pin point lights shimmering in the sky so bright not even the sun could drown them out. In the dim, overcast weather it was almost blinding.
Then came the whistling. Small circular beads carved from wood or bone were attached to the kunai and explosive tags. They were carved in such a way that as they arced through the air they let out a piecing shriek. Naruto didn't know that. He had never heard such a thing before. All he knew was that death was screaming down towards him in a disharmonious cacophony and he was struck motionless by the display. To his eyes, it was beautiful.
A moment before the barrage of metal reached him he felt two strong tugs on the back of his uniform, pulling him down into the trench and onto his back. He was staring up at Sasuke and Sakura crouched over him.
Then the world erupted. The soft, loamy soil of northern Fire was thrown into the sky in great geysers of expanding gas and shrapnel. The sky continued to scream. The earth began to shudder as if it threatened to split apart. Yet Naruto noticed that Sasuke seemed surprised by something else as he looked down the length of the trench. Naruto couldn't hear if his team mate was speaking, nor could he read his lips because of their masks, but when Naruto lifted his head to look in the same direction he knew exactly what Sasuke would have been saying.
"What the fuck?" he muttered.
Kakashi was walking towards them down the trench. Not running, not ducking, walking. Debris and deadly shrapnel was whizzing past him yet none of it touched him, like he was in the eye of a storm.
Then in a few more easy strides Kakashi arrived in front of them.
"Team NANBU." Kakashi didn't yell but by some chakra trick his three charges could hear him clearly.
"Namiashi-Taii has been incapacitated. This means I, as a senior officer, am now obligated to take control of this unit and complete its objectives." He said. "I also cannot leave you three to retreat to Konoha alone."
The two boys nodded in a stiff, mechanical manner. They could hardly believe what they had just seen and it took a moment for Kakashi's words to reach them at all. Sakura, however, only gulped heavily. The air was thick with dust and her throat was parched dry by the anticipation of what Kakashi might say next. She hid her shaking hands by squeezing them into the dirt beneath her.
"The enemy have us trapped in a classic L-shaped ambush." Kakashi continued. "They have elements the north and the west and in a few moments they will be carrying out a close assault. What is the correct course of action in this situation?"
The three Genin looked at Kakashi as if he had grown a second head as explosive tags continued to fall from the sky. Naruto even whipped his head around to both his team mates with an obvious unspoken question.
Kakashi sighed at their non-answer.
"We will concentrate the majority of our forces on the northern edge of our fortifications." He said. "When the barrage stops we will move aggressively and break through their northern advance and eliminate them in close order. Once done we will rally one hundred meters over the edge of the ridge and then double back and roll up the flank of their western elements. The key is to regain initiative and to never stop moving. I will not be able to keep a close eye on you three so take care of yourselves. Understood?"
The three Genin, again, gave short nods, not able to rely on their words in the current situation. Even if they wanted to they doubted they would be heard over the din of explosions.
Then just as he had arrived Kakashi left, leaving the Genin slightly dazed at the sudden turn in events. Eventually they came to their senses, and pressed in to the wall of the trench as they waited for the coming assault.
Naruto shook his head in amazement which drew the attention of the other two Genin.
"He never even ducked!" Naruto yelled.
"What?" Sasuke yelled back.
"I said, he didn't duck the whole fucking time he was talking to us!" Naruto shouted. "I don't know if that's just insane or what. It's like he doesn't give a fuck if he dies."
Just as Naruto finished speaking the explosions stopped and in their place came a blood stirring war cry from the line ahead of them.
"Here we fucking go." Naruto pulled a pair of kunai from his holster and made to go over the top when he saw Sakura still huddled by the wall of the trench.
"Pink we got to go!" he said.
He was about to lean down and drag her up to her feet when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He twisted his head around and saw Sasuke shaking his head.
"Just leave her." He said.
Naruto felt a wave of disgust lapping against his stomach that turned sour.
"What the fuck are you on about." He spat back at Sasuke and threw the boys hand from his shoulder before turning back to his other team mate.
"Sakura, you idiot, you might die out there but you're definitely dead if you stay here." He said.
He grabbed both her shoulders and shook her but she refused to look at him.
"Are you listening to me?" Naruto shouted. "We got to go or you're never going to see Konoha again!"
Sakura's porcelain mask tilted up at Naruto but hid her features. He had no way of knowing what emotions were flitting across her face but her shoulders were tense in his hands. They were shaking,
"That's not it..." She whispered.
"We don't have time for this." Sasuke hissed.
He stepped around Naruto to the other side of the girl and grasped her by the front of her tunic with both hands. Then with a grunt he threw her bodily over the lip of the trench.
"Let's move it." Sasuke shouted before jumping over himself.
"Shit, whatever works." Naruto muttered before following his lead.
As he scrambled up out of the trench Naruto saw Sasuke dragging Sakura up by the back of her harness as he ran by. She was scrambling her legs frantically, trying to get her feet under her as her team mate lifted her up and forward. Then before she could truly think she was running. The adrenaline was triggering a primal response in the depths of her brain, telling her that now that she was out in the open, it was run or die.
The three Genin were only slightly behind the bulk of the Konoha forces that were arrayed in a ragged line about a hundred and fifty meters wide. They were advancing at full speed, but unlike the enemy there were no war cries or whooping or yelling. Like ghosts they flitted across the grass as fast as their feet and chakra could take them.
Sasuke knew that this was one of the worst positions a unit could find themselves in, and even the most ideal response guaranteed casualties. The only chance of any of them surviving, however, was breaking through the closer edge of the ambush and getting out of the kill zone. He turned his neck to see his two team mates following close on his heels and he suppressed the desire to stop right then and there and slug them both in the face. Instead he slightly slowed to come abreast of them and gave them both a hard shove in opposite directions as they ran.
"Watch your spacing you morons!" he yelled. "Ten meters. Ten bloody meters! Or do you want all of us to get fragged by a single technique?"
Without waiting for a response he ran forward, picking up speed.
Under the cover of the bombardment the enemy had crept close and had been preparing to assault into the Konoha positions. They were only two hundred meters away, safely outside the scatter zone of the explosive tags, when the bombardment had come to a stop. Then, just as they were about to commence their own attack, the leaf shinobi had come charging.
Caught flat footed, the enemy's response was anaemic and Kakashi had no intention of letting them ramp up the response. Sasuke heard the man's order being shouted down the line as each shinobi that heard it shouted it out themselves.
"Smoke out front, one hundred!"
Sasuke turned his head slightly to see Naruto to his left, rummaging with one hand through one of his larger pouches before the boy came up with a fist sized cylinder held in his hand. With a short step and an elongated hop Naruto tossed it forward as did each designated man in every other squad.
A moment later a curtain of thick, opaque smoke puffed into existence between them and the enemy.
Then they charged through it.
Kunai, shuriken, and mid-range ninjutsu came tearing through the smoke, punching open spiralling holes and at times hitting home. Sasuke himself saw a Chūnin just ahead of him take a flame bullet to the chest and go down in a conflagration of crackling flesh. The enemy were firing blindly but sometimes you just got unlucky.
He grimaced as he leapt over the charred body and continued through the smoke only to feel something smash into the left side of his torso as he finally broke through to the other side.
With a scream he fell and rolled along the ground as his momentum carried him on, eventually coming to a complete stop on his back. He had been hit.
Winded and with a dull pain spreading across his chest he laid there stunned. He could feel the ground shaking beneath his spine as the charge continued on without him, and though he moved his hands towards where he thought the wound was, he couldn't bring himself to touch or even look at it.
"Not like this." He said to himself. "Not like this."
The back of his eyes stung and like a hot coal on a frozen lake his heart burned through his chest and left it feeling hollow. All those promises he had whispered in the night, now meaningless.
"I can't die like this." He whimpered. "Not like some piece of shit Genin in the middle of nowhere."
He heard laughter.
"Naruto?" Sasuke said.
The white mask topped with a shock of yellow hair came into Sasuke's field of view.
"We all taking turns on the ground?" Naruto said. "Get the hell up you fucking jackass."
The boy grabbed at him and tried to pull him up off the ground but Sasuke grabbed Naruto's wrists.
"Just leave me." Sasuke said.
"Just look, you idiot." Naruto snapped back.
"what?" Sasuke said.
He peered down at his stomach and didn't see any guts, or any blood, or anything at all that would indicate he was dying. There was only a long gash across his left side, the fabric cut cleanly, and the dull shine of steel mesh poking through.
"It was just a glancing hit." Naruto said. "And you give Sakura shit. Unbelievable."
Sasuke felt his stomach plunge right down to his feet and his whole body grow warm. He could just imagine the shit eating grin on Naruto's face and when his team mate offered a hand it took Sasuke a long second before he gripped it and began to pull himself up.
"You know," Naruto continued, "It should be pretty fucking obvious if you get hit, you can tell because-"
Naruto never finished his sentence as a kunai, from nowhere, entered through the back of the boy's neck and out the front his throat. Then a whole mess of blood splashed on Sasuke's mask.
