Incident 24 – By the Roots First
Rain Country – Dense Forest
Daimyo Controlled Territory
The Next Day
Yadome sighted her quarry almost exactly at noon, a strange coincidence of timing, and little more. She had waited for him for almost an hour, no more, having expected his appearance in this area since morning.
The man with plants integrated into his body was an enigma, his movements erratic, his abilities strange, his body apparently without normal blood, and his name was unknown. Only the last was something Yadome preferred. It was always easier to kill a man when his name remained unknown, a strange thing Yadome could not explain, but it held true for her.
As she watched the strange man approach the village, walking slowly through the sodden rice fields after he had simply appeared on the forest edge, Yadome considered her options. The current figure was the real target, not the copy bodies they had killed so often in the past. She had managed to work out a setting of her lenses that revealed that, a difference in heat. The completely plant-formed bodies had no temperature difference from the surroundings, while the real man actually did. That much played to Yadome's advantage, that her enemy was currently surrounded by a screen of vines did not.
Obviously, Yadome's target expected attack, in fact, as she watched, some three hundred meters off, another version of the man materialized slowly from a nearby tree, this one fully made of plant matter.
The clone was no less deadly for that. They had learned that in the fight in Rivers country. These copies held all the power of the original, and all the durability, indeed, even more durability, for they had no vital parts. It took a very complete destruction to eliminate them. It was not normal, but normality was not something you expected from people like this.
Unlike her sister Kina, Yadome was no great strategist; she was a sniper, pure and simple. Her approach to battle could be reduced to the very basics, finding a way to make the killing shot. However, this situation could not be handled so simply. Her foe was aware of her, expecting an attack at any moment, and it would take far more to kill him than an ordinary human. Yadome knew she needed a strategy, but she had few ideas.
Time was against Yadome as her foe walked easily across the field. He'd reach the village soon, surely to start a massacre and obscuring any potential shots. She had only moments to think of something.
Her mind raced, trying to think like her sister, her captain, her commander all did, what would work, how could she entrap this man? How could a plant be destroyed?
With the last thought she hit upon a possible idea. For animals, you put holes in them to kill them, for plants you had to cut them down or rip them up, but there existed forces to destroy both types of life, and now Yadome decided she could try to harness them.
She worked hurriedly, having to prepare with only moments available, engaging in tasks unfamiliar. Yet, as she worked, Yadome gained further confidence. She was not acting as a sniper now, just as a ninja, but this struck her as ideal. Her foe was prepared to face a sniper, not to face a ninja. With a little work, she'd reverse all the expectations, Yadome didn't care how her foe died; arrows weren't the only way to kill.
Her preparations done she had to hurry, running through the forest edge, trusting in the masking power of her equipment to keep her silent and unseen.
There was barely enough time, when the pale sniper finally reached a proper angle, directly behind the real body of her target. He was only a dozen or so meters from the first few buildings, though he'd not been observed yet, seemingly, there were few people about. Yadome lifted her bow, took only a moment to aim, and then launched an arrow across the four hundred meter distance.
To keep up the forms the sniper had cloaked her arrow in chakra, hiding its appearance, but she deliberately refrained from masking the sound, and made surely the arrow hit the wind in just the right fashion, insuring it would be heard upon its path.
Moments before the arrow would have impacted grasses shot up behind the plant-man, whipping about the arrow with frightful speed, and then throwing it backwards, insuring any explosion was too far away to do harm.
Yadome had not wasted an explosive arrow, but she admired the counter. She considered how to deal with it even as she launched a trio of lightning arrows with all he speed she could manage, and then ran to the right.
Only moments later plants twisted in a hideous verdant distortion as a frightful green copy of the plant-man materialized in the place Yadome had occupied when launching her initial attack. Crackling darts of electrical force met this new form as well, the sniper having anticipated this maneuver.
Burning and sizzling the flesh smoked and burned, but this vegetative copy only smiled hideously and raised a smoking hand.
Yadome was already leaping back, knowing she could not allow her now two enemies to flank her. Even as she snapped off lightning arrows to burn back surging vines and rippling grasses she maintained constant motion, darting backward in fits and zigzags of jerky motion, drawing her foes onward, and always away from the place she had prepared.
The pursuit by Yadome's foe was not a thing of one ninja and a clone, no, it was a vast stampede of vegetation, twisting and turning and gradually building into a tidal wave of greenery, covered with spines and thorns and all but obscuring the small cloaked figures running through it. Though the sniper maintained ahead of the crest of that wave for a time, it only proceeded to gain speed and would soon overtop her entirely. Little darts of electrical energy might ward off one advancing vine or burn back a nasty spray of thorns from moment to moment, but it was not enough. A ninja cannot fight a forest.
Yadome, backpedaling furiously, knew some trepidation before this mighty attack. She had expected a powerful set of counters, but nothing like this all-encompassing assault. Her foe apparently had chakra to burn and a very solid understanding of just what kind of attack was most useful against an archer. After all, one could not poke holes in a hillside. However, this was not Yadome's plan.
Nevertheless, she was about to take a hideous risk. Everything in the counter the sniper prepared depended not on her own skills, a relatively minor component of this new situation, but on the powers embedded in the seals of her suit. The total operations gear must prove its viability here and now, or Yadome would die, and death could not be allowed, Kina's orders were clear.
"It look's like you're about to be swallowed up!" the plant-wielding Akatsuki laughed with cultured sadism. Yadome said nothing, focusing her mind upon the second skin and all its seals she wore.
"Kill! Kill! Kill!" the alternate copy of the Akatsuki screamed.
The completely different voices were a startling revelation, and could be seen to explain much, but Yadome pushed the thoughts away. She had something else to do.
Channeling chakra the pale sniper slammed her feet down. Spinning, she launched into the air. Her right arm moved in time, pulling arrows from her quiver and throwing them forth, forming a perfect pattern.
A vine, covered in finger-length prickles, spanned out from the massive wall of green anger, curling about Yadome's right ankle.
Gold flashed, and seals ignited on the bodysuit, hurling a burning remnant of vine away.
"What?" One-half of the Akatsuki muttered, as the other growled in rage.
Arrows fell back into Yadome's hands, and she shot again and again, forming a specific pattern. "Motokadou!" she intoned, and the power imbued in those arrows wrapped about and formed its shear spiral, a hurtling vortex shearing through the green wall and down.
Plant juices rained down to soak the ground before the onslaught, and a hole ripped into the great vegetation wave.
Now was the moment, a circular gash revealed a path through the massive wall of green. Yadome focused, whispering words to invoke one of the strange powers imbued by the master Genjiro in her equipment.
Seals flared, and a coruscating nimbus of energy wrapped around her body. Impossibly her motion completely reoriented herself, channeling all her momentum in the direction she now specified. Instead of falling to the ground, into that devastating mass her enemy had formed, Yadome burst out through the hole she had carved.
As she escaped the great trap there was a single snap of the bowstring, and Yadome sent her last arrow down at her foe's copy. The attack came from above and behind, and impossible angle to one who had though protection completely assured.
The barbed steel struck home, and then detonated.
The copy gone the sniper's task was far from done. Landing behind her enemy Yadome ran as hard as she could, invoking seals in her suit once more to empower her body and vastly increase her speed, turning to a streak of black across the ground. Her arrows expended there was no only the trap she had prepared, the deception that must succeed.
The green wave crashed down in the distance, and the ground rumbled and shifted with the immense force of the mighty attack. In that moment the plant master looked back and saw his enemy escaping, hitting the edge of the forest with speed no runner could match.
"Oh no you don't," he hissed.
Five great running strides only had Yadome taken past the edge of the woodline when the ground exploded beneath her in a storm of lashing, sharpened, roots.
The sniper desperately planted her foot and swung her body and bow around, letting those woody clubs smash her body, bruising and scraping. Her suit absorbed the worst of it, but its energies were exhausted, the pale woman's chakra all but gone, and she was held fast in a crushing grip.
Before her stood the monstrous foe, two-colored face inside a vast plant cocoon, a lashing shield of grasses before him, preventing any desperate attack she might manage. "Now die!" two voices spoke as one.
Beneath the black fabric covering her face Yadome smiled, and forced her bowstring back one last time.
Her aim was wild, nowhere near her target, who laughed as the streak of electricity slammed pointlessly into a tree behind him.
The world before Yadome's eyes exploded into flames.
The howling wind of the sudden change mingled with the incredulous scream of her adversary as the trap unfolded. Explosion notes mixed with balls of tinder and all the other flammables Yadome had scrounged up, all triggered at once by careful placement turned the little section of forest into a raging inferno.
The Akatsuki's plant form, previously an asset, was now a death sentence. Despite its natural resistance to flame, once ignited his body served only to fuel his combustion, screaming and raging as he futilely attempted escape.
Yadome, held fast still by the roots, was forced to watch the slow process as the man burned to death, screaming in twin voices the whole time, until at last, mercifully silent.
The life of her foe ended, the roots slackened in their binding and the sniper slowly navigated her limbs free. She was bruised and battered, and her suit would need patching before all its function could be restored once more, but she was whole.
Only one look did Yadome spare for her foe's remains before turning away. She was not interested in the dead. Her siblings were relying on her now, and the mission was not done. It was time to return, and she must hurry, or this little victory would be for nothing.
Chapter Notes:
Thanks to Hakate Aiko for suggesting death by fire as the fate of Zetsu