Okay, major gore rating here. Also, remember that the ultimate pairing is DanxRor despite what happens here.
Thirteen months since graduation, and they never anticipated this, not so soon.
Hiko stands watch, perched high in a tree, Byakugan blazing, seeing through everything, in all directions.
Walter stands over the prone body of the Rock-nin, hands braced in a Snake seal. It's the first time he's used this jutsu in the field, but he's practiced enough to hold it easily. Earth Style: Pottery Restraint technique, where the ground itself restrains the target.
Michiyo kneels, arms deep in the Rock-nin's guts, who is still alive despite the gaping cut in his belly. Bloodied knives lie on the ground beside her, ready to be used again.
"Where is your team's rendezvous point?" She demands. The ninja spits weakly at her, missing. She smiles, that closed lipped smile of hers. "Fine. We'll do this your way." She separates one coil of intestine from the mess, wrapping it around her fist. Then pauses, and looks to Walter for approval.
"Do it." Walter says, and Michiyo jerks her head in a nod. Walter's not sure how he became the leader in Reika-sensei's absence, but he is now, and it feels natural. Like he always has been, and they've just taken a while to realize it fully. "Do what needs to be done, Michiyo."
Michiyo squeezes, and the man screams, wetly. His voice is wrecked, and she can see his diaphragm flex as he breathes.
It's been six hours since they were separated from their teacher. It was just another C-rank patrol, their tenth, and they'd found them boring but simultaneously exhilarating so far. Staying alert but finding nothing.
Not this patrol.
Forty minutes' travel from Konoha, Team Four crossed paths with a team of eight Hidden Rock ninja, and tumbled into a confrontation. Reika-sensei had hidden her Genin with a genjutsu, allowing them to safely back her up with thrown kunai and long-distance jutsu. They'd taken out one cleanly, wounded another, and their teacher had killed three others before the enemy knocked her out and carried her away, dragging the wounded man with them. It was then that Team Four revealed themselves, but they were caught up in battle with the one man that remained behind. They'd killed him after twenty minutes of frantic battle. After checking, and ensuring that the dead were truly dead, Team Four began pursuit of the enemy, opting to rescue their sensei rather than return missing a member.
They'd run across this man, alone, knocked him from the trees with the combined effort of a waterspout-like water jutsu from Walter and a paralyzing lightning jutsu from Michiyo, and finally, subdued him through Hiko's Juuken. Then, they'd pinned him and restrained him with Walter's Pottery Restraint.
The shinobi is breathing sharply through his nose, biting down hard on his lip.
"Again, Michiyo." Walter commands.
She obliges. The Rock-nin draws blood on his lip before shrieking, spraying Michiyo's cheek with a few stray flecks of blood from his lip.
"Again." Fist closes again, hard this time, drawing another scream.
"Fuck!" The man gasps, "Fuck – you're just kids, fuckin' brats… Hell, man!"
"Your team took our Jounin sensei, and for that you die." Walter murmurs, words coming to his mouth easily, full sentences suddenly easier now than out-of-combat, and he smiles, feeling light and high. He knows his face echoes Michiyo's dreamy smile. "Tell us where they would take her, and my teammate will make it a quick death. Michiyo, remind him."
"'Kay." She sighs happily, and pulls.
When the man's noise dies down, Walter continues.
"It's up to you to tell us, and the truth this time, or we'll do nothing. We'll just leave you, tied up, to bleed to death, slowly. Painfully, for your sins. With us gone, anything could happen to you. Perhaps the wildlife will investigate, and find a meal. Maybe the maggots will hatch from their eggs, and you will feel them writhe in your flesh as you die. Or we might shatter your hands and feet, gag you so you can't bite your tongue and bleed to death swiftly, and then snap your arms and legs. Or maybe sever something and cauterize the blood vessels shut. The woman your team captured taught us multiple fire techniques that could be utilized in such a fashion…"
"Sick, my gods you're all sick!" The Rock-nin sputters.
"That's a matter of opinion, bucko." Michiyo says, "Hidden Leaf wasn't the one who started this war, by the way. It was Hidden Rock."
"We're only doing what's right! The Leaf has long stood behind their sick child protégées, you say you're soft but you're all just a bunch of hypo—Aaieee!"
Crunch.
The man's words cut off and gurgle in his throat. Walter raises his sandal off the shinobi's now-crushed hand. With a grunt, he crouches next to the man's face and grabs the enemy's chin in a purple gloved hand, tilting it towards him.
"You seem to be forgetting something," The redhead growls softly, "You are in no position to be speaking like that. Speak of my village that way yet again and I'll gouge your eyes out with my hands. What rank are you?"
"Special-Jounin."
"War must be lowering Hidden Rock's standards." The man's face twists in anger, but he stays quiet.
"Wise to stay quiet. Where is the rendezvous point for your squad? I'm beginning to feel impatient…"
A tear rolls down the man's cheek, but he gives up a line of coordinates which Walter writes down carefully.
"How many in your team originally? And their ranks."
"Eight. Two Jounin, me, another Special-Jounin, and four Chuunin."
"And finally, your name." The Special-Jounin swallows, dark eyes staring at Walter.
"Ryuuji. Ryuuji Iwahi." Walter nods.
"Michiyo, to me. Hiko," He raises his voice to reach the Hyuuga. "Come down." A soft pat as Hiko lands easily, padding over quietly. A quick glance at the other boy reveals that he is pale and sweating, and obviously not at ease. "Have you ever killed before?" Hiko goes green, and shakes his head.
"Yes, but not in cold blood." Michiyo says softly beside him. "I killed the guy back in the clearing. I don't think Hiko did, but one of us killed that guy ten hours ago, y'know." Walter sighed.
"Not counting that possibility, this will be my first time, perhaps. But this isn't killing in cold blood. It's justice. We'll do it together, as one, more mercy than he deserves. A team kill."
"Kids, just fuckin' kids." Ryuuji Iwahi whimpers.
"My name is Walter Kovacs." Walter tells the man, "And this is Michiyo Kagami, and Hiko Hyuuga. Goodbye." He selects a long knife, and his teammates place their hands on the handle. Hiko's hand is trembling. They bring it down over the Rock-nin's throat.
"Now."
The knife cuts cleanly. Ryuuji Iwahi closes his eyes, last breath sighing out of the cut, his body going still. Blood spurts over their hands in slowing pulses, and Hiko drops his grip on the knife to run and vomit several yards away.
"Knife's yours." Michiyo says softly, and pulls back her hand. Walter changes to a tighter grip, an icepick grip, and idly knifes the still-warm corpse in the heart, just to be thorough. It barely twitches.
He pulls himself away from the body and stands. Michiyo shifts closer, and presses a small hand to his shoulderblade. Her hand is bloody but warm, and Walter can't bring himself to push her away. It feels good. The relative silence of the forest is jarring after the noises of torture.
He shifts his balance as she leans against him, pressing herself to his back.
"Too quiet, Michiyo."
"So you're talking all fragmented again, huh?"
"…Yes." (Strange, really, how easy the words had come during the interrogation. Walter has never been a smooth-talker, but in that bloody haze he'd temporarily achieved the crystalline coherency he'd always dreamed of reaching.)
"Hunh. No, I guess… It felt funny, though, the blood, and the screams. Doin' it. It felt right, y'know?"
"...Did." He admits. (This too is unusual, because isn't it wrong to enjoy killing? But no, no, a voice that sounds like Reika-sensei says. Ninja must kill. Assassination, war, killing-intent… Ninja must kill and not go insane, because sometimes, killing is just part of the job.)
"You were amazing. Back there." He turns to face her.
"Flattery." He comments drily, and the unbloodied skin on Michiyo's face flushes. She drops eye contact.
"I just thought… After we get Reika-sensei back, if we live… Take me out on a date?"
He stares, mouth slightly open.
"…What?"
"Go out with me?"
"Why?"
"I hate to interrupt this charming display of romance, but we have a Jounin to rescue." Hiko drawls, and Walter takes an awkward step away from Michiyo. "The now-deceased Ryuuji Iwahi was expected to rendezvous with his team at the given coordinates in two hours, which gives us very little time to prepare a proper retrieval of our teacher. We are going to impersonate him, correct?"
"Yes." Walter confirms. "Michiyo is best at this, will do it." He turns to her, "Had a good look at the Rock-nin – Ryuuji Iwahi – before interrogation?" Michiyo nods, all business now.
"Yeah, I should be able to duplicate his look with a henge, and I saw how he moved when we took him down, so we're good."
"Act injured, in multiple places, a wound on face that hinders speaking, act walking wounded – his team will less quickly suspect imposter then. Person in shock behaves different than when healthy."
"This is just to get them off guard for the big attack, yeah?"
"Correct, three Rock shinobi left then, one wounded – assuming they did not meet reinforcements. No need for long impersonation, just to get them off guard." His two teammates nod. "Look for Reika-sensei."
"If she's not there, kill all but one." Michiyo nods, hazel eyes hard.
"Same for them as this one then." She jerks her thumb over her shoulder at the bloody corpse behind her. "We just gonna leave him here?"
"No. Hiko, seal him up." The Hyuuga smiles, pleased to finally do something that's his forte. He pulls out a small scroll and unseals a large jug of ink and a thick brush. He crouches on the ground and begins to paint an intricately glyphed circle around the body.
"This should take at least a foot of the forest floor with it, so all the blood spill should be covered." He comments, wrinkling his nose at the stench of blood and death and perforated intestines. That is Hiko, ever-fastidious.
"So," Michiyo says, almost conversationally, as they watch their teammate work, "Worst case-scenario, we're facing two healthy Jounin and an injured Special-Jounin. I'm ready to die, are you?" Hiko snorts. Walter just shakes his head.
"Will use team jutsu – Water Style: Ice Needles, blood variant."
Team jutsu were rare, but Reika-sensei had taught them the few she knew – it was rare for a team to reach the right balance and teamwork to master team jutsu – but they needed all the advantages they could get to survive the war, she had explained to them, not seven months ago.
"Wait – blood variant? I'm used to the local water, air moisture and groundwater one, but blood?"
"Hm. Yes. Discovered it myself. Changing ram seal at end of sequence to dog seal draws water from targeted living creatures rather than moisture in air or from water table. Worked on plants, squirrels, and one rabbit. Should work on humans. Sixty percent of human body made of water – simple but effective."
"And deadly." Hiko says from his crouch, channeling chakra into his seal. With a soft poof, the man's body and blood disappear, leaving a once blank scroll full, scrawled with black ink that matches the seal Hiko just drew in miniature. Hiko pockets the corpse-filled scroll. "A jutsu that causes the enemy's blood to transform into needles?" He continues, "Possibly worth classifying as a forbidden jutsu."
"Glad you're on my side, then." Michiyo says, then shakes herself. "Sounds doable, at least. Dog seal instead of ram, okay. We'd better get going, yeah?"
"Hnk." She takes that as an affirmative, and with a pop, transforms into the now-deceased Ryuuji Iwahi.
"Let do this!" She says in the dead man's voice, careful to wheeze like she/he's broken a rib.
"Yes. Mission to retrieve our teacher begins now."
Reviews are nice.