Previously: Suzu and company begin exploring Orochimaru's hideout; Suzu releases some prisoners; Tsunade seems to have set off an explosion.
Chapter warning: depictions of graphic violence.
Here, one last one for the road.
A huge swell of chakra unlike anything I'd ever encountered blared through the air. Taken aback, all I could do was clap my hands over my ears and cut off the chakra flow as the noise grew to a deafening level. Even Hashirama, who did not seem to have any passive sensing talents, exclaimed over it.
"What is that?" I asked, terrified, as the air roiled with chakra. I could feel it even with my extrasensory techniques turned off. I'd never been frightened by such a loud noise in all my life.
"It would appear that you have never heard a large-scale summon before," Tobirama answered, totally unphased. "Hmm… well! It seems that your granddaughter has inherited Mito's summoning contract, Brother."
At these words Hashirama instantly broke into a wide grin. "Katsuyu!"
"K-Katsuyu?" I asked as the image of a white slug rose hazily in my mind. The largest summon I'd ever encountered was Sakuya… but Sakuya, now that I thought to compare them, wasn't even a quarter of Katsuyu's size. "She was Mito-sama's?"
At that the Senju brothers both looked at me with surprise flashing in their eyes. "You… know Mito, little kunoichi?" Hashirama asked slowly. Realizing what my familiar-sounding address had implied, I hastened to clarify.
"No, not personally. Kushina—Uzumaki Kushina-sama, the wife of the current Hokage, speaks of her sometimes. She lived with Mito-sama for a short time before she passed away, I'm told," I explained quickly while internally cringing at how much I had just given away. Any other Konoha-nin from this century would have figured out who I was in a heartbeat. Outside of her direct family the number of shinobi who dared to call Lady Kushina's given name so familiarly could probably be numbered on two hands. No wonder Jiraiya had told me to sign instead of talk… this mask didn't have the voice modulator, either.
"I see…" Hashirama seemed to be somewhat disappointed despite himself. Luckily I was saved from further questioning by not one but two more massive chakra explosions. I repressed a startled jump.
"It would seem a summon battle is now underway," Tobirama observed as he tilted his head towards the massive tsunami of sound. "Perhaps we now know where to go."
I took a moment to reflect on the wisdom of charging towards what was undoubtedly the three Legendary Sannin already unleashing mayhem. Then I twisted my fingers together and looked at my companions. Surely if two equally legendary Hokage came along everything would be all right?
"Hold. I know that scent." Hashirama's voice was not so jovial as it was when he spoke then. Tobirama and I paused and looked back at him. Still caught up in the booming echoes of the distant clash of Sannin, it took a moment for me to come back and properly read the sharpness coloring the Shodaime's gray, pallid face.
"What is it, Brother?" queried Tobirama.
"Up ahead. I smell a familiar smell…" Hashirama's face darkened with recognition. "I see that this Orochimaru is well-traveled. That is the scent of a most poisonous, hallucinogenic desert flower. It is known for its strong fragrance—it is distinct even at this distance."
His words made me immediately think of Noru and Tsunade's conversation. Suna's nastiest… a foreboding chill shot up my spine.
We turned the corner and found ourselves standing between racks and trays of plants. Several glass distillation kits had been set up on a counter to the left, but they were currently lying shattered in tiny pieces as if something—or someone—had been thrown atop them. Blood was running over the table's edge and dripping onto the floor, where it gathered and then mingled in a pool with a grim-looking purple-blue substance.
"I hope it was not one of your allies who ran afoul of this," Tobirama remarked at the grisly spectacle of jagged glass and gore. Someone's skin had been quite shredded on those shards. It made me wince just to look.
From there the remains of conflict led us straight towards the exit. Kunai and shuriken began to appear, embedded in the floor and walls, and the splattering blood trail was still fresh enough that it felt sticky to step upon. I found myself wishing with sudden anxiety we had some means of determining to whom it belonged—an Inuzuka, maybe, or even Kakashi, who was an accomplished smell-type sensor. It was apparently just by looking that this was no small injury. If we were lucky one of the medics was already on the scene seeing to the wound, but judging by the current situation Tsunade was likely to be well-occupied at the moment. Maybe Noru had it on hand…
And then there was a loud rumble. Startled, we fell into wide-legged stances to stabilize ourselves as the base began to shake. Then cracks began to appear in the ceiling.
"It must be the summons," I concluded right away. "Fighting on the cliffs." There had been repeated jutsu use for the past several minutes. Combined with large-scale ninjutsu, especially doton, it wouldn't be hard at all for animals of that size to collapse a cliffside if they were jumping around enough.
"Then we must leave at once," Tobirama declared. "This way. Let's hurry."
We took off at a run down the hall, still following the weapons and the blood. As we sprinted the structure began to deteriorate further; the cracks in the ceiling widened. Then they began to fall.
"Whoa there," Hashirama exclaimed as he deflected an absolutely massive chunk of stone with an impromptu wood dome. Tobirama yanked me by the hood when I turned to gawp at the sudden casual appearance of mokuton. A moment later a small boulder the size of my head crash-landed in just the same spot I'd been standing.
"Pay attention!" the Nidaime snapped. He promptly released me and whapped me on the side of the head. "You fool!"
Once we got through to the outside the familiar roar of the Naka River soared up to meet us. Both Hashirama and Tobirama made noises of recognition when they saw the rushing torrent of water beneath and the rising walls of the ravine above.
"We truly are in Konoha," Hashirama remarked, delighted. Or, well, he was delighted until a spray of acid came raining down from above. He dodged left; Tobirama and I dropped down closer to the water.
"That was Katsuyu-dono's Acid Spray," Tobirama observed, impressed, as he craned his neck to look up at the now-rapidly dissolving ledge upon which we had been standing. "How nostalgic."
My reply was lost as I found myself looking farther out, a ways down the cliff. The sound of metal ringing was unmistakable. I stepped out towards the edge of the outcrop and caught sight of a familiar figure flying through a flurry of beautiful high kicks. As he turned and nailed his adversary in the head I made a noise of recognition. I executed that kick with frequency myself; it was pure Hurricane Gale. "Akihiko."
"Akihiko is one of your companions, no?" Tobirama leaned forward to watch, tilting his head as my clanmate's dark-clad opponent fell from the cliff face and then plummeted into the river below. I winced in realization. I'd said his name—twice now, hadn't I?
"Yes, ah… that's Rengoku," I muttered and put a hand on my head. Oyuki would absolutely kill me if she could see me right now. I'd been away from the unit too long.
"Oh? I see." Tobirama regarded me with an amused look. But then his eyes drifted back. "He seems to be rather outnumbered."
It was true. Kamoku and Shou were nowhere to be seen, nor were any of the members of Team Ya. And though Akihiko had toppled one shinobi, four more were pressing in on him while a single other was dueling with… Noru, it looked like. Still, he was handling himself with impressive efficiency. I watched as he ducked and weaved beneath various strikes and weapons. Even at this distance he looked like art in motion: smoothly pivoting on his back foot, sweeping his upper body into a lithe backbend, putting one hand on the ground and springing upwards with a flying kick spin… As he whirled a brace of kunai flew forth from his hand, driving two attackers back while he simultaneously downed another with his heel. He was like an iron wall, solid and impassable as his opponents fought to get through his defense.
"He's guarding Noru," I realized belatedly. The four enemy ninja were pressing in on him not to get at him, but past him. And that made sense: Noru was a medic. Not only was it to their advantage to take her out, but by the very virtue of her trade she was less suited to fend off multiple opponents. There was no doubt she was a proficient fighter—she wouldn't be in ANBU otherwise—but medics were not trained to be powerhouses, at least not in the main. They relied on their teammates for that. That way they could focus their time and energy on perfecting their craft, not their taijutsu.
As I watched, though, I got the sense that something was wrong. He threw kunai again, wildly, and only half of the spray flew in the direction of his opponents. Something about his gaze was glazed. He was sweating heavily—very heavily—and once he came to a stop he swayed on his feet.
"How many… how many?" I heard him call, gasping. "I can't tell, Noru, how many?"
"Four!" she yelled back as she ducked under the swipe of a katana. "Four left!"
"Which ones?!" Akihiko cried back as he turned his body this way and that, facing illusory opponents no one else could see. I saw clearly then that his right arm was hanging limp at his side, covered in huge red gashes and bleeding profusely. He scrambled to think and then said, "Give me their clock spots!"
"10, 12, 1, 2—agh!" Noru let out a cry as the tip of her enemy's blade slashed across her bicep.
"Noru!" Akihiko tried to whirl around, but his adversaries, dressed in the same manner of the guards we'd found while releasing the prisoners, saw the opening and pounced. My clanmate let out a frustrated yell and drew his ninjato before lashing out, relying on the blade's extended reach to try and compensate for his bum limb. I began bolting forward, leaping haphazardly down the cliffside across jutting rocks and crags to try and get closer to him. I heard Tobirama yell after me but I left him behind, heedless.
As I ran, Noru and Akihiko struggled with their opponents. Noru eventually managed to twist her torso and disarm her enemy with an especially tricky contortion, turning the tide in her duel, but in contrast Akihiko's fight began deteriorating rapidly; he swiped his sword at the shinobi on his left, but the kunoichi at his back flew in with a sweeping kick and knocked his feet out from under him. As he fell onto his front I was forced to watch as my teammate desperately rolled left and then right, frenetically avoiding another katana-wielding woman's downward strikes. I cringed as his injured arm ground itself into the rocks, but despite the obvious pain Akihiko managed to rock himself up onto his feet. With chest heaving he brought his ninjato down on the forehead of the third guard, cracking the man's skull open like a melon. But then he was forced to block with the flat of his blade as the fourth dove in with a long dagger. He gritted his teeth and leaned into the parry, putting his body's weight forward in an attempt to make up for the fact that he was blocking one-handed against a two-handed strike.
And then, while I was still cresting over the top of a large boulder, the unthinkable happened. Noru yelled Rengoku's name as the enemy kunoichi, taking the opening created by her partner, drove her katana clean through Akihiko's stomach and out the other side. Akihiko gasped and dropped his sword. My breath stopped dead in my throat.
He didn't go down right away. He actually yanked himself off the kunoichi's blade, put a hand on the tsuba, and used it to jerk its wielder right off her feet. He then proceeded to punt her wholesale off the cliff, movements forceful and rapid, before turning the sword around and slashing it straight across the chest of her partner. Horrified, I watched as he let out a bloody cough and turned to face down the remaining attacker, staggering.
"Rengoku! Rengoku!" Noru frantically tried to disengage from her wild taijutsu bout, but her opponent hooked his foot around her ankle and she was forced to roll aside to save herself. Akihiko readjusted his one-handed grip; I could almost see the way he took a deep breath to steady himself before the charge. Then he let out a loud yell.
My shoulders began to shake. I saw his foe's head separate from its body and tumble down the rocks—and I saw Akihiko pitch to the side and plummet down after it.
Once I'd finally made it to the large platform they'd been fighting on I sprinted full force to the edge, ripping my cloak off and throwing it down as I went. Noru gasped as I flew past her, but I just slammed two hands down on the rocks, barely keeping the presence of mind to place a seal, and then launched myself off the cliff and straight into the river.
Akihiko hit the water before I did. I fell in several seconds afterward. It became immediately apparent that we'd fallen straight into rapids; for an instant without time the world was nothing but a spin cycle in a washing machine, tumbling me up and over and to the side. I struggled in the current as water rushed up my nose, fighting to bring my head back to the surface and to open my eyes against the monstrous force of the rushing water. Once I'd broken through there was a long moment of air-starved coughing, of discerning left from right and up from down, before I found myself being slammed into a rock and pinned there by gallons and gallons of water. Throat and chest burning, I craned my neck and saw just a glimpse of bright yellow being swept away. The rock beneath me cracked with the force of the chakra I used to propel myself after him.
Even after all this time I could still remember that long last day in the bunker. I had spent it bound and prone and soaked in Yoshiya's blood. The way it had crept slowly across the stone floor—the way it had crawled into my clothes, seeping into the crook of my elbow—and the way it had cooled on my skin, going from warm to cold to sticky, I remembered it better than I remembered my own face sometimes. They'd stabbed him in the gut and he'd died. If Akihiko—if Akihiko, stabbed in the gut, died—
A guttural shout of pure adrenaline ripped itself from my throat when my fingers closed around his ankle. Wasting no time, I stretched my hand out and pulled at the cliffside seal with my chakra; a silver lifeline bloomed into being around my fingers. Frantic, I made a fist and twisted my elbow. Then I twisted it again, wrapping the wires all around my forearm. I gritted my teeth as the river pulled angrily at us and made the metal threads dig into my skin. My gauntlet did no good to protect the underside of my forearm from this.
I set my sights on a long, flat boulder at the edge of the river and desperately began to kick. I expelled chakra from my feet as I went, haphazardly applying nature transformation to try and create some sort of slipshod sealless technique that could get me to the other side faster. We crashed into the rocks with no control and very little grace.
"Akihiko… Akihiko!" I gasped as I released and resealed the wires while simultaneously grabbing a fistful of his collar and hauling him out of the water. He didn't reply; I smacked him across the face, desperate for him to wake, but there was no response. His face was white. He wasn't breathing. I flung a glove off and pressed my fingers against his neck—no pulse. As I stared down at him, breathing heavily with exertion, I saw a long, swirling trail of red begin to leak out from beneath him. Images of Yoshiya's dead gaze, lightless and empty, swam past my vision again.
No, no, no. This time I could do something. I had to do something.
"Akihiko!" I shrieked and slammed on his chest. When the heel of my palm contacted his sternum a strangely-colored memory shot up to the surface of my mind. All the Earth memories were like that—just slightly different from my own, foreign and unfamiliar—and I was used to seeing them in this way. But this one made me still. For a split second I was in a different world, watching the Earth girl's movements as she observed a screen—as she listened to an instructor—as she practiced over a dummy. What was this? It was nothing I'd ever seen in the Narutoverse. It was called—BLS, basic life support, and that was—cardiopulmonary resuscitation, CPR.
ANBU armor did not zip up the front. After wrenching a kunai from my waterlogged holster I seized the front of his vest and ripped a jagged tear straight down the middle. Then I pried his black turtleneck shirt from his skin and slashed that in two as well, exposing his chest to the air. Blood was already pooling on his abdomen; I stared a moment in silence as it gathered in the crevices between his well-defined muscles before trickling down his sides, where it joined the thin bloody stream flowing back down into the river. I swallowed and looked at his arm, which was still leaking profusely as well. He was going to bleed to death. CPR couldn't stop that.
Then I snarled to myself, interlocked my fingers and straightened my elbows, and pressed down on his chest. Hard and fast, I did it again. Then I did it again—and again—and again and again and again. I heard a snap—a breaking rib—and I gritted my teeth, but I kept going until I had counted to 30. Then I shoved my mask up while flinging Akihiko's aside.
My heart jittered wildly when the first rescue breath failed to have any effect. Drawing back, I inhaled deeply and re-tilted his head before pinching his nose and pressing my mouth to his once more. The terrible tightness in my gut eased just a hair when I saw his chest rise.
Compress, count, breathe, compress, count, breathe—without anyone to help me the sets blurred together. My muscles began to burn. Time, which had been rocketing past so unstoppably, now seemed to elongate. I sloppily went to compress again; my palms slipped and my body lurched forward across Akihiko's front. Tears began to leak from my eyes.
"Akihiko, please," I pleaded as I gripped his shoulder, shaking with exhaustion. "Please. You can't. Not you, too. You can't."
Akihiko did not respond. The only reply to meet my ears was the furious roar of the river, rushing forward as if to take my only remaining teammate's soul far away with it.
Note: Well, I hope you enjoy cliffhangers...