Chapter XIV: Spider's Web
A spark at the enemy's fingertips began the melee. As the undefined ninjas slammed his charged hand into the wet brick surface of the plaza, Naruto and Sasuke jumped high into the air. It took less than a second to realize that landing in a thousand-volt field was not to the two's advantage.
"Sasuke!"
"I know!" Sasuke took a deep breath and heaved out a column of fire, creating a thick white mist that engulfed the area with a thick fog before clearing the air once more. A soft tinkling from behind caught Naruto's attention before he turned to see a rain of needles falling from the sky at a high velocity.
"Gwah!" Both landed several meters away from the flaming brick plot, studded with steel spines and landing heavily on their sides. All that and only seven shinobi were either out of commission or dead.
"Hmph. That was way too easy. I thought Leaf ninjas were tougher than that," the opposing ninja mocked as a number of unraveled scrolls clattered to the ground around him. Utterly pathetic, the man thought with a mixture of pride and disgust.
"Heh…" Naruto pushed himself upright with labored effort, his mouth twisted into a bloody smirk. The sadistic spectator watched with much amusement at the futile attempt at resiliance.
"You think…we're that easy?"
"?!" A poof of smoke remained as the shadow clones disappeared, triggering a countless number of shuriken that shot across the plaza from all sides and taking out a dozen oblivious shinobi. An immense amount of charka collected in the air thwarted the remaining ninja's attention to the space above. The vision they saw was nothing short of baffling.
The two leaf shinobi were sprinting five feet over their heads.
The armored man squinted to make out clear, thin threads intersecting under his foe's feet, connected to a variety of large shuriken deeply embedded into the buildings surrounding the plaza. So that's how it was…
"So you used the steam from the water evaporating after that fire attack to stall for time in order to create another 'platform' off the ground." Sasuke calmly pierced the man's throat as he appeared behind the verbose foe with a kunai as he hung by his toes.
"You talk too much."
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Sakura awoke to find herself in an unfamiliar room wearing unfamiliar clothes and in an unfamiliar state.
Reason trickled slowly into her throbbing mind. The team had changed their attire when they stopped by a town and broke into two groups for lunch. Assuming that she had eaten lunch with Kakashi and that the man was there long enough to see her get drunk, the only logical order of events was that he had taken her somewhere after her mind went wonky on alcohol.
Remembering Kakashi's drunken antics and piecing them together with what she had seen on television, Sakura jolted her back off the floor, which was followed by a painful rush of blood to her head, and desperately racked her demurring brain for any little snippets of memory from after she exited the restaurant to when she was brought to this… place.
Where exactly was 'this place'? Taking a hold of her senses, the kunoichi noted the presence of a floppy-eared dog lying next to her blankets. Obviously one of Kakashi's since there was no other person in the world that would adorn their pets with that strange scarecrow-face drawing. It was tacky, but when she explained it to Tenten-sempai in one of their coincidental marketplace meetings, she said it was cute. She was not the only one who thought that way, for Hinata shared the same sentiments. Since then, Sakura had many internal debates on the relative concept of 'cute'.
Lying back down so her head hit dead center of the pillow, she directed her thoughts to something other than her headache. Kakashi must have left to find Naruto and Sasuke-kun, she thought. Sakura sighed and began to mentally dig through layers upon layers of what she figured to be brain cells corrupted by the wiles of vodka. Little by little the scenes came back to her in erratic intervals.
There was the waitress, babbling to Kakashi after taking a whiff of the contents in her cup. Then they were standing in the rain… but before that she had something to say. A vague memory of focusing her attention on her leader's eye, and then her mind shut down until she found herself outside in the rain. Looking up at Kakashi. In his arms.
And she said something… something important…or something she thought was important at the time.
Whatever she said, she had to remember. Though she would ask Kakashi, there was a vague internal alarm warning her that her dignity would not emerge unscathed.
"Uwah!" Sakura cried out lout as she gripped her hair in desperation. The dog next to her stirred and lifted his head in quiet interest.
"What did I say?"
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Shiro peered through the sight, surveying the field. The ninjas were moving at high speeds, but after watching them flounder below Naruto and Sasuke attacking above their precious million-volt turf, the remaining five shinobi were forced to tread the flimsy wire platform.
The ninjas who wiped out his comrades the day he began that aborted assignment would trust his hostage to kill their enemies. Who in their right mind would put give their detainee such an advantageous position? He could go home earlier and take less vexing assignments back in his own country…if he killed them…
I suppose I can put my trust in you?
Sasuke's words echoed in the gunman's mind until Shiro squeezed his eyes shut to focus his mind. After his concentration stabilized, he took a deep breath, opened his eyes slowly and took aim.
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Naruto and Sasuke stood back to back, fatigue threatening the Uchiha's attention. When they were off-guard, these ninjas were easy targets. When they weren't, they made suitable opponents. A bit too suitable.
Now that both ally and enemy were fighting on a thin wire platform, Sasuke could feel the weight of seven people, dead and alive, straining the shuriken holding up the field. If all of them kept moving, this safety net would collapse to leave him and Naruto to fight with a devastating handicap.
"Naruto! Whatever you do, don't kage bunshin too much!"
"I already know that!" Naruto whipped out three explosion tags. Sasuke followed suit, attaching a tag to each of the kunai he carried in his hand.
"For the future Hokage, this should be nothing!"
Using the wire net as a trampoline, Sasuke catapulted into the air, separating two of the last five shinobi. Two against Sasuke, three against Naruto. The latter's stamina would be able to take more hits than he could say for himself.
Sasuke threw his kunai in rapid succession, forcing the opposing ninja back with each one. He would expose his side as he rushed to deliver what would look like the finishing strike to lure the other shinobi over the kunai
"Guh!" A foot found its way to Sasuke's gut as it kicked him away, as planned. As he fell, a spark from the explosion tags attached to his previous kunai caught his attention. The electricity going through the plaza below disrupted the trigger and cancelled out the effects of the explosion tag, leaving the chakra-embedded pieces of paper smoking uselessly beneath his enemy.
Sharingan eyes widened the fatal inaccuracy. The trap was useless. He would fall unguarded and dangerously exposed.
Immediately on landing, the opposing shinobi wrapped an armor-clad hand around several wires he yanked, pulling out a loosened shuriken and causing a violent quaking under Sasuke's feet. The thread gave away, and Sasuke immediately gripped any wire available and hung painfully by his fingertips. This was a severe miscalculation on his behalf, and if Naruto couldn't send at least one shadow clone in his direction, his demise would be from above or below.
"Naruto!" Sasuke shouted as he felt cleats dig into his already aching fingers. He gritted his teeth as blood trailed down into his shirt. What kind of self-respecting ninjas needed cleats when they had chakra?
"I underestimated you, but this is the e—" A sickening crack of an object ramming through the ninja's metal headgear and skull cut through the sounds of the rain and Naruto battling the remaining three shinobi. Sasuke and his remaining opponent looked about in confusion before another crack sent the other man hanging lifelessly on the suspended webbing.
Where I come from, they call people like me 'snipers'. Basically a long-range assassin.
Sasuke smirked and hoisted and steadied himself back on his 'platform'. Trusting Shiro didn't turn out as bad has he thought.
Before rushing off to help Naruto, Sasuke glanced back at the dead shinobi.
They really did talk too much.
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Alright, two down, three more to go. Shiro shifted his position to face Naruto's battle where he took out a hesitating ninja before Sasuke joined in the brawl. Now that the battle was one-on-one, the target would be moving faster and he needed to keep in mind the positions of his allies.
"Yo." A voice made him start and he turned to see two ninjas.
One was Kakashi. The other he didn't know and decided that he should be relieved to see Kakashi strangling him calmly.
"Yo, where's Sakura?"
"Sakura?" Kakashi wondered how Shiro would react to news of Sakura suffering from the side-effects of illegal alcohol consumption. He would more than likely pass the information to Sasuke and Naruto, and Kakashi had an idea of how the two would take the truth.
"She wasn't feeling well." The less information, the better.
"Hmm…" Shiro looked deep in thought. His fingers moved in odd figurations as he pieced facts together as he glared at his gun in contemplation, Sasuke and Naruto forgotten in his new puzzle. A few seconds later Shiro's face brightened as he thumped a fist into his hand.
"I know what's wrong with Sakura!"
"Hm?" Kakashi wondered how this man who had little knowledge of their culture and had only known his team for three days could figure out the emotional patterns of Sakura. The only woman on the team. The natural enigma as far as men was concerned. The female.
Assuming some ridiculous explanation, Kakashi decided to humor the gunman and released the shinobi that had stopped struggling in his arms a while ago and squatted next to Shiro.
"Then let's hear it."
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Sakura opened her water bottle to find it empty. Irritably tossing the useless vessel aside, she squeezed her temples with the palm of both hands.
The pounding in her brain had lessened somewhat. Just one gulp caused her all this. Sakura realized that though she looked like her mother, she had her father's disgraceful lack of tolerance. She was surprised that he had survived any kind of social drinking events, since just one sip would cause enough intoxication for him to lose all coherencies.
Absentmindedly reaching over to scratch the ears of the fuzzy creature next to her, Sakura continued to stare and take in the fine cracks in the ceiling and contemplating on what she wanted, other than getting rid of this headache.
Despite her adamant protests against marriage, Sakura still longed for some kind of companionship other than books and scrolls. Ironically, she had wanted to meet new people on her first time on the field as a medic-nin but was stuck into her old gennin team. Unlike the old Team Seven, she could start over, create and imprint new impressions.
But no, she was stuck with the people that knew her like their old battle scars. And now she was 'married' to the man that identified her as well as his favorite books. She wouldn't be surprised if he could read her as easily as those raunchy scenes.
Sakura made a face at the analogy and turned her mind elsewhere. What was something else she wanted?
She wanted…
Ice cream.
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Sasuke lied down on the bed of wires, finally letting himself clutch the bruised flesh of the bullet wound he received during his stay at the mansion. Naruto sat next to him looking as cheerful as ever, mocking his friend's low energy.
"Nya ha ha! I saw that!"
"Saw what?" Sasuke sighed out.
"So much for the Great Uchiha Clan, eh? If Shiro didn't pick those guys off, you'd be dead." Naruto watched Shiro kneel and recite a prayer over a corpse, crossing himself as he rose before continuing his walk towards them. Watching the strange ritual dedication of homage to the deceased, Naruto decided to reiterate what his instincts told him before the battle. "I told you he was a good guy."
"Hey," Shiro greeted, jogging towards the two from under the net.
"Don't 'hey' us, what happened to the last person?" Sasuke demanded on his back.
"Ah, Kakashi got rid of him."
"Kakashi-sensei?" Naruto looked around to detect another presence. Shiro waved a hand.
"He went to check up on Sakura. She wasn't feeling well, so that's probably why we decided to stop at this village."
"Ah ha…" Naruto nodded before a devilish grin raided his face.
"Why? What's so funny?" Sasuke grew irritated as his friend began to snicker.
"Y'wanna walk in on them?" From where Shiro stood, Sasuke just seemed abnormally tacit. From where Naruto stood, Sasuke's face was changing color at a frighteningly rapid pace.
"That's not a good idea."
Sasuke craned his neck to look down at Shiro. "How so?"
"It's… well, I-It's not what you guys think but…well, it's something…important for them and… um…." Shiro stuttered with his words, earning him two odd looks. An uncomfortable silence settled on the gunman's shoulders before he wrapped up his haphazard speech.
"Uh… just ask them yourself." Naruto looked at Sasuke and Sasuke looked back at Naruto. Naruto shrugged in confusion, not comprehending anything beyond their current situation. Sasuke had a well-worn proclamation ready in these kinds of situations. First one to articulate the line would be free of such daunting responsibilities where information gathering would become emotionally stormy; responsibilities that should be given to none other than his best friend.
"You ask."
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Author's Notes:
Minor-ish edit in Chapter 10, Naruto's Cyclops quote. I changed it before I uploaded it that time, but I decided to go back to the original quote. The level of indecency is upped a bit ("a bit" might be an understatement, but just look and see). Note: The original quote said nothing about Kakashi's sex life, just his marital/love life.
College is eating me alive. Don't expect weekly updates.
"Fanartist"