A happy new year to all of you. As of this chapter, Era has officially been posted for over a year. Considering this is the 22nd chapter, that means I actually didn't miss too many updates. This story should continue into the new year for a while, but we are reaching the end, which is ironic, given this chapter's title.
Chapter 22: And so it Begins…
The sun had already set, leaving Sasuke barely visible atop the building. He didn't move, merely staring into the endless void of stars. Dawn was hours away, yet. There was the possibility that the primary army would not gather until reinforcements arrived, but he highly doubted it. Soon the city would be overrun by opponents out for blood.
Much of this city would be destroyed, he knew. Though the city seemed unnaturally closed and uncommunicative, news of the explosive battles his team had fought in it had quickly spread. For the past day many people had been evacuating the city, which was fortunate given what it was about to go through. Still, all of them wouldn't make it before the battle started, and there would probably be many civilian deaths in addition to the immense property damage. It was unavoidable, but not any more pleasant for it.
His mind remained for a moment upon the winged warrior he had fought earlier. Probably the most powerful warrior who had tried to kill him in a very long time. He had been working for the enemy, and yet he had retained a certain degree of inner nobility. It was that which captured Sasuke's interest.
If one warrior involved in the overall plot was willing to give it up, how many more likewise would be? Could this battle actually be on a moral plane as well as a physical one? That would certainly make everything messier, and he preferred not to think about it. His hand tightened against itself dangerously. Afterward, of course, he would be forced to deal with such things.
Afterward, however, he would have better things to do. Hinata flitted through Sasuke's mind, nearly bringing a smile to his face. Before any of that, however, there was the upcoming battle. Already in the distance he could feel a solid wave of chakra approaching... and a group of decently-sized chakras heading directly toward his back.
Calmly Sasuke turned toward the group of samurai that were leaping over buildings toward him. Most of them he wrote off as generic warriors of no particular threat; though all of them wore similar robes and carried katanas, some had stronger chakras. In the center of the group was a much older man, bald except for a ring of shaggy grey hair, that struck Sasuke as the leader. Before the group reached him it slowed to a halt.
The leader raised a hand, and instantly all of the other samurai made a slight bow. They formed a line and the older man moved toward Sasuke, wiry arms folded behind his back. No words had yet been spoken, and Sasuke saw no reason to speak any. Hopefully it would begin soon... he was in the mood for a fight.
"Are you Sasuke-sama of the Hidden Leaf?" the elderly man asked. Sasuke gave him a scarce nod. Immediately the man smiled and brought out a box from behind his back. One of Sasuke's eyebrows rose; it doesn't seem to be dangerous in any way. "This I bring to you as a gift from all the samurai I control."
"Haven't those samurai generally tried to kill me in the past?" Sasuke asked, noting that the row of samurai behind the old man looked surprised.
"Before we had been working for a different employer; that is behind us now." the samurai explained. "But please, allow me to introduce myself in some small way. I am the Samurai Kage, who has trained all lesser samurai. If you decide to make peace, I will tell you my name as a friend."
"You wish to make peace?"
"Yes. Our employer has proved to be dishonorable, and I have severed our connection with him with due process. You have slain many of my warriors, indeed, two of your comrades killed my greatest pupil but two days ago. I am willing to forgive this, if you forgive the damage we have caused to you."
The elderly man opened the box, revealing three crystal glasses. One was filled, and the Samurai Kage deftly poured even amounts of it into the other two and extended the box between them. "The drinking of water has long been a custom of peace among my people," he explained. "If you will share it with me my remaining warriors will fight alongside you."
Immediately Sasuke's eyes narrowed. "Very well," he said after a moment. He picked up the glass closer to the Samurai Kage, and the old man did the inverse. After glancing at one another, both of them drained their glasses in the same moment. There was a long pause, the samurai behind their Kage still looking stunned, and then the old man began to laugh.
"You may be a great warrior," he chuckled, "but you are also a great fool! Taking a drink from an enemy... you will be pleased to know that I poisoned your glass. It is essentially impossible to detect, but it kills within minutes in that large of a dose."
"M-Master," one of the other samurai spoke up, "what do you mean by this? Surely to poison a foe under the guise of friendship is the highest dishonor."
"Speak again and I will remove your tongue," the Samurai Kage snapped over his shoulder. "I wish to watch him die."
He turned his head just in time to catch a face full of water from Sasuke, who expelled his unswallowed drink at that moment. With a slight cry the man stumbled backward, coughing as much liquid as he could away. Immediately Sasuke struck forward, kunai flashing at the man's jugular. It crashed off of the Samurai Kage's blade, barely drawn in time.
"Then I must cut you down the traditional way!" the Samurai Kage cried, slashing horizontally at Sasuke's head. The shinobi easily shifted back, evading the attack. His opponent attempted to slash again, but Sasuke leapt back and launched several shuriken. Each was deflected, but Sasuke was already far out of the samurai's range.
The two shifted, watching each other carefully as they circled. Both stopped on opposite sides of the roof, parallel to the line of intensely watching samurai. Sasuke put his hands at his sides, the Samurai Kage readied his blade, and then both of them attacked.
Most of the camp was quite silent, its primary talkers mostly out of commission. Slowly Matthew opened his eyes, glancing up at the mushroom that sheltered them. They hadn't given him any information regarding what was happening and he hadn't asked, either. At this point, he was already far too deep in shinobi policy, and he had no urge to go deeper.
From the scraps of conversation he had heard, however, he could piece together a great deal. Their silent messenger had provided them with a scroll that gave a general concept of an attack; it appeared it would be both large and from all sides. Most likely a collection of all of Father's forces, then. If there was at least one Leaf shinobi in range to deliver a message, there were others that could provide direct assistance. It appeared that the exact number of these was unknown, perhaps even to one another.
In any case, Matthew could also derive a few things from Sasuke's limited reactions. For a brief moment while reading the scroll his eyes had flickered elsewhere, though to where Matthew couldn't be certain. He was, at least in some way, slightly concerned for someone else, if not for the entire situation. What that meant he didn't care to contemplate. As the sun fell, Sasuke had vanished as he usually did; unlike usual Hinata had vanished as well some time later.
Sighing, the doctor sat up wearily. His body still ached, but trying to force himself to rest was only going to tire him out more. If he had to be awake, he might as well be productive while he did so. Briefly he glanced at the other two injured persons in their camp. Ino and Sakura were sleeping back to back, seeming both angry and sisterly at the same time.
"So much as move, and I kill them both," a voice whispered to him as if on the wind. Matthew's eyes widened, and then narrowed, though the rest of his body froze. Slowly he began to comprehend that there was a strange shifting in the air directly over Sakura and Ino. His eyes eventually trained themselves to see past the genjutsu and to the shinobi who held blades to their necks. "Make a sound, and I kill all of you," the shinobi continued, voice incredibly soft.
"What other option do I have?" Matthew whispered back. "Not make a noise and let you kill us all anyway?"
"Exactly!" the shinobi cried, his voice still with the same whispered quality. With that word he hurled several shuriken directly at Matthew.
The doctor's arm flew into action, shifting a scalpel to his fingers and barely managing to knock the shuriken aside. They bit into the mushroom stalk behind them, then exploded in metal wire. Guided by an energy Matthew couldn't completely follow, they curled around him, then snapped tighter, binding his arms and legs to the tree.
"Good," the assassin told him softly, "but not good enough. Your degree of failure is irrelevant, because you will die as surely as if you had blocked none of my shuriken."
"Your logic is in error," Matthew answered. At that moment a kunai slashed across the shinobi's neck. He collapsed to the ground, revealing Sakura and Ino standing behind him, Ino still with a bloody kunai in hand.
"So they found us," Sakura surmised. "How many do you think there are?"
"Too many," Ino breathed, glancing behind her. "I seriously doubt they'll try for any more silent kills, either."
"Not quite." Both of them glanced to the side, startled, to find a shinobi standing beside the mushroom calmly. He held a foreign-shaped kunai to Matthew's neck calmly. "Drop your weapons, all of you, or I kill him very painfully. We'll make this quick if you cooperate."
Silence stretched between the three shinobi and the doctor. Sakura and Ino glanced at one another in shock, uncertain how to act. Sakura began to feel sweat rolling down the side of her head. I should attack and let him die... but I can't bring myself to do it... I...
"Sure," Matthew shrugged, as much as he could while bound by wire. He let the scalpel drop from his fingers, and the shinobi glanced to Sakura and Ino.
Before the scalpel hit the ground, Matthew tapped it to the side with his foot, then kicked it up. One of his arms ripped free from the wire, catching the scalpel and slicing the shinobi through the jugular in one clean motion.
Ino and Sakura breathed a sigh of relief, but Matthew merely shuddered. He shouldn't have broken that wire with his arm in the condition it was, but there had been no other choice. Now it was throbbing with pain... and there were shinobi leaping from all the nearby mushrooms toward them.
Hinata continued down the dark street silently, letting her senses gently probe the area. She wasn't sure exactly why Sasuke had left the camp, but she suspected it was due to the overall plan. Perhaps he intended to draw any warriors following him away from their wounded comrades, but he hadn't mentioned it to her. Did that mean he was protecting her as well? No, she decided, he was merely letting her do as she wished.
Hopefully, however, he would sense her chakra and let her find him. They couldn't be exactly certain when the armies would attack, but she hoped that they would have at least a short moment together. Then she could tell him that she loved him; small little things that he wouldn't care about but would appreciate anyway. Every time they entered another battle there was always the chance that one of them would not come out of it alive, and that frightened her. Before, that possibility hadn't bothered her nearly as much.
Something whirled through the air behind her, noiseless but visible to her. She snapped a hand behind herself to catch it. Up close, she realized it was a boomerang, and one that was beginning to hiss. Her eyes widened, and then it exploded in a shower of shrapnel.
Hinata landed some distance down the street even as the clone dissipated. Her attackers were strange; even though she could see them with her eyes she couldn't feel their chakra. There was something there, but it didn't feel completely normal. More what Matthew's energy had felt like. That might mean...
The group standing before her was a surly bunch, and quite large. A massive number of warriors were watching from the shadows and from upper windows of buildings, no longer entirely hiding their chakra. Those didn't concern her in the slightest, however; they were very weak compared to the smaller group of six in the street.
All of them had exactly the same energy type and all wore similar clothing. Looking at them further, Hinata thought she saw a vague resemblance to Matthew. Her eyes widened just slightly, but she gave no other sign of her surprise. None of them had yet spoken, and Hinata wasn't the type to start conversations.
During the silence, she analyzed the group as much as she could. She noted that one of them appeared to be wielding boomerangs, and had probably thrown the first one. At the back of the group was a massive figure who stood a head taller than the rest of them, brown shaggy hair falling to his shoulders. Near him stood a warrior clad entirely in heavy armor. A man and a women nearer the front of the group were both wearing similar loose-fitting clothing.
"We don't know who you are personally," the man at the head of the group stated abruptly, shifting back a pair of thin glasses. He seemed slender and very much like Matthew. "But we do know that you are of the Hyuga Clan. Father has always said that to destroy shinobi, we must be superior to shinobi. So consider this the Ragnarok Clan... we are here to demonstrate our superiority with your dead body."
Instead of talking with them, Hinata slid into a fighting stance. There were so many of them... perhaps more than she could defeat; she couldn't properly judge their strength. In any case, fighting would do her a lot more good than talking.
"I have already struck a blow," one of the group said. Hinata instantly identified him as the one who had formerly thrown a boomerang. "I will finish my own fight." The other five all nodded, though Hinata thought she saw the leader frown slightly.
With a smirk the warrior stepped from the group and stopped some distance from Hinata. For a moment he merely watched her, then his hands few to his sides. Two boomerangs were instantly in his hands, and they flashed through the air at her. Both were easily evaded, but Hinata found herself facing a massive metal boomerang moving directly toward her head.
In midair she flipped, kicking off the boomerang and also evading another thrown at her. She landed, then felt a slight tug of chakra. The smaller boomerang shifted directions in midair, then hurtled back in her direction. Back flipping, she evaded this one as well, only to have it dive at her again.
A slight grin on his face, the warrior hurled another boomerang, this one large and red. Hinata evaded it as well, simultaneously back stepping the homing boomerang, but when it passed her by some distance it exploded in a shower of small red shards that flooded toward her. Instead of dodging, Hinata ran in the direction they were moving, which was toward the warrior who had thrown them.
With startling speed she was almost upon him, and the warrior panicked, pulling another boomerang from his belt. This one burst into a wall of flame before him. Hinata managed to pull back in time, then shot into the air to evade the red shards. These dissipated on the flaming wall, and the warrior smirked as it faded. One of her sleeves had caught on fire before she could pull away. That was a start-
The homing boomerang failed to curve up in time and smacked him directly in the face. He flipped backward from the momentum and collapsed to the ground. Some distance away, Hinata quenched the flame on her sleeve and dropped back into a fighting position. With a growl the Ragnarok Clan warrior flipped back to his feet.
"You're better than I gave you credit for," he admitted. "But you have yet to face my greatest technique, the Eight Swaths of-"
Hinata's hand hit him in the chest, and the chakra around his heart twisted lethally. His sentence unfinished, the man remained on his feet for a moment, then collapsed away from her. Wooden weapons clattered over the street as he fell to the ground and lay still.
"Kill her," the leader of the Ragnarok Clan snapped, and the others immediately charged forward. At the same instant, the small army nestled in the buildings above leapt forward. All of them focused solely upon Hinata.
Her first reaction was to run away, and in this case she decided that was the best choice. She skidded backward across the street, evading the massive attack that ripped a crater in the area where she had been previously standing. It appeared that some of the warriors had waited, however, and now launched themselves at her.
Spinning, Hinata kicked the first of them out of the air, then ducked to evade a slash from the second. The third stabbed down at her head, but she moved too close to him to be struck by the blow and slapped a hand over his heart. As he fell back she leapt off the ground, barely avoiding a stream of flame spat by one of the lesser shinobi.
Two massive arms clamped around her from behind before she could land or think about creating a clone. Looking over her shoulder she recognized the most massive of the Ragnarok Clan, who was steadily attempting to squeeze the life out of her. He certainly had a lot of strength, but not enough of a grip of her. She flowed out of his hold like water, kicking him on the side of the head and leaping away.
He barely stumbled, but Hinata had other things to worry about, such as warrior slicing at her from behind. She whirled just in time to push the blade aside with her right hand and plant her left on the warrior's temple. Several more launched strange, rectangular blades at her the next instant, but she was already leaping away from them.
Landing on the side of a nearby building, Hinata barely had time to duck and evade another of the Ragnarok Clan, who was slashing down at her. Two of the lesser shinobi attacked her from the sides, also running across the side of the building.
Something else caught Hinata's eye first: the man who looked somewhat like Matthew was bent to the ground, carefully making a massive and complex seal of a type she hadn't seen before. He finished and slapped his hands together in a seal, and she instinctively leapt away instead of attempting to combat the nearest opponents. This turned out to be a very wise choice that only barely saved her.
The seals on the ground leapt to life, snaking out into the air and crashing into the space where Hinata had been, going through her two attackers to do so. In the air just above them, she breathed a sigh of relief, only to have the seals shift upward and wrap around her legs. They jerked with startling speed, and though she managed to break her fall being slammed into concrete still hurt.
Back flipping away, Hinata landed on the street again and found herself surrounded by the weaker warriors. All of them were holding the same rectangular blades, looking as though they were ready to strike at any instant. She started building chakra for a clone, but was interrupted by an enormous presence.
Chakra swept across the street like a wind from behind Hinata. It seemed to shift together purposefully, forming a column just before it struck each of the warriors. Rods of chakra slammed into the hearts of all the warriors in the arena, which promptly stopped beating. Hinata was untouched by the attack, which merely curled around her body and passed, and the members of the Ragnarok Clan all defended themselves in various ways.
"This situation strikes me as fundamentally flawed," a voice echoed across the street, seeming to come at once from nowhere and everywhere, making the Ragnarok Clan whip their heads about them swiftly. Hinata didn't need to glance about, but still searched for the speaker. "If you intend to pit your strength against that of the Hyuga Clan, does it not seem more apt to fight the clan itself, instead of merely one member of it?"
"There doesn't seem to be more than one," the leader of the Ragnarok Clan snapped back at the shadows.
"That was true," the voice admitted, "until thirty seconds ago." Abruptly a brilliant light flashed in the street behind Hinata, blinding everyone momentarily but still drawing their collective gaze. When it faded, a form was quite clear standing on the street. He was tall and wearing the traditional uniform of a Jounin of the Hidden Leaf; his long black hair flew randomly behind him in the wind. His eyes were solid white.
"Who's this freak?" the armored warrior muttered. Hinata, on the other hand, appeared overjoyed.
"Neji!"
Calmly the warrior slid across the street and beside Hinata, shifting into a fighting stance as well. His pure white eyes glanced at her just slightly, and then a hint of a smirk appeared on his face. "Well, Hinata-chan? I believe that a challenge has been issued."
Several of you made mention to the ages of Kakashi and Iruka. Frankly, I blew this aspect of the story. Kakashi is only 14 years older than his students and Iruka even less so. When I was putting together the original plotline I didn't really consider this fact, mentally setting it an indeterminate amount of time into the future (my idea was that leadership of Konoha would have shifted entirely). So Naruto and company are only in their thirties, not in the sixties required to make the older generation of shinobi elderly. I apologize for my oversight.
That is appreciated, LadyPearlDragon. However, it appears that my schedule will not allow for such. Thank you nonetheless.