Wow, I'm back.
And with a really long chapter, to boot things up.
Most of it, up to the last ten or tweny sentences, was written almost two years ago, very close to the previous update, while FullMetal Alchemist was still a new anime (yeah, I'm a sucker for cameos, shoot me). The rest was written mintues ago.
More comments afterwatds, enjoy.
Chapter 19: The Lost Madman
It happened when Amber was only 16, three years before she joined the night hound organization, while she still lived in the fire country as a simple young lady with an undeniable future in the family business as assistant to her brother in arm making.
"I need all the kunais you have, and I need them now!" someone said, it was a skinny male at his late 40's, his hair was wild and white, she could tell he wasn't taking any care of himself over the past years, but the thing that attracted her attention were his eyes.
"I'm sorry sir, all the kunais we have are reserved for the leaf village ninjas, but if you'd like, I'll be glad to appoint you to a more civilian weapon smith… maybe you'll find something more suitable for your needs over there?" Amber answered calmly, mentioning Shinobi villages and hinting about their wrath was the best way to deal with goons who thought they could walk in and take arms for free, her second line of defense lay in her belt, a sharp knife and good reflexes.
"foolish girl! Haven't you heard? The leaf village has died! The demon killed them all! They should've let me kill him when I had the chance.." the man started crying, between his rugs, Amber could see a broken leaf forehead protector, as a weapon smith, she knew it wasn't broken in an accident, it was smashed broken, probably as a symbol of some sort.
"calm down already, start acting like a man and explain the crap about the leaf village dying, we have a very big order for next month, ya know…" Amber said, she walked to the door and put the 'closed' sign on, it wasn't as if anyone would come anyway, they sold ninja shurikans, not fishing hooks.
"Sit down girl, I'll tell you all about the leaf, and it's not the stuff that you'll hear if you ask the shinobies…" the man said, amber took another look at his eyes, it reinforced her opinion that he was mad, but he still seemed too cautious to be a true lunatic.
"My name is Kazamatsuri Mizuki, if you'd search for the name you might find it under the records of a chunin exam about 33 years ago, but that's not the point, the only that should matter is this…" he grabbed the forehead protector, held it in the air for a moment, and smashed it to the floor.
"The ninja villages are corrupted, they hide demons in them and let them grow, I must crush them all, before the come and get the rest of the fire country, it's my duty to protect them" Mizuki screamed, smashing the forehead protector time and again, making new cracks each time.
"calm down, you're gonna hurt yourself!" Amber screamed, she never liked shinobies as well, whenever they came, she would always have an ominous feeling, they reeked of blood and explosives, she tried once to throw a knife at one of them, a blonde haired guy with whiskers, but when she reached for the knife she couldn't find it. Only when they left the blonde haired ninja turned to her and smiled, without a hint of malice or anger, on that moment, she felt like something else was looking at her, something so horrible that it could crush mountains and entire nations without noticing it at all.
Then Mizuki dropped to the ground, senseless and unconscious, the fall opened up a few wounds over his body.
A month has passed, Mizuki stayed in their city, coming over to Amber's watch each day. They made a bet about whether the leaf shinobies would come or not to collect the kunais, if she were to win, then Mizuki would have to hospitalize himself in a mental center.
"And if I win?" he said. "then I want you to take over my name, I don't have kids of my own, and if I die while fighting the shinobi demons, I want someone to carry the Kazamatsuri name on…" that was their deal.
Another month passed, like a water spring forming, the rumors about the leaf village began to arrive, some said it was eradicated by monsters, some said it was attacked by other ninjas, some even claimed that they were punished by the gods for their sins, the final answer came when a sound shinobi entered the store.
The first thing that Amber noticed was that the ninja came alone, and by foot, it didn't make sense, there was a large shipment of Kunais and shurikans, which usually required at least ten ninjas and a mobile transport to get back to the village, and that was without counting the shinobis needed to protect the cargo.
"This is for your troubles, I'd like to see those weapons destroyed immediately" he said, handing her a check.
"I don't get it" Amber replied, not only that they wanted to destroy the merchandise, the check was much lower than usual, and was signed by someone else then usual.
"the leaf village is no more" he showed her a leaf forehead protector, "it was destroyed two months ago, as an official representative of the survivors, I'm canceling our contract with your family, go and inform your father" he said formally.
"I'll tell my father about this" She said, using the same formal tone as him, she bowed to him and run to the stairs, to wake up her father from his last night drinking spree.
"I know this guy" Mizuki jumped in her way and whispered, she didn't flinch, she spent enough time with him to get used to his stealthy ways and habits, "his the third hokage's grandson, Konohamaru is his name, ask him why he wears the sound symbol now". Amber nodded to him and continued going up the stairs.
"My father will be with you shortly, he wants to verify it himself, do you mind… Mr.…?" Amber asked, trying to sound as polite as possible.
"Konohamaru" he completed, "I don't mind waiting, I have to stay here until I see with my own eyes that all the weapons are melted down" he smiled.
"If he's willing to expose his name like that then he's probably saying the truth" she decided to herself, the next thing on her mind was how to inform her family of her name change, they already hated Mizuki's effect on her.
it was then that she decided to leave her family and do something, getting disowned by her father would allow her to go everywhere without worries that someone will send her back, she knew that staying in her city would only keep her back, and with some guidance from Mizuki, she was sure that she could change something.
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"So, Kazamatsuri Amber, how do you want to start your new life?" Mizuki asked, though he won the bet they made, his wounds from years of captivity were effecting him deeply, deeply enough that he knew he could never leave the city and lead the crusade against the ninja villages.
"It's a secret!" Amber tried to use a childish voice, but it didn't work very well for her.
"I'm joining the night hound agency" she finally said, looking for approval in his eyes, as far as she knew, he considered those new founded agencies to be only one step different than shinobi villages.
"well, I could think of worse things for you to do, and it is your choice… but before you join them and leave me forever, allow me to teach you some things that you'll need to know as an adult and as a secret agent" he sent his hand through her hair, "it might not happen immediately, but soon enough, you'll start competing with Shinobi villages over customers, and when that happens, you'll have to be ready to kill or die"
That was the point where she started suspecting that he didn't really consider her joining the night hound agency a terrible thing.
"there's nothing pretty about it, it's not some Samurai novel, you'll never see two warriors facing each other, and then running to clash that only one of them will survive. Get that image out of your head, war and battles are exactly like life, only those who can outsmart the other win; misleads, lies and deceptions aren't looked down upon, the only people who fight fairly are living corpses, don't let yourself be drowned in some false romanticization of the battle field"
"What is he thinking, confusing me with such ideals?" she asked herself. He should have known that she didn't have much loyalty to neither the truth nor to other epic concepts.
"I know what you're thinking, but in the real life, it isn't that easy, ninjas start fighting at wars before they reach puberty, so you'll have to be ready to kill kids almost half your age, and I'm not talking just about the battle field, you'll have times when you need to line them all up for execution, even though they still aren't in the eligible age to drink sake…"
Killing kids? For some reason, the thought of it sent chills down Amber's spine, throwing knives at masked adults? No problem, cutting the head off the body of some muscled criminal? Sounded fun. But lining children and killing them after the fight? Working as an agent suddenly didn't seem so exciting.
-------Normal story, different scene-------
"So, she wants me to send three platoons of armored vehicles, without proper preparations, without being able to set down all the logistics required and she says she needs them in three days?"
"Sir, I know commander Kazamatsuri's demands quite a lot of vehicles, but you have been informed of this plan, haven't you?"
"Informed? She barged in here a month ago, before any plans concerning the chunin exam were made, and she said that she'll need tanks, APCs and transport vehicles for some secret operation, she clearly stated that I can't even order my men a maintenance check in fear that an enemy ninja might figure out we're planning something!"
"Sir, please, I'm just the messenger, commander Kazamatsuri apparently has complete back-up from HQ, they trust her more than anyone else, including some higher men in the chain of command, they've issued a warning to every soldier who's participating in the attack, they'll have the head of whoever interferes in the mission, in this case, it's ME and YOU"
"Fools, don't they realize that she's digging our collective grave?"
"Apparently, Amber knows that as well, some soldiers talked about it at the camp, and somehow she heard about it and executed them herself. She even wrote the inscriptions on the graves herself: 'personal grave or collective grave, which do you prefer?'"
"And no one informed HQ about that? Even they should be able to see where her vendetta is leading us…"
"They don't care about it, from their point of view, Amber is a great commander who devices impressive battle plans which buffs their pockets, and she has the lowest body count under her command. They don't especially care for her weird twinks, all they care about is that you'll deliver what she wants, can you do it?"
"Of course, I'm not chief of the armored forces for nothing… but I'll have to apply for some funds afterwards, the terrain is going to butcher their lower parts"
---------------------------
"So, how is it out there?" Sakura asked.
"It's not good, it seems that we've fallen to their trap, they got us cornered here, over five hundred soldiers, armed to death with rifles and grandees, they seem to be on patrol duty, but they aren't doing it thoroughly enough, we'll be safe here for a few more hours unless they decide to pick up their pace" Sasuke muttered, he cursed himself for volunteering to check the surroundings, he was already dangerously low on chackra and stamina.
Not to say Sakura wasn't in a similar state, keeping a barrier around them was as draining for her as using the sharingan was for Sasuke, and even with those two combined, they were still hurt, and able to move only thanks to the soldier pills they took.
"Rest a bit, I'll take guard from now on, we'll decide what to do later on" Sakura said, 'I just hope you're still safe, Tack' she prayed silently to herself.
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"Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen…" Reilla counted footsteps from beneath the mud, she had to carefully consider all her options, she needed to finish this battle in one constant move, giving them even a split of a second to respond would prove fatal to her. The only thing she could think about was to disarm them from their rifles using a wind jutsu, but it still left the matter of actually dispatching them before they reach for their spare guns.
"I can't bring in enough water to create a flood strong enough to knock all of them down, a fire jutsu would be able to take only a third of them down and after that they'll shoot me… a lighting jutsu would have worked well if I would get the chance to touch them without being hurt from twenty bullets before…" she went through her options, an earth jutsu would also be out of the question, it was her weakest field of ninjutsu, that left her with option of waiting for reinforcement.
Unfortunately for Reilla, someone was just coming closer to them fast, and since the Night Hounds all moved in groups, Reilla realized it had to be a ninja, most likely a genin, and that meant that she'd have to act.
"I guess this is the only option I can try…" she said to herself, it was still in experimental stages, Reilla wasn't' even sure she could really accesses that power, and even if she could, what guarantee would she have that she wouldn't be lost forever?
"I still need to do it" she reminded herself, she started releasing chackra, as she expected, connecting to the liquid in the ground felt intimidating, not hard, it was almost to easy for her to connect to the demonic chackra in the ground and control it as if it was her own power.
"Demon clone no jutsu"
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"Arms check"
"I have three explosive tags, two smoke bombs, and four flash bangs, no shurikans or Kunais"
"Two explosive tags, two smoke bombs, a flash bang and five ropes, but not weapons"
"Ten meters of ropes and strings, three flash bans, an explosive tag and a smoke bomb, I'm also out of weapons"
"As I thought" Konohamaru said, looking at the three genins, all their metallic objects were now converted to a slump of iron, if he was given another two days or the proper equipment, he could have converted them back, and even use the metal from the bullets to produce more through his alchemy.
"No shurikans, no Kunais, and the three of us don't know any long range jutsu, we won't be able to survive an encounter with those guys…" Doro started calculating their odds, three genins and a jounin against a modern army, not good for them.
"Don't be so pessimistic, we still have some hope, right?" Hob asked with hope.
"Yeah, we have to be able to do something, we're ninjas, after all!" Tack tried to cheer them up, but his voice was tensed as well.
"I won't lie to you kids, even if I was in my top condition I wouldn't be able to stand against a patrol of them. We have to focus on survival, but if we attack and fail to kill them all, then those who are still alive will reveal our position, if we don't attack then we'll be surrounded by troops soon" Konohamaru stared his explanation, it was one of the reason he didn't want to be a jounin instructor,
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"now, tell us exactly what's going on" Gaara smiled to the soldier, wiping the blood off his face, it was the blood of his newly fallen comrades, most jounins would be worried about battling modernly armed armies at such a distance. But with Gaara's sand balls, Temari's wind and Eailla's string skills, the battle was over before it began. The sand exploded onto their faces, then it was moved by the wind to hurt their eyesight as much as possible, and then Ealla waved her hands and sent the diamond strings to cut through the enemy's rifles.
"you better start talking…" Gaara said again, allowing his sand to form a claw over his right hand, "what are your orders? What are you after?" he inquired.
"I don't know! I really don't know! They said that we should patrol around for two days without getting into too much trouble, that's all of our orders!" the soldier screamed in fear. Gaara looked at Eella's and Temari's faces, they nodded him to continue.
"I'm going to ask you again, are you sure you aren't holding anything inside? Because if you are, I'll make sure your death will take much longer time than your friend's" Gaara stretched his transformed hand upwards, allowing the shadow to fall on the soldier's face, then he let loose of the sand from his hand.
The soldier screamed for a moment when he felt the drops of sand falling down on him, not heavy enough to harm him, but still enough to show him enough fear that made him lose his conscious.
Temari sent a glare at her brother, she hated seeing him going overboard with the intimidation attempt, "great, we've just lost our potential information supply…" she sighted, "what do you think?" she asked them.
"The guy was too much of wimp to lie, my guess is that they are trying to buy time" Ealla stated immediately.
"Same thing, so far, they were probably trying get us to this spot, maybe they are waiting for backup…" Gaara said.
"It does make sense, they were actually trying to avoid direct confrontation, so we had the chance to make the first move" Temari concluded.
The only thing the three were wondering about was what kind of reinforcement was on the way, the attack was too organized to be a regular raid, it had to run deep into the politics of land…
"Someone's here"
Gaara suddenly said, though no one was in their line of sight.
----------
It was the third patrol Tsubakeruo had to hide himself from, over thirty different soldiers so far, and he suspected that none of them was important and therefore, worth the trouble of assassinating. It only meant that the people pulling the strings behind this façade were still behind the curtains, and the play still hasn't reached it final stage, so there was still time left to change the course of actions.
'More information is needed' he decided to himself, the best place for that would be their Headquarters, in which the puppet masters behind the marionettes would probably be. But to get there, he knew that a map was in order, and such could only be taken from one of the patrols.
After three hours of following a patrol group, he managed to figure out an action plan to steal the operation map. It was quite simple for him, since he wasn't targeting all of them, he didn't need to fight them, moving between them was enough for his needs.
"Rock clone no jutsu" he raised two clones from the earth, then he placed one in the corner of the road, and picked up the other, Stone clones were much more durable than other clones, but had no movement potential, and were damn heavy to carry around.
"Rock slide no jutsu" three large boulders and a couple of stones rose from the ground, Tsubakeruo extended his right arm and pushed the stones, then focused chackra to his legs and jumped on to the boulder, "Genjutsu: Skin of the Stone", he and the spare clone merged into the boulder.
"Take cover! A rock slide!" a soldier shouted, even though he wasn't the first one to spot it, he was the only one to issue out a warning, it was enough to tell Tsubakeruo that he was the leader. "Over there! Fire!" he shouted when he noticed the stone clone which Tsubakeruo placed before.
When the boulders crushed onto the group of soldiers, Tsubakeruo jumped out, caught the leader and placed the second stone clone in his place, and used the same genjutsu to escape inside the stones. He figured that he'll have about twenty seconds to escape until the Night Hound soldiers would regroup and decide on the next man to be in charge.
Twenty seconds were fifteen more than what he needed, two second to pull out a kunai, another second to search for any secret traps that might have been set on the corpse, and the next two to reach out for all the essential documents that concerned the mission.
"Well, isn't this interesting…" Tsubakeruo thought to himself, he took great pride in his analyzing skills, and from the patrol route set to the soldiers, he could tell that they were trying their hardest to AVOID confrontation. "so they have another thing planned… this is way too much anti freezing liquid for a foot army" he said to himself, it seemed that the commander he killed also had responsibilities on the resources department, and he didn't get rid of all the papers as they have required him to. He wasn't exactly experienced when it came to modern weaponry, but a ratio of one liter of anti freeze liquid for 50 bullets seemed unreasonable, and suspicious to him.
"So, they have something else in mind, interesting, I guess a little trip to their HQ is even more in order now"
/\\\
"Three of them… one is Ealla, the second is the chunin examiner… and third is something else…" Karen thought to herself, her new sight revealed to her that even though they were healthy, their chackra system was a tad heated, implying that they were involved in something lately…
Suddenly, their chackra began to tense up, Ealla's and the other girl's chackra were still low, but the third was almost raging.
"What do you know… Gaara of the desert.. the terror of the wind country, and it looks like he was involved in a pretty big fight…" The Kyubi suddenly said, using his regular tone.
"you know him?" Karen asked, it was rare to hear the demon talking highly about anyone, even when he mentioned her father he was mostly sarcastic.
"Too well, just like you're how too close to him now, that guy is murderous psycho, with enough power to wipe out most living jounins without breaking a sweat, frankly speaking, I can think of maybe ten living people that have a chance at him, and a total of twenty people if you want to count a few dead guys over the years… I think he lost only one fight in his entire life"
"And to whom might that be?" Karen inquired, no ninja lost only once, even the greatest shinobies of all had to go through many hardships to get somewhere, even Sasuke, who was praised as the greatest ninja in the sound village. She heard once from Tack said that his father once bragged that he has beaten Sasuke to dust the first time they met…
"You don't get it, Gaara isn't on the same scale of geniusity as Sasuke is, Gaara's power is deeper and more terrifying than that, he's the type of guy that could stand with his hands in his pockets and still be as dangerous as ten other shinobies, and when he gets serious… he'd even be able to put up a nice fight against me" the Kyubi continued, that was the first time Karen heard him comparing anyone to himself, a mere human against a demon? The fox sure seemed to have respect to that guy.
"So who could beat a guy like that?" She asked, she couldn't think of any option, everyone in the village knew that their kage, Tsubakeruo, was not the most amazing fighter and that he got the position directly from the founder of the sound village. And from the way the Kyubi talked about Sasuke, it was obvious to her that he also wasn't the one to defeat that 'Gaara' guy…
"Your father" the demon said sharply.
-/\\-
"I can sense it now too, but I don't see anyone around" Temari said.
"It doesn't appear to be some genjutsu either, the chackra is too clear to be a worthwhile one" Ealla agreed.
"That doesn't matter, someone's here, we're already tired from fighting that kid, so he has the advantage over us" Gaara stated calmly.
"So, what are we gonna do? We can't blow up the ground randomly, it'll cause too much of a commotion, we don't need that with all these soldiers running around" Ealla questioned him, she was getting annoyed by his attitude, she wished that he'd panic once, just to be sure that he can also have uncertainties…
"Nothing, we keep moving like we discussed earlier, we have to rendezvous' with our village, you have your village and team to take care of. We only need to be more careful now, whoever's around us probably knows we detected him, so he won't attack unless he sees an opening, so we just won't create any" this time it was Temari who spoke.
"so, this is what we're going to do, listen carefully, unlike most missions, I'll be participating as well, so don't mess up, cuz nobody will be there to save you" Konohamaru looked at the three genins, considering their abilities, he could estimated his plan had a 60 chance to succeed.
"Let's go over our situation, we're outnumbered and out matched, we need a quick strike to kill all of our enemies, what would you normally do?" he asked them, his wife said things went better with genins if they understood the plan step by step.
"Ambush them, of course!" Hob said impatiently.
"That is what we're going to do, but not the traditional way, there are two differences between those guys and other ninjas, can you state them?"
"the first one is that they can kill us if they see us, right? But I can't think of anything else, beside the obvious fact they aren't ninjas..." Doro said.
"That is the right answer, sort of, they aren't ninjas, they so don't have ninjutsu or any ability above normal people, which means they won't be able to sense us until we make our moves, we could take out half of them before raveling ourselves to them, and still we'll be in position to strike again"
"so you mean we'll combine a hit-and-run tactic with an ambush, I can see that working out, but we genins would need to pair up to kill one guy, and I don't suppose you can kill ALL the others by yourself, right?" Tack questioned the jounin.
"I don't like that disrespecting tone of yours… but I guess you're right about that, however, We still have some arms left, and I happen to be from this village, and I happen to know a few secret trapdoors in the area" Konohamaru stated proudly.
"Why didn't you say so before!" the three genins shouted at him at the same time.
"This is the chunin exam, you're supposed to find out those things on your own!" he hoped that his excuse would pass.
"If you haven't noticed, the chunin exam was stopped a few days ago, and we're in the middle of a life-threatening situation!" Doro scorned at him, adding a juicy curse under his mouth.
"Look, I've been under a lot of stress lately, and I'm not even supposed to know about these trap doors, I peaked once at the hokage's books and I saw the map.. " Konohamaru tried another excuse.
"I don't buy that one… you don't get to be a jounin if you fall to stress, my dad thought me all about the requirement for every rank, for example: ANBU, high fighting skills, high stealth abilities, people who can't follow orders won't advance, nor those people with extreme physical abnormalities…" Hob started chanting the ranks; obviously, he began with the ANBU.
"Well, I guess you got me, too bad." Konohamaru sighed, "The truth is, until this point, there was still a chance for you to advance to the chunin rank, a field promotion if you want, it happens sometimes when Genins go through A-mission like situations… basically, I thought you'd have a chance to do it without resorting to my tactics, but your lives are more important than that…"
"and now that I told you about the process, you're prohibited from getting chunin, something about the underneath the underneath rule, anyway, our survival is first priority" he closed the argument.
"we get the point, now tell us about the trap doors already" Doru said anxiously, Hob and Tack nodded in agreement.
"well, it's nothing that special, the fifth Hokage built them after the sound village attacked us about twenty years ago, we copied the idea from the sand's village underground tunnels, it's one of the best ambushing methods that I could think off" Konohamaru said quickly.
"I don't hear any reflections from the ground, are you sure they're here? I'm trying to sonar their location with my sound waves but I don't get anything…" Doro held his head next to the dirt, his hand also buried into it, sending vibrations through it and waiting for response.
"I never said that the trapdoors lead all the way to the surface, did I?" Konohamaru stated, "They all originate at three different points in the village, they are mostly 25 feet under ground, and the higher points are 7 feet under, it's requires a bit of effort to charge out of them directly, but it also allows movement from above"
--------------------------
"He's still tailing us" Ealla said, looking around her for any sight of anyone suspicious, it was the same as she did many times since they've noticed the presence of their tracker, but as any other time, she found nothing.
"Doesn't matter, if he comes out, we'll fight him. We can't waste our time worrying about this, we are probably being followed by some specialist, perhaps one with sever mental problems, the action pattern fits the profile" Temari reassured her, most villages discarded any person with mental issues, they deemed them as 'useless'. The sand village was the one who made the most use of them, the ANBU had a special training unit for them.
"Shouldn't we split up? Just to check which one of us is the target?" Ealla suggested quickly, even though there was interference in the exam, not a single shinobi believed it meant that all old rivalries among the hidden villages stopped, at best, it was a temporary truce.
"We can split up, but what's to say we won't be attacked? We've just survived a fatal meeting with both a monster ninja and an armed patrol, you can go wander about if you want to, but you should know that in our state, we probably aren't capable of anything beyond the chunin level jutsus, are you willing to run the risk of venturing alone in this situation?" Gaara railed at her, though he already knew it'd have no use, she was suspicious towards him ever since they met, so he hadn't believed that any outcome of their separating would be able to make her trust them completely.
----
Gray was running casually through the ruins of the leaf village.
To be honest, it wasn't the most casual type of running, as a shinobi, careful and silent movements were second nature to him, and still, Gray wasn't moving like the situation was supposed to dictate him to. It was a foolish decision on his behalf, had he moved a bit more precautious, he might have noticed that he was on a collision course with an agency patrol.
Yet, for Gray's great luck, another ninja was in the close perimeter, and though it was her first time performing the particular jutsu, the feat was an amazing success.
"one, two… six, seven!" Ealla counted to herself, she could hardly distinguish the clones from the scenery. At first glance, they looked like normal bunshins, but the more she stared at them, she found that they were still changing their forms, each one with his own special features and traits, one was slightly bigger than the rest, it wasn't just physical size, it's entire concept of pride enlarged the clone more than anything else.
The other clones were entirely different from the first, each one of them gave off a different feeling, one seemed to lust after the others, and one looked as if it could devour its surroundings in a feat of gluttony.
"ok, how am I supposed to move these things? I doubt that they have the same mindset as mine like normal clones have, and I certainly don't think they'll listen to me like summoned animals…" Reilla thought to herself.
"Funny stuff, I never thought that I'd be such a coward" Someone suddenly talked.
"No shit, and she still gets to live all the time, life's so unfair" another person said, but he had the same voice as the first one.
"You know what I'd do if I got the chance to live all the time? I'd go around make money out of my ninja skills, and then I'd take over a country" a third voice spoke, but still the same as the other two.
"Greed, Pride, Envy, just shut your traps already, we've got business to do, it seems that some ass is about to get killed, and we're here to stop it from happening" a forth voice talked, Reilla suddenly came to realization that the voices were all very familiar.
"Can't you watch your mouth, Wrath? You'd think that you could hold your aggression until the battlefield…" the fifth one spoke, Reilla finally noticed whose voice was it.
Her own.
The seven clones morphed a bit more, and without any slight indication of movement, were already far away from where they first appeared.
"So, the kid we're saving is Karen's boyfriend? I was under the impression that we want Karen to come with us, so if the boy dies, won't it mean she won't have nothing to stay with the sound for?" one of the voices asked, it was the same clone who talked before, Reilla recognized his sleazy tone of speech.
"Sloth, when will you learn that not everyone is as selfish as you are?" one of the clones said, he looked around for a moment, and then continued "sorry, my bad, it was a stupid question, you'll never change, and nor would I".
"Uuhmm, how do you know who's that kid?" Reilla asked silently, Karen's boyfriend? She could think of four possibilities, and she liked none of the boys, the thought of telling the clones to withdraw the attack passed her mind for a second.
"oh, you haven't figured it by yourself yet? The only people left in the perimeter are sound shinobies, and both Doro and Hob move in irregular patterns, due to the sound gear and the dog, and Lee has much larger steps than what we have here, therefore, the kid is Uchiha Gray" one of the clones explained, the others started performing seals and setting up traps.
"Five, four, three, two, one… GO!" a clone screamed, the seven of them started running towards the patrol.
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A gunshot was heard, followed by many others.
Gray's first reaction was to freeze at his spot, the second reaction was to hide in one of the abandoned buildings.
The second wave of gunshot came after ten seconds, this wave was longer than the first. Gray counted the seconds, twenty have already passed and it didn't seem like the firing would stop anytime soon.
"it's taken too long, It's impossible to dodge so many gunshots for such a period of time, and it's unlikely that so many ninjas are charging at someone…" Gray tried to analyze the situation, all his thoughts stopped as a loud yell screeched through the sky.
"MY ARM! Get this thing off ME!" was the first yell Gray heard, but a moment afterwards, another yell was heard "AHHHHA! What is this thing! Shoot it already, FIRE!", however, Gray didn't hear any gunshots, just more and more screams. He decided to see what it was, reminding himself that he should find some help for Karen.
"That went on fine" Reilla thought to herself, granted, she had no real idea what the clones did to the soldiers, but the corpses on the ground indicated that they have ripped body parts from the original location and then bathed what was left in acid. However, they did the job well, nobody remained standing, and as an added bonus, their personal equipment was miraculously unharmed.
Gray tried sneaking towards the bodies, he knew that someone has taken care of the patrol, but whether it was a friendly shinobi or an enemy was yet to be seen. Of course, now he didn't have much to do about it, since whoever was there, had recognized him and called him out "come here, Gray, I need some information", a female voice, slightly familiar.
"Reilla, what happened here?" he asked, the bodies were mutilated, yet there was no apparent damage to the ground, nor was there new blood on her clothes. "I'm not sure myself, but more importantly, where is Karen?" seeing as the two weren't together, it meant that either the worst has happened, which seemed unlikely, or that they were forced to separate.
"she was injured, and then she did some weird transformation" he started saying, he saw her face expression changing so he quickly took back his words, "not that kind of transformation, she morphed into a flower of some sort, I think it was a flower"
"couldn't she transform you with her?" Reilla asked the boy, for a pair such as close as the two, it seemed unreasonable that they would choose to separate on their own, unless… "how bad was she injured?"
"Uh umm, it's hard to say, she told me it wasn't so bad, but she was hit by those projectile things these guys carry, and that's nothing to laugh about, isn't it?" Gray said, the female shinobi seemed exhausted, and as far as he could guess, it was from fighting the enemy at different conditions from normal ninja fights.
"Listen, kid, I'm not in the mood for playing guessing games, you're the last person who met with her, you're the only person to make the choice. We go back to her right now or we continue. You decide"
"me, but.. I don't, I'm not sure" Gray tried to say that he wasn't qualified to make that decision, protest that only a medical nin was supposed to give out estimations of that sort. And besides, did they really expect him to make a choice that might lead to his friend's death?
"I, We, don't have time for this"
Was she trying to add to the pressure he already felt? Of course he knew time was pressing, it was even a mistake staying at the same spot, in the middle of ten commando unit bodies. And what if he made the wrong choice, what if they come back and find Karen has been killed? How could he live with that? Wasn't there a leeway? A third option, a possibility to do both? To grab the rope at both ends?
Still, what was the right thing to do? He had to save Karen, didn't he? It was the right thing to do, as a friend, as a fellow villager, wasn't it?
But not as a ninja, or a teammate.
"I put my trust in Karen, she'll be fine, what do we do from now on?" he said.
If one lied hard enough to himself, it was possible to find the middle way.
End of chapter nineteen.
Yes, this is all, a lot of scene changes, and lots of other things I don't particulary remember since I've written them so long ago.
Don't have any expections for next chapter, it won't be out until it's done, and it won't be done for a long while… you can read my Inuyasha story, if you want, it's the same style, but more neatly tied, since I wrote the first half under the influence of pre-army phobia, and the 2nd half under in-army mania.
Besides, it's about secret agents, lots of lies and stuff. It's more Naruto than Naruto.
Anyway, that's all.
I hope you old readers are still here, and you new readers like the story.