Disclaimer: It's not true that I don't not own Naruto... I think.
Author's Note: Yummy action and fight scenes... To all the people who are looking forward to the Neji/Tenten of this fic you'll have to wait just a little more for your fix of fluff. I refuse to lead Neji down a path of hardcore In Characterism and then make him into a hopeless romantic at the drop of a hat. Don't you worry though, it is coming, cause even I'm looking forward to it. This chapter was actually chopped from a much longer version of what I had planned for this submission which included a nice heartfelt moment, but I felt that the chapter was getting a bit too long. So I could use a little bit of feedback if possible to all you wonderful reviewers out there.
How long do you usually like chapters? 2,000 words? 3,000 words?
Please read and review, it seriously makes my day when I get that wonderful "Review Alert" email. )
Anyway, without further ado...
Blood. There was blood all over the place. The crimson liquid spread everywhere, touched everything. The splashing of the rain only helped cover the forest floor with the color, as if a painter had dropped his red palette and the hue was slowly draining away into the earth from the pouring water above.
This couldn't be happening.
But it was, and Tenten was almost numb from the sensory overload. It was happening, and it was happening all too fast. One minute they were fighting; the next they were all being pulled out of the battle. At first, with the red that covered everything, Tenten couldn't tell who was hurt. Being confused to start things off didn't help matters.
"He's hit, badly. It's deep. It ... his lung is punctured."
"Hyuuga-san."
Neji was whiter than normal, and in shock as far as Tenten was concerned. But even in this situation he should have been calm. He was a jounin after all.
"Hyuuga-san," Hiro repeated.
"His wound isn't closing; it looks like there's chakra residing in this hole. His body isn't healing on its own, and he's going to bleed to death." Akiko said just before whipping out tape and applying it directly to the wheezing hole in the man's chest.
"Hyuuga-san."
Neji wasn't sure now if Hiro was continuing to say his name or if it was just an echo that refused to go away. Either way, the boy repeated it over and over as if it was a chant or a prayer.
"I can't heal him here. I'm not even sure I can heal this wound at all. I need to get him somewhere with more medics." Akiko inserted three needles into the body in front of her, an attempt to slow down the blood loss.
The world as Tenten knew was crumbling fast. She and Neji had always made perfect teams. They had never had anyone on the team seriously hurt. No one had been this close to death when they were together. Everyone looked at Neji, they waited and watched for his decision. The red that covered his chest was proof to Tenten that her squad was not immortal.
And the day had started out so nice.
"Hyuuga-san! Tenten-san! They're coming"
Those words would imprint themselves inside of Tenten's brain for a long time to come. It was like the wails of a siren that cried out in warning and scared away the silence. It was a cry that's implications negated the fairy tale like peacefulness that she had been sharing with a certain silver-eyed man. Meanwhile a little voice inside of her admitted that sitting beside Neji could hardly be called a romantic tryst. But Tenten was tired, and listening to little nay-saying voices was not high on her priority list.
The rest of the morning was spent preparing. Most of the villagers were evacuated and told to keep moving towards Konoha. The self-proclaimed fastest three of the village were entrusted with scrolls asking for backup as soon as it could be provided. With any luck, the reinforcements would get to Neji's squad before the fighting got too heavy. Meanwhile, the four Leaf ninja would be fighting to protect the village and the people who were too old or too sick to run to safety.
They were determined to face the incoming force just over five miles outside of the village; a tactic they hoped would lessen the chance of the attack spilling into the village. Traps were set and weapons readied - this wasn't going to be a walk in the park. Usually, among high level ninja, fighting was kept one on one; whether this was due the pride of defeating someone by yourself, the honor of single opponent combat, or a simple coincidence of having the same number of ninja as the opposing squad, any which way didn't really matter; one on one was just the norm.
However this was no ordinary day. Today the four ninja from Konoha would be guaranteed to fight dozens of ninja each. Each fight against a one of the enemy would promise to be a challenge; each of them against a horde of enemies, all of whom would be attacking at the same time made the odds of surviving impossibly low.
Neji's orders were simple: stay together, and protect one another's back. They would keep talking during the entire fight, the reason Neji said, was so that they could continue to change their strategy if needed. While there was some truth to that, Tenten knew it to be a lie; Neji wanted to keep everyone talking during the fight to know who was still alive.
By day break, everything was set up. The four ninja were as ready as they could be, all they could do was wait, and watch for death to come.
The first sign that the fight was near was the sound of the wild animals frantically scrambling through the woods to seek shelter. Like cockroaches when the lights come on, they scrambled for their lives. This was nature; the instinct to run when you're outnumbered and outclassed in size and strength. It was the instinct to move to safety and live on. And in that sense, the ninja squad from Konoha was very unnatural.
While the world around them burst in chaos and fear, they stood like statues, unmoving despite the oncoming threat. The leader stood among them, leaning nonchalantly against a nearby tree. To him, this was just another day and another chance to defy fate. Tenten stood defiant beside him. In her mind she would be seen as the stronger person for not needing to lean on anything. She was a 'tree' in her own right; among the squad she was not only reliable, but approachable. Younger ninja in Neji and Tenten's squads could always lean on her if they needed; Neji was just a bit too distant to have the same thing said of him. Sure, Neji was reliable, but it was Tenten who was the heart of the squad.
Akiko, the medic who cared neither for showing off strength nor coolness, sat relaxed near the jounins' feet on a large grey rock. Lastly, the group's illusionist, Hiro, also sat on the ground, and was, oddly, sleeping soundly. Whether it was his youth and arrogance or intelligence and wisdom that gave him enough calm to sleep, Tenten couldn't tell. A part of her just wondered if the boy had a tendency to fall asleep; a quirk the boy probably picked up as a result of his techniques that required him to be in a comatose state. It was an interesting thought that Tenten made a mental note of and would research it a little more if they made it out alive.
The enemy ninja flew in like a swarm of bees through gaps in the trees and from branches on high descending down towards the anticipating Leaf ninja. The first wave of ninja dropped dead ten meters away, a result of running through traps headlong. The second wave that unceasingly trampled their fallen comrades bodies all died from seven to five meters away from the deadly projectiles spent from the lethal ladies of the squad. There was already fighting in the distance as Hiro's illusions were doing their best to pick off numbers of the enemy that came rushing in. It wasn't long after the second wave that the real Hiro came back to life with a gasp, having his solid illusions 'killed' and freeing his consciousness to awaken back in his body.
Meanwhile Neji made simple, decisive gentle fist attacks against anyone that came close enough to be a threat to the people he was responsible for. A dash to the left followed by three quick strikes put down the first of the enemy that tried to flank them. Neji's arms flew back and forth so that each hit that thrust chakra forth had the full momentum of his arm swings. With his arms moving like pistons and his power that could be called inhuman, Hyuuga Neji truly was a killing machine.
The enemy was flooding around them however, and those men who should have been dead from earlier attacks and traps were standing up. Not only were they showing signs of life, but also signs that they were not done fighting yet.
"Formation change"
The group rushed together to make a small compact circle when suddenly Tenten blurred upward with a speedy jump into the air. Hanging in the wind, Tenten had already begun doing hand seals when she finally shouted out to start her technique.
"The four wind spirits"
Four scrolls, one in each cardinal direction shot upwards around the group until they hung around the tops of the trees. After concentrating chakra to her arms, Tenten began to slap the scrolls around her and throw the corresponding summoned weapons down to the earth. With her attack started, Neji threw both of his hands upwards and preformed the Heavenly Barrier to prevent any of Tenten's arsenal from falling on her teammates.
The inertia that her arms created from throwing the weapons with such force and speed made Tenten spin so that she was throwing blades in all directions. She became a fountain that rained down sharp death all around her until even trees were cut down. Shafts of sunlight that snuck in through the tree's canopy reflected off the polished steel to make the attack as beautiful as it was deadly. All around Neji, blinks of light shone like floating fireflies that ignited their bodies before finding their home as daggers planted squarely in the enemies chest. After the last weapon was thrown, Tenten glided down lighter than air with weapons bared, ready to fight.
"By my count, twenty seven."
"I don't think so; half of them are getting up. You only took out fourteen."
"It's so unfair," Hiro protested, "you start out with a special attack so it boosts your numbers."
They stood back to back; each member of the four man team faced one of the cardinal directions. Tenten was back to back with Akiko; both of them would provide ranged attacks and support of the men to their left and right who would take care of any close range threats with their taijutsu. It was another brilliant formation created by the genius Hyuuga to create an impenetrable defense.
"I got… four."
"Nice try, thief! That last one was killed by my kunai, you only got three." Even though Akiko and Hiro weren't related, the playful sibling rivalry was definitely apart of their relationship.
Neji, with his Byakugan activated, could watch all of his teammates. If one of them had a particularly strong opponent facing them, the four ninja would turn the circle until fighting was balanced out. It was a wheel that rotated and moved to bring a quick end of life to who ever they came across.
"Nine."
Neji's attacks were filled with chakra and each punch he let fly stopped a heart here, severed a spinal cord there. The precision of his strikes were like those of a malicious doctor, putting in only the effort that was needed, no more and no less. The Jyuken really wasn't a flashy form of taijutsu, but it never needed to be. The effectiveness in its style was near perfection.
"Twenty one." Tenten's triumphant smile was in full force in this competition of killing.
On Neji's back, Hiro was wielding two punching daggers and trying his best to keep up with his amount of killing. Since Akiko was trained by Tenten, she was taught an affinity for throwing sharp objects, and it seemed to Hiro that each snap of her wrist brought forth a pain-filled yell or blood gurgling choke off in the distance.
"Twelve."
The circle of ninja began to turn and move through out the battle field making sure not to stay in one place too long as they moved deeper and deeper into the current of the river of ninja that came attacking. One of the reasons that Neji moved the circle was to slowly get farther away from the village they meant to protect; another reason they moved was that the bodies of the dead were beginning to pile up and it was inhibiting his killing.
"F-fifteen!" Hiro shouted.
"You're such a liar."
"Children, if you don't stop arguing, we're going to go back to Konoha and I will personally ground you from missions." Tenten lectured, the epitome of the ninja mom, "And then neither of you will be able to kill for a very long time. Is that what you want?"
"No, Okaa-san. Seventeen!" Akiko mocked back.
"We're… Eighteen! Sorry."
Continued muttering could be heard under Akiko's breath each time Hiro would update his numbers in an extreme fashion.
Hiro was getting frustrated, each time he would drop an enemy, another one or even two would appear on the heels of his victory. It wasn't before long that he noticed himself moving away from the group due to continuous attacks that drew him farther out from his circle of safety.
It only took a moment of Neji concentrating more on the horde in front of than the people besides and behind him for Hiro to get separated. The onslaught of enemies continued to attack more intelligently now, Neji noticed. They weren't just throwing themselves at the four ninja like sacrifices, now they were attacking in patterns; one that specifically was aimed at splitting up their formation.
"Tenten, Akiko. Tighten up!"
At the short burst of Neji's command, the two kunoichi closed the gap where Hiro once stood to prevent the weakened side from being their downfall. Neji consciously started moving the new triangle formation as fast as he could to recover the lost boy but it seemed as though there was a conspiracy among the enemy to prevent such a thing from happening. As he fought on, Neji paid attention as Hiro was forced like a chess piece to move further and further away.
Somehow, Neji couldn't help but feel like he'd seen this all happen before somewhere.
Added A.N. I need to start out thanking Rekino for being a wonderful Beta-reader who can put up with me and has helped to take out all the little quirks to make this chapter as smooth as possible. I'd also like to formally appreciate Sintari for helping me out early on in fixing little grammatical and spelling mistakes. Seriously, these are wonderful people. I highly recommend people check out their writing and review their works so you can tell them how awesome it is.
Thank you to all my reviewers. Rei, Ayuka-chan, Cyberwing, Gasha-Aisu, Aries Stephastone, i-dream-of-blue-eyes. Also, Ayuka-chan I need your email address if you want notes on Twisted, you only left half of the address last time you reviewed. Gasha, thank you for your kind words about the OCs and Neji. I really try hard not to make him do something against his nature so I was really happy when I read your review.
Okay, now for the usual advertising. These are the stories that are so good, it keeps me reading rather than writing. I know you'll enjoy 'em.
For the love of all that is good in this world please go read Sintari'sRosemary for Remembrance. A powerful introspectively written story about the world of the Hyuga Family. Her insight is unmatchable.
Rekino has an amazinglyangsty Neji/Ten story called Jealousy of Icethat I swear will not disappoint.
Neonate has a great followup to Seeking Comfort (which was the best!) called Seeking Guidance to which I anxiously await new chapters for.
And go read firefly's story calledIndigo Stars. It's one of those great stories that allowed the characters to grow up, keep them IC and yet evolve them in all the right ways. Also, help me bug firefly for a sequal or continuation of the story. )