Chapter nine.
And so, operation infiltrate Orochimaru's hide-out is a go! Please enjoy and review this chapter! Oh, and sorry for the delay, I've been on holiday for a while but I hope to return to uploading these regularly again!
I do not own that wonderful franchise Naruto or its characters!
Tenten held her long robes tightly around her light frame as she stood in a dip between a couple of the frequent hills that featured on the barren landscape. She had been moving slowly and carefully, knowing that at any moment she could be ambushed by Orochimaru's subordinates. A cruel wind was blowing in her direction, funnelled between the contours and managing to chill her substantially even through her clothes.
She was hidden between the hills in question because the lair of the snake lay only about one hundred meters away from her. Luckily, the wind was blowing into her face so if Orochimaru had any ninja hounds, they would have a tough time picking up her scent.
The building had been pretty dismally disguised, she had to admit. Then again, assuming Orochimaru already knew of the disarray the leaf village was in, he would hardly spend much effort and time cleverly disguising his base from a village that was too busy worrying about political matters to send assassins after its rogue ninjas. As Tenten thought about it, she wondered whether the Leaf Village had yet dispatched anyone to search for her.
With a sigh, she shook such tangential thoughts from her head and rose a little from her hiding place, her dark hair camouflaging perfectly with the dark gorse bush which she was peering through. The base must mostly be underground, she thought as she scrutinised it with a careful eye. A gaping hole in the face of one of the large pale grey boulders that dotted the bleak environment was the giveaway.
Tenten noticed a pair of large ninjas standing to attention outside; their eyes glazed over and blank. She shook her head in disgust. Evidently, these were ninja that Orochimaru had snatched from some other village and drugged to do his bidding. However, judging by the criss-crossed scars that covered the men's faces, this pair were no to be taken lightly.
She then looked past them, knowing that it would be suicide to charge in through this front entrance, as the sounds of fighting would almost certainly alert the enemy and more troops would be sent to deal with her. She then spotted a small plume of steam that rose from a spot on the ground a hundred meters away from the main entrance. It must have come from an air-vent or some kind of ventilation passage. Between her and it lay a narrow but steep ditch that contained the occasional dirty rainwater puddle and patches of thick mud. The kunoichi sighed; it would have to do.
Keeping close to the ground, she moved over to the side of the dip she was in that was closest to the ditch. There was a brief space of open ground between her and the ditch that she would have to get across before she was hidden again. She was just weighing up her options when a voice came from down the cavern-like opening that was the main entrance to Orochimaru's lair.
"Rōn, Heikin, there are new orders." The voice said.
Tenten watched carefully, as a third blank-faced shinobi emerged from the carven behind him. He was evidently drugged as well.
"Several chakra signatures have been detected south of here, and are heading this way. Orders are to pay extra caution incase anyone tries to break in. Reinforcements are being sent here as we speak."
Tenten furrowed her brow as she listened to the short conversation. Deidara was early, and why were there multiple chakra signatures? Of course, he could just have distributed a small amount of chakra to several clay clones, but that didn't explain his timing.
Deciding she ought to speed up if she was going to get inside before Deidara arrived, she took advantage of the guards as they momentarily turned to the messenger's direction and dived out of the dip between the hills, staying low to the ground as she crossed the short distance to the ditch.
She slid quickly into it, her feet hitting the soft and wet ground with a faint 'squitch'. She thankfully sighed to herself as the drugged guards failed to notice the small noise, and began her passage through the ditch.
It was slow work; after all, she had to keep dodging the puddles of stale rainwater and patched of dark sludgy mud. It wasn't because she was worried about getting mud on her new clothes; she couldn't have cared less about that, but it would save her having to clear muddy footprints away once she got inside the base.
Suddenly, Tenten stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes widening as she had to hurriedly fight her reflex to gag. A body was lying half-buried in the mud in front of her on its back, unseeing eyes staring up at her. She took a deep breath and steadied herself, forcing down her feelings of foreboding. The corpse belonged to a leaf shinobi by the looks of it; she could tell from the dull metal of the headband he wore, and the general attire. Tenten didn't know the shinobi however, and judging by the state of the body it must have been lying here a while.
This unlucky shinobi must have stumbled across Orochimaru's lair and been kidnapped for experiments, Tenten thought as she looked at the horrid pallor of the corpse's skin.
The kunoichi shook her head in disgust and hurried past it, wanting to get away from the smell and the clouds of flies. After a few more tense minutes of picking her way around pools of stagnant water and patches of foul-looking mud, she came to the end of the ditch and saw the small air-vent a few meters away.
Looking around, she checked that there were none of Orochimaru's subordinates around before she slipped over the lip of the ditch and withdrew a thin kunai.
Tenten looked carefully at the design of the vent's cover, and after some deliberation slid the tip of her kunai into the thin gap between the rim of the vent's cover and the metal frame of the opening. She twisted the kunai, and with a snap, the lid came away. Smiling at her success, and moved closer, inspecting the vent.
It appeared to be large enough for her to just squeeze inside and navigate. She was pretty sure that none of the other Akatsuki members, even Sasori or Konan, could have fitted inside. Tenten also noticed that instead of heading vertically down into the earth, the ventilation passage sloped slightly, another bonus as it would mean it would be much easier to traverse.
She sighed with resignation and with incredible dignity slipped through the narrow opening, intensely relieved that neither her shoulders nor hips had gotten stuck. It was thickly humid inside the narrow passageway, and hot too. Tenten had been deliberating on whether to don her face mask in case of toxic fumes, but the air smelled clear to her, so she decided against it is it would just end up impairing her vision.
I wonder where Deidara is right now… She found herself thinking as she crawled, it should be about time soon for him to begin the diversion.
At that moment, Deidara was in fact pacing just in front of where the woods dispersed into the barren wasteland, scuffing up the dusty earth with the end of his boot absent-mindedly.
"Surely that kunoichi is inside by now, hmm?" he murmured to himself as he turned and looked out at the direction she had disappeared.
He had to commend her stealth, as once she had disappeared out of his line of sight, it had been a tough time trying to spot her, even through the scope he wore on his left eye. After a while, she had vanished altogether.
Deidara looked up at the sun that was beginning to sink from where it had hung high up in the sky for most of the afternoon. Its warmth was beginning to fade from the already unforgiving landscape, making it seem even more of a wasteland as the shadows threw the occasional straggled shrubs into sharp relief.
With a grunt of frustration, the missing-nin crossed his arms. Unlike Sasori, he was more laid back, and didn't mind taking things at a slightly more relaxed pace. However, having been standing in the same place for several hours, he was definitely ready to start causing some havoc.
His lips twitched into a grin as he looked at the mouths on each of his palms. They both spat out small quantities of clay loaded with chakra, that he carefully and quickly moulded into several of his signature pieces. Firstly, he threw one of these into the air. After making a hand-sign, there was a crack like a gun-shot and the small figure had expanded into a huge eagle-like bird, with its white clay wings spread wide as it cast a dark shadow on the sparse earth beneath. Deidara leapt atop the transport bird and smirked, eyes narrowed as he looked at the sun's retreating figure. It was time.
Tenten was breathing quite heavily after a while of crawling through the humid ventilation passage, and was beginning to feel slightly claustrophobic in the tightly compacted space. She was also feeling apprehensive to some extent as she had heard very little movement at all, not to mention any suggestion of a place where a jutsu was been developed.
She had been making slow but steady progress through the aeration system for some while now, and she felt as if she had almost lost track of time in this maze. However, judging by the direction she had been travelling in, she must have been nearing her goal by now.
Suddenly, she saw a chink of light filling up the metal passageway ahead of her. She shuffled over to it, glad of any light source after her travels through the dark, and saw that it came from a grid above an empty corridor. She guessed it meant she must be deep inside Orochimaru's lair now, as there were no windows along the corridor so she must be quite a way underground by now.
The kunoichi waited for a couple of minutes, and after nothing broke the heavy silence that surrounded her, she quietly removed the grid cover to the vent opening that led into the corridor and slipped inside before quickly replacing it again. She hit the ground silently, bending her knees to the point where she was crouching in order to spread the impact out so it resulted in minimal noise and pain.
She then stood up straight again, stretching her muscles that had cramped up after spending so much time trapped in the ventilation system and adjusted her Akatsuki cloak.
At that instant, a tumultuous explosion shook the still air and Tenten had to duck as small sections of the ceiling crumbled and fell to the floor around her. The shockwaves dispersed after a minute, and as the dust settled, Tenten stood up once more. The blast had come from quite a way away, and yet the resulting tremor had reached this far into the lair. Tenten found herself feeling thankful that Deidara had been handicapped for her fight against him.
Deidara wheeled deftly through the sky above the main entrance of Orochimaru's hide-out, the wings of the eagle-like clay creation he was standing atop continually shifting and moving to catch the evening's air currents, but also to above the barrage of weapons and attacks that were coming his way.
He grinned a wide unnerving grin as he threw another of his finest missiles at the increasing horde of subordinates gathered below.
"This time, with emotion, yeah?" He yelled before clamping his hands together in a hand-sign.
"KATSU!"
The swiftly flying white bird glowed brightly for a second as ninja right and left dived out of the way, before it exploded in a blast that lit up Deidara's features from below making him look quite deranged. The shinobi who were caught up in the blast were tossed into the air as dust from the ground and wreckage of the base's entrance was thrown up in clouds around the area.
Deidara laughed animatedly as some of the milling troops below brought forward a device which somewhat resembled a trebuchet. Inside were placed several lethal looking projectile weapons with cruel barbed points like harpoons.
"Now look who's getting creative!" The blonde shinobi smirked as the long weapons where launched at a considerable speed in his direction.
However, under the adrenalin of the battle, he was secretly worried. Since commencing his onslaught on the base, he had not seen anyone important, not to mention Orochimaru himself. This either meant that he was unbothered by Deidara's attack and saw him as an inconvenience rather than a threat, or he had realised it was a diversion and was hunting Tenten down. This made Deidara wonder if the kunoichi was alright, although he would never admit it.
Lastly, there was the matter of the several chakra patterns he had detected some minutes earlier, heading fast in their direction. He couldn't tell what village they were from or whether they were friend or foe, as they had disguised their signatures pretty well. Deidara found himself wanting this mission to end soon before something went dangerously wrong, as his quick strategist's mind was telling him that the longer they stayed in this place, the more precarious their situation became.
Tenten made her way down the empty corridor, keeping one hand on the wall to her right. She knew a lot about mazes, and one thing that was important was that if you keep your attention on the one wall beside you, you will eventually meet the middle and were less likely to get lost.
This corridor had no distinguishing features, no furniture or notable characteristics except for the same organic repeating pattern that covered the walls, floor and ceiling and just served to confuse her even more. The light filling the passage was dull, a yellowish shade that emanated from dim spotlights that were placed every few meters in the ceiling. They offered very little comfort or warmth and made Tenten's skin crawl.
She kept her concentration fixed on the path ahead of her, knowing that the lair of Orochimaru undoubtedly had many hidden dangers to beware of. Now and again, Tenten would notice a door set into the thick walls of the twisting corridor. However, since she could detect no chakra at all through these, she ignored them deciding that where a jutsu was being created, massive bursts of chakra were likely to be found.
Not only was Tenten anxious of attack or traps, she had just remembered a key fact from her time in the Leaf Village. What if she ran into Sasuke Uchiha? The one who had abandoned the Leaf village in some ways a lot like she had to gain power. He had been able to defeat Naruto, even with his jinchuuriki powers. He was truly a formidable opponent.
Suddenly, there was a drastic upheaval of the ground beneath Tenten's feet. She had to force herself not to cry out as, with an almighty crash, a deep cavern collapsed underneath her and she fell, the loose earth crumbling all around her into the pit.