Chapter twelve.
I may possibly do some art to go with this story if I have the time and the patience, considering my current workload is nearly touching the ceiling as it is…
I do not own Naruto!
Tenten gritted her teeth as the flames from the explosion began to eat through her cloak; evidently they hadn't been designed to be heat-proof. Even as she felt the fire start to blister her left arm and the pain almost became unbearable, she stayed completely still until the chaos ended, and the shock-waves from the blast died down.
She threw off her Akatsuki cloak, and stood shakily up. She suddenly realised just how drained she was; her chakra was almost completely depleted and she was sporting several minor injuries, not to mention her right arm still refused to move when she told it to. She winced, digging around in her bag for some ointment to put on the large burn on her left arm. Her head was still ringing from the cacophony of the explosion, and was throbbing painfully.
Stamping out the last of the flames that still clung to her holed cloak, she looked around to see what ad become of Kabuto. He was nowhere to be seen. Tenten suppressed a snarl of frustration. The slippery weasel must have used some kind of teleportation jutsu to get away at the last moment!
Tenten walked unsteadily across the wrecked room, avoiding the fallen shelves that were still burning. The originally white-washed walls were now blackened, as was the floor. Her body ached as she bent over to pick up her prized bladed chain and stowed it in its scroll before she stood up straight and sighed.
Kabuto would probably right now be scampering away to his master to relay the news of what she had done, and facing Orochimaru in battle in her current state was definitely not on the top of Tenten's to-do list.
The brunette kunoichi picked up her blackened robes and put them on once more, sighing with frustration at the numerous holes caused by the fire that had been eaten through the thick material.
Making sure she had retrieved all of the scattered weapons she had used during the battle, she swung her bag once more onto her back and headed for the doorway, as the door had been blown off of its hinges earlier on.
She leant panting against the bent doorframe as she passed, her left hand clutching the wound that sank right through her immobilised arm that was from when Kabuto had pinned it to the wall with the demon windmill shuriken.
She knew she was loosing too much blood, as even though she could move it, whenever her limp arm was jostled by her movement it triggered fresh blood to ooze from the wound. Knowing that the longer she remained, the sooner Orochimaru would arrive, she hurriedly bound the injury with bandages and gritted her teeth as she looked at her rushed work; she was definitely no medic ninja.
Checking that the corridor ahead was still empty apart from the scattered bodies from earlier on, she began to run, as fast as she could without letting her feet make any noise against the hard floor. Soon, she reached the end of the corridor, the end that led into the wider passage.
Having memorised the route from this point that would take her to the ventilation tunnel that was to be her escape way, she looked quickly in both directions to check for Orochimaru's subordinates, and then continued at an unsteady run through the corridor ahead.
The swirling patterns on the walls were disorientating her, spiralling continuously and distracting her from her course. The warm yet unfriendly yellow light from the lamps that lit the passage made her feel drowsy, especially due o her lack of chakra and energy.
Tenten shook her head and cleared her tangled mess of thoughts, focussing on the task at hand, and broke into a straight sprint, knowing her freedom was close at hand now. As soon as she found the tunnel, she could get her breath back and then it would just be a short stretch before she made it back out of this terrible place and back to…Deidara.
The kunoichi suddenly wondered why her thoughts had grounded on the blonde-shinobi. For some unknown reason, the thought of being reunited with him made her feel safe and secure again, a feeling that after nearly a day in this place seemed like an alien concept to her. She sent these thoughts straight out of her mind at once, telling herself that she was getting delirious. However, the thoughts remained at the back of her mind.
It was then that Tenten heard the shout.
"There she is, the intruder Lord Orochimaru described, there she is! THERE SHE IS!" yelled a voice from behind her.
Tenten span around, eyes widening as she looked into those of a sound-shinobi whose face was positively glowing with triumph. Evidently, not only had Orochimaru been told about her by that rat Kabuto, he had also already alerted his troops. By the ecstatic look on the sound-shinobi's face that had spotted her, quite a reward had been placed on her head. A clever move, she supposed; using the carrot and stick method to motivate his subordinates.
However, now was not the time to worry about things like that, as more and more sound ninja were pouring out of the side doors and into the main corridor, hot on her heel. The exhausted Tenten put on a desperate burst of sped as she knew the drainage and ventilation tunnel was close at hand. Being teamed up with the fastest shinobi in the leaf village for most of her life had certainly taught her to be quick.
The kunoichi flew done the corridor, her feet barely touching the ground as the adrenalin in her system gave her the energy she needed not to keel over with fatigue. She was breathing heavily and sweat drenched her face, her many injuries protesting violently at the strain on her body.
Her face broke into a wild smile as she saw the metal grill in the side of the wall ahead of her, the ticket that would lead her to freedom. Tearing down the corridor like had never ran in her life, she skidded to a halt outside of it, and with new-found strength at the thought of safety, she kicked the metal grill in on itself, and with another strike it broke away from the rusting fitting sand fell with a clatter to the ground.
Tenten looked up and saw that the shinobi were even closer now, and some had drawn kunai and shuriken. Cursing that she had used up all of her detonating tags, she withdrew a handful of smoke-bombs and hurled them at the oncoming mass. In the cloud of confusion they generated, she dived into the narrow tunnel and began to crawls, shuffling along the metal ground as if her life depended on it...which it did.
The tunnel began to slope up after a while, even though the ceiling remained level. This worried her a little, as the space for her movement was rapidly becoming less and less, and she could now here the clambering noise of the enemy shinobi following her into the cramped passageway.
It was all made doubly hard by the fact that she had to crawl without the use of her right arm, which was still refusing to move. The air was hot and rancid, and the walls of the metal tunnel were slippery with condensation, not to mention the fact that her hands were slippery with sweat and grime.
Tenten was now seriously starting to panic as crawling was becoming extremely difficult. Her back and head were pressed against the roof, and her knees dug painfully into her chest every time she shuffled forwards. Tenten growled with frustration and undid the ties that held the buns of her hair in place, as they were dragging against the ceiling and pressing into her head.
After a few more feverish minutes, not only was the space so flat now that she had resorted to crawling on her belly like a snake, but the shouts of the sound shinobi were closer, although they must have been having the same trouble as she – if not worse as she was probably far thinner than most of them. Tenten's eyes widened as she realised she would have to sacrifice her rucksack if she was going to keep going; it was getting stuck in the cramped space.
This was more of a test that it would seem, as it contained most of her valuable weapons in their scrolls. With the sigh of some-one who has lost a treasured pet, she removed her bag, took out a few essentials like her water flask and wound ointment, and left her rucksack behind.
Not only was mobility getting impossible now, breathing was also getting harder and harder as the space narrowed. However, just as Tenten was contemplating stopping to rethink her options, she felt a waft of fresh air on her face. It was almost nothing, and she could have imagined it, but it gave her the strength she needed to keep going.
Suddenly, her hands were clawing at thin air. Reaching down, she could feel a vertical wall below and above the small opened through which she was jammed, and with a hard shove, pushed her head and shoulders out of the tight space into the darkness. It was pitch black here, just as the thin tunnel had just been, but she thought she could see a glimmer on the distance.
Behind her, there were the sounds of the shinobi angrily arguing, but either way, they were definitely not getting any closer to her anymore. The noise died away as they turned back, the thin tunnel having become to narrow for them to move at all.
Carefully, Tenten eased out the rest of her body, and leapt away from the wall, landing heavily on the floor below. Although the hard surface jarred her ankles and made her wince, thankfully the drop had not been that far so she was otherwise unharmed. Lighting a small torch that she carried with her in her bag, she could clearly see where she was.
Tenten was standing at the end of a vast cavern, the end of which was not in sight except for that faint glimmer in the distance. Looking back, she could see the thin slit of an opening through which she had crawled, and then looked at herself.
Her clothes were covered with sweat and grime from the tunnel, not to mention the holes in her cloak from the explosion earlier. She wondered if she was even recognisable, especially with her hair which was now down and resembled the hair of a scarecrow.
She sighed, knowing that it would not be long before Orochimaru's men or Orochimaru himself headed her off at the exit of the drainage cavern. She held her torch aloft and started to traverse the cave, noticing that it stretched before her like a tunnel, naturally eroded through the rock by a small rivulet that ran through the cave.
Tenten at once knelt by the water and checked it was sanitary before taking a deep gulp of the refreshing liquid, knowing that in her current state, dehydration was the last thing she needed.
She took of at a jog down the rocky tunnel, unable to go much faster as she was close to the end of her strength. The adrenalin of her earlier encounter had worn off, and her breathing was ragged and her injuries seemed to hurt now more than ever. However, the silver lining was that she was beginning to get some feeling back in her right arm, although this did have the effect of making the deep wound in it even more painful.
She could tell the light was coming closer, and could feel that ever increasing waft of fresh air on her face. She made a silent vow to herself that if she ever got out of here alive, she would never ever take sunshine and the wind on her face for granted again.
At the back of her mind, she began to feel a pressure of some sort, the type of which she associated with the presence of another person's chakra. However, in her current state of exhaustion, she supposed it was just her mind playing tricks on her.
Tenten's unsteady run slowed to a stumbling walk as she felt herself draining the last dregs of her energy. Compared to most of the shinobi in the Leaf Village, she had had nearly the best stamina out of them all, particularly the group of rookies, but now she knew, a little further, and even she was sure to collapse.
"I will not give up now." She found herself sating.
"I refuse…to die…here!"
After a further few minutes of this stumbling gait, the light was nearly upon her. She could smell the fresh air and make out trees in the distance through the opening ahead of her. She had forgotten that this passage opened out close to the forest. Not long now, and everything would be fine; she could meet Deidara and he would take her back to the Akatsuki base, mission complete. The thought of that filled her with such a feeling of hope and determination; she almost broke into a run again.
She could tell by the pallor of the light and the length of the shadows that it must be early morning, perhaps some time after dawn. She gave a sharp intake of breath as her foot caught under a rock and she pitched forwards, hitting the ground painfully. Shakily, she heaved herself back onto her feet.
She had never felt so heavy, and her burnt arm that she had applied ointment to was sticking to the fabric of her shirt. Gritting her teeth, Tenten tore off the sleeve and reapplied the salve, wincing as it stung. However, the jolt of pain brought her out of her weary stupor and she shook her head, carrying on through the rocky terrain. Once again, those foreign chakra signals surfaced at the back of her mind, but in her current state they didn't seem at all important to her.
The mouth of the cavern was now only about one hundred yards ahead of her, and she could clearly see the landscape beyond through it. How she could have thought the place a barren wasteland, she had no idea. After that monotony of the endless passageways of Orochimaru's base, it seemed like a tropical paradise in comparison. And the sky! It was still filled with weaving patterns of blue, purple and pink from dawn, and Tenten could swear she had never seen anything as beautiful in her life.
After a further few minutes, she was standing at the opening of the cavern, staring up at the sky in almost a trance-like state. Suddenly, with her freedom before her, she felt the last dregs of her energy leave, her legs crumpled beneath her and she felt to the ground. Tenten's ragged breathing was the only sound, apart from the birds that were calling to each other in the forest about twenty yards away.
Suddenly, with her face pressing against the hard earthy ground, sh heard the unmistakeable sound of footsteps coming towards her. They were running; she could tell from the way they were too irregular to be walking.
"Dei…dara?" Tenten breathed, her voice shaking nearly as must as her head as she struggled to lift it, expecting to be met with that pretentious smirk that annoyed her so much.
A pair of hollow white eyes was all she could make out, before everything went black.