32 A Truer Test of Worth
Friendship is Proven in Battle, and Clan Kurogata Shows its Strength
You were right when you said that this is what you were made for, the Nekomata mused with a pleased smirk as Kotori moved through the streets of the village, using smoke and rubble from burning and already destroyed structures as cover to seek out yet another skirmish to resolve. Although I would imagine our dear Manami-sensei would have a stroke if she saw you now…
"She turned me loose to do as I see fit," Kotori retorted, ducking into an abandoned building as she heard the voices of an invasion squad coming closer. "And I see fit to help this village, even if it has done little to support me."
Say what you will. I have a feeling she'll show up sooner or later to call you to account for your actions… Heads up! The demon's warning came none too soon as the invaders stopped just outside Kotori's hideout and one walked in to search for inhabitants. The girl ducked behind an overturned table and waited for them to finish their survey, relieved when retreating steps confirmed their exit. Once the room was silent, she stretched up to peer over the edge of the table. One foot gave a betraying scuff as she shifted position and she froze as the invader, Sand in origin by the look of their clothing, stopped in the doorway and turned back around. If you were any smoother, you'd be a laxative, the demon hissed as the Suna-nin drew a kunai and threw it at the girl. Move fast!
Kotori needed no further bidding, pushing the table aside to intercept the kunai as she summoned the zanbatou and sprang into action. She swung the giant blade in one smooth sweep and neatly separated her attacker's head from its attendant torso, the resulting gout of blood causing the blade to glow briefly like a guttering flame as it absorbed the crimson into its crystalline body. As if directed to do so, the newly severed head – eyes still staring in disbelief – rolled back out through the open door and came to rest at the feet of the invaders, who stared back at it for a few seconds as they tried to process this new development. "A clean cut," one said to the others in the trio that remained.
"A very clean cut," a second mumbled, scratching their head. "And from the sound of it, a very large blade…" From where she stood inside, Kotori could plainly hear the conversation and rolled her eyes. I don't have much room to move in here, so I'd best get out while they're busy overanalyzing, she reasoned and ghosted out the door. Finding a good vantage point on a nearby rooftop, she then perched in wait to plan her next action while the three below did likewise. As a final precaution, she bit down on one of her fingers and let the resulting trickle slide down the length of the blade, praying that this would have the same effect as it had in previous times. I'm nearing the end of my reserves, Kotori mused grimly as she felt the early stages of fatigue beginning to set in. Then again, I haven't exactly been taking it easy…
You mean I actually might get a piece of the action? the cat asked with a gleeful little cheer, and the girl felt the burn of demonic chakra supplementing her own as well as the rub of smoke-filled air against the reopened wounds of her seal. Noting that the three still stood in a tight confused cluster, Kotori took this as her cue for action and leapt down from the roof, using trained physical strength as well as supernatural stamina to maneuver her blade around in another clean, powerful stroke. Two of the three invaders died instantly from sudden, unexpected bisection, but the third hastily skipped back a step to avoid the deadly arc of the zanbatou. Landing and drawing the sword back into position for another strike if needed, Kotori waited a beat to gauge her opponent's reaction and grinned when they likewise toppled, top and bottom halves parting company as if hit by an echo of the zanbatou's earlier slice.
Her senses told her that the area was now unoccupied, and she smiled in satisfaction. "Nice to see I haven't lost my touch." Stretching a few kinks out of cramped muscles, Kotori then balanced the blade over one shoulder and trotted off in search of the next trouble spot.
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Naeko was already sweating with exertion both from her all-out run and use of stealth to avoid the patrols she frequently came across when at last she reached the section of the market where her family operated a tailor shop and lived in the apartments above. Her keen eye did not miss the number of nearly-invisible threads stretched in inconvenient places and affixed to explosive tags in a deadly spider web that even the agile girl had trouble sidestepping at times. Entering the shop via an alley passage, she saw the familiar bearlike form of her father crouched over his work bench in the stockroom laboring feverishly over another stack of the tags, and it was with great caution that she hailed him and got his attention. "Father, is everything all right?"
A dismissive grunt from Satoshi, the patriarch of the Kurogata family, was all this got in response as he finished the last few brushstrokes on his current work and set it with the others. "As all right as things can be, considering." He reached up to adjust the lamp above his work bench to get better lighting and Naeko saw that he now wore the traditional dark garb and green flak vest of his jounin status, set aside almost thirteen years previously when he'd chosen to enter semi-retirement. "Most of the gang is still in school and probably on their way to a shelter right now, where they'll meet up with your mother and the little ones." The older man then stopped and turned around, giving Naeko a puzzled look. "Come to think of it, why are you here? Why aren't you with your team?"
"We split up at the arena. Kotori told me that I'd be better off with you, that she and Taiki can take care of themselves." A shaky grin, then, "I chose not to second-guess them this time. What can I do to help?"
"I've only got a few more of these left to finish. Take that pile right there and set them outside, using my work as an example, and try to think ahead. Place them where they'll do the least amount of property damage when they go off - we want to give our people a place to come home to once this is over." Naeko nodded once and gathered up the stack of paper slips, then went out to do her father's bidding. Even with his words in mind, it took the girl a matter of minutes to set up a few traps of her own before returning inside to get the rest of the tags. "How does it look out there?" the elder Kurogata wondered, flexing his ink-stained fingers to get the cramp out of them from such high amounts of intricate writing.
"All quiet," answered Naeko. "No one's come by this part of town yet."
"Yet." Satoshi stood up and stretched. "Man, it's been a while since I've worn this stuff, but I don't think it'll take too long for me to get used to it again." He tugged his vest back into place and then left the stockroom for the stairs that led to the family's dwelling. "Go ahead and set those last tags and I'll be right with you. Give a yell if you need a hand, okay?"
"Will do." Naeko then trotted back out and resumed her activities of earlier. Her work was finished none too soon, however, as she heard the murmured conversation of an approaching group. Drawing back into the shadows near the entrance of the tailor shop, she waited for them to come nearer. Maybe the traps will cut down their numbers enough so that I won't have to call my father out, Naeko prayed as she watched the invading group, a squad of six with a seventh leading them.
Even with their eyes peeled for surprises, the group managed to run solidly into the first and second threads, which triggered the attached tags with a resonating boom. Two of the squad fell stunned from the power of the explosions, while the rest assumed a defensive formation against further attack. When none came, they continued forward and, to their credit, avoided the next series of street-level traps. Another was caught up by an ingeniously-rigged set of threads at the entrance to one of the shops which destroyed the storefront but left the invader missing one hand and several fingers on the other. Two more were injured by the shards of flying glass from the demolished shop window but were able to move on after removing the shrapnel and quickly bandaging their wounds.
They're almost to me, and there's still more of them than I think I could handle on my own. But I guess I have no choice – better to get the jump on them than to prolong the inevitable. Unhooking one end of a thread line from its spool at her waist, she fastened it to her kunai and threw it across the street, counting on the invaders seeing the brief flicker of motion. See it they did, one walking over to investigate and make sure this newest addition was not rigged as well. Good little Sound-nin. Just a little bit closer… Her prey took a few more steps and visually examined the line, unsure of what to make of the seemingly innocuous darkly hued thread lying across his path. "Imashime!" Naeko hissed, tapping her end of the thread once and causing it to crackle briefly with blue light in response to her chakra.
She could not believe her luck as the Sound-nin reached out and nudged the thread with his toe, jumping back when it seemingly came alive and wound up around his ankles like a snake. No matter how hard he struggled, the thread would not come loose, and with a chill in her blood Naeko knew what she had to do next. Paying out enough line so that her enemy's entire body was bound, Naeko then fed her chakra through it again, unfastening the other end still weighted down with her kunai and whipping it around to bury the blade deep in the invader's back. He fell to the ground with a twitch and a gurgle but was soon silent, and when Naeko stopped to breathe and look she realized with a shiver that this invader could have been no more than three years her senior. "If not him, then me," the girl reasoned, cutting her thread loose and re-winding it onto its spool for reuse.
A shout was then heard down the street as two of the other enemy-nin spotted her next to the corpse of their colleague. She barely had time to deflect swiftly-thrown shuriken with her reclaimed kunai and, gulping back the bile of rising terror, Naeko began to form another plan in her mind. She lurched to her feet with faltering steps and began backing away from the body in what she hoped was a convincing impression of petrified fear, glancing around to mark the positions of the closest traps. A scared little girl… That's what you want to see, isn't it? And with any luck, that'll be the last thing you see. Naeko focused her energies once more and created a clone of herself, at the same time fading her own form into invisibility and distancing herself to avoid further injury.
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"Come on, what's the matter? You've already killed one of us, don't tell me a big bad fighter like you is afraid of two more!" Ignoring the alarmed look shot her direction by her comrade, the Sound kunoichi took a knife to hand and began to close the distance between her and her prey. "From the looks of it, though, it seems like they're letting just about anyone graduate these days, even useless clods like you - "
The younger girl's trembling demeanor now changed abruptly, a wide grin appearing like the sun on a cloudy day. "Useless? Look around you."
Glancing around, the woman saw that she'd been led into a narrow alley liberally strung with threads and tags and that all that would be needed to set the deadly array off would be a single wrong motion. Furthermore, her teammate was nowhere to be found, gone as if snatched away by some unseen hand. "Damn – where'd he go?"
The girl's grin widened, and she lifted one hand in farewell. "Bye-bye!" she chirped, vanishing in a cloud of smoke. A whoosh from above betrayed the passage of a heavily falling object, revealed at second look to be another young man wrapped in the camouflage spots of Sound as well as several well-placed bonds of thick rope and another explosive tag affixed to his chest. Pulse pounding in her ears, the female Sound soldier tried to run but found her ankles tied by a strangely animated coil of dark fiber…
A shriek of alarm was the first indicator to Naeko that her plan had worked, along with one loud boom when the tag she'd placed on her captive exploded. Five other such detonations followed in quick succession, and with a sigh of relief Naeko let herself relax for one brief moment. "Good thing I saved a few of those tags. Nothing could survive that," she murmured, wiping sweat from her face with a hand. "At least, so I hope."
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"This is Eight, calling in to request reinforcements. We're in the marketplace, and we've met resistance - "
"Setsudan!" A thin filament, dark in color and glowing with a faint blue light, whipped out and neatly nicked the microphone away its strap on the invader's neck. Feeling a faint burn where the thread had passed, the Sound-nin reached up to gauge the extent of the injury and hissed a curse when his fingers came away slick with blood. He had little time to react, though, as more of the razorlike line wrapped around him and began to cut into his skin. At another growled command – "Sesshou!" – the thread came alive with arcane flame and set his clothing alight. The last impression the invader had was of a tall, muscular man launching him into the air with a powerful kick towards a net of eerily glistening threads, and then all went dark with a roar of fire.
A quick body count showed Kurogata Satoshi that his work was finished, at least for the moment. "This is one hell of a way to come out of retirement," the jounin muttered, rubbing at a cramp in his neck as he took stock of the situation. "Hope Naeko's doing all right. I'd like to think she's actually learned something from that punk of a teacher – if not, Takeshi's getting a chunk taken out of his hide when this is all over." A loud boom from just up the street caused even the normally unflappable man to flinch at its magnitude, and with a shiver he prayed that his daughter had not gotten caught in it.
"So this is the resistance he told us about? One old man?" A new voice from behind him told Satoshi that reinforcements had indeed been sent, and with a weary sigh he opened the pouch at his waist to take another coil of rope to hand. With his other hand he drew a kunai from its holster, then focused his body for a fast attack. "Leave this to me – you go and scout the area for some real trouble."
"I don't think so!" Satoshi then whirled and struck, punching the kunai with crushing force through the light armor on his enemy's torso and lodging it with pinpoint accuracy in their heart. The Sand-nin fell dead to the ground, the jounin noting this only in passing as he uncoiled the length of rope in his other hand. After checking to make sure that the clay weights on either end of the line were secured tightly, he lifted it above his head and began to whirl the rope at dizzying speed. When it at last became a faint whistling blur in the air, he loosed it at the first of the remaining three invaders and smiled in satisfaction as it snarled immovably around their waist. The weights at the ends of the rope then slammed together, the resulting explosion tearing a gaping hole in the captive's torso and sending him flying back into a wall where he then lay limply in the dust and rubble. The last two wasted no time in beating a hasty retreat, one only making it halfway down the street before being cut down by a flurry of expertly-aimed shuriken. "I'm not an old man! I may be fifty-three but I can still hold my own." Satoshi then dashed off after the last of the reinforcements, hoping against hope that he would get to them before they could cause any damage.
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"It's quieted down, finally," Naeko murmured to herself, sinking into a crouch from sheer exhaustion. Just a few feet away from her lay the body of the first Sound soldier that she'd killed, and the charred rubble heap of the alley marked the resting place of the two others. Tired in body and spirit, she allowed her eyes to drift closed for a moment's rest, not hearing the rapidly approaching footsteps from what was left of the supplementary invasion squad.
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Both pursuer and pursued spotted the weakened genin at the same time, Satoshi growling an oath when he realized that he was too far away to do any good. "Naeko, move!"
The girl did look up, body freezing in terror when she spotted the soldier from Sand coming towards her with bright blade held ready. "I can't! Help me…"
A ragged yell distracted all three for a moment, none expecting a teenaged girl with a knife clenched in her teeth to hurtle down from the balcony level of a nearby shop with murderous intent alive in her eyes. The Konoha duo winced as her sandaled foot connected in a solid, crunching hit, knocking the Suna-nin away from his target. One small fist thumped into his chest and he coughed from the rupture of several internal organs, spattering the girl with bright crimson, but this was not enough. Focusing her strength in her other hand, she pumped it upwards and crushed his nose, ensuring quick death as the cartilage traveled with fatal force into the cranial cavity beyond. The girl then fell back and looked around to ensure there were no other enemies that merited her attention, realizing only after a moment's silence that she was being stared at. "What? Did I do something wrong?"
Recognizing the voice, Naeko did a double-take at the grime-smeared and tattered form of Kotori, whose left shoulder now openly oozed blood from the seal located there. "Tori-chan! Oh my god, it's you!"
"If it were anyone else, I'd be concerned," Kotori muttered, re-holstering her knife and giving herself a token dust-off to tidy up her appearance. "I take it everything is under control, then?"
Naeko nodded once, then looked to her father for confirmation. Satoshi likewise nodded, fixing Kotori in a studying gaze. "You're the girl from Kirigakure, aren't you," the older man muttered thoughtfully, noting the leaf-band of Konoha tied at a slight angle across Kotori's brow. "So tell me, why are you helping us out?"
Kotori frowned disgustedly but still kept some semblance of decorum as she answered. "With all due respect, sir, do not mistake me for one of the enemy. I may have been raised and trained in the Mist, but everything that matters to me – my family and my friends – are here. You're Naeko's father?"
Satoshi permitted himself a small smile at the pointed words. "I am, and thank you for stepping in. Naeko's said some good things about you, but it's nice to see them proven right."
This merited a dubious eyebrow raise from the redhead, who then smirked and lightly slapped Naeko on the top of the head. "You haven't known me that long, Naeko, so don't put all of your eggs in one basket." Naeko laughed but did not protest, and Kotori continued. "I'm going to check on Taiki now. Do you need any more help, or do you want to come along?"
Picking herself up from the dirt, Naeko nodded again. "I think I'll go with you. Between my father and the rest of the booby traps, this part of town should be safe for now."
"Well then, I guess we're off." Kotori bowed to the older man in a respectful farewell. "An honor to meet you, sir." Then the two girls dashed off, leaving Satoshi alone with their erstwhile enemies.
Satoshi watched them leave, shaking his head ruefully. "So that's your kid, eh, Katsuo? She's a special one, that's for sure."
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Author's Note: Imashime, setsudan, and sesshou all are different techniques members of Clan Kurogata use with their special thread - literally "binding", "severing", and "destruction" - and will be explained further in another chapter.