A closed fist raised just as a pair of black boots landed on a tree branch.
Three silent figures halted immediately behind her.
Kana reached out with her Kurogan, searching the trees and forest floor for the three shinobi she had sensed, noting how they masked their presences well enough to almost fool her.
Almost.
Her fist raised two fingers spread apart and her wrist flicked downward; the team rushed forward and Kana could see her older teammate form hand seals for a distraction genjutsu just before they dropped to the ground silently.
The three shinobi didn't notice that the team they were pursuing had flickered ever so slightly and continued to fly over the Anbu members' heads as they chased after the illusions.
She raised her fist and opened it to a flat palm, turning it sideways and waving it forward.
Her squad leaped up to the trees and dashed forward.
Blood splashed across Kana's forearm.
Two blue-clad dead bodies were thrown to the forest floor.
The third could only grunt as his body was possessed with the Mind Transfer Jutsu.
A few moments passed, certainly no more than a minute, before her teammate's body jerked back to life.
"There was a witness – a child. He alerted the family head but the village officials weren't informed; this was a revenge mission. Privately paid."
Kana sighed angrily and cut through the frightened Dream ninja's throat before signaling with bloody fingers to turn back.
Looks like they were going to be late.
There were few things that truly and deeply frightened Kana – in fact, there were only two: Losing someone she loved, and genjutsu.
A familiar fuzzy feeling spread through the back of her head as her senses began to dull; it happened just as they set foot inside the bloodbath of a house they had left early that morning, meaning someone had been there since they had left only three hours earlier.
"Diyo," she said quietly, "Do you remember what the child looked like?"
"Yes ma'am. The child was about seven or eight years old. Long braided brown hair. Blue eyes. Wore a yukata."
"And the faces of anyone else who knew?"
"A group of ten shinobi wearing identical outfits. Black pants. Blue flak jackets. A blue armband of the same shade on their left arms with the insignia of a fish."
Just like the ones they had seen in the forest, good; Kana was already searching for the shinobi as she pricked her finger on a kunai and formed the hand seals for a summoning jutsu. Three small grey cats in red bandanas appeared before them and she gave them the same description as her teammate before they darted off in separate directions.
Her vision shimmered as the genjutsu fought to overpower it and Kana released it alongside her teammates. Genjutsu that could so much as confuse her kekkei genkai, which could see through just about every illusion known, disturbed her more than she would like to admit. Anything that tricked her mind was terrifying.
What bothered her even more, though, was that this was the same village Kana performed her last solo mission on – and this genjutsu felt exactly the same as the one she had felt when she entered the elder's residence.
Dull pain began to ache at her temples as Kana focused on each individual room in the village - one of the side effects to using her Kurogan for more than a few hours at a time. It didn't help that it seemed like a village custom for everyone who wasn't a monk to keep their hair long. "Diyo," she said through clenched teeth, "Were you able to see where the boy lived?"
"I'm sorry, no."
She groaned inwardly at his response.
A few moments later there was a flash on the far side of the village: A little boy with a long braid down to his hips was sleeping on the first floor of a small house with a woman sleeping two rooms away. Kana saw him just as one of the cats came trotting up to her with a disappointed look on his face.
"We couldn't find the shinobi you described," he explained, "But we noticed that there are several genjutsu traps laid throughout the village."
Kana stood up from her crouching position and nodded, "Yeah… I've felt a couple already. It doesn't seem like they're too bad, but we'll stay on our toes. I found the boy – keep looking for the shinobi." She looked back to her teammate with a fox mask, "Yuta, as the expert, I want you to pay special attention to any signs of genjutsu and alert us of anything unusual."
"Ma'am."
The group jumped from the treeline to the rooftop, sprinting silently through the sleeping village towards the building she had pointed out earlier. They had made their first hit just two hours after sundown, meaning it was close to 0100. 'Plenty of time. Get in, kill the kid. Find the shinobi. Get out by 0400 at the latest.' Kana was still annoyed that they were going to be a day late, as she prided herself on always being on time, but she needed to fix this fuck up before it got any worse.
She raised a fist with two fingers raised together, flicking her wrist downwards. The squad dropped to the ground as they reached the house; they kept low while Kana surveyed the building. She couldn't see any chakra signatures other than the boy's and what she presumed was his mother's.
"One genjutsu barrier placed on the very perimeter," Yuta whispered, "Nothing serious. Just a sleep-inducing one. I can dispel it."
"Do it."
He formed a couple of seals and tensed, "There's…"
Kana narrowed her eyes from behind her mask, noticing the shimmer at the same time he stopped moving. "I see it." She preemptively began focusing her chakra, "The genjutsu is layered, meaning this is most likely some sort of trap. Yuta and I will run in, you two stay outside and stay alert. Stay on your guard."
Her team nodded at her as she crawled to the bedroom window and slid it open soundlessly before hoisting herself up. Wasting no time, Kana swiftly made her way over to the sleeping form and severed his jugular just as wide blue eyes flew open with a wicked smile.
'What-'
The room shimmered and the boy's chakra flared just as he transformed into a full grown man wearing a blue flak jacket with a matching armband.
'Genjutsu - a third layer - he fooled my eyes- how-'
"What a vicious bitch."
Kana whipped around to see the room transform from a plain child's bedroom to a large meeting room lit by plenty of candles; there were shinobi wearing blue standing around them with varying expressions of amusement and anger.
"I can't believe you actually would have killed a child," said the one with the only variation – a blue beret with the same snake insignia, "That's pretty harsh, don't you think?"
Yuta moved closer to her and tapped his fingertips against the palm of her hand in Morse. "Diyo can get into his head if we keep him alive."
She nodded in agreement; if there was anyone here that would be able to give her answers, it would be the obvious leader of the group. A door opened to their left, which had previously been a window, and her teammates were both being dragged in by their hair. Kana could hear hair tearing from the scalp from the pressure and fought to not let the sickening noise get to her. "Are you going to tell us who you are?" she asked, keeping her voice monotonous.
The grin on his face spread as he crossed his arms over his chest, "And why would I tell you that? You're going to be dead soon anyways."
Kana didn't bother with further questions; she lunged towards the man closest to her and used what little time she had to form her demon arm and drove it through his midsection. His body hadn't even hit the ground before she was onto the next opponent, but they were faster than Kana had anticipated. A lot faster.
A charged chakra blade almost cut across her throat as she ducked down to drive the blade into his body; it cut along her jaw, stopping just before her ear, and he jumped back to avoid the worst of Kana's attack. Another opponent was on top of her as she dropped to the floor and kicked herself sideways, spitting out a burst of chakra that successfully impaled the man that had managed to stab her square in the center of the back.
'Two down… Four… Six more to go.' Kana tucked her body into a ball to roll to her feet, immediately jumping into the air as a handful of shuriken whizzed through the air where her face had previously been. She threw senbon in the opponent's direction and realized that one of her teammates' chakra signatures flickered away just before his body dropped to the ground.
Her hands flashed as she landed; Kana threw her arms forward and swung them out, "Demon arc jutsu!" she cried just as a wave of black chakra burst out of her hands and extended into a flame-like arc. As they dodged she used their moment of instability to rush forward and thin out her demon arm so it resembled a katana; she swung her arm down through the shinobi's shoulder and back up, cutting him into a v-shape.
A body dropped behind her, making that five shinobi in total-
Yuta's pained groan reached her ears just as Kana saw him take shuriken from two different opponents. When he stumbled around, his head swiveling back and forth, she realized that her teammate was under some sort of illusion. 'Shit, hold on…'
"Diyo, cover me!" she shouted as she started forming hand seals. 'Not enough time. Yuta I'm sorry.' Kana darted to his collapsing figure, hooking a leg around his hips and kicking off of the ground while making sure her hands didn't falter. Yuta coughed painfully when she set him down on the ground next to Diyo, who was fending off the leader of the group and two others.
"Chakra Barrier Prison!"
Kana concentrated as hard as she could as the barrier formed around them - she was glad that the sudden burst of her chakra startled their enemies enough to make them stumble back, one of them screaming as the barrier formed through his body and charred his insides.
Sweat beaded on her forehead as her headache intensified. Kana had only ever separated the barrier into halves before in training, but she had to create an extra pocket for the leader to ensure his safety; the strain it had on her was almost insurmountable.
"Don't touch it," she warned between pants, "It'll burn you."
"That's an impressive chakra you have there," the man with the beret said as a hole in the prison formed around him, "I can't say I've seen something like this before. Is this yin release your bloodline trait? Oh, and don't bother trying to help your friend. That poison resists medical ninjutsu."
Kana ignored him and focused on her breathing and solidifying the wall. 'I'm okay. I can do this,' she assured herself as her hands melted into the black translucent barrier.
"Pulsing Chakra Wave!"
She could hardly control the chakra that resonated along the barrier surfaces, moving so fast and bouncing off of so many different points that Kana had to use every ounce of concentration she had available to absorb what she could so she didn't have to keep sending out wave after wave. Just like last time, though, she could feel the bodies caught in each wave slowly begin to suffer total organ failure just a few moments before those organs burst or started to melt.
Instead of reveling in the sensation, Kana could only watch her dead teammate's body slowly tremble as it liquefied. The kunoichi knew he didn't have a family back in their village, but he still deserved a proper burial; she hated knowing that his fate was to be reduced to scraps of clothing and mush.
"Diyo…" she gasped as her hold on the barrier began to wane, "You… Know… What to do…"
The barrier dissipated. Kana picked up her teammate off of the ground by his vest and dragged him away from the shinobi leader while the other engaged him in battle; when they were at a somewhat more of a safe distance she focused healing chakra to her hands and held them over Yuta's chest.
A shuriken had been lodged in his heart, with two others buried deep into his lungs. Kana pulled the one out of his arm and noticed that they were soaked in a clear liquid – poison. She watched his eyes dart around the room fearfully and figured that it was inducing hallucinations, and probably hurt like hell.
'We don't have time for this, I-' Kana straightened her back and twisted, emitting a pained gasp when a sharp pain flared just above her floating rib.
"Captain-"
"I'm all right," she shouted, using a body blast to blow the shinobi squad leader backwards, "Keep him off of me, Diyo!" Kana couldn't help but allow the agitation she felt seep into her voice as she tried to heal Yuta's wounds – she had to heal his heart as she pulled the shuriken out if she was going to get his bleeding under control, but no matter how much chakra she fed into the jutsu nothing seemed to improve. If anything, it almost felt as if her chakra was being completely absorbed by the poison, and she remembered the leader's words about how the toxin resisted medical ninjutsu.
A kunai flew past her ear and Kana realized that there was no way she could get any healing done, not here. In any normal situation she would have just thrown up a barrier, but she was running too low on chakra to risk it. She jumped to her feet and twisted to the side to dodge another blade as her vision faltered.
'Shit, the poison…' It must not have been hallucination inducing like she previously thought, as her vision only felt weakening, but Kana knew that it was going to pose a serious problem.
She signed and spat several chakra balls at the leader, signing for more when he dodged. He was fast, maybe as fast as Guy, so the best Kana could do was throw him off balance enough for Diyo to get in and take him down.
As his feet touched the ground he created a shadow clone and pulled out the katana on her back as they sprinted forward. The clone threw shuriken while Diyo stabbed their opponent in the tricep with a kunai, using his lightning chakra to amplify the injury. Kana focused chakra around her blade as well and aimed downwards, cutting through his flak jacket and dragging the charged blade through two ribs and through his hip bone.
The man screamed and fell back. Kana impaled his left leg to the ground so he couldn't move anywhere, snatching one of his poisoned kunai from his thigh and stabbing it through his hand.
"Do it, now!" she barked as she dashed back to Yuta's body.
Even as Kana began the healing process she knew the man wasn't going to make it. His wounds were too great, she didn't need to hear him struggling to breathe against the blood pooling in his lungs to know that. It didn't help that whatever this poison was, was negating any effects her jutsu had. His eyes continued to dart around the room; Kana concluded that the leader had hit him with a genjutsu earlier.
"Tsuki… Please… J-just…"
"Shh, don't talk. You're only going to make it worse," she said solemnly.
Yuta coughed violently, causing the shuriken in his lungs to sink deeper and shred the surrounding tissue. "Don't… Both-er lying… I know…" he coughed again and squeezed his eyes shut, "It's… It burns… Tsuki please j-just make… Make it stop…"
The meaning of his words were not lost on Kana and she bit her lip hard enough to draw blood; she stopped the healing jutsu and picked her teammate up bridal style. "Shut up. You're going to be fine, just stop talking and focus on your breathing," she said firmly as she stood, "Slow breaths, nothing deep. Diyo, are you ready?"
"Yeah. They were rogue-nin looking to start a war. They fed the Leaf lies about what their elder was planning, wanted to pin the assassination on us by killing you after the murder but weren't able to catch up. The man we killed earlier was another attempt. There was never a child witness. It was a false memory created through genjutsu. The team sent after us was a ruse to get us back in the village."
Kana struggled to reposition Yuta's larger body and limped over to their other teammate; she kneeled down with a pained grunt and lifted his headband from his gored remains. "Are there any others?"
The pain in her head was reaching a nauseating crescendo, coupled by a burning sensation in her muscles from the toxin, and she stumbled against a wall and groaned. Diyo grabbed her waist to help keep her upright as Kana doubled over to fight back at the vomit that threatened to force its way up. "Are you okay?" he asked, "Can you make it back?"
Labored breathing puffed back into Kana's face against the mask as she struggled to get her breathing under control. "Really low on chakra," she panted, "And I got stabbed three times by those poisoned blades… I don't know what the full effects are, but I think I'll be okay. Are you hurt?"
Diyo turned so he could give her a view of a nasty looking gash on his back: his flack jacket and shirt had been ripped open from one shoulder down to the bottom of his ribs, deep enough for Kana to see the muscles and sinew. "Some sort of chakra blade combined with wind release," Diyo explained, "So I guess we're both poisoned, huh?"
She swore and pushed herself off of the wall. "We need to get out of the village. I'll perform first aid once we're safe." Kana practically threw Yuta's gasping figure at him, "Take… Take him. I can't. He's too much."
Once he was seated on Diyo's back piggyback style, they dashed out of the building.
Diyo's shoulders jerked and he released a pained moan.
"Stop, put h-him down," she ordered.
The pair stopped on the forest floor behind a cluster of large bushes; the man unceremoniously dropped Yuta to the ground before sitting on the ground to rest as Kana coughed painfully and leaned against the base of a tree. Excruciating pain was radiating from each of her wounds, only layering over the head-splitting agony she felt from using the kekkei genkai that was practically blinding her by this point.
Ragged breaths forced their way from her lungs as Kana shakily reached into the extra hip pound she kept strapped to her leg, "Can… Can you get… Your vest…"
"Yeah, of course."
She dropped to her knees and shuffled forward, swaying side to side, as her Kurogan finally deactivated – meaning her chakra was all but completely depleted. Kana had to focus all of her concentration into her movements while she dabbed an antiseptic into the gaping wound on Diyo's back.
A tensing in her stomach warned Kana just in time for her to topple over onto her side painfully and tear her cloth mask away before she vomited. It wasn't as if there was anything to throw up, though, considering neither of them had slept or eaten in over four days; the only thing her body could expel by this point was yellow-green bile that pooled in the grass in a frothy mess.
"Captain-"
"Listen… Listen to me, D-Diyo," she gasped, "W-We're not going… I can't hold out m-much longer. Make su-re that in-tel... Gets to... Lord... Dan-zo... And…" Tears pricked at her eyes, "I need you… to f-fi-find Mi-Might Guy… And Sasuke… Uchiha… P-please…"
Kana choked on a sob as she vomited again, noting the tinge of brown from her blood mixing with the bile, "Tell S-Sasuke that I-I never… I never sto-stopped watch-ing over… Him… He never… Stopped being pr-precious to m-me as… As my little… Brother…"
She pushed herself up off of the grass with wobbling arms and crawled back to Diyo, picking up the sealed packet with a threaded needle and using a kunai to tear it open. "G-Give my… My mask to… Guy… Tell him… To… G-give my head…head-band to… Neji…"
Diyo shook his head as she tied off the sloppy stitches – it was a mess, but the wound was closed. "I can keep carrying you, you can tell them yourself."
"Don't... Be stupid. You and… I both know y-you can't get back fast en-ough… This cut… It's too deep… Se-vered too much… Lost too… Much blood…" she wheezed, her numb hands barely able to tape a strip of gauze over the stitched wound. "This should… Help… Get you h-home…"
"You're a good shinobi," he said solemnly. Diyo turned to Yuta's heaving form, "Is there anything you need?"
"M-my pouch… Sc-scroll… For... Sis-ster."
She watched the tears pour out of Yuta's eyes through their masks. Whether or not they were from the pain of his wounds or the fear of death she didn't know.
Diyo reached into his pouch and pulled out a scroll tied closed with a black ribbon before reaching behind his head to pull his ninja headband loose, "I'll make sure it gets to her."
Kana half-crawled half-dragged her way over to her dying teammate, putting a hand she couldn't feel on his chest in a comforting gesture.
Diyo turned to Kana and helped her sit against the base of the tree with Diyo in her lap, his dark eyes solemn behind his bear mask. "Alright, I promise. Do you need anything else?"
The kunoichi struggled to lift her cloth mask over her nose and nodded. "Can… You.. H-help me… Seal for the… Summ-on-ing Jut-su…?" she gave a dark chuckle and coughed, "I… I c-can't really… Move m-my fingers…"
Diyo used a kunai to prick her thumb and clumsily folded Kana's hands into the proper symbols, pressing them into the grass as she pushed the last burst of chakra she had left into the jutsu. Momoko appeared in a puff of smoke with a sad expression on her feline face. Kana tilted her head back and looked up at the leaves that swayed in the breeze, "She'll… Deal with… Our bodies. Y-you can… Go now."
Cool air rushed to meet Kana's sweaty forehead as her mask was removed by her teammate, followed by her headband. His eyes gave her a silent goodbye as he began running in the direction of the village, three headbands and two masks clutched in his hands.
"C-c-apt…" Yuta wheezed, his eyes pleading from behind his mask, "H-h-h-hurts… Please…"
Kana felt her chest constrict as she watched the man suffer. It had been a miracle that he had made it this far, and she wished she had the strength to commend him for holding out this long. She focused chakra to her fingertips in jagged spikes, the best she could create by this point, and tightened the hold she had on her teammate's shoulder.
"Th-th-thank," he choked, locking his impossibly blue eyes on hers, "So… Much."
His blood was warm on her when she cut into Yuta's jugular. "You're… Gonna… B-be ok-ay now," she whispered, "J-j-just…. Sleep."
Yuta's eyes closed only a few seconds later.
She used the remaining shreds of her energy to reach into her pack and pull out the small beaded bracelet, hanging her head down to look at the trinket as her vision darkened. Momoko crawled into her lap on top of Yuta and purred comfortingly. Kana remembered how proud Sasuke had looked when he had given this to her on her birthday, so excited that he had gotten her a present all on his own. She thumbed the plastic beads, which had been applied in no particular order, and smiled inwardly at the family crests that shone brightly in what little moonlight was able to peek through the trees.
They were the last things she saw before her vision went completely black. The next couple of minutes were spent remembering what she had said to Neji, about how there was a chance she wouldn't come back, and she decided that she was glad Kana had said those things when she did. Her heart ached for him. Neji and Kana had been an inseparable duo since he was just a baby - she was one of the few consistent things in his life.
As her body began to numb Kana decided that her only regret in this life was not being able to be there for him. She wouldn't be able to see him make chunin and jonin, she wouldn't be there for his first drink or his first love, she wouldn't see him grow...
'Neji… I'm so sorry, I tried…'