Updated: May 24 2014

5. The Spider's Web

Friday arrived faster than Minato had expected. He had spent some time falling into the rhythm of break, and it seemed like one day off wasn't much after all. On Thursday evening, he received information from Hiromu about his new mission, and was woken early to leave as fast as he could; despite the border between the Fire and the Rain not being the longest, the trap expert's location was quite far away. The trap expert, who went by the name Fukuda, had prepared his traps as far from the border posts as possible to save time, but Minato ran as quickly as he could through the thick forest while he worked out different strategies to eliminate a trap user. He could also think of one factor that could be crucial for the outcome of the mission: he had never fought against a trap user before.

The advice he had received the day before had mostly been to slow down when he approached the location, and observe the area carefully. They didn't have much information about the trap expert himself, besides that he was supposed to be rather quick compared to the size of him. Minato wondered just how big the man was and thought that the advice had otherwise been rather useless.

He had figured out on his own that he should make himself as small as possible, so he had left as many weapons he could sacrifice. He had brought two Hiraishin kunai, and out of the two slender swords he wore on his back, he had only brought one. Most of his weapon pouches lay on his bed, and since the weather was nice and it was warmer than usual in the winter, he decided to leave his jacket as well. All he needed now, was to find out when he would fall into the traps before he actually did.

But the first thing he found when he neared the location was neither a trap nor the trap expert, but a team from Konoha.

"Hey, hold on!" he said loudly as he jumped out on the path a few meters behind them. The team stopped and turned. They were breathing heavily; they had probably been running for a while.

"Minato?" one of them said in surprise. It was Hyuuga Hizashi, accompanied by two older jounin Minato could barely remember.

"Hizashi," Minato nodded. "You should take a detour. There's a trap expert from the Rain who's sabotaging reinforcements somewhere on this path, so make it as wide as possible."

"I see," Hizashi said calmly, turned and activated his Byakugan. After a moment, he could share with the others what he saw. "Yes, I see him now, he's about a kilometre ahead. Looks like he put up quite an area with wires and exploding tags." He turned back to Minato. "We would have noticed, I usually check the environment regularly, especially in times like these. But thank you anyway, I'm sure you saved us a lot of time."

"No problem," Minato said, but Hizashi lingered and stared curiously at him.

"If you don't mind me asking, what're you doing out here by yourself?" he asked politely.

"Not at all," Minato said and nodded at the path ahead of them. "I'm after that guy. More reinforcements are coming today, and they would lose valuable time if they had to deal with the traps or take a detour like you."

"Good luck, then," Hizashi smiled. "And be careful. Well, if it is to any help -" he turned and reactivated his Byakugan, "- he's set up wires connected to exploding tags with a width of about half a kilometre, but only ten meters in depth. The man himself is sitting around fifteen meters behind."

"Thank you, that really helps," Minato said. The Konoha team headed in a different direction, while Minato continued on the path towards the trap. Now that he knew what lay ahead, making a plan was a lot easier. Wires was no surprise – they were perhaps the most common traps to fall into – but he could at least push a few complicated ideas to the back of his head. Although, he was sure wires and exploding tags were not the only things he'd meet; they made, after all, a quite simple trap. He reminded himself to be careful.

A kilometre ahead … That meant he soon had to sharpen his senses and watch out. If they were half a kilometre wide he would only lose time walking around them, which meant more time for the reinforcements to reach the trap and get caught, and he didn't want that to happen. Besides, if the trap expert had made a more extensive trap than Hizashi could see, it would be easy to fall into, and if the reinforcements were needed in the Rain, they had to get there as quickly as possible. The traps were probably not as tall as they were deep; maybe he could get somewhere underneath or above it. And then he had to catch the trap expert himself. Speed was one thing he could challenge, but if the man was as huge as they said, he could be a real pain the ass.

Now that he thought about it, he hadn't seen Hizashi in four years, but since he had seen his twin brother a couple of times, he wasn't surprised to see how much he had grown. He wished he could meet Hizashi under different circumstances; they had gotten along well, even though Hizashi was a year older, and Minato always liked to see faces from Konoha. They reminded him of home, and to meet people who came directly from the village could only mean that such a home still existed -

The tiniest of gleams made him plant his heels in the soil, every muscle of his tightened and only his heart moved when he stopped and stood as still as a petrified man, looking at a thin, light thread, hanging centimetres from his eyes. There was barely any shadow of it, but at a closer look, Minato discovered several layers of wires nearby. He had barely run half a kilometre, how had all these wires come up so fast?

His first thought was to walk backwards, but when he as slowly and carefully as he could turned his head to see if the coast was clear, he realised that that was not an option. Hundreds of wires had been set up near his back, every one of them connected to the tiniest exploding tags Minato had ever seen. Many of the wires fenced around his legs.

A cold laugh disturbed the silence.

"What a shame I only caught one, I was hoping for a bigger fly."

A man, possibly two meters tall and one meter wide stood by one of the trees nearby between the wires, in a small gap (small meaning he could barely get through) he had made, and a larger piece of paper besides him had a different seal on it. Minato caught two things to begin with: one, he could only dream of getting to the gap. Two, he had seen many of the symbols on the seal before. He checked the ground around him, and a theory formed in his head.

But knowing how the trap was made wasn't helping; he was still trapped. Instead, he focused on the trap expert. He was wearing a mechanical mask that covered his head, shoulders and chest, and Minato could barely see his eyes.

"Maybe I should wait and see if anyone else falls in my trap and sets it off," Fukuda continued. He had a cold voice which made Minato shiver slightly, but he was more afraid he would touch the wires because of it. They were a simple way to eliminate the trap expert, but he preferred to do it in a way that didn't get himself killed.

Minato suddenly found this morning to be exceptionally shitty.

"Let me guess, you're a lone assassin from some border post?" Fukuda asked with false interest, possibly to gain time.

"Yep," Minato said surprisingly lightly.

The trap expert grinned. "Well, aren't you taking things easily? You're the first I've ever caught in my spider's web who've talked so casually to me. No, wait -" he pretended to remember something, "- you must be the first who ever had time to say something. Congratulations, I might have to set this off myself.

Minato was suddenly very grateful to be alone on the mission. He had often been in situations where a partner could have come in handy, but in a trap like this, the bigger the prey, the worse the situation. A perfect trap for reinforcements. And the more time he spent, the bigger the chance a team would show up near the trap, and maybe set off all the tiny, but probably powerful, exploding tags.

He had to get out of there. The only question was how.

Fukuda had, considering the marks on the ground, summoned the wires from underground with a seal like the one on the tree. There could be more of the wires, so to get underneath was probably not a good idea. He had threads in front of him, behind him and on both sides, so to move around was impossible without setting off the explosion, so – above.

He looked up carefully. There was more space, but he couldn't move his legs. The height, on the other hand, was manageable. He looked back down, and carefully pulled a Hiraishin kunai from a pocket with his right hand, which was less exposed. The trap expert laughed.

"Ha! If you try to cut the wires, you'll set off every single exploding tag. Not that it has been tested, maybe you want to try?"

Minato was sure he didn't want to try. Fukuda watched with genuine curiosity while Minato looked around himself again to see how much he could move his right arm; if he stretched it out, he would hit at least four wires, but if he lifted it first …

He dropped the kunai carefully and caught it with his more limited left hand before he pulled out another kunai from the same pocket. Only then did Fukuda realise what kind of kunai it was Minato was holding.

"But you're -"

But before he could tell Minato who he was, Minato had weakly thrown the first kunai up between a bigger gap between the wires and disappeared from the ground, and hung above the trap for a second while he threw the other kunai using chakra - he caught it around twenty meters above the ground where he started falling, aimed and inserted chakra into the kunai; two seconds later, the kunai hit a tag.

For a moment, it looked like the whole world underneath him exploded. There was a blinding light and a loud bang, earth and trees splintered and smoke rose. Minato fell towards the ground and landed heavily in the middle of the warm smoke.

No, he had landed in the middle of a huge advantage.

Crouching, he placed a finger on the burnt soil.

Got you.