Woah! Double updates!
Yup, double updates indeed; just for you guys!
*Just as a quick reminder, I've changed the five-tails to be a wolf demon in my story. I just really don't like that horse-like thing... it's really one of the few rare things that I will dare to change since I don't like changing the story either :/
Reena was trying to go as fast as she could with her team. The issue, however, was that they couldn't go too fast either. If they did, then they might miss something important. Ever since Sai came back with a new report and new orders from the Hokage, the white hair girl had been feeling unusually panicked. It took all her might to keep it together.
As they kept moving forward, the girl cursed the weather. It was pouring rain and the little hope that she had to maybe catch on her scent had now vanished. She would not even be able to find Kakashi's team in this weather either. Thank god for radios. However, the rain was not only a nuisance to her sense of smell. It was also a nuisance to everyone's sight. They could barely see ahead of them which made their search even slower.
She knew that she should tell her team to stop and hide from the rain a bit. Everyone was exhausted and soaking wet. Even Naruto's usual energy, which had always seemed endless up to now, was gone. Yet, something kept pushing her forward. Maybe it was the fear of falling behind and never being able to catch up to the merciless brother. Or maybe, just the fear of not finding Sora in time.
"Reena."
A voice behind her broke her concentration but that did not stop her from moving forward. She kept going and soon enough her pink hair teammate appeared by her side.
"I know you want to keep going but is it for the best?"
"Yes."
The team leader was in no mood to discuss yet Sakura kept pushing.
"What if we miss them? We can't see properly."
"We will see them. We just need to concentrate."
"But it's hard to move properly in …!"
Alerted by the fact that her partner didn't finish her sentence, Reena stopped and spun around. Concentrating, she barely noticed a shape falling down through the trees. She tried to push herself off the branch she was but her feet slipped. Also falling in mid-air, she hurriedly stabbed the nearby tree with her claw-like weapon in order to change the direction she was falling in order to go toward Sakura. Just before they hit the ground, the white hair girl managed to catch her partner and concentrated her chakra in her feet in order to reduce the impact on her legs from landing hard. She then settled the girl on the ground and fell backward to land in a sitting position.
"You okay?" she asked, uncertain.
Sakura seemed out of breath as she answered.
"Yeah, my foot just slipped off the branch..."
As Sai and Naruto landed nearby to see what had happened, Reena finally started to realizing her mistake. Not only would they miss the merciless brothers, like Sakura had mentioned, the rain was making it dangerous to move around for everyone. In other words, she was putting the mission in jeopardy by pushing forward with the risk of breaking their neck. She sighed.
"I'm sorry guys. Let's stop here."
Sai simply nodded while Naruto sighed in obvious relieved. Once Sakura and her were back up and standing, they started to walk on foot to find shelter. They would need to stay cover until the rain cleared up or at least lighten up. Hopefully, at the same time, their clothing would dry a bit. Without much of a conversation, they finally reached a place where several trees had fallen. By pushing them close together, they managed to create a sort of shelter. After taking place in the newly made up dry place, Reena offered the team to sleep while she guarded. No arguments were made.
Sitting on the edge of the shelter, the team leader continued to stare intently outside. She started wondering how Kakashi's team were doing. To cover more ground, the two teams had split up. Ever since they had done so, they had not heard anything from them on their radio. At the thought, the girl pulled out the radio and looked it, half expecting to suddenly hear the man's voice coming out of it but it stayed silent.
Hours past and the rain had not diminished at all. Behind her, she felt a movement and soon enough, Sakura sat beside her.
"Still raining, huh?" she asked quietly as not to wake up her teammates.
"Yeah…" answered Reena, miserably.
They stayed silent for a few minutes.
"I'm sorry for earlier," said the white hair girl, still feeling guilty for her rash decision.
"Don't be, it's understandable. I'm glad you caught me in time though," answered her friend with a reassuring smile.
Reena opened her mouth to say something but froze as she heard a noise from not too far. Quickly she stared at the direction it came from and waited. She then saw it: three dark figures strolling through the trees at a certain speed. Sakura seemed to have noticed them too as she hurried and woke up Sai and Naruto while mentioning to stay quiet. When they grouped up at the entrance of their cover, Reena motioned to them the plan she had created. Thankfully, they all understood right away. Naruto made several clones and dashed for the three figures as Sakura and Sai went around, surrounding the group. While standing where she was, the white hair girl concentrated her five-tails chakra to her eyes in order to be ready to ambush the group.
"Oh? Finally getting some action?" whispered Kokuō excitedly.
She stared at the three figures. As Naruto was about to reach them, Reena realized that something was wrong. They should have noticed the presence of Naruto by now. Yet, they kept on moving like nothing was happening. Plus, their chakras were all wrong. She swiftly crouched down and looked around them and there they saw them. One of the figures was standing on her right, behind Sai. Another stood on her left behind Sakura. Before she could signal to her team the imminent danger, she tried to track down the third shinobi.
Naruto reached the three figures and attacked them. Immediately, the three figures disappeared in cloud of smoke. When the blond boy and his clones tried to turn around, they came to realize that they couldn't. They were all frozen in place. As if something else were controlling them against their will, they jumped in the air, took out a kunai knife, and headed toward Sai. Realizing that something was off, the black hair boy took out his tantō and got ready to fend off the attack.
While Sakura waited at her position, she felt the ground rumbling behind her. She spun around just in time to notice a huge boulder like figure heading toward her. Jumping on the side, she managed to barely avoid it. Somehow, the boulder managed to turn around and started heading toward her again. However, this time, she was ready. Standing her ground, she raised her fist and concentrated all her energy in it.
Watching the scene from her position, Reena was desperately trying to find the third figure. She was starting to be afraid that this was all a distraction to have the third figure run ahead. If this was the case then they would be in trouble as they wouldn't be able to track him down in this rain.
"Behind you," whispered urgently Kokuō.
Reena spun around and finally saw the third shinobi that had managed to conceal her chakra from her. There, in front of her, stood the dark figure that was holding her hands in a triangle formation in front of her.
"Mind Transfer Jutsu."
Everything happened in a flash. The white hair girl was taken aback by the ninjutsu and fell backward on the ground. As she felt herself hit the ground, she also took notice that her body felt like it didn't belong to her anymore.
"Success!" said a girl voice from inside her.
A chuckle resonated from the girl's mouth.
"Are you sure about that, you lowlife?" she heard herself say with a beast like voice.
The white hair girl knew that as a mechanism of defence, the five-tail had taken over her body. He made her roll over to stand on all four while still chuckling very amusingly.
"W-what the…?"
Ino? thought Reena as she finally recognized the new presence inside her. Kokuō, however, paid it no attention as he moved closer to the motionless body that was laying on the ground nearby. As he moved the girl's hand down on the body's throat, he said:
"We are enough of two in this body."
"N-no! W-wait!" the voice screamed from inside the body in panic.
Pushing forth all the energy she had, Reena managed to speak up with her own voice.
"Rokuō, stop!"
With a grunt, he pulled away her hand.
"She needs to come out or I will kill her," he spat out.
"She will," she said snakingly. Just talking took a lot of energy. "Ino, come out."
"Y-yes. Release!"
To aid her with her technique, the five-tail made Reena cross her arms in an "X" formation. As Ino reached back her body, she loudly took in a deep breath. At the same time, Reena collapsed on the ground as Rokuō gave her back her body.
"Thank you," she whispered.
"Tell her not to do it again or I'll kill her," he answered threateningly with a sniff.
"It was an accident," she answered him as she got up.
After brushing off a bit of mud that was on her pants and boots, she walked up to Ino that was still lying on her back.
"You okay?" she asked while looking down at her friend and giving her a hand.
"Yeah, but he's scary," the blonde girl said while getting up with Reena's help.
"I'd say that 'overprotective' would be the right way to describe him," the white hair girl answered with a smile.
The both turned around to look at the fight. As they did, they saw what they guessed to be Choji flying off, on one side. On the other, Sai was patiently avoiding Naruto's clones' movement and taking them out one by one. Ino cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted:
"Guys! You need to stop! This is Reena's team!"
"What?!" they heard Choji shout from somewhere in the darkness.
"Ino?" shouted Sakura while looking at them wide eyes.
Almost at the same time, Naruto and his clones gained control over their own bodies again. Instead of turning around and blaming the culprit, he started to argue with Sai about how he could have simply avoided him instead of killing his clones off one by one. The ANBU boy only shook his shoulder and said something that sounded like "you shouldn't be such a pussy" which, of course, pissed off Naruto even more.
While the two boys were off arguing in the background, the others met up in the middle.
"What are you guys doing here?" asked Reena seriously as she stared down Shikamaru.
"Doing the same thing than you, I believe," he answered defiantly.
The white hair girl arched an eyebrow at his attitude.
"Lady Tsunade let you come too?" said Sakura, surprised.
"...not exactly," answered Ino hesitantly.
The pink hair girl stared at her in surprise.
"You do realize that she might kill you," she said looking at everyone then stopped on Shikamaru and insisted: "all of you."
"Well, it's too late now…" mumbled Shikamaru.
Naruto and Sai seemed to have stopped their fighting as they reached the group.
"Hey! It's nice to see you guys!" shouted Naruto.
"You all went the same way then us," added Sai, with a hint of surprise in his voice.
"Guys, I know you all disagree with what we did," stated Ino. She then looked at Naruto and added: "well, almost all of you, but can we go somewhere covered and hopefully dry?"
"Oh yeah, come to our shelter," said Reena as she motioned for the place where her team was sleeping earlier.
As they started settling down in a circle, Naruto rubbed his hands together and said:
"Man, I wish we could start a fire…"
"Yeah, me too," added Choji.
"But we can't," stated Sai.
As sparks flew between Naruto and Sai once again, Reena concentrated her attention on Shikamaru.
"You know, usually I'd be surprised to see this kind of behavior coming from you but I guess this time is different. I'm actually glad you guys are here. We definitely need more help."
"We'll deal with the Hokage all together afterwards," butted in Sakura as her and Ino came to sit closer to them.
"I'm… actually glad we ran into you guys, despite the ugly encounter we had," said Shikamaru nodding slightly. "We had nothing to follow. All we did was guess where they could have gone, probably for the same reason that you guys came up with."
"Yeah…" answered the white hair girl, discouraged.
"I guess you don't have much luck either?" asked Ino.
Sakura slightly shook her head.
"Where's the other team?" asked Shikamaru.
"Kakashi's team is covering more the south side from here, just in case, but like you can guess, two teams are obviously not enough," replied Reena. Then as a new thought crossed her mind, she continued: "Talking about them, we need to radio them in order to let them know you're here."
Both Shikamaru and Ino shrugged at the idea of their sensei knowing that they had left the village despite orders. There was definitely a lot of discussion that would happen after this mission. However, they knew that they couldn't avoid it. Thus, when Reena picked out the radio from her back pouch, they sat there while holding their breaths.
"Kakashi, come in."
The answer didn't come immediately which seemed to make it worse for team 10. With the bad weather, it was just so hard to communicate let alone do anything else. It is only after a few minutes that they heard the man answer.
"Reena? Did you call in?"
"Yes?" answered the girl confused.
"Sorry, we're hearing a lot of static. What's up?"
"We ran into Shikamaru's team."
There was another long silence. It was as if Kakashi was deciding what to do with this new information. When a response came, it was not the silver hair man at the other end anymore.
"Did you really say Shikamaru?" asked a new voice which they identified as Asuma's.
His voice seemed like a mix of confusion, surprised, and frustration. Reena bit her lip while staring at everyone now. She didn't want to cause more issue for the trio as she understood why they acted this way. Before she could answer, Asuma added:
"Reena, give me Shikamaru."
Defeated, she handed the radio to Shikamaru who hesitated a few seconds before taking it. However, before he could say something, his sensei added:
"Shikamaru, I won't force Ino, Choji, and you to go back to the village but at one condition…"
"Yeah?" answered the boy.
"Don't. Do. Anything. Reckless. I don't need to worry about someone else. Just follow Reena's orders."
Before answering, the boy looked at his two teammates who gave him a serious nod.
"Understood."
With that, the conversation was over. Shikamaru gave back the radio as Kakashi came back on the radio.
"Reena?"
"Yeah?" she answered.
"We will soon have a chain of mountains separating us. Send Shikamaru's team there. As soon as we finish our part, we'll meet them there. Oh, and give them the extra radio."
"Yes, sir," the girl replied with a smirk, knowing full well that the man hated when she answered that.
There was a small silent during which she knew that he was silently cursing her. Finally, he added:
"Your team will also meet at the mountain if you find nothing on your side."
"Understood."
"See you guys in a few days."
She didn't reply. She only set the radio back in her bag, knowing that there wouldn't be anything more that would be said.
"So we're going to the mountains?" asked the boy to confirm his new orders.
"Yeah but tomorrow morning. We'll go after everyone had a good night of sleep and this cursed rain settles down."
"Thank god for sleep!" said Ino as she let herself fall on her back.
"Hey, that's my line," told her Shikamaru.
With a slight smile, everyone went to be with the exception of Sai, who had offered to take the first shift to guard.
And that is it! A longer chapter than the last one too! Hold on tight for the next chapter! I'll try to stay on a roll !
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