Parrot dives for cover in a parking garage as high-velocity rounds puncture the concrete wall around his head; however, he crawls out of the sniper's line of sight into an ambush. The Uzumaki decapitates the incoming Red Zetsus with his sword, but another grabs him. He holds back the abomination's face as it bites and snaps at him; the shinobi twists its neck 180° before kicking the mutant over a ledge. The beheaded Red Zetsus arise, lunging onto Parrot and wrestling him to the ground.
The Uzumaki hits his head on a curb but impales one of them upon a jagged pipe protruding from a wall. The remaining mutant suffocates him with its inhuman strength. Despair lies heavy upon Parrot; a horde swarms the entrances. He's alone, fading in and out of consciousness; his muscles are fatiguing. The Red Zetsus are closing in; he struggles at maximum strength, frantic and hysterical. A security shutter opens; a hand with an iron grip yanks him and the headless abomination across the factory floor.
"Sparrow, help me pull this freak off him!" a gruff masculine voice barks. The kunoichi crushes another Red Zetsu's skull with the security shutter, then assists Pelican with prying away the headless abomination. He throws the cannibalistic fiend off Parrot, but it lunges after Sparrow. She dislocates both the mutant's legs, knocking it over; the flesh-eating ghoul continues limping after her despite its broken limbs. Pelican Dropkicks the Red Zetsu onto a conveyor belt that pulls it into a waste grinder, splattering bloody chunks everywhere. The shutter bends and deforms; Parrot sits up, but the gash on his head leaves him unsteady.
"Get up! Get up, Parrot!" Sparrow yells, "We're getting out of here!" she pulls Parrot to his feet, but vertigo causes him to collapse. The Red Zetsus crash through the skylights and breach the security shutter.
"This is insane!" Pelican lifts Parrot using the Fireman's Carry, then dashes past an assembly line with Sparrow. The thousands of groans and wails outside the factory drown out the whirring machinery and biohazard alarm blaring around the complex. The mutants scale the walls, breaking into the windows and upper floors.
Escape becomes uncertain; the Anbu fight for their lives using the equipment and tools littering the ground as improvised weapons. With nowhere else to run, they decide to take their chances outside. Sparrow destroys a weak section of the wall using Fire Release. They escape down an alley; Sparrow takes point, clearing out any Red Zetsus obstructing their path, while Pelican carries the near-unconscious Uzumaki. Parrot awakens from unconsciousness; though dizzy, he can somewhat stand without assistance.
"Wake up, slacker! We can't watch your six much longer!" Sparrow yells.
"The devil's goin' on, you know!?" Parrot slurs.
"We're about sixty shades of shagged unless you use your Fūinjutsu to unseal that door!"
"Alright, alright—just buy me some time!"
"Earth Style: Mud Wall!" Pelican's jutsu takes its toll on his remaining chakra reserves. His breathing becomes hoarse as he struggles to stand; the mutants are already chipping away at the rocky wall with their freakish strength.
Sparrow shifts through a chain of hand seals, "Lava Style: Scorching Rocks Jutsu!" A magma wall gushes onto the abominations, slowing them down. Yet, they continue crawling from the lava and over the rock wall. "Hurry, we can't hold out much longer!" she says, cutting down a Red Zetsu with molten stone covering its body.
Parrot has difficulty translating the foreign letter keys but types with haste on the terminal. He uses Fūinjutsu (Sealing Jutsu/Techniques) to replicate and decode the sealing matrix, bypass the blast door's security measures, and disengage the locks. However, the PRCB (Photonic Resonance Chakra Barrier) requires an access code in a language the Fūinjutsu specialist doesn't understand. He punches through the wall below the terminal, ripping out its circuitry.
Parrot sends a jolt of chakra into the electronics, overloading the security seals, thus deactivating the barrier, "Yours truly can't hold it open forever!" Pelican and Sparrow rush past the entrance; the Uzumaki pulls his arm from the wall and dives into the bunker before the chakra barrier reseals. The three Anbu personnel approach the bunker's main elevator; the blood dripping from Parrot's head leaves a trail that Sparrow and Pelican can no longer ignore.
Pelican places his hand on Parrot's shoulder, "We're patching you up before advancing further."
The Fūinjutsu expert sighs but agrees, "All right, but make it snappy; we only have so much time before those Cronenbergs find us again."
The Anbu descend to the lower levels of the bunker to an old bomb shelter. They search the control room; the terminals and mainframes are dysfunctional and unsalvagable. The armory is full of empty crates void of any weapons or supplies. Pelican discovers an office around the rearmost gun rack. He kicks down the office door; inside, an enemy Admiral's corpse with both its eyes missing remains sitting at a desk. A chill shoots up his spine as he recognizes the Admiral. The shinobi skims over the pages of his Bingo Book to confirm the body's identity.
"You've got to be kidding! No way!" Pelican blurts.
Parrot rushes into the office with Sparrow, "What's with all the commotion, here—woah! I-It can't be!?"
Sparrow almost leaps out of her skin, "What!? How? Why would he just? Is it him!?"
Pelican tosses the book at Sparrow, "Yeah, that's him, alright. Vice Admiral Gunsche Alcubierre Lecarde, the Butcherer of the Land of the Sky."
"The same one that whipped us all up n' down the Land of Snow? The same freak that fought Izuna and Tobirama simultaneously and planted his foot firmly between their lungs and collective colons!?"
Parrot scoffs, "I mean, I ain't complainin'! Least we're not dealin' with this psychopath, you know."
Despite the bloodstains on the wall and the bullet hole on the Admiral's peaked cap, Pelican takes it as a souvenir, "Mine now, you genocidal lunatic!"
Sparrow searches the corpse; she takes the Admiral's pistol, then a keycard from one of his pockets, which the kunoichi hands to Parrot. The Uzumaki rummages inside the desks, file cabinets, and safes, looking for any intel to aid the ASF's war effort, but comes up short. Nothing of importance is available, the computer's hard drive is missing; furthermore, the documents are in a foreign language. Parrot seals the papers in a scroll, then the Admiral's corpse into another; however, he doubts the body's usefulness without an intact brain.
Nevertheless, Parrot finds amusement, imagining the Yamanaka trying to unscramble what's left of it. "Creepy mindreading degenerates," he mumbles, scraping the brain matter off the wall into a zip-lock bag.
Sparrow examines the Admiral's handgun; she presses the mag release, causing its magazine to fall onto the desk.
"Have you got that thing working?" Pelican asks.
"Not really," Sparrow replies, "both magazines are empty, and no more bullets are lying around."
"What about the ammunition you found in the armory?"
"Though it would be nice, twelve-gauge won't work with this type of weapon. I'll need 5.7x28mm for it to function."
"Darn, I was hoping you found one of those directed chakra-based weapons those Syndi-officers sometimes carry."
"If you find one, it's best not to pick those up," Parrot warns, "they typically have seals that activate the moment anyone but the intended user touches it. You're lucky that weapon didn't do the same or worse!" The Fūinjutsu specialist accesses a hidden room behind a bookshelf with the Admiral's keycard. He examines a terminal within the room but discovers its administrative files have been wiped clean and formatted. However, Parrot is successful in hacking the surveillance network.
The monitors reveal various locations around the city, surprising Pelican, "What even is all of this?"
"That's what I'm trying to figure out, you know. It's probably how those Syndi-guerrillas constantly know when and where to ambush us at the worst possible time."
"Maybe there's a way to contact the ASF here. Maybe if we tell them how FUBAR the situation is, they'll cancel the invasion and have the Jinchūriki nuke the rest of this forsaken wasteland into oblivion!"
"That was the first thing yours truly thought of, but most of the city's COMMS towers are heavily damaged or offline."
"Well, that's a bummer. We only need one functional tower; can't we repair any from here?"
"Negative, they're in various locations across the city; the only available tower is at a police station… on the other side of town."
Sparrow sighs, staring at the monitors, "Assuming we make it there, we still have to worry about our target, pickin' us off from the rooftops."
An image on the screen draws Pelican's attention, "not necessarily, look!"
Parrot zooms in, focusing on the image, "As expected, Crane and Captain Raven have Malkhaz on the run. Perhaps gettin' that COMMS tower up n' runnin' ain't so far-fetched."
"What about that other sniper Raven spotted with her Sharingan?" Sparrow asks, "I doubt it'll be a cakewalk."
"It's now possible to flank the enemy, "Parrot pulls up another screen on the monitor, "we know exactly where that sniper is, thanks to the surveillance network."
"Still, it's risky," Pelican says, "their long-range weapons are accurate enough to annihilate us from afar."
"We can't attack from below," Sparrow adds, "the streets are crawling with those things."
"Can't strike from the side, can't strike from below."
"So we'll hit the target from above!" Parrot declares. "As long as we stay on the topmost levels of those oversized buildings, we can avoid being eaten alive and mitigate our chances of running into the enemy's crosshairs."
After careful planning and consideration, the trio of assassins devise a workable means of attack. They reach the upper floors via a hidden stairwell and keep their distance from any windows or broken sections of the walls to avoid drawing sniper fire. Despite Pelican disarming the traps, the Red Zetsus lurking in the shadows remain the leading concern in each skyscraper. The zombie-like creatures track the Anbu down, regardless of where they retreat.
"It's not lookin' too good. If this continues, those things will give away our position…" A round embeds itself into the wall, forcing Pelican to dive for cover; another round destroys an adjacent stone pillar.
"So much for the element of surprise," Sparrow sputters, "they led that sniper right to us!"
"But this works in our favor."
Sparrow looks at Pelican like he grew a second head, "What!? How?"
"We know where the sniper is; all we need to do is lure these rabid fiends toward our target and let them do the rest."
"Hmm, I see," Parrot concurs, "they'll flood the building, cutting off any avenues of escape while getting rid of the traps for us."
Pelican snaps his fingers and points at Parrot, "Bingo, we may even capture the sniper—alive."
Sparrow cracks her knuckles, "I'll lead the interrogation."
"All I ask is five minutes alone with the enemy. My arm may be intact, but I haven't forgotten," Pelican avows, massaging the scar on his new arm.
"Hey hey hey! Yours truly gets a turn, too, you know! I want to make sure that worthless slag pays for killing Hawk!" Parrot asserts.
The assassins navigate the concrete jungle using the smoke and ruins as cover. After reaching their destination, the Red Zetsus swarm the entrances; unrelenting chaos ensues.
Explosions tremble the skyscraper in ascending order as the hoards climb each floor. Random body parts and furniture fly in the air. Spring-loaded metal spikes swing out, smashing into the mutants wandering by, sending handfuls of them crashing out the windows. Some of the Red Zetsus hang outside, sticking to the rebar steaks. Steel girders smash through every other window, throwing dozens from the openings. With most abominations set ablaze, erratic rocky pikes erupt from various building sections, skewering rows of burning corpses.
The hoard wanders into an ambush of lightning seals illuminating the interior, disintegrating and launching scorched, mangled bodies in every direction. Sizeable stone lances with rows of charred bodies (many still twitching) puncture the building's walls. Rows of glowing hot electrified rebar impale the Red Zetsus scaling the surfaces, hurling them in the air before bursting like overheating hotdogs in a microwave.
The skyscraper resembles a giant blazing Tesla coil rising from the underworld, discharging arks of electricity with ceaseless explosions within each floor. The chaos dies; the burning hoard lights up the pitch-black upper floors. Blood splatters onto the unbroken windows, shattering the brief silence.