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Muteki.
Author of 25 Stories |
Chapter Two - First Blood
~Kohaku~
If I’d had any ability to plan ahead for myself or my safety before, I lost it stepping out the front door. For a moment, I was thoroughly convinced that fate had taken a pair of tweezers, picked my house up and dumped it halfway across the world.
The neat row of houses facing mine was completely alien. Windows were closed and wooden shutters had been pulled down over the large display windows of all the shops, but every door was flung open, left ajar to creak in the wind. As I watched, people came stumbling out through these doors, half dressed and still fighting sleep, some alone and some with whole families in tow. Blurs of ninjas shot past within inches of me, kicking down doors to herd more villagers, frightened and confused, out of their homes. Some came out empty handed; others tried to hurriedly stuff a few possessions into sacks or makeshift packs consisting of a tablecloth and some rope. These badly wrapped packages probably explained the jumble of things scattered all over the packed dirt ground—I saw everything from clothes and money to antique vases (obviously family heirlooms).
To top it all off, under virtually nonexistent light at the crack of dawn, everything was either a neutral bluish black, or was stained a color a few shades darker than it naturally was. The walls on either side of me looked almost the same as open air. I stood on my doorstep, looking out at the neighborhood I’d lived in all my life, and had no idea where I was.
Thankfully, the ninja didn’t seem to be having this problem. Glancing briefly behind him to make sure I was following, he took off at a run down the street. Gripping my kunai, the only item I’d taken from my home, I jogged after him.
It seemed as though I was among the last of the villagers to be evacuated. There weren’t nearly as many people on the path as there could have been, and most of the stranglers were those actively resisting the order to leave.
"No, I can't go! My son is a shinobi. What if he comes back to find me, and I'm gone—?" A frail old woman wailed, protesting feebly as a young man in a Jounin vest tried to convince her to go with him.
"There isn't much time, Obaa-san. Konoha's defenses won't hold much longer—"
Most other ninja didn’t give them a choice in the matter—anyone being stubborn was thrown over a shoulder and carried off like sacks of potatoes. With each screaming passenger being forcibly taken to safety this way, I felt more and more disgusted. Didn’t these people know that the village was in the middle of a war? What did it matter that this was the only place they had ever known in their lives? Didn’t the order for evacuation tell them anything? If they stayed, the current Konoha would be the only place they would ever know in their lives.
The white-eyed ninja in front of me rounded a corner, and when I followed, a small band of villagers heading in the same general direction came into view. The ninja stopped, waiting for me to catch up. He pointed at the group. “Follow them to the mountain passageways. You will be led out of the village—”
The rest of his sentence was drowned out when suddenly something jerked me backward. Stumbling, I cried out sharply. The ninja’s gaze flew to a point near my elbow.
"Nee-san, please, let me borrow your kunai!" The small boy clutched at my arm. I could see the fear in his wide eyes. Fear…and yet, not fear. Not the kind I expected. "Tou-san is in trouble! He might get hurt! I need to help him! Nee-san, let me borrow—"
"Come on, we have to leave." Yet another shinobi appeared behind the boy and lifted him bodily as I wrenched my arm away with more force than was strictly necessary in a jolt of irritation. Stupid boy. What did he think he was going to do with one kunai against an entire Oto army?
Keeping a firm hold on my weapon, I sprinted forwards again and with a nod to White-eyes, run past him to catch up with the other villagers. In a scared, tight-knit pack we hurried along the maze of streets that is Konoha. No one told me where we were going, but looking up I saw that we were nearing the steep, rocky cliffs that our village is backed up against. I vaguely remembered my mother saying something about secret tunnels, escape routes for emergencies like these.
We were almost at the cliffs. The last stretch of road was past a small patch of the village’s wall and I could hear sounds of battle coming from the other side of the thick concrete towering thirty feet above us. The few ninja guiding us along the way occasionally the glanced upward worriedly. These glances were always followed by hisses urging us to walk faster. Heart pounding, I overtook the elderly couple shambling along in front of me and broke into a run again, moving forwards along the outskirts of the group. I’d nearly reached the front when I saw another ninja ahead. He was waving at us furiously and pointing to a spot that looks like just another bit of rock, but wasn’t. There were just a few more houses between us and him, and I put all my energy into running.
Then all at once there was this—noise—that’s something like a boom and something like a crash, just one loud roar of sound, and then I was flying through the air for a second before hitting something solid. I didn’t even have time to scream before sliding down that something (it’s smooth and cold) and landing on the ground with a thud. I landed on my side. Pain shot along one hip, making me hiss and gasp—then I was choking because of all the dust and dirt in the air. Bits of rock and cement rained down and suddenly the fighting sounded much closer—there was a clang of metal on metal just a few feet away, accompanied by a dull flash.
Then I knew. The village walls had fallen. And the Sound Domination was finally in Konoha.
Before this had fully registered, I’d already crawled behind a dark shape next to me, which turned out to be a large wooden barrel. I was shaking uncontrollably but my mouth was clamped shut and it wasn’t out of common sense. Clenching my kunai with both hands I held it out in front of me where I was curled into a ball behind the barrel. I knew it couldn’t save me, but it was the only illusion of defense I had left and even if it was useless, I just couldn’t let go.
The air was thick with—with everything. All I could see was a dim outline of the hole blasted through our walls. All else is a blur; there was no telling who’s on our side and who’s on theirs. Everywhere there was dust and debris and flying objects. And things on the ground. Large things, my size or bigger. They weren’t not moving. There were also screams, shouts and snarls. I could hear rage, demented rage. They sounded so carnal, like animals, and I half believed that our ninja were ripping out throats with their teeth. But there was pure insanity mixed up in the fray too, and pure violence. Some were yelling because they were winning, others because they were losing and others still just because they were killing and it’s these that made me shake harder and grip my knife until my knuckles hurt.
An arm caught my waist in an iron grip and I screamed.
But the only thing I felt in the next few moments was a dropping sensation in my stomach. When I finally opened my eyes again I was in the air. but before I could start panicking and kicking, I was set down on a roof. “Get on,” a voice ordered over the din and without thinking I clambered onto the back of the person beside me. “Hold on to me tightly,” the voice commanded and then the wind was in my face as we rushed forwards. Long, straight black hair got into my eyes. The white-eyed ninja from before flashed into memory.
We were racing across rooftops faster than I’d ever run in my life. For seconds at a time it felt as if we were flying when he jumped from one house to another, landing with a brief but jarring bump. In no time it got quieter and the air got cleaner. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw a dark grey cloud slowly dispersing, a looming presence of war.
We weren’t the only people on the rooftops. Around me, I could see leaping figures carrying something on their backs, heading the same way White-eyes was. But there was also—
Out of the gloom something appeared beside us and I saw a man’s face, ugly with splattered blood. A glint of metal drew my attention to the foot long knife in his hand. It happened so quickly, I barely had time to get scared. But fear did eventually spike like an arrow through my chest to my throat, and I did the first thing that came naturally—with a jerk of my arm I blindly lashed out at the Oto nin’s face.
A scream—my whole body spasmed—but a second later White-eyes was still standing and there was a sudden blue glow...
The first thing I saw when I pried my eyes open was the Oto nin, tumbling off the side of the roof, clutching his chest and a deep cut over his cheek and one eye. The second thing was the blood dripping off my kunai.
I didn’t know which disturbed me more.
Forging ahead, White-eyes shot a palm forwards and alarmingly, his skin became the same fluorescent blue I’d just seen. Another Oto nin I didn’t even see coming fell away behind us, thrown forcefully out of our path. “Keep still,” White-eyes said evenly. “I will deal with any assailants.”
Forgetting that I was behind him and he couldn’t see me, I nodded and focused all my energy onto hanging onto him—it was all I could do to keep from strangling him, cutting him with the kunai I still wouldn’t abandon, or being thrown off when he abruptly pivoted in bizarre directions as Oto nin poured in on all sides. It seemed like the chaos I thought we’d left behind was catching up to us. Weapons and their wielders materialized from every possible direction, dropping from the sky and smashing through roof tiles to intercept us. Kunai and shuriken and katana and senbons and axes, every kind of weapon I knew and more that I didn’t know slashed the air inches from us, from me.
My teeth were still clenched together. I was beyond screaming. The terror was endless but every new spike that ripped through me when a new enemy appeared felt more acute than the last. Inside, I was begging for it to all just stop. Close to tears, I buried my face in my sleeve, shutting my eyes to the relentless siege that rendered me helpless, overwhelmed to the point that I couldn’t even move.
Once in a while I saw a blue glow in my peripheral vision, and knew that White-eyes had engaged in another fight. There was always a crackle like electricity with these glows, and often howls of pain followed the crackles. And after that, dull thuds of bodies dropping. It was comforting and horrifying, a mixture of relief and nausea, a sense of being safe for the time being, and the painfully vivid scenes of gory that haunted the mind.
Finally, White-eyes slowed to a stop. I was sobbing into my shirt, and was barely aware of a creak of rusty iron and something rubbing against sand. Then everything went dark and I looked up just in time to see him shut the thick door behind us. Straining my eyes to see through the gloom, I could just barely make out the long straight tunnel in front of us with a lamp on the wall every so now and then.
White-eyes took a few steps forward—then fell to his knees. I tumbled off his back.
“Neji!” a female voice called out urgently.
Still trembling, I tried to get up but my limbs felt like they weren’t mine anymore. Awkwardly I got my arms under me and managed to prop myself onto my elbows. Slowly I looked over at White-eyes. He was on his hands and knees, long hair in disarray and breathing harshly.
Even as I watched, red spilled along his white shirt, creeping up his side.
~Neji~
“I need to go back outside. There are more—”
“Get DOWN. You’ll wait until I’ve mopped you up.” A rough shove and a significant amount of pain managed to wrestle me to the ground. Trying to calm my ragged breathing, I watched Tenten whip out her first aid supplies. She unscrewed a small tube of disinfectant and slathered it liberally over my wound. I winced. The wound was not particularly large or deep, but it cut over a lot of muscle, and I knew I would be tearing it a little bit more every time I moved.
“What happened?” she demanded in the meantime while preparing bandages. “Are there that many of them inside already? Why did you let them get to you? Neji?”
“I was careless,” I told her shortly. My breathing was still shallower than it should have been. “I failed to notice the Oto nin in the confusion. He managed to take a swipe at me before…he was cut in the face and I finished him off.” She put on some sort of lotion on me. It stung quite a lot. I grimaced.
There was a movement some few feet away from us. Turning my head slightly I saw the civilian girl I’d just brought in. She was inching towards us and by the look on her face, she wanted to say something. Apparently Tenten sensed the movement too. She looked around as well. I couldn’t see her face, but the civilian girl could, and she froze at once. Her expression tightening, she backed away slowly. I sighed inwardly. I didn’t have time for this. Konoha didn’t have time for this. “Follow the tunnel. One of our shinobi should be in the cavern at the other end. He will tell you where to go,” I instructed the civilian.
She pulled herself to her feet clumsily, clinging to the rough wall for support. Without looking at me, she tried to run and managed a fast albeit shambling trot. Looking down, I saw that Tenten was tucking the last of the bandages into place and stood up gingerly. “Come on. There are more.”
We returned to the battlefield together.
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