Red Riot - Chapter 14 - Konoha reacts (Patreon)

Konoha’s response was fast and furious.

The destruction of one of their patrols was a defeat for them, but it was obvious they were out for more.

They must have gotten to the battlefield before Kiri, or Suna shinobi could. Hanzo had a flamethrower jutsu that he apparently used to burn the bodies before we departed but that wouldn't have gotten rid of the signs themselves.

They must have reviewed the scene, noted the scorch marks, and realised someone was missing.

Their response was to flood the desert landscape with patrols, sweeping through it like a raging storm.

I wished I could go back to my boring days, staring at desert that was unchanging as I ran across it.

Sadly, that wasn’t to be.

Clashes against Konoha went from a small possibility to being practically guaranteed each time you went on patrol with how aggressively Konoha began to search the desert.

Our standard operating procedure became to evade and disengage with the numbers they were bringing to bear, but sometimes fights were being forced, regardless of our desires.

They were obviously looking for the stolen Hyuga and tension rose when reports came in about specialised scouting teams being sighted roaming the desert, not leaving a whisper of their passing behind, but occasionally being spotted.

Thankfully, Konoha seemed to be focusing a lot of their ire on Suna patrols resulting in Suna becoming more aggressive. Suna was rather caught by surprise.

Wano had been forced to meet with Suna as they became desperate to answer Konoha’s sudden aggressive return to the desert.

I suppose to them, it must have seemed like Konoha was setting up to not just embarrass them but to land a true killing stroke.

Suna didn’t know about the stolen Hyuga.

Sadly, lots of our shinobi did. And I knew that it wouldn’t be long before Konoha became curious about the other force that was patrolling Suna’s deserts. All it would take is a Yamanaka, and they’d be able to rip the knowledge that we had her, along with where our base was.

For that reason, I knew the Jonin were getting restless as they awaited a fast response from Kiri to give them their orders. They didn’t want to abandon Suna, but the prize of an uncaged Hyuga had them re-evaluating that.

I observed all of this. Taking in the increased injury rates and healing that needed to be performed as the days dragged along.

I gained a very good snapshot of what was going on thanks to this and thanks to my own efforts and previous injuries, my team were on base duty for the next week.

This meant Dende, Hanzo, Hito, and Suzi all got to properly recuperate. I’d seen all of them training rather hard for a day or so after they’d been cleared of injuries, but then they’d started to slack off.

I could only shake my head as I worked at my Ransōtengai jutsu as much as possible, working to get the fine control to improve the strength of my limbs while I tried to create a weave throughout my body that would strengthen it beyond what I already had by flooding my chakra through my body.

Perhaps I needed to be more mindful of it and contain it when I opened the gates. Too much chakra spilled out instead of being held within and properly used. That would reduce the chakra radiance that would occur with my opening the gates.

It would make it look less cool, but I would trade getting more out of the gates for shooting up the equivalent of a chakra flare each time I needed to open the gates. I needed to be practical about these things.

More chakra wasn’t what I needed, unlike a good deal of other shinobi, my heritage as an Uzumaki bastard had granted me a great genetic starting point that I needed to work at.

I had great chakra control, but I could always push for more.

To that purpose, I badged Hanzo and the others to show me any tricks they had for converting their chakra into the elemental alignments. It counted, after all, and if I could get that down, I could make more use of the few jutsu I had.

Sadly, I needed a lot more time for that, which, with the casualties that started to mount up, was not possible.

Chunin En lost the time to snip at me as he had to simply assign me and Genin Ala various tasks in the medical bay of the caverns. With the increased pressure, he took to drinking heavily from a flask that soon ran out, only worsening his state.

I was able to handle the increased workload thanks to my prior work as a medic from my time in the academy.

Ala, I found, was drowning in the tasks being given to her.

She had to heal or triage anyone that came in with her speed and decision making sometimes being what determined if people that could live or die reached En or me.

This got to her, and Chunin En didn’t help matters with how he berated her for sloppy decision-making.

She broke down into tears that day in a small cubby where no one was supposed to find her. I made sure to seek her out and sit with her.

At first, I didn’t say anything, merely sitting and holding her hand. Once she’d calmed down and gotten used to me I spoke up. “Hey, that… could have been handled better.”

“No shit!” she said wetly, wiping at her face. “I know its a great gig, but I’m not sure I can keep doing this!” she said.

“You can,”I said, knowing how important even her limited skills were to Kiri’s war effort. “You just need the time to get more knowledge and comfort with your skills. Right now things are being rushed. How about we come up with a system for you to use? It won’t be perfect, but it’ll be something,” I said.

Ala stared at me in confusion and I huffed. “So, when an injured person comes in, instead of seeing them in a first come first served process, especially when they come as a group you need to do an initial assessment before—” I outlined the thoughts I’d had on setting up a proper triage system to her. While I couldn’t expect it to be perfect, it was certainly going to be better than nothing.

I pointed out ways to make things more streamlined such as using small coloured markers to indicate the severity of injury along with the urgency of treatment.

Once she’d calmed down fully, having sat and listened I waved for her to walk with me. I led her to my patrol buddies and got them to help us make some coloured badges that she could place on people coming into the medical wing.

Dende grumbled a bit but Hito and Hanzo soon shut him up. Suzi merely sidled up to Ala and whispered rather loudly. “What’s it like… seeing them die in the medical bay?” she said.

I gave Suzi a very unimpressed look. I then reached over and chopped my hand lightly onto her head. “Sorry about Suzi,” I said to Ala. “She’s got a fascination with death. Just… endure her and you’ll learn that she has some good traits.”

Dende leaned in. “She does?” he said only for Suzi to flick something into his face for his cheek.

I rolled my eyes. “At the very least, she doesn’t mean any harm by her comments,” I said.

Ala eyed Suzi and accepted my words with a nod. I snorted in amusement and made up some more badges of red, black, yellow and green colours with her. Soon enough we had a simple enough system ready to roll out. The tough part would be to get En to use it. He tended to prioritise anyone with useful connections, not that a lot of people here had those. Usually, it was higher-ranked shinobi that he treated to curry favour.

Ala stared at the buckets of badges and chewed her fingernail, a habit of hers I’d noted her having when she was stressed.

I nudged her. “Hey, what’s wrong now?” I asked.

Ala flushed and dropped her hand from her mouth. “Sorry! It’s just that… I’m older than you and I… I would never have thought of something like this.”

I shrugged. “Don’t sell yourself short. But even if that’s the case, who cares? This is what is good about having friends, you can help each other out or just offer your own thoughts. It’s more important than we realise,” I said looking into the distance.

I might have been pushing the whole ‘teams good, individuals bad’ a little obnoxiously, but it seemed to be clicking with this group. I just needed to keep reinforcing it.

“Hoh?” Dende said, a smirk on his lips. “Sounds like a lesson you had to learn you little brat you! Pretending to be so clever all the time, but you’re just using other people’s words!”

I nodded, unashamedly. “Yeah, I am, but in a way so is everyone. The world didn’t get to how it is without the work of others. We all stand on the shoulders of others in some way or form.”

Hanzo eyed me. “What made you realise that then?”

I smiled, he was nibbling at the line. Time to draw him in a bit. “I ever tell you I worked out how the Graduation ceremony is done in my first year?” I said.

Around me, the others stilled. I had been saving this story, and others had teased at the edges but never asked directly. Now I was offering it up. I had five people, all of them skilled in some ability or experience. I wanted them tied to me, so, I offered them a story.

“I worked out the Ceremony in my first year, and I realised I had no idea what to do. At first, I thought… Well, who do I need to be standing next to?” I said my gaze staring into the distance.

The others grimaced and nodded slowly.

“But… I found myself hating that. Why did I have to be weak? Why did others have to be weak? Couldn’t we try for more?” I smiled.

“I knew I couldn’t ever tell the others what was coming, not honestly. They might blab, or stick their noses where they weren’t supposed to be to verify my knowledge. But, I could work with them, make them strong, and then… well I rather like the motto, who dares, wins,” I said with a smirk. “I decided to try something audacious, but to get to that point I needed the others to helo me work things out. I had a goal, but not the knowledge of how to get there.”

The others mouthed the phrase under their breaths, only to blink and glance around as they realised they’d all been doing the same thing. They chuckled together and Hanzo nodded at me his eyes sliding around the group. It seemed he understood what I was doing with them.

“You’re alright, Matsu,” he said with a nod. “Not half the hell raiser I heard you were.”

I smirked. “Well, I like to think I’m a good man,” I said with a shrug.

Hanzo snorted. “Please, piss on that idea. Good men die in ditches with no one remembering their names. Be a prick, live.”

“Ah, I plan on that, don’t you worry,” I said, amused at his reaction.

He’d obviously never heard about how demons ran when a good man went to war.

                                              _______________________________

The next day saw only one patrol to fix up in the medical bay, but they had it bad.

The only reason they’d survived and made it back to us for healing had been they’d been a lot closer to the base when the fight occurred. I knew Wano wanted to leave but the rumours were that dragging the Hyuga with us would be too dangerous.

Konoha was too close. We needed to keep our heads down for a while.

When my shift was over I stretched having spent a good hour reattaching a kunoicho’s fingers to her hand before bandaging them up.

When I moved to En and Ala, I found them together.

En was looming as much as he could over Ala. “Stupid girl! This one obviously had poison in their system! You need to be watching for signs like this! We covered it only a few weeks ago!”

“This is the first time I’ve seen it in person! I also had to look after the oth—” Ala’s words were cut off as En backhanded her.

“It doesn’t matter. You failed. They’re dead; now get out of my sight!” he said.

Ala sprinted away, tears in her eyes. I approached and eyed the cooling corpse of the kunoichi. Hmm, en was right, there was a grey colour to the skin that should have been obvious. It must not have been one of the things Ala had been looking for. She had taken to the triage system well enough with her and me reviewing it at the end of each day.

It seemed we’d found something that didn’t fit in the system however and now she was paying the price missing him with her approach. I didn’t doubt that this symptom would be something she would recall from now on, but that didn’t change that this woman was dead.

I glanced into the cloudy eyes and noted the pale discolouration. “Chunin En, sir? What poison causes this discolouration in the eyes?” I said with a frown.

I had listened in to all of the classes on poisons that he’d run, I had assumed, so either this hadn’t been covered, or En had slipped something past me.

But En wasn’t that sly.

I prided myself on having a firm read on people, and En was a tiny tyrant who would enact petty acts and strike at you mentally more often than not. He was also lazy. He wouldn’t have gone out of his way to teach Ala without my being there to be denied.

En’s breath hitched before he schooled his expression. I made no sign that I’d noticed as he waved a hand. “There are some snakes in the desert. Konoha must be experimenting. That or the fool Kunoichi got some splashed in her eyes. Acids would also work.”

I made a show of nodding and accepting his reasoning. If you didn’t examine it too much it seemed reasonable. Except for his reaction to how I’d noticed the pale eye colouration.

I decided to not pry any further as I felt a tingle run through my awareness. Chakra sense was like a sixth, or seventh sense sometimes, and with how I could feel Wano approaching the medical wing, broadcasting himself? It was too put on, and too specific.

I waved a hand to the door. “May I depart Chunin En? My patient will make a full recovery,” I said.

En’s lips thinned as if he wanted to say more before he noticed Jonin Wano walking in. “Get, and be thankful I don’t have you scrubbing the bedpans!” he said threateningly.

I scampered off, giving Jonin Wano a bow on the way out.

From there I moved after Ala to comfort her, sitting with her and letting her cuddle me like I was a teddy bear and not a shinobi that outranked her. As she calmed herself, my mind continued to ponder on the poisoned Kiri Kunoichi’s eyes, En’s reaction, and Wano’s… presence in the medical bay.

I had a theory, but I didn’t like it. That didn’t mean I could ignore it though. I didn’t have that luxury in this life. Knowledge was power, and power meant everything.

When Ala calmed down enough for me to lead her to our friends, I set up a game of cards and asked about the closing skirmishes with Konoha. I made a show of talking about how worried I was before losing a number of hands as my attention focused on other things. This drew in others who didn’t typically play with us as they smelled blood in the water.

We let them join with Dende and Hito sharing a smirk between themselves.

Hanzo dealt the next hand and I considered my cards before casually asking to raise the pot. When the people who’d joined in with us couldn’t match the ante, I offered to accept a storage scroll if they had one.

They accepted, revealing a hand of three geisha.

I laid out a hand with four Kage and swept them, much to Dende’s amusement. Hanzo watched all of this and afterwards tapped me on the shoulder. “What do you want that for?”

“Oh,” I said casually. “Lots of things,” I said unrolling the storage scroll to inspect the tiny script. “I rather like the idea of one day being able to make seals like this of my own.”

Hanzo snorted. “Yeah, good luck with that kid. Sealings the toughest discipline out there,” he said waving me off. I merely hummed and continued to look over the script, without a clue where I would even start.

I pushed my chakra into the scroll and watched how it reacted to taking in a kunai. Then I did it again. It was damn near instantaneous. But there was a very quick flicker of chakra.

I grit my teeth. Seemed I would need to get a lot better at sensing chakra before that worked for me, but it held potential. I tucked the scroll away for later opportunities and worked on my puppet string juts, all the while feeling out who was about and tracking the various chakra signatures.

Chunin En was still working in the medical bay, performing surgery, while Wano watched on. I sat very still and observed them both for a few hours.

I went to sleep that night, hating that I’d been right.

                                                 _________________________________

Nothing happened for the next few days. The silence after all of the various encounters was damning in and of itself.

Worse, a messenger was supposed to be coming from Kiri any day now. If they got intercepted… or worse, followed, we’d be in a world of hurt.

All I could do was heal people and train myself, pushing for any gains I could get in small moments. I had to temper this with the knowledge that I might need to fight at a moment’s notice.

I therefore never felt safe dropping below sixty percent of what I felt my reserves were.

It wasn't like I had a lot of jutsu that used a lot of chakra in my jutsu repertoire. Most of my attacks were close range with the only ranged jutsu I had to any level of mastery being the water bullet jutsu. Something that was a bit tougher to get in a desert.

I didn’t go anywhere without my canteens, but it was something that I needed to be fast with, which mostly came down to having the chance to use it. It was powerful, but it was also rather blunt. If someone was using fire jutsu I could use it, but otherwise, I was just as quick, if not more so with simple kunai.

A thrown handful of kunai was just as fast and more lethal, which, for fighting in a war, was important. I mostly worked on my chakra sensory ability, trying to eke out another few metres or greater resolution while not sacrificing what I already had.

When I reached two hundred metres and was becoming consistently able to sense Jonin signatures, I knew I was doing well. At nine years of age, I was advancing as well as I could expect.

It still didn’t feel enough. I was on a battlefield.

I knew I could go the distance, but it all came down to being given more time.

Time, which sadly was running out.

Three days after watching Chunin En perform surgery through my chakra sense, Konoha struck.

They came like ghosts, through the earth walls and floors, gliding through them. I and a few others spending time in the main cavern stiffened before rising to our feet.

My group of friends glanced up, a question on their lips only to fall silent when they saw how focused I was.

Hands reached for weapons as the entire room stood to fight.

This gave away any chance of trapping Konoha.

By reacting, we alerted whatever sensors they had brought with them that we were on the move. I could feel the Konoha nin accelerate towards us while others sprinted towards more isolated groups.

Jonin Akiko didn’t hesitate to hurl a kunai with a bomb attached to it into a tunnel, causing a deafening boom and warning those who hadn’t yet detected the threat that Konoha was in the base.

If they were here, I could only conclude our sentries were dead.

Before the boom finished shinobi with with masks covering their faces surged through the walls to engage with us.

“Watch the right flank!” I barked as I hurled a storm of kunai into the wall I was facing right in time for a masked face to lean out.

The kunai bit into the mask and jerked the shinobi to a stop before they slumped, dead while embedded into the wall.

Other people tried the same but they weren’t able to line up the shots and ANBU of Konoha dropped, walked, or rose into the cavern to fight.

I pulled up my pole as one man closed with me, his blade arcing through the air only for Suzi and Hanzo to intercept him. I could only huff in amusement as the rest of my friends formed a protective ring around myself and Ala.

With this sort of formation, I was able to step back and focus on being a sensor. I felt a ripple of chakra enter Dende’s coils and I slid to him to touch him and throw spike my chakra into him, disrupting the genjutsu before Dende could be too hampered.

Dende twitched as he realised what happened. He couldn’t pause to thank me as an arc of wind swept towards us.

“Dip!” I shouted, causing everyone in our group to kneel and roll to the side, opening a path through the middle of us in doing so. Masked shinobi surged into the gap, trying to get at what must have seemed the weaker members.

I hurled my pipe into their faces, making sure it spun through the air.

One of them, wearing a monkey mask, contemptuously reached out to catch it only to leap back as I slipped an illusion into his coils. I’d made it sound like there was a barrage of kunai whistling towards his back.

In doing so, the pipe continued to swing onward, where it slammed into the back of another Konoha nin in the back of the head.

Suzi gutted the Konoha nin before they had a chance to recover.

“Got a clever one here!” said the man who had tried to catch my pipe only to be faked out. “Young too,” he commented as he flicked his hands through a series of seals.

I felt my chakra ripple as a genjutsu slipped in, only for me to crush it ruthlessly before it did anything. I faked myself stiffening and standing up slightly, only to then lash out with a flurry of shuriken when the man got cocky.

He vanished in a blur, and I had to spin and hurl a kunai towards a different fight as I felt him replace himself behind another Kiri nin.

The kunai slammed into his back and staggered him but that didn’t stop him in turn, stabbing the man he’d gotten behind.

Akiko then engaged him and the man found himself easily outclassed. “Little assistance!” he shouted resulting in a trio of ANBU dropping their own fights to assist him.

I chopped a hand and whistled. “Priority target! Monkey mask!” I said out loud.

The man, who I was now suspecting was a Sarutobi of some description, twitched and shot me what must have been a venomous look. “Little shit!” he said as he and his squad found themselves facing more pressure as other Kiri nin joined Akiko in fighting them.

The monkey mask glanced around. “Target isn’t here! Pull out with extreme prejudice!” he barked.

“Captain!” shouted a few other voices in acknowledgement as they began hurling about kunai with explosive tags.

I started intercepting the few that I could that were coming our way with the water bullet, with the jutsu dampening the tags before they could do anything.

Others detonated and rocked the cavern. The Konoha nin fled as the cavern started to cave in.

Akiko swept her hand. “Fall back to the escape tunnels! Regroup in the lower sections! Do not go to the sur—” she shouted as she led most of the group away.

I grunted and pointed to one of the only tunnels we had available to our group that led down. “So need to learn that jutsu the Konoha nin were using!” I said this over the top of the rumbling booms.

Suzi kicked up my pipe and handed it to me as we started running.

Hanzo snorted. “Yeah, good luck with that! Konoha doesn’t like to share! You’d have a better chance with an Iwa nin!” he said as he darted to the front, our group quickly forming a diamond once more around Ala and myself.

I hissed as I cast my senses ahead of us, only to find an equal number of unfamiliar chakra signatures ahead of us. “Got contacts!” I said.

The group drew out more kunai and when we turned a corner, Suzi ran up onto the roof to give another angle of attack while Dende moved to the left wall. Hanzo stayed in the lead.

When we rounded the corner, it at first seemed like we’d taken them by surprise with our sudden appearance.

Except that wasn’t the case, as we rounded the corner on a group of shinobi, these ones notably without masks. One man turned and knelt as another held a fire up behind him, casting his shadow large over the tunnel.

The shadow connected with us, and I felt my heart sink.

“Shadow capture complete!” he said with an air of smugness.

“Ha! Got 'em easy! Like rats in a barrel!” said a rather fat man that I was pegging as an Akimichi.

The Nara— and it had to be a Nara— sighed like this was just an annoying chore for him. “Want me to snap their necks, or are you going to just spare me the chakra?” he said, turning his head to another man lounging to the side. In doing so, our group mirrored him.

I heard a whimper and spared Suzi a glance, noting that our eyes could move but not our limbs. Damn, he’d even gotten Suzi on the roof!

I tested my body, straining against the binding. The man turned his head back and glanced at me. “Ho? Got a strong one in there!”

“Which one?” said the Akimichi scratching his belly.

“The little... Red-haired one,” said the masked Nara. I could feel his mind working away. “Tch, he’s a chunin, which means he’s been through their fucked up processes. If he’d been a genin it might have been a rushed deployment but eh.”

I felt my finger twitch as I tried to get it to open and shut. Hmmm, the movement was very very difficult. What about talking? Perhaps I could exploit their monologuing?

“Please don’t let the fat one eat me,” I said loudly.

The group of Konoha nin fell silent. The big Akimichi, who’d been happy to lean on the side stood as his face twisted into a scowl.

“They fuck you call me?” he said as another man, a blond, sighed theatrically.

“Fat, fat, fatty, fat, did you get that fat from eating or are you naturally fat?” I said childishly. A vein pulsed in the big man’s head and he stormed towards me.

“I don’t even need to use my jutsu to snap your—” he started to say, his arm reaching out towards me only for the chakra strings I laced around my body to shoot up off my form and wrap around him.

They then constricted on him and he twitched once before falling to his knees as I slit his throat with my chakra strings. Through training and experimentation, I’d learned it wasn’t hard to make them sharp. With how I’d wrapped my wires around him like a net, he’d been trapped like a ham leg.

I then pushed the illusion of myself rushing forward with a bloody kunai in my hands.

The Nara twitched and dropped the shadow imitation as he reacted to the sight of his teammate dying while I apparently surged toward him.

“Shito no! It’s a clone!” shouted the blond man, revealing himself as the sensor in the group. The Nara man had long enough to realise his mistake only for Suzi to descend on him with a vengeance.

She landed on him and pinned him with a kunai in each hand, only to lift and stab them down viciously.

“No! No! No! No! Never again!” she chanted as she stabbed into his body.

“Fucking hell!” screamed the last shinobi as he slapped his hands together.

He raised his hands towards his lips in a pose I recognised and began to exhale fire. I matched him and proved myself to be the faster ninjutsu user as my water bullet slammed into him.

It stopped his fireball jutsu cold and rocked his head back as he was struck.

He staggered backwards a moment and Hanzo swept past him with a kunai that splashed blood on the wall.

The Yamanaka man died backpedalling as Hito and Dende unleashed a combination attack with one tripping him up while the other bounced off the roof to snap his neck.

In moments the once tense situation was reversed and the only sound was the wet thunk of metal stabbing into flesh accompanying Suzi’s panicked words.

I approached and caught her hand causing her to stiffen and snap her head up.

“You got him” I said softly, flexing a bit of the coma jutsu into her, only a touch, just enough to help break her panic and make her realise she was safe.

She blinked and stared at her bloody hands. “I? Just… I reacted… I…” She stared at the dead man beneath her before scowling and spitting at him. “Fuck him and his stupid jutsu!” she said standing and kicking him in the side.

I coughed. “As cathartic as it might be to do that, we need to keep moving.” I glanced over the bodies and tilted my head. “Search the bodies for anything useful but then let’s get out of here,”  I said.

Hanzo nodded and knelt to strip the body closest to him while I did the same to the dead Akimichi.

We didn’t find much, some pill bottles on all of them with only a few symbols, what looked like poison vials on the Yamanaka along with some scrolls, kunai, a sword and a rather nice pair of mesh underwire vests that Hito and Dende claimed.

Hanzo nodded. “Good job tricking that Leaf punk,” he said before waving us to keep moving.

We ran lower and lower only to still as a huge pulse of chakra rang through the caverns. The others stilled and shot me a look.

“What the hell was that?” said Hanzo, having felt the wave of chakra despite not being a sensor.

I frowned for a moment. It wasn’t tinged in any way, but the Konoha nin that I could detect throughout the tunnels was starting to withdraw.

“A signal, it was a signal,” I said.

I swallowed. “Konoha is pulling out. I think they got what they were coming for.” I waved a hand. “We need to move faster.”

We broke into a sprint at that and thanks to Konoha pulling out while I kept an eye on the tunnels ahead of us, we didn’t encounter any more shinobi until we reached some of the lower caverns where we encountered a number of dead bodies.

Notably, most of them were Kiri shinobi but there were a few ANBU bodies that, even as I watched, started to sizzle and let off smoke as some compound was released from within them.

Also notable was the smoking, headless body of a woman I just barely recognised.

I took a moment to stare at the headless body.

They hadn’t come to save her, merely deny Kiri the chance at using her bloodline. I suppose at the end of the day, it would be rather worse for an uncaged woman to be taken behind enemy lines. It was also harder to transport a prisoner out compared to denying an asset to a foreign power.

I couldn’t imagine that our own forces wouldn’t do the same for a Yuki, or a Hozuki, or a Terumi of some description.

The thought of being captured must be the stuff of nightmares for clan kunoichi.

Or did most of them just not fight? What did that mean for this Hyuga woman—that she’d engaged us where she had? Had Konoha mislabeled the Land of Wind? Or had something else been going on?

I had no way to know and instead, I could only spare a moment with the others to frisk the dead for dog tags, supplies, and other useful tools before getting out of the scene of a fierce battle.

As we ran, the walls began to shake. This time, when I felt a wave of chakra running through the walls, I knew what was happening.

“Konoha are trying to bring the walls down on us!” I called, accelerating to get out of the cave-in.

“They’re using some sort of earthquake jutsu! That’s going to cost them a lot of chakra and not work on the reinforced escape tunnel!” shouted Dende.

“That only matters if we’re in the tunnel!” shouted Hito.

We broke into a sprint as rocks tumbled down around us, only to eventually make it into another cavern where a group of Kiri shinobi were fighting with yet more Konoha nin.

These shinobi, unlike the previous ANBU, all wore dark cloaks and seemed to not care that the cavern was falling down around them even as they fought. I watched as one threw himself onto the blades of a Kiri kunoichi to deny her her swords as another masked shinobi struck her from the side.

Fanatics, I thought, they were fanatics.

Who else would throw away their lives like this but fanatics?

These shinobi must have been the ‘darkness’ of Konoha.

These were ROOT ANBU.

These were Danzo’s select troops and sacrificial pawns.

The knowledge that the man had any idea of my general vicinity made ice run down my spine.

A trio of ROOT agents turned towards us, and a wave of insects flooded towards us.

Hanzo quickly ran through a set of handseals in a sloppy manner. “Fucking work, damn you! Flamethrower jutsu!” he said.

His handseals were slow enough that I was able to copy him perfectly, molding my chakra at the same time as him. His chakra nature shifted and I didn’t hesitate, pushing my chakra into the jutsu and a moment later we both exhaled two waves of fire.

Mine was equal to his only thanks to what I suspected was my greater chakra reserves.

Hanzo seemed surprised by the reveal, but he didn’t stop exhaling the flamethrower towards the bugs, crisping them before they could reach us.

“Dodge!” I screamed as, on the other side of the fire, one of the ROOT agents fired a lightning blast at us.

We barely had time to throw ourselves out of the blind shot as it exploded off the ground between us.

A moment later, we whirled about expecting to fight on, only for a section of the ceiling to drop on the trio of ROOT agents.

We all blinked at our insanely good luck before throwing ourselves into the backs of the other Konoha sshinobi,causing a wave of chaos and the attacking nin to buckle as they became less cohesive.

I parried a brace of kunai only to return fire myself. I then hurried through another water bullet and unleashed it into a woman’s knee. She fell without making a sound, desperately clinging to a Kiri kunoichi’s leg in an attempt to bring them both down together or to delay the woman enough that one of her fellows could get through.

I leapt to defend my fellow Kiri ninja, slamming my metal pole into the Konoha nin’s head. Sadly, no good deed went unpunished as I became the target of other’s ire.

When one man got too close, I repeated the earlier trick of lashing out with razor puppet strings to disarm him. His hands twitched as they hit the ground, and he stared at them impotently. Then he tried to sweep his bleeding stumps into my face to blind me, only to get kicked backwards as Ala appeared at my side.

I shook off the disgust at how much blood I had on me as another rumble saw the cavern collapsing even further.

“Get me out of here!” shouted an all too familiar voice.

I looked up to find En scurrying towards the only tunnel. In breaking ranks, he had sadly revealed which exit was the most important to the suicidal ROOT shinobi.

They threw earth jutsu and explosive tags, forcing Kiri nin to match them. En took an earth bullet to the knee and screamed as he fell to the ground.

Another rumble saw the roof buckle.

I swallowed and decided to stop playing around. “GATES! OPEN!” I shouted this time wrenching at the gates of my chakra network. I didn’t take it in order gradually but instead ripped open four of them at once.

Chakra detonated off me in waves, and I took a step only to find myself carried straight into an enemy. We both blinked, but I had the momentum to carry my movement into a strike to the solar plexus that saw them thrown clear across the room.

I then whirled about and hurled a brace of kunai, their passing causing a screech of tortured air as Konoha nin found themsevles pinned to the walls. They stared down at the kunai only to kick themselves off the wall and form chakra handseals that saw their chakra networks light up.

I grabbed everyone that was close to them and leapt away. We landed close to the escape tunnel before throwing myself into the fight and dropping another three shinobi.

This time, I made sure the hits were kill shots.

As the number of ROOT agents dropped to under five, they all stopped fighting and instead threw themselves towards the tunnel, their chakra networks flashing like the others.

They exploded and caused the cavern to give out properly. I raced into the tunnel, snatching up Chunin En as I did so, leading a final desperate escape for the Kiri shinobi into the reinforced tunnel. I had to adjust En from a princess carry to a fireman’s carry over my shoulder.

We ran through a dark tunnel with barely enough light to not trip over our own feet.

We ran long enough that my coils started to ache, and I had to stop to seal the chakra gates. I put En down for this, much to his displeasure. “Damned brute!” he said only to stare at me. “Matsu?” he said in shock.

“Chunin En,” I grunted, leaning on the wall. One hand reached under my vest and felt around for any injuries. I slipped a thin glass vial into my inner pocket as I did so, hiding the action with how my chest heaved.

Damn I hoped we had enough air down here to last us until we got out. I didn’t voice that thought though, or else some people might start swinging to limit the oxygen depletion.

Chunin En staggered to his feet, only to fall to his knees. “Argh! Fuck! My leg! I can’t fucking walk!” He pointed to two shinobi. “You and you! Carry me!” he commanded.

The pair of them snorted. “Get fucked, die in the dirt, you pompous shit!” They said giving him a thumbs down.

“Do it!” I barked out, forcing myself to keep down the bile in my stomach. I failed and instead puked up blood. Fuck, that wasn’t good, and it was happening far too often for my liking. Too much reliance on the gates.

I shifted my hand to my stomach and healed myself while trying to contain the raging maelstrom of energy that wanted to rage on despite running out of energy.

“We need him to help heal anyone that’s injured; I’m not going to be able to, and that only leaves Ala,” I said, causing the men to grumble.

En shot me an inscrutiable look, but I ignored him in favour of fixing myself as much as I could.

I should have just gone in hard from the start and let myself have better control with a gradual openning of the gates. I’d been hesitant, and that was fucking me up. It was rather different opening all of the gates like this, it seemed.

If this was what opening four outright was like, I’d hate to know what it was like to open any more.

I eventually closed the gates and felt the ache begin to ease as my chakra, now much calmer, began to trickle through my coils where before it had surged.

I’d need to check if I hadn’t done myself any injuries from this stupid act, but that would be future Matsu’s problem.

For now, I needed to get out of this tunnel.

The tunnel itself, to hear the older shinobi speak of it, ran at least three kilometres underneath the surface and was at least ten kilometres in length, while the entrance on the far side was impossible to find.

When we reached the end, we found another group of Kiri nin waiting for us in a large cavern. I was starting to get sick of being underground. I wanted to see the sky.

Jonin Wano was there, and he swept his gaze over us. His eyes locked on En.

“En! Report!”

“We were engaged by another group of crazy ANBU that were throwing suicide jutsu around like fish flakes! We got out thanks to my efforts though,” the man said smugly.

The pair of shinobi that were carrying him shot him angry looks while others glanced in my group's direction. Wano didn’t miss this, but he didn’t comment either.

“Is that so?" he said. “What about the the vial?” he said pointedly.

En reached into a pocket that was inside his vest, he started to wink.

I’d seen him stash things like a flask of alcohol and other personal things there. “I’ve got it right…” he trailed off, and his eyes widened. “No! I had it!” He turned and looked back. “It must have fallen out; we have to go back!” he said, panicked.

Wano sighed. “No, if it fell, it is now too far gone… You’ve failed me, En. And you’ve failed Kiri.” With that, Wano slashed his hand, and a wave of wind swept forward.

Everyone braced against the sudden dust of wind only to straighten as something wet hit the sand.

A splash of blood and a thump announced En’s fate, and the men carrying him stepped away from the dead body fearfully.

I had to give Wano props. That had been an impressively controlled wind jutsu.

Wano merly grunted, and waved our group in. “Get yourselves seen to, this… failure is going to see us not able to project much of our strength going forwards.” He glanced around and for once I noted how few of us there were. Where before there might have been over three hundred. Now there couldn’t be even a third that number. Hmmm, this was a bad result for Kiri.

“Gengetsu will see this as a failure if we don’t hold our ground for at least another two months!” Wano growled. “Don’t expect me to bail any of you out should he question you! You will fight, and if necessary, die to grant Kiri victory here!”

This caused a few people to straighten up, while others slumped. Wano didn’t care, instead he marched off to confer with what was left of the Kiri Jonin. I was relieved to see Akiko was amoung their number.

Dende led our group to a wall to rest and I sank down as Ala moved to start healing others.

“Hot damn Konoha went crazy,” said Hito as he lay down.

“Talk to me about it! I didn’t expect them to get that butt hurt over us kicking their teeth in!” said Dende. He shook his head. “Makes you wonder… if it was worth it.”

I snorted. “Konoha just lost a lot of shinobi to guarantee we didn’t get that bloodline,” I said. “I’m not sure if it was worth it for them beyond honour.”

Hanzo huffed. “We’re probably just lucky we didn’t face that white-haired shinobi. I inclined my head, accepting the point. If Konoha had sent one of their more powerful shinobi…

I sighed and clenched my fist, renewing my vow to get stronger.

We’d gotten too greedy trying to keep the eyes of the Hyuga. I ran a hand over my ribs and felt at the edge of the glass vial I’d stolen from En when I’d scooped him up. I knew he had one of them, and with the opportunity presented, I’d dared to dream.

When I eventually had a moment away from everyone else I drew out the vial and found myself looking into a single eye that if you didn’t know what it was, you’d think was a blind man’s eye.

A single eye of a set. Wano had the other; I had no doubt. I had no idea what En had done to secure the right to carry one, but it had cost him. I sealed the vial away and slotted it into a very secure pocket before returning to my friends.

It was a prize, but not one I could use until I got so much stronger. I had to wonder if my eyes weren’t bigger than my stomach in this instance. I would be executed, no question if I was discovered with this.

If I got stronger, then it wouldn’t matter if I used it for myself. Sadly, that was a long way away.

So much relied on that these days, and for that, I needed time.

Hopefully, with Konoha’s ‘victory’ we would get some breathing room.

I chuckled to myself as I lay down, drawing the others' attention.

“What’s got you laughing?” asked Suzi.

“Suna still has no idea what’s going on in their own country,” I said, causing the others to join me in laughing.

I fell asleep with a smile and a glimmer of hope in my heart.

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A.N. Yet another chapter of what is becoming fairly popular, Red Riot, the Konoha cave action! Hope you enjoyed this chapter and thank you to my patreons for your support!

I can't say that I struggle with writing these as I find them very fun. But sadly the issue as always comes down to actual time I have to spend writing.