Anbu Black Ops: Thirteen Alpha
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 Whirlpool shinobi 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 the air; the Uzu-nin twists its neck 180° before kicking the mutant over a ledge. The beheaded Red Zetsus arise and tackle him.
He 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 as his muscles fatigue. 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!" 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 the Uzu-nin, but it bolts after Sparrow. She dislocates both the mutant's legs, knocking it over; the flesh-eating ghoul continues limping after her despite its broken limbs. The shinobi dropkicks the Red Zetsu onto a conveyor belt that pulls it into a waste grinder, splattering bloody chunks around The Dewerdye Warehouse. The shutter bends and deforms; Parrot tries standing, but the gash on his head leaves him unsteady.
"Get up! Get up, Parrot!" the kunoichi shouts, "We're getting out of here!" she pulls him to his feet, but he collapses. More Red Zetsus crash through the skylights and breach the security shutter. The shinobi lifts the Uzu-nin using the fireman's carry, then dashes past an assembly line with Sparrow. 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.
The Anbu fight for their lives using the equipment and tools littering the ground as improvised weapons. The kunoichi destroys a weak section of the wall using Fire Release. They retreat down an alley; she takes point, clearing out any Red Zetsus obstructing their path as Pelican carries the dazed Whirlpool shinobi. Parrot stirs from unconsciousness; though dizzy, he can somewhat limp without assistance.
"Wake up, slacker! We can't watch your six much longer!" Sparrow yells.
"What the devil's goin' on, you know!?" Parrot slurs.
"We're about fifty shades of fucked unless you use your fūinjutsu to unseal that damn door!"
"Alright, alright—just buy yours truly some time!"
"Earth Style: Mud Wall!" Pelican's jutsu drains his remaining chakra reserves. His breathing becomes hoarse as he struggles to stand.
The mutants chip away at the rocky wall with their freakish, undead strength. The kunoichi shifts through a chain of hand seals, "Lava Style: Scorching Rocks Jutsu!" A magma wave 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.
The Uzu-nin translates the foreign letter keys via fūinjutsu; he replicates and decodes the sealing matrix, bypasses the blast door's security measures, and disengages the locks. However, the chakra barrier requires biometric identification. Parrot punches through the wall below the terminal, ripping out its circuitry.
He sends a jolt of chakra into the electronics, overloading the security seals and deactivating the barrier. "Yours truly can't hold it open forever, you know!" Pelican and Sparrow rush past the entrance; the fūinjutsu specialist pulls his arm from the wall and dives into the bunker before it reseals. They approach the main elevator; the blood dripping from the Uzu-nin's head leaves a trail that Sparrow and Pelican can no longer ignore.
The shinobi places his hand on Parrot's shoulder, "We're patching you up before advancing further."
The fūinjutsu specialist sighs but agrees, "All right, but make it snappy; we only have so much time before those Cronenbergs find us again."
The triune of Grey Berets (Anbu) descend the lower levels of the bunker to an old bomb shelter. They search the control room; the terminals and mainframes are dysfunctional and unsalvagable—kaput crates and shelves, void of weapons, ammunition, or supplies, litter the armory. 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!" he yells.
The Uzu-nin walks into the office and says, "What's with all the commotion here? Woah! I-It can't be!"
The kunoichi almost leaps out of her skin, "What!? How? Why would he just? Is it him!?"
"Yeah, that's him, alright. Vice Admiral Gunsche Alcubierre Lecarde, the Butcherer of the Land of the Sky," Pelican says. Despite the bloodstains on the wall and the bullet hole on the Admiral's peaked cap, he takes it as a souvenir, "Mine now, you genocidal lunatic!"
"The same one who whipped us all up and down the Land of Snow? The same freak who fought Izuna and Top Hat Tobirama simultaneously and planted his foot firmly between their lungs and collective colons!?"
Parrot scoffs, "I mean, I'm not complaining. At least we're not dealing with this psychopath, you know."
Sparrow searches the corpse; she takes the Admiral's pistol and a keycard from one of his pockets, which the kunoichi hands to the fūinjutsu specialist. He 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. The Uzu-nin 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, he finds amusement, imagining the Intelligence Division (Jōhō Butai) trying to unscramble what's left of it. "Creepy mindreading degenerates," Parrot mumbles, scraping the brain matter off the wall into a zip-lock bag.
Sparrow examines the Admiral's handgun; she presses the mag release, then pulls back the pistol slide, locking it in place.
"Any luck?" Pelican asks.
"No, not really," she replies, inspecting the chamber, "both magazines are empty, and there's no more ammunition lying around." The kunoichi releases the slide and holsters the firearm in her inventory.
"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, don't you know!" the fūinjutsu specialist says, "They typically have seal-engraved frames that activate the moment anyone but the intended user touches it. You're lucky that weapon didn't do the same or worse!" He accesses a hidden entrance behind a bookshelf with the Admiral's keycard. The Uzu-nin examines a terminal within the room but discovers its administrative files have been wiped clean and formatted. However, he 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. Perchance 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."
One of the display panels 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 Captain Raven spotted with her Sharingan?" the kunoichi asks, "I doubt it'll be a cakewalk."
"It's now possible to flank the enemy," he 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!" the fūinjutsu specialist says. "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 meticulous contemplation and planning, 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 them 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 the shinobi to dive for cover; another round destroys an adjacent stone pillar.
"So much for the element of surprise!" the kunoichi says, "they led that sniper right to us!"
"But this works in our favor," the Uzu-nin says.
She looks at him as if 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," Pelican says, "they'll flood the building, cutting off any avenues of escape while getting rid of the traps for us."
He snaps his fingers, pointing at the shinobi, "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 says, massaging the scar on his regenerated 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 says.
The three Anbu navigate the concrete jungle using the smoke and ruins as cover. After reaching their destination, the Red Zetsus swarm the skyscraper; unrelenting chaos ensues.
The hoards stumble upon an ambush of lightning seals; stone lances erupt from erratic sections of the complex, skewering rows of burning Red Zetsus along the exterior. Steel girders and spring-loaded poles with rows of jagged, rusting rebar smash through the stampeding hoards, sending hundreds through the windows with random furniture and debris.
An immediate fusillade of glowing, hot, electrified rebar dismembers and catapults the abominations scaling the surfaces; their mangled, burning bodies burst like overheating hotdogs in a microwave, splattering scorched chunks that coat the sky scrapper's surface with a thin layer of gelatinous red paste. Ceaseless explosions tremble each floor in ascending order. The towering structure resembles a giant blazing Tesla coil rising from the underworld as electrical discharge illuminates its pitch-black interior.