I held the lightsaber out to the side. It had the effect of making my shadow stretch in the opposite direction, right to the walls. I could circle it around from there, running unobtrusively around and enclose the courtyard. It picked up nothing.
I hoped that meant he wasn't in the shadows, rather than his technique protected him from it. I could have tried to stretch it further – to cover the entire ground in shadow and find him no matter where he was hiding – but I didn't think I would manage it. Stretching a shadow to increase its length was one thing; area was another.
"You stuck your nose into something that's none of your business," he said.
I swung the lightsaber, lightning dancing off the blade in a wide arc towards the source. It fizzled harmlessly into the ground, the words not betraying the true location of the man. He was throwing his voice, keeping me from finding his true location.
"It's our mission," I said, trying to keep the conversation going. Engage him. Stall him. Play for time.
"And you'll die for it," he spat. "Hidden Leaf scum."
The ground grasped at my ankles, suddenly, with no spike of chakra warning. I yelped, caught off guard, chakra going immediately to my feet to free me. Even as I struggled, it pulled me deeper and I knew I had bare seconds before I was underground.
"Touch blast!" I pressed it down with my foot, using a conical shape that would drive the force of the blast away from me.
But it was still setting off an explosion in an enclosed space and it wasn't pretty. The stone shattered, yes, but I was lifted up and catapulted backwards from the force of it. I rolled across the dirt, scrambling to rip my shoes off. The soles were melting from the heat of it.
I hissed in pain.
I'd lost my jutsu. My shadows were gone. My lightning blade shut off. My nightvision was ruined and I could see nothing.
But there was no time to stop. I had to keep moving. I pushed off the ground, narrowly missing being struck by a kunai.
The angle of it –
I followed it back, activating and launching another sweep attack from the lightsaber. Again, nothing.
Earth jutsu; is he even above ground? I cursed not being able to sense him. I cursed being so reliant on the fact that I usually could. The kunai suggested he was, but kunai launchers were so easy to rig.
I need something bigger, I thought. Radiating Shockwave was the only area of effect lightning jutsu I knew but dammit, I had the Sword of the Thunder God. That had to mean something.
I stabbed it downwards, deep into the earth. It cut the rock easily, but that was only where the blade could reach. "Lightning Release; Sword in the Stone!" I howled, all but throwing chakra into it.
Lightning blasted out, a full carpet of it, lighting up the courtyard from beneath; the force of it was focused downwards into the ground, but spikes of electricity danced up into the air in a parody of reversal. I wove chakra into my legs and feet, protecting as much as I could, but it still hurt where they lashed at me.
A shape, hard as rock, hurled itself out of the ground at me.
I dodged, but barely, clipped by an arm that threw me to the ground. I tumbled, jutsu fading.
But it had served its purpose.
"You'll die for that," he growled out, voice like rocks grinding together. I had been half right with my earlier assumption of that he was using camouflage jutsu. He was using it to blend in with the rocks and stone, and to remove himself from my senses. Even now he was grey and marbled, and I had a feeling that if I lost him again, it would be much harder to find him a second time.
I panted, breath coming in sharp gasps. "Thought that was your plan from the start," I managed. "I could have sworn you'd already said that."
I really needed to learn how to say more helpful things.
"Rock Tank," he growled, and spun forward. His body became circular, rolling like Chouji's Human Bullet Tank. The moving sphere picked up mass like an avalanche, growing larger and leaving a giant trail of destruction in its wake.
I moved again, springing off the rock and ignoring the way pain stung through my feet. I was cushioning them with chakra as much as I could, but it wasn't enough.
The seals I planted in the dirt went off as soon as he passed over them. I was pelted with rock shrapnel, and threw and arm across my eyes to protect them.
That was the reason I didn't see him coming at all, as he slammed me into the wall, hand locked around my throat. My head rattled against the stone, red spiking through my vision.
I froze, muscles locking up.
The world buzzed red and black. Red and black.
In the world of Tsukiyomi, time and space are mine to command…
Some strange whimpering sound escaped my mouth, but it didn't seem real. Nothing seemed real. I was pinned and I was floating away and I was both at the same time.
I –
- pulled free.
I was the shadow pooling around our feet. Everything that touched me fell under my sway. I reached, stretching up and up, blackened limbs looping around and around. My arms elongated, black hands clawing at a neck, pressure and more pressure. Stone skin refused to give way, the attempt at strangulation useless. I reached up further, splitting another hand to cover nose and mouth. Suffocation was also sufficient for my purposes.
(- slumped against the wall, hard stone pressed against my back. There was no escape. I was caught. I was helpless. I couldn't, I couldn't do this again. I couldn't. Please. No.)
The enemy heaved and twitched in my grasp. The body, lost in fear, twitched in his.
I needed to make him release it.
I changed tacks, shifting form from solid shadow to shadow possession. His limbs moved under my power, hand unclenching and drawing backwards. The body slumped against the wall, making small, distressed sounds.
I stepped him backwards. And again, until there was sufficient distance between them.
(Hands drew back from my neck and I choked, gasping for air as my lungs burnt. I burnt. My back slid against the wall, skin scraping raw against stone. I couldn't stop the sounds escaping my mouth. I was afraid. I didn't want to be here. I didn't want to be doing this. Please. I want to go home.)
"Who," he asked. "Who's there?" His eyes were wide and rolling, trying to see behind him, or to the sides.
"That depends," I said, voice made only of air changing shape. "Who are you?"
If he would talk, I would not kill him. Our mission was to acquire information. He could still be useful.
"We are the Watari Clan; the Wandering Ninja," he said, something indefinable in his voice.
I had heard of them. There were not that many large groups of shinobi that did not belong to a village left any longer. Fewer still that didn't have land of their own and maintained the nomadic lifestyle of the pre-village era, moving to wherever there was work.
"The Land of Birds has not hired you," I said, confident in the fact. Because if they had, then they would not have hired us.
He snorted. "You know nothing. What it means to be nomadic, forever travelling with no place to call your own… that's something that a pampered village brat like you would never understand."
I could hardly deny that. But he was warming up to the topic, speaking more freely, and I hoped I could glean something useful from his ranting.
(I huddled against the wall, arms drawing over knees. I wanted to run but there was nowhere to go. There was nowhere to go. Nowhere was safe. I could never escape this life. All I could do was stay small and quiet and hope that no one noticed me.)
"What would you know of endless drifting? Of sharpening skills without benefit of a school or teacher? Of having limitations that can't be surpassed, and of always being looked down upon by those like you."
"How terrible," I said, blandly. "That doesn't explain why you're here."
Had someone hired them to assassinate the royal family? If so, who? Who would have had the knowledge, in this cloistered, superstitious place? Was it even someone within the country at all?
"That," said a different voice. "Is not your concern."
And I realised I had made a terrible mistake.
The enemy had been stalling as much as I was. He had been waiting for backup. And it had arrived in the form of a blue haired swordsman, slinking out of the night and holding a blade to the body.
(He was holding a sword to my throat. I have to do something, I thought, but it was a dim and distant thought that belonged to someone else. My reflexes were choked with panic and terror. I would die here, die for nothing, with nothing.)
I threw myself across the courtyard, a streak of black on the ground, rising up between the two and batting the sword to the side. He repelled the two shadow stitching tendrils I aimed at him, slicing one in half. It didn't hurt, exactly, it was not a physical limb to feel pain. But there was loss, because of it.
"Nagare," the swordsman said, retreating a fraction as I drove more tendrils at him. "I wondered what was keeping you."
I hovered, uneasily, on the ground in front of the body. This was not good. And worse yet, I could feel the strain of the jutsu trying to pull us back together.
The enemy – Nagare – grunted. "I got caught off guard."
I swirled backwards, gathered around body's feet, ready to move her to safety and –
(The dark shadow, my jutsu, defended me, launching attacks that drove him off. It came to me and -)
- We were one.
I staggered to my feet, woozily, uncertain. Nothing really felt real. But it didn't feel so unreal either. I was in two minds, but I wasn't. I was myself again, except I had always been only myself.
A hysterical laugh bubbled past my lips.
Maybe the clan was right. This is really screwed up.
But I had two enemies in front of me that needed dealing with. Breakdowns could wait till after. They had to wait till after.
"Careful, Hokushin," Nagare said. "She's stronger than she looks."
Considering I must have looked pretty damn awful, that wasn't really saying much.
I coughed. "We don't have to fight," I rasped. "If you aren't trying to attack the Daimyo, then I have no problem with you." It might have been a better argument if we hadn't already been fighting. But. I made do with what I had.
"Funny," Hokushin said, levelling his sword in my direction. "That's exactly what we're trying to do."
That was more information than Nagare had given me. But it was not good. It meant that I couldn't afford to let them go, either. Not if they were just going to attack Toki.
I had to deal with them here and now.
Right. Two enemies. Both good at concealing chakra. One had a sword. I didn't want to engage him close range, obviously. The other, an earth jutsu user. Taijutsu would be useless, but he was weak to lightning. He had distance attacks, however, and I couldn't discount that.
I reached for my sword.
And it wasn't there.
Luck wasn't on my side today, clearly. I couldn't even remember when I'd dropped it. When Nagare had attacked me? When I'd been split?
I didn't waste the energy cursing it.
Nagare raced through a set of handseals, slapping his palms down on the concrete. The ground under my feet went mutable, rising to grab me.
I moved. I couldn't risk getting caught in that trap again. Not after the damage I'd done to myself trying to escape it the first time.
I speed boosted, dropping my resistance seal and amping my chakra enhancements to the max. The strain of it felt like a deep burn in my muscles, already trembling from the abuse I'd put them through.
It wouldn't last me long, then.
I grimaced. Time to abandon subtlety.
I took a second's break, though, perched sideways on the courtyard wall, to gather myself, before launching at them.
Nagare was ready for me, blocking my first attack with a simple arm bar. It was hard as rock. I didn't even try force it, using it instead to push myself up, planting a hand on his shoulder and flipping right over him. My fingertips left ink behind.
I hit the ground and rolled, ducking beneath Hokushin's sword swing, digging a hand into my kunai pouch and planting an experimental magnetic seal on the ground. They'd worked well enough during sparring, even if they weren't particularly refined.
Then I performed an extremely fast replacement jutsu with a hunk of rock on the other side of the courtyard and narrowly escaped being crushed to pieces.
Activate! I used a half seal to focus, and set both seals off at once.
Hokushin stumbled as his sword dragged towards the ground, metal caught in the magnetic fields created by a piece of paper.
Nagare. Well. Nagare exploded into a shower of rock.
I was far enough away to escape the debris. His ally was not. He was clipped across the face and went tumbling across the ground, sprawled lax and awkwardly.
I wasn't sure if he was dead. But he wasn't moving. I waited for a long second, almost sure he was faking. But nothing happened.
Two birds with one stone, right?
I smothered a set of inappropriate giggles. This was not the time.
I pushed myself to my feet and limped towards him, still alert for ambush. If he wasn't dead, then I wanted to be sure he stayed out of it.
"Rock," a voice said, just as I reached him. "Blizzard."
I hit the ground. It wasn't quite enough to save me from the stones that flew through the air in a parody of the explosion I'd forced on them. They whistled through the air above me, a couple clipping me before I evaded, and began to form a person.
You have got to be kidding me. What does it take to put this guy down?
I had had people brush off explosions before. Kidomaru. Kimimaro. But to put himself back together after I'd blown him up? That was something different.
And worrying. That was bodily physical transformation, like Konan and her paper form. That was an A-rank level technique of serious utility.
How do you take out an enemy that you can't damage? Or rather, that damaging doesn't stop?
I didn't have time to consider it, pushing myself off the ground with speed that belied my injuries. The ground quaked and cracked beneath me.
I tried to make for high ground, shooting for the walls to try and get to the trees. If I could get to the trees –
Spikes shot out of the wall. I ground to a halt, bare feet skidding painfully over the ground and doing nothing good for them. But I managed to avoid taking a spike to the face, so it was probably worth it.
Keep moving.
He had me blocked in. I couldn't get out, and there was nowhere in the courtyard that was safe to pause. I had to keep moving – keep moving in an unpredictable pattern – and it was wearing me down. I couldn't keep it up.
I couldn't even tell if the constant ninjutsu was equally wearing on him. I couldn't count on it.
This was a battle of stamina and I was losing.
Think, I told myself. You have options.
Did I? I couldn't run. I had tried to fight. I couldn't outlast him. I had to, somehow, get rid of him.
Get rid of him.
A crazy, stupid idea bloomed in my mind.
I grabbed it with both hands.
This had better work.
I yanked a blank scroll out of my jacket and bit my thumb for blood. No time for ink. The seal itself wouldn't be tricky. It was a simple one, one of the first I had learnt. It was just… adjusted, a little bit.
The attacks slowed a fraction. Either he was curious or cautious. I didn't care which; I took huge advantage of the fact.
I launched myself across the ground towards him, scroll held ready in my hand. This was going to be the tricky bit, and I mentally spared a quick thanks to Tenten for teaching me how to throw them. That was an art in its own right. Paper was not aerodynamic.
It arched around, flying through a full circle, enclosing him and returning to my hand.
Nagare responded by sinking into the ground. If I let him, he'd be out of my trap before I could put it to use.
"Seal!" I said grimly, feeding it chakra. There was a huge puff of chakra smoke. The seal was not efficient, but it did its job. Air rushed past me, whooshing in to fill a void.
Everything within the loop of the scroll had vanished.
There was a gaping pit in the ground, a perfect circle going down and down. I didn't even know how deep it was – it looked endless. It wouldn't be. Even though I hadn't put a terminating distance on the effect, the sealing matrix got weaker and weaker the further from the anchor that it was. Eventually it would simply have faded out and ceased to affect the world.
I shivered. My hands clutched at the sealing scroll that held a person. He wouldn't have survived that, no matter the jutsu he was using. Sealing scrolls were not for living matter.
I used my bleeding thumb to line an edge of red around the top. It wasn't quite the black of a body scroll. But people would still know.
Then I very carefully limped away to retrieve my lost weapons.
There was nothing more to be done here.