"Not if we aren't alive to report it," Sasuke grunts, wiping the blood in his eyes off on the arm of his shirt.
"Good point. So what are we doing here?"
...
Sasuke scowls in thought, watching as Lee and Neji struggle to fend off Tiger. I take a quick glance behind us, at the big fight, and gape. What had once been a thin dirt path surrounded on both sides by forestry had turned into a massive clearing, dozens of trees ripped from their roots, burned down, or straight exploded.
And it looks like things are only going to get even more destructive, as there are still four ANBU locked in fierce combat with our two sensei. Thankfully, they don't look like they've taken any severe injuries. If anything, Gai looks even faster than he was at the beginning of the fight, if that were even possible, and is his skin red? I squint, not quite able to make it out through the haze of A-rank ninjutsu and elite shinobi.
"Naruto!" Sasuke jerks me to the side, and not a moment too soon as Lee suddenly goes rocketing through the spot I'd just been in, crashing into a tree.
"Heh, thanks," I say, just a bit wild-eyed. "So I think Hatake and Gai can handle themselves. We won't have to worry about cleaning up the rest of the squad, at least." Sasuke snorts. "But really, what are we doing?"
All by himself, Neji is quickly being overwhelmed by Tiger's superior kenjutsu abilities. When it finally proves too much for him, he executes another Revolving Heaven. This time though, Tiger is prepared. He jumps back, hanging just outside the range of the jutsu, poised to strike when Neji lets it go.
A trio of kunai sink into the ground at his feet, each wrapped in seals. Tiger flashes through hand seals, tanto now sheathed, but when he reaches the last one he pauses and looks up into the treeline where the kunai came from. I stare at him in confusion, wondering what the hell he's doing standing there about to get blown up. Then it hits me. The seals haven't started sizzling yet.
Sakura used defective notes. Shit.
Tiger breaks the hand seal, unsheathing his blade once more, and makes to leap up into the treeline. I growl, plotting out the trajectory I'll need to take to catch him before he makes it to Sakura. I start running.
Then the tags explode.
I'm still a good twenty feet away from the fight when they go off. The average blast radius of genin-grade explosive notes is ten feet- fifteen at best. And there's always a minimum five seconds of "sizzle" before they blow. These haven't even begun to sizzle when they activate, and all of the sudden my world is bathed in searing white.
I lurch, trip, and fall to my knees. I clutch at my eyes, a gurgling cross between a scream and a groan rising in my throat. A high shriek echoes in my ears, but I can't risk the agony of taking my hands off my eyes to cover them as well. A pair of hands fall on my shoulders, shaking me back and forth, and a faint noise makes itself heard through the ringing.
"Naruto! Naruto!"
"What?" I hiss.
"What happened? Can you see?"
Rather than say no and leave it at that as my gut is hollering at me to do, I force my eyelids open. Everything remains a blinding white, and an asinine thought passes through my mind that this must be what being a Hyuuga feels like. Then my vision and my head begin to clear and I blink rapidly.
Sasuke's bleeding visage comes into being in front of me, and I nod. He sighs in relief.
"Well," I say, voice hoarse from all the internal screaming I just did. "That role reversal didn't take long."
"What happened?" He asks. "I looked over at the fight with the jonin and heard a bang, and then you were on the ground."
"Sakura used a bunch of flash tags," I say, doing my best to massage the ringing out of my ears.
Sasuke blinks. "Where did she get flash tags?"
"Beats the hell out of me," I say, staggering to my feet. Flash tags are supposed to be chunin and up. You can't buy them in the store or anything like that- you've gotta get them from the village armory. It should be impossible for her to have them.
Ah, who am I kidding? She probably made them herself. Wouldn't surprise me.
Now that my eyes have cleared up for the most part, I look to see what kind of effect the tags had on Tiger and Neji. Neji is down on the ground, clutching his eyes. Looks like his Revolving Heaven fell apart right before the flash tags went off. Ouch. And Tiger...
Tiger is right where he was before the tags went off, unperturbed. Well, no, he isn't jumping up after Sakura. So maybe there's something going on behind his mask? But no. He just turns around and starts advancing on Neji's downed form, apparently having decided that Sakura isn't a threat.
"Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me!?" I shout, pulling at my hair. Sasuke doesn't say a word, just flies through a set of hand seals and brings his fingers up to his mouth.
"Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu!" Tiger dodges the jutsu with plenty of room to spare, but it puts some distance between him and Neji, at least. Unfortunately, it closes the distance between him and us.
"Alright, screw plans. Who cares about plans? We don't need plans." I mutter, gearing up for another painful onslaught.
"LEE!"'
Against my better judgement I turn. I see Gai, hands locked together with another ANBU's, and yes his skin is definitely red. He shoves against the other shinobi and the ground beneath them cracks. The ANBU is thrown back through the air, and he turns back to Lee.
"Lee, the gates! Use the gates!" Another ANBU falls upon him with a blade of stone as tall as I am, and he's forced back into the fight.
"Gai-sensei!" Lee cries, pulling himself out of the ruins of the tree he'd been thrown into. I glance at him, then to Tiger, who Sasuke has already engaged, and then back again.
Alright Gai, I'll give it a shot. You better not let me down.
"New plan!" I holler, leaping into the fray. "Protect Lee!"
The onslaught is indeed very painful. The Tiger-masked ANBU is unbelievably fast with his tanto, and it's all I can do to keep him from advancing on Lee and/or cutting my throat open. It only takes a minute for cuts to start appearing all over my arms and legs. And yet I find myself grinning, because despite the beatdown I'm taking, there's one difference between this engagement and the last one.
This time I'm fighting with Sasuke.
Tiger bats aside one of my kicks with the flat edge of his sword, but before he can follow up Sasuke is already sliding under my aborted kick and kicking at his legs. He sidesteps, his sword sweeping down at Sasuke's vulnerable spot on the ground, but I've already covered the distance between us with a surge of wind chakra. For every attack Tiger avoids from one of us, there's another one already coming at him. For every attack he launches at one of us, the other is there to back him up.
I've been told more than once that teamwork in a close combat scenario is almost impossible to pull off. The risk of stumbling over one another at a critical moment is too high, the chance of knowing exactly what your partner will do before they do it is too low. It takes years to build up that level of trust.
I don't like to call it trust. I like to call it experience. Experience from years and years of getting my ass handed to me by Sasuke and handing him his in return.
Whatever you want to call it, the result is the same. For a couple precious minutes, due to our synchronized fighting, the kid gloves Tiger is handling Sasuke with, and no small amount of luck, we're able to hold off the ANBU shinobi for Lee.
And then Tiger takes a swipe at me that I can't dodge, so I knock it to the side with a strong burst of wind. The strike careens off to the right, directly into the path of Sasuke's next assault.
I don't even have time to scream a warning. The blade flashes, heading straight for Sasuke's throat.
I register the clash of metal on metal before I do the sight of Neji, suddenly in the middle of our fight, a kunai clenched in his hands. He heaves Tiger's blade aside with his own, and Sasuke immediately tries to capitalize on the opening. He throws a punch aimed at the ANBU's solar plexus, but instead of batting it aside or dodging, he catches it in one gloved hand. Then with one monumental heave he spins Sasuke around and sends him flying into the trees.
Tiger turns back to us, and he speaks.
"Pouncing Hunter's Dance."
I don't even have time to curse. Tiger has already appeared in front of me, sword glowing with the energy from his kenjutsu technique. Even the wind I channel to take the brunt of the blow doesn't protect me from the backlash. I'm sent flying back, not as far as Sasuke, but I still find myself slamming into a tree. Stars dance across my eyes, and if not for the tree's support I'd fall flat on my face.
As it is I let the stars clear, and take stock of things.
I can't see Hatake and Gai's fight anymore. They've driven their opponents too far away- or been driven by them. Lee is still in the same spot, though he looks to be muttering something to himself now. Sasuke is nowhere to be found, and neither is Sakura. And Neji...
Neji is getting murdered.
Chakra courses through my veins, and I explode forward with a speed born of desperation.
Neji staggers as the elite shinobi dances around him, breaking through every single one of his defenses before he even has a time to put them up. He's been toying with us, I realize as he opens up three new cuts along his arm in the blink of an eye. He's been toying with us this entire time and we still-
Tiger rears back his blade, stabbing it down at Neji's throat.
Wind explodes from my palms, knocking the veteran genin aside, and liquid fire fills my veins.
Everything stops. The wind, the blade, my teammates, everything. It's just me, standing there. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Neji stares up at me with wide eyes. Tiger shifts, tugging at the sword lodged in my flesh, and I grunt. I raise an arm, clenching the blade in my fist, ignoring the cuts that open up in my hand.
"Stop," I growl. He tugs again, and I hold firm. Then in one smooth motion he rips it out and oh god it hurts. I stagger, clutching at the gushing wound. Tiger flicks the blade, and my blood flies off like water. He raises his blade again, the energy from his technique flaring up once more.
"Gate of Opening: Open!"
The blade freezes.
"Gate of Healing: Open!"
Ignoring the nausea, I turn my head. Through my internal haze I see Lee standing up, leaves and dirt shaking and rising up around him.
"Gate of Life: Open!"
Tiger takes off at a dead sprint towards Lee, sword alight with the energy of his technique. He covers half the distance in a heartbeat, only to veer off as an explosion rocks the earth. Sakura.
"Gate of Pain: Open!"
Lee's skin begins to darken, becoming almost red. Just like Gai. His eyes are pure white, and a small cyclone of actual, visible chakra whirls around him.
Tiger bursts through the dust cloud.
"Gate of Limit: OPEN!" Tiger's chakra flares, and he disappears as his kenjutsu technique goes into effect. "This is it!"
...
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