You ever look at a chapter you wrote and go "You know, not a fan... Fuck me."
I'm not saying I hate this chapter, and I will stand in defense of my characterization on all parts, but even after several edits I'm like "Ehhhhh, uhhhh... Hmmmmmm...."
It feels more forced than organic, I guess is the wording? I'm not saying this couldn't have happened organically, I just don't feel like this was organic.
That's kind of the issue with being on an update schedule and working though. Sometimes it's 11PM and you're just like, "fuck it."
I've given it one last edit before posting it here, I like it a bit more now than before, but uh, enjoy.
Or join the Patreon, jump 21 chapters ahead, and get past this awkward while supporting me taking less time for work and more time for this story so this just doesn't happen.
"Cover your ears." Tenten orders, and Sakura for her credit does exactly as she's told.
She doesn't even look at Tenten as the girl sticks her head up over the counter and takes aim.
She sticks her fingers in her ears, and says a silent prayer to the Kami that this isn't going to mess with her too badly.
Bang-
Bang-
Bang-
Bang-
Bang-
It just keeps going, how big is that weapon's magazine? She doesn't check, she doesn't look, she just knows that her ears hurt. Even with them covered, her enhanced senses as a ninja almost make her pass out.
"Why do you have a gun?" She says it the moment the shooting seems to be done, but she doesn't hear herself say it, and has to look up at Tenten to read her lips for her response. She's not sure when the older girl got earmuffs on, but she did, and that's probably for the best.
"I'm a ranged specialist." Tenten explains, coming down so her head isn't in the firing zone and it's easier for Sakura to read her lips. "Guns aren't great for the field where ninja have full mobility, but they're amazing for situations like this, why wouldn't I have one?"
"But-" Sakura doesn't bother to finish her own statement, Tenten's right. She looks at her crossbow with a bit of shame. They both operate under the same concept, not getting stronger based on the user but being very good for low level enemies. Why is she carrying around a crossbow instead of a pistol or something, fire bolts be damned.
Maybe she'll see if Higurashi's can get her one when she gets back, just for situations like this...
"Look, do you scoff at weapons because they're a little unorthodox, or do you take them just in case they're useful? I love kunai, but we're in a closed shop and they're down a narrow passage towards the exit. Guns shoot straight, that's what they do." Tenten continues, clearly not noticing Sakura got her point already.
"Ah…" Sakura gulps, nodding to herself in a show of understanding. "Are we sure they weren't the academy students?"
"Nope. But I'm sure we can check after we investigate. Body shots don't normally kill those with ninja training that easily." Tenten shrugs.
"And if they did?" Sakura asks.
"Well, they were throwing attacks into this guy's shop…" Tenten ponders, "Neji might be mad, we executed the wrong targets, but I'm okay with this."
"Me too." Sakura agrees, before getting up to go check on the enemy.
It turns out there were four of them, and they are badly injured.
She can see Tenten is expecting a lecture, but Sakura doesn't have anything like that in her. She inwardly wonders why she'd think she'd get yelled at for taking down the enemy? Even her team doesn't yell at her.
"We should patch them up," Sakura says, dropping by one of the four downed boys and searching in her pack for medical supplies while he groans.
"Right!" The girl with the gun cries out, getting right to work beside her.
It's a lot of work, but she's sure this will help her to know in the future, so Sakura doesn't complain, she just treats the wounds in the best she can with the sub-part medical supplies she could afford after wasting so much of her money. She'll need to add that to her list of stuff to get better quality supplies for. It seems medical is where you want the good stuff, or it becomes far more of a pain in the ass than she expected.
As she finishes treating the second, and finds Tenten's right behind her with her second, Sakura can't help but smile at a pop-up that arrives.
You have earned the First Aid Skill:
You now have hands-on experience with first aid and treating wounds. Healing items applied by you are 10% more effective, you will never forget how to use a healing item after you first learn, and healing items are more likely to show up in loot. |
That's nice, too bad she didn't have that back in Wave. She might have been able to treat her eyes a little instead of going blind, maybe she'd have a potion or something.
It says healing items, so it probably counts magical ones. She hopes magical healing items exist, that'd be very convenient.
"They're academy students." Sakura says, after a bit, "there's nothing on them that indicates the preparedness of a real Genin."
"It's too early to be taking captures, Neji wants the academy students later." Tenten points out, "what if they're just bad Genin?"
"You want to kill them?" Sakura asks, already drawing her weapon from its sheath.
"No I just… right, let's rope 'em up and bring them to him, see what he thinks." She doesn't look happy about that decision.
Sakura can already tell something bad is about to happen by the nervousness in the way Tenten ties them up to chairs for Neji. Her hands are skittish, and awkwardly fumbly for a dexterous girl like her. Sakura lines them up in a proper row so that when he comes back from his part he can see them easily.
She's not disappointed, bad things do happen.
From the moment Neji enters the room she can see the frown on his features is one of unbridled rage. He's a stoic boy, the kind that rarely shows his emotions in a way that's readable for someone with low charm like her, but the mood chart helpfully expresses the murderous chart image for her right beside his head.
"Tenten, you understand we still have weeks on this mission, correct?" Neji scolds, looking at them and the gags Sakura tied up on their mouths to prevent needless annoyances. They just wouldn't stop whining about how Tenten shot them.
"Yes." Tenten looks a little ill, guilt showing in her eyes, shame too. Neji probably isn't a very good teammate. She couldn't imagine feeling that guilty even if Kakashi called her out on something.
"And we do not have the supplies to take care of four extra people," Neji asserts, "you are aware of that."
"But you said not to kill them…" Tenten pouts, looking anywhere but him, she rubs her arm nervously, and Sakura can't help but relate her to an abused girlfriend in a video game. It's odd because Neji doesn't look like the type… She decides to keep her mouth shut and observe, maybe she can learn something about profiling.
"I said they weren't a threat, there was no harm in letting them regroup and capturing them later when they would be less of a burden. Now they know where we are." He points out, practically shaking despite standing so very still, it's an odd oxymoron that has Sakura's keen eyes focused. She's happy her hearing is back, otherwise she'd be missing the practical hissing under his breath, which provides a lot of needed context here.
"They probably already did know where we are." Tenten defends herself. The look on her face makes it very clear she didn't intend to say that, because now she looks scared. Should she get involved? She feels a little rage at seeing him treat Tenten like this boil inside of her. She agrees with him but Tenten's right, he did ban killing the students. If Sakura had her way, this conversation wouldn't even be happening.
"Probably is not a guarantee." Neji makes a hand sign, and just as suddenly as he made it, his veins protrude around his eyes. It's possibly the most visible Doujutsu ever. Sasuke's eyes turn red, but Neji's do a whole circus act. His eyes gain definition in a way they didn't before, and Sakura knows something is about to happen.
"Wait, Neji!" Tenten moves to stop him, and freezes in place mid-shuffle when his glare turns towards her. The Byakugan allows you to see a full range around you, which means that glare was very intentional, and had nothing to do with focusing on Tenten, which is something Sakura grasps immediately thanks more to mind than charm. She's grateful the two overlap sometimes or she'd be even more of a lost wreck in life.
It's then that he does something which matters very little to her, but changes the world for Tenten. He walks down the line of prisoners, and gently pokes their foreheads one at a time while maintaining a false eye contact with the weapons girl.
Sakura watches Tenten's expression waver and crack. She ignores the dying boys entirely, they don't matter, but Tenten does. She whimpers, as they die, she begs for him to have mercy. They can keep one, maybe two, surely it wouldn't be that big a deal.
The second dies with an odd gurgle, Tenten's eyes fill with tears-
He kills a third despite her clear and obvious pain, and that's all Sakura can take.
She sees flame, a whispered madness takes over her vision as quickly as her rage ignites deep inside. Before Sakura even knows what she's doing, Neji's dodging to the side and her sword is where his head just was.
"What are you-" He shouts at her-
She doesn't hesitate to move in while he talks, forcing the elite boy to jump back and fall into a combat stance. She doesn't know what she's doing either, if she's perfectly honest, moderate treason maybe?
What matters is Kakashi's words, that she shouldn't hesitate or she'd die. Her sword goes through one of the dead, and it flares to life from its place inside them within a second. Neji's focus on her is clear, and she can tell he's surprised. "Can't you tell how much you're hurting her?" Sakura's voice comes out more trembling than angry, and even she has to double take at that.
"You're hurting a teammate intentionally to make a point, you're disgusting, the Leaf doesn't need ninja like you in charge." Sakura's voice echoes in on itself. She pulls her sword from the dead student strapped to a chair with a flick of her wrist, and notes the absence of a splash. Everything that needed to be pulled from him was, extracting a massive amount of power in such a short time, it all feeds her rage. "So I'm stopping you."
"Tenten was right about you, I'll put you in your place and let the Hokage decide what to do about this." He doesn't look bothered, his smirk seems satisfied, happy about this. It looks like he's been waiting for someone to try and stop him for some time, and that only makes her all the more eager to be the one to do it. Her second hand lands on the hilt, and she lets out a primal growl, before her feet take her across the room to him in an instant. He pushes a hand forward-
She slashes towards him-
The loudest clang she's ever heard rings in her ears before the vibrations hit her. It's so much so fast, she finds she's smashed her weapon directly into a brick wall that appeared out of nowhere.
Sparks fly, her power is sent out and is intercepted entirely, her momentum is halted and she's pushed back from the force of her own attack coming back towards her with equivalent energy. It's a law of physics she doesn't normally have to deal with because normally that part of the energy is bled off by the strike continuing through her opponent and her own controlled deceleration.
Here she finds she's sent back across the floor hard enough to burn it, boards are torn up beneath her feet and her whole body is wracked with untold agony that threatens to rip her apart. Her sword stabs into the floor just to give her something to hold onto as she falls to her knees.
Looking up, she finds Neji's in the same condition, sent backwards hard enough there's blood on his cheek and the floor is destroyed. He's still standing, better off than her, but still clearly worse for the engagement.
Standing between them, having taken the entire impact, is none other than the push-up master. Looking like a green hero, his short hair billowing, and looking none the worse for it but a little dirt caught on his clothes and the waver of his expression. "Enough." The boy says, but he doesn't need to, the both of them have already lost all sense of rage that filled them just a moment before. They're too shocked by what just happened, and in Sakura's case at least, happy about it. Killing an ally is probably frowned upon by Konoha law. Sakura's weapon is depowered, and as a show of faith in his teammate, Neji deactivates his Byakugan. The blood that her blade had held in it that was discharged is everywhere, splattering the walls, the dead, Neji, her, Tenten, Lee's the only one who looks untouched.
Standing in a field of consequence without a single blemish besides a little dirt, he looks like a hero in a strange land. She's never felt less like the protagonist before, he's clearly standing in front of her.
"Perhaps I went a bit far." Neji asserts, taking a breath to visibly calm himself.
"The Hokage will decide my punishment." Sakura says as calmly as she can manage herself, working herself to a shaky stand so she can sheath her sword. "I shouldn't have done that, and will understand if I'm to be removed from the mission."
"No," Neji says out of nowhere, shocking her attention back to him instead of the boy between them. "Lee would not have stepped in if your attack would not have seriously harmed me, because if he stepped in, it means Gai was about to step in but allowed him to instead to avoid getting in the way of the mission. I thought you were a nobody, but if you could harm me, then you are not here to learn how to fight from professionals, you are here to learn temperament."
"What's that have anything to do with this?" She growls at him, feeling her hand twitch, but knowing not to let it go anywhere near her weapon right now. She's in so much fucking trouble, holy crap. She's going to be on D ranks until she retires.
"It means that my duty here was to teach you how an adult conducts themselves, and I have failed. If you agree not to write about this in your report, I will do the same." His offer has her taking a step back, but it's nothing if not generous.
Aggressively generous.
"I agree, on the condition that you apologize to Tenten, and let me kill the final captive while she is not here to see it." It feels a little odd to negotiate when he is definitely doing her the favor, but, his nod is more than enough for him.
"This was too far, I am not handling command very well and I lashed out. I apologize, and will endeavor to learn from this." She watches the boy bow to Tenten, and that has her reeling more than anything.
She definitely misunderstood him, and she'll need to observe his character more from here on out. The him she's observed would have sent her home just now. Kakashi would probably approve of her actions, even if he'd put her in the dirt a bit before bringing her to the Hokage to make her beg for forgiveness. The fact that he'd be intentionally hurting her to prove a point doesn't escape her, but there's a difference here, she thinks. She's not sure what, but she's sure it's different.
Bottom line though, she needs to test just how much of her rage is her and how much is Thirsty, because holy shit, talk about a firing offense. Maybe she needs to talk to Sasuke's guy?
He's mentioned a guy.
