Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Chapter 5: Failure
'Failure is simply an opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.' - Henry Ford
Team Taka is strolling in one of their contractor's base. They are in an open platform, large pillars kept the ceiling up. The design was like of an infrastructure at Greece. There are lots of paintings on the wall and several statue of men and women. For an ungenerous drug lord, their client surely is a lover of Greek art.
Karin has a special ability in sensing any chackra signature around her. This special ability had granted her a spot on team Taka. She admired their team leader. Uchiha Sasuke has a very fascinating chackra signature and a very handsome face that the red-head drooled after. However, even she tried the umpteenth time to seduce the man, he never showed any signs of attraction towards her. At first she started to doubt her appearance. Maybe she wasn't beautiful enough, but after she succeeded in seducing both Goku and Suigetsu she started to think otherwise. Maybe their team leader is actually a hormone-less guy. They are on their teens for crying out loud! Most of the teenagers and early adult have problems in controlling the urges specially those from the male population. But Uchiha Sasuke hadn't showed any signs of sexual tension towards anything. It was as if he only cared about finishing all the missions they had received. His chakra is not as dark as before when his main goal is revenge. Now it has darkness and emptiness in it. Emptiness that is as if something inside Sasuke had died. Albeit the red-head couldn't pin point what it was exactly.
"Karin?" the Uchiha asked.
The girl nodded sideways, "I don't sense anything peculiar Sasuke."
"You don't sense anything or you couldn't? It is obvious you are oogling Sasuke, you hag!" Suigetsu retorted.
The eye glassed female hit the male but as she did so, he's upper body turned into water.
The girl seethed in annoyance, "Damn you Suigetsu!"
Juugo sighed as he watched his two other team mates started their usual brawl. He eyed their leader and asked, "Sasuke, what kind of enemy do you think we'll face?"
"I have no idea." he admitted and looked at his orange haired companion, "But I do believe this is nothing Taka can't handle."
"Sasuke-san is right big guy! Don't worry to much. Me and my battle axe would surely put an end to that assassin!" the Casanova said.
Karin immediately stopped fighting with the white-haired, "Sasuke, there is..."
But before she could finished talking a figure appeared in front of them. The person is wearing a large brown hat which somewhat resembled the ones wore by the Akatsuki. Team Taka presume that the assasin was a boy who is at the same age group as them. A black cloak is wrapped around the figures body preventing them to see the type of clothing the enemy wore underneath. The hired killer's eyes were closed and a mask was placed over the nose and mouth, preventing the others to see the face of the new comer.
"Great, the assassin's here! Good work Karin! You haven't sensed him fast enough." Suigetsu said sarcastically.
Karin pouted in annoyance. "Hmmp. Shut up imbecile!"
"Tst. Bitch!" he glared at Karin and then eyed Sasuke, "Oi, let me finish this one Sasuke."
"Aah." the Uchiha nodded his head towards the enemy. The legendary swordsman wanna-be grinned as he took this as their leaders acceptance to his statement.
The boy attacked the assassin using his sword. The weapon was blocked by the assassin's katana. Both the water-turning boy and the cloaked figure jumped backwards with the impact of their weapon's clash. The sound of metal to metal clanging echoed around the vicinity. In a blur, each one appeared and disappeared in a spot to another. Karin was shocked when something flew towards her left making her hair flew from the swift of air created by the impact. A loud 'thud' was heard, then a curse vehemently uttered from behind her.
The cloaked figure's head was tilted sideways eyeing the white haired as he stood up from the wall he was forced to collided into.
Karin turned to Suigetsu and shouted, "You moron! What the hell are you doing?"
"Can you please shut up even for a minute?" Suigetsu spat a bloodied saliva on the floor. He looked at the assassin, "What did you do to me shit-head?" He was sure the assassin had put something on him making his transformation impossible. The enemy probably researched his skills and developed a toxin that will prevent his cells to mutate and turn into water. And because of this, his body would receive the 100% impact from the enemy's attacks.
Without further ado, the hired killer teleported himself in front of Suigetsu and stab his right lower abdomen. The white haired man screamed in pain. The katana of the assassin throbbed happily as blood oozed from the newly inflicted wound towards it's blade.
Goku used his battle axe to hit the cloaked person, but as he thought his axe had made contact with the enemy's back, the assassin disappeared. "What the fu-" he hadn't finished his statement for a kick connected with his gut causing him to fly towards a nearby pillar.
"I'm going to kill you!" The brunet said angrily as he rush towards the assasin. His continuous attacks were all blocked by the assasin. Goku cursed outloud.
Karin ensured that the hired killer is preoccupied in fighting Goku before she run towards Suigetsu. "What happened to you?" She examined the wound. "That's a lot of blood you are loosing!"
"Yes genius, I know! So would you just bind it or something to stop the bleeding!"
The red-haired nodded and tore Suigetsu's pants and use the clothe as a make-shift bandage to stop the bleeding.
"Damn, it won't stop!" The girl said in panic.
"Roll a clothe first and put it on top of the wound before you bind it. That would put enough pressure to the wound that could temporarily stop the bleeding." Sasuke said as he placed the said clothe and coax Karin to rebandage the wound with the leader's remaining clothe. The girl do as he said.
Sasuke activated the sharingan and assessed the assasin's movement. There is nothing special with the intruder's movements, he thought. Although the taijutsu could almost par with that fuzzy brows from Konoha. His team mates are having a hard time because they weren't fast enough. "Goku."
In a blink of an eye the Uchiha appeared between the battle. Goku understand what Sasuke wanted to do, so he nodded and jump away from his leader and the assasin.
The assasin's eyes turn into slits, then closed them. Sasuke thought that this person probably heard about the sharingan. But fighthing the Uchiha with closed eyes has its disadvantage as well. The avenger unsheated his sword and started fighting as soon as the assasin charged towards him. The Uchiha would like to give the assassin some credit because even with closed eyes, the assassin is handling himself well pretty well.
"Sasuke be careful!" Karin shouted.
The Uchiha noticed the split of second delay on the assasin's movement and use this as an opportunity. His kusanagi was able to reach the enemy but the assasin recovered quickly and dodge the attack. However, the tip of the kusanagi cut the assasin's mask, making it fall in the ground. The hired killer opened his, no, her eyes and looked directly at the sharingan wielder.
"Sasuke-kun..."
Sasuke blinked. A voice echoed in his mind. A very familiar voice. A voice who's owner he didn't expect to see again.
"I want us to be together forever..."
Upon seeing the face of his enemy, he immedietly remembered someone. The someone he kept locked in the deepest part of his subconscious.
"I love you more than anything..."
The Uchiha tooked some steps towards the assasin. "Sa-"
"Sasuke-kun... Why?"
"-kura?"
The assasin just looked at him with an unreadable facial expression and disappeared in a puff of smoke.
/End of Chapter 5
"We were together. I forget the rest."
- Walt Whitman
A/N: Thank you for reading.
