The Way Into Mist Village (Naruto)

33: Found

[OP: "The Truth is a Cave"--The Oh Hellos]

Outside the volcano, the other search squad members only realized they'd lost Shoto and Momo after they'd been driven farther from the mountain and lost sight of it.

Shine guessed that this was the intention of the person attacking them. Maybe they knew she was looking for her students.

But if Shoto and Momo had slipped past them, would they be okay? It didn't seem likely.

The dragon mist monstrosity had spat more boiling water. It had to be drawing power from the volcano itself somehow...and it had also formed a kind of spiky shell so that they couldn't just stab it.

"One smart dragon," Wally told Shine. "Maybe I can just...vaporize it somehow."

"Maybe, yeah," Shine said.

Wally successfully did so, to the others' surprise.

It started acid raining right then.

Neji, Shikamaru, Gaara, and Sasuke had no idea what acid rain was. And Shine only got it once she saw it eroding the color of her clothes.

Somehow none of them had been hurt that much, but Shine had landed on her wrist too hard and scraped it against a rock. She wasn't that hurt, but the rain began to sting in that cut when she held her hand up too long.

She tried to rinse it out with drinking water once the rain stopped (it only lasted a few minutes).

"Are you okay?" Wally looked at her arm. "It's kind of red..."

"I think it's a little better now," Shine said, wincing. "That stuff can't be that potent, right?"

"I don't know. Everything here is so weird," Wally said. "Maybe you should go back to Mist and let Sakura help."

"That would probably be the smartest thing to do," Shine agreed. "But I really don't know if I can." 

"If that poisoned you, you shouldn't be fighting," Wally argued.

"If it helps," Neji spoke, "likely it relies on chakra, like everything else. If it doesn't hurt as much, I think there's a good chance she won't suffer any further problems from it."

"If it feels worse, I'll go back," Shine offered. [I do not recommend this in real life.]

"Just pay attention to it." Wally wasn't sure about this.

"So now what?" Shikamaru said. "The rain only made the fog worse, somehow. Can you guide us back to the mountain?"

"I can try," Shine said. "But I'm afraid the masks Momo made are going to max out soon."

"We need to find them," Gaara asked. "But the people who attacked us can't be far. They must be watching us."

"Maybe we should just find them instead." Sasuke was getting tired of being run around like this. He preferred to be the hunter, not the hunted. "I'm sure I could handle them if we just fought them in person."

He got salty looks. Except from Gaara.

"I mean, now isn't really the time to be cocky," Wally said, annoyed.

"You're one to talk there," Sasuke shot back.

"I can't help but feel like there was more to that rain attack," Neji said. "Something about it didn't feel normal...even for this island."

Shine put her sword into the ground and frowned. "I don't know... It's hard to tell anymore what's the island's atmosphere itself and what's the attacks. How long have we even been here?"