Journey of the Three Failures

Chapter 13: Breaking Point

Journey of the Three Failures

Thirteen: Breaking Point

Part One: Setting the Stage

Hanabi ハナビ

"Hurry!" Inuzuka Ken shouted at me and his little sister. The fifteen-year-old suddenly stopped running and scooped me into his arms. "Akita-chan, hop on my back and hold on tight!" She did as told, and Ken took off at full speed.

The halls thundered quietly with the echoes of dozens of pairs of racing feet. The alarm had died down a minute ago; now most of the shinobi were moving to the outer edge of New Konoha to prevent the Sound from entering, while the rest were rushing any children to safety in the innermost area.

I shook my head. "I don't understand – what time is it?"

"About a quarter to eight," Ken answered, eyes trained ahead.

"So they must have changed their plans..."

He snorted. "Maybe... but let's just say I thought something smelled funny about that Uchiha. We shoulda' known."

Sasuke-san... Could he really have...?

"But for whatever reason," he went on, "the Sound ninja seemed ... caught off guard somehow."

Neji ネジ

Why?! Why are three-fourths of our shinobi lagging behind?!

I searched furiously with the Byakugan, the kunai I would have thrown in a few more minutes clenched tightly in my hand. Two hundred of them were supposed attack on my signal at 7:50 and storm their headquarters together, but someone else had thrown a paper bomb five minutes early. And then, only fifty surprised Oto and New Oto-nin had charged on the attack.

I ground my teeth and jumped off the rooftop, racing down a street toward another captain's group. I needed to get to the bottom of this!

Naruto ナルト

"Kill them."

There was movement – I falling back and the others taking stances in front of me as six shinobi blurred out of the crowd, passed the captains, and darted toward us. A speeding kunai whizzed my way, and Lee snatched it from the air to whisk it back as I drew back my fist. No pulling punches today.

I struck sharply, hitting the two nearest us with shadow strikes branched from the same move. They cried out, one with a broken nose, and in an instant Hinata and Lee had taken them out. The next four swiftly converged on them, and the rest of the army observed, utterly motionless, as my friends engaged two Sound ninja each, while I threw in a few quick Shadow Strikes. Hinata, after brushing a Juuken Stream from his shoulder to hip, thrust her shoulder into her enemy's breastbone in a fiercely sharp move that shot him ten yards with force that seemed disproportionate to a girl her size. At the same time Lee landed three fast, hard punches before snapping into a backwards jump kick that briefly knocked his foe clear off the ground. Within five seconds the three of us had left six chuunin unconscious or groaning on the ground. We settled into ready stances again, glaring together toward the captains. Bring it...

They discussed at low whispers. "Send these grunts after them, and we'll crush them with sheer numbers – though at the price of some casualties on our side for certain," the older male Oto-nin said. I noticed (it was tough not to) his headband was tied at eye level. Weird. How did he see?

"So we crush them ourselves, right?" a slouching girl in her mid-to-late teens said uninterestedly. "It ought to be a decent warm-up..."

"Patience, Midori-chan," Torakou lightly scolded the green-haired captain. "Let's not be rash. Carelessness will get even the strongest ninja killed."