Journey of the Three Failures

Chapter 14: Crimson Wave

Journey of the Three Failures

Fourteen: Crimson Wave

Part One: Minagoroshi

Naruto ナルト

It hadn't taken long, after coming up with the Kageken, for me to realize just how much potential it held. I'd also understood that I would more than probably need it some day down the road. That's what I'd already told myself, but theory and practice were two different things.

With a cold sickness in my gut, I turned to see one among another group of stunned shinobi recover to throw three kunai my way. I raised my arm, eyes trained on the projectiles as I swatted the air with my knife. The three kunai were deflected five yards away from me.

I focused on the frontmost shinobi, guessed the average neck height – and my knife sliced the air. Just like that, ten more – dead.

"Hold your positions!" a man barked as the shinobi wavered. "Spread out and–!"

I lunged, knife pointed forward. Twenty yards from me, the man sputtered and fell, blood gushing from a vital point in his abdomen. I stood there, shocked at my own decisive move.

Though too terrified to speak now, the troops seemed to come to a silent consensus – and begin to close in on me from all sides.

Heart racing, breath fast, I yelled out and swung my arm. Six – dead, throats slit.

I secured the kunai's handle in my teeth and filled my hands with eight throwing stars. I crossed my arms and swept them out, and though I didn't release the weapons eight clones that appeared a short way in front of the enemies I was facing did.

Kageshuriken!

Sixty-four shuriken blasted into the line, seemingly from nowhere. As the nearest halted or fell, others behind them raced by unfazed.

I turned to my right, sweeping that hand out; shuriken peppered my foes. I turned and repeated with my left, whirled to 'throw' with my right again, and again with the left, over and over again. Oto and New Oto-nin dropped like flies, but even as they were furiously beaten back by the hail of shuriken the sheer mass of them drew steadily nearer.

Five shinobi raced forward in a line, stacked one behind the other. I flung all eight shuriken aside – as in every direction there were enemies – and hopped toward them, dropping the knife from my mouth into a hand that smoothly caught it already drawing back. A sharp, lunging slash – and the multiple Shadow Blade created the illusion of a single invisible force stabbing straight down their line, spearing through the side of every neck. Then I jumped as the remaining ones converged, Shadow Swapping twenty yards off and twenty more, landing outside the group again.

The nearest detected and charged toward me with no hesitation, and the ones that were armed drew shuriken. I didn't give them a chance to attack.

Kage Ninpou: Shadow Mapping.

My arm drew back, and in the instant before the strike fifteen clones flickered in and out of existence around and throughout the well-scattered group approaching. Gritting my teeth in concentration on the flood of information, I slashed. Though scattered, I knew their positions; ten of the nearest shinobi fell as ten throats were simultaneously hit.

My hand darted into my tool pouch and withdrew a string of paper bombs, ten evenly spaced on a thread my armspan long and tied to a kunai. I spun once and held the hand out beside me; the wind held the string up in front of me, and a one-handed seal was formed as the tags flapped in the icy breeze. I glanced toward the thirty or so who had stopped approaching at the sight of the tags.