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A faint breeze in the muggy, tropical air disturbed the mangrove forest. Carried by the wind indistinct voices could be heard, one sounding incredibly annoyed and the other tired. As they neared, the sounds became recognisable.
“- and then he blasted a water jutsu at me, but his plan was pretty obvious – “
“Enough Ichirou! Can’t you tell she isn’t interested? No one believes your pathetically obvious lies anyway. Shut up before I make you.”
“You shut up, asswipe, as if a paper pusher like you would know – “
The voices grew and faded as the patrol squad sweeping through the forest drew nearer and further from the unremarkable group of trees.
Between the curving roots of the towering mangroves, something stirred.
A rock shimmered and an illusion dropped to reveal two small figures huddled together beneath a tarp. The younger had her arms and legs wrapped tightly around the back of the other, clinging to him like a limpet. She was a child only a few years older than a toddler, and her young face was thinner than it should be.
The elder of the two was also a child, scarcely a pre-teen, and despite likewise showing signs of slight malnutrition, he smoothly stood and shoved the tarp over his shoulders. The younger sealed it away in one of the numerous scrolls strapped to her waist.
Surrounded by the drab brackish water of the mangrove forest and the green of the trees and sea grasses, the crimson red that topped their heads stood out like flares in the night.
And yet they moved, unseen and unheard through the forest, the elder carrying the younger as he set a swift yet stealthy sprint west.
It was possible to leave Water country without a ship. It required one to be incredibly fit to cross the ocean either by swimming or running, and to know the small islands that littered the seas in order to rest and recover. Technically, an adept genin could make the trip if they had decent chakra reserves, control and the requisite knowledge.
In reality, only the desperate and foolish ever tried.
Afterall, every scrap of land, every ocean swell belonged to the Yondaime Mizukage, the Bloody Tyrant Yagura.
We were most certainly desperate.
Whether or not we were fools had yet to be seen.
Skating across the water and riding the swells, cold droplets occasionally dampening my toes, my little sister and I made our way in the direction of the setting sun. In the middle of the edge of the Kaizoku Sea with not a hint of land in sight, I came to a halt as Karin tapped my shoulder.
We had left the most north-western island and now had a huge stretch of water to cross. It would have been easier to take the southern route where there were a constant stream of islands dotting the ocean between the Land of Water and Land of Noodles, but that way was guarded even more closely. Even with Karin’s astounding sensory abilities, I doubted we could avoid detection.
“Karin?”
“We’re as far as we can go before crossing the shipping routes.” She confirmed, her voice scratchy from not using it for so long.
I let go of her legs to make hand signs, kneeling to reach the water.
Boar – dog – bird – monkey – ram: Summoning Jutsu
Ink webbed out from beneath my palm over the deep blue surface and a puff of smoke enveloped my hand. I lifted it to reveal a pale pink basketball-sized seahorse floating in the water.
“Asahi-kun.” It spoke solemnly, his smooth, deep voice that of a middle-aged man’s. “I am very pleased to see you and Karin-chan still safe.”
“Hello Enkai.” A smile briefly rose to my face at seeing my mother’s faithful summon before the circumstances smothered it. “We’re passing through the shipping route and there are too many patrols to avoid above water. We’re going to have to risk swimming to get around them.”
Krakens gorged with chakra, sea snakes so large they might as well be sea dragons, and enhanced shark packs patrolled the reefs that ringed the islands. The oceans surrounding Kiri were a death trap. And that wasn’t counting the more ordinary dangers – jellyfish, toxic coral, orcas.
As I said, only the foolish and desperate take this route.
Karin wobbled when I set her down on the sea surface, a sign that her chakra control wasn’t yet up to par. She’d been working hard, but she was still barely eight.
She tucked her bright red glasses into a case which went in one of her many pouches, replacing them with large goggles that were nearly too big for her face.
The identical bandoliers around our waists holding numerous scrolls were unbuckled and dumped into a waterproof bag. Red hair was tucked up into the tight, gripping hoods of our wetsuits and I carefully tied Enkai to myself, and then myself to Karin. Kiri standard issue rebreathers were popped in and, preparations complete, I nodded.
We descended, the water swiftly darkening and the surface light filtering from above soon fading to pitch black. Sending chakra to my eyes, I activated my infrared vision seals. I could feel the ink swirl out from underneath my eyebrows and down into my irises, and the world lit up in an alien landscape of deep purple with distant splashes of blue, green and yellow.
Guided by the shape of Enkai before me, I swam, my arms and legs moving in a breaststroke as Karin clung to my waist with her little legs paddling away. The seahorse summon led us onwards, and we descended slowly to the sea floor into a huge canyon that carved through the rocky bottom. Once below the range of most sensors but not Karin, we began to move forwards.
It was a long, nerve-wracking journey, and even swimming with the aid of chakra to control the water around us, it took hours. Several times Enkai cast illusions about us, and once he had to release a cloud of toxins into the water to scare away interested predators who came sniffing about. Karin and I had spent the last year immunising ourselves to the poison, and we passed through the cloud unscathed.
The wetsuits provided by the Seahorses kept us dry, but the frigid water seeped our heat and forced us to burn chakra to keep warm. Four hours in and with each detour we had to take to avoid enormous sea creatures - alerted to their position by Karin - my strength was waning.
My internal clock told me it was two hours past the point where I’d deactivated my infrared seals to conserve chakra that we finally began to rise. I can honestly say that swimming in complete darkness, knowing the water around me was filled with numerous sea monsters who wanted nothing more than to eat us, was the most terrifying experience of my life.
After Karin had given the all clear, we swam up a steep incline, vertically moving past packs of reef sharks and the occasional migratory sea turtle. Dim light returned and the ground changed from rock to brain corals and huge polyps, and soon the vast seas were swarming with life.
As we made our way through the gap and into the long stretch of shallow lagoon, I was met with the sight of a stunningly beautiful coral reef that reminded me of the home of the Seahorses in the Summon Realm. Striking corals in every colour imaginable greeted my eyes, and tiny fish in bright reds, yellows and blues flashed back to their homes amongst the anemone as we passed by. A metre-long reef shark swam by, ignoring us, and Enkai led us unfailing to shore.
I crawled up from the ocean bed, using my noodle-like muscles to heave myself out of the water and just flopped onto the sand.
Karin detached herself from me before lifting Enkai from the water and trying to stand. Her legs gave out, having spent the entire swim clinging to my waist and kicking. It was a struggle, but somehow the two of us managed haul the seahorse further up the beach.
We moved just far enough to avoid the incoming tide before collapsing into an exhausted pile. I pulled the water off the both of us with a fumbling hand sign and nearly passed out from effort.
Crunching down on one of Mother’s illegal home-made soldier pills, Karin and I then proceeded to shove stale ration bars into our mouths, moving our arms listlessly. We both nearly fell asleep more than once and had to be awoken by Enkai, who was bobbing next to us in the tank of sea water Karin had unsealed.
When I felt my chakra begin to rise, the soldier pill swiftly metabolising the nutrients in the rations, I slowly ran through handseals. Placing my hand in the tank, two more tiny seahorses appeared in the water.
“Sleep, Asahi-kun. We’ll keep watch.”
I couldn’t summon the energy to respond to Enkai after summoning the sensory specialised Seahorses, and I stumbled to where Karin was passed out, a leftover bit of her ration bar still clutched in her small hand. My shaking arm fumbled through the scrolls Karin had dumped out of the waterproof bag, and after identifying the correct one, I released a silver foil blanket.
Curling next to Karin, I wrapped it around the both of us and slipped gratefully into oblivion.
I was wrenched from my dreamless sleep by the squeaking of seahorses that my fatigued brain interpreted as danger. I jack-knifed awake sending our blanket fluttering to the floor as I instantly scuttled to our haphazard pile of scrolls. My muscles screamed their protests at me, and I bit back a groan as I forced my aching arms to shove them back in the bag.
A glance at my surroundings showed that the coast we’d crawled onto was one of the black sand beaches, having been too tired to even register our surroundings last night. The rocky shore was illuminated by the bright morning sun, and I withdrew a black-camo tarp from the last scroll before it joined the others in the sack.
My scrambling had roused Karin who was scrunching up the silver blanket and shoving it in the bag as well before clumsily flicking through Kiri sign language.
Incoming ship, nine shinobi on board plus civilians, ETA thirty seconds.
We stumbled over to the tank and Karin and I huddled down next to it, the black tarp covering us all in darkness. Only the two sensory seahorses were still bobbing in the water, Enkai having disappeared while we slept, his summoning timed out. I forced stiff fingers into seals and a genjutsu shroud dropped over us, the four creatures beneath it stilling.
To me, all I could see was the inside of the tarp. The waves crashed against the beach in an uninterrupted rhythm and despite straining my senses, I couldn’t detect a thing. I awaited Karin’s signal.
The Seahorse twins I’d summoned were the only two chakra sensors in the entire Clan, and they had a very limited range. Like their ordinary counterparts, the Seahorses specialised in camouflage, stealth - and to get around their poor natural swimming abilities - water ninjutsu. Sensing wasn’t usually one of their abilities.
The Clan had been my only genjutsu teachers since I’d feigned complete incompetence at the art while in the academy and under the tutelage of my chuunin instructor. Jounin weren’t wasted on teaching mediocre kids, and as far as Kiri knew, I was very mediocre indeed. It was Karin who was Kiri’s most prized Uzumaki.
Chakra sensors were rare, perhaps one in a thousand people ever awakened such an ability. With Mist’s heavy recruitment drives, Kiri probably had more sensor shinobi in its ranks than any other village, Yagura having heavily invested in his tracking division and hunter-nin. Even then I doubted there were more than twenty chakra sensors in all of Water country, though there were far less than twenty thousand shinobi.
Range and accuracy varied, but if one of the nin on the boat was a sensor, we were screwed.
Breathing lightly, it was an eternity of being able to do nothing but hope we were lucky before Karin allowed herself to move. Trusting her, I exhaled a quiet sigh of relief and shifted the tarp, letting the genjutsu fall.
Amongst all the sensors in the world, Karin was the best. Of that, I had no doubt. There was probably someone somewhere capable of fooling her, but it was highly unlikely that someone would be here, bothering with us. If she thought we were safe, then we were.
“Thank you for your assistance, Kai, Mai.” I thanked the two sensor twins who squeaked in reply before dismissing them in tiny puffs of smoke.
I didn’t bother to stand, simply reshuffled into a more comfortable position as my adrenaline faded and emptied the scroll bag once more. Now that we were both awake, my sister and I stripped off our wetsuits and unsealed some fresh water. We drank our fill and I used the rest to rinse us clean, getting the uncomfortable sticky feeling off our skin.
The suits the Seahorses provided did their job, but they were also made of some unidentifiable adhesive string woven tightly together. After the stories of scaring squid in order to collect ink for me, I had carefully refrained from asking what, exactly, they were created from.
With Karin settled down before a map to trace out patrol routes of the islands ahead, I unsealed a metal pot and drew a heating seal on a flat stone. A quick trip back to the lagoon snagged us several unsuspecting fish and crabs. More ingredients were unsealed, and soon I had a pot of highly nutritious soup bubbling before me. While it was risky to cook while in hiding, Karin and I needed to recover our strength quickly, and nothing was better for that than Mother’s Uzushio specialty.
Karin and I choked down some highly suspicious nutritional goop the Seahorses had recommended, before proceeding through several very clumsy katas to loosen our muscles while waiting for the soup to finish. The smell made us salivate and our stomachs were rumbling as we stretched. When I finally decided it was done, Karin and I ravenously ate it straight from the pot, two spoons scooping the broth into our mouths as quickly as we could, burning our tongues as we swallowed.
Pleasantly warmed and satiated by the meal, tiredness crept in again. We relocated off the beach and a bit further inland to the trees, before I set the tank back down and resummoned the three seahorses.
While Enkai had no sensory abilities, he was one of the Clan’s few veteran fighters and he had the instincts to recognise if something was wrong that the younger two didn’t.
We were awoken twice more as the island patrol came near our position, and after the second squad had passed us by, I was feeling much improved. Karin and I took ten minutes to relieve ourselves, and for us to plot and memorise the best course through the patrol routes Karin had marked on the map.
Enkai pitched in his opinion and Karin pitched in about the circuit timings.
“What of pursuit from Kiri itself? While you needed the rest, you invite danger the longer you linger.”
I nodded at Enkai’s word in acknowledgement but not agreement. It wasn’t the shinobi behind us I was worried about, but the ones before.
“Okaa-sama is covering for us.” My voice hitched as I spoke. “She’ll stall as long as she can, and I summoned Shizue to stay with her. She has orders to activate Karin’s linked seal when Okaa-sama… passes.”
I glanced at my little sister’s hand to see the simple alarm seal inked onto it. When triggered it would release the tiniest morsel of chakra which only Karin, an S-ranked sensor, would be able to detect.
Mother barely had the chakra capacity to summon the seahorse herself; a sure sign for an Uzumaki that her end was near, even if Kiri didn’t kill her once they discovered Shizue’s genjutsu covering for our absence. I had summoned Shizue, and Mother would have resummoned her once the twelve hours had passed and she’d returned to the Summoning Realm. That would give us only thirty-six hours at best before Kiri knew we’d done a runner, Mother being far more adept at the summoning jutsu than myself, despite her lacking chakra.
We had spent about sixteen hours yesterday running, hiding and swimming, and ten resting, we were that exhausted. Ten more until Kiri sent pursuers, or however long it took them to discover our deception.
My mother’s old summon looked as grieved by her impending death as we were, as much as a seahorse could look grieved. “Very well. Do not hesitate to summon any of the Clan should you need us, the entire herd is ready to do what we can. And once Konoha clears you, call me again. I would keep Hisana’s children as my summoners for many years yet.”
Karin sniffled back tears and scooped the seahorse out of the tank to give him a crushing hug. “Love you, Enkai.” She mumbled. The aquatic creature looped his long tail around her waist, returning it.
“And I you, dear one.” The seahorse rumbled back.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Thank you, Enkai. We will meet again.”
We had scarcely been on the move once more when the steady rise and fall of Karin’s chest faltered against my back.
“Aniki.” Her voice quivered with grief and she held her left hand up.
The hand with the alarm seal.
A pang of intense sorrow hit me, but I knew long before we’d left that Mother wouldn’t survive our escape from Kirigakure. Still, the news of her passing wasn’t any easier to take.
I said nothing and ran on, ignoring the slowly growing wet patch on my shoulder.
Escaping Kiri wasn’t enough. Karin and I were Uzumaki, we belonged to a clan so dangerous Kiri and Kumo had conspired to destroy it almost in its entirety. Of those who had been in Water country at the time of Uzushio’s fall, my mother was the only one allowed to live, solely for her unique healing abilities.
Despite the Yondaime’s infamous attitude towards clans with bloodline abilities, the smaller families in service to Kiri had largely escaped the purges. Too small to trouble the state, our tiny ninja families were made second-class citizens, allowed to live in exchange for being used by the village. Our lives were theirs to do with as they pleased.
No, we couldn’t simply leave Kiri to wander the elemental nations, we wouldn’t live long that way. We needed protection – from the Kiri hunter-nin sent after us and others seeking to obtain us – and who better than the village famed for their numerous bloodlines.
My mother hated Konoha for failing to save us, for letting Uzushio die - but I was far more practical. The Second War had been nearing its end and Konoha was still fighting three nations; Suna, Kumo and Iwa. Uzushio’s interference had prevented Kiri-nin from doing much damage to Fire’s south-eastern borders, and as such most of their troops were deployed to other fronts.
Konoha couldn’t save Uzushio. It hadn’t been physically possible.
Uzushio knew the invasion had been coming for days, it wasn’t a complete surprise. But the Uzumaki had trusted in their seals and by the time it became obvious that the siege was far stronger than they’d anticipated, it was too late for Konoha to send aid. Uzushio had stood strong for centuries, the ancestral home of the Uzumaki and their vassals.
Uzushio was strong, but they were alone.
Whirlpool fell, not because of their enemies’ greater cunning or power, but due to their own arrogance. The belief that a tiny island nation with a single clan could overcome two of the Great Nations.
So while my mother raged at the fact we would be at the mercy of Konoha, I knew it was our best option. Our only option, short of joining the Rebellion, and I had no intention of remaining in the hellhole that was the Land of Water for any longer than I had to.
The Wall guarding the border of the Land of Fire had come within Karin’s sensory range.
We hunkered down in between patrols sweeping overhead and planned.
Karin withdrew a blank piece of paper and began drawing what she could sense, adding dots on two sides of a long line: the Konoha and Kiri shinobi prowling their respective borders.
We had stopped on a small island just south of Haran Bay with the Land of Hot Springs directly west and Fire just west of that. The islands just south of the bay were controlled by Yagura and thus heavily guarded. Huge amounts of maritime trade flowed through there, and just behind the Wall was an enormous city that traded with Water country. While there had been far more trade before the Crusade began, there were still plenty of people looking to make a profit - even if they had to do business with Yagura.
We had finally reached the very edges of Kiri’s territory, and now we were approaching Fire country’s waters. Having avoided detection by the rank and file troops that patrolled the vast majority of Water, we would now be braving the hunter-nin corps. For directly south of us was the island split in half and separated by the Wall, fittingly named Akashima.
Akashima, the Red Island, the Gateway Island.
It was on this island that tens of thousands came to die.
I would have loved to avoid Kiri ANBU and the Wall entirely by swimming beneath them all once more, but ironically these waters were even more dangerous than the Kaizoku Sea was. While the sea was filled with all sorts of monstrous creatures, this chain of islands was home to a single type of creature.
It was infamously known as the Jellyfish Islands for a very good reason; the waters were filled with the tiny stinging beasts, and I very much doubted we could avoid them all. Some of them were incredibly toxic and people had been known to die from their stings.
Furthermore, the seafloor of the island chain probably wasn’t deep enough for us to move out of sensor range, and I was certain the hunter-nin had other ways to detect people from afar.
Karin’s map illuminated the dire situation. On the Kiri side of the border, ANBU squads of four were posted at each half kilometre section of the Wall. Shinobi could cover that distance in less than a minute. There was also an ominously large stretch of land before it where there wasn’t a single life-form.
However, more interestingly was a cluster Karin had marked as civilian and genin chakra signatures, gathered in a small bay very near the Wall itself.
Ragged clothing, thin faces even more emaciated than mine and Karin’s, these people were starving and dying. Even as we stared down on them from our hiding spot amongst the cliffs, I could see a man in his thirties hack up a glob of blood, huge heaving coughs racking his body. A baby cried pitifully as its mother rocked it listlessly, and children could be seen carrying out chores with stick-thin arms.
For a moment I felt enormous, crushing guilt at what I was going to do. Then I gritted my teeth, shoved it all away and flipped through a series of handsigns. My chakra whispered into their systems, and one by one I fed their desperation and longing for the promise of something better.
I inflamed the worry a mother felt for her children if they stayed even a day longer in this wretched country, grew the hope in those too young to know better, and muted the concerns of those who knew the Bloody Plains were named such for a very good reason. And in the ones who all but given up, I fed the thought even if I were to die, would that really be so bad?
I watched them talk each other into the attempt, allowed those few who were truly against it to leave, and coaxed the rest into splitting up into three groups.
They were starving, sick and hopeless enough to attempt a run.
I prayed Karin and I would fare better than they would.
The Wall stood ahead.
The Bloody Plains stretched out before it, a graveyard of more bones than earth. Even just looking at it from afar, I could see small lumps of colour that marked rotting corpses. I presumed the Kiri-nin must clear the field at some point or else the entire ground would be covered, but they obviously hadn’t done so in the last few days.
It was a hugely intimidating and gruesome sight. There wasn’t cover anywhere for nearly an entire kilometre; it was a space for slaughter, pure and simple.
The hunters patrolled the area in squads of four, and I had no doubt there was a sensory shinobi within the Kiri outpost in contact with them all. They undoubtably already knew we were here. I had directed the three civilian groups to the best starting points I could give them, though with ninja speed that wouldn’t do much. I just hoped some of the genin nuke-nin would put up enough of a fight to distract them for a time.
At the chosen moment when the sun had just begun to sink beneath the horizon, painting the sky in ominous crimson, simultaneously all the groups began to run.
We were alert like we’d never been before, and the people around me were sprinting like mad men. My eyes flicked from side to side, trying to spot the Kiri-nin but unable to. I knew they were there, Karin told me they were, but I couldn’t see them.
Karin squeezed my shoulders tight in warning, and a beat later, the hunters arrived.
I made sure to stay with the group for the beginning of the run, not wishing for the sensor-nin to be able to distinguish our chakra signatures and alert the squad. But as soon as the four ANBU reached us, I shot forward on silent feet, moving as swiftly as I could with all the stealth I possessed.
Behind us, the shrieks of the wounded and dying began to fill the air.
“Please! Not my child!”
“Argh - !”
“No, no!”
Their blood-curling screams were punctuated with sickening squelches as skin and bone were pierced and sliced, corpses falling to the mud with fleshy smacks. From the sound of it, the four hunter-nin were slaughtering the other runners with such casual ease that it was disgusting. Guilt twisted in my gut like a knife while Karin gripped my shoulders tighter, and I didn’t turn to look.
The two teens with ninja training who I had convinced to remain with the group began to sprint to the sides as I nudged the genjutsu. Another suggestion and several water clones flickered into existence out of the muck, using more chakra than the teens should have spent. They would tire too quickly to be able to reach the Wall now.
Two of the hunter-nin immediately abandoned the civilians and focused on the shinobi, slicing the clones down at an ominous rate and I felt the genjutsu shroud I’d layered over the real teen on my left shatter.
He struggled, briefly and in vain, before he too fell with a gurgle, his life blood to join the rest on the plains.
I commanded my last thrall on the right to make a sharp U-turn and flee straight back, hoping to draw his pursuer further away from us. The man instead brought his hands together in a very recognisable seal and I could feel my shroud on the boy fade, then the genjutsu controlling him, and then my own shroud shattered.
With my focus freed up I poured on the speed, running faster than I’d ever done in my life. Karin’s rapidly fluttering fingers notified me that it wasn’t fast enough.
I twisted my head to glance behind, briefly taking in the four hunters closing in on us, the rest of the civilians having all joined the earth.
“Wait! Please, I was under a – “
One passed the fleeing boy I’d used as a distraction and took his head clean off with a casual swipe, ignoring his pleading. As I dodged a spray of senbon from the nearest kunoichi with a blood-speckled mask, I brought my hands up.
Water Style: Severing Wave
With a single seal, a jet of highly pressurised water shot from my mouth and sliced the slowest hunter-nin’s left hand clean off before he managed to fling himself away from the spray, the other two smoothly sliding below and one leaping above. The one who had jumped briefly fared better than his comrade before he lost his head as a second jet, so small it could scarcely be seen in the wake of the first, caught him in the air.
Ninjutsu and kunai bombarded my position and I abruptly stopped, stomping hard on the ground, a seal blooming beneath my feet. The weapons crashed and fell to the mud, the explosive seals on them kicking up huge dirt clods just outside my barrier. I leapt straight through the shimmering walls and over the blasts.
We sailed over the heads of the ANBU who didn’t seem to see us and began to bombard the barrier with water jutsu. The now one-handed shinobi wasn’t fooled, peeling off the assault and slashing out in a whirling lunge with his katana, aiming straight for my neck.
A sickening squelch could be heard even over the sound of my barrier breaking as metal was plunged straight into flesh.
My illusion self-disappeared off the hunter-nin’s katana, and blood burbled beneath my hands around the kunai I had just plunged into the man’s artery. I kicked off hard bone-white armour as the remaining members of his team broke the second layer of my genjutsu, and I was suddenly hard-pressed to dodge all their attacks.
Avoiding the shuriken, I missed the ninja wire attached. I jerked in shock when they curved in the air, wrapping straight around the both of us in a suffocating grip.
My last second seal-less kawarimi saved Karin and I from death via electrocution as I clumsily switched places with the corpse I’d just made, scrambling to my feet after landing on my knees. The smell of burnt flesh notified me of the fate I’d barely escaped, and I made it two steps forwards before something hard hit my left side and blasted me clean off my feet.
Karin cried out as the force wrenched her arms off my neck and we both tumbled uncontrollably across the muddy floor. I was standing an instant later, heart pounding and blood thrumming with icy terror.
Water Style: Water Wall
Only needing a single hand sign, the speed of my jutsu was fast enough to prevent the female hunter-nin from piercing her katana through my sister. And then I had no time to defend her further as the other shinobi closed in on my position.
From the corner of my eye I was able to see a small ball of crimson hidden within a shimmering dome; behind my water wall Karin had activated one of my barrier seals and was curled with her head buried in her arms. I felt a fierce surge of pride for my sister activating the tag immediately despite being obviously terrified and disorientated.
The barrier was tiny, meant to conserve her chakra, and it wouldn’t withstand a determined jounin long with only Karin powering it. But it would protect her from stray kunai and jutsu, and that was all I could ask for at this point. Something squirmed within me as I saw her quivering form, but I pushed it down and focused on not dying.
The kunoichi had abandoned her assault on the barrier after a single attempt, obviously having come to the erroneous conclusion that I was powering it after seeing me set the last one. I was faster and more agile without Karin on my back, so I leapt and twirled through the duo using my control over water to perform the wave-skimming technique on mud. I wove in and out, keeping close enough to stop them from using ninjutsu to prevent friendly-fire, but far enough to stay away from close-combat, which I would certainly lose at.
After two near misses in which the man nearly punched my head clean off, the second time ripping several crimson strands from my scalp purely from being in the wake of his fist, I changed tactics.
I did a hop, skip, jump; and then I was in the air whirling like a top, water being drawn to my body from all directions the battlefield, swirling around my form like a pressurised spinning saw. I landed on my hands and kicked my legs out while continuing to spiral. The water followed my movements and the liquid shot out in an omni-directional wave of pure cutting power.
The two ANBU surrounding me were shredded. They fell to the ground in bloody chunks, and I heaved deep breaths after the intense exertion.
A puff of smoke revealed one had escaped with a substitution.
I poured chakra into my limbs and blazed a trail for Karin. The barrier seal – keyed only to mine and Karin’s blood – allowed me through without hesitation. Snatching her from the ground I took off, once more running for the Wall.
My heart sank as I saw another squad of four speeding straight towards us from where they had been guarding another section of the wall, and the last member who had lived – the kunoichi – fell back to pelt us with weaponry. I’d hoped they’d have taken longer, perhaps played with their prey, but the sensor must have alerted them to us.
They fell into step with the kunoichi, spreading out to flank us from all sides and I felt sweat trickle down my back.
Genjutsu: Siren’s Lament
A beautiful, haunting song echoed across the battlefield, the sound as intoxicating as it was alien. A woman’s voice could be heard singing, just out of earshot, as if the words could be understood if one strained to listen a little harder.
And like the sirens in the myths, the song drained those caught in its spell of energy, simulating a bone-deep weariness in our pursuers and they slowed and stumbled. And yet despite the unnatural exhaustion and tear-inducing grief of the song, it was so beautiful, so mesmerising that they never wanted it to end.
Hear me. My illusion whispered in their minds. Hear me and sleep.
Rest, and all will be well
Behind us, our pursuers collapsed to their knees, energy abandoning their limbs as their will was sapped. All but one set of footsteps, which stumbled but did not fall.
“Kai!” I heard a roar from behind me, and the sheer force of the dispel made me stagger.
The genjutsu unravelled and for a moment, the entire battlefield was still and no one moved, such was the strength of the illusion’s hold on them. And then as their senses returned, they processed the fact that we were no longer there.
The hunter-nin squad instantly began blasting our surroundings with wide-scale ninjutsu. Beneath my illusory shroud, I darted sideways with Karin’s arms once more tightly around my neck.
I dodged two jets of water, my feet skidding on the mud, but had to redirect the third. The hunters immediately noticed and closed in on our position, flanking us from three directions.
My lungs heaved and I dropped the now redundant genjutsu to conserve chakra. I had more chakra than most chuunin, most jounin too, but I was running dangerously low after so much extreme exertion.
Then they all peeled away.
I was only able to feel confusion for a fraction of a second before it was too late; there was sonic boom, the sound of the very air parting before something with immense speed, and then a sword was shoved straight through Karin and I. I choked, the shock of seeing a piece of metal appearing from my stomach making me jerk to an abrupt halt.
And then Karin screamed, high pitched with terror, and her chakra surged.
Behind me, the ominous rattle of chains filled my ears.
I half-pulled half-fell off the sword, the metal leaving my body with a sickening squelch, heart pounding in my ears. Blood oozed out but I ignored it, both hands occupied with holding my sister, head suddenly spinning and nausea bubbling up. I turned around and was greeted by the sight of Karin impaled on a blade, golden chakra chains from her back stabbing into the man holding its hilt.
All three of us crumpled as Karin’s first activation of the Uzumaki Adamantine Chains dissolved into golden light, and the four hunters behind shot forwards again, the hunt unexpectedly continuing. In my haste I roughly shoved Karin’s arm into her mouth and my sister bit down on her own limb, chakra surging through her small form.
With both Karin and myself wounded and four enemies mere seconds away, I – who had died by water and been reborn into it – clasped my hands in a prayer, palm against palm.
The mud churned as liquid abandoned it, the slight mist in the air fading as it coalesced into droplets, and even the blood of the man Karin’s chains had speared were drawn towards me in a swirling vortex that spun about us and towered towards the sky.
“Water Style: Water Shock Wave!” I roared the name of the technique for extra power, my words going unheard beneath the thundering spray.
The whirling pillar of elemental fury erupted outwards, resoaking the ground and sweeping all the ANBU away, water churning and crushing in a shocking display. I could see them whipping about like rag dolls, their limbs shattering into bursts of crimson before being lost in the flurry.
I gulped a soldier pill down in the silent aftermath, having a hard time swallowing around my dry-heaving before hefting Karin back up – once more staggering towards the Wall.
Karin’s legs gripped me firmly as her strength returned to her and her free arm wrapped around my head, hovering before my mouth. Biting deeply into my little sister’s scar-ridden arm, my staggering firmed. Nourishing chakra and vitality flowed into me healing my wounds, and thus fuelled by the very life energy of my sister, I ran on.
We had scarcely made it ten steps forwards before Karin fearfully tapped a warning out on my shoulder. The third squad we’d anticipated that was close enough to intercept us had arrived.
I was exhausted, running on chemicals, adrenaline and sheer willpower. I doubted Karin was any better. But we were so close.
The Wall was bustling with people, lit with beacons of fire and the open gates tauntingly beckoned us closer. I could see a group of people gesturing wildly and several ninja with medic aprons and huge boxes at their sides waiting at the threshold.
Running far faster than an exhausted kid carrying a passenger, the four new ANBU flickered to a stop between us and the Wall.
“Karin, water!” I gasped out as I zigzagged madly, staggering like a drunk as weaponry flashed past.
My sister unravelled a scroll from her waist and suddenly a deluge of water exploded from the paper and ink. It burbled forth, gallons and gallons of the clear liquid drenching the landscape beneath our feet and turning it from a muddy field into a bog. Throwing myself into the spray, I gathered the liquid with my will and enveloped us in a coating of seawater.
Water Style: Water Bullet
We shot forwards like a gunshot, bursting straight towards the Kiri ninja blockade they had formed, enveloped within the bullet itself. The hunter-nin platoon simultaneously made handsigns and an enormous earthen wall rumbled up from the ground, like a giant awakening from long slumber.
I sharpened the waves around us and didn’t stop.
We exploded out the other side in a spinning water drill, chunks of earth and human flying everywhere as I ploughed straight through both technique and one of the casters.
The stream of water from the scroll died down, and combined with the momentum loss from breaking through the wall, my water bullet splashed harmlessly to the sodden ground. I spun smoothly out of our bubble, sprinting forwards without a pause. The living Kiri-nin pursued.
Karin’s right hand detached from its death grip around my neck to flash through sign language. Another squad of reinforcements sixty seconds out, and still the Wall was two hundred metres away.
A fit civilian could do that in under a minute. A shinobi running straight could cross that distance in mere seconds. With three ANBU in pursuit, those two hundred meters might as well have been miles.
The Wall was alive with activity, the Konoha shinobi manning the entranceway twitching with tension, alert and anxious. A man was speaking into a loudspeaker, shouting non-stop encouragements that I couldn’t hear over the pounding of my heart. They probably rarely ever saw people make it this close.
Shuriken sliced through the place Karin and I occupied but a moment ago, and my deception was revealed. Chakra spiked and we reappeared several feet left from our position as the illusion unravelled.
I popped another soldier pill, something I would sorely regret if I lived long enough to do so, and leapt into the air. Sandalled soles glowed with strange seals, English script unfurling in the air and the wind gathered beneath my feet and firmed. I jumped farther still, springing off my air platform to ascend even higher and closer to the Wall.
Then I spoke, the foreign, lilting tongue of English weaving my seals, and alien words wrote themselves in the air right behind the running ninja down below. The glowing cyan blue circles of letters all enclosing one single, unmistakable kanji.
Explode.
Even high up above them, I could hear the enormous detonations and the screams of they caused. Humans erupted into showers of gore and body parts, falling into the waters I had summoned, the churning bog momentarily bleeding red before mud turned it all brown again.
Karin updated me in my peripheral vision: my seals had gotten one of them, and one of the remaining pair had lost an arm, not having escaped the blast radius in time. I glanced down to see the man cauterise it with a glowing hand, his footsteps barely even faltering.
Despite myself, I felt admiration well up in my chest. There was a reason why Kiri hunter-nin were known all across the Elemental Nations as the best; they were absolutely relentless. I discarded the useless emotion a second later, flinging myself to the side as lightning bolts ripped through the space I had vacated in the nick of time.
The soles of my feet were getting uncomfortably warm, a sign that my air-walking seals were quickly overheating, the prototypes proving they weren’t yet up to par. Karin dropped a handful of pellets without prompting, and huge clouds of smoke ballooned beneath us.
Wind whipped fiercely, felt even fifteen metres in the air, and the grey smoke was forcibly dispersed. Not even a heartbeat later the Uzumaki pair leaping through the air were pierced by a lighting jutsu, so quick we didn’t have time to react. Our bodies were launched even higher from the sheer force of the jolt, before dispersing into a colourful display of butterflies. The glittering creatures fluttered and danced, mocking in their serenity, before a surge of chakra tore the illusion apart.
The real siblings were on the ground, mere feet from the gate.
Behind us, even I felt a huge swell of energy as someone accessed their entire chakra network. The enormous pressure was the only warning for the huge burst of lightning that shot forward, blasting a straight line through the gate and causing the Konoha shinobi standing there to scatter, some falling to the floor as shocks bled off the bolt.
Dropping like stones, two corpses fell to the mud with a final, fleshy thud.
Once more, we burst into butterflies.
The real Karin and I hit the top of the Wall with a loud crash, the last tier of the triple-layered illusion breaking with the impact and startling the Fire country men and women manning their posts.
We tumbled straight across the hard rock floor of the battlement walkway from one side of the Wall to the other, smashing to a stop against the stone parapet.
For a long moment, we lay there, stunned and exhausted.
Then I rolled over and vomited, a disgusting mixture of ration bars and half-digested seafood spewing all over the grey stone, and nearly faceplanted in it as my arms gave out. I didn’t have the energy to to react as strong hands caught me and lifted me up, my world spinning.
“Karin.” I uttered, voice shaking and my lungs working over-time.
Karin also had several Konoha shinobi crowded around her, and shakily raised herself from where she had landed, her thins arms trembling with the effort.
“Aniki.” Her voice wavered. “Did we…make it?” The incredulity told me that she too had scarcely dared to hope it was possible.
“- reprisals from Kiri, tell the medic wing to prep for two patients and get Daichi and Hirakawa up here now!”
I panned my eyes to the side, following the arms holding me up to a rugged blue-haired man with the Konoha leaf on his forehead. His barked commands swam in and out of hearing range, but I ignored him as I staggered to Karin at the same time as a man vaulted over Konoha’s side of the Wall. He rushed to my sister, pressing a green glowing hand resting against her back, and I suppressed the instinct to tear him away.
“Yes. We did, Karin.” I answered her question belatedly, swaying where I stood.
The hand on my shoulder squeezed gently, bringing my eyes back to the commander of the Wall.
“Welcome to the Land of Fire.” His brown eyes gazed at me with a mix of awe and disbelief that was equal to my own, and I suddenly wondered how many runners he’d seen die on the Bloody Plains before us. If he’d ever met a successful one.
The Land of Fire. We made it.
Muscles starting to spasm from soldier pill abuse and absolutely covered in mud and gore, I tripped and stumbled my way over to stare down at the Bloody Plains.
Our path could be clearly seen in the carnage that lined the barren field from the far treeline to the gate. Bodies of other Water country refugees littered the mud right next to the trees, showing they hadn’t gotten far. Their numbers dropped as they were picked off, and then they were joined by hunter-nin corpses. Despite my bone-deep exhaustion, triumph rose and burned fiercely in my breast as I followed the trail of bodies to the earthen wall, and then the gate.
We had killed ten of them - nearly half an entire platoon.
The remaining two members of the Kiri hunter-nin stared back from the base of the Wall, white masks pointed up and focused in my direction. Both groups stood still for a long moment; me looking down and the Kiri-nin looking up.
I was grinning, I realised. Teeth bared with vomit, blood and filth from the Bloody Plains; I was smiling.
The men on the ground broke the stand-off first, flickering away to their former comrades. Each destroyed the corpses before vanishing from sight entirely, leaving only the bodies of civilians behind to rot on the battlefield. I turned my back on the Bloody Plains and the Land of Water, making my way to Karin, who had since collapsed in a dead faint.
Kneeling down, I placed a hand on her chest, feeling the comforting rise and fall of her breath.
We were alive.
Alive and free.