"Yami?" Jōtarō's booming voice demanded. "Why'd you close the door?"
For half an eternity, Hazō and every other member of the team froze. His brain stuttered with panic for a long second before he forced it back into gear. Distract, evade, fight...yes!
"Sensei, make sexy noises!" Hazō whispered. "Keiko, PMYF out the window! Noburi—"
"We're ninja, but we're not looking for a fight," Inoue-sensei called, pitching her voice to carry and filling it with calm as she moved to stand in the middle of the room, slightly offset from the door. She slid her feet slowly and carefully as she went so as not to step on the caltrops that were strewn thickly around. In the frozen silence they made faint scritch and tink noises as she pushed them aside.
Once she was on her mark, Inoue-sensei took a combat stance and then glanced at Akane, hands dancing in exaggerated battlesign that was just barely visible in the trace of moonlight that came through the small window: get light. "Your people are safe and unhurt," she said aloud, keeping her voice calm and confident. "We have no intention of hurting them as long as things stay calm."
"If I hear anyone moving or any techniques, I'll kill you," Jōtarō said through the door.
Inoue-sensei laughed softly. "Don't you think that would put a damper on what could be a promising relationship?" she asked, a trace of throaty purr slipping into her voice. "One of my team is getting a light but otherwise we're not doing anything."
From Jōtarō's room came the sound of a door whispering open. Hazō saw Inoue-sensei notice it; she paused, then grimaced and shook her head slightly.
"So, what happens next?" she asked. "This room's pretty small; if we go at it the people that you're supposed to be guarding are going to end up dead." She waited a moment, listening; when no response was forthcoming she continued. "You are guarding them, right? You seem like a great fighter, but I don't get a 'spy' vibe off you."
Light blossomed as Akane unsealed a lit oil lamp. Hazō blinked in the sudden light, raising a hand to shade his eyes while they adjusted. Akane set the lamp on the ground by the wall; it dimmed the light and meant there were shadows everywhere, but it also put the flame out of the way and left her hands free.
The moment there was light to see, Inoue-sensei pointed at Noburi and then at the window with a not kidding expression. Noburi hesitated, looking displeased at the idea of abandoning his team. A raised eyebrow from Inoue-sensei got him moving and he cat-footed across the floor, stepping carefully around the caltrops now that he had light to see them.
"I'm opening the door slightly so I can hear better," Jōtarō said. "Stay calm."
Inoue-sensei held up a hand and Noburi froze.
Moving with the speed of a man stepping up to the gallows, the door creaked open a handspan.
Inoue-sensei made a moue of irritation but didn't say anything. Her head turned a fraction of an inch so she could flick her eyes around the room, gauging the exact positions of the civilians and the team.
"If you need the door open, I need a little more security," she said. "Whiskers, cover the boy. Don't hurt him unless there's a problem. Fish, join him."
Hazō rolled his eyes at the callsign—it sounded silly and only got worse when you knew that it owed its origin to the hated 'Mr. Mew' nickname. Still, he said nothing as he and Noburi quickly moved to the window where the boy and his mother lay unconscious. He peeled the boy's shirt back and began gliding his finger over the characters of the tattooed cypher. Noburi walked up the wall to where he could get both feet out the window without making noise.
"Nobody leaves," Jōtarō said. "Close the window and latch it."
Hazō glanced up just in time to see a mirror being withdrawn back to Jōtarō's side of the door. Noburi looked at Inoue-sensei; at her nod he climbed back in and pulled the shutter closed, clicking the latch into place.
"Five on one," Inoue-sensei said, her voice relaxed even though her expression said she really wanted to growl the words. "We aren't being paid to kill and we'd rather not cause an international incident. Let's just walk away, okay?"
"If you thought you could take me, you would have," Jōtarō said. "Personally, I'm betting I can carve two of you before the rest can react, then work my through the others. You might get some hits in, but you'll still be dead."
Inoue-sensei snorted. "Pull the other one. The DMZ is the only thing keeping us from ripping your head off and spitting in your neck."
"You think so?" Jōtarō said. "Tell me, how are you going to rip my head off after I fill that room with fire?"
"You'd kill the civilians too," Inoue-sensei said. "You'd fail your mission."
"Looks like I'm pretty close to failing my mission right now," Jōtarō said. "My orders are to ensure that those two don't fall into enemy hands first, get them to safety second."
Inoue-sensei sighed. "You know, I really hate that about our lives," she said sadly. "Doesn't it bother you sometimes? I mean, the boy is...what, thirteen? Fourteen? He's not a fighter, he didn't choose this life. We should protect children, not kill them in the interest of politics."
There was a pause. "What are you talking about?" Jōtarō asked, confused. "He's a nobody. A civilian."
"He's still a kid," Inoue-sensei said. "Do you have kids? Or nephews, nieces, younger cousins, that kind of thing?"
The pause was longer this time. "Yeah," he said. "My sister's boy. Turned eight a month before I went on this mission."
"Imagine that this boy was your nephew," Inoue-sensei said. "And some other group of ninja was standing over him with blades in hand. Is that the kind of world you want to live in?" She hurried to add, "We don't have orders to kill him and we don't want to. The only way he ends up hurt is if you start a fight."
Hazō glanced up for an instant to check if anyone was signaling him. Noburi was standing over him, hands twitching with the suppressed desire to summon his Water Whip, but he clearly didn't dare to call the technique for fear Jōtarō would hear. He caught Hazō's gaze for an instant and took a deep breath before nodding in reassurance.
Akane was standing to the left of the bed, watching the door as intently as a cat at a mousehole. Keiko was opposite her, the drawers of the dresser half-open after her hurried search. Her eyes were shifting around intently as she used the Zephyr's Reach to move caltrops one at a time from their positions on the floor up onto the bed where they would be out of the way. Inoue-sensei worked alongside her, and between the two of them the floor was being cleared up with impressive speed.
His teacher caught him looking, scowled, and pointed with her chin to say get back to it! Hazō nodded and returned to tracing cypher characters.
"I'm still waiting for a reason I shouldn't kill you all," Jōtarō said.
"Like I said, we don't have to fight," Inoue-sensei said. "I'm thinking there's a way for all of us to win."
"Oh?" Jōtarō said. "Do tell."
"Your mission is the kid and his mom, right? We're here for the spy. You take yours, we take ours, we're good to go."
"I've got a counteroffer," Jōtarō said. "You surrender now and I don't kill you."
"That isn't quite the deal I was looking for," said Inoue-sensei. She glanced over at Hazō to see how far along he was. She grimaced when she saw he was only a third of the way down the boy's back, then took a deep breath and looked back to the door.
"You realize that this is a no-win for you, right?" she said. "You come in here and start something, you're not walking away. A couple of explosive tags and everyone in here dies for sure. If we win, you're dead and your mission fails. If it looks like we're going to lose, we'll take you with us. And I know you sent your clone for backup, but the genin here aren't going to make a—"
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
There was the sound of running footsteps as someone entered Jōtarō's room at ninja speed.
"What's going on here?!" said the female jōnin who, based on the speed she'd entered with, had clearly been malingering when she said her leg was injured.
Mari swore. "Collie, exit! Tsunami!"
Tsunami was one of the simpler battle plans the team had evolved. It meant hit hard, once, and then run—just like a real tidal wave. In a group that included Kagome, 'hit hard' meant 'blow everything sky high.'
Across the room, Keiko ignored her assigned role—hurling explosive-tagged kunai—and instead pivoted to the left, reaching for the dresser.
Akane's hands came up, left palm towards the window and right towards the door. Hazō's eyes widened; he threw himself down and covered his ears as Akane's shaped charges went off in a double thunderclap, blasting a hole a meter wide through the wall above him and to his right. Noburi leaped back into the corner to avoid having his arm taken off as Akane created an escape route for the team.
Before Hazō or Noburi could use that escape route, Jōtarō came through the half-demolished wall of the sitting room. His sword whirled around him in a gleaming steel net and he moved so fast that his form blurred.
"Genjutsu: Special Hell," Inoue-sensei whispered, her fingers flicking towards Jōtarō like an adder striking. The massive jōnin collapsed to his knees, clutching his head and screaming in horror, unable to look away from the tiny redhead's gaze. His sword went flying across the room and under the bed.
Komori, the not-actually-injured blonde jōnin from Iwagakure, burst into the room and charged at Inoue-sensei with an Earth Country battlecry on her lips. Hazō saw what was about to happen, but he couldn't make his traitorous body move fast enough to throw himself between his teacher and the enemy jōnin.
Inoue-sensei didn't look away from Jōtarō, but she obviously saw Komori coming. The redhead smiled and a long-hidden burden seemed to fall from her shoulders. She took a calm breath and didn't move as Komori's fist blasted forward at her head—
Komori leaped back as a hundred-kilo wooden dresser went flying through where she'd just been, hurled by a tiny girl with strength powered by chakra, love, and terror. The Iwa jōnin landed off-balance and stumbled, giving the team just enough time to dive forward and throw themselves between their teacher and her almost-killer.
Hazō came in fast, overamped muscles screaming as he pushed them to their limits and beyond with every scrap of chakra he could manage. Komori was a taijutsu specialist; he needed to end this fast while she was off balance or they were all dead. Noburi's Water Whip cracked over his shoulder in a combination they'd practiced a thousand times; Komori would have to twist to the side to avoid it and that would put her exactly in position for Hazō's smashing front kick to the hip, which would actually be a feint covering a punch to the throat—
Komori grabbed the Whip and yanked, hard.
Noburi flew forward and smashed into Hazō's back. The impact flung Hazō forward into a straight punch from Komori that would have gone in through his sternum and out through his spine if he hadn't managed to deflect it. It still got a piece of his shoulder and sent him spinning to the floor, agony shrieking through the dislocated joint. He landed hard on Noburi; both of them grunted at the impact, but neither one paused before rolling away in opposite directions. No matter how much it hurt, you didn't stop moving in a ninja fight unless you were tired of living.
Komori absently kicked Noburi's ribs in and launched herself at Hazō to finish him while his arm was disabled. A storm of kunai came in from her right, forcing her to pause long enough to slap the weapons away before finishing her attack. Hazō hurled himself back, desperately throwing out defensive strikes to hold the stronger woman off as he backpedaled.
"By the power of YOUTH!"
Akane came in from Komori's eight o'clock with a legsweep that Komori cartwheeled over, kicking the world's most wonderful apprentice in the head as she went by. Akane tanked the kick with nothing more than a grunt and fired back with an elbow smash that would have broken Komori's neck if she hadn't leaped aside.
The delay had given Hazō just enough time to pop his shoulder back into place. He flexed his fingers to be sure—yes, it felt like someone had stabbed a sword through it, but the limb was functional again.
His eyes flicked around, desperately looking for options. He and his team were good, but Komori was better. They'd been fighting for only a few seconds and she'd already disabled Noburi and injured both Hazō and Akane. Even worse, she'd done it with contemptuous ease. Hazō didn't stand a chance against her at anything less than maximum boost, and he'd burned almost half his reserves on that one pass. He had enough for only one more try, so it would need to count.
Escape through the hole in the outside wall? No. Komori was between Keiko and the exit. Besides, Komori could outrun them.
Escape through the door into the sitting room, then into the hallway? No. Too far, Komori was still blocking Keiko's way, and Noburi wouldn't be able to move fast enough with the broken ribs.
Fight? No. They'd lose. Maybe if Inoue-sensei were fighting with them, but she was busy holding...Jōtarō...wait.
"Spearfisher, target the big one!" Hazō shouted, pointing to Jōtarō. Keiko didn't ask questions, she just fired a brace of kunai at Jōtarō's defenseless head.
As Hazō had hoped, Komori sprang back to Jōtarō's side, intercepting the weapons and swatting them away before they could reach their target. It put her exactly where he needed her.
Sorry, Honami, Hazō thought. He ran through a series of handseals and emptied his chakra coils into the most powerful Multiple Earth Wall jutsu he could manage. The instant it was complete he grabbed Inoue-sensei and flung them both backwards towards the bed.
The granite wall surged up out of the floor at Hazō's feet, rising at an angle that took the kneeling and immobile Jōtarō in the chest and rammed him up into Komori. She danced back in surprise, easily avoiding the attack but failing to stop the wall from slamming Jōtarō into and through the ceiling.
When used on a wooden floor, the Multiple Earth Wall creates a chakra construct that is, temporarily, identical to normal granite. Granite, as it happens, is heavy. Really heavy. Hazō had created a lot of it, and the fight was happening on the second floor of the inn.
The floor collapsed under them and all seven ninja—well, six and a red smear—plummeted to the ground below. Inoue-sensei was still coming out of her genjutsu trance and wasn't moving on her own; her dead weight pulled Hazō off balance and kept him from landing smoothly. Something in his ankle shrieked as he hit; he let go of Inoue-sensei so that he could roll to absorb the impact. She hit the ground hard, her head bouncing off a broken piece of oak flooring. Blood splashed everywhere, but it was just a cut. She pushed herself to her feet, yanked Hazō upright, and looked around to assess the situation.
Hazō had created the wall in a line that split the room in half, trapping Komori on one side and the team on the other. In the process of falling the wall had ripped through the front of the building, leaving a wide-open route of escape.
"Go, go, go!" Inoue yelled, pulling Noburi up into a fireman's carry and waving the others towards the exit. The stout genin screamed as her shoulder dug into his broken ribs but she ignored it. Hazō, Keiko, and Akane fled past her, racing for the edge of the resort and the carefully-prepared slips that awaited them. Inoue-sensei was almost stepping on their heels as they went, urging them to greater speed.
o-o-o-o
"What were you thinking, sensei?" Keiko said, her voice wobbling halfway between rage and misery. Distantly, she felt like she should probably be bothered by the audible lack of control. She really wasn't. She'd held it together through the frantic race through Kagome's traps. She'd been silent as they spent two hours doubling back and water-walking to ensure they weren't being followed. She'd said nothing when they reached the safety of camp, and cleaned their wounds, and made a fire. That entire time the terror / horror had been clawing at her throat like a wild animal trying to rip its way out. She had earned a moment of uncontrol!
Mari-sensei forced a very unconvincing laugh. "Aw, what's the problem? I knew you guys had it. I figured I'd just get the big guy out of the way and—"
"No," Keiko said. "That is not what you thought. You expected to die."
Mari-sensei-sensei looked away.
"Yeah, I did," she said finally. "I couldn't see any way to get everyone out of that. We couldn't all get out the window before Jōtarō came through—despite Mr. Mew's very good suggestion about the PMYF, we didn't all have sightlines for it." She turned to Hazō with a teasing smile. "Also, 'make sexy noises'? I mean, I know you're growing up fast, but maybe that wasn't the best time to ask for a show, right? And, anyway, I really don't think of you in that way, so maybe we should find you a girl your own—"
"Sensei," Keiko said warningly.
Mari-sensei sighed. "Yeah, okay. I thought I could stall him long enough for us to slip out one by one. Then he shut that down and I had to fall back on Plan Z."
"What's Plan Z?" Noburi asked, shifting carefully as he looked for a position that didn't bother his ribs too much.
Mari-sensei laughed. "Talk fast, buy time, try not to die until you can run away," she said. "Always worked for me before, and it came through again, right?"
"We could have just blown the wall right away instead of waiting," Hazō said quietly.
Mari-sensei nodded. "I know," she said. "But it was still under control. I was confident that Jōtarō wasn't going to try to take the five of us on simultaneously without knowing what we were capable of. I heard him send his clone out for reinforcements, but I thought he was going for the genin who guard this place. They wouldn't have mattered much, and it would actually have been useful to have them in a known location so we didn't run into them on the way out. Sure, the clone could probably have gone on to collect some Hot Springs ninja, but that would have taken long enough it didn't matter. I just didn't think of Komori."
"You could have died, sensei," Keiko said. "You tried to die."
Her teacher smiled softly. "Keiko," she said, "we all die. I'm not looking to meet the Reaper, but I've made my peace with it. We couldn't have handled both Jōtarō and Komori together; they would have carved us all up like a festival goose. I knew that if I could catch Jōtarō in my genjutsu I could hurt him badly enough that he'd be useless for a long time. Way longer than you would have needed for you lot to escape. If I hadn't taken him out we were all going down anyway, because I made a bad call. I got greedy—I thought we could get the cypher and get out without damaging anything or anyone so that we could keep the relationship with Honami intact. We could have, too, if Komori hadn't mixed in. I screwed up, and I was the only one who could fix it."
"But not by dying!" Keiko wailed. "Sensei, I can't lose you! Please, you're all that I have left! I've lost Ami, I've lost my parents, I've lost everything! There's nothing left, you're the only thing I still lo—"
Keiko slapped her hands over her mouth, her eyes going wide in horror as she realized what she'd just said.