Rina couldn’t help but be excited. Everything had gone awry but they, she was handling it just fine. She was in command of a team that wasn’t meant to come across threats as large as even Named Samurai, but with her at the helm they’d taken out four Kumogakure infiltrators and had even freed about a dozen Nettou clan members.
Nana’s going to be proud no matter what. She shook her head as she stifled a grin. Yagura-sama too.
She, Akari, and Haruka had returned just in time to watch Sakai take down the last shinobi with a vicious strike to the temple, followed by a brutal stabbing as the team medic used a chakra scalpel to paralyze another for interrogation.
With her tendons and chakra pathways severed irreparably, it took little to get the kunoichi to confess her team’s mission here in the Land of Water: to steal Bloodlines. It was obvious enough at a glance, but having that confession was a necessary step for everything else to come.
A part of Rina worried what more conflict this would brew, but another part cheered at her grand participation in incapacitating the infiltrators before they had a chance to abscond with a power Kirigakure had finally come to collect on. Yagura-sama would be proud indeed.
Of course, there was still the rebuilding team left to deal with: four more shinobi and another dozen Nettou clan members to liberate. The plan for them was wholly different from the plan they’d used against the logging team, for one, the rebuilding team was a lot more alert than the former, and where they were situated was far too open for the same cat and mouse trap she’d pulled with her Genin’s Genjutsu.
There was also the fact that amongst them would be at least one Jounin, and she doubted Genin-level Genjutsu would work on a Jounin, Karatachi prodigies or no. But nonetheless, there was a plan in place, and Rina was the linchpin to its success.
As a team of one Chuunin medic-nin, two Genin Genjutsu specialists, one Genin Kenjutsu specialist, and herself, a so-called Ninjutsu specialist, an upfront encounter with a lone Jounin would be ill-advised. To begin with, now that they’d liberated half of the Nettou clan, there was no need to challenge the Kumo shinobi’s position; all they needed to do was sabotage their mission. To do that, the ship they’ve been working so hard to rebuild needed to go.
There was only one way Rina saw they could accomplish this, and that rested squarely on her ability to perform her clan’s [Hiden]. The rest of her team would stand by as reinforcements just in case anything went awry, much to Sakai’s dismay, but there was simply no other way; besides, someone had to shepherd the liberated Nettou clan members.
At the farthest edge of the shore where Rina was about half certain no sensory-nin would sense her chakra spike as she activated her Jutsu, she clipped her weapons pouch between her teeth and breathed deeply. The sun was still out, it was little more than an hour since they’d taken out the logging team, but there was no time to waste; the rebuilding team would surely notice that there weren’t any logs coming through to reinforce their rebuilding efforts.
With her pouch between her teeth, she carefully weaved the required hand seals as she stepped out of the jungle and onto the open sea. Her body began to melt and meld with the body of water, the heavy chakra cost of her transformation mitigated by the wide availability of water.
Once her neck was at the sea level, she halted the [Hydrification] technique; partial transformation was one of the basic facets of the [Hiden], so this part was no problem, it was what was to come that she worried about. Putting doubts out of her mind, Rina shot out towards the ship as quickly and as stealthily as she could, ensuring to hold up her melting head and pouch above the water as she swam.
The paper bombs in her pouch were waterproof, but there was an extent to how much, and she wasn’t about to risk the entire mission on something as trivial and stupid as wet paper bombs.
She swam in a wide arc around the ship and port where one shinobi fished and the Nettou clan laboured, even a single person doubting their eyes could alert the shinobi that something was off, and so she strained herself to travel the longer route around the ship and then approach from its unsupervised backside.
After what felt like an eternity of anxiety but was really only a couple of minutes of swimming, Rina made contact with the ship’s underside. Part of its backside was still in dire need of repair, as there was a gaping hole in its hull, likely from cannon fire. Here comes the hard part. She gulped at the gap that would serve as her infiltration point; it should be a walk in the park for a Hozuki such as herself to extend her body with the water and fit into even the smallest crack, but this was where she faced difficulty with her clan’s prized [Hiden].
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Manipulating the body of water she becomes a part of to bolster or reform herself was a difficult thing for her. She’d watched her father, the Third Mizukage, become as large as the very ship she was trying to infiltrate once as a mere demonstration, and yet she had always struggled to replicate it in the smallest forms.
Of course, she could use any body of water to supplement the cost of her transformation, but using the body of water to grow or even shrink herself any more than what she was originally had been a constant struggle.
Not this time, this time…this time lives depend on it, Rina, lives depend on you. She steeled her nerves and let her chakra and will seep into the water around her as Nana Megumi always instructed. She imagined the water becoming a part of her as her chakra suffused it, but her will didn’t take as quickly as her chakra did. Come on, Rina, do this and Yagura-sama might see your true worth, they’ll all see your true worth. You’re the daughter of a Mizukage!
She poured more chakra and felt her will extend just a bit; quick as a fox, she seized it, the water, and used it to propel her watery form upwards. She only needed to spill in through the gap some feet above her head, and then the rest of her would be obliged to follow. She struggled for some moments, teeth gritted and bitten into her pouch as she rose inch by inch until she could toss herself forward with a watery splash.
Panting heavily as her body drew into itself and reformed, she was in a dark, damp underside of the ship with a plethora of broken chairs, crates, and abandoned planks. She took her surroundings in quickly and found there was no one waiting to strike her. There was a stair leading up into what she assumed would be the ship’s cabins, but for now, her landing spot would do fine.
She quickly began plastering paper bombs around at any and everything that looked like it would give a good tumble: pillars holding up the next level, steps on the stairs, the walls, and even the floors and ceiling. Once she was satisfied, she started moving up to the cabin level.
It was dimly lit by a single lantern, and she could hear the Nettou workers hammering away on the other side of the ship. She had to be fast and yell for them to get away. She plastered as many paper bombs as she could in each cabin, walking through them with silent footsteps and open ears in case someone walked in on her sabotage.
She was almost out of paper bombs but fortunately only one cabin room was left; the door was torn asunder and hung limply off its hinges, so she walked in as she owned the place and plastered the last of it on its walls before starting to head out.
“Oi.”
Rina froze, her second mistake. By the time she realized this, a foot was squarely planted in her back, shoving her violently out of the cabin entirely and into another. She cursed, stood, and equipped herself with a kunai in time to weakly deflect a heavy blow from a blade.
“Kiri has found us out, huh? A bit too late but whatever.” The shinobi bore his weight on her, chipping her kunai with his blade as his hoarse voice spoke down at her.
She risked it and slid her kunai along the length of the blade, ducking just as his forward momentum ploughed him forward to rend into the wooden wall she was backed against a moment ago. Crawling on all fours into a frantic run, Rina darted into the dimly lit corridor, sights trained on the stairs leading up and out onto the deck of the ship—she only needed to get out into the open water, and she’d be scot-free, mission accomplished!
Her instincts screamed that she duck once more, and she listened; three lightning-coated shuriken blazed over her head, embedding themselves deep into the wood as she scrambled to escape. She looked over her shoulder for a split second and cursed as she had to stand her ground—the shinobi was upon her in an instant, blade chipping and grinding at her kunai.
Her opponent was a tall man covered in bandages; his face was unwrapped but injured from what looked like steam burns. She cursed inwardly for not anticipating that at least one of the shinobi would be camped within the ship—there were twelve originally, and her team had only accounted for eight after all.
“Shunsuke! Satoshi! We’ve got a rat!” the man screamed at the top of his lungs, not minding how burnt his throat must be from what the Nettou clan must’ve put him through. His eyes seared into Rina’s, not leaving them even as he yelled and thrashed at her kunai.
His blade sliced at her arm, then her thigh, before stabbing into her shoulder. She stifled a scream as she leaped away, pulling herself free of the blade even as she tripped on the stairs behind her.
He didn’t hesitate for a second to capitalize on her vulnerability, his sword reared over his head and moved to perforate her neck only to slide through with ease as Rina hastily activated her [Hydrification].
The surprise on his face didn’t last long as he muttered, “A Hozuki? I know your type.”
Rina scrambled up the stairs when the crackle of lightning channelled along his sword sounded. She raised her kunai in defence only to see it sliced in two like butter, his sword free to stab her. She liquefied herself once more, but that too was a mistake.
“Aaaaahhhh!” Electrified in her liquid state, Rina lost control over her body as it sublimed halfway between solid and liquid. Her eyes glazed over for a moment, and she was sure she lost consciousness as her form dripped all over the stairs.
Her opponent stretched his steam-boiled face with a smirk as he grasped her hair and pulled her head upright, “I wonder what I’d get for bringing in a Hozuki as well?”
Head pounding, Rina glanced at the mess of herself drooling against the floorboards; he was even stepping in her. She checked for sensation and found her chakra pathways and fingers responsive. All I need. She mirrored his smirk as she raised her hand and curled it into a single half-hand seal, “Kai!”