"Uhm."
"I know," said Sakura.
"Well," said Naruto, scratching his head.
Sakura's head came up. "What if he's right? What if that's all I am?"
"If you were, would you still be concerned about it?" asked Naruto.
"Eh?" asked Sakura.
The cat got up, favored them all with a disdainful look, then proceeded towards the door from which the sound of combat continued.
Naruto briefly wished Fate or Nanoha were here, THEY were better at explaining stuff. Oh, on second thought, Yuuno. Nanoha might go with that Combat Therapy jutsu and considering Nanoha's tendency to blow stuff up - that might not be good for Tazuna's house.
"Uhm," said the cat. "You might want to back me up while I rescue Sasuke."
Sasuke Uchiha had thought nothing about attacking the crowd of armed thugs. They were merely normal fighters after all, whereas he was an Uchiha.
He reconsidered that concept when he felt something metal and heavy impact the back of his head. He WAS a ninja though, and managed to twist just enough that the back of his skull had not met the front of his skull.
While dealing with the funny lights and massive pain in his head, Sasuke Uchiha discovered that as bad as this was - he COULD hurt even worse.
He was wrestled to the ground and then someone put a spike in each forearm to fix him to the ground.
"Now that the warmup's over," said the guy with the two-handed maul that had driven the spikes into place, "time to get on to the main event."
"Chain Lightning!"
A serpent of lightning went into the maul-wielder, arced to the sword-wielder next to him, then the guy with the metal net, then the spear-carrier next to HIM, and finally grounded itself out against a halberd-user who had managed to plant the spike of his weapon into the ground.
Haku wasted no time, freezing his bonds and shattering them as soon as he heard the thunder going off loud enough to rattle windows.
One water clone and substitution later, he was escaping with as much speed as he could. Zabuza would have to be told - that while his mission hadn't been successful - he HAD acquired some potentially useful intel.
Naruto swung his hammer, shattering the sword of someone who'd tried to block. Lightning flared and threw two other attackers backward.
Kurochan leapt towards one enemy, grabbed his face and then raked with hindclaws - producing a lot of hurt and a painful scream if not a lot of damage, then shifted to her young girl form in mid-leap to the next opponent. "You are in range of my divination. Jyuuken!"
Sakura punched at a mercenary who simply bent his back to avoid the blow. At which point ratchets released and her extensible arm made its first real use. She then retracted it and began using the blade-function of the other arm.
Kakashi looked back towards the house, smirking at something, then watched as his genin began beating the snot out of the mercenaries.
Actually, as mercenaries went, these guys looked to be pretty good. Weapon specialists all of them. Not the usual street-rabble-with-a-weapon sort. No, these looked like experts that knew how to handle their weapons. Against a typical genin they'd be at least a match in one-on-one straight fight.
That some of these weapon-experts were being launched violently into the air, or were going down smouldering with an electric sizzling, or had their chakra networks short-circuited simply indicated that the genin of Team Kakashi were not exactly typical genin.
"You did pretty good, Sasuke," noted Kakashi as he unpinned his wayward genin.
"What do you mean 'good'?" asked Sasuke, snarling slightly.
"You beat down three of these guys, even though they're apparently in the middle-upper tier among mercenaries that aren't ninja," said Kakashi.
"But..." said Sasuke, looking at where Kurochan was arguing with Naruto and Sakura about who had beaten the most mercenaries.
"They teamed up against you," noted Kakashi. "That's why genin operate as teams - because together you're stronger than alone. If you'd operated with someone watching your back - you might not need that concussion looked at."
"But, I need to kill That Man," said Sasuke.
"And you believe he's all alone - why?" asked Kakashi. "This isn't some period drama, you know. If you think you'll find him and then proceed directly to have a one-on-one showdown with your target, that is rather unlikely. I don't think I've seen that many fair fights between ninja. Of course, we are ninja and fair fights isn't exactly a specialty of anyone in that profession."
"Hnnn," hnnned Sasuke, scowling heavily.
"Your arms aren't going to be that useful for a little while," noted Kakashi. "Fortunately I know some training that doesn't involve using your hands."
The last mercenary fell, having been electrocuted, Jyuuken-struck, and hit with an extensible punch at the same time.
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(Posted Tue, 07 Dec 2010 15:29)
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