Naruto: The Outsider's Resolve: CH_233

His initial plan was to kill Orange-Mask and then shake off the leader before escaping—but now, as he stood on the rooftop after blasting the leader off the roof and Orange-Mask was nowhere to be seen, Takuma wondered if he had found a window to escape. He decided it was and that the window was narrow.

He could tell that his two pursuers were trying to keep the whole ordeal quiet for some reason, and the leader was especially holding back—he deduced they were trying to keep it all relatively quiet so they could rope the rest of his team. Takuma knew if he pushed it, there was a risk that the situation would escalate to a point he didn’t want it to.

He weaved hand seals for the Hidden Mist Jutsu. In a couple seconds, a mist descended over the rooftops and spilled out down the street level. He jumped down into the thickening mist and was in mid-air when he heard a soft schwing sound.

Goosebumps rose on his skin as Orange-Mask suddenly appeared in his vision, restricted by the thick mist. Orange-Mask was ascending as Takuma was dropping. The masked shinobi’s sword struck quick; Takuma only had the opportunity to raise his hands. The steel shredded his metal-platted arm guards and left a painful gash in both his arms.

Takuma cussed as he stumbled to the floor, the water tentacles stabilizing him. He held his breath and sharpened his ears. There was a pin drop silence until Takuma heard soles rubber against rough surface.

He looked up and caught Orange-Mask zooming down at him, barely a few meters away from him. A tentacle contested the razor-sharp sword with a kunai that bounced off against the sword firmly held by Orange-Mask, but Takuma sidestepped the swing at the last moment.

Orange-Mask blitzed Takuma with a sword dance the moment his feet touched the ground. Takuma was pushed to his physical limits as he moved every part of his body; every swing had the potential to end him.

Takuma’s tentacles rushed forth, but Orange-Mask immediately retreated, disappearing into a hazy mist he had created. He realized he had set up the perfect playing field for an assassination. He had to decide either to trust the training he had done to fight in the mist, or lift the jutsu to revert back to the previous combat environment.

But he wasn’t given the time to decide as his ears picked up another sound and saw a shadow jump into the air. One of the tentacles threw a kunai that Takuma caught, and he raised his hands above his head at the exact moment Orange-Mask brought his sword down at Takuma.

The sword slashed against the flat of kunai supported with both of Takuma’s hands. Sparks flew and Takuma’s heart leaped when he felt the sword slice through the kunai. His skin tingled when he felt a sharp chakra humming in the sword. He had felt it before with Kameko when she used her kenjutsu.

Takuma urged his tentacles forward. They wrapped around Orange-Mask’s thighs and waist and pulled him back away. Takuma diverted the water to strengthen the tentacles and commanded them to slam Orange-Mask to the ground as he prepared the strongest augmentation he could muster as a follow-up.

But, Orange-Mask used his core to spin in the air and got in the position. He swung his sword, cut through all the tentacles holding him, landed directly on his feet, and disappeared into the mist before Takuma could raise his fist.

This won’t do, he thought.

Takuma flexed his back, and the tentacles retreated into the water mass on his back. As much as he liked the flexibility of the tentacles, he didn’t think he could split his focus between his body and the tentacles. He needed the extra concentration to focus on his senses to help him in the mist.

He held a kunai in his left and his right empty.

“Come on,” he mouthed to himself.

The mist split near Takuma as Orange-Mask sneaked in from behind. Takuma turned and blocked the repelled sword with a kunai swing; Takuma drew closer with an augmented strike, ready to turn it into a second-form augmentation—but Takuma’s fist passed through an afterimage.

A second later, Orange-Mask reappeared to Takuma’s right. He stabbed his sword into Takuma’s neck. The blade sliced through the back of Takuma’s hood as he bent forward at the last moment.

Orange-Mask disappeared, and a volley of shuriken flew from the direction in which he had been standing a moment before. Takuma moved his kunai hand to deflect all of the shuriken. His balance was uneven, so Takuma let himself fall and rolled forward, and a split-second later, Orange-Mask appeared from above to stab the empty ground. He charged Takuma, who hit him in the crotch with a ground kick from a hands-and-knees position.

Takuma used the kick’s momentum to lift himself up and rushed a stumbling Orange-Mask. He tried to take him down to the ground, but Orange-Mask eluded Takuma’s grab with a skillful sidestep and pushed Takuma’s back to put some distance between them.

Takuma turned back, intending to continue the pressure, but Orange-Mask had disappeared.

He could do this; he could contend, Takuma said to himself—but he didn’t have a clear advantage. He was proficient in low-visibility combat, but his opponent was efficient and even masterful. And if he wasn’t winning against Orange-Mask, he feared what would happen if the leader joined the fray.

Takuma formed a quick release-seal. The visibility improved as the mist thinned out. Takuma saw Orange-Mask a few meters away from him, trying to sneak around to get behind him.

He turned around and dashed into the nearest alley as Orange-Mask gave chase.

———

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Kon leaned against the building in an alley with a groan and grabbed his head, which was hit twice on his way down. His vision swam and doubled. He fumed in anger when he remembered getting caught up in another trick. He could almost hear the Master Instructor, who had taught him to be a shinobi since he was a five-year-old babe and had turned him into a ROOT agent.

He had let himself go. It had been years since he had been involved in active combat—in fact, he didn’t like combat—it was crude and inelegant. He understood its place and importance in society; he just didn’t like participating in it. He was among the weakest in his batch and his other peers—which is why he had made himself useful in the intellectual side of things and had managed the drug trade for ROOT.

But that didn’t mean he was a slouch in combat. He cleared the ROOT standards in his category. Which was why it pissed him that he wasn’t able to engage the target in combat because he wasn’t able to stay with the target long enough.

He looked around and noticed mist from the Hidden Mist Jutsu thinning out. By the time he emerged from the alley, the mist was all but gone. His subordinate was known to use that jutsu, but he couldn’t figure out why the jutsu was released. Was his subordinate killed by the target? Or was the target able to hold an advantage in the mist? The second didn’t seem viable—which, in turn, increased the former holding true.

In one leap, Kon crossed the height to the nearby rooftop to find his subordinate and the target. As he looked around, he spotted the target running across the street. His concern for his subordinate vanished, and he furiously chased after the target. He quickly locked on the target and closed the distance.

Kon suddenly heard the sound of fighting in the opposite direction. He was surprised. Did the second target kill his other two subordinates and proceeded to find them and was now fighting his last subordinate. Kon didn’t turn away and continued chasing the target. If he had indeed lost subordinates, then he had to ensure the capture of the target.

At the entrance of another alley, Kon blitzed through hand seals for Fire Release: Running Fire. He put a finger on his lips and breathed out two streams of fire that attached to the walls on both sides and ran on the surface. The fire streams ran past the target and reached the other end of the alley, where the streams poured fire that formed a wall blocking the exit from the alley.

The target stopped and turned back to face Kon. With the fire in the background, there was a shadow over the target, which, along with the hood, obscured the target’s face.

“I’d advise that you don’t struggle; I might end up killing you,” said Kon.

The target didn’t reply and pulled out a kunai.

Kon pulled out his sword from the scabbard and dashed towards the target, but just before he reached the target, he abruptly his direction towards the wall and used it as a springboard to shoot himself to the opposite wall and then launched himself toward the target with his sword ready to cleave through.

The target jammed up for a split-second, making him a beat late as he tried to follow Kon. There was no time to evade. Kon thought the target would use his kunai to block the sword, but he was ready for a contest of strength—he had the momentum on his side. However, to his surprise, the target pulled his empty arm back with his hand clenched with a fist. It seemed that the target was planning to trade damage—accepting to be pierced with Kon’s sword in exchange for getting in a strike of his own.

Kon recalled the target’s physical strength when he had kicked his subordinate through the wall. He accepted the trade—his body had been forged from the torture the Master Instructor liked to dress up as light sparring. The target’s strength didn’t worry him.

Kon had the advantage of range as he stabbed his sword forth. He smirked as the blade cleanly pierced through the target’s shoulder. He then braced himself for the target’s hit—but as he did, he detected chakra.

Anyone who trained chakra had the innate sense to detect the presence of chakra—but that sense was extremely dull. Two shinobi with enormous reserves could be sitting next to each other, and neither would detect chakra in the other. Only sensory-ninwith highly sensitive chakra sense could detect chakra in a meaningful way. For everyone else, they could only detect chakra when it was being used near them in a high volume.

Kon’s eyes shifted to the target’s arm, which was about to hit him. He saw a translucent blue sheen covering the target’s fist and wrist.

Chakra was usually colorless when released out of the body in cases like chakra adhesion used for wall/tree and water walking—but it gained a blue color when a high volume was concentrated.

Kon instantly recognized that he was about to be hit by an augmented strike with so much chakra packed into it that it had gained a visible blue color—and it was coming directly for his face. He had made an error in judgment.

In haste, he shifted his body at the last moment to move his arm up to protect his face.

The target’s fist collided with Kon’s upper arm and immediately shattered the bone. Before Kon felt pain, he felt a flood of foreign chakra rampage out of the fist into his arm. Kon’s arm stopped the fist, but the chakra rampaged forth. The force fractured his shoulder blade and snapped the collarbone in half.

Before Kon’s body could fire the pain signals, he saw something much worse.

The moment the fist collided with Kon’s arm; the target’s entire arm exploded. Kon expected blood, flesh, and bone—but instead, he got a splash of water in his face. Before his mind could process the information, the target turned into a human-shaped mass of water that dropped to the ground.

Kon landed on the ground, his left arm hanging limp by his side, with a shoulder that was sagging dangerously. The pain hit him; it was intense, even with the adrenaline running through him. He ignored it; his pain tolerance had been thoroughly developed.

It helped that shock was keeping his mind off the pain.

He had traded damage… with a clone. He had lost his left arm, taken damage that would take a couple weeks to fix, and then more time to regain his original performance… all to kill a clone.

Kon remembered the sound of fighting he had heard previously, and it hit him— he was baited again. The target had used the clone to draw him away while the target engaged his subordinate in combat.

Kon swallowed his anger. He held his broken arm with his other arm and went to find his subordinate. Fifteen seconds later, Kon was standing over the dead body of his subordinate. His mask and weapons belt were missing.

He stared at the bloody hole in his subordinate’s forehead as his other two subordinates arrived .

“Reporting,” said one of them. “The target was a clone.”

Kon closed his eyes, taking deep breaths to contain his rage as his iryo-nin subordinate immediately tended to his mangled arm.

———

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AN: Clones really are useful—but they're costly as well. Naruto really was lucky.