Naruto: The Outsider's Resolve: CH_203

As he struggled to get up, Takuma knew he wouldn’t eat properly for at least a week. The bastard with the fake smile had done a number on his stomach. He flinched and whimpered in pain as his chest burned in pain. Pain was simply a symptom; the main problem was the cause— strenuous movements with cracked or broken ribs could further damage his body, and strenuous was the only way to move his body currently.

When his swarming vision settled, Takuma took a score of his location before looking at the designated location at the edges of the pit where iryo-nin were stationed for emergency care, plotting a reasonable path to travel. He needed to get there or catch the attention of a roaming iryo-nin. He was practically useless in his current condition.

Takuma finally looked at the bastard he had blown up. The man was kneeling on the floor, his body bloody with wounds. He was trembling like a leaf, with his blood and mud-stained face twisted in pain. He looked up at Takuma with anger burning in his eyes—that was the most real expression the man had shown in the two minutes they had known each other.

They stared at each other momentarily before Takuma started to move away. The blonde bastard didn’t give chase or much less chuck a kunai towards him. Takuma kept an eye on the man, but he wasn’t worried; neither of them wanted to fight each other in their condition—it was a mutual decision to leave the fight and get themselves patched up.

———

.

Imamura of the Hidden Cloud dragged his feet through the battlefield. His skin had suffered high-degree burns, and he was losing blood. He wasn’t in danger of dying, but the “Hidden Steam” boy had done a number on him with the explosive tags—if not for his quick action of ripping his tank top off, his body would’ve been ripped in half from the explosion.

He had underestimated the boy. He hated to admit it, but misdirecting him by biting his teeth to plant explosive tags on him was a slick move.

Imamura had noticed the boy when he dropped himself between a group of their forces without any support. The boy started to pick off the grunts one-by-one. If that wasn’t bad enough, the chaos the boy caused allowed the Hidden Steam side to pick up more of the grunts. Things became ridiculous when he saw the grunts get caught under a genjutsu and willy-nilly launching ninjutsu without accounting for their allies.

He went ahead and isolated the boy before he caused more trouble. Imamura couldn’t allow the pit to be taken away as his career depended on Hidden Frost’s, mainly Hidden Cloud’s, hold on the pit to extract more and more gold out of the mines. He was guaranteed a promotion to Tokubetsu Jonin if he kept the pit safe until the Land of Frost had pushed their border significantly into the Land of Hot Waters that the gold pit wasn’t in immediate danger of attack.

Imamura should have already been promoted to a Tokubetsu Jonin a couple of years back—but a mission under his leadership had gone south, and a jonin’s kid on his team had died during the mission. It wasn’t his fault that the kid couldn’t do his job as a decoy.

The old jonin held a grudge and took it out on him.

Imamura’s promotion was pulled, and he was stuck indefinitely as a chunin even though the mission was a partial success. They said it was his fault for not preparing properly and assigning inappropriate responsibilities to members who weren’t equipped to complete them.

No one wanted to go against the old jonin with lots of influence, and suddenly, Imamura found his career in the gutter with no possibility of a promotion. So, when the war between the Land of Frost and the Land of Hot Waters came along, with Hidden Cloud supporting Hidden Frost, Imamura saw it as an opportunity. He pulled in all of the favors he had, persuading those who owed him, and somehow got himself posted at the Gojiro gold mines.

It was an important asset for Hidden Cloud as they were taking fifty percent of all output for protecting the mines for Hidden Frost. As long as Imamura did a good job, he would be promoted to Tokubetsu Jonin—and as long as that happened, his career would have a second wind, and if he leveraged his situation right, the old jonin wouldn’t be able to obstruct him.

He wanted to make jonin one day, and this was only a tiny obstacle to overcome, a bump in the road.

While he made his way through the battlefield, Imamura felt his back go cold, and he jumped ahead in a forward roll to evade a flurry of shuriken that struck the place he was standing before.

Two Hidden Steam shinobi dropped from above and surrounded him on either side.

Imamura clicked his tongue and raised his hands in defense. He moved to the side in an attempt to put his two assailants in front of him, but they moved with him, keeping themselves on either side so that he wouldn’t be able to see them both simultaneously.

“What? Scared of facing me alone?” he spat.

Both of them chuckled. One of them unsheathed their swords, putting Imamura on higher guard. He immediately weaved hand seals. His focus was broken when he heard a sound of clinking metal and looked toward the other man to see him release a swinging chain sickle. Imamura ducked down to evade the sickle coming for his head—but he lost the progress he made on his jutsu hand seals in doing so.

Before he could restart, the sword-wielding man charged. Imamura threw a volley of shuriken at him before turning away with a kunai in his hand to thwart another throw of the chain sickle. The sound of metal against metal echoed, and Imamura felt his chest hurt from the impact. His condition wasn’t getting any good. Fighting two opponents wasn’t doing him any good.

‘I can defeat them—’

Imamura saw a glow of yellow and red around his shadow on the ground. He jumped to the side to dodge a searing pillar of fire—but his problems didn’t end as the fire pillar followed him, forcing him to keep moving, which brought about stabbing pain assaulting his body.

His plan of making quick work of the two men changed to fleeing to a position where backup would take the load off his back.

When the fire ninjutsu ended, the two enemies dashed towards Imamura with their weapons. He bit the inside of his mouth and quickly weaved his hand seals. Chakra filled him before turning into concentric waves of lightning that shot out of Imamura. It was a desperate ploy to gain some time so he could put some distance between them, which he did, but it was for naught.

“AaH—!”

The chain sickle cut through his thigh clean, only nearly missing the bone. Imamura fell to the ground, but he desperately got up to move ahead, only to have a sword driven across his chest. He instantly spat out blood, but before he could even do anything, the sickle removed his head from his body like grass from its roots.

———

.

Takuma lugged himself across the battlefield. He took the shortest path he could afford while resorting to stopping occasionally and even crawling to avoid attention. It was slower than he liked, but Takuma continued to work his way towards the iryo-nin, hoping they were able to follow the plan and were in the pre-decided spot

“Oh, fuck!”

He ducked under a stray stone boulder that almost took his head off and broke into a run, knowing he was in a danger zone with high activity.

His eyes were attracted to a building-sized lion made up entirely of lightning, pouncing towards and gouging the place where, assumedly, its target stood. Takuma stood in his place, a shaky breath escaping him. The jonin were finally picking up their pace as a car-sized bird flew into the lion before exploding into a mass of fire that sent a shockwave so strong that it knocked Takuma off his feet.

‘I need to hurry!’

However, as he moved ahead, a woman crashed a few meters in front of her. He recognized her from Camp Banana, having seen her in passing in the camp. She got up and jumped to the side— a wise decision as another woman flew down and dug her feet into the ground with force. The second woman wore Hidden Frost colors like everyone defending the pit—just as their side was wearing Hidden Steam colors.

Takuma gazed at the two women fighting, and his peer was clearly losing the fight. She was injured; there was a gash in her left shoulder, and from the looks of it, left was her dominant hand.

He silently took out a scuffed golden bell from his weapons pouch and cautiously moved forward while ringing the bell. He spread his chakra forth, layering it in with the shockwaves as it moved.

Ding!

The bell rang while the two women wrangled against each other. The shoulder injury was clearly bothering the Hidden Leaf kunoichi; she was being pushed and forced to be on the defensive as her arm was close to completely impaired.

‘Come on, just a few more moments,’ Takuma thought. He could hear his breathing in his ears, impatience bubbling underneath the surface.

The enemy kunoichi stabbed the Hidden Leaf kunoichi in the side and kicked her in the abdomen. The Hidden Leaf kunoichi fell on her back, with the enemy kunoichi dashing towards the prone woman with a dripping kunai in her hand.

‘Fuck!’

DING!

The enemy kunoichi who had mounted the Hidden Leaf kunoichi froze up with her kunai pulled above her head, ready to strike. She trembled as though struggling against invisible bindings.

Genjutsu: Golden Bell Jutsu

Takuma broke into a full-speed sprint, bearing the pain and risk. He had to be quick as he hadn’t applied enough chakra, and the genjutsu was fragile. It could break at any moment. He took out a kunai for stabbing, but as he reached the two women—

Shatter!

The genjutsu broke, and the enemy kunoichi turned back to Takuma and blocked his kunai with her own. She forcefully pushed Takuma back and tried to turn that into a lethal heart stab—which Takuma barely side-stepped.

He charged his leg with chakra and swept the enemy kunoichi’s leg out with an augmented kick. The kick pulled on Takuma’s abdomen, sending jolts of pain across nerves. He bore through them and mounted the fallen woman. He grabbed both her hands to pin them above her head to stop her from resisting so he could kill her.

The kunoichi struggled and managed to free one of her hands and punched Takuma in the face. Takuma held on—but then the woman punched him in the side, which made Takuma spit out blood and drop his kunai, sending more shooting pains that almost made him lose his grip.

The enemy kunoichi sensed Takuma’s struggles and went in for another punch, but before she could swing, the Hidden Leaf kunoichi grabbed the arm and pinned it back to the ground.

“Hurry!” she yelled.

Takuma took out another kunai as the woman below him thrashed to get free and then stabbed her in the neck. He pulled the kunai and stabbed her again, and one final time when her struggling went limp.

Takuma fell to the side, breathing heavily, while his hands lightly rested on his stomach. His face was twisted in pain while he silently tried to endure it.

‘One more moment,’ he said to himself. After taking deep breaths to prepare himself, Takuma got up, swaying so much that he almost fell. He walked to the Hidden Leaf kunoichi and put his arm under his shoulder.

“Get up, come on,” Takuma said as he pulled her up.

“Thank you,” she barely managed.

Takuma didn’t reply and continued to move forward one step at a time. The ‘medical station’ was just a small distance away. Even though he was considerably slower than before—he had already covered most of the distance on his own.

A sound entered Takuma’s ear, and he looked up to see a massive sphere of fire, larger than the building-size lion, soaring through the air above his head, which then slammed into the pit’s walls. It exploded, sending huge debris airborne. A cluster of boulder-sized rock debris flew right in Takuma’s direction. Not only that, but the explosion also caused a landslide, and Takuma was close enough to get buried by a mass of rolling rocks.

“Fuck me!” He put the kunoichi down and started weaving hand seals for Earth Style: Earthen Dome—he didn’t know if the ninjutsu would work, and if it did, they might still get buried.

However, halfway through, Takuma felt something slither around his stomach, which sent more pain up his body—but in the next second, he was air-born, moving at high speeds, weaving around the debris and rocks.

He looked down to see a snake’s body wrapped around him. The kunoichi also had a snake thicker than his arm wrapped around her torso. Takuma looked up to see the snakes disappearing into the wide sleeves of one Mitarashi Anko.

“What a terrible time to get injured,” she said.