Chapter 34: Taking the Outpost!
Nawaki's heart was steady.
That was the only thing that mattered for the twelve seconds it took Mikoto to confirm it. Steady rhythm. Lungs inflating. Blood flowing through sealed vessels instead of leaking out of them. The internal bleeding had stopped. The organs were stabilized. The bones were set. The worst of the burns were closed.
He was alive. Scarred, broken in places she'd need a proper medical facility to fully repair, but alive.
She looked up. The battle raged beyond the crater. Jutsu lit the forest in flashes. The sound of steel and water and fire and screaming came from every direction.
"Nonō."
Nonō turned from her guard position, her face still white.
"Take him to the rear. Find the medical station. Tell them he has internal stabilization on seven sites, three fused fractures in the left arm, a partially reconnected right knee, and sealed burns over sixty percent of his body. The burns are surface-sealed only. They'll need to do the deep tissue work." She paused. "He looks worse than he actually is."
"Sensei, will he..."
"He'll die if you don't hurry." Mikoto told her sternly.
Nonō created a makeshift stretcher from a broken tree limb and a torn section of canvas she pulled from the debris. She loaded Nawaki onto it carefully.
"I'll be going now, sensei." Nonō bowed her head.
"Get going."
Nonō dragged the stretcher north, toward the rear lines, moving as fast as she could without jarring the body on the canvas. Within thirty seconds she was out of sight.
Mikoto stood.
The world was sharper than it had been an hour ago. Something beyond what the two tomoe had given her.
She looked at Emi.
Emi had her fan open, her eyes on the treeline, her stance ready. She hadn't flinched once during the entire time Mikoto had been working on Nawaki. She'd stood guard and done her job.
"Emi. With me."
"Yes, sensei."
"You stay within my line of sight at all times. You do not leave my visual range for any reason. If I lose sight of you, I will pull you back. Understood?"
"I’m not like that knucklehead, sensei. Please don’t compare us…"
Mikoto drew Shark Skin. "Let's finish this so I can go back to finish up his treatment."
The compound was still contested when they rejoined the fight.
The Leaf shinobi had breached the eastern wall but the Ame garrison inside was holding the interior. The thirty defenders had been reduced to nineteen, but the survivors had consolidated around the command outpost at the compound's center, using the stone structure as a fortress within a fortress. Water jutsu flooded the courtyard. Earth walls sealed the approaches. The four jonin, three now since one had been killed in the initial breach, commanded the defense with the understanding that they were protecting something worth dying for.
Mikoto came through the eastern breach as a blur.
The first Ame chunin saw her coming. He formed hand signs for a water jutsu. Her Sharingan read the signs before his fingers finished the second seal. She knew the jutsu. She knew the trajectory. She knew where the water would be before it existed.
She stepped left. The water bullet passed through the space she'd occupied and hit the wall behind her. She closed the distance in three steps and Shark Skin caught him across the torso, cleaving him in half.
Two more came from the right. The Sharingan tracked them both. One was forming signs while the other charged with a kunai in each hand. Mikoto cast a genjutsu on the caster through eye contact, a scene of him killing her with whatever jutsu he was about to perform. She killed the charger with a rising slash that bisected him and the genjutsu victim with a thrown fūma shuriken before his vision corrected.
Emi came through the breach behind her, fan open two moons. A wide gust of wind ripped through the courtyard, scattering debris, disrupting the water that flooded the ground, and slicing three Ame shinobi who were trying to flank the Konoha teams at the northern approach. One of them stumbled into the open and a Konoha chunin put a kunai through his throat.
Mikoto slaughtered her way through the compound with her comrades. Then she saw it.
The left side of the Ame defense, where a single jonin was holding three Konoha chunin at bay with a continuous water stream that pinned them behind cover. Take him out and the left side opened. The left side opening meant the Konoha teams could surround the compound. Surrounding would force the remaining two jonin to split their attention. Split attention meant gaps. Gaps meant death.
Mikoto Body Flickered behind the jonin.
He sensed her. He spun, the water stream whipping around with him, a pressurized arc that would have cut a normal shinobi in half. The Sharingan had already mapped the arc. She ducked under it, came up inside his guard, and Shark Skin punched through his flak jacket with the Chakra Enhanced Strength behind the thrust. The cleaver shredded through his vest and into his chest. His chakra drained. His water jutsu died. He fell.
The left side opened.
"Left side is clear!" Mikoto called. The Konoha chunin who'd been pinned surged forward. The northern team pushed simultaneously. The Ame defense around the area began to fall.
A water dragon surged from the compound's entrance. One of the remaining jonin was making a last stand. The dragon filled the courtyard, twenty meters of pressurized water shaped into jaws and coils, aimed at the advancing Konoha forces.
Mikoto formed a few hand signs. “Fire Style: Fire Dragon Jutsu!”
A fire dragon met the water dragon head-on, steam erupting where fire met water. The collision bought two seconds. In those two seconds she threw a Fūma Shuriken into the steam. The Shuriken Shadow Clone Jutsu multiplied it mid-flight. Dozens of spinning four-bladed stars burst through the steam wall and tore into the Ame positions around the entrance.
The jonin who'd launched the dragon deflected three of the shuriken with a water wall. The fourth caught his leg. The fifth caught his arm. He staggered. A Konoha jonin decapitated him from the side and that was the end of it.
The last Ame jonin inside the compound fought for another thirty seconds before three Konoha shinobi overwhelmed him.
The outpost fell.
…
Mikoto didn't stop.
The offensive had punched through the compound, but the valley's southern end still had pockets of Ame resistance. Retreating squads, scattered defenders, shinobi who'd pulled back from the front and were regrouping in the forest.
She hunted them with Emi at her side along with a group of Leaf-nin who were inspired by her strength and bravery.
The three-tomoe Sharingan read chakra signatures through the rain and the trees. She found a squad of six Ame shinobi regrouping at a stream crossing and hit them from the north while part of her squad hit them from the east. Shark Skin cut through two of them. Genjutsu dropped a third. The team handled the rest.
She found a concealed senbon position in the trees and launched an explosive kunai volley with the Shuriken Shadow Clone Jutsu that bombarded the enemy ninjas.
She found a pair of jonin trying to organize a counterattack at a ridge point and engaged them both simultaneously. The three-tomoe prediction let her track two opponents at once. She read their combination attack before they launched it, sidestepped the water jutsu, blocked the taijutsu with Shark Skin, and killed one with a lightning-charged thrust while the other was mid-signs. The second jonin tried to run. Mikoto tossed a lightning-charged Shark Skin that pierced through his gut. She grabbed Shark Skin by the hilt, leaving his body where it was.
Emi watched all of it.
She'd fought alongside Mikoto for two days during the initial push. She'd seen her sensei fight and heal and teach simultaneously. She'd thought she understood what her sensei was capable of.
She hadn't… Not in the slightest…
What she was seeing now was different. Mikoto wasn't holding back. She wasn't protecting genin. She wasn't splitting her focus between fighting and teaching and healing. She was just fighting. Pure, focused, relentless. Every movement was to kill or to avoid being hurt. Every jutsu had a purpose. Every swing of her sword killed something.
Emi kept up. She used her fan to create openings that Mikoto exploited, sent gusts that sliced through enemies, deflected incoming jutsu with wind walls. She fought well. Better than she'd ever fought. The six days of training and two days of combat under Mikoto-sensei had pushed her further than years at the Academy ever did.
But she wasn't in Mikoto's league. She knew it. She could feel the distance between them with every exchange, the gap between what she could do and what her sensei was doing without breaking a sweat.
It should have been demoralizing. For anyone else, it might have been.
For Emi, it was fuel.
She watched Mikoto smash a crater into the ground, swallowing up several enemies before their allies finished them off with a combined fire jutsu, burning them alive.
And she thought: I want to be able to do that.
She watched Mikoto cast a genjutsu on three people simultaneously without hand signs and thought: I want to learn that.
She watched Mikoto heal a dying man between kills, A water clone formed from the rain and a green light appeared over its hands as she slaughtered shinobi after shinobi, and thought: I want to be stronger than that.
Stronger than Mikoto. That was the thought that burned in Emi's chest as she fought through the valley's southern end beside the girl they called the Mikoto of the Shredding Sword.
As of now, she didn’t see herself being capable of that. Probably not even in ten years. However, she would use it as her goal. She would get there or die trying. And Katō Emi did not intend to die anytime soon.
The valley was secured by evening.
The Ame command outpost was in Konoha's hands. The surviving defenders had retreated south through the mountains toward Ame's next line of defense. Konoha held the valley from end to end, and the teams on the ridges reported no remaining enemy activity in the surrounding area.
The cost was significant. Several hundreds dead. Hundreds crippled. Dozens more with injuries that would require a medical-nin or proper rest. The valley floor was marked with the evidence of what it had taken: craters, fallen trees, scorched earth, the dark stains in the mud that rain would eventually wash away.
Mikoto's water clones had healed hundreds of people during the offensive. The real Mikoto had killed more people than she saved most likely.
She found Emi sitting against the outpost’s outer wall, fan across her knees, breathing hard. The day had pushed her to her limit. Her chakra was low. There were cuts and bruises on her body but besides all that her eyes were still sharp despite it all.
"You did well today." Mikoto said, healing her.
"I could have done more."
"More?" Mikoto chuckled. “You did perfect considering this is your second battle.”
"It's not enough for me."
Mikoto looked at her. Ambition in her eyes that burned so hot it was almost visible.
"You'll get there in time. Don't worry." Mikoto encouraged her as she rubbed her head.
Emi looked up at her. "Sensei. How can you fight multiple enemies at once? Like, how do you keep track of them all. It was like you had eyes in the back of your head."
"The Sharingan."
"Can you teach me to fight multiple enemies at once? Without a Sharingan?"
"I can try. It’ll be hard but not impossible."
"I’m willing to do whatever it takes."
"Alright, next time for sure."
"Promise?"
Mikoto was momentarily taken aback. She never expected Emi, who seemed the most mature out of her students to ask her to promise. In fact, she thought she would be beneath something like promises. Maybe seeing them as too childish or silly.
"Promise." She smiled, learning something new about her student.
Emi nodded. She stood up, put the fan on her back, and walked toward the medical station where the wounded were being treated.
She didn't ask about Nawaki. Her mind wasn't anywhere near Nawaki. He was alive because Mikoto saved him. He nearly died because he was an idiot. Emi would've never fallen for such an obvious trap. Who would chase after a jonin as a genin in the first place? Was he looking to die? Plus, Mikoto saving him had caused several comrades to die because she wasn’t there to wipe them out.
I hope that idiot is sent back to the village. I can’t work with someone like that! They’d put my life at risk with their stupidity! She made her way toward the mess station to find something to eat.
Word reached Orochimaru not long after the successful conclusion of the battle.
He was reviewing the reports from all five assault squads when the runner arrived with the specific account of what had happened in the second squad’s push. The explosive trap. The special genin who'd chased a retreating jonin into it. The injuries. The save.
Orochimaru read the report. His expression didn't change. It rarely did. But something behind his gold eyes shifted, a calculation adjusting, a variable being updated.
"Nawaki Senju," he said to himself. "Alive…"
He set the report down.
Tsunade's brother was alive because a fourteen-year-old girl had rebuilt his body from the edge of death in the middle of an active battlefield. The boy's injuries should've been fatal. Not even Tsunade should've been able to save him.
But the girl had done it anyway.
"Fascinating, absolutely fascinating…" he said.
He sealed the report and marked it for Tsunade's attention with a note in his own handwriting: Your brother is alive. Injuries are severe but survivable. The Uchiha girl saved him. Come when you can.
He sent the runner south.
Then he sat back in his chair and refocused his attention on the next plan of action.