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Chapter 58 - Arc 4 - Brawling in the Streets: An Enemy Arrives, Ino Helps
🕑 Added 2024-07-16 08:45:44 +0000 UTCThe team is having a rough time on all fronts, luckily for Naruto, Ino's there to help.
Luckily for Sakura, she's having fun.
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A tendril of smoke curls into the sky like a beacon, alerting her to exactly where Tenten probably is. It leads right to the heart of chaos, and Neji’s not one for chaos. He’s deliverance, he’s tactical and powerful, Tenten’s the one that would cause mass property damage and send a smoke signal for all to see that she is destructively in charge of all that is within her range. Even if Neji’s opponent had been the one to cause it, it would have likely been preceded by an immediate blood curdling scream as he tore them apart for making a mess. That’s the kind of guy he’s come off as up to this point, and she’s not about to second-guess him. Her legs start to move, but it’s not towards Tenten’s mess.
Even as her heart races, and the ominous crackling of flames tells her she needs to aid her teammate, she finds herself jumping back on the roof and landing flat on her back without any control over her actions. “Owww…” Her shoulder screams at her, having crumpled to the ground only made her injury worse. Tenten should have warned her not to do any cool gaming spinny maneuvers with the giant hammer! Everyone knows she’ll do the cool thing if she can! The hammer discarded to her side, she decides to leave it there for a moment while she catches her breath, and takes in the whole reason she jumped back in the first place.
The reason for her hasty retreat stands at the edge of the building, silhouetted against a sun that probably shouldn’t be setting but sure as hell is. She blames the dungeon’s sense of awe and epic timing. His hand is still outstretched, the kunai he had thrown at her glinting malevolently in the fading light exactly where she was just standing. He’d intended to impale her foot to the roof, and then slash her with the long sword at his waist. Beneath a massive fur mantle that billows dramatically, his form is obscured, only his silver hair and piercing red eyes are visible to her. He is a vision of both beauty and terror, a delicate porcelain doll adorned with razor-sharp features and a potent hatred that flows off of him like water does a waterfall.
He’s beautiful, like a pure soft boy with satin skin, or a coy demon attempting to trick her and tell her it’s safe while not even caring to hide the evil that ignites behind his eyes. That hair of his rests on his shoulders, and those sharper features make her want to take him home and set him up beside Haku, not kill him.
Too bad, unlike with Haku, she senses the malice that exudes off of him like a tortured miasma. It’s palpable, malice radiating from him in a thick, dark aura that chokes her like a noxious fog. She can sense the darkness within him, taking in the light from his surroundings and snuffing it out for fun. “Fierro?” She asks, her voice trembling slightly as a deep and primal excitement overtakes her. She can feel it, someone truly strong is in front of her, and his hatred will let her go all out without having to feel bad. No accidentally killing him with a table leg, or thinking of them as NPC, or worrying what her teammates will think. As her fingers land on her own malevolent sword and the killing lust allows her to feel her own hunger in her teeth, she knows something overwhelming is about to happen. Something that Sasuke, Naruto, Neji, Lee, Tenten, even Ino, none of them would ever approve of.
A low, mirthless chuckle escapes his lips and sends prickles of flavorful excitement down her neck. Every hair on the way down stands up, and she’s here for it. “No, she’s much too preoccupied to spend even a moment dealing with trash like you.” Even his voice is like a velvet-wrapped dagger, laced with as much venom as disgust. It’s so perfect, if she manages to not kill him, she has to get him on the camera, she’s a manager now damn-it! They’re both filled with malice, and she can’t help but shiver in her footwear. She’s going to get to fight someone that truly wants to kill her!
That’s awesome! “Oh, I think this is going to be fun,” she replies, her voice comes out unsteady, the need to move shaking her to her core and getting in the way of basic thoughts and actions like speech. “Don’t scream too much, okay? I’d hate to be judged by my teammates.” Lifting her sword, and tilting it towards him, she finds she’s ready to kill. Three days of that stupid manor, and now she can finally let loose her bloody rage!
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“Owww, gentle, don’t hurt me more than Kakashi did!” Naruto’s cry of pain is met with a roll of Ino’s pretty eyes, and an application of ointment deeper against a wound that’s healing quickly but not quickly enough. He’s losing a lot of blood, and while she doubts he’ll die, he needs to be up and about soon or Kakashi’s next beating will send him right back to this state.
“Shut it freak,” she scolds him, holding him still, “you’ll draw him back if you don’t shut up and then even your stupid freakish healing powers won’t be enough.” It only takes one look at his face to see she fucked up, “what? Freak’s a trigger word for you, seriously? What else would you call this? Your arm is reattaching as we speak!”
The thrashing limb seems to have a mind of its own. Surrounded by so much orange chakra it’s visible, tendens are reconnecting in real time as she takes note of just how it does so. It’s incredible data for her to gather for the medical field, which wasn’t a field she cared about until the other day. Now medicine is all she thinks about, she needs to give a single minded dedication to the creed, Naruto’ll fucking die if she doesn’t! It’s all she can do to try her best not to vomit, it doesn’t help that the chakra surrounding his arm itself makes her feel ill just being close to it. There’s something wrong with him, but the thing is, she’s grateful for it.
Let demons possess Sakura’s teammates, if it’ll keep them alive to protect her.
Kakashi severed his arm to prove a point just a few minutes ago, and she deeply regrets watching when she realized what he was going to do. Witnessing a sensei slashing up his student with a look of pure detachment, it was something straight out of a nightmare. It was like Naruto was nothing, just another leaf in the wind to be discarded if he can’t get stronger fast enough to satisfy some sick desire within the older man. As much as she’d love to report this kind of brutality to daddy, or to the Hokage, or to anyone really, the fact that Sasuke’s injuries are always superficial and Naruto’s body can reattach limbs are definitely connected. It’s likely this training is indeed meant to improve them, and the Hokage will lecture her about sticking her nose into other people’s business instead of doing anything about it.
She is still going to report this, but she's not expecting anything to come of it but that lecture. She’s prepared to accept that, if it means the possibility that she could stop this. “Why do you keep coming out here to help us?” Naruto asks, unable to look at her at the moment.
Yeah, she fucked up, she’ll be sure to treat that word with some distance in the future, even if he is being ridiculous. “Because Kakashi lets me,” she explains, “he knows I’m doing this. I haven’t been subtle, and I’ve even found money and a shopping list for medicinal ingredients in my nightstand and I sure as hell know daddy didn’t put them there. You need it, and he knows it, so I’ll keep coming. You’re important to me.”
“He’s training you too?” Sasuke asks, sitting against a tree and catching his breath. Kakashi’s so much easier on him, and he clearly resents that. He wishes his arm was severed, which is just, how much of an inferiority complex can you have to want to literally lose limbs? “Figures.”
“I don’t get it, you want to explain?” She asks.
“He wants Sakura to have a medic, that’s all,” Sasuke spits some blood to the side, “you’re a tool to ensure our dummy doesn’t die.”
“Good, she needs a tool…” Ino mumbles to herself, and uses a pair of tweezers to remove a stick in the way of Naruto’s steamy healing. “Do you think you’ll survive this training? These injuries are getting worse every day.”
“I think we’ll be fine, as long as you keep getting better at treating them.” Sasuke says, rubbing a little dirt off his hands on his pants, and digging into his pack to get out some food. The one time she tried bringing them something to eat from the outside world, it suddenly disappeared from her pack, which told her to not do that again. They’ll have to survive with what they catch and prepare. The thought that Kakashi probably ate her homemade egg salad sandwiches with glee and then teased them about them the moment she was gone, only makes her a little pouty. She won’t let that asshole win, not if she can help it. Sakura’s right, Kakashi’s a dick, she wouldn’t talk to him either.
“I’ll try my best.” Ino watches as Naruto’s arm seriously just reattaches completely, and the seam of his flesh froths over with a foam, before it's completely healed. All she has to do is wipe away the foam with a cloth, and admire a job well done. She barely did anything, but she learned so much, every one of his injuries is like that.
Ten minutes at max, that’s all he needs with that orange chakra, he’s getting so much better at using it too. Maybe that’s what Kakashi’s trying to teach him? Whatever the case, she hopes they’ll live through this… Sakura needs to get back quickly, and not just because she wants to kiss her again.
Comments
Damon Fitzgerald
Kakashi is definitely a dick. That is brutal. I love your Ino point of views. Simultaneously very kind and very bitchy.
Dopplerdee
I love Sakura finding her Kampachi. Also neat that Ino immediately relizes she shouldn't say that and decides not to any more while still being kinda bitchy about it. Very in character.
