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Chapter 50 - Arc 4 - Brawling in the Streets: Into the Breech
🕑 Added 2024-06-25 02:32:45 +0000 UTCSakura's not too happy about the theme of this one, I however find it hilarious.
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One might say this is ‘Into the breach’, but for her it’s more like into the horrifically overleveled dungeon with horrifically overpowered teammates that are going to look down on her. She’s clutching her sword for dear life, she’s had it drawn since the moment they enter the glowing red entrance, and she can tell her own nervousness has hit them too. They’re not as jittery as she is, but when a teammate is lacking in confidence it tends to show in an entire team. While she’s never been particularly into team games, she’s played quite a few of them, and fraying nerves can destroy morale even through a shitty bargain bin mic. She can’t help it though, it’s too much.
The last time she was in a place like this, there was mist everywhere, and blood, and she went blind, and she was on level at the time. This time she won’t have an infinite Naruto supply to save her, and Tenten’s weaponry is very unlikely to be helpful against actually strong enemies and powerful dungeon created challenges unless she’s truly mastered a few of them and she’s getting the impression she’s more of a variety kinda girl!
It’s nerve wracking, and she finds it hard to breathe as she takes it all in. The darkness they’re greeted to doesn’t help, she just wishes she could see. What if there're traps like the other one? What if she’s dead before she even realizes it?
The truth is both her teammates have very high levels compared to her. Their levels are much higher than the dungeon’s requirements, so, if she can find it in her to trust and rely on them this probably won’t be that bad. But she can’t, it feels like twenty minutes ago that she just tried to kill Neji!
It’s a different form of dungeon, it’s supposed to be longer, so it’s unlikely there’s just some massive boss at the end that’s going to shatter her world and murder her where she stands. If it’s just a ton of small challenges and an endurance test, their power might actually get her through this unharmed and with all of her limbs. Her own ability to recover might make an endurance test a joke, that’s something to consider to maybe make her stop shaking in her nifty footwear.
On the other hand, she has no idea what she’s walking into and she is in fact, absolutely petrified. It’s weird, she’s never worried about dying before, but something about dying away from her team hits differently. She gets the feeling these two wouldn’t even tell Ino about it, she’d probably find out by asking Naruto who would find out from Kakashi, and no one deserves to find out she died via Kakashi. She can imagine him showing Naruto a Genjutsu of her gruesome death and going ‘it was something like that, from what Gai tells me.’
The bastard. She’d come back to life and haunt him for that.
The dungeon they’re in looks like it’s just a huge house, which puts her on edge for a hundred different reasons. There aren’t a lot of places to go in a house, why would this take days?
There have to be gimmicks here, dozens of gimmicks, all as terrifying as the last.
“Would you stop?” Neji scolds her, and it’s his words that break her out of her daze and make her realize she’s been shaking in place uncontrollably, not just in her footwear. She thought she at least had her nerves contained on the outside for the most part, but her sword in her hands is swaying to and fro uncontrollably even as she tries to concentrate on stopping it.
“Sorry I, trauma,” she decides to land on, “and I miss my team.”
“I would rather have Lee than you as well, but whatever this is, Gai said to go along with it, so here we are.” Neji doesn’t seem very happy with her, but if Gai told him to listen to her, well, that means Kakashi spilled the beans to him. Then again, Gai Maito is probably privy to several S-rank secrets, it’s unlikely hers would truly be above his pay grade in any sense. She’s just a genin, a special genin, but still just a genin. Does that mean every Jonin was informed of her system, or just those that would be directly involved with her?
She should tell her parents already, if every Jonin knows then they should, and they probably deserved to know in the first place. Where’s a Naruto Clone to relay information after popping when you need one? She would love to skip that conversation and make him do it… actually that might be the optimal play, maybe she’ll take a vacation after she gets home and let him do it while she’s gone.
She hasn’t known life without her brother for a while, and it’s showing. It’s showing so much that even with concentrated effort, her sword still isn’t completely still in her hands. It’s probably better to say her hands aren’t still around her sword.
She rubs her face to get the heat back into her cheeks, and takes a deep breath.
[Quest Notice:
To Clear this Dungeon you will need to kill 20 Genin, 10 Chunin, and eliminate the Dark Meister Fierro.
Should you flee the dungeon, all eliminated foes will return as stronger undead.]
“Well that’s informative.” She gulps, knowing damn well they don’t see that. “We have thirty-one targets, a special enemy, ten chunin, twenty genin, and we’re not allowed to leave.”
“Why not?” Neji asks.
“Well, unless you want the town to be overrun with zombies…” She trails.
“Zombies do not-right, forget it,” Neji decides to honor his promise not to ask after a moment of consideration, before looking back at the exit, “so we do not leave, understood. Can our enemies leave?”
“I don’t think so,” Sakura denies, shaking her head slowly, “I think the entire idea of the dungeon is that it traps both parties, allowing a quick conclusion. This house is more like an arena than a dungeon.” She steps forward, leading them - which is awkward with Neji in front of her - into a main room, where several different staircases lead up in different directions towards different rooms, and several different - “This is a resident evil mansion,” she sweat drops. “what the fuck.”
“Grraaaaauuhhhhh-” They hear from upstairs, before several objects clang around and thuds ring out uncontrollably. A horde is coming, they’ve woken up a nest. “Tenten, get the gun!”
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“Why is it always fucking zombieeeessss!” Sakura finds herself screeching as she drives her sword through a skull and into the wall. She finds the red skinned figure moving itself along her blade, shambling towards her despite the clear and powerful damage she’s doing to its brain.
A red zombie, who would have figured. She can’t actually be in the first Resident Evil, right? But then, they already killed this one when it just looked dead, and here it is, trying to eat her face despite the only thing in mouth range being her weapon. Its skull falls apart with every movement, and it’d be enough to bring bile to her lips if she didn’t already have a ton of experience with zombies.
“What do you mean, always!?” Tenten asks, shooting countless bullets down a hallway over and over again, the ranged focused Genin’s eyes watching her target bob back with every shot but never fall. Long hallways are what guns are for, she said, so she doesn’t question the use of ammunition.
“I don’t, fuck!” Sakura slashes to the side, tearing through its brain and allowing her foe to fall towards the floor, hopefully permanently this time. “It just, it was zombies last time too okay, and I’ve had about enough of this theme! I don’t even like the earlier Resident Evils that much!”
“So what, you were a huge fan of five or something?” Tenten asks, still backing up while shooting, at least her target is down but, well there's more coming through a door at the end. The horde seems truly endless, and has been for at least a half an hour now. She’s not sure how many bullets Tenten has, but…
“I was a huge fan of the fifth game, actually, I used to join random people with my new game plus plus plus loadout and, well, I get it had a few awkward connotations but it was a really good game okay!”
“People didn’t like it very much.” Tenten denies as she sidesteps a face that leaps out at her from the side, how it got there who even knows anymore, but the bun haired Genin with a gun does something completely unexpected. She unfurls a seal as she sidesteps, and out comes a giant hammer, one that immediately turns that thing’s head from an ‘is’ to a ‘was.’
“People have bad judgment in matters of taste!” She steps in front of Tenten to tear another zombie in half just as one lunges at her friend from the side, there’s just so many it’s hard to keep track. “You can melee? Why didn’t you tell me you could melee?”
“I’m a weapons mistress!” Tenten shouts, “it’s in the name!”
“When would I have heard that?” Sakura defends herself, stabbing another just as it begins to turn red, putting its third life - counting when it was presumably alive for real - to an end prematurely.
“Would you two shut up?” Neji looks, well, he’s completely unmarred, untouched, and looking like a dream over there on top of what can only be called a flow of corpses. It turns out the Jyuuken is perfectly suited for destroying brains, which does make him possibly the most terrifying being she’s ever swung a sword at. Mostly because she’s never taken a swing at Kakashi, well, yet, she might once she gets back home. How dare he get her into this mess?
This is ridiculous, and despite the impossibility, somehow she just knows Kakashi planned this crap. “Can I have a giant hammer? My sword is great and all but their blood is too coagulated to use and there’s no way in hell I survive if I start using my own blood as power in the middle of a zombie horde.”
“Oh, yeah, sure.” Sakura is very surprised to find that Tenten has two giant hammers. The head is bigger than Sakura’s entire torso, and she’s actually more surprised to find she can lift it than she is that Tenten has two because like, why only have one when you’re going this colossally absurd?
Comments
Dopplerdee
Neji is gonna have an ulcer after this mission
