He stopped about three meters from the body.
Dark Fox froze.
He looked down at the small figure lying face-first in the dirt. The child's skin was bloodless, her body drenched in red. A harsh world, he thought.
But this was the Hidden Mist.
He would never want his future child to grow up in a village like this.
His guard loosened.
Dark Fox strode the last steps, bent down, and flipped the body over. The girl was light. Too light for a corpse.
The thought had barely formed when
a sound like a silenced shot thudded through the night. A pale fingertip bone, laced with a film of fresh pink, punched straight through his throat.
Pain ripped his neck. Dark Fox's eyes bulged. His mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. He stared at the blood-masked girl as she raised her hand from the ground and slowly sat up.
Her gray eyes gleamed with killing intent. Veins crawled around her sockets like a curse.
Byakugan?
Impossible.
He clutched the hole at his throat. His body shuddered twice, then collapsed.
"Ghh… khh…"
"What was that?"
The ragged noise drew the attention of the other two. Kunai ready, they turned.
"He is still alive."
Amid a field of corpses,
the fox-masked man crouched beside the fallen ANBU and spoke in a level tone. He bowed his head and looked into the same fox mask that now hid a pair of panicked, bloodshot eyes. Out of sight, his knee pressed into the man's chest.
Dark Fox coughed blood and thrashed.
"Sh… she… khh…"
He never finished.
Long fingers stabbed into the hole at his throat like a steel awl. The knuckles hooked. Like tweezers, they drew out the broken half of a finger bone lodged deep in the flesh, along with a neatly severed artery and the torn end of the trachea. The windpipe sagged and bubbled, making the thin slurp of a straw dragging up the last sweet drop from the bottom of a bottle.
Dark Fox bucked harder. His heels dug two pits in the earth. Then his strength fled.
"A survivor. Lucky one."
From a distance, the other two glanced over the ANBU uniform and, satisfied, turned back to their search. They did not notice anything strange about their comrade.
"You two keep looking. He is fading fast. I will get him to the hospital."
"Tch. Since when are you so kind? You are not sneaking off to see Naoko, are you?"
"If you find the target while you are gone, do not expect to share the credit."
They did not even look up. Laughing, they drove their kunai into another chest and moved on.
The silent "Dark Fox" glanced at the butchered Taketori near their boots, then hoisted the wounded man onto his shoulder. Eyes lowered, he turned and left.
…
Mist swaddled the forest. The sky was a black curtain. Water vapor blotted out the stars and then tore again under gusts of wind as if some evil star struggled to descend.
Konome Taketori, wearing Dark Fox's face, raced from branch to branch with the body over her shoulder.
Warm blood soaked her back.
Her legs hammered against the limbs. Branches whipped by at her flanks. She was moving as fast as a car on the open road.
"Hah… hah…"
The weight was burning through her stamina, but the corpse was also her pass through the ANBU cordon.
In ten minutes she crossed paths with four patrol squads.
The Byakugan did the scouting.
If the squad had a jōnin, she avoided them. If not, she shouldered through units led by chūnin. With an injured comrade on her back and an ANBU mask on her face, few dared stop her outright.
So she did the impossible. She slipped past the cordon and into the village proper.
That was right, into Kirigakure itself.
The Taketori compound sat on the village's outer east. Go a little farther east and you could walk straight out.
She had planned to use the gap Orochimaru had torn open to flee east, but half the ANBU were reinforcing that breach. The risk was too high.
She was in no shape for it.
Her chest, head, and back had all taken killing blows. Shikotsumyaku had healed the wounds, but the chakra cost was brutal.
At the moment, even maintaining the Transformation Technique and the Byakugan was a strain.
If not for the Soldier Pills in her gut, she would have been dry. Rather than smash into the eastern blockade, she would do the opposite. She would head west into the village center, find a place to lie low until dawn, and then find a way out. Lower risk. Wiser plan.
Konome glanced at the chill spreading across the back of the ANBU she carried.
Cautious man.
Even with a target that looked dead, he had thrown a test shuriken before closing.
Without Shikotsumyaku's control of flesh and glands to flood her veins with adrenaline and clamp her vessels shut, she would never have fooled him.
If all Mist ANBU were like this, that was bad news.
She ran on.
The hole in her back finished knitting.
An itch, like a mosquito bite, tickled her index finger as new bone grew.
Shikotsumyaku. Ten-Finger Drilling Bullets.
A jutsu that fires the phalanges with chakra. Fast and vicious enough that even Gaara's Absolute Defense could only barely keep up in the original story.
Her first time using it, she had not known how quick it would be. She had lured him close and found out.
The technique was terrifying. The shot was so fast that even her Byakugan had only traced a ghost of its path. With no seals required, most shinobi would never react in time.
Ten-Finger Bullets paired with the Byakugan's full 360-degree field turned the world transparent like a wallhack with a hard lock in an FPS.
From a zero-frame start, if they could not read it, they died.
Thunk.
Konome kicked a trunk, bled off momentum, and dropped lightly to the roots.
A kilometer ahead,
a six-man Mist squad cut across her route.
She waited until their path diverged and then continued toward the village.
Byakugan. Shikotsumyaku.
She had woken to find herself hunted by one of the Five Great Villages. Yet this body's gifts were rich enough to give her room to move. She did not have to die the moment she opened her eyes.
Kirigakure Hospital.
"Make way. Make way."
A sharp female voice cleared a path of bodies.
Nurses drove gurneys down the hall. The ANBU had clashed with the Taketori tonight. Wounded were everywhere. Doctors and nurses were running without a moment to breathe. Shinobi who usually soared through the air were now howling on carts. Some had already fallen silent.
"Doctor, over here."
An ANBU with the Mist's teardrop crest on his mask burst into the lobby with a wounded man on his back. Staff hurried over to check.
"This one… are you a relative?"
"No. We are both ANBU. I do not know his name."
"He is already gone. Normally we would notify his family. You can see how swamped we are."
"I will notify them. I do not know his address."
"Do not worry. Any shinobi who has visited leaves a record. I will look him up."
The nurse was in her forties, iron-willed and efficient. The handsome young man removing his mask seemed to speed her up even more.
"Found it. Hoshino Harusora. Married. Wife, Naoko Tenzaka. Address…"
"Thank you, miss."
The young man smiled, all sunlight and clean lines in his tight ANBU uniform.
"You are welcome."
She cradled her cheeks. Her voice softened another shade.
…
"Be good, baby. Daddy is heading out on a mission."
Naoko Tenzaka leaned on the sofa. Long black hair framed her cheeks and made her look gentler still.
Her palm stroked her round belly. Happiness gave her face a soft glow, but worry flickered there too.
It had been nearly a year since she married Hoshino Harusora. She would be a mother soon. ANBU missions were full of knives in the dark. Each time Hoshino left, she lay awake until dawn.
ANBU were paid well for that risk.
He always said he wanted to leave the Mist and the Land of Water, buy a bigger home, and live better.
She did not care about any of that.
If the family could be together and laugh each day, that was enough.
They had saved plenty over the years. In a few days she would press him again. Retire from ANBU. Go teach at the Academy. The pay was smaller, but safe and steady. She would not have to spend every day with her heart in her throat.
No more letting him have his way. Even if it meant a shouting match, she would make him quit ANBU.
Naoko firmed her resolve.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
The sound broke her thoughts.
Hoshino was back? So soon?
She rose, careful of her belly, and walked to the door. "Who is it?"
"Naoko. It's me."
A familiar low voice. Her face relaxed. A bright smile bloomed.
Click.
The door opened.
Hoshino stood there in ANBU gear, stinking of blood. His sharp features were stiff. His eyes fixed on her and did not blink.
"Why are you staring like that? You are scaring me."
She pouted. His open, hungry stare made heat crawl up her neck.
Hoshino did not answer. He shut and locked the door. He wrapped her in his arms.
"Hey, hey. You reek of blood. It was just one mission. You are too clingy."
Her mouth teased, but her face shone. She nestled into his chest and set her chin on his broad shoulder. Her arms cinched around his waist as if she feared he would slip away.
The blood-soaked "Hoshino" held her just as tight.
A wet crack.
The smile froze on her lips.
Naoko trembled and looked down, confusion twisting her features.
Bone spikes burst through her from chest to back like the pistils of a white flower, and blood blossomed over her dark-blue nightgown, dyeing it brick red. Pain tore her in two. Her brown eyes stared, uncomprehending, at the impassive face above her.
"Ah… ah… you… you are not…"
A hand cupped the back of her head.
The bones in her belly churned like constrictors in a sack.
An arm locked her waist and held, ignoring the kicking and the little flutters that quickly went weak. He held her until she went slack.
Drip. Drip.
Blood slid down clean white bone.
When the woman in his arms was utterly still, "Hoshino Harusora" released the Transformation Technique.
Smoke thinned. A girl caked in blood stood in the lamplight, bone spurs jutting from her chest and belly like thorns. She held Naoko and stared with death-gray eyes that held something hard to read.
Konome laid the body down.
The ribs that had speared out from her sides snapped and crumbled to powder, then sank away. Skin rippled and drew tight. Only two ragged rows in the fabric remained to mark where they had passed.
She let out a long breath and shut her eyes.
She had meant to stun Naoko and hide here for a few nights. She had not expected the woman to have chakra, and more of it than Konome at full strength.
Konome was young, but her chakra reserves already matched a chūnin's.
Naoko's were greater. By chakra alone, the woman was brushing the threshold of jōnin. In her current state, if Konome had not used a familiar face and struck without warning, the outcome would have been uncertain.
The living room
was bright as day.
Blood poured like molten rock and spread across the brown carpet.
Konome looked down at herself.
Hair, face, clothes. Layers of dried blood flaked and stuck in crusts that stank of copper and rot.
She rubbed her brow. Her fingers came away slick and tacky. Irritation prickled under her skin.
She was no maniac. In one night since crossing over she had killed three people, one of them pregnant. Her mind and body both reeled from it.
She only wanted to live.
The Mist did not spare children or women when they set out to slaughter the Taketori.
She dragged Naoko's body to the bathroom. Blood pattered on the cold floor tiles and smeared into long streaks where the weight slid.
She still did not know what the ANBU were searching for. With Orochimaru stirring the pot and a battlefield to clean up and casualties to count, they would not have the hands to chase her immediately.
At last, she could rest.
Konome exhaled, exhausted.
She tore the crusted rags of her clothes away, hauled Naoko to the sink that faced the bathroom door, and stepped naked into the shower.