Chương 386: CH_10.20 (386)

Takuma gritted his teeth as he desperately gripped the handle of the kunai on the side of the wall, as he faced the full force of the Wind Release ninjutsu. It felt like trying to resist a windstorm strong enough to uproot trees and houses. He raised his hand to protect himself from the dislodged bricks coming for his head while praying the section of wall he was attached to didn't give out. His attempt to throw a kunai at the agent climbing the wall was swiftly thwarted by a gust that sent his throw wide.

He cursed as the agent disappeared from his view over the ledge. The ninjutsu lasted two more precious seconds. He immediately leapt up to the roof in one push. His eyes darted for the agent, who had put three buildings between them but was still within sight. Takuma ran forward while weaving hand seals for Body Flicker Jutsu to catch up. He was sure the agent would do the same and was surprised he hadn't already used it.

It took a full second for Takuma's brain to register what his eyes caught while he was hurriedly climbing up the wall. There were two explosive tags on the roof ledge. The black ink had taken on the colour of fire as the fūinjutsu reached the detonation point.

"Fuck!" He propelled himself while bracing for impact. The force of the explosion hit his back just as the Body Flicker Jutsu kicked in. The positive was that he was saved from fiery death, but along came the negative: ordinary, it already a headache to control oneself using the Body Flicker Jutsu, so when the explosive force disrupted his balance, he had no way to course-correct once he was thrown off-balance.

His shin caught against the ledge of the next building, and Takuma bounced off the rooftop floor, rolling half a dozen times over before he was able to push himself up. It hurt like hell, but he got up instantly and continued his pursuit of the clever ROOT agent, who had yet again increased the distance between them. Takuma wished he could have created a water clone beforehand, like he had done with the water tentacles.

However, creating one right now wasn't an option because water clones required an external water source for the clone body as opposed to simply turning his chakra into water. To do so, Takuma would have to spend precious time on using a Wild Water Wave to then construct a clone.. Luckily, he had a perfectly usable alternative. A short set of hand seals later, one shadow clone stood beside Takuma.

It was the first time since creating the bunker that he had made a shadow clone, which wasn't that long, but it felt like ages, considering he had created one every day before Inenpachi banned him. He wasn't going to use it today either, due to its cost. With a full tank, he was only left with 45% of his maximum chakra after the clone. It was still an ample amount of chakra as he rarely ever bottomed out his reserves in combat, but it still forced him to be conservative with his spending.

Even if he was fighting alongside multiple teammates, he didn't want to be in that position when he was facing various shinobi, which was why he'd not used it before. But now he was alone, facing a singular target—doubling his numbers was all to his advantage. ———. Rui heard the explosion from the little gift he had left the ANBU-nin. He signed the seals for the Body Flicker Jutsu and put more distance between them by directly skipping multiple rooftops.

Then, he changed latitude again and dropped to ground level and vanished in the crowd. As he thought about changing clothes and finding somewhere indoors to lay low, he glanced back only to find the ANBU-nin still on his tail. He was farther away, but now, there were two of them.

"A clone?" Rui muttered under his breath as he glanced at the identical figures before he dropped down the roof. Was it an illusionary clone or one of the corporeal clones? Did it matter? No. The bigger problem was that the ANBU-nin was still on his trail. He assumed the worst-case scenario in that the clone was of the corporeal kind. Not only did he have to deal with two pursuers, but he also didn't know which one was the clone.

"Hey, stop right there!" A Leaf shinobi saw him dropping down from the building and tried to stop him. Instead of avoiding him, Rui ran towards the shinobi, punched him in the face, snatched the weapon pouch on his leg, pushed him to the ground, and continued running. The man was a patrolling genin. He wouldn't be able to catch Rui if he tried. Taking hostages was useless as it would only slow him down. He would only take one to preserve life once he had no chance of escaping.

Rui looked up behind him to see the ANBU-nin take a giant leap from a rooftop toward him on the ground while the other remained on the rooftops to his right. Rui knew that the moment a masked "shinobi" ran through the street, everyone would scatter, leaving him clear to be nailed by a long-range ninjutsu from the ANBU-nin on the rooftops. He urgently needed cover, so he thought about his location in the city and decided to head to the left into the next alley to stay away from wide streets with clear aerial views.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. However, the ANBU-nin on the ground was too close for comfort. Before heading into the alley, he weaved hand seals for a very simple and weak D-rank jutsu. Wind Release: Tiny Twister. A palm-sized wind twister spun into life in his right palm. He grabbed a man and shoved him toward the ANBU-nin, who effortlessly dodged the human obstacle by spinning around him, but while doing so, missed the wind twister on the ground.

He stepped on it and was immediately thrown off balance. Rui pulled out a smoke bomb from his utility belt and threw it on the ground in the middle of the alley to add cover. Even if the ANBU-nin on the rooftop could track him, the one on the ground wouldn't—at least for a little while, which essentially meant erasing the advantage of creating a clone. ———. Takuma saw his clone seemingly trip on his feet and leapt across the street when the ROOT agent dipped into the alley on the other side of the street.

He clicked his tongue when he saw a smoke bomb go off. As he jumped across rooftops, he looked around and found that, while the streets were narrower than before due to higher building density, nothing was blocking the view, unlike crowded balconies. He spotted the agent and quickly followed, still keeping to the rooftops. The agent was nimble on his feet and innovative with his decisions.

He never ran in the same direction for too long and was constantly changing directions, making himself more challenging to keep track of. Takuma lost sight of him for every few seconds but stuck to him like glue, never letting him out of sight for too long. I should get down, Takuma thought, as he looked ahead and saw that the building heights were increasing, which would make tracking someone on the ground harder.

He looked behind him and saw that his clone had recovered and was leaping across the rooftops in his direction. He would wait until the clone caught up, and then he would get down. Takuma was two and a half buildings away from the agent when he turned left, and for a second, because of the building layout, disappeared from his view. Takuma kept running while keeping his eye on where the agent would reappear, only for him to not do so for a whole second. Where did he go?

Takuma first thought it was a trick because the agent had previously thrown fakes where he would turn left, but then immediately run back towards the right to fool him. But then an explosive went off in the far right—it was indistinguishable from the sound created by an explosive tag. Was it his clone? No memories returned to him, which meant the clone was still alive. He pumped the brakes and looked back to immediately spot the clone still some distance away and nowhere near the origin of the sound.

Takuma whipped his back to the front only to have his breath caught. The agent had jumped high enough to clear the building's height and had an egg-shaped mass of concentrated air, pumped with Wind nature chakra, between his palms. They only had a building's distance between them, so it took almost no time for the attack to reach him. Takuma moved as fast as he could and punched out a second form augmentation—but there wasn't enough time for him to gather enough chakra or properly release it.

The jutsu ripped through the augmentation like it was nothing and hit him straight in the chest. Takuma flew off the rooftop and crashed into a shop's flimsy wooden sliding door that snapped in half when he went through it. He didn't think it broke a bone, but he felt a nasty bone bruise coming, which was going to do numbers on his ignored the startled person inside and got up, trying to go forward, but the pain in his ribs spiked. He needed a couple of seconds before he could get going again.

"Hey—" The clone finally caught up and stopped to check on him.

"Go!" Takuma said before groaning. ———. Rui continued to run for two minutes before sneaking into a three-story building and climbing to the top, where he reached the door to the roof so that no one would run into him on the staircase. He wanted to sit down, but he knew he couldn't rest yet. He believed he managed to throw the ANBU-nin and his clone off his tail, but he didn't have proof. He was going to wait for a couple of more minutes before he could be sure that he had evaded capture.

He repeatedly looked out of the window present on each floor in the staircase to see if he could spot the ANBU-nin, but saw no one. After a few minutes, he finally felt a sense of safety and confidence that he was successful and finally sat down. It was a closer call than he expected. The ANBU-nin had come close a few too many times for his liking and combat would've been bad for his chances of escape. He didn't like to fight, and he remembered how that dislike had got him punished when he was younger.

What was good about getting bruised and cut? He couldn't relate to his peers, who liked to fight, in the least. But well, fighting was among the few things that were beaten into his bones, so it wasn't like he was helpless. He thought about the sudden encounter with ANBU. There was no telling if any of the others had escaped, and he had no desire to find out because that meant dipping his toes into danger when he had just avoided falling headfirst into the deep end.

His priority was to get out of Inahara, travel to a large town some distance from the city, submit a report, and then report to the nearest emergency location. It was crucial that the chain of command was aware of the ANBU raid. If all of them had been captured, it would take a long while before leadership found out about it.

ROOT was no longer part of the Hidden Leaf, so when ANBU inevitably buried the new information, it would take another three months for the leadership to realise something was wrong, because his unit only made contact with their handlers through letters every four months. The last contact was a month ago. After taking a short rest of a couple of minutes, Rui stood up to leave, but then looked down at his clothes. He needed to change and wondered if someone in the building had clothes he could borrow.

His heart had been beating in his ears, so he had missed the buzzing sound near his ear. He waved his hand to shoo whatever it was away, and it went away, but as he walked down a step, he heard the buzzing again. It was abnormally louder, but it was coming from down the stairs. He looked down, and his eyes widened when he saw a black cloud of bugs filling the entire staircase and flying up toward him. It was a terrifying sight and by no means natural. There was an Aburame nearby.

Rui looked at the window in the staircase and, without a hint of doubt, crashed his body through it to avoid being swallowed by the swarm. Shards of broken glass dug into his body as he went out of the building, and while in mid-air, he saw a snake-masked ANBU-nin with a cloud of bugs flying around him on the ground. Their eyes met, and both of them instantly weaved hand seals. The Aburame ANBU-nin shot a concentrated ball of white fire.

Rui pushed his palms forward, and the winds rippling through him as he fell coagulated into a rectangular wall.

"Crap," Rui cursed emotionlessly when his wall of wind caught on fire before blowing up in his face. As he shot back with his body catching on fire, he cursed the fact that escaping wasn't going to be easy.