CH_7.13 (231)

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'Take a deep breath,' Takuma said to himself.

He groaned as another hot stab assaulted his head. There wasn't a worse time to get a headache than when he was surrounded by unknown hostiles. A part of him wanted to find out about the first person who had triggered his headache, but he could see a trap when he saw one.

The unknown shinobi had set the police station ablaze in hopes of drawing out the culprit behind the Bentetsu police station bombing, and Takuma had played right into their hands. He had to escape regardless of what he wanted because capture wouldn't mean good things for him. Fortunately for him, his hood was concealing his face from view—as long as he could shake them off, he could escape without the possibility of a sketch of his face plastered around the town.

"We're leaving," Takuma said, still trying to calm himself down.

Takuma and his clone jumped off the rooftop into a side alley and quickly headed towards the police station street, where the crowds gathered. Without a word, both of them used the Transformation Jutsu to turn into two young women in an attempt to blend into the crowd.

Transformation Jutsu was easy to detect when one was looking for it, but the difficulty spiked when the adversary was looking at a crowd from a distance. They consciously chose to transform into women in an attempt to throw off their pursuers.

"Stay," said Takuma.

"Are you sure?" asked the clone in the form of a young woman.

It was an extremely risky move to stay in the crowd instead of instantly taking off—but Takuma expected the pursuers to look for people leaving the crowd. They moved away from the side alley entrance as that area would be looked at with the most suspicion after people walked away from the scene.

"Yes," Takuma whispered as he stared at the burning building for an excruciating fifteen seconds. Every second that passed was one where he thought that the unknown shinobi would jump down to surround them.

"Okay, I think this is enough time," said the clone. "This is what we're going to do. I will go ahead and try to cross the roadblock to make a scene. Use that commotion to slip away. Agreed?"

The street had been closed off for safety as the firefighters tried to contain the fire.

Takuma nodded after a second of consideration.

"Go," he said,

The clone in the disguise of a young woman took a step forward before unexpectedly stopping.

"What happened?" asked Takuma, thinking the clone must've spotted something.

"… You've got that headache, so I don't know if you noticed it or not," said the clone, "but do you recognize their tactical gear?"

The clones were different from himself in various ways. Even though they were complex creations, at their core, they were simple simulacra of the user. Unlike Takuma, who focused on the middle-aged man and his intuition headaches, the clone's first order of business after seeing the masked figures was to ensure Takuma's safety. It was a noted factual observation that the clones didn't have strong self-preservation instincts unless ordered to, as they knew their life span was limited from conception. They would put the original before them in every matter and were highly receptive to orders from the original.

There could be many reasons why the clone didn't get the same headache as Takuma. Perhaps the clone didn't care about finding out the truth of the matter at the moment, or he didn't have a good look at the man before he spotted the masked figures, which caused his priorities to switch.

Whatever it was, it allowed the clone to focus on the many different things that Takuma missed in his fluctuating mental state.

"What do you mean?" asked Takuma.

"Their tactical gear… it's exactly the same as the assassins from that night," said the clone.

Takuma's entire world screeched to a stop. He stared at the clone through wide eyes, while the memories of that rainy night flashed through his mind. He recalled the assassins' gear, washed in the yellow light of their fire ninjutsu. The clone was correct; the assassins wore the same black and grey tactical gear he had just seen a minute before.

A phantom pain flashed through Takuma's left leg, reminding him of the injury that had given him so much trouble; he had to arrive at Camp Banana with a walking cane. He grabbed his leg tightly and bit the inside of his mouth as the spark of apprehension from getting caught in a trap surged into a choking swell of fear.

"Get a hold of yourself; you've got to make it out alive," the clone pinched Takuma's arm.

Takuma looked at the clone, who was still transformed as a young woman, and took deep, calming breaths.

"Go. I'll be fine," he said.

The clone wasted no time and pushed through the crowd towards the road back on the street corner. Takuma turned to walk away from the scene, and as expected, he heard a loud commotion. He ignored it and kept walking away. With the thoughts muddling his brain, it took him all to stop himself from tearing away at full speed—he couldn't even walk briskly because it would be too fast for a civilian.

Takuma stopped when he heard a faint whistle coming above him. He immediately side-hopped and pressed himself against the nearby building. A moment later, a kunai stabbed the pavement where he stood.

He could tell that the clone was still alive, but the distraction ploy had failed. Takuma dropped all pretence, shed his disguise, and bolted away at full speed. The civilians yelped and exclaimed at the scene of a seemingly normal young woman turning into a shady hooded figure. They screamed when another kunai descended from the sky, stabbing the pavement close to them.

Takuma ignored them and pressed forward. He glanced to the side and saw a masked pursuer, with orange highlights on the white mask, sprinting from rooftop to rooftop, keeping up with him. Takuma changed course very abruptly and turned into a narrow alley off the main street.

The unmasked man, the leader of the masked group, dropped down to the other end of the alley from the sky, cutting off Takuma's route.

"Surrender," said the leader.

Takuma dug his heels into the ground to stop and course corrected towards the adjacent wall. He leaped up the exposed brick wall and ascended as fast as his legs could go. The leader launched a kunai at Takuma and he spun in a quick, complete rotation, catching the kunai. Before gravity could take effect, Takuma was back on the wall and climbing to the roof.

The orange masked figure leaped from across the street and landed on the rooftop while Takuma was pulling himself up. Using the kunai he'd caught, he formed bogus hand seals to trick "Orange-Mask" into thinking he was applying ninjutsu to the kunai. The masked man dove to the side to evade the plain kunai instead of deflecting it.

Takuma didn't stop and directly leaped to the next rooftop, but he didn't reach it. The leader appeared beside him and kicked him completely off course. Taken by surprise, Takuma managed to raise his block, but was hurled towards a building across the street.

"Gah!"

His back smashed against the wall, crushing the bricks and cement. Takuma stuck to it and continued his escape from his pursuers. He ran around the building before dropping down to the street level, and tore through alleyways and bends, sticking close to the building walls and hiding within the long, arcing shadows.

It was reminiscent of the night of the assassination attempt. He was running with pursuers hot on his tail. Back then, he didn't like that it was raining, but right now he really wished it was. Yu was drastically smaller than the Hidden Leaf village, and a big commotion could have the enemy forces come down on him. To make things worse, Takuma didn't know Yu as well as he did the Hidden Leaf. He couldn't go towards the industrial district with the factory base, nor could he go towards Chinatsu's house—and those were the two areas he knew best.

For the first time since he had been in Yu, the city felt truly hostile. He cursed himself as he sprinted through the streets, unable to lose the pursuers—he shouldn't have gone out alone. He saw shadows leaping over the buildings and the sound of footsteps as they pursued him like he was a game animal.

The sounds grew closer. He glanced back to see the leader on his tail, a few metres between them. Takuma exerted himself to boost forward when Orange-Mask appeared at the other end of the alley.

Takuma immediately switched to running up the walls again.

On the ground, the leader weaved hand seals. He breathed out a thin stream of fire, cupping it between his hands to form a long spear in his hands. Takuma saw the leader cock his arm back for a javelin throw—he wasn't going to catch that. His danger instinct tingled, telling him that dodging it narrowly wouldn't be enough.

Takuma's mind moved faster as he cycled through his recollection of the street in his mind as his eyes were locked on the leader's spear.

'Window'

Takuma glanced at the window one story above him. As the leader heaved the spear, chakra flooded into Takuma's feet and expunged out of the soles of his feet. The wall underneath his feet cratered as the wall/tree-walking technique was overloaded, and Takuma was propelled off the wall.

Crash! The glass shattered as Takuma went through the window pane less than a second before the spear reached his position and exploded. The fiery rush of flames managed to enter through the window and he would have been consumed by the roaring fire if not for his forward roll onto the floor.

Takuma had no time to look back and stumbled forward into an apartment bedroom. He hurried out of it in search of an exit, having taken one step to run into a pudgy woman holding a kitchen knife to his face. In one fluid movement, he disarmed the screaming housewife and threw a kunai with an explosive tag out of the broken bedroom window.

It exploded right outside the window ledge, damaging the building and the room, but it bought him a few more seconds before the pursuers came in.

He looked down at the screaming housewife who quieted under Takuma's gaze.

"Shut up and hide," he said before hurrying deeper into the house. He saw an old woman closely hugging a five- or six-year-old girl in a living room, both of whom looked terrified. Despite the twinge of guilt in his chest, he had no time to calm them down, so he ignored them.

The apartment was small, and he immediately saw the front door up ahead. He was halfway through it when his peripheral vision caught the sight of a large bucket full of water through an open bathroom door.

Takuma took the risk and weaved hand seals for the Water Style: Eight Tentacles. Just as he finished the hand seals, the leader stepped into the bedroom through the hand seal. Their eyes met, and both of them immediately drew and threw a kunai at each other. The kunai collided in the narrow hallway, a few feet away from the housewife, who screamed and dropped to the ground in fear. In the living room, the little daughter started crying as the grandmother hugged her tighter.

Takuma backed up toward the door and threw three shuriken toward the leader. He deflected them with a kunai while the water inside the bucket rose up in a freeform blob and flew at Takuma, who smashed through the front door into the open corridor.

The leader threw a kunai through the house as Takuma vaulted over the open corridor. The water blob attached to Takuma and sprung out two tentacles that caught the kunai. As he jumped down, he saw Orange-Mask run into the street from around the corner.

Takuma bit his lip in frustration.

He could feel that his clone was still alive and by the looks of it, had taken two out of four pursuers away from him. Despite that, Takuma felt that as long as he had these two after him, he wouldn't be able to escape.

The situation was only getting worse. Takuma's directional sense was average in all purposes, and he was already confused about where he was. For all he knew, he could have subconsciously leading them to the industrial complex of Chinatsu's house. The longer he was on the run with his focus on shaking the pursuers, the worse thing would get. Even if he wanted to get some help by going close to Chinatsu's house in hopes that the team would notice, he wouldn't be able to find his way quick enough.

He needed to eliminate one of them if he wanted a fair chance at escaping, and between the two, Orange Mask not only felt less threatening, but Takuma also had questions he wanted to ask the leader about how the man related to his past.

"Looks like Orange Mask has to die," he muttered.

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