CH_5.17 (160)

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He needed to leave his neighborhood and head to a busy main street because no help would come where Takuma lived. But to do that, he needed mobility, which he didn't have currently because of the bum leg.

Takuma didn't dare look at his leg in fear the remaining three assassins would notice the glance and figure out the situation. But simultaneously, it didn't matter as they would figure it out anyway when Takuma moved.

The rain was now bathing the Hidden Leaf. Takuma's ears were filled with the sound of the heavy showers. The rain bore down on him, making his injured body feel heavier than any ankle weight he ever had. Takuma tried to look at the situation positively as his Water Release jutsu gained from the heavy rain—but the rain made the situation difficult as well—his trained ears were hindered, and every single surface in the area would become slippery.

Either the first dose of Sango's painkiller had kicked in, or his body was pumping enormous amounts of adrenaline through his blood because Takuma felt the pain dull a smidge, and his body felt more functional than it should be in his current condition.

But with his foot not operational, he was in no condition to engage three trained assassins.

He needed to escape.

The water tentacles behind Takuma shifted as one tentacle turned thinner and longer as it slowly extended behind him, heading towards the dead No#4. Takuma ordered the tentacle to swipe No#4's weapons pack to replenish his improvised arsenal. It was difficult as he didn't have a good view of No#4, and the rain only made it difficult.

Takuma turned to look at his front when he noticed the three assassins move. They spread out and moved to surround him. The tentacle behind him snatched the weapons pack and retreated quickly.

Takuma weaved hand seals for Hiding in the Rock jutsu and slipped into the ground. The urban landscape restricted his movement as building foundations underground made it so he couldn't just go anywhere—this would not have been a problem if he was at his best, but in his current condition, going any deeper than just below the surface wasn't possible. If he pushed it, he could end up buried alive beneath a city, never to be found.

Takuma turned to follow the road and had only moved a couple of meters when he felt the ground shake. Takuma felt his jutsu fail, and without a moment's delay, Takuma jumped out of the ground. In shock, Takuma looked around to see No#1 kneeling with hands on the ground.

Takuma recalled the earthen spikes he had faced earlier. No#1 was an Earth Release user. He had disrupted the ground, forcing Takuma to re-surface.

'Fuck!'

There went that plan. He would need to take out No#1 if he wanted to escape using Hiding in the Rock jutsu—but Takuma was sure they, too, realized that, which was why No#1 stood a step behind No#2 and No#3 even though No#3 was the most injured among the three. They were protecting him so that Takuma couldn't escape.

As Takuma thought about what to do next, he noticed No#3 look toward No#4. It was a subtle head turn, and Takuma barely noticed it. Takuma thought about it for a moment before returning to his current predicament.

As Takuma thought, No#2 and No#3 charged towards him. In a hurry, Takuma did the first thing that popped into his mind.

Two of the eight water tentacles moved and wrapped themselves around Takuma's leg. He let his legs go limp and let his body weight be supported by the tentacles.

'Just treat them like feet… treat them like feet… just like feet.'

While repeating the words in his mind like a mantra, Takuma jumped back, but instead of taking a big leap, Takuma ended up with a flimsy skip. No#2 and No#3 rapidly closed in, and Takuma had no choice but to engage them.

He dug into No#4's weapons pack, and thankfully, it had a stash of kunai, which he used to arm his tentacle.

Takuma felt horrible as he operated the tentacles at his feet. Without a solid base and nimble footwork, the rest of his body seemed awkward to move. It was the most awful he had felt in combat, so much so that he wanted to throw up.

No#2 swung his sword, and when Takuma went to the counter, the tentacle holding the kunai missed. The sword straight cut through the water tentacle. Takuma had to lurch back at the last moment to avoid the sharp edge, and due to the abrupt movement, he lost his balance and fell to the ground.

"Gah!"

Pain shot through his body as a deep cut got pulled from the fall. He had barely squinted for a split-second, only to see No#3 stabbing his sword down towards his chest when he re-focused his eyes. With pure flight instinct, the tentacles pushed Takuma to the side, making No#3 miss.

Takuma's problems had just started as No#2 was ready with his next attack. Takuma didn't know what to do from his current position until he remembered he had tentacles. Like whips, two tentacles assaulted No#2's legs to make him stumble.

Another swing from No#3 threatened Takuma's life, but he didn't miss this time and successfully contested the strike. Another tentacle got in a counterstrike into No#3's side, and Takuma was about to get a final lethal strike to the heart when he saw No#1 in his field of vision.

The next moment, a shuriken came down at him. Every tentacle lurched in front to form a barrier, but Takuma knew that the shuriken would pierce through the water—he pushed chakra into the water to further solidify it so he could survive the attack.

The pseudo-wall didn't deflect the shuriken; instead, the shuriken entered the water but didn't make out the other side.

Takuma didn't have the time to breathe a sigh of relief. The water tentacles moved, the shuriken floating inside moving along with them. Takuma turned the tentacles into a slingshot, flinging the shuriken out—but instead of returning fire to No#1, he aimed at No#2 and No#3 as they were more immediate threats. The two assassins immediately jumped out of the way of the shooting stars, but not before they could avoid all of the shuriken—some hit them—and that gave Takuma a chance to regain footing.

He stood up with the tentacles wrapping around his leg. From his previous failure, Takuma was able to better control the tentacles as substitutes for his legs—he immediately headed towards an alleyway, stumbling along the way, almost falling. Even if he could move now, Takuma was nowhere near the mobility he would normally possess.

Fortunately for him, Takuma knew the alleyways better than his assassins.

In the night of the dark, Takuma moved through the narrow ways of the poorly planned part of the city, but today, it was all to Takuma's advantage. Not only were the alleyways narrow, but the construction companies who had built the houses had over-extended the balconies beyond the assigned plots. The balconies from two opposite buildings had a distance that could be covered with a small jump, putting the balconies directly above the alleyways, which made the streets down below partially blocked and thus inaccessible from the rooftops.

He weaved through the dark village, almost falling multiple times.

But before Takuma even left the block, the moment he entered the first alleyway, he felt something. But the feeling disappeared almost instantaneously, and Takuma had too much on his mind to care. All of his attention was focused on operating the tentacles.

His breathing was labored; the rain sapped the energy from his body, but he couldn't stop. He could feel the assassins on his tails; he could hear them over the noise. They were behind him on the road; they were atop the buildings, following him. It was Takuma's frequent twists and turns that were keeping him safe.

He consciously kept away from main roads and kept to back alleys, knowing that if he gave them the space, they would nail him. He could tell that things were going well as he hadn't faced a single explosive tag to just blow him up—but he hoped they would use explosives or a flashy ninjutsu to create some commotion. That might not have done anything in his neighborhood, but it would work now as Takuma moved toward a better part of the town.

Takuma was avoiding the main roads, but his aim was a large Police Force precinct that would have night shift officers working in the building. The precinct wasn't accessible by back alleys, and Takuma knew that very soon he would have to travel out in the open.

Suddenly, No#2 dropped at the end of the alley Takuma was halfway through. It was an alleyway that opened to a main road.

Takuma got the scare of his life when he saw No#2 weaving hand seals. Time slowed for Takuma; he knew he had close to no chance of avoiding a ninjutsu in the narrow alleyway, and even if he pulled off an Earth Release: Earthen Dome in time, the solid concrete buildings around slowed the dome construction and he would get hit.

The other option was to disrupt the jutsu before No#3 completed it, but he didn't have any kunai equipped in his hands, and the tentacles didn't have enough space to build up the momentum to whip the kunai.

A genjutsu wasn't an option—No#3 was actively operating chakra for a jutsu, which meant, in that moment, he had better control of his chakra, and a genjutsu had a higher than usual probability of failing. 

Takuma had less than a second to make a decision, and he made one in the moment.

The tentacles around Takuma's feet tightened. There was no water below his soles, and even though one of his legs wasn't working, he could still circulate chakra into it. He pushed as much chakra he could in the moment into the water tentacle and used his good leg to jump high up just before a stream of fire engulfed everything below him

The jump was pathetic; he barely jumped to a single-storey height. Takuma slapped his hand on the flat surface of a balcony's outside, and his training during the basic training right out of the academy kicked in, and his hand stuck to the surface like his feet would do with chakra adhesion.

His arm was strong enough to pull the weight of his body, and Takuma climbed up as fast as he could. The moment his good foot was on a surface, he kicked himself up and continued his way to the top.

Takuma reached the rooftop and turned his head to see No#1 and No#2 behind him on another rooftop.

The precinct was just a few blocks away, which meant Takuma only needed to cross a bit more distance before he could reach his destination. Takuma didn't have the leaping strength to cross the main road and onto the rooftop across the street, which meant he had to travel by road, which wasn't optimal.

By the time he went down from the rooftop, No#3 would be ready to mount another attack, and the other two would soon follow. But he had no choice; he had to survive his way to the precinct.

Takuma turned to the front and stepped forward when tragedy struck.

He slipped.

Cold rain fell from the sky.

Takuma's mind went blank as he found himself falling back into the narrow alleyway.

He could see the future in his imagination. He would hit multiple balconies on his way down; once on the ground, he would face No#3, who would take advantage of the situation and finish him off. Even if that weren't the case, the other two wouldn't allow him to live much longer.

He was as good as dead.

'Not yet.'

All eight tentacles merged into one and shot forward to wrap itself around an iron rod before pulling Takuma up and flung him into the sky.

Eight Tentacles Jutsu wasn't meant to handle large weights. Its intended usage was to wield small weapons like kunai, shuriken, big daggers, and perhaps a sword or two—but the jutsu wasn't meant to support heavy weights and especially couldn't muster enough force to fling someone Takuma's weight into the sky.

It wasn't even meant to substitute legs like Takuma was using, but he had been pumping chakra into tentacles to increase their ability to bear weight. And in the moment, he was falling, Takuma did the same, he pushed so much chakra into the tentacles that it, for a very short moment, became able to fling Takuma into the air.

And because the Eight Tentacles jutsu wasn't meant to be utilized in such a way, it shattered immediately.

As Takuma flew in the air, he turned his body mid-flight and weaved hand seals for Water Release: Wild Water Wave.

No#1 and No#2 had rushed forward and were well within the range.

Water Release ninjutsu had a special feature. Most of them performed significantly well when there was a body of water present nearby—or an alternate, if it was raining in the area.

Takuma then ejected a wave of water, which was twice as big as the biggest wave he had ever pulled off. It wasn't just the volume; the pressure behind the water was at another level as well. No#1 and No#2 had no opportunity to dodge and were hit by the wave.

But the happiness was short-lived as Takuma fell to the ground violently, missing the opportunity to do a roll to kill the momentum. Fortunately, his body was much stronger than a normal human. Unfortunately, he was in bad shape, and even the fall from a height that Takuma wouldn't feel in his knees sent a wave of weakness throughout his body.

Takuma groaned, and before even attempting to get up, he weaved hand seals for Eight Tentacles through the pain. The water collected from the puddles and rain pulled together in front of his chest. Two tentacles sprouted out and wrapped around his legs. As he forced himself to stand up, the water blob moved from his front to his back before six more tentacles spread out. Each tentacle felt as heavy as lead.

He knew his condition was worsening, and he didn't have enough time; his body would give out before he ran out of chakra.

He heard footsteps, and when he looked up, the three assassins stood around him…

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The link is in the synopsis!