3.10

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[Erik's POV]

As I mentally prepared for the fight to come, looking at the enemies running at us from the forest, I heard a loud warning, "Behind us!"

Whipping my body around, much like the rest of our group, I was shocked to find that shadowy figures had infiltrated the building, and were right behind us.

Even more shocking, however, was the kunai coming straight for my face.

The first instinct was to dodge, but the weapon was far too fast for me to dodge. Blocking it was a big no too, and even strengthening my forehead with Qi wouldn't be a good enough protection. Not with the speed the kunai flew at.

But as I thought things were over for me, a golden sword flashed before me, parrying the kunai. Realizing a moment later that I had narrowly escaped death, and that Alexander had just saved my life, I also heard the dull sound of metal piercing through flesh, accompanied with a groan.

My body frozen up, I looked at my side, and saw Francis, a kunai sticking out of his chest, right where his heart was. He toppled over, dead as one could be.

The chaos brought by the battle seemed to disappear as all I could hear now was a continuous ringing. I gulped, and felt my heart beat so strongly I wondered whether my teammates could hear it.

Both Francis and I had been attacked, a kunai thrown at us. The only one who could react to it was Alexander, and he had made the conscious choice to save me.

But another way to see it, was that I had been too incompetent to save my own life, and got Francis killed.

I know I shouldn't feel bad, because this was only my second mission and Francis was nothing more than a useless dregs of society who hadn't even bothered to introduce himself… and yet, the guilt was overwhelming me, paralyzing my body.

"Start moving if you don't want to die!" Alexander bellowed as he drove his sword into the belly of one of our enemies. I thought he was addressing me specifically, but as the call finally woke me up, I realized that the rest of my team were also frozen, with our protection targets being the only ones actually ready to defend.

Yahiko, the orange-haired boy, weaved multiple handsigns, before spitting out an absurd amount of water out of the building, forming a tidal wave that clashed against the incoming soldiers.

But by the time I turned my head back to Alexander, who had been joined by Yahiko and Konan, I was surprised to find the attackers gone already… where had they left?

Konan was looking at their feet as she said loud enough for me to hear, "These were clones too. Was there not a single real attacker?"

Clones?

Following her gaze, I only noticed some water and dirt there. Was I missing something?

Alexander, who was looking at his sword that somehow did not have a drop of blood on it with a frown, said, "It seems to be the case… and they managed to get one of us."

I did not even dare to look in Francis' direction, afraid I would throw up at the sight.

He added, "Since they haven't launched an attack with all their forces, they certainly are preparing for something else. A large jutsu that would level the building and everyone within, perhaps?"

I paled at the possibility. I knew next to nothing about Naruto, as all I knew was what I had picked up from one of the newbies, Jordan, and that wasn't much. But among the things I did pick up, was that the top powers in this world were Gods, and that some time in the future they would split the moon in half.

In comparison to the moon, a building didn't feel like much.

Asher, the sniper from the military, suddenly spoke up, "They probably are going to use guerrilla tactics."

I, along with everyone else, turned to look at her. Personally, I both felt shocked she dared to speak when the big guys were discussing, as well as confused about what she was speaking about.

Whatever it was, however, seemed to hold some trace of sense as Yahiko actually nodded, saying, "It would appear so. They want to lower the casualties to zero."

Alexander added, "You mean repeated small attacks like this one, to whittle us down?"

Asher nodded, explaining, more for us than them, "Sending all their men at once would certainly wipe us out, but not only is there the possibility of you being stronger than you showed, we might also be hiding other troops. So instead of going for a Pyrrhic victory, they are going to use their numbers to continually attack us, to stop us from ever sleeping. If they do this, then we will either fall in under a week, or they will be able to, as you said, whittle us down, one by one if necessary, without losing a single man."

That was being in the army, I guess. It makes sense for her to know about this kind of tactics. But weren't we fucked if they did that? Surely they won't, God won't put us in a hopeless situation, would he?

But looking at the faces of our Shinobi allies, Hanzo very well might have planned to do exactly this.

This wasn't good. Not at all.

Even if our entire group was capable of fighting them, I'm not sure we would be able to last a week like that. After all, if only a single one of our targets dies, we earn no Points and lose 1000, meaning a complete team wipe.

Well, except for Alexander, of course, since he already had Points in the thousands.

The moment I remembered this, I looked at our leader with fear. He… wasn't going to abandon us, was he?

After all, he had enough Points to let all three of the targets die and still live. Sarah and Chris did say he was a mission junkie who wouldn't let any Points pass by his nose, but if things were to get desperate… is he going to abandon us?

Since the earlier fight in the forest, when we went to rescue Alexander, we briefly fought against Hanzo's men, and things didn't look pretty. The only ones capable of fighting even a single one of them equally are Alexander, Yahiko, Konan, Nagato, Daibutsu, Kyusuke and Kie. And the last three would quickly die if they had to face more than five of them.

Chris could do big damage with his shotgun, but we were facing ninjas, their whole deal is to sneak around and assassinate people. If they were to throw a kunai at him the way they threw that one that almost killed me, Chris' gun wouldn't do him any good.

And out of the seven who were capable of guarding the group against Hanzo's men, the last three would surely get killed, and thus allow the enemy to attack those sleeping, ending our group.

The protection targets, although strong, would mean game over for us if they die, so making them take shifts was not really a safe option.

In other words, out of our entire group, Alexander was the only one who could reliably protect us.

No matter how I think of it, I can't see how he would possibly accept to do it. It would be suicide, no one can stay awake for seven days, while fighting trained ninjas capable of throwing giant fireballs every hour or even less.

He would only end up getting killed, and we would follow. The logical thing for him to do is to simply abandon us, and hide for the rest of the mission.

I… I'm scared. I don't want to do this anymore. I just want to get back to my Andrea…