9. The Village.

SHOW DON'T TELL

its harder to describe things happening than just saying it happened, and if I show how things happen, my pacing won't be so shit anymore. Sorry for the long break, I have been cleaning the house, making pastries and preparing the house for guests.

Writing interaction is hard. Dialogue is hard. But only so, can I improve.

Also sorry for the short chapter, but I've been busy with Christmas prep and so on. I post this today, cause I won't be able to write for a bit more after, and didn't want you guys to starve for longer.

Also no proofreading

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We were covering ground quickly, moving as fast as possible while making sure we would be in a good condition to fight, should we run into our targets as soon as we reached our destination. They were hiding in a small village, using their strength to basically enslave the occupants. Which is why we don't want to let the Kiri Anbu deal with them. The civilians would become collateral damage, and that is unacceptable, as population is already sparse in this country. Even losing a small village is a great loss in the long term, from the possibility of children with the potential to be shinobi, to even just the taxes, it makes any populated place important.

As we were approaching our destination, Deiki signaled us to slow down our pace and keep quiet. We stopped dead in our tracks behind our sensei, before lowering ourselves closer to the ground. The Jonin signaled once more, ordering Karin and Baki to keep themselves concealed, while me and him scouted the village. I projected myself to the top of a pine, and waited for Deiki to give the signal.

I set off at the same time as him. I was assigned the eastern half of the village, while Deiki would take the western part, where our targets most probably resided in, as the town hall was there. We moved quietly, taking our time as we approached the village. The first thing that jumped to my eyes as I first saw the 'village' was how little was left of it.

Almost all the houses on my part were destroyed, with the few left being in a horrible condition. In the rubble of said houses, I could see corpses. Only parts of them, bloodied and battered, viscera, hands legs, heads, anywhere you looked, if you paid attention, you would find pieces of humans. Men, more specifically. The only female corpse I saw was an elderly figure.

As I moved further along the village border, I could see some intact housing, right next to some farmland. I peeked through the treeline, and into a window of one of the buildings, where I saw about five kids, between six and ten years old, who looked bruised. Outside of the buildings, there were some kids working the field.

I was quite confused by the needless slaughter. The men would be much more efficient in working the land, so killing them all made no sense. Considering the lack of female corpses, they were most probably still alive. The children were too few and inexperienced to cultivate enough food to feed tens of people, and also two approximately Jonin level shinobi.

While I was pondering the logistics of sustaining such an operation, I realised something. The two weren't here to stay. They came, they are having their fun, and they will leave very soon, to repeat the process, in another small country or isolated village. I guess the blade hovering over their necks constantly made them fall to their own desires, that, combined with the empathy-crushing training of Kiri, drove them to become nothing more than powerful animals.

And just as a shepherd would kill a wolf were it to attack his herd, so do we target the ones who hunt our flock. I moved forward through the foliage, and stopped at the middle of the village, on the opposite side from which I started on. Not long after, Deiki had appeared behind me, and signaled for me to regroup with the other two. We moved close to one another, with me mostly using my projections to create as little noise as possible, while the Jonin maneuvered the tree tops with silent grace.

When we reached the spot we had left the other two at, we found they had built a concealed campsite, using the resources at hand. Logs and shrubbery. It wasn't an exceptionally good location for our campsite, and some parts of it looked out of place when looking closer at the construct, but they still seemed proud about it.

Before I could ask them what they were so proud of, Deiki lowered himself a little to look them in the eyes, and congratulated them for their work. Karin put a hand to her forehead, as she did in a twirl in happiness, while Baki flashed an even wider smile than usual, before flexing his arms. I looked at them both, unimpressed, and quite annoyed. As I made my way towards the camp, Karin looked at me, before asking.

"Why so annoyed? Are you jealous? Is the mighty Zenin jelly-" Karin said, while leaning forwards towards me, with her tongue sticking out, one of her eyes closed, and dragging the conjunctiva of her other eye down.

However, before she could finish, I interrupted her.

"Why are you proud? I don't see any kitchen here for you to make yourself of use in." I was looking over her, inspecting the campsite. I turned to Baki. "Did you at least bring some bread so she can have some contribution to this mission?"

Baki ignored me, instead choosing to ask Deiki about what he had scouted. I turned to the redhead.

"See? If you were qualified for such a profession, you would have asked me about the mission." I sneered, as Karin got visibly redder, with a vein pulsing gravely on her forehead. I rolled my eyes when I saw her. I opened my mouth to comment about how little control women have over their emotions, only to be stopped by a hand covering my mouth.

Deiki looked at me. I looked at Deiki. If I said anything more I would create a liability in the mission, in the form of a red haired human alarm. I rolled my eyes once more, before going to sit in the campsite. I motioned for everyone to sit with me, and they followed. Although some did so begrudgingly. After they took their seats, I started describing what I had seen.

Once I was finished, Deiki took over, with the situation being much the same, except for the fact that, near the town hall, the buildings were intact, and filled with women. Karin and Baki both had dark looks on their faces, trembling in anger. The redhead had seemingly forgotten about her inferiority in rapport to me, and seemed to only care about serving 'justice' on the culprits. Whatever helps them kill the targets, I guess.

"Since its close to midnight, we should rest for this night, before attacking in the morning. Considering that both targets are high-level shinobi, we need to be in the best shape possible for the upcoming battle." As I said this, Deiki was nodding along with me, satisfied with my proposition.

My teammates, however, were not very happy with this idea.

"What? We can't let the villagers suffer like that, we NEED to go help them NOW." Baki shout-whispered. Karin nodded her head with him, her face contorted into an angry frown.

Before I could repeat what I had already said, Deiki intervened.

"All of us are tired from the journey. Me and Naoya also went around to scout, draining us even more. It is close to midnight, and we have been up since sunrise. We take this night to rest, to make sure we have the strength necessary to bring justice to these monsters. Understood?"

The Jonin spoke in an authoritative tone, pausing with every sentence to stare down either Baki or Karin, depending on which one tried to argue with him. After confirming they both understood that there was no way to change his mind on this issue, Deiki suddenly smiled, as he pulled out some food from his pouch.

"Now, its time to eat our fill. And tomorrow morning we will plan our actions."

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