An Hour

The chunin beside him had been talking for an hour now — what he liked to eat, his family back home, or what his favorites hobbies were. No topic had been omitted from his lips.

Katsu could hear it in his voice — the stress formed from a state of prolonged paranoia. He couldn't fault the man, as he too was the same.

It had been an hour since their scouts had reported sighting of Iwa shinobi crossing through the Land of Rain. Without any orders from high command, they could only wait for an assault, and they'd indeed been waiting with strained eyes and heightened vigilance.

Katsu and another dozen Konoha shinobi were dug in at a forward operating base established along the border of the Land of Fire and Rain. It was a small encampment of tents with simple caches of supplies spread haphazardly around. The base was buried into the earth, resulting in a three-foot lip that circled along the perimeter. It made for decent-enough cover, but not enough to alleviate the concerns Katsu had with their position.

'We're sitting ducks and miles from any sort of backup. Only a few shinobi from the reconnaissance division prevent Iwagakure from executing the easiest encirclement in the history of their military,' Katsu thought, 'If I know this, then there's no doubt our superiors do as well. What the hell are they thinking? Our force is just too damn small for it to be worth stationing us here.'

The tension was palpable, and Katsu's chest only tightened more as the seconds ticked by.

How would the first engagement begin? A kunai to the back of the head? A boulder crushing a man on patrol? Or perhaps a torrential flood that wipes their outpost from the map in a matter of seconds?

Katsu didn't want to think about it any longer. The stress of it all was becoming too much. There was no need to add more mental turmoil to the mix.

"So anyway that's when the misses throws a pan at my head. A freaking pan! Cast iron, man! Right at my head, I'm telling you!" And on and on the chunin went.

Katsu didn't resent the chunin for trying to lighten the mood with conversation, but when the man began giving him an earful about how he preferred to be stepped on and treated like garbage in bed, it really wasn't soothing his chaotic mind.

'Did you really need to admit that to a seven-year-old?' Katsu wondered, keeping his gaze locked on the treeline.

"So that's why I think ketchup is technically a solid, and so if you think about it, honey should be as-"

"I heard something," Katsu whispered, quieting the chunin.

He narrowed his eyes and espied the treeline with greater attention to detail.

'It sounded like… whistling?' he thought absentmindedly.

Katsu turned to the chunin to ask his opinion. "How about you, did you hea-"

The chunin was gone — at least the part that mattered most. His body stood upright, sitting on his knees with his arms laid limp by his sides. The majority of his head was missing, shattered and strewn across the ground in fragments of skull and splashes of blood. Only a stump remained with a few strands of skin left hanging uselessly over the sides. It gushed in a pulsing manner, in tune with the beating of his heart.

'Ah…. ah…. He's…' Katsu stared at the headless corpse with vacant, dazed eyes. His mind went blank as he kept his attention on the lifeless carcass of a man who had been talking to him only a few seconds prior.

When the reality of what had happened hit him, it hit him like a tsunami with enough destructive force to crush a sprawling metropolis. His body and mind were thrashed with waves of unbridled disgust and dread.

He broke his gaze from the corpse just to release the military rations he'd consumed across the ground. He coughed for a moment, freeing the bit of vomit that had been caught in his trachea.

Katsu wrestled the sight of his dead comrade from his mind just long enough to shout, "Enemy attack!"

The other shinobi — who were up until this point waiting at their designated positions while on edge — jumped into action, readying their weapons and scanning the surrounding trees for enemy presence.

They were true veterans. Most of them were chunins who'd already been participating in the war for over a year now while there was only a single jonin designated as the captain. Out of the dozen Konoha shinobi stationed there, only two were genin: Katsu and Takumi, the top two of their graduating class.

Why were they stationed here? Katsu didn't have the slightest clue. He only hoped the Konohagakure higher-ups knew what they were doing.

Now that his partner on the northwestern side of the encampment was dead, Katsu was left to guard the point alone. He warily watched the treeline. The attack had originated from his side, and he would surely bear the brunt of any opening assault.

'Where the hell are the scouts?' Katsu screamed in his mind, 'They should have retreated at the first sign of enemy shinobi — hell that's what they're best at doing! Are they really dead? Fucking figures.'

As Katsu's mind raced, a pair of shinobi joined him at his position.

Susumu, a thin man with pitch-black receptacles and short black hair investigated the chunin's corpse. "What in god's name happened to him?"

The pair looked at Katsu for an explanation of the situation.

"I'm not sure. It was fast — too fast. There was whistling… and then you know the rest," Katsu said, glancing at the deceased chunin for a short moment before turning away.

Katsu had no clue what had killed the man. A jutsu was the most probable answer, but the speed of the attack was unexplainable. He saw nothing, or he was simply incapable of seeing it. His eyes were unable to capture the speed and his brain unable to process what little they did capture.

"Probably some sort of speed-type ninjutsu," the other man, a wide and bulky brute named Taichi, said.

"I agree," Katsu said, having witnessed the event first hand.

The three of them had the same gut feeling — someone powerful had appeared. Someone with this kind of speed-type attack would make dodging or escaping an impossibility. All three of them immediately came to the conclusion that the scouts were absolutely dead, their silent, decaying bodies stranded out in the woods somewhere.

"Enemies sighted!" someone shouted on the southern edge of the encampment.

"Enemies!" another yelled from the east.

"They're here!" Takumi called from the southwest.

It was at this moment that Katsu's fear had been realized: They were surrounded.