I Don't Choose To Love You... I Just Do [B-rank

Serah

Serah

D-rank

81

Character sheet
Chakra:

(250/250)

Spoiler:

‘Clear the sector of bandits’. That had been their fucking objective. It had been their one and only objective and it had been so easy, so simple to do. It was something that they’d done over and over and over again, and there should have been absolutely no difference in how they handled it. But, as fate would have it, it was different, drastically and painfully and fatally so.

It was bullshit, Serah thought. It was bullshit how the normal patrols were just conveniently and coincidentally too tied up to handle a small bandit problem, which turned out to be a rather large bandit problem that their star member, Hirotsugu, had been unable to take care of. The team of three freshly-promoted Chunin, who’d already held a near spotless mission record due to Hirotsugu’s near untouchability in the Land of Fire itself, what with him being a Senju who commanded the very land they walked on, as well as Junichi’s rising status as the Sarutobi who got up in your face so much you could only keep your distance if you were facing away from him. And then there was her, Serah Uchiha, and there was little that needed to be said about her, with the knowledge of her Sharingan slowly but surely building up within her.

Maybe things would’ve been different if Mihoko-sensei had been with them. The normally calm Nara had been called away on something urgent, something that had caused her eyes to widen in shock at the very notion, and she’d left hurriedly from their team meeting with only their mission dispensed and the usual warning to keep their heads on their shoulders, both metaphorically because she still doubted they understood the purpose of it, and literally as no sensei wanted their team to return from a mission one member short and a funeral on the way. Sadly though, it seemed as if that would be the case in this unfortunate scenario. Mihoko would surely be disappointed in their inability to reach her standards, should they – even any single one of them – make it safely back to the village walls.

Mission intel had suggested that there was only a small group of no more than twenty bandits. That was the worst case scenario, and as Hirotsugu himself had once upon a time tied down over two dozen of them with his Wood Release, they had been fairly confident. They’d set up the usual perimeter and gone through the usual strategies of course – being Chunin they weren’t going to really jeopardise the safety of themselves or their village than when they needed their sensei watching over their shoulder like a hawk – but clearly that had been insufficient to ensure that they swept this mission under the rug like all their other missions.

When they’d sprung the trap, the bandits had seemed ready. It had almost seemed like they had been waiting the entire day for Serah’s team to move, and Hirotsugu’s initial surprise attack had failed splendidly. Fire techniques were unleahsed like it was hell on earth, singing all his techniques before they had a chance to truly form and grow devastating, and the number of eighty bandits – far more than the godforsaken twenty that had been suggested to be in the area – swarmed them without a second thought, hitting Hirotsugu with Genjutsu after Genjutsu and leaving him a broken wreck, not from trauma but from chakra exhaustion as Junichi had fought his way in to save his teammate. The boy’s fire techniques, too, were countered immensely, with Water being unleashed like it was nobody’s business, and Serah’s Sharingan was the only jutsu on her team that didn’t seem immediately countered, though they had a myriad of Taijutsu users on their team that Serah had difficulty immediately following, simply due to the sheer speed they had.

Plus, these weren’t ordinary bandits. These were fucking ninja. Three Chunin couldn’t possibly hold up against a number of ninja over twenty times greater, no matter how weak they were, unless they were infants who were born into the role without any training. Mihoko-sensei would have likely been able to ensnare them, and fight off the many Raiton users that seemed to also have been prepared for their sensei, but not them. They were still far too inexperienced, and the battle had quickly tipped against their favour. Serah, although having evolved the two-tomoe Sharingan in the fight against twenty, now carried her unconscious teammates on her shoulders as she tried to hurry the frick back to Konoha before they sprung any more of their traps, her teammates having already succumbed to the exhaustion long, long ago.

She believed she was simply making a fuss of things for no reason. After all, in a group of eighty people, you would expect them to be able to repel any attack, especially one conducted by a team of only four, and especially so if all eighty or so were ninja, which in the short several seconds long skirmish had seemed like a very, very big threat to the small team of only three. However, Serah couldn’t shake the feeling that the team had been expecting them, and her mind shot back to the time that her sister had warned her of this… possible group that was hunting Serah and herself down. Her sister’s sensei, the ever omnipotent Sumimoto Kyudoka had been the one who had pulled off a massively impressive reconnaissance mission to search for the truth that lay within the shadows and had made it back to the village to warn the two of them, primarily because they were for some reasno on the hit list, not just Uchiha in general, of which there were plenty in the village. This attack just seemed way too orchestrated for it to be anything less than a planned attack.

Junichi stirred on her left shoulder, and he blinked his eyes even as Serah travelled past her limits, pushing herself to go faster than was physically possible for her at that point, having already travelled for two hours without stopping at her top speed. She was beginning to feel the strain on her muscles but she didn’t dare stop, in fear that they would catch up to her – to her team – and she continued pushing herself past her limits, to the death if she had to, to ensure that her teammates at least would make it back to Konoha alive.

“Serah…” Junichi groaned. “What… what happened?”

A kunai whizzed past her head from above and she realised they didn’t have time. There was no time for niceties. There was none whatsoever.

“Junichi, can you walk?”

“Um.. I think so. My legs feel a bit sore but that’s how I always feel in the mornings, right?” he joked. Then, he saw the serious look in her eyes. It wasn’t as if he’d forgotten that they were being chased, but when he saw the spark of anger, of seriousness, that was normally amiss within the young, optimistic pinkette who always bordered on the brighter, less serious side of life, it seemed that he read her mind and knew instantly why she’d asked her question, and almost instantly regretted his almost positive answer. Almost. But a small part of him, his pride, told him to accept it. “No… you’re not going to-”

Serah threw Junichi to the side, hitting the trunk of a tree and landing on a branch, and tossed Hirotsugu at him. No more words were said, but a playful wink – the very same she always gave them before they set off on missions and in an attempt to get them to stop arguing with each other – was shot before she rocketed back in the direction she came. It was almost a painful twist of irony that the girl who kept them from going at each other’s throats would much rather slit her own than have either of theirs claimed. He held strong to their promise of coming back alive after every mission. While this was one mission gone wrong, it was no different from the many other times false intel had gotten them in a pinch. Of course, it had never been this bad, but one could always hope. And, if his body were in any better condition, he’d have defied her, but at the moment, it was all he could do to hop from branch to branch, and so he resolved to return to Konoha. The road was familiar and it was only a short ways away, ten minutes at the least though, and his best bet of finding help for Serah would be in the village, not his own abilities. And, if Mihoko-sensei was already back, then all the better. He reassured himself as he took off as quickly that he could that he would make sure Serah lived through it.

He would come to regret his decision when he never saw her face again.

“Junichi, get the hell back here!” Hirotsugu shouted, but the boy paid him no heed as he swung from tree to tree like the his clan’s namesake.

“No way! We only have until sundown to find those bells and I’m not letting your slow ass get in the way of our team, Senju!”

“F*ck you! You get your sorry ass back here or I’m going to yank it back, you son of a b*tch!” Hirotsugu cursed, causing the girl sprinting from tree top to tree top beside him to raise her eyebrows.

Serah had never heard him curse before. He’d always been the cool kid in school, composed and not letting anything get under his skin. Junichi, on the other hand, had been his express rival, always trying to mess things up for the Senju. Where Hirotsugu had been the epitome of composure, Junichi had been the epitome of energy. The two didn’t mesh well together, and Serah had absolutely no clue what the instructors had been thinking in pairing these two up together, but she had full faith that they knew what they were doing, and so pressed onwards, jumping to another tree top and landing in a crouch, before taking off again, just one branch away from Hirotsugu, whom she decided was a better leader for their team than the hyperactive Junichi, although hyperactivity wasn’t a bad thing.

Just then, a huge snake tore through the tree Hirotsugu was about to land on. The boy, unable to readjust his landing, risked falling into the massive coil of scales that was the snake’s body, crushed either along its body or underneath it. Serah, however, had just landed, and exploded outwards, making a beeline for Hirotsugu and caught him by the hand. The two of them landed on a secondary tree trunk, sticking to it with their chakra and watching as the snake coiled around three trees, taking them down as it constricted around them, before staring at the two of them with slitted eyes.

“Take this you scaly bastard!” Junichi exclaimed from behind it, likely having moved to hit it from its rear. Serah saw a powerful burst of fire singe its back, only for the snake to turn around and strike Junichi, the attack seemingly doing nothing to him. Junichi, ever the monkey and the trickster, somehow managed to latch onto the snake’s upper jaw and yank himself away from its dangerous bite, before scrambling over its head and leaping back to his team. “Wooo! This is one big snake, don’t you guys think?”

“This is the Forest of Death after all,” Hirotsugu answered. “Wood Style-”

“Wait!” Serah called out, seeing an unusual shine to the slimy surface of the snake’s body. Only, it didn’t look as much slimy as much as it did- “Metal? I think its scales are metal!”

“That’s crazy!” Junichi retorted. “Snakes don’t have metal scales! They’re snakes!”

“Unless this is a summon,” Hirotsugu theorised.

Just as they said that, a monkey landed on the branch above them, bringing their attention to it from the loud creak of the branches it caused upon its landing. It screeched at them, revealing its sharp, salivating, and don’t forget sharp fangs, before leaping down at Serah. The boys, unable to react from the sudden ambush, were unable to do anything to save her, and the girl was tackled onto the ground, dropping several metres down below. Not wanting to land on her behind, however, she withdrew her kunai and stabbed the monkey in the back, only for his tail to catch her wrist just as the kunai was about to pierce his back. Not wishing to be outdone so quickly, she reached for the three shuriken she kept and forcefully scratched along the surface of the monkey’s back with her other hand. It screeched in pain, but its grip on her remained, and she felt the ground impact her back painfully. Her grip on her kunai and her shuriken slackened, dropping her four weapons onto the ground as the monkey raised its right fist to pound her head.

She moved her head to the right to avoid the punch, which drove a crater an inch into the ground, and she quickly brought her hands together and inhaled, before blowing a Great Fireball straight above her, forcing the monkey to leap back. She turned around to get onto her knees, but the moment she stood up, she felt a furry leg swipe at hers, causing her to drop onto her back again. She saw the monkey bringing its tail down onto her, and quickly rolled out of the way. Somewhere above, she could hear the shuffling of leaves against each other and could only suspect that Hirotsugu was engaging the snake, whereas a large exhale of fire informed her that Junichi was currently doing the same… which meant she had to take care of the monkey alone.

Her attention was diverted from her current opponent, however, when she saw something large and silver come crashing down onto her, and she rolled onto her feet before making a quick dash to escape the downward slam of the snake’s tail. She felt the monkey’s tail wrap around her waist and throw her into a nearby tree, dazing her slightly. When her vision returned, she saw the monkey’s left fist pulled back, but just as it approached her, she saw it slow down. Ducking, she closed her right hand around the monkey’s left fist to hold it there, before driving her knee into its gut to cause it to bend over in pain, some of its spit falling onto her white uniform, before she drove her left elbow into its neck, causing it to poof into smoke.

‘A summon?’ was her only thought, before Junichi’s cry from above caught her attention.

That was the first time she’d gotten her Sharingan. It had seemed so scary then, but then repeated fights against Mihoko-sensei as a team had built her resolve up. It was easier to fight as a team. Hirotsugu always managed to disorientate the enemy team while Junichi ran in like a wild monkey, and Serah would pick off any strays. It was a fool proof plan that had worked all this while, until it began to fail in this one, painfully retarded mission.

‘Goodbye,’ she thought, even despite her promise, when the first of the shadows descended upon her.

2617 words

–EXIT–

Two-Tomoe Sharingan: 2000 words
Words not being used for mission; just added it for flavour text.

1 I Don't Choose To Love You... I Just Do [B-rank | Plot] Mon Sep 05, 2016 8:35 am

Serah

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