"Kurenai-sensei, my bugs are picking up something up ahead; a huge chakra residue of some sort; might be a battle."
"Hinata, Kiba, can you see anyone?" Two negatives. Feeling somewhat relieved, Kurenai urged her team to proceed cautiously. Team 8 gasped when they reached the devastated clearing.
"Fucking shit!" Kiba's eyes widened in shock at the sight of the first maimed body. For a moment, Kurenai was too stunned by the scene of carnage to reprimand her student as all three genin turned green at the gills.
"Shino, have your friends check the bodies to see how long they have been dead." The jounin's sharp red eyes scanned the darkness.
"Not long. The blood is still warm."
Warm in this freezing cold nighttime weather? Alarmed, Kurenai immediately signaled her students to withdraw. However, Team 8 barely had time to move a muscle before the ambush was sprung with a volley of flying shuriken. A figure leaped out of the darkness and ran straight for the jounin, stabbing her torso with twin kunai before anyone could react. Kurenai's lifeless body fell…
… only to explode into a mass of bugs.
Dismayed, the attacking shinobi immediately threw three shuriken at the genin. His aim proved true, but all three targets subsequently vanished in a haze of smoke. Bunshin no Jutsu.
The assassin swore and then gulped as a whirling storm of red hair descended upon him. The newcomer was angry—no, scratch that—she was downright furious at her subordinate for breaking cover. The agitated young girl scanned the surroundings with suspicion before glaring at the man.
From the shadows a fair distance away, the Konoha genin and jounin watched in tense silence. Team 8 wasn't labeled a tracker team for nothing and Kurenai Yuuhi was neither an amateur nor a fool. She was perfectly aware of her team's abilities and knew how to use them. Shino's bugs had discovered and relayed information that the Lightning delegation was likely compromised or dead sometime earlier. The question had then been where were the perpetrators? Kurenai had been pleasantly surprised when Hinata shyly voiced the possibility of a trap, which was quickly confirmed to be likely when both Shino and Kiba reported that there wasn't even a whiff of an exit track from the area.
Deciding that they had lingered long enough, Kurenai silently motioned her team to withdraw. Kiba looked like he wanted to protest since Team 8 clearly possessed the element of surprise. The jounin instructor, however, gave him a firm look. The genin were still green and she had no idea how strong the enemy was. With no other intelligence, Kurenai considered it prudent to wait for heavier reinforcement. She maintained watch on the enemy, confident in her ability to mask her own team's movement.
Unfortunately for the Konoha ninja, Yuuhi Kurenai wasn't the only genjutsu specialist around. Her red eyes widened in surprise when she noticed the red-haired girl looking intently in her direction. Kurenai managed to utter a warning just before her intricately woven genjutsu collapsed. The sudden outcry from their sensei surprised the genin but saved their lives as they dodged a deadly lightning technique from the left. Kurenai cursed as she saw a blonde moving to engage her team.
"Magen: Kokoni Arazu no Jutsu!"
Desperate to save her team, the Konoha kunoichi unleashed a genjutsu that covered the plain forest surface with jagged rocks. The illusion was crude and makeshift, but it worked in disrupting the blonde attacker, who swerved and dodged around imaginary obstacles. Like her first, Kurenai's new genjutsu soon collapsed courtesy of the young redhead.
Who is this girl? The Konoha jounin was becoming increasingly concerned. While genjutsu specialists were not supposed to give into frustration, Kurenai was quickly reaching that point as the young assassin fought a jounin almost a decade her senior to a standstill. The battle turned decisively against the leader of Team 8 as the redhead's shinobi ally joined the fight.
Briefly distracted by the male ninja, Kurenai failed to catch her first opponent performing an advanced genjutsu with her flute. Soon after, the jounin found herself struggling futilely against the invisible bonds set by the illusion.
"Dumb bitch. Think you're better just because you're older. Just be thankful that I'm in a hurry so I can't torture you or any of your brats." Holding her kunai in a reverse grip, the enemy slashed at the bound jounin's common carotid arteries. However, to her immense surprise, only a trickle of crimson appeared. She had been tricked.
A second genjutsu covering Kurenai fell away, revealing the formerly trapped Konoha kunoichi. The illusion had caused the redhead to misjudge her enemy's position so that the Konoha jounin only received a slight graze on her left shoulder as opposed to a slashed windpipe. The wound, however, was enough to release the Konoha genjutsu specialist from her "unbreakable" trap. Once freed, Kurenai quickly counterattacked with a vengeance. Now, it was the cursing and spitting enemy ninja who was on the defensive.
"You may be powerful, but your youth still makes you brash and impulsive. You talk far too much for a genjutsu mistress."
The redhead, already furious at being played for a fool, fumed at the snide remark. To her credit, the younger girl did not allow her emotions to dominate her, and continued to fight with vigor and precision. Still, she was clearly no hand-to-hand specialist. And while Kurenai's raw talent in taijutsu wasn't much better, years of training with some of the very best in Konoha gave her an edge. Within minutes, she succeeded in breaking the enemy kunoichi's guard with a clever feint and finished with a solid cross punch that sent the surprised girl tumbling into the ground. Had she been Gai, the poor girl would have suffered at least a few broken ribs instead of just a bruised ego.
"Surrender now and I'll spare your life," Kurenai declared in what was her most menacing voice, complete with killing intent. The redhead glared back and spat a wad of blood onto the ground.
"No, how about you surrender so I can kill you quickly!" The enemy ninja brought her flute to her lips. The ground trembled as a soft melody began to play. The red-eyed jounin's face paled when she caught sight of the three lumbering demon summons. The Konoha nin were officially in deep trouble.
Meanwhile, the genin of Team 8 were fighting the sword wielding kunoichi for their lives. All three youths would have died many times over if it were not for their precious blood limits. Even so, each sported several cuts while their blonde opponent looked only slightly worse for wear.
Yugito, however, was less than satisfied with the result. She knew time was not on their side as her enhanced senses picked up the scent of approaching Konoha ninja. Momentarily distracted, the Kumo kunoichi almost failed to duck under the wild swings of a rampaging summon.
"Hey, watch who you're attacking!" Not the least bit amused, Yugito vented her frustration at her ally after failing to defeat her young opponents. She was the host of the Nibi and she wasn't about to allow some prissy bloodline geniuses show her up.
"Che, you are pathetic if you can't even defeat three baby genin," the redhead replied cheekily before facing the Konoha jounin once again.
Kurenai, meanwhile, felt despair slowly fester within her. While her students remained standing, the grim reality was that they were badly outclassed in this fight. Their only option left was to retreat, but alas, their escape route was blocked by one of the enemy's giant creatures. Team 8 would have to break through that blockade to escape and the jounin sensei had just the person. She only hoped her student was up to the task.
"Hinata!" she called out, hoping beyond hope that she wasn't sending the young ninja to her death. "Use it on the legs!"
Even though she was sweating profusely and scared out of her wits, Hinata obeyed without hesitation. The Hyuuga heiress might have been a failure by her clan's standards, but she was still properly indoctrinated in the chain of command. Orders, even suicidal ones, were to be obeyed. To the shock of her teammates, Hinata charged into melee range with her bloodline active. For a moment, all looked lost when the summoned demon swung at her.
As if in slow motion, the small girl nimbly ducked under the swing, outflanking the beast and began closing chakra points like there was no tomorrow. The creature tried to twist around to swipe at the girl, only to realize that it could not move its legs. The giant beast roared futilely in anger as it toppled over like some decrepit statue. Team 8 cheered at the timid, reclusive girl's brilliant and near perfectly executed maneuver. Hinata might not be the Hyuuga genius, but she was clearly far from being unskilled.
Unfortunately, the Konoha ninja started to celebrate much too early. In her hasty withdrawal from her target, Hinata had veered dangerously close to Yugito, who instantly snapped off a high kick that split the girl's shoulder blade. Kurenai's heart cried out in sympathy as Hinata's scream of agony reached into the skies. Shino and Kiba moved quickly to retrieve their teammate's wounded body. Kurenai tried her best to provide cover to her students, but it wasn't easy. Her genjutsu were useless as even her strongest techniques failed to take effect so long as the red-haired girl played her flute. The tunes not only controlled the summons' movements, they also acted as area of effect illusion dampers by disrupting the chakra flows in people.
The red-eyed genjutsu specialist was, to say the least, shocked. Sure, she knew that Konoha had become deficient in the area of genjutsu in recent times, but she had never expected to be so utterly outclassed on her own playing field. Even so, she was not going to give up, not when the lives of her students depended on her.
If I could just take that flute away from her…
The enemy nin, however, were unwilling to give the Konoha jounin the time to do that. With their opponent's most potent ability nullified, the assassins of the Lightning delegation attacked with renewed vigor. The redheaded genjutsu specialist quickly corrected her previous mistake and stacked the two remaining demons together for a direct attack. Shino's bugs were swatted aside like the insects they were, and both Kiba and his dog were thrown flat across the terrain while they were in their Man Beast Clone mode. Kurenai, despite her higher ninja rank, fell soon after. A combination of physical and chakra exhaustion prevented her from completely dodging a nasty lightning attack from the sword-wielding blonde. With a groan of pain, the last member of Team 8 fell.
"Yeah, take that, you fucking bitch!" The battle had lasted far, far too long for the redhead's liking. Frustrated at both the tenacity of the Konoha ninja and angry at her own overconfidence, the young kunoichi delivered a vicious kick at the downed kunoichi's stomach. Kurenai gave a bloody cough as she reflexively coiled into a ball.
"That's enough, Tayuya. Just finish them so we can leave this dump." Yugito, her previously pristine hair now a mess, was equally dissatisfied with how the engagement turned out. "Their reinforcement could arrive at any moment."
Incidentally, any moment turned out to be that very instant! As Tayuya and Yugito threw themselves on the ground to avoid a hail of projectiles, the sky opened up and started raining orange… orange ninja that is.
"What the fuck—"