Chapter 50: Help, I'm Being Besieged
"Sure, sure."
For the sake of money, Stelle was remarkably easy to talk to. She was just about to reach for the snacks on the table when she realized the plate was already empty. This noble was no good, she thought with a private frown. He had no sense of tact at all. If he saw she clearly enjoyed a certain snack, shouldn't he have immediately sent for another portion?
The Jonin seated beside her noticed her lingering gaze and immediately slid his own untouched plate in front of her.
"Captain Stelle, please enjoy."
"Thanks!" Stelle beamed, her mood instantly restored. She popped a small cake into her mouth and asked, "What's your name?"
A single drop of cold sweat traced a path down the Jonin's temple. Weren't there detailed personnel files distributed before every mission? They were meant to help deployment, coordination, and teamwork. Had the Second Hokage's own disciple not even bothered to glance at them?
"My name is Gekkō Kenshi, ma'am."
'Gekkō,' Stelle mused. He must be one of Gekkō Hayate's elders.
She immediately began to ask about the Gekkō clan, but just as she picked up a glass of juice, her expression sharpened. Her senses screamed.
"Ambush!" she warned, her voice cutting through the quiet room.
In the same breath, her body was engulfed in a shroud of violent purple flame as she launched herself from her seat. A hail of shuriken sliced through the air where she had been a moment ago. With a casual flick of her wrist, she sent a wave of fire roaring outwards, melting the steel projectiles into slag.
A searing red glow tore through the room, a blade of pure energy slashing toward her.
'Holy crap, chakra-infused swordsmanship!'
Stelle grabbed Gekkō Kenshi by the collar and charged straight through the wall, bursting onto the building's roof.
Behind them, the sharp clang of weapons clashing erupted, punctuated by the deafening blasts of explosive tags and a few short, miserable screams.
"Water Release: Water Dragon Bullet Technique!"
The moment Stelle's feet touched the roof tiles, a massive dragon formed of churning water roared into existence, smashing down toward her head-on.
She didn't flinch. A blur of hand signs and she unleashed her own Flame Release, the purple fire hissing as it met the aquatic assault, neutralizing it in a massive cloud of steam. Without pausing, she fired a Flame Dragon of her own back toward the caster.
The sheer speed of her seals caught the enemy ninja by surprise. He only had time to throw up a simple Water Formation Wall before flickering away from his position.
The purple dragon tore through the hastily erected defense and slammed into the eaves of the roof. A plume of white smoke billowed into the air, momentarily obscuring the vision of both parties.
In that instant, Stelle moved. Her fingers hooked a kunai from her pouch. Pushing off the roof tiles, she dove through the steam cloud toward the Water Release user now perched on the opposite ledge, her blade aimed squarely at his carotid artery.
'There have been a lot of assassination attempts lately,'she thought wryly.'Those spies and assassins probably figured they can't kill Senju Tobirama because of his Flying Thunder God, so they're hell-bent on targeting me, his disciple, instead. I'm not even a big shot in Konoha. Is all this really necessary?'
Her speed was phenomenal, far too fast for the enemy ninja to mount a proper defense. Yet, just as the cold steel of her kunai was about to break his skin…
The man's form dissolved. He collapsed into a fluid puddle of water, flowing forward through her attack before reforming a safe distance away.
"The Water Transformation Technique?"
This was no ordinary shinobi. He was from the Hozuki clan.
Just then, two more figures appeared on the battlefield. One was a man dressed as a samurai, his hand resting on the hilt of a longsword. The chakra fluctuating around him was so intense it was practically visible, making it clear he was no ordinary swordsman.
'Rumor has it the Exchange Center has a powerful samurai with a one-hundred-percent mission success rate,'Stelle recalled.'He's likely taken an assassination contract from god-knows-who.'
In any case, there were plenty of people who wanted her dead. She wasn't surprised.
The other newcomer had unsettling green eyes and wore a dark gray hood that wrapped around his hair and the sides of his face. A black mask covered his nose and mouth, and a deep, deliberate scratch marred the village symbol on his forehead protector.
"Whatever you're here for has nothing to do with me," the masked man's voice rasped, cold and greedy. "I only need her head. It's worth thirty million."
Anyone else would have been clueless as to his identity.
But Stelle knew him all too well.
'Isn't this the money-grubber Kakuzu?'she thought, a flicker of amusement mixing with her annoyance.'The guy in Naruto who was the best at making money, the absolute stingiest, who only ever earned and never spent—the universally recognized Minister of Finance of the Akatsuki.'How had he already defected? Had Takigakure still sent him to assassinate Hashirama behind her back? Or maybe he'd tried to assassinate Madara, took one look, and just ran for the hills.'I don't know which idiot put me on the Exchange Center's list,'she fumed internally,'but am I not even as expensive as Asuma? Are you kidding me? Am I not worth thirty-five million?! I may not be the Hokage's daughter, but I'm the Hokage's disciple, damn it!'
That wasn't all. Within her sensory range, two familiar chakra signatures were hiding behind a distant building. One belonged to that perennial pest, Black Zetsu.
The other was a signature she didn't recognize at first, but the moment its owner laid eyes on her, a fresh wave of mood value flooded her system. The name that popped up wasn't some random background character—it was Uchiha Setsuna, the very same clansman she'd had a run-in with before.
Black Zetsu's reaction time was truly something else. One moment, he finds out she has an Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan; the next, she's being besieged. No wonder he'd been completely off the radar lately. He was busy setting this little trap for her.
It seemed that with Uchiha Madara's mysterious disappearance, Black Zetsu's mental state had deteriorated so badly that he was desperate to send her to the Pure Land. He was even using the same tactics on her that he would have used to lure Izuna out of Konoha.
The Hozuki was of average strength, but the other two—the samurai and Kakuzu—were unquestionably Kage-level powerhouses.
At that moment, a figure suddenly flickered into existence behind the black-clad samurai. It instantly split into three identical afterimages, all swinging their swords in perfect unison.
"Dance of the Crescent Moon!"
Three blades slashed toward the samurai from the left, right, and above. The attack was a complete surprise, a phantom assault that sealed off every possible retreat. It was the Gekkō clan's signature kenjutsu. Gekkō Kenshi, after being thrown onto the roof, had clearly been lurking invisibly this entire time.
Seeing his move, Stelle's eyelid twitched. 'Why did he pick the hardest one to deal with? No, wait, he can't handle any of them. Even the weakest one, the Hozuki, is resistant to physical attacks.'
The samurai's hand was already on his sword. He didn't even bother to dodge. In a single, fluid motion, he drew his longsword and slashed back at Kenshi.
The movement looked deceptively slow, yet it was as fast as lightning. A red glow flashed. Before Kenshi's sword could even touch him, the samurai's blade had already bitten deep into Kenshi's shoulder.
Kenshi screamed as he was sent flying backward. Stelle shook her head at the sight. The Gekkō clan's techniques were excellent for assassination, but the difference in raw power was simply too vast. He didn't even have the right to deal chip damage.
Swoosh!
She activated the Body Flicker Technique, rushing to intercept her subordinate. The next second, the Hozuki ninja also moved, and a solid wall of water erupted from the roof tiles to block her path.
In that instant, Stelle's form blurred, accelerating so fast she became a mere afterimage. The Water Formation Wall should have been more than enough to stop her.
But by the time the wall had fully formed, she had already passed straight through the space it was meant to occupy, catching the wounded, tumbling Gekkō Kenshi in her arms.
What incredible speed! The enemy ninja stared, momentarily stunned. As expected of the shinobi famed for her speed and Flame Release.
"Captain Stelle!" Kenshi gasped, crouching on the ground in a pathetic state. The wound on his shoulder was deep enough to show bone, and a strange, burning energy sizzled around its edges—an effect of the samurai's sword technique.
Stelle glanced back at the samurai's katana. It was a chakra blade. The moment it was drawn, it had flared to life, the blade glowing with a faint orange-red light as it extended in both length and width. It was a perfect fusion of chakra nature and shape transformation.
No wonder Kenshi was crushed. He was a Tokubetsu Jonin, a specialist, but his opponent was a true Kage-level powerhouse.
With Kenshi's combat power instantly nullified and the two Chunin from their team nowhere to be seen—clearly having been killed inside the house—the situation was grim.
"Kenshi, you can't handle this battle," Stelle said, her tone firm. "Find a chance to escape later. Otherwise, your grandson won't ever get the chance to be born."
He couldn't beat a single person here; he was nothing but a burden. It was sincere advice. Even if the Shippuden era didn't have Hayate, that was fine, but the canon story still needed him.
"Captain Stelle, how can I do that?" Gekkō Kenshi struggled to his feet, his face a mask of grim determination, ready to die for a noble cause. "I will cover the rear! You escape!"
'You'd be cut in two the moment you tried,'Stelle thought, exasperated.'And what good is one second of covering the rear going to do?'
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