The Hope of the Senju Clan

Chapter 41: Demon

"Move!" shouted the leader of the group as he and his comrades scattered. But as they jumped away, a new hail of Kunai flew out of another tree top and hit the second cloaked figure's partner in the back, causing him to fall to the ground dead.

Landing on a large tree branch the two remaining cloaked figures stood back to back to one another, watching for any possible new attacks, which came in the form of two more Kunai barrages.

Upon seeing the Kunai, the two spies each took their own Kunai hidden underneath their cloaks and used them to deflect the projectiles. But as soon as they had deflects all the Kunai they came under assault again when two masked Shinobi appeared above them and attempted to stab them both in the head with their Tanto swords.

Acting quickly the two spies separated and dropped several flash bombs and exploded. With their attackers temporarily blinded the two Iwa spies, quickly jumped off the tree branch and began to race across the ground, hoping to get away as quickly as possible from their attackers.

Glancing back the two Iwa spies could see that their attackers had already recovered from the flash bombs and were in hot pursuit of them. When they saw who they were dealing with the first spy cursed and said "Shit! Konoha's ANBU, where did they come from?!"

"They must have followed you here" growled the other spy angrily.

"Or they could've followed you and waited until they could get all of us" the first spy countered. Not appreciating having her stealth and counter intelligence skills question, especially since she was the one who had first realized that Konoha was on to them.

"It doesn't matter who they followed, we need to get out Konoha territory. If we can make it to the Yu no Kuni (Hot Spring Country) boarder we can make our way back to Iwa from there."

However before the two spies could get much further several Kunai flew past them and stabbed ground in front of them. The two spies quickly stopped when they notice the exploding notes tied to projectiles, which exploded after hitting the ground, blowing both of them back.

Recovering from the explosion the Iwa spies immediately tried to run, but found their path blocked by the two ANBU who redrew their tanto.

Drawing their own weapons, a battle of Swords and Kunai soon erupted between the two teams.

As the battle drew on, the leader of the Iwa spy team got the upper hand over one of the ANBU as he knocked the ANBU's sword out of his hand. Jumping back the ANBU pulled off it gloves revealing his purple hands.

Seeing that he had the advantage the spy charged the ANBU and attempted to stab him in the chest with his Kunai. However the ANBU sidestepped the attack, where the spy stabbed his right hand instead, which allowed the ANBU to grab hold of the man's arm and punch him in the stomach. With a painful grunt, the Iwa Shinobi immediately moved back and glared angrily at the masked Shinobi. But before he could reengage, the Iwa spy felt a sharp tense pain coming from his arm, from where the Konoha ANBU had punched him.

Pulling the his sleeve up the Iwa Spy could see his arm quickly turning purple, along with his stomach and was spreading quickly throughout his body. "What short of Jutsu is this!?...Did he poison me when he touched me?"

"Give up..." said the ANBU suddenly, who judging by his muffled voice and size was quite young, and was mostly likely in his mid to late teens. "It's pointless to resist, at the rate it is spreading you'll be dead within a minute, but if you surrender I'll cancel my Jutsu."

Grinding his teeth in anger and from the pain, the Iwa spy knew surrender was not an option for him. All that waited for him was torture and interrogation from Konoha intelligence unit. Still the spy had enough resolve to not go down quietly or alone. "If I'm going down, I'm taking this bastard with me!"