For Nobara

Chapter 17: What Crawls Below

It's easy enough to be blinded by rage, but somehow Nobara feels calm.

As the water cascades down, Yūra watches as it devours one of his men along with the child, instantaneously turning him into ice without even giving him a chance to think. Abandoning the lost Anbu, Yūra acts on quickly as he attacks her then while she's still trapped and his hands weave through seals.

Wind Release: Breakthrough!

From his stomach, he expels a huge gust of wind as it blows everything immediately in the vicinity, the roused sand creating a curtain of smoke. He expected her to have been blown along with his technique, but in a split second something comes out from the smoked veil and bludgeons him with air-knocking force. He's thrown across the open area and he coughs blood.

Groveling on the sand, he's left stunned by the force before he winces to realize his broken arm that took most of the impact. And as the smoke dispels, he finally realizes it's water that hit him. It formed into a thick water tendril and hardened at the tip like a crystallized whip. And it's connected to the child, serving her like an extension of her limbs.

It melts away as it contracts back, but it doesn't fully retreat.

As he looks behind the child, Yūra feels sick at the sight of shattered garnet scattered on the sand, knowing full well what they are. Despite his reluctance to make any other careless move, all the backup Anbus he brought with him seem to have picked this chance to finally move.

Two come out from above, wielding their own blades to cut her down with. But just as Yūra expected, two more water tendrils collect to her back, catching one Anbu by the throat as he gasps from the impact from when it slams him to the nearest surface wall. Before it can even fully crystallize over his throat, he's propelled like a mere rag doll to the other Anbu as they topple upon each other.

On the other hand, the third one from behind her thinks himself better as he attacks her from behind. Yet, the moment his katana makes contact with every intention of slicing her in half, he finds himself surprised as it's knocked out of his hand.

Just as he notices her crystallized skin that deflected his blade, the water tendril already strikes for his throat and lifts him off the ground before her. His feet dangle as he struggles to keep himself from choking, gasping for air but she ends it for him quickly.

The moment she reaches out her hand for his middle, she does something to him that makes him choke more violently. And before he can even think further, something rouses from inside him as he feels his stomach explode, his blood reforming into spined garnet that skewers out of his body.

Blood splatters over her face from what remains unsolidified inside him—as the last of one, the last of Yūra's men, now hesitates to even make a move at how quickly she has disposed of his comrades.

The pungent odor fills her senses then as something inside her revels in it. But somehow, despite how she appears now, tainted with warm blood, she only feels calm on the outside, frighteningly calm.

"Y-You... don't move!" the last Anbu yells at her, but just her eyes falling to his direction makes him stagger back.

At first, he and his companions thought she would only be a measly child they can easily get rid of. Because for whatever Yūra surmised her to be, it didn't matter because in the end, she's only a child. Even if she were gifted enough, she wouldn't have fend for herself against so many Anbu-level shinobi.

She wouldn't have been... this.

For how rare a thing like her to wander into their deserts, they underestimated the stories they have heard that have traveled from village to village.