“Hngh! Come, Uchiha!” The mole-faced man desperately yanked his sword from the sheath on his back and readied it before him.
“Hey? Is the train, like, stopped?” a voice drawled lazily.
The door opened behind the mole-faced man, and the girl from the first-class car popped her head in.
“Run!” Sasuke shouted.
But mole-faced man was already rushing at the girl to grab her.
“Huh?” She raised both eyebrows, confused by the sudden attack.
Sasuke flung a kunai with unerring precision. It pierced the mole-faced man’s stomach but didn’t stop him. He yanked the girl off her feet and tossed her toward the window. She screamed. The glass broke, and she was launched from the train.
“Tch!” Sasuke leaped after her, caught her in midair, and touched down on the ground.
“W-w-what?! That was super scary! Who was that guy?! I totes thought I was gonna die!”
If she was making this much of a fuss, then she couldn’t be badly hurt. The bigger problem was the mole-faced man.
Sasuke let the girl down on a patch of grass and turned back toward the train. He jumped up, caught the edge of a window frame, and peered inside.
The inside of the carriage was painted with blood, and the mole-faced man lay slumped against the wall. His feet continued to twitch, but his wide-open eyes stared blankly at nothing. It was clear he was dead. He looked to have slit his own throat with the kunai on the floor in front of him.
This is exactly what I didn’t want.
Sasuke flipped over the other man who was face down on the floor. Blood oozed from his chest where a kunai had been stabbed into him. The man with the mole had probably killed him to keep him quiet.
Sasuke sighed with annoyance. Train bombers or not, he hadn’t intended for anyone to die. Now he would never get any information about why they’d committed this crime, and besides, the current Hokage hated it when people died. If Konohamaru could at least take the leader alive…
Sasuke turned his back on the eleven dead bodies and jumped down out of the train.
The girl was on her back on the ground, her eyes dazed. She was trembling uncontrollably.
“What’s wrong?” Sasuke asked.
“Ah…ah…” Her voice shook. She raised an unsteady hand.
As he looked back in the direction of her pointing finger, Sasuke understood that his last hope had been crushed already.
The steel column the mole-faced man had created with his ninjutsu had risen up from the ground, twisted through the passenger seats, pierced the roof, and stretched sharply up to the heavens. Skewered on the tip was the man who had been their leader, impaled like a butcher bird’s prey on a twig.
“Hold up!” Konohamaru called out to the fleeing man in the bib. “You’re not gonna make it out of here! Just surrender!”
The man ignored him and ran toward the woods that spread out on the side of the tracks.
Konohamaru turned the knob on the scientific ninja tool attached to the inside of his wrist. A small scroll popped out. In it was an electrical strike that used Thunder Style.
He released the bolt from the palm of his brandished hand. Crackling and sparking, it raced off into space like a yellow dragon and struck the man in the bib squarely in the back. The man pitched forward, his body shuddering, but a moment later he picked himself back up and took off running as though nothing had happened.
Huh? Misfire?
The scientific ninja team had calibrated the lightning bolt to paralyze without killing. It had definitely hit its target. Was the man in the bib resistant to electricity?
Konohamaru scrambled up on top of the train and launched a sickle and chain. The weight attached to the tip of the sickle caught the bibbed man’s feet.
First, let’s bring this fight to close quarters!
He yanked on the sickle, and the man’s body flew up into space. The man carved an arc in the air as he was pulled in, building momentum to swing his fist at Konohamaru’s face. Konohamaru blocked with his left hand and grabbed the man’s head. He threw his own head forward in a head butt, fully prepared to crack his own head open if necessary.
Whud!
The sound and the impact rattled his skull. Ignoring the pain in his eardrums, Konohamaru quickly kneaded his chakra.
Rasen…
The man ripped off the bib. With the square of fabric clenched in his hand, he grabbed hold of Konohamaru’s foot. Konohamaru felt something small and hard embedded in the fabric press against his ankle.
Dammit! He started to twist his ankle away.
The bib exploded.
Intense pain raced up his right leg. He’d manage to avoid a direct hit, but fragments of the bomb nevertheless punched deep into his calf, the shards digging into his flesh before finally falling around him.
The man’s right hand had been cleanly blown off by the blast. He swung at Konohamaru’s face with this mangled arm. Spraying blood landed in Konohamaru’s eyes. “Ngh!” Unbearable pain shot through him, but he kept his eyes open through sheer force of will.
He grabbed and twisted the man’s arm upward “What do you want? Why are you targeting this train?!”
“Want?” The man stared back. “To kill you, ninja of Konoha!” He kicked out at Konohamaru.
With his leg injured, Konohamaru couldn’t maintain his balance, but the reactive force of the blow caused the man himself to stagger backward as well.
Now! Konohamaru focused his chakra in his palm. This time for sure, Rasen—
A dark steel pillar erupted from the roof of the train, stabbing into the bibbed man. “Gah!” He vomited blood as his suddenly splayed legs twitched and spasmed, kicking at empty space.
Dragging his leg behind him, Konohamaru ran-walked to examine the man’s face.
His eyes bulged, and his cheeks were drawn taut. His tongue lolled from his mouth, a stream of blood dribbling from it. A drop fell onto Konohamaru’s shoe. The man was dead.
“Dammit…” Konohamaru slowly collapsed on the spot. He pulled out one of the metal fragments stabbing into his calf. How could he face Sasuke now? Not only had he not managed to get any information, he’d let the enemy die.