“Lily! Over here!”
“Lily! You’re the best!”
The wild enthusiasm of the audience quickly took over and anything resembling order vanished.
We have to do something. We have to get to the front row right now! Jammed in amongst the surging bodies, Sarada frantically scanned their surroundings and saw something strange—a person surfing along on top of the crowd. Their prone body was held up and passed from fan to fan so that it moved slowly toward the stage at the front of the venue. The members of the audience seemed perfectly at ease with this body gliding along above their heads. In fact, they worked together like a well-oiled machine, as though this were the most natural thing in the world. Was this just something that happened at idol shows?
“We’ll get them to carry us, too!” Mitsuki shouted.
“Huh?” Sarada couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“It’s the only way we can get anywhere near those guys without revealing that we’re ninja!” He had no sooner spoken than he was kicking at the ground and jumping up onto the shoulders of the person in front of him. “Gotta surf!”
The cool and collected Mitsuki she was familiar with disappeared. Now she watched as he spread his arms and dove on top of the audience, shouting like an excited fan.
“Whoa! Hold him up! Let him ride!”
The wild fans held Mitsuki’s body up and passed him forward.
What?! I had no idea Mitsuki was that kind of guy… But whoa. I can’t do that. No way.
Vehemently opposed to any kind of human surfing, Sarada cast about for another route to the front of the crowd, but stopped when she caught sight of Boruto on stage. Bathed in the spotlight, he was dancing in a dress and heels, sweat shining on his forehead.
Did her own personality even matter in the face of a mission? Neither Boruto nor Mitsuki was even slightly accustomed to any of this, but they were both fighting hard, no matter how dorky they looked.
This is no time for me to get all uptight. She leaped up onto a fan’s shoulders. She could feel the passionate intensity of the excited crowd below. This is scary! I really don’t want to do this! But I’ve got no choice!
“L-Lily, you’re the super best!” Sarada shouted awkwardly. She spread her arms out and dove into the audience. Instantly, a swarm of hands sprang up around her body and began to whisk her away to the stage.
She felt like a bamboo leaf flowing down a river. It was a strange, itchy sensation, but it was the fastest way to the stage. She was going to get there ahead of those men.
She lifted her head slightly and looked toward block A, then frowned when she realized she couldn’t see the men anymore. She quickly scanned the area, but there was no sign of them. Had they changed their route?
“Mitsuki!” she called out in a tense voice as Lily’s fans carried her along. “The target’s on the move!”
“Where?!” he shouted back.
She narrowed her eyes to seek them out, but everyone was waving fans and jumping up and down, which made it hard to see.
“Aah! You’re all in the way!” Sarada cried in annoyance and opened her eyes wide.
Sharingan!
Instantly, her field of view opened up. The movement of the people around her became crystal clear. Apparently, the gunmen had given up on the front row because of the crowd and were now racing up the stairs to the second floor.
“They’re headed upstairs!”
“Let’s hurry!”
The ninja sat up on the wave of people and shifted until they were both moving the way they wanted to go. They were still able to make it look as though the crowd was carrying them as they crawled along on top of upthrust palms toward their targets.
At the central aisle that separated blocks A, B, and C from blocks D, E, and F, they dropped to the ground. The passage was partitioned off by a fence. The air was less stuffy here, and Sarada breathed a sigh of relief.
The second-floor seats protruded out over the rear block, so the only way to get to the stairs up from this central corridor was to head out into the concourse, through the doors to the rear, and then go around.
“Looks like we’re going to have to dive again,” Sarada said wearily.
“No.” Mitsuki shook his head. “There’s no need for that.”
She gasped with sudden realization when she saw Mitsuki pressing on one eye. The current song—“Woo Woo ★ Love Fantasy Train”—was almost over. Once it ended, the lights would go out temporarily, and the cameras wouldn’t be able to see them in the dark.
Woo woo! Woo woo! Lovely star beam ♪
Woo woo! Woo woo! Milky moon sexy ♪
With one hand still over his eye, Mitsuki grabbed Sarada with his other. The gunmen were still crouching to the rear of the second-floor seats, perhaps getting into position to fire. The song ended, the lights went out, and the area was plunged into darkness.
Mitsuki stretched his arm toward the second-floor seats and grabbed hold of the railing. Still holding Sarada, he contracted his arm and the two of them swung upward like Tarzan and Jane.
The second floor was much calmer than the arena floor. Most of the people were sitting in their seats. Mitsuki and Sarada crawled along the narrow aisle until they reached the rear. The men were there, waiting for the lights to come back on. One of them held the gun. Neither appeared to be able to see in the dark. Sarada went around to the front while Mitsuki took the rear.
“Okay, next song! Here we go!” Lily’s voice came from the wings of the stage, and the lights flooded back on.
At the same time, Sarada yanked away the gun. Before either man could so much as gasp in surprise, Mitsuki chopped at the napes of their necks. Both fell forward, unconscious.
Mitsuki grabbed them by their collars and laid them out in the aisle. Their eyes had rolled all the way back in their heads. They were down for the count.
“Mission complete, huh?” Sarada said as she took the bullets out of the gun.
Hyoo! Something grazed her hair.
“Huh?” When she looked back in surprise, she heard the whoosh of air once more, and the bodies of the men in the aisle bounced slightly. She watched as a pool of red liquid slowly spread out beneath them. Both men now bore holes in their foreheads.
Mitsuki quickly pressed his cuffs up against the wounds to try and stop the bleeding, but the gunmen were already dead.
“Someone took them out,” she breathed. “To shut them up?”
“But from where exactly?!”
It was too perfectly organized. Sarada activated her Sharingan again and sent her gaze racing around the area. The audience was utterly focused on the stage, so no one had noticed that anything strange was going on.
They were as far back as you could get in venue. There were only a limited number of positions for a sniper to be targeting them from: the spotlight above the stage, the lighting booth on the second floor, or...
“There!” She pointed at the roof of Konoha Dome.
“They’re shooting from there?” Mitsuki narrowed his eyes in that direction, but because the polycarbonate was fairly opaque, there was no way he’d be able to spot their shooter with the naked eye.
But Sarada could see the figure of a man bearing a rifle with a scope just fine. He was lying flat on the roof, loading the rifle. There was a hole about the size of a tennis ball in the double polycarbonate roof, which the man was using to shoot into the arena.
Reflexively, Sarada reached for a shuriken, but stopped herself. “He’s too far away. What are we supposed to do now?”
I hope Sarada and Mitsuki are getting it done!
Even as he fretted, Boruto perfectly inhabited the role of Lily, although the tips of his toes were already throbbing in pain from being wedged into the stiletto heels. From the stage, he couldn’t see what was going on in the audience, which only added to his anxiety.
“We’ll do the call and response once this song ends, so please take action pattern B, Boruto.”
Lily’s instructions coming through the earpiece were ceaseless. He desperately tried to remember all the gestures he’d practiced with her. He was pretty sure action pattern B was lifting an arm up, snapping his fingers together, and making a cute face. He awkwardly raised his hand.
“Are you all ek-chited?!” Lily shouted from the wings into the microphone in time with his movement.
Chited? The unfamiliar word baffled him momentarily, but it was clearly what the audience wanted to hear. They threw their hands up enthusiastically.
“Yaaah!”
“Okay then! Wet’s go to da necht shong!”
Shong?! Boruto was perplexed once more as the speakers directly behind him started in with the upbeat opening.
“There’s a way,” Mitsuki murmured, glaring up at the sniper on the dome. “But the audience will see, even during a blackout. The cameras, too.”
“We’re probably thinking the same thing.”
The Lorentz Gun. If she used the technique they’d only just learned from Sasuke, she could reach the top of the dome with room to spare.