Moonlit Poison Vines Sever the Root Script

"One at the left window, two by the stairs."

Chiba rolled off the bed and landed on his feet. Bone Wood Vine bored into the floor, using the underground Root Network to confirm the positions of three chakra signatures. One of them had already cut the water pipe outside the apartment.

Bai Ye leaned against the door, bone spikes pushing through his clothes at the shoulder.

"I'm going with you."

"Guard the clan grounds."

"They might be the ones coming for me."

"That's why you stay. If the Cursed Seal heats up, seal the western cave immediately."

Bai Ye grabbed his coat, but the moment he took a step forward, Bone Wood Vine stretched across the doorway.

"You're going alone to die?"

"Iruka's there too."

"He's being surrounded and hunted by three people."

"Then stop talking."

Chiba crashed through the rear window. Vines braced against the eaves, and he used them to vault over the courtyard wall. By the time he landed, the roots had already carried the vibrations from inside the apartment back to him.

Iruka had just put out the lights when two knocks sounded outside his door.

"Who is it?"

"Ninja Academy duty office. Something went missing from Warehouse Seven. We need you to come verify it."

Iruka did not open the door. His right hand drew a kunai from beneath the desk.

"What's the name of the teacher on duty?"

The person outside paused before answering.

"Takagi."

"Teacher Takagi is assigned to the west training field tonight."

"Shift changed at the last minute."

"Who has the shift transfer form?"

The hallway offered no further answer.

A thin needle slipped through the gap beneath the door. The wire attached to its tail trembled lightly as pale blue liquid flowed along it into the room.

Iruka kicked over a basin of water. When the wire touched the pooled water on the floor, the poison spread into faint rippling patterns.

"Have the Hidden Sound Village people become so poor they're stealing school seals now?"

A snake head smashed through the door, sending wood chips flying into the room. Two slender snakes crawled up the walls toward the ceiling, while a third lunged directly for Iruka's wrist.

Iruka pinned the snake through the neck with a kunai, then tore down a bedsheet and threw it over the doorway. The Explosive Tag hidden behind it immediately ignited.

"Move!"

The two outside vaulted over the railing. Wood splinters blasted up by the Explosive Tag chased them down to the ground below, but the ninja inside slipped free from the snake's belly, scales on his arm still covered in shredded cloth.

"Where are the records?"

"What records?"

"Senju Chiba's Wood Release samples."

"The academy doesn't keep student blood samples."

"What about the experimental logs?"

"You've come to the wrong place."

"Danzo's intelligence can't be wrong."

After saying that, the ninja raised his arm and released another batch of snakes. Iruka's kunai was already at his throat.

"Who did you just mention?"

The man tilted his head aside to evade the kunai, but Iruka sliced open his sleeve, exposing a musical-note-shaped brand on the inside of his arm.

A short whistle sounded outside the window.

Iruka was about to press him further when a piercing shriek filled his ears. As chakra flowed through his meridians, the sound waves knocked it off course, and his right arm immediately lost its aim.

A second Sound Ninja landed at the window, a perforated copper tube held across his mouth.

"A chunin dares to lose focus?"

The copper tube sounded again. The teacup on the table shifted half an inch, and Iruka's chakra was trapped near his acupoints. He stumbled back to the bed before managing to steady himself.

The third man lowered himself from the roof on a steel wire.

"Don't kill him too quickly. Root wants him alive."

"You talk too much."

"What are you afraid of? They're still waiting on East Street."

Iruka flung a kunai and severed the wire, but another poisoned needle had already pierced his sleeve and stabbed into his left shoulder.

Meridian Poison advanced from his arm toward his chest. His already-disordered chakra became even harder to gather. He yanked out the needle and squeezed blood onto the floor.

"Root sent you?"

The snake-wielding ninja stepped on the pool of blood.

"The dead don't need to know."

The ground downstairs churned as Poison Vines hidden at the base of the wall burst from the earth. The first wrapped around a Sound Ninja's ankle, only to be severed by a blade beforehand.

Three streets away, Chiba received the feedback from the severed roots and increased his speed again.

The recently evolved Bone Wood Vine extended along his arm. Every time he stepped onto an eave, it pierced the roof tiles and pulled him through the next stretch of distance.

"Stop."

Two Root ninjas in white masks appeared on the rooftop ahead. Their short swords remained sheathed, but their positions blocked the direct route to the apartment.

"A ninja attack has occurred ahead. Civilians are forbidden from approaching."

"I'm a Ninja Academy student."

"Then you're even less permitted to go."

Chiba looked at the street behind them.

It was only three streets away, yet the Root ninjas had chosen to avoid the main road. The medical pack at their waists had not been opened either, and pale blue medicine was visible from one man's sleeve.

"When did you receive word of the attack?"

"That is none of your concern."

"Iruka has been poisoned."

"Reinforcements are on the way."

"And you're just standing here."

The Root ninja raised a hand, signaling Chiba to back away.

"This is an order."

Bone Wood Vine burst out from beneath the eaves and coiled around his ankle. Its inner framework braced against his shin guard and yanked backward.

The man lost his footing, and his short sword finally left its sheath. The blade sliced through the vine's skin, only to become wedged in the pale bone framework.

The other reached for Chiba's shoulder.

"Attacking a Root member? Do you want to betray the village?"

"Move."

"Captain Kinoe will deal with Iruka."

"He's waiting for Iruka to nearly die."

The two Root ninjas simultaneously retreated half a step. One of them pressed a hand toward the signal tube at his waist.

Chiba slapped his palm against the roof tiles. Thick roots rose from the edge of the eaves, locking the signal tube and the man's wrist together inside a knot of vines.

"How do you know Captain Kinoe?"

"You were moving too slowly."

Bone Wood Vine shoved the two men away from the main route. By the time Chiba crossed the rooftop, the short sword behind him had only just cut through the second knot of vines.

The sound waves rang out inside the apartment once more.

Iruka leaned against the wall. His left arm hung at his side, while the kunai in his right hand still guarded his chest. Six severed snakes lay scattered at his feet.

"Still not handing it over?"

The Sound Ninja turned the copper tube toward his ear.

"The poison has reached your heart meridians. You won't last until Root arrives."

"You know they'll come, yet you still dare stay here?"

"They'll take Chiba, and we'll take the records. Everyone gets what they want."

Iruka kicked a broken table plank. The wood knocked the copper tube aside, and the sound wave grazed the wall, splitting the hanging picture frame down the middle.

The Sound Ninja outside pulled the steel wire. A poisoned needle looped around the table leg and stabbed toward Iruka's neck from behind.

A vine tip pierced through the window frame first.

The Bone Wood framework clamped the wire, stopping the poisoned needle just before it reached his skin. Pale purple spores crawled along the wire toward the outside.

"Wood Release?"

The snake-wielding ninja turned toward the window. The snakes crawling from his arm had barely raised their heads when more vine roots grew from the cracks between the walls and floorboards.

"How did he get here?"

"Root didn't stop him?"

"Kill Iruka first!"

All three moved at once. Bone Wood Vine rose from the four corners of the room, its poison-marked tips sealing off the bedside while another set of frameworks smashed through the damaged door.

Chiba stepped into the room littered with broken wood and caught the kunai slipping from Iruka's hand.

"You came late."

Iruka leaned against the wall, his right leg still trying to step forward, but Chiba used vines to support him back toward the bed.

"You can still talk. You won't die."

"The poison will disrupt your meridians. Don't touch the wire."

"Already did."

Footsteps sounded from the rooftop outside. Kinoe's Root squad finally entered the street, the medical ninja in their group holding that pale blue antidote.

The Sound Ninjas looked toward Root, and Root did not immediately enter the room. The two sides waited across the broken window for the other to make another move.

Chiba pulled the poisoned needle from Iruka's shoulder, had Bone Wood Vine seal off the three Sound Ninjas' escape routes, then aimed the bloodstained needle tip at the antidote outside the window.

"Tonight, whoever waits one step longer dies first."