[closed; Jan 10th-18th]

[not_thedragon]

Who: Sasuke & Sakura, the dream team, the wonder girls, the inadvertent bringers of beasts.
When: January 10th-18th.
Where: Land of This & Land of That
Notes: It's not a dragon, not technically, but does technically even really matter at this size?

The mission had gone from good to bad in short order, but this was something else. It had been almost appallingly easy to retrieve the target from his imprisonment in the Land of This, though given the quality of his lodgings, Sasuke was hard-pressed to call it imprisonment. It had, in fact, been so easy that he'd thought at first they'd be back to Konoha within three days of setting out.

Of course, complications had arisen. First, it had become clear that the Land of That had only been resisting declaring all-out war out of concern for their missing kin's safety. When Sasuke and Sakura had returned, the lord's kinsman in tow, the small complement of mercenaries had suddenly swelled to ... not a large complement, but a larger one, at least.

That was not, technically, their purview. Sasuke had been loathe to leave it behind, certainly, but the priority had been returning to Konoha right up until they found their way out of the country abruptly blocked by an angry force from the Land of This -- not a shinobi-trained hand in the lot, but certainly filled in numbers -- and it had been unpleasantly touch-and-go for a long standoff. There had been all the promise of violence in the air, That's mercenary force rushing through the trees and This's civilians clutching unfamiliar weapons, and still they might have left.

But then a copse of trees on the border of This, That, and Fire had rustled, rumbled, and then suddenly gone up in flame. Amid the inferno, a dark shape had stretched, yawned, and poked a lizard-like head out, directly next to one horrified mercenary.

Sasuke decided, looking at the woman scrambling away from the scaly head and enormous teeth, that he was going to need to have a word with whoever handled naturalist records in Konoha, because this was the third time they'd run into something like this.

Comments

[notveryspecial]

It wasn't the business of Konoha shinobi why the people who hired them wanted a job done, and it wasn't in their authority to interfere with the other things those people were doing if they weren't directly threatening Konoha. The two lands going to war with each other wasn't their problem. If they interfered, they'd only make their nation look bad.

It was a shame that the Land of This didn't appear to agree on their neutrality on the matter. Making their way through an army, even a small and not that dangerous one to them like this, could be a tricky matter for diplomatic reasons, especially with a nation right on Fire's borders.

A fire breathing lizard wasn't quite as tricky, as far as touchy diplomatic issues went. Surprisingly (if one could say such, considering the circumstance), a giant fire breathing lizard didn't actually make things any better, even if it provided an opportunity to escape.

She glanced over at Sasuke, entirely unimpressed with...really, with everything this day. "I don't remember any mention of lizards in the mission briefing."

[not_thedragon]

"That," Sasuke said, trying and failing to keep his tone from trending drier than was polite, "Is probably because there wasn't any."

The lizard's head had tilted in curiosity, watching the mercenary and her compatriots beat a hasty, uncertain retreat, before it gave what looked like a shrug -- inasmuch as giant reptiles could shrug -- and rose the rest of the way out of the trees. It might have been more impressive had the rest of the way continued much further out of the canopy, but instead a pair of wings shuddered out of the tree cover, then snapped open.

"If it's aggressive," he started, hand still on his own sword, but was cut off by a startled roar: a spear had been thrown, striking the back of the lizard-thing's shoulder. The great head swung around, angling to give one glittering eye a full view of the field behind it, and then --

Of course it breathed fire.

"We need everyone with a shield or something similar to cover everyone else's retreat," he said instead of continuing his previous thought, already straightened out of the awkward exit they'd been engaged in prior to fire-breathing lizard interruptions. A small group of mercenaries looked slightly more organized and better armed. "I'll start with those guys; you can start rounding up civilians."

[notveryspecial]

...Why did it breathe fire? Why was that a necessary component to the suddenly appearing monster lizard? Why did it fly? Why did Konoha have a giant flying, fire breathing lizard in its forest? Was it some old Uchiha pet?

These were really important questions.

She glanced over at Sasuke a moment. It was possible she could shield the majority of the battlefield with earth...but that would take considerable chakra, and might be mistaken for a hostile act by one of the sides of the conflict or the giant creature itself. It also would only work for a short while. If things escalated it would get tiresome. As he suggested, getting people away would be best.

With a short nod, she sprinted off in the direction of the nearest group of frightened looking civilians.

[not_thedragon]

The civilians Sakura had chosen to tackle first were already falling into a disorganized rush away from the fire-breathing lizard when she reached them, the already-tenuous structure of their ranks giving way to frantic shoving at one another. Her hands would be full, Sasuke could see already; he'd need to sort out those with any real combat experience quickly so they could turn their collective attention to civilian evacuation.

That was easier said than done, given how many of said combat-experienced groups were for-hire. "Why?" was the first question asked when Sasuke directed them to order their forces to cover the retreat of the civilians and both countries' respective leaders. Only the reminder that the loss of said leaders was also the loss of their payout made the mercenaries start to turn and set what shields they had to face the lizard, now flapping its wings experimentally.

It launched itself into the air after a moment, looking as if it might have benefited from a longer run but clumsily gaining steadiness with a few strong beats of leathery wings. Really, why did it have to fly?

Sasuke glanced over at Sakura, checking on her progress with the civilians, and hoping that she'd run into less protest than he had.

[notveryspecial]

There was a certain advantage to being able to easily handle the chakra networks of multiple shinobi at once: when it came to panicked civilians, she was very good at crowd control. But then, a shinobi genjutsuing a crowd of civilians on a battlefield didn't tend to look very good for the village that sent that ninja, and the skill level involved in that was better not shown to so many witnesses. Especially the one who was her teammate.

Instead, when she approached the mess of civilians, she worked quick an subtle handsigns only on the biggest trouble-makers, putting the loudest and most difficult of them into quiet stupors instead of the crowd at large. For the rest, she was forced to rely on her presence alone. "Come this way!" It wasn't relevant to her which of them came from which city-state, or who had been about to do worse than shove and trample each other before the monster appeared. If any acted out, she'd deal with them swiftly and efficiently.

While she glanced over to the flying lizard (why was a forest creature flying?) a few times, most of her attention remained focused on evacuating the large group of people, leading them away from the dangerous creature and into the relative safety of the walls of the city. Which probably provided rather less protection than they would like...but there was little help for that, except to begin erecting walls of her own between the people and the lizard.

...And a roof. A roof seemed like the smartest thing to do for a flying creature, even if she could only summon enough chakra to make something of an interior overhang of rock around where the crowd of people were gathered. She had excellent control of her chakra, and therefore she could do far more with smaller stores of chakra...but sealing an entire city-kingdom in a dome of protective rock would kill her even if she somehow managed to succeed.

Once the crowd was safely behind the walls of the city and her own partial roof (which served mostly as a suggestive deterrent to the beast, and a place to keep the civilians from panicking and doing anything unfortunate, than anything else) she turned her gaze back to her teammate once more. Just to see how he was managing.

[not_thedragon]

Civilian battle strategies were not what was taught to shinobi of any rank, but it hadn't taken long to work out that the best way for the civilians to proceed was to form walls out of their shields and try to use their long-ranged weaponry against the creature. It was still moving with less agility and speed than Sasuke had expected -- biding its time, or simply not graceful in the air?

He'd have to find out from closer up, he realised, watching as several of the better civilian archers chanced standing and firing off a volley. Wind swept through the clearing as the creature beat upward, the arrows falling just short.

"Reload and keep firing, keep it from heading for the buildings!" He shouted at the mercenaries, glancing over to see Sakura sheltering the non-fighting civilians with rock jutsu that would hopefully divert attention to those who could fight. If those people stayed put and Sakura could command the three bunched groups of shields and arrows he'd managed to force the mercenaries into, there was a way to get closer.

There was no point in insulting Konohana by asking the summons if she could avoid fire and arrows, Sasuke thought with some ruefulness, before he took advantage of one group's reload to leap onto a shield and then higher, biting his thumb midair. The enormous goshawk grabbed him by the shoulders in the next moment, sweeping upwards as Sasuke kept a hand on his weapons pouch in case any arrows did come too close for comfort.

Sakura would get the gist of the manouevre, he hoped, and spread them out if the flying fire-breathing lizard tried another tack.