AtlannianSpy
Alarmed and Strangerous
Hotaru Hagano
-Team 7-
-Team 7-
"You've got to be joking," said Wakaba rather brusquely, in response to Kuren's suggestion. "I'm not going anywhere without my research or my daughter, Hotaru it's too soon for something like this. I'm not letting you throw your life away. The house isn't close to the village center or any other important areas, with the lights off and the curtains drawn it won't attract any attention and we can wait for the situation to resolve itse-"
"Mother!" Hotaru interrupted suddenly. Her voice was seemingly calm but higher pitched than normal and it had a strange, almost brittle quality to it. In fact a careful listener could detect the same, brittle quality in Wakaba's voice as well.
"We don't know who these people are or what they want, they may very well want to burn the whole village down in which case nowhere is safe. You need to be outside of the village and... I can't come with you," Hotaru paused and took a deep breath, fortifying herself before continuing. "I want to be a ninja and prove to everyone the value of your, or our research/ This is a part of that I can't runaway from so-"
With that Hotaru broke off to weave some handseals and a moth clone appeared, stepping forward to take her mother by the hand rather firmly.
"This clone is going to take you out of the village using subterranean voyage and some moths to detect and avoid any trouble. It'll be slow going and a little messy but you'll be safe. Once you're outside of the village you can proceed on foot the next town over and find somewhere to stay. I'll come find you in the morning,"
There was a brief silence as Wakaba pressed her hand into her face, rubbing her temples with her thumb and two fingers. Then abruptly crouched down to envelop her daughter in a fierce hug. "You always exceed my expectations. No you're growing up far more quickly than I could have imagined." she whispered in Hotaru's ear, before letting her go and standing up to look at all three of the genin sternly.
"Stick together, take care of yourselves and each other and don't do anything reckless. You're the future of this village so your job is to survive until you can reach your full potential as much as it is to protect us."
With that and a final, quick hug Wakaba allowed herself to be lead away by the clone and Hotaru turned back to her squadmates, biting her lip.
"Alrighty! Genius plan time. I've had moths scouting the area around us while we were talking. There's chakra signatures all over the place, spiking rapidly in a manner that suggests fighting. I can't tell who's who though, my moths can only recognize a few specific chakra signatures that I've taught them to, you two, Makorama, Mom and a couple of others. Even if I could figure out who was an enemy and who was friendly the further out I spread my moths the more of a time lag I get while they transfer messages back to me. If I try to cover the whole village or even a wide area inside of it then I won't be able to accurately track the fighting.
That being said, If I limit myself to an area like the couple of blocks around us I can do a bit better and while I can't be sure, I can probably pick out civilians. Ninjas will be moving quickly and purposefully, probably in small groups while civiliansn will be hiding in buildings or running around aimlessly. Between me and Ashi, we can be aware of anyone coming towards us, we could either set up traps and ambushes or we could focus on guiding civilians away from them and out of the village. We could even do some of both I guess.
Hotaru's eyes flicked over to the window sill where a moth suddenly landed and began flapping its wings to communicate. "Our other option is to head straight for Makorama Sensei's location and try to link up with him. I sent a couple of moths ahead to check if he was at the Senju compound since it seemed like the most obvious place to check first. It looks like I was right but that's almost on the other side of the village, to stand a chance of getting through we'd need to be careful,"
Hanarei
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