Vamair: переводы

→-o-​

→The team abandoned any pretence of stealth, and ran.

→Damn damn damn. Hazō had overlooked, and Wakahisa had failed to remind him, that water clones only had a small fraction of the original’s skill and power – and Wakahisa’s sneaking skills were already the minimum required to qualify as a genin. Now anything in the target area (and quite a large range nearby) would know that they were coming.

→Chapter 8: Gust Front

→The movement being in Wakahisa’s peripheral vision, it took him a second to notice and react. In that second, one of his clones moved too close to a clearly visible banshee lizard, and the creature let loose one of its characteristic paralytic shrieks before vanishing into the water.

→After a few seconds, Mori, still facing forward, suddenly moved her hand out towards Wakahisa, and made a series of signs. Abort. Ninjutsu. Risk of Exposure.

→Wakahisa’s two clones moved to the front of the formation, and the party began to move.

→Hazō quickly made a series of hand signals. Primary. Stealth. Secondary. Speed. Pincer Formation Three. He didn’t know the sign for the Water Clone Technique, but improvised. Water. Clone. Take Point.

→Nothing happened, which was definitely for the best. A genjutsu user would mean a chūnin or jōnin enemy.

→“Dispel!”

→Oh. There was one more possibility.

→But if it was an enemy… well, if it was an enemy, then they’d need to find out as fast as possible so they could warn the base. And the enemy couldn’t be that tough if they were being forced to use exploding tags against the local wildlife – something even Hazō’s genin team hadn’t needed to do so far. Of course, if Hazō’s assumptions were wrong, then he and his team would die horribly. Just like most missions.

→Hazō quickly weighed retreat versus advance. If there was a friendly ninja over there, and one in enough danger to use exploding tags, then there was no time to lose. By the time Team Kurosawa reported back to base and got backup, the person in need of help would almost certainly be dead. And on the off-chance that it was a neutral ninja (perhaps the inhabitant of that mysterious shelter from earlier), rescuing them from a threat would be a great way to establish first contact.

→Four o'clock found them most of the way home, skating smoothly across Red Route One, the most direct of the mapped paths leading to the lair from their entry point into the swamp. They were making the southwest turn to avoid the waterskater nest when the distinctive BOOM! of an explosive tag echoed across the swamp from the east.

→By the time they finished, the only signs that there had been a battle were the damage to the trees and the eight-hundred-pound skinned-out carcass. The latter was easily dealt with; they simply poured a trail of blood from the acid-ants tree to the carcass. After a few minutes observation to make sure the ants followed the trail, the team was on their way home. The storage scroll that Shikigami-sensei had loaned them ("If I find so much as one tiny stain, I will make a replacement scroll from your skin!") was stuffed full of hundreds of bristles and several dozen pounds of what was probably going to be delicious meat. The excitement and pride of the hunt buoyed them up on the way back, making the miles fly by effortlessly. Mori blushed when the boys teased her and called her 'Mori the Mighty, Slayer of Pigs!' but she didn't seem all that bothered.

→The next three hours were spent on cleanup; they very carefully filled in all the damage the boar had done to the ground, replacing as much of the turf as possible, brushing out all the tracks they could manage, and covering up as much as possible of the blood. They couldn't do much to conceal the damage to the treebark and the gashes where the ninja wire had dug in, but those weren't quite so obvious.

→o-o-o-o​

→"You missed," Mori said absently, before going back to studying the bristles.

→"I thought you were just supposed to catch its leg," Hazou said in amusement. "Didn't we have this whole cunning plan where you and I were going to each get a loop around one foot and hold the thing immobile while Nobby drowned it? What happened to the plan?"

→"Uh...," said Noburi.