[07] north country winters keep a-gettin' me down

[thethundersaid]

Who: Crew of Murderess/Howling Sabers
Where: West of Empieza
When: Month of March. Top post starts beginning of month; mark dates in new threads to maintain some semblance of continuity. :Db
What: Catch-all for March posts -- will include Captain fight at least.
Warnings: Violence as ever
Style: Anything that'll move!
Status: Open to anyone actually on board or nearby

They'd spent a month docked at Empieza, and finally they were on the move. Sasuke wouldn't deny that they had perhaps needed the time -- to get the ship back into shape, for one, and to pick up a medic-nin, even if that hadn't been in the plans. But an entire month of one small island and an even smaller ship had left Sasuke about as stir-crazy as he could get, and the presence of said medic-nin and her entourage only exacerbated it.

He'd told Naruto and Sakura that he hadn't been doing nothing since arrival, but in all honesty, in terms of real progress, he'd accomplished nothing. Nothing of use, nothing of real import, for all that they had a shard on board and no one had been possessed to kill everyone else recently.

So it was that Sasuke was in the rigging in a better mood than he'd been in all month as they sailed away from the island, heading for rendezvous with the crew of the sailboat that had gone to find fairies.

Comments

[thethundersaid]

For all that their opponents were far from the level of even genin ninja, they were at least something other than mindless zombies and flying horses with magical powers. Alicorns. Whatever -- it meant fighting with focus and thought instead of just cleaving a path to the final destination, and Sasuke hadn't expected he'd miss even this level of intelligent combat as much as he had. Or maybe it was just the weight of his own sword in his hands again, for all that it had nearly bankrupted him to finally buy it back.

He hadn't thought their plan would have worked as effectively as expected, either, but the genjutsu covering their approach had held without an issue, and the surprise of stripping it away to reveal their boarding party abruptly on the deck had given them a strong initial advantage over the sailors. At this rate, Sakura would just be bored back on the Murderess.

It didn't take much deduction to tell one trail of bodies apart from another's, and he caught up to L-Elf by administering a stab and a slash at a pair of soldiers attacking on either side, tossing their bodies out of the way.

"Leave the captain alive if you find him," he said, voice pitched to be heard over the ruckus around them. Sasuke's own body count, even when he'd been rampaging toward Danzo, was deliberate rather than thorough: he killed whom he meant to kill. "I want him for information."

[breakfastmetaphors]

"I know." If there was one thing he knew, it was that Sasuke wanted people left alive for information. There was value in interrogation, but the fact that Sasuke wanted them to remain alive after they were no longer of use was endlessly frustrating for someone like L-Elf, who had been raised under the strict philosophy of "Kill, don't be killed." Judging by the general level of fighting ability, Sasuke and his comrades from his world had to have started their combat training at a young age, but it seemed that their instructors were far kinder than those at the Karlstein Institute.

"He'll live." It was both an acknowledgement of the request and a prediction of the future. It went against how he would have liked to see the scenario play out, but Sasuke was extraordinarily stubborn.

[thethundersaid]

Killing was easier than leaving people incapacitated but alive; when a yell was suddenly raised from above and sailors dropped from the unfurled rigging, brandishing bright standard-issue steel and pistols, Sasuke flared electric on instinct, Susano'o's ribcage swirling into place around him.

An attack from above was hardly unexpected, but that these sailors had managed to attempt the element of surprise even while watching their crewmates being roundly defeated below spoke to a greater discipline than Sasuke had expected on board a ship like this.

A giant hand formed from the glowing ribs surrounding him, Sasuke glancing up from the men twitching on the deck at his feet to make sure he didn't need to snatch any of the Murderess's crew out of immediate danger.

[breakfastmetaphors]

The yell was no doubt meant to intimidate them, but it also provided an advanced warning of the attack. While it was frustrating not to be sufficiently armed (a submachine gun would have been nice), it wasn't an impossible situation by any stretch. L-Elf withdrew enough to take advantage of the confusion caused by Sasuke's attack, though it galled him to have to fire his own gun several times to take out a few more sailors from the rigging.

"There will also be several squads below decks. If we've cleared the deck in the next eight minutes, they'll attempt a similar surprise attack."

[thethundersaid]

Eight? The man had certainly claimed to have precise calculations, but Sasuke hadn't expected anything so precise. It was one thing to assume that there would be more crew lying in wait -- that much could be expected of even an amateur tactician -- but the exact estimation of time made Sasuke raise an eyebrow while tossing a pair of would-be attackers overboard to the sound of satisfying screams and splashes.

"What if we clear it faster than that?"

[breakfastmetaphors]

"Either they'll scramble to attack or they'll lie in wait and ambush us as we search the ship, depending on how quickly we reach the captain." L-Elf paused to grab two pistols off fallen sailors and stick them in his belt before picking up a third and firing it into a small crowd further down the deck, scattering them and leaving an opening for other members of the Howling Sabers to attack.

"They've worked this strategy out in advance and he directs it."

[thethundersaid]

Made sense, and even if L-Elf turned out to be wrong, they didn't have much time to sit around and come up with alternatives. Sasuke turned to shout the information to the rest of the crew -- only to find that most of the sailors who had landed on the deck were already well on their way to extinction or uselessness, tossed aside by chakra or blade. Their slipshod strategy of boarding in smaller groups appeared to have worked, probably by sheer luck, but it was working too effectively now.

"Ambush would be the best option for them, with how this is going," he said, tone grim, throwing the last of the demotivated men attacking him overboard and turning to deal with another rush. "I'll spread the word. You do the same if you can."

[breakfastmetaphors]

L-Elf smirked, still an island of calm amidst the chaos on deck.

"No. You draw attention away from me and press forward to the captain. Try not to overpower them too quickly. I'll take care of the units below decks."

Fighting on deck where one had to compensate for the rocking of the boat to keep one's footing and avoid being sent sliding to the rail put him at a disadvantage, but close quarters fighting in the cramped confines of the ship's interior was right up his alley. Now that he was certain of the strategy the Navy captain was employing, it would be a small matter to decimate his reserves before they could be mobilized.

[thethundersaid]

No wasn't something Sasuke was accustomed to hearing, especially not in the course of a fight -- it threw him for a moment, enough that he was frowning as he cut through the new attackers. At their level, it was far too easy to duck into the middle of the cluster and turn their efforts against one another, Kusanagi glinting only a few times in the fray.

The suggestion would only have made sense if L-Elf were completely confident in his own ability to handle ambush in close quarters. Then again, maybe that made sense; with the man's build and what Sasuke had seen of his fighting style thus far, he might very well be suited for precisely that sort of footing. Still, the fact that there was room to disagree in the middle of a fight spoke to a fact they'd both already known -- that the crew, for all its strength, desperately lacked organization.

"Fine," he said, finally, accepting the plan and turning toward what was most likely the captain's quarters, assuming this was just a larger version of the Murderess. "What's your ideal time for me to reach the captain?"

[breakfastmetaphors]

L-Elf's eyes flicked to the nearest passage below decks, then to the door of the captain's quarters.

"Two minutes. Just focus on keeping the men on deck at bay rather than defeating them and draw him out. Once he's on deck, don't hold back."

The Navy captain was skilled in strategy and no doubt had several more tactics up his sleeve that he would attempt to employ, but without his reserves to draw on, he would be crippled. So far, they had shown themselves to be powerful fighters, but not necessarily tacticians. If he managed to keep things quiet, it would remain that way and give them the upper hand.

[thethundersaid]

Sasuke didn't bother staying to talk much longer, turning instead to assess what was left between him and the captain's quarters. Assuming the captain was even in there, and that the men between him and the door would fight to protect a dummy even if he weren't, two minutes was doable. Just not particularly neat.

If only fire were practical on board a ship, but they wanted to use this thing later, not sink its charred remains into the ocean. And keeping the sailors out of the way, but not incapacitating them -- it was like being back in Sound under Orochimaru's watchful tutelage. L-Elf might even have passed for a sharper-tongued Kabuto, silver hair and all.

In any case, it left Sasuke with taijutsu and the work of the Kusanagi, and two minutes blurred past as he reached the door -- which remained closed, making it highly likely that the only thing behind it was emptiness or further ambush.

He threw the doors open at the two-minute mark, tensed as his eyes adjusted to the relative darkness, and waiting to see if L-Elf had some kind of plan prepared for the extremely likely chance that there was no captain in the captain's quarters at all.

[breakfastmetaphors]

L-Elf had said "draw him out" instead of "find him" on purpose. The Navy captain was quite impressed with his own strategies. The attack from the rigging had shown that. It was effective, but flashy, and designed to surprise and demoralize them. Now that it seemed that they'd gotten their footing again, a second attack would be sprung on them. He couldn't quite hear what was going on on deck, but he expected the captain and a unit of elite soldiers, likely with firearms, would appear either from a hatch behind the crew or above them within a minute or less of the captain's quarters being entered. It would depend on the captain's temperament. As flashy as the attacks so far had been, above was 90% more likely, probably on a raised portion of the deck.

He kicked the body of a fallen sailor aside and descended further into the ship. There would be several more small units and they would all need to be disposed of before the captain had a chance to call on them. The timeframe had shortened again, so there was no time to waste, unless of course the rest of the crew managed to kill the captain before the units could be mobilized.