Nightshift 42: Bill's Hardware

[ruthless_hunter]

[from here]Lockdown kicked the door to the hardware store down and barged in. There was already a zombie in here, a big one, who the bounty hunter guessed was the owner of the store. There were also two other zombies with him, so Lockdown was already outnumbered. But that had never stopped the bounty hunter

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[see_my_back]

Whether the enemy was dead or alive, it hardly mattered. There were enough forbidden jutsu to do it, but on this kind of scale? It only took seconds for Sakura to calculate just how outnumbered the patients would be. If this was happening all over town, there had to be thousands of living dead. She and Sasuke might have a bit of trouble, but she had confidence in her abilities. Others, however, wouldn't be escaping intact, that much she was almost sure of. There'd been children, and so many others who'd no skill in fighting whatsoever. Maybe there was some merit to Sasuke's theories. Something like this was certainly a way to narrow down the patients and find out which ones had any abilities worth investigating. Or a good way of wiping everyone out. Great.

Sasuke didn't have to tell her to gather supplies, she was already equipping herself with as much as she could feasibly carry. The smaller sawblades went in her baggy front pockets and a couple of smaller hand-axes went on her belt. And thankfully, a nice pair of leather gloves for punching the hell out of their new enemies. They were a little dusty, but had survived well enough. She remembered seeing some knives up front as well, behind the clerk's counter. Not a sword by any stretch of the imagination, but they'd work with whatever they could find. They'd had plenty of time to evaluate what equipment would be useful, now it was more or less a free-for-all.

"I'm ready," she told him, taking a running start and nailing the nearest rotting human with her boots. It made a disturbing squishing noise, but it wouldn't be the strangest enemy she'd ever faced.

"There's some knives behind the counter on the way out, but if we don't hurry, we're going to be overwhelmed. There's more of them coming in the door!" Luckily, while the creatures were many in number, they had little actual skill. They were slow, they were obvious, and that made them easy targets. But just like with Naruto's kage bunshin, sheer numbers could overwhelm just about anyone, even if they were weak.

With a grunt, she used her momentum and jumped up onto the front counter and kicked in the glass a second later. There were more of the undead coming in through the front and she picked up a short gerber and nailed one in the head, dropping them to the floor. She picked up one with a slightly longer blade as she crouched to kick a second monster in the face. Gross, definitely; almost reminded her of some of the weird clones they'd faced in the forest during their chuunin exams.

[sasuke_of_sound]

Sasuke had already heard the commotion at the door -- and beyond that, smelled the familiar stench of decay and dirt, something he hadn't realised he'd gotten accustomed to in Sound until he'd woken up here -- but Sakura's warning confirmed it. Sasuke hefted the shovel until he'd found the right balance, recalled the layout of the shop, and ran towards the door.

There was the particular sound of impact on rotting flesh to one side, which he deduced was Sakura doing rather better than he'd expected. Sounded like that had been enough to take it out, though -- nothing difficult, then. Sasuke dodged out from the shelves and activated the Sharingan for the pattern of fighting he'd been forced to develop here: a moment, a flash of bright chakra, memorizing locations, and then darkness again. It was probably a good thing these creatures seemed to be consistently making a weird moaning noise.

He took stance and closed his eyes to better focus on sounds: Sakura was by the counter and holding her own for now, but there were two more headed her way and a veritable crowd starting to fill the entrance. Sasuke stepped between the smashed counter and the oncoming two, smashed in the head of one -- walking dead? whatever the hell they were -- and kicked the other back, removing the immediate threat.

And kept pressing them back towards the mass at the front, taking out the second with another swing. Apparently shovels were more handy than Sasuke might have suspected through all those D-ranks of his team days.

"Any windows?" He tossed over his shoulder, jabbing the business end of the shovel towards the closest moaning sound and assuming that she'd understand the possibility of escaping by smashing one open.

[see_my_back]

She hadn't seen Sasuke in action much during the night, but he was pulling his fair share so far as she was concerned. A window did seem like the best escape route since so many of the dead were coming through the front. Though the store might also have a back door, there were plenty of windows. Surprising really, that the monsters hadn't broken through them already.

It would be best if they could hurry to one of the windows furthest from the door. That seemed to be relatively clear.

"Follow my lead," she replied, folding the knife and tucking it into her pocket before jumping from the counter and running toward the far right front side of the store. Luckily, there were plenty of heavy objects to be found and Sakura picked up a big metal wrench, adding a bit of her chakra to the throw as she hurled it at the window. It shattered, leaving only a few ragged pieces of glass at the bottom and another large opening that would soon be occupied by more of their slow-moving opponents.

Another kick kept one of the undead at bay, knocking him into one of the aisles and clearing a path to their escape. Sasuke would've heard the crash of the window, she was certain, so she didn't pause for more than a moment before jumping through the hole she'd left.

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