Luck? What luck?
The thing with falling is that it’s not the fall itself that kills you, it’s the stopping of the fall. Some might luckily faint along the way, and meet their end without going through the process Neji is experiencing at the moment– the losing of the senses, almost like death before death, as the adrenaline runs so thick in your veins you become almost tipsy of it, and the wind and cold crashes onto your skin so hard it’s like the freezing water of the Land of Iron being flung at your face, to the point you can’t even breathe or see due to the sheer speed you’re falling.
In his world (in the Before, as he likes to call it), there hadn’t been buildings as tall as this one– the only things he can compare it to are the Hokage Tower, or the building of the Five Kage Summit, which both pale in comparison. The only things that could measure up were the mountains of the Land of Lightning, which were reputed for their wildness and altitude, and wasn't that a statement about the dumb heights some of the buildings of this world could reach. That had been a fact Neji had known from the moment he had stepped foot in the city, but he couldn’t have understood it as intimately than in this moment, falling to his demise for an obscenely long time. There is a lot to think about in an entire minute or so of falling, mainly something along the lines of, ‘was my pride over completing Giran’s stupid mission worth it?’
Neji will blame this very near death experience for his later inattention, stumbling his way through the empty alleyways of Tokyo after teleporting to the ground mere moments before meeting it, a good distance away from the accursed tower, but not too far away that he can’t hear the police sirens in the distance. The adrenaline is still pumping in his blood, seeming even more noticeable with the hollow feeling in his stomach– he’s almost drained all his chakra, again. This, and the entire mess he’s created, has made Neji realize just how out of his game he was.
Or maybe, maybe, he will blame it on his injuries, on the crimson blood pooling out of his side, on the two tiny feathers still buried in his thigh, too deep for him to pluck out with his fingers, on the shard of glass still in his foot, on the fog that starts to spill into his vision, that he doesn’t notice the person that slams into him until it’s too late. He flies into a wall and the impact makes his brain rattle painfully inside his skull, his body leaving a huge indent into the wall.
“Not laughing now, are you?” a voice pierces through the fog, almost unheard because of the loudness of his own heartbeat in his temples.
There’s a large woman in front of him, holding her arms stiffly in front of her– a huge, blueish shield is coming out of them, hovering threateningly with the promise of squishing Neji into a bloody paste. Around her, three other people stand at attention, with varying degrees of animosity (which, on a scale of one to ten would be, 1. being the man with spikes coming out of his pores, practically foaming at the mouth staring at Neji, and 10. being the woman that flung him into the wall, aiming a nasty glare at him.)
How did he not see them? Well, again, Neji is beginning to seriously doubt his ninja heritage.
“Who are you?” Neji manages to choke out, peeling himself from the wall and trying not to think about how bad his spine hurts.
The one with the spikes scoffs, flexing his hands in a show Neji guesses is meant to intimidate him, before bursting in mad cackles. “You’re about to find out, little boy. Oh– oh, you’re about to find out!”
Another man, tall and primly dressed in a suit and a pair of sunglasses not unlike the ones Neji normally uses, side-eyes him briefly before turning back to Neji and explaining, “You messed with one of our men a month ago.”
He raises an eyebrow at that, taking a second too long to process the information, before scoffing as well, irritation bubbling slowly in his stomach. “I apologize, I can’t remember– clearly, they must not have left a big impression. I usually forget the unskilled.” he marks a deliberate, mocking pause, “Though I suppose you came back for revenge, is that it?”
He hopes they are too angry to notice how stupid Neji sounds with his broken nose. Either way, nobody mentions it.
The man with the glasses shrugs indifferently, while the woman takes two heavy steps towards him, face contorted with anger. “He was just taking food from a store, just enough not to starve in the streets. Was gonna leave without trouble. And you– you just.” she stops, suddenly out of breath. “Do you even realize what you’ve done? He’s… paralyzed, the shitty docs don’t even know how exactly, and y’know what the worst is?”
Silence answers her. Neji is trying to evaluate how much chakra he’ll have left after beating them down, whether or not he’ll have enough to perform a shunshin afterwards.
“The worst is— it’s that the only reason they even spared a look at him, is because some bigshot has it out for you. He’s– just a piece of fucking evidence to them! And as if it wasn’t already hard enough, the hospital bill is–” she stops with an abrupt shake of her head. “You’re not worth the effort. Why am I even telling you piece of shit anyway?”
“Good question.” Neji retorts coolly, and can see the veins on her forehead threatening to burst. No more prompting was needed for her to charge at him like a raging bull, the blue shield in front of her acting, ironically enough, like a weapon more than an actual defense. He leaps out of the way, keeping his focus on the other three as the man with the spikes very obviously positions himself to intercept him, while the tall man just stands there next to their fourth member, a boy that has yet to speak.
She crashes into the wall like a boulder, evidently not capable of changing her course fast enough, as Neji focuses his weight on his uninjured foot, bending low to avoid one wild slash of Spiky’s, then moving with the momentum to slam his shoulder into the man’s collarbone. He hears a crack, a sharp scream of anguish that hurts his own sensitive ears, before righting himself so that he doesn’t fall along his victim. He brings his heel down on his face– another crack. Neji switches targets, focusing on the man with the sunglasses. The boy (who can’t be older than Neji, actually) retreats a few steps back, clenching the straps of his backpack.
Neji feels it before he sees it. His skin tingles, and he twists out of the way as a white-hot beam of energy leaves a scorched hole in the ground, right where his chest would’ve been. The man re-adjusts his glasses with two fingers, clicking his tongue, and turns his head to Neji, pushing his glasses down his nose again. ‘Laser-shooting-eyes,’ Neji thinks deliriously as he dodges the next one, ‘now I’ve seen everything.’
He doesn’t have the time to think more of it, to wonder how Lee would react to that kind of crazy, straight-out-of-a-fiction-book technique, as the woman finally frees her arms from the wall behind him, chunks of cement and dust dropping to the ground around her.
She turns to him again, massive thighs and arms flexing in preparation, but Neji doesn’t give her the time to charge in again, flinging two knives into her shield– a useless offensive, if you could even call it that, but a good enough distraction as her focus is broken. The man now behind him takes the seen opportunity, thinking Neji is unaware of him now that he’s facing away. Without much thought, Neji sprints straight to the woman, her eyes narrowing as he closes in, and dodges a violent fling of her shield that would’ve sent him hurling into the wall.
He slips behind her just as a laser crashes into her shield, shocking a grunt out of her. “What the hell?!” she yelps at the man, who makes a dismissive ‘get out of way’ gesture with his hand. Even from behind her, Neji can see the way her neck flushes with anger, and he promptly digs his fingers into the back of her thigh. She sinks to the ground with a bloody scream, her blue shield rattling loudly with the impact it makes as it hits the ground, then flickering to nothing.
Now, without his improvised human-shield, Neji side-steps another laser that comes dangerously close– close enough that he can feel the heat of it when it grazes his hip, and chucks a hunk of concrete at the guy, who hurries clumsily out of the way. Neji plants his foot onto the woman on the ground, ignoring her protests, and uses her back as a springboard to fly head-first toward the man. As he jumps off her, her chin hits the floor, knocking her out for good.
His body splits the air and he covers his face with his arms, crashing into the man. His elbows dig into the guy’s chest under him, and he slaps his hand on top of the glasses to keep them in place (he doesn’t need a laser to hit him at point-blank, that would be unfortunate.) For a long minute, they’re both trashing on the ground, all nails and sharp knees and elbows, trying to wind the other down. Finally, the older man gives him his opening, and Neji flips him on his stomach, grabbing his hair and bashing his head in the ground– once, twice. Another time for good measure. There’s a sharp crack as his glasses break at the seam.
Neji stumbles back up, his knees scraped raw, and turns to the remaining person. His byakugan, weak as it was, finally shuts down. He blinks around the sting in his eyes, his blurry vision focusing on the boy cowering by the mouth of the alleyway.
He could very well run away– Neji wouldn’t bother going after him, not in the state he’s in. But he doesn’t. He’s frozen in fear, a mistake you’d find in fresh genin; Chunin, too, if they were lucky (or unlucky) enough to pass the test without the skills to back it up. Loyal as he was (and still is, death hadn’t changed that) Neji could still admit that bureaucracy at Konoha had been… questionable at times. Point is, the boy doesn’t move an inch as Neji shuffles to him, his hands curling into fists after having long given up on the gentle fist, for lack of chakra (the last he has, he plans on saving to be able to function half-properly.)
He towers over the boy, and being met with no resistance, reaches for his collar to yank him up, maybe to bash his head in the wall or, in a more merciful method, choke him until he drops– though the boy’s eyes move to the side, and look at something behind his shoulder. Neji’s arm freezes mid-air when the faint rustling of clothes reaches his ears.
The man with the spikes has gotten up, giving a wet gurgle (courtesy of his broken nose) as Neji meets his crazed eyes. There’s a huge reddish bruise all over his collarbone, and he shouldn’t be able to move by any means but– Spikes fiddles with something that glints in the moonlight, and Neji instinctively snaps to attention, knees bent and arms limp, ready to dodge. He surprises him, though, by stabbing himself in the thigh, with a grunt that sounds more like a dog’s than a human’s. That’s when Neji realizes– what he thought had been a knife is actually a syringe. A shiver runs up his arm, and he knows that he has to brace for whatever comes next.
The man’s neck spasms oddly, lips parting with a breathy exhale that shakes his whole body. The syringe breaks as it slips from his fingers and falls to the ground. “Holy shit.” the man is saying, blinking blown pupils back to reality. “Holy shit.” he says again, delightfully, peering at his spikes that have grown at least thrice their original size. He directs a crazed look towards Neji– his eyes are red.
“Spikes.” the boy calls, broken out of his trance. It seems Neji had been spot-on with the nickname. “You weren’t— you weren’t supposed to use it.”
“Oh, shut it.” Spikes drawls, and rolls his shoulders experimentally, which makes his spikes click together. “I know I can’t count on you to pull your weight anyway, you goddamn scaredy cat.”
“The plan was,” the other insists, glancing between Neji and Spikes. “to take it back to Chisaki, not use it ourselves! Do you know how expensive those are?! Oh god, he’s gonna be so mad at us–” Spikes ignores the guy, and launches himself at Neji with bone-breaking speed. He’s taken aback and something skewers his chest, a choked scream spilling out of his lips, the memory of getting impaled flooding his senses.
Had his heart just been pierced? Neji thinks irrationally, before gripping the spike with both hands, the edges biting into his palms, and bringing his forehead down on the already-broken nose of his assailant. The man jerks back, blood spilling across Neji’s own face, but continues his assault with the sort of one-track ferocity Neji has only ever seen in the most unhinged ninja. He brings his palm down to crack the spike in two and disengage before he has the opportunity to twist the spike in his chest, his palm throbbing uncomfortably.
Now bending low, he ducks under another wild slash, the air displacing just above his head, and bats at the man’s exposed ankle, his stumbling giving Neji enough time to put a good distance between them. Hiding behind garbage, he winces as he pats his chest– the blade doesn’t seem to be too far in, of which Neji at least tries to convince himself.
“Why are you hiding?” the man rasps, trying to take a step in his direction but not being able to (seems like having spikes the size of large knives all over your body makes it hard to wander without stabbing yourself.) “Hey!” he calls abruptly, waving the blade Neji has broken in the boy’s direction.
Said boy flinches, glancing between him and Neji nervously.
“Go get him!” he blurts, voice wavering like a drunk’s. “I can’t fucking move.” the boy’s agape mouth clicks shut, focusing on Neji and his gasping– probably doing rapid math about whether or not he’d be able to restrain him alone. Neji gives him a dark look, cutting the speculations short.
“No way.” the boy backtracks, snapping his gaze away from him. “No way! You seen how he took care of the others? I can’t take him!”
“You’re so, so fucking useless.” Spikes snarls, and Neji sees him folding into himself like a porcupine. The muscles on his back bulge under his mesh, more-than-a-little-torn shirt, the tissue of the flushed skin underneath tearing as the spikes extend outward. There’s a split second of dead silence and then– he unleashes the spikes into a wild, uncontrollable attack, cutting the air with such ferocious force the walls and the floor around him break in the destruction. The boy falls back with a heavy thump, lips parting with a soundless scream. His gaping throat stares at Neji, blood spreading in the cracks of the pavement. Neji doesn’t understand the aim of that chaotic offensive, safely tucked away behind the now severely pierced and spilling garbage can, but he’s not about to complain.
He takes one, calming breath– discards the pain of his countless injuries somewhere deep into his mind.
“No spikes left, Spikes?” Neji taunts, picking up one sharp skewer and flinging it at the other’s clumsy guard. It strikes true in his shoulder, sending him stumbling. Neji jumps on the wall and uses it to propel himself at Spikes who’s too slow to react, and tackles him at the waist with a vengeance. It’s settled fairly quickly from then– he seizes both sides of his head, twists with a decisive flicker of his wrists before the man has even the time to scream.
An unrefined takedown if he’d ever seen one, thought Neji sardonically. Luckily, no one was here to see, and certainly no one from home. Neji gets back to his feet quickly, lest the exhaustion take him here and then– he has things left to do, mainly getting somewhere where he’d find a vague sense of safety.
Every time his chest rises with a new labored breath seems to rattle the spike in his torso, and the mental image of the sharp end of it wiggling around in his flesh is an unwelcome one. It’s dark enough that he can’t discern the blood from his shirt when he squints down at his chest. He only knows it’s there because of the warm wetness clinging to his shirt, and because of the overwhelming scent of iron filling his nostrils. The pain, however, has reduced to a dull buzz in the back of his head– he’s not sure if that’s a good sign.
He stumbles past half-toppled cans of garbage, one hand flat against the wall, the other applying pressure to his chest. There’s a shortness to his breath that makes the deserted alleyways look even more ominous, the sound of his own erratic pants reminding him of the first night he’d been taken from his world– alone, lost and wounded.
And then he stumbles onto that alleyway.
There’s a crash, and Neji freezes. A man in heavy armor skids across the floor, his heavy gear gritting against the ground until he crashes into a wall with the sound of a wheezing engine stuttering to a stop. There’s a deep, bloody dent in the unprotected part under his armpit, where the space between two silver plates makes for an easy target.
Another man, much less equipped but much better off, stands at the other mouth of the alley. He stands taller than Neji, ragged, with skin so pale he would’ve looked faint if it weren’t for the obvious muscles of his arms, or the confidence in his posture. Instead, the bandages around his face and arms give him a look of menace that is not unlike the killing intent most shinobi exuded.
His deformed face sneers when his gaze snaps to Neji’s, standing like a deer caught in headlights, and making the bandages crease restlessly around the space where his squashed-up nose sits. He brings his katana to his mouth and licks it, not breaking eye contact. The man in armor slumps, the mouth of his helmet rattling against the ground with an air of finality.
Neji drags his gaze between the two men. It’s easy enough for him to put two and two together, enough for a ball of dread and irritation to lodge itself in his stomach.
Then the stranger takes two deft steps forward (close enough that Neji is within striking distance), the moonlight finally hitting the almost-comical amount of blades he carries on his body. Two knives on both his sides, the katana, at least five or so knives in his boots that Neji guesses are supposed to be hidden, others tied to his belt– it all looked rather impractical, but the man seemed to make it work. He knows Tenten would’ve had a field trip making fun of him– Neji finds himself in a more sober mood.
“It’s just one thing after the other…” he mutters under his breath, making sure his hands are visible.
“You a hero?” the man asks gruffly, his katana resting in the space between them like some sort of dark promise. Neji straightens, hoping the ambient darkness is a good enough cover that it’s not too obvious he’s wounded. He forces himself to slow his breathing, his chest tightening.
Neji forces out a humorless snort, and points to himself. “Do I look like one?”
“Watch it.” the man snaps, his sword-hand convulsing briefly. “I’ve no patience for whatever it is you want, and you’re already bothering me enough.”
“I don’t want anything.” Neji replies, and shifts so it’s not too obvious he’s putting more weight on one foot than the other. “I’m just passing through.”
“Passing through? You just interrupted my hunt, you little pest.” he spits, sheer venom laced into his words, and again, his hand spasms around the handle of his katana, like it’s taking him herculean effort to not just lounge at Neji and put his sword through his throat.
“I’d hardly call this a hunt. He was already at your feet when I came– you would’ve killed him already if it was what you wanted.” Neji counters, uneasy. “You weren’t aiming to kill.”
He has enough chakra to teleport to safer grounds, but not quite enough to do so comfortably and very far away– the landing would be rough, and the aftermath would be chakra exhaustion, which isn’t really something he wants a repeat of anytime soon. But, as proven countless times this particular night, things seem to rarely go Neji’s way.
"Well," the stranger grunts after a moment of scrutinity, looking at him in the eyes again and finding him lacking. "Maybe it's not a waste after all. Two birds, one stone."
There’s a weak, spluttering hum to his side that has the lines of his shoulders tensing. The stranger’s red gaze widens, shifting to the side, then coming back to Neji’s like it’s somehow his fault– with a strangled cry, the wounded man in armor is sent flying past Neji. The other closes on him with accusing eyes–
As the wicked blade closes in a precise arc to meet his throat, Neji gathers the last scraps of his chakra, the effort itself feeling like his stomach is trying to eat itself, and pulls, poofing out of space.