Starring:
Date: August 14, 2014
Summary:
After dividing up lookout duty between his team, Atsuro takes the first shift. Everything seems quiet at first. Just when his shift is about to end, he smells something strange in the wind and investigates. It doesn't take long before a commotion breaks out at Elder Masao's house. Three gigantic winged spiders had attacked the place with the intent to silently steal the inhabitants away, but the shinobi inside detects the attempt and fights back. Akiko (NPC) and Taizen hold their own in one guest room. In the other room, Taree (NPC) is paralyzed by venom while Kenta's glued to the floor with webbing. Atsuro arrives just in time to save them and kill one of the three spiders. The other two creatures flee, which gives Atsuro the opportunity to track them to their lair using a shadow clone.
Poster's note: foul language filtered in obvious places.
"Flies in the Web - Part 2"
Shadewood Village (within a northern forest in the Land of Fire)
After checking out the rooms available to them, Atsuro has gathered the team together in one of the rooms for a meeting and gotten a consensus on how to arrange watches and sleeping accomodations. "Okay," he says, clapping his hands together once, "To start with, Kenta sleeps in this room all night. Taree sleeps here too, and Taizen and Akiko sleep in the other room. I'll take first watch. Then I switch places with Akiko. Once her watch is done, she switches with Taree. Then once Taree's done, he switches with Taizen. That'll take us through the night." He rubs his chin, "So when it's still a bit light out, I'll be watching and smelling. Then Akiko uses her bugs in the darkest part of the night. Then Taree can use his vision when it's starting to get lighter. And then in the morning, Taizen is just about the same as me, sense-wise. Sound good, everyone?"
Kenta nods his head up and down. He finishes handing out cups of an herbal brew that he mixed up to help them recover their energy a little faster. The young medic-nin sits down and crosses his legs. "Understood, Atsuro-senpai. I just wish that I can contribute more to this than sleeping all night. I feel like I'm leaving everyone else with all the hard work. At least the four of you will still be able to get a few hours of sleep."
Taree mirrors Kenta's nodding motions, but much more vigorously. The tall Hyuga flops down onto his mattress and folds his arms behind his head. "Hey, if any of you guys are too tired, I can take a second watch too. Sentry duty? It's a piece of cake for one of the Hyuga. There was this one time where I had to stay awake for two entire days for a dare…" His boisterous voice trails off as he glances over at Akiko. "Why do you keep going over to the window, Akiko-chan?"
The tiny Aburame girl jumps when her name's spoken. She's still a little spooked from meeting the guards and Elder Masao, but it's slowly wearing off. "Oh… uh uh… I-I have a bad feeling. N-None of my insects have r-returned. All of th-them are supposed to back in two hours, but some only had to f-fly into the surrounding forests and report b-back." She looks out into the window again with misgiving on her face before walking over to Taizen. "M-Maybe I'm just a little n-nervous sleeping in place where people disappeared." She hesitantly touches the big ninken on the shoulder. "Let's go to our r-rooms, Taizen-san?"
"You are contributing," Atsuro reassures Kenta, "It's just that you don't have the same job as other members of the team. Right now, the most valuable thing you can do is stay rested so that you're in top condition when we move on to another part of the mission. Don't feel guilty about it." He considers telling Kenta that it's an order, but he figures that exhortation is enough and there's no need to get heavy handed.
"This mission isn't a dare," he reminds Taree, "I'm glad you're eager to contribute, but I need you on top of your game too." He smirks slightly, "That way you can show off in ways other than putting your sleep off." That expression quickly disappears when Akiko reports, though. "Some should have been back by now, then?" he asks. He thinks for a moment. "Will you be able to sleep and see if they've come back when you wake up? Or do you think you'll need to be awake? We could swap places in the watch rotation if you need… otherwise, we can talk when I come to get you for your shift." This is worrying… has one of their ninja's most imporant abilities been disabled before the mission has even really started?
Akiko ducks her head and folds his hands on his stomach. There's a faint blush on her face from being addressed directly by Atsuro, but the angle along with her sunshades hide the rest of her expression. "It's too s-soon for alarm. I-I'll wait and see if th-they back by the time it's m-my shift. If any of th-them return before that time with important news, th-they'll know to wake me up."
"Yeah, I don't think there's anything to worry about yet, Atsuro-san," Taree says with confidence in his voice. "With all our combined abilities, we'll be ready for anything that's thrown at us. Unless it's ghosts doing the abductions" The mention of ghosts makes Kenta stiffen where he sits, but Taree doesn't notice. "we can handle things with no problem. Since I'm not needed for a second shift, I'll just get some shut eye…" Taree must be more tired than he's letting on, because his eyes start drifting closed while he speaks and he's out like a lamp before he even finishes his sentence.
Atsuro nods. "Alright then," he says, "You can let me know how things go when I get back." He looks over to Taree and nods, "I hope you stay that confident. In any case… I don't think we'll have to worry about ghosts." He shoots a quick glance in Kenta's direction, "Anybody." He then looks in the direction of the door. "I should get going for the first watch," he says, "If nobody has anything else to say." He gives a moment for someone to pipe up and for himself to answer, then heads out, "Get some sleep, guys." Then he sets about finding the guard to take him to the lookout area.
Taizen goes to the other room and settles down to sleep.
The next few hours is a quiet and lonely time for Atsuro. The guard leads him to the northern section of the village where he can get a good view of the entire area from the railed roof of three storied storage building close to the palisade wall. From his vantage point, it's easy to see that the village is actually located in some kind of depression that dips further down the closer one gets to the center where the Elder's house. The guard briefly explains that the knowledgeable minds among them think that the underground stream that keeps the wells supplied with water might have caused the dip when it eroded some of the bedrock away to create it's course.
Twilight slowly deepens the color of the sky from a dark blue to a purplish black. Twinkle stars begin to appear in the sky one by one, but they're dim beneath a hazy sky. There's no moon tonight to provide extra lighting. This isn't a problem at first due to the lamp light streaming out from the cracks of shuttered windows in the cabins below. The cabins of the missing villagers stick out like a sore thumb due to their lack of life. Eventually, even the lights from the cabins flicker out. Deep night falls with only the torches of the eight night guards to provide some brightness as those hardened individuals patrol throughout the area. seems to be happening at all.
It's just about time for Atsuro to trade shifts with Akiko when something odd catches his attention. A breezes from the south brings the faintest sent of rot and something unidentifiable to his keen nose. Overhead, a few of the stars wink out and back on again.
Once he's brought to the balcony, Atsuro walks forward to lean against the railing and looks out over the village, looking it over to get a clear idea of the layout, as well as the people and things that are there right now. He sniffs the air, wanting to get all the scents and tie them with their sights before it gets too dark to see easily. That way, he'll know when something's out of the ordinary.
While he usually requires more stimulation in his life, he's somehow patient when his duty requires it. He looks out over the village, seeing everything as best as he can, and sniffs the air, noting every scent that reaches his nose. It's strangely peaceful, even with the underlying tension of the situation. Used to staying up late to enjoy Konoha's night-life, he's not at all tired, and the end of his own shift seems to come quickly.
He begins turning to leave the building, but stops as the scent of rot reaches him again, along with something else. That wasn't there before. He tromps down the stairs as quickly as he can, then searches out a guard. "Come with me," he says, "I might have found something suspicious." He adds, "If we run into something, I don't want you to fight. Head back to where the other ninja are sleeping and tell them to come find me." If the guard agrees, he starts to head in the direction of the scent.
"Yes, sir!" The guard exclaims. The older man starts following Atsuro while the Jounin shinobi follows the scent with a sharp nose. The smell of rot and the second scent, which registers as a cold and dusty after a few more whiffs, drifts in from the south breeze, but keeps cutting off when buildings block the wind. It happens very often due to the spiralling pattern that the village is built on. Luckily, there's enough of a gap between each cabin that they can slip in between instead of having to jog the full length of the road. This does mean that Atsuro's nose is assaulted by outhouses several times when he has to travel pass them. Before long, two more guards join them. The additional light from their torches is helpful, but also ruins night sight to a large degree. Every shadow seem to be reaching out for them.
Tt's soon apparent that the source of the rot and dust cold stink comes from the center of the village. The closer the little group gets, the strong it becomes. A minor shift in the angle of the wind blows the odor directly into Atsuro's face. It's coming from the Elder's house. Suddenly, a feminine scream pierces the air, followed by a round of familiar barks. The sounds are loud enough that lights start appear in the nearby cabins as sleepy villagers jump out of bed to peer out their windows in alarm.
"What's going on?"
"I thought I heard a scream!"
"We're under attack!"
"Shhh, you'll scare the kids."
The sound of fighting reaches Atsuro's ears as soon as he enters the Elder's house. Shouts and thumps and things breaking make the very timbers of the foundation shudder. "Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven!" CRASH! BANG! Elder Masao nearly runs down Atsuro on the way down from the second floor to the streets. The old man pants loudly and points his cane up at the ceiling. "Be careful up there! They were shouting about there being more than one attackers!" Elder Masao yells out over the noise before he goes down the rest of the stairs in a limping sprint.
When Atsuro finally gets to the third floor, he finds that both the guest doors are thrown open. The one leading into Kenta and Taree's room is actually completely blown off the hinges and lie on the ground in splinters. A quick look inside shows a dire scene backwashed in the ghostly pale light of a chemical torches that Kenta had handled out earlier, now scattered on the floor.
Mattresses and furnishings are mashed against the perimeter of the rooms as if tossed by a twister while four figures dominate the cleared center. Two of them are enormous creations of chitin and gossamer wings, about twice the size of Taizen. They look like enormous spiders that had cross-bred with an equally large damselfly. Their cruel mandibles crack together loudly with enough force to crush bone as they skitter up the walls and ceilings on eight multi-jointed legs. A buzzing sound from rapidly beating wings attached to their backs. Eight eyes, each the size of a man's palm, glare balefully at the figures that they're trying to cover. Taree is unmoving on the floor, at the center of the circle of destruction. He probably fell right after throwing up the Hyuga's signature barrier of spinning chakra to deflect an attack. Several long barbs are sticking out from his right shoulder. Kenta stands over the larger shinobi's form, but he probably can't move beyond the point anyway due to the webbing that's splattered over his lower half and Taree's body. The medic-nin thrusts his right palm out at the closest spider-fly when it tries to get too close. "HAH!" A blast of chakra knocks the monster back and makes it's legs temporarily crumple for a second.
Barking and even louder buzzing comes from the other guest room. The area right pass the threshold is completely covered in webbing and so is much of the room beyond it. It makes the shadowy darkness even harder to pierce, but Atsuro can see Akiko trying to fend off another of the spider-flies with dodges and competent thrusts from a kunai. Her movements are extremely graceful, easily getting her out of the way without forcing her into any of the webbing. The reason why she's not using her kikaichu is easy to decipher, since the webbing inside the room is literally stuck with thousands of their bodies. As Akiko attacks the creature from the front, Taizen is taking it from the back. Despite Akiko's handicap, they're fairing much better than Kenta and Taree.
"I'll take care of it," Atsuro tells Masao hurriedly, barely even slowing in his run up the stairs. Finally, he's at the top of the stairs, looking into the guest rooms. Even a quick look shows pretty clearly where he's most needed. Heading for Kenta and Taree's room, he hurls himself in, ramming a spider back with his shoulder. Turning and slicing quickly at it before he steps back, interposing himself between the spiders and the trapped ninja.
He holds the ninjato with both hands in a defensive stance, eyeing the spiders from across the room. "I don't suppose you can cut the webbing with a kunai or something?" he asks Kenta, "I need you to get him out of the room. Get him healed up if you can, but try and watch out for us too."
"Atsuro-senpai!" Kenta exclaims when the closest spider-fly goes tumbling. It's large, but it's still wobbly from the pulse of chakra that the medic-nin sent at it and Atsuro's hefty enough to pack some punch with a charge like that. Unfortunately, the ninjato's sharp edge merely scores the creature's carapace and doesn't slice in deeply enough to produce a serious injury. The chitin armor isn't just for show. Only the eyes, the mouth when the mandibles are parted and the wings look soft enough to pierce with relative ease. As soon as the fallen spider-fly's upright, it tries to retaliate. It's mandibles spread for a second to spit out several long sharp spikes like the ones that struck Taree. At the same time, the second spider-fly rapidly crawls up a wall and spits a stream of webbing at Atsuro from above.
"Watch out!" Kenta exclaims. He struggles to yank his legs free, but they're glued tightly to the floor. "The webbing's like sticky iron wires and the stingers are poisonous! Taree fell unconscious after he was struck!" He yanks at his legs again. "We're completely stuck! Don't let any of that stuff touch you! You can't cut them either! I tried with a kunai!"
It's not yet clear how intelligent these creatures are, but they certainly have given Atsuro a difficult choice — dodge and let Kenta or Taree get hit by the spikes, or block the spikes and get tied down by webbing. Atsuro opts to do the latter, and easily uses his sword to parry each of the spikes so that they simply hit the floor. But now he finds himself with webbing on his feet, preventing him from moving towards the spiders to attack. But he's not doomed to failure. He makes a seal, and with a puff of smoke, a totally free Atsuro appears, armed with a shadow copy of that same ninjato!
The clone Atsuro doesn't make the same mistake as the original. He bears down on the spider Atsuro tackled, then raises his sword high above his head before bringing it down in a brutal overhead slash. Atsuro's strength is immense and his technique is well-honed. This attack could probably cut through a marble pillar, but instead it's aimed to cut through the spider's carapace and slice it right in half!
Kenta cries out in horror when Atsuro is webbed, but the sound quickly turns into one of elation. As strong as the spider-fly's carapace is, the one that the Jounin's clone targeted is ripped apart by the power the sword strike. Both ends separates in opposite directions with a mixture of ichor and bug guts spilling out in between. The heavy scent of rotted flesh and arachnid punk fills the room strongly enough to make even Kenta gag.
As the first spider-fly twitches in the throes of death on the ground, it's companion's movements stall. The second spider-fly seems to be assessing the suddenly reversal in the situation. Whatever goes through its mind only lasts for a fraction of a second. Suddenly, it's on the retreat. The creature's speed is impressive as it dashes towards the open window with all the haste that eight powerful legs can muster. It's squeezing through into the night almost before Atsuro can blink an eye.
"Atsuro-senpai, please free me while we have a reprieve," Kenta urges with an edge to his worried voice. "The webbing's keeping me from reaching my medical bag—" The bag's among the piles of rubble flung into the far corners of the room. "I need to treat Taree-san right away. I don't know how potent the poison is."
"Gah!" The scent leaves Atsuro and his clone gagging for a moment. But as soon as they regain their faculties, they return to the task at hand. The clone jumps out the window in pursuit of the fleeing spider, doing his best to track the creature by scent, if not sight — as a clone, he doesn't need to think much about things like backup or being ambushed. Whatever the spider can do to him, he's producing some kind of intel for the original Atsuro.
Who, right now, is doing his best to help Kenta. He pulls his shirt up over his nose, then uses his strength to twist around, despite the webbing on his feet. He crouches down and sets to tearing and cutting the webbing holding Kenta's feet down. Recognizing that he has considerable strength and is using a sword as a cutting tool, he's careful not to actually hurt Kenta in the process. It slows him down some, but he's not going to let mere webbing cause his team to come to harm.
Kenta stands stock still while the webbing's being cut away from him. The young medic-nin had been completely ineffective at getting rid of it. There's two of his kunai stuck to the strong, sticky strands. That just shows him how much stronger Atsuro is, so he tries his best not to distract his friend by twitch and getting a foot cut off. Once he's freed from the encasement, Kenta drops to his knees next to Taree. The prone shinobi is also caught in webbing, but Kenta's most worried about the poisoned spikes. He yanks those out of Taree's shoulder and sets them aside for later inspection. Afterwards, the young medic-nin starts checking vital signs and perform chakra diagnostics. "The poison's strong and debilitating, but not life threatening. Taree-san is going to be out for hours. I'll make an antidote, but he'll be extremely weak for days afterwards. The spikes also left something else in him… Eggs?" Kenta wrinkles his nose and keeps up the analysis. "I might be able to purge those, but I'll have to cut out the infected flesh out instead if it doesn't work."
A thump comes from the direction of the door. Suddenly, Akiko and Taizen are careening inside. Taizen is uninjured, but Akiko has a shallow cut across her left cheek. There's also strands of loose webbing tuck to both of them, but not nearly enough to weigh them down. "A-Atsuro-sama? I th-thought I saw you briefly before. We just had to f-fight off a s-spider creature in our room. It just ran away all of a s-sudden— Taree-kun!" Akiko runs over to drop to her knees next to Kenta and Taree. The former quickly bends his head towards the alarmed girl and starts whispering in a soothing voice.
Meanwhile, Atsuro's clone has to chase two fleeing spider-flies across the rooftops and through the streets. The creatures' overlarge damselfly wings aren't just for show. They make surprising little noise as they speed into the skies to the south and quickly disappears from sight against the pitch black sky. Thankfully, the traces of rot and dusty cold stink they leave behind produces a trail from the clone to follo, even though the scent rapidly deteriorates with distance and is hard to detect underneath other scents. Atsuro-clone ends up running through the heavy forest and having to reorient himself using the occasional whiff of spiderfly scent.
Atsuro starts tearing away his own webbing so that he can head to the door, obviously intent on helping out in the other room, but it seems Taizen and Akiko gave a reasonable account of themselves. Or the spider somehow sensed that the one in this room died and also decided to flee. Unfortunately, Taree's conditions sounds bad: this early in the mission, one of their nin is down for days, and might end up with permanent injuries. Worse, getting him to a proper medical facility likely means abandoning the mission entirely. After hearing Kenta's assessment, he can't help but mutter, "Shit." He sighs, "Well, at least we've got our mednin here. See what you can do. Let me know how things develop."
He looks up as Taizen and Akiko come into the room. "Good work," he tells them. He suddenly realizes that he's barely been breathing and starts to do it normally, even ignoring the stench of the dead spider. "I think we know what's causing these disappearances," says Atsuro, "Doesn't bode well for the abductees. We'll have to wait for my clone to either come back or be released."
Speaking of the clone, he keeps after the spiders in his pursuit. He won't rest until he's lost their trail entirely, found them, been killed, or entirely exhausted his stores of energy.
As the shinobi team from the Leaf regroups inside the elder's house, Atsuro's clone is still on the chase. The forest is extremely dark and difficult to navigate at night. Trees keep zooming seemingly out of nowhere while roots and shrubbery provide plenty of material to catch one's foot on. It's still too cold for there to be many nocturnal animals around, although Atsuro-clone does briefly startle something that smelled like a bear at one point before hurtling pass. Unless the clone has a good memory or a way to mark the route, the best guess is that the spider-flies are fleeing in a southwesterly direction.
It seems like forever, but it's actually only two hours before the occasional stink of rot and dusty cold starts to thicken. At first, the snatches of scent starts coming every twenty five seconds instead of every thirty. That drops down to twenty, ten, five… until Atsuro-clone can detect a thin, yet steady stream of it in the air. This also strengthens towards eye-watering levels. Eventually, Atsuro-clone finds himself close to the opening in the ground between an enormous dead tree. The spider-fly scent wafts thickly from it along with a medley of other scents: decaying meat, parchment, moisture, minerals, leather and unwashed humans to name a few.
Atsuro is an experienced scout, so the clone is quite adept at making his way through the woods. However, in his hurry to track down the spiders, he hasn't taken any special actions to make finding his way easier. That's fine — this is really pretty good information considering they haven't even spent 12 hours on this mission yet. Hopefully Taree is doing okay, though. He shakes his head and keeps his eyes on the prize. Somewhere southwest of the village is a nest or base, and he's going to find it.
Finally, he comes to a hole in the ground, which seems definitely smells like it's somehow related to the spiders… as well as a great many other things. He takes note of this scent for the original to hopefully use. Then he makes a couple deep cuts in the bark of a nearby tree to mark the area before creeping over to look in the hole and see what he can discern.
The inside of the hole is pitch black, even darker than the surrounding forest. It's large enough for Atsuro-clone to climb down if he ducks his head a little, but the faint sound of clacking and chittering inside indicates that it might be a bad idea. There seems to be a tunnel underneath the tree or maybe a series of them, since the hole leads down a little before curving to the side. Faint lines might be sparse strands of webbing stretched across the way, but Atsuro won't be able to tell for sure without crawling in first. Then, more webbing catches his eyes. Two patches of the stuff is stuck to either side of the hole in a thick clump, as if the entire opening had been covered and someone recently pushed them aside. Atsuro's nose tells them that there are dead kikaichu beetles stuck to them.
The clone now has a difficult decision before him: continue to gather intelligence and risk alerting the spiders, or stop here and miss out on what might be easy information. After peering into the hole and smelling at it as best he can, he figures that he has as much information as he can reasonably get. The clone walks away from the hole, then makes a seal and disappears in a puff of smoke.
Back in the room, Atsuro receives all of his clone's experiences. "I've tracked them to a location in the woods. I have a rough idea of where to find them now." He thinks for a moment, "They've got some kind of burrow. Underground. I smelled people in there." He nods to Akiko, "And your bugs were in there too… dead, sorry."
Back in the Elder's house, the third floor is still in shambles. The sound of guards shouting orders and children crying can be heard along with a show flickering torch flame from below the window as the small village outpost mobilizes outside. It'll be a while before anyone gets some sleep, especially the guards and Elder Masao.
Kenta has tidied up his and Taree's guest room as best as he can before continuing to work on his treatment for the poisoned Hyuga. While Taree lies limply on a scavenged pile of bedding, the young medic-nin kneels on a clear part of the floor with many scrolls, chemical solutions, sachets of dried herbs and other medical equipment spread around him. He's currently testing a few antidote bases against one of the spider barbs, which has been grounded up. "I think I have it…" Kenta says softly as a soft sizzling come from the contact of the powder and the solution that he's currently testing. He's concentrating so intensely that he barely notices that Atsuro's speaking.
On the other hand Akiko's head jerks right up. She's sitting at the opposite side of the room from Kenta and has been silent for over half an hour. It's the first time that she's really stared at Atsuro for more than a few seconds and without blushing. "You f-found them, Atsuro-sama? That's g-g-good news! We'll be able to c-come up with a plan. I won't f-forgive that th-thing for hurting Taree-kun!" she says in a fierce voice that's somewhat marred by her stuttering. "Th-The webbing's a problem, b-but I'll be ready for it next time. S-Some of my insects are resistant to the s-stickiness and s-survived contact. I'm f-feeding them chakra now to make th-them breed quicker inside of me."
Staying silent for a moment, Atsuro glances at the window the spider left through. "Obviously," he says, "We'll need to destroy the nest. Or kill all the spiders inside. I don't /love/ that idea, but if the abductees are still alive, that's how it's going to have to be." He looks at Taree, then Akiko. "We should do it as soon as we can, but not any sooner. Taree probably can't help us anymore on this mission, but Kenta needs to at least get him recovering. And Akiko needs to replenish her insects. So…" He sighs, "We'll take what time we need and try and get whatever rest we can, given the circumstances." He pulls a piece of paper and a pencil out of his jounin vest and starts to quickly write down his clone's experiences, before time can fuzzy his memory.
Akiko drops her head, tearing her gaze away from Atsuro, and brings her hands together. Any sensor-nin would be able to tell that the flow and molding of chakra inside her body had just accelerated. "M-My insects will be r-ready by noon at the latest, if I t-take a nap to r-replenish my chakra later," she tells him softly. The schedule won't leave her with much sleep, but she seems determined to avenge Taree as soon as possible.
Kenta speaks up from his position in the room. "There!" He holds up a syringe full of purplish fluid. "This should neutralize the venom inside of Taree-san and also kill those eggs inside his wound. That should stabilize him. I'll make some extra to bring with us. If we use it within a minute of getting stung, we should be able to keep paralysis from setting it." The young medic-nin's somber expression grows even more grave. "It's strange. I took a look at those barbs under a microscope. The eyes are glued to the -outside- by a protein that's also used in the webbing. That spider that you killed is also a male, Atsuro-senpai. It's an egg carrier, but not the egg producer. When I was making a diagnosis of Taree-san's injuries, I also noticed that the chakra network around the wound had a lower level of chakra flowing through the pathways than usual. I think the eggs were absorbing some of it."
Neither of these things being his area of expertise, Atsuro listens to Akiko and Kenta both, not making any comments until they're done. "I know you didn't get the time to examine them, but I wonder if the other ones were males too," he suggests finally, "I didn't notice any difference between them. I know spiders don't usually do this, but maybe it's a bit like ants. A queen and her attendants or whatever." He look around the room. "We have everything we need to attack the nest," he says, "I say we get some proper rest while we can. Then we get some proper payback."
"Umm, spiders usually don't have queens. The males don't stick around after they fertilize a female's egg packet. Some of them simply get -eaten- by the females after mating occurs. I haven't heard of any species where the males actually try to spread the eggs. This is outside my area of expertise…" Kenta replies with unease in his voice. Strangely, or maybe not -that- strangely, there's also a keen edge of curiosity in his voice. The desire to learn and know more is even present in the faint tension of excitement that seeped into his body language as he gets to his feet and walks over to where Taree's prone form lies. The young medic-nin injects Taree with the antidote in a motion made smooth by a experience. "I'll go to bed once I make a bigger batch of antidotes. Do you think that those flying spiders will attack again tonight, Atsuro-senpai?" he asks.
Atsuro nods. "Well, it was just a suggestion. They don't really seem much like normal spiders anyway… for a lot of reasons, actually." He shakes his head, "Anyway, I don't think we need to worry about understanding their biology quite so well as this. Our priorities are to rescue the survivors and make sure this village doesn't get attacked again." Kenta's other concern gets more of his consideration, though. "It's hard to tell," he says after a moment of thought, "On the one hand, they only seem to attack one house per night. But this is the first time someone's managed to drive them off. Hard to tell if they'll try again." He looks between himself and Taizen. "I think we're the two that can afford to lose out on sleep the most. You guys sleep. Tai and I will take a couple of shifts." He walks over and pats Taizen on the shoulders. "I volunteer you, buddy. I'm not exhausted, but that clone took a bit out of me. I could use some rest."
