The Jeep drove through the broken asphalt, passing through the abandoned street and flipped cars.
Ada sat beside Sasuke, watching him from the corner of her eye as he drove one-handed, the other resting on the gear stick.
The wind carried the faint scent of ash due to the recently burned building a distance away.
She spoke feeling bored. "Can I ask you something?"
"If you think I would answer it"
"Why all the effort?" she clarified, seeing his side glance. "I mean, building the shelter and rescuing strangers, people who may betray you the next day. I'm curious, why all the troubles even though you're impossibly strong and can be well off alone?"
Sasuke looked at her and shrugged. "Because I can."
"Just that?"
"Just that," he nodded. "I know the feeling of hopelessness, and I was saved myself. Here, I got people I care about, and since I can keep all of them safe, I'll do it the best I can... wouldn't you?"
"I have none." Ada leaned on the window watching the passing scenery before turning to him, trying to keep her smirk. "Interested in being the first?"
"Nah, thanks; all that headache without you even caring—imagining what it would be like if you did isn't all that tempting."
"Your loss; it can be very rewarding." She chuckled and hesitated a moment before she spoke again. "Say Sasuke,"
"Mhm?"
"If you weren't in a...relationship, would you have treated me differently?" Ada didn't even know why the heck she was feeling anxious about his answer.
"Ifs aren't good for your mental health."
And sighed hearing that. "Tch, we're just chatting; you can share your honest thoughts. I did."
"These are useless contemplations...we can always try to influence what's coming ahead, but not our past actions."
She nodded and smiled at him. "Is that you telling me you can forgive my past actions and encouraging me to do my best and win over your...affection?"
Sasuke turned to look at her with a weirded expression. "You are really something. What's next? Me being your actually long-forgotten fiancée who is suffering from memory loss?"
"Who knows?" Ada shrugged playfully.
And froze the next second looking at the black wave that became visible the next turn they took.
She leaned forward, her hand instinctively going for her holster, safety turned off.
"That's—"
"A horde." Sasuke nodded.
She hurriedly spoke, seeing the look on his face. "Don't tell me you're thinking of doing what I know you will."
Sasuke didn't answer, of course he was. He could see more than seventy threads marching his way, no way in hell he was going to miss this wrapped gift.
"We can take the detour, Sasuke. That's, like, five hundred of them."
"Eight hundred, roughly"
"What? That's even worse"
"Stay in th—"
Ada didn't even let him finish his sentence. "I want to fight too."
And while he appreciated that bravery, Sasuke didn't really want to share his exp points with someone else.
He turned to her and used his ultimate, the head pat. "Leave it to me, alright? I'll take care of this. I need to test something." He pointed to a building. "Go to that building; it's safe. I'll meet you in twenty minutes, max."
Ada looked at his face for a long moment before sighing, "Alright."
He nodded in satisfaction seeing her follow his words obediently, leaving after a brief hesitation and entering the building he pointed at, Sasuke then grabbed his sword and got down from the car, walking ahead.
The place around was like any other those days: desolate, dusty, destroyed buildings by the sides of the road, and abandoned.
Sasuke stepped out to the middle of the road and watched the horde moving in the same slow, terrible rhythm, this was the largest horde he had come across so far; they looked like packed ants marching in a straight line.
His Sharingan flared. and his smile turned to an evilish smirk, almost twisted.
"Thanks for the meal." And Sasuke vanished from his standing point.
He reappeared twenty-five meters down the road, already sprinting at full speed with his hands behind his back.
His tomoes spun in his irises around his pupils, heightening his perception—positions, gaps, angles, weak points—everything became crystal clear to him, and he chose his method to deal with the horde.
At thirty meters out, Sasuke pushed chakra into his soles and leapt. Appearing up in the air with a single, powerful burst that pushed him high above the walkers. From that height he counted every walker down the road—843—and smirked.
Rotating, he threw two Kunais, embedding them into opposite buildings, one to each side, anchoring thin steel wires to them.
The sound of the steel wires resonated as they extended—like a fishing line pulling taut. Mid-air, Sasuke flipped and tied each wire to his ankles efficiently, then let gravity pull him downward.
He formed two hand seals while falling, spread his arms, and a second later a puff of smoke burst around him.
The massive demon-wind shuriken materialized in each hand. The steel wires tightened to full length and swung him like a pendulum toward the horde.
He began to spin, arms out, the two giant shuriken cutting arcs through the air. The first row exploded into gore, the shurikens' sharp edge met skulls and brains with a sick, wet sound; blood and tissue sprayed as the blades cut through the walkers' heads.
Sasuke kept his rhythm steady—his calculations on the wire's length and speed were meant so that the shuriken were the only thing within reach for the walkers. They could swipe at him but not touch him.
By the time the first two dozen fell, the wires snapped taut behind him and yanked him upward again, lifting him over the walkers' heads. Now in the middle of the horde at seventy meters altitude, Sasuke froze his rotation, and with the shuriken still charged with chakra, he sliced the steel wires attached to his ankles and let himself drop.
At fifteen meters above the ground, he used his body control to whip himself into another fast spin and hurled the two chakra-charged shuriken out to both sides of the road.
They sounded like rotating helicopter blades and slashed through everything in their paths.
Sasuke slammed down onto a walker's skull; his chakra-reinforced feet crushed its bones and made a crater in the ground beneath his feet.
The smell of rot and decay assaulted his sense of smell, but he didn't even flinch; he saw how the thrown demon-wind shuriken lost its momentum after more than fifty meters but had already gutted over a hundred walkers.
Sasuke still crouched, his arms spread, the sunlight flashing off the thin wires tied to his fingers. Electric arcs ran along those wires all the way to the spinning shuriken;
Walkers shuffled toward the space where Sasuke was now—a gap in the surrounding gore. Yet even though he was surrounded from all directions, he didn't blink as he swept his arms in, pulling both wires at once with all his strength.
The blades screamed as the shuriken reversed, ripping back through the gaps that started to fill with new walkers and shredding the first walker that reached out to grab him.
Sasuke released the wires at the last heartbeat and made a light horizontal leap, leaning his body sideways to slip through the narrow gap between the two intersecting shurikens.
They cut clean through the nearest walkers and then slowed losing the momentum, dropping to the ground with loud Clank.
Sasuke landed on his feet again, hearing the thuds of the dismembered bodies around.
"Let's dance." And smirked, unsheathing his Kusanagi.
He spun, the Kusanagi beheading five walkers in a single motion. Sasuke then planted his reinforced foot on another walker's skull and used it to spring into the air, landing in the middle of another cluster, slashing skulls with his sword, His feet moved in brutal taijutsu rhythm, while his left hand kept firing his Silverballer. Each bullet finished a head when his kusanagi couldn't reach.
He tossed the spent mag in the air, flipped to avoid a grab, reloaded instantly, and snatched up a clutch of spare shuriken mid-twirl, hurling them at his left; his right hand went through three sets of one-handed seals.
And the thrown shuriken multiplied—three for one—clearing that flank of walkers.
He turned to another direction and sprinted. Every step Sasuke took dropped at least one walker.
The ground filled rapidly with corpses; and the stench of rot became even worse.
Yet even so, his red eyes appeared the same calm as always, calculating every step and move ahead.
All the while, Ada watched everything through binoculars from a window, barely able to follow his rapid movements. And one thought kept running through her mind:
"Screw your little girlfriend. I'll have you all to myself." Her eyes looked like a deep pool swirling as if trying to pull the black-haired ninja in and drown him; she licked her lips unconsciously.
'Ada always gets what she wants.'