| [Apr. 30th, 2014|05:49 am] |
She left the bodies where they’d fallen and went to search for Raidou. She found him pulverizing the Kiri-nin’s corpse on the wharf, stripping skin from bone with each frenzied punch. Blood and gore stained Raidou’s hands and bare face, ran in fresh rivulets down his drenched armor; skull fragments clung stubbornly to his knuckles.
Katsuko’s right arm hung useless at her side, crippled by the break in her collarbone. She’d taken out the Tsutos with only one working hand. Raidou was different; even if she could use both arms, Katsuko doubted she’d be able to stop him when he was like this without using lethal force.
“Taichou!” No response. Katsuko hadn’t expected any. She gritted her teeth and flared her chakra, alerting him to her presence, before she gripped him by the shoulder and tried to haul him off the body.
Raidou didn’t even look at her. He snarled instead, wrathful and bloody, and slammed a gore-covered fist into her armored stomach. The impact sent her flying, leaving her airborne just long enough to realize that this was going to hurt. She crashed into a pile of wood and debris hard enough to split concrete; her broken collarbone screamed agony, consuming her vision in a haze of white for a few wavering seconds.
Raidou had skirted the line between controlled rage and wholesale slaughter on a few missions with their old ANBU team, but he’d never tipped over before. Not like this.
Katsuko gasped for air. Anger roared hot and tight in her throat, forcing her back from the brink of unconsciousness. She staggered upright, shaking off dust and wood shards, and broke into a sprint.
Raidou was still crouched over the Kiri-nin’s corpse, intent on reducing it to a pile of organs and bone mush. Slick red gore sprayed into the air with every frenzied strike.
Katsuko rammed her armored fist into the side of his head, curtailing her chakra-enhanced strength to avoid doing brain damage, and sent Raidou soaring. She didn’t even have time to gloat before her collarbone flared in agony. The world around her lurched like a ship in a storm.
Katsuko staggered and fell to her knees. |
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