| [May. 8th, 2014|03:30 am] |
They made it to the red light district on the city outskirts, ghosting over the rooftops of a town that wouldn't sleep til dawn, before Kakashi's head came up again like a hound catching a scent. He glanced back. Ryouma was just behind him; he saw the glitter of streetlights catch in the shadowed eyehole of Kakashi's mask.
"Trouble?" Ryouma asked. He knew about Kakashi's uncanny sense of smell, but he was beginning to believe now that Kakashi had uncanny everything. He'd heard the servant's scream when neither of the others had, though the city alarm bells had joined in soon enough.
Kakashi stopped on the very edge of a roof, one straight line of tension, head lifted into the still, muggy air. Half a roof ahead of them, Genma paused and turned back. He was too far to speak without shouting; he lifted a hand to flick his radio mic open. "Problem?"
"Chakra signatures," Kakashi said. "North-east."
Coming in from the coast. Kiri nin.
Genma came back to their roof in two swift leaps and stood beside Kakashi, almost mirroring his pose: head lifted, shoulders rigid, senses straining out. Ryouma didn't bother; his chakra-sensing range was nothing like theirs. He kept an eye on the street below, where carousing wouldn't pause even for the alarm bells ringing in the rich neighborhood far up the hill, and waited for them to tell him who to kill.
Thunder rolled in the distance.
"Four," Genma said crisply. "They're tamped down but they're not bothering to hide." He reached up to rub the back of his neck, lifting sweaty tendrils of hair that had worked free of his ponytail.
"If they're coming from the coast, they've already hit Tsurugahama Port, or left people there," Kakashi pointed out with a sharp edge to his voice. "We should stop them before they get into the city." He crouched to leap from the roof-edge, but pulled up abruptly when Genma flung up his hand in the ANBU sign for hold.
"If we can sense them," Genma warned, "there's a possibility they can sense us. We need to draw them away from the city, toward the rendezvous point. If there's trouble, we'll have reinforcements when Moon and Rat finish their mission." He paused. "And we'll be closer to them if they need us."
Not that much closer, Ryouma thought. The rendezvous point at Arechi Hill Safehouse was two hours' run north-east, but the port was just under three hours east of that—nearly five hours from here, even if they cut cross country. They could push faster, hit their top speed and cut the time in half, but they'd arrive exhausted and chakra-burned and useless.
And far too late, if the Kiri nin had already been and gone.
The hell they would.
"Like the captain's gonna let some Mist snaggle-tooth take him down," he said, scornfully as he could. "He'll unleash Rat on 'em, let her play." He fidgeted with the buckle on an arm-guard. "You want me to draw these guys off? You both hide your chakra better than I do. I'll play beacon, you can set up an ambush."
And maybe he'd have a chance to fight someone who could actually fight back.
Genma was silent a moment, thinking it through, then nodded. "Don't get too far ahead. Hound and I should be able to tell if they sense you and change direction. If they stay on course and don't follow, we'll need to come up with another plan."
Kakashi said very softly, "I have another plan." A single blue spark crackled across the backs of his fingers. |
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