| [May. 8th, 2014|03:38 am] |
Ninja of the Bloody Mist.
Just once, Kakashi would like to run into a piece of hyperbole someone didn’t try to take seriously.
Red and black lights exploded behind his eyes. He choked and (remembered the color bursting into Sakako's dying face like a ruptured blood-orange) drew his tanto, slashing the blade down. The steaming blood-ropes bent like flexible steel, absorbing the strike without breaking. Iebara twitched his fingers and the jutsu yanked Kakashi off his feet, hiking him into the air.
That was worse.
His weight hung from his neck, cutting off his air. From the corner of his eye, he saw the stretching crimson lines break loose from Genma and Ryouma, dropping them both to their knees. The trailing ends lifted up and spread wide, like terrible wings above Kakashi’s head. He grabbed at the loop around his throat with his free hand, trying to wrench it away, and struck again with the tanto. His nails dug into the slippery, body-warm surface, but couldn’t find purchase. The blade didn’t pierce.
His lungs burned. His vision was starting to dim.
Movement. Genma rising, staggering up with senbon glinting between the knuckles. A humming cloud of shuriken cut him off before he could throw them, forcing him to vault backwards out of the way. The orange-haired man—Moto—hefted another handful of sharp, warning blades.
Ryouma made a deep, terrible sound, and shoved himself up off the muddy ground. Blood streamed down his arm, washing out his ANBU tattoo.
Iebara put his head on one side, almost thoughtful, and shaped blurringly fast seals. A dark ripple of chakra twisted through the world.
Ryouma gasped and went back down on one knee, still in the grip of the jutsu. Genma’s second attempt at a counter-attack faltered, senbon falling like silver rain between his fingers. He fell to a shaking crouch. Blood burst from their open shoulders, rising up and coalescing into six distinct blades. They hung in the air, almost black under lowering stormclouds. Three over Genma, three over Ryouma. The sluicing rain cut over them, droplets sliced by lethally sharp edges.
That threat was clear enough: Die, or your teammates do.
Do nothing and they’d die anyway, along with Kakashi.
He tightened his grip on the tanto-hilt and poured his last bit of focus into a gamble. Sakumo’s bloodline, one of the first tricks Kakashi had ever learned. The chakra burned hot down his arm, filling the blade with blazing white light. He forced it all into the edge and brought the tanto around again, in one clean slash.
The ropes sheared through.
Blood burned away, sizzling with the sharp edge of hot copper, and Kakashi fell. He landed in a jarring crouch and stabbed his tanto into the dirt, reached for fast seals as the broken garotte splattered down around him. Iebara’s hands were already a blur.
The six floating blood-blades shivered and leapt through the air, dropping like guillotines down onto Genma and Ryouma. Getting rid of witnesses. |
|