| [May. 8th, 2014|03:42 am] |
Cold rage gave Kakashi the extra edge of speed he needed. He poured chakra through his hands and smacked both palms down on the ground.
A rising tide of drenched earth wrenched itself up and over his teammates, putting a solid wall between them and their own weaponized blood. The blades impacted with dull thuds, and burst into crimson splashes.
There was a moment of rain-filled silence, undercut by the rasp of Kakashi’s breath.
Iebara laughed hoarsely. “White Fang’s whelp.”
“Have we met?” Kakashi croaked.
“Iebara!” snapped the blond Kiri-captain. “If that’s the Hokage’s student—”
Iebara rolled his shoulders, as if shaking off an irritating itch, and extended one hand to Kakashi in a welcoming gesture, curling his fingers. Come and play.
Kakashi felt his lip curl. He flicked his fingers through the bird-seal, melting the Quartermater’s clever little Sharingan-covering mesh, and straightened up. His vision spiralled into chakra-blue, layers of intent pouring over the world. Iebara’s energy signature glowed like a dark beacon, shifting and ugly. In contrast, Genma and Ryouma’s signatures were buried and safe—at least for now.
“Last chance to take that boat ride home,” Kakashi said.
“Did you inherit your father’s cowardice, too?” Iebara said, with the special scorn Kirigakure seemed to install in their shinobi at birth. “I can give you a blade to kill yourself against, if you’d like.”
Kakashi had never liked diplomacy anyway.
“Not necessary,” he said, and wrenched his tanto out of the ground.
Fate-lines shifted. Iebara sank steel-lined nails into his own palms, sharpened edges biting deep, and shaped new seals—almost invisibly fast, but this time the Sharingan caught them. Blood burst around his hands, fountaining up and twisting into two long, latticed blades that stretched and glimmered in the rain. The hilts melted around his wrists, locking the blades into place like manacles.
Not something that could be disarmed, then.
But the blood-jutsu didn’t stand up against hot chakra, and the air was full of lightning.
Iebara blurred into motion. Kakashi moved in copycat symmetry, filling his tanto with charged energy. Obito’s eye handed him Iebara’s subtle tells, showing Kakashi a slender opening.
In the split-second before he and Iebara clashed, the subtlest tremble went through the earth. Genma’s hand punched up through the ground and wrapped around Iebara’s ankle. The lieutenant hauled downwards, yanking the bigger shinobi shin-deep into shifting ground. Ryouma exploded out of the shield of molten earth Kakashi had made, and flung a roaring javelin of fire at Iebara’s head. Kakashi recalculated on the fly, twisting around to avoid the jutsu and aim for for Iebara’s throat.
In the silent space between violent moments, Iebara made a sound like, Tch.
He dodged smoothly and threw one of the blades, which met Ryouma’s fire-jutsu and consumed it in a boiling hiss. The blood bubbled, smoking, and the blade re-warped itself to strike Ryouma squarely in the armored chest, knocking him out of the air. He crashed down hard on his back, skidding like a landed comet, and made a dull choking sound as the blood poured over him, smothering his mask.
With his other hand, Iebara blocked Kakashi’s chakra-blade strike. The tanto sank deeply into Iebara’s remaining blood-blade, but didn’t shear all the way through. Blood closed around the glowing metal, twisted, and ripped the tanto out of Kakashi’s hand, flinging it out of reach. Iebara snorted, blurred again, and punched Kakashi like an anvil in the face, knocking him backwards in a welter of rain and cracked porcelain. |
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