| [May. 8th, 2014|03:55 am] |
And Iebara was moving, so there was no time to linger on it. Kakashi jerked his hands down, trying to force feeling back into numbed fingers, and looked up into the shifting, blue-drenched fate lines of Obito’s worldview. A single red blade arched in Iebara’s hands, about the length of a katana. Its current path would carve Kakashi’s chest out.
Above them, a new fork of lightning blazed.
The thing about affinities was that they were strongest when you had a natural source. Sand-shinobi ruled the desert; water ninja had tides and deep currents in their blood; Konoha’s Uchiha could turn back a forest fire, or burn a village down with one. Kakashi had lightning, water, and earth in his bones, and right now the sky was singing.
Lightning called to lightning.
Iebara closed in. Kakashi flung his chakra wide open, letting loose a violet dance of sparks across blood-soaked skin. He felt the answering pull above him. Dark clouds roared with thunder, splitting around the last massive electrostatic discharge. The next strike poured down on them like a waterfall of light.
It was a lot like standing underneath the end of the world, but Kakashi had split lightning before. He had a jutsu named for it, and he could damn well reach into the electric lifeblood of his own nature, meet it, and bend it around to kill the bastard who'd nearly bled his teammates dry.
The world went white, and loud, and faded silent.
Then it came back.
Kakashi choked on a staggered heartbeat and lurched upright, shoving himself up on unsteady elbows. The ground smoked in front of him, torn apart in a deep, blasted crater. His ears rang. Purple haloes crowded his blurring vision. His gloves fell away in charred, shredded strips as he levered himself into a weaving crouch, and his armored vest hung at a crazy angle. Sparks crackled over his hair.
Where was—
He’d poured out most of his chakra; his senses were down to less than twenty feet, dwindling like a fading watermark. He couldn’t feel Genma and Ryouma at all, or the ninja they were fighting. He couldn’t see Iebara.
Maybe the Kiri ninja had exploded.
Kakashi’s breath cracked on an exhausted laugh, because that really wasn’t funny, but—boom.
Movement flickered through smoke.
He jerked one leaden arm halfway up, and Iebara—blood-soaked, skin blistered with third-degree burns, clothes shredded away—heaved over the edge of the crater like the smoking reject from one of the war’s worst trenches. The Kiri nin staggered upright and smashed Kakashi’s arm aside. Kakashi stumbled, nearly falling. Iebara grabbed him, yanked him around, and locked a slick, blackened arm around his throat.
Kakashi choked.
Again. |
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