| [May. 8th, 2014|04:07 am] |
Genma moved as efficiently as he'd promised, if maybe not quite as quickly or as gently as Kakashi might have hoped. In short order he unwrapped the foil blanket, stripped off the wreckage of Kakashi's armor and underpinnings, and swabbed blood and filth away with prepackaged alcohol wipes. Kakashi hissed at the first stinging touch, but thereafter lay silent. Then it was the light, hovering touch of hands lit green with healing chakra, and the shallow gashes in Kakashi's pale skin knit themselves closed, lacing vivid pink lines out of what had been raw meat. Genma was particularly careful over Kakashi's face, but Kakashi seemed to have made up his mind to endure. He shivered, but he didn't make a sound.
There were clean jounin blues, when it was over, produced with a puff of smoke from one of Genma's sealing scrolls. Genma skinned Kakashi into the long-sleeved shirt and pants with the same careful, impersonal touch he'd used all along. They were much of a size, though Genma was a trifle wider through the shoulders and chest. He tucked the foil blanket back around Kakashi, and then pulled out a roll of clean bandages to wrap a quick, makeshift mask around Kakashi's lower face.
"He looks like a Kiri nin," Ryouma said, disturbed.
"Less dead," Kakashi said, without opening his eyes. His voice was still sluggish with exhaustion, but some of the painful rasp was gone. He turned his head again and pressed his face against Ryouma's knee.
Genma said gravely, "Much less dead. Also better dressed. They have some ugly uniforms in Mist."
Kakashi's watery chuckle tickled Ryouma's knee.
Genma's mouth twitched, not quite a smile, but maybe dredging up a fragment of pleased relief. He rocked back on his heels and wiped the back of his wrist across his brow, shoving stringy-wet hair aside with a wince. Then he settled down, weariness dragging at his shoulders, to begin packing up his kit.
"Time to move out?" Ryouma suggested, hopefully. "I'll carry Hound."
He didn't mention the Kiri captain. Her anguished groans had finally stilled. Maybe Genma would forget her. Maybe, if they were lucky, she was already dead.
"What's your chakra at now?" Genma glanced up from his neatened kit, a vial of pills in his hand. "Are you in good shape if we run into trouble?"
"Down to maybe a third of my normal capacity, but that still leaves me pretty strong. I only used the Naizou Tokasu once, and that was mostly soldier pill chakra. None of the rest of my jutsu are nearly as chakra intensive." He'd spent about as much chakra on Kakashi's transfusion as he might have on one bolt of the Internal Organs Melt technique, though transfer inefficiency meant Kakashi's chakra system still ebbed alarmingly low. Had he looked that white-lipped and hollow-cheeked when Raidou'd pulled him out of the demon queen's liquified guts?
The eerie green glow of the lightstick wasn't doing any of them any favors. Rain had loosened the crust of blood from Genma's newly uneven nose, but his eyes were bruise-shadowed pits and his hair hung lank and dripping. The blow that had broken his nose must have shattered his mask at the edges, too, because there were a scattering of scrapes and gouges at his jawline and hairline, with a dark clotting of blood in his right brow.
Ryouma snorted softly. "Guess I'm in the best shape and the best looking out of us right now. Not that it's much of a change."
Kakashi groaned, muffled against Ryouma's knee. Ryouma patted his head carefully.
"Too bad you're the only one who still has an intact mask," Genma said, after a sharp look at Kakashi. He tipped a soldier pill out of the vial and held it out. "Take this anyway. I want you at fifty percent. Make a clone, too. We'll need an extra guard."
Ryouma couldn't help the quick flicker of a glance beyond him, this time. The Kiri captain lay still, but the swaddled lines of her body had shifted; she'd pulled her remaining arm up, beneath the foil blanket, to put pressure on the stump. Still alive. Still thinking.
Dammit. |
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