| [May. 8th, 2014|04:07 am] |
He took the pill, crunched it viciously between his molars, and swallowed. False chakra flooded into his pathways with a chemical burn. Physical energy from the caffeine and added calories would take a little longer. He shaped seals and spun off chakra, and a second version of himself appeared in a bloom of smoke. The shadow clone settled its mask on and strode over to stand midway between Genma and the Kiri nin, its arms loosely folded and its shoulders rigid with tension.
Ryouma unclipped his own mask from his belt. "Anything else before we move out?"
Genma shook his head. "There's no sense wasting the chakra to hide this mess. We'd be here for a week." He finished sealing Kakashi's ruined armor in the emptied scroll from which he'd pulled the clean jounin uniform, tucked it away, and pushed himself up.
His right leg buckled. The light-bearing shadow clone caught Genma just before his knee hit the mud again. He swore, shook his head, and straightened, leaning heavily on his clone. "You get Hound. I'll go get our prisoner moving. We can take care of the other dead on our way out of here."
"If she stabs you," Ryouma said, "I warned you." He met his own kage bunshin's eyes, behind the Ram mask. The bunshin nodded, short and sharp, and drew its sword. If the Kiri captain so much as moved wrong, it would strike.
Genma jerked his chin, either acknowledging Ryouma's concerns or dismissing them, and limped away. The light from his clone's glowstick faded with each heavy step, and the shadows crept back in. Ryouma fumbled with Kakashi's blanket while he could still see, unwrapping enough to free Kakashi's arms and then lapping it back over his shoulders like a cloak. He secured the ends with a pin from his field repair kit, only stabbing his fingers twice in the dark.
"If I got you on my back," he asked Kakashi, "d'you think you could hold on?"
"'f I can't, should leave me in a d-ditch," Kakash muttered. He made an effort to draw his elbows up under him. The right one wobbled, but held; the left slid out from under him, pitching him back into Ryouma's knee. Ryouma caught his head just before his temple cracked against the edge of the knee-guard.
"Just hold on," he said. "I'll do the heavy lifting."
Kakashi was, it turned out, heavier than he looked. Or maybe Ryouma was weaker, after a night of running and fighting in the rain. His shoulder burned a little where Iebara had cut and Genma quickly healed, but the muscles still worked the way they were meant to, and the cut was low enough that Kakashi's arms, wrapped around Ryouma's neck, didn't rub it. He locked his hands together under Kakashi's seat, bracing his wrists at the small of his back, and thought: Katsuko'd have something to say about touching Kakashi's butt.
Raidou'd have something to say about boundaries, too.
They'd better be waiting at the safehouse to say it.
He got his knees under him, hefted Kakashi's weight a little more securely up on his shoulders, and stood with a surge of muscle and a slosh of mud. When he glanced back, Genma had the Mist nin on her feet, still wrapped like a peasant woman in her foil blanket, her face bloody and set in the glowstick light. Ryouma refused to meet her eyes. He looked at Genma instead.
"We'll be late," he said.
Genma hauled his arm off his clone's shoulders and glanced at the watch sheltered on the inside of his wrist. He looked up at the Mist nin, and his mouth tightened. "They'll wait for us."
Breath warmed Ryouma's ear. Kakashi mumbled, "She c-conscious? Ask her if they left people at the p-port."
Ryouma didn't want to say anything at all to her, but he gritted his teeth and repeated Kakashi's question, louder. The Kiri captain lifted her eyes from the mud and stared at him, cold and silent.
His kage bunshin stepped in, out of the wet darkness, and laid the blade of its sword against her neck. She didn't even glance aside at it. "If you had friends that way," she said, in a ravaged voice like a viper's hiss, "they're already dead." |
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