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Salt the Earth [May. 7th, 2014|07:49 pm]
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[User Picture]From: [info]hatake_kakashi
2014-05-08 03:27 am (UTC)

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Kakashi slid to his feet. Ryouma didn’t react beyond dipping his head in a quick, acknowledging nod as he gathered materials together. Genma’s tanuki mask tilted towards Ryouma for a moment, silent, then the lieutenant turned and led the way to his target room. Kakashi followed, leaving bloody footprints on the polished wooden floors.

He could have gotten cleaner, but the copper edge helped drown out the scent of Ryouma’s rot still clinging to him. It had been bad on the open training field of the First Trial, when Ryouma had reduced a pig carcass to rotten slag under a breezy spring sky. But here, in closed rooms on a living body that thrashed the mess around, it was halfway to intolerable. Even with the ANBU mask, it felt like the back of Kakashi’s throat was coated in slime.

Tsuto’s chest had caved under his hand like wet sponge.

Deliberately, he set the thought aside and focused on the small fires springing up around the reception room, racing over antique furniture and fragile paper wall-hangings. Genma conducted his flames with an artist’s touch, wrecking everything valuable. Kakashi chased the occasional errant spark with an absent water jutsu, but he was barely needed.

When Genma was satisfied, they moved onto the next room.

It was simple work to gut most of the house, leaving smoke and ruin behind. Only the occupied bedrooms—for a given value of ‘occupied’—and servant’s quarters were left untouched.

“You didn’t have the easy part of this mission,” Genma said, as he set the Tsuto family shrine ablaze. The altar-room was the last one, and furthest away from Ryouma. “Ram seems unsettled.”

Kakashi weighed his answer. “Is he impairing the mission?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Genma said carefully. “Do you have concerns?”

For a man who’d just turned another human being into a skin-sack of rot? Ryouma was an experienced shinobi, a full-blooded jounin, who’d come of age on the battlefield like everyone else in their generation. He’d seen terrible things, and done terrible things, and—

Probably never strangled a civilian in slow, cold blood before.

But they’d been warned what taking the mask would mean. Minato had told them. Once you swear the oath, there’s no glory to be had. They weren’t here because it was noble; they were here to take care of Konoha’s gory scutwork, see the job finished, and go home.

A memorial tablet cracked in the heat.

“No,” Kakashi said, meaning yes, but there was no time for them here. “We’re almost finished.”

“We are,” said Genma, with a nod. He made a fleeting religious handsign at the shrine, obviously uncomfortable with its desecration. Of everyone on the team, the lieutenant seemed the most likely to carry the weight of spirituality with him. “It helps that we found those ledgers.”

“Nice to know you’re killing someone who actually deserves it,” Kakashi said softly. And their children.

Genma hesitated. “It’s not our job to justify our targets,” he said, calling back a curl of flame climbing eagerly across the ceiling. “But yeah, it helps. Helped hearing him spill that confession out, too. Too bad for him it wasn’t enough to buy his life with.” He was silent for a moment. “Or his son’s.”

Kakashi flicked a glance sideways.