| [Nov. 29th, 2016|09:41 pm] |
Ryouma stuck his own rat bar between his teeth and stripped off his shirt. Sakamoto Ginta, Team Thirteen's lieutenant, spread out a long scroll; piles of clothes, boots, and belts quickly began to build. Genma passed out jars of a dark, smelly grease to smear over exposed skin. Kakashi shed his shirt but kept a tank-top. He double-checked the straps of his mask around his ears and ignored Kasumi's incredulous stare.
Fukuda stripped down to sports bra and underwear without assistance, then rigidly accepted the Intel agents' help in greasing her skin. The stump of her arm had healed tight and shiny, purple with scar tissue. Ryouma looked away.
"Two minutes," Kuroda said.
Genma collected the jars and piled them on the edge of Ginta's sealing scroll. The thinnest spark of chakra, a puff of smoke, and the scroll was empty, its contents marked only by an inky scrawl. Ginta rolled the scroll, slid it into a watertight case, and belted the case to his narrow hips. "Ready," he said.
Kuroda checked his watch, the only personal item they'd kept back from the sealing scroll, and nodded. "Well done," he said, grudgingly. "Fukuda?"
She walked to the edge of the shore, her bare feet steady on the sharp rocks, and stood where the oncoming swash could ripple over her toes. "Bird," she said. Her remaining hand formed half a seal. "Monkey. Dog. Horse. Hare. Bird. Rat."
Uchiha Satomi's Sharingan were wide and spinning red. So was Kakashi's.
"Could've given us more time to practice," Ryouma muttered between his teeth. He followed the seals, but had to guess at the path his chakra would take: a twist here, a loop there, opening wide then closing sharply in…
Fukuda bared her shark-sharpened teeth. "Could've left my arm to shape the seals for you, Konoha."
Genma put a warning hand on Ryouma's wrist.
Sakamoto Ginta looked up from his practice hand-seals, and gave Fukuda a cold smile full of promise. "How well would you swim armless?"
"Still better than a Leaf-nin," Fukuda said, unflinching. "If I told you all my secrets, you'd have fed me to the fish already, and let Kimiko rot."
"You've told us enough," Kuroda said, unsympathetic as granite. "Kindly proceed, so we can avoid that unpleasantness." He glanced over his shoulder, and fixed Raidou with a narrow glare: keep your children in line.
Raidou gazed back impassively until Kuroda turned away. Then he reached around without looking, and swatted Ryouma on the back of the head. Ryouma kept his feet, with effort.
"Once more." Fukuda stood ankle-deep in the black sea now. "Bird. Monkey. Dog." Her chakra rasped Ryouma's senses, but Satomi and Kakashi had to be seeing more; their hands echoed hers without hesitation, and their chakra flowed tight and controlled. Satomi took two steps forward, passing Fukuda, and then knelt and bent her head directly into a breaking wave.
The water flowed over and around her in a perfect bubble, leaving her shaven head dry. She stood, shivering, and terminated the jutsu with an abrupt Ram. "It works. Fifteen minutes, I'd guess, no more. We'll have to surface during the swim."
"There are air pockets," Fukuda said. Her eyes were on the sea, hungry.
"Stay close," Kuroda ordered. "Hatake, you're with Fukuda. Team Six, Yuuhi, then Thirteen. Uchiha and I take rearguard. The rest of you, partner up. Chakra flare if there's a problem, but keep it tight." He looked around at them, his eyes dark and steady. "We get one shot at this. If you can't do it, fall out now."
No one moved.
"What are you waiting for?" Kuroda demanded. "Hatake, move out!" |
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