| [Dec. 31st, 2016|09:58 pm] |
“Back!” Fukuda shouted. She shot out of the knee-deep water to land on its surface, chakra pressure pushing concentric ripples away from her feet. Most of them had already had the same idea, racing in retreat towards the reeds.
The leeches kept coming, churning the silty water up so it was impossible to tell where leech bodies ended and muddy ripples began. Kurenai had a slender knife in hand; she slashed one of the pink-brown leeches as it veered towards Fukuda, forcing it away.
Another one rose in its place, showing a spiraling array of v-notched yellow teeth leading into its massive gullet, where even larger teeth filled the throat. It writhed blindly in the air, questing for its prey. A larger one, thick as a shrine post, surged out of the water so close to Kuroda that the vice-commander stumbled. Raidou caught him with one hand, while Genma hurled senbon at the beast. Their razor-sharp tips barely penetrated the leathery-looking skin before they fell away, pattering uselessly into the water.
This was not a fight they could win on the leeches’ turf. If they could win it at all.
Genma sprinted towards a low rise where the tufted reeds stood higher, with his teammates close on his heels. The sick percussion of Ryouma’s jutsu flared to life next to him, as another of the monsters surged under their feet.
Abe’s voice rose on a strangled pitch; Genma whipped around to see a wriggling brown shape attach itself to Abe’s calf, just below his rolled up pant leg. Usagi wrapped her arms around her rookie and tried to pull him free. Kasumi’s hands blurred through seals, and a wave of water rose up at the edge of the lake between the ninja and the leeches, driving some of the monsters back.
Spinning back from her retreat, Satomi unleashed a jet of fire. It blackened and blistered the leech on Abe, until the beast curled backwards and released him.
Kakashi had climbed higher on one of the dead tree trunks. “Everyone out of the water, now!” His voice carried, sharp and insistent. That was what they were all trying to do, wasn’t it?
Ginta glanced at Kakashi, then raced towards the water, vaulting over two of the smaller leeches' seething bodies and dashing across the swamp’s surface to climb one of the bleached trunks on the other side of the animals. “All the way out!” he shouted. “Climb anything you can climb.”
Chakra pressure rose. Genma and Raidou hauled Kuroda up a slippery-barked mangrove. Ryouma shoved the brick dust red of his jutsu into the leech closest to him, then scrambled up the tree beside them. The others dragged Abe to safety in another tree. Blood poured from his leg in a cascade, staining the water beneath them.
Genma’s eardrums ached with sudden pressure, and the hair stood up all over his body. In almost the same moment, Kakashi and Ginta released searing arcs of lightning. Thunder pealed so loud it shook the trunks of the trees, and the surface of the water boiled.
Genma blinked the afterimages of the lightning bolts away. Where the leeches had swarmed, fat brown bodies floated lifelessly on the surface of the water.
In the breathless silence that followed, Kuroda ordered, “Sound off.”
All eleven voices chimed in, though Abe’s was strained and weak. Raidou clamped a hand on Genma’s shoulder for just a moment, and then Usagi shouted, “Shiranui, need a medic!” |
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