InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Orange is the new blue."

fallen_raidou (fallen_raidou) wrote in fallen_leaves,
@ 2008-05-07 00:36:00

Current mood:

dying

Three is a Crowd. Four is Salvation.
Follows Three is a Crowd. Four is a Fuck Up.

It was noisy. It was noisy and cold and far too bright. Battle sounds raged in the distance. The ring of steel on steel, the crackle of jutsu biting through flesh. The screams of dying men rose high in the air. Women and children with them. Ninja. It was hard to tell the difference.

Mud crushed underfoot, ochre brown in the sunlight, redder in the shade. It swallowed the open toes of his sandals and stung the cuts on his feet, icing skin cold. Sweat burned down his face, soaking the cloth of his hitai-ate. It wasn’t new anymore, that hitai-ate, the dye had long since leeched out. It wouldn’t make his forehead blue like it had once, a few years ago.

The sun rose up higher, and Raidou’s heart thumped a slow, weary rhythm in his chest. Blood rushed through his veins, pounding a taiko drum beat through both ears. It wasn’t enough to drown out the noise. It wasn’t enough to focus him. He licked his lips, tongue catching on chapped skin. Dirt smeared everywhere; he could taste it, filling his mouth with a bitter edge. Metal hung heavy in each hand, weighing him down at the shoulders. Kunai weren’t that big, but his muscles were tired. Overused. Everyone was overused. Wars did that to people. Chewed them up and spat out the pieces.

Four soldiers crouched behind him. Kids. Genin. His team. Not by choice, but he was the chuunin. The one in charge. It was his job to keep them safe. Keep them alive. Get them home. He didn’t even know their names. Two were boys, pale and frightened. One was a girl, small and determined. The last he couldn’t tell, couldn’t read the face hidden by the anonymous bandages. All four were too young for curves. For anything but hard-earned muscle carving angles under puppy-fat.

Four soldiers behind him. Four kids he didn’t know. Had to protect. But all Raidou could look at was the man in front of him.

Two men. One behind the other.

The man behind rose up, metal glinting in each hand. A double fistful of splayed steel spikes dripping something that hissed when it hit the ground. Acid, whispered a dull voice in Raidou’s head. Behind his weapons the man wasn’t grinning. His face gave nothing away as he stared through Raidou and weighed up the four Leaf-nin behind him. The Iwa seal on his hitai-ate was scratched, the metal dinged. Dried blood filled the grooves, colouring the steel with human rust. He was a jounin. He was an enemy.

The man in front of him wasn’t.

Raidou stared up, a kunai gripped tight in each hand, at the unmasked ANBU. He was tall and sleek, dressed in black and white on a battlefield where everyone wore green until they died in red. His hair was long and brown, slicked darker with sweat and whiter with dust. The carmine swirl on his left arm stood out like a wound against bare skin.

He was smiling around the senbon gripped between his teeth.

He was dying.

Raidou stared at that smile, a lazy curl of bitten lips that seemed so familiar, and looked beyond it to the ugly wound split across the ANBU's body, ripped from one shoulder to the opposite hip. Skin and flesh had peeled back and burned away, flaking into black dust that drifted down like dry snow. Blood spilled down his chest in thick ribbons, splashing down into the mud, making it redder. Blisters crowded like flowers, bursting soundlessly in vile splatters of straw-coloured liquid.

He knew that man.

Raidou stared at one, and looked beyond him to the other. The jounin moved, muscles bunching under cloth. Behind Raidou, the genin scattered, screaming. The sound rose up with a thousand echoes, bringing the battlefield with it.

The ANBU didn’t scream. He just fell, crumpling forward to land on his knees in the mud. His eyes were locked on Raidou’s, burnt honey-coloured in a place where nothing was sweet. His mouth was red.

The jounin blurred forward and Raidou stopped thinking. He just moved.

He didn't feel the hit. He ran, dodged, lost the jounin, and cried out as a blow like a hammer strike smashed him down. Metal ripped his face open. Acid blistered the skin away. Agony spilled like oil through his body, blotting out everything else. He didn’t feel the ground when it caught him, or the scream that vomited out of his throat. He couldn’t see anything but blue that became red that became black.

He could hear the genin screaming.

His face was on fire. His shoulder was melting away, the flesh chewed down to the bone. Burning meat curled up in a scent that blinded his sinuses and choked bile from his throat. He curled around himself, hands over his face, and screamed until he couldn't hear anything else. Until he couldn't hear the genin sliced into silence. The ANBU rasping his last blood-clotted breath. Until he couldn't hear anything but himself, dying on a field with a thousand other soldiers because he'd been a chuunin against a jounin, and there was no way to move fast enough.

He was fourteen years old and the world was ending.

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fallen_tsume
2008-05-06 06:50 pm UTC (link)

His world had ended.

Every breath brought in only dust, the smell of stone clogging his sensitive nose. There should have been something else. Anything else. The burn from explosions, or the smear of ash. Instead there was only the dried rot of a corpse long dead.

He inched backwards, paws moving uncertainly. His whine echoed off the rocks, bouncing back before it had time to go anywhere. He moved forward, one slow step at a time, until his nose met stone. He quartered the tiny room, eventually returning to where he'd started.

Trapped. And alone.

His keening whine went nowhere. He dug at the rock until his paws bled, talons broken. He bit at it, mashing his teeth into stone, cutting his lips. And he remembered, very clearly, watching Tsume die.

This was where he'd remain. This was what he deserved.

Canines couldn't cry. He tipped his head back and howled, the sound ripped right from his soul. It ricocheted around the tiny pocket, nearly deafening. He howled again, multi-toned and agonized. And again. And again.

Pain, horror, fear, everything crashed inside him, the instinctive panic of knowing he couldn't survive alone, the agony of watching Tsume fall--

He reached for their chakra link automatically, seeking comfort, forgetting she was dead and it was gone and even as he started to howl again at the knowledge--

Her chakra whispered down his pathways, soothing and constant, drawing his back in a forever-cycle.

Kuromaru's howl cut off. He picked his feet up, put them down, stared into the darkness not even his wolf-eyes could see through.

Dead. Gone. He'd seen her fall.

Her chakra murmured to him, tugged at his centers. Flowed back down pathways that melded from human to beast.

He whined. He'd seen--

And again her power came, following lines set down when they were both still cubs. He keened softly and lay down, resting his muzzle on his paws. His mind sunk into the familiar, the safe; the energy they shared. It twisted around him, through him, sliding down veins no scalpel could cut. He closed his eyes and followed them, tracing the paths, smoothing out quirks and scars, strengthening the lines. Building chakra, spinning it faster. The more he focused, the more it was real. The more it was real, the more his memory faded.

Not cut down.

He pulled on her chakra. She gave it up, traded for his own.

Gone around a corner. Saw Genma, lying on the ground.

He sped it faster, and she answered his need.

Raidou nearby, muscles slack.

It sleeked through lines and bodies, hers to his and back again, brighter as he focused.

Tsume behind him, a quick intake of breath and when he turned she slid to the ground, boneless.

Brighter until it was the only real thing that existed.

The man ahead of him, looking pale, looking thin. Snarling in a weak imitation of a predator. "Fall."

Until the chakra lines were all he cared about, and the rest of the world melted away. Until he could follow them out of the haze that clouded his mind. Until all the other images were gone.

And then he opened his eyes, and knew what he'd see. Genma, lying on the ground. Raidou nearby, muscles slack. Tsume behind him, seemingly boneless.

It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds from when he'd gone down, no matter how long it seemed. The ninja, however, was nowhere to be found.

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fallen_tsume
2008-05-06 06:50 pm UTC (link)

Kuromaru rose slowly to his feet, a growl growing in his chest. And then the scent of terror hit him. It lifted his hackles, bared his teeth. It was too powerful to come from just one person.

He whipped around, realizing with a whine it came from all of his temporary pack, though he didn't know why. Didn't know why they were down. Had to get them up. Had to get them up now.

He streaked to Tsume, recognizing the look of a genjutsu in the instant before he crouched, nudging her mask aside to lick her face. He'd go after the ninja, then--if you killed the jutsu maker, the jutsu died, too, right? He'd--

He couldn't. Not against a genjutsu. This one he'd fought off; he couldn't have a dead familiar and yet feel her chakra patterns. But he was canny enough to know that anything else would pull him under and keep him there.

A howl tried to rise up in his throat; he bit it down. Wherever the ninja had gone, he probably wasn't far. Kuromaru licked at Tsume again, nipped at her skin hard enough to draw blood, but got no response. They were weak against genjutsu; he knew that. She wasn’t coming out of it. He could smell her fear.

Someone else, then. Pain could knock a person out of it, sometimes. He glanced at the two men, weighing them in an instant.

He didn't trust Raidou. He bolted for Genma, faintly hearing the rattle of someone moving things. The way the tunnels warped, it was impossible to tell how far away the man was. He might have hours to wake Genma before the missing nin came back and knocked him under again. Or he might have seconds.

Kuromaru didn't give it much thought; he dove for the man's leg and sunk his teeth through cloth and skin. Blood flooded his mouth. He didn't break the bone.

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fallen_senbon
2008-05-06 07:03 pm UTC (link)

One minute Genma was lying in a pitch dark, stone-walled cell that stank of blood and death, curled up over the body of his best friend.

His best friend who shouldn't have died like that.

His best friend he was glad had died like that, a hero still fighting, not broken.

Genma was lying in the dark, listening to his own desperate breaths burble through lungs full of blood, wondering if he might manage to join Raidou before the Iwa ninja came back to heal his body and break it all over again interrogating him. He lay weeping silent tears that fell on Raidou's lifeless body.

"Rai" he whispered, too heartsick to try to rise.

The next he was bellowing in pain as something sharp tore into his thigh, reaching for weapons that came easily to hand, striking back at... at...

He sat up, sweat-soaked and shaking, staring at the dimly lit hall. There was light. There was light and Kuromaru was there, hunched and defensive, jaws dripping blood. Raidou lay on his side, masked-face turned away. Tsume was slumped over her own knees with her head turned towards him. Her mask was knocked askew so he could see her red-tattooed cheek, but not her eyes. The only blood spilled seemed to be his own.

Genma held a kunai in his left hand, his right bristled with senbon. His leg throbbed and bled, soaking invisibly into black pants, leaving red-black smears on the dusty earthen floor when he moved.

Kuromaru had bitten him. Kuromaru, who bristled with black fur making him look twice his side, whose bared fangs were still stained red.

"What the hell is going on?" he whispered, keeping his eyes riveted on the dog. He pulled himself into a crouch, feeling rough, cold stone at his back. Sidling towards Raidou. Moving to put himself between the dog and his fallen partner. Where were the Iwa ninja? How was there no blood? Why could he sense Raidou's chakra when the man was dead?

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fallen_tsume
2008-05-06 07:28 pm UTC (link)

Kuromaru prowled slowly backward, shoulders rolling under the heavy rise of his fur. "Genjutsu," he growled softly. His head dropped, ears flicking to catch every breath and every step. "Because Tsume's not dead." So it had to be a genjutsu, didn't it? Making you see things that weren't real?

He slid toward his human familiar, a circular dance as Genma slid toward his own mate. Kuromaru nudged at Tsume again, but it only over balanced her. She slid along the cave wall that had been helping to brace her up, and he caught her seconds before her head cracked against rock, jaws tight on her armor straps. Kuromaru laid her down and whined softly, licking her face once, twice, and looking back up at Genma.

His ears slicked back against his head. "Can you fix it? You can, right?" His lips lifted off his teeth, showing gums that were black and pink. "Or we could just kill him." His head ducked, muzzle dropping toward the stone. "Gotta hurry. He'll be coming back."

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fallen_senbon
2008-05-06 07:38 pm UTC (link)

Genjutsu. It was a possibility. A certainty when Genma got Raidou's mask off and felt his friend's breath hot and moist against his palm. Raidou's head not parted from his body, his armour not drenched in his blood. "Rai," he tried, knowing it wouldn't work. Not even his fingers grazing across the rippled flesh of Raidou's scarred cheek drew so much as a sigh.

Genjutsu. And a powerful one. One that had knocked all three of them out. Why not the dog? "He didn't get you?" he asked, and checked Raidou's pulse in his neck, feeling under the physical throb of blood in veins for chakra. It was there, bound and tight, flowing back into itself in an unhealthy cycle that only a violently complex genjutsu could produce.

He focused, drawing energy in, forming seals learned early in his training. His own chakra bloomed bright and amber yellow, limning his hands. "Kai." He pressed one hand to Raidou's forehead, the other to his chest.

Raidou didn't wake up, but he stirred, gasping in a breath and twitching away from Genma's hands. Genma put them back to Raidou's neck, breathing a tiny prayer of gratitude for what he felt: the chakra dam was broken, normal flow restored. Now he just needed to wake up.

"Why didn't he get you?" he demanded, still suspicious. His leg burned where Kuromaru's teeth had torn the flesh. And a lingering echo of the illusion, of a memory he couldn't be sure of, told him Kuromaru wasn't to be trusted.