InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Winsause?"

Hyuuga Hiro (fallen_hiro) wrote in fallen_leaves,
@ 2009-01-23 01:12:00

Entry tags:

ginta, hiro, kyuubi

Rescue Me [closed to Ginta & Hiro]
[ Takes place five years previously, the night the Kyuubi attacked Konoha. ]

The world was painted in shades of flame-blue and blood-blue and desperation-blue. (His eyes couldn't see that third but he knew it was there; he breathed it with every breath, thick and cloying.) Hiro's Byakugan took in the destruction around him, displaying a scene of monochrome catastrophe.

He was too tired for it to even affect him any more. Twenty-six hours since the first alarms had sounded--they still blared in the background unattended, repetitive klaxxons echoing through the fog and smoke--and Hiro had settled into a rhythm now.

First find the Kyuubi; he didn't need the Byakugan for that, following the screams would do. Screams were good, it meant someone was still alive.

Then he trailed in the demon's wake, hopefully far enough to be safe, using his bloodline limit to search through the human debris: left behind haphazard piles of flayed and scorched shinobi, charred flesh and exposed bone, all the colors of chakra-blue. Eventually he'd find one alive, would dig it out and lever it up onto his back. Often it would be making sounds, possibly words, but Hiro ignored them, concentrating only on moving one heavy foot after the other. He'd leave his burden at the makeshift field hospital, then head back out again, repeating from the beginning.

This time it was different, though. Superficially the two bodies in front of him were just like the rest: not breathing. He should have left them.

But these weren't like the others. These had names.

A girl, slight, her limp body resting as if asleep on a carpet of scorched kikai bugs. A boy, features half melted-off, his one unspinning pinwheel eye colored in a particular shade of Byakugan-depicted sharingan-blue.

Aburame Chiyo. Uchiha Takuro. Hiro blinked and deactivated his bloodline limit, colors slamming down on the world and narrowing his focus to a point. Images of dormant chakra pathways disappeared, and the ghostly patterns he saw in Takuro's eye faded away to a flat, lifeless black.

He had a moment of bizarre double-vision: the two bodies as anonymous corpses, objects he should leave behind, overlaid by memories of the teammates he had seen--well, it would be twenty-six hours ago now. Takuro, teasing him and slapping him on the back, rivalry and acceptance. Chiyo, with a small, quiet smile behind her scarf, a feather-light kiss on his cheek.

Then the images coalesced into one. Two bodies, two teammates. He bent down mechanically, sliding an arm underneath each one. Then, balancing them over his shoulders, he fought unsteadily to his feet.

He almost fell; both teammates were older and bigger than he was. The only thing keeping him standing was the knowledge that if he went down, there was no way he'd be able to get them lifted up again; his strength was running too low. As it was, he had to leave Chiyo's beloved kikai bugs. He closed his eyes and lowered his head as he turned, sparing a moment to mourn them for her as he left them behind.

The sky was still dark, but the red glow through the smoke cast more than enough light to see by without needing to waste his chakra. His feet only knew how to carry him to one place anymore, so he let them go, one step following the next, into the fog and the night.

Ads by Project Wonderful! Your ad here, right now: $0

(Post a new comment)

fallen_ginta
2009-01-23 03:23 am UTC (link)

Ginta was one of hundreds of Leaf ninja trying desperately to keep the demon fox out of Konoha. The beast had lain waste to farmland and forest, devastating surrounding hamlets as it honed in on the hidden ninja village with ruthless precision, leaving ruin in its wake. The first shinobi called out to fight the approaching monster had died almost as quickly as they'd arrived. Only a few desperate survivors managed to get word back that the threat was dire, sounding a general alarm.

For more than a day Ginta had fought side by side with men and women whose names he never even learned before he saw them fall.

There had been a jounin sensei and a cluster of terrified looking genin herding a group of even more terrified civilians away from the advancing front. The man had shouted something at Ginta, and before Ginta could even register the question, the Fox had hurled a stream of fire into their midst. The heat had singed Ginta's hair and blistered his cheeks. With flare-blindness still searing his retinas, he had stared uncomprehending at a reeking lump of carbon where there had been a dozen people before.

Someone had jerked him back, and he'd blinked up into the face of his own sensei, Saito Ichiro.

"Pull it together, Ginta," Ichiro had bellowed, as a massive paw swept a shower of tiles off a roof above them.

It had been three years since Ichiro-sensei had promoted Ginta to chuunin, in a trench on Fire Country's north-western border. In three years as a chuunin, Ginta'd seen his sensei a handful of times, but never had he been more grateful to have that red-bearded face berating him than now.

That had been nine hours ago. At 0423, Ginta and a team of twenty chuunin and jounin, led by Ichiro-sensei, made a coordinated assault on the Fox's left flank. The Hokage was coming, they'd been told. He was coming, but the jutsu he needed to use to subdue the Fox was so massive, so complex, that it would be hours before he could cast it. In the mean time they had to--had to--hold the beast off.

Ginta 's role was to cast a genjutsu to conceal them. Too small, too tired, but he could still do this much, while the others tried to drive a tree through the monster's leg. If they could just break one bone, hobble it just a little, they'd slow it down. Thoughts of defeating this enemy without Yondaime's help were long past, but they'd checked its advances, even made it give way a few times. At the rate it was pushing them towards the village gates, they might keep it back another several hours. Precious hours for the Hokage to prepare his jutsu.

An Uchiha jounin was taking the most dangerous position, right out in front of the beast. He'd draw it to the right with fireballs aimed at its eyes. Ginta would cast two jutsu, the first to make the Uchiha seem to be one of many, the second to hide the movements of the true assault force.

If the Fox had been a little stupider, they might have succeeded.

The half-dozen illusory Uchiha with their multiplied katon no jutsu kaleidoscoped into the Fox's face. The real fireball singed one huge, menacing eye. The real Uchiha was bitten clean through, falling to earth without even a scream, in two bloodied pieces.

The flanking team, Ginta included, rushed in with their mighty spear. The Fox shielded itself with three of its massive tails, striking sparks from the air, and crushed the forward-most of the advancing ninja beneath a clawed paw soaked red with human blood. A shock wave from the swung tails blasted down trees and buildings, and threw the surviving shinobi at the back of the phalanx hundreds of feet in the air.

Pain was all Ginta knew--the crushing pain of the heated shock wave hitting him, slamming him against and then through a pair of collapsing barn walls. The Fox's hideous roar shuddered all around him, drowning out the screams of the dying. Drowning his own screams. When he came to rest, he stared up at fires dancing in treetops. The Fox roared again, making the earth tremble.

To Ginta's left, he heard a burbling groan. Ichiro-sensei lay on his back, with his hips twisted at an impossible angle, and a wooden beam protruding from his throat. Ginta crawled towards him, reached a hand out to stroke his mentor's bearded cheek, and told him it would be alright.