| [Jun. 12th, 2009|12:44 am] |
He wasn't unconscious, he was blind. The clone died, pouring its memories straight into Asuma's head: three ninja, leaping effortlessly across the gap between ships. His own not-hands grabbing Tsume, trying to drag her out of range--
A booted foot smashing his head in.
The clone's head in.
He lunged away from the railing, breaking his grip on wave and wind before he accidentally destroyed the wrong ship, and cast his chakra out like a net. It washed over the deck, coursing past the tangled, disorganized energy signatures of panicking sailors, and ran aground against three sleek, well-ordered patterns like unsheathed blades. And one fading one.
Tsume.
He bellowed something--he couldn't hear himself--and wrenched his chakra apart, breaking it into a dozen solid clones. Two died instantly, smashing more memories into his head. Dizzy shots of a ship in chaos, a glimpse of Tsume strangling in the grip of a bullwhip, held aloft by a man muscled like a tiger. A blonde kunoichi laughing. A third ninja flinging kunai, moving like a dervish.
Chakra flickered. Asuma threw himself right, crashed hip-first into something that felt like solid wood, and staggered to catch his balance. A white-hot line carved into his shoulder. He flinched and kawarimi'd, swapping places with the first thing he remembered.
The mast made no sound at all when it landed on the deck, but three civilian chakra patterns winked out of existence. Asuma clung to the first rope his hand touched, jaw clenching. He couldn't feel Tsume at all.
Three more clones died. Two gave him nothing but a scrambled view of water, wood, and glinting blades. The last attacked the man with the bullwhip, hitting him solidly in the flank. The massive shinobi tossed Tsume aside like a rag doll, gathered the lash back, and slew the clone with a blow from its heavy, iron-shod handle.
The ship trembled, slewing with one mast gone and the remaining sails untended by a dying crew. Chakra patterns vanished one by one, leaving Asuma without any kind of map to anchor himself. He had no idea where the deck railings were, where ropes stretched and bodies lay. Where Tsume had fallen.
He got a damn good idea where one of the enemy ninja was when a punch like a landslide caught his jaw and knocked him straight out of the rigging. Tangled ropes slowed his fall, but the abrupt meeting with the deck's wooden planking still smashed the breath from his lungs. He choked, gasping, and couldn't hear himself.
More clones died. Crew-ship-ninja-blood-waves-no Tsume--
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