| [Jun. 14th, 2009|07:36 pm] |
Tsume's feet jerked off his shoulders. Asuma grabbed her calves as hard as he could, grip tightening enough to bruise flesh against bone, and caught a heel against his sliced-and-stitched cheekbone. His skull jarred; little red lights cracked off inside his head. His hands loosened--
The grate wrenched open with a crash. Tsume yowled as her arm got crushed and pinned, lashing out with her other hand, clawless fingers splayed. Her feet kicked in the air. Hibiki caught her by the scruff of her neck, hauling her up.
Staggered, Asuma missed the grab that could have saved her.
"No, no, no, no--" The words snapped in half between clenched teeth. They'd been so close. He snatched at his flickering chakra--most of it was in Tsume--and lunged after her, throwing himself up to catch her disappearing feet. She vanished before he could get there. His hands latched onto the open edge of the grate-hole, his chakra stuck. He pulled himself up, muscles straining, stitches popping with dull flashes of pain; he barely noticed them.
The deck was in turmoil when he made it out of the hole, but this time the chaos had a kind of order to it. New sails caught his attention for a flickering second. New people on the deck, ranked casually by the sides. They watched with interest.
Tsume was a snarling, spitting, thrashing whirl of fury in Hibiki's arms. Her bare heels struggled to come down on his injured foot. Her clawless fingers slashed for his face. Chakra, low and wrong, swirled under her skin as she called it, scraping the edge of Asuma's raw senses.
Hibiki ducked and blocked each attack easily. His left hand twisted into her hair, yanking her head back. His right hand--
Held a trench knife.
Asuma's trench knife.
He'd been furious before. That was nothing to how he felt now. Pure rage tore through his chest, igniting something that went beyond adrenaline. He surged to his feet, throwing off the sailors that tried to catch his arms and shoulders, and lunged at Hibiki.
Darkness and silence snapped the vice back on before he got there, but Asuma felt a bone crack when his shoulder drove into the ninja's side. His hands found a throat, his knee slammed into a heavy thigh muscle. They went down in a tangle of limbs--Tsume's legs came down on his back--but Asuma got in three more solid blows before Gurou's lash snapped around his neck and yanked him away. |
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