| [Jan. 12th, 2011|08:18 pm] |
The stench of crisping skin overwhelmed almost everything else. Tsume couldn't get close enough to the tanks to save those nearest it. Most had fallen; some were staggering. Even from here, she knew they wouldn't make it out on their own.
For a moment, though, while the fire centered there sputtered under Asuma's jutsu, she had a chance.
But there were others, and the fire was spreading too fast. Others trapped in houses, under rubble, trying to evacuate. She skidded to a stop within the heat of the flames, her skin tightening up. She caught the nearest Inuzuka, pointing at the closest burning house. "Three cubs! Four adults! Make sure they're clear!"
He nodded and took off, wrapping his arm across his face as he rushed into the house. She swept her jacket over half her face, trying to cover as much flesh as possible as she ran into flame already kindling back into life despite Asuma's jutsu. She grabbed one living cub, pumping chakra into her muscles and grabbing another, hauling them away from the broken tanks, ignoring their screams of pain. Already the flames were licking upward, heat sizzling against the chakra she laid across her skin like a shield. Despite the chakra, she couldn't breathe, she couldn't see. But she knew where 'back' was.
There were more Inuzuka gathering around the edges of the explosion as she ran clear and dropped the two cubs. Eyes watering, she bellowed for a medic. Behind her, fire broke free of the jutsu and roared up the side of a house, catching on three more.
"Yasuo!" He was there; she'd known he would be. "Get rescue crews going! Everyone evacuated. Now!" He'd already begun to move, ordering pairs of Inuzuka into houses. Tsume twisted to find Asuma, spotted him setting the last three surviving cubs down far more gently than she had.
She ran for him, stripping out of the confining coat, her fingers slapping around his bicep to get his attention. The crack and boom of superheated flame nearly hammered out all other noise. The fire was spreading. Fast, relentlessly, powered by the oil and fueled by wood houses, close quarters, ancient trees.
When he turned to her, she pointed to the still-whole gas tank. "Can you bury it without moving it?" Because if it went, too...
There were a wealth of houses, filled with people, that would be wiped out with the explosion. |
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