| [Jan. 12th, 2011|08:26 pm] |
Nine children (still breathing), six adults (mostly okay), and eight houses flattened. A few places they just couldn't get into; Kuromaru would pause in the entrance-way, firelight dancing on his fur, then snarl and dart for the next house. Asuma would take a second longer, feeling for living chakra, then flatten the building as fast as he could. Faster, if there were dying people inside.
There were no more Inuzuka accompanying them, now. If he and Kuromaru rescued a family, found a kid, yanked an aging ninja out of the attic, Asuma would send them back to safety with a clone. Most of them made it.
The ninth house was built directly into a carved out tree-trunk, supported on two sides by still-living wood. The roof was a giant leafy branch, wide as a barn. Kuromaru hit the door at a dead run, bursting through with a flash of chakra, and careened up the stairs, Asuma close on his heels. The air was black with smoke. Asuma had lost his jacket somewhere along the way, wrapped around two twin girls with blistered faces, but his shirt-sleeve gave some protection when he pressed it against his mouth.
In retrospect, it was probably a good thing he smoked so much. Anyone else's lungs would've packed in four houses ago.
Kuromaru found a creche of children in the back bedroom, and the body of a woman crushed beneath a fallen beam. Asuma almost tripped straight over three familiars and twelve puppies when he shouldered his way into the bathroom, chasing chakra signatures.
"Shit," he rasped, and yanked the shower curtain off its railing.
Kuromaru bullied the terrified dogs until they grabbed a screaming child each, then drove them out of the window, onto the roof, and down to the burning forest floor. He was back in less than thirty seconds. Asuma spent the time corralling the remaining five children, and stuffing squalling puppies into the make-shift bag he'd fashioned from the shower curtain and his tie.
At Kuromaru's return, he handed two children to a new clone (they were getting weaker each time; he was running out of chakra), watched Kuromaru grab a third by the shirt with his teeth, and picked up the remaining two under one arm each.
They almost made it back to the window.
It was the leaves that did it. They burned like kindling, setting the bigger, gasoline-splattered branches on fire. And when the branches made up the damn ceiling, that was a problem.
It came down like a flaming wave, almost cutting Kuromaru in half. Asuma yanked him back by the tail and nearly got knocked off his feet by his own clone. The construct backed off, swearing, and Asuma spun on one heel, looking for another window. In the pitch black, smoke-dense room, there was no light.
"Oh shit," he said again -- or tried to say. It came out in raw coughing while the children screamed. |
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