| [Jan. 12th, 2011|08:28 pm] |
Tsume twisted, ears catching the faintest of sounds under the crack and rush of a collapsing roof. A sound she knew in her sleep. She bolted, stopped, wrenched back to dive through the house she'd been searching. Faster now, and faster still. She found the unconscious body she'd been looking for, flung the teenager over a shoulder, and leaped out the window. A spiral of wind followed her, a jutsu someone had flung toward her bringing oxygen, letting her take one deep breath before the fire consumed it, roaring higher.
The ground around her wasn't any less hot than within the house. She ran, each foot scattering leaves and flames, using more chakra to smother flames as her dress tried to catch fire, more still to give her skin some meager protection.
When she was close enough for someone else to come in, she nearly tossed the body at him and grabbed his ninja pouch, ransacking it as she flew back into the inferno. Another jutsu followed her, air whipping around her face, letting her breathe that much longer.
Chakra pills. She downed one and pumped it into her coils, downed another -- one each, for Kuromaru and herself. She whipped through seals until there were three more of herself, though creating that many shadow clones nearly wiped out the chakra she'd just swallowed.
There -- there -- Haru's house, the tree it was built from was on fire, and beneath the flames Kuromaru's howl had choked out, gone. But not dead. She could feel him.
Fifty feet away from the house, the heat made her cringe and duck her head, protecting her face. Twenty feet from it, one of her clones vanished. She couldn't get close enough.
Her mind raced, and she swallowed another pill, crunching it and flinging the power into another clone. She didn't know a jutsu that would put out the fire without killing the people inside. But she didn't need to put the fire out. She might not even need to get close. She just needed to improvise.
False chakra burned through her pathways, down to Kuromaru and back. They should have been near each other for this. They should have been touching.
This was going to hurt.
Her air ran out, smoke filling her lungs on the next inhalation. Her lungs seized even as she focused, slamming more chakra into the jutsu, praying Haruichi's work would hold and their pathways could take this, and twisted her hands into seals.
Chakra whipped between them, regardless of fire or trees or burning walls. It hardened and solidified, shoving everything out of the way as her bones shattered and reformed, merging and melding with chakra, which in turn merged into Kuromaru and twisted him.
They were still too far away. The sharp pain of broken, re-formed bones was overwhelmed as chakra dragged her into the fire, skin and flesh bursting outward and surging up.
The house exploded around the large and growing form, flame clinging to timbers as, for just an instant, the fire lost its thrust, the fuel falling away as the giant two-headed canine rose from the flame. A child dangled from the massive teeth of one of the heads, screaming. In the minutes between the fire weakening around them and surging upward with new life, Tsume's clones ran in, scooping up children and leading the way back out.
One of them popped into nonexistence before it made it.
Flame licked up the canine legs, catching on long, black fur and roaring up the giant body as if it had found new fuel. One head snatched Asuma from the ground as the monster leaped free of the house before dissolving to keep from burning alive.
Bones snapped again, chakra hissing away, and Tsume found herself hacking with Kuromaru nearby, a child still gripped in his teeth, and everyone out of the house. Air swirled around them, displaced from the two-headed giant they'd become, giving them something to breathe in the instant before it fueled the flames.
They were still within the firestorm.
"Out," she gasped, pointing to the nearest edge. "That way." If they could make it. |
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