| [Dec. 8th, 2011|08:43 am] |
“I’ll try. It was a hell of a squeeze getting out, an’ things might have moved.” Pakkun pulled himself away from the statue and scrambled around behind it, forging jerkily over snow-covered rocks. He skirted the broken-down temple, leading them to a sunken depression of tumbled snow and obliterated earth.
Mine collapse, was Asuma’s first thought. But smaller and neater, closer to the surface.
The little dog was sniffing around, staggering as he retraced his own tracks.
“Hey, Pakkun,” Asuma said. “What brought the bunker down?”
“Chakra trap,” the dog said instantly. “One of Ryouma’s old ones, left for Kumo-nin.”
Asuma winced faintly. At least that explained why two full-fledged jounin hadn’t managed to translocate ten feet straight up.
“Better get a move on,” he said. “Tell ‘em we’re here, and make sure Ginta’s still breathing, would you?”
“Dig fast,” Pakkun said, before tunnelling his way into a shallow drift of fresh snow and vanishing.
"No earth jutsu, then, if there are still traps." Ibiki strode to the edge of the depression, dark eyes flicking over the rough outline. "We need to know what the bunker layout was, so we can guess at where to dig. Did Sakamoto ever tell you any details about this place?"
“Not a one,” Asuma said. “Didn’t even tell me he’d been here. Just that he’d done a stint up in Lightning. But a bunker’s a bunker, right? They’re all hollowed out on the same lines.” At least, Konoha’s were. If this was a captured enemy outpost it could look like anything down there. He headed out to stand in the middle of the depression, balancing on grinding rocks. “Figure we start here and go straight down, unless you’ve got a better plan?”
Ibiki paced with his head down, working out some silent train of thought, before circling back to Asuma. "If it's built on a standard Konoha model, then it's a Y with a common area leading to a kitchen, then toilets and showers down one branch and sleeping quarters down the other. Pakkun said he thought they were in someplace tiled, that means showers.” The little dog had been downright talkative on the freezing trek over, with his cold nose shoved against Asuma’s throat. Ibiki pointed to a spot a few feet away. “ So… Here."
“Good enough,” Asuma said, and unslung his cloak from around his neck, tossing the snow-dusted weight of it aside. He pulled a scroll from his belt, flicking through the chakra necessary to unseal them. A mess of camping gear thudded to the ground: a rolled up tent, coils of rope, a dented storm-lamp, a sleeping roll, and most importantly, a sturdy shovel. “Wish I’d brought a pick-axe.”
Ibiki’s pile of stuff was, of course, neater.
"That would be handy," Ibiki agreed neutrally. He lengthened the collapsible handle on his own shovel, organized his gear into a careful cluster on one side of the ditch, and surveyed the ground with narrow eyes. "Maybe we can disable the traps if we can find any of the original seals."
“Just don’t get yourselves blown up,” Saiyuri advised, taking over Asuma’s gear. She scrabbled it together with Ibiki’s and set about lighting the twin storm-lamps, casting a brighter glow on the snow. She affixed the lamps to the temple, and turned to their tents, setting up a rudimentary shelter.
Asuma saluted her back. “Duly noted.”
Ibiki snorted very quietly, and sank his shovel deeply into the ground, jarring a screech of sound as the blade scraped stone. He heaved the chunk of earth and rubble to one side, and hacked down again.
Not about to be outdone, Asuma hurried to join him. |
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