| [Jan. 21st, 2012|10:57 pm] |
Katsuko had been watching Kakashi make eyes (or maybe an eye) at Ryouma with barely hidden amusement. When his gaze flew back to her, a hiss escaping through the black mask, she flinched. When what he’d snapped at her registered, she made a choking sound.
“You sensed that?” Katsuko shook her head, dragging a hand through the tangled snarl of her hair. “What am I talking about, of course you did. Um.”
Kakashi pushed up his hitai-ate and stared at her, left eye flaring crimson. Katsuko froze as the Sharingan took her in for a long moment, reminding herself to breathe.
At last, Kakashi asked in a slightly incredulous tone, “Doesn’t that hurt?”
Katsuko gave him a tired smile. “Normally I’d say you’d have no idea, but considering who you are...I think you just might.” She jerked her chin at Ryouma’s broad back. “He’s heard this before. Do you want the full story or the two-minute debrief?”
Ryouma shifted, his voice quiet over the sizzle of frying bacon. “Go for the full story.”
Kakashi just tugged his hitai-ate down and looked at her, waiting.
Katsuko stared down at her hands, interlacing her fingers as she willed down the rumbling in her stomach. “I don’t suppose we could wait until after breakfast?” she asked rhetorically, but grimaced and forged ahead. “When I was fifteen...when I was fifteen, my chuunin team was ambushed during a border patrol near Lightning. My sensei was killed and I was brought down underground to an experimental facility. The head scientist took a liking to me because I looked like her dead daughter and,” she stopped, licked her lips, started again, “saved me for the special experiments.”
Ryouma had gone still, leaning against the counter, half-turned to watch her. Kakashi’s eye darkened; he gently tapped the inner side of his elbow, matching the scars she kept covered in layers of bandages. “That’s where this is from?”
“No. Sometimes, she’d just get bored. ” Katsuko scratched her head, shrugged, gaze flicking to a point somewhere over Kakashi’s left shoulder. “One time I woke up to find my entire ribcage opened up, with her poking her fingers around everywhere.” One hand reached up to rub her chest, absently. “I could see my heart beating.”
Wood snapped; one of the cooking chopsticks Ryouma was holding had broken. “You never told me that.”
Kakashi’s face hadn’t changed, although the visible skin of his cheek had lost a little color. “Genjutsu?”
“She didn’t like genjutsu. Wasn’t real enough for her.” Katsuko shook her head. “I’m getting sidetracked. During the last month I was in the labs Kumo started riding Kaminari to develop a long-term seal that increased chakra capacity. I was the subject she tested all her first drafts on before she moved on to a larger experimental pool. The last seal she ever painted on me was here.” Katsuko tapped her stomach, just below her navel. “She’d done a few experiments on my reproductive system a month ago, and I think whatever she found made her key the seal to the chakra node there. It...hurt. And it was the one that worked exactly how she’d wanted it to. Next thing I know, my coils start moving like a pit of angry snakes and I go into a seizure on the lab table. I woke up in my cell with my chakra the way it is now, and that’s how it’s been ever since.” |
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