| [Apr. 30th, 2014|05:24 am] |
He put his weight behind his sword, breaking through Aoisuke's weaker, one-handed grip, and kicked the man’s legs out from under him. Aoisuke tumbled, hit the ground, and flipped himself back to his feet, but Raidou was there to harry him, forcing him back up against the wall.
“You getting paid enough for this?” Raidou rasped.
“Are you?” Aoisuke said.
Above them, flames raced across the ceiling. The air boiled with smoke, filling Raidou’s lungs with dense, choking heat. The house was traditionally designed, hand-built and beautiful, which meant paper walls and varnished wood—and a deadly firetrap. The servants might already be lost.
Which, goddammit, he hadn’t wanted their deaths on his hands.
Aoisuke strained against him, muscles bunching. Raidou shifted his footing, shoved the other man’s sword high, and created the perfect opening to drive his knee through. He hit Aoisuke hard in the solar plexus, thumping the breath out of him; the other man grunted, fighting against the knee-jerk instinct to bend double. Raidou knocked the wakizashi aside and whipped his katana around, taking Aoisuke's head off at the neck.
And a clone exploded.
Oh, for the love of—
He turned, already expecting a knife between the shoulders. Instead, Katsuko smashed in through the exterior wall, scattering wooden panels.
“Taichou!” she shouted, as the backdraft of her entrance whipped the flames up into an inferno.
He didn’t have time to be surprised.
“Mind your back,” he snapped, turning to rake his gaze over the corners of the burning room. Genjutsu users were almost always sensor-types, which made their chakra-hiding skills better than most—
A shadow moved.
There wasn’t time to react. The wall next to Katsuko shivered, illusion breaking to reveal Aoisuke right behind her. He had Tomoko in one hand, cradled to his chest, and bare steel in the other: the short, curving wakizashi with its wicked edge.
In liquid slow-motion, he lunged forward and stabbed Katsuko through the back.
Raidou went cold.
Katsuko looked down at the length of bloodied metal punched out of her armored chest, right through her heart, and said, very quietly, “Oh.”
Aoisuke pulled his sword back, steel making a gritty sound against bone, and kicked her in the spine. She staggered forward and landed on her knees. Blood slid down her white chestplate. Her face lifted towards Raidou, throat working as her breath bubbled in her chest, but she couldn’t manage words. Crimson flooded out beneath the bottom edge of her mask, streaking down her neck. She collapsed in a boneless heap on the floorboards.
He couldn’t feel her chakra.
“What’s that worth to you?” Aoisuke said, and ducked out through the hole in the wall.
On the floor, Katsuko’s blood spilled gently out and mixed with the infant boy’s.
This is going to hurt later, Raidou thought distinctly, through layers of ice. This is going to hurt a lot.
It was his last thought for a while. He set his hands together, pulling up the dense, rarely-used reserves of his chakra—
And it wouldn’t come.
His feet wouldn’t move. When he looked down, the floorboards had wrapped around his ankles, soaked with arterial-crimson streaks, moved by a jutsu he hadn’t noticed. The heat roared at his back, bright as dragon’s breath. His skin, already tight, started to burn.
Katsuko was dead, and he was trapped.
He grabbed his sword and crouched to hack at the living wood tightening around his legs. The blade struck sparks, as if it was meeting steel. The fire drew closer.
Raidou screamed rage. |
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