| [Apr. 30th, 2014|05:30 am] |
The yard was a nightmare of reflected firelight, glowing dull orange as sparks and ash rained down. Raidou dropped Katsuko in the middle, next to the ornamental koi pond. Blood thundered in his ears, hot as the smoke in his lungs.
“Stay here,” he grated.
She grabbed his arm, grip tightening. Her voice rasped. “I can still fight.”
The fragile vestiges of his control sheared through.
“Stay,” he snarled, and wrenched out of her grip.
In the distance, Aoisuke’s chakra signature was weak and half-hidden, folded in on itself at the bare edges of Raidou’s reach, but it was accompanied by three civilians—two adults, one child, and those couldn’t be hidden.
He pulled on his chakra, and this time, it came. Deep energy lit up the inside of his skin, smothering everything that hurt. Ready to pull flesh from bones. Tonight, Kirigakure owed him blood.
Katsuko froze very still, the whites of her eyes gleaming behind her mask.
He turned away from her and put his hands together, letting the first jutsu go. It ripped the ground apart under his feet and tore a V-shaped opening in the compound’s perimeter wall. He left Katsuko where she was, alive and breathing, and went after the man who’d made him think she’d died.
Aoisuke might have been a fast runner under ordinary circumstances, but two panicked parents—neither one in sprinting condition—and a traumatized toddler would slow anyone down. They were almost to the docks when Raidou caught up with them, but they hadn’t made it to a ship.
The odds of that got a little worse when Raidou broke three of the piers.
There were more than a dozen jutting out into the ocean like the teeth of a wide comb, interspersed with docked merchant ships, bright sails furled for the night. Raidou didn’t have wood jutsu that could affect them—no one did, not since Hashirama had died—but he had earth, and he had water, and when he reached for both, a stretch of the waterfront ripped itself apart. Piers wrenched loose from the stone wharf and battering waves smashed them underwater. Four of the ships lurched, crashing into the wharf and each other, and foundered, including the vessel the tiny party had been running for.
Aoisuke skidded to a halt on the cracking edge of the wharf, caught between open water and the threat at his back. Beneath his feet, the weight of Raidou’s furious chakra made cobblestones crack and split, denting down into disintegrating concrete.
There was a moment, just a split-second of a pause, and then Aoisuke made his decision.
He shoved Tomoko into her mother’s arms and turned, stepping away from the family. Splintered moonlight lit the planes of his face as he raised his chin. He was young behind the bandages, maybe Raidou’s age. “Couldn’t just burn, could you?” he yelled over the chaos.
Raidou didn’t have words. He had Katsuko’s blood in his mind’s eye, and two feet of steel jutting out of her chest. He had Oh, and a slow fall, and How much is that worth to you?
He had rage, and he had running.
He hit Aoisuke square in the chest, and smashed him down onto the water. The ocean flattened beneath them, thumping down beneath the chakra-pressure of two jounin who could water-walk in their sleep. Salt burned into open wounds, but that just made Raidou madder. Aoisuke bucked and slithered out of his hold, slashing with kunai. Raidou knocked the gleaming blades aside, and took the first three openings that presented themselves: sternum, solar-plexus, and the narrow edge of the man’s jaw. Bone cracked beneath his knuckles. |
|