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[Nov. 29th, 2016|10:08 pm]

tousaki_ryouma
Ginta's genjutsu settled around them like mist, muffling the occasional scuff of boots on stone or crunch of shell. Satomi vanished from the corner of Ryouma's eye; ahead of them, the clone turned visible only in brief moments of movement, then faded again in stillness. Ryouma found himself holding his breath.

The tunnel narrowed and forked again, splitting into two tubes less than half its original height. Blood splotched the left entrance. Ryouma's bunshin cast a despairing look back and then stooped to enter. Ryouma had to duck behind it. A damp, craggy ceiling brushed his head, and forced him lower. Only Satomi, barely shoulder-high, could walk upright.

The scent of decay grew stronger. The blood-trail thickened, streaking the narrowing walls: a stagger here, fingerprints there. Ahead of them, the clone called out in a voice muffled to a whisper. "Found 'em."

Ryouma crowded into the tiny dead-end cavern after it. The clone edged against the wall, made a rapid calculation of the amount of space remaining, then dispelled itself. Ryouma waved ozone away and breathed through his teeth.

He was used to the stench of putrefaction. The two huddled corpses had been here a week, maybe, and the cave-creatures had found them days ago. Tiny crabs scuttled and crunched as Ryouma crouched over the bodies and drew a knife to poke the more stubborn crawlies away.

A teenage boy, maybe fourteen or fifteen. Another, younger, perhaps twelve. The older boy had a Mist nin's sharpened teeth; both of them had hitai'ate, scratched and scored. Neither of them had eyes.

Satomi made a thick, rough sound at the back of her throat. Ryouma didn't look up. "If you're gonna be sick, do it back there."

"I'm not," Satomi said tightly. "Check for injuries."

Ryouma stabbed one last obstinate crab, shook it off the blade of his knife, and reached out to turn the smaller corpse over. His fingers slipped on the remains of sloughing skin. A new rush of scavengers scattered.

Two deep stab wounds bared white ribs under the smaller boy's arm, enlarged by a week of scavengers feeding. One cut had merely skidded over the ribs; the second had penetrated, likely to the liver. Smaller wounds paired with each entry might have been crab-holes, but were more likely left by the secondary blade of a pronged kunai.

"Kiri kunai," Satomi muttered. Ryouma nodded, jaw clenched.

The second boy's forearms and shoulders were lacerated with smaller wounds—shuriken, Ryouma guessed—but the injury that killed him was a slashing wound that bit deep into his side, scoring his pelvis. Even with the smaller boy's help, he couldn't have staggered far.

Footsteps scuffed behind them as Ginta's genjutsu dropped. "Think I can guess what you found," the lieutenant said grimly. "Come out. They're not the only bodies."

Satomi met Ryouma's eyes. Then she reached out, fumbled at the boys' throats, and snapped the dogtags from their necks. Clutching the silvery disks tight in her fist, she scrambled out of the cave again.

Ryouma lingered a moment longer. The Nikutai Hakai lent no dignity to death, but it was better than being crab food.

The other two were waiting for him back in the larger tunnel. Neither of them mentioned the smell, but Ginta had a handful of packaged towelettes. Ryouma wiped his fingers clean and burned the damp paper to a handful of stinking ash as they walked.

Back to the first fork where Satomi'd spotted the blood, and then up an angling slope of the second tunnel, following the blood trail the fleeing boys had left. Ryouma wondered how far they'd come, whether they were still under the sea. How far Kirigakure lay ahead, and how long those boys had lasted, bleeding in the dark, before they died.

The tunnel swung a wide bend and abruptly opened out, and the scent of decay clinging to Ryouma was drowned, suddenly, in the battlefield reek of bowel and piss and rot. Kakashi stood, straight-backed and alone, at the entrance to a vast cavern where bodies lay twisted, piled, scattered as they'd been cut down.

Kakashi said softly, "They're all from the same family." He turned, finally, and his eye found Ryouma for a brief, lancing moment before skipping to Ginta. "We should get Kuroda."
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