| [Oct. 22nd, 2017|09:24 pm] |
Ryouma dropped his kunai and lunged for the statue.
He hit it shoulder-first and full speed. Pain slammed through his side. The statue didn't even rock. It was a monolith, big as the stone tanuki statue back in Hiraizumi, taller than Ryouma and four times as broad. Ryouma fell away, scrabbled back to his feet, and hurled himself at the stone again.
This time he kept his feet, but the statue didn't shift, and Raidou was dying—
"Tousaki, stop!" Kurenai caught at his arm. "You'll break your shoulder before you move that. Summon clones. Or an earth jutsu—"
"I can't," Ryouma gasped. "My chakra—"
But it was there when he reached for it, rushing through his pathways as if it had never drained away. Or been blocked. His hands tingled painfully, like the blood returning to a frozen limb.
Raidou lay on his back, his torso almost completely trapped beneath the statue's base. There was no blood on his mask, or on the one outflung hand.
The statue wasn't big enough to have trapped Genma, too. Why wasn't he here helping?
Kurenai knelt, swiftly pulled off Raidou's mask, and checked his airway. Over her shoulder Ryouma saw Raidou's warm brown eyes wide with pain or fear, but his face wasn't yet purpling. His mouth opened without sound.
Kurenai touched his cheek. "Hold on," she said fiercely, and pushed to her feet.
Six Kakashi clones shoved in around her, grappling at the rounded shoulders of the statue, its enormous paws clutching bowl and bottle. They weren't trying to lift the thing, just stabilize it. Kakashi himself stood behind them, shaping seals blurred with speed.
Rock groaned and shifted. The statue ground down. Raidou made a breathless, desperate noise, like a kitten squashed underfoot. Kurenai shouted, but Kakashi had already stopped, his hands frozen in the terminating Ram seal.
"Raikiri," he said.
Kurenai shook her head. Her face was bloodless white, her eyes like wounds. "The rock could shatter. He'd be ripped apart."
"Water," Ryouma said. His voice scratched in his throat. "If we soften the soil—"
He reached for the river, felt Kakashi do the same. Water arched up like ribbons and seeped down again into the soil beneath Raidou, softening and loosening the hard ground. Not too fast, or he'd sink down and be buried just as surely—
The statue lurched down again despite the clones' grips, grinding another horrible sound out of Raidou. The clones' shoulders strained, rounding like bows. A tendon popped. One clone cried out and blew away in smoke.
This wasn't working. Ryouma threw a desperate glance at Kakashi. "Can you split it? Without killing him?"
Kakashi's skin was paper-pale above the mask. His eye darted over the statue, down to Raidou, back to Ryouma. "Get back."
He pushed up his eyepatch.
Kurenai pulled Ryouma back. Two more clones burst.
Chakra lit like blue-white lightning in Kakashi's hand. It hissed and sizzled, throwing off arcing sparks that withered the grass where they struck. One of the remaining clones looked back, then bent its head again and strained against the statue.
Kakashi moved like wind, like a lightning-strike, almost too fast to see. A searing trace of light, and then the crack of splitting stone — and then smoke, obscuring the world again. Ryouma lunged forward.
Kurenai's wind jutsu cleared the air. The statue was gone, and Kakashi's clones with it. Kakashi had stumbled several paces beyond, his Raikiri burning a furrow into the soil. And Raidou dragged in a lungful of air, coughed, and rolled halfway onto his side.
Ryouma dropped beside him. "Are you okay? Can you breathe?" That was stupid, Raidou was breathing, in huge raw gulps. Ryouma reached for his armor buckles. |
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