| [Jun. 10th, 2013|04:56 am] |
Raidou barely had time to throw an arm around Ryouma, bracing him, before the Yellow Flash ripped open a hole in the universe and shoved them all through it. There was a dizzy, wretched moment of passing through intense cold and howling white noise, then the air lurched and popped like the moment before an earthquake, and they landed on a dry wooden floor.
Genma staggered, going down on one knee. Raidou’s stomach turned over. Iori let out a long, slow breath.
Sagara-sama and Kakashi both looked unaffected, presumably used to being dragged through Hell’s half-acre and back again.
Against Raidou’s shoulder, Ryouma made a dry choking sound and clapped his good hand to his face. Raidou turned hastily, expecting a lost lunch and subsequent unpleasantness, but Ryouma wasn’t heaving—he was bleeding. Red strings dripped between long, unsteady fingers and splattered his jounin vest, and Raidou had an acute moment of panic before Iori spoke.
“Tip your head forward, Tousaki,” she said.
Nosebleed, Raidou realized. Ryouma hadn’t just randomly burst both lungs.
Relieved, he ruffled a hand through Ryouma’s sweaty black hair before he realized he really shouldn’t, but then it was too late. “Can’t catch a break today, can you?” he said.
Ryouma shook his head very carefully, and mumbled past his fingers, “S’'my secret plan to impress you all. With how good I am at bein' rescued.”
“If I may interrupt,” Iori said, touching green-glowing fingertips to the bridge of Ryouma’s nose. The blood flow ceased instantly.
“Rousing success so far,” Raidou said dryly, and raised his eyes to the room.
Sagara-sama had moved to Kakashi and Yondaime-sama, standing slightly off-set from the two men, but clearly waiting to be let in on the details of whatever threat Kakashi had decided outranked ANBU clearance.
Genma was still braced on one knee, but his masked face lifted to focus on Kakashi—itching to get healing hands on him, Raidou bet.
And in the corner, seated at a paper-stacked desk and staring at them through a blue-swirled squirrel mask, was Hajime. Behind him, a map clustered with pins had been tacked to the wall.
At his feet, Akiyama’s body bled gently onto the floorboards.
Raidou lifted his free hand. “Hey, Base.”
After a moment, Hajime returned the wave. “Hey.”
“I need to attend to these tendons before they get the chance to retract further,” Iori said, unsplinting Ryouma’s wrist and wrapping chakra-haloed hands around the ugly red scar. She raised her voice. “Tanuki, watch Hatake. He should keep for a minute, but grab him if he goes down.”
Genma nodded, stood, and moved just in range of Kakashi. |
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