| [Jun. 10th, 2013|05:21 am] |
The hospital was still standing. That meant that probably most of Konoha was, because the hospital was about as central as you got: two blocks away from the Hokage’s Palace, five minutes’ run from the Academy, a short jog from Intel’s main offices. Nightshift medics and anxious-eyed patients flurried around the red-tiled circle in the corner of the lobby where the Hokage landed them; somewhere a bell began to ring.
“Shut that down,” the Hokage said sharply. Someone jerked a guilty finger away from a button and pressed another one. The bell cut off, and ordinary sounds filtered back: a child crying, footsteps on tile, a querulous old man asking what the hell was going on. The flurry had resolved itself into a thin, wide-eyed crowd ringing the Hokage’s translocation circle.
Not translocation, Ryouma thought muzzily. Hiraishin no Jutsu, the Flying Thunder God Technique only the Yondaime Hokage—Konoha’s Yellow Flash—could master. He’d taught a variant of it to the jounin, but the real thing was nothing like its reality-skimming stepchild. At least Iori’s green-lit hand on his shoulder kept bile and blood where they belonged.
Braced between the Hokage and the tanuki-masked ANBU, Shiranui, Kakashi looked just as crumpled as Ryouma felt. One of his knees seemed to be trying to buckle. The Yondaime looked down at him, lips thinning, and then up again.
“Is Nohara Rin available?”
“She’s in surgery,” a stocky woman with short-cropped white hair said, pushing through the crowd. “All right, everyone, as you were, nothing to do here...” She shooed them with her hands. Parents with colicky babies and old folks with midnight heartburn began to shuffle shamefacedly away. A few uniformed shinobi, back from a mission with bloody bandages tied around wounds too minor for immediate surgery, stayed where they were. The white-haired woman eyed them direly, but turned back. “What’s our status, Yondaime-sama?”
“Poisoning,” the Hokage said, with a gentle little shake of Kakashi’s shoulder. “Probably stupidity as well—his and mine—though I don’t think anyone’s invented a pill for that yet.” He looked back to Ryouma. |
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