| Three is a Crowd. Four is a Pain in the Tail. [closed to Tsume, Raidou, Genma] | [Apr. 17th, 2008|06:53 pm] |
Directly follows/continuation of Three is a Crowd. Four is a Massacre.
Time passed.
Kuromaru wasn't great at telling time beyond animal instinct. The storm fouled his ability to measure with the accuracy he needed to know how many minutes were sliding by. The watch helped, though he found it difficult to read. He peered at it, puzzling out hands and numbers, waiting for the right time.
She'd been gone too long. Not longer than three hours, but longer than he believed the trail would hold. Two hours passed, and he watched the freezing storm with mounting anxiety. They wouldn't find her in this weather, if something had gone wrong. She would hole up. She knew how to den in, stay safe until movement was possible again. He realized he was whining and stood, pacing to the door and outside, trying to find her trail just beyond the ice where Genma had tossed dirty water.
He couldn't, of course. Her trail was long since dead. Kuromaru howled. Nothing responded except wind and lashing rain. He returned to the fire, eying the men absently, pondering Raidou. The watch ticked. One ear flicked toward the entranceway.
It had been too long. The hands crept around, reaching the two and a half hour mark. He growled softly at the little bit of machinery, as if that could change something.
Chakra pulled and warped between him and his absent familiar. She was alive. He didn't think, given the amount of energy she was using, that she was holed up. He wasn't pleased about that, and yet he was glad she was coming back.
He hoped she was coming back.
The humans talked quietly, a word here and there, outwardly calm. He could smell the underlying tension that spoke of readiness to go out.
The hands crept past the two and a half hour mark.
The first time he heard it, he couldn't be sure it wasn't the wind. Kuromaru's head snapped up, ears pricking as if by straining alone he might hear it again. He waited, counting heartbeats. Five, six, before it rose again, so faint he doubted the humans had caught anything.
His claws scrabbled against the stone and he shot outside, howling back, tearing into the storm like a killer on the hunt.
The cave entrance remained dark for a long while. Five more minutes passed, and another two after that. Then it melted from the storm, wet and bedraggled, tail curled between hind paws that were tucked up close, tiny mincing steps on legs shaking so hard that the sound of nails against stone was a constant rasping. Its head hung, ears pressed flat against its skull, ice hanging in strands off belly fur and glittering deep in the soaked coat, balled around muzzle, stained red where it had caked the front feet.
Kuromaru followed the wolf, nearly twice its size, harrying at hind legs to keep it moving forward.
"Fire," Kuromaru growled when the beast's legs nearly gave out at the door. He darted forward, grabbed a hank of skin and fur at the scruff of the smaller wolf's neck, and dragged it closer to the flame.
Legs did buckle, then, and it laid straight down on its belly, giving up on even curling into a ball to conserve heat.
Kuromaru leaped over it, laying out along it's body on the side opposite the fire, and started rapidly licking ice off ears and face. "Change back," he growled.
The wolf shivered and keened and managed a long, quiet, "Cold," that was more howl than word.
"I know," Kuromaru answered soothingly. "And the fur's served you well. Now change back. Skin dries faster." There was an order in the words, an assumption that he would be obeyed.
Chakra flared and flickered erratically. The smaller wolf howled as joints twisted, tendons gone stiff with cold now forced to stretch and elongate. The howl changed to a human yell as neck and throat warped, vocal chords changing. Hind legs re-bent, growing in length and snapping backwards out of the hock formation, forward into knees.
Tsume lay, panting through the last of the pain, biting back a whimper. Her hair was iced through. More ice came off of her clothes, falling out of the folds of her shirt and pants in chunks. Her gloves were gone, and blood flowed sluggishly from multiple lacerations starting as small, clean marks at the base of her thumb and traveling up her arm, to one that was deep and ragged. After that they stopped being slices and became puncture wounds; twisted out of shape now and bleeding once more, but clearly they could have been teeth marks before the change had torn them.
Her lips and nails had gone blue, her skin as pale as a day-old corpse. She shivered uncontrollably.
Kuromaru put a paw on her back, rolling her to her side. She curled into a fetal position. The red tattoos were garish down her cheeks; deadly talon marks making her skin seem whiter still.
"Stay awake," Kuromaru snapped, and began licking the ice out of her hair near her temples, her face, her neck.
The heat of his mouth dragged her back from the edge, burning like hot irons. She struggled weakly, only to feel his paw pin her hair and stop her from being able to turn her head away. Unconsciousness flirted, dancing around the edges of her vision, tempted closer in the shadows cast by the fire. "H-hurts," she managed, closing her eyes against tears that burned just as scorchingly as Kuromaru's tongue.
"Get the clothes off," he said, though whether he was talking to her or the men was impossible to tell.
Tsume lifted an arm to fumble at her armor, responding more to the tone of voice than anything. Her hands were numb, her fingers unresponsive; she couldn't have worked the buckle anyway.
"Not you! You stay awake!" he snarled, and licked her face once in reprimand.
"'M 'wake." She clung to the searing heat of his tongue and the hot coal of the flames. She felt like she was burning, and had to tell herself it was only that she was too cold. Sensations vied for her attention, overwhelming and painful on too many levels. She shivered, and when she heard the whimper through the chatter of teeth she tried to bite it off. Everything hurt, from deep in her cold-constricted bones to the flesh that felt like it was blistering away. She pushed weakly to escape the fire, but Kuromaru's bulk stopped her. She wasn't very close to it, anyway.
"You used too much chakra," the canine growled. "Shouldn't have."
She had? She had. Riding the knife edge of burn-out now, coming down off solider pills, staring into the cold, dark whirlpool that wanted badly to pull her under. Chakra depletion. But there had been a reason. A hint of her former wildness crept into a bare smile, showing off gums nearly as white as her teeth. Her lower lip split, and red welled up to match the tattoos before dripping slowly down the line of her mouth. She could barely speak, stuttering as she shivered, but the attempt kept her awake. "I sh-should've stopped the j-jutsu to k-keep me warm? Or the o-one to mark-k the t-trail?" she alternately croaked and whispered.
Kuromaru didn't answer. They both knew he had no response. |
|