| [Apr. 20th, 2008|03:55 am] |
"Two. I killed two in combat, and wounded a third badly enough he was out of the fight." Genma's voice picked up a harsh edge. A hint of mania. "The third died afterwards, under questioning. He proved an unsuitable information source." He'd been a kid, maybe a chuunin, only thirteen or fourteen. Only a few years younger than Kakashi, and still with baby-fat in his cheeks and a desperate plea for his life on his lips. Genma had asked him just enough to determine he didn't know anything they didn't already know themselves, then he'd looked at Kakashi, slumped in grief over the blood-soaked carcass of a deep-chested hunting hound; looked at Ayako's ruin of a face, skin peeled back from her skull, ruptured eyeball hanging grotesquely from one socket; looked at Nobuki flayed in half with pink-grey lungs and a purple heart swelling up through his desecrated chest. He'd looked at his own bloody hands, tipped his mask back so the boy could see the face of the man who killed him, and smiled grimly while he crushed his larynx.
"I killed two, disabled the third, and sustained an ankle fracture in combat. I was unaware of the severity at the time. Once the enemy were down, I turned my attention to attempting to save my team." Genma gagged. He hadn't felt that coming. He was telling the woman from Intel what had happened, remembering what he'd seen, what he'd done, and suddenly he felt his stomach seize, felt a hot rush of bile in his throat. It was one sneak attack after another, it seemed. Ambushed by their enemy. Injured without realizing it. Brought in for questions by a Sentry escort from the moment he and Kakashi had shown up at Konoha's Southern Gate, blood-covered and in Genma's case, limping badly. Silent but for the occasional grunt of pain.
He swallowed hard, swallowed again, felt his eyes tearing and his mouth flood with saliva. He was not going to humiliate himself, he thought, and grit his teeth, breathing slowly through his nose. After a moment the nausea receded, and he picked up his cigarette again. Inhaled the smoke which burned in his acid-stung throat.
"I ascertained that Ayako was beyond saving. She still had a pulse, but her injury was too severe to sustain life. She had an open fracture of the skull with partial avulsion of the face." She had been still breathing, a terrible, gurgling sound, as air burbled in and out of her ruined mouth and the hole where her nose should have been. "I terminated her so that she wouldn't suffer."
The sickness came back, sharp and insistent, and Genma shut his eyes and lowered his head to the table, face turned away from Kakashi, from the interviewer. It was the sentry still in the room who pushed a wastebasket towards him. A kindness or a practicality? Genma didn't care. He was past caring. He swallowed again, and used the same willpower that had gotten him home to keep himself from vomiting now. |
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