| [May. 3rd, 2009|07:16 pm] |
"Leave him alone!" Raidou's voice hit its lowest register and bottomed out, crashing around the tiny room. Muscles stood out along his arms and shoulders as he wrenched at his chains, snatching at chakra that wouldn't come. Green-eyes--Rikuto--watched him for a moment, eyebrows raised, then turned and nodded at the silent man standing by the door.
"If you're done flailing?" he asked dryly, turning back as the man unfurled a scroll with a snap before biting his thumb and dragging a line of blood over the parchment. Smoke rolled out, surrounding him as chakra flared briefly, but when it cleared there wasn't any kind of animal summons waiting for orders; instead, two squat chests carved from dark, polished wood crouched at the ninja's feet. Seals, twisted out of gleaming metal, had been pressed into the lids.
Raidou's mouth went dry.
Mist-nin. A missing Mist-nin, whose picture he'd definitely seen before. Tall, curly-haired, unsmiling, jaw like an anvil and scrolls that summoned chests--
"Sago," said Raidou through gritted teeth. "Sago Masami. I heard you'd died."
The Bingo Book certainly thought so, and everyone who'd seen the black mark through that entry had breathed a sigh of relief. Some people only made the world a better place by leaving it.
"You heard wrong," said Rikuto cheerfully. "Your Intel is impressive, pretty boy. But I'd expect no less from a Leaf-ninja."
Sago grunted once, drawing the eyes of both Mist-nin. He crouched, flicked the lid off one of his chests with a catch of chakra, and withdrew something long and metallic. It gleamed in his hand.
Raidou forced himself to look away and back at the ninja still holding Genma by the throat. "If you don't let him go," he growled, "I'm going to snap off one of your fingers for every bruise he has and feed them to you."
"Scary," the man drawled, and patted Genma's cheek with his free hand. "Bit overprotective for just teammates, aren't you?"
Raidou lunged against his chains again, uselessly, stupidly, tearing the skin at his wrists and ankles, wrenching his shoulders--and found himself suddenly eye to eye with a pair of level brown ones, not unlike his own, beneath a mop of dark curly hair.
"Fire," said Sago quietly, "is something you never forget."
Hands twisted through seals, metal glowed cherry red, and Raidou barely had a moment to think before heat seared the left side of his face and burned sanity away. |
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