| [May. 28th, 2009|08:01 pm] |
Chakra bonds snapped like old bowstrings, whiplashing back into her tenketsu. If she cried out, she couldn't hear it over the roaring rapids. Spray blinded her; a strong arm crushed her against a shattered chest-plate. When she twisted, fighting to break free, fighting to see, steel scraped against the chipped ceramic surface of her mask. One narrow eye-hole offered a slice of bleeding shoulder, black shirt and white strap and a sword shoved carelessly through...
The idiot had completed the mission, retrieved the sword, and come back for her.
And her added weight had thrown off whatever delicate balance of chakra and speed he'd found to run on white-water. He reeled into the cliff wall again with his next step, and one foot sank to the knee in the churning water. Natsumi threw her left arm around his neck, clenched her frozen fingers in his shoulder-strap, and filled her lungs one last, desperate time before the river took them both.
The water seemed warmer this time, the current faster. Natsumi warded them off another submerged boulder with a jolt that burned like fire through her broken hand. A sunken snag shredded her knee; her ribs creaked under Asuma's iron grip. His chakra crackled over her skin. They broke the surface again, and Asuma flattened a blue-burning hand on the raging water and shoved.
He made it only chest-high out of the water before the cresting rapid collapsed and dropped them again, but that was enough to see what lay ahead. |
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