| [Jul. 20th, 2010|01:27 am] |
A cloud of billowing steam rose up where molten metal impacted waterlogged earth. The storm's fury immediately lessened, now spreading its ire impartially across the landscape rather than focusing in a knot of rage wherever they happened to be standing. Darting from shadow to shadow, tracing the path of the gleaming and deadly projectile back towards its source, Rina cast about among the trees for Genma.
There, behind that boulder! But a barrage of glittering needles proved the lie, biting deep into her shoulder and left hip, glancing off the thick material of her vest. With a wince, she pulled them out and sent them back, following an instant later with four kunai and four everpresent tags, fluttering and white. She could just make out an outlined shape, camouflaged against the angles of the rock, trapped inside the circle of her explosives.
The tags didn't go off. Rina's lips curved into an adrenaline-charged grin, and she held tight to a fifth sheet of inked paper.
With a shudder, the ground beneath her began to convulse, forcing her to leap and cling to a hanging tree branch with one hand, clenching the tag between her teeth. Changing the branch's contact point to her feet, she pressed her fingers into seals, whipping the falling rain and hail into a barrage of needle-point splinters of ice aimed at the hunched shape on the rock.
The other ninja would be wondering when her explosives were going to go off, she knew. If the fuse had failed, or if it was just a bluff. She didn't really care what he thought--so long as he stayed within her circle for just a few extra moments.
With a jolt of chakra to aching feet, she shoved herself off the branch moments before a towering mud cyclone ripped it from the trunk, roaring and gathering pine needles and debris as it chased her in her scramble towards the source of Genma's jutsu. Ten meters, twenty meters--crouch, leap, duck--thirty meters, forty...
As she reached the end of its range, Rina shoved the few last sluggish curls of her chakra into the final strip of inked seal paper.
Four simultaneous explosions split the darkness behind her, and the tornado of churning earth collapsed, lifeless, to the ground. Pillars of flame lent a red cast to the downpour, and Rina used the light to look for Genma. |
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