| [Feb. 9th, 2011|09:51 pm] |
Plastered against Ginta’s inner thigh, half-crushed beneath Kakashi’s shoulder, Pakkun kept his eyes clamped shut until the rumbling stone settled back down. His nose was choked with dust. When he dared a look around, nothing but dark met his eyes: the seals had finally gone out.
Baiji whimpered faintly. Alarmed, Pakkun scrambled out of his hidey-hole and growled a query. What? What’s wrong?
The response he got wasn’t so much words as a mental picture wrapped up in canine vocal cords, delivered on a strained whine. The roof’s on my back.
Don’t drop it! Pakkun shot back.
Ginta coughed wetly. “Okay,” he said, sounding shaky. “No translocating.”
No kidding, Pakkun didn’t say. Team Bad-Ass had been misnamed. Team Pain-In-The-Ass would have been better. Who booby-trapped an abandoned bunker just in case some poor ninja bastard wandered in? Gods.
“What about other jutsu?” Pakkun asked. “Is it just translocations, or is it everything?”
“I don’t know.” Ginta’s voice rasped and caught; he coughed again. “If I try and it does that again...”
“We’ll call that Plan B,” Pakkun said hastily. He turned blind eyes in Baiji’s direction, towards the sound of grating stone. How’re you doing?
Baiji grunted. Using chakra. The seals aren’t biting me.
“Okay,” said Pakkun to Ginta, “I have good news and bad news.” He waited a beat for Ginta to respond, trying to parse out what the current level of the kid’s shock was, but Ginta said nothing. There was a brush of sound, like a hand moving over stone: Ginta feeling the roof, maybe.
“Baiji’s holding the ceiling up,” Pakkun said. “Part of it, anyway. That’s the bad news. Good news: he’s doing it with chakra. So maybe it’s just translocating that’ll set the trap off--”
He paused suddenly, head twitching to one side, and flicked an ear.
“What?” demanded Ginta. His voice cracked, wound too tight.
“Air,” Pakkun said. “Shush a sec. Something’s changed.” He turned in a tight circle, feeling Ginta’s tension pressing close and Kakashi’s nothingnothingnothing and Baiji’s heavily muscled support, and--
There.
An air current.
Pakkun surged forward, following his nose, and hit a long broken seam in the wall. A handspan wide, a handspan deep, but big enough to squeeze through. Big enough for him, anyway. Especially if he could use chakra.
How long can you hold out? he asked Baiji.
The big mastiff shifted, dragged a huffing breath, and moved in a way that made the ceiling crunch up hard. Pakkun felt the spreading network of a chakra grid seeping up into the stone; a formless, instinctual jutsu, made without seals, cementing the stone together. Dog chakra. Baiji was using it to hold the roof in place.
Do that again, Pakkun said.
Baiji did, forcing the ceiling to glue together like a man whacking dirt flat with a trowel. I can hold it, he said. I think I can. Help coming?
Let’s hope, said Pakkun. He twisted back on himself, seeking Ginta in the darkness. It wasn’t hard; he just had to track the scent of blood, and that barely took three steps.
“I think I’ve found a gap,” he said. “That last shake moved everything about. It’s big enough for me, maybe, and there’s air coming in. I’m gonna try getting out. The village is close; there’ll be people there that can help. Can you keep it together--”
He paused, re-thought, and stretched up on his hind legs until his front paws found Ginta’s shoulder. Until his nose could touch a blood-soaked cheek.
“You will keep it together until I get back. Okay? Because Kakashi’s gonna wake up soon, and he’s gonna need someone sane around.” |
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