| [Jul. 8th, 2012|04:42 am] |
He tried to envision the chakra coils threaded through every line of her body, the way they would be on an anatomy chart. What could they have done to her in Kumogakure that would have caused her chakra to go on permanent overload? Maybe it was like the taijutsu technique of opening gates? But that technique tore apart muscles and organs, not the coils. It liberated the energy that held cells together and turned it into chakra. It wasn’t sustainable.
But maybe, if her ‘scientist’ had found a way to make it sustainable, that much chakra coursing through her coils over time would damage them.
“I don’t understand,” Genma said, staring at the midnight lights of Konoha in the streets fanned out below them. “Is it a gate thing? What do you mean disintegrating? If your coils are being damaged by the overload, how is better control supposed to help? Shouldn’t they be trying to fix the overload at the source?”
"The seal itself is disintegrating," Katsuko answered. "When it does, my coils will collapse along with it. If I lose control during a jutsu, or mess up a hand seal, or…" She waved a hand in the air in a vague circle. "Or mess up, really, the seal will just fall apart.” Her voice was calm and matter-of-fact, at odds with the dreadful scenario she described. “If I can manage to avoid doing that, they figure I've got months. Maybe even a year, year-and-a-half. If I'm lucky."
“If you’re lucky?” Genma stared hard at her profile, at the breeze tousling her hair back in dark strands, at the placid fall of her lip and the way the moonlight picked up the barest hint of a worried crease in her brow.
I’m looking at a dead woman, he thought suddenly. She wasn’t just facing the staggering odds of disability or early death that came with wearing ANBU’s spiral on her shoulder: she was sitting there talking about being lucky to live another year before violence that was done to her in the service of Konoha when she was barely past puberty finally caught up with her.
He didn’t even think about what he was doing, he just raised one arm and draped it over her shoulders, pulling her against his side as if the night were chilly. She stiffened in confusion, then reached up to pat him awkwardly on the back and leaned against him, accepting the gesture even if she didn’t understand it.
Next to him her chakra burned like a furnace, bright and brassy and sharp-edged, like a saw-toothed blade. It was almost uncomfortable, like a too-bright light in his peripheral vision. Her face turned up towards his in a question, but he didn’t have an answer for her. He just shrugged and shook his head, not letting go.
“Bastards,” he said at length, because there was nothing else he could say. “It’s not okay. I’m not... I’m not okay with that.” |
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