AN at bottom
Disclaimer: I no own Naruto
Warnings: violence, swearing, blood, a tough of gore, death, depression/desperation
Beta: MadameGuillotineTheSeraph
Chap 12 When the Match Strikes
Flames seemed to almost lick the overcast sky in pitiful bursts, its roar drowned out by the sheer cacophony of howling wind, certainly a contrasting scene compared to the desperate battles going on below.
I stood there on the crest of a low sloping sand dune, still garbed in the traditional Suna cloak, as I detachedly watched the Kinme clan compound (home, yet so much more), burn. If I tried hard enough, I could almost imagine the chakra backlash from the battle (not massacre, the clan is strong…) smothering me (oh Kami-sama!).
Neither of my female teenage companions uttered a sound, though they didn't seem shocked, just a slightly resigned and frustrated aura radiated from them, their hands entwined together for a semblance of reassurance. Scar however, was straight in contrast to the girls, shaking fists clenching and unclenching at his sides as his chakra seethed with anger (and fear, so much fear). His partner, a pale sand-coloured creature, almost reeked with despair.
Hisao-san only spat out a tch'd, though his emotions were still indiscernible to me, as I wouldn't tear my eyes away from ahead. Then he carefully used his own chakra to cloak all of our signatures, the abrupt absence of our chakras to my senses unbalancing me for all of a second, but the sudden removal of my chakra sense thankfully hadn't affected my other senses.
Heat still drifted over the horizon from the remnants of a dying sun, the sharp tang of blood permeated the air, and sound of ricocheting metal and explosions were too much, too many contradictions to the mostly peaceful aura associated with my clan, and more importantly home.
Truly, it was like staring at a train wreck (rooted to the spot, unable to run away) as I absentmindedly took notice of a conversation taking place next to me, mainly consisting of furious whispers and repeated negatives.
Orochi and kaa-chan and Manda and Hikaru and Sugiryuu and Ume are all down there with everyone else…
To get to the underground clan compound, it appeared that the Suna nin had ripped open the metaphorical stomach cavity of the desert leaving us bare, as some regions of the sand had been superheated (I thought Suna didn't have many lightning-natured users… a collaboration?) to the extent of creating fulgurite veins that held the sand away from the battle.
Due to our vantage point, the sun setting to our 8 o'clock, we could clearly observe the process of how the sand was methodically ripped away from the area above the compound previously, and how all of that sand was now shoved into superheated dunes tens of meters tall that surrounded it approximately in a two-hundred meter radius. Shards of glass (fulgurite, my brain supplied unhelpfully) glinted in the remaining piles of sand, the product of the intense heat.
We were sitting ducks, or in this case, fire-breathing cacti rooted to the bottom of an unforgiving desert.
The sole fragment of good news was that our clan was probably warned beforehand, as bodies of dead Suna shinobi littered the slopes that steepened towards our compound. As the Kinme are a clan of enthusiastic scientists, not to mention ninja, they can be quite creative with traps, among other preparations when forewarned, though that fact hadn't relieved me as much as I hoped.
Whatever, if we don't get to choose the battleground, we'll just change it to our advantage.
(Hisao-san's partial bird summons suddenly seemed a bit more important)
Occasionally, bursts of smoke materialize into being, whether they are caused by snakes being summoned, unsummoned, or corpses of precious clan members being retrieved by our partnered snake summons, I will never know. However a sudden shadow of the few behemoth boas in our company made quite an impressive entrance, as was the golden chakra chains that would flash every few seconds.
Glad to know the Uzumaki is still kicking, to say the least.
And then I realized that the wind from the sudden displacement of air courtesy of the appearance of the no-limbed godzillas was whipping up the hill, a realization that was synchronized with when I heard a particular, purple-coloured, black-striped, now apparently slightly horned giant boa roar in despair.
Oh. Oh no, nononono not again not again Not Again…
A strong hand clamped down on my shoulder as I was about to fall backwards and I instinctively flinched. Not even the coils belonging to my partner around my forearm could prevent panic from setting in, it did assist me in regulating my diaphragm so I could breathe properly again. A choice that I most regretted against the stench of battle that the battle had swept up.
Time set: The week after Yasu Kinme and Kuroryuu's demise.
"Kaa-chan, why wasn't Ume-san with us after –" I choked at the last bit, unable to continue. Yasu-obasan's death had hit my entire little family rather hard, and the entire clan had mourned alongside us. My cousin had smashed his instrumental contraption thing, because to him apparently the only human that had ever tolerated his playing it had just died. Now he's somewhere off in the engineering sector, trying to reconstruct another music maker.(I hope he doesn't become too affected her Ume-san's…permanent absence. Who am I kidding? His mom just died.)
There are reasons why despite most of us still being ninja, the Kinme considers themselves being more science orientated. It's only one of the factors, I'm sure, but less casualties definitely played a role in the transition.
Orochi was sleeping, an afternoon nap with Sugiryuu while kaa-chan and I were taking a break from our physical training.
We were resting mainly because, well, there's a lot of running, dodging, and intense bursts of sparring on my part, while speed training over complicated structures such as dummies on my partner's part. Manda is a hard couch, apparently, with all of his threats of eating her.
Kaa-chan popped a shoulder back into place after her demonstration on how being able to dislocate her own shoulder can be in a fight, a Kinme trait, I'm sure. She stood silent, as if contemplating whether to answer or not.
I was almost certain she wasn't going to answer, before the violet-haired woman decided that moment to speak up.
"Summons are... handy." Was her stilted reply.
That I know of, and so did the rest of my clan, it's part of why we have been tied to the snakes since… whenever the snakes were first tied to humans. I've heard one of the resident "crazies" (despite pretty much all of us being one in some form or other), brag that our clan was the first to contract summons.
Apparently the few Inuzuka I've heard about all beg to differ, as well their close allies, the Hatake.
"Yeah, so?"
Kaa-chan seemed a bit conflicted about my question, for what reason I really don't understand, but she hesitated nonetheless. Perhaps it was her horrible story-telling skills, which inevitably lent itself to her explanations.
She pursed her lips, and put away the katana that she was polishing, the red tassels just a bit frazzled from years of use. Suddenly I realized that my kaa-chan was very young, as in late twenties young. This is what ninja life drove clans to, I thought sadly, people living out the entirety of their lives before reaching forty when there's nothing reassuring a possible tomorrow and many end up dying much earlier.
"Well," she began, "you know how when you were a baby I signed your name in your blood, umm, on an individual summoning scroll?" Her hands waved everywhere to demonstrate me as a baby (awkward rocking motions with her arms), blood (a thumb scoring alongside her other thumb), and summoning scroll, which goes 'ka-boom'. No better way to sum that up, with how she randomly slammed her hand into the training room floor.
I still looked at her in deadpan though, first due to Orochi trying to nap, and second because come on, how was I supposed to remember everything that happened that panicking day when I finally left the summoning realm? It's not like she knows my memories extend past age three, right?
"Ah. Ha, haha…" her laugh trailed off, hinting her nervousness, before sobering up quickly.
"Anyways, for our entire lives, each Kinme is tied to either an individual or a specific group of summons that almost entirely stays in our world, so our chakra system is linked with theirs, rather permanently."
Ehhh...What.
"You've seen how Manda can sort of, umm, you know, henge into different sizes, right?" I nodded numbly, missing tou-chan and his skills at convoying more intellectually stimulating conversation.
"It, uhh, occurs because of two main reasons, both of which are quite important and are crucial to both of our continued health. One," she stuck up a finger, "it's hard for the human half of the summoning contract to keep a larger summon on this side of the contract, as the chakra it needs increases a lot. And I mean, a lot. Summoning works a bit like friction, you know? There's the, uhh, static-y bit and the bit where the thingy is moving and you don't need as much force to move it. The actual summoning takes a lot of chakra, Yin (mental) or Yang (physical) doesn't matter, but once it's done, there's a small, constant drain. All of it is in direct proportions to the size of the summon so –"
I deadpanned at her again, ever so glad that high school physics covered friction and its variables and all that.
"So if Manda was big all the time, you wouldn't have enough chakra?" I cut her off, before I promptly whined in exasperation when I realized what I had done. She only huffed and shook her head before continuing her explanation, probably relieved I got it so quickly if the proud gleam was anything to go by (she probably didn't want to keep nattering on...).
"That, would be correct. But as a result of evolution and all that nature-y stuff that some others dabbled in, we realized that all living creatures go through osmosis, chakra style."
That's it, I'm that close to being done. If she wants to use big words on small kids that shouldn't have knowledge of science classes past, she'll need to teach me when my body doesn't feel like goo from training, it's tiring. Translating in general is tiring.
Then again, if her frantic hand-waving is to go by, kaa-chan probably also realizes that she is slowly losing her lone audience member, it's sort of endearing, honestly.
"What I mean, is that, umm, despite what most think, everyone is always absorbing tiny, tiny amounts of nature chakra all the time, and also releases tiny amounts of their own chakra into atmosphere through their tenketsu."
So, is that how I sense? By 'seeing' the trace amounts of chakra that is emitted by everybody? Then how the hell can people tell the capacity of others through surface 'measurements' so to speak? At least this explanation is easier to understand, despite the questions it raises up. How the heck do they even find this stuff out?
"On another hand, it's why there are native chakra elements to certain regions of the world, as nature chakra can be slightly biased towards certain elements. Going back to what I was trying–" note: trying, "– to explain, our chakra system is so entwined with those of the snake contract that we basically live in a symbiosis chakra exchange partnership." My whining again prompted her to explain symbiosis but it was probably going to happen again.
"As at most half of a whole relationship, us Kinmes provide the snakes with our chakra while they're in our realm, the amount that needs to keep them alive and the amount that they need to live and grow. Because of our linked relationship, they also take chakra from us when they're in the summons realm. The catch is," she took one of my hands and ran it over the scaly ridge of one of her fingers, "they need nature chakra to grow to their full sizes, which their realms are filled with. But like most things in nature, they can't absorb it directly, and need a means to do so."
I could physically feel my jaw dropping, and – oh my kami that makes a heck lot of sense. Like, how summons can grow to oversized wrecking balls of doom and how the more connected a sage is with nature, the less signs they show. The snakes use us as a goddamn chakra filter, like, rude much.
"Humans… are filters?"
Kaa-chan laughed a bit, also snorting at my word choice. "Yeah, sort of. But this is only really crucial during their adolescent age, otherwise, the bits of our chakra and nature chakra that we can link to them under normal circumstances is enough for them to grow. The second they need to go over their normal size limit though, they will start to drain our chakra and strain our "filter-like" properties more. The chakra exchange is both ways to, in order to balance out the human chakra we lose to help filter the nature chakra that we all need, a thread of their chakra shows up in us. Generations later, and here we are!" She spread her arms cackling, and gestured to everything, because that was it, wasn't it? How our lives have become so intrinsically linked with the snakes?
But… "What does this have to do with Ume-san?"
Kaa-chan froze briefly, the smile on her face twitched before dropping into a pouting grimace. "Misdirection trial number thirty-five, fail." Her muttering just barely reached me but I felt a bit vindicated all the same, for apparently no real reason.
This time when she started again though, her golden eyes were blank, and none of the previous mirth or humour present. "When one side of the bond dies, the other feels it as a sudden chakra fluctuation. Actually, it's... much worse than a mere chakra fluctuation. It's like a giant imbalance? I think? Umm, for example, if the human side of the bond died, then the snake side would suddenly lose the filter, or in other cases, have a sudden influx of nature chakra. No matter what people say, the dead do have chakra, if only the tiny Yang bit that they have left, unlike Yin chakra which is connected to the soul, spirit, or whatever, Yang chakra takes time to dissipate.
"So, ermm, the entire amount of the remaining Yang chakra suddenly becomes completely available as a filter instead of the little we can spare in order to stay alive, which... kind of lets a lot of nature chakra into the bond? At the same time? Then as summons, all of the excess chakra is converted into growth. That's why if a Kinme is killed in a surprise attack without using any of their chakra, well. Their partner would essentially growth spurt their way into a behemoth. A crazy one at that, because the sudden loss of what amounts to a soul-partner, turns them a bit crazy."
I thought back to the eyeless serpent that I had once happened upon in the snakes' realm, and shuddered. He lost half of his soul…
And then the question that I was a bit dreading, once I realized that in no way, shape or form, did Sugiryuu appear in the canon dimension. "What happens… if...if the snake died?" Simply because I can no longer imagine a life without Dōsukēru anymore.
"Why," her eyes crinkled, pulling at the violet markings around her eyes, "did you think we'd be fine with a hole in our souls?" There was no mirth to her tone, just sad acceptance. Is that also what tou-chan had to live with?
Time resume: Present
My stomach rebelled, and I nearly lost the sparse amount of food that I had ingested on the way… home.
Was it still home? Home isn't filled with screaming and ashes and crying and loss oh kami why.
Hisao-san whispered into my ear, his grip on my shoulder bone tight. "Suijami, Dōsukēru, I'm going to have you two go with Shuichi –" Scar, my brain tacked on helpfully, albeit a bit softly, "to where Mi will direct you, there will be a caravan waiting and all of the others not here will be there. Run, and we'll take care of any pursuers."
Yeah, my brain isn't going to process nothing for a bit though, no matter how anyone explains things, even if it is Hisao-san with a straight answer for once.
"Kaa – Kaa-chan just died, I need to help Ma–a–anda, he needs his head and I – I can help, he sounds sad and angry and ha-ha-lf his s-soul is gone!" My voice rose into a pitching wail, and it was testimony to the horrid fighting that not a single enemy shinobi noticed.
I think there may have been snot and tears flowing down my face, but the wind was starting to bite, and the smells singed the skin just as much.
Hisao-san growled, growled at me, fangs bared, willing for the child that just lost their last human parent (Manda is honestly just a non-human uncle) to get the tiniest bit of pent-up emotion out of their system, but not patient enough to let me cry until I calm. For all he knows, that could take hours. For all that I know, it may take days.
Crouching down to my eye level, his hands gripping my arms (Dōsukēru had her head poking out of my collar), he declared,
"The Kinme clan has survived before, and it will survive again. Some will be lost, but even science is but built on the dead, much less mere mortals like us, no matter how much chakra defies normal physics. So go with Shuichi, who will be directed by Mi on the path that you shall run."
He stood up, turned me around, and pushed me away from home. "And run you shall, for night time in deserts never favours the snakes despite how it's a misleading cloak".
Somewhere on the snarky side of my brain, I distantly heard the cerebrum cortex mutter dramatics, the lot of them.
"But–"
"Run along now, or else our pursuers are going to catch up. You haven't forgotten the rules yet, have you?" Guidelines more like.
How could I forget the rules? Even if they're merely mislabelled traditions, they are always, always, followed without fault. The one pertaining to this case would be that children under eight years of age are not allowed to participate on missions with a sure chance of combat, and those under twelve are not allowed onto shinobi "war" zones.
Scar's hands were clammy when he grabbed mine, and he tugged none too gently, furious at himself for not being old enough to help in the battle, and instead assigned to 'escort' a six-year old. His stress must do wonders on his cooking, or was it the other way around? None of us had cooked when we were in Suna, preferring take-out and other foods, but if our chef's… experimental "delicacies" were of any mention, well.
When further prompting turned to furious tugs at a nearly unresponsive six-year old, Scar huffed and reached over to flick my nose.
Frankly, Dōsukēru was either in a protective and/or grieving mode and she did not appreciate people messing with her human right after losing a surrogate mother, so she reared out of my collar and butted away his hand. Only careful restraint allowed her to not lash out with fangs and venom, only god knows how much pain and poison the Kinme share already.
Nonetheless, I took a step, then another, and finally another. Within five more strides, I was running, looking back after every second or so step, confident that Scar wouldn't let me fall.
At the tenth stride, I was flat out sprinting, and only then did I let the built up screams release. " Fight! Live! May the odds –" and that would be the point at where Scar slapped a hand over my running mouth.
The bloody sun though, it seemed to laugh at us, as it set behind the carnage that had families ripped apart. Its rays all but mocked me when the glare all but prevented me from getting one last glimpse of home. Fat lot of good that does me, just more trauma to compartmentalize and sift through later.
Shut up brain, nobody here needs you.
If the expression Scar had was any indication, his last tries to see our home again proved just as futile.
We had been running, then jogging, then walking, then sprinting again for kilometres, our inconsistent pace set by our (my) limited bodies. I could no longer tell the time, what with the sun at our backs then not at all, and the air was rapidly starting to freeze. I could feel Dōsukēru curling her way around my waist through the thin shirt-like clothing I wore between my skin and the cloak, but even then none of them provided enough insulation against the desert-night. All of my chakra was dedicated so that I could just make that one step further, and subsequently a lowering in body temperature. Her drowsiness in her chakra was a laden thing that promised to drag us into sweet oblivion, which I really didn't want to refuse. Too much death too much toomuch.., mental thoughts touching barely concealed hysteria.
Not for the first time, Scar sneezed, his head twitching in order to try to contain it and not jostle Mi. The tiny coiled thread snake sat among silver-white bristles of hair– much like how she used to curl up in the nest that was Hisao-san's – directing us onwards, tinkering with our direction every so often. According to the first and last stilted conversation we tried to have, she was the tracker of Hisao's nest, her siblings capable of feats different from her.
We all pretended to not notice her desperate attempts to look back (maybe to find her possibly dead partner and siblings my treacherous mind whispered), or how she flinched every time her chakra flickered without her control.
It was definitely at least an hour of numb silence and frigid tension later that Mi motioned for us to stop, and she dropped off of Scar, her chakra pulsing in what seemed to be a signal.
I took a look around us, having not paid too much attention in my grief induced delirium. No longer were we completely surrounded by dunes, but instead by shallow canyons and equally height-stunted hills that were framed by random pillars of sandstone. Knee-high shrubbery dotted the seemingly wasteland and I could swear that there were cactus-like plants in the distance, if only my eyes could see properly again…
At least night-vision is decent, what with the stars and all. A moon would've been even better, but beggars can't be choosers. Perhaps our clan was purposely attacked on a moonless light, who knows?
Stopping unfortunately meant that we weren't moving, and the sweat that had accumulated quickly turned a temperature that really might give me frostbite.
"We there ye–et?" Dōsukēru's speech was slurred and soft and I honestly wasn't surprised. Either she was nearly asleep, or the cold was getting to her. I can vouch on both aspects, we haven't rested once beyond the two or three minutes we got when our group had arrived at our clan compound, an impossibility in my old world, but completely normal here.
"I think so?" I replied still unsure, rubbing my hands quickly for that bit of friction generated warmth, I pressed my now warmer palms to where I knew her head was and a couple inches down from her neck. She probably needs the heat more than I, considering her actual biology, and considering how my chakra circulation was focused on in my legs to provide speed instead of the warmth that would've been quite needed.
Multitasking with chakra can sometimes be a tad… messy.
Then a flush of dry, warm, rocky chakra washed over the area, the ground opens in front of Mi, and I gape a little. My partner also squirmed up from around my waist to poke her head out of my collar (and only her head), tongue flicking out once before staying firmly in her mouth.
Scar had automatically settled into a defensive stance, what appeared to be a curved haladie blade clutched in his right hand and a fistful of senbon in the other, spaced evenly between his digits in a practiced move. His partner had also woken up, the cobra spreading his hood in an aggressive display and hissing menacingly at the figure rising from the hole in the sandstone-like ground. It would've been funny with how the cobra was legitimately half asleep, but humour has been evading me for the past few hours.
It was the soft-looking, black-haired Yuki that had passed me an ice-cube what seemed like ages ago in line to hire a genin team. A team of children that might now be associated with the downfall of the Kinme clan…
The Yuki's brown eyes sparkled when they alighted on me, and the armour-clad ice-wielder offered me a smile, before smirking at an abashed looking Scar? What the heck?
"Now there, Shuichi, it wouldn't do you any good if you're so tense the entire way."
I blinked at the lack of honorifics.
"And you two must be Suijami-chan and Dōsukēru-chan." The Yuki clapped once, and motioned for us to all shuffle closer to the hole in the ground. Imagine my surprise when I realized that there was a river down there, flowing through an underground cavern.
"I'm Mako, and I'll be your escort through the Yuki-waterway today."
I stared, and the icy-cold/sweet-frost chakra of Mako flickered, bright like the glare on snow, and tinged with sadness. Ohh. She knows.
If even a non-clan-member knows, how many knew that the Kinme were going to be attacked? How long did they prepare? Why didn't they run? Was it a matter of kami-damned pride?
…I just don't know.
So when the brown-eyed Yuki stepped up, I took a step back, and suddenly we all heard the barely noticeable footfalls on sand, no longer obstructed by a pillar of sandstone behind us, or in front of Mako.
Gold-eyes glinted out from underneath a hood when we whirled around, the only definable feature visible from the bloodstained cloak and scarf that adorned the figure. Even then, the chakra was unmistakably Hisao-san's, even if a bit skewed, and notably weaker.
Scar visibly relaxed his grip on his weapons (again) but Mi looked confused, head tilting left and right as if squinting to look for something. I just sniffed the air, it bit my nose sure, cold always did, but underneath the copper tang of blood was still the faintest hint of coffee. So, I'm quite sure it's Hisao-san? Something still seemed wrong though, not to mention his lack of glasses.
"Why, hell~o darling boo," crooned the Yuki, "took you a bit, didn't it? Now, are others going to meet us back up in Taki?"
The eyes blinked, and Hisao-san's head dipped in a nod (oddly stiffened, if not too silent).
Then Mako-san surprised us all when four icicles spun into existence from a hip flask at with a single hand seal, and propelled themselves (weaving around Scar and I) at Hisao-san with a snarl of anger. It was only when Mi gave a hiss of outrage at her partner did I know that something was dreadfully, kami–damned, wrong.
The wrongness was intensified when the merchant didn't move, and simply allowed the glorified ice spears stab into his chest, stomach, right shoulder, and left foot, I gagged, and could feel bile rise up in my throat yet again.
Then all the bile came out in a wet splatter when the spears ripped out again, only to reveal a perforated corpse.
It tasted like blood and ashes and acid and smelled like nothing pleasant, vomit now dripping through my facial orifices. Damn my sense of smell.
Mi wailed a screeching cry, and launched herself through the sand, practically flying to where her partner's corpse stood, for it stood, despite the multiple not-so friendly looking holes.
Then the world exploded in sand.
Clattering sounds filled the night, and I wiped my face using my Suna-grade cloak (not going to wear one ever again) and channelled chakra to my palms, puffs of smoke signifying the unsealing of twin daggers.
The chef in-training next to me, however, had never dismissed his weapons. He took a familiar stance and swiftly slide a blade of the haladie over his left arm. It cut easily through the cloak, and the gentle glow emitted by the now chakra-infused weapon easily illuminated the black curling marks of a summoning seal. Who did he lose? I wondered briefly, then laughed inwardly at my own morbid humour, perhaps everyone, soon.
But children are not known for their chakra capacities, no matter the gender, training, or clan heritage, and Scar was no different.
I could feel his chakra flare once he ran a bloodied thumb – flying debris had cut a gash over his chin – over the mark, like a beacon for the precious few instants that it took for a summon to be brought over to the human realm. The snake did not disappoint, a glowing white bulk that for an instant obscured the enemy. At least, before Scar doubled in agony as white blots started crystallizing upon the opened sleeve.
The fact that the snake was white said enough.
In this world, natural albino snakes are practically unheard of, especially when they were summons. Most shinobi choose to kill whatever snake that they see, the serpents too long associated with my clan. Even if not affiliated, the possibility of a venomous snake getting somewhere it shouldn't discourages people from keeping snakes alive, unless they are poison experts and want to harvest the venom.
Then it could either be better or worse.
Thankfully, nobody usually goes out of their way to kill snakes, but enough humans and predators pretty much ensured that all the non-summoning snakes are hard to find.
Among the summonings though, white snakes are the ones with the highest chakra capacity, best in their fields, and hardest to kill. They are also the ones that can absorb the most latent nature chakra without human filters. The white ones could be either born the way they are, or bleached by a latter day occurrence.
In other words, they're a bit similar to sages, sages that have lost their partners through an act of kamikaze to save them (they weren't always the colour of bleached bones). The downside is that the amount of chakra required to keep any type of sage-summon in our realm is exponentially larger, and requires a hell lot more filtered nature chakra. Then to compensate for a larger so-called "filter-surface" and our intruding onto the fringes of sage-territory without proper training we grow scales, the first step to turning to a stone snake.
At least we weren't connected with toads.
According to some of the elders, you can tell how many times a Kinme was pushed beyond their normal summoning capacities by counting their scales. Generally, children below the age of twelve don't have any, despite occasional twinges that tells us where the transformation might start from when our chakra is strained. I only have an inkling of where mine might be, but if it proves true, well. I will be losing a lot of flexibility, it's not like scales can be removed.
But that doesn't matter now, as Scar has fallen over, white glitter-like scales climbing up his arms, and his partner writhing on the ground as chakra is almost visibly siphoned off of them.
The white snake bellowed, and lunged, chakra furious and mad and hurt and filled with too much regret.
It took a chunk of the desert with it.
Despite the large summon's speed and girth, puppets are notoriously hard to fight, and more so when it's a team of puppeteers. But when the snake is mostly immune to most poisons, and when the scales can block most of the smaller projectiles that the puppets were pumping out, the fight seems a bit more on equal footing.
When the battlefield was briefly visible, I counted in total four puppets and three sand-cloaked puppeteers, painted visages bared for the world to see. One of the puppets was the corpse of Hisao-san, roughly hewn blocks of wood encircled his wrists and ankles while other less visible puppet parts littered the body.
A rush job.
I could hear a strangled whimper from Dōsukēru when she set her eyes on the mangles corpse of Mi, bloody and in pieces with guts everywhere, senbon littered the cadaver in a horrifyingly precise manner. Threadsnakes were never visibly imposing, but her death made her all the smaller. At least she can join her nest mates in death, I thought stiffly, no way are they still alive.
My feet were stiff, frozen as I watched the harrowing battle play out, unable to will myself into action.
A scorpion shaped puppet dipped low, aiming to manoeuvre around the snake, only to be quickly recalled when a tail swung through the area between it and its puppeteer. The other puppets ganged up on the summon while their puppeteers inched around, desperately keeping their weapons between them and the snake.
We all knew that if the snake got a fang on them, they would be as good as dead.
They, unfortunately, also knew that the once-merchant's body made for a good shield against what once was an ally.
The white snake, however, could only block so many of the enemies at the same time, and time was running out if the way Scar was convulsing was any indication. I did the only logical thing available to me at the time.
Seal one dagger, sheathe the other by threading it into my cloak, scoop up Scar, his partner, and run like hell towards the Yuki snarling for a "Katsuki-baka" to get his ass up here and fight against a puppeteer that had circled around.
This is around where I got very confused around the sequence of events, as my plan didn't even make it to the first phase.
The clan mate that I was lugging on my shoulder potato–style gave a full-body spasm before I felt something in his chakra go snap, his partner similarly went limp in the hand that I was cradling him in, and the white snake vanished in an eruption of summoning smoke, leaving three very dead humans, and three very broken puppets, Mi and Hisao-san's desecrated corpse nowhere to be found, and a very scared adult-child.
But somewhere in between, the ground had trembled, and the desert erupted with bones.
Kaguya.
AN: School is evil, so is IB, and it devours time like a hungry python. Uni applications are annoying too, lol. Anyways, screw the update scheduale until my life makes sense again/
Would anyone like more of the soul mark au? Or any other prompts for omakes? Cuz I dunno if it should be continued.
Now posted on ao3 as well!
Bug me on tumblr, details on my profile or previous chapters.
Happy (belated) New Year!
Please leave a review on the way out, they are love~!
~Cadriona Morningwing
Uploaded: January 11, 2017 (or, 1/11/17