025 -- [Action || Voice]
[When Shikamaru heads down to Asuma's apartment Monday morning, he finds it empty of everything but Kurenai's things and a silver lighter standing on the table. It's wrong, but he doesn't give in to the false hope.
Of course it would stay. Even though Shikamaru gave it back to him, the lighter stopped being Asuma's the moment he picked it off his dying body.
Kurenai must've stepped out before it happened. She's a ninja, and not so senseless to have left the door wide open and run off in her grief. And so he waits for her, and tries to find his words.
After he leaves Kurenai, he has to tell Ino. Team 8 he'll find in person too - he has a request for them on top of this. It's been too long since they've heard a stir from their enemies.]
[It's well past midnight before an announcement comes, after he's made this post and spent a few hours going over the discussions there. When people are either busy with the information he gave them, or asleep.
He smokes a cigarette on his way back to his apartment in the night air, putting it out before he steps into the building, his posture falsely relaxed until he steps into his own room.]
Sarutobi Asuma is gone. [There's a pause and- no, he doesn't think it was mentioned.] Also, Haruno Sakura returned to her world a few weeks ago, for anyone who knew her.
Funnily enough, I haven't seen that masked Akatsuki guy in a while either...
[Too many people to filter that too. It's vague enough, but anyone who needs to know should get what he means. It would have been better news if he'd known before.
He'll answer journal comments in the morning.]

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Well, it's at least a distraction. There's only one story left after this, after all. He digs into his pocket to find the lighter.]
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[Just talking for talking. He doesn't know what he feels to Masaomi's reaction... if he thinks about it, he knows he's not doing it to be malicious. Masaomi's his friend, and it's because he's his friend that he's being dragged through the pits just like he is.
But it's too easy to hear his laughter in place of that right now. Shikamaru opens and closes the lighter, just to hear the metallic click.]
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It kills him to realize it, but Masaomi is right. He swore to look out for her, but he could stand as her bodyguard twenty four hours a day and still not be able to help her. And to get her over this again...
It's not that he won't try, or that the others won't try, only that he can see his best efforts will likely end in failure. She has to be able to pull herself some of the way too.]
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[That's said darkly, and then he exhales. Okay, so now it's time to move on. Move on to the end of the story. He waves his hand at Shikamaru. Tell him about Asuma. The end of it]
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You remember those Akatsuki guys I told you about, I'm sure. They remain a huge threat to the world, but for a time there were more than a couple of them. The Land of Fire instated a group of twenty platoons, tasked to hunt them down. The Niju Shotai.
All of Team 10 was assigned to this task, though we were split up. Ino and Chouji were assigned to a squad with two special jounin, and Asuma and I were on another with Izumo and Kotetsu. Weird guys, but good chuunin. Asuma was captain of the squad.
One day, we got a lead on Akatsuki activity. Two men in the signature cloaks had attacked the Fire Temple, and slaughtered all of the monks within. The twenty platoons were dispatched. Our squad stopped by the ruins of the temple, where the monks who were away were collecting the bodies.
There was only one they could not account for: a monk named Chiriku. He was a good friend of Asuma's, the only other one of the Twelve Ninja Guardian who had survived the coup as he did.
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We thought we had gotten very lucky. When we got there, one was sitting outside like an idiot, while his partner was inside. Should've been easy as pie.
[He counts off his strategy - it was his, after all.] Asuma was the bait, and lured him into position. I nabbed him with my shadow. Izumo and Kotetsu came from the sides with their swords, and stabbed him through while he couldn't move.
[If it had been anyone else, that should've been it.]
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[It's here he realizes that for story-telling's sake, he can't keep avoiding referring to them by name.]
That's Hidan. The ability was something granted to him through his religion of Jashinism. The belief of which is "Kill thy neighbor". His partner was Kakuzu, a man just as hard to kill. It was lucky for us that Hidan was an idiot, and wanted to fight us for his own bloodlust. If his partner had joined the battle earlier, we all would have died.
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[...Wow, how magic. And "kill thy neighbor?" Wow, what in the fuck]
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All we knew was that he was immortal, and that the only one who stood a chance in fighting strength against him was Asuma. He took the lead, put Izumo and Kotetsu on covering me in case that Kakuzu guy got any ideas. And I provided back up with Shadow Sewing. It's a formation we'd practiced.
[Which Masaomi has surely seen on drafts and such. But he pauses now.]
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[Just keep that in mind. He doesn't think he needs to elaborate.]
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[Shikamaru lets his arm fall back down, staring flatly.]
It was an intense battle for a while, but it changed drastically all of a sudden. Hidan's weapon was a triple-bladed scythe. Cumbersome for him, but hard to dodge. Eventually it drew the smallest bit of blood.
Even as Asuma was setting up a counter-attack, he got very excited. He ate the blood; licked it off the scythe. And then instead of dodging Asuma's fire jutsu, he runs into it to stand in that circle from before.
When the smoke clears, his skin has changed colors. Black and white, like a walking skeleton. And Asuma's burned in the exact places that he is.
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["Hurts good doesn't it? Attacking the vitals is a fucking waste! This pain, this is the shit! As the other dies, their agony radiates through my body! And living through is pure ecstasy!"]
Laughing, and talking about where to stab next like a kid who can't decide what candy he wants at the store. I held him with the Kage Mane, though, before he could do anything.
And when I figured out exactly how it worked, I dragged him out of the circle. It broke the curse. And then I stabbed him through to hold him in place with Kage Nui, and Asuma cut off his head.
[He laughs, bitter.] But you already know that didn't work, right?
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[Getting ahead of himself again. He starts flicking the lid of the lighter again.]
His body was, in essence, like that of a rag-doll only held together by thick black threads. He could control these, and one use of it was to reattach body parts. He put Hidan's head back on, and then we were fighting two of them.
Or well. Kotetsu and Izumo were. They took on Kakuzu and tried to protect Asuma. Asuma just worked on avoiding Hidan's scythe again.
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