Starring:
Amuro, Datura, Mune, Tomoyo, Kanami
Date: January 27, 2011
Summary:
Amuro's arm is possessed and trying to stop Kanami's operation. Any interruption could mean the actress's death. Tomoyo is trapped in a pit of skulls, Shinji is missing, Amuro is looking for both of them, and Mune is busy operating on Kanami! Who can save the Tao Shih? Is it… Datura!?
"Tao Shih Training Arc - The Chains Of Thought"
Level 5 - Location Unknown
Level 5 of the underground Tao Shih facility is a bad place. This much has been established repeatedly in multiple ways. And yet things have not gotten any better as the amputated left arm of the Tao Shih's leader has apparently come to life thanks to the same wicked Chakra-based poison that necessitated its removal to begin with. And further, the operating room has been locked down thanks to the detection of an unauthorized presence within. Amuro and Shinji are stuck out in the hall with who-knows-what, while the four mechanical guards in the hidden room let loose with all manner of weaponry, trying to destroy Amuro's removed arm. Those on the outside have no clear idea of what is going on within.
Those on the inside likely have no clear idea of what's going on either. All they would know is that the guardians have begun firing senbon machineguns mounted in their arms; Chakra cannons built into their torsos; and electric bolts from their singular, cyclops-like, crystalline eyes. Then it would become clear what they are shooting at, why they are tearing apart the room, destroying crates, shredding no-doubt-valuable journals, and so forth. The arm. The arm that was cut off. Amuro is yelling something about it, and now there it is. Only a pool of blood remains on the operating table it once lay upon — though the table itself has also been shorn in half and turned into twisted scrap metal. The arm is seen in glimpses as it leaps around somehow, hurling its considerable weight for an arm by the strength in its fingers and palm, and doing its damndest to keep from getting torn up. Everywhere it goes, black and red Chakra visibly trails the stump that used to be connected to Amuro's shoulder.
As all the noise goes on, Mune has likely already started on Kanami's procedure. What that means is that any interruption at this point could result in serious injury to Kanami — and possibly death.
Datura is the only one able to stop this. Amuro is trapped outside with Shinji. Or is he?
Outside, Amuro is having an inordinate amount of difficulty remembering the codes to override the security systems. He never has problems remembering >anything< even after a century. So to suddenly forget, and under such dire circumstances as these, is simply bizarre… And far too inconvenient to be a coincidence. Amuro looks at the arm of emptiness that has replaced his arm of flesh. 'Did it corrupt my Munashiigan somehow?' he wonders briefly. He is doing more than just wondering idly, however. He can multi-task.
So he turns to Shinji and says, "Shinji, I need…" He trails off on the third word. Shinji is gone. "Shinji!" he yells, heedless of what kind of monster might hear and come for him. First Tomoyo and now Shinji. This is >not< a coincidence. Amuro knows a way to break through into the hidden room without the codes. One does not live as long as he has without back-up plans. The back-up plan is simple: The wall is made of Chakra. And what are the Hyuuga able to do with Juuken? They can disrupt Chakra. So now all Amuro needs to do is find Tomoyo and get her back here so she can destroy the entrance. "Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu! <Multiple Shadow Clone Technique!>" A moment later, as wisps of black smoke vanish, there are five of Amuro standing in the hall instead of one. Without any words spoken between them, they set off. Two remain by the hidden room's entrance to try other methods of getting in, while two turn the corner and run down the main hall that still is lined with broken windows and disrupted offices — and yet is free of the remains of the nurse-things. It seems their corpses do not stick around to decompose. Odd, but not exactly odder than anything else down here.
Where is Tomoyo? Well, one moment she was out in the hall guarding the entrance into the hidden room. She was not happy about this, presumably, but she was at least assured that all she had to do was call for help or back up through the wall if anything happened, and she would be assisted immediately. Now she is somewhere else. It is like she is at the bottom of a well. It is dark, except for a single pinpoint of red light high above. The walls are not that far apart, but at least there is room to walk around. The walls themselves seem to be made of something hard like stone and covered in a wetness of some kind. More wetness lies at the bottom of this place, about ankle-deep. There is no indication in the dark that there is a door, window, ladder, stairs, or anything else to get out or up. But climbing should still be possible, and Wall Walking should be easy, even with the unseen liquid.
How did Tomoyo get there? That's unclear. It would almost be like there was a gap in time where things just… Blurred together.
Shinji's location is unknown completely. It's like he just fell off the face of the world.
Nothing was ever easy, simple, the way the blonde-haired Yamanaka preferred her days to go. As soon as one thing is overcome or otherwise dealt with, another inevitably seems to pop up to complicate the young woman's life. It really wasn't fair! Her life was not meant to be a series of struggles and trials like those stupid stories her lover was so fond of! She was the goddamned Precious Consort!
As the weapons begin to fire and shriek about the room, tearing up just about everything in their path with seemingly no regards to what they were shooting at! Datura couldn't even see anything that might be threatening the safety of the room as she lunges to dive behind a row of cabinets to avoid the seemingly-berserk guards in a moment of utter self-preservation. There was shouting from outside, or seemed to be, but making it out over the noise of a room being shredded was a task that was far beyond the teenaged kunoichi's mortal ears.
"KANA! MUNE! WHAT'S GOING OOOOOOOON!?"
The blonde-haired goth's voice reaches new levels of volume and piercing high-pitchedness as she covers her ears, ducks her head to avoid breaking glass, and curls up to make herself as small a target as possible behind the counters, her eyes squeezed shut. Didn't these things have some kind of command word!? The Konoha runaway grits her teeth as she curses the man outside for not having told them it before.
"WHY ARE THEY SHOOTING!?"
Mune has Kanami out on the second of the operating tables. The mutated woman is a horrible sight to behold. However, this is not simply because of how malformed she has become, but because Mune knows what Kanami looks like NORMALLY. The disparity between beauty and horror is great. Enough to make Mune feel dizzy. Or is that the weakness that comes from using the Perfect Surgery Technique? Either way, she can't afford to wait until she has recovered. She also can't afford to operate while distracted by petty physical concerns. She can be tired later. Right now…
Closing her eyes, Mune activates parts of her brain at high levels and then shuts down others. Perfect Surgery again. When her eyes open, they are hyper-focused and intense in their gaze, moving quickly over Kanami's body, assessing the situation and what she needs to do. One hand swiftly snatches up one of the vials, labelled 'Hitodama Ringu', from the tray. The other hand moves to Kanami's left hand and just cuts out a piece of the back of it with Chakra like there's nothing wrong with doing so. Would it hurt? Maybe/maybe not. Given the flesh of that hand appears blackened as though burnt, it might not even have any nerve endings in the section cut.
But either way, Mune takes the piece of flesh and dumps it into the vial of blood. Then she begins to channel Chakra through the vial one-handed, stimulating the live cells to bond with the long-dead cells and then make them GROW. Her hand that previously had the Chakra Scalpel around it loses that shroud as it instead goes for her medical pouch to retrieve a different medicinal item. This goes on for about two minutes before the guards start firing. Mune does not even bat an eye.
She does speak, however.
"The noise is disrupting the patient. Try to keep quiet," she calls out to Datura, possibly drowned out by the weapons. Whether she is heard or not, she just keeps working. There is no time for dawdling, and all the weapons-fire seems to be missing her and Kanami anyway, even if only by inches. Almost by coincidence, she reaches out to the side and shifts the tray of vials to her in front of her belly, just as some senbon strike the table where the tray was a second ago. Sparks fly as metal meets metal, but nothing is destroyed. Good thing, because the contents of these vials are NOT replaceable.
It was one thing to space out for a few moments while doing something as boring as just standing outside a door and making sure nothing snuck up on those who were busy inside the sealed off medical room. But to zone out enough where you can't remember how you got somewhere else is something else entirely. This was the case with the Hyuuga girl who was suddenly finding herself in a place that was not familiar to the surroundings she was at only moments ago.
As if rousing herself out of a haze, she reaches up with both hands and rubs at her eyes a little bit before looking around her with a seemingly refreshed look. Nope, she still wasn't where she was… The near complete darkness not helping her very much either in figuring out where 'here' was.
Reaching around, she finds the nearest wall and her hands come into contact with something akin to the feel of stone, but not quite as well formed as a brick or tile… The single red little light that was far above her was the only thing that gave her a sense of location. Whatever that light was, it was high up. Where was she? Groping around in the dark would get her nowhere fast.
Taking a deep breath, Tomoyo prepares herself for what's about to come as she focuses a bit of chakra into her eyes to bring about the activation of her Byakugan. Things would become a little more visible to her this way and she could see what she was dealing with. But she didn't expect to be met with what suddenly came into her sight.
Skulls… skulls and more skulls! Skulls lining the walls of the entire room all the way up, except for the floor. And for some odd reason, the walls were coated in some sort of fluid that contained trace amounts of chakra.. and she touched it with her hand moments ago.
It takes a moment for it to sink in as her breathing starts to drastically increase to near hyper-ventilating levels before sucking in another breath and letting out a shrill-like scream that reverberated its way up and seemed to amplify along the way.
Once that was out of the way, the gasping for air Hyuuga could move on to the next task at hand which was trying to find a way out. Which seemed to be up, since the only other thing was just a grate on the floor and she didn't want to know where that lead to since the chakra tinged liquid all seemed to trickle down into there. Instead, she steels herself and begins a trecherous climb upwards, using the skull lined wall as her footholds.
Kanami is laid down on the table. She doesn't know what will be involved in this but—"Ouuw!" she lets out as Mune cuts a piece out of the back of her hand. She would frown, but her mouth doesn't accomodate facial expressions very well. The vials that are being used are eyed, but Kanami can't see the labels from this angle. They're by her right hip, and though her right eye is functional, the labels are turned away. Before she can begin to guess at what the vials contain with her limited medical knowledge, everything goes to hell! Speakers begin blaring about intruders, and weapons are firing, and all she can do in her condition is lie still. Mune is standing in the way, Kanami is in no position to be dodging, and since Mune does not seem perturbed at all it appears that she may be safe for the moment. Or perhaps her condition is worse than she thought and she needs to be treated even in the middle of a battleground.
"Rroh-chaa!" Kanami gets out around her mouth of fangs as she hears Datura yelling and hiding. If only she could help! "ENTWUUTAHS!" she yells as loud as she can in answer to Datura. If there's someone else in the room… Perhaps that whispering voice that tried to convince Kanami to kill everyone!? Do the guards detect that evil presence!?!
Amuro's arm leaps past, getting seen out of the corner of Kanami's vision. "…." 'Is that it? The arm is the intruder!?' Kanami looks up to see if Mune has noticed, but the doctor appears to be focused solely on the operation. That means… "DARRURA! WROOK!" <Datura! Look!> she yells as she tries to indicate the disembodied arm with her right hand — the one that actually has more-or-less human fingers to point with.
The noise may be loud, and Amuro's voice may be drowned out, but Datura and Kanami can yell to each other just fine. They're in the same room after all, not on the other side of a solidified Chakra barrier. The arm climbs up one of the robotic guards causing the others to begin shooting it with their own weapons. The guard is quickly decimated, and the arm just skitters off somewhere else. It manages to get caught with a blast during one leap through the air, however, and half of it is blown off.
That leaves the forearm, wrist, and hand itself. Good! Much less arm to cause trouble! …And also, much less to hit successfully. It does not appear to be slowed down by the loss of mass. Infact, it >speeds up<! When it runs close to Datura's hiding position, the remaining three guards ease off their fire. All weapons cease firing, infact. Only some echoes remain in the sudden quiet. The moment the hand is away from Datura, about five seconds later, they start shooting again. Kanami pointing out the hand would have happened during those five seconds of silence, thankfully.
So… Now what is Datura supposed to do!? The stone floor is being torn up! At least the machines are out of senbon, and the intensity of their other weapons seems to be dying down. Are their weapons running low on power!?
Tomoyo starts climbing up the walls of the skull pit with Chakra flowing through her feet. The skulls seem to be stuck together quite firmly, because they do not tumble or shift. They may crunch a bit in places if Tomoyo pushes too hard, but overall her footing would remain stable. A sucking noise like water running into a gutter suddenly begins below Tomoyo when she is about a third of the way up. The noise builds and builds, louder and louder, as there is a sudden increase in the amount of the fluid running down into the pit. It washes over the Hyuuga girl's ankles and feet, streaming down towards the drain. If she either looks below her or uses the Byakugan's nearly 360 degree vision, she would see that there are things that look like bladed chains rising up out of the slots in the drain. They are gradually working their way upward like snakes, winding and squirming, reaching for the one so close to escaping!
This would be a good time to pick up the pace. The hole above is closer now, judging by its seemingly increase size. The red light is still glowing down through it. But then, while it may seem like an illusion or a trick of the light at first, it gradually becomes clear that the hole is >shrinking<. Is Tomoyo moving downwards without realizing it? Is the pit deepening? No. The Byakugan can see everything. And it sees that the the pit's opening is gradually >closing< like a living thing that aims to trap her down there forever!
Move fast, Tomoyo. Move fast.
Unfortunately, Kanami was difficult to understand at the moment in the best of circumstances. With the rapid pinging of searing metal needles dropping all over the room like rain, making out what was happening was an impossibility for the blonde-haired kunoichi. But the sudden silence is punctuated by the young woman sticking her head out partially to view the devastation. …And the sudden introduction of an arm bounding around the room right next to her like some sort of macabre Addam's Family prop!
"EEEEEEE!"
The high-pitched, overly-girlish scream of terror is purely instinctual, the blonde-haired young woman crabbing backwards over shards of torn stone, wood, and glass to get away from the dismembered appendage which seemed to be very much alive. It takes several seconds for the reality of the sight to sink in. This thing was disrupting Kanami's operation, was going to ruin everything! But what could she do? She wasn't exactly a proper kunoichi in the traditional sense. She didn't even carry basic ninja tools with her!
The blonde-haired shinobi comes back crawling out of her cover as the fire is taken away from her, reaching for a larger shard of something sharp. It was either stone or glass, she wasn't sure other than the fact that it felt smooth and cool, her eyes trying to follow the dizzying route the unattached hand was taking, her eyes and mouth set into a determined, if uncertain, frown-pout. She was not a taijutsuist, and was even now questioning why she thought this was going to work out in her favor.
"How am I supposed to…?" The trailing chakra certainly made it easy enough to track, but getting close to the speedy bastard was another matter entirely!
Mune keeps on working. She dumps out the vial onto some powder that she has poured onto the table next to Kanami. It crackles with electrical energy. Mune then puts it on Kanami's left hand where she cut before. The blackness begins to leech out of Kanami's skin, turning gray, and then pale. All the blackness goes into the lump of flesh that Mune is holding. Kanami's fingers change from claws to actual fingers, and overall the inhuman qualities of her right hand gradually — but relatively quickly — fade away. Mune repeats this with the rest of Kanami's right arm, cutting a small piece out here or there so there is an opening to use the lump of tissue on. The wad of flesh grows larger and larger with each wound.
This may look easy, but it is anything but. Mune is actually manipulating the cells in the artificially grown tissue and Kanami's own cells on an INDIVIDUAL BASIS at a level that few other Medic-Nin are capable of. Most others who enhance cell replication and similar do it in a general fashion. They pump Chakra into a wound, and it heals itself. Mune actually goes INSIDE each cell and manipulates the mitochondria floating within the cytoplasm. She goes into the nucleus and rearranges the DNA to fit her needs. And she does it at the rate of hundreds of thousands of cells per second. This is not easy. This is, simply put, insane.
But she is doing it anyway. Her brain may be ignoring unimportant things like her body's gradual weakening, but she is still sweating from the effort. She has a patient to treat. That is all that matters.
For the first leg of her journey out of the well of skulls, everything seemed to be going along just fine, save for the unsettling sound of her footfalls comming down onto the domes of the departed. Using the basic training that nearly all shinobi should have, she could scale the wall with ease without having to actually touch the walls again with her bare hands! Sadly that didn't save her feet from being coated with whatever it was that was oozing downwards towards that grate at the bottom.
The sudden increase of flow of whatever was streaming down the walls was unwelcome, especially since it started to run over the tops of her footwear. Thankfully it was sealed up and she wasn't decimated by having to run with soggy shoes and socks. The accompanying sucking noise also draws her attention behind her, the Byakugan being able to see all around without having to turn her head. Like having another pair of eyes back there! For a moment she wished she didn't see the bladed chains in hot pursuit of her trying to escape, but thankful because it told her to climb even faster.
As the Hyuuga picked up her pace and tried to focus on what was ahead of her, her eyes would squint as in disbelief as it seemed that the mouth of the pit she was in was getting… smaller? Smaller?! "No no no no no no!" she muttered in a panic as she started to climb even faster still!
Those eyes of hers were keen, enough so to spot what seemed to be something reaching out for Tomoyo. A hand? A hand with a familiar looking marking on it! - Papa..?! - is her first thought, an excited smile trying to creep over her face but kept at bay since she had to get out of here first.
She was almost there, and those chains behind her weren't getting any further away either. The mouth of the pit was also trying to close, trying to seal her into a tomb of unpleasantness that she might not survive. Speed was of the essence here, and she was fairly confident she had plenty of that as she managed to reach the top of the pit before the mouth could close up on her. Panting with effort, Tomoyo would outstretch her hand for the one reaching for her.
Just as her hand would come into contact with the hand reaching for hers, her footing would give out as a skull decided to give under her foot and cause her to fall away from the wall, dangling from the only thing keeping her from falling back into the darkness below. That slurping.. chain ridden coffin.
Kanami feels her body changing back to normal. It hurts. It hurts a lot to have her cells rearranged like that, even though the bad parts are being torn out of her. Or maybe BECAUSE the bad parts are being torn out. But her body regaining the feeling of familiarity — her OWN body instead of something else — feels good. It helps her drown out the pain. But not the noise of weapons fire. Things breaking, things exploding… The momentary silence only makes the resuming of chaotic noise all the more painful. 'Ryoko-chan…' Kanami thinks silently as Mune cuts out another piece of her left arm and leeches away the mutated flesh. She can't do anything until she's healed. She doesn't like feeling helpless. It reminds her too much of her sensory deprivation in that void when she tried to make her Mask too early… It reminds her of the void from Ankoku Cave too… She was helpless then. Why does she have to be helpless now!?
The hand and forearm are definitely wearing down the mechanical guards. They are out of senbon, they have stopped using their electric crystals, and the Chakra blasts are fewer and weaker. Eventually, they just shut down. The grind to a halt and stop moving. The room is in ruins, and there is no sign of the disembodied hand.
Mune keeps on working on Kanami, Kanami keeps lying there, and Datura lies in wait. Then a couple pieces of wall that were blasted loose shift a bit… They form a sort of 'tent' within which is total darkness. The shift again… And then a large hand comes >lunging< out of the shadows right at Datura, attempting to strangle her, or perhaps just smother her! And given its strength and size it might be fully capable of it!
The hole is closing. There is no more time. That tiny slip has cost Tomoyo her life. The hole is too small now for Tomoyo to fit through. It is about to cut right through the arm of Amuro's Shadow Clone as he hangs onto his dangling daughter. There is no time. The chains are less than a yard away from Tomoyo's legs.
The end.
Then there is a cloud of smoke, and Tomoyo is right where Amuro was a moment before. It is now >her< holding onto >him<! What just happened!? Was it… Body Replacement Technique!?! Given that Amuro weighs substantially more than Tomoyo is able to support, and the hole is still closing, he does the only thing he can do. He frees himself from Tomoyo's grip and falls into the darkness, as the sudden lack of weight on Tomoyo's hand will likely cause her to reel back and away, saving her arm from being cut off. The chains reach up to receive Amuro just at the hole finishes closing.
Where does this leave Tomoyo? In a cavernous room with what appears to be a giant, fanged mouth hanging from a pillar of flesh that gradually transitions into stone until it merges with the ceiling. The mouth is dripping blood — or something like it — from its maw. The liquid is laced with the same kind of Chakra that the giant mouth is full of.
The guards are spent, all the mechanisms and failsafes in place to prevent this room have seemed to fail. But given the utter quiet in the wake of such carnage… was the intruder dead? That awful, disembodied hand blown and torn into pieces too tiny to form even the most vague and insignificant threats? A sudden shifting in nearby pieces of rubble draws the blonde-haired woman's blue eyes, her frowning expression shifting to peer at it. Slowly, she moves forward, towards it, her sharp shard in front of her and ready, creeping closer and closer. She could feel the sweat starting to form in the palms of her hands, ready to lash out, ready to-
The hand slams into her neck and upper chest with enough force to knock Datura over backwards, her reflexes utterly failing to even react before she is struck. She hits her back hard against the torn floor, her head smacking down with enough force to cause starbursts to lance through her vision with a muffled "UMPH!" The feel of large, thick fingers closing around her slender, pale throat comes a second too late. They are already beginning to squeeze by the time she reaches up.
A hand as large as Amuro's was easily the equal of two of Datura's, and the inhuman force with which it grips her delicate neck would have crushed her vital airways had she not had at least rudimentary physical ninja training. As it is, her airway constricts, as does bloodflow to her brain, leaving her feeling lightheaded after only a few seconds, a burning sensation swelling in her chest as her fingers try to find purchase over the digits wrapped around her defenseless throat. Where was the shard she was holding? She didn't remember dropping it. She should reach for another, try to find something to attack with, try to- to…
Unexpected oxygen deprivation coupled with restricted bloodflow was making it harder to think, a sense of panic rising, overwhelming, the pulls against the choking presence of the hand becoming weaker, more ineffectual, more desperate, her legs thrashing as if it would help her to find purchase and save herself. She couldn't die like this, not here, in this dark hole with no one to see or hear or fear or hate or miss her. Her death, when it came, was meant to be something bigger! And yet the curious tingle of excitement in her lower abdomen almost made her long to accept it, to let it happen.
Her mind lashes out in a panic, her natural talents with genjutsu coupling with her hidenjutsu skill at manipulating minds to find something, anything within this disembodied creature that she could manipulate, could pry off of her, could use to LIVE.
Mune continues with the treatment. As Datura struggles for survival behind her, and Kanami lies helpless on the table in front of her, the Medic-Nin has only one thing in her mind. 'Complete the procedure successfully.' So she proceeds, heedless of the potentially life-threatening situation behind her. Gradually, Kanami is returned more and more to her normal self. Her torso, her left arm, and now her face are free of twisted and dead-white flesh, and the left eye is visible once again. The patch of skin that had grown over it is simply gone.
Mune continues throughout the struggling and begins to work with the vial labelled for Kaguya Inoue — that's where the 'porcelain skin' and 'scales' are coming from. The bones of a Kaguya somehow REPLACING the epidermal tissue cells… Not to mention those nasty teeth in Kanami's mouth.
"The procedure is 1/3rd complete," Mune announces.
Dangling in midair, hoping that the hand that is keeping her from falling back down would yank her up and rescue her from the pit of chains. But the little slip that she had costed her precious time, time that she had lost in the fall. With the hole now to small for her to fit through, she stared almost blankly up at Amuro. Were these going to be the last few moments she'd get to spend with him? All those years of training, wasted by one little slip up. Two big tears start to well up at the corners of Tomoyo's eyes as she's really thinking this was the end. "I… I'm sorry Papa.." she says apologetically.
As the ever closing mouth of the pit gets smaller and smaller, Tomoyo soon finds herself in the opposite position in this situation. Instead, she's now trying to hold the weight of Amuro from falling back into the pit. And that was something that was sudden and very hard for her. Not being overly strong physically, she didn't have time to muster up enough strength to hold him up for long.. But that didn't matter, he couldn't fit through the hole either.
Feeling Amuro trying to free himself from her grasp, she struggles to hold on but lacks the strength to re-establish a firm hold. The sudden release of someone as large as Amuro sends the girl reeling backwards to fall on her behind. Just as quickly as she fell, she springs back to her feet to try and somehow save Amuro, but the hole had already sealed closed and who knows what became of her Papa.
Banging on the sealed pit with her relatively small fists, at least compared to Amuro, she tried to break through it. Realizing it was futile to try and break it open with her fists, she brings out her ponderous weapon and jumps atop the sealed pit and tries to stab her way through. Raising that weapon and bringing it down over and over as her mind basically shut down from the sudden shock of what just happened. Mostly acting on impulse now and that impulse told her to break into the pit and get her father out. Tears were streaming down her cheeks at this point, her eyes following the long staff portion of her weapon up.
This is when she spots the large gaping mouth, and when it finally registers in her mind that that thing has been drooling a blood like substance over her while she was trying to penetrate the pit. Though it doesn't matter to her at this point, as she's still trying to break through the ground beneath her.
Kanami feels her arm and her face and her internal organs changing back to normal, but the sudden silence as the machines go off makes her more tense, not less. The sight of Datura creeping towards the fallen tiles or cement chunks or whatever they are is nerve-wracking. She wants to tell her to stay back and wait, but she is also afraid that making any noises could set off another attack or draw the attention of that hand…
Then it lunges at Datura and grabs her, slamming her to the ground! Kanami yells! "Ryoko!" she lets out, and almost pauses in amazement when she realizes she can speak more or less normally. Her left eye works fine now too! She tries to sit up to help, but probably won't be going anywhere before Mune puts her back on the table. "Forget about me, Mune! Help Ryoko!" she yells out. She's not 'whole' yet. She is not 'complete' enough to help on her own. Surely stopping at this point can't be THAT bad, right?
Datura's Genjutsu Chakra, paired with her knowledge of controlling the bodies of others, allows her to begin seizing control of the hand that tries to strangle her. The hand loosens its grip somewhat, and finger-by-finger, it stops digging into the blonde's throat. It continues to quiver and struggle, but it is rapidly weakening its hold and may even fall under Datura's control for a bit — though it will continue to struggle against her will the entire time!
As Tomoyo keeps cleaving at the floor, the tiles like those found in a shower or restroom take the blows, cracking, breaking, and crumbling, and… Revealing no sign there was ever a pit of skulls there at all. It's like it ceased to exist. Is she hitting the wrong spot somehow? Is it somewhere else nearby? Is she just not hitting hard enough!? Then the sound of boot falls from relatively nearby may be heard — or perhaps not, over the clanging of metal on concrete — and Amuro comes running past a doorway off to the side, in a hallway that passes alongside the large room Tomoyo is in. He skids to a stop and comes back after running past. "Tomoyo!" Amuro calls out from the doorway. "Are you alright?" he asks, concern somehow evident even in his near-monotone voice. Rushing up to Tomoyo to check her, Amuro pauses only long enough to ensure she is whole and intact — the blood covering her is worrying, but if she shows no sign of injury… He just grabs Tomoyo and tries to explain while they run. "The room has sealed itself shut. We need you to come break it open. There is a monster trying to kill the others."
Her eyes are beginning to glaze over, her hands are stopping their struggling, her desperate movements for survival are turning into weak and ineffectual twitches. Just like that, that's how quick it is to have one's life, one's hopes and dreams and endeavors brought to an end by cutting off precious oxygen and blood deprivation to the brain. Her heart skips a frantic beat in its unrelenting struggle to get blood to the largest of Datura's nerve centers by simply increasing volume.
And then the grip begins to loosen.
The yellow-haired teenager sucks in a ragged gasp of oxygen through her raw, pained throat, much like a swimmer just managing to break the surface of the water before all has gone dark. It takes every part of her willpower to maintain her mental hold on the chakra controlling the deadly hand and forearm, as she coughs and sputters, weakly pulling the twitchy limb from her neck and rolling first onto her side, and then struggling towards her knees. She tries to hold the severed appendage down with one knee, her brow knit, the coughing-gasps for oxygen refusing to abate, each like painful wash of acid through her windpipe.
Her hands search the floor for another jagged shard of something, anything, finally closing around a tringular piece of stone that had been ripped up. It wasn't overly sharp, but it was heavy, like a paperweight, and pointed. Her vision was wavering in and out as her brain deals with the sudden influx of oxygen that was previously starved, closing both hands around the cold piece of stone that would have to do. A bead of sweat falls from her temple as she concentrates, tracing an irregular line down the side of her face.
She swings the pointy side of the rock towards the index finger.
Kanami sitting up nearly breaks Mune's concentration, the way all sudden movements and impacts do in this state. Her words somehow penetrate her consciousness for a moment and her brow furrows… Then she touches a hand to Kanami's chest and sends out a wave of Chakra that may well paralyze her. "Please do not struggle. This is a delicate procedure," she says calmly. She almost loses focus on the arm she is presently sucking the snake scales out of with a wad of dense bone tissue. That could mean Kanami LOSING that arm.
Instead, however, she manages to regain control. She ignores Datura and her struggle. She has to finish the procedure.
With each fall of her bladed weapon against the tiled like ground beneath it, it seemed to fail to register that she wasn't making much progress. This just simply meant she wasn't trying hard enough! More effort pouring into her rescue attempt as she grunts with each blow, sweat starting to bead up on her forehead. Chunks of tile and concreate being splintered off to the sides with each strike.
The sound of those familiar boots hitting the floor don't quite make it to Tomoyo's ears while she is frantically trying to break through the floor. But when the sound of Amuro's voice is heard calling out to her from somewhere that isn't behind a layer of floor, she snaps out of the shock induced actions she was stuck in and looks towards the source. The moment her pale eyes fall on the 'face' of Amuro, she is overcome by a wave of relief and ends up falling to her knees in all that nasty chakra laced blood that's drooling down from above while holding on to her polearm.
Despite the mess she was covered in, she smiles a bit when Amuro approaches her and makes sure she's alright. "I'm fine now that I know you're okay." she replies before she's suddenly grabbed and hauled off of where she was and stumbles the first few steps while still holding on to her weapon. It was easy enough to keep up with Amuro, but a little tricky since she was being dragged at the same time. "It has? Why?… How did I end up over here…?" she asks, thinking hard on the thought of some monster trying to slaughter her comrades.. and how she was supposed to break through a sealed door. It took her a few moments to remember that this door was composed of solid chakra. So it made sense as to why she was needed to break through it!
Kanami loses all feeling in her body for a moment as she just falls back onto the table and lies still. It looks like Datura has things under control now — based on what she can see around Mune's pelvis anyway. Stupid wide-hips! "Mune—!" she manages to get out. But that's about it. She is almost whole again, and yet she still can't help. What kind of loved one is she? Why isn't Mune helping!?
Datura strikes the finger of the hand as it struggles against her will with its evil Chakra. There is a cracking noise and then the Chakra just >shoots< out of the wrist, spraying blood and bone fragments and gross all over the floor. The ground turns black where the Chakra touches and smells like bad things. Things that make people want to cover their mouths and noses and run away. Not just 'gross' but 'my life is in danger if I keep breathing this'. Thankfully it is only the odor, not actual lethal gas. The hand relaxes and goes limp. It does not move again.
Amuro explains everything to Tomoyo along the way. His arm being removed, it being possessed by evil Chakra, Shinji disappearing, and the need to get into the room. The two meet up with the other Shadow Clone that was sent out, and arrive at the entrance to the lab, where the original Amuro and one other are still standing. The silence from within is not a good sign.
Amuro pauses and listens. The intruder alert is shut off… He tries to pass through the wall, but it remains locked as a security measure. It will continue to remain locked for another hour at least. Amuro disperses all his Shadow Clones and just keeps himself present. "I am alright, Tomoyo. That was a Shadow Clone that rescued you. But right now we need this door open. Please shut it down."
The hand may have quit moving, but the blonde has not stopped striking it. The goo-covered chunk of concrete is lifted again and again, brought down with slightly less force each time. This is not because Datura is calming down, but a symptom of the tiring and degradation of muscle tissue through physical activity. Each blow splatters a bit more foul-smelling good across the floor, and the blows do not cease coming until the entire appendage is a disgusting pile of blackened pulp, completely unrecognizeable from what it once was. The blonde-haired manipulator continues through the awful, nauseating stench that made her want to wretch what was left of her breakfast all over the floor, air rasping in and out of labored lungs with a pained, stinging sensation from her still-raw throat. Her survival instincts override the superficial senses of her nose, eyes, and touch, all of which tell her that proximity to this mess is unwanted.
Finally, her arms like lead, the outcast Yamanaka gasps, coughs, and allows the chunk of floor to fall to the side, stumbling backwards on her knees away from the mess. Already bruises are beginning to form on her reddened throat, the outline of grasping fingers standing in stark contrast to the pale skin of her slender neck. She tries to swallow, fails, then tries again, reaching a shakey hand to what is left of one of the counters to pull herself to her feet.
With one hand cradling her wounded neck, she searches the room for the others, finding them almost immediatly, stumbling towards the operating table, having to lean a hand on the foot of it for balance. Her legs were unsteady, muscles weak so soon after the drain of an adrenaline-fueled fight for her life, however brief. Her voice is a strained, hoarse, painful-sounding rasp.
"Kana…"
Mune finishes up — more or less — by the time Datura comes over. When she completes the procedure, Kanami is back to her normal self and three misshapen lumps of tissue — one blackened and burnt, one made of scales, and one made of a shiny substance that might be porcelain, all lie on one side of the table or another.
The vials remains in place, though one remains untouched. The one for White Snake cells. Mune's jutsu ends and she staggers for a moment before her eyes roll up into her head and she just falls forward. Interesting medical trivia of the day: Unconcious humans fall forwards, not backwards or to the side. This means Mune slams into the table on her way down and then collapses to the floor.
As father and daughter traverse the halls that would eventually bring them back to the cooridor that is sealed off by the chakra barrier, Amuro would explain to her what she needed to know. Things that happened while she was playing watch dog outside before disappearing to that strange skull pit of nasty. Knowing that Amuro was fine now, the issue of being covered in whatever it was she was covered in starts to set in and she feels dirty… very dirty. She wishes she could get herself clean right now.
When they arrive at the sealed off entrance that they were trying to get through, they meet up with some other shadow clones of Amuro. Tomoyo still mulling over all the information that was fed to her and constantly looking over at the replacement arm that Amuro obtained. Assured that he was fine, Tomoyo nods to Amuro at the request to get that door open.
"Alright, I'll get rid of this door for you." she says, almost making a declaration as she puts away her polearm since it wouldn't do her any good right now in dealing with a chakra barrier. Approaching the chakra wall, she focuses chakra into her eyes again and activates her Byakugan to have a look at the door for any potential weaknesses in the barrier itself… Staring it down for a few moments while cleaning off a hand on her clothes, though that didn't help much… She focuses and thrusts a palm out against the solid wall of chakra while striking it with her own chakra to disrupt it, sending a ripple through its surface. Was that enough? Probably not! No way something that could keep out Amuro was so easily disrupted. Bringing up her other hand she brings back both palms and breathes in, then out as both of them are driven right into the chakra wall with resounding force. Tomoyo's chakra surges out through her palms in a visible shockwave outwards along the surface of the barrier.
After a few moments, the security measure that held Amuro at bay just vanishes from sight. She did it!
Amuro rushes inside and quickly locates Mune, Datura, and Kanami. The devastation to the room is barely noticed. Or perhaps he does not see it somehow… Rushing over to the trio, Amuro avoids the blackened smudge on the ground where his hand used to be. "The operation was a success, but it seems to have taxed Mune too far. We have what we came here for, however. We can leave this accursed place for good. Shinji needs to be found and then we will depart. I am having this floor destroyed and sealed in the most secure manner I know…"
Amuro looks at Datura and her state. "…Congratulations, Datura. You saved more than one life today." Then he moves to pick up Mune and prepares to carry her out of Level 5. It is doubtful that the Medic-Nin will be sad to never see this place again.
