Chapter 57: Ride the Lightning

Kannin's cloak was singed from the flames filling his field of view, but he couldn't put them out because Warai needed them to see. Thankfully, he didn't much care right now. He sheathed Koseki for the moment to perform his jutsus.

Weaving his hand seals at the Kumo-nin in front of him, he premiered a new jutsu, creating two small tornadoes just beside each other, both rotating anti-clockwise--he called this one 'The Blender' to himself. The intent was to create an effect like being placed between two grinding wheels, each grating on the enemy and spinning them.

Of course, the Kumo-nin avoided it, but the real intent was to give Warai some cover while she entered the fray. The twin tornadoes whipped up the lingering flames burning the brush, creating a light show, while Warai locked her eyes on the fleeing enemy. While Warai chased her, Kannin leapt into whatever was left of the trees to strike from above.

The Kumo-nin suddenly changed course, and with a quick hand seal, released a rather strange jutsu. A crackling, spherical pulse of electricity emanated from his body, shocking everything in its path, and sending Warai back. Kannin jumped towards him and slashed through it with wind release, which disrupted it successfully. Landing before his enemy's feet, he weaved hand seals faster than he had ever done before, and summoned a tornado around his feet.

He heard a muffled "You bastard!" through the gyre, but wasted no time in unsheathing Koseki to slash through the tornado. But when his blade was halfway out, a surge of chakra dissipated the tornado. In the receding wind stood their enemy, covered in a thin layer of lightning chakra, head to toe, and Kannin saw the rage in his eyes.

'Oh god this is gonna hurt-' Kannin barely managed to think before the blitzkrieg began.

The enemy's Lightning Chakra Mode enhanced his speed to a degree he couldn't have imagined--faster than he thought even Shin could accomplish. In an instant he was punched in the gut, then the lower spine, then the neck. Kannin could feel his windpipe crack on that third one. Thankfully Warai joined in, and with her Sharingan, she could keep up. She blocked his next strike with a kunai, and shot a stream of fire directly into his face.

The Kumo-nin reeled back, his eyebrows singed clear off and hair melting, clawing at his now burnt face. Kannin, through the agony suffusing his throat, urged Kiyo to bite his enemy in the leg to restrain his movement, while he summoned his chains from his belly. Immediately 4 chains, with links of massive size erupted from his abdomen and struck at the Kumo-nin, taking hold of his other three limbs, while the last one impaled him in the chest. Kannin felt the surge of chakra entering his body as it was sapped through the chains, and pulled him back.

As the enemy's body was flying through the air, Warai swiped at his neck with a kunai, drawing small a fountain of blood from a small slit where it sliced through his skin. Collapsing onto the ground, choking on death, the Kumo-nin only got to spatter out, "M-m-my, m-my wife..."

'So that's why he looked so angry.' Kannin thought. Nursing his crushed trachea, he looked across the wasted field of battle, wondering where, if at all, this man's wife was lying.

-

It took Kannin a whole month to even start speaking again after that, let alone breathe properly. He thanked his Uzumaki constitution for healing him so quickly. Thankfully, that month was pretty calm--the fighting didn't pick back up until after that. He also didn't see Warai after that. Their duties hadn't allowed Team 4 to really convene in a long time, at least outside of official occasions--which he lamented. He missed his friends from the academy. He missed their spars and lunch periods. He missed the training sessions with Shin, and he missed their laughter.

He also couldn't stop thinking about that Kumo shinobi. He didn't even learn his name, but he watched him bleed to death on the ground in front of him. He also thought about the man's wife, who he assumed Konoha-nin had killed either in this war or the last.

'In this war or the last...' Kannin thought, frowning

Looking around his pale-tan tent, Kannin sat pondering this war. He knew war would be hell, but it was making demands of him that he never expected to bear. Lately, he had been unsheathing Koseki at night, and just staring at it, reflecting the candle-light into dancing shapes. He didn't really understand why he did it, but he did keep thinking back to some of the things Mifune had taught him so long ago.

Kannin thought about a dream to rid the world of war, like so many of the idealists this war would drum up, but he never fully believed it. He certainly would love a world without this massive and pointless slaughter of people. They were people, weren't they--people he could've been friends with had things gone differently. But a world without war seemed like a lie to Kannin. There would always be difference, opposition, power, and will.

Looking at the flames in the cold surface of his blade, he couldn't shake the feeling that he was on the wrong side of things, or that he didn't have the whole picture in some way.

'Why do I have to be a kid?' he thought in frustration, 'Maybe if I was older I'd see things from a different perspective--a kinder perspective.'

Kannin didn't know why he did, but he clenched his jaws shut and sheathed his blade, feeling a sort of disgust he couldn't quite understand. He looked over at the half eaten rations on his little nightstand and almost threw up at the thought of eating while the eyes of the man he killed that night flashed through his mind. This war was scarring him in ways he couldn't fathom.