Night 52: North of the Institute (woods)

[tsunagari.livejournal.com]

[from here]

Sai hit the ground and rolled as the blasts from their opponent ripped through the air to either side of them. He crawled up onto his knees, pawing around for the flashlight that had been knocked from his hands in the attack. "Naruto?" He hadn't seen if the blond had been hit or not. If he had, this whole venture would have been a mistake.

The robotic man from the field didn't seem to be following them, and as the adrenaline left his system, the use of chakra started to catch up to him. He remained on the ground as he listened for his friend, catching his breath. If they'd truly gotten away, then this was the furthest he'd managed to get in the past several days.

Now if only such luck would hold out.

Comments

[full-score.livejournal.com]

"I'm not worried about it," he responded with a frown, frustrated at his shadow for making Guy think that it could possibly be an issue. But it wasn't a problem at all, and that didn't stem from any sort of denial, either. The shadow hadn't been lying when it said he didn't feel jealous when he saw Guy and Luke together, and since it didn't try to contradict him on that matter, hopefully Guy would accept it for the truth that it was. There were other ways its words could be twisted, though, and quite frankly, they had enough to deal with as it was. "Look, don't think too hard about what it said just now, okay? I'm pretty sure it's spouting stuff off just to be difficult at this point."

That partly went for the stuff about Ashton and his experiments, too. It had been so unnecessary to bring up, and yet his shadow had done it as though it got some sort of entertainment out of spewing his personal secrets everywhere.

The thought that these...things would be literally watching them from the shadows was kind of sickening, but Claude wasn't going to buy into it so easily. Instead, he glared at the two shadows. Did they see this as some sort of joke or spectator's sport or something? He just didn't understand...

"Considering how you needed us to spell out just how much you hide from each other, I'm looking forward to seeing you two bumble along after this," the marionette said with a smirk.

Claude's glare turned into a narrow-eyed gaze. "If you're done, then, we'd like to be on our way."

[nobleman]

If Claude was insisting that he wasn't bothered by it, then Guy was going to do his best to believe him. Honestly, that wasn't as simple as it should have been after everything that had been said tonight, but he wasn't going to let these shadows get to him. Besides, some possible jealousy really didn't match up to the other issues that had been brought up. "Got it," he said with a nod.

Of course, it couldn't really end there, with both of them having to get one last jab in. After Claude spoke, Guy's shadow laughed and shrugged. "If you want it that way, then fine. I'm not sure if anything we said got through to you after all. I have to admit, I'll be pretty shocked if you two change at all after this." It sighed and glanced at the puppet. "But we tried, right?"

Guy rolled his eyes. These two were clearly drunk on their own egos (and while he didn't know what that said about himself and Claude, he didn't think it was worth thinking too hard about), and so he simply waved them off.

Then, in the blink of an eye, the shadows flickered and were sucked back into the ground, returning to the spots that they should have never left from in the first place. And while they were now alone, they weren't even given a second to say something to each other in relative privacy, because in the next moment everything went dark.