Gracie Abrams is eking out a solitary existence, fighting day-in, day-out against the drain of working customer service and nursing two newborn kittens in her off time. Out on her own ever since her sister moved in with her boyfriend, the burden of...
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I swallowed, my parched throat begging me to stop talking. "For what use?"
Patty beheld the battle. It was dramatically turning to a close. Pride's body had begun to glow that weird volcanic fire that illuminated his very bones.
This was the third time we'd seen this. If Kakashi faced similar physical damage, would he begin to glow, too? And once he glowed—grew too weak to stay in this world—would that send him home without a return spell?
But who could damage Kakashi enough to do that? Other than...himself? Would it really be okay to do something like that...just for the chance to go home?
There were still too many unknowns for me to feel comfortable with sending him off like that. What if he landed back in his world, but in a place without fast medical supplies? Out in the middle of nowhere? A battlefield?
"Exalted," a new voice spoke from within the darkness.
Sam's spine shot ramrod straight as I yelped, dragging the kids in closer to my body. The sound distracted Kakashi, who turned to look at the three of us. This distraction allowed Pride to sharpen the fangs of his shadow, stabbing straight at Kakashi's exposed neck.
"Kak—"
The shinobi parried, dodging the gleaming, elongated teeth as they chomped near his neck. He spun in the air, his Chidori searing visible traces across the sky as he took the moment to grab the kid's small body.
Pride's face was marred with black, like a deep burn, sloughing it away into ash. The vibrancy of the orange along his spine—dipping lines across his arms, his cheeks—was so eerie. Pieces of his head even began to crumble away.
It was a horrible sight.
I didn't have any affection for Pride, but it was still difficult to watch. Was it because he was trapped inside that childlike form? The sight of those dark eyes glaring fiercely out at Kakashi, that frown that morphed his features into something narrow and sinister—something a child should not wear—was just so startling. So eerie.
"You know you can't win," Pride managed, his entire right eye crumbling to dust. It left behind a cloud, a poof of black that drifted, covering Kakashi in a horrible coating. "You have no say here. No power. You, yourself, are of little consequence."
The light grew blinding, and the child began to levitate. Patty flicked a finger up, and the child shot into the sky. A gaping purple wound swelled, just barely visible against the black.
And another one was gone.
"Ginnie," Patty welcomed the new voice, uncaring about the vanishing sparks of lava-filled veins and crackly portals in the sky that left the rest of us reeling. "Come over. I want you to meet someone."
