Her chakra was sluggish and just beyond her reach. She felt almost like she was lying on a flat piece of glass, observing the river that she knew belonged to her churn and breathe less than an inch from her, and yet, for all of her ability in recognizing it, it could just as well be on the moon.
Unreachable.
Yet, the fact that she was able to feel that something was amiss at all meant that something could be done.
Slowly, blindly, she metaphorically pressed herself against the 'glass' slowly but surely mapping it, feeling that the perception of flat smoothness was only that: a perception. A trick on her senses. After all, chakra couldn't be defined as 'flat'.
In a sense, it was like a liquid, but one that couldn't be forced into a specific form. It couldn't be stopped, for it meant that whatever fluid grip the seals had on it would slip away, and it couldn't be erased, because then Karin would die.
With growing confidence, Karin completely abandoned the faint feelings that her body kept sending her, and completely focused on that way of feeling-not-feeling that she was applying to her esoterical constraints.
After a lenght of time she couldn't measure, she found a moment of balance: as if she was on a cusp over the smooth glass. No, it couldn't be defined so paltry, but it mattered not: it was an imperfection, and that meant leverage.
Her focus narrowed on that 'cusp' seeing how it barely wobbled in order to consent her chakra to move even while it kept her from direcly touching it.
But she could feel the barrier, and so, she could touch the 'glass'.
Blundering in the dark, she eventually found the other two points where the seals kept her chakra moving even if beyond her reach.
By that point, she finally was ready.
Quietly, almost shyily, she started pushing and pulling on those three points, stretching them in opposite directions so that the tension would simply make them more nociceable to her senses, then she 'dangled' them, for lack of a better term, as if they were loose teeth about to fall off.
After some time, the 'knots' became easier to manipulate, and eventually, she pulled on them enough for her chakra on the other side of the barrier to pool in the dents she created. And just like that, the seal on her throat cracked, the other two lacked the balance inscribed in their build, and she was once more alive.
Warmth washed over her senses along with a deluge of information carried to her by her instinctive sensing of the surroundings. Liquid strength trickled through her muscles ready to be unleashed, and her eyes, still closed under the juta sack over her head, opened.
There were five chakra signatures laying around. One of them was further from the others, quietly and unfeelingly searching into the night while the others slept. Carefully, she analyzed what she could: the sentinel was a female naturaly inclined towards Suiton.
She named her Vigil in her head. The first shinobi she focused on had a larger than average pool of chakra, Doton attuned, she named him Deep. Arrow was a thin female that would barely reach Karin's chin where they standing one in front of the other, while Red was a powerfully Katon aligned male whose sleep was a little too light for the Uzumaki' tastes.
The last shinobi she analyzed was a large, burly man with a relatively small chakra pool: instinctively, Karin felt his murky and almost poisonous chakra. Likely a Genjutsu specialist. Karin concluded, and named him First, because he would be her first target.
With a minute application of chakra, ropes fell from her wrists, marred with the ash of the broken seals that should have kept her unable to access her power, and then she was ready.
With her head still under the juta sack and with a deliberate action, Karin intertwined her fingers together, keeping her attention towards Vigil, the only shinobi awake that could most easily spot her actions.
Her chakra eagerly answered to her entructions as she manipulated it as thin as she could, before spreading it like a cover over First, whose sleep deepened slightly once her illusion took hold. She had to match the unique characteristics of the shinobi's chakra, so she moved lightly and carefully, making her Genjutsu complementary to the man's natural feel.
Arrow and Deep were next, even given their differences and unique feel of their chakra, her Genjutsu spread over their sleeping forms, almost like mist, before quietly slipping in them, turning their sleep into something that resembled a light coma more than a deep slumber.
She smiled under the cover of her juta sack, overjoyed by her tentative success, only to immediately focus once more when she felt the delicate exercise she was carrying on almost slip from her fingers. Steeilng herself, she parted her illusion once more, ensnaring Red in her sleeping web.
She was... confused, on one hand, she only felt relish in seeing the results of her success, on the other... No. She decided. The life of no shinobi can be valued more than my freedom.
She only wanted to run, run from her pursuers, run from what she had done in order to remain alive.
Safe from the notoriously light seep of her nearby captors, she slowly undid her bindings, and soon enough her eyes could roam through the night, the moon and stars bringing enough light for her to see, not that she needed it: Earth natured chakra gave her a precise feedback of everything in her surroundings, and so she slowly rose to her feet, chakra circulating in order to keep her body from protesting because of the effort it took.
The nearest shinobi left two kunai ready to be thrown in case of emergency, and they quickly found their way into the Uzumaki's hands.
With a flick of her wrist, the first sailed in a high curve soon enough glinting off in the distance while she readied her second blow: her attention unwavering on Vigil.
When the first weapon she threw made some noise during its descent, Vigil's chakra became suddenly attentive: as if the stony vigilance he had until that point had just turned into a steely bear trap.
Focused as he was towards the origin of the unnatural sound of a kunai landing in the sand, he didn't react in time when the second buried itself into the back of his head, making him crumple forward in a not so quiet tumble.
Still, Karin's genjutsu had induced an extremely deep sleep in her captors, and none moved.
A feral baring of teeth took place on the Uzumaki's face then. memories of abuse at the hands of Kusa, both towards her and towardds her mother, suddenly washing over her consciousness.
She moved methodically, fishing another kunai free from the closes shinobi. And quietly walking from one to another, she sunk the lenght of steel into their bodies. Silent death was given away four other times that night, and during each second of that endeavour, Karin could only focus on keeping her motions controlled, her chakra muted, her will steady.
So, again and again, she killed.
Because they kidnapped her.
Because she wouldn't need to be saved once more.
Because she wanted to. Because she wasn't weak. Because... Beacuse...
Karin blinked in surprise when she found fat tears streaming down her cheeks, her adrenaline high finally coming down as she hesitated.
A part of her knew that the treath was ended, and that the safest thing to do now, was to carefully check her captors belongings, before stocking up with anything useful, hide the bodies and run away, faking a trail or two.
She knew what she had to do, but as she bent over one of her captors, his dead body moved minutely, gravity finally pulling one arm free from a fold of the sack in which he had been sleeping.
And because of that unexpected and wrong movement, shaken by the current events, Karin ran.
...
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