ANBU Legacy - Traitor Mission - ANBU_Legacy (2024)

Chapter 1: Grow Teeth and Pursue

Chapter Text

May 5 through 7, Yondaime Year 5

At 1900 exactly, Team Six set out into the gathering blue twilight.

The mission split point was Kaede Ridge, an old strategic hold-over from the last war (and the war before that). It took them just under two days to reach it, moving at a steady wolf-pack pace. The healings had done good work. Raidou felt loose and easy, stiffness erased by a medic’s clever hands. Genma was back to his usual fluidity, loping along with the watermark smoothness of a shinobi in glowing health.

The kids were feeling their oats. Raidou could barely keep track of the rapid-shifting alliances between Kakashi, Katsuko, and Ryouma as they squabbled, challenged, teased, and whetstoned each other’s edges. He only interfered once, when Kakashi looked tempted to commit actual homicide.

They camped twice, cooking, storytelling, and sleeping under starlight, while Katsuko’s clones kept guard.

In the late afternoon of the target day, the ridge came into view. It was dotted with May wildflowers and long grass. At the highest edge, a giant tree had fallen sideways and bleached in the sunlight, broad roots making a pale lattice of dessicated wood. That was the marker.

Raidou called a halt in the sheltered lee of the tree, and Genma broke out a cold late lunch.

Half an hour, maybe, and they’d splinter out towards their separate missions, running to keep pace with the five other ANBU teams arrowing towards their own goals. Raidou should probably say something.

Nothing profound presented itself.

He settled with his back pressed against rough, wind-stroked wood, balanced a pork rice-ball on his right knee and a half-empty canteen on his left thigh, and just looked at his team. Katsuko had draped herself out along the slanted tree-trunk like a leopard preparing to sun itself, with a set of riceballs lined up on her armored stomach ready to be sacrificed. Ryouma sat just beneath her, to Raidou’s left, his problematic left knee crooked up to support the casual elbow he’d propped on it. Genma knelt over his own pack, still doling out lunch items. Kakashi sat a little ways separate from the group, cloaked in the kind of watchful stillness that suggested he was keeping an eye on the horizon.

“Captain,” Katsuko said suddenly, in the voice of honest inquiry that made everyone around her brace. “How many goats do you think I’m worth? I’d say twenty. And a cow.”

…well, that was one way to dodge mission nerves.

“Depends,” Raidou said. “Are we talking good-quality goats, or backwater farm stock?”

“The best goats,” Katsuko said. “Goat nobility.”

He considered it. “Four and a half. You can keep the cow.”

Katsuko clutched at her heart as if he’d just knifed her. “Four-and-a-half?Evenyou’reworth at least six.” After a belated second, she added a more respectful, “Taichou.”

“And a cow,” Raidou said.

Ryouma tossed a twig at Katsuko, who dodged it with an absent lean. “I want to know who’s paying goats for you. You might want to line that up before you settle on your price.”

This was something to do with the half-mumbled thing Katsuko had said in the briefing meeting, which meant it was really something to do with the training session Raidou had missed. The only training session he’d missed. And they’d created weird in-jokes about livestock.

Raidou couldn’t decide if he was vaguely (ridiculously) jealous, or grateful for sanity-preserving ignorance.

“You don’t even wanna know how many goats I thinkyou’reworth,” Katsuko told Ryouma ominously.

“None,” Kakashi drawled. “But maybe a bunny rabbit.”

Katsuko’s head swivelled around like a falcon spotting new prey, but Ryouma returned fire first. “And who was it who caught rabbits for us on our first mission together?”

“Killed,” Kakashi corrected. “I would pay a dead rabbit for you, and keep you around to run errands.”

“You’d have to pay more than a dead rabbit to get ‘Ryouma-senpai’ to notice you,” Katsuko said silkily.

Kakashi gave her a puzzled look. He wasn’t the only one; Raidou tipped his head back to stare up at Katsuko, trying to figure out why she’d promoted Ryouma to the position of senpai over herself.

Genma was more proactive. A satsuma sailed over Ryouma’s head and bounced gently off Katsuko’s forehead; she caught it before it fell.

“Stop,” Genma said, and hit Ryouma in the chest with a second satsuma. “You stop, too.”

Kakashi got a look with his flying fruit, but no commentary. Raidou received his via an easy underarm toss, which seemed to be less of a criticism and more of an invitation to vitamin C.

“Thanks,” he said, and set a good example by eating it.

Katsuko skinned her satsuma and stuffed it wholesale into her mouth, biting down with relish; juice ran down both sides of her chin. Ryouma dropped his head guiltily down, concentrating on peeling his satsuma in one piece before he ate the fruit in neat sections. Kakashi’s satsuma had, unsurprisingly, vanished. Genma sliced his satsuma into four even quarters with a kunai, like an orange, and ate them one-handed while he sorted through his pack, re-ordering his supplies after the lunchtime gutting.

None of them were quite looking at each other, and the weight of the upcoming mission loomed like distant thunder.Today we murder people.

“Alright, Hatake,” Raidou said, breaking the silence. “Let’s go over those plans again.”

Profound was probably for civilians and higher-ups, anyway. Strategy was more useful.

Kakashi’s ideas for both sides of the mission were simple, succinct, and made surprisingly good use of individual strengths. The team had already covered everything twice, both times they’d camped, but it didn’t hurt to run over the finer details again.

Ryouma sketched out two maps in the dirt, laying out blueprint-accurate floor plans of their strike zones. (Apparently no head for letters didn’t translate into a difficulty with pictographs. If anything, Ryouma had a better map-sense than anyone else on the team.) Katsuko slid down from the tree to lean casually against Ryouma’s back. After a moment, she stretched over him and used her sword-point to scratch arrows in the dirt, illustrating Kakashi’s explanation. Genma interjected the occasional quiet word. Every time he did, the flow of conversation changed like a stream flowing through new geography, re-routed by calm landmarks.

All Raidou had to do was get out of the way and let them work.

Twenty minutes later, Kakashi pulled him out of his warm bubble of self-satisfaction with a low, “Captain?”

Raidou smiled at the four waiting faces. “Looks perfect.”

Kakashi’s visible eye curved. Katsuko sheathed her sword, thumb stroking the hilt with the faintest edge of leashed impatience. Ryouma kicked the dirt maps away.

Genma stood, stretching his back in a bow’s curve. “Time to go.”

It was better not to make a production of it. Raidou got to his feet and shouldered his pack, brushing grass away from the seat of his pants. A golden shiver of chakra brushed his skin. He glanced down and found Katsuko ready at his side, faintly vibrating with the need to get moving. Kakashi and Ryouma fell in behind Genma, standing like a brace of Hokage’s guards at his back. The silver and black hair made them look like living ANBU armor, polished and ready underneath the sun.

“Good hunting, lieutenant,” Raidou said, and tapped his own tattooed shoulder. “Hatake, Tousaki, if you screw up I’m going to use your back teeth to make myself a shiny necklace, understood?”

Ryouma’s cheek dented as he ran his tongue around the inside of his teeth, thoughtfully. “Good thing I flossed.”

Kakashi snorted, and nodded once at Raidou.

“Good hunting to you, too, captain,” Genma said, unruffled. He glanced at his watch. “I have 17:26. Strike at 22:00, rendezvous at Arechi Hill Safehouse at 03:00?”

Raidou set his watch. “Give an hour for margin of error. If we’re missing anyone by 04:00, available parties go to the back up plan.”

“Back up plan?” Kakashi said.

“That’d be Plan B,” Raidou said. “‘Rescue lost idiots’.”

Ryouma flickered a brief look at Raidou—remembering the Second Trial, probably, or perhaps being pulled out from underneath a mountain of dead demon slime—and then turned the charm on for Katsuko. “I know you’ll always come for me, right?”

“That’s right,” Katsuko said cheerfully, after a quick glance between Ryouma and Raidou. “I’m always willing to be a prince for damsels-in-distress.”

Kakashi’s snort was louder this time.

“I think we ought to try to make it a point of honor not to need rescuing,” Genma said, and turned to Katsuko. “Look after Moon. I deputize you to nag him in my stead if necessary.”

Raidou expected her to light up like a megawatt bulb, but Katsuko just gave the lieutenant a single, serious nod and glanced to the horizon, like she was already marking out the trail between here and bloodshed, and planning where she needed to be a shield. Raidou felt his mouth tilt up at the corner.

“I’ll try not to need it,” he said, and pulled his mask on. “Give Tsuto Takayoshi my regards.”

Painfullywent unsaid.

Genma smiled like a switchblade, edges unsheathing with a glimmer, and slid his tanuki mask into place. His fingertips skimmed his tattoo. “And give Tsuto Masaaki-kun mine.”

Ryouma traded a glance with Kakashi and cracked his knuckles, murmuring something that sounded a lot like, “Tigers.”

To Raidou’s great surprise, Kakashi gave a low little growl that shivered in the air like something blood-drenched. It clanged weird harmonics into the prehistoric parts of Raidou’s brain that suddenly wanted to beoff the ground. Ryouma just grinned, broad and white, like he’d expected that.

Katsuko made a savagely amused sound.

Well, at least they were bonding.

Kakashi’s visible grey eye regarded Katsuko and Raidou for a moment, as if he was printing their faces down into memory, then he pulled his lion-dog mask into place and turned away first. Ryouma followed him, the horns of his ram mask curling up into dark, wind-ruffled hair. Genma fell into easy pace on their heels, a man prepared to run a long leash.

Raidou watched them go for a moment. Their destination, Ibaragashi City, was only a short hop away. From the vantage point of Kaede Ridge, Raidou could already see the smudge of city sprawl on the horizon, and the rising smoke from industrial works—if they ran true, Genma’s half of Team Six would be there within the hour. Katsuko and Raidou had a longer run ahead of them, at least forty miles before they hit the coast.

“Ready for this?” he asked Katsuko.

“Always,” Katsuko said, and pulled her rat mask down over her face, black-whisker lines fanning out like slotted shadows. “Let’s kill some traitors, captain.”

The first shiver of real adrenaline spilled down his spine.

“Let’s,” he said, and set out.

Chapter 2: No Quiet Man's Descent

Chapter Text

May 7 and 8, Yondaime Year 5

Day faded into night as Katsuko and Raidou closed in on Tsurugahama Port. The red-tinged sunset cast a bloody light over Raidou’s mask and gave his hair a fiery glow; he looked like a revenant from old legends, a battlefield spirit summoned to mete out retribution.

Katsuko folded the image into the back of her mind, fitting it in with all the other things that weren’t the mission, and reached for the quiet clarity of purpose.

The moon crawled up into the sky and rolled out a ceiling of stars for them to navigate by. Katsuko tracked time until they crested a hill and saw Tsurugahama sprawled out along the ocean in a cavalcade of small lights. They stopped long enough to test that their radio collars were working, hydrate, and choke down a ration bar each; then it was back to running, down from the hills into the winding maze of Tsurugahama streets.

Tsuto Masaaki and his family lived in a gated estate close to the water’s edge, near the shipping warehouses. The house itself was separated from the main gate by a carefully cultivated garden and a koi pond; round lanterns lit the yard like miniature stars. Armored guards patrolled the gate and the perimeter of the garden at regular intervals.

This place looked quiet. Peaceful, even.

Katsuko wanted to burn it all down.

She tapped Raidou’s arm. Moonlight gleamed on his blank-faced mask as he glanced down at her.Orders?Katsuko signed.

Thirty minutes,Raidou signed back, glancing at his watch. He indicated a passing four-man patrol with a flick of his fingers—eliminate them—and marked another group of guards as his own prey.

The plan was simple: chase out the staff, eliminate the targets, raze the estate to the ground. Leave the bodies behind as a message:Konoha brooks no traitors.

Katsuko saluted and faded into the shadows. She didn’t look back. A half-second later, Raidou’s chakra signature flickered and vanished. His ANBU tattoo glowed steady and warm on the edge of her senses.

Her designated patrol group consisted of three young fighters and their older captain. All four were well-armored and moved like soldiers; none of them were chakra-sensitive. Katsuko shielded her presence anyways and ghosted along in the patrol’s wake, careful not to disturb the scattered gravel lining the path.

One of the guards, a young, dark-haired woman with a crossbow, looked back over her shoulder just as the patrol reached the edge of the outer wall. Her captain glanced at her.

“Problem, Izaki?”

After a moment, Izaki shook her head and turned back around. “Nothing, taichou. Just thought I—”

Katsuko’s ANBU kodachi slid underneath Izaki’s chestplate, chakra-charged steel tearing through scaled plate like paper. Katsuko twisted the hilt, angling the tip of the kodachi up, and drove the blade into Izaki’s heart. The guardswoman choked, hands scrabbling at Katsuko’s arm, and dropped like a stone when Katsuko yanked her sword out of her chest.

Izaki’s captain wrenched his sword out of its scabbard and lunged for Katsuko, his face white with fury, while the two other guards remaining rushed to flank her.

“Nothing personal,” Katsuko said. She drew her katana from its sheath with a cold whisper of steel.

On the other side of the house, the second wing of the guard patrol hadn’t caught the change in the wind. They carried themselves like fighters, comfortable with their weapons and scarred from old victories. Not ninja-trained, but they’d obviously seen combat. Which wasn’t unusual, given Fire Country’s recent history.

Mercenaries, most likely.

Raidou didn’t feel good about putting them down, but that was the job. You couldn’t blame a dog for what its master had done, but you didn’t leave it standing to bite you, either. He dropped down into the center of the group and broke two necks, stabbed the third man in the chest. The fourth guard dodged. A woman, muscular and fast, scrambling to bring an iron-shod staff into play. He blocked her first hit with an arm-guard, irritated by the muffled clang, and yanked the staff out of her hands.

She went for him with a knife. Raidou flipped the staff and staved her chest in with the iron end, ending the fight in a crunch of bone. Her body dropped. He stowed all four corpses behind a manicured collection of shrubbery and slipped around the east side of the house. On the edges of his senses, Katsuko’s spark was already heading west. There was one outlying guard on each side of the house.

Judging by the fractional hesitation in Katsuko’s movements, hers only took a second. Raidou’s was no more complicated.

He touched his target-entry window frame, feeling for the threads of a chakra trap, and acknowledged a passing thought.This is too easy.

There was no trap.

The latch took a second, then the window slid soundlessly up. He boosted himself inside, landing in a light crouch on grassy-smelling tatami floor of a storeroom. The lights were off. The house had the soft-breathing quality of sleeping occupants. Intel suggested there was probably a guard or two inside, but they’d only had two days of data to pull a pattern from.

Raidou cracked the sliding paper door, checked his sight lines, and padded down the hallway. On the other side of the house, he could feel Katsuko circling right. Her spark glowed on his mental map like a single constellation, heading towards the master bedroom. Raidou’s path took him to the servant’s quarters, where no one was awake enough to require an immediate solution. Unlike his father, who housed a full recruitment of servants, Tsuto Masaaki kept a much smaller staff on-site: just a manservant, two maids, a cook, and a nanny in the kid’s room. From a passing glance, Raidou was pretty certain none of the sleeping servants had combat training, though the cook was surprisingly sturdy in the biceps. Probably came from punching dough.

He left them in peace and reversed directions, heading for the nursery.

There was no guard, which put him on edge, but the nanny was dozing in a rocking chair with an open book on her lap. She barely stirred when Raidou closed a hand around her neck and put hard pressure on her carotid, tipping her off the ledge into actual unconsciousness. That wouldn’t last long; he tightened a loop of wire around her wrists, locking her hands together, and left her slumped in the chair as he moved quietly forward.

There was a crib on one side of the nursery, and a small bed set just beneath the window. A little girl was tucked underneath the covers, breathing with the faintest rasp of a recovering cold. Her headboard had cherry blossoms carved into the varnished wood.

That was a thought Raidou really didn’t need.

He swept it aside and stood over the crib, deliberately trying to see Masaaki’s son as a collection of target points. Soft baby skull, fragile baby throat. Six months old. Even a civilian could handle that; all you needed to do was grab and shake. But there were cleaner ways.

From his kunai-holder, Raidou drew the single steel senbon he’d borrowed from Genma.

Before he could set the tip to pale, blue-veined skin, something flickered behind him. Raidou spun, swapping the senbon into his left hand and unsheathing his black sword.

The room was empty, cut across with moon-lit shadows.

The nanny was still slumped in her chair. He glanced at the corners, searching for anything out of the place. The door was half-open, the window still shut. The little girl—Tomoko, his brain helpfully supplied—snuffled and turned over, burrowing down beneath the covers.

Warily, he glanced back at the crib.

Which was empty.

The single blanket was neatly folded down, as if it had never been disturbed. The baby was gone. Raidou’s grip tightened on his sword hilt. He took a step to the left, eyes sweeping over the room again, senses extending. The side of his knee brushed the bedframe. He flicked the sword into his left hand, prepared to stab down and at least take out one target—

The bed was empty, too.

The covers lay flat and tidy, conscientiously pulled down to let the mattress air. There was no trace of the dark-haired little girl.

What the hell…

A hammer-blow between the shoulderblades knocked the breath out of him. He staggered one step forwards, felt something tear inside his chest, and stared down in shock as three feet of steel punched out through his sternum. A sword blade, streaked with blood.

“Hello, Konoha,” said a soft voice in his ear.

The two guards outside the master bedroom died without a sound, faces frozen in rictuses of shock. Katsuko flicked the blood off her blades and stepped over the threshold. The soft sound of breathing greeted her: Masaaki and his wife, asleep behind the silk curtains drawn around their large canopy bed. Moonlight filtered through the maple trees outside and fell in dappled patterns on the thick carpet. Paintings in extravagant frames hung on the walls, details lost in the shifting shadows. An intricately carved jade dragon loomed on its marble base in the center of the room; its cut ruby eyes gleamed down at Katsuko in watchful censure.

Katsuko crossed the floor on silent feet, passing by a large desk laden with scrolls and calligraphy brushes. A framed picture next to the inkwell caught her eye; unlike the rest of the art in Masaaki’s room, this one was simple, rendered on lined notebook paper. A child’s clumsy hand had drawn crayon roses arranged in a circle; a blob with a tail that might have been a cat frolicked in the center. The clarity that directed her focus during missions wavered like the surface of a lake, weakening enough for one selfish, human thought to coalesce:

Thank god I’m not the one in charge of killing the kids.

Shame prickled down Katsuko’s spine and curdled into a stone in her gut. She’d executed children before, snapped fragile necks and stopped young hearts. Hesitation was a weakness—and she was not weak.

Somehow, though, the memory of the Fujiyama house (blood-soaked tatami, the glimpse of a blue sundress in the space underneath the floor) lingered.

Her katana hilt creaked in her grip. Katsuko forced herself to turn away.

Masaaki and his wife slumbered on. Katsuko sheathed her katana and pushed aside the curtains, flipping her kodachi so the blade pointed downwards. Two clean strikes; Masaaki wouldn’t feel a thing—

Except he wasn’t there.

The even, rhythmic sound of two sleepers breathing didn’t stop, but Masaaki’s bed was empty of occupants, blankets folded and pillows propped up against the headboard. Katsuko’s heart pounded in her chest.

On the other side of the house, Raidou’s chakra signature flickered and bloomed open, its owner either too wounded or too distracted to conceal its presence.

Instinct forced Katsuko into action. Dimly, as if on the other side of a fog, she saw herself slice the edge of her kodachi in a smooth motion across the palm of her free hand. Blood welled up in a thin line through the lacerated fabric of her glove, followed by stinging pain. It was enough to knock her back into her own head; enough to feel the web of illusion settling over her mind. She slammed her kodachi back into its sheath and slapped her palms together.

“Kai!”

The genjutsu shattered. The bed remained empty, but the phantom breathing cut off. She shook off the last clinging threads of the illusion and stretched her chakra out in time to sense a second foreign presence closing in on her like an arrow. Katsuko cursed and went for her blades.

Which was when a third enemy shinobi lunged up out of nowhere and crashed into Katsuko like a tidal wave.

An armored shoulder dug into Katsuko’s sternum; the back of her head smacked the wall hard enough to make lights explode behind her eyes. Wood and plaster caved underneath their combined weight; the bastard had tackled herthrough the wall.

For a heart-stopping second, everything went black. Her pain centers shut down. Katsuko’s focus narrowed down to the buzzing in her ears and the isolated sound of her own breath rasping in her throat.

They hit the floor with a crash. Katsuko lashed out blindly, breaking the enemy shinobi’s hold on her with an elbow to the underside of his chin. He cursed, breath hot against her ear; Katsuko kicked him away and flipped back up to her feet in a graceless, jerky movement. The world dipped and swayed around her like a drunken carousel as she lurched. She managed to stay upright and drew her katana, forcing her grip to remain steady. Her vision filtered back slowly, the blurred edges of the world resolving into a cloud of dust and scattered debris. They were in the hall outside Masaaki’s room.

The complete lunatic who’d used her for interior renovations surged to his feet, shaking plaster off of his shoulders.Tall, Katsuko’s brain supplied, helpfully. Maybe taller than Raidou. Definitely taller than Kakashi and the lieutenant. There were no lights in the narrow hallway, but the moon shone from Masaaki’s room through the ruined wall. The four dashed rain-marks of Kirigakure glinted on the man’s hitai-ate. He smiled, showing long white teeth filed into dagger-points, and opened his mouth.

Raidou’s chakra was still wavering at the edge of her senses. Katsuko didn’t havetimefor small talk. She lunged at the Kiri-nin and he drew a kunai from nowhere to block the scything edge of her katana, dancing backwards out of range. She snarled and gave chase.

Adrenaline could do a lot for you.

Raidou grabbed the blade with a gloved hand, choking his grip up around the base where it exited his chest-plate. There wasn’t much blood; he could feel a trickle inside his armor, but steel plugged most of the hole. He had ten seconds, maybe, before his body figured out it was supposed to fall.

Enough time to kill the ninja who’d killed him.

His own sword was still in his left hand. He flipped the grip and stabbed backwards, aiming for his attacker.

And hit nothing.

He was getting really tired of that theme.

“Try again,” said the voice, and now it sounded like it was coming from all four corners of the room.

Dark flickers scratched at the edges of his vision, distracting. Blood pressure dropping, probably. He turned, spreading his chakra out, but it came sluggishly—dammit, he wasn’t a sensor. He slammed it all down into the ground instead, sheathing his sword and dropping the senbon, freeing both hands just long enough to work quick seals. He reached for his most basic affinity. If he couldn’t stab the shinobi or find the children, he’d break the earth and pull the whole house down. Katsuko would know what to do with the wreckage.

He felt the ground begin to tremble around the foundations, and then the sword in his chest melted.

Gleaming metal spilled down across his armor like running water, liquid-silver, and ran sideways across his chest-plate. He yelled and slapped at it, expecting raw heat, but cold silver tendrils clung glue-like to his hands and flowed around his wrists, then up his arms. It was more metal than the sword could have held, and it washeavy. It weighed his arms down, sealing them against his sides. More ran down his legs, forcing his knees to bend.

What the hell kind of jutsu…

Oh.

You dumbass.

His chest was on fire now, numbness given way to the kind of beautifully constructed agony only a talented genjutsu-caster could force onto someone’s nerve-endings. But Raidou hadn’t dropped, he could still think, and that was a pretty good clue his impending death was exaggerated.

He couldn’t get his hands together for akai, but he never had much luck with them anyway. He never had luck with genjutsu in general, but that was a thought he could panic about later, when he gotout of this one. The metal weight forced him down to his knees. Raidou drew a furious breath and bit down as hard as he could on his tongue.

Blood burst into his mouth.

Pain came with it, more sturdy than the false burning in his chest. He tightened his jaw and felt the ripple-shock in his chakra. His vision shivered, and there was reality, overlaid with someone else’s mental playground. The metal wasn’t really there. His sword was in its sheath. He was standing, hands loose at his sides, senbon still dangling between his fingertips, and there was a woman in the room. Light-haired and curvy, solid-muscled, mouth a painted red slash. Light gleamed on the hitai-ate tied loosely around her throat: Kirigakure markings, no slash.

Sanctioned shinobi for hire.

She held the baby in one arm and the little girl in the other. The baby was screaming. The woman regarded Raidou with calm, measuring eyes.

“You can’t have the children,” she said, and cracked her neck sideways.

The genjutsu poured over his head again, sinking hooks into his psyche. He was stabbed, he was burning; his skin peeled off in strips. A long way away, he saw the grey shadow of her movement, splitting into mirror images—clones taking the kids while she moved towards him, the slender stretch of a silver garotte glittering between her hands.

Raidou bit down on his tongue again, wrenching enough control back to regain movement in one hand. He flipped Genma’s senbon around and drove it into his thigh. It was enough real hurt to knock him back onto his mental footing. He slapped his hands together and croaked out, “Kai.”

The illusion cracked.

“You’re not good at this, are you?” said the woman.

“I have other skills,” Raidou said, and got his hands up just before she lashed the wire around his throat. It bit into the reinforced material of his gloves and the back of his neck, but not—and this was important—into his larynx. She spat irritation and sent real, actual fire burning up the metal noose, but Raidou knew where she was now. He had her on a line.

And she expected him to jerk away.

He grabbed further down the wire with both hands, ignoring the hiss of smothering flames, and wrenched her forward. She staggered, caught by surprise. Raidou surged forward, let go of the wire, and in a move Katsuko was particularly fond of, unsheathed his sword in a single arc right across the woman’s ribs. Her flak-jacket peeled open under the black blade, and flesh pared away from bone. Blood washed down the flat plane of her stomach. She choke-gasped and drew two kunai, forcing him to block one with a quick reversal of his stroke and the other with his arm-guard. Clashing metal struck sparks. She was fast and light on her feet, like most genjutsu-artists. But she was close enough to grapple, and that washisplayground—

Paper rustled.

An exploding tag flapped gently on the ring of her second kunai. She slammed it into the ground at Raidou’s feet with athunk, and looked at him. “Three,” she said. “Two—”

He threw an arm up.

The explosion blew them both into the walls. Raidou hit hard enough to dent plaster and dropped to floor, head ringing. He fought his way back upright, shedding pieces of wood and bits of foam—the crib had been caught in the blast, though the little girl’s bed was remarkably untouched—and ripped the wire free, dropping it to the ground where it smoked and blackened. In the corner of the room, the nanny had been knocked out of the rocking chair; she fought dazedly with the wire he’d tied around her wrists, blood smearing her clothes from half a dozen wooden shrapnel injuries. Not a threat. The kunoichi was already up and scrambling towards the doorway, casting shimmering threads of genjutsu to cover her escape, but they were weak, visible. Raidou yanked the senbon out of his leg and flung it at the back of her neck.

It struck, but missed the nerve cluster he’d been aiming for. She yelped, and vanished around the doorframe into a hallway that wavered with weird blue flames and—giant scorpions.

Raidou was ninety percent certain those weren’t real.

He could also feel Katsuko’s spark again, like a grounding beacon. He grabbed his sword and bolted after the kunoichi before he could lose the last shreds of his advantage to a new set of illusions. She met him with fresh kunai and the incredibly disturbing vision of all his skin spontaneously melting into blood, but he could see reality through it. Her gasp was definitely real when he broke her guard and kicked her in the ribs. She went down on one knee, cradling the mess he’d made of her stomach. Her uniform was shredded and scorched all over, but her eyes were still calm.

“They haven’t done anything,” she said.

“I know,” Raidou said, words smearing around blood, and cut her head off.

His vision cleared immediately, genjutsu vanishing as if it had never existed. He felt the collapsing lurch of a dying clone at the end of the house, and heard the twin thumps of small bodies hitting the ground—the baby screamed again, and the little girl had woken up enough to join in. Servants shouted, footsteps hammering down wooden hallways. The nanny was shrieking.

Close by, Katsuko’s chakra swirled violently, locked in the tight pattern of combat.

Raidou hit his throat-mic. “One enemy down. Watch yourself, they use genjutsu. You need back up?”

The radio hissed empty static just long enough to make his throat tighten with worry, then Katsuko’s voice came over the line. “Roger that,” she said, clipped and professional. “I’ve got three hostiles. They’re using genjutsu to hide Masaaki. I can handle it, taichou.”

He’d struggled with one, but Katsuko was a lot better with illusion. Three jounin were a handful for anyone, though. Then again, Katsuko was her whole own class of fighter.

“Status?” she added.

“Little singed,” he said. “Mind the explosion tags. I’m going after the kids. Keep me updated.”

“Roger that.”

Something crashed on the other side of the house.

Atta girl.

Aching all over, Raidou smiled faintly, flicked blood away from his sword blade, and headed towards the thin sound of infant terror.

The knot in Katsuko’s chest loosened when she felt Raidou’s chakra signature stabilize. She clicked her throat-mic off. Then she threw herself underneath the Kiri-nin’s next strike and rolled between his legs, slamming the heel of her boot up into his groin on her way through. He yelled and leapt out of the way before she could take out his knees, lashing out at her with a water jutsu that filled the air with a veil of steam. Katsuko twisted aside and surged back up to her feet.

The hallways were too narrow to accommodate the broad sweep of her katana. Katsuko switched to her kodachi instead, relying on its shorter blade to slide in underneath the Kiri-nin’s guard. He dodged, despicably nimble for such a tall man, and kicked her in the ribs. She turned aside at the last second to divert the force of the blow and stabbed her kodachi downwards; he yanked his leg back fast enough that she only scored a long line down his calf instead of hamstringing him. Katsuko leapt back and slapped her palms together as she started to flicker through the first seal for her clones.

Metal flashed out of the corner of her eye. A machete blade cut through the steam with deadly accuracy, aiming for her throat. Katsuko flinched backwards and knocked it aside with her armguard, gritting her teeth at the high-pitched screech of steel against armor. The newcomer was another Kiri-nin: a kunoichi with a thin scar bisecting the crooked tilt of her mouth. Pale eyes glinted at Katsuko from underneath the Kiri hitai-ate.

“Konoha,” the kunoichi hissed.

Katsuko lashed out with her kodachi and ducked underneath the other woman’s whip-fast counter-strike. The machete whistled a centimeter over her head.

The kunoichi and the shinobi with the shark teeth made for two out of the three enemy presences she’d sensed. She cast her chakra out, searching, and found the third energy signature hovering nearby, in the master bedroom.

The kunoichi slammed a knee into Katsuko’s stomach. Katsuko doubled over, gasping in a lungful of steam, and wrenched her hands together to call fire out from the empty spaces of the world. Flames licked her palms and fingers, raced along the floorboards, surged up the walls in a roaring wave of heat. The kunoichi swore. Further down the hall, the shinobi let out a guttural snarl.

Rage lit Katsuko’s veins. She knocked the kunoichi away with a torrent of fire. The stench of charred hair and flesh filled the air. Steam from the water jutsu still filled the hallway like a bathhouse; it hung in a stubborn fog, some sort of jutsu trick keeping it from evaporating. Katsuko sent a surge of chakra into her next onslaught of flames to kick the heat up a few more degrees.

The steam began to boil.

The Kiri ninja screamed, the kunoichi’s shriek and the shinobi’s yell rising to an inhuman pitch. Katsuko pivoted on her heel and sprinted for Masaaki’s room. The scent of burning meat dogged her heels.

Entering the master bedroom through the main doors would mean running the gauntlet of flames and steam again. She climbed back through the giant hole in the wall instead and turned on her throat-mic.

“Two hostiles down,” she informed Raidou. “Going after the genjutsu user and Masaaki now. Also, this side of the house is on fire.”

Static crackled for a short beat. “Did you set the house on fire?”

“It’s spreading fast,” Katsuko said, scanning the shadows of Masaaki’s room. The estate was big, but chakra-fueled fire was even hungrier than its mundane counterpart. “I’d say ten minutes til it reaches you, taichou.”

“Great,” Raidou said. His side of the comm hissed background noise for a moment as a resoundingcrashand the sound of servants screaming filtered through. “Try not to bring the roof down.”

“Understood,” Katsuko said, and switched her mic off. She spread her chakra out again, encompassing the room to search for the genjutsu user. Only emptiness greeted her. Frowning, she re-catalogued the details of the sculptures and paintings around her, trying to find a flaw that would tell her if she was caught in a hastily-crafted illusion. Everything was as it should be at first glance; even the crayon roses on Masaaki’s daughter’s drawing had the correct number of lopsided petals.

Behind Katsuko, the fire in the hallway surged higher. She walked further into the room to escape the stench of cooking bodies and froze mid-step when a whisper of fresh air filtered through her mask.

The window in the far corner had been left a fraction ajar. Katsuko threw her chakra out like an arrow, homing in on the gardens beyond the curtain of maple trees outside, and caught the barest shimmer of foreign chakra racing towards the outer wall.

Katsuko launched herself out the window, ducking her head to avoid the shower of shattering glass, and hit the ground at a dead sprint. Cool night air hit her mask and chased away the lingering traces of smoke in her throat. The enemy ninja’s chakra flickered as Katsuko closed in; after a moment, it stopped dead and flared in challenge, sharp and savage as a cornered tiger.

Tigers, Ryouma’s voice whispered in the back of her mind. The memory of Kakashi’s snarl shivered in her hindbrain.

Katsuko’s mouth tilted up in satisfaction. “My turn,” she said, and slid her swords free of their sheaths. Fire spilled down the gleaming edges of her blades.

The garden gave way without warning to a graveled path. The estate wall loomed high and forbidding overhead. In the dim pool of light cast by a hanging lantern, a green-haired man in shinobi armor was struggling with a civilian couple. Katsuko didn’t need to see the civilian man’s opulent dressing gown to identify the master of the house: the twin streaks of grey hair at Tsuto Masaaki’s temples were distinctive, even if grief and terror had twisted his face into something unrecognizable.

“My children!” the woman shouted, wild-eyed. Masaaki’s wife, Euiko. Her unbound hair flew every which way as she attempted to yank free of the Kiri shinobi’s grip.

“Already dead,” the shinobi snapped. Masaaki moaned in horror; the shinobi’s free hand shot out and grabbed him by the collar, giving the merchant a violent shake. “Keep it together! You and your wife—”

The shinobi’s gaze snapped sideways. He shoved Masaaki and Euiko out of the way and spun two kunai into his hands, bringing them up in time to catch Katsuko’s swords in a cross-block. Fire licked at his fingers and seared the fabric of his gloves away; he cursed and disengaged, jumping back to gain more breathing space. Reddened fingers interlaced and flickered through the beginnings of a jutsu.

Katsuko lunged at him and scythed her katana out in a broad arc, shearing his hands off at the wrist. Smoke rose from cauterized flesh. The Kiri shinobi screamed and buckled, falling down to one knee. His chakra roiled in agony.

Then it disintegrated like ashes in the wind. Katsuko stared as the clone unraveled into thin air and realized she’d been tricked. There’d been enough chakra in the bunshin to convince her it had been the real thing. She bit her lip until it bled, drawing on the spike of pain, and twisted her fingers in a seal. “Kai!” she barked.

Masaaki and Euiko huddled together against the garden wall. Their wide eyes and pinched faces faded into nothingness as the illusion broke, leaving Katsuko alone with her rising fury.

A thin infant scream rose from inside the house. Part of the roof caved in with a hungry roar of flames.

Raidou.

Katsuko ran.

The servants tried to protect the children.

A manservant, a maid, and a cook weren’t much of a hurdle, even if the cook did punch like a boxer. Raidou put them down one by one, dropping them into unconscious heaps, and chased the second maid trying to carry the children out the back door. He caught her in the hallway, grabbing her by the back of her sleeping yukata. Her socked feet skidded on the polished wooden floorboards.

“No!” she screamed, and flailed around to kick him, desperately hanging onto the frantic little girl and wailing baby.

“I know, I know,” Raidou told her, and closed a hand around her throat. “I’m sorry.”

He squeezed, hard and merciless, hitting pressure points to disrupt the blood-flow to her brain. Her eyes rolled up and her knees sagged. He caught the children as she fell, landing in a crumpled curl of blue-patterned fabric at his feet. The little girl, Tomoko, shrieked and beat at his armored chest, seeing a monster in the white mask looming over her. The boy’s name was Sorai, Raidou remembered; he was scarlet and screaming behind a mask of tears and snot, choking on smoke.

They’d done literally nothing. The girl was barely old enough to form permanent memories. The boy wasn’t old enough to have first words.

But Konoha wanted them dead.

The heat was already at Raidou’s back, pieces of the roof thundering as they collapsed. If he wanted any chance of giving Katsuko backup and getting the servants out unburned, he was out of time.

He’d lost Genma’s senbon in the back of the kunoichi’s neck. He pinned the girl against his side, freeing one hand, and drew a kunai. Set the blade to the baby’s throat. Sorai twitched at the touch of cold steel, his fingers splaying in an infant’s grab reflex. Raidou breathed out, and cut deep.

Blood sprayed across the floor.

The little body shuddered and went still, cries extinguished. Raidou made himself drop the boy and re-juggled the girl. She fought him, screaming hysterically. He got a grip on her long, dark hair, pulling her head back to bare her throat.

He brought the blade down again. But as it touched her skin, chakra twitched behind him and her body burst into red flowers.

Raidou swore and spun, coming face to face with a shinobi in the dark grey jounin-uniform of Kirigakure. Firelight glinted on spiky, grass-green hair. Equally green eyes narrowed over the white bandages Kiri-nin used in place of a mask. The shinobi’s hands were folded into a dragon seal. Ninjutsu or genjutsu?

Henge or more head-f*ckery?

Raidou flipped his kunai, raking a hot line of pain across the inner side of his left arm, and slapped his hands together. “Kai.”

Nothing changed. Crimson petals blew across the floor.

Behind the bandage-mask, the man’s mouth quirked. “We don’t always do the same thing twice.”

“I do, when it works,” Raidou said, and flung the kunai at the man’s face, drawing his black-bladed sword in the same motion. He launched himself on the heels of his kunai, hitting the Kiri-ninja just as the man deflected the flying blade with the contemptuous sweep of an armored forearm. The kunai spun away. Raidou’s sword clashed down on a short-bladed wakizashi that appeared with lightning speed.

Steel ground against steel, making a thin, shrill noise.

“I’m Aoisuke,” said the Kiri-ninja calmly, as they strained against each other. Of course his name hadbluein it. “I’d say it’s a pleasure, but…”

“Can you notnarrate?” Raidou said.

“Just making conversation.” Aoisuke’s other hand vanished and reappeared, bristling with shuriken. He threw them at point-blank range.

Raidou ducked his head, protecting his neck; steel sliced his shoulders. One thunked into his chestplate, the blade sinking through a joint in the ceramic plating deeply enough to scratch his chest. Itfeltreal.

Henge to hide the girl, kawarimi to swap her with with an explosion of flowers? Or just a localized illusion to fold her presence away? The petals were still there, sinking into the spreading puddle of Sorai’s blood.

Raidou hated genjutsu-users. You had to think on three levels at once, while trying not to get your face carved off. If you couldn’t trust your senses, whatcouldyou trust?

Steel, maybe.

Himself, definitely.

He put his weight behind his sword, breaking through Aoisuke’s weaker, one-handed grip, and kicked the man’s legs out from under him. Aoisuke tumbled, hit the ground, and flipped himself back to his feet, but Raidou was there to harry him, forcing him back up against the wall.

“You getting paid enough for this?” Raidou rasped.

“Areyou?” Aoisuke said.

Above them, flames raced across the ceiling. The air boiled with smoke, filling Raidou’s lungs with dense, choking heat. The house was traditionally designed, hand-built and beautiful, which meant paper walls and varnished wood—and a deadly firetrap. The servants might already be lost.

Which, goddammit, he hadn’t wanted their deaths on his hands.

Aoisuke strained against him, muscles bunching. Raidou shifted his footing, shoved the other man’s sword high, and created the perfect opening to drive his knee through. He hit Aoisuke hard in the solar plexus, thumping the breath out of him; the other man grunted, fighting against the knee-jerk instinct to bend double. Raidou knocked the wakizashi aside and whipped his katana around, taking Aoisuke’s head off at the neck.

And a clone exploded.

Oh, for the love of—

He turned, already expecting a knife between the shoulders. Instead, Katsuko smashed in through the exterior wall, scattering wooden panels.

“Taichou!” she shouted, as the backdraft of her entrance whipped the flames up into an inferno.

He didn’t have time to be surprised.

“Mind your back,” he snapped, turning to rake his gaze over the corners of the burning room. Genjutsu users were almost always sensor-types, which made their chakra-hiding skills better than most—

A shadow moved.

There wasn’t time to react. The wall next to Katsuko shivered, illusion breaking to reveal Aoisuke right behind her. He had Tomoko in one hand, cradled to his chest, and bare steel in the other: the short, curving wakizashi with its wicked edge.

In liquid slow-motion, he lunged forward and stabbed Katsuko through the back.

Raidou went cold.

Katsuko looked down at the length of bloodied metal punched out of her armored chest, right through her heart, and said, very quietly, “Oh.”

Aoisuke pulled his sword back, steel making a gritty sound against bone, and kicked her in the spine. She staggered forward and landed on her knees. Blood slid down her white chestplate. Her face lifted towards Raidou, throat working as her breath bubbled in her chest, but she couldn’t manage words. Crimson flooded out beneath the bottom edge of her mask, streaking down her neck. She collapsed in a boneless heap on the floorboards.

He couldn’t feel her chakra.

“What’sthatworth to you?” Aoisuke said, and ducked out through the hole in the wall.

On the floor, Katsuko’s blood spilled gently out and mixed with the infant boy’s.

This is going to hurt later,Raidou thought distinctly, through layers of ice.This is going to hurt a lot.

It was his last thought for a while. He set his hands together, pulling up the dense, rarely-used reserves of his chakra—

And it wouldn’t come.

His feet wouldn’t move. When he looked down, the floorboards had wrapped around his ankles, soaked with arterial-crimson streaks, moved by a jutsu he hadn’t noticed. The heat roared at his back, bright as dragon’s breath. His skin, already tight, started to burn.

Katsuko was dead, and he was trapped.

He grabbed his sword and crouched to hack at the living wood tightening around his legs. The blade struck sparks, as if it was meeting steel. The fire drew closer.

Raidou screamed rage.

In the depths of the burning house, Raidou’s chakra howled like a storm. Katsuko ducked low to avoid the smoke and called up five clones. They went racing down the hallways in search of survivors while Katsuko kicked in a screen door. She tapped her throat-mic. “Taichou, can you hear me?”

Static crackled and hissed on Raidou’s end of the comm. Katsuko bit down on the fear that rose like bile in her throat and doubled her speed.

She took the next corner at a sprint, eyes streaming from the smoke, and almost tripped when she caught the faint glimmer of foreign chakra. It moved at a fast clip, away from the house, and veered abruptly to make a beeline in the direction of the docks. Raidou’s chakra still flared somewhere in the house—or at least, she thought it did.

Had the Kiri genjutsu specialist lured her in with another illusion?

Katsuko reached out with her chakra and gasped in relief when Raidou’s ANBU tattoo shone like a homing beacon in response to her own.

Another part of the ceiling caved in with a shower of white-hot sparks. She was out of time.

Five quick seals and a directed twist of chakra sent wind blasting through the closest wall. It punched through wood and plaster like a spear, barreling through the next wall—and the next. Katsuko ducked through her impromptu shortcut and shouldered a burning bookcase aside. A flood of memories from a dispelled clone hit her over the head like a brick: a quick glimpse of two blistered bodies sprawled on the floor, barely recognizable as the two Kiri ninja she’d boiled alive in the hallway outside Masaaki’s room. At leasttheyhadn’t been a genjutsu.

Another burst of memories: one of her bunshin picking the half-unconscious nanny from the floor of the burning nursery; the sharp burst of night air as the rest of Katsuko’s clones piled all the household servants they could find in an unconscious, crumpled heap outside the front gate, popping of existence once their purpose was complete.

Well, if Raidou and Katsuko died in the flames of their target’s burning house, at least they wouldn’t bring any innocent bystanders with them to the afterlife.

Katsuko darted through the wreckage, coughing hard enough to make her chest ache, and narrowed her focus down to the cacophony of her captain’s chakra. It feltwrong, sharp and disjointed where Raidou was usually smooth and contained, but it meant he was still alive.

Her vision started to dim. She blasted aside a blockade of burning debris and focused on putting one foot in front of the other; she was nearly on top of Raidou’s chakra signature now, all she needed to do was hang on—

Katsuko rounded the corner and stopped short.

Raidou stood with his back to her at the other end of the hallway, hands clenched at his sides as he stared into space. Fire lit his armor up in flashes of orange and red; sparks landed on his bleeding shoulders, but he gave no sign of noticing.

“Taichou!”

He didn’t even twitch.

A genjutsu, then. The Kiri shinobi had trapped Raidou in a nightmare and left him to burn.

Katsuko had enough control to shock his system free from the genjutsu without flooding it. She started forward, gathering chakra into her hands.

She made it three steps before the ceiling collapsed inwards in a hail of splinters. A wooden support beam toppled in slow motion, one end catching on the jagged edges of a wall. The other end swung down like a pendulum, down towards Raidou.

Adrenaline surged. Katsuko didn’t remember moving; she was justthere, the distance between them vanished in an eyeblink. She shoved Raidou out of the way with chakra-glowing hands, sending a jolt of directed energy straight into his system to break the genjutsu, and twisted aside to avoid the beam. Not fast enough; it slammed into her like ten tons of agony, but she caught the brunt of the impact on one side of her body instead of her spine.

Very distantly, she felt something in her shoulder crack.

Katsuko tucked into a roll, letting the force of the blow propel her out of the way, and tried to push herself back to her feet. Screaming pain caught her halfway up; she staggered and fell to one knee, clutching her shoulder.

The rising wave of Raidou’s killing intent made her head snap up. Raidou let out a terrible, grating sound, rage twisting his voice into something inhuman, and shoved himself up from where he’d fallen. Katsuko met his gaze through the crescent moon mask and felt her breath catch in her throat. Nothing recognizable looked back at her through his eyes.

Her mask was still on, but Raidou must have read something in the stillness of her body. He paused, killing intent retreating, and wrenched his mask aside. His lips were all-over bloody, red trickling down from the corners of his mouth.

“Rai?” Katsuko asked.

She saw the moment he realized it was her. His chakra rose again, blackened fury surging, but this time Katsuko was in the eye of the storm instead of its focus. Raidou grabbed her and slung her good arm over his shoulders, dragging her out of the burning house through a hole in the wall. A little bundle on the floor, half-hidden by the smoke, caught her eye; Katsuko reared back in instinctive horror when she recognized the unnaturally still face of the Tsuto family’s young son.

Raidou’s grip on her tightened, but he didn’t say a word. He hauled her out into the cool night air. Katsuko sagged against his side and didn’t let herself look back. Behind them, the house crumbled, consigning its dead to the flames.

The yard was a nightmare of reflected firelight, glowing dull orange as sparks and ash rained down. Raidou dropped Katsuko in the middle, next to the ornamental koi pond. Blood thundered in his ears, hot as the smoke in his lungs.

“Stay here,” he grated.

She grabbed his arm, grip tightening. Her voice rasped. “I can still fight.”

The fragile vestiges of his control sheared through.

“Stay,” he snarled, and wrenched out of her grip.

In the distance, Aoisuke’s chakra signature was weak and half-hidden, folded in on itself at the bare edges of Raidou’s reach, but it was accompanied by three civilians—two adults, one child, and those couldn’t be hidden.

He pulled on his chakra, and this time, it came. Deep energy lit up the inside of his skin, smothering everything that hurt. Ready to pull flesh from bones. Tonight, Kirigakure owed himblood.

Katsuko froze very still, the whites of her eyes gleaming behind her mask.

He turned away from her and put his hands together, letting the first jutsu go. It ripped the ground apart under his feet and tore a V-shaped opening in the compound’s perimeter wall. He left Katsuko where she was, alive and breathing, and went after the man who’d made him think she’d died.

Aoisuke might have been a fast runner under ordinary circ*mstances, but two panicked parents—neither one in sprinting condition—and a traumatized toddler would slow anyone down. They were almost to the docks when Raidou caught up with them, but they hadn’t made it to a ship.

The odds of that got a little worse when Raidou broke three of the piers.

There were more than a dozen jutting out into the ocean like the teeth of a wide comb, interspersed with docked merchant ships, bright sails furled for the night. Raidou didn’t have wood jutsu that could affect them—no one did, not since Hashirama had died—but he had earth, and he had water, and when he reached for both, a stretch of the waterfront ripped itself apart. Piers wrenched loose from the stone wharf and battering waves smashed them underwater. Four of the ships lurched, crashing into the wharf and each other, and foundered, including the vessel the tiny party had been running for.

Aoisuke skidded to a halt on the cracking edge of the wharf, caught between open water and the threat at his back. Beneath his feet, the weight of Raidou’s furious chakra made cobblestones crack and split, denting down into disintegrating concrete.

There was a moment, just a split-second of a pause, and then Aoisuke made his decision.

He shoved Tomoko into her mother’s arms and turned, stepping away from the family. Splintered moonlight lit the planes of his face as he raised his chin. He was young behind the bandages, maybe Raidou’s age. “Couldn’t just burn, could you?” he yelled over the chaos.

Raidou didn’t have words. He had Katsuko’s blood in his mind’s eye, and two feet of steel jutting out of her chest. He hadOh, and a slow fall, andHow much is that worth to you?

He had rage, and he had running.

He hit Aoisuke square in the chest, and smashed him down onto the water. The ocean flattened beneath them, thumping down beneath the chakra-pressure of two jounin who could water-walk in their sleep. Salt burned into open wounds, but that just made Raidou madder. Aoisuke bucked and slithered out of his hold, slashing with kunai. Raidou knocked the gleaming blades aside, and took the first three openings that presented themselves: sternum, solar-plexus, and the narrow edge of the man’s jaw. Bone cracked beneath his knuckles.

Aoisuke spun backwards and fell, sinking a foot into the shallow waves before he regained his balance. When he coughed, blood sprayed through his bandage-mask and dappled the ocean’s surface.

It was a rare genjutsu-user who could go hand-to-hand on Raidou’s playing field.

But then he brought his hands up, and shuriken flashed through the air. Raidou was ready for them this time; he twisted and stamped down on the crest of a wave, shoving chakra through quick seals. The wave roared up, answering the water affinity in Raidou’s blood, and swallowed the shuriken. It kept going, curving higher before it crashed down on Aoisuke’s head. The Kiri-nin vanished under the surface, forced down deep.

A second later, chakra sparked.

Waves split beneath Raidou’s feet, wrenched apart by the force of a jutsu. He dropped down into the valley and the ocean closed icy jaws over him, ripping his mask right off the side of his head. Breath jolted out of his lungs, but he didn’t need it, he didn’tcare. He could feel Aoisuke struggling to the surface, almost within reach, and Raidou wasn’t going anywhere until he broke more bones.

He kicked upwards.

When he broke through, Aoisuke’s chakra was circling in on itself, gathering close to split into another mind-bending illusion or infuriating chakra trick. Raidou yanked on his own chakra faster and shoved it down into the water; a summoned wave grabbed him and hurled him up into the air. He landed crouched next to his target, balanced on the ocean’s surface. Ducked Aoisuke’s frantic sword swipe as chakra splintered apart, jutsu unformed, and lunged up to drive a clenched fist into Aoisuke’s chest.

Ribs snapped beneath his knuckles.

There was chakra behind the hit. Aoisuke caught air, arcing up and crashing back down on the wharf, sword flying from his hand. Stone cratered beneath him. He landed flat on his back, chest heaving, and flung empty hands up. Blood streamed down his face, and Raidou might have felt something about that, once upon a time, might have stopped at the open-palmed plea, but there was no mercy left in him tonight.

He leapt and came down on top of the man, straddling the broken chest. His knees pinned Aousuke’s arms down, and he looked at the dazed, desperate face.

“Don’t—”

And hit it.

And hit it again.

He didn’t stop. Teeth broke, bone caved, and somewhere along the way, the body beneath him quit fighting. In the shivering distance, someone screamed. Or maybe they’d always been screaming.

They didn’t stop, either.

The support beam had snapped something when it hit Katsuko. Clavicle, judging by the burning agony when she prodded at her collarbone. The break was in almost the same place as last time, when the demon queen had knocked Katsuko flying. Ryouri-sensei was going to have a field day lecturing her on re-breaking just-healed bones.

Stay, Raidou had told Katsuko. Like she was a damn dog.

To hell with Ryouri-sensei. And to hell with Raidou, too. Katsuko staggered to her feet, dropped a concealing veil over her chakra, and followed her captain.

Heat from the fire warmed her back as she shadowed Raidou down to the docks. Around her, Tsurugahama was in chaos. Watchmens’ bells rang like klaxons as firefighting crews barreled towards the Tsuto estate. Dark clouds roiled at the edge of the sky, above the clamor of city lights and panicked civilians, threatening to encroach on the cold glare of the moon and stars.

Raidou’s chakra howled in counterpoint.

The unearthly rage that had claimed her captain back at the mansion still gripped him in its teeth. Katsuko kept a half-step behind Raidou as he tore down to the docks, watching as he homed in on the Kiri ninja’s chakra signature. Mere hours ago, while she’d been running with him down to the coast, she’d thought Raidou had looked like a vengeful ghost.

That version of Raidou, with his calm control and directed purpose, was nothing compared to this revenant with bloody hands and smoke-stained armor.

She hung back and watched, mute witness to the destruction Raidou rained down upon the docks. The green-eyed shinobi shouted something at Raidou over the cacophony of shattering wood and concrete; Raidou responded with a headlong tackle that sent both men catapulting off the docks. They disappeared beneath the waves.

Katsuko twitched forward before she stopped herself. Fighting a Kiri-nin in the ocean would be suicide for anyone without a strong water affinity. Raidou’s chakra pulsed strong and steady, no trace of distress in his signature. She left him to it and ghosted down the quay to where the Tsuto family stood frozen in terror. None of them saw her approach; their attention stayed riveted on the vicious fight between Raidou and the Kiri shinobi. Katsuko melted out of the shadows behind Tsuto Masaaki.

After all the struggle and pain Katsuko had gone through to reach him, killing Masaaki was anticlimactic. Her kodachi sank between his ribs, puncturing his right lung; he made a wet, choking noise, breath bubbling in his throat, and slid off the end of her blade to land on the cobbles. Euiko screamed. Katsuko sheathed her kodachi, kicked Masaaki onto his side and crouched down to look him in the eye.

“Watch,” she said, very softly, and waited until his face twisted in horrified comprehension. Then she rose to her feet.

Tsuto Euiko roused from her fear-glazed stupor and turned on her heel, clutching her daughter to her chest as she ran. Her long black hair streamed like a banner behind her. Katsuko caught her before she made it ten steps, grabbing a fistful of Euiko’s dark tresses and yanking the woman off her feet. The back of Euiko’s head hit the ground with an audiblecrack. Her daughter flew out of her arms and landed in a small, screaming heap a few feet away. Katsuko let out a breath and drew her kodachi.

Masaaki made a anguished noise. Euiko groaned. Katsuko flipped the kodachi hilt in her grip and drove the blade down one-handed between Euiko’s eyes, chakra-enhanced strength punching steel through the woman’s skull and impaling her to the concrete.

In the silence that followed, Katsuko felt the life fleeing Euiko’s body. She yanked her kodachi free with a scraping sound and turned away from Euiko’s empty, staring eyes.

Masaaki’s daughter— Tomoko, Katsuko remembered—sobbed when Katsuko stopped in front of her. Katsuko studied her in silence, taking in the tear-stained face and grubby pajamas. Then she sheathed her kodachi and knelt down, reaching out to grip Tomoko’s shoulder.

“Close your eyes, sweetheart,” Katsuko said, gently.

“No,” Masaaki begged. His voice was thick with blood and tears.

Katsuko held Tomoko’s gaze. “Close your eyes,” she said. “It won’t hurt.”

Tomoko whimpered and squeezed her eyes shut. Katsuko’s blade flashed once in the darkness.

Masaaki was crying when Katsuko returned to his side. Tears ran down his face to pool with the blood drying on the ground. Katsuko looked down at him, too hollow inside to feel anything like pity, and slit his throat.

She left the bodies where they’d fallen and went to search for Raidou. She found him pulverizing the Kiri-nin’s corpse on the wharf, stripping skin from bone with each frenzied punch. Blood and gore stained Raidou’s hands and bare face, ran in fresh rivulets down his drenched armor; skull fragments clung stubbornly to his knuckles.

Katsuko’s right arm hung useless at her side, crippled by the break in her collarbone. She’d taken out the Tsutos with only one working hand. Raidou was different; even if she could use both arms, Katsuko doubted she’d be able to stop him when he was like this without using lethal force.

“Taichou!” No response. Katsuko hadn’t expected any. She gritted her teeth and flared her chakra, alerting him to her presence, before she gripped him by the shoulder and tried to haul him off the body.

Raidou didn’t even look at her. He snarled instead, wrathful and bloody, and slammed a gore-covered fist into her armored stomach. The impact sent her flying, leaving her airborne just long enough to realize thatthis was going to hurt. She crashed into a pile of wood and debris hard enough to split concrete; her broken collarbone screamed agony, consuming her vision in a haze of white for a few wavering seconds.

Raidou had skirted the line between controlled rage and wholesale slaughter on a few missions with their old ANBU team, but he’d never tipped over before. Not like this.

Katsuko gasped for air. Anger roared hot and tight in her throat, forcing her back from the brink of unconsciousness. She staggered upright, shaking off dust and wood shards, and broke into a sprint.

Raidou was still crouched over the Kiri-nin’s corpse, intent on reducing it to a pile of organs and bone mush. Slick red gore sprayed into the air with every frenzied strike.

Katsuko rammed her armored fist into the side of his head, curtailing her chakra-enhanced strength to avoid doing brain damage, and sent Raidou soaring. She didn’t even have time to gloat before her collarbone flared in agony. The world around her lurched like a ship in a storm.

Katsuko staggered and fell to her knees.

The closest stopping point was the weathered stone wall belonging to an inn. Raidou hit it sideways, putting a heavy dent in the masonry and a slightly smaller one in his ribs. He landed in a welter of fractured stone, blood, and someone else’s bone chips.

The entire world rang loudly, banging like a gong.

Or maybe that was his skull.

He levered himself back upright, step-staggering sideways, and reeled around with base, bedrock wrath. This time, Aoisuke was going todie—

On the ground, Katsuko knelt in a spreading lake of blood, and Raidou’s heart stopped.

That wasn’t real. He’d left her behind,alive. He’d done the nesting-doll universe of genjutsu and lost his grip, but she’d broken the world back together. He’d given it up again to kill the last enemy part of it, buthe’d left her safe. His death and hers, both fake. The baby’s death: real. He couldn’t see Katsuko fall again. He didn’t know what else to fight.

She set one gloved hand against red cobblestones and pushed herself up, listed, steadied, and made it to her feet. Her right arm hung deadweight at her side, but she brought the left up in a ready guard and set her stance. Through the smoke-blackened eyeholes of her mask, she stared him down.

“Come on, taichou,” she rasped. “I can do this all day.”

At her feet, a flayed sack of flesh and bone almost looked like it might, once, have belonged to a person. Except most people had more head. The neck ended in a pulped stump, edged in the shards of a glistening, shattered jawbone and the torn remains of a bandage-mask. Chunks of hair were almost too blood-matted to see the color, but a little green showed through the red. Below the throat, the Kirigakure uniform was still clearly visible. Raidou looked down at his hands. Through a slick sheet of gore, his knuckles were torn open.

Katsuko had a bloody fist-print in the center of her ANBU vest.

Raidou thought,Oh.

She must have seen something in his face, because she paused, straightened out of her guard, and took a careful step forward. Raidou lowered and opened his hands:no threat.

Katsuko’s whole body slumped with obvious relief, though her masked face didn’t show anything. She drew a deep breath, ribs expanding beneath soot-streaked armor—and marched over to punch him in the face.

There was no chakra in the blow, just a glove-wrapped fist and good aim. In terms of ninja aggression, it fell somewhere betweenyou idiot bastardandwelcome back. On Katsuko’s radar, it was practically affectionate. It still turned his head gently inside out and stitched agony into the remains. Raidou winced.

“Ow,” he managed, dragging up a rusty croak from the distant place his words had gone. It burned in his throat, like he’d filled up the absence of thought with screaming instead.

“Ow?” Katsuko repeated, dangerously. “Ow?” She shoved into his personal space, in blatant disregard of the fact that he’d just turned a man to mulch with his bare hands. “That’s not ‘ow’. Do you want to know what’s ‘ow’, taichou?”

She jabbed a backwards thumb at the crimson fist-print.

Raidou cleared his throat. In the sea of returning emotions—of which there were many—shame and embarrassment clawed for an equal lead, just edging out bone-hurting relief. Very carefully, he touched two shaking fingertips to the dropped angle of Katsuko’s right shoulder: dislocated, or broken again. “I would have guessed this,” he said. And, much quieter, “Sorry.”

Katsuko’s good hand fisted in the collar of his black turtleneck and dragged him down to face-level. Behind the mask, her eyes were narrow as a blade edge. “When this is over,” she said. “You are buying me food for amonth.”

Then she let go and threw her left arm around his shoulders in a fierce, tight hug.

A hot ache closed Raidou’s throat. He held completely still for a moment, bloody hands hovering gingerly in the air at Katsuko’s back, unwilling to touch for fear that something else might crack under her skin. But her weight was straightforward and solid, pressing chakra-heat against his ocean-soaked skin, and she didn’t let go.

Very, very carefully, he gathered his arms around her, and let himself believe she was alive.

Judging by the way her grip tightened hard, he wasn’t the only one trying to get grounded. Katsuko’s hug evolved into something more like an exhausted lean, which radiated little spikes of pain up through Raidou’s ribs, but he figured he’d kind of earned that. He let her stay and glanced up, remembering, suddenly, that he’d never gotten confirmation on Masaaki’s death—

That looked pretty confirmed.

Two adult bodies lay crumpled in their nightclothes, and a smaller body between them.Mission completed.

There was no satisfaction in it, just a drained, sick hollowness.

Raidou’s situational awareness slunk reluctantly back and gave him a nudge. He glanced around, taking more in, and realized several things: the thumping noise in his skull wasn’t just a gathering migraine, someone was furiously ringing a bell. In the close distance, the sky was glowing rich orange and pouring black smoke, presumably as Masaaki’s compound burned itself to cinders. Much closer, and more worryingly, a growing crowd of horrified, armed civilians were watching Katsuko and Raidou with the nervous anger that just needed a single thrown stone to spark a riot.

Also, a fair chunk of the harbour seemed to be… broken.

Katsuko felt him stiffen. “Taichou?”

“We should leave,” Raidou murmured, barely moving his lips.

She glanced over her shoulder. “Good idea.”

Roof-running seemed like a painful option. Raidou didn’t really want to smash through that crowd, either. He’d killed enough people today.

He glanced just once more at Aoisuke’s body, remembering the sharp green eyes in what had once been a face, then forcibly made himself stop. “Got everything?” he asked Katsuko.

She grunted confirmation. He could see the hilts of both of her swords, and feel the weight of his. Anything else was replaceable. He set his hands together behind her shoulderblades—the crowd scrambled backwards—and worked two fast jutsu. The first tore the ground up in front of Masaaki and his family, unzipping a spiralling trench into the shape of Konoha’s leaf symbol: proof of execution. The second peeled open the skin of the universe and shoved them through it, into the teeth of Raidou’s hasty translocation.

The remains of Tsurugahama Port vanished, left to its flames and corpses.

A series of translocation jumps slung Katsuko and Raidou to the outskirts of the city, where paved streets and buildings gave way to thickly forested hills. The ocean roared at their backs as they faded into the night like specters. Clouds rolled over the sky, killing the moonlight and leaving them only darkness to navigate by.

They met the oncoming storm and ran through it. Rain shattered against their bare shoulders and stung healing cuts. Katsuko ignored the dull throb of her broken collarbone and fell in at Raidou’s side, staying a half-step behind so she could keep an eye on the tense set of his shoulders.

She tapped on her throat-mic. No sense in shouting over the rising wind, even if their close proximity meant there would be a little feedback. “Rai,” she said. “What are you going to tell the others?”

Droplets splashed on her mask and hissed over the comm.

“I don’t know,” Raidou said.

Katsuko swallowed and switched the radio line off, only to bring her hand back up to her throat-mic a second later. “I won’t tell them anything,” she said. “Not until you decide what to do.”

The silence that followed made anxiety twist hot and tight in Katsuko’s stomach. Then the defensive curl of Raidou’s spine straightened. His end of the line crackled. “I won’t make you lie for me, but— thank you. I’ll figure it out.” He closed some of the distance between them, falling in just behind her right shoulder: making a wall between the world and her wounded side. “How’s the arm?”

“It’s been better.” As if on cue, sharp pain spiked from her clavicle, running down her arm and making the fingers of her right hand curl. “I don’t even care if the lieutenant yells at me, I’ll love him forever if he heals this damn break.”

Raidou glanced back over his shoulder, measuring distance, and then slowed down and came to a stop. “I’m not the lieutenant, but let me see if we can at least bind it up.” A bare flicker of his usual wryness shone through. “I promise not to yell.”

“Pinky-swear?” Katsuko asked, but followed him anyways. They ducked into a hollow shielded from the rain by a rock outcropping. Raidou dug into his medkit for a sling and eased Katsuko into it, using additional bandages to secure her arm against her side. She didn’t say anything about the red streaks his hands left on the bandages, and he didn’t say anything about the exhausted waver in her voice.

She waited until he’d finished tightening the sling straps before she pushed her mask aside. “Was it the genjutsu that set you off?” she asked, because working up to delicate questions required the sort of energy she didn’t have right now. “Or did that Kiri-nin do something before he got you with an illusion?”

Raidou’s expression closed down. “He— No, it was just the genjutsu.” He shoved back up to his feet. Katsuko rose with him and caught his arm before he could turn away.

“Rai—” she said, and then cut herself short. She squeezed his arm and let go. “Captain. What happened?”

He stopped, spine rigid. And then sighed. “They made me think you’d died.”

He hadn’t recognized her, after he’d snapped out of the genjutsu. Had turned on her, even, killing intent clear and deadly.

“Did you think I was an imposter?” she asked. “After I woke you up, I mean.”

“Honestly? I wasn’t really thinking anymore,” he said, very low. “I just wanted to… well, you saw what I wanted to do.”

Raidou’s surrender to berserker rage—and the resulting carnage—abruptly took on a new light. Katsuko examined the memories of Tsurugahama from all angles and felt the pieces of the puzzle she’d been missing slot into place.

“Oh,” Katsuko said at first, because anything else she could offer in response paled in comparison. She had totry, though. “I’d do the same. If you were the one who—if I thought—” she struggled for eloquence and came up empty. In desperation, she offered, “Do you want a hug?”

Raidou looked at her, mouth curving in a slight, rueful smile. “We did that already.” He glanced back at the entrance to the hollow, where the storm raged outside. “We need to get moving. If we ran into trouble, the others might have, too.”

The thought hadn’t ever occurred to her. Kakashi and Ryouma were deadly as solo fighters; working together, with the lieutenant’s steady hand and level head to keep them in line, they should be nigh unstoppable. Now, though, a little of her surety wavered.

“Hounddoeshave that fainting problem,” Katsuko said, voice light. “And Ram falls into things a lot after he’s done pulling heroics.”

Raidou snorted ragged laughter. “Exactly. We’ll hit the safehouse. If they’re not there, we’ll patch up and… figure something out.”

“The lieutenant will get them there safe,” Katsuko said, following Raidou out into the rain. “And they’ll tear through anything that tries to get in their way.”

“Let’s hope,” he said, and picked up the pace.

They ran the rest of the way in silence. Fear mounted in Katsuko’s chest with each step.

Ryouma had thrown a twig at her just hours earlier. Kakashi had joined in their good-natured ribbing, and the lieutenant had brought them all back into line. They were starting to become ateam, instead of a disjointed jumble of specialized skillsets and personality clashes.

She’d already started to think of them all ashers. If something happened—

No. It was useless to speculate. Ryouma was lethal with his rot jutsu and as sharp as the blade of her katana; Kakashi had torn through entire battlefields before he’d turned fifteen. The lieutenant was cunning and competent, the hand that nocked the arrow to the string and guided its flight. She had to trust that they knew how to take care of themselves.

In retrospect, Katsuko really should have expected the ringing emptiness that greeted her and Raidou when they opened the safehouse door.

Chapter 3: Salt the Earth

Chapter Text

May 7 and 8, Yondaime Year 5

Genma’s team arrived in Ibaragashi City with hours to kill before the strike. They used the time to explore the city itself, and verify the maps Intel had given them. The Tsuto estate was nestled in the wealthiest, most exclusive part of Ibaragashi City. It occupied half a block at the pinnacle of one of the city’s many hills, built in an era when a lack of indoor plumbing had made it de rigueur for the wealthy to live uphill of the common riffraff. Modernization had come to Ibaragashi, as it had to the rest of Fire Country, but neighborhoods long established had little incentive to change. Electric lights twinkled in Tsuto’s gardens, and clay pipes under the street carried waste water away, but the compound still reeked of pomp and privilege.

The temperature had been rising steadily since noon, and even sunset didn’t seem likely to cool things off. Muggy haloes ringed early-lit lamps, and sweat trickled down the side of Genma’s face under his mask.

Intel’s reports said Tsuto Takayoshi took dinner with his family every night at 19:00 and retired shortly afterwards. The servants ate when the family was settled for the night, often as late as 21:00. That didn’t leave a lot of time to take the staff down before a 22:00 strike time. Under cover of genjutsu, Genma and his rookies studied their options from the rooftops of Tsuto’s neighbors’ homes, then reconvened in the narrow alley between the walled plots.

There were guards patrolling the compound, unsurprisingly. Tsuto Takayoshi might have made his name importing and exporting luxury goods, but he made the bulk of his money these days lending it out at exorbitant rates of interest. His home in Ibaragashi City was also, for all intents and purposes, a private bank with enough gold inside to tempt even the most cautious thief.

And the man had just funded a failed coup.

If he were truly smart, he’d have fled Fire Country by now and sought asylum in an unallied country like Lightning or Water, but according to Intel he was confident his treachery was untraceable.

Genma was going to enjoy proving him wrong about that.

He looked at the masked faces of his companions. “I’ll take care of the household staff as planned. If you miss my radio signal, when you see the guard with the birthmark go down, that’s your cue. I’ll take him out first.”

Kakashi nodded once, sharply precise. His extreme economy of motion was the only outward sign of mission tension.

Ryouma was more animated, flexing his hands through practice seals in rapid sequence to keep his fingers limber. “Signal us if anything goes wrong,” he said.

Genma nodded and touched the collar holding his radio mike, then tapped his earpiece into place. “Radio silence unless there’s a problem,” he told them.

He got twin nods from Ryouma and Kakashi.

The crunch of feet on gravel announced the pass of one of the guards. Now was Genma’s window. He shimmied through a narrow gap at the back gate and used ninjutsu to melt into the shadows of the compound’s wall. Slipping across the courtyard was relatively easy with its many shade-casting features.

By the time a second guard rounded the corner, Genma was in position under the raised porch skirting the building.

He ghosted under the house, mentally following the blueprints they’d received from Intel. The building was traditionally constructed, raised on heavy wooden beams over a generous crawl space. There were signs of its long history at every turn—scorched wood from what could have been a disastrous fire, damp staining left by a flood long past, and drifts of unswept sawdust beneath fresh drilled holes that accommodated the snaking wires of electrification.

Above him the floor joists creaked as someone moved within. Here the floor was wooden—a hallway—but in an adjoining space the grassy scent of fresh tatami mats showed the boundaries of one of the many living rooms. He counted off mats—twelve and a half. That made this the reception room where Tsuto entertained guests. It was unused tonight—the Tsuto clan were dining alone in the smaller family room—which made it an ideal place for Genma to sneak up into the high-beamed ceiling. He pushed the corner of one mat cautiously up and shimmied between the floor joists into the unlit room. Seconds later, the mat was back in place, and Genma was a wraith in the beams.

It was easier to move in the ceiling. The family room was set for dinner, and all six members of the Tsuto household were there: Takayoshi and his wife, his elderly parents, and two teenagers—a son and a daughter. Three servants in pale early-summer kimono served the meal. The adults in the Tsuto family were traditionally dressed as well, despite the rising heat, but both teenagers wore modern clothing. The boy, in particular, looked like he’d rather be anywhere else but at table with his parents and grandparents.

The rest of the house was still plenty busy even as the family took time to eat. There were a pair of young women folding freshly laundered clothing and putting it away, a gardener tending seedlings in a small greenhouse bright with electric light, a cook and three scullery helpers in the kitchen. The head of house staff—an older man in a starched kimono and hakama—was carefully going over paperwork at a desk in one of the smaller rooms, while his apprentice knelt beside him taking notes.

That was going to be a lot of staff to put down.

Genma slithered along the beam in the kitchen until he was just over the stove. A pair of rice cookers stood beside it, one battered and old, one brand new, both on and steaming. It was an easy guess which one held the rice for the masters and which for the servants.

A diversion now would go well for him—time to manufacture one. He cast the jutsu for a kage bunshin with a very short fuse, and sent his shadow self scuttling along the rafters into the dark. A few moments later there was a clatter in the hallway. Cook and kitchen staff all turned towards the sound, giving Genma just enough time to snake the lid of the battered rice cooker open, dump a vial of a near-flavorless knock-out-drug over the contents, and disappear again.

Then it was just a matter of continuing to wait. The clone ended itself as soon as its mission was complete, dumping a brief memory of knocking a wall scroll down into Genma’s awareness.

By the time the family was settling down in their quarters and the servants sitting down to their meal, Genma was tired of watching and waiting. He hoped Ryouma and Kakashi had managed to acquire themselves good spots to launch their assault from.

Fortunately, it didn’t take long for his drug to start to work. Sleepy servants excused themselves one by one, leaving only the kitchen staff yawning and shuffling through cleanup. When the youngest and smallest of them slumped unconscious in a corner, the other two were too drugged themselves to notice. Moments later, they were down, too. Genma sent another clone to scout the servants’ quarters. It reported back quickly: the only ones in the household still awake were the guards, the family members, and their hunter.

There was a school of thought that said waiting was the worst part of any mission.

Kakashi was inclined to think gruesome and painful injury was the worst part, but waiting came a close second. Especially when the timeline was nebulous. ‘Guard with a birthmark’ wasn’t the most terrible signal he’d ever seen, but it wasn’t winning any awards for precise.

The guard in question was a leanly muscular man in his mid-twenties, light-haired, with a port-wine splash across the left side of his face. From their vantage point on the neighbor’s rooftop, it looked a lot like arterial spray. Or, from a less morbid frame of mind, dark autumn leaves. He was leaning against the sheltered eastern side of the building, taking the chance to have a surreptitious smoke.

“That’s going to get him in trouble,” Kakashi murmured.

“More trouble than dead?” Ryouma murmured back, almost soundless. He was nearly invisible at Kakashi’s back, resting in the space between shadows with the casual talent of a shinobi used to disappearing. It said something about their training, Kakashi thought, that even a man as loud as Ryouma could erase himself from the universe with a hand-wave. Or maybe it just said something about Ryouma.

“Look at his teammates,” Kakashi said. “Notice anything?”

“Less obvious vices?” Ryouma quipped, but Kakashi felt his attention sharpen, flicking from guard to guard. “They’re tense.”

“Expecting something.”

“Us, you think?”

Kakashi tapped half-gloved fingertips soundlessly against his knee. “Intel didn’t think so.”

“Reinforcements,” Ryouma said, landing on the next likely thought. “Kiri ninja would makemenervous, if I was a baby guard.”

“Yeah,” Kakashi said. “Exactly.”

“Lieutenant’s got a sharp chakra-sense. He’d’ve let us know by now if he’d landed on a Mist nin’s lap.”

“Yeah,” said Kakashi again, only slightly doubtful.

The lightshow of civilian chakra made it hard to pick out an enemy signature deliberately hiding itself. If enemy shinobi were already lying in wait, there wouldn’t be any warning.

Still, every mission had its hiccups. And if nothing else, Kirigakure always brought an interesting challenge with them.

Bloodthirsty insanity had that effect.

“There,” Ryouma said, a half-second before distant steel flashed, blood sprayed, and the guard’s body dropped in a boneless heap.

The radio crackled. “Go,” said Genma.

“Roger,” said Kakashi and Ryouma in the same breath, and took off. Ryouma arrowed to the left, leaping across the alley to the Tsuto estate’s outer wall, before he dropped like a stooping hawk on his chosen knot of three guards. That took care of the northern side. Genma had already dispatched a second guard and was handling a third on his side. Kakashi translocated with a tight shiver of chakra, landed on the steel spine of a greenhouse roof, and vaulted lightly down between the southern guards.

One man was so tense, the surprise made him drop his sword.

Kakashi caught it, saving the movement it would have taken him to draw his own, and twisted through one vicious, scything circle. Three bodies fell. He let the sword drop back on its former owner—good steel, but poor balance—and went for the house.

“Going in,” he muttered, trusting the throat-mic to pick up the faint vibration of his voice.

Ryouma’s answer was undercut by the dull gasp of someone breathing through a severed windpipe. “Meet you in the bedroom.”

“Staff are all taken care of,” Genma said. “Kids are still awake, so watch yourselves. I’m on the grandparents.”

“Roger,” Kakashi said, and again, Ryouma was almost in perfect unison.

The back door was the closest point of entry. It wasn’t even locked. Kakashi cut through a foyer, passing a neat row of outdoor shoes, and padded swiftly down a wood-floored hallway. He let his chakra unfurl just a fraction, spreading thin, cautious tendrils out to feel for signatures and traps. The house blueprints unfolded in his mind, memorized and waiting. He passed an antechamber, two well-appointed family rooms, an altar—laid out for several deaths, he noted—and a formal room kept aside for guests and ceremonies. The master bedroom was towards the east…

A shadow moved at the end of the hallway.

“Ram,” Kakashi murmured.

Ryouma shook blood off his hands and put a single finger to his masked mouth. With his free hand, he slid a wood-framed paper door aside and vanished into the room.

Kakashi followed.

The master bedroom was warm and sleepy, colored with the twined scents of a woman who liked expensive perfume and a man medicating himself for acid-stomach, judging by the chalky twist in the air. Blue moonlight spilled through a partially shrouded window, outlining two shapes on the large, modern bed. Ryouma was already standing on the opposite side, looking down at the slimmer, curvier one. Tsuto Sakako, Takayoshi’s second wife, mother of the two teenagers still living with them. Intel thought she helped Takayoshi keep the books.

Tsuto was about ten years older than her, in his middle-fifties. An average-sized man, greying at the temples and starting to run to seed around his middle. He snored softly on his back, breath catching in his throat.

If Intel was right, he was responsible for the deaths of eleven Guardians and countless members of the Daimyou’s service. And for even greater crimes under Fire Country law: funding a direct threat against the Daimyou, creating instability in the Capital. Treason.

But the thing that really itched at Kakashi was the next thought: if the coup had succeeded, they would have come after Minato next. This man had targeted Kakashi’s family.

On the mantlepiece, a brass-plated clock gently chimed the hour: 2200.

Kakashi glanced at Ryouma, who nodded once, fine blood droplets gleaming against the white of his mask like rubies. Kakashi drew a kunai, spinning it around his fingers. Ryouma leaned down and closed his hand around Sakako’s throat.

She jolted awake, eyes flying wide, and choked on a scream.

Tsuto jerked upright with the hair-trigger of a man who had things weighing on his mind. Kakashi caught his hands as they came up, pinned them against the wall above Tsuto’s head, and drove the kunai through both stacked palms. The triangular blade sank deeply into the wood panelling, fixing Tsuto’s hands in place.

Tsuto screamed, fingers spasming.

Kakashi slapped the man’s legs down before a frantic kick could connect, and set his kodachi blade to Tsuto’s throat. “Yondaime-sama has a message for you.”

Tsuto froze. “Oh gods,” he managed, tears of pain coursing down his face. “I—”

“Shh,” Kakashi said, and twitched the blade, forcing the man to turn his head. “Just watch.”

Tsuto Takayoshi’s eyes bulged wide and frightened, but Sakako’s were wider. She fought for air, manicured fingernails splintering as she raked at the steel-plated back of Ryouma’s glove. He tightened his grip.

Two hands would have been faster. He could have broken her neck with a swift jerk. But Intel thought Tsuto Sakako assisted her husband with the business books, and that meant she knew about the flow of money from the Tsuto treasury to Lord Nobunori in Taishin Province, and from there to Hikouto to buy the loyalty of the Daimyou’s guards. That meant she had to die slowly, in pain and terror, while her husband watched.

Her face darkened. Her broken nails slipped off the back-plate, skated down his fingers above the hem of the fingerless gloves. He felt his skin catch and tear.

Tsuto was making thin, desperate whimpers of pain and fear, and he’d added the sharp burn of urine to the perfumed scent of the room. Ryouma didn’t look up; Kakashi had him covered. He watched Sakako’s face instead, as she faded from the struggle for a breath that wouldn’t come. A blood vessel had burst in her eye, filling the white with shadow. Her swollen tongue protruded from her mouth, almost black in the moonlight. Her scrabbling, desperate hands relaxed and fell away.

Genma’s voice crackled suddenly in his ear. “My clone just took a knife in the side. On my way to assess. Watch your backs.”

Ryouma wrapped his other hand around Sakako’s throat, fingers sinking into her swollen flesh, and snapped her neck.

There was a noise at the open door: a slide of bare feet on polished boards, breath caught in horror, too late. A teenage girl, dressed for sleep in a loose t-shirt, smart enough not to scream but torn for one fatal moment between helping her parents or saving herself.

Kakashi’s kunai took her just above the collarbones. She crumpled, choking on blood. A small, ornamental tanto skittered across the floor.

Tsuto screamed and wrenched at his pinned hands. Kakashi pulled his kodachi back from Tsuto’s neck before the man actually killed himself on the edge, reversed his grip on the hilt, and set the tip of the blade just below Tsuto’s right eye. His voice iced the air. “Be still.”

The money-lender quivered, gulping down sobs. He hadn’t screamed for his wife’s death: did the daughter matter more? Maybe it was the suddenness of it, the shock. Ryouma eased his hands free from Sakako’s corpse and went silently across the floor toward the dying girl. Kakashi’s kunai had opened her throat but not penetrated to sever the spinal cord. She was drowning in her own blood.

Her brown eyes caught him as he knelt over her. Begged him, tear-filled. He laid a gloved hand over her eyes and shoved the kunai in. Her body convulsed and was still.

Ryouma spared a quick glance up and down the corridor, then dragged the corpse inside and thumbed his throat-mic back on. His voice came steady. “Mother and daughter dead. Did you get the grandparents and the boy?”

“Grandparents are down,” Genma said in his ear. “Just got to the son.”

Ryouma glanced back. Kakashi had taken the receiver from his ear and was holding it to the side of Tsuto’s head. A trickle of blood ran down the fleshy cheek, under the shadow of Kakashi’s blade.

Tsuto was shaking, tears streaming, smearing the blood-trail. “Don’t,” he begged. “Oh god, please don’t. He’s just a boy, he didn’t do anything. I’ll give you whatever you want. I have information, money— You don’t need to kill him.”

“That’s why it’s a punishment,” Kakashi said. His voice was empty of any emotion that Tsuto could have seized on. He tucked the receiver back in his ear and added, “Hold a second, lieutenant.”

“Holding.”

Kakashi twisted the blade, very gently, carving a tiny divot beneath Tsuto’s eye. The blood-trickle thickened. Tsuto blinked uncontrollably. Kakashi flicked the volume up on the mic at his throat and said, “What information.”

“Oh god, oh god,” Tsuto said, and spilled words like a man vomiting: names of co-conspirators, places and dates they’d met, payments and the men who’d taken them, the location of his strongboxes, promises and prayers—

Kakashi turned down the volume on his mic. “Lieutenant?”

“Got it. Nothing new. Proceed with the mission as planned.”

Kakashi took the receiver out of his ear and leaned in again. Ryouma looked down the hall, empty and dark except for a square of moonlight from a skylight near the end. Over the radio he heard the thunk of steel into flesh and the gurgle of breath as Genma killed Tsuto’s son, and in the room behind him Tsuto screamed and wept.

“Primary objective here complete,” Genma said at last. “Moving on to secondary. I’ll start in his accounting room. Check for a hidden compartment under the tatami in the southwest corner of his bedroom when you finish up with him.”

“Roger,” Kakashi said quietly. “Ram.”

Holding that image of the square of moonlight in his mind, Ryouma went back to the bed. His fingers slipped through the familiar seals of theNikutai Tokasu. Chakra grew and hummed red-black around his gloved hands, lighting the room with a sickly glow.

Tsuto hung from his pinned hands, still weeping, but the sharp edge of Ryouma’s killing intent touched him and his head came up, eyes blank with horror.

“This will hurt,” Kakashi said in the same flat voice. “You’ve earned it. But then it will end. Do better in your next life.”

Tsuto didn’t seem to hear him. His gaze was fixed on Ryouma, on the shifting fire of visible chakra around his hands. The palms of Ryouma’s gloves had begun to shred away. Tsuto made a thin wail at the back of his throat and tried to pull his legs up, kicking and scrabbling at the bedcovers, but there was nowhere to go.

Ryouma leaned over the bed and set both hands on Tsuto’s belly. He let the chakra seep in, instead of shoving. Tsuto’s anemic chakra system was nothing like a shinobi’s robust pathways, barely a life-sustaining flicker instead of coils brimming with fire, but there was enough and more than enough for the Human Flesh Melt Technique to seize and eat. The crumpled sleeping yukata rotted away like the gloves, and Ryouma’s fingertips sank into a spongy mass of tissue that dissolved beneath his touch, releasing a fetid reek of decay.

Tsuto screamed and did not stop.

Ryouma pulled back, cutting the jutsu. Tsuto writhed, wrenched one hand free from the kunai in a shower of blood, and curled onto his side, trying to hold his belly with his ruined hand. His fingers sank inside. Liquid rot spilled like blood onto the bedding, and Tsuto’s scream found a new throat-shredding pitch.

Even drugged, the servants might begin to wake soon.

Kakashi flicked blood from the tip of his kodachi, sheathed it, and slipped into handseals almost too quick for Ryouma to follow. Ox and Rabbit he caught, but the last might have been either Monkey or Snake. Lightning crackled around Kakashi’s right hand with a sound like the chirping of a thousand birds, and Kakashi leaned in and plunged his hand through Tsuto’s heart. Blood sprayed like a fountain.

The silence rang in Ryouma’s ears, in the aftermath of Tsuto’s scream. He wiped his hands, slowly, on a sheet, and then offered Kakashi a clean edge. Kakashi eased his hand out through shattered ribs and took it without a word. He wiped the worst of the clotted matter from his hand and then turned to lead the way out of the bedroom, past Tsuto’s daughter’s corpse and the pool of blood she’d left in the doorway.

Ryouma couldn’t remember her name.

They stopped just down the hall, at a bathroom with its sliding door left half-open. The bath was lidded, still full. Kakashi fouled the water with his bloody hands, scrubbing up the insides of his gloved arms and scooping up palmfuls to sluice down his armguards. Ryouma waited against the door until he was done, then took his place. The soap was expensive stuff, sandalwood scented, soft under his fingers. He peeled out of the flapping shreds of his gloves, ripped the backplates off, and burned the rest in a brief chakra flare.

Kakashi was at the door, looking out. Ryouma scrubbed his hands one final time, turned the tap to rinse them in clean water, and then joined him.

His throat scratched when he finally found words. “Do you really think there is a next life?”

“No,” Kakashi said. He started down the hall, back to the bedroom to search for Genma’s hidden compartment. “But he had a shrine. So he might.”

Small comfort to a man they’d tortured and murdered. No comfort at all, to the murderers.

Ryouma’s and Kakashi’s voices came thinly through Genma’s earpiece. It was unsurprising, Genma supposed, that Kakashi didn’t believe in gods or karma. At least half the ninja Genma knew had left their childhood religious beliefs in tatters on the corpse-littered battlefields of the Third War. And amongst ANBU— even those who hadn’t seen the wholesale bloodshed of the war—believers were few and far between. Some days Genma agreed with them, but usually he took the opposite view: it was far easier to be the Hokage’s death-edged tool if you believed there was a next life for your victims.

Especially for targets like Tsuto’s children.Pick better parents in your next life.

Tsuto himself was probably just as karma-bound as the ninja who’d dispatched him.

Tsuto’s counting room was tidy and organized, with ledgers filed neatly on a shelf near a low desk, and locked safes built into the walls to hold the private bank’s reserves. Securing the gold and documents would have to wait, though. The drug Genma’d poured into the servants’ rice was powerful, but it was impossible to be sure every eater had taken a sufficient dose to keep them unconscious through Tsuto’s agonized screams.

He doubled back through the kitchen on his way to the servants’ quarters. The cook raised a groggy head and thrust out an arm, struggling to coordinate her movements. Her fingers brushed at the handle of a chef’s knife that had fallen to the floor near her. Genma kicked it away, knelt down, and clamped a hand over her mouth. “Shhh,” he told her. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

But of course he was.

He pulsed chakra through the coils at the base of her skull, tripping her into deep unconsciousness. When she woke, she’d find her employers dead, her home half destroyed, and her livelihood in ruins.

Genma shook the thought away. At least she and the other servants would live. There were other employers—better ones—though he didn’t doubt there was corruption under the surface in most of the homes of the very wealthy.

He dragged her body carefully next to the other drugged kitchen servants, checked them all for breathing to be sure none had overdosed on the poisoned rice, and as extra insurance, repeated that chakra pulse on each of the others. It would be at least half an hour before they had any hope of shaking that off, at which point Genma and his team would be long gone.

In his earpiece he could hear muffled sounds as Ryouma and Kakashi searched Tsuto’s room for the hiding place Genma’d told them about. His journey under the floor had revealed it; it hadn’t been on Intel’s blueprints.

A brief static burst announced someone turning up his mic.”Found the compartment,”said Kakashi.“Looks like accounting ledgers. It’s all encoded, but the numbers stack up with some of Intel’s information on the coup.”There was a subtle edge to Kakashi’s voice—relief, maybe, that they had solid proof to validate the vengeance they’d just wreaked on Konoha’s behalf.

“Good,” Genma said quietly. “Secure it, and if there’s anything else worth taking, grab it and move on. I’m double checking the staff. Meet you in the counting room when I finish here.”

“Roger,” Kakashi said. Ryouma murmured an indistinct acknowledgment.

“Ram?” Genma said. “Everything okay on your end?”

“I’m fine,”Ryouma said, clipped and entirely unlike his usually vocal self.

So, not fine. But not injured. This was Team Six’s first mission of the sort ANBU was infamous for; it wasn’t that surprising Ryouma was taking it hard. At least the rookies weren’t responsible for killing the youngest children. Genma didn’t envy Raidou and Katsuko their half of this split operation.

There’d be time for an in-field debrief on the way back to the rendezvous point. He tried to remember what Hyuuga-taichou had said to him after his first truly nasty mission as a rookie, but all he could recall was his own shaking horror at what they’d had to do.

He’d just have to improvise, and hope Ryouma was as resilient as his background suggested he was.

In the servants’ quarters, Genma found one room full of women sleeping side by side on several evenly spaced futon. None stirred when he entered, and it took only minimal chakra to assure their continued slumber. The male servants—the gardener, the head of staff, and his assistant—slept in a second room. Only the assistant, youngest of the three, seemed to be shaking off the knock-out drug. Perhaps he’d taken less of the rice than the others, or maybe it was just his younger, faster metabolism at work. It didn’t matter. Genma settled him back down with a palmful of focused chakra.

“On my way to you,” he said, keying his mike. “Staff are taken care of.”

“We’re in the counting room,” Ryouma answered. The radio thinned his voice, but he sounded less shell-shocked than he had before. Maybe leaving the room full of corpses behind had helped.

Genma found Kakashi and Ryouma stacking bundles of gold koban coins onto prepared sealing scrolls. Hundreds of thousands of ryou by Genma’s estimate—more than enough to pay for this mission—and they hadn’t even finished emptying the safes. They were ghoulish in their blood-streaked uniforms and masks. Kakashi’s hair was dyed crimson, the ends dripping with congealing gore. Their hands were surprisingly clean, though, and Ryouma’s gloves were gone. They must have washed up just enough to avoid getting blood all over Konoha’s spoils. Under the metal-heavy tang of blood, there was a strong scent of expensive soap. It almost covered up the reek of decay that wafted down the hall from Tsuto’s bedroom.

Both ninja looked up when Genma entered, turning masked faces towards him. Kakashi nodded once and went back to stacking coins. Ryouma offered a cautious, “Lieutenant.”

“Ram. Hound,” Genma said. “Injuries?”

Both men shook their heads.

“Good.” He checked his watch. “We’re on schedule. Hound, did you seal the ledgers you found already?”

Kakashi flipped a slender, sealed scroll into Genma’s hands without looking up. The fire symbol on the seal still felt warm from recent activation. Genma slid it into the bottom of one belt pouch, swapping it for a set of lockpicks. They jangled softly between his fingers, like less lethal senbon. “I’ll start on this one,” he said, approaching the unopened wall safe. “Was that one trapped?” He didn’t sense any active chakra, but a mechanical trap could be just as deadly, and a well-made chakra trap could lie invisibly dormant until triggered or disarmed.

“Minor fire-trigger,” Kakashi said. “Three-pointed rabbit seal unlocked it.”

A skilled ninja must have set up Tsuto’s security, then. Probably a Konoha ninja, given that until very recently, Tsuto had been a lawful citizen of Fire Country. Preparing keyed safes for paying customers was the sort of chuunin-level job that kept Konoha in business.

“You didn’t find his key, I take it?” Genma asked. There would have had to be a chakra-charged key for Tsuto to open his safes, since he certainly wasn’t capable of working jutsu himself.

Kakashi shook his head.

“Okay, thanks,” Genma said. He knelt next to the closed safe and cast the unlocking jutsu Kakashi had suggested. Chakra threaded out from his hands and into the metal of the lock, and for a moment Genma didn’t think it was going to work. He was about to drop the jutsu when he felt a jolt as his shaped chakra latched onto the chakra matrix built into the mechanism. A faint scent of ozone rose from the broken jutsu, like the leftovers from a lightning strike. With the trap disabled, it was a small matter of picking the lock itself, and Genma had the safe open.

More stacks of koban greeted him, all wrapped discreetly in plain, creamy rice paper. They were heavy in his hands, individual coins clinking within their wrappers as he set them down on a sealing scroll of his own. “Look at all this,” he said softly when he had a minor daimyou’s ransom piled up and ready to be sealed. “What do you want to bet this guy was a tax cheat as well as a traitor?”

“Could be a reason for supporting the coup,” Ryouma offered. “If he didn’t like the taxes.”

“If he was even paying them,” Genma said. He activated the seal on his scroll, pouring chakra into it to account for the hefty mass of gold. When he was finished, he slipped the scroll in with the first. It looked like between the three of them, they’d be able to seal all the wealth into three scrolls, with one more for Tsuto’s books and ledgers. Kakashi activated the seal on his scroll, vanishing the gold into the ether, and Ryouma followed suit.

“Ram, see if you can find Tsuto’s hanko, and seal up the paperwork on that desk and shelf. Hound come with me,” said Genma. “We’ll start in the reception room. I’ll set the fires, you douse them with a water jutsu before they spread too far.”

Kakashi slid to his feet. Ryouma didn’t react beyond dipping his head in a quick, acknowledging nod as he gathered materials together. Genma’s tanuki mask tilted towards Ryouma for a moment, silent, then the lieutenant turned and led the way to his target room. Kakashi followed, leaving bloody footprints on the polished wooden floors.

He could have gotten cleaner, but the copper edge helped drown out the scent of Ryouma’s rot still clinging to him. It had been bad on the open training field of the First Trial, when Ryouma had reduced a pig carcass to rotten slag under a breezy spring sky. But here, in closed rooms on a living body that thrashed the mess around, it was halfway to intolerable. Even with the ANBU mask, it felt like the back of Kakashi’s throat was coated in slime.

Tsuto’s chest had caved under his hand like wet sponge.

Deliberately, he set the thought aside and focused on the small fires springing up around the reception room, racing over antique furniture and fragile paper wall-hangings. Genma conducted his flames with an artist’s touch, wrecking everything valuable. Kakashi chased the occasional errant spark with an absent water jutsu, but he was barely needed.

When Genma was satisfied, they moved onto the next room.

It was simple work to gut most of the house, leaving smoke and ruin behind. Only the occupied bedrooms—for a given value of ‘occupied’—and servant’s quarters were left untouched.

“You didn’t have the easy part of this mission,” Genma said, as he set the Tsuto family shrine ablaze. The altar-room was the last one, and furthest away from Ryouma. “Ram seems unsettled.”

Kakashi weighed his answer. “Is he impairing the mission?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Genma said carefully. “Do you have concerns?”

For a man who’d just turned another human being into a skin-sack of rot? Ryouma was an experienced shinobi, a full-blooded jounin, who’d come of age on the battlefield like everyone else in their generation. He’d seen terrible things, and done terrible things, and—

Probably never strangled a civilian in slow, cold blood before.

But they’d been warned what taking the mask would mean. Minato had told them.Once you swear the oath, there’s no glory to be had.They weren’t here because it was noble; they were here to take care of Konoha’s gory scutwork, see the job finished, and go home.

A memorial tablet cracked in the heat.

“No,” Kakashi said, meaningyes, but there was no time for them here. “We’re almost finished.”

“We are,” said Genma, with a nod. He made a fleeting religious handsign at the shrine, obviously uncomfortable with its desecration. Of everyone on the team, the lieutenant seemed the most likely to carry the weight of spirituality with him. “It helps that we found those ledgers.”

“Nice to know you’re killing someone who actually deserves it,” Kakashi said softly.And their children.

Genma hesitated. “It’s not our job to justify our targets,” he said, calling back a curl of flame climbing eagerly across the ceiling. “But yeah, it helps. Helped hearing him spill that confession out, too. Too bad for him it wasn’t enough to buy his life with.” He was silent for a moment. “Or his son’s.”

Kakashi flicked a glance sideways.

The lieutenant seemed almost exactly the same as when they’d first walked into the house, lean and anonymous in his black-and-bone armor. The only flashes of color were the matching red of his tanuki mask and swirling ANBU tattoo, and the glints of gold the firelight picked out in his hair. He’d avoided getting any blood on him.

It took a hard look to see the faintest tired slump in the other man’s shoulders.

Maybe it didn’t get easier.

Or Kakashi needed to be stronger, for when his teammates weren’t. He straightened his back, folding philosophy away for a moment when reflection could actually be useful, instead of distracting, and doused the remaining fire with a final jutsu.

“Time to get moving, lieutenant?” he said, putting just enough spin on the inflection to make it a question.

Genma nodded and thumbed his mic back on. “Ram, we’re good here. You ready to go?”

“I’m in the garden,” Ryouma said, over a static crackle. “No one’s called the firefighters yet.”

If anyone had seen the light from Kakashi’schidori, or the repetitive glow of fires starting and stopping, or heard all the screaming, which was most likely, they’d already suspect ninja. In which case, whatever passed for a city police force was gathering.

They might even be trying to get word to the closest Konoha outpost, but that was hours away and nothing to worry about.

Ryouma was leaning against the wall next to a slumped pile of dead guards, cleaning out the undersides of his nails with the point of a kunai. It didn’t seem like a show. Based on what Kakashi had seen in the bathroom, Ryouma really, really wanted clean hands. The ram mask lifted at their silent approach, and Ryouma tossed a single scroll to the lieutenant. Genma caught it, weighed it briefly in one hand, and tucked it away. Even standing next to him, Kakashi could feel the subtle density of chakra. A lot of things compacted into a very small space just…didsomething to the surrounding air, like a weight gently bending the universe.

They each had one scroll full of gold. Genma had two extra scrolls for Tsuto’s paperwork. In the event of attack, it was safer to split the risk of carrying valuables. That, and no one liked the feeling of carrying a chakra brick on their hip. Chakra half-brick was better.

Genma raised his chin, casting one last look over the building. Almost as an afterthought, he threaded his hands through quick seals and let one final jutsu fly. Flames curled up through the air, a bright twist against the hot, overcast night, and sank their teeth into the front door. Genma curled his wrist, and the fire followed the gesture, spiralling into a tight circle and extinguishing.

On the door, Konoha’s leaf symbol glowed like a brand.

“Come on,” Genma said, turning away.

Ryouma fell into step on his right, a tall slip of shadow just behind Genma’s shoulder. Kakashi raked a hand through his own hair, pulling blood-sticky strands away from the eye-holes of his mask, and followed.

The air smelled like distant thunder. Behind them, the stricken house settled around the weight of slaughtered dead.

It was four blocks before Kakashi heard a servant’s first thin scream, rising into the night like smoke.

They made it to the red light district on the city outskirts, ghosting over the rooftops of a town that wouldn’t sleep til dawn, before Kakashi’s head came up again like a hound catching a scent. He glanced back. Ryouma was just behind him; he saw the glitter of streetlights catch in the shadowed eyehole of Kakashi’s mask.

“Trouble?” Ryouma asked. He knew about Kakashi’s uncanny sense of smell, but he was beginning to believe now that Kakashi had uncannyeverything. He’d heard the servant’s scream when neither of the others had, though the city alarm bells had joined in soon enough.

Kakashi stopped on the very edge of a roof, one straight line of tension, head lifted into the still, muggy air. Half a roof ahead of them, Genma paused and turned back. He was too far to speak without shouting; he lifted a hand to flick his radio mic open. “Problem?”

“Chakra signatures,” Kakashi said. “North-east.”

Coming in from the coast. Kiri nin.

Genma came back to their roof in two swift leaps and stood beside Kakashi, almost mirroring his pose: head lifted, shoulders rigid, senses straining out. Ryouma didn’t bother; his chakra-sensing range was nothing like theirs. He kept an eye on the street below, where carousing wouldn’t pause even for the alarm bells ringing in the rich neighborhood far up the hill, and waited for them to tell him who to kill.

Thunder rolled in the distance.

“Four,” Genma said crisply. “They’re tamped down but they’re not bothering to hide.” He reached up to rub the back of his neck, lifting sweaty tendrils of hair that had worked free of his ponytail.

“If they’re coming from the coast, they’ve already hit Tsurugahama Port, or left people there,” Kakashi pointed out with a sharp edge to his voice. “We should stop them before they get into the city.” He crouched to leap from the roof-edge, but pulled up abruptly when Genma flung up his hand in the ANBU sign forhold.

“If we can sense them,” Genma warned, “there’s a possibility they can sense us. We need to draw them away from the city, toward the rendezvous point. If there’s trouble, we’ll have reinforcements when Moon and Rat finish their mission.” He paused. “And we’ll be closer to them if they need us.”

Not that much closer, Ryouma thought. The rendezvous point at Arechi Hill Safehouse was two hours’ run north-east, but the port was just under three hours east of that—nearly five hours from here, even if they cut cross country. Theycouldpush faster, hit their top speed and cut the time in half, but they’d arrive exhausted and chakra-burned and useless.

And far too late, if the Kiri nin had already been and gone.

Thehellthey would.

“Like the captain’s gonna let some Mist snaggle-tooth take him down,” he said, scornfully as he could. “He’ll unleash Rat on ’em, let her play.” He fidgeted with the buckle on an arm-guard. “You want me to draw these guys off? You both hide your chakra better than I do. I’ll play beacon, you can set up an ambush.”

And maybe he’d have a chance to fight someone who could actually fight back.

Genma was silent a moment, thinking it through, then nodded. “Don’t get too far ahead. Hound and I should be able to tell if they sense you and change direction. If they stay on course and don’t follow, we’ll need to come up with another plan.”

Kakashi said very softly, “I have another plan.” A single blue spark crackled across the backs of his fingers.

Killing them all was about the only plan Ryouma could think of, too. But a fight on an empty hillside was far preferable to a fight in a crowded city, and both were preferable to standing here with blood drying on his armor and the faces of death in his mind.

Raidou and Katsuko were veterans. They knew how to handle themselves. They’d known going in that the targets would have guards, that they’d likely have Kiri shinobi, and that Tsuto Takayoshi and his son could afford to buy anyone in the Bingo Book. Tsuto hadn’t had shinobi guards, which could mean foolhardy confidence or just that they hadn’t arrived in time—

And he wasdonethinking. He threw himself off the roof, flared his chakra like a falling star, and ran.

The city fell away beneath him, rooftops and powercables and washing lines just strong enough to hold a shinobi’s weight for the moment it took him to leap again to another roof. There was the gate of the red light district, and here was the untidy sprawl of slum huddled against the old city walls to the riverbanks. No rooftops sturdy enough to run on here; he took to the streets, a fleeting shadow gone before the startled dogs could make up their minds to bark after him. He crossed the river, running on the water, dodging between moored boats and drifting night fishermen, and reached the far bank.

His radio crackled to life. “They’ve split off two chakra signatures, but there are still four heading for the city. Coming faster. We’re continuing for the main party. Regroup.”

Behind him, the faint sparks of their ANBU tattoos veered off to the right, heading north-east. Ryouma spared the breath for just one curse and slapped his mic open. “Should I pursue the two?”

“Negative. Shield your chakra and evade.”

The ANBU sparks winked out.

A frenzied heartbeat later they reappeared again, even fainter. Five hundred meters further north-east to thecentimeter, he’d have bet, the very limit a sensible jounin would push a translocation. Three running steps later they blinked out and reappeared again. A kilometer in five seconds, chakra-intensive but shaving off precious time, widening the margin of safety between the sleeping city and any shinobi battle. A few hops further, and they’d be out of his sensory range.

He stopped running. He stood on the narrow trodden-dirt pathway above a rice paddy, quiet water reflecting the cloud-wracked moon. He caught his breath and gave himself a moment more to swear at Kiri nin for existing, Genma and Kakashi for pushing too fast, and the Hokage forinventingthe damn jutsu that made it possible for them to do it. Then he shaped the seals and his chakra and ripped himself along the edge of the universe.

He didn’t throw up this time, but he did fall into some godsdamned farmer’s pigpen.

Genma and Kakashi’s ANBU sparks were still at the edges of his senses, but they’d stopped translocating and dropped back into a less-exhausting run. He shoved a grunting sow aside, hauled himself over the fence, sluiced off the worst of the muck with a fast jutsu and the water from the trough, clamped his chakra down again, and staggered wearily on. After a little while he found his balance again, and his ears stopped ringing.

He hit the mic again. “Still on a collision course?”

“Dead on,” Genma’s voice crackled. He sounded barely winded. “There are some trees up ahead. Hoping they’re out in the open and we’ll have cover to operate from.”

Kakashi added, “The signatures on your tail have vanished.”

Bunshin, Ryouma decided, called off when their creators realized it made no sense to chase someone who could translocate away—even if he did it poorly. Konoha’s new translocation jutsu had turned the tide in more than a few shinobi clashes since the Yondaime had begun to teach it to the jounin; other villages were beginning to work out their own methods of fast movement now, but evidently these Kiri nin weren’t on the cutting edge. Ryouma cheered up a little. Better to be sh*t at translocation than not be able to do it at all.

“Catching up,” he said. “You’ll smell me before you see me.” He cut the mic, so his breath wouldn’t rattle in their ears, and poured the speed on.

A jounin’s steady run was ten miles to the hour, sustainable for hours or days if food and rest were available at regular intervals. Twenty miles an hour was a sprint, and if he were running to Tsurugahama Port he’d push that fast only with another shinobi’s life on the line, but Kakashi and Genma were only a mile or two ahead.Theywere pushing hard, too. He caught up with them just short of the copse of trees Genma’d mentioned, panting but not yet tired. The humid air curdled in his lungs when he tried to catch his breath.

Genma’s pace slackened into a slow jog. Grateful, Ryouma fell in at his side. “How far?”

Genma tipped his chin up at the trees. “If we cut straight through, we should be on them pretty quickly. Another two-fifty meters, maybe.”

Close enough that Ryouma could have sensed them himself, if he’d tried, but neither of them ragged him for it. Kakashi said only, “Meet them head on, or spread out and flank?”

“Assess first,” Genma responded. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with here.”

Kakashi nodded. “So, meet them head on, or spread out and flank?”

Ryouma choked on a laugh and turned it into a gasp for breath. Genma’s mask glimmered pale in the moonlight as he glanced aside at Kakashi. “Spread out,” he said coolly. “Let me take point. Stay in visual contact.”

“Roger.” Kakashi cut away to the right, chakra tamped down to barely a glimmer.

Ryouma faded to the left, where the trees thickened over a groundswell and the wild grass was already growing tall. Cover enough, especially when he pulled together the faintest haze of genjutsu. Moonlight and shadow, and nothing else…

A scatter of raindrops pelted his mask and bare shoulders. Thunder rumbled again in the distance. Ryouma squinted down the slope and saw movement in the darkness, sensed chakra held tight but not concealed. A wet breeze finally shivered the still, muggy air, briefly overriding the reek of blood and pigs with the fresh scent of rain and ozone.

The Kiri nin were bringing the storm with them.

Genma wrapped himself in ninjutsu, melting into the shadows. As the weather moved in, the moonlight faded, leaving flat, featureless gloom amongst the trees. Heavy trunks loomed around him, and a dull patter of rain on the canopy joined the rustle of storm-breeze in the leaves.

The foreign chakra signatures were strong and well-defined: all four felt jounin-sharp, and one had an edge that pricked at Genma’s chakra sense the way Ryouma’s did when he’d just used his rot-jutsu. It made the hairs on the back of Genma’s neck rise.

His first sight of the enemy confirmed his instinct: this wasn’t a fight he wanted to push his team into. They were Kiri ninja as suspected—their hitai-ate were marked with Mist’s four-slashed sigils, and they wore Mist’s heavy grey flack vests and darkly striped underpinnings. They ran in an elongated diamond, moving with the silence and ease of a well-practiced squad. And of course they were armed to the teeth. Two wore Kirigakure’s traditional white cowls, their faces masked in strips of bandage. Two were barefaced. It looked like two women and two men, but in the dark appearances could be deceiving.

What was clear was that the smaller ninja running out front was the squad leader. Genma dropped his concealing jutsu and let his chakra presence swell. All four Mist ninja reacted swiftly; the pony-tailed leader flicked rapid handsigns at her team as they turned towards Genma’s position at the edge of the woods. Genma stepped into the clearing, flashing back handsigns of his own to his concealed comrades.

Close in. Maintain concealment.

The reaction to his ANBU mask and uniform was instant and menacing, as blades came to hands. One of the shorter ninja, a man with flaming orange hair and a scar-hooked lip, flipped his hands through seals, raising a dense fog despite the falling rain.

Genma stood his ground. “Kirigakure, this is Fire Country. State your business.”

“Hold,” the woman in front ordered. The mist thinned and coalesced around their knees, allowing her a clear sight of Genma. She took a step forward. “Leaf ANBU-san,” she said. “Our mission doesn’t concern you.”

Genma just bet it didn’t. He eyed the ninja behind her warily, especially the tall man with the unsettling chakra presence. His heightened sense of peril didn’t ease. Behind him he felt the twin sparks of Ryouma’s and Kakashi’s ANBU tattoos shift fluidly to flank him from the trees. Kakashi’s was half-strength, tamped down but still detectable.

“If you’re here at the employ of Tsuto Takayoshi, you have no mission here at all,” Genma said. “We’ve taken care of it for you.”

Something hard and calculating flickered over the woman’s face. “Is that so, ANBU-san?”

Genma just stared at her, rooting himself to the earth. A flicker of lightning turned the clouds in the west an eerie violet, but the thunder rumbling in its wake said the strike was still distant.

“We’ll be happy to escort you back to the coast,” Genma told her.

“We? I don’t see a ‘we,’ ANBU-san. I see a you.” The corner of her lip lifted in a smile that was half sneer. “Unless you mean the two lurkers too scared to come out. You can show yourselves, Leaf ninja. We won’t bite.”

The orange haired man guffawed, and the masked woman’s eyebrows twitched in evident amusem*nt. Only the broad-built man at the back of the quartet remained emotionless, radiating nothing but ‘threat’. Another flash of lightning, brighter and closer this time, illuminated the clearing. That was when Genma saw the tattoo curling around the tall man’s right eye.

He recognized that face. Even with the mask. He’d seen it only two days ago, in his Bingo Book.

Iebara Shigematsu was a ninjutsu powerhouse, known primarily for leaving bloody carnage and no survivors in his wake. He was one of Mist’s most dangerous shinobi, at least according to information gleaned from a captured Kumogakure ninja. All Konoha had was a description, a reputation, and a sketch of that distinctive tattoo. No Leaf ninja had ever survived an encounter with Iebara to fill in any blanks.

Genma motioned to his comrades, flicking the signs forextreme dangerandhold for my signal.

“My team and I will escort you to the coast,” Genma repeated. “Your mission here is over. Tsuto is no longer in need of your protection.”

“You’ll understand if I don’t take your word for it,” the Mist leader said. “Even if Tsuto is dead—which, if he is, nice job killing one of your own—he still owes us travel expenses. It’s not cheap to reach the mainland, you know.”

“Tsuto is dead, and the Tsuto estate no longer has the funds to pay for your services,” Genma said. “But as the Hokage’s representative, I’ll front you the fare back to Water Country.”

The leader’s eyes narrowed, and she glanced back to her orange-haired colleague. “Moto, doesn’t that sound like the Leaf nin stole our fee?”

“Sounds like,” he grunted. Steel points that hadn’t been there a moment before glinted between his fingers.

“Nakeda, what do you think of thieves who won’t even show their faces?” the captain asked.

The masked woman looked Genma up and down, eyes glittering. “That it doesn’t surprise me from a Leaf. If they came toourland, I wouldn’t just stand and talk about it.” Her katana tip lifted into the scorpion pose.

The captain smiled, showing a mouth full of Kirigakure’s trademark file-pointed teeth. “Agreed. Pay us everything, ANBU-san. And we’ll think about leaving.” She took a step forward, a curve-edged kunai in each hand.

Genma didn’t need to give any orders—Ryouma materialized at his right elbow, looming out of the dark with as much sinister presence as Iebara was projecting from the back of the Mist squad. At his left, he felt Kakashi’s icy-fierce chakra, killing intent rising like the crest of dawn.

“I’ll let you rethink that,” Genma said, pitching his voice low. “Turn around, Kirigakure. You donotwant to pick a fight with ANBU. The Hokage’s vengeance won’t end at Fire Country’s borders.”

The skies opened up as if to underscore his threat, sheeting down in torrents. Lightning flickered, and the Mist captain hesitated, meeting Genma’s eyes through his mask. She reholstered one of her kunai, and raised her hand to draw her team into a conference.

“You make a good point. Allow me to discuss this with my squad, ANBU-san.”

They huddled together, and for a heartbeat, Genma caught a breath. This woman was smart. Mist didn’t want a war with Konoha, no matter how badly they might want Tsuto’s hoard. He could hear muffled argument over the din of the storm, but it seemed cooler heads were prevailing.

Kakashi didn’t say anything, but his attention was riveted on Iebara. He must have recognized the Bingo Book target when Genma did.

Ryouma shifted his weight slightly, leaning a little closer to Genma. “Are we seriously going totalkour way out of a fight?”

”Yes,”Genma hissed. Out ofthisfight? Definitely.

Ryouma twitched a surprised glance at Genma, then his masked head tipped back as he studied the Mist ninja. “Recognize someone?” he asked.

Genma nodded once, sharply, and held a hand up for quiet. He couldn’t hear what the Kiri ninja were saying and he doubted they had heard Ryouma, but caution was a shinobi’s best weapon.

The rain continued to bucket down, scouring rivulets of white through the sticky blood coating Ryouma’s and Kakashi’s armor. Kakashi’s hair dripped red-stained water as the rain sluiced away the gore, leaving silver in its wake.

Iebara’s head came up, tattooed stare fixing on Kakashi for a blazing moment. Then he was a blur. The Mist captain shouted a curse.

All three ANBU reacted, but none quickly enough. Iebara materialized between Genma and Ryouma, slashing both men’s shoulders open as he rushed past them to his real target. Genma spun, falling, reaching for a handful of senbon, but his arm wouldn’t move. A bright ribbon of blood streamed away from his cut shoulder, arrowing through the falling rain like a living thing. A second blood-snake joined it, sourced from Ryouma’s lacerated shoulder. They laced around Kakashi’s unarmoured throat, tightening like a garotte.

Ninja of the Bloody Mist.

Justonce, Kakashi would like to run into a piece of hyperbole someone didn’t try to take seriously.

Red and black lights exploded behind his eyes. He choked and (remembered the color bursting into Sakako’s dying face like a ruptured blood-orange) drew his tanto, slashing the blade down. The steaming blood-ropes bent like flexible steel, absorbing the strike without breaking. Iebara twitched his fingers and the jutsu yanked Kakashi off his feet, hiking him into the air.

That was worse.

His weight hung from his neck, cutting off his air. From the corner of his eye, he saw the stretching crimson lines break loose from Genma and Ryouma, dropping them both to their knees. The trailing ends lifted up and spread wide, like terrible wings above Kakashi’s head. He grabbed at the loop around his throat with his free hand, trying to wrench it away, and struck again with the tanto. His nails dug into the slippery, body-warm surface, but couldn’t find purchase. The blade didn’t pierce.

His lungs burned. His vision was starting to dim.

Movement. Genma rising, staggering up with senbon glinting between the knuckles. A humming cloud of shuriken cut him off before he could throw them, forcing him to vault backwards out of the way. The orange-haired man—Moto—hefted another handful of sharp, warning blades.

Ryouma made a deep, terrible sound, and shoved himself up off the muddy ground. Blood streamed down his arm, washing out his ANBU tattoo.

Iebara put his head on one side, almost thoughtful, and shaped blurringly fast seals. A dark ripple of chakra twisted through the world.

Ryouma gasped and went back down on one knee, still in the grip of the jutsu. Genma’s second attempt at a counter-attack faltered, senbon falling like silver rain between his fingers. He fell to a shaking crouch. Blood burst from their open shoulders, rising up and coalescing into six distinct blades. They hung in the air, almost black under lowering stormclouds. Three over Genma, three over Ryouma. The sluicing rain cut over them, droplets sliced by lethally sharp edges.

That threat was clear enough:Die, or your teammates do.

Do nothing and they’d die anyway, along with Kakashi.

He tightened his grip on the tanto-hilt and poured his last bit of focus into a gamble. Sakumo’s bloodline, one of the first tricks Kakashi had ever learned. The chakra burned hot down his arm, filling the blade with blazing white light. He forced it all into the edge and brought the tanto around again, in one clean slash.

The ropes sheared through.

Blood burned away, sizzling with the sharp edge of hot copper, and Kakashi fell. He landed in a jarring crouch and stabbed his tanto into the dirt, reached for fast seals as the broken garotte splattered down around him. Iebara’s hands were already a blur.

The six floating blood-blades shivered and leapt through the air, dropping like guillotines down onto Genma and Ryouma.Getting rid of witnesses.

Cold rage gave Kakashi the extra edge of speed he needed. He poured chakra through his hands and smacked both palms down on the ground.

A rising tide of drenched earth wrenched itself up and over his teammates, putting a solid wall between them and their own weaponized blood. The blades impacted with dull thuds, and burst into crimson splashes.

There was a moment of rain-filled silence, undercut by the rasp of Kakashi’s breath.

Iebara laughed hoarsely. “White Fang’s whelp.”

“Have we met?” Kakashi croaked.

“Iebara!” snapped the blond Kiri-captain. “If that’s the Hokage’s student—”

Iebara rolled his shoulders, as if shaking off an irritating itch, and extended one hand to Kakashi in a welcoming gesture, curling his fingers.Come and play.

Kakashi felt his lip curl. He flicked his fingers through the bird-seal, melting the Quartermater’s clever little Sharingan-covering mesh, and straightened up. His vision spiralled into chakra-blue, layers of intent pouring over the world. Iebara’s energy signature glowed like a dark beacon, shifting and ugly. In contrast, Genma and Ryouma’s signatures were buried and safe—at least for now.

“Last chance to take that boat ride home,” Kakashi said.

“Did you inherit your father’s cowardice, too?” Iebara said, with the special scorn Kirigakure seemed to install in their shinobi at birth. “I can give you a blade to kill yourself against, if you’d like.”

Kakashi had never liked diplomacy anyway.

“Not necessary,” he said, and wrenched his tanto out of the ground.

Fate-lines shifted. Iebara sank steel-lined nails into his own palms, sharpened edges biting deep, and shaped new seals—almost invisibly fast, but this time the Sharingan caught them. Blood burst around his hands, fountaining up and twisting into two long, latticed blades that stretched and glimmered in the rain. The hilts melted around his wrists, locking the blades into place like manacles.

Not something that could be disarmed, then.

But the blood-jutsu didn’t stand up against hot chakra, and the air was full of lightning.

Iebara blurred into motion. Kakashi moved in copycat symmetry, filling his tanto with charged energy. Obito’s eye handed him Iebara’s subtle tells, showing Kakashi a slender opening.

In the split-second before he and Iebara clashed, the subtlest tremble went through the earth. Genma’s hand punched up through the ground and wrapped around Iebara’s ankle. The lieutenant hauled downwards, yanking the bigger shinobi shin-deep into shifting ground. Ryouma exploded out of the shield of molten earth Kakashi had made, and flung a roaring javelin of fire at Iebara’s head. Kakashi recalculated on the fly, twisting around to avoid the jutsu and aim for for Iebara’s throat.

In the silent space between violent moments, Iebara made a sound like,Tch.

He dodged smoothly and threw one of the blades, which met Ryouma’s fire-jutsu and consumed it in a boiling hiss. The blood bubbled, smoking, and the blade re-warped itself to strike Ryouma squarely in the armored chest, knocking him out of the air. He crashed down hard on his back, skidding like a landed comet, and made a dull choking sound as the blood poured over him, smothering his mask.

With his other hand, Iebara blocked Kakashi’s chakra-blade strike. The tanto sank deeply into Iebara’s remaining blood-blade, but didn’t shear all the way through. Blood closed around the glowing metal, twisted, and ripped the tanto out of Kakashi’s hand, flinging it out of reach. Iebara snorted, blurred again, and punched Kakashi like an anvil in the face, knocking him backwards in a welter of rain and cracked porcelain.

Kakashi hit the ground with his ears ringing, and felt his ANBU mask fall away in pieces.

A throttled noise snapped his attention back. He struggled up to see Iebara dragging Genma out of the ground by the throat.

“Fight someone your level,” Iebara advised Genma, and tightened his grip. Genma made a strangled gasp, back arching, feet hanging off the ground—but his hands were free. They blurred through seals, and flames burst up between the lieutenant and Iebara, setting the Kiri ninja’s face bandages alight.

Iebara snarled and changed his handhold, moving into a form Kakashi recognized as the precursor to snapping Genma’s neck.

The Sharingan slowed things down just enough for Kakashi to act. He yanked up chakra, forced it through rapid seals, and let it go. Above Genma, rain slammed itself together into a solid shape and roared down, twisting into a water-dragon around both struggling men. The fire hissed out, which was unfortunate, but his second choice—hitting them both with a another landslide—would’ve done more bone-breaking damage than Genma wanted to deal with. The dragon flexed, knife-like teeth snapping at Iebara’s face. Iebara swore, deflecting. A translucent tail wrapped around Genma and yanked him away, tossing him high into the air.

Objective achieved, the dragon used the remainder of its chakra to smash down hard on Iebara, bringing several tons of water-weight down on the Kiri nin’s shoulders. For a moment, Iebara staggered.

There was a flash of dark energy and the construct tore itself apart, splashing down into harmless puddles. Iebara lifted his head and glared at Kakashi through dripping dark hair.

Blood-manipulating Mist shinobi—of course he knew water jutsu.

Fifty feet away, Genma landed, tumbled, flipped upright and bolted towards Ryouma.

Kakashi pushed himself to his feet, and shook his head. Iebara’s seals were bright and clear in his mind’s eye, wrapped around new, corrupted ways Kakashi could twist his chakra. With his tanto gone, it was an option to play with. He flexed his fingers. “Let’s try that again.”

Iebara cracked his neck. “This time, I’ll take your blood.”

Anything that took him away from the other two.

“Come and get it,” Kakashi said.

Ryouma’s pulse roared like the crashing tide in his ears. His lungs burned, empty, or else filling with breathed-in blood. His own blood, or Genma’s, ripped out and turned against him, slipping under his mask, sealing his nose, filling his mouth with hot copper and salt.

Tsuto Sakako had died like this, on her back and fighting for breath, vision shattering into darkness.

But there were no hands to claw away here, no grip to break. His fingers slid over the slick surface of his mask and found no purchase, not even an edge to grip and tear the mask away. Iebara’s jutsu covered his head like a caul. He was going to drown on his own blood, choking for air like Sakako and her daughter, and thatbastardMist nin would rip his body open and use his blood to kill his teammates, too—

Noise, beyond the roaring in his ears. A low, rasping voice: “Ram, I’ve got you. Hold on, don’t fight me.” Gloved fingers tangled with his own and held them briefly still, then pulled away again. Chakra ignited.

The pressure of the blood-caul broke, and the mask wrenched away. He gasped for a breath.

For a moment there was nothing, just blood and darkness and the surety that Genma’d come too late. Then Genma’s chakra rose over against him again, shaping and twisting into something he almost recognized, and plunged inside.

Horror twisted backwards.

The blood ripped out of his lungs and left only fire in its wake.

But there was air on the other side, wet and metallic, harsh with the scent of blood and ozone. He sobbed after it, curling onto his side, wracked with coughs that ripped what was left of his lacerated throat. Genma’s gloved hands steadied him. The ground was torn grass and red mud beneath him, but Genma lifted his face from it and braced Ryouma’s head against his knee, leaning over him to block the rain. He breathed easier, without the rain pouring down.

“Slow breaths,” Genma urged. His throat sounded raw, too. “Try not to cough. Let the air in.”

Raidou’d told him the same, when he dragged Ryouma out of the drowning lake of the demon queen’s rotting corpse. Ryouma tried to obey again. He was dimly aware of Genma’s chakra gathering once more, twisting and splitting into two new shapes: clones, set to guard.

Beyond them, in the rain, Kakashi and Iebara blazed.

Ryouma struggled up to his elbow and twisted to see over his left shoulder. Stormclouds still darkened the moon, but the unearthly glow of chakra-edged weapons chased blurring lines through the field and beneath the trees. Two white-glowing kunai for Kakashi, Ryouma saw in a brief moment of stillness, when the combatants landed crouched on tree branches at the edge of the copse. The steel blades looked like they were already beginning to deform with chakra-heat. Iebara had blades of blood again, casting a faint red light like a reflection from the pit of hell.

Iebara struck, and Kakashi was no longer there. He’d fled further back into the trees, forcing Iebara to pursue. Drawing him off.

Trying toprotectRyouma and Genma. So far, they’d been nothing but a liability for him.

They were both still bleeding, though the rain did its best to wash the trails away. A vicious slash angled high on Genma’s right shoulder, dark on pale skin. Its twin burned on Ryouma’s arm, just above his ANBU tattoo. He drew a final rasping breath and tried to speak. “Can you seal the cuts?”

Genma’s shadowed head dipped in a nod above him. “In a sec. We need blood pills.” He sounded a little breathless, as well as hoarse. “Don’t know how much he got out of you, but I’m feeling pretty light-headed. Seeing haloes.” He shifted, reaching into his hip-pouch, and drew out a small metal canister. The hunch of his shoulders offered a little protection from the driving rain as he twisted the top off and shook pills out into his gloved palm. “Can you get that down?”

Ryouma’s left arm hurt to move, but if he could push through seals he could pick up one pill. He wasn’t going to lip it off Genma’s palm, at any rate. The pill tasted of salt and copper, already beginning to dissolve from the wet. For a moment he choked on an vicious flare of fear, but he swallowed it down.

The lieutenant swallowed his own blood pill and chased it with a soldier pill, then tipped his mask back down. He looked up, over Ryouma’s head. “Those bastards are just standing there. What’re they waiting for?”

The Kiri captain and her two subordinates seemed to have moved further away from the woodline, though distance wasn’t easy to judge in the dark and the rain, through broken lightning flashes. They stood stiff-backed in the downpour, just out of shuriken range. The captain had crossed her arms over her chest. The stocky orange-haired man was spinning one of Kiri’s viciously pronged kunai around his finger, while the other woman simply stood still, loose-jointed, with her hands in her pockets.

If they cared about Genma’s guarding clones, they didn’t show it.

“Their captain didn’t want a fight,” Ryouma said, dazedly. He had to stop when Genma set the open mouth of a canteen to his lips, but the warm water soothed his throat and helped clear his thoughts. “You were talking sense to her. She didn’t want a fight, she yelled after him, but she didn’t chase him down. No wayourtaichou’d let that stand. So she’s scared of him. ‘Cause he won’t hesitate to turn onthem, I bet, if they got in his way.”

Genma took a long pull at his canteen and then capped and stowed it. He fumbled in the muddy dark for a moment and came up with the pale glimmer of Ryouma’s mask, bloodless, clean. He didn’t press it to Ryouma’s face, just held it out. After a moment Ryouma steeled himself, and took it.

“I’m scared of him, too,” Genma said, low, “but f*ck that.” He shaped a dizzying sequence of seals and lifted a green-lit hand to his injured shoulder. “We’re taking him down, and the rest of them, too, if we have to. Hound’s not the only one in this fight with a bounty on his head. I don’t want to fight that Kiri bastard, but if he insists, I’ll be happy to move his page to the back tab of my Bingo Book.”

Ryouma glanced out into the lightning-lit darkness again. He couldn’t see either Kakashi or Iebara, not even their chakra flares, but he could feel the wintry sunlight-on-steel chill of Kakashi’s chakra and the dark, twisted weight of Iebara’s, somewhere in the trees. Coming closer, now, nearly to the edge of the treeline. Genma’s clones tensed. The three Kiri nin took a few measured steps back.

It wasn’t Konoha that the Kiri captain was keeping her distance from.

Ryouma struggled up to his knees. “They’re staying outside his range. D’you see? They pulled clear when he attacked, instead of trying to stop him, and they’re still playing careful now. Fifteen meters, maybe. If they stay outside his range, he can’t affect them.”

Fifteen meters was ahellof a range for a jutsu that powerful. Ryouma’sNaizou Tokasuwas only accurate within five, and fizzled within eight. The more powerful a jutsu, generally, the shorter the range its caster could manage while still keeping the jutsu’s effects under control. Did that mean fifteen meters was the absolute limit of Iebara’s range, and that further inside—say, ten meters—his control might be shaky, not absolute? Ryouma tried to remember how far apart they’d been when the Kiri nin wrenched the blood from his veins, but all he could remember was the dark wet ribbon ripping out of his shoulder, and the pain.

“I’m going to touch you now,” Genma said, and Ryouma looked back, startled, as Genma’s glowing hand closed on his bleeding shoulder. Genma’d remembered Ryouma didn’t react well to being touched without warning. But his mind was clearly somewhere else, following the trail Ryouma had laid, even as the warmth of his chakra sank into Ryouma’s shoulder and the healing flesh began to sting and itch. “He cut us when he wanted blood to use. That jutsu probably needs the blood to come from a living source to manipulate it like that. Blood cells have chakra outside the body, but the minute the blood’s exposed to air, it starts to die.”

Which explained why Iebara hadn’t pulled the dried blood from Ryouma and Kakashi’s uniforms, or from the shallow gouges over the backs of Ryouma’s fingers where Tsuto Sakako’s broken nails had caught his skin. And why he hadn’t recalled the blood that splashed when he lost control of the first blood-knives, or of the broken garrotte that had dyed Kakashi’s armor red.

“If we can keep from bleeding, and keep Hound from bleeding, we’ll have an advantage,” Genma said. He turned his head, glancing back into the wood, where a fitful flicker of white and red light clashed, broken apart, and vanished again. “I’ve got a jutsu that will trash the metal in his blades, if I can get within five meters.”

“And I’ve got a jutsu that’ll turn his insides to soup, ifIcan get within five meters.” Ryouma twitched his shoulder out from under Genma’s hand, inspected the pink-knotted line of the closed wound, and nodded. “I can’t take a risk when he’s too close to Hound, though—it’s why I had to use fire earlier, instead of rot. But if we can draw him off Hound, and you distract him, I’ll get him.”

Another crack of lightning flashed, casting their black and white uniforms into stark relief. “I’ve got the same issue with myToi no tetsu o hakai,”Genma said. “It doesn’t need direct contact, but it can latch onto any iron nearby, including your weapons or mine, or Hound’s.” And, he hoped, the iron holding together Iebara’s blood blades.

He had another jutsu he could reach for,kinzoku o hikidaru, that could pull iron straight from the blood in a target’s veins, but like most medical jutsu, the metal condensing technique required direct, sustained contact to work. He just had to hope the metal corruption jutsu could do the job. The blood wasoutsideIebara’s body, and the iron in the blood blades was no different than the iron in a katana or kunai, in theory.

Even if it didn’t work, he could still try to push Iebara away from Kakashi, towards Ryouma.

“You and I should come at Iebara from two sides to minimize the risk. I’ll try to draw him towards me. Give him a bleeding clone to reach for.”

He spoke low, trusting the downpour to keep them from being overheard by the distant Mist ninja. A quick sweep of his chakra-sense picked out the familiar flicker of his own clones, his teammates, one sickly twisted signature engaged with Kakashi, and the three Mist ninja they could see. “They don’t have any clones in play,” Genma said, as he poured chakra into making a third kage bunshin as lifelike as possible, this time adding back the bleeding shoulder wound. It crouched with them, hiding itself from prying eyes.

Ryouma glanced back towards the tense knot of Mist ninja. “Let’s hope they stay out of play altogether. They don’t look happy.” He turned his face back to Genma, dark eyes fierce and glittering in the shadowed recesses of his mask. “Lieutenant,” he said. “Whatever you do, don’t get in the way. I won’t fire if there’s any danger to you or Hound, but— Just stay clear.”

Genma’d seen the carnage Ryouma’s jutsu had wreaked on the demons. He’d watched Ryouma reduce a man-sized pig carcass to putrid slime in a matter of minutes at the ANBU Trials. Genma’s jutsu could destroy a shinobi’s weapons, but Ryouma’s would take a life in an eyeblink.

“I’ll be careful. If you don’t have a clear shot, use fire again. I’m fire-affinity, too; I can add to it.”

Ryouma nodded. “Hound’s not fire, but better a little singed than bled out.” He rocked from a kneel to a crouch, shoulders tensing as he prepared to move. “Got a signal for me?”

“I’ll pulse my tattoo spark twice,” Genma said. Kakashi would feel it, too, but by the time Genma gave the signal they’d be within Kakashi’s sight—he’d be able to see it wasn’t a distress call.

Ryouma nodded an acknowledgement.

“You wanted to call down tigers,” Genma said. “Let’s go.” He and his new clone bolted to their feet as one and took off at a dead run towards the bright flare of Kakashi’s chakra. Lightning cracked again, striking a tall tree in the grove not far from where Kakashi and Iebara were battling. The thunderclap was almost instantaneous and deafening, leaving Genma’s ears ringing as he raced towards the fight. Ryouma darted left as he swung right, going for the flank.

Within the trees, there was a blasted-clear area, torn apart by clashing jutsu. The earth was shattered into rough trenches and churned into mud. Trunks were scorched and splintered, raw white heartwood laid bare where massive force had exploded the wood into matchsticks. The trees still standing were peppered with shuriken and kunai—some Konoha’s slender black daggers, some Mist’s savage tooth-edged blades.

Both shinobi were moving at a frenzied pace, blade against blade. Iebara’s sickly-hued blood weapons clashed against Kakashi’s chakra-charged kodachi—he must have lost or broken his kunai. The new blade glowed almost white, looking like a fresh-forged sword still radiant from the furnace. It hissed and steamed in the falling rain, metal ringing against metal again and again, as Kakashi and Iebara drove each other in a perfect, deadly ballet.

Iebara was bleeding from several shallow cuts, but Kakashi looked uninjured. Both men were breathing hard. Neither looked like he was giving ground. Across the combat zone, Genma felt Ryouma’s ANBU spark twinkle as Ryouma got in position. Genma flicked his hands through seals, sent his decoy clone in towards Iebara from Ryouma’s direction, and cloaked himself in shadow.

When Iebara caught sight of the clone, his mouth curled into an evil grin behind the blackened tatters of his charred mask. His fingers whipped through seals, reaching for the blood streaming from the clone’s shoulder. The clone staggered and went down on one knee.

Before Iebara could realize the blood was illusory, Genma cast his jutsu.

It drew chakra like a whirlpool, surging against Genma’s control. His own kunai and shuriken rattled in their holsters as the jutsu tried to rob the nearest sources of iron first, but he forced the energy away from himself, aiming for Iebara. When it latched onto the iron in the blood blades, it settled and strengthened, feeding on the iron-rich blood almost as easily as it did solid steel.

Iebara twitched, turning towards Genma’s concealed position with a furious roar. “You don’tlearndo you, Konoha?” He broke away from Kakashi and came at Genma, and Genmaran, trying to get distance between himself and Kakashi. Just a meter or two should be enough. Kakashi was already closing in to take advantage of the distraction Genma’d provided.

Genma threw up an arm to ward off the blow as Iebara caught up to him.

The red blades struck his arm guard and shattered into hundreds of blood-colored shards.

Was Kakashi out of range?

Now.Genma pulsed the signal from his ANBU spark twice, and jumped back out of range himself.

Across the clearing, there was an explosion of chakra as Ryouma stepped out of the trees. His left hand braced his extended right arm. From his right palm, a bolt of red-black chakra raced straight for Iebara’s torso.

At the last minute, Iebara lunged to the right—some preternatural danger-sense warning him of the threat. Ryouma’s sick-hued chakra struck a glancing blow against Iebara’s side, wringing a guttural grunt from their target. Iebara clamped his arm around his side as if he were protecting broken ribs. He coughed, tore the shreds of his mask off, and spat blood, but there was no decay spreading across his torso. He’d taken internal damage, but not nearly enough to take him out of the fight. His fingers twitched through seals.

Kakashi darted in, glowing kodachi aimed for the death blow. Iebara crumpled under the strike, but as his body hit the ground, it exploded in a flood of water quickly washed away by the falling rain.

Substitution jutsu.He’d swapped himself with a water clone.

Genma dove for the ground, hands a blur as he called chakra together for an earth jutsu, but Iebara, fresh kunai in hand, was faster. His tooth-edged blade bit deep into Genma’s thigh.

Lightning turned the world technicolor as twitching muscle sheared apart, sliced nearly to the bone. Iebara cast his signature jutsu again; a crimson cloud erupted from Genma’s thigh. His leg twisted inside out with pain as the alien chakra stole blood from severed vessels and coalesced it into a strangling hood.

Chakra Genma’d called up for his unfinished earth jutsu was still unreleased—he shaped new seals in a panicked frenzy and worked the same jutsu he’d used to draw the blood away from Ryouma’s mask. When the blood hood disintegrated, he found three identical ANBU in liondog masks, glowing swords raised in unison, closing in on Iebara. A fourth Kakashi grabbed Genma roughly by the shoulder and waist, and hurled him towards Ryouma.

“Ram, catch!” Kakashi shouted.

Genma tucked into the motion, drawing his arms and legs in close as he fell towards his comrade. The image of the rot-chakra limning Ryouma’s palms flashed through his head.

”Whatever you do, don’t get in the way. I won’t fire if there’s any danger to you or Hound, but— Just stay clear.”

Lightning ripped down behind him, burning rain into plasma, filling the air with the scent of ozone, and a deafening roll of thunder.

Ryouma slammed into Genma midair, pulling him barehanded into a tight embrace. One broad hand cradled Genma’s head protectively, guarding his neck as they tumbled to a stop.

There was no reek of spoiled meat; no agonizing disintegration of flesh.

Thank the gods.

Perhaps Bishamon, armor-clad god of warfare and warriors, was on their side after all.

Ryouma found his footing first. He hauled Genma’s right arm over his shoulder, making sure Genma’s injured leg was between them, and raced for the trees. “How bad?” he shouted over the roar of the thunder.

“It’s deep,” Genma panted. Blood poured from the wound, but it was steady—Iebara’d missed the major arteries, at least. “Hurt like hell, and he got a fair amount of blood out of me, but I can close it.” He focused chakra into a wound-sealing jutsu and set his hands against his leg. Self-healing took twice the chakra healing another shinobi did, but he had no choice. Any open wound was a liability with Iebara nearby.

In the clearing, Kakashi’s trio of clones died in an eruption of smoke. Iebara lurched towards the real Kakashi, but he had one hand pressed to his injured side.

Genma didn’t see what Kakashi did next; a double hit of chakra jolted into him, flooding his senses with his own clones’ memories. “sh*t! My clones are dead. Those other bastards finally decided to get in the fight.”

Ryouma swore, turning towards the oncoming flare of unshielded chakra.

Genma poured his own chakra into the healing jutsu, sacrificing accuracy and control for speed. As soon as he felt the wound close, he yanked his hands free, armed himself with a pair of kunai, and ran towards the closing Kiri ninja. Away from Kakashi and Iebara. The farther they could take the new fight from the blood ninja, the better. He just had to trust Ryouma’s slow-spreading rot had done enough damage to give Kakashi the advantage he needed.

When this was over, Kakashi was going to have a serious word with his teammates about not getting themselveskilled.

At least they were withdrawing, even if it was straight into the teeth of another fight. He could feel Ryouma’s chakra twisting itself into a new jutsu, swirled through with the rank edges of more flesh-melting destruction. Genma’s was still bright and brilliant with the after-images of healing—another thing to be grateful for.

Kakashi just wished they hadn’t left blood all over Iebara’s hands.

But theyhaddone some damage.

Kakashi dodged a viciously fast pattern of strikes, flipped around behind Iebara and dropped low, scything his kodachi across the back of the bigger man’s legs. He wanted a hamstringing, but at this point he’d take anything that delivered an injury. Iebara leapt—still blurringly fast for a shinobi who had a) used that much chakra and was b)rottinginside—and spun, lashing out with a kick that snapped Kakashi’s kodachi in half. The chakra-charged blade whirled away into rain-lashed darkness.

That was the problem with regular steel; it couldn’t withstand the White Fang’s bloodline limit.

Kakashi gritted his teeth and hurled the useless hilt at Iebara’s face. Iebara swiped it contemptuously aside, but the distraction bought Kakashi a second to vault backwards and form rapid seals. Rain coalesced above Iebara’s head, forming into wicked, senbon-shaped needles. They glowed blue beneath a sky full of sparks, and hammered down fast enough to make the air scream.

Hampered by his crippled side, Iebara was a fraction too slow.

Kakashi had seen Rin use jet-injectors at the hospital, needleless hypodermics that accelerated liquid so fast it punched through skin. A month later she’d turned it into a jutsu, something to save time. He’d taken it, with her wry permission, and weaponized it.

A blizzard of sharp edges shredded Iebara’s clothes, lancing through the skin underneath. He flung his hands over his head and a shield of Genma’s blood exploded upwards, denting under the lethal shower. It opened up his chest into a broad, beautiful target. Kakashi obliged by hurling his last two kunai at it.

They thunked solidly into Iebara’s flak-vest, just below his collarbones, and quivered there, like black fangs.

Slowly, Iebara raised his head and snarled.

What was hemade of?

A black roil of chakra shivered the air. Iebara shaped seals, and the kunai punched backwards out of his chest, carried on ropes of spiralling blood. He whipped the blades at Kakashi, who blocked with an upflung arm-guard, and the new blood rose up to join the remainder of Genma’s. All over Iebara, thin lacerations offered up more ammunition, dozens of crimson strings that rose and braided, and, as Kakashi watched, became a hovering cloud of gleaming dark needles.

“Crap,” Kakashi said quietly.

The cloud exploded.

There was no safe path to take, even with the Sharingan. Kakashi flung crossed arms in front of his face, dropped his chin to protect his throat, and braced against the stinging storm. The force blasted him backwards, boots skidding on soaked earth. He shoved chakra into his soles and kept his balance. Pain sliced into unprotected skin, scouring the nerves raw. Kakashi clenched his teeth. For a burning second he could feel every individual cut, and then it just melted into a wall of white noise.

When it stopped, he had to jerk backwards to keep from falling on his face.

Cautiously, he raised his head. Blood dripped like syrup off his fingertips. He was covered in it, steaming-hot and coppery, blocking all the smell out of the world. Even with the driving rain, he couldn’t see skin underneath—or tell where Iebara’s blood ended, and his own began.

At least he couldn’t see flayed bone.

And Iebara was moving, so there was no time to linger on it. Kakashi jerked his hands down, trying to force feeling back into numbed fingers, and looked up into the shifting, blue-drenched fate lines of Obito’s worldview. A single red blade arched in Iebara’s hands, about the length of a katana. Its current path would carve Kakashi’s chest out.

Above them, a new fork of lightning blazed.

The thing about affinities was that they were strongest when you had a natural source. Sand-shinobi ruled the desert; water ninja had tides and deep currents in their blood; Konoha’s Uchiha could turn back a forest fire, or burn a village down with one. Kakashi had lightning, water, and earth in his bones, and right now the sky was singing.

Lightning called to lightning.

Iebara closed in. Kakashi flung his chakra wide open, letting loose a violet dance of sparks across blood-soaked skin. He felt the answering pull above him. Dark clouds roared with thunder, splitting around the last massive electrostatic discharge. The next strike poured down on them like a waterfall of light.

It was a lot like standing underneath the end of the world, but Kakashi had split lightning before. He had a jutsu named for it, and he could damn well reach into the electric lifeblood of his own nature, meet it, and bend it around to kill thebastardwho’d nearly bled his teammates dry.

The world went white, and loud, and faded silent.

Then it came back.

Kakashi choked on a staggered heartbeat and lurched upright, shoving himself up on unsteady elbows. The ground smoked in front of him, torn apart in a deep, blasted crater. His ears rang. Purple haloes crowded his blurring vision. His gloves fell away in charred, shredded strips as he levered himself into a weaving crouch, and his armored vest hung at a crazy angle. Sparks crackled over his hair.

Where was—

He’d poured out most of his chakra; his senses were down to less than twenty feet, dwindling like a fading watermark. He couldn’t feel Genma and Ryouma at all, or the ninja they were fighting. He couldn’t see Iebara.

Maybe the Kiri ninja had exploded.

Kakashi’s breath cracked on an exhausted laugh, because that really wasn’t funny, but—boom.

Movement flickered through smoke.

He jerked one leaden arm halfway up, and Iebara—blood-soaked, skin blistered with third-degree burns, clothes shredded away—heaved over the edge of the crater like the smoking reject from one of the war’s worst trenches. The Kiri nin staggered upright and smashed Kakashi’s arm aside. Kakashi stumbled, nearly falling. Iebara grabbed him, yanked him around, and locked a slick, blackened arm around his throat.

Kakashi choked.

Again.

Whatever Iebara was running on—willpower, fumes, pure rage—it didn’t care about the way his burned flesh split against Kakashi’s buckled armor, peeling open and pouring blood. Or the way his blackened chakra was flickering, dwindling down to a pilot light. He just wanted to kill a Leaf ninja, and he didn’t care if he destroyed himself doing it.

Kakashi’s fingers scrabbled over Iebara’s forearm, digging into raw, bunching muscles. He kicked, and they tumbled backwards into the crater. Mud splashed underneath them. Steel strength tightened around his throat, clamping down. He couldn’tbreathe.

He didn’t have any weapons left.

But he was not goddamn dying on his second mission while his teammates werestillfighting.

Seals unfolded in his mind’s eye. They were fresh and new, unmastered, but he could see how the chakra flowed, where it would bite. All it needed was blood, and Iebara was losing plenty of that.

Kakashi forced his hands together. The last reserves of his chakra surged, rising into a vile, corrupted shape, and lashed out. He felt it sink hooks into Iebara, pouring into all the ripped-open, ragged places that remained of the man’s flesh.

Iebara went still.

“You didn’t,” he said, voice burned raw.

Kakashi didn’t have the breath to respond, he justpulled. Blood burst like a landmine detonation, spraying out into the lashing rain, and Iebara ripped apart.

Warm pieces slid slowly down Kakashi’s back. The arm, attached to nothing, fell away from his throat.

Kakashi gasped, swaying to his feet. He managed not to fall. The air tasted like raw copper and storm water.

Ryouma, he thought.Genma.

He turned and staggered through the wet remains, tripping over the streaked arch of a rib. The stench of Ryouma’s jutsu bloomed up from half-rotted viscera. He righted himself and mostly crawled up to the lip of the crater, pulling himself over the edge to land chest-down in more mud. The rain was starting to thin out, fading from a deluge to a miserable drizzle. Just beyond the charred, lightning-blasted trees, flares of active chakra signatures wavered and hazed in the Sharingan’s vision.

Still alive.

He just had to get there.

Panting, Kakashi forced himself up again. He took a step, slipped, and crashed down on one knee and both hands. When he got his head up, one of the lights had broken away, darting across open ground in his direction.

Maybe they’d come to him instead.

When the lightning struck in the trees it blinded all of them. Ryouma used that moment of white, deafening earth-shaking to kill.

The tall woman with the bandage-masked face had turned out to be a kenjutsu user. She’d nearly taken Ryouma’s head off when he first burst out of the trees, and his armguards were notched and scarred from blocking. He couldn’t close with her, until Kakashi brought the sky down on the woods behind them. She struck wildly, blind and deafened, and the sword lodged in the thick reinforced strap over his shoulder. He seized the blade with one hand and found her side with the other, and then it was all over but the screaming.

When he could see again, the kunoichi was writhing at his feet, and the two shinobi tag-teaming Genma—the ponytailed captain and the orange-haired man—had taken advantage of the strike to close inside the defensive circle Genma had created with his viciously accurate senbon strikes. Genma slapped a pair of kunai up out of his leg holster, but the left-hand dagger shattered with the captain’s first blow. The orange-haired man grinned viciously and stepped in.

Genma met him with fire. The Kiri shinobi called up a shield of water from the rain, but the storm was moving on, its wild strength spent, and the rain sizzled away. Ryouma closed in, circling to flank the two Kiri nin. The woman whose side he’d rotted away was still whimpering, but she wouldn’t be for long. The captain’s pale eyes kept dropping to her, and then jerking back up.

Chakra flared like a firestorm, back in the trees, and abruptly went out.

That had felt like Kakashi’s cold sunlight-on-steel chakra, wrapped up and twisted in Iebara’s bloody massacre of a jutsu, and now Ryouma couldn’t feeleitherof them anymore. He shouted into his radio mic, “Hound!” and heard nothing but a static hiss.

Of course Kakashi’s lightning jutsu must have fried their circuits. That was a better thought than Kakashi dead or dying, his radio crushed beneath his shattered body, and Genma was hurt and weary and Ryouma couldn’t helpeitherof them—

The Kiri captain breathed, “Iebara.” And then she was gone, arrowing through the trees.

Ryouma bolted at her heels.

Genma was holding his own against the orange-haired nin, anyway. Without the Kiri captain double-teaming him, he’d be fine. And he couldn’t have run fast enough; his leg would slow him down. Kakashi was the one in danger. Ryouma was right to run.

He didn’t quite believe it until he burst into the clearing and saw the crater, the blood, the burning trees, Kakashi on his knees with his head lolling back and his bare throat exposed beneath the shredded mask, and the Kiri captain stooping in for the kill.

Ryouma had never ripped through akawarimi no jutsufaster in his life. He latched onto the faint, almost undetectable ember of Kakashi’s chakra, and wrenched them both through the universe. Smoke broke around him, catching in his throat, and he stumbled on the charred, broken ground at the edge of the crater where Kakashi had knelt.

The Kiri captain was only two meters away, eyes wide with shock at the substitution. She tried to stop, to pivot back to the spot across the clearing where Kakashi now lay, but momentum was against her. She skidded in the mud, and Ryouma caught her by the elbow with a hand edged rot-red. Heshovedchakra through.

Her lower arm dropped away, splashing rot, and landed in a puddle of blood.

He tossed her back into the crater, still alive but not for long, and went to Kakashi.

His hands were trembling when he cut the jutsu and knelt. Kakashi lay where he’d fallen when the substitution technique had dropped him, but he was trying to lever himself up, and both his eyes were wide open beneath the bloody-wet shock of his hair. There was barely anything left of his mask, just a few shreds of black cloth stretching from the bridge of his nose to the edge of his jawbone, a fluttering panel that only half-concealed his mouth. His armor hung half-open, banging against his bent elbow, and the black fabric of his underpinnings was nearly as shredded. There was nowhere that Ryouma could touch him that was not dark with charred blood.

“Tanuki’s coming,” Ryouma said, uselessly. He curled his filthy hands over his knees. “Can you hold on?”

Kakashi’s head came up. He seemed to be trying to focus on Ryouma’s face. The faint light from a few burning trees caught in his mismatched eyes. “He’s gonna yell,” he managed, in a voice like crushed gravel. “A lot.” His head swung, almost too heavy for his neck, but he put his other hand down in the muck and braced himself. The edge of his mouth curled. He had a scar there, slicing down the corner of his lip like he’d tried to kiss a kunai. “They shoulda taken that boat.”

“Yeah,” Ryouma said. His own mouth tugged. “There’s no tigers in the sea.”

Kakashi coughed, cracked, on a laugh. Ryouma rocked forward and just barely caught himself. He wanted desperately to reach out, to touch, to assure himself that he’d made it in time, this time. But Kakashi’s bare skin was a mess of raw wounds, slick fresh blood oozing over the burnt crusts of the old, and touching him would hurt more than it would help. Ryouma hooked his filthy fingers into the straps of his knee-pads, feeling the hard line of the brace beneath his pant leg. “You sure took that blood bastard apart,” he said, half at random. “Did you copy his jutsu?”

“Killed him with it,” Kakashi said. “Because—irony.” There was a kind of hunted pride in his voice. Ryouma remembered the carnage in the crater, only half-glimpsed; Kakashi looked like he was remembering it too. “I need—I should—” He tried to turn his head and almost fell, before he stiffened his bracing arm. He was shaking, starting to slur. “You got all yours, right? Saw you get the captain.” The scarred lips parted on bloody teeth; it took Ryouma a moment to recognize it as a grin. “That was perfect.”

The cold rain was still drizzling down, painting blood-trails down Kakashi’s arms and sinking them deeper into mud, but Ryouma’s chest warmed. He shoved his mask back with the heel of his hand and beamed at Kakashi. “Left one missing half of her ribcage, and Tanuki taking care of the other one. I wish I’d seen you. We got the lightning, at least—it gave me the opening I needed to get past a sword—and wefeltyour jutsu, but—”

He stopped. “Thehell. We felt your chakra go out. You need a transfer?”

Kakashi huffed his cracked laugh again. “That’d be nice.”

Then his elbow buckled and he dropped, facedown in the mud.

Ryouma was too slow to catch him. Too slow,too late,always too late— He grabbed for the melted edges of Kakashi’s armor and flipped him over, shaking with fear and haste. But when he crouched low, with his ear over Kakashi’s mouth, he heard the slight rasp of slow breathing and felt the flutter of a torn mask against his ear.

Unconscious. With his chakra guttering perilously low, even his ANBU spark barely an ember. Soldier pills wouldn’t be enough for him, in this state; they’d only tax a system already strained to its limits. Raidou’s style of floodwaters transfer wouldn’t be much better. But if Ryouma kept tight control, eased his chakra in, tried to sooth its passage along scorched pathways…

He knocked his mask off the side of his head with the back of his wrist, and leaned down. Pressed his forehead to Kakashi’s, clammy cold, and closed his eyes. Breathed in, slowly, and let his chakra unfurl as he exhaled.

He began tentatively, coaxing, searching for the moment when Kakashi’s chakra would open up a door into its pathways and invite him in. Slower than usual, without Kakashi conscious to meet him on the other side, but easier in some ways; there was no instinctive battle of wills, just a gradual mesh and then a gentle pour. He tried to shape it as water chakra, matching Kakashi’s affinity. Slow,slow, warming and soothing and refusing to let himself tremble…

Maybe this is what healing will be like.

Genma flung a handful of senbon at his opponent and cursed. Kakashi was down, Ryouma was no medic, and this fight needed to beover,but the orange-haired Mist ninja was relentless.

Orangy raised a muddy tsunami from the saturated ground in a two-pronged assault. Shuriken flew out of the wave faster than Genma could dodge. He blocked instead, grabbing instinctively for kunai and crossing his arms in front of his throat as knife-edged stars raked furrows across his shoulders.

He felt the impacts in his palms with each shuriken that cracked against his blades. One kunai fractured almost to the hilt, weakened by the iron-stealing jutsu he’d used on Iebara’s blood blades, but the other held.

As the jutsu wave crested he threw broken and intact kunai at the enemy ninja and dove for the ground, opening the earth with amoguragakuretechnique. Relying on chakra sense to tell him where his quarry lay, Genma surged up from below and hurled a poison-tipped senbon straight for his opponent’s face.

The jutsu-sabotaged steel failed, shattering on impact.

Orangy cursed, leaping back. There were a dozen fresh cuts on his face where senbon shrapnel had hit him, but if he’d gotten a dose of Genma’s poison, he didn’t show it. Chakra flared, and a cannon blast of icy wind hit Genma in the face, throwing him to the ground. His mask slammed against his nose and cheeks, splinter-cracking under the onslaught before the jutsu died. Bone crunched, and his head rang as sparks bloomed behind his eyelids. He hurled himself blindly to one side before Orangy could strike again.

With untrustworthy senbon, accuracy was critical, and a moving target hard to hit. Genma tucked into a roll, twisting fingers through seals to cast a fresh jutsu of his own. Manacles of hardened mud locked around Orangy’s ankles, and Genma unleashed a fresh volley.

Two of the senbon broke, but a third sank home, delivering its payload. Orangy gasped, raising a hand too late to block, and fell with his legs still encased in Genma’s muddy shackles, choking on a last breath as he died.

Genma sprinted for the trees. When he tried to vault over the body of the tall woman Ryouma’d taken down, his injured leg buckled; he fell almost on top of her. Her ribcage was half-rotted away, with macerated viscera spilling out. Ryouma’s jutsu continued to eat into her corpse, feeding on the residual chakra of recent death.

He gagged on the stench and shoved himself to his feet, forcing his leg to hold just a little longer.

There were still three chakra signatures in the trees. Two ANBU sparks made a beacon to navigate by. As a slow roll of thunder pealed overhead, Genma ran.

In the devastated grove of trees, Ryouma knelt over Kakashi’s unnaturally still body. Both shinobi had lost their masks; Ryouma was bent so low their foreheads touched. It looked terrifyingly like a man mourning a fallen comrade, but Genma could feel the sputtering flame of Kakashi’s chakra, and the current of a transfusion flowing from Ryouma.

At the bottom of a scorched crater, the Mist captain groaned and gasped, dying by degrees from whatever wounds she’d incurred. Iebara was nowhere; his brackish chakra had disappeared in that lightning strike. Genma extended his chakra sense, but there was still no sign of the enemy. He went to one knee next to his comrades. “Ram, what’s the status?”

Ryouma didn’t move. “I’m not hurt,” he said, tight with concentration. “Hound’s a mess, but I don’t think he’s bleeding out. Passed out from chakra depletion.”

“Iebara?”

“Hound copied his jutsu and killed him with it,” Ryouma answered. He maintained his focus on the task of transfusing Kakashi, but there was a thread of fierce pleasure in his voice.

Genma stripped his soiled gloves off, detaching them from the sleeves at the wrist, and cracked open a lightstick, shedding a greenish, phosphorescent glow over the grisly scene. Every exposed bit of Kakashi’s skin was a welter of shallow cuts, and his uniform was in shreds. It looked as if Iebara had tried to scour Kakashi’s skin off with some variant of that heinous blood jutsu—Genma could only hope at least some of the blood covering Kakashi’s skin wasn’t Kakashi’s own.

He put as little chakra as he dared into creating a shadow clone to hold the light aloft.

Ryouma smelled like blood and decay.

“Ease off on the transfusion for a minute,” Genma said. “I want to assess him. If you have the chakra reserves for it, wash off. I’m going to need your hands clean.”

Ryouma hesitated before he let his chakra flow dwindle to nothing. He stayed where he was for a moment, breathing slowly, with his forehead pressed against Kakashi’s. When he finally sat up, he moved stiffly and with evident reluctance. “I’m still about fifty percent,” he said. The hollowness of his voice suggested he was far from steady. Genma gave him a sharp look, and found Ryouma doing the same to him.

When Ryouma seemed satisfied that Genma wasn’t in danger of collapse, he gave a relieved sigh and got to his feet. Stooping to pick up his mask from the mud, he moved off a few meters and sluiced himself clean with a water jutsu.

Hold it together a little longer, Tousaki, we have a long way to go.

Splinters of his mask dug into Genma’s cheek when he turned his head; shifting pieces of ceramic raked agonizingly against his broken nose, and one damaged eye opening buckled, partially obscuring his vision. He snatched the fractured mask off and hooked it to his belt, then laid two fingers into Kakashi’s limp palm. “Hound, if you hear me, squeeze my hand.”

There was no response.

Kakashi’s breathing was shallow, but at least he was maintaining his airway. Genma checked for a pulse: weak, but not too rapid. A quick survey revealed no broken bones or obvious major wounds. The hundreds of small cuts were still oozing, but there were no arterial gushes or flooding open veins. It was, as Ryouma had said, chakra exhaustion and not blood loss.

Ryouma’s transfusion was keeping Kakashi’s basic life systems functioning, but even with it Kakashi’s chakra was a pale imitation of itself. It felt skeletonized, and the pathways themselves were inflamed—ravaged by sudden overuse.

What Kakashi needed was a soldier pill, but unconscious he couldn’t swallow one. If only there were an injectible solution, but the chakra-active component of a soldier pill was dangerously anticoagulant. Filtered through the digestive system, it was a manageable risk: injected it was deadly. Even if he could swallow a pill, with Kakashi’s chakra system so fragile, there was a risk the artificial chakra could tip him into chakra-shock and seizures, but there wasn’t a safe alternative. The average chakra transfer depleted the donor at a rate of half again what the recipient got—Ryouma would have to drain himself to give Kakashi enough of a boost to really make a difference, and there could still be enemies heading their way.

But a soldier pill could boost Kakashi’s chakra by twenty percent, two taken together up to forty, even if only temporarily.

They had to wake Kakashi up.

Genma unbuckled Kakashi’s ruined vest. He fisted his hand and rubbed his knuckles against Kakashi’s sternum. “Come on, Hound, open your eyes.”

No response.

From the crater, the injured Mist captain continued to groan.

Ryouma’d estimated he had fifty percent of his chakra reserves left: more than Genma. Genma glanced over his shoulder to find Ryouma shaking water from his hands. “Ram, are you clean? I need you to transfuse him again. No more than twenty percent of your reserves, but if he regains consciousness, stop sooner.”

Ryouma came over instantly, kneeling down at Kakashi’s other side. He held his gloveless hands up, keeping them carefully out of the mud. “Should we get a blanket on him?” he asked. “I mostly remember being cold.”

“On it,” Genma said. He pulled a slim-folded foil blanket from his field kit and spread it over the churned up earth. At least the mud on this part of the battleground was free of the bloody mess that was, presumably, all that remained of Iebara. “Help me lift him, and we’ll wrap him in it.”

Kakashi remained as still as death as they positioned him on the blanket and wrapped it around him. Genma checked his pulse and respirations again—no better, but at least no worse.

The Mist captain’s moaning rose in stark contrast to Kakashi’s painful silence.

As soon as Ryouma had begun the transfusion, Genma broke open a second lightstick and went to see about their dying enemy. She lay in the lightning-blasted crater, nearly two meters below the level of the ground, surrounded by unimaginable gore. Bloody hunks of flesh and shattered bone filled the bottom of the crater: Iebara’s remains.

The Mist captain had fallen face upturned. The stump of her right arm twitched spasmodically, as oozing decay crawled towards her shoulder. Ryouma’s jutsu would reach her chest soon—an agonizing death. At the crater’s edge, a sword lay near her severed hand; Genma picked it up, and jumped down into the nightmare.

Emotion said kill her and be done, but when Genma swung the blade down, it was to part her rotting arm from her body. She cried out, low and hoarse, and her eyes fluttered open. Severed arteries pulsed bright arcs, but Genma was prepared. He slapped hands glowing with chakra over the remains of her stump and cauterized the bleeding vessels shut. When he was sure they wouldn’t reopen, he dragged her out of the crater, wrapped a coagulating bandage tight against the wound, and injected the woman with a full syrette of morphine.

It might be a waste. They might still have to kill her. But there was a chance, if they could get her back to Konoha, that Intel would have a use for her.

She was still whimpering, clearly shocky. Genma extracted a second foil blanket and wrapped her in it, turning her onto her side in the recovery position. When he was finished with her, he called up enough chakra to pull pure water from the drizzling rain and puddles around them, and doused himself. It stung his cut shoulders and face, and reopened some of the wounds that had started to clot, but at least he was cleaner. It took a second water jutsu with some force behind it to get the nauseating gore off his legs and feet.

Dripping and starting to shiver, he limped back to Kakashi and Ryouma. Ryouma glanced up, chakra transfusion evidently complete.

In his silvery cocoon, Kakashi twitched and groaned, and opened his eyes.

Everything hurt.

His mouth tasted like dry-gulched shock and rainwater. Kakashi blinked once, trying to think around the ice-pick driven through his skull, and found himself with a view of dark skies and the underside of someone’s chin, lit by green shadows. Blue fate-lines shivered across his vision, and a warm tear coursed down the left side of his face. The Sharingan, badly overworked. It was an agonizing pull on his coils. He closed it, shutting Obito out of the world.

Painfully, he blinked his good eye, and realized there was foreign chakra running through his veins. Water and fire, blended together like a complex ying-yang that didn’t quite complement itself.

“T’saki?” he rasped.

“Hey,” Ryouma said, with warm relief. “Welcome back.”

“I’m not dead,” Kakashi said, because that seemed worth mentioning.

“You’re doing okay, Hound,” said another voice, close and clear—the lieutenant. Genma knelt down on Kakashi’s right, and put two fingers against the side of Kakashi’s neck. They were warm, skin-to-skin, and an entire part of Kakashi’s brain curled itself up around a cold, tight thought:where’s my mask?

There was a crinkle of foil blankets, then a sting against his arm—Genma’s other hand, with a needle—and a rush of familiar warmth. Morphine.

Well, he’d probably been done running for the day, anyway.

“Can you feel your hands and feet?” Genma asked, clipping the spent syrette to Kakashi’s dog-tags, where it would flap as a dosage marker.

“Yeah,” Kakashi croaked, because they were definitely there, sending all kinds of signals about how much they didn’t want to be. He focused and managed to haul his right hand up. It was like dragging a tectonic plate, but it moved. He wrestled it out of the silver heat-blanket and brought it up to his face, curving unsteady fingers over his mouth. There was shredded cloth there, but not much of it.

“We can see the tip of your nose and about half your mouth,” Ryouma said, because he’d picked up mind-reading while Kakashi had been studying the insides of his eyelids. Or Kakashi was just screamingly obvious. “Some cheek. It’s not a whole picture, though, so your secret identity’s safe from us.” He glanced up at Genma and added lightly, “Looks like you’ve gone in for some facial rearrangement, too, lieutenant.”

Kakashi focused over the edge of his own fingers. Genma’s bare face was shadow-drenched and blurry, but there were twin channels of blood cutting down from his nose. And the bridge looked… less straight than Kakashi remembered. Broken.

Kakashi tried to find a thought about that, and came up with, “Ouch.”

“Yeah,” Genma said, with a ginger touch to his upper lip, eyes half-shuttering for a moment, then he visibly diverted himself. There was a quick blur of warm-handed movement, and Kakashi found himself rebundled up in the foil blanket. This time, Genma pulled the silvery material higher, up over the lower half of Kakashi’s face. “You need to keep warm. I’ve got jutsu that will help, but first I need to get some meds into you.”

Kakashi wasn’t sure he remembered what warm felt like.

That was chakra drain; it always froze you from the inside out.

“O-okay,” he said, and looked up at Ryouma again, a silhouette cut out against the clearing sky. “We got everyone?”

“You and I got ours,” Ryouma said, and glanced at Genma. “I assume, since the lieutenant’s here…”

“Three dead,” Genma confirmed. “One disabled prisoner.”

Kakashi followed the lieutenant’s nod to another silver-wrapped person laid out on the edge of the crater. A blood-slick ponytail looked like it might be blonde underneath. The captain, who’d almost cut Kakashi down.

“What?” Ryouma demanded, jerking up to his feet.

The lines of her body didn’t look complete. Kakashi tracked two legs and what looked like an arm pinned beneath her ribcage; his eye tripped over the missing space where another arm should have dented the foil-blanket out sideways.

“Their captain,” Genma said, over his head. “I amputated what was left of the arm you got, Ram. She might be useful to Intel, if we can get her back to Konoha, but if she hinders us, we’ll do what we have to.”

“Amputation,” Ryouma said, sounding stunned and a little distant. “Right. Well, that’d work…” He stared at the woman for one more moment, then hunkered back down next to Kakashi. “How’re you feeling?”

“B-better than her,” Kakashi said, and felt like a monster when laughter spilled up his throat. But then, he had just detonated a man. And they’d all killed a family, so at least he was in good company. Shivering took over and wouldn’t stop. “C-cold.”

“Ram, heat the water in your canteen to a little above body temperature,” Genma ordered. He slid a pill vial from his med-kit, shaking out a pair of soldier pills. “Morphine getting a handle on your pain, Hound? This isn’t going to feel nice, but I need to get soldier pills in you before I can try to heal you.”

Because healing pulled on the injured party’s chakra. No chakra, no healing.

Soldier pills were going to hurt alot, though.

“Morphine’s helping,” Kakashi said. It was starting to blunt the edges, at least, making him feel leaden and heavy, like the ground could pull him right down.

Ryouma set a broad hand on Kakashi’s shoulder, and sudden heat suffused through the foil-blanket. Ryouma’s other hand held a metal canteen. He was warming everything at once, spilling a careful trickle of his fire-nature out. With good control, it didn’t even take a jutsu.

“Think you can sit up?” he asked Kakashi.

“Better if he stays lying down, Ram, he’s a little shocky,” Genma cut in, before Kakashi could answer. “Just lift his head and shoulders enough for him to swallow.”

Ryouma nodded and tossed the steaming canteen across. Genma caught it deftly, dropping in the soldier pills and swirling them until they dissolved.

“M’notshocky,” Kakashi protested, through chattering teeth.

A warm hand slid under the back of his neck, carefully cradling, and lifted his head up just enough for Ryouma to settle in behind him, notching a muddy knee into the gap for Kakashi to brace against. “You’re shockingme,” Ryouma murmured, as his chakra rolled heat across Kakashi’s skin. “Awake five minutes and you haven’t even insulted me yet.”

Kakashi blinked hazily at him. “You really smell.”

Ryouma blinked back, then white teeth flashed in a broad smile. “See? Recovering already.”

“Mm,” Kakashi agreed, and settled against Ryouma’s knee.

He didn’t realize he’d closed his eye until the lieutenant’s voice cut sharply through the hissing drizzle of dying rain—“Hound,Hound.”—and a hand touched his face.

Kakashi jerked back awake, and winced.

Genma let out a breath. “Stay awake a little longer, okay?” he said, and tweaked the foil-blanket down to set the lip of the canteen against the unmasked side of Kakashi’s mouth. “You need to drink this. Little sips.”

Tip of your nose, half the mouth, some cheek. Not the whole picture.

Still enough.

Kakashi choked, chakra-rich water spilling down his chin, and flailed a hand up to slap, or grab, orsomething, anything to get their eyes off his face. Genma’s free hand caught his wrist, careful but rock-solid, and a shadow moved above Kakashi’s head.

Ryouma’s hand curved over the lower half of Kakashi’s face.

“Easy,” Ryouma said, low behind him. “We can’t see.”

Kakashi’s rapid breaths washed over the back of Ryouma’s fingers, curling up warm into his own face. Genma shifted, easing Kakashi’s hand back down under the foil blanket, and said, “Slow breaths, Hound. You’re safe, we’re your team.”

Ryouma’s hand stayed where it was, laid like a steady steel band over Kakashi’s mouth. It was a lot heavier than a mask, and it didn’t cover Kakashi’s nose—because breathing—but it was solid protection, and it kept them from seeing.

Slowly, Kakashi managed to untense.

“Good. Slow, even breaths,” Genma said, in the calm voice of a man used to seeing strange things and not commenting on them. All medics had that. Probably most lieutenants, too. He raised the canteen again. “I need you to drink this.”

Despite himself, Kakashi’s whole body made its best effort to press back through Ryouma’s knee.

Ryouma reached over him and took the canteen from Genma. “Lieutenant, turn your head?”

Genma hesitated, then he nodded and pivoted on one knee, angling himself away. “Get him to drink all of it, if you can,” he said. “If you can’t, I’ll do a transfusion myself and we’ll figure something else out.” He unearthed a soldier pill for himself and swallowed it, chakra flaring brighter with the punch of new energy.

Kakashi wasn’tdeaf, he was just—

Having a blind-stupid reaction that delayed things for everyone else.

Ryouma tipped the bottom edge of his hand up and slid the canteen mouth underneath it, lining it up blind with Kakashi’s lower teeth. Kakashi got a grip on himself and drank, tasting the particular metal-edge that went with soldier pills. The water was still warm, and it washed smoothly down his throat. Swallowing hurt, but getting choked—twice—would do that.

He finished it, and fought his right hand up again, wrapping it around Ryouma’s wrist. Hemeantto drag Ryouma’s guarding hand down, prove to them that he could deal like an actual shinobi, but the chakra hit his coils like a burning wave, and the next few moments wiped out in a dark, shaking void until Genma shoved more morphine into him.

Ryouma’s hand was still over his face when Kakashi could focus again, and the world was a little bit warmer. Blurrier, too. Another red-flagged syrette hung on his dog-tags.

“Sorry, lieutenant,” Kakashi mumbled.

Genma glanced at him, light eyes picking up eerie green reflections. “Nothing to be sorry about, you’re fine. When we get to the safehouse, I’ll have a few more options for dealing with your coil damage, but for now all I have is morphine.” His mouth tightened into a thin line. “Sorry for putting you through so much.”

“Less than Iebara,” Kakashi said, with an eye-curving smile. “Or Tsuto.”

And there was that ugly, ragged humor again, brimming up under the drugs. He swallowed it down with the last edge of metal and tried to have a linear thought. “Now what?”

“Now we clean you up, get you stable, and get to the safehouse,” Genma said immediately. “Ram, can you fill our canteens? We need all need to drink at least a liter.”

Because blood-pills didn’t give you plasma back, they just upgraded whatever red cells you had left to be better temporary oxygen-carriers, so you didn’t die the highly ironic death of suffocating with air still in your lungs. You still had to offset the fluid loss. There was probably some other magic in there, too, but Kakashi’s medical knowledge tended to run dry around ‘slap gauze on it and hope for the best’.

Ryouma needed both hands for seals.

Kakashi’s fingers were still curled around the heavy bones of Ryouma’s wrist, holding him in place. Slowly, Kakashi made himself let go.

Ryouma didn’t move for a moment after Kakashi’s fingers relaxed their bone-biting grip on his wrist and slipped back down under the foil blanket. Kakashi didn’t try to tug the blanket up higher, or squirm down under it, or even turn his face away. He just set his half-bared jaw, sharp-carved in the steady green light, and stared fixedly at a point just over Genma’s left shoulder.

Well. That was clear enough.

Genma was already digging in his kit again, pulling out the familiar metal vial of blood pills. Ryouma balanced the emptied canteen against his knee and pulled his own canteen out as well. His chakra still molded smoothly, flowing into the hand-seals and then surging out eagerly to focus streams of clean water out of the dying mizzle. No need even for a soldier pill yet.

Later, maybe. They had miles to run and an injured enemy to guard, and Kakashi was clearly in no shape even to sit up on his own. Genma wouldn’t be good for much either, if he kept spending his chakra like water.

Why the hell had he saved the Kiri captain? She’d meant to kill them. Shewouldhave killed Kakashi, if Ryouma hadn’t intervened. Maybe she hadn’t wanted the fight in the first place, but she hadn’t called Iebara back and she’d plunged into the fight when she realized Konoha was beginning to get the upper hand. She might not be a threat now, but she would be later. Even if she couldn’t form seals without her right arm, that wouldn’t stop her from palming a kunai and cutting any throat she could get to.

Maybe Genma just meant to leave her here. She’d be a danger at their backs, but with luck she’d be too busy dying of shock to follow them.

The canteens were full, and Ryouma’s pants—and the top of Kakashi’s head—were a little cleaner from the spray. He cut the jutsu and held both bottles out to Genma. “I didn’t lose much blood.”

Genma accepted his own canteen, but waved off Ryouma’s. He took a long drink. “Hound, if I give you a pill, can you swallow it? Ram will help you with water.” He tipped a dull red-brown blood pill into his own mouth, crunched it between his back molars, and took another throat-bobbing pull at his canteen.

“Yes,” Kakashi said. He was starting to slur, heavy eyelid dragging down over the grey right eye. Morphine kicking in, Ryouma hoped, not chakra-depletion slamming back. He was still shivering, but not quite as violently as before.

Genma passed a pill over. Kakashi swallowed it obediently, and managed most of the canteen before he coughed and shook his head.

Ryouma drained the last few swallows, and wished he’d heated it first. The condensed rain water chilled his throat and iced in his belly. Kakashi hadn’t protested, but Kakashi didn’t seem quite capable of complaining about anything at the moment. His head rocked back on Ryouma’s crossed shins and then tipped sideways to rest his lacerated cheek against Ryouma’s left knee. He didn’t pull away this time when Genma reached out to check his pulse.

“Soldier pills are helping,” Genma said, relieved. He was breathing a little easier, though his voice was still nasal and raw, thickened by his broken nose. He capped his empty canteen, tucked it away, and began slathering his hands with an antibacterial wash. “I don’t want to spend a lot of time on this, but we need to close what wounds we can before we move him.” He rubbed the last of the sticky gel off his fingers onto his wrist, and then touched Kakashi’s shoulder. “Sorry, Hound, we need to strip you down. I’ll be as fast and gentle as I can. Ram will keep you warm.”

That begged for a joke. Ryouma couldn’t think of one.

Kakashi took over for him. His eye slivered open, and he rasped, “B-big jutsu. Gets ev’ryone ‘n my p-pants.”

“Youwish,” Ryouma scoffed, which was possibly near the top of his list of Least Successful Comebacks Ever. But Kakashi’s scarred mouth curved in half a smile, and if he could joke things couldn’t be nearly as bad as they seemed. Ryouma tousled his blood-matted hair, and then left his hand there, wrist-deep in sodden spikes. He called up fire chakra, tempered it, sent it trickling down again through Kakashi’s skin. The shivering didn’t ease, but Kakashi’s bare lips were finally beginning to look a little less blue.

Genma moved as efficiently as he’d promised, if maybe not quite as quickly or as gently as Kakashi might have hoped. In short order he unwrapped the foil blanket, stripped off the wreckage of Kakashi’s armor and underpinnings, and swabbed blood and filth away with prepackaged alcohol wipes. Kakashi hissed at the first stinging touch, but thereafter lay silent. Then it was the light, hovering touch of hands lit green with healing chakra, and the shallow gashes in Kakashi’s pale skin knit themselves closed, lacing vivid pink lines out of what had been raw meat. Genma was particularly careful over Kakashi’s face, but Kakashi seemed to have made up his mind to endure. He shivered, but he didn’t make a sound.

There were clean jounin blues, when it was over, produced with a puff of smoke from one of Genma’s sealing scrolls. Genma skinned Kakashi into the long-sleeved shirt and pants with the same careful, impersonal touch he’d used all along. They were much of a size, though Genma was a trifle wider through the shoulders and chest. He tucked the foil blanket back around Kakashi, and then pulled out a roll of clean bandages to wrap a quick, makeshift mask around Kakashi’s lower face.

“He looks like a Kiri nin,” Ryouma said, disturbed.

“Less dead,” Kakashi said, without opening his eyes. His voice was still sluggish with exhaustion, but some of the painful rasp was gone. He turned his head again and pressed his face against Ryouma’s knee.

Genma said gravely, “Muchless dead. Also better dressed. They have some ugly uniforms in Mist.”

Kakashi’s watery chuckle tickled Ryouma’s knee.

Genma’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile, but maybe dredging up a fragment of pleased relief. He rocked back on his heels and wiped the back of his wrist across his brow, shoving stringy-wet hair aside with a wince. Then he settled down, weariness dragging at his shoulders, to begin packing up his kit.

“Time to move out?” Ryouma suggested, hopefully. “I’ll carry Hound.”

He didn’t mention the Kiri captain. Her anguished groans had finally stilled. Maybe Genma would forget her. Maybe, if they were lucky, she was already dead.

“What’s your chakra at now?” Genma glanced up from his neatened kit, a vial of pills in his hand. “Are you in good shape if we run into trouble?”

“Down to maybe a third of my normal capacity, but that still leaves me pretty strong. I only used theNaizou Tokasuonce, and that was mostly soldier pill chakra. None of the rest of my jutsu are nearly as chakra intensive.” He’d spent about as much chakra on Kakashi’s transfusion as he might have on one bolt of the Internal Organs Melt technique, though transfer inefficiency meant Kakashi’s chakra system still ebbed alarmingly low. Hadhelooked that white-lipped and hollow-cheeked when Raidou’d pulled him out of the demon queen’s liquified guts?

The eerie green glow of the lightstick wasn’t doing any of them any favors. Rain had loosened the crust of blood from Genma’s newly uneven nose, but his eyes were bruise-shadowed pits and his hair hung lank and dripping. The blow that had broken his nose must have shattered his mask at the edges, too, because there were a scattering of scrapes and gouges at his jawline and hairline, with a dark clotting of blood in his right brow.

Ryouma snorted softly. “Guess I’m in the best shapeandthe best looking out of us right now. Not that it’s much of a change.”

Kakashi groaned, muffled against Ryouma’s knee. Ryouma patted his head carefully.

“Too bad you’re the only one who still has an intact mask,” Genma said, after a sharp look at Kakashi. He tipped a soldier pill out of the vial and held it out. “Take this anyway. I want you at fifty percent. Make a clone, too. We’ll need an extra guard.”

Ryouma couldn’t help the quick flicker of a glance beyond him, this time. The Kiri captain lay still, but the swaddled lines of her body had shifted; she’d pulled her remaining arm up, beneath the foil blanket, to put pressure on the stump. Still alive. Stillthinking.

Dammit.

He took the pill, crunched it viciously between his molars, and swallowed. False chakra flooded into his pathways with a chemical burn. Physical energy from the caffeine and added calories would take a little longer. He shaped seals and spun off chakra, and a second version of himself appeared in a bloom of smoke. The shadow clone settled its mask on and strode over to stand midway between Genma and the Kiri nin, its arms loosely folded and its shoulders rigid with tension.

Ryouma unclipped his own mask from his belt. “Anything else before we move out?”

Genma shook his head. “There’s no sense wasting the chakra to hide this mess. We’d be here for a week.” He finished sealing Kakashi’s ruined armor in the emptied scroll from which he’d pulled the clean jounin uniform, tucked it away, and pushed himself up.

His right leg buckled. The light-bearing shadow clone caught Genma just before his knee hit the mud again. He swore, shook his head, and straightened, leaning heavily on his clone. “You get Hound. I’ll go get our prisoner moving. We can take care of the other dead on our way out of here.”

“If she stabs you,” Ryouma said, “I warned you.” He met his own kage bunshin’s eyes, behind the Ram mask. The bunshin nodded, short and sharp, and drew its sword. If the Kiri captain so much as moved wrong, it would strike.

Genma jerked his chin, either acknowledging Ryouma’s concerns or dismissing them, and limped away. The light from his clone’s glowstick faded with each heavy step, and the shadows crept back in. Ryouma fumbled with Kakashi’s blanket while he could still see, unwrapping enough to free Kakashi’s arms and then lapping it back over his shoulders like a cloak. He secured the ends with a pin from his field repair kit, only stabbing his fingers twice in the dark.

“If I got you on my back,” he asked Kakashi, “d’you think you could hold on?”

“‘f I can’t, should leave me in a d-ditch,” Kakash muttered. He made an effort to draw his elbows up under him. The right one wobbled, but held; the left slid out from under him, pitching him back into Ryouma’s knee. Ryouma caught his head just before his temple cracked against the edge of the knee-guard.

“Just hold on,” he said. “I’ll do the heavy lifting.”

Kakashi was, it turned out, heavier than he looked. Or maybe Ryouma was weaker, after a night of running and fighting in the rain. His shoulder burned a little where Iebara had cut and Genma quickly healed, but the muscles still worked the way they were meant to, and the cut was low enough that Kakashi’s arms, wrapped around Ryouma’s neck, didn’t rub it. He locked his hands together under Kakashi’s seat, bracing his wrists at the small of his back, and thought:Katsuko’d have something to say about touching Kakashi’s butt.

Raidou’d have something to say about boundaries, too.

They’d better be waiting at the safehouse to say it.

He got his knees under him, hefted Kakashi’s weight a little more securely up on his shoulders, and stood with a surge of muscle and a slosh of mud. When he glanced back, Genma had the Mist nin on her feet, still wrapped like a peasant woman in her foil blanket, her face bloody and set in the glowstick light. Ryouma refused to meet her eyes. He looked at Genma instead.

“We’ll be late,” he said.

Genma hauled his arm off his clone’s shoulders and glanced at the watch sheltered on the inside of his wrist. He looked up at the Mist nin, and his mouth tightened. “They’ll wait for us.”

Breath warmed Ryouma’s ear. Kakashi mumbled, “She c-conscious? Ask her if they left people at the p-port.”

Ryouma didn’t want to say anything at all to her, but he gritted his teeth and repeated Kakashi’s question, louder. The Kiri captain lifted her eyes from the mud and stared at him, cold and silent.

His kage bunshin stepped in, out of the wet darkness, and laid the blade of its sword against her neck. She didn’t even glance aside at it. “If you had friends that way,” she said, in a ravaged voice like a viper’s hiss, “they’re already dead.”

Ryouma stiffened. The shadow clone drew its blade back the barest inch, ready to swing.

“Hold,” Genma snapped.

The bunshin’s sword stopped, vibrating slightly in the misty air. The Kiri nin’s mouth curled contemptuously.

Genma said quietly, “It’syourfriends you should be worried about, Kiri. Ours are just fine.” His gaze lifted to Ryouma’s kage bunshin. “Knock her out and carry her if she steps out of line. We’re not done with her.”

“Lieutenant,” the bunshin said, with a stiff nod. It wasn’t happy with the order, but it stepped back again.

“Triad formation,” Genma told it, looping his arm around his own clone’s shoulders again. “You and she take point, but mark the pace we set.” The clone grabbed his wrist and slid its other hand behind Genma’s back to grip his belt on his opposite hip. Genma tested his weight on the injured leg, leaned a little more heavily on his clone’s shoulders, and nodded to Ryouma. “Let’s go.”

They struck out for the woods at an almost unbearably slow pace, with Ryouma’s clone and its prisoner leading while Genma and his clone limped behind and to the left. They passed through the narrow belt of charred woods that was left of the copse, and Kakashi stirred on Ryouma’s back.

“Wait,” he rasped. “M’tanto.” One hand unlocked from its clasp at Ryouma’s neck and pointed waveringly at the churned mud.

It took Ryouma a moment to see the glimmer of metal in the darkness, near the dark lump of a ruined body. He hefted Kakashi higher on his back and stooped to pick up the blade. It was lighter than he’d expected, as if the steel were some sort of alloy. He tried to pass it up, realized Kakashi had nowhere to keep it, and finally wedged it through his belt, under Kakashi’s hip. Kakashi gave a little sigh of relief and slumped forward again over Ryouma’s shoulder.

Genma and the clones had just reached the bottom of the slope with their reluctant prisoner; they were nearly invisible in the darkness now, identified only by the faint glow of Genma’s ANBU spark and the ebb of low chakra. His clone must have pocketed the glowstick. They paused on level ground, maybe waiting for him to catch up, maybe consulting map and compass to find their course to the safehouse where Raidou and Katsuko would be waiting for them.

Ryouma spared just two minutes more. A string of seals, a handful of reddish-black chakra. He knelt clumsily again beside the woman with the half-rotted torso. “Remember this?” he asked Kakashi. “It’s theNikutai Hakai. Said I’d show you if you showed me your face.”

“Mm,” Kakashi mumbled, half-asleep.

Well, he’d only shown Ryouma half his face, and not on purpose anyway. It probably didn’t count. Ryouma set a hand to the nearest bit of cooling flesh and sent his chakra surging through, leaving black slag and crumbling bone in its wake. Kakashi whined in protest at the slap of rot-reek and buried his bandage-masked face in the side of Ryouma’s neck.

“Just one more,” Ryouma promised him. He waited a few seconds longer, until there was nothing left but rot, then cut the jutsu, heaved them both up, and slogged over to the earth-shackled man to repeat the process of corpse destruction. Kakashi was too tired to protest this time.

The others had set off again, arrowing north-east. Or, at least, limping that way. Ryouma rinsed his hands with the last rain in the air, hefted Kakashi higher onto his back, and trudged after them, toward the promise of dawn.

Chapter 4: Guilty Filthy Souls

Chapter Text

May 8, Yondaime Year 5

Arechi Hill Safehouse was dust-choked and hollow, its entranceway swept with old leaves. It had been carved right into the base of a hill; a quick wartime job someone had done in the heat of necessity, and smoothed out by more careful hands later. Unoccupied now, but the seals still worked. They came down in a shiver of chakra when Raidou keyed through the correct sequence of hand-signs.

He shouldered the heavy door aside, letting his blunt, tired chakra sense extend.

Empty.

He’d expected that, but worry still tasted like lead. Katsuko slipped in ahead of him, shedding rain off her armor. She cracked a neon green lightstick and set off down the long, dark hallway, chasing shadows around the bend. The walls had subtle curves instead of rigid straight lines, which made it feel a lot like a burrow.

A deep burrow, at that.

Raidou heaved the door closed and followed her. There was an automatic illusion built into the safehouse’s defenses; as soon as the locks tumbled back into place, the outer view of the door vanished, replaced by an anonymous scrubby patch of hillside. You had to know exactly where you were going to find it. Even then, they’d almost missed the tiny marker stone in the dark and rain.

“Found the pantry,” Katsuko called, voice rasping with tiredness. “And the cells.”

“Is there food?”

“Looks fully stocked.”

There was one blessing. Konoha did its best to maintain safehouses, but you never knew until you landed in one. And there was nothing quite as crushing as finding your bolt hole ripped open and laid bare, with the long journey to the next one ahead of you.

A pump creaked, followed by splashing.

“Running water, too,” Katsuko said, from the tiny cubbyhole that served as a kitchen. “Must be hooked into an underground stream.”

“Gives us good odds for a generator,” Raidou said, and cracked his own lightstick.

He found the generator after a little searching. It was wired up in a back room which served double-duty as linen storage and a ventilation hub, judging by stacked towels and a steel shaft vanishing up into the ceiling. For a bunker this deep, they had to get the air in somewhere. Raidou put his face next to the grate and smelled rain. A faint, cold breeze stroked his bare face. Still in working order, then.

The generator took a bit of cajoling, but some helpful soul had left a wrench and hastily chalked instructions on the wall:bang until working. There was oil, too. Raidou applied both and a sturdy kick for good measure, and the machine grumbled to life.

Electric lights flickered, died twice, and finally brightened to a low yellow glow.

Back in the kitchen, Katsuko gave a croaky cheer.

Raidou stuck his glowstick into an armor-strap and headed back, learning the layout as he went. A bathroom with a toilet, sink,anda shower, glory be, though Raidou doubted the generator had enough juice in it to make the water any better than ‘not quite icy’. A low-roofed bunkroom, stacked with six individual narrow cots. Most importantly, a neatly stocked medic’s closet spilled treasures when Raidou cracked the door open in a cloud of dust. Bandages, sterile equipment, painkillers, even Ringer’s lactate in carefully labeled IV-bags. Most things were actually in date.

There were also the two cells Katsuko had found, made up of narrow little slots carved into the hill near the kitchen. They weren’t fancy. Hard-packed dirt walls and barred doors, with a bucket shoved into the corner and a blanket apiece for a bedroll. A place to hold someone briefly, not keep them indefinitely. Though a lick of glimmering energy in the bars suggested someone had actually spent the time and effort to set some chakra-limiters in place.

Somewhere to bed the rookies down, if they got cranky.

The thought made a faint smile rise up before it died. The rookies weren’t here, and neither was the lieutenant. In twenty minutes, they’d be officially late.

They were the faster team. They should have been early.

He had to shove the worry aside. His half of the team was here, and she had broken bones. He grabbed medical supplies, stopped in the bathroom long enough to soap the remains of Aoisuke’s shattered face carefully off his hands, and went back to her.

Katsuko had put her time to good use. She’d wrangled up a tiny kerosene camp-stove from who-knew-where, and a pot to go with it, and already had a block of dried noodles on the boil. The bubbling broth swam with seasonings from what looked like… four different packets? Katsuko’s approach to cooking was to start with a mallet and build from there.

“Smells good,” Raidou said, because it could always be worse.

“I don’t know what flavor packets I put in,” Katsuko informed him. “But I think one of them is chicken.” She crouched intently over the flickering blue flame, stirring one-handed with a metal spoon. Her mask was up on top of her head, pushing dripping hair back. Steam wreathed up around her face.

Raidou eyed her and thought about landmines, snares, and other things that coiled up tight before they unwound all over the landscape. But he felt a lot like a wolf-trap himself, and of the two of them, he was the only one who’d snapped today.

Stiffly, he hunkered down next to Katsuko. “Let’s multi-task. You cook, I’ll take a better look at your shoulder, and then we’ll swap.”

“Sure,” she said, and flicked a glance at the watch tucked beneath his arm-guard. It had survived the Kiri-kunoichi’s exploding tag, and everything that followed after. The tick was a faint metronome beneath the sound of bubbling water.

Late, late, late.

One thing at a time. Raidou eased Katsuko out of her sodden sling, her armor, and with permission, out of her shirt. He had to cut through the shoulder; her arm couldn’t bend enough to go through the hole. Black cloth peeled away, revealing a deep blue sports bra underneath, which matched the color of the ugly, mottled bruising surrounding the obvious notch of a broken bone. The little red silk-screened bunnies did not, though; one of them was frozen in the act of kicking another clear across her chest.

“Where do you evenfindthese?” Raidou asked.

“I know people,” Katsuko said, as if she had a lingerie black market source tucked into her back pocket.

Raidou decided not to touch that one. He lifted her bad hand gently, and pinched her fingertips one by one. “Still feel that?”

Katsuko made a sound approximately like “Gnaargh,” which Raidou took as an affirmative.

“That’s good. No obvious nerve damage,” he said, trying for brisk and efficient. Her hand was cold, but so was the rest of her. The collarbone was bridged up under the skin, which wasn’t ideal. Raidou had done his time in the medic-tents during the war. He knew basic field medicine, at least along the lines of stitch it, staple it, chop it off, drug ‘em up, cross your fingers (if you still had them). When pressed, he could set a bone, but he’d rather let Genma get eyes on it first.

(Late.)

Coin-sized burns flecked Katsuko’s bare skin wherever the armor hadn’t protected her. One edge of the bruise was blue-black, drawn like a ruler line just below the break and flecked about with more burns, as if something very hard and very hot had cracked into Katsuko’s shoulder at high speed.

“Whatdidthis?” he asked.

Katsuko gave him an exceptionally neutral look, which was a red flag all by itself. “Support beam,” she said, after a moment. “You were still caught in the genjutsu, and it was coming right down on you.”

“Oh,” said Raidou. He backed away from the yawning edge of guilt. “You mean you got an actual hero moment, and I didn’t get to see it?”

“That was extremely rude of you,” Katsuko agreed. “And now nobody will believe you if you tell them I saved the day.” She sniffed. “I am unappreciated in my time.”

Raidou knocked her mask off and dropped a towel on her head. The terry-cloth was cold and badly in need of airing, and it smelled faintly of oil from being stored next to the generator, but it was dry. He rumpled it over her wet hair.

“You’re appreciated,” he said.

Katsuko was silent for a beat that edged them too near to actual emotions, then she let out a belated squawk and snatched the towel from him. She wrapped it loosely around herself, grumbling, and poked the noodles like they’d offended her.

Raidou smiled unevenly, and got back to work.

They each had a clean change of uniform sealed into scrolls. Katsuko put up with Raidou’s attack of cleaning, ointmenting, and bandaging on her burns and scrapes, and then vanished down the hall to re-dress herself in the bathroom. When she came back, her face was clean, new armor gleamed under the yellow lights, and she’d twisted her hair up into the towel with the particular magic trick that most women just seemed to know.

It probably took extra magic to manage one-handed, but Raidou wasn’t going to ask.

She accepted a new sling for her right arm without protest, which told him how much it hurt, and a handful of non-narcotic painkillers. He didn’t push her on heavier drugs; until the rest of the team showed up, or Katsuko and Raidou went out after them, no one got morphine.

Which was a shame, because Raidou was pretty sure his headache would have killed a bear.

“Your turn,” Katsuko said, turning on him with dark, vengeful glee and a handful of unused medical supplies. “Sit still, captain, or I’ll tape your eyelids together.”

“Oh god,” Raidou said involuntarily.

But sitting still was the least he owed her. He shucked his armor and peeled his shirt off, wincing when aching ribs protested. Katsuko’s gaze flicked over him, narrowing as she catalogued injuries, and then landed on his watch. And stayed there.

Two minutes after 0300.

Late. Officially.

Raidou unbuckled the band and set the watch down between them, where they could both see the face. The team had agreed on an hour grace period, but Raidou knew he couldn’t wait that long. Even this short break was itching at him, as necessary as it was.

“If they’re not here in thirty minutes, we’ll go after them,” he said.

“We need to gonow,” Katsuko burst out, before she could stop herself. “Masaaki had four Kiri-nin, Takayoshi would have hired more—”

She couldn’t lose Team Six now, not when she’d only just started to think of them ashers—

Her fingers twitched. Katsuko yanked the towel off her head and braced her good hand on her knee. “—and god knows the Tsuto family is rich enough to buy as many Kiri freaks as they want—”

Raidou snapped his fingers in front of her face. No aggression in the gesture, just a sudden sound to interrupt her rising panic. “They might be hurt, but wearehurt, and I’ve already maxed out my quota of dumbass decisions today. First aid, food. Then we’ll go. If you want to go faster, help me deal with this mess first.” He gestured curtly at himself.

Katsuko blinked and shook her head to silence the fear clanging around inside her skull. “Right,” she said, taking a deep breath. Then she ripped open the first alcohol wipe and went at him.

His hands were her major concern. She picked out as many bone fragments as she could from the bloody mess of his knuckles, went through three more alcohol wipes sterilizing the torn skin, and bandaged the hell out of everything. The burns and singing on his palms and the back of his neck she treated with burn cream and more bandages. There wasn’t much she could do about his mild concussion, besides apologize for punching him in the head and then retract her apology immediately afterward.

“I don’t feel even a little bit sorry,” Katsuko informed Raidou, peering at the senbon stab in his right thigh. “I hope I left a permanent knuckle imprint on your skull, you jerk.”

A shadow of a smile crossed his tired face. “Worried you that much, huh?”

She scowled and finished bandaging the senbon wound. “No. You can pull your pants back up, now.”

He did so and then shucked himself into a new shirt and armor, tossing back a handful of painkillers after he was fully dressed. “Your noodles are boiling over,” he said.

Katsuko scrambled to switch the flame off and managed to rescue the pot before the noodles dissolved into mush. Her appetite had vanished when 0300 came and went with no sign of Genma, Kakashi, or Ryouma, but she portioned the noodles out into two bowls anyways. She’d be useless on an empty stomach.

Raidou tossed his bowl back in a couple mouthfuls and then wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, rubbing the old blood off. Katsuko downed her own bowl, ignoring the boiling broth in favor of slurping the noodles, and caught the two rat bars Raidou tossed at her with a casual flick of his wrist. He took his own rat bar and glanced at the watch. Katsuko followed his gaze, watching the seconds tick by. Not quite half an hour yet, but she didn’t care about the difference a few minutes would make, and she doubted Raidou did, either.

He flickered through hand seals lightning-fast, pulling a henge mask over his face. “Let’s go.”

Finally.

Katsuko picked up her mask and slid it on. She resettled her katana and kodachi on her belt and rolled her good shoulder, savoring the fresh rush of adrenaline. “Ready, taichou.”

Raidou took the lead. He moved easier now for having taken a brief break; they both did. Katsuko adjusted her sling against her side and followed him out the door.

The storm hit them like a slap in the face. Katsuko squeezed her eyes shut against the battering rain and sealed the safehouse closed behind her. She fell in at Raidou’s side as they darted through the howling wind towards Ibaragashi City, reaching her chakra out in an automatic sweep of the area.

They made it five meters when the faint glimmers of six chakra signatures brushed against her senses. Katsuko stopped dead, heart hammering, and flung her arm out in the sign forhold. She reached out again, drawing on the ANBU tattoo, and grinned when three sparks shone in the distance. She tapped on her throat-mic.

“Tanuki, Hound, and Ram are headed straight towards us,” she told Raidou over the comm. “Two clones with ‘em.” Her grin faded. “I don’t recognize one of the signatures traveling with them. And Hound’s signature is low.”

“How low?” Raidou asked, sharply.

Katsuko narrowed her focus down to Kakashi’s flickering chakra. “I doubt he’s conscious.”

Raidou swore and broke into a run, activating his throat mic. “Tanuki, status?”

Static crackled.Hssssssss.

His voice sharpened. “Ram, report.”

Hsssssss.

Katsuko put on an extra burst of speed to draw level with him. Proper squad formation—her staying a half-step behind her captain at all times, waiting for a hand signal—could wait until she had her squad back.

She could sense their signatures racing closer, feel the variances unique to each of the three men: Genma’s opaque glow, dimmed with fatigue; Ryouma’s mix of fire and water, chilled in the way she’d come to associate with recent use of his rot jutsu; and Kakashi’s spiky, lightning-flavored energy, drained to a dull murmur.

Raidou’s and Katsuko’s distance-eating sprint lasted only a few minutes, but it felt like hours before they burst through a clearing and spotted a group of lean, dark figures loping down a hill towards them. Ryouma’s bunshin, identifiable as a clone because of its lack of an ANBU tattoo spark, was on point, carrying a blindfolded prisoner. Genma and Ryouma followed behind in a triad formation, Ryouma carrying Kakashi and Genma leaning against one of his own clones. Genma and his bunshin lagged behind; the clone looked only slightly less bedraggled than its creator.

Katsuko’s heart leapt; she surged ahead of Raidou, ignoring the sharp protest of her broken collarbone, and shot past Ryouma’s clone. She stopped in time to avoid bowling Ryouma over, panting like a civilian runner.

“You,” she managed, and pointed accusingly.

The painted ram mask hid Ryouma’s expression, but the smile was easy to read in his straightening spine and loosening shoulders. “You came for me,” he said, voice cracking in tiredness and relief.

When she’d offered to be the prince to Ryouma’s damsel-in-distress, she hadn’t expected him to take thedistresspart seriously. His chestplate was battered, muddy, and bloodstained; the shoulder strap had taken a hit from the sharp end of a sword. Even with the rain, blood still caked his hair and skin. He smelled like a week-old battlefield.

And he was makingjokes.

Katsuko inflated like an angry pufferfish, gathering breath to tell Ryouma how worried she’d been and where exactly he could stuff his damsel.

Kakashi interrupted by lifting his head from Ryouma’s shoulder and revealing that he looked evenworsethan Ryouma did. His grey hair clung like soaked fur to his skull; his mask, armor, and weapons had disappeared, replaced by bandages covering the lower half of his face, baggy jounin blues, and a foil emergency blanket wrapped around his shoulders like an ineffective cloak. Pain and exhaustion had drained the color out of his already-pale skin, making the quasi-healed needle cuts on every uncovered part of his body stand out in stark contrast. Katsuko gaped.

Kakashi had the gall tosmileat her, both eyes curving. His voice creaked like a rusty door hinge. “‘lo, Ueno.”

She made an infuriated, unintelligible sound and crowded in close, jabbing a finger into Ryouma’s chest. “Youcan rot demons the size of a mountain!” Then she jabbed her finger at Kakashi’s face. “Andyoucan cut lightning in half! Why the festering hell do you both look like chuunin who got dragged ass-backward through an A-rank?”

Ryouma didn’t retreat a step, but he did lean back from her accusing finger. “Hey,” he said, looking plaintively down at her through the eyeholes in his mask. “I’m doing better than last time.”

Last time he’d almost drowned in a rot lake of his own making. Katsuko snarled, “Not good enough.”

Kakashi unlocked an arm from around Ryouma’s neck, slipping a little, and wrapped ice-cold fingers around Katsuko’s hand. “‘s your arm broken again?”

“Areyoubroken again?” Katsuko demanded, covering her surprise with more anger.

He dropped his head back down on Ryouma shoulder, good eye sliding shut. He mumbled, “Little bit. Won, though.”

Katsuko only needed to look at the shape Genma, Kakashi and Ryouma were in to see how narrow of a victory it had been. She swallowed another surge of relief and glared at Ryouma. “Staystill,” she ordered. “Don’t move. Don’t eventhinkabout moving. The two of you aren’t leaving my sight for the next twenty-four hours.” She didn’t wait to see if Ryouma would obey, just turned and stalked away like an offended cat.

“Lieutenant,” Katsuko said, stopping in front of Genma. She took in the hastily healed cut on his arm and the still-bleeding lacerations on his face, his broken nose, and his two black eyes, and struggled to say something that wouldn’t shoot straight over the line and land somewhere deep in insubordination territory. “You arelate.”

Genma was the same color as his breastplate, but the unflappable, sardonic eyebrow lift was as strong as ever. He glanced at his watch, and then at her. “We’re not really late until 0400. But we are tired. Let’s get inside and you can finish yelling at us there.”

“Right,” Katsuko said, after biting her tongue on the first three things she wanted to say.I’m glad you’re not deadwas one of them, but she was still angry and everyone on her team needed to know that, superior officer or not. She glanced at Raidou, who’d been watching in skeptical silence while she upbraided the others, and then over at Ryouma’s clone, which still had a blindfolded person slung over its shoulder. “Who’s the prisoner?”

Raidou had already put together ‘Kiri-ninja’ from the general odds, but he still raised an eyebrow when Genma said, “Captain of the Mist unit we ran into on our way back. She’s the only survivor.”

The woman looked like she’d been through a bladed tornado. She twitched faintly when he pulled the foil blanket aside enough to find the slim silver chain of her dogtags. He flipped a tag over and squinted at the lettering under the greenish light of his glow-stick.

f*ckUDA TAKEDO

REG: 0075393-B

DOB: 12/15/D-45

O-NEG

Captain, clearly a jounin, and twenty-seven, based on the Mist Country calendar that anchored itself on their Daimyou’s assumption of power.

“You’re a universal donor, f*ckuda-san,” Raidou said, and let the tags fall back. “That’s handy.”

Her lip curled, showing the gleam of sharp teeth.

“Relax, we’re not draining anyone yet.” Though Genma and Kakashi both had the sour milk coloring of blood loss, and Ryouma looked bruised and exhausted. In fairness, so did the woman, but Raidou was markedly less inclined to sympathy for Kirigakure right now. He jerked his head right and raised his voice. “Safehouse is close. Rat, you can lead the way.”

Katsuko nodded crisply and turned on her heel, swinging up to take point with Ryouma’s prisoner-carrying clone. Ryouma fell back into the trudging run of a man who’d been going at the same aching pace for miles, and expected to go for miles more. On his back, Kakashi didn’t move.

Raidou fell into step next to Genma, who cast him a critical eye.

“What’s wrong with your comms?” Raidou asked, before he could comment.

“Lightning blew them out,” Genma said. “Hound might have helped that along. I take it you ran into company, too?”

“A little,” Raidou said.

“Well, our part of the mission was a complete success. We didn’t hit any snags until we were on our way back to you.”

“Looks like a pretty hefty snag,” Raidou said. “We got Kiri-ninja from the start. Killed the targets, though.”

It wasn’t quitecomplete success, but it was as much detail as he wanted to go into now.

“We got a Bingo Book kill,” Genma said. “Iebara. Hound did the heavy lifting.”

Raidou managed not to fall over his own feet. “Iebara?”

“Yeah,” Genma said, with a kind of weariness that suggested he’d had a good long while to wrap his brain around the idea. Or perhaps he was just that tired. “There’s pretty much nothing left of him. Hound copied his jutsu and used it on him—some kind of medical jutsu, I think. Takes fresh blood from a handy source and works it like a water jutsu. Hurt like hell to get hit with it.”

Iebara was one of Kirikagure’s monsters, known for leaving blood-wrecked disaster wherever he landed and not much in the way of identifiable bodies. If he’d been usingactual blood, that probably explained a thing or two.

He was also rumored to be unkillable.

Raidou stared at the back of Kakashi’s silver head and thought,Okay, then.

On the balance, bringing that little piece of good news home might weigh up against,Oh, by the way, Hokage-sama, I smashed one of your major trading hubs. Just a little.

“You said unit. What about the rest of them?” he asked. “You and Ram took them down?”

“All but her. Two other jounin. I don’t know if Ram got their tags before he slagged the bodies.”

So, a legend, two high level fighters, one captive, and if Raidou remembered Genma’s half of the mission correctly, six slaughtered civilians. Plus whatever regular guards they’d run into; Intel had suggested at least twelve.

Not bad for three Konoha boys.

“Good work,” Raidou said, and wondered if he’d remember how to breathe relief by the time they got back to the safehouse.

It took longer than the short run out: Genma was limping heavily on a wounded leg, and while Ryouma was going steadily, he wasn’t going fast. But the hillside came into view, and they found the stone marker after a brief search in rain-swept darkness. The team staggered underground and Raidou sealed the door.

The lights were still on; they glowed sickly yellow on blood-stained armor.

Raidou dispelled his mask-henge, and looked over his shivering, panting ninja and the unmoved clones. Steam curled up from Ryouma’s skin, and blood dripped down the edge of Genma’s unmasked jaw. Kakashi was silent, face mostly hidden against Ryouma’s shoulder. And the enemy captain—

Was missing an arm beneath that foil blanket.

Probably not a good donor after all, then.

“Cells,” Raidou told the clone carrying her, and dropped her to the bottom of his priority list. If she hadn’t bled out before now, she’d keep. “Ueno, show the boys the barracks. Hatake needs a bedroll—” to start with, “—and Tousaki gets whatever hot drink you can make in short order. Shiranui, if you can stay on your feet for another minute, I’ll show you what medical supplies we’ve got, and you can give me a grocery list.”

Katsuko hustled Ryouma and Kakashi off like she half-intended to carry them both herself. Her good hand wrapped briefly around Ryouma’s arm, then switched to Kakashi, landing on his shoulder, then his back, then back to Ryouma. She did that with Raidou sometimes—touched constantly, like she had to check he was really still breathing.

There was probably going to be a lot more yelling before the night was done, Raidou thought. At least she hadn’t punched them yet.

Ryouma’s clone bundled f*ckuda Takedo into a cell, slammed the door, and crouched down outside it, staring at her. There was an intensity about its unbreathing focus that caught Raidou’s attention, a knife just waiting for a target.

Genma raked dripping hair out of his face and leaned against his own clone. “You’ve triaged yourselves already?” he asked Raidou. “Give me the rundown. And I need Tousaki and Hatake stripped down so I can check them out in the light.”

Raidou eyed Genma’s obviously broken nose. “Might want to think about putting yourself on that list somewhere, doc.” He set off down the hallway, ducking a metal-caged light fixture, and said over his shoulder, “Ueno’s re-broken her collarbone; took a burning beam to the shoulder. We had a house fire… issue. Minor burns for both of us; I’ve dressed those already. Probably some smoke inhalation, but nothing that’s knocked us over yet. Her collarbone looks displaced. I wanted you to check it out before I tried setting anything. She’s doing okay with the sling for now.”

“Thanks,” Genma said behind him, breath rasping as he and his clone kept up. It had a nasal whistle to it; not much air getting through his nose. “What meds have you had? Any soldier pills?”

“No soldier pills. Handful of painkillers each, nothing narcotic.” Raidou took a sharp right turn into the medic’s tiny supply room and opened the closet. A stethoscope tried to slither out, along with a miniature landslide of dressings; he caught them hastily. “We’re both stable. I’d keep your focus on yourself and the boys first; you all seem like you’re in worse shape.”

Which was worrying in a medic.

Raidou hadn’t seen a radio in the safehouse, but he damn sure planned to look again. Otherwise they’d have to send one of Katsuko’s clones to the nearest occupied post for help, and that was hours away.

Genma braced himself between the doorframe and his clone, casting a practiced eye over the supplies when Raidou stood aside. “Grab out the Ringer’s and some IV tubing. I’ll take another soldier pill—” (which made how many, Raidou wondered) “—and get my clone to hook me up while I work on everyone. Tousaki shouldn’t need an IV, but Hatake does. We’ve all taken blood pills.”

“I can do that for him,” Raidou said, hauling out IV bags and tubing.

Genma nodded gratefully, and rubbed his forehead. “I want to do something to regulate Hatake’s chakra flow. Tousaki gave him two field transfusions and we got two soldier pills into him, but his coils are roached.”

Anchored worry, already well-entrenched, settled heavier in Raidou’s chest. “Is he gonna last, or do we need to evac him out ASAP?”

“I’m not making promises,” Genma said, after a beat. “But as long as he doesn’t end up with an infection or other serious issue, I think I can keep him stable. We’ll need to radio for a team anyway. He’s not walking home any time soon, and I’m probably not either.”

That was a hefty ‘if’, but Raidou would take it.

“Okay,” he said. He grabbed another bundle of supplies and stuck his head out into the hallway, raising his voice to a bellow. “UENO, CLONES. WE’RE GONNA NEED EXTRA HANDS.”

There was a distant crack of chakra, sharp enough that even Raidou felt it, and a flood of bodies poured down the hallway. At least fifteen clones standing in a line; the last one gave Raidou an expectant look. He shoved supplies at it.

“Pass those up. Lieutenant wants the boys stripped down; help them.” He didn’t bother addingbe gentle. Katsuko knew where the line was when it counted, and her clones would, too. “There’re blankets and towels in the generator room. Grab ‘em all. You two, add yourselves as guards on that prisoner; I don’t know how much juice Tousaki’s clone has left in it. And you, hunt up a radio. If there isn’t one, I want to know—we’ll have to send a message on foot.”

About seven voices said, “Roger,” in unison, and clones scattered. Raidou picked out one without a task and pointed at it. “You, has Ueno made any start on food yet?”

“Curry,” it said.

“Take over for her,” Raidou ordered. “I want her back with the boys. Grab another helper if you need it. See if you can scrounge up hot tea, too.”

Two more clones vanished.

Raidou glanced sideways at Genma, taking in the white skin, the dull shivering, and the glaze of exhaustion. There was blood grimed under his nails, and blackened gore splattered over most of his uniform. Rain hadn’t done much to sluice him off, but it had soaked him enough to set in a chill.

Not good in a man about to attend wounded. And there was a battlefield lesson for you: triage first, but none of it was any use if your medic fell over.

“Shower,” Raidou said decisively. “One of Ueno’s clones has enough chakra in it to heat the water. Take five minutes to get yourself warm and clean. I’ll get Hatake’s IV laid in.”

Genma followed Raidou’s gaze down over himself and had to agree. “Yeah. This isn’t exactly sterile.” Rivulets of rain water oozed down his gore-spattered armor, littering the ground around him with bloodstained droplets. “Can’t believe how cold it got. We were bitching about the heat all the way to Ibaragashi City.”

The Katsuko clone Raidou’d designated as Genma’s bath attendant looked up at him expectantly, nudging Genma’s own clone to get a move on.

“Your hands,” Genma said, eying Raidou. Every finger was wrapped in bandages. “Are those burns? How bad?”

Katsuko’s clone swiveled its gaze to Raidou, keeping mute.

“Cuts,” Raidou said dismissively. “Minimal. You can check ’em out later, if you’ve got the energy left. Katsuko already cleaned the hell out of ’em.”

Was there an edge to Raidou’s voice, or was it just too much worry making him sound tense? He looked… functional and his wounds were all bandaged. Genma could see the fatigue in the captain’s eyes, and creases in the sooty grime on his face that said he’d been squinting or scowling, but he seemed alert. And he had a good point—Genma’d be useless as a medic if he was falling over himself.

“Alright,” he said. He could worry about Raidou later. “Shower. I gave Hatake my spare blues, but I’ve got another set of blacks I can change into.”

“Good plan,” said Raidou. He pulled a box of non-stick burn dressings and a pair of bandage scissors out of the closet to add to the armload of medical supplies Katsuko’s other clones had already marched off with, and turned to follow them to the barracks room. “See you in five.”

Genma didn’t even get a chance to acknowledge that before the clone assigned to him tsked impatiently and made an urgent, ‘follow me’ gesture.

His own clone, nearing the end of its lifespan, tugged at him, too.

“Don’t you start,” he told it. “One clone nagging me is enough.”

Katsuko’s clone, complete with sling-bound right arm, darted into a supply room and came back with a washcloth and a thin, greyish towel. The bathroom it led them to was tiny but functional, with a shower stall just barely large enough to hold two bodies. Katsuko’s clone handed his clone the towels, and crowded past them to put its good hand on the tiny cistern that fed the shower head, dumping in chakra to heat the water.

Evidently her clone was staying—not much room for modesty in a foxhole. He got his own clone to help him unbuckle his weapons and belts, setting medkits and utility pouches carefully in the narrow metal sink. Black fabric stuck wetly to his skin, leaving a reddish layer of filth on him when he peeled them away. He had to lean heavily on the wall and let his clone do the work of getting him out of his torn up pants. The contours of his right thigh were lost under red-black swelling, the fresh healed wound strained and badly puckered—he’d sealed the skin, but left something bleeding inside.Damnit.

When he was down to nothing but underwear, he looked over at Katsuko’s clone. “Last chance to get out of here before you see more than you want to.”

The clone kept its back pointedly turned. “Would if I could,” it said. “But unless you like your showers arctic cold, I gotta stay here.”

“Definitely stay.” Genma hesitated for a second, then discarded his cup and jock, and limped past his own clone to share the stall with Katsuko’s. It did him the courtesy of closing its eyes and flattening itself against the tiles.

He let the blissfully warm water sheet over him for a moment before he held a hand out to his clone for a washcloth and soap.

“How badly were Ueno and the captain hurt?” he asked. “Any injuries they didn’t tell me about?”

The clone was trying to blend into the shower wall so thoroughly it would have turned itself the color of the tiles if it could have. “All their injuries are treated,” it said without turning its head. “Wouldn’t hurt to double check the bandaging jobs, though. They were in a hurry to find you guys.”

“I plan to,” Genma told it. He got his upper body as clean as a two-minute wash would allow, and found every cut and bruise he’d earned in the fight with Iebara and company in the process. Scrubbing his scalp pulled on his broken nose enough he didn’t even want totryto wash his face. When it came time to do his legs, he gave his own clone the washcloth back. It squatted just outside the shower stall, reaching into the spray to do what it could.

Katsuko’s clone remained mute throughout, ignoring him as he contorted himself trying to get clean without brushing against it.

“Alright,” he said, when his mental clock said his time was up. “Go ahead and go. I’ll get dried and dressed.” The clone obeyed instantly, shutting off the water and shimmying out past Genma.

It was almost at the door when he stopped it. “Wait.”

It glanced up, saw he was still dripping and towelless, and ducked its head so fast it probably gave itself whiplash. After the last mission, Katsuko’d made a beeline for the door when she’d come in on Genma changing. For a woman who made every effort to get a good look at her other teammates unclothed, she was remarkably shy around Genma. He was starting to wonder if it was personal.

Focus, Shiranui.Maybe he should take that third soldier pill sooner rather than later.

He grabbed the towel from his clone and wrapped it around his hips. “Is there anything else I need to know?”

“Ask the captain,” it said cryptically.

So there was something.

“Also, um,” it said. “Katsuko’s happy you’re okay.”

Before he could respond to that, it made its escape, leaving him with his clone and a muddle of complicated feelings in the dull yellow light.

“I’m glad you’re okay, too, Ueno,” he told the closed door. How bad had Raidou and Katsuko’s side of the mission been? They’d headed out in the storm to look for their team well before the 0400 drop dead mark, too. Something had spooked them.

Not without reason, given what Genma and his team had run into.

He turned to stare at his painfully distorted reflection in the steamed up mirror. Really should fix that nose, but two seconds’ prodding convinced him he didn’t want to touch it again until he was high on painkillers. And that wasn’t going to happen until he’d finished treating the rest of the team.

While Genma dressed, his clone rinsed the gore and grime from his armor in the shower. He didn’t bother putting it back on. It could use the time to dry, and he needed the freedom of movement for now. His medkit was still in good order when he checked it over. He grabbed the vial of soldier pills and shook one out, crunching it down dry. As he chewed, his nose throbbed, and a trickle of blood ran down over his lip like a warning. Three soldier pills in twenty-four hours was already pushing past what was safe, and his leg…

Was still bleeding inside from some vein or lesser artery he hadn’t managed to seal.

He spat the remains of the pill into the sink and rinsed his mouth. The tingle of artificial chakra burned in his pathways, but it felt feeble compared to the usual buzz a soldier pill gave him.

The clone looked at him with an arched-eyebrow expression Genma recognized too well.

“Nobody asked you,” he told it.

It kept the rest of its opinions to itself as it helped him limp back to the others.

He found them in a disheveled bunk room. It might once have held orderly rows of cots, but the bare metal frames were stacked in one corner now. What was probably a freshly created earthen platform big enough to hold all six mattresses dominated the room. Kakashi was nearly invisible under piles of blankets, with an IV line snaking down towards him from a bag of Ringer’s hung from a kunai someone had driven into the wall above him. A second IV bag and line led to Katsuko, free of her mask and armor now, who snuggled next to Kakashi, presumably keeping him warm with her unquenchable chakra.

Ryouma sat hunched over a steaming cup of tea at the edge of the bed, stripped to his underwear as Genma had requested and huddled under a scratchy-looking wool blanket. A well-used articulated brace wrapped around his left knee. Raidou sat next to him, looking just as weary and not a little worried, gaze darting from Katsuko to Kakashi to Ryouma like he was just waiting for the next crisis to hit.

Three sets of eyes riveted onto Genma when he entered. Katsuko’s good arm lifted from the blankets to wave a greeting, wagging trailing IV tubing like a tail.

“Your limp’s got worse,” Ryouma said sharply.

Raidou dropped a towel over Ryouma’s head. “Dry off,” he said, and pushed stiffly to his feet, one final IV set in hand. Critical brown eyes were fixed on the swollen leg between Genma and his clone. “You need to fix that first?” he asked in a low voice.

“I don’t know if I can fix it quickly without making a bigger mess,” Genma told him. “But I need to seal off a bleeder in there.” His nose trickled ominously again. “I’m maxed out on soldier pills, and I’m still low. What’s your chakra level like?”

“About thirty percent,” Raidou said. “But I can boost that with pills, and it doesn’t cost me much to peel off a transfusion.” He tipped his head at the ummoving form on the makeshift bed. “Figure you and the kid both need one. Maybe more than one.” He turned again to look behind him. “Tousaki, you got anything more to spare? I know you’ve done a few already.”

“Got a little more than a quarter left, after that run,” Ryouma said. “Only took one soldier pill, though, so I’ve got some leeway.” He stood and clutched his blanket around him while he went to root through a pile of his gear next to the stacked up cot bases.

“That works,” Genma said. He had to lean on his clone and catch his breath for a moment, letting his racing heart slow down. Blood pills could only do so much when you’d lost enough volume to drop your pressure. “Go ahead and set me up with those fluids, taichou? Then I’ll seal the bleeder, you and Tousaki can give me and Hatake a boost, and I’ll see where we are. Probably Hatake first.”

Katsuko stirred next to Kakashi, looking at Genma with evident frustration. “Sorry, lieutenant, I’m useless for chakra transfers.”

“You’re good, Ueno,” Genma told her. “Keep Hatake warm. He needs that as much as he needs chakra right now.”

She nodded and burrowed carefully back under the covers, pulling them even higher with her one working hand.

Raidou had pulled out his own vial of soldier pills. “Tousaki, take Hatake,” he said. He tossed a soldier pill into his mouth with an absent gesture, and crunched it while he leaned over Genma, slipping the IV catheter into a vein like butter, fast and smooth. Yet another shinobi who’d gained basic medical skills in the harrowing war years. He spiked another kunai into the wall and looped the bag’s hanger over the jutting handle. “Any objection with forehead-to-forehead?” he asked, leaning in again.

Genma glanced over his shoulder to see Ryouma kneeling carefully next to Kakashi, ready to start his own transfusion.“Forehead-to-forehead’s good,” Genma said, turning back towards Raidou. He tipped his head back so Raidou could access it more easily, but blood from his nose immediately ran down the back of his throat, and he waved Raidou off. “Ugh, no. Wait.”

Raidou gave him a wary look.

“Can we do this if I keep my head upright?” Genma asked, swallowing at the thick sensation in his throat. “That really didn’t feel good.”

Raidou’s wry smile was a weird hybrid of reassuring and concerned. “You’re not that short. Just stay where you are.” Cupping Genma’s head carefully between his hands, he pressed his forehead against Genma’s, aligning their pineal chakra points. Genma shut his eyes and felt the warm wash of breath as Raidou exhaled and initiated the transfer.

Heavy pressure thudded against Genma’s coils as Raidou’s chakra surged down receptive channels. Water and earth, wet and weighty. It gave Genma a strange chill, and he had to remind himself to keep breathing. The fire in his own nature fought against Raidou’s water, but earth sought like with earth—Raidou’s granite to Genma’s quicksilver—and slowly, relentlessly, Genma’s chakra level rose. He found himself breathing in sync with the captain. His pulse still raced, but he could feel the tug of Raidou’s slower biorhythm like a metronome.

For a moment, Genma drifted, letting Raidou’s strength take the place of his own. He leaned into it, and didn’t snap back until his legs buckled. Raidou caught him by the shoulders, and his clone grabbed an arm.

“Steady, Shiranui,” Raidou said.

Genma caught a breath. “Sorry. I’m good.”

Raidou didn’t let go right away, locking eyes with Genma like he was trying to see the lie hidden there.

“Really,” Genma said. He pulled back, testing the weight on his uninjured leg, and the uneasy slurry of foreign chakra mixing with his own low reserves. “That was a good transfusion. You’re not drained from it, are you? That felt like a lot.”

“Wasn’t planning to use it for anything else today. You need it more,” Raidou told him. He gave Genma an almost affectionate pat on the shoulder.

Dealing with his leg couldn’t wait any longer. He undid his belt and pushed his tight-fitting trousers down. Raidou gave a low whistle when he caught sight of the vivid bruise dominating Genma’s thigh.

“Yeah. It’s not great,” Genma said. He sat on the edge of the platform and tried to figure out the best approach. The swelling was even more pronounced, straining the red edges of the closed wound. Iebara’s blade must have nicked the branching lateral artery, and solder-pill toxicity was killing his clotting. He flipped through seals for a cauterizing jutsu and tried to visualize the twisting course of the artery. It would be so much easier if he had the bleeder exposed. Or had a Hyuuga’s eyes. He pushed chakra into the depths of the wound, gritting his teeth as it burned its way through muscle and blood vessels alike. When they got home, he’d get a lecture and probably a round of corrective surgery to deal with the damage his emergency treatment had piled on top of the original injury, but field medicine was almost never pretty.

Raidou waited until he’d finished, then produced a sterile gauze square and some tape from the small arsenal of medical supplies he’d assembled, folded the gauze, and taped it carefully under Genma’s nose to catch the still-oozing bleeding. “That should hold you until you get the chance to do something better.”

“Thanks,” Genma told him. “Might get your help with that later. How are you at setting fractures? I just want to tape it in place, chakra healing can wait.”

“I’ve set bones,” Raidou said. “You might do better with a more delicate touch, though.” He raised heavy-boned, bandaged hands by way of explanation.

From his position at Kakashi’s side, Ryouma looked up. “My hands are still steady. And I’ve dealt with a broken nose before.” He ran a finger down the bridge of his own nose and back up, stopping at a nearly imperceptible divot.

“You set that yourself? Good, you can do mine after I’m finished with everyone and can take some painkillers.” Genma probed his leg gingerly, but it was impossible to feel the anatomy through the massive hematoma—he just had to hope that as broadly and deeply as he’d applied the jutsu, he’d managed to cap the bleeders.

“How’s Hatake? And how are you? If you’re finished transfusing him, let me give you a quick look, and then I want you to go get clean.” He looked around for the Katsuko clone that had accompanied him for that awkward shower, but it seemed to have absented itself.

“He’s a chakradrain,”Ryouma said, sounding equal parts fond and annoyed. “Neither of us should be keeling over any time soon, though.” He ruffled Kakashi’s filthy wet hair and stood up, a little stiff on his braced knee.

“That’s the coil damage,” Genma said. “As long as he’s stable for the moment, let’s make sure you’re safe to send off to the showers.”

When Genma started to stand, Ryouma waved him down and came around to Genma’s side of the platform. An assortment of shallow cuts and bruises littered Ryouma’s skin, but the only serious injury was the shoulder laceration that Genma’d healed hastily in the middle of the fight. It was red and raised, with striated lines radiating away from the wound—a hallmark of forced rapid healing.

“How’s your shoulder motion?” Genma asked. “Can you lift your arm over your head without any issue?”

Ryouma obliged him by raising his left arm. “Pulls a little.” He reached up to grab his elbow with his other hand and tug the arm further into a stretch. “But it’s not painful. Stiffness might just be from backpacking Hound. He’s heavier than he looks.”

Genma didn’t doubt that. By the time everyone had cooled down and rested for a while, and exhausted muscles had gotten a chance to stiffen up, all of Team Six would probably be hobbling around like grey-haired grandparents.

Grandparents. Tsuto’s elderly parents asleep on twinned futon. The grandmother’s blood staining yellow silk. The old man’s eyes snapping wide as Genma’s blade touched his throat, and gnarled hands, stiff with arthritis, scrabbling at Genma’s arm in a desperate, futile gesture.He blinked the image away.

“Lieutenant?”

“Your breathing,” Genma said, ignoring the question. “How’s your chest? I’m not hearing any wheeze and you seem to be breathing okay, but I know I wasn’t gentle pulling the blood out of your lungs.”

Raidou’s head snapped around.

Ryouma pressed the heel of his hand against his sternum, focus turning inward. “Lungs seem clear,” he reported. “Didn’t have any problems on the run, and I wasn’t coughing like with the demon-rot. My throat’s still a little sore.”

“That’ll wear off,” Genma told him, relieved. With Ryouma in good shape, he could send him to shower and stop worrying about at least one of the ninja in his care. “Go take a shower. A long one.” He couldn’t smell much of anything through his damaged nose, but he didn’t doubt the reek of putrefaction still clung to Ryouma’s skin and hair. “Get one of Ueno’s clones to heat the water for you.”

Ryouma gave him a wry look. “Guess it’s a good idea to wait until my hands are clean before we try to get your nose working again.” He glanced around at the handful of idle clones who hovered at the edge of the room. “Volunteer?”

All three of them immediately leapt up, scrabbling at each other in a vicious elbow fight. The chaos ended abruptly when two of them bamphed out of existence, leaving the victor smiling broadly at Ryouma.

Ryouma knelt to grab his utility belt from a small pile of his discarded gear. He tossed a cheeky, pleased look at the rest of the room before he left to follow the winning clone to the bathroom.

Genma stared after them and sighed. Maybe itwaspersonal.

Katsuko lifted her head from the blanket nest. “It’s not that you don’t have a nice butt, lieutenant,” she said drowsily. “It’s just that Ryouma’s butt can’t make me run laps if it catches me looking at it.” There was a long pause. “I didn’t say that.”

It was probably a measure of how tired Genma was that it took him as long as it did to chuckle. “I can accept that,” he told her. He twisted around on the communal bed and tried to kneel next to Kakashi, but his leg was having none of that. It took some awkward shifting, but he eventually found a position that let him keep his leg extended and still gave him the proximity and leverage he needed to work on Kakashi.

“Get my med kit,” he told his clone. While it turned to do as he asked, he laid three careful fingers at the angle of Kakashi’s bruised and bandaged throat. Pulse was slow and even, breathing regular, and chakra… Chakra was still a mess, but the fresh transfusion from Ryouma was palpable and strong. “Alright, Hatake. You in there? This will be easier if you wake up a little and can talk to me.”

It was an effort to crack one eye open. When Kakashi did, the world was filled with ice and agony and Genma’s new white mustache. Kakashi stared at that, confused, until he realized Genma had a bloody bandage taped beneath his nose.

Okay, Kakashi thought blurrily, and tried to achieve actual thought.

“S’ c-cold,” he managed.

“I know. You’re low on chakra,” Genma said gently, and glanced over to Katsuko. “Can you add any more heat?”

Katsuko shifted, tucking herself closer against Kakashi’s side. The blanket of her chakra rolled out across his bare, bandaged skin, wind and fire combining in a delicate balance that probably cost her significant effort. Slowly, carefully, the temperature ticked up by degrees. It just didn’t seem to sinkin. Kakashi shivered, feeling iced to the bones, and made a low sound of complaint.

Genma glanced back over his shoulder. “Taichou, you didn’t find a stove we could set up in here anywhere, did you?”

“Tiny camping stove in the kitchen,” Raidou said. “Clone’s using it right now. I’ll see if there’s another.” He left, dogged by one of Katsuko’s copies. There… seemed to be a lot of them around.

“Wish I had your chakra,” Kakashi muttered to Katsuko. “d’never fall down.”

“No, you don’t,” she said, low and tired. He tipped his chin down to look at her, but could only see the wild, half-dried flurry of her hair and a slice of pale cheek. Then she lifted her face and smiled. “Besides, if you stopped falling down, we’d think you were an imposter.”

Kakashi knew that smile. On him, it came with curving, insincere eyes.

“C-could insult you more,” he said. “T-then you’d know it was me.”

“What a relief,” Katsuko said dryly, and then sobered up. “You warming up at all, or am I just throwing chakra into the void?”

“Void,” Kakashi said, after a moment of shivery self-reflection. “S-sorry.”

“Don’t stop,” Genma told Katsuko. “It’s helping even if he can’t feel it. His coils were damaged by that lightning strike, I think. Damaged coils can get leaky.” Light brown eyes landed on Kakashi again, framed by tiny creases as Genma smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry, it’s reversible.”

“I k-know,” Kakashi said. Bodies weren’t smart; just because itfeltlike hypothermia, didn’t mean it was.

“Just because you’re half-dead doesn’t mean you’re off the hook,” Katsuko muttered vengefully in his ear. “We’re going to havewordswhen you’re coherent again.”

“You an’ Rin,” Kakashi mumbled, resigned. “An’ sensei. Everyone always yells…” He opened his eye again, not quite sure when he’d closed it, and gave them a hazy, hidden smile. “But T-Tousaki’s alive, and so’s Shiranui, an’ now I can make people explode. So it’s worth it.”

Genma glanced at Katsuko. “Morphine’s working,” he drawled.

Katsuko didn’t answer him; she was staring at Kakashi, slender eyebrows drawn down into a frown. “Explain,” she said.

“Explain later,” Genma said, before Kakashi could respond. “I need to work on you now.” He accepted his med-kit from an increasingly insubstantial-looking clone, and withdrew a syrette of morphine. The drug went straight into a vein, and Kakashi exhaled slowly at the fading burn. Genma added the spent syrette to Kakashi’s dog-tag collection and opened up a slim packet of hair-thin medical senbon.

“Haven’t had enough needles today, ‘tenant?” Kakashi said.

“Guess not,” Genma said. “I have to take the covers off you for a minute. I’m going to gate your chakra a little, try to slow the flow down. It’ll make you feel weak, but it might help with the cold, and it will give me more to work with for healing you.”

“Okay,” Kakashi said warily.

Katsuko jerked her chin at a clone, which vanished and reappeared a half-second later, helping Raidou lug in three gas-powered burners. They were talking softly, but Kakashi definitely caught the word ‘Iebara’, then ‘blood jutsu’.

Genma peeled the covers back. Cold air spilled across Kakashi’s skin, because he was down to a bandage-mask and underwear and the lieutenant was trying tokill him. He yelped rasping protest, hurting his own throat; Katsuko rolled against his side and threw an IV-strung arm across his bare chest, radiating concentrated heat.

Maybe he could wearherlike a blanket.

Genma worked fast, swiping a stinging alcohol wipe across key points of Kakashi’s meridian lines, and setting needles into place. They were painless, at least, but slab-heaviness followed in their wake, like Genma was nailing what remained of Kakashi’s chakra down. Katsuko tucked her face against the side of Kakashi’s throat, looking away.

Not a needle fan, right.

After the tenth senbon went in, a glimmer of heat pulled through Kakashi’s veins. Ryouma’s fire-chakra had finally found something to catch against. Kakashi forced weighted hands up, feeling vaguely like they’d been detached at the wrist, and curled his fingers beneath Katsuko’s arm, trying to catch more warmth.

“Stay still, you big baby,” she said, exhaling a stream of raw heat against his bandaged neck as she spoke. The temperature ticked up another notch.

Kakashi shivered all over. “Do that ‘gain,” he slurred.

“Demanding,” Katsuko grumbled, and spread further across him like a cat seeking a sunbeam, managing to avoid every one of Genma’s needles. Her weight pressed against his welter of cuts, sparking a constellation of dull, distant pains beneath the morphine, but Kakashi didn’t care. Especially when she did that dragon breath trick again.

Genma smiled faintly. “Thanks, Ueno.” He continued setting needles, stopping when he had a miniature forest of twenty or so. They were short, t-bar shaped needles, inserted deeply enough that only a faint gleam marked their placement. Genma shifted position uncomfortably, re-balancing on his bad leg, and settled one warm hand against Kakashi’s ribs, trickling chakra carefully under the skin. “Better,” he pronounced. “How’s it feel?”

“Mmnrgh,” Kakashi said, afloat on a sea of narcotics and foreign, humming energy.

“You are so high right now,” Katsuko told him gleefully. “Ryouma better finish his shower quick. He needs to see this.”

“Mmm,” Kakashi agreed, because Ryoumadidneed to come back. He got into trouble unattended.

Genma touched Katsuko’s arm for a moment. “Ueno, try not to push your own temperature up. You don’t need to fry your kidneys like I did on the last mission.”

“No fried kidneys, yessir,” Katsuko said. The heat dropped a fraction, but there was still sweat shining on her skin. Effort or normal reaction, Kakashi couldn’t tell. He wasn’t sweating, but his hair was steaming gently.

It made pretty swirling patterns against the yellow lights, like Katsuko really was breathing smoke.

Genma peeled away Kakashi’s hasty field-applied bandages, reassessing the motley collection of scabbed needle slices Iebara had left. He laid better healing into the deeper ones, focusing on Kakashi’s scalp, hands, joints, and after some negotiation, face.

Kakashi made that easier by going somewhere else in his head for a while.

When he drifted back, the bandage-mask was firmly re-wrapped, Katsuko hadn’t raised her head from his neck, and Genma was finishing up with ointment and new bandages on the shallower cuts. They weren’t worth wasting chakra on, and judging by how Katsuko and Raidou looked, Genma needed to save as much energy as he could.

Kakashi sighed softly, breath curling back against his face. “Need ‘nother medic.”

“Yeah,” Genma said, sounding weary. “We do. I’ll work on that.” He stuck tape over the sunken needles, pinning the little cross-bars down against Kakashi’s skin, and marked each piece with a timestamp in medic’s purple pen. Then he tapped Katsuko’s outflung hand. “Your turn, Ueno.”

She made a grumbling sound against the side of Kakashi’s neck, and Kakashi realized she was more than half-asleep.

Genma’s mouth twitched. “Okay,” he said, and gestured at his clone. It hauled him up, helped him around to Katsuko’s side. Genma’s bad leg folded when he was halfway seated; he lurched, swearing, but managed to right himself before he fell off the edge of the platform.

When he settled into a comfortable position, his clone shivered once with a ripple of collapsing chakra, and vanished. Finally used up.

“Turn towards me, Ueno,” Genma said quietly.

She made various sounds of protest, but pulled away from Kakashi when Genma insisted. Genma leaned over her and tugged the blankets back into place, trapping the remaining chakra-heat before it dissipated. The cold wasn’t quite so bad now. Kakashi burrowed himself down until musty-smelling blankets covered the bandaged half of his face, and watched sleepily as Genma did medical things to his unwilling patient.

Morphine, bandages, chakra-healing, what looked like the beginnings of a splint…

A twilight drowse pulled Kakashi under, spiralling everything distant and shadowy. People moved around him. Voices murmured. Ryouma still wasn’t back, but the captain was close, and the air was warmer.

Bone snapped.

Katsuko yelled.

Kakashi jerked awake in a shattering of dream fragments, tight panic, and enough adrenaline for one violent movement. Everything blurred. Then it stopped, crystallizing around a picture that slowly made sense.

His hand, a half-inch away from Genma’s breakable fingers. And Raidou’s hand, broad and bandaged, wrapped around Kakashi’s wrist.

“Easy, Hatake,” Raidou murmured. “He’s supposed to do that.”

Kakashi swallowed his hammering heartbeat down. “Don’ make her scream,” he managed, as the world folded in on itself.

Raidou caught him before he hit the mattress.

Her collarbone reset with an audible snap. Katsuko, understandably, was vocal about it. Then: a flash of grey out of the corner of her eye; Raidou’s lunge; the jarring halt as the chaos resolved into the single point of Raidou’s hand wrapped around Kakashi’s wrist. Kakashi croaked something, voice rasping low enough that Katsuko couldn’t hear. Then he crumpled.

Nobody moved in the silence that followed. The haze of pain and fatigue muffling Katsuko’s brain added an extra layer of confusion to the whole mess.

In the absence of anything resembling normal in this situation, Katsuko fell back on the one familiar thing she could count on.

“Did Kakashi just faintagain?” she demanded.

Raidou lowered Kakashi carefully down and pressed two fingers against the younger man’s pulse. “Looks like it.”

Genma leaned over to check Kakashi’s chakra. “Yeah. Honestly, I’m surprised he stayed awake as long as he did.” He looked up at Raidou. “Thanks for intervening. That was about to go badly wrong.”

Katsuko stared at Kakashi’s unconscious face and, in a spectacularly delayed reaction, realized that the shaky feeling in her chest was shock. “sh*t,” she breathed. “He almost mangled you.”

Genma looked down at his hands and let out a low breath, giving himself a quick shake. His expression was as phlegmatic as ever, but adrenaline had leached some of the color from his skin. “Maybe that’s how we should try to recruit new field medics. ‘Do it for the rush.’”

“Hah,” Katsuko said, faintly, and considered lying down.

“I think he’s okay,” Raidou said, and pulled the rumpled blankets over Kakashi again. He moved himself around to settle behind Katsuko, offering his steady presence as support. Genma braced Katsuko’s good arm and searched her face with a medic’s concerned, clinical gaze.

“You alright?” Genma asked. “Want me to do a nerve block on that shoulder before the next part?”

Katsuko really,reallydid not need a repeat of the last few minutes. Kakashi might be unconscious, but the man had the hearing of a cat and the same predilection for doing the opposite of what she expected him to. She eyed the motionless, blanket-covered lump and leaned back, propping herself up on Raidou. “That’d be great, lieutenant.”

“Sorry I didn’t do it first, but I wanted to be sure you still had feeling in your fingers when I finished setting the bone back into place.” Genma took her right hand and squeezed her fingertips one at a time, watching for the color to return to each blanched nail. There were the usual kind of questions checking for nerve damage: do you have feeling in this finger? What about this one? Is it the same amount of feeling, or do you think your thumbs are going to fall off?

Raidou kept quiet while Katsuko answered Genma; her captain’s chakra was a compass pointing her towards solid ground, steady and calming as always.

No. Not always. Tsurugahama Port had proven that. It was hard to remember, sometimes, that Raidou was as human as the rest of Team Six. She was used to thinking of him as bedrock, constant and unfaltering. She’d forgotten that Raidou wasn’t much older than she was; that for all his authority, he wasn’t infallible. He’d pulled Katsuko back from the edge after the demon queen mission, but Katsuko hadn’t even thought to ask Raidou how he was handling his own personal fallout. Katsuko closed her eyes.

I’m an idiot.

Friendships were supposed to be about trust, an understanding that you gave as much as you took from the relationship—that you met the other person halfway. All Katsuko had done so far was take, and take, and take, without even considering what support she could give in return.

Katsuko had killed Tomoko and the Tsuto parents in cold blood today. She could still see Tomoko’s small body crumpled like a doll on the edge of the wharf. Raidou had executed Tsuto Sorai and beaten a Kiri-nin until the man’s skull shattered like porcelain. She couldn’t give back the lives she’d stolen, but she could be there for Raidou when the weight of this mission threatened to pull them both under.

“Taichou,” Katsuko said, opening her eyes. Something in her voice made Genma glance up at her in concern.

Raidou tipped his head down to look at her. “Yeah?”

She shouldn’t have taken her mask off. Her face felt naked. Genma was watching her like he half-expected her to have a seizure. It was hard enough dealing with feelings; she didn’t need to worry their overworked medic, too.

It was possible that she could have picked a better time for this. “Uh,” she got out. “I’m—I’m really glad you’re okay. So when we get home, can I treat you to lunch? All of you.”

She’d never offered to buy food for someone of her own free will before, let alone her whole team. Raidou was silent for a surprised moment. Then something in his expression eased, and he put his hand on Katsuko’s good shoulder, bandaged fingers resting gently against her unbroken collarbone. His voice was low and warm. “I’d like that.”

Katsuko contorted her face in an effort to disguise her expression and redirected her gaze at something safe and unable to make eye contact. She settled for the opposite wall of the bunker and said, “Good, cause I won’t do this for you guys again. This is a special occasion.”

She was so determined not to look at either man that she jumped in surprise when Genma moved into her line of vision. He tried to catch her eyes; she scowled and tipped her chin down to stare at his collarbones instead. She heard the smile in his voice when he said, “That’s reassuring. I was about to ask if you’d gotten a ding in the head when you took this injury.”

Head injuries. Sheknewshe’d forgotten to tell the lieutenant something. In an effort to stave off the inevitable, Katsuko said abruptly, “What did Kakashi say? Before he fainted, I mean.”

“‘Don’t make her scream’,” Raidou said.

Katsuko stared at Kakashi, who was motionless beneath his nest of blankets. After a moment, she asked in a quiet voice, “How bad was the fight with Iebara?”

The clone she’d sent to interrogate Raidou had dispelled itself once it had learned the bare details of Genma’s, Kakashi’s and Ryouma’s side of the mission. Katsuko had the Bingo Book memorized; Iebara’s name had sent chills down her spine.

Genma’s eyes went flat with exhaustion. One hand lifted towards his bruised throat for a second, then dropped. “Bad. It was bad. I was doing my damnedest to avoid it—we almost had an agreement brokered with their captain.” He glanced at the door, in the direction of the bunker’s prison cells. “And then Iebara recognized Hatake and broke ranks.”

“And Kakashi killed Iebara with Iebara’s own jutsu, while you and Ryouma took out the rest of the squad.” Katsuko catalogued Genma’s visible injuries, feeling her mouth thin. “Iebara used his blood jutsu on all of you?”

“He took Tousaki’s and my blood and used it against Hatake.”

Katsuko hissed through her teeth. She studied Genma’s bruised throat and glanced over at Kakashi again. “I get it now.” She’d be pretty damn protective of the others, too, if she’d been in Kakashi’s place. Though she doubted she would have fared as well against Iebara as Kakashi had.

Sometimes she forgot Hatake Kakashi was a legend in the making. She had a hard enough time remembering he was supposed to be a genius. Every so often, though, things like this drove it home.

Grudgingly, Katsuko said, “I guess I should stop bullying him.”

When Ryouma got back from the shower, she was going to install him next to Kakashi in the blanket nest andnever let them leave. Her rookies had gone above and beyond the call of duty for Team Six’s second mission, and they deserved rest.

“That might be a start,” Raidou murmured. His hand brushed against the back of her head. She could almost feel him frowning. “Also might want to explain this knot to the lieutenant.”

“Taichou,” Katsuko said, appalled at his betrayal. Then she switched over to Genma, trying to mitigate the damage. “I got tackled through a wall, lieutenant, but it was a very thin wall and I feel a lot better now.”

Genma had his’I am concerned about your health and your intelligence’look on. He reached up and cupped the back of her head, probing the wound. “Any loss of consciousness or memory?”

Katsuko squawked. “Ow! No! Stop poking it!”

He dropped his hand. “I’ll deal with that in a minute, then. Keep your arm folded across your chest, I’m going to do that nerve block now. It’ll hurt for a second, but then everything from your shoulder down should go numb.”

“No wait,” Katsuko blurted, and, when Genma paused, said in a voice full of spite, “Taichou has a head injury, too. A massive one. Someone punched him into a building and he left a dent.”

Genma paused, hands poised, and looked at Raidou with the calm expression of a man who’d accepted his team was full of idiots. Dryly and deliberately, he said, “Any loss of memory or consciousness?”

The sour note in Raidou’s voice made Katsuko smile beatifically. “It was a very thin building. I promise I’d tell you if I was dying; you can focus on her collarbone first.”

Genma visibly made the decision to proceed as if two senior members of his squad hadn’t just told on each other like Academy students. He looked at Raidou. “Got her steady?” When Raidou nodded, Genma asked Katsuko, “Ready?”

“Hit me,” Katsuko said.

The green glow of the medical jutsu flared. Katsuko’s shoulder went numb. She breathed out as she leaned against Raidou, who’d made himself into a wall behind her, and thought about other things. Hopefully Ryouma would be done with his shower by now. She was looking forward to the influx of his helper clone’s memories.

The water pressure in the safehouse shower was nothing to boast about, but Katsuko’s clone managed steaming heat for as long as the water in the tiny cistern lasted. Which wasn’t as long as Ryouma would have liked, either, but it was better than hosing off with rainwater and a jutsu, and at least he had his own rich-lathering soap from his kit.

Probably he should leave the bar in the shower for the next person who needed to clean off. Kakashi’d mocked Ryouma’s choice in soap scents before, but even he might not turn up his nose at blackberry vanilla. Katsuko would probably enjoy it.

She was still alive to enjoy things.

He took a deep breath, steam thick in his sore throat, water hot on his shoulders. He’d never really let himself contemplate the possibility that she mightnotbe, that one month of wicked jokes and careless closeness might be all he’d get. That he never would get a second chance with Raidou, or even a chance to get over him.

He’d told himself, that whole agonizing slog, that they’d be there at the safehouse, waiting with hot drinks and cheerful criticism. That f*ckuda’s threat was sheer bravado, the last poisonous strike of a woman who’d already lost everything. And he’d believed it, or thought he did. There was nothing to be worried about. Katsuko and Raidou could handle anything Kiri threw at them. Theyhadto.

That was the really awful thing about having a team, the thing he’d forgotten: how much it hurt when you knew you might lose them.

Well, they weren’t lost. He’d been right. Katsuko couldn’t lift her arm and Raidou looked like he’d punched his way through a stone wall, but they’d made it back from Tsurugahama. Katsuko’d supplied the hot tea and the criticism all by herself. Raidou hadn’t said much, but he’d given Ryouma a hand with his cut armor-strap, in between getting Kakashi and Katsuko settled and rigged up with IVs. The whole team was back, they were safe, Katsuko had a sling and Kakashi had a warm bed and medical attention. Genma’d fixed the bleeding in his leg, and the mission was over.

So why thehelldid he still feel like the walls were just waiting to cave in on him?

If it were just mission nerves, he should already have come down. That long miserable trek in the rain, Kakashi half-conscious on his back and the lieutenant limping ahead of him, should have drained him to the bone. And hewastired, chakra low, muscles aching, he just—

The mission was over. He was supposed to be able to relax.

“You’re doing the handsome brooding thing again,” Katsuko’s shadow clone commented, glancing over its shoulder. It kept its good hand on the cistern, high above its head, although the water pressure was already beginning to slacken. “Are you having a heart-to-heart with the showerhead?”

“It doesn’t have a heart,” Ryouma said. “It can’t understand.”

“That was deep,” the clone said. “Soap-opera levels of deep. It makes me want to give you a hug, but I have to stay over here to heat your shower water.”

“Plus, boundaries,” Ryouma murmured. It didn’t seem as funny as usual.

He ducked his head beneath the thin spray one last time and then stepped back, shaking wet hair out of his eyes. His hands didn’t smell anymore, and the squelching memory of rot beneath his fingers wasn’t something you could wash away. “That’s enough. I’m good.”

The clone dropped its hand from the cistern to the rusty tap and screwed the water off. It stayed politely pressed against the tiled wall while Ryouma edged out of the cramped stall and wrapped his narrow, threadbare towel around his hips. The concrete floor was cold and slick under his wet feet. He thought fleetingly of the bathroom in Tsuto’s house, with its warm wood floor and huge soaking tub.

The water turning red, as Kakashi scrubbed his hands, and then black, when Ryouma took his place.

He’d left his soap in the shower. The clone was just coming out, shaking water out of its hair. It pulled back in surprise when he brushed past it. He grabbed the soap and went to the sink. The water here was icy, no visible cistern to warm, but the soap still lathered. He scraped at the beds of his nails, at the creases of his palms. The scabs where Tsuto Sakako’s nails had torn the backs of his fingers broke open and began to ooze again.

Katsuko’s clone stepped up beside him, and touched his wrist.

He stopped. The thin bar of soap slid between his fingers and fell sideways, blocking the drain. The scent of blackberries and vanilla rose, cloyingly sweet.

“Sorry,” he said. He turned off the tap, fished the soap out and left it on the side of the sink, wiped his stinging hands on his towel-clad thighs and turned to find his utility belt. He didn’t look at the clone. “I know it’s stupid. I just had to be sure.”

Callused fingertips brushed the back of his shoulder. “It’s okay.”

It wasn’t, but he appreciated the effort. “Thanks,” he said. He crouched down, shivering a little in the cold, and pulled out the scroll containing clean clothes. His raw fingers left pink streaks on the paper. He tried to ignore that. “You did a good job with the water, by the way. Hot all the way through, but it never burned.” He broke the seal on the scroll, waved away smoke, and pulled out clean trunks and his second set of ANBU blacks. “You should go into business, when you’re ready to retire. Best bathhouses in Konoha. Wouldn’t even need a hot spring.”

“Only if you’re the half-naked model for the bathhouse ads,” the clone said, cheering up.

Ryouma smiled down at his neatly rolled clothes. “You don’t think the tattoos’d scare all the old aunties off?”

“Tattoos are actually old aunties’ greatest weakness,” the clone said loftily. “You heartbreaker, you.”

“Well, then we’ve both got our post-retirement careers planned out.” Ryouma dropped the towel and pulled his trunks on. “You can hire the rest of the team to scrub the baths. Kakashi seems like he’d be a hard worker.”

“We can assign everyone special uniforms,” the clone said, rubbing its chin. “Yours will be a steam cloud and a smile.”

“Hah,” Ryouma said, and pulled on his actual uniform, ignoring his discarded kneebrace. The tight, stretchy black fabric tended to cling to damp skin, despite his rough toweling, but he managed to wrestle the trousers up to his hips and do up the buttons. The shirt was more daunting, involving some wriggling to unroll it past his ribs, but if the clone enjoyed the show, at least it didn’t comment. Maybe Katsuko’d done her own absurd tight-clothes-dance, when there wasn’t time to airdry.

“Thanks for your help,” he said finally, tucking his shirt into his trousers. He crouched down again to seal up his old trunks and knee brace in the scroll. The scroll slotted into its waterproof pouch, and Ryouma straightened, slinging the soggy belt over his shoulder. “Was there food happening somewhere? We should bring it to ’em.”

“Definitelyfood happening,” the clone said. It pushed away from the sink, skirting the toilet, and patted his biceps as it drew even with him. “And you can help carry it all.”

“It can’t be heavier than Kakashi.” He hitched his slippery belt up his shoulder again and followed the clone out into the hall.

The kitchen was the opposite direction from the bunkroom, easily identified by the rich, oily scent of rehydrated beef curry. They’d eaten that by the gallon during the war, when they could get it. Ryouma ducked into the tiny kitchen alcove to find another of Katsuko’s clones crouched over a tiny campstove and a bubbling pot, while a third swore at a foil bag of instant rice.

The rice was crunchy, but not inedible. Ryouma found tin bowls, and the clones poured rice in and spooned curry on top. “Maybe the curry will soften it,” one of the clones said hopefully.

The clone from the shower looked doubtful, but it let itself be laden down with a third bowl. The remaining bowl, out of a set of four, had an old hole burned through the bottom. They gathered around to stare at it in dismay.

“We can eat in shifts,” Ryouma decided, finally. “There’s not all that much left anyway. Might as well scrape the rest of this in Katsuko’s bowl and make a second batch later.” He looked around. “Spoons?”

A scrambling search produced the large metal spoon the clones had been using to stir the curry, several teaspoons, and a cardboard box of disposable chopsticks in paper packets. It was the shower clone, flushed and triumphant, who found another unlabeled box with a treasure trove of cutlery, including a set of six matching flat-bowled curry spoons. The clone wiped one off carefully on its pant leg, stuck it into a bowl of curry, and smiled proudly over the result.

Back in the bunkroom, Kakashi was asleep again under his pile of blankets. Katsuko sat beside him, with Raidou settled behind her, holding her between his bent knees. Genma had taken a weird sort of sideways seat at the edge of the platform in front of them, with his bad leg stretched out and his good leg tucked under him. He was just lowering his hands, no longer lit with green healer’s chakra, from Katsuko’s shoulder to his kit.

Ryouma leaned against the doorframe and watched as Genma eased Katsuko’s bad arm back into the sling and strapped it down to her ribcage. “That’s just barely knit together, so don’t move it,” he warned her. “When the nerve block wears off, stay on top of your painkillers. Take them on the clock, don’t wait for it to start hurting.”

“You have to take painkillers with food, right?” Katsuko asked craftily.

That seemed as good an introduction as any. Ryouma cleared his throat. “I come bearing calories.”

Katsuko straightened as if she’d been shocked. Her face was pale and damp with sweat, and she swayed a little before Raidou steadied her, but her smile bloomed for Ryouma alone. “You are myfavorite,” she told Ryouma, and held out her good hand for the bowls he carried. “I love curry. I love you. I love youandcurry. Get over here, curry minion.”

“Is that a promotion?” Ryouma handed her the biggest bowl, but waited to make sure her grip was good before he held the other one out to Genma. “You and I get second shift, taichou. We ran out of bowls. Figured I’d see what Kakashi can get down him, first. Payback for Hayama.”

Raidou gave him an approving nod, touched with the edge of an eye-crinkling smile. “You can try with Hatake. He just wiped out, but if you can wake him up and get food into him, that’d probably help.”

Ryouma ducked his head. Maybe he should be used to that smile by now, but it always seemed to strike him at unexpected moments, like a knifeblade twisting up through a weakness in the armor and sliding between his ribs.

He really needed to get out, when he got back to Konoha. Find someone whose smile he liked better, or at least almost as well. Work out some of that post-battle adrenaline, shake off the mission-nerves. Find a little time, and space, to forget.

It’d worked before, after other missions.

He took the last bowl from Katsuko’s shadow clone, tossed his utility belt towards the pile of wet gear stacked against the wall, and climbed up the platform to Kakashi’s side. Staring down at the scrap of Kakashi’s face visible between blanket and hair—barely a sliver of closed eye and bruised socket—he wondered if Sharingan no Kakashi, with his razorblade cheekbones and his desperate discomfort with anything that verged beyond a joke, had ever even wanted the comfort of someone else’s body.

Probably not. He was ice on the mission, ruin on the battlefield. He wouldn’t reach for people, and he didn’t need them.

Ryouma wished, desperately, for some of that cool detachment.

Well, distraction would do instead. For a while.

He set the steaming curry bowl down on the earthen platform beside him and peeled the blankets back from Kakashi’s shoulder. Kakashi was still in bandage mask, black trunks, and bandages, but there were new little dots of tape scattered across his torso and arms, some overlapping bandages and some cluttering up the only bare skin thatwasn’twhite-swathed after Iebara’s attack. The new bits of tape all had numbers written on them in a tiny, careful hand.

Shaking him awake was likely to be a bad idea, even if there was an undamaged spot to grab. Kakashi’s chakra-spark and ice-freeze in Hayama deserved retaliation, but he’d probably electrocute before he punched. Anyway, even if Kakashi had no compunctions against straining someone with stressed chakra coils, Ryouma could be a slightly better person.

Or, at least, less of a bastard.

He dipped the spoon in curry, scraped the drips off on the rim of the bowl, and twitched aside the line of bandage that wrapped under Kakashi’s nose. Strong scent was usually a decent way to wake even a deep sleeper up, and curry was nearly as good as coffee, but Kakashi didn’t twitch. Snapping fingers next to his ear produced no effect, either.

“He woke up when I screamed,” Katsuko put in helpfully. She had nearly finished her bowl of curry, and was eyeing Genma’s.

“Or you could try something that doesn’t put the lieutenant’s fingers at risk again,” Raidou said dryly.

“Let him sleep,” Genma said. “If he’s that out, he’ll recover chakra faster sleeping than he would trying to digest a belly full of food, if you could even get it into him.”

“Bet that’s not what you said when hefroze me,” Ryouma muttered. He pulled the blankets up to Kakashi’s chin again and rocked back on his heels. “Guess we can keep something by for when he wakes up.”

He contemplated the bowl of curry, the half-cooked rice and the sheen of grease on top. His stomach turned. Maybe in the war he’d have gulped it down, but it wasn’t wartime anymore, and he didn’t need a full belly just so he could fight in the morning. There were still energy bars in his belt pouch. He’d pull one out later, when he was hungry again.

“Taichou, you want this?”

Raidou glanced down at Katsuko, who twisted around to gaze pleadingly up at him. Wordlessly, he reached across Kakashi’s body for the bowl and handed it to her. She settled it into the empty shell of her first bowl and dug gleefully in.

“You should eat something too, Tousaki,” Genma said quietly. “Or at least drink some more.”

Raidou peeled himself back from Katsuko and swung his legs over the side of the platform. “Everyone should. I know there was more tea in the kitchen; the clones might even’ve managed to not set it on fire. Can you stay upright for another five minutes, Lieutenant? I’d like your eyes on that Kiri-nin.” His voice shaded wry. “And also on me, if you have it in you.”

Genma swallowed a last bite and set his curry down, half-finished, at Katsuko’s feet. He pushed himself stiffly up.

“Tousaki, Ueno, reckon you can keep Hatake warm between you?” Raidou picked up the med-kit, stepped off the platform, and presented his broad shoulder to Genma just before the lieutenant’s bad leg tried to buckle. Genma grabbed his armor shoulder-strap. They paced a careful doubled stride out of the room. Raidou paused just before they reached the door. “Try not to induce him to bite anyone, for preference.”

“Wow,” Ryouma said, in the silence of their passing. “Now I really want to snuggle Kakashi even more. Way to be motivating, taichou.”

Katsuko took a fantastically large bite of beef and potato, chewed briefly, and then came to a decision. She set her doubled bowls down, rolled up to her knees, and crawled around Kakashi and his blanket nest to tug at Ryouma’s arm. “It’s okay,” she said gravely. “I’ll protect you.” She lifted the nearest edge of blanket and tried to shove him under it.

“My hero,” Ryouma said, mostly to see her smile, and let her pull him down.

Kakashi was still shivering. At least he could think of this as one more job to do.

The IV, however necessary, was proving to be enough trouble Genma wasn’t sure it was worth it. He looped the hanger over the belt hook that usually held his mask when it wasn’t on his face. Quartermaster Morita would be unimpressed with the smashed remains of Genma’s custom-painted tanuki mask, but the empty hook was convenient. Of course the IV wouldn’t work hung from his waist, but he should have had Raidou hold off placing it until he was ready to lie down and call this day over.

Treading the fine line of being the medic and being a patient was always a challenge. ‘Treat the medic first’ was sacrosanct, especially in a unit with only one, but—

Raidou interrupted his train of thought with a pointed look at the blood flowing backwards in the IV tubing from Genma’s arm, now that gravity was working against him.

“I know,” Genma said. “We’ll hang it up when I sit down again. If Iebara hadn’t managed to bleed me quite so much, this wouldn’t even be necessary. Not that we knew he could do that, but still.”

“Now might be a good time for the full story on that,” Raidou said. “You mentioned it was a medical jutsu? I’m guessing that accounts for your leg. And Kakashi copied it—which, I didn’t think he coulddomedical jutsu?”

“He can’t, as far as I know,” Genma said. “He might have copied that jutsu, but his execution got radically different results from Iebara.”

“How?”

“Tousaki and I are still mostly in one piece: I think the biggest piece of Iebara left would have fit in one hand.”

Raidou paused for the edge of a second, taking in Genma’s words. “That’d do it.”

Genma snorted, but a misstep and an abrupt jolt of pain killed his laugh. Raidou steadied him with a quick grab and a tighter hold on Genma’s waist, making Genma acutely conscious of the bandages and abrasions covering the captain’s shoulders.

They passed the cells, one occupied, one empty. The Mist captain was huddled on the floor, wrapped in a blanket. She needed medical treatment, but Raidou came first. And Genma himself. If he’d been her prisoner, he had no doubt her priorities would have put him last, too.

Raidou helped Genma limp into the tiny kitchen, where Katsuko’s clones were making merry havoc with tea. Two clones were encouraging a third, who was spooning sugar into a pot steaming over a kerosene burner. The contents were a murky green—an open canister of powdered matcha suggested the reason. They snapped to attention when Genma and Raidou entered. One of them grabbed a wooden crate and shoved it at them while another produced a folding chair with a triumphant look.

Raidou thanked them both and helped Genma sit, but it still took a moment for Genma’s heart rate to slow and his visual field to widen back to normal. Which was why he needed that IV. Dammit.

While he caught his breath, Raidou reached across, gently freed the IV bag from Genma’s belt, and stood up to tack it into the wall with a kunai, where gravity would actually help it work. The thin swirl of crimson flushed out of the line, washed back into Genma’s veins. Ringer’s wasn’t a substitute for real blood, but it was a good bandaid.

When Raidou sat back down, Katsuko’s third clone offered Genma a battered mug of swampy-looking tea.

“Why would a safehouse bunker have matcha?” Genma asked, staring at it. “No, never mind, It’s good. Tea is tea, and caffeine is caffeine.” He took a cautious sip. Sweet enough to make his teeth ache. “That’s probably enough sugar,” he told the cooking clone.

Raidou leaned past the clones to give the ‘tea’ a dubious look. His eyes lifted to a cluster of mismatched cups and mugs stacked upside down on top of another crate, and visibly made the decision to inflict the concoction on other people. “Take a mug each through for Tousaki and Ueno—she’s probably not asleep yet.”

Two clones immediately started ladling tea.

“f*ckuda can have one, too,” Raidou added.

All three clones turned puzzled faces towards him.

“Kiri-nin,” explained Raidou.

One of the clones offered a mug of tea to Raidou, but he shook his head at it, earning a glowering look of reproach from the rejected clone. He shooed it away with the other clone that had gone to deliver Katsuko and Ryouma’s tea.

“It’s not as bad as it looks, taichou,” Genma said, sipping the syrupy tea. The clones had put in at least as much of the matcha powder as they had sugar. “It’s sweet, but good and strong. Bunker tea. They made it like they were making coffee.”

Raidou grimaced. “Kind of… bit my tongue earlier. I was thinking I’d stick to cold. Water’s good enough.”

That explained the thick edge to Raidou’s voice—Genma’d thought it was just fatigue, not a clumsy, swollen tongue. “Open your mouth and let me see?” he said. “You can sit on the crate.”

The lone remaining clone leaned in, evidently just as interested in Raidou’s medical treatment as Genma was.

“Didn’t one of you go to find a radio?” Genma asked it. “Go find them. And the radio. Taichou and I don’t need an audience.”

The clone heaved a deep sigh and made a face so distraught Genma had to laugh. It hauled itself upright and shuffled slowly out of the room, lasering injured looks over its shoulder.

“If I wasn’t so tired, and that wasn’t a clone, I’d make it run laps for insubordination,” Genma said.

“Ueno will be so pleased she was right,” Raidou observed.

“Giving me grief about obeying an order isn’t the same as sneaking a peek while I’m in the shower,” Genma said. “But yeah.” He peered into Raidou’s mouth and found a double set of clotted lacerations on either side of Raidou’s tongue. The tissue was swollen and red around the teeth marks.

“Did this on purpose, or did you get hit with an uppercut?”

Raidou’s eyes flicked down and away for an instant. “Genjutsu,” he said in a low voice.

’Crap at genjutsu,’was how Raidou had described himself to Genma back when they’d first met about Team Six. Judging by the wounds, Raidou had to have bitten down at least twice…

“Did it work?” Genma asked.

“Well, I’m not dead,” Raidou told him. Which wasn’t exactly a yes. “Did have to sacrifice your senbon for a self-stab, though. Ueno already looked at it.”

Genma sucked his lips in. “Good thing I didn’t give you a poisoned one.”

Raidou’s watered-down smirk of agreement was cut with something darker.

It begged a question: if Raidou had used the senbon to break a genjutsu on himself, how had he killed the infant target Genma’d given it to him for? Had he even made that kill, or had it fallen on Katsuko?

“Stick it out again, I’ll take the swelling down,” Genma said. “This isn’t terrible, and tongues generally heal well on their own, but no sense you being in pain.”

When he’d finished Raidou’s tongue, he moved on to inspect the knot at Raidou’s temple. There was some bruising and swelling above the ear, and a second tender spot on the opposite side of Raidou’s head.

“This the head injury Ueno mentioned?”

“Feels like it,” Raidou said, wincing away from Genma’s touch. “If you can do anything about the headache, you’ll be my new favorite person.”

“I can do that,” Genma told him. “And not just because I want to be your favorite, either.” He closed his hands carefully over the two bruises and pulsed chakra in, feeling for the clean echo that meant no fractures. “Ueno said you dented a building, and you didn’t really answer before, so I have to ask: any loss of consciousness or memory? Even just getting a little zoned out counts. And any head injury symptoms now besides headache?”

Raidou was quiet for a moment, inwardly focused. “No symptoms right now,” he said carefully. “Nothing at the time that read as dangerous, except maybe a little dizziness.” Before Genma could follow up on that evasive eddy, Raidou quirked a smile. “If you want to quiz me on everything, would it be easier just to take my shirt off now?”

“Actually, yes,” Genma said. “I should probably check under your bandages, too. Not that I don’t trust you and Ueno.”

Raidou snorted and sat back to peel himself out of arm-guards, gloves, armor, and shirt. He folded them up fairly neatly and set them aside, moving with the slow care of a man whose bruises were starting to assert their dominance.

There was a spectacular one wrapping the left half of Raidou’s ribcage.

“Wow,” Genma said. “Good thing I didn’t put all my chakra into fixing your headache yet. Those feel broken to you? How’s your breathing?” If there were significant lung contusions, Raidou’d probably be coughing and breathless, but with minor damage, the adrenaline focus of managing a mission might have kept the impairment beneath his notice.

Raidou glanced down and raised a hand to give his ribs a thorough, professional mashing. “Just bruised, I think,” he said, pushing hard enough that if there weren’t fractures grating under the skin yet, there would be soon.

Genma cringed. “Try not to make it wor—”

“Maybe a crack?” Raidou said, ignoring Genma. He dropped his bandaged hands from the spreading bruise and held them out. “But I’d rather you look at my hands first.” There was a subtle tension in his voice, with good reason, Genma guessed. A ninja with crippled hands was looking at the end of his career.

He leaned forward, ignoring the throb in his thigh when he put even a little weight on the outstretched leg, and cast a first-level concussion-mending jutsu. When Raidou’s eyelids flickered and he took a slightly deeper breath, Genma let the jutsu drop.

Raidou yawned almost immediately. That was a good sign. As a field medic, Genma’d seen it often enough he’d learned to rely on it—when pain was relieved, the patient relaxed and often yawned without even realizing they’d done so.

“Feel better?” Genma asked, knowing the answer was yes.

“Mm,” Raidou said. “Thanks.”

“Good,” Genma said, pleased. “Hands?” He found his bandage scissors and started snipping the gauze and tape from Raidou’s left hand, finger by finger. When he got everything unwrapped, he took a minute to study the damage. Despite the thick scars from years of taijutsu toughening, every knuckle was flayed raw, and there were dark swellings over the heads of the metacarpals.

Genma raised his eyebrows. “Minimal cuts?”

“Minimal-ish?” Raidou offered guiltily.

“Let’s have the other one.” When Genma’d repeated the de-bandaging, he found Raidou’s right hand even worse than the left. “Ueno did a good job bandaging these,” he said. There was something whitish gleaming in one of the deeper lacerations. Genma frowned. “This looks like it’s down to bone.”

Raidou squinted at the injury in the dim light from the overhead bulb. “I don’t think that’s mine,” he admitted.

“Ah,” Genma said, nodding with a medic’s practiced reserve. “Well. That’s potentially both better and worse.” Better if it wasn’t Raidou’s own bones denuded of flesh. Worse if there were shards of infective material lodged deep in the wounds. “I need to irrigate and flush the wounds, debride them, get all the foreign matter out—it’s going to hurt. Do you want me to do a nerve block, or should I just give you something for pain before I start?”

Raidou shook his head with an irritated scowl. “Don’t waste the chakra. I’ve taken painkillers. Just do whatever you need to.”

’Ask the captain,’Ueno’s clone had said, when he’d asked if there was more to the story.

“Namiashi-taichou—” Genma started, and hesitated. It was hard to know your place on a new team. If it had been Hajime, Genma would have asked straight out. And he’d have known exactly what that grim, inward-focused expression on his captain’s face meant.

Katsuko’s clone came back at last, with its twin. “No radio,” one reported. The second craned its neck to look at the gory desecration of Raidou’s knuckles.

Genma swallowed a curse. “Go get me another IV setup,” he told the gawking one. Maybe it was his tone of voice, or maybe it was something in Raidou’s face, but this time it obeyed without hesitation.

“Figures,” Raidou muttered. He addressed the remaining clone. “Pick two more of your friends; I want three messages run out on foot. Uotani Temple, Akasugi Ridge, and Porei Cove are the closest safehouses, and I know the first two are definitely staffed. Porei was having turnover, but it’s worth trying.”

Those were the three Genma would have named, too. Everything else was too far to be worth the run.

“Tell ’em—” Raidou started.

The clone rattled off the distress code immediately, sharp edged with Katsuko’s professional focus:Code Smoldering Branch. ANBU Team Six. All injured, three seriously. Enemy ninja engaged; no escapees. One prisoner. Evac needed. Mission successful.

“Might want to lead with that last bit,” Raidou advised. “Perfect otherwise. Kill yourselves if you hit trouble or deliver the message, so Ueno knows.”

The clone saluted and turned just as its twin arrived with the IV bag. Genma took the bag, and the first clone took its clone twin. “Code Smouldering Branch,” it said, and the second clone nodded and swung into step with it.

When they had the kitchen to themselves again, Genma picked up where he’d left off. Clear-headed, or bull-headed, he wasn’t sure which, but right now he was Raidou’s medic more than his lieutenant. “No one gets in a fight so bad they end up with the other guy’s bones embedded in the wounds without a really good reason. Let me at least numb them up with a local.”

“I don’t want it,” Raidou said flatly.

Genma didn’t say anything, but he didn’t move to start cleaning the wounds, either.

“I earned ’em,” Raidou gritted out at last. “And I was stupid about doing it. Next time, I want a good reason to think twice.”

There it was. The edge of whatever had gone so wrong on Raidou and Katsuko’s half of the mission. Or maybe the edge of the things that had gone right.

“Alright,” Genma said gently. “But if you’re in a lot of pain when I finish, you won’t be focused. And I think you’re going to want some focus, taichou.”

“If I couldn’t focus around a little pain, I wouldn’t be doing this job,” Raidou said. Still flat, like he meant what he said and he was done arguing. He held his hands up for Genma.

Trying one more time would be pushing it too far. Butnottrying felt like a betrayal of Genma’s responsibility as a medic. “I could giv—”

“Just get on with it, Shiranui,” Raidou snapped.

“Captain,” Genma said.Over the line, Shiranui. You should listen to your instincts sometime.

He sterilized a pair of tweezers with a swipe of an alcohol pad, opened the valve on the IV tubing, and let the Ringer’s solution sluice the wounds. Raidou held his hands under the flow with an iron will and not even a flinch. Not until Genma started digging out the deeply embedded debris. Then Raidou’s breath hitched a little.

Genma glanced up to find Raidou’s face tense and pale, eyes fixed in grim determination.

So much for being the captain’s favorite person.

Genma wasn’t wrong: it hurt.

It wasn’t the good kind of pain either, like sunburn and healing bones and anything you took in the middle of a fight that didn’t kill you. This was cold and sharp, with no adrenaline to blunt the edge. But that was sort of the point. Raidou had lost himself tonight, drowned control in rage and wrath and a lot of blood; he should feel the aftermath now.

He’d call it masochism, if he was actually enjoying it.

Penance was closer.

Genma finished picking the few missed bone chips and blackened specks of who-knew-what, and moved on to debridement. Thatdefinitelyhurt. Hands had a lot of nerves, and no system built in to gate pain; the body liked to know exactly what was going on with its most important tools. Raidou let out a slow breath.

Genma paused. Then, silently, continued.

Raidou watched the sun-streaked head bent low, the bottom lip caught between white teeth in lieu of a senbon, the tired eyes still managing to focus, and thought,I’m being an asshole. Penance was something you did yourself; not something you dragged an exhausted, injured medic into against his better judgement. But the anger was still there, flickering around the edges, and Raidou couldn’t make himself apologize.

Debridement gave way to a second round of Ringer’s-flushing, which stained the dirt floor faintly red around their feet. Genma wrapped glowing fingers around Raidou’s hands, and healing flooded in. Oozing blood sucked back, replaced by knitting pink flesh and black scabs, and the odd tingle of infection cleansing. About a week’s worth of healing, if Raidou was any judge. Genma let go before the wounds were closed, but what he left behind looked significantly better. He packed ointment and clean gauze over Raidou’s knuckles, and bandaged everything tightly.

Then there was the rest.

Raidou sat still while Genma went over Katsuko’s handiwork, peeling back bandages to look underneath. Most of it passed muster; it wasn’t Katsuko’s first rodeo, either. A few long wooden splinters got yanked—remainder of being blown through a wall, Raidou guessed—and Genma spared a handful of green sparks to stitch healing into the nastier burns and whatever damage was lurking in Raidou’s ribs.

“Cracked,” Genma muttered, pressing on his side.

There was a faint shift under skin, like bone bending backwards. It stung viciously, then settled. Genma gave a grunt of satisfaction.

“Anything I missed?” he asked.

“Senbon,” Raidou said.

“Show me.”

The puncture was tiny but it went deep into the side of Raidou’s thigh, more like a syringe mark than anything weapons-related. Genma gave it a narrow look, and Raidou could guess what he was thinking: infection was a risk, especially if the stabbing item wasn’t clean. Raidou didn’t object when Genma splayed a hand over his leg and shoved healing in. When the lieutenant pulled back, only a sealed pinkish dot remained.

After everything else, that seemed a little anticlimactic.

But the healing had done its job. Raidou felt scoured, stripped-clean—and steadier inside his own skin. His hands were a solid, red-edged ache from wrists to fingertips, throbbing like a migraine beneath the bandages, but that was good:real, real, real, no genjutsu here. His hair was plastered down with sweat and his shirt stuck to him when he pulled it back on. He badly needed a shower.

But he felt better.

And Genma looked worse. The lieutenant swayed once on his folding chair, grey-faced, nearly pitching off. Raidou snapped out a hand and steadied him, jaw clenching when he found Genma’s chakra burned down to a simmer. Not dangerously low, not yet, but getting close.

“Hang on,” Raidou said, as Genma blinked hazily through blackening eyes. He’d healed Raidou’s damn tongue, but he hadn’t bothered with his own broken nose yet.

“Mm-hm,” Genma managed, faintly breathless.

Raidou cracked a second soldier pill between his teeth. Salt-and-steel flooded his mouth, followed closely by the hot chakra slap. He waited just long enough for the energy to hit his coils, then laid a hand over Genma’s cold forehead. A forehead-to-forehead transfer was useful for exchanging chakra fast, but Genma was on the edge of his reserves and Raidou’s chakra control wasn’t exactly subtle; letting it trickle through a palm was better.

He pulled the energy up, focused it, and poured it carefully,carefullyinto the access point between Genma’s eyebrows, where Buddhists believed the third eye lived. Genma sighed softly, shoulders slumping. His eyes fluttered closed, dark lashes making an inky sweep against bruised, pale skin.

As Raidou kept the channel open, funneling chakra through as slowly as he could, Genma’s cheeks gained color. The paper-white lips pinked up, and his nail-beds lost a little of their faint bluish edge, fingertips warming. Chakra helped blood move, and Genma had given up too much of both.

A blood transfusion would help, but they weren’t exactly flush with sources. Raidou was AB-positive, Ryouma was B-positive: both poison to Genma’s A-positive. Kakashi and Katsuko were O-negative, universal donors, but Kakashi wasn’t in shape to donate anything, and Katsuko had broken bones and a chakra system that would gladly knock her flat if she used too many reserves—she was already struggling to eat enough.

Which left the Kiri-ninja.

If Genma got worse, Raidou would tap her for everything she had and lose no sleep over it.

But he didn’t think they were quite there yet. Genma had blood pills, food in his stomach, fresh chakra in his coils, and an IV spilling fluids into his veins. If he could hold on, it was safer than filling him up with unknown, risky blood. For now.

Genma opened his eyes; they were tired, but less dizzy. “Thanks, taichou,” he mumbled. “Didn’t mean to drop myself so low. I misjudged that.”

“You wouldn’t be the first,” Raidou said. As far as he knew, even Konoha’s medical elite had a rich history of falling face-down on battlefields and in hospitals, and Genma wasn’t in their shiny echelons. It was just a hazard of the job.

“Yeah,” Genma said. “And I wasjustlecturing Tousaki about conserving his chakra—” He stopped mid-sentence. Then, with the particular skill that came from battle-experience and a lot of practice operating on vapors, snapped himself back together, eyes going sharp. “We need to talk about Tousaki.”

Raidou blinked. Ryouma was the least injured of anyone. “Why?”

“He wasn’t okay when we finished our mission,” Genma said. “I took the grandparents and the teens, but the teenage girl got away from me. Tousaki and Hatake had to deal with her.”

Ah,Raidou thought.

“Hatake handled it well enough, but Tousaki’s never had a mission like this,” Genma continued, clearly determined to get his full report out before he fell over. “I was going to talk to him on the run back here, but we picked up the Kiri ninja’s signatures before we’d even left city limits. I never got the chance.”

That was ANBU missions for you—always ready to deal more harm before you’d recovered from the last piece.

“Not okay how?” Raidou asked.

“Unsettled? Unhappy?” Genma said, with the grimace of a man who wanted better words. He straightened his face out immediately; that’d probably jarred his nose. “He barely spoke in complete sentences in the immediate aftermath, and his energy was off. If I had to guess, it didn’t sit well with him having to kill two—no, three—defenseless civilians, no matter how corrupt they were. Especially the daughter. She was just collateral.” His eyes dropped to the ground. “I’m sorry I let her get past me. She had a tanto we didn’t know about; she got my clone with it.”

“So long as she didn’t get you with it,” Raidou said, dismissing guilt they didn’t need. “Can’t be helped; I wouldn’t linger on it. You said everything else was a success?”

“Complete success.” Genma looked up again. “All family members in the house are dead, and the corpses identifiable. Tsuto went last—the rookies both hit him with their special jutsu. We emptied his treasury and found documents that look like financial records of the coup plot. Intel should be delighted.” He took a breath and picked up his abandoned cup of massacred matcha, cradling it between long-fingered hands. “Killed twelve guards, left the rest of the house staff alive, torched the interior but made sure the structure stayed upright and the bodies weren’t touched. And I burned Konoha’s mark into the front door.”

“Good,” Raidou said, and meant it.

It wasn’t hard to picture what the aftermath looked like. He’d seen Kakashi’s jutsu in action; Ryouma’s, too. Lightning and rot targeted at one body, with slaughtered teenagers stacked into the equation—that was a rough day for a veteran, let alone a rookie on his second mission out.

Kakashi, at least, was too unconscious to care. It was even odds whether he did anyway.

Raidou rubbed a hand over his mouth and tried to bludgeon his brain into better working order. “You think he’s a break risk, or just struggling a little? He seemed together enough with Hatake and Ueno.”

Though Ryouma’s clone had certainly been intent on staring f*ckuda down, and clones were always a good mirror for the mind that had created them.

Genma’s eyes closed briefly. “I don’t know. I don’t know him well enough to know. He sharpened up and dealt with the fight with the Kiri ninja well, but he also almost got killed during it.” He paused again. “I should probably tell you that part, too, huh?”

“…yes.”

“Iebara took blood from me and Tousaki to attack Hatake.” Genma touched a ragged red scar on his right shoulder, which bore all the rough hallmarks of a field-healing. “Tousaki and I regrouped while Hatake kept Iebara engaged. We managed a coordinated attack on Iebara, but he was just a better fighter. He almost snapped my neck, and he tried to drown Tousaki with blood he’d stolen from me. Nearly succeeded. I had to use a medical jutsu to pull the blood back out of his lungs.”

By the end of that little speech, Genma was breathing hard. Since he hadn’t mentionedpulling bloodout of his own lungs, that was probably normal blood-loss working against him—it was hard to get enough oxygen when you were low on the red cells needed to carry it.

Raidou took a slow, deliberate breath, feeling healed ribs flex with a lingering ache, and then another. Genma’s eyes flickered, something wry lighting up the odd gold of his irises, but he copied Raidou without needing a more obvious nudge, slowing and settling his breathing.

“This’ll be the second mission Tousaki’s lungs have taken a knock,” Raidou said. “We need to watch him for infection again?”

Genma tipped his head neutrally, neither a yes or a no. “I got the blood out less than five minutes after he inhaled it, and it wasn’t putrid like the slime from his jutsu, but there’s always some risk. When I checked him, he sounded clear. He’ll probably be alright, but I’ll keep a close eye on him.”

When they were done here, Raidou suspected Genma had about enough energy left to get back to the bunkroom and collapse, but he admired the man’s dedication. And at least pneumonia wasn’t something Ryouma couldhide.

“Tell me how you won,” Raidou said.

“With effort,” Genma said, dry. “It took a couple of high level jutsu from Tousaki and me just to give Hatake an opening with Iebera, but the rest of the Kiri team got involved when it looked like we were actually getting the upper hand. If they’d stayed out of it, I’m pretty sure Hatake’d be in better shape.”

“Since he’s got a Bingo Book kill under his belt, I doubt he’ll care.”Assuming he wakes back up.“Did Iebara bleed him, too?”

“I don’t think so, but I didn’t see the end of the fight,” Genma said, sounding frustrated. “He certainly had a lot of cuts—looked like senbon—but his vitals didn’t reflect a significant blood loss. When Iebara yanked blood, he yanked a lot.”

“That’s something.” Raidou managed a faint, dark smile. “And Hatake yanked him back, even if he flatlined himself to do it. He’s going to be insufferable about that when he’s up again.”

Genma snorted quietly. “Probably.” His eyes darkened. “But Tousaki—”

“Had a bastard mission and a bastard fight on top of it, and a teammate that dropped himself. If that’s making you feel guilty, it’s probably making him feel worse,” Raidou braced his elbows on his knees. “He did okay after the last mission, but he was also unconscious for most of it—which is a habit I’m really thinking we want to break in our rookies.”

“That’d be a good place to start,” Genma said.

Raidou rubbed gritty eyes and blinked hard. “Later, then. For now—you need to sleep. I’m going to be wired for a bit. If Tousaki stays up, and I’m guessing he will since he just mainlined the same amount of caffeine as I did—” one of the secondary benefits of soldier pills, “—I’ll see if he wants to talk. Or we can be soldierly and silent at each other. So long as he’s keeping most of it together, he’s in better shape than the rest of us anyway.”

Genma gave him the sharp, light-eyed look Raidou was starting to recognize as the immediate precursor for a health check question. “Are you—”

“I need to tell you about my side of the mission,” Raidou interrupted.

Genma settled back in his dusty chair, bracing his shoulders against the wall and stretching his bad leg carefully out in front of him. He folded his arms loosely and nodded. “I’m listening.”

“Thirty second version,” Raidou said. “We hit Kiri-ninja from the start. They’d had time to set up. You already know about the genjutsu. They… got under my skin. The upshot is that I killed two, Ueno got the rest, and we took care of the mission objective. Downside: the house burned down to the studs, Ueno took unnecessary injuries, and I might’ve… broken part of the port.”

Genma blinked. “Broken theport?”

“Just the shipping docks,” Raidou said, studying the wall. “Only half of it. And a couple of piers.” He scratched the back of his neck. “And three or four ships.”

Genma digested that for a silent moment. “Masaaki’s house was near the docks. Was it… Did they take the fight outside?”

Sometimes Raidou could wish for a less intuitive lieutenant.

“One of them did,” he said. “We— They took us for a pretty dance with illusions. Made Ueno think she was chasing the parents when she was really going after a clone. Mademethink—” He stopped. Restarted with the important details, and only those. “I killed the baby in the house. The last Kiri-ninja knocked me back under genjutsu before I could get the little girl, and evacuated the family down to the port. Ueno got me out, but took her collarbone injury doing it. I caught the Kiri-ninja before he could get the family on a ship, but—”

He could still feel the anger. Cold and tired now, like a fist of lead in his stomach, but he remembered how it had burned. How the whole world had gone red and black before it had just gone away.

He’d done that in the war, when there’d been nothing but blood and fumes and corpses where his friends used to be, and no end in sight. It’d been easier to fall deep down inside himself, to the place where wrath andf*ck youlived, and let it loose on people he didn’t care about killing.

He’d gotten very good about not caring, near the end.

But that was then, when control barely mattered. This was now, when it did. And this time, he hadn’t meant to do it.

“I got a little irrational,” he finished, looking up at Genma.

“That can happen,” Genma said calmly, eyes level and steady. “Especially if it was a well-crafted genjutsu.” He unfolded and twisted around to reach for a mug, ladling some of the clones’ tea experiment into it. He handed it to Raidou and sat back. “Wonder what the other teams ran into, seeing as we wrecked a port and took down an unkillable Bingo Book monster.”

Raidou choked on a mouthful of lukewarm green tea syrup. He coughed, whacked himself in the center of the chest—which,ow, Namiashi, don’t do that again—and managed not to sneeze matcha. “If they went bigger than us, they deserve a medal.” He peered down into the mug. “This isgruesome.”

Genma gave a sympathetic wince—and then a second one, when that visibly hurt his nose. They really needed to fix that. “It helps if you pretend it’s shave ice syrup, but yeah. Might be the worst matcha in the history of tea.”

“I think my teeth are buzzing,” Raidou said.

Genma chuckled quietly, and Raidou realized that was it: the lieutenant wasn’t going to push, he was just going to give Raidou terrible hot beverages and silent support. Verbal support even, if you counted that crack about other teams.

Some of whom were probably going home in body bags.

It occurred to Raidou that Yondaime-sama probably wasn’t going to give a good goddamn about the state of anything, so long as Team Six came home breathing.

That was a thought to hang onto.

He slugged the rest of the tea back, because it was sugar and calories and he needed both, and set the mug down. “Bed for you, doc, soon as we get Tousaki to reset your nose. f*ckuda can wait until morning.” Or afternoon. Dawn would be creeping up on them soon. “I’ll give her a look-in to make sure she hasn’t tried to drown herself in her bucket.”

“You should give her another hit of morphine,” Genma said, withdrawing a syrette from his med-kit. He hesitated, then pulled out another. “And you’d better give me one, too.”

The subtext of that was pretty clear:I’m in significant pain and I’d like it to stop now, please.

Wordlessly, Raidou took both syrettes, flipped one around, and punched the needle neatly into the broad muscle of Genma’s good leg. Genma paused, eyebrow lifting, and gave him a mild look that, on another man, would have been aggrieved. “I didn’t meanrightthis second. You could have at least let me finish my tea.”

“Thought I was saving you from it,” Raidou said. He pulled the spent syrette back and clipped the red-flagged empty vial to Genma’s shirt. Visible reminder that he’d taken a dose, since none of them were liable to keep all the facts straight.

Genma threw back the rest of his tea, gave a delicate shudder, and placed his mug carefully on the stamped dirt floor. “I’m starting to see why Ueno doesn’t get the cooking detail.”

“She has other skills.” Raidou pushed himself up, and stooped to haul Genma out of the chair, which folded up with a vicious snap as soon as the lieutenant’s weight lifted free. Genma staggered once, reaching to unhook his IV bag; Raidou steadied him, drawing one of Genma’s lean-muscled arms over his own shoulders. They set off at a slow, hobbled pace back to the bunk-room, where the kids waited.

“Thanks,” Raidou said quietly, halfway there.

Genma’s mouth tilted in a tired, good-natured curve. “Any time.”

Katsuko and Kakashi were both breathing slow and even when the captain and the lieutenant came limping back into the bunk room, but Ryouma pushed himself up on his elbow and craned to see over Kakashi’s blanket-shrouded shoulder. Genma looked a bit better, not quite so pale, though the bruises under his eyes were darkening spectacularly. Raidou had clean bandages on his hands and a questioning lift to his brow.

“Kakashi’s okay,” Ryouma said. A bit too loud; Katsuko stirred and mumbled something, but didn’t rouse.

It was probably safe to move, finally. He slid out from under the blankets, tucked them in against Kakashi’s side, and eased painfully off the ledge. Over-strained muscles had begun to stiffen while he lay still and sleepless under the blankets. He should probably stretch, at some point, but just now the ache felt warranted.

Nothing else hurt, very much. He might have felt better if it did.

He stepped aside for Raidou to ease Genma down into the nest of mattresses and blankets on the ledge. A tin mug was still there, with its coating of green syrup at the bottom. He snatched it hastily out of the way and reported, “Katsuko had her tea and went mostly to sleep. Kakashi hasn’t roused, but he’s getting warmer. Finally stopped shivering about ten minutes ago.”

Katsuko made a thin, fretful sound from her side of the pile of blankets, and pulled them over her head. Apparentlymostlywas still the operative word.

Genma allowed himself to be lowered into the space Ryouma had vacated, and his IV drip spiked to the wall next to Kakashi’s, but he refused to lie down until he’d checked Kakashi’s vitals. Assuring himself that Ryouma could actually tell sleep from death, apparently, or that Ryouma hadn’t decided to kill Kakashi and then lie about it. “Did you give him another chakra burst, or is he holding his own?”

“We’ve just been cuddling, since you left,” Ryouma said, a little too waspishly.

Raidou gave him a quizzical look. Genma dragged up an eyebrow.

Ryouma looked away, and tried to drain the irritation back out of his voice. Genma hadn’t really done anything to earn it. “No, I haven’t transfused him again. He seemed steady. And I don’t want to overload his system, anyway, with his coils all burned like that.”

“Good,” Genma said, sounding pleased enough to forgive Ryouma’s rudeness. “Your chakra must be a good fit for him, if it’s holding steady.” He was wavering with exhaustion, but he still pulled himself together enough to give Ryouma a sharp once-over. “Doing okay yourself?”

“Not sleepy,” Ryouma said. It wasn’t anywhere near answering what Genma’d asked, but it was the best he could manage.

The soldier pills were a valid excuse, anyway. He could blame the jitters and the crankiness on caffeine and chakra-surge, or even on the oversweetened tea Katsuko’s clones had brought. No one’d think it strange if he didn’t sleep for what remained of the night. They’d probably just be grateful there was someone awake to stand watch with the shadow clones.

He should make an effort, even so.

He jerked a thumb at Genma’s bruised face. “You still want that nose set, or wait till we get real medics in?”

Genma winced. “Soonest we could get someone in here is probably six hours, and that’s assuming there’s a medic at one of the other safehouses who could come straight here. More likely they’ll have to send someone from Konoha, and that’s a day and a half…”

He sighed, swallowed, and braced himself, hands splayed over his knees. “You’d better do it. We’ve already waited a little too long as it is. I need to get some of the blood out and take the swelling down first, though. Taichou, you mind bracing me up while we do this? And Tousaki, get some gauze ready. I’m not clotting great. This could be messy.”

It was. There was blood all over Ryouma’s hands by the time they finished, and dripped and spotted over Genma’s shirt and pants. At least it didn’t show on the ANBU blacks. Genma’s nose was straight again, taped down and packed with gauze in place of the ridiculous bandage mustache. His eyes watered from the pain, but he’d refused more meds. He had morphine in him already.

Between the morphine and the exhaustion—compounded by the jutsu he’d used to drain blood from his nose and reduce the swelling—Genma was clearly clinging to consciousness only by the ragged ends. When Raidou eased out from behind him, he slumped down onto his elbows as if his strings had been cut.

“Sleep, lieutenant,” Raidou said, gently. He liberated a couple of blankets from the pile to drape over Genma, giving him a space a little separate from Katsuko and Kakashi. “You’ve done the lion’s share. We’ll take it from here.”

“Thanks, taichou,” Genma mumbled. He managed to get one hand on the edge of the blanket and pull it up to his chin. His eyes focused, bleary, on Ryouma. “Make a medic of you soon enough.”

Ryouma’s chest tightened.Still?

“Don’t tease me,” Raidou said, before Ryouma could speak. “After today, I’d pay solid gold for a second medic.” He gave Genma’s blanket-swaddled foot a rough parting pat, before he shifted around to the other side of the platform to check on Katsuko.

“Gonna get rich,” Genma mumbled, and went out like a burnt-out light.

Katsuko was nearly there, too. She huddled down further into the blankets when Raidou tried to ease them back, and then kicked at him. “Taiiiichouuu.”

“Sorry,” he said softly, smoothing her hair. “Just had to check. Go to sleep.”

Katsuko huffed and pushed her head against his hand, like a sleepily offended cat. Then she burrowed back underneath the covers, wrapping herself around Kakashi. Two thin fingers crept up to the edge of the blankets to pull the pile over her head again.

Raidou smiled fondly down at the moth-bitten mound, and reached across her to give Kakashi’s spiky head a careful ruffle, too. Then he pushed himself stiffly off the edge of the platform, glanced at Ryouma, and tipped his head toward the door.

Out,at last.

Ryouma wiped the blood off on his pant legs and followed Raidou out into the passageway. Steel-caged lightbulbs flickered with an ugly yellow glow, catching on the armor of the two kage bunshin on guard outside the cell and glinting in the eyes of the woman who huddled wrapped in her emergency blanket, watching her watchers.

Too many deaths already tonight. Why wasshestill alive?

Raidou stopped in front of the bars. Katsuko’s clone glanced up at him and then shifted away, clearing the door. Ryouma’s shadow clone kept its tense crouch. The chakra he’d poured into it was barely an ember by now. It wouldn’t last much longer.

“Get me an IV,” Raidou said to the clones. “And the spare mattress, and some clean clothes— there was a stack with the towels. Bring one of those, too.”

Katsuko’s clone nodded and ducked away down the hall. Ryouma’s took a moment longer, and a long cold stare at the Kiri nin, before it unfolded. It went back into the bunk room and returned a moment later lugging a rolled blanket and the sole cot mattress they hadn’t been able to fit on the sleeping ledge. Raidou put a hand on the trigger to the cell door’s automatic lock.

“Why?” Ryouma demanded. The first word was the fissure in the dam; the rest came tumbling after it, like uprooted trees in the flood. “She’d have killed us. She was about to slice Kakashi’shead offwhen I stopped her. The lieutenant should have let her die. Why the hell are you helping her now?”

Raidou paused, with his hand still on the lock. “How many of her team did you kill today?”

“One. The lieutenant got another. And Kakashi got Iebara.” Ryouma gritted his teeth. “It could have beennone, if she’d kept a leash on her damn team. Or if she hadn’t sicced the rest of them on us when she realized we could take down Iebara.”

“I got two,” Raidou said. There was a dangerous glint in his dark eyes, but his voice was cold and perfectly level. “Ueno took down another two. Don’t you think someone should carry the news back to Kiri, what happens when they try to cut us down in our own land?”

He had a point. Ryouma kicked the dirt floor at the base of the bars. “You should’ve taken the lieutenant’s deal,” he told the Kiri nin.

Her mouth tightened, but she kept silent.

Katsuko’s kage bunshin came back. Raidou opened the door and stood aside for the clones to lug the supplies inside. Ryouma’s clone kicked the mattress into the corner. Katsuko’s rigged up an IV in the woman’s good arm with ungentle hands, then helped her strip out of her damp, bloody uniform and into clean—and weapon-free—clothes. Oversized Konoha blues were apparently all the safehouse had to offer. Katsuko’s clone hacked the sleeve off the shirt with a kunai, and left the bandaged stump of the severed arm poking through. The bandage was spotted with blood, but not badly enough to be worth changing yet.

Ryouma’s clone gathered up the woman’s gear in the towel—damp and bloody from toweling her down—and hauled it out. Raidou cast a swift glance over the jumble and ordered another of Katsuko’s clones out of the bunkroom to search through it, piece by piece. The clone hunkered down in the hallway. Ryouma’s bunshin crouched down in its old spot just outside the bars, while Katsuko’s first clone tugged the woman over onto the mattress, dropped the new blanket over her, and then slipped out.

Raidou went in, instead, ducking his head to clear the low iron frame of the door. He had a morphine syrette in his hand. He crouched down by the mattress, every move slow and clear, and injected the syrette through her pants into the meat of her thigh. Eye to eye with her, he asked, “Anything you want to tell me?”

“f*ckuda Takedo,” she said. Her voice still rasped with pain. “Kirigakure jounin, registration 0075393-Bravo.” She met Raidou’s gaze, steely-eyed. “Still planning on stealing my blood, Konoha?”

“Your teammate took ours,” Ryouma said.

She swung a narrow look at him. “And yours killed him for it.”

“And you’d have killedhim, and I should have killed you. Cut the sh*t, Kiri.” His voice, and his hands, shook with fury. He gripped the cell bars. The chakra limiters stung his hands like ragged little thorns. “Or I can finish what I started.”

f*ckuda smiled at Raidou, thinly, a gleam of sharp teeth. “Looks like you don’t have much control of your team either, captain.”

Raidou put out a hand behind him, flat-palmed, lowering:Calm down.His cold, steady expression didn’t flicker. He didn’t look around.

“Maybe I’ll have the time to learn,” he said, very quietly, “since mine are still alive.”

f*ckuda’s lips thinned. She said nothing.

“You won’t be harmed while you’re here,” Raidou said more briskly, “unless you try to escape. But I don’t think you’re that stupid. When this is all over, Konoha is going to want a word with you, but they’ll probably send you home alive. Until then, try not to goad anyone into killing you.”

“Doesn’t seem like I’d have to try very hard with this one,” she murmured.

Ryouma bit down on the inside of his cheek.

And Raidou still didn’t look around, as though he trusted Ryouma to obey, as though there were never any possibility that Ryouma might not listen. “He’s had a long day,” he said, and stood, straightening in a long dangerous line of muscle and power. “But he already got your arm, so that’ll probably hold him for a while.”

He left the cell, kicking the door shut behind him. The automatic lock whirred, and the chakra wards brightened. Raidou clapped Ryouma once on the shoulder and headed across the hall into the kitchen.

There was a folding chair there now, fallen on the floor in a patch of reddish mud, and a creaky-looking wooden crate. The battered pot the clones had left on the extinguished burner now contained a boiled-thick sludge of the oversweetened green tea. Ryouma looked for a drain to tip it out.

The modernized plumbing in the bathroom hadn’t extended to the kitchen alcove. There was no sink, but there was a pump over a small concrete drain in the very back corner, and a large flat-bottomed plastic basin with a small tray of yellow bar-soap beside.

His hands were almost steady again, though they’d begun to blister across the palms where the chakra limiters had bitten him. He squeezed his fingers into fists, and the pain helped, a little.

“She knows our faces now,” he said, finally. “She already knew Kakashi’s name. Probably from his stupid hair.”

“Maybe we’ll stuff him into a hood for the next mission,” Raidou said. He crouched by the wooden crate, fitting together the remnants of a well-plundered med kit. It took Ryouma a moment to identify it as Genma’s. “Though his jutsu aren’t exactly subtle. Sometimes I wonder why they bother trying to make us anonymous.”

“I got the impression it was so we wouldn’t go glory-hounding.” Ryouma leaned on the pump to get water flowing. “Also that whoever put the bathroom in this place didn’t bother retrofitting the kitchen. How hard can it be to put in a tap? When they putmein charge of designing safehouses, mine are gonna be a lot better…”

“Stock ’em with doctors, for a start.” Raidou dropped the restored kit on a ramshackle steel-sheet counter and leaned against it.

He was near enough to touch, if both of them reached out. Ryouma could hear him breathing.

The air smelled of blood and sweat and antiseptic, lingering curry, grassy tea. Too familiar, from too many days and nights spent crammed in a bunker like this, binding up injuries and waiting for new orders that would send them out to kill or die.

They hadn’t always waited alone. There were always dark corners, narrow closets, space enough for a frantic tumble, vicious with adrenaline and relief.We’re alive, we made it through.And then, later, bar bathrooms and hotels and bedrooms after other missions, the bad ones, the ones where not everyone came back, or came back whole.

Some of those missions had been worse than this one, but not many.

He bent over the pump and tried to force his mind away. Maybe he could make an excuse for ten minutes alone in the bathroom, later. Or maybe he could just have some damn self-control for once in his life, hole up and hold out until he could get home and find someone with warm hands and an eye-crinkling smile. It wasn’t like his own blistered right hand and the cold air against his skin would do much good for him right now—

“Are you okay?” Raidou asked, quite near.

Ryouma stopped pumping.

His blisters burned. One of them had burst. He closed his hand tighter on the long handle of the pump, but the pain had stopped helping. He couldn’t think of anything flippant, or angry, or strong to say. Only: “What would you do if I weren’t?”

“Ask what you need,” Raidou said.

As if it were just that simple. Ryouma closed his eyes. “What if I told you that I strangled a woman in front of her husband, and I did it slow? And when her daughter saw what I’d done, I cut her throat. And we made the man listen to his son being murdered, and then I rotted his belly open and Kakashi tore out his heart. And then we robbed him, and set his house on fire.”

His voice was shaking. He stopped. Opened his eyes, crouched, and scooped a handful of water from the basin. He drank, and splashed his face. Staring at the packed-dirt wall, he said, “When I came back from a bad mission, in the war or after, first thing I used to do was go looking for sex. Rough or gentle or anything, I didn’t care. So long’s I wasn’t alone. So long’s I could forget what I’d done and just remember—” He broke off. Water dripped from his hands.

Cloth rustled behind him. The shift of weight, long limbs folding up. Raidou, sitting down. Saying, very steadily: “Would that help you now?”

Ryouma watched another droplet of water hit the basin, and the concentric rings spreading out. “I wish it could.”

Raidou waited.

“But I don’t want to get kicked off the team. Or for you to leave. I don’t want to mess things up any more than I already have. We’ve got this one thing, it’s going to begood,and if I screwed it up by screwing around—”

He thought of Genma.Make a medic of you soon enough.

Katsuko, laughing.I love you,andI’ll protect you.

Kakashi.That was perfect.

He closed his eyes again. “So. I’m not getting it. So let’s pretend I’m okay for a little while longer.”

Raidou looked at the tight, miserable line of Ryouma’s broad shoulders and thought,That’s not gonna cut it.

They’d already bypassed soldierly and silent by a long stretch.

“C’mere,” he said.

Ryouma’s dark head came up, like a sudden reprieve, but he stopped without turning. “You sure that’s a good idea, taichou?”

“I really do,” Raidou said firmly. “Come over here, Ryouma.”

Ryouma hesitated for a fractional moment, barely a beat for a civilian, but enough time for a shinobi to decide whether to fight, flee, or truce. Then he rocked back on his heels and straightened up. The distance between them was only a pace; Ryouma covered it in a quick stride, hesitated again, and folded down into a wary tailor’s seat when Raidou waved him to the floor.

Face-to-face, with less than an arm’s length between them, it felt like the start of a negotiation, or the beginning of circle story time. Raidou had to lift his chin very slightly, accounting for Ryouma’s greater height.

It had been a while since he’d noticed that.

“The first time we met,” he said, which was a better sidestep then:so, the last time we had sex. “You remember what my face looked like?”

Ryouma’s expression turned puzzled. “Beat up, a little,” he said. “Split lip. Black eye. Strong.”

Raidou hadn’t been angling for that last one but it was nice to hear, even if it was a reminder that the ground was laced with landmines. “I was fresh off a mission. Weapons developer in Kumo was getting just a little too dangerous, I guess, since someone paid to wipe his lab, his business partners, and both his sons off the map. Big fire, lots of bodies.”

“I remember that,” Ryouma said slowly. “It was on the news. Enshou factory.”

“That’s the one. I think they had some kind of exploding powder in the works.” Raidou shrugged. “Took the place up like a bonfire, anyway. And after that I came home, showered the blood off, went out again, and found you. I know what wanting to forget looks like.”

Ryouma was silent for a moment. “I thought it was probably something like that.”

There was something faintly brittle in his voice, behind the careful construction of a still face, and Raidou thought,I hope I didn’t just screw that up.He didn’t want to drag up all the emotions of that one good night and spread them around now, when Ryouma was rocky and clinging to old habits, and Raidou wasn’t exactly steady either. But he didn’t want Ryouma to walk away with the idea that it had been nothing, just a roll with a forgettable stranger. Ryouma had left an impression. He wasbuiltto leave impressions.

And neither of those were helpful avenues of thought.

“Point is,” Raidou said, trying to find it again. “I’ve been there, most of us have, and there’s no shame in it. And if you tell me right now that sex is the only way to get you through this mission and home, I’ll listen, because shutting you down is probably going to end up with your kunai through that woman’s head. And I’d like to avoid more bodies today. I’ve met my quota.” He looked at the hard-cut lines of Ryouma’s face, still edged with old flecks of blood the shower had missed. The dark, strained eyes, and the mouth with its bitten edges. “But first I want you to take a moment and think,reallythink, about what you need, and what’s just a bandaid.”

Ryouma shook his head, slow, and then harder, until his hair flew out in wild spikes, like black glass. “I don’t. I told you. I want it—” He broke off, stumbling. “But want’s different from need. I’ll make it home. I won’t kill her and I won’t crack up and kill anyone else, either. I—”

He stopped again, blistered hands splayed helplessly across his knees.

I don’t know what I need, Raidou filled in.

But Ryouma had already said part of it.So long’s I wasn’t alone. So long’s I could forget what I’d done.

Company was easy; Raidou was a long way from sleep. But forgetting… No matter how good the sex was, it was still just a distraction, and the memory was right there waiting for you afterwards. With teeth, usually, to make up for lost time.

“We’ll figure it out,” he said at last, pulling up all the certainty he had left. He reached out and tapped two fingers to the back of Ryouma’s burned hand. “Starting with this, since you’ve broken a record by getting injuredinsidea safehouse.”

Ryouma blinked and looked down. “It’s just blisters. Those chakra limiters bite.”

“That’s sort of why they’re there,” Raidou said, dry. “And since the lieutenantisn’there to nag, it’s my duty to do it in his place. And then I’m going to make you cook something, because I haven’t eaten and you ditched your curry, and the clones can’t be trusted.”

“I was going to have a rat bar,” Ryouma said vaguely, as if he was still struggling to catch up with the topic change. He closed and opened his hand, staring down at it, then gathered long legs beneath himself and scrambled up. “I can make you something.”

“Somethinghot,” Raidou said, hoisting himself up more slowly. Every muscle and joint twanged complaint. Honestly, it was flattering that Ryouma thought he wascapableof sex. Or another strike against Ryouma’s current footing in reality. “And edible, for preference. And wash your hands first, my god.”

“I wasgoingto,” Ryouma said stiffly. He returned to the basin and crouched down, picking up the little yellow bar of soap with a judgemental grimace. The pump creaked and water splashed. When Ryouma spoke again, his voice was almost lost under the sound. “You’re not going to kick me off the team, are you?”

Raidou looked blindly at the ceiling.

He was going to add the person who’d kicked all the cracks in Ryouma to his list, where it could share space with the person who’d ripped Katsuko’s coils into bloody pieces, and one or two other names. And when he found them, no power in the world was going to make him stop hitting.

He wouldn’t even feel guilty afterwards. It’d be a good day.

“No, I’m not going to kick you off the team,” he said. “I asked, you told me, and I’m glad you did. If I started punting people for thinking about sex, Katsuko wouldn’t last eight seconds.” He stepped forward, standing a half-pace to the left of Ryouma’s hunched back, and tried to find the right words. Then he gave up and said the honest ones. “You’re a member of my team, Ryouma. That means something. All the good bits, all the ugly sides, whatever’s in your head—that’s just part of it. And unless you break one of thereallaws, the only way you’re getting out is if someone takes you.”

He crouched down, and after a second’s debate, settled his hand on the back of Ryouma’s neck.

“And they’ll have to drag hard, because I’ll be hanging onto your feet.”

Ryouma shivered, a fine running tremor, and his head dropped low. He let out an unsteady breath and sounded more than a little wrecked when he said, “You’re making it really hard not to have a crush on you, taichou.”

You’re making this no-fraternization thing really hard,Ryouma had complained once, at that very first team meeting. He’d been talking about Raidou’s solution to his paperwork problem and followed it up with a crack about trading love-declarations for coffee, which Raidou had written off as a joke. And they’d talked later, admittedly briefly. But Ryouma’d sounded like it meant it when he said,We’re good. I really don’t do relationships, anyway.

Which, Raidou reflected, wasn’t the same as saying,I don’t feel anything.

He’d felt Ryouma looking at him during training and on wall duty, a quick flick of dark eyes. But Ryouma looked ateveryone, and most of the time it wasn’t a precursor to getting in their pants. Ryouma watched people, carefully, warily, like he was waiting to see what they thought of him. And then he smiled like he didn’t care.

Not for the first time, Raidou thought,I wish I’d never walked into that bar.

It had been easy, and it had been fun, and the only thoughts he’d really had afterwards had been—well, hot and happy. He’d even gone back to The Green Pig once or twice, with half an eye out for tall-dark-and-ninja. Ryouma had never been there and Raidou had wondered, a little regretfully, if his morning-after mission really had killed him.

And now they were here.

Maybe the priests had a point when they told you to abstain.

Raidou dropped his hand to an iron-tense shoulder, squeezing just once, and pulled back. Ryouma looked up, eyes red-rimmed and too bright. He’d killed half a family today. Raidou had bled a baby out on a burning floor and beaten a man to death. There were bigger issues at stake than what they thought of each other, but dammit, Raidou was tired, and it was too hard.

“I’m sorry,” he said at last, helplessly.For everything.

Ryouma’s cheek dented; he was biting it again. “S’okay,” he said. “It’s not your fault. You’re just… being who you are.” He looked down at the basin again, where the remains of soap bubbles drifted, and scrubbed the back of his arm quickly across his eyes. Then he rinsed his hands, still raw-looking, and tipped the basin into the drain. “Anyway, I actually get rejected more’n you’d think. I’m getting better at dealing with it. Surviving inappropriate crushes on my team captain is pretty much my hobby at this point.”

There was probably a story in that, but Raidou didn’t have the will to chase it.

Ryouma stood, cast about for a towel, found none, and dried his hands on the seat of his pants. The yellow lights picked out a sulphurous gleam in his dark, still-damp hair. He turned and flashed Raidou a faintly watery grin. “If you’re not kicking me off the team, I’m already doing better.”

Maybe that was how the other story had ended.

Raidou pushed himself back to his feet, pressing a hand to his side when his ribs twinged. “No kicking,” he said seriously. He’d keep saying it, until Ryouma heard it. “You’re in ANBU now; we look after our own.”

Ryouma was silent for a moment, eyes searching Raidou’s face. No dark-eyed flick of look and look away; this time he stayed, looking for the crack. Finally he swallowed roughly, and nodded. “Okay.”

A little relief lightened Raidou’s chest.

Ryouma turned away, to the staggered wooden shelves lining the back and side walls. “If there was dehydrated curry and rice, there ought to besomethingelse edible in here.” He rummaged and came up with a dusty box. “How’s soybean stew sound?”

“Like heaven,” Raidou said, eying the evil snap-chair with faint longing. “Also like it needs beef, but I’m about one step away from finding stink-badger tasty, so my judgement is questionable. Don’t eat that, by the way. It’s never worth it.”

He reached for Genma’s medkit and pulled out a half-used tube of ointment and a roll of bandages, tossing both to Ryouma, who caught them with one-handed ease and a nod. Ryouma set them both down on the counter.

“There’s a can of stewed beef here. We could try dumping that in,” Ryouma said dubiously. He poured the stew out of its foil packaging into a clean pot, ripped the pull-top off the beef can, and dumped a pile of glistening brown chunks on top of the stew. It looked a lot like dogfood and it might taste about the same, but beggers and choosers, etc, and at least it was meat. When he had the pot balanced on the kerosene burner, Ryouma returned to the counter to smear ointment on his blisters.

Abruptly, he asked, “How d’you deal with nightmares?”

Screw it, Raidou was sitting down.

The folding chair creaked as he forced it open and dropped into it, but it didn’t cost him a finger. “On missions or in general?”

Ryouma shrugged one forced-casual shoulder, focusing on his hands. “Both, I guess. Though missions are more to the point. Sounds like it’ll be a couple of days before we get back home. I’ll have to sleep sometime.”

It was the second night you had to worry about, after the brain had come down from adrenaline and exhaustion long enough to start sorting things out. If you were nightmare-prone, that’s when it would hit you. Third night, maybe, if you were lucky.

And Ryouma was right. It wasn’t going to be a quick evac from here. Especially if other teams had gone down.

Raidou shrugged. “Honestly? Try not to worry about it. If it happens, we’ll deal with it. Just don’t stab someone in your sleep, or you’ll make the lieutenant cry.”

“Good thing we disarmed Kakashi,” Ryouma murmured. He stared down at his hands blankly, as if he’d forgotten what to do with them, then finished wrapping the bandages and stuffed the ointment back into Genma’s kit. He was silent a beat longer, leaning against the metal counter, before lifting his chin. “Thanks.”

Raidou thought of the lieutenant’s weary but willing smile, and how Genma had taken Raidou’s issues and flipped them around, yanking some of the barbs out. The way Katsuko had offered to buy them all dinner afterwards, which probably meant he’d scared her hollow. But she was still reaching out. Maybe if they kept passing it on between them, the whole team would manage to level out.

He smiled, crooked. “Any time.”

Raidou sounded as if he actually meant it.

Probably not the part that involved the worst-judged confession in history, but Ryouma’d rather avoid ever doing that again, too. At least he hadn’t cried.

Well—not much.

Raidou wasn’t offering his broad shoulder to weep on again, at any rate, so Ryouma pushed himself off the counter and got back to work searching through the dusty shelves. He found more instant rice, this time of the heat-and-serve variety; several packets of dried mushrooms; an entire box of canned fish. Mackerel, judging by the cartoonish label. More dehydrated curry, canned pickles, a haphazard collection of silver foil packets of mystery meals. He set those aside for Katsuko’s breakfast; she’d probably appreciate the surprise.

Dried sweet potato, canned satsumas, canned sausages, a tin of miso, a large jar of shoyu, umeboshi. Sake,hah.He shoved that box of bottles to the back of the shelf again. Maybe by evening f*ckuda would die and Kakashi would wake up, and they could celebrate.

He took one of the packets of heat-and-serve rice, a can of sausages, and a tin of pickled burdock root, and retreated. Raidou had tipped his head back to rest against the wall, and the stew simmered peacefully in its pot on the little gas burner at his feet.

Ryouma set his rice down where the burner might radiate a little heat. He found a clean wooden spoon and sank down into a peasant’s squat to stir the stew. The burner sputtered fitfully underneath, probably low on fuel. He glanced up, about to ask if Raidou knew where the spare fuel canisters were, and caught sight of Raidou’s face.

Raidou’s eyes were open, watching: not with any purpose or pleasure, just the idle surveillance of a shinobi aware of his space. All the same, his gaze seemed to have settled somewhere over Ryouma’s left shoulder. The straight-carved line of his mouth pulled down at the edge, and the hollows under his eyes were dark with shadows like bruises. The faint, early creases bracketing his mouth had somehow begun to cut deeper.

He’d gone to a bar and taken Ryouma home after a hard mission, once. And this one must have been harder.

Ryouma’d killed a teenager, but Raidou and Katsuko had been sent for children.

He dropped the spoon back in the pot and folded his arms over his knees. “Areyouokay?”

Raidou blinked, shook himself, and glanced down. “What?”

Ryouma said, stubbornly, “We talked about me. What about you?”

“Me?” Raidou sounded almost bewildered. He hadn’t expected turnabout, obviously, or at least not from Ryouma. Maybe he’d already confessed his sins to the lieutenant and they’d cried in a very manly fashion on each others’ shoulders. He scrubbed a broad, bandaged hand over his face and pulled a sideways, sardonic smile that didn’t touch the crinkles at the corners of his eyes. “It’s been a long day.”

That wasn’t, quite, aKeep out.Ryouma said, “I can listen.”

Raidou dropped his hand, and the smile. His eyes were still tired, beaten-hollow, but they’d warmed a little. “I know you can,” he said. “And I appreciate the offer. But you shouldn’t have to. It’s my job to look out for you. You’ve already got enough to deal with.”

“I don’t mind,” Ryouma said.

He wasn’t quite sure that was true. Whatever had happened in Tsurugahama Port to break Katsuko’s collarbone and shadow Raidou’s eyes, it’d been clearly been bad. Raidou’d be willing to talk about it, otherwise. And Ryouma didn’t need more fuel for his nightmares, but—

Sometimes it helped, to know you weren’t the only one.

It’d helped him to talk, a little. Maybe it’d help Raidou, too.

He tried again. “What if you just tell me one thing? Whatever you want. I dropped everything on you. I can take a little back.”

Raidou sighed very softly, and looked up at the packed earth ceiling. “I killed a baby tonight, about yea big.” His hands sketched a shape not quite the length of his forearm. “With a kunai.”

Twelve hours ago, sketching blueprints in the dirt on Kaede Ridge, Ryouma’d listened without much interest to Kakashi’s plan for Raidou to kill an infant. It hadn’t been more than words, then.Namiashi-taichou enters through the window into the small storage room, checks on the servants, then enters the nursery. The nurse will most likely be asleep already. He immobilizes her, then eliminates his targets…

Nobody said, going in,We’re going to kill a baby.You couldn’t. The horror came after.

His crossed arms slipped down to hug his knees. “First time?”

“No,” Raidou said. His gaze dropped from the ceiling to his own hands, lumpy with bandages. Weariness lined his face and dragged at his shoulders. “That’s probably something I should have told you and Hatake on the first day. Those rumors about ANBU? True.”

In the village, in civilian neighborhoods where nobody’s sons ever grew up to be ninja, in the chuunin lounge where the worst duty you ever pulled was bodyguard for a scumbag industrialist, they called ANBUbabykillers.

He’d known that, and he’d joined anyway.

“You don’t get used to it,” Ryouma said.

“No.” Raidou paused. “But you get better at it.”

He didn’tlookbetter.

But he’d held up all the way back to the safehouse, presumably, and then he’d come out to guide the rest of his team home and see to their needs. He’d offered Ryouma help and he’d talked him down from the edge, and he was only now letting his shoulders sag, now that his team was safe and tended and didn’t need him quite as much anymore.

Maybe that was all the better you got.

“Why did you join?”

Raidou’s eyes flicked up, surprised. But he said, after only a moment’s hesitation, “Because I could. The Kyuubi attack gutted ANBU hollow. Once the rebuilding was underway they needed warm bodies, and I didn’t have much else to do.” He picked at a loose thread in the bandages over his knuckles. “Why did you join?”

Ryouma shrugged one shoulder. “I turned twenty, and I was still alive.”

He realized, belatedly, how that sounded. “Not that I’ve got a death wish! Just, I made jounin a year ago and I never actually expected to live this long. So I realized I’d actually made it to be an adult—d’you know the civilian drinking age is twenty?—and I figured I should do something to mark it. And the ANBU Trials were the next week. So I signed up.”

Raidou laughed, short and hoarse. “Of course you wandered in. You know other people train foryearsand don’t make it?”

Some of them had been his friends. At least Takeshi hadn’t been too awkward about it, when Ryouma and Hakone ran into him at The Green Pig a few days ago. Hakone and Ryouma had both stood him drinks, and tried not to talk too much about anything that involved their new tattoos.

Ryouma stretched out a hand to stir the stew. “Maybe Kakashi’s not the only genius on the team. Tell me something else, taichou.”

The corner of Raidou’s mouth quirked briefly up, softening the sharp edges. “One thing, you said. Dead baby wasn’t enough to carry?”

A tiny bubble boiled its way to the murky surface of the stew and popped. Ryouma bit the inside of his cheek. “Just seemed like you’re still carrying more.”

Raidou teased the loose thread out of the bandage at last and started on another. Halfway out, it snapped.

“Maybe,” he said, staring down at the ragged end. Then he dropped it, and brushed his hand against his pants. “But I’ve got more practice. If you really want to help, you could feed your poor starving captain who had to watch everyone else eat first and didn’t complain.”

“Ioffered,” Ryouma said. “You chose to feed it to Katsuko.” He gave the stew a rough stir, and let the spoon drip on the back of his wrist, below the bandages. Not quite hot enough yet. He licked the brown splatter from his skin. It tasted salty and earthy, and faintly metallic.

Because it came from a tin, not because it was blood. He got up anyway, pumped water into a battered tin cup, rinsed his mouth. Then he found another cup and brought it back for Raidou. “There were two kids, weren’t there? Did you— I mean, did Katsuko take the other one?”

“And both parents.” Raidou took the cup but didn’t drink. “If you’re still looking for a way to carry someone else, you might think about sparing a shoulder for her. Especially since she broke hers.”

And the shadow clone in the shower had tried to comforthim, anyway.

Ryouma swallowed against an ache, sharp as fish scales in his throat. “I promised her clone I’d model for the ads for her bathhouse when she retires.”

Raidou barked a startled, rusty laugh. “That’s another way to make her feel better.”

“Won’t get through to her til the clone pops, though.” Ryouma scuffed a foot on the dirt floor. “Hopefully she’ll get a laugh out of it.” He scuffed again, knocking up a clod from the hard-packed floor, then quickly tamped it down. “I can tell she means a lot to you.”

Raidou felt his mouth pull sideways. “She’s the little sister I never, ever wanted.”

And more than that.

He didn’t have good words for Katsuko. She was a puzzle and a problem, and occasionally a ferocious pain in the ass, but she was also a kindred spirit. The first time he’d seen her fight— the firstrealtime, with blazing swords and howling chakra and gleeful, joyous violence, he’d thought,I know you.

She’d looked back at him through the eyeholes of her rat mask, still shiny and new, and winked, and killed a man.

No one had come through the war intact, but Katsuko had taken all her sharp, broken places and turned them into weapons. And underneath that, she’d still managed to keep a little softness. She ate terrible foods and said idiot things, but she cared so deeply about her teammates—even the new ones—that it nearly made her vibrate. As much as she bullied them, she’d still die for them.

Probably exactly like he’d seen, six hours ago.

He rumpled a hand through his hair, shaking away blades and blood and the dull sound Katsuko’s knees had made, hitting the hardwood floor. It wasn’t real; it hadn’t happened. Genjutsu just had a vicious way of sticking around afterwards, like acid reflux for the brain.

When he looked up again, Ryouma’s face was still pale and pinched; if he had edges, they were all turned inwards. He looked a little worried at the stretch of silence.

“Sorry,” Raidou said. “I think this day is starting to melt my brain. Food?”

Ryouma gave a guilty jolt and went for the stew pot. “It’s boiling,” he said. “I don’t think there’re bowls, but there should be more spoons…”

He liberated the pot from the burner, hissing quietly at the hot metal edges, and set it down on the dirt floor. The burner flicked off with the faint plink of cooling metal. Ryouma scrambled up to find the spoons, and came back to juggle the sausages, pickled burdock root, and the rice, which had managed to warm next to the burner.

The stew was—well, ‘brown’ was probably the best you could say about it.

“Ah, sh*t, hot,” Raidou said, burning his tongue on the first mouthful. He was more careful for the second bite, and discovered actual flavor: salt and savory, meat gravy, an extremely weird cross-over between the soy, beef, and burdock. But he was starving and it wasfood. “This is—ow, damn—perfect. You should run cooking detail for breakfast, too.”

Ryouma was trying to wrangle a cold sausage from the can; he glanced up sideways, skeptical. “Remind me never to ask your opinion on restaurants.”

“Breakfastandlunch,” Raidou said, finding a thread of cheer. He pushed the pot across. “Better dig in before I eat the whole thing. I’ll trade you a sausage.”

Ryouma handed the can over and tried a proper taste of his creation. He paused, spoon still in his mouth, and made an extremely complicated expression. “I’ve had worse, I guess.” He risked another bite. “It’s better than the curry.”

“Not a high hurdle to jump,” Raidou said dryly.

“The curry wasn’t my fault. You didn’t even have any.” Ryouma tried the rice, which was lukewarm at best.

Raidou finished half the can, traded them back for another third of the stew, and forced himself upright to get them both another metal cup of water from the pump. That, at least, was cold and clear, drawn up from an underground stream. They had another two drinks apiece, making up for water they’d bled and sweated out. Raidou settled down again, feeling the leaden buzz that came from caffeine layered over exhaustion.

Another hour, he judged. Maybe two. Then he could sleep.

Ryouma’s spoon dropped into the pot. He stretched his back, jaw cracking on a yawn. Raidou glanced at the door and whistled, short and sharp. A moment later, a clone stepped through.

“Taichou?”

Raidou scooped the pot off the ground and held it out. “Prisoner can have the rest. Take her some water, too.”

There was a grate in the cell door. The clone could probably figure out how to work it without killing itself against the chakra-cancelling seals.

It saluted, gathered a cup, and stepped back out.

Ryouma’s jaw tightened. Still no fan of f*ckuda, and Raidou couldn’t blame him for it. Aoisuke had only faked Katsuko’s death, and Raidou had ripped a waterfront apart to put him in the ground. f*ckuda’s team nearlyhadkilled Kakashi and Genma.

It made him wonder, distantly, what would’ve happened if they’d swapped missions.

Kakashi’s Sharingan could cut a genjutsu apart; Ryouma and Genma had no trouble with illusions, either. The children would’ve been the sucker-punch.

And for Iebara—Katsuko’s chakra-storm made her a target for any ninja who wanted to add salt to his Bingo Book entry. She could go toe-to-toe with legends and come up swinging, but not if that first hit bled her dry. Raidou could handle a team well enough, but a team with a monster at their back?

Maybe it was a good thing they hadn’t gotten the chance to find out.

“You ever been taken prisoner, taichou?” Ryouma asked, breaking him out of his thoughts.

He had an amazing talent for tossing out questions Raidou didn’t expect.

“Not so far,” Raidou said, and reached back one-handed to brush his fingers against the crate’s splintery wooden side.Touch wood.“Had a couple friends who did, though, back in the war. One of ‘em made it home.” He paused. “Most of him.”

Ryouma chewed that over for a minute, thoughtful. “Body or mind?”

“Minus three fingers and half a leg,” Raidou said. “He was still sane after, much as you can be. He’s a gardener now, grows medical plants. Likes to stay under open skies.”

Ryouma nodded, eyes distant. “Guess that might not be so bad.” He glanced back towards the closed door, a brief flicker of indecision darkening his face. Wondering what f*ckuda’s future would be without that arm? He shook his head abruptly and lurched up to his feet, gathering the meal detritus. “So long’s she doesn’t get a chakra-prosthetic arm and come after us again, I don’tcarewhat happens to her.”

Raidou thought,You’re a bad liar.

“Don’t think they make prosthetics that good,” he said.

Ryouma’s voice ground dark, like glass. “It’s Mist. Who knows what they do? They have puppets in Suna.” He circled back to the shelves and poked half-heartedly through supplies. “D’you want more tea? They don’t have coffee.”

“Y’know what I really want? Fresh air.” Raidou creaked back to his feet. “Want to see if the rain’s stopped?”

“Bet it has. We ran back into the storm, coming here.” Ryouma dropped the tin of matcha back on its shelf. He followed Raidou up the long earth-walled passageway and around a bend where the electric lights gave out. It was only a short climb to the top of the tunnel, though, and the faint glow from beyond the bend cast just enough light in the darkness that Raidou could find the door and heave it open.

The new day was beginning to break, leaden grey and chill, despite yesterday’s heat. Moisture beaded the leaves of the tall grass and scrub covering the hillside. They faced east, but the young sun still lurked behind clouds. Its diffused light gave the damp air a heavy, unearthly quality, like the pearly mist lurking in the hollows at the foot of the hill.

Ryouma squatted down on his heels again, peasant-style. “Mornings are better in Konoha.”

Raidou drew a deep, chest-expanding breath, one hand bracing his left side. Cracked ribs? He let the breath out slowly, his face tilted up to the sky. His voice sounded warmer, calmer somehow. “This isn’t too bad.”

Ryouma looked away. He ripped up a handful of wet grass and drew the cold blades between his fingers. “I bet you like bathing under waterfalls and wrestling bears in the wilderness, too.”

That earned him a chuckle. Raidou squatted down, too, and elbowed Ryouma companionably in the ribs. “Don’t you?”

“I like three cups of coffee and a sharp razor in the morning.” Ryouma scraped the grass-blades along his jaw, where a light stubble was just beginning to rasp. Raidou had the makings of a healthier scruff shadowing the strong planes of his cheeks and chin. Direct sunlight might catch the reddish tones, but in this watery grey dawn his stubble and hair were only a murky brown.

There was a rising bruise on his temple, well-faded as if it had already met Genma’s healing hands. Smaller cuts and scrapes hadn’t been worth the same treatment. He still smelled of smoke and sweat and antiseptic, and—

And Ryouma wasn’t meant to be looking at him. Not out here, alone in the cold, foggy dawn. Not when they had nothing to talk about but themselves. He dropped his head again, and ripped savagely at the grass.

Raidou shifted. For a moment Ryouma thought he was getting up, but instead he dropped down to sit cross-legged, heedless of the wet grass beneath. He tossed an arm around Ryouma’s shoulders and pulled him off-balance, against his side.

“Taichou,” Ryouma said, desperately.

“I’m tired,” Raidou said. His arm didn’t loosen from Ryouma’s shoulders. His side was furnace-warm. “It’s been a sh*tty night. When we get home, we’ll look at boundaries again. For now, Ryouma, if you want a hug, take the damned hug.”

Somewhere in the world there were scattered shards of self-control. Ryouma gathered them with gritted teeth, and didn’t move.

But it was uncomfortably awkward to lean, still squatting, against Raidou’s side; their shoulders didn’t fit together, and Ryouma’s ankles hurt. After a moment he let himself slither down to sit beside Raidou. The grass immediately soaked the seat of his trousers through, but if he slouched a little his shoulder fit better under Raidou’s. He could feel Raidou’s warmth the whole length of his side, where they pressed together.

He thought of falling asleep in Raidou’s arms, that one night they’d spent together. For the first time in a month he didn’t immediately shove the thought away, or crush it down with distractions. He let its memory warm him, and then he thought, deliberately, of the cold in his bed when he woke, the dawn light revealing an empty apartment, only the rice cooker left on, no dishes in the sink.

This way was better. Watching the dawn together, and knowing that for eleven months, at least, neither of them would leave.

The light strengthened. A breeze picked up and began to blow shreds of mist through the hollow. Ryouma shivered. “My butt’s getting cold, taichou.”

“Oh god, mine too,” Raidou said immediately, with such relief that Ryouma suspected he’d only been waiting for Ryouma to cave first. Raidou loosened his arm, paused, and then lifted his hand to the top of Ryouma’s head. He rumpled the thick, dry hair with a careful hand. “Think you could sleep?”

“Still don’t want to,” Ryouma said. He let himself sit a moment longer, then ducked out from under Raidou’s hand and levered himself to his feet. “I could try, though. Might be able to, now that I’ve seen the day.” He held out a hand.

Raidou curled loose fingers around Ryouma’s wrist, letting Ryouma grip and haul. The blisters on Ryouma’s palms protested a little, but once Raidou got his feet under him he immediately pulled back, and Ryouma had to let go.

“C’mon, then,” Raidou said. He started back for the hidden door.

They went down again, into the dark and then the familiar sickly flicker of electric lights. The Kiri nin was still in her cell, curled on the mattress with her blanket tugged over her and the empty stew pot discarded by the bars. Ryouma’s shadow clone straightened with a weary sway. “Hit my limit,” it said, and popped into smoke and emptiness.

Its memories poured in, the tedious watch, the anger. Ryouma rocked back on his heels and caught himself with a hand against the wall. “Should I set another?”

“Ueno’s clones can handle it,” Raidou said. There was one of them there already. Another, perhaps the one who’d dragged f*ckuda’s belongings into the passageway to catalogue, came up to take up the abandoned place. Ryouma left them to it.

In the bunkroom, the rest of Team Six slept. Genma was snoring slightly. Ryouma hoped that was normal, and not a sign they’d set the nose wrong after all.

Raidou looked at them for a moment, blinking blurrily. “You want to take Ueno’s other side? I can bookend the lieutenant.”

Katsuko would probably be warm, and she wouldn’t mind the cuddling. But…

“Think I’d rather take the floor,” Ryouma said quietly. He bit his wrist on a yawn. “Just in case.”

Raidou’s weary gaze dragged back. He studied Ryouma for a moment, then nodded. “If that’s what you want.”

It wasn’t, really. But it was better than waking from nightmares to find he’d strangled someone in his sleep, or pressing too close in a half-conscious drowse and wrecking everything he’d fought so hard to win. He nodded back, and Raidou let him be.

They turned the gas burners off, conserving what little fuel remained, and kicked their boots to the wall. Raidou peeled a couple of blankets off Katsuko and tossed them Ryouma’s way. He took one more for himself, and then crawled up onto the platform at the lieutenant’s back.

Ryouma sorted through the scrolls in his belt-pouch until he found the one that sealed his bedroll inside. The blankets, folded in half along their length, made a better pad than bare dirt, though less than a mattress. He wriggled in with his back to the door and the Kiri-nin’s imprisoned threat, curled an arm under his head, and waited for the nightmares to come.

Raidou’s voice came instead, soft around the edges of sleep. “Tomorrow will be better.”

“You saw the sunrise, taichou,” Ryouma reminded him. “It’s already today.”

Silence, for a moment. “Maybe next week, then.”

Ryouma closed his eyes. “I’ll hope.”

Raidou said, very softly, “Sleep, Ryouma.”

When they woke, and the others were around, it would beTousakiagain. But there was still a little warmth in the gentleness of his voice around the personal name, the lingering trace of good memories. An order, but one he believed Ryouma could follow.

Ryouma turned his face against his arm, and tried.

Chapter 5: The High Road

Chapter Text

May 8, Yondaime Year 5

Obito was an angry little bastard.

“You’re screwing up,” he snapped, young and petulant. Summer sunlight made his hair gleam dark and ruffled, and his eyes glitter.

One eye. The other eye was a red crater.

Kakashi lay on his back under an endless blue sky, surrounded by tall grass. It blew gently in the warm breeze, tickling his bare arms. He folded them beneath his head, and said, “Mm?”

“You’re screwing up,” Obito repeated, and kicked Kakashi on the booted foot.

“Ow,” Kakashi said mildly.

Obito kicked him again, with pointy teenage feet. Kakashi flinched and it hurt everywhere, like glass needles. The sky turned dark above them. The sun melted into red arterial streaks that pulsed out, thumping like a heartbeat. It smelled like rank copper.

Kakashi gave it a worried look.

“What’s happen—”

“Youalwaysscrew it up,” Obito said. “You try, but you do itstupid. You’re being stupidright now—”

Kakashi’s eyes snapped open.

He drew a short, hard breath, and it still smelled like blood.

Obito’s eye stung viciously. He closed it, hot salt spilling down his cheek (Obitoalwayscried), and struggled for his bearings. There were blankets; a wiry arm flung across his chest; dull sodium lights and a low, dark ceiling. Hair brushed his face, warm as sunny grass. It smelled of smoke and ginger— Katsuko.

On his other side, sleeping muscle: Raidou.

And—and—he couldn’t feel the others. He had no chakra sense, just drugs and sledgehammer exhaustion blurring the world, but itsmelled like blood.

He opened his mouth and a rasping croak came out. Katsuko muttered something and tucked her face down, warm breath blowing over the side of his neck. Her weight was leaden against his side, pinning him down. Kakashi tried again, made even less sound, and gave up. There were IV wires trailing out of the blankets, leading up to kunai staked into the walls. One for him, another for her.

He fumbled a hand over to Katsuko’s line, forced his fingers to curl, and yanked it hard.

It was like flicking a switch.

There was no pitstop at confusion. Katsuko surged awake in one dangerous movement with a naked kunai flicking into her good hand. She crouched over him like a lioness, scanning the room for threats.

She looked down at him.

She looked at her IV.

Bright red droplets beaded around the taped needle.

“I’m going to hollow out your skull and use it as a flower vase,” she said hoarsely.

Kakashi grabbed her by the hair, making her twitch. “Tousaki,” he forced out. “Lieutenant.”

Katsuko sheathed her kunai. She disentangled his grip, worked her hand underneath his shoulders and hauled him into an awkward, upright seat, bracing him when he slewed sideways. His stomach clenched, hot and sick. Katsuko jerked her chin at a dark lump on the floor.

Kakashi managed to see what she was looking at: Ryouma, sprawled on his stomach with his face turned away, one arm wedged under a twisted blanket he was using for a pillow. His breath was slow and even, but his bedroll was kicked about. Restless sleeper.

Not bleeding.

Katsuko’s chakra swelled and bloomed out, searing against Kakashi’s ragged, stapled down pathways. He flinched, breath hissing between his teeth. He couldn’t feel how big it got. Enough to fill every corner of the bunker, probably more.

“Lieutenant’s in the next room over,” she said. “He’s okay.”

“He’s not,” Kakashi rasped. “I smell— There’s blood. Check him.”

Katsuko gave a ragged, tired growl. “You!” she barked at a curious clone eyeing them from the door. It flinched upright, and Katsuko gestured sharply. The clone saluted and vanished. On Kakashi’s other side, Raidou snorted and rolled over.

In the tense beats of silence, Kakashi could taste his own heartbeat.

Then, from down the hallway, the clone’s voice echoed loudly, “Ewwwwww!”

Ryouma jolted upright. “Whassit?”

“Lieutenant, why?”

That… didn’tsoundfatal.

Distantly, there was the dull chakra-crack of a clone exiting the universe. Katsuko’s expression creased into faint horror as she got the clone’s memories, and thatwas not reassuring. “Lieutenant’s draining a leg wound,” she said, before Kakashi made a legitimate effort to scramble upright. “There’s blood, but he’s got it under control. He’s sewing it up.”

Kakashi sagged with relief. “Oh.”

Ryouma buried his face in his hands andsighed. Muffled, he said, “Does he need help?”

Katsuko moved to rub her face, almost accidentally yanked Kakashi into herself, and made a last minute trade for a one-shouldered shrug. “Didn’t seem too bad. My clone dispelled itself before it could get a good look, though.”

Ryouma groaned.

Before he could get up, Raidou rolled back over, hair sticking up in sleep-rumpled spikes. “I got it,” he mumbled. “G’back to sleep.” He heaved himself upright, taking a blanket with him like a cloak, and stepped over Ryouma on his way out.

The door clicked shut behind him.

Ryouma dropped his hand to blink at it, and then turned stiff-necked towards the bed-platform. “You’re awake.”

“Iwassleeping,” Katsuko said grouchily. “Except fuzzybuns here decided to yank on my IV line.”

The adrenaline was slipping away, replaced by a warm, shaky blur, as if the world was made out of unstable cotton wool. Kakashi slouched against Katsuko’s side and remembered how to breathe. After a moment’s search, he found a hand to wave at Ryouma. “Hi.”

Ryouma stared at him, eyes cut to shadowed slots in the dirty yellow light, and slowly waved back. “You must’ve got the really good drugs. Or else I’m actually still asleep.”

“You’re on the floor,” Kakashi said.

Ryouma turned fully to face them, shedding out of the tangled layers of his bedroll, and crossed his legs. He regarded them, weary and thoughtful. “I think we’re finally operating on the same intellectual plane. Less exciting than I thought it’d be.”

“Come be unexcited up here,” Katsuko said, still grumpy. “You need to help me keep Kakashi from rolling face-first onto an explosion tag, or something.”

Staying upright was increasingly difficult, even with Katsuko’s arm bracing him and her angular side to lean against. Kakashi slouched a little further and discovered it didn’t hurt to start melting down, though it did make things slip and spin. Genma’s taped down senbon needles pinched at him distantly, warning to be careful.

“Hey,” Kakashi croaked belatedly, when he realized Katsuko had insulted him.

They’dbothinsulted him.

“You said that already,” Ryouma said, staying exactly where he was. “How’re you feeling?”

It took Kakashi a minute to figure it out.

“Floaty,” he decided. There was pain under it, waiting with naked teeth, but that was the beauty of good drugs: they made you not care. He cleared his throat with a raw catch, dry-mouthed. “And thirsty.”

And naked, except for bandages and underwear. He decided, deliberately, not to care about that.

Ryouma stretched out a bare arm to pull his canteen from his utility belt, which was discarded like a snake-skin with the rest of his scattered gear. He shook the canteen, discovered it was empty, and groaned. “Don’t roll on any explosive tags. Katsuko’ll cry.”

He staggered upright and slipped out.

Kakashi tipped his head to look at Katsuko, which made his hair fall across his face. “You don’t cry.”

“You’re damn right I don’t,” she said.

“Mm,” Kakashi said, and gave up on the last part of gravity. He slid out of her hold, landing half on her legs and half on the body-warm mattress. Both were comfy, though Katsuko was bony. “He does.”

“Ryouma?”

“Dead-last,” Kakashi said. He thumbed the line of wetness away from beneath his left eye. Obito’s eye stung protest. “Maybe Ryouma, except I think he punches people instead. He punchedme.”

“Oh, good,” Katsuko said distantly. Her face was unreadable, but light hazel eyes lingered on his wet fingertips. “What did you do?”

“Existed,” Kakashi said, put upon.

Katsuko snorted. “There, there, my little riceball,” she said, and patted him on the head. She lifted her hand and tapped Kakashi’s cheek gently, on the Sharingan side. “Don’t tell me anything more about this.”

“M’kay,” Kakashi said, blurry.

He blinked, lost a few seconds, and came back with a darker thought.

“You okay?” he asked, remembering the crack-crunch of bones. “‘tenant broke your shoulder.”

“I had a broken collarbone,” she said. “He reset it. Thanks for nearly making me pee myself, by the way. You were an inch away from mangling him.”

“He made you scream,” Kakashi muttered bitterly. He closed his eye again, face half-buried against Katsuko’s blanketed thigh. He didn’t remember mangling, but the sharp, high sound of Katsuko’s yell was clear enough, and fast movement, and…

There were holes in his head, stuffed with black. He left them alone.

Katsuko was silent for a long moment. Kakashi drifted, and came back down when her hand settled on his head, fingers sliding through his hair. They were calloused, not precisely gentle, but delicate, as if she thought he had edges that needed careful handling.

“I’m glad you’re on my team,” she said, and immediately ruined it by adding, “You gigantic loser.”

The door creaked.

“Lieutenant said he didn’t get the wound sealed properly before and it started leaking under the skin,” Ryouma said. “Woke him up with the pain. He had to drain it before it got septic—” He paused halfway across the room. “Not interrupting, am I?”

“Mnnngh,” Kakashi mumbled, and put out a blind hand for the canteen Ryouma hopefully had.

A moment later, warm fingers curled around his wrist and pushed it back down. “You’ll spill everywhere,” Ryouma said. There was a rustle, blankets moving—Katsuko snort-laughing as Ryouma did something ungraceful—and then solid weight settled against Kakashi’s left hip, and a combination of three hands forced him to sit upright again.

Kakashi complained the whole way, but found himself wedged securely between Katsuko and Ryouma, which wasn’t so bad. Ryouma was warm, Katsuko was warmer. Both of them were solid.

Ryouma uncapped his canteen and lifted it to Kakashi’s mouth.

The advantage of a bandage-mask, Kakashi discovered, was that he didn’t need to take it off to drink. Ryouma found a gap between cotton strips, and then there was cold, clean water sliding like diamonds down Kakashi’s throat. He drank until he choked, coughing, and leaned breathless against Ryouma’s shoulder.

“Was it too cold? I can make tea,” Ryouma said, sounding worried.

“If you move, I’ll bite you,” Kakashi rasped.

Katsuko—giggledwas the only word, like a shiny river in his ear. “You’d have to lose the mask to do that.”

“I can bite through cloth,” Kakashi said, closing his good eye. “Sharp teeth.”

“Captain’ll yell a lot if he comes back and finds you doing something kinky,” Ryouma said.

“We could do an experiment to see if Kakashi reallycanbite through cloth,” Katsuko said reasonably. “It’s not kinky if it’s for science.”

“Then the lieutenant’ll yell at us for blood loss,” Ryouma said. “And I already got reamed out for getting hurt inside the bunker.”

Kakashi peeled himself upright enough to get a better look at Ryouma. “Hurt where?”

“Inside the bunker,” Katsuko repeated, slowly and loudly.

Kakashi pulled together enough coordination to jab Ryouma hard in the ribs. “Hurtwhere?”

A bandaged palm filled his worldview; Ryouma’s right hand, smelling of antiseptic beneath the gauze. “Touched the chakra limiters on that Kiri viper’s cell,” Ryouma said. “They bite.”

“Oh, you were stupid,” Kakashi said, relieved, and slumped back down against the comfortable slab of muscle padding Ryouma’s shoulder. Against his right side, Katsuko shook with silent laughter.

Ryouma snorted. “Guess so.” He dropped his hand. “You gonna sleep again?”

“Like it here,” Kakashi said.

Katsuko snorted, a higher stereo echo of Ryouma, but her good hand slid around Kakashi’s bare elbow and squeezed his arm, fingers warm between bandages. Kakashi tipped his head sideways and smiled at her, blurry.

“You aresodrugged,” Ryouma said, sounding faintly awed. “I hope you remember this in the morning. Actually, no. You’ll probably try to beat me up again.”

“Only did that once,” Kakashi said. “An’ you started it.”

“You could try beating him up now, but I think you’d end up punching yourself in the face,” Katsuko said.

Kakashi laughed low in the back of his throat, because it was funny. Katsuko stared at him, wide-eyed, and Ryouma went still against his side.

“I saved you today,” Kakashi said, tipping his head to look up at Ryouma. “An’ the lieutenant. Too much effort to undo it. And you saved me back, right?”

Ryouma gave him a startled look. “I— yeah.” His mouth was a little bit open, showing the ridge of white teeth behind wind-chapped lips. His eyes were wider. This close, Kakashi could count individual lashes, though he kept getting lost around twelve. Long and dark, they probably made girls envious.

He’d stopped the Kirigakure captain from taking Kakashi’s head off tonight.

The memory was slippery, dark and bled-through with holes, but Kakashi remembered the gleam of steel, the fact of oncoming death. The black hole of exhaustion that made it impossible to fight or dodge, or think anything but,Dammit, I’m not ready.

And then Ryouma had ripped him through the universe and landed him on the other side, still alive.

Kakashi had said,Perfectafterwards, with blood in his mouth and cold leaching out of his bones, mud everywhere, no chakra left.Perfect, because any mission you could crawl away from. Because Ryouma had shorn his timing down to the razor thin line, but he’d gotten it right, and no one had to carry Kakashi’s dogtags home.

Minato was good at death, but he didn’t need more in his life.

Naruto deserved none.

Kakashi sighed, long and slow and soft, and let his arm drop down Ryouma’s back, curled his fingers into the hem of Ryouma’s shirt. “Thanks,” he said, while morphine was here to make it easy.

There was a fragile little pause, like the world breathing out. Just long enough for Kakashi to think, beneath layers of brain-candyfloss,Emotional idiot.

Ryouma’s mouth crooked into a tiny smile. “You did the same for me.”

“M’awesome that way,” Kakashi agreed.

On his left, Katsuko shifted silently.

He turned to say something uplifting for her, but misjudged his own complete lack of balance and managed to stumblewhile sitting, clipping his chin against the pointy edge of her unbroken shoulder. She blinked at him, head co*cked back.

“Ow,” Kakashi said, surprised.

“Don’t end your moment on my account,” she said. “Especially if you’re going to attack me with your face.”

“Why is every part of yousharp?” he complained, and very carefully propped his head on her lethal shoulder. There was less muscle and more bone than Ryouma, edges cresting up beneath her skin like a rising wave, but heat shimmered outward from her core. She was warmer than anything else in the room.

“Sharpness is my secret weapon,” Katsuko said, with her head still tilted back at a safe distance, like Kakashi was a strange creature she didn’t understand and was cautious about getting close to. “I’ve killed a man with just my elbows before.”

“I believe it,” Ryouma said, behind Kakashi’s head.

Somewhere in the back of Kakashi’s hindbrain, Raidou was getting ready to kick the walls and make noise about boundaries, but Kakashi was warm and the closest approximation of comfortable he was likely to get. Katsuko smelled nice, like spice and soap and the memory of old explosions, the lick of worn out fire.

Her shoulder shrugged beneath him, miniature earthquake, then her arm stretched around behind him. She set her hand on Ryouma’s arm. “I’m just glad you both made it back,” she said, quiet. “Getting killed on our second mission would make the team look bad.”

“And on this team, we’re all about the looks,” Ryouma murmured dryly. He hesitated a beat, and then added, lower, “Thanks for coming to look for us. We—we were hoping you’d be here.”

Kakashi didn’t remember saying that, but he was sure he’d thought it at least once. A different memory nudged him. “Kiri captain said you were all dead,” he said. “Lieutenant called her a liar. You killed everyone, right?”

Katsuko let out a long breath, and something sour rippled through her scent. “Yeah,” she said. “Mission complete.”

“Good,” Kakashi said.

Her side had taken the children, he remembered.

Tsuto Tomoko, four. Tsuto Sorai, eighteen months. Kakashi had put together the fastest, cleanest game plan he could manage to take them out, along with their parents, but Katsuko and Raidou had held the blades.

Kakashi had stabbed a teenage girl in the throat.

He wasn’t sure why that memory came up now, when there were a dozen worse ones ready to take a bite. But there it was, rising like a rotted flower. Tsuto’s bedroom, the scuff of unexpected movement in the hallway. Steel in his hand, the flash of frightened eyes, steel in her throat. He hadn’t thought, he’d just moved.

The kunai hadn’t killed her. Ryouma had needed to finish the job.

But that was the price of discovering traitors: someone needed to kill them, and everything they cared about. Then you wouldn’t getmoretraitors.

They’d done the right thing.

He leaned more heavily against Katsuko, and didn’t let go of Ryouma’s shirt. “Guess what?” he rasped.

“What?” Katsuko said carefully.

“We don’t have to kill anyone else for at least a week.” He made his best approximation of a cheery noise. “Ta-dah.”

Katsuko stared at him for a flat, blank moment, then the corner of her mouth twitched. “That’s right,” she said. “It’ll be like a vacation.”

“You can sleep,” Kakashi agreed, encouraged. “And eat everything. And not break anything else.”

“Would you and Ryouma entertain me when I got bored?” Katsuko asked. “Would you play cards?” The corner of her mouth curved higher, and her voice brightened, only a little brittle. “Would you let me draw on your face?”

“No face,” Kakashi said, mellow enough about it that he even surprised himself. But he remembered Ryouma’s hand laid protectively over his mouth, like armor. Face was taken care of; nothing to worry about. “Tousaki does Five Finger Fillet, though.”

Ryouma stirred from his careful stillness. “Katsuko’s only got one hand, and no one’s trusting you with a kunai.”

“Could beat you both drugged, blind,andone-handed,” Kakashi said.

“Almost tempted to let you try,” Ryouma said, “but you were the one all upset about people getting hurt in the bunker.”

“Because itkeeps happening,” Kakashi said. “I’m not passing out anymore. Every time I do, I wake up and more people are broken.”

“I don’t know if youcanstop passing out,” Katsuko said. “It’s your defining character trait. Kakashi, the fragile fainting lotus bud.”

“Who beats S-class enemy ninja,” Kakashi said. “Judge me when you can do that.” He punished Katsuko and her ingratitude by shifting his weight away from her, bestowing it on Ryouma instead.

Ryouma showed his appreciation by going rigid. “You needed an assist from me an’ the lieutenant to get Iebara,” he said.

Kakashi was going to abandon themboth. They could be argumentative and unnappreciative together, and probably injure themselves to death with safehouse paperclips. Then they’d be sorry.

Except—it was so much effort to move again.

He sighed heavily instead, loud and obnoxious, and closed his eye. There was another slip-slide of time, moments unreeling into warm darkness as the world got heavy. He jarred back awake just before his chin slipped off Ryouma’s shoulder.

A broad, long-fingered hand steadied his head, rearranging him more comfortably. Kakashi expected it to retreat, but it stayed there, fingers carding through his hair. Some of the tension unwound out of Ryouma, as if petting Kakashi was more for Ryouma’s benefit.

Katsuko had done that, too.

Well, yeah, Kakashi thought muzzily. That was why he liked pettinghisdogs. Everyone came away soothed.

“I thought maybe it was gel,” Ryouma murmured. “But your hair still dried all spiky.”

“Mm?” Kakashi managed, half-lidded.

“It must be a bloodline limit. Grants you special powers of snark,” Ryouma said, like he wasn’t rambling and crazy. Before Kakashi could work up enough will to respond, Ryouma said, more quietly, “Y’know, you’re better at people than you think.”

Kakashi blinked slowly.

No, still didn’t make sense.

“I’m really high right now,” he said, in case Ryouma had forgotten.

“There’ve been a few other times, too,” Ryouma said.

Kakashi managed to fight the pull of gravity enough to turn his head and give Katsuko a mute appeal for sanity.

“It’s okay,” Katsuko said soothingly. “Just accept it and let him pet you.”

She wasno help at all.

“Wait, I want to pet you, too,” she added, and scooted in against Kakashi’s right side, reaching up to rumple her unbound hand through his bangs. He twitched, blinded by a sudden snowfall of hair into his good eye. Before he could protest, Katsuko swept it carefully aside again, clearing his field of vision, and settled into finger-carding a matted section by his temple.

Ryouma’s hand had paused. It moved again now, stirring Kakashi’s hair into backwards spikes.

“Takin’ advantage ‘f’a drugged person,” Kakashi muttered, but he could feel himself getting boneless and heavy, letting Ryouma bear almost all of his weight. Katsuko was a steady bracket on his other side, stopping him from tipping over.

“You’re sofluffy,” Katsuko said, marvelling.

“M’not fluffy. Professional killer, be ‘fraid,” Kakashi said, vaguely nettled. Someone’s nails scratched gently across his scalp and he added, involuntarily, “Mmm.”

Laughter rumbled against his skin. He couldn’t tell from which side. There were more things he wanted to say, starting withscrew you both, but the world was made of golden syrup and exhaustion, and closing his eye seemed like a much better idea.

He half-woke when they laid him down and Ryouma pulled away.

“What’s— No, don’,” Kakashi slurred, trying to grab him again. Blankets got in the way.

“You’re okay,” Ryouma said, voice roughened by an unpracticed attempt at soothing. “Your IV’s nearly empty, though. I’m gonna get you another.” Lower, he said to Katsuko: “I’ll check on the lieutenant again. You’re right, they’ve been quiet too long.”

“They probably fell asleep sitting up,” Katsuko muttered. She gave a jaw-cracking yawn. “Come back soon or Kakashi will cry.”

Kakashi found his most coherent swear word and rasped it at them.

“Go back to snuggling,” Ryouma said wryly. He paused to scoop up a pile of abandoned dishes, and glanced at Kakashi. “I’ll be quick.”

The door clicked open and closed before Kakashi could say,Don’t get hurt. He made an aggravated sound and shoved his face down against the musty-smelling blankets. “He’s dodging again.”

Ryouma had been holding himself carefully distant all night, like there was shame under his skin and he didn’t want to touch them with it. Genma had spotted it once already,Ram seems unsettled.

“If he doesn’t get back in when he comes back, I’llmakehim.” Katsuko wrestled with the blankets until she’d installed herself at Kakashi’s side again, radiating heat. “You two get into trouble unsupervised.”

“Broken collarbone,” Kakashi mumbled pointedly. “Twice.”

Katsuko sniffed. “This is the broken collarbone of ahero.”

Kakashi smiled wearily. That was one they’d used to toss around in the war, a reward for corpses and duty done. Sakumo had been a hero for a while, before he’d been a traitor, then a bloodstain. They hadn’t put him on the Hero’s Stone.

“Pretty word,” Kakashi said, and let it slide away.

Katsuko glanced up at him, then drew one of the blankets up over her face, bundling down into a self-contained curl. “The pretty distracts people from the ugly, I guess,” she said, muffled.

She wasn’t wrong.

Kakashi closed his eye and drifted.

He woke up with Genma crouched at his right side, displacing Katsuko, and a new needle in the crook of his elbow, injecting a rush of heat.

Oh good, more drugs.

“Sorry I scared you,” Genma said, sliding the morphine syrette gently free. Behind him, Ryouma was staking another IV bag to the wall.

“You didn’,” Kakashi said blearily.

Genma’s mouth quirked at the corner. His face was the color of bleached paper, but his eyes were bright enough, and his hands were professional-medic steady. He was crouching at an awkward angle, balanced on his left leg with his bad leg stuck out sideways. “Sorry I didn’t scare you, then. How’s the pain?”

“What pain?” Kakashi said, coasting on a new surf of narcotics.

“Zero out of ten? That’s good.” Genma held up one hand, three rawboned fingers extended. “How many fingers?”

“Eleven,” Kakashi said, and laughed at his own joke.

Two fingers folded down, leaving the index still standing. “Try again.”

“Three point one-four-one-five-nine…” Kakashi derailed at Genma’s expression, still laughing.

Genma closed his mouth on what was either surprise or amusem*nt, and continued the sequence: “Two-six-five-three-five. How many really?”

“One,” Kakashi confessed.

“Well, cognition seems intact,” Genma said. “How about other systems? Need to pee yet?”

Kakashi made the mistake of admitting yes, actually, his kidneys were functional and he’d had a lot of IV today. Which turned the world into a much less pleasant place, becauseWalking is good for you, Hatake, and Raidou and Ryouma were both ready and willing to haul him up and deliver him into the bunker’s cramped little bathroom, where all manner of new indignities awaited.

Zero out of ten turned out to be an ambitious lie. He was back to a solid five by the time they returned him to bed, though at least that helped clear his head a little. Katsuko was laughing at him from her rumpled nest of blankets against the wall. Kakashi gave her a rude gesture, which she returned with interest.

“I hope your leg explodes,” he told Genma grouchily.

Genma rubbed his right thigh, where a new ridge of bandaging bulked out the line of his ANBU pants. “You’re too late, I already opened the pressure valve.” He didn’t seem particularly offended, but that was medics for you: they were used to bile. “Any other comments?”

“It’s fixed, right, lieutenant?” Katsuko said, with a glimmer of badly hidden concern.

Genma glanced at her, a strand of sweat-dark hair slipping across his forehead. “I just missed a bleeder when I closed it in the field,” he said lightly. “Caused a minor hematoma. Don’t worry, I’ve got hemostasis now.”

Don’t worry, I was just bleeding out under my skin and had to drag myself up in the murder-hours of morning to fix it. No big deal.

The gallow’s humor expression on Raidou’s face suggested he was having a similar thought, along with the dark new crescents of red under his nails. Whatever Genma had been doing, he’d needed help. There was a smear of dried copper across Raidou’s wrist, too, and dried splatters on Genma’s pants.

The size of that bandage didn’t go with a minor anything, either.

For a second, Kakashi thought about pushing the question—how bad are youreally?—but a different answer wouldn’t change things. Either Genma had it under control or he didn’t. Kakashi wasn’t a medic; he couldn’t help.

Genma derailed his train of thought by circling cool fingers around Kakashi’s wrist, checking the pulse, and asking, “Anything else you need?”

He probably meant meds, but—

“Are we safe?” Kakashi asked, before he caught himself.

“Safe enough,” Raidou said, from his watchful lean against the bed-platform. “Two of Ueno’s clones checked in a couple hours ago. Uotani Temple safehouse is dealing with casualties. Team Twelve got badly hit, but they’ve got at least two members still breathing. They put their attackers in the ground. Uotani is sending messages home for them and us.”

The report was businesslike, but the lines bracketing Raidou’s mouth looked deeper, and his eyes were tired and sad. Leaning against the wall, Ryouma looked down and away, white-lipped.

Kakashi couldn’t remember anyone on Team Twelve. They weren’t a rookie team, but that was all he knew.

“Akasugi Ridge is quiet, and no word yet on Porei Cove, though it might not even be staffed,” Genma said, with the same temperate professionalism he’d worn since the mission began. “I don’t expect anyone to land on them. Team Twelve was the only one with a mission near us.”

Ryouma looked up. “Would we hear if others got hit?”

From within her tumble of covers, Katsuko mumbled, “Doubt it.”

“It’s unlikely,” Raidou agreed. “Unless they think we can help, or there’s something worse coming our way, and I’m voting no on both those options.”

“S’okay,” Katsuko said drowsily. “I’ll protect you all.”

Ryouma’s voice was quiet. “You’ve done your part. Go back to sleep, Katsu.”

“If the ceiling starts to come down, I’ll let you know,” Raidou said, wry and fond.

“You’d better,” she said, like her clones wouldn’t tell her first. “I wouldn’t want to miss that.”

“I would,” Kakashi muttered, thinking of rockfalls and bodies that broke under them. The demon caves had been bad enough, and none of them had a bloodline to yank out and share if they got crushed. A death down here would be double-wasted.

He kicked his mind towards more useful thoughts. It would take a radio message a few hours to reach Konoha, provided the channels weren’t compromised. Bird-carrier took at least a day, but was more secure. Then time for medical teams to scramble—and it would be teams, plural—and travel out to them. Team Six had made the journey in a day and a half, but they’d hustled. Konoha’s medics weren’t slow, though…

Two days, at the earliest. Probably closer to three.

Sharing space with the Kiri-ninja who’d nearly taken his head off. But she was injured and cell-bound. Raidou was mobile (though heavily bandaged), Ryouma was upright (and shadow-eyed), Genma was limping (and still lethal), and Katsuko was shattered inside her skin (but still capable of making things explode).

On-mission, that was about as safe as it got.

Then again… Kakashi pressed the heel of his hand against the hot, solid throb of Obito’s eye, and considered the two days of Team Six’s nurse-maiding ahead of him.

At least there were drugs.

On cue, Genma said, “I can give you acetaminophen to go with that morphine, if it’s not holding you.”

“It’ll pass,” Kakashi said, with more hope than belief.

Genma gave him a measuring look, as if he could see all the thoughts Kakashi was trying not to have. “Try me,” he said quietly. “Where’s your worst pain? Maybe I can do something about it.”

The morphine was already taking the edge off, but there was a lot of edge.

“Right arm,” Kakashi said, flicking an explanatory gesture at the Raikiri’s standard pathway: inner arm to wrist, ending at the palm, where the bones of his hand ached like exhausted fire. He’d re-routed a lightning bolt instead of mimicking one, but the principle was the same: lots of energy, one arm. He added, “Chest hurts a little.”

That was standard when you made a good effort to tear all your chakra out. The meridians liked to sit up and protest, especially the major seats between heart, lower ribcage, and the base of the spine.

Kakashi hesitated on a last thought. Genma tipped his head, eyes tired but knowing, and said, “Something else?”

Kakashi grimaced and pulled his hand away from his face, feeling the warm spill of another tear. “Eye,” he said.

Obito’s gift was never exactly comfortable, but when Kakashi really put it to the test, especially when he fed it something new and complicated, it sat like a hot coal, inflaming everything around it.

Genma’s mouth compressed to a thin line. “For the arm and chest I can add a few more senbon to gate your chakra flow more tightly, since it’s a specific set of channels. The eye… Is it a pain you’ve felt before?”

“Yeah,” Kakashi said, dropping that thread of hope. Full-blooded medics didn’t like to mess with Rin’s work; a field medic on the edge of his reserves definitely wouldn’t. “It’s normal; it goes away. Don’t worry about it, lieutenant.”

That didn’t ease the pinch between Genma’s eyebrows. “What do other medics do for it, besides morphine?”

Kakashi shrugged one shoulder. “You’re the first medic I’ve worked with long-term, besides Rin. Standard is morphine and a ride home.”

Where Rin would make thatface, and Kakashi would have guilt for a week.

“How about a cold compress?” Genma said.

“Wouldn’t kick it out of bed,” Kakashi said, which made Katsuko laugh into her stolen pillows.

“I’ll get it,” Ryouma said, and peeled himself away from the wall.

“I like this thing where he’s the errand boy.” Katsuko freed her head from the blankets just enough to show one eye, having completely failed at following orders and going to sleep. Her temple was dappled with faint, shallow burns, like she’d stood too near a scatter-shot of shrapnel. Or thrown herself through a burning wall. “Can it be a permanent thing? Tea minion, beverage me!”

Ryouma turned, leaning against the doorframe. “Any other requests?”

Genma glanced up. “Since you’re making tea…”

“I wouldn’t turn down tea,” Raidou said.

Kakashi raised his left hand and waved it languidly, only briefly distracted when the edges blurred against the yellow lamplight. “Can you do a dance when you come back?”

“One cold compress, three mugs of tea, one Wind Country veil-dance, coming right up.” Ryouma dropped a remarkably fluid bow for someone who had to be stiff, and stepped out.

Genma and Raidou both laughed. Katsuko lowered the blanket another inch, showing a second eye, and said prayerfully, “Ohplease.”

“There’s money in my belt-pouch,” Kakashi said. “Someone get it so I can throw it at him.”

“How about we get your needles first?” Raidou said, sounding like he was fighting not to laugh again. “Then you can pay for dinner and a show.”

“Deal,” Kakashi said, and lay obediently still as Genma ran gentle hands over his right arm and shoulder, searching for new places to insert needles. He hissed a little when Genma swiped alcohol over his skin, but the sting was short-lived, and the hair-fine senbon didn’t hurt at all. His chakra rippled weirdly, fighting the new pull.

“Breathe,” Genma said. “Slow, in and out to a count of six.”

Kakashi inhaled through his nose and out through his mouth. On the fourth breath, he felt the thin edge of his chakra relax, settling into slow, loose curves. The throbbing pain trickled out of his muscles, ebbing like a tide.

He sighed softly, relieved.

“Better?” Genma asked.

“You still smell like blood,” Kakashi mumbled, eyes closed.

There was a moment of blank, confused silence, then Genma said, “Oh,” and cleared his throat. “Yeah. Not much I can do about that. I’ve got some clove oil for toothache I could dab under your nose, if you want.”

Kakashi shook his head, which made the room swirl like an oil painting. “Like to know what’s going on,” he said. “Can’t if I’m just smelling cloves.”

“Think you can eat a little before you pass out again?”

“Effort,” Kakashi complained. “Ueno can do it for me.”

“You sure?” Katsuko said, words smashed into fabric again. “Wouldn’t want to stunt your growth or anything.”

“Pretty sure you’re shorter,” Kakashi said. “And skinnier.”

“I’m prettier than you so it doesn’t count,” Katsuko said, like that made any kind of sense.

Kakashi scratched his jaw, adjusting the itchy layers of bandage-mask. “I’m going to remember this the next time you want my food. Wouldn’t help in a time of need…”

The door creaked, and Ryouma paused to lean against the frame again, balancing three steaming mugs, a canteen, a damp towel, and no veils of any kind. “Every time I come back, I feel like I’m interrupting something,” he drawled. “Getting bullied, Kakashi?”

Kakashi sighed. “Ueno won’t eat my food.”

“The food you don’t have,” Ryouma said slowly. “Right. Guess it’s a good thing I found protein powder and made you a shake instead.”

“Good thinking,” Genma said.

Ryouma’s mouth tilted up at the praise. He crossed the floor and passed out mugs to Raidou and Genma, who accepted them gratefully. Katsuko took more persuading to rise from her blanket-cocoon, but eventually she bribed Raidou to sit up on the platform so she could lean against him, still shrouded in covers, and cradled the final mug in her good hand.

Ryouma also hauled himself onto the platform and settled down in the empty space on Kakashi’s left side. He draped a cold compress over Kakashi’s face—it was damp, not quite dripping, and cold as ice melt. Kakashi pulled it down over both eyes and let out a long, slow breath as it numbed some of the ache.

“You’re my favorite person,” he mumbled.

“You owe somebody a dead rabbit if you wanna keep me around as your errand-boy. Dunno who you’d pay it to, though,” Ryouma said, but there was something pleased edging his voice. He settled the canteen in Kakashi’s hand. “That’s supposed to be chocolate-flavored. Think you can drink?”

“Or die trying.” Chocolate wasn’t a favorite, but Kakashi needed calories, and liquid-form was the easiest option he was going to get.

“I don’t recommend choking as a way to die,” Ryouma said quietly, which, yeah, since he’d recently half-drowned in Genma’s blood, and Kakashi had gotten to wear both of their blood like a noose— They’d reached their quota for the week.

“Needles are all in,” Genma said. “How’s that feel now?”

Kakashi flexed his right arm, muscle bunching around odd spots of numbness. The canteen wobbled in his grip; he tightened his fingers, but chakra drain liked to hit you where you lived. His grip slipped, too weak and tired, and the canteen fell.

Since it didn’t smack him in the stomach, someone else had caught it.

Kakashi nudged the compress up enough to see a glimmer of brushed metal in Genma’s hand, and the wry, tilted expression on Ryouma’s face, and said, “It hurts less?”

“Scale of one to ten?” Genma said.

“The frowny face in the middle, before it starts crying,” Kakashi said. When Genma did the lieutenant eyebrow at him, he added, “Three and a half.”

“Down from?”

“Seven,” Kakashi said. “Seven-ish. Drugs are great; everyone should have them.”

“You know what else is awesome?” Katsuko said. “Singing. You should sing for us. Feel free to warble.”

“I can sing,” Kakashi said, offended bywarble.

Katsuko lit up like a woman presented with a glorious, shiny birthday present.

“But it’ll take a lot more drugs,” Kakashi said.

“Since three of you were recently strangled, let’s bench the singalong,” Raidou said. He’d shifted to settle his back against the wall, still supporting Katsuko’s weight. His tea was already drained.

“Help me slide out,” Genma told Ryouma, “and you can help Hatake sit up and drink.” His hand settled brief and cool on Kakashi’s shoulder, finding an unbandaged bit. “Sorry, I’m not much use as a brace right now.”

Kakashi patted Genma’s wrist and then, on impulse, reached up to catch one of the sun-streaked tendrils of hair framing the lieutenant’s face. Genma went very still. Kakashi turned the tendril between his fingers, watching it catch the light.

“Don’t cut this,” he told Genma.

Genma’s skin was still the color of old snow, but a faint ghost of heat tinged his cheeks pink, and a reluctant smile broke through his restraint. “Make you a deal. Drink at least half that canteen and I won’t.” He gently untangled Kakashi’s hand from his hair, and patted the back of it.

“M’kay,” Kakashi said.

Genma nodded at Ryouma, who helped him slide free. Genma’s right leg didn’t want to bend, but they managed a semi-graceful maneuver between the two of them, Ryouma supplying strength and Genma achieving a little flex. Genma settled on the edge of the platform, turned sideways to brace his bad leg up and watch them. Ryouma returned to Kakashi’s side, canteen glinting in one hand.

“No flirting with me,” Ryouma said, as he tortured Kakashi upright like aviolent sad*st. “I don’t want you beating me up again when you’re sober.”

“You’re no fun,” Kakashi gasped, catching his breath against Ryouma’s shoulder. Ryouma’s arm was a solid support around his back, one hand curling gently around Kakashi’s upper arm. The room did an interesting little kaleidoscope, smearing into fractals and back again. Kakashi closed his eye until it stopped, pulling the compress back into place.

“Rethinking that dead rabbit?” Ryouma said, and pressed the lip of the canteen to Kakashi’s mouth, between the bandages. “C’mon, drink up.”

The protein shake might have been chocolate in another lifetime. Now it mostly tasted like grit and sugary chemicals, but it was cold and wet, and better than the memory of last night’s blood. Since Genma had made it achallenge, Kakashi wrapped his hand around Ryouma’s heavy-boned wrist, steadying the canteen, and drank the entire thing.

“More?” Ryouma asked, sounding a little surprised as he tipped the empty canteen up.

“Only if you want me to throw up on you,” Kakashi said. He propped his chin on Ryouma’s shoulder, which was solid and broad and comfortable, and blinked when he inhaled something sweet. It was—coming from Ryouma? Underlaid with the edge of old rot, because that jutsulingered forever, printed into Ryouma’s skin like a vengeful watermark, but there was a lighter scent on top. Something bright and clean, and weirdly fragrant.

“Y’smell like fruit,” Kakashi informed Ryouma. “Why d’you always smell like a lady’s bedroom?”

Somewhere to the right, Katsuko made a rough sound quickly muffled by coughing.

“I like smelling good,” Ryouma said mildly. “It makes a change. This one’s blackberry vanilla. I left the rest of the bar in the bathroom; you can try it tomorrow morning.”

Showering would probably make him feel like a new man, if only because it would kill the old one dead. Kakashi let that thought slide in favor of rubbing his nose against Ryouma’s shirt-strap, where cloth trapped scent against skin and made it curl up warmly.

“It’s nice,” he said indistinctly.

Ryouma laughed quietly, surprised; it made his shoulder quake. “Now I know the morphine’s kicked in,” he said, but he wasn’t sharp about it. The hand curled around Kakashi’s left biceps rubbed up and down, slow and soothing. Kakashi leaned heavier, feeling himself start to go liquid-relaxed. Ryouma said, “Hope it makes up for the rot. Sorry I dragged you through it, earlier.”

There was a vague memory of bodies slagging to black puddles beneath Ryouma’s hands—Remember this? Said I’d show you…—but it was distant and blurry, and Kakashi couldn’t bring himself to care.

“Mmm,” he said.

Genma shifted in the distance. “Ready to lie back down?”

“M’comfortable,” Kakashi protested. “Stop making me move.”

Katsuko stirred, peeling herself away from Raidou’s side to poke him gently in the ribs. “If you lie down, you can get hugged on both sides, my lovely coconut sprinkle.”

“Coconut’s gross,” Kakashi said, wrinkling his nose.

“My lovely butterbean pastry?”

“Okay,” he said, and pushed himself away from Ryouma’s shoulder—or tried to. The spin was more vicious this time, and Kakashi thought,Overdid itas he fell back against Ryouma’s side. Too much, too soon, because apparently sitting up was taxing.

Hehatedchakra drain.

“Whoa there,” Katsuko said, and steadied him one-handed on the left.

“Stay still, I’ve got you,” Ryouma said, still with his arm around Kakashi’s shoulders. There was a vertical shift and Kakashi realized Ryouma was very slowly reclining, lowering them both backwards in a kind of glacial reverse crunch. Katsuko came with them, steady against Kakashi’s left side, and then the mattress was there and gloriously, immovably flat. Kakashi sighed and sank into it.

Ryouma’s arm eased free, and then—

“Hey,” said Kakashi, cracking his eye back open. “Don’ leaveagain.”

“I’m sleeping on the floor—” Ryouma began.

“Stay with us?” Katsuko said. There was no teasing edge in her voice, just honest exhaustion, weary and worn down.

Ryouma hesitated, eyes lowered. Then, inexplicably, he looked at Raidou.

“You never been in a foxhole before?” Raidou said, wryly. “Hug your team, Tousaki. Someone should. I’m going to keep the lieutenant warm, in case he decides to open another vein.”

“Hey,” Genma said mildly. “I wasclosingthe vein.”

“Don’t pass up a chance to snuggle with the captain,” Ryouma said, distracted. He held Raidou’s gaze a moment, searching for something Kakashi couldn’t parse—reassurance? further permission?—then dropped his eyes to Kakashi. “I left my blankets on the floor.”

He pulled free and slid down to the floor, padding across the room.

Kakashi watched the shadows ripple over his unarmored back and thought that, for being in a room full of people, Ryouma looked very alone.

“Doesheneed a hug?” Kakashi asked Raidou quietly.

“It couldn’t hurt,” Raidou said.

“Yes,” Katsuko said at the same time.

Raidou’s mouth tilted. He leaned across to brush Katsuko’s hair back from her forehead, careful around the faint, dappled burns, and then reached further to tap Kakashi’s shoulder. Kakashi blinked up at him.

“I didn’t get the chance to say this earlier,” Raidou said. “But good work today. I’m glad you’re on this team, Hatake.”

Something unexpected and warm lit in Kakashi’s chest, like the distant cousin to the sunbeam blaze of Minato’s rare and hard-earned compliments. He searched for words, found no good ones, and said, “Lieutenant’s getting cold.”

“You are all suchnags,” Raidou said, but he sounded amused. “I’m moving. Be kind to the lesser people; they’ve had a hard day.”

“M’always kind,” Kakashi mumbled, and pressed his face down against Katsuko’s good shoulder. She still smelled like smoke and ginger. Apparently his whole team just smelled like candy-fruit when they didn’t smell like death.

“Uh huh,” Raidou said, and levered himself stiffly up, collecting mugs and the canteen. Over the very edge of Katsuko’s shoulder, Kakashi watched him meet Ryouma on the return and put his hand on Ryouma’s shoulder.

Ryouma let out a long, slow breath. An edge of brittle tension didn’t quite wash out of him.

Raidou squeezed gently, rocking Ryouma just a little on his feet. Then he scruffed a hand through Ryouma’s hair, turning it into a glorious disaster, and shooed Ryouma back up onto the platform. Raidou followed after him, dropping mugs and collecting Genma on the way. There was a mill of general confusion before everyone settled down again.

It resolved with Ryouma pressed warm and awkward against Kakashi’s side. Beyond him, Genma and Raidou buried themselves beneath a pile of blankets, hissing quietly at each other as they negotiated sharp joints and various injuries. Genma sighed, low and exhausted. Raidou mumbled something that sounded like,no more midnight bleeding.

“Stoppingbleeding,” Genma said.

Their breathing evened out shortly after that, and Kakashi thought,Veterans. They were both older; they’d done real time in the war. You learned to sleep anywhere after a while, and quickly.

Katsuko was chakra-warm and languid, sleepy but not yet gone. Ryouma was stiff.

Kakashi reached up and found the ruffled edge of messy hair, the rougher edge of an unshaven jaw. He patted the side of Ryouma’s face with an open hand.

“S’okay,” he said, hazy. “Whatever it is, we can kill it.”

Ryouma’s laugh shivered in the air, raspy. “Sure. If anyone could, it’d be you.” He put his hand up over Kakashi’s, fingers long and calloused, and slid Kakashi’s hand off his face, tugging it down to rest on the rumpled blankets between them. He didn’t pull his hand back afterwards. “Go to sleep, Kakashi.”

Vaguely, Kakashi thought,Ryouma’s melted people with that hand.

He’d seen it, just recently. Tsuto’s ravaged belly, f*ckuda’s sword arm, the half-remembered bodies in the field. But Kakashi’s right hand had burned out more hearts than he could remember, and it was all just… weapons, sheathed and laid down for the night. Safe enough.

Ryouma felt like flesh and bone now.

The golden lights made warm shadows, soft and peaceful. Kakashi curled his fingers around Ryouma’s palm, ducked his head down lower against Katsuko’s shoulder, and drifted into the dark.

When he opened his eyes again, Obito looked up from a field of sun-stroked grass and smiled.

“Better,” he said.

Kakashi smiled back, and the sky was blue.

Chapter 6: Rest for the Wicked

Chapter Text

May 9, Yondaime Year 9

The third time Ryouma twitched himself awake from nightmares, there was someone leaning over him.

For a moment it was the nightmare again, reversed: himself on his back in a tangle of blankets, the hand coming down, the iron band crushing his windpipe. Fear gripped him like shackles. He had no air to cry out.

But the hand settled on his shoulder, not his throat. Katsuko’s shadow clone shook him once, urgently. “Tousaki,” it whispered. “We need you at the cells.”

He dragged in a desperate breath. The clone leaned back warily, but Ryouma’s body seemed to be as sleep-stifled as his brain. It took him a moment to push onto his elbow, pulling his hand free of Kakashi’s sleep-loosened grasp, and claw his mind back together. “The cells. f*ckuda?”

The clone nodded, short and unhappy, and stepped away.

None of the others had stirred. Genma was still snoring softly through his swollen nose, Raidou a rougher counterpoint beyond him. Kakashi’s shallow breathing hitched when Ryouma eased himself away, and the tousled head turned restlessly from its pillow on Katsuko’s shoulder. But he settled his cheek on the pile of blankets Ryouma had left behind, and his breathing evened again.

Ryouma left them all dreaming and followed the clone out into the hall. The air was cooler, easier to breathe. A generator hummed in the storage room, and shadows swung crazily against the packed earth walls as the second shadow clone posted outside f*ckuda’s cell clambered to its feet.

There was no sign of a break-out yet, no surge of vicious foreign chakra. He couldn’t see any movement beyond the bars, and he didn’t want to go any closer. If she was dying, damnit, she could just getonwith it.

The clone who’d come to wake him said, “She drank the water. Hasn’t touched the food.” It jerked its chin at the faintly glimmering iron bars of the cell, and the shadowed woman beyond them. “She’s been tossing for the last two hours.”

Ryouma drifted two steps closer, despite himself. The metal pot with its congealed lump of stew sat just inside the low grate at the bottom of the door. The tin cup lay on its side, a little closer to the mattress and the woman huddled on it. She’d kicked the blanket halfway off, and the dim light from the caged bulbs in the hallway caught at the sheen of sweat on her temples.

He looked back at the clone. It stared up at him, quiet-eyed. The other clone kept its unwearied crouch at his feet.

If he walked away, he thought, they might keep quiet, too.

But Katsuko would know, when the clones dispersed. She might not say anything either—but she’d know.

He sighed. “The lieutenant’s sound asleep, and he’s spent too much chakra today already. One of you see if there’s any fever meds in that closet. And clean bandages.”

The first clone nodded and brushed past him, loping down the hall for the medic’s closet. The other stayed in its flat-footed peasant’s crouch, but it took its eyes off the prisoner to regard him instead, its head co*cked to the side like an inquisitive bird.

They didn’t talk as much as Katsuko did. Clones never really did; he shouldn’t find it unnerving. He looked away, all the same.

“Here.” The first clone was back with an sling tucked full of medical supplies and the same thoughtful stare. He sent it for water and triggered the automatic door lock. The second clone edged back, away from the swing of the chakra-cancelling bars, and then wedged a rock in the gap to prevent the door from closing.

f*ckuda didn’t stir as Ryouma approached. Her yellow hair was damp, matted to the sides of her head, and her breath was shallow and fast. The IV bag Raidou had rigged for her was flat and dry. He replaced it with a new bag, opened the drip a little wider, and then crouched to sort through the rest of the medicines.

Most of them were labeled, uselessly.

“Can you—”

“Here,” the clone said again, stooping back into the cell. It set down a cup of clean water and took the plastic bottle out of his hand. “Not this one, probably. Acetaminophen for fevers, right?”

“Think so.” Ryouma followed the clone’s directions as it read from the label on a different bottle, crushing four small tabs into the water cup and then swirling until they’d mostly dissolved. He had to steel himself to touch the Kiri nin, to lift her head enough to drink.

Her lips were cracked and dry, her eyes deep-shadowed like bruises. The pale lashes fluttered at the first touch of water to her mouth; she drank, deeply, before her eyes slitted open, vague and unfocused. “Moto? Wha—”

“Moto’s dead,” Ryouma said.

Her eyes flared wide with shock. She jerked back against his grip, and the stump of her arm twitched as if she were reaching for a weapon she didn’t have. The pain of movement ripped a gasp out of her throat, and she lay still again, shaking.

“Finish this,” Ryouma said, pressing the cup against her teeth again. “It’ll cut the fever.”

She clamped her lips shut. Her eyes burned.

Ryouma glared back. “My captain said you won’t be harmed.Ican obey orders. Besides,” he added, sliding a knife-edge of contempt into his voice, “I got a lot easier ways to kill you than poison.”

Katsuko’s clone shifted its balance, brushing its shoulder against his. Supportive, maybe, or adding an extra edge of threat. He didn’t look back at it, but the warm burn of its borrowed chakra sank into his skin all the same.

f*ckuda licked cracked lips. After a moment her stump twitched again, as if she were trying to reach for the cup with her missing dominant arm. She flinched, and bit down. A dribble of blood blotted the corner of her mouth. She rasped, “Where’s your captain, Leaf ANBU?”

“Busy,” Ryouma said.

He tipped the cup, until she had to drink or spill. She drank, reluctantly and then thirstily, but her eyes never faltered.

He curled his lip. “Memorizing my face, Kiri? Good luck. By the time you’re back up to my level, somebody else will have beaten you to it.”

“Wondering why you didn’t kill me,” she said. “Back when you actually had the chance.”

He handed the cup back to Katsuko’s clone. “I thought I did. You’d’ve had maybe half an hour, if the lieutenant hadn’t come.”

Half an hour of unrelenting, unbearable agony, before the rot reached her heart.

He’d have said she deserved it, if he’d been thinking about it. But he hadn’t been; he hadn’t been thinking of anyone but Kakashi, just then. He’d left her to die because he’d been too busy making sure Kakashi wouldn’t. Was he supposed to feel guilty about that?

Even if he should, he wasn’t going to.

She didn’t say anything more as he unwrapped the bandages to check her arm, just bit her lips and hissed quietly at his touch. Most of the cauterized wound was clean, but one edge was beginning to suppurate. He lanced it to drain the pus, smeared it with antibiotic ointment, rewrapped the stump in clean bandages. “Medic’ll have a look later,” he said, tying the last knot. “You’re kinda low on our list of priorities.”

f*ckuda looked up, her pale eyes glittering huge in her hollow-cheeked face. “You can blame me for Iebara,” she said. “But my team didn’t murder their own countrymen.”

He pushed to his feet. “You should sleep well at night, then.”

She laughed, hoarse and ragged, and turned her head away.

He left Katsuko’s clone to clean up the medical detritus and ducked out of the cell to peel off the grimy blister-bandages and wash his hands. The small bar of soap he’d left in the bathroom wore down to half its previous size by the time he finished, but its sweet, rich scent was as strong as ever. It wafted with him when he came back out into the hall.

The cell door was shut; the clones must have kicked the rock away. One of them kept its eternal watch crouched just outside the cell. The other was coming back from its medical waste disposal. It peeked in the bunkroom door as it passed, creaking the ancient hinges.

Katsuko’s chakra rippled in the room beyond, the barely controlled flare of waking from sleep. The clone said, in a tone of deep satisfaction, “Finally.”

It glanced down the hall at Ryouma. “I’ve been waiting for this all night,” it said, and popped into smoke and nothingness.

Time and practice had taught Katsuko how to process the mental onslaught of a bunshin’s lifespan in seconds. By the time she sat up, rubbing the grit from her eyes, she’d already stored away the image of Ryouma’s bare back glistening in the shower. She’d examine it in detail later, when the memory of Ryouma’s venomous exchange with the Kiri-nin wasn’t clanging around inside her skull, demanding precedence.

She disentangled herself from Kakashi, who’d attached himself to her like a sloth in search of the warmest tree branch, and wobbled to her feet, ignoring the paper-dryness of her throat. Kakashi didn’t stir at her careful movements; Katsuko suspected nothing short of a cave-in would wake him at this point. She drew the blankets back up over his shoulders, detached her IV, and went looking for Ryouma.

He hadn’t moved far from the Kiri kunoichi’s cell. Katsuko found him in the spartan kitchen, watching as a fresh pot of tea came to boil. She hesitated in the hallway while she regarded Ryouma’s dark, bent head and the tense line of his back.

“Figured you’d be out soon,” Ryouma said. He didn’t turn around. “Sorry, you’ve probably got a headache now.”

Are you okay?Katsuko didn’t ask. She cut across the room on silent feet, stopping next to Ryouma. When he continued to stare at the pot like it held unfathomable secrets, she nudged his arm. He was tall enough that her good shoulder only came up to his bicep.

“Hey,” she said. “I’m a lot prettier than the tea. And I even talk back.”

He let out a soft huff and gave her a sideways glance. “Sounds like you come pretty highly recommended.”

“Boiled leaf water has nothing on me,” Katsuko said in magnanimous acknowledgment.

Ryouma made an expression like he was considering smiling. Katsuko propped herself up on him with a comfortable sigh, resting her good shoulder against his arm. If she leaned a little more weight against him than necessary… well, acting as a standing post was part of his duties as her teammate. And she didn’t want him going anywhere while that restlessness still lurked in the back of his eyes.

Everyone on Team Six hid some sort of darkness—it was impossible not to—but Ryouma was the only one who masked his with flash and flair and determined, brilliant light. The rage he’d shown towards the Kiri nin hadn’t startled Katsuko; he hadn’t made any effort to hide it before. It was the haunted look on his face as he’d retreated to scour his hands raw that made worry curl tight and sharp in Katsuko’s throat.

She knew what it was like, feeling like you’d never be clean again; the horror of learning what you were capable of doing under orders. Obedience was bred into a shinobi’s bones, the legacy of generations of ninja pledging themselves to their Villages as warriors, weapons, soldiers.

Sacrifices.

But a ninja was not wholly a weapon, no matter what the rules liked to preach. The first time Katsuko had killed a civilian in cold blood, she’d scraped her knuckles bloody trying to clean the gore out from the grooves and whorls of her skin. Even with more than a year of ANBU experience to inure her, it was only willpower that kept the memory of Tsuto Tomoko’s terrified eyes locked away in a dark corner of her mind Katsuko refused to acknowledge until the mission was over and she had permission to feel again.

Asking Ryouma to break his silence while keeping her own guilt and grief buried deep was impossible. She wouldn’t be able to free Ryouma from the nightmare place in his head without cracking herself open and spilling out all the ugliness she’d rather keep hidden. The weight of all the death she’d dealt would swallow her whole.

But tonight had been Ryouma’s first mission with a civilian family on the sharp edges of his blade. She would have felt for any rookie in this situation, but this was Ryouma. In the short time she’d had with him, she’d learned she wanted to see him hurting about as much as she wanted to cut her own arm off.

Even if it meant she’d have to dredge up some of the barbed-wire memories that kept her up at night, she wanted that hollow look gone from his eyes.

“You can talk to me,” Katsuko said at last, quiet. “I might be your senpai, but I was still a rookie not even two months ago.”

Ryouma looked down at the tea again, but his silence didn’t feel like one of rejection. Katsuko waited as the seconds stretched out. Finally, he said, “I never killed anyone who wasn’t trying to kill me back, before this.” He paused. “You wouldn’t think it’d make that much difference. The girl even had a knife— she stabbed the lieutenant’s kage bunshin. It was one of those ornamental tanto they give rich ladies to protect their virtue. A kaiken. She couldn’t’ve even scratched me…”

There were red lines gouged across the backs of the fingers of his right hand. He rubbed at them absently. Katsuko studied his expression and asked, “Did she try to run?”

“She didn’t get a chance. Nobody did.” A muscle jumped in the side of Ryouma’s jaw. “Except Kiri. The lieutenant meant to let ’em walk, until that blood-bastard broke ranks.”

Katsuko nodded. The Kiri kunoichi hadn’t given the impression of a captain who tolerated disobedience from her subordinates. What kind of mad dog had Iebara been, that even his squad leader had been afraid to bring him to heel?

“Tea’s done,” Ryouma said irrelevantly. He dislodged Katsuko and crouched down to turn the burner off. He didn’t pull the pot off; just stayed there, flat on his heels, watching the bubbles break and die. Slowly, he said, “We had to kill them. Tsuto and his wife. They were traitors. They deserved to die. But the girl didn’t know that. She just saw ANBU killing her parents. And—” He cut himself short, biting down on his lips, and shook his head.

She settled her hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently. “Your first civilian kill stays with you,” she said, quiet. “The guilt never really goes away. And you’re never the same after it.”

Ryouma laughed, short, sharp, and without an ounce of humor. “’We’re not the good guys anymore’, you mean? I knew that. In the war, we did things— hell,youknow. You probably did them too.” He threw his head up, staring fixedly at the wall, and worked his jaw sideways. “Raidou— Taichou told me you had to take the little girl.”

Katsuko’s grip tightened despite herself; she felt the muscles in Ryouma’s shoulder shift. She forced the words out. “Yes. And the parents.”

Silence reigned for a few blessed moments. Then he said, “You’ll have nightmares about it.” It wasn’t a question.

She gazed down at Ryouma’s dark head. Honesty felt like agony, but she’d already come this far. “I told her to close her eyes and that it wouldn’t hurt. Then I killed her in front of her father. What do you think?”

He looked up, then, the skin around his lips pinched and pale. “I did the same thing. Except she was ten years older, and Kakashi’d already put a knife in her throat. But I had to cover her eyes before I ended it.”

Katsuko made a jagged sound. “Aren’t we a pair?” she said, bleakly amused. “Two grown killers who’d rather face a battlefield than look dying little girls in the eye.”

Ryouma’s mouth twisted. “Special kind of cowards.”

She made another rough noise in the back of her throat; it sounded like agreement.

Her skin was waxen and drawn with pain and tiredness, and dark circles puffed under her eyes. He thought of the clone in the shower, sparing its only good hand to squeeze his shoulder. Of Raidou, sitting on the folding chair just a few feet away, telling him that Katsuko’d had to kill a toddler and her parents, and that she might need a spare shoulder of her own.

He’d tried to carry Raidou’s burdens, when he had no right to. Raidou’d made it easy on him, refused to give him all of it. And here Katsuko was, trying to do the same: to be the good senpai, to let him talk out his nightmares and give him only what she thought he could bear of her own.

Heat itched behind his eyes. He wanted to cry, or to kill something.

He poured tea instead. It was overbrewed—he’d forgotten what he was making, when he first poured the powder in, like campfire coffee instead of tea—but they both took it oversugared, which helped a little with the taste. Katsuko crouched down beside him and curled slender fingers around the last of the clean mugs, breathing in the steam. For a moment her lashes lay long and dark on her cheeks, almost hiding the shadows under her eyes.

Ryouma burned his tongue on his own tea and set the mug aside. He said, “I’m not sure if I could have done it. I told myself I could, when I signed up—that I’d be fighting for the village; that I could kill babies, if it was for the village. But I was glad when taichou told me I was going for the traitor and his wife. And—glad Kakashi threw that kunai, before I had to.”

Katsuko blew the steam away and took a careful sip of her tea. She studied him for a moment over the rim of the mug. Then she lowered it to reveal a faint, crooked smile. “I was glad, too, when the plan was for taichou to take the kids. Telling yourself it’s for the village doesn’t make it any easier.”

“Taichou said you don’t get used to it, but you do get better at it.” Ryouma dropped his gaze to his hands, the dead skin over his palms where the chakra-limiters on the cell bars had bitten him. He picked at the edge of a blister. “I did it well, though. I didn’t hesitate. About the only thing I could’ve done better is the…dealing with it. And I’m not sure how you get better at that, or if I want to.”

Killing without a qualm—he had that down already. He’d killed men and women painfully and often horrifically since he was fourteen. But surely there weresomelines you had to draw for yourself, some way to tread the cliff edge between forging yourself into a weapon and discarding everything that made you human.

Was guilt enough?

“I never got better at dealing with it,” Katsuko said, so bluntly that he looked up. She was gazing into her tea. “I just learned how to delay the fallout until I get back to Konoha.” Her fingers tapped a brief, broken rhythm against the side of her mug. “Some people can shut everything off during a mission and switch back to normal as soon as it’s over. Other people go cold on their first ANBU assignment and stay cold for the rest of their career.”

She lifted clear hazel eyes to him, sharded with startling green in the dull yellow light. “Those are the ones you have to look out for.”

Ice-cold Kakashi, Ryouma thought, and then cut himself off: no, that wasn’t fair. Kakashi’d offered a traitor the comfort of a rebirth Kakashi himself didn’t believe in, simply because Tsuto might.

Genma and Raidou hadn’t gone cold, either. Genma’d killed Tsuto’s parents and son and seemed unbothered by it, but he’d kept the household staff safe and tried to talk the Kiri team out of a fight. He’d saved f*ckuda, when it would have been far easier to let her die. When everyoneelsehad had to die.

Maybe that was why Genma’d done it, Ryouma realized, with a slow cold hollowing of his belly. Because everyone elsehaddied, but there was still one person he could save…

He shook his head. “What do you do? When you get back, when the fallout hits? How d’you deal with it then?”

Katsuko set her mug down and met his eyes, steady and straight. “I find a place where I can be alone. Sometimes I cry. More often I train until I’m too tired for nightmares.” She paused, and then forged on with that same brutal, unflinching honesty. “It doesn’t always work. And when solitude starts to grate, I go find someone who can help me feel like a person again.”

“I never ran into you at the bar,” Ryouma said. “You must go to classier places than me.”

She gave him a wan smile, probably better than his feeble attempt at a joke deserved, but it didn’t last long before the lines drew down between her brows again. “I’m sorry I can’t give you any better answer to all this. I wish I could.”

Ryouma lifted one shoulder. “Didn’t really expect one. Taichou didn’t have one either.”

He’d given Ryouma at least one of the answers he needed, though—No, I’m not going to kick you off the team.And maybe Katsuko had, too.I never got better at dealing with it. I just learned how to delay.

Maybe some ANBUcouldhit the off-switch, but that didn’t mean they didn’t still wrestle with guilt and regret. They did what their village ordered them to, and afterwards…

Afterwards.

“Hey,” he said, and leaned sideways just enough that his shoulder bumped hers. “We should go out, when we get back. Your favorite bar, or mine. You promised me I could be your wingman after I killed that demon, and we never went.”

She looked up at him, sideways. Her face was still tired and too pale, but a smile grew slowly at the corners of her mouth. “You remembered? I’m touched.” She patted his knee. “Let’s do it. You can dress up sexy, and I can dress up sexier, and you can buy me food while you help me pick up hot people.”

“We have to bring Kakashi,” he said, remembering. “I owe him dinner anyway. I can clear my debts with both of you. An’ then we can abandon him mercilessly—or more likely he’ll abandonusbefore we even get to the dance floor—and next morning we’ll high five at team training and everyone else can be jealous.”

“That is an amazing plan,” Katsuko said, with the same deadly earnestness she might have used in reviewing mission strategy. “We can corral him into a bar and watch the twitching. Then we can go pick up hot people. You’re a genius.” She paused. “When we high five, you have to remember to bend down so I can actually reach your hand.”

“I’ve seen you jump,” Ryouma scoffed.

“Friends don’t make friends jump for high fives, Ryouma,” Katsuko said, sounding deeply hurt.

“Score somebody hotter than I do, and I’ll high five you.” Ryouma tossed back the rest of his tea and pushed himself to his feet. Sore muscles protested all over again. He reached a hand down for Katsuko.

She took it and let him pull her to her feet, not without a wince at her own aches. Standing, she swayed, as if the arm bound against her side had impaired her balance. He caught her just before she faceplanted into his chest. She must have been more tired than he’d thought; she didn’t pull away, just sagged against him. She was feverishly warm, and after a moment he dropped her hand and put his arm around her to hold her up.

“You shouldn’t’ve made it a contest,” she said, slightly muffled against his shoulder. She tilted her head back, sharp chin braced on his collarbones, and grinned up at him like a gremlin. “Now I’m in it to win it.”

She was irresistible. He couldn’t help it; he smiled down at her. “You’d better be. I want to see you dazzle ’em.”

“They won’t know what hit ’em,” Katsuko promised. She yawned, tongue curling like a cat’s, and then tucked her face down against his collarbones. Her good hand snaked around behind his waist, and for a brief, fierce handful of heartbeats she hugged him tight.

It wasn’t exactly the spare shoulder Raidou’d told him to offer. But for the moment, for both of them, it felt like it might be enough.

Genma jerked awake, aware of pain and not much else. Given the crudeness of his earlier medical treatment, the caffeine in the soldier pills he’d downed, and residual mission tension, the fact he’d slept several solid hours was probably some kind of minor miracle that deserved an offering at the temple, but he wasn’t feeling particularly grateful. While he’d slept, his right thigh seemed to have taken on elephantine proportions, throbbing in time with his heartbeat and hot as new-forged steel. And his nose and upper jaw felt like he’d run face-first into a brick wall.

Or maybe the morphine had worn off and swelling was making the bandages uncomfortably tight.

He took a few slow breaths to clear his head, then sat up carefully in the dark room, trying not to disturb his teammates, who seemed much reduced in number now that he was paying attention. There was a gap at his right where Ryouma had been, then Kakashi’s unmoving bulk under a mattress-thick layer of blankets, and another conspicuously empty pillow. Katsuko’s disconnected IV set hung from a kunai next to Genma’s and Kakashi’s depleted bags, but its owner was nowhere to be seen.

A quick chakra sweep found Katsuko and Ryouma’s ANBU sparks close by—probably in the kitchen. Raidou twitched awake at Genma’s left, rolling towards him with an inelegant, “Wasgh?”

“S’okay, you can go back to sleep,” Genma said. “I’m just getting up a sec.” Though how he was going to do that without help was a problem he hadn’t thought through.

Raidou pre-empted the question by ignoring Genma’s reassurance entirely. He shucked the blankets off of both of them, and sat up wild-haired and only half awake to put a restraining hand on Genma’s elbow. “What’re you cutting open now?”

“I’m not,” Genma said. “No more self-surgery, promise. I just need to loosen my bandages a little, and hang fresh fluids. I figured I’d go see what Ueno and Tousaki are up to since I was awake, and check on our prisoner.”

“Oh,” Raidou said blankly. He let go of Genma’s arm to scrub a hand over his face and through his hair, evidently trying to push consciousness into himself by force of will, then shook his head, blinked, and frowned at the empty bed-spaces. “I’ll help,” he said through a yawn. Bandaged shoulders tightened and rolled with an abbreviated stretch. “Hatake still breathing?”

“As far as I can tell,” Genma said. He levered himself over into Ryouma’s vacated space, hissing at the hurt. Raidou braced him up when he swayed, and waited without comment for Genma to find his equilibrium.

Kakashi’s skin was cool, but not the icy chill it had been. And his breathing was slow and even. His chakra still felt staticy and rough, like the scales of a lizard rubbed against the grain, but at least the current was holding steady and level. The senbon were still in place, holding Kakashi’s chakra back like retaining walls around a leaking oil tank.

“He’s in decent shape, all things considered,” Genma said. “Chakra’s low but holding steady, and he’s warmer. The more he sleeps, the better, for now.” He tucked the blankets back around Kakashi as closely as he could, then turned towards Raidou. “How are you doing?”

“Better than him,” said Raidou. He crawled off the end of platform of bedrolls and got stiffly to his feet—it looked like his painkillers had worn off, too, judging by the way he moved—then offered his bandage-swathed hands to help Genma up. In the half-light spilling in from the hall, he looked beaten hollow and oddly frail for such a muscular man—a study in injuries and exhaustion. “You?”

“Better than him,” Genma agreed. He disconnected his empty IV bag, leaving it hanging from its kunai holder, worked his way to the foot of the communal bed, and sat for a second gathering breath and conviction before he let Raidou help him stand.

Even with the captain to hang on to, the world swirled dangerously dark and vertiginous for a moment. “Blood loss’s a bitch,” Genma said dryly. He swallowed, got a grip on himself, and opened his eyes to give Raidou a weak smile. “I’m good now.”

“Yeah, and I’m a drag queen in my spare time,” Raidou deadpanned.

“Bet you’d look good in the right dress,” Genma said.

Raidou’s eyebrows twitched towards an expression Genma had only seen him use on Katsuko.

“I didn’t say that,” Genma started. “Boundaries. Morphine. Pain. Not at my best…” He waved a hand in a vague gesture.

“You’ll never see the pictures,” Raidou said, with a bland confidence that implied therewerepictures somewhere. And that he didn’t mind their existence.

There were so many directions to go with that idea, Genma’s thought process came to a confused halt.

Raidou made an amused sound and reconfigured the way he was bracing Genma up so they could shuffle down the hall side by side, and Genma wouldn’t eat dirt with a wrong step. “Where first, prisoner or kids?”

“Think they’re together. Ish.” Genma said, forcing his attention away from vague images of Raidou in red taffeta. “Toilet first, though.” He shuffled forward a step and tried not to put too much weight on Raidou’s bandaged shoulders.

When they got to the door, Raidou summoned over one of Katsuko’s clones and instructed it to keep an eye on Kakashi. He got Genma as far as the bathroom, waited just outside when Genma proved he could manage a few hobbling steps on his own, and resumed his role as human crutch to get them down to the kitchen when Genma re-emerged. They stopped again at the prisoner’s barred cell, where one of Katsuko’s clones was standing guard.

f*ckuda looked ill, face drawn and sheened in sweat. She didn’t react to their arrival.

“Did Tousaki hang that new IV?” Genma asked.

“Yeah,” the clone answered, standing up from its crouch to offer a second shoulder to lean on. “Gave her water, too.”

“Any meds?” Genma asked it.

“Fever stuff,” it said. “And he rebandaged her.”

Genma nodded. “Get my med kit,” he told the clone, “and Tousaki.”

Raidou gave him a questioning look.

“She looks septic,” he said. “I don’t know how Tousaki’s jutsu works. If my amputation wasn’t clean, and she’s got rot spreading under those bandages…”

He didn’t need to finish the sentence for Raidou to get the full import. “No jutsu,” he said. “I’d rather have her dead than you drained.”

It was the obvious choice to make faced with injured teammates and a prisoner of only medium value, with help likely twenty-four hours away at best, but Genma still found it oddly warming to hear Raidou say it. “No jutsu,” he agreed. “I’ll try to keep her stable, but she’s bottom of the list.”

Ryouma ducked through the door from the kitchen with Katsuko close at his heels. He frowned, crossing tense arms over his chest and gave Genma a narrow-eyed look. “Lieutenant. Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

Genma blinked, caught off guard and amused. “Yes,” he said. “My leg was killing me and I needed to use the toilet, so I thought I’d check on her while I was up. What’s your excuse?”

Ryouma hesitated for a second, then jerked his head at the cell. “Clone woke me up. She was feverish. We were going to let you sleep.”

There seemed to be something Ryouma wasn’t saying, but Genma wasn’t operating at the top of his game, and he couldn’t puzzle it out. Raidou unlocked the cell door and helped Genma get into an awkward one-legged crouch on the floor next to his patient.

A quick exam was reassuring on several counts. Her chakra was steady, her pulse strong and even, and her fever not nearly the crisis he’d feared. Ryouma passed over Genma’s med kit when he asked for it. “She’s not septic after all,” Genma judged. “Tousaki, if I missed an edge of rot from your jutsu when I did the amputation, would that account for the fever?”

“If you missed an edge of rot, she’d be missing her shoulder and half her chest by now,” Ryouma said, with dry finality. He leaned against the wall, arms still folded, keeping his distance from the cell but watching the prisoner like a viper. “I got some water and four of those pills for fever into her, maybe half an hour ago. She was lucid then.” Before Genma could respond, Ryouma’s tone sharpened into derision. “You’re not fooling anybody, Kiri.”

The woman’s eyes pressed briefly tighter, but she gave no other sign of engaging.

“That’s fine, you keep faking. If I were in your shoes, I’d pretend I was unconscious, too,” Genma told her. She maintained her façade. He looked up at Ryouma. “You give her another hit of morphine, too?”

Ryouma shook his head. “Didn’t know the dosage, or what she’d had already. Lanced some localized infection on the wound, though, and smeared some of that antibiotic ointment on.” His gaze locked onto the clean, bandaged stump. “Doesn’t look like it’s leaked through.”

Genma inspected it, too, and found the wound clean and the bandages dry. He dug a vial of strong antibiotics out of his kit and piggybacked it onto the IV keeping the prisoner hydrated. Then he counted remaining morphine syrettes, grimacing at the number they’d gone through already. But pain could kill, too. He injected her, clipped the spent syrette to her collar, and signalled Raidou to help him back up and out of the cell. “You did a good job,” he told Ryouma. “I should let you do my bandages next.”

Ryouma tugged his eyes away from f*ckuda with a start, like he hadn’t quite realized Genma was speaking to him. “Wha—? Oh. Thanks.” His cheeks and the tops of his ears darkened faintly, and he glanced guiltily down at Genma’s swollen leg. “D’you need help now?”

“Yeah,” Genma said. “This one’s too tight and probably pretty bloody. Good thing the bunker had medical supplies, given the rate we’re going through gauze.”

“You mean you didn’t pack half Konoha hospital in that medkit of yours?” Ryouma said. He might have been trying for light-hearted, but it came out a little strained.

“I did, but we used it already,” Genma told him. He grimaced at his own neglect as Ryouma helped him to his feet and out of the cell; he’d meant to check in on his unsettled rookie on the way back from Ibaragashi—the mission had clearly shaken Ryouma—but the encounter with the Mist team had shattered that plan, and he’d never picked up the pieces.

Maybe there would be a moment soon, once the rest of the team was back in bed.

Maybe Genmahadbeen serious about making Ryouma a medic.

Raidou had exactly zero problems with that idea. They needed all the help they could get.

While Ryouma helped Genma limp painfully back to the bunkroom, shepherded by a brace of Katsuko’s clones, Raidou’s eyes fell on f*ckuda’s back. The ridge of her spine pressed up against her shirt, outlined by sweat. Every hoarse breath made her ribs flex like a valley of sticks.

She’d have killed us, Ryouma had said.Why the hell are you helping her now?

And yet he’d been out here first, patching her up. Guilty conscience? Or a renewed determination to toe the line and follow orders after last night’s not-quite-breakdown.

A hot shiver of chakra made Raidou’s skin prickle. He looked sideways. Katsuko had moved to his elbow, good arm crossed over her chest and tucked into her sling as she regarded the cell. Her gaze on the prisoner held no particular emotion—no anger for an enemy or sympathy for a wounded combatant. It was just steady: one professional sizing up another.

“She’s a resource drain,” Katsuko said at last.

Time, chakra, meds, and bandages so far. Plus some frayed tempers.

“Yep,” Raidou agreed.

“And a danger,” Katsuko said.

“She is,” Raidou said.

Katsuko flicked a sideways glance at him, partly shrouded by the hair spilling across her face. For a moment, he thought she might say the unspoken thought:You’re crazy for adding enemy bullsh*t to an injured, unsteady team. We’re too fried to deal with this.

Her chin dipped once. “I can put a bow on her if you like. Y’know, for Intel.”

Raidou swallowed the punch-drunk urge to laugh. Or perhaps it was relief. Even with his knuckle-print bruising her breastbone, she still trusted him. “The last treaty had specific rules about the treatment of prisoners. Pretty sure cruel and unusual methods got a mention in there somewhere.”

“I won’t tell if you don’t.”

“Noted,” he said, and leaned against her, very carefully, just for a moment. She leaned back, warm against his side.

From the bunkroom, Genma said distinctly, “Buddha’s motherfu—Ow.”

“Sorry!” Ryouma said, sounding stressed, and there was the metallic clatter of some doubtlessly important piece of medical equipment hitting the ground. Bandage shears, if Raidou had to guess.

Not quite a medicyet.

“Better rescue them,” he said, and glanced quickly at his hands, which were still flecked with Genma’s dried blood from last night’s exploding leg drama. “I need to scrub up. Can you lend Ram a hand?”

Katsuko lifted her right hand, still injury-free, and wriggled her fingers. “Still got one spare,” she said, and went to Ryouma’s—or, more accurately, Genma’s—aid.

Raidou glanced one last time at f*ckuda’s back and thought,But for the grace of God. One moment of slipped control, one teammate gone rogue, and she was every captain’s worst nightmare. Captured, crippled, team slaughtered. You couldn’t fail worse.

If she hadn’t tried to massacre half of his team, he’d almost feel bad for her.

He left her under the watchful eye of one of Katsuko’s remaining clones—they were down to less than seven now—and made tracks for the bathroom. The soap smelled oddly sweet, but it got the blood off. He splashed cold water over his face, clearing mental cobwebs, and eyed the cracked mirror. The ragged bastard staring back looked like he badly needed a shave and a nap, but at least he was clear-eyed.

If he made it to the end of the mission without another blackout, maybe he’d stop worrying.

Okay, no, but maybe he’d worryless.

When he returned to the bunkroom, Genma was sitting with his back braced against the bed-platform, surrounded by a tiny hurricane of old, bloodied bandages. It looked like he’d taken a moment to give himself a fresh IV. Up on the platform, Kakashi had one, too. Ryouma was kneeling at Genma’s side, holding antiseptic, gauze, and an expression of faint trauma. Katsuko was on the other side, bending over to study Genma’s injured thigh curiously. The wound was ugly—curving and ragged where the original blade had laid the flesh open, neater where Genma had taken a scalpel to himself. Half the thigh was bruised black and purple, but the stretched, shiny look of intense swelling was gone. Clotted scabs intermingled with black stitches, and a few disturbed spots bled sluggishly. Overall, it was an improvement on last night.

Katsuko had a pair of bandage shears tucked behind one ear.

Quietly, Raidou leaned against the doorframe and watched as, under Genma’s instruction, Ryouma finished cleaning the injury and moved on to re-bandaging. Katsuko handed across supplies when asked, and kept up a patter of cheerful, random commentary that alternately baffled the lieutenant and seemed to help keep Ryouma grounded.

When the leg was bound up in clean, white bandages and the last knot tied, Genma sighed relief. “Good job.”

“We try our best,” Katsuko said, sweeping unused supplies back together.

Ryouma sat back on his heels, bracing his hands on his knees. “If yousit stillnow and stop walking on it, maybe someday you’ll be able to brag to everyone that you got Tousaki Ryouma’s first bandage-job.”

The look Genma gave him was impressively bland. “Snarky, dictatorial, and insubordinate: you’re a natural medic.” He patted Ryouma once on the shoulder tiredly, but also, if Raidou was any judge, with legitimate pride. “I knew you had it in you.”

Ryouma’s face brightened, like it always did when someone complimented him, and the tips of his ears went faintly pink. “Quick learner,” he said, trying for casual. “Anything else before we pull your pants back up?”

Katsuko snickered quietly.

Genma glanced at her, eyebrows creased, and then back at Ryouma. He actually seemed a little embarrassed. “Boundaries still apply, Tousaki.”

That was as good a cue as any. Raidou cleared his throat.

Katsuko and Ryouma twitched like a live current had been applied. Ryouma glanced guiltily over his shoulder, and Katsuko busied herself more intensely with tidying.

Terror in the ranks. That was gratifying.

“Perhaps bedside manners can be the next lesson,” Raidou said. “All done?”

Ryouma visibly swallowed his first answer, ducking his head instead. “Yes, taichou.”

“All set, taichou,” Katsuko said, more breezily, and patted Ryouma on the shoulder. “We have an excellent new bandage minion.”

“I see that,” Raidou said. “Seems like you make a decent scrub-nurse, too.”

She grinned at him, reboundable as always. “The scrubbiest.”

“We’re finished except for the clean up,” Genma said, meeting Raidou’s eyes over Ryouma’s head. “Please tell me we’re done with medical emergencies for the moment.”

“I know I’ve met my quota,” Raidou said. “You guys want breakfast?”

“Yes, breakfast,” Katsuko said.

Genma glanced at the empty space on his wrist where his watch would have been, if he hadn’t spent half the last day wrist-deep in bleeding people. He pulled a face. “My sense of time is off. Is it breakfast time? Food’d be good.”

“It’s about three A.M.,” Raidou said. He still had a watch. “We’ve been here just shy of a day.”

Genma blinked. “Really?”

Raidou smiled, wry. “Guess we needed the sleep.”

And then some.

Ryouma gathered the used bandages and stood, glancing sidelong at Raidou. “You cooking?”

Raidouhadthreatened to make Ryouma run cooking detail for breakfast and lunch, but looking at the slight shake in Ryouma’s hands, and the tension underlining that angular face, Raidou was more inclined to make him sit still and quiet until he got the ground back under his feet.

“Might as well, since I’m up,” Raidou said. “Any requests?”

“I’ll eat whatever,” Katsuko said, to the surprise of no one.

“I suppose it’s too much to ask for eggs and good coffee,” Genma said, with a wistful sigh. “What have we got besides rice and war rations?”

“There was a lot of stuff in cans,” Ryouma said, closing his eyes as he listed off: “Mackerel, sausages, pickled vegetables, satsumas. Foil mystery meal packets. Miso and umeboshi, dried sweet potato.” He opened his eyes and looked hopeful. “Sake.”

Katsuko’s head came up.

“Nice try,” Raidou said. “Sake’s for cooking and emergency antiseptic. Fledgling alcoholism can wait for the next mission.”

Genma’s second sigh was even more wistful. “It’s probably not the good stuff, anyway.”

“It’s okay, lieutenant,” Katsuko said reassuringly. “He promised next mission.”

Raidou gave up, amused despite himself, and said, “You’re all getting mystery foil breakfast.” He took the bandages from Ryouma, and the remaining medical supplies from Katsuko. “Help the lieutenant back into bed, since you’re so dead-set against him walking. And someone see if Hatake can wake up for food.”

By Raidou’s count, it’d been about ten hours since that protein shake, and that was the only thing Kakashi had managed to eat.

Ryouma began stiffly, “I’m not just—” Then clearly realized Raidou had been teasing. His shoulders came down a little, and he said, “Read the labels on the packets before you dump ‘em together, taichou.” With that last word, he leaned down to help Genma stand up.

Clearly the better choice to keep him around people, instead of segregated alone in the kitchen.

On Genma’s other side, Katsuko hovered close, hand extended and steadying. When they’d gotten the lieutenant back on the platform and installed back under the covers, she cast a thoughtful eye Kakashi’s way.

Raidou privately wished the unconscious man luck, and left to attend to food.

Kakashi wasn’t easy to rouse. Katsuko tried shaking his shoulder gently, poked him a few times, and then evidently gave up and settled down cross-legged next to his head to tie his hair into little tiny one-handed pigtails. Genma made a few noises about how heoughtto object, as a conscientious lieutenant, but then he remembered there were rubber bands in his med-kit. Katsuko scrambled gleefully to acquire them.

Ryouma leaned against the wall and wished for a camera.

The fitful sodium light felt warmer, somehow. It still cast the wrong shadows, caught out the wrong colors; everything looked yellow-washed, Kakashi’s hair as bright as gilt. Katsuko had begun to hum as she wrapped rubber bands around the little tufts at the crown of his skull. Ryouma didn’t recognize the song. He wondered if she’d sing it, if he asked.

Then Katsuko snapped a rubber band on her thumb and broke off humming to swear loudly and indignantly, and Kakashi woke up.

He blinked, once. Then he put a hand up, tethered by the IV line, and felt at his skull. Sleep slurred his voice. “What… is happening to my head?”

“Art,” Katsuko said soothingly, patting her little row of spiky pigtails. “Art is happening. Sssh. Go back to sleep, my little umeboshi.”

“Actually, don’t go back to sleep.” Genma reached over to touch Kakashi’s arm. “You need to eat before you sleep again.” He gave Katsuko a wry smile. “We were waking him up on purpose, remember?”

“He could have waited a little longer,” Katsuko said, eyeing Kakashi’s hair in judgmental disappointment. “I was nearly done with this section. Now he’ll be lopsided.”

Kakashi said blankly, “Everyone is touching me.”

“Says the guy who snuggles in his sleep,” Ryouma said, and was briefly rewarded with Genma’s bemused brow-lift and Katsuko’s fierce grin of delight. He pushed away from the wall and added, “Taichou’s making breakfast. He says it’s been almost a day. D’you need anything first?”

Kakashi dropped his hand and stared at the ceiling. He blinked again. Then he announced, “I need to pee,” and tried to get up.

He made it almost halfway vertical before he pitched sideways, nearly into Katsuko’s lap. She caught him with her good arm. Her mouth tightened into a thin white line as the movement jarred her collarbone, and her eyes pinched at the corners, but she made no sound.

Genma grabbed for Kakashi’s arm again. He didn’t quite have the leverage to pull him off, but Ryouma was only two strides away. Genma reached for Katsuko, instead, when Ryouma detached Kakashi’s IV and hauled him out from between them.

“…Ow,” Katsuko said, after a considering silence.

Ryouma could have shaken Kakashi, but Kakashi was grey around the eyes, too, slumped heavily against him and breathing hard. Genma shot them a quick, hard look, and then hitched himself up to put a steadying arm around Katsuko. “You’re probably about due for new painkillers. Is it just the shoulder?”

“Yeah,” Katsuko said. She was holding very still, breathing slow and shallow. “He just jarred it. I’ll be fine.”

“You lie down, too,” Ryouma told her. “Bothof you. I’ll get you painkillers in a minute.” He waited, bracing Kakashi, until she eased carefully down onto her back.

Kakashi rasped, “Sorry.”

Katsuko tipped her chin up onto her chest, and gave him a crafty look. “Make it up to me by keeping the pigtails in.”

Kakashi tried lifting his hand to his head again.

“C’mon,” Ryouma said, mercilessly. “You can look at yourself in the mirror.” He hauled Kakashi off, out of the bunkroom and down the hall to the toilet.

It was slower and harder than when Raidou’d been there to help, and his shoulders burned by the time they reached the bathroom, ugly reminder that he’d hauled a much less conscious Kakashi much further only twenty-four hours ago. He steadied Kakashi through the indignities of relief, and then propped Kakashi up against the narrow metal sink and waited for the reflection in the cracked mirror to register.

Kakashi stared at himself for a long moment, eye slitting narrow and then slowly widening. He turned his head, brows drawing down again, and poked at one of the pigtails. “Itisuneven.”

“She only had one hand to work with,” Ryouma said. “It was slow going.” Probably better not to mention that Genma had lent a hand once or twice, too. He scraped the thin bar of lavender-gray soap off the edge of the sink and held it out. “Want to wash up?”

Kakashi took the soap, leaned his hips into the sink, and began slowly and meticulously to wash his hands. A distant, unreadable look darkened his eye as he scrubbed out the half-moons of reddish grime under his nails, and he lathered the soap up three times for his right hand alone. His skin was pink with scrubbing and beginning to wrinkle when he finally rinsed off the sliver of soap that was left. He set it down on the sink edge again, careful not to let it slip, and said thoughtfully, “It’s nice. Still smells like a lady’s bedroom, though.”

Ryouma lifted his brows. “Which you know, because you’ve been invited into so many ladies’ bedrooms.”

“Kushina liked perfume,” Kakashi said, and then shut his teeth with a click, as if he’d just realized he’d said that aloud.

“Kushina?” Ryouma said, blankly. “D’you mean—”

He stopped. There was only one Kushina the village knew well enough to call by name. Uzumaki Kushina-sama, the lastjinchuuriki, the woman who’d hosted the Nine-tailed Fox and then died sealing it to save them all.

She’d been the Hokage’s wife, too. And the Hokage had been Kakashi’s sensei. No wonder Kakashi’d known her.

Mockery shriveled away. Ryouma cleared his throat and grabbed a towel. “Here. Dry off.”

They hobbled back to the bunkroom in silence.

Genma and Katsuko were still immobile under the covers, though Genma’s blankets looked messier than they had been, and the medkit lay suspiciously open again at the foot of the platform bed. He’d gone for the painkillers after all, and probably strained his leg again doing it. Maybe they should try shackles next.

At least Katsuko was breathing easier, though. She propped herself up on her good elbow and demanded, “What’d he say? What was his face like?” She eyed Kakashi’s bandage-mask and amended, “What was hiseyelike?”

“You’re going to fix this,” Kakashi informed her. “If you start something, you have to do itright.”

“Pretty much like that,” Ryouma said. “His head’s lopsided and his feelings are hurt. Here, you can have him.”

He helped ease Kakashi down onto the platform again. Katsuko scootched very carefully over, cradling her sling-bound elbow against her chest. She still had the tiny plastic baggie of rubber bands. “No take-backs,” she told Kakashi. “Next time I’ll give you braids.”

“He’d have to grow it longer, first,” Genma said, struggling stiffly up to help reinstall Kakashi between them. “Right now you’d only be able to make tufts.”

“But they’re going to be the cutest tufts in the world,” Katsuko said serenely, and attacked Kakashi’s hair with her good hand and her rubber bands. Kakashi lay still, curled a little on his side, breathing between his teeth.

Painkillers, right.

There were less than half a dozen morphine syrettes left in Genma’s medkit. Ryouma hesitated over them. “Should we be rationing?”

“We’ll have to,” Genma said, quietly.

Ryouma looked up. Genma was still sitting up, braced against the packed dirt wall, plucking lint off the thick woolen blankets. He met Ryouma’s eyes. “Priority is keeping Hatake and Ueno as comfortable as possible, since he’s in the worst shape and she’s closest to functional after you and taichou. Give him a 5 mg dose for now. It takes less drug to keep pain at a low level than to manage it if it gets high.”

“Better to stay high than get high,” Kakashi said, and laughed softly at himself.

“We’re never taking you to Grass Country,” Ryouma told him.

Genma huffed. Katsuko said soothingly, “Don’t listen to Ryouma. You can go anywhere you want, as long as you keep your pigtails in.” She tugged one, gently. Kakashi tipped his head back against her hand and closed his eye.

Ryouma thought, uneasily, of the last time Kakashi’d woken; the warm weight of his head on Ryouma’s shoulder, the roughness of his hair under Ryouma’s hand. The way he’d melted, boneless and trusting, when they stroked his hair.

It’d felt—right, then, when Ryouma was half-asleep himself, when it was just the three of them and Kakashi wouldn’t remember it anyway in the morning. They’d been looking after him, keeping him still and safe. It was only for a little while.

They’d made it through the dark hours, the hurting hours, when even a sober man could reach out for comfort without shame. There was no reason for it to be like that now.

And nothing for him to do but get on with things.

He held the syrette up to the light, judging half a dose. Like squeezing a tube of toothpaste, only there was very little difference between half the tube and the full 10 ml. How the hell were you supposed to get an accurate dose with this?

Maybe you learned that it in medic training. Or maybe everyone else just guessed, too.

Ryouma pinched the cap off, drew back the blanket to expose Kakashi’s bare, bandaged thigh, and slid the needle in. He squeezed the tube carefully, until it seemed about half-full, then pulled the syrette out and tugged the blanket down again. “What should I do with the rest?” The needle was still exposed; he couldn’t clip it to Kakashi’s dogtag chain.

“Label it for Hatake,” Genma said, and yawned. “He can have the rest at his next dose.”

Ryouma waited. Genma yawned again and tilted his head back against the wall, eyes sliding briefly closed.

“I’ll find a pen,” Ryouma said, finally. He headed for the door.

Genma’s head jerked up, guiltily. “Wait, I can do it. Sorry, there’s a pen in my kit.” He shifted, as if he meant to get up, and hissed in pain.

“Don’tmove,” Ryouma snapped. “I know the kana.”

He could feel their eyes on him, and his ears burned.

He found Genma’s armor and gear in a tidy heap next to Katsuko’s, found the pen—no longer than his index finger, and paired with an equally tiny writing brush, a vial of ink, and three blank scrolls—and then hunched down against the wall, squinting in the dim yellow light.

Ka, ka.That was easy enough. One vertical line, another crossing it at right angles, then hooking sharply down.Shiwas two horizontal lines and then a third, swooping below. The crinkled tube of the syrette didn’t take the ink well, but the markings were at least visible.

Probably he could just have scribbled a black mark, and it would’ve done as well.

He stuffed the pen and the syrette back in their respective kits. “Three cheers for literacy,” he muttered, and cleared his throat. “Anything else?”

Kakashi lifted his head up. He had two new pigtails over his left ear. “Wind Country veil dance,” he said, almost cheerfully. “You never did one yesterday.”

That morphine must have kicked in quick.

Ryouma considered him, and Katsuko, and the lieutenant’s faint, lingering flush. Maybe Ryouma wasn’t the only one embarrassed. Maybe they werealllooking forward to pretending the last two minutes hadn’t happened.

“Sure,” he said, and reached for the hem of his shirt.

A half-second later, Raidou paused in the doorway.

He’d been goneten minutes. And returned, breakfast in hand, to raise his eyebrows at the rapidly-getting-naked expanse of brown, muscled back as, once again, Ryouma’s shirt vanished. A dark, complicated tattoo rippled between his shoulderblades; two lancing tribal wings surrounding a black flame. Raidou had forgotten that.

On the bed-platform, Katsuko and Kakashi stared at the show, enraptured. Only Genma’s eyes flickered, clocking Raidou.

Ryouma went very still, shirt dripping from his hand. “Taichou’s right behind me, isn’t he?”

“With so many questions,” Raidou said.

“It’s boosting morale, taichou,” Ryouma said, still not moving. The backs of his ears were starting to redden.

“Oh, I see,” Raidou said, and considered exactly how much he was supposed to yell. A lot, under other circ*mstances. But today there was mostly terrible amusem*nt bubbling up, and perhaps a twist of relief that Ryouma was feeling better enough to decide a strip-tease was the way to go for team bonding.

Of course, that didn’t explain why Genma hadlethim.

“Is it working?” Raidou asked, looking at the lieutenant.

Genma sounded like his usual implacable self, except for a faint, telltale crack in his voice. “For a given value of working.”

Ryouma’s naked chest did tend to have that effect.

But since the lieutenant had only revealed the disinterested, professional libido of a brick up until now, Raidou still marked that down as an interesting factoid. Genma liked men, at least a little.

Genma cleared his throat. “I’m sure the captain’s thinking what I was just about to say. Time and a place, Tousaki.”

Wrestling back into his shirt, Ryouma muttered something that sounded a lot like,You weren’t about to say it until taichou showed up…, just loud enough for Raidou to hear. Raidou freed a hand from the breakfast stewpot and smacked Ryouma upside the head, not too hard.

“Less backtalk, more dishes fetching,” he said. “Since you’re in a serving mood.”

Ryouma rubbed the back of his head and said, very stiffly, “Taichou.” But he obeyed and left.

On the bed-platform, Genma looked sheepish, concerned, and tired. “Sorry about that, taichou.”

“No harm done,” Raidou said. He lugged the steaming stewpot over to the platform and set it down on a bare patch of earth, where it wouldn’t burn anyone or catch the bedcovers on fire. “Did I miss anything else exciting?”

Like, for example, the stylistic tornado that had happened to Kakashi’s hair. Raidou blinked at him.

“Hatake managed a walk to the bathroom with Tousaki’s help. And we topped off his meds.” Genma said. “The hair was Ueno’s contribution.”

“It’s art,” Katsuko said. She ran her good hand lightly over the banded tufts that covered three-quarters of Kakashi’s head.

“It’s something,” Raidou agreed. “Doing okay, Hatake?”

Kakashi regarded him with a distinctly anesthetized look. The pupil of his visible eye was tiny. “Heeey, captain,” he said. “You hit Tousaki.”

“I did,” Raidou said.

“I don’t have a shirt on, either,” Kakashi said.

It was hard to tell whether that was commentary or actual concern, but what Raidou could see of Kakashi beneath rumpled blankets was still just bandages and underwear. They really did need to get the kid back into actual clothes.

“You have a doctor’s note,” Raidou said, more gently. “Gets you a free pass. Think you can manage breakfast?”

“Smells like miso fish,” Kakashi said, which wasn’t exactly an answer. He swung his head around to look at Katsuko. “Y’should eat,” he told her seriously. “You smell hollow.”

“I smell what?” Katsuko said blankly.

“Hollow,” Kakashi said. “Too much chakra, not enough fuel. S’making you thin inside.”

“That’s how it is all the time, though,” Katsuko said, still moving her hand carefully over Kakashi’s ridiculous hair. She gave him a closer look. “Are youworriedabout me?”

Unconvincingly, Kakashi said, “No.”

“Uh huh,” Katsuko said. “Of course you aren’t, petal. Will you eat if I eat?”

Kakashi sighed. “Okay.”

Katsuko had apparently picked up Hatake-handling as a skill when Raidou wasn’t looking, which made one of them. Maybe two, if you counted Ryouma, though Raidou was less sure about that. It was a general trend he approved of, though the true test would probably come when Kakashi was sober again.

Ryouma returned with a ragged collection of tin bowls and spoons, and a touch more flex in his mood. The kitchen break had given his ears a chance to cool down. He helped dish out five bowls of the stew, which contained Raidou’s best dawn effort at something tasty and quasi-healthy, and handed them out. Rice, mackerel, miso, and mushrooms were prominent features. A little shuffling on the bed-platform allowed Raidou and Ryouma to retake their places, though they changed the seating order to more of a rough, communal circle. Kakashi remained bracketed between Katsuko and Ryouma, who helped brace him up; Raidou sat between Katsuko and Genma, and Ryouma staked himself a safe place on Genma’s other side, protected from any more captainly head-slapping.

Raidou, Katsuko, and Ryouma managed to sit cross-legged, with varying degrees of stiffness. Genma leaned his back against the wall, beneath the shadow of his hanging IV line, with his bad leg still extended. Kakashi slouched in a manner that suggested his skeleton might actually be hinged, but his stew vanished slowly and steadily, and his face never quite revealed itself, so he was feeling at least a little better.

Katsuko ate four bowls.

Partway through his second, Raidou checked his watch. “If luck holds, we’ve probably got another day before a team shows up. More likely two.”

Genma glanced at his med-kit, counting stocks in his head. If he could keep Kakashi and Katsuko on five cc doses of morphine every four hours—and the prisoner, damn her—and he he kept himself together with NSAIDs and willpower, and Raidou and Ryouma didn’t suddenly develop late-blooming crippling pain… He had enough doses for about twelve hours.

Damn.

He held his empty bowl out and let Raidou ladle more stew in. “Do you remember if the med stocks here included any morphine?” he asked, keeping his voice casual. “And did any of you happen to sign any out for your med kits for this mission?” A non-medic ANBU could carry a single syrette on a mission as long as they returned it either unused or with a documented injury that had required it. Captains could carry up to three, with the same sign-out-and-document rules.

“Kakashi prepped our kits,” Ryouma said, waving his empty spoon in the direction of their stockpiled gear in the far corner of the room. “I can check—”

“S’got morphine,” Kakashi said. “Everyone’s got morphine. Who forgets morphine on a mission?” In any other circ*mstances, the judgmental superiority in Kakashi’s voice would have grated, but just now Genma found it encouraging: Kakashi sounded almostnormal.

Katsuko was too busy scouring the bottom of her bowl like a starving wolverine to look up, but she made an agreeing noise.

“Did you sign out one unit or three for taichou?” Genma asked.

“Three,” Kakashi said. He leaned the un-tufted side of his head against Ryouma’s shoulder in a gesture that was probably nine-tenths weariness, but at least a little bit fond. Before Genma could get over his shock, Kakashi added, “But I stole an extra, because the captain likes to block things with his face.”

Raidou choked on his stew. “Youstole—”

“It was poorly guarded,” Kakashi said, as if that were unimpeachable justification.

Genma winced. “Who was on duty when you signed out meds?” he asked. “Do you have any idea how much trouble they’re probably in for their counts being off?” He put his own stew bowl down and went to rub his face, but broken nose and bandages and pain and dammit…

Kakashi raised his head from Ryouma’s shoulder. “But we need it,” he said simply.

“I know,” Genma said, groaning. “I could kiss you. Or kill you. I don’t know which.” He looked up at Raidou and found the same mix of horror and relief on his captain’s face. Seventy more ccs of morphine would get them all the way to rescue. Probably.

And Kakashi, and by extension Team Six, were going to be inso much troubleover that missing syrette, once they’d gotten the clerk in the medic’s office who’d ‘lost’ the syrette off the hook.

But still, with the 120 ccs of morphine for three patients, and a medical jutsu or two to keep everyone’s pain at bay and speed healing, they were probably safe. That was, all things considered, a profound relief,

“Does this mean I’m off medkit-stocking duty?” Kakashi asked.

Raidou sank his face into his hands, muttering something that sounded likemake him run laps for years.

“We could put him in a drug rehab program when we get home,” Ryouma offered. “Like the ones they have for soldier pill addicts. He stole morphine, he’s spent half this mission high…” He offered his shoulder to Kakashi, who leaned against it again.

“Do they let you bring books?” Kakashi asked interestedly.

“Only books on how to properly stock med kits, observe protocol, and follow orders,” Genma said. “And no, you’re not off med-kit stocking duty. You’re on it forever.” He picked up his bowl and made an attempt at his second helping of stew. “You didn’t really think that was going to work, did you?”

“I just thought we’d need it,” Kakashi said, sounding less snarky and a good deal more genuine than he’d probably intended to let on.

Heworriesabout us, Genma thought. And wasn’t that surprising, in the rookie who’d done his best since day one to convey how little he wanted to be a part of Team Six. And then hauled Genma’s poisoned ass out of a mountain, wracked himself with guilt over failing to kill the demon queen, and sat up all night at Ryouma’s side. And tried to take on Iebara by himself, to keep his teammates out of harm’s way.

It made it damn hard to stay pissed off at the guy.

“Actually, what I meant was, doing it wrong to get out of a chore never works,” Genma said, bluffing his way out of too many thoughts. “When I was nine I tried to get out of making icing roses for my dad’s shop by doing some really sh*tty ones on a wedding cake order. Guess who makes the best icing roses in Konoha now?”

I see what you’re doing,the grey ice in Kakashi’s visible eye said,and I am playing along.“Is it you?”

Genma waited just long enough for Ryouma and Katsuko to look up. “Actually, it’s still my dad. But I’m second best.”

Amusem*nt flickered briefly in Katsuko’s eyes, before she returned to demolishing her—fifth? sixth?—bowl of stew with the single-minded intensity usually reserved for surgery or licensing exams.

Ryouma’s eyes narrowed. “I expectcake,” he said, with an inflection usually reserved for much direr demands, “when we get back to Konoha.”

“I want an icing rose,” Kakashi said. His eye had gone unfocused and his expression relaxed as he rested against Ryouma’s side. ‘Meds, fed, bed’—the wounded soldier’s triple cure was starting to work.

“I want the last ten minutes of conversation to have been a fever dream,” Raidou said, almost as wistfully.

Katsuko punctuated the moment with a loud belch. She looked at her bowl with a contemplative expression, probably trying to decide whether she desperately needed another bowl of stew, or if eating more would in fact make her stomach explode and kill her.

“Can you take a deep breath, Ueno?” Genma asked her.

“Maybe,” Katsuko said, after a moment of thought and a couple of abortive experiments. “But that would make my lungs expand and leave less room for food.”

“Then you should probably digest what you’ve eaten already, before you eat more,” Genma said. “You’ll be sad if you make yourself vomit with your shoulder broken.”

Katsuko nodded. “Good idea,” she said, and set her bowl down. She regarded the others with an evaluating expression, eyes ticking over bed-hair, bandages, and bruises. “So. Besides discussing drug theft, how are all of us going to last two days underground without killing each other?”

“The thieved drugs will probably help,” Genma said. “Much as I hate to admit it. But I’m sure we’ve all spent time in foxholes, right? I’ve got cards. And there’s the sake someone stocked this place with. We could play drinking games.”

Raidou gave him a sharp look.

“Or not. Since sake’s for cooking and antiseptic use only.” Genma thought for a moment. “We could play drinking games without the alcohol.”

Ryouma brightened up. “Like Thumper? Or Never Have I Ever?” He wrinkled his nose. “Most of the others aren’t much fun without the drinks.”

“Or Two Truths and a Lie, yeah,” Genma agreed. “We just have to come up with a penalty besides drinking for getting it wrong. When I was at the Yowaru Dam station we played for the good flavors of rat bars.”

Kakashi blinked one slow, baffled eye. “Whatlanguageare you speaking?” he demanded.

“Foot-soldier-ese,” Genma said. “You probably never learned it, being the Yellow Flash’s student and all when the war was on.”

Kakashi shrugged one loose-jointed shoulder. “He thought I was too young to drink. Jiraiya-san didn’t, though.”

“Jiraiya-sama took you drinking,” Genma said. “Of course he did.” He couldn’t quite figure outwhyhe’d begun to think of Kakashi as being only a little different from the rest of the team. Kakashi was the Hokage’s student and in many ways a member of Yondaime’s family. Ofcoursehe’d learned to drink from the legendary Toad Sage. He carried a personally inscribed copy of one of Jiraiya-sama’s first editions, after all.

Genma’d caught a glimpse of the signature on the inside cover of Kakashi’s favorite book one day during training. He supposed it could have been a forgery, or some other note scrawled inside the book for some other reason, but he didn’t think so.

Raidou broke in, rescuing Genma from his own thoughts. “We can play Two Truths and a Lie. The penalty is chores. If you win, choose a victim to hand them off to. No truths that make anyone cry.”

“That works for me,” Genma said, seizing on the line gratefully. “Hatake, you need us to explain it to you?”

The deadpan look Kakashi gave him was almost entirely at odds with the drugged thickness in Kakashi’s voice. “Do you have to tell two truths and a lie?”

“Even morphine can’t stop your crippling sarcasm,” Katsuko said, giving one of Kakashi’s pigtails an idle flick. “Truly, you are one of Konoha’s finest.”

“That’s one truth,” Kakashi said. “What’s your next one?”

Genma sounded amused. “I sincerely doubt Ueno believes what she just said; that actually could be her lie.”

“We haven’t started playing yet and already people question my integrity,” Katsuko lamented. “At least Tousaki’s on my side.Hedoesn’t impugn my character.”

Ryouma said cheerfully, “That’s because neither of us have any character to impugn. We are roguish allies. Are you starting us off, then?”

Katsuko would have preferred the sake. Telling the truth made her itch. She shrugged her good shoulder and tried on a grin. “Sure. Whoever guesses right gets to help me finish Hatake’s hair makeover. Losers have to give me one of their rat bars.”

“Only one rat bar from the losers?” Genma asked. “You’re going easy on us, Ueno.”

“I am, occasionally, very nice,” she informed him.

“You just bartered my hair as a prize,” Kakashi observed with mild interest.

Katsuko beamed at him. “Yes.”

Raidou jostled her knee with his. “Play the game first before you start auctioning off your tranquilized teammates.”

“Yes, taichou,” she sighed, and tapped a finger against her lips in thought. “Okay. One: I’ve been drawing since I was five. Two: I know how to negotiate trade treaties. Three: I once dyed my jounin-sensei’s hair pink and convinced him that my teammates had done it.”

Ryouma squinted at her. “I saw your drawing of the demon queen. I’d believe the first one.”

“I think I know the answer, so I’ll sit this round out,” Raidou said. Katsuko pulled a face at him.

Genma looked at her thoughtfully. “I’m pretty sure this is one of those situations where the truth sounds like a lie and the lie sounds true.” Katsuko gave him a face, too. That was the beauty of faces. They could mean anything.

“Who was your sensei?” Kakashi asked. The look in his eye was a bit too alert for a man on that much morphine.

“Miyamoto Hideki. He was a ninjutsu specialist.” She felt the smile tug at her mouth. “He used to string my genin team up in a net and leave when we annoyed him.”

Raidou murmured, “Smart man.”

“Did it work?” Genma asked, with genuine curiosity.

“Maybe,” Katsuko said. Hideki-sensei had been an inscrutable bastard. “I think he was trying to teach us a lesson about teamwork. Or he thought it was funny.”

“It’s good to enjoy your job,” Genma said, sage as a mountain hermit.

Ryouma had been listening with a slight frown. He finally decided, “So the one about dyeing his hair pink is a lie. No way you’d convince him you hadn’t done it.”

“But she can negotiatetrade treatiesinstead?” Kakashi said.

Katsuko batted her lashes at Ryouma. “I might be a better liar than you think,” she said sweetly.

“Skilled lying is probably essential to trade treaties,” Genma allowed.

“Drawing and dyeing are the truth,” Kakashi insisted. “Treaties is the lie.”

“I’ll take that bet,” Ryouma said. “I say the treaties are true, and your sensei was smarter than merchants.”

“What about you, lieutenant?” Katsuko asked.

Genma mulled it over before saying, “Hair is plausible, and you might knowhowto negotiate a treaty the same way I knowhowto build a bridge. So I think it’s the drawing. I’ve seen your art. I think you’ve been drawing sincebeforeyou were five.”

She grinned at him and surveyed the rest of her team, letting the silence draw out before doing a little fistpump of victory with her good hand. “Two rat bars for me! Tousaki, you’re my new hair assistant. Lieutenant, Hatake, pay your dues.”

“Argh,” Kakashi said, and actually fell over backwards, landing on the blankets with an annoyedflomph. Ryouma cheered and reached over his prone body to give Katsuko a high-five.

Genma’s eyebrow ticked a bare centimeter upwards. “Apricot-oat or ginger sesame?”

“Both,” Katsuko said. This game wasn’t so bad when other people gave her their food. “Because I am a winner, and winners deserve two flavors of rat bars.”

“You’re getting the second flavor from Hatake.”

She looked at Kakashi. Kakashi glared up at the ceiling. “I don’t know where my pants are,” he said.

“It’s okay,” Katsuko assured him. “I can take imaginary rat bars for now. Imaginary rat bars of victory.”

“Ever the gracious winner,” Raidou said, laughter in his voice. “Tousaki, your turn, since you won.”

Katsuko and Ryouma hauled Kakashi upright as gently as possible under Genma’s watchful gaze, ignoring Kakashi’s disgruntled noises. Once Kakashi was settled and dusted off, Ryouma sat back and looked at the rest of them, straight-faced.

“Okay, here goes. One: I lost my virginity two years after I graduated from the Academy. Two: I can recite Abbot Ryougen’s entire speech from the second Five Rings movie. Three…” Ryouma paused. The edges of his mouth tugged, dark eyes dancing. “Before I hit my growth spurt, I crossdressed as a geisha three times, and nobody but my sensei and the target ever found me out.”

“But thoseallsound plausible,” Katsuko complained. “What was your favorite shade of lipstick for your geisha get-up?”

“It was the same each time. Some kind of purply red?” Even more cheerfully, he added, “I got plum-blossom perfume, though.”

If she narrowed her eyes and squinted sideways, Katsuko could imagine a younger Ryouma in an entertainer’s kimono and decorative hair ornaments. She pursed her lips contemplatively.

“When did you graduate?” Kakashi asked, with faint horror. She remembered, belatedly, that Kakashi had passed the Academy exams when he was seven.

Ryouma grinned at him. “October, Sandaime year 27. I was thirteen and a half. Were youworried,Kakashi?”

Kakashi bristled. “Who wouldn’t be?”

“Awww,” Katsuko cooed, and patted Kakashi’s shoulder. “It’s okay, sugar-puff. Tousaki mocks because he cares.”

The annoyed growl that rumbled out of Kakashi’s throat was surprisingly canine. Katsuko resisted the urge to scratch behind his ears. He pointed at Ryouma like he had him on the stand and ordered, “Recite the last line of Ryougen’s speech.”

Genma intervened before Ryouma could reply. “That’d be cheating, Hatake. You can’t make him prove the truth of one of his assertions before you make your guess.”

“But that’s how youwin,” Kakashi protested.

“Where’s the fun in winning a game you cheated at?” Genma countered, the lone voice of reason in a room full of drugged ninja. “Cheating’s for missions.”

“Cheating is for everything. That’s why it’scheating.”

Katsuko reached behind Kakashi to tap Ryouma’s shoulder. When Ryouma glanced at her, she said, “If I ask really nice, will you do a geisha fan dance for me?”

“Taichou put the kibosh on dancing.” Ryouma was still grinning. “So, guesses?”

“Virginity as the lie,” Katsuko said promptly. “Because I know how good your aural recall is, and I really want the geisha thing to be true.”

Genma drawled, “I have to agree with that logic.” Katsuko bestowed an approving nod upon him.

“Geisha is the lie. You look too happy and Ueno isn’t that lucky,” Kakashi said.

Raidou had been quiet up until now, but he interrupted Katsuko’s outraged squawk with an amused, “Since Ryougen dies in thefirstmovie, I’m going to call that one the lie. But his speech was very moving.”

Ryouma’s grin faltered. He stared at Raidou for a moment in mild shock. Then he folded over and dropped his head onto his knees. “You’ve seen it. Of course you’ve seen it,” he told the fabric of his trousers.

Katsuko and Kakashi groaned. Genma gave Raidou a look of ironclad disappointment and turned to Katsuko. “Do you feel betrayed, Ueno? I feel betrayed.”

“So betrayed,” she mourned, clutching at Kakashi’s pigtails to demonstrate the depth of her outrage.

Ryouma straightened up determinedly. “Okay. Your turn, taichou.”

“The geisha thing wastrue?” Kakashi burst out.

Katsuko blinked and turned to smile at Ryouma. “The geisha thingwastrue!”

Ryouma was still regarding Raidou with a complicated expression, but he yanked his gaze away with a kind of relief. “There might be pictures, even, if my sensei kept ’em. Which I kind of doubt. I never did learn the fan dance, though. Barely mastered how to walk without tripping.”

Hers was a life fraught with disappointment and continued betrayal. Katsuko drooped a bit before pulling herself back up. Never let it be said that she couldn’t make the best of a bad situation. “It’s okay,” she sighed. “We can’t all be perfect. I forgive you anyways.”

Ryouma reached over behind Kakashi and ruffled her hair. She grumbled but didn’t bat his hand away.

“So what’s the penalty?” Genma asked. “Rat bars again?”

Raidou nodded. “Or chores. Dealer’s choice.”

“Three of you are out of commission for chores. I’m saving it for later,” Ryouma said.

“Good choice.” Raidou thought for a moment, tapping his fingers on one kneecap. “Okay, one: when I was little, I had a stuffed tiger called Stripey-san, but I lost him when we moved house. Two: the first girl I ever liked pushed me into a river. Three: I’ve been playing the guitar since I was twelve, and I once managed to write a song that didn’t suck.”

“Aw, man,” Katsuko realized glumly. “I’m gonna have to sit out for this one. I already know the answer.”

Genma eyeballed Raidou. “That’s four.”

Raidou looked unrepentant. “That last one was a two-parter? Okay, cut the song, I just wanted to boast.”

“I’m voting for the guitar as the lie,” Ryouma said, like he’d have a personal grudge against the universe if it wasn’t.

“I’ve seen the guitar,” Genma said. “Don’t know when you started playing or if you’re any good, but there definitely is one. I’ll go with Stripey-san as the lie.”

Raidou had his blandest face on. Kakashi asked suspiciously, “Why did the girl push you in the river?”

“I gave her a flower.”

Kakashi blinked.

“We were six,” Raidou explained. Katsuko giggled and tried her best to turn it into a cough.

“Was she an Inuzuka?” Genma asked.

“Inuzuka tend to bite when they’re displeased with you,” Katsuko chimed in, then remembered she wasn’t supposed to be participating and busied herself with staring at the ceiling.

“A gentleman doesn’t fall in a river and tell,” Raidou said serenely. He added, “She might have been an Aburame.”

That won him a collective blank look.

“Was it… the faint humming sound that caught your attention?” Ryouma asked at length. “Or did she have particularly pretty bugs?”

“I liked her laugh,” Raidou said.

Kakashi connected two and two, and snapped his fingers. “Your flower offended her insects.”

“I was six. I wasn’t born smooth,” Raidou said. “Or horticulturally trained. When did this become twenty questions?”

Katsuko was almost quivering with suppressed laughter against Kakashi’s side. Even the lieutenant looked like he was having a hard time maintaining a straight face.

Ryouma said stubbornly, “I’m still voting for the guitar. Life’s unfair enough as it is.”

“I’m sticking with Stripey-san,” Genma said. He looked at Kakashi. “You’ve narrowed it down to two, Hatake. Gonna go with the guitar or the cuddly toy?”

Both seemed equally plausible. Raidou looked exactly the type to drag a battered guitar down to some dive bar and strum it soulfully while people fell over at his manly-yet-sensitive feet. But he could have owned a stuffed tiger. It was a rite of childhood passage, Kakashi had learned, to bond furiously with scraps of fluff and descend into traumatized madness if anything ever happened to them. Like the time Naruto had accidentally lost f*ckkura-san in the laundry hamper and cried for hours, until Minato had pulled an extremely clean rabbit from the washing machine.

Kakashi had spent his childhood bonding with puppies, but the principle was basically the same.

He rubbed bandaged hands over his face and said, “I hate this game.”

“Think of it as a training exercise in reading people,” Genma said.

“While stoned,” Katsuko chipped in helpfully.

Kakashi gave up. On a normal day he might have been able to scent the truth, but only because lying caused stress, and stress had a very distinctive smell. Right now the entire bunker smelled of pain and old blood, and too many people crammed into too small a space, and Kakashi was just barely capable of smelling his way out of a paper bag.

“I’ll side with Tousaki,” he said. “Guitar’s a lie. Drowning and stuffed tiger are true.”

“Wrong three for three, Hatake,” Raidou said cheerfully. “I never lost Stripey-san; he’s still on the dresser at my moms’ place.” He grinned at the chorus of groans and cries ofcheating!that earned him. “Hey, no one said it had to be ablatantlie.”

Ryouma glanced sideways at Katsuko. “You said you knew the answer already. Did he used to bring his guitar along on missions and serenade the team?”

“Maybe their last team got a tiny little tiger mask from the quartermaster for Stripey-san and made him a mascot,” Genma said.

“Taichou’s got a guitar in his room,” Katsuko said. “He told me about the Aburame when we were both in the hospital once.”

“Oh,” Ryouma said.

“Can we go back to the part where the captain still owns a cuddly tiger?” Kakashi said.

“Abandoning him would’ve given me guilt,” Raidou said, mouth quirking, but his eyes were soft and fond, caught by some old memory. “Didn’t you hold onto any childhood relics?”

Nothing that wasn’t useful, Kakashi thought. Because that was the rule. No deadweight.

He sat up abruptly, almost tipping sideways. “Where’s my tanto?”

Raidou blinked, non-plussed, but Ryouma steadied Kakashi and said, “It’s with my gear.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, towards one of the ragged piles of gear stacked up against the opposite wall. “I think the sheath got wrecked with the rest of your armor, though.”

Kakashi’s chest clenched. “What about the blade?”

“It’s whole. Didn’t see any major nicks, but I wasn’t exactly looking closely.” Ryouma paused. “How come it didn’t melt? Your kunai did.”

“It’s made with a special alloy,” Kakashi said distractedly, craning his neck to try and see. There was a dark, muddy hilt jutting out from beneath a chestplate’s torn shoulder strap. The bindings didn’tlookdamaged, but it was hard to make out details under the bunker’s bad lighting. A second, equally terrible thought occurred, “Did you clean it?”

“No,” said Ryouma, exasperated. “And I’m not going to now, and neither are you. You’re high and we’re all sharing a bed and I’m not arming you. The mud’s dried, anyway. Another day won’t hurt it.” He glanced at the weapon’s dark outline. “Much.”

There were moments when Ryouma was kind, and moments when he emphatically wasn’t, and you never knew which one was going to take you out at the knees.

Stung, Kakashi pulled away from Ryouma’s hands. For a second he thought about damning them all and getting up by himself, but he’d tried that once already and nearly snapped Katsuko’s shoulder in half. Itwasjust a tanto—

He couldn’t finish the thought. A shinobi cared for his weapons, always.

Especially that one.

The image of the bare, blood-caked blade abandoned under sodden armor to rust actually made him feel ill.

“It’s important,” he said, and looked at Katsuko. She understood swords.

“Ah,” Katsuko said. Her eyes flicked to another stack of armor, where her katana and kodachi were dry and safely sheathed, leaning against the wall. “I get it.” She squeezed his shoulder with her good hand and whistled one of her nearby clones into action. It extracted Kakashi’s tanto from the armor, collected a cleaning kit from one of Katsuko’s belt-pouches, and brought both over to the bed-platform.

Wordlessly, Genma and Raidou shifted to make room. The clone settled down cross-legged in Kakashi’s direct eyeline, laid the tanto respectfully across its lap, and began to sort out cleaning cloths. It was also operating one-handed—Katsuko must have been distracted when she’d summoned them, to program her injury into her doppelgangers—but that wasn’t any particular challenge.

Despite himself, Kakashi made a slightly throttled sound when it began to tend to the blade.

“You’re not allowed to clean weapons when you’re high,” Katsuko and her clone said, in precise stereo echo. Katsuko glared at the clone, which didn’t appear to notice. “But if the clone cleans the blade where you can see, can you keep on playing? No cheating with your lie like taichou did.”

“But I lost the last round,” Kakashi said, watching the clone fixedly. “It’s the lieutenant’s turn.”

“Taichou hasn’t set your penalty for losing yet, or my prize for winning,” Genma said, giving Raidou a meaningful look. “Maybe the penalty is you have to take the next turn, Hatake.”

Or maybe the lieutenant just wanted to slither out of his turn and continue being a weird implacable force of nature.

Kakashi opened his mouth to express that opinion in detail, but Raidou cut him off. “I like that idea, since he can’t exactly do chores right now. Think you’re up to the challenge, Hatake?”

Kakashi glanced up and found himself on the business end of two weighing but not unkind stares. He snorted. Both the captain and the lieutenant were about as subtle as a brick—join in, Hatake. Have fun, Hatake. Play nice with the other kids, Hatake—but they were also trying to accommodate him, and offering a distraction from the faintly agonizing process of watching the clone. At his side, Katsuko smiled sunnily, as if everything were a great game, but her hand was still warm on his shoulder. Only Ryouma was looking away.

Gigantic black-headed sulker.

“Anything you can do, I can doright,” Kakashi declared, and leaned himself against Katsuko’s good side. “Fix the rest of my hair while I think, Ueno.”

“Anything to help inspire your creativity, my cranky dandelion fluff,” Katsuko said, once again raising the question of whether morphine was assisting her mood, or if she was just… being herself. She reached around Kakashi’s back and touched Ryouma’s shoulder. “Tousaki, I already told you you’re my hair assistant. No getting out of it now.”

Definitely morphine.

Ryouma snuck a quick, wary glance at Kakashi, and shook his head. “I’ll pass this time. You didn’t say when.”

Did he expect Kakashi to bite?

Actually, that wasn’t a thought without appeal, but the whole point of this stupid exercise was fostering team morale (and killing time), and kicking Ryouma in the head would make the captain pull terrible faces. Plus, Ryoumahadoffered a striptease only ten minutes ago, which had been one of the most entertaining bunker events so far.

And he’d technically saved Kakashi’s life.

He deserved points for that, Kakashi realized. When Kakashi was sober enough to do math again. That might even put Ryoumaahead.

Kakashi scowled, shifted sideways, and interrupted whatever unimportant thing Katsuko was saying by dropping his legs across Ryouma’s lap.

“I’m declaring you a footstool,” he announced.

Ryouma gave him an incredulous look.

“We’re building team spirit,” Kakashi said. “You’re helping. Stay still.”

Ryouma strained a long, slow breath through his teeth. “You areso incredibly high.”

“And you’re an unpredictable jerk,” Kakashi said. “I’m giving you the chance to make up for it, and I’m also being nice and not pointing out your hypocritical lapses, Mr punches-people-who-mess-with-his-important-things. Ueno, you’re not braiding my hair.”

Ryouma stared at him for a very long moment. Then he shrugged one broad shoulder, gave a shortoh, what the hellbark of laughter, and pulled Kakashi’s feet more comfortably into his lap. Katsuko buried her face into the unbraided quarter of Kakashi’s hair and had quiet hysterics.

“I have absolutely nothing to say,” Raidou said, sounding like a man very far away.

Genma was doing the lieutenant face again, but none of them appeared to have crossed the line enough to warrant chastising. When Katsuko wound down and began to breathe like a normal person again, he leaned across the gap and gravely offered her a rubber band.

Well, that explained where they’d been coming from.

Kakashi pulled a set of blankets across himself, bundling into their warm (if dusty) layers. Katsuko’s hand snuck back into his hair. Kakashi tipped his head against her palm and tried to think of good lies.

“Do they all have to be about me?” he asked.

Ryouma said, “You don’t— Huh.” He frowned, dark eyebrows pulling together. “I think it has to be something you know about personally. Like you were there when your genin teammate got his head stuck in a beehive, or something.”

Katsuko snickered.

“You can’t just use random facts,” Genma said. “Like ‘the capital of Clay Country used to be called Owl City in their local language’, or whatever.”

And nothing that made anyone cry, Raidou had said.

Katsuko created three more pigtails while Kakashi mulled things over, and was starting on a fourth, fingers sliding gently through Kakashi’s hair, when he said, “Okay. One, I learned to swim by doggy-paddling in the river with real dogs. Two, Minato-sensei once forgot it was Valentine’s day until just before he was supposed to meet Kushina-san, and tried to stealmy personal plantas a present for her. Three, last year I got offered the elderly discount for a spa in Tea Country.”

Ryouma asked, with intense interest, “Did you take it?”

“Yep,” Kakashi said smugly. “Got me fifteen percent off.”

Katsuko snickered again. “Did you successfully defend your personal plant?”

“No,” Kakashi said. “I had to steal Ukki-kun back later.”

Ryouma forget himself enough to grip Kakashi’s feet in horror. “FromKushina-sama?” he said, like Kakashi had stolen kibble from blind orphaned kittens.

“You named your plant Ukki-kun?” Katsuko demanded in the same breath.

“Is a personal plant different from a regular houseplant?” Raidou asked.

“None of you are ever allowed to own plantlife,” Kakashi said. “Ukki-kun ismine. Of course I stole him back. Ueno, you’re not allowed to criticize anyone’s naming conventions ever. Taichou, shame on you.”

Raidou scratched the bridge of his nose, hand hiding his mouth. “I feel the shame.”

“Succulent or fern?” Genma inquired, the only sane man in the room.

“Ficus,” Kakashi said with dignity.

Genma’s eyes brightened. “That’s a good one. You can make a pretty decent contact irritant from Ficus sap.”

“Ficus Microcarpa,” Kakashi said.

“Oh,” Genma said. “Not from that one.” After a beat, he allowed, “They’re pretty, though.”

“It’s one of the best plants for improving air quality,” Kakashi informed them, only slightly defensive. “It has one of the highest rates of removing formaldehyde, benzene, and—” he had to think for a second, “trichloroethylene from tainted air.”

“I’m learning so much right now,” Raidou said.

Genma’s eyebrows climbed. “Is there a reason you’re generating formaldehyde, benzene and trichloroethylene in your personal living quarters?”

“I didn’tsayI was—” Kakashi began, and stopped. “You’re asking too many questions. Make guesses already.”

“Calm down, bossyboots,” Katsuko said, snapping her fourth band into place.

“He doesn’t have any boots. Call him bossytoes,” Ryouma said, andtweaked Kakashi’s toes. Kakashi yelped and nearly fell over, caught by Katsuko at the last second. “I’m guessing the plant,” Ryouma continued, blithely blocking Kakashi’s revenge kick. “Because you said hetriedto steal, and then you said you had to steal it back. Which means he didn’t just try, he succeeded.”

“Oh, smart,” Katsuko said.

“Stop trying to injure each other,” Raidou warned.

Genma said, “Tousaki, if you make Hatake pop a needle…”

“Sorry,” Ryouma said guiltily, and settled back, one hand wrapping around Kakashi’s anklebone, fingers warm. Kakashi watched him suspiciously, but Ryouma stayed still.

“We can’t take you anywhere,” Katsuko said, flicking one of Kakashi’s hair-knots. “I vote that old people discount, by the way. Tousaki, do you know how to tie hair ribbons?”

“No,” Ryouma said firmly.

“You arethis closeto having your hairdressing privileges revoked,” Raidou said, eyeing Katsuko.

“I can tie hair ribbons,” Kakashi said, since no one had seen fit to ask him. “I can do braids, too.”

There was a delicate fall of silence.

“See, now I have no idea which is the lie,” Raidou said finally.

Genma touched his own hair, which had turned dark gold under the lights. Kakashi had a faint memory of reaching for it, and couldn’t remember why.

“You’ll have to demonstrate when you’re feeling better,” Genma said.

Katsuko made an airless sound.

“What, lieutenant, you wouldn’t trust him with your hair when he’s high?” Ryouma said, voice lilting as he teased.

“Have you ever seen the webs spiders weave with different toxins in their systems?” Genma said. “Morphine webs aren’t tidy.”

Raidou pulled Kakashi from the fascinating thought of wondering who drugged spiders in their free time, by asking, “Who taught you to braid hair?”

“Hm? My mother,” Kakashi said. He raised a hand and flexed his fingers. “It’s good for dexterity.”

Raidou’s expression did the same unreadable, complicated thing Katsuko’s had done when Kakashi told her that Obito cried, then he switched topics. “Valentine’s day plant-theft was the lie. I’ll take Tousaki’s logic.”

She’s not dead, Kakashi thought, but explaining required effort. He rolled his head back to look at Katsuko, and just about managed to avoid toppling into her lap. “What’s your guess?”

“I told you already, clouds-for-brains,” she said, bracing him up. “The old people discount. You don’t lookthatold. Maybe sixty, or a very spry seventy.”

Kakashi laughed atclouds-for-brains. Hefeltcloudy, a half-step divorced from his body. Everything was glossy and warm, glimmering slightly around the edges, like someone had laminated the world in mirror-world plastic.

And that had to be the fifteenth pet name Katsuko had called him.

Kakashi blinked up at her. “Do you just not like my name?”

She blinked back at him. “I, uh,” she floundered. “No, your name’s your name. I just…”

He’d never seen her at a loss for words before. Kakashi watched, surprised and delighted, as Katsuko tripped over a direct question. He should have asked herweeksago.

“Did you forget it?” he suggested.

“No…” Katsuko said, stretching the word out.Noooooo.

“You call everyone else by their name,” Kakashi said.

“Well, yeah, but—” She gave a flailing gesture that explained nothing. “It’s not like I don’tlikeyour name or anything.”

Kakashi waited. “But…”

Katsuko made a cryptic squawking sound of frustration.

Kakashi let the moment drag out just enough to pay back a month’s worth of increasingly bizarre pet names, and then relented. “It’s okay,” he said, reaching up to pet her wild hair. “Words are hard.”

“You’rehar—” Katsuko began. She paused and switched to, “Yourfaceis—”

That insult failed her, too. She ran aground to a sputtering halt, and snapped her teeth at Kakashi like an irritated turtle.

Kakashi looked at the rest of the team. “Did I just win?”

Ryouma patted his ankle. “Two points.”

Katsuko made another outraged sound and Raidou laughed. “Congratulations, Hatake,” he said. “This’ll be a meaningful moment if you ever remember it.”

“I won,” Kakashi blissfully. “Now she can only call me nice things.”

“I always call you nice things,” Katsuko said, disgruntled.

Ryouma jostled Kakashi’s foot gently. “And you’ve got to admit it. Youarekind of a delicate snowblossom.”

“S-rankeddelicate snowblossom,” Kakashi said, because he’d run out of energy to get offended. And he’d probably collapsed one too many times to convince them he was made of iron at this point. But he’d killed everyone he needed to first, so he was still in the black.

“Wonder if that’s your Bingo Book description anywhere,” Genma said, looking faintly amused. “Hatake Kakashi: Fainting Snowdrop of Konoha. S-rank. Has Sharingan.”

“And Iebara’s head,” Kakashi said, with a quick, wolfish smile.

Genma’s mouth curled. “Damn right,” he said.

Ryouma went suddenly still. “sh*t. Were we supposed to bring that back?”

There was a beat of silence.

“Was his head intact?” Raidou asked.

Kakashi thought of warm, meaty rain exploding behind his back. Bones ripped apart by weaponized blood. There’d been an arm left. The lightning strike had probably fused Iebara’s dogtags into unreadable slag.

“Probably not,” he said.

Raidou shrugged. “A clean up team can sponge up whatever the storm didn’t wash away, but if he’s in shreds Intel won’t get much from him anyway. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

But Raidou looked a little worried, all the same. Probably because a team would take the better part of a week to get there, and animals and decay would take what the storm hadn’t. Whatever secrets Iebara’s remains carried were long gone and lost.

Kakashi said, “Next time I’ll take a bucket.”

Ryouma snorted. Katsuko laughed in Kakashi’s ear. Raidou cracked a smile, and even the lieutenant chuckled.

“Collecting the remains was on me,” Genma said. “We have Iebara’s commanding officer. That’s gotta be better than a bucket of slime as far as Intel’s concerned.”

“Point,” Raidou said. He leaned over and tapped Genma’s elbow. “Y’know, we’re still waiting on your guess, Shiranui.”

“Swimming with dogs is the lie,” Genma said decisively. “There might have been dogs around, but ninja parents make sure their kids know how to swim properly.” After a fractional beat, he added, “Except maybe in Suna.”

“Accurate,” Raidou said. “On both counts.”

Kakashi thought about it while Katsuko’s fingers slid through his hair, putting the final elastic band into place. She brushed her palm over the sticky-up tufts, making his head rock gently from side to side. It made the room waver, full of black and gold shadows.

At last he said, “I don’t remember what I said.”

“Oh mygod,” Katsuko said.

Raidou propped his chin on his hand. “I’m seeing the flaw in making it Hatake’s go now.”

Calmly, Ryouma tapped warm fingers against the top of Kakashi’s foot. “One, you learned to swim by doggy-paddling in the river with real dogs.” Another tap checked off each line. “Second, Minato-sensei—it feels really weird to call him that—once forgot it was Valentine’s until just before he was supposed to meet Kushina-sama, andtriedto steal your personal plant as a present for her. Which I still think means he didn’t succeed, and you caught yourself up in a lie,” he said, like arguing semantics with a drugged man was a winning strategy. “Third, last year you got offered the elderly discount for a spa in Tea Country, which is also pretty ridiculous now that I think about it. Spas involve getting naked in front of other people.”

Maybe the advantage of not knowing how to read was perfect aural recall.

“Wow,” said Kakashi, fascinated. “You should do that at parties.”

Ryouma smiled crookedly. “Does this count? We’re playing party games.”

“I guess so,” Kakashi said, and finally managed to re-achieve his point. “Lieutenant’s right. I learned to swim in our pond with my dad. Dogs weren’t allowed to join in until I could keep my head above water.”

He hadn’t thought about that in years.

Light on water and big, careful hands, and the feeling of absolute safety, back when that was a thing which existed.

He let it slip away. Right now there were laughing teammates and ties in his hair, and he only hurt a little. Ryouma was making a face of betrayal and demanding to know what kind of spas catered to elderly people with six packs, while Katsuko hooted and mocked his deductive skills. Genma was smiling the small, pleased smile of victory, and Raidou leaned against his own fist, looking tired and fond.

Kakashi slouched down lower in his warm, borrowed blankets and smiled at them, half-lidded. “I like this game,” he decided.

“I knew you would,” Genma said. “Everyone likes this game.”

There was an adage about friendships forged in foxholes that Genma couldn’t remember the exact wording to, but by the looks of it, the magic was at work for Team Six. In the time it had taken for Kakashi to play his turn, he’d changed his tune from “I hate this game” to “I like this game”, and more importantly, he looked almost happy. Comfortable, out of pain, and relaxed—all of which could be attributed to morphine and medical senbon, but Genma didn’t think that was the only factor. For the first time since the team had formed, it seemed like Kakashi trusted his teammates enough to let his guard down.

Katsuko was grinning to herself as she continued to tweak the pigtails she’d created in Kakashi’s hair, adjusting them towards some vision of symmetry only she could see. The nervous anxiety she’d greeted them with when they’d arrived at the bunker was all but gone—unsurprising in a veteran that she’d found her equilibrium fairly quickly, but still very welcome. Ryouma, who’d worried Genma the most, seemed mellower and more relaxed. He was leaning back braced on straight arms, with Kakashi’s feet casually resting across his folded thighs, and there was only a hint of tension at the corners of his eyes.

Only Raidou still looked strained and tired. The weight of command combined with a post-concussion headache was probably more than enough to account for that. Genma made a mental note to remember to check Raidou’s head injury again as soon as the game was done. And make sure the prisoner was stable. And inventory his medical supplies to be sure he hadn’t missed anything. And…

They were all looking at him.

“It’s my turn?”

Kakashi plucked a bit of blanket lint and tossed it at Genma. “Yes,” he said. “You have to do good lies, too. No cop-out little ones that just change a date or something. And nothing about the bakery. We know about the bakery.” His preemptive scorn was almost endearing.

“You don’t know everything about—” Genma started.

“Or about Aoba,” Kakashi continued, imperious as a daimyou. “I don’t care about him.”

Genma choked.

“Aoba?” Raidou asked, genuinely puzzled.

“He polices the lieutenant’smail,” Kakashi said, like he was pronouncing judgment on high treason.

“Hatake met my temporary roommate the other night,” Genma explained. “Yamashiro Aoba. He’s a good guy, but he can be kind of an ass if he thinks he’s protecting me.”

“Protecting you from Kakashi?” Ryouma asked skeptically. “What, did he think Kakashi was hunting for revenge after one too many laps around the training field? Or was it more likeGenma-kun is too young and innocent for your scandalous love letters, begone you ruffian?”

Raidou snorted a laugh, Katsuko cackled, Genma choked a little more, and Ryouma looked like the cat who licked the cream.

Kakashi was evidently still playing catch up; once he’d processed through everything he scowled quizzically at Ryouma. “Love letters?”

“Aoba was just messing with you,” Genma said, waving away Ryouma’s suggestion. “And trying to make sure my rookies weren’t bringing me unnecessary problems when I was just out of the hospital.” He shrugged. “You weren’t, so don’t worry, he forgave you.”

Kakashi looked slightly mollified—Genma’d have to tell Aoba about this when he got back—and Ryouma heaved a theatrical sigh, evidently disappointed at the lack of juicy backstory.

“You watch a lot of romances, Tousaki?” Genma asked.

Ryouma shrugged. “All the best historical dramas have a romance or three at the core. C’mon, lieutenant, tell us yours.”

“My romances?”

“Your lie— truth—things,” Kakashi said from his muffler of blankets.

There was only so much stalling a man could do. Genma shifted and stretched his spine, and leaned back against the wall, shoulder to shoulder with the captain. “Okay,” he said. “Romances it is. One, my spinach allergy ruined a date with someone I really liked. Two, I turned down a marriage proposal last year. Three…” He hesitated a moment, deciding on one last plausible statement. Katsuko and Ryouma leaned in. “Three, my favorite romantic movie isThe Maiden and the Mechanical Bird Soldier.”

“Proposal’s false,” Katsuko declared instantly. “No one in their right mind would want to get hitched with active ANBU.” She hesitated. “Unless it wasanotherANBU.”

Genma nodded. “Sticking with that guess, Ueno, or changing your vote now that you’ve realized there’s a loophole in your logic?”

“I don’t back down, lieutenant,” Katsuko said, meeting his eyes. “Ever.”

“One of the things I like about you,” Genma told her. “That’s a truth, by the way.”

Katsuko blinked in surprise, and then, hesitantly, offered Genma a small, genuine smile.

Genma smiled back, surprised in turn at the warmth her smile kindled. Foxhole magic was working on him, too, it seemed.

Raidou glanced between Genma and Katsuko, expression lightening at the exchange between them. “I’ve seenThe Maiden and the Mechanical Bird Soldier,” he said. “It’s a good one. Little sad at the end, but some people like that. I could see that being a favorite.” He looked up thoughtfully, scratching the back of one bandaged hand where adhesive tape was pulling hair. “The marriage proposal could’ve been an after-mission adrenaline thing, or too many on a night out, or a friend’s kid being cute. Too many variables to guess,” he decided. “I’m calling the spinach allergy as fake.” A teasing smile tipped the edges of his mouth up. “Real ninja don’t have allergies, no matter what it says in their files.”

Genma chuckled. Was Raidou was trying to throw the game on purpose? “The allergy’s genuine,” he said. “If you don’t believe me, you can ask my dad or my jounin sensei. They both ended up dealing with the consequences at one time or another.”

“Ah well, too late to change my vote now,” Raidou said.

Ryouma lasered a narrow-eyed look at Genma. “Allergy being genuine doesn’t mean the date was, though. And you’re smart enough not to eat something you know you’re allergic to,especiallyon a date. So that one’s my vote.” He lifted his chin to punctuate his statement, then let a sly grin steel across his face. “But I want to hear the story behind the marriage proposal.”

“If you’re right, maybe the story can be your reward,” Genma said. Although being right for the wrong reason didn’t seem like it really deserved as good a reward as being right for the right reason. “Hatake, your guess.”

“You’re allergic tospinach?” Kakashi demanded.

“I am. And if you try to test it by sneaking spinach into my food, we’re all going to be sorry, but you’ll be sorriest when I recover.”

Kakashi slunk further under his blankets until he was almost completely prone, with his head at the edge of Katsuko’s lap. An indistinct grumbly protest about not poisoning his teammates, who would do that? filtered through the layers of cloth in a drug-laced slur. Genma caught something that sounded a lot like,Poor lieutenant with his last team of sociopaths.Which was almost sort of sweet.

For a moment it seemed medication and fatigue had gotten the best of Kakashi, but then he resurfaced, shoving the blankets away from his face to say, “The film is fake. It’s the only definitive fact that reveals anything. Ergo, not true.”

Ryouma’s mouth twisted around the word ‘ergo’, like he was trying to puzzle out a mysterious flavor of jam.

“It’s a thing they say in court,” Genma said. “It means he thinks he’s proven his point.”

“I always prove my point,” Kakashi declared.

“When were the two of you ever in court?” Ryouma asked, nonplussed. “Did you get court-martialed?”

Genma shrugged, amused at the suggestion. “I can’t tell you about Hatake’s checkered past, but I’ve been in court a couple of times. Never because I was on trial. I don’t think they’d promote you to lieutenant if you’d been court martialed.”

“Hmm,” Ryouma said, digesting the idea.

“Not more than once, anyway,” Raidou said, with enough ironic inflection to imply he’d heard stories.

Genma reached up to scratch an itch on his nose, and shuddered when his fingers encountered bandages and the whole front of his face throbbed.

Right. Broken.

He dropped his hand carefully, and took a slow breath through his mouth. “Promoted to lieutenant more than once, or court-martialed more than once?” he asked.

“Both,” Raidou said. He dropped his hand casually on Genma’s unbandaged leg, tapping out two words in code:hurtandkill—in ANBU parlance, ‘kill the hurt’ or, more specifically, ‘you need drugs, man?’

Technically, the answer was ‘yes.’ Genma’d shorted himself on painkillers back when he’d dosed Katsuko and Kakashi, because at the time he thought they had barely enough to make it through twelve hours just treating the two of them and the prisoner. Knowing they had breathing room thanks to Kakashi’s creative med-kit stocking helped, but it only got them to twenty-four hours.

He found Raidou’s arm and tapped back anall clear.

Raidou gave him a dark-eyed, assessing look, then turned toward the clone still working on Kakashi’s tanto. Evidently it operated on the same silent telepathy that Katsuko seemed to sometimes share with Raidou: it met Raidou’s eyes, then glanced over its shoulder and whistled sharply. A second clone vanished from the doorway, reappearing a moment later with a glass bottle of non-opiates pilfered from the bunker’s medical supplies. It held them out silently, waiting for Genma to take them.

He dry-swallowed a pair of tablets and gave the bottle back. Kakashi was too out of it to notice anything amiss, and Katsuko seemed deeply engaged in petting Kakashi’s pigtails, but Ryouma was studiously looking away, pretending not to mark the exchange of codes and medications.

Katsuko was probably only pretending not to notice, too.

Genma wasn’t sure what to make of that, but it seemed considerate. He shifted into a fresh not-quite-comfortable position next to Raidou, and tried to pretend he hadn’t noticed their pretending.

“Tousaki and Taichou get it,” he said, to break the spell of awkward silence that had descended over them. “But they’re wrong about why.”

Ryouma’s smug cheerfulness at having guessed right faded into narrowed eyes. “You didn’t actually like your date?”

“Nope, I liked my date,” Genma said.

Kakashi groaned in mock despair.

Ryouma’s eyes narrowed still more. “So you were dumb enough to eat the spinach, and you got hives and stopped breathing or whatever allergies do, but it didn’t ruin the date? Because your date secretly had a thing for hives.”

“Something like that,” Genma allowed. “It wasn’t me being dumb, though. I asked if there was spinach in the dish, and the waitress checked with the chef and they swore to me there wasn’t any. Turned out there was dried spinach in a seasoning packet that a new apprentice brought in and added to the soup without telling the chef.”

“Should have smelled it,” Kakashi said, like smelling a few milligrams of dried spinach in a bowl of soup was as easy as walking into a brick wall.

“Not an Inuzuka relative,” Genma told him. Maybe there was something to the rumors about Hatake clan genetics. “Could you really have smelled it? You’re official taster for me from now on.”

“I can eat your food,” Kakashi said, half-lidded and magnanimous.

“You just wouldn’t get any back,” added Raidou.

Kakashi smiled sleepily in affirmation.

“Well, youcouldget your food back,” Katsuko offered, propping her chin up on Kakashi’s head. “It just wouldn’t be in a form you’d want.”

Genma grinned at her (and regretted it, because ow, nose.) “That’s another thing I like about you, Ueno. Classy and clever.”

“That’s me,” Katsuko agreed, nodding smugly. “A noble lady of refinement.”

A soft, delighted laugh came from the pile of blankets that had started swallowing Kakashi again.

No one was pressing Genma on the penalty or prize phase of the game, which was just dandy as far as he was concerned.

Katsuko’s clone finished the tanto in the same moment, displaying its handiwork with evident pride. “Look good?” it asked, holding the blade so it gleamed in the yellow light.

Kakashi shed blankets and sat halfway up to take the tanto, then dropped back with liquid ease, all rubber-band muscle control with no real awareness, like a skilled drunken brawler. He hugged the weapon close against his chest, fingers curled loosely around the naked blade. “Thanks, Kats’ko,” he mumbled, eyes closed.

The looks on Raidou’s and Ryouma’s faces had to be mirrors of the one on Genma’s own, as sharp eyes darted to that lethally-edged steel. Drugged, unpredictable when half-conscious, andarmedwas not the most reassuring combination of traits Genma could have picked for Kakashi.

“Last time I had to do medical work on Hatake when he was out of it,” Genma said, “was when he passed out after getting his tattoo. Taichou saved me from a crushed larynx. And a few hours ago taichou saved me from Hatake breaking all twenty-seven bones in my hand when I was working on Ueno’s shoulder and she yelped.” He looked at his patient, laid out on his back and clutching a blade like a warrior corpse ready for the pyre. “Anyone else think arming him was a bad idea, and this looks creepy?”

Katsuko and her clone shared the panicked, guilty expressions of a babysitter who’d just watched her charge run out into a crowded road with an ox-cart bearing down.

Ryouma shot her an exasperated look.What did I tell you?he mouthed.

Without missing a beat, Raidou eyed Kakashi strategically, then pointed at Katsuko and flicked trail signs at her.Five minutes. Sleep. Disarm.

She nodded in acknowledgment, holding herself with a careful lack of tension so as not to alarm the ninja she’d just supplied with a freshly sharpened blade.

Genma allowed himself a soft sigh. “So. Taichou’s cuddly toy for bedtime was a stuffed tiger, and Hatake’s is a thousand-fold alloy blade. What about the rest of you?”

For an instant Ryouma looked blank, then hurt, before he turned his gaze away. “You’re not distracting us that easily, lieutenant,” he said, sounding suspiciously light, and just a little forced. “You promised the story behind the marriage proposal, if I got it right.”

All Genma’s concerns about Ryouma’s emotional resilience came crowding back, adding to the litany of other worries this mission had generated. Was it Ryouma’s own troubled childhood that made him flinch, or was it the teenage girl he’d had a hand in killing on the mission? The babies Katsuko and Raidou had had to kill? Or the deaths of the young girls on the previous mission?

He glanced at Raidou—had the captain picked up on the same thing?—and tapped code against Raidou’s knee:Safe?

Unknown, Raidou signed against the back of Genma’s hand. Aloud, he said, “Youdidpromise the story, lieutenant.”

Watchful worrying it would have to be, then.

“I said Imighttell you—” Genma started.

“You’re gonna leave us to start asking around when we get back to Konoha, lieutenant?” Ryouma asked. Heseemedto have bounced back enough to engage again. “Who knows what damage we’ll do to your reputation?”

“I see you passed your coercive methods classes in Academy,” Genma said with a small laugh. “Alright, here’s the story. We’d been dating for five months. I got a little banged up on a mission, and when I got home, got a proposal I wasn’t expecting. I turned it down because I’m too young to get married, and my commitment to ANBU comes first.”

Ryouma was quiet for a long moment before he said, “And then you broke up?”

Genma nodded. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “A couple weeks later.” A couple of tense, argument-filled, miserable weeks.

“They should put that in the recruitment posters,” Katsuko said with a wry twist. “‘Joining ANBU gets you a mask, a reputation, and an inability to keep relationships alive’.” Her expression turned softer and more sincere. “Shouldn’t keep us from trying, though.”

“Speak for yourself,” Ryouma said. “I intend to blow through as many one-night-stands as we have time for.” He tossed Katsuko a wicked grin. “I already bet the lieutenant I could sleep with all the lower ranking ANBU in a year.”

Genma rested his forehead very, very gently in his hand.

“How about you try making some friends instead,” Raidou said softly. Dark, shadowed eyes locked onto Ryouma.

Ryouma dropped his gaze and the grin. After a moment he shrugged one shoulder and patted half-heartedly at Kakashi’s ankle. “Lieutenant never did actually take the bet,” he said.

Thank you for not throwing me into that fire,Genma thought. He reached over and gave Ryouma’s elbow a light touch. “They say the strongest friendships are forged in foxholes, right?”

Katsuko had never taken shelter in a foxhole during the war. She’d neverfoughtin the war; she’d been relegated to running messages and guarding supply points as far from the front lines as possible, like all the other genin. Then had come that late March evening when she’d turned right instead of left on her way home, and the next time she’d woken up she’d been in a living nightmare. Her teammates had passed the chuunin exams and shipped out to the front while she’d been trapped underground. The war had raged on without her.

She forgot, occasionally, that she was the only member of Team 6 who’d never seen a battlefield. Konoha had rescued her and stitched her back together too late for her to be of any use near the war’s end. If they’d found her even a month earlier…

No. Her new chakra levels had been too unstable to risk sending her out, even as a last resort. Guilt and the insistent whisper that she should have been out there with the others, fighting to defend her home alongside them—none of that made a difference. She would have been useless in the war effort. Shehadbeen useless, all those months spent in the hospital while her year-mates paid their dues to Konoha in sweat and blood.

Kakashi shifted underneath her chin. Katsuko blinked when his pigtails brushed against her nose, startled back into the present by the urge to sneeze. She fought it down with a disgruntled noise and buried her face in Kakashi’s scruffy hair. Kakashi made a mumbling sound and freed one hand from his tanto to reach back like he was going to pat her face. He lost drive halfway through and ended up just resting his palm against her cheek, calluses rough against her skin as his breathing started to slow and deepen.

“Anyway,” Ryouma was telling Genma and Raidou, “I bet if we walked down Canal Street in Konoha, I’d know more names than you would.”

Katsuko scrunched her nose as she tried to catch up with the conversation. “Are we still talking about friends?” she asked.

Genma looked over at her. “Tousaki’s claiming he’s some kind of social epicenter of Konoha.”

Kakashi’s grip on his tanto was starting to loosen. Katsuko reached over and very gently wrapped some of the blanket around the exposed blade. His fingers twitched. She pulled her hand back and glanced up at the others. “Tousaki doesn’t need to be an epicenter of anything,” she said, annoyed and feeling blurry around the edges. “He’s already got us.”

“But Idohave other friends though,” Ryouma said, to Genma and Raidou. “Friends I haven’t slept with, even.” He looked at Katsuko, then, and some of the irritated stubbornness faded from his dark eyes. “And yeah, you’re one of ‘em.”

“Good,” Katsuko said, pleased with herself and the world in general. The warm feeling in her chest made her add, “Don’t tell Kakashi, but you’re the prettier one of my rookies.”

Ryouma straightened, smug delight and real happiness transforming his face as he took the compliment as his due. “You’re my prettiest senpai, too.”

“I’d better be,” Katsuko warned, narrowing her eyes. “I’m your only senpai.”

Raidou shifted, drawing her attention, and leaned sideways to stage-whisper to Genma, “I was wondering when she’d realize that.”

“Aren’t we technically senpai, too?” Genma asked. “Or does being officers cancel that out? Not that I want to compete for ‘prettiest’.”

“No, you’re not senpai,” Katsuko said flatly. “Iam their only senpai. You’re just commanding officers.”

Raidou reached over to grab himself a pillow, propped it up against Genma’s hip, and lay down, popping a couple joints as he stretched stiff muscles out. “In that case, we’ll take a break, and you can take charge for a bit. Keep the rookies in line, commander-senpai.”

Katsuko brightened. “No take-backs,” she said, and barreled on before Raidou could rescind her new position of higher authority. “Tousaki, steal taichou’s blankets and then come back over here and make me a fort. Hatake, you can keep sleeping.”

Ryouma gave her an utterly betrayed look. “Your first command, and you’re sending me to my death already?”

“Tousaki,” Katsuko said earnestly, and reached over to grip his wrist for emphasis. “Tousaki. This is an S-ranked mission. Others have tried and failed. But as your new commander, I believe in you. I believe in your success. I believe in you totally and utterly. Now go get me my fort, soldier.”

Ryouma’s mouth was quivering. “Senpai,” he said. There was a quaver in his voice, too, badly controlled laughter lurking at the corners of his lips. He shifted up onto his knees and whispered loudly, “I’m casting a genjutsu now. Sleep deeply, taichou, and dream of— fluffy puppies.” He tugged very cautiously at the corner of one of the blankets underneath Raidou.

Out of the corner of her eye, Katsuko saw Genma tense up at the wordgenjutsuand dart a sharp glance at Raidou. Defensive irritation flared—Raidou wasn’t made of glass, and treating him like he was about to break wouldn’t do anyone any favors—before amusem*nt at Ryouma’s over-exaggerated gestures wiped it away.

“You’re one of Konoha’s finest, Tousaki,” Katsuko said, also in a loud whisper. “If anyone can steal a blanket out from underneath the slumbering beast, it’s an ANBU.”

“You could also try asking the beast,” Raidou said, tired and amused. He gave them a fond smile that crinkled his eyes at the corners, and lifted himself up enough for Ryouma to retrieve the blanket. Then he added more softly, “Though puppies are nice, too.”

Ryouma paused with the blanket crumpled in his hands, gazing down at Raidou with a troubled expression. After a moment he said, “I can’t just leave him toshiver, senpai. Let’s give him Kakashi. That’s almost as good as puppies.”

Before Katsuko could explain that Kakashi was going to be the central support pillar for the impending fort, Genma intervened with a firm, “We’re still trying to keep Hatake warm. How about you make your blanket fort generous enough keep him under there with you?” Light amber eyes flicked to the tanto still in Kakashi’s hand. Genma glanced at Katsuko and signeddisarm.

Kakashi’s non-weapon-wielding hand still rested against Katsuko’s face. His breathing was deep and even, tension unwinding slowly from his muscles as he sank further into sleep. Katsuko did her best to keep her head and upper body still as she reached out to carefully start coaxing Kakashi’s fingers loose of the tanto hilt. His grip relaxed, opening just enough for her to start to tug the tanto free—and then he shifted with an unconscious noise of discontent, hand curling around Katsuko’s fingers instead.

Katsuko stopped. Then, slowly, she curled her index and middle finger, gaining just enough space to tap outsafein ANBU code against Kakashi’s palm. There was a long beat—just long enough for Katsuko to remember exactly how painful broken metacarpals were—before Kakashi let out a soft breath, body going even heavier as his hand finally relaxed again, letting Katsuko go. She lifted the tanto free and started to hand it off to Ryouma before she realized he was still holding Raidou’s blanket. A clone came over to take the tanto instead and darted away, presumably to find some sort of cloth to wrap the blade in.

Genma breathed out a relieved sigh. “Good job. Thank you, Ueno.”

“Mm.” Katsuko peered down at Kakashi’s peaceful, trusting face. “Does anyone have a marker?”

Ryouma tossed his newly acquired blanket over her head. “Pretty sure we can come up with a less dangerous way to give you an adrenaline rush, if you want. There’s got to be a farm around here with an angry bull.”

The world was dark and musty. Katsuko tugged the blanket off and gave Ryouma a look of injured outrage. “Are you questioning my authority, Tousaki?”

Ryouma rocked back off his knees onto his heels, balancing easily. “Mostly just your judgment, senpai.”

Raidou, who’d been watching the scene unfold with a thoroughly entertained expression, let out a muffled snort. Genma just smiled like a bodhisattva and bestowed his approval upon Ryouma with a nod. Katsuko stabbed them with her eyes and turned to Ryouma with an imperious sniff.

“Fine,” she conceded, glaring up at Ryouma’s amused face. She jabbed her finger at a spot right next to her and Kakashi. “Get over here so I can administer your punishment, mutineer.”

He shrugged one muscled shoulder and flashed her a crooked grin, charming even in the midst of his treachery. Katsuko watched, narrow-eyed, as Ryouma thumped back down beside her, relaxing only when he crossed his legs and settled in.

Good. He knew better than to try and run away.

“Stay still,” she ordered, and set up court with Kakashi sprawled half over Ryouma’s legs and half over hers. She tugged the blanket up over Kakashi’s shoulders, propped her good shoulder up on Ryouma’s arm, and smiled when Ryouma accepted her weight without complaint. The brittle tension that had wound him up so tight until now was almost gone. Her smile turned smug when she aimed it over at Raidou and Genma. “Myrookies are the best.”

Raidou folded his arm over his eyes, mouth lifting up at the corner. “If you start scent-marking them, we’re going to have words.”

Katsuko stroked an imaginary beard in contemplation. “Interesting suggestion, taichou.”

“Outside words,” Raidou added. “In the rain. Or a river. Whatever body of water is closest.”

“Hmm.” Her shoulder was starting to feel squashed. Katsuko turned just enough to rest her back against Ryouma instead, reclining like he was a favored chair. “On second thought, the scent-marking will have to wait until I can swim with both arms again.”

Ryouma’s weight shifted just before his chin settled on top of Katsuko’s head. Katsuko did her best not to look as pleased with herself as she actually was. He said lazily, “C’mon, taichou. I’ve smelled worse.”

Genma had a resigned look on his face. “What you do in your own time is your business, but there better be no-one scent marking anyone until all your wounds are closed, or I’m in line behind taichou for serious words.”

Katsuko sighed and sadly stroked her imaginary beard again. “Oh, well. I’ll just have to make do with marker labels and ‘property of’ stamps.”

“Mm,” Raidou murmured drowsily, which Katsuko took as permission for the implementation of her stamp plan. Genma went into medic-mode and moved over to start checking Raidou’s head and hand injuries one last time before Raidou could start falling asleep.

Ryouma rubbed his chin into Katsuko’s hair, mussing it up even further and sending fizzy little bubbles of happiness up in Katsuko’s chest. “Surprised you haven’t looked into tattoos yet. Guess we still need to prove ourselves as good kouhai first.”

“It’s okay,” Katsuko assured him, reaching up to pat his cheek like Kakashi had done to her. “Like I said before, I believe in you. You’ll pass the kouhai test eventually. Just stopmutineeringfirst.”

Ryouma’s laugh rumbled in his chest and vibrated down Katsuko’s spine. “You’ve got a very long and respectable line of Academy teachers and genin sensei and team captains ahead of you who’ve failed to cure me of mutineering. I wish us both luck, though.” He resettled his chin. “Heading for sleep, taichou?”

“‘f anyone needs me to do anything, they better ask meright now,” Raidou said, which translated to ‘yes’. Katsuko only realized her eyes had drifted shut when she had to peel them open to see again.

“We’re good, I’ve got it,” she mumbled, and put her hands together to form the seals for her clones. She remembered why that was a bad idea a second too late, and by then her first set of bunshin had already dispelled themselves to make way for the fresh wave of clones. Her bad shoulder twinged as secondhand memories piled in; Katsuko breathed through her nose and relaxed deliberately, processing the images. By the time the new kage bunshin flitted off to take up their guard stations, the pain had started to dissipate and drowsiness was already threatening to overtake her again. She grunted. “These clones should last until the cavalry arrives. M’going to bed now.”

Genma eyed her. “Get some rest,” he ordered, after he decided Katsuko probably wasn’t going to keel over. “I need to dose everyone who needs dosing and check our prisoner. Tousaki, you still awake enough to give me a hand?”

Ryouma’s entire body winced, but he disentangled himself from Katsuko very carefully and eased her down. Katsuko grumbled at the loss of warmth, but smiled sleepily when he pulled the blankets up over her and slid a pillow underneath her bad shoulder. Her eyes fell closed; the next thing she felt was Ryouma’s callused hand sliding gently over her hair and his soft, “Rest well, senpai. And thank you.”

Katsuko made a quiet, warm sound of acknowledgment as Ryouma stood. Footsteps; then Ryouma’s voice, further away: “What d’you need, lieutenant?”

Kakashi was a solid presence at her side. Katsuko reached out until she could rest her hand in his hair, anchoring herself. Then, as the sound of Ryouma and Genma’s conversation faded out of the room, she slept.

The swelling had gone down in Genma’s leg, but the pain evidently hadn’t. He threaded his IV needle out by himself, but he needed a hand up from the platform, and a strong arm and a steady shoulder as they made their way out of the bunkroom. First to the bathroom, to deal with certain consequences of a round-the-clock IV; then, even less pleasantly, to the prisoner’s cell.

f*ckuda’s fever had broken. She’d drunk water, Katsuko’s new clones reported, diligently mining through the memories of the previous watch. Still hadn’t eaten, hadn’t even tried to speak. The metal pot with its congealed lump of stew lay by the cell door, untouched. Ryouma left Genma and three clones with the prisoner and took the pot to the kitchen to wash.

He finished before Genma did, and went back into the bunkroom to scrounge for more dishes to clean.

When he came out of the kitchen the next time, Genma was outside the cell, leaning heavily against the packed earth wall and giving quiet instructions to the new clones. f*ckuda lay blanket-covered in the shadows beyond him, breathing quietly. Her eyes were open.

“She’ll live?” Ryouma wasn’t sure why he was asking or whether he wanted to know the answer. Maybe it was something about watching the way Genma had worked tonight, steady despite his own hurts. A medic was supposed to look after himself first, and care about himself last. Had Genma said that, or had he heard it somewhere else?

Half of being a good medic is wanting the other guy to stop hurting.He remembered Genma saying that, at least.

He looked at f*ckuda, and then away.

Still not there yet.

“As long as nothing changes, she’s improving.” Genma braced a hand on the wall and tested his weight on his right thigh. He grimaced, teeth clenched, and leaned back again. “Your bandage change earlier helped.”

Ryouma started to shove his hands in his pockets, remembered his spare ANBU blacks didn’t have them, and tucked his thumbs into his waistband instead. “Bet you won’t catch her being grateful.”

Genma gazed at him for a moment, light eyes caught a vivid gold in the flickering overhead glow. He seemed to be considering his words, and discarding them. At last he said, “Shibata-san’s department will be glad we saved her.”

Even less reason for f*ckuda to be grateful, then.

Ryouma stole one more glance at her. She hadn’t moved, but she was watching him. He wondered if she knew, or guessed, who Shibata was. Raidou’d said Konoha wanted a word with her, hadn’t he? She had to know they were only saving her for interrogation.

He’d handed prisoners over to T&I two or three times before, but they’d been missing-nin, traitors to Konoha or to other villages; he hadn’t felt guilty. He didn’t have any reason to feel guilty now. He’d have been happy to kill her. He’d already crippled her. T&I couldn’t do much worse.

He dropped his eyes, all the same. “We done here, lieutenant?”

“We’re done,” Genma confirmed, but the careful, evaluating look still simmered behind his eyes. He pushed off from the wall, limping heavily. His shoulder brushed Ryouma’s in the narrow hall. “Hatake will keep for a while longer. I could really use a cup of coffee. Come sit in the kitchen with me a minute, and I’ll share my stash of instant.”

“Thought you were a tea man,” Ryouma said.

Genma shrugged. “I am. But instant coffee’s easy to carry, and I usually have teammates like you who’d rather drink it than tea. We can make a cup of each.”

Ryouma hadn’t had a decent caffeine hit since they left Konoha. He could guess at Genma’s motives for the offer, but he couldn’t drag up the energy to care.

He followed Genma to the kitchen, dragged over the folding chair for the lieutenant to collapse into, and busied himself pumping water and lighting the tiny stove. The fuel canister was full again; Raidou must have replaced it for his breakfast stew. He crouched over it, waiting for the water to boil. The back of his neck prickled with Genma’s gaze.

When Genma finally spoke, his voice ground low with tiredness and pain. “That’s the hardest part of the job. When everything in you is telling you that the person you’re trying to save deserves to die.” He drew a slow breath, let it out. “When you have a teammate badly injured, or dead, and it’s your prisoner’s fault. And when you’re off on a mission like ours, where you had to… Where some of your targets deserved Konoha’s wrath, but some were just…”

“In the way?” Ryouma asked the water bubbling in the pot.

“Collateral,” Genma said.

Ryouma remembered the wet thunk of kunai into flesh, the Tsuto boy’s last gurgling breath nearly inaudible under his father’s screams. And then Genma’s voice, calm and collected over the radio:Primary objective here complete. Moving on…

He shuddered, straightened, reached for clean mugs. “You got that coffee, lieutenant?”

Genma leaned precipitously out of his chair, hanging on to the edge of the doorway, and called for one of Katsuko’s clones to bring his medkit. When the clone arrived, Genma dug through the kit to an interior compartment and unearthed a slim metal cannister. He unscrewed the lid and pulled out a slender foil tube printed with a brightly colored image of a girl in traditional southern Water Country garb. “One packet makes two cups.”

Ryouma poured half the crystals carefully into a mug, and paused. “You wanted tea.”

“I could do either, I guess.” Genma tilted his head back against the wall, heavy-lidded eyes barely slitted open. “That’s how you know I’m tired. Can’t make a simple decision easily.” He dragged his gaze up again, with obvious effort. “You think you can drink two cups of coffee? I’ve got tea in here, just need to dig it back out.”

“Those mornings you see me looking only slightly zombified on the training field at 5 a.m.? Those are two-cup mornings. I need at least three cups if you want me chipper.” Ryouma added hot water, stirred, and set the mug aside to accept the folded tea packet Genma’d produced instead.

It looked fancy, too. Probably needed some delicate brewing temperature six degrees below the boiling point of water, or something. He dropped it in the mug, poured water in, and held the cup out. “Thanks for sharing.”

Genma’s eyes were slipping down to half-mast again. He made anmhmnoise at the back of his throat and curled his fingers around the mug.

Ryouma dredged his brain for something else to say. “Smells like good stuff.”

The corners of Genma’s mouth tipped up. “Enjoy. Mount Akan coffee is amazing.” He opened his eyes, took a deep breath of the scented steam from his tea cup, and struggled a little more upright. “When we get back to Konoha, I’ll buy you a cup of the real stuff.”

Ryouma’s fancy-coffee-buying habits usually involved more whipped cream and hazelnut syrup and espresso shots, but he said, “Sure,” and tried a cautious sip. He’d burned his tongue once already today, making tea with Katsuko.

The flavor was as good as the scent, mild-roasted and smooth, with hints of complexity. Ryouma looked up, startled. “You weren’t kidding about the good stuff. Why—?”

He bit the question down. The answer was patently obvious. Genma hadn’t opened his secret stash on the journey to Ibaragashi, or during the previous day in the bunker, because it was meant for more than just a morning wake-up. It was a peace-offering, or at the least a conversational lubricant, because Ryouma wasn’t exactly handling this mission well and everyone on the team knew it.

Well, maybe not Kakashi. Allhisfilters had crumpled beneath the battering-ram of morphine; if he’d noticed something, he’d have said it.

But Genma had noticed. Genma’d watched him all the way through. And Genma was sitting there now, hands laced around his tea mug, watching him with honey-amber eyes, and waiting for him to crack.

Ryouma licked the taste of coffee off his lip. “It hasn’t been my best mission, has it?”

Genma’s mouth quirked. “You gave yourself a hard act to follow, what with dealing the death blow to a giant demon scorpion-dog on the first one and all.” He fished the floating tea bag out of his cup, tossed it into the bucket where they’d been scraping food scraps, and took a slow sip. When he lowered the mug, his eyes were serious again. “This was Team Six’s first mission where we didn’t get to be unambiguously the good guys. There’s no easy way to prepare for the reality of ANBU. You think you know what you’re agreeing to when you take the mask, but until you have to hold the knife to some innocent kid’s throat, you don’tknow.”

“You wouldn’t think a jounin’d have all that many illusions left to lose,” Ryouma said.

“And yet,” Genma said gently.

“And yet.” Ryouma sighed. He tried another taste of his coffee. “I thought, maybe… I thought you’d saved f*ckuda because we couldn’t save anybody else.”

Genma blew out his breath through pursed lips. His gaze fell away for a moment, seeking something in the shadows. “I… don’t know if I was thinking that. Maybe part of me was. I saw her there, and she was clearly going to die horribly if I didn’t do something. But this was an S-class mission, and she was the only surviving enemy—and Iebara’s commander. She’s at least a moderately high value target for interrogation.”

His gaze wandered again, this time to his mug, as if there was something in green tea with brown rice that could help him marshal his thoughts. He said slowly, without looking up, “The effects of your jutsu are gruesome, and the medic in me recognized her suffering. But I’m a field operative first. I saved her because I thought Konoha would need her.”

At least she’d be able to confirm Kakashi’s Bingo Book kill, since they hadn’t salvaged Iebara’s dogtags or his head. Ryouma wrapped an arm around his legs and decided he didn’t, actually, want to think about her destined meeting with Shibata.

“You thought about a lot of things I didn’t,” he said. “I just wanted to stop her from killing Kakashi. And then I didn’t care how long it took her to die.”

Genma lifted one shoulder, silent acknowledgment: He was the lieutenant. It was hisjobto think about those things.

“I get that,” he said quietly. He looked up at last, and his eyes met Ryouma’s. His sandstone gaze was unflinchingly direct, but there was anger lurking in the depths. “When I saw you bending over Hatake, holding him, I thought I was too late. And when I got to f*ckuda, what I wanted to do—what I almost did—was cut off her head.”

And yet he hadn’t.

Because he was the lieutenant, and thought about his duty before himself? Or was it sheer iron self-control, that kept him from giving way to either blood-thirst or compassion?

Ryouma took another sip. “You ever done anything you really regret?”

A crease drew down between Genma’s brows. He reached up to rub it, winced as he brushed the bandage over his nose, and dropped his hand again. “On a mission, or ever? Because the answer is yes, to both.” He turned the tea mug in his hands. “The worst one was giving up on a guy I maybe could have saved. He was gasping and blue with a lung injury, and I was barely trained. I was scared to try to heal him, because if you do it wrong in the chest, you can kill your patient.”

His fingers tapped a rough, broken tattoo against the tin curve of the mug. He sighed. “In the end he died because I didn’t try. I bandaged him and ran him back to an aid station, and it was too late. He died on my back.”

“So your worst regret is not that you did something wrong, but that you didn’t do enough right.” Ryouma chewed the inside of his cheek. “And you deal with that by being kind of scarily conscientious now.”

Genma chuckled tiredly. “Is that how you see me? I guess maybe.” He grew somber, spinning the mug between his palms so that liquid swirled and sloshed up the sides. “I’ve done things wrong that I regretted, too, though. I’ve screwed up in the field, misread a trail, missed a trap I should have seen. Had to kill a witness to an assassination who I never should have let get that close in the first place.”

He looked up from the tea. “Practically every mission in ANBU, we have almost no margin. That’s why we get the missions, and not the regular service. We all have things that eat at us. From what I’ve seen, you’re not making mistakes. Unless I missed something?”

Ryouma shook his head. His throat was tight and raw. A mouthful of coffee helped, a little.

“I did it right,” he said. “The mission, at least. The fight with the Kiri team, I could’ve done better—if I’d reacted faster in the first place, Iebara never would’ve cut me, and maybe I should’ve gone for f*ckuda’s throat and not her arm—but a fight’s always like that. You can’t second-guess yourself there. But the mission, I hit every mark spot on, I followed orders exactly, I didn’t hesitate when it counted.”

He looked down at his hand, the raw red scratches across the back of his fingers, and said softly, “I watched the mother’s face while she died. I thought I owed her that. But the girl—”

Grown killers who’d rather face a battlefield than look dying little girls in the eye, Katsuko had said.

And Genma had killed that girl’s brother.

He rubbed his hand over his face, and tossed the rest of the coffee back. “It was the mission. And we did it. So. We pull ourselves together, and we go on, and Katsu takes me out to get drunk and laid when we get back home. That’s the ANBU way, right?”

“It’s not the only way,” Genma said gently. He leaned in, resting an elbow on his good thigh, dangling the tea mug between his knees. “You can reach out—talk to people. Talk to your teammates, like you’re already doing. Talk to friends on different teams. You’re buddies with Shibata’s son and that swordswoman Ayane on Hajime’s team, right? It helps to realize it’s not just you. My rookie year, after the first few missions, there was a lot of cross-talk between teams. It helped.”

Ryouma probably didn’t need friends to talk to nearly as much as Ayane did. He’d meant to see her before he left Konoha. There just hadn’t been a chance, between his appointment with the chakra specialist and packing his gear for the mission. He hoped Hakone had looked for her.

She’d lost her entire team, on her first mission. How could talking toanyonepossibly help her deal with that?

At leasthehadn’t lost anyone, despite Kakashi’s most suicidal heroics. That probably wasn’t the sort of comfort he should be looking for, but at the moment he wasn’t ready to feel guilty for it.

Maybe by the time he got back to Konoha, slept a full night in his own bed, took Katsuko and Kakashi out drinking—because he still thought that was a damn good idea, no matter what Genma said—maybe then he’d be steady enough to look for Ayane and Hakone and his old friends.

Maybe he’d have a strong shoulder of his own to offer, by then.

He reached for the remaining half-tube of coffee crystals. “I think mostly my talking to teammates has been less reaching out and more— Hell. I don’t know.” Last-ditch efforts not to fall apart? Maybe that was only true of that thorny tangle with Raidou, yesterday. Hehadbeen doing better since then, and since talking with Katsuko today. He’d been pretty proud of himself during their game, actually, until he’d seen f*ckuda and all the bottled-up anger broke out again.

Genma said, “You’re doing fine.” There was a new, forceful note in his voice, compelling Ryouma’s attention up. He caught Ryouma’s eyes, held them. “You’ve kept Hatake distracted and Ueno focused, and you’ve been helping me with medical care, and all of us with basic needs like food and hygiene. It’s hard enough to keep it together in a bunker safehouse with injured teammates when youaren’tfreaked out by what you just had to do on your mission.” He glanced through the open doorway, toward the cells. “Or what you’re bringing back with you.”

The whiskey-amber gaze fixed back on Ryouma. “Don’t let the prisoner get to you. Leave her to me and the captain. You’re doing fine, Tousaki.”

Ryouma’s throat hurt again. He ducked his head. “Thanks, lieutenant.”

There was a moment’s silence, and then the gentle brush of a hand over the top of his head. Chakra-warm, lingering, fingers sinking into his hair.

Then a quick ruffle, and a yawn, and the warmth and pressure were gone. Ryouma glanced up to see Genma rubbing his bandaged leg. “I should probably get back to bed before my leg starts swelling up again,” Genma said. “Your throat and chest feeling okay? I can lay a little healing chakra in if you need it.”

Ryouma shook his head. “Save it,” he said. “I’ll finish the coffee.”

Genma yawned again, careful not to scrunch his bandaged nose, and set his empty tea-mug down. “Don’t stay up too long,” he said. “You need rest, too.” He paused, halfway up from his chair, with a hand on the wall. One of Katsuko’s clones hovered helpfully around the doorway. “And Hatake and Ueno need you in sightlines,” Genma added. “It’s been a rough mission for all of us.”

Ryouma could probably stand to do a better job of remembering that.

“I’ll be there, lieutenant,” he said.

Chapter 7: One of Those Lives (Get Used to It)

Chapter Text

May 9 through 11, Yondaime Year 5

Kakashi woke up again because the world smelled different.

Now it was full of medics.

Groggily, he counted four white hats and five new ANBU masks, and then there was a penlight in his face and hewent blind.

Katsuko yanked the medic’s hand away before Kakashi snapped it off.

“Don’t do that,” she told the room, quiet and cold, kneeling at his side like a guardian lion.

Kakashi blinked shadowy after-images away, and registered Ryouma crouching on his other side, watching the room with a mix of wariness and relief. Genma was sitting on the edge of the bed-platform, legs dangling, while a different medic bent over his wounded thigh. Raidou was talking to a tall, light-haired woman in a crane mask.

“Another captain,” Ryouma said, tracking Kakashi’s gaze.

Kakashi tried to put two and two together. “Are we getting rescued?”

“Yep,” Katsuko said.

“Oh good,” Kakashi said, and pulled the blankets back up over his face.He was asleep again in seconds, bracketed between his teammates.

The next penlight was held by a medic he recognized, and she woke him up to ask first.

Hyuuga Iori looked the same as Kakashi remembered from the Trials — pale, professional, and unimpressed with him.

“I see you’ve managed to incapacitate yourself again,” she said. “Most new ANBU wait at least a month between events.”

“Wanted to get a headstart,” Kakashi mumbled. He squinted when she did terrible penlight tricks to his uncovered eye.

“I suppose I should be thankful it’s not poison this time.” She tucked the penlight away and checked his pulse with cool fingers. “Can you name the current Hokage?”

“Blond idiot,” Kakashi said, and measured a hand against the bridge of his nose. “About yea high.”

Iori did not look amused. She had the special Hyuuga trick of sucking all the humor out of the air and compressing it down into a cold singularity that questioned your poor judgement. “Try again.”

“Namikaze Minato-sama,” Kakashi said, cowed.

“Very good,” she said, and didn’t ask him any further questions. The advantage of Hyuuga eyes was that they killed the need for patient participation. Iori didn’t have to ask where it hurt; she could tell with a glance.

A creepy, vein-bulging, skin-crawling glance.

“Hm,” she said, after a moment that stretched far too long. “Your medic did acceptable work. I’m going to alter the placement of some of these needles, and then we’re going to stretcher you home. If you injure one of my medics in the process, it will go poorly for you. Do you understand?”

Kakashi felt himself heat behind his makeshift mask. “Yes.”

“Good.” She began peeling tape away to pluck out the hair-fine senbon. After a moment, she said, “What exactly have you done to your hair?”

Kakashi touched a hand to his head, where the collection of elastic-banded tufts felt like they’d been severely mashed by a pillow. “Uh,” he said, heating more. “Ueno.”

“Do you need them?” Iori said.

Kakashi hesitated.

“No,” he said, and began to strip them out.

On the edge of the platform, Genma hissed softly between his teeth as his medic did something green-handed and glowy to his broken nose. Raidou didn’t break away from his discussion with the Crane-masked captain, even when another medic began checking over his bandaged hands. A third white-hatted medic pressed firmly on Katsuko’s broken collarbone, making her breath catch.

Ryouma sat alone with his bruises, and smelled like guilt.

Clothes came next. A set of basic jounin blues the medics had brought with them, and a medical mask that covered Kakashi’s mouth and nose, even if it left more of his jaw visible than he would have liked. The stretcher came after that.

Iori wouldn’t let him hold his tanto. Raidou took it, already wrapped, and hung it with his black-bladed sword. Most of the time, he was good about standing where Kakashi could see him.

Genma got a stretcher too, after a stern admonishment tostop walking, Shiranui-san, have you no sense?Raidou and Katsuko were instructed to take things easy and stay within the guarding flank-lines of the new ANBU team, but they were allowed to keep their feet. Ryouma, at Genma’s instruction, was given the job of paying close attention to the medics. Kakashi wasn’t quite sure why.

f*ckuda also got a stretcher, and restraints to keep her in it.

The journey home was like being at sea, except over land.

Katsuko had enough chakra to create three pairs of stretcher-bearing clones, with each clone supporting the front and back of a stretcher. They ran in perfect time, but the world still swayed gently—and less gently, when the new ANBU went stiff and alert, and doubled everyone’s speed.

Kakashi thought about Team Twelve and their slaughtered members.At least two still breathing, Raidou had said.

He wondered if they could still run. How they were getting home.

Crane’s team was number Twenty-Eight. They were all veterans, called each other exclusively by their mask names—when they bothered to speak at all—and worked as a sleek, synchronized unit. They all had scars.

One of them, a lean-shouldered man with pale curly hair, was missing his right ear.

If they had any thoughts about Team Six, they kept it to themselves.

There was still morphine in the world. It made things shiver-slip sideways, time unreeling past in a blur of valleys and grasslands, light-dark-morning-night, until there were forests unfolding like the green arms of home, and Konoha’s tall walls rising on the horizon.

They didn’t go in the front gate.

The back road curved up through sharp, hard-edged hills, past Konoha’s defenses — Kakashi couldn’t feel the checkpoint, but Genma’s head came up, and Crane tipped her mask in acknowledgement — and then into the wild ANBU training fields before they finally came upon the dull, squat HQ building.

Team Twenty-Eight took f*ckuda’s stretcher and peeled away, accompanied by a lone medic. They left one short, hard-muscled kunoichi in a bear mask as final vanguard. She tipped her head at Iori and the remaining medics.

“Hospital,” Iori ordered. “If Sagara-san needs them debriefed immediately, we can arrange private rooms.”

Bear nodded, and took the lead on silent feet.

Kakashi thought they went over rooftops, but he closed his eye too long. When he opened it again, there were hospital hallways streaming past. He could tell by the taupe, and the way the air smelled like bleached-away blood.

He rolled his head sideways and found Raidou walking next to him, grey-lipped.

“Almost there,” Raidou rasped.

He looked tired. At his back, Katsuko was stumbling forward with her eyes half-closed, one hand bracing her injured, sling-bound arm. Behind them, next to Genma’s stretcher, Ryouma looked like he was just about managing to walk a straight line. Kakashi couldn’t see Genma.

Had they even rested?

“Taichou,” Kakashi began, voice grating.

Raidou looked down at him, but then they turned a corner and the hallway was full of nurses and new medics calling sharp commands, and the team was torn apart like fruit segments.

The intensive chakra-injuries ward was about the same as Kakashi remembered it. The bed in room seventeen still had the knot in the mattress, right under his left shoulderblade. The grey floor tiles were curling up in the east corner.

It was almost like being at home. Except not really.

Nurses took blood and vitals, asked a hundred invasive questions, and attached half a dozen machines that beeped softly and scrawled accusing green lines across tiny screens.

“Where’s my team?” Kakashi demanded.

“They’re being taken care of,” said a nurse with calm brown eyes.

When Iori came in, flanked by two medics with serious faces, Kakashi asked again. He got the same answer.

One of the new medics, a short, elderly woman, picked up his chart and said, “I hear you can channel lightning now.”

“Not sure I’d recommend it,” Kakashi said.

Except that wasn’t quite true. It had nearly killed him, but there’d been a moment standing underneath that waterfall of light, right before it had blasted his senses white, when he’d felt the full strength of a storm pour through his blood and strike something that echoed.

He’dbeenlightning, for just a moment.

If the chance ever came to do again, he’d take it with both hands.

“Typically I advise my patients to avoid direct contact with elements that can kill them, but I understand that can be challenging,” the woman said, with dry sarcasm. “My name is Naito Rumi. I’ll be taking over from Iori-sensei. ” She gestured at the third medic, a dark-skinned man with short, springy hair. “This is my intern, Sawaguchi Bunta.”

The man bowed respectfully.

“Hi,” Kakashi said, with a little wave. “Where’s Rin?”

“If you’re referring to Nohora-sensei, she’s currently in surgery,” Naito said.

“Oh,” Kakashi said, disappointed. “Does she know I’m home?”

“I don’t have that information. Which hand did you direct the lightning with, please?”

Kakashi sighed and turned his right hand palm-up.

There were more tests, and more questions, and some excitingly colored drugs in plastic IV bags, and what seemed like a rotating squadron of Hyuuga traipsing through to glare at his chakra coils — though none quite so intensely as Iori, who’d finally been told to go home and sleep — and Kakashi lost track of time again, even with a clock hanging across the room.

Somewhere in the orange hours of the afternoon, Ryouma slipped through the door with wet hair, obviously borrowed hospital scrubs, and hollow cheeks. He was holding a paper cup of coffee like it was his last lifeline. “Lieutenant’s in surgery,” he said. “Medic took a look at his leg and threw a fit.”

Kakashi felt his stomach clench, small and tight. “Career ending?”

“Probably not.” Ryouma rubbed a hand over his eyes, blinking. “Said we’ll know more when they’re done. Captain’s getting his hands looked at; medics didn’t like that much either. An’ Katsuko’s getting her collarbone fixed. How’re you doing?”

Kakashi looked up at his IV pole, with its small balloon parade of drugs. “Think I’m still high,” he said. “My whole head tastes blue.”

Ryouma’s expression didn’t change at all. “You’re actually probably higher. They have better drugs here.”

“And grouchier medics,” Kakashi said sadly. “I miss the lieutenant. He doesn’t scowl so much.”

Ryouma’s voice was quiet and distant. “Yeah, he’s not so bad.” He folded down onto the edge of Kakashi’s bed and took a long swallow of coffee. The collar of his scrub-shirt was too loose; it gapped at the back of his neck, showing smudged bruises down the ridge of his cervical spine.

There was a lot Genma hadn’t been able to heal, but at least he’d been nice about it.

“You miss him, too,” Kakashi said.

Dark eyes gave him a startled look. “No, I—” Ryouma broke off into a short laugh; it rasped in his throat. “Hell, sure. Maybe. This whole team grows on you.” He took another drink.

Kakashi had never liked people after only a month before.

Well, except for Minato, and that barely counted. Minato was blinding and Kakashi had been seven; he’d never stood a chance.

“Did I grow on you?” he asked.

That earned him a quick sidelong look, then a crooked smile. “You’re not even gonna remember this tomorrow, are you?” Ryouma said, cradling the paper cup between his hands. Long, scar-bitten fingers overlapped on the cheap cardboard sleeve. “Yeah, you grew on me. Took you about ten minutes, but you managed it. I told you, you’re better at people than you think. Bet you half the Uchiha I know wouldn’t have closed the Sharingan when I asked. And none of ’em would’ve talked to me afterwards.”

It took Kakashi a second to place Ryouma’s meaning, then he remembered. The first Trial, when Ryouma had punched Kakashi in the ribs, threatened to liquify his lungs, and melted a pig carcass to black slag and bone. Kakashi had closed his Sharingan because Rin had said,Try to make friends. Just try.

Apparently it had worked.

“I’mgreatat people,” he said victoriously, lying back on his pillows. “Much better than Uchiha. Though that’s like being better than rocks.” He considered the ceiling tiles for a moment, and added, “Mean rocks.”

Ryouma snorted. “Mean rocks who’re still convinced they’re better than you. That’s one thing I like about you: you’re too damn good at nearly everything, but you don’t get pissed off when someone is good at something else.”

“Am I supposed to?”

“Well, no, but—” Ryouma broke off to take a drink of coffee, and looked entirely betrayed when he found his cup empty.

Kakashi laughed, hoarse and soft. “I’ve got IV, if you want it.”

Ryouma scoffed. “Your drugs make you sleepy. I’m sleepy to death already.” He crushed his cup and tossed it accurately into the wastebasket, making a discarded rubber glove jump. “Are you allowed to eat? Want me to bring you anything?”

“Or you could slee—” Kakashi started.

There was a quiet knock at the door, and a harried looking nurse with red freckles stuck his head through. “Tousaki Ryouma? There’s an Intel agent asking for you.”

Ryouma gave a heartfelt groan and bent forward, burying his face against his knees. “I willneversleep.” He straightened and scrubbed his hands over his face, then through his hair, until it stuck out in half-dried spikes. “Okay. This is payback for that time I napped while you guys did paperwork, right?” He patted Kakashi’s blanketed feet, and wavered up to his own. “Get some rest for me.”

Even through the drug-cloud, Kakashi gave Ryouma’s back a worried look, but door slid closed before he could think of anything smart to say.

The silence pressed back in.

He tried to sleep. It was harder.

Later, when the sun had dipped low and lazy, sliding long, slotted shadows through the partly drawn blinds, and more Hyuuga had been by to yank and replace needles, the door slid open again.

“Heeeey, sleeping beauty,” a low, familiar alto said.

Kakashi peeled himself out of pillows that wanted to eat him, and floundered up to find Katsuko leaning against the doorframe. She looked like she’d taken a recent shower; her skin was scrubbed pink and her hair was damp and drying, curling a little around her neck. Someone had loaned her a pair of overlarge scrubs too, sherbet orange and cuffed at the ankles. Her right arm was braced and strapped into a dark, low-profile sling that kept her elbow hugged in close to her side.

The scrub-shirt had a little spray of flower petals trailing down one sleeve.

“Y’look like a girl,” Kakashi said, baffled.

“I’m going to tell you a secret,” she said, very gravely. She came over, dropped into a chair at his bedside, and leaned forward to say, in an intense whisper, “Iama girl.”

“But with flowers.” He looked down at his own shirt, which was now standard hospital-issue mint, and complained, “Mine’s boring.”

“Maybe if you flutter your eyelashes really nice at a nurse, they’ll get you scrubs with flowers on them, too,” she said. “That’s what I did. How are you holding up, bunny bear?”

“Everyone keeps leaving,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on, and no one’s talking to me. Is the lieutenant okay?”

Katsuko’s eyes softened, green flecks showing against the darker brown. “Lieutenant’s going to be fine. Doctors are saying he’ll probably only need crutches for a while before he makes a full recovery.” Her mouth quirked, just a little. “I’ll tell him you wept and wrung your hands out of worry for him.”

Relief made Kakashi feel warm and tired. “Don’t do that,” he said. “He’ll fuss.”

“Big fat tears,” Katsuko said mercilessly. “Tears of sadness and worry. I will tell him you cried into a handkerchief.”

Kakashi’s shoulders quaked with brief, silent laughter. “I don’t have a handkerchief.”

“We can make one out of your old hospital scrubs, after they give you the new scrubs with flowers on them,” she said, eyes gleaming. “A nice little handkerchief made out of medical material. The lieutenant will like it, cause he’s a medic. Get it?”

“Thoughtful,” Kakashi said. He wanted to put his head down on her shoulder and sleep, but they weren’t in the bunker anymore. This was home, and people had jobs, and he needed to get it together. “How about the captain?”

Her expression closed down, like a shut door. “Captain’s with Intel right now; medic said an agent crashed his healing session. He’ll be a while.” She brightened. “Oh, but he gave me this before he went.” She shoved a hand down the front of her shirt, which was not themostalarming thing she could have done, but definitely ranked in the top ten, and then withdrew—

A hilt, dressed in familiar dark bindings.

He had no idea where she’d beenhiding that, but he didn’t care. He sat up, reaching out one IV-strung hand to grab the welcome, reassuring weight of his tanto. The blade was still wrapped in cloth, missing its sheath, but the metal sang at his touch, even without chakra to make it blaze. One anchor, in a sea of none.

Katsuko flicked a glance at the door and hissed a warning. Kakashi shoved the tanto beneath his pillows just before the freckled nurse stuck his head back in, inquiring if they needed anything.

“Jello,” Katsuko said immediately. “In every color. And something tasty for his highness.”

“I want soup,” Kakashi said.

Light red eyebrows lifted in amusem*nt. “Anything else?” the nurse asked.

“Pudding,” Katsuko said. “And also lemonade. And a TV that works.”

“No promises,” the nurse said, and ducked back out, sliding the door closed behind him.

“Lemonade?” Kakashi asked.

“If life doesn’t give you lemons, demand them,” she said, and lounged carefully back in her chair, propping her feet up on the edge of the bed. The light drifted across her face, shadowing the bruised curves beneath her eyes and picking out the shrapnel-scatter of scabbed cuts across one temple. She sighed, long and low. “I think I’m never moving again. Can I sleep here?”

“Yeah.” Kakashi closed his hand around the tanto’s hilt, feeling himself settle and steady. “I’ll keep watch.”

She did sleep, tucked into a loose, guarded curl with a blanket wedged against one side of the high-backed chair to make a pillow. The sun drifted lower, picking out the lighter browns in her hair, and a few subtle white scars scattered over her face, one just edging her right eyebrow. For once, she was too exhausted to talk in her sleep.

The nurse returned eventually with two flavors of jello, chicken soup with crackers, and lemon water. No TV. He offered Katsuko a book of half-completed sudoku instead, which she peered blearily at and then handed off to Kakashi.

The soup was good. The sudoku made his vision blur.

He was halfway through wrangling a puzzle with Katsuko’s yawning help when the door slid open and Ryouma stumbled in grey-faced, collapsing across the foot of Kakashi’s bed. “Lieutenant’s out of surgery and awake,” he said. “He’s talking to Intel. Captain’s been summoned to meet with Sagara-sama.”

The head of ANBU.

The air went out of the room. When it came back, Katsuko said, “Okay. That’s normal procedure.”

“It is?” Kakashi said.

“No,” she said, and scrubbed both hands over her face.

“They wouldn’t let me see the lieutenant, but I got a glimpse of him through the glass before they pulled the curtain,” Ryouma said. “He looked stressed.”

“He just had surgery,” Kakashi pointed out.

“Man knifed his own leg open in the middle of the night, in another room, so he wouldn’t disturb us,” Katsuko said. “I don’t think he does stress like normal people.”

Ryouma yawned, jaw cracking wide enough that a tear squeezed out of the corner of his eye and tracked down his cheek. He rubbed it away. “I think it was the Intel agent. She looked pretty grim.”

“But… the mission was successful,” Kakashi said. “Both of them.”

Silence trickled in, cold and heavy.

He knew before he asked. “Weren’t they?”

Ryouma bit the inside of his cheek and looked at Katsuko. She’d gone closed and still again, folded into the professional, unreadable lines of a shinobi with a faultline in front of her and no way around it. “Taichou and I completed our side of the mission,” she said. “The port was destroyed in the process.”

Ryouma’s mouth dropped open. “The whole port?”

“A noticeable portion of the port.”

Kakashi tried to make his brain function. He couldn’t remember enough details to make anything cohesive. The captain’s hands were bandaged. Katsuko had broken bones and smoke in her hair. He’d asked her— Hethoughthe’d asked her about the mission.

You killed everyone, right?

Yeah. Mission complete.

But that was supposed to mean dead children, not half a town.

He said, low, “What happened?”

Katsuko’s blankness slipped, just enough to show the exhaustion beneath the cracks. “I can’t tell you,” she said, and looked down at her hands. Three of her nails were cracked. She curled them into her palms.

“So—there might be areasonhe’s getting pulled off to HQ so quick?” Ryouma said.

“Yeah,” Katsuko sighed out, and rubbed her unbound hand over her mouth like she wanted to wipe the words away. She looked at them helplessly. “I— promised the captain I wouldn’t tell anyone what happened, not until he’d decided what to do. Intel snatched him up before I could ask him what he’d settled on.”

Kakashi was starting to feel sick.

It couldn’t be that bad if they’d completed the mission. Property damage was an unavoidable consequence of fighting within city limits. Kakashi’s side had been lucky to run into Iebara’s team on open land, where the only casualties were trees and combatants. If Raidou and Katsuko had run into that kind of firepower in close quarters, they might have dinged buildings, torn up some streets, angered a few public officials, but it wasn’tfailure.

He reached back and clenched his fingers around the tanto’s hilt, until the bindings bit into his palm.

Even if it was, ANBU wouldn’t announce it. There’d be no public outcry. No scapegoat. Just a running byline in the news for a few weeks, coda to the deaths of real traitors, and a few more headstones in Tsurugahama Port. There was no war effort to injure.

Nothing Raidou might hurt himself over.

Except that he was an honorable man, and they were the worst for bleeding over their sins.

Kakashi said numbly, “No one went with him. Someone needs to go with him.” He tried to push himself upright, tangled in medical wires and sheets, and didn’t make it. One of the monitors trilled angrily.

Katsuko lurched forward to steady him, and Kakashi grabbed her arm. “We’re supposed to be a team. No one’swithhim.”

That hit a nerve. Her eyes went dark and narrow, and she snapped, “Think, Kakashi. Raidou’s with Sagara-sama right now. You want to go toe-to-toe with the ANBU Commander, be my guest. Raidou would want mehere, with the team.” Her fingers were like iron on his skin, giving no quarter, and for the first time Kakashi saw the superior in her. The woman who’d lived in the crucible of ANBU for a year, and only come out stronger. She stared him down until he went still, frozen in her grip and gaze. Then she let him go. “Nowlie back down.”

Kakashi hit the pillows and ducked his chin, dropping his gaze. Anxiety still twisted like barbed wire in his chest, but there was no place for it to go.

Ryouma had been sitting frozen. Now he said, worried and uncertain, “Should I go—wait for him, at least?” He began to push himself up.

Katsuko nailed him with a look. Ryouma dropped and laced his fingers together, knuckles blanching. Katsuko sighed softly.

“I know this is hard,” she said. “Iknow, alright? But Raidou knows what he’s doing. Trust him to handle his own business.” She tipped her chin, looking at them both. “You’re our rookies. It’sourjob to take care ofyou.”

Even when rank didn’t follow skill?

It was an ugly thought, and Kakashi wasn’t supposed to have it. But shinobi had dark thoughts. If you didn’t watch for fractures, you’d never catch them. And then it was your fault, just as much as theirs.

What was the point of having smart eyes, if all you did was close them?

He said tightly, “Who takes care of you?”

Hazel-green eyes gave him a searching look.

“Kakashi,” she said, and reached over to wrap a hand around his shoulder. “You are very, very high and very, very injured. That’s why you feel like you’re five seconds away from a panic attack. Deep breaths.”

That was the second time she’d said his personal name.

Kakashi drew a shivery breath and said, “I’m not being irrational.”

“No, you’re not.” She squeezed his shoulder, fingers warm and strong. “But right now you need to rest. I’ll make some clones. They’ll keep an eye out for the captain and the lieutenant.”

That wassomething.He nodded once, vision silvering when his hair fell into his face. “Okay,” he said, and almost reached up to touch her hand. But that was childish, and she’d been pretty specific about him staying still. He said again, quieter, “Okay.”

Katsuko’s hand dropped away.

Ryouma had lowered his eyes to his locked hands, but he raised them now, looking at Katsuko. “Will you sleep, too?” he asked softly.

Katsuko opened her mouth, but a clear, light voice interrupted her.

“I thinkeveryoneneeds to sleep,” Rin said, standing just inside the door.

Kakashi’s entire chest lightened. “Rin,” he rasped.

She glanced at him, brown eyes warm and worried, and then at Ryouma, giving him a medic’s swift, professional once-over, before landing on Katsuko. There was a thin clipboard tucked beneath her arm, with Kakashi’s ANBU number printed on the top corner, and tired smudges beneath her eyes. Whatever surgery she’d been in had clearly been long and tiring. He hoped her patient had survived.

And then he wondered, abruptly, what they looked like to her, Ryouma sitting close and exhausted at the foot of the bed, well inside Kakashi’s personal radius, and Katsuko still carrying the weight of rarely seen authority, all her laughing edges folded down and hidden.

Rin sighed gently, and said to Kakashi, “What am I going to do with you?”

He really didn’t care, so long as she stayed in the room.

“Don’t yell,” he said instead, because he was drugged but not stupid. He pointed at Ryouma and Katsuko in turn. “That’s Tousaki Ryouma and Ueno Katsuko-senpai. They’re on my team. You can yell at them, if you want to.”

“I didn’t doanything,” Ryouma said, with what sounded like pure reflex. He blinked at Rin, staring for a moment, then belatedly appeared to remember the concept of manners, and levered himself upright. He moved with ancient, rickety stiffness, but managed to approximate a bow. “Nohara-sensei, right? You know—” He stopped and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Of course you know Kakashi.”

“Sit down, Tousaki-san,” Rin said, voice light with amusem*nt. “You look like you’re going to fall over.” She inclined her head at Katsuko, who gave a half-bow in return.

Ryouma dropped back down, and Kakashi stared at the back of his head.

Team Minato had been more than five years ago. It was becoming more common for people to know Rin purely on the merits of her own reputation, instead of a medical footnote to the beginning of Sharingan no Kakashi. She was one of the hospital’s rising stars. The next Tsunade-sama, according to some.

Personally, Kakashi thought people should have figured that out when she’d performed a living eye transplant under fire, without anesthesia, atthirteen. But people were stupid.

Still, he thought Ryouma would’ve at least known she and Kakashi were former teammates. But now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure he’d ever mentioned Rin to the team.

He wasn’t in the habit of mentioning much of anything to the team.

“I’m not going to yell at you or your teammates until all of you are in fighting shape again,” Rin said, pulling him out of his thoughts. “Speaking of, I think it’s time Ueno-san and Tousaki-san went home. They can visit tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Kakashi said bleakly. He gave himself a little shake. “Yeah. That’s probably smart.”

He felt Rin’s eyes on him, reading more than he wanted.

“Hm,” she said, after a beat. Her expression softened a little, and she looked at Ryouma and Katsuko, who had conspicuously failed to move. “Tell you what. Promise me you’ll get at least eight hours sleep, and I’ll have a word with the nurses to let you in early tomorrow.”

Ryouma flattened his hand over a long, hard yawn. “If I fall asleep, I’m not sure I’m waking up again.” He looked down at Kakashi. “You’ll be okay here?”

Kakashi nodded.

To his right, Katsuko had gone aggressively neutral in her chair, face expressionless. “I was planning to make bunshin later to keep an eye on my team,” she said.

Rin nodded once. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Ueno.”

“All of it flattering, I hope,” Katsuko said, inscrutable as glass.

Kakashi traded a baffled glance with Ryouma, who just shrugged, too tired to comment.

“Let’s just say it made an impression,” Rin said. “I need to talk to Kakashi alone, but after that your bunshin can stay as long as it doesn’t get in the way of the nurses. Thank you for looking after Kakashi, by the way. Both of you.”

“I’mright here,” Kakashi said.

“Hush,” Rin told him.

Ryouma patted him on top of a blanketed foot. “You needed a lot of looking after.”

“You’re high-maintenance,” Katsuko agreed, a familiar glint re-entering her eyes.

Kakashi sank back into his collection of pillows and dragged one down to cover his face. “Everyoneget out,” he said, muffled.

Ryouma patted his foot one last time, fingers warm through the rough cotton weave. “Sleep well,” he said. The bed dipped and rose as he levered himself back to his feet. “I hope you’re out of here before I wake up.”

“Get your rest, honey bun,” Katsuko said, standing up. She skimmed her fingers quickly through Kakashi’s hair, chasing out one of the crimps she’d knotted into it. “Try not to play catch with lightning again.”

Kakashi made a dark sound, but eased the pillow down enough to watch them slip out of the room. Ryouma tall and staggering, ready to collapse on the first safe horizontal surface that presented itself. Katsuko lighter and leaner at his back, with a cup of stolen jello stowed away into her sling and lingering tension stitched into the curve of her spine.

The door slid closed, and clicked.

In the silence that followed, Rin drew the narrow blind across the glass pane in the door, and then padded to the bedside. She looked down at Kakashi, fingertips tapping gently on her clipboard. “Playing catch with lightning, hm?”

He needed a much bigger pillow to hide behind.

“You just argued with my team,” he said, because defense never worked with her, but offense sometimes made a dent. “The team you explicitly told me to make friends with.”

“I was testing the waters,” she said serenely, and leaned forward to ease the pillow down from his face. He uncurled his fingers and let her have it, grateful there was still a thin white layer of medical mask between them. Rin said, “How’re you feeling?”

Exhausted, chemically altered, bone-deep sore. Rattled about the captain. Worried about the others.

But there was one other thing, too.

“Proud of myself,” he said.

Rin’s eyebrows cut dangerously upwards, but she stayed silent just long enough for him to explain.

“I was smarter this time,” he said. “We did terrible things, and other teams died. But ours didn’t. We got attacked by an S-class team. We should be bones in a field. But the lieutenant helped, and Tousaki helped, and I channeled real lightning, Rin. Right through my own hand. And we came home.”

Understanding slipped across her face, like dawn light. Her eyebrows lowered, and there was pride there, and sorrow, old and dark, and, cresting above everything else, love. She set her clipboard aside and pulled him into a hug, cupping a hand around the back of his head.

Kakashi made a startled sound. Her scent curled into his lungs, carrying soap and weariness and the touch of spring she always wore, green things and growth struggling away from winter. Gentle chakra curled around him, cool against all the places he was ragged and raw.

The world shifted, then steadied.

Slowly, Kakashi slid his arms around Rin’s back, and curled his fingers into her shirt. They didn’t do this often. Rin patted hands, or touched cheeks, but she didn’t hug. There was too much between them that hadn’t worked, too many failings. Things she’d wanted that he couldn’t give. All the ways he’d let her down. There would always be Obito, the empty grave at their feet.

But she was here, and she still hadn’t yelled, andeveryone was alive, and he thought his throat might be closing up.

“I’m so glad you came back,” she said, soft and tired. “If I lost you, I—”

She broke off and tightened her grip.

Kakashi let his forehead rest against her collarbone, and closed his eye. “Can you stay for a while?”

“For as long as I can,” she promised fiercely.

An hour, then, perhaps two before someone else’s personal tragedy called her away.

He’d take it.

“I missed you,” he mumbled, into the dark hollow space where drugs made it easy.

“I missed you, too,” she said, so quietly he almost missed it. There was an edge in her voice that, in any other woman, on any other day, he would’ve said sounded a little choked.

But it was Rin, so he kept silent and let himself lean on her while it lasted.