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 just there, 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.