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

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 they had done 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) rotting inside—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 he made 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.