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.