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.