Usagi’s voice rasped like salt-metal. “If this is the afterlife, I want a refund.”

Kasumi said, smaller, “Me too.”

“Next one’s coming,” Kakashi said sharply. “Pass him up.”

They overhanded Abe up to Kakashi and Satomi. Raidou could see now that they’d found a shallow lip to balance on. Ginta scrambled up next, giving Raidou’s neck an apologetic tap as he passed. Raidou and Ryouma boosted Genma up between them. Usagi hauled Kasumi up like a scruffed kitten. Raidou and Ryouma made it up last, with the next wave licking foam over their feet.

The stone lip was barely wide enough to support them all, but it gave them a place to breathe and count limbs. Raidou’s shoulders ached fiercely, and his fingers stung with scrapes. Abe’s hands were bloody, several fingernails broken. Everyone else had an amalgamation of blue skin and soon-to-be-bruises beneath the grease — except for Fukuda, who only looked slightly windswept. Genma’s teeth were chattering.

“Shake it off,” Kuroda said, immovable as iron. “We still have a long way to go.”

Raidou cracked his jaw, reminded himself once again that it was treason to drown a superior officer, and craned his head back. High above them, a glimmer of moonlight cut through drifts of fog.

Very high above them.

“A moment,” Genma said, cupping green-glowing hands over Abe’s fingers. The pinched, pained look faded out of Abe’s face. When Genma let him go, a few fragments of dead fingernail sloughed off, but the wounds were sealed. “Is anyone else injured?”

A beat of silence.

“I could use some alcohol over here,” Ginta said, “but not for disinfecting.”

Abe was not the only one to make an agreeing sound.

Kuroda jerked his chin at Fukuda. “Lead, Kiri.”

The look she gave him, in the fractional moment between stretching cramped muscles and swinging around to climb, was the first time Raidou had ever felt acute kinship with a Mist ninja.

“You’re bleeding, Vice-commander,” Kakashi said.

Kuroda’s hand went to his forehead, following the arctic grey gaze.

Kakashi said, softer, “My mistake.” He hauled himself up after Fukuda, followed by Satomi, and after a tiny pause, Kurenai.

Raidou exchanged a glance with Genma, whose mouth had thinned to a white line. Though, Raidou thought, possibly to hide a smile, not a lieutenant’s frown.

“C’mon,” Ryouma told Abe, bracing him on his uninjured side. “I’ve got you.”

Raidou had to hide his own smile, when he heard Abe hiss, “Is he crazy?”

In dribs and drabs, they scaled the cliff to Aoshima.