A small, sandy-brown dog met him at the top of the cliff.

Ryouma hauled himself up over the crumbling edge and stared at it. It tipped its head, folded ears flopping, and stared inquiringly back. It had huge brown eyes and a wrinkled, appealingly ugly face, and it was wearing a Konoha hitai'ate.

"I thought the Inuzuka bred their dogs for war," Ryouma said, squatting down next to it. He could use a breather, anyway. He'd come up in the forest on the far western edge of the escarpment, more than a kilometer from the waterfall; his arms ached from the sideways, spidering climb. But he was at least three kilometers from the training field, with no scent trail in between, so he'd earned a rest and maybe a moment to scratch soft ears.

He offered the dog his hand.

It sniffed, appraisingly, and said, "You don't smell like rotten fruit."

"Fucking hell," Ryouma said, and sat down in the dirt.

"Pakkun, actually," the dog said. It was moving its jaws and everything, though it seemed to have a little trouble on some of the trickier consonants; the voice sounded like a gruff old man who'd smoked three packs a day for the last forty years. It sat down beside him, small stocky body leaning against his leg, and scratched its ear thoroughly. "You've got about ten seconds."

"Ten seconds," Ryouma said, numbly. "Before…"

The dog spread its tiny toes and began to nibble between them. Faintly muffled, it said, "He did say you seemed pretty bright. Mighta been wrong about that too…"

"He?" Ryouma looked up.

Dimly, through the mist of memory, he heard a small boy say brightly, "Dad's got toads and Kakashi's got dogs…"

He looked down sharply at the dog—Pakkun—again. Its curling tail thumped. It offered, "Three seconds."

Ryouma shoved himself off the ground and bolted for the trees.

Behind him, he heard the pug's voice lift in a warbling high-pitched howl. Another dog answered, lower-pitched, resonant. That one sounded big.

Of course the moment he met Kakashi's summons would be when they were hunting him.

They had his trail, now; there was no point in hiding his chakra. He split off another three shadow clones, substantial enough to carry his scent, and took to the trees. They were massive oaks here, Shodai's jutsu-grown guardians: broad limbs, concealing leaves, and enough chakra in their sap to mask his own.

A clone died. It wasn't the first. The five he'd split off at the training field were almost all gone by now, tracked down and dispatched while he was in the river or on the cliff. Their memories had come with brief flashes of pain, a kunai to the arm or a shuriken to the back. This one died with the memory of dogs' teeth in its hamstrings, pulling it down like a deer.

"No crippling injuries," Ryouma muttered. "Thanks a lot, Kakashi."

"You're welcome," Kakashi said, behind him, low and amused. Not quite breath on the back of his neck, but too damn close for any type of comfort.

But Ryouma'd been expecting that since he felt dogs' teeth in his clone's death-memory. He spun, bare hands lit red, and Kakashi flinched half a step back.

The explosive tag sparked beneath Kakashi's heel, and the branch erupted into flame.

Ryouma dropped the genjutsu and dropped out of the tree. He rolled off the ground and into a weaving sprint. A pillar of earth struck up out of the leaf-mould at him; he hit it with one hand and used the momentum to vault over it. The earth reformed, trying to shackle his wrist. He hardened his chakra, punched through, and hurtled through falling dust.

Fire raced through the trees ahead of him, roaring loud as the waterfall. Saplings crisped and blackened. His damp shirt steamed in the heat. It might be genjutsu, but he didn't have a Sharingan or a Yuuhi's eyes to tell. He veered, running parallel to the flames, and pulled on his Water chakra.

Bird, Dog, Monkey, Hare—

The sweat in his shirt, the moisture in the leaves, the clammy underside of a rotten log. He shaped a disk of water that sliced through the fireline and left a narrow gap for him to follow. A dog howled behind him. Another clone died.