“D-did you just bluff a g-giant monster d-demon?” Genma stuttered at him, breathless and almost too quiet to hear.

“Maybe,” Kakashi said, relief sledge-hammering him so hard it actually made him dizzy. It vanished again when he got a good look at Genma’s face, slick with feverish sweat, flushed hectic-red over unhealthy corpse-white. One bare shoulder had what looked like a clotted stinger-wound; the other was ringed by bloody teeth marks. Genma’s chest-plate was buckled, soaked crimson from a slashed belly wound.

And he was clearly half-paralyzed.

Kakashi was not Rin. He couldn’t glue people back together again, especially not one-handed.

Could the others?

Not if the mother-demon ate them first.

He fumbled a blood-clotting field dressing out of his medkit, managed to get it open with his left hand, and slapped it over the belly gash—which, mercifully, didn’t seem to be the entrance wound for any demon eggs. Using his knee and some awkward leverage, he dragged Genma into a slewed seat, semi-upright, and held him there long enough to wrap the trailing ends of the bandage around Genma’s waist and anchor them tight. Genma made a pained sound, half-throttled.

“Sorry,” Kakashi muttered. “Can you swallow?”

“Prob'ly.” Genma’s throat clicked as he tried, and sort of succeeded. “Mmm… Maybe. You hurt bad?”

“No,” said Kakashi, who was upright and moving and therefore fine. “Take this.”

He pressed a soldier pill between Genma’s lips, and held a canteen to his mouth. It took two false starts, but Genma was able to get the pill and a gulp of water down without choking himself.

“Why are you so hot?” Kakashi demanded. “None of the civilians were.”

“Ch-chakra. Burning the v-venom out,” Genma managed, like self-inducing a high fever was a perfectly rational thing. The soldier pill hit his blanched coils in a bright wave Kakashi could feel, like a flash-flood across a dry riverbed. Genma shut his eyes. “It's… working. Kinda.”

In theory, he was the medic.

“Don’t roast your brain,” Kakashi said, and dumped the remains of the water canteen over Genma’s head, making him yelp.

They’d wasted too much time already. The demon-mother might already be at the surface. Kakashi stowed his canteen, clipped Genma’s mask onto the empty hook at his belt, and hauled Genma up onto his shoulders. It took an awkward piece of maneuvering, but he managed to get the lieutenant slung into a one-handed soldier’s carry, draped belly-down around Kakashi’s neck, held firmly there by one knee and one arm pulled together in front of Kakashi’s chest.

Heat spilled over Kakashi’s bare shoulders, and a slow trickle of blood rolled down his arm. Not his.

No, wait, maybe some of it was his.

“Ow,” said Genma faintly.

“Hang on,” Kakashi said, and scraped his remaining chakra up, funnelling it down his legs. He took a deep breath and ran straight up the wall, then across the ceiling, following the demon-mother through her own escape tunnel.

Somewhere high above, there would be daylight, and help.