Between Genma’s shoulders and his stomach, even with Raidou’s help, the last bit of acrobatics were minor torture. Maybe he shouldn’t have made them climb—Raidou’s shoulders weren’t in any better shape than his own, really, and it was taking all Genma’s training not to walk with a stoop and his arms wrapped around his belly. Too late now, though. The superiority of hindsight seemed to be the theme of this entire mission.

Raidou found a spot between the smokestacks and sat carefully down. When Genma’d joined him, he gave Genma a searching look. “You sure you have enough chakra for this?”

“For healing my captain up so the team has functional leadership? Yes. I have enough chakra for that.” Genma gave Raidou a wry smile, then realized it was completely invisible behind his mask. “That wasn’t me being an insubordinate dick,” he said, and pushed his mask off. There were no prying eyes up here, and the fresh air was a relief on his face. “I really do have enough chakra for this, unless you need a lot more healing than I think you do. What hurts?”

“So just being a subordinate dick?” Raidou asked. He sounded more amused than annoyed. Scruffing a hand over his face, he dissolved his jutsu-created mask into mist. “Can you start with my eyes?”

Genma sucked in slow breath. The skin around Raidou’s eyes was damaged in a pattern that mapped almost perfectly to the eyeholes of the crescent moon mask he’d lost. “Wow. That’s from something the demon spit at you?”

“Yeah.”

Genma pushed up to his knees, leaning in to get a better look. Raidou’s eyelids were so swollen that his irises were barely visible, and his eyelashes were altogether swallowed. The chemical burns were red and raw, crusted over with scabs in some places, and blistered yellow in others. It looked exquisitely painful. “Good thing you washed it off so quickly. Did you get any in your eyes?” Genma asked. “Is your vision cloudy at all?”

“Little blurry,” Raidou said. “Which I figured was because of the panda face. I managed to blink right before she hit me. Can you fix it?” The undercurrent of tension in his voice could have been fear he’d damaged his eyesight, but more likely it was pain.

“Have you taken anything for pain today?” Genma asked. “I’d like to get some meds in you before I start trying to take down the inflammation.”

“No,” said Raidou. “I'm not going to, either. Someone needs to stay clear-headed, and I've got the most chakra left.”

“You also need to sleep,” Genma pointed out. “And it doesn’t have to be a narcotic. Here, take aspirin at least.” He produced a flip-top metal canister from his med kit and shook out a pair of tablets. “I’ll do a pain block before I start the actual healing, too.”

Raidou gave him a look that was somewhere between exasperated and annoyed, but he dry-swallowed the pills.

Genma didn’t worry about it; Raidou was hardly the first ninja he’d had to bully into taking pain medicine. He twisted his hands through a half dozen seals and set green-lit fingertips to Raidou’s temples, pulsing waves of pain-slowing chakra through the nerves in Raidou’s upper face. It would probably leave his unburned cheeks a little numb, but it would knock the pain from the burns down by an order of magnitude, at least for a little while.

“Feel better?” Genma asked.

Raidou closed his eyes and let out a slow, quiet breath, dropping his shoulders and generally looking much less tense.

“Good,” Genma said. That was what he liked about being a field medic—providing instant relief for a comrade’s suffering. “This might feel a little weird, but it shouldn’t hurt; tell me if it does or if you see any bright flashes of light.” The last thing he wanted was to detach Raidou’s retina with a healing jutsu—working on eyes was tricky. He activated a second jutsu, and held his palms directly over Raidou’s closed eyes, first the left, then the right, pushing leaking serum out of blisters and swollen flesh, back into Raidou’s bloodstream. The puffiness melted back until the Raidou’s closed eyes almost looked normal, although still scabbed and raw. Throughout the process Raidou held perfectly still, breathing slowly and almost meditatively.