The metal and machine-oil scent of the industrial mixers wasn't enough to overpower the toxic choke of chemical dust that rose from them, as masked and goggled workers poured yellow powder into their gaping iron mouths. Ginta crouched behind one giant cog, black with grease and caked with grains and shavings of something that glittered. He gasped for breath, filtering it through the inadequate mask his ANBU turtleneck provided, and held his bleeding right arm in his left. At least they hadn't got his left.

He looked behind him, at the dark triangular space he'd shimmied through to get here. A rotating shaft thicker than a man's body had rumbled to life just as Ginta'd squeezed through the gap between the gears. He'd felt the heat of it sear the backs of his calves, and would have smelt the singed hairs, but the overwhelming miasma of sulfur drowned everything out.

Tsuyako was still back there. One moment she'd been running by his side, bloodied, beaten, but getting out with him, and then she'd been gone. Fallen with a sick cry as something pierced her chest from behind, and Ginta hadn't had time to turn and see who had taken her down, because another four ninja with the Waterfall crest on their headbands had skidded around the corridor, weapons raised.

No jutsu, though. That was important. Taijutsu and genjutsu, and weapons of all kinds, but no one risked an elemental inside a bomb factory.

Blades had sliced through the air, and a bolt from a wrist-mounted cross-bow had taken a sliver from Ginta's ear. He'd ducked into a hole too small for any but the most agile and slender of pursuers, and wormed his way into the heart of the machinery. He longed for his mask, but that was gone, along with his weapons. The cogs rumbled to life, and Ginta had to move or risk being crushed.

"There he is!" someone shouted. A new flight of arrows crossed the room, and this time one struck home.

Shiratori-san was a lean jounin in his late forties, graying around the temples, weathered around the eyes, and entirely unprepared to put up with even a whiff of bullshit. He barely blinked when Kakashi flickered to a halt in front of him.

"About time," he barked, and slapped a map against Kakashi's chest armour. "Our agents missed their last check in twenty-six hours ago. We're assuming the worst. We need you to track down their last known whereabouts in Komatsuyama and bring back whatever pieces you find. The city's an--"

"Industrial wasteland on Waterfall's southern border. I know; I've been there." Clipped facts came easier than a mental image of Ginta in any shape but whole. Kakashi locked pieces in a steel box and threw away the key.

"Fantastic. Interrupt me again and you'll be walking backwards, on account of me having twisted your head off. We don't have time to shit about." Shiratori voiced everything in the controlled shout of a man used to making himself heard in the middle of open warfare. Kakashi narrowed a glare at him, got one straight back, and caught Shouma by the scruff when the dog drew himself up for a lunge. "It'll take you just under thirty-six hours to get there," Shiratori went on, ignoring them. "Less if you push it, and I damn well suggest you push it. Details are in the brief. Get your ass moving."

"Sir, yes, sir," Kakashi said softly, lips peeling back from dangerous teeth. "But it'll be eighteen hours."

Shiratori didn't snap what? Instead, he ran a sharp glance over Kakashi, taking him in from tousled hair to travel-scuffed sandals, and tipped his head back. "Let's hope. If you're done flaunting your ego, boy, there're two agents out there needing help yesterday. Get moving, and take a brace of hawks on your way out. We want updates."

The outpost near the main gate had both birds and emergency medi-kits. Kakashi tossed off a salute, grabbed both dogs, and translocated before the ring of Shiratori's voice had time to finish echoing.

The pain was less horrifying than the way the thick arrow shaft stuck out from Ginta's left thigh at a sixty-degree angle. It hurt, but not in any meaningful way at first. Like many wounds sustained in battle, the severity was obscured by adrenaline and shock--until he tried to slide into another narrow and defensible space. The protruding arrow caught on the edge of the passageway he was trying to get into, and tore a savage rent through stoutly resisting muscle. The wooden shaft bent and splintered, but didn't break. The noise it ripped from Ginta's throat was almost inhuman.

There were shouts and the clatter of feet on echoing steel walkways. The turning machines ground to a halt as someone threw an emergency switch. Protesting metal screeched and popped, and a cloud of acrid powder rose from one of the mixer's maws.

Ninja were already swarming down into the concrete-edged pit holding the machines. Holding Ginta.

He didn't dare risk a ninjutsu, but genjutsu... His hands flashed through seals: horse, rabbit, snake, bird... twenty-eight separate seals, and suddenly the room was plunged into dim emergency lighting. Klaxons sounded. "Evacuate! Evacuate! Fire!" And no-one but Ginta could move. Thick syrup enveloped the limbs of the ninja and workers, trapping them in a pantomime of slow motion.

Ginta grabbed a metal bar and swung himself up into the loading arm of the mixer. Two ninja followed. Two! Two had already dispelled his illusion and freed themselves. One lunged towards Ginta, who dove for his legs and managed to shove him backwards off the narrow bar. He plummeted into the seething chemical brew with an agonizing scream. As he fell, he grabbed for Ginta's leg with a clawed hand, raking long furrows down to bone.

The hawks were large, exquisitely trained, and strangely comfortable riding on the shoulders of two galloping hounds. Hoshika and Shouma were less thrilled with the arrangement, but Kakashi wasn't in the mood to take complaints. He translocated the bizarre group as far out of Konoha as the jutsu could reach, and took point, leading the tiny pack into the stormy forest darkness.

They ran.

In many ways, it was the same as any other rescue flight. Distance, destination, target. The wound-wire tension that came from not knowing if you were running towards a breathing teammate or a meat puppet with its chakra strings cut. He pushed himself hard, because every second made a difference when you were already far too late. Pushed the dogs harder, because the training was good and Shouma was still green.

Forest blurred to field. Without the protection of sheltering trees, rain lashed down like a fist.

Barely a month ago, he'd cut a hundred and eighty miles down in six hours. Arrowed straight to the north-east, almost to the border of Lightning, to kill a ninja, rescue a kunoichi, and save a man who'd become a partner who'd become something else entirely. Now...

Now he tore north, aiming straight for the border of Waterfall, and called to mind another man. Shorter, blonder, smarter, in a way that was all shining intellect and zero common sense. They'd shared a mission, a hospital room, a rapist, and far too much alcohol; jutsu, stories, a double-sided insult that was almost an endearment. Anchovy pizza. And Kakashi had driven him away to stop something like this from happening.

Too little, too late. Or Ginta was a lightning rod for bad fortune.

Fields became a network of hills and valleys, nestled with villages and sliced through by a branching web of interconnected rivers. Kakashi translocated, losing miles and saving minutes, and avoided ever seeing another person. Hours slid by, measured out in steady breath and carefully rationed chakra pills. Water streamed from feathers and fur, slicked down silver hair and glued cloth to a body that was working too hard to feel the chill.

Broken land soared up into high mountains, lifting them above the rain.

The ninth hour brought their one and only break, seeking shelter in a cave where the dogs panted and the birds shook themselves out and Kakashi read through the brief until he had every detail memorized. Infiltration, organization, a checkpoint that had been long missed. At least this one didn't feel like a set up.

When they reached plains, he started to flicker, pulling on Minato's signature jutsu to carve out the difference between fast and faster. The dogs lagged, but not by much; they caught up whenever he slowed enough to keep his bones inside his skin. He rested by jogging, never losing pace enough to stop, and dried out long before the sun reached its zenith. Wished for more rain when the afternoon heat rolled sweat down his spine and drew a flush over doubly-masked cheekbones.

Plains broke into streets before evening cast a shadow. Kakashi translocated again before he saw the first house and ended up in the middle of a village. People shrieked and scattered, lunging away from the dust-streaked shinobi too focused to be startled. He grabbed an apple from a cart--it was better than ration bars--and vanished in a swift blur of chakra and dancing leaves before someone thought to attack.

It wasn't long before villages became towns become suburbs became a city. Komatsuyama, in all its steel-mill and ravaged-land glory.

The sun was a long distant memory by the time Kakashi vaulted over the city walls, followed by heavily-panting dogs, but the moon barely cast a light through the smoke-thick sky. There wasn't even a glimmer of stars. He landed on a rooftop lit by neon and floodlights, caught his breath on soot, and scanned over the broken-tooth silhouette of the cityscape.

Warehouses. Factories. Heaving nightclubs to mark out the heartland. Slums everywhere else.

Shouma sneezed and dragged a heavy paw down his muzzle, trying to claw the scent away. Kakashi laid a hand between his ears.

"Almost there," he rasped, and leapt for the next rooftop.

They were one hawk less by the time they reached the final warehouse.

Another one of the Waterfall ninja had freed himself from Ginta's genjutsu, and was talking into a radio. Summoning reinforcements. The screams of the ninja who had fallen into the chemicals echoed on the metal surfaces, sounding like a thousand tortured souls in some pit of hell. Ginta's leg poured blood down into the mix, and the clouds of fine powder rising from the vat stung and blistered in the raw wounds.

The other ninja chasing Ginta bellowed like an enraged beast, and lunged. His hand crackled with raw chakra in some perverse mirror of Kakashi's chidori. Some tiny part of Ginta's mind kept apart and observing--they must be getting desperate if they'd risk a ninjutsu with so many flammable chemicals around. Konoha were fools if they believed Kakashi was the only one in the world who could do a trick like that. And why now of all times, was Ginta thinking of Kakashi again? But there wasn't time to think. Not even time to plan the next move. He dodged behind the greasy arm of the giant mixer, felt the machine shudder as the other ninja's blow tore into the metal, and jumped.

His hands wrapped around a hanging cable, which swung slack for a moment, then caught. He spun himself around it, flipped himself into the rafters, and landed on his feet, upside down, channeling chakra through trembling limbs to stick himself to the ceiling. Cables and chains hung thick here, and pipes that shuddered as he brushed into them. There was just space above the pipes, just barely space... Blood dripped from his legs into his eyes, but he'd stopped feeling the injuries. He grabbed a pipe and shimmied into the gap.

The arrow shaft caught again.

Ginta's genjutsu sputtered and died: the lights brightened, the klaxons silenced. There were shouts from below, and a fresh round of arrows flew towards him. Ginta's upper body rested against parallel pipes; his legs hung limp. Easy targets. Some sixth sense, some grace, some unknown god taking pity perhaps, sparked Ginta's consciousness back. He swung his legs up just as the arrows whistled past to graze against the soles of his boots.

There was no time and he had no weapons. He reached down with his left hand, grabbed the protruding arrow, and twisted. The half-shattered shaft gave way, splintering under his fingers. The point remained embedded deep in his flesh. It was enough. He slithered into the tiny space above the pipes. More arrows pinged from the ceiling, but the pipes were an excellent shield.

Voices below cursed. Then someone started climbing. Ginta pulled his chakra in, cast a fresh jutsu, filling the air with a screeching cacophony--Kakashi's musical jutsu put to a defensive use--and cast a second, translocating blindly.

He fell heavily into the new space, stumbling against a steel barrel. It tipped, and an oily orange liquid sloshed out, drenching Ginta's clothes. He gagged and gasped, stumbling away from the syrupy stuff, retching.

Nothing here was safe. Nothing. He risked a water jutsu and sluiced off his face, washed the bitter taste from his mouth. Then he burrowed past the rows of barrels, deep into the storage space. There, a vent! He could hide in the ductwork. He pulled the grating free, climbed into the narrow pipe, replaced its cover, and tunneled in, losing himself in miles of airshafts.

Kakashi had burned the mission brief back in the mountain cave, but he didn't need it anymore; sharingan and memory was more than enough. And the co-ordinates Ginta and Tsuyako had included in their last check-in gave him a solid place to start.

Ginta's scent, marked all around the sloping, corrugated-iron warehouse rooftop, gave him more than that. Kakashi crouched, concealed behind a sheet of warped metal, and got a basic lay of the land. The warehouse was a monster; massive and slate-grey, constructed from cinderblocks and heavy girders, it breached across the invisible line that separated Komatsuyama's industrial sector from its garish centre. He could hear the not-too-distant boom of crowds and clubs, smell the greasy undertones of suspicious take-out and overworked humanity beneath the chemical stench set to scent-blind him.

Too many people, far too close. But no sign of Ginta or his partner. Heavily-armed, well-armoured security guards patrolled the building's perimeter and rooftop, covering every entry point Kakashi could see. They looked far too alert for his personal comfort.

High above them, Hoshika's hawk circled, waiting for Kakashi to call it back. The other was long gone, lost in the low cloud cover and heading for home, carrying the message that said he'd made it. The dogs remained silent at his side, waiting for an order.

Kakashi wished he had one to give them.

Highly explosive chemicals, Ginta's last message had said. Definite evidence of foul play. Heavy ninja presence.

And no way in. Lethal traps flickering with subtle chakra suggested he didn't try to blow his way through the brickwork, not to mention the hundreds of tons of volatile bomb-componants just waiting for the wrong trigger. Anti-translocation seals had been etched directly into the rooftop. The place was a vault.

Eyes narrowed, he swore very softly, and turned to regard the shepherds watching him with faithful brown eyes.

Ninety seconds later, the guards stationed at the west-side entrance found themselves bodyslammed to the ground and introduced throat-first to a katana blade before they regained breath to scream. Hoshika dragged the corpses away. Shouma lost himself in shadows, blood still dripping from his jaws. Kakashi summoned two clones to replace the missing men, left them under watchful canine eyes, and slipped like a wraith through the doors.

He found chaos.

Currently, that suited him.

Ginta found a nexus of air shafts where he could rest. A bulky heating and air conditioning unit blocked entry from two directions, and lethally whirring fans shielded the three other access points. Between the fans and the compressors of the air conditioner, there was a gap just wide enough for a small man like Ginta to curl into. He couldn't stand up, but he could sit, stretch his legs out, and maneuver a little. And there was light coming in, filtered and flickering, from a rooftop air intake.

The first thing he did was set traps. They'd taken every tool, every weapon, his armour, and all his supplies when they'd had him and Tsuyako in captivity. But he had open wounds. Blood seals written crudely with a fingertip were one of the oldest tricks in a ninja's repertoire.

The second thing was to stop the bleeding. The broken-off arrow high on the outside of his left thigh was staunching its own wound. He left it there. The katana-cut arm was a clean slice, easy to bind together with a strip torn from the hem of his shirt. The ragged parallel gashes raked down his right shin were another matter entirely. His leg bindings were torn to shreds, with threads and grime deeply embedded in the wounds. The skin was blistered with chemical burns. He pulled at a strip of torn cloth that stuck to one gash, and nearly passed out. When his vision cleared, he stared at it numbly, feeling sick, then unwound the undamaged bandage from his left leg and wrapped it around the right.

There were sounds from the rooms below, but no one in the airshafts yet. He was low on chakra, beyond sleep deprived, hungry, injured... Curled into his dangerous hideout, Ginta slept.

He woke to the sounds of men below him. It was dark now, pitch black in his hideout. He slipped past one of the fans, and into the tunnels, listening closely to words he couldn't quite catch. Every now and again one of the speakers would raise his voice, angry and sharp. "ANBU" and "Konoha" came clear enough. And "Still alive, dammit!" There was more low muttering, and a different voice, possibly a woman, insisting something was too risky. Ginta inched through the ductwork, silent as the air whispering past him, and headed for what he hoped was an exterior wall.

There was no translocating in or out of the building, that much he and Tsuyako had ascertained on their way in. And they were obviously still looking for him. He wondered if Tsuyako was even alive. If they were both lucky, she'd died when she'd fallen during their escape attempt.

He found his way back to the room with the barrels, and from there to the now-deserted mixing room. It was lit with a few safety bulbs, dark and shadowed. Blood still stained the floor. From there it was a left, a steam tunnel, two doors... And yes, there was a cache of finished bombs. Ginta pocketed several with a grim smile, and made his way through the building, leaving explosive little gifts for his hosts to find.

Hours later, in the dark before dawn, he dragged himself back to his fortress inside the air conditioner. His right leg was so swollen he couldn't bend his knee, throbbing with every heartbeat. The left, with its buried arrow, was even worse. In his skulking trip through the darkened factory, he'd managed to acquire a kunai. He grit his teeth, set the point against the place where the arrow disappeared into flesh, and dug.

Luck was with him again. One of his bombs went off somewhere in the building, drowning out his scream.

Eyes, ears, nose: the order which normal people greeted the world. For Kakashi it was different. Nose first, eyes next (always grey, sometimes crimson), ears last. Scent, sight, sound.

The blast that shuddered through the building a few steady heartbeats after he'd ghosted past the first internal guard made an unpleasant welcome for all three. Scent assaulted him, the combined weight of a thousand chemicals blasted together by force and fire, shutting his nose down in pure shock. Black smoke wreathed the air and stung his eyes. A shockwave of sound--more explosions, half a dozen violent blasts--made his hearing lurch and pop.

He smiled, sharp and dangerous. Somewhere close by, Ginta was having fun.

Then he ran.

A subtle approach was pointless; the element of surprise offered nothing in a building full of people very aware that something had gone wrong. But quick and devastating might give the missing pair a chance, if they didn't already have blades to their throats. Pulling on chakra, Kakashi blurred down a maze of corridors, leaving a trail of crumpled bodies behind. Workers, mostly.

A seventh detonation showered him with scorching soot and metal fragments as he skidded out onto the factory floor. Brickwork rumbled and shattered down, smashing into the wreckage of twisted machinery. Multi-coloured chemical floods swept across the concrete floor, mingling and spewing yet more acrid smoke into the choked air. Flame licked up the walls, barely held in check by the sprinklers bursting into life.

Kakashi watched one man fall from an upper walkway, screaming and slapping at the flesh peeling away from his limbs in steaming chunks, and resolved to stay the hell away from anything that even looked chemical.

Then he spotted a cluster of ninja--saw furious eyes register his presence--and snapped back into action. There was no way to conduct any kind of search in this melee. He slapped his hands together, broke his chakra into a double-dozen well-armed clones, and threw himself forwards. Aimed for the first ninja who looked like he might know where captives were kept.

One explosion, then three, six... A chain reaction as one of Ginta's bombs ignited stored chemicals. He could feel the building shudder, and tasted acrid smoke filtering through the ducts. His hideout shook and groaned, but he'd placed his bombs carefully towards the building's periphery. Still, he hadn't expected them to be triggered so soon. He had to get out now.

The knife in his hand was sunk halfway into his thigh: blood and pus streamed out around the blade, but the arrowhead was still firmly lodged. He took a deep breath, and twisted.

A fresh explosion shook the building, closer by. Without meaning to, Ginta jammed the kunai all the way in to the hilt. The blades of the airshaft fans caromed into their housings, sending sparks into the darkness. The air conditioner heaved and shuddered to a halt, as its power lines were severed. Emergency sirens sounded in the dark, real ones this time.

He yanked the kunai free, just as another rumbling explosion sent flames leaping into the left-most airshaft. The heatwave that blasted him singed his hair and choked his lungs. By the flickering orange light, he could see blood pooled on the metal. The flames retreated, plunging him into blackness again.

No telling which bomb would go next. He dove for the vent on the right, slipping past the stilled fan, and tried to remember how the hell to get out of here. The building swayed, metal pinged and popped as it heated. As supports gave way. The ductwork jolted to the left and sharply down, and Ginta fell with it, through a collapsing ceiling, into an inferno.

The first ninja yielded nothing but a snarl, followed by an ugly thump when Kakashi broke his neck. The second put up more of a fight, wicked claws clashing with a ring of steel against Kakashi's sword. It ended in an arching spray of blood when Kakashi dropped to slice the woman's legs out at the knee. She fell with a scream, and yanked up short when his hand fisted in her long hair.

He wrenched her head around. "Two ninja. Little blond and a redhead. Where are they?"

An incoherent scream was his only answer, followed by a wild swipe as she tried to gut him. He sliced her throat open, threw her spasming body at a bellowing archer before the man could set arrow to string, and moved onto a third. Then a fourth. Scattered over walkways and throughout twisted machinery, half lost in the belching smoke, clones waged their own private wars. Fought and died and came right back when Kakashi lashed out with his chakra.

Balanced on an iron girder hanging half-shattered from the ceiling, it was a clone that spotted the steel airducts tearing down. It bellowed a warning, voice almost swallowed in the chaos, and drew Kakashi's attention with a snap of blue-white energy. His gaze jerked up--

And saw a flash of bright blond in the welter of falling metal, plunging straight towards the open maw of a mixer engulfed in flame.

In the frozen, silent moment between understanding and movement, Kakashi thought he felt his heart stop. Then his hands slammed together around the hilt of his sword, fingers twisted seals, chakra wrenched from the core of his chest, and the world shivered and vanished.

He couldn't translocate through the walls, but there was nothing to stop him flying inside the warehouse.

Eight clones died in the flicker of a second it took him to there. He reappeared in a falling shower of metal and fire, snatched the slender body tumbling helplessly through the air, felt something hot and wet sear across his shoulders, and vanished again before they hit the ground.

Three more clones. Five more ninja. Sixteen workers. Kakashi slammed down on his knees with Ginta safely in his arms, heard the distant shout of "Found her!" in his own voice, and lunged back to his feet. A kunoichi raked his hip with a razor-sharp kunai. Sword-hand pinned by Ginta's weight, Kakashi lashed back with a heel aimed at her knee, and dropped desperately to avoid the next blow, shielding Ginta.

A clone swept in and tackled her before she could finish them. Kakashi wrenched away and ran, sprinting towards the clone that held a screaming, blood-soaked woman in its arms.

Falling into the fire, there had been a moment when Ginta felt as if he were being stretched to infinity, his body preparing to be incinerated and his soul to leave it. He was shocked to realize he even had a soul, but in that instant before death, he could feel himself lifting out of his body. There he was, smaller than he would have thought, in the black underpinnings of his ANBU uniform--it looked wrong without the bone white armour. He looked vulnerable, covered in blood and bruises. The flames reached up to embrace him, greenish from the chemicals that fueled them.

He wondered if it was going to hurt.

And then something darted in and snatched him from the air. In an instant he was back in his body, and it did hurt, but it wasn't the pain of burning alive. He was held tight against that same armour he'd wished he'd had. Enveloped in fierce blue-white chakra that he knew.

How ironic. How ironic that at the very moment of his death, he managed to hallucinate being rescued by that bastard.

There was a flash of metal, a screaming woman. Kakashi holding him ducked. Kakashi charging in from the side tackled the attacker before her blade could bisect them. Kakashi rushed up, holding Tsuyako.

Ginta tensed, arched his back, and tried to get away.

It was a mark of how many rescues Kakashi had run that he half expected that. Water sprayed like indoor rain as Ginta lashed out, hammering desperate blows against any part of Kakashi he could reach. A wild punch swiped the ceramic wolf-mask away, sending it skittering across the burning concrete. Kakashi jerked his head back to avoid another hit, dropped his katana before Ginta accidentally stabbed himself--a clone snatched it up--and quickly readjusted his hold, trying to pin Ginta's arms to his sides. Blood slicked his hands.

Tsuyako screamed again, unable to tolerate her own clone's grip and the sprinklers' deluge. Fire roared an answer, clawing its way up the walls, backlighting the giant machines that stood like blazing monoliths in the dense smoke. Raw-throated, Kakashi breathed through his mouth and tried not to cough. Not to smell. His shoulders blistered. Ginta's heel slammed into his side, bruising ribs.

"It's me, jackass," he snapped, purposefully using the insult-turned-nickname he'd spent almost a month not thinking about. "Stop fighting and help."

He couldn't see the way out. Couldn't see anything but flame and fire and the distant shapes of bodies in the smoke. Weapons glinting like lethal stars in the orange-lit darkness. A crossbow bolt flashed past and slew the clone holding Tsuyako, dropping her in a crumpled heap to the unforgiving concrete. This time, she made no sound. Kakashi hissed and snarled at another clone to grab her, dodging a second bolt that just grazed the edge of his jaw. Chakra lurched as more constructs died. They needed to get out.

Ginta had stilled.

Kakashi bolted, directionless but away from the closing ninja, Tsuyako's new carrier keeping pace on his heels. A wall shattered down, flinging metal and brick across their path. High above them, the ceiling warped and cracked, brutalized by the rising heat, unleashing the powerful trap seals in a wave of uncontrolled chakra.

Ginta's world reformed. Not dead. Not hallucinating. Kakashi was, in fact, here. He'd snatched Ginta from the mouth of Hell, and it was his clone holding the lifeless-looking body of Tsuyako. Firelight and smoke colored Kakashi's pale skin and hair orange, and reflected obscenely on the metal plate of his hitai'ate, and in his exposed grey eye. The clone still wore the face of a wolf, in stylized blue and white.

It's me, jackass, and as suddenly as Ginta had found himself back in his body, he found himself back in his mind. This was real, this was now, and Kakashi was...

Kakashi was heading left, towards the room with the barrels. They weren't burning yet, but any second now...

"Go to the right!" Ginta screamed. There was a soft whoosh of air, almost gentle in the chaos. People screamed as they burned. Others shouted instructions, "Over here! Get out! Look out!"

The ceiling gave a mighty groan, and erupted in purplish crackles of chakra-fueled flames. A beam came crashing down, knocking one of the mixers on its side.

The whoosh became a roar, as a fantastic fireball erupted from the left. From the room with the barrels.

Ginta cast a water jutsu almost by instinct, sending a towering wave ten feet into the air, to shield them. It hissed into steam almost as fast as it grew.

"Go right! Towards those pipes!"

In the sweltering darkness, Ginta turned a shade paler as he used more chakra than he could afford to spare. Kakashi cursed and veered right, abandoning the wreck of the door he'd been aiming for. Rippling up the nearest wall, he caught a glimpse of flickering seals above an oily, iridescent flood, and gathering flame...

Bomb factory. Bloody ninja-run bomb factory.

It wasn't just the urgency in Ginta's scream that made Kakashi change gears, throwing on a turn of speed that brushed the edge of Minato's flicker-jutsu. They made it halfway back, weaving through rubble-crushed corpses and the bones of dying machinery, before a dull whumph turned the air itself into a weapon. Crushing force picked Kakashi up and slammed him sideways into a rusted steel chute; Ginta screamed as his legs caught between the copy-nin's body and unyielding metal. Head ringing, Kakashi staggered back to his feet, and did his best to sooth with a smoke-torn voice and hands that should have been forming seals. The clone carrying Tsuyako--

Was gone. Destroyed by the blast.

Kakashi swore again and lunged towards the crumpled, silent body of Ginta's teammate. A deep rumbling to his left announced something imminent and floor-cracking; he clawed up an answering wave of chakra-driven earth, tearing the jutsu right through concrete, and brought a few precious seconds to haul Tsuyako onto his back, trusting Ginta to stand on his own feet for a white-knuckled moment. He couldn't sense another clone; his katana was long gone.

And the damn ceiling was coming down.

"Son of a bitch," he snapped, sweeping Ginta up again and wrenching all three of them around a shatter of falling bricks.

Before Ginta could answer, a gout of flame blazed up from a previously untouched mixer, casting a brief flash of stark light. Kakashi sneezed violently, used Ginta's shoulder mid-run to shove his hitai-ate back and free the sharingan eye (he needed to see), and caught a perfect chakra-blue look at Ginta's clothes. From head to foot he was drenched in long-dried chemicals; a perfect, flammable target. And the sprinklers were shutting down.

If he'd had the time, Kakashi would have paused to beat his head against a wall. Instead, he drew on reserves of waning chakra, threw himself and both fallen agents towards the pipes Ginta had pointed out, and sliced air like a blade through the heavy black metal. Water, clean and freezing, erupted out, dousing them all. Kakashi drove straight through it, keeping his footing with chakra and luck, and pushed onwards to the door he thought he could see on the other side, shouldering desperately fleeing workers aside.

As a plan, it worked fantastically. Right up until he ran straight into another ninja.

The shock of the cold water stopped Ginta's breath in his throat; the shock of that ninja running at them, axe in hand, stopped his heart. His eyes widened as Kakashi faltered. Kakashi couldn't reach for a weapon without dropping Tsuyako, Ginta or both. He couldn't form seals. And Ginta had neither weapons, nor chakra for a jutsu. That desperately flung up water shield had torn through coils achingly overdrawn. Another attempt, even a small one, would certainly knock him out, maybe permanently.

But Kakashi had weapons. Ginta twisted, reaching for Kakashi's thigh holster. He grabbed kunai, flinging two at their attacker, and wielding a third. "Put me down!" he rasped, choking on smoke laden with toxic fumes. That moment on his feet when Kakashi had scooped up Tsuyako had been agony, but... But putting Tsuyako down was Kakashi's only other option.

She's probably already a corpse, Ginta thought. She'd been grey-skinned, covered in blood. Her screams were long silenced.

"Put me down!" Because Ginta could still fight. And maybe Kakashi could get Tsuyako out, and maybe the same miracle that had let him save Ginta from certain death was still operating.

The ninja was almost on them, raising his axe to strike Kakashi's head from his neck.

A dark, feral shape lunged out of the shadow, striking the man in the chest, knocking him sideways. He was already committed to his blow--the axe swung down, striking nothing. It clattered to the concrete floor, ringing strangely loud against the inferno's roar. The dog's jaws closed around his throat as he fell.

"Good boy," Kakashi rasped, trying not to stagger with relief. Smoke, exhaustion, or just plain bad luck--whatever the reason, his attempt to lock the ninja into a sharingan-coma had won him nothing but a headache. And for a second there, as that ax had swung down...

He shook off the chill. Later there would be time to think. Now there was nothing to do but run.

A growl was all it took to call Shouma back; Kakashi's throat was too dry for whistling. Tail high and teeth dripping red, the shepherd cleared the space around them with just a look, sending workers scrambling to avoid coming too close. The corner of Kakashi's mouth twitched; more relief. He let Tsuyako slip off his shoulders, easing her down to the floor, and granted Ginta's wish by settling him on Shouma's strong back. The dog set himself square, determined not to falter under the lean shinobi's weight. "Hold on," Kakashi told Ginta, guiding his hands to wrap tight around Shouma's collar.

He dropped back down by Tsuyako, preparing to lift her up again, and found himself face to face with a second pair of loyal brown eyes. Wreathed in smoke, Hoshika lowered her muzzle and pressed her nose against Tsuyako's shredded shoulder, whining softly.

"No time," Kakashi snapped, rougher than he meant to, and hauled the woman up. Blood smeared him from wrists to shoulders, painting violent crimson streaks over heaving chest armour. He could smell it, but that was probably because his nose was bleeding; had been ever since his last agonizing sneeze. There was no time for that, either. "Move," he ordered.

Snarling, Shouma bounded forward, scattering unfortunate civillians. Kakashi lunged to keep up, holding Tsuyako tight to his chest. Hoshika pressed against his hip, ensuring he kept to a straight line.

And behind them, flames drew closer.

Ginta was easily as large as the dog that carried him. He balanced precariously, belly flat against the dog's undulating spine, arms wrapped around its neck in what he hoped was less than a choke hold. His legs dragged on either side, toes raking the ground. As the dog bunched muscles to move, Ginta hooked his fingers under the thick leather collar and did his best to hold on. They lept over obstacles--debris from the multiple explosions, fallen bodies, pools of flame-licked fuel. He could feel bones in his right leg grating, twisting out of position at every jolt, as his feet bumped the ground. He tried to pull them up, and managed to lift his left foot, but the right was beyond his control.

People were screaming as they raced from the flames. One woman staggered out of the gloom, clothes aflame, and fell in front of them. The dog barely paused before leaping over her. Thick, oily smoke poured out of one ruined wall, choking and black, and so hot Ginta could feel his skin blister. He held his breath as long as he could, shut his eyes in an instinctive self-protective gesture, and ducked his head down against the dog's thick fur.

The world was reduced to this: pain, heat, suffocation, and terror. Somewhere close by, Kakashi had Tsuyako. That chakra presence was still there. Blue-white. Strong despite everything. Ginta risked a look back, saw a shadow running next to him, with another taller shadow by its side. Hoshika and Kakashi, and the bulky shape of Tsuyako's limp body in Kakashi's arms.

There was a high-pitched whistle, like a kettle on the boil. A shower of cinders fell across Ginta's back, sharp little spots of pain like stars against a velvet midnight sky. His right leg caught against a splintered board, nearly pulling him off the dog's back. Nearly pulling consciousness out of him. And then the ceiling fell.

Blood misted the air when Kakashi exhaled, sharp and violent, and dodged a welter of falling rubble. There wasn't time to swear. There wasn't time to stop. Panicking civillians crushed against his back, driving him forwards into Shouma and Ginta--into the wall of brick and plaster smashing down into the hallway, blocking the exit. Dust filled the air like a mushroom cloud. Kakashi almost took a rebar through the chest.

Ginta didn't scream. Tsuyako didn't flinch.

Hoshika howled, scrabbling up and whirling on the chaos behind them, snapping at screaming workers. Shouma lurched back to his feet, Ginta spilled across his shoulders like a blackened toy, one leg twisted at a brutal angle. Kakashi shoved himself away from the spur of metal that had almost punched a hole through his ribcage and Tsuyako's belly, and tried to collect himself. The room swayed. His temple ached; he reached up awkwardly and touched liquid. Smelled metal.

Breathed metal, because the hallway was a massacre and his arms were full of bleeding woman. Stone and metal had sloughed down behind them, pinning half a dozen civillians and trapping the rest, blocking the open crucible of the factory floor, throwing the hallway into darkness like pitch tar. He couldn't see a single clear face in the mess, just wide eyes and gaping mouths. Hands reaching out.

No way forward. No way back. He didn't dare try a translocation through half-shattered seals.

"Shit," he said, softly, because now there was time.

The sharingan spun, showing gleaming patterns of movement, threads of the future. He sliced a look over the fragile ceiling, trying to see a path through the naked girders and shattered plaster. Orange lit the room above them with a dull glow; cinders showered down, licking sparks over his burning shoulders. More fire, denser smoke. No way up.

Well, what were jutsu for?

He swept his chakra together, sparing the smallest amount he could for two substantial clones, and pressed Tsuyako into the arms of the first. The second leapt for Ginta, gathering his limp body off Shouma's red-soaked back. Kakashi waited the half-second it took for them to get behind him, the half-second more it took for the dogs to drive the civilians back, and staked their survival on a fistful of blue-white lightning and broken birdsong.

Twelve seals. All the chakra he had left.

It felt nearly cathartic when he blew straight through the wall.

Grey dawn light was completely obliterated by the roiling orange glow of flames, but the air was cold. Ginta's oxygen-starved brain triggered a deep, gasping breath, and that brought on violent coughs. He shook in the clone's arms as it ran. For a moment consciousness sparked back, and he lifted his head, squinting through the carnage.

People streamed out of the burning factory, soot-blackened, bleeding, some screaming in pain, others silent as ghosts, with their skin blistered and peeling away from raw, red flesh. Shocked, animated corpses. It was beyond any hell Ginta had ever imagined. As bad as anything he'd seen in the war years. It was worse, because then it had been shinobi dying, and now it was civilians.

Of course there were shinobi here, too. Waterfall ninja, rushing to put out the flames, get the survivors to safety. There were shouts and whistles, a crackle of chakra. A water jutsu cascaded into the throat of the volcano, which belched steam and foul, sulfuric fumes.

No, not a volcano. Ginta lifted his head. Factory. It had been a factory. Where was Tsuyako? He choked on the smoke, clawing at the clone's shoulder for a moment, before his body went slack in its arms.

Running. They were running. There were no more screams now of dying women. Dying men. There was running, shouting, questions and orders. Running. Medics had him. There'd been an attack. A surge. The battle lines had broken, and they were in retreat...

No. Not the war. A mission, and Kakashi. Kakashi had appeared out of nowhere.

Every breath of cold air seared in his chest, tracing pathways the burning gasses in the factory had scorched through his lungs. Every step the clone took jolted through Ginta's body, through his legs. Broken. Beyond that he couldn't contemplate. The right leg was broken, and his foot was ice cold--a bad sign, he thought dimly.

Fire and chaos and death. The Fox. Was it the Fox? Hadn't the Fourth sealed the Fox away?.

The running stopped. The roar of the fire was gone. The shouting, panicked people gone. All that remained was Ginta's own harsh breathing, and pain.

That meant he was still alive.

Even with two dogs, two lookalikes, and two grievously injured people, it was easy to get lost in the chaos. Silent in the midst of screaming, Kakashi and his clones melted away like breath, flanked by panting, blood-stained shadows. An alleyway. A rooftop. The factory dwindled behind them, lost in its own smoke.

He guided them through shadows, sticking to the last lingering shreds of darkness. Two soldier-pills dissolved under his tongue, laving bright new energy through a system definitely starting to think about cashing its cheques; enough to strengthen the clones, hearten the dogs, push himself a little faster. They ran.

One factory. Two. Over warehouses and empty nightclubs, through the heart of the industrial section. He couldn't follow a nose streaming blood, but he could damn well follow the mental map stacked inside his sharingan. He knew this city. Well enough to find its--

Abattoirs.

Kakashi smiled grimly and led them straight through the grey, iron-clad buildings, losing their trail in a real bloodbath. Lingering animal terror probably wouldn't mask the stench of chemicals and smoke coming off them in waves--not to a real scent-expert--but it might buy them some time. Shouma and Hoshika cut away for a moment, released by a one-eyed look as Kakashi yanked his hitai-ate down; they returned with hunks of meat clenched firmly in their teeth, muted pleasure gleaming in brown eyes.

And they ran.

Alleyways, rooftops, empty side streets. Down to the poorest neighbourhoods. High above them, almost out of sight, a hawk's shadow circled. Kakashi drew to a halt before they hit slums, picked the first house with solid walls and copper piping--with neighbours only on one side and bare land on the other--and broke in through the window, leaving clones and dogs and teammates behind.

He was back in three minutes, rope-marks fading on blood-streaked hands.

"Inside."

The clones paid no attention to the bound, terrified family lying in the hallway, but Hoshika spared a moment to gently sniff the little girl's hair. Kakashi gestured her away, eye fixed solely on Ginta and Tsuyako as the clones eased their still bodies down onto a rumpled, still-warm double bed. He stepped forward and pressed his fingers against one neck, then the other.

Two pulses.

"Water. Medkits." His voice was a croak, but a steady one. He tossed two scrolls to the nearest clone, letting it waste chakra on the summoning. The other headed for the kitchen sink. "Towels."

Ginta stirred, groaning. His eyelashes flickered.

Kakashi sat down hard on the bed next to him, bent over shaking knees, and remembered how to breathe.

Ginta broke the surface of consciousness like a blister bursting: slack muscles went taut in an instant, red-rimmed eyes wide and fierce. He sucked in a ragged gasp, shoved himself back and up, brought his hands together in the ram seal, and tried to call up chakra for a defensive jutsu.

Then the pain hit him. Urgent, desperate signals that neither of his legs were functional. Burned skin and scorched airways added to the misery, and he gagged, coughing deeply, choking up sooty mucus until his vision failed and he slumped forward.

Coughs gave way to exhausted pants, and he found himself leaning against a steadying hand. If this had been an enemy, Ginta thought distantly, he'd be dead. He'd have had his head hacked off while he struggled for air. He could smell smoke and chemicals, sulfur and black powder, and blood. And he could sense chakra, blue-white, threaded through the hand on his shoulder.

It was hard to think through the pain. His legs--gods his legs. Staring down at them, seeing the left grossly swollen, and his right foot turned all the way in like a broken puppet's... There was blood and black soot seared across the sheets, and all he could think was, that's wrong. It's not supposed to go like that.

The hand on his shoulder tightened, shook him a little, and he lifted his head. Kakashi. It was Kakashi, right there, face smeared with grime, and mostly covered in that familiar black mask. His Sharingan eye was hidden, the grey one red all around, and glassy from the smoke.

What the hell was Kakashi doing here?

Ginta gave him a look half agony, half disbelief. "Gen...ius?" It came out a guttural sound, rasped and raw. And wrong. And nothing made sense at all.

Fifteen years of practice had made Kakashi very, very good at keeping his mission focus in place. But that one word almost undid him. He locked his jaw, leaned Ginta back against the wall, and reminded himself of the facts of life. Of Tsuyako, bleeding out on the flower-patterned blankets.

"Later," he rasped, and moved aside for the first returning clone. It took his place, hands filled with a bulky medi-kit and a basin of lukewarm water. The second clone crouched down by Tsuyako's side, checking her over with efficient hands, feeding its knowledge back to Kakashi.

Broken bones, shattered teeth, amputated fingers. Missing skin. Marks of torture.

He didn't let himself think about Ryouma.

Ginta was better, and worse. Quickly, gently, the first clone sponged away the blood and muck caked to his skin and shredded clothes; peeled away chemical-gore drenched bandages to reveal most of the damage. The sword gash to his right forearm, the deep puncture wound in his left thigh, still glinting with embedded metal and slick yellow pus. Burns, bruises, lungs scorched with smoke. And that right leg. Deep clawed wounds in the calf muscle, bones that grated beneath the clone's quick, careful hands, and a foot wrenched all the way round on itself. Dislocated, if they were lucky. Shattered, if they weren't. Pale skin, hollow eyes, hands that trembled.

Kakashi took a deep, copper-laced breath. Not dead. The rest they could work with.

"Hold tight," he said, calm and entirely contained, and sat down again by Ginta's legs. A syringe flashed in the clone's hand, filled with clear morphine; another gleamed in the second clone's grip, already emptying into Tsuyako's lax arm. Soldier pills pressed against two sets of bloodless lips. "Breathe deep. We're going to fix this."

We. It was never just I in a rescue.

And it wasn't just his hands that held Ginta down, waiting for blue eyes to fill with understanding, and unfocus with painkillers. Cloned fingers tightened above and below shifting bones, keeping them straight; but it was Kakashi's careful grip and steady chakra that wrenched Ginta's ankle back into place, trying to save the foot before constricted blood flow killed it. It popped.

Lucky.

If Kakashi had given him three times that dose of morphine--enough to send him into a coma, maybe--Ginta might have got through it silently. As soon as he felt the clone's hands on him, he knew it was going to be bad. As soon as he saw that look on Kakashi's face, calculating, waiting...

The clone moved slightly, grating the fracture it was stabilizing, and Ginta gasped. Even with the morphine curling queasy fingers around his equilibrium, it felt like there was nothing but thin tissue paper holding the pain back.

His foot was rotated all the way in, and it was ice cold. If he was ever going to walk again, it had to be dealt with now.

He took a deep breath and set his jaw. Kakashi twisted.

He'd meant to keep silent, but the pain tore a string of curses from Ginta's chalk-white lips, then a scream that died into an eerie howl. He didn't see Kakashi and the clone, didn't feel them struggling to keep him still. There was a weight on his chest, then a soft brush of smoke-scented fur against his face and a wet tongue. Hoshika licking his jaw with frantic, worried swipes, her weight pressing him into the mattress.

It brought him around just long enough to look into Kakashi's face. Into one red-rimmed grey eye, and one whirling red one. Red black red black spinning into oblivion like prayers on a monk's wheel.

Pain dissolved. The world dissolved. Ginta fell softly into a dream of a koi pond, cool on a hot summer day. Nothing hurt. Nothing even moved but the fish below the surface of the water, circling lazily. Heat made the air shimmer. A few water insects skated on surface tension. A white koi slipped towards the surface, sending ripples spreading silently on the calm water. Cicada buzzed unseen in the trees. Ginta drowsed on the bank, utterly safe. At peace.

When he woke, he was lying on his back in an unfamiliar room. His right leg was splinted from hip to ankle, his left thigh throbbing and freshly bandaged. Tsuyako lay next to him, wrapped in bandages, too, deathly still. Only the faintest stir of breath against a tendril of her hair convinced Ginta she was alive.

Hoshika lay against him on the other side, bracing him in the bed as if he might fall out. When he opened his eyes and turned his head towards her with a groan, her tail swished slightly against his splinted leg, drawing a whimper from him before he could stop it. She stilled immediately, and dropped a cold nose against his bare shoulder.

He raised his head. Kakashi was sitting on the floor, back against the edge of the bed, head between his knees. Ginta reached a shaky hand out to touch his shoulder. He didn't trust his voice.

The genjutsu had been a mistake. But he'd known that before he'd yanked his hitai-ate down. It had been worth it, anyway, to see Ginta's pain collapse in on itself, drowned in dreams of summer sun; the clearest picture Kakashi had been able to focus on at a moment's notice.

An arrowhead gleamed dully between his fingers.

The ankle had been worse than he'd thought--broken around the dislocation, as was typical of such an injury. But there was warmth in Ginta's foot, now. Returning blood flow. Mobility in the joint. And everything had been easier after that. Even the thigh wound that had spurted old blood and older pus when Kakashi's blade had dug in deep.

The arrowhead twisted, turned gently in cold, unshaking hands.

He'd left Tsuyako to his clones, helping only when Ginta was fully bandaged and redressed in a spare set of Kakashi's ninja blacks. They hung too big on his slender frame. But there were antibiotics in both of them now, and tightly bound linen hiding the worst of the mess. Painkillers to dull the edge. Soldier pills for flagging chakra.

Kakashi licked his lips, tasted blood, and realized he should wash his mask. Change his clothes. Drink some water. Get up and do something the minute his skull decided it wasn't on fire--

Icy fingertips touched his shoulder, skidding over blistered skin. He jumped, almost jammed the arrowhead under a fingernail, and jerked his head around to stare at wide blue eyes. Pulled away when Ginta didn't take his hand back, and staggered to his feet. Ginta's eyes followed him.

"Welcome back," Kakashi said, smoke-stained voice grating in his throat. Ginta's hand stayed where it was, hovering painfully in the air. Kakashi stepped further away, slipping behind a clone and out into the hallway. The clone settled down where he should have been, smoothing Ginta's hair carefully back from his eyes, offering him water. Hoshika whined softly.

Kakashi fled, stepping past the weeping, terrified family into their bathroom, shutting the door behind him.

This shouldn't have happened.

But it had. So what was he supposed to tell Ginta now?

Kakashi, the real Kakashi, was gone. A clone, looking just like the real thing, but with a fraction of the chakra presence and no trace of the weary emotion that had been in the real man's face, knelt in his place, mutely offering a canteen. When it reached out to swipe Ginta's hair from his eyes without saying a word, Ginta winced and pulled away.

You have the most annoying hair. That's what Kakashi should have said. Would have said, if everything hadn't gone to hell a month and more ago. That birthday kiss was six weeks and several lifetimes in the past. That hospital hallway fight should have been the end of it. I don't want your blood on my hands... Then why was Kakashi even here?

He'd been sure Ginta was going to die, and just now Ginta'd nearly proved him right. Why in fuck's name was Kakashi here hauling his ass out of the fire?

Next to him, Tsuyako coughed.

That was why.

Ginta jerked away from the clone and towards his teammate. Her bandaged, battered face was barely recognizable. Her shallow, rasping breaths spoke more of death than life. Their mission had been a failure from the moment she'd been captured. From the moment Ginta had found himself out numbered, out jutsued... out smarted. They'd captured her while she crept inside the factory overseer's office. They'd captured her, because Ginta had missed one guard, and Tsuyako had used a weak concealment jutsu, and their opponents had been good.

They'd captured Ginta because he'd let them, so that he could find her, and break them out.

But their breakout had failed, and they'd caught her again and this time they'd had reinforcements. An interrogator and his team brought in from Takigakure. They'd had her at their mercy for hours, knowing there was another Konoha ANBU on the loose. They'd been desperate to get what information they could from her.

He looked at her fingerless hand, wrapped in blood-stained bandages. He looked at the tiny, parallel lines of raw flesh striping her cheek, where skin had been razored away a millimeter at a time. She groaned, and her eyes, barely slits in blackened, swollen bruises, fluttered open.

"Ginta..." Her voice was as broken as her body.

"It's okay, we're out," Ginta told her. He reached for her shoulder and hesitated, not sure where he dared touch her.

Her eyes welled with tears.

"Give her some more fucking morphine," Ginta rasped at the clone nearest her.

"I broke," she whispered. "I'm sorry." She choked, coughed weakly, and started to shake.

"Morphine, dammit! Tsuyako, look at me!"

Her eyes rolled back, as her whole body stiffened, then started to seize.

"Tsuyako! Fuck, Kakashi!"

She kicked Ginta's legs.

The clones jumped in, holding her still. Hoshika grabbed the loose cloth of Ginta's shirt, dragging him away from the flailing woman.

At the exact moment Ginta shouted, Kakashi had his head in the sink. Blood trails spiralled away from the gory mess of his lower face, streaking the water crimson. It had been years since he'd had a proper nosebleed, but this one was trying to make up for lost time. He swallowed coppery water, soothing a raw throat. His mask was on the floor of the bathtub, drowning in its own scarlet puddle.

Alarm slammed down the chakra links connecting him to his clones. He jerked up, splashing water everywhere, and found the air filled with Shouma's deep barks. Ginta's yells. Panicked, mostly-gagged sounds from the family in the hallway. Ragged, spasming chakra brushed against the edge of his senses--Tsuyako's.

He slammed out of the bathroom, through the hallway, and back into the bedroom without stopping to re-cover his face. Chaos met him; this time he wasn't pleased to see it.

Under the restraining hands of two clones, Tsuyako arched like bent bow, eyes rolling back in her skull. Straining bandages blossomed with fresh blood. Her heels dug desperately into the old mattress.

Hoshika had yanked Ginta half off the bed, trying to get him out of range without doing further damage. His pale face was twisted in an agonized rictus, fists clenched tight. He'd stopped yelling.

Kakashi darted to Tsuyako's side, shoving between struggling clones to cup his hand around the back of her neck. His fingers dug into the stacked column of her spine, searching out key chakra points before she asphyxiated herself. He found one bundle of nerves, then a second, and lanced his chakra through them. She collapsed like a headshot victim, frenetic movement replaced by horrible stillness.

He hovered his hand over her mouth, and didn't feel breath.

Wrapped in icy calm, he ordered a clone to Ginta's side, dropped to his knees, and sealed his bloody mouth over hers. One hand pinched her nostrils closed. He breathed, once, twice. Drew back as the remaining clone compressed her chest. Breathed again. The clone jolted chakra directly through her heart, turning insubstantial at the edges as it used itself up. Kakashi breathed, forcing air down her throat--

With an aching, wrenching gasp, Tsuyako coughed herself back to life beneath his hands. He held her carefully down as wracked limbs tried to draw themselves in.

"Easy," he said, murmuring into her ear. "Easy. Just breathe. I've got you."

She shuddered, tears leaking out of tightly closed eyes. Across the bed, Ginta trembled in the grip of his clone, face turned ashen under sooty streaks. Kakashi sighed with relief.

"I leave you alone for one minute..." he muttered, brushing a strand of Tsuyako's hair back. Rock-steady fingers slipped his hitai-ate up; it took less than a second to ease the kunoichi back into pain-free unconsciousness. "Still with me, Ginta?"

The clone had him under the arms, half holding, half restraining him. Hoshika was at his side, using her broad shoulders to muscle him back onto the bed. Ginta's head lolled against the clone's arm, but his eyes were bright and wild, fixed on Tsuyako and Kakashi. He felt sick and dizzy, pain transmuting into nausea, as he swallowed and tried to answer.

Kakashi's face was bare and blood-smeared, and a fresh trickle of blood ran from one nostril to stain his upper lip. He looked exhausted. Tsuyako looked dead.

What Tsuyako had said...

"We have to get out of here." Ginta grit the words out. He couldn't stop shaking. Couldn't think much past the agony in his legs. But she'd broken. She'd broken, she said. What she'd told them there was no telling.

"She..." He coughed, smoke-tainted foulness, and swallowed again. "How bad?"

The answer to that was obvious: so bad she was a hair's breadth from death. And she'd broken, which sealed her fate. If the Waterfall ninja didn't catch up to them, if she didn't die of her injuries, if she didn't take her own life out of shame, she'd face her Hokage.

He should have let her go. That seizure had been a kindness, but he'd panicked. Hurt and desperate, and now...

"She... Tsuyako... She's.... You can't carry her and me. You probably can't keep yourself going much longer." The clone at Kakashi's side was a wisp of vapor now, vaguely man shaped. The one holding Ginta was still there, but...

"We have to get out of here, now. She broke. They'll have patrols."

It was a good thing he had a box to keep his feelings in, Kakashi thought dully, because otherwise he might have broken something, too. Like a wall. He didn't ask if Ginta had proof; it was right there in front of him. In agonized blue eyes and missing fingers. Skin flayed away like paper.

Ryouma, if Kakashi had been just a little slower. He'd run eighteen hours to get here, but he still hadn't been quick enough for Tsuyako.

Or she hadn't been strong enough.

Slowly, he gentled his fingers against the side of her face, palm pressed against a cheekbone that would have been delicately angled, if someone hadn't crushed it. Bruised lips parted against broken teeth as she inhaled. His breath was still in her lungs.

He snapped her neck.

Fast, painless, and she was gone. He tilted her jaw gently back into place, swept a thumb over the tears still wet on her cheeks, and let her go. Felt nothing at all, because there wasn't time. Without looking, he signaled the clone still cradling Ginta in its arms; it lifted the shaking ninja to its chest, supporting him with strong, empty hands. Hoshika slipped behind its legs, ears pressed completely flat against her skull.

"Shouma," Kakashi began, but the shepherd was already moving. Delicately, he picked the two half-eaten chunks of abattoir meat off the floor, and vanished through the doorway, tail tucked between his hocks. The clone followed, bearing Ginta away from the bloodstained bed and the body of his former comrade. Hoshika followed in their wake, flanked by the insubstantial clone.

Kakashi sat for half a heartbeat, watching a single tremor ripple through his fingers. Then he took Tsuyako's intact hand, pulled a scroll from beneath his chestplate, and pressed four blood-whorled fingerprints into the parchment. She didn't have a set of dogtags he could take home, no mask to give back to whoever she'd left behind. But he needed something to prove he'd found her. Confirm he'd killed her.

He shoved the scroll back inside his armour, wrapped her body in the flower-patterned blankets, and re-sealed the medkit still splayed open on the mattress; put that scroll inside his armour, too. Then he threw the shrouded body over his shoulder, stole some of the husband's clothes from a dresser-drawer, and retrieved his drenched mask from the bathroom.

The family watched him with wide, shocked eyes as he passed them by. He paused and turned.

"Wait two hours, then free yourselves. I'm sorry if we frightened you."

The clone holding Ginta was waiting by the door. Kakashi handed it one of the stolen sweaters, instructing it to pull it over Ginta's shoulders, blurring his scent and warming shock-chilled limbs, and kept the remaining clothes tucked under one arm. Then he opened the door.

They were running before they hit the curb, heading straight into open sunshine.

Even though he'd known what he was asking, Ginta hadn't expected... He hadn't expected such ruthless, brutal efficiency from Kakashi. He'd expected a moment's discussion. A chance to confer. A chance to reach out and tell Tsuyako he was sorry.

His shaking was worse, despite the sweater and the sunshine. The clone body held no warmth, and shock was finally starting to catch up to him. He struggled to pull himself together, to still chattering teeth and trembling ribs, but effort just made it worse. Every step the clone took sent pain clawing through Ginta's leg, tearing thought to shreds.

Kakashi racing next to him, carrying that absurd quilt--green scattered with plum blossoms and branches--Tsuyako would have approved. She'd been a warm, lively presence on their way to this gods-forsaken city, laughing about kimono fabrics and the perils of dating, and her plans for her sister's upcoming wedding.

She'd been a sharp kunoichi, but not sharp enough, at the last. Few were.

And now she was a heavy corpse Kakashi staggered under, just as his clone struggled to carry Ginta.

The fire still raged in the warehouse district. It had spread, Ginta guessed, by the volume of smoke rising into the morning sky.

Kakashi's shoulders were blistered. Like Ginta's own. Blistered and burned by chemicals, falling cinders and radiant heat. He shouldn't carry Tsuyako over his shoulder like that, it would make it worse. He shouldn't carry her at all.

"Canal," Ginta whispered, barely loud enough for the clone to hear, but it hesitated mid-stride, looking down at him.

"Canal... under... Tunnels." He wasn't sure where they were, entirely, but the canal had to be nearby. It circled the slums and industrial sectors of Komatsuyama like an ineffective moat. There were tunnels where it dove underground, concrete slick with moss and the scent of rotting plants. There was usually an oily scum on the water, residue from the factories.

They could hide there, dispose of Tsuyako's body in the sludge-lined banks. Plan their own escape.

The clone took a harder step, jolting a gasp from Ginta. He clenched his hands into tight fists and willed himself to be silent.

Kakashi traded a look with his clone. A canal could work--any kind of body of water would work. Something to cut their scent trail in half. Soft earth to crack open and lay Tsuyako to rest. But he didn't want to stay inside the city limits any longer than absolutely necessary; not with a sharper threat behind them and hundreds of miles to go before they hit home.

He'd been thinking of a safehouse, one of the many scattered through the landscape between here and Konoha. Somewhere to guard Ginta, treat his own injuries, and sleep. Somewhere with supplies and ninja clothes, real food.

His arms ached beneath Tsuyako's weight. The sooner they got rid of her, the faster they could move.

He cast an anxious, assessing glance over the horizon. Slums that bled into villages, villages that became roads, and then long stretches of plains before they hit anything like forest. Open land, beneath the swift rising sun. No shadows to hide in.

Not ideal.

Ginta's breath hitched as the clone faltered out of its ground-eating lope--his ground-eating lope. It stagger-stepped once and righted itself, running true again. A few more hours left in it, Kakashi judged, then he'd have to carry Ginta himself. Above them, the following hawk lifted high above the faint clouds--high enough not to mark their moving presence to enemy eyes.

"We don't have time," he grated. "We need to get out of the city. There's a river on the other side of the first outer village. We can break the trail there, bury Tsuyako, and carry on to the nearest safehouse. When did you last eat?"

"Hn," Ginta agreed. Too worn to argue. At least Kakashi had a plan, and he could best judge how long he could run. It was far from ideal, racing for the wider Kintama river with the sun rising, but there was no choice. Waterfall ninja wouldn't all be needed for fire-fighting, even if the flames grew. Some would be sent to hunt them. Some undoubtedly already were.

When had he last eaten? He couldn't remember. It had been right before he'd gone in after Tsuyako--a hastily gulped pair of rat bars, dry and chalky, and a soldier pill, which was what had kept him going since then. That had been... two days ago? Was that all the time that had passed? He'd been hungry, but that had gone in a wash of chemicals and injury.

Before that... Before that he and Tsuyako had eaten together at an udon stall in the city. Their last meal before they commenced the operation. Even the udon had tasted of metal and ammonia--the stinking chemical brew that tainted the ground water of Komatsuyama

The clone shifted its hold on him, settling his center of gravity closer to its own. Ginta looked up at Tsuyako's shrouded corpse, and found Kakashi's eye on him, sharp and narrowed in an utterly weary face. Waiting for Ginta to answer.

"Don't know. What day is it?"

"Friday," said Kakashi, after a too-long pause. "The twenty-eighth."

The thinnest pin-scratch drew itself between Ginta's normally expressive eyebrows, but no surprise crossed his face. It was unsettling to see so little animation in that whip-cord body; no spark in smoke-reddened blue eyes. To hear one word answers, clipped sentences.

Ironic, Kakashi thought bitterly. Two weeks ago he would have given the world to have Ginta never speak to him again.

He crushed the thought. Freed one hand to dig a ration bar from his hip pouch and flick it at the clone. Effortlessly, his lookalike snatched the foil-covered bar out of the air, shucked it of its wrapper, and pressed it into Ginta's hand. Kakashi tossed over his half-empty canteen to help wash it down.

And they ran.

Food didn't sit well with Ginta. He tried his best, picking at the sticky-sweetness of some protein-fruit combination with bloodless, shaking fingers. But pale cheeks turned grey before the bar was even half gone, and sweat beaded like wax drops over his forehead. Even through a nose filled with copper, Kakashi still caught the twist of nausea in the air. He sighed on a rasping breath.

Ginta heard him, coloured in a way that was more agonized, self-directed frustration than real anger, and tossed back a reckless gulp of canteen water. It didn't help. He dropped the canteen--Kakashi's clone caught it--and braced his head against the sharp wing of an unreal collarbone, drawing each breath slowly, carefully through his nose.

When even Ginta's lips turned grey, bitten white where teeth had sunk in, and hollow-bruised eyes creased with the effort of trying not to retch or faint or--presumably--elbow the clone in the throat, Kakashi gave up trying not to notice. At this rate, Ginta wasn't going to make it to the river, let alone a safehouse.

A flicker of chakra was all it took.

The clone lifted its hand, slid its fingers around the nape of Ginta's neck, and hit a small but crucial cluster of nerves, slicing energy through them. Ginta went limp.

Kakashi nodded, clenched his teeth, and forced himself to run faster.

They'd stopped moving. Ginta was on his back, on damp-smelling earth. The sun was high enough now, but there was fog masking it, making it a bright silver disk in a sky of ash. It took a moment to understand what had happened--had he passed out? He must have. They must have reached the river. He turned towards a sound of water--Kakashi standing hip-deep in the cool, grey flow of the river, sluicing water over his shoulders. Mist rose around him in wisps, giving him a ghostly look.

Tsuyako was... Ginta raised his head just enough to catch a glimpse of the bright-colored blanket still concealing her body. Then the clone was there. Still there, still silent. It put one gloved hand under Ginta's head, the other on his chest, looking at him imploringly. Kakashi's face, but not. It reached for a canteen, holding it to Ginta's mouth. The canteen was full, the water cold. It sloshed against his lips and dribbled down his chin. He closed his eyes and tried to swallow.

When he opened them again, the clone was still kneeling beside him, but the canteen was gone. It was carefully bathing his face with a wet strip of bandage. Kakashi--the real Kakashi--was out of the water now. There was a deep trench in the river bank, and he was kneeling next to it, easing a flower-strewn bundle into the earth. For a moment, as her body tumbled into its final resting spot, Tsuyako's hand was exposed. The one they hadn't desecrated. Her fingers looked almost alive when Kakashi grasped the hand and carefully folded it down over her unseen body.

Ginta turned away and shut his eyes.

The clone had an arm under his shoulders. The fog was still there, still billowing over the sun like a widow's veil. Kakashi was there, looking down at him, dressed in stolen clothes. The dogs were there, too. Hoshika whined, and touched Ginta's palm with her nose. The clone slipped his other arm under Ginta's knees and lifted. Broken bone ends grated, and Ginta's eyes flew wide.

He didn't see Kakashi move, but he felt the chakra. In the second before he could cry out, the world arced white, then black.

They ran. The river was a distant memory, the sun already past its zenith, and trees in early leaf shielding them before Ginta woke again. For a moment he was falling. Two dogs barked. He twisted in midair, and then Kakashi's arms were under him. He smelled of fire and sweat, and the heaving chest Ginta rested against was hot. Not the clone.

Kakashi panted for air.

"Take a break," Ginta rasped.

Kakashi didn't answer.

"Put me down and take a break, before you kill yourself."

It probably wasn't healthy for Ginta to spend more time unconscious than absolutely necessary, but Kakashi was starting to miss the uncritical silence. He swallowed hard, pulling air through a blistered-bone throat before he answered.

"In my next life." Confusion darkened Ginta's gem-cut eyes. "I'll take a break--in my next life."

Ginta's inarticulate look suggested that particular event was a lot closer than either one of them wanted, but Kakashi ignored him. They didn't have time to rest. The afternoon was already beginning to shade towards evening, shadows lengthening and edged with velvet; the perfect near-twilight time for an attack. And he was moving far too slow.

The last clone had only been gone a few minutes, but he missed it. Ginta was heavy. Even half-starved, injured and traumatized, he was still a ninja; still corded with solid muscle and hardened, well-trained bone. And Kakashi was losing track of the miles he'd run.

An eighteen-hours run to Komatsuyama, twenty miles to an hour, a translocation whenever he could afford one, Minato's flicker--

Running back, slower and wearier and twice as determined not to stop, burning up false chakra and too many clones. Trying not to feel the sting of his chidori-burned palm.

He spun the math through mental pathways, divided wrong somewhere between one step and the next, and came up with an answer that was definitely impossible.

But the river had cooled his shoulders and numbed his kunai-slashed hip. And drenching his mask had drained some of the blood-stench from it. He could smell Ginta, shocked and wounded and chemical-stained, scorched with the undercut of carrion and flame. Dulled by the lead weight of grief. But still Ginta, beneath that. Still carrying the touch of expensive wood and sweet things. Blond hair.

Still wrenching Kakashi's arms out of the sockets, because painfully thin didn't mean light when they'd run this far.

"You have the most annoying hair," he gasped, as the wind whipped a flail of blood-stained strands against his masked jaw. In the distance, the trees knotted together in dense clusters; better concealment, harder going. Kakashi lunged onwards, panting dogs flying at his heels. The last hawk circled high overhead, waiting for his call. "Another--hour to go, I think. Maybe two." Maybe three. "If you're going to stay awake, you could--be useful. Talk about something--interesting."

Ginta went very still. You have the most annoying hair. He wanted to shake Kakashi. Tell him he'd lost the right to say things like that weeks ago. And he wanted to cling to it, to the tiny hope that things could be... could be back on track. But not after everything that had happened. Not any more.

And not when Kakashi was wheezing like an old man, shifting Ginta's weight again and again, trying to carry him. Every time he adjusted his grip, it jostled fractures, pushed against burns, ruptured blisters. The morning's morphine was metabolized and gone. Long gone. Ginta grit his teeth for as long as he could, then summoned his energy into a tight ball, raised his hands, and formed seals.

"Put me on its back," he ground out, as he released his chakra into the jutsu. Soldier pill chakra, so it burned brighter and hotter, felt thinner and more brittle, but it was sufficient. A clone appeared, running in step with Kakashi. Ginta's clone, unhurt, unmasked. It turned fierce blue eyes on Kakashi and held out its hands.

"On its back," Ginta repeated, feeding more energy into the jutsu. He could feel himself shaking, but shaking on the clone's back for three hours and making it to the safehouse was a far preferable end to letting Kakashi drive himself into a coma before they even got there.

Double vision with only one eye was always a unique experience. Kakashi had been getting it on and off for the last fifty miles, whenever he canted the fragile balance of water-rations-chakra pills into an off-kilter place between too much and not enough. It took him a shocked moment to realize that that thrumming pulse of chakra wasn't his. And that the Ginta running next to him, strong and lean and proud, was the real mirror-image copy of the man in his arms, and not some delusion brought on by too much movement and not enough sleep.

He skidded to a halt and almost gave at the knees, stopping dead for the first time since the river. The clone caught him by the elbow.

Kakashi yanked away, panting hard.

"You stupid--" he began. But the jerky movement--both of them--had ripped straight through Ginta. He tensed, stiffening in Kakashi's hold like steel bent to the breaking point, and groaned deep in his throat.

Kakashi felt his grip slip.

The clone got there before he did, catching Ginta's shoulders, sliding a hand beneath Ginta's knees, pulling him away before Kakashi could readjust. He let go; there was no choice, unless he wanted to turn Ginta's wrecked body into a tug-of-war toy. The clone employed a bit of flexibility only seen in ninja circles, somehow getting Ginta up and onto its back without ever quite releasing its grip or yanking on a shattered limb. Kakashi would've been able to do that--a few hours ago.

He dropped his hands to his sides, re-catching his centre of balance. His chest heaved, sweat trickled down overheated skin beneath the double-cover of armour and stolen clothes. He ripped the second shirt off--it was long past doing anything useful to mask his scent--and shoved it into a hip-pouch until he could find somewhere to discard it.

The clone watched him with bright blue eyes, like chips of mountain sky. Over its shoulder, Ginta's bruised, agonized gaze struck like a blade. He looked frail.

Kakashi dragged a shaking hand through his hair, feeling impossibly light and infinitely tired, and shook himself back into movement, picking up the run again. After a beat, the clone followed, loping along by his side with an easy, smooth stride.

It could go faster.

Kakashi snarled, bringing Hoshika and Shouma to his side in an instant. "Take the dogs and go ahead. You'll get to the safehouse before I can."

"Fuck--that," Ginta snarled. He blinked at Kakashi through pain-teared eyes, panting almost as hard as if he'd been the one doing the running. "Broken leg. Not dying. Better to stay--together." Much better. Because if it had to, the clone could fight. If he had to, he could fight. But he wasn't so sure Kakashi could.

The dogs looked uncertainly from one man to the other, tongues out, muscles bunching as they ran. They had to be near exhaustion, too. If they split up, especially if Ginta took the dogs, and their pursuers caught up to Kakashi...

Low sun flickered through heavy trees, casting shadow like flames. It would be child's play for their enemies to hide here, lay traps...

They should lay traps. Maybe Kakashi already had, in the hours while Ginta'd lain unconscious, but when would he have stopped? And did they dare take that time now? The forest loomed ominous around them.

"No fucking suicide missions. We stick together."

"It wasn't a debate." Shadows rippled over Ginta's wax-pale skin, darkening his expression. Kakashi whistled between his teeth, dropping the vocalization into a growl when it rasped. Two pairs of canine ears flicked back, listening intently. "Mission was to get you home. Alive, for preference. That's what I'm doing."

Bring back whatever pieces you find.

Splitting up would force their pursuers to do the same. And a smaller target was easier to kill, or defend against. They'd have to send their strongest for Kakashi, especially if they recognized him--he was still the biggest threat. The only unknown. And Ginta's clone stood a better chance of outrunning everyone if it didn't have Kakashi holding him back.

Kakashi had a better chance of surviving if Ginta wasn't around to distract him.

He ducked his head, snatched a laden breath, and growled deeper. Shouma lunged forwards and snapped at the clone's heels. Hoshika darted in, herding it from the other side, driving it forwards. They were ninja dogs, trained summons, hardened in the crucible of war--they could move faster, run for longer, even now. Ginta gasped and protested, voice grating high with pain, but the clone sped up. It had to, or risk destruction. The dogs weren't bluffing.

Kakashi really wasn't bluffing.

"Move," he snapped. "Before I waste chakra making you."

"Bastard!" Ginta raged. But there was literally no choice. Hoshika and the other dog looked every bit the dangerous beasts their ancestors had been, all teeth and wild eyes, lunging for the clone with gaping jaws. If one of those bites connected, it would be as bad as a kunai strike. Worse. The clone would evaporate and Ginta would fall.

"Fuck off! We're going," he snarled. He wanted a weapon to throw at the damn dogs. At least one of them ought to stay with Kakashi, but they both kept pace, eying the clone with murderous glances even after it stopped weaving and put on a burst of speed towards the safe house.

Ginta hung on gamely, face a tight mask of fury and pain, and glanced back to see Kakashi running still. An exhausted, desperate figure, and they were leaving him to his chosen fate.

Bastard.

By the time the sun touched the horizon, there was neither sight nor sound of Kakashi. The air was thick with mist in the woods. The scent of damp cryptomeria bark and the rustle of wind in groves of bamboo accompanied them. The safe house had to be no more than another hour's run distant, if it was the one Ginta remembered. A tree house, high in the canopy. Hard to get to, easy to defend from any threat but fire.

Surely there had been enough fire already.

He was still thinking about fire when the earth trembled.

The dogs spun on their heels, while the clone faltered and leapt over a crack widening in the earth before them. A pair of dark figures materialized from the shadows, and the earthquake grew. On their foreheads gleamed metal etched with Takigakure's jagged parallel lines.

There were no words. There was no need for them. They were professionals, all of them. Killers who had no need to explain themselves. Metal gleamed, jutsu roared to life. Ginta's clone dodged flying kunai and raced up a tree. Ginta on its back pulled in chakra, formed seals, and cast a blanket genjutsu to distort space around himself, sending his attackers into circles. From the tree top, he cast a second jutsu, fire this time, to rain down in a cascade. Spring dampness was all that kept the trees from blazing into a wildfire.

There was something to be said for extreme long-distance running; after you hit the thirtieth hour and beyond, the whole process became beautifully trance-like. Your feet moved, your muscles burned, your lungs inhaled, and miles vanished without any thought whatsoever. Meditation in its purest form. It hurt, but in the distant, dream-echo way that real dissociation brought.

And, like real dissociation, the whole thing fell apart the moment the senses noticed something that the brain really needed to pay attention to.

Kakashi stumbled, felt rich agony bite through his legs, and caught himself. In the distance, a second burst of chakra scorched through the world, snapping him around like a hunting hound. He lifted his head and caught a glimmer of dusky orange brightening far away treetops, offsetting the gathering twilight.

A dog's howl split the air.

Ginta.

Ice water washed down his spine. He'd been wrong. Fatally wrong. They'd skipped him entirely and cut straight for the bigger target. Even if Ginta was closer to the safehouse, he wouldn't be there yet.

A second howl rose on the wind, then cut off into echoing silence.

Hoshika. Panic crushed like a fist into Kakashi's ribcage. He braced his shoulders against the tree, dug into his hip pouch, and yanked out the steel container holding his remaining soldier pills. There were twelve left--enough to keep a body running for a full week, if the average body didn't tend to burn up and collapse halfway through.

No fucking suicide missions.

Kakashi palmed two, crushed them between his teeth, and unsheathed the tanto strapped crosswise across his lower back. His katana was still back in the factory's smoking hulk, dropped by a vanishing clone, but all he needed was a blade. Any blade. Raw energy blistered through his pathways.

Mission was to get you home. Alive, for preference. That's what I'm doing.

He was keeping that promise.

Ice-steady fingers locked around the hilt. He twisted three seals, grabbed onto the glowing bonds linking him to two canine hearts, and translocated in a cyclone of leaves.

When he reappeared, metal burned white between his hands.

There were three attackers and a half-dozen clones. But the clones were easy to snare in the genjutsu--a weakness Ginta was grateful for. He clung to his branch and mustered his chakra, conserving it carefully, while his own clone shimmied down the tree under the cover of that same space-distorting jutsu to retrieve a handful of thrown iron. Three shuriken, a kunai, and a clump of dirt was all it managed to grab before it was noticed. It made it back to Ginta, throwing the weapons towards him, and the rocky soil into its pursuer's face. The man swore, sending a lightning bolt of chakra racing up the trunk of the tree.

Ginta flinched, shielding his eyes on instinct, waiting for the sizzle and burn to hit, but the clone took the blow; it burst into a cloud of vapor, releasing chakra in a blinding flash. The tree shook, and the enemy ninja screamed as Kakashi's dogs pulled him to the ground. There was a sickening, snapping sound, when canine teeth crushed his jugular.

No more clone, but Ginta had weapons now. And some chakra still at his disposal. He fed it into the genjutsu, watching enemy clones lost in the fire's glow below him. There was a shift in the wind, and suddenly another ninja was facing him. This one was small--a woman or a child, maybe. The wind became a knife's edge under her control. Ginta blocked with his kunai, and felt the weapon torn from his fingers by the jutsu's icy blast. He didn't trust his legs, but it was move or die: bringing bloodied fingers up to his chest, he kawarimi'd away, catching at a lower branch with his hands, and hanging below the cyprus tree's needles for a heart-stopping moment, scanning for the next attack.

She came leaping down from above. He swung himself around the branch, flipped over it, and waited until she was almost on top of him to hurl his stolen shuriken at her face. Her air-blade batted one away, but the other raked across her eye. Adrenaline rendered the fight in terrible slow motion for Ginta. He saw the spinning shuriken tear into her skin, shredding the eyelid in a fountain of blood. She screamed and thrust her blade towards his unprotected abdomen.

His body reacted without thought. He curled forward over the branch, reaching for her bloodied face to hook a finger in her eye socket, and shoved chakra into the blow. Bone cracked under his hand. Her head jerked back, and for a second her momentum nearly carried Ginta, but he pulled his hand free.

The woman's scream died. Her blade seared across Ginta's shoulder. She fell gracelessly, already dead.

The world swirled back in a frozen tableau of two dead shinobi, Ginta hanging desperately from a tree, and a ninja built like a whip crouched over Hoshika's fallen body, yanking the knife free from her back. Blood slid off the blade.

High in his tree, hands and shoulder drenched in bright red, Ginta screamed.

Kakashi made his own noise, harsher and deeper and lost in the furious wind of movement; he lunged forwards, swept beneath the ninja's startled attack, and came up inside his guard. A desperate fist grabbed for his throat, but the white-blistered blade was already leaping up, shearing through armour and cloth and flesh.

He disengaged the strike before he killed the man, and whipped away, slicing through genjutsu-frozen clones. The ninja spun around, choking on a cry, hand pressed against his side, and staggered when Shouma slammed against his shoulder. The dog was away and gone before a blow could catch him, teeth sinking into Hoshika's ruff as he hauled her out of range.

Kakashi ducked in, past a flashing knife strike, sliced a smoking gash across the back of the ninja's thigh, and flickered away again. Past a corpse with its throat torn out, and a crumpled woman missing one eye and half her bone structure, and up into the lower branches of the tree that held Ginta. Ginta was already hauling himself up, arms shaking badly, onto the limb bearing his weight. Despite the blood, he didn't seem badly injured in any way Kakashi hadn't already seen.

Even in the midst of open warfare, there was time for one breath of relief.

Down in the centre of the jutsu-stricken, still-burning clearing, the enemy ninja swore viciously and slammed his hands together. The air grew heavy and gleamed, forming blades of water drawn from mist and fog and up from the evening-damp earth. They splayed out in a violent, glittering fan, then threw themselves at Ginta.

Kakashi wrenched up a shield of dirt and rock, twined through with chakra, and took the impact. Silvery knives exploded like a shatter of stars. He leapt straight over his creation, twisted around a spray of shuriken, and slammed his glowing tanto through the man's shoulder. It wasn't his father's blade--that was eight years broken--or a fistful of raw blue energy, but it did the job just fine. The ninja screamed, falling backwards as Kakashi scythed his legs out from under him, and screamed louder when the blade ripped free straight through his collarbone.

Kakashi wanted the man alive. But he didn't mind hurting him first.

He pinned the ninja to the dirt by slamming the tanto through his other shoulder, effectively disabling both arms, and kiwarimi'd back to Ginta. It was the work of five hurried seconds to gather the smaller ninja off his branch, get him back down to the writhing enemy ninja, stake the man down with two more kunai shoved straight through the meat of his calves, and arm Ginta with a blade.

"Question him."

Two more seconds and a lifetime to slay the remaining clones and reach Hoshika's side.

Ginta's gaze lingered on the prisoner only for a moment--long enough to be certain the man was going nowhere, although by the volume of blood pooling under him, Hell was a likely destination soon. Instead he tracked Kakashi, watching him dispatch the remaining clones snared in his jutsu, then sprint to Hoshika. Ginta let the genjutsu drop at last, and stared at the kunai in his hand. A gurgled groan from the Taki ninja brought Ginta's head back around.

"Shut up," he told the man. He twisted on the ground, sliding his splinted leg through charred leaf litter with a low curse. The pain traveled through him like a delayed exploding tag, catching him full force after he'd already settled into his new position. For several seconds the world disappeared: he was blind and deaf, unmoored from everything around him. He held excruciatingly still, quivering with torment.

The prisoner groaned again.

"I told you to shut up!" Ginta snarled. He turned on the man with blade in hand, point aimed at the man's throat. In the flickering light of the dying fire, Ginta could see the whites of terrified eyes.

"Don't want to die yet?" Ginta dragged the point of the blade across the other ninja's throat, pressing just enough to break the skin. His hand shook, twisting the kunai as he pulled it away. Blood beaded up in the wound and spilled down the side of the man's neck.

"Go to hell!" the other ninja snarled.

"Not without you." Ginta looked over at the fallen woman. At Kakashi still hunched over his dog. They had a prisoner, he needed to interrogate him, but all he could focus on was the agony in his broken bones. He reached over and grabbed at the man's dog tags.

His name was Tsuchibe Moro. He was twenty-nine years old. Blood type B. It was the same as his own, Ginta thought abstractedly. Tsuchibe tried to pull his leg free and whimpered. His head thrashed side to side, eyes wild, searching for something.

Even a henge seemed impossible, but Ginta pulled one off. He morphed himself into the woman he'd killed, and layered a genjutsu atop it. Hospital. Clean sheets. A smell of antiseptic and urine. "Moro? Moro, wake up. Are you alright?"

"Aki?" Moro's focus came back. He tried to lift an arm to touch her.

"Shh, don't move," Ginta whispered. "You're safe. The team that came after us got us out."

"How? Did they get our radio signal? I thought we were out of range..." He looked confused.

"It's alright. They got us out," Ginta repeated.

"Did Idomu?"

Flying blind. One wrong guess would give away his lies. Ginta grasped for what he hoped was the right choice. "Idomu... didn't make it." He could feel the illusion wearing thin as his chakra siphoned away.

Moro's eyes flew wide. "How? We sent him back when the radio failed. He should have... He..." Understanding dawned. "Bastards!" he screamed. He tore himself up, showering blood from his brutalized shoulders.

Ginta's kunai sank into the man's chest. He jerked it sideways, lurching away from the dying man to fall panting and shaking beside him.

The sudden lack of enemy chakra and Ginta's harsh rasping breaths drew Kakashi's attention for a split-second. He spared both hands to snap a clone into being, ordered Shouma to follow the construct back to Ginta, and pressed his palms flat against Hoshika's spine again. Blood soaked through his gloves, squelching between his fingers. A pained whine scraped the edge of his hearing, tapering off into a gurgle.

"You're okay, sweetheart," he murmured, gathering his chakra. "You're okay. Breathe deep for me. I'm going to fix it."

He wasn't a medic-ninja, but every war-trained shinobi knew the sound of a punctured lung when they heard it. Hoshika's ribcage shuddered as she tried to inhale. Sprawled on her side, claws left deep furrows through the scorched earth as her legs kicked fitfully. The knife strike had sunk in between the middle ribs arching away from her spine, deep enough to do real damage. Bloody streaks glistened in the foam around her jaws.

Kakashi bit through the inside of his cheek.

"You're okay," he whispered, leaning down to speak by her ear. Chakra swirled together near his core, twining around the bond that stretched between them. "I'm proud of you. Breathe for me."

He wasn't a medic-ninja, but you didn't need to be for a summons. You just needed to break the bond and send them home. As long as their hearts stayed whole, breath kept flowing, they always came back...

Hoshika cried out.

He set his teeth, grabbed the bond, and snapped it. Chakra lashed back through red-raw coils, crackling like a whip. Hoshika stiffened beneath his hands, whipped her head around to catch his shirt-sleeve between her teeth, and vanished before she could get a proper hold.

Kakashi exhaled, squeezed his eyes closed, and shoved himself back to his feet. She'd come back. She always did.

When he turned to look at the clearing, his clone had already lifted Ginta from the blood-soaked earth. He looked like a rag doll. Shouma stood stiff-legged next to newly dead Taki ninja, fur lifted like a jagged halo of black and brown. Long canines glistened red against drawn back lips and mottled gums; he seemed unhurt. A growl confirmed it.

Kakashi walked to them, steady as a condemned man, and pressed his fingers against the side of Ginta's throat, finding a rhythmic pulse. Dead-tired blue eyes lifted and focused on his face.

"Still with me?" he asked softly.

"They lost radio contact--with their base." Ginta swallowed and tried not to need the gentleness he heard in Kakashi's voice. Tried not to see compassion and weariness in that pale, masked face. Tried to forget it was Kakashi standing there.

"Sent a runner. Probably--not long ago."

One dog stood there, stiff-legged and guarding, the other one...

"Where's Hoshika?" Her body was gone, and Kakashi had blood on his armour. Blood on his gloved hands.

He couldn't keep going like this. Neither of them could keep going like this. Where had Kakashi found the energy for that fight, this clone? How far was that damned safe house? He made an abortive effort to reach for the clone's shoulders and pull himself upright, hissing when pain lanced through him.

"Give me--something. Please." His eyes begged as much as his voice.

There were moments in life that Kakashi almost wanted to believe in a deity just so he could thank them for having a mind that could multi-task; this was one of them. Facts filed away, the hand touching Ginta's throat moved to support his head, and his free hand leapt to retrieve the first scroll containing a medi-kit. He opened it with a flare of chakra, twisting the one-handed seal that was fortunately all it required, and grabbed the first morphine syringe his fingers touched.

One glance down to make sure he had the right drug, then he bit the plastic needle-sheath off through his mask, and injected the morphine straight into Ginta's neck.

There was still a bit of mental room left over to call himself an idiot. He'd dosed Ginta again while the man had been unconscious, but that was hours back. Too long. He couldn't believe Ginta had held his silence this long...

"Jackass," he said quietly, around too-rapid breaths, and meant every syllable. Ice-blue irises stared at him, almost entirely swallowed by dilated pupils. Ginta was shaking. Kakashi was shaking. The only steady bodies around belonged to a clone and three dead shinobi. Even Shouma trembled with exhaustion around his fury. Kakashi's fingertips left red streaks against Ginta's white skin, like the carmine design of a warped ANBU mask.

"You're okay. Hoshika's fine, too," he murmured, waiting for the drug to kick in. For one small thing--any small thing--to go their way. "You did great. Just breathe. It'll feel better in a second."

He was too tired to sway on his feet, too wired up with chakra to feel remotely weary. His heart thundered in his chest, drenched in adrenaline and chemicals. Blood and sweat greased his skin. He dropped the spent syringe back into the kit, re-sealed the scroll, and took his hand away from Ginta's face.

"Keep breathing." Two more clones siphoned away some of that reckless energy. He sent them to deal with the bodies--stripping them of anything useful, anything secret, burying what was left--and tried to catch his bearings. The safehouse was...

South. That way.

The clone moved quickly, Shouma at its left flank like a bristling hellhound, Kakashi at its right. He promised himself that he'd send the dog back as soon as they could afford it; Shouma was a well-trained summons, but not enough for this. He was past his limit and beyond. Like all of them.

There was still no choice but to keep going.

"Hang on, Ginta."

"It's jackASS," Ginta corrected in a whisper. He let the morphine carry him past caring. Past sensing. He'd asked for the drugs. Been weak, he heard his grandfather's voice. Weak like a woman. And he couldn't do anything about it but try to hold his body still while the clone ran, finally losing even that much control.

Kakashi calling him jackass. Him calling Kakashi genius. It had been... It had been something. His weakness. But everyone called Kakashi genius. He was one. Ryouma probably called him that now. Thoughts flitted past, as slippery as koi fry leaping out of the net before Ginta could see their markings.

Running, they were running. He was aware that his legs hurt terribly. Aware that he didn't care. That was the beauty of morphine, want it? You knew you were dreadfully injured but you didn't care. He dragged heavy eyes open to glance up at a masked clone face, then over to the real one.

Kakashi was looking at him. For a moment their eyes met, then Kakashi's gaze flinched away, and Ginta let himself slip under the red velvet veil of drugged exhaustion.

Some noise pulled him out. The feeling of halting. The clone looked down into his face, or maybe it was Kakashi. It was fully dark now. Slender trunks rose all around them, to disappear in a tangle of branches with tiny new leaves, high overhead.

The safehouse was hidden in those branches somewhere. It took chakra to reveal it, the right code. Ginta felt the world swaying under him, even at a standstill, but... No. Kakashi must have already cast the releasing jutsu. There was a dark shadow against the trunk, a heaviness where the safehouse was anchored.

Now they just had to climb up there.

It was a red cedar. Kakashi tilted his head back, studying the monolithic tree with its burnished copper bark and immense branches, leaf-studded in the middle months of Spring. The safehouse--revealed by the standard issue jutsu that all Konoha jounin used--had been half carved straight into living wood. Curving branches shrouded and shaded it, breaking up its unnatural shape, making it difficult to see even when you knew where to look.

It was about sixty feet up.

Kakashi was still tempted to kiss it.

Instead, he crouched down, dug his blood-stained hands into Shouma's knotted ruff, and leaned his forehead against the dog's. Shouma's panting breaths trickled through his mask, laden with the stench of meat. Kakashi was equally winded. He swept a shaking hand down Shouma's long spine.

"Good job," he rasped simply, and snapped the bond. Shouma vanished in a rippling shiver of fur and fallen leaves. Kakashi straightened up again.

The clone tipped its head, regarding him with one tireless grey eye. Ginta seemed barely sensate in its hold, one arm hanging loosely down. Kakashi caught the hand and lifted it back up, replacing it carefully on Ginta's chest. Then he nodded.

Without pause for the mimicry of breath, the clone leapt straight up. Ten feet vanished in the first flicker of movement, another five in the second. It settled into an easy, half-horizontal run, Ginta cradled against its chest, and sprinted the remaining distance. Kakashi watched until it vanished, disappearing through the door he'd unlocked, before he turned around.

The safehouse didn't stand in a clearing. Identical trees surrounded them, pressing the forest in close, blocking out the sky. Old traps, deactivated but maintained, called his attention by memory. There was a pattern to them; the same pattern used in at least a tenth of all safehouses. He pulled it directly from Obito's sharingan, and set to work.

Twenty minutes later, the land was a fortress, and Kakashi had used up more than half of his remaining chakra. Their remaining hawk had returned, settling down to roost in the one safe spot Kakashi pointed out to it. He hauled himself up the tree-trunk, climbing more than walking, and lost his grip near the top.

The clone caught him.

"Took care of Ginta," it murmured; Kakashi was too tired to focus on any information drifting between them. "That arrow wound's starting to turn nasty. I cleaned it and got more antibiotics in him. Re-bandaged everything else."

Kakashi nodded, muttered something incoherent, and pulled himself up with trembling arms. Braced on shaking legs. The clone hauled him up by the back of his armour and through the door.
He caught sight of Ginta laid out on a camp bed, wired up to an IV-line with two hanging bags--antibiotics? Fluids?--and bathed in a shaft of moonlight that turned his skin ice-blue. His eyes were open.

"Halfway home," Kakashi managed, staggering. "Y'should sleep." He twisted to glance back at the clone. "Watch. Wake me up--four hours."

His knees hit the floor halfway through the sentence. It was only the clone's lunging catch that stopped him cracking his head open on wooden planks.

Kakashi wasn't awake to thank it.