Breathing was not helping. Swearing helped, when he managed to drag his thoughts together long enough to string out a sentence. Asuma pressed his back against solid metal, trying to grind out the pain, and drew his legs up, bracing his forehead on white-knuckled hands that clenched around his knees.

After half a second, he straightened back up. Curling didn't help, either.

"--rutting whoreson of a bastard's mistake--"

When he ran out of words, he changed languages, hitting every curse he'd learned in two years of travelling and three years spent in the company of unorthodox teammates. Halfway through Northern Suna's politest phrase for a woman with loose morals and an inability to count, he managed to convince himself he wasn't drowning in liquid fire.

Saltwater. It was only saltwater.

The bastards.

He forced his eyes open, dragging his attention away from a myriad of sparking smaller injuries he hadn't noticed until now (what the hell had happened to his cheek?), and focused on Tsume. Slatted moonlight twisted blue shadows over eerily pale flesh; half her hair was plastered to her skull, the remainder spiked up in a wild tangle. Her throat looked red raw.

And there was a chunk missing from her left ear. The injury wasn't bleeding--it was old, Asuma realized. Like the silver-pink scars at her left temple. Something to do with the reason her chakra couldn't work right.

He shuddered and blew out a breath.

"Next time, get a whole foot." He didn't manage a smile, but a grimace came close. "Or a knee. I think that might have been worth a knee."