Kakashi crouched and -- very, very carefully -- brushed away a thin, recently disturbed patch of dry grass and dusty earth. Beneath his gloved fingers, something glittered. He scooped up the fragile glass vial and turned it over, examining the seals. Inside, a thick orange liquid clung to the transparent sides.

Poison, set up to shatter beneath a careless footstep.

"Average," he said, answering Genma's question. "Paranoid, but not clever. This would have been a much better trap if he'd made it chakra-sensitive."

And hadn't left his scent all over it. Kakashi handed the vial to Genma and stood again, wiping his hands on his thighs. The threat of poison made his skin creep a little, tickled an itch in the back of his throat. Broken ninja were the worst kind of enemy, especially ones still functional enough to lay down traps, but this was the first broken ninja Kakashi had faced with an ability to make a man's skin melt off...

He still questioned the need for Genma's presence. Of course, that was mostly because Kakashi wanted to melt his skin off.

He took a breath, refocusing. The breeze picked up, whipping across the ceramic face of his wolf-mask. Kakashi inhaled deep. Suguru's scent was faint and grey, a dying ribbon draped over the landscape. Almost entirely obscured by a heaving, living world.

Particularly the parts of it that smelled like body-warm metal, ginseng, and sweet spices.

He wrinkled his nose and glanced sidelong at his mission partner, lip curling a little. "Stand downwind, Shiranui. You're blocking the trail."

Genma's shoulders knotted under the straps of his vest, but he took the vial and stepped aside. There was a hierarchy, and on a fading trail the tracker's needs took precedence. Of course most trackers would be a little more polite in their requests, but Genma was fairly certain Kakashi was incapable of being polite. Maybe he had one of those weird personality disorders that made him incapable of understanding human emotion, That would explain a lot, really.

About a lot of things.

He held the vial up, assessing it. There was a fine, almost invisible sediment precipitating through the liquid. So a delivery vehicle and then... Who knew? Suguru had worked on heavy-metal based poisons, and he'd worked on chakra-disruptors. Written a really nice paper about them, actually. But this could be anything. "It's nasty," he told Kakashi. "If there were time, I'd field test it so we'd have an idea what antidotes we might need. It looks like a new one, or a new combination. If you get tagged with this... Well, just don't. And someone should warn the farmers."

"Feel free," said Kakashi drawled sarcastically. "I'll catch up with you again on the way back."

Yes, someone should warn the farmers. But taking out the psychotic, potentially vengeful, fleeing ANBU Hunter came first. Preferably before Suguru hit the furthest point of Tsuchi no kuni and fell off the map.

Genma's right hand flexed into an angry fist, but his ceramic cougar mask covered his expression. Kakashi turned his back on the man and cast about in the breeze, searching for Suguru's scent again. It was mostly chemical -- irons, ores, acids, arsenic -- with a trace of the man himself underneath, drenched in fear. Strong scents, which was why the trail had lasted so long.

Still heading North-West, straight as an arrow. At this rate, they might catch up by Taki no kuni.

"Five miles straight ahead," Kakashi ordered, and translocated before Genma could respond. He hit the ground at a dead run, breathing steadily, alert for more traps. Genma's chakra shivered into existence behind him, twitchy with irritation.

Kakashi couldn't help the smile, just a little sharp, behind his masks.

If Genma had needed any more reasons to dislike the arrogant prick, Kakashi was certainly making them easy to find. The fact that he was right -- that there was no time to go find and warn whatever farmer owned that field that death lurked between the golden ranks of rice plants -- was just fuel to the fire.

"You bastard," he snarled, as he hit the ground running a few paces behind Kakashi. "I was gonna at least summon a clone or a rat to carry a message. Konoha's dependent on those damn farmers, in case you've forgotten where your rice comes from."

Kakashi's shoulders stiffened, crinkling the smooth black of his uniform where it showed above the edge of his vest. "Focus. Or Konoha's going to have a lot worse to worry about," he growled.

"He's running. If he's got buddies in Grass or Waterfall, they have treaties with us," Genma snapped back. Which wasn't an argument to the contrary. If Suguru had buddies in any other hidden village, it was trouble for Konoha. And just on the other side of Grass and Waterfall, lay Earth Country. Iwagakure. Genma had no desire to tangle with any Iwa ninja any time soon. In the two and a half years since he'd been their prisoner, Genma's hands had healed. Mostly. But his memories...

He kicked up his pace, lurching past Kakashi and bringing his hands up in seals for another translocation. "Well? Do you have a usable trail, or do we have to slow down again?"

"Had a usable trail," Kakashi gritted out, "until you just walked all over it. Are you trying to make my job harder?" Especially because Genma's scent had just twisted hot and rancid with some deeply unhappy thought -- Konoha's destruction, probably. (Hopefully, because that, at least, was preventable. And also not something Genma would be inclined to talk about.) And, yes, okay, Kakashi would still be able to smell the trail if Genma stripped off, covered himself in butter-oil, and rolled naked in the dirt, but that wasn't the point. The point was Genma blocking the view of the horizon. Again.

"Didn't realize you were such a--" Genma began, and cut himself off with an almost audible snap of teeth. Shitty tracker, Kakashi filled in. Asshole. Genma fell back without another word. Apparently they were being diplomatic now.

Well, there was a first time for everything.

Kakashi decided the only way maintain his sanity for the next hundred miles was to ignore Genma, thoroughly and completely, no matter what he did. He could make it a sub-mission, perhaps, or a personal challenge. An exercise in self-control. One that carried the advantage of both of them completing the mission in one piece.

He made it thirty miles before Genma persisted in humming, very quietly, under his breath until Kakashi threatened to strip his vocal chords.

Another twenty, then Genma needed a verbal answer to a map-query.

Thirty-six, and Genma made an extended effort to be friendly while they sat on a giant tree branch and caught their breath. He stopped only when Kakashi threw a water canteen directly at his face, and even then he said thank you, with deep irony.

Eighteen more miles and they'd made it almost entirely across Waterfall, within easy translocation distance of Earth Country, and Kakashi was about ready to bite something in the jugular. Suguru's trail hadn't wavered once. How could someone be mentally defective enough to run in a completely straight line but still savvy enough to dodge every living being Kakashi and Genma had been forced to slip quietly around, enemy ninja included? It made no sense.

Not to mention the thirty-plus traps they'd disarmed along the way. Crazy and paranoid was one thing, but crazy, paranoid, mobile, and poison-armed was turning into Kakashi's least favourite combination ever. He was beyond tired of smelling sinus-burning chemicals.

And Genma was humming again. How did he even have breath?

Kakashi whirled around with every intention of telling him to shut up--God, Shiranui!--and caught a faceful of fresh new scent before he even saw the moving shadow. The blackened steel in its hand, slicing towards his teammate's neck.

Kunai sprang into his own grip. He lunged at Genma. "Move!"

It took bare nanoseconds to recognize the shift in Kakashi's mood from rashy with irritation to battle-ready tense. Bare nanoseconds, while time dilated and slowed; while a wolf-masked ANBU hurled kunai with one hand, and shoved Genma flat with the other. Genma didn't feel the kunai splitting the air, burning the faintest trail across his neck, leaving a furrow in his armour. He was already rolling away, reaching for weapons of his own. A shadow sprang back, melting onto the foliage, and Kakashi's arm was in motion, hurling another fistful of metal too fast for Genma to do more than track the trajectory.

It could be Suguru; it could be some other enemy; there was no telling. Genma was just curling up into a crouch when the ground underneath him exploded in a cloud of ochre smoke. "Traps," Genma shouted in warning. Useless, because it was obvious: Kakashi couldn't have missed it. The poison burned on his bare skin, but... But yes, this was a standard Konoha issue gas bomb. The air smelled foetid and Genma's stomach rebelled at the stench, but he had immunity. Gods look down favorably for once and let Kakashi be immune, too, he prayed.

There was a sound like a hornet's next had been disturbed, and the air filed with splinters. Another trap, Kakashi must have triggered it, Genma thought, scanning frantically for his teammate. Clouds of choking smoke hid the tiny projectiles, deadly, nasty thorns coated in a paralytic poison, if Genma remembered the last thing Suguru had been working on correctly. He snapped his hands into the dragon seal, let his fingers fly through the jutsu sequence while he shaped chakra, and manifested a burst of water, drenching the clearing and himself as it washed Suguru's poisoned shards away.

There was Kakashi, still on his feet, and a handful of his own clones around him. Too hard to tell which was the real Copy ninja and which the imitations. It didn't matter. Where was Suguru? Genma unleashed a second jutsu, fire this time, to burn up Suguru's hiding places in the dense shrubbery. Another trap sprang from the heat, sending a plume of sparks into the air, making Genma's hair stand on end.

That straight line path they'd been following--was it just the most complex trap of all, leading them to this ambush?

"Suguru, you bastard! You owe me fifty ryou," Genma shouted, hoping to throw their quarry off guard.

His answer was another flight of shuriken, but at least now he and Kakashi knew where to aim their next attacks.

At this rate, Kakashi was going to run out of throwable metal. He snapped his final two kunai at the moving blur which had paused, just barely, on hearing Genma's voice. One missed, but the second struck home with an entirely satisfying thunk. Steel into meat. A yelp blew away on the poisoned wind. Kakashi kiwarimi'd before Suguru could reward him with a counterattack, bypassing Genma and the scrum of battling clones entirely, and hit at Suguru from behind.

Or where Suguru had been.

Goddamn, the bastard was fast, and better rested than they were. And he left traps in his wake. Kakashi backflipped over a tensile wire strung to take his head off, and hit the ground when the exploding tags attached to it ignited. A tree erupted into shattered, blazing fragments. Red-purple smoke billowed around him, tasting of rotten meat. He gasped.

Solotoxin. They'd had that in the last war. And Kakashi had spent several months building up an immunity to it, at Minato's insistence. He sent up a mental thank you to his long-absent sensei now, as his lungs failed to liquefy, and kiwarimi'd again, trading places with a clone.

The former patch of forest was rapidly becoming a clearing, as explosions scattered the trees and chloric air wilted the smaller plants. It smelled like a battlefield, like the deadliest trenches of the war, with less blood rotting the earth. Smelled like everything but the man Kakashi was supposed to be tracking, which was almost certainly the point. He coughed into his mask and slew one of Suguru's clones, scanning quickly for Genma...

There, summoning his own clones and systematically taking out the worst of the traps Kakashi could--and couldn't--see. Fire and water danced alternatively in Genma's hands, winding protectively around that armour-clad body like glassy ribbons. He was holding his own just fine.

One less thing to worry about. Now if Kakashi could just find Suguru he could end this thing--

Instinct made him drop, barely fast enough to avoid the shower of senbon aimed for his cervical spine. A shadow flitted by overhead, darting for the undergrowth. Kakashi wrenched a hand up, beneath his wolf-mask, and yanked down the strip of black cloth that served him in place of a hitai-ate. It fell around his neck, like a collar, and freed the sharingan.

The world spun into monochrome blue, sharp and clear. Like a single perfect moment, stretched out to infinity. He twisted, yanked a brace of spent kunai from the wet, oily dirt, and lunged up to follow the future Obito showed him.

It went much quicker, after that.

As suddenly as the ambush had been sprung, the battle was over. The last of Suguru's clones evaporated, the last of his poisonous vapors drifted away on a moist breeze. Trip wires lay in broken coils, kunai littered the churned up, muddied ground, some of them trailing the tatters of detonated exploding tags. A creosote shrub still smoldered, sending dense black smoke into the air: Genma doused it with another water jutsu, extinguishing it before its acrid fumes could draw curious Takagakure ninja.

It had been a stunningly fast battle, fast enough that, if they were lucky, it had gone unnoticed. Of course there were treaties in place, and a pair of Konoha Hunters taking down a rogue man of their own was the sort of thing any sensible foreign ninja would keep well out of. But better not to have to deal with anyone at all. By their last compass and map readings, Genma placed them far enough from both the Waterfall and Grass hidden villages that they were probably safe, but it didn't hurt to be cautious.

A pair of Kakashi's was dragging a corpse from the brush, setting Suguru's lanky, dark body down with more gentleness than he had earned. The Kakashi at Suguru's feet stepped back, the one by his head crouched down next to the corpse, and pushed his ceramic wolf face back.

One red eye, and one grey, pierced Genma from a distance, before Kakashi's gloved fingers drew the bandanna around his neck back into place, hiding the Sharingan from view. It was no surprise, Genma thought, that under the ANBU mask Kakashi still wore the cloth one. No surprise, and yet somehow it was.

Kakashi leaned over Suguru, turned the dead man's head from side to side, then reached down to open his vest, searching his scroll pockets.

"You should be--" careful about traps. Genma didn't even get the full sentence out. A puff of grey-brown spores erupted from Suguru's chest, engulfing Kakashi's face. The Kakashi clone shimmered, staggered, and blinked out of existence. The real one clutched at his throat, choking and gagging.

Genma didn't remember running, didn't remember translocating, he was just there knocking Kakashi prone, dragging him away from the spreading poison cloud. The noxious powder hugged low to the ground, filling Genma's nostrils with a distinctive wet copper and mildew scent. Kakashi writhed under him, retching, gasping, single exposed eye showing bloodshot whites all around.

"Hold on! Hold on, I've got an antidote!" he shouted. One hand fumbled for the packet in his medkit, the other yanked the black mask down, forced Kakashi's mouth open. Kakashi's fist slammed solidly against Genma's jaw, cracking his teeth together, wrenching his head back, knocking the cougar mask askew. Genma almost lost his grip on the tube of antidote, almost lost his grip entirely, as Kakashi reared up to take another swing.

"Lie the fuck still, you asshole! You have about ten seconds left for me to get this into you!" Genma shoved his own mask the rest of the way off and tore the top off the tube of antidote powder off with his teeth, grabbed Kakashi's face and pulled his mouth open again, then poured the yellow crystals down Kakashi's throat. Kakashi surged up under him, then fell back, lips turning blue.

"Let it work. Let it work, Kakashi. Look at me. Focus!" Genma ordered, one hand still clamped on Kakashi's struggling jaw. The crystals mixed with poison: foam spilled from Kakashi's lips, ran down his cheeks. Kakashi's eye rolled back. "Focus, dammit! Look at me and breathe through your nose!"

He couldn't breathe he couldn't breathe he couldn't breathe -- there was no air. The world was blistered and burning and turning black around the edges, red at the centre, where Genma's eyes blurred into a streak of hot, frantic gold. His weight straddled Kakashi's hips, barely noticeable next to the solid weight of stone crushing his chest in. He couldn't breathe. He bucked, arching up. Black-gloved hands forced him back down, pinned him at jaw and wrist.

They'd done this to Obito, seven years ago. Buried him in an avalanche until there was nothing left but an eye and a headstone and bloody memories. Because he'd been thirteen and foolish and had traded his life trying to save a teammate -- two teammates, in the end.

Kakashi had just killed one.

--ocus! Breathe, goddamn you--

The world went white.

Genma's grip around his jaw tightened, shaking Kakashi's head from side to side. Fingertips pressed too hard into unmasked skin. Kakashi's eye snapped open--when had he closed it?--and widened, thin grey iris surrounding dilated pupil. Genma leaned in close and screamed at him.

"In-fucking-hale!"

Kakashi did. The first shattered, rib-broken breath felt like burning -- like he'd swallowed raw magma in a shot glass. The second came easier, sparking off a wave of coughing that dragged in air whether he wanted it or not. He twisted sideways, Genma's hand going with him, and retched foam-slick bile onto the dying grass. The tight grip on his jaw released, sliding around to support the back of his head.

Kakashi had one hand free, clotted with mud from clawing at the earth; somehow it had grabbed Genma's armour. As another flood of acid spilled up his throat, he gripped tighter, holding onto the one solid thing in the universe.

Vomiting was good, Genma told himself, supporting Kakashi's head with one hand, keeping him well over on his side with the other. Disgusting, and with his own stomach still half-turned from the stench of poison and the race of adrenaline, hard not to join in sympathy. But good. Good if it meant Kakashi got up all traces of the toxin, got up any of the slurry of foam the antidote had generated when it met poison in the back of his throat. As long as he didn't inhale any, but the coughing was taking care of that, and his pale lips were pink again, no longer dusky, oxygen-starved mauve.

He waited for the spasms to subside, then eased back, reaching for Kakashi's hand tight-fisted around the strap of his vest. He wrapped his own fingers around a slender wrist, feeling a jackhammer pulse racing strong beneath the skin.

"Better? Keep breathing. I know if feels like shit, but try to take slow, even breaths on a four count, okay? Kakashi?" One heavy-lidded grey eye focused, Kakashi's lips pressed into a grim line, and he nodded.

"Good. I'm gonna clean you up and move you away from the mess a little. Don't fight me." Genma shifted from kneeling to crouching, reached out to clear slime from Kakashi's cheek and lips with a gentle swipe of his thumb. Kakashi flinched violently away, jerking a hand up to swing at Genma again. Genma dodged it with a curse. "Would you fucking quit hitting me?"

He listened to the rattle-wheeze of air in Kakashi's abused windpipe. Checked his pulse again, his color.

It was okay. He'd gotten the antidote into him in time.

Thank you to whatever gods were looking out for Kakashi. For both of them.

"I got tagged with that stuff last year in the lab, during a training exercise. Just a little. It's nasty, but the antidote is a complete fix if you get it fast enough. You're gonna be a little weak for a few more minutes."

Kakashi still hadn't let go. He was still panting for air. But he was breathing.

Thank god.

As air returned, reason came with it. Kakashi forced himself out of the tightening curl his body wanted to stay in, preferably forever, and used his free hand to scrabble his mask back up. The cloth was stained and foul-smelling, but far better than walking around naked. Especially if Genma was feeling inclined to get touchy again.

Unconsciously, Kakashi's hand scrubbed across the lower half of his face. It was a mark of something, gods knew what, that he would have far preferred to let Genma go fishing around in his pants again before he would have ever shown the man more unmasked skin. But either was better than ending up dead--probably.

Ignoring Genma's protest he shoved himself up, feeling bone-sore and shaky, and settled into a well-braced crouch. Another coughing jag made his vision spin red. Genma reached out again, eyes both frustrated and... kind, and Kakashi couldn't have stopped his snarl for a thousand successful missions.

Genma stiffened and pulled his hand sharply back, but didn't move away. His mouth pressed into a thin line, blanched white at the corners, and Kakashi recognised the look of a field-medic bound and determined to be responsible for someone else's healing ass until it killed them.

"Fine, suit yourself," Genma said shortly, through gritted teeth. His hand drifted up to rub the purpling bruise on his jaw -- belatedly, Kakashi recognised the mark as his own work. "Fucking try to help some people," Genma muttered, but his watchful gaze stayed on Kakashi.

Feeling unaccountably ashamed and furious about it, Kakashi lurched to his feet, tugged his ceramic wolf's mask back down, and staggered back to Suguru's body. A fine dusting of grey-brown powder lay over the dead man's battle-scarred armour. Kakashi crushed every feeling he'd ever had about dead teammates down into the pit of his stomach, and summoned a clone to finish his job.

Genma stirred behind him. Kakashi wrestled with himself for a long moment, but couldn't force a thank you past his acid-chapped lips.

The longer Kakashi remained upright, breathing, moving around -- proving the antidote had been in time -- the more annoyed Genma became. As fear receded, it was replaced with every other heart-pounding, adrenaline-fueled emotion in Genma's arsenal, not the least of which was pure pissed-off ire.

"If you're going to be an asshole and get up before it's safe, at least drink some water. A lot of water, so I don't end up treating you for dehydration and palpitations and seizures next," he snapped. "Or did you really not notice how fucking close that was?"

Kakashi's response was an insolent shoulder lift. A dismissal. Well, at least that aspect of the world was right again. He hated Kakashi; Kakashi despised him.

Genma straightened his shoulders with a weary shrug, reassembled his med-kit, now down one tube of heptaphane antidote, and summoned up a pair of clones. One he sent to secure the perimeter, the other grid-searched the battlefield, retrieving thrown weapons. That left him free to join Kakashi in attending to Suguru's body.

The dead man looked frighteningly familiar, lying broken-necked in the same bone-and-black uniform of his killers. No mask and no hitai-ate, as befit a traitor. But the crimson spiral inked indelibly on his left biceps matched Genma's, matched Kakashi's, proclaimed a loyalty the man had forsaken. His face was, in death, nothing at all like the man Genma had called colleague.

"Did you get his tags yet? Was he wearing them?" Genma knelt next to Suguru, reached out to sightless eyes, and closed them for the last time. "When you've finished searching him, I'll do... do the disposal. Since I knew him."

"If that's how you want to remember him," Kakashi muttered quietly, and dropped the unshining links of tags and chain into Genma's waiting hand. "They were around his neck."

"I'd rather remember him the way I knew him a week ago, than this way," Genma answered, even quieter, staring at the cooling tags in his hands.

Just barely, Kakashi refrained from rolling his eyes. Make up your mind. But he owed Genma at least this much, and getting the man with his grief-guilt smell further away would help Kakashi's roiling stomach stay put. "Then do him a favour and go pick out a nice spot for a burial, somewhere he would have liked." Forcibly, he gentled his voice. "Cutting up old friends isn't a job anyone needs."

Which was precisely why you shouldn't make friends in ANBU, dammit.

Genma's strange gold eyes stared at him for a long moment, long enough for Kakashi to feel entirely uncomfortable, then Genma nodded curtly. "If you're up to it. I'll slag the remains." An in-house term for the jutsu-based chemical process used by well-prepared assassin teams to thoroughly destroy a valuable corpse, usually a traitor. Easy to do, unpleasant to watch.

Kakashi shrugged, already crouching down, and Genma melted away to find Suguru's final resting place. Using clones instead of his own hands, Kakashi stripped Suguru of his scrolls, his remaining weapons, and finally his clothes. Three more traps went off--more of the grey-brown gas, a blooming cloud of dull red, and a lightning jutsu that sought the electricity in Kakashi's own blood, five feet away, and gave him a serious wake up zap--and Kakashi resigned himself to never smelling anything but chemicals ever again. The inside of his nose felt like scorched metal.

Then he took a kunai from his newly acquired stash and got down to the grisly business of destroying every part of Suguru's corpse that retained the memory of old jutsu. Slagging the body would do precisely the same on a global scale, but Intel liked it when their hunters were thorough, just in case the enemy had learned a new trick. Like how to glue molecules back together. Or read the echo of long-gone chakra patterns.

Hands, chakra centres, the body's core, eyes and brain. It didn't have to be neat, just meticulous.

When he was done, he sealed Suguru's belongings in a scroll, bandaged the corpse's sluggishly bleeding places until it looked almost human again, returned Suguru's jockstrap for Genma's peace of mind, and took five minutes for himself to drink a canteen of water away from watchful eyes. His gloves were bloody up to mid-forearm; he stripped them off and bundled them away, to be washed later. Then he leaned against a tree and spat until his lungs felt marginally clearer. Watched his fingers, until he was sure they weren't shaking.

Then, quietly, he whistled Genma back.

Suguru's corpse looked almost peaceful. Genma raised an eyebrow at the bandages covering incisions he knew by rote. Incisions that traced over chakra paths to root out jutsu-traces with brutal efficiency. Kakashi had even bandaged up Suguru's hands, or what was left of his hands: blood-stained balls of gauze hiding obliterated digits.

Genma still didn't like Kakashi. Not even a little. But in that moment, that act, Kakashi had earned a little of Genma's respect. Genma nodded down at the corpse, touched two fingertips to the inner tail of the spiral tattoo on his arm, and met Kakashi's gaze. "Thank you."

He bent down to pick up Suguru's ruined shoulders, his cut-open-pieced-back-together head. Kakashi wordlessly took the corpse's legs, and let Genma lead the way to the grave he'd prepared.

When Suguru was in the ground, Genma opened the slagging kit. Two pouches of chemicals: one large, full of grey-green powder, coarse as sand; and a smaller one holding glittering, char-colored dust, fine as talc. He opened the small pouch and tipped the contents into the large one, shaking it to blend them, then carefully applied the mixture to every part of Suguru's corpse. When he was satisfied the distribution was even, he unsealed a slim metal flask and sprinkled an oily yellow liquid over the body. A smell like ammonia and sulfur fouled the air, and the powder immediately began to foam, oozing up in obscene bubbling masses, before it began its true work of decomposing all but the memory of Inouye Suguru.

Genma watched flesh melt and bones soften and crumble, then finally, when he was sure the reaction was going to be complete, started shoveling earth back over the body.

Kakashi started forward with every intention of helping, but the smell drove him back. Drove him to his knees, almost. It had been nearly six years since the war -- since every ninja had had almost daily exposure to rotting corpses -- and he'd grown soft in the aftermath, clearly.

The stubborn, almost masochistic desire to toughen himself up right now made him put one foot in front of the other, stepping closer to the open grave. Genma shovelled down a clump of moist soil that splattered over the former-corpse, filling the air with another gout of scent. Kakashi's stomach lurched.

In the choice between retching all over a teammate's former comrade--his own former comrade--and melting silently into the undergrowth to pull himself back together, Kakashi, for once, picked the option that left feelings intact. A ripple of chakra put him across the clearing; a second left him on a broad treebranch where he could at least keep a look-out in between gulping deep, steadying breaths. He resisted the urge to crouch down and put his head between his knees.

There was no sign of enemy ninja, at least, even when he spread his chakra out in a thin, delicate net to cover more ground.

Genma hadn't been injured, either. And Kakashi's own... poison episode was survivable. He felt better already, downwind. Enough to push his wolf-mask to one side and breathe easier through plain black cloth.

A successful mission, then. With Genma, of all people.

Leaning against sun-warmed back, listening to the distant crunch of the shovel, Kakashi tried to let himself relax, just a little.

Genma wondered if Kakashi's absence was respect or shame. He didn't really care which. In a silent, sun-filled clearing, in an anonymous corner of Waterfall Country near the border with Earth Country, Genma quietly recited a fragment of the Lotus Sutra with every spadeful of earth he added to Suguru's grave. Maybe the merciful Amida would intercede, even for a soul as karmically sullied as a traitor ninja who'd killed his own family. The repetitive motions: lifting soil, turning the heavy shovel over, watching the dark earth cover Suguru's remains, was like the turning of the wheel of life.

When the grave was filled in, Genma resealed the shovel and the remains of the slag kit in a scroll, tucked the scroll back into his utility pouch, worked an earth jutsu to roughen the soil and hide the grave, and went to find Kakashi.

"How are you feeling? Any effect from the poison left?" he asked, swinging up onto Kakashi's branch. The younger man looked uneasy, but well enough, his chakra presence felt strong enough: blue-white, like the electricity he channeled, and painfully sharp. "If you're okay... It's done."

Kakashi straightened up hastily and slid his ANBU mask back into place, regarding Genma coolly through eye-holes cut just a little bigger than standard. "Good," he said, disregarding Genma's question. "Let's head home, then. And warn your farmers along the way," he added, with just a hint of irony, as he leapt down from the branch.

A last glance at the clearing showed devastation with no clear source. Blasted trees, blighted greenery, raked-over soil. But the clones had cleared the weapons away, obliterated the footprints, and removed the last traces of poison. There was nothing to reveal Konoha had ever been here. Even Suguru's grave was indistinguishable from its surroundings, though Kakashi did notice that Genma had chosen a spot beneath one of the only remaining trees, a broad and shady sycamore, for his former-friend.

Not a bad place to spend eternity, Kakashi thought, after a life of fighting. Peaceful, at least, even if it was far away from home.

He shook the thought off and turned his face to the South-East, setting an easy, loping pace that would put them squarely in the centre of Fire Country in two days. Genma insisted on sticking by his side this time, rather than falling back; Kakashi tolerated it for the sake of keeping a sidelong eye on his mission partner.

Genma really hadn't taken any damage in the fight, other than some peculiar staining on his armour and a faint gouge on his backplate that ended in a raw-looking scratch across the nape of his neck. Not deep and therefore not worrying; it was probably from one of Kakashi's kunai, anyway, when he'd almost given Genma an accidental haircut in the first few seconds of battle. The bruise on Genma's jaw was going to be spectacular, though.

Well, serve him right. Mask-grabbing bastard.

Life-saving mask-grabbing bastard, Kakashi admitted to himself, grouchily.

After an hour of running, the silence grew oppressive and Kakashi's thoughts had spun themselves in a slow circle back to grave-sites far from home. Genma ran without a word, calm and steady, presumably thinking his own thoughts. Kakashi couldn't smell any real trace of emotion through his chemical-weary nose.

"Where do you want to end up?" he asked abruptly, glancing sideways.

Genma was startled enough by the sudden burst of conversation from his morose companion that he almost broke stride. "End up?" he asked, turning his head right around to peer through cat-shaped eye holes. Kakashi's posture gave nothing away, and his face was completely hidden behind the abstract blue and black swirls of his white wolf mask. Genma almost answered home, where else are we gonna go?, but something about Kakashi's inflection let him read the deeper meaning in the question.

"Old," he said at last. "Old. Retired. Happy. Maybe with great-grandkids or something." It was such an absurd desire for an ANBU to have, he had to laugh. Knew Kakashi had to be laughing.

"But barring that... Barring that, I guess I hope when I go, it's in the service of my village, in the company of friends. And I hope I take out twenty of whatever bastards finally get me on my way out." They ran another several paces in silence, the twin fantasies of heroism and peace spinning like black ribbons between them.

"However I go, it's not gonna be like that. Like Suguru."

There was a soft sound from Kakashi, maybe a snort, maybe just a breath.

"What about you?"

Kakashi should have expected the question, but he still blinked. Slowed his pace fractionally, searching for the right answer. Not like Suguru. He could still feel the sharp crack-break of neck bones twisting beneath his hands, wrenched until the tendons and cartilage snapped. A quick death, almost painless -- mercy, in it's own way. But not the way he wanted to leave the world.

One shoulder lifted. "Happy would be nice," he admitted, but he could hear the doubt in his own words. Genma had painted a pretty picture, with his old age and great-grandkids and retirement. But Kakashi knew himself better than that. Knew that he'd never be happy with stagnation, and even if he did make it out of ANBU--strange thought--who would want to be his partner? More so, how would he ever get along with people who weren't ANBU?

Besides, the village would always, always need him for something.

They ran on a while longer. The sun curved down lower on the right, casting long streaks of shadow, and Genma's silence turned from waiting expectantly to introverted once again. It was ironic, Kakashi thought, in-between wrestling with his own thoughts, that Genma would chose after the mission to be calm and centred, while Kakashi's own adrenaline burned itself out into jitteriness.

Any other mission, with any other person, he might have been thinking about finding a convenient tree and enticing his mission partner into shoving him against it. But definitely not this mission, and definitely not Genma, and very definitely not with his lungs still burning in his chest.

Conversation would have to do.

"I don't care where I'm buried," he said, and saw Genma twitch out of the corner of his eye. "But I want my name on the Stone."

All my friends are there.

Kakashi, it turned out, was not quite so thoroughly imperturbable as he pretended. Genma gave him another look, and slowed his pace a little. "I can't imagine any future in which it isn't," he said softly. "Unless the Stone doesn't exist in that future at all."

Looking at their shadows stretching out long and purple before them, at the rippling orange and yellow of turning leaves on the hills, the stunning crisp blue of the autumn sky, it was easier to contemplate death. To look at the skeleton colors of Kakashi's and his uniforms and see them as simply part of the whole. Suguru was gone, just as so many others: Kobo, Seijuro, Genma's sensei Kazuma, his sisters, his parents and grandparents, the first, second, and fourth Hokages... Just as enemies whose names Genma would never know, targets whose last words had been "Why?", innocents who'd been in the wrong place, the wrong life, and the guilty who'd gotten more mercy than they deserved... All gone.

Nothing more now, than memories, and only some of them with their names etched in basalt, to mark the passings of heroes. One day Namikaze Minato, Kamiyama Kobo and Hoashi Seijuro, Kamizuki Kazuma, Shiranui Genichi, Yuuichi, Etsuko and Yumiko, would share the stone with Hatake Kakashi and Shiranui Genma. It was as inevitable as the coming fall of leaves.

"You'll be there. So will I."

"Oh, sure," Kakashi drawled, with a sidelong smile Genma couldn't see, "take all the joy out of it."

"All life is suffering," Genma intoned wryly. "Why should your death be any different?"

"Because I'm a very special snowflake," said Kakashi, without pausing to think, "and when I die, there will be cross-continental mourning. It's inevitable." He put on a little burst of speed, leaping up and ahead into a new bank of sturdy, broad-limbed trees. Almost, but not quite, like the forests of home.

Genma followed him, drawing level again. "Thanks for the warning. I'll make sure to die first, so I can avoid it." A subtle flicker of chakra, and he pulled ahead.

Kakashi caught up. "You'd mourn, too," he informed the side of Genma's mask. "You're like that. All bleeding-hearted and mushy."

A giant oak forked the way in front of them. Genma whipped around to the right while Kakashi bolted left, and came up leading the way on the other side. His breath rasped in his lungs, but not enough to make him want to stop.

"Yeah," panted Genma, drawing level yet again, "gets me laid. It's a good trait, being human. You should try it."

Kakashi's lips curved. "I get plenty of action--" he began, turning to look at his mission partner.

But Genma was gone.

Kakashi snapped out of his run so fast he almost broke both shins, and flooded his chakra out. No enemies--no enemies-- He leapt to another tree anyway, not wanting to be a standing target, and scanned around. Still nothing...

Genma, right there.

Kakashi blinked and dropped down to the forest floor. In front of him was something that looked like an unholy mating between shinobi and bush. Genma had apparently fallen straight down, ricocheted off a tree, and landed in some some low-rise, thorny-looking shrubbery. He was thrashing his way out, swearing. Kakashi's heart-rate slowed; he smirked.

"Miss your step?"

Genma cursed again, picking his way out of the brambles. Thorns in his damn shoulders, scrapes across the back of his neck. Sticks and burrs in his hair. He combed gloved fingers through it, and tried to come up with an answer that would satisfy not just Kakashi, but himself as well.

How had he missed his footing? He had no memory of slipping at all. None. One minute he'd been racing Kakashi through the treetops, and the next free-fall, with barely half a second to correct his trajectory and turn the fall into something more humiliating than neck-breaking.

"I don't know. Yeah," he finally admitted, feeling foolish, and deeply glad of the mask hiding his glowering face. "Must have hit some moss."

"Y'know, you're right," Kakashi intoned gravely. "At this rate, you are going to die first."

"Suck my dick," Genma said curtly, before he had quite thought out all the implications of saying that to Kakashi. He leapt up to the trees again, dashing ahead with serious intent. This was a race. As he sped ahead, he tried not to dwell too much on that missed step, and the moss that was mysteriously absent from any of these other trees.

Kakashi caught up easily. Damn him, he was a speedy son of a bitch. At least he was breathing hard. He laughed sharply, a dark, feral sound, and tipped the ceramic wolf face back to expose a fangy-looking grin that the clinging cloth mask only made more sinister. "Don't tempt me, Shiranui," he warned, throaty and dangerous. He was gone before Genma could answer, putting on a burst of speed that was truly impressive.

Truly galling.

Genma spun chakra to his feet, pushed off hard, and surged after Kakashi's retreating back. The gaps between the trees were increasing, necessitating a hands-and-feet approach as he drew near Kakashi again. "Forget it," he panted. "You don't have the skill."

His chest was starting to burn from the chase. His fingers felt a little numb at the tips. He swung around a branch, flipped to a higher level, and found himself falling again.

"Mother fuck!" This time he caught himself before he hit the ground.

Kakashi felt the wild burst of honey-yellow chakra hit his own coils and burn through, leaving an odd kind of tingle in their wake. He turned mid-step, using a branch as a fulcrum to keep from accidentally spinning himself to the forest floor, and halted some ten feet away from Genma's dangling, frustrated body.

"What were you saying about skill?" he asked, mostly rhetorically as his gaze focused and narrowed. One slip was a mistake. Two was something else.

"That you lack it," Genma snapped, pulling himself up. Something wrong in the movement of his fingers caught Kakashi's eye; they were just a little awkward, like his hands were cold. Or stiff. Of course, everyone knew Genma had hand problems, you weren't supposed to notice it. But this seemed different.

"Mm," said Kakashi absently, circling closer as Genma caught his breath. "Funny, that's not what I hear. Pull your hair up?"

"Ha ha, no." Genma pulled himself up from his crouch, one hand out to steady himself against the trunk of his tree, and glared at Kakashi through his cougar-mask. "Do you have some kind of long-hair fetish I was unaware of?"

Kakashi rolled his eyes. "Absolutely. In fact, I'm about to pin you to that tree. All this falling down is an incredible turn on." He leapt across to Genma's branch and was rewarded with an obvious startle from the man. "Relax, I just want to look at that scratch on the back of your neck. Move your hair, already."

There was a too-long pause. Kakashi snapped his fingers in front of Genma's mask, getting no reaction, then Genma startled again and backed up. "Uh, what? What scratch? I'm fine, it's just some thorns."

Eyebrows arching, Kakashi pushed his own ceramic mask to one side, and hooked Genma's off before he could protest. Genma's mouth shaped around an insult, but his eyes looked glassy. Done with time-wasting, Kakashi simply grabbed him by the shoulder, spun him around, shoved him against the tree trunk, and flipped his ridiculously long hair aside.

In the microsecond before Genma swung back to punch him, he caught a brief look at the latest reason for his heart to beat double-time.

"Oh, shi--"

Genma's fist clipped his chin; Kakashi twitched his head sideways to avoid most of the blow, saw a brief burst of stars, and knocked Genma's hand aside.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Genma demanded, swinging again; Kakashi smacked him in the face with his own cougar-mask and used the moment of disorientation to yank the Sharingan's cover off.

"Look, idiot!" he snapped, catching Genma with the black-and-red spin. A small, simple genjutsu that showed Genma exactly what Kakashi had seen in the last thirty seconds. He knew it worked the moment Genma went limp, limbs falling slack, and Kakashi had to grab him before he tumbled off the tree branch.

So much for a goddamned easy mission.

The disorientation of the Sharingan-generated illusion was sharp and painful. Where he'd been facing Kakashi, taking a lip-splitting blow from his own mask, about to rip the asshole's head from his damn shoulders, now Genma was facing... Someone else from behind? Same height. Himself? It was like looking at the back of one of his own clones, but those weren't his hands, with their long straight fingers tugging the clone's hair aside.

The scratch across the base of the clone's neck seemed almost inconsequentially shallow, but something was wrong there. The edges of the meager wound were blue-purple and raised, looking almost like powder burns, with faint traces radiating out from the edges. Visible veins maybe, or...

The clone spun around, aiming a right-cross from the shoulder with admirable form. Most clones weren't that good. And he was dodging, dodging strangely, not quite the way he knew to move to avoid his own clone's blow in a spar...

He snapped back into present reality to find himself sagging in Kakashi's grip.

"The fuck do you think you're doing?" Genma gasped, shoving straight-armed against Kakashi's shoulders, backing hard against the tree trunk behind him. He shook his head, dizzy and still short of breath, as if he'd been running hard.

"Sit down," Kakashi barked, backing away. An unmistakable order, but then he sat himself, grey eye fixed on Genma with the same intensity he might have used on an enemy. He tapped the back of his own neck. "I'm hoping you know what that is, and what you need to do to fix it. Otherwise I'm panicking." His tone was at odds with his words, calm and level, and anything but panicked.

Genma blinked again, reached a hand up to rub his aching face, then slid it around to the back of his neck...

Fuck.

Hot tendrils shot out from the scratch, rippling tension down the muscles in his back. He waited for the spasm to subside before he slid down to straddle the branch, facing Kakashi.

"It's.... Well, it could be..." It could be a lot of things. "Maybe it's infected," he said, knowing that was false. The catch in his chest was, if anything, growing worse. "But.. But I think it might be... Be the same stuff you got tagged with before. I've got partial immunity, so it took a while to hit me."

It would explain the shortness of breath. And that powder was caustic. If he'd gotten it into that scratch, then run, sweating, maybe that had been enough to activate it. "Thought I'd avoided it."

At least there was an antidote. And he had two more tubes of the stuff. He was careful, pulling his medkit around with deliberate slowness, extracting the tube with numb, stiff fingers. "We should get down on the ground before I take this. It's probably gonna make me sick for a minute."

"Oh good," Kakashi sighed. "Something else to look forward to."

He tucked his and Genma's masks beneath one arm, plucked the vial neatly from Genma's awkward fingers, flicked through a quick brace of seals, set his hand on Genma's knee, and translocated them straight down and a hundred feet away, to end up on an entirely different section of forest floor, just in case.

Genma regarded him with a slow, steady look, breath hissing quietly between his teeth. "Don't do that," he growled, low in the back of his throat. Kakashi studied the worry lurking in those glazed yellow eyes and flipped a casual salute.

"Aye, boss." It was a drawl, arctic calm. Kakashi pressed the vial back into Genma's fingers, now that they were on the ground safely lined with fluffy leaf litter. Well, almost fluffy. "Take your medicine. If you choke half to death, then you can bitch at me."

Genma's shoulders lifted, tensing. He glared. "You got water in your canteen? We need some water. You want to be useful, fill mine up, and yours too." Kakashi arched an eyebrow, but dug for his canteen and reached out a hand for Genma's; the ANBU masks slipped into the leaves by his side.

Canteen divested, Genma uncapped his antidote tube and tipped what looked like uric acid crystals into his mouth, pulling a face. Fascinated, Kakashi watched while he dealt automatically with summoning a small water jutsu. He could barely remember the latter moments of his own poisoning experience, just the broad stroke details. Choking, falling under Genma's weight, fighting, hands yanking his mask down...

This seemed a lot less dramatic. By the time the two canteens were full, Genma had only gone a few shades paler and shivered once. There was no foaming, no coughing, no cross-eyed vomiting. He cleared his throat heavily and winced. Kakashi watched him intently.

After another moment, he handed Genma's canteen across. "Well?" he asked. "Nothing happened. Is that good or bad?"

"It's... I don't know what it is," Genma answered. His throat felt swollen and abraded from the antidote, and his chest still had a funny, tight feeling, like he couldn't draw a full breath. "I've never seen anyone have a delayed reaction to that stuff, but that's usually because you inhale it. I didn't inhale it, I'm thinking it got into the wound, so it's acting like a contact poison. I think it's systemic, now, but... it's different." Belatedly it occurred to him that he should have made a slurry of the antidote crystals and flushed the wound with them.

He took a long swallow of water, wincing at the motion. "Gives you a sore throat," he added, as if his hoarse voice hadn't already given that away. "When there's not residue. It's kind of new territory, dealing with a delayed reaction like this."

But he felt a little better. And frankly, if he didn't have to go through the foam-spewing phase of countering the poison, he was all for it. "I think it's working. Here..." He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, tipped the last of the crystals from the open tube out onto the cloth, and poured a little water over it, making a bright yellow paste. "Can you wipe the wound down with that? Make sure it's all in there. I'd do it myself, but I'm not sure I trust my sense of touch."

"First sensible thing you've said all day, " Kakashi said dryly, even while he filed that particular piece of information into a new folder marked GENMA: THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT. He took the handkerchief and moved around to Genma's back, crouching down to sweep sweat-soaked brown hair to one side. The scratch was just... strange looking, like nothing Kakashi had ever seen before. Which said something for a man with a fourteen-year career. He smeared the paste carefully over it, listening to Genma hiss quietly.

"How on earth do you stand having this much hair?" he asked conversationally.

"At least I only look like I have bed hair when I've actually spent time in bed," Genma muttered, with a sulky hunch.

Kakashi considered this. "So what you're saying is, I look sexy all the time and you have to work at it?"

"Sure, if the unwashed look is a turn on for you."

Kakashi found his thoughts returning to a shower-room, a lot of pain, and the most wiped out he'd felt after any kind of sex in a long time. He'd met some better, less irritating, far more grateful people since. But there was something different about adding hate into the mix.

Probably, he thought, that wasn't very healthy.

"I wash," he said, distracted sounding, and eased the cloth aside on Genma's neck. Gritty crystals soaked down into the black ANBU shirt, beneath the stained armour. The wound didn't look any different, except for a faint yellowish cast. Kakashi studied it, recalling trajectories. He'd been standing in front of Genma, Suguru had been behind, but Kakashi had shoved Genma down and to the side...

He sighed. It could have been his blade or Suguru's, there was no way to tell without the Sharingan's perfect recall.

"It doesn't look any different," he informed Genma. "What do you want to do now, cauterize it?" Except Genma had said 'systemic', which medics usually said alongside 'blood poisoning', which meant whatever was in your body had gone everywhere. And you couldn't cauterize every blood vessel. Kakashi swallowed another sigh. "Or we could just make camp," he suggested. "See if you do better with sleep."

He'd have to send a messenger home, he realized. Maybe a dog, or a clone.

"I don't actually feel bad, you know," Genma rasped. He pushed himself to his feet, carefully resettling his medkit just behind the outer curve of his right hip. It sat comfortably there, easy to reach for but not in the way. A reassuring weight hanging from his belt, as comforting as the sword at his back, the weapons holster affixed to his right thigh, the ANBU vest itself, with its heavy armoured plates and binding straps.

"That antidote made me feel worse than anything else. That and you trying to break my jaw again. What the hell is it with you and trying to mess up my face, anyway?" He rubbed his jaw, flinching at the tender swelling over angular bone. His tongue flicked out to whet a puffy, split lip. "I'm just a little... I feel a little tired. Think it's affecting my breathing just a little, and maybe my coordination."

Kakashi's arched eyebrow expressed a world of skepticism.

"Fine, I slipped. Twice. I swear I don't feel bad, okay? But yeah, maybe we should look for someplace to camp. Eat something. Fuck, for all I know there's nothing wrong with me at all that a little food and a nap won't fix."

"Do you want me to point out everything wrong with that sentence, or should I leave you and your denial to have a moment in peace?" Kakashi drawled. His voice held an edge as fine as a razor blade.

"Oh fuck you," Genma spat. Every ounce of good will he'd managed to generate for Kakashi was rapidly evaporating. Ungrateful, supercilious, self-righteous little prick. "Let's just go." He snatched up his mask and took off at a brisk jog, staying on the forest floor this time.

"Did that already!" Kakashi yelled after him, just to see the backs of Genma's ears turn red. It was every kind of wrong to bait a poisoned man, but Genma was an ass -- something Kakashi clearly needed to remind himself about. A dog-killer and a bastard in bed (or against the wall, whichever), and it didn't matter if Kakashi had accepted the guilt of Arihiro's death as his own, or that he had set himself up and forced Genma to take him down, or that Genma had actually been nice a minute ago -- Genma was an ass, and Kakashi was delighted to rub his face in it.

Bastard.

He hooked his mask up and settled it back over his face, breathing the scent of old sweat and new poison from the ceramic -- when they found a camp, he was going to wash his mask thoroughly -- before running to catch up with Genma. For a moment he stayed behind the other man, eye narrowed on the ugly blue-rimmed scratch that flashed every so often through light brown hair, as if by looking at it he could fix it, then he drew level.

"Y'know," he commented airily, "for a man who's fine, you sure--" run slow, was what he meant to say. But Genma derailed that train of thought entirely when he stumbled on thin air, cracked his shoulder against a tree, and lurched directly into Kakashi's path.

Reflexively, Kakashi dodged smartly aside and grabbed Genma by his upper arm, hauling him up before he fell. For a moment, Genma didn't react, then he startled wildly and wrenched out of Kakashi's grip.

Kakashi made a mild noise in the back of his throat. "Yeah," he said. "You're perfect."

For the first time since he had been straddling Kakashi's prone, writhing body, screaming at him to breathe, Genma felt the icy hand of fear grab him by the solar plexus. "What-- what just happened?" he demanded, staggering back from Kakashi, wild-eyed and panting.

He remembered running. Running, running and then...

Then Kakashi was holding him by the shoulder, fingers digging painfully into a bruise Genma didn't remember getting.

It was like a genjutsu, like the disorienting whirl of an Uchiha's Sharingan, like being in a nightmare. Genma brought his fingers together in the ram seal, letting his chakra pressure build. The chakra in his coils felt sluggish, and his back prickled and ached. "Is there a genjutsu on me?"

"Nothing," Kakashi said with conviction. "You just tripped. On thin air."

Genma let the jutsu go uncast.

"I don't... I don't remember tripping. I tripped? You're sure?" He could feel his heart racing, feel his breath chafing raw in his throat, thick in his chest. "Did I pass out?"

"If you did, it was only for a second." Kakashi's face was hidden by his mask; his voice flat, giving nothing away.

"It's... It could still be from the poison. Delayed reaction. That stuff interferes with your cell metabolism. That's why I had to get the antidote into you so fast, before." Genma forced himself to take slower breaths. To think it through rationally. "If I'm having a delayed reaction because of my immunity, I might also have a slow response to the antidote."

Yes. Yes, that made sense. The tingling in his fingertips and toes was diminishing as his heart slowed. He just needed to keep his wits until the antidote had a chance to fully work.

It was fascinating to watch how Genma talked himself back from the ledge. Not that Kakashi didn't appreciate it; a Genma who was busy freaking out would've been much, much harder to deal with. This Genma could at least be reasoned with -- well, sort of.

Kakashi raked a hand through his hair. "And what if it wasn't the poison that got me? We triggered at least a dozen traps between us. Do you have antidotes for the others?"

"I have specific antidotes for the five of the worst poisons, and spectrum antidotes for three general classes." Genma's masked face revealed nothing, but his shoulders were tense; the fingers of one hand tapped a brief staccato against his leg, then stilled.

"But you can't mix all of those, right?" Kakashi asked, after he'd unravelled the geek-speak.

"You can mix A and C. If you have to. And you can mix some of the specifics with the generics. The one I already took you can mix with two of the others, and with standard B and C."

Genma started to walk again; Kakashi fell into step by his shoulder. Neither of them seemed inclined to try a faster pace.

"Seems like it'd be worthwhile trying a few other antidotes, then," Kakashi suggested. "If they're not going to kill you."

"Taking antidotes for things you're not poisoned with is a lot like just taking a different poison." Genma's voice hit a different tone, almost a lecturing quality, like a man getting ready to teach a class. "'Possible to take together' isn't the same as 'safe'. Besides, I'm not showing symptoms of anything but the one you got tagged with."

"I'm pretty sure my tongue didn't turn blue," Kakashi pointed out, after a second to absorb this. Poisons were not his world. "Seems like that would be something worth mentioning."

Genma's lean shoulders lifted in a dismissive shrug--I know more than you--and the conversation ended abruptly. Kakashi slid a glance right at the slowly descending sun, the shadows lengthening on the ground, and felt his own shoulders hunch. They were running out a light.

"I think there's a stream a few miles up ahead," he said. "We can camp there."