Ginta shoved the rest of the rat bar into his mouth and turned to shout to Kakashi, only to be met by a small, angry dog.

"Okay, glitter-fairy, what the hell did you say?" Pakkun demanded.

Ginta gave him a blank look. "I'm pretty sure Ryouma took the bluffs trail. In fact, I'm very sure of it. I assume since you're here, Kakashi already told you why?"

"Rookie-boy's missing, the kid's freaking out, and apparently we're doing double-date missions now. Why do you have all the details?" Pakun said, with an unstated 'why are you even here?' limning his tone.

"If I had all the details, we'd be a lot further to finding Ryouma. If I had all the details—" Ginta took a breath and pushed the anger away. "I don't have all the details. I have a tiny few, and I have them because I worked really hard to dig them out from a system that wasn't going to tell either one of us what the hell was going on. Go get Kakashi, we need to take the lower trail. Where did he go? Up?"

"He's checking out the upper trail," Pakkun said, eyeballing Ginta with a disdainful air. "I'll rephrase — why do you have some of the details, and Kakashi has none of the details? Are you keeping him on a leash, or just trying to make him insane?"

"You know as well as I—" Ginta started.

Pakkun cut him off with a rough, dismissive snort. "Actually, never mind. You're a lying ninja; I can smell it on you. Wait here." The little dog turned and ran far faster then it seemed a dog that size should be able to.

Ginta watched him go, not particularly caring what Pakkun thought of him as long as the dog brought Kakashi back and helped with the search. He swallowed another bite of ration bar while he waited for Kakashi: it sat like a lead weight in his stomach, even when he drank half his canteen dry as a chaser. And his leg was killing him, still shaking enough to slow him down.

He tried not to think about that last argument he'd had with Ryouma, while he popped the cap off of a small tin bottle, and swallowed a bitter-tangy soldier pill.