“S’one option,” Asuma said, taking three steps closer to the crater hacked into the ground. He looked down into the jagged hollow that had so nearly killed two people—four, if you counted the dogs. “Think I have an easier way, though.”

Ibiki lifted an ink-black eyebrow.

Asuma shaped a half-dozen familiar seals, hands moving stiffly in the renewed cold, and took a long draw on his cigarette. “Haisekishou,” he whispered, and breathed out a living ribbon of ash. It hung in the air, dense and black, then swarmed down into the ex-bunker, coating every unstable surface.

He clicked his teeth.

The ash ignited like gunpowder, splitting the air with a flash and a roar that collapsed the over-hanging shelf of stone down into the hole, and toppled the sides with it. Ibiki twitched. Asuma grinned at the other ninja over his shoulder.

“Gettin’ tired, stretch? You almost had a visible reaction there.”

"What was that?” Ibiki demanded. “Fire-based? I caught two tiger seals in there, and a horse."

It took Asuma a second to realize Ibiki was actually impressed, and then he grinned much, much wider.

“Fire jutsu,” he confirmed proudly. “Burning Ash Accumulation, if you want the technicals. Helps keep the crap out of my lungs.”

Ibiki’s eyebrow went up again, like nonverbal punctuation. “Really,” he said. “How many packs will you have to smoke again before you can do it again?”

“After the week I’ve just had? None,” Asuma said dryly. “I’ve got at least one more bang in me. After that, it depends how big an explosion I want to make. What about you? Any fancy tricks for tearing down campsites?”

“Nothing original. But I can make you think you volunteered to do all the work yourself,” Ibiki said, with a frankly alarming grin that stretched his scars sideways and showed all his teeth. He twisted long-fingered hands into seals, summoning a standard D-level earth jutsu. The walls of the crater collapsed further, and dirt from the surrounding area pressed in and packed down, making something that looked almost like a natural hollow. “Add a little grass seed, and it will look like nothing ever happened here once the snow’s done.”

Now it was Asuma’s turn to lift an eyebrow. "You in the habit of carryin' grass seed about?"

Ibiki shrugged. "Ordinarily, no,” he said, producing a small brown sack. "But I grabbed some in the village. Actually it's barley seed, I think."

In the middle of a fraught rescue, Ibiki had thought to grab barley seed.

Well, Asuma had taken a nap. It probably levelled out.

“You are a frightening man,” Asuma said, on principle, and drew a last drag from his cigarette. He crushed the butt out in the snow. “Might as well get to it. I’ll take down the tent while you’re playing green-thumb.”