Raidou had already put together ‘Kiri-ninja’ from the general odds, but he still raised an eyebrow when Genma said, “Captain of the Mist unit we ran into on our way back. She’s the only survivor.”

The woman looked like she’d been through a bladed tornado. She twitched faintly when he pulled the foil blanket aside enough to find the slim silver chain of her dogtags. He flipped a tag over and squinted at the lettering under the greenish light of his glow-stick.

FUKUDA TAKEDO
REG: 0075393-B
DOB: 12/15/D-45
O-NEG

Captain, clearly a jounin, and twenty-seven, based on the Mist Country calendar that anchored itself on their Daimyou’s assumption of power.

“You’re a universal donor, Fukuda-san,” Raidou said, and let the tags fall back. “That’s handy.”

Her lip curled, showing the gleam of sharp teeth.

“Relax, we’re not draining anyone yet.” Though Genma and Kakashi both had the sour milk coloring of blood loss, and Ryouma looked bruised and exhausted. In fairness, so did the woman, but Raidou was markedly less inclined to sympathy for Kirigakure right now. He jerked his head right and raised his voice. “Safehouse is close. Rat, you can lead the way.”

Katsuko nodded crisply and turned on her heel, swinging up to take point with Ryouma’s prisoner-carrying clone. Ryouma fell back into the trudging run of a man who’d been going at the same aching pace for miles, and expected to go for miles more. On his back, Kakashi didn’t move.

Raidou fell into step next to Genma, who cast him a critical eye.

“What’s wrong with your comms?” Raidou asked, before he could comment.

“Lightning blew them out,” Genma said. “Hound might have helped that along. I take it you ran into company, too?”

“A little,” Raidou said.

“Well, our part of the mission was a complete success. We didn’t hit any snags until we were on our way back to you.”

“Looks like a pretty hefty snag,” Raidou said. “We got Kiri-ninja from the start. Killed the targets, though.”

It wasn’t quite complete success, but it was as much detail as he wanted to go into now.

“We got a Bingo Book kill,” Genma said. “Iebara. Hound did the heavy lifting.”

Raidou managed not to fall over his own feet. “Iebara?”

“Yeah,” Genma said, with a kind of weariness that suggested he’d had a good long while to wrap his brain around the idea. Or perhaps he was just that tired. “There’s pretty much nothing left of him. Hound copied his jutsu and used it on him—some kind of medical jutsu, I think. Takes fresh blood from a handy source and works it like a water jutsu. Hurt like hell to get hit with it.”

Iebara was one of Kirikagure’s monsters, known for leaving blood-wrecked disaster wherever he landed and not much in the way of identifiable bodies. If he’d been using actual blood, that probably explained a thing or two.

He was also rumored to be unkillable.

Raidou stared at the back of Kakashi's silver head and thought, Okay, then.

On the balance, bringing that little piece of good news home might weigh up against, Oh, by the way, Hokage-sama, I smashed one of your major trading hubs. Just a little.

“You said unit. What about the rest of them?” he asked. “You and Ram took them down?”

“All but her. Two other jounin. I don’t know if Ram got their tags before he slagged the bodies.”

So, a legend, two high level fighters, one captive, and if Raidou remembered Genma’s half of the mission correctly, six slaughtered civilians. Plus whatever regular guards they’d run into; Intel had suggested at least twelve.

Not bad for three Konoha boys.

“Good work,” Raidou said, and wondered if he’d remember how to breathe relief by the time they got back to the safehouse.