Over the past four weeks Ryouma had wished, aloud and repeatedly, for something bad to happen to the ANBU vice commander. He hadn't exactly pictured this: Kuroda's blood slicking the dark basalt floor, Usagi steadying his shoulders while Abe mixed a blood pill into a canteen, Raidou turning Kuroda's right arm to show Genma the deep gouges from biceps to wrist. It looked like something had tried to chew his arm off.

Satomi crouched on the edge of the water, panting. Her hands were scraped and bloody, and she'd lost her knife. Ginta tossed her another canteen; she guzzled half before she explained. "Eizo had the rear. We were coming out of the kelp when — something — grabbed him." She looked up, meeting Usagi's eyes. "I couldn't get back in time."

Usagi's jaw worked sideways. "Sakamoto," she rapped out, and started for the water. Ginta threw the sealing scroll to Kasumi and followed her.

Satomi lurched to her feet, barring their way. Her eyes still spun like black pinwheels in blood. She said hoarsely, "There wasn't enough to bring back."

Kuroda said, almost steadily, "It bit him in half." He hissed as Genma clamped a disinfectant-soaked bandage over the wounds. "Stay put, Usagi." The bandages began to turn red.

For a heartbeat moment, Ryouma thought Usagi would jump anyway.

Ginta's chakra pulsed out in a brief lightning-flash, crackling around the ember of his ANBU spark. He stood beside Usagi like a hunting hound at point, every muscle straining forward as his senses stretched outward. Then the taut muscles of his legs relaxed, and his shoulders dropped. He touched his shoulder, where the ANBU tattoo curled beneath a flesh-toned patch, and looked up at his captain.

Usagi said, quietly, "Dammit." She let her breath out slowly, staring at the water.

Then she turned. Ginta slipped back to join Kasumi in unpacking the sealing scroll. Usagi asked Satomi, "What was it?"

"Looked like an eel," Satomi said, "but eight meters long and about twice as thick through the torso as— as Namiashi, there. Our knives broke on it." Her voice shook, for the first time. "I'm sorry."

Usagi cupped a hand over Satomi's shaved head, wordless acknowledgment: You did what you could. Satomi closed her eyes, opened them on black again, and looked down at her scraped-raw hands.

Fukuda said, "Fanged eel. They take pearl divers every year." Her face was carved marble, unreadable.

Genma glanced up briefly, then focused on Kuroda again. "Can you move your fingers, Vice-commander?"

Kuroda gritted his teeth. His fingers curled towards his palm. The disinfecting bandages were fully crimson, now; Genma peeled them away, and Abe slipped in to hand him a thick pad of clotting gauze.

"The shoulder may be dislocated," Kuroda said, in a distant voice.

"We'll get to it once the bleeding's controlled." Genma pressed the clotting gauze to the vice-commander's arm. Blood welled into it from distinct, ragged-edged puncture wounds, carved in a deep semicircle through the flesh of biceps and forearm. Shallower gouges marked where the creature had torn free—without, luckily, tearing Kuroda's arm away with it. The fanged eel must barely have set its teeth in before Satomi counter-attacked.

Uchiha. Rumor said their Sharingan could see an attack before it happened.

Not fast enough for Eizo, though.

"How good are you with a tourniquet jutsu?" Genma asked Abe. "We can do physical, if you're not familiar with it."

"I know it." Abe raced through the seals: Ox and Tiger to start, like most other medical ninjutsu, then reverse Rat, Serpent, Boar, Dragon, reverse Ox, half Tiger. His hands lit green. He held them high, studying Kuroda's arm.

"Block the brachial artery," Genma directed. "That ought to be sufficient."

Abe nodded and curved his palm against the pit of Kuroda's arm. Kuroda hissed again, then clenched his jaw.

Genma wiped the blood away again with the soaked dressing. The wounds seeped a little, but not enough to drip.