“About you,” Kakashi said, without ire. A teacher should be proud of their student.

The seal-viewing party was wrapping up. Kakashi stepped around Ryouma to take a look, but there wasn’t anything special to glean. Except for its longevity and clever placement, the trap was just a simple trip-trigger.

Ryouma summoned his new clone, which set off with an extra bounce in its step, and the scouting trip recommenced. When they came to a fork in the tunnel, Ginta pulled a slim kaiken dagger out of nowhere and spun the polished wooden scabbard on the ground. It landed with the handle pointing left. Ginta pocketed it again and directed them right.

They passed the remains of several defunct traps, just shreds of energy clinging to stone. Ryouma’s clone loped ahead, followed closely by Satomi and Kakashi. The tunnel wound through a series of bends that eventually dead-ended in a collapsed heap of jagged rock. Ryouma’s clone poked around a little, but turned up nothing more ominous than a skittering cave spider, which reared at them. The clone took a hasty step back.

They backtracked to the fork and took the left tunnel, which angled upward. A few short side-tunnels contained the remains of abandoned supplies, destroyed by mold and crabs, but the main tunnel continued true. In the dim light, Satomi’s Sharingan glittered almost black. Kakashi held his own in reserve, relying on his nose and chakra senses.

A warning prickle shivered over his skin, just as Satomi’s head jerked up. “Tousaki—!”

Ryouma’s clone didn’t get the chance to react. The floor beneath its feet shifted, rippling, and stone tendrils lashed up to wrap around its legs. The clone staggered. The tendrils wrenched apart. False bone snapped, both knees collapsing into unnatural angles. The clone, coded to be a perfect battlefield distraction, cried out with Ryouma’s voice. Kakashi jerked half a step forward, then caught himself.

Behind them, the real Ryouma muttered a curse. The clone dissolved in a burst of smoke before the floor finished sucking it down. When Kakashi looked back, Ryouma grimaced and rubbed his right knee.

Ginta moved up to stand between Kakashi and Satomi. “Well, kids,” he said brightly. “What’s it look like this time? More mirrored-seals, or did our Mist friends get creative?”

There was a sharp, glinting edge to him, and Kakashi realized Ginta was enjoying himself.

Satomi, by contrast, was narrow-eyed and tense, pacing the width of the corridor for different viewing angles. “I don’t see the seal.” She stalked back again, like a frustrated tiger. “It triggered out of—nowhere. Now it’s gone again.”

Kakashi crouched at the edge of the trap, where the floor had returned to solid stone. Cautiously, he flicked a fragment of rock across the surface. When that triggered nothing, unsheathed his knife to tap the blade’s point against the floor. It chinked dully, metal against rock.

Very carefully, he teased out a half-dozen strands of chakra and feathered them over the ground, searching for the sensation that had first warned him. He’d barely stretched beyond the edge when the ground heaved, lashing out at him with grasping stone tendrils.