The camp disappeared with startling swiftness. Fire quenched and buried, canteens refilled, scrolls sealed. Kuroda led them back onto the beach and up the strand, until sand gave way to rock and water.

"Hatake, Uchiha, take point with Fukuda and Yuuhi," he said rapidly. "Namiashi, Sakamoto, Tousaki, with me. Shiranui, support Abe. Usagi and Yamada take the rear. Hide anything shiny, and don't die."

No one spoke. Kakashi built Fukuda's bubble-jutsu, but this time Satomi took the stump of her arm as they entered the water. The waves closed over their heads, and they were gone.

Raidou, stony-faced, built Kuroda's bubble. With one arm bound to his chest, the vice commander was now the weakest swimmer on the team. Raidou and Ryouma pulled him through the waves, until they could submerge in deeper water.

Five kilometers. An hour, perhaps, at Ryouma's top swimming speed under the best conditions, which these were decidedly not. Waves buffeted; currents seized and spun them on. Schools of fish slivered through their little shoal, darting away just before they scraped against his grease-bared skin. He couldn't accurately gauge time or distance or direction, but two tiny ANBU sparks glimmered like lodestars ahead of him, Ginta just out of reach and Kakashi further away. Raidou and the Vice-commander blazed at his side. Then Genma behind, and the rest of Team Thirteen…

He could swim blindfolded or even blind, he realized, and he would still know exactly where Team Six was, and how the other ANBU filled in the world around him.

Air grew thin. They surfaced in the trench of a wave, refilled their bubbles, and dove again. Ryouma began to track time by his lungs' growing burn. Fifteen minutes between each refill. A second refill, and a third, and they'd passed the one hour mark but the dark shadow of land looked no closer…

The next time they surfaced, Kakashi and all three of the women were there, treading water.

Ryouma's bubble popped. He gulped fresh air. "What's going on?"

Fukuda shook her head. Ginta whispered helpfully, "Sound carries over water."

Ryouma revised his grip on the Vice-commander's greasy arm and looked around. Gentle waves rolled around him, bobbing shinobi up and down like rubber ducks in a child's bathtub. He could hear the crash and roar of surf, though— and there, looming abruptly close, a grey smear of cliff crowned with a dark tangle of vegetation.

Aoshima. Uncharted home island of Kirigakure.

Genma's head bobbed up, sleek as a seal's. Abe, hollow-eyed, was beside him. Usagi and Kasumi followed.

"The cliffs are dangerous here," Fukuda said, low and rapid. "There's another cave that leads to the surface, but if you miss the entrance, the surf will break you on the rocks. Time it for the crest of the wave, and don't let the undertow drag you out. You won't get a second chance."

Her eyes swept over all of them. She nodded, waited a bare moment for Kakashi's bubble jutsu, and then dove.

They followed.