Smoke stung his eyes. He swapped directions again, heading back toward the cliff. The ground shivered, nearly throwing him off his feet. A young tree, two meters in diameter, crashed down to block his path. He leapt up over it, and a massive dog hit him square in the chest and smashed him back down.

The world was snapping teeth and saliva and snarls. Ryouma jammed his forearm between its jaws and barely kept his hands from seals. Kakashi didn't mind hamstringing him but he wouldn't thank Ryouma for rotting one of his summons. "Your breath stinks," he panted, and kicked the dog in the belly. Then he punched it in the side of the head, for good measure.

He might've punched the tree for all the good it did. The dog shook its head, nearly ripping his arm out of its socket. This one was an immense brindled mastiff with drooping jowls and a studded collar, and it had to outweigh Ryouma by fifty kilos or more. It forestalled another attempt at a kick simply by folding up its legs and dropping on him. His ribs bowed.

Fuck, if this dog thought he was a clone and chewed his arm off— If Kakashi came along and found him trapped beneath a dog—

He laced his fingers together for the kawarimi no jutsu, and left the dog chewing on half a tree branch.

His arm was scratched and sticky with dog-spit, but not actually bleeding. Maybe the dog had more sense than its master. It realized the substitution quickly enough, and crunched down. The tree branch splintered. The dog got to its feet and lifted baleful eyes to the tree where Ryouma crouched, catching his breath. It tipped its head back and howled.

Ryouma cursed, and darted for the next tree.

His last clone died and left him memories of flames streaking like javelins through the forest. Another dog bayed somewhere to his left, uncomfortably close. Ryouma veered right. He knew they were herding him like prey, knew somewhere ahead of him Kakashi lurked with some trap, but—

Teeth snapped at his ankles. The fucking things could chakra-climb. Of course they could, they were summons, at least one of them could talk, this had to be his punishment for looking at Kakashi last night and wanting him—

The trees ended abruptly. He dropped out of the branches and into a clearing at the base of a steep semicircle cliff, with a thin waterfall glinting down the rock to form a shallow pool. The water ran off again to his left, cutting through the forest to join the river.

A dog waited at the top of the cliff, tawny-grey and wolfish and almost as big as the mastiff. It grinned at him, tongue lolling scarlet between very long teeth.

His clone's death-memory knew the sharpness of those teeth.

Ryouma turned, warily, and saw two more dogs coming out of the trees. One was the mastiff; the other was a lean yellow shepherd type, smaller, and probably much quicker.

He bared his teeth back at them. "One of you screwed up. You gave me water."

The stream rose with his chakra. He'd never much seen the point of the showy water-dragons with their glinting fangs and spiky crests; they took too much control to shape, and too much time. Thick ropes would serve just as well, to smash a leaping dog from the air and then bind it down. He could manage three, and hope there wasn't another one lurking...

The shepherd crouched lower, growling. Ryouma tensed. His chakra flexed, and the water-ropes waved and dripped over his head.

And something struck him from the side, blazing-fast. He lost his feet and his control. The water-ropes lashed out and then splashed down, and Ryouma hit the ground on his back, soaked to the skin, with a kunai at his throat.

Kakashi gave him an eye-curving smile. "Hi."

Ryouma tried to punch him in the side of the head.

Kakashi caught his hand effortlessly. A dog's jaws closed around Ryouma's other wrist. Kakashi knelt astride him, controlling his hips in the approved taijutsu manner, and nothing about this morning was fair.

"One point to you," Ryouma said, trying to keep his voice steady. "Let me up."