Either his see-me-not jutsu was particularly effective, or Kakashi had managed to land in a mostly unmanned section of the forest. He thought he saw a distant hint of smoke near dawn, rising up further west, but it vanished soon afterward. Other than that, nothing disturbed his run until past midday, when a giant centipede tried to eat him.

It was a short, grisly fight, which ended when Kakashi ran hot chakra through his tanto and split the insect’s back open from neck to tail, spilling yellow guts across the forest floor.

The blood smelled like steel and rancid plantlife, and plumed steam into the air.

Kakashi cleaned his blade and moved hastily upwind. There was nothing he could eat on a centipede without making himself sick, but the corpse was too big to leave as it was, marking an obvious shinobi kill.

After a moment of debate, he risked an earth jutsu. The ground opened beneath the centipede and swallowed it, zipping closed afterwards. There was a visible scar left behind; he kicked loam over it and called it good. The air still smelled foul, but most ninja didn’t have his nose.

Time to not be here.

A translocation dropped him a mile away, helpfully not in the middle of a tree, though it was a near miss. He crouched low on a sturdy branch and took a look at the new lay of the land.

Miles of forest to the south and east, but to the north-west...

Kakashi whistled very, very softly.

The trees gave way to open grassland, which faded fast into broken black earth that spilled all the way to the horizon. He’d known the past year had been dry, but this looked like a wildfire had razed it all down. Skeletons of trees reached blackened fingers towards the unforgiving sun.

Reaching up, he straightened his hitai-ate, giving Obito a look. The blue wash of chakra lines didn’t make the landscape look any more forgiving, but he didn’t see any lurking energy signatures either.

“Any thoughts?” he murmured.

A hot salt tear ran down the edge of his cheek. He pulled the hitai-ate back down.

No cover, no rivers, and he knew that desertscape ended in a treacherous rocky valley. A smart ANBU could hide himself anywhere along the way, like a spider in a trap, and wait for someone to trip the web.

Kakashi thumbed the tear away. “Water first. Okay, dead-last.”

He dropped out of the tree and went river-hunting in the forest to restock his canteen.