Kakashi still had one hand held behind his back. He flicked three quick signs, felt the tiny flare of acknowledging chakra, and brought his hand forward, lacing his fingers together. “Okay,” he said. “But only if you clamp that wound.”

Akiyama transferred the blade to the soft skin at Ryouma’s temple, where a hard thrust could puncture the thin skull bone, and wrapped his free hand around Ryouma’s wrist, quelling the blood. “Done,” he said. “You know, you’ve done remarkably well with that dose I gave you. Most people would be comatose by now.”

“I inherited some immunities,” Kakashi said, and flexed his fingers backward. “You realize I’m only going to be able to do one hand?”

“You’ll do both,” said Akiyama, and drew a scratch across Ryouma’s skin.

Kakashi sighed and braced himself, forcing his fingers backward until they began to pop—

The wall behind Akiyama trembled and lurched, flaring with chakra. The solid stone transformed to thick clay, which sheared away in slabs.

“What—?” Akiyama demanded, head jerking around. The scalpel lifted an inch.

Kakashi twisted a six-seal sequence, filling his right hand with screaming birdsong, and threw himself forwards. Without the Sharingan to guide him, it went too fast to pick a perfect target; he just aimed for central mass. Akiyama whipped around just as the Raikiri punched through his ribcage, and the wall behind him collapsed.

Blood sprayed.

Kakashi drove the taller man backwards, through the falling clay, away from Ryouma, into the shattered moonlight of the open valley. He kept going until Akiyama’s back slammed into a tall spur of black shale, which exploded.

In the falling rain of stone chips, Akiyama’s choking cough was quiet. Blood washed down his chin—real this time. Shredded muscles constricted around Kakashi’s arm. Empty hands wrapped around Kakashi’s elbow, pale fingers stuttering and weak.

“Who do you work for?” Kakashi demanded.

Akiyama tried to speak, but only managed a gargle. His lips pulled back, showing red teeth, and his tongue slid out, dark and obscene.

He flexed it like a snake.

Ice slurried through Kakashi’s blood. “Orochimaru?” he whispered.

Akiyama managed a thin, bubbling sound—a laugh with broken lungs behind it—and slumped, eyes sliding half-closed. Blood drooled thickly out of his mouth.

Kakashi wrenched his burning arm back and let the body drop.

“Hatake!” someone yelled.

He jerked around. The moon-masked ANBU agent was bracing the cave ceiling up with earth jutsu and his bare hands. Behind him, his tanuki-masked partner was dragging Ryouma clear and laying him down on an open rock slab, quickly checking a pulse and wrapping a hard grip around that gashed wrist.

Kakashi took a step forward.

“Hatake, stop,” snapped moon-mask.

Kakashi froze. “I didn’t—” he began.

“Your shoulder,” said the ANBU.

Kakashi looked down. Jutting out of the join between his arm and his flak vest, Akiyama’s scalpel stood out like a dart. Thin red trickles of blood ran down his bare arm, because he’d cut the sleeves off.

“Oh,” he said. “Damn.”

That was why you didn’t use the Raikiri without the Sharingan.