Katsuko nodded and fell into step on Raidou’s left. The gauze covering her shoulder was soaked in red, and sticky crimson trails stained her chestplate, overlaying the dried blood from the Fujiyama girls. But there wasn’t a flood and she hadn’t fallen, so—

“Big production for a little scrape, Rat,” Raidou said.

Katsuko shrugged her good shoulder, unruffled. “When I do things, captain, I do them all the way.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Raidou said.

Genma’s chosen spot was a giant fallen tree, where the towering uprooted base made a shelter from the rain they could tuck against and defend. Anything attacking would have to come from the front, the right side, or above—a route that became markedly more difficult when Ryouma’s chakra signature flickered close and settled on the trunk above them, like a watchful hawk.

Raidou had barely knelt down again before Genma was pulling his vest off, cutting him out of his black underpinnings, and doing something highly painful with alcohol.

“Ow,” Raidou tried, but it came out more like owaaargh.

“Sorry,” Genma said, unrepentant. “You need a painkiller?”

“I can help, lieutenant,” Katsuko said, before Raidou could answer, which probably translated to I’d really like to torture my captain with alcohol wipes, too.

“No,” Raidou told Genma. And to Katsuko: “No.”

“You can help by keeping pressure on your own wound,” Genma told her.

Katsuko sighed, but complied.

“You know,” Genma said to Raidou, “I hear dodging is a good strategy. Can you feel your fingertips?”

“Yep,” Raidou said, after clenching both hands to be sure. “You realize they attacked without warning, right? Like, oh, let’s say, ninja.”

“I do,” Genma said. “They had chakra. A lot of chakra.”

Familiar coolness washed over Raidou’s back as the first touch of healing jutsu began; he felt flesh and muscle twitch, pulling back into place. It was—still really gross, actually.

“Bet there’s a main nest,” Katsuko said thoughtfully.

“Scorpions don’t live in groups,” Raidou said, breathing out between his teeth.

“But dogs do,” Genma said. “And those two were clearly hunting together.”

“Point,” said Raidou.

His thoughts derailed slightly when Genma did something that burned and ached and rippled all at once, but then it eased and the healing chakra slipped out of his back, leaving a workable looseness behind. Raidou flexed his shoulders tentatively, but stopped when Genma hissed at him.

“Would you let me bandage it before you start trying to reopen the wounds?”

Touchy, Raidou didn’t say. Genma bound his arms, wrapped a complicated criss-cross around his chest and back that covered the shoulder gashes and would, in theory, still let him move, and finished with the backs of his thighs, which was slightly more intimate than Raidou had planned to get with his lieutenant on a first mission, but needs must.

“Done?” Raidou asked.

“Done,” Genma said. “Rat, let me get a look at you.”

Katsuko came forward and bared her shoulder, standing with careful nonchalance while Genma poked, cleaned, and bathed her lacerated skin in a healer’s green glow. It was field medicine, not the bone-deep healing a full-blown medic could do, but they wouldn’t bleed out between now and home.