Raidou sounded like he believed it. Staring up at the thing heaving itself out of the mountain, Ryouma wasn't sure he could. The Kyuubi had been bigger, but they'd had Sandaime and Yondaime and a whole village of shinobi to fight the Kyuubi, not three injured ANBU. And long, segmented black-armored body kept coming out of the mountain, with a few tiny scorpion-demons scuttling out of the hole around it, ant-sized against this monstrosity.

His hands were shaking as he cut the rot jutsu and reached for his soldier pills. Both of them spilled out of the vial into his wet palm and rolled there, small and brown and innocent-looking. They immediately began to melt in the rain.

He'd taken three in a day before without ill effects. Three in an hour was dangerously close to the edge, but he was probably going to be dead in ten minutes anyway. He tossed both pills back, dropped the vial in the muddy shale, and set his hands together again.

Naizou Tokasu, the Internal Organs Flesh Melt, would serve no purpose here. His range was five meters at best, and they couldn't hope to cripple this monster badly enough to give him a straight shot. He'd have to be fast, darting in and out, hitting with the Nikutai Tokasu wherever he could, and then letting the rot fester and spread while he found a new angle of attack...

And Katsuko was already running up the mountain slope.

"Shit," Ryouma said, and sprinted after her.

Boulders and earth came crashing down as the monster's tail whipped free of its hole. The segmented tail looked off somehow, foreshortened, but then the mountain moved under it, rock shackles reaching up to catch at its legs, to crush the claws. The monster shrieked and wrenched sideways, its free legs scuttling down the shale slope, splintering trees like twigs. Two of the rock shackles crumbled, but the third, snaring one of the hind legs, held firm.

"Rat, go!" Raidou shouted.

Katsuko sprang high into the air and fell like a meteor, blazing bright through the rain. The monster's tail arched and swept to smash her out of the air, but came short. She landed high on its back, where a mammal's shoulders would have been, and ran up an armored ridge to the hut-sized head. Pincher claws raked at her; she ducked low under their sweep and slashed the side of its face. Flame spilled like water over the brow ridges, and the monster screamed.

"Mid-back!" Katsuko shouted, crouching down as the hideous head slewed from side to side to shake her off. "The plate's cracked!"

Ryouma had no breath to answer her. The little demons weren't so little after all, most of them knee-high with stinger-armed tails arching above his waist, and they'd begun to pour down the mountain after their—leader? Queen? God? He kicked one aside, and it fell three meters down the mountain before it caught itself on two legs and sprang for him again.

Rock slabs slammed up out of the earth to strike it out of the air. Ryouma leapt up, hit the top of the furthest slab with one foot, and vaulted higher. He caught a protruding spike on the demon queen's armored side and swung himself onto its back.

The tail swayed over him, huge, dripping. But that was blood, not venom; the stinger-bulb was gone, leaving a gaping wound at the end of the abbreviated tail. If he could get up there...

Too far from vital organs for a quick kill. Katsuko had said the armor plating was cracked. He hauled himself to his feet, anchoring his boots on the slick-wet carapace with chakra, and looked around. The injury was easy to spot: lightning-shot cracks rayed from a fist-sized hole in the plate near the segment of thorax and abdomen. He fed more chakra into his hands, brightening the dried-blood glow of the jutsu, and headed for the crack.

He didn't make it.