Dazed brown eyes blinked at him from under a sheet of blood; the edge of her mask had gashed her forehead open. “Taichou?” she mumbled, and then winced. “Owwww.”

He didn’t have to ask what hurt. She’d held onto her sword, like every good ninja was trained to. But at the cost of not gutting herself on a truly crappy landing, she’d come down on her left side. The shoulder was hunched unnaturally high and pulled forward. When he touched the joint, she didn’t flinch, but when he ran his fingertips over her collarbone, something gave. She lurched upright and swore at him.

Snapped clavicle. To make a perfect matching set with her bitten, gashed shoulders.

“When we get home, I’m going to drill you on falls until you bleed,” he said tightly, and swept her off the ground, grabbing her elbow firmly to help stabilize the break.

“What? And break my other collarbone?” she said, flinging her good arm around his neck, naked sword blade pressed to his back. “Where’s Ram?”

Nowhere Raidou wanted to think about.

“Under her,” he said, and ducked as one of the queen’s legs thrashed free, raining dirt and stone down on them, before the earth jutsu managed to recapture the limb. “I need to get you out of here, then I can look for him.”

Katsuko sucked in a sharp breath, bloodless skin turning paler. But she only said, “Take my clones with you.”

On the edges of his senses, he could feel the twilight glimmers of her chakra getting closer—a dozen clones returning from the forest, where they’d left the remainder with the civilians.

Raidou made it halfway to them, carrying Katsuko, when the queen’s continuous scream went from furious to—something else entirely. A sawing, rising disharmonic that grew louder and louder, and tighter and tighter, until Raidou’s ears ached and his head rang. He looked back and saw the massive body arching off the ground, no longer fighting, just straining upwards, as if drawn by a taut wire.

“What the—”

Katsuko laughed suddenly, savage, and he felt it.

The demon-queen’s immense, steely chakra turning putrid. Yellow blood ran black, oozing out of the cracks between the giant armored plates. The thorax inflated as disgusting, gaseous pressure built up inside, straining the body beyond the point of no return.

Three feet of steel punched up between two interconnected stomach-plates, ripping across the join, and the queen burst.

A geyser of foul-smelling black fluid shot into the sky, mixed with colorful streaks of smeared flesh that had once probably belonged to organs. The entire thorax ripped open and flooded out, melting across the mountainside. The upstanding legs shuddered and twitched, still held by Raidou’s jutsu, and the broad jaws shivered with dying spasms.

Raidou clapped a hand over his mouth and nose. Katsuko gagged, retched, laughed, and punched her good hand into the air, sword blade scattering rain. “Awesome,” she shouted.

Somewhere in the middle of that, Ryouma was probably drowning.

“Set your clones on any demons still moving,” Raidou said, putting Katsuko down on an uprooted tree at the mountain’s edge, where the oncoming river wouldn’t get her. “I’ll be right back.”

“Don’t drown in the stuff, taichou,” Katsuko said, as her clones bolted past to wage war on the few remaining demons, who were mostly trying to run. “That would be a pain.”

Raidou was already turning to run; he tossed her an acknowledging wave over his shoulder, and went back up the mountain as fast as he could move. His jutsu was still active, holding the queen’s legs apart like a spread ribcage around the crater of her chest. He cancelled it and pulled the remaining chakra back. Most of the stone arms crumbled, splashing down into the oily lake of putrefaction, but a few stayed upright, anchoring the corpse.

Roughly in the center, Ryouma’s ANBU spark glinted faintly.

Raidou reached the edge of the black organ-slick, took his last breath of even slightly tolerable air, and stepped up, chakra-running across the rotted mess like he’d run across a swamp. Except uphill, through fumes. The rancid air actually stung against his burns, making his raw eyes tear and stream.