"And you reek of death," Genma answered, looking up sharply. His clone held Ryouma steadily enough, but Genma left off his suturing to check anyway. Relieved the rookie was coherent enough to make jokes, even lame ones. "And you bet your damn ass I'm not helping you die. Stupid rookie," Genma said, and pulled the towel the clone had been holding against his head away. It was wet and spotted with blood, but at least the wound looked clotted. In fact it had probably been clotted before whatever had gotten them so wet. Without rain. Sweet Amida's left testicle they were idiots.

"Did you fools try to take a shower instead of just going to the damn hospital straight off and that's why Mari-whatever-her-name-is is now sleeping alone in her own bed and I'm here to play nursemaid?" Genma laughed. "OK, you're excused for not knowing any better, Ryouma. But damn," he glanced at Kakashi and away again, with a cold shouldered reproach that said far more than words could.

Ryouma was concussed. Badly. And chakra-drained. Shaking with that too-fast heart rate that said he'd bled too much, taken too many soldier pills, or both. And he was bruised. Maybe bleeding internally. His heart beat was steady, at least for now, but if that bruising on his sternum hid damage to the heart itself beneath.... even a tiny bruise to the pericardium could kill a man. Drop him dead before the medics could repair it. "Soon as I finish stitching up your side, I'm taking you over to the hospital. You and your partner there, who should have had the good sense to do it himself in the first place."

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Kakashi was ready for it this time, he didn't flinch. Genma's look was nothing new, and his words were already inside Kakashi's head. Already in Kakashi's own voice. Hearing the echo of them snarled by the man putting Ryouma back together was probably a fair price, even if it twisted a kunai up and under his ribcage. He knew he'd fucked up. He'd known since he'd seen Ryouma take that blow and hit the ground on his knees. He was a genius, of course he knew.

Hell if he was going to tell Genma that, though.

"Just him," Kakashi said, and canted his weight, shifting his balance to pull himself back upright again. "Ryouma can go--" should've taken him there already, stupid dog, "--but I don't need to do anything but sleep." He managed to bring his voice back to almost-normal, tone flattening out into drawl. "And then you can get back to your Mari-whoever. I'm sure she'll appreciate the nurse-maiding just as much, Sensei-sama." Sometimes sarcasm was the only weapon you had left.

Of course, sometimes you had reflexes, too. Kakashi caught a flicker of movement in his peripheral vision, and realized he'd been hearing footsteps without taking any notice. Footsteps meant enemy getting close. Pure adrenaline gave him the system shock he needed to wrench away from the doorframe and shift into a strike, aiming up at a throat--

A hand caught his fist and squeezed. Pain happened. This time it didn't stop.

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Raidou had been having a peaceful night. He'd spent most of his day training, mid-way along the uphill slope to getting back into shape after his recent mission-related hospital stay. He'd made some good progress and finished the session with a run and a shower. A decent meal, a good book, and a fairly early night had capped his evening.

Then people had started snarling outside his room.

He'd woken, already tense, to hear the sound of Genma snapping on his... left? Genma's room was on the right. The rookie's room was on the left. What the--? The voice that answered Genma's was quieter, tone spiking up occasionally in something that sounded like anger, possibly fright. It didn't sound like the rookie, either.

Raidou glanced at the clock next to his bed, and scowled at the time. Then he got up, and picked up a sweater to drag over his sleeping tank-top, covering his bare shoulders. He didn't bother putting on shoes, nor did he turn the light on. He knew his own room well enough to move easily in the dark.

He let himself out quietly, closing the door without a click, and spotted Hatake Kakashi leaning against Ryouma's doorframe looking fairly battered. Roadkill was a good description. Wet roadkill. Raidou could hear Genma's voice coming out of Ryouma's room. He sounded pissed, but unhurt. Raidou didn't bother pausing to be surprised, he simply moved down the hallway on bare feet, making no huge effort to be silent. He didn't want to sneak up on someone clearly wired from a mission.

Kakashi gave him no notice right up until he flinched, his muscles bunched, and he jerked around to swing an off-kilter blow at Raidou's jugular. Raidou snapped a hand up, catching the strike automatically (and since when was he able to move faster then the genius brat?) locking his fingers around the kid's fist. He was bringing up his other hand to block a second blow before he realized there was none.

Raidou might not have spared the time to be surprised at Kakashi standing in the door, but he was definitely surprised when the genius in question gasped and dropped like a damn rock. He blinked and arrested the copy-nin's fall with his spare hand, catching him before he hit the floor. Then he noticed the blood.

"Motherfuck, lover boy, what the hell's going on?"

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"Oh fuck, I told him to sit is stupid ass down before he passed himself out," Genma growled, turning towards Raidou. "Damn am I glad to see you though. Fuck. These idiots had a mission and got fucked up is what happened. And then instead of being intelligent and going to the hospital for their blood loss and concussions and general stupidity, they decided to go have some kind of festival of idiocy in the showers. Kakashi came and passed out on my door to get my attention to fix the rookie here. I'm taking them both to the hospital. In fact now seems like a good time to do that, judging by him."

Fucking Kakashi just had to go and pass himself out. Not like he couldn't have seen that coming. And Ryouma was still groaning, still not quite with it. Genma sighed and stood, sending the clone he'd had there for Kakashi over to help Raidou, and getting Ryouma up between himself and his other clone.

"So want to help me get these idiots to some medical care before they die here and we have to fill out even more fucking paperwork?"

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Raidou sighed. It seemed the appropriate thing to do. "Excellent," he said, after trading an unamused look with Genma. "It's wonderful to see the ANBU tradition of rookie hazing is still ongoing, even if this is a little over the top..." Kakashi was surprisingly light, considering how tall he was. Raidou steadied him and got a hand under his knees, lifting him into a basic cradle hold. Genma's clone got a similarly unimpressed look when it tried to lend an unwanted hand, then Raidou's attention was taken up with Kakashi's own hands.

Ouch was not quite the word.

"Damn, kid," he said to the unconscious ...teenager? How old was Kakashi, anyway? "You forget how to block properly?" Ryouma, held between Genma and his other clone, looked like he was in much worse shape. Raidou scowled. "Who the hell let them past the desk in this condition? Fuck me, we've got enough people trying to get us dead without our own doing it through neglect." Dying on the field was one thing, but dying because you'd done your mission, gotten home, and no one cared enough to notice you were bleeding out your last bit of red was something else entirely.

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Ryouma couldn't see much from his non-vantage point on the bed, but his hearing wasn't nearly as fuzzy as his vision, and he could damn well recognize the familiar thwack of fist against flesh. And then the soft gasp and slump of something going very badly wrong.

One of the Genmas turned away and started babbling. Ryouma tried to drag his left arm under him, tried to prop himself up; every sense was shrieking Danger, danger!, and Kakashi was on guard but he couldn't use his hands and something was wrong--

Then hands were touching him again, hauling him up, and his vision swirled scarlet and black, along with his stomach and his balance and everything else. Maybe there'd been hallucinogens in those last soldier pills, instead of just caffeine. He wasn't getting much better at fighting past the fog, but the adrenaline surge helped this time, and when he finally found his feet, he moved on them.

Shinobi, dammit. ANBU. And injury and fatigue and soldier-pill crash, and even concussion, were no excuse for dying. Or letting your teammates die.

There were still two versions of Genma holding him, but they weren't holding terribly hard. Ryouma twisted savagely in the grasp of one Genma and sliced his leg sideways in a kick aimed at the other one's groin. His foot connected solidly, and then slammed through a puff of smoke. Clone, okay, dammit don't fall over...

He found his balance again just in time to evade the first Genma's hands again, smashed his desk chair into the man's knees, and reeled for the door. Where there was another Genma standing, and where Raidou was cradling a very limp Kakashi.

His scowl didn't look terribly homicidal.

"Oh, shit," Ryouma said.

Then the Genma-in-the-door went for his knees, and he staggered backward straight into an armlock courtesy of Genma-from-behind. At least it was his left arm. They really were trying to help.

"Sorry," Ryouma said, and tried very hard to go back to being meek and inoffensive and not-dying. With adrenaline still pounding through his veins, at least he could still think. "C'I have a soldier pill?"

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The best thing about a clone was that you didn't feel its pain. You felt its chakra release when it got taken out; a clone could take a damn hard hit before it vaporized, but a blow that would disable a flesh and blood man would take down a shadow clone in a swirl of vapor, leaving only a mild scent and a sudden return of chakra to tell the caster his clone was gone. On the other hand, watching another guy--any guy--take a shot to the nuts evoked a complex 'oh gods that could have been me' empathy in pretty much any other man. Seeing yourself take such a shot couldn't fail to evince a wince. Of course that didn't stop you from fighting, since obviously if your clone was taking a nut shot you were undoubtedly also in the thick of things.

Genma winced, went for another grab, and was rewarded with a chair across the knees, hard enough to knock him back. Hard enough to make a really sick sound. Hard enough to piss Genma off. Because honestly even if he could understand that Ryouma had a head injury, there was a limit to a man's patience. Especially a man who has been pulled away from a warm bed with very pleasant company to deal with this shit. Getting Ryouma subdued without actually hurting him was a challenge, but with the aid of his other clone, and some deft leaping over the damn chair on the floor, Genma managed it.

"No you cannot have a fucking soldier pill. Idiot rookie. And quit fighting the people who are trying to help you." Genma took a breath through his teeth, nostrils flared, eyes narrow and glittering. "Hospital. Now. Are you walking between me and the clone you didn't kick the balls off of, or are we carrying you?"

Fucking rookies. He glanced at Raidou. Damn Kakashi. "Is he stable?"

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The rookie fought dirty; good trait in an ANBU. Despite that Raidou still winced very faintly when Genma's clone took a solid crack between the legs and did what all men under similar circumstances wished they could do--ceased to exist. He backed up fast when Ryouma managed to evade the real Genma with the swift application of furniture--ouch--and some luck, and swung towards him. Raidou was more then capable of taking down a half-dead rookie who looked like he'd left most of his blood on the sheets, but Kakashi's unconscious weight in his arms was a damn convincing reason not to. Besides, one more nick would probably finish Ryouma off, and Raidou was not going to be the man who delivered it.

Fortunately Genma's other clone proved itself useful and solved the problem; pitching Ryouma back into the real Genma's--oddly pissed off--arms. Raidou gave his friend a calm the fuck down look--it was easy to see why Ryouma had freaked, even if it hadn't been the smart thing--and turned his attention to his own bleeding scrap of ninja. He shifted his grip and slipped his hand up under Kakashi's mask to feel for a pulse. The kid was half-frozen, damn pale, and definitely not living the good life from what Raidou could make out, but he was still breathing, and the flicker-beat thrumming under his skin was steady, if a bit slow. He was also, Raidou couldn't help noticing, soaked. He noticed mostly because water--cold water--was seeping steadily through the thick cloth of Raidou's sweater and the thinner cloth of his sleeping shirt to chill his skin.

Showers, Genma had said. Oi.

"He's still with us." Raidou cast another glance at Kakashi's hands, limp against the kid's stomach, and found he had a second wince. The bloody bandage around the copy-nin's left hand spoke of unpleasant things, but the blistered black mess someone had made of his right palm was just ugly. No wonder he'd dropped when Raidou had caught that blow. "Stable might not be the word for it, though."

Raidou carried him over to Ryouma's bed, spied a blanket that was almost non-bloody, and set Kakashi down on it. It took half a second to wrap the kid up fairly neatly--incidentally hiding his hands from Genma, because that was not really something Raidou wanted his friend to see--and pick him back up again. Raidou glanced at Ryouma, who was in a similar soaked state and half-naked to boot. Damn. "We got time to get some clothes on him?" he asked Genma, "Or do you just want to go?"

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"Don' need clothes," Ryouma muttered rebelliously. Clothes wouldn't keep him conscious, and they certainly wouldn't keep him on his feet. They would probably help with the coldness factor, but he could deal with that on his own. He just needed chakra, adrenaline, energy. Soldier pills.

More blood would help too, but it sounded like that was looming in his future anyhow. Soldier pills weren't. Ryouma had never met a medic who approved of the false burst of energy they offered, or of the crash that inevitably followed an overdose. The kind of overdose where you'd eaten practically nothing else for a three-day mission, and the kind of crash where you'd run out four hours ago and still had to make it back...

His free hand was shaking. He hadn't noticed it before, but he couldn't pull his eyes away now.

"'m serious," he said. "Crashing." And concussed, and bleeding, and damn if this wasn't an excellent way to reinforce all of their bad opinions about rookies.

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"Go," Genma said, and didn't wait for Ryouma to stop talking before he swung into action. "We have to move now. Hospital's just gonna strip 'em anyway and it's not that far." Thank gods for that. Someone, maybe the Shodai Hokage, for all Genma knew, had had the foresight when laying out the important buildings in Konoha to put ANBU HQ less than a full block from the hospital. Perhaps that spoke more about the job than any of the ANBU really wanted to hear.

Raidou could carry Kakashi cradle style or over his shoulder or however the hell he pleased, and if he needed help he could pop up his own clone. One glance at Ryouma was enough to tell Genma there would be no walking the rookie between himself and a clone. No the kid was about to nosedive, and there was no time to keep fucking around here. What the hell had Kakashi been thinking? Ryouma was pale, shaking, sheened in cold sweat, breathing way too fast. He was already way over the line as far as shock went, and if he was on a soldier pill crash on top of it... "How the fuck many pills did you have in the last twelve hours? Stay with me rookie, answer me," Genma said. Had to get moving, had to move now.

The clone helped him get Ryouma up on his back, where Genma could feel his shaking all the more obviously. "Don't you dare have a seizure or stroke out on me here, kid. You got that? Stay with me. How many pills?" He was out the door and running already, with his clone at his tail to keep Ryouma on his back if he started to slip. Hoped to gods Raidou kept up. Not that that mattered.

Stupid rookies. Weren't the senior guys like Kakashi supposed to keep shit like this from happening?

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Fuck.

Raidou didn't waste time with questions--there was nothing he needed to ask anyway--he simply tightened his grip on Kakashi (who he intended to have words with once the kid woke up again) and took off after Genma, running on bare feet and a spin of chakra.

Soldier pills. Damn, they really needed to kit rookies out with an instruction manual for the things. Too many ANBU burned out on false chakra long before an enemy got the chance to end it the bladed way. It was a nasty way to go.

Raidou fell into step behind Genma, alongside his clone, and hoped Ryouma didn't get to find out just exactly how it felt. He hadn't even reached six weeks, let alone the coveted six months. Raidou was just starting to get used to the room on his left being occupied again. He wasn't ready to see it empty.

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The shift from vertical to half-way vertical didn't do much for Ryouma's head, although once his weight was off his legs he could appreciate a little more how ready he'd been to collapse. He tightened his arms around Genma's neck, trying to ignore the unpleasant scratching of the man's mesh shirt against his bruised chest, and trying even harder to ignore the aching complaint of the bruises themselves. At least the pain was something to focus on, as his head bobbed unpleasantly and his vision spun. He tucked his chin down on Genma's shoulder and worked on breathing.

"Pills? Ran out...four hours ago. Maybe." Although they'd been here long enough that it had to be longer than that. Five hours? Five was a good number, like fingers and toes and the next Hokage. He'd had more soldier pills than five, though. Eight were standard issue for a three-day mission, and he'd carried twice that.

"Dunno twelve hours," he mumbled against Genma's neck. "Started with sixteen."

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"Sixteen? Mother fuck, rookie, don't they teach you anything in orientation?" It couldn't be sixteen in twelve hours. Sixteen in twelve hours was six over what was considered a lethal dose. Genma'd heard of one ninja--an Akimichi, who'd had his size in his favor--surviving twelve in twelve hours, but sixteen? That was impossible.

"Over how many days? Ryouma!" his voice was sharp as he felt the rookie's head loll, his grip slacken. "Stay the fuck with me! Over how many days did you take sixteen pills?" He was out the door now, running barefoot across frozen ground and barely feeling it because this had escalated from emergency to cluster fuck and he was damn well not letting this kid die on his back from shock and soldier pill overdose.

If Ryouma died, Genma thought darkly, he was laying formal charges of negligence against Hatake Kakashi, and to hell with the consequences. He might be ANBU's golden boy, master of a thousand jutsu, special-ass sharingan user, but he was just another comrade-killing traitor if Ryouma died.

Which he was not going to. Ice tore at his feet as Genma rounded a corner and put on a burst of speed that would have impressed the very man he was cursing.

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The stairs had done nothing good for Ryouma's head, and for a few moments there he nearly lost it, as Genma pounded down the last flight and surged out into the lobby and through the doors. The sudden jolt of freezing air helped, like a splash of cold water on his face. He blinked and searched hazily for words.

"Three days. Had...hadta keep up. Keep going." Because Kakashi was fast, and there was no way Ryouma was falling behind, no way he'd let Kakashi take the lead that he hadn't yet proved he'd earned. And then there'd been fighting, and more running, and more fighting. And at the very last, when they were already exhausted and worn thin after two and a half days of running battles, they'd cornered their target. Or been cornered. It'd worked out about the same, in the end...

"Keep fighting," he explained. "An' get back."

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