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The cornerstone to being a decent ninja--to being an alive ninja--is quick reflexes. Fast reactions. The ability to take a sudden change in stride and deal with it without ever letting your personal sense of that's not right get in the way of continued living. Instant suspension of disbelief is something any ANBU knows from day damn one, because freezing and staring would only get you killed.
When Kuromaru came to instant quivering attention, finally stilling for the first time in almost two hours, Raidou knew Tsume was either back or she was dead. He was on his feet almost before the dog that was more of a bear had bolted out of the cave, leaving nothing but a lingering howl behind him.
When Kuromaro came back with a half-sized wolf, Raidou didn't bother being surprised. Surprise could happen later, once things were settled and he knew everyone was breathing. He didn't even blink when the wolf howled and screamed and twisted its way back into human shape, changing from a mostly dead animal to a sorry looking ninja. He moved quickly, collecting blankets--he'd spread both his and Genma's out near the fire in preparation for this--and med-kits, dropping the former on Tsume's bare, frozen feet, and the latter by her head for Genma.
"Listen to your dog and don't fight us," he ordered, calm but firm, and stripped her armour away with practiced movements. Tsume's arm- and shin-guards were long gone, replaced by ice and blood. Her chest-plate was tiny, so much smaller then his. He shoved it to one side. Her skin was past white, almost transparent with cold where it wasn't inked red. It looked dead against the matt black of her clothes. Raidou got rid of that problem by getting rid of the clothes, slitting them off neatly with a kunai stoke run from throat to belly, and another from hip to calf, scrupulously careful not to catch her skin, not to touch it if he could. She would probably bitch at him later, but he didn't much care. If she was alive to bitch, that was a good thing.
There were no wounds on Tsume's lower body he could see, so Raidou dragged the blankets up quickly, covering her to the waist. He yanked a nearby kit over and lifted her head up to slide it underneath, offering more support then the bare rock floor. Her arms were a mess. Raidou tucked himself as close to Tsume's naked flank as he could, took both of her hands carefully, holding them between his own much larger ones, and thought warm thoughts. The rest was for Genma to do.
"Hope it was worth it," he muttered, gaze flicking between his partner and his teammate, trying to do his best by both.
There was something reassuring about the bustle of activity when she crashed anywhere injured. Something about it that said care was on the way and, more importantly, she wasn't dead yet.
She hissed when the blankets fell against her. Frozen nerve endings fired randomly, sending pain signals instead of warmth as they tried to come back to use.
Then hands started pulling at her armor, and she flinched ever so slightly. Kuromaru's tongue rasped against her skin, the nape of her neck, reassuring. She was shaking too hard to protest, and knew she shouldn't anyway: everything needed to come off.
A blade slid through cloth, and she had a moment of dark room and tearing clothes and large man and can't get up and she stiffened, forcing convulsing muscles to work, damn it--
Only to feel teeth against her throat, and hear Kuromaru's low rumble, "I'm here. We're gonna get you dry."
She didn't relax, but she stopped thinking of fighting.
Then the man--Raidou, it was Raidou, but somehow his scent wasn't reassuring--had moved, pulling the blanket up--hurt, again, scratching over skin gone raw--and enveloping her hands easily in his, broad and heavily callused. Her fingers shook in his grip, and she hissed between her teeth. Hot, he was hot, and it burned over her like acid eating through flesh. She blinked back reactionary tears and stopped trying to pull her hands away, forcing a smile up at him, her jaw clenched against chattering. "Was worth it," she shuddered out.
Genma didn't waste time on speech. While Raidou stripped away Tsume's iced clothes, he laid hands on her, checking for any sign of injury beyond the obvious ones to her arms. Her fingers and toes, he was surprised to find, though white with cold, showed good blood-return when he pressed them, blanching them still further, then releasing to watch color refill his fingerprints. She responded to the pinches too, twitching feet, pulling hands away, so she had sensation. Her wolf-shape must have protected her, he thought. The last ninja he'd seen this cold had lost nine of ten fingers, all the toes of one foot and three on the other, and his livelihood as a shinobi, thanks to frostbite and the subsequent and inevitable gangrene. She was lucky.
So it was all a matter of getting her warm. Warm from the core of the body out. That same winter he'd seen one man lose his digits, he'd seen another lose his life, not from injuries or battle but simply from having his blood warmed too quickly from the wrong direction. He'd seemed to be improving then flipped into cardiac arrest and expired before the medics could get there. It was one of the experiences for Genma, at the time a sixteen-year-old chuunin, that led him to become a field medic himself. That helpless feeling of watching a comrade die, and not having any idea why.
He was not going to watch Tsume die. She needed warmth from the inside out. Civilian medicine relied on warm water, injected into the body cavity with catheters in the abdomen, sluiced in to the bowels through the rectum, infused into the jugular through an IV line--they had none of that equipment here. But they didn't need it. Genma clasped hands into seals, focused, then placed one glowing hand on Tsume's belly, the other between her breasts over her heart, and gently, as quickly as it was safe, started warming Tsume back up.
It was a challenging jutsu, hard to cast, hard to control with the delicacy and precision it needed. He realized after he'd already begun, he should have told Raidou to see to her arms. Although he'd probably figure that out for himself. Genma couldn't speak now; he could do only one thing: warm Tsume up.
There was a moment of stillness for Raidou when Tsume grinned at him, a moment of recognition. Raidou wasn't the greatest fan of mirrors--or any shiny kind of surface--but he still knew his own reflection when he saw it. Besides, that level of crazy-strength willpower was something you had to respect, even if running yourself into the ground in the middle of a storm was a whole new plateau of stupid. He grinned back.
Her hands were very small.
Raidou watched as Genma began his jutsu, and realized in short order that his friend was going to be thoroughly occupied with that for a long stretch of time. Getting Tsume warm--and doing it right--was the most important thing, but stopping the slow, steady blood loss from the deep wounds on her arms ranked a close second.
Good thing there were med kits close to hand.
He shifted, moving a little closer to Tsume's head and giving Genma more room to work, and let go of her hands carefully, laying them down on his knee to keep up a bit of warmth. He snagged a med-kit, and, with a bit of a stretch, reached the hand warmer Genma had discarded some time in the last hour. It was cold, the contents inside once more liquid. He snapped the seal, wrapped the thing in a thick, messy length of bandage to stop it from being too hot against her skin, and tucked it between her shaking hands.
He was definitely going to pick up a few more of those the next time he was home. They were useful little things.
"You better not be allergic to anything," Raidou said as he pulled items from his med-kit. The basic stuff for her wounds--antiseptic, needle and sutures, bandages--and a pre-filled syringe of middle-strength painkiller. Not too strong, he didn't want to mask any pain they needed to know about, but it would at least take the edge off. Raidou slipped the needle carefully into a relatively intact bit of her shoulder, and then set it to one side. The worst wound was on her left arm, tucked just inside her inner elbow. Deep enough that the blood had clotted black, and ragged enough that it would leave an ugly scar. Raidou began there.
"What did you find?"
Tsume needed to stay awake. If the burn of antiseptic against raw flesh didn't do that, talking might.
She tensed briefly when Genma's hand laid carefully over the bare skin of her belly, but pulled herself back under control. The teeth that sank into her throat, deep enough to leave pink marks, might have helped.
Something warm began to curl through her abdomen, and she knew it was probably cold if she was feeling it as warm and not scalding. Still, there were levels of cold, and it was warmer than she was. She tried not to brace, tried to open her chakra--depleted as it was--and let the alien energy slide through without a fight.
It was almost a relief when Raidou let her hands go. Even through his pants she could feel his body heat, her fingers trembling on his knee. She watched, eyes unfocused, darkness creeping around the edges of her vision. His muscle swelled beneath cloth, pressed taut from the fold of his leg. She tracked the shape of his knee, the way shadows pooled between one muscle and the next. Then he was placing something between her palms, something hot, and she hissed and pulled the top hand away. The shaking got worse, cold and pain combining even while her internal temperature started slowly, slowly, to rise.
Something shifted inside, and the warm sensation went hot, so painful it was almost blissful, riding the blade between euphoric and agonizing. It overwhelmed the needle prick entirely and she breathed, trying to keep above water as she drowned in reaction. She shuddered convulsively, as if all the cold inside were forcing its way out through her muscle and skin.
Suddenly, she felt like she was freezing. Even knowing it was a good sign--she was starting to feel--it seemed alarming. Until that moment, she hadn't entirely known how cold she was; it had taken back place to making numb limbs work.
Antiseptic burned across her arm with an entirely different sort of heat. She grit her teeth. Spots leaped in front of her eyes, blocking out vision before dancing away like tiny black imps. She focused on Raidou's question as the best of anything there to focus on; certainly better than any of the current pains she was feeling, despite the meds that tried to blunt the edge.
"F-found--" What had she found? Her mind moved sluggishly, as cold-thick as her body. "Found smoke." She remembered, then, and bared fangs through gritted teeth and the splintering pain of her body coming back to life. It pulled at her lip. More blood slid down the seam of her mouth, coating the base of her teeth. "Didn't g-get closer." Raidou's hands scalded her arm as he held it, examining the worst of the kunai wounds. "Spilling ch-chakra like a b-beacon. D-didn't want-t him to feel me."
She looked at the ragged tear in her arm, chalking it up to yet another scar on an already lined body. It was probably going to need stitches. That wasn't going to be fun, given the trembling. She was glad she wasn't doing the sewing. Maybe they should have waited to warm her up and make her feel until after that had been done... The thought was half wistful, entirely snide, and she snapped at herself to pull it together.
Kuromaru stood, a great black hulk above her, and leaned over to examine the wound himself.
Great yellow-brown eyes regarded Raidou carefully. "Careful with drugs," he rumbled. "Inuzuka react funny, sometimes."
"Pain meds're f-fine," Tsume interjected before Raidou worried. "Ant-antis-septic, too."
Teeth closed around her upper arm, the wolf jaw grinding down into her bone slowly, careful not to break the skin. It stabilized the worst of the trembling back down into a shiver, rather than the violent convulsions Genma's jutsu pulled up.
"Smoke's good. You sure it was our boy?" Dumb question. Of course she was sure, she was the tracker for a reason. "Scratch that. You did good, kid." Sometimes reflexes could get you in trouble. A beat after the name was out of his mouth, Raidou realized what he'd said. He rolled his eyes at himself, and ignored the look Kuromaru gave him. "Stick with us, you need to stay awake a bit longer. You find anything else out?"
It would be nice to say that a bear-sized dog was the weirdest helper Raidou had ever had in a crisis, but that wouldn't even shave the edge of truth. He didn't question Kuromaru. He was smart enough to take the help of the person that knew Tsume best, even if that person had four legs. He could feel Tsume's hands tremble against his leg, sharp nails catching at the cloth. That bit of unsteadiness bothered him a lot more then the fact she wasn't wearing much more then a sports bra and a pair of shredded panties under the blanket.
He was probably going to have to apologize about the panties.
A glance at the red-soaked blade of Tsume's not-smile and the shivers that had crossed the line from simple muscle tremors to real convulsions suggested Raidou had much more to be concerned about then torn underwear. He concentrated on his own self-appointed job, flushing the wounds down her left arm with antiseptic. If she tensed he couldn't tell, she was shaking far too hard. Clear liquid that wasn't even close to water spilled down her skin, mixed with blood, and streamed away to soak Raidou's pants. The pink-red mess didn't show against black cloth.
"What drugs?" he asked as he worked, using a handful of gauze to clean away as much as he could. The wound by her elbow needed stitches. "What do you react weirdly to?" The question wasn't directed at anyone specific, just as long as he got an answer.
Tsume found the energy, somewhere, to look at Raidou with just a bit of incredulousness when he asked if she was sure. Then he came to his senses.
And called her kid.
She would have laughed if she hadn't been hurting and shivering so much. The pain meds had been mild, but even so they added to the exhaustion. She listened to his voice, to the rising and falling cadence of it, and tried to stay awake. "Found out..." what? "He doesn't know we're scent-tracking." The trail would have been erased if he hadn't taken to the deep woods, where the foliage protected his scent from the worst of the rain. It was long gone now, but her chakra markers would hold. "He's not far. But--" she shuddered again, eyes closing as everything in her tightened painfully before relaxing into continuous shivering. "--b-but the rain wiped out ev'r'thin' else."
She hurt, and it would have been so much easier to fade into the black.
Antiseptic snarled like fireants down her arm, but it was minor compared to the burning in her gut. Normal, she kept telling herself. It was a good sign, but crotchticks it hurt.
"Poisons," she breathed out on a shudder. "T-take us funny. An'..." she had to think past her brain screaming at her that things were wrong. "Pain meds. Antibiotics, n-need extra of both, s'm'times."
Tiny bursts of flame shot through her gut and up her stomach. Her lungs reawakened with a nearly sobbed gasp. It might save her life, but this damn jutsu was now on the list of ones she hated. She couldn't stop shaking, and despised the weak feeling that went with it. The chakra depletion didn't help.
"'Mune system's good," she mumbled, trying to keep her mind active, trying not to think about the hot iron under her skin. For a moment she remembered that Genma had metal jutsu, and she knew, simply knew, that he was killing her, filling her body with molten steel that would burn her alive from the inside out--
Then the moment was gone, and she shivered and shook and burned and wished she could just fall into the whirlpool, but she couldn't. Not now. She focused on Raidou's knees, there in front of her face. "Don't--don't usually need an-antibiot-tics," she shivered. "High pain t-tolerance." What else? Her mind felt sluggish. "Ant--anti-toxins. Take us f-funny. 'S c-cold." She didn't realize she'd spoken until she heard the whisper. She grimaced, wishing she hadn't. Of course it was cold. She should be glad she was feeling cold rather than numb; it meant she was feeling, that blood was flowing again, her nerves weren't dying off.
But great merciful stars, she wouldn't mind if it weren't so cold.
It was working. Genma kept telling himself that, even as Tsume's tremors turned so spastic he feared she was going into seizure. She wasn't. He'd be able to feel the electric disturbance of a seizure if she had one, with his chakra threading through her body. It was just the cold, just a normal response to warming up. It meant her body was coming back to life enough that it was trying to save itself. She'd warm up faster if she shivered. It was a good thing.
He was hurting her though. He hated that. Hated that there was no gentler way to do this. All he could do was keep working, slowly raising her temperature, steadily feeding chakra in, careful not to let it slip and waver. It had to be a steady increase, no spikes, no gaps. Harder than an anti-inflammatory jutsu, more tiring than one to close a wound. He focused on keeping his own chakra rock steady to support Tsume's erratic energy flow.
Fuck he was going to be tired when this was done. He was dimly aware that Raidou was taking care of her arms, and glad for that. She should probably have another soldier pill, though she'd evidently already had one or more in the field. And maybe a blood pill. Hard to tell how much blood she'd lost, and better safe than sorry.
She shivered and whimpered, and Kuromaru whined in response. He was hurting her. But it was working. That made it all worthwhile.
Raidou listened to her list, carefully taking each problem fact and locking it away in his brand new mental folder entitled Inuzuka Tsume: Things You Need to Know. He'd pass the knowledge on to Genma when the man was capable of hearing it again. Tsume's last words he didn't keep. The little whimper that crested and broke. 'S c-cold. Every ninja got to that point once in a while, more often when you wore the spiral and the white-bone armour. The moment where nothing at all existed except the broken banshee shriek of a body pushed past the limit of endurance. Raidou had been there on his last mission, burned up with fever from an infected sword wound. He remembered the acute agony of Genma scrubbing away the worst of it, and the only word he'd been able to articulate in the end. H'rts.
Medics heard a lot of whimpers like that.
There wasn't much you could do about it but keep going, unless you considered curling up and dying an option. Raidou stitched the worst wound with rough field stitches. He would never have the fine delicacy of a medic when it came to sutures, but they would keep the wound together and that was all that really mattered. The next wounds weren't as bad, he used a few steri-strips and wrapped the whole lot in tight bandages, elbow to palm. That at least wouldn't draw a lot of attention in a fight, lots of ninja preferred to wrap their arms in the absence of wounds. Then he turned to the next arm and repeated the process.
Goddamn the woman, had she tried to eat herself?
Raidou talked as he worked, a low tone that curled around the bass registry of his voice. It wasn't a medic's soothing patter. It was simply the words of a ninja who knew what he was doing dammit, because he'd acted both sides of this particular shitty little play. "So here's my plan. Want to hear my plan? It's cunning." Don't fall asleep, don't fall asleep, don't fall asleep. "I'm going to take that as a yes. Here's my plan, so listen up. We're going to get you warm and fixed up, then we're going to eat the rabbits your mutt managed to hunt down." No actual stew for Tsume, but she could probably manage some of the broth at least. "Then you and lover boy here are going to crash flat out until the storm's over. The pup and I can keep a watch up." Genma's chakra was steady, filling the air around him with a pale shimmer as he worked, but he was using a lot. "And in the morning we'll find our very unfortunate friend and break him into six. Or twelve. I'm not fussy."
Raidou thought he'd managed to find the cross between comforting, annoying, and just slightly silly that would guarantee Tsume's attention stayed on him. The part of his own focus that was locked squarely on Genma nudged him, Raidou glanced at his partner and got ready to catch him if it was needed.
Damned healing jutsu. Drained chakra like water.
"S-sounds like a good plan." Especially since she doubted there was much that was going to keep her from crashing out. She was still cold, still shivering, but the internal burn was starting to ease. It still felt unnaturally warm, like sitting on sun-baked concrete; just on the edge of too hot, but not quite enough to make you move. "I 'specially like the part with the d-death." She shivered again, but was no longer near convulsions on the stone floor. Pain receded far enough to allow awareness in.
The rock was cold.
Kuromaru's teeth were no longer in her arm.
The cuts hurt like a nest of pissed off hornets.
The rock was cold. And she was naked under the blanket, most of which had been shoved down when Genma had started his jutsu.
Crotchrot.
"Y-you owe me new clothes. Girl-clothes, even," she said through shivers that were starting to die down. "Sh-should add that to your plan." Her grin was a shadow of what it normally was, but it was there. "K-kid." Something niggled in the back of her mind. Something with scent and darkness and pain--
She forced it back, recognizing the familiar tension of memories she didn't need surfacing. She was almost naked on a stone floor, but she had underclothes and it was a cave, not a bunker, and she had a blanket over her. Why they were triggering now, and why her assessment didn't feel quite right, she had no idea. She wasn't going to examine it, either.
"He's younger'n you," Kuromaru pointed out, laying down along her spine to share his body heat. "If you're a kid..."
"P-point. So... baby? Jus' sounds wrong..."
"Babe," Kuromaru suggested. Anything to keep her talking; he could feel her fading.
"In-infant." Her eyes closed, lulled by a lack of bone-shattering cold. She snapped them open. She couldn't look up at Raidou's face without rolling over. Her muscles protested any kind of movement, and since her sports bra and underwear were only barely hanging on, she elected to look up as far as she could without moving.
His belly button. Close enough. She stared at folds of cloth and pools of shadow. "Premie."
Kuromaru snorted. "'Cause he's so small?"
Tsume smiled slowly. Her lip split again, and for the first time she actually felt it. She winced, tongue dashing out to cover it. "Yeah. Tiny."
Genma was almost sagging with weariness when he finally felt Tsume's body was warm enough he could stop. She was still colder than normal body temperature, colder than he would have liked, but out of the danger zone. He himself was dripping with sweat from the exertion, and from a side effect of that jutsu he hadn't expected--his own body temperature had soared as he worked to bring hers back up from subnormal. He let the jutsu die away and pushed back with a weary sigh, wiping his forehead on his arm and blinking to clear his vision.
Raidou had her arms bandaged, Good. And she wasn't shivering anymore. Doubly good. If they could keep her under blankets, close to her dog... "Clothes. We need to get dry clothes on her now." He spoke aloud, but in a distant voice, talking more to himself than to Raidou or Tsume. "Gotta get that wet bra off, too. Shouldn't have left that on." It had dried where his hand had been, casting that jutsu.
Hot. He was hot. Swimming in heat. How had Raidou managed to build that fire up so much? There was so much heat in that room he could see little shimmers in the air, like on a desert mission in summer. But Tsume needed the heat. He didn't. He grabbed her shirt from its place by the fire, handed it to Raidou, then stripped off his own. "Here, put mine on her too. I'm too warm anyway."
"It's still cold outside," Raidou informed Tsume blandly, "I can easily arrange another attempt at human icecream if I hear one more size comment. A man's feelings're fragile, y'know. We're easily bruised."
Genma breaking his jutsu snapped Raidou's full attention to him. He didn't like the look of his friend at all. There wasn't the time to do anything about it quite yet, though. He took both shirts and pulled a wry face at Tsume. "Sorry, kid, you heard the medic." Sports bras were a pain in the ass to get off--no convenient snap clasps anywhere. The fact that he'd already sliced through one side made it a little easier. In the end he simply cut the straps that looped over her shoulders, careful not to so much as touch her skin with the kunai blade, before he slid the damp cloth away. He didn't like taking it off, but Genma said it had to be done. Tsume had a damn impressive glare for a woman half dead.
"I probably owe you that bra," he admitted, as she snatched for the shirts he was holding. He helped her get both over her head, carefully ignoring the--literal--flash of her breasts, mostly by studying the ceiling for a moment. He got a brief impression of scars--she had scars everywhere--and skin that was a few shades lighter then the rest of her. "B-cup?" That got him an even better glare.
And then there was Genma to deal with. Flushed and sweat-soaked, half-naked in a cave that wasn't all that warm.
One ninja too hot, the other too cold. It didn't take a genius to work out the math. Raidou caught Genma gently by the bare shoulder, steadying his sway. "C'mon, lover boy. You did good. Time to rest a bit." A tug was all it took to get him laid out flat, back pressed against Tsume's front. With Kuromaru behind her, Genma in front of her, two shirts and a blanket over the top, she would probably stay pretty damn toasty.
Food, fluids, and the rest of the clothes. That was what they needed. Raidou got to his feet and picked up the remaining clothes still laid out by the fire. He folded up two sets of pants and made his teammates some rough pillows. The remaining shirt--his shirt--he laid under Tsume's feet, getting them off the bare rock. Next were socks, which was a minor exercise in quiet hilarity--Tsume even had clawed toenails. Then he dealt with her hair, which was still wet and thoroughly tangled. Raidou cast a basic justu, bringing up some external heat now that it was safe enough to do so, and gave her a fairly speedy dry off, prompting another half-lidded glare. It made her face look weirdly familiar again. "Very scary," he said quietly, and went to get stew, tea, and some cold water for Genma. Maybe a wet compress...
"One mission," he muttered to Kuromaru as he passed, "I'm going to fight more then I play nursemaid. Won't that be exciting?"
"Can't wait to see you in a lingerie store," Tsume mumbled, covering her discomfort at being suddenly disrobed. Then she was down again, and could have put socks on herself, thank you very much, except that it was so much nicer to stay under the blanket and, well, Raidou was doing a fine job. Even if he did have issues with toenails. Just because they were a little pointy...
Genma was like a radiator when he curled up in front of her, and she considered it her ninja-ly duty to tuck her hands between them, warming her fingers and--probably--cooling his spine. She still wasn't wearing pants, but she wasn't about to point that out to Raidou. It might mean getting out from under the blanket, and the very idea made her shiver again. It had nothing to do with not wanting him fondling her butt and hips to get her into pants.
She tucked her legs in, shuffling until her knees lined up with Genma's and followed his lines, her forehead pressed against the knots of his spine between his shoulder blades. His skin was damp but hot, and she breathed the scent of sweat and heat and metal, all of it slightly underlaid by the sour whiff of poison. She tipped her head and strained upward, her hands flattening out over his ribs and using the friction of skin on skin to push her up the bit she needed to smell his neck, just under limp hair that probably looked a lot better when he hadn't been on a mission in the rain.
She snuffled, breathing in and out through her nose quickly, sorting through smells at a very base level. A hint of shampoo, sweat, forest, weather. All of those she discarded, focusing in on the more subtle scents that were Genma. The sour was still there, but faint; some sort of toxin, but there was no sign of disease or the grape-candy smell that meant cellular death. Whatever it was, it wasn't affecting him. Tsume relaxed again, body tucking up against him, feeling Kuromaru lay behind her.
"Lover boy?" she murmured against his shoulder blade, feeling the shift and flex of muscle as he made tiny little movements. Her eyes were closing again, and she wondered--hoped, really--if she was allowed to sleep yet. Every time she blinked she could feel the press of his skin against her eyelashes. She tucked her bare legs a little closer, glad he, at least, was wearing pants.
Kuromaru watched his person and their medic, then looked up at Raidou, jaw dropping in a doggie grin. "One mission," he answered back, "I'm going to play nursemaid and let the rest of you fight. You try watching everything fall apart and not have opposable thumbs."
Tsume's cold hands on his back were a welcome relief from the heat. The fire blazing in front was an agony to be endured. When Tsume pressed closer, Genma tried to shift back. She was cool, drawing the excess heat off of him. She needed the heat. He wondered if the jutsu was designed this way--to make the caster feel so damn hot he couldn't think straight, so all he could do was lie there and passively warm up the victim, even after the jutsu was finished. Probably. "Prob'ly," he mumbled, not quite aware he was speaking aloud.
The sound of the fire was a roar one minute, a distant crackle the next. Tsume was creeping closer, nuzzling at his neck. Okay that was weird. Then she relaxed, sliding her cold hands down his ribs again, and curled her knees into the backs of his. He needed to get her warm, he remembered, and rocked back, making sure his longer legs had full contact with hers. For a moment he nearly fell asleep.
When she called him lover boy, Genma stirred. "Only Raidou's 'loud to call me that." His own voice sounded strange to his ears, and his hands ached. Heat, this time, not cold, setting the joints off. Hot air in his throat. Hot fire on his face. Heat pouring out from his core. He felt a bead of sweat run down his side, another down his face. Gods almighty it was hot. If Tsume hadn't needed him to keep her warm, he'd have gone right out in that ice storm and let the sleet cover him.
Genma was burning up. Raidou knelt above his and Tsume's heads, setting aside the bowls of food and drink he'd gathered, and touched his fingertips to Genma's forehead. He almost hissed. "This better be a normal side effect," he muttered, and settled himself down, gathering his chakra. It took an intense bit of focusing to cast the jutsu Genma had used on him only a few hours ago, lowering the air temperature enough to make ice sparkle. The jutsu itself wasn't hard, but casting it so that it only touched Genma's front, gliding cold air over his flushed face, his bare hands, his naked torso, took a delicate touch that Raidou wasn't particularly renowned for. He did his best, letting the chakra spill out of him in a slow, constant trickle, to cool one teammate without re-freezing the other.
Keeping his focus on that, while he tried to draw Tsume's head back enough--touching her covered shoulder first with a murmur, and then her jawline with a careful brush of fingertips to let her know he was there--to hold a mug of hot, sweet tea to her mouth (no caffeine, he couldn't risk restricting blood vessels that had only just started to work properly again) was an exercise in multitasking that made Raidou's head ache slightly.
She still looked familiar. Something about the sharp edge of her jaw. He couldn't quite place it...
Focus, moron.
Then he had a minor lightbulb moment, cursed himself for an idiot, broke his jutsu, and summoned a clone. Tea, stew, and Tsume went to the clone--be gentle was the main command he shoved into its core, you had to be careful with women especially--and Raidou moved himself to sit nearer to Genma's head. He called up his jutsu again, letting it settle close to Genma's skin, and picked up a water canteen. "'kay, kid, don't fight me on this one." Fever never made for a cooperative shinobi. "It's just me, I'm gonna lift you up a little. Need you to drink a bit, then you can rest."
The cold jutsu was a relief like no other. It took away the sick feeling of fever curling under Genma's skin, made the air feel breathable. Still too hot though. Too hot and when he tried to move his skin felt like sandpaper and his joints like rusted hinges. The air outside him was cool, but inside every breath was a katon no jutsu waiting to be let off. Raidou was speaking, cool hand on Genma's hot brow, then he was gone, the cool air was gone, and the heat closed in around him like a cocoon.
Genma shut his eyes and tried not to whine. Tsume was still cool at his back. Tsume needed his heat. This stupid heat that just kept climbing and climbing until he could hear whispers of voices in the fire, and the sound of Kuromaru breathing was as loud as the gale outside. More sweat rolling off him, but then Raidou was back, and the cold was back, and Genma almost could have wept with the relief.
Raidou was talking again. Something about water and rest. Tsume needed both, he thought and put one achingly hot hand out to touch Raidou's knee. "Don't give it to her cold. Gotta be warm. Sugar. And salt maybe." He closed his eyes and thought for a second. "It's a tricky jutsu." Made you too hot. Way too hot. "Think it's a little overkill."
"Don't worry, lover boy, already taken care of." Tsume was warming up, he could see. The blue was gone from her skin, even if the parchment pale of water-logged corpse still lingered. Her shivers had slowed, easing as her muscles finally registered they were warming up. She was going to be spark out fairly soon, unless he missed his guess. The clone was doing a decent job of getting some fluids into her, even around sleepy protests and the occasional mild attempt at homicide.
Good thing Raidou made sturdy clones.
"So you get me all to yourself, aren't you lucky?" Genma still wasn't cooling down. Not really. Raidou poured a little more chakra into his jutsu, dropping the temperature further. He had to find the balance between what would help and what would damage. What would cool Genma slow enough to avoid tissue damage, and quick enough to stop him cooking inside his own skin.
What idiot had invented that anti-hypothermia jutsu anyway? Didn't they know the damn order? Medics fucking first. If you took out the medic you screwed everyone else six ways from Sunday. Gods.
Raidou focused on his own hands, letting the cold sink past his skin and down into his joints. Then he slid them under Genma's arms, pulling his friend gently up into his lap, shifting him until his head was cradled between Raidou's own arm and chest. He slid one hand around Genma's forehead, holding him steady, letting his fingers spread out to encircle the delicate bone curve of his skull. The other arm went around Genma's bare chest, anchoring him in place and lifting the canteen up to his mouth. "C'mon, kiddo. Drink as much as you can manage, then you can sleep."
"I'm not sleepy," Genma protested. He wasn't really. He was limp as a rag doll, and melting with heat, but Raidou was cool and sturdy, supporting him. He thought about protesting having been moved away from Tsume, but maybe she was alright. Maybe she was warm enough now she didn't need him lying next to her, radiating heat from an artificial fever.
Something had gone wrong with that jutsu. The cooling Raidou was doing for him was helping him think a little more clearly, and all he could think was, this is wrong. "Rai?" The canteen neck pressed against his mouth and Genma drank, letting Raidou slosh the water past his lips in tiny sips, tipping it again and again as Genma swallowed. At last he closed his lips against the next sip, shook his head, pushed to sit up. Still so hot, cooler than before but not close to normal yet, and not able to really gain any ground. He managed to slide his shoulders a few bare inches before he sagged again, letting Raidou hold his weight, feeling Raidou's long, cool fingers wrapped around his forehead, keeping him steady.
"Rai, something's not right. Is she overheating too, or is it just me?" He could hear the sleet lashing against the stones outside, and wanted so badly to go out there. Go out in that cold and let the heat melt away. Surely the outdoors was big enough to absorb this inferno.
Raidou glanced at Tsume, still with his clone hovering over her. She'd managed to turn, or the clone had turned her, and now her face was buried in the thick, drying fur of Kuromaru's heavy chest. Her hands tucked close to the dog's belly. Kuromaru was watching him with half-lidded yellow eyes, ears flattened back slightly. Raidou had no idea what that meant. "It's just you," he told Genma, eyeing the very small shivers that still rippled through Tusme's limbs, shaking the blankets. "She's warmer, but she's still cold."
The heat radiating from Genma was ridiculous. Hot enough to turn Raidou's skin pink through the sheer black fabric of his shirt. The jutsu wasn't enough, and Raidou couldn't keep it up and hope to be greatly functional in the morning. But he also needed Genma not to be dead from a stupid fake fever.
Rain pounded the rock outside, water slapping against stone as it were trying to split it in half.
It was the mark of Raidou's self-control that he didn't get up and kick something. Instead he stripped off his own shirt--no point in drying the damn thing again-- adjusted his hold once again and got Genma on his feet, pulling one burning, bare arm up over his shoulders. "Alright, lover boy, let's do a bit of storm walking. See if we can't cool you down the old fashioned way."
This was going to be miserable.
"The hell are you doing?" Genma protested even as he knew exactly what Raidou had in mind. It was what he himself wanted. Go out there, into the howling wind and lashing rain laced with seeds of ice, and let the storm counteract the jutsu. But not with Raidou. That was just stupid. "Raidou, no," he protested, when they got to the mouth of their hideout. "I'll go, but don't you dare come with me. That's too stupid for words. I'm the only one who's too hot. You're probably freezing. Look at you!"
Raidou, rather than looking at himself, bare-chested and starting to shiver already despite the heat pouring off his friend, looked at Genma. Gave him that do not argue with me, Genma, I am barely tolerating your stupidity as it is look. Genma usually got that look when he'd had a whole lot too much to drink and Raidou was attempting to get him to do his puking or passing out or both somewhere other than in a public place.
"I am not being irrational," Genma protested, proving if nothing else that while fever might cloud his judgment like alcohol, it didn't rob him of articulateness as intoxication did. Even if it did make him hallucinate bits of conversation he actually hadn't quite had.
Sometimes Genma was prone to moments of monumental stupidity. Thinking that Raidou was just going to turn around and trot back into the nice warm cave because his fevered friend and medic--medics came first--had said so in a fit of apparent insanity, was one of those moments. Raidou crossed his arms over his chest, ignoring the way the wind seemed to drive straight through his bare skin and into his bones. If Tsume could make it twenty miles and last two hours, he could manage three feet and however the hell long it took for Genma to stop cooking in his own skin.
This was his job. He watched, he guarded, he fixed things, he kept people going and moving and living. If he couldn't do that, what was the damn point?
Raidou didn't say any of that. Instead he gave Genma a level look, tensed his muscles to stop them shaking, and set his jaw. "I'm not going anywhere."
The thunder that broke overhead almost drowned his words.
Sometimes Raidou was as unyielding as an earth jutsu. Possibly because he was as dumb as a box of rocks, Genma thought with a strangled laugh. "Then I'm not either," Genma said, and planted his feet firmly with chakra, anchoring himself to the earthen floor. There was a breeze coming in through the slit-shaped entrance. And moisture, cold and icy. It would help drive off the extra heat, and the jutsu was long ended at this point. They just had to wait it out a little, let his body do the right thing and cool him down. The sweat slicking every centimeter of bare skin was a clue it was making the right effort.
Genma pulled away from Raidou, leaned back against the wall, and wanted nothing more that to just go lie down out there on the soaked earth, and let the rain and sleet wash over him until he shivered. But he was by god not taking Raidou out in it. "You honestly think I could cast that jutsu again and survive?" he asked, incredulous and a little unclear whether he'd already said it, or only just thought it. "I don't know what made it backlash on me so hard, but there's no way in hell I'm attempting it again, so don't get your sorry ass frozen."
Heat and cold, it was so simple. He was too hot, he needed to be colder. Raidou was not over-warm, so he needed to stay as he was. How the hell hard was that to understand?
Tsume drifted in and out of half-consciousness, sometimes dozing, sometimes losing minutes as her body tried valiantly to replenish the chakra it had lost.
She was aware that Genma-at-her-back had gone, that she still didn't have pants, that Kuromaru was panting hot and heavy but not moving away, and that there was some quietly insistent argument going on. The smell of anger was on the rise.
"Kuromaru?" she mumbled into fur, curling closer to his bulk.
He sighed, licked his chops, and twisted to look at the two men near the entrance to the cave. "You're acting like moon-faced pups and disturbing Tsume. You know that, right?" He spoke in a low rumbling growl, thoroughly unimpressed with anything two-legged at the moment. "Now I realize I'm not human, and times like this I'm glad, but is there a reason Genma can't sit right there, right outside the door, within reach of being grabbed and dragged back inside if it's necessary?" It wasn't really a question. It was more like a statement of how thoroughly stupid he thought they were. His pack, his responsibility while Tsume was out, and he had no patience for teenaged cubs who felt the need to bare teeth and scrabble over who got to be the protector. Even if these cubs were slightly older than teenaged. Not much, from the way they were acting.
Humans.
"There's even a patch of ice. Right there. Right outside, against the wall, within grabbing distance." In case they were too stupid to figure it out. He paused to pant, lips pulled off his gums, tongue lolling out. Between his fur, the fire, and Tsume, he was roasting. When he could talk again he said, "And when you're done ball-licking, you can bring me some water. Really cold water." He whined slightly and rested his head on his paws, then picked it up again, opened his jaw, and sweated in the only way a canine could. "Not all of us can remove our fur," he grumbled, eying Raidou's lack of shirt. Saliva pooled in the flat of his tongue and dripped onto the stone floor underneath him. His lips pulled farther off his teeth, the lining of his mouth and the flesh around his fangs bright pink. He still didn't move away from Tsume, and wouldn't unless one of the idiot cubs needed the point to be made clearer.
"That's exactly what I was trying to do," Genma protested. "Sit outside and cool off. I'm not proposing trekking back to Konoha." Still hot. So hot, and the cold, ice-laden air skirling in through the doorway was a seduction almost irresistible. "I'm just going right outside. Just for a second. You put your damn shirt back on before you get like her." He stared at Raidou's chest, at his right shoulder, so recently injured the skin where he'd been stabbed was still bright pink. At his left side, scarred and contracted with cold.
"Go. Shirt. I'm just going outside and lie down until my head clears and then I'll come back in."
So hot. Sweat rolling down the side of his face, dampening his hair, making every breath ache. So hot, and what the hell had gone wrong with that jutsu? He'd cast it correctly, worked it carefully. It didn't make sense, but nothing made sense except the need to get outside, now and get out of the heat. Genma stumbled for the door.
Gods and hellfire, why did everyone have to be difficult? Raidou moved to pick up a half-empty stew bowl, dumped the contents into another half-empty bowl, and worked a tiny water jutsu to fill it up. He set it down for Kuromaru with a narrow-eyed look and cast a second jutsu that cracked a thin layer of ice over the top. "Quit bitching, dragon dog, and focus on keeping your lady warm."
Genma was already outside, which meant Raidou needed to be outside.
Simple, really.
Raidou snagged his shirt on the way out, yanking it back on as he moved. It would give one less thing for Genma to protest about, at least. He caught up with his friend just as he reached the outer entrance, and winced. The wind was like a blade. The rain slicing down hard enough to make a crack as it landed against slick rock. The additional frosting of hail probably had something to do that. Clearly the sensible thing to do was go sit back in the cave and wait until Genma iced his way down to a normal temperature once again.
Raidou set his feet carefully, channeling chakra, and followed his friend into the maelstrom.
Genma had, true to his word, not gone far. He was lying on his back just outside the mouth of the cave, with one arm over his eyes and the other flung out on the ground at his side. The rain had turned to sleet now, pelting him and the earth around him with tiny pellets of ice that bounced crazily as they hit and piled up in little drifts that didn't quite look like snow.
Every shard seared like an iron brand. He thought about one of his own jutsu, one that pulled elemental metal from the environment and hurled it in a cluster of tiny molten droplets at an opponent's face. It peppered them with burns, scorched holes in their clothing, ravaged exposed skin.
But this was ice, and it was cold, not hot. Cold on his overheated skin, where the ice melted and pooled in the ripples of his bare chest and belly. Ice that coated his hair, soaking his burning scalp, and freezing into thin sheets at the hair's ends. It was a blessed relief when a few shivers tremorred up his spine. When the blast furnace breath eased off in his throat. He was still too hot, he could feel that, but here in the ice storm, with freezing water slicking his skin and wicking the heat away, he finally had a chance to cool down.
And then Raidou was there.
Genma moved his arm off his face, turning his head to squint at the dark shape of his friend hulking over him. "God dammit Raidou! Did you not listen to a single fucking thing I said?"
"I make a point of not listening to you when you're being stupid," said Raidou, raising his voice to be heard over the wind and rain. "Continuing in that vein, you will notice how I'm now wearing a shirt." He unclenched his fingers from his biceps and unfolded his arms, spreading them out. "Observe my shirt."
It was impressive how even flat on his back, half naked, and soaked to the skin, Genma was able to look at him like he was the most brain-dead person in the known universe.
Raidou gave him a bland look back, and then crooked a frozen smile. "How about we skip past the bit where you bitch at me, I argue, and we still both end up outside in the rain? Because that really gets boring fast." He crossed his arms once again and jerked his chin to point. "Hey look, lightning." His gesture wasn't really necessary; the fork of liquid electricity that split the sky and underlit the bruised clouds was its own announcement. Raidou blinked and saw white-blue blotches on the insides of his own eyelids for a moment. Then the thunder rumbled up, deeper then a roar, and tried to shake the land apart.
It was, Raidou reflected, deeply cool. He thought he might have gone deaf in one ear.
"You feeling any colder yet?"
Not for the first time in his life, or even on this mission, did Genma want to sock Raidou in the gut with a chakra-charged punch. He wanted to, because Raidou was being stupid and disobeying what almost amounted to a direct order, if you considered Genma mission leader. He was going to get himself in as bad shape as Tsume had been and Genma didn't have the resources left to fix it this time, he'd told Raidou that. He pushed himself up, dizzy with fever that the rain and sleet had just finally been beginning to reduce, and glared.
He wanted to hit Raidou so bad, and he couldn't because Raidou was there smiling at him. There because of that new scar on his shoulder, and Genma knew if the tables had been turned he'd have been the stupid one and insisted on following Raidou out into the freezing fucking storm rather than risk losing him even for a moment.
"Yeah." Genma said and pushed sopping hair back from his face. "I'm cooler. Go inside, I'll come too. Go get dried off. Or have you already forgotten what I said when we got here?" He used scout signs again, indistinct in the dark: You so dumb you don't know to get out of the rain?
Raidou, despite evidence to the contrary, was not a fool. He didn't miss the anger that stiffened Genma's shoulders and darkened his expression despite the lightning. He didn't miss the way he reined it back in, either. Nor the way he was going to cut his storm walk short to get Raidou back in the cave.
I need less self-sacrificing partners, thought Raidou for an odd little moment. It never turns out well for us.
He flashed a scout sign back: You so dumb you don't know what cold is? And lifted his hand to press the back of it to Genma's forehead. Heat bled from hot skin to cold, making him suddenly aware of how frozen he really was. And how very much Genma was not.
Genma who was going to come inside.
Raidou sighed and took his hand back. "Alright," he said, frustrated and frozen and hating himself for wanting to be warm and wanting to stay and not being able to do either. "Stay here. Cool down properly. I will be right there," he jerked a thumb at the cave entrance. "Flash your chakra if you need help, okay?" He waited for an acknowledgment and then turned on one heel and walked back into the cave. The entrance wasn't much warmer, but it was out of the wind and rain for the most part and that would be enough. Raidou leaned one shoulder against the rough stone wall, and wrapped his arms around his ribs. He could still feel his fingers and his toes; he was fine to stay longer.
This mission was turning out to be a complete pain in the ass.
Genma waited until he was genuinely shivering before he finally picked himself up and headed back inside. It had taken nearly an hour, maybe longer by the look Raidou gave him when he made his way back in, dripping and drenched, with his hair hanging in iced-over clumps and his skin a mottled red-white. While the fever might have been artificially induced, the after-effects were identical to the real thing. Sheer, limp-muscled, bone-aching fatigue. The chakra-expenditure the jutsu had cost undoubtedly added to that. He gave Raidou an exhausted look, pushed past him, stripped off his soaking wet pants without so much as a shred of modesty, and grabbed the pair he'd been wearing originally where Raidou had lain them to warm by the fire.
Tsume was asleep, curled up with Kuromaru, who watched Genma with wary yellow eyes. Good. She was asleep, under the blankets still and no longer shivering. Her color was more normal, too.
A black top--his, Raidou's? It was impossible to know, except that Tsume was still wearing one of Genma's over her own--was hanging by the fire. Genma shrugged into that and stumbled towards Raidou again. "Gotta crash out. Just a little. You keep first watch okay?" It was barely articulate, but the best Genma could manage at the moment.
"Y-yeah, yeah, I've got it," said Raidou around teeth clenched to stop them chattering. He picked up a blanket with semi-numb fingers and wrapped it swiftly around Genma before he pitched over, grateful it was already warm from the fire. Then he set his hands gently but firmly on Genma's shoulders and pushed him to the other side of the blaze, guiding him to the opposite side from Tsume and her dog. If anyone had a violent wake up--unlikely but possible--he didn't want someone getting hurt because they were in each other's personal space.
The cave was warm. Raidou rationalized that he would probably stop shivering fairly soon, so he could ignore it until that happened. That seemed logical.
"Sleep, kid, I've g-got it for a bit." Warm, dry clothes would also help. And food. He definitely wanted food. Raidou stripped his shirt off as he moved, completely as uncaring as Genma had been about his pants, and tossed it on the rock by the fire. He managed to get a spare out of his kit and yanked it on, then he did the same for pants. Getting buttons and ties done was a little beyond his current dexterity, so he left them. Gods it was cold.
Food. Fire. Keep watch. That was what he needed to focus on.
Raidou got their last blanket, set the remaining stew back over the fire to reheat, found his book, and slid down the wall to sit between Genma and Tsume. The fire was warm, the cave was warm, and he had a blanket. A warm blanket. Plus food in a minute. He was definitely going to warm up soon.
Any minute now.
The fever was gone, the blanket was warm, the hideout secure, and Raidou was taking first watch. It was safe, finally, to stop. When Raidou pushed, Genma stumbled to the floor, curling up in an exhausted ball where his partner put him. Knees drawn up, hands curled close against his chest, and wet hair shoved back from a tired, pale face, Genma was asleep almost before he was fully horizontal. He didn't dream, he didn't move, he didn't even feel the passing of time a normal sleep gives you.
Eventually it got warm enough for Raidou to feel exactly how cold he was. He shook for a while, felt his teeth chatter, ate some stew, shook a little more, and communed with the fire until his skin turned pink again. When he felt vaguely human he shifted back, leaned himself against the wall, and read his book by flickering firelight. It wasn't a great book, but the plotline had at least three twists and one he didn't actually predict in advance, so Raidou was fairly content.
After a while he reached a pause in the narration that suited him and set it aside, folding his knees up to rest his elbows on. The cave was warm, almost cozy, and quiet with the sound of slow, even breathing. Raidou fell into the half-lidded almost-trance that any ninja acquired after enough practice, and watched his teammates. Genma was a still presence on his left, folded around himself and mostly hidden by his blanket. In the distant awake part of Raidou's brain not focused on watch he was grateful Genma was too tired to have nightmares. They didn't need another hand episode on top of everything else.
Tsume and Kuromaru were a matched pair on his right, tucked so close together he couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. Kuromaru's fur shone gently sable in the warm glow that filled the cave and cast black shadows. Tsume he could barely see. Just a slice of her cheek etched in red ink, and one hand curled against Kuromaru's chest, fingers lax in sleep. He was glad she wasn't the nightmare type, either.
Six hours into his watch, Raidou knew he was supposed to wake Genma and change shifts. That was how it went and that was what they always did. But after six hours of watching his friend sleep deeply enough to barely twitch, Raidou was fairly certain he knew who needed the rest more. One night awake wouldn't kill him. He banked the fire, ate a little more stew, drank some strong coffee, and picked up his book again. | |
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