Tsume frowned, nodded, mentally cataloging all the things that made her Inuzuka. She pulled an image up of herself, then collected chakra and spun it though her centers, carefully making seals and trying hard to keep an image in mind. Herself, without the tattoos--Inuzuka or ANBU. No fangs, no claws. Eyes like Hana's, because those were easier to imagine than ones without slit pupils. Brown eyes, dark like chocolate.

No armor. No Leaf symbols. The ninja blacks were standard among all countries; she didn't worry about removing those.

When she was sure the henge would hold, she wrapped it around herself like a cloak, felt the chakra divert and settle. She blinked up at Raidou. "Better?"

Raidou stared at her, and tipped his head slowly to one side. "Better might not be the right word," he said finally. "Definitely different."

She looked... normal. Normal hair--if still a shade spiky--framed a normal face with normal eyes and normal skin. She'd even wiped her scars away. It was faintly unsettling.

Raidou leaned back slightly, and tilted his head the other way. Without tattoos lending an edge of wildness to her face, or fangs adding a dagger's gleam to her smile, she looked even smaller. Younger. Completely human, with wide, dark eyes.

"You look like a civilian." He smiled wryly. "With a bit of pixie. It's interesting." And definitely not scary. She was going to have to work to make an impression on anyone.

Raidou focused and stretched his own henge, wiping away the scarlet mark on his left biceps, and the ceramic sheathes that stretched down both forearms. A final flicker of thought and the mask at his belt shimmered out of the visible spectrum. He glanced down at himself. "How's this?"

Pixie? Tsume eyed her hands and wondered what else was different. Blunt nails, no scars. Raidou's scent was off; a hint of crab apples indicating he wasn't pleased. She wondered why.

Then she glanced up at him and understood. He hadn't changed; not really. The armor was different, ever so subtly, and the mask was gone. The scars had vanished, wiped off as if they'd never existed. She frowned. He had a good face; strong jaw, straight nose gone a bit crooked from being broken. When he spoke his mouth moved, and it was only because it looked normal that she realized there was usually a twist to it, whether he meant there to be or not.

"...Huh," she said at last with a dubious note, and looked away. "I'll be glad when we're back to normal." Because he just looked odd. Handsome, she supposed, but in a plain sort of way. Bland. Like everyone else. She didn't look at him again.

"I'd guess there's about a hundred people here." She'd checked it out, learning where the demon was. "If the one kid says his mother didn't want to hurt him, he might be right. And there might be others." She paused, thinking. "Be a pain to go after them all one by one, and make sure none slid away while we were busy. Ideas?"

Back to normal, Raidou thought, with a dull spark of pain, was anyone's guess. An automatic hand lifted and brushed over the bridge of his nose--it stilled when the slick touch of old scars failed to meet his fingers. The henge was good, solid; his chakra was strong enough to make the illusion as real as possible. For the moment.

He dropped his hand. "If your nose is as good at I think it is--" it would take a blind man to miss the way her nostrils constantly flared, "--I figure we just round everyone up, lock them in a big building, and ask some pointed questions. Kill everyone that smells like a lie."

For a moment he thought about little boys screaming in the dark. About children who cried and others who paid a hairpin to see their daddy die. About nameless graves under wind-blasted saplings.

Anger burned pain away.

"Or maybe we just kill everyone."

Her smile was tight and just a little bitter. "Why don't we find the ones who smell like a lie. There's a barn, there, that ought to hold everyone. A decent genjutsu should herd them that way, or a dozen clones." They were, after all, only civilians.

She took a breath and thought of the boy who only wanted to go home. "If any of those kids has a chance to heal," she murmured softly, "we ought to give it to them." The rest... she thought of the girl, Aoi, of the kind of ninja she'd make or the timebomb she could become. Both seemed fitting.

The rest of the children, the ones who wouldn't find their home here, could decide where to go, and she and Raidou could see them settled.

Raidou looked at the lights burning in the distance, brighter now, as the sky darkened. "Their families put them in pretty clothes and tried to feed them to a monster." His voice rasped, but didn't break. "I don't think there's a way to heal that."

His hands slipped down and drew two kunai.

"You take the North. I'll take the South. We'll meet up in the barn." He stood up with a mental twist that gathered his chakra close, and spun the blades fast enough to risk cutting his own wrists. "We're not the healers, Tsume. We're the other kind of monster."

It was almost nightfall. He cut away to the right, and ran into the dark.

Tsume watched him go, vanishing into the dark. "You'd be amazed at what people can heal from," she murmured, and turned to head in her own direction.

It was strange to summon clones, to tell them specifically not to use the Inuzuka jutsu: no claws, no teeth, no savage smiles and barked orders. She pulled on the Shikyaku no Jutsu so often, bringing serrated edges to her fingertips, drawing extra speed and strength, letting her fangs lengthen--that to not use it felt awkward and clumsy.

Instead, she pulled out half a dozen senbon and held them between her fingers, three in each hand. They were close enough to claws to work; it was startling how much damage they could do when used like talons. Especially considering they had no sharp edge. The points, however, were nasty enough.

Clones helped her drive people out of their houses and into the night. Shapes tried to flee and were rounded up. Children in nightshirts, like wailing ghosts flying out of their haunts, old men and women with cribbed steps finding the ability to move in sheer terror.

The animals remained in their pens, watching the stampede. Docile eyes regarded everything with the serene knowledge that all was as it should be.

The barn loomed in the night, blocking out the stars like a great hulking beast. Like the large demons, mostly dead now, or sealed in imperfect cages to wreck havoc at a later date. She wondered, briefly, if putting something like the Kyuubi into a babe was any different than what they'd stopped here. Slower, perhaps. Less painful, if the babe was lucky.

Her anger at everything drove the people on at greater speeds. One man fell, and was trampled beneath the soft, bare feet of his peers. She didn't really care.

They poured through the barn doors, crying and screaming, looking at her and her clones with the same sort of horror normally reserved for monsters. It was well deserved; Tsume had killed two and maimed a third before they realized she was not to be underestimated. Still more bore scratches and bruises, a few broken bones. One would never speak again.

When they were all in the barn, she grabbed the large doors and hauled at them. Rust had melded them into place; it took a carefully aimed fire jutsu to get them moving, something she wouldn't have chanced in a barn normally, but her worry for these people was sorely lacking. The metal warped and ran, and she closed the doors and locked them in place. For a moment, she was tempted to simply let it all burn.

Then she scurried up the side, using chakra to cling to the walls, and went in at the top.

The air stank of fear, of pain, of hay and oats and the musky odor of animals long gone. She stared down at the mob dispassionately. They milled and screamed. A woman was hysterical, tearing at her hair, clawing at her face. Murmurs of 'demon' rose up more than once.

Tsume crouched in the shadows like the creature they feared and watched. Soon she'd be among them. Just her nose to decide whether they lived or died. Raidou would take her word for it. She could kill them all, for letting this happen. She hoped some of them were worth saving.

Not for the first time, Raidou looked subtle in the face and told it to sit and spin. He splintered his chakra, breaking it apart into a dozen clones, and scattered them through his half of the village. The peeled away from him like teeth from a shark, and ripped the people from their beds.

Screams filled the air and made his bones shiver.

When the villagers didn't move fast enough, he warped his clones and created demons. They prowled on four legs and long claws, baring teeth longer than a kunai. The crowd panicked, losing their minds with fear. They ran. More than one man tried to fight back. Raidou smashed them down.

Lights burned out as lanterns shattered, spilling tarry oil. Sparks caught. Flame licked across timbers and set into dry wood, casting up a leadstone pall of billowing smoke. Raidou stopped it only when the blaze threatened penned cattle, pulling water from the well to extinguish what was fast becoming an inferno. Metal bristled from his hands, waiting for a throat to slice. The echo of flame twisted across his face, lighting unscarred skin.

He hammered into his people like a wrathful hellgod, and drove them to the barn. Demon clones snapped at their heels, ripping out chunks of flesh. They avoided the wailing children, but spared no one else. Screams became a solid wall of noise.

In the middle of the crush, he found one man with a gilt chain around his neck, and grabbed him by the throat. "Takahiro?"

The man turned purple under his grip, eyes bulging. Raidou loosened his fingers a fraction.

"D-demon!" the man gasped.

Raidou snarled at him. "Messengers of children. Are you Takahiro?"

The man just stared and scrabbled at his fingers. Raidou shook him, and then dragged him by the neck into the barn, roaring at people still not moving fast enough. Behind him, wild-eyed clones barred the doors.

He threw the man to the floor and stood in a widening circle of panicked villagers. Those that could move scrambled away, hitting the walls. Those that couldn't shivered on the floor.

Raidou bared his teeth, and raised his voice above the noise. "Is this man Takahiro?"

Nothing but fear answered him.

Tsume watched the humans spread out, making a space around Raidou like oil dropped in water. A woman fell. She scrambled backward on hands and feet, like a crab scuttling away. Her skirt tangled around her heels; she kicked free and rolled, clawing her way up again.

Raidou looked like he might just kill the man sprawling at his feet. Tsume leaped, landing deeply in a crouch beside him. She stood slowly. The smell of terror battered around her. Her heart pounded in response, pupils widening until her eyes under the henge were white with large black holes. Quietly, she stalked through the barn. Shavings moved under foot. She cut through the crowd, watching for one person who could keep their mind together. It was a specific type she was looking for, and she found him hiding behind a woman's legs.

Tsume caught the blow the mother tried, twisted her arm back, and reached around to pick the child up. "Do you know who Takahiro is?" she asked quietly. Her chakra filled with alpha and she brushed it along the boy's centers, catching his attention. It wasn't soothing, but it made him pay attention.

The child stopped screaming and sniffled, rubbing a hand across his face to smear snot above his lip, and nodded.

"Is that him?" She walked up to Raidou, keeping her own body mostly between her partner and the child. The boy needed to think, not stare at the other ninja in terror.

The boy looked at the man with the gold chain, the one who smelled like sour urine and stale wine. "Yeah," he said, and reached out one pudgy hand.

Tsume turned to block the boy's sight. "Good. Thank you." With a twist of chakra she created a shadow clone and called her other clones back. With another thought the one had taken the boy, and the others were searching out the rest of the children. Any of them less than ten. Any of them too young to understand what had been going on.

Those would be spared. The others would be judged.

Tsume's clones worked quickly. Raidou glanced over his shoulder and forced his own to stand to one side while they carried the younger children out. It was hard. He'd crafted the snarling creations mostly from anger, hammering them out of chakra so red with rage it was almost black. They didn't want to listen.

With so many people packed into cramped quarters, the temperature in the barn soared. Noise filled it from floor to ceiling, drowning any attempt Raidou made to speak in sheer volume. Mothers shrieking as their children were ripped away. Fathers shouting. Families trying to cling together. He could feel it grating against his senses, prickling down his spine.

At this rate, he was going to lose himself in bloodlust.

Think. Focus. He shook his head, spraying sweat, and took a stifled breath. Tsume was thinking.

They needed quiet.

Behind him, a dozen demon clones gathered. For a moment they spilled together, flesh rippling like melted plastic. A hard mental twist and twelve resolved into two. Raidou hunched his shoulders, concentrating, and forced them to station themselves either side of the only unsealed door.

Think. Focus.

Hot air shimmered over his neck, licking hidden scars. He tensed. Kunai trembled in his hands.

He really needed quiet.

The demons roared.

People screamed.

Tsume snarled at a man who, in blind terror, attacked her. Her hand closed over his throat, nails digging into the jugular until the aggression left his scent and he dropped at her feet.

As quickly as the noise had risen, it died away. The mob cowered, too frightened to cry out. A few men were gathering themselves, trying to drag their wits together despite fear. Tsume had some grudging respect for them, and guessed they'd be the first to die. They were probably in charge. They probably knew about the demon.

Takahiro rose, though as he came trembling to his feet his bravery was belied by his movement away from Raidou. "Wh-who are you? What do you want?"

From the shadows where she'd slid to, Tsume smiled. The henge presented it as normal sized, cold but not feral, in a small round face with a delicately pointed chin. The henge lied. "We want to know who helped feed the demon."

Too many faces paled. A village of a hundred people. She'd removed ten children. Adults looked at each other. Teenagers looked confused. Too many parents reeked suddenly of panic.

She hated them, in a purely human sense.

Takahiro looked around, staring for a moment at the clones twisted beyond recognition posted at the door. "Are you demons, too?" he said in a hoarse whisper. "Do you--" He stopped, drew himself up straight, and looked at Raidou. "Do you want children, too? Is that where you've taken them? Not all. Please, not all--"

A woman groaned and collapsed into wretched sobs.

Raidou tensed all the way through. "No," he grated, and snapped both hands forward. Metal sheared through Takahiro's neck as easily as breaking ice. For a moment, head and body stood frozen. Takahiro's eyes widened. A line of blood crept slowly down his throat.

Raidou kicked him in the torso, slamming the corpse to the ground. Red splattered over the crowd. The head rolled away.

"Shut up!" he bellowed, before anyone could scream. People froze, barely breathing. The crying woman was stifled by a man next to her.

Raidou snapped the control on his demon clones, breaking them into nothing but cloud that wisped slowly away. His chakra flooded back to him, dragging a crackle through the air. It hit his coils with nothing but black-red-rage, shaking the foundations of his control.

Bloody metal flickered in his hands. Lips peeled back from teeth.

"We're ninja." His voice cut low, the antitheses of a scream. "Sent to kill the demon. We found your children--"

A woman tore herself away from a frozen clump of people and threw herself down. Tears streamed over her face, cutting wet streaks over hollow cheeks and pale skin. She looked half-starved. "My baby! Did you find my baby? Is he still alive?"

Raidou's eyes narrowed.

Tsume caught his rage and stepped between the woman and the ninja, presenting her back to Raidou. She wasn't sure she believed he'd pull a strike, but she certainly believed she could stop one.

Relief and hope speared like a gold-tipped blade from the woman in front of her. "What is your child's name?" Tsume growled, holding wet blue eyes. She remembered the girl, sleeping in the den with Kuromaru, crying that her mother hadn't wanted to. She hoped that girl was right.

"Cho. My baby--Cho--tell me he's--"

She knew the name. She hadn't met the child. But it ate Ch-Cho-- Tsume's eyes shuttered. She shook her head.

The woman collapsed, but before she could drop entirely Tsume grabbed her by the arm, pressing them face to face. The woman was taller. "Did you know what they were going to do to him? Did you send him willingly?"

"We--we had no choice--" the woman sobbed. But it wasn't the right answer. She had no choice, but there was no underlying sense of anger, of helplessness, of the smell a victim got when forced into something they didn't want but couldn't stop. She'd had no choice, but she hadn't protested, either.

With a snarl, Tsume twisted, her chakra lending strength, and threw the woman at Raidou.

Raidou was too good a ninja to strike down a teammate. He froze when Tsume dropped between him and the woman, locking down the moment's urge to cut through both of them. Metal slipped in his grip, humming as he flicked it to bleed away tension. He settled slightly in the few seconds Tsume talked, wresting back control.

Then the woman answered wrong.

Raidou didn't need the scent. He could see it in her face, the terrified crouch of her body language. She's mourned, but she'd still sent her child to a slow slaughter.

Cho. One that hadn't lived.

Raidou didn't speak. He stepped forward and slammed the point of one kunai through the falling woman's sternum, catching her with his other hand. It wasn't a clean kill. Bone shattered. Her chest caved in like a breaking accordion. He wrenched the blade sideways and tore through her heart.

She dropped at his feet like a sack of bleeding clay.

He left the weapon where it was. Dark brown eyes flickered up, scything the crowd. "Next parent."

They ran. Scattering like birds, in flapping clothes and screeching calls. Tsume shaped chakra. A dozen clones spilled out, taking places around the rooms, on the walls. They all spoke together, calmly, pouring power into the air with each word spoken in tandem. "If you want to survive, you'll calm down. Those who sent the children to the demon will die. Those who didn't, will live."

"I didn't! I didn't!" A teenager shouted, hysterical.

"Did you know?" Tsume asked, a circle of calm in a torrent of chaos.

"No!" It was truth. Tsume gestured and the shadow clone arrived, taking the teenager and carrying him through the night, past Raidou and through the closed doors, briefly opened.

The visible safety of one had others crying their innocence. Tsume took a breath and pitched her voice to carry. "Where are Miho and Riku?"

A man stepped forward, dragging his wife. "We are! Our son! Is he--?"

"Did you hand him over to the demon?"

"Yes, but we didn't..." The man's eyes stared at Raidou. "We didn't want to. Gods help us, it's the only way to keep it from attacking--"

She turned from them to the next soul, fingers dancing in field-sign. Death.

Raidou grinned. It wasn't a smile that had anything to do with humour. There was no pleasure in it. His lips pulled back, exposing teeth in a gesture Tsume's clan would have recognized. But she wasn't looking at him.

Miho and Riku were; both frozen in place where Tsume had left them. Tears gathered in Miho's eyes.

Their son had cried, too.

The lone kunai in Raidou's left hand flicked away, disapearing back into the pouch hidden by his henge. He reached a hand back, and slid the ninjaken free from the sheath strapped between his shoulderblades. In the din of protests, the quiet ring of metal was almost lost.

"No, please..." Miho's lips trembled. Her hands rose up, imploring.

Her husband shoved her to one side and leapt at Raidou. The ninja didn't flinch. With a shiver of quick movement, the blade flicked up and gutted man. Flesh parted beneath its well-sharpened edge. Intestines slopped to the floor.

Raidou side-stepped the falling body, ignoring the hacking scream that bubbled out, and turned on the wife.

"Your son loved you." The ninjaken flashed and cleaved her open from hip to hip. She dropped without a sound.

"Souta," Raidou yelled at Tsume, wrenching the blade back. "Find him!"

Tsume's eyes sharpened. She peered through the crowd, delving through the panicked screams that every death brought, ignoring the reek of terror. "Who here can tell me where Souta is?"

Three arms pointed. She smiled grimly and lunged for the portly man. He screamed and ducked behind the barrier of an old stall, recognizing her for what she was. Ninja, dog, wolf, demon. She went over the partition after him, catching him within moments and hurling him up and around. He tried to hurt her. She broke his arm, and left the rest of him for Raidou.

"Gods no, gods no," he babbled. "She's not normal, I tell you! It would have been better if she'd died! You don't understand!"

Tsume leaned close to his ear. "Should have sent her to a ninja village." She shoved him toward her teammate.

Raidou caught him by the neck, and grimaced when spittle hit his forearm. Souta choked, mouth dropping open with panic as Raidou's fingers clenched, sinking into soft flesh. The sword hung lightly by his side. The urge to jam it through the man's belly and leave him bleeding was almost physical.

But first, he had a contract.

Raidou dropped the man and nailed his thigh to the floor with the ninjaken, shattering the long femur bone. Souta screamed and curled like a frying worm on hot metal. Raidou kicked him in the head. "Shut up."

Around them, people clawed at the walls.

Raidou dropped down next to the sobbing man, crouching back on his heels. Carefully he pulled a cheap pin from his arm-guard, smearing the cheap glass beads with red-soaked fingers. "Your daughter gave me this," he said quietly, leaning close enough for Souta to hear every low syllable. "You hurt her. She paid me to hurt you back."

"Pl-ease..." The man was choking. Ripping the heavy muscles of his leg as he tried to pull free. "Please..."

"You tried to feed her to a demon," Raidou continued, closing his hand around the small trinket. "She would have suffered for hours. It ate their legs first. Poisoned them until they couldn't move and ripped them apart."

Beautiful. The soft croon filled his head. The gentle stroke of fingers down his face. Over his eyes.

"You're lucky," he whispered. "She only gave you to a ninja. She was merciful."

Souta screamed.

Raidou ripped his throat out.

Darkness spread over the little village. Quiet crept into the corners. Lanterns winked out one by one, until the only light left was that created by the ninja inside the barn.

Several times a year the barn was the site of festivals, celebrating gods and demons, long dead ancestors, the changing of the seasons. It was filled with light and laughter, cries of excitement, shrieks of good humored fear. People in brightly colored clothes, dancing and whirling, every step quick and full of life.

Now it was full of people, full of light and screams, people covered in bright red blood shifting and whirling, every step faster than the one before.

Not many escaped. Tsume asked questions, threw the liars toward Raidou, threw the guilty toward Raidou. Most of the teenagers were spared. All in all, when it was over, there were sixty-seven people left. In the end, three of the children had a safe place to go to. An aunt came forward to claim one of the boys, tear stricken and horrified. One of the girls had a mother, her face purple-blue with bruises, who begged to be killed if her daughter was dead. Tsume sent her outside. A third child had a sister, an adult, Tsume deemed safe enough.

The other two--Aoi and the boy who'd wanted to go home, the boy that Tsume had promised she'd see what she could do, the boy whose parents she'd killed first--had no one left, when the ninja were done.

After the tenth person, Raidou lost count. Every one was a variation on the same theme. Same pleas--

No don't.

I didn't want to.

Don't hurt me.

Please.

--same stricken look. Same shock. Same silence when he was done.

After Souta, he killed them neatly. A head stroke. A heart stroke. Any major artery. A chakra strike to the base coil. They died quickly, his sword grew bloody, and the bodies piled up around his feet.

When it was done he crouched, panting, ninjaken blade stabbed deeply into the reddened earth, and felt the wash of rage ebb slowly away. People were still crying, but it was softer now. Resigned. They'd stopped fighting to get away. Raidou looked at his hands, and watched adrenaline make them shake. "Any more?"

Tsume shook her head. It was the only response that didn't require a ninja sign.

"Then we should burn the bodies. Bring the survivors back." Words required an odd effort. It felt clumsy after the simplicity of speaking through blood and bone and easy deaths. He knew he was supposed to say something else, impart some great life lesson, but he wasn't sure he cared anymore.

He looked up. People flinched away. "Demons can be killed," he muttered. "One ninja did for yours. Be smarter next time."

She was cool and in control as they slipped from the lit barn, into the darkened shadows. Her mask came off first, hung on her belt. Her clothes would have to be burned. Some blood was one thing, but this was too much. Too much soaked into the fabric. The scent would linger no matter how often it was washed.

She thought of Ryouma and his rot-jutsu, and how it seemed to take so long to come out of his skin. Blood was like that, if there was enough of it. It soaked into the creases and fingerprints, and refused to be washed away.

She breathed deeply of the crisp air and tried not to think about it. "What next?" she murmured as they sprinted through the trees. Chakra fed her muscles; the taijutsu that had killed the demon had sapped her strength, and her reserves were burning low. Chakra fed sinew that kept going, would keep going until they were home.

She didn't wait for Raidou to respond, but answered her own question, mouth tight. "We should wash. Then go get the kids who can stay." The other two would go home with them. Back to Konoha, where two more orphans with funny scars wouldn't make anyone look twice.

Raidou's sword hung from one hand, splattering the grass with fine droplets of blood and viscera as he kept pace. He didn't want to sheath it yet--not until he had something to clean it with. His shirt was drenched through, sticking to his skin. His armour was in the ground.

At least he wouldn't have to clean it.

Dull laughter twisted under the henge. He let it rattle in his chest until lack of air burned it away. In the distance the barn was burning, too. He was grateful they weren't close enough to smell it.

"Washing's sensible," he called back. "Don't want to scare the kids." Or leave tracks all over the place, if Aoi was right and there were other predators around. In his free hand he toyed absently with a dull steel chain. Where bare skin showed, drying blood made him itch. "Do you want to head home tonight? Or crash in the cabin and go tomorrow?"

She really wanted to go home. As soon as possible. A look at the sky made her think twice. They'd be carrying two children, and they weren't genin. They weren't used to the cold night air, and if they did hit predators once they got into healthier forest...

"We should stop," she said finally, pushing herself to move with a longer stride, to keep up with the man ahead of her. Annoyed, she shot forward, dodged in front of him, and began to slow down carefully.

Raidou smelled better than he had. She didn't feel much better, herself, though. All the anger and disgust was still there, knotted into a small ball of fury in her stomach. She'd deal with it. Making sure her pack was all right came first.

They needed to wash. They needed to get the kids to safety.

The water was going to be cold. "You have enough chakra left to do that drying jutsu again?" She'd survive if not, but...

She felt sticky. She tried not to think about why.

Raidou blinked and checked a stumble as Tsume cut in front of him, forcing him to slow down or trip over. "Watch it," he snapped quietly, shooting an annoyed look at the back of her head. She wasn't a stupid ninja. That had been deliberate.

He cut sideways and pulled level. From the side her henge told him nothing, but her chakra was low and slightly erratic in the way that spoke of looming exhaustion. As he watched, her careful illusion melted away. Tattoos knifed down her cheeks. Her eyes lightened, the white-blue almost startling around dilated pupils. In the darkness, shadows underlined everything. She looked tired.

He glanced up at the moon, and veered sharply to the side, putting more distance between them. Even under the blood, she looked a lot closer to how he remembered, and he didn't want to remember that.

"I'm fine for chakra," he said without thinking. Then he considered the question and jerked one shoulder, amending, "A little tired, but I've got enough to work with. How about you? Can you keep up a henge long enough to not freak the kids out?" He doubted it. But he doubted the same about himself, too. They'd have to figure something else out.

She kept the steady jog up, falling into the rhythm of breathing and pace that could keep her going long after she should have dropped. Raidou was a solid presence beside her, no longer pushing her faster with his greater stride. She counted heartbeats, counted steps. A quick glance at him gave her a good idea of how he looked, how he was moving. There was tension around his eyes, his mouth. She couldn't tell if it was real or not; his henge was still in place. It didn't hide his steps, though, the stiffer movements that told of weariness, if not exhaustion. She guessed he was telling the truth, though at the moment she couldn't smell it. He was too far away. There was too much blood.

Tsume straightened out and continued to run. "The cubs have seen me like I am. Or close enough. If Kuromaru's rested, he can take the three home." It would save them from this path again, save her from burning more chakra into muscle that was becoming stiffer by the moment. The Tsuuga wasn't meant to use if you were planning on continuing to work for long after it. It didn't burn out chakra reserves, so there was always those to run on, but it wasn't kind to the body.

Still, she spoke with the calm frankness of honesty when she said, "I have plenty to do what needs to be done." She'd be glad for a few days off when she got home.