His scent reached her before he did, smelling like back alleys and old beer and the pleased-bright smell of sunshine. A smile tugged from her before she even knew why, and she watched as he landed close. "Good news, then?" Her smile was a little feral, teeth a blade between lips.

"Bandit-stew," Kuromaru suggested, and gave a human-laugh at his own wit.

Tsume shook her head at the dog and offered Ryouma the flask she was drinking from, filled with hot water and leaves from a nearby bush. It didn't make a bad tea. Not great, but better than nothing. It at least masked the taste of metal from the canteen.

The night was clear and cold, stars like pinpricks in the breaks of the canopy. She'd set up a tent, thrown Ryouma's gear inside it, and hunkered down at the base of a tree that worked as a windbreak. She'd be fleabit if she spent another night trapped in a tent with a too-large man and a canine. It had nothing at all to do with questions and scent--she just wasn't that masochistic. Besides, more fidgeting might end in death for one of them. Possibly both of them, if Kuromaru decided they were annoying. But the rain was gone, and her familiar was more than enough heat; worked out better that way.

The only thing that might make her happier would be the promise of bloodshed soon.

"Very good news," Ryouma agreed, accepting a swig from her canteen. He'd thought it was water; it turned out to be tea, bitter and grassy and unredeemed by caffeine. Apparently liquids were out to get him tonight. He forced himself to swallow, coughed, and handed it back. "Damn, that stuff is vile. Toss it out. I got something better."

Sealing weaponry into scrolls was a chuunin-level technique. Sealing food into scrolls was a lot harder, and it didn't last long; the scrolls started to disintegrate around the time the food would have spoiled, which was why no one had yet figured out a better alternative to ration bars. The steaks were cold when he unsealed the scroll, and the rolls that had accompanied them were slightly stale, but at least they were edible. He rocked back on his heels, reaching for his own canteen to rinse the tea-taste out of his mouth.

"I spread the story in three restaurants and four bars," he said. "If the bandits don't hear about it by sunrise, they don't deserve the honor of getting taken out by ANBU. You found a good place for an ambush yet?"

Kuromaru perked up at the sight of steaks, then wilted when he realized they'd been cooked.

Tsume chuckled, taking a steak and tearing into it with pointed canine teeth, setting aside the trappings of civilization like forks and knives in favor of wolfing down food. She didn't point out that throwing out her liquid in exchange for solids made little sense. She was too busy eating and mentally blessing Ryouma. Her stomach growled as it realized it was getting fed. She ignored it.

"Found a great spot. Rock wall on one side, river on the other, forest all around. They've already had an attack there--possibly more than one, if my scenting's right." And it was. "Should be easy to pick 'em all off. Just up and over those cliffs." A jerk of her head indicated the direction, while sharp nails tore off a chunk of meat and popped it into her mouth.

Running missions with other Inuzuka was great, because they all hunted. Running missions with Ryouma, she decided then and there, was just as good. Not only did he hunt--after a fashion--but he cooked it, too. After a fashion.

"How soon do you think our bandits'll be ready?" The sooner they could beat them up, the sooner she could indulge in a little bloodlust. After all the stress of the last few days, she needed that. She grinned at Ryouma, enjoying his company now that everything was set and she didn't have to share a bed with him. A lack of bedsharing made everything less stressful. He'd even stopped pressing her for information.

Ryouma stole one of the stale rolls--hey, he'd paid for it, and Kuromaru didn't seem particularly interested!--and began shredding it into bite-sized pieces. "I told 'em the caravan was expected in town by noon tomorrow, so I'll bet they'll be out there pretty soon after dawn. Figured we could send a genjutsu through about 0900 or so, draw 'em out and chop 'em up." Damn, he should have scrounged up some jam along with the rolls. He ate the dry bread anyway, and washed his bite down with another drink from his canteen.

"If it's a bottle-neck, sounds like a good spot for the bandits and for us. We could start the genjutsu just out of range, bring it in and wait for them to spring their ambush before we spring ours." He mulled back over the information they'd received on the bandits in their briefing. "They've got a couple of former shinobi, right? If they've used the place before, I'm betting they're hiding either in the rock or in the river, maybe with reinforcements in the trees. Easy enough to make a cave and conceal it till the right moment..."

He scattered the rest of his bread-pieces on the ground, laying out two rough lines: river on one side, cliff on the other. A few crumbs served to give the impression of the surrounding forest. "Or, if they're smart, a couple of 'em could also be hiding in the shallows. Pinch the prey in on both sides and give 'em nowhere to run. You could take out a caravan in five minutes." He brushed the crumbs off on his thighs and stared down at his impromptu map. "If we're counter-ambushing, we'll want to do the same thing, but from the opposite direction. You and Kuromaru could come down the road from Fujioka and hit 'em in the front; I'll follow the caravan from Hirai and take 'em in the rear. Trap 'em between the rocks and the river and us."

Tsume's sharp eyes tracked Ryouma's movements, marking the bits of food that made up their map. She nodded once, grinning. Smelled nice, good looking, and he had a brain.

Lady killer, this one. Tsume felt herself withdraw slightly at the thought, sitting back and bringing her knees up, looping her arms around them. She'd have to throw him at some girls when they got back, just to laugh. It was always entertaining to watch that, and it would carefully relegate her to a male buddy with breasts. It was a place she was comfortable with, a place she really wished he'd drop her to. It would make life so much easier for everyone.

"Sounds like a plan. You're gonna have to cast the genjutsu." She'd have to remember a kai. And then another one, most like, unless he dropped it. Dropping it would make them more obvious, easier for the bandits to attack. Keeping it up would help create confusion, easier to pick off their targets... if she could keep from getting sucked in.

Tsume frowned at the crumbs littering Ryouma's thighs, not tracing the way shadow pooled against muscle along ninja blacks. She caught herself inhaling deeply, winding scent into her mind the way other people drank in sights. She stopped and pinched the bridge of her nose. He just smelled like a guy. Just like every other guy she knew.

Only not. They all smelled different. He happened to smell good, that was all.

She glanced over to see Kuromaru smirking, black nose twitching as he caught every pheromone shift and change. She glowered at him. He dropped his jaw in a doggie-grin and panted.

Usually, Ryouma managed to foist the genjutsu-making off on someone else. It wasn't that he was bad with genjutsu, exactly; as a full jounin he was pretty damn good at everything, as long as you didn't consider reading and writing necessary ninja skills. But genjutsu always gave him a headache and bad dreams, and it wasn't like they actually did anything anyway. It still took a ninjutsu, or a good solid kunai at the right spot, to get the job done.

Still, they hadn't been able to work out any better decoy than an illusion. And as Tsume had mentioned when they first brought the idea up, she was definitely not going to be the one who cast it.

He could live with a headache. And he probably wouldn't be sleeping well until they got back to Konoha anyway, so the dreams wouldn't be much of a loss. They'd get the job done, and then they'd spend the night in an inn instead of a tiny tent, and then they'd head back for Konoha and sanity. And he really would invite that Intel girl, Fumiko, out for dinner and maybe more--or maybe he'd go see if Kakashi was up for a next time yet--and Tsume would just miss out. Well, that was her choice. Didn't mean he was going to give up on finding his answers.

He ruffled Kuromaru's ears, grinned at Tsume, and pushed himself to his feet. "I got a feeling this one's gonna go great."

Her hackles had been up all morning. She found herself distracted, lifting her chin and checking the air at odd moments. There wasn't a reason for it that she could see. Nothing they hadn't expected. Nothing that went wrong. Ryouma didn't even protest her sleeping outside with Kuromaru, and she hadn't spent the night tossing and turning and aware of a large male body locked in an enclosed space with her.

She kept half-expecting the bandits to simply not show up. When a caravan tromped into their ambush spot right on cue, she even remembered to cast a kai and not believe it was real. She had to cast it twice, but it took. The caravan disappeared.

Then bandits attacked, leaping just from where she and Ryouma had expected them to, and Tsume had prey on which to channel her twitchiness.

The first bandit dropped as Tsume cut straight through the genjutsu, feeling chakra sizzle along her flesh. Blood sprayed from a ruptured jugular, the scent hot and sweet, triggering the predator she kept leashed. It overwhelmed the human boundaries, rising to the fore as she didn't bother to restrain it, bubbling out her throat with a teeth-bared snarl of pure excitement. She had half a second to recognize fluid movement out of the corner of her eye as someone else casting a kai. She twisted and dropped down as a kunai flew over her head.

She dove. Dirt scattered from under her boots as she yanked on the chakra pathways between her and Kuromaru, making seals, releasing it into claws at her feet and hands, to help with traction and rip the man's windpipe from his throat--

Earth rose up before her, forced into a human shape with chakra. That had to be the second ninja's doing. She skid straight into it, twisting too late to get out of the way, and felt sand envelope her, fill her nose and mouth, drag her down to the ground.

Oh, screw her to a tree, she wasn't getting dropped by a damned earth jutsu. Twisting her hands into shapes through the mud wasn't easy, but she managed it somehow. Chakra sliced through her body, down her arms and hands, lengthening her teeth and flooding her muscles. It was simple, a more advanced, short-lived form of Shikyaku no Jutsu and not much else. But for this purpose it was all she needed; the creature wasn't very solidly bonded. The jutsu poured speed and strength into her. Stronger, faster movements, quick strikes with overlong claws, tore it to bits. It crashed down around her, and she pulled her legs free quickly.

Now she had sand in her teeth. She hated that.

They hadn't exactly coordinated the exact moment of their attack. Ryouma recalled something vague about "hit 'em back when they hit us," and the clear understanding that they'd rely on their own initiative. When the feel of your partner's chakra was a wildfire burning through your senses, it didn't take any thought to know that they were moving and you'd better be too. He formed the seals as he ran in the wake of his genjutsu: Monkey, Hare, Dragon, Ox, Bird, Boar, Horse, Dragon, Monkey, Dog. "Nikutai Tokasu no Jutsu," he breathed, and euphoria lit his muscles as the sickly chakra lit his hands. This was a mission that needed doing. This bandits had no village to protect, no ideals to follow or orders to obey. They killed for their own profit and pleasure, and even a ninja could despise that.

Maybe it was the reminder of how thin the differences between them were.

He slid into a cloud of dust and shouts, dodged low under a swinging sword and slapped his palm against the inside of a man's thigh. Chakra surged through his fingers, and flesh gave way to crumbling bone under his hand. He pulled away from the falling corpse--the screaming man just didn't realize he was dead yet--to catch the sharp downward stroke of another katana on his arm-guard. The blow hit with unexpected power. He felt his arm-guard crack, and he leapt backward just in time to avoid the whistling swing of a wakizashi at his throat. "Damn!" he panted, grinning beneath his mask. "Not exactly a peasant gone wrong, are you?"

The man was even taller than Ryouma, and he probably weighed twice as much. He shouldn't be able to move that fast. But he did, somehow, maybe because he saved his breath for fighting instead of talking. Ryouma blocked another bone-jarring blow, heard his arm-guard's ominous creak, and realized that the tough ceramic plates weren't going to take this much longer. He could cut off the jutsu and draw his sword, but in close combat like this his ninjaken would probably be even less effective than his chakra-ridden hands. Especially given his mediocre swordsmanship.

So it was time to display some of that famous Ryouma recklessness, the bloodthirsty disregard for danger that had won him a reputation among the genin before his developing jutsu won him a name even jounin recognized. Teeth bared, eyes dancing, he closed in, ducking under the katana's sweep, dodging into the wakizashi's slice so that it skidded across his shoulder and glanced off his reinforced armor-strap. Two fingertips grazed the swordsman's sleeve, which dissolved into ash. Not good enough. Ryouma gave up blocking, gave up dodging, and lunged.

Pain seared his ribs. But it did far worse to the swordsman, as Ryouma's left hand closed on his throat and his right palm flattened against the big man's chest. The reek of rotting flesh hit him like a blow.

Damn. He'd forgotten about Tsume.

Crouched over the body, he formed the Ram seal, cut off the chakra flow to his hands, and started all over again. Five seconds later, the rich scent of overripe oranges bloomed.

She was in the middle of hacking up dirt that used to be a mock-man when the smell hit. Her stomach coiled, tensed... and held.

And then it smelled like oranges, and the world was a much better place. Tsume cackled a laugh, throwing her head back in a near-howl before she whipped around, coming under a bandit's guard and slicing nails across his gut. Blood-slick hands flashed through Shikyaku no Jutsu properly this time, elongating claws and teeth, giving her extra speed, longer claws, fangs, and heightened senses. This, she could sustain almost indefinitely. "Coyot, that orange thing is great! I love that!"

"Love this, bitc--"

She took his face off below the jaw before he could finish.

For a moment, there was space. Tsume crouched, shaking her hands free of flesh and shreds of muscle, most scents blocked by the smell of blood. She had an instant to look around, to see a dozen or more armed civilians striking at air where they saw genjutsu. Another instant and she saw three more ninja arrowing in on her and Ryouma. She followed her pathways to Kuromaru, spotted him in the shadows, crunching through bone, twisting to snap someone's spine.

Then another woman was on her, moving with fluid grace beyond what any civilian could manage.

There were more than a couple of shinobi here. She ducked a blow only to feel something--wire, she realized too late--tangle around her feet. Tsume went down with a yelp and a snarl, and a log landed where she would have, atop a scattering of makibishi. She dropped to the ground a body-length away, swapping opponents and kicking the knees out of another ninja. He didn't try to catch himself, just came down on her hard, mouth opening and something green and glistening shooting out.

It hit her armor and sizzled, leaving black scorch marks in its wake.

"You rectal bloodfart," Tsume snapped, lunging up at his face as he paused to breathe. "Do you have any idea what a pain it is to get armor in this size? The guys always think it's a typo! And I just had my chest plate replaced!" She ripped at his face, driving him back one step, another, a third into the spires his compatriot had laid down. He opened his mouth, cheeks inflating with the green, and froze. A moment later he went into seizure.

A kunai skittered across her shoulder, caught on a strap, twisted into skin and muscle. Tsume snarled and whipped around. How many of these guys were there? She leaped at a ninja, and was bashed out of the air by a mace-wielding bandit. Her ceramic guards protected her from broken ribs, and she rolled as she hit the ground. Her lungs burned, air knocked loose. She scrambled up slightly too late; the ninja she'd been aiming for kicked her hard under her jaw, just past the edge of the mask.

She was about to get pounded. Chakra shot between her and Kuromaru. She twisted seals. They both vanished.

And reappeared in each other's spots. Kawarimi, with an Inuzuka twist. She glanced back in time to see Kuromaru's teeth sink into the ninja's striking foot, then she grabbed the man who'd dropped low to catch a wolf and twisted his head, snapping his neck.

She grinned behind her mask, teeth smeared red, nose filled with the smell of blood, pupils dilated. This was perfect.

It was the first time in years Ryouma had been considered the lesser threat, and there was something wildly funny about the idea. None of his enemies seemed to have realized yet that his palm-strikes didn't just break bones or crush flesh. The ninja seemed to be concentrating on Tsume; the regular bandits, wielding swords and maces and sickles, split their attention between the illusory caravan, the woman and the dog who ripped out throats, and the man who--

Melted faces.

His fingers sank through the eyesockets of a blue-eyed woman who'd tried to gut him; he grimaced and pulled his hand free of the blackening wreckage, flinging little drops of smoking slime away. His stomach seared with a thin line of fire, but the armored vest had taken the brunt of the hit; only a little blood warmed his belly. Maybe it wouldn't even scar. He already had one brutally long line marring his abs, and he didn't need another.

He didn't dare look down, though. One second of distraction could be the last one he got. And as long as he wasn't tripping over his own guts, he could keep fighting. He grinned mirthlessly behind his mask, dipping into a crouch again as he beckoned with two fingers at the nearest bandit. The man had finally seen the results of Ryouma's jutsu close at hand, and he was beginning to back away. "C'mon," Ryouma encouraged, flooding more chakra into his hands. "Wasn't her lucky day, but it could be yours."

The man tightened his grip on his kusari-gama and licked his lips, gauging the odds. Ryouma shrugged and moved in.

He took another hit to the right arm-guard, and remembered why he hated the sickle and chain so much. The weight at the end of the long chain smashed into his arm with punishing force, splintering the armor and bruising the bone. Worse, the chain coiled abruptly about his wrist, nearly yanking him off his feet when the bandit tugged. Ryouma set his teeth, found his balance, and tugged back.

That was when the next bandit tried to cut off his leg.

In the ensuing struggle, Ryouma freed his arm, melted another head, and collected an angling gash through the meat of his calf. His leg bindings, sliced through, tried to trip him. He kicked them away, swearing, and stood awkwardly hip-shot, trying to maintain his balance with most of his weight on his right leg. Three meters away, the first bandit collected the chain of his kusari-gama again. He was grinning now.

Ryouma sighed. "Screw this," he said, and formed the Ram seal. Then he ended the genjutsu, too. He was going to need all the chakra he had.

The next sequence of seals was one he seldom used; it took too much chakra, too much time, and it left him with no other recourse if he missed. But he'd established himself as a close-range fighter now, and the kusari-gama man, laughing now as he spun the weighted chain above his head, was definitely a longer-range man. So Ryouma took the fight to him.

He hit the Snake seal, and chakra coiled within him, feral, murderous. Ryouma wrenched his hands apart and closed his right hand over his straightened left forearm. The armor forced him to go a little higher up than usual; his fingers closed around his elbow, but the contact was there, and the chakra seethed through his pathways and boiled in his palm.

"Naizou Tokasu no Jutsu!" he yelled.

The jolt of chakra hit the bandit right under his ribs. Agony seared for an instant across the man's face. Then he dropped, limp, empty. He sloshed as he hit the ground, and a dark red river oozed past his lips.

Ryouma's hands were trembling, and the bandits around him were backing off. He used the moment to snag two soldier pills and invoke the orange-scented jutsu again.

Adrenaline surged, pounding out aches and pains and sudden, stabbing hurts. A senbon went through her bicep and out the other side, making her nearly fumble the kunai she had aimed toward another bandit. She didn't, though, driving it into his eye until it ratcheted against the back of his skull. She yanked it out, twisting to see who'd thrown the needle.

Whoever it was had already lost themselves in shadows and trees.

"Juujin Bunshin!" Kuromaru howled, and obligingly Tsume flew through the seals and felt chakra slide between them, hot and liquid. There was the clatter of steel against armor and someone screamed, the scent of blood thickening in the air.

"How you doin', Coyot?" she called out, leaping up until she was in the boughs of a tree, getting a better look on their field below. Only two civilians left, but another three ninja. With the two she'd already killed--

Kuromaru screamed in her voice, red spattering across the ground as he dropped and released human form, twisting on three legs to race off into the undergrowth.

Okay, four ninja. Well armed, too. It only confirmed what she'd suspected: Intel snapped teeth. She was grateful for Kuromaru, another set of fangs and claws to round out their numbers.

The smell of rot vied with the scent of oranges under the overwhelming air of blood and fear. Tsume leaped from her perch to another branch, covering half the clearing before she dropped down on top of a ninja closing on Ryouma, her knees driving into his shoulders. Suddenly focused chakra kept him from crashing to the ground. As he started to form seals she grabbed his head and jerked, only to realize that the same chakra he used to stay upright was threading through his bones. His neck didn't snap. She shoved away from him a split instant before spines tore from his flesh, her calf scraping hard along one as she twisted clear. He whipped around to look at her, his eyes spinning yellow in the morning light. The ground sucked her down, dragging at her feet and gear. She thrashed to escape but it only pulled her lower. She focused, twisted seals, yanked her chakra, and replaced herself with a log.

Right, then. Ryouma could deal with that one. Tsume crouched, her head ducked, looking at the nearest man from under red-coated hair. She smiled behind her mask, a baring of teeth to mark her sheer joy in a good brawl. Blood flowed freely down her arm, smeared across her skin from uncountable scratches and cuts. She feinted left, stagger-stepped, and when the man dove for the weakness she twisted, channeling energy and flinging it into chakra claws that sank deep into his skin. Blood and muscle slid hot over her flesh, the scrape of a rib against her forearm.

He looked a little surprised as he fell. She stepped away, surveying the wreckage thus far. Bloodlust and predator coiled in her stomach, triggered by death and the smell of warm meat. Her heart pounded under her ribcage, her breath coming short and fast, the echo of her pulse thrumming in her ears.

There was still prey left. Four members. She smiled.

Ryouma was moving in on one of the remaining bandits--with kunai, this time; the bandit was only armed with a mace, and he'd rather save the brilliant chemical surge of chakra and caffeine burning through his veins for someone who actually merited it--when chakra flared behind him. He pinpointed one kunai through the mace-wielder's throat and whipped around, palming another two, in time to see Tsume leaping away from a man who had suddenly grown an array of spines sprouting from back and chest and arms, like a porcupine gone wildly wrong.

He threw his kunai, just to see what would happen. The spines batted the blades away; the man didn't even blink. His eyes were yellow, Ryouma noticed. And he was smiling around a mouthful of lengthening teeth.

"Right," Ryouma groaned. "No close combat. I get the point." Good thing he'd taken those soldier pills already. He could manage the Naizou Tokasu twice in a day, if he was lucky, and he was already feeling the strain of the first shot. He probably shouldn't have wasted that one, but he could think of even fewer alternatives now. There was no way he'd be able to touch flesh without getting torn to shreds, and the sword probably wouldn't be any more effective than the kunai. Explosion tags were a possibility, but the Internal Organs Melt was a far better one. No matter how well-armored the outside, no human, shinobi or not, could shield his soft tissues. As long as Ryouma got a straight shot, the ninja's spines wouldn't matter.

Getting a straight shot was the problem, though. He couldn't make the mistake of assuming that his opponent hadn't seen his previous use of the jutsu, or that he wouldn't dodge. A Nara would really come in handy, here.

Or a bit of water from the river to which the bandit ninja had so obligingly put his back...

The seal sequence for this jutsu was a lot shorter and a lot faster. "Suiton: Imashimeru no Jutsu!" Ryouma snarled, wrenching his chakra out. The porcupine ninja leapt sideways as a rope of water, as thick as his torso, erupted from the river and lashed out at him. A few of his spines slashed through the water rope, which recoiled, reformed, and then doubled back on him. The ninja dodged again, and Ryouma gritted his teeth and brought his hands together in the Ox seal.

He was going to have the mother of all headaches, tonight. But at least he wouldn't be dead.

Ox, Hare, Bird, Boar... The water rope was driving the porcupine ninja closer, stabbing at him with all the mindless intent of a jutsu created solely to bind and to hold. Hare, Monkey, Dog, Ram. A dozen spines whipped out from the ninja's arm, slicing through the water rope. The jutsu, noticeably weakened, tried sluggishly to draw itself back together. Horse, Monkey, Dragon, Ox. Another armload of spines slashed the water rope in half. Droplets danced in the sunlight as they fought to reform. Coldly, contempteously, the porcupine ninja struck them down.

Snake. Ryouma straightened his left arm, gripped his biceps with his right hand. Chakra built, roiling, furious. "Naizou Tokasu no Jutsu," he whispered.

The porcupine ninja turned.

Ryouma's bolt of chakra shot through his chestful of spines and grazed his left side. Badly aimed, but not a miss. Pain seared the ninja's face; he coughed, doubling over around a stomachful of spines. Blood dribbled, dark and stringy, between his fangs.

Ryouma's knees tried to buckle. He choked down another two soldier pills, somehow kept his feet, and looked around for Tsume.

Hopefully she wouldn't mind taking care of the rest of them.

There were two men left. They both smelled like fear, though neither were backing away. Maybe they were ninja. Maybe they'd just realized it was futile.

Maybe they'd noticed the great black shadow melting from the trees, paws leaving bloody prints as he walked. Kuromaru licked his chops, sucking flesh off an eyetooth. His pupils were ebony circles, gold ringing them. Tsume guessed hers were just as dark.

Ryouma smelled good. She could catch it every so often, under the potent scents of blood and rot and orange. He smelled tired, and full of adrenaline, and not at all like she was used to non-Inuzuka partners smelling. No edge of wariness, no uncertainty at a kunoichi who didn't act like a proper ninja should, who enjoyed the fight too much.

He smelled like excitement and bloodlust and exhaustion. Like pain but not fear. Like the edge of soldier pills but not the soldier. He smelled like Pack, but not anything like Pack.

The sense of predator sunk claws into Tsume's mind as it realized it didn't have to back off to keep a mission partner happy.

She smiled behind her mask, a low growl vibrating from her throat. One of the ninja circled and, apparently sensing the same exhaustion from Ryouma as Tsume was, dove for the tall man.

Kuromaru streaked from the trees, silent as darkness against the ground. The ninja seemed to expect him; he turned, crouching and forming jutsu. He aimed, chakra blasted, slamming into the wolf-dog leaping toward him.

The wolf-dog exploded. Shrapnel flung in all directions, forcing the ninja back in a hurry, protecting his face.

Kuromaru dropped his henge and snapped in behind the man, teeth sinking through skin and tendon, hamstringing the human.

The shinobi went down screaming as Tsume spun to face the other one, her head tipped and shoulders snaking behind.

Apparently, he'd decided close combat wasn't the way to go. He yanked out shuriken, throwing three before he even moved. Tsume dodged but felt one slice her shoulder open anyway, the heat of poison sizzling over her skin.

Crotch-rotting bloodworms. With a snarl she whipped a kunai up, still moving toward the trees, toward cover, as she cut into her own flesh and skimmed the infected injury off.

It wasn't deep. Didn't have to take muscle to get rid of it; just skin. Adrenaline kept it from hurting too much. Her blade was sharp enough to cut without tearing, peeling off flesh before pain registered. Inuzuka-blood made it react like it shouldn't; she had no way of knowing if that was better or worse.

The ninja was running. Smart, if cowardly. He wasn't fast enough; low level chuunin, maybe. She shoved chakra into her muscles, her legs, spinning it from Kuromaru to herself and back again as she borrowed claws and fangs and strength and speed.

By the time she took the man down, blood had run red and clean all the way to her wrist. At least it didn't burn anymore.

The chuunin died quietly. She hoped Ryouma hadn't wanted any of the rest of them.

No one else came out to play, even when Ryouma experimentally pitched to his knees in the middle of the road and waited for someone to come and finish him off. Kuromaru howled in the forests to his right, beyond the abrupt cliff that had bottlenecked the road and held their ambush. Ryouma wasn't much of a judge of wolf-howls, but even he could hear the thread of victory in the throbbing cry. That sounded remarkably like a Done!

He pushed himself back to his feet, wincing as the cut across the back of his leg spilled wet warmth and pain down his ankle. As the adrenaline rush seeped away, he was beginning to feel the pain of his other injuries, the cuts across his ribs and belly, the bone-deep bruises on his arms. His chakra pathways burned falsely bright with the soldier pills' energy, but at least he wasn't shaking anymore. Blood pills would probably help, too. He took one, washed it down with the last few gulps in his canteen, considered the wreckage of corpses in the road, and limped over to the one who wasn't quite yet a corpse.

His jutsu had just grazed the left side of the porcupine ninja's chest. Unlike his two other major original jutsu, the Naizou Tokasu didn't spread into whatever it touched. But once it penetrated the bone-cage of the ribs, it dissolved any soft tissue in its path. By the looks of it, his shot had hit a lung, maybe the edge of the heart. Thick, frothy strings of dark red slime dripped from the ninja's lips and glued his face to the ground. The racking coughs had ceased as his chest cavity filled with fluid from his dissolving lung and draining heart. He lay very still now, and his yellow eyes were the eyes of a frightened child.

Ryouma had to remind himself, forcibly, of the severed hand lying rotting and forgotten in the forest. He stopped two paces away, drew his sword, and ended it all.

"Someday," he told himself, wiping the blade off, "I'll invent a jutsu that does the job with half the mess. And half the chakra."

Maybe then he'd have enough left over to actually dispose of the bodies properly. As it was, he had to make do with dragging them into a ragged pile between the river and the road. They were heavy, and his stomach and leg hurt, but he wasn't going to leave any severed hands behind.

Tsume heard Kuromaru's howl and smiled, a savage sort of grin. She had to catch her breath before she could yank her mask to the side, tip her head and howl back. Higher, shorter, without the multi-tone that only canines could achieve. Enough to tell her familiar that she'd finished, too, everything was fine, and they should head back.

She wondered if Kuromaru actually would head back, or if he'd gorge himself on the kill. If she had to go after him...

Pain snapped through her like a quick sort of static shock, leaving the burn of torn skin behind as she stood. She growled low in her throat, an instinctive response to pain and weakness. Blood oozed down her arm from her shoulder. She glared at the body in front of her, then finally slapped an exploding tag on it and walked away.

She wasn't going to carry the pus-bag clear back to the ambush site.

By the time she slid into the clearing, Ryouma had hauled most of the bodies into a pile. Tsume watched for a moment, mind fighting past the adrenaline come-down, predator checking for any further attack. Blood dripped down her hand, off her fingers, and soaked into the ground. She watched it a moment, wondering how many other predators they might attract. As long as they were in near-fighting shape, it wouldn't matter. Animals didn't go after people, generally.

As long as they were in near-fighting shape. All things changed when you were half-dead.

She paced into the clearing, onto the road, standing for a moment in the sunshine. She tipped her head to listen, to scent. The colors were too bright, contrasts too clear. She took a deep breath to try and dispel the wolf-mindset. Blood. Fear. Rot. Orange. Ryouma. Kuromaru. She inhaled again. Death. Pain. Prey. She pulled her mask the rest of the way off, hooking it on her belt, and forced herself to think like a shinobi.

Bodies. She padded over, grabbed one, and threw her weight against it to haul it up along the pile. "Few more than half a dozen bandits and a couple of nin here," she pointed out, mostly to use the voice that tried to curl up in her throat and turn into a growl. Words were human. Words were very human, and the flash of her dilated eyes and the glint of teeth still weren't.

Ryouma smelled nice. She shook herself, realized she'd been watching him for a second too long, and stepped away. Bloodlust curled in her stomach, spread through her abdomen and up into her chest. Her heart pounded against skin that was too hot, too tight. They weren't fighting. Bloodlust without the blood...

She purposefully put weight on her injured calf, forcing the cut muscle to contract. Pain was a great distractor. She snarled softly and stalked toward another body, trying to ignore the itch in her muscles.

"Maybe they were recruiting," Ryouma suggested. He grabbed the last corpse by the ankles, trying not to look at the ruin of a head that had once held blue eyes, and lugged it back across the road. "Maybe the mayor can't count." That seemed rather more likely. He heaved the body up onto the pile, and then scrubbed his hands furtively against a relatively clean scrap of someone's shirt. The chakra bolt had boiled his left palm clean, but his right hand and glove were still leprous with splotches of muck. And he was seriously going to give them blood-poisoning if he tried any first aid like this.

He glanced over at Tsume, trying to judge how soon he needed to get his hands sterile. Blood sleeved her left arm, dripped from her fingers and pattered in the dust. She was favoring one leg just a little, but only someone already acquainted with her usual feral grace would have noticed it. A thin trickle of crimson down her right bicep, a painful precision in the way she held her head.

Clean hands would probably be a very good thing.

He left the pile of bodies and limped towards the river. Blood squelched in his sandal with every step; fortunately there weren't many. The water ran clear over a rocky bottom, swollen high with the recent rain; there were chunks of ice from the mountain snow-melt floating downstream. He clenched his teeth, unbuckled the cracked arm-guards and stripped off the filthy gloves. Then he crouched down over his searing leg, dunked his hands in the river, and pulled them out again with a yelp.

"Next," he announced, "I am going to invent a cleaning jutsu. It may also boil off the first layer of skin, but I'm not sure I'd mind. You doing okay? It's gonna take me a minute to be able to tie bandages."

"Maybe they heard we were coming, and were hoping they stood a shot," Tsume said with a wicked smile. She pondered the great stack of bodies, tipping her head carefully to one side. Her jaw throbbed. A moment's recollection brought the image of a boot smashing into her. Oh yeah.

Exploding tags would make things messy. A slow burn would smell. Earth jutsu was the best bet. She knew some basic ones. Stepping back, she canted her weight off her tender leg and focused. Chakra slid through her pathways like liquid satin, twisting and flowing from her to Kuromaru and back again, shaped by seals. She released it, felt it pour out her feet and down through the ground. Watched dirt writhe and slide out of the way, letting the bodies sink before it crashed over them like a wave and settled once more.

Good enough. She was trembling, ever so slightly. She pulled out a soldier pill, crunching it between her molars, tasting it bitter before it sank into her system, filling her with a heady sort of rush. She paced to the stream where Ryouma crouched, stopping close enough to smell him.

Sour pain and let down, the adrenaline crash like burned toast. Warm dens and playing, the edge of power like a confident wolf. "Aren't you just the jutsu-creating fiend. In the meantime, you could try putting some of that water in a basin, and heating it before you freeze your fingers off. Hard to make seals without fingers." She grinned, lowering herself carefully to the ground, pausing halfway to move over, give him more space. Give her more space. Aches were starting to overshadow the itch toward touching, be it fighting or--or anything. She embraced them.

Kuromaru disentangled from the shadows, loping across the ground with his tongue lolling out. Blood smeared his muzzle, made his fur darker still. Flesh caught between his teeth.

Tsume sat a little more comfortably and pulled her medikit out. She popped a blood pill on principle, tossed one into the air and heard Kuromaru snap it between his teeth, then eyed Ryouma. She lifted her chin--catching the movement when it pulled the forming bruise--and scented.

He smelled like pain and let down and blood. She filtered out the other scents. The way his weight balanced, she guessed the biggest problem was his leg. Legs were important. "How bad? I know some basic healing jutsu..." For big things, anyway. For little things, she had glue. Better than stitches. You didn't need to sew carefully.

"Stand a shot?" Ryouma scoffed. "Not against your brilliance. I think I should keep you around all the time. You can come up with great ideas when I'm too brain-dead for 'em."

No basin in sight, but while his chakra was a low simmer bolstered only by soldier pills, he could still manage some minor jutsu. In two minutes he'd created a shallow bowl-like depression in the bank, dropped a liter or so of water inside, and heated it with a fingertip of chakra.

Sometimes it was nice to be a ninja.

There was soap in his med-kit, a chip of the floor-scrubbing stuff he'd nabbed from the ANBU showers; it smelled strongly of antiseptic, but it worked up a fine lather and stripped the blood and slime off his hands. Not sterile, maybe, but it was the best he could do.

"My leg's the worst, and I'm not sure how bad it is," he admitted, as he pulled another water jutsu to empty and refill the hollow. His hands were beginning to ache; the left one cramped, protesting at every seal. Damn, if old people had arthritis like this, no wonder they were cranky. Maybe when he got back to Konoha he'd reconsider his policy of only using the Naizou Tokasu in combat. A week of training would undoubtedly improve his stamina and chakra capacity--if it didn't land him in the hospital with chakra exhaustion and a left hand burned like Kakashi's. It still sounded like a risk worth taking.

He dropped gracelessly to his knees at last, balancing most of his weight on his right leg while he twisted his left leg out awkwardly behind him. The slice started at the widest portion of his calf and angled down to the hem of his pants, although for the last few centimeters it was a mere scratch. It was still bleeding sluggishly, dyeing his heel crimson. "If I don't bleed to death," he commented, poking at the lips of the wound, "I might survive. Doesn't look too deep. Gonna make going home a real pain, though." He grinned at her, blinked at Kuromaru on her other side, and made a face. "You seriously ate them? You don't know where they've been!"

Tsume just stared at him with dubious amusement when he started spouting compliments--about her brilliance, no less--then shook her head and huffed a laugh. "Sure, Coyot. You keep me around, and I'll keep pointing out the obvious." She unpacked first aid gear while he shifted, then moved around to look at his leg.

She batted his hand away from the edges, curling over to sniff the wound. It didn't smell like poison, or like rot--and now that he'd cleaned the worst of the black ooze off his hands, she could actually tell that. No grape infection scent, either. "If you don't bleed to death, I think you'll live," she said with a flash of teeth up at him. Her grin widened. "Nice job, rookie." Not that he'd acted the part, but occasionally you had to get a word or two in where possible. The compliments she didn't understand brought out the evil in her. Men complimented when they were flirting, and she didn't want him flirting. Except it was nice, and she did. She was confused. He smelled good.

Either way, poking at him occasionally was good for him. Built character or somesuch.

"Hang on, this'll sting," she muttered, then smeared antibacterial cream over the long gash and pinched the edges together over the bulky muscle of his calf. The glue was thick, pressed out of a compact tube in a thin line. She took a breath, blew on it to speed up the drying process, and sat back. His skin felt warm against her fingertips.

The glue stopped the bleeding, staved off infection, and worked almost as well as stitches. Tsume eyed the hole in her bicep and wondered how much the medics would yell at her for sealing in possible infection if she glued that closed, too... It was really starting to hurt.

Sure that Ryouma's leg wasn't going to open back up, she lifted the tube--crotchticks, and her other shoulder was really starting to hurt, too, but there was no skin left to glue shut--and squirted some onto the still-bleeding hole. It wasn't too bad, really. The senbon had mostly passed through flesh, barely nicking the muscle.

Kuromaru lay down, belly up to show off a long line of blood-matted hair across his ribs. "Who cares where they've been?" he asked happily. "I know where they went. Meat is always better freshly-killed." He twisted further to expose his injured back leg. It flopped awkwardly, and Tsume suspected something important was torn. "Unless you wanted some...? I buried the rest for later, but I could dig it up for you."

"Don't be gross," Tsume growled, brushing a hand carefully over his knee. The injury was higher; she slid up to his hip. "You're not coming back for your kill."

Kuromaru went silent. The silence of a five-year-old child plotting the best way to get candy... Tsume ignored him. They'd be out of range within a day, regardless.

"How much does that hurt?"

Kuromaru whined.

With a sigh, she removed her hand and sat back. "All right. Let me finish with the Coyot, here, and I'll bind it. Sound good?"

"No," Kuromaru griped, but he rolled to his side to wait, broad tongue scraping over a bloody paw.

She shouldn't sniff Ryouma for injuries, really. She told herself that only after she'd started at his neck, head sweeping down his chest, the ceramic scent of armor mingling with everything else. But there was definitely more blood.

Tsume paused, sat up and away so she could no longer feel his body heat, and cleared her throat. She gave him a sheepish smile. "I suppose you could just tell me where you're hurt..."

"Could do that," Ryouma agreed, between gritted teeth. He'd dug out a roll of bandages while Tsume and Kuromaru bickered, froze with two loops wrapped around his calf while Tsume sniffed him, and now began again to wrap his injured leg with quick, mindless movements. Inuzuka, he had to remind himself. Nothing to get confused about. Only her abrupt retreat made this time quite different from the previous times she'd scent-checked him, as if she was as aware of his body as he was of hers...

It was just adrenaline and bloodlust, battle-heightened senses still keyed up and muscles still quivering. Ryouma tore the bandage free from the roll, split the loose end, and knotted it around his calf. Then he grabbed Tsume's med-kit, dug through for pain pills, and downed two.

The drugs would slow his reactions considerably. They'd also numb the searing bite of multiple cuts and bone-deep bruises--and dull his senses to the point where he didn't start going hard every time Tsume touched him.

His body was just stupid. Yesterday morning had been bad enough. Today was almost as explicable and just as unforgivable. Hopefully, even if she could smell his arousal, she'd mistake it for battle-fever. That was really all it was, after all.

"I can handle the rest of it," he said, prodding experimentally at the dark, broken bruises building on both his forearms. Where the kusari-gama chain had wrapped around his right wrist, burst blood vessels and torn skin shadowed the links of the chain. "Just bruises and a couple shallow cuts through my armor." There wasn't much blood; the reinforced armor had taken the brunt of the blows. "I'll patch 'em up myself. You take care of Carrion-boy here."

Except... Her left shoulder, sliced raw and crusted with blood, didn't look any too good. As reaction set in, she was starting to use that arm a little more carefully. "Scratch that. Let me see your shoulder first." He grabbed the antiseptic cream she'd used on him and beckoned her with fingers that didn't tremble at all.

She watched carefully as he took two pills, making sure he'd grabbed the ones not designed for Inuzuka systems.

Then he spoke, and she twitched. She wasn't really sure she wanted him to patch her up. It meant touching and warm skin and calluses and she was trying not to think about the way he smelled, all his usual scents mixed headily with bloodlust and arousal--

Tsume realized she'd pulled back a little and stopped herself firmly. She was being a moon-faced pup. It was just Ryouma; surely she could keep from leaping on him in a fit of lust.

"It's only skinned," she murmured uncomfortably, presenting that shoulder to him and trying hard to focus on anything except body heat and smell. Maybe it wouldn't take much touching. "My immune system's better than most." She stopped talking, then. It wasn't helping, and she could hear the discomfort in the growl of her own voice.

"Better doesn't mean perfect," Ryouma pointed out as he dipped a wad of bandage in the refilled basin of water. He dabbed at her shoulder, cleaning the crusting blood away from the clamshell-sized patch of flayed flesh. A little more blood leaked through as he dislodged clots. He snagged a clean gauze pad out of her med-kit, smeared antiseptic cream on one side, and slapped it against the wound. It was a little too high on her shoulder to easily wrap, but that was what medical tape was for.

Right. So. He rocked back, eyeing his work. A little slap-dash, and the strips of tape holding the gauze against her skin weren't quite even, but at least only a few red dots were soaking through. When they changed the dressings tonight, when he wasn't trembling on the edge, he could do a better job of it.

"Anything else I should look at?" The bruise below her jaw looked ugly, but he couldn't do anything more for that than he could for the contusions purpling his own arms. Sometimes he really missed having a medic-nin on his team.

At least her armor, while filthy and bloody and scorched, didn't look badly damaged. Small mercies. She was probably better at dodging than he was.

Tsume poked at the bandage. Unsurprisingly, it hurt. Then she glanced at Ryouma. Nothing about him was in good condition; half his armor was cracked or broken, he smelled like he'd been through a meat grinder--though she suspected most of that was bruising, not bleeding--and he was beginning to get that pupil-dilated look that came with pain pills. Another swift sniff--from a safer distance, this time--told her that while he might look like he'd been through the wringer, he wasn't bleeding badly and he didn't reek of pain. Both were good signs. He moved a little carefully, but no more than she'd expect from a body protesting a hard fight.

"Nah." She glanced down at herself, then quirked a smile at him. "The quartermaster must love you, though. Didn't you just get your mask replaced, too? You looking for a full complement of new armor, Coyot?" Her eyes twinkled as she spoke, taking the sting out of the words. She turned without waiting for an answer, unwrapping a length of bandage from her thigh and turning to Kuromaru.

On the underside of the bandaging were seals; rows upon rows of them, painted with Kuromaru's own blood. Binding any canine limbs was never easy, but the Inuzuka had learned what they could over the years. It took only a brush of her chakra to activate them, and as she wrapped the length around his hips and the upper part of his leg, it tightened and glowed momentarily, using their own chakra system and sealing the joint into a flexible rigidity that would support whatever had been torn until they could get to a medic.

Kuromaru whined as his leg was pulled into place, but otherwise lay still. That done, Tsume took a kunai and sliced at the fur on his belly until she could see where he was bleeding. It was just a shallow injury; she smeared antibiotic cream on it and taped a bandage over.

"You sure you're all right?" she asked, glancing at Ryouma. She flexed her arm as she spoke, feeling the twinge of pain in her bicep where she'd sealed the senbon hole with glue. As long as she kept it moving, it kept hurting. Continuous hurting meant she'd be expecting it, somewhat inured to it, if she had to use her arm later.

"'m fine," Ryouma said, just a shade more snappishly than usual. He blamed it on his side, which was being a pain and bleeding more now that he'd managed to peel his armor and shirt off. The wound on his belly had mostly clotted, but the armor was thinner beneath the arms, to allow for more flexion, and the cut over his ribs had sliced deeper there. It wasn't nearly as bad as the gash under his arm that had almost bled him out after that last mission with Kakashi, but it still wasn't much fun.

He snagged the roll of bandage again, figuring that if he wrapped at an angle he could cover both cuts at once, and looked for the antibiotic. Damn, Tsume had stolen it, and if he asked for it back she'd snark at him about not being fine after all...

He twisted around to look for his own kit, which he'd dropped behind him at some point. Something like a chakra flare tickled his senses just as his fingers closed over the pouch. He glanced up.

And lunged for Tsume, knocking her flat over Kuromaru's side and rolling both of them away just before a jagged bolt of lightning smashed into the dirt where she had knelt.

She almost went for his throat despite the surge of alien chakra. Then ninja-reflexes kicked in. She covered her head and his in the same arm-sweep, tucking her face alongside Ryouma's for more protection.

His roll kept them both moving, him off her so she could come to her feet, drawing weapons, eyes skimming for enemies and--

Bone white armor was lying on the bank. Which meant it wasn't on Ryouma.

Kuromaru scrambled to his feet, adrenaline masking the pain from his hind leg as he pushed off. Another lightning blast seared the air, and Tsume was blinded for a moment with the smell of scorched fur. Not flesh, though. They hadn't gotten her familiar.

She heard a rush of water and twisted, cursing as she saw the river behind them rise up and snarl itself into a dragon, stones from the bottom filling in for teeth. Fish silvered under the surface, flashing as they tried desperately to swim back down.

"Move!" she barked, diving to one side. And just like that, they were scattered. She didn't see where Kuromaru had vanished to. She hoped he was hunting.

Water pounded down around her, sending her swirling into something she couldn't see or hear or smell through. There was enough time to take a breath, and then the world went silent and she was thrown around, no longer sure which way was up. Her lungs burned. Her hands started forming seals.

Ryouma reached recklessly for the low chemical burn of soldier-pill chakra as the water-dragon plunged down. No time for seals; he couldn't have dragged out a high-level water jutsu to counter the Suiton: Suiryuudan no Jutsu even if he'd had one on hand. But he could force through a kawarimi in less time than it took him to think the jutsu name. He landed higher up the bank, on the hard soil where once a small boulder had been.

Stone wasn't his favorite element for switching with, but there wasn't much closer to hand. The ground was slicked with patches of blood and slime, and one foot nearly slid out from beneath him before he slammed it full of sticky chakra. His reflexes were slowing. Damn, taking those pain pills had been an even worse idea than stripping off his armor in a place he'd only thought had been cleared of enemies...

He'd never have a chance to make up for his idiocy if he didn't survive this.

Even with the two soldier pills he'd taken after his second use of the Internal Organs Melt Technique, his chakra was unpleasantly low. Dangerously low, if he meant to fight. He snaked one bare hand back to his hip; med-kit was gone, but he kept some soldier pills in his shuriken pouch, too, because good ninja planned for the worst. Just like he hadn't done.

Lightning lashed out of a clear sky. Ryouma threw himself aside, rebounded off the cliff wall, and hurtled into the air.

One man, standing at the top of the cliff, making no attempt to hide. Another woman, across the river, hands just pulling apart from the Bird seal that had finished her Water Dragon Technique. Probably more moving in...

Well, they weren't the only ones who could play with elemental jutsu. Ryouma bit down on another soldier pill and wrenched a quarter of the new flood of energy into shape and through the seals. "Katon!" he snarled, as he landed on the cliff edge several meters away from his target. "Goukakyuu no Jutsu!"

The giant fireball that seared through his lips wouldn't kill the enemy ninja, not if he was good enough to pull off a B-ranked lightning jutsu. But it would get him moving, give Ryouma time to get closer.

Give him a chance to pull out his real killer jutsu.

She completed the final seal and spun into Tsuuga, chakra lending the taijutsu more momentum, the ninjutsu that lengthened her nails into claws and gave her added strength and speed boosting it further.

Something hard was caught in the backlash; it shattered as the water dragon did, chunks of rock blasting out and away.

Tsume landed in the river and kawarimi'd instantly, a log floating where she'd been. There was no sign of Kuromaru. She couldn't smell anything. Her lungs were begging for air, leaving her gasping when she needed to be moving.

Motion out of the corner of her eye made her fling herself sideways. The flurry of glowing senbon vanished as they hit dirt, but that mattered less than the fact that she now knew where one of her opponents stood. Whipping around, she flung herself forward. A woman stood facing her, eyes focused, hands locked in a boar seal. More senbon materialized and shot out, arrowing in on Tsume.

She wrenched aside again. In the time it took her to move, wind picked up. Her feet left the ground. She cursed and kawarimi'd, saw the forest blast into splinters from the other side of the field, and pulled weapons. These fighters were keeping them at long range. She snarled with frustration, looking around in the hopes she could change tactics. Take down a more accessible one. The one with the wind jutsu, for example.

There were two closing on her teammate. His eyes were trained on a man on the cliff.

"Ryouma, watch it!" Tsume shouted before transporting again, diving for one of the stalkers as Kuromaru melted from the shadows, lunging after the second. She didn't see what happened. Heard a yelp, and felt a sudden drain in her chakra. Tried not to think about it as she ran the last little distance toward the ninja, trying to outrun the wind jutsu as it started up again. Outrun it, or at least drag it toward the teammate. She preferred using one against the other.

He was draining chakra too fast, he knew, and couldn't help it. Not when the enemy nin smiled pleasantly at him, and slapped the fire-ball down with three hand-seals and a sheet of water. The man didn't even flinch. No uniform, no hitai'ate, just a shock of youthful white hair and coffee-dark skin layered over a fresh, unwearied chakra that burned with jounin-level strength. Ryouma grinned back at him, and started a new set of seals.

Then Tsume's shout echoed between cliff and water. Startled, he jumped back. The ground crumbled where he'd stood; a handful of kunai flashed by. The pain pills still slowed his reflexes, and one kunai skimmed the wrist of the hand he'd thrown up as an automatic shield for his unmasked face.

Mask. Right. He didn't have his armor, but he hadn't lost it all...

He jerked the curved ceramic plate over his face and leapt sideways again, scanning the cliff-top for a new attacker. Another man, with an old purple scar pulling his face askew, stood almost at right angles with the first man--at a spot perfectly calculated to put either shinobi out of Ryouma's peripheral vision as long as he was focusing on the other. If he stepped back, he'd be stepping into empty air. And there was a third man at the base of the cliff, pulling one hand back in another palm-strike that would crumble Ryouma's footing out from under him.

Ryouma swore and leapt aside again. "You guys aren't with the bandits, are you."

"Not in the end, Tousaki-kun," the white-haired man said cheerfully. "But they were very helpful in drawing you out."

He knows my name. They were drawing us out. Ryouma's breath strangled in his throat. "The hell," he whispered.

"We needn't fight, you know," the white-haired man said. "You can leave that to your partner; she won't last long, even with her dog. We simply have a proposition to put to you. If you agree, you might even get to keep the bitch."

Ryouma didn't wait to hear it. "TSUME!" He wheeled and sprinted for the cliff-edge. A chakra-filled thrust shot him into the air; another surge steadied his landing on the riverbank. "Pull out!"

This wasn't in their mission. These shinobi were fresh, and strong, and working together, and they knew his name.

Something had gone so incredibly wrong that Ryouma had no words bad enough to describe it.

The wind jutsu caught her. Tsume spun into Tsuuga again, letting the wind rather than her chakra sustain the whirl. She heard a voice bellow and grinned savagely; the backlash had caught the scarred ninja, even if her claws hadn't. Blood-filled air made her scentblind. Spinning, her sight was useless. The forest splintered around her as she stopped the move.

She crashed hard into a tree. The tree broke. She might have, but pounding chakra into her bones kept her whole. She still hit the ground hard, vision whiting out even as she surged to her feet again.

Pull out. She was more than willing to pull out. They were getting their tails bitten. "KUROMARU!" And where was Ryouma, now? It took her a half second to locate him. Longer than she had.

The three men who'd been after him were still after him. The one with the facial scar was bleeding, now, but still using his right arm. She hadn't hit him hard enough, or he'd dodged too fast. The woman with the chakra senbon was nowhere to be seen, and Kuromaru hadn't responded. She still didn't know who was using the wind jutsu.

They were after Ryouma. That much was obvious; one predator to another, she could read their chakra, see their stances. They were hunting, not fighting. She bolted, pouring on speed, pushing her already over-taxed muscles faster. Chakra sizzled through her pathways. She grabbed a soldier pill, two, and ate them both. Half of it bled down her system into Kuromaru.

Ahead of her, the ground on the riverbank where Ryouma stood began to crumble. Snakes rose from the water, long coils of shimmering liquid as dangerous as the real thing. The man with the scar slipped into fluid motion, making seals and sliding toward Ryouma, a coil of something glowing between his hands.

They were too far away. Tsume heard the wind jutsu start up again and wondered briefly if that ninja even knew anything else. She didn't think about how much chakra that must take, and therefore how much he must have. It didn't bear consideration. She simply barreled toward the attacker nearest her, summoning her own pill-bolstered energy into her hands. Half a dozen seals had twelve inch chakra claws burning out her fingertips.

The man turned, saw her, shoved his palm out. The ground in front of her opened, a yawning chasm of nothing. She leapt. Chakra made the jump higher, arcing her up and over the ground jutsu. More chakra funneled out. Deep in the forest, there was a series of explosions.

She landed, aimed a foot strike at the ground-man, sent him staggering back. She didn't know what Ryouma was doing now. She hoped he was still functional. To pull out, they needed to be alive. She struck at the ground-man again, leapt as he aimed at her feet, twisted and landed to one side. Struck again. Took a kunai on her armguard, dug chakra-claws into his shoulder. He screamed. Her claw-jutsu was burning itself out. She needed another pill; between her and whatever Kuromaru was doing, they were spinning through chakra too fast.

Someone yelled. She hoped that was a good sign.

The two men on the clifftop followed him to the ground; the man who'd been crumbling the cliff was already there. There was a moment of confused mayhem--Tsume scythed through their midst in a deadly spin and landed further up the bank--and then the Earth jutsu-user was crumbling the bank away, the scarred man was pulling off a jutsu Ryouma didn't recognize, and the white-haired shinobi, still smiling, called up another Suiton.

He couldn't see Kuromaru. He'd lost track of Tsume. Pulling out had been a nice fantasy, but it was impossible now. These men weren't just running them off; they were running them down.

Ryouma dodged one striking water-snake. He should have avoided the other one, too, but his muscles were growing still more sluggish as the drugs kicked in and his pain died away. He yelped as the second water-snake crashed down on his shoulder, twisted away from its freezing grip, and hit the ground rolling. He formed the seals and slammed his chakra into shape, and his fingers slid into the Dog seal as he came to his feet. Putrid chakra bloomed around his hands.

The white-haired man's eyes lit with a light like love. "Watch yourself, Sano," he breathed. "See what I told you?"

His scarred friend snorted. "The bitch he's running with is having problems with Takeo," he said scathingly. "You think he's any better?"

Stupid, stupid, they're trying to throw you off! Ryouma's brain screamed at him, but he couldn't help a quick glance backward. The water-snakes were gone, and Tsume was tangled with the Doton user, and she was doing fine--

Right up until the moment that a Wind jutsu slammed them both against the cliff wall hard enough to break bone.

Ryouma shouted wordlessly, helplessly. The white-haired man laughed. "I told you, Tousaki-kun," he said pleasantly. "Just put the jutsu away and listen to us, and we'll let you keep what's left of her. Before she's too far gone to save. Or, if you prefer, we can fight it out. The results will be the same for you, but not for her."

"You bastards," Ryouma breathed. He forced more chakra into his hands. The halo widened another centimeter and darkened to the color of old gangrene.

Something flickered in the white-haired man's face. "You really don't want to fight us, Tousaki-kun."

"Oh yeah," Ryouma said, "I think I do."

The white-haired man shrugged and lifted his hands.

And a shower of glowing senbon streaked just past Ryouma's masked cheek.

He grunted with the impact as two lodged in his right shoulder, though he barely felt the pain. The white-haired man shouted in annoyance; Ryouma ignored him. The woman he'd last seen ending her Water Dragon Jutsu on the other side of the river had crossed over. Now she stood just a few meters behind him, eyes narrowed in concentration, hands still set in the boar seal.

Even drugged and dulled, Ryouma lunged faster than he'd ever moved in his life. His left hand closed on the woman's shoulder; his right hand found her face. He shoved chakra through with everything he had.

When he dropped her a moment later, her head was already gone.

Kuromaru dragged himself out of the ditch the woman had thrown him into. Senbon prickled out of his coat. Holes riddled one ear.

His prey was across the riverbank, now, and dead. He snarled, muscles moving with sleek grace as he leapt back over the water in two huge jumps.

Ryouma was surrounded. Tsume fought against the cliff face, struggling with dirt and a ninja all at once. The air smelled like pain and fear and fury, and most especially rot. He braced his stomach against it and ran forward, stretching out to pummel chakra into his muscles and streak across the ground.

The white-haired jounin yelled something, and the scarred man with coils of energy between his hands whipped around, fingers reaching for Tsume, a hundred feet away. Kuromaru kept running. He'd halved the distance between them.

Lightning shattered down around Ryouma. The man twisted around it, blocked from getting closer to the next ninja. Trying to stay alive.

Too busy to see the coils of energy wrap around Tsume, haul her up and away faster than a thought while the white-haired man gave an edged smile and said, "Your choice then, Tousaki-kun."

She was flung through the air, too fast for seals. Too fast for anything.

Kuromaru had nearly closed the distance when he realized she was going to slam right into Ryouma. Right into hands almost black with the rot of gangrene. There wasn't time. Not even for a breath as wolfen chakra flooded into his muscles and they bunched, propelling him forward, slamming him into Tsume before she could hit those deadly arms.

Her momentum threw him off course. He crashed sideways. His ribs smashed into Ryouma's chest. An arm brushed over his temple as they fell in a tangle of limbs. He twisted his head to protect it and fire burned down his other ear.

Kuromaru screamed.

The first moment of horror lasted for a split-second eternity. No time to form the Ram seal, to sever the chakra flow, to cleanse his hands; no time even to dodge. Stabbing lightning had distracted him, and when he whirled around to see what the white-haired man had meant, it was already too late.

Nightmares never came close. They could never detail the terrible bone-crunching impact of one body sacrificing itself for another, or the silken feel of coarse fur sizzling away under his fingertips, or the spine-searing horror of a wolf's scream. His own throat-ripping yell, as he realized what he'd done. His fingers fumbled into the Ram seal, and he cut the chakra flow so fast the snapped coils whiplashed, scoring welts of fire through his pathways. Kuromaru's thrashing bulk crushed his pelvis and then writhed away. He was still alive, but that was his skull Ryouma had felt brush under his wrist. The best they could do for Kuromaru now was a kunai straight to the heart.

And he was still screaming.

Ryouma tried to fight to his feet, to reach for a kunai. His cheeks were wet; he must have cut his face somehow, though his mask hadn't broken. He lurched to one knee, and the kunai sliced into his own leg. It didn't hurt. It should have hurt.

The white-haired man's laugh rang with genuine amusement. "Will you put him out of his misery now, Tousaki-kun? Do the same for her?"

"You." Ryouma ran out of words, out of thoughts, out of breath. He'd left his ninja-to with his armor on the riverbank, but he didn't need it now; he'd rip out that devil's throat with his fingernails if he had to--

Two meters from the smiling white-haired shinobi, Ryouma ran face-first into a glass wall. It shattered, and his world shattered with it.

Kuromaru's screams followed him down.

It all happened too fast. Too fast to react, too fast to understand, too fast to know anything more than the sudden smell of rot and pain and the screaming of her familiar in her ears and down her pathways. The world twisted out from under her and claws raked her armor, blunt nails screeching across as a fur-covered demon-dog tried to do anything to escape from between her and Ryouma.

Ryouma who was pushing away, reeking of anger and panic and horror. And Kuromaru was still screaming.

Tsume caught a hand in thick fur, holding onto him instinctively, knowing she wouldn't ever find him again if he escaped now. He dragged her away from Ryouma, away from the laughing, white-haired shinobi. She scrambled to get her legs under her, to stop him, to halt the world long enough to find out what was going on. It worked as well as stopping the tides.

She saw Ryouma go down, dropping as if he'd been speared. She had to go back. She had to help. She had to stop Kuromaru's panic.

She got a foot under her. Leapt, twisted. Landed on his back and grabbed for his scruff to stop him, turn him--

The smell of gangrene overpowered everything. Her hand halted inches from his fur, hovering over a mess of blackened ooze, the wreckage of a perfectly cupped ear. Everything became obvious. What'd they'd tried to do. What they'd done.

He twisted, shoulder and face diving for the ground as if he could wipe away the rot and pain. The earth crumbled away beneath them. Kuromaru fell, staggered up.

Too many ninja. Her familiar was screaming. Ryouma was down. She twisted back, saw the white-haired shinobi pick her partner up as if it were nothing.

Hadn't killed him. They hadn't killed him, but they were taking him and gangrenous jutsu was rotting Kuromaru and the only person who might know anything about that was leaving. Leaving, but alive.

"Takeo," the leader said. "Take care of them."

Kuromaru lurched sideways, blind and deaf with agony. She couldn't save everyone. She wasn't sure she could save herself.

The man with the ground-jutsu faced them from two hundred feet away. The others were leaving. Takeo glared, hands boiling with brown chakra, and took aim.

The earth began to tremble.

Tsume faced forward, turning her back on the ninja, on Ryouma, and reached up to dig her nails into Kuromaru's throat. Claws pierced fur and skin, and she pulled up all the alpha she'd ever possessed, slamming it into the air around them, snarling, "Run!"

For a moment, she wasn't sure it would work. And then he crashed into the forest, great leaping bounds as if he could outrun the shudders of pain that rippled under his fur and over his bones. Tsume hung on, leaning close to his shoulders, burying her face in his coat against brambles and whipcord branches.

The river turned up ahead. Then it dropped a hundred feet, pummeling into a basin with a roar like a fire. She drove Kuromaru toward it, not knowing what she'd do when they got there.

The chuunin kept up. Kuromaru still screamed, diving and leaping erratically. She kept him from stopping, from clawing at the agony that seared his head, but only just.

And then the ninja was leaping above them, aiming and shouting something over the roar of the falls and the cries of Tsume's familiar.

The ground shuddered and dropped out from under them. They plummeted. Tsume ducked her head between her arms and hung on. Her stomach flipped. Her body tried to pull away from her familiar, spinning into nothing. She tightened her grip on his fur. Her ears filled with the sound of falling rocks and rushing water. And keening over it all, Kuromaru screamed.