"Pants and no hugging," echoed Raidou. "No problem. Just--give me one sec..." He reached back carefully, following a patch of numbness that was fast blooming into something else, and touched wet steel. A sharp edge sliced through cloth, nicking a callous. He traced the shape, feeling delicately with gloved fingers, and decided the kunoichi had tried to give him a liver piercing with a good ol' traditional kunai.

Well, considering he'd left one inside her head, that probably counted as a fair trade.

He braced himself and jerked the blade out with a wince. The wound didn't feel deep. And it was definitely off to one side...

"If that's fatal," he said, climbing to his feet, "I'm making you wear that collar all the way home." He left his hand pressed over his back and retrieved the kid's pants from a shelf, hooking them down with a shirt--gauzy and brightly coloured; probably a seduction thing--and a pair of balled socks. There was no underwear.

No underwear on the kid, either.

Raidou shoved his mask aside with the back of his wrist and crouched down in front of the teenager, studying his face. Dark blue eyes, tanned skin that was just a shade too pale, narrow jaw...

"You must be Kaito," he said, and dropped the clothes on the boy's lap. "I'm Namiashi Raidou: official rescue party. Nice to meetcha. Do me a favour and switch off that chest-hurting thing while I get you out of these cuffs? It's kind of distracting."

He had a set of lockpicks somewhere, he just needed to find them...