After three long minutes of strategizing and preparing himself, Haruichi had chosen a way forward. The other medics at the hospital had strictured that the two Inuzuka not be fully restored to their original bonds out of concern that there was no way to know if Kuromaru was entirely free of Tousaki's jutsu; which they had all decided meant not reconnecting the seven core chakra points they shared. This would give them the fullest sense of reconnection to one another possible, but prevent them from either performing ninjutsu or from exchanging chakra in amounts that would redistribute the rot if it flared up again. They hoped.

Haruichi had argued repeatedly against doing anything to jeapordize them right now, including this entire procedure, but the hospital medic nins had convinced themselves (and more to the point, Tsume and Kuromaru) that the risk of Tousaki's rot jutsu persisting in Kuromaru's system was slight enough to be overwhelmed by the benefits of rejoining the two of them. Nothing was ever so simple, in Haruichi's highly cynical worldview, but once he'd been told that the Inuzuka were promised their chakra would be linked together once again, there was nothing to say or do. Guilt bettered him, and not for the first time.

Along with the memory of their ravaged bodies lying limp in that winter field, Haruichi still held the picture in his mind of the order in which he'd snapped one hundred and twenty-three lines of chakra between the two of them. However, now it was more than a matter of going back over his steps and repairing the damage. All the points, less the seven core chakra points - without which little could be done in the way of jutsu, but which he'd refused to take the risk of reconnecting - lest the infection sprint down those highways of connection and finish them both off. The work was delicate, precise and cut to the very core of their beings - and now he had to do the repairs differently to how he'd planned when he initially made the cuts out in the field.

He also had to try and do it when their chakra systems were coiled like dull, filthy silver worms - sluggish and blind in their bodies. It was starting to hurt Haruichi to look at the massive contortions to their chakra, but he ignored the sting in the back of his eyes and lifted his fingers - arms slightly outstreched in the directions of each of them. His pale fingertips seemed to feel for something in the air, both nothing and everything in a gossamer gasp of energy, and when he found it suddenly the entire room seemed to spark to twice brightness against the dark.

"Mind your feet," he said quietly, wondering if the charms and chakra in the room really were letting Tsume and Kuromaru see what was going on. Because if that was so, they'd be seeing something interesting right now.

The stunted worm shapes of their chakra paths, listless and dark, were suddenly tugged gently by the tiny thin threads which had been caught from the air at the tips of Haruichi's fingers. Tsume's toes and Kuromaru's back paws probably tickled a little, but what they'd be seeing was much more interesting. It was as though the thick worm shapes were spinning away in little silk-thin swirls, finding their true shape and lengthening out along the thin lines Haruichi held. Eventually, a minute after beginning their journey through the air, the newly silk-spun blue lines completed their climb along the original threads Haruichi had plucked from the air and met when they reached his fingers and were linked in a simple handseal.

One of the green lines on the floor flashed brightly, a flash picked up by the newly unwound and re-formed chakra path, and then the green strip vanished. Eventually the floor would be blank black, and the air would be full of pale blue strings of light, but right now they'd only just begun.

And there were one hundred and sixteen more to go.