Raidou jerked awake when someone hammering on Genma's door made his wall shake. He was on his feet and grabbing the nearest weapon to hand--a double brace of kunai stashed under his pillow--when the knocker discovered his own door. There was an unsubtle sense of urgency in the crack of knuckles against wood; Raidou was pretty sure he could hear the sleepy rumble of Tousaki swearing quietly through the wall--and dead silence from Kaito's room across the hallway, but that was teenagers for you.

He padded barefoot across the floor and unlatched the door. A harried looking Intel agent gave him a rapid once-over.

"Namiashi!" he said sharply.

Some combination of sleepiness, confusion, and several years worth of training almost had Raidou kunai-ing himself before he remembered that he wasn't technically supposed to salute Intel agents.

"Yeah?" he said, glancing sideways to catch a glance of Genma leaning out of his door, dressed in nothing but loose pyjama pants and bedhair. Judging by the lack of fuzzy-worded protests or fading bite marks, he'd been sleeping alone.

"Grab your armour," ordered the Intel agent. "You too, Shiranui. And report down to Sub-basement One immediately. Room thirty-four."

Raidou woke up a lot more, fingers automatically tightening around his kunai. "What happened?"

"Just move," said the agent, already heading back down the hallway.

Raidou glanced at Genma, caught the hard look chasing sleep away from amber-brown eyes, and ducked back into his apartment to grab his sword. His mask was already waiting for him, resting face-up on top of his weapons chest.

All traces of dream and sleep evaporated under the influence of the fresh adrenaline that command kicked into Genma's system. Getting yanked from bed in the wee hours for a mission you'd been hand-picked for happened pretty much one of two ways: you were a rookie being hazed, or something was really the fuck wrong. And he and Raidou were way past being rookies. The look that passed between them was electric and full of meaning, even if none of it was articulated: this was serious, they were on it, and thank god if they were going out like this, it was together, because when you got an emergency call you wanted someone you could absolutely trust at your back.

Genma's pajama pants dropped to the floor around his ankles as soon as he loosened the drawstring, and he kicked them aside, pulling on a sleeveless black turtleneck top in almost the same motion. Underwear next, with a protective cup, then pants, leggings, armour, belt packs, weapons. He was dressed and ready but for gloves and mask in minutes. The clank of metal against metal from the next room told him Raidou was checking his weapons. Buckling on armour. Dressing just as fast as he was.

The cold weight of his chest protector sharpened his focus even more as he adjusted side straps, tightening it down. His fingers riffled through his utility pouches, inventorying weapons and tools, medicines and bandages. Gloves came next, and arm guards. A clap and bow to his shrine, with a tiny prayer. He hooked his mask to his belt and turned to find Raidou standing outside his door.

"How the hell are you always faster at getting ready than I am?" he asked, and clicked his door shut. Since the Intel agent had woken them, only seven minutes had passed.

"Magical fairy dust and instant coffee," said Raidou, falling into step just behind Genma's shoulder as they headed for the elevator. "That and I have a working knowledge of time."

A quiet snort was the only answer, but he didn't expect much more. Even with the violent wake up, it still usually took Genma's reflex sarcasm a few minutes to catch up with the rest of him, which was one of the very few perks about partnering with a guy who really wasn't a morning person.

The ride down to the sub-basement was spent mostly in silence, the careful waiting kind that edged on the heels of trained killers preparing themselves to get very bad news. There wasn't much point speculating aloud--they'd find out soon in any case, and putting any secret fears into words was too much like asking bad luck to sit up and take notice.

When the doors slid open with a quiet ping, Genma almost got flattened by an overeager pair of chuunin bearing armloads of folders. The two teenagers jerked back with a double harmonic of surprised squawks when both ANBU reacted with reflexively drawn blades.

"Uh," said Raidou into the razor-fine silence that followed. "Sorry."

He sheathed his kunai, planted a hand between Genma's shoulderblades, and shoved his partner firmly out of the elevator while both chuunin recovered.

"Hate working in ANBU," one of them muttered very quietly. The other one elbowed him into the elevator with a hissed, "Shh!"

Raidou smiled very faintly while Genma snorted again and led them unerringly towards the right room.

"I don't know," he murmured. "I reckon it grows on you after a while."

"Like fuzzy mold on a rotting corpse," Genma returned, and flashed a brief wry grin at his partner. "Those guys were lucky it was us in the elevator and not some hair-trigger rookies. What kind of idiot walks into an elevator without making sure it's empty first?" He dropped the kunai he'd drawn back into its holster on his leg, where it settled against its fellows with a subtle clank.

Rolling his shoulders, he glanced down the hall towards the door that led to the Intel lounge with a longing expression. "I bet there's no coffee. Not like there's time to get some anyway, but I bet there isn't anything but burnt dregs." Not at 0325. There seemed to be an inflexible rule that even the guys pulling all-nighters who needed the java the most never brewed a fresh pot until 0445. If you wanted decent coffee at three, you went topside and got some at the twenty-four hour shop by the hospital. Genma'd tried to figure out where the Intel mission ops guys kept their stash of beans several times with no success.

The door to room thirty-four stood ajar; they could see a map and photographs spread out on the table. And three tall paper cups of steaming caffeine with the coffee shop's logo on the sides.

"Damn, they bought us good coffee." Genma pushed the door open for Raidou, and met the unsmiling face of their briefer. There were sandwiches laid out as well. Good ones.

"Damn." This was looking worse by the second.

Raidou gave the spread a slightly wary look. It wasn't common, but sometimes Intel got it into their heads to liven up a dull week by testing their hunters: skill, loyalty, the ability to take down a teammate if absolutely necessary, torture resistance... Waking partners up at three in the morning, feeding them a cocktail of specially designed drugs, and playing a mental round of 'kick the shinobi to see what cracks' wasn't entirely unheard of. Archaic and brutal--but so was hazing.

Of course, it was also entirely possible a real head-game of a mission had come up and they were getting sent off with a last meal because they might not be coming back.

"Sir?" asked Raidou carefully, glancing from the table to the briefer. He fought down the reflex urge to step in front of Genma--it would do nothing but embarrass his friend.

"Take a seat and eat," said the briefer. "This one's live and there's no time. You'll need your chakra."

Raidou hesitated, but followed Genma's lead when his partner hooked a plastic chair out and sat down. Neither one of them touched the food.

"Eat," urged the Briefer. He looked at Genma. "Especially you. There's likely to be healing needed on this one." He hooked out a folder as Raidou's spine stiffened slightly. "Thirty minutes ago we received a distress call carried by a bird-summons. Hara Yukaho's genin team was attacked on the Western border."

Any suspicion Genma had held about the food disappeared when he heard the name of the jounin they were being sent to rescue. That and her photograph on the table, plus those of three genin who looked no more than eleven or twelve, convinced him if this was a mind-fuck, it was the simple, straightforward kind your enemies dealt you by attacking your friends, not some exercise Intel had cooked up for them.

"Thirty minutes? Do we have an exact location?" Genma stared at the map, at the paths picked out in red and blue pencil marking the trail Yukaho's team had been expected to take, and the location the bird had presumably been summoned. Not identical. They were off course, they were in trouble, and they were damned close to the border with Grass country, where ninja from Kusa and Taki and even Ame and Iwa all might be at work.

"We think they're somewhere within this triangle," the briefer said, dotting three points on the map. There was a large rice plantation at one corner, steep hills in the middle, and several shrines and farms nestled in the hollows and valleys. Altogether they were looking at at least fifty square kilometers of search area.

"That's the best we can do? What was their mission?" Genma asked. His tone was tense, and he flinched when the briefer moved the sandwich closer to him, but he took the hint and started eating. Egg and meat--protein and fat--they were serious about him needing reserves.

"D-rank courier to Setsubushinji, with documents concerning the temple's endowment. We don't know who attacked or why, but we don't think it was mission-related," the briefer replied. He pointed out the temple and surrounding village where Yukaho had been supposed to be. Much too far off course. Something must have happened.

Raidou reached out and slid the photographs towards him, fanning them carefully out with one gloved hand. "I know these kids," he murmured, voice so neutral it was dead. "They were in Jiro's graduating class. Binya, Akimi, and..." He had to look at the dossier to get the last boy's name. "Sadahiro." He touched Akimi's photograph with a quick brush of fingers. "Jiro had a crush on her, before he got his own team."

"We know," said the briefer shortly. "We're also aware of Agent Shiranui's connection to Yukaho-san. That's why you've been selected for this mission, beyond your obvious skills. The chief objective is to bring them home." Hard grey eyes fixed on Raidou and Genma in turn. "We are not so blessed with genin we can afford to lose a whole team."

Raidou grabbed a sandwich and a paper cup of coffee, and shoved his chair back. "Eat as we go, Fearless," he said. "We'll plan on the move."

At top speed, they'd still probably be four hours too late. But Yukaho was a jounin, and a good one at that--maybe she'd hold out.

The briefer stood. "If we receive no word from you within twenty-four hours, we'll consider this a political situation and act accordingly." He pulled the folders back and closed them with a breathy rasp of paper. "Good luck, agents."

Genma returned the briefer's salute, and took the folded map from him with solemnity. "We'll bring them back," he said, knowing in his heart of hearts how hard that would be. That it might well be too late already. If Yukaho had sent up a distress call, then...

But it was a bad idea to get ahead of yourself. Plenty of rescues resulted in safe retrievals. Yukaho was a damned good jounin; she'd make sure her kids were safe, and she'd find a way to go to ground until help arrived. She wasn't the kind of woman who would just lie down and die.

He bit savagely into his sandwich, and gulped coffee to ease the passage of the half-chewed mouthful down his dry throat. "Yukaho was my older sister's best friend," he told Raidou, as they made their way to the exit. "She's good. Really good. She's got a wicked sense of humor, and she's a talented Earth jutsu user. She's probably got the kids holed up in a secret bunker, telling them ghost stories to pass the time."

It had been months since he'd spoken to her. Years since he'd spent any real time with her. "After Yumiko and Haruko died--after the Fox--she kind of looked in on me. Brought me some rice balls while I was in the hospital once. She's good with kids, that's why she got a genin team."

"And we'll get them back," Raidou said, forcing himself to believe it. He spared half a moment between gulping a scalding mouthful of black coffee and ripping a bite of his egg and bacon sandwich to think up an insult with Intel's name on it, and resolve to graffiti it somewhere when they got home. Using personal connections that weren't too personal as a motivator to make them run faster...

It was smart, ruthless, and definitely going to work. Which just had Intel written all over it.

Bastards, thought Raidou sourly, and finished his sandwich as they ran up the stairs. It was faster to simply sprint up the single flight than it was to wait for the elevator again. He drank the last of his coffee just as they reached ANBU's main desk, nestled in the corner of the lobby, and skidded to a halt.

"Oh damn," he muttered, and spun on one heel to face the chuunin staring at him over the counter. "I need you to pass on a message."

Wordlessly, the chuunin offered him a pen and notepad. Raidou waved them aside.

"No time. Send someone up to Morioka Kaito's room at 0900 and tell him I got called out on a mission. He's expecting me to train with him."

"Which--"

"Room 319," said Raidou. He slapped his hand down on the counter for emphasis. "Don't forget."

"Morioka Kaito. Room 319," repeated the chuunin. "Got it."

"Thanks," said Raidou, too rushed to sound completely sincere, and took off after Genma again, catching up with his partner by the door. He tossed his coffee cup and sandwich wrap into a nearby trashcan, and pulled his ANBU Ox-mask off his belt. Black streaks caught the moonlight for a moment and completely failed to gleam. He slipped it into place and smiled grimly when his vision narrowed, tunneling into adrenaline and focus.

"Reckon you owe Yukaho something of a debt," he said quietly, and let his chakra unfurl beneath his skin. "How about we pay it back?"

"I should have told them to tell Kaito I was gone on the same mission, and that's why I'm not showing up to drill him on how to light a cigarette and fold a love letter," Genma said, glancing back at the door. "He's not too dumb, though, he'll figure it out, right? I mean, you're on a mission, he knows you and I usually partner up..."

It was so much easier to worry about the minutiae of the life you were leaving behind, than to answer Raidou's rhetorical question. To think about what they were facing. "I didn't finish cooking a batch of scorpion venom down. I hope Takahashi or someone down there notices. It'd be a waste to lose all that venom. Probably at least a month's worth of work to re-collect it, if I have to start over when I get back."

The moon was shockingly bright, just past full, edging into the west. It cast long shadows from them as they raced towards the northwest gate. Genma glanced at his half-finished sandwich, re-wrapped it, and stuffed it into a pocket. "I'll finish it when we stop to take bearings at Sand Crane Flats," he told Raidou, when he caught the accusing tilt of his friend's head. "You know I don't like to eat right when I get up. We really don't need me getting cramps or anything stupid right now."

He pushed his own mask into place, hiding his face behind a grinning feline's.

"She'll be fine. They'll all be fine," he said quietly, and kicked his pace up a notch. "I'll summon Shinobu when we get up there. He's a good tracker."

"The little black and white with the personality problem?" Raidou said, falling into place in the wings of Genma's dust. He made no comment on the half-spoken prayer his friend had left behind at Konoha's gates. For the next four hours they had nothing to run on but faith--and Genma was the one who carried that for both of them. "Because I'm pretty sure we can live without him. I've been practicing my tracking skills. Reckon I'm capable of out-tracking a rat at least three days out of seven. Maybe three and a half."

The poor attempt at humour fell flat against his mask; he didn't let it faze him. Up ahead, just out of arm's reach, Genma leapt silently up into one of the giant monolith oaks that bordered Konoha's forest and almost disappeared into the shadows cast by leaf and branch. Raidou followed him, eyes fixed on the brief, muted flare of white-bone armour stretched over a lean back, senses trained on the ghost-edge of chakra he could barely feel.

"You have soldier pills?" he called quietly, trading the words for a code whistle halfway through. "If you're up for it, we could translocate and skip a few miles."

Speed traded for strength, relying on soldier pills to make up the cost when they reached whatever enemy lay ahead--it wasn't ideal, but it might just get them there a crucial fraction quicker.

"Plenty," Genma said, slowing his pace a fraction so that he and Raidou were running abreast. He lifted his hands in preparation for the jutsu. "Catch up at the field station behind Morosenji temple?" That was a good thirty-two kilometers ahead of them. And a safe target. Four translocations of eight klicks each was nearing the limit of what most jounin considered sustainable and safe, but it was definitely something he and Raidou could both manage. And having a rendezvous point was the safest way to travel by translocation with a partner.

"And I won't tell Shinobu what you said. He actually likes you, you know. I think it has something to do with the fact you never let me get my ass handed to me unless you're doing the handing."

What Shinobu had actually said was that Genma ought to stop screwing around when he had a perfectly good mate already, as long as you overlooked the fact that there would be no pups. Genma, Shinobu reasoned, could always find a doe or two if he wanted a litter, and humans were a lot like rats when it came to needing pack mates. If two alpha males could share leadership, it was always a good thing, even though it almost never happened. Safer for everyone. Genma hadn't made a satisfactory response as far as Shinobu was concerned. But then, he told him, humans were slow. He was used to waiting for Genma to get the obvious clues.

Genma had put a box over Shinobu at that point and told him to go to sleep, effectively ending the conversation, since the rat took offense.

"You ready for the first jump?" he asked, and nodded at the dark forest ahead of them. Shinobu they could worry about when they were actually within the search zone.

Raidou answered with another soft whistle, accompanying it with a quick hand sign now he was in Genma's peripheral vision. They were still close enough to home that Genma felt safe calling at him, but Raidou preferred to stick to code when he could help it. Just good sense, really.

Stay safe

Genma's cougar mask dipped in acknowledgement, then his hands flickered and his chakra swept up, brushing the edge of Raidou's own for a split second before he vanished in a dance of leaves.

Raidou blew a short breath through his nose, shaking off the lingering shiver of energy whispering over his skin. Then he summoned his own, weaving it around flesh and bone and hand seals, molding it through familiar patterns long since worn into muscle memory. Mid-leap, caught between branch and branch, the world shimmered and blurred away.

He landed on a tall, moss-covered rock, snatched a breath, glimpsed a flash of fast-moving black and white ahead, and threw himself into another mile-eating jump.

Two more later, he'd gained thirty-two klicks in less than five minutes, and his heart felt ready to thunder out of his chest. Rasping for breath, limbs trembling on the edge of shaky, he hit the ground running and aimed for the arching roof of the temple clearly visible in the moonlight, built out in a forest clearing. With any luck, Genma was either straight ahead or just behind and closing fast.

Genma's final translocation had him materializing on the boards that covered the temple's well. Heavy pipes and a pump stood up black against the moonlight-bleached wood, and he leaned against them, panting for breath. The field station was only a few meters distant, he saw, a wood and plaster three-story pagoda built in the name of some daimyou who no longer lived. Now home to many a Konoha ninja on their way to or from someplace, its upper level housed messenger birds and watchful chuunin.

Genma pulled out a mirror and flashed a signal at the dark eaves of the top of the pagoda. Two outbound ANBU coming in. No support needed. Which was pretty much its own code for leave us the hell alone, you don't want to get mixed up in this.

He sprinted across the open yard, palmed a seal on a hidden door, and slipped inside. Raidou should be here any minute, he thought, and pushed his mask off his blazing cheeks. Sinking down against the cool plaster wall, he drank half a canteen's worth of water, kneaded at tensely quivering muscles in his thighs, and tried to catch his breath while he waited for Raidou.

Thirty seconds later, Raidou staggered through the door--still at a run--and hit the wall; he slouched down it with a vague, breathless mutter about the evils of rapid translocation. Mutely, Genma offered him the canteen. Raidou sluiced water down the back of his neck, raising a mist of faint steam in the cool night air, and swallowed the rest.

The moon was barely a mark higher in the sky before they were on the move again, after Genma stopped quickly at the well to refill his canteen. A flash of light from the upper eaves of the temple wished them luck as they slipped away, back into the dark.

Thirty-two klicks was twice what most jounin could run in an hour--though Raidou knew from one very unpleasant mission that Hatake Kakashi was capable of that and more. Still, with four rapid jutsu, they'd almost halved their time. They wouldn't be able to do it again, but two hours could mean everything when someone's life--more than one life--hung in the balance.

And they could lose all that time in the search.

After another hour, they slowed from a ground-eating lope to a walk, letting muscles ease and lungs settle for a moment. This time, it was Raidou's canteen that saw some use, and they refilled it from a quick-flowing stream that let them cut any scent trail they were leaving neatly in half. When they began to run again the forest gave way to flatter plains and huge formations of tumbled, broken rocks, scattered about in the long grass like discarded teeth. On the edges of the horizon, dawn began to glimmer as the moon--long gone, now--gave way to the beginnings of watery sunlight.

The lack of decent cover made Raidou edgy. Judging by the tense set of Genma's shoulders, he felt the same.

"It occurs to me," Raidou muttered quietly at one point, laying the thought out as if it were brand new, and not always in the back of their minds, "that this could be a very unsubtle trap."

Genma said nothing, but his hands drifted closer to his weapons for the next few miles.

When they neared the Western border, close to Grass and Rain, the sky grew darker, clouds scudding lower and closer, carried by the sudden appearance of distant winds. Raidou scowled beneath his mask.

"Better call your rat," he said, closing in to Genma's side. "If the weather breaks, we'll lose any trace of scent."

With the dawn came a moist smell--damp earth and falling rain. The air here was heavy and warm compared to Konoha, and the few trees they could see included cherries in full and glorious blossom, shedding pink and white petals in the rising wind. Genma nodded, stopping in the lee of one of the larger rocks, dropping to a crouch. He pulled out a tiny metal box and held it up to Raidou. "You want a Soldier Pill now? I'm gonna take one before I summon him." He tipped his mask back and popped one of the brown pills into his mouth, chewing it before washing it down with a long drink from his canteen.

The pill burst into life in his belly, sending heart racing, eyes darting, chakra flooding through every coil. It was the work of a moment to pull out a well-used scroll, graze the edge of his little finger on a kunai, and apply the blood to the jutsu. Chakra surged from solar plexus outwards, filling his hands. It crackled and flowed, and he shaped it into a summons. A call to one particular rat.

There was a backsurge as Shinobu appeared, smoky tendrils swirling low to the ground in the heavy weather. Genma didn't give him time to speak.

"We need you to track. Weather's getting bad, and this is priority. You remember Yumiko's friend Yukaho-san? She's missing with three genin. Sent up a distress call from this area maybe..." He glanced at his watch, than up at Raidou. "Three hours ago."

Shinobu nodded, looking from one masked face to the other, smelling sweat and lactic acid and tension. "Put me on your shoulder so I can get an idea of what's in the vicinity," Shinobu instructed, and scampered up Genma's arm as soon as he held it out.

"They were supposed to be heading north-northwest," Genma said, unfolding his map and showing it to both companions. "We're here," he pointed. "On what we believe would have been their trail. Is there anything?"

"Nothing," Shinobu said after a moment. "Keep going in the same direction, Maybe we'll pick it up."

The nice thing about masks was that no one could see you wince. Raidou bit the inside of his cheek, gave the darkening clouds a warning look, and kept pace as Genma led them along the path of Yukaho's planned trail. Shinobu's long tail curled around his friend's neck as the little rat balanced up on his hind paws and sniffed the air, long whiskers twitching. After twenty minutes of nothing, the first fat drops of rain began to plummet down. Raidou swore.

Shinobu's round ears flattened to his tiny skull. Genma put his map away, protecting the paper with its layers of special inks designed to react to specific jutsu, and moved faster, slicing through the long grass that whipped at his legs. Raidou stayed close on his heels. In the distance, the wind picked up and tore the blossoms from the trees.

Barely a breath later, the sky seemed to tear open and empty. Genma swore loudly, skidding to a halt and lifting a hand to shelter Shinobu. He turned and pinned Raidou with a look through his mask--one that said he was about to suggest something that Raidou was really going to hate...

Half a moment and a muted flash of chakra later, Raidou's right shoulder bore its own rat--a small brown one with a white belly and a name that sounded like Aoshi, though it was hard to hear over the wind--and he had orders to split away and take his own search, before they lost the last traces of scent.

Which meant leaving Genma alone in definitely hostile territory.

Raidou said something emphatic with hand signs, got a pointed look and a response that ended with a finger tapping him firmly in the middle of his forehead, and summoned a brace of clones before he finally allowed Genma to cast him north.

"We're having a serious talk later," he muttered to Aoshi, as he ran on the barest slivers of chakra to keep his feet from skidding in slick grass and slicker mud.

"Good luck," squeaked the rat, and twitched his nose, gesturing with a tiny paw. "Try that way."

Genma kept to his original northwest heading, shielding Shinobu as best he could from the punishing rain. For all the air was heavy and warm, the drops themselves were icy cold, and the spring dawn was fighting with the clouds, which grew heavier and blacker by the minute, taking on a sickly greenish hue. Lightning flashed purple behind the billowing clouds, and Genma ducked on instinct as the wind lashed furiously at man and landscape alike.

"Genma..." Shinobu said, and by the tone of his voice Genma could tell he didn't want to hear what the rat had to say.

"We're keeping going, dammit. They got that messenger bird at 0249. There's still time to try to find a trail to read, if we find something in the next thirty minutes. Don't tell me this is impossible," he snapped.

Shinobu crept closer to his neck and huddled there, a warm presence under his ear. "I'm not saying you should give up. I'm just saying... You need to be realistic."

"I'll be realistic in a half hour. Until then, look." Genma ran on, wishing he could feel the raindrops on his face. In twenty minutes of increasingly soggy running, uphill over bare trails that were swiftly turning into gullies of mud, Shinobu could only report negatives. No scent of Yukaho. No sign of anyone at all.

Scrambling up a particularly steep bit of hillside, and rounding a corner, Genma skidded to a halt, staring through the downpour at a copse of beaten down brush to his right. "Look! Looks like something broke a fresh trail through there. Was it them?"

By the time he was heading across the steep hillside, Raidou's clones were already at the break in the vegetation. Mute clones who only served as bodyguards, but reassuring nonetheless. Genma hoped like hell Raidou wasn't draining chakra reserves too much, maintaining clones at a distance.

Shinobu interrupted his train of thought by grabbing Genma's ear with sharply clawed little hands. "It's her! I smell her!" he shrilled. "Yukaho and... three, maybe four other scents."

"In through here?" Genma asked. The new trail led into dense bamboo, barely passable.

"In there," Shinobu confirmed.

Genma looked at one of the clones, grabbed it by the arm, pulling it towards himself. "Sorry, Rai," he said, and socked the clone with a chakra-filled punch to the throat. For a second it felt just like hitting a living person, and Genma had the sick sensation of killing his best friend. Then the clone bamphed out of existence.

"You better be close enough to get back to me here in under twenty," Genma told the remaining clone.

Raidou was braced in the shadowed lee of a rock formation, shielding himself and Aoshi from the weather as he tried to get an overview of the landscape, when the bond to one of his clones trembled and snapped, and he got the disturbing echo-memory of his best friend's fist aimed at his throat.

"The hell was that?" Aoshi demanded, as Raidou jerked.

"Genma's found them," Raidou said, swinging around as the clone's memories meshed with his own.

"Thank gods," the rat sneezed, and scrabbled with a minute flare of chakra down Raidou's chestplate to disappear into one of his hip pouches, hiding from a world determined to drown him. Raidou leapt down from the rock, caught himself with a bigger flare of chakra--just enough to rebalance; not enough to announce his presence to the general universe--and launched himself back the way he'd come.

"This is why we stick together," he muttered to the inside of his mask. "So I'm not miles away at the worst damn moment..."

The bond to his second clone was like a guideline, stretched out slender and glowing at the touch of his senses, a direct link from him to wherever Genma was standing.

Which had better not be near anyone with bladed intentions.

He crested a low hill, skidded down the other side in a rush of torn grass and mud clumps, and leapt onwards to the next one. Midway up the slope he dug a hand into the pouch not currently housing a drenched rodent and dug out a soldier pill, slipping it under his mask to crack between his teeth as he vaulted over another rock formation. New energy licked at his insides, sliding into his pathways. Not as much as he'd had at the start of their run, but enough for one last jump...

At the apex of the third hill, he slapped his palms together, twisted the seals, and lost four miles in a quick clap of smoke. Muffled by wet leather, Aoshi squealed in surprise.

Raidou made his own, much deeper noise of unhappiness when he found himself up to his shins in mud, standing on the long hair of a little girl's corpse. Across the bamboo thicket, frozen stone-still in the way only shock and terrible anger could grant you, the red and black streaks of Genma's mask stared blankly back at him.

"Damn," whispered Raidou quietly.

They were too late.

Raidou's arrival was cold comfort. Genma stood over the body of Hara Yukaho, staring past her ravaged corpse to the bodies of three children. A light-haired boy with his neck twisted sharply to the side and unnaturally far back. His tongue protruded between his teeth, swollen and purple, and his eyes bulged, cloudy in death, but still holding every bit of the terror they had in his last moments alive.

The girl under Raidou's feet was sprawled on her belly, legs twisted under her, black hair lying in sodden tendrils on the muddy earth. Pinkish rivulets of blood-stained rain ran down one pale, outflung arm, nearly severed from her body. Genma could see neatly sliced ribs, jarring white in the gore, cleanly cut as if by a butcher's saw.

The third boy looked unharmed. Pale and still, staring sightlessly at the carnage. He'd been the first one Genma'd checked. The one he'd had, for a fleeting moment, hope for. But he was as dead as the rest: pulseless, breathless, chakraless.

He flashed a sign at Raidou, a meaningless gesture. Too late. Then he knelt in the blood-stained earth and gently slid Yukaho's eyes shut. He looked at her broken body, trying to catalog it clinically, for the report they would have to make.

Broken jaw. Lines of circular burns down her neck and across her bared chest. Skin peeled back from her fingertips. Black clots of blood where her nails had been. Black gaping hole where her teeth had been. Legs broken with bone exposed, evidently at least one of them by her own attempts to free herself from a leg iron still in place. Her thighs were spread in an awkward split, with the broken bones making it more grotesque.

She was naked.

Genma took it all in, breathing shallowly to filter out the overwhelming stench of blood. Memorizing. Trying to plan his report. Not thinking about it at all. He pulled her dogtags, the only garment the men--it had to be men--who'd tortured her had left her, from her throat. "I'm sorry, Yukaho-neechan," he whispered, then stood slowly, deliberately, so controlled he was shaking with the effort, and raised his masked face to Raidou's once more.

Raidou didn't have an answer, barely had a thought, but that tended to happen when a little dead girl had her long black hair tangled around your ankle. He bent down and, very carefully, eased himself free.

The clearing they were in wasn't a natural one. Blackened scorch marks streaked the still-living bamboo, proof that someone had used a fire jutsu so recently the rain hadn't had time to wash the evidence away. The ground was torn and shredded, great gouges carved through mud and earth, massacred by blades and chakra and whatever else had been turned on the four bodies lying broken at their feet.

Raidou swallowed hard, clenched his fists, and tried not to see the way someone had wrenched Akimi's legs apart. She was twelve years old, far too small, and he could still remember the day Jiro had come home, bursting with excitement and determined to write her an epic love poem.

She was too young to have her name carved on the stone.

He gritted his teeth. She was too young--but they were far too old to stand around in a killing field, staring like fools at the recently gone, waiting for someone else take their heads off.

He jerked a hand at his clone, signalling it to peel away and check the surroundings. It ghosted away into the undergrowth, silent as a breath.

"Take the two boys, kid," said Raidou, hoping an order would be enough to snap Genma out of that unnatural stillness. "I've got the girls." If only so Genma didn't have to.

He pulled himself out of the mud, standing on the fetid surface with a dull flicker of chakra, and tried to work out how they'd be able to burn anything when the rain was still lashing down. But burying those tiny bodies in the melting slag of a poor battlefield seemed like the final violation. He wasn't sure he could bring himself to do it.

"Maybe we could take them home," he began. "With enough clones--"

A flash of bloodthirsty chakra was all the warning he got before a hail of kunai scythed across the clearing, fluttering tags bound to their handles. Raidou threw himself at Genma just as the first explosion tore half the clearing up.

Genma was partway into a crouch, preparing to leap back, when Raidou's weight slammed into him and they both tumbled into the scorched bamboo. The explosions were muffled and strange sounding, a string of half-hearted pops and fizzles, without the searing heat Genma expected, or the earthshaking tremors. At first he thought maybe his eardrums had been blown out. Then he smelled the air.

"Mask!" he shouted, yanking up his own, and pulling the cloth of his turtleneck over nose and mouth before hastily shoving the polymer-ceramic cougar face back in place. A thick mist enveloped the battleground, hiding the bodies, turning even his partner, an arm's-reach away, into an indistinct shape.

Raidou coughed.

"Mask! It's toxic!" Genma reached for Raidou, lunged towards him. Raidou wasn't there. A harsh blow caught Genma in the side, a blade skittered against his armour. He turned to defend himself, hands raised in half-completed seals as kunai materialized out of the fog. Dark, unnatural fog, it sucked the light out of the air, and roiled with the heavy, earthen scent of poison.

There was time to parry, or time to save his rats. Genma chose the latter, frantically casting the jutsu to send them back. In the instant he felt the tiny chakra presences of Shinobu and Aoshi disappear, a blade tore into his hip from the side. He rolled away from it, falling and manipulating chakra in the same movement, casting a wind jutsu to clear the poisonous fog away. It created barely a meter's hollow in the miasma, which quickly closed back in. Just enough for him to see Raidou staggering as he parried a katana blow.

There was a crackle like fire catching in dry timber. A sound of wind. Genma's legs, he found, were anchored to the forest floor, encased in ice to the knees. The whistle of flying shuriken was all the warning he had before a pair of blades raked furrows across his shoulders and throat, skimming just above the line of his chest armour.

And Raidou was still coughing.

There was the clang of blade on blade, grunts, thuds. Raidou's choking coughs. But no other sounds. In the eerie fog it was all muffled and muddled. The poison stung Genma's eyes, burned on his skin. Filled his doubly masked mouth with a taste like burning cherries.

His hands were still free, and he still couldn't see his attackers. Genma's earth jutsu cracked the ice under him and hurled clods of mud into the air. He leaped back before it was half finished, and cast another--a fire jutsu this time. It blazed a bright fireball, boiling the rain and fog to steam.

Whatever was in that dark cloud, it didn't react well to fire. Raidou shielded his face with one hand as heat and flame roared out, scorching the air and licking at his armour, flash-frying the poisoned air with a crack that set some of the bamboo alight. The enemy hammering at his sword arm leapt back with a curse. Raidou lunged after him, desperately trying to turn the moment to his advantage, and staggered badly as his grip on his chakra failed, dropping him almost knee-deep into clinging mud. Coughs ripped out of his chest, wrenched from his lungs. His head spun.

Genma had burned the poison away, but not soon enough. Raidou just hoped his partner's hard-earned immunities were keeping him safe. Then the enemy with the katana swung back and there was no more time for hope, or anything but a desperate block with an arm that moved far too slow--

The katana caught him with a nasty crack against the armoured guard of his wrist and smashed his sword from nerveless fingers. It hit the mud and sank, lost beneath the churned mess of broken bamboo and sloppy earth. Raidou jerked his head up just in time to catch a solid knee to the face, and heard his mask break. He landed on his back, twisted sideways to avoid the follow-up blow, and tried to haul himself back up. The mud clung to his limbs like ice-cold glue, pulling him down.

He couldn't see Genma.

"Son of a bitch," he rasped breathlessly, and forced himself upright. Caught his balance on a matt of tangled bamboo, blocked the downswing of that katana on his crossed forearms with a surge of pure adrenaline, and grabbed its owner before the bastard could dart away. Dull metal glinted--a breathing apperatus strapped over the ninja's face--as Raidou jerked him around, took a hammer-heavy blow against his shoulders, and snapped the man's neck. He threw the corpse aside, didn't have time to wince when it fell across Yukaho's mutilated body, and almost collapsed again when his muscles turned as weak as water.

There was no time for that. He had to find Genma.

Chakra lurched distantly as his clone died. The clearing was a dizzy mess of moving bodies and already-fallen ones, kicked brutally aside by ninja with more of those hissing breathing masks. Four that he could see, blurred through the broken eye-holes of his ANBU mask, and the clone's memory stuffed the knowledge of at least two more into his head.

Six. With a seventh already dead. And Genma was--

There, leaping aside as a ninja sliced at him with a splayed hand full of kunai. Raidou caught sight of him just as Genma ducked in close, fingers flashing through seals, and set the air on fire again. The enemy jerked back--and a hail of senbon peppered his shielded face, sinking deeply into wide open eyeballs. He screamed and fell, thrashing and clawing at himself.

Raidou almost caught his breath with relief--then lost it all on a warning shout as another ninja surged up behind his friend.

"Watch your back!"

He lunged forwards, stumbled, and knew he was going to be far too late.

Raidou's shout saved Genma from a crushing blow to the skull. The attacking ninja's kick got air and nothing more as Genma dove low, twisting and pivoting on his hands in the slick mud. Even with the best chakra control adrenaline could buy, he skidded and fell, feeling tendons stretched to their limits in elbows and shoulders. His legs scissored the air, catching his enemy around the knees, bringing them both down atop the flayed open chest of the dead girl. Before they could rise again, the last of Genma's senbon found their marks, driving deep into the man's chest and throat to deliver a five-times lethal dose of poison.

The dying man clutched at his wounds, gasping for air. Genma's attention was already half turned away, towards that shout. He had time to see Raidou trying to get to his feet, struggling and lurching on uncoordinated limbs, and bellow a useless warning. One of the demon-masked ninja drove his knee into Raidou's back, knocking him to the earth. A blade in his hand--longer than a kunai, not quite a kodachi, was at Raidou's throat.

"No!" Genma screamed, and then the ice was snaking towards him again. He surged up with every bit of power left in him, lunging away from the caster and his immobilizing jutsu. The ice moved faster than he could, grabbing his ankle in midair, jerking him back to earth with a shattering crack.

For the first time Genma heard something other than the sounds of battle. He heard laughter.

"Mother fuckers!" he yelled. His eyes streamed, his lungs burned. The poison, whatever it was, was obviously acting on him, though not nearly so much as it must have on Raidou. His muscles ached, heavy and leaden as if he had a high fever.

He had to get up. Take them down. No more of Raidou's clones lived. Raidou himself might be... Genma gasped for air and searched frantically for his partner. There, still on the ground. Still at the mercy of the greasy-looking ninja who had him pinned. Genma's fingers shaped themselves into seals, as he called up the chakra to take that bastard down.

Slammed down into the mud, pinned with a knee in his back and a knife across his throat, watching as his partner fought against jutsu and blade and poison--Raidou didn't think it was possible to feel more furious. Or more helpless. His limbs were numb, wiped cleanly off his mental map; his vision was blurred, his lungs wracked with spasms, and no amount of struggling could get his body to obey what his mind was frantically commanding it to.

--get up get up get up--

Then chakra sparked at Genma's fingertips. The man kneeling on Raidou's back leaned forwards and grabbed him by the hair, hauling his head back, baring his throat. A razor edge of metal whispered over skin, drawing beads of blood that the rain washed away.

Genma stopped dead.

"We knew it would be ANBU," said a voice by Raidou's ear, as he redoubled his effort to move, to summon his chakra, to do anything. "We just didn't know it'd be this easy."

"Bite me," Raidou spat. The blade bit deeper into his throat; he braced for a killing blow.

"Later, maybe," the man said, yanking his head further back, away from steel. "If you're lucky."

Across the clearing, behind Genma, the other ninja laughed again, and Raidou realized just how badly they had this wrong. Over each forehead, barely visible through the downpour and mud splattered everywhere, what little light there was gleamed on hitai-ates--and on the deep scratches drawn through each metal plate.

Missing-nin.

From Mist.

This wasn't just an ambush, as Raidou had thought in the first frantic minutes when he'd gulped a mouthful of air and found it black. It wasn't a quick execution of Leaf-nin who'd strayed too far from home. It was a trap. And they'd walked right into it.

And if they didn't escape, no one from home would ever guess who'd taken them.

Raidou locked his eyes on Genma, catching the distinctive amber-brown even through two masks and pounding rain, and dragged what little air he could into his lungs. "Run"

The flat of the blade smashed against his throat, choking him silent.

"Yes, Shinobi-kun," said the voice above him. A hand reached around and yanked his mask off. "Run away and leave your friend with us. Don't worry about missing his pretty face--" more laughter, "--we'll rip it off and send it to you when we're done."

Time slowed, as it always seemed to, when Death hovered close. Genma's jutsu thrummed one step from being cast, crackling through his hands with so much fury he could feel every single cell, every capillary, every scar. In front of him was Raidou, pinioned by a man who had every intention of making him suffer before he killed him. That was certain. A man who had renounced his loyalties to his Kage, from a village that had long been rumoured to have renounced their humanity. If ninja were ruthless killers, then Mist ninja were sociopathic mass murderers, raised from the cradle to be more monster than human.

They were ambushed and about to be captured by men even Kirigakure couldn't govern.

Raidou wanted him to run? Like hell he would. And where? Where could he run, with three more rogue Mist ninja circling, laughing at their prey? Better to stand and fight and hope they'd get out alive, because running was a one way ticket to a grave Genma wasn't ready for. One he sure as hell wasn't going to leave Raidou to.

A grave Yukaho and her genin hadn't deserved.

He twitched to the left, sending the lightning he'd held coiled crackling towards two of their tormentors. The man with the sword choked Raidou even harder. Genma tried not to see the terror in Raidou's eyes. Animal terror, lying just underneath the rage that kept him fighting. It took only one step too close to death for the fear to overwhelm even the most rational mind. It clawed like a beast up his own spine.

He pushed it away with a savage yell, flinging himself and a flight of shuriken in the direction of the showering sparks of his fading lightning jutsu. He was running low on blades--out of senbon, down to a handful of shuriken and kunai. Running low on chakra. He could feel blood, hot and sticky on his chest, the burn of shallow cuts across his throat and shoulders, deeper ones on his hip and thigh. His left hip felt disjointed and wrong, ready to give out at any moment. Bruises were blooming under his armour. And the poison was grating on him. Dragging at him. How was Raidou even still moving at all?

But he wasn't.

Genma reached for his katana, and his eyes should never have left the Mist ninja. For that eighth of a second it took him to check, to see if Raidou was still alive, he'd let his awareness of the man behind him slip.

Fine wire snaked around his throat, jerking him off his feet. Cutting into the already bloody traces on his neck. Crushing his windpipe.

In the split second before Genma moved, through the darkness drawing in around the edges of his vision, Raidou caught a glimpse of that look again: the one that meant Genma was about to do something mind-blowingly stupid.

The sword jammed tight against his throat stopped him from screaming at his friend. But as chakra crackled on the tips of Genma's scarred fingers, Raidou tried to forget about the lung-crushing fear of not being able to breathe and threw everything he had into staring at his teammate, trying to draw on the silent communication they'd mastered months ago without ever really trying, telling him to run, dammit.

It didn't work.

Bleeding, staggering, breath rasping so loudly Raidou could hear it through the rattle of rain against metal, Genma threw himself against the Mist-nin with a desperate yell and a hail of shuriken--none of which connected to the men dodging with ease, breathing fresh clean air through the devices strapped to their faces. Raidou's hands, completely divorced from feeling, couldn't even clench in the mud oozing beneath his body.

Then, just for a moment, Genma glanced his way, blank-faced mask tilted at an angle that revealed nothing--and everything fell apart. For one fraction of a second Genma's focus was on Raidou, on the partner who was captured and useless, and when he looked away there was already a Mist-nin behind him, cutting close to wrap a coil of hard wire around Genma's throat and slam him to the ground.

Raidou didn't have the air to scream. He tried anyway, surging and bucking under the heavy limbs holding him down. Fingers tightened brutally in his hair and yanked his head to one side. The sword eased just enough to keep him from passing out.

"See?" whispered the Mist-nin in his ear, as Raidou drew half a sobbing breath and Genma choked. "Far too easy."

It felt a lot worse than Genma had ever guessed, being garroted. The wire tore and cut flesh, the pressure choking him turned quickly to pain that trumped every other sensation. Poison-seared lungs screamed for breath that wouldn't come, and blood trapped above the wire turned his lips numb, his face a brilliant crimson. A crimson hidden completely by his mask.

He staggered to his knees, hands scrabbling at his captor's wrists, finding armoured, clawed gauntlets there. Nothing he could get purchase on. No way to force the fingers tightening the noose to release. Katana, then, he thought, reaching again for the blade. Without air; with poison he held only partial immunity to circulating relentlessly; he didn't have the strength to pull the sword from its sheath.

His hands fell limp, and he gagged. Spittle foamed from his lips into the cloth mask. Blood vessels burst in his eyes, clouding his vision to grey.

Raidou was watching him. Horrified, panicked, immobilized. Being forced to watch him. That much he could still see.

He twisted and arched, fighting with his whole being against the blackness. Fingers found a kunai, and he stabbed blindly backwards. The ninja choking him cursed and loosed his hold, and for a second Genma gasped, falling forward. Then the wire tightened again.

"You little fucker!" were the last words Genma heard.

When Genma's lean body, arched backwards like a bow and throttling out sounds so painful it made Raidou's throat burn in sympathy, finally stopped thrashing and jerking and went horribly still, the bottom dropped out of Raidou's world. He stopped seeing the other ninja. Stopped caring that he couldn't move, could barely breathe. That he was belly-down in the mud, sharing the world-view of four other corpses and probably the same life expectancy. Because that was Genma and he was falling and Raidou wasn't there to catch him.

His mouth couldn't remember the shape of words; it split around a raspy, breathless, horrified yell that did nothing to cover the laughter of ninja, or the thump of Genma's body hitting the ground. He sprawled out, limbs twisted awkwardly beneath him, hair soaked and dark with mud, and he wasn't breathing. One of the ninja--the one with the wire still dangling from his wrist--crouched and unknotted the other end from around the blood-smeared throat. Two fingers settled against pale skin, feeling for where a pulse should be--

The ninja pinning Raidou to the ground released the weight of his knee and flipped him over, resettling the sword-blade against his straining throat. He twisted desperately, fighting to get up and move--to see--

They only needed one. Whatever they needed Leaf-ninja for, they only needed one.

But by every god Genma believed in, they were never supposed to take him first. Not Genma. Raidou was supposed to protect him. To die for him, if he had to. Not watch the life get choked from his bleeding, battered body and do nothing but lie on the ground.

He struggled up, arms hanging like deadweights from his shoulders; the ninja slammed him back down, closing a hand around his throat. Behind the bulky breathing apparatus, bright green eyes crescented in a smile.

"Get your beauty sleep, Shinobi-kun. You're going to need it."

A flash of chakra hit Raidou between the eyes, and the darkness swallowed him whole.