"Bastard!" Ginta raged. But there was literally no choice. Hoshika and the other dog looked every bit the dangerous beasts their ancestors had been, all teeth and wild eyes, lunging for the clone with gaping jaws. If one of those bites connected, it would be as bad as a kunai strike. Worse. The clone would evaporate and Ginta would fall.

"Fuck off! We're going," he snarled. He wanted a weapon to throw at the damn dogs. At least one of them ought to stay with Kakashi, but they both kept pace, eying the clone with murderous glances even after it stopped weaving and put on a burst of speed towards the safe house.

Ginta hung on gamely, face a tight mask of fury and pain, and glanced back to see Kakashi running still. An exhausted, desperate figure, and they were leaving him to his chosen fate.

Bastard.

By the time the sun touched the horizon, there was neither sight nor sound of Kakashi. The air was thick with mist in the woods. The scent of damp cryptomeria bark and the rustle of wind in groves of bamboo accompanied them. The safe house had to be no more than another hour's run distant, if it was the one Ginta remembered. A tree house, high in the canopy. Hard to get to, easy to defend from any threat but fire.

Surely there had been enough fire already.

He was still thinking about fire when the earth trembled.

The dogs spun on their heels, while the clone faltered and leapt over a crack widening in the earth before them. A pair of dark figures materialized from the shadows, and the earthquake grew. On their foreheads gleamed metal etched with Takigakure's jagged parallel lines.

There were no words. There was no need for them. They were professionals, all of them. Killers who had no need to explain themselves. Metal gleamed, jutsu roared to life. Ginta's clone dodged flying kunai and raced up a tree. Ginta on its back pulled in chakra, formed seals, and cast a blanket genjutsu to distort space around himself, sending his attackers into circles. From the tree top, he cast a second jutsu, fire this time, to rain down in a cascade. Spring dampness was all that kept the trees from blazing into a wildfire.