By the time the echoes of the explosion had died, Genma had his sights on Rina. The collapsing-building sound of the earth jutsu that had been chasing her was a good clue. The only problem was getting to her. He started to run, but the earth heaved up under his feet. Violent spasms shook trees down, opened cracks in the soil, tossed boulders into the air as if they were pebbles. It was as if the earth itself were suffering an epileptic fit.

A stone nearly as large as the Heroes' Monument came hurtling out of the darkness, smashing a log to splinters in Genma's place, when Genma kawarimi'd away. Another shower of stones came flying, smaller fragments, but in mass just as deadly. He dodged again.

When a silver blade came slicing at him from his left, shaving an inch off his swinging hair and biting a shallow slice along his neck before gouging a deep furrow in his hastily flung up arm guard, he made his decision: time to cut and run.

"Rina!" He raced towards the place he was sure she had to be, where that mud twister had torn through the forest like a giant harvester's scythe.

The thrashing earth threw him off his feet again, and a wind jutsu caught him around the waist and flung him like a terrier flinging a rat. He landed in a tortured heap, one arm under him, one leg splayed at a hip-straining angle. Dazed but not knocked out, he groaned and gasped for breath, rolling onto his back. Lightning flickered again, and he heard a woman's screaming voice above the roar of the storm, above the roar of his own blood in his ears.

Rina was bending over him, shrieking his name. His eyes snapped to focus on her face, then he wrapped his arms around her, worked a translocation seal behind her back, and transported the two of them two kilometers away.

They landed in the same position they'd started in, Genma on his back, Rina toppling onto him, in an ice cold mountain stream.