"If we go southwest we should hit Tiger Road," Genma said, raising a hand to point towards a clearing where they could see remnant mauve tinging the horizon above the just-set-sun. When Rina gave him a blank look, he shrugged. "It's a supply line from the Third War. Runs pretty much parallel to the main roads once you get into Fire Country, but it's protected, and trapped all to hell and back up here where there was more enemy action. I had a bunch of missions up here when I was a chuunin."

Rina nodded and followed Genma's gaze, as if she could see the hidden road from here. Looking towards home. Her eyes held exhaustion and longing and something else painfully forlorn.

There was another chuunin they were leaving behind.

Miles back up that trail, hours dead if he was lucky, in the hands of the same Kumo ninja Genma and Rina had just fled if he wasn't, was Tanaka Shouji, Rina's mission partner. They had nothing to bring back to his family but Genma's word that he'd done what he could.

Genma felt the other Konoha ninja's dog tags, nothing-at-all steel and a slick of dried blood, heavy in his pocket. Yushiro, his memory whispered in the gasping breath of the dying chuunin, the dead jounin's name was Yushiro.

"Come on," Genma said, resting one broad, gloved palm on Rina's slim shoulder. His swollen, aching knuckles looked oddly strong to him in their black gloves, curling against the faded olive canvas of her flack vest. "There's a safe house about an hour's run from here. We can send a message to Konoha from there."