“Thirty miles, give or take,” Ginta answered. He grasped Kakashi’s forearm and wrenched himself to his feet, not letting go until he was sure of his footing. “There’s a trail up from the village Ryouma’s mission was supposed to take him to, but there’s another way there from here. He’d have known it. If he got in trouble up here—” He cut himself off with a sharp. “If I got in trouble up here, I’d head for the bunker, not the village.”

Kakashi tipped his head at an angle that said there was a frown on his doubly masked face. “Why would Intel miss that?”

“It’s decommissioned.” Ginta stretched out, twisting his shoulders, reaching for handfuls of nothing. Turning to look at the grey and white peaks that marked the border between Snow Country and Lightning. “It was a spy operation to keep an eye on the big Kumo outpost at Kodenwa. On my last mission up here last summer, it got compromised. Ryouma told me they shut it down after that, that’s why he came back to Konoha.”

“Where you ran into a Kumo nin and his naginata. You told me.” Kakashi turned to look in the same direction. “You’d still think they would have checked it,” he murmured, almost to himself. Then his spine straightened, and he turned back, meeting Ginta’s eyes through his mask. He looked taller and broader-shouldered. Reinvigorated. “Hurry up, Jackass. Get on the dog.”

Hopeful, Ginta told himself, was better than hopeless. False hope could get you through at least one level of hell. And maybe, if there was any justice in the world, Kakashi’s hopes — his own hopes — would prove founded.

Climbing back on Baiji’s high back, he settled in for more running. “There’s been too much recent snow up here for me to see anything like a trail, but this is the way he’d have gone. They ran the supply line through here, and I’m pretty sure it was never discovered. Kumo found the outpost from the other side, not this one.”

Kakashi just nodded, while Pakkun, still on Baiji’s back, curled close to Ginta’s stomach, shivering in the cold. Kakashi jerked his chin to the northeast.

“Yeah, north-northeast,” Ginta confirmed. “When we get close there’s a binding field I’ll need to disperse if it’s still there, that hides the temple, and then I have a key to get us inside.” He could see Kakashi’s posture shift, ready for another breakneck run.

“Pace yourself. It’s shit terrain, mostly uphill, and the higher we go, the more ice there’s gonna be.”

That got a curt nod, and then Kakashi was a blur of black and white, racing over the snow. Baiji bunched up and leapt, catching up to his master and leaving huge broken holes in the snow’s crust.

Fuck covering their trail. The scent on the wind said more snow was on its way — any trace of their passing would be as obliterated as Ryouma’s, probably by nightfall, certainly by morning.

“It’s jackass,” Ginta said quietly, hunched over Pakkun, watching Kakashi. Wondering which would be worse, finding Ryouma — finding his corpse, the evil whisper of pragmatism insisted — or not finding him. Somehow the joke just wasn’t funny anymore.