Ginta’s fingers closed over the crinkly pouch containing his emergency blanket at last, and he had to let go of Kakashi’s neck to open it. When Kakashi’s head lolled to one side, Ginta braced it with a hastily shifted knee. Kakashi looked like a corpse, freshly killed, in the fading, flickering light of the dying message from Team Bad-Ass. Pale, bloodied, loose-jointed in a way that suggested no control would ever return to those long limbs.

For the space of a blood-scented breath, Ginta could only see death. Then Baiji whined again, and Pakkun’s sharp claws pressed against Ginta’s arm.

“Kid? Are you gonna keep it together here, or am I going to have to bite you?”

“I’m gonna... I’m gonna take him home,” Ginta answered, thick tongued. He could taste blood now, and identify the ringing sensation ricocheting around his head as pain. “Gotta get out of here.”

Every thought took an eternity to formulate.

One thing at a time.

He spread the blanket over Kakashi and slipped his arms around Kakashi’s chest, hauling dead weight into his lap, then scooted back until he felt Baiji’s warm bulk at his back. Kakashi’s bandaged head fell against Ginta’s shoulder, picking up fresh blood from his armour.

“Is Baiji okay? Are you okay?” Ginta asked, fixing Pakkun with the sharpest look he could muster.

“I’ve had better days,” Pakkun snorted. He whined something at Baiji, who responded with a low, eerie sound. “Baiji’s fine. Just some bruises.”

“Okay. Get in my lap next to Kakashi. Make sure you’re touching me. I’m gonna translocate us out of here.” His arms were still around Kakashi’s chest when he pressed his hands together into the first Ram seal for a multi-party translocation. He pulled on chakra reserves that didn’t want to come, shaped the jutsu, extended his chakra sense to encompass two dogs and one other man — a man whose heart he could still feel beating, whose chakra he could still feel responding to his own — and focused on energizing the last, critical seal.

Immediately, bright, blinding light flared. Bright, blinding light and a soul-crushing agony in his injured face as chakra rebounded. The ground lurched and shuddered with none of the smooth finesse of moving through the spaces between seconds. Pipes in the walls groaned, ceramic tiles cracked, and the rubble around them shifted and collapsed. Ginta just managed to jerk Kakashi back, away from the heavy thud of concrete on concrete, as the space they were trapped in compressed down to little more than a crypt.

He choked on the dust, and could hear both dogs coughing.

Kakashi didn’t respond at all.