Warnings: Blood. Lots of blood. And death. Lots of death.

"Fuck, move!"

"Find those-"

"Where'd that useless-"

"-motherfucking-"

Screams.

"-the files-"

"Someone get down there and release the expendables!"

Her ears hurt.

Rings of purple and gold blinked into existence.

Darkness.

It was unusual that noise could actually be heard from the other levels.

Opening her mouth, she drew the air over her scent glands and took stock. Nothing out of the ordinary on their floor- yet. A space of fluctuating heat and chill curled almost around the front of her on the floor was undoubtedly her cellmate, shivering weakly through the throes of a feverish sleep. She spared half a second to check his abdomen- still closed, fading scent of rot, reek of clotted blood- before sweeping their surroundings with a closer focus. The other residents of the block were restless. Some were pacing and jerking chains, growling and drooling in anticipation of blood. Others, those who had turned to fear rather than mindless hunger, were snivelling and cowering, doing their utmost to merge into where the corners were darkest.

They all knew the sound of the hunt when they heard it.

Another tremor trailed its fingers through the solid stone of the compound, stronger than the one that had coaxed her back to full awareness.

His comrades? A bit late, but more likely than anything else at the moment. Perhaps they had noticed the departure of the acquisitions team and taken advantage.

Another two explosions rocked the facility in close succession, and a rush of footsteps scrambled down the stairs into the block in the following momentary quiet. Musty orange bloomed and instantly illuminated the floor to eyes accustomed to the former near complete gloom.

"Hurry! Get into the safe room!"

"Activate the security seals on the stairwell!"

The banging clatter of something hard and heavy hitting the ground shattered the remaining sound level of the block as a rush of scattering papers flapped into the air.

"Leave it! Move!"

"But my-"

"Release the expendable containment seals! Open the cells!"

A sound like crumbling rock echoed through the floor. Half a second later, and the hiss of chakra burning into steam and smoke flooded the floor as twenty-four of the twenty-five cells in the block had key sections of their leylines severed and a veritable rain of chains and shackles fell to the ground. An ear-shattering series of ballistic roars tore through the stagnant air as the hunger-driven ones threw themselves forward. Steel bars groaned and gave where they hadn't opened quickly enough to permit the berserkers past. The masters, abruptly silent within their safe room in the far corner, watched as their creatures barrelled into the open space in the center of the block, rushing up and down the wide hall-like space, revelling in their limited freedom. It had been long since they'd been let out to hunt, even longer than it had been for her. They slammed into one another, grappling and tearing, engaging and disengaging as easily as others fell into their sights.

It did not take long for the hunger-driven to turn their attentions to other things, though. They lusted for more than competition; they hungered for the kill. Almost like a switch had been flipped, suddenly their focus was on the cowering creatures in their deep shadows. They stepped forward threateningly, singling out their chosen prey, and, sensing doom creeping onto their shadows, the fear-driven pulled their lips back and screeched fear and warning in equal measure.

Just because they were driven by less aggressive motives did not mean that they were lesser fighters. Quite the opposite, perhaps. It was fact she'd seen proven many a time that the cornered ones often fought the most viciously. The hunger-driven merely enjoyed the sour stench of terror the fear-driven gave off most. At the same time, the hunger-driven were not completely stupid, choosing the weakest to prey upon. A kill was most enjoyable when one suffered less in achieving it.

And so the block devolved into a bloodbath of its own. By the time the number of participants was cut down to a third the original swarm, the survivors had each made at least one kill of their own and now stood guard over their trophies, the hungering and fearful alike. The fear-driven had outnumbered the hunger-driven from the outset, and now continued to do so in greater disparity. Where over a hundred had languished in the darkness previously, now just over four dozen remained, spattered in their and each others' lifeblood.

A piercing snap cracked through the air. Instantly, all eyes were on the safe room tucked into the right corner of the wall directly opposite hers. The stairwell was folded into the left corner of that same wall, while the two that ran parallel between her enclosure and the opposite wall housed the other cells. Her wall held only her one cell, larger than the others by multiple times. Altogether, they surrounded the large, long, open rectangular space that had been left unused since her cellmate's arrival. Its primary functions had usually involved copious amounts of blood and bloodshed.

At the front of the safe room, securely ensconced behind a greyish curtain of rippling energy and black ink, a man she recognized to be one of the masters that gave orders to the others during her procedures stood stiffly, chin tilted a little too high for the distant disdainful confidence painted on his face. A black length of coiled hide reeking of fear and pain and blood and death was clutched tightly in a sweaty, white-knuckled palm.

The order-master uneasily raked his gaze over the crowd of bloodied creatures. 'Expendables,' they'd dubbed them, survivors who had already lost their worth as research material, who had survived as failed experiments and could not be used further, who had lost their higher reasoning abilities and thus fine motor skills in manipulating chakra in any semblance of skill beyond instinct.

Fodder material kept for the sake of those creations yet to be deemed expendable.

Fodder material kept for her sake.

Fodder material with enough enhancements and conditioning to command into a wall of meatshields against the intruders.

It had been decided to permit them to take the edge off their bloodlust in order to sate the remainder enough to command them. They did not have the time or resources to subdue them to the usual way and ensure their obedience. All those that inhabited this block were the most ferocious killers, survivors, that they had ever managed to create, creatures beyond reasoning with. If they were not united in the knowledge that it would be difficult to kill another strong enough to hunt their own kind, they would only fight amongst themselves when the time to fight came anyways. The seemingly wasteful loss was acceptable- for now.

Lifting the arm that held the whip, the order-master snapped it down, hurling the length, twisting and coiling, through the air and against the ground with a ringing crack. Inhuman ears flattened back in unison, teeth flashing in warning even as whites of eyes flashed in simultaneous disgruntled submission. The whip rose again, hilt pointing direction, and the attention in the room instantly followed it to fix on the stairwell. The master pursed his lips, drew breath in steadily, accustomed to the heavy weight of danger and bloodlust and impending doom that his creatures exuded like a shroud and channelling that steady reminder that they can't reach you they can't touch you they can't hurtyoukillyoutearyouapart-

-and blew.

The shrill whistle pierced through the air, pitched and steady and sharp. The equally shrill sound of shattering chakra restriction seals echoed it, and flat shards of black sloughed to the ground like sleet from the creatures' flanks.

Hunt.

Most of the hunger-driven surged forward, eager for the promise of adrenaline and flowing red, while most of the fear-driven hung back, a few exceptions lurking around the edges of the two groups. Hunt did not necessarily mean chase.

Quiet descended on the block once more, though this one a listening quiet rather than a slumbering-beast quiet. Echoes of the chaos ensuing above continued to telegraph through the halls, the ceilings, the walls. A sudden sharp escalation in the clamor marked the entry of the creatures into the mess and held.

A feathersoft touch to her knee.

"Neko-chan?" he croaked in a whisper. She hadn't known such a thing was possible. Twin rings of purple and gold dropped to track the movement of his flank. Breathing was steady. Heart rate low but there. The greatest wounds had not reopened. But weak. Too weak. It was all too weak. He was in no condition to move, let alone fight, and yet she could see the knowing in his eyes as he held himself still, carefully maintaining the illusion of a sleeping body as he, too, listened to the distant chaos. She saw the knowing, and knew, too, that he would fight regardless. That, too, was the way of things.

"They're coming." The speaking eyes sought hers out. Be ready.

Was this what indecision felt like? It was something simpler, she knew. She had no right to choices. But would it have felt similar to this indecipherable spiral of contradicting emotions?

The thought fell away. It wouldn't matter in the end. Either he would take her or the masters would keep her and that would be that.

The sounds of battle steadily declined until nothing was left but silence.

One minute.

Two.

And then there were three more presences in the room.

They were gliding, flitting, fluttering things, intangible and formless and there-and-yet-not-there. They were the shadows that the guttering lamps and torches were struggling to hold at bay, the deepest darkest corners that the fear-driven sought refuge in, because they were shadows and they were not and suddenly that meant they were in the shadows and another six bodies were hitting the ground.

Positions blown, a quick flare of killing intent blasted through the air from three different points along the walls before disappearing in the next instant, the three fluttering things rapidly abandoning those shadows for others. The creatures whirled and howled, darting out of their own hiding places, snapping and snarling only half-heartedly at each other as they backed towards the center of the room to form a misshapen ring, shoulders hunched, eyes darting, instinctively calling an unspoken ceasefire in unity against the new, greater threat. A few of the worse tempered and twitchy ones opened their mouths wide in the direction of the new corpses and gurgled deep from their bellies. Coarse orange and burgundy spilled from their jaws in scorching, snatching billows, and the creatures lent to the roar of flames with their own warped screams of threat.

The plumes of fire slashed through the shadows in bright flares of orange heat, nearly blinding after the long dark. Here again she saw and understood the masters' reasoning. The expendables could not be anything besides failures by the standards they had. With that one move, their sight, hearing, taste, and, to a slightly lesser degree, scent, had all been nullified. The loss of their intelligence was a burden- they would never meet the demands the masters made of them. Of course, the masters had no interest in their intelligence levels themselves. It was merely inevitable fact that not being smart enough simply wouldn't let them ever be enough against such beings as shinobi, those who looked underneath the underneath, planned five steps ahead and saw another ten. Opinions remained undesirables.

That said, they were not completely without minds. As the first plumes crested and began to recede, others with fire affinity stepped forward to breathe new heat on the tails of the first flames. Gradually, the shadows were eaten away from the walls, narrowing the possible hiding places down, down-

Confused, some of the fire-attuned spat more flame in several surges.

No presences appeared from the illuminated corners.

The fire-attuned creatures allowed the bright heat to subside. All around the block, the scattered corpses and trails of blood and fluid from the initial slaughter had caught the flames, providing crackling pyres to light the block. The way they threw hot light and washed-out shadows across the ground until it rippled like water made her wonder if this was what her cellmate had tried to describe of a sea of floating lanterns.

Burning orange danced, permeating the air with the stench of burning meat, and weakened grey-blacks mirrored the movements, jerking ungainly shades and tendrils along. The walls heaved with a cacophony of shades chasing one another across every surface, the flames crackled, the creatures snapped and snarled, the masters frowned and muttered and fiddled, the ring of black shadow inside the creatures' circle fluttered-

A surge of chakra pulsed from the ring of the creatures' own silhouettes as three figures, so fast they blurred, darted out and- a wave of blood-spray, a wave of screeched howls- neatly hamstrung a good half of the creatures.

Instantly, the block devolved into chaos.

They watched the bloodbath, she, her cellmate, the masters- watched and waited for the conclusion.

Having chosen to cripple the greater number rather than limit themselves to the small handful they could have killed directly, the three intruders held their own surprisingly firmly against the nearly eleven to one odds. No matter how the creatures lunged and erratically swung claws and limbs, the fluttering ones went hardly touched in comparison as they danced in and out and around, blocking and dodging and stabbing and slicing, dealing swift death on a wind that never reached these depths. The battle held even, gave, and fell on a slow decline as the intruders ground the creatures down with inevitable finality towards their fateful conclusion.

The sour tang of fear yet untouched by blood stung the air. The masters stared at the battle in barely contained terror, horror plastered bright and clear across their entire persons. A few had collapsed where they'd stood, whatever cowardly instinct that had sustained their scramble for continued survival so far used up and gone in the face of certain doom. Some of them might have had a bit of combat experience, but most only had basic training and procedure to fall back on. They were no warriors for all that they held the whips. Whips were for masters, those that commanded others to do what they could not.

Now, they could not fight.

Now, they would die.

The order-master was no fool. He saw this, and he knew what had to be done. He was not so naive as to believe that the intruders had not noticed the unreleased cell. They would wipe out the expendables and take whatever was so special as to have remained apart in the last cell to assuage their curiosities.

Eliminate all traces. Scorched earth policy. So it would be.

She saw this.

One of the other masters saw this as well.

The only one besides the order-master to remain standing, albeit on bowed legs and spine, darted wild eyes between the melee and the order-master and made a split-second decision. Jerking forward in a graceless lunge, he wrenched the whip out of the clammy deathgrip of the order-master. The order-master threw his arm out instinctively as he felt the leather-bound hilt of the length of hide lurch out of his grasp and connected solidly with the bone edge of the coward-master's right eye socket. Flung back by the weight behind the hit, the coward-master reeled into the wall and allowed himself to slump his back against it, hungry for the useless illusion of safety it provided.

The order-master twisted to face his attacker, face first sickly pale then incandescent with flushed fury as he took in the new situation within their sealed room. All the rest of the remaining masters were tensed, watching the faceoff. Clinging to the last vestiges of authority, he sneered in derision.

"What do you think you're playing at?" His voice was surprisingly level. "You still think there's any escape from this?"

"Not if you destroy the divine beast." The coward-master was panting from burn of adrenaline despite the lack of action. His eyes were peeled back so that the whites clearly bordered the entirety of the irises, and darted desperately between the other masters. "Not if you trigger the self-destruct sequence."

"Coward."

"Yes!" he shouted, convulsing forward sharply as if to give the word physical momentum. "Call me a coward! I don't want to die! But you- you just-!" He threw his hands about wildly, words escaping his scholar's tongue. "We don't have to die! The divine beast doesn't even have to win! So long as it buys us enough time to escape, we can leave this place, start over! We have the most important files, enough that the setback won't be devastating! They don't know how to contain or sustain or use the divine beast, it will inevitably die even if they manage to take it!" The man was near hysterical. "We don't have to die!"

The other masters stared at the coward-master. His eyes darted between each of theirs, beseeching and terrified and despairing.

A second, another, and a few hesitant steps shuffled away from the order-master, shoring up the coward-master. One woman clenched her fists, looked at the ground. "That's… I…" All eyes fell on her. She seemed to steel herself, shoulders hunching up in trepidation, eyes squeezing shut in brace. "I.. don't want to die eith-!"

A swish of air, quiet enough to be nearly drowned out by the sound of the bloodbath just beyond their expired safe space. It was a messy blow, jagged and inefficiently angled so that it caught on a clavicle and only sliced through a fifth of the neck, but fatal nonetheless, if only because it had not missed the artery. The woman's words literally caught in her throat, unable to escape in the sudden flood of lifeblood as she drowned on dry ground. Another body hit the floor.

Outside the safe room, another creature screamed and fell. Its severed leg tumbled down beside it.

Pandemonium broke out in the safe room. One of the guards behind the coward-master threw his own blade out to engage the killer, and then everyone was taking up arms, the masters drawing shiny new holdout kunai while the guards raised more weathered weapons. The coward-master's side numbered more, but was primarily composed of soft masters unused to combat. The order-master's side was the opposite- fewer masters, and though the guards were few, too, they were more than a match for untrained fighters. It stood to reason they held a greater commitment to their given duties as well- she was aware that some of the masters had been coerced into service. The fact did not make her revile them any less.

Amid the tumult, the order-master and the coward-master scrambled for the row of seal keys inked onto the surface of the back wall. The two rows of twenty four identical keys had already been released, but the set of three of the five furthest to the right remained untouched.

She watched the struggle over the seals avidly. The triple set controlled the physical restraint, natural energy, and chakra restraint seals binding her. The fifth and final seal was a sort of self-destruct sequence for the entire base.

The fourth, inactive seal key was to a killing seal.

The order-master was the first to reach them, shoving aside the body of the master he'd just stabbed in the temple and reaching for the fourth seal key, but the coward-master was not far behind. He clumsily launched his holdout kunai at the extended hand, forcing the order-master to jerk to the side, knowing he hadn't the control to activate the key with an injured hand, and then was upon him. A fist darted out, aiming for an uppercut to the jaw. The order-master stepped sideways to avoid it this time, allowing it to carry through past him while he brought up a knee into the coward-master's stomach.

The coward-master hunched over and the order-master allowed him to collapse to the floor, choking on his own tongue trying to get air into deflated lungs. Whirling back to the seals, he reached again for the fourth seal, slapping a palm over the black ink-

-and failed to move in time as the coward-master tackled him in the knees because he was staring at the seal in blank horror, the seal that was black and ink and flat on the wall and not activating whywasn'titactivating.

For an instant, the seal sputtered dim grey- and then the back of his head met the unforgiving ground with a solid crack and the seal spat and died. She wasn't looking at him though, because the triple seal was glowing from under a smudged smattering of red and the coward master was grimly grinning, shattered fist cradled to his chest, and the familiar feel of her containment seals swirling and racing in rivulets to drip from her skin like so much water was outpacing the rush of blistering heat flooding those same rivulets. Chakra shouted in roaring whispers, pushing, shoving, fleeing out from the tendrils of ink bindings and dragging the markings with it.

The order-master swore and stabbed the spiked handle of the whip he snatched back from the coward-master straight up into the soft flesh behind his chin and jawbone. Gagging on his severed tongue, the coward-master released his grip on the order-master's knees and scrabbed at the hole futilely as he keeled over one final time. Ignoring him, the order-master clambered to his feet and hurried to the body of one of the other fallen masters. He rifled the pockets, found what he was looking for- and turned toward the last cell.

In the space between the cells, the intruders finally seemed to have established their dominance over the creatures to the point where they could break off and regroup. Having maneuvered themselves around during the battle, they'd managed to reposition, with two between their cell and the last of the creatures and one blocking the sole entrypoint through the stairwell. The pack of creatures- because yes, they were a pack now, unity against the much-more-dangerous-than-they'd-originally-thought threat- shifted uneasily, forced again into a ring of sorts, though it bulged pear-shaped as a few warily backpedaled towards the corner of the safe room, away from the greater-than-they predators.

The intruders didn't pursue immediately. For all that they were shadows, made themselves out to be so and shrugged off attacks like a particularly stiff breeze, they remained human at their most fundamental, and the expendables were no slouches. Sparking puddles, sharp outgrowths of rock, gouges carved by unseen blades, scorch marks from flame and lightning alike- the entire block simmered with volatile chakra residue. Newly visible silver-grey armor and bone-white masks were singed in places, cut and torn and blackened, however glancingly; the creatures' efforts had not been entirely futile, and the intruders had not entered this fight at full capacity in the first place, if the intermittently continuing explosions were anything to go off of.

Shifting towards a more centered position, one of the two figures in front of their cell took up a more solid defensive stance while the other dropped back and darted to the side of the row of bars, searching for something, presumably some branch of the cell's plethora of seals.

A shout, a crack of a whip- a spike of fear-scent and anxiety shot into the air when the order-master saw what the crouched intruder was doing. Hurling the length of the whip through the air over the creatures' heads, he yelled something nigh unintelligible in his panic even as he clutched the thing he had taken from the corpse- a kunai, black and dull-glinting- as if in anticipatory preparation. The creatures surged forward once again, a vague light of knowing in their wild eyes, as if catching the note of near-hysteria in his tone, as if somehow understanding that it would be very very bad should that intruder succeed in whatever he was doing.

It was too late, though. With a curling twist of both a gloved hand and a tightly coiled flare of chakra, the intruder grabbed whatever it was they had found and pulled.

A pulse, an overflow, a rush of chakra smoke-

-and then the long row of solid metal rods was rising, pulled, sucked, directly into the suddenly malleable stone of the plated portion of ceiling-

-and the intruder was rolling under the bottom ends of the metal rods and slipping cautiously forward to her cellmate's side after a brief, wary eyeing thrown in her direction-

-and the two other intruders were throwing deadly swathes of water and lightning, pincering the reckless charge of berserking savages-

-and the order-master was throwing, throwing the dead master's blade, the dead master's tag-wrapped now-glowing-and-burning blade, hurling it with panic and terror and utter desperation at the space between her eyes-

-and the blade was rushing towards her, slow, fast, no, but enough to hit her, kill her, when she was bound and tied down as she was and-

The scent of wind and sickness and aged trees and pus and rich loam and salt and old blood and lemongrass and those little white bell-shaped flowers-

She blinked, nonplussed, at the sudden dark that filled her vision, but then, no, it wasn't dark, not really, there was the glint of firelight against grime-layered skin, and there was the crusted edge of dried soaked-through wrappings, and there was her cellmate, above her- above her?- panting and sweating and smelling like all those things she'd just breathed in through her nose and yet for some reason now gaining an enveloping cloak of burnt-flesh-smell-

He coughed, wet and muffled, and fine mist of scarlet sprayed through the air, through her hair, painted itself across her face-

Master-

A pained noise strangled itself out of his throat, a noise she would later find she would remember in perfect detail for all the rest of her life and yet be unable to properly describe, it hurt so much to think about, and then the intruder was there, gloved clawed hands glowing muted green and frantic eyes just barely discernible from the shadows of the mask's eyeholes and-

Why-

"Yo-ou al-" -a gasp- "-lright, nek-ko-chan?"

-wHY-

The ink chains running straight up and down from the floor and ceiling to connect to the constrictive bindings around her neck jerked and she distantly registered the fact that he'd had to grasp the upper one in an attempt to keep from collapsing on top of her-

"Sir, your back-"

-and the intruder with the glowing hands was speaking, not to her, no, to him, but he wasn't looking at the intruder, he was still looking at her, waiting for her response, and-

"Why?"

-and he smiled at her.

He laughed at her.

"Wha-t a, thing to ask."

He twitched, a full-body thing, and the intruder with the glowing hands pulsed the glow and stopped trying to talk to him in favor of containing whatever damage- damage, damage to his back, he was down and wounded and there were still threats in the vicinity-

"I had, the choice to, do, it, and I thought, it was the, thing I, ought to do, so I- I did it. Because I, wanted to."

She didn't know what to say to that.

He grinned at her then, teeth and tired ferocity, and she didn't have to.

"Hey-y, neko-chan, look." He panted some more, gave a self-amused chuckle. "My friends are here."

So they were.

"You coming with?"

She might not have known much about the social standards he operated on, but these just couldn't be the appropriate circumstances for any of this.

Behind him, something scraped and screeched and crashed into something less sturdy.

"Befoorr, nee-d."

He had asked her before, and she had decided that however things played out would be how they did. And yet, he had made a choice, and now was giving her a choice- an opportunity to influence that outcome.

"Anything, neko-chan."

Unconditional accommodation.

Unconditional trust.

May she die before ever betraying that trust, intentional or by mere existence.

The wind-rushing sounds of releasing chakra that had been hissing since the release of the triple-seal finally dipped, weak and spluttering and dissipating and-

Four soft sounds, like the breaking of the threads the masters sometimes used to stitch pieces of creatures back together. Black ink crumbled and dissipated into the gloom of the enclosure, the cell, the cage that could hold her no longer.

Late, late, too late to stop it-

-but not too late to fix it.

She caught him when he lurched forwards, falling, having lost the support from the ink chains of the binding seals, and lifted her hand- loose, free, truly free, so light, so free- ignoring the glowing-hands-intruder's protests as she reached around and pressed it, palm open, fingers splayed, into the raw, smoldering ruins of her cellmate's- no, her friend's back (whispered between pained pants and the squelch of infected flesh, you're my friend, too, neko-chan). A fine tremor traced its way through him, but he did no more than suppress a grunt and meet her gaze with a question in his unwavering own.

He knew the power of blood in contracts, then.

Good.

Bringing up her other hand, as well as drawing the first back around from his back, she grasped the hand attached to the shoulder not presently slung over her tiny frame and smeared his blood across his own much larger palm. She gave him one last, long blink, trying to push all the meaning of allegiance and dedication and submission and for-you-I-would-live-fight-die she could into it, and then twisted around to bare her own back to him.

She would not deceive him in this. She would have him know what he was getting himself into. She did not want him to look at her like that when all he was looking at was false.

Behind her, she felt him pause at the sight of her command matrix.

The glowing-hands-intruder- no, friend, glowing-hands-friend- had fallen silent before, but drew a sharp breath now. She paid them no mind, proper friend-making could come later.

A long moment.

Two.

Something else exploded and thudded into the walls.

"Neko-chan."

A death scream.

Two.

"You are not a weapon."

She didn't turn to look at him. There was no time.

"For you. Fight, I."

He swallowed, gritted his teeth with a faint creak.

"Let me fight."

He was very intelligent. Having seen the measures with which she'd been restrained, and now seeing the command matrix, he would understand the implications of those three simple words.

Because, etched into the mottled scar tissue that covered the span of her back, was a large, intricate, beautiful piece of calligraphy, painted to interlace the myriad tumble of the rest of the black, black ink that spilled over her scars, brought to the surface by forces she couldn't be bothered to decipher just then.

Because, just below the nape of her neck, were a pair of kanji.

奴隷

Dorei.

Slave.

They needed her to fight.

She could not fight without this.

Slowly, slowly, that large, warm hand pressed into that space of her back just below the nape of her neck.

"You are not a weapon," he whispered fiercely. "You're not an object, not a piece of property. I'll show you. I'll prove it to you. I promise you that."

She believed him.

Under the press of his palm, the matrix came alive with a ripple of white and silver.

Five characters flared with the light of an active seal, and she felt something within it, within her, reach out and touch that warm warm chakra that seeped into her skin from the layer of blood pressed into her back. The tentative touch, careful, searching- asking permission- it was familiar, yet not. They had attempted to use the command seal before, the masters, attempted and inexplicably failed. They would reach cruel, grasping, yanking tendrils of demand into her, and yet never quite manage to get a solid grasp on that something inside of her.

For the first time, she gave a response. She reached back-

-and clasped something warm.

Warmth. She could really start getting used to the sensation.

The newly formed connection pulsed. Chakra rushed into it, into her, a meagre drip compared to the sudden influx of natural energy, but enough to serve its own purpose, sealing and smoothing over the connection until it was a bond. Strength flooded her body, returned with the surge of foreign chakra and-

-enough, enough, it was enough. Enough to kill, to maim, to slaughter-

To eliminate the threat to her master.

Her Master.

The meagre drip shriveled up to nothing, its job done, and her Master released a shuddering breath over her shoulder. The maelstrom of conflicting emotions whirling within him conveyed itself through the new bond, strange and familiar at once, but there was no time to decipher them right then.

Her body was changing with the intake of chakra, recognizing the precarious state of health her Master was in and automatically shifting her from the semi-shut-down mode induced by the containment seals into the most aggressively powerful form she had taken so far- the 'semi-awakened mode,' as the masters had called it. Muscles thickened and corded, bones creaked and morphed, and, with a brief flash of concentrated awareness, she realized that her vocal chords were among those parts of her changing into more bestial shapes.

The bloodied palm disappeared from her back, and she turned back around to face her Master, agonized silver-grey meeting twin rings of purple and gold. Throat convulsing, straining, she forced out a burble of nonsensical noises and managed a disjointed chain of words as the change took hold.

"I, to act-t, orders, need. You need, need yuu. C-mmand."

A pained, conflicted expression she could not see twisted his face- her eyes were changing now, irises twisting, pupils contorting, sight warping, fading, fading, sharpening- but she did not need to see it to know it was there. The bond thrummed with it.

She pushed out a last few words of urgency, already warped and butchered by tones no human ought be able to make.

"Mhe. Yuu. C-mm-nd. Fight."

Reluctance echoed down the bond.

She held his gaze.

He reached out, slowly, too slowly. Threaded his hand through the thickening tangle of hair-fur-hair at the base of her skull. Leaned in- pulled her into him. Pressed the side of her face into the side of his own. Cheek to cheek.

"Live," he breathed.

Like it was a secret to be shared.

Like it meant a thousand little things and a million larger ones.

Like it was the single most important thing he could ever tell her.

Like he was going to die.

But he wasn't going to die. She would not let it be so.

She took the second meaning and ran with it. She would make that one word mean everything she needed it to.

Everything that his continued existence needed it to.

Because she certainly wasn't going to live without him.

Far in the corner, beyond the ongoing carnage, the order-master leaned slumped against the wall, expression blank, eyes fixed on her, the fifth seal seething with chaotic energy next to him as previously concealed lines of sealwork made themselves known across the walls, the floors, the ceilings.

Stone shivered.

The world trembled.

Creatures and humans shrieked in symphony.

Master's friends-

Vision returned in full sharpened force as twin rings merged and purple-gold starbursts blazed in the darkness.

Seals flared.

She moved.

The world fell apart.

Darkness.

The world pressed in around her.

She breathed.

Coughed.

Blinked open eyes and promptly shut them against the stinging dust and closed her mouth and held her breath.

Four warm bodies beneath her, shielded in the dome of her enlarged frame and two extra limbs.

All breathing.

She shifted her stance slightly, testing the weight of the world on her back. The stones shifted, unstable, and a rain of dirt poured over a shoulder into a small pile over one of the friends' legs.

A muffled groan.

Her command matrix throbbed, constant in its alert of her Master's continued state.

Beneath her, someone shifted.

Tilting her head downwards, she carefully made sure not to let that particularly large piece of unstable debris past the press of her skull while she huffed a gust of air at the prone figures beneath her. They needed to wake up if she was going to get them out of the slightly pressing matter of being buried alive.

The first to stir was the one with the scent of the glowing-hands-intruder, no, glowing-hands-friend. Apparently this was a good thing- they immediately turned their attention to the others, hands aglow once more, and swiped a palm over each of their foreheads. They woke quickly.

They took stock of their surroundings.

Noticed her.

Very carefully froze.

(-except her Master. She felt his smile, and felt something light swirl within her at the knowledge.)

She imagined her eyes were glowing. She was watching them carefully, very carefully not moving, since she was not their enemy. Hopefully, her Master's friends would understand that. At the very least, the glowing-hands-friend ought to.

Her Master spoke up. Presumably they could not see each other either, and thus could not make use of those interesting gestures she had seen them make during their battle.

Presumably, her Master should not have been speaking, either, but she supposed there was little choice in the matter.

"Everyone okay?" A subdued chorus of affirmations.

"Neko-chan?" Warmth. She carefully regulated the growling tone of her responding purr. Her more bestial forms didn't only look more aggressive.

"Uh, Zouge-taicho…" One of her Master's friends started uncertainly.

"No worries," her Master assured, faintly amused. "Neko-chan is a friend. We can do proper introductions later. For now, we should get ourselves out of here. It seems like we've been buried."

"Yessir," uncertain-friend responded. "Hermetically sealed. Stagnant airflow. Time limit…" She got the distinct impression he'd glanced up at her unseen yet obviously looming form. "...maybe five minutes."

"Hmm." Careful shuffling ensued. "Status report."

The uncertain-friend had broken all the bones in their left leg and dislocated the arm on the same side. The glowing-hands-friend had gotten away with a burst eardrum and fractured right forearm. The last of the intruder group, the tallest of them all, was having trouble breathing and reported at least five fractured and three broken ribs. This was all discounting the severe burns each had suffered in the self-destruct seal's explosion- the uncertain-friend across the left side of their neck and torso, the glowing-hands-friend over their upper left arm and the flat of their abdomen, the tall-friend over both legs and around their lower back- as well as the collection of cuts and other flesh wounds received from their initial break-in and the subsequent battle against the creatures.

And then her Master- well.

None of them were in any condition to really be moving, let alone fighting, by the glowing-hands-friend's diagnosis, and while she had certainly had to do so in worse conditions herself, she had to agree that it was not advisable.

"I see," her Master received the information with calm composure. "Options?"

"I'm out of chakra." The uncertain-friend sounded like he might have made a face to go with the admission. "Can't drag us out with a jutsu- we're at least two hundred feet below ground. And we each took a soldier pill right during earlier combat. That was… well, just under an hour before we all passed out. If we were only out a moment, taking another now wouldn't be the best idea."

"We're all seriously injured, and I'm low on chakra too. Had to remove some contaminants that looked like poison, but I can't be sure. None of us are in too much danger so long as I can treat us within the next hour, but I need to administer immediate treatment if we're going to last long enough to make it anywhere for proper measures."

"I'm not adept enough at earth techniques to pull us all two hundred feet."

Her Master sighed. "I've got some chakra, but I'm not good enough at earth for that either. And considering the collapse, it's way too unstable for us to attempt to leave with anything less than a jutsu-"

He cut himself off. She could feel the way his attention snapped to her.

"Neko-chan, are you…?"

His line of thought somehow conveyed an impression of itself over the bond. She let out another purr of admission.

He swore. "I knew we couldn't have been so lucky."

"Taicho?"

"We're not in some luckily uncollapsed corner. It's Neko-chan- she's holding up the earth around us."

A beat of silence. Then the others let themselves swear a few phrases too.

She let out a low rumble at the distress that was emanating from her Master, the emotion catching in her own, but she dared not lower her head further to seek him out in the darkness.

Another trickle of dirt fell through a gap between her limbs.

"Sorry, no, it's okay Neko-chan, we're fine, I'm fine." An inaccurate assessment. "Just, a bit hand-tied at the moment." Slightly less of an inaccurate assessment. And the glowing-hands-friend had done something that had reduced the scent of fresh blood. Her Master was even speaking more fluently now.

The rustle of clothing, and then the soft light of the glowing-hands-friend's technique lit the small pocket of space with a dull green glow. They were working again on her Master's back, pulling out dirt and grime and sealing the flesh with scabbing as quickly as possible.

And in the dim glow, they looked upon her form.

She smelt the sparks of fear, saw the startled jerks. They recoiled.

But only for a second.

There was fear- but there was also a tentative something else.

Her Master smiled.

"A big Neko-chan, eh? You're just full of surprises. Coulda sworn you were a tiny little thing."

She purred, immensely relieved, though she could not have explained in that moment why, or over exactly what, even if some subconscious part of her could have. She reached for the bond, weak but strong, and tried to will her thoughts into it.

Her Master blinked, surprised, but easily recovered. The glowing-hands-friend released the technique, momentarily plunging the little space into darkness as they moved to another friend's hurts. "You can? All of us? Are you sure? Will you be okay?"

She purred. Anything for her Master.

"Was that a yes?" All three of her Master's friends were watching their exchange warily, though the fear had abated for the most part. Impressive. Or foolish. One of the two.

"Yes, that was a yes." Her Master breathed deeply, pushing himself up into a crouch so that he could reach slightly trembling hands towards her face. He had lost much blood. She blinked at him slowly, allowed herself to lean ever so slightly into the touch. Another small shower of dust and debris trickled down. He petted the newly grown fur of her face and ruff and spoke to his friends without turning his head. "Emergency first aid only. We'll have time for more once we're up top."

The glowing-hands-friend quickly stemmed the worst of the flesh wounds, leaving the mending and the bones for later to set. Everyone was breathing more harshly now. They were out of time.

Her Master's friends approached warily but unflinchingly, trusting in their friend. She eyed them warily in return, but trusted in her Master as well. She gathered them close, urged them in to hold fast to her underside, the vulnerable fur and flesh of her soft belly, the space above her beating heart, and carefully wrapped her extra appendages around them, allowing the tons of rock and dirt they'd been holding back around her flanks to gently tumble into the ever-shrinking space.

With four injured forms pressed tightly to her, she called up the thrumming power so long absent and let the walls of their little world fall through her.

The small space collapsed in on itself as she turned away and headed upwards. She didn't stop to consider the flickering signatures all around her, buried in the earth. Either they would perish, or also return to the surface if they were capable. She would deal with any hostiles, of course, but she needed to get to the surface before them so as to drop her passengers off somewhere defensible, or at least shift her hold on them. She couldn't fight while carrying them pressed into her underbelly.

It took just over two minutes to breach open air. Normally it wouldn't take nearly so long, but she'd never carried either injured or passengers with her before. Unfortunately, that meant that they were not the first to arrive.

She only had enough time to drop her passengers- carefully, carefully- in the hollow of the roots of a large tree she'd had the presence of mind to surface near at the edge of the entrance clearing before the first wave was on them.

Snapping her head up, she caught the most rash of the assailants in her jaws and promptly crushed his thoracic and abdominal cavities. A quick shake and release sent the corpse careening into the fool who thought the back of her head was a blind spot, and an almost casual extension of the extra appendage on her right elicited a chorus of more broken bones before both bodies were hurled into the underbrush, undoubtedly dead. She stretched out its pair and flexed the stiff new muscles in tandem, allowing the attached feathers to spread and catch the air as she re-familiarized herself with having wings. Eyeing the proper formation of perimeter guards that had apparently been spared any fighting so far, she drew in the cool spice of fresh forest air-

-and breathed out inferno.

The high-intensity flame burst outwards in a plume of burning death, easily catching the remaining first-responders. Half a dozen charred bodies faltered in their charge and hit the ground on the last of their momentum.

In the brief respite that followed, she glanced underneath herself and caught her Master's eye. He nodded to her even as reluctance colored the motion. He'd also caught the signatures of the other congregating forces and knew that fleeing would just be leaving their backs open. Plus, their mission…

None were to be left alive. He wasn't much inclined to argue, personally, either, especially when Neko-chan was an exception to that particular parameter. He just really wished it didn't have to be her who did it.

"We can take care of ourselves."

She dipped her head in acquiescence and stepped out from over them, moving towards the center of the clearing, though stopped before reaching it so that she remained in a semi-defensive position.

Behind her, a sudden series of sharp intakes of breath found her ears swiveling back towards them in alert. There were no hostiles in their direct vicinity, all their chara signatures were still relatively stable-

The weight of many heavy gazes was pinned to her back.

Ah.

The self-destruct activation, managing to reach them all, shielding them from the blasts and the collapse…

It probably didn't look so good.

Of course, she'd suffered worse before. There was no need for such concern; she would heal. More pressingly important were the enemies before them now.

She flexed a shoulder, dislodged a spike of stone, and tried to convey the idea of combat-capable down the bond.

A strange sense of resigned ache answered it. Something to mull over later.

A barrage of metal shot out of the undergrowth; widespread, area of effect. Curling her lip, she opened her mouth and roared, infusing the sound into a wave of disruptive chakra that hit the projectiles as if solid, scattering them like leaves and slamming into the throwers. Over half faltered, disoriented, and fell to the immediately following blast of searing flame. Two managed to leap out of the way, three blocked and suffered severe burns.

The two that avoided the attack completely immediately countered, one spitting a high-pressured stream of water and the other slamming hands to the ground for a liquified wave of earth that built on its own momentum. She ignored the easier option of simply dodging the attacks, highly conscious of the four signatures behind her, and slapped a heavily built paw onto the earth herself, rupturing the ground through sheer brute force. The split rushed forward and crashed into the earth wave, directly breaking the attack in half so that it simply passed by on either side harmlessly. Lifting the other paw, she flexed the digits and thrust it, claws extended, straight against the forceful jet attempting to puncture her neck, splitting it into a great shower of harmless droplets.

These were clearly lesser-ranked guards. Never once had they slowed in their charge towards her. Both clutched something white and fluttering in one hand- restraining tags, the kind used on those creatures leagues lesser than the expendables- and had their eyes fixed on the sections of the command seal that overflowed onto the tops of her shoulders and flanks.

They thought she was a mere fodder-creature.

No fodder-creature could maintain a form so large as she could. Nor could one hold one so stable.

She was insulted.

She peeled her lips back all the way, exposing her oversized cuspids to the fullest, and plucked the suiton-user out of the air. He died by a fang through the heart, surprise frozen upon his face, evidently having believed he'd not been yet within her reach. The other froze up without her needing to do anything else, shouting something- a name?- and staring in abject horror at the decidedly neat puncture in the other's chest. The three other survivors of her earlier attack finally caught up then, launching their own attacks- doton, doton, suiton.

Futile.

She darted forward, no longer so concerned that such weak opponents could pose a threat to her Master and his friends, even injured, even through a fluke. They'd handled the expendables perfectly well- these opponents were nothing in comparison. Their ninjutsu casting rate was slow, movements hesitating and wasteful, and they were severely underestimating her, let alone even beginning to account for the others- they were prey, in truth.

She reached out with her senses as she dealt with the weaklings, examining their presences and comparing them to the other remaining signatures.

-a flick of a paw and a head bounced, once, twice-

A swarm of similarly weak presences raced confused paths above ground. Those of similar strength below ground were quickly fading, no doubt fallen to the self-destruct protocol.

-desperate, useless wriggling-

The only things she really had any concern for were the expendables, if any survived. She could sense a few of their signatures flickering far below, some struggling slowly upwards through the rubble of the collapse.

-leaned down to the dying thing pinned by one paw and grabbed the torso between her teeth and pulled-

She would wait for them, then, lest they attempt chase later. In the meantime, her Master's friends were doing something with wires and sharp metal things, and the swarm of weaklings was peppered with a few stronger signatures.

Leaning out of the way of a particularly desperately wild sword thrust, she waved a wing forward in the space she'd vacated and batted the weakling away. A loud snap marked the breaking of his spine.

She was confident in her senses, and her senses told her that the area around them was clear for the most part, but the swarms had noticed their presences if their changing movement patterns were anything to go by.

Her command matrix might have had several mechanisms built in for her to protect her Master, but when it came down to it she was an offensive fighter, not defensive. Most of their opposition was weak and undoubtedly no match for her, but they were many, and, while capable, her Master and his friends were still injured and in no condition for anything beyond self-defense. She would move them to somewhere more secure, yes, and then return for the swarm.

Turning away from the carnage, she loped back to where the others waited. Unsurprisingly, she was greeted by gazes significantly more cautious than before. Blood had soaked through the majority of her coat, her own on her back and her prey's on her chest and teeth and paws and jaws and claws, though her coloration did much to hide the worst of the stains.

Her Master smiled at her, though it was strained, but a whisper from the bond told her that it was not out of fear or revulsion. What it was, she did not know, could not recognize, but that was fine. It was enough that he was not repulsed by her.

Tentatively, she lowered her head towards her Master and nosed his chest. He smelled of blood and perspiration and sickness still, and a bit of the scent of battle-rush- adrenaline. But underneath it, there was something else, more concerning for the fact that it had not been there earlier. Shock, the masters had called it; in fact, all four of them seemed to be suffering from it. They seemed aware of it, and seemed capable of dealing with it, since all except her Master had already pulled themselves out of it and were already beginning to recover, artificially increasing their blood flow by cycling their chakra, but her Master had lost too much blood and was struggling to shake its hold. He was on the brink of passing out.

The glowing-hands-friend had rapidly rotated between each of them, doing what they could for each of their worst injuries, just enough to keep them alive. It wasn't just the time press; they definitely didn't have enough chakra.

She nosed her Master a little more insistently. He blinked at her through hazy eyes.

Urgency, movement, hide-fight. She growled and willed him to understand. The others tensed at the sound but didn't pull any moves.

"Ah, right, you're right," he muttered, blinking repeatedly. " 's get moving, defensible location…"

She growled again, agreeing, and took a step back. Dropping to her elbows, she dipped the tips of her wings down and offered them her back, blood and burns and all. They needed to hurry, and she was probably fastest of them all as they were.

The friends shared a round of looks.

"Go'n," her Master winced at the sight of her back but still grunted out the words. "Neko-chan's a friend. You can trust her."

That seemed to be good enough for them. It was good enough for her to ignore the searing points of pain where they made contact with her wounds. She appreciated the way they did their best to avoid the worst patches as they helped each other up.

Pushing herself to her feet, she carefully folded her wings partway, shielding and steadying her passengers. She reoriented herself with the approaching swarms, turned, and dove into the shadows of the forest.

She carried them a few miles away, far enough to keep them out of the range of the fighting, and found them a cliffside crevice to hide in. The friends clambered off once she'd inspected the interior for inhabitants. There were a few old animals bones that might have once been a bear's meal, but nothing had disturbed the place for a long time since.

Once she'd made sure none of them were about to keel over and die, she turned back towards the entryway.

"Where are you going?"

She paused and spared a glance over her shoulder.

The tall-friend had been the one to speak. He was propped up against a wall, one arm cradling his ribcage, hastily bandaged feet stretched out in front of him. The colored marks on his white mask were nearly black in the cave's shadows.

Did he think that they were only pausing in their escape to regroup? Admittedly, it was a fair assumption to make- if they were outmatched, that is. As it were, they were not. They were, however, very much injured. The best course of action in this case would be to eliminate the threat, properly administer emergency treatment, and then return to base- wherever that was for them. She would have to get directions later.

Now, how to convey that without her Master to interpret? He had succumbed to the drop from the adrenaline high during the trip, but was no longer in danger from shock. The glowing-hands-friend had pressed their hands to his chest and helped circulate his blood and chakra for him, as well as done something she suspected had helped boost his blood levels.

Then again, the friends were not her Master. She did not answer to them.

Live, he'd commanded.

She was making sure they lived.

She tilted her head at the tall-friend, hoping they'd be smart enough to extrapolate just a little. She looked at them, looked back the way they came, looked at them again.

"There's too many."

She was not asking permission. Permission did not come from him.

Her Master had already given her permission. Tacitly.

Besides, she wouldn't be bull-charging the swarm. The forest was her element. The sky was her element. They knew not her true strength.

She looked at them, particularly pointedly at their injuries, looked at the forest, looked at the sky, looked at her Master, looked at them.

Blinked.

Twitched her wings, bared her teeth, flexed her claws.

She took another step towards the entryway.

The tall-friend stared at her for another beat, then slumped fully against the wall, relenting. They weren't going anywhere with those burns on those feet, and neither was the uncertain-friend with his shattered left leg. The glowing-hands-friend was out of chakra but had pulled out supplies that smelt of antiseptic and bitter medicine and would need time. And her Master was completely out.

This was their best course of action and they all knew it.

"Be careful out there."

She blinked again in response, slightly confused by the strange wording but understanding the gist of the meaning. She would return soon enough.

Bounding into the forest, she singled out the largest tree in the vicinity and headed straight for it, then up it, not bothering to use her claws. She reached the two-thirds point and leaped- wings lifting, opening, flaring, and she spiraled into the air on a thermal. The muscles in her back protested severely and blatantly, but she ignored them for the moment. It was midday and warm. She leveled out at a few hundred feet, still easily visible to those below and plenty eye-catching with her size, and circled back towards the swarm in a deliberately curving path.

They spotted her quickly. With the facility destroyed and the current state of affairs, her standing with them would be dubious at best. They would likely act first and question later, if they didn't know what she was. If they mistook her for a fodder-creature again, well. It had been offensive enough the first time. It had also been damning enough, though they were damned either way. She had a true Master now, after all, and it didn't seem like he very much liked them.

A barrage of sharpened steel- she tucked her wings and slipped through it with ease, letting the following blasts of hot air boost her forwards. The act-first mentality, then. Not even a simple chakra-reinforced throw, either; did they really think so little of her? Was her appearance not fear-striking? Granted, she was not nearly so horrendously disfigured as many of the others were, but this was truly a first.

Regardless, they had made their stance clear. She would respond in kind.

Gathering chakra at her mouth, she tucked in her wings, parted her massive jaws, and dropped towards her prey, a roar between her teeth.