"'How big a threat can a few pigs be?', you said," Noburi sing-songed, gasping for breath as he leaned on the three-meter body of the dead animal. "'They're just animals', you said."

It turned out that a drift of a dozen five-hundred pound wild hogs was in fact not a trivial challenge for a bunch of genin. The things were taller at the shoulder than the genin and three meters long. They had no real weak points—the neck was no thinner than the body, the eyes were tiny and sunken, the body was a rectangular slab of thick muscle that was effectively leather armor, and most of the organs were deeper in than the length of a knife. The original plan—stay in the trees and bomb them with kunai until they died—had failed due to unforeseen kunai resistance. Noburi had come down the tree trunk far enough that he could use his Water Whip, but the pigs had charged with startling speed. Rearing back with their front hooves leaning on the tree trunk had let them get close enough to startle him into losing his grip on the tree. He'd vaulted over them, but more pigs had wheeled and charged.

It had been disturbingly dicey, but in the end the pigs were animals and the team were kungfu battle wizards equipped with explosives. The outcome was never really in doubt, it had just been a little harder than expected.

"I think getting the meat back might be a little more trouble than we'd planned," Inoue said, eyeing the six tons of dead pork loin that was spread out on the ground in front of her, much of it in small pieces from where the genin had resorted to Kagome's favorite tools. "Noburi, Keiko, run back to the village and tell them where we are. Have them bring sledges or wagons. I'll stay here and guard all this."

"Yes, sensei!"

o-o-o-o

"That's the best I can do, I'm afraid," Noburi said, tying off the bandages on the old man's leg splint. "I've disinfected it and set the bone, but you're going to have to let it heal on its own. Stay off of it, eat as much as you can, and keep it clean. Take these for the pain, but only one at a time and not more than three a day. Okay?" He held out a small bag with twists of paper inside.

The old man smiled and nodded. He only had three teeth left, so it was quite a grin. "Yes, doctor," he said. "Thank you." He took the bag and limped out, his crutch on one side and his daughter on the other, fluttering nervously around him.

The man had no sooner left than a mother and her child ducked inside the hut. The mother was in her late twenties with a heart-shaped face that was attractive but too freckled and too careworn to be classically beautiful. The little boy was four, maybe five, short for his age and straw blond, with a half-healed scar running from his nose to his mouth. As soon as they were inside he hid behind his mother, peeping out at Hazō with one eye.

"Go on, Shōhei," the mother said, urging him out. "Say thank you."

The little boy looked at his shoes for a moment, one toe scuffing in the dirt until he got the nerve to look up at Noburi from under his bangs.

"Thank you, Mr. Doctor Sir," he said quietly. "Thank you for fixing me."

Noburi grinned. "S'all good, squirt," he said. "Just glad I could help."

"I can't tell you how wonderful it is," the mother said. "It was...hard, before. He had trouble eating, the other children made fun of him. It's night and day."

"Yeah?" Noburi said. He looked down at the child. "That true, squirt? The other kids pick on you?"

The boy nodded, looking at his shoes and clinging to his mother's leg with one thumb in his mouth.

"How about now?" Noburi asked. "They still being mean?"

The boy shook his head.

"They think it's cool," the mother said, laughing. "They gather around and want to see his scar, have him tell how the great ninja used his magic to fix Shōhei's face. They even invited him to play soccer."

Noburi shrugged modestly. "Well, it was nothing. No magic, really, just a little surgery. Well, okay, a little magic, just to disinfect everything. Glad to see things are healing up so well."

The mother looked down at her son and swallowed. When she looked up, her eyes were brimming. She ducked in and pecked Noburi on the cheek, then straightened up and stepped back, blushing to the tips of her ears. "Thank you, doctor," she said, giving him the lowest bow he'd ever received before rushing out, still blushing.

Noburi watched her go, one hand on his cheek and a look of amazement on his face.

o-o-o-o

"Come on, Kagome," Inoue said. "Everyone's waiting. Time to go." She took care to speak quietly and stay well back. One thing you did not do was startle a sealmaster while he was working.

The sealmaster in question grunted, not looking up from the seal trap he was setting on the inside of the curtain wall. "Give me a minute," he said. Inoue waited patiently while he finished aligning the small box with fussy precision.

The boxes were clever—a chunk of branch five centimeters in diameter and maybe twenty long. Kagome had collected them in huge numbers, split them lengthwise and hollowed out a small cavity in the center into which he fit an explosive seal. Close the halves up, tie them tightly, fill the seam with animal fat, and you had a nicely waterproofed bomb. Combine a few hundred of them with Kagome's motion detector seals and you had a perimeter that had caused the sealmaster to sniff and say, "Adequate."

Kagome finished placing the bomb and straightened up, eyeing it consideringly.

"Kagome," Inoue said. "Time to go."

"Hm?" Kagome said, looking over in surprise. "Oh, right. You guys go ahead. There's a few things I want to take care of here."

Inoue laughed and took his arm. "Come on, Kagome," she said, tugging him along. "You've done a great job. Everything is secure—" She raised a hand to cut him off. "Okay, secure enough. You know you'll never be satisfied with it."

"But I haven't even started on the minefield," Kagome whined. "No, I should definitely stay here."

"Kagome," Inoue said chidingly, tapping him on the nose with one finger. "You've done a great job. Now come on. If you stay, Keiko will think you don't trust her enough to follow her plans. You know how important this is to her, and how scared she is about being in charge."

"Oh." Kagome looked stricken. "Right. Come on!" Suddenly he was the one dragging Inoue. She chuckled and shifted into a jog to keep up with his much longer strides.

The genin were waiting by the north side of the wall. Not by the gate, of course—there was something that looked like a gate, superficially, but it was actually just a deathtrap of mines and inner defenses. The only way in or out of the compound was to ninja-leap over the wall. And, of course, to leap high enough to avoid the invisible motion detector beams that ran between the corner posts. And you had to land in the thin stretch of ground between the wall and the abbatis, then leap over that. None of the others were sanguine about supplying the place, but it was easier than living with a jumpy (well, jumpier) Kagome. They weren't looking forward to when he started digging the spiked pit traps.

"I'm here!" Kagome said, jogging up. "Kagome, reporting for duty, ma'am!" He drew himself straight and fired off a half-remembered salute. He held the brace for a second then took in Keiko's appalled look and slouched. "So...uh," he said, fidgeting. "I'm ready?"

Inoue laughed and bumped shoulders with him affectionately before looking at Keiko. "Okay, kid, ready?"

"Yes, sensei," Keiko said, in the tone of someone being taken to the gallows. She ran an eye over the others and saw nothing to object to. "Let's go," she said. She turned and leaped over the wall, the others right behind her.

By ninja standards, the village of Tonaki was a short run. It was on the opposite side of the country, but Tea was only about eighty miles wide at the widest. Ordinarily it wouldn't have taken more than three or four hours to run that far. Unfortunately, there was a small mountain range in the way. There were three passes through it, distributed roughly evenly north to south, the middle one being nearest to their current base. Back in Akio's time there had been a road that ran up and over the pass. It had come out on the far side, gone to where Tonaki crouched on the coast, and then turned south for the city. Two hundred years ago the road had been blocked by a rockslide too big to be worth clearing; the traffic shifted to use the northern and southern passes and the road was taken back to the heart of the rainforest.

Of course, what was impassable for a civilian caravan was just moderate exercise for ninja. The team moved out along the route that the villagers had said used to be the road. There was no trace of it now, but they held their course until they reached the mountain, then scrambled up and over the rocks and down the other side. There was a lot of wall-walking to get around unstable areas, but no real dangers. Kagome had stopped a couple of times to poke around on the landslide and various apparently random sections of the cliffs; the others waited impatiently until he returned.

"What were you doing?" Inoue asked the first time.

Kagome shrugged, not meeting her eyes. "I like rocks," he mumbled. There was nothing to say to that, so the group started running again.

o-o-o-o

The rain shadow of the mountains was to the west, so the eastern side was heavily watered. As a result the tree line came well up the side of the mountains and the group was back in dense foliage long before they reached ground level.

Kei was enjoying the running. It was calm and quiet, the steady beating of her feet making a syncopated rhythm with her heart. Her mind drifted, calm and quiet for once. She'd made a plan, Mari-sensei was happy, and they were one step closer to the summoning scroll that would give her the power to protect her sensei and her team. While they ran there were no terrifying choices to make, no decisions that would bring humiliating judgement down on her. If she'd been given the choice she would have had this moment go on forever, the pounding of her feet washing away all worries. Her team was around her, their steady presence buoying her up. Mari-sensei, gliding smoothly through the trees like a whisper of silk. Hazō, his every step perfect and efficient, the feel of him like a quiet stone that she could lean on. Noburi, sparky and hyper even when he ran. Kagome-sensei, his eyes flitting from spot to spot as he ran, always unsure, always alert. He was like a feral dog that had only recently been taken in: twitchy and aggressive from being kicked one time too many, but growing increasingly devoted to the people who had given him a home. The change in him was amazing; he was still paranoid and hair-trigger crazy, but his madness had rapidly shifted outwards. He was focusing on protecting the team just as much as on protecting himself. His salute at the 'gate' had been heartbreaking—so eager to show his support, so unsure of how to do it. When he'd first joined the group she'd been confident that he would abandon them at the first sign of a fight. Now her opinion had completely reversed itself; she was utterly certain that any threat to herself or one of the others would reach them only over his bloody corpse. No, if any threat came out of the forest Kagome would blow it sky-high before....

She frowned. Blow it sky-high...with what? How many seals had he used in the construction of their base? Hundreds. The curtain wall was thirty meters on a side and five meters high, and Kagome had put at least one tag on every square meter of it, plus more inside and some mixed into the abbatis. Where did he get so many tags? Yes, they'd bought him a thousand sheets of paper and plenty of ink, but they'd been busy since then. She'd seen him making seals, but nothing like that number. There'd been some time between delivering the paper and when he'd joined them...had there been long enough?

These thoughts carried her through the forest to the village.

o-o-o-o

Three hundred years ago, Tonaki had been a burgeoning 'metropolis' of nearly three thousand people, a disproportionate number of them artisans due to a local abundance of natural resources. When the road shut down and the merchant traffic shifted away the place had shriveled; today it was three or four hundred people and a few dozen houses. There were still a disproportionate number of artisans, though.

"Oooh, paper store!" Kagome said, pivoting and darting into the small building on the side of the road. The others followed on his heels, bemused.

It wasn't just a paper store, of course. Paper, inkstones, brushes, yes, but the main product was books and scrolls. The man behind the counter was leaning back in his chair, feet propped up on on a stool in front of him. He had a small orange book open on his lap and a cup of tea at his elbow.

"You have paper!" Kagome said as he came through the door.

The merchant looked up at his crowd of new customers and climbed eagerly to his feet, quickly tucking the orange book away below the counter.

"Yes, sir," he said. "All kinds. What can I get for you?"

"I need se— mph!" Kagome looked cross-eyed down at Inoue's hand over his mouth, then glared at her.

Inoue was wearing the form of a young blonde girl in her early twenties. She bowed to the proprietor. "My uncle is an author," she said. "I'm afraid he's...not as careful as he should be about his supplies." She looked up at him, the picture of amusement. "We got caught in a rainstorm and his pack wasn't properly waterproofed. All our paper was ruined and he hasn't been able to write for three days. He's been grumpy the whole time. Could we see some of your products, please?"

The proprietor laughed. "No trouble," he said. "I've got some good quality paper that would do fine for publishable work. If all you need is inexpensive stuff for notes, I've got...."

It only took twenty minutes for Inoue to bargain the dealer out of his entire stock of best-quality paper. Several hundred sheets of paper richer (and a not-insignificant amount of money poorer), they'd continued on their way.

The rest of their visit was a lot less fruitful. They were in town for a week, carefully nosing around, and coming up completely empty. Oh, it wasn't utterly useless—in addition to Kagome's sealing paper they'd found a glassblower who'd been willing to sell them a few bushels of his rejects for cheap. Kagome's eyes had lit up and he'd actually rubbed his hands together, mumbling to himself about, "See how those stinking ninja stinkers like landing on this stuff, huh? Embed it in the walls, that's the way to go, yeah. Keep them from wall-walking, yeah. Stinking stinkers. Not bringing any lupchanz into my camp, oh no!" He'd paused to stir the contents slightly, looking inside as he considered the optimal way to cause injury with it. "Oooh, glass dust!"

In truth, a town was not a good place for Kagome. He had been jumpier than a cat on a stove ever since they arrived. The waitress had nearly gotten a kunai through her hand when she accidentally set one of the plates down too hard. Fortunately, Inoue had been fast enough to catch his arm before the waitress noticed what had nearly happened. The jōnin frowned slightly, glancing down at where she was gripping Kagome's forearm, then smoothed her face into a bright smile for the waitress.

The problem was the amount of time that had passed. There were very few written records remaining from the time. They managed to locate someone with the same last name as the long-ago blacksmith's father-in-law, but the woman knew nothing of use. They worked the places where the old people hung out, drawing them into conversations and subtly steering the conversation to old myths and legends. Nothing.

"I think we need to face it, this mission is a bust," Noburi said during breakfast on their eighth day. "Sorry, Keiko."

Keiko shrugged one shoulder, not looking up from where she was listlessly stirring her porridge. "Yeah," she said.

Inoue eyed her carefully. "Keiko," she said. "Look at me."

Reluctantly, Kei dragged her eyes up to meet her sensei's level gaze. Here it came. The criticism, the judgement for her failure. Kei had been the one to plan and lead the trip; reluctantly, perhaps, but still. Mari-sensei wouldn't be cruel, of course. She'd be dispassionate, offering constructive criticism on how to do better next time, how to not fail the next time.

"Keiko, you've done a great job," Inoue said. "You planned how to get here, what to look for, how to look for the information without being suspicious. The fact that there's nothing here to find doesn't change the fact that the mission has been smooth as glass."

Kei felt her stomach start to unknot. Really? Had she actually done all right?

"I think Noburi's right, though," Inoue said. "We've exhausted all the options here. We should head back to base and figure out our next move. Finish your breakfast and let's roll."

The trip back was boring until Inoue suddenly pulled up, frowning at the ground. She squatted down, one hand on the ground for balance as she carefully surveyed the dirt. The others gathered around, looking to see what their teacher was examining.

A group of animals had gone through here, probably a few hours ago based on the water that was starting to pool in the bottom of the footprints. The prints were large, about the size of Inoue's palm with four blunt hoof-like toes splaying out like fingers and a thumb.

"What have you got?" Kagome asked quietly, his eyes flicking around the woods.

"Not sure," Inoue said. "But there were similar prints here when we went through the last time. And look at this." She touched one of the toe-claw prints with one finger.

The genin leaned in close, trying to see what she was pointing at. Keiko, of course, was the first one to get it.

"The toenail has been filed," she said. "It must have gotten chipped and someone rounded it off with a file to prevent the chip from cracking."

"Mm-hm," Inoue murmured. She stood off, absently brushing her hands off. "Come on, they went this way." She turned and loped into the woods, following alongside the strange tracks.

They were moving slowly, keeping careful watch, so no one was surprised when eight animals charged out of the forest at them. The things were big, about half the size of the boars the team had fought the previous week—two meters long, a meter high, and weighing easily three or four times what any of the genin did. Their feet had pads, with four blunt and squared-off nails-cum-claws sticking out in a vaguely fingers-and-thumb style. Their noses were surprisingly mobile and looked almost prehensile. They charged at the group, squonking angrily.

"Scatter!" Inoue yelled, and the team went for the trees. "Don't attack!"

Kagome's arm had been cocked to hurl a kunai while in mid-leap, but Inoue's command made him abort. Instead he latched onto the tree he'd been jumping for and skittered higher to where a larger branch gave him a good place to stand.

The team watched in bemusement as the beasts snorted and grunted around the base of the trees. There were eight of them; six of them kept the ninja treed while the other two galloped off into the woods.

The team watched the animals for a minute, then looked at each other across the gulf between trees.

"So," Noburi said. "We've been attacked by a herd of...giant rats? That's new."

"Tapirs," Inoue said. "A candle of tapirs."

Noburi looked over at her with a raised eyebrow. "A candle of tapirs? Really?"

Inoue shrugged. "Hey, don't blame me. I didn't make it up. I've read about these things, but I've never seen one."

"Does it seem to anyone else like they're acting...odd?" Hazō said. "Like, organized and trained?"

"Little bit, yeah," Noburi said.

"That's why I didn't want to attack them," Inoue said. "I thought maybe they were summons." She looked down at the tapir waiting at the base of her tree. It was up on its hind legs, leaning on the tree and glaring balefully at her. "Excuse me," she said. "We don't mean any harm. We were just passing through."

The tapir grunted.

"We'd heard there was a summoning contract in the area," she said. "We thought it didn't have a summoner, though. We aren't a threat."

The tapir squonked at her.

Inoue looked around at the others. "So, does it not want to talk to me or am I just making a fool of myself talking to an animal?" she said.

"Summons pop if you hit them hard enough," Kagome said. "I could throw something at one of them. If it dies, it's an animal and we have dinner. If it pops, it's a summon and we can try to talk to the others some more."

Keiko noticed that the sealmaster had two wooden rings on his hands, one on each middle finger. He hadn't been wearing them when the tapirs first appeared.

"That sounds like a solid Plan C," Inoue said. "Plan B is to just run off through the trees and leave these things behind. Anyone have an idea for a Plan A?"

"We wait," Keiko said. "Given how they're acting, it seems likely the other two went for reinforcements. Likely human reinforcements. Given the strength of this team, it seems unlikely that whomever they bring back can threaten us."

"Valid point," Inoue said. "Okay, let's try that." She squirmed around until she was stretched out on a branch and put her hands behind her head, one foot up and the other dangling comfortably. "Smoke 'em if you got 'em," she said.

The others looked at each other, and then settled in to wait...with, perhaps, a tad less insouciance than their sensei.

They weren't waiting long. It was under fifteen minutes before loud squonking in the woods announced the return of the tapirs. A group of ten men trotted alongside, dressed in forest camoflage with machetes on their belts and bows on their backs. When they saw Inoue and the rest of the team they unslung the bows, aimed, and fired in one smooth motion. Two of the arrows would had skewered Inoue had she not rolled off the far side of the branch to hang underneath, treewalking with one hand and one foot to hold herself in place. Noburi whipped two of the other arrows out of the air and the rest of the team managed to dodge behind their respective tree trunks.

Ugh. There was so much grief after this update, people (mostly one person) bitching about how it didn't make sense for ninja to use bows because they could throw harder than a bow could shoot. My answer was "Eh, the wood is very strong so it's a superhumanly powerful draw". The response was "But you can throw faster than you can shoot, so it's stupid for them to use bows." I'm not sure that's reasonable, given how fast real archers can shoot, but I couldn't actually refute it.

"Hey, hey, hold up!" Inoue called. "We aren't threatening anyone! We just want to talk."

Between 'threatening' and 'anyone', she needed to dodge more arrows. She made it look easy, releasing the chakra from her foot so that she swung through a hundred eighty degrees to clamp her foot farther out the branch Between 'to' and 'talk' she swung back the other way to dodge the next barrage.

"Look," she said. "Would you put those things down? You're just wasting—hey, cut it out!—arrows and it's getting annoying. Trust me, you don't want to—hey, I'm talking here! Do I shoot things at you while you're talking? No. No, I do not. Anyway, I was just saying—stoppit!—that if you don't stop annoying me, I'm—fine! Be that way!" She dropped from the tree, pushing off the trunk halfway down and blurring forward towards the men on the ground. The tapirs charged her but weren't nearly fast enough.

Moments later, nine of the men were unconscious on the ground and the last was being pinned face-down on a branch thirty feet off the ground while Inoue tied his arms together behind him. She took care to secure his fingers as well so that he couldn't make handseals, then she flipped him over on his back and looped more rope around him, binding him to the tree branch. She checked the bonds one more time, then climbed to her feet and stood over him. Well, actually stood on him, both feet on his chest. She had one hand on a branch over her and seemed to be supporting most of her weight that way, but it was clear that that could change.

He struggled against the bonds but made no progress. She waited patiently until he'd convinced himself that he wasn't going to escape and gave up. He lay still, glaring up at her. It wasn't an impressive glare; he was eighteen, nineteen at the most, with a dirty face and some blond peach fuzz on his chin. Inoue stood there calmly until his glare broke against the certainty of her gaze and he started to look uncertain.

"Now, then," she said. "As I was saying, you don't want to annoy me, because bad things happen to people who annoy me. Unfortunately for you, I'm already pretty annoyed. The next step is angry. Believe me, you really do not want to see angry." She shifted her weight slightly and he cried out. "Howzabout you tell me who you are?"

"Never!" the young man grunted, then yelped when she stepped back onto his hip joint.

"You know, there are people who pay a fortune to have small women like me walk on them," Inoue said. "Granted, they usually prefer me to walk on their backs and the rest of them prefer me to wear heels, but we can have fun this way too." She shifted her foot inwards a few inches and leaned slightly, bringing more weight to bear. "Tell me your name," she said.

He grunted in pain but shook his head.

The tree shook as Kagome leaped over to it. "Here," he said, holding out a small piece of paper. "This'll make him talk. It's a really tiny explosive. You put it in his a—"

Inoue held up a hand to cut him off. She sighed. "Look," she said to the prisoner. "Eventually I can make you talk. If I can't, then my very slightly psychotic friend with the explosives can. Even if we couldn't, though, we could just follow your trail back to wherever you came from. Now, I would prefer if we had made a more positive first contact, but you guys started shooting the minute you got here. I'm willing to let bygones be bygones if you are; we didn't come here to fight and so far no one is seriously hurt. How about we start fresh, huh?" She studied him for a moment but he didn't respond.

"Look, kid," she growled, before cutting herself off. She stood for a moment, deflating, then stepped off of him with a tired sigh. "Gods and demons, I just...." She shook her head. "You know what? Forget it. Just go. Take your friends and go. We're all missing-nin. We know what it's like to have the entire world against you." She laughed, bitter and sad. "We even tried to do what I think you're doing—fort up somewhere, hide from the world. Just live and let live, right? Didn't work for us, but it looks like you're doing better." She bent down and tugged free the rope that was holding him to the branch, then turned him slightly so she could cut his bindings.

He didn't move right away. He simply lay on the branch, looking up at her in confusion and unconsciously rubbing his wrists.

"Well?" she said. "Go on. Git." She waved vaguely in the direction he'd come from.

"You're letting me go?" he said doubtfully.

"Looks like," Inoue said, surprise in her voice. "You might have noticed that we didn't start this fight. We were just passing through when your animals attacked us. We've been trying very hard not to hurt them or you."

"Why?"

Inoue thought about that for a moment, then sat down so she was straddling the branch and could slump back against the tree trunk, bumping Kagome out of the way as she did so. Her head tipped back and her eyes fell closed as though she were exhausted. For a moment her face was not that of the seductress, the laughing jester, or the unstoppable jōnin. Instead it was the sad, tired face of a women on whom life had been pounding for far too long.

"Because I'm tired of killing people," she said. "Tired of killing and lying and seducing and hurting. I'm just...tired. I don't need to kill you, I don't want to kill you. Just go, okay? Don't make this a fight when it doesn't need to be. Take your friends"—she waved vaguely at the angry tapirs and the unconscious humans—"and go. We'll need a few minutes for our medic-nin to check us all over, then we'll get off your turf."

The forest nin shifted slightly. "Medic-nin are real?" he asked.

Inoue opened her eyes enough to give him a raised eyebrow. "Yeah," she said. "You guys really have been out of touch for a while, haven't you?"

He hesitated but nodded. "Yes," he said. "There are stories about medic-nin. Can they really raise the dead?" He was trying to act casual but failing.

Inoue's half-smile was just as tired and sad as the rest of her. Her eyes fell closed again and she rolled her head from side to side in a gesture of negation. "I wish," she said. "If they could...well, there's some old friends I'd love to talk to again." She sat still and silent for long seconds. "A lot of old friends."

"Oh."

Silence reigned. Kagome was careful to remain completely immobile and as unobtrusive as he could. In the other trees, the genin were just as still and silent.

Eventually Inoue opened her eyes and raised her head to look at the still-unmoving ex-prisoner. "Well?" she said, impatient and irritated. "Go on. Get lost, kid. Sooner you're out of here the sooner we can get ourselves checked over and then get back home."

The boy licked his lips, eyes shifting nervously. "My brothers are still unconscious," he said. "They might be hurt."

Inoue rolled her eyes. "Seriously? You're asking us to doctor the people who tried to kill us?"

The boy shrugged. "Well, I can't carry them all," he said, mouth tugging into a smile.

Inoue sighed. "Fine," she said. "Call your critters off and I'll have Kōki check 'em over."

The boy looked down at the tapirs and gave a sharp whistle. "Saa!" he called. He snapped his fingers and pointed off to the side. Immediately, all of the tapirs trotted to where he'd pointed and lay down. They kept an intense gaze on the foreign ninja.

"Kōki!" Inoue called. "Get down there and do some doctoring. Make sure those guys are okay."

Noburi looked like he couldn't believe what he was hearing, but he jumped to the ground, Hazō and Keiko following him. Kagome dropped down beside them, seal-equipped kunai in both hands. As Noburi knelt over the first of the unconscious Tea ninja the other three kept their gazes outwards, splitting their attention between the watchfully threatening tapirs and the unconscious ninja.

Green medical chakra flared brightly around Noburi's hand—far more brightly than usual, and held for longer. Inoue's ex-prisoner sucked in a startled breath.

"They're mostly okay," Noburi called. "I've got six dislocated shoulders, a hairline shin fracture, a broken rib, a couple of bruised livers, two minor concussions, and a whole lot of bruises. There's also a lot of preexisting stuff. They've all got vitamin deficiencies, and I think this one has a tapeworm. That one has an infected wisdom tooth; as bad as that's gotta hurt, I don't know how he's managing to fight. You want me to fix them up? It's gonna hurt, and it'll wake them up."

Inoue looked at her prisoner. "What do you think, kid? Are they going to come up swinging?"

The boy's eyes shifted. "Probably," he said. "I'll talk to them." He looked down at the ground below, then back at Inoue. "May I...?"

She shrugged. "Knock yourself out."

He nodded thanks, then rolled off the branch and dropped lightly to the ground thirty feet below.

The genin and a very jumpy Kagome backed off slightly as he came over to them. "Here," Noburi said, holding out a small vial. "Hold this under their noses. Careful, it reeks."

The boy took the vial with care and uncorked it. He couldn't resist taking a sniff himself, and recoiled back.

"This is much worse than anything we have," he said, scrubbing his sleeve across his face to try to take the lingering smell out of his nose.

"Told you to be careful," Noburi said, smiling slightly.

One by one, the boy waved the vial under his comrades' noses until they woke up coughing. In each case they immediately grabbed for their weapons. In each case, the boy stopped them before they could do anything that would have caused Kagome to blow them to sausage.

When the last of them came awake it was to find Inoue standing a few meters away, watching them with folded arms and a grumpy expression. Her team was to their left, looking much less comfortable with things.

"Who is this, Noboyuki?" the oldest of the newly-awakened ninja said. He was in his early forties, his hair graying, with a blocky build and blunt-fingered hands. "What's going on?"

"She is letting us go, Kenji," Noboyuki said. "She even had her student look you over. He's a medic-nin." He gestured to where Noburi stood, looking uncomfortable. "He said he could heal us."

The older ninja looked at Inoue distrustfully. "Doubtful," he said. "Why would an enemy heal us?"

"We didn't start this fight," Inoue said. "I'm fine to finish it if you really want, but I'm hoping not to have to. As far as I can tell, you're missing-nin like us. If we fight, the people who banished us are going to be laughing up their sleeves at how we're doing their work for them."

"We aren't missing-nin!" snapped one of the younger ninja. "We live here!"

"Quiet," the older ninja snapped. "No, I don't want to fight you," he said. "But I can't let you stay, either."

"Fine, whatever," Inoue said, sounding tired again. "We'll leave. You want Kōki to look you over or not?"

"We can—" the older ninja started to reply, only to be interrupted by a tug on his sleeve by Noboyuki. He frowned and for half a minute the Tea ninja muttered to each other.

Finally the older ninja turned back to Inoue. "All right," he said unwillingly.

"Hey, don't do us any favors," Inoue said. "You don't want our help, fine."

The Tea ninja seemed to have swallowed a lemon. "Would you please have your medic attend us?" he said.

Noburi waited for Inoue's wave before moving forward to scan each member of the Tea ninja team again, going slowly and being thorough. His green medical chakra was much brighter than usual and he held it longer, playing it over the bruised livers and head injuries. With that done he started setting shoulders. The Tea ninja were tough; they hissed with the pain but didn't cry out.

"Hey, kid," Inoue said to Noboyuki. "While he's finishing up, word to the wise. That hook kick of yours is embarrassing. You need to follow through—you're supposed to be trying to hurt me, not pet me."

The other young ninja laughed and Noboyuki blushed, rubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment.

"What are you laughing at?" Inoue said, glaring at a stocky black-haired boy not much older than Hazō. "You're the one who tried to punch a woman in the boobs. Gods and demons, kid, aim somewhere that matters. I know I've got an amazing rack, but the middle of a fight is a bad time to cop a feel."

The boy suddenly stopped laughing and blushed redder than Noboyuki.

"Very nice of you to offer such constructive criticism," the older ninja said sardonically. "We're still not bringing you back to our village."

Inoue rolled her eyes. "Buddy, I don't give a damn about your little mudhole," she said. "So far my entire knowledge of your people is that you attack on sight, you're lousy fighters, and you don't even know that medic-nin are more than legends."

"Don't you—" began the older ninja. He was cut off when one of the others cried out and sat down hard. "What's happening?" he demanded.

"Crapcrapcrap!" Noburi said, dropping to his knees next to his patient. The ninja in question tried to push him aside but the attempt was feeble and he promptly collapsed. "You! Get over here and hold his legs! You! Sit him up!" Green chakra flared from his hands and he played it across the man's chest as the other ninja hurried to obey.

"What did you do?!" Kenji demanded.

"I didn't do anything!" Noburi growled. "He's got a broken rib and he flinched when I tried to set it. I think it might have pierced his lung, so shut up and let me do my job!"

Everyone fell silent as Noburi worked. The patient—a rail-thin man in his twenties with mud-brown hair and startlingly blue eyes—was gasping and panting, each breath labored and wet.

After a couple very tense minutes, Noburi sat back and scrubbed one hand through his hair in frustration.

"Good news, bad news," he said, looking at Kenji. "Good news: I'm pretty sure his lung isn't punctured. Looks more like a pleural effusion. There's fluid leaking into the space around his lungs, keeps them from expanding properly. It might clear up on its own, or it might get worse until he suffocates."

"Can you cure him?" Kenji asked.

Noburi scratched his forehead with his thumb, looking uncomfortable. "Maybe," he said. "It would be best to wait and see if he improves on his own. If it gets really bad I could stick a needle in his chest and try to drain the fluid. It's risky, though. It could easily kill him."

"How long before we know?" Kenji asked.

"A couple days, maybe?" Noburi said. "It depends on a lot of things."

Kenji looked unhappily back and forth between the gasping ninja and Inoue.

"Kenji, she said they could follow our tracks," Noboyuki said. "We can't stop them from finding the village if they want to. And he did heal the rest of us."

Kenji blew out a long breath. "Fine," he said. He turned to Inoue and bowed. "I am Takahashi Kenji, jōnin of Isan. I would be very grateful if you and your team would guest with us, and if your medic would tend to my injured nin."