Darkness cloaked the forest, clouds obscuring the moon and stars that should have been visible overhead. The trees provided some cover from the elements but they weren't enough to negate the rain entirely. The slick branches threatened to make the unwary foot slip and tumble to the earth. So far, none of the ninja had fallen prey to that particular danger but it was only a matter of time if they continued this pace in their exhausted state. The sound of pursuit had faded when they entered the trees but that didn't mean their enemy had given up, only that they were being more cautious. The team's mission had spiraled from bad to worse until there was no hope of saving it. Outnumbered and injured, the leaf shinobi had been forced to fight their way out. Failure and retreat rankled but at least they gathered some useful intel to take back to the Hokage.
The rain splashed off the five bodies darting from branch to branch in the trees. Though they had rain cloaks, those were still packed away. The pale color was too obvious in the shadows of the forest, especially now. Naruto, showing surprising maturity for once, had taken the lead on their retreat. No one raised any objection to following him; they were too exhausted or injured to argue. Sai was only a step behind Naruto, near the front of the group. At some point, the boys had developed a respect for each other that allowed them to work together as a cohesive unit. Sakura moved in the middle of the pack, the most protected position, though she'd started growing into her own strength recently. Tenzo, Captain Yamato to the rest of the team, drifted between positions as needed, sometimes up front with the boys, other times falling back to relay something to Sakura. Kakashi, bringing up the rear, could see the familiar form making its way toward him.
"Are they still following us?" Tenzo leaned close to the jonin so his voice wouldn't carry. Under normal circumstances, Kakashi might have used a shadow clone to circle back and watch their retreat but his chakra was almost entirely spent. If they were being pursued, he would need every ounce of strength to fight off their attackers. He could have had asked Naruto to do the same but the youth was brash; he would probably try to take on the enemy with a single shadow clone rather than bringing information back. Tenzo could have done the same thing with a wood clone but the truth was that the divided attention could kill them as easily as the enemy. They needed to find a safe spot to regroup and rest but the nearest one he could think of was at least an hour away. As his sandal smacked against the next branch, Kakashi winced and was thankful for the mask that hid the majority of his face from his comrade. Tenzo turned toward him and Kakashi looked away almost in the same instant.
"They aren't the type that will give up easily," he answered, voice coming out in a soft grunt as he landed. Kakashi relied on every ounce of his ANBU training to keep himself moving despite the pain that rippled through his body with every jarring jump. Exhaustion exacted the largest toll; both physical tiredness and chakra depletion nagged at the back of his mind as a blurry, achy pain. All five team members were injured after their fight, but Kakashi suspected his own were the worst. They had been investigating rumors of rogue ninjas from the Hidden Rain village but their stronghold was far more occupied than the mission status had led them to believe. Not only that, but the enemy seemed to know they were coming. An intelligence gathering mission had quickly become an ambush; had they been any less skilled, it would have been a massacre.
The team had managed to gather some information about the rouge group but not nearly enough. Their hideout was situated in an abandoned compound not far from the border between the two nations. Kakashi had been anticipating perhaps ten or fifteen ninjas of middling strength as part of this band. What he'd found had been nearly forty enemy scattered throughout the compound, some with exceptional skills that rivaled his own. The leaf shinobi had been trying to find out something about their leader, a woman named Sayomi, when they'd been cornered by half a dozen enemy with the alarms already raised. Kakashi still didn't know what had given their presence away. They had fought out of the building and into the street, trading wounds with the other ninja at every step; it was all they could do to keep from being butchered.
The leader herself appeared when they were nearly to the gate, moving like a phantom among her men. She had been so fast that only his sharingan gave him an edge against her ninjutsu, a powerful combination of wind techniques and weapons, the worse being swords made of air. Naruto had taken several wounds from the invisible blades before Kakashi managed to draw Sayomi's attention to himself. In hand to hand, she proved almost as formidable as his own rival, Might Guy. By the time they'd reached that point, the leaf shinobi were nearing the end. Naruto was injured enough that Sakura had stopped fighting to heal him, though between that and the nine-tails restorative abilities he showed little of his injuries now. At Kakashi's command, Sai and Tenzo had retreated, dragging Naruto behind them with Sakura close on their heels. That Kakashi would surrender his life for any one of them was a given, as was the fact that Naruto would never let him. The genin had inherited that particular nindo perhaps a bit too strongly.
In the end, Naruto's shadow clones had made the difference that allowed Kakashi to escape with the rest of them. Clones and his own substitution jutsu, though Sayomi saw through it almost immediately. He could still see her face when he sprang away with the rest of them: wide, teal eyes framed by black hair. There was no question in them that she'd won even though they were escaping. Not many made Kakashi nervous but something about that woman did. Any shinobi with that type of skill should have been in the bingo book but he'd never seen any detail that matched her. The information about the enemy was essential to get back to Konohagakure so they could assess the threat. That was why they couldn't stop, even for injuries. Kakashi was certain they were being pursued so they had to keep moving. He'd been in worse places than this and come out fine on the other side.
Tenzo glanced behind them at the silent forest then turned to face Kakashi, rain dappling his face and slicking his short brown hair to it. "How badly are you injured?" His words were quiet, as they always were, but he didn't want them to be heard by the other members in their party. He would allow Kakashi that much privacy, at least. "We worked together long enough in ANBU for me to recognize that stubborn set in your eye and the way you wince every time you move. How bad is it?"
Kakashi wanted to say that it wasn't serious but the pain had multiplied exponentially. Fire radiated through his body with every beat of his heart and sweat was running off his skin, mixing with the blessed coolness of the rain. "Bad enough," he grunted. The edges of his vision started to grow dark but he shook his head and focused on a point ahead of him. He could almost make out the white circle on the back of Sakura's shirt but there were more than one and he couldn't tell which was real. Kakashi shook his head a second time and leaped from his current position toward the next branch. In mid-air, it split into three wavering images, merging and splintering apart with no set rhythm. His foot landed on air and he pitched forward, missing the branch by inches. Tenzo reacted, barreling into him and carrying both of them to ground.
He laid Kakashi on the damp ground, almond shaped eyes filled with worry, as his voice rang out in the quiet. "Sakura, I need your help." Beneath the mask, Kakashi smiled. His friend had become an effective leader in the time they'd been apart. Team Seven followed Tenzo almost as well as they followed Kakashi now. His single eye reopened when he felt someone thump lightly to the ground next to him. At her name, the pink-haired young woman had turned back. Now, her green eyes were leaping from one man to the other.
"What happened, Captain Yamato?" There was confusion on her face as she looked at Tenzo for an answer. "Kakashi-sensei?" He tried to open his mouth to tell her that he was fine but the words kept sliding away as the forms above him grew hazy and distorted. Kakashi squeezed his eyes shut, regulating his breathing and heartrate while attuning to the sounds around him. They needed to keep moving; he had to get up.
"He's hurt," Tenzo began, watching Sakura run her eyes over Kakashi's body, looking for injuries, "probably more injured than he let on." Kakashi opened his eyes when she touched his chest, pushing the partially unzipped flak vest to the side. Sakura gasped and pulled the zipper the rest of the way down. The heavy green fabric had a gash across the face, running from the left near his shoulder down almost to his stomach on the right, stained red with blood. The navy, long-sleeved shirt beneath the vest was torn as well. Sakura peeled away the sweat-soaked, bloody shirt and ran her fingers over the worst gash. He had multiple cuts on his arms, legs, and chest but thankfully the navy fabric hid most of them.
Sakura's face paled as she looked down at him and Kakashi found himself realizing how much she'd grown up. She was no longer the little girl that tagged along at Sasuke and Naruto's heels. Her tutelage under Tsunade had given her confidence she'd rarely shown before. Their eyes met and she forced a smile onto her face. "You'll be fine," she whispered but he could hear the deception in her words as the soft green healing nimbus surrounded her. It brought out her eyes. Kakashi focused on that, trying to hold onto consciousness. "I think he's been poisoned," she worried aloud, turning to Tenzo for guidance as Naruto and Sai landed beside them.
"What kind of poison was it?" Naruto asked. Sakura's face clouded and she looked on the verge of hitting him as she had done so many times in the past. His hands came up instantly to fend her off.
"If I knew that, I wouldn't still be trying to figure out how to help him, would I?" She growled. Luckily for Naruto, her attention was wholly focused on healing so she didn't actually punch him. Kakashi managed a second smile as he regarded Naruto who was looking more and more like Minato with every day that passed. They had grown up so much in the past few years, but especially with the escalations of tensions that pointed toward the next great shinobi war. At the thought, Sakura's face shifted into that of Rin and Kakashi felt his chest squeeze tight at the memory of her and Obito. They still haunted him now, even all these years later. Hopefully the war could be avoided so his students wouldn't have to live through the same monstrosities his own team had.
The quiet focus of his senses had intensified the sounds around him and a faint rustle was all the warning he needed. Rolling to the right, Kakashi wrapped one arm around Sakura's shoulders and dragged her to the ground beneath him. The force was enough to draw the breath from her lungs in a grunt as a kunai sliced the air where she'd been kneeling moments before. Tenzo, Sai, and Naruto sprang apart, blending into the trees without needing the scatter command. Within seconds, the familiar sound of shadow clones popping into existence reached him and three copies of Naruto stood between the pair on the ground and the dark patch of forest where the kunai had come from. Releasing Sakura, Kakashi leaped to his feet with her right behind him. He didn't insult her by giving any command; she responded without needing to be told, disappearing into the darkness with the rest of the team. Kakashi bounded in the opposite direction staying on the ground rather than the trees.
Once he was sure he wasn't under immediate attack, he paused against the trunk of a tree and pressed his forearm over the wound in his chest. Poison made sense; his reactions were slower than they should have been, though Sakura's healing seemed to have given him some strength back even if she couldn't heal him entirely. He gave himself the space of four heartbeats to give in to the pain that was still there, sagging against the tree. Then, exhaling through his nose, Kakashi zipped the heavy vest over his wound and put it from his mind. The poison wouldn't have a chance to kill him if the enemy did first. His chakra was nearly spent so he drew a kunai from the pouch on his right thigh and peered into the darkness.
The sound of metal on metal crashed through the quiet and he ghosted toward it, taking extra care though his earlier dizziness and double vision had faded. A flash of silver glinted on his left and a man screamed. Sai appeared from behind the enemy, blade bloodied from the kenjutsu assassination technique favored by Root members. After dispatching the ninja, the boy moved off into the darkness beyond Kakashi's range of vision.
The silence shattered a second time around Naruto's voice, taunting an enemy and Kakashi almost smiled. That one was wasted on stealth. Dozens of orange clad, blonde ninjas appeared when he used multi shadow clone jutsu. Almost as soon as they appeared, three disappeared in a puff of smoke that gave the trajectory of the enemy's attack. Had Naruto willingly sacrificed his clones to show the enemy's position? Was he thinking that far ahead?
The reasoning mattered little; the end result was that Kakashi now had a good idea of where the enemy was. As he circled in that direction, he wondered if it was Sayomi. Kakashi had given as many wounds as he received in their fight but it was possible that she had a medical ninja as well. Whomever it was, he couldn't see them yet. Off to the left, he could see Naruto grappling with an enemy, pummeling him with shadow clones. Kakashi watched the fight for a moment, looking for a place to strike, when Naruto finished it with a quick jab at the man's throat which he couldn't block in time.
"Did you miss me, Kakashi?" Sayomi's voice was a velvet whisper behind him. Inwardly, he berated himself for being distracted by his comrade's fight. Naruto had proven time and time again that he could take care of himself even if he didn't always show the most common sense. "I had hoped that you'd be as much of a challenge as our bingo book says you are. I hate being disappointed." Three shuriken flew from her hand, tearing through his forehead, neck, and chest with deadly precision.
In the same instant, the jonin flicked his wrist, allowing the spinning kunai to leave his hand as Sayomi's shuriken split through the log Kakashi had substituted for his actual body. The woman had turned at the last moment, springing to the right as his blade raised a fan of blood in her wake. As soon as the weapon was out of his hand, Kakashi was moving too, dipping his head to avoid her thrown shuriken. This kunoichi was good; one of the best he'd faced in a long time. Adrenaline coursed through his body as he moved between the trees, feeling the thrill of a challenge shivering through him. He no longer felt groggy or disconnected though whether that was from Sakura's healing or from the excitement of battle, he couldn't tell. Kakashi couldn't see his quarry as he drew a second kunai from his pouch.
"You're fast," Sayomi purred, stepping into his line of vision, perhaps five feet ahead. "Almost as fast as I am." Her deep grey, almost black, clothes blended into the shadow seamlessly except for the sash of teal around her waist that matched her eyes. She held a kunai loosely in her gloved hand, watching him. "It's a shame to kill the famous Copy Ninja. I bet you could teach me all sorts of interesting things." Kakashi didn't answer, mind already spinning through a thousand scenarios of how to turn the fight into his favor. She was right, of course, she was faster than he was without the use of his sharingan but he couldn't risk using it again. The strain would possibly kill him. "You can't even use your precious sharingan, can you? I was really hoping you'd give me a challenge."
"A good shinobi makes use of all the tools at their disposal." Kakashi smiled beneath his mask. The woman had been so focused on taunting him that she hadn't realized Naruto, or perhaps one of his clones, had crept close enough to watch the fight. The figure thumped to the ground between them, grinning at Kakashi over his shoulder in that infuriating Naruto way.
While the woman was still trapped by the surprise of his appearance, Tenzo's voice boomed "Wood Release: Four Pillar Prison Jutsu." The ground erupted into a cage, encasing the woman behind thick bars from which there was no escape. Kakashi saw the fleeting surprise on her pretty face before the walls closed around her. To her credit, she didn't cry out, only widened her eyes in surprise. Kakashi collapsed against the tree, feeling the adrenaline rush out of his system at an alarming rate. The world trembled and his knees gave way, depositing him on the damp ground.
Naruto's shadow clone popped out of existence and Tenzo was at Kakashi's side, shaking his head. "You'll never learn, will you? You should have hung back and let us handle it. You were in no condition to fight."
"It's not that bad," he groaned, trying to push himself back onto his feet.
"It is. You can barely stand." Tenzo's dark eyes were serious. "You don't have to act like you aren't injured in front of me. None of your students are close enough to see."
Kakashi almost smiled as he looked up at the younger man. "In a way, you were my student once, too."
"Once," he nodded. "Now, I'm your friend and I'm telling you that you should have let us handle it. You realize raising your heartrate only helped spread the poison, right?" Tenzo rested a hand on his shoulder. "So what you're going to do now, is sit right where you are until I get Sakura to look at your wounds a second time." Normally Kakashi would have argued but normally the forest didn't spin the way it was now. The other man called out for Sakura again but it seemed to come from a great distance away. Kakashi struggled and failed to focus on Tenzo's face as darkness surrounded him.