The two men took turns watching through the night. Listening for anything human hidden in the sounds of chirping insects and nocturnal animals. This was enemy territory. They slept and watched wearing their jackets and weapon holsters, leaving the rest of their clothes to dry on the rocks.
Iruka woke to the smell of fish cooking over a campfire.
"Is it safe to have fire?" He asked. He knew that if Kakashi had lit one it must be, but he still wanted to be told.
"There are risks, but no one is looking for us here. Sometimes the best way to hide is in plain sight. I found traces of lots of small groups in these marshes, like the one we ran into today. They would have had a fire."
Iruka nodded and took a roasted fish treaded onto a stout reed. "Did you catch these."
"Yes, did a little training. My speeds good but I've got no strength."
"Can you walk?"
Kakashi shook his head. "Not far, I could with crutches but I couldn't use them here, on this ground. Finish breakfast then help me to get dressed."
"What, you can't even dress yourself yet?"
Kakashi grinned sneakily. "I could but I like the way you blush when you do it."
It earned him a blush.
It wasn't just the blushes he enjoyed. Iruka's strong gentle hands pulling on his clothes, smoothing them and fussing with the fastenings, tempted him to take them right off again. But now wasn't the time.
Iruka's sores had sealed over and the heat had gone out of them as they'd dried overnight. Kakashi looked them over approvingly.
"I don't see why you're making such a fuss." The younger man said, from where the other had him stretched, spread-eagled on the blanket. "They're only really blisters, but bigger."
Kakashi was digging through Iruka's medical supplies. He picked out two different ointments, gauze and tape.
"That's where you're wrong. These are open wounds. You don't know how easy it is to get an infection, in this swamp and this climate. You could be fine today, have a fever tomorrow and be dead the day after."
He smoothed on one of the ointments then picked some smooth dull leaves from a marsh plant and layered them on top. "Wet-me-not leaves. It's a folk remedy, can't hurt and it will stop the gauze from sticking."
Kakashi was almost finished when Iruka felt him pull in his chakra, and he hadn't noticed that it had grown so strong. Then he waited, ears pricked. Iruka reached for a shuriken.
After a few minutes Kakashi relaxed. "Damn. A woman. Alone. Maybe she saw us maybe she didn't. But we can't risk staying here now. We'll have to cover our tracks too."
Iruka dressed quickly, filled all their water bottles and they set off. Kakashi didn't want to be carried. He knew that without a day to heal the fragile scabs on Iruka's sores would tear open easily. Instead he leaned against the other man, for balance and support.
They waded through the pools of shallow water, stepping over plants and around patches of mud. Leaving no sign that they had passed through. The path they traced was an erratic zigzag, full of false starts and misleading turns. They didn't have to plan this, or even think of it consciously. They were ninjas, it was second nature.
After a while the sky brightened as they came to a wide stretch of open water. Two lakes with a narrow strip of land between them. Half a dozen vultures were circling lazily overhead.
Kakashi held them back. "Dammit, those damn birds, they're waiting for us. They knew we'd have to break cover here."
"Can you swim?" Iruka asked. "If I use a jutsu we can go under the surface most of the way."
Kakashi weighed his options. Transporting another person would stretch the chuunin's ability to its limit, and if he had to use his chakra too it might leave them both exhausted.
In the end they didn't have to. A bright flash exploded in the sky and a fork of lightening hit the vulture closest to the far side of the lakes. A bolt from the blue, the perfect distraction.
"Run! Now!" Kakashi ordered as the vulture burst into flames and fell towards the water. He flashed across the bridge of land and into the cover of vegetation on the far side, Iruka ran at his full speed behind him. When he caught up the copy nin was leaning against a tree, breathing heavily.
"Wow, Kakashi!"
He grinned sheepishly. "Yeah, my speed's good but I can't keep it up for long."
Iruka moved closer, putting an arm against the tree on either side of the other man. "As I said, wow."
Kakashi opened his mouth slightly and brushed his lips up and down teasingly against the mouth in front of him. "Glad I can still impress you."
"All the time." Iruka mumbled, before catching one of those lips gently between his teeth.
He deepened the kiss, probing with his tongue, melting into it and pressing his captive hard against the tree. Kakashi felt a low groan in his throat, he didn't know which of them it came from and he didn't care. Grabbing Iruka's firm buttocks he pulled him closer, grinding their hips together. Iruka pulled away first, flushed and breathless, slightly embarrassed at being so forward.
"Why Iruka-sensei." Kakashi teased, eye dancing with amusement. "I should bring you out into the wild more often, but let's not get carried away."
The teacher's blush deepened. "Yeah, sorry. So what do you think happened to that vulture?"
"Someone zapped it obviously, but who? Looked like something one of your students would do."
"Could it have been one of those jutsu balls?"
"Probably. We have to be more careful, no letting our guard down again. They must be close."
Almost at once he knew just how close. There was human presence all around and he'd been too distracted to notice. He knew that the kiss hadn't made any real difference, he had to stop and rest for a few minutes anyway, but it made him feel like a genin. For the first time in days he pulled up his mask.
Iruka understood what that meant immediately. "How many?" He whispered.
"Not sure. A lot, maybe forty or fifty."
The threat closed in. It seemed the entire outlaw army was about to cross the land bridge between the two lakes and they had literally run right into the middle of them.
If Kakashi had had his full stealth ability he could have hidden them both until the danger had passed. But it would be a couple of days before he was capable of such advanced jutsu, and if Itachi were there it would be a waste of chakra even trying.
"Henge." He hissed, becoming a flat rock at the base of the tree. Iruka nodded, stepped a few feet away and then there were two trees growing side by side.
The men, and an occasional woman, started to amble past in small clusters. Not silently like ninjas, but not loud and laughing like groups of soldiers either. It looked as if it might just work. One of the men was holding an iridescent ball. He tossed it and caught it carelessly.
"Idiot!" The man next to him yelled grabbing it from him. "Drop one of those fucking dangerous things and anything can happen, you'll blow us all to bloody bits."
He threw the ball angrily at a tree thirty feet away. The tree that was, in fact, Iruka.
In an eyeblink Kakashi swept him out of the way, breaking the henge, and they both landed gently a safe distance away, as the ball exploded into flames.
Iruka could feel Kakashi leaning on him after the sudden effort. He had to act fast. "Just defend yourself. There are a lot of them but they're all spread out and they aren't very quick. I can take them one at a time."
Kkashi nodded, although he was doubtful. He would be ready to step in if he had to. So he dodged for the cover of the nearest large tree. He couldn't afford to leave his back exposed. And prayed that Iruka was right.
Iruka took up a fighting stance. It took a few moments for the men all around to get over their surprise. They looked at each other, chuckling at the gall of the slight man who had suddenly appeared on their turf, apparently threatening them. Then the closest four charged. Iruka was too far from the water to use it effectively, but if he could work his way towards the wet ground nearer the lake he'd improve his chances considerably. He hurled four shurikens.
The first was a kill, hitting the closest man in the throat, severing his carotid artery in a fountain of blood. The second struck the next man in the chest lodging deeply and making him collapse to his knees. The third sliced through the arm of a man who had just drawn a sword, he dropped it more in surprise than pain, but it stopped him in his tracks. And the fourth hit another in the face, destroying his right eye. Not a kill but he wouldn't be doing much more in this fight. It was a good start.
The others hesitated, giving him the chance to leap fifteen feet closer to the lake. A man and a woman closed in from opposite sides. Iruka could tell at once that they were a more serious threat. They moved fluidly, as a team, sizing him up instead of attacking. Then he saw their headbands, the Hidden Mist symbol scratched through with a line. Missing nins. From Hidden Mist too, the village with the reputation for being the fiercest and most bloody of all the ninja villages. And he didn't think they'd left because it was too rough for them there.
He attacked first, if he could face them one at a time he might have a chance. Shooting two kunai from his left hand, he used the time it took the woman to dodge them to leap into a tree, behind the man. It was a small tree, hardly strong enough to take his weight, but it gave him the height he needed. Using the spring of its rebound he pushed high into the air, slicing down onto the mist nin's chest and abdomen with his sword. He was blocked and thrown back easily but landed in a crouch and swung his sword low to cut both the man's legs just below the knees. That had to hurt.
The woman was running to get behind him but fortunately no one else seemed interested in joining the fight. They were standing back watching the show. He jumped to avoid the shurikens she threw in his direction, landing another four feet closer to the water. Then the woman made a mistake. She overshot her mark and in the fraction of a second that it took her to turn back Iruka landed a kick in the center of her chest. He heard ribs crack. Pressing his advantage he threw a kunai into her shoulder and before she could recover her balance he had the tip of his sword at her throat. She sat back on the ground and threw her weapons out of reach. Apparently whatever she was fighting for wasn't worth dying for. The man, meanwhile, had used this time to fill his hands with weapons and was poised to attack. He didn't plan to die, just kill.
Kakashi was almost ignored. Obviously no one had recognised him. Two men hung back from the crowd closing in to watch Iruka and the mist nins. Two men to take out Konoha's Copy Nin. Kakashi smiled behind his mask. They thought he was the weak one that Iruka was protecting and they weren't even treating Iruka as a serious threat. Of course he was the weak one but he still had his strengths. They closed in towards him then the larger of the men, a big hairy ape of a man in fact, took out a knife.
It looked like a big butcher knife more than a weapon, just as the man looked more like a butcher than a warrior. He walked right up to the copy nin, almost casually, and raised the knife ready to dispatch him with a single stab through the heart. But before he could complete the move, Kakashi had slit his throat with a kunai, stabbed the same weapon through the top of the other man's head and slumped against another tree. One with no fresh corpses under it. He looked over to where Iruka was fighting. The teacher had brought down five already but he wouldn't be able to keep up that pace for long, and there was a man almost on top of him. Racing through the seals Kakashi filled the area with mist.
Iruka knew at once where the mist had come from. He cursed his bad luck, Kakashi wouldn't be able to see who he was fighting from where he was. The enemy he was fighting was forced to pause in his attack, by laughter at the idiocy of this Leaf ninja who thought he could distract a Mist nin with mist. Iruka knew that he was now at too much of a disadvantage for a straight fight. He retreated to the top of the tallest tree. There may be mist but there were still plenty of leaves here too.
The Mist nin was molding the mist into a net work of patches, some thin and wispy some as thick as dense smoke. It would be impossible to judge distance down there now. He was also creating mist clones at an alarming rate. Well Iruka could do that too. Starting a genjitsu that caused a shower of leaves from the tree to fall as a shower of shuriken, he made for the lake. He formed six water clones, sent two of them up into the treetops and the others straight forward. Then he henged into a mist clone and hid in one of the denser pockets of mist.
The Mist nin and his clones were by now ignoring the shurikens that turned to leaves as they hit the ground and were using the patches of mist to surround Iruka's clones, taking them out one at a time. As the last of those on the ground burst into a shower of water drops, another clone dropped from the tress and held a kunai to the man's back. He turned in time to see one of his own clones kill it with a kunai from twenty feet away. Then he was hit in the shoulder by a shuriken thrown by the clone still in the trees and the clone that had just saved him henged back into Iruka, who pushed a kunai into his chest.
As the Mist nin collapsed to the ground the mist dissipated and his clones disappeared. The rest of the outlaws, angry and frustrated at not being able to follow the fight, saw their champion defeated and surged forward to deal with this pesky Leaf shinobi for once and for all. Kakashi could see the danger Iruka was in. He couldn't fight one on one for more than a few minutes but he could even the odds a little. Molding chakra in his hands he send a small chidori behind the group surrounding Iruka. It exploded throwing the twenty fighters closest to it into the air. So now there weren't so many, but the ones left were more determined than ever.
Iruka swung his sword at the first to reach him, then a voice rang out over the yells of the fighting men.
"Stop!"
The fighters froze, then separated into two groups as a man walked in between them. A tall man, with the distinctive black hair, dark eyes, and striking good looks of an Uchiha.