A/N: I agonised, you guys. Agonised. And then Shana patiently listened to my plot monologues and tidied everything up. On tumblr it seems that there is developing a mental image of Shana and I's relationship, and I have to say - pretty accurate? Her standing over my motionless body while a high-pitched whine escapes from me.


His name was Byakko, he was almost seventeen years old and Raiku was reasonably sure that two days earlier, he hadn't existed.

She watched him, fascinated. This was made easy by how Daisukenojo had swiftly and definitely overdone the restraints.

He was also, apparently, Ryuu's evil twin.

'Who the hell has an evil twin?' Daisuke asked eventually, from where he'd been sitting next to her in silence for almost an hour. She shrugged, unable to look away from Byakko's face.

She was certain that the scar through his eyebrow, Ryuu's scar, would have matched down to the millimetre if she got close enough to check. But his eyes were slightly rounder at the edges, enough to soften Ryuu's sharp glare. His pupils were rounder somehow too, set in warmer eyes. He had thicker, paler eyelashes. His ears were indefinably different. Tiny, tiny differences, enough now to make a whole new person.

Would she have noticed, she wondered, if the Plot hadn't distracted her from the details of him immediately? If Ryuu had always had a twin, if the Plot hadn't conjured or constructed one for him in a last-ditch effort to keep the right amount of narrative potency in place, would she have been in a better position to notice the swap? If she hadn't touched the wrong thing at the wrong time, had Tsuji never come to Iji, would there just be empty space here?

It had always been a sort of abstract thing; this causal weave that, even when it attached to her or bent around the invisible shape of a Device, just made patterns. It had never seemed real enough, physical enough, to make a person out of nothing.

Byakko met her gaze, his own far too steady for someone both bleeding and, frankly, gratuitously restrained.

'Who the hell,' Daisuke continued, his voice getting louder, 'gets replaced by their own evil twin?'

Raiku nodded dumbly. Even for the Genematrix, even for a Genematrix she had accidentally spurred into a flurry, this was not a good day for narrative.

Byakko raised his eyebrows. Raiku jerked back before she could restrain the impulse. On Ryuu, that expression meant he'd asked a question he already knew the answer to and was preparing to be mean about it. On Byakko, who knew?

'In all fairness,' said evil twin pointed out, 'I didn't abduct him.'

'Do you think we're going to trust anything that Ryuu's evil twin tells us?' Daisuke demanded, raising his voice. The implication of that hit them both at once. When she turned to him, his face was white beneath the freckles. 'Ryuu has an evil twin,' he whispered.

Darkness threatened to creep in around the corners of Raiku's vision. After a moment of her lungs burning, she realised this revelation had actually driven the air out of her chest.

Ryuu had an evil twin.

They turned to look back at Byakko as a single, horrified unit.

He huffed.

Yes. Yep. Okay. Yep. Raiku nodded once, decisively.

Okay.

'We're killing him.'

She was halfway around the fire, knife already drawn by the time Daisukenojo managed to catch her around the knees and stop her.

'Raiku, no! We need him to talk!'

She struggled against his grip, half-waddling in place where he'd trapped her legs. Byakko was wriggling away as best he could, inching along as fast as possible when bound so effectively.

'Stay the hell away!'

'He's evil Ryuu! He has to die!' Raiku yelped, finally losing balance and crashing to the ground. Doggedly, she started pulling herself and by extension, Daisukenojo, along the ground with her arms.

'We need him to tell us where Ryuu is! They still have Yamada!' Daisukenojo struggled, trying to drag her back. 'Ah! No shocking! No shocking!' His voice jumped up about half an octave when the crackling started. 'None of that!'

'I'll tell you anything you want if you keep her away from me,' Byakko told Daisukenojo urgently, leaning as far away from Raiku as he could. 'Keep her away!' His amber eyes were wide.

Wide with…

'Are you afraid of me?' she asked with real interest, propped up on her elbows.

'Of course he's afraid of you! You tried to kill him twice now!'

Byakko's eyes stayed fixed right on her.

'Fine. If we're not going to kill him,' Raiku said, pulling her legs free from Daisuke's suddenly slack grip, 'then we can at least use him to find out where the real Ryuu is.'

'I can't believe this is even happening,' Daisuke grumbled, getting to his feet as well. 'Fucking… evil twins.'

Byakko narrowed his eyes again when Raiku had settled a safe distance away, ostentatiously showing him her empty hands to indicate how incredibly harmless they were.

Daisuke gestured for Byakko to speak, which he did with a mutinous look. 'We took him from Iji when the three of you separated. Gairano ran off after something and we managed to get Seiryu,'

'Seiryu?' Raiku interrupted. 'Like. The dragon? Wait, like Byakko and Seiryu the great beasts?'

The look Byakko gave her was so venomous that her eyes almost watered trying to hold his gaze. 'Yes. That's his name. Apparently you people weren't exactly subtle when you decided to rename him.'

'But your parents—what kind of naming convention is that?' she pushed incredulously. Sure, Byakko hadn't actually existed seventeen years ago, but naming twins after two great cardinal beasts? That was a lot of pressure to put on a child, even if you had a matching set. Had the Plot just… retconned Ryuunosuke's birth name? Rough.

'I would have loved the chance to ask them about it myself,' Byakko said, smiling thinly.

Raiku winced.

'Anyway,' he continued, looking back at Daisukenojo. 'We did the trade in Iji, since we failed to contact him properly three years ago—'

'Contact—you set an ambush for us by summoning a hurricane and tried to murder a cross-nation squad!' Raiku burst out. She'd quietly resolved to stop interrupting, but she'd broken a lot of promises to herself recently. 'You basically enacted an action movie! And you were the bad guys!'

'We're not supervillains,' Byakko said with an eyeroll, where Ryuu would have glared. 'We just wanted a chance to talk to him. To tell him the truth. We sent him messages, but your village has been on high alert since that invasion.' That you deserved, his expression clearly implied.

'You say you're not supervillains, but your family literally just replaced our teammate with what basically amounts to his evil clone,' Daisuke pointed out.

'I'm not evil!' Byakko snapped. 'Stop saying that! Not all twins have an evil and a good twin! We're not the ones abducting babies and murdering their families!'

Yet another good point that she fully intended to ignore. 'Wait. But even if you did just want to talk to him, why would we believe that after you tried to kill us all those years ago?" Raiku asked. It had been niggling at the back of her brain.

Byakko gave her a look so incredulous it bordered on hysterical. Really, that was uncalled-for, given how reasonable her question was. 'We weren't trying to kill you, we were trying to distract you while my uncle Zeshin talked to him. We didn't care about you. Also, I want to point out, we're not the ones who blew up the forest! And you killed four of us!'

They both shot Raiku a look, because yes. That… had happened. 'Well,' she said, voice bland, 'you probably shouldn't have distracted us by attacking, should you?'

She became aware of her inner voice doing some familiar internal screaming.

'But we're getting off-topic,' she said quickly. 'So you must have known we were coming this way and,' she stopped. 'Wait, were you the ones killing people from Konoha?' she demanded.

Byakko sent her a flat look. 'If we were, would I tell you?'

Raiku moved to stand and he leaned back again. 'We were not!' he said immediately, as if he had always meant to answer her question. 'But I would be lying if I said it wasn't convenient for us.'

'So you just... took him?' she asked, scratching the back of her neck. It basically sounded like shoplifting at this stage. They'd walked into Iji with a lower value version of their item and walked out with the original under-arm. They had done the story equivalent of shoplifting Ryuu. It would have been funny under any other circumstances.

'How the hell did you manage that, anyway?' Daisukenojo asked slowly, folding his arms. 'Much as I hate him, the asshole's sort of.' He cast a quick, self-conscious look at Raiku. 'Y'know.' He waved a hand. 'Terrifying.'

Raiku gaped at the admission.

'It was more… difficult than we expected,' Byakko allowed. 'But we were prepared after last time, and he doesn't actually know any of our real techniques. We were honestly more worried about dealing with you three; the teacher or you in particular,' he added, jerking his head at Raiku.

'So, everyone but me?' Daisukenojo asked, more than a little petulant before he got promptly steamrolled by Raiku.

'Me? You guys have a huge advantage over me! I use electricity!' She made a fist with one hand and then pushed it down with the other, held in an open palm. 'Electricity loses to wind, every time. Everyone knows that.'

'Yes,' Byakko said slowly, as if she were the idiot who didn't understand basic chakra types, 'that's true when it's chakra techniques, but I have no idea what you're doing. It's not chakra.'

Shit, how the hell had he noticed that?

'No, no,' she said after a moment, gesturing decisively. 'Ryuu always beats me. Wind trumps, how do you explain how that still works?'

Byakko shook his head. 'We don't fully understand what he's been doing either. We use techniques and channelling methods to make use of our bloodline affinity. As far as we can tell, he's been purely feeling his way through, so it doesn't look anything like the normal discipline. We've never seen anyone do things the way he does.'

Daisukenojo groaned and rubbed his face. 'Of course he'd be some sort of goddamn freak, even for this team. It's never easy with that guy.'

'But he's still using chakra,' Raiku sputtered. 'How is it not a technique?!'

'He's barely using chakra,' Byakko shot back irritably. 'How have you never noticed?'

'Don't even, not with her,' Daisuke said, flapping a hand in her direction.

'This is all super fascinating, but why take Yamada?' Raiku asked, settling back on her hands with a huff. 'He'd have to be way more trouble than he's worth.'

Byakko settled back as well, his face taking on an eerily familiar mulish expression. Shit. That never meant anything good on Ryuu.

'You did get his fingers, right?' she muttered to Daisukenojo, who nodded. He had also tensed, so at least it wasn't just her.

'Look. Just tell us where your goddamn people are and we'll go in, trade you for Ryuu and Yamada and leave. No more questions, no more... Y'know. Torture,' Daisukenojo said, jerking his head at Raiku in what she felt was a deeply unjustified reference to her tendency to harm people specifically to… encourage information sharing and… behaviour modification.

…Wait a second, holy shit.

While Raiku parsed through this realisation, staring in bewilderment at the fire she'd made purely to ease some stress, Byakko growled. 'I'm not taking you two anywhere. You'll be attacked, and this one,' he looked pointedly at Raiku, 'will kill me out of spite.'

'They won't attack us if you send a message ahead,' Daisuke persisted. 'I know you can do that. It was the first thing Ryuu ever figured out, you guys must have it on lock.'

'First thing other than the choking,' Raiku muttered. Then she snapped her fingers. Brooding, huh? 'Hey, yes! You were doing that earlier! The message, not the choking.'

Byakko settled back again. Cat-like. They'd really leaned into the symbolism there, she marvelled. Given how freshly developed Byakko was, the Genematrix must have been thanking its lucky stars that Ryuu had always been a predatory bastard.

'No,' Byakko said eventually. 'I'm not leading you to my family. Not after what you people have already done to us.'

Raiku frowned. 'Hey, I am barely older than Ryuu, it's not like I stole him! Or Daisuke!'

Daisukenojo coughed and leaned into her space. 'You did kill four members of his family,' he mumbled.

Raiku elbowed him away and stood. She was tired. She was so hungry her stomach felt like it had turned itself inside out. More than anything, she was confused. She was pretty sure Tsuji had known all this beforehand and had been—what, trying to trick her? Trying to gain her sympathy? Doing god knew what, with his nothing-eyes and that line pulled taut in his voice.

She'd had enough. She was going to do what she had been suggesting since day one. 'I'm not doing this anymore,' she told them both, yanking one glove off. 'I'm burning the forest down.' She yanked the other glove off with her teeth and started rolling up her sleeves decisively.

Daisukenojo threw out a hand. 'No, no, we're not doing that!'

'See, she's insane!' Byakko exclaimed.

Daisukenojo groaned. 'Raiku, would you stop suggesting that, you're freaking him out!'

'Look! We're either burning the forest down and taking them all down with it or you're taking us to your family. If Ryuu comes with us willingly, we'll take him. If he wants to stay,' she added meaningfully, making almost painfully direct eye contact with Byakko, 'we'll leave. We'll take Yamada and go. No killing anyone.' A cliché; exactly what the Plot would be looking for right now. An evil twin? Obviously it wasn't trying too hard for originality here. It was trying to reach a conclusion so this would all be a neatly-contained little arc, with minimal interference with Naruto's. Any quick solution she would give it, it was likely to take.

And Tsuji would be likely to see, she thought before she could stop herself.

She could see Daisuke slowly turning to face her again in her periphery, and she solved the problem of enduring his incredulous stare by pretending it wasn't happening. Even if she couldn't rely on the Plot with Tsuji lurking, Ryuu wouldn't want to stay. Ryuu hadn't been compliant once in his life. And to stay with people who had literally replaced him with another version? That wouldn't play into his complexes at all.

Her and Byakko stared at each other through the flames. She tapped her foot impatiently. 'Well? This or we find it ourselves. With fire.'

'Fire or not, you won't find it without me,' Byakko told her, eyes glinting, the fire reflecting off the amber irises to make his name suddenly seem all too appropriate. 'We've gotten a lot more careful since the last time your people visited.'

Before Raiku could seriously consider going back to the torture option, he slowly inclined his head. 'But I can agree to those terms. Let me go and we'll make this happen.'

Daisukenojo startled Raiku so much when he laughed that she almost sent sparks out. 'We're not letting Ryuu's evil twin go! Are you insane?!' he laughed loudly. Too loudly. Too long. After almost a solid minute, Raiku realised this was Daisuke's own form of hysteria, which was less destructive but a lot more unsettling than hers. She patted him on the back awkwardly.

'There, there,' she said hesitantly. 'Let it out.' She tried not to catch Byakko's eye, but he was clearly resigned to being at least maimed by what looked like a squad of lunatics.

After a few minutes, Daisukenojo's hard laughter turned to a sort of pathetic wheeze. Raiku proudly credited this to her attempt at consolation, though he shrugged her off when he finally managed to get his breathing under control.

Byakko, who had also waited patiently, shifted in a way that implied he was waggling his fingers where they were bound behind his back. 'Hidden to everyone but my family. Get it? The bloodline limit? I need my hands.'

Daisukenojo let out a muffled giggle that he quickly masked with a cough. 'Tell you what, man,' he said, husky voice even raspier from the unexpected vocal exercises. 'I've got a compromise.'


Raiku drummed her fingers on her bicep, arms folded across her chest. 'I feel like this plan puts a lot of pressure on me to succeed,' she said to Daisukenojo.

Daisukenojo grinned, too obviously proud of himself for her to really want to crush his dreams. 'Are you kidding?' He waved a hand at Byakko. 'How the hell are you not gonna keep track of him when he's strung up like this?'

Byakko sighed.

This, like any movement he made now, produced glimmers of light.

'What's to stop him from just pulling it all off?' she pointed out.

Daisukenojo waved a hand again. 'What, all of that before you can catch him? Not without losing all his fingers.'

Byakko squirmed a bit. 'Can we get a move on? This isn't exactly comfortable.'

'Yeah, I can see how this would feel a bit awkward,' Raiku said with grudging sympathy. Byakko flashed an arm at her pointedly, it and all his other limbs now wrapped strategically with razor wire thinly coated with chakra. It shone, making both Raiku and Daisukenojo squint. It also made him burn in the forefront of her mind, which was the point.

'Could you not?' Daisukenojo asked, batting Byakko's arm back down. 'This way you can't leave either of us behind. It's safer than whatever she had planned.'

Byakko nodded, but the glare he sent Raiku seemed a little less wary than it had before. It couldn't last, she thought wistfully; she just wasn't very frightening, especially once she stopped actively threatening death. She waggled her still-bare fingers at him, just to see if it helped.

He frowned. 'I don't feel safe. I feel like I'm one chakra slip-up away from losing a limb.'

'Accurate,' Daisukenojo agreed. 'Now, let's get started.'

Byakko stepped in front of them and shook his shoulders free of tension, before stilling.

The forest around them swayed in the darkness, leaves rustling. The night air was cool, a welcome reprieve. It felt good on her overcharged skin and she closed her eyes for a moment, before the dragging force that was Byakko's wires moved forward. He strode confidently into the dark forest, the two Chuunin following behind him. Daisukenojo reached out to grip Raiku's elbow, in what she briefly assumed was an act of support and then quickly realised was to make sure he could use her natural luminescence to see where he was going.

Byakko stopped abruptly, making Raiku tense, but he just stood in stillness with his head tilted, like he was listening to something. He lifted one hand by his side, long fingers stretching out to feel something she couldn't see.

The wind rustled. He adjusted more to the east and set off again.

'What the hell is he doing?' Daisukenojo muttered, his voice too rough and loud in the silence. Raiku shrugged, trusting that he could feel the motion through her arm and just followed after.

She couldn't see enough. Every now and again the dim glow of her eye caught on Plot blackness slipping through the trees, a flash of oil-slick tracing in the dark after Byakko, trying to pull them behind.

What was it even doing, she wondered; she had discovered Byakko, but it remained. Would it drag Ryuu and him together, to destroy each other? Or would it corrupt Ryuu, push him to kill his team and strike against Konoha? A less important Sasuke, there to fill time until the real thing came back?

Or was this Tsuji and his threads, poised like a spider to watch and see who fell through?

She stopped when Byakko shushed them from ahead, head cocked and hand raised. 'No,' he said suddenly, his eyes closed.

Raiku jerked back, panicked for a moment that he had somehow heard what she was thinking. She opened her mouth to speak but Byakko shushed her again, then shook his head with his eyes still closed.

She frowned. 'I'm really loving this cryptic clan stuff,' she muttered to Daisukenojo. He nodded, eyes fixed on Byakko.

'I'm sorry,' Byakko said to the air, a crease appearing between his eyebrows. The wind blew his hair over his face and she almost caught the sound of that no one, a low hum that slid across her ears before dissolving into nothing again. 'I don't have many options. You know that. I'm sorry.'

'Is this what it looks like when my mother's telling me off?' Daisukenojo asked quietly.

'No-o,' she whispered, 'he's not cowering.'

Daisukenojo opened his mouth, then sort of shrugged. That's right, she thought; he couldn't really argue with that.

Byakko abruptly turned and walked off into the dark again, ducking under a low branch in his path.

The two remaining members of Team Yamada followed after, jogging a few steps to close distance.

They walked on in the darkness, their now-silent guide dragging her forwards by the conductors over his skin, a compass facing true north as long as she didn't think about what he had been created from too strongly. The leaves rustling in the wind weren't soothing anymore. Every other moment brought a susurrus of voices she didn't know, too quiet to hear properly, too quickly gone to pinpoint. It felt like she was surrounded.

She could have been. But that was the thing about this strange family, about Tsuji; she could be surrounded without them ever setting foot near her.

Speaking of.

'We're almost there,' Byakko told them, after an age of twists and turns in the near-silence and dark. Even with so little visibility, she could see the line of tension in his shoulders.

She heard Daisukenojo swallow heavily. Understandable; this was a foreign group of fighters with a potent bloodline limit, and one he'd already felt the brunt of all throughout his adolescence. Ones who had Yamada, and had somehow managed to keep him there against his will.

Byakko looked back at her. 'They'll kill you if you try anything,' he said.

Still wary, then, she thought. Maybe he had been there in the bamboo forest, had gone to get his brother and felt a fraction of the fear she'd felt when she had thought she was going to die. When she'd woken up to a world on fire.

'He might just bail,' Daisukenojo muttered to her. 'You know we're probably walking into a trap.'

She nodded. But they didn't have many options.

The calm, green smell of the forest had been replaced with that damp smell of leaf rot in the cooler night air. It set an unfortunate tone. Byakko moved to walk again, but—

'Wait!' Daisukenojo said, dropping to one knee to quickly rummage through his pack. After a second of searching, he pulled out a light travelling cloak and tossed it around Byakko's shoulders. On Daisukenojo, it came to his knees. On Byakko it barely hit mid-thigh and he looked down at it bemusedly.

'It's for hiding. The wires and stuff,' Daisukenojo said, pointing.

Byakko wiggled razor-bound fingers. 'Thanks,' he said dryly. He looked over to Raiku. 'I've told them that I'm escorting you both. So. Stay by me.' He was telling her, not asking, she observed. So much for the fear.

She looked up again, and there was a compound blending into the woods, one where there had been nothing before.

The high walls were made of worn stone, the gates in front of them so tall she had to crane her neck back to see the name Takeshita carved into the top. Through them, gold light poured out from sconces in the sides of traditional wooden homes, surrounding a large, primary structure and wooden steps led up to a large doorway.

It was all very Dramatic. It was also, she had to admit, beautiful.

Or it would have been beautiful, if the picture hadn't been ruined by tiny details on closer inspection, mostly hidden in the dark. A nearby section of the outer walls had been partially destroyed where it joined to the large compound gates, the stone cracked and broken outwards like it had suffered a great blow. The large, traditional roof of the closest building had, upon a second look, been stripped of half the terracotta tiles and now just displayed wind-worn wood.

The man standing guard by the gate was so tense she almost mistook him for a statue. He was also alone, which came as a surprise. Byakko picked up the pace, jogging the last few steps towards him.

'Kanji… What happened?' Byakko asked, gesturing at the general disarray after he and the random family member had briefly clasped hands. Raiku assumed this was that manly way of hugging she had heard so much about.

This Kanji person's expression was tight. It also had three harsh red lines gouged across it, rendering his face grotesque by the torchlight. His clothes were traditional working gear in dark green, a single folded jinbei. He also sported strapped sandals and knifes along his side, she noted; another armed son of a bitch.

'Welcome back,' Kanji said shortly instead of answering. He glanced at Raiku and Daisukenojo. 'You said you could control them. We need that to be true, Byakko.'

Byakko looked back at them. Raiku tried her best to look innocent. ...well. Tried. The mask was too sketchy for her to pull it off usually, but she generally managed a pretty good "terrified".

The wires around him pulled her ever forwards.

'They'll be fine,' Byakko said.

Kanji looked reluctant and more than a little hostile. Also, she couldn't help but notice with no small amount of vindictiveness: exhausted. On cue, a loud crash sounded from further into the property. There was a shrill, pained cry.

Kanji tensed.

Byakko flinched, but Raiku knew that involuntary shudder.

She brightened. 'Ryuu!' She pushed Byakko aside, ducking past Kanji, and sprinted onto the packed earth of the courtyard. The cry had come from a building to their right, more dilapidated that the large building that sat central to everything, and even if she hadn't heard anything she would have known that was where Ryuu must be.

The walls of it were shaking.

'Seiryu! You need to—Ryuu, then, calm down!' A low voice snapped and then cursed, and the entire structure shuddered. Wind whistled through the doorframe; the wooden slats of a window nearby exploded outwards in a shower of splinters.

Raiku raced up the steps and threw open a strangely heavy sliding door, the reinforced frame screeching along its tracks.

And Ryuu.

Finally, Ryuu—looked up with a icy, enraged expression, squinting bloodshot yellow eyes into the sudden light. She waved eagerly as his eyes seemed to adjust, sudden recognition crashing down on him. He froze, pupils suddenly shrinking to small dots as he focused. He had a man she recognised from years earlier pinned beneath him, one hand digging roughly into the man's neck and the other shoved into a painful pressure point that had immobilised his opponent's arm from the shoulder down.

She beamed. Classic Ryuu.

The man twisted his head carefully, trying to see what Ryuu was so distracted by without getting his neck broken.

'Raiku,' Ryuu said, low voice scratchier than usual. Probably because of all the threats he'd been shouting, she thought affectionately.

She spread her arms wide, confident he wouldn't take her up on the implied offer of a hug. 'We found you!'

Ryuu lifted the man just to slam his head back down, then shifted from where he knelt on his chest. His bare feet thudded to the woven floor and he stood, drawing himself up and rounding the man's body to stalk towards her.

Raiku's glee faltered.

Wait.

She took an automatic step back.

How long had it taken her to notice, again?

'Zeshin!' Byakko appeared at her side, taking hold of her upper arm for a moment to push her aside. It had to be Byakko, by the way Ryuu immediately stilled. She marvelled, because wow; Ryuu didn't mess around. Byakko tended to pause like a normal person, but Ryuu just became a statue. Half-cast in shadow, hardly breathing.

Byakko faltered at the sight of him.

'…Sei,' he said, suddenly breathless. Raiku wanted to see his face, wanted to see the expression all this Drama and that winding Plot had culminated in, but she couldn't look away from Ryuu's sharp, frozen features. Thinking of the truce that they had made to get here, and the violence ready to break it that she could see scrawling down Ryuu's arms, the minute tensing of his jaw.

'Byakko,' she said slowly, 'step back.'

Byakko didn't. Ryuu hadn't blinked since he saw him, settled into stillness like a snake poised to strike.

'Byakko,' she said more urgently, trying not to raise her voice and trigger the tension readied in Ryuu. 'You need to back off, now.' Her mind was racing: Ryuu was unpredictable. He could calm down, he could go totally the other way but if this erupted into violence then she couldn't stop him, not without them trying to protect him of all things, like she was the one they needed to be worried about—

Ryuu moved so quickly she almost couldn't follow it, but a familiar shape crashed into him before he could get anywhere.

'Ryuu, stop!' Daisukenojo yelled over Ryuu's enraged snarl, managing to get a hold of Ryuu's arm enough to throw his balance off. Ryuu swiftly began to dissolve but Daisukenojo twisted his arm before he could, Ryuu slamming back into solidity in response to the pain. 'You can't! Calm down!'

Ryuu had his teeth bared and his eyes were wild; he was struggling more effectively against Daisukenojo's immediate hold than Raiku would have. It was a jarring change from his usual controlled irritation, this dishevelled whirlwind of motion with sharp teeth and fingers outstretched to hurt. He was getting close to breaking out, faster than she had expected. But then, they seemed to have very different approaches. Raiku tended to struggle towards what she wanted, while Ryuu seemed to specifically struggle against the person holding him.

She took this in with real professional interest.

'Could you stop staring and help—gak!' Daisukenojo's cry cut off when Ryuu's elbow slammed into his windpipe, getting an arm free.

Raiku planted her hand on Byakko's forehead and shoved him backwards, forcing him down to the ground just as Ryuu's hand darted forward where his brother's eyes had been.

'Goddamnit Ryuu!' Daisukenojo cried as she crouched low by Byakko's face, keeping her hand on his forehead just in case he decided to get smart about this. The key to keeping this poor bastard alive long enough for them to get out of this damn compound unscathed, she knew, would be for him to seem as harmless as possible. As non-threatening to Ryuu as he possibly could be after having already literally replaced him once.

Ryuu surprised her by pausing, held back by Daisukenojo's forearm wrapped around his chest, heaving for air.

'You're taking his side?' he asked hoarsely, his usually brushed-back hair falling in his face. He looked like hell, she realised for the first time. There were fine veins visible at the base of his throat and the corners of his wild eyes, red webbing there the way an enemy's capillaries burst when he used a technique on them. His fingertips were bloody, and they'd given him the same change of clothes Kanji had worn but they were torn, dishevelled, pulled aside in his struggle against Daisuke to show a section of shoulder.

'His side?! We fucking came here to save you!' Daisukenojo snapped, but Ryuu ignored him, looking straight at Raiku.

She swallowed. Byakko tried to move against her hand and she pushed him back down roughly, drawing Ryuu's attention to her bare hand, stark against Byakko's tan.

His breath came out in a hiss. He tensed again. Daisukenojo shifted his weight to brace better against the woven floor, preparing for another surge of energy.

'Enough!' the man, Zeshin roared. Raiku jumped. Zeshin had gotten to his feet during the chaos and now stood, rubbing roughly at his shoulder. His lips were faintly blue, but his face was as lovely as she remembered. Sharp features, an androgynous voice. His accent, unplaceable and alien, was enough to make her smell the ghost of smoke, to twitch backwards from remembered pain. His eyes were yellow, but his hair was black and far longer than Ryuu's. The resemblance was striking; even more so when he looked as angry as he did at that moment. 'Byakko, go to the house and wait for me there,' he ordered, flicking his hand. Byakko moved to protest, but Zeshin fixed him with a sharp look and he just pushed Raiku's hand off and he obeyed, casting a reluctant look back at Ryuu before he turned a corner and vanished.

'Seiryu—'

'Ryuu,' Raiku corrected automatically.

Zeshin glanced at her. 'Ryuu,' he repeated, 'please sit down.'

Ryuu pushed forward against Daisukenojo's arm, but the shorter boy didn't move. 'No offence,' Daisuke said stiffly to Zeshin, 'but I know this asshole pretty well and unless you wanna lose that asshole forever, you don't want me to let him go yet.'

Ryuu looked convincingly murderous, even settling from that strange mania that had gripped him.

Zeshin shook his head. 'Fine,' he said. He himself took a seat, still rubbing at his shoulder. 'Now that you know these two are alright, I trust we can have a civil conversation?' he asked Ryuu wearily. 'Now that you can be sure I didn't murder them and hide their bodies in the woods, or whatever dramatics you suspected.'

'"Dramatics"?' Ryuu echoed. She saw Daisukenojo tighten his grip just in time for Ryuu to try and lunge forward. 'You replaced me! You abducted me!'

'And I reunited you with your team, didn't I?' Zeshin asked.

'No, Byakko brought us back here after Raiku tried to kill him twice,' Daisukenojo said, awkwardly craning his head to be seen over Ryuu's shoulder.

Zeshin tilted his head. A long lock of black hair slipped over his shoulder. 'Byakko brought you back to us when Ryuu wouldn't settle without you. He let you think what you needed to get here.'

Daisukenojo groaned in frustration when Raiku pointed at him accusingly. 'See, evil twin!' Raiku said shrilly. 'We should never have forgotten that, of course he was up to something!'

'We?! You're the one who proposed we come here in the first place!'

'Only because you wouldn't let me burn the forest down!'

'Maybe if you had told me that it wasn't Ryuu from the start, we could have had the time to make a better plan!'

'If you're quite done?' Zeshin interrupted.

Raiku flushed self-consciously. Yes, they had fallen into their usual bickering in this highly dangerous situation, in front of an enemy. That had happened. Had happened more than once, in fact, like it was all they knew how to do as stress relief. Raiku collapsed to a sitting position, while Daisukenojo remained awkwardly keeping Ryuu steady.

Sure, she thought, Ryuu looked less… terrifyingly out of control now. But the second he was released, Byakko was going to get brutally strangled to death and then the compound would turn into murder central. No amount of abduction, trauma and situational delicacy would stop Ryuu from being himself.

'I know that this has been less than ideal,' Zeshin said to Raiku, almost apologetic but not quite, 'and I'm sorry for the trouble we have caused you.'

'"Trouble",' Daisukenojo repeated incredulously.

'By abducting Ryuu and Yamada, keeping them prisoner here and replacing them with Ryuu's evil twin?' Raiku finished for him. He'd need all his concentration to keep Ryuu from escaping. Even at that very moment Ryuu was shifting a little, probably getting ready to break free again. 'Also, look at what you've done to him!' she gestured at Ryuu's general state of dishevelment. 'He looks terrible!'

Zeshin frowned. 'Firstly, Byakko is hardly evil. Overzealous, maybe. But we never had any intention of hurting Ryuu. We just wanted to keep him here to speak with him, we didn't think his—your,' he corrected, looking at Ryuu, 'response would be so extreme.'

'I thought you'd been watching him,' Raiku said with a probably unjustifiable feeling of pride. 'You should have known he'd try and kill you.'

'Never stops, this guy,' Daisukenojo said. From his tone, he also found himself feeling weirdly affectionate about Ryuu's relentless homicidal drive.

Ryuu just bared his teeth again.

Zeshin sighed, rubbing his shoulder once more. 'I thought he would at least be curious enough to hear us out.'

'I mean, he probably is curious, a little,' Raiku allowed. 'But it's Ryuu. So.'

Zeshin shook his head. He looked tired, suddenly. 'We never wanted this. We never wanted to hurt you.' He covered his eyes with his hand briefly. 'You're my nephew. I remember when my sister was—' He broke off into another sigh. Raiku wondered uncharitably if he knew how to exhale inaudibly, though she herself had also sighed much more since Ryuu had come into her life. 'I promise we won't hurt you. Or your teammates. But I'd like to speak to you in the morning, now that you know they're safe.' He looked at Ryuu. 'Is that acceptable?'

Ryuu glared in silence.

'Fine,' Daisukenojo said instead. 'He's fine with it.'

Zeshin didn't look happy at Ryuu's apparently consistent refusal to go along with anything, but he did duck his head and made a silent, graceful exit. The door closed behind him and sealed with a flash of chakra that even Raiku couldn't miss.

Silence reigned amongst Team Yamada for a time, the three of them now trapped inside.

'What are the odds that Zeshin doesn't kill us in our sleep?' Raiku wondered idly.

'Let me go,' Ryuu said loudly instead of answering her extremely pertinent question. 'It's fine. Just let me go already.'

Daisukenojo craned his neck but sent Raiku a questioning look when he obviously couldn't read Ryuu's expression from that angle. The tension had drained from Ryuu while they weren't looking and now his arms hung limply over where Daisukenojo had him restrained. He looked for all the world like a disgruntled cat held against its will, incongruously normal in the surreal cast of their surroundings. Raiku reluctantly nodded, and he released him. Ryuu swiftly turned around and clapped Daisukenojo directly on the ear, hand cupped to cause maximum pain. Daisukenojo went down with a yelp while Ryuu stood over him, shaking out his hand.

He turned to face Raiku, eyes glinting.

She waved. 'He-ey, buddy,' she began, then scrambled backwards when he advanced. 'Hey hey hey, I knew it wasn't you I'm the one who noticed!' She covered her head with her arms when he stopped in front of her.

A second passed. She cautiously creaked an eye open. Ryuu dropped to a knee in front of her and his hand darted out, only to be yanked away with a hiss when a thin tendril of electricity sparked to life between their bare skin.

Raiku blinked. She wasn't sure what he had been expecting, really.

'Why did it work for him?' Ryuu asked, the question almost directed at himself. 'Why was it just him?' He was opening and closing his hands into fists at his sides, the thing Raiku knew she did herself, when…

Oh no, she realised in horror; this wasn't Ryuu angry anymore. This was Ryuu distressed.

He was reaching out for human contact and the electricity in her skin had bitten him for it. 'Hey,' she said quickly, scrambling onto her knees in front of him, trying to catch his eye, her hands hovering anxiously. She was unable to give him the contact he clearly wanted, but she wanted to do something. 'It's okay! We found you, we're okay! We're going to get out of here and it's going to be fine!'

She shot Daisukenojo a pleading look over Ryuu's shoulder.

To her great and profound horror, that shoulder shook slightly.

'Daisuke!' she said, high-pitched and nervous. 'You gotta—just—' she made a vague wrapping motion. 'Just do it!'

Daisukenojo had the grey pallor of a man who knew he was walking to his execution. He awkwardly shuffled to Ryuu's side. With the greatest of discomfort, he wrapped an arm around his shoulders. 'It's… okay,' he coughed. 'We're, uh. We're here and uh. We're gonna get Yamada and. Y'know. Go home.' Obviously at a loss for what to do, he lifted his other hand to pat Ryuu's arm. 'And it'll be fine.'

Ryuu grimaced, but he didn't pull away. Without moving, something seemed to collapse quietly inside his body and he seemed to become.

Smaller.

Ryuu's rage could fill a room, could suffocate a person with its weight, but she'd never known how quiet it would feel to see that crack open.

After a long moment, he sighed. Raiku wondered if he would ever realise how much it made him look like Zeshin, that expression he wore. 'They don't have Yamada,' he said, lifting a hand to press it to his face. 'They just had me.'

'But Byakko—'

Daisukenojo made a chopping motion, but not before Ryuu glared at her viciously through the crack in his fingers.

She corrected hastily. 'Someone basically…' hadn't said that at all, she realised. Had let her say it and let it pass without correction, like her dad would have. Or a textbook evil twin. 'Shit.' Still, a glare was better than the alternative.

'How stupid are you two?' Ryuu asked, but she could tell his heart wasn't in it. 'These guys are strong, but they're not outfitted to deal with Yamada for any length of time. He's a havoc specialist.'

'I don't know what that is, but it sounds about right,' Raiku said, tapping her fingers to her chin. 'They probably know where he is, though. They seem pretty well-established in this forest, and uh, he said they were taking advantage of the attacks.'

Daisukenojo let his pack slide off his shoulder and drop to the floor with a thud, clearly using the excuse to remove his arm from around Ryuu now he'd been distracted from his rising trauma levels. 'Great. Just great. We finally thought we'd found both of you and it turns out we just got the crazy one.'

Raiku moved to remove her own pack, but at her first shift backwards Ryuu grabbed her arm above the elbow to keep her in place. With a layer of fabric safely placed between their skin, he held on so tightly she could almost feel the bruise forming. When she looked up he had that manic light in his eyes again, that split-second away from violence hovering there between them. She froze without consciously deciding to do so.

Daisukenojo reinserted himself into Ryuu's space, his freckled hand coming up to grip Ryuu's wrist. 'She's not going anywhere, man,' he said, with obviously forced calm. Daisukenojo had never been the one to calm Ryuu down, and this was really not the role life had prepared him for. 'We're gonna stay right here and if that Byakko shithead comes back, we'll kick him to the curb. Okay? None of us are going anywhere.'

Ryuu nodded, after a while. 'You knew it wasn't me,' Ryuu said, staring at her. He was looking for some kind of answer, she realised; some kind of assurance that she would know if Byakko came again, that she would know to look if Ryuu was taken away a second time. 'You did.'

She tried a smile. It didn't sit right on her face, kept sliding off to join those dark thoughts sitting at the base of her brain that said

I was going to watch you die I was going to kill you

and there was no explanation she could give that he would understand. No way to describe to him what it had felt like to watch the universe devour that false Ryuu and know he'd have to die. 'He wasn't you,' she said instead, her best attempt at confidence. 'He's not you.'

It seemed to take an age for Ryuu to let her go and it looked like it hurt, like he had to lift his fingers one by one against his own resistance.

When he was finally free, she edged away as subtly as she could manage. She'd touched Byakko's bare skin, she thought; he'd touched her bare face and she had never felt more exposed than when Ryuu had looked at her and waited for her to tell him she would notice if he was gone.

The thought settled as guilt in her stomach.


A/N: Don't beat yourself up, Raiku - Ryuu is back and that is clearly his preferred task.