As they watched Kurama's jinchūriki fight multiple heroes in the middle of a crowded American city, Kei's underlying internal monologue of, Shit, shit, shit—

If there was ever a time to be thankful for your habit of crafting new fūinjutsu, Isobu growled, it is now.

Kei clapped her hands to the sides of her face, silencing the bubbling anxiousness crawling up her spine and into her brain. The shock of pain did better work than cold water. It also put her in contact with the edges of the borrowed mask.

Okay, first things first.

"What do you need?" Batman asked. And it was Batman—congenial and clumsy Mr. Wayne had fully disappeared under the cowl. In a way, the calculation there made it seem more like the mask had come off instead of being put on.

Deep breath, then go.

"I need a size estimate of Kurama's host body," Kei said, in a command tone she so rarely used since arriving here. Maybe when she had the mental space for regret, she'd apologize. Until then, the mission was more important. "Then lock down the original ritual site and don't let anyone in or out until we've stripped the place to the foundation."

"Agreed," Doctor Fate's voice said with a faint backing echo. Charging a spell, maybe. "This will not happen again."

"Zatanna is en route to the site," Mr. J'onzz said, even as Doctor Fate vanished into an ankh-shaped whirl of color just behind him. "Our away team includes Wonder Woman, Vixen—"

Kei ignored the rest of the list. And the signature blinding flash of Doctor Fate's abrupt arrival in the Batcave's central platform. Instead, she ran for the secret passage stairs with a, "I'll be right back!"

Zatanna didn't make a habit of exploring the glorified strip malls that appeared ubiquitous in large cities across the eastern seaboard. While, yes, she appreciated the tucked-away restaurants and pop-up shops while on tour and wouldn't turn down a thrift store in the right moment, Blüdhaven wasn't on her normal route.

And it probably never would be, to be honest.

Zatanna raised her wand on arrival and said, "Draw siht ecalp."

The particular cubicle farm of an office was in bits spread across a city block when they arrived. Rubble and powderized drywall and overturned equipment littered the ground, obscuring any ordinary attempt to get closer. Just stepping into the area risked impalement on rebar jutting out of splintered concrete support columns.

"Anything you can find would be immensely helpful," Wonder Woman told the team, already scanning for the sound of fighting. She floated into the air a moment later, pulling her lasso off her belt. "Someone has to answer for this."

"You got it," was Vixen's response. Her amulet briefly glowed with the spectral image of a wolf, and then she rushed off in the direction of the worst damage. "Blood this way."

"Right behind you. Thgil." A blob of gentle white light appeared above her hat, illuminating thirty-odd feet around her without trouble. Then Zatanna put on her air filter mask and then tapped her wand against her shoes, for just a bit more stability and resistance to stabbing.

Green Lantern used his ring as a searchlight while flying overhead, scanning the rubble. Green lit up the area better than dying street lamps or Zatanna's light spell.

This business park address was rubble. It was also, clearly, a front. As the Justice League team split up and surveyed the area—and Wonder Woman and Green Lantern joined the fight directly—Zatanna and Vixen came to the same grim conclusion.

"Taolf sirbed," Zatanna said, and the last bits of dust, drywall, and broken concrete revealed the full death toll.

The first hint of the deception was that, even when there was not so much as a business name anywhere to be found, Vixen tracked down a dozen bodies. Three were men in white lab coats, another four men and women were dressed in plain black scrubs, and the remaining five were clearly security officers. While Zatanna didn't have a pile of corpses in camouflage, the too-loose clothes on each man came with a concealed firearm underneath, and every one wore uniform military crew cuts. Further investigation revealed high-powered laser rifles in a collapsed locker near the center of the damage, akin to a storage space for elephant guns at a zoo.

The things you learned from being friends with Bruce Wayne and, indeed, any other member of the Justice League caught between shifts of supervillain-wrangling. Zatanna dreaded the moment someone got the bright idea to hold a trivia competition.

"These are mostly crush injuries. I was expecting something…more personal, after what happened last month." Vixen rested her hand against her totem as she swapped from a leopard spirit's strength and back to the wolf. "They really brought the house down."

While no one in the Justice League brought up the Arkham Incident directly, there had been no hiding the clues from those on the Watchtower. Batgirl's report was clinical and to the point, and so most of the League understood that the Joker and Harley Quinn came to an untimely end at the hands of a new person of interest. Specifically, the one who showed up on the teleporter pad covered in blood that mostly wasn't hers. As victims, however, it was considered best to avoid directly questioning a traumatized woman or Robin about their experiences.

Vixen, due to her skills, put all the information together as soon as she realized how heavily Zatanna and Doctor Fate were involved in this.

Few, if any, of the debris piles included things so mundane as personal effects. While the area immediately around the summoning site was also the flattest, it had the only evidence of human habitation. Medical equipment was more common than coffee mugs or loose paperwork. One room's space away from the central ritual site was the densest concentration of lab paraphernalia, and that went on for the remainder of the destroyed hallway.

It wasn't a good sign.

A wave of fear rolled over the area, making Vixen shudder just slightly. Zatanna could pick out a magical component to it, but there was also a good chance Vixen could detect an infrasound layer. The monster reported by Nightwing had animal features. It wasn't a difficult conclusion to draw.

"I can't speak for anyone here, but this already looks vicious enough. Ees cigam."

To Zatanna's eye, parts of the building began to glow. Like plate glass splintered on impact, shards of spells littered the entire complex. Some of the contamination rolled onto different parts of the business park and would need to be removed. If Zatanna squinted, the more delicate layers of the spell disintegrated into nothing as she watched. Despite her wards, some of this simply wouldn't last long enough for an investigation.

And yet there was a glow that didn't fade, thirty feet past Vixen's shoulder.

"There's still an active spell. Mari, just a second…" Zatanna raised her wand and beckoned the little light back their way. "Emoc ereh."

There was a clink as something metal snapped loose, and then the strange thing landed squarely in Zatanna's gloved palm. Once she cleaned off most of the dust, it revealed a teal gemstone pendant bracketed on both sides by metallic beads. The string itself was, at worst, a plain, dark cotton string.

Its plain appearance belied its two enchantments—one that helped the wielder control something, and a death curse reinforced by some ghostly stain. The latter was already trying to latch onto Zatanna just for holding it.

"Do you think that belonged to whoever set this off?" Vixen asked, taking in Zatanna's grim expression.

Genbu's magic was something Zatanna didn't have a lot of personal experience with, but she could tell it apart from Earth magic the same way one might distinguish Italian and Spanish cooking. Both used well-worn ingredients and tremendous skill, but the result could be something similar, different, or entirely alien depending entirely on the chef and their needs. The two types of magic weren't fundamentally hostile, just different.

And Zatanna didn't know enough to shut down the monster without fighting its magic resistance to turn it into an actual fox. There was every chance the spell would just fail on contact. Too dangerous.

"No, but—"

An ankh-shaped flare of magic appeared just above the center of the ritual site. When the light show was over, it left Doctor Fate floating in the air under one of his many enchantments, and Genbu with both feet firmly on the ground and her attention on the pendant in Zatanna's hand.

"That's—you probably shouldn't hold on to that for long," Genbu said all in a rush, stepping closer to Zatanna before catching herself. "Ma'am. Sorry," Genbu mumbled, clearly having second thoughts about her approach. "But it's really bad luck."

That was the least of it. "You know about the curse?"

Behind her, Doctor Fate set a stack of papers on the ground, nodded to Vixen, and took off to survey the area. Apparently, his job was not going to involve babysitting anyone or their notepad. Instead, he lifted both hands and started magically shifting the dust out of the air.

"Yeah." Genbu's attention kept turning toward the ongoing fight ten blocks away, as though magnetized. Even with the domino mask, her eyes glowed brightly enough to pierce the darkness. "But that's not the point," Genbu said, shaking her head. "Curse or not, I need that."

In turn, Zatanna assessed her with new eyes. Yes, Genbu was a brawler, but it had become clear over the last month that Genbu was a clever sorceress underneath the constant timidity. Her magic worked primarily like flexing a muscle, and there were limits, but Genbu knew them well. Lacking Zatanna or Doctor Fate's versatility in the field meant less when she could prewrite most of the esoteric spells she knew. And a lot of those were effectively grenades, according to Bruce.

Which wasn't ideal. It was hard to tell if that gave Genbu any idea of how to assess risks to or for ordinary people. "Why?"

"Taking the necklace off that kid probably made this worse. It has other uses."

Zatanna felt her stomach drop toward her toes. What had happened here?

"That's a kid?" Vixen demanded.

In the distance, something exploded. Maybe a car, maybe a bomb. In Blüdhaven, it could be hard to tell.

And before Zatanna stow the item in her hat, the necklace was gone. The telltale sign of the culprit was the sudden rush of wind as a superspeed hand withdrew. And the necklace's excess length dangled from her hand when she backed up, bowed, and then vanished in a puff of white smoke. Possibly one of Batman's gas grenades.

"Did she warn you she was going to do that?" Zatanna asked when the smoke cleared, looking up at Doctor Fate with worry shaking down her spine. "Any hint at all, before the disappearing act."

Doctor Fate floated down to her height, arms crossed. All of the papers he'd brought along were also gone. "The entire period from the initial alert until now has been preparation for the battle ahead. I believe that counts."

Zatanna pinched the bridge of her nose. "This feels personal."

"Likely so. Genbu was the one to positively identify the threat in the first place." As Doctor Fate turned his helmet toward where the necklace had been, his gaze landed on Vixen. "I'd like to find more of the child's effects. Even what was taken from him before this incident may be useful. May I ask for your assistance?"

Vixen nodded, already spinning on her heel. "I got a good whiff of the kid's blood. This way."

Answer me, Kurama!

If he could, he would've done it by now. Maybe there's some kind of ward blocking him?

It could be. It would be the option that makes sense. If time split with your influence, he should at least know some version of me and respond. We predate you.

True. Keep trying.

If there was one thing Dick didn't need on a weeknight in his home turf, it was more trouble for Blüdhaven. Described occasionally as "the worst city in America," the "East Coast's armpit," and "where dying and going to Hell would be considered a promotion" by the sort of people who declined to visit, Dick saw a different side of the city. Sure, most of the corrupt parts of it kept shooting at him, but that didn't mean that they were the only parts that mattered. All Dick needed to do was step outside his apartment and catch his landlady on a smoke break to immediately find someone worth protecting.

The fine officers of the Blüdhaven police department were, however, making it a lot harder to guarantee the city would still be there tomorrow.

While Green Lantern and Wonder Woman kept the whatever-the-hell contained in a mostly-empty parking lot, it was mostly Wally rushing around and making sure civilians were nowhere nearby. The BPD had formed a cordon around the easiest street access, but someone further up the command chain had ordered SWAT teams to the area. Dick could see the sniper nest setting up on the roof of a nearby warehouse if he looked their way.

Not that he thought that shooting would do much. Anybody who could get into a wrestling match with Wonder Woman, last long enough to writhe free of the Lasso of Truth, and then smack her across the asphalt with a four-limb advantage probably wouldn't notice being shot. As it was, the thing slammed headfirst into Green Lantern's construct shield hard enough to crack it even on the first impact.

And the wave of supernatural fear accompanying the sound made things still worse. While all Gotham residents got a biannual dose of Scarecrow attacks, this was something that ripped straight through toxicology and made people run away in nearly a straight line while the ground shook beneath them. The monster didn't even roar, just screamed. Like both a beast and a murder victim. A banshee, maybe.

That, too, made Green Lantern's barrier splinter a little more as the sound hit him in midair. Wonder Woman actually hesitated for a moment before diving back into the fight.

"Nightwing," said a familiar voice, and Dick turned to find Genbu on the roof with him. He hadn't even heard her approach. "I think we should swap."

From the looks of things, Genbu's new field outfit was…odd. A mix of an unreleased prototype Batsuit (hastily refitted) and a black zipper hoodie instead of attaching to a cape. A red Bat symbol peeked out from the top of her jacket. She wasn't even breathing hard, though Dick knew the original plan was to drop her off at the ritual site ten blocks away and not in the middle of melee. And the suit she was wearing wasn't armored.

"To?" Dick prompted. After reporting the monster's size over the comm, every single Justice League procedure shifted from trying to beat it up to more passive containment. Nobody wanted to be the one to hurt a child. Only knowing there was a decent chance he'd be ripped in half kept Dick on observation duty, because he itched to help. "If it's a magical crime scene, I thought having Fate and Zatanna on it would be enough."

"It's also a mundane crime scene. There were bodies in the rubble."

Dick had figured that much. Though he didn't practice magic himself, all of the stories indicated there was little recourse for a magic-user getting some warding detail wrong and then being curb-stomped by whatever they called up. He only had to fight a demon once to get the broad idea. Luckily, in the age of the internet, there were slightly more ways to find out how to banish the problem back where it came from.

But there wasn't anything to be gained from just yelling about other people's bad decisions regarding magic. "Don't call up what you can't put down" was a lesson lost on corpses. "Anything helpful?"

Genbu fished around in a pocket until she retrieved a necklace. The teal pendant caught the light too strangely to be anything but magic. "This. I don't think the trouble started until the after people who kidnapped him took it off."

Dick at least ten questions for Genbu about how she knew that, what her strategy might be, and if she was in a good headspace to even be here. It was one thing to have a possessed magic-user blow up at a target and then come down from the experience feeling like complete shit (see: Arkham Incident), and yet another to have that same woman show up again, here, with every inch of her military bearing on display. It was like her timid self was swallowed whole.

"So we win if we get the necklace on him?" Wally's voice asked, and the rest of him blurred into view.

"It can't hurt," Genbu offered, which was not a real answer. "Compared to everything else, at least."

"Good enough. Gimme."

Genbu's expression went ice-cold and her hand closed around the pendant. The sudden pulse of psychic fear was definitely closer than what the guy still fighting Wonder Woman was putting out. "Do your powers come from magic?"

Wally opened his mouth to answer, thought better of it in an eyeblink, then managed a sheepish, "No, but I can get you there."

"I can walk." Genbu wrapped the necklace around her hand, then dug paper out of her pockets and placed those in Wally's waiting hand. Each was smeared with some strange pink substance, which seemed to take up more of the backing the longer Dick stared. "You get three shots to bubble Kurama. The barrier will be five meters in diameter if it works. Do not get caught inside with him, and don't let anyone else get stuck either."

"And what'll you be doing?" Wally asked, but sounded a lot more comfortable now that there appeared to be an actual plan. And not one he'd need to frantically improvise because someone or something forgot about a relevant power.

Genbu knew exactly what she was up against. Would be nice if she actually shared with the class.

Quick as a blink, Genbu held up a stack of stationary and what looked like a calligraphy brush. "Writing the actual takedown spell."

"I take it you couldn't do that before you got here," Dick said as Wally sped off, prepared to run straight up the side of Green Lantern's containment shield. And going by the red blur of afterimages, he was succeeding.

"Had to make the barriers first."

"Great."

With that, Genbu stretched the paper across the ground and started drawing. Or writing, using a ink stored in one of those half-sized plastic water bottles. Either way, Dick had to swallow down the automatic protest as Genbu ripped off one glove and cut one of her fingertips to drip blood into the bottle, swirled it, then continued writing. She was far too calm not to know what she was doing.

"I have to ask," Dick said about a minute later, as a glowing golden bubble popped into existence down in the middle of the chaos. He set his night vision goggles to one side. "If you didn't know these spells and had to fight that guy head on right now, what would you do?"

"Die, probably."

Dick paused to look back at her. On their shared perch on a Blüdhaven rooftop, it was suddenly cold. The sound of Genbu's scribbling was neither reassuring nor comfortable like it was in the Manor, when she was just Kei and getting bullied into watching movies with Tim. Or practicing gymnastics with Dick and Tim and generally grumbling through the experience. Or following Alfred like a combination of a personal assistant and a gofer.

Apparently, a month isn't enough time to hammer self-worth into her head. This was the cracking of sheet ice below their feet.

Genbu went on, her tone as flat as a disinterested store clerk, "Then Kurama would fully break free, killing his host, and an angry fox demon the size of Godzilla would probably destroy the city."

Okay. That was…a lot. Genbu kept writing and Dick tried to think of an option that wouldn't leave him horribly out of position when this moment finally broke and everyone went all in.

"Being objective, some of the things I've done are…pretty bad." She'd said that on the Watchtower, a lifetime ago. Dick didn't have to think that hard to remember her downcast demeanor then, when everything was going wrong. "But we weren't going to leave a kid to…whatever someone like the Joker came up with. There's monsters, and then there's that."

In the aftermath, Genbu didn't turn cold like this. Upset and worried and nervous, but not this close-mouthed, mission-first persona. Dick felt a little like the Bat on her chest was making her channel Bruce. Or else that original predatory patience was already too close to Batman.

Genbu's head jerked up from her work, already turning toward the fight. Her brush stilled in her hand. "Isobu got through."

Red light flashed from behind the barriers.

Genbu lunged for him as the shockwave hit.

Kei rolled to her feet on the slope of a crater, asphalt dust cascading down from her loose hair. While she'd managed to toss Nightwing like a bowling ball and safely get him inside a barrier via one coral kunai she'd held back from the Flash, that only removed one more factor from the fight.

The adrenaline surge was as familiar as her own heartbeat.

Going by the fact that Wonder Woman and Green Lantern were both thrown through buildings, her workaround for the barrier seals hadn't worked long enough to matter. The coral either wasn't strong or responsive enough. Or it was timed wrong. So, no more handing off her talismans for non-magicians. The rest was going to be her, the highest quantity of Isobu's chakra that her body could still tolerate, and a lot of running.

The biggest problem was still twitching ears and tails in the only clear spot around, calculating where to leap to next. When Kei flared her chakra on purpose, the white eyes locked squarely on her and the entire body twisted into a crouch that was pure beast.

Plus side: One of her allies was not literally disarmed by one of Kurama's wild swings and lack of concern. Kei could return Nightwing to his family with all extremities attached.

Minus side: Kei was now in effective melee range of a V2 jinchūriki who, once upon a time, nearly killed Jiraiya during a training session. And Kei was no Jiraiya.

But she did routinely spar with Kushina, before everything. Maybe that would be enough.

He accused me of betraying him to the humans, Isobu reported, grim. Not that Kei exactly blamed him; despite Isobu's voice and power being a universal constant, Kei was pretty sure Kurama's mental profile of his three-tailed sibling involved a lot less of her influence. Or of shutting him out for the sake of it.

Cool, so he doesn't know what wards might've fucked up our range. That's just great. So much for the fifty kilometers Kei was moderately proud of. Oh, and the dust cloud was big enough that Kurama had probably spoiled the shots of every police sniper previously deployed against him.

That wouldn't last.

Isobu rolled his eye. If he could have been slightly more inconvenient, we would also be short one ritual site.

Small mercies, I guess. And with that, Kei held out her right hand far enough to generate more coral kunai away from her body, spinning Isobu's chakra out of the seal with the patience of someone pulling glass. One wrong move, and this trick could destabilize everything from her heart to her right palm. On the other hand, it wasn't like Kei was going to retroactively train in Batarangs.

Always a nice night to learn by doing. And if anyone ever tried to tell Kei that their power-testing time was stressful, she was going to laugh. Even if the Flash did get struck by actual lightning.

Nightwing was already up, kneeling in the fūinjutsu-made barrier as he tried to get his brain back in order. While the man was a born acrobat, Kurama's shockwave knocked Wonder Woman onto the back foot. He was lucky Kei was there to make sure he wasn't vaporized.

This Kurama has faced Shukaku most recently.

Yeah, Kei got that from the presence of the First Hokage's necklace and the briefing about this host's height. The idea that their Chūnin Exam could've disintegrated into the Suna-Oto invasion of another timeline wasn't new. Kei didn't know how one of Kurama's jinchūriki could've gotten hold of the necklace otherwise. Hope that means he forgot what you can do.

I hope so too.

Kurama charged.

Replacement Jutsu.

And Kei was suddenly five meters away, making hand seals while Kurama impaled the swapped-in trash can and scattered its contents over the immediate area. An empty Coke can bounced off the barrier keeping Nightwing safe.

Kurama's head twisted her way again. Though he had some major disdain for Kei's entire existence, Kei was still sure he spoke. Even if it was only inside Isobu's head, Kei heard the echo of a low, resentful, "Three-Tails…"

Kei stuck her tongue out at him and enveloped the entire area in mist. It would protect all sides from undue interference. Mostly from police, who were not actually paid to get in the middle of superpowered brawls and die.

Kurama roared. The force produced was similar to what had launched the Justice League members before, but Kei wasn't in melee with him. And wasn't surprised by it. And with Isobu taking full control of the mist from inside of Kei's chakra coils, the only way Kurama would dislodge that ninjutsu was if he wanted to fight it directly.

He will not. Wind Release is not entirely beyond him, but also not of interest. Not while he can sense you.

"Detect malice" is such a bullshit search parameter. This parking lot was going to be a write-off when they were done here. Kei brought her hands together and burned through more seals. Body Flicker.

Kurama gave chase.

Despite the very real danger, there were still some silver linings to the fact that this Kurama clearly didn't know Kei, and didn't understand this version of Isobu. And Kurama, for all that he was perceptive and powerful, was a complacent fighter. He'd never needed to be otherwise. When he had more chakra than any living being in the entire world, the will to use it, and a whole planet full of people with no idea what ninjutsu was, what did he have to fear besides his own mortality? And even that wouldn't stick.

So if Kei landed on a half-destroyed car and flipped its hood directly into Kurama's glowy face, that was just a distraction tactic and everyone knew it.

Not that it mattered too much. Kurama's sensor ability was good enough to mostly keep track of Kei despite her personal lack of hatred toward him or his host, and Kei hardly needed mist to know exactly where a volcano like Kurama was at all times. Looking at him for too long as ill-advised. It burned.

Kurama struck, again and again. He would dignify the battle with spoken words instead of screams when everyone was dead.

And his hatred and his killing intent choked out every other sensation. Maybe some people interpreted it as terror inflicted. Something as insidious as Scarecrow's gas.

Kei mostly read it like a cheat sheet. Who needed a Sharingan when this guy broadcasted murderous intentions on every level? In his true form, he'd have made the heavens shake. As just a jinchūriki with demonic stamina, Kei would be swarmed under by clones. Like this, unable to draw on his host's control and running on a tiny fraction of his real power, Kurama sat at that happy middle of tolerable risk.

Not that a direct hit would be any less lethal, but it was easier to make sure he didn't get that hit.

Keep going.

Kei dodged like her life depended on it. Replacements, Body Flickers, and Water Clones all made rotating appearances that quickly shifted toward combinations. And once Kurama started getting too used to being able to destroy her clones in a single hit, Kei started Replacing herself with single coral kunai, coral-coated rocks, and so on.

Each one blew up into a sticky, pinkish-gray blob on contact, but Kurama kept ripping himself free before it could solidify. After the third repetition, he contented himself with attempting to literally bite Kei's head off.

Is he giving you anything?

Hostility.

That works.

Isobu could be a bad influence, too. Kei hadn't felt this awake and alert in weeks. Being centimeters from death did that to both of them.

While she didn't have chakra to burn the way Kurama did, Kei could buy time. The more she could sucker Kurama into trying to kill her, specifically, the less time he spent thinking of alternative ways to solve his problems. Such as just running away, or directing a Tailed Beast Bomb into the city at large. Or grabbing a random human and splattering the area in their blood.

Kei ducked back far enough that her heel hit the edge of Nightwing's current prison, then shot sideways when Kurama charged for her. The barrier warped, but held despite the impact, and then Kurama chased after Kei again.

Another piece of evidence that no one else can really use my talismans.

Not a timely discovery.

Kurama jammed a clawed hand through where Kei's head would have been if she was slower. Instead, he popped a Water Clone once again.

Turning herself into a rock to hide for that split second ambush was such a basic ninja tactic for Kurama to forget. And Kei's answering kick brought a half-formed Rasengan down onto the base of his spine where the tails connected. Mostly, it was enough manifested power to keep her from directly touching Kurama's chakra and frying her own skin off.

All four tails bunched below the blow, sending Kei flying partly through her own will. Mostly not. But high enough that if she twisted the wrong way, Kurama could catch her before she hit the ground.

Replacement Jutsu.

Green light flared halfway across the destroyed parking lot. A green construct clamp blasted through asphalt rubble and grabbed one of Kurama's legs.

Shrieking, Kurama tore apart a last Water Clone before twisting back on himself and sending all four tails through the construct like sequential swords. The air shuddered against the sound.

And Kei blew the mist apart so that the center of the battlefield was in plain view, compressing the fog past that arena rough to make it opaque. Under uneven moonlight and stuttering street lamps, the crater was even messier than before, but it gave Green Lantern line-of-sight on his target as well as protecting them from outside interference.

The construct buckled under Kurama's assault, but didn't break. Instead, shards of green light regrouped into their source and flowed back, forming a series of chain-linked bear traps that gripped each tail. They rattled like real metal as Kurama wrenched his limbs in an attempt to pull free.

Kei, crouched behind an overturned car, saw Wonder Woman rise into the air and lasso Kurama's wrist to one of the tails and yank him off balance. Which was only so far when Kurama had eight limbs to consider.

"Hera, give me strength!"

Kurama whipped his head around and fixed his spectral teeth around the lasso, yanking hard enough to make Wonder Woman nearly slam into the broken street. Instead, she caught herself in a three-point landing pose and wrapped the lasso even more firmly around her forearm, determined not to give ground this time. Instead, Kurama leapt and closed his teeth around one of Wonder Woman's bracers, clawing wildly despite Green Lantern's grip on his tails.

Still counted as keeping him immobile, even if it did look like Wonder Woman was trying to fight off a demonic bobcat. Good enough.

Isobu peered over Kei's figurative shoulder. Now.

Kei didn't question Isobu's call. A fresh coral kunai landed at Kurama's feet, then another. Both exploded outward in an oceanic rush, engulfing his ankles. Before long, both coral sources grew far enough to encase his knees and prevent any more complex movements. Then Kei slipped between piles of broken earth and rubble, unheard and possible unnoticed among the sounds of Green Lantern and Wonder Woman still trying to wrestle Kurama to the ground, rodeo-style.

"Stay back! He's not down yet," Green Lantern ordered, but he'd noticed Kei's approach too late.

Kei landed in front of Kurama's struggling form, held her chosen fūinjutsu talisman level with his forehead, and shoved as much power as she could through the blood-and-ink lines before false jaws could rip off her hand.

Chakra-Suppressing Seal.

Kei's paper talisman rippled against her hand as she pressed it forward, fingertips scorching as her chakra fought Kurama's, even through a premade medium and every advantage another writer's fūinjutsu gave her. She held the technique for a heartbeat, then two, then a stretch of time too long to be anything but agonizing. Numbness crept up her arm on the heels of pain.

I have your back. The surge of Isobu's chakra rushing through her body fought back, and damn the consequences.

Then the pervasive hatred pressing down on the world ripped loose, blasted apart as though by a bomb. The talisman disintegrated. All at once, it was like surfacing after too long somewhere with precious little air. The V2 chakra cloak blew apart like a balloon, leaving just a burned child, hollowed out and pinned by Wonder Woman and Green Lantern and now-crumbling coral.

Green Lantern's bright constructs blinked out of existence as he flew their way, expression pained as he reached true ground zero. Wonder Woman unwound her lasso before he even landed.

"That was a kid this whole time?"

"Careful, John. The ground is unstable here."

Ignoring both of them, Kei cradled her fellow jinchūriki on her lap. The straw-toned hair and whisker-shaped birthmarks gave away his identity even before his mostly-depleted chakra, but everything else stacked up like a checklist gone wrong.

Diagnostic ninjutsu rolling around in her hands, she tracked the flow Kurama's regenerative power as it spread outward from the seal automatically. She bolstered it with her own, carefully filtered to strip her Water nature in favor of a more easily-absorbed neutral. With any luck, a bit of donated power could shorten the recovery timeline.

And yet, Kei's mind kept whirring. Cataloging.

Someone had replaced Naruto's clothes with a papery hospital gown, stolen all of his belongings down to his damn shoes, and installed three IV ports in the boy's arms. One in each hand and in the crook of his left elbow, with a half-meter of trailing plastic tube wrapped around his forearm. Even though the burns from Kurama were starting to clear up along with everything else, it made Kei's stomach turn to see incisions and spots of blood lagging behind. For all that jinchūriki healed quickly, and Kei's personal knack for trouble could have easily killed a weaker shinobi long ago, even the Joker hadn't tested her durability in this cold, clinical way.

Isobu's voice rumbled under her thoughts like a storm. Death does not seem sufficient punishment, though he will recover.

I almost hope he doesn't remember what happened and Kurama piloted him through all of this.

And yet, because of that same healing factor, the worst this unconscious child faced now was chakra exhaustion intense enough to kill a normal human. His body had already burned through any substances his captors might have used on him. Once they got rid of the IV ports, the wounds would close in mere minutes.

Kei could vividly imagine Kurama waking independent of his host in some hideous laboratory, ripping himself free, and killing everyone within reach. As infrequently as Kei fought in V2 mode, as opposed to V1 or just as herself, the feel of pulverized flesh under her fingers was a familiar one. She almost hoped Kurama enjoyed it.

You already know I would do the same.

I know. And I hope whoever did this died screaming.

This wasn't the four-year-old boy she knew, but he was a Naruto. Child of Uzumaki Kushina and Namikaze Minato, with Kurama sealed into him when he was only a couple hours old. She didn't need more confirmation except to tailor her discussion points later on. Those baseline facts were good enough for the hissing, seething part of her brain to sharpen outrage into a sword.

But instead of dwelling more on the bubbling rage, Kei looked up toward where Wonder Woman was still kneeling an arm's length away. Waiting for word that everything was stable, even though Green Lantern had flown away at some point. Even as she draped the First Hokage's necklace over the unconscious child's head, Kei murmured, "I need to get Nightwing. Can you…?"

Wonder Woman's mouth twisted with terrible sympathy. She rested one hand on Kei's shoulder with a grip as firm as concrete. "Of course. And I will be present when we return to the Watchtower."

"Thank you." Bodyguard secured, Kei also took the time to hand over her jacket for use as an improvised shock blanket, then went to un-bubble a night shift hero.

JUSTICE LEAGUE INCIDENT REPORT FORM

Use this form to report accidents, injuries, medical situations, criminal activities, etc. If possible, a report should be completed within 24 hours of the event.

PERSON FILING REPORT

Hero Name: Green Lantern 2814, John Stewart

Title Holder: Incident Response Lead

Signature: [image of the Green Lantern sigil]

Date: 05/22/200X

THE INCIDENT

Date of Incident: 05/21/200X

Time: 9:22 PM EST (GMT-5)

Location: 16th and Marine View, Blüdhaven, NJ, USA

Describe the Incident: [come back to this after Genbu answers]

Notes:

Kei's outfit for this chapter has the net effect of making her look a lot like a helmetless Red Hood. Or like Nightwing with a red bat and jacket instead of his bird symbol.

Despite the First Hokage's necklace being capable of calming the Nine-Tailed Fox's chakra…Kei can't use Wood Release, and doesn't have enough access to the necklace in her timeline to run experiments. She just recognized it and realized she needed to get it back to Naruto before the curse got anyone else.

The Flash is fine, just miffed at being launched into the mist, especially when it didn't even budge in response to an attempt to blow it away with superspeed. Afterward, Nightwing starts ribbing him.
Dick: "So much for being the fastest man alive, huh?"
Wally: "You know how many lines I have saved up about caged birds? Don't start."