With Noburi and Akane already loaded and ready, it was Hazō's turn. He crouched down so that Akane could heft the thoroughly-bound and unconscious body of the kunoichi onto his back. He pulled the woman's flaccid arms and legs into a piggyback position and held them there while Akane tied her in place. He bounced a couple of times to make sure that she wouldn't shift, then nodded in satisfaction and turned to the rest of the team.

"Before we leave," Hazō said, "there's something I want to say to all of you.

"A lot of people died, and that sucks. This entire situation sucked for all of us. We are ninja, we exist to hold the line against the darkness. We are Team Uplift, dedicated to not just holding off the darkness but of raising up the light, to saving lives and making them better. We're also a heavy combat team, not an infiltration or capture squad. To mangle a phrase, we go to where the bad guys are and we kick their asses up into their necks—that's what we're good at. This courier mission, capturing Goda, this is all outside our skillset. Minami—Captain Minami, you had to make a hard call that should never have been forced on you. I'm not sure I would have had the courage to do what you did, and I hope none of us ever have to again.

"With all that said, I intend to do what Mari-sensei taught us: acknowledge what went wrong, learn from it, but focus on the positive. No matter what else, there was positive here. We worked well together, both in planning and in the actual operation. The combat side of things went smooth as silk. Keiko, your pangolins were as powerful and effective as you predicted, and I'm sorry I ever thought that they weren't worth it. You did your usual amazing job of fixing up the holes in a plan, and you coordinated the ambush brilliantly. Noburi, I don't think any of us had really appreciated just how strong you've become. You took down the entire ship so fast that by the time the rest of us arrived there was nothing left to do. That includes the two experienced ninja that you defeated almost effortlessly, with no risk to anyone on our team. And you did it with surgical precision, taking down our target completely unharmed in the middle of a brawl between powerful ninja and massive pangolins. I am really impressed."

Noburi blushed and looked away. "Thanks, Hazō," he mumbled. He shifted his feet awkwardly, clearly uncomfortable at the strange sensation of having his barrel on his chest instead of his back; it was necessary, since the latter location was currently occupied by the banker.

Hazō nodded back, then looked around the circle again. "We made mistakes in our planning that meant we ended up with a bad outcome. We'll learn from those and we'll do better in the future. Next time we'll be stronger, more experienced. We'll have other options. This will not happen again."

"Damn straight," Noburi muttered, the words low and intense and full of self-recrimination that was rapidly being forged into determination.

Keiko nodded silently and Akane beamed. Minami's face was still, giving nothing away, but her eyes studied him with a wariness and curiosity that were plain as day to someone trained by a fire-haired champion of lying and deceit.

"Uh...that's all, I guess," Hazō said, suddenly out of words.

Akane laughed and glomped him, squeezing tight but carefully enough that his ribs didn't creak more than a little. "Thank you, Hazō. That helped. Now come on, we need to get these three delivered." She tossed a salute to Minami, then turned and leaped away. Hazō and Noburi fell in beside her, six legs moving in a unison forged of the thousands of long miles that had previously passed beneath their collective feet.

o-o-o-o

Fifteen hours at ninja speed was a thousand steps, and then another thousand, and then another and another until the mind went blank. The steady thud, thud, thud of feet numbed the brain, making it a struggle to maintain awareness. It helped to have an unaccustomed weight on your back that shifted and bounced slightly with every step, providing a constant source of random sensation. The real solution, though, was to engage the mind with hypotheticals: what if that bird in the distance were actually a summon creature spotting for its master? Suppose a slurp of sky squids charged out of those clouds? How would the team best react? Hide, fight, run...?

No matter how many scenarios he considered, however, nothing could have prepared Hazō for a man shimmering into existence scant meters in front of them, standing blithely in mid-air a thousand meters up. He was tall and austere, his black hair and black-with-red-clouds cloak billowing behind him in the wind. His eyes burned red like rubies dipped in blood, three black commas swirling in each.

Akane reacted instantly, flickering her skywalkers in order to drop fifty meters before turning and sprinting to the west. Hazō and Noburi were fractions of a step behind her and running at maximum chakra-boosted speed; whoever this was, none of them wanted to get in a mid-air fight while wearing sixty kilos of unconscious prisoner.

The air shimmered and the man was once again before them.

"Stop," he said. The wind at this altitude should have torn the words away, but they whispered in Hazō's ear with a velvet spite. "I am here for the prisoners. Give them to me and you may leave."

The team braked to a halt, spreading out slightly. Hazō's brain whirred uselessly. Whoever this was, the cloak marked him as Akatsuki. Jiraiya had described them as a group of S-rank ninja, so fighting him wouldn't be useful. More importantly, though....

"How are you standing there?!" he demanded. "How are you just standing in mid-air? And who are you, anyway?"

The man shrugged, a tiny smile playing across thin lips. "You do not recognize me, Kurosawa? I see that the Iron Nerve really is but a pale remnant of the true Sharingan. I am your distant cousin. I am the Great Traitor of Leaf, the true Master of the Gods' Eyes, the most powerful prodigy of my generation. I am the kinslayer, the demon that haunts the dreams of the Sannin, the shadow warrior of legend. I...am...UCHIHA ITACHI!" He threw his arms back, causing his cloak to snap out behind him like massive bat wings.

"Uh...." Hazō's brain completely froze.

"Okay," Noburi said. "So, how are you just standing there? I know how we do it, but what's your trick?"

Uchiha rolled carnelian eyes in disgust. "The Sharingan sees all, boy. The Toad Pervert and the Old Man brought these 'skywalker' seals to the battle against Yagura. One glance from these eyes was enough to reveal all their secrets; Akatsuki thanks you for the gift." His lips twitched in a half-smile of amusement. "I truly am grateful; running on my own two feet is far preferable to straddling a dragon made of explosives under the control of a not-terribly-sane companion. In fact, I am grateful enough that if you give me your prisoners, I will allow you to leave unharmed."

"Attack!" Akane bellowed, charging forward. Hazō followed in her shadow; Noburi cut to the side, yanked a misterator out of his pouch, and popped it off in Uchiha's face.

Noburi's hand had barely started to move when Uchiha stepped forward with languid grace. A gentle touch of his left palm simultaneously deflected Akane's punch and trapped her wrist even as his right hand wrapped around her throat. Pale fingers clenched and twisted with force that no human, ninja or otherwise, should have been able to generate; her head soared into the distance and a fountain of blood poured from her neck.

Still with that same lazy grace, Uchiha turned Akane's dead body so that the arterial spray splashed Noburi in the face, leaving him coughing and choking while nary a drop soiled the traitor-nin's clothes. Uchiha swung Akane's corpse around by her wrist like a human flail. The mass of the dead genin (and the unconscious kunoichi she wore tied to her) smashed into Noburi's chest in a rising strike that lifted him up and instantly crushed his barrel through his chest. There was the wet squelch of a dozen ribs shattering and pulping the organs behind them and then Noburi and Goda carried arced up and into the distance.

"Nooo!" Hazō screamed, throwing everything he had at Uchiha in a desperate bid for vengeance.

Uchiha sidestepped with casual ease and rammed his finger through Hazō's eye and into his brain. The last thing Hazō felt was an itching deep in—

"NOOO!" Hazō screamed himself upright, hands lashing out at a phantom enemy that had never existed.

"Hazō! It's okay! It's okay, we're safe," said someone who sounded like Noburi but obviously couldn't be because Noburi was dead and....

No.

No, Noburi was fine. They were all fine. The run had been long, tiring, and completely uneventful. Now they were asleep a mile outside of Leaf and a mile in the air. Safe. All of them.

"How long was I asleep?" Hazō croaked, his throat rough from screaming. Akane wordlessly passed him a cup of cool water; Hazō gulped it down gratefully.

"About two hours," Akane said softly. "Do you want to talk about your dream?" She reached out slowly and lay a hand on his leg, offering quiet comfort without crowding him. It was never wise to startle a groggy ninja, especially not one who was still shaking off the effects of a screaming nightmare.

Hazō shuddered. "No. Not now, anyway. We all died on the run here. Uchiha Itachi wanted the prisoners."

Noburi nodded sympathetically. "Mine was about not getting off the boat in time. Kagome set the timers and ran off, but my skywalkers weren't working and there was still so much mist around that you guys didn't notice I wasn't with you. The corpses and the unconscious people were all lying around me, laughing; they weren't moving or sitting up or anything, just laughing. I woke up just before the blast went off."

"Mine was after the ship sank," Akane said quietly. "I was underwater, my leg chained to the railing, holding my breath and struggling to get free. The bodies were all still there, sitting on the deck in a circle, staring at me. The ones that Noburi drained were intact, but they looked like they'd drowned weeks ago—their faces were bluish and water-logged, the skin practically melting off. Their hair swayed in the currents as they watched me try to free myself. The ones that the pangolins...killed, were pulling themselves back together, blood and organs oozing back into a mass of ground meat. Before they finished coming together I couldn't hold my breath anymore and I started to drown."

A wave of shame swept through Hazō; he'd taken the first shift on watch while the others slept. They'd been restless and they'd each woken up partway through his watch, but they hadn't screamed like he had and they'd managed to go quickly back to sleep. Why was he the weak one?

"I'm sorry, honey," he said to Akane, covering her hand with his own. "I'm sorry, Noburi. I should have checked in with both of you when you woke up."

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Noburi shrugged and snorted. "I wasn't feeling real chatty just then."

"'Honey'?" Akane asked, smiling.

Hazō blushed. "Um, sorry. It's a thing poppa used to call momma."

She patted his hand, her smile getting brighter. "I like it."

"Gack," Noburi said, pretending to gag. "Ugh, save me from young kids in love."

"Hey!" Hazō said. "What do you mean 'young kids'? I'm older than you!"

Noburi waved a hand dismissively. "It's not the years, kid. It's the mileage."

"You're quoting someone," Akane said, eyeing Noburi curiously. "It's not Mari-sensei, I don't think. Who is it?"

The good humor fell off Noburi's face. "Shikigami-sensei. I heard him saying that to a couple of the other jōnin once, back in Swamp."

Hazō watched Akane look back and forth between her two suddenly-somber teammates with an expression equal parts bemused and concerned. His fear and inner disrepair shifted, acquiring a patina of sadness. He and Akane had been through so much and he had told her so many of his memories and stories, but there was this one set of things that could not be shared. If you hadn't lived through the Swamp you couldn't understand what it had been like. To be torn from everything you knew, tricked into a constant struggle for survival in a place far more deadly than Tea or Iron, knowing that the slightest lapse in attention would bring instant death. Watching constantly as your brothers- and sisters-in-arms died around you, eaten by monsters or exsanguinated by water plants or simply vanishing without a trace. No advanced jutsu, no seals, no advantages to make survival easy and comfortable. In the beginning he hadn't even known water walking, so he and the others had had to slog through mud up to their chests like civilians.

Noburi met his gaze. "Remember the alligator?" he asked with a sideways smile.

Hazō nodded. "I didn't mind the alligator or the spiderbear so much. It was those red bugs that creeped me out."

"Don't you mean they bugged you?"

Hazō mimed thwapping his teammate upside the head and both of them chuckled. Akane joined in, squeezing Hazō's leg reassuringly.

"You know," Hazō said, looking down at her hand where it rested on his thigh. It was the hand of a taijutsu specialist, calloused and rough, with heavily-chewed nails at the ends of fingers that were short and blunt. It was the most beautiful hand in the world.

"You know," he began again, "we've been through a lot of scary stuff, but none of it has hit me as hard as the boat. All those people."

Noburi looked away. "Yeah. I'm...I'm sorry about that. I'll be smarter next time."

Hazō frowned in confusion. "What are you sorry about? You did great."

Noburi shrugged, fiddling with the fabric of his pants and refusing to look at either of them. "Should have thought ahead more. After making such a big deal to you about clan secrets it didn't even dawn on me that all the civilians and whatever would see the mist drain. If I'd been a little smarter maybe we...maybe we could've...."

"Noburi, stop," Akane said, capturing his left hand in her right while leaving her left where it was on Hazō's thigh. "You did nothing wrong. None of us thought of it."

"We didn't look far enough ahead," Hazō confessed. "That's on me. Nara Shikaku even made a point of bringing that up with me in our first conversation. He chewed me out for not thinking of a counter to skywalkers before handing them over to Leaf. Not for the fact that I didn't have a counter, for the fact that I didn't think far enough ahead to even recognize the issue. I should have learned the lesson, should have looked farther ahead than just taking the boat."

"Stop hogging the blame," Noburi said tiredly. "It's not on you. I didn't think of it either. None of us did—you, me, Akane, Kagome, Ms. PrissyPants, none of us. Keiko fixed the plan that we gave her but the plan only went so far. We should have remembered to ask her to look beyond the end of the plan to what problems it might cause. We all know she doesn't think of that sort of thing on her own."

Hazō nodded; there was nothing to say to that and he would bite out his own tongue before he would admit to the tiny part of himself that blamed Keiko for it. She was the brilliant one, the analytical genius; why couldn't she have looked just a little farther ahead and seen the issue? If Pankurashun hadn't gone below then maybe they could have confined the murders to those on deck. Of course, if Pankurashun hadn't gone belowdecks and the enemy ninja had been down there it would have given them time to prepare. Against an enemy of unknown capabilities that was not a good idea. Still, why did Hazō have to be the one to think of everything? Couldn't the brilliant analyst have come up with an original idea just once? It wasn't that hard!

Shame burned through him at the thought. He shook his head and ground his mental heel into the traitorous whisper at the back of his mind. It wasn't fair and he knew it wasn't fair. Keiko's bloodline made her good at some things and terrible at others; it wasn't her fault and it wouldn't do anyone any good to imagine that it was.

"You know the part that worries me?" Hazō asked quietly. "What if it starts getting easier? We killed all those people because it was expedient, because it was necessary to protect Leaf from a possible information leak. What if that becomes a good enough reason?"

Akane turned her hand over so she could grab his and squeeze it reassuringly. "That will not happen. You are both far too youthful to allow that. This pain that we are feeling? It spurs us on, scourges us to drive off the weaknesses and impurities until all that remains is the Will of Fire burning in the springtime of our youth. Something like this will happen again, and we will know better. We have learned, and we will remember. The next time we plan an assault we will think ahead to the consequences and plan how we may keep our natures secret so that we can spare the lives of those we capture."

"That's not good enough," Noburi said. "We can't just do better the next time there's an assault, we have to do better at everything. We need to look ahead of every decision. When we handed the prisoners over, the guards told us to draw back and wait for further instructions. Okay, what's going to happen next? Is Jiraiya likely to hear about this soon? Is our presence likely to cause him a political issue if he calls us inside Leaf to report? If so, we should maintain henge."

"I think the Hyūga would see the henge," Hazō said with a frown. "It might just attract their attention. Maybe physical disguises?"

"I will trust in Jiraiya to think of this and send appropriate orders," Akane said. "I feel that the most important thinking we could do would be what happens after we rejoin the group. Minami's opinion of us is poor at best."

"What you mean 'us', foreigner?" Noburi joked. "Sure, you might have been there for The Incident, but you're a Leaf nin in good standing. She's giving you a pass."

"I'm not sure she knows you were there, actually," Hazō said. "And she was definitely impressed with how you handled that disaster with Kagome-sensei."

Noburi snorted. "Speaking of whom...right now Minami is running around the back of beyond with no one but Kagome and Keiko for company. Can you imagine the talk around the campfire?"

"'I set the perimeter, Dumbbutt...er, Captain Minami!'" Hazō said in a good imitation of Kagome's voice. "'No stinking chakra beast is going to sneak inside my perimeter! Boom, squish!'" He freed himself from Akane's grip just long enough to slam his right fist into his left palm, then reclaimed her beautiful, battered, rough-skinned hand.

"'I calculate a very low probability that any of the local fauna will be capable of passing through the perimeter in order to eat our eyeballs or crawl down our throats and consume us from the inside out,'" Noburi offered. "'However, the chance is non-zero, so it would be wise for each of us to update the others on our preferences regarding burial or cremation if those preferences have changed recently.'"

"Be nice, you two," Akane said with a laugh. "Yes, they're a little gloomy, but—"

"Ahoy the tower!" called a voice from below them and to the left. "Leaf courier approaching with orders!"

The team was instantly on their feet, crowding to the edge of the Air Dome and looking down. Hazō felt a moment of dull surprise to find himself wearing his gauntlets; his hands had pulled them on automatically without his brain needing to be involved at all. On the other hand, he was completely unsurprised to notice that Noburi had his Water Whip active.

A young woman climbed into sight, skywalking upwards as though jogging up a shallow incline. She was frighteningly young to Hazō's heavily-mileaged eyes, but she wore the uniform of a Leaf genin with the blue cloth of a messenger tied around her upper arm.

"Red bird, blue river," Hazō called out, offering the challenge the guards had issued them when they handed Goda over.

"Ash, water, and fire," the possibly-an-Academy-student (?!) replied with a sunny tone. "Wow, this is amazing! I've only been to one other skytower so far and boy these things are riff. You guys are so lucky to get to be up here—whoa, were you camping up here? Oh, wow, that is utterly riff!"

Hazō blinked. "Riff?"

The girl grinned. "Yeah, riff. I wish they'd let me sleep up this high!" She turned, hands on her hips as she looked out over the map-like expanse of the Elemental Nations far below. "This is way beyond riff. This is completely shattered!"

The three teammates looked at each other.

"This is what all our sensei used to feel like," Hazō observed wonderingly.

Akane laughed. "Excuse me, young lady. I believe you said you had orders for us?"

The toddler dressed as a ninja jumped guiltily and turned to face them. "Right, sorry! Like I said, they don't generally let us up this high but I was the one on messenger duty when Lord Hokage needed the message run—I mean it's not like he gave me the message personally because wow would that be completely shattered!—but anyway, he gave it to his secretary who gave it to the deskmaster who gave it to me and now I'm giving it to you!"

At Hazō's elbow, Noburi choked a laugh down into a cough and allowed his Water Whip to dissolve.

The little girl in front of them drew herself up to a position of attention, hands folded neatly behind her and eyes straight ahead. The words came out in a fast patter, each with the exact intonation that had been trained into all three of the team back during their long-gone Academy days.

"Orders from Lord Hokage actual to mission team designate 'Rockfall 2', deliver soonest. Orders are as follows: Team Rockfall 2 is to report to the Hokage's office for in-person debrief—And wow, that is so shattered! You guys must be seriously tapped!...um, where was I? Oh, yeah: For in-person debrief. After reporting, team will have the remainder of the day to resupply, and then Rockfall 2 is to reunite with Rockfall 1 at maximum urgency consistent with safety and OPSEC."