If You Die, I'm Going to Kill You [Kureno, Rin, and Asuka]
[[Takes place approx. 6 hours after Rin and Kureno leave Konoha and approx. 1 hour after the fight between Asuka and Sasorzia.]]
Ninja are not fired. They are either dismissed, retired, or assassinated depending on the situation.
Kureno was betting on Tsurude killing him.
There were two thoughts racing through Kureno's mind as he whipped through the landscape, and stopping for rest was certainly not one of them. One of the two thoughts was clearly his brain talking to him, kindly informing him that he was going insane. He had just abandoned a mission. He had never abandoned a mission before, especially one he'd put effort into being a part of. That mission had been his golden chance to get more information on Kabumi and how to better rid himself the village of her torment, and he had just turned his back on it. Why? Because of an overly-worried monk, a silly, panicked medic-nin, and this incessant bad feeling that had been twisting knots in him since this morning. There was absolutely nothing but worry and fear driving his actions right now.
'Crazy,' his mind continuously lectured. 'This is completely irrational and insane. You are behaving like a lunatic!'
The other half of his thoughts were much more simple and repetitive, consumed with only three words.
'Please be safe.'
...Yes, he was feeling more and more certain now...
Definitely assassination.
Rin was not panicking and he was not being silly; he was the opposite of those two things because this right here? This was what he was born to do with his life. This was why he put so much into learning to move so fast; this was why he spent his time wrist deep in people's insides and this was why he didn't hate himself as much as he could when he had to kill somebody. Rescue missions, that was him. He could practically feel when they were on the cards (official or not) and they were what he did best. You had to be calm, serious and so tenacious it defied comprehension. You had to blank most of your emotions and keep your eyes and mind clear. Rin could only do that at times like these; it was when he was at his best.
Right now, focusing on something besides his own heart was a spectacular relief. Only something as serious as this could cancel out the doubt and ache he'd been trapped with ever since Kakami walked out on him.
All the same, if they found Asuka unharmed at the end of this run he was going to smack her upside the head. How many frigging times had he been through this run? How many cold corpses had he found at the end? How many friends and relatives had he lied to, telling them the body on their hands hadn't suffered very much, since that was the only consolation they could have because it wasn't as if they had died for anything more than a lapse in their judgement?
He'd given her those serums in good faith; if it turned out he'd given her a free-pass to get herself senselessly murdered he would never forgive either of them.
As he darted in a blur through the trees over the border he had a flicker of wonder at how well Kureno was keeping up. Rin trained for this; knew how to efficiently ration his energy to each and every muscle down to his toes so that he could be useful at the other end and on the way back... he knew Kureno didn't. But he was moving just as fast; and suddenly Rin remembered something Asuka had said... "don't need Kureno jealous of you, too."
Oh that was it, he was going to give her hell for this. Somehow finding a way to push themselves even harder, the two jounin barely let the soles of their sandals hit the Tenchi Bridge as they entered the zone Asuka had been headed for.
As they crossed the bridge, it was clear that damage had been done to the far side - a large chunk of the ravine had been carved away, fallen down the slope and piling up many meters below. It couldn't have happened too long ago, as scree still tumbled off the edge in slow rivulets, but it was recent enough that there was still a haze and taste of dust in the air.
The ravine was quickly left behind, and they plunged into the forest on the other side. Dimly, over the sound of the wind rushing past, was the sound of crows, and swift glances showed them roosting in the boughs of the trees and circling high over head - a whole flock, noisily clamoring over something unseen. Unseen, at least, until the forest suddenly broke open into an unexpected clearing.
The dread that Kureno had been keeping in a well-maintained, rationalized ball suddenly broke at the sight of the ravine, spilling its dark thoughts into his gut where it began seeping throughout the rest of his body. 'Oh god, there was a confrontation. Please don't let her have fought alone...'
There was evidence that it couldn't have started too long ago, meaning perhaps there was a chance they could still aid or intervene. But... 'Oh god, it's too quiet.'
Of course this thought was almost immediately followed by the calls of birds. That was almost worst than the quiet. Wild animals never stuck around a shinobi battle, not one where the blood lust auras alone would have spooked them. And the crows were the worst sight yet, even worse than the level of destruction they passed. Crows meant the fight was over. Crows meant there was a loser. Crows meant--
The trees suddenly disappeared and gave way to the scent of blood.
'.............oh god...........'
Rule No. 1 to Entering a Finished Battleground: Check for traps or signs of the enemy. Unused traps from the battle can still spring, or there may be new ones. If your comrade has fallen, the enemy may still be capable of fighting and could be monitoring the area. A comrade's body may be the bait used by the surviving enemy.
Kureno couldn't remember telling his feet to start moving, but he didn't think to stop them as he ran forward, automatically stepping over and past logs, branches, stumps, and bodies. (Bodies...? They weren't Asuka, they could wait.) He actually wasn't thinking much of anything at the moment. He was too scared to.
The crows scattered in a loud, noisy panic of caws and feathers, and for a while all that echoed in Kureno's ears was the sound of wings beating against body and wind.
Rule No 2. to Entering a Finished Battleground: Check for survivors.
He'd stopped three feet from her, afraid to move any further. She was so still... He should be calling her name, checking her pulse, stopping the bleeding, finding the damn owner of that damn sword sticking through her chest.
But he couldn't move. Because if she didn't answer him...if he couldn't feel her heartbeat under his fingertips...if there was nothing more for her to bleed...
Kureno stood in place, staring and waiting for something he didn't know the name of, hardly registering Rin who rushed past him, crossing the three feet he couldn't.
All around them the forest was cleared to dirt and roots, and the hundreds of bodies splayed across the scrubbed ground under the midday sun would've been enough to rank this as one of the worst battlefields Rin had ever seen... save for the smell. There wasn't one, not really, not enough of one for this many bodies in this much heat. All his senses still led him right to where the disappointed crows were stalking, right past Kureno's frozen shape, hands moving before his mind let it get all the way through that this silent body, bloody faced and with a blade in her chest, was Asuka.
"Asuka?" he called, dropping down next to the pile of bodies and stabbing a syringe into her leg before bothering to hear if she could answer or even if she was still alive. No response, but his fingers found a thread of a pulse and his eyes spotted a glitter of fresh blood around the blade of the katana. He flipped a kunai into his hand and started quickly cutting her armour straps off, the jutsu and procedures he would need accumulating and ordering themselves in his head as he spotted more and more of her injuries. The most serious wasn't the katana blade, it was the source of the bleeding in her abdomen he could feel on his fingers as he ran his hands over her, searching for wounds.
"Kureno?" he called, cutting through Asuka's clothes fast as he could in search of the second unblocked puncture. "Kureno! Are we secured?"
There was no response at first. Kureno hardly realized he'd suddenly focused himself entirely on waiting for Asuka to respond to Rin that he forgot to himself. It was like time had stopped and it wouldn't start again until Asuka was okay. He couldn't move until she moved; he couldn't reply until she replied; he couldn't be okay until she...
Another bark of his name and something within him rebelling at his uselessness snapped him back--forced his time to move again. The effect of it still left him rather dazed, and his eyes didn't quite look directly into Rin when they raised. (There were more bodies piled here. How had he missed them before?) The other man was talking to him. (Why did he feel so shaky?) Kureno searched for his voice and when it came out, it sounded like he'd only found half of it.
"...what?"
Holy gods, of all the people, of all the times-- all that speed they needed to get this far, this fast and Kureno had stopped bloody moving! Rin forced himself to look up from Asuka for the second it took to shoot Kureno quite possibly the most furious look that had ever crossed his face. They didn't have time for this! Asuka didn't have time for this! The medic's face was still set impassive, same as always at this stage in the game because you never risked the patient seeing what was really on your mind, but his eyes were practically burning with impatience and frustration for the second they looked to the man clearly in shock, still standing quite still about three feet away.
"Secure the site, Kureno!" he demanded. "I've got to operate on her right here, right now, so secure the site! Go!"
If any imagery could be an equivalent to a hard, stinging slap across the face, the anger in Rin's eyes was it. And people said he got scary when pissed off, but Rin... Rin was....was....saying something. What was he saying?
'Secure the...?'
Rule No. 1 to Entering a Finished Battleground...
'....oh. OH.' What the hell was he doing?!
Rin was still alive. He was still alive. And if Rin said he needed to operate, that meant Asuka was still alive, or at least had a fighting chance. There was no way in hell Kureno was going to let them miss that chance. He wasn't a medic, he couldn't save Asuka. But Rin could, and if nothing else Kureno could protect Rin.
A more familiar instinct--and one much more welcome than that awful numbness--slipped back into Kureno as he forced himself to look away from Asuka. (Nothing he could do there. His job was elsewhere now. Just for now. He'd see her again. She owed him a beer.) His awareness stretched and a kunai found its way into his hand. The first target to assess was simple as the unmoving body wrapped in an Akatsuki coat only lay another few feet away. (Jeez, how had he not let himself see that and react to it first? It was the most obvious danger!) Putting himself as much as possible between the Akatsuki and Rin and Asuka, Kureno carefully approached, reflexes ready as he reached out and pulled down the high collar obtruding some of the face.
Sasoriza.
The familiarity of her face came back to him, like something from a bad dream never quite forgotten. That mess of red hair over cold, teal eyes that watched you with confidence in their dominion over the situation. The last face he saw before waking up two days later in a hospital bed was here now, staring back. Dead. Or looking very dead. It was impossible to be too careful, so Kureno reached out to check for a pulse.
...What the heck was this? It felt a little like skin on the surface but it was too hard underneath to really be... He opened her coat further to check her injuries. There was a sword running straight through her heart. At least...he was sure that's where the heart was supposed to be. It was hard to tell on a puppet.
Good god, she had actually turned herself into a puppet... That just...went beyond anything he'd ever...
They would have to bring the body back. This kind of jutsu, whatever it was, could become valuable research for the village. He'd store it later, after checking the grounds further. Standing back up, Kureno couldn't sense any other threats, or even any other living things in the area other than the crows (damn birds), but his eyes were opened to re-take in the scene of devastation that he'd somehow overlooked just minutes before.
Gods, had this really only been an Akatsuki battle? It reminded him more of a scene from the war, broken forests and upturned earth, bodies strewn about and piled, litters of tools and metal... Asuka had beaten them all on her own? ...Or perhaps she hadn't been alone like he'd hoped, in which case, there could be other members of her team still here somewhere! It would be helpful if Asuka were awake to tell them but she likely wouldn't wake up for a while. He had to find the others and make sure once and for all that the area really was safe.
"Rin, I'm going to scout for any others." His voice was much steadier now that he had something else to focus on--now that he knew there was something he could do. "If Asuka wakes up, ask her where her team is. I'll be in calling distance."
Rin was distantly relieved that Kureno was doing his job at last, but he couldn't spare more than a nod for his attentions because he'd found the second wound to Asuka's abdomen which had caused the majority of the bleeding. Swearing quietly under his breath he cut at her armour until only the front plate remained, with the katana still skewering it. Then he tore away her black shirt until it lay under her, still pinned with the katana against a puppet's torso. Blood was both slick and tacky all over his hands now, but it made no difference to the medic preparing what he could for what he was planning lightning fast in his head. He cupped his chakra-lit hand over the seeping hole (about two fingerwidths thick) in Asuka's side and concentrated, assessing the injury.
The puncture wound had nicked her kidney, her intestines and missed skewering her liver by the grace of god but it'd still abraised it... which should have been enough to trigger fatal blood loss. Rin could only think of one reason why she hadn't bled out; and that was that the blood wasn't getting very quickly to the area any longer. His fingers probed very gently in the wound, and he saw glots of red on the distinctly coloured organ. The second the fragile blood clots around the abrasion broke she'd bleed to death in a minute. The only reason he could think of that the blood had slowed to such a trickle was the blockage action of the katana's placement in her chest.
Insanely, it seemed several glaring flukes of luck - not least of which was the katana's placement - had kept her alive, but not for much longer. Keeping Asuka alive and killing her some other way were the same action in this case, but there wasn't time or resources to deal with one injury and then the other.
Okay. Multitasking. Let's go.
"Kureno! I need hands!" Rin yelled, lifting his own to pull his vest off and unzipping the pockets so that the meds and weapons fell into a pile on the dirt-scrabble ground. He moved a few feet away from the pile and tossed it down open, closest thing a stretcher they were gonna manage here. Most of Asuka's clothes were already cut away, though Rin suspected her bindings were doing as much as anything to hold that katana in such a mindbogglingly convenient position so he wasn't gonna move them til the last moment.
There was blood all over his hands, all over Asuka's body, all over the ground and all over his friend's face, but she wasn't dead. And she wasn't going to die either. She wasn't. Rin scrambled over the ground, grabbed the clouded cloak from whoever was lying nearby and tore it off the body, spinning it into a roll of cloth and tucking that at the top of where his vest was laid out as he heard Kureno's footsteps return.
Kureno didn't listen half as much to what Rin said as he did to merely respond to the sound of Rin's raised voice. Everything was dropped and forgotten in favor of lending speed to his return.
The sight of so much blood really shouldn't faze him like this did. (It was everywhere. Was she really still alive?) It probably would have helped if he stopped thinking so hard about it being Asuka's blood. He couldn't afford to stand around being as helpless as he felt. Asuka couldn't afford it. He needed to stop thinking so damn hard about who this was and concentrate more on what needed to be done. Just needed to shut off what he was feeling and start acting and stop thinking, stop dreading, stop thinking so hard it was going to make him sick, just...
'Stop,' he demanded of himself, calling upon a lifetime of discipline in an instant. 'There will be time later, not now. It doesn't matter what happens in the next few minutes, so long as you're doing something. Now act, Yuuhi.'
The focus that entered his eyes acted almost something like a gloss across them, but it was there nonetheless and two seconds after returning was he looking to Rin. "Tell me what to do," he said. .....Or rather, would have said, but Rin was already barking out instructions and there was nothing more for Kureno after that save obedience.
Rin was indeed telling Kureno what to do, because there was not a particularly high chance of success for what he was going to try and it was all going to depend on Kureno following instructions exactly and using his common sense. The medic had faith in him though, and not without reason.
"Empty out your vest and open it up, line the lower edge with the lower edge of mine, that's where we'll operate," he instructed, still checking the rest of Asuka's body for injuries and judging the likelihood of her wakening up during the procedures. "Stitch them together with shuriken wire and we'll put poles through the arms so we can stretcher her out."
One way or the other, but times like this was when Rin's optimism meant the most: once he pulled this off they had to run home. The medic prepped two syringes and set them to the side, then looked up at Kureno. "I'm gonna tell you what to do and you're gonna do it, Kureno. We can pull this off, but it'll be rough. Understand me?"
"Got it." Pockets were rapidly emptied, scrolls and tools tossed in a pile to the side, and his jacket nearly torn off as he hurried to set things together as told. His fingers moved nimbly with the wire, likely thanks to him managing to detach himself from the situation. (...A little. Remembering that this was for saving Asuka helped motivate his focus.)
He didn't ask Rin what the plan was for a few reasons. The first and most obvious being that they didn't have time, the second being that Kureno wasn't of the knowledge to offer the kind of second opinion that would actually be useful in this situation. This was Rin's field of expertise and Kureno had no other choice but to trust him completely.
...Really wasn't that hard to do.
"Done!" he barked as he tied off the last stitch, turning and ready to do whatever next was asked of him.
Rin nodded, finally having begun molding and channelling the very specific chakras he was going to use to get this done. Healing one such wound was bad enough, but healing two simultaneously... well, he'd just have to wing it. A small familiar beat in his chest told him Asuka would appreciate that. He didn't let the chakra spark over his hands yet, there was more to do before he made the attempt, not least of which was getting Kureno ready.
"Get on her other side," he muttered, glancing back to judge the distance to their makeshift operating table. There wasn't time to explain the procedure to him, even though Rin wished he could - it'd make it easier for him to understand. All he could tell him was how to double as his extra pair of hands and eyes. "When I say, put your palm flat over this and apply tight pressure," he hovered his own hand over her punctured abdomen, still seeping blood thicker by the moment. "And when I pull this katana out, get your hand round her back and press hard against the exit wound. We're gonna lift her the second it's out, onto stretcher, and then I'll start."
He looked up to Kureno's face, brown eyes probably clearer than most people ever saw them. He could do this, he had to do this, both of them... all of them needed him to, so he would. "Kureno, there's two syringes by the stretcher. Small one's for her if she wakes up. Big one's for me if I start passing out. S'up to you to administer it if it comes to it, okay?"
The other jounin nodded wordlessly and complied. Those were the only things he could do. He'd picked up a while ago that he was merely serving right now as an extra body to help; like a shadow clone acting under someone else's orders. Control over his movements didn't belong to him now, they were for Rin to decide. It was easy enough to accept and adjust to, not just for Asuka's sake but because it was a familiar way to have his life run.
"A tool does not complain, it does not cry, it does not desire to be or accomplish anything more than it was designed for. It exists to fulfill its purpose as designated to it by its master. ...A ninja is a tool for their village."
.......Funny. It was something he applied so easily to himself. But looking down at Asuka and the blood that stained her uniform and smeared across the tattoo on her shoulder... somehow he just couldn't believe it. Not for her. This was not a tool beneath his hands, this was a human; a woman. One that he...
Rin said something again. Looking up into the medic's eyes, he nodded firmly. "Ready."
Well thank the gods that glazed look was off his face. Rin didn't need a robot, he needed somebody who'd think, and now he had him. Closing his eyes for the briefest moment, he offered a silent plea to everybody listening that this worked, and then got to his feet. He tugged a third syringe out his pocket, uncapped it and held it in his teeth as he didn't give anybody time to worry about it and smoothly pulled the katana right out of Asuka's chest along the path it had taken in. As expected, blood that had been held back spurted up out the wound as he tossed the blade over his shoulder and away, and he dropped back to his knees, injected the blood pill solution straight into the artery that led through her undamaged kidney, and slammed one hand down over the raggedly spurting wound and slid the other around to the other side of the momentarily-to-be-pouring wound through her lower back.
"Got it," he whispered, gritting his teeth and blinking away some of the blood that'd hit his face. "Up we go, c'mon!"
And then they were up and moving, in a moment Asuka was lying flat with her head elevated to keep her from choking if she came to. Which Rin prayed she wouldn't as he slammed his hand hard against her perforated breast bone and extended a bright flash of healing chakra down into her chest, delicately and desperately working against the flow of blood through the severed vessels to seal them and to force healing in the surrounding tissue. At the same moment his other hand was under her back, with his fingers inside the wound to directly apply chakra to the injured paths on her liver and force healing as the blood clots fell away and it began bleeding in earnest.
His eyes falling closed in concentration and energy running for different purposes down each arm, into each tiny chakra point in his hands, Rin held his breath and hoped he'd manage to seal up the main points of blood loss before the injection he'd given her forced her marrow to start replenishing what she'd lost.
If he didn't, if he wasn't fast and thorough enough, there was no chance at all.
Unfortunately for all three of them, Asuka started coming around the moment the sword was pulled out.
The sword hadn't just managed to block the flow of blood; it had also made certain she could continue to breathe, ironically enough. Blood had been trickling into her chest cavity the whole time, but the sudden new flow of blood needed to go somewhere, and if hands were keeping it from easily exiting the body...
The sudden inability to breathe - not just a thin whisper of air that had barely moved her chest, but no way to inhale at all - had her choking and spluttering in an instant. Blood bubbled from both her mouth and nose as she (less than half-consciously; her eyes were hardly open) fought to bring up what was crowding her lungs, weakly fighting back against the hands that were holding her down. Thankfully her hands were free of weapons (one tekko had not been in evidence, but the other had slid from her hand as they moved her), or her movements might have caused more trouble. As it was, one hand ended up around Kureno's wrist (there was no strength in her grip), the elbow of the other arm and her heels scrabbling in the dirt in an automatic attempt to curl up on her side and cough her lungs up.
"On her side!" Rin hissed, shifting his leg out to brace against her hip and ribcage so he could roll her over to face him, his arm crossing over her raised side at a painfully awkward angle to keep his position chakra-suturing her liver. His other knee he brought down on her wrist, pinning her flailing hand as he kept trying to work, suddenly feeling a stab of dizziness at the physical movement that made his head sway. Oh... there was a reason nobody tried to do this...
"Goddamnit you're inconvenient, Asuka!" he yelled at her, his voice startlingly weak suddenly, but trying to let her hear at least that it was him. She kept weakly struggling and he could barely keep staunching the flow from her chest as her elbow connected sharply with his ribs. "Ow! Don't make me come over there!" He could barely concentrate, he was only a third of the way done, if that, somebody had to make her stop.
Ironically enough, seeing her coughing and choking on her own blood was one of the more relieving sights to Kureno, simply because it was the first real sign from her that she was alive; that her body was still struggling to live. It was all the proof he needed to maintain hope.
The relief didn't last long however, as it became clear this movement he'd been so thankful for was making things worse. He tried to grab her other arm (her other still holding his wrist) and keep her legs from coming up and kneeing Rin, almost having to pin his weight against her back to keep her still and balanced on Rin's lap. His head came down to her ear (just briefly) to loudly whisper in it.
"Calm down, Asuka." His voice was significantly more calm than Rin's but no less urgent. Rin couldn't afford to be distracted by Asuka's squirming; Asuka couldn't afford to have Rin distracted, and neither could he. He turned his head over his shoulder and spotted the two needles Rin had mentioned earlier.
In the back of his mind, he realized that perhaps he should be vaguely horrified by the amount of her blood that he saw on his hands when he reached out to grab the smaller syringe. But there was still no time for that. There would be time for things later. Later. There would be a later.
He pulled the cap off with his teeth, spitting it aside and making sure he was injecting it properly and that Rin wasn't protesting to where he stuck it. "Sorry," he murmured, looking up to watch her face. "I've gotta put you out now. But you'll wake up again. ...Promise."
Though her struggles didn't cease entirely, they did mostly stop once she was on her side - the blood no longer pooling in the way of her breathing and allowing her to cough more of it up. The amount she was bringing up would have been appalling, if not for the fact that more of it was pouring out elsewhere.
The last of her struggles ended about ten seconds after she'd been stuck with the needle; she went limp almost all at once, a cough even ending half-way and turning into thready, shallow gasps for breath, blood still leaking from her nose and pale lips. She was almost certainly too far gone to have heard a word either of the men said, but her eyes half-opened all the same, a blind, unfocused glance cast side-ways to both of them, before fluttering closed again.
Kureno injected the paralytic, Asuka stopped moving and kept breathing, they rolled her onto her back again, and Rin kept working. Her liver was healed best he could manage, and he had to change the chakra in his left hand to suit repairing the gash in her intestines while his other hand pressed down and began drawing the blood out her lungs and diffusing it into the vessels they supplied with air.
There was a minute of careful silence while he got all of this done, not allowing himself to think of anything else up to an including his own name, when suddenly she started to fibrulate. Chest bucking once, out of anyone's control, and pulse hammering unevenly around Rin's fingers.
No! No, damnit no! He crushed his eyes closed tight as he could, bit his lip so hard he tasted his own blood, and dropped suddenly into a kind of urgent clarity that lived somewhere inside him he could never find on his own. The chakra around his hands began to tinge more blue than green, everything he was doing began to happen even faster.
For the strangest reason he could feel the anger and repulsion Kakami had aimed at him just hours ago... because he was such a medical genius he could do the unthinkable. And it made him reach even deeper inside himself, because he'd do this too. He'd invent a whole new freaking medical science right here, right now if he had to, because he could, because he'd been wrong.
He could be and should be pushed. His was to heal or die trying, and since nothing was going to kill him here there was only one option.
Rin tore his hand away from the much-healed hole in her back, laid his palm swiftly over Asuka's heart and with a moment's minor effort stopped it dead. The blood slowed and stilled in her veins, giving him precious moments to heal without her heart spasming and losing what little blood was left.
"Kureno, count me a minute," he ordered, getting back to work - his eyes flicking for a moment to the syringe meant for him, the one containing adrenaline. The one he was going to need.
'1...2...3...4...'
Something was wrong. Something was going wrong. Had Asuka's moving worsened her injuries? He wouldn't be surprised, but by how much? Rin could still fix it right? ...Of course Rin could, Kureno could see it by the look in his eyes when he managed to look away from Asuka. Rin had enough determination and skill for this, and Kureno had enough hope. But...still...
Something was wrong.
'...19...20...21...22...'
He took deep, even breaths to keep himself calm. The inner urgency to take care of Asuka now had him wanting to speed up the seconds in his mind, but Rin needed a minute and clearly had too much on his mind if he couldn't count one out himself. It was a job so simple it would have felt silly taking it so seriously in another situation. But right now it was all Kureno had to hold onto, to keep himself grounded while at the same time keeping his head above the sea of panic that was churning just under the surface of his skin.
Because he just realized Rin had stopped Asuka's heart.
'...35...36...37...38...'
Calm. Even. Seconds. Think about seconds.
Steady. Constant. Rhythmic. Do not lose the rhythm.
Do not panic. Do not lose control. Do not lose her. Do not fail her.
Do not fail.
Failure is unacceptable.
Calm. Even. Seconds.
'...49...50...51...'
Her breathing stopped.
'.........55...56...dammit, Asuka, if you let it end like this I'll never forgive you...
His voice came out surprisingly steady and clear and for a moment he doubted it was his own.
"One minute."
And that was it.
"Syringe," he hissed, holding out his plain and bloody hand. His head was starting to swim and his eyes were starting to ache and for an odd reason he felt cold. He'd been right, trying to perform two surgeries at once didn't take twice the energy, it took over quadruple. Still, he had to stop now. There wasn't any point continuing.
The plastic barrel of the syringe was put in his hand, he tugged the cap off the three inch needle and looked down at Asuka's unmoving body. Her lips had started to turn colour under the blood. Rin had stopped her heartbeat with a small, perfect geture of chakra in her muscle; but starting an organ like that again, massaging it back to movement and life... he'd known when he did it there was no way enough time was left for that.
So. Here went nothing.
Rin flipped the syringe, judged the positioning of her ribs and stabbed it downwards like a dart. The needle pierced through breast, muscle and tissue to deliver an adrenaline shot directly to her heart. He withdrew the needle just as her body began to convulse and held his hands away, only able to watch.
And after a few short seconds she stopped; and Rin put his fingers to her pulse and his ear to her airways. Faint but present pulse: shallow even breaths. And not hardly a drop of blood had come from anywhere as she'd convulsed. His seaming and healing had worked. It was done.
Rin looked up from Asuka's face to Kureno's and tried to smile... but he could barely tell where Kureno was suddenly. All the same...
... "She's gonna kill me for that when she wakes up."
Kureno hadn't needed to wonder what the large syringe had contained, he remembered it from bloodier times. He wasn't one to flinch at needles but this one always made his skin crawl involuntarily. He was thinking to himself how he'd have to really commend Rin later for being so willing to have that thing stuck into himself when the stripe-cheeked medic turned it and plunged it into Asuka's heart.
He'd never admit it in a hundred years but he winced and looked away just before it went in.
Kureno had some basic medical comprehension--perhaps a little more than the average shinobi--but what was happening here fell far outside his realm of knowledge. He was useless here except for where Rin placed him, and when Asuka's body began shaking violently, all he could do was hold her loosely and keep her from awkwardly falling off Rin's knees. Thena few seconds more as the other man checked her vitals.
In that instant, Kureno was sure it was his heart that stopped beating, and he was the one who didn't breathe.
"She's gonna kill me for that when she wakes up."
Wakes up. That meant...she was okay. She was going to be okay. .'...Oh gods, she's going to be okay.'
The relief washed down and throughout him, like standing under a waterfall. It was a sudden and intense sensation that washed you clean and kept you rooted to the ground under a pressure of humility. His fingers dug a little tighter where they held her, and for a few fleeting moments he didn't care that this feeling was completely raw and evident on his face. He was suddenly exhausted from all the dread and worry and fear that had been eating up his nerves that he was too tired to put effort into hiding things like Rin was falling over.
Wait. ...Rin was really falling over.
With a sudden jolt, Kureno reached forward and caught the medic with his free arm, bringing the man in to lean against his shoulder. A little difficult to do actually with Asuka still lying between them. That couldn't be good for the other man's back. "Rin! Are you okay?!"
Rin didn't feel okay by any stretch of the imagination, his insides felt cold and his eyes were shut tight to keep out the light and the spinning and whatever else was dizzying him as his body tried to balance what he'd distressed of his chakra systems. He'd used too much, and now he didn't have anything to get him back on his feet so he was utterly defenceless. But he couldn't say that, not ever, because he was still scared that his weakened stamina would lose him his job and only Kakami knew how bad it could get. He could barely feel where his forehead was resting, just that it was steady. Steady was good.
"m'fine," he mumbled automatically, like always. "Just... a minute for it to stop spinning."
His fingers still rested against Asuka's neck, still had her pulse, and that's where he put his attention. It was going to stabilize, he could just feel it... but until it did...
"We've got to get her home," he said quietly, eyes still closed and not willing to admit that there wasn't much chance of him so much as standing up for the next five minutes.
Kureno's eyes narrowed as he thought over the new situation. Rin was spent in a more real way then he himself was. Asuka may not have been bleeding out anymore but she did need to be taken to a proper facilitiy where the Hokage himself could better her condition. And Kureno still needed to store Sasoriza's body, and finish his search for any of Asuka's team in the area. ...He was beginning to hope they weren't here, because if they were the only thing that should have kept them from showing themselves by now was some kind of serious injury. An injury they no longer had a medic for.
Gods he'd been so selfish; as a rule of thumb subordinates were to come first in the aftermath. He looked back down to Rin who still looked like he was fluttering between consciousness and passing out.
"I need seven minutes to finish the sweep of the area, Rin. Can you and Asuka hold out that long?"
Rin actually laughed weakly, he usually got a bit giddy when he was headed for a burn-out, but he wasn't there yet. He managed to lean back and blinked hard, finding Kureno's face. Oh good, he was being serious. Kureno was always serious enough for two or three people, probably a good thing right now.
"Don't know 'bout me, but you know Asuka's tougher than that," he said, shifting slowly and as carefully as he could manage to he got Asuka settled flat on the stretcher. "Go do your... stuff. I'll get her ready for heading home." Maybe take a soldier pill too... if he could find them.
Kureno would have produced some soldier pills himself already if he hadn't emptied them out of his vest and left them on the ground about four feet away behind him. Balancing Asuka and Rin hadn't put him in a good position to reach for the medicine without dropping one of them. As soon as Rin moved back however, he placed Asuka down and turned for them.
His shirt and some of his pants were damp and sticky with blood, and he was pretty sure he felt some on his face as well. He probably didn't look as bad as either Asuka or Rin, but this wasn't any sort of time for vanity. He'd just have to not think about it for a while--long enough to get home.
He popped a pill in his mouth, grinding it up while he knelt and handed the small pouch containing the rest to Rin (who didn't look in any condition to catch them if they were tossed to him). "Soldier pills," he told him, then stood. "I'll be back. Holler if you need me."
Putting a kunai back in his hand and making sure he secured everything he'd need from the pile of his vest's contents, Kureno darted off.
Seven minutes seemed to pass by in slow motion for Rin and Asuka as he took half a soldier pill, resolving to take the other half just as they got ready to go. Too strong a dose too soon would hurt him more than help just now, and he had to be back on the ball for transporting Asuka home. As the stimulant got his body's energy back to an artificial level of acceptability he managed to settle Asuka better and used bandages to bind and staunch her major wounds and control where her dangerously small volume of blood would flow. The paralytic would help with that, but the adrenaline on top of that might cause complications so he'd have to keep an eye on it.
He paused for a few minutes, feeling his body acclimatize to everything going on within it, and was relieved as the dizziness and light-headedness he'd been feeling began to fade away. He really had done a stupid thing, but it'd worked so he wasn't going to apologize for it. (Even if it hadn't, he wouldn't have said sorry for the attempt either) Rin just couldn't believe how lucky the whole situation had been. Almost as if everything had happened just so they'd be able to save her.
Once Rin felt up to moving again he realized that actually keeping her on the stretcher was going to be another matter entirely. He looked around and noted that a few of the... uhm... hundred puppets were armed with spears. Rin wrested a pair out of the dead hands, used a kunai to cut off the metal tips and slipped them through the sleeve-holes of their stitched vests to Asuka's either side. Then he pulled his bloodied turtleneck off his back, noticing with a wince that the white t-shirt he had on underneath showed the blood soaked through to it pretty horrifically. Still, this was the best way to do it without a full medical squad on hand. Rin had carried people back this way before.
He put the navy shirt over Asuka's much smaller torso, the arms level with below her breasts so he had access to that injury, and let the sleeves lie to either side. He'd tie them under the stretcher once it was up off the ground. Then he loosely bound her ankles to the spear shafts with what was left of the bandages and let himself sit beside her, head bowed to keep the fading dizziness down.
"You'll be home soon, Asuka," he told her, not caring that she couldn't hear him, and glancing to her face and reaching over to gently move some hair from her cheek. "It'll be alright. This time I get to return the favour, how about that?" He sighed and smiled a little, reaching over to dab the blood away from her mouth and nose best he could. "You gave Kureno a turn, by the way. Which was mean."
The sweep of the area really only took Kureno a little over five minutes, although that wasn't the end of his job. Still, in the search he accomplished, he couldn't find any signs of her team members having been involved in this battle. This was both relieving and...highly unsettling. For if they weren't here, then where could they be? Fighting Sasoriza's partner perhaps? If that were true, they must have been far from here as even his long-range senses couldn't detect any strong or raised chakra. But the fact of the matter remained that they weren't here, and if Asuka had a radio on her, they were likely outside of range.
Returning to the spot of discovery, Kureno stopped at Sasoriza's body and examined it closely for a moment. "I can't find any of Asuka's team but it looks like they weren't even here," he told Rin as he worked. A puppet's body was inorganic, but this one had a small exception. After pulling out the katana, the man had to admit he could identify which part of the body that was in the container, but no doubt someone back home could. He reached into his belt where he'd tucked one of the scrolls he'd pulled from his vest earlier, unfurling it next to the body. There was no time for ink, so the kunai sliced across the first two fingers of his hand and he began writing the proper markings along the paper. "If we don't run into them on the way back, another team will have to be sent to retrieve them." Five seals were placed on Sasoriza, one on each limb, one on her forehead, and one over the special compartment in her chest. Once the body was properly aligned with the markings on the scroll, Kureno's hands shot through a series of seals themselves before his palm slammed down on the puppet's abdomen and a second later the entire thing disappeared in a cloud of smoke, leaving a new large kanji on the paper where one hadn't been before. He used his chakra to rapidly roll the scroll back together and secured it safely away in his pouch as he walked back over to the others.
"Alright, let's head out." He paused, sparing a moment to look Asuka over again. Then he turned to his partner in this slapped-together rescue party. "Rin, I didn't find any signs of another Akatsuki member either, but they're known to always travel in pairs. Keep your guard up on our way home."
Rin nodded, and since the motion didn't make him dizzy nor sick he figured his body had done all the adjusting it needed to for him to pull his own weight (and half of Asuka's) and get her home. They lifted their makeshift stretcher, Rin balanced his end and tied the sleeves of his shirt on the underside of Asuka's weight and secured her, checked her pulse and pupils and with one final exhausted half-smile at Kureno the three of them began to make for home.
Gods only knew what reception they'd be in for, but at least Asuka would be around to catch it in the neck too.
Ninja are not fired. They are either dismissed, retired, or assassinated depending on the situation.
Kureno was betting on Tsurude killing him.
There were two thoughts racing through Kureno's mind as he whipped through the landscape, and stopping for rest was certainly not one of them. One of the two thoughts was clearly his brain talking to him, kindly informing him that he was going insane. He had just abandoned a mission. He had never abandoned a mission before, especially one he'd put effort into being a part of. That mission had been his golden chance to get more information on Kabumi and how to better rid himself the village of her torment, and he had just turned his back on it. Why? Because of an overly-worried monk, a silly, panicked medic-nin, and this incessant bad feeling that had been twisting knots in him since this morning. There was absolutely nothing but worry and fear driving his actions right now.
'Crazy,' his mind continuously lectured. 'This is completely irrational and insane. You are behaving like a lunatic!'
The other half of his thoughts were much more simple and repetitive, consumed with only three words.
'Please be safe.'
...Yes, he was feeling more and more certain now...
Definitely assassination.
Rin was not panicking and he was not being silly; he was the opposite of those two things because this right here? This was what he was born to do with his life. This was why he put so much into learning to move so fast; this was why he spent his time wrist deep in people's insides and this was why he didn't hate himself as much as he could when he had to kill somebody. Rescue missions, that was him. He could practically feel when they were on the cards (official or not) and they were what he did best. You had to be calm, serious and so tenacious it defied comprehension. You had to blank most of your emotions and keep your eyes and mind clear. Rin could only do that at times like these; it was when he was at his best.
Right now, focusing on something besides his own heart was a spectacular relief. Only something as serious as this could cancel out the doubt and ache he'd been trapped with ever since Kakami walked out on him.
All the same, if they found Asuka unharmed at the end of this run he was going to smack her upside the head. How many frigging times had he been through this run? How many cold corpses had he found at the end? How many friends and relatives had he lied to, telling them the body on their hands hadn't suffered very much, since that was the only consolation they could have because it wasn't as if they had died for anything more than a lapse in their judgement?
He'd given her those serums in good faith; if it turned out he'd given her a free-pass to get herself senselessly murdered he would never forgive either of them.
As he darted in a blur through the trees over the border he had a flicker of wonder at how well Kureno was keeping up. Rin trained for this; knew how to efficiently ration his energy to each and every muscle down to his toes so that he could be useful at the other end and on the way back... he knew Kureno didn't. But he was moving just as fast; and suddenly Rin remembered something Asuka had said... "don't need Kureno jealous of you, too."
Oh that was it, he was going to give her hell for this. Somehow finding a way to push themselves even harder, the two jounin barely let the soles of their sandals hit the Tenchi Bridge as they entered the zone Asuka had been headed for.
As they crossed the bridge, it was clear that damage had been done to the far side - a large chunk of the ravine had been carved away, fallen down the slope and piling up many meters below. It couldn't have happened too long ago, as scree still tumbled off the edge in slow rivulets, but it was recent enough that there was still a haze and taste of dust in the air.
The ravine was quickly left behind, and they plunged into the forest on the other side. Dimly, over the sound of the wind rushing past, was the sound of crows, and swift glances showed them roosting in the boughs of the trees and circling high over head - a whole flock, noisily clamoring over something unseen. Unseen, at least, until the forest suddenly broke open into an unexpected clearing.
The dread that Kureno had been keeping in a well-maintained, rationalized ball suddenly broke at the sight of the ravine, spilling its dark thoughts into his gut where it began seeping throughout the rest of his body. 'Oh god, there was a confrontation. Please don't let her have fought alone...'
There was evidence that it couldn't have started too long ago, meaning perhaps there was a chance they could still aid or intervene. But... 'Oh god, it's too quiet.'
Of course this thought was almost immediately followed by the calls of birds. That was almost worst than the quiet. Wild animals never stuck around a shinobi battle, not one where the blood lust auras alone would have spooked them. And the crows were the worst sight yet, even worse than the level of destruction they passed. Crows meant the fight was over. Crows meant there was a loser. Crows meant--
The trees suddenly disappeared and gave way to the scent of blood.
'.............oh god...........'
Rule No. 1 to Entering a Finished Battleground: Check for traps or signs of the enemy. Unused traps from the battle can still spring, or there may be new ones. If your comrade has fallen, the enemy may still be capable of fighting and could be monitoring the area. A comrade's body may be the bait used by the surviving enemy.
Kureno couldn't remember telling his feet to start moving, but he didn't think to stop them as he ran forward, automatically stepping over and past logs, branches, stumps, and bodies. (Bodies...? They weren't Asuka, they could wait.) He actually wasn't thinking much of anything at the moment. He was too scared to.
The crows scattered in a loud, noisy panic of caws and feathers, and for a while all that echoed in Kureno's ears was the sound of wings beating against body and wind.
Rule No 2. to Entering a Finished Battleground: Check for survivors.
He'd stopped three feet from her, afraid to move any further. She was so still... He should be calling her name, checking her pulse, stopping the bleeding, finding the damn owner of that damn sword sticking through her chest.
But he couldn't move. Because if she didn't answer him...if he couldn't feel her heartbeat under his fingertips...if there was nothing more for her to bleed...
Kureno stood in place, staring and waiting for something he didn't know the name of, hardly registering Rin who rushed past him, crossing the three feet he couldn't.
All around them the forest was cleared to dirt and roots, and the hundreds of bodies splayed across the scrubbed ground under the midday sun would've been enough to rank this as one of the worst battlefields Rin had ever seen... save for the smell. There wasn't one, not really, not enough of one for this many bodies in this much heat. All his senses still led him right to where the disappointed crows were stalking, right past Kureno's frozen shape, hands moving before his mind let it get all the way through that this silent body, bloody faced and with a blade in her chest, was Asuka.
"Asuka?" he called, dropping down next to the pile of bodies and stabbing a syringe into her leg before bothering to hear if she could answer or even if she was still alive. No response, but his fingers found a thread of a pulse and his eyes spotted a glitter of fresh blood around the blade of the katana. He flipped a kunai into his hand and started quickly cutting her armour straps off, the jutsu and procedures he would need accumulating and ordering themselves in his head as he spotted more and more of her injuries. The most serious wasn't the katana blade, it was the source of the bleeding in her abdomen he could feel on his fingers as he ran his hands over her, searching for wounds.
"Kureno?" he called, cutting through Asuka's clothes fast as he could in search of the second unblocked puncture. "Kureno! Are we secured?"
There was no response at first. Kureno hardly realized he'd suddenly focused himself entirely on waiting for Asuka to respond to Rin that he forgot to himself. It was like time had stopped and it wouldn't start again until Asuka was okay. He couldn't move until she moved; he couldn't reply until she replied; he couldn't be okay until she...
Another bark of his name and something within him rebelling at his uselessness snapped him back--forced his time to move again. The effect of it still left him rather dazed, and his eyes didn't quite look directly into Rin when they raised. (There were more bodies piled here. How had he missed them before?) The other man was talking to him. (Why did he feel so shaky?) Kureno searched for his voice and when it came out, it sounded like he'd only found half of it.
"...what?"
Holy gods, of all the people, of all the times-- all that speed they needed to get this far, this fast and Kureno had stopped bloody moving! Rin forced himself to look up from Asuka for the second it took to shoot Kureno quite possibly the most furious look that had ever crossed his face. They didn't have time for this! Asuka didn't have time for this! The medic's face was still set impassive, same as always at this stage in the game because you never risked the patient seeing what was really on your mind, but his eyes were practically burning with impatience and frustration for the second they looked to the man clearly in shock, still standing quite still about three feet away.
"Secure the site, Kureno!" he demanded. "I've got to operate on her right here, right now, so secure the site! Go!"
If any imagery could be an equivalent to a hard, stinging slap across the face, the anger in Rin's eyes was it. And people said he got scary when pissed off, but Rin... Rin was....was....saying something. What was he saying?
'Secure the...?'
Rule No. 1 to Entering a Finished Battleground...
'....oh. OH.' What the hell was he doing?!
Rin was still alive. He was still alive. And if Rin said he needed to operate, that meant Asuka was still alive, or at least had a fighting chance. There was no way in hell Kureno was going to let them miss that chance. He wasn't a medic, he couldn't save Asuka. But Rin could, and if nothing else Kureno could protect Rin.
A more familiar instinct--and one much more welcome than that awful numbness--slipped back into Kureno as he forced himself to look away from Asuka. (Nothing he could do there. His job was elsewhere now. Just for now. He'd see her again. She owed him a beer.) His awareness stretched and a kunai found its way into his hand. The first target to assess was simple as the unmoving body wrapped in an Akatsuki coat only lay another few feet away. (Jeez, how had he not let himself see that and react to it first? It was the most obvious danger!) Putting himself as much as possible between the Akatsuki and Rin and Asuka, Kureno carefully approached, reflexes ready as he reached out and pulled down the high collar obtruding some of the face.
Sasoriza.
The familiarity of her face came back to him, like something from a bad dream never quite forgotten. That mess of red hair over cold, teal eyes that watched you with confidence in their dominion over the situation. The last face he saw before waking up two days later in a hospital bed was here now, staring back. Dead. Or looking very dead. It was impossible to be too careful, so Kureno reached out to check for a pulse.
...What the heck was this? It felt a little like skin on the surface but it was too hard underneath to really be... He opened her coat further to check her injuries. There was a sword running straight through her heart. At least...he was sure that's where the heart was supposed to be. It was hard to tell on a puppet.
Good god, she had actually turned herself into a puppet... That just...went beyond anything he'd ever...
They would have to bring the body back. This kind of jutsu, whatever it was, could become valuable research for the village. He'd store it later, after checking the grounds further. Standing back up, Kureno couldn't sense any other threats, or even any other living things in the area other than the crows (damn birds), but his eyes were opened to re-take in the scene of devastation that he'd somehow overlooked just minutes before.
Gods, had this really only been an Akatsuki battle? It reminded him more of a scene from the war, broken forests and upturned earth, bodies strewn about and piled, litters of tools and metal... Asuka had beaten them all on her own? ...Or perhaps she hadn't been alone like he'd hoped, in which case, there could be other members of her team still here somewhere! It would be helpful if Asuka were awake to tell them but she likely wouldn't wake up for a while. He had to find the others and make sure once and for all that the area really was safe.
"Rin, I'm going to scout for any others." His voice was much steadier now that he had something else to focus on--now that he knew there was something he could do. "If Asuka wakes up, ask her where her team is. I'll be in calling distance."
Rin was distantly relieved that Kureno was doing his job at last, but he couldn't spare more than a nod for his attentions because he'd found the second wound to Asuka's abdomen which had caused the majority of the bleeding. Swearing quietly under his breath he cut at her armour until only the front plate remained, with the katana still skewering it. Then he tore away her black shirt until it lay under her, still pinned with the katana against a puppet's torso. Blood was both slick and tacky all over his hands now, but it made no difference to the medic preparing what he could for what he was planning lightning fast in his head. He cupped his chakra-lit hand over the seeping hole (about two fingerwidths thick) in Asuka's side and concentrated, assessing the injury.
The puncture wound had nicked her kidney, her intestines and missed skewering her liver by the grace of god but it'd still abraised it... which should have been enough to trigger fatal blood loss. Rin could only think of one reason why she hadn't bled out; and that was that the blood wasn't getting very quickly to the area any longer. His fingers probed very gently in the wound, and he saw glots of red on the distinctly coloured organ. The second the fragile blood clots around the abrasion broke she'd bleed to death in a minute. The only reason he could think of that the blood had slowed to such a trickle was the blockage action of the katana's placement in her chest.
Insanely, it seemed several glaring flukes of luck - not least of which was the katana's placement - had kept her alive, but not for much longer. Keeping Asuka alive and killing her some other way were the same action in this case, but there wasn't time or resources to deal with one injury and then the other.
Okay. Multitasking. Let's go.
"Kureno! I need hands!" Rin yelled, lifting his own to pull his vest off and unzipping the pockets so that the meds and weapons fell into a pile on the dirt-scrabble ground. He moved a few feet away from the pile and tossed it down open, closest thing a stretcher they were gonna manage here. Most of Asuka's clothes were already cut away, though Rin suspected her bindings were doing as much as anything to hold that katana in such a mindbogglingly convenient position so he wasn't gonna move them til the last moment.
There was blood all over his hands, all over Asuka's body, all over the ground and all over his friend's face, but she wasn't dead. And she wasn't going to die either. She wasn't. Rin scrambled over the ground, grabbed the clouded cloak from whoever was lying nearby and tore it off the body, spinning it into a roll of cloth and tucking that at the top of where his vest was laid out as he heard Kureno's footsteps return.
Kureno didn't listen half as much to what Rin said as he did to merely respond to the sound of Rin's raised voice. Everything was dropped and forgotten in favor of lending speed to his return.
The sight of so much blood really shouldn't faze him like this did. (It was everywhere. Was she really still alive?) It probably would have helped if he stopped thinking so hard about it being Asuka's blood. He couldn't afford to stand around being as helpless as he felt. Asuka couldn't afford it. He needed to stop thinking so damn hard about who this was and concentrate more on what needed to be done. Just needed to shut off what he was feeling and start acting and stop thinking, stop dreading, stop thinking so hard it was going to make him sick, just...
'Stop,' he demanded of himself, calling upon a lifetime of discipline in an instant. 'There will be time later, not now. It doesn't matter what happens in the next few minutes, so long as you're doing something. Now act, Yuuhi.'
The focus that entered his eyes acted almost something like a gloss across them, but it was there nonetheless and two seconds after returning was he looking to Rin. "Tell me what to do," he said. .....Or rather, would have said, but Rin was already barking out instructions and there was nothing more for Kureno after that save obedience.
Rin was indeed telling Kureno what to do, because there was not a particularly high chance of success for what he was going to try and it was all going to depend on Kureno following instructions exactly and using his common sense. The medic had faith in him though, and not without reason.
"Empty out your vest and open it up, line the lower edge with the lower edge of mine, that's where we'll operate," he instructed, still checking the rest of Asuka's body for injuries and judging the likelihood of her wakening up during the procedures. "Stitch them together with shuriken wire and we'll put poles through the arms so we can stretcher her out."
One way or the other, but times like this was when Rin's optimism meant the most: once he pulled this off they had to run home. The medic prepped two syringes and set them to the side, then looked up at Kureno. "I'm gonna tell you what to do and you're gonna do it, Kureno. We can pull this off, but it'll be rough. Understand me?"
"Got it." Pockets were rapidly emptied, scrolls and tools tossed in a pile to the side, and his jacket nearly torn off as he hurried to set things together as told. His fingers moved nimbly with the wire, likely thanks to him managing to detach himself from the situation. (...A little. Remembering that this was for saving Asuka helped motivate his focus.)
He didn't ask Rin what the plan was for a few reasons. The first and most obvious being that they didn't have time, the second being that Kureno wasn't of the knowledge to offer the kind of second opinion that would actually be useful in this situation. This was Rin's field of expertise and Kureno had no other choice but to trust him completely.
...Really wasn't that hard to do.
"Done!" he barked as he tied off the last stitch, turning and ready to do whatever next was asked of him.
Rin nodded, finally having begun molding and channelling the very specific chakras he was going to use to get this done. Healing one such wound was bad enough, but healing two simultaneously... well, he'd just have to wing it. A small familiar beat in his chest told him Asuka would appreciate that. He didn't let the chakra spark over his hands yet, there was more to do before he made the attempt, not least of which was getting Kureno ready.
"Get on her other side," he muttered, glancing back to judge the distance to their makeshift operating table. There wasn't time to explain the procedure to him, even though Rin wished he could - it'd make it easier for him to understand. All he could tell him was how to double as his extra pair of hands and eyes. "When I say, put your palm flat over this and apply tight pressure," he hovered his own hand over her punctured abdomen, still seeping blood thicker by the moment. "And when I pull this katana out, get your hand round her back and press hard against the exit wound. We're gonna lift her the second it's out, onto stretcher, and then I'll start."
He looked up to Kureno's face, brown eyes probably clearer than most people ever saw them. He could do this, he had to do this, both of them... all of them needed him to, so he would. "Kureno, there's two syringes by the stretcher. Small one's for her if she wakes up. Big one's for me if I start passing out. S'up to you to administer it if it comes to it, okay?"
The other jounin nodded wordlessly and complied. Those were the only things he could do. He'd picked up a while ago that he was merely serving right now as an extra body to help; like a shadow clone acting under someone else's orders. Control over his movements didn't belong to him now, they were for Rin to decide. It was easy enough to accept and adjust to, not just for Asuka's sake but because it was a familiar way to have his life run.
"A tool does not complain, it does not cry, it does not desire to be or accomplish anything more than it was designed for. It exists to fulfill its purpose as designated to it by its master. ...A ninja is a tool for their village."
.......Funny. It was something he applied so easily to himself. But looking down at Asuka and the blood that stained her uniform and smeared across the tattoo on her shoulder... somehow he just couldn't believe it. Not for her. This was not a tool beneath his hands, this was a human; a woman. One that he...
Rin said something again. Looking up into the medic's eyes, he nodded firmly. "Ready."
Well thank the gods that glazed look was off his face. Rin didn't need a robot, he needed somebody who'd think, and now he had him. Closing his eyes for the briefest moment, he offered a silent plea to everybody listening that this worked, and then got to his feet. He tugged a third syringe out his pocket, uncapped it and held it in his teeth as he didn't give anybody time to worry about it and smoothly pulled the katana right out of Asuka's chest along the path it had taken in. As expected, blood that had been held back spurted up out the wound as he tossed the blade over his shoulder and away, and he dropped back to his knees, injected the blood pill solution straight into the artery that led through her undamaged kidney, and slammed one hand down over the raggedly spurting wound and slid the other around to the other side of the momentarily-to-be-pouring wound through her lower back.
"Got it," he whispered, gritting his teeth and blinking away some of the blood that'd hit his face. "Up we go, c'mon!"
And then they were up and moving, in a moment Asuka was lying flat with her head elevated to keep her from choking if she came to. Which Rin prayed she wouldn't as he slammed his hand hard against her perforated breast bone and extended a bright flash of healing chakra down into her chest, delicately and desperately working against the flow of blood through the severed vessels to seal them and to force healing in the surrounding tissue. At the same moment his other hand was under her back, with his fingers inside the wound to directly apply chakra to the injured paths on her liver and force healing as the blood clots fell away and it began bleeding in earnest.
His eyes falling closed in concentration and energy running for different purposes down each arm, into each tiny chakra point in his hands, Rin held his breath and hoped he'd manage to seal up the main points of blood loss before the injection he'd given her forced her marrow to start replenishing what she'd lost.
If he didn't, if he wasn't fast and thorough enough, there was no chance at all.
Unfortunately for all three of them, Asuka started coming around the moment the sword was pulled out.
The sword hadn't just managed to block the flow of blood; it had also made certain she could continue to breathe, ironically enough. Blood had been trickling into her chest cavity the whole time, but the sudden new flow of blood needed to go somewhere, and if hands were keeping it from easily exiting the body...
The sudden inability to breathe - not just a thin whisper of air that had barely moved her chest, but no way to inhale at all - had her choking and spluttering in an instant. Blood bubbled from both her mouth and nose as she (less than half-consciously; her eyes were hardly open) fought to bring up what was crowding her lungs, weakly fighting back against the hands that were holding her down. Thankfully her hands were free of weapons (one tekko had not been in evidence, but the other had slid from her hand as they moved her), or her movements might have caused more trouble. As it was, one hand ended up around Kureno's wrist (there was no strength in her grip), the elbow of the other arm and her heels scrabbling in the dirt in an automatic attempt to curl up on her side and cough her lungs up.
"On her side!" Rin hissed, shifting his leg out to brace against her hip and ribcage so he could roll her over to face him, his arm crossing over her raised side at a painfully awkward angle to keep his position chakra-suturing her liver. His other knee he brought down on her wrist, pinning her flailing hand as he kept trying to work, suddenly feeling a stab of dizziness at the physical movement that made his head sway. Oh... there was a reason nobody tried to do this...
"Goddamnit you're inconvenient, Asuka!" he yelled at her, his voice startlingly weak suddenly, but trying to let her hear at least that it was him. She kept weakly struggling and he could barely keep staunching the flow from her chest as her elbow connected sharply with his ribs. "Ow! Don't make me come over there!" He could barely concentrate, he was only a third of the way done, if that, somebody had to make her stop.
Ironically enough, seeing her coughing and choking on her own blood was one of the more relieving sights to Kureno, simply because it was the first real sign from her that she was alive; that her body was still struggling to live. It was all the proof he needed to maintain hope.
The relief didn't last long however, as it became clear this movement he'd been so thankful for was making things worse. He tried to grab her other arm (her other still holding his wrist) and keep her legs from coming up and kneeing Rin, almost having to pin his weight against her back to keep her still and balanced on Rin's lap. His head came down to her ear (just briefly) to loudly whisper in it.
"Calm down, Asuka." His voice was significantly more calm than Rin's but no less urgent. Rin couldn't afford to be distracted by Asuka's squirming; Asuka couldn't afford to have Rin distracted, and neither could he. He turned his head over his shoulder and spotted the two needles Rin had mentioned earlier.
In the back of his mind, he realized that perhaps he should be vaguely horrified by the amount of her blood that he saw on his hands when he reached out to grab the smaller syringe. But there was still no time for that. There would be time for things later. Later. There would be a later.
He pulled the cap off with his teeth, spitting it aside and making sure he was injecting it properly and that Rin wasn't protesting to where he stuck it. "Sorry," he murmured, looking up to watch her face. "I've gotta put you out now. But you'll wake up again. ...Promise."
Though her struggles didn't cease entirely, they did mostly stop once she was on her side - the blood no longer pooling in the way of her breathing and allowing her to cough more of it up. The amount she was bringing up would have been appalling, if not for the fact that more of it was pouring out elsewhere.
The last of her struggles ended about ten seconds after she'd been stuck with the needle; she went limp almost all at once, a cough even ending half-way and turning into thready, shallow gasps for breath, blood still leaking from her nose and pale lips. She was almost certainly too far gone to have heard a word either of the men said, but her eyes half-opened all the same, a blind, unfocused glance cast side-ways to both of them, before fluttering closed again.
Kureno injected the paralytic, Asuka stopped moving and kept breathing, they rolled her onto her back again, and Rin kept working. Her liver was healed best he could manage, and he had to change the chakra in his left hand to suit repairing the gash in her intestines while his other hand pressed down and began drawing the blood out her lungs and diffusing it into the vessels they supplied with air.
There was a minute of careful silence while he got all of this done, not allowing himself to think of anything else up to an including his own name, when suddenly she started to fibrulate. Chest bucking once, out of anyone's control, and pulse hammering unevenly around Rin's fingers.
No! No, damnit no! He crushed his eyes closed tight as he could, bit his lip so hard he tasted his own blood, and dropped suddenly into a kind of urgent clarity that lived somewhere inside him he could never find on his own. The chakra around his hands began to tinge more blue than green, everything he was doing began to happen even faster.
For the strangest reason he could feel the anger and repulsion Kakami had aimed at him just hours ago... because he was such a medical genius he could do the unthinkable. And it made him reach even deeper inside himself, because he'd do this too. He'd invent a whole new freaking medical science right here, right now if he had to, because he could, because he'd been wrong.
He could be and should be pushed. His was to heal or die trying, and since nothing was going to kill him here there was only one option.
Rin tore his hand away from the much-healed hole in her back, laid his palm swiftly over Asuka's heart and with a moment's minor effort stopped it dead. The blood slowed and stilled in her veins, giving him precious moments to heal without her heart spasming and losing what little blood was left.
"Kureno, count me a minute," he ordered, getting back to work - his eyes flicking for a moment to the syringe meant for him, the one containing adrenaline. The one he was going to need.
'1...2...3...4...'
Something was wrong. Something was going wrong. Had Asuka's moving worsened her injuries? He wouldn't be surprised, but by how much? Rin could still fix it right? ...Of course Rin could, Kureno could see it by the look in his eyes when he managed to look away from Asuka. Rin had enough determination and skill for this, and Kureno had enough hope. But...still...
Something was wrong.
'...19...20...21...22...'
He took deep, even breaths to keep himself calm. The inner urgency to take care of Asuka now had him wanting to speed up the seconds in his mind, but Rin needed a minute and clearly had too much on his mind if he couldn't count one out himself. It was a job so simple it would have felt silly taking it so seriously in another situation. But right now it was all Kureno had to hold onto, to keep himself grounded while at the same time keeping his head above the sea of panic that was churning just under the surface of his skin.
Because he just realized Rin had stopped Asuka's heart.
'...35...36...37...38...'
Calm. Even. Seconds. Think about seconds.
Steady. Constant. Rhythmic. Do not lose the rhythm.
Do not panic. Do not lose control. Do not lose her. Do not fail her.
Do not fail.
Failure is unacceptable.
Calm. Even. Seconds.
'...49...50...51...'
Her breathing stopped.
'.........55...56...dammit, Asuka, if you let it end like this I'll never forgive you...
His voice came out surprisingly steady and clear and for a moment he doubted it was his own.
"One minute."
And that was it.
"Syringe," he hissed, holding out his plain and bloody hand. His head was starting to swim and his eyes were starting to ache and for an odd reason he felt cold. He'd been right, trying to perform two surgeries at once didn't take twice the energy, it took over quadruple. Still, he had to stop now. There wasn't any point continuing.
The plastic barrel of the syringe was put in his hand, he tugged the cap off the three inch needle and looked down at Asuka's unmoving body. Her lips had started to turn colour under the blood. Rin had stopped her heartbeat with a small, perfect geture of chakra in her muscle; but starting an organ like that again, massaging it back to movement and life... he'd known when he did it there was no way enough time was left for that.
So. Here went nothing.
Rin flipped the syringe, judged the positioning of her ribs and stabbed it downwards like a dart. The needle pierced through breast, muscle and tissue to deliver an adrenaline shot directly to her heart. He withdrew the needle just as her body began to convulse and held his hands away, only able to watch.
And after a few short seconds she stopped; and Rin put his fingers to her pulse and his ear to her airways. Faint but present pulse: shallow even breaths. And not hardly a drop of blood had come from anywhere as she'd convulsed. His seaming and healing had worked. It was done.
Rin looked up from Asuka's face to Kureno's and tried to smile... but he could barely tell where Kureno was suddenly. All the same...
... "She's gonna kill me for that when she wakes up."
Kureno hadn't needed to wonder what the large syringe had contained, he remembered it from bloodier times. He wasn't one to flinch at needles but this one always made his skin crawl involuntarily. He was thinking to himself how he'd have to really commend Rin later for being so willing to have that thing stuck into himself when the stripe-cheeked medic turned it and plunged it into Asuka's heart.
He'd never admit it in a hundred years but he winced and looked away just before it went in.
Kureno had some basic medical comprehension--perhaps a little more than the average shinobi--but what was happening here fell far outside his realm of knowledge. He was useless here except for where Rin placed him, and when Asuka's body began shaking violently, all he could do was hold her loosely and keep her from awkwardly falling off Rin's knees. Thena few seconds more as the other man checked her vitals.
In that instant, Kureno was sure it was his heart that stopped beating, and he was the one who didn't breathe.
"She's gonna kill me for that when she wakes up."
Wakes up. That meant...she was okay. She was going to be okay. .'...Oh gods, she's going to be okay.'
The relief washed down and throughout him, like standing under a waterfall. It was a sudden and intense sensation that washed you clean and kept you rooted to the ground under a pressure of humility. His fingers dug a little tighter where they held her, and for a few fleeting moments he didn't care that this feeling was completely raw and evident on his face. He was suddenly exhausted from all the dread and worry and fear that had been eating up his nerves that he was too tired to put effort into hiding things like Rin was falling over.
Wait. ...Rin was really falling over.
With a sudden jolt, Kureno reached forward and caught the medic with his free arm, bringing the man in to lean against his shoulder. A little difficult to do actually with Asuka still lying between them. That couldn't be good for the other man's back. "Rin! Are you okay?!"
Rin didn't feel okay by any stretch of the imagination, his insides felt cold and his eyes were shut tight to keep out the light and the spinning and whatever else was dizzying him as his body tried to balance what he'd distressed of his chakra systems. He'd used too much, and now he didn't have anything to get him back on his feet so he was utterly defenceless. But he couldn't say that, not ever, because he was still scared that his weakened stamina would lose him his job and only Kakami knew how bad it could get. He could barely feel where his forehead was resting, just that it was steady. Steady was good.
"m'fine," he mumbled automatically, like always. "Just... a minute for it to stop spinning."
His fingers still rested against Asuka's neck, still had her pulse, and that's where he put his attention. It was going to stabilize, he could just feel it... but until it did...
"We've got to get her home," he said quietly, eyes still closed and not willing to admit that there wasn't much chance of him so much as standing up for the next five minutes.
Kureno's eyes narrowed as he thought over the new situation. Rin was spent in a more real way then he himself was. Asuka may not have been bleeding out anymore but she did need to be taken to a proper facilitiy where the Hokage himself could better her condition. And Kureno still needed to store Sasoriza's body, and finish his search for any of Asuka's team in the area. ...He was beginning to hope they weren't here, because if they were the only thing that should have kept them from showing themselves by now was some kind of serious injury. An injury they no longer had a medic for.
Gods he'd been so selfish; as a rule of thumb subordinates were to come first in the aftermath. He looked back down to Rin who still looked like he was fluttering between consciousness and passing out.
"I need seven minutes to finish the sweep of the area, Rin. Can you and Asuka hold out that long?"
Rin actually laughed weakly, he usually got a bit giddy when he was headed for a burn-out, but he wasn't there yet. He managed to lean back and blinked hard, finding Kureno's face. Oh good, he was being serious. Kureno was always serious enough for two or three people, probably a good thing right now.
"Don't know 'bout me, but you know Asuka's tougher than that," he said, shifting slowly and as carefully as he could manage to he got Asuka settled flat on the stretcher. "Go do your... stuff. I'll get her ready for heading home." Maybe take a soldier pill too... if he could find them.
Kureno would have produced some soldier pills himself already if he hadn't emptied them out of his vest and left them on the ground about four feet away behind him. Balancing Asuka and Rin hadn't put him in a good position to reach for the medicine without dropping one of them. As soon as Rin moved back however, he placed Asuka down and turned for them.
His shirt and some of his pants were damp and sticky with blood, and he was pretty sure he felt some on his face as well. He probably didn't look as bad as either Asuka or Rin, but this wasn't any sort of time for vanity. He'd just have to not think about it for a while--long enough to get home.
He popped a pill in his mouth, grinding it up while he knelt and handed the small pouch containing the rest to Rin (who didn't look in any condition to catch them if they were tossed to him). "Soldier pills," he told him, then stood. "I'll be back. Holler if you need me."
Putting a kunai back in his hand and making sure he secured everything he'd need from the pile of his vest's contents, Kureno darted off.
Seven minutes seemed to pass by in slow motion for Rin and Asuka as he took half a soldier pill, resolving to take the other half just as they got ready to go. Too strong a dose too soon would hurt him more than help just now, and he had to be back on the ball for transporting Asuka home. As the stimulant got his body's energy back to an artificial level of acceptability he managed to settle Asuka better and used bandages to bind and staunch her major wounds and control where her dangerously small volume of blood would flow. The paralytic would help with that, but the adrenaline on top of that might cause complications so he'd have to keep an eye on it.
He paused for a few minutes, feeling his body acclimatize to everything going on within it, and was relieved as the dizziness and light-headedness he'd been feeling began to fade away. He really had done a stupid thing, but it'd worked so he wasn't going to apologize for it. (Even if it hadn't, he wouldn't have said sorry for the attempt either) Rin just couldn't believe how lucky the whole situation had been. Almost as if everything had happened just so they'd be able to save her.
Once Rin felt up to moving again he realized that actually keeping her on the stretcher was going to be another matter entirely. He looked around and noted that a few of the... uhm... hundred puppets were armed with spears. Rin wrested a pair out of the dead hands, used a kunai to cut off the metal tips and slipped them through the sleeve-holes of their stitched vests to Asuka's either side. Then he pulled his bloodied turtleneck off his back, noticing with a wince that the white t-shirt he had on underneath showed the blood soaked through to it pretty horrifically. Still, this was the best way to do it without a full medical squad on hand. Rin had carried people back this way before.
He put the navy shirt over Asuka's much smaller torso, the arms level with below her breasts so he had access to that injury, and let the sleeves lie to either side. He'd tie them under the stretcher once it was up off the ground. Then he loosely bound her ankles to the spear shafts with what was left of the bandages and let himself sit beside her, head bowed to keep the fading dizziness down.
"You'll be home soon, Asuka," he told her, not caring that she couldn't hear him, and glancing to her face and reaching over to gently move some hair from her cheek. "It'll be alright. This time I get to return the favour, how about that?" He sighed and smiled a little, reaching over to dab the blood away from her mouth and nose best he could. "You gave Kureno a turn, by the way. Which was mean."
The sweep of the area really only took Kureno a little over five minutes, although that wasn't the end of his job. Still, in the search he accomplished, he couldn't find any signs of her team members having been involved in this battle. This was both relieving and...highly unsettling. For if they weren't here, then where could they be? Fighting Sasoriza's partner perhaps? If that were true, they must have been far from here as even his long-range senses couldn't detect any strong or raised chakra. But the fact of the matter remained that they weren't here, and if Asuka had a radio on her, they were likely outside of range.
Returning to the spot of discovery, Kureno stopped at Sasoriza's body and examined it closely for a moment. "I can't find any of Asuka's team but it looks like they weren't even here," he told Rin as he worked. A puppet's body was inorganic, but this one had a small exception. After pulling out the katana, the man had to admit he could identify which part of the body that was in the container, but no doubt someone back home could. He reached into his belt where he'd tucked one of the scrolls he'd pulled from his vest earlier, unfurling it next to the body. There was no time for ink, so the kunai sliced across the first two fingers of his hand and he began writing the proper markings along the paper. "If we don't run into them on the way back, another team will have to be sent to retrieve them." Five seals were placed on Sasoriza, one on each limb, one on her forehead, and one over the special compartment in her chest. Once the body was properly aligned with the markings on the scroll, Kureno's hands shot through a series of seals themselves before his palm slammed down on the puppet's abdomen and a second later the entire thing disappeared in a cloud of smoke, leaving a new large kanji on the paper where one hadn't been before. He used his chakra to rapidly roll the scroll back together and secured it safely away in his pouch as he walked back over to the others.
"Alright, let's head out." He paused, sparing a moment to look Asuka over again. Then he turned to his partner in this slapped-together rescue party. "Rin, I didn't find any signs of another Akatsuki member either, but they're known to always travel in pairs. Keep your guard up on our way home."
Rin nodded, and since the motion didn't make him dizzy nor sick he figured his body had done all the adjusting it needed to for him to pull his own weight (and half of Asuka's) and get her home. They lifted their makeshift stretcher, Rin balanced his end and tied the sleeves of his shirt on the underside of Asuka's weight and secured her, checked her pulse and pupils and with one final exhausted half-smile at Kureno the three of them began to make for home.
Gods only knew what reception they'd be in for, but at least Asuka would be around to catch it in the neck too.