"Kai," Hazō whispered, making the hand seal for the Dispelling technique. Sadly, the world completely failed to shatter around him, so this was either Inoue-sensei being sadistic with her un-Dispellable supergenjutsu, or it was actually real. He sincerely hoped that it was just Sadist-Sensei getting up to her tricks and that at any moment he was going to snap out of it and find his hair being ruffled.

He stood still for a moment, hoping. Nope. Damnit. Hair distinctly unruffled.

With a sigh, he tied the bandana-mask around his face, leaving it loose around his neck for now. It would impair his breathing, so he didn't want to wear it any longer than necessary. At the same time, he really didn't want to breathe that girl's knockout drug, so the mask seemed wise.

He dropped to all fours and leopard-crawled a few inches forward, moving fast until he was in sight of the clearing, then slowing down and shifting only one limb at a time. With each movement he paused to check that there was nothing under that limb that would make noise when he put weight on it.

Afterwards, Hazō would never know what he'd done wrong. Maybe he'd rustled a branch? Maybe he hadn't contained his killing intent quite well enough? Whatever it was, he knew he'd messed up when both enemy ninja—Ken and Bōsatsu, they'd called themselves—stiffened. It was just slightly and just for a moment, but it was there. They covered it immediately, but he saw the telltale signs and knew he was blown.

Surging to his feet, he drove forward with chakra roaring through his body as he pushed himself beyond his limits in an effort to close the range before they could kill Akane. Ken leaped back, shouting for his third teammate even as his hands flicked through seals. Bōsatsu, the taijutsu fighter, threw himself in the way of Hazō's charge.

The world seemed to slow around Hazō. Everything became calm and quiet, lines tracing through the world around him, showing all the paths down which the Iron Nerve could take him. With every furious step thousands of the paths vanished, no longer reachable through any combination of skill or strength. He looked down the path he'd chosen and was satisfied; he would slip past Bōsatsu with a whisker to spare and be able to engage Ken, the ninjutsu user. From what Hazō had observed, Ken would be no match for him in close combat. Hazō should be able to crush him in one pass, then turn to deal with Bōsatsu one-on-one. Possibly even two-on-one if Akane would mix in. She wasn't at their level, but she could be a useful distraction while Hazō took Bōsatsu down. They'd need to be fast, though; the third teammate, Mirai, was just out of sight in the trees guarding Noburi and Keiko. She'd show up in seconds, but there should be just enough time to—

A loose patch of earth slid, just slightly, under Hazō's foot. It cost him barely a fraction of a second, but he watched his path to Ken close. Every possible path now led through Bōsatsu, giving the ninjutsu user time to complete his technique.

For just a moment, despair poured through him as his plans crumbled, but then Hazō's jaw tightened. Fine. Bōsatsu wanted to play? Good enough. Time to see if the other nin could cash the note he was writing by getting in Hazō's way.

Bōsatsu was fast. Impossibly fast. He was a lefty and powerfully muscled; on another day he would have made a fun sparring partner. Now, Hazō just needed to get through him. There was no time to mess around, so Hazō dragged even more chakra out of his coils and sent it flooding into his muscles. He gathered himself, feinting high and preparing to strike low.

Bōsatsu saw what was coming. His enemy's shoulders shifted just slightly as he chambered the punch. The left jab would be a feint, followed by a straight right to the collarbone. Or, at least, that's what it was supposed to look like. Actually, both hands were feints; the attack would be a stamping kick to the knee. The tell was nothing so obvious as an eye movement; no experienced ninja would look where he intended to strike. It was a tiny shortening of the stride, almost too small to be seen but sufficient to change the timing of their encounter by a fraction of a second. It would have left him just out of range of the punch, but the kick would have been perfectly positioned. Some distant part of his mind complimented his enemy even as Bōsatsu stepped slightly to the side, raising his leg for an intercepting kick that would leave his target off-balance and primed for—

The world went white as that left jab that Bōsatsu had thought was a feint came out of nowhere and straight into his jaw. The range was wrong, robbing the blow of much of its power, but what was left was enough to rock his head back and make him stutter-step.

Even with his brain too scrambled to follow what was happening, Bōsatsu's brutal experience dragged his body aside from the follow-up strike. He threw out a swift left-hand punch to buy himself space; it connected hard, smashing the enemy's nose flat and forcing him slightly back.

Bōsatsu's vision cleared just as Hazō came back in. The Iron-nin closed his guard, expecting more tricky feints and knowing that he needed only to buy time until his teammates arrived. The feint this time was that there was no feint; Hazō simply smashed into him like a battering ram, powerful kicks and punches pounding at Bōsatsu's defenses and forcing the Iron-nin to fight defensively while soaking the damage. He threw out defensive strikes, but Hazō took the damage and came straight on.

"Hotaru no Jutsu!" Ken shouted, finishing the seals. Sparks fountained from his hands, streaking for Hazō in a blazing, fluttering swarm. Each of the ten sparks followed the guidance of a single finger, swooping in and out as Ken's hands danced.

"Die!" Akane yelled, punching Ken in the face as she'd been taught. The Iron nin slapped the attack aside with contemptuous ease and flicked a thumb towards Akane. One of his sparks zipped over so fast it left a glowing trail in the air, burning straight through her shoulder from front to back.

The pain was indescribable; Akane's vision tunneled down, red spots obscuring most of the world as she struggled to breathe. She snarled, refusing to go down. She did not need second chances! That was not her, not anymore! Nishino-sensei was fighting for his life—for her life!—and she would not let him down. She threw herself at the ninjutsu user, not caring how many sparks and punches he hit her with. She couldn't beat him, she knew that. That didn't mean she wouldn't stay on her feet and keep punching until he killed her. She'd alread accomplished her intent—she'd pulled Ken's attention and his sparks away from Nishino-sensei. Now she just needed to keep punching.

He danced around her, flicking the sparks in her way to drive her where he wanted, or burning them into her flesh to interrupt her attacks. She didn't drive and she didn't interrupt; no matter what he did, she just kept coming. He dodged back, trying to figure out what she was doing; the taijutsu she was showing wasn't even close to his level, but she kept coming forward. It had to be a feint, a mask for her true strength—she had to realize how badly outmatched she was, right? No one would keep taking that kind of damage against a foe they couldn't hope to beat. Any minute now, she would either show her true taijutsu strength or jump back, shift to a weapons-based ranged strategy. She had to! What the hells was she doing?! Why wouldn't she just back off and give him just the second he needed to use his jutsu effectively?

Akane ducked her head so that the spark burned her forehead instead of her eyes, then dropped into a leg sweep. If she could just put him on the ground, disrupt his control of those sparks—

Ken blocked the sweep with a kick to her knee that made her scream and fall, but she rolled back up and came at him again, hopping on one leg because the other wouldn't support her. What was wrong with her?!

Bōsatsu had finally gotten his feet back under him. He was starting to catch the rhythm of his attacker's style. Feints on feints, strikes that sacrificed power for unexpectedness, then a changeup to straightforward hard-style close combat, then back to the tricks. This kid was smooth, skilled, and vicious, but he wasn't flawless. That hook punch he liked so much went just a little too far to the outside; it left the line of attack open. Better yet, he always dropped his shoulder just a bit before he threw it.

Bōsatsu snapped out a punch and then recovered, his right hand deliberately a little too close to the center. That's it, the line's open, come on, come on, show me that hook...yes!

The hook came in, the movement perfectly identical to what it had been every time. Bōsatsu shifted his weight forward and leaned away from the strike, even as his right cross crashed out like a thunderbolt to block the hook and simultaneously blast Hazō's head right off his neck...

Only to find that the opening was another damn lure!

Hazō tenkaned around the attack, his "hook punch" feint opening out into a gripping hand that pulled Bōsatsu's hand gently to Hazō's chest. He continued the turn, keeping the hand tight against him; Bōsatsu's elbow shattered, his shoulder dislocated, and his body was dragged around into perfect position for a hip throw that dropped him on his head. Before he could react, Hazō stamped down on his diaphragm and used it as a launching point to dive at Ken.

Out of the corner of his eye, the ninjutsu user saw Hazō coming from his four'o'clock. At the same time, Mirai burst out of the trees at his nine, the chain of her kusari-gama already spinning as she charged to her team's rescue. Ken had no idea who this kid was, but the way he'd handled Bōsatsu said that he was terrifyingly dangerous in close combat. Not being an idiot, Ken leaped for his charging teammate. That Ishihara girl was finally down, so there was no one to get in the way. If Mirai could pin this guy down for just a moment so Ken could bring his firey friends in, they'd put him down in seconds.

Hazō watched the enemy turn in seeming slow motion. The glowing lines of the Iron Nerve pulsed in his vision, showing him exactly which points in space he could reach, what position his body would be in at the end of each of those paths. None of those paths reached Ken. Mirai was going to get between them, just as Bōsatsu had earlier. Except this time, Akane was on the ground and not moving. Without Akane to keep the ninjutsu user busy for those critical few seconds, keep him moving so that he couldn't use his jutsu effectively...well, without that distraction the fire user would be able to concentrate on guiding his weapons with precision. They would burn through Hazō's Achilles tendons or his eyes and the fight would be over. No, if Ken managed to get behind his teammate this fight was only going to end with Hazō fleeing or dead. And none of the paths that Hazō could reach allowed him to stop Ken from getting there.

Time to create some new paths.

He reached into his coils and scraped them nearly empty, pulling up the last dregs of his strength and pushing it into battered and exhausted muscles. Lightning and fire crackled in his bones and danced along his nerves, turning the world faintly blue and slow around him. The paths leaped outwards, giving him thousands of separate routes to Ken when all he needed was one.

Mirai shifted the angle of her chain's spin so Ken would have space to slip past her. At the same time, she pulled chakra into her muscles. The familiar feeling of godlike speed and power buoyed her up, made the world seem slow and calm as her eyes flicked around, assessing the situation. Bōsatsu was down, and from the damage it had been done up close and personal. This enemy, whom she mentally dubbed 'Mr. Target', was clearly a close-in taijutsu type; he wasn't carrying any weapons and he was covered in bruises and blood. If he was good enough to take Bōsatsu out she didn't dare engage. Fortunately, she didn't need to. Ken would be past her in another breath and ready to turn and use his jutsu. All she needed to do was keep the kama and the chain spinning, leaving no openings for striking or being struck. If she fought purely defensively and gave ground as needed then she could keep Mr. Target tied up until Ken dropped him on the ground in a pile of burnt meat. Once he was down they could show him what it meant to hurt one of her te—

Mirai's brain stuttered and lost its place as something wet and coppery splashed across her face and chest. Reflexively, she dove to the side and rolled back to her feet, wiping frantically to clear her vision. She barely noticed the twitch of her chain that said it had connected with something. Whatever this was that Mr. Target had thrown at her—

He hadn't thrown anything. He'd punched clean through Ken's head and splashed her with her teammate's blood and brains.

She had just a split second to recognize what had happened before she had to dive aside again from the fist that was about to do the same to her own head. She came up with the chain swinging out horizontally, creating a blocking zone around herself while she figured out what she could do. The sickle followed in an automatic cut drilled into her muscles through thousands of hours of practice, ready to slice through anything that came in behind the chain.

Hazō watched the chain go by with calm detachment. It almost seemed to float, leaving him ample time to glide forward in its wake. The sickle came down in a diagonal cut, top-left to bottom-right. There was no thought, no choice, no rational decision. He didn't choose to step in and raise his right arm to deflect the attack. He didn't decide to roll his hand around and push, adding to the force of the cut and guiding it in towards the enemy's body. When the tip of the sickle slammed into its wielder's thigh and drew the scream from her throat, he didn't think about whether he should grab the handle and yank upwards, tearing through her femoral artery and reducing her quadricep to hacked meat. When she collapsed on the ground at his feet, he didn't opt to crush her throat with a heelstamp. It all just happened, power and speed and endless hours of training moving him in exactly the way he needed to move to destroy his opponent.

The world came back in a rush, the energy of the boost fading away and leaving him hollowed-out and empty. He dropped to a knee, one fist on the ground as he gasped for breath. His whole body was shaking with adrenaline crash and he was suddenly aware of just how much damage he'd taken. Ken's sparks had left burns over much of his body, Bōsatsu's fists had beaten him bloody, and the weight at the end of Mirai's chain had cracked into his shin when she dove aside. He didn't think the leg was broken, but he wasn't entirely sure. It sure as hell hurt to stand on, though.

"Nishino-sensei?" Akane called weakly. "Are you all right?"

Hazō pushed himself up and limped awkwardly over to her. She was a mess; her left eye was swollen completely closed, her right would be soon, three of her teeth were missing, her left femur was broken, and the tiny little burns that dotted her head, chest, arms, and back made him wince.

"Nishino-sensei?" she said. "Are you all right?"

"Hazō," he said, smiling. "Call me Hazō. I'll be fine. Thank you, Ak—Ishihara. They would have killed me if not for you."

"Akane," she said. She gave him a bloody and gap-toothed smile before passing out.