"It's . . . it's fine . . ." Chujutsu sighed.

Well, no. It wasn't fine. Chujutsu didn't want to make a huge deal about it, though. Hopefully, this mistake would cool Jin down a little bit. So long as he wasn't jumping the gun, they'd be fine. Unfortunately, even after repairs, there weren't going to quite be fine.

"Please hold still," Chujutsu whispered, apologizing soon after: "I-I'm sorry, but . . . this . . . this won't be pleasant . . ."

Nevertheless, Jin wouldn't see--per say--what Chujutsu was going to do to help him. The artist knelt down behind Jin Kazamika, placing his hands upon the warrior's back, careful to avoid touching the man's wound . . . so far. He had a light, gentle touch, but once he pushed in with the tips of his fingers, the warrior's back would begin to burn--not physically, literally so; no fire was emitted upon his back in the slightest, but it would feel like concentrated flames were being poured down upon ten focal points in his back.

It was only then that Chujutsu began to move his hands across Kazamika's back, and the man would feel the intense burning running over his skin and across his wound, each time threading back and forth like ten needles mindlessly sewing him back up at once. The burn would accompany pain, then--pain of being touched on such a sensitive injury, and the agony of two pains combined, which was in itself a completely different beast.

This would last only a second, however, before Chujutsu would remove his hands from Kazamika's back and, himself, lean back, to briefly sit upon the ground, where he could take a few seconds to rest.

Kazamika would find the bleeding stopped and the wound closed--but it wasn't perfect in any way. The skin would still be raised as if having been stitched closed, and the burning pain wasn't going to go away anytime in the near future, perhaps even the next few hours. A small price to pay, though . . .

"Hold on."

Jin shifted his shoulders away from Raikou's grasp for the moment. His hands lackadaisically sought something at his side. In a fluid motion, he undid the knot that held the silk sash bound at his side and brought its two ends together. He folded it again and again and again, until the sash made itself into a stacked fold of cloth. Jin placed it in his mouth and settled his teeth into the material. Without a word, he shifted his shoulders back into Raikou's hands.

The pain that immediately followed was absolutely magnificent. It wasn't something that he hadn't experienced before. Jin, as a swordsman, suffered all manner of cuts and slashes, fewer and fewer each year the higher the rank he attained. It had been years since anything had made him suffer this caliber of damage. The point is, the pain never grew dull. This just wasn't the kind of ordeal that one simply grew accustomed to. Each cauterization, each stab of a needle point through a canvas of flesh, felt like the first one.

He bit down hard on the silk in his mouth and his chest ballooned outwards as he gathered the air to scream. And scream he did, scream with all the fervor of anguish and agony, but all the left his lips was the low, incessant, incoherent mumble of a beast. Jin's body shook vehemently, overtaken by tremors of restraint, but he managed to sit still for the most part. A bit of drool soaked through the silk band and worked its way down the line of his mouth.

When Chujutsu removed his hand, it was as if Jin lost all the vigor in his body. He leaned forward and nearly fell flat-faced on the ground, but managed to bring his arm out in time. He moved slow, the pain weighing down his bones, but he moved with purpose at least. Jin gently removed the band of silk from his mouth, lines of spit momentarily leading back to his lips, and he began to undo it. Tied it around his waist and stood up.

"You're right. That wasn't very pleasant at all. But…thank you. You saved my life."

Jin walked drunkenly towards one of the bodies he had recently killed, took the sheathe and placed the foreign sword inside of it before hooking the scabbard into his sash.

"The Chameleon was here. That was even more unpleasant. He took my sword. I'm sorry Raikou. I have failed you."

Chujutsu nodded and smiled warmly. "You're welcome."

Though, at the notion that Kazamika had failed him . . .

Well, Chujutsu didn't even want to say in his mind that Kazamika had failed all that much at all. Truth be told, they actually did pretty good, all things considered. Kazamika took them all on by himself, practically, and he came out with only a semi-deep blade wound--which wouldn't be much of a problem in the next couple of hour. It was going to leave a scar, but all warriors had scars. In Cizok, a modest amount of scars were seen as a show of experience. Too many scars, though, was a sign of weakness.

Nonetheless, they did better than the projected details would have allowed if they had simply blitzed--like Kazamika did. Some enemies escaped. Many were killed. Those were enemies they wouldn't have to worry about later.

"It's fine. You were impressive, honestly," replied Chujutsu.

He didn't want to encourage behavior like that, but he had to tell the truth, there: for going on as a one-man-army, Kazamika had done damn good. He'd have been killed in the end if there were more enemies, and going as he did, he should have been killed--he was fighting the odds, and he still did good.

"In any case . . . we need to hurry. Many of the archers escaped. They will be heavily searching this area within the hour. I don't expect you to be comfortable walking for the next couple of minutes," obviously, it wasn't the first time Chujutsu had to do that so someone, "But when you're ready . . ."

From the way Kazamika moved, it was clear some manner of burden played heavily on the way he interacted with the world around him. Even in the way he merely stood, his back was disproportionately stiff to the fluid way in which his arms swung to his side. In reality, if one compared his movements now to how they were before this…unfavorable skirmish, they'd find Jin both stilted and slower.

"I'm ready."

His response to Chujutsu's concern was a curt defiance and gristly broadcasting of pride and perseverance. Perhaps this was arrogance at its peak, but equally so, it was a pride well deserved. Jin, despite the faux pas a few minutes ago, was not one to rush in blindly. He knew well his own limits, and if he thought himself able to walk, then that's exactly what he planned to do.

"I thank you deeply for your concern Raikou, and deeper still for the aid you have offered me. If it wasn't for you, then I would be sharing my grave with the likes of them."

Jin looked down the length of his arm at one of the several bodies that squeezed the last, scant remnants of a blood out of a cadaver that grew colder, grayer, as time marched on. He did not pity these men. Did not think pensively of the families that they left behind, of the woman widowed or the children orphaned. He thought only of the insidious souls that he loosed from their fleshy cages, and what manner of perdition waited for men that betrayed the foundations of their country and its people. Their brothers.

Jin looked away from them and turned, stiffly, towards Raikou. He walked, stiffly, towards him as well and stood, stiffly, before him. His left hand held firmly the scabbard of his pilfered sword, and his right arm hung aimlessly at his side. Occasionally, he rolled his shoulder to loosen it a bit on the off-chance it'd be needed in the near future, and only marginal reactions to the pain ran across his forehead.

"I'm ready, whenever you are."

That was a fast recovery. Though, it could hardly be called a recovery. This was more of a matter of will; Kazamika was willing himself to deal with the pain. It was admirable, Chujutsu felt--really showed his devotion to the cause. He had to respect that.

Just in case, though, Chujutsu was still there. He could help Kazamika walk if he needed it. The faster they could move, the better. Now, they needed to get in contact with the other camp to warn them. They'd need to expect a large search team in the next day or two, and a number of methods of surviving it came to Chujutsu's mind--ideas to explore at a later time.

"We first need to get back on our path--up this way," Chujutsu pointed in the direction that they'd been in before the battle, "Then, we continue as we were."

Which was unfortunately a little longer than expected, which was an unfortunate increase to the elapsed time of their walk--but they'd just have to make do, and hope to find what they were looking for . . .

"Please follow me."

Jin's stride was slow, stilted, and stiff, but he managed to keep up. For the most part, his countenance remained as stoic as it had been before the altercation. Brow smooth, eyes far away, and lips set in a thin line. Though he walked with something of a limp, he did not let the pain slow him. A slight sheen of sweat eventually broke out across his forehead, but he still strove to keep pace.

Soon enough, however, his body grew accustomed to the rhythm. What was once fire spreading across his back from a focal point was now a gentle, if ever unpleasant, warmth that touched his nerves. Chujutsu had done a good job in healing him. The endorphins flooded his system made the trek bearable, but far from acceptable.

It had been hours. Still, Jin had yet to utter a single word of distress or rest. His gait had warmed up and become more fluid, though it had yet to return to its former grace.

"I can't believe that the Chameleon would be out with such a small and apparently worthless group. Do you think that they were meant for something more? More than just scouting?"

"You'd be surprised," Chujutsu replied as he glanced back to Kazamika.

He didn't want to sound too foreboding, but that couldn't be helped with this subject matter. Sending Kensai with weaker groups, elite Kensai with the weakest groups, gave them a distinct tactical advantage. If the group was ambushed, an elite kensai on their side would turn the tables immediately. That wasn't what was foreboding, though . . .

"Finding us is the Shogun-dono's number one priority. He is devoting three fourths of his military to it, it seems, even the greatest soldiers amongst them. I believe he wishes to snuff us out--and here in the forest, he does not have to worry about dirty jobs spoiling his public figure."

They were reaching a clearing, one which had the painter's interests. He'd been going that direction ever since he saw it in the distance. Because of their side venture with the Chameleon, they were off track, and he couldn't quite get them back on track. This clearing could serve as a good place to recollect himself and get back into the tracking game.

Chujutsu stopped suddenly, at the very instant that he reached the clearing. He held his open palm up immediately to tell Kazamika to stop, too. The reason would become evident as soon as the former Kensai could examine the clearing. It was fairly large, and covered in footprints. Steps were separated in long gaps, suggesting long leg movements--running, and there had to be dozens of them. Not quite hundreds, but close . . .

"Tracks," Chujutsu said as his eyes peered up from the footprints to the clearing, "Dozens of them. And long indentations--like tents. The other camp was here . . ."

"The Chameleon is likely dead now. I envenomed him with the poison of the purple-ringed octopus. I'd be surprised if he managed to draw breath for more than a few minutes after our engagement. It worries me…I wonder how many more elites fly under the banner of Almaster, and what they're all capable of."

He had little to say afterwards. Jin kept his hand on the foreign sword and his mind reveled in the grotesque thoughts of a dozen or more of contingents of men, such as they one that they just faced down, peppering the countryside. As an omen, the outlook was incredibly dismal. They needed to find a way to break Almaster's almost hypnotic hold over the kensai.

Jin studied warfare, both classical and unconventional, and though he knew the best way to infiltrate the center of a small contingent and maim them from there, he did not know how to find them. He could claim some degree of tracking expertise, a level higher than that of a layman, but between the two revolutionaries standing in the corpse of a rebel camp, it was clear that Raikou was the expert between them.

"I don't see any blood. It looks like they got out of here before anything serious happened, but you have better eyes than I do. Can you tell which direction they're going? Can we find them?"

"This way," Chujutsu pointed towards the north-east. "

The tracks were great in number; startling, even. There had to be a large number of people moving all at once, and all in that direction. Each track, even if circling a little, went that way in the end. It was a mass exodus. Chujutsu stood back up, thinking for a moment. This group wasn't taking much precaution with their movements. They weren't covering their tracks. They had so many that they'd be easy prey if a soldier came across this.

"These tracks are still somewhat new. They must be a day old at least. It is a large group movie, though--they still cannot be too far away."

With that, Chujutsu motioned for Kazamika to follow, and started on to the northeast. There was a bit of a risk if they were being followed--or if this was actually a camp of soldiers they were looking for, but that all could be addressed in due time.