Samehada's roar turned the forest into a drumline of snapping branches and flying leaves, but Uchiha Jin didn't bother to look back. He kept his head down, feet pumping, lungs working like bellows — every step measured, economy of motion perfected so that speed wasn't just burst but a steady, unwearable march. With Nara clutched under one arm and Kudo hung limp over the other, he threaded the trees like a needle, sliding between trunks that would have snagged a less practiced runner.
Kunai and senbon hissed past, carving the air where Jin's shoulders had been a heartbeat before. One shuriken nicked his sleeve, another nicked Kudo's boot. A kunai thudded into a trunk beside his ear. It should have slowed him; instead it gave him rhythm. He used the impacts to pivot, torqueing his hips and converting the blunt hits into forward momentum. Samehada cursed and swung, the great blade tearing a furrow through ferns; twice Jin's shoulder caught bark and blood spattered, but he didn't falter. Endurance, not daring. That was the calculus.
After ten harrowing minutes the Pufferfish Demon realized he was losing ground. He had the strength of a dozen men, but the terrain was not his ally. The boy ran like a practised mountaineer: steps that found the surest root, the narrowest ridge, the tuck that let the body disappear. Samehada had power—you could not out-muscle a jōnin—but power eats itself against discipline and a mind that knew the land. Breathing like a struck ox, the swordsman slowed, awareness sharpening into a different kind of fury.
Jin felt it too: the pursuit's heat dropped to a distant red. He veered into a shallow, marshy drainage the team had passed earlier — a place of stopped water, thin mud, and tangles of long grass. He heard the warrior's boots hit that slick ground; they made the wrong sound. He didn't stop. Instead he staggered once, made a show of buckling, and then — with a practiced snap — slid headlong into a narrow channel between reeds.
Samehada hit the marsh a heartbeat later, blade sweeping, and the sword sank mid-thigh. The swordsman's momentum hurled him forward, but mud gripped his boots like hands. He tried to plant and pull free; the mud had a memory. It would not yield to force. The big sword hung heavy in waterlogged air. Jin, already up the bank, turned and gave him two words: "Tie your shoes."
The insult sent a flare of rage through the swordsman. He hacked. The stroke smashed through reeds and rotted wood, but mud held. Every strike took time to recover. Jin was already a blur: he jogged, set Kudo down gently on a root, gave Nara a brief, efficient nod, and then — in two breaths — had vanished again into the thicket. Samehada's curses filled the marsh like a tide; after a few more frantic swings, discipline reasserted itself. He could not chase into a maze without losing the advantage. He ground his teeth and retreated to firmer ground, not because he could not push forward, but because his priority had shifted: this hunt had become humiliation territory. Report would matter. Pride would matter. He would not squander the Swordsmen's reputation on a bog's whim.
When the three of them finally stopped — high, breathless, and filthy on the lee of a fallen pine — Kudo curled forward and vomited into his palms, then laughed weakly like a man who'd cheated death and realized how cheap the thing had been. Nara sat very still with his back against the trunk, eyes half closed, mapping the night. Jin wiped the mud from his sleeve with a motion that was almost casual.
Kudo's voice came out small. "Why… why saved me? You could've left me. You—" He choked on the last word.
Jin tossed his head, annoyed more than sentimental. "Because you're a useful idiot. You still have contacts, you still talk, and sometimes useful idiots keep the map of what the village thinks. Also—" he glanced at Nara, then at Kudo, and the corner of his mouth tilted up for the first time in hours, "because the chase was fun. Don't make it philosophical."
Nara snorted, then spoke with the clinical calm Jin had come to trust. "Kudo will blabber if he sees the ANBU. Let him live. More importantly: you used terrain and bait. Smart. You're not an Uchiha type of brute, Jin. You think like Nara."
Jin's eyes flickered briefly — not with pride, but with calculation. Saving Kudo wasn't kindness; it was risk management. The civilian chūnin had value as a temporary cover, a plausible explanation if the Anbu poked, and a figure to hand over to Kirigakure as misinformation if it came to that. He liked living allies more than dead trophies.
Far off, in the fog-buried black, a lone scream split the trees — Samehada's vow, half roar, half promise: he had been cheated this night, and he would return. The three heard it and let it hang in the air like a debt.
"Two things," Jin said finally. "One: we keep moving. Two: we don't stick to any trail. Nara, your shadow work — more often. Kudo, you carry the spare scrolls and be quiet with them. And if we get cornered, don't die like an idiot. Do something they'll believe."
Kudo swallowed, nodded, and for the first time looked not at the ground but directly at Jin. Something like respect — raw, inexperienced respect — glimmered there.
They moved again, a crooked little pack of survivors. Somewhere behind them a Mist sword swore revenge, but for now the night belonged to the ones who could disappear into the dark and make the forest forget them.