[Hokage] Terukawa

Those stakes are rapidly taking root and growing in the Gobi.The so-called sea fog does not seem to be sea fog, they just linger on those strange wooden piles... Transpiration?Well, who knows, are you going to be scientific in such a world?

As for other thoughts - no other thoughts.Whether it's tactics, escape routes, continued observation, or Kakashi and Rin... nothing at all.Waves of pain continued to sweep through my bones and nerves. I felt my eyes darkened and my limbs numb and cold, and I almost lost the ability to think that I was proud of.Concentration has become an impossible task, as if I have reached the end of my strength while staring at the distant stake, so that now I can't even focus my eyes.

I got it if I fell to my death.

In a trance, I gritted my teeth tentatively—it’s okay, at least the teeth didn’t fall out, but the strong smell of blood has completely paralyzed the sense of taste and smell, and everything else is beyond the range of perception.It was as if a thousand mosquitos had been drilled into his ears, and his headache seemed to explode in the next second... The world was spinning, and the buzzing tinnitus blurred all sense of direction.After the thick black color blocks in front of my eyes faded a little, I could barely cover the surrounding scene, but everything was covered with a thick layer of rough edges... No, I still couldn't focus.I can't see what's around me.

There was blood foam in my throat, and my throat would roar with the rhythm of my breath, which probably made me look like a poor dying animal.I haven't actually figured out where the blood I'm spitting up is coming from, but a couple of ribs were broken before...hope the lungs are ok.

Fortunately, this state of pain that made my consciousness become chaotic did not last long, but the few seconds of memory are enough for me to recollect in the rest of my life.

I closed my eyes and tried to turn my body over to avoid being choked to death by the backflow of blood back into the trachea—unfortunately I failed, because I found that my elbow could not exert force, probably because of a bone problem, But at this time, my sense of hearing just happened to recover a little... to the point where I could vaguely hear someone calling my name.

It's Kakashi.

I opened my eyelids, and as I expected, I caught a bunch of white hairs dangling in my blurred field of vision.Nearly half of the mask covering his face was damaged. Although he couldn't see his expression clearly, it could make people feel that his face was not in a good mood—this person was probably trying his best to restrain his emotions, so that he couldn't see clearly at all. His voice sounded a little trembling now.

"Zhaohe! Zhaohe! How are you? Wake up! Yasaka Terukawa!" He gently patted my face with his hands, breathing short and fast.

I opened my mouth, but no words came out.The sound drilled from the gaps in the vocal cords is only the sound of "ho ho ho" as if the cold wind passes through - maybe there is also the subtle sound of blood bubbling and bursting, as if it was stuffed into tattered cotton wool, in short, it sounds like As bad as it gets.

……That does not work.

I swallowed subconsciously, but I was almost choked by blood, and this obviously shocked Kakashi again, but fortunately, the string called "calm" was always tense In his mind, he knew almost instantly what to do in this situation... Unfortunately, the focus was wrong.

I can't move my fingers and elbow very much, but one shoulder can.

I gently blocked the hand he extended to help with my arm, and when he was dazed by that pitifully small force, I opened my mouth and said: "Hide well."

The person who was blocked suddenly realized, and explained in a low voice: "Don't worry, we are safe for the time being, and Sanwei has no intention of continuing to chase and kill us."

?

Did I miss a whole year of drama?

I stared at Kakashi for a few seconds with rounded eyes that were almost covered with blood. After repeatedly confirming that his attitude of speaking was indeed serious and not making some inappropriate jokes, I finally calmed down. God, barely digested the news.

There is no intention of continuing to hunt us down... what about trouble?Then it pushed us to this point with the tail-spraying beast jade, was it all on a whim?

...incomprehensible.

Taking advantage of this gap in thinking, Kakashi carefully checked the injuries on my body, and in the end he helped me half-sit up cautiously and lightly.Lin was placed next to me by him. She is still unconscious, but the situation should look much better than mine, except for the initial fracture of the sternum, and because Kakashi and I removed all the joints of the limbs. In addition to a subtle distortion, what my eyes can catch is only a few large-looking scratches.

Ah... Our location has also been shifted.

I belatedly thought.

When I first landed, I could see huge wooden piles standing in forests on the sea in the distance just by looking up, but now all I can see is a scene of thick and light gray-blue sea fog. There is no fluctuation, and the dead silence looks like the surface of a pool of stagnant water.

It made me realize that there was a gap in my memory, which meant that I had briefly lost consciousness...or briefly went into shock, and it also showed that the few seconds that made me faint from pain were far from simple.Kakashi is probably one-on-two... Heh.

Forget it, we'll talk about this later.

"The stake," I said, "Kakashi, do you see the stake?"

"No one will see them." Kakashi didn't even lift his head. He seemed to have injured his throat. After all, his voice shouldn't be so hoarse and full of fatigue. "After all, they were nailed through immediately." Three-tailed carapace and its three tails."

"It makes Sanwei suffer, makes Sanwei fear." I laughed in a breathy tone, "Savior."

—— Immediately afterwards, I realized that the meaning of this sentence was really unclear, so that it was the same for myself.

The movements in Kakashi's hands paused, and then he raised his head—I guess he might not understand my current overly complicated heart, but he still stared at me with a look called "worried" for a long time—— Of course, this will not make me feel uncomfortable, but it will definitely not arouse any desire to explain in me, but he finally realized something was wrong at a certain moment, and then moved away very quietly He focused on the little work in his hand again.

I tilted my head and found that he was wiping the half-severed ninja sword with a rag that came from nowhere.

— Kakashi has changed.

A concept that had always existed in my mind in the form of a reflection in the water suddenly became clear at this moment, and before that, I swore I had never realized it so clearly and firmly before.

Where has he changed?

—he doesn't seem to have changed anywhere.The hair style has not changed, the shape of the face has not changed, the facial features have not changed, the dead fish eyes have not changed, the clever head has not changed, and the loyalty to Konoha has not changed.He is as strong as ever, and he is as proud of his peers as always... Of course, he can't beat me as always.

But he has indeed changed.

Take a look, he seems to have become much calmer.He is no longer tense and thinking about fighting the enemy to the death, he is no longer always ready to fight, and he no longer instinctively wants to swing the knife as soon as he picks it up.He learned to retreat temporarily, learned to steal a little energy between battles, and learned to retain the weapons that accompanied him all the way.

But... is this "peace" in the true sense?

I thought about it quietly for a while, but didn't get an answer, so I simply gave up thinking.The massive blood loss also seemed to blur a part of my ability to think. This feeling was very exhausting, as if I had been drained from the inside out.

Time will tell everything, and the only thing I really need to think about is the present moment.

Wooden stake, "savior", Sanwei Isofu... wooden stake.

So the stake can basically be equivalent to a "savior".I came to this conclusion easily.

In this way, there is a reasonable explanation for the wooden stake that was clearly able to pass through three in one go, but in the end it was just a wooden stake that happened to be nailed to our side.It's a pity that my mind was a little chaotic under the blood loss and heavy pressure at that time, and the appearance of that wooden stake became the last straw that broke the camel's back. It was the direct reason why I finally became like a frightened bird.

In a state of stress, I didn’t even go through my mind before doing things. The current state of being seriously injured and vomiting blood has an inseparable causal relationship with my choice to instantly cast advanced ninjutsu without a seal because my mind was not clear at the time.

...unexpected and dangerous.Maybe I should be surprised that even in a stressful state, I still remember to get Kakashi and Rin together before doing anything, but it is undeniable that we are now in such a safe place , Inseparable from the ethereal and unpredictable element of luck.If there was any mistake in my chakra control at that time... or if Kakashi took the wrong route when he landed and dragged two, then our situation must be very different from now.

That makes it all clear—wait a minute, there's one more doubt, and it's a doubt that bothers me.

"Kakashi!" I yelled.

"Hey." Kakashi immediately raised his head in response.

"Stand up, then turn around... yes, raise your hands again... Hey, what are you doing in the surrender posture? I didn't see it before. I didn't expect you to have a good sense of humor."

"??? Yasaka Terukawa, don't push yourself too hard, don't you ask me—"

"No, wait, that's fine too," I covered my face and waved my hands, "Okay, let's go back... stop talking nonsense—well, it doesn't seem like a big problem."

Seeing that although Kakashi had a stinky face full of question marks and swear words, in the end he still carried out all my instructions with a loving posture of "surrender", and what I was most worried about seemed to be It didn't happen. Under the sudden relaxation, I finally couldn't control my tense expression, and I laughed out loud under Kakashi's almost scorching stare—of course, this kind of The result of the act wasn't great, not about Cassie, but about my broken ribs.

"..." Kakashi's dead fish eyes seemed to have become more deadly - this should not be an illusion.The annoyance that he felt he was being played was mixed with some more complex emotions that I didn't bother to analyze. His eyes and micro-expressions were mixed, but then he strode up to me and looked down upon me. Looking down at me, he said with a half-smile, "Yasaka Terukawa, you'd better give me a reasonable explanation for what you did just now."

I spat out the blood that sprang up from laughing in two mouthfuls, and then my face became serious: "Kakashi, the third person that Dough waited for time did not appear, or the third person has actually appeared, Just didn't show up to us. He didn't even try to keep us."?

"...You can change your face faster than turning the pages of a book." Kakashi frowned, and suddenly said, "So you were actually looking at my wound just now?"

...The original intention is indeed so, but you raised your hand to "surrender", which is really unexpected to me, and the funny effect is indeed top-notch... Kakashi, your financial source after retirement is guaranteed.

While this is true, it certainly cannot be said so.

I nodded indifferently, and continued: "When Lin threw the detonating talisman at me, the reason why I didn't react was because the result of dying together was seriously inconsistent with the tendency to procrastinate it showed before. Now think about it carefully. , it is very likely that the detonating talisman just means the arrival of the third person."

"Wait a minute," Kakashi interrupted, "Is it 'Because the third person came, so it threw the detonator at a certain time', or 'Because the detonator appeared, it just means that the first Three people are coming'? Is the detonator led by a third person?"

"The former. The detonating talisman is not dominated by a third person." I said decisively, "I saw with my own eyes that the dough was attached to the corpse of Anbu Kirigakure, and through the corpse, it activated the puppet charm that Anbu Kirigakure buried in Lin's body. They are all under the control of the dough, and the dough has the initiative in the whole process."

Kakashi "tsk": "So, the third person is actually the one who was calculated? But why should the timing of the arrival of the third person detonate the detonator? The consequence of the explosion of the detonator is... "

"So it should be that the explosion of the detonating talisman will cause a certain degree of irritation to the third person...but it must have underestimated you." I twitched the corners of my lips and joked.

He ignored my untimely joke, frowned and continued to think for a while, and after a while, he suddenly said, "Are you still Lin?"

——But for me, this sentence is very easy to understand.If things are indeed as we speculated before, the consequences of the explosion of the detonating talisman will stimulate the third person... Is it my death or Lin's death that will stimulate the third person?Or is it the whole thing?

"...It's all possible. The conditions are too vague, but it seems that my probability is relatively high. My men have more lives than Lin, so I can't guarantee..." I pinched the bridge of my nose with some headaches, "Lin just no the same."

Kakashi didn't speak, nor nodded or shook his head, but I saw that the frown between his brows seemed to deepen a little, and there were many dark tides hidden in his dark blue eyes.After a long time, I feel a little boring, but I have never been impatient of loneliness. After all, I can’t get up from the injury now. Even if I have nothing to do, I should find something to do for myself—such as holding back a little throbbing pain, Extract medical chakra for self-healing.

As soon as I eased the worst injury, Kakashi sat up straight like a spring, and the sudden movement shocked me who was defenseless.

"No!" He stared straight at me, the light in his eyes was as bright as the stars in the field at night, "And I know what's wrong, Zhaohe, you are lost."

I frowned: "You say."

"Although it was Lin who was controlled and Lin who threw the detonating talisman, whether it was you or me who faced her did not depend on the dough, but on our on-the-spot reaction. That is to say, if controlling Lin threw It was decided from the very beginning that the detonating talisman should perish together, so the other person in this incident besides Lin cannot be predicted no matter what."

As if being illuminated by a bean candle, the blind spot in the previous thinking path suddenly became clear at this moment, but my mood could not be elevated no matter what. fell down.

"what do you mean--"

"That's right, it doesn't matter whether the other dead one is you or me," Kakashi lowered his eyebrows and easily pressed to his upper eye line, which made his eyebrows and eyes sharp at this moment almost shockingly, "The point is Lin."

"Let Lin die under the nose of the third person," he said firmly, "that's the only thing it wants."