[Hokage] Terukawa

"Whoa, Captain Coyote—is that you?"

"..."

"Ah... isn't this very handsome, I can see your face, I have been with you for almost a whole day... Captain Coyote, why don't you talk? We have also met several times driven by fate , more or less an acquaintance, don't you think?"

"..."

"Captain Coyote, your mask is gone, and it looks like you don't like that ugly mask either."

"..."

She-it.

It rubbed Shiori's face with exaggerated movements, and smiled at me:

"Coincidentally, Captain Coyote, I don't like it either, so I threw away the mask and used a better-looking side to meet you... How is the sense? Is my smile still natural? Oh sure. I'm just an extra, you're the one I want to entertain—"

"Captain Coyote, do you still like this face?"

"..."

……

…………

silence.

silence.

What color is silence?

Silence is black.

But this silent black is not pure black, because I can see the deeper stagnant red through the silent black.

Stagnant red.

blood color.

"..."

No other voices can be heard.Cannot see other colors.Can not open mouth to speak.Can't use my brain to think.

There seems to be a layer of glass between me and the world, and the water vapor accumulates on the other side that I can't touch.

Nothing can be straightened out.Nothing is received.Can't understand anything.

……

——Unless that thing is stuck on the other side of the glass that is full of moisture.

I don't know what the original voice of "Dough" was like, but I know what Shiori's original voice was like.It is condensed and cold, firm and slender. Sometimes it is actively controlled to be more neutral and powerful in order to highlight its momentum, and sometimes it will change back to its proper softness and warmth imperceptibly. Between each syllable The connection between them seems to be rolled into a warm brown by the quietly burning flames.

……

After all, it shouldn't be like this now.

The cold and sharp female voice mixed with some kind of harsh and rough male voice twisted the whole voice into an absurd and weird way, it—it sounded like a damn stitch monster.

...I must tear you to pieces.

Give up weapons, give up skills, give up seals, and give up ninjutsu.

All that remains is pure killing intent and strength.

——What is my fastest killing technique?Is it boxing? Is it ninjutsu? Is it teamwork?

--neither.It is a knife.

I don't have a knife in my hand, and I can't hold it, but who said that a "knife" must be a "knife"?

——This may be a faster blink than when being chased by the three tails.

Everything around me is blurring and blurring, and finally crosses a certain abstract threshold, merging into a mass of indistinguishable darkness, as if all the light built by the world around me is counted by some invisible force at this moment Manipulate, crush, and grind into ashes.

The stitch monster seemed to be still talking, and its voice lingered in my ears inexplicably, like a magic sound filling my ears and sea water pouring down, making me uncomfortable.

...But that's okay, it won't be able to talk soon.

Sure enough, at the moment when the scene around me became stable and concise again, the cold and distorted mixed sound finally stopped abruptly as if cut off by a sharp weapon.There is already a spindle-shaped hollow on its twisted and sickly left shoulder blade. A light blue-blue light is flowing on the surface of my right hand. Just like a steel knife is performing its duty on the cutting board.

Use the palm as the knife, use the palm as the knife...but the palm and the knife are different after all.Unlike the "Chidori" used by Kakashi, which will be blessed with speed due to the thunder attribute chakra, the effect of the water attribute chakra in this regard is not very significant, but it must also have its own uniqueness.

Since the palm is not convenient for chopping and cutting horizontally, let's change the chopping into a stab.

"Tired? Take a rest when you're tired." My voice was hoarse, as if I had been poisoned.

I could feel the layers of tissue wrapping my left hand twitching and shaking, but it didn't make me feel at ease—no one who'd seen it hold Three Tails in person. peace of mind.I don't even know if there is one method that can end its life among all the methods I know, or if I have thought too much from the beginning, and the only one who is about to be ended in such a miserable way here is me.

But—run away?

Whether you can escape or not is another matter, but I will never be reconciled.

"... I underestimated you, Captain Coyote, you are indeed quite explosive."

"But an attack like this, do you still have the energy to launch a second time?"

My heart skipped a beat, but my face was calm.

At this time, half of "Dough"'s body convulsed violently without warning, and the palms and wrists I penetrated into it could clearly feel the pressure from the tissues in its body.It only took a moment to understand its purpose, but even with sharp eyesight and quick hands, it was too late to pull out the palm, but the thin layer of chakra wrapped on the palm of my hand was just for this purpose—overcoming psychological obstacles, and then Flipping my palms and exerting force horizontally - I only heard a "poof", half of Shiori's shoulder blade and half of Dough's body were slammed open by me.

Then I calmly launched the blink, and returned to Kakashi's side.

The "dough" that was left in place let out an exclamation of "Oh", and the voice could not be heard to be pain or annoyance.

But after a fleeting moment of calm, my mind has been scrambled into a mess.My feet touched the ground, and the next moment I found that I had almost lost the courage to look directly at my right hand.

My hand hurts, and my hand is also cold... I can clearly tell that the cold and sticky feeling comes from the mixed-color slurry covering my entire palm. All ninjas are familiar with this low temperature to the bone, just like all ninjas Ninjas have long been familiar with freezing and death.

My mind was cold and numb, but the heartbeat in my chest was so violent that it seemed to explode in the next second. Time seemed to stand still at this moment, and it felt like I lost the ability to think for a short time.I call out to my mind and my intellect and they don't answer, but it only takes a few milliseconds for them to complete a picture in my head, so I lean forward to look and see that they have been in this fleeting time Outlined the death of "dough" thousands of times.

...Yasaka Terukawa, Torikawa Shiori Her blood is cold, she is dead.

She won't be coming back.

—but she now stands before you, blocking your way, because of this culprit.

Behind being blocked by her, there are companions and juniors who trust you, respect you...and even rely on you, they don't know whether they will live or die.

... They don't know whether they are alive or dead.

Yasaka Zhaohe.

My chest began to rise and fall violently, and my heartbeat was so loud that my eardrums were pounding. In the blink of an eye, I seemed to have broken free from the feeling of suffocation caused by my limbs being frozen, and returned to my sanity, but the heavy rage and sadness fell on me. My hands and my feet, which made me stand in place, stiff and hard like a broken and incomplete statue.

Get rid of who will wake me up from this painful emotion... just give me a hand.

I whispered in my heart.

It's not right, it's not right... Please let me get my sanity back.

Very fortunate—my silent prayer was heard.

There is another kind of temperature that wraps my cold and dirty right hand. The temperature must not be very high, but it is no different from scalding to me at this time.This hot temperature embraced the source of my coldness, warmed my limbs with my still flowing blood, and awakened my heart.

...It's Kakashi.

Thanks to the warmth of Kakashi's palm, I woke up from grief and trance.

My right hand has broken bones, but it is barely enough to shake Kakashi's hand back.The slurry made of Shiori's blood and the body fluid of "dough" is still sticky, which makes my palm slippery and I can't use it, but I still hold him tightly, as if I want to absorb something—and as if is to convey something.

I didn't look back at Kakashi's expression.

I don't want to look back.

"Ah, you discovered this." "Dough" straightened up meaninglessly, "I have to say that you are much faster than I assumed, um... I thought you would be more scruples because of this girl, She's such a nice girl after all, isn't she?"

"..."

"Isn't it? Yasaka Terukawa—Captain Coyote, am I wrong? Why don't you speak?"

"...You talk too much nonsense. Didn't your mother teach you not to provoke an enemy who has calmed down?"

I say.

"Or do you have no mother? Ah... your expression has already told me the answer, and it seems to be the case. Rubbish, you are so pitiful, a rubbish creature without a mother can only find a sense of existence for itself by doing rubbish things... Oh, though I don't know who made your piece of shit do shit like this, but that person—or that thing? It must be shit, too, and a wretch."

My voice was as cold as ice.

"Using the friendship between people, using the emotions between people-the person who can do this kind of thing, the degree of insidiousness can be seen. This kind of guy is either born anti-social, or he lives too much. Failure, for example, we don’t have all the things we have, or we have lost all the things we have. It is a loser who has nothing but watches in the dark and hates all good things. There are usually two mentalities of a Loser, one Seeing other people’s happiness makes me feel a little warm, and the other is seeing others’ happiness makes my teeth itch with hatred, telling myself that I can’t get it, and others can’t even think about it——Guess which kind of guy is behind you? ?”

Surprised—yes, surprised.

I saw surprise on the face of "Dough", but the surprise disappeared in the blink of an eye, replaced by a strange look as if looking at rare birds and animals.

"Dough" said: "Yasaka Terukawa, you really surprised me... Have you noticed something? Your guess is actually partly correct, but the guy behind me is not an ordinary guy. He is independent. In addition to your two hypotheses, walk on a third road that you can never imagine...a great third road that surpasses all roads."

It laughed again.

"You're so smart, so smart... ah~ You're much smarter than I thought, what should I do? I kind of want to get you into the group, but you're an unexpected guy, and if you don't say hello to him, you will Make him angry~"

I felt terrified for a moment, and some kind of chill that seemed to exist made my hair stand on end, so that I subconsciously wanted to back away to avoid its venomous sight—but some important information was hung up again That string in my head made me nail my feet in place.

But Kakashi was one step ahead of me.

"Unplanned? Is Yasaka Terukawa unplanned?" His voice was icy cold, "Then it should be me and Lin who were originally planned, right? You——"

"You guys want to write sharing eyes." I took a step forward and interrupted Kakashi's words firmly.

Kakashi's breath was slightly suffocated, and he nodded immediately.

I held Kakashi's hand tightly, and at the same time observed the look of "dough" calmly——

I saw it narrowed its eyes with disdain after a brief daze.

... As expected, they were directed at Lin.

I had a guess in my mind, and I have to wait and see, but I heard a "crash" sound from the grass not far away, as if some heavy object overwhelmed the reeds. It was no different from a thunderbolt that shattered the situation.

In an instant, everyone's eyes were attracted by that reed, and Kakashi, who was tense, yelled, "Who's there?!"

At this moment, my peripheral vision of the dynamic vision of my eyes suddenly caught the sudden change of "dough"'s expression, which made me suddenly realize that something important happened that was unexpected by both parties at the same time.

In the next second, "Dough" controlled Shiori's body to jump high, and when her feet touched the ground, I saw a white thing escaping into the ground like a shadow returning to a dark place.Shiori's body was left in place, she didn't even shake a few times, she just paused on the ground, and then fell straight to the ground like a puppet whose strings were pulled...

The body seems to move spontaneously.

I shook off Kakashi's hand extremely quickly and ran over at the fastest speed in my life.The eyeballs in the eye sockets seem to have lost the ability to turn, so that in the short distance of a few steps, all eyes are full of her.The river beach is full of pebbles, and I stumbled on one of them. Fortunately, I reacted quickly and stabilized my balance, so that I would not describe myself as embarrassed when I fell down before I hugged Shiori, like a defeated dog who could not stand on the ground.

...I caught her.

I caught her.

Stiff and cold.It was not a general coldness, but a kind of coldness that oozes deathly silence everywhere.

I was afraid that my hands would not be stable, so I didn't dare to touch her half of the shoulder blade, which was dripping with blood because I opened it with my palm, but at the same time, I couldn't control my gaze to look there, her bones, her body Flesh, her blood... Maybe because of her current state, her blood is not warm and does not flow a lot, but I feel that my right hand that has created all this is starting to get hot, so hot that I almost want to Convulsions, and then moaned/groaned out his illusory and meaningless pain from his mouth.

I caught her.

But this is meaningless.

I am genuinely overwhelmed by the nonsense.

Is this how Chunriqing felt at that time?

"Relax, that thing isn't coming back."

Kakashi turned back at this time, I looked up at him, and saw Lin who was sleeping peacefully on his back, and some kind of absurd image in the trance suddenly felt real at this moment-I guess it wasn't just me Human thinking, but no one broke it, so the four of us had to look at each other silently in the bloody twilight, and the scene once became like a painful art that was all the rage in the previous life.

"You...you can cry if you want," Kakashi said, "don't look at me with that kind of eyes... Zhaohe, haven't you ever touched your face?"

"Face?" I asked.

"Your expression doesn't look right with your tears, which is not a good thing."

He said.

"Haven't you noticed? You have tears all over your face."

I froze for a moment, subconsciously rubbed my forearm, and finally found that Kakashi was not lying.

"I... I haven't cried for a long time, and I almost forgot what it feels like to cry."

I say.

"You know? I was lucky when I saw Shiori just now, because she seemed to be agile and nimble, and a stiff corpse couldn't do that, so I wishfully thought that she might be possessed by a living body. "

Kakashi sat cross-legged on the side, and he looked at me intently, as if I was talking about an extremely important declaration.

"My knife...in fact, it wasn't an accident. I can deceive myself but I can't. I can let myself wishful thinking, but I can't stop myself from finding my reason. I had a tentative mind about that knife...ah , In fact, as it said, I was using my right hand to measure the temperature of Shiori's blood, so as to test whether she is..."

I lowered my eyes and didn't continue talking.

...I was sure that I couldn't do anything to the living Shiori, but the situation was unknown at that time, and I needed a reason to fight.

There may not be so many reasons for people to live and do things, but people always need reasons.For a while, I couldn't tell whether this was my real judgment at the time or the reason I thought of later... I was too tired.

Kakashi said: "But it's never your fault, you're definitely not the garbage that runs all this. For Shiori... for Shiori, she is a liberator."

Kakashi is not suitable for comforting others, and I am not suitable for being comforted by others, I thought.

The statement of the facts is indeed the most reasonable consolation, but it is also the most feeble consolation.In fact, the people who are comforted are not always the ones who can't see the facts clearly... Maybe these people are the ones who know the facts best.

But what is the use of facts?

If facts can comfort others, what is the meaning of dreams and bubbles?

I wiped the tears from my face: "I'm sorry, but it's okay, come with me to see the situation of our Anbu subordinates?"

"Why do you say I'm sorry?" Kakashi frowned, his voice was low, "I've seen it, there are seven people over there, and the four on the right are in a coma. people……"

His voice trailed off, but he was still looking into my eyes.

"...well," I said, "that's seven."

"what?"

"I and Shiori's team lost a total of seven people. I keep these in mind."

My voice calmed down again.

"Keep it in mind - in the future, if you have grievances, you will have revenge, and if you have revenge, you will have revenge."

The wind has no trace, but it can leave a shadow in the reeds.The sun sank into the soft reeds in the distance, and even the blood-like brilliance also subsided. The sky changed from warm to cold, and the middle sky was already a slightly warm dark blue. After dusk, the reeds were completely silent. ... We didn't speak, the flowing water was gurgling, layers of reed leaves fell down with the wind, and the sound of rustling was endless, like wandering spirits wandering and whispering in the wind.

It will be night.We're going to rest here overnight before we hit the road.

"It's time for me to watch the night, Zhaohe, go and rest."

I nodded and shook my head again, and told Kakashi to wake me up immediately if something happened, and finally slept in the place closest to the night watchman.

The fire in the dark night is burning beside me, and with just a glance, I can see that the distant night sky has sunk into indigo, and the tiny stars are shining with a cold blue-white light, but the silver-white closest to me is covered with A layer of warm firelight.The fire seems to have propped up a warm hood in this humid and deep night. All people who feel cold can find a moment of comfort in this hood, and they can relax themselves temporarily in this comfortable temperature. Allow yourself to sink into a less outlandish dream.

During the period, I woke up occasionally, and I saw the silvery white that was close at hand in the short twilight.He lowered his head and didn't notice me, he only concentrated on wiping the rust-colored sin on my right palm with a damp rag.

...You also know that you are not good at comforting people.

The warm and chaotic darkness soon returned.