The Hero's Bridge stretched silently across the sea, indifferent to all the turmoil of the Land of Waves.
The massive bridge piers cast broad black shadows over the water. Inside one of those shadows lay a headless, charred corpse, sprawled face-down, blood still gushing wildly from the severed neck.
Wrapped in bandages from head to toe, Zabuza stood to the corpse's left. The exposed skin on his body was covered in burns. Holding the bloodstained Executioner's Blade, he picked up Hidan's head and casually tossed it to Kakashi.
Hum.
The Executioner's Blade traced a pale crescent through the air. With a light flick, it sent thick blood splashing across the sea, leaving behind a widening crimson stain.
"That was troublesome."
Catching Hidan's head midair, Kakashi looked at the unnaturally smooth cervical vertebrae exposed at the neck and silently approved.
As expected of the wielder of the Executioner's Blade. His technique was clean and efficient.
"I don't like owing people favors."
Zabuza's tone was flat.
"You saved my life. If you ever need something in the future, just say the word."
The words sounded light, but Kakashi understood the weight behind them.
To repay Kaiza for saving him, Zabuza had protected the Land of Waves for five whole years after the bridge was completed. Even while being hunted by such terrifying enemies, he still left a clone hidden beneath the bridge to watch over the country while his real body secretly protected Tazuna on the way to Konoha.
Later, when Tazuna cancelled the mission, it was also Zabuza's Mist Clone that negotiated with them and restarted the effort to save the Land of Waves.
When this man stepped up, he truly stepped up. His promise carried tremendous weight.
"The one who saved you was Konome. Go tell her that."
Kakashi did not dare take credit.
Konome had handled the most troublesome opponent, the flying shinobi, alone. The three of them had only faced Hidan, a man whose abilities were already partially exposed and whose secret technique could not be used freely, yet they had still nearly capsized.
The enemy's technique had been far too bizarre. If not for Zabuza's warning at the critical moment, Naruto would already have died by Kakashi's own Raikiri.
Even thinking about it now left Kakashi shaken.
When Hidan had mocked him earlier, the fear in his heart had not been entirely an act. The moment he saw Naruto coughing blood and collapsing, every comrade he had ever lost flashed before his eyes, especially that girl with the purple markings on her face.
If he had truly killed another precious companion with his own hands, and this time the only son of his teacher and his teacher's wife…
At the thought, Kakashi's gaze toward Zabuza grew even more grateful.
Zabuza, his whole body aching, simply nodded and pressed a hand to his left ribs without saying more.
He had been struck by Kakuzu's Wind-Fire combination technique and forced to dive into the sea to avoid it.
Then a sudden tsunami had swept him into the air, breaking his ribs under the impact of tons of rushing water. On top of that, the steam generated by the clash of water and fire had nearly cooked him alive.
By the time he had barely recovered enough to move, Konome and Kakuzu were already blasting each other across the harbor plaza, and there was nothing he could do to help.
So he had quietly hidden near Kakashi's side of the battlefield, waiting to see whether he could land a sneak attack on Hidan.
Unfortunately, when the battlefield shifted, everyone moved too fast. Injured as he was, he could not keep up. By the time he arrived, the fight was already over. If not for the Mist Clone he had left to monitor the Land of Waves, he really would have done nothing more than steal a head.
"It's useless! I'm immortal, you worthless idiot! Moron!"
Reduced to nothing but a solitary head, Hidan still cursed nonstop. His Death Possession Blood technique had already been dispelled, and his face had returned to normal.
"Yeah, yeah."
Kakashi, wearing his usual dead-fish eyes, did not really listen to Hidan at all. He responded with the careless tone of someone humoring a child, holding the still ranting head up by the hair like a lantern.
Looking at the dripping flesh and pale bone at the severed neck, curiosity filled his eyes.
How exactly did this work?
With the neck severed, there should be no blood flow. His brain cells should have died almost instantly from lack of oxygen, and his vocal cords should have been cut as well. By all rights, he should not even be capable of speech.
This man was openly challenging biology itself.
Spending too much time around Konome had clearly had an effect on Kakashi. He was starting to drift, just a little, toward the path of the mad scientist.
The three tomoe in his Sharingan spun as he studied Hidan. He genuinely wanted to dissect the strange creature.
Unfortunately, now was not the time.
Kakashi shook his head regretfully, slung Hidan's body over one shoulder while carrying the cursing head in one hand, then propped the heavily injured Zabuza against his other side.
The three of them quickly regrouped with Naruto, who was carrying Sasuke, and made for the shore.
Medical ninja were exceedingly rare in the ninja world, and true miracle-working healers even rarer.
Fortunately, they had Konome.
The five of them did not move especially fast, nor especially slow. In no time, they were nearing the harbor.
"Um... Sasuke... thanks for saving me!"
With Sasuke still unable to use his legs, Naruto carried him on his back and apologized over and over, his whiskered face full of sincerity.
In view of Naruto's sincere attitude, Sasuke decided not to hold it against him.
After all, Naruto's brain simply did not work properly.
Idiots really did have idiot luck.
Naruto had originally only been able to open the first two gates of the Eight Gates. Yet after getting injured and pushing himself beyond his limits, he had unexpectedly opened the Third Gate, the Gate of Life.
His strength had risen tremendously.
Compared to that, Sasuke's Sharingan had failed to evolve, and he had ended up injuring his own legs. Worst of all, by the time he got there, Kakashi and Zabuza had already finished the enemy.
Not only had he failed to contribute, he had practically become the burden.
That left the proud Sasuke extremely frustrated.
"Mmph! Mmph!"
Hidan, hanging from Kakashi's hand like a grotesque lantern, had a kunai stuffed in his mouth and had lost the ability to shout.
He widened his eyes and stared toward the harbor, emitting muffled noises.
"Behave yourself."
Naruto snapped irritably.
For an enemy who had nearly killed him a moment ago, Naruto could not possibly offer a kind expression, no matter how bizarre Hidan's powers were.
"Naruto!"
Suddenly, Sasuke called out from behind him. His voice was hoarse and carried a thread of panic.
Naruto froze at once and turned his head.
"What is it?"
Sasuke's face was pale. Wet strands of hair clung to his forehead, making him look unusually bedraggled. His dark eyes stared toward the distance in shock, red slowly blooming through them.
"Did I see that wrong? That's the harbor we just came from, right?"
The harbor?
Naruto followed Sasuke's gaze.
Then, just like Kakashi and Zabuza beside him, he came to a dead stop. His blue pupils widened, reflecting a wash of pale gold.
Before them, deep gray storm clouds packed the sky, split down the middle by a single thread of gold. A blazing sun shone through the gap, casting fierce light over the shoreline.
And along the visible edge of the coast, the ground had split into countless vicious cracks, like a gigantic spiderweb cast over the entire edge of the island and extending so far that no one could tell where it ended. It looked as though the entire island had been broken by some invisible force.
Boom.
The fractures still trembled. Tons of earth continued to shear away from the island and crash into the sea, sending plumes of water into the air and turning the already black ocean into muddy sludge.
Foam-streaked waves of dirty water slammed against what little remained of the low cliffs, and in some places had already started encroaching onto the island itself. If the collapse continued, the whole island might soon sink beneath the sea.
"An... earthquake..."
Naruto stared at the crumbling cliffs, his voice shaking. That cliff had been the very one they jumped from earlier. Now it had already been swallowed by the sea.
"How could an earthquake split the sky too..."
Sasuke's voice lacked conviction, but the doubt still came out.
The sky, the earth, even the ocean itself all bore signs of being torn apart by some immense force. If it was not an earthquake, then what was it? Surely it could not have been caused by a person.
"I've lived in the Land of Waves for years. We've never had an earthquake like this."
Zabuza drew a deep breath, his expression caught between fear and awe.
"This is most likely man-made."
His conclusion stunned everyone.
He knew exactly what kind of shinobi could produce destruction on such a scale.
Only a Kage.
Strictly speaking, the ninja world had no official "Kage-level" rank, just as "elite jonin" was never a formal classification. They were merely practical labels used by shinobi to describe immense differences in strength.
No one knew whether other villages had codified such standards.
But in the Bloody Mist Village, where elite quality was everything, there were very clear rules for judging the strength of every class of ninja, even elite jonin and Kage-level fighters.
Genin and chunin needed no explanation.
In actual combat, anyone who could slaughter an enemy while completely disregarding numbers was understood to be two ranks above the people being slaughtered.
A tokubetsu jonin, for example, stood two levels above a genin.
That was why, when the young Zabuza slaughtered every student in his graduating class, he had been judged to possess tokubetsu jonin-level strength and recruited directly into the ANBU.
The same principle explained why jonin held such authority in the village. They stood two full levels above the chunin who formed the military backbone of every village. A jonin sent out on a mission could sweep away the majority of shinobi in the world.
Beyond jonin, if a fighter could defeat a tactical squad of three to five seasoned, well-coordinated jonin with both close and long-range capability, that person could be called an elite jonin.
And if a shinobi could butcher the very jonin who held power in each village as if they were dogs, ignoring numbers entirely, then that person belonged to the realm of the Kage.
Outside the Five Great Nations, most villages possessed at most one elite jonin and perhaps three to five ordinary jonin. Against a Kage-level fighter, such forces could not resist at all.
Some even believed that any shinobi capable of single-handedly annihilating a small nation deserved to be called Kage-level.
There was no question.
The absurd devastation on the coast had to be the result of at least multiple Kage-level combatants clashing. If they had been allowed to continue unchecked, the entire Land of Waves might have been erased.
"It looks like the battle over there was even more brutal than we imagined."
Carrying the still muffled Hidan in one hand, Kakashi was visibly shaken by the devastation.
That area had been Konome and Kakuzu's battlefield. He had no idea which of them had unleashed that scale of destruction.
For some reason, an old image suddenly surfaced in his mind.
A silver-haired girl in white robes leaning against a giant tree. It should have been a beautiful scene.
Except the trunk of that poor tree had creaked and groaned the whole time, bending further and further downward.
Now the harbor of the Land of Waves felt strangely similar to that pitiful tree.
Each of the five carried different thoughts as they hurried back onto the harbor.
Konome, now dressed in a fresh change of clothes, sat casually on the ground in a sunken crater amid the shattered plaza. Ignoring the strange looks they gave her, she waved once in greeting.
The whole square would have to be rebuilt anyway, so she could not be bothered wasting more chakra reinforcing the ground.
"How did this place end up like this?"
Using the Executioner's Blade as a crutch, Zabuza looked around at the harbor plaza, the place that had cost the Land of Waves a fortune to build under his protection. It was now a complete wreck.
"That guy called Kakuzu did it. I killed him for you, but there was nothing I could do about the plaza."
Konome spread her hands and placed the blame squarely on the dead man.
To be fair, it was the truth.
That bastard had insisted on dragging out the fight long enough to force her into Phase Two.
Otherwise, this place would not have been destroyed to such an extent. Even the sea cliffs had collapsed. Fortunately, the battle had not lasted long. On a sea island like this, prolonged combat of that sort could easily trigger a real earthquake, and then the whole country might have sunk.
Hearing her somewhat perfunctory explanation, Kakashi looked at the crater beneath her, then at the tiny footprints deeply stamped into ground that had been baked into crystal by Fire Release.
He chose not to say a word.
Zabuza, also unwilling to die, likewise remained silent.
So everyone stayed silent.
"Mmph! Mmph!"
Hidan had something to say, but with a kunai jammed in his mouth, none of it came out.
Konome had no interest in listening to him spit abuse anyway. She clasped her hands together, and the ground rumbled as a coffin-shaped tree rose up from the earth, about the size of a travel case.
Everyone beside her froze.
"W-W-W-Wood Release!"
Naruto, who often copied notes for Konome and was no longer the dead-last student he once had been, pointed at the coffin and gaped so wide it looked like Hidan's whole head could fit inside.
If even he recognized it, the others naturally did too.
Ever since they got close to the harbor, Sasuke's Sharingan had not stopped spinning. As he looked at the legendary bloodline limit said to originate with the Senju Clan, endless speculations surged through his mind.
Zabuza was even more stunned.
Just moments ago, he had said Konome was a surviving remnant of the Kaguya Clan of Kirigakure. Now she had simply produced Wood Release. Did the Senju of Konoha and the Kaguya of Kirigakure secretly intermarry at some point?
Everyone in the ninja world knew of the First Hokage's famed Wood Release.
Even Hidan had heard of the God of Shinobi. He stopped muffling and simply stared at the tree-coffin with naked curiosity.
Only Kakashi leaned back slightly.
Once, he had saved a boy called Kinoe. That boy had been a Root ninja, experimented on by Orochimaru in childhood, and had accidentally gained the First Hokage's Wood Release bloodline.
Could Konome also be one of Orochimaru's experiments?
Seeing the storm of emotion bubbles practically exploding above their heads, Konome had no idea how to explain something on that scale. If she ever casually revealed both Byakugan and Sharingan in front of them at once, they would probably lose their minds.
"Shh. Secret."
She decided not to explain at all.
With a finger to her lips aimed at Naruto, the loudest of them all, she took Hidan from Kakashi's hand.
Buzz.
Wind Release, shrieking like a saw, carved the body into neatly even chunks. She threw every piece into the wooden coffin.
Then Konome pressed both hands together again, and a twisted but perfectly sealed wooden lid grew over the top.
The dismembered corpse was fully enclosed. Wood Release power continuously devoured his chakra, and bloodstained green leaves and branches began to sprout from Hidan's remains. His muffled cries quickly weakened.
The wood created by Wood Release was incredibly tough, vibrant with life, and naturally absorbed chakra, making it ideal for sealing. Kakuzu's will had only been destroyed by Black Lightning, while the heart still carrying Earth Grudge Fear was not truly dead. Hidan, meanwhile, simply could not die.
Only a Wood Release seal made Konome feel safe.
And just like that, the mission in the Land of Waves was complete.
She had not found the Ice Release bloodline she wanted, but acquiring the strange bodies of the two undead monsters counted as a decent haul. After burning through so much chakra on this trip, she would at least have something worthwhile to bring back to her original body.
Speaking of which, she wondered how her main body was doing back in Konoha.
After indulging the thought for a moment, Konome waved at the still dazed group.
"I'm a medical ninja. Does anyone need treatment?"
Zabuza, who had only just begun to recover from his shock, froze again.
Watching the blind girl heal Sasuke's legs with glowing green hands, he smacked his lips.
He had almost forgotten.
She was also a medical ninja.
"Then... heal me too."
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