Ichu Gin saw the kid charging straight at him. Instead of panicking, he laughed—a wet, maniacal sound.
"You brat! I'm going to skin you alive!"
Gripping his kunai, murderous intent radiating off him like heat waves, Gin rushed forward to meet the charge. Two broken souls colliding in a final, desperate gambit.
But halfway there, Aokawa stopped.
His feet slid across the dirt in an unnatural, fluid motion, darting sideways and disappearing behind a thick oak trunk.
Gin didn't stop. He couldn't.
Snag.
He felt a resistance against his chest.
Ping!
The sharp sound of a taut steel wire snapping echoed in the clearing.
Then came a cascade of snaps—ping, ping, ping—like dominoes falling.
Gin's pupils contracted to pinpoints.
Oh sh—
Before he could finish the thought, the periphery of his vision turned white. Seven explosive tags, hidden under the bark of the surrounding trees, detonated simultaneously.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The world dissolved into fire and noise.
Gin was a veteran. In the split second before the fire consumed him, his hands formed the seal for the Body Flicker Technique.
Whoosh!
A ragged figure stumbled out of the cloud of dust and smoke.
He was alive, but he wasn't whole.
The explosion had been too dense. Gin's right shoulder was a ruin of charred meat and bone. His arm was gone. Blood sprayed from the cauterized stump like a fountain.
"GAAH!"
Pain, white-hot and blinding, brought him to his knees. His face drained of color. He clutched the stump with his remaining hand, gasping for air, sweat rolling down his face mixed with soot.
"You vicious... little... rat."
He cursed through gritted teeth, his bloodshot eyes scanning the smoke, refusing to blink.
He knew what was coming. The arrow.
And he was right.
Hiss!
A blue-white bolt of energy tore through the smoke, aiming straight for his heart.
"Bastard!"
Gin roared. Caught in the open, with no cover, he swung his remaining arm in a desperate arc.
CLANG!
Metal met energy. He deflected the arrow with his kunai, sending it skidding into a tree where it exploded into splinters.
Weak.
The thought flashed through his mind. That arrow was weaker than the first one.
But it was a setup.
While his body was still rigid from the block, a second arrow—silent, faster, deadlier—hissed out of the smoke from a different angle.
Thwack.
It buried itself deep in his gut.
The force lifted him off his feet and slammed him into the dirt.
"Blargh!"
Gin vomited a mouthful of blood and organ fragments.
He hit the ground, and before he could draw a breath, the air whistled again.
Shuriken. Three of them. Aiming for his eyes.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Pure instinct took over. Gin batted them away with his kunai, his movements jerky and desperate.
But the shuriken were just another distraction.
A shadow materialized behind him.
Body Flicker Technique.
"So fast!"
Gin's heart stopped.
This endless pressure! The traps! The arrows! The speed! Is this really just an Academy student?!
Terrified, he forced his broken body to twist. He tried to raise his kunai to block the strike aimed at his throat.
Clash!
Sparks flew. He barely stopped the blade.
But Aokawa didn't stop. He pivoted on one foot and drove a kick into Gin's open, bleeding stomach wound.
Thud!
"AAARGH!"
Gin doubled over, retreating, falling to his knees as agony ripped through him.
Aokawa didn't give him a second. He flickered forward again, looming over the kneeling man like the grim reaper.
He thrust his kunai down.
Gin's face twisted in terror. He jerked his hand up to block.
Aokawa's wrist turned. It was a feint. The blade snaked around Gin's guard, bypassing the defense entirely.
Aim for the throat.
Oh no.
Gin realized it too late. His brain screamed at his right hand to block.
But there was nothing there. Just an empty, bleeding shoulder.
Squelch.
The dull sound of steel parting flesh.
Aokawa drove the kunai into Gin's throat, severing the windpipe and the artery in one smooth motion.
Blood spray painted the grass.
Gin fell back, gurgling. His left hand clawed at the metal in his neck, his eyes wide, staring at the sky. He tried to speak, but only bloody froth bubbled from his lips.
His body arched once, then went limp.
Aokawa collapsed next to him.
He was done.
His chest heaved. His vision swam. His ten-year-old body was screaming in protest. Without the Heilig Pfeil to bleed the enemy first, he would have died ten times over.
The adrenaline crashed, and the pain returned.
His wounds—the ones Keiko had so carefully stitched—had torn open again. His robes were soaked with fresh blood.
He sat there for fifteen minutes, just breathing, forcing his chakra to settle.
Finally, he groaned and stood up. He looted Gin's corpse quickly—money, tags, pills—and strapped them to his waist.
Then, he turned toward Konoha.
He didn't know how long he walked.
Time blurred into a cycle of putting one foot in front of the other.
When the massive wooden gates of Konoha finally appeared in his blurry vision, Aokawa felt a surge of bitter relief.
"No wonder teams with Medical Ninjas survive longer," he muttered, his voice raspy.
Ninjas were glass cannons. High damage, zero defense. Unless you were a freak like the Raikage or Tsunade, getting hit usually meant you were out of the fight.
If I knew even a basic healing jutsu, I wouldn't be stumbling like a drunk.
He dragged himself down one slope and up another.
Hashirama and Madara... those two idiots.
He cursed the founders silently.
They didn't just fight; they terraformed the landscape. All these valleys and cliffs north of the village are a nightmare to hike when you're bleeding out.
He stumbled toward the gate.
The eternal gatekeepers, Izumo and Kotetsu, were still in diapers or the Academy right now.
Standing guard were two different men.
One had wild red eyes and distinct facial markings. Yuhi Shinku.
The other had a scar across his nose and a kind face. Umino Ikkaku.
They saw the small, blood-drenched figure stumbling out of the forest and stiffened.
"Holy—"
They rushed forward to catch him before he face-planted into the dirt.
Shinku looked at Ikkaku.
"Ikkaku, hold the post. I'm taking him to the hospital."
Without waiting for a reply, Shinku grabbed Aokawa.
Whoosh.
They vanished in a swirl of leaves.