I slowly shifted my gaze to the side, to the place where my right arm was supposed to be. At first, I saw only a blurred crimson smear, but then...
A green light.
Who was that?
Ah...
Ah...
Ah...
A face leaned over me, streaked with soot and blood. Strands of hair clung to a sweat-slicked forehead, and the eyes... I had never seen them so wide. They were filled with such a primal, chthonic terror that for a heartbeat, even I felt a chill of unease.
"Who is it?.." The thought labored through my mind like a heavy tortoise.
"A familiar face... Why is it so quiet?"
An eternity seemed to pass before the gears in my brain finally ground into motion.
"Tsubaki..."
I exhaled, the name leaving the sharp, metallic tang of copper on my tongue.
Her palms, shrouded in the emerald radiance of medical chakra, were pressed desperately against my mangled shoulder. Her entire body was trembling, the light of her technique flaring and fading in rhythm with her ragged breath.
"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry!" she sobbed. A heavy tear fell directly onto my cheek, washing away a layer of dust and leaving a lonely, wet trail.
"I couldn't help you in the fight... I only got in the way! If only I'd been faster, if I hadn't let myself be a target!"
She continued to babble, her words spilling out in a frantic rush, as if she were trying to cast a spell over herself—or perhaps over me.
"You... you told me back then, after training, remember? You said it would be better to focus on something else... So I decided to study medical ninjutsu. In secret, from everyone. I thought it would be a surprise...
And now... Kotetsu, I'll do everything I can! I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..."
Her voice frayed into a high-pitched needle of sound, and the emerald light began to stain a dark, murky green, saturated by my blood that refused to stop its flow.
"The bet... paid off," I spat out a thick glob of blood along with the words, trying to bleed some of the tension from the air. My lips were numb, but I forced them into a crooked, jagged smirk.
"A good... surprise. See? Still breathing."
"Don't talk! Be quiet!" she nearly shrieked, pouring chakra into her palms. Her voice shook with the strain, and large beads of sweat broke across her brow.
I closed my eyes, drawing my focus inward. "I can feel the arm better now," I thought as I struggled against the resistance of deadened tissue, managed a slight twitch of my index finger. My left hand reached instinctively toward my shoulder, trying to confirm if the limb was still there.
Ten minutes later, in that suspended state, sensation more or less returned. It was a dubious blessing; my body felt as though it were being branded with white-hot irons. The shock had retreated, leaving behind a pulsing agony that made my teeth grind until they creaked.
Yet, amidst that conflagration of pain, something else caught my attention. Through the roar of blood in my ears, I caught a foreign sound. The rustle of leaves, heavy, uneven footsteps... Someone was moving toward us from the thick undergrowth.
"Tsubaki... someone's coming," I rasped, attempting to prop myself up on my good elbow. My one free hand reached for my pouch, though my fingers barely obeyed the command.
Tsubaki froze for a second, not breaking the medical glow, and listened. Her face, previously distorted by anguish, smoothed out slightly.
"It's Gai, Genma, and Mizuki," she said, narrating the scene for me since my view was still blocked by the edge of the crater and the enemy's corpse.
She squinted at the approaching shadows. "They look okay... relatively. But Mizuki... he's limping badly, leaning on Gai."
"Hey! What happened here?!" Genma was the first to reach us.
He stopped a pace away from the crater, and I saw his eternal senbon nearly drop from his mouth. His face, usually imperturbable and even slightly drowsy, slackened. He looked on in horror at what remained of my shoulder and forearm. Gai and Mizuki appeared behind him.
Gai, who usually never silenced himself for a second, simply went still. His large eyes rounded, and his fists began to tremble. Even Mizuki, despite his mangled leg and grimace of pain, fell silent, staring wide-eyed at the bloody mess that had once been my right arm.
The silence became suffocating. I had to break it with something, or I'd start believing I was finished myself.
I swallowed the thick, salty saliva with effort and tried to stretch my lips into a semblance of a smile, though it likely looked more like a snarl.
"What are you... staring at?" I wheezed, shifting my eyes from one to the other. "You look like... you're the ones who just got flattened into the dirt."
Gai started to shout something about the power of youth and spirit, but I cut him off, focusing my hazy vision on the limping Mizuki. He stood closest, wincing painfully and leaning on his good knee.
"Mizuki... you know what?" My voice dropped to a whistling whisper.
"Yeah, Kotetsu?" He froze, clearly not expecting me to produce a coherent thought in this state.
"You and I... make a hell of a team now." I forced out a short chuckle that immediately sent a sharp stitch through my ribs. "If we tie our backs together... we'd make one whole shinobi. Ready to head back into the fray right now."
I let out a faint laugh through the pain.
Mizuki was taken aback for a moment, then his face twitched in a strange, uncertain grimace—as if he couldn't decide whether to laugh at the absurdity of the joke or if he was finally convinced I had lost my mind.
"You're an idiot, Kotetsu," Genma exhaled, shaking his head, but I noticed his shoulders relax just a fraction. The tension that had hung in the air finally snapped.
"We didn't find Akame nearby," Genma spoke tonelessly, summarizing their findings in short bursts.
"We didn't dare go further. Not much chakra left... We'll recover a bit, then we can head out to find him."
Another half-hour passed.
I sat beneath a sprawling tree, trying not to move. Tsubaki had no chakra left to continue the treatment. She sat beside me, pale, her gaze fixed on nothing, her hands still trembling slightly from overexertion.
I knew time was running out. Gathering the remnants of my will, I attended to my own arm. It was a sickening sight. Tsubaki had done everything possible in the field: she had essentially "re-attached" the flaps of skin torn away by the blast and reconnected the largest of the ruptured tissues. But even so, it wasn't enough. The arm looked foreign, swollen, and deathly pale where it wasn't drenched in blood.
Trying not to look at the ruin of my forearm, I slathered the wound in thick disinfectant ointment. The cold mixture burned the raw flesh for a moment, making me hiss through my teeth. Then I wrapped the arm tightly in bandages, layer by layer, hiding the nightmare from my own eyes.
Tossing a couple of bitter soldier pills into my mouth, I felt them hit my system. I felt nauseous—physically sickened by the reality of what had happened to my body.
"Kotetsu..." Tsubaki called softly, staring at my blood-soaked bandages. "I'm sorry. I only... I only..."
"You saved my arm," I cut her off. "If you hadn't, I'd have bled out by now. The hospital will do the rest."
It had been over an hour since Akame vanished. The others—mostly Gai and Genma—had combed the nearby thickets as far as strength and common sense allowed, but there was no sign of the captain. The forest around us felt dead, and the silence pressed against my eardrums harder than the roar of the explosions.
I rose slowly, leaning my good hand against the tree trunk. The movement sent a jolt of pain through my entire frame, but the pills were taking hold, carving a cold, empty clarity into my mind.
"I'm ready enough to keep moving," I said, surveying the hushed team.
"What about Akame?" Mizuki asked. He looked ghostly, his eyes constantly darting toward the thicket where we expected the captain to emerge.
I exhaled heavily, feeling the pulse in my wounded arm. "He's a Chunin. An experienced shinobi. If he hasn't returned, there are only a few possibilities, and I think you can guess them for yourself..."
"But you're hurt!" Tsubaki tried to interject, stepping toward me. Worry flared in her eyes again.
"I am a Chunin!" I snapped, and my voice sounded unexpectedly harsh, even to me. "Which means I have to lead the rest of you. It's not up for debate. We shouldn't stay here long. We move directly toward the mission objective."
I paused, checking the security of my gear. My left arm worked fine, and I pressed my right arm tight against my body, securing it with bandages over my shoulder so it wouldn't swing while I ran.
"I hope you haven't lost the scrolls you were given?" I asked, looking at Genma and Gai.
Before the mission, each of us had received a scroll. Command had decided to distribute the cargo to increase the chances of success: if one fell or was captured, the others would deliver their portion. In this chaos, it was the only decision that had actually made sense.
"Mine's here," Genma nodded briefly, patting his pouch.
"Mine too!" Gai replied, momentarily striking his usual pose, though his movements were heavy with fatigue.
"I've got mine," Mizuki muttered.
"Good. Then we move out," I said, giving the binding on my arm one last check.
The world tilted slightly as I took the first step, but I forced myself to stand tall.