13 Stairway to Heaven

Kakashi held Kahyo to his chest to hide the sight of Rahyo plummeting from the Tobishachimaru. She beat at that chest in rage and grief over losing her brother. She buried her face in Kakashi’s arms and wept freely.

Even after Kahyo’s wailing turned to sobbing, Kakashi kept holding her to him. And then he said the thing that he had no choice but to say. “I don’t want to say this at a time like this, but… the Tobishachimaru seems to be gradually ascending. If we keep going, we’re all going to die.”

He got no response.

“There are lives that can still be saved on this ship,” Kakashi said, gently, as though trying to comfort a small child. “I don’t know how well it’ll go, but I intend to do whatever I can.”

Face still buried in his chest, Kahyo murmured, “What will you do?”

“Put a hole in the air bladder.”

Kahyo was silent.

“The old man who built this ship said that they used helium for buoyancy, which isn’t flammable. So even if there is a fire, there won’t be any big explosion or anything. If I can puncture the air bladder, we might be able to bring Tobishachimaru down for a landing.”

“And if it doesn’t go well?”

“Have you ever stuck a needle in a fully blown-up balloon?”

She breathed a tiny sigh.

“It’s my first time breaking a balloon this enormous—” Kakashi stopped abruptly, and Kahyo lifted a face swollen with tears.

“What’s wrong?”

He lifted a hand to forestall her question. “What? Sorry, Ino, I can’t hear you that well. You secured Garyo?”

“We’ve taken care of it.” Ino’s voice sounded softly inside his head. “Shikamaru and the others are still chasing the escaped prisoners, though. I’ve just had a message from Lady Tsunade. The Tsuchikage is heading your way. We can see him from here as well.”

Kakashi looked out at the sea of gray clouds swirling below his eyes through the gash in the gondola. Three shining bodies were approaching them at incredible speed.

“Mm-hmm, I can see them too,” Kakashi replied in his head. “They’re going to shoot the Tobishachimaru down before it enters Ishigakure.”

In which case, making a hole in the air bladder would have exactly the wrong effect. Looking down on Ohnoki and the others closing in on them, he began racking his brain urgently. The air leaking out from the hole will propel the ship—no, if I make the hole in the front of the air bladder, the force will work in the opposite direction and push the ship back, won’t it…

The wind toyed with Kahyo’s long curls, and Kakashi realized once more that the wind was blowing from east to west. That’s no good. If I make a hole in the front of the air bladder… He rethought the situation. The Tobishachimaru would end up going against the wind. If he handled it poorly, they would be thrown about by the air currents.

And if that happens, then we’ll be battered every which way and be bouncing around inside the ship long after we’re dead. Like we got sucked into a washing machine or something.

The points of light slowed down and then stopped below them.

He thought it strange only for an instant; he quickly grasped the reason behind them stopping. The ship had gone beyond the range within which the Tsuchikage could fly and was still ascending further.

“Don’t let them shoot this ship down.”

“Yes, that won’t happen.”

“…What?”

“Please listen closely, Master Kakashi,” Ino said. “This is an order from Lady Tsunade. Please blow up the Tobishachimaru immediately.”

“Hold on a minute! There are still survivors on this ship.”

“I understand,” Ino said, without a hint of emotion before disconnecting the transmission. “And Lady Tsunade understands this as well.”

Kakashi’s eyes raced over to the people crouched down in the kitchen. Several had already collapsed and were greedily sucking at the thinning air, their mouths wide open. With the sudden temperature drop, all of them were shivering furiously.

“How high up are we right now?”

“Good question.” A pilot holding her knees on the floor lifted her face and moved purple lips. “I don’t have my gauges, so I can’t say for sure, but… Given how thin this air is, I think we’re long past thirteen thousand meters.”

Thirteen thousand… Kakashi did some mental calculations. It hadn’t yet been ten minutes since Tobishachimaru had been torn apart. They had originally been flying at an altitude of five thousand meters, but in the confusion earlier, they had to have gone higher than that. Assuming they had risen to seven thousand meters at that time, that meant they had ascended another six thousand meters in the span of ten minutes.

Six thousand meters in ten minutes. In other words, if they continued to ascend at this speed, in another ten minutes, the ship would reach an altitude of nineteen thousand meters.

And their blood would boil in their bodies.

No, that’s not going to happen, Kakashi thought, desperately. Before that, the air bladder will probably explode because of the pressure differential. In which case, it might be better to deliberately break the air bladder and lower our altitude. At the very least, we won’t have to deal with something unexpected when the air bladder explodes abruptly.

But if I pop the air bladder in these air currents, will I be able to maintain control of Tobishachimaru?

“What’s that point of light?”

Kahyo’s voice did not reach Kakashi at all. When she repeated the question, he finally returned to himself.

“The Tsuchikage of Ishigakure,” he managed to reply. “He knows this ship is jammed with blue fire powder, and he plans to shoot it down before it enters Ishigakure. And not only that. The order I just got from Konoha… I have to blow this ship up.”

“What!” Kahyo cried. “There are still passengers aboard!”

Kakashi lowered his gaze in anguish.

“I’m sorry. This is all our fault.”

“I’m a shinobi. I’m prepared for death. But…the people riding on this ship, I’m sure they expected nothing more than a great deal of fun on a sightseeing trip. I can’t believe it’s come to this.”

Kahyo bit her lip.

“Sorry,” Kakashi continued. “I wasn’t trying to reproach you.”

“No.” Kahyo shook her head. “It’s only natural that you would.”

“I-I’ve got nothing else up my sleeve.”

“We just have to land the ship before we leave Kusagakure, right?” A do-or-die look colored Kahyo’s face. “In that case, let’s destroy the air bladder.”

“We can’t.” Now it was Kakashi’s turn to shake his head. “We make a hole in the air bladder, and the ship’ll be buffeted every which way.”

“I didn’t say let’s make a hole in it.”

Kakashi let his confused expression speak for him.

“I said, let’s destroy the air bladder.”

He narrowed his eyes.

“We have no choice. We have to chance it,” Kahyo said, large eyes shining with resolve. “I don’t want anyone else to die.”

∞

Just as he had been instructed by Kahyo, Kakashi headed toward the back of the ship, crossing the suspended scaffolding to make his way to the drive area he had used when he snuck on board in the first place.

The pilothouse had fallen away with much of the passenger gondola, so the propellers had stopped turning. He climbed the ladder and stepped out onto the scaffolding used by the crew during maintenance inspections. From there, the air bladder was so close he could touch it.

They had no choice.

If the Tobishachimaru kept ascending, everyone would die anyway. No—before that happened, the instant the wind carried them out of Kusagakure airspace, they’d face the Tsuchikage’s attack. Or maybe flickering tongues of fire would spread all over and roast them all when the air bladder was damaged.

“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t…”

The passengers had already been evacuated to the ship storehouse.

After taking a deep breath, Kakashi let out a battle cry and flung his chakra-infused kunai at the air bladder.

Skrrink!

The blade pierced the bladder, scattering sparks. A tiny crackling noise hit his ears, followed by helium forcefully jetting out.

And then, of course, the thing he had feared happened.

At first, it was a small red flame. A mere ten seconds later, it had burned up the back of the air bladder.

Whoooosh!

The external skin of the air bladder went up in flames all at once, the blaze howling as it sucked in air. In the blink of an eye, it had spread to the entire envelope area.

At the same time, the Tobishachimaru turned its nose toward the ground and started to fall.

Kakashi leapt down the ladder and raced back across the scaffolding. Above his head flames licked at the air bladder, and it gradually disappeared, as though God were taking an eraser to it, leaving nothing but the skeleton behind.

They began to lose altitude.

When he flew into the kitchen, Kahyo had already finished weaving her signs and activated her jutsu.

“Ice Style! Earth Chain Ice!”

Her voice was drowned out by the wind, but her jutsu was not. An enormous collision shuddered through the falling ship.

The Tobishachimaru sprang upward, followed by Kahyo dropping onto the flat slab she had made with the Earth Chain Ice. The impact knocked yet another piece of the gondola off.

Kahyo, still weaving signs, concentrated on her jutsu with a grim look on her face. The physical and mental burden was no doubt heavy—her arms trembled, her hair stood on end, and a trail of blood came from the corner of tightly pursed lips.

The chakra-cloaked ice surface gradually extended outward, as if it were growing up from the bottom of the ship, and the Tobishachimaru plunged its head into the sea of clouds, which parted and swallowed it up.

Each time air currents threatened to snatch up the ship, tentacles of ice forced it back on course.

“We’ll land it.” Kahyo pushed the words through clenched teeth. “I absolutely will not fail.”

They were wrapped in a single shade of gray as they passed through the clouds; they could see nothing.

Their descent was so rapid, Kakashi’s ears popped repeatedly from the changes in air pressure. Swallowing hard, he released the air blocking his ears, and the sound of the wind became clear again.

In less than a minute, the air bladder had been become essentially nothing more than its own frame. The structure left behind was black and smoking.

As if insisting there was still more for the conflagration to consume, the flames pressed ever forward. Above the heads of Kakashi and Kahyo were only the blue of the flames and the gray of the clouds.

Tobishachimaru broke through the clouds and continued its fall. It heaved from side to side, but each time, Kahyo created a wall of sorts with her icicles and kept the ship from sliding off the slab of ice.

The badly damaged ship steadily lost altitude.

And then Kakashi felt his body floating up gently.

He was indeed floating in midair. “What’s happening?!”

“There’s not enough water!” Kahyo shouted back. “There’s not enough moisture in the air for me to make ice!”

Peeking down through the broken kitchen floor, he saw that the slab of ice Tobishachimaru had been riding on had disappeared without a trace. The yellow earth spread out in the distance below them: the mountains in full autumn foliage, the river glinting and glittering as it flowed.

Having lost its ice support, Tobishachimaru was falling more or less straight down.

He knew that they had broken five thousand meters when he saw the Tsuchikage flying up as though he had been waiting impatiently.

“Oi, Kakashi!” Ohnoki came alongside the Tobishachimaru, flanked by Kurotsuchi and Akatsuchi. “Seems this is the end of the ride! If it’s just you two, we can save you. Woman, Kakashi, jump over!”

Kakashi and Kahyo exchanged glances. Kahyo nodded.

That was all.

With that, Kakashi knew she was of the same mind as he was.

“What are you doing?! You don’t hurry it up, we’ll have no choice to shoot you down with the ship—”

But Kakashi didn’t have the leisure time to let the Tsuchikage finish speaking.

A surprised “Ah!” slipped out of Kahyo’s mouth.

Almost as if he were about to charge the Tsuchikage, Kakashi kicked at the broken floorboards and leapt out of the ship. His body danced in the air.

There was nothing but a few thousand meters of empty space between him and the ground. The wind ran fingers through his silver hair, and a hard determination like ice took up residence in his eyes.

“Good. Come!”

But Kakashi leapt over the reeling Ohnoki, kicked at Akatsuchi’s head, and jumped even farther.

“W-what are you doing?!”

“Kakashi!” Kahyo shouted, not to be outdone by the Tsuchikage.

Kakashi concentrated the chakra of his entire body into his right arm. “I am going to make it rain!”

“Kakashi!”

“The rest is up to you, Kahyo!”

Pulling his right arm, shining dazzlingly white hot, far back, Kakashi beat at the rain clouds with every bit of Violet Bolt he could muster up.

“Aaaaaaah!”

Ka-booom!

At the incredible force, the clouds split, and for a moment, they caught a glimpse of blue sky. The force was such that Kakashi himself was almost sent flying by his own jutsu.

The Tsuchikage opened his eyes wide in surprise.

The lightning gushing out from every inch of Kakashi’s body shot out in all directions and pierced the gray clouds.

Instantly, lightning called lightning. The rain clouds pulled together, electricity rippling through them.

“It’s too dangerous, Lord Tsuchikage!” Akatsuchi cried. “Hurry! Hide yourself in my shadow!”

“I don’t need you to take care of me!” Ohnoki roared. “Honestly! Those Konoha ninjas, they go to absurd lengths…”

A bolt of lightning flashed out of clouds rumbling with angry thunder and split a large maple tree on the ground cleanly in two.

“Kurotsuchi! Help that idiot!”

Obeying the Tsuchikage’s orders, Kurotsuchi immediately went chasing after an unconscious, falling Kakashi.

The first drop of rain hit her cheek.

It felt like he had been unconscious for hours, but Kakashi had only lost consciousness mere seconds earlier.

At the touch of the cool rain on his face, he lifted his eyelids slightly. The instant he did, a massive shadow jumped in front of his eyes. Startled, his eyelids snapped open, and Kakashi took in the figure of Kahyo desperately weaving signs inside the broken gondola.

The falling rain was called into her Earth Chain Ice and formed into ice crystals on the bottom of the Tobishachimaru, which itself was nothing more than wreckage now. The ice crystals stretching out from the bottom of the ship gradually grew into a silver platform that glittered in the sky.

And the Tobishachimaru glided along on top of it.

As soon as the ship had slid past it, the ice broke apart and danced off into space, glittering brightly. It looked almost as though the ship had become a comet.

If there were such a thing as a stairway to heaven… The thought came unbidden to Kakashi’s mind as he watched the airship sliding downward, rumbling and roaring. It would definitely be something like this.

Bluish-white ice crystals drifted soundlessly, filling the sky.

“Looks like he’s awake.” He heard a voice near his ear. “What should I do, Pops?”

Kakashi was being carried on Kurotsuchi’s shoulders.

“That boy was pretty serious about dying, it seems,” the Tsuchikage said. “Got his reasons, I suppose. And that troublesome ship’s not falling into our land, it seems. So we’ve got no business here now.”

“Ah!” Akatsuchi cried out, wildly. “Something’s flying up from Hozuki Castle.”

Sai silently brought his large bird up alongside Kurotsuchi.

When the Tsuchikage nodded, Kurotsuchi tossed Kakashi over to the bird’s back with a “Hup!”

“Tell Princess Tsunade not to grow complacent in her victory. It’s getting to be time for us to hand things over to the next generation, after all.” Leaving these words behind, Ohnoki flew off.

At that moment, for the first time, Kakashi realized they were getting quite close to the ground. He could see people squirming around like ants in the courtyard of Hozuki Castle, plumes of white smoke snaking up around them.

The Tobishachimaru slid down into the broad grassy plains surrounding the castle. In the field, the season for ground cherries past, thick clouds of dust danced up. The ship skidded across the grass, pitched forward, and stopped.

There was a commotion from the direction of the castle, and soon enough, a small figure came flying out of the gates and raced toward the Tobishachimaru. It was Sakura!

A pitched battle on the south side of the castle caught his attention. A whirlwind sprang to life and pulled the fleeing prisoners into it. It had to be Lee’s Konoha Whirlwind. Meanwhile, the shadows stretching out and shrinking back in the courtyard told him that Shikamaru was holding firm there. A large ball beyond the courtyard mowed prisoners down—Choji’s Human Juggernaut. And the two figures he spied tearing along the straight path from the castle were definitely Tsunade and Shizune.

Shino’s insects, Tenten’s ninja tools, Kiba and Akamaru—looking out at his comrades, Kakashi could do nothing to stop the heat that welled up in his heart.

Just like the Tsuchikage said. It’s our time to start on this path.

It was then that a decisive change came over Kakashi.

Haven’t I just been using the loss of the sharingan as an excuse to run away from the position of Hokage? he thought, abruptly.

Becoming Hokage means there are more people I need to protect. Which means I don’t know when or where I’ll have to face the same sadness as when I lost Obito. I was so convinced I wasn’t ready to carry the burden of that sadness.

The people of this land, right now, even in this very moment, say nothing and support each other. They act like it’s the most natural thing in the world, the same way they wake up when morning comes. Naruto, Lady Tsunade, Shikamaru, Ino, Guy, Lee, Tenten, Choji, Sakura, Sai, Hinata, Shizune, Iruka, Shino, Kiba—all of their faces came to life in Kakashi’s heart one after another.

And from the bottom of that heart, he was proud of Konohagakure, of these comrades.

If those guys need me to, Kakashi thought, I’ll gather up all of their sadness and take it into myself. Right, like it’s the most natural thing. And I’ll struggle together with them and that sadness.

That’s what it means to be Hokage.