2 Historic Moment

Regardless of the fact that the sightseeing flight was meant to be a secret, the curtain was lifted at the height of a magnificent ceremony.

In the grassy field by the sea, decorative paper balls were split open and white doves flew free from them, a drum and fife band marched about, and confetti danced in the air. It went without saying that the guests of honor who were to ride the Tobishachimaru, and even the mere attendants who had been placed at their disposal, all expressed their respect for the historic moment and watched the ceremony in full dress.

Behind the brilliant men and women taking the stage one after another and offering congratulatory addresses stood the proud form of the enormous streamlined Tobishachimaru, 223 meters in total length, diameter of 34 meters, top speed of 70 kilometers per hour, the tail equipped with six thrust propellers. A gondola compartment was attached to the bottom of the massive body.

Tobishachimaru—the three characters of the name meant flying shachi boat, and the origin of this name was very clear. On the balloon, an enormous tiger-headed shachi carp had been carefully painted, right down to the dorsal and pectoral fins.

The weather was superb—there was not a cloud in the sky, and the cool wind of late autumn blew through the grasses to make rustling waves.

“It’s the perfect day.” Slight tears welled up in Tazuna’s eyes as he gazed upon the ship he had had a hand in building. “Now the Land of Waves will be incredibly strong once more.”

“Congratulations,” Kakashi replied. “You’ve made something wonderful, Tazuna.”

“Did you know? That huge balloon there’s called an air bladder. Got helium gas inside it.”

“Helium’s lighter than air and not flammable, right?”

“Mm-hmm, that’s Tobishachimaru’s buoyancy right there. Look. There’s six propellers on the tail there, right?”

Kakashi nodded.

“Those push that massive thing forward. This time’s a sightseeing flight, two and a half hours, but we tweak things a bit and we should be able to achieve significantly longer flight ranges. Although, to keep other countries from learning about the ship, we have to stay at an altitude of five thousand meters or lower. As long as we don’t go above five thousand meters on today’s flight, we should be safe from the prying eyes of the intelligence services of the other nations. We checked it all out. And the reason the ship was painted that precise shade of light blue is to make it blend in with the color of the sky.”

“But Konoha has been informed about it?”

“Well, there was no way around that.” All smiles until that point, Tazuna’s face clouded over. “All fine and good for Garyo to have been sent to Hozuki Castle, but his followers have infiltrated every level of society.”

“That’s exactly why we have the masters of Konoha concealed inside the ship.”

“We’re really counting on you.”

“Now, let us at last proceed to board!” A proud voice echoed from the stage, urging the guests toward the ship. “Those lucky fifty-seven guests fortunate enough to have invitations, please make your way to the Tobishachimaru! The attendants will show you inside!”

“Finally, hmm?”

At Kakashi’s words, Tazuna narrowed his eyes, overwhelmed with emotion. “Yes, finally making history here.”

They looked out over the people, laughing and chatting in their finery, streaming toward the Tobishachimaru. The playing of the drum and fife band grew noticeably louder.

Kakashi heard hurried footsteps from behind just as the last guests stepped onto the ramp and the photo session to commemorate the occasion began.

“Wait!” A woman holding up the hem of a long blue dress came running at top speed. “I’m getting on! I’m getting on the ship as well!” Clutched in the hand she was waving wildly above her head was a gilded invitation.

Just as she was about to run past Kakashi, the woman tripped and pitched forward. “Waah!” she cried in a small voice as her body was thrown into the air.

Almost reflexively, Kakashi stopped her.

In the confusion, their eyes met. Flowing, curly hair, slightly parted lips, large, moist eyes open in surprise—time stopped for a moment, and the world, to Kakashi, was this woman and nothing else.

The woman in the long dress fell into Kakashi’s arms, her hair softly tickling the end of his nose as she raised her head.

“Are you all right?”

“Oh! Excuse me.” The woman hurriedly pulled herself upright. “I was in a bit of a hurry. Thank you so much for helping me in a moment of danger.”

Kakashi nodded, and she avoided meeting his eyes, embarrassed. And then she lifted the hem of her dress once more and charged toward the Tobishachimaru, yelling loudly, “Wait! Please waaaiit! I’m getting on, I’m a passenger as well!”

“People are that excited to go on the sightseeing trip,” Kakashi remarked to Tazuna, watching the woman running away from behind. “Carpentry is really a wonderful occupation.”

“She’s a real beautiful woman, too,” Tazuna said. “And speaking of occupations, you still not having your big day?”

Again?

Kakashi shook his head ambiguously. His eyes were turned toward the Tobishachimaru waiting to take off as the woman in the long dress rushed to the gangplank.

“I don’t really know, but isn’t the Hokage inauguration ceremony kinda like a wedding between you and Konohagakure?”

“Yes,” Kakashi answered absently, staring at the propellers on the tail. “I guess you could say that.”

“Then it’d be strange not to have doubts. And all the more so with everyone expecting so much of you.”

Kakashi looked closely at the gondola bathed in the morning light, casting a black shadow on the green grasses.

“For instance, suppose that beautiful woman just now was seriously chasing after you to marry her. No matter how beautiful she might be, a man’s going to flinch at that.”

“Mm-hmm.” But Tazuna’s voice was for the most part not reaching Kakashi’s ears. “You don’t say.”

“When a woman’s too aggressive, a man just pulls back. And this is exactly why when I was young, I went chasing round after tail like a starving dog—”

“Tazuna,” Kakashi interrupted the other man. His eyes were firmly fixed on a suspicious man jumping down from the tail of the ship. “I might have just gotten called to work.”

Leaving behind Tazuna, and the question mark floating over his head, Kakashi raced toward the Tobishachimaru.

The woman, who had just run up onto the gangplank, appeared to be the last passenger. The workers began releasing the ropes that affixed the ship to the earth. The sky-blue machine groaned quietly as it made its preparations to leave the ground.

“Hey!” Kakashi called from behind, and the man in the black, hooded cloak jumped and stood still. It was the man who had snuck down from the tail of the Tobishachimaru while he was talking with Tazuna. “You’re not an invited guest, huh?”

The man started running.

“Stop!”

Kakashi took off in pursuit, only to receive a sharp kick that came flying out from under the hem of the man’s cloak. Opening his stance, he dodged the enemy attack and threw out a number of his own attacks in succession.

One blow, two, three, the pair attacked each other. Kakashi could tell his opponent was quite masterful. He made no wasted movement.

But while they exchanged a fourth and fifth blow, he came to see through his enemy’s tactics. No sooner had he thought that a kick would come at the same time as a thrust, his opponent launched that very attack. He read the show of tripping as actually moving in for a series of blows to his torso, and his enemy moved exactly as he anticipated; it was almost fun to watch.

Kakashi knew this attack pattern only too well. On top of that, he felt absolutely no bloodlust here, nor the minutest sense of any ninjutsu being activated. As if to confirm his suspicions, that back might have been covered in a black cloak, but—

Lowering his head and dodging a kick, Kakashi charged at his enemy.

He deftly handled the succession of lunges and dropped his hips to kick his enemy’s feet out from under him as he shot out a rapid-fire five-blow combo using his fists and elbows.

Crack!

Whmp!

“Aaaaah!” Sent flying, the enemy fell to the ground, legs and arms spasming.

“My, my.” Kakashi approached his opponent and pulled back the hood hiding his face. “The fact that you’re here means that Guy’s come too, hm?”

Below the hood was the face of an unconscious Rock Lee.

∞

Slipping through the crowd of onlookers and picture takers, Kakashi jumped up onto the last rope tying the Tobishachimaru to the ground.

He molded his chakra and swiftly climbed up with the power of his arms alone. Kicking with his legs to raise his body up, Kakashi took advantage of the centrifugal force and flew onto the body of the ship in a single leap.

He caught a glimpse of the passengers inside in their finery through the window of the gondola. Not one of them had noticed Kakashi passing by outside.

He lay facedown on the envelope—the side of the air bladder—then stood and ran up diagonally, heading for the tail as the crosswind pushed at him.

But, he thought. That’s some job with that body, avoiding the eyes of the jonin set up all over the ceremony grounds and sneaking onto the Tobishachimaru. Or maybe he bought off a jonin?

Below the slowly ascending ship, the spectators gradually grew smaller and smaller.

Kakashi, having arrived at the tail of the ship, hung by one hand from the cover of the drive area. Inside were the propellers, about five meters each in diameter.

He probably got in through here. I have to get in there too before the propellers get going. He had this thought at almost the same time as the third propeller from the right started rotating.

Whk whk whk. With a low rumble, the propeller gradually picked up speed. The Tobishachimaru started to turn gently toward the right.

The air high up in the sky was much colder than he expected. The wind grew stronger as they gained altitude. Kakashi focused the chakra in his limbs and crawled along to the opposite side of the engine area so he wouldn’t get buffeted by the wind.

When the ship stopped in the air for a moment, as if it had finally determined its route, the third propeller from the left appeared to be about to start spinning.

By the time Kakashi dove into the drive area, fighting the wind, the propeller had begun to spin slowly. After firmly planting his feet, he jumped headfirst through a gap in the rotating propeller. Fortunately, given that it wasn’t rotating at top speed yet, he managed to make it through without his body bursting like an overripe tomato against the enormous blades.

But before he could even heave a sigh of relief, the propeller had picked up speed to rotate with a great deal of force and threatened to suck him in.

“Ngh!”

Even using the chakra of his whole body and clinging to the interior of the drive area, the wind speed threatened to peel his body away and back into the propeller. Still, he inched forward and somehow managed to escape the engine area.

He looked around.

The route directly ahead of him was blocked by the buoyant air bladder, but there was a ladder that led to the engine area, and he used this to make his way down toward what seemed to be the engine room.

His ears picked up a strange sound. Shooting his gaze around the area, he spotted a person in a wheelchair, wearing the exact same black hood as Lee, racing along the scaffolding suspended above the engine room.

“You’re not getting away from me!”

Kakashi leapt over the railing to drop down to the scaffolding. Even farther down seemed to be the ship’s hold, and he could see several large wooden boxes piled up there.

The man in the wheelchair kept advancing, staggering somewhat, on the scaffolding running parallel to the beam upon which Kakashi stood.

Kakashi kicked off the scaffolding and leapt across the room to the other scaffold. “What are you up to, Guy!”

The wheelchair came to an abrupt stop.

“Lee spilled everything.” Kakashi sighed and shook his head. “Honestly… You went so far as to tell him that if he didn’t get you on the Tobishachimaru, you’d sever the apprentice-master bond?”

In the fight with Madara, Guy had shattered the bones in his right leg and been forced to use a wheelchair ever since. The doctor told him he’d never walk again.

But in a surprising turn, not only had he tirelessly bounced back from this adversity, but he had even recovered to the point of being able to stand and walk when he put forth the Full Power of Youth.

“Even without Lee, I can do whatever I want when I want to,” Guy said. “With this body, I’m proof a person can live just fine without one or both legs.”

“Now, look,” Kakashi glanced at Guy’s cast-covered right leg. “You went to the trouble of sneaking into the Tobishachimaru just for that?”

“Get it, Kakashi? I’m not done as a shinobi quite yet. One, two thousand pistol squats with just my left leg are nothing. I might be in a wheelchair, but when I feel like it, getting into a boat like this is a piece of cake. Mwa ha ha ha!”

Kakashi simply stared with cool, half-closed eyes at the boundless optimism of the man before him.

“And I’ll tell you right now, I didn’t particularly want to get on this ship,” Guy argued. “I had absolutely no interest in humanity’s first flying ship or what have you. The scenery from five thousand meters up in the air? What good is looking at that going to do you? I don’t even care how it’s possible exactly for a boat that’s two hundred twenty-three meters long and weighs over two hundred tons to fly anyway!”

Ah, come on, Kakashi thought. You just really wanted to get on this thing.

“W-what? What’s with that look?”

“You know, you used to get terrible motion sickness.”

“Unh!”

“What’s wrong?” Kakashi couldn’t suppress a sigh. “Let me tell you now. Don’t go blaming me if you start throwing up or something.”

“W-what?! Ridiculous! It might be a boat, but this one flies, doesn’t it?”

“But a flying boat’s still a boat.”

“Quit with the condescension! As if I, Might Guy, would get sick on such a trifle as this!” But no sooner were the words out of his mouth than his face went pale, and he was struggling to hold down whatever was coming up from his stomach.

“Just what are you planning to do?” Honestly. This is ridiculous. “The shinobi concealed on this boat reported in advance to the Land of Waves. We didn’t make any such report, and if we’re found here like this, it’ll damage the trust they have in Konoha. They might misunderstand our presence here and think we’re trying to steal information about the Tobishachimaru.”

“Not a problem.”

“Huh?”

“This scenic flight is a secret from all the nations.” Guy grinned. “Officially, the Tobishachimaru doesn’t exist. You and I can’t sneak into a boat that doesn’t exist.”

“Oh, I get it.”

“I’ve accounted for everything! Mwa ha ha—Urp! Anyway, how’s my favorite student?”

“If you’re talking about Lee, I sent him to Hozuki Castle.”

“You did? Well, Lee will be fine! With the Full Power of Youth I’ve ceded him, he’ll watch carefully over the prisoners.” Then he lowered his voice. “At any rate, I’m here with this body. I can’t do anything like supervise prisoners. So it’s not a problem in the least for him to slip off for a little while.”

“You… This is the total opposite of what you were saying before, isn’t it?”

“What? We’re not going to get caught! Anyway, to discuss things—Urp! Aah, I feel terrible… We’re in here now, so how about you push my wheelchair and we take a spin around the place together?”

Here, Guy clamped his mouth shut and peered down towards the bottom of the ship’s hold, his facial expression suddenly grim.

Kakashi had noticed it too.

“Ninja.”

“Yeah.” Kakashi nodded at Guy’s statement. “There shouldn’t be any ninja on this boat other than the ones above us.”

The pair of men who had come into the ship’s hold did not look like regular passengers. The way they moved without a sound, the sharp bloodlust turned outward, the gait that did not lose its balance even in the middle of this swaying ship; any one of these marked them as shinobi.

Kakashi and Guy tamped down their auras and watched the movements of the men below them. From above, they couldn’t make out their faces. And their clothing was the same style as that of any other passenger.

The men didn’t noticed Kakashi and Guy above them. They crouched down in a corner with wooden boxes piled high and did something before hurriedly leaving the area.

Kakashi and Guy exchanged looks.

Once the men were gone, Kakashi jumped down from the scaffolding and examined the area around the boxes. He soon found what he was looking for.

“Hey, Kakashi!” Guy called out, quietly.

“Did you find something?”

“Yeah,” he replied, almost a groan. “Looks like things are about to get annoying.”

It was a kunai with an explosive tag.

Immediately, there was a scream from the dining lounge.