Impossible to Forget

Chapter 38: A Single Jutsu

I extracted my hand from my mother's and closed her eyes slowly before rushing over to Kakashi.

He had bled through the shirt that I had tied to the wound on his back. I felt his neck for a pulse and was relieved when it was still there, but his skin was scorching hot to the touch. He had a fever. I rolled him over and listened to his breathing. It was incredibly labored. Shit, he was suffering from the most severe case of chakra drain that I had ever personally seen. He needed medical attention and much sooner than I could probably get it to him.

I walked over to my dead mother, and took her weapons pouch. There was a standard medical kit inside, some food, and a small container of water. Thank goodness. Kakashi and I no longer had our weapons pouches since she had made us remove them earlier.

I used the first aid kit to roughly splint my right hand, and then wrapped a bit of the bottom of my shirt that I had torn off around the base of my hand where the skin was still raw and stinging from being ripped out of the shackles. I grabbed Nori's sword and cut off a sizeable chunk of her pant leg before moving back over to Kakashi.

Yes, I had just robbed my mother's dead body, and yes, I felt like an incredibly shitty person. However, I was not going to let Kakashi die because we didn't have the supplies necessary. Survival sometimes calls for drastic measures.

I knelt down next to Kakashi, and removed the shirt that I had used as a make-shift bandage. Using the pant leg that I had taken and the kunai wrapping that had been disguised as a snake (it was on the ground near us), I rebandaged Kakashi's wound tightly. I pulled his shirt back on over his head, pulled his mask back into position, put his gloves on, snapped back on his flak jacket, and put his forehead protector in my pocket. There, now the chances of him dying of hypothermia were lessened.

I groaned as I stood back up. Nori had really beaten the crap out of me, but I couldn't stop. The cave that we were in was at least ten degrees colder than it was outside, which is saying something. We needed to move. We needed to get out of the mountains or as close to their border as I could get, and then I needed to get Kakashi to the Cloud Village. Some small part of me hoped that Tadao and Anzu had managed to get help, but I couldn't rely on that wish.

The large number of cracked ribs that I was sporting cried out in agony as I lifted Kakashi onto my back. I set my jaw, and walked out of cave. Getting through the narrow opening with a full-grown man on my back was a real challenge, but the outside air felt unbelievably fresh after being cooped up in that cave for so long. It was dark outside, and the stars were glowing out of the velvety blackness above us, and the moon was so bright that I could see perfectly.

I set Kakashi down several feet away and safely out of range before walking back to the entrance of the cave. It was my time to keep a promise to a yokai.

I forced my fingers to interlace, weaving my left hand with the fat and swollen digits of my right in the sign of the snake. I channeled my remaining chakra before stomping down on the ground. A shockwave flowed out from my foot, and I could hear the cave inside tearing apart and collapsing.

A light blue mist poured out of the crushed stones to float past me before dissipating into the wind. As it went by, I could feel it replenish my chakra. I had freed Raiju and made my mother's tomb in the cave that had changed her forever with a single jutsu.