Standing at the bow, Kitagawa Gen looked at the sea fog rising around him. The sea breeze blew into his face and stirred his short hair, leaving him in an especially good mood.
Behind him, however, Zabuza, who had been tied up tight, looked rather grim.
"Damn bastard."
Watching Kirigakure draw closer and closer, he could not help cursing under his breath, yet there truly was nothing he could do.
Thinking back to the earlier battle only filled him with a sense of helplessness.
With Kakashi and Jiraiya coming at him together, he would not have had any chance of winning even inside the Hidden Mist Jutsu, and worse still, he had no way to leave!
It was not that he could not bear to abandon Haku. It was that he had no confidence at all that he could escape from these two.
And what made it even harder for him to accept was that he had originally thought Haku could deal with that brat, but the truth was that this brat was unbelievably strong, and Haku had instead been quickly defeated by him.
"We're almost there."
Zabuza's mental state was close to collapsing, while Jiraiya was in a fairly decent mood. He walked to the bow and looked into the distance, then turned his head toward Kitagawa Gen.
"Kid, I'll remind you one more time. This situation isn't like before. Are you sure there's no problem with your Flying Thunder God?"
"Exactly. We can't afford to be careless about this."
Kakashi was not reading his book anymore either. He had spent plenty of time "urging updates" along the way, but now he also smiled at Kitagawa Gen in a joking manner.
"Although we have Zabuza's 'help,' your Flying Thunder God is the key. We're all counting on you."
"Don't