"Rumble—rumble—"
The collision of shockwaves, the grinding and shattering of sand and stone, resounded like thunder, carrying far across the relatively open clearing where the bushes had been completely burned away.
"Pfft!"
And in the very next second, as the colliding shockwaves sent a dragon of flying sand soaring skyward, a pitch-black figure suddenly burst through it. Like a kite with its string cut, it flew backward at low altitude in a certain direction amid a series of cracking sounds. After being flung back for quite some distance, it slammed into the ground with a bang, gouging out a shallow pit.
"Clink! Clink!"
At the same time, from the other side of the spiraling column of sand that had shot into the sky only to seem ready to vanish in an instant, an ordinary Kunai and a special Kunai with a forked tip were flung out by the vortex's rotating force. Tangled together, they struck the ground in another direction and embedded themselves deeply in the earth.
"Whoosh!"
Almost the instant the two Kunai pierced the ground together, four figures and a two-person-tall log abruptly appeared amid silent space-time ripples.
They were Minato Namikaze, Kushina, Yukina, and Hirohiko! "Crack! Crack-crack! Crack-crack!"
As the four figures appeared in an instant, scorched black fragments of stone fell in sheets, scattering across the ground.
"How is he, Hirohiko?"
At that moment, Kushina, whose entire body was wrapped in red Tailed Beast Chakra and who stood beside Minato Namikaze at the front of the cross-shaped formation, slowly turned around and looked toward the one-armed youth at the rear.
At this moment, the one-armed youth was gently setting the two-person-tall log on the ground. With a flick of his intact left hand, he sliced through the rope around the log with a crack.
"He's fine!