"W-What's wrong, Hirohiko? Did something happen to Chiba?"
Hearing Hirohiko's roar and the tangled despair, anger, and fear within it, Yukina, who had been about to make the final decision, suddenly caught her breath. Before she knew it, she had already moved behind Hirohiko, to Chiba's side on the ground.
They could not even maintain their formation anymore.
"Hirohiko! What happened?"
At the same time, Kushina, clad in the Nine-Tails Cloak, spun around. By the time her words fell, she had moved to Hirohiko's opposite side, crouching down to look at Chiba lying on the ground.
She had no mind to care about the X-shaped formation either.
Chiba?
Something happened to Chiba? From Hirohiko's voice, could it be that Chiba had already...
However, Minato Namikaze was, after all, the Hokage of a village. He was still able to remain calm, though his heart had already fallen into turmoil.
The despair, anger, and fear in Hirohiko's voice meant Chiba's condition could not be good. It was even very possible that he had already...
To be honest, if not for the figure across from the Flying Sand Tornado—which was fading away as sand and stones clattered down—slowly rising to its feet, shrouded in what seemed to be a mass of burning black Chakra, he would probably have turned around at once to check on Chiba.
But he still retained his reason. If he turned to look at Chiba too, he would be exposing his back to the enemy. That would practically be suicide.
Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!
Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!
Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!
At that moment, the Flying Sand Tornado finally ran out of force. The swept-up sand and Kunai came raining down in a clattering mess, eventually scattering across the center of the space between the two sides for several meters.
"Hm?"