Departure and Intelligence Transfer

Urashiki stood on the lunar surface. The dust beneath his feet had been churned into a gray-white haze by his earlier motion of kneeling and rising, and it was slowly settling. He lowered his gaze to his dislocated left shoulder, to the wound stretching from his collarbone to his ribs, and to the dark red patch spreading across his blood-soaked robe, which appeared nearly blackish-brown under the moon's cold light. The blood he had spat out still lay on the ground by his feet. In the windless, low-gravity environment, the dark red droplets retained their even circular shapes, their edges not spreading into the surrounding dust.

He looked up at the two people who had fallen before the entrance. Toneri and Hanabi lay on the lunar surface beside the stone steps, less than two paces apart. Yet both of their Tenseigan had dimmed to a critical state, the light in their pupils flickering deep within at an agonizingly slow rhythm, like the final pulses of two dying batteries. Toneri's hand still twitched faintly against the ground, his fingertips tracing several shallow marks through the gray-white dust. Each mark was fainter than the last; by the fifth, there was only the lightest brush over the surface.

Urashiki's gaze shifted from Toneri to Hanabi, then back from Hanabi to Toneri. His breathing continued to grow heavier. The dislocation in his left shoulder left his upper body tilted at an unnatural angle, while the still-bleeding wound slowly expanded the dark red stain beneath his robes. His right hand hung at his side. The pale golden Chakra in his palm had already merged into his meridians, and he could feel the distinct texture of Tenseigan Dojutsu Power flowing through them slowly reacting with his total Chakra reserves. The reaction carried a faint sensation, like