He struggled, trying to get to his feet, but with his chakra exhausted, his body went limp and he collapsed again.
Before long, the Sunagakure ninja had dealt with the remaining five enemies. He wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, then hurried over to Aoba, crouched down, and looked at him with a trace of gratitude in his voice. "Thank you, kid from Konoha. Thank you for protecting Captain Kazeno. If it hadn't been for you, Captain Kazeno would probably have died, and Sunagakure's classified files would have fallen into the enemy's hands."
Aoba smiled weakly. "No need to thank me... I only did what I thought was right... Is Senior Kazeno all right? Did you catch up with him?"
"Don't worry, Captain Kazeno is fine." The Sunagakure ninja nodded, his tone noticeably lighter. "I pretended to chase after him earlier, but I was really trying to draw away their leader, that Jonin. I left Captain Kazeno a signal telling him that I'd dealt with the enemies here and asking him to wait for us at the abandoned outpost. We'll go find him now."
Aoba nodded, a relieved smile appearing on his face. "That's good... that's good... As long as Senior Kazeno is all right, and as long as the classified files are safe, then everything I did was worth it." The Sunagakure ninja reached out to help Aoba up, then took out a bottle of wound medicine from his ninja tool pouch and handed it to him. "Here, put this on first. You have a lot of wounds. If you don't treat them soon, they'll get infected."
"My name is Kazeno Rin. I'm Captain Kazeno's cousin, as well as a Chunin of Sunagakure. Thank you for helping us earlier."
Aoba accepted the wound medicine, nodded, and