"Thank goodness, Toad Sage Jiraiya! You're finally here!"
Before the last word faded, the red figure on the branch pitched headfirst toward the ground.
Time was up.
The instant the countdown reached zero-
The giant wolf of ice and snow froze mid-lunge, then burst into a flurry of snow.
Above it, the Unicorn Whale did not even have time to swing his tail before he began crumbling from the head down, dissolving into a blizzard that thundered down over the entire clearing.
Hayashi plummeted straight down.
Jiraiya pushed off with his toes and sprang upward, catching the boy securely in his arms before a strand of red hair could touch the ground.
His first impression was that the boy weighed almost nothing. He was impossibly light.
The child in his arms weighed less than the stack of manuscript pages on his desk.
His second impression was how badly the boy was hurt.
The bandages on his shoulder were almost completely soaked in blood. His left hand was torn open, with not an inch of intact flesh among the ragged wounds, and dense scrapes covered his wrist and forearm.
Yet this weightless, battered child had just stood firm on a high branch, controlling creatures made of ice and snow and forcing a Kage Level fighter into a desperate corner.
He bent down and gently laid the boy flat on a clean patch of ground, moving as though he feared breaking something.
Even unconscious, the child still had his right hand locked around his sword's hilt.
Jiraiya crouched down, pried those clenched fingers open one by one, took out the Tachi, and turned to hand it over.
Sasuke stepped forward and accepted it without a word.
"You lot." He tipped his chin toward the children gathering around. "Keep an eye on him."