Shuo wasn't dead, but he was barely a breath away.
Rin knelt beside him, her hands glowing with dense green medical chakra as she desperately poured it into his body-like pouring water into a leaking bucket full of holes. It went in, flowed out through his wounds, went in again, flowed out again, over and over without end.
"It's not working..."
Rin gritted her teeth, her voice trembling, cold sweat covering her forehead. "There are too many wounds. I can't stop the bleeding at all, and his chakra is almost gone."
Sai crouched beside her, one hand pressed firmly against Shuo's chest.
There was a fist-sized hole there, hideously frightening. Blood welled out of it, staining his arm red and splattering his face. He couldn't tell what was Shuo's blood and what came from the graze he'd suffered in the shock wave earlier.
"Press down!" Rin suddenly shouted. "Harder! Don't let him bleed anymore!"
Sai gritted his teeth and put all his strength into his hand, but blood still squeezed between his fingers, sticky, hot, and rank.
Obito stood beside them, his body rigid as he watched, his heart feeling as though it were being squeezed tight.
He had experienced this despair before-when Rin had died all those years ago, it had been just like this. Blood all over his hands that he couldn't stop no matter what he did. That helplessness had nearly driven him mad.
"Let me." He crouched down, his voice terribly hoarse.
Kamui activated, space warping slightly as Obito reached toward Shuo's wound and began peeling away the chakra clinging around it.
Black residue was mixed into that chakra, sticking to the flesh like poison. Just looking at it was sickening.
The instant the residue came free, Shuo's body convulsed violently, his brows drawing tightly together.