He molded his chakra and swiftly climbed up with the power of his arms alone. Kicking with his legs to raise his body up, Kakashi took advantage of the centrifugal force and flew onto the body of the ship in a single leap.
He caught a glimpse of the passengers inside in their finery through the window of the gondola. Not one of them had noticed Kakashi passing by outside.
He lay facedown on the envelope—the side of the air bladder—then stood and ran up diagonally, heading for the tail as the crosswind pushed at him.
But, he thought. That’s some job with that body, avoiding the eyes of the jonin set up all over the ceremony grounds and sneaking onto the Tobishachimaru. Or maybe he bought off a jonin?
Below the slowly ascending ship, the spectators gradually grew smaller and smaller.
Kakashi, having arrived at the tail of the ship, hung by one hand from the cover of the drive area. Inside were the propellers, about five meters each in diameter.
He probably got in through here. I have to get in there too before the propellers get going. He had this thought at almost the same time as the third propeller from the right started rotating.
Whk whk whk. With a low rumble, the propeller gradually picked up speed. The Tobishachimaru started to turn gently toward the right.
The air high up in the sky was much colder than he expected. The wind grew stronger as they gained altitude. Kakashi focused the chakra in his limbs and crawled along to the opposite side of the engine area so he wouldn’t get buffeted by the wind.
When the ship stopped in the air for a moment, as if it had finally determined its route, the third propeller from the left appeared to be about to start spinning.
By the time Kakashi dove into the drive area, fighting the wind, the propeller had begun to spin slowly. After firmly planting his feet, he jumped headfirst through a gap in the rotating propeller. Fortunately, given that it wasn’t rotating at top speed yet, he managed to make it through without his body bursting like an overripe tomato against the enormous blades.
But before he could even heave a sigh of relief, the propeller had picked up speed to rotate with a great deal of force and threatened to suck him in.
“Ngh!”
Even using the chakra of his whole body and clinging to the interior of the drive area, the wind speed threatened to peel his body away and back into the propeller. Still, he inched forward and somehow managed to escape the engine area.
He looked around.
The route directly ahead of him was blocked by the buoyant air bladder, but there was a ladder that led to the engine area, and he used this to make his way down toward what seemed to be the engine room.
His ears picked up a strange sound. Shooting his gaze around the area, he spotted a person in a wheelchair, wearing the exact same black hood as Lee, racing along the scaffolding suspended above the engine room.
“You’re not getting away from me!”
Kakashi leapt over the railing to drop down to the scaffolding. Even farther down seemed to be the ship’s hold, and he could see several large wooden boxes piled up there.
The man in the wheelchair kept advancing, staggering somewhat, on the scaffolding running parallel to the beam upon which Kakashi stood.
Kakashi kicked off the scaffolding and leapt across the room to the other scaffold. “What are you up to, Guy!”
The wheelchair came to an abrupt stop.
“Lee spilled everything.” Kakashi sighed and shook his head. “Honestly… You went so far as to tell him that if he didn’t get you on the Tobishachimaru, you’d sever the apprentice-master bond?”
In the fight with Madara, Guy had shattered the bones in his right leg and been forced to use a wheelchair ever since. The doctor told him he’d never walk again.
But in a surprising turn, not only had he tirelessly bounced back from this adversity, but he had even recovered to the point of being able to stand and walk when he put forth the Full Power of Youth.
“Even without Lee, I can do whatever I want when I want to,” Guy said. “With this body, I’m proof a person can live just fine without one or both legs.”
“Now, look,” Kakashi glanced at Guy’s cast-covered right leg. “You went to the trouble of sneaking into the Tobishachimaru just for that?”
“Get it, Kakashi? I’m not done as a shinobi quite yet. One, two thousand pistol squats with just my left leg are nothing. I might be in a wheelchair, but when I feel like it, getting into a boat like this is a piece of cake. Mwa ha ha ha!”
Kakashi simply stared with cool, half-closed eyes at the boundless optimism of the man before him.
“And I’ll tell you right now, I didn’t particularly want to get on this ship,” Guy argued. “I had absolutely no interest in humanity’s first flying ship or what have you. The scenery from five thousand meters up in the air? What good is looking at that going to do you? I don’t even care how it’s possible exactly for a boat that’s two hundred twenty-three meters long and weighs over two hundred tons to fly anyway!”
Ah, come on, Kakashi thought. You just really wanted to get on this thing.
“W-what? What’s with that look?”
“You know, you used to get terrible motion sickness.”
“Unh!”
“What’s wrong?” Kakashi couldn’t suppress a sigh. “Let me tell you now. Don’t go blaming me if you start throwing up or something.”
“W-what?! Ridiculous! It might be a boat, but this one flies, doesn’t it?”
“But a flying boat’s still a boat.”
“Quit with the condescension! As if I, Might Guy, would get sick on such a trifle as this!” But no sooner were the words out of his mouth than his face went pale, and he was struggling to hold down whatever was coming up from his stomach.
“Just what are you planning to do?” Honestly. This is ridiculous. “The shinobi concealed on this boat reported in advance to the Land of Waves. We didn’t make any such report, and if we’re found here like this, it’ll damage the trust they have in Konoha. They might misunderstand our presence here and think we’re trying to steal information about the Tobishachimaru.”
“Not a problem.”
“Huh?”
“This scenic flight is a secret from all the nations.” Guy grinned. “Officially, the Tobishachimaru doesn’t exist. You and I can’t sneak into a boat that doesn’t exist.”
“Oh, I get it.”
“I’ve accounted for everything! Mwa ha ha—Urp! Anyway, how’s my favorite student?”
“If you’re talking about Lee, I sent him to Hozuki Castle.”
“You did? Well, Lee will be fine! With the Full Power of Youth I’ve ceded him, he’ll watch carefully over the prisoners.” Then he lowered his voice. “At any rate, I’m here with this body. I can’t do anything like supervise prisoners. So it’s not a problem in the least for him to slip off for a little while.”
“You… This is the total opposite of what you were saying before, isn’t it?”
“What? We’re not going to get caught! Anyway, to discuss things—Urp! Aah, I feel terrible… We’re in here now, so how about you push my wheelchair and we take a spin around the place together?”
Here, Guy clamped his mouth shut and peered down towards the bottom of the ship’s hold, his facial expression suddenly grim.
Kakashi had noticed it too.
“Ninja.”
“Yeah.” Kakashi nodded at Guy’s statement. “There shouldn’t be any ninja on this boat other than the ones above us.”
The pair of men who had come into the ship’s hold did not look like regular passengers. The way they moved without a sound, the sharp bloodlust turned outward, the gait that did not lose its balance even in the middle of this swaying ship; any one of these marked them as shinobi.
Kakashi and Guy tamped down their auras and watched the movements of the men below them. From above, they couldn’t make out their faces. And their clothing was the same style as that of any other passenger.
The men didn’t noticed Kakashi and Guy above them. They crouched down in a corner with wooden boxes piled high and did something before hurriedly leaving the area.
Kakashi and Guy exchanged looks.
Once the men were gone, Kakashi jumped down from the scaffolding and examined the area around the boxes. He soon found what he was looking for.
“Hey, Kakashi!” Guy called out, quietly.
“Did you find something?”
“Yeah,” he replied, almost a groan. “Looks like things are about to get annoying.”
It was a kunai with an explosive tag.
Immediately, there was a scream from the dining lounge.