After giving a brief rundown of the past few days, Rin temporarily left the room.
Kamishiro had no choice but to accept the reality that he was now officially the "White Yaksha." It wasn't the worst thing in the world. At least they didn't saddle him with something stupid like "Exploding-balls Masked Freak."
To his surprise, however, Kakashi stayed behind after Rin left.
This was weird. He and Kakashi had absolutely zero overlap. They weren't even acquaintances; throughout this entire war, they had probably exchanged less than ten sentences with each other.
Was he staying behind to play nurse? Highly unlikely.
"Um..." Kakashi finally spoke up. He hesitated, looking strangely embarrassed or flustered.
Even with the mask covering half his face, the look in his eyes practically screamed awkwardness.
Hey, hey, don't look at me like that, Kamishiro panicked internally. Are you trying to drag this story into some weird, unspeakable romance genre?
As it turned out, Kamishiro's imagination was just running wild. Kakashi actually had serious business.
"Kamishiro..."
"Just drop the formalities," Kamishiro quickly interrupted. He couldn't stand overly stiff honorifics.
"...I have a jutsu I want to show you." Without waiting for a response, Kakashi's hands blurred into a sequence of seals.
He wasn't showing it off to ask for guidance. As a proud ninja, Kakashi felt that if he was going to use someone else's original jutsu, the least he could do was confess to the creator.
The moment Kamishiro saw the specific hand signs, he instantly understood why Kakashi had stayed behind.
Ox — Rabbit — Monkey. A harsh sphere of concentrated lightning crackled to life in Kakashi's palm, screeching like a thousand birds.
The Lightning Blade. The legendary, one-and-only original jutsu of the future Copy Ninja. Even though Kakashi had managed to learn it early, the title of "original creator" had been pitifully stolen from him by Kamishiro's interference.
After demonstrating it, Kakashi quickly dispelled the lightning. Firing off high-rank, destructive jutsu inside a hospital ward wasn't exactly standard procedure.
Besides, maintaining a massive chakra sink like the Lightning Blade for no reason was just asking for trouble.
"I'm sorry. I somehow figured out your jutsu without realizing it. It was like... the theory for it was already in my head," Kakashi admitted, his tone still laced with guilt.
He genuinely felt like a thief. Stealing ninjutsu was still stealing.
But to Kamishiro, this couldn't have mattered less. In fact, Kakashi learning the jutsu was the best possible outcome. When Kamishiro first used it in front of him on the battlefield, his entire goal had been to subtly "return" the jutsu to its rightful owner anyway.
The Lightning Blade was supposed to be Kakashi's. However, the current Kakashi's mastery over it was incredibly immature. Because his body hadn't built up an immunity to high-voltage chakra, there was a strict limit to how many times he could safely cast it.
It was an ultra-high-risk jutsu. In terms of lethality, it was an absolute guaranteed kill—Kamishiro's extensive "human testing" during the war proved that whoever got stabbed by it, died. But the severe recoil and tunnel vision made it equally dangerous for the user.
Kamishiro's unique Esper-like constitution made him completely immune to electrical blowback, meaning he had zero restrictions. Kakashi didn't have that luxury.
"Um... I apologize..." Seeing Kamishiro zone out in thought, Kakashi assumed he was furious about his signature jutsu being stolen.
"Huh? Oh, don't worry about it, Kakashi. Treat this jutsu as your own," Kamishiro quickly reassured him. "Use it as much as you want. If you ever want to teach it to someone else in the future, go for it."
As long as Kamishiro could still use it, he didn't care what Kakashi did with it. He wasn't about to parade around claiming he invented it. Even without Kamishiro, Kakashi would have created it eventually anyway.
"What...?"
Now it was Kakashi's turn to be utterly baffled. Why was Kamishiro reacting like this? A stranger had just reverse-engineered his ultimate, original jutsu, and he wasn't even a little bit mad? Shouldn't he be screaming right now? Shouldn't he be demanding Kakashi hand over an equivalent A-rank jutsu as compensation?
"Look, you said the theory was already in your head, right? I'm sure even if you had never seen me use it, you would have developed it yourself sooner or later. Seriously, don't sweat it."
Kakashi: "..."
After Kamishiro aggressively reassured him a few more times that he genuinely didn't care, Kakashi finally left the room, his face practically a mask of sheer confusion.
He's being way too nice, Kakashi thought to himself. He had never pegged Kamishiro as a saint. The guy had even given him specialized pointers on the jutsu's fatal flaw—the tunnel vision during a straight-line sprint.
Having successfully shooed Kakashi away, Kamishiro was finally alone. After lying in bed for three days straight, his joints felt rusted stiff. Naturally, he wanted to go for a walk.
Grabbing the oversized white hospital gown draped over the foot of the bed, Kamishiro slipped it on over his bandages, slid his feet into some slippers, and walked out. Calling it a "hospital ward" was generous; it was really just a cramped medical tent.
It was high noon outside, the sun glaring down brightly. Everywhere he looked, medical ninjas in white coats were sprinting back and forth in a state of frantic exhaustion. The camp still hadn't had time to clean up the devastation from the battle three days ago. The medics were entirely focused on desperately trying to save anyone who still had a pulse.
The sheer scale of that night's carnage was on full display. The terrain was heavily cratered. Tents that used to sit on flat ground were now pitched at awkward angles over ruined earth. Dark, dried blood stained the soil everywhere he stepped.
Fortunately, both the Konoha and Sand corpses had already been cleared away, otherwise the scene would have been much more gruesome.
Kamishiro wandered aimlessly, his eyes scanning the wreckage until he unknowingly found himself standing in front of a very familiar tent.
It was Tsunade's central command tent. Given how massive of a target it was, it was an absolute miracle it hadn't been obliterated during the raid. Logically speaking, a giant, conspicuous target like that should have been leveled in the first five minutes of the ambush.
Hearing no movement inside, Kamishiro curiously pulled back the tent flap. He assumed it would be empty. He was wrong.
Tsunade was sitting at her desk, frowning deeply at a stack of paperwork.
"Lady Tsunade?" Kamishiro called out.
Weird. If Tsunade was in here, why were there absolutely zero guards posted outside?
"Kamishiro? You're awake. Have a seat. I need to talk to you the second I finish this." Hearing his voice, Tsunade glanced up, fired off the order, and immediately buried her face back into her work.
Tsunade actually working hard was a phenomenally rare sight. Years down the line, even after she officially became the Hokage, she would never show this level of sheer, unadulterated work ethic again.