Hidden Leaf, Hidden Talents 82 (Patreon)

The branch creaked under their feet, but neither clone bothered looking down. They stood side by side, staring at the smudge of grey on the horizon that was supposedly a hidden village. From here, Amegakure looked less like a major shinobi settlement and more like someone had spilled ink on the edge of the world and forgotten to clean it up.

"So that's it, huh?" One of them folded his arms, squinting at the distant blur. "The last one on the list."

"Yep."

"Every tiny village in this country, every farming settlement, every collection of houses that barely qualified as a hamlet. We searched them all."

"We did."

"And we found absolutely nothing."

"Also correct."

Neither of them said anything for a while, which was probably the longest either had gone without complaining since this whole mission started.

The clone with folded arms scratched the back of his head. "You know, when the boss sent us out here to find some kid with fancy eyes, I figured it'd take a few weeks tops. Maybe a month if we got unlucky. How long has it been now?"

"Long enough that I've lost count."

"That's what I thought."

His counterpart leaned against the trunk behind them. "We did find Konan, though. That's something."

"Finding Konan was supposed to get us to Nagato. Instead we got stuck playing blind monk for weeks and then had to drag her out of the country when Suna showed up. Now we're back to square one."

"At least she's safe."

"Look, I'm glad we saved her, but that doesn't change the fact that we're still nowhere on the actual mission."

"Yeah, I know."

That was the problem, wasn't it? They both knew. Every small village in Ame had been crossed off, one by one, and every single one had come up empty. No Nagato. No red hair. No legendary eyes. Just a whole lot of suffering civilians, burned-out buildings, and the occasional patrol that needed dealing with.

Speaking of which.

"The jonin are going to be a problem," the clone said.

The clone by the tree grimaced. "Yeah, I've been trying not to think about that."

Chunin and genin got knocked out and left behind. That was fine. Those ones would wake up with headaches and bruised egos, nothing more. But jonin were different. They'd learned that lesson early when one of their "unconscious" targets had managed to signal reinforcements before fully losing consciousness. That had been an annoying afternoon. After that, they stopped taking chances. Jonin woke up angry, woke up capable, woke up and started hunting. Leaving them alive was just signing your own death warrant.

So they hadn't left them alive.

"May their souls find peace," the standing one said, pressing his palms together in prayer. "And may their parents understand that their children really shouldn't have been that good at their jobs."

"Truly a tragedy."

"We'll light incense for them eventually."

"Maybe send a fruit basket to their families."

"With a nice card."

He held the pose for exactly three seconds before dropping it.

"Anyway." He his attention back to the grey smudge in the distance. "Amegakure. Last place we haven't checked."

"If he's not there, he's either dead or Madara moved him somewhere else."

"You think Madara got spooked?"

The clone leaning against the trunk considered the question. Madara Uchiha was an immortal legend who’d fought the First Hokage to a standstill and survived long past what anyone expected of him. A guy like that didn’t spook easily. But he also wasn’t stupid, and Ame had turned into a warzone over the past few months.

The villages they'd searched hadn't all been empty when they arrived. Some of them had been ransacked by Suna, left as smoking ruins with bodies in the streets. Others had been caught in the crossfire between Konoha, River, and Suna forces, or just unlucky enough to sit on a supply route someone decided they needed. The whole country was bleeding from wounds inflicted by three different hidden villages who couldn't care less about the civilians caught in the middle.

If Madara was keeping an eye on his investment, and Madara was definitely keeping an eye on his investment, then he'd watched his quiet little grooming operation turn into a battlefield. Sure, trauma was supposed to be good for developing fancy eyes, if the Rinnegan worked anything like the Sharingan. But there was a difference between "controlled tragedy to unlock potential" and "random Suna patrol stumbles across your future weapon and kills him over a bag of rice." Especially if the kid didn't have reliable people around him to watch his back. In canon, Nagato had Yahiko and Konan covering for him. Here? Who knew. They'd already scooped up Konan, and god knows what happened to Yahiko. Moving Nagato somewhere safer would just be common sense at that point.

He blinked, realizing he'd been quiet for a while. "Probably. The whole country's gone to hell. If I had some kid with legendary eyes stashed here, I'd have pulled him out months ago."

"Can't really blame him for that one."

"No. But it does make our job a lot harder."

"True."

"You know what else is true?"

"What?"

He pointed at the distant village. "One of us has to go in there."

The clone by the tree suddenly looked a lot more interested in the conversation. "One of us, you say."

"That's what I said."

"And by 'one of us,' you mean..."

"Not me."

"Interesting." The clone nodded slowly. "Because I was thinking the exact same thing. About you."

"Me? No, no, no. I've already done plenty of dangerous scouting on this mission. It's your turn."

"My turn? I handled that patrol near the eastern swamp by myself. The one with the sensor."

"That was three days ago. Ancient history."

"It was yesterday."

"Time moves differently during war."

"Look, let's be realistic here." He crossed his arms. "Walking into a hidden village alone is basically just suicide with extra steps."

"Agreed."

"And neither of us actually wants to die."

"Also agreed."

"So the logical thing to do is..."

"Let someone else handle it. Preferably someone who looks exactly like me but isn't me."

They stared at each other.

"I'm older," one of them finally said. "Seniority matters."

"You were created maybe thirty seconds before me. That's not seniority, that's a rounding error."

"Still counts. Older clone gets to delegate. It's only fair."

"Since when is that a rule?"

"Since right now. I'm making it a rule."

"That's the most pathetic thing I've ever heard, and I've heard myself make excuses before."

"You're welcome to call it pathetic all day long, but I notice you're still standing here arguing instead of heading toward that village."

The argument continued for several more minutes, cycling through increasingly creative justifications for why the other person should be the one to walk into Amegakure and probably get killed by Hanzo's salamander. At one point, they tried to flip a coin, only to realize neither of them had a coin. They considered using a leaf, but leaves didn't flip properly. One of them suggested they count the stripes on a nearby caterpillar and use that number to determine whose turn it was, but they couldn't agree on what counted as a stripe versus what counted as a spot.

"This is getting ridiculous." One of them finally broke the silence. "We've been standing here for what, half an hour?"

"Longer, probably. Sun's moved."

They both glanced up. It had. Not by much, but enough to make them feel like idiots for wasting daylight on an argument neither of them was going to win.

"Okay." He rubbed the back of his neck. "What about third-gen? We make some expendable copies, send them in, let them do the actual dying."

"Thought about that already."

"And?"

"Shadow clones pop into smoke when they die. Everyone knows what that looks like."

"So?"

"So Ame's on edge right now. Foreign shinobi infiltrating their hidden village, leaving behind smoke every time they get caught? That's not subtle. That's basically leaving a calling card that says 'Konoha was here, please declare war on us.'"

The clone grimaced. "We're already fighting in their backyard. How much worse could it get?"

"There's a difference between 'your country is a convenient battlefield' and 'we're actively sneaking into your hidden village.' One of those Hanzo might tolerate because he's got bigger problems. The other one..." He trailed off, shaking his head. "From what the boss remembers about that guy, he's paranoid as hell.”

"Fair point."

"Besides, Ame seems weirdly more pissed at Suna than us right now. I'd rather not give them a reason to change their minds."

The words barely left his mouth before something made them both pause. One look at each other was all it took. They dropped from the branch without a sound, hit the ground, and kept going. The soil parted around them like water until there was nothing left on the surface but an empty clearing and the sound of approaching footsteps.

The Ame patrol that walked past seconds later had no idea how close they'd come.

"—swear to god, if I have to look at one more Suna headband this week, I'm going to lose my mind." The woman leading the group sounded like she meant every word.

"Yeah, well, join the club." An older man walking beside her shook his head. "Command's tripled patrols along all the southern routes. Every path coming in from Wind Country, they want eyes on it around the clock."

"Good, it's about time. Those sand-licking bastards have been walking into our villages like they own the place, taking whatever they want, burning whatever they can't carry." She spat on the ground. "My cousin lived in one of those villages."

"I heard about that. I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry, be angry. That's what's gonna keep us going until we make them pay for every grain of rice they stole and every house they burned."

"At least Hanzo-sama's finally letting us hit back," a younger shinobi at the back chimed in. "Any Suna-nin we catch on our side of the border, we're cleared to kill on sight now."

"About damn time. Should've been doing that from the start instead of letting them walk all over us like we're doormats."

The patrol continued on, voices fading as they moved deeper into the trees, completely unaware of the two clones buried in the earth just a few feet away.

A few minutes later, when the footsteps had gone silent, both clones pushed themselves back up through the soil. They emerged near the same tree, brushing dirt off their clothes.

"Well," one of them said, still picking a clump of soil out of his hair. "That was enlightening."

"Suna's really made themselves popular around here, huh."

"Can't say I'm complaining. Better them than us. Long as Ame keeps pointing all that anger in their direction, we can keep moving without drawing too much attention."

"Assuming we don't run into another patrol."

"Assuming that, yeah."

The forest, as if reading the mood, offered nothing but silence in return.

"So," one of them finally said. "Third-gen clones are out. Walking in ourselves is out. What does that leave us with?"

"Playing it safe and boring, I guess. Camp outside the village, watch who comes and goes, see if we can spot anything useful from a distance."

"That's gonna take forever, though. And there's no guarantee Nagato ever leaves the village in the first place, assuming he's even in there to begin with."

"You got a better idea, I'm all ears."

Silence.

“What about refugees?” he said slowly, like the idea was still forming as he spoke. "War pushes people out of their homes. There's gotta be Ame civilians who fled the fighting, ended up in border towns or nearby countries looking for somewhere safe."

"And we, what, just walk up and ask them if they've seen a red-haired kid with weird eyes?"

"Not directly, obviously—that's way too on the nose." He scratched his chin, thinking. "But refugees talk. They gossip about home, about people they used to know, about weird things they saw before everything went to hell. If Nagato's got the Rinnegan and it's active at all, someone might have noticed something strange."

"So we find displaced Ame civilians, get friendly with them, and basically let them do the information gathering for us without ever realizing that's what they're doing."

"Exactly. Spies who don't know they're spies." He paused for a moment, then added, "Plus, if we play it right, they could double as bait."

"Get him to come to us instead of going to him." His fellow clone was already nodding. "Build something visible enough that word travels back inside. If the kid's got any attachment to his people..."

"He might show up on his own. Saves us the trouble of breaking into Hanzo's backyard."

They stood there for a moment, both turning the idea over.

"That's..." One of them finally said. "Actually not terrible."

"Don't sound so surprised."

"I'm always surprised when we have good ideas. It happens so rarely."

"Speak for yourself."

They both turned to look at Amegakure again. The village hadn't moved, obviously. Villages didn't do that. But it felt like it was sitting there smugly, aware that they couldn't touch it.

"Alright," one of them said. "Let's go find some refugees."

"Best plan we've had all day."

"It's the only plan we've had all day."

"Exactly."

……

Meanwhile...

The sounds of battle below were starting to wind down. Fewer clashes of steel, fewer jutsu lighting up the treeline. The Konoha reinforcements were mopping up what was left of the River-nin squad, which meant Mikoto didn't have to worry about her comrades anymore.

Which also meant she had nothing to distract her from her current situation.

Namely, the fact that she was still being held like a bride on her wedding night.

"So," Mikoto said, trying her best to sound casual, "how long are you planning to keep holding me like this?"

Shinji tilted his head, as if genuinely considering the question. "Hmm. Good question. How long do you want me to?"

"That's not even close to an answer."

"Of course it is. You're just upset it wasn't the one you wanted."

She tried to respond to that. She really did. But somewhere between her brain and her mouth, the words got lost, took a wrong turn, and never showed up.

The obvious thing to say would be "put me down," but some traitorous part of her brain was screaming that she absolutely did not want him to put her down, and the rest of her had already quietly defected to the same side.

Shinji's smile widened. "See? Tough question."

"I hate you."

"No you don't."

"I really, really do."

"Your grip on my jacket says otherwise."

Mikoto looked down. Her fingers were still resting against his chest, tracing slow circles over his shirt without any conscious input from her brain. She hadn't even noticed.

She let go immediately, heat crawling up her neck. "That was... I was just making sure I didn't fall."

"We're on a branch. And I'm holding you with both arms. Where exactly were you planning to fall?"

"I don't know, okay? It was instinct."

"Your instinct was to feel me up?"

"I wasn't feeling you up! I was just... resting my hand there."

"While moving it around in little circles."

"...Shut up."

Shinji laughed. "Alright, alright. I'll stop teasing."

He didn't put her down though. And she didn't ask again.

For a few seconds, neither of them said anything. The forest was quieter now, the sounds of combat below winding down into scattered shouts and the occasional clash of steel.

It would have been peaceful, if not for all the bodies on the ground below.

"Your eyes," he said suddenly.

She blinked. "What about them?"

"Three tomoe, huh." His eyes lingered on hers, and his grin softened. "Looks like someone's been busy while I was gone."

Oh.

She'd almost forgotten. In the chaos of the fight, the moment her Sharingan had completed itself had been just another heartbeat among hundreds. She'd felt it happen, felt the world sharpen and slow beyond anything she'd experienced before, but there hadn't been time to think about what it meant.

"During the fight," she said. "One of the River-nin got behind me, and I just... saw it. Everything. His muscles tensing, the angle of his blade, where he was going to strike before he even started moving." She paused, remembering. "It saved my life."

"And then I saved it again about thirty seconds later."

"You're really not going to let me have this, are you?"

"What? I'm agreeing with you. You did something amazing, and then I got to witness it. Best seat in the house." His grin softened. "Seriously though, congratulations. Three tomoe is a big deal. Most Uchiha don't get there until they're way older than you."

The warmth in her chest spread a little further. It wasn't completely accurate. She could name at least two cousins who'd awakened their third tomoe younger than her. But Shinji didn't know that, and the pride in his voice sounded real enough that she didn't feel like correcting him.

"It doesn't feel like a big deal," she admitted instead. "It just feels like I can see more now. More than I could before."

"That's exactly what makes it a big deal."

"I guess."

They stayed like that for a while, neither of them saying anything. It was strange how comfortable it felt. Before, she always thought silence needed to be filled. But here, with his arms still around her, she found she didn't mind it at all. She could have stayed like this for hours.

Of course, the universe had other plans.

Her Sharingan caught it before her brain did. Movement in the trees behind Shinji, someone lunging out of the shadows with a blade already mid-swing, aimed straight at the back of his neck.

"Shinji, behind you!"

The words tore out of her throat before she could think, raw panic flooding her system. She tried to move, to push him, to do something, but his arms were still around her and she couldn't get free in time and the River-nin was already swinging and—

Shinji didn't react.

He just smiled.

The River-nin's blade never connected. Halfway through his swing, his whole body jerked like a puppet with its strings cut. The weapon slipped from his fingers, clattering against a branch as he reached for his throat with both hands.

Blood sprayed between his fingers. More than she'd expected from a throat wound, pulsing out in thick spurts every time his heart beat. He tried to say something, maybe a curse or a cry for help, but all that came out was a wet gurgle.

Then he fell.

His body hit two branches on the way down before crashing into the underbrush below with a dull thump. The sounds of struggling continued for a few more seconds after that, getting weaker and weaker until they just... stopped.

Mikoto stared at the corpse through the leaves. Her heart was still hammering against her ribs, adrenaline screaming through her veins with nowhere to go.

"Great, another one." The voice came from her left, flat and tired. "At this rate I'm gonna hit double digits before we even get out of this forest."

She turned her head so fast her neck cracked.

Another Shinji was leaning against the trunk of a nearby tree, one hand resting casually on the handle of a sheathed blade at his hip. A clone, obviously, though he looked identical to the one holding her in every way. Same clothes, same posture, same irritatingly calm expression.

The only difference was the blood on his sleeve. Just a few drops, already starting to dry.

"You know," the clone continued, "I've been running around this forest for the past hour cleaning up stragglers while you two have been up here doing... whatever this is." He gestured vaguely at the princess carry situation. "Flirting, I guess? Getting cozy? Making heart eyes at each other while I do all the dirty work?"

"We weren't flirting," she said automatically.

"Sure you weren't."

"We weren't!"

The clone looked at the original Shinji. The original Shinji looked back. Some kind of silent communication passed between them that Mikoto couldn't interpret, and then they both turned to her with identical expressions of disbelief.

"You're literally in his arms right now," the clone pointed out.

"That's... medical. He's healing me."

"Uh huh."

"He is!"

"With his arms?"

Mikoto's face felt like it was on fire. She turned to Shinji, expecting him to say something in her defense, but he just shrugged.

"I mean, I am healing you. But also we were kind of flirting."

"Shinji!"

"What? It's true."

She wanted to bury her face in her hands, but that would require letting go of him, and some stubborn part of her still refused to do that. So instead she just groaned and turned away, staring pointedly at the leaves overhead.

"Why do I even put up with you?" she muttered.

"Good question. Let me know when you figure it out. But I'm just glad you do."

The clone made a sound that was probably supposed to be a sigh but came out more like a laugh. "Right. Well. I'll leave you two to it, then. The others and I will keep circling the perimeter."

"Thanks for the backup," Shinji said.

"That's literally why we're here." The clone shrugged and flickered away, dissolving into the forest like he'd never been there at all.

Mikoto stared at the spot where he'd been standing. Something about what just happened kept nagging at her.

Her Sharingan had been active the entire time. All three tomoe spinning. She'd seen the River-nin's approach, tracked his movement, predicted his strike. Her eyes had given her more information than she'd ever had access to before.

But the clone...

All she'd seen was a flicker of black. There and then gone, and then the River-nin was dying with his throat cut open.

"I couldn't see it," she said slowly. "His attack. Even with three tomoe, I couldn't track it."

She had trained for years to awaken her Sharingan. She'd pushed herself through more pain and exhaustion than she'd ever experienced in her life, faced death multiple times, watched people die in front of her. And at the end of all that, she'd finally achieved what every Uchiha dreamed of. The complete Sharingan. Three tomoe.

And it still wasn't enough to see a clone move.

"Hey."

Mikoto didn't answer. Her mind was still turning over what she'd just seen, trying to calculate the gap between them.

How strong had Shinji become? It hadn't been that long since they'd been assigned to the same team, since they'd trained together and fought together and she'd thought she had at least some idea of what he was capable of. But that was before. Before the war started, before they'd been separated, before she'd spent days carrying stretchers and changing bandages while he was off doing... whatever it was he'd been doing.

She'd gotten stronger. She knew that. Her Sharingan was proof of it.

But Shinji had gotten stronger too. Much, much stronger. Strong enough that even a copy of him could kill a chunin faster than her eyes could follow. Strong enough that he hadn't even flinched when an enemy attacked from behind, because he'd known his clone would handle it before the blade got anywhere close.

How was she supposed to catch up to that?

Was it even possible?

Her goal, the one she'd been chasing since she first understood what it meant to be an Uchiha, suddenly felt further away than ever. Like a distant star that kept receding no matter how fast she ran toward it. She could train for the rest of her life and still never—

Something flicked her forehead.

"Ow!"

Mikoto's hand flew to the spot instinctively, rubbing at the sting. When she looked up, Shinji was watching her with an expression that was half amusement and half something else.

"You were thinking too hard," he said. "I could see the gears turning from here."

"Sorry, I just..." She trailed off, not sure how to explain.

"You don't have to tell me. Just know that whatever it is, you're not dealing with it alone."

She didn't answer. Which was answer enough.

Shinji sighed, and then he was moving, shifting her in his arms until her feet touched the branch beneath them. The motion was gentle, careful, giving her time to find her balance before he let go completely.

Mikoto's legs held her weight, which was a surprise. She'd taken some nasty hits during the fight, and her back still ached where she'd been knocked down. But when she tested her legs, everything felt... fine. Better than fine, actually. The pain that had been screaming through her muscles was reduced to a dull background noise, and the places where she'd been bleeding seemed to have stopped.

"You healed me," she said, looking down at herself.

"So you finally noticed? I thought it was just a cover story for why you were still in my arms."

"I wasn't... I knew you were healing me. I just didn't realize how much."

"Uh huh."

She ignored his teasing, focusing instead on how easily she could move now. No stabbing pain in her ribs, no ache in her back. "How bad was it?"

"Bad enough." He stretched, rolling his shoulders like he'd been holding an awkward position for too long. Which he had, she supposed. "A few cracked ribs, some internal bruising. That hit to your back did more damage than you probably realized."

Mikoto touched her side experimentally. Nothing hurt. "Thank you."

"Don't mention it."

"I mean it. Thank you. For saving me, for healing me, for..." She trailed off, not sure how to finish the sentence. For coming back. For being here. For making me feel like everything might actually be okay.

He seemed to understand anyway, and just smiled.

"Any time."

Below them, the fighting had ended. She could hear voices calling out, Konoha shinobi confirming kills and checking on the wounded. The medical team would be here soon to take over.

Movement caught her eye. A jonin below was making a series of hand signals in Shinji's direction, ending with a pointed finger toward the east. Shinji lifted his chin in response.

"Duty calls," he said, turning back to her. His gaze swept over the clearing below, and something in his expression tightened. "Your squad... it's just you, jonin Aya, and those two genin now?"

Mikoto followed his line of sight. Two genin huddled near the stretchers, looking shell-shocked but alive. Everyone else was either dead or being carried away on makeshift litters.

"We got lucky," she said quietly. It didn't feel like luck.

"Will you be okay from here?"

She nodded. "The reinforcements will handle the rest. Go."

He hesitated for just a moment, like he wanted to say something else. Then he dropped down from the branch, landing silently on the forest floor.

She watched him go, and that's when she noticed Aya.

The jonin was standing near the edge of the clearing, still as a statue. She wasn't looking at the battlefield or the wounded or the reinforcements organizing around them. She was looking at Shinji. Had been looking at him, Mikoto realized, probably since the moment he'd appeared with her in his arms.

Shinji seemed to sense it as well. He changed course, heading toward the jonin.

"Aya-san." He stopped in front of her. "Good to see you're still standing."

"Barely," she admitted. "It got ugly before you showed up."

"I saw. You kept them alive though. That's what matters."

She was quiet for a moment, then inclined her head slightly. "Thank you. For getting here when you did. If you'd been any later..."

"Good thing I wasn't." His eyes drifted to the genin survivors, then to Mikoto, then back to Aya. "Your squad's been through hell. Make sure they get some proper rest before command throws them back out there."

"Including you," he added, louder, in Mikoto's direction.

"I'm fine," she called back.

"That's exactly what someone who's not fine would say."

Aya glanced between them, and something like understanding crossed her face. "Go. Your jonin's getting impatient."

Shinji looked over his shoulder. The jonin who'd signaled earlier was already fading into the trees, not bothering to wait.

"Yeah, I noticed." He sighed. "Can't sit still for two minutes. Probably calls people back when they don't answer on the first ring."

And then he was gone, flickering after the jonin before she could process any of that. Mikoto stared at his retreating back, brow furrowed. First ring of what? Sometimes talking to him felt like walking into the middle of a conversation she'd never been part of.

……

Meanwhile, somewhere far less pleasant, a clone breathed through his mouth. Didn't help much. The air in here tasted about as bad as it smelled, and standing over a cot channeling Mystical Palm into a dying man wasn't making things any better.

The shinobi's veins had turned a murky greenish-brown, like something rotting at the bottom of a pond. Two other hims worked alongside him on the same patient, their hands glowing green, their faces screwed up in concentration. None of them looked particularly confident about what they were doing.

The notes Tsunade-sensei left them sat on the bedside table, thick and covered in her cramped handwriting. Diagrams and dosage calculations branched into more diagrams and more calculations. She'd clearly put a lot of effort into making everything comprehensive, and he appreciated that. He really did.

Didn't make any of it less unreasonable, though. Not that he needed to keep checking the pages anymore. The steps were burned into his memory at this point. Maintain liver function. Cycle purification through the blood. Monitor the heart. Watch for neurological signs. Adjust output as needed.

Simple enough on paper. In practice, it was like trying to keep three plates spinning while someone kept adding more.

The clone on his right made a small sound, almost a grunt, and shifted his hands. The patient's breathing had gone shallow.

"Lungs," he said quietly.

"On it." The clone on the left adjusted his chakra flow.

That was the extent of their conversation. Anything more would have been a distraction.

He sighed, eyes drifting to the rest of the tent without breaking focus on his hands.

Four iryonin were working on other patients nearby, all of them looking like they'd been awake for about three days too many. Their movements were sluggish. Their chakra flickered. One of them kept wiping his forehead with his sleeve, which was already so soaked with sweat it wasn't doing much good.

They were in over their heads. All of them.

The problem with Chiyo's poison wasn't just that it was lethal. Plenty of poisons were lethal. The problem was that treating it required maintaining multiple healing processes at once, each one demanding precise chakra control, and the margin for error was basically nonexistent.

Tsunade-sensei had cracked the cure after days of trial and error. Days of losing patients. Days of pushing herself past the point where anyone else would have collapsed. She'd done it.

But knowing the cure and being able to execute it were two different things. One of the medics fumbled a transition somewhere to his left. He didn't see it directly, but he heard the curse, heard the sudden spike of desperate chakra output as the man tried to stabilize his patient.

This wasn't working.

"Oi," he called out, keeping his voice low enough not to disturb the patients. The four iryonin glanced over. "We can take over here. Go deal with the ones you can actually save."

He didn't have to say it twice. The relief on their faces was immediate, shoulders dropping as the tension bled out of them. One of them mouthed "thank you" as he stepped back from his patient. Another was already heading for the tent flap, moving like a man who'd just been told his shift was over.

"We owe you one," the third said on his way out.

"Don't mention it."

They left in a hurry, practically tripping over each other, and the clone couldn't really blame them. Nobody wanted to watch someone die on their table, especially when they knew deep down they couldn't prevent it.

He turned to the clone on his left. "Go outside. Bring back more of us."

"How many?"

"As many as you can find. Six, maybe more."

The clone nodded and flickered out of the tent.

He came back two minutes later with six copies. They didn't ask questions. Didn't need to. One glance at the murky veins and the shallow breathing told them everything.

"That's Chiyo's work alright," one of them muttered, already rolling up his sleeves. "Let's get to work."

The others followed, splitting into groups of three without needing to be told.

They spread out around the tent, three clones to each patient, and started working.

Mystical Palm was usually gentle. Soothing, even. Push chakra into damaged tissue, coax the body to heal itself faster than nature intended. Straightforward enough that it became almost meditative after a while.

This was nothing like that.

Treating Chiyo's poison meant managing multiple systems at once, each one demanding constant attention, each one ready to fail the moment focus slipped. Liver, blood, heart, lungs. All of them compromised, all of them needing support simultaneously. The chakra drain was brutal.

"Liver's dropping," one of the clones said.

"Compensate through the hepatic artery."

"Already am. Blood pressure's falling when I do."

"I'll stabilize the pressure. Keep the liver going."

The tent flap rustled.

"Looks like you could use a hand."

Tsunade stepped inside, still wearing her field coat, hair pulled back and out of the way. The signs of too many long shifts were written all over her, but she moved like she had energy to spare, and her gaze was already cataloging everything in the tent before the flap had even fallen closed behind her.

"Sensei." He nodded at her. "Perfect timing."

"Uh huh." She walked over to the patient he wasn't working on, the one being handled by three clones who looked like they were barely keeping things together. "Move."

They scrambled aside immediately.

She knelt beside the cot and placed her hands on the patient's abdomen. Her chakra flared, green and bright and so much more controlled than anything the clones were managing.

"I'll handle this one," she said without looking up. "You take the other two. And if you let either of them die, I'm holding a remedial lesson when this is over."

The clone didn't like the way she said "remedial lesson."

"And if both of them die?"

She turned her head just enough to give him a look that made his survival instincts start screaming.

"Then I'll come up with something worse."

One of the other clones muttered under his breath. "She's not joking, is she."

"Tsunade-sensei never jokes about training."

"That's... reassuring?"

"It really isn't."

Tsunade returned her attention to her patient. "Save the chatter for after. Your patient's slipping."

She wasn't wrong. The clone snapped back to his patient and found the man's vitals trending in directions they really shouldn't be trending. The next several minutes demanded everything he had. Chakra management, coordination, split-second adjustments. At some point time stopped behaving normally. Could have been ten minutes. Could have been an hour. Impossible to tell.

Tsunade gave pointers without breaking her own concentration. Small things, mostly. Adjust the flow here. Ease off there. Anticipate the cascade before it happens. Advice that sounded obvious in hindsight but made all the difference in the moment. She wasn't teaching so much as nudging, keeping them on track whenever they started to drift.

There were a few close calls. Moments where someone's vitals dipped and the tent went very quiet until they stabilized again. Moments where the clone was pretty sure they'd lost one, only to claw the patient back from the edge through sheer stubbornness and chakra expenditure.

But they held on. Every clone, every patient, nobody giving up.

And then, somehow, it was over.

There was no dramatic turning point. No moment of triumph. The poison levels dropped below critical, the organs stabilized, the bodies started functioning on their own again, and at some point the crisis was just... over. Like finishing a long climb and only realizing you'd reached the top when the ground stopped going up.

The clone exhaled slowly, feeling the tension drain out of his shoulders. His chakra reserves were basically empty, scraped down to the dregs, but their patient was breathing normally now. Color returning to his skin. Vitals holding steady on their own, which was a novel experience after the past however-long of constant intervention.

He glanced at the other clones. Same situation. Everyone looked like they'd aged a few years, but the patients were stable.

Three saves. Zero losses. Against Chiyo's poison, that counted as a win.

Tsunade stood, rolling her shoulders like she'd just finished a light warm-up instead of saving someone's life. "Not bad," she said, which from her was practically a standing ovation.

She headed for the tent flap, pausing just long enough to add, "There'll be more coming in soon. Rest while you can."

And then she was gone.

The clone stared at the tent flap. "Did she just say more?"

"I think she said more."

"Wonderful."

He looked down at their patient, still breathing, still alive.

A win. Definitely a win. He should feel good about this.

He did not feel good about this. Not when Tsunade's parting words "more coming in soon" kept bouncing around his skull like an unwelcome houseguest who refused to leave.

And there would be more. As long as Chiyo was still out there, still breathing, still cooking up new batches of poison, the patients would keep coming. He sent a silent prayer to the original. Kill that old lady. Please. For all of our sakes.