Hidden Leaf, Hidden Talents 87 (Patreon)

The cell smelled like old blood and damp stone.

Mole pushed the heavy door open, the Yamanaka trailing behind him. Chiyo sat in the corner, hands bound in cuffs, her eyes fixed on some point on the opposite wall. She didn't look up when they entered. Didn't acknowledge them at all.

Not that he expected her to. He'd been at this for three days already.

"Still nothing?" the Yamanaka asked, pulling up a wooden stool.

Mole shook his head. "I've tried pain. Interrogation drugs. Sleep deprivation. The woman's a rock. Won't give me a damn thing."

"Nothing at all?"

"She twitched when I dropped the boy's name." He shrugged. "That's it.”

"Well, he did butcher her family." The Yamanaka's voice was dry. "Can't exactly blame her for that one."

"Which is the problem." Mole folded his arms. "They had him dead to rights. Numbers, surprise, weeks of prep, and somehow he just walks away? Something doesn't add up."

"Do you think he was the one who killed them?"

Mole's shrugged. "The seals make it impossible for any of us to talk. You know that." He paused. "But nothing is perfect. There's always a chance something went wrong. A loophole. A mistake. Some variable nobody accounted for."

"So we need confirmation."

"We need everything. What went wrong. Why he's still breathing and the rest of them aren't. How much he actually knows." His eyes met the Yamanaka's. "We're dead in the water until we get answers. So get in there and find them."

The Yamanaka nodded, cracking his knuckles as he approached the prisoner. Chiyo's eyes finally moved, watching him approach the way someone would watch a cockroach crawl across their floor. Disgusted. Unimpressed. Like he wasn't even worth the effort of hating properly.

But it didn't matter. She could be as defiant as she wanted. The Shinranshin would soften her up, and then the Shinkyū Tenchi would crack her mind open like an egg. Willpower only got a person so far when someone was literally walking through their memories.

The Yamanaka formed the first set of seals, and Chiyo's body went rigid. Her jaw clenched so hard Mole could hear her teeth grinding. Veins bulged at her temples. A thin line of drool escaped the corner of her mouth as her eyes went wide and glassy, pupils blown out like she was staring into a bright light that wasn't there.

Shinranshin no Jutsu. The mental equivalent of pinning someone's arms behind their back. It wouldn't break her, but it would hold her still long enough for the Yamanaka to get in and take what they needed.

Chiyo made a sound in the back of her throat. Not a scream. More like a choked grunt, the noise someone makes when they're biting down on pain and refusing to give their torturer the satisfaction. Her fingers curled into claws against the stone floor, nails scraping, leaving pale scratches in the grime.

The Yamanaka held the jutsu for a few more seconds, watching her struggle, then released it. Chiyo sagged forward, chest heaving, sweat dripping down her face. Her eyes were bloodshot now. Capillaries burst from the strain.

She didn't get a chance to recover.

The Yamanaka's hands were already moving through the second sequence. Shinkyū Tenchi. His eyes rolled back until only the whites showed, and his body slumped forward like a puppet with cut strings.

Chiyo's mouth opened in a silent scream.

Her whole body started trembling, small convulsions that made her chains rattle against the floor. Mole watched her face twist through various expressions. Confusion. Grief. Rage. Fear. The Yamanaka was somewhere deep inside her skull now, dragging up every painful thing she had, fresh wounds and old scars alike, and she was feeling every second of it.

Mole waited.

Minutes ticked by. Five. Ten. Chiyo's trembling got worse, then faded to occasional twitches. Tears leaked from her unseeing eyes, mixing with the sweat and drool. The Yamanaka's body sat motionless across from her, two hollow shells connected by something invisible and violating.

Mole counted the cracks in the ceiling. Adjusted his gloves. Listened to the drip of water somewhere deeper in the building.

Then the Yamanaka's body jerked, and his eyes snapped open.

His face was ashen.

"Report," Mole said immediately.

The Yamanaka didn't answer right away. He was staring at nothing, his hands clenched on his knees, looking like he'd just watched someone butcher a puppy.

"Report," Mole repeated, sharper this time.

The Yamanaka swallowed. "He killed them. Some of them, maybe all of them, she saw him cut down a few before his clones forced her to run." He shook his head. "She didn't see the rest, but it didn't matter. They were outclassed from the start. And we haven't found bodies, so either he buried them or..."

He didn't finish.

"That's not unexpected." Mole said. "What else?"

"He knows."

"Knows what?"

"Everything." The Yamanaka looked up at him, and there was something close to shock in his eyes. "He knows about us. He knows Danzo-sama sent them. He knows the whole thing was an assassination attempt."

Mole's frown deepened. "That's not possible. The seals should've made it impossible. Even if he took one of them alive—"

"I know." The Yamanaka ran a hand through his hair, looking just as lost. "But here's the thing. He knew before they even made their move. When they sprung the ambush, he wasn't surprised. He already knew who they were, who sent them, all of it." He spread his hands. "It's like someone tipped him off."

Mole felt his stomach drop. "No one could have."

"I'm telling you what she saw." The Yamanaka's voice was strained. "Maybe he's got his own Yamanaka? Someone who can—"

"Konoha doesn't have any Yamanaka unaccounted for."

"Then I don't know what to tell you." The Yamanaka shook his head. "All I know is what's in her head. Shinji knew. Told them he knew, right before he killed them. Called out Danzo-sama by name."

Mole stared at him for a long moment, running through possibilities in his head and coming up empty on every single one.

"Continue the extraction," he finally said. "Get everything useful out of her."

"And you?"

He was already moving toward the door. "Danzo-sama needs to hear about this.”

He didn't wait for a response. The heavy door slammed shut behind him, and then he was walking through the corridor, fast enough that it was almost a jog. His sandals echoed off the stone walls. Left turn. Right turn. Up the stairs. Through the checkpoint where the guards barely glanced at his identification before waving him through.

He forced himself to slow down and think it through rationally.

Root wasn't illegal. Danzo-sama operated with the Hokage's blessing, even if that blessing was never spoken aloud. So exposure wasn't the issue.

The issue was Shinji himself. A jonin with a growing reputation, connections to the Senju-hime, and now a personal grudge. If he decided to push back, to drag this into the light, it wouldn't destroy Root. But it would make things... inconvenient. Political headaches, explanations, justifications, all the things Danzo-sama preferred to avoid.

Mole shoved open the exit door and stepped into the evening air.

The outpost was half-empty at this hour. Most personnel deployed to the front, the rest either sleeping or pulling guard duty. Just the occasional footstep and the creak of wood settling in the cold night air. Nothing unusual.

Except for the crows.

Mole stopped mid-step.

There were at least a dozen of them. Black shapes perched along the rooftops, lined up on fences, watching from the bare branches of a dead tree near the barracks. They weren't moving. Just sitting there. Staring.

At him.

A chill ran down his spine that had nothing to do with the evening breeze.

‘Coincidence,’ he told himself. ‘Just birds. The outpost probably has food scraps lying around.’

But he picked up his pace anyway.

He avoided the main roads out of habit. Took the side route instead, cutting between storage buildings and ducking into the alley behind the quartermaster's tent. The messenger roost wasn't far if he kept to the back routes, and less chance of running into anyone.

The alley was empty. Shadowed. The setting sun barely reached between the tall canvas structures, leaving everything in a dim twilight that made the corners blur.

Mole's hand drifted to his tanto without conscious thought.

His feet moved faster.

Another turn. The space opened up into a slightly wider passage, then narrowed again as it wound between supply crates stacked three high. His sandals scraped against loose gravel. His breathing sounded too loud in his own ears.

‘Stop being paranoid. You're in the middle of a Konoha outpost. Nothing is going to happen here.’

He rounded the corner into the third alleyway.

And stopped. Heel skidding slightly on the wet stone. Heart stuttering in his chest.

Someone was standing in the middle of the path.

Mole's tanto was out, the blade raised in a defensive guard. His heart slammed against his ribs. His eyes adjusted to the shadows, picking out details one by one.

Dark hair. Konoha flak jacket. A sheathed wakizashi resting in his left hand.

Shinji.

The man who somehow knew everything. Root's involvement. Danzo-sama's name. Information that should have been impossible to obtain. The sealed tongues of his comrades should have guaranteed silence. And yet Shinji had known anyway.

How much more did he know? What else had he figured out?

Shinji's right hand drifted to the handle, and something cold crawled down Mole's spine.

Then logic kicked in. The real Shinji was on the frontline. This was a clone. Just a clone. A chakra construct. His clones were tough, sure, but they weren't the real thing. Just a pale imitation.

He could do this.

Mole exhaled, letting confidence replace fear.

Then Shinji blurred.

“!!!”

Steel sang. The mole's tanto came up on instinct, catching the first slash. The impact rattled his hand. Before he could breathe, the second came. Then the third. Each one faster than the last, each one hitting harder, driving him back step by stumbling step.

Training. Remember the training. Danzo-sama's voice echoed somewhere in the back of his skull. Pain is weakness. Fear is death. You are Root. You do not bend.

He didn't bend. He blocked. Again and again, arms screaming, wrists aching, teeth clenched so hard his jaw hurt.

He couldn't see the blade anymore. Just flashes of silver in the dark and the endless ringing of steel.

This was a clone. Just a clone. He'd survived worse. He'd been broken and rebuilt by Danzo-sama's hands. He was better than this. He had to be better than this!

On the fifth clash, the mole raised his tanto again, ready to parry, ready to counter, ready for anything.

But Shinji wasn't attacking anymore.

He was... sheathing his sword?

The blade slid into the scabbard with a soft click. Shinji just watched, like he was waiting for something.

‘What?’

The confusion lasted half a second before instinct took over. An opening. He was showing an opening. Every fiber of his being screamed at him to take it. Rush in, drive the blade home, end this fight. He could still win. He could still survive. Just move. Move!

He tried to raise his blade.

His arm didn't move.

He tried again. Nothing. His whole body felt... wrong. Heavy. Like moving through water.

‘Why can't I...’

He looked down.

Thin lines. Dozens of them. On his wrists, his neck, the gaps between his armor. Every soft spot his vest didn't cover. So fine he hadn't even felt them. For a moment they were just pale marks on his skin, barely visible in the dim light.

And then every single one of them split open at the same time.

Blood welled up from everywhere, soaking through his clothes, running down his arms in warm rivers. His vest turned dark. His hands turned red.

He opened his mouth to say something, anything, and choked on copper instead.

His hand went to his neck and wet heat greeted his fingers. He pressed down hard, trying to hold it in, but he could feel his heartbeat pushing the blood out anyway, spilling over his knuckles with each weakening pulse.

‘Arterial,’ some distant part of his training supplied helpfully. ‘Carotid. Fatal wound. Thirty seconds to unconsciousness. Sixty to death.’

His knees buckled. The tanto slipped from fingers that couldn't grip anymore. He hit the ground hard, gravel biting into his cheek, and the world tilted sideways as his vision started to gray at the edges.

Footsteps. Another person. The mole's fading eyes caught a glimpse of the newcomer's face.

The same face. Shinji's face.

"Done?"

"Done."

"That the last one?"

"Should be.”

They spoke quietly, casually, like two colleagues wrapping up a routine task. The mole's vision dimmed further. The voices blurred into meaningless noise.

Then everything went dark.

…

The two clones stood over the body for a moment, watching the blood pool spread across the gravel.

"Y'know," one of them said, nudging the corpse with his foot, "I still don't get what the boss is doing."

"Hm?"

"All of this." A vague wave at the carnage. "This whole song and dance. What's the point? Should've just killed Chiyo back there and called it a day. Now he's got Danzo breathing down his neck, and there's gonna be even more shit waiting for him when we get back to Konoha."

The other clone didn't answer right away. Just stood there, staring at nothing, like he was chewing on something he couldn't quite swallow.

"Who knows," he said finally. Crouched down and started rifling through the dead man's pockets. "Half the time I can't tell if the boss has a plan or if he's just really good at pretending he does."

"You and me both."

"But there's one thing I'm pretty sure about." He pulled a letter from the corpse's vest, tucked it away. "He's not planning on letting Danzo leave the frontline."

Silence.

"You think he's gonna—"

"Kill him out there?" The clone stood up, dusting off his hands. "Yeah."

"What makes you so sure?"

A shrug. "Gut feeling. Just the way things are lining up, I guess."

"That's not exactly solid reasoning." He crossed his arms. "And it still would've been a lot simpler to just kill Chiyo back then. Why go through all this trouble?"

"Who knows what the original's thinking? Half the time I'm not even sure he does."

"Yeah, well. That's not even what's bothering me."

"Hm?"

"Chiyo." He jerked his thumb back toward the prison. "She's still breathing. And she's got a head full of memories that show Shinji cutting down Konoha nin."

The clone paused. "Root nin."

"Root nin who are technically still Konoha nin. You think the village is gonna care about the distinction when they go poking around in her skull?" He started pacing. "All it takes is one Yamanaka getting curious, and suddenly everybody's asking why the jinchuuriki was slaughtering his own comrades in the middle of a war zone."

"Fair point."

"And it gets worse. Say the boss actually pulls it off and Danzo ends up dead. What happens when someone remembers that Chiyo had memories of Shinji killing Danzo's men?" He stopped pacing. "That's not a coincidence people are gonna ignore. Investigators will be knocking on doors before the body's even cold."

The clone went quiet for a moment, actually thinking it over.

"So what are you suggesting?"

"I'm saying maybe we do the boss a favor." He glanced back toward the prison, voice dropping. "Clean up his mess before it becomes a bigger problem."

"You're talking about killing Chiyo."

"I'm talking about making sure nobody ever sees what's inside her head."

The clone stared at him for a long moment, then let out a slow breath.

"You know the original's not gonna like that."

"The original doesn't have to know. We dispel after it's done, he gets the memories, and by then it's too late to undo. He can thank us later."

"Bit of a waste though, don't you think?" The clone scratched his chin, still staring down at the corpse.

"What?" He frowned, not following.

"Killing her." The clone tilted his head, considering. "She's one of Suna's best puppet masters. Probably got decades of techniques rattling around in that old skull. Medical knowledge too, if I remember right. Poisons, antidotes, all that fun stuff." He rubbed his chin. "Seems like a shame to just slit her throat and call it a day."

"...Where are you going with this?"

"The cave."

"The cave?"

"Yeah. The one where we dumped all those Root agents." The clone's grin widened. "She'd fit right in. And think about it. Live test subject. One of Suna's elders. The things we could learn from her..."

He grimaced. "That's a little unhinged, even for us."

"Hey, I'm just being logical."

"Logical." He stared at the clone for a solid three seconds. "You've been away from the original too long. Something's rotting in there."

The clone just snorted. "I'm just saying, she'd happily watch us get skinned alive if she had the chance. Why waste the opportunity?"

"The problem is I'm only like, sixty percent opposed to this, and that's concerning."

"See? You're coming around already."

"That wasn't a compliment."

…

-Clone-

-Field Hospital-

The clone had been tailing this guy for four days straight, and he was starting to lose his mind from boredom.

Tailing someone sounded exciting in theory. In practice, it meant spending hours henged as a supply runner, watching one unremarkable medic go about his incredibly mundane routine.

He'd ended up on the clone watch list because of his downtime. Or rather, his complete lack of it. Everyone in a field hospital had a vice. Gambling, drinking, complaining, sneaking off for a nap, something to take the edge off. This guy just worked. And when he wasn't working, he sat quietly and waited to work again. No hobbies, no bad habits, no signs that there was an actual human being underneath the uniform.

That kind of emptiness didn't happen naturally. It got trained into you. But the real kicker was the meetings. Different Konoha nin kept showing up at camp, faces the clone had never seen before, and somehow they always ended up having a quiet conversation with the medic before disappearing again. Could be coincidence. Could be old friends catching up. Could also be a handler rotation, and the clone hadn't survived this long by assuming the innocent explanation. Oh, and the coin thing. The guy kept finding ryo in the strangest places. Under a specific rock near the latrine. Behind a loose board in the supply shed. Tucked inside a crack in the fence post near the eastern gate. Always just one coin, always pocketed without a second glance. At some point the clone had stopped watching out of suspicion and started watching out of morbid curiosity. Where would the next coin be? Inside a corpse's mouth? Wedged under a dying man's pillow?

Sadly, today's episode had been a disappointment. No coins. No mysterious visitors. Just the target going through his usual routine like a puppet on strings.

The clone was in the middle of convincing himself to dispel and report a whole lot of nothing when the target changed direction.

He'd been heading toward the mess tent. Same predictable, boring route he took every day at this hour.

But now he was veering left, toward the recovery area where walking wounded waited for clearance to return to duty.

The clone yawned, scratched the back of his neck, and wandered toward the water station like a guy who'd decided he was thirsty. Stepped around a dark stain some poor River nin had left behind. The path just happened to curve close enough to the recovery area that he'd have a clear sightline without ever appearing to look. Body language was half the game. Act like you had somewhere boring to be, and nobody questioned why you were there.

He reached the station, filled a canteen he didn't need, and let his eyes drift lazily across the tents while he drank.

The target had stopped in front of someone.

Mikoto.

She was sitting on a crate outside one of the tents, her arm freshly bandaged, looking annoyed at being benched for something so minor. The target said something to her. She looked up, responded. The clone was too far to hear any of it, just saw mouths moving and expressions shifting.

The target smiled. Mikoto didn't.

They talked for maybe a minute. Then the target nodded, said something else, and walked away like nothing had happened.

Mikoto watched him go with a slight frown, then shrugged and went back to picking at the edge of her bandage.

The clone stood there, crate in his arms, every trace of boredom gone from his face.

Four days of nothing. Four days of watching this guy follow the same routine without deviation.

And the first time he broke pattern, it was to talk to her.

The clone set down the crate and walked toward the edge of camp. He needed to dispel. The boss needed to see this.

…

-Shinji-

Tree branches whipped past my face as we blitzed through Ame's lovely, scenic murder forest at speeds that would make a civilian's eyes water. Tsunade was on my left, Orochimaru on her other side, and behind us trailed enough Konoha nin to make this feel almost like a proper S-rank operation.

"Alright, what's the situation?" Tsunade asked, apparently deciding that ten minutes of tense silence was enough.

Orochimaru took a moment before answering, which was never a good sign. "Hanzo's personally leading the assault on our eastern flank. Last report said he'd already gone through two of our forward squads."

Tsunade's frown deepened. "He moved faster than we expected."

"Our scouts had him near the northern border just yesterday." Orochimaru didn't sound annoyed, but then again, he never did. "Clearly they were looking at the wrong Hanzo."

Hanzo again, huh.

Part of me, the sensible part that had kept me alive this long, wanted to point out that fighting Hanzo once had nearly killed me and doing it again was statistically inadvisable.

The rest of me glanced at Tsunade, then at Orochimaru, and felt something close to anticipation settling in my chest.

Last time I'd been alone. Scrambling, surviving, barely scraping through by the skin of my teeth. This time I had two of the most dangerous shinobi in the continent running beside me, and neither of them looked particularly worried about what was waiting at the end of this sprint.

The to-be legendary Sannin. Well, two-thirds of them. The other third was probably balls-deep in 'research' somewhere. Tsunade could probably kick Hanzo's ass so hard his grandchildren would feel it. Orochimaru had enough tricks up his sleeves to fill a library. And me? I'd already survived the bastard once. Knew how he moved, how he fought, what to watch out for.

This wasn't a suicide run. This was payback.

I caught myself almost smiling and had to remind my face to behave.

Then a wave of memories slammed into me from one of my camp clones, and the smile died before it could fully form.

A medic. One of the suspected Root agents my clones had been tailing for days. The guy with the dead drops and the mysterious visitors and the complete lack of human personality. He'd walked up to Mikoto. Said something to her. My clone had been too far to hear what, but it didn't matter. The fact that it happened at all was enough.

Danzo was making moves on my people.

Danzo. That scheming, paranoid, power-hungry fossil. He just couldn't leave well enough alone, could he. Had to stick his fingers in everything. Had to touch things that weren't his to touch. Fine. If he wanted my attention that badly, he was going to get it.

Then a familiar presence flickered beside me, and the sinking feeling in my gut told me the universe wasn't done piling on just yet. One look at his expression confirmed it.

"We need to talk," he whispered. "It's about Chiyo."

Yeah, this was going to be one of those conversations. I could already feel it.

"What about her?" I muttered back.

"My clones at the outpost just dispelled. Fed their memories back to me."

"Okay. And?"

The clone's face went through about three expressions in two seconds, none of them reassuring. "So. Funny story. Remember how you wanted Chiyo kept alive?"

"Yes. I remember. Very clearly."

"Right, well, the clones at the outpost had a bit of a... creative discussion about that."

"I'm going to regret asking, but creative how exactly?"

"Let's just say the words 'kill Chiyo' and 'do the boss a favor' came up in the same sentence more than once."

I closed my eyes. Took a deep breath. Let it out slowly.

Then I opened my eyes again because unfortunately the problem was still there.

"You're telling me," I said, "that my own clones almost murdered a high-value prisoner because they decided they knew better than me."

"In their defense, the reasoning wasn't terrible. Something about memories in her head, potential Yamanaka investigation, blowing your cover after Danzo dies. One of them even suggested throwing her in a cave with the Root agents." The clone paused. "For research purposes."

I really, really wanted to palm my face. I didn't because once I started, I probably wouldn't stop, but the urge was definitely there, crawling around under my skin like an itch I couldn't scratch.

Here's the thing. I wasn't particularly worried about the Root situation itself. They tried to kill me. I killed them back. That was about as clean as self-defense got. A clear conscience had no guilt. The whole situation was a textbook case of 'don't start none, won't be none,' and if anyone wanted to argue semantics, they could take it up with my trusty blade.

The reason I'd brought Chiyo back to the outpost alive was multiple layers deep, but only one of those layers was complicated.

On the surface, she was a high-value hostage. Prisoner exchanges, peace negotiations, whatever angle Konoha wanted to play. Any factor that could help end this war even a single day sooner was worth the effort, no matter how small the impact looked on paper.

Then there was the sentimental reason. I liked her as a character. The cranky old lady who eventually helped Sakura take down Sasori, the one who gave her life bringing Gaara back. Sure, that version of her was decades in the future and might never exist if the timeline kept diverging, but sentiment was sentiment. Call it nostalgia for something that hadn't happened yet.

But those were minor reasons. Background noise compared to the main objective.

The real reason I wanted Chiyo alive and visible in Konoha custody was because I needed witnesses.

Not witnesses who would testify in some formal proceeding. I wasn't naive enough to think Danzo would ever face that kind of justice. I needed witnesses who would remember. People who would know, when things inevitably got messy, that Root had made the first move. That everything I did afterward was purely in response to them trying to kill me first.

Because here's the uncomfortable truth I'd been avoiding, the longer this war dragged on, the less confident I got about killing Danzo cleanly.

On paper, Danzo was an easy kill. He wasn't some legendary warrior or bloodline prodigy. He didn't have his future bag of tricks yet. No arm full of Sharingan, no Hashirama cells letting him spam reality-bending nonsense. Just a manipulative man who'd spent more time in council chambers than battlefields.

Shame that theory and reality weren't on speaking terms. The bastard hadn't left Hiruzen's vicinity in days.

The clone I'd assigned to monitor the Hokage's squad had confirmed it multiple times. Danzo stuck close to his teammate like they were joined at the hip. Never wandered far enough for my clones to make a move. Never gave me an opening that wouldn't also involve dealing with the God of Shinobi himself, and fighting Hiruzen was somewhere between 'terrible idea' and 'creative suicide' on my to-do list.

I'd been playing the patient game. Waiting for the right moment, the perfect opportunity when I could put Danzo in the ground without anyone ever knowing I was involved. Something people would chalk up to enemy action or bad luck or whatever convenient explanation let them sleep at night.

But patience had limits. And mine had just run out.

Before today, I'd been willing to wait. Danzo was a problem, but he was a problem I could postpone. He hadn't touched my people. Hadn't threatened anyone I actually cared about. As long as he kept his schemes pointed at political enemies and abstract threats, I could play the long game.

But the moment he set his sights on Mikoto, all that went out the window.

I hated regret. Hated the feeling of looking back and knowing you should've acted sooner, should've seen the danger and stopped it before it became an actual crisis. The empty 'what if' that echoed through every scenario where hesitation cost you something you couldn't get back.

I wasn't going to let Mikoto become a regret.

So even if killing Danzo now was messy, even if it caused political fallout and landed me on Hiruzen's shit list, I had to do it. Had to pull that trigger before something worse happened. Before the regret became something permanent.

Hence keeping Chiyo alive. She'd seen everything. Root coming after me, the ambush, all of it. A living witness who could prove I wasn't the aggressor.

If I killed Danzo cleanly and nobody ever found out, perfect. Problem solved, no questions asked. And even if someone got suspicious, so what? Suspicion wasn't proof. Besides, I'd already thought up a perfectly reasonable explanation for how I knew about Root. One of the Root guys talked. Hated Danzo with his whole chest, apparently, enough that dying from a seal violation was an acceptable trade for getting the last word in. You had to admire that level of commitment to being petty. I certainly did. The man chose spite over survival, and honestly, I could relate. Of course, none of it actually happened. But lies worked best when they contained emotional truth, and 'employee hates his boss enough to die just to screw him over' was a tale as old as time.

Which brought me back to my idiot clones almost ruining everything.

"Let me get this straight." I turned to the clone beside me. "I told them—explicitly—to keep Chiyo alive. Those exact words. ‘Keep her alive. Don't kill her. She's valuable.’ All of that."

"You told me," the clone said, already sounding defensive. "I passed it along to my clone before he headed to the outpost."

"Then how did 'keep her alive' turn into 'maybe we should murder her for research purposes'?"

"Hey, don't look at me like that. I delivered the message exactly how you gave it to me."

I stared at him.

The clone stared back.

Neither of us blinked.

"Fine," I said finally. “Walk me through it."

The clone let out a long breath. "Okay, so. The clone I sent out got held up at the field hospital. Three Rivers squad hit the camp, nothing major, but enough that he couldn't just ignore it and keep moving. So he made another clone, passed the message along, and stayed behind to help with the defense."

"Okay."

"And that clone ran into the same problem a few kilometers later. Different attack, same situation. Made another clone, passed it on, kept fighting."

I was starting to see where this was going.

"How many times did that happen?"

"Three." A pause. "Maybe four." Another pause. "...Possibly five."

"Possibly five?"

"The memories get fuzzy after a certain point." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Clones of clones of clones, you know how it is."

I did know how it was.

"So let me guess," I said. "Each time the message got passed, it got a little shorter. A little vaguer. A little more 'handle the Chiyo thing' and a little less 'specifically keep her alive because I have a very good reason for that.'"

"That's... basically what happened, yeah."

"And by the time the last clone reached the outpost, all he had was something like 'deal with Chiyo, she's important, don't screw it up.'"

"Something like that." The clone spread his hands. "Everyone was busy. Everyone assumed. And you know what they say about assumptions.”

Classic telephone game. Pass a message through enough people and 'keep the prisoner alive at all costs' became 'the prisoner is valuable, handle accordingly.' Nobody intentionally changed the orders. Nobody decided to go rogue. The system just did what systems always did when you pushed information through too many layers without checking if it came out the other end intact.

It drifted.

And drift, when combined with clones who already thought they knew better than the original, could turn 'keep alive' into 'kill if convenient' faster than you'd think.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Hah."

"In my defense, there was kind of a war going on."

"You don't say." Truly, a revelation.

The clone wisely chose not to respond to that.

I opened my mouth to keep grilling him—

"Contact ahead!" Tsunade's shout rang out from the front. "Everyone prepare for engagement!"

I shelved the problem for later. We had bigger things to worry about right now. Like the combat that was now very, very audible. Didn't need to see it to know how bad it was. The smoke drifting our way filled in the rest.

I sped up and threaded past the others, catching up to Tsunade right before the forest spat us out into open ground. The situation was worse than the noise suggested. Ame nin had overwhelmed one of our forward squads, pushing them back against a rocky outcrop.

We hit them before I finished counting.

My hands blurred through seals. So did everyone else's. The Ame nin weren't shy about returning fire either. For a few seconds the whole clearing turned into a shooting gallery—jutsu streaking back and forth, crashing into each other, detonating in sprays of steam and mud and superheated air. The smoke went from bad to blinding.

But that didn't stop someone from trying their luck.

Something whistled down from above. I swayed back without looking, felt the blade pass close enough to trim my bangs. The Ame nin landed already swinging, slash, slash, thrust. I let them pass, one after another, moving just enough to not be where the steel was. This was supposed to be a jonin. With nintaijutsu running, he looked like a fresh chunin on his first real mission, slow and painfully predictable. Then I stopped dodging and started hitting. Fist to the jaw snapped his head back. Elbow to the ribs folded him sideways. Palm to the chest sent him stumbling. He was still trying to figure out what happened when my knee came up and introduced itself to his chin. I buried my heel in his chest. He went airborne. My clone's blade met him on the way down. He didn't get up.

One jump took me to a high branch overlooking the battlefield. Steel in hand, I watched the mess below. The smoke was thick enough to hide a dozen threats. Or just one really bad one.

Where are you, Hanzo?

My clones didn't wait for orders. A dozen of them whooshed past me, diving into the smoke and fire like missiles. Their job was simple. Find Hanzo before Hanzo found us. Preferably without dying, but I wasn't picky.

For a few seconds, there was nothing but the distant sounds of fighting. Jutsu clashing. Blades ringing. The usual noise of a battlefield.

Then the screaming started.

Not just from our side. From my clones too. The clone beside me tilted his head, processing whatever his copies were feeding him. His face didn't change, but his hand moved to his blade.

"He's here."

I cracked my neck. Round two, then.