Hidden Leaf, Hidden Talents 90 (Patreon)

-Shadow Clone-

The mud was everywhere.

Not just on the road, which was really just a long streak of brown water at this point, but in his sandals, between his toes, caked up to his shins, and slowly working its way into places mud wasn't supposed to go. The clone shuffled forward with the rest of the group, head down, shoulders hunched, doing his best impression of a kid who'd been walking for way too long and had stopped caring about anything except putting one foot in front of the other. Which, honestly, wasn't that far from the truth. He'd been standing in the rain for hours waiting for a group like this to show up.

The people around him weren't much better off. Twenty-something civilians carrying whatever they'd managed to grab before running. Bundles of clothes, cooking pots, a sack of rice that one man held against his chest like it was worth more than gold. Probably was, out here. A woman near the front had a baby strapped to her back and a toddler clinging to her leg, slowing her down with every step. Nobody complained. The woman next to her just reached over and picked up the toddler without asking. Because out here, with everything already taken from them, looking after each other was the only thing they had left.

The clone kept his head down and let them have their moment. He had his own problems to worry about. But at least the henge was doing its job. Small frame, bony arms, hollow cheeks, dirty face. Rags that used to be clothes, hanging off a body that looked like it hadn't seen a real meal in weeks. He'd put effort into the details. Cracked lips. Sunken eyes with dark circles underneath. A bruise on one knee that was turning that ugly yellow-green color bruises got when they were old but not quite healed. Even the way he walked was different, a tired shuffle with no energy behind it, mud sucking at his feet with every half-step.

The intel had come in that morning. Hanzo had left the hidden village. Personally, with a sizable escort, heading south toward the front lines. Which meant Amegakure's most dangerous resident wasn't home right now.

So he'd waited. Found a spot along one of the roads leading into Ame and just sat there in the rain, watching. It wasn't long before he spotted what he needed. A group of about twenty civilians trudging through the mud, carrying bundles on their backs and exhaustion on their faces. Men, women, a handful of kids. Refugees, obviously. The war had turned Ame's countryside into a meat grinder, and anyone with half a brain was heading toward the one place that still had walls and guards.

When nobody was looking, he slipped in.

Just like that. One second he was crouched behind a bush, the next he was in the middle of the group, shuffling along with the same dead-eyed stare as everyone else. Nobody saw him join. Nobody heard him. He was just there, like he'd always been there, another small body lost in the crowd.

It took about ten minutes for someone to notice him.

An older woman near the front glanced back, did a headcount out of habit, and frowned when the number didn't match what she remembered. She nudged the man next to her. He looked back too. They exchanged a few words, quiet enough that the clone couldn't hear, then the woman turned around fully and walked toward him.

"Hey." She crouched down to his level. Her face was weathered and tired, but her eyes were soft. "Where'd you come from, sweetheart? Are you with somebody?"

The clone just stared at her, eyes wide and glassy, lip doing that slight tremble thing that no adult on earth could resist. Then he looked down at his feet and didn't say anything.

The woman's expression crumbled. She looked back at the man, who gave her a helpless shrug back. A few other adults drifted closer, murmuring among themselves. Nobody recognized the kid. Nobody remembered him being with the group when they left. They asked around, quiet questions passed from person to person, but nobody claimed him.

Someone suggested he'd probably wandered in from another group. Or maybe he'd been alone on the road and just started following them when he saw people. It happened all the time. Kids lost their parents to raids, to starvation, to the fighting, and they just walked until they found someone to follow. Nobody wanted to think too hard about the alternative, which was asking a traumatized orphan to explain how his parents died when the answer was obviously nothing good.

So they let him stay.

The older woman patted his head once, gently, and said something about sticking close. A couple of the other kids in the group were pushed in his direction by their parents. Go play with him, keep him company, he looks scared. The kids were reluctant at first, but after a while they warmed up. One of them, a boy about the same age as the clone's disguise, started walking beside him and tried to make conversation. Where was he from? Did he like frogs? Did he want to see a cool bug he found earlier?

The clone mumbled something that wasn't really an answer and kept his eyes on the road. The boy didn't seem to mind.

"I'm Yahiko, by the way." He pointed at himself with his thumb. "My mom says we're gonna live in the big village now. She says they have walls and everything. Have you ever been inside a real hidden village before? I haven't. I bet it's huge."

The clone shook his head.

"Me neither. But my dad said Ame has these really tall buildings with pipes all over them, and the water goes through the pipes and comes out hot, and people use it for baths. Like, whenever they want. Can you imagine? A hot bath whenever you want?"

The clone shook his head again.

"Yeah, me neither." Yahiko kicked a stone out of the mud and watched it skip once before sinking. "Oh, hey. You hungry?" He dug around in his shirt and pulled out something wrapped in a scrap of cloth, already falling apart at the edges. A rice ball. Or what was left of one, anyway. He broke it in half and held out the bigger piece. "Here."

The clone stared at it.

"Go on, take it. My mom made a bunch before we left." He paused. "Okay, she made like three. And I already ate one on the road. But that still leaves some, so." He pushed the piece closer. "Come on."

He took it. It was cold and a little soggy from being stuffed inside the kid's shirt all day, but he bit into it anyway. Rice and salt and a tiny bit of pickled plum in the center. Not much, but it was food someone's mother had made with the last of their rice.

Yahiko grinned like he'd just done something great.

The clone chewed slowly, staring at the kid. Orange hair. Bright eyes. Loud personality. A refugee orphan in Ame who handed out food to strangers and smiled like the world wasn't falling apart around him.

No way.

He looked again. Harder this time. The hair was right. The age was right. The personality was so dead-on it was almost scary. Everything lined up. Everything pointed at the same ridiculous conclusion.

This was Yahiko. That Yahiko.

He'd spent weeks combing the entire country for Nagato, searched every backwater village in Ame, almost died to patrols, argued with his fellow clones about who had to infiltrate the hidden village... and the first kid who walked up to him and offered him a rice ball was part of Nagato's gang.

Was the universe finally treating him like a protagonist? Because if so, he had some complaints about the pacing of the earlier arcs.

A few hours later, they could see the hidden village. Hard to miss, even through the rain. A dark mass of metal and stone rising from the flat landscape like it had grown there instead of being built. Pipes ran along the outside of buildings. Smokestacks leaked thin trails of steam into the overcast sky. Everything was wet, everything was grey, and the whole place looked like it had been designed by someone who'd never seen the sun and didn't particularly miss it.

The gate was ahead. Two Ame-nin standing on either side, both thoroughly bored. One of them was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. The other was sitting on a stool behind a crate that had been repurposed into a desk, a clipboard balanced on top next to a cup of something.

The group slowed as they approached. The adults at the front moved forward, and the clone hung back near the middle, half-hidden behind the woman who'd spoken to him earlier.

Clipboard Guy straightened up when the group got close enough. "Stop." He looked them over with dull eyes. "Where you all coming from?"

One of the men at the front answered. A farming village to the northeast. Some name the clone had never heard of and immediately forgot.

"How many in the group?"

"Twenty-two." The man paused, then caught himself. "Sorry—twenty-three."

The Ame-nin scratched something on his clipboard without looking up. "How long you been on the road?"

"Three days. Left the morning after it happened."

"After what happened." It wasn't really a question. More like a box he needed to check.

The man's jaw worked for a second. "Suna came through our village, took everything that wasn't nailed down and burned the rest. Some people—" He stopped. Started again, quieter. "Some of us lost family. We didn't have anywhere else to go, so we came here."

The nin with the clipboard nodded like he'd heard this exact story forty times today, which he probably had. He scribbled something else, gave the group a lazy once-over to make sure nobody was carrying anything suspicious, and waved them through. The whole thing took maybe five minutes. No searches. No secondary checkpoints. Just a tired chunin with a clipboard and a quota to fill.

The clone filed in with the rest of the group and didn't look back.

Inside the walls, Amegakure was exactly as miserable as he'd expected.

The lower districts were where the refugees ended up, and calling them "districts" was generous. It was a slum. Narrow streets packed between tall, rusted buildings that blocked out what little light the sky had to offer. Water pooled in every low spot, brown and stagnant, with debris floating in it. The air smelled like wet metal and mold and too many people crammed into too small a space.

The processing was minimal. Someone in a stained flak jacket pointed the group toward a row of tents set up along the base of a retaining wall. Nobody asked their names. Nobody cared where they were from. Nobody told them anything beyond "over there." The adults grumbled but complied, because what else were they going to do? They had nowhere else to go.

The clone walked with the group, taking in everything as they moved. The streets, such as they were, teemed with people. Other refugees, by the look of them. Hollow faces, worn clothes, everyone carrying the same exhausted, hollowed-out stare. Kids ran between the tents, barefoot on wet concrete, chasing each other or fighting over scraps. An old man sat under a piece of corrugated metal propped against a wall, staring at nothing. Two women were arguing over a cooking pot near a communal fire that was struggling to stay lit in the damp air.

And orphans. God, so many orphans. They were everywhere, sitting in doorways, huddled under awnings, wandering in small packs through the flooded streets. Some of them looked younger than his disguise. A few looked like they'd been here long enough that the slums had become their entire world, feral little survivors who'd learned to navigate the cracks of a city that barely acknowledged they existed.

This place was miserable. The clone decided he hated it. He needed to find Nagato and get out of here. Fast.

The question was how. Amegakure was a big place, and "find one specific kid in a city full of orphans" wasn't exactly easy. But he had an idea. Not a great one, but better than nothing.

Nagato was a refugee. Or at least, he should be. A war orphan from one of the destroyed villages, assuming Madara hadn't moved him somewhere else. If he was still in Ame, the slums were the most logical place for him to end up. This was where refugees went. This was where orphans went. And a kid with no family, no money, and no connections wouldn't exactly be living in the upper districts sipping tea with Hanzo's advisors.

That narrowed it down, at least. Search the slums. Comb through the refugee population and see if anyone matched the description. Sounded simple enough. In reality, not so much, given the sheer number of people crammed into these streets.

Unless he had help.

The clone waited until the group was distracted, arguing about tent assignments and where to put their things. Yahiko was busy helping his mother unpack their bundle. The older woman had her back turned. Nobody was watching the quiet kid who'd barely spoken three words since joining them.

He slipped sideways into an alley.

It was narrow, barely wide enough for two people to pass each other, and it stank of something between sewage and rot. Water dripped from pipes overhead. A rat scurried along the base of the wall and disappeared into a crack. The clone walked to the far end, where the alley bent around a corner and opened into a small dead-end space between three buildings. No windows facing in. No foot traffic. Perfect.

He raised his hands to form a seal.

Then common sense kicked in and he lowered his hands. Yeah, no, that was a bad idea. This wasn't some backwater village where nobody would notice a bunch of kids popping into existence out of thin air. This was a hidden village, full of actual shinobi who probably had sensors and security protocols and all sorts of things designed to catch exactly what he was about to do. Even if the refugee quarter wasn't a priority for them, a sudden burst of chakra down here would light up like a bonfire to anyone paying even a little bit of attention.

So no clones. No shortcuts. Just one pair of legs and however many hours it took. The clone had never hated a plan more in his very short life.

He sighed and started walking.

Nobody had designed the slums. That much was obvious. The whole place looked like it had built itself over the years, one desperate addition at a time, with zero regard for anything resembling a plan. Streets curved into dead ends, alleys opened into other alleys, and the spaces between structures were packed with lean-tos, tarps, and improvised shelters made from whatever scrap material people could find. You could walk in circles for an hour and not realize it because everything looked the same. Grey walls, grey puddles, grey sky above it all like a lid someone forgot to take off.

He kept his head down and his eyes open. Red hair. That was what he was looking for. Shouldn't be hard to spot in a crowd, right? Ame wasn't exactly known for producing redheads. One glimpse of that color and he'd know.

Except the slums were a lot bigger than they looked from the outside, and the number of people crammed into them was staggering. Refugees sat in clusters outside tents, huddled under overhangs, packed into doorways. Kids ran through puddles. Old men sat against walls staring at nothing. Women hung wet laundry on lines strung between pipes. Every few minutes, he'd catch a flash of color in his peripheral vision and his head would snap toward it, only to find brown hair, black hair, a dirty rag, a rust stain. Never red.

He searched for two hours. Up one street, down another, through crowds and around corners, checking every face he passed. Nothing.

He asked around, carefully. Nothing direct, nothing that would raise flags. Just a kid looking for his brother. Red hair, about his age, might have come through here a while back. People shrugged. People shook their heads. One woman looked at him with pity and said "good luck, sweetheart," which was probably the most sweetest answer he'd gotten all day.

He turned down another alley, stepping over a puddle that was deep enough to lose a sandal in, and walked straight into trouble.

Four kids, maybe fifteen or sixteen, had a smaller kid backed against the wall. The smaller kid was clutching a cloth bundle to his chest with both arms while the bigger ones tried to pry it away from him. There was shoving involved. Some shouting. The usual soundtrack of petty theft between minors.

The smaller kid was Yahiko.

Orange hair, loud mouth, zero sense of self-preservation. The kid had both arms wrapped around his bundle like it was a baby and was yelling at the older kids with more volume than sense. "Get off me! This is mine! My mom made these—she made them for me, you can't just—hey! Don't touch that! I said get off!"

"Hah, shut up already," one of the older kids said, yanking at the bundle. "That food came from outside the wall. Anything that comes through the gate belongs to everyone. Hand it over."

"That's complete crap and you know it! You literally just made that up!"

"Maybe I did. But there's four of us and one of you, so it doesn't really matter, does it? Now let go before I break your fingers."

Yahiko did not let go. Yahiko, in fact, bit the kid's hand.

That escalated things.

The bigger kid yelped, pulled his hand back, and swung. His fist caught Yahiko on the side of the head, hard enough to knock him sideways into the wall. The bundle tumbled out of his arms and hit the wet ground. Two of the others grabbed it immediately while the third shoved Yahiko down into a puddle.

The clone sighed.

He really, really didn't want to get involved. Getting involved meant drawing attention. Drawing over some street kids fighting over food scraps was about as far from "maintaining a low profile" as you could get.

He walked up to them anyway.

The biggest kid saw him first. Looked him up and down. Saw a malnourished orphan even smaller than the one they'd just knocked over and apparently decided this was the opposite of a threat.

"Beat it, runt. Unless you want some too."

The clone blinked at him, which the bigger kid took as an invitation. He grabbed the clone by the front of his shirt and shoved. The clone went stumbling backward, arms flailing, and crashed into a stack of empty crates piled against the wall. The crates toppled. The clone staggered sideways trying to find his footing, and his heel clipped one of the fallen crates on the way down. It went skidding across the wet ground like a hockey puck and caught the second kid flush in the shins. He yelped, hopped on one foot, and stepped on a rusty pipe half-buried in the puddle behind him. His feet went out from under him and he hit the ground butt-first with a splash that sent muddy water spraying across his friends.

"That's it, you're getting it now!" The leader rolled up his sleeves like that made a difference and came at him again. The clone was still tangled in the crates, scrambling to get up, and his foot kicked one of the fallen crate lids across the wet ground. It skidded through the mud like a sled and caught the leader right across the ankles. The kid went down face-first into a puddle with a sound somewhere between a slap and a splat.

The leader lifted his face out of the puddle, spitting brown water. "Get... him..."

The third kid, loyal to a fault, charged in from the side. The clone grabbed the wall to pull himself up. What he grabbed turned out to be a loose plank, barely held in place by one bent nail. The second he put his weight on it, the bottom swung free and went bonk right into the kid's chest. The kid made a sound like a squeaky toy getting stepped on and staggered backward, eyes watering.

The fourth kid watched all of this happen in about six seconds. His head swiveled between his three friends, all sprawled in various puddles groaning and covered in mud, and the clone, who was sitting in a pile of broken crates with wide eyes and bits of wood in his hair looking like he had no idea what just happened either. The fourth kid opened his mouth, closed it and let out a tiny confused whimper, shifting his weight from foot to foot like a kid who really needed to pee but couldn't find a bathroom.

The leader peeled his face out of the puddle, spitting mud. "This isn't—" He coughed. "This isn't over, you bastard! You hear me? This isn't over!"

Hearing his leader's voice gave the fourth kid his nerve back. He straightened up, puffed out his chest, and added with all the menace a fourteen-year-old could muster, "Yeah, that's right! And—and my older brother is way bigger than you! Like, way bigger! He's gonna mess you up so bad you won't even—you won't even know what happened!"

"Yeah! And he's got friends! Big friends! With weapons!"

The leader, still on his hands and knees in the puddle, seemed to realize this wasn't exactly the intimidating exit he'd been going for. He scrambled to his feet, wiped the mud off his chin with the back of his hand, and jabbed a finger in the clone's direction. "You're a freak! I've never met anyone freakier! And—and your face is stupid!"

All four of them scrambled off the ground, tripping over each other in the process, and took off down the alley like a litter of wet puppies who'd just gotten yelled at by someone's mom. They kept shouting over their shoulders as they ran, cycling through every threat a fourteen-year-old could think of before running out and switching to plain name-calling. One of them kicked at a puddle on the way out to prove a point, caught himself in the face with the splash, and kept running like nothing happened.

The clone sat there in the wreckage of the crate pile, looking appropriately shell-shocked. Behind him, Yahiko hadn't moved from the wall. His bundle was still pressed against his chest, his mouth was still open, and his eyes were roughly the size of rice bowls. Whatever he'd been expecting to happen, this clearly wasn't it.

He peeled himself off the wall and stared at the alley. At the toppled crates. At the puddles. At the muddy trail the four kids had left behind as they ran. It took a few seconds for it to sink in. When it did, he burst out laughing.

"Did you see his face?! The one who fell in the puddle?! He looked like a wet cat!" He wiped tears from his eyes. "And the plank! It just went bonk and he just... he just..." He couldn't finish, doubling over until the laughter ran out, then cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled into the empty alley. "Yeah, that's what you get! Come back anytime, morons! We'll be right here!"

He wiped the tears from his eyes and suddenly looked at the clone like he'd just remembered something important. "Wait. Hold on. I just realized I don't even know your name. What's your name?"

The clone blinked. Coming up with a proper fake name sounded like work, so he just shaved two syllables off his real one. "Shin."

"Shin! Cool name." Yahiko dusted off his bundle and tucked it back under his arm. "Alright, Shin. So where are we going?"

"We?"

"Yeah, we. You and me."

"There's no you and me. Go back to your mom."

"Can't." He said it the same way someone would say the sky is blue. "You helped me out back there. That makes us friends."

"That's not how friends work."

"It's exactly how it works. Somebody does something cool for you, and then you're friends. That's like... friendship 101." He said it with absolute certainty. "And friends hang out together. Everybody knows that. So." He spread his hands like the conclusion was obvious. "I'm hanging out with you."

The clone started walking. Yahiko followed. The clone walked faster. Yahiko walked faster. The clone turned a corner without warning. Yahiko turned the same corner two seconds later, still talking.

"You know, you're pretty fast for a skinny kid. Where'd you learn to walk that fast? I bet you ran a lot back in your village. I ran a lot too. Mostly from dogs, though. There was this one dog near our house that hated everyone, and..."

He didn't stop. The clone kept walking and Yahiko kept following and the words kept coming, a nonstop stream of whatever passed through the kid's head at any given moment. Dogs he'd known. Foods he missed. A rock he found once that looked like a face. Whether fish could sleep. Why rain smelled different at night. The clone tried ignoring him. Didn't work. Tried walking in silence. Yahiko filled it. Tried taking a sudden detour through a narrow gap between two buildings. Yahiko squeezed through right behind him.

"...and that's why I think cats are smarter than dogs, but don't tell anyone I said that because the kid next door had a dog and he'd get really mad if he heard me say—hey, are you even listening?"

"No."

"That's cool." He didn't sound even slightly bothered. "I'll just start over from the beginning."

He did. Word for word. From the dog.

An hour passed like that. Yahiko talked, the clone scanned faces. The rain had softened to a thin mist that coated everything in a wet sheen and made the already-grey streets look even greyer. People moved through the slums with their heads down, and the clone's eyes jumped from face to face, looking for red among the sea of brown and black.

"Hey, Shin."

"What."

"Is it just me, or are people looking at us weird?"

The clone didn't need to look. He'd noticed the eyes on them about twenty minutes ago. From doorways. From under tarps. Quick sideways looks from adults who pretended to be doing something else. Nobody was staring out of concern, that was for sure. They were sizing them up, the way strays eyed an unguarded meal.

"It's not just you," he said.

"Okay, cool—well, not cool, actually. But why? Why are they doing that?"

"Because you're carrying food and you look like an easy target."

"I look like a—" Yahiko looked down at his bundle, then back up at the doorways and the tarps and the eyes, and something clicked behind his expression. Not fear, exactly. More like the sudden awareness of a small animal realizing it was standing in an open field.

"Eat it," Shin said. "Before someone else tries what those kids tried."

"But this is for later. Mom said to save—"

"You know what happens to kids who walk around flashing food in this part of town?" Shin's voice dropped flat and hard. "There was this kid last week. Kept his rice balls in his shirt, just like you. Walked around all day showing them off. By evening, six guys jumped him in an alley. They didn't just take his food. They took his shoes, his shirt, and his front teeth."

Yahiko had stopped walking. "...His teeth?"

"Both of them. Popped right out."

"Why would they take his teeth?!"

"I don't know." Shin kept walking. "Maybe they were hungry for teeth."

Yahiko looked down at his bundle. Then at the eyes watching them. Then at his bundle again. He started eating without another word, shoving rice into his mouth like his life depended on it, completely forgetting that he and Shin had walked through the same gate, on the same day, in the same group of refugees, literally side by side. If he'd stopped to think about it for even two seconds, he would have realized there was no possible way Shin knew what happened to any kid last week.

But that thought was somewhere far, far behind the panic, and panic was winning. Rice balls, a strip of dried fish, something that might have been pickled vegetables. He chewed fast and swallowed faster, barely tasting any of it, cheeks puffing out like a squirrel preparing for winter.

Between bites, he turned toward the nearest cluster of watchers and made a face. Tongue out, cheeks full, eyes scrunched.

A few of them looked away. One older kid actually scowled.

Shin covered his face with his hand. Somewhere in this kid's future, there were a lot of black eyes and split lips waiting for him. Probably deserved, too.

"Done!" Yahiko wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, crumbs falling everywhere. "Okay, now nobody can take it. Brilliant plan, Shin."

"Please stop talking."

"So what are we doing?” Yahiko fell back into step beside him like he hadn't heard a word. “You've been walking around staring at people for a while now. Are you looking for someone?"

Shin said nothing.

"You are." Yahiko's voice jumped half an octave. "I knew it! Who is it? A friend? Family? Somebody from your village? Ooh—is it a girl?"

Nothing.

"Come on, I can help! I'm great at finding people. Well, I've never actually done it before, but I'd be great at it. I'm a people person. You're... well, you're great at other stuff, I'm sure."

Shin: “…”

Ignoring him clearly wasn't working. Might as well put him to use.

"My brother," Shin said quietly. "We got separated and I've been trying to find him."

He regretted saying it almost immediately, because Yahiko latched onto it like a dog with a bone and spent the next two hours asking questions the clone had to bullshit his way through.

By evening, they'd combed through half the slums and found exactly nothing. The grey sky darkened into something closer to charcoal as the light faded. The slums didn't have proper lighting. A few fires flickered here and there, casting weak orange circles on wet concrete, but most of the streets just faded into shadow. People retreated into their tents and shelters. The alleys emptied out. Even the slum dwellers who'd been sizing them up all day had gone inside.

"We should head back," Yahiko said, and for the first time all day, he actually sounded tired. "Mom's probably wondering where I am."

Shin nodded. They turned back.

The walk back took about fifteen minutes, and Yahiko spent most of it talking about what they'd do tomorrow. Check the eastern section of the slums. Ask at the communal water points, because everyone had to drink water eventually, right? Maybe bribe some of the local kids with something if they had anything to bribe with, which they didn't, but Yahiko would figure something out.

Shin let him talk. It beat saying no for the hundredth time.

They rounded the corner into the row of tents where Yahiko's group had settled, and Yahiko stopped mid-sentence.

A crowd had formed around Yahiko's mother's tent and the neighboring shelters, and nobody in it looked like they were having a good time.

Something was wrong.

"Mom?" Yahiko's feet were already moving before the word was out. "Mom!"

The clone trailed behind, eyes moving from face to face.

The faces turning toward Yahiko told the story before anyone spoke. Worry. Pity. The look people got when something bad had happened right in front of them and they couldn't do a damn thing about it. One of the women from their original group reached for Yahiko's shoulder as he passed, but he ducked under her hand and kept going.

"Where's my mom?" Yahiko demanded. "Hey—what happened? Somebody tell me what happened."

The woman exchanged a look with the man beside her. He rubbed the back of his neck and crouched down to Yahiko's level.

"Your mom's resting right now, okay? She's—"

"Why is she resting? Is she sick? She was fine when I left."

The man's eyes drifted to somewhere around Yahiko's shoulder. Couldn't quite look him in the face. "There was a... some people came by. While you were out."

"What people?"

"Just... local people." He was choosing every word like he was stepping through a minefield. "There was a disagreement. About supplies."

"A disagreement?" Yahiko's voice pitched up. "What does that mean? What kind of disagreement?"

The man glanced at the woman again. She looked away.

"It got a little rough," he said quietly. "Your mom, she's... she's okay, she just needs to rest."

For a guy trying to keep a kid calm, he was doing an impressive job of making everything sound ten times more suspicious. Not that the clone needed him to spell it out. The clues were everywhere. Half the tents in the row had been ransacked, flaps torn open, belongings scattered in the mud. A cooking pot lay overturned two tents down. A woman was on her knees picking up spilled rice grain by grain, her hands shaking. Somewhere further along the row, a man was arguing loudly with his wife about why he didn't fight back, and her answer was just crying. The bruise on this man's cheek. Three other families sitting outside emptied tents staring at nothing, too stunned to move. Most of the refugees, though, were physically fine. Shaken, robbed, miserable, sure, but walking and talking and in one piece. It was only a handful of tents that felt like someone had died in them.

"Where's my mom?"

The man didn't answer fast enough. Yahiko was already past him, ducking into the tent.

The clone stopped at the tent flap. He already knew what was on the other side. The sound of labored breathing filled the gap between the canvas walls, too shallow and too rough to belong to anyone who was okay. Then came the thud of Yahiko dropping beside her, and after that, a voice calling "Mom" that got smaller with every repetition instead of louder.

The woman who'd caught Yahiko's shoulder earlier had drifted back to the man's side.

"She should have just handed it over," the woman said. "The rest of us did."

"She had a kid to feed. You can't blame her for—"

"I'm not blaming her. I'm saying she'd be standing right now if she'd just let them take it." She wiped her nose with her sleeve. "They asked three times, and every time she said no, they hit her harder. She kept saying her son needs to eat, Yahiko needs to eat, like that was going to make them stop."

"It should have made them stop."

"Well, it didn't. It just made them angrier."

Shin stood at the tent's entrance and looked in.

Yahiko was on the ground beside a thin futon, both hands gripping his mother's limp fingers. She was still breathing, which was something, but her face was a mess. Swollen left eye, split lip, bruises running down her arms and across her ribs where someone had kicked her while she was down. The work of people who hadn't just wanted her stuff. They'd wanted to make a point. This is what happens when you say no.

"Mom." Yahiko's voice broke. "Mom, wake up. Please wake up. I'm here. It's me. Please."

She didn't wake up.

Shin looked away.

It was a common sight, honestly. Not just in Ame. In every slum, every refugee camp, every place where people who had nothing were shoved together and left to figure it out. The strong took from the weak. The weak took from the weaker. And everyone pretended they didn't see it because acknowledging it meant admitting that nobody was coming to fix it.

And nobody was.

Shin leaned against the tent pole and looked up at the grey sky, listening to Yahiko cry.

…

Meanwhile, back at the Konoha camp, a different clone was having a much less emotionally devastating evening.

The field hospital camp was winding down for the day. Fires crackled between rows of tents, casting warm light across tired faces.

Mikoto was sitting on a supply crate, cleaning a set of kunai with a cloth. Hair tied back, flak jacket loosened, completely absorbed in the task.

The clone crept up behind her.

He reached out and tapped her shoulder.

What happened next was entirely his fault and he accepted that. Mikoto made a noise that was half gasp and half hiccup, her whole body jolting like someone had dropped ice down her back. The kunai in her hand came around whipping around at roughly chest height, fast and instinctive and very much intended to hurt whoever was stupid enough to sneak up on an Uchiha in a warzone.

The clone leaned back just enough for the blade to whiff past his chest.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." He had both hands up before she could wind up for a second swing. "It's me. Please stop trying to stab me."

Mikoto froze mid-swing, recognition catching up with reflexes. Her eyes went wide, then narrow, then into that particular squint she reserved exclusively for when Shinji or anything related to Shinji did something that tested her patience.

"Don't do that," she said, lowering the kunai but not putting it away. Her free hand pressed against her chest. "I almost killed you."

"Almost being the key word."

"I'm serious. You can't just sneak up on people in a camp full of combat veterans. Someone is going to put a blade through you before they realize who you are."

"Noted. I'll wear a bell next time."

She stared at him for a long moment, waiting for the apology that wasn't coming, and then let out a sigh. The kunai went back into the pile she'd been working through. "What do you want?"

"I need you to grab Tsume and meet me at the clearing by the river. The one behind camp."

She blinked. "Right now?"

"Right now."

"...Why?"

"I'll explain when you're both there. I don't feel like saying it twice."

"You could just tell me now and then tell Tsume after."

"Or you could just go get her and save me the trouble."

He turned and walked off before she could ask anything else. He was halfway across the camp when he heard her say something to nobody in particular. It sounded a lot like "every single time."

The clearing by the river was a decent spot. Far enough from camp that casual foot traffic wouldn't stumble into them, close enough that it wasn't suspicious to walk to. A stretch of flat ground bordered by trees on three sides and the river on the fourth, with enough open space to move around in. One of several spots around camp he'd mapped out for off-the-books training.

He waited. The four figures behind him had gotten bored at some point and started fishing in the river with sticks and string. He didn't bother telling them to stop.

Half an hour passed before he heard them coming. Longer than he'd expected, but then again, getting two people to walk into the woods at night based on "just trust me" wasn't exactly a quick sell.

Mikoto emerged from the treeline first, eyes already scanning the clearing like she expected something to jump out at her. Tsume was right behind her, hands shoved into her jacket pockets, looking like she'd been dragged here against her will but was too curious to actually resist.

"Alright, we're here," Tsume said. "What's this about? Did Shinji get himself into something again?"

"Is Shinji okay?" Mikoto added, her eyes darting between the clone and the four figures standing with their backs turned. "Who are they?"

"Shinji's fine. Nobody's in trouble."

"Then what—"

"The boss wants me to train you two."

That got their attention.

"Did you just say train?" Tsume was already on her feet. "Please tell me you just said train. I've been losing my mind doing chores for weeks. Weeks! I'm going crazy in that camp."

"Yep, he thinks having you two run errands and do chores around camp is a waste of your time. Time you could be spending getting stronger."

"Finally!" she slapped her knee. "I've been saying that for weeks! All they've got me doing is hauling water and sorting supply crates. I'm a kunoichi, not a warehouse worker. When do we start? Right now? I'm ready right now."

Mikoto, predictably, did not slap her knee. She folded her arms and frowned slightly.

"We can't just stop doing our assignments," she said. "We were given duties. People are counting on us to do them. If we suddenly disappear every day to go train in the woods, someone's going to notice, and when they do, we'll be the ones getting punished for abandoning our posts."

"Yeah, what she said," Tsume added, then paused. "Wait, no. I don't care about that. Let's train."

"Tsume."

"What? Mikoto, listen to me." She put both hands on Mikoto's shoulders and looked her dead in the eyes. "We are hauling water. That's what they have us doing. Picking up buckets, walking them from one place to another place, and putting them down. A trained monkey could do our job. An untrained monkey could do our job. I'm pretty sure I saw a stray dog carrying a bucket the other day and nobody even blinked."

"That's not the—" Mikoto pinched the bridge of her nose. "The point isn't whether the work is hard. The point is that we were given a responsibility. As shinobi of this camp, we have an obligation to fulfill our duties regardless of whether we think they're beneath us. That's what discipline is. If we just—"

"Relax," the clone said, cutting in before the debate spiraled. "Shinji already thought of that." He tilted his chin toward the figures standing at his back. "Ladies, if you would."

Two of the four figures turned around.

The clearing went very quiet.

Mikoto stared. Tsume stared. Neither of them moved.

The figure on the left had Mikoto's face. Same dark hair, same dark eyes, same calm expression. She gave a small wave and said, in Mikoto's exact voice, "Hello."

The figure on the right had Tsume's face. Wild hair, sharp eyes, and a grin that was pure Tsume. "Yo," she said, in Tsume's exact voice.

Tsume's mouth fell open. She looked at the clone-Tsume, then at the clone-Mikoto, then at the clone-Tsume again. "What the hell."

"My clones," the clone explained. "Henged to look and sound like you. Starting today, these two handle your camp duties. Water, crates, whatever mindless busywork they've got you on. You two train with me here every morning, and as far as anyone in camp knows, you never left."

Tsume was on her feet in an instant. She walked up to the clone-Tsume, circled her once like she was appraising a horse at auction. She checked the hair. Checked the jacket. Leaned in and squinted at the clone's teeth. The clone-Tsume stared back at her with the exact same expression the real one was wearing, which made the whole thing twice as unsettling.

"No way." Her jaw dropped. "She even has the scar on my ear. How do you even know about that?"

She turned back to the clone with the widest grin he'd ever seen on a human face. Every single fang on full display.

Mikoto had not moved from her spot. Her arms were still folded. Her frown had deepened.

"What happens when someone notices?" she asked. "A henged clone isn't perfect. If a jonin walks by, if anyone pays close enough attention—"

"They won't."

"You don't know that."

"Mikoto." The clone looked at her. "You're a genin. A really talented one, sure, but right now, on paper, you're just a lowly genin assigned to camp chores. Nobody is paying that much attention to you. As long as the clones don't start any fights or set anything on fire, the higher-ups aren't going to look twice."

Something twitched at the corner of Mikoto's mouth. "A lowly genin?"

"That came out wrong." The clone held up a hand. "What I meant was, you're not important enough for anyone to—no, wait. I mean, your rank isn't high enough to—ahem, what I'm trying to say is, nobody cares what you're doing because you're just a—" His mouth snapped shut. "Okay I'm going to stop talking now."

Tsume cackled. "Oh, he's dead."

Mikoto dropped her arms to her sides and started rolling up her sleeves. "How about we start with taijutsu?" She smiled. "I'd love to show you what a lowly genin can do."

The clone looked between the two of them. Tsume, practically vibrating with excitement, already bouncing on her toes. Mikoto, smiling that terrifyingly polite smile that meant someone was about to have a very bad time. The two henged clones stood off to the side, apparently content to watch.

He sighed.

This was going to be a long afternoon.

…

-Shinji-

If someone bottled whatever this air smelled like and tried to sell it, they'd be arrested. And they'd deserve it.

I stood at the edge of the makeshift camp, staring east toward Fire Country, listening to the chorus of groans and ragged breathing behind me. My clones had done a decent job of gathering the wounded, dragging them out of the mud and the wreckage of the Three-Kage battlefield and into something resembling a safe perimeter. "Safe" being relative, of course. We were still in enemy territory, the ground was still soaked with blood, and about half the shinobi behind me needed a hospital, not a makeshift camp in the woods.

But a makeshift camp was what they had, so a makeshift camp was what they'd get.

The memories had hit me about ten minutes ago. One of my clones protecting the Hokage had gone down during the retreat. Two kages in pursuit. The Third running deeper into Fire Country with Sakumo covering the rear.

I let out a long breath and turned around.

Orochimaru was crouched beside a chunin at the center of the camp, tearing a strip from his own sleeve to wrap around the man's leg wound. His clothes were already torn in a few places and there was dried blood on his jaw. He was speaking in a low voice to a pair of shinobi nearby, something about watch rotations and perimeter checks, without looking up from what his hands were doing.

"Orochimaru-san." I walked over. "We need to talk."

He finished the knot and stood, wiping his hands. "Your face says it's bad news."

"Clone with the Hokage went down. Two kages on his tail, pushing him deeper into Fire Country."

That got a reaction as his eyes sharpened. "Both of them?"

"Both of them. My clones are with him, and so is White Fang."

Orochimaru's gaze drifted toward Fire Country. "Then we should reinforce them. If the Hokage falls—"

"Konoha loses the war. Yeah, I know." I rubbed the back of my neck. "But here's the thing. Even if we get there in time, even if we somehow pull off a miracle and push them back, then what? We still lose. Konoha's been bleeding since this whole thing started. We reinforce the Hokage, burn through whatever we have left, and even if he survives, we limp back to the village with nothing to show for it except a longer casualty list."

"I take it you're not proposing a rescue mission, then."

I looked at him. Let the silence do some of the work. "Their kages are gone, Orochimaru-san. Both of them. Out in the field. Chasing the Hokage with what I have to assume is the best they've got. Which means right now—right now, as we're standing here—somewhere behind their lines, there are supply depots, medical stations, food caches, communication relays, and forward command posts that have a whole lot fewer guards than they did this morning." A pause. "Maybe a whole lot fewer."

Orochimaru's head tilted. "You want to strike their infrastructure."

"I want to gut them." The word came out harder than I meant it to. "Hit them everywhere at once. Every depot, every relay, every supply line we can reach. All at the same time, while their kages are a hundred miles away trying to get past my clones and Sakumo. Burn their stockpiles. Cripple their logistics. Sever every communication line between their front and their rear. By the time they realize what's happening, there's nothing left to come back to."

"Bold," he said, and I couldn't tell if it was a compliment or a warning. "And you're comfortable leaving Lord Hokage's survival in the hands of Sakumo and a few shadow clones?"

"Comfortable? No. But Sakumo is Sakumo, and my clones aren't going to stop multiplying anytime soon. The longer they run, the more bodies I can put between the Hokage and whoever's chasing him." I glanced east. "Besides, we could sprint there right now and still not make it. Or we could hit them where they're not looking and actually change how this war ends."

Orochimaru looked at me for a long moment, then let his gaze drift across the makeshift camp. The wounded. The exhausted. The handful still standing.

"The strategy has merit," he said. "But strategy without intelligence is just enthusiasm. We don't know where their supply depots are. We don't know their patrol routes. We don't know garrison strengths." He looked back at me. "And we don't have the people to find out the hard way."

"About that."

A hand went up from the cluster of wounded nin on the far side of the clearing. It was a shaky hand, attached to a guy who looked like he'd been through a blender, but it was up.

"I can help with that." The man coughed, winced, and kept going. "I'm with the Intelligence Division. I've got locations on most of their forward bases. Supply points, medical stations, communication relays. Not all of them, but enough."

I looked at him. My brain flagged something before I could put words to it. Then the memory surfaced, one of my clones had noticed this guy before the battle, drifting around Danzo's crowd. Not obviously, not in any way you could point to and call suspicious, but close enough to notice if you were paying attention. And I was always paying attention.

Root? Could be. Could also just be some Intelligence guy who happened to be near Danzo at the wrong time. One clone memory wasn't a lot to go on. Either way, he was still Konoha. Still on our side. And right now, what he was offering mattered more than who he reported to.

I could play the paranoia game later. Right now, I needed those locations.

"Orochimaru-san," I said, turning back to him. "What do you think?"

He considered the Intelligence nin for a moment, then shook his head slightly. "The intel is useful. But useful intel doesn't solve our real problem. We're looking at wounded, exhausted shinobi and a handful of your clones. Even spread across fewer targets, we'd be stretched too thin to do any meaningful damage."

"What if numbers weren't the issue?"

He looked at me. "They are the issue."

"What if they weren't?" I repeated. "Give me an hour. Two at most. And I'll have enough clones to hit everything on that list."

He didn't say anything for a while. The camp seemed to follow his lead, the groaning and shuffling dying down until all I could hear was the wind in the trees.

Orochimaru held my gaze for what felt like a full minute. "You know what happens if you do this. At this scale, there's no hiding what you are anymore. Every nation with a spy network will know within weeks. And what they'll see isn't a talented jonin or an unusual jinchuriki. It's a threat they can't afford to leave alone."

"I know."

"The bounty on your head will seem quaint by comparison. You will become a priority target for every hidden village.”

"I know."

"And you're fine with that?"

I looked out toward Fire Country again. Somewhere out there, an old man was running for his life, and two kages were trying to end it. Somewhere out there, the war was being decided, and Konoha was on the losing side of the equation.

"This was always going to happen." I turned back to him. "You can only hide something this big for so long before people start connecting the dots. Iwa's suspicious. Kumo's suspicious. Half of Konoha is probably suspicious." I shrugged. "If they're going to find out anyway, I'd rather it be on my terms. And I'd rather it be the last thing their supply lines ever see."

"I see," he murmured, almost to himself. Then, louder. "Very well."

He stood up from the fallen tree "You," he said, pointing at the Intelligence nin. "Shinji’s clones is going to heal you. Once you're functional, I want every location you have. Supply lines, command posts, medical stations, all of it. Organize them by priority and proximity."

The man nodded, wincing as he shifted.

Orochimaru turned to the rest of the camp. "Anyone who can stand and hold a weapon, you have one hour to get ready." He looked at the wounded. "The rest of you stay put. Shinji's clones will get you somewhere safe. Do what they tell you."

Nobody argued. Nobody even looked like they wanted to. Orochimaru watched them start moving, then glanced back at me. "Of all the plans I've heard in this war, yours is certainly the most ambitious. And possibly the most insane."

"I'll take that as a compliment." I pulled my blade from its sheath and held it up. The steel was warped and half-melted, sagging in places like candle wax. "Also, slight problem. Anyone got a sword that isn't ruined?"

Around the camp, a few heads turned. One nin looked at his sword, which was missing the top third. Another pulled his out and stared at it like he was seeing it for the first time. It was bent almost forty-five degrees to the left. A third guy just held up an empty scabbard and shrugged.

"I'll take that as a no," I said.