Hidden Leaf, Hidden Talents 98 (Patreon)

-Clone #138-

Blood slipped from the tip of #138’s tanto in slow, fat drops.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

They landed on trampled grass that had long since stopped looking like grass.

Fire Country soil was dark with churned mud, ash, and blood. Trees tilted drunkenly across the field, trunks split where jutsu had punched through them. Smoke rolled low across the battlefield in thick veils, glowing orange whenever a fire jutsu flared somewhere inside it. Steel rang. Men screamed. Earth split. Chakra flashed in blue, gold, brown, and red streaks through the haze.

The war had been going for hours now, and just around him, nine bodies lay where they had fallen.

#138 did not look at them. His eyes stayed on the three people ahead of him instead.

Mikoto ducked under a hooked blade, black hair whipping behind her as she twisted inside an enemy chunin’s guard. Tsume came in from the left a second later with a feral rush, claws flashing, boots kicking up mud in sharp sprays. Aya stayed half a step behind them, weaving hand seals while her eyes moved constantly across the battlefield.

This was their team.

Large battles rarely stayed organized for long. Once thousands of shinobi clashed, formations broke apart quickly. Commands became distant. Units scattered. In the end, most shinobi survived by sticking close to a few trusted people.

So teams were formed early, whenever there was time, or pieced together on the battlefield from whoever was still alive.

Their group had come together quietly near the start of the march.

Mikoto.

Tsume.

Aya.

And one of Shinji’s clones.

#138 had simply joined them and stayed.

No one complained.

A Shinji clone nearby meant better odds of staying alive.

Of course, he was not the only clone around.

A few others moved through the battlefield not far away, drifting in and out of the smoke while fighting their own enemies. Close enough to notice if something went wrong. Close enough to step in if needed.

But inside the team itself, there was only him.

Four people.

Simple.

Easy to track in the chaos.

Protect the three.

Kill anything that tried to get through.

That was the job #138 had given himself.

And so far, it was working.

An Iwa jonin burst from the smoke on Mikoto’s blind side.

Fast.

Faster than she could handle.

#138 moved before the thought had fully finished.

Shun.

His foot hit the broken side of a root, his body turned sideways, and he slipped through the mess of bodies and torn earth like water finding a crack. The Iwa nin’s blade came down toward Mikoto’s ribs.

Kiinng!

#138’s tanto cut across the descending blade with a sharp, ringing kiss of steel, catching it just enough to bend the strike off course. He turned with it, letting the force slide past his shoulder as his wrist snapped and sent the edge skidding away, the enemy’s arm dragged wide with it.

#138 stepped in.

His left hand snapped forward and hammered into the elbow joint.

Ktok.

The arm folded the wrong way.

The jonin hissed, but #138 was already moving again. He stepped onto the man’s front thigh, used the contact like a springboard, flipped over his shoulder, and dragged the tanto backward across the throat on the way down.

Shhk.

Hot blood sprayed in an arc.

The body dropped before Mikoto had fully turned.

#138 landed lightly behind her.

That had been close.

Closer than she probably realized.

Without someone like him nearby, or another jonin of similar level, shinobi with genin or chunin strength simply didn’t last long in wars like this. The battlefield chewed through them too quickly.

Even with three tomoe already spinning in her eyes, Mikoto still couldn’t quite keep up with a jonin’s speed.

She simply couldn’t.

A jonin’s strike had already been halfway to her ribs by the time her body began to move.

If he hadn’t been there, she would be dead.

#138 found himself thinking of another Uchiha for a moment.

If Itachi were standing where Mikoto had been just now, that blade probably wouldn’t have reached him in the first place.

Then he dismissed the thought almost immediately.

Comparing geniuses to ordinary people was pointless.

Even among Uchiha.

Still.

The clones responsible for training these two had done good work.

Tsume was still officially a genin, yet her actual ability sat somewhere around the lower edge of chunin.

Mikoto had climbed even higher.

Mid-chunin, give or take.

Neither of them could face a jonin head-on. That was simply reality.

But a lower chunin?

Either of them could kill one without much trouble.

A mid-chunin would be harder.

Still manageable if the two of them worked together.

For genin in the middle of a great war, that was already more than most could hope for.

“…Thanks,” Mikoto said, letting out a small breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

#138 flicked the blood from his blade.

“That one was dangerous.”

She glanced at the fallen jonin, then back at him.

“…Yeah.”

Her expression softened a little.

“I’m glad you were there.”

He gave a small shrug. “Where else would I be?”

Behind them, the chunin she had been fighting tried to stagger back to his feet. Mikoto turned, drove a kunai into his chest, and shoved the body away with a sharp kick.

Aya saw that and let out a quiet laugh. “You two are holding up better than expected.”

Tsume dropped beside them in a crouch, breathing a little hard. Dirt streaked her cheek and one sleeve had been sliced open.

“Yeah. That’s what happens when we’ve got him around.”

She jerked a thumb at Shinji’s clone.

“Try doing this without that and see how long you last.”

Aya’s lips curved faintly. “I thought so.”

Tsume snorted. “You remember the field hospital.”

Aya’s lips curved faintly. “Hard to forget.”

“Then you know,” Tsume said. “I would’ve died ten times over if not for Shinji’s clones running around.”

She shrugged. “So yeah. I’m staying close.”

Aya nodded slowly. “That seems wise.”

Mikoto glanced at him. “…You really don’t mind protecting us like this?”

He shrugged lightly. “Someone has to stay close. It may as well be me.”

Tsume laughed. “See? Reliable. That’s exactly why I’m not wandering off anywhere. If a clone is standing next to me, I’m staying right here.”

Aya gave a small nod. “That does seem like a very sensible survival strategy.”

Her eyes flicked briefly toward the clone.

“A dependable teammate, huh.”

#138’s attention drifted toward the smoke.

“…Later,” he said quietly. “More incoming.”

Tsume groaned. “Of course there are.”

Mikoto lifted her kunai. “Don’t get careless.”

Aya’s eyes snapped downward. “Down!”

All four moved instantly.

Fwsh!

#138 twisted sideways, foot kicking off a broken root as his body slipped into a low spin.

The ground exploded.

KRRSHHHK!

Stone spikes punched out of the ground in a crooked line, tearing through the patch of earth they had just vacated. Dirt and broken rock burst into the air in a violent spray.

Mikoto flipped backward, hair snapping through the air as two stone spikes punched up past her ribs.

Tsume kicked off one rising pillar and vaulted sideways with a feral snarl.

Aya slid low across the churned mud, cloak whipping behind her.

#138 never stopped moving.

His body flowed through the chaos like water slipping through cracks.

A rising spear shot up beneath him.

Too slow.

He planted one foot on the stone as it erupted and used it like a stepping stone.

Tok.

His body vaulted into the air, twisting through the cloud of dust.

From the air he saw the attacker.

Through the drifting smoke.

Suna flak jacket.

River forehead protector tied around the arm.

Working together, huh.

Nice.

One of those days.

His foot touched the top of a broken stone spear.

Then he vanished.

Shun.

The enemy was already on the next seal.

Too slow.

#138’s hand snapped through a quick sign.

Poof!

Two shadow clones burst into being beside him.

One went right. One went left.

The enemy’s eyes widened at this.

The clone on the right sprinted straight in, drawing attention. The left clone dove under a broken patch of earth, vanishing with Moguragakure. The real #138 leaped into the air, turned once, and hurled three shuriken downward in a spread that looked sloppy on purpose.

The enemy dodged the obvious line.

That was where Aya’s genjutsu brushed across his senses like cold silk.

Just a flicker. Just enough.

His foot landed half an inch off.

The buried clone burst from the ground behind him.

Bam!

The enemy spun instantly, blade flashing toward the clone’s neck.

The clone bent backward at the waist, the sword whistling over his face by a hair.

Fwsh!

He twisted sideways and kicked off the ground, sliding around the strike while his own tanto flicked toward the enemy’s ribs.

The man had to pull his blade back to guard.

That half-second cost him.

#138 dropped out of the air.

His body came down almost horizontal, one hand brushing the trunk of a shattered tree to change angle midfall.

Tok.

His legs scissored around the enemy’s sword arm.

Using the momentum, he whipped himself around the man’s shoulders, drove a heel into the back of his neck—

Thk!

—and released.

He landed behind him in a slide across the dirt.

For one still second, neither moved.

Then the man’s stomach split open.

Shhhk.

A dark line widened across his abdomen. Cloth parted. Flesh followed.

Blood spilled out in a sudden wet rush.

The enemy staggered once.

Something pale slipped free between his fingers as he instinctively tried to hold himself together.

Then his knees buckled.

He folded into the mud.

The clone on the right didn’t slow down. He ran straight past the corpse.

Five meters away, a River shinobi turned just in time to see him coming.

Fwsh!

The clone dropped low, sliding across churned mud as a kunai slashed over his head.

His palm slapped the ground once.

Tok!

Momentum whipped his body upward into a tight spin.

The enemy tried to step back.

Bad idea.

The clone’s hand flashed forward.

Blue light flickered along his fingers.

Shhk.

Chakra scalpel.

The glowing edge slid cleanly across the inside of the man’s thigh.

The River nin’s leg folded instantly.

Before the scream could fully leave his throat, the clone closed the distance.

Pak! Pak! Thk!

A palm hammered the sternum.

Another smashed the throat.

The last strike drove two glowing fingers straight under the ribcage.

Shkkk.

The chakra scalpel slid through muscle and found the heart.

The River nin stiffened.

His eyes widened.

The clone twisted behind him.

His arm hooked the neck.

His foot kicked off the man’s thigh.

Then he spun.

Fwsh!

Both bodies twisted together in a savage spiral.

The clone’s knee crashed into the lower spine.

KRRK!

The enemy’s body folded sideways and slammed into the mud.

The clone released him and kept moving without even looking back.

Behind him, the River shinobi twitched once.

Then went still.

Tsume let out a low whistle as she stepped over the body, eyes flicking between it and #138. “…Okay, that was nasty. You didn’t even give him a second to realize what was happening.”

“That’s the idea,” he said. “If someone looks confused, don’t let them stop being confused.”

Tsume snorted, shaking her head as she fell back into step. “That’s your idea of advice? That didn’t even look like a fight. You just took him apart like you were taking a toy from a baby.” She clicked her tongue. “Then again… this is war. Guess that’s just how it goes.”

Aya tilted her head slightly. “If it keeps you alive, then it’s good advice.”

Another crash rolled through the battlefield. Farther uphill, a Doryūheki wall rose from the earth in a long brown ridge, shielding a cluster of Konoha shinobi from a storm of jutsu. Clones moved across that wall like ants, leaping down into enemy lines. Beyond them, thousands still clashed in broken currents. Konoha and a thousand Shinji clones against numbers that never seemed to end. Suna wind users blasted trees apart. Iwa earth users changed the shape of the field every minute. River shinobi lurked where the smoke was thickest, striking from cover and vanishing again.

There was too much chaos for anger to last.

Somewhere along the way, that feeling had been worn down, like a blade used too many times. What remained wasn’t calm. It was simply… absence.

#138 looked across the battlefield and felt almost nothing.

That used to bother him.

It didn’t anymore.

The numbness had arrived quietly one day and decided to stay.

It didn’t make death easier.

It only made it easier to keep the living from joining them.

Mikoto was moving better now.

Still cautious, still not fully at ease, but better.

She parried a thrust, spun away from a second attacker, and flung two kunai in opposite directions without looking. One missed by a little. One buried itself in a Suna genin’s throat.

Her eyes widened for the briefest moment.

The Suna genin couldn’t have been much older than her.

For a moment his face reminded her of a cousin she used to chase around the compound.

The feeling vanished as quickly as it came.

#138 was beside her before the hesitation could turn dangerous.

“Don’t stare,” he said.

Mikoto frowned a little. “I wasn’t.”

He shifted his gaze back ahead. “Something on your mind?”

Her eyes flicked once toward the fallen genin before she looked away again. “…I thought… he looked like someone from the compound.”

#138 glanced at her. “Don’t get stuck on that. You’ll have time to think about it later.”

She exhaled slowly. “…I still don’t like it.”

“I know. Just save the thinking for later, alright? Right now I’d prefer you alive.”

She gave a small nod.

A River chunin rushed in with twin blades, striking fast from both sides.

Mikoto met him head-on this time.

Good.

She blocked the first slash, turned her wrist, let the second skid past her shoulder, and drove a knee into his side. The enemy dropped an elbow and took the hit on his guard, forcing her back.

#138 flicked his wire.

Tzzip.

It looped around the enemy’s ankle. A sharp tug yanked his leg out from under him, and Mikoto reacted instantly, kunai dropping in a clean downward stab under the chin.

Thunk.

The body went still.

Tsume grinned. “Nice stab, Mikoto. That was—”

She yelped and ducked as an Iwa shinobi’s spinning cleaver screamed past her head.

She hit the dirt hard.

Whoom.

The blade skimmed over her hair and buried itself halfway into a tree behind her.

The Iwa shinobi was huge. Broad shoulders, thick arms, the build of someone who solved problems by breaking them in half. Tokubetsu jonin at least. Maybe a full one.

Way out of Tsume’s league.

He ripped the cleaver free and came again.

Fast.

Too fast.

Tsume rolled instinctively.

A wire snapped tight around her waist and jerked sideways.

Tzzzip!

The cleaver that should have split her spine instead crashed into the ground beside her ribs.

KRAK!

Mud and broken clods blasted across the ground.

She barely had time to breathe before the jonin moved again.

His boot came down like a hammer toward her chest.

Another wire flicked out.

Tzzzip!

The clone jerked her again, ripping her across the churned battlefield like a hooked fish.

She skidded through mud and smashed into a low root just as the Iwa shinobi’s boot crushed the ground.

BOOM.

The ground cratered.

“Hey,” Tsume called, still half on the ground. “Appreciate the save.”

“Don’t get used to it,” #138 replied from somewhere in the tree. “You’re supposed to dodge those on your own eventually.”

She pushed herself up on one elbow and snorted. “Yeah, well, when the guy’s twice my size and swinging a shovel for a sword, I’m gonna take the help.”

Even as he spoke, he was already moving.

A shadow clone burst out of the dirt beside the jonin.

Pak!

A palm slammed into the man’s elbow mid-swing, spoiling the arc of the cleaver.

The blade shrieked past Tsume’s shoulder instead of through her neck.

The jonin snapped a backhand toward the clone without even looking.

WHAM.

The clone slipped under it.

His palm smashed empty air while the clone folded low and slid past his flank like water.

Tok.

One foot touched the man’s hip. The clone vaulted away before the follow-up strike could land.

But the interruption bought half a second.

Tsume pushed off the root and sprang up, claws flashing.

Shhk!

The jonin’s arm blurred.

Tok!

He caught her wrist mid-strike.

Just like that.

Her claws stopped an inch from his throat.

His grip tightened.

Pain shot through her wrist like a spike driven through bone.

For a split second she met the jonin’s eyes.

And understood.

This was death.

The cleaver came up in his other hand.

Then a shadow dropped in behind him.

Pak!

A clone’s palm cracked into the nerve behind the jonin’s elbow.

Not enough to injure.

Just enough to kill the strength in the arm for half a second.

TZZIP!

A wire snapped tight around Tsume’s waist.

The clone twisted his hips and drove a second strike into the man’s shoulder joint.

Thk!

The grip failed for an instant.

That was all the wire needed.

Tsume was ripped backward out of his hand.

WHOOOM.

The cleaver ripped past her side and shredded the edge of her sleeve.

She slammed into the mud and skidded across the churned battlefield.

The jonin’s head turned slowly.

His elbow flexed once.

The arm worked again.

He looked at the clone now.

But Aya’s genjutsu hit first. Not full capture. Just distortion. The man saw Mikoto half a step to the right of where she really was and corrected toward the false image.

Bad choice.

Mikoto’s eyes spun. She twisted from the mud, kicked both hands up, and caught his weapon wrist between crossed claws. She could not overpower him. She did not need to.

She only had to hold him for half a second.

#138 slid on one knee under the descending arm, planted his free hand on the ground, and swung around the jonin’s body like a hooked hinge. His tanto snapped up in a short rising cut.

Shink.

The cut opened from inner thigh to hip.

The man roared and stumbled.

#138 flowed up with him. Elbow to floating ribs. Palm to sternum. Backfist to throat.

Bkt-bkt-bam.

The impacts blurred together.

Then he stepped past the jonin’s shoulder and drew the tanto backward across the kidneys as he went by.

The roar broke into a wet gasp.

Mikoto scrambled up and ended it with a stab to the throat.

Thunk.

The jonin collapsed.

For a moment the battlefield noise rushed back in around them.

Mikoto stood there, shoulders rising and falling.

“Hah… hah…”

Her kunai was still in her hand. She slowly pulled it free.

Her breathing was rough, chest heaving from the surge of adrenaline.

#138 glanced at her and flicked blood off his blade.

“At this rate, you’re going to rack up enough kills for them to promote you straight to jonin.”

Mikoto blinked at him.

Then she let out a small breath that almost sounded like a laugh. “…I’m not sure that’s how promotions work.”

“Sure it is,” he said. “You defeat enough people stronger than you, someone important eventually notices.”

She wiped a smear of blood from her eyes.

“I think they’re more likely to notice you.”

“That’s fine,” he said. “I’ll recommend you.”

Mikoto shook her head, but there was a faint smile there. “…Let’s survive the war first.”

#138 hummed softly.

Not a bad goal.

Survive the war.

Still.

Watching her just now, he found himself thinking something.

A battlefield like this was terrible in many ways.

But as a teacher?

It was excellent.

Brutal, yes.

Unfair, absolutely.

But extremely honest.

Real enemies. Real fear. Real death standing one mistake away.

You couldn’t fake growth here.

If Mikoto kept walking out of encounters like that alive…

Her instincts would sharpen.

Her timing would tighten.

Her rank might start climbing faster than anyone expected.

Not the kind of training most people recommended.

A little too lethal for what genin were supposed to be doing.

Then again.

This was war.

And war had always been very good at teaching things quickly.

Tsume hissed softly and shook her arm.

The cleaver had torn her sleeve open.

Mikoto caught her wrist before she could move away.

“Hold still.”

A shadow clone stepped in beside them.

Green light gathered in his palm.

She leaned closer, fingers parting the torn cloth so the clone could see the cut clearly.

The chakra sank into the wound.

The bleeding stopped.

Skin pulled itself closed.

Tsume made a face. “You two fuss too much.”

The clone snorted. “You nearly lost that arm.”

#138 didn’t join the conversation.

He stood a few steps away, shoulders loose, the blade held loosely near his thigh.

His eyes moved across the smoke.

Listening past the noise.

Past the shouting.

For the wrong sound.

The hidden breath.

The faint killing intent that meant someone had set their sights on them.

There.

Upper left.

Tree line beyond the split cedar.

Three hostiles.

He moved before speaking.

“Three incoming at eleven o’clock.”

A burst of kunai came out of the smoke.

Tchk-tchk-tchk!

Aya snapped up a hand. “Doton: Doryūheki!”

A wall of earth surged up in front of them, taking the barrage in a shower of sparks and cracking steel.

Before the dust settled, #138 was already running up the wall.

His boots hit vertical earth like level ground.

At the top he kicked off into open air.

The battlefield stretched out beneath him in the distance, huge and hideous. Fires. Bodies. Clones detonating in bright orange flowers. Konoha shinobi dragging wounded comrades behind broken roots while enemy jutsu chewed the land apart.

He took it in with a single glance.

Then he dropped back into the fight.

And the war kept going.

So did they.

Hours dissolved into repetition. Fight. Move. Kill. Heal. Repeat.

When someone took a bad hit, a clone appeared beside them with green chakra already glowing. Iryōninjutsu closed cuts just enough to keep people moving. Not perfect healing. Just enough to keep the body from falling apart.

Then they were pushed back into the fight.

Again.

And again.

Tsume started complaining after the first hour.

“You know,” she said at one point while ducking a flying kunai, “most people would call this overworking.”

Another clone patched the cut on her shoulder while she talked.

“You’re pushing us like crazy.”

“That just means you’re still alive enough to complain,” #138 said. “Keep going.”

Aya hid a quiet laugh behind a jagged earth ridge.

Tsume kept complaining.

Mikoto didn’t.

#138 noticed that after a while.

She fought.

She bled.

She got healed.

Then she went back in again without a word.

No complaints. No hesitation.

Just that look in her eyes.

A quiet fire.

Ambition maybe. Determination. Something sharper than simple stubbornness.

#138 didn’t know the reason behind it.

But he saw it.

And once you noticed something like that, it was hard to ignore.

Tsume pushed because she refused to lose.

Mikoto pushed because she wanted to become stronger.

Those were different things.

Very different.

He watched her cut down a chunin and immediately turn toward the next opponent.

The movements were still rough in places. The reactions half a second slower than they should be.

But the foundation was there.

Solid.

She wasn’t a genius.

Not like Itachi.

Not one of those monsters who walked into the world already sharpened.

But that didn’t mean she couldn’t become something close.

#138 couldn’t turn her into a monster.

But he could probably turn her into a little monster.

The method was simple.

Push.

Then push again.

And if she survived that, push harder.

So he did.

Mikoto started seeing more enemies than the others.

Not enough to kill her. Never that.

But enough to force her to grow.

He created the openings.

Broke enemy rhythm.

Turned killing blows a hair off their mark.

Whenever something slipped past Mikoto’s guard, a shadow clone appeared to shove the danger aside.

She fought.

He made sure she lived long enough to learn from it.

Sometimes he healed her himself.

Then sent her back in.

Over.

And over.

The battlefield was a brutal teacher.

But it was also very efficient.

Two hours later Mikoto was moving differently.

Sharper.

Faster.

And #138 found himself watching her more closely than the others.

Not that he was ignoring Tsume and Aya.

Of course not.

Aya was already a jonin. Someone at that level didn’t grow just because you pushed them a little harder. Real improvement for someone like her took time, experience, and things #138 couldn’t manufacture in the middle of a battlefield. If there were shortcuts to that, he couldn’t think of any right now.

Tsume…

Well.

Tsume was Tsume.

She would get there eventually. Probably by headbutting every problem in existence until the world gave up and called it growth.

He was fairly confident about that.

So his attention drifted elsewhere.

He was just…

Paying a little more attention to Mikoto.

In any case, the result was the same.

Another enemy fell.

Mikoto stepped over the body.

And the war continued teaching its lessons.

Then the forest screamed.

SKREEEE—

It wasn’t one voice.

It was dozens of shinobi.

They screamed—

—and something erased the rest of the sound.

Like it had been carved away.

Light followed.

WHUMMM—

It spilled through the trees in pale sheets, sliding between leaves, turning the drifting smoke silver-white.

#138’s head snapped toward it.

“…That’s not a normal jutsu,” Aya said quietly.

“It’s not,” #138 replied. “That’s Dust Release. There’s only one person on this battlefield who can do that.”

Aya followed his gaze, her expression tightening just a little. “Onoki… so he finally decided to show himself.”

“I’ll go deal with him. Just… stay back and let the clones handle things, and—”

She shook her head lightly. “You don’t have to convince us. We already know we’d only slow you down.”

Mikoto’s eyes flicked once toward the distant glow, then back to him. There was no panic in her face. Just understanding, and maybe a little frustration at understanding too quickly. “We’ll help the clones clear the perimeter instead,” she said. “You and your clones can handle keeping him away from us. I don’t like it, but I’m not stupid enough to fight with a Kage.”

Tsume wiped blood off her chin with the back of her hand and snorted. “Yeah, no, I’m brave, not suicidal. I can tear into chunin all day and feel pretty good about myself, but if you throw me at a Tsuchikage I’m just going to become a life lesson for somebody else. Go deal with him. We’ll make sure the area around here doesn’t collapse while you’re busy being insane.”

#138 looked at Aya. “Take care of them. Keep moving and stay low. Don’t pick fights above your level, and let the clones handle the rest. Your safety comes first.”

She met his eyes. “We’ll be fine,” she said gently. “There are already plenty of your clones around, so it’s actually hard for things to go wrong. Just focus on what you need to do. Leave this side to us.”

He nodded once, then moved.

Shun.

His body shot through the trees, branch to branch, bark exploding under his sandals. FWSSH. FWSSH. FWSSH. Around him, Konoha shinobi were already rushing the same way, and between them came more clones, all of them moving through the forest with that same relentless speed.

The screaming got louder.

Then he saw it.

A white beam the width of a road swept across the battlefield with a sound like the world grinding its teeth. KRRRRSHHHH.

Men didn’t fall.

They didn’t burn, didn’t break, didn’t even have the decency to leave something behind that could be called a body.

They were there, moving, shouting, trying to live.

And then they weren’t.

Just a clean absence carved into the battlefield.

Just… erased.

Like someone had reached down and rubbed them out of the world with a hand.

Konoha nin, clone bodies, trees, earth, stone, everything in its path simply ceased to be. Onoki hovered above the ruined ground like some bitter little god, his old body tiny against the destruction beneath him. Then he swung the beam sideways. FWOOOOOM. Another line of shinobi disappeared. The trees behind them followed. The ground itself sheared away in a glowing cut.

#138 stopped on a thick branch just outside the killing range and watched.

For a brief second, he went still.

It was like watching a man step into an anthill.

That was all they were to Onoki right now. Ants. Hundreds of them. Charging, scattering, dying.

And worse, the old bastard had already figured it out.

Every time a wave of clones got close, Onoki rose higher into the air and drifted back, never giving them clean distance. Whenever a group pushed too aggressively, he picked them out and erased them first, the beam flashing and leaving nothing behind. He was already avoiding the exploding clones. Either he was that sharp… or someone had told him.

Below, clones sprinted and twisted through the bombardment, shouting at nearby Konoha forces to fall back and leave the Tsuchikage to them. Onoki answered by carving up the earth from above, keeping all the advantages where he liked them.

#138 watched him for a few seconds more.

Then he drew his blade.

Shhk.

He flicked the blade into a quick roll across his fingers, then caught it with a sharp twist of his wrist. Even so, this wasn’t a losing fight. Onoki could erase them as many times as he wanted. They would just keep coming back. Unlike the old man in the sky, he and his brothers did not have to care about running dry. Moryo kept pouring chakra into the system like a river that had forgotten how to end. That meant this could become a contest of patience if necessary.

But first things first.

Air superiority was a problem, and he had no intention of letting Onoki keep it.

He rested the tanto against his shoulder and looked up at the floating Kage.

Alright then, old man, he thought.

First, let’s clip your wings.