Hidden Leaf, Hidden Talents 101 (Patreon)

By seven in the evening, the smell of rendered bone marrow had completely taken over the farmhouse.

Shinji set the last plate down and stepped back. The elk loin was seared dark at the edges, resting on a shallow pool of smoked marrow jus, with a scattering of charred herbs along the rim. He felt good about it. Not just good, actually. It was a solid piece of work.

He wiped his hands on a cloth and reached for his tea. "So where did you get the marrow? Because elk bones are way too gamey for this. You're not getting a clean jus out of those."

The handler looked up from his clipboard. "There's a slaughter shed about a kilometer down the road. The clones took down a cow this morning, so I had one of them grab some leg bones while they were at it."

Shinji nodded. Cow leg bones were the right call. Elk would have turned the whole jus muddy and sharp, and the dish would have ended up somewhere between edible and forgettable. Of course the handler had known that. Shinji just appreciated that he'd bothered. "That was good thinking."

"I know," the handler said, and went back to his clipboard. He flipped a page, then said without looking up, "Oh, and an update came in about an hour ago. Suna's down to roughly two thousand. The rest pulled back into Wind Country and haven't moved since."

Shinji reached for his tea. Two thousand out of six thousand, which meant they'd lost two-thirds of their army in a single day and decided Wind Country was a better place to be than wherever his clones were. Hard to argue with that logic, honestly. He was fairly confident they'd stay put, but fairly confident and completely certain were different things. "Send some clones to the Wind Country border tonight. I just want eyes on it, nothing crazy. If those two thousand decide to stop licking their wounds and start moving again, I want to know before they get anywhere near us."

"After dinner?" the handler said.

"After dinner."

He had just poured a second cup of tea when the door opened.

Tsunade walked in first, still in her jonin vest, looking like someone who had been awake for about eighteen hours. She was tired. He could tell because her eyes were doing slightly less work than usual.

Shinji smiled right away. "Welcome back, Sensei."

She looked at him, and some of the weariness in her face softened. “I'm back.” Then she glanced at the table and back at him. “You cooked again.”

"I did," he said. "And thank you for your hard work today, Sensei."

He stepped in before she could say anything else and started helping her out of her jonin vest. Tsunade gave him a sidelong look halfway between suspicion and amusement, but she didn’t stop him. She just let him lift the weight off her shoulders and take it from her as if this was a perfectly normal thing to do.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He hung the vest neatly by the wall. "Being a good and respectful student. I do that sometimes."

Then she tipped her head toward the doorway behind her.

"So how come you're not helping Orochimaru too?" she asked. "He looks worse than I do."

Shinji looked past her. Orochimaru was standing just inside the doorway, covered in what appeared to be a significant portion of someone else's bad day. Shinji looked at him for a second, then back at Tsunade. "He's fine."

"He has blood all over him."

"That's not his blood."

Orochimaru considered this. "He's not wrong," he said, and came inside.

"Wash your hands before you sit down, Sensei." Then he looked at Orochimaru. "Orochimaru-san, I don't know whose blood that is, but it's not coming anywhere near my dining room."

Orochimaru looked at his hands, then walked to the washroom without saying anything. Tsunade watched him until he was gone, then looked at Shinji.

"He just listened to you," she said.

"Stop standing around and go wash your hands. The food's getting cold."

She looked at the table. She'd been too tired to really see it when she walked in, but she saw it now. It was the best looking food she'd ever seen in her life, including every expensive restaurant she'd ever been dragged to in the capital, and those places had tried very hard.

"Okay, what am I looking at," she said. It wasn't really a question. She was still looking at the table.

"Elk loin," Shinji said. "Smoked marrow jus."

A pause.

"You made that. Here."

"I did."

"In this farmhouse. With this kitchen."

"I am not sure what answer you are expecting me to give you that is different from the first one."

He put his hand on her back and steered her toward the washroom. "Go." When she came back Orochimaru was already behind her, hands clean, looking like nothing had ever been on them.

Shinji pulled out a chair for her. "Sit down," he said. "You look exhausted."

"I am exhausted," she said, though she let him guide her down into the chair. "Which is why I'm telling you this now before the food distracts me. Orochimaru and I are heading back to the Land of Fire after this. The Konoha forces there still need help dealing with the two Kage and their army."

Shinji nodded. He'd already figured something like that was coming. Hiruzen was down and the front was still a mess, and Tsunade wasn't the type to sit around in River Country once she had a reason to leave. “Yeah,” he said. “You should go.”

"Are you going to be alright out here by yourself?"

"I have six hundred clones and a handler who knows where to find good leg bones," Shinji said. "I'll be fine."

Which was fewer clones than he'd had yesterday, and fewer than he'd had the day before that. Moryo had done most of the damage. Suna had done the rest.

He reached over and moved the jus closer to her plate. "You're not saving anyone on an empty stomach. Eat first, sleep after, then go be a hero."

"You're very bossy today," she said.

"I am like this all the time, you just haven’t been around enough to notice," Shinji said, and picked up his chopsticks. "Itadakimasu."

She picked up hers. "Itadakimasu."

Orochimaru, who had been quietly in his seat for the last two minutes, did the same.

She took the first bite, and her whole body went still. The marrow jus coated her tongue first, thick and smoky, and then the elk loin, seared dark on the outside but so tender on the inside. A small "Mmph" escaped through her lips before she could stop it. She swallowed. By the time she went back for the second piece, any pretense of eating at a normal pace was already gone.

Shinji saw that and laughed. "Take it easy, there is plenty."

She kept chewing, lifted a finger at him without looking up, and went in for another piece.

Across from her, Orochimaru quietly did the same.

Shinji shook his head. "Seriously, when was the last time either of you had a meal?"

She swallowed and reached for another piece. "I am going back out there tomorrow and there is no telling when I get to eat like this again. You have no idea how much I am going to miss this."

He chuckled and nodded toward her plate. "That is actually a good thing. Even the best food in the world gets old if you are eating it every day."

She shook her head, mouth full. "Not this. I would eat this every single day and never get tired of it."

"Oh, right," he said. "I already figured out that super strength technique you showed me yesterday."

Tsunade choked so hard she had to turn her head and bring a fist to her mouth. Shinji slid the cup toward her across the table before she could even ask.

After a long drink, she set it down and stared at him. “Yesterday,” she said. "I just showed you that yesterday."

Shinji looked back at her, amused. “Yeah, I know. That’s why I was feeling pretty good about today.”

She pointed her chopsticks at him. "Also, don’t ever call my technique a trick. It’s not a trick."

He answered by placing another piece on her plate. She accepted the peace offering without a word and ate it. The sauce went first, then the meat, and a second later he heard the small pull of breath through her lips.

As soon as she swallowed, he said, "Oh, right, I forgot to mention. I am going with you and Orochimaru to Fire Country tomorrow."

That started her coughing all over again. By the time she had washed it down with another glass of water, Shinji was on the floor with Tsunade’s arm around his neck, already asking for mercy. Orochimaru didn’t even look up. He dragged a piece through the jus, ate it, and pulled the last of the sauce in with a slurp.

A few minutes later, she was back to eating like nothing had happened. Shinji sat beside the table rubbing at his neck while she dragged another piece through the jus.

"You were serious about that, then. You are actually coming back to Fire Country with me?"

He nodded. “Yeah.”

Her chopsticks slowed. “And what exactly happens to the western front while you go wandering off with me?”

“Handler already has it covered.”

She frowned. “That doesn’t make me feel better, Shinji. That just means you’re leaving a war front to your clone.”

"You should be more worried if I said I was leaving it to anybody else," Shinji said. "He already handled most of our problems out here, including the reports, the paperwork, the briefings, and all the standing around tables pointing at maps. At this point, I am just extra."

Tsunade didn’t look convinced. She let out a quiet breath and went back to her food, but the crease between her brows stayed there. She knew perfectly well what his clones could do. Everyone on this side of the war knew. Konoha was still holding the western front because his copies had thrown themselves into every gap, every fire, every ugly little disaster that would have turned into something worse without them. That was not the issue. The issue was him. She had seen what too many clones did to him, seen the headaches turn vicious, seen his mind get dragged raw by too much memory coming back too fast. Leaving him here was not just the sensible option to her. It felt safer.

Shinji, unfortunately, knew her well enough to see exactly where the argument had stalled.

So he changed tactics.

He leaned toward Orochimaru and murmured a few things too low for her to catch, and whatever he said was clearly chosen like he was baiting a very elegant snake. Orochimaru’s eyes shifted, faintly amused. Then, Orochimaru, still eating, added a few quiet words of his own. Between Shinji’s persistence, Orochimaru’s support, and several more minutes of back-and-forth that somehow became a negotiation despite never sounding like one, she was finally dragged to a reluctant yes. Not a happy yes, not even a normal yes, but it was still a yes all the same.

After they finished, the plates were stacked across the table in a messy little tower of clean bones, sauce streaks, and empty bowls. Orochimaru took a cloth, wiped his mouth, and smoothed it flat on the table before letting it go.

For a moment, Orochimaru said nothing. Then he looked at Shinji. "There is a group of River Country refugees south of here," he said. "I passed through their camp on the way back. They have taken over an abandoned village."

Shinji looked up.

Orochimaru reached for his drink. “What do you plan to do with them?”

That bought the table a brief silence.

If Tsunade had asked that, Shinji would have known where the question was going. Food. Shelter. Medicine. The whole respectable menu of decent human concern. But this was Orochimaru, so naturally his brain skipped past every reasonable answer and went straight into the swamp. Did he mean they were a problem and should be removed before they became someone else’s inconvenience? Did he mean something even worse than that? With Orochimaru, there was always room for worse.

Then he remembered the little girl.

The one who had stabbed him.

One of his clones had taken her there afterward. Which meant she was in that village right now, along with the rest of them. Shinji let out a slow breath. Yeah, no. That was not happening. Whatever Orochimaru was getting at here, the answer was going to be no.

Even so, Shinji didn’t think Orochimaru was going to accept a simple no. That felt optimistic to the point of stupidity. With Orochimaru, it was often smarter to start a little to the side and work your way in.

So Shinji put on his most serious face.

"I think I know what you are getting at, Orochimaru-san," he said. "But wiping them all out seems a little excessive. We could just wall them in. Throw up a big earth wall around the village, nobody gets out, nobody gets in. Problem solved."

The table went quiet.

Tsunade looked at him.

Orochimaru looked at him.

It was not a good silence. It was the sort of silence a person received when he had just said something so insane it needed a moment to fully arrive in other people’s brains.

Then Orochimaru sighed. Actually sighed. “Shinji-kun, I am genuinely disappointed by how quickly your thoughts leapt to mass killing.”

Shinji blinked.

Orochimaru folded his hands loosely and continued. "Just so we are all clear, randomly butchering a village full of refugees would be considered going too far even by wartime shinobi standards. And that bar is already in a ditch."

Across the table, Tsunade let out a long, tired breath and pressed two fingers to her forehead. "That one is partly on me," she said. "I apparently spent months teaching my student how to fight and never once stopped to cover basic human decency."

Shinji’s eyes went wide. He looked at her like she had just slapped him with a frying pan, then turned to Orochimaru, then back to her again.

He opened his mouth. "I was not even, I mean, that is not what I was, you were clearly the one who made it sound like—"

His words died on the table.

Tsunade broke first, laughing into her hand, and Orochimaru followed a moment later with a softer laugh of his own.

She waved a hand at Shinji's face. "Relax, stop making that face. I was messing with you. Consider that payback for all the teasing you put me through."

"What she said," Orochimaru added mildly. "And also for the fact that you heard me ask a simple question and immediately decided I was proposing a war crime."

Shinji was still staring. "You absolutely made it sound like you wanted me to go out there and kill them."

"I was not. I was asking because I noticed several suspicious people blended into the group. River Country intelligence, most likely."

Shinji nodded slowly. "Okay. That is a very different conversation." He thought about it for a moment, then looked back at Orochimaru. "In that case, what do you think we should do?"

Tsunade snorted. “Why are you asking him? You’ve been running half this front through your clones for days now. At this point you are the commander out here in everything but title. So come up with your own answer."

He nodded. "Yeah, fair point."

Then he turned toward the kitchen.

Handler was sitting in the kitchen with a plate in one hand, stuffing meat into his mouth so fast his cheeks had gone round. When all three of them looked at him, he blinked innocently.

Shinji pointed with his chopsticks. “Good. Then I’ll leave the refugee problem with you.”

Handler went still.

Shinji thought that was only reasonable. He was about to leave with Tsunade anyway. The problem was here, Handler was here, and therefore the problem had found its proper home. Handler, judging by the look in his eyes, didn’t agree.

Before he could object, the farmhouse door slammed open.

A clone stumbled in hard enough to catch himself on the frame, chest heaving, breath coming fast. Everyone at the table turned toward him.

"Something bad just happened," he said, still trying to catch his breath.

…

-Clone #1349 - Clone Factory Camp, West of Kawazumi Outpost-

Meanwhile, far to the east, #1349 was sitting cross-legged in the dark with nine other clones, all of them spaced along the edge of the camp in well-worn little pockets of stillness, eyes shut, hands resting on their knees as they pulled in what chakra they could. The camp spread wide through the trees and broken ground, lanterns burning low, cookfires reduced to red coals, hundreds of clones scattered through the night in that same quiet. From a distance it might have looked peaceful.

It was not peaceful.

It was maintenance. Survival. The whole machine only kept moving because Shinji’s clones could spend themselves, recover, and send more bodies where the line was thinning. Everyone here understood that. It was the cycle of the war now. Burn chakra. Recover chakra. Make more clones. Repeat until either the enemy broke or they did.

Then #1349 frowned.

Something was wrong.

He stayed still for another few seconds, waiting for the usual slow trickle of chakra to come back.

Nothing came.

His eyes opened.

“My chakra isn’t coming back,” he said.

One of the clones to his left opened his eyes too. "I was about to say the same thing."

Another looked down at his own hands. "Same here. It just stopped."

#1349 straightened as the others around him started coming out of it one by one. Eyes opened. Backs uncurled. Hands turned over, then clenched, then opened again like that might somehow change what they felt. A few went still and checked again, as if the second look might find something the first one missed. One clone jerked to his feet. Another muttered a curse under his breath. Somebody off to the right said he had been running low already and was just about to make another batch, but now nothing was coming in anymore. The usual chakra regen was just... gone. Not even a thin little trickle was coming in anymore.

Then the noise started spreading.

All across the camp, clones were coming out of meditation with the same expression on their faces. First confusion, then the slow, ugly turn into alarm. They were scattered through the trees, between the tents, across the churned dirt, but all of them were finding the same thing at the same time. The chakra that was supposed to be coming back was not coming back. The stillness broke apart after that. Men started calling to each other, asking if anyone else felt it too, and getting the same answer from every direction.

#1349 got to his feet.

Sweat had gathered at his temples at some point. He could feel it now, one line of it sliding down his cheek while his mind kept circling the same dead end and finding nothing there.

Why?

How?

He looked out over the camp and watched the mood change in real time. Confusion was bad enough. Fear was worse. Once that got into a camp, it spread faster than fire and usually did more damage. Something cold settled in his chest as he watched clone after clone realize this was not just their own problem. It was all of them.

The western front was still standing because bodies kept showing up where bodies were needed. Every loss could be answered with another wave. That was the whole ugly trick of it. Shinji’s clone army had turned chakra into numbers, numbers into manpower, and manpower into the only thing keeping Konoha from getting crushed under two Kage and the armies behind them.

The Tsuchikage.

The Kazekage.

Their armies.

#1349’s stomach dropped.

If the clones couldn’t regenerate chakra, they couldn’t keep making more of themselves. If they couldn’t keep making more, the line would start getting thinner by the hour. And once the line started thinning, the two Kage would do what Kage did. They would hit the weak place, tear it open, and keep tearing until there was nothing left to hold. If that happened, Konoha was going to lose this war.

Around him, the camp had turned loud with voices. Hundreds of clones were calling over each other, throwing out questions, guesses, and half-formed fixes, all of them trying to find some way around this disaster and all of them coming up empty. #1349 couldn’t think of a single good answer either, but he knew doing nothing would be worse than any bad plan. He pointed at one clone and ordered him to dispel himself and send the intel back to Shinji and HQ. Then he told the others to move. They were going to Kawazumi Outpost to report to Commander Minoru and figure out what they were supposed to do next before this got any worse.

…

A few hours later…

The Third Kazekage was not a man who smiled easily, least of all on a battlefield, but he felt a quiet satisfaction as he looked over the fighting below.

Konoha’s line hadn’t broken yet. That much was true. Their shinobi were still fighting hard enough to keep the collapse from happening, still throwing men into the bloodiest parts of the field fast enough to stop Suna and Iwa from tearing straight through. But the weakness was there now. The Third Kazekage could see it without trying. There were fewer bodies moving to answer each breach. Fewer fresh shinobi arriving to replace the dead. Sections of the battlefield that had been thick with Konoha resistance an hour ago had started to look worn down. Not broken yet. Just less able to keep killing at the rate this battle demanded.

The clones were changing too, and that was just as important. For the last few days, Black Death’s copies had been one of the main reasons Konoha had managed to stay in this fight at all. They threw themselves into the worst parts of the battlefield without hesitation, swarmed his men in numbers that turned clean victories into expensive ones, and used suicide attacks with a level of shamelessness that made them disgusting to fight and even worse to fight successfully. They had made themselves into the answer to every hole in Konoha’s line. Every time Suna and Iwa killed enough men to open the field up, more clones arrived to close it again.

But over the last hour, that had changed.

He saw one of the clones dart into a knot of fighting where three Konoha shinobi were trying not to get swallowed by a Suna push. Earlier, that same clone would have gone for the obvious answer and the most irritating one. It would have thrown itself into the center and tried to take as many men with it as possible. Instead, this one grabbed a wounded Konoha shinobi by the back of his vest, hauled him out of the press, and dropped a wall of earth behind them to slow pursuit.

A little farther left, his iron sand speared through another cluster of clones and shredded them apart in a spray of dirt and smoke. An hour ago, those survivors would have kept coming anyway. They would have kept coming, throwing themselves forward with the same ugly disregard as before. Now the remaining clones broke away the moment the sand moved toward them, scattering back, buying time, avoiding direct contact.

He saw another group too, four clones near a battered section of Konoha’s line. They were not pressing forward. They were cycling through defensive jutsu instead, throwing up earthwalls, dragging the wounded back, delaying, stalling, doing everything except the one thing they had been doing all day, which was throwing their own lives at the problem until the problem exploded.

Interesting.

For Suna, that was very good news.

Konoha had only managed to hold this long because every time enough of their men died to make a gap, clones arrived to plug it before Suna and Iwa could widen it. That had been the ugly truth of this battlefield. His iron sand killed. The Tsuchikage’s Dust Release killed even more thoroughly. And every time it should have been enough to tear the line open, more clones appeared and kept the collapse from happening.

That was changing now. Fewer clones were reaching the field, and the ones already on it had stopped spending themselves so freely. They were stalling, dragging the wounded back. Useful things, perhaps, but not the things that had kept Konoha alive. And Kazekage found that deeply encouraging.

"They are running out of time," he said. "It will not be long now."

At this rate, Konoha’s outpost should fall by tomorrow. Once it did, everything behind it would start coming apart. Their whole position on this front would collapse, and the rest of the war would follow soon enough.

Konoha would lose.

That should have been enough to satisfy him.

It wasn’t.

His mind returned to the same irritation that had been needling him all day. Their rear had gone silent for three days. No messenger had come back. Silence like that didn’t happen by accident. Something was wrong there.

He turned to one of the shinobi nearby. "Have we heard anything?"

The man stiffened immediately, which told the Kazekage enough before the answer even came.

"Still nothing, Kazekage-sama. No contact with our supply depot or the garrison at the southern pass. It has been three days now. We have sent four separate messengers. None of them have come back."

The Kazekage went still.

Three days.

At that point it was no longer a delayed report or bad timing or one unlucky team getting swallowed by rough ground or an enemy patrol at the wrong moment. Three days of silence from the rear was its own answer, and every messenger sent to mend that silence had disappeared into it the same way. He felt his jaw set before he even realized it. That was not a minor problem to deal with later. Whatever was happening behind them was already getting worse, and ignoring it would only make it bigger.

His first thought was Konoha. But Konoha's main force was right here in front of him, bleeding and thinning and barely holding its ground. They had already crushed the Third Hokage's army. The old man was either dead or close to it. Konoha didn’t have the manpower to open a second front behind Suna's lines while simultaneously losing the one in front of them. It wasn’t possible.

Could it be another country? A smaller force trying to profit from the chaos? Bandits didn’t have this kind of discipline. River Country didn’t have the nerve for it either. Then Hanzo, perhaps? The salamander had been quiet throughout this war, sitting in his rain-soaked village and watching everyone else bleed. Too quiet, maybe. Ame shared borders with both Fire and River Country, and Hanzo had never been the kind of man who let other people's wars happen near his territory without finding some way to profit from them. If he had decided that Suna's rear lines were an easy target while the Kazekage was occupied at the front...

His frown deepened.

No. Possibilities could wait. Confirmation couldn’t.

He looked at the shinobi again. "Send a fast recon squad out right now. I want eyes on the rear routes, the relay points, and the supply line." His voice sharpened. "And get a sensor sweep going."

“Yes, Kazekage-sama.”

The shinobi vanished at once.

He stood there a moment longer, watching his iron waves crash across the battlefield. They moved like a black tide, rolling over the ground in heavy surges that swallowed everything in their path. A group of Konoha shinobi scattered before the next wave hit, pulling back hard with the clones’ help.

Good.

That was very good.

“Keep pushing,” he ordered.

His order carried down the line, and within seconds the pressure doubled. Suna-nin hit the left flank where two clones had just popped and nobody replaced them. They hit the center where a squad of Konoha chunin were already pulling a wounded man back. They hit a ridge position that had held firm for two days and watched it give ground for the first time.

Konoha wasn't broken. But it was doing something it hadn't done before. It was shrinking. Pulling tighter. Fighting smaller. The Kazekage watched it happen from the ridge with his arms folded and his iron sand drifting lazily around him like a living cloak. He'd seen armies die before. They all did the same thing at the end. They got small. And an army that starts fighting smaller has already started losing.

…

-Shinji-

So there I was, running for my life. Or not my life, exactly. More like running for the life of everyone else's life that depended on my life, which, when you think about it, is way more stressful than just running for your own.

The Land of Rivers blurred past in long streaks of brown and grey. Dry hills, thin rivers, rocks that weren't worth looking at twice. Tsunade was on my left, Orochimaru on my right, and the three of us were moving at a speed that would've made a horse cry and file a complaint. We'd been running for hours. Not that it mattered much physically. Shinobi legs don't quit that easy. It was my brain that was getting tired of staring at the same ugly scenery.

The news had come in while I was still chewing my last bite of dinner, because the universe had apparently decided that I wasn’t allowed to finish a single meal in peace during this entire war. I was starting to think there was a cosmic rule somewhere that said Shinji is not permitted to enjoy food without something catching fire or falling apart or trying to kill him. And no, that one time I managed to eat three onigiri behind a supply tent doesn't count. Eating while crouching behind something is survival, not dining.

But that's not important right now. What's important is what the clone told me three seconds after I swallowed my third bite.

My clones had stopped regenerating chakra.

Let me say that again, because it deserves to sink in properly.

My clones. The ones holding the entire war together. The ones keeping Suna, River, and Iwa’s tens of thousands of men from rolling over our positions like a carpet. The ones plugging every gap, fighting every skirmish, dying and coming back and dying again so that real people didn’t have to. Those clones. They stopped regenerating.

Which meant every single one of them was now running on whatever chakra they had left. No refills. No second wind. Just a slow, quiet countdown to nothing.

If the clone army disappeared, the western front collapsed. If the western front collapsed, Suna and Iwa got their supply lines back. If they got their supply lines back, the two Kage and their army would stop starving and start getting fed, armed, and reinforced. And a well-fed Kage with fresh troops wasn’t something Konoha could survive right now.

All because one ancient demon threw a tantrum.

I sighed hard enough that the wind probably heard it.

Before we left, I'd pulled the handler aside and laid it out for him. Keep guarding the river passages. Don't let Suna or River retake the routes. And most importantly, pull the clones back from aggressive operations. No more raids, no more offensives, no more burning things down for fun. Every clone that popped now was gone forever, so treat each one like he was the last guy at a party who still had the car keys. You don't send that guy to pick a fight. You sit him down, give him water, and tell him to stay alive until the ride's over.

As for why this happened, well. That part was embarrassingly simple.

Moryo.

The ancient demon living in my gut had decided to stop sharing. And honestly? I couldn't even blame her that much. The last report I'd gotten from the clone network was that my clones had pranked her. Again. Not the tomato thing this time. No, they'd graduated past that. And the last straw, apparently, was a poop prank. I didn't get the full details, but the words 'poop' and 'Moryo' had appeared in the same sentence, and she was livid. My clones had hit an ancient world-ending demon with a poop prank, and she was so livid she'd shut down the entire chakra pipeline out of pure spite.

So no more chakra flowing from her to me. No more energy trickling through the seal into my clones. Just... nothing. Like someone had reached inside me and turned off a faucet I didn't even know was there until the water stopped.

I wanted to be angry. I really did. But the thing about being angry at a sealed demon who lives in your stomach is that there's nowhere for the anger to go. She can't hear me. I can't negotiate with her. I can't exactly send a formal apology letter that opens with 'Dear Moryo, I sincerely regret the poop incident' and expect her to read past the first line.

"You're thinking too loud," Tsunade said without looking at me. "I can practically hear it from here."

"I'm trying to figure out how to apologize to a demon for something my clones did," I said. "It's a new experience for me."

"Maybe start with sorry my clones blew you up."

"That's the thing. She wasn't angry about the explosions. I mean, she was, but that's not what set her off this time. It was the last prank they pulled."

Tsunade was quiet for a few steps. Then, like someone who already knew she was going to regret asking, "...What kind of prank?"

"A poop prank."

Tsunade: "…"

Orochimaru: "…"

She didn't say anything for about ten seconds. Then she let out a sigh so long and so deep that I was genuinely worried she'd run out of air mid-sprint. "We're finished," she said. "Konoha is finished. Because if it were me, I wouldn't forgive you either.”

"Sensei... that's cold. You're supposed to say something encouraging right now. Like 'we'll figure it out' or 'I believe in you.'"

"I believe you're an idiot. How's that?"

“…”

"It's too soon to give up," Orochimaru said from my right.

I almost teared up. "Orochimaru-san. Thank you. At least someone here still has faith in me."

"I wouldn't call it faith. I'd call it not having better options." And just like that, he kept going, ignoring my complaint. "Shinji-kun, you should attempt to make contact with her. Apologize for the prank. And more importantly, come to some kind of arrangement. She wants something. Everything sealed wants something. And then see if there's a deal to be made." He didn't look at me, but his tone got a little harder. "Her chakra isn't a convenience. It's the reason you're the Black Death. Your S-rank status, your clone army, the fact that Konoha is still standing against three countries at once, all of it runs on what she gives you. So find a way to convince her."

I chewed on that for a few steps. He was right, obviously. Without Moryo's chakra, the Black Death was just a scary nickname attached to a guy who couldn't back it up anymore. And a scary nickname without the power behind it was just advertising for people who wanted to test you.

"And how exactly do I convince an ancient demon who hates my guts to start sharing chakra again?"

"That," Orochimaru said, "is an excellent question."

He didn't offer an answer. He just kept running, face as flat and unreadable as ever. I had no idea if he was worried, amused, or mentally drafting a research paper about demon negotiation tactics. With Orochimaru, all three were equally possible.

I looked ahead. The terrain was starting to change. The sparse hills of River Country were gradually giving way to thicker trees, greener grass, denser air. We were getting close to the border. Another few hours and we'd be back in Fire Country, back where the real mess was waiting.

The sensor on our flank suddenly stiffened. "We've got company. Twelve people coming straight at us from the front. Looks like a squad."

I glanced at him. Then blinked. I'd honestly forgotten this guy was running with us. He'd been so quiet for the last hour that he'd basically become part of the scenery. What was his name again? Ko-something. Kota? Koichi? No, that wasn't it either. You know what, let's just call him Sensor-kun.

"Good catch, Sensor-kun," I said. "But twelve signatures? Could be another Suna messenger squad."

"Another?" Orochimaru said.

"Yeah, the clones caught one a while back. Put him in the basement under the farmhouse for interrogation."

"What did you learn?"

"Nothing useful. Guy didn't know anything I didn't already have from our own intel." I scratched my cheek. "After that, I kind of forgot about him."

"You forgot about a prisoner?"

"It was a busy day." I thought about it for another second. "Actually, now I'm wondering if anyone remembered to feed him. If not, then... yeah, he might not be doing too great right now."

Tsunade's stare could have peeled paint. She looked like she had about fifteen things to say about that, but the twelve signatures were getting closer, so she swallowed all of them and went with. "Stay behind us. You can't spam clones anymore, and your chakra isn't infinite right now. Let Orochimaru and me handle this."

"Sensei, I'm still an elite jonin," I said. "Just because I can't flood the field with a thousand copies of myself doesn't mean I forgot how to fight. As long as nobody out there is secretly a Kage, I'll be fine."

"And if one of them is?"

"Then I'll run very fast in the other direction. I'm good at that too."

She looked like she wanted to hit me. Orochimaru looked like he agreed with her. Sensor-kun just kept running and pretended he wasn't here.

I cracked my knuckles. No clone army, no demon chakra. Just me, my fists, and two of the scariest people in the shinobi world running beside me.

Honestly? I'd had worse odds. Probably. I'd have to check my notes later.