Hidden Leaf, Hidden Talents 132 (Patreon)

In the back room of the bathhouse, a mom sat with her two girls, waiting on a dad who said he'd come back.

He'd told them, lock the door, don't open it for anyone unless you hear my voice. So that's exactly what they did. The girls were curled up under their mom's arms, rain drumming on the shutters, and every so often the fighting outside would rattle the ceiling enough to shake little bits of dust loose, like the whole building was shivering along with them.

The older girl had her cracked festival mask sitting in her lap. She kept running her thumb over the ribbon, the one her dad tied on for her right before he left, like if she touched it enough it'd bring him back faster.

The little one kept asking the same question, over and over.

"When's Papa coming back?"

"Soon," their mom said.

She gave the same answer each time.

Then smoke started sliding in under the door.

Their mom was up before either girl even understood what was happening. Orange light bled through the hallway, and a burning beam crashed down across the front room, sparks skittering everywhere like startled bugs.

"Girls, up, now." She had a hand on each of them, pulling them to their feet. "We can’t stay in the bathhouse anymore."

She started dragging them toward the back exit, but the little one grabbed the doorframe with both hands and just wouldn’t let go.

"No! Papa said wait here!" Tears spilled down her face as she clung harder to the doorframe. "What if he comes back and we're not here? What if he can't find us?"

Their mom stopped.

Fire popped and cracked through the wall behind them. She glanced back at the locked front door, waiting, hoping, to hear him calling for them.

It didn't come.

She dropped to her knees and cupped her daughter’s face.

“Papa is going to find us,” she said. “He always finds us. You know that. But we can’t wait for him in a burning building, okay? We have to go.”

The older sister reached over and took her sister's hand without even needing to be asked. Their mom took the other one, and the three of them ran out into streets that were already on fire.

They made it two blocks before a Kiri squad found them.

…

-Shinji-

A life could be priceless and still not weigh the same as another. That sounded like a contradiction, but only to people who confused value with priority.

Shinji looked down at the woman lying across his lap. He didn't want to look, looking wouldn't fix anything, but not looking wouldn't either, so he looked.

His left hand was pressed into the wound under her ribs, green light threading between his fingers, hunting down the vessels still pumping blood into her chest from the inside. One piece of luck, the blade had missed her heart. It had only caught a lung. That bought her more breaths, though each one came a little thinner than the last, like a debt getting paid off in smaller and smaller installments.

"Mama!"

One of the girls had twisted her mother's sleeve into both fists, like grip strength alone could keep her here. Her sister had the wrist, tugging at it between sobs.

"Please wake up. Mama, please."

"Easy," Shinji said. "She needs to stay still."

The older girl flinched back like she'd been caught doing something wrong.

He softened his voice. "Hey, you didn't do anything wrong. Here." He guided her hands and wrapped them around her mother's fingers instead. "Hold her hand. Let her know you're still right here with her."

She nodded, lips shaking, and pressed her mother's hand to her cheek like it was the last warm thing left in the world. It might have been.

Four stone spikes stood around them, taller than the roofs nearby. A Kiri shinobi hung from each one, stone jutting straight through the chest. Blood ran down the grey rock and pooled dark in the dirt below.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

He'd killed all four before they could finish what they'd come to do. That part was easy. Killing usually is, once you've got the knack for it. It's everything that comes after that wears a man down.

Red hair lay tangled across the woman's face. Both girls had the same hair, though the younger one's had gone dark with soot and her mom's blood.

A mother and her two daughters. Uzumaki, all three of them.

That alone was enough reason for Kiri to send a squad after them. Shinji could patch the woman up. He could keep her breathing a bit longer. He could probably take down the next squad too, if it came to that.

But every second he spent here was a second Kushina and the others were left without anyone watching their backs. The clones he'd left with them had already poofed. Which meant it was just him. Just one Shinji, and not enough of him to be in two places at once.

He looked down at the woman.

Could he leave her?

Of course he could.

"Please," the younger girl wept. "Please save Mama."

Shinji closed his eyes for a second. It didn't make the choice any easier. It never did.

Lives aren't worth the same. He'd given up pretending otherwise a long time back. Kushina, her mom, and Konan were his people. This woman was a stranger. Her daughters were strangers too.

That put them lower on his list. It didn't make them worth nothing. Caring more about your own doesn't mean you stop caring about everyone else, it just means you know who you're running toward when the building's on fire. He couldn't stay. But he didn't have to leave them with empty hands either.

Shinji brought his hands together.

Smoke burst beside him. His clone dropped to its knees and took over where he'd left off, pressing both hands to the wound, green chakra spilling between its fingers.

He kept his own hand there until the clone had the bleeding under control. Then he pulled back and turned to the girls.

"Girls. I need you to listen to me."

The older one looked up first. Her sister followed a few seconds later. Their eyes were red, their cheeks streaked with tears and dirt.

"Your mother is alive," Shinji said.

The younger girl sucked in a broken breath.

"She is?"

"Yes. But you have to help me keep her that way."

Both girls looked at him like he'd handed them the moon and might snatch it back any second.

"This man is going to carry her into that house." Shinji pointed across the street. Half the roof was gone, but the walls were still standing. "You stay beside him. Do everything he says. No shouting. No running outside. Kiri will hear you if you cry too loud."

The younger girl clapped both hands over her mouth, like she could hold the sound in by force. The tears kept coming anyway, slipping out between her fingers.

Shinji reached over and set a hand on her head.

"You can still cry," he said. "Just do it quietly. Can you do that for your mom?"

She nodded against his palm.

He patted the older girl's head next. "Stay with your sister. Don't let go of her hand."

"I won't."

The clone slid one arm under the woman's knees and the other around her back.

Shinji watched him lift her.

"Leave them to me," the clone said. "They'll be fine."

Shinji gave him a smile that didn't go very far.

One clone, and it had to keep a woman alive, hide two girls, and fight off anyone who came looking, all at once. It might be enough. It would have to be.

The clone carried the woman across the street. Her daughters followed behind, hand in hand. The younger one kept looking back at Shinji until they disappeared through the broken doorway.

Then they were gone.

Shinji stood.

He drew a slim silver dagger from the sheath at his thigh, a guardless Kaigan blade taken from one of their captains.

He jumped to the roof.

‘Konan. Kushina. Aunty. Wait for me.’

His boots struck tile and he ran, the town unspooling beneath him in fire and smoke and ruin. People fled through the alleys like water finding the low ground. Shinobi crossed the roofs both ways, jutsu bursting bright between the buildings, followed by screams that stopped before he could tell who they belonged to.

He crossed six blocks before the next fight found him.

The Uzushio were badly outnumbered. Barely a handful of them still on their feet, with more than twice as many Kiri closing in. Bodies covered the street and the roofs around it, Mist and Uzushio tangled together where they'd fallen. One defender had lost an arm. Another was still fighting with a blade buried through his side. The survivors had been pushed back against a storehouse, and the ring around them kept getting smaller.

Shinji didn't slow down. Slowing down is a luxury for men with time to spare, and he didn't have any.

The Kiri at the back of the group never saw him coming. Never saw anything again, for that matter.

Shinji used the Body Flicker and appeared at the man’s shoulder, drove the silver dagger in below the ear, and dragged it across the throat before vanishing again.

The second one heard it. That wet, familiar sound of metal finding meat, and started to turn.

Too slow. Shinji was already behind him, dagger driven into the base of his skull.

A third spun with a kunai raised, quick as men got when they smelled death close by.

Not quick enough. Shinji crossed the gap, knocked the kunai wide with his wrist, and put the blade up under the man's jaw.

Three bodies on the roof in under two seconds. Not a fair fight. Shinji had never seen the appeal of a fair one.

"Ambush!"

"Konoha! It's Konoha!"

The Kiri nearest him spun around, blades already coming up.

One of them was shouting orders. "Five of you keep the Uzushio pinned! The rest surround the Leaf and strike together!"

That would be the squad leader, then. Drop him, and the rest might lose their nerve along with him. That's usually how it goes.

Shinji sent lightning down through his legs, and the world went blue and fast.

The leader twisted aside at the last second, quick enough to prove he had good instincts, and Shinji came in behind him with the dagger already falling. Somehow the man got his blade up in time to catch it.

KLANG

Steel crashed together, sparks bursting between their faces as the roof buckled beneath their feet.

The leader's eyes were bloodshot and furious. He came back with a slash, then another, putting everything he had behind them.

Shinji’s dagger flashed twice, knocking both cuts wide.

Before the leader could brace himself, Shinji drove a heel into his chest.

Chakra burst on contact.

THOOM

The kick landed like a siege ram. It launched him off the roof, sent him rocketing across the street, and put him straight through the wall of the house opposite, into a cloud of timber and stone and dust. Then the whole side of the building gave up and came down on top of him.

Shinji landed at the edge of the roof. Lightning still crawled around his boots, flickered twice, and went out.

Nobody came at him after that. The Kiri just stood there, gawking at the hole where their leader used to be.

The Uzushio didn't waste the opening. The one-armed man drove his shoulder into a Mist shinobi and took them both off the roof together. The one fighting with a blade still in his side threw three kunai into the Kiri formation, and the others charged in behind them.

The fight turned back into noise.

Shinji looked at the Uzu shinobi. One of the red-haired men caught his eye.

Sorry.

That was all the time he had to give them.

The easy kills were over. Every Mist shinobi here knew he was in the fight now, which meant killing the rest would take time, and time would cost him chakra he couldn’t spare.

Shinji turned and ran.

"Don't let him escape!"

The Kiri hesitated. After what they'd just watched happen to their leader, none of them were in a hurry to go first.

Then one of them swore and jumped after Shinji.

Shinji was already ahead of him, crossing to the next roof. Then blue flashed between them, too quick for the Kiri to follow.

Something turned slowly beneath the Kiri shinobi as he sailed over the street. He looked down and saw a pair of legs tumbling through the air below him.

His legs.

For a second he just stared, unable to understand why they were falling without him. Then his upper body started to drop too.

The guy was dead before either half reached the street.

Shinji flicked the blood from his silver dagger as he landed on the next roof and kept running. He had barely taken three steps when the empty roof ahead suddenly had an old man standing on it.

Steel flashed in front of his face.

He blurred back.

Hiss.

The blade missed his nose.

A second cut chased him into the air, aimed below the ribs. Shinji turned sideways and smashed his dagger into the blade.

KLANG!

Sparks burst between them, the clash flashing white, and Shinji came out of it trailing red.

Then the kick landed.

Shinji got both forearms up across his chest just in time.

THUD

It sent him flying anyway. His back broke through the tiles, he bounced, planted one hand, and let the momentum flip him across the gap to the next roof.

He turned to face whoever had just hit him, mentally cursing. It hurt like hell, and worse, it didn't feel like an ordinary jonin's kick at all.

The man stood on the opposite roof, calmly flicking blood off his senbon between his fingers. Huh? What the hell—senbon? That's insane. Who the hell uses senbon like that?

The man looked past Shinji, at the bodies scattered across the roofs behind him.

"Leaving so soon?" he said. "After all the trouble you've caused my men?"

Noise rose behind him.

"Mizukage-sama!"

"You're finally here!"

A what?

Shinji's stomach dropped. Part of him wanted to laugh. He probably would have, if the situation weren't quite so bad.

The Uzushio down there were still slugging it out. Bloodied, exhausted, and surrounded on all sides. Bailing on them felt scummy.

Maybe it was.

He still had to go.

"Sorry, guys," he muttered. "Gonna owe you one."

Lightning crackled around Shinji's legs, and just like that, he was gone.

He crossed the first roof in a blue streak and landed on the second already running. His foot had barely touched the tiles when silver flashed beside his neck.

His dagger snapped up before he even told it to, lightning sparking along the blade.

Ting.

The senbon struck his dagger, batting the lightning-coated blade aside in a single blur.

What the-

The old man had just stopped a lightning-coated dagger with a sewing needle held between two fingers!

“Oh, come on. That barely counts as a weapon!”

The Mizukage answered by moving his hand again.

Shinji swung sideways and caught the senbon a hair before it kissed his throat.

Ting.

The needle slid off his blade and spun back around so fast it looked like the silver was bending itself around his own hand. Shinji caught it again, sparks bursting right by his face, and felt something warm trickle down his shoulder.

Damn, too fast!

He shoved more chakra through his legs.

Double Accel!

The lightning around him thickened, and the roof blurred beneath his feet.

The Mizukage had barely begun to turn when his senbon struck Shinji’s dagger in a bright spray of sparks and knocked it aside.

Shinji changed direction before the clash ended. He crossed behind the Mizukage, drove in from the other side, then sprang above him and brought the dagger down.

The senbon found him every single time.

Ting. Ting. Ting.

The roof filled with lightning and ringing steel. Shinji struck from the left, the right, above, then behind, moving so fast the Mizukage’s body seemed trapped several attacks in the past. Somehow, the hand holding the senbon kept skipping ahead of the rest of him, meeting Shinji wherever he appeared.

What sort of nonsense was this? Was his hand running at a higher frame rate than the rest of him?

Suddenly, his danger sense screamed, and Shinji barely got his dagger between the senbon and his throat.

Ting.

Sparks flashed between their faces.

Pain burned across his cheek.

“Kh!”

The senbon disappeared under his dagger and reappeared going for his ribs.

Shinji smacked it away.

Ting!

Same silver blur, whipping right back around and slicing through his sleeve before he could even pull his arm out of the way.

Shinji yanked his arm back in.

KLANG!

The hit rang all the way up to his shoulder.

He had blocked it. He had felt the weapons meet and heard the clash loud enough to prove it, so why was blood suddenly spreading across the front of his shirt?

A fresh cut throbbed across his chest. Shinji jumped back and just stared down at it.

How.

One needle hit his dagger. One needle cut him open. Those two things weren't supposed to happen at the same time, yet the Mizukage seemed perfectly happy to keep doing both.

The Shōsen Jutsu flowing through Shinji's body was working overtime, sealing cuts almost as fast as they appeared. Almost. But the Mizukage kept coming, and new wounds kept blooming across his skin.

Shinji sprang back, blue skipping from his boots across the roof. He could feel blood dripping from his cheek, soaking through the rips in his shirt. Three cuts, maybe more, and a faint lightness had begun creeping into his head. Poison? No. His Shōsen would've flagged it. Just blood loss, he'd lost more than he thought.

He'd already kicked his speed up to Double Accel. Most high-ranking ninja would've lost him by now. Hell, at this point he was moving about as fast as Orochimaru. But the Mizukage just kept tracking him like it was nothing.

The old man raised his senbon again.

This wasn't good. This really wasn't good.

Shinji sucked in a sharp breath and poured more power into his legs.

Triple Accel!

His muscles screamed. It felt like they were tearing themselves apart from the inside out. Sharp, burning pain spread through both legs, and Shinji clenched his jaw as he kicked Shōsen Jutsu into overdrive. Healing chakra raced through his calves and thighs, sealing the tiny tears before they could grow worse.

And then everything went weird.

The world turned slow and syrupy, as though he were moving through honey. Even the old guy looked slow now.

Shinji crossed the roof before the Mizukage’s foot came down and drove his dagger at his throat.

But even with everything moving in slow mode, the old man’s eyes followed him. Actually followed him, like he knew exactly where Shinji was going!

The senbon snapped up between them, and Shinji’s dagger bounced off the needle with a harsh metallic clang.

His eyes widened.

Again, how?

Shinji didn’t think. He just attacked again, reversing his grip and turning the rebound into an upward slash at the Mizukage’s throat.

The senbon was there.

Ting ting.

Sparks scattered across his vision. He felt the needle dart past his dagger, cutting across his ribs before flicking back across his stomach. Except the Mizukage had barely moved, and yet somehow he'd hit Shinji twice.

Shinji pushed himself harder. His muscles were already screaming, but he forced them to move even faster.

The Mizukage's body was lagging behind now, definitely. His shoulders couldn’t turn fast enough to follow Shinji. His feet were way too slow to follow him across the roof. There was no way he could keep up with Triple Accel.

But that senbon needle kept finding him anyway.

Cuts spread up Shinji’s arms and across his chest and shoulders, opening faster than his healing could close them.

This was bad. This was actually really, really bad.

Shinji caught the senbon near his throat.

A line opened across his cheek.

He blocked beside his ribs.

Two cuts appeared across his chest.

He knocked the point away and drove in for the Mizukage’s heart, but the old man turned his wrist. The senbon curled beneath Shinji’s dagger, gliding around the blade.

It vanished from sight.

Pain exploded through his chest.

Shinji looked down and saw the needle buried between his ribs, pushed so deep that the Mizukage's fingers were almost touching his skin. Blood bloomed around it, spreading fast and warm through his shirt.

The old man's heel came up half a second later.

The kick drove the senbon deeper into his body and sent Shinji flying backward off the roof. Lightning broke apart around him as blood spilled over his lips. He fell spinning through the air, rooftops wheeling beneath him and the sky opening above.

Then the Mizukage was there.

One second there was just empty sky. The next, the old man was falling right alongside him, another senbon already pinched between his fingers and aimed straight at Shinji's eye.

This was it. This was actually it.

This was death, and it was way too close, way too fast, and there was no way to stop it.

DEATH

Shinji’s eyes burned purple.

The air exploded.

The Mizukage vanished in the opposite direction.

BOOM.

He smashed through the first building in a storm of timber and stone. His hand clamped around a roof beam. It snapped out of the building with him.

He struck the next building sideways, punched through two walls, and came out buried in roof tiles and broken boards.

The third building finally stopped him.

Shinji hit the roof shoulder-first, bounced over the tiles, and came to a rough stop on one knee.

He tried to breathe.

“Cough.”

Blood spilled from his mouth, hot and thick and wrong.

He sucked in half a breath.

“Cough, cough.”

More blood came. So much of it, pouring over his chin and dripping through the fingers he'd pressed against his mouth. His palm was completely red now. His entire sleeve was soaked through.

Every breath made something wet shift inside his chest. Every cough brought up another mouthful of blood.

He knelt there, shaking, trying not to cough again because he already knew what would happen.

The senbon was still wedged between his ribs, and it trembled every time he coughed. Shinji pulled his bloody hand away from his mouth and pressed it over the wound instead.

Green chakra bloomed under his palm.

He could feel the damage underneath. Torn muscle fibers. A blood vessel that had gotten nicked. And his lung... his lung was pierced deep enough that blood kept rushing into his airway every time he tried to breathe.

This was really bad.

Another cough hit him like a wall, crushing what little breath he'd managed to pull in. His mouth filled with blood again, and he spat it across the roof.

Shit.

He'd never felt this helpless before. Not even when he was fighting Hanzo. Not even against Onoki. Right now, just trying to breathe was working against him.

Shinji gritted his teeth and focused. First things first. He sealed the damaged blood vessel, feeding chakra into it until the bleeding slowed. Then he reached down and caught the senbon between two fingers. He took a breath that made his whole chest scream and pulled it free.

Blood welled up from the puncture hole immediately.

He slapped his palm over it and started pouring healing chakra into the wound. But his lung was fighting him the entire time. Every cough ripped apart half the work he'd just done, undoing everything he was trying to fix.

"Fuck," he muttered, spitting more blood.

Hanzo had been a nightmare. But this old man? This was what came after you woke up from the nightmare and realized it was real.

Shinji kept working, carefully knitting the damage back together. His hands had stopped shaking, at least.

Then something foul washed over his senses.

It was coming from Kushina's direction.

Shinji froze right there on his knees.

He knew what malice felt like. Spending a year with Moryo breathing down the back of his mind had taught him way more about that than any boy should ever have to know. But this was different. This wasn't just regular malice.

This was hate. Pure, vicious, choking hate soaked through every single thread of chakra he could feel.

Bijuu chakra.

And it was coming from Kushina.

Oh no. Had the seal broken?

The wreckage across the street groaned and shifted, stirring a cloud of dust. Shinji’s head snapped up.

The Mizukage stepped through the wreckage without any sign of hurry. He was brushing broken wood off his shoulder with one hand, and the senbon was still pinched between his fingers like a toothpick. But what really got Shinji was the katana strapped at the old man's waist. The sword he hadn't even bothered to draw the entire fight.

He almost choked on blood from the sheer disrespect of it.

This was insane. This guy had punctured his lung with a needle while carrying around a perfectly good sword like it was just decoration. Like Shinji wasn't even worth pulling out an actual weapon for.

Shinji wiped the blood from his mouth and forced himself to stand up. Beneath his skin, Shōsen Jutsu kept working on the damage quietly, without any flashy green light to give it away.

“Well,” he said, like his lung hadn't spent the last few minutes trying to drown him. “This has been fun, but I think we're pretty evenly matched here.”

He gave the Mizukage a little smile. “So how about we call this a truce?”

From his experience, fighting someone stronger than you was peak stupidity. Only an idiot picked a fight they couldn't win, and he'd never been that kind of idiot.

The Mizukage didn't say anything.

His eyes just slid past Shinji, looking toward where that awful chakra was boiling in the distance. His whole body went still for half a second.

Then he was gone.

Just like that. Vanished.

Shinji's smile dropped.

"Wait. Hey, wait!"

Too late.

The man was already gone, racing straight toward Kushina.

Shit.

Shinji poured more chakra into his chest, pushing hard and fast even though every medic with half a brain would say that was a terrible idea. Green light flared under his palm, forcing the puncture closed way quicker than it should've been possible. Pain twisted up beneath his ribs like a knife, and blood climbed back into his throat again. He swallowed it down and ignored the metallic taste.

The Mizukage was heading straight for Kushina.

Bad lung or not, punctured or not, he had to stop him.

…

What Shinji didn’t know, and really couldn’t have known, was that Mitsuharu, the Third Mizukage, had never meant to disrespect him.

Well, not in the way Shinji thought.

The truth was much simpler.

Mitsuharu didn’t draw his katana against most jonin because, most of the time, he didn't have to. The guy had basically grown up with a blade in his hand. Give him a katana and people died. Give him a kunai, same story. Hand him a senbon, a chopstick, or honestly even a stiff enough blade of grass, and somehow the outcome barely changed.

A weapon was only ever as scary as the person holding it.

But this boy? This boy had just launched him through three buildings without laying a finger on him. No hand signs. No warning. Not even a twitch that might've tipped him off before the world decided, nope, you're flying now. Everything Mitsuharu knew about ninjutsu said that shouldn't be possible.

He'd fought beside the Second Mizukage through war after war. He figured he'd seen basically every trick worth worrying about by now. Jutsu always leave a tell. Fingers twitch. Chakra builds up somewhere. Muscles tense before the strike. Even the fastest shinobi alive still had little habits, small cracks you could catch if you trained your eyes long enough. After decades of training, not even the White Fang or the Raikage could outfast him, but this kid?

This boy gave him nothing. Not one single thing to grab onto.

One moment he'd been driving a senbon straight at the boy's eye. The next, something invisible slammed into him and sent him crashing through the buildings across the street.

Even while wood and stone rained down around him, he was still trying to piece together what just happened. By the time he dragged himself back up, he still had no answers.

There was no way to stop that jutsu. No seals to watch for, no warning sign, nothing to react to before it hit. And the part that really got under his skin was how easy it looked for the boy. Like he could do it again whenever he felt like it.

How were you supposed to block something that gave you nothing at all to work with?

He'd seen fights fall apart over way less than that.

But the boy could wait. Whatever that chakra rolling through the town was, that couldn't.

A tailed beast.

Mitsuharu knew that feeling in his bones. Kiri had Isobu and Saiken both, and anyone who'd ever stood anywhere near either of them never forgot what it felt like.

This wasn't either of those two.

Still, it hit with that same bone-deep pressure, just wrapped in way more hate than he'd ever felt from a bijuu before.

He raced across the rooftops, but part of his mind stayed on the fighting below. The attack had already cost Kiri far more men than he’d expected. The deeper they pushed into the town, the harder the resistance became, as though every street and every broken house had decided to fight them too. Now Konoha had joined in, bringing shinobi with ninjutsu he had never seen before.

That weird jonin alone was enough of a problem. But a tailed beast running wild through the middle of town? That could turn this whole mess into a full blown disaster before anyone even figured out what was going on.

That's when Mitsuharu finally reached where the chakra was coming from.

Red. The whole street was soaked in red.

A bunch of houses had gotten smashed to pieces, walls and roof tiles scattered everywhere, Kiri shinobi lying among the wreckage. A couple were still moving, twitching, trying to crawl. Most of them weren't moving at all anymore.

And right in the middle of it stood a girl, wrapped head to toe in boiling red chakra.

Her red hair whipped around her face while that chakra rolled off her in waves. Her fingers had stretched out into claws, and three tails twisted behind her, lashing out at anything dumb enough to get close. One tail punched through the side of a house. Another wrapped around a dead shinobi, scraped him across the road, then sent him crashing through a shopfront.

Mitsuharu knew that chakra. Or at least, he knew what it had to be.

The Nine Tails.

But Kiri's intel said their jinchuriki was a man, and this red-haired girl was very much not that. So who was she, then? What exactly had Konoha been hiding this whole time, and why was their jinchuriki out here right now?

None of it made sense.

One of his own men was trying to drag himself out from under the rubble nearby, one leg bent the wrong way below the knee.

The girl noticed him. One of the crimson tails rose up high behind her, curling back before it came crashing down.

Mitsuharu dropped off the roof and drew his blade.

Iai: Rokusen!

Shhk!

The street flashed white beneath six crossing slashes.

The red cloak split apart in six places, and the girl screamed as the force threw her backward through a market stall. Broken boards spun through the air around her while six matching cuts sliced through the wall behind her, deep enough that you could see straight into the rooms on the other side.

Click.

His katana was already back in its sheath before the first piece of broken wood even hit the ground.

Mitsuharu landed next to the injured shinobi and told him to fall back.

The man dug his fingers into the dirt and hauled himself away as fast as his busted leg would let him.

Across the street, the jinchuriki pushed herself out of the wreckage.

Mitsuharu watched her get back up and felt his frown deepen.

The cuts were there, sure, but they weren't nearly as deep as they should've been. Red chakra bubbled inside each one, yanking the torn skin shut before more than a few drops of blood even had a chance to spill out.

He’d already landed six hits with Iai: Rokusen, and she was healing them almost as fast as he’d made them.

This was going to be a problem.

!!!

The girl vanished in a blur of red.

Mitsuharu slid out of the way just as the first tail slammed down beside him, smashing through the stone and sending broken chunks flying everywhere. A second tail whipped in from his right a heartbeat later.

He ducked under it. Heat scraped across his face as he pulled his katana half out of its sheath and smacked the tail with the flat of the blade.

Clang!

Steel met crimson and knocked the tail up just high enough for him to slip underneath.

A third tail shot straight at his chest.

He jumped, landing on the roof beside the street.

Down below, the girl dug her claws into some poor merchant's abandoned wagon, ripped it off the ground, and hurled the whole thing at him. Its wheels spun wildly as it flew across the street.

His thumb pressed against the guard of his sword.

White flashed.

The wagon split down the middle. Both halves sailed past him and crashed through the buildings behind, scattering broken wood and loose cloth all over the rooms inside.

Down in the street, the jinchuriki crouched in the wreckage, three tails twisting behind her as she stared up at him through that red haze. Her mouth curled into a snarl, teeth already growing sharper and longer, while more chakra poured off her in thick, rolling waves.

Mitsuharu's ribs were still aching from getting thrown through a building by that Leaf jonin, and now he had a rampaging jinchuriki trying to wipe out every single Kiri shinobi left standing in the street.

That's when lightning flickered across the rooftops behind her.

A figure in black came racing over the buildings, closing in fast.

Mitsuharu's frown got even deeper. That weird Leaf jonin again.