"Run! Run now!"
"Konoha is attacking!"
The Land of Fire's Daimyō Palace dissolved into raw panic.
The moment the Daimyō's corpse was found swaying from the central beam, the varnish of ceremony cracked and fell away. Servants dropped lacquer trays; silk hems tangled underfoot; gilt screens toppled with clatter and crash. The palace that had lectured a nation on order became a funnel of stampeding fear.
The nobles—pampered, perfumed, powdered—bolted like startled deer. Etiquette evaporated. Lineage meant nothing. There was only breath, stairs, doors, and the blind urge to live.
"Kill, kill, kill! Kill all these nobles!"
Uchiha Inaho's voice slashed through the corridor like a blade. To his right, Uchiha Tekka moved in lockstep, eyes burning red. Three-tomoe spun in every gaze behind them; steel flashed; sleeves were flecked with arterial spray. The Uchiha vanguard advanced without hurry and without mercy, cutting through attendants, bodyguards, and brocade-robed lords with the same, efficient economy.
They did not look away. They did not lecture. They simply cut.
To many of them, it felt like justice long-delayed. They had watched the nobles thrive while refugee towns starved; seen levies tighten while granaries hid grain. Inaho, Tekka, and the others did not bother to argue politics with prey. Their blades argued enough.
"Hurry and escape, Gen-sama!"
Tokugawa planted himself in a stone-worked doorway, katana raised to shoulder height. His hands shook—not from fear, but from the knowledge of what stood against him. As a samurai he knew the truth: against an Uchiha, steel weighed less than breath. Even so, duty was the iron that held him upright.
Behind him stood a boy dressed far too finely for war. Gen's delicate features had collapsed into panic; his lips, once quick to sneer at servants, trembled like a child's.
"Go! If you don't leave now it'll be too late!"
Gen swallowed. His eyes hardened with sudden venom as he glanced down the hall where crimson eyes drew closer.
Those Uchiha had walked these corridors already—months ago—wearing the insignia of the Twelve Guardian Ninja. A clever disguise, a long planting. Had Konoha been preparing this from the start?
'I'll remember.' Gen thought, head whipping around as he dashed away. 'Konoha—you will pay!'
Tokugawa exhaled, shifted his footing, and met the first Uchiha with a clean cut at the wrist.
The Uchiha turned their blade and let the strike skim past, eyes rotating once—calm, precise. The counter arrived like rain.
In the next wing, a white-haired ninja stepped from the smoke of a smashed lantern.
Gen skidded to a halt.
"Hatake Kakashi?"
The black mask, the single visible eye, the blade that didn't waver—he knew the name from whispered court gossip, a genius whose legends seeped even into the capital's drawing rooms.
"It's regrettable," said Kakashi, voice level, "but as a Konoha ninja, I cannot stand by and watch you escape."
He lifted his sword without flourish.
"After all, it's a ninja's duty to cut the weeds and pull out the roots."
Pfft.
The steel slid in under the ribs and found the heart. Kakashi twisted once, clean and final. The boy's breath fled like a candle in a draft. Blood darkened the brocade; the body sagged.
"Gen-sama!"
Tokugawa tore himself free from his opponent and sprinted, the shout ripping his throat raw. He didn't make three steps before a second Uchiha's short blade lanced from behind and took him at the hollow of the throat. He fell forward, palms slapping stone, eyes locked on his dying liege.
Kakashi watched it land with the stillness of a surgeon watching a monitor flatline. Duty had been done on both sides: the samurai had used his life to block a few heartbeats; the shinobi had removed a root.
'Samurai and ninja.' he thought, gaze tracking the chaos as nobles stumbled, as servants crawled under tables, as paper walls took blades and fell. 'Bound to collide in the old order.'
He didn't savor it. There was nothing to savor. It was an ugly work.
A sudden sting of cold kissed the back of his neck. Instinct fired; muscles locked.
'This feeling—'
Space twisted to his left; a circle of reality folded inward with a sound like breath being sucked from a room. From that spiraling void, a single hand reached—unhurried, precise—fingers stretching for his left eye.
"I'll take this eye."
Kakashi's pupil blew wide. The blade came up without command, but the hand wasn't striking the blade. It was already almost on his face.
The corridor narrowed to a point.
Somewhere behind him, nobles screamed. Uchiha footsteps drummed closer. But in the ring of that vortex there was only the quiet hunger of a theft long promised.
…
Land of Fire, border.
The line of allied shinobi stretched black and unbroken across low hills, spears of glassy grass shivering in the wind around their boots. Banners hung heavy; armor straps creaked; the smell of oiled leather and cold iron pooled in the morning air.
At the center of the Iwagakure formation sat a man whose silhouette echoed a legend: squat, wide-shouldered, heavy as a wall. Kitsuchi—Onoki's son—squinted toward the south until the horizon stained with dust.
He hated that his mouth was dry. Orders were orders: the Land of Earth's Daimyō had leaned hard, and Iwagakure had moved. Five thousand, gathered in haste and grimly equipped.
If this war went wrong, the world wouldn't be reshuffled—it would be overturned.
A column appeared—tight, fast, numerous. The dust rose like a veil and then broke. The Kumogakure's banners rode the wind.
"Is it finally here?" a captain at Kitsuchi's shoulder asked, voice low.
The Kumogakure didn't just arrive—they arrived like they owned the road. Lines deployed, ranks counterchecked ranks, and the column shortened and swelled as they flowed into position beside Iwa. Armor gleamed the color of storm rock; faces were fierce and hungry.
Kitsuchi's relief came and went in one breath. His jaw tightened again when he saw who led them.
The forward man wasn't a general. He was a mountain.
"Rai… Raikage?" Kitsuchi's voice made the word more question than greeting.
The Fourth Raikage strode like a bull through the gap between formations, arms crossed, the cords on his neck standing like cables. Muscles carved shadows on his skin; the air around him felt like it had bounced off stone.
"Don't look at me like that." Raikage Ai said, voice rough enough to peel bark. "I'm not like that old geezer Onoki. If I say I'll aid the Fire Daimyō, I'll put my fist into it."
He didn't say that "aid" had a price tag for the Lightning Daimyō that he intended to collect—Kitsuchi could read as much in the edge of his smile. He didn't say revenge, either, but it burned in his eyes. The humiliation of the last time—the ransom for Killer Bee—still lived in the set of his shoulders.
"Numbers?" Ai asked without glancing away from the road south.
"Five thousand Iwa." Kitsuchi replied. "Your side… eight?"
"Eight thousand." Ai said, and his teeth showed. "Enough to get their attention."
Thirteen thousand shinobi hardened the horizon. Messengers loped between anchors of the line. Water canteens passed. Command flags stabbed the sky and held.
Kitsuchi looked at the Raikage over his knuckles. "You came in person. The Land of Lightning must be serious."
"I came because I want to." A didn't bother to hide it. "Konoha thinks it can spit in every Daimyō's face and live? Good. I'll teach them what price a throat pays when it barks too loud."
He rolled a shoulder; muscles jumped. "Prepare to depart."
Orders cracked through the ranks. The Kumogakure's eight thousand shifted like a single beast—files opening, closing, aligning. Iwa's five thousand tightened and checked gear with a veteran's quiet. Drums thudded, low and steady. The ground gave a tiny answer—doom… doom… doom…
Kitsuchi took the beat into his chest and breathed to it. Thirteen thousand wasn't simply a number; it was a statement. Even in the Warring States, such concentration had been rare. This wasn't an expedition. It was a lever being set against the spine of the world.
"I can't wait to have a decisive battle with Konoha." Ai said, almost conversationally. His eyes never left the south, where a city waited and a palace bled.
*****
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✓ Killed For 100 Years in Hueco Mundo, Aizen Invited Me To Soul Society!
✓ Naruto: Senmei Asahi
✓ Naruto: Uchiha's Intelligence Dealer
✓ Naruto: The Fifth Hokage Is Naruto's Uncle
✓ Naruto: Who Made Him a Ninja?
✓ Bleach: In My Second Reincarnation, I Became The Ninth Kenpachi
✓ To Love-Ru: Spoiler Route [R-18]
✓ Naruto: The Accidental Incubus [R-18]