"Yamashiro Aoba!"
"Stop pretending to be dead on the ground!"
"This is not the time for your love confession!"
Sarutobi Asuma barely twisted his body out of the path of the shuriken slicing toward him, shouting over his shoulder at Yamashiro Aoba who was still lying limp in Amamiya Rei's arms.
Yamashiro Aoba: "…"
The moon withdrew behind thick, oppressive clouds.
Within the pitch-black darkness, the sound of blades clashing rang out endlessly.
Amamiya Rei finally released Yamashiro Aoba and rose to his feed, dodging a burning torch that hurled past his shoulder.
The campfire they had built earlier had long been scattered during the chaotic struggle.
Its embers hissed and died in the freezing wind.
The air was saturated with the metallic, suffocating scent of blood.
Rei swallowed.
He lifted a hand and wiped the warm trace at the corner of his mouth.
The rich metallic tang drifting through the air ignited something violent within his blood; something feral, something dangerous.
His blood thrummed with a rising, uncontrollable adrenaline.
He forced the frenzy down.
From the soil around him, thick vines burst upward like awakened beasts, lashing toward the enemy shinobi surrounding them.
"What the hell is that?!"
A stranger's voice echoed sharply in the dark.
It was a voice that did not belong to anyone from Konoha.
"That looks like..."
"Wood Release!"
A horrified whisper escaped, only to be instantly rejected.
"Impossible!"
"Only Senju Hashirama possessed Wood Release!"
"But..."
"But that's clearly Wood Release!"
"So what if it is Wood Release?"
Someone gritted their teeth and growled, "If she really had the strength of Senju Hashirama, we would already be dead!"
"Kill her!"
Shadows erupted like a swarm of blades.
Figures flickered across Rei's field of vision.
The vines rising into the air were shredded by a burst of intersecting steel arcs...forming a web of blade light bright enough to pierce the night.
The cold shine of those blades reflected cleanly in Rei's crimson eyes.
The enemy's gazes paused on his face for a brief moment before they tightened their grips on their weapons and swung toward his neck.
A crisp, ringing sound of a blade being drawn echoed among the shinobi surrounding him.
"Thunder Breathing, Second Form: Rice Spirit!"
Lightning tore across the night sky for an instant.
A yellow-black electricity flashed through the darkness, too fast for the eye to track.
The wet, sickening sound of sound of flesh being split open followed one after another.
Rei stood exactly where he had been... unmoving, sword still in hand.
Around him lay the shinobi who had collapsed onto the ground, unable to stand.
He had not killed them.
He had only severed the tendons in their hands.
With Byakugan, he could see directly into the human body; his blade could land precisely wherever he wished.
"No!"
"Don't kill me!"
One of the shinobi, paralyzed on the ground, watched the tip of Zero's sword aim at him. His pupils dilated uncontrollably as he writhed backward like a trapped insect.
"No! Please..please don't kill me!"
"I was wrong!"
"I truly know I was wrong! I admit it!"
"My wife and daughter are still waiting for me at home...please"
Tears and snot streamed down his face without restraint.
Slowly, his frantic movements died.
His trembling form slumped back against a tree. The girl standing before him had stopped advancing.
Amemiya Rei looked at him with a conflicted expression before turning away and heading toward Yūhi Kurenai.
Kurenai, already exhausted, had been cornered completely.
"Hah… hah…"
She clenched her kunai with desperate strength.
Blood streaked down her thigh and arm.
She could no longer even feel the pain.
Every wound had gone numb.
She kept her eyes locked on the shinobi in front of her, her kunai held defensively.
"Heh… what a coincidence."
The enemy shinobi smirked with satisfaction, savoring her trembling stance like a predator amused by its dying prey.
"You're a genjutsu-type shinobi, aren't you?"
He spun the kunai in his hand arrogantly, mocking her.
"To think you fell into a genjutsu so easily… how naïve. This must be your first time on a real battlefield, right? No wonder you're completely unguarded."
"Well… at least you'll learn something before you die. Being on night watch isn't just about listening for rustling leaves."
With that, he charged toward her, a cruel grin twisting his mouth.
Thud!
Kurenai raised her arm to block the kunai slashing toward her neck.
Her arm trembled violently, and the kunai continued to press closer and closer.
"Die!"
A cold glint flashed in the man's eyes.
He pushed harder.
The sharp blade carved a thin line of blood across Kurenai's neck.
But it went no further.
A vine had wrapped tightly around the shinobi's wrist.
He snarled and glanced toward the distance with hatred.
He immediately released his kunai.
The falling blade was caught smoothly by another hand.
The shinobi wasted no time slicing through the vine restraining his right wrist.
"I'll deal with you later!"
He sprinted toward Amamiya Rei.
Countless vines erupted from the ground and coiled around him in an instant.
Within a heartbeat, he was bound completely...like a tightly wrapped cocoon.
Not only were his limbs immobilized, even breathing became difficult.
"Rei!"
"Behind you!"
Kurenai screamed.
Rei turned, only to see Yamashiro Aoba's face.
Amamiya Rei: "…"
Aoba's back had just been cut into a deep X-shaped wound.
He stumbled and collapsed, unable to rise again.
Rei's gaze shifted to the shinobi holding a long blade between his teeth.
It was the one Rei had spared earlier.
"Why…?"
Rei looked at him as though her worldview had just shattered, her eyes confused and wounded.
"Didn't you say you were wrong?"
"Didn't you say you had a wife and daughter waiting for you?"
The shinobi gripped the blade with his teeth so hard that blood leaked from his mouth.
He stared at Rei...not with shame, but with scorn.
Realizing his ambush had failed, the shinobi spat out the blade.
It clattered onto the ground.
Then he burst into wild, mocking laughter that echoed throughout the forest.
"Hahahahahahaha!"
"You're such a damn idiot!"
Rei: "…"
Wow.
So infuriating.
"This is war!"
"You even understand what war is?!"
His eyes gleamed with manic resolve as he screamed, "In war, it's kill or be killed! Even if I die, I'll drag you down with me! Go back home and drink milk, you stupid girl!"
Rei: "…"
So vulgar.
Rei's empty gaze swept across the area.
These shinobi had clearly been lying in ambush long before they arrived. Their movements had already been exposed.
From the sheer number alone, the enemy held overwhelming advantage.
And the Konoha shinobi...already tormented by prolonged genjutsu...were exhausted and disoriented. The ambush hit them like a hammer, leaving them scrambling.
The battle was already one-sided.
"Kill them."
Yamanaka Kaiichi's voice echoed sharply across the chaos.
Rei looked at Kaiichi,whose body was covered in blood.
Kaiichi's eyes were sharp and unwavering.
"Kill them, Rei! If you don't, we all die here!"
Rei opened her mouth but no words came out.
Kaiichi's low voice trembled with urgency, but not fear.
"I know you can do it."
"I know you have the power to kill them."
"Rei!...Kill them..and we live."
***
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