"Report!"
Three hours later, the camp's outer defenses were finally complete. The last trenches sealed, the chakra barriers humming faintly beneath the rain-soaked soil. Then Tannin, Raizen's scout captain, sprinted in from the mist, mud caked to his armor.
"Lord Raizen! The Hyūga coalition has broken formation — three thousand advancing directly toward our position! They'll reach us before dusk if we don't intercept!"
Raizen exhaled through his nose. "So they're that eager to die, huh."
He straightened and barked, "Sound the drums. Select a thousand shinobi — they're coming with me."
"Yes, sir!"
The war drums thundered through the gorge, echoing between the cliffs like the heartbeat of something ancient. One thousand shinobi rallied under Raizen's banner, faces grim, chakra flaring like a thousand small fires in the fog.
Raizen tightened the strap on his gauntlet. Three thousand against one thousand… not exactly fair. But fair fights are for fools.
He raised his hand. "Move out!"
The unit surged forward, racing over uneven hills, the sound of sandals thudding against wet soil.
At the far end of the gorge, Hyūga Shibuya received word of their approach.
"The Konoha Alliance is moving to engage, Lord Shibuya!" shouted a reconnaissance ninja. "Their commander is—"
"Who?"
"Amamiya Raizen, Patriarch of the Amamiya Clan!"
"What?" Shibuya's eyes narrowed. For a second, he almost smiled. "Amamiya Raizen… that brat who killed three clan heads before he turned twenty?"
The name carried weight. Even among the endless chaos of the Warring States, Raizen was whispered about like a ghost story — a man who turned scraps into strategy, who built a clan out of stubbornness and spite.
But Shibuya wasn't impressed.
He rose, Byakugan veins flaring around his temples. "So what if it's him? He's bringing one thousand to face three. Crush them. I want his head before sunset."
His captains saluted sharply. The order spread.
The two forces met beneath a bruised sky. Clouds gathered like vultures. The air felt electric — every shinobi could feel it, that prickling sense of history about to be written in blood.
A black line appeared across the ridge. Then another. Hundreds of figures leaping through the treetops. Fast. Precise. Merciless.
"They're here," Raizen muttered, his tone flat.
His men tensed, drawing kunai, checking seals.
By the time the Hyūga vanguard came within sight, barely ten minutes had passed. The two armies stopped five hundred meters apart — the invisible border where breath and death mingled.
Raizen's eyes sharpened. He spotted three figures ahead — the chakra around them pulsing heavier than the rest.
Quasi-Kage level, he realized. One Hyūga, one Sarutobi, one from the Hibiscus Clan. Not bad.
He adjusted his grip on the kunai in his palm. Three elites, backed by thousands. Perfect odds for a terrible day.
"Advance!"
Shibuya Hyūga's command tore through the wind. His troops roared, charging down the slope like a tide of steel.
Raizen's lips curved into something halfway between a smirk and a snarl. "All units — fire!"
A thousand Konoha Alliance shinobi hurled their weapons in perfect unison. Kunai and shuriken screamed through the air like rain made of razors.
"Rotation! (Kaiten!)"
Hundreds of Hyūga activated their Byakugan, their bodies spinning violently as chakra spheres erupted around them. The whirling domes deflected the incoming barrage with metallic shrieks, turning the rain of death into sparks.
"Now—detonations!" Raizen snapped.
His rear line threw explosive tags high into the air. A moment later—
BOOM!
The battlefield erupted in a wave of orange light. Smoke and blood filled the gorge, pieces of armor and flesh raining from the sky.
"Earth Release!" Raizen barked again.
Dozens of his shinobi slammed their palms to the ground. The earth convulsed. Cracks spiderwebbed across the soil as the terrain itself turned traitor, swallowing men and trees alike.
"Damn it—Amamiya Raizen is mine!" Shibuya roared.
He shot forward, chakra flooding his palms in pale blue light — the signature of the Gentle Fist.
Raizen's eyes snapped to him, Sharingan-red and cold as a blade. "You really shouldn't have said that."
Shibuya's strike hit—
—And passed clean through Raizen's chest.
The Hyūga blinked in shock. "What—?"
Raizen's voice came from behind him. "Wrong target, genius."
The clone vanished in a puff of smoke as the real Raizen appeared behind him, hands already flying through seals.
"The rest of you — command falls to Inuzuka Daisaku! Kill them all!"
Then his hands clapped together. "Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique! (Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu!)"
A sphere of flame the size of a house roared from his mouth, incinerating the mist and swallowing half the battlefield in crimson light.
"Rotation!" Shibuya spun again, the flames splitting around him — but even as he defended, panic flickered across his face.
"Damn it—Sarutobi Sanbei! Hibiscus Takuma! Help me, now!"
Two chakra signatures flared to life behind him. The Sarutobi and Hibiscus elites leapt into formation, encircling Raizen from three sides.
Raizen clicked his tongue. "Three-on-one, huh? Guess I should feel honored."
He straightened, chakra rising like heat off a forge, eyes gleaming in the half-light.
"Fine then," he murmured, voice low and sharp. "Let's see if three of you together can kill one pissed-off salaryman."
And the gorge lit up again—fire, wind, and steel colliding beneath a storm that refused to break.