Mitani's laughter echoed through the mist-choked valley, raw and triumphant.Yakura's body lay motionless at his feet, the last warmth leaving her limbs."HAHAHAHA!" he howled upward into the white sky, voice cracking with vindication. "Did you see that? All of you! I avenged you!"
His roar dissolved into the fog.
Then.
Footsteps.
Slow. Steady.Crunching through gravel with a patient rhythm that felt utterly wrong in this killing ground.
Mitani frowned, turning.A silhouette approached from the direction Yakura had entered—a lone shadow cutting through the white veil.
"Who's there?" he barked.
The figure didn't answer.Fog parted around him as if repelled.
Mitani stiffened, raising a kunai. "I said—who are you?"
A quiet exhale drifted through the mist.
The black-haired stranger finally stepped into view, Sharingan dull and unlit.
Uchiha Tobika.
His gaze flicked to Yakura's collapsed body. A long, frozen beat followed, his expression unreadable.
"…Still late," he murmured.
Mitani blinked. "What?"
Tobika lifted his eyes to meet the Kiri shinobi directly for the first time.His voice was soft. Flat. Dead calm.
"If you had waited ten more seconds before stabbing her…"He tilted his head slightly."…you might've lived long enough to eat your family's lunch."
Mitani squinted, confused for a heartbeat—Then Tobika vanished.
Not blurred.Not flickered.
Gone.
Mitani barely inhaled before a hand clamped down over his skull.
"What—?!"
His scream was cut short as Tobika drove his head downward.
BOOM.
The earth cratered beneath the impact, fractures webbing outward like shattered ice. Dust geysered violently, swallowing the two figures whole.
When the air settled, only one person remained standing.
Tobika flicked his hand, shaking loose fragments of bone and blood.
"Trash," he muttered, staring at the crater. "Yakura died to someone like you?"
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Fuyu burst into the clearing, tail puffed out in alarm before his eyes widened at Tobika's expression.The fury.The stillness.The distance.
He swallowed his words.
"Are… you alright?"
"I'm fine."Tobika didn't look back.His voice had the still weight of a man holding something in place by force.
"You. Move Yakura somewhere safe."
He reached over his shoulder and drew the Grasscutter Blade—the sword he had carried for years but never once unsheathed.
"I'll deal with the rest."
Fuyu's ears flattened. "…Tobika, if you go on a rampage here, that's going to cause problems."
"Then let it."
His footsteps resumed, fog swirling around him as if retreating.
"If this causes trouble, then restart the war.If Konoha ever looks at me wrong—I'll hand myself to Black Zetsu and wipe out the whole village.Then the world.Then me."
Dark humor.Cruel absurdity.The kind only a Uchiha could summon while calm.
Fuyu grimaced.Here we go again.
As Tobika's silhouette faded into the fog, the cat muttered under his breath:
"Fake Uchihas: polite, gentle, caring, empathetic.Real Uchihas: 'maybe I'll end the world.'And Uchiha Tobika?He's the type who thinks about it when he's sad."
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━By the time Tobika reached the next clearing, a squad of Kiri shinobi had already gathered—five jounin, seven tokubetsu jōnin, ten chūnin.
A small army.
They froze when he emerged from the fog, sword balanced casually in one hand.
Their captain stepped forward, eyes narrowing as he spotted the Sharingan.
"A Konoha ninja… Uchiha?"
Tobika ignored him completely, whispering under his breath:
"…Twelve… thirteen… fourteen… forty-eight…"
One Kiri shinobi snapped, "Hey! Answer when you're—"
Tobika accelerated.
Not movement.Not speed.A disappearing act.
"Contact!" someone screamed. "He's coming—!"
A jounin raised his arm to block Tobika's punch—and smirked when the impact felt light.
"That's it? This is an Uchiha jōnin? Pathetic—"
Then his viewpoint suddenly began rising.
He saw, upside down, his own decapitated body standing below him.
"Eh?"
His head hit the ground before his brain finished forming the thought.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━"Don't panic!" another Kiri jounin barked."He's alone! We have five jōnin, seven tokubetsu jōnin, ten chūnin—he can't possibly—"
"I'm going to string him up," one snarled, drawing kunai. "I don't care whose emissary he is—"
"Wait!" a tokubetsu jōnin blurted."I've seen that guy before—something's wrong—"
His warning was cut off as he leapt overhead, aiming to drive his kunai downward into Tobika's skull.
Tobika casually raised the Grasscutter and parried.
His eyes flicked to the attacker's mouth—sharp, triangular teeth.
"Shark-bite teeth," he muttered. "Figures."
His foot lashed out, kicking the man skyward like a rag doll. As the body arced upward—Tobika followed with a diagonal slash.
A massive wound carved across the Kiri shinobi's chest—But instead of blood, water splashed onto the stones below.
"…Hozuki Clan's Hydrification Technique," Tobika said with real irritation."Annoying."
He dropped into a low stance, hands flying through seals.
"Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique."
The ignition was instantaneous.
A fire boulder the size of a wagon erupted from his mouth, engulfing the water-formed shinobi at point-blank range.
Steam detonated outward.Mist thickened, roaring like a boiling sea.
And when the cloud settled—one more Kiri shinobi had been flash-vaporized.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━A kunai with an explosive tag whistled toward him.
Tobika caught it mid-air.Turned it around.And flicked it back with lazy disdain.
BOOM.
Bodies tore apart in a wet spray.
"Four," Tobika counted softly.
Fog rolled over the carnage.
The explosion's aftershock faded into a ringing quiet.Fog billowed, swallowing the shredded remains of the unlucky chūnin caught in the blast.
Tobika exhaled slowly, steam drifting from his lips.
"Four."
A murmur rippled through the Kiri formation.Fear tasted thick in the air.
"What… what is he?""He took out a jōnin like swatting a fly…""Stay calm! He's just one man!"
One man.Against an assembled Kiri strike unit.
A tokubetsu jōnin with a scar across his cheek pointed his kunai at Tobika.
"Uchiha bastard! I'll—"
He didn't finish.
Tobika vanished again.No flicker of chakra, no warning—just an absence.
Then a wet thump landed behind the speaker.The man turned.
His own severed arm lay at his feet.
"Wha—?"
Tobika's silhouette appeared beside him, sword dripping.
"Five."
A scream tore the air.The maimed shinobi tried to leap away, but Tobika's blade licked out again—and the second cut ended everything.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Someone finally snapped.
"He's alone! Surround and overwhelm him!"
A rain of kunai and shuriken burst from all directions.Twenty shinobi attacked in a coordinated formation, covering air, ground, blind angles.
Tobika didn't dodge.
He didn't need to.
His Sharingan spun once—And suddenly every weapon skidded off the environment as if redirected by invisible hands.
Steel clattered across stone.
The formation fell apart in surprise.
Tobika walked forward.
"You're not worth my ninjutsu," he said plainly."But I suppose I can waste a few sword swings."
A chūnin lunged—Tobika's blade cut him cleanly in half.
"Six."
A tokubetsu jōnin flung himself from above—Tobika bisected him mid-dive.
"Seven."
A jōnin roared, performing seals—A fireball consumed him before his jutsu even finished forming.
"Eight."
Blood hissed onto hot earth.Someone tried to flee into the fog—Tobika's kunai found the back of his skull.
"Nine."
The last few broke ranks entirely.
"RUN!""HE'S A MONSTER!""We need backup—"
One tried desperately to perform a mist clone—but a sword pierced through the real body before the jutsu even triggered.
"Ten."
Someone sobbed.
Tobika didn't spare him a glance.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
By the time the fog settled, only one remained alive—a trembling chūnin, legs barely holding up.
He stared wide-eyed at Tobika.
"W-why… why are you doing this…? This isn't your war…"
Tobika stepped close enough for the chūnin to see his reflection in the Sharingan.
"It is now."
The blade fell.
"Eleven."
Fog swallowed the last echo.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
When Tobika returned to where Fuyu waited, his hands and face were streaked with evaporating steam, not blood.
The orange cat glanced at him.Eyebrows raised.Whiskers twitching.
"…Did you kill all of them?"
"Not all," Tobika said. "One ran deeper into the fog."
A pause.
"Should I chase him?" Fuyu asked.
"No." Tobika sheathed the Grasscutter. "Let him run. Kiri will find the bodies soon enough."
He knelt beside Yakura's corpse.
His expression didn't break.Not openly.
But his voice lost its habitual cynicism.
"…You really couldn't wait ten more seconds, huh."
Fog pressed down like a suffocating blanket.
The cat didn't comment.