Staring at the smoking crater that used to be his lab—
No, correction.
Staring at the ruins of his lab, Amamiya Kenichi felt… complicated.
He honestly hadn't expected things to go this far. A few hours ago everything was intact. Then he blinked, and now?
Goodbye, lab.
"Was it because I mixed in lightning-nature chakra and destabilized the thermobaric compound?" Kenichi sighed.
One big, beautiful underground base. Gone.
He'd already succeeded in mixing a normal thermobaric charge. Test results were great.
Then he had a bold idea.
What if he fused it with chakra?
If he could get chakra and thermobaric fuel to work together, he might be able to create something far more terrifying than a standard fuel-air bomb.
Ammo worthy of a final boss.
And it wasn't a totally insane idea—most explosives were fairly stable under normal conditions. They didn't just blow up from a light bump. That, more than anything, made Kenichi willing to experiment.
He'd even reduced the test quantity on purpose.
Safety first, in theory.
Since he understood Lightning Release best, he tried infusing the explosive mix with lightning-nature chakra.
That was when it all went wrong.
The once-stable mixture suddenly went into a violent reaction. If he hadn't moved fast, Kenichi would've been part of the wall decor.
As it was, the lab didn't make it.
And with black smoke pouring out of the ground like a disaster flag, he really didn't want any Leaf shinobi stumbling onto the scene. That would be… inconvenient.
So he could only abandon this base and relocate.
"Really hoping what I took off Gatō is enough to cover this," he muttered, looking at the giant pit.
It wasn't like Orochimaru had lab insurance.
And this was Orochimaru's private facility. If Kenichi had to reimburse everything at full price, his heart might break before his wallet did.
Still, it wasn't a total loss.
The experiment had proved something.
Chakra absolutely could be fused into a thermobaric system. With lightning chakra, the explosive's behavior changed dramatically—more power, and signs of electrical effects mixed into the blast.
Next step would be to test on living "samples" and carefully study the physiological damage.
Science.
But that would have to wait. This lab was finished. The floor had collapsed, half the interior was rubble, and anything not sealed in advance was probably vaporized.
On the bright side, Orochimaru had taken some materials with him before he left. Otherwise the damage bill would've been even worse.
Kenichi patted the storage scroll at his waist.
He'd managed to seal away a few important things while escaping, including the Kaguya clan blood sample. That needed a proper freezer as soon as possible.
Material exposed too long at room temperature would degrade.
In any serious biology lab, temperature control was sacred. DNA extraction, bacterial cultures—some species died if you changed the temperature by 0.1 degrees.
If you casually turned off the freezers?
Congratulations, that's how entire research projects died.
Blood was no different. No proper cold chain, no proper quality.
"Good thing I know where two other labs are," Kenichi exhaled, scanning the forest, then took off at full speed toward the nearest one.
Before leaving, he didn't forget to add a final touch.
A stream of Flame Bullet jutsu roared into the ruins, feeding the remaining debris until the underground structure was thoroughly burned out.
No evidence. No data fragments. No surprise visitors.
"Lately… something's off in the Land of Fire," Kenichi thought aloud as he ran, fox mask back on his face.
He'd just seen a small squad of shinobi rush past along the main road.
Their numbers were small. The leader was only a chunin.
But their faces…
Too tense. Too grim.
He'd seen that look before.
Last time, it meant war was coming.
"Did things finally blow up?" Kenichi rubbed his chin. "Konoha's biggest threat right now isn't internal politics… it's the other villages."
If anyone were going to make a move, the prime suspect was obvious.
"Probably the Cloud." He slowed, chakra flaring subtly as he sensed ahead.
Two chakra signatures. Familiar ones.
Kenichi slipped into the trees and hid.
A moment later, two figures emerged from the forest path.
Kenichi almost laughed.
"Is the Land of Fire small," he thought, "or is my luck just cursed…?"
Kakashi. And Might Guy.
It'd been a while, but Kakashi looked the same—messy silver hair, face mask, dead fish eyes, and a "don't talk to me" aura that could kill a conversation at twenty meters.
Not that this ever worked on Guy.
"Oi, Kakashi! Shouldn't we be heading to the front lines?" Guy waved his arms around, already wearing his iconic green jumpsuit, though still a bit youthful, not yet at full "Green Beast" glory. "The Hidden Cloud declared war on us!"
"This is a direct assignment from the Third," Kakashi answered flatly, single visible eye half-lidded.
Under the mask, his Sharingan whirred quietly.
Ever since the Fourth Hokage's death, Kakashi's life had tilted sideways again. Danzō had tried to recruit him into Root, but the Third had shut that down.
Even so, the betrayal of his friend—Amamiya Kenichi, branded a missing-nin—had cut deep.
After Obito and Rin, Kakashi had closed off his heart. He didn't let people get close. Didn't make "friends."
Kenichi had been the one exception.
The only friend he'd made in that dark period.
That night of the Nine-Tails' attack, he'd wanted to suspect Kenichi. The timing, the oddities—but in the end, he hadn't.
When giving his report, he'd simply said he'd been knocked out and remembered nothing.
He'd chosen trust.
Then Kenichi repaid him by dumping a full bottle of salt—and a barrel of alcohol—straight into his wounds.
So now, Kakashi accepted this mission without hesitation:
Find Orochimaru.
And find Kenichi.
The Third had noticed too. So he gave Kakashi what he wanted—authority to lead the search.
Of course, with the situation growing more critical by the day, Kakashi knew sooner or later he'd be pulled back to the front against the Cloud.
But until then… he was here.
In the same forest.
Breathing the same air.
Kenichi watched them from the shadows, fingers resting lightly on the scroll at his hip.
For a moment, he considered stepping out.
Saying something.
Then he looked at the scroll, thought of the blown-up lab, the remaining two bases, the blood samples, the thermobaric experiments, Akatsuki, Orochimaru, the Rinnegan—
And quietly turned away.
"…Sorry, Kakashi," he thought, leaping silently deeper into the woods.
"I've got too much left to blow up."