Watching Minato tear through the battlefield with a series of lightning-fast maneuvers, felling swaths of his comrades in moments, Troy knew things couldn't go on like this.
If Minato was allowed to keep it up, no matter how many people they threw at him, it would never be enough. Before his chakra ran dry, no one would even be able to brush the edge of his clothes.
What Troy couldn't understand was this: they were all shinobi—so how could someone be this fast? Wouldn't his girlfriend have complaints about that?
Ordinary Kumo shinobi simply had no way to deal with attacks that surpassed normal neural reaction limits. At this point, only his own kekkei genkai—Magnet Release—could restrain Minato's movements.
After magnetizing the massive square-bladed shuriken in his hand, Troy drove it into the ground. He then pulled a sealing scroll free, clamped it between his teeth, formed hand seals, and summoned two long chains of identical small square shuriken.
Magnet Release: Magnetized Shuriken Technique!
After infusing his special chakra into the two chains of shuriken, he swept both hands outward. The hovering shuriken were guided by an invisible force, scattering in all directions.
They were fast, and their targets were clear.
This was a wide-area ninjutsu. Its objective was the Konoha shinobi surrounding his comrades—forcing them to abandon their assault and instead use kunai to deflect the square shuriken flying toward them.
Under Troy's control, once these bizarre shuriken were knocked aside by Konoha shinobi, they fell with precision onto the Flying Thunder God kunai embedded in the ground.
Even the Makoto squad, which had just entered the battlefield, was "taken care of" by one of the square shuriken. Kumomi drew his blade, intending to sweep it away, but Makoto beat him to it, using a scaled-down version of the One-Horn Great Wall technique to knock the shuriken aside.
He applied force deliberately, ensuring the shuriken did not land on the Flying Thunder God kunai near them.
Makoto quietly picked up the kunai and stowed it in his ninja pouch, then warned, "Don't touch that guy's shuriken with your weapons. I can sense that even your body will be magnetized. Look at what happened to the others who touched them."
The three looked over, and sure enough, the square shuriken that had been deflected sprang back from the ground like predators that had locked onto prey, shooting once more at the people who had just made contact with them.
This was the deadly surprise of a special technique on first encounter—without understanding the principle behind it, it was easy to fall right into the trap.
Magnet Release was not unfamiliar in the shinobi world. Although ninja placed great emphasis on intelligence secrecy, the way Sunagakure's Third Kazekage and Rasa used Magnet Release had long since been exposed. Fortunately for them, it didn't matter—when iron sand or gold dust crashed down like tidal waves, knowing about it didn't mean you could stop it.
Only Troy of Kumogakure used Magnet Release in a combat style that remained largely unknown. Outsiders who learned of it were all dead.
That was because his Magnet Release wasn't as flashy as Sunagakure's. Pathetically, it could only magnetize weapons. It lacked the overwhelming force to crush everything head-on. Once its mechanics were understood, its threat level dropped dramatically.
This time, likely because he was controlling too many small square shuriken at once, the speed and striking power of each individual one weren't particularly high. Most of the Konoha shinobi who were attacked could block or evade in time; only a few unlucky ones with insufficient skill were hit, their fates unknown—dead or alive.
Even so, this peculiar assault still served as a deterrent. The fighting paused briefly, buying the remaining Kumo shinobi a moment to catch their breath.
Troy and Teoshi both knew that with Konoha shinobi encircling them, there was no way to escape. All they could do was stall for time and see if they could hold out until the Fourth Raikage's reinforcements arrived.
As long as Raikage-sama made it here, everything would get better.
Konoha, of course, understood that plan as well. So after the short lull, the encirclement attack restarted.
The Kumo shinobi were dragged back into a bitter struggle.
Troy couldn't go on rescuing anyone anymore, because he had trouble of his own—Namikaze Minato had come for him.
From the previous exchange, Minato quickly deduced that the kunai he had scattered earlier had already been magnetized by the enemy and were no longer safe.
So several kunai were fired out again, embedding themselves around Troy. Then the Flying Thunder God Technique activated, and Minato instantly appeared behind him, kunai in hand, slashing toward the back of Troy's neck at blistering speed.
Troy was a pure ninjutsu-type shinobi. He knew his taijutsu was inferior, his reaction speed inferior—so he used a crude method to defend.
Under Magnet Release's control, three enormous square-bladed shuriken spun around him, sealing him inside a turtle-shell-like defense.
Clang!
The giant square shuriken blocked Minato's strike—and in the process, magnetized him as well.
But Minato himself was also a sensor-type shinobi, and he immediately picked up on the problem.
Seeing that he'd succeeded, Troy kept himself protected while directing the nearby small square shuriken to fire in dense volleys at Minato. Those little things acted as if they could track their target, crazily surging in to attack the magnetized mark.
But this still didn't do much against Minato—quick on the draw and able to switch positions in an instant.
In the end, Troy was just a small-time "showman." He could only use his special Magnet Release chakra to empower weapons, controlling them to attack magnetized targets. At most, his methods were simply strange and tricky.
If he could truly control magnetism like a genuine Magneto—hell, even the movie version would do—then by manipulating the metal weapons across the battlefield he could slaughter his way through everything.
But chakra wasn't a mutant superpower. It couldn't be used with that kind of effortless freedom. Relatively speaking, the Third Kazekage's Magnet Release was closer to Magneto's.
And his opponent wasn't limited to kunai attacks alone. After flickering around Troy several times in rapid succession, spinning him until he was completely disoriented, Minato finally forced him to expose an opening.
A Rasengan blasted the two giant shuriken away before they could close together. Then, with a flash, Minato slipped past the shredding assault of the small square shuriken and appeared behind Troy, driving a kunai straight into his heart.
Minato's raw attack power might not have been overwhelming, but it wasn't something that could be blocked with just a few chunks of metal.
He didn't even need to use Flying Thunder God: Guiding Thunder to move the giant square shuriken away—those things simply weren't worth it.
"So fast…"
That was the only remark Troy could manage before dying.
It was probably the same lament uttered by every shinobi who died at Minato's hands.
While Minato was finishing off Troy, Makoto and the others were happily harvesting easy battlefield merits of their own.
The real experts could leave the heavyweights to deal with each other. They only needed to stay on the fringes, observing—and if necessary, add a bit of noise by calling out in support.
But a masked, white-haired young man who had followed Minato into battle had no intention of staying in the background. He went straight after the fair-skinned, blond Kumo shinobi Teoshi, fighting with extreme ferocity, as if he didn't care about his own life.
This was the Konoha genius template that Higashino Jirō had always talked about—Hatake Kakashi.
Makoto noticed him. Ever since losing two teammates in quick succession, the light had completely drained from his eyes.
His fighting style was equally desperate, carrying an air of mutual destruction—if you don't kill me, I'll kill you.
As an adult Kumo jōnin elite, Teoshi's strength should have exceeded Kakashi's at this stage. But with his emotions in turmoil, and facing a Kakashi who fought as if his life meant nothing, he was forced into an increasingly awkward position.
At this moment, Kakashi had already lost his father's weapon, the White Fang short blade. Armed with nothing but a kunai, he pressed in close, engaging Teoshi in rapid, close-quarters combat.
Neither side had time to use ninjutsu. They clashed using only the most basic taijutsu, and for a while neither could gain the upper hand.
Suddenly, not far away, Makoto frowned as his passive sensing detected a change.
With a single Body Flicker, he jumped behind Teoshi. Just as Teoshi blocked Kakashi's downward thrust and, having noticed something himself, began to show a smile— Makoto drove his blade straight through Teoshi's heart.
Before dying, Teoshi turned his head to look at Higashino Makoto, his eyes filled with a desperate longing to live.
He could already sense it—rescue had been just moments away. So why did some sneaky bastard suddenly jump out?
Damn it. Too careless. Didn't dodge.
"You bastards deserve to die!"
A furious roar came from the sky—but it was useless. With his heart pierced, Teoshi was beyond saving unless a god descended from the heavens.
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