Hidden Leaf, Hidden Talents 59

I didn’t think Sakumo was the type to joke while an entire base burned, but he said, quiet and sure, “It hasn’t fallen,” and then he was already moving.

Tsunade moved with him. A flash of pale hair, a footfall that didn’t even bother the ash, and both of them blurred past the outer berm like the night had opened a side door just for them. By the time my eyes caught up, they were gone.

I sighed, spun off two clones that flickered out of sight, then sprinted after Tsunade and Sakumo.

Closer meant smell first. Burned wood, oil, the sourness of old fat catching flame. Beneath that was the iron note I knew too well. The outpost’s walls breathed heat, the watchtower was a torch, and the gate looked like someone had tried to teach it how to flower open from the inside.

No shouting. No steel hitting steel. Just the quiet roar that a fire makes when it has nothing left to argue with.

Bodies outside. Eighteen? Nineteen? I didn’t stand long enough to count. Wrong headbands, wrong gear. Patches, odd makes, the lazy mix of a life on the road. Missing-nin. Almost all of them. A couple of neighboring uniforms, but not many. Konoha flak vests, barely any at all on the ground. That was the first thing that didn’t match the picture I expected.

I stepped past a man whose mask had melted into his cheekbones. The ground around him was littered with shuriken that hadn’t found anything to do. I kept moving.

Inside wasn’t better. Corridors baked to a dark sheen, a glaze left by fire chewing on the same spot over and over. A door hung drunkenly by a single hinge. More bodies. Some had fallen with their hands up like they were still arguing with the wall.

I found them near the command room. Tsunade stood with her arms loose at her sides, Sakumo half a step behind her, and a jonin from the outpost was saying something while looking exhausted as hell. When I got close enough to hear, the word that reached me was “ambush.”

Tsunade noticed me. The conversation stopped like a thread pulled clean. She looked at my face and made a call in the space between her blinks. “The attackers are gone, so you can get some rest,” she said. “We’ll take Aya to the hospital wing.” She swept up Aya as if the weight didn’t exist, nodded to Sakumo and the jonin, and they were gone again.

I took a breath that didn’t help and exhaled it just to make room for the next one. Treated like a kid again. I could keep going for two days if I had to, tower defense or tower offense whatever mode it needed. But sure, rest. Why not.

She’d said the outpost was safe, attackers gone. Safe. The word felt too neat for what I’d just seen, like a lid pressed down on a pot that was still boiling underneath. Something was off. I knew it. I could feel it.

Outside, chunin dashed from the trough with sloshing buckets. A few others stood near the worst of the fires, hands moving through seals before releasing streams of water. I watched steam roll in white sheets and thought that something about the way the fire clung to the buildings still felt wrong, like it didn’t quite match the story everyone was acting out. I frowned, tried to pin it down, then caught a familiar face. The chunin who guarded the command post sometimes, the one with a wife who worked mess. My hand went up before my brain finished, ready to call out, but I realized I’d forgotten his name. I let the hand fall and pretended I’d never raised it.

I turned toward the barracks and made it six steps before a different thought tripped me. Minato and the others. Were they fine? Probably. Definitely. The “definitely” didn’t feel like a fact; it felt like a string I’d tied around my finger.

My stomach growled, and I debated finding something to eat. I glanced at the hard-working shinobi trying to put out the fires and felt embarrassed for even thinking about food.

But honestly, since I didn't know any water jutsu, I couldn't help anyway.

To ease my guilt, I created a single clone and told it to hide nearby, create additional clones, and secretly help put out the fires while I went for a walk.

So I wandered around the outpost with my hands tucked into my flak jacket, whistling, ignoring my clone's fading grumbles about manual labor.

The whistling died after about ten steps.

The outpost looked worse up close. More bodies than I'd expected, some covered with sheets, others still waiting. Chunin rushed past carrying water buckets, their faces streaked with ash. Some buildings had collapsed into charcoal and smoke. The smell of burnt wood mixed with something I didn't want to think about too hard.

I kept walking, letting my feet take me wherever. Must've been fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. Long enough for my legs to feel the aimless wandering, for the smoke smell to settle into my clothes.

By the time I reached the barracks area and turned a corner, I'd almost forgotten why I was out here in the first place.

Then I stiffened.

One of my clones popped.

I turned and made for the mess hall, picking up my pace. The building came into view around an orange shed. Better shape than the others, roof sagging on one side, door hanging crooked, but mostly there.

I went inside, found it empty, and checked every corner and room. Again, something felt off—very off. My clone had been right, one corner of the room had a faint draft, even though no window was open. I crouched down, felt around, and there it was, slightly warmer air rising from a narrow crack in the floor.

I deliberately walked around the mess hall and, sure enough, some sections of the kitchen floor gave off a different sound when stepped on. Less dense, more hollow.

I carefully checked the kitchen area and found a trapdoor beneath a large stove. Figured it out by tapping the floor near the stove and hearing a faint hollow response, unlike the packed earth around it. The alignment with the nearby walls and tiles was also slightly off.

Trapdoor under a heavy stove. Weird choice, but smart. Nobody moves a stove unless something has gone very wrong or very right. I put my hand on the iron lip to shift it, then stopped. The draft had a shape now, a faint lift of warmer air. And I hadn't seen a single civilian body outside.

Shelter. Everyone down there, waiting for a knock with the right password. Open it, and I’d get a lot of faces and a lot of questions. Also a lot of hassle. This smelled like a problem that’d puts mud on your boots and then follows you home. So nope. With my curiosity satisfied, I quickly lost interest and abandoned the trapdoor, putting it out of my mind.

Instead, I rummaged through the kitchen for food. Cold trays sat under cloth. The grease had turned waxy, but food was food. I grabbed a plate, loaded it with whatever looked edible. Some kind of stew, rice that had gone hard, a piece of bread that still had some give to it. Ate standing up by the counter, chewing through cold meat and vegetables that tasted like they'd been sitting since yesterday.

The chewing gave my mind something to do. Another part of me was busy picking up the items I'd dropped in my head on the way in.

The underground shelter. Tsunade and Sakumo's conversation with the jonin about an "ambush." Back then, I had assumed it was Konoha that had been ambushed, since the outpost was clearly on fire.

But on second thought, something had been off from the beginning. I’d been distracted by that married chunin before, but now that I remembered and thought about it carefully, I knew what was wrong.

First, the burning buildings, there was almost no exterior blast damage. If enemy jutsu had caused the fires, there should have been signs of attack from the outside. Windows blown inward, scorch marks on the outer walls, that sort of thing.

But on the contrary, windows and doors were blown outward, with burn marks streaking from the inside like black fingers reaching for escape. Glass shards were scattered on the ground outside the buildings, not inside. Smoke was billowing from multiple openings, suggesting the fires started indoors.

And those missing-nin corpses. I'd walked past a few earlier, one guy halfway through a window, stuck there with his face smashed against the ground. Another pressed against a doorframe, half his body covered in burns. Actually, most of them had burn marks now that I thought about it.

These weren't attack casualties. Well, they were casualties, obviously, but not from attacking. These were people trying to escape something.

Even a fresh academy graduate could have figured it out. Hell, probably a civilian could have figured it out. Konoha had lured them inside somehow and started the explosions. The few who'd made it outside had been picked off while trying to flee.

Actually, maybe not a civilian. But definitely an academy graduate.

Anyway.

Satisfied with my curiosity being sated, I kept eating.

The cold stew wasn't bad, considering. Rice was harder than it should've been, but I'd eaten worse. The bread had some chew left in it. Sometimes food was just food, and overthinking it was a waste of time.

The smell of charred flesh was getting stronger. Or maybe I was just noticing it more now that I wasn't focused on cooking. Hard to enjoy a meal when... yeah.

Though honestly, I've eaten in worse places. Not sure why I thought that was worth mentioning.

I took another bite and wondered how the higher-ups had managed to pull this off. Luring that many missing-nin into buildings... that required planning. Intel. Someone had to know they were coming. When they were coming. What route they'd take.

Which raised another question, who were these missing-nin anyway? These guys don't usually work in groups this large. Too many people means splitting the pay, and missing-nin are notoriously bad at sharing. They also don't usually take jobs this risky unless the money's really, really good.

So someone hired them. Someone with enough money to convince more than eighteen missing-nin that attacking a Konoha outpost was a good idea.

Which meant someone wanted this outpost gone. Or wanted to test our defenses. Or wanted to make a statement.

I kept walking, chewing on that thought.

Another clone popped.

This one had been standing on top of a tree about half a kilometer out, looking at the landscape around the outpost. Corpses scattered across the ground. Both Konoha and missing-nin, but way more missing-nin than ours. Bodies in the grass, bodies against trees, a few face-down in a shallow stream.

I shoved my hands back in my pockets and kept moving. The bodies weren't going anywhere, and neither were my questions. Well, technically I had answers now. Whether I wanted to do anything about those answers was the real problem.

……

The next day in Konoha, the roof of the Hokage Tower was quiet.

Hiruzen and Danzo stood side by side, overlooking the village. Smoke rose from a few chimneys. Somewhere below, a merchant was closing up shop. Normal evening routines. The things that continued regardless of war.

Hiruzen felt genuinely grateful to Danzo. Without Root's black ops work, they never would have obtained the intel on Iwa's attempt to contact Amegakure. And because of that intel, Konoha had managed to ambush most of the Ame and Iwa shinobi who'd been disguised as missing-nin at Kawazumi.

"What do you plan to do about the war?" Danzo asked.

Hiruzen took a slow breath, considering his words. This was the tipping point. The successful defense of Kawazumi, combined with the successful raids on enemy outposts, it had created a clear momentum shift. Konoha looked strong. The enemy appeared vulnerable.

Now was the time to push for peace negotiations. On Konoha's terms.

"We force the Land of Rivers to capitulate first," Hiruzen said. "Once that happens, Sand will have no choice but to follow."

Danzo was silent for a moment. Then. "That alone won't be enough."

"I know."

"But you should pursue peace regardless," Danzo continued. "I'll support you from the shadows. Root will continue the black ops raids, maintain pressure, prevent them from recovering."

Hiruzen nodded. That was what he'd hoped to hear.

"Use diplomatic channels," Danzo said. "Offer them ‘reasonable’ peace terms."

Reasonable. Of course. Terms that heavily favored Konoha, naturally, but packaged in a way that allowed Rivers and Sand to save face. Give them an out. Let them tell themselves they'd negotiated a decent settlement instead of admitting defeat.

"And what about Iwa?" Hiruzen asked. "And Amegakure?"

The real concern. Iwa and Ame couldn't publicly acknowledge the loss of shinobi they'd never officially sent, but they'd know. And knowing meant they'd respond.

Danzo turned to look at him. "You're worried they'll accelerate their plans."

"Forty-eight of their shinobi dead," Hiruzen said. "Even with plausible deniability, that's a significant loss for Iwa and Ame. They'll either pull back to reassess, or…"

"Or they'll commit more resources to whatever they were planning in the first place," Danzo finished.

Exactly. It was what happened in the shadows. What moves Iwa and Ame would make next, now that their initial probe had failed so spectacularly.

"Can Root delay whatever comes next?" Hiruzen asked. "At least until the war with Sand and Rivers is over?"

Danzo was quiet again. Thinking. Calculating. The way he always did when presented with a problem that required... creative solutions.

"I can deploy Root operatives disguised as Ame-nin," he said finally. "Have them attack several Iwa villages. Stir hostilities between the two."

"How long can you keep that going?" Hiruzen asked.

“Long enough,” Danzo said. “By the time Iwa and Ame figure out what’s happening, they’ll be too busy fighting each other to care about us. And if they don’t, I’ll make sure things get… unsettled in Ame as well.”

Long enough. That was all they needed. Just... long enough.

"Thank you, my friend," Hiruzen said quietly.

Danzo didn't respond. Just stood there, looking out over the village.

Below them, the merchant had finished closing his shop and was walking home. A woman called out to her children to come inside for dinner. Just another evening in Konoha.

……

Kawazumi Outpost

I woke up to the sound of someone snoring.

Not my snoring, thankfully. One of the other chunin in the barracks had a talent for making sounds like a dying walrus. I'd gotten used to it over the past few days, but that didn't make it pleasant. The morning light filtered through the narrow window above my bunk, painting everything in that weird orange-gray color that made the whole room look like it was trying to decide whether it wanted to be depressing or just ugly.

I glanced at the clock on the wall. 8:00.

Tsunade had told me to meet her at the training ground at 9:00, which meant I had time. Not a lot of time, but enough that I wouldn't have to rush. The three other chunin in the room were still dead to the world, bundled in their blankets like particularly antisocial caterpillars. If I didn't have training, I'd probably still be asleep too.

I stretched, felt my spine pop in three places, and swung my legs off the bunk.

The bathroom was down the hall. I grabbed my stuff and headed there, trying not to think about how much I missed my apartment back in Konoha. The outpost bathrooms were functional, sure, but they had all the charm of a prison cell. Gray walls, flickering light that buzzed like an angry bee, and a mirror that was either dirty or cursed. Maybe both.

I spent about ten minutes going through my morning routine. Brush teeth, wash face, fix hair so it didn't look like I'd been electrocuted. The usual. My reflection stared back at me. A dead fish would've looked more enthusiastic. Then again, I'd spent yesterday hauling lumber and hammering nails instead of doing anything interesting, so maybe that tracked.

By the time I finished, I felt almost human again.

The mess hall was already busy when I got there. Shinobi of various ranks sat at long tables, eating breakfast and talking in low voices. The air smelled like rice, miso soup, and something vaguely fish-related that I didn't want to identify. It wasn't bad, exactly. Just... boring.

"Shinji-san!"

I turned and saw her, the chunin's wife I'd met a few days ago. She was behind the serving counter, ladling miso soup into bowls for the line of shinobi. She looked tired, but then again, everyone here looked tired.

I grabbed a tray and joined the line. When I reached the counter, she glanced up and smiled.

"Morning," I said, walking over. "How are you holding up?"

"Better than I expected," she said, ladling soup into my bowl. "The repairs are coming along well. Minato-san and his team have been a huge help."

"Yeah, he's good at that." I moved my tray along as she added rice and grilled fish.

She laughed. "I don’t doubt that. From what I've heard, you've been just as helpful."

"I'm mostly following Minato's lead," I said. "He actually knows construction. I just carry the heavy stuff and nod when he explains load-bearing walls."

She added pickled vegetables to my tray, still smiling. "Well, either way, thank you."

I nodded and moved on, scanning the room for a place to sit. Most of the tables were full, but I found a spot near the back where a few chunin I vaguely recognized were eating in silence.

"Mind if I sit?"

"Not at all," one of them said. Then he blinked, like something just clicked in his head. "Wait, you're the one who helped with the fires a few days ago, right? With all those clones?"

"Uh, yeah. That was me."

"Man, you saved our asses," another one said. "That blaze near the eastern wall was about to spread to the next building. Then suddenly there's like twenty of you running around doing everything."

"Got it handled way faster than we could've," the third one added. "Probably saved us half the repairs we're dealing with now."

"Oh. Yeah, no problem."

Which was a weird thing to say because, honestly, I didn't remember most of it. The clones had kind of done their own thing once I'd made them. I'd given them a general direction, put out the fire, don't let anyone die, and they'd just... gone. By the time they dispelled and I got all their memories back, it was already done.

So really, I was accepting thanks for work I'd technically done but hadn't actually been present for.

"Seriously though," the third chunin said. "You kept the whole situation from getting worse. We appreciate it."

"Just doing what needed doing," I said, because what else could I say? "Glad it worked out."

They seemed satisfied with that, which was good because I didn't have a better answer. We settled into comfortable silence after that, just eating. They nodded at me a few more times throughout the meal in this way.

I nodded back.

It felt nice, actually. Weird, but nice.

My clones had apparently made a good impression.

That fire had been just one mess among many from the attack, but at least it was a mess we'd actually managed to handle.

It had been a few days since the counter-ambush. If you could even call it that. More like "the time a bunch of enemy shinobi tried to be clever and got absolutely demolished for their trouble." The outpost had taken some damage during the fight, which was why I'd spent some of my time helping Minato and the others with the construction and repairs. Not that I minded, really. Hauling lumber and hammering nails was just another form of physical training. It beat sitting around doing nothing.

"Hey." Minato appeared beside the table with his team. Miyabi, Nawaki, and Yua stood behind him, looking about as awake as I felt, which was to say not very.

"Morning," I said. "Grab a seat."

They sat down, grabbed their chopsticks, and dug in.

For a minute, nobody talked. Just eating. Nawaki looked like he wanted to say something, opened his mouth, then apparently decided food was more important.

"So," I said eventually. "Plans for today?"

"Training with Orochimaru-sensei," Nawaki said immediately, practically vibrating with excitement. "Then more repairs."

"Same," Miyabi added, sounding significantly less excited about it.

"I'm training with Tsunade-sensei," I said. "Then more repairs. Also more training after that. Living the dream."

Yua raised an eyebrow. "That's a lot of things to do in one day."

"Tsunade-sensei's thorough like that," I said with a shrug.

"What kind of training?" Minato asked.

"Probably something medical-related," I added. "Since that's what we've been working on."

Nawaki perked up. "You're learning medical ninjutsu? That's so cool!"

"It's a lot of memorization," I said. "Less cool than it sounds."

"Can you fight with it though?" Nawaki said, leaning slightly. "Like, is there offensive medical ninjutsu?"

"Sure," I said. "Chakra scalpel, for one."

Miyabi looked interested now. "Scapel?"

"Yeah. It's meant for surgery, precise cuts without needing an actual blade. But you can use it in combat too." I paused. How to explain this? "You coat your hand in chakra, shape it right, and it just... cuts. Through muscle, tendons, whatever. Doesn't leave external wounds though. Just severs what's inside."

"That sounds brutal," Yua said.

"It is." I took a bite of fish. "But it's useful and hard to block, since most people don't expect it."

Actually, 'hard to block' wasn't quite right. You could block it, technically, but you had to know what you were dealing with first.

"Helped me a lot in the last fight," I said. "When you're up against jonin, having something that bypasses armor and standard defenses—" I gestured vaguely with my chopsticks. "It makes a difference. People see your hand coming, think it's just taijutsu, then suddenly their arm stops working."

Nawaki's eyes went wide. "Wait, you've actually fought jonin? Like, actual jonin?"

"Few times now," I said. "Still getting used to it, but yeah."

"That's insane," Nawaki said. "I can barely keep up with chunin in training."

"You'll get there," I said. "Just takes practice."

Minato had been quiet, but now he looked at me with this expression I recognized. "We should spar sometime."

I blinked. "What, now?"

"Not now. But soon." He smiled, but there was something else there. Interest, maybe. "I'd like to see how you use it. The chakra scalpel, I mean."

"You just want to figure out how to counter it," I said.

"That too," he admitted.

Miyabi smirked. "He's been trying to spar with every chunin at the outpost since we got here."

"I wouldn't say 'every,'" Minato said. "Just the ones I think I can learn something from."

"Same thing," Yua said.

I took another bite of fish. A spar with Minato sounded interesting, but also kind of weird when I thought about it. Because wasn't I doing the exact same thing? Walking around the outpost, finding chunin to spar with whenever I had free time?

We were creepily similar in that regard.

"Sure," I said. "After I'm done with Tsunade-sensei."

"Looking forward to it," Minato said, and I could tell he meant it.

Yeah. Definitely similar.

Nawaki raised his hand like we were still in the Academy. "Can I watch?"

"If you want to see your teammate get his ass handed to him."

"You say that now," Minato said, grinning wider. "Might want to save the trash talk for after."

The conversation settled for a moment, people going back to their food. Then Nawaki shifted in his seat, and I could tell something had been eating at him.

"The ambush a few days ago," he said, looking at me. "Shinji, were you in that fight?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Some chunin told us at least thirty enemies got taken down. Maybe more. I still can't believe it. We were just sitting in the shelter the whole time and—ugh, it's so frustrating!"

“Because we were in the shelter,” Yua reminded him. “Exactly where we were supposed to be.”

"I know, but still!" Nawaki's expression shifted from excitement to something closer to frustration. "It's so annoying that we got stuck down there. We missed the whole fight!"

"You would've been a burden," Miyabi said bluntly. "Or dead. Most of the people fighting were jonin and chunin. Genin would've just gotten in the way."

"She's right," Yua said. "You probably would've been chewed in half in a single blow."

Nawaki's face scrunched up in a pout. "You don't have to say it like that."

I picked at my pickled radish. "That's why you should learn as much as you can from Orochimaru-sensei. Get better, get faster. Make chunin. Then next time something like this happens, you won't be stuck in a shelter."

Nawaki's whole face lit up. "You're right! This is just the first step. I'm gonna train hard, make chunin, and become Hokage!"

"You'll have to beat me first," Minato said, smiling. "I want to be Hokage too."

Nawaki blinked. "Wait, really?"

"Really."

"Well then I'll just have to work twice as hard!" Nawaki said. "I'm gonna be the best student Orochimaru-sensei ever had!"

"Pretty sure that spot's taken," I said. "But second-best isn't bad."

"Second-best?" Nawaki looked offended. "I'm not settling for second-best. I'll be first. At everything. Orochimaru-sensei's best student, the strongest genin, and the next Hokage. Minato can have second place."

Minato just smiled wider. "We'll see about that."

"Yeah." Nawaki pointed at him with his chopsticks. "We will."

Then he turned to me. "What about you, Shinji? Do you want to be Hokage too?"

I paused mid-chew.

Did I want to be Hokage?

No. Absolutely not. Being Hokage meant paperwork. Mountains of it. Sitting at a desk all day, signing documents, attending meetings with old men who talked in circles. That sounded like hell. I'd rather fight a hundred jonin bare-handed than spend my days buried in administrative work.

"Nah," I said. "Not interested in being a desk guy."

"Really?" Nawaki looked surprised. "But you're strong enough. You could totally do it."

"Strong enough, sure. But wanting to do it is different." I took a sip of water. "Being Hokage sounds exhausting."

"You could still train to be strong without wanting the position," Minato said, pulling me out of my thoughts.

"That's the plan," I said.

Nawaki shrugged. "Your loss. More room at the top for me."

"Sure," I said. "Good luck with that."

We kept talking as we ate, the conversation drifting from training to missions to the general weirdness of living in an outpost that had almost been overrun by enemy forces a few days ago. Talk that didn't really go anywhere, just bounced around until everyone finished eating and realized they had places to be.

Eventually Minato and his team stood up, said their goodbyes, and headed off toward wherever Orochimaru was probably waiting to put them through training that would make grown men cry.

I finished my breakfast, dropped off my tray, and headed out.