Hidden Leaf, Hidden Talents 39

The rain had finally let up, but everything was still soaked. Water dripped from every branch, and the bark was slippery as hell under my feet. Mikoto and I were making decent time through the trees, keeping maybe half a mile between us and the caravan below.

But something was off.

She was keeping pace, sure. Still sharp. Still fast. But her face was set tighter than usual, her eyes just a little too far away.

"You doing okay?" I asked as we landed on a thick, mossy branch.

"I'm fine," she said, but her voice was flatter than usual. "Just tired."

"Tired? You?" I gave her a look. "Uchiha don't get tired. Pretty sure it's against clan rules or something."

That got a small smile out of her. "Yeah, well, guess I’m defective, then.”

We jumped in silence for a while, but I could tell something was eating at her.

"Mikoto," I said finally, during another pause. "What's going on?"

She was quiet for a long moment, staring off through the trees. "It's nothing. Just... family stuff."

"Family stuff that has you looking like someone kicked your cat?"

"I don't have a cat."

"You know what I mean."

She sighed, running a hand through her damp hair. "We got word from the Suna front yesterday. My cousin was in the latest engagement in the River Country."

I felt my stomach drop. "Was?"

"He's alive," she said quickly. "But barely. Took a hit to the chest and lost half his squad." Her voice got quieter. "Three other Uchiha didn't make it back at all."

"Shit, Mikoto. I'm sorry."

"It's war, right? People die." But her hands were clenched into fists. "It's just... we're supposed to be the best. Genjutsu, Sharingan, all that clan pride bullshit. And we're still losing people to Suna and River shinobi."

I didn't know what to say to that. The Uchiha were supposed to be untouchable—that's what everyone believed, probably what they believed about themselves too.

My first instinct was to roll my eyes a little. Of course the clan princess was having trouble with the reality that her family wasn't invincible. Welcome to the real world, where even fancy bloodlines couldn't stop a kunai to the throat.

But then I actually looked at her. Really looked.

And it hit me—she was a teenager.

I'd been thinking of her as this confident, skilled Uchiha who happened to be on my team. Someone who could keep up with me in the trees, who had decent instincts, who didn't slow me down. I'd been treating her like... well, like an equal.

But she wasn't. She was a teenager who'd probably grown up hearing stories about how great and powerful her clan was, how their Sharingan made them nearly unstoppable, how they were the pride of Konoha. And now people she'd grown up with—people she'd probably looked up to—were coming back broken or not coming back at all.

For all her skill, she was still just a genin dealing with her first real taste of what war actually meant.

"I'm sorry," I said, and I meant it. "I bet you knew those guys, didn't you? The ones who didn't make it back."

She nodded, not trusting her voice.

"That sucks. It really does." I shifted on the branch, trying to find the right words. "For what it's worth, being upset about it doesn't make you weak. It makes you human."

"The clan doesn't really do 'human,'" she said with a bitter little laugh. "We do 'strong' and 'victorious' and 'bringing honor to the Uchiha name.'"

"Yeah, well, the clan can go stuff it for a minute. You're allowed to be sad when people you care about get hurt."

That got a snort out of her—half laugh, half sob. "You realize you just told one of the most powerful clans in Konoha to 'stuff it,' right?"

"What are they gonna do, glare at me really intensely?"

"With the Sharingan, actually, yeah." But she was almost smiling now. "Though knowing you, you'd probably find a way to make that backfire too. Like showing up to a genjutsu duel wearing a blindfold or something."

"Hey, that's not a terrible strategy. Can't get caught in a genjutsu if you can't see it."

"That's..." She paused, actually considering it. "That's still completely insane, but also kind of brilliant in a very you way."

I reached over and squeezed her shoulder. "For what it's worth, you being here instead of there probably means someone else gets to go home tonight. That caravan we're protecting? Those are real people too."

She nodded, taking a shaky breath. "I know. It's just hard sometimes."

"Yeah. It is."

We sat in comfortable silence for a moment, listening to the water drip from the leaves around us. The heaviness was still there, but it felt more manageable now.

"How you holding up?" I asked, shifting the conversation to lighter ground. “Y’know—besides the existential crisis.”

"My hair's going to be sticky tonight." She wiped rain off her face, seeming grateful for the change of subject. "But I'll live. You?"

"Same. At least it's not pouring."

"Don't even think about jinxing us," she warned, already moving toward the next tree. "We've still got hours to go."

“Don’t worry, we-“

Suddenly the memories hit me like a pillow to the skull—soft, but still weirdly personal.

—Clone moving through brush near the road, maybe three hundred meters out from town. Something's wrong. Movement in the trees above. Six figures dropping down—bandits, weapons already out, no time to—

The surprise hit me like a punch to the gut. My vision blurred, and suddenly I wasn't seeing the branch in front of me anymore, I was seeing steel flashing and blood and—

My left foot went out from under me on the slick bark.

I twisted around, grabbing for anything, and managed to slap my palm against the trunk. I swung around it, using the momentum to flip myself back up onto another branch.

"Shinji!" Mikoto was right there, looking me over. "What happened? Are you hurt?"

"I'm okay." I caught my breath. "One of my clones just got hit. Wasn't expecting the memory dump right now."

She dropped beside me on the branch, frowning. “Memory dump?”

"Yeah, when a clone gets taken out, everything they experienced just..." I made a vague gesture at my head. "Floods back all at once. Usually I have them dispel on a timer so it's not so jarring, but this guy got jumped."

She studied my face. "You sure you're okay?"

“Yeah.” I gave a short nod. “No pain—just the memories. Caught me off guard, that’s all.”

I blinked a few times, trying to make sense of the messy swirl of secondhand adrenaline and jumbled visuals.

Steel. Bark. Leaves stained with blood. The smell of wet grass.

Then I saw them—six figures moving like pros despite their rough clothes.

These weren’t desperate bandits out for easy coin.

"Six of them, at least chunin level," I said. "Dressed like bandits but fighting like trained shinobi. And they had a sensor with them—my clone never even saw it coming."

Mikoto's face went tight. "A sensor?"

"My thoughts exactly." I stood up, testing my balance. "We need to warn Miyabi. Have her find a good spot to make camp and set up proper watches. Maybe scout some backup positions while they're at it."

"How much time do we have?"

I ran the numbers in my head. "Four hours, maybe five. Close enough that they might try something tonight."

"I'll have Tsume get word to the caravan."

"And make sure they know about the sensor. Last thing we need is someone wandering off to take a piss and walking into an ambush."

I leaned back against the trunk, letting the bark dig into my shoulder while my brain spun through the mess we were in.

They had the upper hand—no question there. They knew the terrain, had been watching the roads for days, and that sensor of theirs meant we couldn’t so much as sneeze without getting flagged. Stealth was off the table.

Still… we weren’t completely screwed.

My clones had been working the past few days in Kitaura, the little trading town where the rest of the Konoha teams were stationed. Quiet recon, mostly. Listening, watching, dropping info with the squad leads when they could.

I sifted through the memory dump, filtering out the ambush flashes and digging for the intel my clones had picked up from town.

Four teams assigned to this mission. Two already deployed, chasing reports of merchant caravans getting hit. My guys had checked in with the others still in Kitaura, swapped updates, and filed observations.

The picture wasn’t pretty.

These guys weren't even pretending to be random bandits anymore—they were hitting merchants who traded with the Fire Country while letting everyone else through untouched. Someone was definitely directing this, and if we didn't shut it down soon, it was going to become a nasty problem real quick.

The timing was what really pissed me off. With most of our forces tied up fighting Suna, we couldn't spare the manpower to properly patrol every trade route. Whoever was behind this knew exactly what they were doing—hit us when we were stretched thin, make it costly enough that neutral countries would start thinking twice about doing business with us.

And it was probably working. It didn't take a genius to see where this was heading. Keep hitting Fire Country merchants while leaving everyone else alone, and pretty soon the neutral traders would start avoiding our routes entirely. Rice Country, Hotspring Country, all the smaller nations that depended on steady trade—they'd start looking for safer options.

It wasn't just about the money, though that would hurt bad enough. During wartime, those trade routes were lifelines—medical supplies, raw materials for weapons, food to keep the civilian population fed while our forces were off fighting. Cut off enough of that trade, and suddenly we'd be fighting a war on two fronts: against River-Suna's forces and against our own supply shortages.

Worse, if this pattern kept up, other countries might start seeing Fire Country as a liability. Why risk your merchants getting killed just to trade with us when you could do business safely with Earth or Lightning Country instead? Once that reputation stuck, it would take years to rebuild those relationships after the war ended.

This wasn't random violence. This was economic warfare. Someone was trying to strangle us while we were too busy bleeding on the front lines to notice the knife at our throat.

We needed to break the pattern. Show that Fire Country could protect its trade partners. Maybe start running false flag operations—have our own people pose as merchants, let word leak about valuable cargo, then ambush whoever showed up to hit them. Turn the hunters into the hunted.

Or we could try to trace the attacks back to their source. These weren't random bandits, which meant coordination, which meant supply lines and communication networks. Find those, and you could roll up the whole operation from the inside.

Better yet, if we could figure out which country was backing the operation, we could hit their trade routes in retaliation. Make it cost them as much as it was costing us. Turn it into a proper economic war instead of just taking hits...

"Are you okay?" Mikoto had finished with Tsume and was settling back down next to me. "You're doing that thing again."

"What thing?"

"That face you make when you're cooking up some weird plan."

I couldn't help grinning. "Just thinking through our options. That clone that got jumped was part of my little spy network in Kitaura—you know, the town where the other teams are hanging out. Also the same place we’re supposed to drop this caravan.”

"Spy network," she repeated, shaking her head like I’d just told her I raised pigeons in my spare time. “Sometimes I forget you’re not like the rest of us.”

“Hey, I’m totally normal.” I shot her a deadpan look, then made a quick seal and popped another clone. I jabbed a thumb toward the direction of town. “Point is, I’ve got eyes and ears down there. While we’re out here babysitting merchants, they’re gathering intel. If this guy makes it back and checks in, we’ll know whether we can expect backup.”

"And until then?"

“Until then, we don’t do anything stupid.” I pushed off the trunk and stretched a little, getting ready to move again. “Come on. Miyabi’s probably knee-deep in tents and bad tempers by now.”

We started moving through the trees again, but something kept bugging me. Shadow clones were great for intel and keeping in touch with people, but they had one major problem—once I sent them out, that was it. No way to talk to them until they came back or got killed.

If things went sideways fast, or if the other teams needed to coordinate something right now, my clones would be working with old information. That could get people killed.

There’s gotta be a workaround, I thought, ducking a low-hanging branch. Maybe something with seals... relay tags, or a burst trigger on the memory link—

"You're doing it again," Mikoto called out.

"Doing what?"

“Thinking so loud I can practically hear the gears grinding.”

……

The clone disappeared in a puff of white smoke, leaving nothing but the sharp smell of burned chakra in the air.

One of the shinobi flicked blood off his kunai before sliding it back into its sheath. "Well, that was disappointing."

"Clone," another one said, spitting into the dirt. "Should've known when it didn't bleed right."

The six of them stood around where their target had been, looking convincingly scruffy in their bandit gear. Weeks of playing the part had left their clothes properly torn and dirty, their weapons looking like they'd been scavenged rather than issued. It was good cover for what they'd been doing in these parts.

"Kid knowing shadow clones though," their tracker muttered, scratching at his fake beard. "That's not normal Academy stuff."

Renji, their team leader, shifted his grip on his sword and scanned the trees. "Konoha's been switching things up, I guess." He didn't sound convinced. "Question is, how many more of those things are running around?"

"And where's the real brat," someone added.

That's when Kota made a weird choking sound and dropped to one knee.

“Hey—” Renji was on him fast. “Kota? What’s going on?”

“I can’t…” Kota’s face had gone paper white, sweat already breaking out across his forehead. “My arm—I can’t move my arm.”

His left arm just hung there, limp and useless. When Renji shoved up the sleeve, there wasn’t a mark on it—no blood, no swelling. Just skin. Normal, untouched skin.

“When the hell did this happen?” Renji snapped. “You were fine thirty seconds ago.”

"I don't know!" Kota stared at his arm like it wasn't his. "It doesn't even hurt. I just... I can't feel anything. From the elbow down, it's like it's not even there."

Their medic dropped her pack and knelt beside them. "Let me see."

She ran her hands over his arm, green chakra flickering around her fingers as she worked. After a moment, she sat back on her heels, frowning.

“These aren’t normal injuries,” she said. “The muscle fibers are cleanly severed—but there’s no trauma around the cuts. No tearing, no bruising.”

Her eyes flicked up to Renji. “This was done with a chakra scalpel.”

“A what now?” the tracker asked, crouching beside her.

“Medical ninjutsu,” she said, already channeling chakra again. “It turns your chakra into a blade—surgeons use it for operations. It’s incredibly precise. This kind of damage doesn’t just happen. You have to know what you’re doing.”

She began stitching the chakra threads back through the fibers, her brow tight with concentration.

"Wait, hold up." One of the others stepped closer. "You're saying that kid did surgery on him? In the middle of a fight?"

“Not surgery.” The medic didn’t even glance up. “This was an attack. A weaponized version of medical ninjutsu.”

Renji felt his stomach drop. Medical techniques weren't Academy material. Hell, most chunin couldn't pull off a chakra scalpel. The kind of control it took, the training...

"The clone did this to you," he said, looking down at Kota.

"I guess? I mean, I thought I had it cornered. We were going at it pretty hard, and then after it poofed..." Kota stared at his limp arm. "I don't even remember when it happened. Everything was moving so fast."

That's when it clicked for Renji. During the fight, when they'd had the clone surrounded—there had been something. A quick flash of green light around its hand, gone almost before he'd noticed it.

He'd figured it was just the light playing tricks on him.

"Son of a..." he muttered. "It used a chakra scalpel. A genin clone used a chakra scalpel in combat."

"That's not possible," another team member said. "Medical ninjutsu takes years to learn. Even basic healing is chunin-level."

"Yeah, well, tell that to my dead arm," Kota said weakly.

The medic kept working, green chakra steady around her hands as she carefully reconnected the damaged muscle.

"How long?" Renji asked, watching her work.

"Five, maybe ten minutes. I can fix the damage, but I need to do this right or he'll have problems with that arm forever."

Renji rubbed his forehead, trying to think this through. They'd been hitting caravans for weeks now—standard harassment ops to mess with Fire Country's trade routes. Make it look like regular bandits, squeeze the merchants, force the smaller nations to think twice about doing business with Konoha.

Boring work, really. The kind of assignment they gave to chunin teams when all the real missions were tied up elsewhere.

Except now they had some genin brat slicing people up with medical ninjutsu like it was nothing.

"Boss," one of his subordinates said, "at this rate, why are we still bothering with the bandit act? Anyone with half a brain can figure out that either Kumo or Iwa is behind all these attacks. The pattern's too obvious."

Renji's expression darkened. "Because the moment we drop the pretense, this stops being a deniable operation and becomes an act of war. Our job is to make Fire Country's trade routes unprofitable, not to give them an excuse to march on our borders. Stop asking stupid question."

The guy's jaw tightened. "Right. Got it, boss." There was just enough bite in his tone to make it clear he didn't appreciate being talked to like an idiot, but not quite enough to be insubordination.

Renji caught the attitude but let it slide. They were all on edge after what had just happened.

He turned to their tracker. "What are you picking up out there?"

The man closed his eyes, going still as he extended his senses. "Caravan's still moving southeast, couple kilometers out." He frowned, concentrating harder. "But there's definitely more people than there should be. I'm counting... six distinct chakra signatures."

"Konoha shinobi?"

"Has to be."

Another guy nudged a dead branch with his foot, watching it tumble into the underbrush. “So what now?”

"Mission stays the same," Renji said. "We hit the caravan, make it look like bandits, get out clean."

"Boss," the medic said, still working on Kota's arm, "a genin pulling off combat medical ninjutsu? That's not normal."

"No kidding," the tracker muttered. "Kid this good now, what's he gonna be like in a few years?"

That silenced them.

They were solid chunin—experienced, competent. But this wasn't really about the medical ninjutsu. Sure, chakra scalpels weren't great for killing people, but that wasn't the point.

The point was that any genin who could master something that advanced was probably the kind of freak who could learn anything you put in front of him.

"How common is this?" Renji asked the medic. "Genin knowing medical ninjutsu?"

"It's not." She didn't look up from her work. "Most villages won't even touch medical training until chunin rank. The control you need, the theory..." She shook her head. "I’ve been at this for eight years, and even I couldn’t pull off cuts that clean during live combat."

"So either this kid's some kind of prodigy," another team member said, "or he's not actually a genin."

"But if he is..." He didn't finish the thought.

Everyone knew what he meant. A talent like that wouldn't stay genin for long. Give him a few years, and he'd be the kind of shinobi that made operations like theirs suicide missions.

The smart play might be to end this problem while they still could.

"We're moving," Renji said. "That kid's going to be a problem for us down the line. Better to deal with it now while we can."

The medic pulled her hands back from Kota's arm. "Good enough for now. You'll be sore, but it'll work."

"Alright." Renji looked around at his team. "We hit them fast and hard. No messing around, no drawn-out fights. Get in, eliminate the threats, get out."

They took off through the trees, moving in sync like they'd done this a hundred times. The forest was a blur of green as they closed the distance to the caravan.

“Wait,” the tracker said suddenly, raising a hand to stop them. His eyes squeezed shut, chakra flaring faintly as he concentrated. “One of the signatures just broke off. Heading toward town. Fast.”

“Damn it,” Renji muttered. “They’re calling for backup.”

“You want us to split up?”

“No.” Renji was already calculating. “If that runner gets there and calls in help, we’ll be looking at multiple squads instead of one. We take him out first—then double back for the caravan.”

"What if they change course while we're chasing him?"

"Then we track them down after." Renji checked his gear. "But we can't let word get out. Konoha already knows someone's been hitting their trade routes—they're not idiots. But as long as we maintain the bandit cover, they can't officially retaliate while they're tied up fighting Suna and Rivers."

He glanced toward Kota, still pale but stable. “Splitting up just makes us easier to pick off. And I’ve got a bad feeling about this mess already.”

They changed direction, angling toward the lone signature racing through the forest. No matter how fast the messenger had, they'd catch up soon enough.

And once they cleaned up that loose end, they could deal with the problem kid.

They darted through the canopy, branches whipping past as they pushed their pace. The tracker kept his eyes locked ahead, reading the chakra signatures.

"Shit," he said suddenly, nearly stumbling on his next landing. "The signature just split. Now I've got three."

"Shadow clones again," the medic said grimly.

"Has to be the same brat," another team member said. "How many genin do you know who can spam that jutsu?"

The tracker's expression got more worried as he focused. "One's still booking it toward town, moving even faster now. The other two are hanging back, staying in range but keeping their distance."

Renji’s jaw tightened. The whole thing was starting to look less like a chase and more like a net—and they were right in the middle of it. "Smart little shit. If we go after the one heading for town, the two behind will hit our backs. If we engage the two clones, we give the messenger time to reach reinforcements."

"It's actually pretty solid," another muttered, almost impressed. "Kid knows what he's doing."

"Yeah, too well." Renji's mind was racing. "This isn't some fresh Academy grad fumbling around. This is someone who actually knows tactics." He made his call. "We split. Two of you take the runner—don't let it reach town. Rest of us deal with the tail."

"Thought you said splitting up was dumb," Kota pointed out, still flexing his healing arm.

"That was before this kid started playing us like a damn chess game," Renji shot back. "Now we don't have a choice. Go!"

The team broke apart, two peeling off to chase the town-bound clone while the rest wheeled around to face the other two.

A few minutes later, the four of them closed in on the clones in a small clearing, spreading out to form a loose circle. Renji raised his hand, keeping his team at a distance.

"Stay back," he ordered. "Stick to ranged attacks. Force them to burn chakra on defense—clones run dry fast."

Two of his shinobi moved fast, hands blurring through seals. Wind blades and jagged earth projectiles shot toward the clones in rapid succession.

One clone dove behind a thick oak just as a wind blade carved a deep notch into the trunk where his head had been. The second clone was right behind him, already yanking two smoke bombs from his pouch. He hurled them at the advancing Kumo team before retreating deeper into the woods.

Gray smoke exploded outward, thick and clinging, obscuring their line of sight—but it wasn’t fooling anyone.

“Pursue, but keep your distance,” Renji barked. “Use kunai and shuriken—keep the pressure on.”

The clones moved like a well-rehearsed unit, exploiting every twist of the terrain. They ducked beneath low branches, wove through tight knots of undergrowth, always just a step ahead. Every time the Kumo team closed the gap, another smoke bomb hissed out, blinding them and forcing a choice—charge in blind, or lose the target.

…..

Kota had been doing missions like this for three years. Track targets, maintain distance, use ranged attacks to wear them down. Shadow clones didn't have much chakra to work with, so you made them waste it on defense until they popped.

Simple stuff.

He slipped into position behind a cluster of trees, eyes on the two clones retreating through the smoke. His partner swung wide to the left, while the other two advanced, closing the gap. Textbook formation.

The clones were decent, he had to admit. Using the terrain, throwing smoke, making them work for every meter. But it was all stalling. They'd run out of tricks eventually.

That's when he spotted the tags.

Explosive seals stuck right to the tree trunks ahead, barely hidden. Kota almost snorted. Really? "Hey, obvious trap up front," he called to his team. "Going wide."

Kid was trying way too hard. Funneling them into a choke point with tags that screaming "look at me"? That was some Academy bullshit right there.

He repositioned to get a better angle through the canopy, keeping his distance like a good chunin should. That's when something moved in his peripheral vision—up in the branches above.

Kota looked up just in time to see the clone dropping straight down at him.

Oh shit—

Muscle memory took over. Aerial assault, rule one: never let them pin you down. He launched himself forward and right, textbook evasion, putting distance between himself and the drop zone.

Perfect form. Just like they'd drilled it a thousand times.

Except as he rolled to safety, his hand hit something that definitely hadn't been there before.

A wire.

When did they—

The tripwire was strung between two trees at exactly the height a chunin would roll to when evading an aerial attack. And it was connected to explosive tags that weren't in the obvious choke point ahead—they were hidden in the underbrush right here, right where any competent shinobi would move to avoid the "obvious" trap.

Realization hit the same moment a seal marked "explode" (爆, baku) flared to life.

Everything went white, then spinning. The blast picked him up like a rag doll and slammed him down hard enough to bounce. Something wet splattered across his cheek—he didn’t know if it was blood or brain matter, and he wasn’t sure it mattered. His ears were screaming, clothes scorched, and the scent of burnt hair and cooked flesh clung to the back of his throat.

He couldn’t tell up from down anymore. His sword was gone. He hadn’t seen it leave his hand. He couldn’t feel the hand either.

Through the static in his skull, Renji was yelling. Maybe orders. Maybe his name. Kota couldn’t tell—his brain kept skipping like a scratched record.

He tried to stand. His limbs didn’t agree. When he looked down, his right leg was bent sideways at the knee—but the bone was out. Jagged, wet, white. A flap of muscle hung loose like a torn sleeve.

That’s when he saw the glow—green? No, blue. Flickering, like chakra caught in water.

The clone was smiling as it approached, fingers wrapped in something pulsing and alive. Its footsteps were light. Eager.

The pain didn’t come all at once. First was a crack—then a wet slide as something cut into his sword arm, fast, deep, right through the muscle. He felt things snap. A ligament coiled back into his elbow like a live wire. Blood fountained up—hot, bright, and fast enough to make him dizzy.

He choked out a breath. Tried to scream. Nothing came. His jaw worked like a fish’s—just spit and panic.

The clone shifted again.

There was something in its other hand now. A blade. Not clean. Slick with someone else’s blood.

This isn’t how this was supposed to go.

That thought rose up right before the blade shoved deep under his jaw and dragged sideways. His throat opened with a bubbling noise he felt more than heard, warm liquid pumping down the front of his vest. He saw his own blood on the clone’s arm. On the leaves. On his lips.

He’d been a chunin for three years. He’d done dozens of missions like this.

It was supposed to be simple.