~ Every 100 Power Stones = Bonus Chapter!
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Four figures surged out of the mist.
Black cloth masked their faces, blades in hand, footsteps kept deliberately low.
The spacing as they ran wasn’t bad — they’d had training, at least.
Murakami Takuya drew his blade three inches, took one look at the enemy, and slid it back.
Hand returned to the hilt.
Shoulder settled against the tree trunk.
The meaning was clear.
Kaede swept a glance over them.
Four people, no chakra fluctuation, weapons were standard forged long swords, running form had fundamentals but lacked polish.
He stepped back half a pace.
These weren’t opponents he needed.
But Tsunade and Jiraiya did.
“Tsunade, Jiraiya — they’re yours.”
Before the words were fully out, Tsunade had already charged.
When the first shadow swung its blade down, Kaede caught something: Tsunade’s eyes weren’t tracking the blade.
They were on the opponent’s shoulder.
The shoulder moves first; the blade follows.
Read the origin, not the edge.
Something her sensei had drilled into her.
She’d learned it well.
She stepped inside the arc of the swing and drove her right fist into his face.
No hesitation.
None at all.
The sound of knuckles hitting cheekbone was short and dull.
The man’s head snapped back, his whole body slammed into a tree trunk and slid down, and he didn’t move again.
The second one circled in from the side, blade tip aimed straight for her ribs.
Tsunade dropped low, swept her right leg across and took him off his feet, then flipped forward and came down on top of him — knee grinding his blade hand into the dirt, elbow driving down hard.
A brief, stifled grunt.
Fast and clean.
The whole thing took under 10 seconds.
The other side was considerably messier.
Jiraiya lunged like a sparrow that had just discovered it had wings, his kunai stabbed forward, missed, and only scraped the opponent’s shoulder, slicing through cloth and leaving a shallow cut.
The opponent hissed with pain and swung back in a wide horizontal slash.
Jiraiya jumped clear, his heel caught a wet rock, and he went down flat on his back.
The back of his head cracked against the ground.
His vision flashed white.
The blade came down.
He threw his kunai up to block.
Steel on steel, sparks sprayed across his face and the shock numbed his grip, nearly tore the kunai from his hand.
The blade edge caught in the kunai’s groove.
Two people, locked together over crossed iron, staring at each other for less than a second.
The opponent’s eyes were visible above the black cloth.
Pupils wide.
Bloodshot.
He was afraid.
But afraid people are more dangerous than calm ones, because they give everything they have.
The opponent leaned in and pushed.
Jiraiya’s arm trembled.
The kunai sank inch by inch.
The blade was three fingers from the tip of his nose.
He rolled sideways.
The blade slammed into the mud where his head had been, burying two inches deep.
No time to think.
Jiraiya scrambled upright, gripped his kunai, and stabbed forward.
This time it didn’t miss.
The kunai passed through cloth with almost no resistance.
Muscle was different, a thick, viscous drag transmitted all the way back into his palm.
The opponent went rigid.
His blade dropped, hit the ground.
A line of blood ran down the kunai and dripped onto the back of Jiraiya’s hand.
The fourth man watched all three of his comrades go down inside a few dozen seconds.
He couldn’t even hold his blade level.
He turned and ran.
Kaede flicked his wrist.
The shuriken left his hand.
The man lurched forward two steps.
His legs buckled.
His knees hit the ground, and then his whole body sprawled onto the grass.
Kaede lowered his hand.
He hadn’t moved from his spot.
Hadn’t taken a single step.
His eyes had been on Tsunade the entire time, the shuriken thrown with his left hand, right hand never leaving his kunai.
If any one of those four had posed a real threat to her, he would have been there before anyone else.
It hadn’t been necessary.
Tsunade had handled it herself.
The campsite went quiet.
The stream became audible again, unchanged from a few minutes ago, as if nothing had happened.
Her right fist was still clenched.
Her hand wasn’t entirely cooperating, those two punches had come too fast, body moving before her mind had caught up.
She looked down at the man on the ground.
His chest was still rising and falling.
Shallowly.
Getting shallower.
In training, they hit straw dummies.
You finished and clapped the dust off your hands and walked away.
Straw dummies don’t make sounds.
They don’t fall backward.
They don’t let you feel inside your fist the way bones shift out of place.
She didn’t speak.
She took one slow breath and lowered her fist.
Across the clearing, Jiraiya was bent over, throwing up.
He braced his hands on his knees, retched twice, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
He still hadn’t put the kunai down.
The blood on it was already beginning to darken.
He stared at it.
His lips moved once.
“…Easier than I thought.”
Barely above a murmur.
Like he was telling himself, not anyone else.
Not bragging.
He had just discovered something that scared him, killing a person was far easier than he had ever imagined.
He had assumed he wouldn’t be able to go through with it.
Assumed there would be a moment where he hesitated, where his body refused.
There hadn’t been.
When the kunai went in, his hand was steady.
He didn’t know what to do with that.
Kaede looked at them both for a moment.
He said nothing.
His first time on a battlefield, he had been in worse shape than either of them.
He walked toward the bodies and crouched over the first one, flipping open the outer coat.
No forehead protector, no ninja tool pouch, but a hidden pocket was sewn into the inner side of the belt.
His kunai worked it open.
Three soldier pills rolled out.
He picked one up and held it under his nose.
Not a civilian imitation.
Standard village issue.
He checked the second body, then the third.
Soldier pills, bandages, hemostatic powder, complete standard field kit, nothing missing.
Kaede stood.
“Something’s wrong.”
He tossed the soldier pills to Murakami Takuya.
“No chakra, but their gear is ninja-spec.
These soldier pills are village-standard issue.
Civilians don’t have access to the materials.”
Murakami Takuya caught them, looked them over, and didn’t disagree.
“Wandering samurai don’t carry these things,” Kaede continued.
“And wandering samurai don’t just happen to find our campsite.”
Murakami Takuya was quiet for a few seconds.
“Decent read.” A pause.
“But it’s still speculation.
We don’t move until we know more.”
His gaze shifted past Kaede to Tsunade and Jiraiya several meters away.
“Let them settle first.”
Kaede walked over to Tsunade.
She was still standing, back straight, chin angled up slightly.
That was her habit, the posture she held when she didn’t want anyone to see she wasn’t all right.
He unclipped the canteen from his pouch, unscrewed the cap, and held it out.
Tsunade glanced at him.
She didn’t take it.
She pulled out her own canteen, unscrewed it herself, and took a long drink.
Then she poured some of the remaining water over her right hand and scrubbed it.
“Let’s move.” She capped the canteen.
Nothing else.
Kaede put his away without a word.
She wasn’t refusing him.
She just didn’t want anything handed to her right now.
Didn’t want to be the one who needed looking after.
Jiraiya drifted over.
The kunai finally left his hand.
He wiped it clean on the grass and slid it back into his pouch.
The movements were about half his usual speed, but his hands weren’t shaking anymore.
He glanced at Kaede and opened his mouth.
Any other day, he’d have rattled off a dozen lines without pausing for air.
But he chewed his lips for a long moment, and nothing came out.
In the end, he just reached into his pocket and pulled out the notebook, the one with Hero Descends from the Sky: Cool Entrance Pose (TBD) on the cover, looked at it for a second, and pushed it down to the very bottom of his pack.
“Move out.” Murakami Takuya turned east.
“Twelve kilometers.
Outer perimeter before dawn.”
The four of them broke camp.
Quick movements.
No talking.
The sky was still dark, but the clouds in the east had started to go gray.
Tsunade walked ahead of Kaede, her ponytail swaying with each step, rhythm no different from any other march.
Jiraiya walked at the back, carrying the oversized pack he’d hauled the whole way.
His steps were heavier than before.
Four sets of footsteps on gravel.
The sound of the stream fell behind them and faded.
➤ Next: Something’s Off — Clash