~ Every 100 Power Stones = Bonus Chapter!
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The three of them crept toward the sounds of fighting.
The closer they got, the louder it became.
Tsunade pressed herself against a broken wall, crouched, and peered out with half her head.
The open ground at the center of the village looked like something had torn through it.
Several cracks split the earth wide open.
Two wooden houses had collapsed halfway, shattered tiles and broken beams scattered across the ground.
Murakami Takuya was still fighting.
His left arm hung limp at his side, the sleeve soaked through with blood, his short sword switched to his right hand.
A gash on his forehead ran from his hairline down to his brow bone.
Half his face was smeared red.
His left eye couldn’t open anymore.
The bald man stood opposite him, katana loose in his grip, breathing like he was taking a stroll.
He slashed down.
The air groaned with the weight of it.
Murakami Takuya sidestepped, thrust back, and only cut through the fabric at the man’s ribs.
A knee drove into his stomach in the next instant.
His whole body smashed into a collapsed wall.
Broken wood exploded outward in a ring.
He propped himself on his sword and stood.
Blood hung from the corner of his mouth.
Tsunade crouched behind the wall and couldn’t say a word.
It wasn’t that she had never seen a fight before.
But she had never seen someone past their limit still refusing to stop.
Kitahara Kaede crouched to her right, making no sound.
His gaze wasn’t fixed on the brutality of it.
He was calculating, distance, angle, the bald man’s recovery window after each slash.
And how much chakra he had left.
After that last fight, very little remained.
But it seemed he could use the Chidori one more time.
Once.
Just once.
The bald man slashed again.
Murakami Takuya raised his blade to block.
Steel on steel, sparks scattering, but the force drove him down onto one knee.
The gap in power was too wide.
The bald man turned his head.
His gaze cut through the smoke and dust toward the broken wall.
He smiled.
“Still not dead, huh — you three little mice.”
Tsunade’s spine went rigid.
“More capable than you, their team leader.” He pressed the blade down another inch.
“That pack of useless trash you had working for you, actually all cleaned up by three brats.”
Murakami Takuya stilled.
All of them?
Sixteen people?
The corner of his mouth twitched.
He wanted to smile.
His mouth was full of blood.
He couldn’t.
Then his chest dropped, what were those three kids still doing here.
“…What are you doing here?”
The words scraped out through clenched teeth.
Hoarse and burning.
“I told you to run!”
No one answered.
The bald man flicked the blood off his katana and laughed.
“No rush.
I’ll deal with you first, then take my time with them.
Three little brats, what’s the hurry.”
Then he didn’t look toward the broken wall again.
Kitahara Kaede noted that.
From beginning to end, this man had never counted them as a threat.
Good.
What he needed was a window, the moment the opponent stood facing the captain, side turned toward Kaede, completely still.
A clear sprinting line with nothing in the way.
The window hadn’t opened yet.
He swept a quiet glance to the side.
Three o’clock.
A collapsed section of house could screen his approach route.
About 13 meters to the bald man’s back, with broken stones and a fallen beam between them.
No way to change direction once he committed.
The Chidori as he currently had it couldn’t change direction mid-run.
He needed to be in position first.
Kitahara Kaede’s body vanished soundlessly from Tsunade’s right side.
Tsunade didn’t notice.
She pressed her back against the broken wall, something tight lodged in her chest.
“I’ll go up and help.” Jiraiya drew a kunai, his voice strained.
Tsunade glanced at him.
“Go up?
Look clearly, even the captain can’t hold out.
If you and I go up, we just take a couple more cuts.”
Jiraiya gritted his teeth.
“Then we just watch?
Watch the captain get killed?”
Tsunade didn’t answer.
She dropped her head and stared at her own fists.
Was there anything?
Any ninjutsu, any tactic, even something that helped just a little?
Nothing came to her.
That man had been playing around the entire time, and the captain was barely still breathing after fighting like this.
She closed her eyes for a moment.
Then opened them.
“…Go.”
The word dragged itself out of her throat.
Harder than taking a punch.
“While the captain can still hold him.
Go.”
She turned to look at Kitahara Kaede.
The spot was empty.
Behind the broken wall, only she and Jiraiya remained.
Tsunade’s mind went blank.
“Kaede?”
No answer.
She grabbed the wall’s edge and looked out, eyes sweeping across the battlefield,
Then she heard it.
Everyone heard it.
ZZZT, ZZZZZZZT, like a thousand birds shrieking all at once.
Kitahara Kaede was already in position.
He’d used the collapsed houses as cover to circle around to the battlefield’s flank, keeping his footsteps suppressed the whole way, breathing shallow.
He hadn’t told Tsunade.
If he had, she would have stopped him.
He crouched against the remnant wall, looking out over the shattered bricks toward the battlefield.
13 meters.
Broken stone underfoot, one fallen beam, one shallow pit.
This path only worked if the opponent was stationary and facing straight ahead.
Wait.
The captain took another slash.
Shoulder.
Blood sprayed.
Kaede’s fingers twitched.
Not yet.
Still moving.
Hold it.
Murakami Takuya glanced at his left arm, couldn’t lift it.
Then at the gleaming katana in front of him.
He felt strangely calm.
Three kids had taken out sixteen men.
Genin who could pull that off had more reason to stay alive than he did.
What he needed to do was simple.
Hold him off.
As long as he could.
The bald man raised his katana.
Murakami Takuya didn’t move back.
His short sword came up, not to block.
A life-trading strike.
He threw his body forward and drove the blade into the man’s thigh.
3 inches deep.
The bald man grunted.
He hadn’t expected that.
The katana went off-course.
The edge carved across the captain’s shoulder, deep enough to see bone.
Both men pulled back.
Murakami Takuya dropped to his knees.
Right knee against the ground, left already finished.
The short sword was still lodged in the man’s thigh.
The bald man looked down at the blade, pulled it out, tossed it aside.
Blood ran down his pant leg.
The smile on his face was gone.
“You don’t know when to die.”
He hefted the katana and walked forward, one step at a time.
Murakami Takuya raised his head.
One thought left in his mind, had those three kids left yet.
The bald man raised his sword.
Then the birds cried out.
The window opened.
That stab had nailed the bald man in place, pulling the blade out, tossing it away, closing in, his full attention locked on the man kneeling in front of him.
His left leg was bleeding, his steps heavier.
He wouldn’t be watching his flank.
He had never once put the three little mice into his calculations.
Kitahara Kaede formed hand seals.
His body sent a clear warning, chakra bottoming out, any more would be overdraft.
He didn’t stop.
Lightning-nature chakra surged into his right palm.
Arcs of electricity shot from between his fingers, denser and denser, brighter and brighter, and then the sound arrived,
A thousand birds screaming in his palm.
He kicked off the ground.
Every ounce of strength drove through his right foot.
Broken stone shattered.
His body launched forward.
13 meters.
The bald man heard it.
Didn’t turn around.
Just little mice.
The katana swung down,
9 meters.
5 meters.
2 meters.
Kitahara Kaede drove his right hand straight through.
The instant the lightning orb touched the man’s back, the resistance vanished.
His hand came out the other side.
Lightning Release chakra detonated inside the body.
Arcs burst from the wound’s edges.
Blood mist steamed and sizzled.
The katana stopped in midair.
The bald man looked down.
A hand had punched through his chest.
Fingertips wrapped in blue-white light, flickering.
He tried to turn his head.
His neck moved one inch and couldn’t move further.
“Little…
mice…”
Bloody froth surged from the corner of his mouth.
The katana slipped free.
He toppled stiffly forward and kicked up a cloud of dust.
Kitahara Kaede pulled his hand out.
His legs went soft.
His vision narrowed at the edges.
He had calculated right.
His body fell before his mind did.
The last sound he heard was very far away, and pressed right against his ear at the same time.
“Kaede——!”
By the time Tsunade ran over, she wasn’t thinking about anything else.
Kitahara Kaede lay face-down beside the corpse, not moving.
She dropped beside him and flipped him over, two fingers pressing to his neck.
A pulse.
Weak.
But there.
She rested his head in her lap, both hands over him, green light rising.
She couldn’t speak.
She wanted to curse him.
Wanted to ask why he’d charged in alone again.
She had so many things to say.
Not one word came out.
His breathing was shallow.
His face was white as paper.
Two gashes on his left arm were seeping blood, a scrape along his side.
But none of that was the worst of it.
The worst was the chakra overdraft.
He had drained himself dry.
Her eyes burned.
The tears didn’t fall.
She wouldn’t let herself cry.
Not here.
Not now.
The green light pulsed, bright and dim, casting across her face and across his.
Never again.
I’m not letting you charge ahead alone again.
On the other side, Jiraiya was bandaging Murakami Takuya, frantic, fumbling, wrapping two loops loose and one tight, but the worst of the bleeding was finally sealed.
Murakami Takuya’s gaze moved past Jiraiya’s shoulder toward Tsunade.
He was quiet for a long time.
That technique.
From the sound to the penetration, less than 3 seconds.
Lightning-nature chakra concentrated in the palm, a single thrusting release.
That was not something a genin should have.
“We go back to Konoha.
Now.” His voice was flat and heavy.
“This gets reported to the Hokage.”
Tsunade looked down at Kaede in her lap.
His breathing had steadied.
A trace of color had come back to his lips.
She let the green light die, bent forward, and draped his arm over her shoulder.
She gritted her teeth and stood.
He was half a head taller than her.
Dead weight.
Her knee buckled.
Then straightened.
“Tsunade, let me —” Jiraiya started.
“Support the captain.”
She didn’t look back.
Four people.
Two carrying two.
They started back along the way they’d come.
Tsunade walked at the front, Kitahara Kaede unconscious on her back.
His hands hung at her sides, swaying with every step.
She thought, suddenly, of something he had said when she was small, after he’d finished bandaging a wound.
Just a flesh wound.
Liar.
Always had been.
She bit her lip and walked faster.
➤ Next: Less Nonsense, Open Up