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The Rogue Ninja took a step forward.
Tsunade didn’t retreat.
Her knees were shaking, but her feet stayed nailed to the ground.
A lot of things flashed through her mind, her Substitution Jutsu wasn’t there yet, Clone Jutsu was useless, she didn’t even have a single kunai.
Everything they’d taught in class was worthless right now.
Her palms were slick with sweat.
Her thoughts were a mess.
Her grandfather’s face flickered.
Her great-uncle’s voice.
Then both shattered.
The last image that held was the face that had looked at her from across the desk.
Kaede —
The moment the thought surfaced, she bit her lip.
Don’t.
Thinking about him won’t help.
He was at the mountaintop.
Even running flat-out, 15 minutes away.
And even if he came, what then?
It would just mean one more person walking to their death.
But her brain wouldn’t listen.
It didn’t care about any of that.
It just kept going back to him, over and over, like a drowning person grabbing at driftwood.
No logic to it.
Tsunade shoved the thought down hard.
She was Tsunade.
Her grandfather built Konoha.
Her great-uncle was the Hokage.
She showed no cowardice.
Her hands came up to chest height.
The Rogue Ninja made no unnecessary movements.
His short sword left its sheath, blade just over a foot long, and swept across in a horizontal arc.
Tsunade threw her arms up in front of her face.
She didn’t know what it would block.
It was the only move she had.
The blade never came down.
A fireball crashed in from the side, trailing scorching air, hurtling straight for the Rogue Ninja’s face.
His reaction was faster than thought.
The sword shifted at the last instant.
His body retreated three steps to the right.
The fireball grazed his clothes and flew past, landing on the ground and burning a black scar into the earth.
Tsunade’s arms were still raised in front of her face.
Branches snapped overhead.
Someone dropped from the canopy and landed two meters in front of her, back to her.
Kaede Kitahara didn’t turn around.
His gaze was locked on the man across from him.
Hadn’t moved from the moment he landed.
Tsunade stared at that familiar back.
Her throat felt like something was lodged in it.
Every word she had piled up behind it and refused to move.
Just moments ago she’d been desperately telling herself not to think about this person.
Now he was standing right in front of her.
Kaede was already running the numbers.
That Great Fireball hadn’t landed, but the evasion wasn’t clean, reaction speed below Chunin level.
The way he’d created distance afterward, though, was practiced.
Footwork steady.
No panic.
A Genin who’d seen a real battlefield.
Plenty of combat experience.
No more time to analyze.
A seven-year-old body only had so much chakra.
That one Great Fireball had burned through half.
He had one shot left.
Taijutsu to set it up.
Fire Release to close it out.
No second plan.
The Rogue Ninja was sizing him up too.
The heat from the fireball still hung in the air.
Seven-year-old kid.
C-rank ninjutsu.
Clean release.
This wasn’t what a Ninja Academy student was supposed to be capable of.
The man’s brow dropped.
The short sword tilted downward in his grip.
Originally, he’d planned to deal with these two brats quickly and keep moving.
Running into an Academy exercise was bad luck.
He needed to cross the rear mountain into the eastern forest and slip out of the Land of Fire’s territory.
Two kids in the way was a simple problem.
Now there was a variable.
No more hesitation.
Body Flicker.
To seven-year-old eyes, an adult ninja’s Body Flicker was simply vanishing, one second standing three meters out, the next second already there.
Kaede’s body moved before his mind caught up.
Right shoulder twisting back.
Center of gravity dropping.
The straight kick grazed his left ribs.
The instant the top of that foot scraped bone, pain exploded from his side.
A muffled grunt escaped him.
He rode the force of the blow and slid two steps back.
Stayed standing.
The Rogue Ninja pulled his foot back.
A half-beat of genuine surprise.
Jiraiya was still slumped against the tree, half his body numb, insides churning.
He watched the Rogue Ninja close in on Kaede, his heart lurching, and then he watched that guy hold his ground.
Same kick.
Same force, by the look of it.
When it hit Jiraiya, he’d gone flying into a tree.
Kaede took the same hit, slid back two steps, and stood.
Seven years old.
Both of them seven years old.
Jiraiya’s jaw tightened.
He couldn’t name what he was feeling.
The fight didn’t pause.
The Rogue Ninja stopped probing.
The short sword slashed across.
Kaede didn’t retreat.
He stepped forward to meet it.
Tsunade’s heart missed a beat.
Before the blade arrived, his body slipped inside the Rogue Ninja’s arm.
A short sword’s killing range was at full extension.
Too close, and there was no room to swing.
In close, Kaede’s right hand clamped onto the man’s sword wrist.
The Rogue Ninja shook his hand.
Nothing moved.
Five fingers, pressed into his wrist joint.
Chakra flooding into the knuckles, biting in, locked like a vise.
The Rogue Ninja’s expression changed.
He wrenched his wrist and drove his elbow to counter, his left hand swinging horizontally at Kaede’s temple at the same time.
Kaede tilted his head.
The swing grazed past, but the wrist torque buckled his footing for a moment.
The Rogue Ninja drove a knee up.
It caught Kaede in the side.
Pain blurred his vision.
His hand didn’t move.
Less than half a meter between them.
Tangled together.
The Rogue Ninja was starting to genuinely panic.
He’d underestimated this kid.
Not in terms of raw ability, a seven-year-old body had a ceiling, and that ceiling wasn’t high.
He’d underestimated the will.
This kid had taken two solid hits and still wouldn’t let go.
He was holding that wrist like he was holding his own life.
Then —
Kaede yanked.
The Rogue Ninja lurched forward half a step, his weight shifting —
And the kid let go.
The man instinctively moved to retreat.
In that gap, he saw the hands forming seals.
Too close.
No time.
Kaede opened his mouth.
The Rogue Ninja saw light inside it.
That instant when chakra completes its transformation in the throat, just before it surges forward, the heat is visible to the naked eye.
Point-blank.
Great Fireball.
A column of fire drove directly into his chest and face.
He screamed.
The sound lasted less than a second before cutting off.
Superheated air poured into his airways.
His vocal cords seized.
He wrenched himself backward, tumbling four, five meters, rolling twice across the ground before going still.
The front of his shirt was burned through.
His chest and half his face were a patchwork of charred black and raw, angry red.
The skin had split open.
The edges were still trailing thin wisps of smoke.
He lay face-down in the dirt, fingers clawing at the ground.
He tried twice to push himself up.
Couldn’t.
A person with airway burns makes a specific sound when they breathe in, a hissing, like air being forced through a crack.
The Rogue Ninja opened his mouth and made that sound.
His eyes rolled back twice.
His face dropped into the mud.
The forest went quiet.
Just wind moving through leaves, and the ragged breathing of three children.
Kaede was bent at the waist, hands braced on his knees.
Chakra pressed to the bottom.
Nothing left to squeeze out.
Head spinning.
Ears ringing.
The left side of his ribs ached into numbness, and every breath pulled at the pain.
He straightened first.
Tsunade was standing five meters away.
Hadn’t moved.
“Are you hurt?”
His voice came out rough.
Tsunade’s lips moved twice.
No sound.
She shook her head.
He nodded once, then turned the other way.
Jiraiya was still propped against the tree trunk.
Face pale.
Eyes wide.
“You?”
Jiraiya stared at him for two seconds.
His mouth opened and closed, like he had a whole flood of things backed up in his throat, and only one word made it through.
“…That was cool.”
Muffled.
Squeezed out through clenched teeth.
A pause.
“Bastard.”
Kaede walked over and held out his hand.
Jiraiya looked at it.
Hesitated.
When he was pulled up, his legs were still shaking.
He had to brace against the tree to stay steady.
He didn’t say anything else.
His gaze passed over Kaede’s shoulder to the body sprawled in the dirt, then came back.
Dropped to the hand Kaede was pressing against his ribs.
Stayed there a moment, then moved away.
Tsunade walked over.
Not fast, not slow.
When she reached him, she looked down at where his hand was pressed first.
Nothing was visible through the clothes, but the area over his ribs was faintly swollen.
His hand hadn’t moved.
“Let me see.”
She reached for the hem of his shirt.
Kaede stepped back half a pace.
“Superficial.”
“I said let me see.”
He didn’t move again.
Tsunade lifted the hem.
A large bruise covered his left ribs, the color already deepening, spreading outward at the edges.
Her fingers pressed against it.
Very lightly.
Kaede drew a sharp breath.
“Not broken,” Tsunade said.
“Contusion.
Get it looked at when we’re back.”
She let the hem fall.
They were standing close.
Tsunade looked up at him.
Her lips moved.
Something reached the edge of her tongue — and she swallowed it back.
Not far away, movement stirred in the trees.
…
➤ Next: Flesh Wound — What Was Lost