The word, once whispered like a rumour inside the Suna camp, became wildfire. It roared from mouth to mouth, galloping faster than sound, faster than reason, until it swallowed the entire forward camp in panic.
"The Hokage! The Hokage is here!"
What had begun as a cautious murmur became a shout, then a scream, then a collective psychic collapse. The name was more than just a man—it was a curse, a prophecy, an executioner's drumbeat. It turned the blood of even the most battle-hardened shinobi into ice water.
Towering brass alarm bells—great mechanical monstrosities shaped like bronze scorpions—jolted to life with a sound like thunder on rusted rails, their shrill clangor clawing across the vast desert.
From his perch on a high dune of wind-carved sandstone, Hiruzen now stood gazing down upon the chaos. The Suna encampment had transformed in an instant from a disciplined hive of war to a convulsing nest of terror—like an anthill kicked by a wrathful god.
He felt no pride in the reaction. No grim smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. No thrill of vengeance stirred his blood. Only focus. Cold, methodical, merciless focus.
His objective was not annihilation. It was collapse. Systemic, total, irreversible.
He was not a warrior, not in this moment. He was a surgeon. This camp was a festering tumour. He had come to excise it.
"Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu."
The sphere of flame erupted from his lungs not as a missile, but as a sun. It floated above his head—massive, unstable, seething with chakra-infused heat—its light casting dancing shadows over the trembling camp below.
Then, he whispered the second part.
"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough."
A hurricane-force wind burst forth—not to smother, but to sculpt. The gust hit the suspended fireball with precision, not quenching it but shearing it apart. The orb fragmented into a storm of incandescent fragments—thousands of miniature suns screaming earthward like divine arrows.
They struck the heart of the Suna logistics network—supply tents, scroll depots, food caches, ammunition bunkers. The fire didn't bloom in a single thunderclap, but in a chain reaction of sharp, staccato blasts:
"CRUMP! CRUMP-CRUMP! KRAK-KABOOM!"
Each explosion was a drumbeat in a dirge of destruction. Sealed scrolls of chakra-enhanced food, water, and weapons detonated in rapid succession. The air reeked of scorched wheat, burnt metal, and ozone. Fire danced between tents like it had a will of its own.
Screams followed.
Shinobi rushed toward the inferno, forming squads, barking orders, some wielding water techniques to try and douse the unnatural flames. Others scattered in panicked confusion, searching in vain for the phantom who had undone their camp with godlike precision.
"He's targeting the supplies! Protect the command center! Form perimeter formations—NOW!" one of the senior captains bellowed, his voice cracking with strain and disbelief.
But it was already too late.
Hiruzen was no longer where he had stood. He was on the move—silent, surgical, unstoppable.
With one hand pressed to the sand, he murmured:
"Earth Release: Earth-Style Wall."
But this was no defensive bulwark. The earth responded not with a wall, but with an eruption. A titanic stone pillar, wide as a village street and tall as a watchtower, burst from beneath the central command spire. With a shuddering, tectonic groan, the command tower was lifted bodily into the sky. Then, with a splintering CRACK, the structure toppled sideways—its wooden beams snapping like twigs as it slammed into the adjacent barracks.
The screams of those within were quickly buried beneath an avalanche of debris.
The brain of the camp had just been pulverised.
To their credit, Suna's shinobi did not break easily. Fear did not render them useless. Their pride and training kicked in, and a unit of elite earth-style users formed seals together, moving in flawless synchronicity.
"Sand Style: Quicksand Vortex!"
The ground beneath Hiruzen turned to sludge. Sand whirled in a spiraling sinkhole, eager to swallow him whole.
He barely glanced at it.
"Lightning Release: Earth Stream."
Blue-white lightning surged from his feet, seeping into the sand. There was a sharp FZZZT as the very soil vitrified, superheated into brittle, glassy rock. The ground, moments ago hungry and fluid, froze in place—a shimmering, obsidian surface stretching in all directions.
The Suna shinobi stared in mute horror. Their technique, once feared, had been rendered meaningless with a single counterstroke.
Panic became terror. This was not a battle. It was a demonstration. A dissection.
He countered earth with lightning, fire with wind, water with earth, and wind with fire. Every technique was not just blocked—it was outclassed. Anticipated. Neutralized. He was the Professor, and this battlefield was his blackboard. Each blow, each maneuver, a lesson written in fire and blood.
Near the ruined sensory tower, three elite jonin—faces marked with inked sigils of honour and tradition—surrounded him. They moved with the coordination and grace of veterans. Poisons laced their senbon. Their muscles were tense but not desperate. They had faced Kage-level threats before.
"Shink! Shink! Shink!"
The senbon flew through the air like silver vipers.
Hiruzen did not flinch. He did not move.
With a simple, cross-handed seal, he summoned.
Puff!
A burst of smoke revealed a towering, simian figure—muscles like knotted oak, fur grey as storm clouds, armour like a samurai warlord of old. His eyes gleamed with cunning and contempt.
Enma, the Monkey King.
"Troublesome flies," Enma rumbled, his deep voice a low growl. With a blur, his staff extended into the Adamantine Nyoi—a weapon of such impossible density that it could shatter chakra constructs like glass.
CLANG!
The first jonin's blade shattered on contact. The second found himself swept up by Enma's prehensile tail and hurled bodily into his comrade. The fight ended in the time it took to draw a breath. Broken bones, shattered pride, unconsciousness.
Enma stood silent beside Hiruzen, a vigilant shadow. A sentinel of divine fury.
Twenty miles away, atop a lonely plateau of scorched and gnarled trees, the Konoha recon squad watched the horizon with wide, unblinking eyes.
The desert was alight with unnatural color. The night sky shimmered with chakra—blue, red, gold, white—dancing like the auroras of the north. The sounds of war carried on the wind: explosions, crackling lightning, the dull concussions of earthen impacts, and the roar of chakra-fed flames.
But it wasn't the sounds that stole their breath. It was the light.
The entire northern horizon pulsed and flickered as if the heavens themselves were being rewritten.
Kenta, the youngest among them, slowly lowered his spyglass. His hands trembled.
"By the Sage…" he whispered, barely audible.
Their squad leader, Matsu, a veteran of many wars and survivor of the Yellow Flash's rampages, stared in silence. His pipe had fallen from his lips, forgotten.
"This isn't war," he finally said, his voice hushed. "This is… a redefinition."
Of tactics. Of power. Of what one man can do.
Deep within the Suna camp, buried beneath meters of reinforced earth and chakra-reinforced sandstone, a bloodied messenger collapsed at the feet of the Third Kazekage.
The strongest Kazekage in history did not look up.
He stood with hands clasped behind his back, the very image of composure. Yet tension radiated from him like heat. Reports lay scattered at his feet—maps torn, seals broken, blood staining half the parchment.
"Speak," he said.
The messenger coughed, sand and blood mixing at his lips.
"Sir… it's confirmed. It is Sarutobi Hiruzen. He moves… he moves like a god. Our techniques are useless. He has summoned the Monkey King. Our forward camp is in total disarray. We are being systematically dismantled."
The Kazekage's eyes, cold and sharp as flint, narrowed. The air in the bunker grew heavy. From a large, iron gourd on his back, a faint, metallic grinding began to emanate. A dark, shimmering cloud of black iron sand, his unique and dreaded Magnet Release Kekkei Genkai, began to seep out, hovering around him like a malevolent halo. The very particles seemed to thirst for blood.
"So, the Professor finally leaves his library," the Kazekage murmured. The grinding of the Satetsu grew louder, a sound like a million tiny needles scraping against stone. "It seems a practical lesson is in order."