[ A FEW MINUTES AGO…]
[ KAZUTO YAMAGISHI ]
I stood near the center of the grand hall, a crystal glass of untouched wine in my hand, nodding politely at the monotonous drivel of a fellow politician. As the advisor to the Land of Fire's Daimyo, these galas were a necessity, a tedious dance of politics, forced smiles, and veiled threats. My elite bodyguards stood in a tight, unobtrusive ring around me, their presence a comforting weight in the crowded, opulent room.
My mind, however, wasn't on the trade negotiations being discussed. It was entirely on Tenka. She was here, somewhere in the periphery, brought into the gala under the clever guise of my personal tailor by Team 13. Only those Leaf shinobi and a very select, trusted few knew the truth—that the young seamstress was actually my daughter.
Then, the magnificent chandeliers above us simply died.
The darkness was instantaneous and absolute. For a split second, the hall was entirely silent. Then, the sounds of fighting erupted.
It sounded like thunder indoors. The clashing of steel, the boom of explosives, and the heavy thuds of bodies hitting the marble floor echoed from the unseen balconies. The polite atmosphere around me instantly dissolved into a stampede of terrified animals. Lords, politicians, and wealthy merchants shrieked, shoving each other blindly in the dark to get away.
"Move, Lord Yamagishi!" my lead guard barked, his hands firmly gripping my shoulders as the protective ring of guards tightened. They began physically pushing me towards the exit to secure my safety, acting as a human shield against the surging crowd.
"Tenka!" I screamed, ignoring my guards and fighting desperately against their pull. The frantic noise of the crowd swallowed my voice entirely. "Tenka! Where are you?!"
I strained my eyes against the flashing, violent lights of distant jutsu, desperate for any sign of her. Suddenly, I saw it. A shape moved through the shadows, illuminated briefly by a spark of clashing kunai. It was an enemy shinobi, and thrown over their shoulder was a small, limp figure. Even in the chaotic, dim light, I recognized her clothes. It was my Tenka, completely unconscious.
My heart plummeted into my stomach, a cold, sickening dread washing over me.
Right behind the kidnapper, another figure shot past—one of the young genin from Team 13, in relentless pursuit of the enemy. In my eyes, they weren't even people; they were just terrifying, incomprehensible blurs of speed and lethal intent darting through the darkness.
I tried to lunge forward, to chase after them myself, but my guards held me back with an iron grip.
"My Lord, stop!" one of them pleaded, hauling me backward. He had seen where my wild eyes were fixed and felt my heart sink. "You cannot interfere! You must put your trust in the Leaf shinobi. They will save her!"
I couldn't tear my eyes away from the direction they had vanished. As I was dragged backward toward the exit, a violent crash happened behind me. A massive, heavily armored samurai was fighting something. I knew it had to be that boy, Shohei, using a transformation jutsu, he had told me before hand of his plan to act as part of my body guards. but I barely had time to process it. Ar blur slammed into the samurai, and the two combatants launched out of the building in a chaotic storm of sparks and shattered masonry. Their movements were so terrifyingly fast I couldn't even track the exchange of blows, just violent streaks of motion disappearing into the night.
I was helpless. All I could do was let my guards drag me away from the chaos, praying with everything I had that the Leaf shinobi would bring my daughter back to me.
[ RIN ]
I stumbled into the cold, damp shadows of a narrow alleyway, pressing my back hard against the rough brick wall. My lungs burned as I sucked in hurried, quiet breaths, waiting for my heart rate to steady. My head was still fiercely throbbing from where the leaf shinobi had struck me. The guy hit like a falling boulder, and the impact had genuinely scrambled my senses for a moment—but not enough to take me out completely.
I closed my eyes, letting my mind replay the chaotic sequence of events that had just unfolded.
The shinobi's brute strength had been a problem, but my poison had done its job perfectly. I had watched with grim satisfaction as the toxin took hold, sending the shinobi crashing to the floor, completely unconscious. But my victory was cut short the second I heard footsteps approaching. His allies.
Outnumbered and still disoriented from the shinobi's blow, a straight fight would have been a death sentence. So, I did what any surviving shinobi would do: I went limp. I let my eyes roll back and faked my own collapse, playing dead on the floor.
I had stayed perfectly still, regulating my breathing to a shallow rhythm while my mind raced. I waited as the shinobi's rushed forward, their attention entirely fixated on their poisoned comrade. The moment they crouched over their teammate, putting enough distance between them and me.
But one of them was suspicious and approached me, kunai in hand.
I couldn't risk being captured not at such a crucial moment so I made my move.
I bit down hard on my back molar.
The satisfying crack of the hidden glass capsule breaking in my mouth was instantly followed by a violent expulsion of dense, poisonous gas. The thick smoke erupted around me, instantly filling the corridor with a blinding, toxic cloud.
The shinobi's allies had shouted in surprise, coughing as their vision was completely obscured, and I used that brief window of absolute panic to push myself off the floor and vanish into the night.
Now, safe in the secluded alley, I spat out the tiny glass remnants of my hollow tooth and wiped a smear of blood from my chin. The immediate danger was handled, but the mission was still spiralling out of control.
My mind immediately shifted from survival back to the objective. Jinichi was down, but Aoi and Kisuke were still active, and more importantly, Tenka was still missing. I had to assume they were the ones who had her, or at least knew where she was being taken. I couldn't afford to rest for long. I pushed off the brick wall, my physical faculties returning to normal as adrenaline sharpened my focus. It was time to stop running and figure out how to get the girl back. With my mission clear I took off.
Woosh.
[ SHOHEI NARA ]
The distant sound of shattering wood and the unmistakable roar of pure, unadulterated rage echoed through the grand halls of the gala venue. I had been making my way back toward the main building, having placed Hayate on guard to secure the area, when the explosion of violence erupted.
'What the hell was that?!!'
I broke into a sprint, my body still aching from the brutal clash with Takezo on the terrace. The wound across my chest throbbed with each step, the bandages I had hastily applied already soaking through with fresh blood. But the urgency of the situation burned away any consideration for my own injuries.
The source of the commotion was clear. Councilman Shinji's temporary office. The private wing of the gala venue.
I burst through the corridor just in time to see a massive, plate-armoured swordsman slam his broadsword into a bloodied, broken figure that had been hurled against the stone wall. The figure crashed to the ground, and for a moment, I thought it was over. But then I saw the face of the fallen man, and my blood ran cold.
'Takezo.'
The legendary swordsman was a wreck, his body ravaged by the injuries I had inflicted on him. The deep wounds on his wrists still wept blood, the torn tendons in his legs making it impossible for him to stand properly. But despite the devastation of his body, his eyes burned with an unhinged, demonic fury that made my blood run cold.
"What happened?" I demanded, rushing forward and skidding to a halt near the entrance of the office.
"What's going on here?"
The Swordsman glanced at me, his expression grim.
" Councilman Shinji's attack dog has gone mad. He tried to kill the councilman and Baji. I'm just doing my job."
'Attack dog? Mad? Takezo?'
I looked past the armoured brute and saw Shinji cowering behind his overturned desk, his face pale and his eyes wide with terror. Baji was pressed against the far wall, his expensive robes dishevelled and his hands trembling violently.
"He's lost it!" Shinji shrieked, pointing a shaking finger at the fallen swordsman.
"The mad dog attacked us! He was going to kill me! You! You saw what he tried to do?!"
Takezo laughed, a hollow, broken sound that echoed off the stone walls.
"Lost it? Lost it?!" He struggled to his knees, his body trembling with exertion and rage.
"You took everything from me, Shinji! Everything! My wife! My daughter! My soul! And you sat there, drinking and laughing about it! You turned me into your dog, and now you're surprised when the dog bites back?!"
!!!
I felt the pieces click into place in my mind. The revelation was staggering. Takezo had been manipulated, his family used as leverage to turn him into a weapon. And now, he had discovered the truth. The grief and rage radiating from him was almost palpable, a suffocating wave of pure, undiluted despair.
"Takezo," I said, my voice surprisingly calm despite the chaos of the situation.
"I understand. I understand what they did to you. But this isn't the way. This won't bring them back."
"Bring them back?!" Takezo laughed again, the sound harsh, broken, and utterly bitter. "They're gone! They've been dead for years! All this time, all this blood, all this pain under that merchant's thumb, and it was all for a lie! There is nothing left for me but vengeance!"
I kept my kunai's drawn, my eyes locked on the heavily wounded swordsman as his chakra flared with volatile, unstable rage.
"Takezo, stand down," I ordered, trying to inject a calm, reasoning tone into the chaotic room. "Throwing your life away here won't change the past. You're a broken man right now; do not force me to put you down."
But he wasn't listening to reason, his eyes completely hollowed out by the agonizing weight of his revelation. Before I could issue a final warning, the hired swordsman protecting the politicians suddenly lunged forward. The brute swung a massive broadsword in a devastating, horizontal arc, aiming to take Takezo's head clean off while he was distracted.
It was a fatal miscalculation of the swordsman's raw, animalistic survival instincts. Despite his severe injuries, Takezo moved with terrifying fluidity, ducking beneath the sweeping broadsword with inches to spare. he merely stepped inside the mercenary's guard with ease.
With a guttural roar, Takezo drove his bare fist directly into the mercenary's armoured chest with bone-shattering force. The impact cracked the breastplate instantly, and before the brute could recover, Takezo grabbed him by the throat and violently slammed him onto the marble floor. The armoured man went limp, thoroughly incapacitated in a matter of seconds.
Stepping over the unconscious guard, Takezo slowly turned his bloodshot eyes toward the far corner of the room. Cowering behind an overturned banquet table were Councilman Shinji and Baji, their faces pale with absolute, unadulterated terror. The swordsman carried the heavy blade from the unconscious mercenary's grasp, the steel practically humming with his murderous intent.
"Kill him!" Shinji shrieked, scrambling backward like a cornered rat as Takezo began his slow, terrifying advance.
"Someone kill this mad dog! He's going to assassinate us! I'll pay double, triple! Just cut him down!"
I let out a heavy sigh, my grip tightening on the hilts of my trench knives as my duty outweighed my sympathy. I didn't care about the corrupt politicians, but allowing a slaughter here would trigger the very war Team 13 had been sent to prevent.
"I told you to stand down!," I muttered.
Takezo lunged forward, ignoring his broken body and the puddles of his own blood trailing behind him. He raised his massive sword high above his head, aiming a vicious, downward cleave right at councilman Shinji's skull. He moved like a ghost, completely consumed by the desperate need to sever the merchant's political ties.
I activated the Shunshin jutsu, flickering instantly across the room and materializing directly between the swordsman and his targets. I crossed my kunai's just in time, catching the heavy blade before it could split the councilman in half. The sheer kinetic force of the impact drove my boots deep into the cracked marble.
"Move, Leaf Shinobi!" Takezo bellowed, pressing his weight into the lock as sparks rained down over us. "These men! These scum! They funded this entire operation! They kept my family's death a secret! I will butcher them all!"
!!!!!!!!!
'I See….so that's what happened, sigh….this is why politics is such a drag..'
"I can't let you do that," I replied coldly, pushing back against the heavy sword with a surge of chakra.
"Your fight ends here."
I parried the massive blade to the side, throwing his balance entirely off center. The raw power that had made him a monster on the rooftops was gone, replaced by sloppy, desperate swings fuelled entirely by adrenaline. I slipped effortlessly past his guard, stepping directly into his blind spot.
Without hesitation, I drove the hilt of my kunai violently into his wounded ribs, hearing the bone snap under the pressure. As he stumbled forward, gasping for air, I pivoted and delivered a devastating, chakra-enhanced kick directly to his chest. The blow launched him backward, sending him crashing heavily against a marble pillar.
Takezo slumped to the floor, the sword clattering loudly against the stone as a fresh wave of crimson spilled from his mouth. He tried to push himself up, his muscles trembling violently, but his body had finally reached its absolute limit. He dropped heavily to his knees, his breathing reduced to a wet, ragged wheeze.
I stepped forward, reversing my grip on my right kunai, preparing to deliver the final, merciful strike to end his suffering. It was a tragic end for a legendary fighter, but as a shinobi, I couldn't leave a loose end that threatened the village's stability. I raised my blade, locking my eyes onto his neck.
But before I could land the killing blow, a small, impossibly fast silhouette dropped silently from the high ceiling. A flurry of serrated shuriken forced me to violently abort my strike and leap backward to avoid being skewered. The projectiles buried themselves deep into the marble where I had just been standing.
I landed gracefully in front of the cowering politicians, raising my knives to defend against the sudden ambush. The dust cleared to reveal the child assassin I had encountered previously on the rooftops a few days back. The boy stood defiantly between me and the dying swordsman, his small frame trembling with suppressed emotion.
He held his trench knife in a flawless reverse grip, his cold, dead eyes locked entirely onto mine. "Stay back," the boy warned, his voice dangerously low as he shielded Takezo's broken body from my line of sight.
"Ugh…"
The unconscious mercenary began to stir awake. Woken up by the sounds of my brief clash with Takezo.
Takezo's eyes widened in surprise.
"Rin…."
I narrowed my eyes, refusing to lower my guard as the tension in the room skyrocketed once again. I stood firmly in front of Shinji and Baji, my posture rigid as I stared down the young, deadly rogue ninja.
[ KISUKE YOROI ]
I had commandeered one of the many extravagant rooms of the estate to use as a makeshift laboratory.
The room was silent; save for the soft bubbling of the concoction I was working on. The air was thick with the acrid scent of herbs, chemicals, and something I couldn't quite identify. My hands moved with practiced precision, measuring, mixing, testing.
'I have to get this right. Jinichi's life depends on it.'
The poison that had been used on him was a complex one, a cocktail of paralytic agents and neurotoxins that had been carefully designed to cripple and kill. The purple tinge on his skin, the erratic pulse, the shallow breathing, it all pointed to a venom that was slowly shutting down his nervous system.
I had been working for hours, desperately trying to isolate the components of the poison and create an effective antidote. It was a painstaking process, one that required absolute precision and focus. But my mind kept drifting back to the chaos that was undoubtedly unfolding elsewhere in the venue.
'What's happening out there? Is Sensei okay?'
I pushed the thoughts away, forcing myself to focus on the task at hand. Jinichi's life was in my hands, and I couldn't afford to be distracted by worry. The process was delicate, one wrong measurement, one miscalculation, and the poison would spread faster, stronger, killing him before I could even attempt a cure.
"How's he doing?" Aoi's voice came from behind me, her tone unusually quiet. She had been trying to help, but I had sent her to guard the door, to make sure no one interrupted my work.
"Not good," I admitted, not turning away from the mixture. "The poison is aggressive. It's attacking his nervous system, shutting down his motor functions. If I don't find a cure soon..."
I didn't need to finish the sentence. Aoi understood. The silence that followed was heavy, filled with the weight of our shared concern.
"We had one of our usual fights earlier, before the gala.." Aoi said, her voice barely above a whisper.
"He called me a psychopath. I said I wanted to prove myself as a kunoichi. I was so angry with him for getting paired up with me, for winning our sparring match, for just... existing. And now he might die, and I'll never get to apologize."
I paused in my work, turning to look at her. For a moment, I saw something in her eyes I had never seen before. Vulnerability. Fear. Regret.
"He'll live," I said firmly, though I wasn't sure if I was trying to convince her or myself.
"I won't let him die. He's, our teammate."
Aoi nodded, her jaw set with determination. "What do you need me to do?"
"Stay vigilant," I said, returning to my work.
"No distractions. No interruptions. I need to focus."
She nodded and turned back to the door, her hand resting on the kunai at her hip. I returned to my work, my mind racing as I tried to piece together the formula that would save my friend.
'Just a little longer, Jinichi. I'm almost there. Just hold on a little longer.'
[ AOI SETSUNA ]
I stood guard at the door, my senses on high alert. The distant sounds of chaos echoed through the halls, but I couldn't afford to be distracted. My job was to protect Kisuke, to give him the time he needed to save Jinichi.
'Jinichi. I can't believe he's dying. I can't believe I might never get to make things right.'
My mind drifted back to our first meeting, the brutal sparring match that had left us both battered and bruised. I had been so angry with him, so convinced that he was nothing more than a lucky fluke who had somehow stumbled into victory. But then I had seen him fight, really fight, and I knew he was something more. He was stubborn, persistent, and infuriating. But he was also brave, selfless, and loyal.
I had wanted to prove myself as a kunoichi, to show that I could stand on my own, that I didn't need anyone's help. But being part of a team meant something different. It meant trusting others, relying on them, protecting them. And I had failed. I had let my pride get in the way, and now my teammate was paying the price.
'Never again. I will never let my pride endanger my teammates again.'
The door behind me creaked open, and I spun around, my kunai raised. But it was just Kisuke, his face pale but determined.
"I've got it," he said, holding up a small vial filled with a clear, shimmering liquid.
"The antidote is ready. I need to administer it now."
I nodded, stepping aside to let him through.
"Then let's save him."
We moved quickly to Jinichi's side. He was pale, his skin clammy and cold to the touch. Kisuke gently tilted his head back and poured the antidote down his throat, his hands steady despite the gravity of the situation.
"Come on, Jinichi," I whispered, my voice cracking with emotion.
"Fight. Don't you dare give up. We still have so much unfinished business."