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The silence after was total. A silence filled with the stink of blood, burnt wood, and smoke. The world tilted, and Neji wasn't sure if it was his mind or the forest that was spinning.
He rolled onto his back. He didn't remember screaming, but he must've. His throat tasted of blood and acid.
Right arm ruined. Left hand a burnt husk. Ribs caved in. He could feel something inside him leaking... probably internal bleeding. His clothes were in tatters, soaked crimson.
But he was alive. Barely.
The Uchiha lay dead beside him, a gaping hole in his chest where his heart had been compressed into nothingness.
Neji stared at the canopy overhead, blurred by smoke and tears.
His thoughts drifted to nothing. He forced himself to sit up... slowly, agonizingly... and pulled himself away from the body.
It was time to vanish.
He would need to destroy the scene. Remove every trace. Hide the corpse if possible. Signal to no one.
He staggered up, step by bloody step.
By the time the sun began to rise, there was only the faintest trace of a battle here. Smoke still drifted lazily between the trees. Blood soaked into the soil, but no footsteps remained. The body had been dragged into a ravine and buried beneath brush and soot.
The steel wires, the decoy cloak, the smoke bombs... all gone. Collected. Destroyed.
And Neji? He was already miles away, half-conscious, dragging his broken body. His right hand hung useless at his side.
--
But it didn't feel like victory. Not now. Not after everything. Neji had planned, adapted, fought smart, fought coward, fought ruthlessly. He had done everything right... and yet his body felt like it was moments from collapse. His fingers were broken. His ribs screamed. His left hand was charred to the tendon.
He didn't win. He survived.
He looked down at the corpse, he was dragging.
The teen's Sharingan had faded in death. His expression was not one of terror, but peace. That disturbed Neji more than he liked to admit.
"I had to kill you after knowing Aya and Riku's Identity," he whispered.
The wind didn't answer. But it pushed the leaves aside, just enough for a ray of early sunlight to fall across the fallen Uchiha's face.
A part of Neji wanted to walk away. Leave the corpse for nature. Or the Bounty Hunters.
But he didn't. It took over an hour.
Digging with a kunai in one hand, Neji clawed into the earth beside a twisted tree. The soil was damp, resisting him at every stroke. His fingers bled where the grip bit too tight. His vision blurred with each motion.
But he didn't stop.
The Uchiha's body was heavier than expected. Lean, but muscle-dense. Neji dragged him to the pit slowly, carefully, cradling the ruined torso as if some twisted reverence had settled into his limbs.
He laid the body in the shallow grave with a grunt.The face still looked young. Peaceful.
"Who were you?" he muttered, resting on his knees beside the grave. "What was your name?"
No answer came, of course. But Neji bowed his head regardless.
"I won't remember your face. I can't. I'll forget. Time does that. But I'll remember this pain. I'll remember the cost."
He reached into his pouch and pulled out a blank tag.
Using the blood from his knuckles, he marked a crude character on it:
無名... Nameless.
He planted it like a headstone, wedging it between two roots. Then, slowly, he began refilling the pit with dirt.
By the time he finished, his arms barely responded.
His hands hung limp, twitching uselessly at his sides. Every movement sent spears of fire into his spine. His vision spun again... black halos curling at the edge of his eyes. He collapsed beside the grave and lay there for what might have been minutes, or hours.
When he could finally move again, it was only because he had to.
He couldn't die here.
--
As Neji limped through the broken underbrush, each painful step began to shape his thoughts more clearly.
He hadn't expected the recoil from Chakra Sōgeki: Asshuku-ten to be that devastating. His right index finger was shattered. The chakra feedback had fried the nerves up to the elbow. It was not a technique to be used casually... or perhaps ever again.
He had overestimated his durability. Underestimated how strong a High chunin-Level uchiha. Had it not been for the terrain, the smoke, the wires, the feints… he would've died.
It wasn't power that saved him.
It was cunning. Malice. Desperation.
Neji wasn't proud of that. But he wouldn't apologize for it either.
He thought of the clan's elders, of the Hyuga council that looked down on anyone who deviated from tradition. He imagined their disgust if they saw what he'd done.
He smiled bitterly. Let them. They weren't here.
They didn't bleed in the mud to survive.
What Now?
--
He pulled open his pouch and assessed what remained. A few soldier pills. Burn salve. Bandage rolls half-used. A chakra thread needle... half-melted from the earlier explosion.
But the biggest issue was his chakra network. The fight had torn jagged scars across it. The technique he'd used had nearly burned out his tenketsu. He could already feel the circulation of chakra faltering, sluggish and unstable.
He needed to recover somewhere safe... somewhere hidden. An old idea surfaced. A training site.
There was a Hyuga outpost hidden in the craggy gorges east of here. It had long since been decommissioned, but Neji remembered his father mentioning it... a shack built into the canyon wall, meant for field training and temporary retreat.
It would be hard to reach in his state. But it was his best chance.
He altered course, stumbling toward the eastern cliffs.