The history of Kirigakure was written in blood and mist, each chapter sealing away some new tragedy.
There were the bad days, like the infamous demise of the Second Mizukage and a generation of elites in a baffling, fruitless assault on Iwagakure.
Then there were the catastrophic days.
Today was rapidly shaping up to be the poster child for catastrophic.
First, the uneasy rumors: the Kazekage had gone to Uzushiogakure and simply… vanished.
Then, as if the tension were a ripe fruit, it burst.
No one in Kiri's history had ever needed an 'In Case of Village Invasion' protocol. The Five Great Villages waged war in buffers and borderlands, a civilized dance of death that never, ever crashed through the front gates.
It was an unspoken rule. So when the alarms screamed, the resulting chaos was less a military drill and more a panicked game of musical chairs, with nowhere to sit.
Through sheer dumb luck and the frantic herding of some quick-thinking Genin, the civilians managed to stumble into the ancient, dusty shelters carved deep beneath the village. It wasn't graceful, but it was, mostly, done.
By the time the final defensive barrier shrieked and failed, splintering under a storm of foreign jutsu, Azula stood at the breach.
Her sensory network flickered across the village—pockets of stubborn clan members hunkered down in their compounds, idiots with more pride than sense—but the common throng of civilians had largely moved beneath the village, probably thinking they are well hidden.
What faced her was an army, not at the level of the one that had attacked Uzushiogakure, but it was plenty: a sea of over six thousand enemy ninja.
The logical, clean, brutally simple play was to have Mito unseal a Tailed Beast Bomb and redraw Kiri's map into a glowing crater. Problem solved, village crippled, war potentially over but Azula didn't dwell on something that was impossible.
Instead, her gaze drifted upward. The sky was its usual self: a dismal, watercolor smear of gray clouds, perpetually weeping over the Land of Water. A miserable sight for most.
For Azula, it was a loaded weapon.
A slow, almost impish smile touched her lips. Here it was, the perfect testing ground for a jutsu of devastating, theatrical beauty she'd never had a canvas large enough to paint on. The pinnacle of Lightning Release, the dragon of the storm.
Kirin.
The question wasn't about morality. Azula had long since made peace with the grim arithmetic of shinobi life; in the face of an army, you used the biggest hammer you had.
The dilemma, frankly, was a tactical bore. Azula craved a Kiri that was sufficiently crippled—a broken sword she could later reforge into a pliant tool once she sat in the Hokage's chair and began her mostly peaceful unification of the ninja world.
A single thought, using her chakra, and she could summon Kirin. The majestic, dragon-shaped lightning would turn half the Kiri army below into commemorative ash piles.
A conservative estimate, really.
But… collateral damage, no one truly appreciated the party-crashing habits of lightning.
It wouldn't just strike the visible ninja; it would spear through their pathetic underground shelters, electro-frying every civilian huddled inside. 80% dead, the rest wishing they were.
And then poof goes her future obedient vassal state, replaced by a generation-wide blood feud. She'd have to exterminate them all, and that shifted the mission from 'necessary slaughter' to 'overindulgent butchery.'
And Azula had her standards.
'Honestly, it's fine,' she mused, a smirk touching her lips as she dismissed the storm's temptation. 'Why use a divine dragon to swat flies when a well-aimed newspaper will do? And be far more demoralizing.'
With the palpable aura of impending theater, she strode forward with the Sen-Uch-Uzu army behind her like. She stopped, ensuring every Kiri ninja could see her, could feel the terror of her Sharingan's gaze.
"People of Kirigakure!" Her voice, amplified by chakra, cut through the tense air like a kunai. It was louder than a shout because every genin and jounin present heard it perfectly. "I am Azula Uchiha. Matriarch of the Uchiha Clan. Leader of the unified coalition forces of the Uchiha, the Senju, and the Uzumaki."
"I've come to settle a debt. A rather substantial one." She paused, enjoying the silence. "Several days ago, your late Mizukage—bless his ambitious, foolish soul—led an army of ten thousand to the shores of Uzushiogakure. His mission? Extermination."
She saw the flinch, the dawning horror. If she was here, with Uzumaki at her back… then the Mizukage wasn't coming home.
"It did not go well for him." Her tone was almost conversational. "In fact, it went so poorly that not a single soul from that attacking force survived to send a letter. And your Mizukage? He was personally and quite thoroughly dismantled by Tsunade Senju."
She emphasized the Senju. Let that name resurface from the history books with the impact of a meteor.
"Now," Azula continued, her Sharingan beginning a slow, hypnotic swirl. "We will be visiting every village that signed onto that little genocide pact. But we decided to start with you. Consider it a tribute to your late leader's… pioneering stupidity."
She raised a single hand. Behind her, a thousand hands moved in unison, sealing ready, weapons drawn.
"Of course," Azula said calmly, hands clasped behind her back, "out of generosity, we're offering you a chance."
"Now, let's be reasonable," she said, as if suggesting they share a pot of tea, not discussing the village's vaporization. "We could do this the messy way. One Tailed Beast Ball. One re-enactment of that 'Ten-Thousand Army Vanishing' technique we used on the army led by the Mizukage."
She made a gentle, exploding motion with her fingers. "Then there would be no more mist."
"But that would involve innocent people," she added, as if mildly disappointed. "And I'm trying very hard not to do that today."
A ripple went through the gathered Kirigakure shinobi. There was fear, anger, a little awe but mostly confusion.
"So," Azula said brightly, spreading her hands. "You have two options."
She raised one finger.
"Option one: you die today. For a failed coup, a dead Kage, and a village that has become so bloodthirsty it can't tell enemies from its own children anymore."
A second finger rose.
"Option Two," she continued, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that somehow reached every ear. "Surrender and be peace lovers. It's a novel concept, I know. Hear me out."
She paused, letting the absurdity of an Uchiha preach peace to the Bloody village sink in. The cognitive dissonance was almost audible.
"Surrender," she repeated, "and you get to join the biggest cause in the elemental nations: actually making the world less bad. On my name as Azula Uchiha, you will not be mistreated. If you have talent—and let's face it, surviving here is a talent—I will use it. We'll finish what the two founders of the village system started. Your kids could grow up not wondering if their teacher is a spy. Think about it!"
She could see it working. A handful of younger ninjas, their eyes haunted by Kiri's unique brand of paranoia, were actually listening. They were looking past her at the calm, unnervingly smiling Senju and Uzumaki flanking her, and seeing… an alternative.
Still, she knew better than to celebrate.
This was Kirigakure.
Even before it earned the name Bloody Mist, it was infamous. Betrayal was casual here and loyalty was temporary. Missing-nin weren't an anomaly—they were a career path.
Convincing Kiri to trust anyone was like asking a shark to go vegetarian.
Sure enough, someone stepped forward.
A man in his forties, scarred, broad-shouldered, posture rigid with old experience.
"An Uchiha… talking about peace." He let out a dry chuckle that sounded like grinding gravel. "That's… impressive."
Azula's smile didn't falter. If anything, it grew more luminous.
"I assume you're Genji," she said, her tone polite but certain. "Second-in-command. Acting representative of Kirigakure."
Genji wasn't surprised she knew him. He was, however, deeply unnerved by the un-Uchiha-like aura of cheerful menace she projected.
This was what got the Senju and Uzumaki to play nice? Not just power, but this baffling, irresistible charm? He saw the doubt in his own ranks and felt a surge of old, familiar bitterness.
"You speak beautifully, Young Uchiha Matriarch. I've never heard one of your clan talk like this." A pause. "But how do you expect anyone in this world to hand over their lives based on words alone?"
The philosophy of Kiri is different from Konoha's Will of Fire, what for the village, what trusting camarade, what friendship, it's all nonsense here.
You don't even know when you may be betrayed by a decade long teammate or how the village would want to delete you because it's necessary, so from Genji's point of view, Azula is just politics.
(END OF THE CHAPTER)
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