Last watch was objectively the worst shift, and I say that as someone who'd pulled every variant of guard duty across two lifetimes.
I was lounged on a thick branch, back against the trunk, watching stars punch holes through the darkness while my ass slowly went numb from sitting still too long. The problem with last watch wasn't just that you woke up when it was still dark. It was that you couldn't go back to sleep afterward, and by the time your shift ended, everyone else was waking up anyway and it was time to move.
I sighed and shifted my weight, trying to get feeling back in my left leg. A watch wasn't even necessary, honestly. I'd already set sixteen clones around the camp as perimeter sentries, each one positioned to catch anything approaching from any direction. But leaving no awake squad member on duty would only make the others uneasy. Unlike Mikoto and Kushina, these guys didn't have complete trust in me yet. They'd heard of my accomplishments, sure, but hearing and believing are two very different things, especially for shinobi. The brain might accept facts, but the heart lags behind, takes its sweet time catching up, sometimes never makes the trip at all.
Morning came eventually, like it always did. Gray light bled through the trees, turning everything from black to varying shades of colorless. Birds started making noise, insects joined in, and the forest woke up whether anyone was ready for it or not.
Movement below caught my attention. Kasumi was the first to stir, stretching carefully on her branch before sitting up and rubbing her eyes. She glanced around, spotted me watching, and gave a small wave.
"Morning," she said quietly, her voice still rough from sleep.
"Morning," I said back. "Sleep okay?"
"Well enough." She yawned, covering her mouth. "Though I think I found every uncomfortable spot on that tree trunk."
"Means you picked a good spot," I said. "If you're too comfortable, you sleep too deeply. Can't really afford that on a mission."
She snorted softly. "That's either actual shinobi wisdom or you're very good at making yourself feel better about terrible choices."
"Honestly? I heard it somewhere, but I can't remember if it was from a book or just something I convinced myself was true."
After that, the rest of the group woke up. Akane first, then the other guy, I really needed to learn his name at some point, and finally Grumpy-chan, who looked about as happy as someone sporting a fresh black eye and bruised ego could look.
I dropped down from my perch, landing quietly. "Alright, everyone up. We need to eat and get moving."
Groans answered me. Kasumi sat up slowly, rubbing her eyes and squinting at the gray light like it had personally offended her. The others weren't much better, moving like their bodies were protesting after spending the night on branches in full gear.
After a few minutes of everyone getting their bearings and digging through their packs, Kasumi pulled out her ration pack and held up one of the sweet potato bars, squinting at it. "Think these would taste better if we actually cooked them, or would that just make it worse?"
"Worse," Akane said immediately, not even looking up from her own breakfast. "Trust me, I tried heating the old ones once. Somehow they became even more terrible."
"I didn't think that was physically possible."
"Neither did I, but I learned my lesson."
We ate rice bars, sweet potato bars, and compact onigiri blocks. The new outpost ration packs. The taste was... fine, I guess. Average at best, but at least better than the old stuff they used to churn out. I chewed while my mind was elsewhere, watching the squad come fully awake, noting who was alert right away and who needed time to shake off sleep.
While they ate, I felt three sets of eyes on me. I didn't even need to look. I could guess exactly who they belonged to. I wouldn't have thought much of it if not for the faint flicker of hostility I sensed from one of them. It was tiny, barely a spark, and gone in less than a second. The others wouldn't have noticed at all. But I had a lifetime worth of experience in reading these things. I knew a grudge when I felt one, could recognize the particular flavor of resentment that came from someone who'd been nursing it overnight.
Normally I'd just ignore it. People got pissed about stupid things on missions all the time. Stress, exhaustion, fear, all of it had a way of building up and needing somewhere to go. Usually it passed once the mission was over and everyone got some actual sleep and decent food.
But I also knew Grumpy-chan had a thing for Akane. That made it harder to just brush off, turned what should've been background noise into something I probably needed to keep an eye on.
My experience told me to tie up the loose end, handle it cleanly before it became a problem. But I didn't really want to. It had been a long time since I last had to kill one of my own. I hadn't liked it then, didn't want to do it again now. If I could help it, I wanted to leave that kind of thing in my past life, bury it with everything else that kept me up at night. But I also knew that sometimes you don't really get to choose. Sometimes the mission forces your hand, or circumstances do, or just bad luck. Sometimes you just do what you have to.
Then again, some flowers usually wilted on their own before you had to pull them out. Right now the missing squad was the fire, and Grumpy-chan was just smoke.
"Alright, get ready in ten minutes," I told them while they finished their food. "Finish eating, check your gear, take care of whatever you need to. We're moving out soon."
They nodded, mouths still full, looking more awake now but not quite there yet.
Soon enough we were moving again toward Ame, jumping from branch to branch, everyone moving at a good pace without much trouble. I had Akane use her sensory jutsu every few hours to keep us updated on any movement in the area. Our destination was the last known location of Tsunade's squad, coordinates that were probably outdated by now, but at least it gave us somewhere to start.
...
By nightfall, we'd been moving through Ame territory for hours without finding much of anything.
Kasumi was in the lead, reading tracks and signs that the rest of us couldn't see. She'd stop every few minutes, crouch down to look at branches or the ground, then adjust where we were heading by a bit. The rest of us just followed along, trusting she knew what she was doing.
The forest here was different from Fire Country. Wetter, darker, with this constant gloom that made everything look the same after a while. Trees dripped moisture even when it wasn't raining, and every surface we passed looked slick with water.
"Anything?" I asked after we'd been at it for maybe twenty minutes.
"I think so." Kasumi was looking at a tree trunk, running her fingers along the bark. "There's a faint mark here. Something scraped against it."
Well, at least we had something. Faint marks were better than no marks, and she seemed confident enough to keep going. If anyone could track down Tsunade's squad through this mess, it was her.
We kept moving. The forest got denser as we went deeper into Ame territory, and water just kept dripping from the leaves overhead, creating this constant pattering sound that might've been nice if we weren't out here looking for missing people.
"There," Kasumi said suddenly, pointing ahead. "Something's off about that area. The vegetation looks trampled, and those branches are broken at weird angles."
We headed that way, and after another ten minutes of carefully making our way through increasingly damaged forest, we finally found what we'd been looking for.
Battle damage. Lots of it. The clearing ahead of us had been torn apart by whatever fight happened here. Several craters pockmarked the ground like someone had been playing target practice with explosive tags. Scorched earth stretched across what used to be a clearing, blackened and still smelling faintly of smoke and burnt vegetation. Broken trees scattered everywhere, some snapped clean in half, others just leaning at angles that didn't make sense at first glance until you realized they were held up by other broken trees.
"Well," I said, looking at the mess. "I'd say we found the right place."
Kasumi was already moving through the area, reading everything like she was piecing together a story. She crouched near one of the craters, looking at something I couldn't make out from where I was standing, then moved to another spot and did the same. Her eyes were tracking across the ground, following trails that apparently told her what had happened.
"Looks like one side got pushed back here. They were retreating, but still fighting as they went." She straightened slightly and pointed toward the northeast. "They fell back that way."
No bodies anywhere. Which meant either the losing side managed to withdraw with their wounded, or someone cleaned up afterward.
"Akane," I said. "Give me a sweep."
She closed her eyes, her breathing evening out as she activated her sensory jutsu. The rest of us waited in silence.
When her eyes opened again, she said, "I'm picking up nineteen chakra signatures. There's a village about three kilometers northwest of here."
Nineteen. That seemed like a lot of shinobi to be hanging around some random village.
Tatsu straightened up a little. "Can you tell if they're Suna or Ame?"
Akane looked at him like he'd just asked her to count grains of sand. "Of course not. Unless I personally know someone's chakra signature, I have no way of identifying who they are or which faction they belong to." Her tone made it clear she thought that should've been obvious.
Tatsu's face flushed and he cleared his throat, glancing at the forest around us like he was checking for threats, pretending the conversation hadn't just happened.
His friend, the other guy on the team, winced and quickly found something fascinating about his own boots. Second-hand embarrassment radiating off him so strongly I could practically feel it from here.
I decided to spare them further embarrassment. "Could be either. Both Suna and Ame have reasons to be here. Ame would be protecting their territory from foreign shinobi. Suna needs resources to keep their forces supplied while operating this deep in foreign land for an extended period."
Both girls went quiet, their expressions getting serious.
"When you say resources," Akane said slowly, "you mean..."
I nodded. "Pillaging, yeah. Taking supplies from villages. It's an ugly reality when shinobi are operating far from their supply lines." I paused. "Though they could also just be treating wounded after a fight with our missing squad. Setting up a temporary base, maybe preparing an ambush for anyone who comes looking. Could be both."
That made everyone tense. The girls were looking at me, and I could tell they were hoping I'd say we should get as far away from those nineteen unknown shinobi as possible.
I looked around at the forest, thinking it over. Nineteen was way too many to engage without knowing more about who they were. And a group that size almost certainly had at least one sensor. If we got detected, this would turn into a fight real fast.
"We should pull back," I said. "Get outside their sensory range. No point tipping them off until we know what we're dealing with."
We retreated carefully, putting distance between us and those signatures. We'd moved about half a kilometer when Kasumi stopped suddenly. She was staring at something near the base of a tree, a patch of vegetation that had turned this sickly brown-yellow color.
"What is it?" Tatsu asked, moving closer.
"Poisoned blood, I think," Kasumi said. "See how the plants died? Someone bleeding made it this far before..." She trailed off, still studying the discolored patch.
I was pretty good with medical ninjutsu, could handle most injuries and even some complex trauma work. But poisons weren't my specialty. I knew the basics, enough to recognize common toxins and treat standard poisonings, but this wasn't standard. Even with my limited poison knowledge, I could tell the vegetation hadn't just died. It had changed at a molecular level, like the poison was still active in the dead plants, still eating away at organic matter.
"Don't get any closer," I warned them. "This might be what happened to our squad. We could be dealing with a poison specialist."
Our missing squad didn't have anyone with those skills, so this had to be enemy work. Though if I was being honest, Tsunade being the best healer among her squad meant she'd probably already neutralized whatever poison this was. We should be more worried about the enemy finding her team first, not the other way around.
We moved several more kilometers out from the village before setting up camp in a spot with decent tree cover and good sightlines.
"Akane," I said, "can you keep tabs on those signatures? Check in every forty minutes or so."
Tatsu immediately protested. "That's going to drain her chakra. If we run into trouble, she won't have anything left to defend herself with."
I looked at him and saw exactly what I expected. That expression. You know the one. The white knight face. The I'm-protecting-you-because-you-need-me face. Except Akane didn't need protecting from him, she needed protecting from enemies, which my clones were already handling, and he was just adding unnecessary variables to a situation I already had under control.
I held back a sigh. "It's necessary. If those nineteen nin already sensed us earlier and sent a unit after us, we need to know about it. Otherwise we're walking blind." I paused, letting that sink in. "Do you feel confident we could handle an ambush from nineteen enemy shinobi?"
Tatsu opened his mouth, closed it, then tried again. "We could avoid them. Keep moving, stay ahead of any pursuit."
"And how would we know we're staying ahead of them without a sensor telling us where they are?" I asked. "You planning to just hope really hard that they're not tracking us right now?"
His jaw worked like he was chewing on a response that wouldn't come out sounding stupid. Nothing came. He looked away.
Yeah, that's what I thought. Hero complex without the actual heroic competence to back it up. Just vibes and feelings disguised as concern.
I turned back to Akane. "Don't worry about fighting the enemies. I have your back. I've got over twenty clones spread around the perimeter right now. That's enough to handle them if they come."
Akane nodded, some of the tension leaving her shoulders. "Okay."
She trusted my word without hesitation, which only made Tatsu look more irritated, his jaw clenching like he was chewing on something bitter.
That irritation found a new outlet fast enough. The strategic discussion turned into the men insisting we should abandon this area and focus on finding our squad instead of worrying about nineteen mystery ninja. Whether they were Ame-nin or Suna-nin pillaging villages, it wasn't their problem. This was Ame territory anyway, not Konoha's responsibility.
The girls were looking at me, probably waiting to see if I'd let my ego override common sense. I had the feeling they agreed with the men, even if they weren't saying so.
"We focus on finding the missing squad," I said. "The nineteen in the village aren't our problem unless they make themselves our problem."
Everyone relaxed slightly. Apparently they'd been expecting me to do something stupid and heroic like charging into the village to save civilians or starting a fight we didn't need, which struck me as completely ridiculous. Where did they even get that idea? I tried to think back through our interactions. Had I done anything that screamed "reckless hero complex"? I'd been pretty clear about prioritizing survival and mission success over everything else. Maybe they confused me with someone who actually cared about playing hero. Or maybe they'd heard stories about other missions and filled in the gaps with their own assumptions about how I operated. Either way, completely off base.
Not that I was going to waste time correcting them. My reason for agreeing had nothing to do with avoiding combat though. I wanted to locate Tsunade as quickly as possible. She wasn't in immediate danger, at least not extreme danger. Seeing Orochimaru's name on the list made me feel better about her chances. If Sakumo's name had appeared too, I would've felt far more reassured, but Orochimaru alone was still solid backup.
Even so, I had no intention of ignoring the village. Not because of some hero complex or save-the-civilians impulse, nothing noble like that. I had an important 'guest' inside that village I'd been keeping an eye on. My clones hadn't found Nagato yet, but they had found one of his gang. The last intel my clones provided was from before Tsunade arrived here, before this whole mess began. And because there was only one second-gen clone left inside the village, it couldn't dispel itself to send me information without also dispelling all the third-gen clones protecting my future investment.
So while the squad settled in for sleep, I quietly signaled several clones around the camp. They disappeared into the darkness without a sound, heading toward the village to check on the situation.
...
Back at camp, exhaustion was catching up to everyone. We'd been sprinting across country all day without a break, and it showed. We found spots on branches and most of the squad was asleep within minutes. We decided on shorter four-hour rests with one shift, half the squad awake on watch while the others slept. More efficient when everyone was this tired, and better for staying alert in hostile territory.
By three in the morning, the sky was still pitch black when we silently dropped from the trees and continued following behind Kasumi as she tracked the trail of poisoned blood. For the first thirty minutes, things went what I'd generously call "well." Which in this case meant Kasumi constantly pausing, circling the area like a dog that lost the scent, adjusting course because the signs were getting harder and harder to find. Blood droplets were spaced farther apart. Disturbed vegetation became less obvious. The trail was fading, and not because time had passed. Someone was actively making it harder to follow.
Finally, by the time forty minutes had passed, the trail just… disappeared. The blood droplets just stopped appearing, and every trace of movement had been wiped clean. Kasumi crouched near where the last drop should've been, running her fingers across bark and dirt, checking angles and shadows. Nothing. Whoever had been bleeding either died and got carried, or someone in their group knew how to erase tracks.
"Their tracker's good," Kasumi said quietly, standing back up. "This kind of cleanup while moving isn't easy to do."
I nodded. "Expand your search. Don't rush it, take your time. Check wider circles, see if they missed anything." I looked at the two guys. "You two go with her, keep watch while she works."
As expected, I saw the dissatisfaction tightening Grumpy-chan's expression the moment he realized what that meant. Leaving Akane alone with me. His jaw worked, eyes flicking between me and her like he was calculating whether he could refuse without making it obvious he was refusing. But the moment he met my closed-eyes smile, the man stiffened. Broke into a cold sweat. His body remembered what his pride wanted to forget, how I'd beaten him black and blue in that briefing room. With a huff that tried very hard to sound casual and failed completely, the three of them headed out.
I turned to Akane.
She looked at me and immediately started fidgeting with her vest, her eyes going anywhere but my face. And I could see it happening in real time, her mind drifting instantly to the wrong idea. She thought I wanted to repeat what happened last night behind the tree. Her cheeks flushed pink, then red, then deep scarlet as whatever happened last night played through her head again. The progression of colors across her face would've been amusing if we weren't about to have bigger problems.
"I need you to do another sweep," I said.
She blinked, visibly deflating as reality crashed back in. Right. Work. Not whatever her brain had been hoping would happen. She obeyed, closing her eyes and doing her sensor thing.
Her eyes snapped open maybe three seconds later, and the look on her face went from disappointed to genuinely worried so fast I almost missed the transition. That wasn't good.
"What is it?" I asked.
"There's a squad heading toward us. Twelve shinobi." Her words came out quickly. "They're not from the village, they're coming from a completely different direction." She pointed northeast. "And the way they're moving... they definitely have a sensor with them. They're not just patrolling. They know we're here."
I thought about that. Twelve shinobi with a sensor, coming from an unexpected direction, moving with clear purpose. That wasn't good.
"Give me their exact position," I said.
She rattled off coordinates, distance, speed of approach. I did the math in my head. We had maybe fifteen minutes before contact, give or take.
"Regroup with the others," I told her. "Pull everyone back away from their path. I'll take care of the approaching twelve."
"By yourself?" She looked alarmed. "That's twelve of them, you can't just—"
"I'm Konoha's youngest prodigy," I said, smiling at her worry. "There's a reason for that beyond paperwork and luck." I could see her wanting to argue, so I added, "Every second we waste talking about this puts the entire squad at risk. You need to go."
That got through to her. She hesitated one more second, searching my face for something, maybe reassurance or maybe just permission to leave me behind. Then she turned and ran, disappearing into the trees toward where Kasumi and the others had gone.
The moment she was out of sight, I gestured slightly with my head.
Twenty-four clones emerged from the shadows around the trees and took off toward where the enemy squad was coming from, spreading out as they moved.
I watched them go, already doing the math. Twenty-four clones versus twelve enemies. Two-to-one ratio, which sounded comfortable on paper but meant nothing if those twelve were actually competent. This enemy group was larger than I'd expected in the first place. Twelve shinobi moving with purpose, with a sensor guiding them, appearing exactly where they shouldn't be unless they knew something. If they were connected to the nineteen in the village, and the odds weren't bad that they were, then we were looking at at least thirty-one hostile shinobi in the area. Minimum. Could be more. Probably were more, actually, because why stop at thirty-one when you could have forty or fifty?
And they'd shown up right here. In the middle of nowhere. Exactly where Konoha's missing squad had last been active before going silent. That wasn't coincidence. Coincidences didn't move in formations with sensors attached. Either these were the people responsible for making Tsunade's squad disappear, or they were the cleanup crew sent to finish whatever the first group started.
Which brought me to the uncomfortable part of this equation. If they'd managed to make a squad with both Orochimaru and Tsunade go missing, they weren't your average jonin. Those two could handle most threats without breaking a sweat. Tsunade could punch through boulders. Orochimaru was, well, Orochimaru. Add in whoever else was on their team, and you were looking at a mobile disaster that should've steamrolled anything short of Hanzo and his personal squad. So whoever did this was either very skilled, very numerous, had a poison specialist nasty enough to give even Tsunade trouble, or was operating with some other advantage I hadn't figured out yet. Possibly all four. Probably all four, knowing my luck.
So yeah, I couldn't afford to take chances here. Not with this many unknowns floating around.
Instead of following my clones directly to the fight, I pulled back, moving laterally through the trees while producing more shadow clones as I went. Staying ahead of whatever sensor range the enemy had. As much as I wanted to handle this personally, get in there and finish them myself, I was deep in hostile territory with zero intel on how many more squads were wandering around looking for targets. Getting exhausted in the very first fight would be stupid. That was how people died on long missions. That was how search and rescue turned into body recovery.
This mission was just getting started. Everything so far had been setup. This was my warm-up round. My way of testing the waters before things got worse, which they would, because things always got worse.
Twenty-four clones were cheap. Expendable. The perfect currency for buying information about threats I couldn't afford to face blind.
Were we dealing with random jonin who got lucky, or elite nin who'd been sent specifically to handle high-value targets? The clones would tell me soon enough.
....
[Shinji's clone POV]
The clone and four others hit the village at a dead sprint, dropping from the treeline into what used to be someone's home.
It was worse than expected.
Much worse.
Bodies in the street, fallen wherever death caught them. An old man face-down in the mud with his back split open. A woman crumpled against a storefront, her throat opened so wide the clone could see bone. Blood everywhere, fresh enough that it was still spreading across the dirt in slow, dark rivers.
Suna-nin had been thorough. The dead were all civilians from what the clone could tell, people who'd tried to defend their homes or just hadn't been fast enough to escape. The buildings that weren't burned had been torn apart, doors kicked in, valuables stripped out. Food, supplies, anything portable was gone. What couldn't be carried had been destroyed out of spite or just because they could, hard to tell which and didn't really matter at this point.
The clone moved through the destruction, scanning for the target. Somewhere in this mess was the girl they'd been protecting, the prospect with potential worth keeping alive. Finding her before she became another body in the street was the entire point of being here.
Movement caught his attention. Three Suna-nin near what used to be a storage house, still searching through wreckage for anything they'd missed. One of them looked up, saw the clones, and his hand went to his weapons immediately.
The clones didn't wait. Five identical Shinji dropped from the roofs, tantos already drawn, feet barely touching the ground before the first Suna-nin reacted.
The three Suna shinobi were good, not your average nin, judging by how fast they recognized the ambush.
Didn't matter.
They were still late.
The puppet-user snapped a scroll open and burst his wooden construct to life, blades unfolding along segmented limbs, its maw opening with a grinding click. The other two leapt in separate directions, one forming wind seals, the other dropping low with hidden blades flashing from his sleeves.
Blades met with a sharp, ringing cry. The clones didn't fan out—they crashed in, forcing the Suna shinobi to split, react, improvise.
A clone Shunshin'd past the puppet, reappearing behind its master, only for the puppet to rotate on a central joint mid-air and intercept him with a scything arm, the strike so fast it cracked stone behind the clone.
But the clone had already made a clone.
Two silhouettes split apart mid-air and the puppet's blade only bisected the wrong one, filling the air with smoke—
—right as the real clone rammed a tanto straight in, aiming for the puppeteer's ribs.
The puppeteer twisted unnaturally, chakra threads dragging his own body out of harm's way while the puppet's mouth snapped over the clone's forearm. Wood splintered. Blood sprayed. The clone didn't scream, he just grabbed the puppet's jaw with both hands and forced it wider, stealing the master's control for a full heartbeat.
A heartbeat was enough.
A second clone Shunshin'd in and drew his blade across the puppeteer's throat, opening the artery so fast blood was already spraying before the man could react.
The puppet collapsed like a severed limb.
...
The Futon-user saw his teammate fall and unleashed hell.
A compressed blade of wind tore through the air, splitting a ruined house in half. One clone ducked behind the collapsing wall as a second clone leapt through the dust cloud, weaving signs fast enough to blur.
Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu—
He didn't finish the fireball.
The Suna-nin's wind blade sliced him in half at the waist.
But the bisected body burst—
—BOOM.
The explosion flash-froze the Futon-nin's pupils, shock and heat slamming into him. Blood sprayed from his ears. He staggered—
—and a third clone dropped from above, tanto driving straight into his collarbone and cranking down until ribs snapped audibly. The clone twisted the blade like he was unscrewing a jar, then ripped it sideways, opening him from shoulder to sternum.
The man crumpled, steaming.
...
The last Suna-nin with the hidden blades fought like a demon. He was fast, vicious, reading the clones' movements with a veteran's instinct. Every time a clone tried to close the distance, he adapted instantly, spinning on his heel to redirect entire strikes, flipping his grip to turn blocks into counters, kicking low to disrupt their footing, blades snapping out from hidden slots at his wrists and knees.
It looked like he was fighting four assassins at once and still holding them back.
Knife met tanto. Sparks spit. A clone tried to flank and got a blade punched into his kidney for the effort. Another clone went for a low sweep, but the Suna-nin blocked the kick and his counter-slash nearly took the clone's face off.
Then the Suna-nin realized something was wrong.
He kicked one clone back and the detail hit him in that split second. All black. Black jacket, black pants, grey vest standing out against all that darkness. He'd seen that combination before, memorized it along with every other face and description in the Bingo Book because that's what kept you alive. All black meant exploding clones meant flee on sight, and he was currently surrounded by at least four of them.
His body moved before the thought finished forming, chakra already spiking for Shunshin, but a grip locked around his forearm and stopped him cold.
The explosion turned everything white.
BOOM.
Fire engulfed him. Most of his skin peeled off in the blast, but the bastard lived, rolling, screaming, trying to push himself upright with melted arms.
He didn't see the last clone step behind him.
Didn't see the tanto rise.
He only felt the blade plunge into the base of his skull and exit through his mouth.
The clone pulled his blade free with a boot to the corpse's back.
....
The two surviving clones stood over what was left, three corpses in pieces. One missing a head. One opened like livestock. One charred to bare bone from the waist down. The ruined puppet lay still beside its master, cracked open like a broken toy.
They stood there for a moment, processing what had just happened.
"That guy actually detonated himself inside a village," one of them said, staring at the scorch marks. "That's insane."
"It was a standard explosion," the other clone replied. "Normal output. Look at the blast pattern. If he'd loaded it with extra seals, half the street would be gone."
"That's not the point. We're standing in what's left of someone's home. There could've been civilians hiding in the buildings."
"There weren't. We checked before we moved in."
"Still. Using exploding clones in a populated area is exactly the thing that gets you labeled a terrorist instead of a shinobi."
"We're in a war zone. This village was already dead before we got here. And we needed to end the fight fast before reinforcements showed up." The clone gestured at the bodies. "Mission accomplished."
"Yeah, well. Just saying. If the original heard about this, he'd probably have some thoughts on our decisions."
"The original would've done the exact same thing and we both know it."
"Debatable."
The conversation died there, neither of them wanting to argue while standing over fresh corpses. One of the clones crouched beside the headless body and started going through the man's pouches. His hand stopped on something and he pulled out a small book with worn leather binding and Suna's symbol on the cover.
"Hey, look at this," he said, holding it up with a grin.
The other clone glanced over, then moved closer when he saw what it was.
A Suna Bingo Book.
The clone with the book flipped it open and started scanning through pages. The other leaned in, reading over his shoulder, and the search began immediately. Not for intelligence value or information. Just pure ego surfing. Looking for their own entry. They'd heard rumors they were in here, but seeing it with their own eyes was different. Confirming what the bounty actually was, what Suna thought they were capable of, how seriously they were being taken.
"Anything?" one asked.
"Hold on, I'm looking." He kept turning pages. "Oh, they have Tsunade-sensei listed as S-rank."
"Yeah, that makes sense."
"What about us?"
"I'm getting there." More pages. "Here's Orochimaru. His bounty is... damn, that's a lot of zeros."
"Keep going."
The clone flipped through more entries, scanning names and descriptions. Konoha shinobi mixed in with missing-nin and other village threats. Prices listed in ryo. Threat assessments. Known jutsu. The usual Bingo Book stuff.
"Here." The clone stopped on a page and they all leaned in closer.
There it was. Their entry. Or rather, Shinji's entry, which was the same thing.
....
NAME: Shinji
ALIAS: Konoha's Black Death
VILLAGE: Konohagakure
RANK: Jonin
THREAT LEVEL: S-Rank
BOUNTY: 80,000,000 ryo (Alive), 65,000,000 ryo (Dead)
KNOWN JUTSU:
Kage Bunshin no Jutsu
Clone Great Explosion
Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu
Shunshin no Jutsu
Iryō Ninjutsu
IDENTIFYING FEATURES:
All black clothing (black jacket, black pants). Black hair, black eyes.
COMBAT ASSESSMENT:
Specializes in mass-produced exploding shadow clones. Known to deploy dozens simultaneously in combat. Clone detonations exceed standard explosive yield by factor of 2-3. Blast radius: 15-25 meters. Extreme close-quarters threat. Uses clones as both offensive weapons and diversionary tactics. Real body typically stays at range while clones engage directly.
WARNING: FLEE ON SIGHT
Do not engage without a method to identify the real body among clones. Without sensory abilities or specialized tracking techniques, engagement will result in casualties. Recommend immediate withdrawal if encountered.
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
Youngest jonin to be listed in a Bingo Book. Apprentice to Tsunade Senju (S-Rank). Frequently operates with Team 7.
...
They stared at it.
"S-rank," one clone said.
"Eighty million ryo," the other added.
"Huh. Could be worse, I guess."
"Could be better though. Some of the Akatsuki guys are worth way more than that."
"Yeah, but they're Akatsuki. We're just... what, a chunin who got promoted recently?"
"Jonin," the clone corrected. "Says right there. Jonin."
"Right, jonin. Still. Eighty million isn't bad for someone who's been doing this for what, less than a year?"
"Wait, go back a few pages. I think I saw something." The clone flipped back through the book. "Yeah, here. Chiriku. That monk guy from the Twelve Guardian Ninja. He's S-rank too."
"What's his bounty?"
"Thirty million."
They were both quiet for a second.
"Wait, so we're worth more than double what he's worth?"
"I guess so. Yeah, it says thirty million for Chiriku. We're at eighty."
"That's kind of crazy. I mean, he's one of the Twelve Guardian Ninja."
"And he's been doing this way longer than us. Look, it says he's in his thirties."
"Most of these S-rank people are like... way older. People who've been shinobi for decades."
"Tsunade-sensei's still worth way more than us though."
"Well, yeah, obviously. But still... eighty million. That's a lot."
"Same rank as one of the Guardian Ninja but almost three times the bounty."
"Weird."
They kept staring at the page like it was the most interesting thing they'd seen in weeks. Completely forgetting, apparently, that they were supposed to be looking for their actual target.
One clone pulled the book closer. "You think we could get that bounty higher if we did something really impressive?"
"Like what?"
"I don't know... blow something up? Something important?"
"We blow things up all the time."
"Yeah, but I mean something really important. Like a supply depot or a command post or whatever."
"We're in Ame territory. There's nothing here worth blowing up except villages and we're not doing that."
The clone shrugged. "Fair point."
They kept reading, flipping through other entries, comparing bounties and threat levels like they were shopping for validation.
The bodies around them cooled. The blood stopped spreading. And two clones stood in the middle of a ransacked village, completely absorbed in reading about themselves in an enemy Bingo Book.
...
Meanwhile, the real Shinji stood in the forest, quietly watching his clones churn out more clones and send them sprinting toward the enemy squad. The production line was running smoothly. Clone makes clone, clone runs toward threat, repeat until problem stops being a problem.
Memories filtered back from the clones already dying in combat. The information came in fragments, snapshots of final moments before dispersal. Enemy headbands. Suna. All of them were Suna-nin.
Relief hit him before he could stop it. At least it wasn't Hanzo.
He'd been extremely cautious ever since finding that poisoned blood, his mind immediately jumping to worst-case scenarios because that's what kept you alive in Elemental Nation. When you thought poison in Ame, you thought Hanzo the Salamander. The man who'd soloed the Sannin and walked away to tell about it. Fighting him would've been suicide dressed up as a mission, and Shinji had exactly zero interest in becoming a statistic.
Suna though, Suna he could handle. They had good shinobi but none of them were Hanzo.
Though there was still the poison problem. Suna poison specialist, using something nasty enough that Tsunade was struggling with the antidote. Who was their poison expert again? The name was right there, right on the tip of his memory, refusing to come up.
It took him an embarrassingly long time to remember the name. Chiyo. Grandma Chiyo, except she wouldn't be a grandma yet. Not at this point in time. She'd still be in her prime, still actively deployed, still at her strongest instead of being semi-retired and reminiscing about the old days.
Which made her more dangerous, not less.
Not Hanzo-level dangerous. Nobody was Hanzo-level except Hanzo himself. But definitely not someone you wanted to run into without a plan, and definitely not someone you could treat like a regular jonin who happened to know poison. Chiyo was a master puppeteer, a poison specialist, and had decades of combat experience even at this point in her life. The combination was nasty enough that underestimating her would get you killed just as dead as underestimating Hanzo, just with slightly better odds of survival if you were smart about it.
Another wave of memories hit him, this time from the clones he'd sent toward the village. More intel, more data, more snapshots of the village situation getting filed away in his mental archive. His brain handled it automatically by now, sorting information without conscious effort.
When he turned his attention toward the village, something struck him as odd. The clones there weren't just fighting. They were enjoying it. Actually getting a kick out of the combat. Which was great for morale but terrible for keeping their heads in the game considering they were supposed to be on a recovery mission, not having fun beating up Suna-nin.
He just hoped they remembered the actual mission objective was finding Konan, not clearing out every Suna-nin in the village.