It was a silent night. Far too few of those occurred over the last months. You could argue, that that is the price of war, but even without war, silent nights are ultimately a rare treat. In a time of war though, a silent night could mean something completely different than in peaceful times.
Silence could mean, that a predator was on the move or that any living being in a certain radius was eradicated, which was the case in this instance, as the earth was soaked in blood and the air stuffy. Anything that had not fallen by a blade had long since run away.
If these entities had any type of intelligence or even instincts, they would run farther than ever before and never even look back, not to speak about returning to this forest. No, battlefield would be a more apt description, though it was more of a massacre.
On top of this bloody battlefield there were a few tents in the middle of a rocky clearing. They were situated around a expertly arranged campfire, which did not give away the slightest speck of smoke. Two sentries sat at this beacon of light and talked about one of their enemies. Their target of this mission.
„Do you know the difference between a prodigy and a genius?", one of them asked at some point, mostly due to boredom. The other shook his head, so the man continued to shed some light on his rather unusual question: „A prodigy is someone who eclipses the normal capacity to learn things, though most of these people do have their clear preference. Geniuses instead just do things and know things. They adapt rapidly to any situation, learn from their mistakes in record time and through practice, they improve upon it. Some would say it is the difference between theoretical and practical learners and while that may play a part in those classifications, their source is different. It comes from a persons character, experience and immediate needs. Prodigies are cautious while geniuses are bold, patient and impatient, methodical and savage. But still, even though those represent two ends of a very nuanced spectrum as total opposites, would you believe me if I told you, that our target is both? There are other historical examples for some of these and they are either termed as one of the above or as saviors, leaders, prophets, machines, founders or kage. I just like to call them monsters…", he stopped abruptly, trying to turn his head, before it left his head and silently fell to the ground.
The hunters became the hunted and before anyone knew it, most inhabitants of this temporary encampment were dead. At that point though, the mission went wrong. The leader of this small unit awakened out of his not so deep slumber, a hideous face hovering right above his own. A spark of recognition flashed, before a few movements happened so far, that no one could react to them, not even the previously discussed monster.
Even the monster, who was at the other end of this assassination site, could only look in horror before bolting towards the distance, before an earth shaking explosion annihilated the surroundings, leaving his partner with no body to burry.
‚We should have been more', he lamented before vanishing into the night, having completed their important and urgent mission, though it came at a steep price.
A leader had died that night, though he had long ago lost his tremendous advantages due to his insatiable ambition and arrogance. He had rested on his wins, ignored his losses and stopped learning altogether, just searching for a shortcut to power he so much desired. He could have been so so great, had it not been for this grudge of him, and his death.
All this carnage in the name of the third world war. One would lie if they stated that people did not know what would happen, but alas they certainly did. It was just another one of their power plays, though one of the instigators had just lost his life in a scenario he could not have foreseen, as his very own intelligence network had missed a crucial detail in their haste.
Explosion release, a devastating combination of earth and lightning and an exceedingly rare kekkei genkai anywhere else than Iwagakure, the hidden stone village. Alas, the enemy had kept a tight seal on the capabilities of one of their best and he had not used it a single time openly or at the vers least none of the witnesses survived those particular exchanges.
The only reason that the second assailant survived was a tightly kept secret of himself. Not even his best friends, superiors, comrades knew of his secret, which allowed him once again to escape the clutches of death.
Had they known that Shisui of the body flicker was also a sensor, there would have not been such a ill thought of attempt to kill him. They would still have tried, but with a lot more stronger people alas, an infiltration mission could only take that much personal before being discovered and even then, the now dead team was apparently too big.
Well, he was at least a beginner sensor, as during times of war there was neither time nor place to practice safely, not even slowly expanding your chakra pool was possible in this environment. The only exception for that was chakra control, as that could be practiced anywhere and anytime, as long as stealth was not important.
Control was, well, about control, so after the three not so basic exercises which most knew, the next step would be chakra threads. Not like those puppeteers of Sunagakure, though it was the first stage to that specific technique. While their method was still coined as chakra threads, they were vastly different in essence.
The ones needed for chakra control exercises started pretty simple, as one just tried to stretch out their mana from a specific point. Beginners liked to use their fingers, so you had a kind of chakra spike attached to it, though it was extremely fragil and not capable of combat use, except for the Hyuga clan, which had its own secrets.
No, that spike was just the beginning. Afterwards, you could try to shape the chakra so that it gets thinner and thinner or the thin part gets longer. Both schools of though worked, though there was no clear official test which might be better for whom.
Once you were finished to your satisfaction though, you could just stop the stretch, so to speak of and 90% to 99% of the mana would return to the user depending on experience and control. Then, you could expand it again, focusing on speed and/or duration, before creating multiple, forming intricate symbols or similar.
You would basically just trie to find the next thing which was not possible for you, until you also conquer it before climbing the next mountain, metaphorically speaking. Once chakra control outside the body is good enough, you can work on internal chakra control. The sequence was broken by most as the more practical skills, beyond the most basic three jutsu, required internal chakra control of some kind, but it was possible to seriously injure yourself if you did not know your limits.
Chakra control outside your body or on top of your skin is a lot more saver with the only repercussion being either lost mana or a kind of backlash, which vanishes in a few seconds, for beginners with a not too big chakra pool at least. The bigger the chakra pool, the higher the danger, except your control is already fine enough to separate threads of your chakra from the overall volume.
Not to regain the hopefully little loss of chakra, you needed to knead physical and mental energy together in the right ratio which is different from person to person, with the end result being chakra for your personal use. Most ninja did not have full chakra for at least over a year, as the time to do anything did not exist.
To expand your chakra, you needed to slowly acclimatize your body to hold more of it, which was both painful, distracting, a long journey and slow. Chakra growth also decreased exponentially as the body had an inherent limit, though there existed many ways to exceed that, but the prerequisite for most of those was to have reached the limit of your human body which was not a common feat.
Anyway, the enemy ninja who had self destructed had reached the limit of his body and used a method to store more chakra for that kind of explosion, as he had stored a huge amount of mana in a single pebble sized rock created for the single purpose of such a scenario. Determined people are scary, especially if it concerns their hobbies, as strange as they might seem.
Back at this front's main camp of Konoha, Shisui rematerialized next to a specified point, before entering the battlement after a series of checks, scans and verification. Once through that, he disappeared again, before reappearing inside the command tent: „I already told you not to do that", a lazy voice sighted, shacking his head slightly.
„And I will continue to do so anyway. Mission accomplished, though Danzo Shimura died in an enemy suicide explosion release as we did not have knowledge of such an expert in that infiltration party. They did sadly, as you had expected, slaughter all allies in that outpost and destroyed most of our supplies, especially after that spontaneous explosion, which would have destroyed everything they had kept for themselves", Shisui reported.
„Alas, it no longer matters. All kage negotiated a temporary ceasefire with the intent for peace negotiations to take place in the land of iron. Go rest up but stay in top form. This either ends the war or is the precursor to the last few offensives, which will stop this war either way, just with even more casualties", the commander informed Shisui, dismissing him to a full rest for the first time in months.
Shisui for all intents and purposes was still a common genin, even though his standing in this particular fortification was very much different. With these man he had gotten his moniker and in the same breath saved the lives of hundreds of people. That brought him a lot of goodwill and gave him leeway in his demeanor which he desperately needed, as he did not like the current military like structure which was in place due to war time laws.
His debut battle which earned its moniker was bloody as well. Enemies had silently surrounded the camp in the middle of the night, going unnoticed until a mistake on their part tipped of one of the hidden sentries, who alerted the inhabitants to the thread at the cost of his live. The two battalions were quite evenly matched actually, which meant that a lot of people were dying on both sides, until Shisui joined in.
Shisui was on patrol at that time, though he hurried back after noticing the flare signaling an emergency, through which it was possible for him and his team to fall the enemy into the back and slaughter hundreds of genin and chunin while continuing to stay unnoticed.
At the start, they picked of one or two at a time, trying to not get found out and let is seem like ranged combat casualties, but at some point they were discovered, after which they whole team sew chaos in the enemies backlines, disrupting their formation. Most of the patrol died in that stage of the fight, with only two others surviving, through their injuries resulted in disability and an honorable discharge from the battlefield. Only Shisui remained and got most of the continued fame for it, though he did not let his achievement get to his head.
His moniker came from being chased by three jonin for a long time without being caught due to his phenomenal use of the body flicker jutsu paired with a simple non corporal clone jutsu which was nearly indistinguishable to a physical clone on such a chaotic battlefield. While they did not have any attack power, they were more than enough as distraction.
But still, he only survived thanks to the chaotic battlefield as he would perished in a fight against a jonin or chunin, maybe even a genin if his techniques and attributes counter Shisui's. Still, this experience would start of his journey as a speed specialist instead of a ninjutsu one. The most important detail that not many knew is, that he had never before practiced this maneuver, improving all along just to somehow stay alive, he just got so good in such a short timeframe that at some point he could continue killing while still surviving the harsh reality that is war.