A pity Emi hadn't seen how he'd ended up with this particular edge over Hiashi, Kimimaro thought as he moved, or maybe she had, at least in traces, through her Byakugan.
The idea amused him more than it should have.
There was some sense of restrained pride, not loud, not celebratory, just settled.
The new Byakugan and the way it had evolved him back there had also left him quietly satisfied, not with euphoria or arrogance, but with a calm sense of balance, a steadier certainty that settled deep rather than flaring outward.
As he accelerated toward the ruined arena, his mind recalibrated automatically, as his sensory mode was completely stitching together the state of the battlefield.
Orochimaru's forces, in all corners of the village, were completely finished by this point.
Suna and Oto shinobi lay dead, captured, or scattered beyond recovery.
The giant snakes had been destroyed early, crushed by Jiraiya in passing and the Akimichi clan later.
Konoha's clans were obviously fully mobilized now, moving en masse toward the stadium.
Reinforcements were converging from every direction, heading in their direction.
At this point, the invasion had been stripped down to its core.
Orochimaru.
Kabuto.
Kimimaro.
And the four Blessed.
That was it.
However, the damage to Konoha was also immense. Even without caring for numbers, even without thinking in terms of infrastructure or economics, he could feel it. Thousands, perhaps more.
In this fantasy world, buildings could be rebuilt. Walls could be raised again easily with its supernatural powers and rules.
What mattered was the loss of trained shinobi, the thinning of experience, the invisible fractures that would take years to mend.
After all, even in the original timeline, this so-called Konoha Crush had left the village crippled enough to send chūnin and genin on missions that should never have been theirs in the aftermath, like Sasuke's recovery.
However, Kimimaro knew that it was probably not because of casualties alone, but because the village had also been forced to overextend way more than usual, diverting most jōnin to watch rival powers circling like sharks.
Yet, this was even worse. Far worse.
Orochimaru was stronger here. More prepared. More effective.
And the four monsters Kimimaro had brought with him had carved through Konoha's defenders for far longer than expected.
Akane most of all.
Even from this distance, Kimimaro could see her.
The towering black Susanoo, twin hammers rising and falling, a moving catastrophe.
He smirked faintly, but the Byakugan fed him the rest of the truth just as easily. Her chakra reserves were thinning.
The Mangekyō's backlash was setting in.
That kind of power always demanded payment.
Not to mention, that this also wasn't the same Konoha as the one he remembered from canon either.
Jiraiya alone confirmed that from the beginning.
He was operating a full tier above expectation.
Someone had accelerated him in everything.
But none of that was what unsettled Kimimaro most.
It was the others.
The completely unfamiliar variables.
A Susanoo that echoed Shisui's, in color and structure, worn by someone who should not exist.
A monk.
A samurai.
Fighting styles from an era that didn't belong on this battlefield, powered by external natural energy rather than molded chakra.
And then there was Might Guy.
Still holding back that last step.
Still not opening the Eighth Gate.
Kimimaro assessed it coldly.
If Guy opened it now, truly opened it, there was a real chance they all died before escape was even possible.
No Flying Thunder God. No instant extraction.
Orochimaru might survive through sheer refusal to die, shedding bodies like skins, but the rest of them?
Uncertain.
Kimimaro placed himself honestly on his mental scale.
Quasi–Six Paths, now.
Might Guy with the Eighth Gate?
Low Six Paths, at minimum, if one judged by his clash with Madara, even accounting for Madara's indulgence.
The conclusion was obvious.
They had stayed long enough.
They had taken more than enough.
This battle had already exceeded every reasonable objective.
So Kimimaro pushed harder, bone and muscle moving as one, intent fixed on rejoining the others.
They would disengage. Cleanly, if possible. Forcefully, if necessary.
He had no interest in gambling everything for a symbolic victory.
He had come to Konoha expecting to take something.
Instead, he had taken far more.
And that was exactly why it was time to leave.
He just then inadvertently spared a single glance toward the masked man still lingering at the edge of everything.
Obito.
He had already sensed him for quite some time.
But the presence got even heavier at some point.
As if denser. Even doubled.
Kimimaro didn't need to pry for long to understand why now.
Now that he wasn't actively fighting against such a beast anymore, his senses could finally settle, peel layers back.
The change was obvious.
He got it back.
His other eye.
Kimimaro's fingers tightened slightly, bone creaking under skin.
So that was the first major ripple he'd caused.
By taking Guruguru, he'd forced Obito to see all of this unfold firsthand, and with it, the urgency he could no longer afford to ignore.
Into reclaiming something he'd stubbornly refused to take for years.
Intangibility and offense at the same time.
Long-range spatial warping layered over close-range inevitability.
Two Kamui paths finally converging in reality.
And that was before counting everything else, the surge in soul coherence, chakra density, Yin alignment.
The Perfect Susanoo was inevitable, looming just beyond the horizon, gray and whole, exactly as fate had once intended. His eyes clearly always possessed more than enough power and depth to reach it.
With a near-perfect Hashirama cell infusion, second only to Madara's, reinforcing everything from behind.
This was the kind of existence that already touched on fully Six Paths territory, a low-end manifestation of that class of monster, but a monster nonetheless.
He had been notoriously hard to catch or contain even before, even for someone conventionally 'stronger' than him always, not to mention now.
In Kimimaro's estimation, Obito was already more tricky than Nagato, even with only one eye.
Power wasn't just about flashy techniques; it was about survivability, flexibility, and refusal to die.
Obito also had Izanagi, a technique people loved to conveniently forget, and a private reserve of spare Uchiha eyes that wasn't far behind Danzō's collection, gathered during that same bloody night when corpses were apparently treated less like the dead and more like inventory.
With this new power in hand, he could likely exert far tighter control over Nagato gradually in the future, and even Itachi to a degree, bending the board in ways that had never been fully available to him before.
And in Kimimaro's current assessment, Nagato and Itachi could still also prove dangerous even to him now, and were definitely not inferior to any of the four 'Blessed'.
Kimimaro exhaled quietly.
"That's… inconvenient."
He was also very relieved that Obito hadn't come for him immediately.
If the masked man had decided to stack himself onto Konoha's side right now, just because he stole his plant-like old companion, things could have turned... genuinely unpleasant.
However, more likely, he reasoned now Obito himself was likely still reeling.
Too much had happened too fast.
Orochimaru. Hiashi. The girls. Shisui's echo. Monk and samurai relics walking again. Kakashi turning into something that definitely wasn't supposed to exist yet. And then Kimimaro, quietly rewriting the upper limits of Kaguya blood in front of everyone.
Anyone would hesitate.
Besides, Obito had only just taken the eye back.
He wasn't going to synchronize both Kamui aspects in a matter of minutes, let alone stabilize a Susanoo he had never properly manifested, much less push it toward a Perfect form.
After all, here he lacked the Six Paths–grade Yin chakra that had supported such a manifestation in canon, making it impossible to replicate that state here.
Even Uchiha arrogance had its limits.
And then there was Konoha itself.
Was he really going to reveal everything here?
In front of this many witnesses?
Clash with someone like Kimimaro, where he would be forced to expose the full extent of his power, almost certainly, while the whole village was standing alive to remember it?
Especially when there was no guarantee Konoha would even align with him if things escalated again.
No, this wasn't a restraint born of mercy.
It was a rational calculation.
And maybe pride.
The quiet kind that said, I've already won, I just need time.
Kimimaro felt the warning threaded through Obito's lingering attention.
Not an attack. Not a challenge. Just a signal. A reminder.
I remember you.
You remember me.
This isn't over.
Kimimaro snorted softly and turned away.
Whatever the masked man wanted to prove to himself, it could wait.
He had somewhere else to be, monsters to retrieve, exits to make.
He picked up speed toward the ruined stadium, bone armor flowing smoothly with his stride.
"Honestly," he muttered, dry amusement slipping through, "everyone's so dramatic."
He felt no fear, and even less curiosity, toward whatever that masked simp imagined himself to be conveying.
Kimimaro cut the thought off completly as he reached the heart of that battlefield, the noise and pressure snapping his focus back to the present.