The first sparrow hit before any of us even registered the chirping.
A flash, a sharp crack, and then boom.
Fūma Kayo didn't even get a shout out. One second she was reporting chakra ripples, the next she was red mist drifting through the trees.
Someone screamed "Enemy attack!" behind me, but that was pointless. Anyone still breathing already knew.
The Wind Demon squad snapped into formation, kunai raised, backs pressed together as if nine bodies could stop a forest full of explosives. The captain's voice cracked from panic, not authority. Can't blame him. I'm supposed to be the "reborn modern genius," but even I didn't spot the tag-inked sparrows until they were chewing bark off trees.
Then came the sound:
A soft chorus of "tweet~" floating out of the deep woods.
My gut turned to ice.
More sparrows. Dozens. Maybe hundreds.
They swarmed in like a living storm and slammed into the Wind Demon squad. The idiots actually tried blocking them with kunai and basic earth walls. Cute. Like watching people try to fight a grenade with friendship.
The forest lit up with a chain of explosions. Branches snapped. Dirt sprayed. The blast rattled my ribs even from cover.
Somewhere behind us, the rest of the Fūma vanguard heard it too. I could practically picture them gawking at the rising smoke.
"Something's wrong! That's where Kayo's team went!"
Yes, genius. That's what happens when your scouts get vaporized. The vanguard mobilized in a roar of footsteps, a few smarter ones hanging back to make sure it wasn't a trap. Spoiler: It was absolutely a trap. Just not for who they thought.
The Chiba Squad made their move.
A fox-like creature darted out of the underbrush, leapt into the air, and detonated with enough force to rattle the treetops. The remains of two Fūma shinobi hit the ground in smoking pieces.
Chiba Clan. Only they would strap explosive seals onto adorable woodland creatures and call it a family tradition.
The surviving Fūma shinobi panicked. Signals shot into the sky, crackling red. They had no clue how many enemies were circling them. They didn't even get to guess.
Because the real monster stepped out next.
White eyes. Calm posture. A presence that pressed on the lungs like a mountain.
Hyūga Tennin.
Not the polite dojo version of the Hyūga.
The battlefield version.
The one clan records politely call "an overwhelming force."
The Fūma captain froze the moment he recognized Tennin.
"H-Hyūga Tennin…?"
Then he tried to run. Smart, honestly.
Tennin just exhaled like the whole thing annoyed him.
"Trying to flee?"
His chakra flared.
"Eight Trigrams… Palm Storm!"
A blast of compressed chakra shot forward, ripping trees in half as if they were paper lanterns.
Four Wind Demon shinobi barely managed a Replacement Technique, crashing through brush in a desperate scramble. Two tried to counter with ninjutsu, which went about as well as throwing a puddle at a lightning strike.
The rest… didn't get anything. The shockwave hit them and they were just… gone.
The survivors broke completely.
"Retreat! Retreat—!"
Their captain dug his hands into the ground, chakra flooding the soil. The forest quaked. Mud surged like a living creature, swallowing roots and splintered trunks.
"Earth Style! Hell Ant Technique!"
A huge tide of crawling mud swept toward Tennin. It was the kind of jutsu a full-rank jonin could brag about over sake. The kind that makes lesser shinobi wonder if death is worth a transfer request.
Tennin watched it with faint interest.
No fear. No rush. Just annoyance.
So unfair.
"Your clan has impressive chakra control," he murmured. "But this won't help."
He slid into stance.
"Revolving Heaven."
Chakra roared out of his tenketsu, forming a spinning sphere that devoured the incoming mud. Everything caught in its pull—trees, branches, chunks of earth—was shredded into fragments.
The captain's technique didn't just fail; it evaporated from existence.
The moment Tennin halted, he disappeared from where he'd been standing.
He reappeared in front of the captain.
And then his palms blurred.
"Eight Trigrams… Sixty-Four Palms!"
Strike after strike hammered into the man's tenketsu, rupturing chakra pathways with sickening precision. By the final palm, the captain's eyes were already losing light.
He hit the ground face-first, dead before he could even finish falling.
That was enough to shatter the last of the Fūma morale.
They scattered, screaming.
Tennin didn't bother chasing them. He just raised a hand.
Konoha shinobi—our shinobi—burst out of the surrounding vegetation, a dozen of them moving like wolves closing in on cornered prey.
The fleeing Fūma didn't stand a chance.
By the time the forest fell quiet, the only things left moving were drifting embers and Tennin's calm, steady breath.
I felt my fingers twitch.
This was the Warring States.
This was the world I reincarnated into.
And there was no respawn timer.