The transition from an ordinary man in his twenties, dying in a mundane car accident, to the last scion of the Senju clan had been a baptism of fire. In his first life, Saturo was a face in a crowd; in his second, he was a god of the battlefield. His transmigration had granted him a "cheat" that made even the Uchiha's eyes look pale in comparison: perfect chakra control. He didn't need the rhythmic dance of hand signs to reshape reality. He simply willed the world to change, and it obeyed.
He had mastered Sage Mode, refining a technique that allowed him to draw Nature Energy while in constant motion. He was a perpetual motion machine of cosmic power, a man who lived and breathed in the gilded state of a Sage. But now, as he moved through the cold, sterile halls of the Hydra facility, that godhood felt like a distant dream.
The air here was empty. There was no "breath" of the world to pull from, no natural rhythm to harness. His chakra coils were scorched, his body a map of agony.
"How should I get out of this facility?" Saturo asked, his English smoothing out as his mind—once an ordinary man's, now a tactical genius's—reclaimed the linguistic patterns of his original life. "Speak quickly. My patience died in another world."
The assistant behind the glass didn't need further prompting. The sight of Dr. List pinned to the floor by a tactical knife was a persuasive argument. He quickly led Saturo into the control room, his fingers trembling as he hit the manual override. The magnetic locks disengaged with a heavy, final clunk.
Saturo stepped into the control room, his movements predatory despite the slight limp. He didn't waste words. He stepped behind the assistant and, with a precise strike to the carotid artery, knocked the man unconscious. The technician slumped over the console, his head resting on the blueprints of a fortress he would never leave.
Saturo stripped a set of dark tactical clothes from a locker, pulling them over his battered frame. He used a reinforced vest as a makeshift brace for his eighteen broken bones, tightening the straps until the pain became a manageable, dull roar. He took two handguns, several magazines, and a handful of strange, glowing grenades from the fallen guards.
He was the "Ghost of the Battlefield." Even without chakra, he was a monster.
The facility was a labyrinth of concrete and steel, smelling of ozone and fear. Saturo moved through the shadows, a wraith in a den of wolves. He didn't use flashy techniques; he used the environment. He didn't need Great Fireball Jutsu when a ruptured gas line and a spark from a stolen pistol could do the same. He didn't need Earth Style when he could use a heavy security door to crush a man's skull.
He reached a lower sub-level where the static in the air grew thick enough to prickle his skin. Rounding a corner, he found himself in a high-security ward. Unlike the stone dungeons of the Shinobi world, these cells were massive glass enclosures, reinforced with shimmering energy barriers.
In the cell to the left, a young man with bleached hair paced so fast he was a literal blur—a jagged staccato of motion. In the right, a young woman sat in the center of the room. Wisps of red, glowing energy danced between her fingers like sentient smoke.
Saturo narrowed his eyes. 'Bloodline limits? They looked like children being forged into weapons'—a sight that tasted like ash in his mouth.
The boy blurred to the glass. "You," he hissed. "You're the one they brought in from the crater, right? You killed the doctor."
Saturo didn't lower his weapon. "I am leaving. Do you want to get out?"
The girl looked up. Her eyes were rimmed with red, filled with a volatile mixture of grief and a power she clearly didn't understand. The red mist around her fingers flared. "They'll kill you before you reach the surface," she said, her voice surprisingly steady. "They have weapons... things that don't care how fast you are."
"Do you want to leave or not?" Saturo asked, his impatience cutting through her warning like a kunai.
The girl looked at him for a heartbeat, seeing the confidence, weary violence in his eyes, and nodded.
Saturo moved to the console. He didn't know their "village," but he knew the look of a prisoner. He keyed the release, and the energy barriers hummed into silence.
"You can run fast," Saturo said, looking at the boy. "Take the girl and run toward the forest once we're out."
"Yeah, but first we need to find the exit," the boy said, looking around frantically.
"Get in the lift," Saturo commanded, gesturing toward the heavy metal doors at the end of the hall.
They crowded into the elevator. The silence was heavy, broken only by the mechanical hum of the rising car.
"So, what's your name?" Saturo asked, checking the slide on his pistol. He needed to know who he was fighting beside.
The boy grinned, a reckless, nervous expression. "I'm Pietro. And she is my younger sister, Wanda."
Wanda just nodded, her hands trembling as red sparks danced at her fingertips.
"Hmm," Saturo grunted. He didn't recognize the names at first, but he sensed the gathering storm above them. His sensory range was crippled, but he could still feel the displacement of air, the vibration of many feet. "Stay behind me."
'Tch. I'm out of chakra and this place is a dead zone for nature's energy. My whole body feels like it was put through a meat grinder.' He let out an amused, dry chuckle. 'I suffered more damage from the fall than I did from the Rabbit Goddess.'
The elevator bell chimed—a cheerful sound for a bloody destination.
"Guess I have to do it the old-fashioned way," he whispered.
The doors slid open.
The hallway was a kill zone. Eight Hydra tactical officers stood in a semi-circle, rifles leveled. They didn't even have time to shout a command.
Saturo didn't wait for the doors to fully retract. He fired.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
Four shots, four rhythmic cracks of gunpowder. Four men dropped like dominoes, bullets precisely placed in the center of their foreheads. The recoil didn't even shake Saturo's hand; he was stronger than any super soldier even when his chakra was gone.
"Take aim! Shoot quickly!" a sergeant roared from the back.
Before the man could even pull his trigger, Saturo's hand blurred. He didn't fire the gun; he threw a tactical knife. The blade spun in a tight, silver arc, burying itself to the hilt in the sergeant's throat.
Saturo moved.
He didn't run; he flowed. Even with eighteen broken bones, his movement was a masterclass in kinetic efficiency. He closed the gap in a heartbeat. A guard tried to swing his rifle like a club; Saturo slipped under the arc, his palm striking the man's chin with enough force to snap his neck back. In the same motion, he snatched a knife from the man's belt.
He whirled, a silver storm. A guard fired a desperate burst of submachine gun fire. Saturo didn't dodge the bullets—he predicted the line of fire and simply wasn't there. He twisted his body, the air from the passing rounds whistling past his ear, and slammed a knee into the guard's solar plexus. As the man buckled, Saturo drove the captured knife through the gap in his tactical vest.
Only two remained. One man, his eyes wide with primal terror, leveled his sidearm. Saturo didn't even look at him. He pulled the knife from the falling guard's skull and hurled it without a glance. It thudded into the man's chest, pinning his lung.
The final guard dropped his rifle. He fell to his knees, his hands raised in a frantic, shaking gesture of surrender.
"Please! Spare me! I was just—"
Bang.
Saturo didn't let him finish. He had seen too many "surrenders" turn into hidden kunai or explosive tags. In a war of annihilation, mercy was a luxury for the dead. The man slumped over, a single dark hole between his eyes.
The hallway went silent, save for the hum of the red emergency lights.
Wanda and Pietro stood frozen at the elevator doors. They had seen violence before—Sokovia was a war zone—but they had never seen this. It wasn't a fight; it was a harvest. It had taken less than two minutes. The silver-haired man stood among the bodies, his breathing shallow but his eyes completely calm, as if he had just finished a mundane chore.
"Let's go," Saturo said, stepping over a corpse and heading toward the light of the surface.
Behind him, the twins exchanged a look of pure, unadulterated shock. They had been afraid of the men who held the guns. Now, they realized they should have been afraid of the man who didn't need them.