The blue glow materialized again.
This time it found the second member of the demolition squad. He barely had time to register his comrade's death before superheated plasma tore through his skull.
He stared blankly at Kai, the team captain, his mouth hanging open as if asking what had just happened.
Then his head exploded.
A dull, wet sound. Blood sprayed everywhere, and the headless body collapsed like a puppet with cut strings.
"Get down!" Kai roared, his voice cracking with panic. It was pure reflex—years of surviving the Third Shinobi World War burned into his bones. He didn't care if the Konoha shinobi in camp heard him. Stealth meant nothing now.
"What was that?" someone screamed.
"Move, or we're all dead!" Kai bellowed.
The demolition squad scattered instantly, diving for cover behind rocks and trees. They were veterans, men who had tasted blood for years, but this was different. This was something they couldn't fight back against.
The blue light reappeared.
The shot didn't find center mass this time. It pierced the lower body of a fleeing squad member, vaporizing his legs in a mist of red.
"AAAAGH!"
He collapsed, writhing, his screams painting panic across the darkness. The commotion finally stirred the Konoha camp.
"Enemy attack!" someone shouted from the tents.
"Prepare for battle! We're under fire!"
Chaos erupted as shinobi scrambled to arms.
---
Several kilometers away, Seiran watched through his Byakugan's enhanced vision. The explosions, the clay—he'd known the moment combat started.
"The demolition squad," he muttered.
Deidara. The name carried weight. An Earth Release prodigy from Iwagakure who'd abandoned his village to join Akatsuki, obsessed with calling his explosions "art." Seiran found the irony amusing—blowing yourself up was just performance art with higher stakes.
But knowing your opponent's weakness made everything easier.
Explosive clay was essentially unstable chakra mixed with earth. Volatile, dangerous, and utterly useless against lightning. In the original timeline, a simple electrical discharge had neutralized a reanimated Deidara without effort. Chakra-conductive materials couldn't handle electrical current.
Seiran adjusted his aim. His Electromagnetic Manipulation was subtle, barely a whisper of power across the distance, but it was enough. He'd modified his projectiles to release a high-voltage electrical discharge on impact.
The muzzle flashed blue. Thunder streaked across the battlefield.
Crack!
"Blast it! Blast them all!" the demolition squad roared, their voices euphoric despite the carnage. The sound of detonations was their drug.
Then a clay toad leaped skyward.
A blue line bisected the chaos. The toad went rigid, electrical arcs dancing across its surface. After violent twitches, it collapsed into inert mud.
No explosion followed. Only the faint crackle of lightning filled the silence.
"Where's the boom?" one squad member muttered in confusion.
Before comprehension could set in, the blue light reappeared. It struck the man's chest directly.
The electromagnetic current prevented any nearby explosive clay from detonating. The man's torso erupted from within, and he fell.
Then another. And another.
Seiran was relentless. With the clay neutralized, he had no reason to hold back. His electromagnetic sniper picked off the squad with mechanical precision. Headless bodies and shattered corpses dropped one by one. The demolition squad had become a death squad.
---
Kai's pupils trembled. A buried memory clawed to the surface.
Before the war began, Iwagakure had sent an advance force into the Land of Grass. One day, nearly all the scouts vanished without a trace. The entire advance party lost contact.
The Third Tsuchikage had been furious.
Investigation teams found the bodies near the border, each killed with a single, precise shot. Tiny metal particles embedded in their flesh. Even scouts hiding underground had been killed instantly.
When they dug up the bodies, they discovered the grass above their hiding spots had grown unnaturally lush—as if marked for death.
Iwagakure scouts had feared their own shadows ever since.
Kai gritted his teeth. It can't be...
The same method. The same terrifying precision.
The advance force led by Taiseki. Were they victims of this same killer?
---
From the Konoha camp, Koseki's pupils trembled violently as he stared at Seiran's distant position. The lightning erupting from the gun barrel confirmed what he'd suspected.
Seiran had been active on the Sunagakure battlefield, but back then he'd used a bow and arrow. The Iwagakure scouts, however, had been killed with metal projectiles.
Koseki had suspected a connection. Now, seeing the lightning and electromagnetic phenomena firsthand, he knew.
The sniper who'd terrorized Iwagakure shinobi at the war's beginning—the one who'd struck fear into every scout—it was the boy standing in front of him now.
---
Seiran lowered his rifle. The electromagnetic hum faded from the barrel. He watched the remaining demolition squad members flee into the forest darkness, but didn't pursue. Sustained fire at this intensity drained his stamina faster than he preferred.
He tapped into his biomagnetic field, feeling chakra flow through his body like a steady flame, nourishing his cells.
[Electromagnetic Force LV2: 3289/6000 EXP to next level]
Significant experience gained. The data interface in his mind was a constant companion—alien yet undeniably part of him. He'd wondered about its origins before. A mutation? An evolved Byakugan? A "Goldfinger" from whatever force had brought him here?
It didn't matter. What mattered was that he was changing. The impurities in his flesh were being broken down and replaced. His body was undergoing quiet metamorphosis.
Focus.
His electromagnetic sense scanned the area. Metal fragments from his previous shots glinted through trees and soil. With a small pulse of Electromagnetic Manipulation, he recalled them.
Zip. Zip. Zip.
Jagged pieces tore themselves free, flying back to his palm. They swirled into a dense sphere of metal.
He glanced toward the Konoha camp. The chaos was dying down, defenders organizing a counter-attack. Koseki was still staring at him, shock and hatred burning in his eyes.
Seiran ignored the gaze. He'd made a critical miscalculation.
A faint tremor ran through the ground—not from explosions, but from something else. Heavy. Metal. His electromagnetic sense spiked.
Something massive was approaching from the east. Not a living creature. A construct. Refined metal and chakra.
His Byakugan locked onto the shape. A kilometer distant, moving through the forest, was a puppet.
Not just any puppet.
It was massive and humanoid, gleaming under moonlight. A monstrous thing carrying a weapon on its back. Darker than anything Seiran remembered from the original timeline—sleeker, more menacing, radiating killing intent.
Behind it, moving with a hunter's stealth, were silhouettes of Iwagakure shinobi.
Seiran exhaled slowly, his breath misting in the cold night.
He raised his rifle. Electromagnetic Manipulation swirled around the barrel, charging the next shot. The blue light glowed brighter, more intense.
He wasn't going to run. High ground. Range advantage. Element of surprise.
His finger rested on the trigger.
The shot rang out—not an explosion, but a sharp tearing sound as air itself split apart. A beam of blue lightning tore through darkness toward the heart of the metal giant.
---