The road to the capital was dusty and boring. Hours into the escort mission, and Mikoto was starting to zone out from the repetitive sound of wagon wheels and footsteps.
She walked alongside Shinji, half-listening to one of the older chunin spin tales about missions that should have killed him. The man's left hand was missing two fingers, old injury, by the look of the scarred stumps.
"…so there I was, right?" the older chunin was saying, gesturing with his mangled hand. "Hanging upside down from this tree, bleeding like a stuck pig, with my partner down below trying to scare off this bear."
"Wait, a bear?" Tsume called from somewhere behind them.
"Big bastard. Anyway, I'm hanging there with kunai sticking out of my back, blood getting in my eyes, can't see shit, and this bear's just... standing there. Looking at my partner like he's deciding whether to eat him or not."
Shinji made a non-committal sound. "So what'd you do?"
"Smoke bomb," the chunin said, like it was obvious. "Right in the face. Bears hate that shit more than anything." He chuckled, showing teeth stained yellow from too much cheap coffee. "Thing took off running, nearly trampled my partner on the way out."
"Huh." Mikoto shifted her pack strap. "That actually worked?"
"Yeah, well..." The chunin shrugged. "Sometimes you get lucky."
Shinji was quiet for a moment. "I would've probably tried talking to it first."
"You would've been wondering how to cook it," Mikoto muttered.
A couple of the guys beside them chuckled.
Shinji glanced at her with a slight smile. "Bear steaks aren't that bad, actually."
"Of course you'd know that," she said, shaking her head.
The lead chunin glanced back from his forward position, sweat lines already marking his dusty face. "Speaking of food, you genin need to know something. Never trust what passes for 'edible' in other villages. I made that mistake in Earth Country once. Some of their ideas of nutrition involve ingredients that'll strip the paint right off your taste buds."
"Water sources are worse," another chunin said. "Always check upstream for bodies. Contamination'll kill you slower than poison, but just as dead."
Tsume nodded. "Yeah, that makes sense."
The sun climbed higher, turning the dust into a fine coating of misery that stuck to everything. When hunger finally hit, everyone started digging into their supplies. The chunin pulled out store-bought bento from the market, rice that looked a day past fresh, vegetables that had seen better hours.
Shinji produced three neatly wrapped bento from his storage seal. He handed one to Mikoto, another to Tsume.
"Mm, this smells amazing," Tsume said, already tearing into hers like she hadn't eaten in days.
Mikoto and Shinji ate without comment, but halfway through her portion, Shinji wordlessly offered her half of his grilled fish. She took it just as naturally, passing him some of her pickled vegetables in return. They didn't say anything about it, he never made a big deal about his cooking, and she had learned not to refuse when he shared. She could tell he'd seasoned the fish differently this time, maybe with that new miso paste she'd seen him experimenting with. The vegetables had turned out well too, crisp and tangy. They ate in comfortable quiet, chopsticks occasionally crossing paths over the shared dishes.
The chunin caught the food exchange and one of them smirked. "You two do that a lot?"
"Do what?" she asked.
"Share food without asking. My squad never does that."
"We've been on a lot of missions together," Shinji said.
"Right." The chunin's grin widened. "Very professional."
Tsume snorted. "They do this all the time. Shinji makes sure everyone eats, Mikoto keeps us from doing anything stupid."
"I don't—"
"Remember when you stopped me from doing any more pranks during a mission?"
"That would've been a terrible idea."
"See?" Tsume gestured at the chunin.
Mikoto rolled her eyes. "Whatever."
The teasing died down as they finished eating and got back on the road. More dust, more heat, more walking. One of the chunin started explaining explosive tag placement, something about maximizing blast radius.
The afternoon sun beat down mercilessly, turning the road into a shimmering haze ahead of them. A strand of Shinji's hair had worked loose from the rest, sticking up at an odd angle. Without thinking, Mikoto reached out to smooth it down.
Her hand froze halfway there. What the hell was she doing?
'Focus, Mikoto,' she told herself firmly. 'You're on a mission.'
But it was hard to focus on potential threats when everything felt so routine, so ordinary. The road stretched empty in both directions, the weather was perfect, and the worst thing that had happened all day was running out of the decent travel tea.
"You know what?" one of the chunin said suddenly, his weathered face lighting up. "When we get back to Konoha, you two should come meet my son. Just had him last month. Kid's got the tiniest hands you've ever seen."
"You have a baby?" Mikoto asked, perking up with interest. "Congratulations! How's your wife handling it? I heard the first month is brutal."
"Exhausted but happy," the chunin grinned. "And you're right about brutal. He wakes up every two hours like he's got an internal alarm clock. But when he looks at you with those huge eyes..." He shook his head. "Makes every sleepless night worth it."
"Does he look like you?" Shinji asked, with just enough of a pause to make his meaning clear.
The new father caught it right away and laughed. "Yeah, he's mine, smartass. Got my nose, unfortunately for him. And this little wrinkle between his eyebrows when he's pissed off, that's all me." He held up his hands, grinning. "Seven pounds, two ounces. Kid eats like he's training for the chunin exams."
"The frown could be anyone's," Shinji said, completely straight-faced.
"Oh, screw you," the guy laughed, shoving Shinji's shoulder. "Just wait. When you finally have kids, I'm gonna be right there being a smartass."
"Kids are great," another chunin called out from behind them. "Just wait until yours starts crawling. That's when you really find out what hell looks like."
The father groaned. "Thanks for that."
"I'd love to meet him," Mikoto said warmly. "It's been forever since I've seen a—"
The words died in her throat.
Mikoto saw it before she felt it, steel sliding through Shinji's back with a wet, tearing sound, the point bursting out of his chest in a spray of red. He still wore the smile from their conversation, still looked like he was about to make another joke, when the blade punched through his chest.
Time stuttered.
The smile slipped from his face, replaced by confusion, then pain. His knees buckled. Blood poured from his mouth, from the hole in his chest, staining his shirt crimson.
"Shinji—"
Her voice sounded like it was coming from someone else, someone far away screaming through water. The world tilted sideways, colors smearing together into a sick blur. Sound collapsed into a high-pitched whine, the shouts and clash of metal becoming distant noise.
All she could see was red. Too much red.
Shinji hit the dirt hard, body jerking like a broken puppet. His hands scrabbled at the ground, fingers digging furrows in the dust as blood spread beneath him in an ever-widening pool. The blade, because that's what it was, she could see it clearly now, had gone straight through him, the tip gleaming wet and obscene in the afternoon light.
'No. No, no, no—'
Something ignited in her chest, clawing up her throat, burning hot behind her eyes. The world snapped back into focus, every detail suddenly crystal clear and completely wrong. She could see each individual drop of Shinji's blood hitting the dust. Could count the flecks of dirt stuck to the growing stain beneath his body. Could see the cold satisfaction in the eyes of the enemy shinobi stepping out from the tree line, more shadows moving behind them.
Her hand found Shinji's tanto without her telling it to, fingers wrapping around the familiar grip.
Everything after that became a blur of violence and blood.
Steel biting into flesh. Someone screaming, her throat was raw, so probably her. The Kumo-nin's face twisting in terror as her genjutsu grabbed him, turning his world into a waking nightmare of drowning in his own gore. More enemies sliding out from behind trees and rocks. Tsume's voice cracking with panic, yelling something about getting Shinji out of there.
Mikoto moved through the carnage like she was sleepwalking through hell, the tanto an extension of her arm. Her body knew what to do, all those hours sparring with Shinji had carved the movements into muscle memory. Now instinct took over, her hands finding their own way to the next kill.
"Uchiha!" someone shouted over the chaos. "It's a fucking Uchiha!"
She didn't care. Let them scream. Let them run. It wouldn't save them.
A Kumo chunin lunged at her with a kunai, and her eyes caught him for a second. His chest seized under the illusion, a rush of phantom liquid filling his lungs. He gagged, hacking air like it carried rust, but it was clumsy, he wasn't drowning, just panicking. His grip slackened enough for her tanto to punch across his throat, the cut splattering her face with a warmth more convincing than the genjutsu ever could.
The second one tried his luck from the flank. For a flicker he saw his arm blistering, flesh peeling in strips, but the image stuttered and broke. He shook it off with a snarl, only to feel her blade tear reality open where the false burns had been.
Blood everywhere. On her hands, on the blade, soaking into the dirt around what used to be people. A shallow cut across her ribs leaked down her side, but she couldn't feel it through the rage. Couldn't feel anything except the need to keep killing. How many had she dropped? Three? Four? Didn't matter. Not enough. Would never be enough.
A larger figure loomed in her peripheral vision, a jonin, by his size and the way he moved. She spun toward him, tanto raised, ready to paint the world with more crimson.
But pain exploded through her neck, lightning racing down her spine. The world spun sideways and she was falling, tanto tumbling from fingers that suddenly wouldn't work. Her face smacked into the dirt, mouth filling with copper and grit.
She tried to move, to get up, to keep fighting. Had to get up. Had to make them pay. Had to—
The Kumo jonin looked down at her like she was a rabid dog he'd just put down.
Darkness ate her vision whole, and the last thing she saw was red.
Red on her hands.
Red in the dirt.
All that red, and still not enough.
...
Second-gen Clone POV
Konoha
The steam from our ramen bowls curled around our faces, warm and clinging, and I was perfectly content to sit there forever. Kushina was already on her second bowl, eating like she hadn't seen food in a week.
"So," I said between bites, "did you find out anything about that neighbor of yours?"
Kushina slurped up a mouthful of noodles before answering. "Fuwa Aika? Yeah, I looked into it."
"And?"
"Definitely not Senju." She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "I was pretty sure before, but now I know for certain."
"Please tell me you didn't do anything crazy."
"What? No! I just asked around the compound. Some of the older members know pretty much everyone who's ever been connected to the clan."
"Okay, that's... actually pretty reasonable."
"I even asked Grandma Mito about her."
"What'd she say?"
Her face soured. "Told me to stop gossiping like some old auntie at the market and focus on my own training instead of poking around in other people's business."
I snorted. "So you got lectured for being a nosy old lady?"
"I wasn't being nosy!" Her cheeks turned pink. "I was just... gathering information. For you."
"Right. 'Gathering information.' That's totally different from what the aunties at the market do."
She kicked my shin under the counter. "Shut up. I was trying to help, and this is the thanks I get?"
"Sorry, sorry." I was still grinning. "Just go easy on the violence or I'll pop. You know how delicate us clones are."
"Good. You'd deserve it," she shot back. "And you owe me big time for this."
"Sorry, sorry. I appreciate it. Really."
The tension broke after that. She launched into stories about Lady Mito's bizarre habit of collecting old masks, then somehow switched to a passionate defense of miso broth superiority. I countered that shoyu was the backbone of any decent ramen, but my heart wasn't in the argument. My mind kept drifting to darker thoughts, the way shadows seemed to linger too long in my peripheral vision, how every crowd felt like it held hostile eyes.
After a few minutes, she set down her chopsticks and studied my face. "Hey. What's wrong? You look like someone stole your lunch money."
I blinked and forced myself back to the present. The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed like dying flies. "Sorry. It's probably nothing, but..." I rolled my shoulders, trying to shake off the creeping paranoia. "I've been getting this weird feeling lately. Like someone's watching me."
Kushina's eyes lit up like she'd just discovered a bowl of ramen. "Ooh! Secret admirer?"
"What? No—"
"Some lovesick girl following you around, trying to work up the courage to slip you a love letter?" She wiggled her eyebrows at me. "Or maybe a creepy stalker planning to kidnap you and keep you chained in her basement!"
I grabbed my chopsticks and jabbed them toward her cheek. "You're way too excited about the idea of me getting stalked."
"Hey!" She blocked with her own chopsticks, laughing as wood clacked against wood. "You're the one who attracts the stalker, not me!"
I thrust again and she parried like she'd been doing this her whole life. A businessman at the next table shot us a dirty look, probably thinking we were drunk teenagers making a mess.
"Right." I tried a different angle, aiming for her wrist. "Because I'm so well-known for my sparkling personality."
"Dream on." She knocked my chopsticks aside with a sharp click. "Oh, speaking of stuff you asked me about, that exploding seals thing?"
We both froze mid-strike.
"Yeah?" I lowered my chopsticks. "How's it going?"
"Finally got the exploding seal figured out." She stabbed at her remaining noodles. "Took forever to get the timing right, but I think I've cracked it. Though I'm still not sure how it's gonna mesh with shadow clone jutsu."
"Yeah? Want to test it out?"
"Right now?" Her eyes lit up.
"Sure, if you're not busy. And don't worry about whether it'll work or not, either way, we've already got exploding clones covered." I waved my hand dismissively.
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"The clones back at the apartment already figured out how to make exploding clones without needing seals."
She blinked. "Wait, what?" Her expression shifted to confusion, then annoyance. "Then why did you bother asking me to work on the exploding seal in the first place?" Her knuckles cracked as she clenched her fists.
"Hey, easy there." I held up my hands. "I'll explain everything later, alright? Let's just head to the training ground. I'll tell you the rest there."
"This better be good." She stood up so fast her chair scraped against the floor. Other customers glanced over, probably sensing the violence radiating off her. "I spent weeks on those damn seals."
"Ha ha, don't worry. It will be." The laugh came out nervous.
....
I stood across from Kushina in the training ground, watching her cross her arms with that expression that meant I was about five seconds away from eating dirt.
"Alright, smart guy." She stepped closer, close enough that I could see the muscle twitching in her jaw. "Explain. You just told me you already know how to make exploding clones, so why the hell did you ask me to help you figure it out?"
I scratched the back of my neck. "Well, it's pretty simple to create an exploding clone, technically speaking. You just destabilize the clone and force its stored chakra to detonate. Like tuning the chakra matrix to combust on dispersal instead of just dissolving into nothing."
Her eyebrows shot up. "That's it?"
"More or less. There are some nasty complications, but the basic concept isn't brain surgery." I shrugged. "You can get a shadow clone to explode if you mess with its chakra structure enough."
"Then why—" Kushina's voice dropped to that tone that usually preceded broken bones, "did you waste my time asking me to work on exploding seals when you already knew how to do it?"
"Because," I said quickly, holding up my hands, "the explosion you get that way depends entirely on whatever chakra the clone has left when it goes boom. If the clone's been running around for hours and only has scraps of chakra remaining, you get a pathetic little pop. Maybe enough to singe someone's eyebrows."
She paused. "Ah."
"Right. So if I send a clone on a long mission, or it gets jumped and needs to explode as a last resort, chances are it'll have burned through most of its chakra already. The explosion would be a joke, if it can still explode at all."
She uncrossed her arms. "But if you could supplement the clone with an exploding seal..."
"Exactly. You'd get real destructive force instead of a glorified firecracker."
"Huh." She finally stopped looking like she wanted to break my ribs. "Okay, that actually makes sense. Why didn't you just say that from the beginning?"
"Because watching you get progressively more pissed off is entertaining?"
The look she gave me suggested that violence was definitely back on the menu.
"Kidding," I said quickly. "I just didn't have time to explain properly, and honestly... I kind of forgot about it?"
After calming her down with promises of free ramen for a week, we finally got to work. She taught me everything she knew about seals, the specific knowledge I'd need before tackling exploding seals. We sat in the shade of a gnarled oak tree, its bark rough against my back as she spread her scroll across the dirt-packed ground. Her finger traced complex symbols while she explained how they worked, how one wrong stroke could turn a useful tool into a dud, or worse.
Days blurred together. I taught her the shadow clone jutsu, watching her struggle with the chakra control while trying not to laugh when her first attempts produced half-formed, twitching abominations that dissolved after seconds. She drilled me on seal theory until my head pounded and ink stained my fingers black.
Two days before the real me was supposed to leave for the escort mission to the capital, I finally cracked it.
"I think I got it right this time." I held up the seal against the sun.
"Really?"
"Yeah. The chakra flow feels stable, and the trigger mechanism should work."
"Why don't you test it?"
"Sure, why not?" I attached the seal to a clone and sent it toward the far end of the training ground. "What's the worst that could happen?"
The explosion that followed turned the evening sky orange and sent a shockwave rattling windows a block away. Birds erupted from the trees in screaming clouds, while chunks of earth rained down like hail. When the smoke cleared, we were both flat on our backs, ears ringing, staring up at a sky that suddenly seemed too bright.
The punishment came swift and brutal, three weeks of cleaning public toilets and a formal ban from using explosive seals within village limits. But true art demands sacrifice, and explosions are the purest form of artistic expression. Worth every minute of scrubbing shit-stained porcelain, honestly.
...
The three Konoha chunin moved silently through the forest, following their patrol route along the outer perimeter where trade caravans kept getting butchered by bandits.
The leftmost nin stopped dead when he felt it, a tremor running through the soles of his boots, like something massive had just hit the ground miles away. He glanced toward his teammates, catching their questioning looks. Earthquake, maybe?
The tremor lasted only a few seconds before subsiding, leaving the forest eerily quiet. Birds had stopped singing. Even the usual rustle of small animals moving through the underbrush had gone silent.
"That was—" the center nin started to say.
Another tremor cut him off, stronger this time, strong enough to make the trees creak and sway. The third chunin grabbed a trunk to keep from stumbling, his eyes sweeping the horizon for smoke or movement.
Then came another. And another.
Each tremor was larger than the last, the intervals between them growing shorter. The ground started shaking nonstop, broken up by massive jolts that sent rocks bouncing down the hillsides like marbles.
"That's not an earthquake," the leftmost nin said grimly.
"No shit." His teammate was already digging for his message scroll. "Those are explosions. Big ones."
None of them were rookies. They'd all felt the ground shake from explosive tags, seen what jutsu could do to human bodies. But this was different, like someone was carpet-bombing an entire valley.
The center nin scribbled his message while his partner summoned their hawk. The bird flapped wildly when it appeared, clearly spooked by the vibrations crawling up through the earth.
He tied the scroll to its leg and the hawk shot into the sky like its tail was on fire.
For the next several minutes, they crouched in a defensive triangle, weapons drawn, while the explosions kept coming. The rightmost chunin counted under his breath, twenty-seven separate detonations, each one strong enough to make his molars ache. Whatever was happening over there involved either a major battle or someone with enough explosive material to level a small town.
Finally, the tremors stopped. The forest went dead quiet in a way that made their skin crawl.
"How long do we wait?" The leftmost nin's voice cracked slightly.
"Maybe two more minutes?" The center chunin didn't sound confident. "Make sure whoever did that isn't still around..."
They all agreed it wasn't cowardice, just basic survival instinct. So they waited, ears straining for any sound that might mean death was headed their way. When the silence dragged on and normal forest noises gradually returned, the center ninja gave a curt nod.
"Let's move. Assume hostiles still in the area."
The three chunin started advancing toward the source of the explosions, trying to look professional while silently praying that whoever had just turned part of the landscape into a crater had already moved on to terrorize someone else.
They moved through the increasingly sparse treeline, the smell of smoke and scorched earth growing stronger with each step. Broken branches littered the ground, and more than one massive trunk lay split and blackened across their path.
"Holy," One chunin stepped around a boulder that had been launched so far from its original spot that chunks of earth still clung to its underside.
The leftmost chunin raised his fist, stopping the patrol as they reached a small ridge. Beyond the last standing trees, the forest just... stopped existing.
Where thick woodland should have stretched for miles, a hellscape of craters and destruction opened up like a wound in the earth. The ground looked like it had been chewed up and spat out by some giant beast, holes deep enough to swallow wagons, their edges still belching smoke and steam. Trees that had grown for decades were simply gone, not fallen or burned, but vaporized, leaving behind only splinters and gray ash that drifted in the wind.
"What the hell happened here?"
"I count at least twenty craters. Maybe more…"
"Any bodies?"
"Can't tell from here. If there were any, they're..." He lowered his eyes, his face pale. "There's nothing left to find."
They had never seen destruction on this scale, a systematic obliteration that had carved chunks out of the landscape itself. Steam and smoke rose from the larger craters, some still glowing red at their centers where the explosions had been intense enough to melt rock. The air tasted metallic, like blood and burnt copper.
....
I slumped against the oak tree, each breath sending fire through my chest. The hole where that bastard's sword had punched through me was mostly sealed thanks to my clones' medical work, but "mostly" wasn't exactly confidence-inspiring. Blood still seeped through the half-closed wound, and something inside my chest definitely wasn't sitting right.
Around me, the mess I'd made of the Kumo ambush looked like a butcher shop had exploded. Three of my clones knelt over my unconscious teammates, their hands lit up with medical chakra as they tried to keep everyone from bleeding out.
Mikoto was flat on her back a few feet away, skin white as paper but still breathing. The clone working on her had both hands pressed against a deep slice along her ribs where some asshole's blade had gotten lucky. Blood bubbled between its fingers with each breath she took.
Tsume looked like she'd been hit by a truck. Unconscious, with ugly purple bruises spreading across her left arm and the side of her face swollen shut. The clone patching her up kept cursing under its breath about broken bones and possible internal bleeding. She'd jumped in front of a Kumo jonin's attack meant for Mikoto, stupid brave or just plain stupid, depending on how you looked at it.
The surviving chunin was barely hanging on. Multiple stab wounds leaked red across his flak jacket, and he'd lost enough blood to paint a barn. My clone was pumping chakra into him just to keep his heart beating. The guy had a wife and kids back home. I wasn't letting him die in this shithole forest.
Too bad I couldn't say the same for his two teammates. Or the merchants we'd been hired to protect.
Complete fucking disaster didn't even cover it. We'd lost two chunin, all the civilian traders, and the western front supply run was probably screwed for weeks. Hell, there weren't even bodies left to send home, when those Kumo bastards had jumped us and someone shoved a blade through my back, I'd kind of lost my shit and started throwing explosive clones around like party favors. The convoy site was nothing but smoking holes in the ground now.
I should probably feel worse about that. But mostly I just felt tired and pissed off that we'd walked into another ambush.
The Kumo squad that had jumped us... well, they wouldn't be reporting back to their village. Ever.
My clones had made sure of that.
The worst part? I'd seen this coming from miles away. After weeks of my clones disrupting Kumo operations across the region, sabotaging their missions and generally making their lives miserable, it was only a matter of time before they decided I was worth hunting down personally. I'd been waiting for the other shoe to drop, staying paranoid and careful for weeks. But when nothing happened, when patrol after patrol went off without incident, I'd started to relax. Started thinking maybe they were too focused on other targets, or maybe they hadn't figured out it was me yet.
But nah of course they'd wait for the perfect moment, when I was away from Kitaura, traveling predictable routes with a small escort team. They'd probably been tracking us for days, waiting for the right spot to spring their trap.
Sigh…
At least one problem had solved itself today. I'd been racking my brain for weeks, trying to figure out how to awaken Mikoto's Sharingan without coming off as completely cringe. Turns out watching me take a blade through the chest did the trick just fine.
The clone working on Mikoto glanced up, blood coating its hands up to the wrists. "She's stable, but she's going to be out cold for hours. Looks like activating her Sharingan for the first time burned through most of her chakra reserves."
"Trauma response," I said, tasting copper. "Seeing me get skewered probably flipped the right switches in her brain."
"Yeah, well, at least we don't have to fake some cringy death scene now," the clone muttered.
The clone patching up Tsume looked over. "This one's got a skull like concrete. Concussion and some busted ribs, but nothing that won't heal. She'll be back to being a pain in the ass by tomorrow."
"Wonderful," I wheezed. "Something to look forward to."
I let my head drop back against the rough bark, closing eyes that felt like they had sand in them.
First mission I'd ever completely fucked up.
But it wouldn't be the last time Kumo regretted targeting me. They'd wanted to send a message by ambushing my convoy? Fine. Message received.
Time to send one back.
My first failure, and Kumo was going to pay for every drop of blood spilled here.