Kazuma was breathing hard, his body marked with wounds accumulated across the engagement. He looked at the people he had lost on the ground and kept his expression controlled.
Yagura Karatachi. After years operating against the Hidden Mist on this coast, the name was not unfamiliar.
What the reality of fighting him had turned out to be was something else. The opponent looked like a teenager. He was older than Kazuma. Both of these things were true simultaneously, and the contradiction had done nothing to prepare Kazuma for what the last hour had actually involved.
Six Hidden Mist ninja had broken through multiple Strongholds and pushed deep into the operational zone.
Kazuma had mobilized nearly thirty men in response. After fighting through to now, they had killed three of Yagura's teammates. Their own losses were over twenty. The numbers meant nothing when the individual gap was this wide, and the gap existed almost entirely because of one person.
Kazuma was a Jonin. He was the only one present who could engage Yagura at all.
Yagura broke off from him without warning and his figure crossed the distance to a Sunagakure ninja standing several meters away.
"Watch out!"
The water sphere erupted on contact and sent the shinobi flying. Yagura's Coral Staff was already moving, closing in behind the next target in the same motion.
"Wind Release: Rotating Blade."
Kazuma's hands came through the seals and the wind blades crossed the space between them and sliced through Yagura's body.
Water sprayed out, not blood.
'Water Clone Jutsu.' Kazuma's pupils contracted.
He turned. Another teammate had taken the real Yagura's staff across a vital point from behind.
Kazuma ran through the situation in the fraction of a second he had available. The Ninjutsu and Taijutsu were completely integrated, the transitions invisible.
The feints and rhythm shifts were beyond what anyone in his team could reliably read. And Yagura was doing all of this in the Land of Wind's dry environment, where Water Release should have been at a disadvantage, and the techniques were still landing with this kind of effect.
"Retreat."
He said it quietly but meant it completely. Staying produced nothing except more bodies. Four Hidden Mist remained.
Getting through Sunagakure's full defensive line with four people was not straightforward, which meant there was still time to get intelligence out and consolidate a real response.
"Hahahaha, run? With Lord Yagura here?"
One of the Hidden Mist ninja raised an oversized sword with both hands and swung it in a wide arc at the nearest retreating Sunagakure shinobi.
Kazuma cursed internally. These were not the infiltration-grade operatives he had been dealing with for years. Yagura had brought elites.
He watched the blade coming down and had no angle to intervene in time.
Yagura turned his head.
The motion was sharp, like something had registered in his perception. He formed seals quickly and a water projectile launched skyward. The haste showed in the power, the output reduced from what it would normally have been.
"Careful," Yagura said to his subordinate.
The Hidden Mist ninja with the oversized sword watched the water bullet explode in midair, cut apart by something he hadn't seen coming. What reached his eyes was a faint silver flicker. Almost nothing.
Threads?
He registered the thought and then the threads were already around him, impossibly thin, wrapping him while he was still in the air. Someone had landed beneath him first, crouching low, and he hadn't sensed the movement at all.
"Who"
The threads pulled. The force yanked him downward and drove him into the ground. The edges of the threads were cutting into him continuously, blood coming freely from dozens of shallow wounds across his body.
He used the oversized sword to force open some space inside the constriction, alleviating the worst of it. He was still breathing.
Yuji straightened up and looked at him with genuine mild surprise. "Impressive. Most people turn into something less recognizable when that connects cleanly."
The sword work to create the gap had been excellent. The physical foundation behind it was real.
"Yuji!"
Kazuma's expression broke open with visible relief. The tension in his face dissolved into something that looked like a man who had just been told he was allowed to breathe again.
Yagura's gaze moved to the new arrival immediately. The other Hidden Mist ninja followed it.
Blood Doctor Yuji. Kazuma had just confirmed it with the name.
"Yo." Yuji raised a hand toward the surviving Sunagakure ninja, smiling easily. "Looks like I got here at the right moment."
The engagement had stopped. Everyone on the field had paused, the sudden arrival pulling the rhythm apart.
Then Yuji's smile left his face and he looked across at Yagura and the remaining Hidden Mist ninja standing opposite him.
The air changed.
Yagura moved without preamble, teleporting to a teammate's position and knocking aside a flying knife that was already crossing the space between them.
Yagura moved to a second teammate's side and raised his staff to meet Yuji who had already closed the distance.
In the space of a breath, Yuji had launched a sequence that neither Hidden Mist ninja had seen coming. The flying knife wasn't the real attack. It was misdirection, pulling one target's attention while Yuji's actual intention went toward the other.
Neither of the two he had targeted managed to respond in time. Without Yagura's intervention, one of them would be dead and the other badly wounded.
Yagura's expression shifted into something more focused.
The exchange that followed was immediate and wordless. Two figures, both small, both fast, trading at Taijutsu range with a frequency that made counting the individual strikes impossible.
No hand seals. Pure close-quarters output.
The Hidden Mist ninja whose life Yagura had just saved watched from several meters away and said nothing for a moment. Then he said it quietly. "He can actually match Lord Yagura."
Yuji used a burst of mobility to try to break off the engagement and redirect toward one of the other two. Reducing the enemy's numbers first. The logic was straightforward.
Yagura read it and stayed on him.
"Watch out for the Blood Release. His blood carries poison. Don't let it touch you."
He was calling warnings to his subordinates while trading strikes with Yuji simultaneously. The coordination was natural, the multitasking unremarkable to him.
Less than thirty seconds from first contact to separation. The number of exchanges in that window was beyond easy counting. Both of them were operating with their minds as much as their bodies, cataloguing, probing, building the other person's combat profile in real time.
Yuji landed and put his back to Kazuma and the remaining Sunagakure ninja.
"Captain Kazuma. Take your people and go. Leave this to me."
Kazuma stared at him.
Yagura Karatachi was standing twenty meters away. Two Hidden Mist elites were with him. Leaving Yuji alone here was not a straightforward decision.
Yuji glanced back briefly. "Even if I can't win I can run. If you stay you become a problem I have to manage."
He looked at Yagura. "Your target is me. My value to the Hidden Mist is clearly higher than theirs. Let them leave and the situation becomes simpler for you as well."
Yagura said nothing.
Kazuma held for one more moment, then made his decision. Yuji's meaning was plain enough. He wasn't planning to fight to a conclusion, just to hold and then find the exit.
Keeping wounded shinobi on the field would cost Yuji movement and options he couldn't spare.
Kazuma took the others and moved.
Yagura did not pursue them.
With the field cleared, Yuji's eyes moved between Yagura and the two remaining Hidden Mist ninja, reading the spacing and the angles.
They had gathered intelligence on his Kekkei Genkai. The guard was already up.
Letting Kazuma leave hadn't been about escape conditions. It had been about visibility. He didn't want Sunagakure ninja watching what came next.
His recent operations along the coast had been conducted without Pakura and the others for exactly this reason. He needed to move freely, and free movement meant no witnesses to the full picture of what he could actually do.
One more consideration settled into place. Yagura was a Water Release specialist with extensive field experience and genuine analytical ability.
If Blood Release interacted poorly with water in a way Yagura could observe clearly and document, that intelligence would reach the Hidden Mist's research apparatus.
The weakness needed to stay hidden. Which meant the path to winning this had to run through other methods.
Yuji rolled his shoulders and let his limbs loosen.
His first real fight against a Jonin had been against someone from Konoha, and he had nearly died. After that, he and Sasori had made a habit of avoiding Jonin-level opponents when the mission allowed for it.
The person standing in front of him now was not simply a Hidden Mist Jonin. He was an Elite Jonin. The future Fourth Mizukage.
One against three.
Something moved through Yuji's expression. Excitement, and underneath it something colder.
"Come on then. Let's have a proper one."
Yagura's eyes went flat. "Playing the hero costs something."
He looked at his two subordinates. "Kill him."