Perfect. A little warm-up first.
Before the last word had even left his mouth, Kiyohara moved.
No—more accurately, the rogue-nin Kiyohara, wearing his body like a borrowed suit, moved. The afterimage he left behind seemed to lag half a beat where he had been standing. He did not charge straight in. He cut a low, curved path across the battlefield instead, slipping into the formation like a blade sliding through a seam.
His first targets were the three Iwagakure chunin.
"So fast!"
One of them only had time to blurt out that stunned cry before he threw a hurried punch. Possessed Kiyohara neither flinched nor dodged. His right hand hooked the man's wrist, borrowed the force of the punch, and with a smooth, ruthless twist, hurled him straight into the companion beside him.
At the same time, he lowered his body, letting the third man's kunai thrust skim above his shoulder, then snapped out a kick.
Crack.
The sound of bone breaking was sharp enough to make everyone nearby feel it in their teeth. The chunin screamed as his knee folded the wrong way and he crashed to the ground.
"Earth Release: Earth-Rising Spears!"
Suma Shi's reaction was immediate. Stone spikes burst upward beneath Kiyohara's feet, jagged and vicious, aiming to skewer him in place.
But Kiyohara moved as if he had known the timing all along. A light step, a slight lean, one precise spring backward—he slipped away a heartbeat before the stone lances erupted. In the same motion, he flung the captured kunai toward Suma Shi's face, forcing the special jonin to abandon his hand seals and knock it aside.
"What is wrong with this brat?!"
Suma Shi's eyes widened.
The boy in front of him looked the same, wore the same genin uniform, had the same face. But his gaze, his rhythm, the terrifying efficiency in every movement—those were not the eyes of a green, untested ninja. Those were the instincts of someone who had survived too many battles to count.
On the side, both Kurenai and Rin were frozen in shock.
Rin covered her mouth, her eyes trembling. "How did Kiyohara suddenly become this strong…?"
Kurenai's ruby-red eyes widened. She had fought alongside Kiyohara for days. She knew he was excellent, knew he had hidden depths, knew he was far steadier than most genin. But this was different. This was as if someone had ripped the shell off him and revealed something older and sharper inside.
In the middle of the battlefield, Kiyohara met Suma Shi head-on.
Suma Shi's fist, wrapped in dense earth-style chakra, crashed down like a hammer. Kiyohara turned his shoulder, redirected the angle, and bled off most of the force with technique instead of strength. Even so, the impact shoved him back several steps. His arm went numb from the shock.
Too many enemies. Too little chakra. Too frail a body.
Even while controlling him, the rogue-nin Kiyohara could feel it clearly.
I was too weak back then.
This body had limits. Hard limits. A jonin's experience could force out far more than a genin ought to produce, but it could not erase the fact that Kiyohara's muscles, tendons, and chakra reserves were still those of a much younger, much weaker ninja. To fight at this level at all was already forcing the body right up against the edge of collapse.
Suma Shi noticed the fatigue too, and a vicious grin spread across his face.
"He's running out of steam! All of you—attack together and kill him!"
The dozen remaining Iwagakure ninja surged in again.
Kunai flashed. Earth-style chakra churned beneath the ground. Killing intent crashed down from every direction.
And then—
A streak of gold appeared in the very center of the battlefield.
There was no warning. No buildup. One instant the space was empty, the next there was a man standing there as if the world had always intended him to occupy that spot.
Blond hair. Green flak vest. Calm blue eyes. A presence so steady it made the chaos itself seem to hesitate.
Minato Namikaze.
He did not waste a single word.
The specially made kunai in his hand blurred into afterimages.
Pfft. Pfft. Pfft.
Three Iwagakure chunin collapsed almost at the same time, throats opened before their expressions could even catch up to what had happened.
Suma Shi's entire body went cold. His instincts screamed before his mind did.
"The Yellow Flash!"
The name tore itself out of him. He immediately tried to dive underground with earth-style ninjutsu, to flee, to survive.
He was too late.
"Flying Thunder God: Second Step."
A flicker.
Minato appeared behind him, and the specially forged tri-pronged kunai cut across Suma Shi's back in a merciless line.
Boom.
Suma Shi flew forward and slammed into a tree trunk before sliding lifelessly to the ground.
What followed was not a battle. It was a harvest.
Every remaining Iwagakure ninja fell in moments, Minato's movement too fast for the eye to follow, his attacks so clean that death seemed almost quiet in his hands. The hopeless situation was overturned in the space of a breath.
Only when the last body hit the ground did the rogue-nin Kiyohara withdraw from possession.
The change was immediate.
Kiyohara's knees almost gave out beneath him. It felt as though the frame holding his body together had suddenly come loose. Pain flooded in all at once—his arms, his shoulders, his back, even the muscles in his legs. He bent slightly, breathing hard, sweat cooling fast on his skin.
As expected of Minato Namikaze.
He had fought desperately, with all the experience of a future rogue jonin riding inside him, and still it had felt like clinging to the edge of a cliff. For Minato, the same enemies were little more than weeds in his path.
That was the difference.
At this point in time, Minato truly stood at the summit of all commoner-born ninja. In Kiyohara's mind, only two others would ever rise to stand alongside that kind of peak—Might Guy and Yakushi Kabuto. Neither carried a bloodline limit. Neither had inherited some noble ocular power from birth. All of them had clawed their way up through talent, extremity, and monstrous effort.
And in the end, even monsters like that would still be forced to play support for Naruto and Sasuke.
What a ridiculous world.
Minato turned, first looking at Kiyohara—pale, exhausted, nearly at his limit—then at Kakashi, Rin, Kurenai, and Genma. His eyes lingered for the briefest instant on the cave collapse behind them, then on the Sharingan now set in Kakashi's left eye.
Understanding dawned in his face before anyone said it aloud.
"Sorry," Minato said softly. "I'm late."
The apology struck far harder than any grand reassurance would have.
Kiyohara lifted his head. He already knew what Minato had seen. Obito was gone. And Minato—Minato, the fastest man alive—had still arrived one step too late.
Then Minato looked at him again.
"Thank you, Kiyohara."
Kiyohara blinked.
Minato continued, his voice steady. "On my way here, I saw enough to understand what happened. If you hadn't held the line, Kakashi and the others would never have lasted until I arrived."
Kakashi, in his current state, could barely stand. His chakra was almost empty, and the freshly transplanted Sharingan only made the drain worse. Genma had already been knocked down once. Rin and Kurenai were support types. Without Kiyohara buying those last, critical moments, they would have been swallowed whole.
Kiyohara straightened as much as he could and forced himself to answer in a firm voice.
"It was what I should do, Lord Minato. I won't abandon my comrades. That's my ninja way."
As soon as he said it, he nearly admired himself.
Beautiful. Upright. Full of the Will of Fire. Exactly the kind of answer a superior wanted to hear after a life-or-death mission.
And, more importantly, exactly the kind of answer that would help when his merits were counted after they returned to the village.
Still, he hadn't lied.
He had stayed. He had fought. He had held on.
Minato stared at him for a beat, visibly taken aback by the earnestness in the words. Then the corner of his mouth softened into something gentler, something almost proud.
Genma, meanwhile, bent to pick up his senbon, wiped the dirt from it with the hem of his clothing, and stuck it back in his mouth.
"Thank goodness Minato-sensei got here in time," he muttered. "Otherwise, we definitely would've died."
Minato was quiet for a moment after hearing that.
Then he shook his head.
"No. I'm not the true hero here."
Genma actually looked stunned. "What?"
Minato glanced over all of them, one by one.
"It was Kiyohara. It was Kakashi. It was Obito. It was all of you," he said. "You were the ones who came this deep into enemy territory. You were the ones who gathered information, held the line, and created the opening. You are the real heroes."
Rin's eyes instantly reddened.
Kakashi lowered his head and said nothing, but the hand at his side clenched tight enough to tremble. Obito's name, spoken that simply, that directly, seemed to knock into something raw inside him.
As for Kiyohara—
He was startled for half a second.
Then he almost wanted to applaud.
Minato really knew how to speak. No wonder so many people trusted him. No wonder he drew others to him so naturally. Even Kiyohara, cynical as he was, could feel the weight in those words.
And there was one thing Kiyohara could not deny.
This mission had changed everything.
He had outperformed Obito, who carried Uchiha blood. He had outperformed Kakashi, the son of the White Fang, in several critical moments. He had held a battlefield long enough for Minato Namikaze to arrive and finish it.
That kind of merit was not small.
By the time they returned to Konoha, promotion to chunin should be all but guaranteed.
And once he became a legal chunin, the rogue-nin Kiyohara's final wish could be fulfilled. When that happened, the rest of that man's talent, experience, and strength would finally merge into him completely.
Just thinking about it made Kiyohara's exhausted body feel a little lighter.
Minato broke the silence.
"Alright. We leave now. Once Kannabi Bridge is destroyed, we'll return to the village."
At those words, Kurenai's tense little face finally loosened.
"Then… we can go back tomorrow at the latest, right?"
Her voice held the fragile brightness of someone who had been stretched to the edge for too long and was finally daring to believe the end was near.
Minato gave her a reassuring nod.
"If all goes well, yes."
If all goes well.
Kiyohara repeated the words silently in his head.
The mission was ninety-nine percent complete now. All that remained was to blow up the bridge and withdraw. On paper, victory was already in their hands.
But in the ninja world, the most dangerous moment was often the one right before you believed you were safe.
Kiyohara glanced toward the direction of Kannabi Bridge, then at Kakashi's new Sharingan, then at the darkening sky above them.
Obito was gone. Madara's piece had already fallen into place. Minato had arrived late again, just one step behind disaster, just as he always was.
And the road ahead—
The Nine-Tails. Konoha's collapse. Pain. The Otsutsuki.
None of it had changed.
No.
That wasn't right.
Kiyohara lowered his eyes, and for the briefest moment, his fingertips brushed the hidden urn he carried.
Something had changed.
He had.
And this time, when the next disaster came, maybe he would not be the one left behind in its wake.
Maybe, next time, he would be the one who arrived first.