The words had barely left his mouth when the killing intent arrived.
Whoosh—whoosh—whoosh!
Three blurred figures tore through the thick fog from different directions at almost the same time, ninja swords flashing with cold light.
"Diagonal slash from the right. Straight thrust to the waist from the rear left. Sweep to the lower body from the front. Their first target is you."
The young Kiyohara's voice rang in his head with absolute clarity.
For an ordinary genin—or even most chunin—this kind of coordinated ambush inside a fog so thick it swallowed sight and dulled sound would have been fatal on the spot.
But Kiyohara was different.
He moved the moment the warning finished. His body recoiled like a spring, slipping back just enough to dodge the sweep from directly ahead. At the same time, the kunai in his hand snapped out to the right.
Clang!
Sparks flew as he parried the slash from above.
"Kiyohara!" Kurenai shouted. She had already seen that he still had one attack he hadn't fully avoided.
But Kiyohara's waist twisted with sudden force. Shoulders loose, core tight, stance rooted—his whole body turned in one smooth motion and the thrust from behind skimmed past him by a hair's breadth.
True unity of waist and stance.
The next moment he drove his own kunai down at the Hidden Mist ninja on the right front, targeting the instant after the man's slash ended, when old strength was gone and new strength had not yet formed.
Pfft!
The blade punched through the weakest point in the armor and sank deep. The ninja cried out, his sword crashing to the ground as he staggered back.
The other two turned at once, intent on killing him before he could press his advantage.
"Good. Use ninjutsu to force them back," the young Kiyohara said calmly.
"Got it."
Kiyohara formed seals, then exhaled.
Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!
A compressed gale blasted the ninja behind him off balance and hurled him back into the fog. Without pause, Kiyohara slapped one hand to the ground.
Lightning Release: Earth Walk!
Azure arcs spread low over the surface. Shui Wushe had only just drawn back when numbness shot through his legs and locked his body in place for a split second.
Everything happened in a breath. The three-man ambush that should have killed him instead broke apart under a flurry of counters.
Kakashi, watching from the side, widened his eye. He had been about to use Lightning Blade to support, but before he could move, Kiyohara had already torn through the opening himself.
When did he get this kind of close-combat skill? Kakashi wondered. He used to rely on ninjutsu far more.
Genma and Rin looked equally stunned. All they had seen were a few flickers in the mist, the ring of metal, and then the Hidden Mist attackers falling one after another.
Kiyohara himself knew exactly how much of that belonged to him and how much belonged to the young man guiding him. Ninety percent of the miracle came from information. But on a battlefield, information was power.
He finished off the wounded Hidden Mist ninja with a thrown shuriken before the man could recover.
Then a different sound ripped through the haze—a shrill, thunderous cry like a thousand birds screaming at once.
Kakashi had moved.
Taking advantage of the chaos Kiyohara had created, he turned into a streak of blue lightning and skewered one of the Mist ninja who had not yet regained his footing. The scream cut off almost instantly.
Only one remained—the same Hidden Mist ninja who had mocked them from inside the mist.
He showed no grief for his fallen comrades. He simply drew the long sword from his back. It was larger than a standard ninja blade, obviously custom-forged, and the air around him sharpened at once.
Mizunosuke.
Instead of going after Kakashi, he drove straight at Kiyohara, who had just finished his own opponent and appeared the more exhausted of the two.
"Brats of Konoha—don't get cocky!"
His blade carved through the fog with a vicious direct slash aimed right at Kiyohara's face.
"Careful!" Kurenai and Rin cried out together.
Kakashi turned, but he was too far away, and Lightning Blade had already drained him badly. He could not provide support in time.
Kiyohara caught up the abandoned sword of a fallen Kirigakure ninja and raised it sideways to block. At the same instant, he shouted inwardly, "Future me, help!"
Since the fight had already reached the point where thinking would only slow him down, he handed over the brain.
"Fine," the young Kiyohara replied. "It's been a while since I stretched my arms anyway."
The world changed in a heartbeat.
Thought, breathing, rhythm, force, timing—everything inside Kiyohara's body shifted. Muscle memory, sword sense, and battle cadence all became someone else's, yet also his own.
Faced with the descending great blade, the possessed Kiyohara stumbled forward instead of back. His sword traced a perfect curve and met the enemy's strike not where it was weakest, but at the strongest and most awkward point to answer.
Clang!
A much sharper metallic note exploded outward, and sparks scattered like fireflies.
The force running up the enemy blade should have crushed through any ordinary defense. Instead it felt as though he had smashed into a spinning coil of cotton. Seventy percent of the impact vanished.
Mizunosuke's eyes widened. "What?"
His sure-kill blow had been slid aside as if it had struck a fish slick with water.
He recoiled in horror. To do that, the boy in front of him would need a level of swordsmanship far higher than his own.
"How is this possible?" he snarled. "You're clearly not a sword ninja…"
He had seen it himself—Kiyohara using kunai, using tricks, using ninjutsu. The sword he held now had only been picked up from a corpse moments ago.
How could he wield it so naturally, so cleanly, like someone who had smoked the same habit for twenty years?
Inside the body, the young Kiyohara smiled.
Hard to understand?
To put it bluntly—your swordsmanship is a loli in the shinobi world.