Another Boring Uchiha Power Fantasy.

Mikoto stepped through the hole in the wall.

The rain hit her face. The wind hit her body. The sound of the battle hit her like a wall of noise, steel and screaming and the grinding roar of ninjutsu tearing the ridge apart. Fifty meters ahead, the Iwa wedge was closing on the tower. Six shinobi in formation, earth-brown flak jackets, headbands gleaming wet. Behind them, a second wave of Ame nin spread across the broken eastern approach like dark water filling a crack.

Mikoto planted her feet. She wove forty-four hand signs in four seconds.

”Water Style: Water Dragon Jutsu.”

She didn’t pull from puddles. She didn’t pull from the rain. She opened her mouth and the dragon came out of her, a torrent of chakra-dense water that coiled and shaped itself mid-air into something massive and roaring and alive. It was twice the size of the one she’d used on the hillside. The rain fed it as it flew, swelling the body, thickening the coils, until the thing that crashed into the Iwa wedge was less a jutsu and more a natural disaster.

The formation shattered. The dragon hit the front three shinobi and they simply stopped existing as people and became part of the jutsu itself. One of them slammed into a boulder with enough force that they died. Another was dragged across the rocks, tumbling, his body bouncing off stone until the dragon’s momentum ran out and dropped him in a broken heap thirty meters from where he’d been standing. The third went under the water and didn’t come back up.

The back three scattered. One of them was fast enough to dodge. Two weren’t fast enough and caught the tail end of the surge, water slamming them off their feet and sending them rolling across the muddy slope.

Mikoto didn’t watch the results. She was already moving.

Body Flicker.

She appeared beside the Iwa nin who had dodged, the one who was already spinning to face the tower with his hands forming seals. He saw her for a quarter of a second. Shark Skin came across his midsection and the cleaver sliced through his flak jacket and into the body beneath. His chakra flooded into the sword and the sword fed it back to Mikoto.

He dropped and she was gone before he hit the ground.

Body Flicker once more.

She appeared behind one of the two who’d been knocked down by the dragon’s tail. He was on his hands and knees, coughing water, trying to stand. Shark Skin caught him across the back of the neck. The sword shredded through muscle and vertebrae and his head went flying.

Body Flicker again.

The second one had gotten to his feet. He saw her coming. He threw a kunai. She tilted her head and it passed her ear close enough to nick the skin. She closed the distance and drove Shark Skin into his guard, the sword’s bulk smashing his arms aside, and the follow-through tore across his chest in a spray of red.

Six seconds. Five of the Iwa wedge down. The sixth, the one the dragon had hit head-on against the boulder, was already dead.

The Ame nin behind them saw it happen.

Some of them hesitated. Some of them didn’t. A cluster of four broke toward the tower, ignoring Mikoto entirely, sprinting for the breach in the wall where the wounded lay helpless on the stone floor.

Mikoto saw them. She Body Flickered.

The technique hit her body like fire. She’d used it four times in ten seconds and her muscles were screaming. The burst of speed pulled her from one point to another and she landed between the four Ame nin and the tower breach with Shark Skin raised and her teeth bared.

The first one came at her with a kunai in each hand. She caught his right wrist with her left hand and swung Shark Skin one-handed into his ribs. The blade dug in and ripped sideways and his chakra drained into the blade so fast his skin went pale before he fell. She shoved his body into the second one, tangling them, and Body Flickered behind the third.

Her muscles burned. She ignored it.

Shark Skin came down on the third Ame nin’s shoulder and carved a trench from collarbone to hip. His legs gave out as he fell forward. The fourth one, the smart one, was already retreating, hands weaving seals, water gathering from the rain into a pressurized stream aimed at her face.

She performed a one-handed jutsu weaving through handsigns with her free hand. Genjutsu. A half-second shift in his perception, her image displaced a step to the right. His water jutsu blasted empty air. Mikoto stepped inside the arc of his technique and brought Shark Skin up in a rising cut that opened him from belt to throat.

Ten down. The tower was safe. For now.

She turned to face the battlefield.

It was worse than the sounds had told her. The trenches were rubble. The second line had collapsed into scattered knots of Konoha shinobi fighting back-to-back. She could see Tsuga and Hai on the western slope, the Inuzuka a blur of claws and fangs, Fang Over Fang drilling through an Ame nin’s guard while Hai savaged another from behind. But three more were converging on her position and Tsuga couldn’t see them coming.

Mikoto Body Flickered.

The pain was real now. Each jump sent a jolt of white-hot agony from her shoulders to her feet, the muscles tearing at a level she could feel but couldn’t afford to acknowledge. She landed on the western slope and Shark Skin took the first of the three across the legs, cutting him down. The second whipped toward her with an umbrella, senbon launching from the mechanism in a spray of steel. She swung Shark Skin in a wide arc and the blade’s surface blocked the needles. She closed the distance and the blade found his chest.

The third ran.

She let him run. Tsuga’s head snapped toward the sound of his retreating footsteps and she launched Fang Over Fang at his back. The drill of claws connected and he went down screaming.

Tsuga landed in a crouch. She looked at Mikoto. Her eyes were wild.

Mikoto didn’t stop. She couldn’t stop. Across the ridge, she could see the eastern side where Tetsu’s position had fallen. Konoha shinobi were being pushed back toward the tower. An Iwa nin with his palms flat on the ground was raising a wall of earth to cut off their retreat, boxing them in for the Ame nin behind them to finish.

Body Flicker.

Her right calf seized up. She stumbled on the landing, caught herself, and kept moving. The Iwa nin saw her too late. Shark Skin came down on his arms where they touched the ground and the sword slashed through his wrists. His earth jutsu collapsed. The wall crumbled. The trapped Konoha shinobi poured through the gap, some of them bleeding, all of them running.

One of them, a chunin with blood in his hair, looked back at her.

”Who the hell are you?!”

”Keep moving!”

He didn’t stop to question her.

She stood on the eastern slope with Shark Skin writhing beneath the transformation jutsu. A dozen Ame and Iwa nin spread across the broken approach, regrouping, their eyes on the girl in the middle of the ridge who had just killed half their forward assault in under a minute.

She was the target now. Good.

She charged.

She ran into the nearest cluster. Two Ame nin, shoulder to shoulder, both reaching for weapons. She swung Shark Skin in a horizontal arc that caught the first across the chest and sliced the second’s arm.

An Iwa nin came at her from the left, hands forming seals, earth already crawling up her ankles to pin her. She ripped her feet free and kicked off the forming stone, launching herself forward with raw physical strength. Fire chakra gathered in her lungs as she weaved through hand signs of her own.

”Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu.”

The massive fireball bloomed from her mouth and hit the Iwa nin point-blank. He got his arms up. It didn’t matter. The flames engulfed him and the two shinobi behind him. One of them rolled free, burning, slapping at his own body. The other didn’t.

More were coming. She could see them on the ridge, emerging from the northern approach in twos and threes, fresh squads rotating in to replace the dead. How many enemies were there? How many could they afford to throw at one outpost?

It didn’t matter. She was here and they were here and the people behind her were alive because she was standing between them.

Body Flicker.

Her left leg faltered. A hitch in the stride that turned her landing ugly. She came out of the technique off-balance and an Ame nin with a kunai was right there, close, too close. The blade scored across her left forearm, a shallow cut that burned. She couldn’t heal it. There was no time. She smashed Shark Skin into his face with the flat of the blade and his jaw shattered as he was sent flying away.

She kept moving.

The battlefield had shifted. She could feel it. The Konoha defenders who’d been scattered and retreating were watching her. Some of them were rallying, not because anyone gave an order but because the little girl with the massive sword was still standing and still killing and if she could do it then they could hold a kunai.

The chunin with the rebuilt shoulder from the tower was back in the fight, throwing shuriken at an Ame nin whose attention was fixed on Mikoto. Two of the three shuriken connected. The Ame nin staggered. Mikoto ran over to him and finished it.

A Konoha genin, one she’d healed earlier, the one with the thigh wound, was fighting from behind a broken section of trench wall. He couldn’t move fast but he could throw sharp weaponry and he was throwing them at every enemy that came within range. One of his throws caught an Iwa nin in the throat.

They were fighting back.

But the enemy was fighting too. And they had numbers.

A scream from behind her. The tower.

She spun. Two Ame nin had circled wide around the western slope and come at the tower from the south, the blind side. They were at the breach. One of them was already inside.

Body Flicker.

The pain was blinding. Her legs were shaking so badly she could barely stand when she landed. But she landed, at the breach, and the Ame nin who was climbing through the hole turned to face her and Shark Skin hit him so hard the impact drove him back through the opening and into his partner outside. They went down in a tangle. Mikoto stepped through and used Shark Skin to slash through the first one’s chest. The second scrambled free and she caught him with a water bullet that crushed his sternum against the tower wall.

She stood there, gasping. Her muscles were on fire. The cut on her arm was bleeding freely. Shark Skin was shivering, engorged, bigger than it had been at the start of the night under the transformation jutsu.

Inside the tower, one of the wounded was dead. The genin with the back laceration. He was lying face-down near the breach with a kunai in his neck. The Ame nin who’d gotten inside had killed him before Mikoto arrived.

She stared at the body.

He was maybe fifteen. Brown hair. She’d healed his back twenty minutes ago. She’d knitted the muscle fibers together with her own chakra and told him to rest and he’d rested and now he was dead with a kunai in his neck because she hadn’t been fast enough.

“I’m sorry…” She couldn’t look at him for long. There were more coming.

She went back through the breach.

The next hour was the longest of her life.

She fought across the ridge in a blur of steel and chakra. Body Flicker after Body Flicker, each one worse than the last, each one tearing something in her legs. It wasn’t until she politely asked her sword that she realized it could’ve healed her this entire time. Shark Skin’s stolen chakra could help heal herself without much difficulty at all! 

Why did I have to ask you nicely to heal me instead of just healing me…? She asked. And all she received was the urgence of a spoiled and engorged fish sword who wanted her to keep slashing and cutting.

She killed an Iwa nin with a kunai throw that sliced through his throat. She killed an Ame nin by catching his eyes with a genjutsu, making him see the rain turning into his worst nightmare, and driving Shark Skin through the back of his neck while he attacked empty air. She killed a vest-wearing Iwa nin in a straight fight, trading blows, his earth-hardened fists cracking against Shark Skin’s transformed body until the sword ate enough of his chakra that his jutsu crumbled and his fists were just fists and Shark Skin ate the rest.

She couldn’t save everyone.

A Konoha shinobi she didn’t know went down on the western slope with an earth spear through his chest. She was forty meters away, fighting two Ame nin, and by the time she killed them both and turned around, he was long gone.

Another one died at the second line. An Ame nin had gotten behind the defenders and cut a genin’s throat before anyone saw him. Tsuga killed the Ame nin two seconds later, but two seconds was two seconds too late.

A third died holding the eastern approach alone after everyone else had fallen back. She didn’t see it happen. She heard the explosion and when she looked, there was a crater where they were and nothing else.

Three dead on her watch. Three people she couldn’t reach in time.

She kept fighting.

The enemy’s rhythm was breaking. She could feel it in the way they moved, the hesitation in their approaches, the way their formations loosened when she appeared on their flank. They were taking losses they hadn’t expected. Every squad that pushed for the tower left bodies on the ridge. The rain washed blood downhill in thin streams that joined and widened and ran like veins across the stone.

Word was spreading among them. She could hear it in the shouted warnings that preceded her attacks. A girl. An Uchiha. The poisoned sword. Don’t engage alone. Don’t let her get close.

They were afraid of her.

Fear wasn’t enough or in Shark Skin’s opinion, there wasn’t enough fear. They kept coming. But each wave was thinner. Each push was shorter. The intervals between attacks stretched from twenty minutes to thirty to forty-five. Their commanders were recalculating. The cost of this outpost was climbing and the girl on the ridge was the reason.

At dawn, the rain eased.

Mikoto was standing at the center of the ridge with Shark Skin in her hands, soaked in blood, and her legs firm. Around her, the outpost was rubble and mud and bodies. Konoha’s dead and the enemy’s dead, mixed together in the rain, indistinguishable in the grey morning light except by the headbands.

The last Ame squad had pulled back ten minutes ago. They hadn’t come again.

Tsuga was sitting against a trench wall with Hai’s head in her lap, both of them bloody, both of them breathing. Tetsu was propped against the tower’s eastern wall, one hand pressed against his bandaged side, his kikaichū far less than with what he started with.

Numerous Konoha shinobi had started the night in fighting condition. Six were still alive. Three of those six were wounded badly enough that they couldn’t stand. Sozen was conscious inside the tower, giving orders through the doorway in a voice that sounded like gravel being stepped on.

Mikoto had lost count of how many she’d killed. She stopped counting after the twentieth. The number didn’t matter. What mattered was the number of people she hadn’t saved.

She sat down on the wet stone. Shark Skin lay across her knees, still shivering, grotesquely swollen with stolen chakra underneath the transformation jutsu. She could sense it. Shark Skin used some of that chakra to heal her injuries, making it look like she wasn’t harmed at all throughout this entire battle.

The young Uchiha thought that she should heal the others. She should check on the wounded in the tower and assess Tetsu’s side and make sure Hai’s leg was still holding.

She sat for one minute. Just one. The rain fell on her face and she let it.

Then she stood up and went back to work.

The reinforcements arrived six hours later.

Several dozen Konoha shinobi crested the southern ridge at noon, moving fast, weapons drawn, ready for a fight that was already over. The jonin leading them stopped at the edge of the outpost and looked at what was left.

Trenches destroyed. Tower breached. Bodies on every slope. Blood in the mud.

And in the middle of it, a thirteen-year-old Uchiha girl with a sword across her back and green chakra glowing from her hands as she healed a man whose arm was hanging by threads.

The jonin looked at Sozen, who had been carried outside and propped against the tower wall in the morning light.

”What happened here?”

Sozen looked at Mikoto. He looked back at the jonin.

”She happened.”