Another Boring Uchiha Power Fantasy.

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[Obtained: Musical Talent!]

Name: Mikoto Uchiha

Age: 13

Rank: Chunin

Affinity: Lightning Affinity, Fire Affinity, Yin Affinity, Water Affinity

Unique: Immense Chakra Reserves, Sharingan (Dormant), Advanced Growth Rate

Skills: Fire Style Mastery, Water Style Mastery, Clone Jutsu, Substitution Jutsu, Transformation Jutsu, Shurikenjutsu, Basic Taijutsu, Basic Genjutsu, Body Flicker, Perfect Chakra Control, Uchiha Style: Kenjutsu, Stealth, Survival Knowledge, Cooking, Medical Ninjutsu (Mystical Palm), Fūinjutsu Affinity, Pedagogy Mastery, Space-Time Ninjutsu Affinity, Seven Heavens Breathing Method, Musical Talent

Equipment: Kunai, Shuriken, Smoke Bomb, Explosive Tags, Poison Gas Bomb, Flash Bomb, Gas/Sleep Bomb, Food Pills x103, Wire Strings, Shark Skin, Giant Folding Fan, Bingo Book, Training Weights, Fūma Shuriken x100, Hero Water x10

The supply run was the easiest mission they’d had in weeks.

The caravan was three wagons loaded with food, weapons, and medical supplies, pulled by mules along a supply road through the southern edge of the Rain front. Two drivers per wagon. A merchant liaison who handled the paperwork. Team Mikoto walking alongside them under a sky that couldn’t decide whether to drizzle or just threaten.

”This is nice.” Chōza said, stretching his arms behind his head.

”Don’t jinx it.” Shikaku muttered.

”What? I’m just saying it’s nice. Nobody’s trying to kill us. The rain even let up a little.”

”That’s exactly what someone says before something goes wrong.”

”Dude, you’re so paranoid.”

”I’m realistic.”

”Boys, enjoy the walk but stay vigilant please.” Mikoto spoke up.

The road wound through muddy lowland and thin forest, just behind the allied front lines. They passed two Konoha patrols going the opposite direction. A farmer loading a cart in the drizzle gave them a tired nod. The road was rutted and soft in places, puddles sitting in every low spot.

It felt almost calm. Mikoto knew it wasn’t, but for a few hours she let herself pretend.

They reached the outpost by mid-afternoon.

Outpost Eleven was a fortified camp built around a stone watchtower on a hill overlooking the southern supply road. Wooden walls, earthen berms, a gate with two sentries. Inside, maybe twenty Konoha shinobi went about the business of a rear-area station behind the front: sorting supplies, maintaining equipment, running messages. The fighting was all north of here, and people moved at a leisure pace because of it. Someone was playing a card game near the barracks. Rain dripped steadily off the watchtower eaves.

The special jonin in charge was a woman named Haruna. She was tall, with short-cropped blue hair.

”Team Mikoto?” She checked the manifest against the wagons. ”Supplies match. Good run.”

”Thank you, ma’am.”

”You can bunk here tonight and head back in the morning.” She signed the delivery form and handed it back. ”Actually, before you settle in. I could use a favor.”

”Of course.”

”Camp Fourteen, about six kilometers east. A messenger hawk came in from them this morning. Crush injuries from a collapsed storage shelter, and their medic’s down with a fever. They asked for some help from nearby allies.” She glanced at Mikoto. ”I hear you’re trained in medical ninjutsu.”

”I am.”

”Would you mind? It’s a quick run. You’d be back before you know it.”

Mikoto looked at her genin. Shikaku was already eyeing the card game by the barracks. Inoichi was talking to one of the sentries. Chōza was sniffing in the direction of the mess area. Twenty shinobi and a special jonin. This was the safest place in the sector.

”Will they be alright here?” she asked.

Haruna glanced at the three genin and almost smiled. ”This is the quietest post behind the front. Nothing happens here. Go, handle the consult, and come back in no time. Your kids will be fine.”

Mikoto nodded. She turned to her team.

”I’m heading to a nearby camp for a quick medical task. I’ll be back in a few minutes. Behave.”

”We always behave.” Inoichi felt offended.

”We’re good boys.” Shikaku agreed.

”...” Mikoto narrowed her eyes.

The two didn’t break. Chōza gave her a reliable thumbs up. She shook her head with a smile and left through the gate.

The trail east was quiet. Forest on both sides, the drizzle muffling everything, a swollen stream running parallel to the path. Mikoto ran at full shinobi speed, the trees blurring past her.

She reached Camp Fourteen in a few minutes.

Something was wrong.

The camp was small, maybe a dozen tents around a central fire pit. The tents were still standing. The fire pit was cold. Everything looked intact from a distance.

But it was empty. No voices. No movement. No one tending the fire pit or sorting equipment or doing any of the hundred small tasks a functioning camp produced at every hour. Just tents and silence and the wind moving canvas that nobody was inside.

Mikoto drew Shark Skin.

She checked the first tent. Empty. Bedrolls laid out, gear stacked, a half-eaten bowl of rice with chopsticks still balanced across the rim. The second tent was the same. The third.

The fourth tent was the medical tent, and that was where she found them.

Nine bodies. Laid out in rows on the tent floor, arranged with a care that was worse than carelessness, because it meant whoever did this had taken time. Konoha shinobi, all of them. Single deep slashes across throats. No signs of a fight inside the tent. They’d been killed elsewhere, probably in their sleep or at their posts, and moved here. Hidden. Not to conceal the atrocity, but to buy time. To make Camp Fourteen look empty rather than dead to anyone passing through, so the alarm wouldn’t rise until it was too late.

The blood was dark. Hours old.

Mikoto’s heart hammered against her ribs. Enemy shinobi. Just behind the front lines. Deep in allied territory. A covert unit that had killed an entire camp silently and then hidden the evidence, which meant this wasn’t a raid. This was preparation. You killed Camp Fourteen so it couldn’t reinforce or raise alarm for whatever you hit next.

And the nearest target east of here was nothing.

But the nearest target west was Outpost Eleven.

Where her genin were.

She was out of the tent and running before the thought finished forming.

…

On the way back she encountered three Iwa shinobi positioned along the path between Camp Fourteen and Outpost Eleven, a screening element left behind to intercept anyone who discovered the dead camp and tried to raise alarm. They were hiding in the trees, still, professional, doing exactly what a covert unit does after eliminating a secondary target: watching the road.

Mikoto was moving at full speed when the first attack came. A kunai from the left, aimed at her throat, thrown by someone who’d been sitting motionless in the treetops for hours. She twisted and it sliced past her ear close enough to nick the skin. A second came from the right. Then three more from behind.

She hit the ground rolling and came up with Shark Skin drawn.

Three shinobi dropped from the trees. Iwa headbands. Flak jackets. The first was muscular and low to the ground, palms already flat against the earth, chakra flowing. The second stood thirty meters back between two trees, a pouch of weapons open at his hip, kunai and shuriken between every finger. The third was directly in front of her, sword drawn, feet set.

Close range. Mid range. Long range. A unit designed to cover every distance and leave no gaps.

The swordsman’s eyes found Shark Skin. They widened.

”That sword.” He looked at his teammates. ”That’s the bandaged cleaver. The one from the bingo book.”

”The Shredding Sword,” the weapons specialist said from the back. ”We just got lucky, boys.”

Mikoto didn’t care what they called her. She cared about the distance between her and her genin.

”Please get out of my way, this is your only chance to live.” She requested.

They didn’t move. They attacked simultaneously.

The swordsman closed first. His blade came in fast, a diagonal slash aimed at her shoulder, and Shark Skin met it. The swords connected and the swordsman’s eyes widened as the cleaver’s edge caught his blade and cleaved the steel. He disengaged, circled, and came again.

While she was engaged, the earth user struck. The ground beneath her heaved, cracking open in a line that raced toward her feet. She jumped, and the moment she was airborne the weapons specialist threw. Four shuriken in a spread pattern, cutting off her lateral movement. She deflected two with Shark Skin and twisted past the others, and the swordsman was there when she landed, blade already swinging.

She blocked. Countered. Shark Skin carved a chunk out of his replacement earth-style sword and he backed off. The earth user raised a wall between her and the weapons specialist, blocking her line of sight, and she heard the soft papery sound of explosive tags waving from a kunai behind the wall.

They were rotating. The swordsman engaged, the earth user reshaped the terrain, the weapons specialist punished every gap. When she pushed the swordsman back, the earth user trapped her feet. When she broke free, the weapons specialist filled the air with steel. When she targeted the weapons specialist, the swordsman intercepted.

No single one of them was a match for her. Together, they were a genuine delay.

Every second she spent here was a second her genin might not have.

She stopped playing their game.

Mikoto swung Shark Skin at the swordsman in a massive arc that forced him to choose between blocking and keeping his arms. He chose his arms and leapt back. She used the opening to Body Flicker straight at the earth user. A rock pillar burst from the ground to intercept her; she ran up it, launched off the top, and came down on him from above. Shark Skin split him from collarbone to waist.

Two left.

The weapons specialist cursed in annoyance before he threw everything he had. Kunai, shuriken, explosive tags, all at once, a wall of steel and paper. Mikoto Body Flickered through it, appearing behind the swordsman before he’d finished turning. She kicked him between the legs. Something broke. He dropped to his knees and his head went flying into the sky.

The weapons specialist turned to run.

Mikoto threw a lightning-coated kunai. It pierced through his back and out through his chest. He stumbled, hit a tree, and slid to the ground.

She was already gone.

And then she saw the smoke.

A black column, rising over the treeline to the west. From the direction of Outpost Eleven.

Her blood went cold.

She ran faster than she had ever run in her life.

Outpost Eleven was burning.

Shikaku heard the first explosion while he was losing at cards.

The wall on the eastern side of the outpost erupted inward. Earth jutsu. Chunks of wood and packed dirt flew across the compound and the sentries who’d been standing on either side of the gate were thrown like dolls. Dust and debris filled the air.

Then the screaming started.

Iwa shinobi poured through the breach. A dozen of them hitting the outpost from the east while a second group came over the northern wall. The stationed Konoha shinobi scrambled for weapons. Haruna was already moving, leaping from the watchtower into the thick of it, her blade drawn.

Shikaku saw her meet the first wave at the breach. Three Iwa chunin rushed her and she cut through one, blocked the second, kicked the third back. But more kept coming. Four more. Then another three from the northern wall converging on her position. A dozen enemy shinobi swarming around the strongest defender like dogs on a bear, pinning her in place, keeping her too busy to do anything except survive.

Shikaku grabbed his ninja pouch and found Inoichi and Chōza by the barracks. Both had their weapons drawn. Both were pale but ready.

”Stay together,” Shikaku said. ”We have to survive until Mikoto-sensei comes back.” He didn’t know why he felt that his chunin captain would protect them better than the special jonin in charge of this outpost. It was just a feeling. Not logic. Just what his heart told him. And he believed it.

The Konoha defenders met the Iwa assault at the breach and the fighting was brutal and messy. Steel on steel, jutsu tearing through the compound, bodies falling. The defenders were outnumbered but they were holding, pushing back, keeping the breach from widening.

Then someone walked through.

The jonin came through the breach like it meant nothing. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a katana in his right hand that caught the firelight. His Iwa headband was scarred. His face was calm. He walked past the fighting on either side of him like it was scenery.

His eyes swept the compound. They passed over the defending Konoha shinobi. They passed over the burning buildings. They landed on three genin huddled near the barracks.

He studied them for a moment. The big one with the staff. The ponytail. The blond.

His mouth curved.

”Ino-Shika-Cho.”

Shikaku’s stomach dropped.

”I’ve fought your clans before,” the jonin said, walking toward them with the katana resting on his shoulder. ”Yamanaka. Nara. Akimichi. Never together, thankfully. That’d be more trouble than I’m interested in.” His smile widened. ”But you three aren’t the real thing yet, are you? Just brats wearing your clans’ names.”

”We need to move. Now.” Shikaku whispered to the others.

”You’re the Nara.” The jonin’s eyes locked onto Shikaku. ”A smart one. I can see it. You’re already thinking. How far to the nearest shadow. How long your jutsu can hold me. Whether your friends can get away if you buy them time.” He tilted his head. ”The answer to all three is: not long enough.”

He disappeared.

One moment he was twenty meters away. The next he was in front of Inoichi, katana already swinging.

Inoichi barely got his chakra blades up in time. The katana hit them and the impact drove him backward, his feet carving furrows in the dirt. The water coating on the blades absorbed most of the force. He parried a second strike, a third, but the fourth came from an angle he couldn’t read and the katana slashed across his left side, opening a gash from his ribs to his hip.

Inoichi gasped. He looked down at the red spreading across his shirt. His legs wobbled.

The jonin kicked him in the chest. Inoichi flew backward and hit the barracks wall. He slid to the ground and didn’t get up. The chakra blades fell from his hands. Blood pooled beneath him.

”INOICHI!” Chōza screamed.

Something broke in Chōza’s chest.

He breathed in.

The oxygen flooded his lungs. More than he’d ever taken in. His chest expanded. His vision sharpened. The world slowed down by a fraction and everything in it became clear in a way it hadn’t been a second ago.

”SEVEN HEAVENLY BREATHS, FIRST ACTIVATION!”

His eyes went white. A surge of yellow chakra erupted from his body like a cloak. His muscles tightened, coiled, and the strength that poured through them was unlike anything he’d ever felt.

Chōza grabbed his bo staff and charged.

The jonin turned to meet him, katana raised, still smiling. The smile lasted until Chōza’s staff connected with his guard.

The impact blew the jonin backward. His sandals carved trenches in the dirt. His arms shook from blocking a strike that had no business hitting that hard from a leaf brat. His eyes widened for the first time.

”What the-”

Chōza didn’t give him time to finish. He swung again. And again. Overhead, lateral, upward, each blow carrying the full force of the First Activation behind it. The jonin blocked, parried, dodged, but each impact drove him further back. The yellow cloak around Chōza pulsed with every swing.

”NOW, SHIKAKU!” Chōza screamed.

Shikaku was ready. Shadow Possession Jutsu.

His shadow surged across the ground and caught the jonin mid-retreat. The man froze. His katana arm locked at his side. His legs stopped moving.

Shikaku poured everything he had into the bind. His chakra drained like water through a cracked cup. A jonin’s body fighting against the technique was like trying to hold a river with his hands. He had seconds.

Chōza saw the opening. He closed the distance in one step and brought the staff down on the jonin’s sword arm with everything the First Activation could give him.

The arm broke.

The snap was loud and ugly. The jonin’s katana clattered to the ground. His face contorted, the first real expression of pain he’d shown, and a scream tore out of his throat that was more rage than agony.

Shikaku’s chakra was reduced to dregs. The Shadow Possession snapped off and he staggered, vision swimming, his body suddenly weak from the drain. The jonin was free.

The jonin’s good hand scooped up his katana and he swung one-handed at Chōza in a single furious arc.

The blade caught Chōza across the chest.

The cut was deep, shearing through shirt, skin, and into the pectoral muscle beneath his left collarbone before trailing down in a long, shallow, bleeding gash toward his right hip. The yellow cloak flickered and died. His eyes returned to normal. His bo staff fell from his hands.

He hit the ground face-first.

”CHŌZA!” Shikaku screamed.

Blood spread beneath his friend’s body. Too fast. Too much. The cut ran from his left shoulder to his right hip and everything along it was open and red.

Shikaku’s mind was screaming at him. Run. Body Flicker. Get distance. Find Mikoto. Find anyone.

He tried.

His feet left the ground and the Body Flicker technique pulled him three meters to the left before a boot caught him in the ribs. The jonin had read it.

The kick launched Shikaku sideways. He hit Chōza’s body and rolled across the blood-soaked dirt, tangling with his friend’s limp arm. He came to a stop on his back, staring up at the sky.

He couldn’t breathe. His ribs were cracked from the kick. Chōza was beside him, face-down, bleeding out. Inoichi was against the wall twenty meters away, not moving.

The jonin walked over. He picked up his katana with his good hand. His broken arm hung at his side, bent at the wrong angle. His face was twisted with pain and fury and something like grudging respect.

”Konoha always has unnaturally talented brats for some unthinkable reason...” He grumbled.

He raised the katana over Shikaku’s chest.

Shikaku’s hand found Chōza’s. He squeezed.

I’m sorry, Mikoto-sensei.

I’m sorry, Chōza. Inoichi.

Mom. Dad.

I’m sorry I’m not coming home again...

The sword came down.