"Sothing happened."
Shikamaru slid the flare back into his pack, voice low. The sky looked ready to catch fire. He did not need to spell it out.
"Nothing serious."
Kono shook her head.
With the Byakugan, the urgent scene did not deceive her. She swept the periter and marked every pair of green eyes.
A pack of wild gray wolves, minds gone feral.
In this world, natural energy made wildlife bigger than in her past life. The wolves hemming them in were massive, many close to two ters from nose to tail. Their swaying tails were thicker than a grown man's thigh.
Without firearms, even Tyson might co up short.
But this was the shinobi world.
She flicked her gaze again. Not a flicker of chakra in any of the twenty-odd bodies. Without chakra, numbers did not matter. They were at on a block.
"How can it be nothing. Look how many there are."
Ino did not buy it. Low growls rippled from the dark. Green eyes pulsed and promised danger. One or two wolves were manageable. A charging pack, when none of them had large-area jutsu, was another story. Up close, those jaws were wider than a face. One bite would not cripple. It would cut a person in half.
"If Kono says it is fine, it is fine."
Naruto took her side before she spoke. Since he had put Yuta's trio in their place, the sneers in class had faded. No one dared call him dead last or monster to his face.
Kono had not lied to him. Loathing and scorn were only the weak looking down. If he kept growing stronger, people would understand.
As his strength rose, so did Kono's weight in his mind. He trusted her judgnt without conditions.
"Tch, talking to you is pointless."
Ino, for the first ti, tasted the despair of soone with a crush-brain. She turned to Shikamaru.
"Listen to Kono first." Knowing what jonin-level power looked like, Shikamaru chose the smart path. "What do you want us to do."
"Nothing. Just protect yourselves."
Kono picked up the boar's severed head from the dirt. The cut at the neck had long clotted into a ragged, black crust.
The stink of old blood sent the wolves into a frenzy. Growls layered over one another. In the next instant, three wolves could not hold back. They sprang with a single howl, shadows blotting Kono's small fra.
Ino flinched and rushed with a kunai.
"Do not."
Naruto yanked her back, blocking Chōji and Shikamaru with an arm, barely hiding his excitent.
Before anyone could ask
zzzt
hum
light flickered.
Air around Kono rippled like a lake under rain, an invisible arc spreading from her skin.
The three leaping wolves froze for a blink. Then their heads, claws, and chests burst red. Like a misaligned puzzle cube, each section slid apart.
Thud.
Thud.
at fell like dumplings into broth. Smooth-cut chunks spattered the ground. The stink rode the air like a pink haze.
Ino clapped a hand over her mouth. The colors of torn organs turned her stomach.
"Wind Release."
Shikamaru's eyes hardened. He phrased it as a question, but he was sure. Training Yin Release had honed his mind. Even at a distance, the edge around Kono was so keen his skin prickled as if under a knife.
Naruto stared at the clean figure standing amid gore, spotless and calm. His eyes shone.
"Kono told . It is new and hard to control. If you do not want to be minced, do not get close."
That settled it. Team Ino–Shika–Chō backed off fast and did not stop until Kono was a third her size to their eyes.
The wolves did not care.
Blood scent whipped them wild. It was impossible to tell which howl led the charge. The pack threw itself forward like a suicide squad.
What followed was a slaughterhouse.
Kono did not move. Wolves flooded in and, with each flicker of light, broke into eight pieces and toppled. It was as if an unseen wire traced a periter around her. Cross it and Wind Release tore everything to rags.
Thirty seconds later, the last wolf parted silently.
Under the crimson dusk, the ground around Kono was a mosaic of at. Only the space beneath her feet stayed clean.
Their nerves still fired. On the flat-cut faces, bright red muscle fibers pulsed and twitched.
Chōji's eyelids jumped. The boar he had just eaten churned.
Ino pressed her lips tight. Roast fat, blood, and gut-stink mixed and rose. The oil that had tasted so good now made her gag.
Thump.
The tusked boar head rolled and ca to rest among the wolf scraps. Because the wolf remains were so fine, the boar's head, intact and wrong, stood out.
Water hissed into being. It coiled over Kono's pale hands like a ta serpent and washed away the grease from dinner. Even the wolves' blood could not touch her. The Wind Release had sliced every spray to mist.
The water rinsed a clear path through the red.
Kono stepped along the flowing ribbon and out of the ring of gore. Her white cloak still floated pristine.
Shikamaru finally understood why his father forbade him from provoking Kono. After watching those deaths, he did not dare stand close. From now on he would keep a three-ter safety buffer. He did not want to die in pieces too small to gather.
If he felt that way, the others felt worse. Ino and Chōji, both close to vomiting, backed away fast as Kono approached, as if they could flee into a neighboring training ground.
Only Naruto swaggered up two steps.
"What now."
"I do not know."
Kono halted for Ino's sake. She pointed to the ss. "These are not Training Ground Zero stock. Their state is wrong. They were aggravated by sothing."
"You an soone sicced them on us."
Shikamaru caught her aning at once. His mind spun.
"The target is us students. Whatever the goal, we just need to deny them. I propose we abandon the exercise and exit the ground."
"Agreed." "Agreed."
Chōji and Ino spoke together. All three, and Naruto, looked to Kono. At so point she had beco the de facto leader.
"Do it."
She decided. She had planned to use the chaos to kill the watcher, but with only animals on the field and no handler exposing themselves, she had no trail. For now, get Naruto and the others out.
Hoo.
Wind bood. "Careful," Ino shouted, head tipping back.
A great bird had appeared overhead. Sothing dropped and fell straight toward them.
They scattered.
Boom.
A black bundle slamd into the earth and burst. A flood of powder swallowed them whole.
At the sa ti, on the eastern side of Training Ground Zero, storm and thunder exploded, turning the dim forest bright as noon.
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