The three of them followed the sounds of combat, creeping closer. The nearer they got, the more violent the noise beca.
Tsunade crouched against a crumbling wall, peeking her head around the corner. The open area in the center of the village looked as if it had been torn apart. Several deep fissures ripped through the ground, and two wooden houses had partially collapsed, leaving a wasteland of shattered tiles and broken beams.
Murakami Takuya was still fighting.
His left arm hung limp, his sleeve soaked in blood, and he had switched his short sword to his right hand. A gash ran from his hairline down to his brow; half his face was sared red, and his left eye was swollen shut.
The bald man stood opposite him, holding his tachi. His breathing remained steady, almost undisturbed.
He swung the blade down with a heavy, whistling force. Murakami Takuya pivoted his body to evade the strike, slashing back in a fluid motion, but he only managed to tear the fabric of the man's side. In the next instant, Takuya drove his knee into the man's abdon, slamming him into a collapsed wooden wall. A spray of splinters exploded around them.
Takuya leaned on his sword as he stood back up, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth.
Crouched behind the wall, Tsunade found herself unable to speak. It wasn't that she had never seen a fight before, but she had never seen soone push themselves this hard when they were clearly at their limit.
Kitahara Kaede crouched to her right, silent.
He wasn't focusing on the brutality of the fight. He was observing—the distance, the angles, and the montary gap in the bald man's recovery after each strike. He was also calculating how much chakra he had left.
After the previous battle, he didn't have much. But he believed he had enough for one Chidori.
Just one.
The bald man swung again. Murakami Takuya raised his sword to block; steel clashed against steel, sending sparks flying, but the sheer force of the blow drove Takuya down to one knee. The gap in their strength was simply too vast.
Suddenly, the bald man tilted his head, his gaze piercing through the dust toward the broken wall. He smirked.
"Still alive, are we? You three little mice."
Tsunade's spine stiffened.
"You're far more capable than your leader here," the man said, pressing his blade down another inch. "The waste I brought along were all handled by three brats."
Murakami Takuya froze.
*All handled? All sixteen of them?*
His lips twitched as he tried to smile, but his mouth was too full of blood to manage it. Then, his heart sank. *Why are these three children still here?*
"...What are you doing here?" he squeezed the words out through gritted teeth, his voice hoarse and burning with anger. "I told you to run!"
There was no response.
The bald man flicked the blood off his tachi and laughed loudly. "Don't be in such a hurry. I'll finish you off first, then I'll deal with them slowly. They're just three brats, after all."
With that, he stopped looking toward the wall entirely.
Kitahara Kaede noted this. From start to finish, this man did not view them as a threat.
That was a good thing.
What Kaede needed was a window—a mont where the opponent was facing the captain, positioned sideways to Kaede, and stationary. He needed an unobstructed straight line for a dash.
The window hadn't opened yet.
He cast a subtle glance to his side. At the three o'clock position, a collapsed house provided enough cover to mask his approach. It was roughly thirteen ters to the man's back, with rubble and broken beams in between that would make changing direction during a sprint impossible.
The version of Chidori he currently possessed did not allow for mid-dash course corrections. He needed to be in position beforehand.
Silently, Kitahara Kaede vanished from Tsunade's right side.
Tsunade didn't notice. She shrank back behind the wall, her back against the stone, her chest tightening with anxiety.
"I'm going in to help," Jiraiya said, drawing a kunai, his voice strained.
Tsunade glanced at him. "Go in? Look closely—the captain can't even hold him off. If we go in, we're just giving him two more people to stab."
Jiraiya grit his teeth. "So we just watch? Watch the captain get killed?"
Tsunade didn't answer, staring down at her own fists. *Is there any way? Any jutsu, any strategy, even sothing small to help?*
She couldn't think of anything. That man had been playing with them the entire ti; the captain had fought like a demon just to barely survive.
She closed her eyes, then opened them again.
"...Go."
The word felt like it was being torn from her throat, more painful than taking a punch. "While the captain can still distract him. Go."
She turned to look at Kitahara Kaede. The spot was empty. Only she and Jiraiya remained behind the broken wall.
Tsunade's mind went blank. "Kaede?"
There was no answer.
She gripped the edge of the wall and looked out, her eyes scanning the battlefield frantically—
Then she heard it. Everyone heard it.
*Chirp—chirp chirp chirp—*
It sounded like a thousand birds screaming at once.
***
Kitahara Kaede was already in position.
Using the collapsed house as cover, he had circled to the flank of the battlefield, suppressing his footsteps and shallowing his breath. He hadn't told Tsunade; he knew she would have stopped him.
Crouching against the ruins, he peered over the broken bricks at the fight.
Thirteen ters.
A rubble-strewn path, one broken beam, and a shallow pit. This route only worked if the opponent remained stationary and facing forward.
*Wait.*
The captain took another hit. Blood sprayed from his shoulder.
Kaede's fingers twitched. *Not yet. He's still moving. Hold it.*
***
Murakami Takuya looked at his useless left arm, then at the reflecting blade of the tachi before him. Surprisingly, he felt a sense of peace.
Those three children had taken down sixteen n. Genin capable of such a feat had far more value to the future than he did.
What he had to do now was simple. Distract him. Hold him for as long as possible.
The bald man raised his tachi high.
Murakami Takuya didn't retreat. He lunged forward with his short sword—not to block, but as a trade of lives. He threw his own body into the attack, driving his short sword deep into the man's thigh.
The blade sank three inches into the flesh.
The bald man grunted, caught off guard by such a desperate tactic. His tachi struck off-center, slicing through the captain's shoulder down to the bone.
Both n recoiled. Murakami Takuya collapsed to his knees. His right knee supported him; his left was already ruined. The short sword remained embedded in the enemy's leg.
The bald man looked down at the blade in his thigh, pulled it out, and tossed it aside. Blood flowed down his trouser leg. The smile vanished completely from his face.
"Death wish, then."
He gripped his tachi and walked toward Takuya, step by step.
Murakami Takuya looked up. Only one thought remained in his mind: *Did those three brats get away?*
The bald man raised his sword.
Then, the birds sang.
***
The window was open.
Takuya's desperate strike had pinned the bald man in place—pulling the blade, throwing it, and closing in had locked the man's entire attention on the kneeling man before him. With his left leg bleeding, his pace had slowed.
He wasn't paying attention to his flank. He had never factored those "little mice" into his calculations.
Kitahara Kaede ford the hand signs.
His body sent a clear warning—his chakra was bottoming out. Any more and he would be overdrawing.
He didn't stop.
Lightning Style chakra surged into his right palm. Electric arcs leaped from between his fingers, growing denser and brighter. Then ca the sound—a thousand birds screaming in the palm of his hand.
He kicked off the ground.
He poured every ounce of strength into his right foot, shattering the rubble beneath him as his body shot forward like a projectile.
Thirteen ters.
The bald man heard it. He didn't look back. *Just a little mouse.*
The tachi swung down—
Nine ters.
Five ters.
Two ters.
Kitahara Kaede thrust his right hand forward.
The mont the sphere of lightning touched the man's back, all resistance vanished. His hand punched straight through the man's chest.
Lightning Style chakra exploded within the body. Electric arcs surged from the edges of the wound, and a mist of blood vaporized with a loud, sizzling hiss.
The tachi froze in mid-air.
The bald man looked down.
A hand had erged from his chest. Blue-white electric arcs flickered and danced around the fingertips.
He tried to look back, his neck turning a single inch before it locked completely.
"Lit... tle... mouse..."
Blood bubbled from the corner of his mouth, and the tachi slipped from his grip. He fell forward stiffly, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Kitahara Kaede withdrew his hand.
He stood there for two seconds.
His legs gave out, and his vision began to tunnel.
He had calculated it correctly.
His body collapsed before his consciousness could even register it. The last sound he heard seed distant, yet it echoed right against his ear.
"Kaede—!!"
...
Tsunade didn't care about anything else as she sprinted toward him. Kitahara Kaede lay face down beside a corpse, motionless.
She lunged forward, flipping him over and pressing two fingers against his neck.
A pulse.
It was faint, but it was there.
She cradled his head in her lap and placed her hands over him, a green glow erupting from her palms. She was speechless. She wanted to scream at him, to demand why he had charged ahead alone again, to say so many things—but not a single word would co out.
Kaede's breathing was shallow, his face as white as a sheet. Blood seeped from two gashes on his left arm, and a graze marked his flank. But that wasn't the worst part—his chakra was completely depleted. He had squeezed himself dry.
Her eyes stung.
Tears didn't fall; she refused to let herself cry at a ti like this. The green light pulsed, flickering across her face and his.
'Not again.'
'I won't let you charge ahead alone ever again.'
...
On the other side, Jiraiya was frantically bandaging Murakami Takuya. He fumbled, wrapping two turns tight and one too loose, but he finally managed to plug the largest wound.
Takuya's gaze drifted past Jiraiya's shoulder, landing on Tsunade and Kaede. He remained silent for a long ti.
That technique.
From the sound to the pierce, it had taken less than three seconds. Lightning-style chakra concentrated in the palm, released in a piercing strike. That was no Genin-level jutsu.
"Return to the Hidden Leaf. We leave now," he said, his voice heavy. "This must be reported to Lord Hokage."
Tsunade looked down at Kaede. His breathing had stabilized slightly, and a hint of color had returned to his lips. She ceased the healing glow, leaned over, and hoisted his arm over her shoulder, gritting her teeth as she hauled him onto her back.
Kaede was half a head taller than her and dead weight. Her knees buckled for a mont, then locked back into place.
"Tsunade, let —" Jiraiya started.
"Support the Captain," she snapped without looking back.
The four of them—two standing and two who couldn't—retraced their steps. Tsunade led the way, the unconscious Kaede slumped against her back. His hand hung by her side, swaying with every step.
She suddenly rembered sothing he had said after bandaging a wound when they were children.
"Just a scratch."
'Liar.'
'You've always been a liar.'
She bit her lip and quickened her pace.
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