Fog and Fire

  May 27, 1 bNb

  .

  He was irritated.

  That’s what he would say if he were being nice.

  If he were to be a little bit less so, then he would say he was fucking pissed.

  The weather was humid, and the air was murky. The sea wasn’t far, so the climate made sense, yet that didn’t make it any better.

  He had been stationed here for coming up on two and a half months now, and the longer he stayed, the more the weather bothered him. Especially because before he was stationed in this place, he lived in the Village Hidden in the Leaves. And the time before then, he called California home.

  So yeah, he was generally used to good weather, and now they had him deployed in the Land of the Noodles.

  Yeah, the Land of the fucking Noodles. Kishimoto was undoubtedly off a perc when naming these places.

  He adjusted the tanto on his back and sighed. The blade sat comfortably in its sheath on his upper back, untouched for now.

  He had been brought to this world just over 15 years ago. How? Well, he had zero clue. He thought it was all a dream at first, but the beginning of the Third Shinobi War and his clan members dropping dead day by day had squashed any semblance of that notion.

  “You’re early again,” came a dry voice from behind.

  Izuma didn’t turn. He just kept his gaze focused on the tents in front of him. The place wasn’t a major front to begin with, so they were more lax, not to mention the last skirmish had taken place three weeks ago.

  He ignored the squelching noise that the wet mud underfoot made as his compatriot arrived beside him.

  He finally gave a shrug. “I don’t think that’s a bad thing, Commander.”

  Shizaku Nara gave a small nod and crossed his arms. His hair was tied back in the signature Nara style. Slight bags were under his eyes—as well as every other ninja on the battlefield—but his gaze remained sharp.

  “Never said it was.” He glanced sideways. “We’ve got new intel. Mist shinobi are planning to push through the eastern ridgeline. They think the terrain there is too rough for us to patrol. Probably believe it’ll be the best place to land to flank us. From there, I’d imagine targeting supply lines leading to Suna would be their game plan.”

  He grunted in acknowledgement. “They really believe they’ll take us all out?”

  It was Shizaku’s turn to shrug. “Maybe, maybe not. Doesn’t matter at the end of the day—we have our mission, they have theirs. Now it’s just time to see who’s better.”

  He nodded, fiddling with the hilt of his tanto—if nothing else, proving his superiority in combat was perhaps his greatest trait.

  Uchiha things, of course.

  .

  They moved before dawn.

  The scent of wet bark clung to the underbrush as Izuma crouched beside two fellow shinobi, garbed in flak jackets, in the foliage overlooking a narrow ravine. According to intel—and more importantly, the intuition of the Nara he called Commander—this was where the Mist shinobi would come through.

  Shizaku’s orders from earlier still echoed through his mind.

  “They’ll move under the cover of fog,” Shizaku had said. “We know where they’re coming from, though. As soon as they arrive, sweep it clear. Then strike hard and fast before they can regain their bearings.”

  He had nodded. "What’s the signal?"

  "You’ll know it when you see it."

  Now, in the dim grey of pre-dawn, he saw it.

  A shift in the mist, followed by shadows. A staggered formation of shinobi crept through the ravine.

  Half a dozen? No. Roughly thirty.

  Izuma’s eyes flared crimson. Three tomoe spun into motion.

  “Shadow Clone Jutsu.” His fingers made a plus sign. Two duplicates appeared beside him without a sound.

  He glanced at the pair of Leaf shinobi beside him—young, but competent enough. “Stay sharp. On my lead, we disperse the fog,” he whispered, earning two nods. “Good.”

  They didn’t question him. No one on this front did. Few dared to do so when you were a fifteen-year-old jōnin.

  A second later, the air behind him shifted. That was the signal.

  His muscles tensed as he nodded to the two beside him. Right afterward, three pairs of hands blurred through hand signs.

  Ram → Horse → Bird → Snake

  He inhaled—his chakra-coated lungs taking in more air than humanly possible—and exhaled with great force.

  “Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!”

  A massive gust of wind howled from the lungs of the three shinobi, tearing through the ravine and blasting the fog apart in a single wave.

  And suddenly, the Mist vanguard was caught exposed.

  “Keep distance and disperse any attempts to put the mist back up,” he told his group, and then he shot forward with ungodly speed courtesy of a Body Flicker, reappearing directly in front of the lead Mist shinobi, who barely managed to raise a kunai in time.

  His tanto was unsheathed mid-step, mid-swing, it was infused with wind chakra—a simple technique dubbed: Vacuum Blade—and was brought down in a forceful cleave.

  One stroke and the kunai split in two, the edge of his wind-enhanced blade slicing through metal with a loud hiss.

  The Mist-nin hurriedly backed off, and Izuma grinned at the sight of blood dripping off his tanto, coloring the ground beneath him red.

  The opposing ninja gave a hiss, and then stopped, his eyes went limpid—less than a second later, Izuma’s tanto was pierced through his heart.

  He pulled back his blade and flicked it to shake off the blood. His gaze went to the fallen body of the ninja he had just killed, and he silently gave thanks to whatever deity had made him a Uchiha.

  Casting genjutsu through mere eye contact was a cheat code he abused in every fight.

  His eye caught a glint of light coming from the left, and he leaned back, watching a kunai pass inches from his face harmlessly.

  A beat later, a ninja followed from where the kunai had just been thrown.

  He pivoted off his left foot and spun. The heel of his boot collided with the Mist-nin’s jaw, which was accompanied by a grotesque noise—his bone was cracked, and the man crumpled.

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  Across from him, a jounin from the Mist—a tall, scarred man with a jagged blade on his back—barked orders in guttural clicks. He flared his chakra, and water began to surge around his feet.

  “Water...” the man growled.

  Izuma’s fingers flashed. “Fire Style: Flame Dragon Jutsu!”

  Serpent. Dragon. Rabbit. Tiger.

  A colossal dragon of fire erupted from his mouth, roaring through the air and colliding with the Mist jounin’s rising wall of water. Steam exploded in a hiss.

  But he had seen this before. Many times in fact. And so with a body flicker, he arrived in front of the veil, his tanto piercing through it with unerring accuracy.

  The mist jounin—lacking the perception granted by the sharingan—barely had time to react, though he managed to jump back before the tanto could do any real harm. The man didn’t so much as blink as blood seared into his flak jacket.

  “Fucking Uchiha,” he snarled.

  Despite the situation, Izuma laughed.

  The opponent was right to be mad—in fact, Izuma agreed with him. The Uchiha were nothing but a clan of filthy cheaters. But as long as he was one of them, he would do nothing but rejoice at how broken their eyes were.

  He pressed forward without hesitation, boots pounding the forest floor. He dashed low, avoiding a slicing arc of water from the Mist jōnin’s follow-up.

  The Sharingan tracked everything, and his knowledge of jutsu was good enough to understand what was being thrown his way from his opponents’ hand signs.

  Again, blame the Sharingan.

  He slashed low to bait a reaction, and when the jōnin jumped, he flung three shuriken in a wide arc—his opponent managed to tilt himself out of the way, and the shuriken flew behind him harmlessly.

  But that had never been the point.

  As the first two shuriken passed behind the jōnin, they struck the third at a precise angle, altering its trajectory mid-flight.

  Steel clanked, and in the next instant, the third shuriken curved unnaturally, arcing back around toward the jōnin's exposed flank.

  To the credit of his opponent, he managed to react off nothing more than the whizzing noise of the approaching shuriken, and was able to tilt his body so the weapon embedded itself in his shoulder as opposed to his back.

  But Izuma was still happy enough with the result, and Itachi would most definitely be proud of it.

  The jōnin managed to have a soft landing, but it was for naught. A single glance—that was all it took.

  The genjutsu was laughably simple. A minuscule distortion in his perception, not his family dying or a world where he was king—all he did was make the jōnin believe he was one step farther to the left than he actually was.

  Barely noticeable and yet so deceptively harmful.

  So when the Mist jōnin turned to defend himself, he struck nothing but air, and Izuma was there a beat later.

  His tanto slipped between the man’s ribs, piercing deep.

  The enemy’s breath caught in his throat, eyes wide as realization struck just a moment too late.

  Izuma twisted the blade once, then withdrew it.

  A shout rang out from deeper in the field.

  “Captain! Incoming reinforcements from the south!”

  Izuma’s head turned slightly. He cursed as he quickly barked out orders. “Group Four, peel off and intercept the southern approach! I want the ravine locked down in two minutes. Group Three, push left with me.”

  He received a chorus of affirmative clicks, and soon after, a new squad of Mist shinobi emerged from the treeline.

  He quickly weaved hand signs.

  “Fire Style: Flame Flower Jutsu!”

  Multiple fireballs bloomed from his chest, streaking toward the enemy lines. One Mist-nin managed to avoid two before being struck in the ribs by the third, screaming as his clothes ignited.

  A flicker of guilt tugged at him. The man, if he could even be called that, was young, and based on the lack of a flak jacket—and skill—was likely nothing more than a genin still dreaming of becoming a Kage.

  The feeling passed as quickly as it came. Either him or them.

  He exhaled and scanned the field.

  He heard a shout. “Earth Style: Mud Wall!”

  A barrier rose, allowing their wounded to fall back, and the new squad to take to the front.

  It was smart.

  But, as they were soon about to find out, smart didn’t always mean effective when he was there.

  Serpent → Ram → Monkey → Boar → Horse → Tiger

  “Fire Style: Great Fireball!”

  A huge ball of flames erupted from Izuma’s mouth, stretching wide, its heat scorching the bark of any unfortunate tree.

  The sheer scale of the jutsu dwarfed what most ninja had seen before—this was no simple fireball.

  And he wasn’t done.

  His hands blurred again.

  “Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!”

  He poured wind chakra into the already-burning ball of flames, feeding the flames until they screamed forward with a new, terrifying velocity. The firestorm, and calling it anything else would be disrespectful, surged ahead and smashed into the earth wall that had risen to protect the Mist squad.

  It didn’t stop.

  The wall cracked, then shattered like brittle clay—flames poured through the gap and engulfed the shinobi behind it. Screams rang out as the burning chakra tore through armor and flesh.

  Izuma staggered as the jutsu ended, his breath ragged. When he took a moment to look around, the wall was gone, and so were the men who’d hidden behind it.

  A Mist-nin, who must’ve thought he was capable of killing Izuma, blanched at the sight behind him, before tears began to pool down his face.

  Instead of having a breakdown, however, he instead snarled loudly and dove forward, kunai in hand, strike poised at Izuma’s head.

  Unfortunately for him, Izuma was no amateur, so he ducked, drove his elbow into the enemy's ribcage, and spun the tanto upward to catch a descending blade.

  Steel met chakra-enhanced steel, and, to nobody's surprise, chakra won. The Mist-nin’s blade snapped in half.

  It wasn’t over yet; the man, before his death, had managed to plant a paper bomb on the ground.

  Izuma’s instinct took over. He flickered backward as the ground exploded.

  He landed on his feet, intact. He felt a sting and looked down to see a line of blood where a piece of shrapnel had likely grazed his leg.

  He heard footsteps approaching and quickly performed a half-pirouette, swiveling with tanto ready to strike, only to be promptly lowered upon seeing Shizaku Nara flanked by two more Konoha shinobi.

  The commander glanced at the smoking battlefield.

  Shizaku’s eyes followed the smoldering edge of the battlefield, then flicked lazily toward the scorched earth and crumbling ridge. "That should at least buy us a few hours before they try anything else stupid. Maybe even a full morning if we're lucky. Gods forbid we get lunch uninterrupted."

  Izuma, still catching his breath, glanced at the smoldering sight before him. “Yeah,” he said, voice dry. “Turns out, fire really is a valid solution to most problems.”

  Shizaku laughed, taking out a cigarette from his pocket. “Either way, they’re falling back.”

  .

  Two days.

  Not a single Mist shinobi had returned.

  Not a scout. Not a runner. In fact, there wasn’t a single soul for kilometers if the sensor-nin had done their job correctly.

  They were gone.

  Izuma stood inside the command tent, arms folded. A bandage was wrapped around his left thigh where a piece of shrapnel had grazed him.

  Shizaku stood across the war table, hands in his pockets, a blank scroll unrolled in front of him. The commander’s eyes landed on the edge of the map, where several stone weights marked the ravine and treeline.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Shizaku said.

  Izuma’s gaze drifted to the same spot. “You think they’re regrouping somewhere else?”

  “No. I think they’re gone.” Shizaku exhaled through his nose. “Like they were never supposed to be here in the first place.”

  Izuma stayed silent.

  He’d thought the same thing. They certainly hadn’t fought like a vanguard. They fought like…heck, he had no clue. They just fought, and then packed up and vanished.

  Shizaku dragged his fingers down his jaw. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. “You burned a hole clean through their team, broke their wall, and shredded half a squad with a firestorm. And then they just stop showing up?”

  Izuma shrugged and cracked a grin. “Maybe they finally learned how great the mighty Uchiha clan is?”

  Shizaku didn’t smile. “Maybe.”

  There was a pause, and then Shizaku spoke again.

  “You’re being recalled.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Since when?”

  “Since twenty minutes ago.” Shizaku tapped the edge of a sealed scroll beside him. “Messenger hawk arrived while you were at the eastern trench.”

  “Your orders are vague,” Shizaku continued. “Officially, you’re being rotated off the front. But unofficially…” He trailed off.

  Izuma raised an eyebrow. “Unofficially, I’m what?”

  “They’re pulling back too many top-rankers back to the village. I heard Minato’s squad was called back as well. Now you.”

  “A strategic regrouping?”

  Shizaku gave him a long, tired look. “Strategic something. Looks like higher-ups are planning to push for another big move.”

  Shizaku rolled the scroll and handed it to Izuma.

  “Pack light. Try not to kill anyone on the way out.”

  Izuma took the scroll with a nod.

  He was halfway to the tent flap before Shizaku added, “Izuma.”

  He turned.

  “Be safe.”

  He looked at his commander and then gave a nod.

  “Thank you.”

  .

  A/N: bNb means before Naruto’s birth, so he’ll be born next year.