Chapter 77: The Art of Theatricality
KABOOOM!
The forest shook. Birds screamed, scattering into the sky like a feathered explosion. The concussive wave of the blast left ears ringing and ash settling like grim snow.
"Damn it! A little warning next time?!" Kakashi spat out a mouthful of dirt, his usually pristine hair and mask now a uniform shade of gray-brown.
"Warning you would have warned them," Ren retorted calmly, gesturing to the two smoldering, motionless forms at Kakashi's feet. "Compromises operational security."
Kakashi was speechless. His carefully planned "live demonstration" for his genin had just been preemptively, and spectacularly, solved. He'd wanted to teach them about environmental anomalies. Ren had taught them about explosive pre-emption.
Sasuke strode forward, examining the corpses with a clinical eye. "Kirigakure ninja."
"M-Mist ninja?!" Sakura's voice trembled. "Kakashi-sensei! You said C-ranks don't involve other villages' shinobi!"
"That's what I'd like to know." Kakashi's gaze, now sharp as a honed blade, turned to Tazuna. The bridge builder shifted nervously under the weight of it. "Unless mission parameters were... misrepresented."
He then glanced at Naruto, who was picking himself up off the ground. "Or their target is... something else." The unspoken words—the jinchūriki—hung heavy in the smoky air.
Minato Namikaze (VIP1): He suspects Naruto is the target. Smart.
Uchiha Fugaku (VIP1): My son is in a team with a walking catastrophe magnet. Wonderful.
"Whoa! Jiang Cheng! How'd you know they were there?" Naruto bounded over, seemingly unbothered by the near-death experience.
Ren pointed skyward. "No rain for days. A random puddle? Anomaly. Anomaly equals threat."
Uchiha Izuna (Regular Viewer): Hey! That's my analysis! You plagiarist!
Ren Arakawa (subvocalizing): Original thought. Coincidence.
Sasuke and Sakura nodded, the logic clear. Naruto's face scrunched in thought. "But... what if someone just... really had to pee?"
Ren looked at him, then sighed, placing a hand on Naruto's shoulder. "Naruto. Tazuna might have a point about your... cognitive processing."
Naruto blinked. "Huh?"
Tobirama Senju (VIP5): Fourth. I'm formally joining the "concerned about your son's IQ" committee.
Minato Namikaze: He's... creatively thoughtful!
Uchiha Fugaku: My Sasuke is the same age and hasn't suggested enemy ninja are urination-based terrain features.
Minato Namikaze: Sasuke got beaten so badly he needed a catheter!
Uchiha Fugaku: ...Low blow.
Kakashi disposed of the bodies with a quick jutsu. As they regrouped to move, the air changed.
A thick, chilling white mist began seeping from the trees, swallowing sound and light. In moments, visibility dropped to an arm's length.
"Hidden Mist Jutsu! Enemy contact! Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura! Diamond formation around Tazuna! Protect the client!"
The three genin scrambled into position, backs to Tazuna, weapons drawn, hearts pounding. Kakashi's lone eye locked onto Ren, the command shifting to request. "Ren. Try to leave one alive this time."
A nod. "I'll endeavor to."
The mist thickened further. Shapes moved within it—shadows within shadows. The shink of drawn blades was the only warning.
Two figures materialized from the fog, converging on Kakashi. He met them with a kunai, the clash of steel ringing through the muffled air. "Hold the line!" he shouted before being swallowed by the mist and the dance of combat.
Sasuke, Sakura, and Naruto tensed, a trembling Tazuna at their center. Then, from directly above, a third shadow descended, kunai aimed for the bridge builder's skull.
"How many are there? Clones?" Ren's mind raced even as he moved. He palmed a special kunai, flicking it with imperceptible motion to lodge securely in Tazuna's pack—a Flying Thunder God marker. Then he launched himself upward, intercepting the attacker mid-plunge.
Their exchange was a blur of blocks, strikes, and feints in the sightless fog. The assassin was good, adapted to low-visibility combat. Ren forced him back, but couldn't land a decisive blow.
So this is their famed mist assassination, he thought. Annoying.
He landed softly, the assassin's form already dissolving back into the shifting white. Ren closed his eyes. When they opened, the world was painted in shades of heat and chakra flow. The Sharingan's tomoe spun, cutting through the mist's obscurity. The dynamic vision clarified the assassin's blurred afterimages into a single, predictable trajectory.
There.
The assassin lunged again, a silent ghost. Ren sidestepped, his hand shooting out—but it passed through a sudden splash of water. A Water Clone.
A scream—Sakura's—pierced the fog from the direction of Tazuna.
Ren didn't run. He simply stepped.
Flying Thunder God Technique.
A hundred meters away, a Mist ninja—the real one, grinning in triumph—raised his sword for the killing stroke on a paralyzed Tazuna. The grin died as a kunai erupted from his own abdomen. He stared, dumbfounded, at the boy who now stood before him, having appeared from nowhere.
"You... the clone... how...?"
"If Kakashi didn't want a prisoner," Ren said, his voice conversational even as his left hand flew through a one-handed seal sequence, "you'd be dead."
Earth Release: Rock Pillar Prison!
RUMBLE—CRUNCH!
Stone pillars, thick as tree trunks, erupted from the earth in a criss-crossing cage, snapping shut around the Mist ninja with finality. The entire sequence—teleport, stab, seal, trap—was executed in a fluid, unhurried motion, as if he were performing a tea ceremony rather than orchestrating a capture.
The mist began to thin, the caster's concentration broken.
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Tobirama Senju (VIP5): Must you narrate your actions while performing them? Is the drama necessary?
Minato Namikaze: His Flying Thunder God form is improving! The efficiency!
Uchiha Izuna: First the office, then the explosion, now the dramatic monologue mid-capture... Kid, when does the showing off END? Would it kill you to just stab a guy quietly?
Uchiha Madara (VIP1): I considered myself a master of impactful entrances and declarations. The boy... may have surpassed me. There is an artistry to his superfluous flair.
Tobirama Senju: Madara, your brother stabbing you in the back was probably just his critique of your over-the-top monologues.
Uchiha Madara: ...I will end you.
Hashirama Senju (Regular Viewer): Everyone misunderstands! Madara and I are comrades! Brothers-in-arms!
Tobirama Senju: BROTHER. CEASE. SPEAKING.
The mist dissipated fully, revealing Kakashi standing over two unconscious Mist ninja, his kunai bloody. He looked at Ren, then at the perfectly constructed stone prison holding a very confused and impaled third ninja.
He sighed, the sound carrying decades of exhaustion. "You... captured one."
"I endeavored," Ren said, wiping his kunai clean on a leaf.
From within the diamond formation, Naruto whooped. "AWESOME! Jiang Cheng, you were like WHOOSH and then BAM and he was all 'uhhh' and then the rocks went CRUNCH! Believe it!"
Sasuke just stared, his Sharingan (recently awakened in the heat of panic) deactivating. The gap between them hadn't closed. It had widened into a chasm.
Sakura looked from the stone prison to Ren, her earlier fear melting into that familiar, complicated awe.
Tazuna stared at the kunai hilt still protruding from his pack, then at the boy who'd saved him. "You... you put that there?"
"Insurance," Ren said simply.
Kakashi walked over to the prisoner. "Alright. Let's have a chat about why Kirigakure is interested in a bridge builder from the Land of Waves." His eye held a cold light. "And why our mission scroll failed to mention that interest."
The real mission, it seemed, was just beginning. And Ren Arakawa had made his opening move with characteristic, explosive, and utterly theatrical flair.