The crisp bite of late autumn was in the Konoha air, a welcome change after the lingering heat of a long summer. Fallen leaves of red and gold skittered across the training grounds, a constant, rustling accompaniment to the sounds of exertion.
Nearly six months had passed since he had received the scroll from Jiraiya. Ryuu was now nearing his eleventh birthday, a milestone that felt strangely muted against the backdrop of relentless training.
Team Twelve had been forged in the fires of Genma's demanding regimen and a string of increasingly complex C-Rank missions.
Their tenth was upon them.
Ryuu's Ice Release, once a source of terror and desperate, uncontrolled bursts, was now a more familiar, if still carefully guarded, tool. Genma's S-Rank secrecy order held firm, but within the team, its presence was an accepted reality.
"Alright, listen up," Genma's voice cut through their pre-mission briefing. He unrolled a new scroll. "C-Rank. Sounds simple, but it's got a few… delicate angles. We're to escort a civilian cartographer, Master Hirano, to survey some old, undocumented shrine ruins deep in the forests bordering the Land of Rivers. Apparently, these ruins predate the village founding, and Lord Fourth has taken a historical interest. Standard protection detail, but the area is remote, known for tricky terrain, and… occasionally, less-than-friendly wanderers."
Izumi raised an eyebrow. "Undocumented shrine ruins? Near the Land of Rivers? That's… unusual territory for a simple survey, Sensei."
"My thoughts exactly, Izumi," Genma drawled, senbon twitching. "Which is why we're taking this one with extra caution. Hirano is a respected scholar, but perhaps a bit naive about the current climate. The intel briefing that came with this mentioned… unconfirmed reports of unusual activity in that sector. Nothing concrete, just whispers. Could be Root remnants still scurrying in the dark, or just jumpy border patrols. Either way, eyes open."
Ryuu felt a familiar prickle of unease.
"Root remnants."
Though Danzo Shimura had been decisively defeated by Minato, his organization dismantled in a swift, brutal purge, the idea that his influence, his poison, could still linger was a chilling one.
Shisui Uchiha had, by all accounts, made a full recovery thanks to Tsunade's unparalleled medical skill and the miraculous retrieval of his stolen eye. The Uchiha clan, shocked and enraged by Danzo's treachery, had officially called off any talk of a coup, with Fugaku himself publicly reaffirming loyalty to the Hokage. Konoha seemed more united than Ryuu had dared hope. Yet…
"Master Hirano is waiting at the West Gate," Genma continued, interrupting Ryuu's thoughts. "Standard travel formation. Izumi, point. Renji, close escort with your wind, keep Hirano buffered. Ryuu, sensory sweep and rear guard. Let's move."
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(Two days into the mission)
The journey was arduous. The forests were dense, the paths overgrown, just as Hirano, a frail but determined old man, had warned. Izumi's Sharingan was invaluable for navigating the treacherous terrain and spotting natural hazards.
Renji, despite his grumbling about the slow pace, proved surprisingly adept at keeping the old scholar comfortable.
Ryuu, at the rear, cast his senses wide. The forest was alive with natural chakra, but beneath it, he felt faint, almost imperceptible traces of… something else. Not active signatures, but the memory of them. Deliberately suppressed chakra, trails days old, but leading in the same general direction as their own.
"Sensei," Ryuu murmured during a brief water break, "I'm picking up old, suppressed chakra trails. Multiple individuals. They passed this way several days ago, heading towards the shrine region."
Genma nodded, his expression unreadable. "Acknowledged. Maintain vigilance." He offered no further comment, but Ryuu saw his eyes narrow, his hand drift closer to his senbon pouch.
They reached the supposed shrine ruins late the next afternoon. It was less a shrine and more a collection of crumbling stone monoliths, half-swallowed by the ancient forest, a thick, almost palpable silence hanging in the air.
Master Hirano was ecstatic, immediately scrambling over fallen stones, muttering about glyphs and forgotten deities.
"Alright, team," Genma said, his voice low. "Uchiha, find a high vantage point, secure the perimeter. Kazama, stick with Hirano, act as his immediate bodyguard. Yuki, with me. We do a wider sweep. This place feels… wrong."
Ryuu agreed. The atmosphere here was… unpleasant.
As Ryuu and Genma circled the periphery of the ruins, Ryuu's senses suddenly flared. "Sensei! Multiple chakra signatures, emerging fast! North-east! Five… no, six! They're not Root – these are… Uchiha!"
Before Genma could react, figures flickered into view at the edge of the clearing, their movements swift, silent. They wore the dark, high-collared attire of the Uchiha clan, but their faces were hard, their Sharingan – two and three tomoe – active with a cold, focused light that Ryuu had rarely seen even in Izumi's most intense moments.
And leading them was a young man Ryuu knew only by reputation and from Kasumi's hushed, worried whispers during her reports to Minato about Uchiha sentiment. This was Uchiha Yashiro, a known hardliner within the clan, one of those who had been most vocal in his discontent before Danzo's fall.
"Well, well," Yashiro drawled, his gaze sweeping over Genma and Ryuu, then flicking towards the ruins where Hirano, Renji, and now Izumi were visible. "Shiranui Genma. And a few… interesting… companions. What brings a Konoha Jonin and his little Genin so far from the village?"
Genma stepped forward, placing himself slightly in front of Ryuu. "Official Konoha business, Yashiro-san. Escorting a scholar. Perhaps you could tell me what brings a contingent of the Konoha Military Police Force so deep into an unpatrolled border region, unannounced?"
Yashiro's lips curved into a smirk that held no humor. "Internal clan matters, Shiranui. Matters that don't concern outsiders." His eyes, and those of his companions, lingered on Izumi, then on Ryuu. "Though… perhaps some 'outsiders' have made themselves our concern."
Ryuu felt a cold dread. This wasn't about bandits. This wasn't even directly about the shrine. This had the distinct, ugly feel of an internal Uchiha power play, or something far more sinister. And Team Twelve had just walked right into the middle of it.
Izumi had tensed, her own Sharingan activating, her hand moving towards her kunai pouch. Renji, though confused, stood ready beside Hirano, his stance aggressive.
"Yashiro," Genma's voice was dangerously calm. "Whatever 'clan matters' you speak of, this is Konoha-sanctioned mission territory. You are out of your jurisdiction, and you are intimidating my team. Stand down."
Yashiro chuckled. "Stand down? Shiranui, you misunderstand. We are merely… ensuring the purity of Uchiha affairs. And rectifying certain… oversights." His gaze flickered to a point just beyond Genma.
Suddenly, Ryuu sensed it – a distortion, a flicker of powerful, familiar chakra. Shisui! But it was… strained. And behind it… another Uchiha signature, older, colder, almost as potent as Fugaku's.
From the dense woods behind Yashiro's group, two more figures emerged. One was Shisui Uchiha, looking pale and weary, his Mangekyō Sharingan blazing, but there was a subtle tremor in his stance. He was clearly under duress.
The other figure was Uchiha Tekka, another prominent elder, known for his hawkish views and close ties to the more radical elements of the clan before Danzo's downfall. Tekka had a hand on Shisui's shoulder, a kunai held subtly near his side.
"Shisui-sama!" Izumi gasped, taking an involuntary step forward.
"It seems," Tekka said, his voice a gravelly rasp, "that Uchiha Shisui has been… overzealous in his 'cooperation' with the Hokage. Forgetting where his true loyalties lie. We are merely… reminding him."
He looked at Yashiro. "Secure the area. No witnesses. Especially not the… outsider with the Yuki blood."
Ryuu understood. This was an internal Uchiha cleansing. They were targeting Shisui, likely to silence him or force his allegiance.
His own team, and Master Hirano, were now complications, liabilities to be eliminated. The "unusual activity" in the report… it was this. An Uchiha faction moving against one of their own, one who was too close to the Hokage, one whose loyalty they doubted.
Danzo was gone, but the seeds of distrust he had sown, the paranoia he had fueled within the Uchiha, were still bearing bitter fruit.
And then Ryuu remembered the canon event for someone his age – Itachi joining ANBU, Shisui being assigned to watch him, Itachi detecting Obito near Naka shrine. This wasn't Obito. This was different. This was the Uchiha tearing themselves apart from within, a tragedy born not of an external manipulator, but of their own festering wounds and pride.
"Genma-san," Shisui said, his voice strained but clear, "get your team out of here. This is Uchiha business. Do not interfere." But his Mangekyō flickered, a desperate, almost imperceptible signal towards… help.
Yashiro and his men moved, not towards Genma, but spreading out, forming an encirclement.
The mission parameters had just gone from C-Rank escort to potentially S-Rank survival against rogue Uchiha shinobi, with Shisui Uchiha caught in the middle. And Ryuu knew, with a sickening lurch, that his Ice Release was about to be tested in ways he had never imagined, against opponents who would not hesitate to kill a ten-year-old child to protect their secrets.
"Izumi! Renji! Protect Hirano-sensei! Fall back towards the denser part of the ruins!"
Genma barked, his senbon already in his hand, not between his lips. His casual demeanor was gone, replaced by the sharp focus of a Jonin facing overwhelming odds.
"Yuki! Disruption! Buy us time! Shisui, if you can move, find an opening!"
"Too late for that, Shiranui!" Yashiro sneered, already blurring forward, a kunai aimed at Genma's throat. Tekka shoved Shisui towards two other Uchiha, who moved to restrain the clearly weakened Mangekyō user.
Genma met Yashiro's charge, steel clashing against steel, the sounds sharp and brutal. Izumi and Renji reacted instantly, pulling the terrified Master Hirano deeper into the crumbling stone structures, Izumi shouting, "Katon: Hōsenka no Jutsu!" Small fireballs erupted from her lips, not aimed to kill, but to create a screen of smoke and flame, covering their retreat into the labyrinthine ruins.
Ryuu knew he couldn't face any of these Uchiha head-on. His Taijutsu was still a glaring weakness, and their Sharingan would predict most direct attacks. He needed to use the environment, his intellect, and the one trump card they wouldn't fully anticipate, the deceptive nature of his Ice Release.
He didn't try to flee. He took a deep, steadying breath, forcing down the rising panic, the memory of Kenta's vacant eyes. No hesitation. Control. He wove the complex sequence of seals, faster than he had during his assessment with Genma, his small hands a blur.
Dog → Snake → Rat → Boar → Horse → Tiger
"Hyōton: Makyō Hyōshō!" (Ice Release: Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals)
The temperature around Ryuu plummeted. Moisture from the damp air and the forest floor condensed, then flash-froze into large, dark, perfectly smooth ice mirrors. Not just one or two, but a dozen, then two dozen, erupting from the ground in a disorienting, circular array around him, catching the fading sunlight and reflecting distorted, shifting images of the forest, the Uchiha, himself.
Two of Yashiro's men, who had been moving to flank Genma, paused, their Sharingan spinning as they tried to process the sudden, unnatural phenomenon.
"What is this sorcery?!" one of them snarled, confused by the multiple reflections of Ryuu, none of which seemed to be the real one.
Ryuu didn't give them time to analyze. From within one of the mirrors closest to them, his own image flickered, then solidified into an ice clone. It lunged, a crudely formed ice kunai in its hand.
The Uchiha reacted with contemptuous ease, shattering the clone with a swift kick. But as he did, another Ryuu-clone emerged from a mirror on his flank, then another from behind.
They weren't strong, they weren't durable, but they were everywhere, their attacks coming from disorienting, unpredictable angles, forcing the Uchiha to constantly shift, to defend, their Sharingan struggling to track the true source amidst the chaos of reflections and fleeting ice doppelgangers.
This wasn't just an illusion, the clones, though weak, had a brief physical presence. Their attacks, while easily parried by seasoned Uchiha, were tangible enough to demand a response, to break their concentration, to disrupt their attempts to support Yashiro or Tekka.
'Don't look them in the eye', Ryuu thought, a core tenet of fighting Sharingan users.
He kept his own gaze lowered, focusing on the flow of chakra, on the subtle tells of his opponents' movements through his senses and the periphery of the mirrors. He wasn't trying to defeat them with the clones, he was trying to confuse them, to overwhelm their predictive abilities with too much false data.
"Tricks!" another Uchiha spat, lashing out with a Fire Style: Great Fireball Technique at a cluster of mirrors. The heat washed over Ryuu, but the mirrors, formed of incredibly dense ice, sizzled and steamed but didn't immediately shatter. Some cracked, their reflections distorting further.
The fire illuminated the clearing eerily, the light bouncing between the icy surfaces.
Yashiro, momentarily disengaged from Genma who was now fending off another attacker, snarled. "Don't be fooled by parlor tricks! Find the real one! Tekka-sama, secure Shisui!"
Tekka, however, was having his own problems. Shisui, though weakened and seemingly held by two Uchiha, wasn't entirely passive. He wasn't fighting back openly, but Ryuu sensed subtle pulses of chakra from him, tiny shifts in his stance that made his captors constantly readjust, preventing them from applying a more secure hold or a disabling blow.
Shisui was biding his time, looking for an opening, or perhaps, waiting for the signal Ryuu knew he had desperately tried to send.
Ryuu pushed more chakra into the Makyō Hyōshō. The strain was immense. Maintaining so many mirrors, forming and directing even weak ice clones, was draining him rapidly. But he saw it working. The Uchiha attacking Genma were now hesitant, their movements less fluid, constantly glancing at the periphery, wary of an ice clone appearing at their backs.
One of the Uchiha who had shattered an ice clone suddenly cried out, clutching his eyes.
"My eyes! The light… it's…!" He stumbled, disoriented.
Ryuu hadn't intended it, but the chaotic reflections of the fireball, amplified and fragmented by the ice mirrors, had clearly created a disorienting, almost blinding glare.
A lucky break.
He pressed the advantage. More ice clones, appearing and disappearing, striking from the reflective surfaces. He didn't try to make them strong. He focused on speed, on numbers, on creating an inescapable web of distractions.
He then added another layer.
"Suiton: Kirigakure no Jutsu!" (Water Release: Hidden Mist Technique)
It was a basic C-Rank, but in the enclosed, mirror-filled space, it became far more effective.
A thick, chilling mist billowed out from Ryuu's position, not formed of ice, but of dense water vapor. It swirled between the mirrors, further obscuring vision, making the reflections even more confusing, more ethereal.
The Uchiha, even with their Sharingan, would find it harder to pinpoint heat signatures or track movements clearly. The mist also subtly lowered the temperature, making his Ice Release slightly more efficient.
"Damn this Yuki brat!" Yashiro roared, finally batting Genma aside with a powerful Katon jutsu and turning his full attention towards the mist-shrouded, mirror-filled area where Ryuu was concealed. "Enough of these games! Everyone, converge on the source of the mist! Burn it all down!"
This was the danger. A focused, overwhelming assault. Ryuu knew his mirrors wouldn't last. His chakra was already screaming in protest.
But he had bought time. Precious seconds.
And in those seconds, Shisui moved.
With a sudden, explosive burst of speed that belied his apparent weakness, Shisui twisted out of his captors' hold. His Mangekyō Sharingan, both of them, blazed with an almost desperate light.
A sudden, powerful yet ephemeral genjutsu pulse radiated from Shisui's Mangekyō, specifically targeted at the Uchiha nearest him, including Tekka. It wasn't the profound manipulation of Kotoamatsukami, but a precisely aimed ocular jolt that exploited their visual perception and briefly disrupted their minds. Their movements faltered for a critical half-second, their eyes losing focus
"Genma-san! NOW!" Shisui yelled, his voice raw.
Genma didn't need telling twice. He had been waiting for such an opening. He blurred, his body a flicker of motion, not towards Yashiro, but towards Tekka.
Before Tekka could recover from Shisui's psychic disruption, Genma's senbon, dozens of them, thrown with incredible precision, struck Tekka's limbs, his chakra points, neutralizing him instantly. Tekka slumped, unconscious, Shisui already pulling away from him.
Simultaneously, Izumi, seizing the opening Ryuu's mist and mirrors provided, unleashed a focused "Katon: Ryūka no Jutsu" (Fire Release: Dragon Fire Technique) not at an Uchiha, but at a pre-placed series of explosive tags Renji had, on Genma's earlier silent command, managed to scatter near Yashiro's position during the initial chaos.
The resulting explosion was deafening, sending Yashiro and his remaining two conscious men sprawling.
The tide had just turned.
Ryuu let his Demonic Ice Mirrors and the Hidden Mist dissolve, the chakra control vanishing as his reserves hit rock bottom. He stumbled, his vision blurring, before he fell into the ground.
Genma was securing Tekka. Shisui, panting, was supporting himself against a monolith, but he was free. Izumi and Renji were warily approaching the dazed and wounded Yashiro and his men.
Master Hirano, miraculously, was still cowering unharmed in the ruins.
The silence that fell was heavy, punctuated by groans from the downed Uchiha and the ragged breathing of Team Twelve.