"Why?" Renjiro repeated. His voice was low, devoid of its earlier fury, replaced by a chilling, hollow intensity. Blood still traced twin paths down his cheeks from his strained eyes, drying into dark, cracked rivers against the grime.
He didn't turn, his Sharingan still fixed on the spot where Ayy and the unconscious Bee had vanished, his posture rigid, vibrating with suppressed violence.
This time, the silence wasn't empty.
From behind a jagged spire of shattered rock, a shadow detached itself. Shiba stepped forward, his expression unreadable, a stark contrast to Renjiro's visible turmoil.
As he approached, moving with deliberate, silent steps across the churned earth, his own shadow was stretched long before him towards Renjiro's own. It was then severed and dissipated like smoke, leaving Renjiro's shadow looking ordinary once more. The subtle, guiding pressure vanished.
"You were about to kill them," Shiba stated flatly, stopping a few paces away. His voice was calm, and analytical, cutting through the charged atmosphere like a scalpel.
Renjiro finally turned. The movement was slow and deliberate. His Sharingan eyes, crimson pinwheels spinning slowly, locked onto Shiba's face.
He didn't speak immediately.
The look he gave the Nara commander wasn't anger, nor defiance. It was pure, unadulterated confusion as if Shiba had just declared the sky was green.
The sheer incongruity of Shiba's statement being framed as a problem momentarily eclipsed the rage.
"Why?" Renjiro asked again, the single word sharpened now, a blade honed on bewilderment. "Why did you stop me?" The 'them' hung unspoken but understood: Ayy, the future Raikage, and Killer Bee, the Eight-Tails Jinchuriki. The architects of Tenjin's agony.
Shiba met the Sharingan's gaze steadily, his dark eyes reflecting the dying light. "There was no need," he replied, his tone pragmatic. "I saw your reaction. The intent. The capability. You could have killed Ayy. Or died trying. The outcome was binary, volatile, and ultimately unnecessary."
"Unnecessary?" Renjiro echoed, the confusion hardening into something colder. A bitter laugh, devoid of humour, escaped his cracked lips.
"He shot Tenjin out of the sky! He almost crippled my summon! He was right there!" He gestured violently towards the empty space.
"I had him. He was paralyzed. Helpless. Everything was under control." The words tasted like ash. Control felt like a distant memory.
"Control?" Shiba countered, his voice still level, but carrying an undeniable weight. "Look around you, Renjiro. Truly look."
Renjiro's Sharingan swept the immediate devastation, the massive crater from Tenjin's fall, the scorch marks from his own fire jutsus and Bee's unstable chakra, and the shattered rock formations.
But Shiba meant beyond that. His gaze, guided by the Sharingan's enhanced perception, extended further, towards the main battlefield miles west.
The scene had shifted dramatically. The chaotic clash, the desperate defence, was over. Instead, what Renjiro saw was a retreat. Kumo shinobi, their earlier bloodlust shattered by the Rasenshuriken craters and the terrifying display of power from the east, were disengaging.
They moved with haste, carrying wounded, falling back in ragged but purposeful formations away from the Konoha lines. The moment Ayy had flickered towards Renjiro and Bee, abandoning the main assault, the Kumo advance had lost its heart. Shiba's forces, battered but intact, were holding their ground, watching the retreat, not pursuing aggressively.
"The minute Ayy confronted you," Shiba explained, his voice cutting through Renjiro's observation, "their morale broke. Their commander abandoned the field. They began retreating. The immediate threat here, now, is over. We held."
He paused, letting the implication sink in. "Killing Ayy and Bee now, in cold blood, after the battle has effectively ended? It serves no tactical purpose at this juncture. It would only guarantee one thing: the Third Raikage's personal, unrelenting vengeance.
Not just on you, Renjiro. On Konoha. He would mobilize the full might of Kumo, shattering any fragile truce or stalemate. It would force the other Kages to react, potentially escalating this war beyond the current regional conflict into something far wider, far bloodier. Is that the consequence you want? For Tenjin? For a moment of vengeance?"
Renjiro stared at Shiba, the cold fury returning, mixing with a deep, unsettling sense of injustice.
His Sharingan pulsed.
"So," he began, his voice dangerously low, each word dripping with icy venom, "Ayy is allowed to attack us? To try and kill us? To cripple my summon? But he cannot be touched? Because he is the Raikage's precious son?"
He took a step closer to Shiba, the air crackling. "Tell me is that the logic? That some shinobi lives are worth more than others? That his life is too valuable to risk, while ours are expendable pawns?"
He gestured broadly, encompassing the unseen battlefield, the fallen Konoha shinobi.
"He chose to be here. He chose to lead this assault. He chose to fire that lightning spear. Anyone who steps onto a battlefield makes peace with death. It is the contract we signed with our first kunai." Renjiro's gaze was piercing, unforgiving.
"I made that peace the day I put on this headband. Why should he be exempt? Why should his survival matter more than my summon? More than the lives he just ended?"
Shiba didn't flinch, but a flicker of weariness crossed his usually stoic features.
"This isn't about the inherent value of a life, Renjiro. It's about consequence. Scale. You know this. The Raikage isn't just a father; he is the embodiment of Kumo's wrath. His retaliation wouldn't be proportionate; And this operation..." He sighed, a rare admission of strain. "...this operation already went catastrophically downhill because of me." He nodded towards the distant retreating Kumo forces. "My role, as commander, is to mitigate losses, to secure the objective – which was holding this position – and to preserve Konoha's strength. Preventing you from triggering more retaliation over a personal vendetta, however justified it feels, is mitigation."
He met Renjiro's furious gaze again, his tone softening fractionally, laced with an unexpected gravity. "And consider this: You arrived here directly from another protracted, high-stakes mission. You were exhausted. You were the only one capable of holding off the Eight-Tails, of shattering their advance. You pushed yourself beyond any reasonable limit. Chakra exhaustion, ocular strain, physical injuries..." Shiba's eyes flickered to the blood drying on Renjiro's face, the way he subtly favoured his ribs.
"...the burden you carried was immense. Adding the weight of assassinating the Raikage's heir and their Jinchuriki, and the inevitable fallout that would land squarely on your shoulders… is that a burden anyone should bear? Least of all you, in this state? It wouldn't benefit Konoha. It wouldn't benefit you. It would only break you faster."
Renjiro held Shiba's gaze, the Sharingan spinning relentlessly, drinking in every micro-expression, every flicker of chakra. The cold logic warred with the white-hot coal of rage in his chest. The Nara's composure, his pragmatic assessment, felt like ice water on the flames, infuriating yet undeniable. The intensity of his stare was palpable, a physical pressure meant to intimidate, to force a crack in Shiba's reasoned facade.
Then, abruptly, the crimson glow vanished. Renjiro deactivated his Sharingan. His eyes were now their natural shade but currently shadowed and bloodshot.
He turned away from Shiba, his gaze sweeping the crater once more, not as a strategist, but as someone surveying the aftermath of personal devastation.
His scan stopped. Near the centre of the impact zone, stark against the pale, pulverized rock, was a dark, viscous patch. Not dirt. Not oil. Blood. A large pool, already soaking into the thirsty earth, surrounded by smaller splatters and smears. It wasn't human blood. The coppery tang mixed with a subtler, avian musk that the dust couldn't mask.
Tenjin's blood.
Renjiro froze. The arguments, the politics, the cold calculus of war – it all receded. He saw only the evidence of his companion's suffering, the life force spilt onto this desolate rock because of Ayy's attack. The rage surged anew, but it was a different flavour now – grief-stricken, desolate. He stared at the dark stain, the image of Tenjin's shattered wing, the pained resignation in his golden eye, replaying in his mind.
Finally, Renjiro moved. He didn't look at Shiba. His voice, when it came, was flat, drained, devoid of any inflexion at all. It wasn't agreement, nor was it surrender. It was exhaustion and a profound sense of disconnection.
"I guess," he said, the words barely audible, "I am done here, then."
Without ceremony, without another glance, he raised his right hand to his mouth.
His teeth bit down hard on the pad of his thumb. Blood welled, dark and immediate. He ignored it, forming a single, familiar hand sign with his other hand – Ram.
Chakra, the dregs of his reserves, flared briefly around him.
"POOF!"
A dense cloud of white smoke erupted where Renjiro stood, swirling violently for a moment before the wind began to tear it apart. When it cleared, seconds later, the crater was empty. Renjiro Uzumaki was gone, leaving only the settling dust, the scent of ozone and blood, the dark stain on the rocks, and a Nara commander standing alone, the shadows deepening around him.
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