Pre-Chapter A/N:First of all, Happy Holidays to all who celebrate. And now we're on to the second post of 2026. You might have slipped off the horse already, so here's permission from me to get back on it. No judgement, anything. If you haven't already, I recommend turning on notifications for my stuff so you can see when new stuff drops right as it drops. More chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio.
XXXXX- MIKOTO UCHIHA
She silently cursed her Sensei as she took another step in the dense snow. The Land of Iron was not a fun place to be at any time, and in the middle of winter, it was even worse. As if that wasn't bad enough, she had to spurn every chance to stop at a city and rest under a warm fire, or use more than the barest minimum of chakra to keep her bones from freezing over and her fingers from burning and falling off.
That true cold did not freeze, but burned, was a sentiment she had never felt the need to confirm the truth of for herself; unfortunately, this mission had made the decision of finding out for her.
"How many clicks left?" her teammate for this mission asked through chattering teeth.
She looked out to the horizon and then whispered, "Eighteen."
He groaned, but they kept moving nonetheless. This was hell, but they were Shinobi of Konohagakure. And Shinobi of Konohagakure did not give up on missions because they were hard. She muted that part of her brain that told her that Sensei had given them permission to do just that.
Those words had been for when their lives were in danger, and not just for when things got hard like they were now. Because the blizzard that made her shiver in her cloak also meant that the Land of Iron Samurai were less likely to be out in force patrolling. There was a measure of logic to Sensei's madness, she knew. There always was.
She remembered the first Clan Meeting after her team was announced. The elders had been pleased and expected her to easily become Sensei's second favourite student behind only Kushina, who he had practically raised himself, partly based on her own skill, and partly because of her relationship to Aunt Uzume. Of course, they had ended up being dead wrong. While Sensei loved Kushina the most and never treated Mikoto herself as lesser, it was clear that Minato had been his favourite.
Minato had been the one after Sensei's own heart, lapping up every crumb that dropped from Sensei's lips like a dog beneath a dinner table. She chuckled internally at imagining Minato as a little blonde puppy. She kept moving, dragging her feet through the snow that had reached knee height with the continuous snowfall from the sky. She would have loved to use chakra to skate across the surface but there was a chance—minute as it was—that the Samurai would have a sensor skilled enough to pick out such a use of chakra from a distance.
Caution demanded that she did things the hard way, and while Sensei had never been one for caution himself, he had beaten it into their heads. "When you're as strong as I am, you can stop being careful, but until then someone can always put a knife in your back," he'd said on more than one occasion after catching them off guard. For someone with as much chakra as he did, he was shockingly good at blending into his surroundings.
She moved through the snow, taking step by step as her mind turned to another line of thinking. Minato and Kushina. Now they were Jounin, powerful Jounin of the Leaf, and just like Sensei had said, they were no longer expected to be deployed as a team. They still tried to meet up where they could to do team training exercises or bother Sensei for a spar, but those were getting few and far between.
Minato was busy working on testing out Sensei's pet project—the training room that could transform into whatever the user needed. He said it would probably be built into the new Jounin training complex, so she could look forward to being able to use it when it was publicly available. Until then, she would have to settle for Minato's secondhand stories. Kushina, on the other hand, had been spending more and more time with her younger cousin.
Sensei had trained Kushina to be the Village's jinchuriki, and it seemed that Kushina's role was going to be paying it forward. Kushina spent even less time outside the village than Minato did with all his obligations. Every second that Isane was not in the academy was expected to be in Kushina's company, preparing the young girl for the burden that would one day be placed on her shoulders.
Mikoto remembered that she had been jealous for a while. She chuckled at the thought. Sensei's attention, power to hang with threats far beyond their level, and whatever other advantages she had seen Kushina receive. None of it was worth that burden, she realised now. Minato had to deal with the burden of being expected to act as Sensei's apprentice at all times. He was the one Sensei took on visits to the Daimyo or who got sent to negotiate with the Wind Daimyo with the goal of undercutting Suna. Kushina dealt with the burden of being the Jinchuriki. She was almost never expected to leave the village. She underwent medical checks every month, and sometimes more than once in a month, and then there were the long hours of meditation to master the beast within.
In contrast with both her teammates, Mikoto had no shortage of freedoms. She could take whatever missions she wanted—most of the time—and go where she wanted and with whom. This particular mission being the exception that proved the rule. She hadn't had any choice in this one. When the Hokage—whether he happened to be your Sensei or not—assigned a mission, it was not like you could say no without a damn good reason.
She turned to the teammate assigned to her and reached out, tapping her on the forehead. Her lance of chakra went straight inwards, stoking her chakra and warming up her body.
"Don't die," she whispered, and the Yamanaka Kunoichi straightened before nodding. Mikoto would be expected to prepare a report on whether the woman was ready for promotion to Jounin, and as things stood now, it wasn't looking very likely.
The rest of the distance was covered with her thoughts shifting from topic to topic. It was something that many people had questioned her about—why her mind never seemed to stay still. Well, to be truthful, they hadn't questioned her on that fact. They had questioned her on why she spoke so little. But the latter was caused by the former. She never had anything to say because her mind could never decide to stay focused on one thing for long enough for her to focus on it. Sensei got it, at least. His mind seemed to move on just as quickly as hers did.
He was better at hiding it, but she could see it in his eyes sometimes. He would be talking to them about something, but then his eyes would glaze over. He didn't stop talking or anything, but it was just clear to her that his mind was elsewhere. That and his obvious love for them made it difficult for her to ever imagine being upset with him for long—he was just like her. Even if he did send her on the most annoying missions he could find.
When they reached the base of the mountain that their target was within, she gestured for her teammate to stop. The Yamanaka girl managed to do so, remaining still even as Mikoto could see how she fought herself just to avoid shivering. Admirable.
Mikoto suppressed her chakra as far as she could and took a seal from her pouch. One of Minato's. She slapped it on her chest and then breathed a sigh of relief as she flooded her body with chakra and banished the cold. She had only five of these—each one designed to give her ten minutes of invisibility if she didn't use too much chakra. She kept it as five in her mental calculations. Better to be overcautious than to get caught out because her chakra suppression seal burned out at the wrong time.
Her teammate weaved a seal and her own chakra vanished to Mikoto's senses. A second later, the girl did the same. They were going to take different routes of entry. The point of this mission was not just theft. Yes, their target was exceptionally valuable and would be a boon to Konoha, but stealing it would not be enough. They needed to send a message as well. A message that Konoha would not be trifled with. And that the Land of Iron would be better served keeping its nose out of shinobi business and doing as Konoha willed.
And so she walked straight towards the cavern at the base of the mountain. If it had been a shinobi base, it would have been hidden under layer after layer of genjutsu. It would have been hidden in the cover of the environment as well and been a pain to find. Thankfully, Samurai were a tad simpler in their dealings. She could see the entrance as well as the lights that shot out of the cave. So sure in their safety, so assured of their dominance. Sloppy.
Her footsteps were silent and her chakra suppressed, so even though she made a straight path for them, it was no surprise that none noticed her until she was almost right upon them. She could see the first one jolt as he spotted her through a haze of red. Almost competent. He flinched backwards and inhaled to speak out. Her shuriken caught him in the side of his neck right as he was about to speak. The words turned into a choked gurgle.
The man by his side flinched, now turning in her direction. Stupid. Her dart sailed out true as one of her Sensei's arrows and shot straight through his eye and into the brain behind it. She kept walking forwards. This was to send her message. Whatever misgivings she had, she was her Sensei's tool. His desire was for the Land of Iron to feel the wrath of the Leaf, and she would see to it that that desire came to pass.
The third guard was the unlucky one who survived the first few seconds of finding out her presence. He turned and scrambled into the cavern once he saw his fellows turn. She walked after him. There was no need to give chase. This was the only way out of the base, after all. Samurai and their confidence.
With the alarm sounded, she was unsurprised when a man wielding a sword and no armour met her as she was about to make her way inside the base. He lashed out with a straight cut. Neither her nor her teammates specialized in Kenjutsu. Sensei had a few swords in his collection but he was far from a master. What she lacked in familiarity though, she made up in sheer skill. She weaved into his guard, avoiding the slash by a mile and then stepping past him. He fell to the ground a second later, heart ruptured. Her chakra was not so dense that she could do the same with an armoured opponent, but then it was not her fault that her opponent chose to confront her before putting on his armour. If they were going to give her advantages, then she owed it to them to take them. Anything else would be an insult.
She marched onwards, trusting that her teammate was carrying on her own part of the mission. The cavern opened into a massive entry hall that branched out with multiple doors through the place. The Samurai seemed to have hollowed out the entire mountain for their base. She ignored the stairs that led downwards. That would be her teammate's duty. The next to meet her had put on his armour, but had not gotten the memo that he would be facing an Uchiha. He met her gaze first, and she weaved the genjutsu with an efficient brutality.
His fellows were caught off guard when he turned to them and attacked. The first did not manage a word out before head was separated from shoulders. The second managed one block but hesitated to counter, and was split in twain a second later.
"Shinobi!" She heard one of the men shout. The alarm he raised was both too little and too late.
They were already upon her and it was much too late for them to change tactics.
She swept her gaze across their ranks. The fools that were too slow to recognise the threat fell under her thrall and she did not hesitate to use them to her advantage, playing them like puppets as she directed them to begin to attack their fellows.
Perhaps if they were fellow shinobi, they would have greater resistance to genjutsu. Or even just more common sense to dispatch of those of us who had fallen under her thrall. They had neither of those things and so they suffered even as she weaved the light that surrounded them into a cloak for her to hide within. Bending light itself was not a skill that any man had managed to accomplish. Not even Sensei had quite managed to bend light as pure and unadulterated as it was when it came directly to them, so she had abandoned that goal in making her jutsu.
She abandoned the concept of bending light entirely and focused instead on weaving it. Instead of working with individual light atoms, she took the ambient light of the environment and weaved it in on itself to form her version of the Meisaigakure Jutsu.
Safely hidden, she went to work. She strolled through the base, well aware that both her chakra and the seal that cloaked it from being detected were running out quickly. As she moved, she used her kunai and darts to make short work of whatever guards had not answered the bloody alarm that marked her arrival. When she finally reached her target, she was almost unsurprised to find him sat in Seiza, seemingly waiting for her.
"Shinobi, welcome," he said when she stepped through the open doorway. She allowed her hold over the light that cloaked her to slip and allowed herself to come into view.
"You are an Uchiha. From Konohagakure no Sato? The Land of Iron has no quarrel with your village," he said, still remaining in the meditative posture.
"Sadly, we have a quarrel with you. Allowing Kumo to purchase chakra metal at a reduced price seems to be a sign that you no longer value the partnership that you enjoy with Konoha," she said, stepping deeper into the room.
"And so for that you have broken in here, killed several of my samurai, and now stand before me. And still you make threats. You dare to threaten me, Fuhido Takeshiro, the First Fire Sword of the Daimyo of the Land of Iron!" he said, at the last words beginning to scream before he pushed up from his position and then turned his whole body in her direction.
She watched as he tilted his body. His eyes never met hers for a second, focused only on her neck and below. Smart. He shot across the space between them so quickly that she wondered if he had used some version of the Body Flicker. Unfortunately for him, her Sensei could teleport and her teammate was not too far off from that when it came to speed. She pushed off from the ground in a flip, allowing his swing to miss her completely. She landed right behind him. He turned quickly, admirably, but he was no shinobi and his training betrayed him.
As he did so, he met her gaze for a second and no longer just as she had expected. Samurai were swordsmen first and foremost and contrary to what the uninitiated would think, they gauged their opponent by looking into their eyes. Eye contact was an integral part of swordsmanship. She took control of his body with the same ease she had for his fellows and commanded him to slit his own throat. The blade was about to make contact before he stopped. She felt her genjutsu shatter and lifted a brow as the Samurai's chakra spiked to a height she had not expected. He had as much as Kushina did without the Eight Tails.
Fire bloomed into being. He swung his blade at her, and even though the distance between them was such that it had no hope of connecting, the fire that had formed around the blade left it and shot straight at her, burning a bright blue. She twisted, sinking into the ground to avoid the attack and returning to the surface off to the side.
He turned to face her immediately. And then there was more fire. She could feel the seal beginning to burn itself out and made her decision. This needed to be over and soon. With her Sharingan, she dissected the workings of the jutsu he was using and she picked a path. She twisted her body and cut through his flames with her bare hands as she moved towards him, closing the distance. He moved to take advantage of her stepping into his range. He was a fantastic swordsman, but she was an Uchiha. His strikes had little chance of touching her and when she found her opportunity, she took it. She dove in on the offensive, aiming to stab her kunai through his neck.
He twisted, the opening having been a feint and victory sparked in his eyes. He stabbed her straight through her chest, a smirk forming on his face. She said nothing as her existence unraveled and the lightning that had formed her coursed through his body. The original Mikoto, having never left the ground, shot up behind him and stabbed her kunai straight through the back of his neck while his nerves were seized.
"I take it you succeeded," she said, turning to the third person in the room.
The Yamanaka removed herself from the shadows and produced a scroll. "It's all in here. Enough chakra metal to arm a small army," she said.
"Who even knew the Samurai had that much they were just sitting on? They made it seem like getting even small amounts of the stuff was hard," she continued. Mikoto remained silent as they began to make their way out of the mountain.
A/N: A whole chapter from another POV? I do hope I managed to keep y'all engaged with this one. With Shori as Hokage, he can't really get up to much outside the village so we have to rely on others to move that part of the story forward, get it? Next five up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.