High above, Yukino Sumi stared, stunned.
She had already written the field off, had already been down to load Choza on the ink-eagle, scoop up the Inuzuka ANBU captain, Gekkō Hisanori, a few others, then run.
Even this main outpost was small.
From the first clash, she could see and sense the whole map, and it had been collapsing in on itself.
She'd been seconds from choosing.
But now five more had punched all the way through to Tenzo… and Shinku had just kept six more Kusa off them with nothing but layered air.
Perhaps he had just been pacing himself until now.
Her eyes flicked across the counts she'd been tracking the entire night.
Choza's and her own culling passes had carved the horde down, where it had been a tide; now it was ~50 Kusa still moving, ~10 Konoha still standing (barely) around here, plus another handful, 5 or so, on Okabe's improvised earthworks.
If the commander fell, morale could flip.
And if there were still chakra spikes here when nearby outposts checked their Root messenger falcons, the fastest birds in this theater, reinforcements might actually make it.
Tenzo's was not the entire village; he was the special ops head, Iwa-backed, rival to the Grass leader the Leaf favored to stay neutral.
His own network was punching this main outpost first in a surprise attack; he didn't have the bodies to hit every listening post at once.
So perhaps they could still hold on, save what could be saved of this base, save those few surviving lives, and at least save Konoha's face, that a minor village like Kusagakure had not managed to drive them out completely of their decades-old main listening post in the country.
Although her plan had been to cut losses and flee, regroup with reinforcements somewhere else in the Land of Grass, or simply wait for the Hokage's orders, she found herself hesitating.
For now, she would stay a little longer.
The fact that three young chūnin had managed to break through to this point, when so many seasoned jōnin had already fallen, spoke volumes. They were clearly not just 'chunin' anymore.
And one of them in particular, Ryusei Nishida, had first held the entire southern gate almost by himself, buying the garrison precious time to last longer in this battle. She watched it from atop her eagle.
Then, instead of falling back, he had crossed the compound to the opposite side, gathering survivors and seemingly putting together a plan to strike at the enemy commander, the very man Choza and Yukino had been unable to pin down, weighed down as they were by the dozens of chūnin and jōnin they had to hold at bay.
Yukino's jaw set. "I stay," she whispered to the eagle. "One more pass for them."
The ink bird screamed and climbed, scattering Super Beast creations to harry the Kusa fringes, buying seconds wherever it could.
***
Down below, Choza Akimichi, still in Butterfly Mode, still enormous, caught sight of the five cutting in on Tenzo.
Sweat streaked down his temples; his voice rolled like a drum.
"If you're pushing that far—win!" he bellowed. "Konoha doesn't bend to grass!"
He pivoted and body-checked a knot of Kusa with a Human Bullet Tank burst, sending a dozen tumbling.
Back in the thicket, Tenzo's eyes tracked Ryusei through a lattice of blades. "Children," he said, voice cold. "Konoha feeds children to these posts now."
Ryusei smiled without warmth. "Kusa sends an old man with a garden."
Tenzo's scythe blurred, one sweep to force Renjiro back, another to bait Hisanori's line, a sudden tug of vines to pull Kanae's footing out from under her, only for a Vacuum Palm to detonate the snare inches before her ankle.
She slid, reset, and the Vital Surge Ryusei had primed in her veins answered with clean speed instead of panic haste.
Shinku called from the perimeter, still fencing minds. "I'll keep the ring thin. Don't overextend."
"Copy," Renjiro snapped, eyes bright behind the mask of focus.
Ryusei tilted his head, measuring Tenzo's timing, the way the grass telegraphed his weight shifts a half-beat early.
"We take his footing first," he said, voice low to his four. "Kanae opens lanes. Renjiro cuts anchors. Hisanori punishes any overreach. I'll go through on the tell—he leans left before the heavy drop."
His gaze flicked once toward Shinku. "If I force him to spin, give me one breath of emptiness behind his eyes."
Shinku's answer was immediate. "You'll have it."
Tenzo's mouth twitched—amused, or annoyed, it was hard to tell. "Planning out loud? Good. I like when they're confident."
The grass hissed as his Yang-fed growth thickened the cage again. The scythe rose.
And the five moved.
Ryusei closed the distance.
Shinku watched from the rear, keeping his layered nets strung tight. Hisanori held just behind Ryusei as the clean-up blade.
Kanae and Renjiro came in from opposite angles at Tenzo's back, cutting lanes and forcing him to pivot, bleed chakra, and keep his mind split.
Kanae's Byakugan read every twitch.
"Right hip—he's setting a bind. Scythe line—low to high!" she called, crisp, rapid.
Renjiro and Hisanori, both pure with the sword, cut whatever grew in front of them—roots, reeds, the sudden ribs of saplings—never letting the cage finish closing.
Ryusei kept Tenzo centered on his sensory map, tracking the man's chakra trace like a live glyph.
Tenzo tried to muddy it with earth-release clones—cheap copies, not Konoha's shadow work.
Ryusei's clones shredded them on arrival and pulsed confirmations along his short-range sensing link.
When that gambit failed and the ring kept tightening, Tenzo stopped playing shadows and went straight for the "weak point."
He laughed without humor. "Eyes first."
He blurred, scythe already coming down at Kanae—the one who kept exposing his intent, the one who looked like the easiest kill.
Renjiro hit the line first, tanto up, lightning flow screaming along the edge.
The impact blew sparks and shoved him a full pace back. He caught the second sweep on a slant, boot gouging stone.
"The hell—!?" Renjiro's eyes flashed. "Your swing covers half the street, old man? Throwing blade-light like it's nothing… Fine. I'll learn to tear the air too!"
Tenzo didn't let him breathe; a short, brutal chakra arc kicked off the scythe and hammered Renjiro's shoulder, driving him another step.
Tenzo shifted to finish both—Kanae first, then Renjiro.
"Renjiro—down," Ryusei said, voice flat.
Eight shadow clones snapped into motion.
They caught Ryusei in sequence and hurled him—clean, practiced, no waste.
Ryusei rode the throw, twisted midair, and dropped like a stone.
Senju Heel Drop.
Momentum coiled through his hips; the entire fall condensed to the point of his heel.
Tenzo felt him late. His sensing wasn't built for this, and he was busy killing.
He looked up, startled, then smiled—cold, confident.
"Come on then."
He couldn't use Crushing Weight upward—gravity didn't favor it—but he didn't need it, did he? He flooded his body with enhancement, ran chakra flow down the scythe until the edge sang, and swung to split the boy in half on the way down.
The two lines, falling heel and rising blade, met in the heart of Tenzo's thicket.
Ryusei had borrowed this maneuver straight from Naruto.
The difference was that he had refined it.
Because the clones he created were formed so close—literally touching his body when they caught and threw him—he could immediately reabsorb the chakra he had given them with almost no loss.
The transmission was instant, clean, and efficient.
That wasn't the case with the clones he had scattered earlier to intercept Tenzo's earth-release copies; the further away they were, the more waste there was when he recalled them, but back then, he hadn't had a choice.
Here, though, the setup was perfect.
The throw gave him the momentum his Senju Heel Drop needed, a brutal push from above that he couldn't generate with footwork alone.
It closed distance with ruthless speed, syncing seamlessly with his sensory map of the battlefield.
With his perception, he could aim the drop almost perfectly, predicting exactly where the enemy would be.
And besides, this opponent didn't look like his upward swings would carry the same crushing force as when he struck downward, nor that he had a good enough sensory ability to dodge on time, as sensors understand each other's levels of sensing.
That was the opening Ryusei meant to exploit.
Ryusei had only a heartbeat to decide, but his mind worked faster than his body ever could.
He was already falling, momentum behind him, the First Gate roaring in his veins, his body at peak acceleration from the Senju Heel Drop.
Tenzo, a man seasoned from decades of battle, had already brought his scythe up perfectly, the blade's edge locked on course to cut Ryusei clean through.
Instead of committing to the usual crushing heel, Ryusei shifted in mid-air, twisting his frame with impossible control.
His leg curved, his shin sliding into the motion of Flowing Willow Guard, a flexible parry turned into a brutal counter.
The steel-like shin slammed down against the scythe with every ounce of force he had mustered—First Gate strength, the full momentum of his fall, and a surge of Lightning Release sparking along the bone.
The result was explosive. The scythe, weapon of years of mastery, snapped apart in a screech of metal, fragments scattering into the grass below.
Ryusei's other leg followed through in the same motion, lancing forward like a spear.
His shin slammed into Tenzo's torso, tearing flesh and sending blood flying. The man was hurled back, a ragged hole punched through his side.
For the first time, the commander's eyes widened in shock. His boots skidded against the grass, blood dripping down his uniform as he staggered back several steps.
He looked down at the ruined weapon in disbelief, then up at Ryusei with a face twisted in rage and confusion.
"A brat… broke my scythe?" His voice was low, venomous, but the tremor in it betrayed his disbelief. "Impossible. That weapon has cut through jonin, through men twice your size—"
Before he could finish, he sensed the net closing. Kanae and Renjiro were already on him from either side, their chakra flaring.
Hisanori had slipped up behind Ryusei, blade drawn, and Shinku's genjutsu was already whispering into his mind from a distance, illusions coiling into the battlefield around him.
Tenzo clenched his fists, the scythe's broken haft trembling in his grip before he tossed it aside. His eyes narrowed.
"So this is how you want it? Fine. I'll show you why I'm the strongest in Kusagakure."
He inhaled sharply, his chest expanding unnaturally.
The veins along his neck bulged as his Yang Release technique activated, flooding his lungs with oxygen at maximum intake.
At the same time, he snapped a small pill into his mouth—Kusa's top-secret stimulant.
His muscles swelled, his skin stretched, and his chakra flared like wildfire.
The recoil would cripple him later, he knew. But later didn't matter.
Blood still dripped from the hole Ryusei had carved into him, his uniform torn and stained, but his aura grew heavier, more monstrous, as he entered his "super state."
Without hesitation, Tenzo moved.
His hand snapped out, and a cloud of senbon whistled forward—thin, precise, each needle laced with poison chakra.
The virulent energy shimmered faintly in the air, deadly not just as poison, but as a chakra designed to invade and rot the body from within by amplifying its effects.
"Die with the rest of them!" Tenzo barked, voice echoing over the battlefield.
Kanae's Byakugan caught the danger instantly. "Renjiro—behind me!" she shouted, shoving him back as her arms blurred.
Her palms struck out in rapid succession, 128 Palms smashing into the air.
The storm of senbon shattered against her defense, poison chakra dispersing in harmless sparks.
But Ryusei was still closest. Too close.
His senses screamed at him, his body barely pulling back a few paces before Tenzo lunged, his eyes glowing mad with killing intent.
The commander's lips peeled into a feral grin.
On his right hand gleamed a new weapon—a heavy glove threaded with seals and coated in writhing poison chakra, the virulent energy pulsing visibly like green flames.
"Let's see how composed you are when this venom eats your soul, you damn Leaf's 'talent'," Tenzo hissed, surging forward to finish him.