Scene: "Let Him Forget Me"
A torrent of black ash exploded toward Isshin.
Minato's eyes widened, he aborted the strike instantly, teleporting away in that heartbeat.
He reappeared several meters off, boots skidding across fractured stone, breath shallow. When he lifted his gaze, his body froze.
There she was.
Orange hair. Pink scarf.
The Shinigami who had taken Genma.
For a brief moment, the battlefield fell into eerie stillness. She stood before Isshin, sword drawn, body poised protectively, wordlessly declaring that Minato would have to go through her first. Their eyes met across the chaos, and something inside Minato softened.
"Oi, Matsumoto! What are you doing? Get back!" Isshin barked, voice ragged.
He tried to push her away, but she didn't budge.
"He'll have to go through me to get to you," she said firmly, her voice carrying through the smoke.
Isshin sighed, then gave a weary laugh. "Maybe you should wear the captain's cloak instead…"
He staggered upright, leaning heavily on Engetsu. Minato's Reiatsu flickered faintly, steady, but weakened.
Then, movement. Several figures dropped from the sky. The first, a young man clad in shinobi-style gear, stabbed downward from above.
Minato backflipped as the blade struck the ground, pulverizing stone where he'd stood.
"Die, criminal!" the man roared, attacking again, relentless, efficient, merciless.
Minato's expression hardened. He weaved through slashes and thrusts with minimal motion, sidestepping one strike, slipping inside another, and driving a kick deep into the man's ribs. Bone cracked. The man's body spun backward through the air.
Minato drew several marked kunai and flicked them forward, each spinning through the air at impossible angles.
Then he vanished.
The man's eyes went wide mid-air. He twisted instinctively, but Minato had already appeared beside him, driving a kunai through his chest.
Before the blood even scattered, Minato disappeared again,reappearing behind him, cutting across the gut, then again, to the side of his head. Teleporting through the marked kunai he had sent chasing after the man,each strike was silent, mechanical, unrelenting.
By the time the last kick sent the man crashing into the dirt, his body was already lifeless.
Minato landed lightly, but his legs trembled. His breathing came ragged and uneven. The toll of fighting two captains had begun to eat away at him, lungs burning, muscles twitching in protest. He barely had a moment to catch his breath before another pulse of killing intent rushed his senses.
He moved just in time, rolling aside as a surge of Reiatsu scorched the ground where he had stood.
Through the dissipating dust, a bald Shinigami emerged with a predatory grin, spear in hand. Behind him stood another, sharp-featured, with long lashes and a blade drawn, silent and calculating.
Minato straightened, raising Sorasen.
The bald man lunged. The spear tore through the air toward his chest. Minato turned it aside with practiced precision, only for the weapon's shaft to uncoil mid-strike, a chain snapping outward. The spearhead curved back toward him from behind.
He ducked beneath it, countering with a flick of his wrist, sending a marked kunai flying.
The bald man reflexively twisted his weapon to deflect it.
A mistake.
Minato vanished.
He reappeared mid-spin, his heel crashing into the man's face, sending him tumbling through the air. Another kunai followed, cutting toward the flying target. A clone appeared beside Minato, nodded once, and disappeared with a faint ripple.
The bald Shinigami steadied himself mid-air, blood trailing from his lip, just in time to meet Minato again, point-blank.
Steel flashed. Pain split his spine.
The clone's onslaught continued. Each movement was clean and final, teleporting between the seals, blades cutting through the air with ghostlike precision. Ikkaku tried to fight back instinctively, but the unpredictability of the Sorasen's power rendered his intuitive battle intelligence unfruitful.
Then, as the man was hurled upward from the final strike, Minato reappeared above him, driving a Rasengan into his back.
The impact shook the battlefield. Wind and Reiatsu erupted outward in a deafening burst.
When the smoke cleared, a crater yawned beneath them, and the bald man lay motionless, his torso torn and burnt from the Rasengan's force.
"Ikkaku!" The other Shinigami screamed in rage, eyes blazing as he charged.
Minato flicked several shuriken toward him. The man halted, eyes darting rapidly to track each spinning blade, reading the angles, predicting his movements.
For a heartbeat, it seemed he had him figured out.
Then Minato vanished, not toward the shuriken behind him as expected, but to one embedded deep in the ground just ahead.
Sorasen flashed across Yumichika's torso, cutting clean through, drawing a red line of finality.
He fell before realizing he'd been struck.
"GETSUGA TENSHŌ!"
Isshin's voice thundered, and Engetsu howled. A colossal wave of searing crimson energy ripped across the landscape, devouring everything in its path.
Minato was already gone.
To be caught in that would mean only one thing, death.
He reappeared behind Isshin, or more precisely, beside a shuriken he'd marked earlier, and drove Sorasen toward the man's head. But before the blade landed, a torrent of slicing ash roared toward him, forcing him to retreat. He twisted backward, only to meet a slash from a tall, bespectacled lieutenant who had closed in during the chaos.
Instinct took over. Minato hurled Sorasen itself forward with a corkscrew and vanished mid-motion.
He reappeared beside the flying blade, seizing the hilt, and slashed downward. The sword cut deep into the man's shoulder.
Blood spattered.
Minato ripped the blade free and backhanded it toward the man's eye.
"Don't you care about Genma at all?!"
The voice cut through the din like thunder.
Sorasen froze, a hair's breadth from the man's eye.
Minato's entire body went rigid. His breath hitched.
He turned.
Matsumoto stood there, eyes burning, voice trembling with fury and sorrow.
"What happens," she said, voice cracking, "when he finds out that his teacher, the man he admired, loved, and trusted, was a criminal, a fugitive?"
The words sliced deeper than any sword.
Minato's grip faltered. His hand trembled. The point of Sorasen dropped.
Then, a surge of golden sealing light erupted from his scroll.
Yoruichi burst free, appearing beside Isshin, eyes sharp as steel. Her gaze swept the field, the unconscious bodies of the lieutenants, Isshin barely standing, the ruin and silence that followed Minato's wake. Her jaw clenched.
She could strike. End him here.
But she looked at the state of her comrades—and sighed.
"Let him forget me…" Minato's voice came low, tired, breaking.
"Please…"
He staggered back, sheathing Sorasen with trembling hands.
Yoruichi's expression shifted. Isshin leaned heavily on Engetsu, struggling to breathe.
Then, his voice, rough and strained, cut through the still air.
"You can walk away, Minato… but your boy's life is on the line. The Head Captain won't spare him, or Matsumoto, if you don't come."
Minato stopped dead. He turned toward Matsumoto. She hung her head, shoulders trembling, silent tears tracing her cheeks.
Minato closed his eyes, exhaled, and sank to his knees.
The fight drained out of him completely.
Genma would die because of him, because of his choices, his defiance.
And his pride as a shinobi, as a teacher, would never let him abandon the boy who looked up to him as a father.
He dropped his head.
"…It's over."
A/N: If you enjoyed this chapter leave a comment, a review would be nice, a powerstone would me amazing. Thank you.