Chapter 24
Gari moved first.
He closed the gap fast, faster than someone his size had any right to, and threw a straight right hand at my chest. I was already stepping left. Not because I reacted to it, but because I'd seen where it was going before he even started the motion. [Martial Arts Prodigy] worked like that. His shoulder dropped a fraction, his weight shifted to his back foot, and in the space between those two tells I had already mapped the arc of his fist.
It hit the dirt beside my foot instead.
The explosion punched upward through the ground. I took the shockwave in the legs and let it throw me sideways rather than fight it, rolling with the force and coming up in a low crouch three meters back. My ears rang. Chunks of displaced earth pattered off my back.
Gari straightened up, looking at me with something between interest and irritation.
Good. I needed him looking at me.
I went back in before he could reset. Not to hit him clean, that wasn't the point. The point was to make him swing again. I pushed inside his range with a feint to his left, and when he committed his weight to cut me off, I dropped under his arm and kicked his wrist downward into the ground, stepping back hard the moment his fist touched down.
The explosion went off inches from his own knee. He was already moving, but the shockwave caught his stance and knocked him a half-step sideways. A chunk of rock fragment sliced across the back of his forearm. Not deep. But it was there.
He looked at the cut. Then he looked at me.
"Hm." He actually sounded impressed for a second.
I didn't give him time to think. I put distance between us fast, pulling back to about fifteen meters and bringing my fingers together into a single Bird seal.
Wind Release: Wind Cutter.
The blade left my hand invisible. It sheared through the air and would have taken his arm off at the shoulder.
A wall of compacted earth erupted from the ground between us. The Wind Cutter hit it and tore clean through half of it before dispersing, sending a spray of rock and dust into Gari's face. He stepped back through the cloud, rubbing his jaw.
"You're annoying, single seal jutsu" he said flatly.
I was already resetting for another angle, reading the terrain, calculating. I formed another seal.
The second Wind Cutter came in low this time, angled to catch him at the knees.
He stepped over it, just barely. If he hadn't jumped back, it definitely would have tore apart his knees.
"Very annoying."
I pulled back again, breathing steady. Swift was holding, but the constant movement was burning through my stamina faster than I'd like. I needed to stop creating distance and start using it, and I was running options when I heard footsteps at the treeline behind Gari.
Heavy ones.
Another Jonin — Monga I recognised, walked out of the tree line with their team's Jonin draped across one shoulder like a sack of rice. He dropped him at the edge of the clearing without ceremony and rolled his neck.
He looked at me, then at Gari, then at the craters and the half-demolished earth walls scattered across the clearing.
"Huh." He crossed his arms. "Surprised you're not done yet."
I mentally cursed.
The Jonin sensei was unconscious, which meant whatever had happened on the other side of the clearing hadn't gone the way anyone in this team had hoped. That was one problem. The bigger problem was that Monga cracked his knuckles and stepped forward, positioning himself to my left while Gari held the center.
Two Jonin. One in front, one flanking.
Gari's expression hadn't changed much but there was something satisfied in it now. He rolled his shoulder and came forward again, slower this time, more deliberate. No need to rush when someone else was cutting off the exits.
I moved right to keep them both in front of me, but Monga was already moving with me, matching the angle. Then the ground split.
"Earth Release: Earth and Stone Bamboo Shoot."
Spikes punched up from the soil in a staggered line, cutting across my path and forcing me back left toward Gari. I cleared them with a jump but Gari was already there, throwing a wide left hook at where I'd land. I twisted mid-air, barely, and his fist caught nothing but the space beside my ribs. The explosion went off and the pressure hit me like a wall, sending me skidding back several meters on impact with the ground.
My legs held. Barely.
Another spike formation erupted behind me before I'd even finished sliding, boxing the retreat. I went up instead, into the branches, buying myself a second of breathing room.
Monga had already raised a thick earthen wall beneath where I'd jumped from, repositioning the terrain while I was in the air. Rerouting. Every time I tried to set my feet and get an angle for a counterattack or Jutsu another wall was coming up or another line of spikes was forcing a step in the wrong direction.
I couldn't find my footing. I couldn't hold a position long enough to form a seal cleanly, and holding Swift through all of this was starting to bite into my reserves in a way I could feel.
Gari came at me again from the right while a fresh wall pushed up on my left. I had one line forward and he was in it.
Below me, from the corner of my eye, I caught Hayate moving. Then Yugao. They'd broken the order.
Gari noticed immediately. His eyes cut to them and something in his expression shifted from focused to irritated, the kind of irritated that preceded violence. He turned toward them mid-stride.
I was already moving to intercept when Monga performed handsigns again.
"Earth Release: Earth and Stone Bamboo Shoot."
Two lines of spikes erupted from the ground, one angling toward the genin and one cutting directly across my path to Gari. I had to abandon the angle entirely, twisting away as the spikes tore up the earth where my feet had just been. Kurenai threw something, a kunai, it clattered off Gari's jacket uselessly, but it made him pause half a step.
I needed to get to Gari. Monga was already loading another volley, I could see his hands moving, and I had no clean line on either of them and no time to form a seal and the genin were ten meters behind me in the open and there was nothing, there was just nothing I could do in the next second that made sense.
The roots came out before I consciously decided on them.
Three of them, thick and fast, bursting from the ground with a sound like breaking stone. Two swung sideways, one catching Monga's follow-up spike formation and scattering it, the other hitting Monga himself across the chest and throwing him back several meters. The third drove straight into Gari's side and shoved him clear of the genin, sending him stumbling.
Not sharp. I hadn't had the half-second it would have taken to make them sharp. They were blunt and heavy and that was all they were.
The clearing went quiet for a moment.
Gari caught himself against a tree, one hand pressed to his ribs. He coughed once, sharp and short, then looked at his own side, then at the roots retracting back into the earth. His expression shifted into something I hadn't seen on him yet.
"That's..." He coughed again, and then he grinned, slow and wide. "Wood."
He straightened up, still grinning despite the hand on his ribs.
"Hah. Taking your head just became a lot more important all of a sudden." His voice was still loose, like it has been before, but he was a lot more tense now.
I made the decision and acted on it in the same breath.
The roots came out in force this time, not the reactive burst from before but something deliberate and sustained. They tore up from the ground across the whole clearing, thick and sharp-tipped, multiple at once. Two drove hard toward Monga, forcing him to move, and two more curved around toward Gari, keeping him honest.
"Get back," I said to the three of them behind me, sharper than before. "Not retreat. Distance. Stay mobile, don't stop moving, and hit whatever you can from range. If you have anything useful, now is the time."
Hayate and Yugao were already separating without a word, moving to opposite sides of the clearing, kunai and shuriken in hand. Kurenai held back, hands coming together.
Monga ripped an earth wall up to deflect the first root, but the second caught his shoulder and drove him sideways. He was fast to recover, but the moment he landed Yugao's shuriken were already in the air, precise and aimed at his feet. He had to move again. Another root swung in from his left, and Hayate's kunai came in behind it, bracketing the landing space.
Then Kurenai's hands finished moving.
Monga stopped. Just for a second, his eyes going distant, body rigid. Then he shook it off with a grunt, but that second had cost him. The roots were already there when he moved, tearing up the ground around him and keeping him scrambling.
"Annoying little brats," he snapped, ripping another wall up to buy himself breathing room.
Good. Stay busy.
I turned fully to Gari.
He was watching me with that same flat expression, but his weight had shifted, more careful now, more considered. He'd seen the roots. He knew what I was working with.
I came at him anyway.
A root erupted from the ground to my left and I used it, planting a foot on its surface as it rose and launching myself at a new angle. I formed a seal mid-air.
"Wind Release: Wind Bullet."
The compressed air hammered into his position. He twisted and the shot grazed his side, tearing fabric and drawing a thin line of red across his ribs. He clicked his tongue, dropped low, and drove his fist into the ground. The explosion kicked up a spray of earth and I was already gone, a root catching my feet from below and slinging me wide of the shockwave.
I came down fifteen meters to his right, formed another seal before I'd even landed.
"Wind Cutter."
He threw up a section of earth to block it, but I aimed high and the blade was just fast enough that it cut into his left calf. Not deep. But he felt it, the hitch in his step told me that much.
Another root drove toward him while I formed a third seal.
Wind Release: Wind Bullet.
He punched the root, point blank. The explosion shredded it and sent splinters scattering but the shot caught him across the left shoulder and staggered him back a step. He steadied himself and looked at me, and for the first time the amusement was gone.
"You're going to be a problem," he said, his tone full of anger.
I was already setting up the next angle, using a root as a platform again, keeping my position unpredictable. He had no clean read on where I'd be coming from next. That was the point.
Behind me I could hear Monga grunting, another earth wall going up, the crack of weapons hitting stone. The genin were doing their job.
Then Gari's hand moved differently.
Not toward me. He pulled a kunai and sent it in a flat arc past my shoulder, straight toward the genin.
My head turned. I couldn't help it. It was instant and involuntary, the half-second check to see if they'd moved.
They had. All three of them scattered clean.
But Gari was already gone from where he'd been standing.
He crossed the distance in a blur, by the time my eyes came back to his original position he was three meters away and closing fast, right fist already drawn back.
I threw my hands down into the ground.
The wall came up thick, thicker than anything I'd raised in this fight, dense wood compacted fast. It caught his fist dead center.
The explosion was loud enough to feel in my chest. The wall blew apart in a shower of splinters and burning wood and I took the pressure across my forearms where I'd crossed them, stumbling back several meters before my feet caught.
I looked back for Monga.
He was gone. A depression in the earth where he'd been standing, the soil disturbed in a clean circle. Underground. He was already moving and I had no way to follow him and no root deep enough or fast enough to catch him before he was out of range while focusing on fighting Gari.
I swore under my breath.
The genin were looking at the spot too, then back at me. I shook my head once. Nothing to be done about it.
Gari stepped through the debris of the wall, one hand flexing, rolling his wrist. His calf was bleeding steadily, his shoulder sat slightly wrong, and there was a dark bruise already forming along his ribs where the first Wind Bullet had caught him. He was hurt. Not badly enough, but hurt.
He looked at me with something that wasn't quite a smile.
"Just us now," he said.
I looked at him and made the calculation quickly. He was hurt and I was tired and we could do another three exchanges like the last ten minutes or I could end this. Monga wasn't here anymore, like he said, just them.
I pressed both palms flat to the ground.
The clearing changed.
Roots came out of everywhere, hundreds of them, thin and thick, from every angle, flooding the space between us and spreading outward. They moved fast, faster than the ones before, wrapping around his legs before he could react, climbing up to his waist, his arms, locking his wrists down before he could bring his fists to bear. He drove an explosion into the ones on his right arm and shredded them but three more took their place immediately, and then another drove hard into his left arm and pinned it down.
He was snarling now, driving explosions into the roots as fast as he could make them, but there were too many and they were coming from too many directions.
One drove straight through his chest.
Gari went still.
He looked down at it, at the root buried through him, blood coming slow and dark at the edges of the wound. He coughed once, wet.
Then his body started glowing.
Even I, who was not a sensor, could feel his chakra spike. His skin was lit from underneath, a pale and horrible light spreading out from his chest toward his extremities.
I could guess what that was.
"Get back!" I was already moving, switching to Swift in the same breath, grabbing the nearest root and using it to fling myself across the clearing. "Move, now, all of you, go!"
The genin ran.
I hit the tree line and kept going, putting as many meters between me and the clearing as I could in the seconds I had left.
The explosion hit like a wall. The shockwave tore through the trees, snapping branches and sending a wave of heat washing over my back. I hit the ground, rolled, came up behind a thick trunk with my arms over my head as debris rained down around me.
Then it was quiet.
I stayed low for a moment, breathing hard, and then raised my head to look back at the clearing.
There was a crater where Gari had been standing.
I pushed myself up from behind the thick trunk. The ringing in my ears was starting to fade, replaced by the crackle of burning foliage. The clearing was a complete mess of scorched earth and splintered wood. Gari was completely gone, leaving only a blackened crater where he had made his last stand.
I didn't linger on the sight. I immediately turned and headed for the edge of the tree line where Monga had dumped the Jonin sensei.
He was unconscious and bleeding from a nasty gash on his forehead. He had been far enough away from the epicenter to avoid being vaporized, but the shockwave had thrown him hard against the exposed roots. He had second-degree burns along his left arm and side. He needed treatment, but he was alive.
A deep grimace pulled at my mouth. Monga had gotten away. That meant Iwa was going to receive a direct, firsthand report about a Konoha genin sprouting forests. The secret of my Nature Release was officially blown on an international level. That was going to cause a massive headache for the Hokage, and an even bigger one for me.
Hayate, Yugao, and Kurenai came and joined me a moment later. They looked pale and shaken, covered in a thick layer of dust, but otherwise unhurt, just a few bruises.
I didn't have time to be gentle. "Hayate, get him over your shoulder," I said, pointing to the downed Jonin. "We need to move."
Hayate blinked, then nodded, moving quickly to haul the heavier man up.
I ran through the mental maps hammered into my head during the Academy and by Orochimaru. Based on our current trajectory from the village, there was a small civilian settlement about four miles east of here.
"There's a town nearby," I told them, taking the lead. "We can get some basic medical supplies there before we make the run back to Konoha. Follow me, and ask whatever questions you have while we move. We aren't stopping here."
We took to the trees. The pace was brisk, but I kept it manageable for Hayate with the extra weight.
For the first mile, nobody spoke. The tension was thick enough to cut. Finally, Yugao broke the silence.
"Yuuki," she started, her voice tight. "Was that..."
I let out a heavy sigh, keeping my eyes locked on the branches ahead. "It is. Wood."
I heard Kurenai suck in a sharp breath.
"Do not reveal it to anyone," I said, my tone hardening into an absolute order. "Not even your sensei when he wakes up. It is an S-Rank village secret. Only the Hokage, Lady Tsunade, and my sensei know about it."
"Understood," Hayate grunted under the weight of his burden.
"When?" Yugao asked quietly.
The underlying question was obvious. She wanted to know if I had been hiding it from them the entire time we were friends in the Academy. I had been hiding things, like my Attribute Distribution, but they were asking about Nature Release.
"After graduation," I answered smoothly. "I manifested it just after graduation and was put under a gag order immediately. I wasn't allowed to say anything. Even Anko and Asuma don't know."
That seemed to ease the tension slightly. Knowing I hadn't been actively deceiving them for years softened the blow.
The rest of the journey was silent.
We dropped down into the outskirts of the small town twenty minutes later. During wartime, shinobi carried an unspoken, absolute authority in these civilian settlements. As we walked down the dirt road toward the center of town, people stopped what they were doing. Conversations died. Mothers pulled their children behind them. The sight of three dusty, blood-spattered genin carrying an unconscious Jonin was more than enough to spark panic.
An elderly man, perhaps the village headman, stepped forward nervously. He kept a respectful distance, wringing his hands.
"My lords," he stammered, looking at the Konoha hitai-ate on our foreheads. "Is there an attack coming? Do we need to evacuate?"
"No," I replied evenly. "We encountered hostility nearby, but your town is safe. Our team leader simply needs medical attention."
The man sagged with visible relief. "Ah, I see. Please, allow me to take you to the doctor. It is just down this street."
We followed him to a small wooden clinic. The town doctor was a frazzled-looking man who clearly wasn't used to dealing with shinobi combat wounds. He didn't have much to offer. There was no glowing green chakra available here. He just had standard burn ointment, sterilized bandages, and some basic painkillers.
It was better than nothing. We helped the doctor clean the worst of the dirt from the Jonin's burns and wrapped him tight. It would be enough to stabilize him for the hard run back to Konoha.
The pace back to Konoha was steady and grueling. The adrenaline had completely worn off, leaving behind a heavy, hollow exhaustion. Hayate carried their unconscious Jonin, his breathing labored but consistent, while Yugao and Kurenai flanked him.
Kurenai broke the silence first. Her voice was quiet, stripped of its usual calm composure. "It was so difficult to keep up with. If it wasn't for you keeping him distracted with those roots, we wouldn't have lasted."
Beside me, Yugao let out a long, defeated sigh. Hayate echoed the sound, shifting the heavy weight on his back. The reality of the power gap had hit them hard.
I looked at their slumped shoulders. "Look, you guys just recently graduated."
"So did you," Hayate cut in, his tone flat and tired. "It hasn't even been a year."
"Let me finish," I said gently. "Because of my ability, my team and I were held back and trained brutally for months before we ever stepped foot outside the gates. Asuma has a year on us, and you all know the insane amount of effort Anko puts in. Plus, I've been on a lot of high-risk missions lately facing off against missing-nin and active combatants. Experience makes a massive difference."
Hayate let out a dry, sarcastic breath. "So what? We just get better over time?"
"Time and effort," I corrected. "As much as it sucks, you've just seen the ground reality of the war. You know exactly what the standard is now. Train as hard as you can and push beyond it."
Yugao looked over at me, her eyes thoughtful despite the dirt and fatigue clinging to her face. "Like you used to do in the Academy."
"Yeah," I sighed.
I used to think about it a lot. Back then, I would train for hours in the dirt, completely consumed by the worry of whether I would survive past my very first mission. The truth was, I had grown a lot since those days. Death was still a constant threat, but after establishing the medicinal farm, I knew I would live on in some way. I had a legacy. That didn't mean I wouldn't try my absolute hardest to stay alive and get through this war and the future events, but the desperate, paralyzing fear was gone.
"You won today," I told them, making sure my voice was firm enough to carry over the rustling leaves. "Even if it was because I was there, you won because you get to live another day with zero losses on your end. You survived. Now you have the time to grow so a repeat of today doesn't happen."
No one argued with that. The reality of survival was hard to dispute when you were carrying your bleeding but breathing sensei home.
They seemed to absorb the words, taking them to heart. We fell into a steady rhythm through the canopy, and they stayed silent for the rest of the journey.
We arrived at the main gates of Konoha just as the sun began to dip below the horizon. Following standard wartime protocol, we flared our chakra to prove we were not enemy infiltrators under a transformation jutsu, then rattled off our shinobi identification numbers to the guards on duty. A medical team was summoned immediately, and they quickly took the unconscious Jonin off Hayate's hands, carrying him away on a stretcher toward the hospital.
While the genin stayed behind to give their initial statements to the gate guards, I headed straight for the Hokage Tower.
The receptionist at the front desk looked up as I approached. I asked if the Hokage was currently in a meeting. Ever since the day I had bypassed the chain of command and caused a scene to reveal my Nature Release, I had been granted explicit permission to report to him directly whenever a situation demanded it. She checked her schedule, gave me a curt nod, and waved me through.
I opened the wooden doors to the office and stepped inside. Hiruzen looked up from a stack of documents, his eyes immediately catching the soot and dirt covering my uniform.
"What happened, Yuuki-kun?" he asked, setting his pen aside.
"The team was ambushed by an Iwa Jonin duo including Gari of the Explosion Corps, and I was forced to use my Nature Release to ensure our survival," I reported, giving him the shortest, most clinical summary possible.
The Hokage let out a long, heavy sigh and reached for his pipe. "I see. The secret is out, then. It will undoubtedly be blared loud and clear in the next edition of the Bingo Book." He struck a match, getting the tobacco burning, before his expression softened just a fraction. "Still, it gladdens me that you were able to get out alive and uninjured, and hold your own against two established Jonin. I suppose you told the genin to stay quiet about your ability?"
I nodded. "I did. But I would like permission to clue in Anko and Asuma now."
He paused, a puff of smoke drifting upward. "Oh?"
"Since the other Iwa-Jonin escaped, Iwa is going to broadcast this to the world. As you said it's only a matter of time before the ability ends up in the next Bingo Book update," I explained. Finding out your teammate has a legendary bloodline by reading about it in an enemy assassination manual was a guaranteed way to breed resentment. Dealing with Anko's feeling of betrayal or Asuma's bruised pride over a secret like this was a nightmare I wanted to avoid. "I'd much rather they hear it directly from me. And honestly, I'm just tired of hiding it from my own team.”
And I really was, I liked Anko and Asuma. Even telling them now would come off as damage control over anything else.
A small, genuine smile touched the Hokage's lips, warming his weary features.
"I would have expected you to ask sooner," he said mildly. "You may tell them."
"You may go, Yuuki-kun," Hiruzen said, picking his pen back up. "Your sensei and I will discuss what happens now."
I bowed and walked out of the office. The wooden doors clicked shut behind me, leaving me alone in the quiet corridor.
A knot of worry immediately tightened in my stomach. The secret was out. Iwa knew about the wood, and soon the rest of the world would too. The target on my back, already large from the initial bounty, had just become a beacon for every ambitious shinobi to bring down
I stopped walking, took a deep, steadying breath, and let it out slowly. Letting the anxiety consume me wouldn't change the facts. The board was set, and my hand was forced. I just needed to train even harder and take everything one step at a time, because there really wasn't anything else I could do.
AN: The cat is out of the bag, now I just have to think what the consequences of it will be… I hope the fight was fun to read, I over-describe a lot that probably doesn't make sense, so, uh don't read into it. I hope it makes sense that Yuuki being faced by two Jonin and needing to protect the kids wasn't able to defeat them, he'd have a significantly easier time if he was alone or even with his own team whose abilities he actually knows and are experienced with.
I honestly feel as though this chapter was very mid, just like all of my work has recently been, needless to say, I'm experiencing some burnout. A new Harry Potter fic that's been in my snippets will be getting advanced chapters and get out on Patreon, but also don't worry, I refuse to abandon this story, it's my first fic that's gone this far and it is NOT stopping until it's finished, just bear with me like y'all have been when I skip a week, not saying I will, but if I do.As usual, please comment your thoughts, they help out a TON!
Spider-Lite out!