Another Boring Uchiha Power Fantasy.

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[Signing in…]

[Obtained: Adamantine Staff!]

Name: Mikoto Uchiha

Age: 13

Rank: Chunin

Affinity: Lightning Affinity, Fire Affinity, Yin Affinity, Water Affinity

Unique: Immense Chakra Reserves, Sharingan (Two Tomoe), Advanced Growth Rate

Skills: Fire Style Mastery, Water Style Mastery, Lightning Style Mastery, Yin Style Mastery, Clone Jutsu, Substitution Jutsu, Transformation Jutsu, Shurikenjutsu, Advanced Taijutsu, Elite Genjutsu, Body Flicker, Perfect Chakra Control, Uchiha Style: Kenjutsu, Stealth, Survival Knowledge, Cooking, Medical Ninjutsu (Mystical Palm, Chakra Scalpel), Fūinjutsu Affinity, Pedagogy Mastery, Space-Time Ninjutsu Affinity, Seven Heavens Breathing Method, Musical Talent, Craftsmanship Aptitude

Equipment: Kunai, Shuriken, Smoke Bomb, Explosive Tags, Poison Gas Bomb, Flash Bomb, Gas/Sleep Bomb, Food Pills x103, Wire Strings, Shark Skin, Giant Folding Fan, Bingo Book, Training Weights, Fūma Shuriken x100, Hero Water x10, Adamantine Staff

Takeda handed her the orders without sitting down.

”You’re being attached to a larger force at the Kaminari Pass,” he said. ”Joint offensive. Konoha is trying to push through and secure the route on the other side. Ame forces have been dug in for two weeks and we haven’t been able to break them. Command is consolidating strength for a sustained push.”

He looked at the three genin standing behind her.

”Your team is assigned to the support line. Logistics, communication, casualty transport. You specifically are assigned to the field hospital. They need medics.” He paused. ”This is different from what your team has seen, Mikoto. Which is why we have them in the rear.”

”Understood, sir.”

”You march out with the next column. Two hours.”

They packed in one.

…

The column was a hundred and thirty shinobi long.

They moved in loose formation down the main trail heading northwest, spread across a kilometer of road in clusters of four and six and eight. Flak jackets and packs and weapons on backs and hips. The sound of it was footsteps and the clink of equipment and not much else.

Mikoto walked near the middle with her team. The boys were quiet. Around them, the shinobi who made up the column were quieter.

Most of them didn’t talk. The veterans, the ones who had done this march before or one like it, walked with their eyes forward and their mouths closed. Some of them looked like they were walking to their deaths. A few ate as they walked, chewing ration bars or dried fruit with no enjoyment. Simply fueling their bodies. One man near the front of the column had his lips moving without sound with a rosary around his hand. A prayer most likely.

The younger ones were different. Some of them fidgeted. Adjusting pack straps, checking kunai pouches, retying sandals that didn’t need retying. A girl who looked about sixteen kept touching the hilt of the tanto on her hip, her fingers finding it every few minutes as if to make sure it was still there. Two genin near the back of the column were whispering to each other.

The few conversations that happened were short and simple. ”Pass the water.” ”Walk faster.” ”Move over.”

Inoichi tried to start a conversation once, about an hour in. He turned to the chunin walking beside them and asked where the man was from.

The chunin looked at him. He was maybe thirty, with a big nose and bags under his eyes.

”Konoha,” he answered. Then he looked forward again and that was the end of it.

Inoichi didn’t try again.

The landscape changed as they walked. The forest thinned into grey scrub and exposed rock slick with rain, the terrain tilting upward toward a range of low mountains that cut across the horizon like teeth, their peaks lost in cloud. The air got colder. The drizzle started somewhere past the border, thin at first, then steady. Rain that soaked through everything it touched. 

Welcome to Rain Country. 

And the signs of war appeared.

A scorched clearing where the trees had been burned to stumps by a fire jutsu. Gouges in the earth where someone had used earth style to reshape the terrain and then left it broken. A section of trail where the ground was darker than it should have been, blood that the rain hadn’t fully washed away. A broken sandal lying in the ditch beside the road, its strap torn, its sole crusted with dried mud and something else.

Nobody looked at these things for long. The veterans didn’t look at all.

Shikaku looked at everything. His dark eyes swept the burned clearing, the stained earth, the broken sandal. His hands stayed in his pockets.

Mikoto walked in silence. Her Sharingan was active, the red catching the fading light, and she could see the chakra of every shinobi in the column. A river of blue-white energy flowing northwest along a mountain road.

She didn’t say anything to the boys. There was nothing to say that the march wasn’t already teaching them.

They reached the camp as the grey light thickened toward dusk, the sun invisible behind the clouds that hadn’t broken once since they crossed into Rain Country. 

…

The valley opened below them as the trail crested a ridge, and the staging area spread across the basin like a second village. Tents in rows that stretched from one side of the valley to the other. Supply wagons lined up along a makeshift road. Cook fires burning in clusters under stretched tarps, the smoke flattening in the damp air and drifting sideways instead of rising. Weapon racks. Water stations. Latrine trenches dug into the hillside. A field hospital that was four tents stitched together with canvas corridors between them. Command posts marked by colored banners snapping in the mountain wind.

And people. Everywhere. Hundreds of them. Moving between the tents, sitting around fires, standing in groups, walking patrols along the perimeter. More shinobi in one place than Chōza had seen in this war so far.

Beyond the camp, the mountains rose. The Kaminari Pass was visible as a gap in the range, a narrow corridor between two peaks where the rock pinched together and the trail threaded through. Even from the staging area, Chōza could see the scars on the mountainside. Craters from explosive tags. Sections of cliff face that had been reshaped by earth jutsu. Smoke drifting from positions he couldn’t make out.

”Whoa...” Chōza breathed.

”This is insane,” Inoichi said beside him. His green eyes were wide, moving across the camp, trying to take it all in. ”There’s so many people. How many shinobi are here?”

”This is nothing like what we’ve been on,” Chōza said. ”This is a whole army.”

”Oi.”

The voice came from behind them. A jonin, older, maybe forty, with a weathered face and a flak jacket that had been repaired so many times the original stitching was barely visible. He was looking at the two boys with an expression that had no warmth in it.

”Shut it. This isn’t a sightseeing trip.”

Chōza was about to respond but the man wasn’t finished yet.

”Every man and woman in this camp is about to walk into that pass and fight for their lives,” the jonin said. ”Some of them are going to survive. Some of them aren’t. You two are standing here gawking like it’s a festival.”

Inoichi stepped forward to explain. ”We weren’t trying to-”

”I don’t care what you were trying. Show some respect or go back home, brats.”

Chōza’s fist clenched at his side. Inoichi’s jaw tightened. Both of them were a heartbeat from saying something they’d regret.

”He’s right.”

Mikoto’s voice was calm. She stepped forward, past her boys, and looked at the jonin. Then she turned and looked at the camp below them. At the tents and the fires and the hundreds of shinobi who filled them.

”This is not the time to be insensitive,” she said. She wasn’t speaking to the jonin alone. She wasn’t speaking to the boys alone. She was speaking to everyone within earshot, and on a ridge overlooking a staging area, that was a lot of people. ”Many of the people here are about to risk their lives for the village. For their comrades. For their families. We shouldn’t make light of their bravery and their strength. What they’re about to do matters.”

The ridge was quiet.

The jonin looked at her. At the chunin vest. At the red eyes. At the bandaged sword on her back. Something in his expression shifted. “At least one of you brats has some sense.” He grunted before wlaking down the ridge toward the camp without another word.

Around them, the shinobi who had heard it reacted in small ways. A woman with her arm bandaged from a previous rotation straightened her back a fraction. A chunin near the supply wagons who had been staring at the ground looked up. A genin who couldn’t have been older than the boys unclenched his fists and let out a breath he’d been holding.

Something in the air around them loosened, just enough. The people heading into that pass felt, for a few seconds, like someone had seen them.

Mikoto turned back to her boys.

”Watch what you say from here on,” she said quietly. ”Our comrades are carrying more than you can see.”

Chōza nodded. His fist unclenched.

Inoichi nodded too. The flush of anger in his face had been replaced by something more thoughtful.

Shikaku said nothing. He hadn’t reacted to the jonin at all. He was still looking at the pass.

…

They were separated within the hour.

A chunin with a clipboard found them at the intake station and read off their assignments in a monotone voice.

”Uchiha Mikoto, chunin, medical corps. Report to Field Hospital Two. You’re on rotation starting immediately.”

”Understood.”

”Nara Shikaku, genin. Yamanaka Inoichi, genin. Akimichi Chōza, genin. Support line. Report to Supply Station Three for assignment. Logistics, communication relay, and casualty transport as directed.”

”Understood,” Shikaku said for all three of them.

The chunin moved on to the next group without looking back.

Mikoto turned to her boys. The field hospital was uphill to the north, closer to the pass, closer to the fighting. The support line was downhill to the south, in the rear of the camp, as far from the front as you could get without leaving the valley.

She looked at each of them.

”Be good,” she said. ”Watch what you say. Keep up with your training when you have downtime. Stay together. If something happens and you need me, send a runner to Field Hospital Two.”

She reached into her pack and pulled out something long, wrapped in cloth. She held it out to Chōza.

”What is this?” he asked, taking it.

”Open it.”

He unwrapped the cloth. His eyes went round.

The staff was beautiful. Dense black metal with a sheen that caught the last of the evening light. The weight was substantial, heavier than his ash wood bo by a fair margin, but the balance was perfect. When his fingers closed around the grip, it felt like picking up something that had been made for his hand specifically.

”It’s an Adamantine Staff,” Mikoto said. ”As hard as diamond. It won’t break, chip, or bend. You could hit a mountain with it and the mountain would lose.”

Chōza stared at it. He turned it slowly in his hands, feeling the weight shift, the way it moved.

”Sensei,” he said. ”Where did you even get this?”

”I have my ways.” She smiled. ”Take care of it.”

”I’ll protect it with my life.”

”Protect your life with it. That’s what it’s for. If I hear you dying over some stupid object, I’ll bring you back to life just to-” Mikoto pulled up her sleeve and balled her fist.

“I won’t! I’ll use it to protect my life! I swear!” Choza said.

“Good.” She smiled with her eyes closed.

“Mikoto-sensei can be pretty scary sometimes.” Shikaku rubbed the back of his head. She was normally tender and sweet. But every now and then…

She looked at them one more time. Three boys in a war camp, standing at the edge of something none of them were ready for but all of them were going to face anyway.

”I’ll come find you when I can,” she said. ”I don’t know how often that will be.”

”We’ll be fine, sensei. We’re not babies.” Inoichi said.

”I know you will.”

She turned and walked uphill. Toward the hospital. Toward the fighting. Away from them.

Chōza held the staff in both hands and watched her go. Then he looked at Inoichi.

”Wanna fight?” he said. He twirled the staff once. The black metal hummed in the air.

Inoichi’s hand dropped to the chakra blades on his belt. A grin started to form.

”Save it,” Shikaku said. He was holding a folded slip of paper that the intake chunin had given him. ”We’ve got orders.”

”Already?” Inoichi said.

”Already.” Shikaku unfolded the paper. He read it. He sighed. ”Supply Station Three needs thirty crates of weapons moved from Wagon Row Six to Holding Area Nine before midnight. Forty crates of ration packs sorted by type and stamped for distribution. And someone needs to dig a new latrine trench on the east side because the old one is full.”

Chōza’s face fell.

”We just got here,” Inoichi said.

”Welcome to war, I guess.” Shikaku sighed. He folded the paper and put it in his pocket. ”Let’s go.”

They went.

The work was exactly as unglamorous as Shikaku had described.

They hauled weapon crates. The crates weren’t that heavy since they were ninjas. The crates were packed tight with bundles of a hundred, and the wagons were parked on uneven ground that made every trip a balancing act. Chōza carried multiple at a time with his new staff strapped to his back. Inoichi tried to compete with Chōza and was struggling. Shikaku carried one like a normal person and still complained about it.

They sorted ration packs. Each type into its own pile, each pile into its own crate, each crate stamped with a label. Chōza ate exactly zero of the rations despite staring at every single one. Inoichi lost the bet he made with Shikaku saying Chōza would snatch one. Shikaku was a little bit richer by the end of that chore.

They dug the latrine trench. They all hated it and complained together.

Other shinobi came and went around them. The support line was its own world, a constant churn of activity that never stopped. Runners carrying dispatches between command posts. Weapon repair stations where smiths sharpened weapons and fixed them. Medical supply teams loading stretchers with bandages and salves and bottles of antiseptic. Cook teams serving food that nobody had time to sit down and eat, bowls grabbed in passing, rice eaten standing up, tea gulped between tasks.

The boys saw things soldiers would normally see during war.

A stretcher came down from the pass just before midnight, carried by two chunin who were moving fast. The man on it had a hole in his flak jacket and his face was gray. One of his hands was gripping the stretcher rail. The other was pressing against his stomach where blood was leaking through his fingers. His mouth was open but no sound was coming out.

Chōza stopped while carrying his crate. He watched the stretcher go past. The man’s eyes were open and they found Chōza’s for a half-second as the stretcher moved, and Chōza saw something in them that he would remember for a long time.

He kept walking, the previous smile on his face gone.

Another stretcher came twenty minutes later. This one had a woman on it. She was conscious and she was screaming. The sound carried across the supply line and every head turned and then turned back because there was nothing any of them could do about it.

A third stretcher came an hour after that. The person on it was covered with a white cloth. The stretcher bearers weren’t rushing.

Inoichi watched that one. And he thought about the first aid Mikoto had taught them. Pressure points. Tourniquets. Keeping airways clear. How to stop bleeding. How to stabilize a fracture. How to keep someone conscious.

None of it could’ve helped the person under that sheet.

…

Their first shift ended at two in the morning. A chunin at the supply station told them they were off rotation for six hours and to find somewhere to sleep.

They found a patch of ground near the supply wagons where someone had left three folded blankets. Mikoto had them pack their own blankets. They spread them out on the hard earth between two wagons and sat down.

Chōza laid the Adamantine Staff across his knees. He ran his fingers along the dark metal.

”I want to test this so badly…” he said.

”We can do it tomorrow.” Shikaku said.

”What if we don’t get a break tomorrow?”

”Then the day after.”

Inoichi was sitting with his arms around his knees. He was looking north, toward the pass. Flashes of light pulsed along the mountainside. Jutsu. Fire and lightning and the dull orange glow of explosive tags. The sound came a second after each flash, muffled by distance, like thunder from a storm that was happening to someone else.

”Is that what war looks like?” He asked.

”That’s what it looks like from here.” Shikaku said. ”Probably way worse up close. I’m glad we got the easy job to be honest.”

”Do you think they’re going to send us there if we start losing?”

“They’ll send Mikoto-sensei before sending us.” Shikaku murmured. “At least I hope so.”

”The outpost was like fifteen people, you know? This is hundreds of shinobi fighting...”

”Yeah.”

They were quiet for a while. The flashes continued. A burst of blue that lit up the eastern peak for a full second. A scatter of orange dots that might have been a fire jutsu. Something white that streaked across the gap of the pass and detonated on the far side with a sound like a giant cracking its knuckles.

”Do you think Mikoto-sensei is up there?” Chōza asked.

”She’s at the hospital,” Shikaku said. ”Not the front line.”

”The field hospital is close to the front line though.”

”Close isn’t the same as at.”

Chōza nodded but he didn’t look convinced.

”She’ll be fine,” Inoichi said. ”She’s the strongest person we know.”

”She is the strongest person we know…” Shikaku muttered. “Do you think she’s stronger than our dads?”

Another flash from the pass. Red this time. Another fire jutsu. The glow hung in the air for two seconds before fading.

”I don’t know…” Inoichi said quietly. ”Our dads are jonin but Mikoto-sensei killed that jonin that wiped us out.”

”I actually don’t know.” Chōza said after a while. ”I really really don’t know.”

”I can’t tell either…” Shikaku said.

”We’ll have to see if it was a one time thing or if she can beat more than one jonin.” Inoichi brought up.

”That makes sense.” Choza nodded.

Inoichi pulled his blanket tighter around his shoulders. The mountain air was cold and wet. The rain hadn’t stopped since they’d arrived, a thin, steady drizzle that soaked through blankets and found every gap in clothing and made the ground beneath them soft and miserable.

”We should try to sleep.” Shikaku said.

”I can’t sleep.” Inoichi said.

”I can’t either.” Chōza said.

”Me neither.” Shikaku closed his eyes anyway. ”But we should try.”

They tried.

The flashes from the pass went on all night. The sound of the fighting rose and fell like a tide, swelling when something big happened, dropping to a murmur when it didn’t. Stretcher teams moved through the camp at intervals, shadows carrying shadows, heading south toward the hospital and coming back north empty-handed.

The boys lay between the wagons in the drizzle and listened to the war happening above them and the rain falling on them and it took awhile before sleep took them.