NARUTO SI: A Burdened Soul (Elder Brother to Itachi SI)

Chapter 13

SHIKAKU NARA

Two weeks, that was the time the young Uchiha had needed to make his preparations, as the Snake Sanin interrogated a few captured Kumo-nin to identify all their routes, encampments and formations.

How the golden haired jounin had done this, Shikaku did not wish to know.

But the plot was set, and it was time to act.

If their intel was correct tonight, Kumo would be attacking one of their flanks, using the cover of darkness to their advantage. As he stood there way behind the lines with the tracker and the boy in question, he waited for Kumo's attack to commence.

BOOM!

And as soon as that first explosion went off, they trap was set.

"Ok, kid you ready?" he asked, as he turned towards the small boy standing by his side.

"Yes, I am," and soon enough, several explosions rocked the line as battle sounds filled the area. Kumo's attack began, and their fates were sealed and placed in the hands of the young Uchiha heir.

"Ok, let's go," and with that, the small unit pushed forward, though Shikaku himself held back as they moved in to intervene against the Kumo-nin, as the Uchiha clan heir took a deep breath.

"You do know that you cannot use those seals of yours, right? You need to leave an impression without them," he reminded the kid. That was why he was here: in case things went awry, it was his job to cover for the boy covertly, if possible, and openly if needed.

"Don't worry, Commander Shikaku," the boy said as he opened his eyes. Now, those black irises were replaced by those scarlet red eyes that the whole ninja world feared, and the boy's demeanor changed as those eyes narrowed.

"I don't think Kumo will be forgetting about me anytime soon," and with that he pushed forward, blurring past them, as Shikaku raised a brow. Moving slightly to the right, he saw the Konoha nin from the front line jumping back, and Kumo-nin chased after them.

"You got nowhere more to run, you damn tree huggers," a Kumo-nin taunted as the four Konoha ninjas stood there in formation as the eight or so Kumo-nin closed them off in a half circle.

And then, in an instant, their gaze turned to the tree above the Konoha-nin, as Uchiha Izuna blurred infront them, hanging upside down from the tree branch, as his eyes gleamed in the darkness.

"Those eyes," one of the Kumo-nin gasped.

"What the hell, Konoha is putting kids on the front lines?" the Kumo-nin taunted before suddenly one of them recognized his face.

"Shit. Is that him? That Uchiha brat we heard so much about?" and at that, he saw them still at that Izuna Uchiha reached for his tanto at the back.

"Surrender, kid. We outnumber you!" they challenged as Izuna Uchiha took out his tanto.

"I would ask you to look again," and in that instant, a dozen of his clones emerged all around them as the Kumo-nin gasped before they began to throw Kunai at them, and yet they passed through them.

"They are simple clones. Get them!" they ordered, and yet the clones rushed forward just as the Kumo-nin did, as Izuna Uchiha jumped down infront of the four chunin Konoha nin, and yet as the Kumo-nin's attacks went right through the clones.

"AGHHH!"

"GUGHHH!"

Three of the Kumo-nin screamed in agony as the attacks from the clones connected, surprising the rest.

"What the hell is this? Is this a genjutsu!" one of them screamed as they tried to disrupt their chakras to break the genjutsu, while two others flanked Izuna Uchiha by the side, swords in hand as they pushed them towards him.

"GOT HIM!" they laughed as their swords cut through his abdomen, and for a second, Shikaku feared the worst and was about to intervene, and yet there was no cry of pain. No blood. There was no movement as he saw those ominous red eyes of his light up and spin.

"Are you so sure about that?" then Shikau's eyes widened as he saw that boy dissolve into a flock of crows infront of his eyes.

And he found himself wondering. Just how many damn tools did the boy have in his toolbox.

And then a battle began, as Kumo-nin tried to fight back against him, and yet they were helpless as Shikaku used his own Shadow Possession jutsu to support the kid from the back, even though he did not need to.

But still, he was rather impressed and distraught at the same time. For this was not a single jutsu, not even a single discipline. This battle, it was a symphony, that combined ninjutsu, genjutsu, taijutsu, and simple misdirection.

It was something that took most shinobi years to master, and yet here he was, an eight-year-old boy, dismantling fully grown Kumo-nin like they were nothing.

BOOOM!

And as one of them used an explosive tag, the Kumo-nin regrouped, their group of eight now reduced to four, and all of them bloodied and injured as a dozen unscathed forms of Izuna Uchiha stepped out of the cloud of debris.

"Shit! Just what kind of a monster are you!" one of them shouted as the Uchiha brat began to cycle through a set of handseals.

"The kind that is about to kill all of you," and with that, he brought his hands to his face.

"Katon: Great Fire Ball Jutsu," and he watched as a massive blue ball of fire rushed out of his mouth.

"GET OUT OF THE WAY!" one of the Kumo-nin shouted and they all jumped back, except one who he pinned to the ground using his shadow possession.

"Wha....." but before he could say or do anything the massive ball of fire enveloped his whole body. And Shikaku had heard about this, heard how the Sandaime-sama himself had praised the boy for the ninjutsu, and yet watching it was a whole other thing.

The attack had burnt Kumo-nin to a literal husk, and it was only his own years of experience that he remained unaffected by the sights infront of him.

"AGHHHHHHH!" and his screams filled the area, Shikaku had watched many a shinobi burn infront of his eyes, yet as the massive fireball vanished, he could do nothing and watched as the Kumo-nin's body was reduced to nothing but ash infront of them all.

"SHIT!"

"RETREAT! SEND THE DAMN SIGNAL! WE ARE DONE!" They began to retreat, and Izuna Uchiha jumped after them, sending off a wave of shuriken at them, and he struck one.

And then another, until only one of them managed to make out and pull back to the other side of the forest.

And it was then that he finally stepped out of the shadows and jumped up the tree branch as he stood beside the Uchiha kid, who did seem a bit winded.

"Thy will be remembering this," he said, and the boy nodded as another voice joined them as the golden-eyed sanin appeared from the shadows, startling even him.

How had he not even felt his presence?

"That they will be," the man said as he looked at the Uchiha clan heir.

"That was impressive Izuna-kun, now let us prepare....."

0000

DODAI-Kumo Commander

The war with Konoha was going in Kumo's favor, and as the main host gathered in Kumo, it was his job to harass and weaken Konoha's defensive line until the main offensive team joined them and blew Konoha up.

They knew that Konoha could not support the Northern Front with a massive influx of men, given that they had to divide their men to cover up the border with Iwa. They were also being harassed by Kiri-nin.

So, whatever resources they may manage to gather up, it was upto him to dismantle them all.

"WHAT!" Dodai screamed as he heard the report from the only surviving member of the assault team.

"We were slaughtered," the Tokubetsu jounin gasped in worry as Dodai found himself surprised by those words.

Of the twenty ninjas he had sent, nineteen had been killed. It was the greatest loss they had suffered in a singular day in months.

"How could this happen?" he asked. The Konoha ninjas should be exhausted, and even if reinforcements had arrived to lose so many men in one single raid. It was unbelievable for though they were not the strongest of his men, they were not the weakest either.

"It was that one shinobi," he blurted out as Dodai felt a shiver run down his spine for that was indeed Konoha strength, monsters, S-ranked nin that could cause a lot of trouble.

And a singular shinobi that killed so many of his men. Could it be him, the shinobi who was feared all over the continent now—the Yellow Flash?

"A kid," he snarled as Dodai's eyes widened.

"That Hatake brat?" he asked as the injured Tokubetsu jounin shook his head.

"No, this was an Uchiha brat. One of the two we were warned about, the one we thought we had killed," and he stilled at that.

Killing children was not the most honorable thing, but yet it was a necessity of war specially when it came to facing a village like Konoha with its slew of monsters. For it was taking the combined might of three Great Villages to push them back, that was just how mighty Konoha was.

It drove all that strength from its cohort of elite S-ranked ninjas, ninjas so strong that they could turn the tide of the battle, if not the war, single-handedly. The newest addition to these ranks was the Yellow Flash, who had now cemented himself as an S-ranked menace, and there was little any village could do about that.

They would target those who had the potential to become these monsters. Hatake Kahasi was one such individual, though targeting him was much more difficult given that he was under the protection of Minato Namikaze.

And then there had been rumors about not one, but two young shinobi just like him. Young Uchiha brats who had broken records and had become genin at seven.

And they had to target them. Somehow they were able to get intel about them, and were able to launch an offensive against them, one that had cost them a whole unit behind enemy lines. But in the end, they had thought their mission accomplished as all those rumors and whispers about the Uchiha's rising stars vanished.

Until tonight.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Yes, it was him. I recognized his face and those eyes. He was just a kid, but he slaughtered all of my units single-handedly," and Dodai heard many gasps at those words, for this was what it meant to be a genius.

And the despair of facing one as an enemy.

"And his fire, it was not red. It was blue, and I watched it burn Sakibo to ash infront of my eyes," he added as his fists balled up, as Dodai gulped.

If this was true, then that meant that the earlier mission to eradicate the Uchiha brat had failed. And now Konoha had sent him here alongside possible reinforcements.

"I will need a full report about the mission on my desk tomorrow," he ordered as the injured shinobi nodded.

"Otherwise, you are all dismissed," and with that, the command room was emptied as he found himself staring down at the map once more, lamenting the major loss they had taken today.

And given that he knew just who the opposing commander was, so nothing was off the table.

Shikau Nara may not be a juggernaut in the same way as the Sanin or Minato Namikaze were. But he was a menace in his own way. It was through his sheer prowess that Konoha had even managed to hold on to their line for as long as they had, and now with reinforcements and that Uchiha prodigy at his fingers.

The man could decimate them.

"We will need to shore up our defences..." he whispered as he began to mark the vulnerable places on the map. But he knew that they could not just sit here and defend, for with every passing day, their enemy grew stronger, and their position got weaker.

If Konoha littered the whole area with traps, then their offensive would be neigh impossible. And then there was the matter of that Uchiha prodigy and how giving him time would only make him more and more deadly.

And of further reinforcements came.

"We need to attack," he decided, or it was decided for him.

"We need to attack and kill that Uchiha prodigy," for that would deprive Konoha of one of its most promising assets and would demolish their morale as well.

"Yes, we need to attack...."

0000

Hiruzen Sarutobi read the reports from Shikaku and found himself content with the progress that was being made on the Northern front. And though the danger had not yet passed, it was encouraging to see that the hopelessness had vanished from the Nara commander's reports.

And with Orochimaru there, he knew he could rest easy for some time.

But the same could not be said of Iwa's progress, and it was imperative of them to act.

"Is your team ready, Minato?" he asked the shinobi standing infront of him.

"They are, lord third," the blonde responded sharply as Hiruzen nodded and put down his pipe.

"Then, I promote Hatake Kakashi to the rank of jounin and assign team Seven the A-ranked mission of bringing down the Kanabi bridge...."

0000

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