The war front shifted long before anyone realized it. For a week, Iwa's attacks had been predictable—probing strikes, skirmishes, ambush attempts easily countered by Konoha's formations. But that morning, the atmosphere changed. Even the wind seemed heavier.
The first clue was the silence.
Konoha patrols stopped returning.
Reports arrived late… or didn't arrive at all.
Then came the real message: an entire Konoha forward position had been wiped out—clean, fast, efficient. No survivors.
A new Iwa unit had entered the war.
And they weren't ordinary shinobi.
Shanks was sitting on a broken stone wall, arms crossed, humming a tune only he found amusing, when Minato arrived with the latest report. His blond hair was dusty from scouting, but his eyes were unusually sharp.
"They're pushing hard," Minato said. "Very coordinated. Iwa's sending squads we haven't seen before."
Shanks raised an eyebrow.
'Elite squads, huh? Took them long enough.'
Behind them, Konoha forces moved with urgent purpose—runners delivering orders, teams equipping sealing tags, medics preparing for triage. Even the seasoned jōnin looked tense.
"How many casualties?" Shanks asked.
Minato hesitated.
"600."
Shanks clicked his tongue.
Before they could speak further, an explosion shook the ground. Not far. Not accidental.
A messenger sprinted toward them.
"Shanks! Minato! Enemy breakthrough on the east ridge—Commander Tokuma requests immediate reinforcement!"
Minato's posture tightened. Shanks hopped off the stone and stretched his shoulders.
"Alright," he muttered. "Let's go clean the mess."
The battlefield was chaos—the disciplined kind that only seasoned shinobi could keep together. Konoha lines were retreating from a slope that was rapidly turning into a kill-zone.
Iwa forces advanced with brutal precision.
Earth pillars erupted, stone shrapnel flew like bullets, and the ground itself shifted under the Leaf shinobi.
Minato's eyes scanned the terrain.
"They're trying to split our units."
"Hm," Shanks said casually. "Annoying."
Minato rushed in first. At ten years old, the boy moved like a ghost—silent, quick, lethal. He slipped between two Iwa chunin, a kunai cutting one's tendon before he dodged a stone bullet and struck the second in the throat.
Small, clean movements. Clinical efficiency.
A nearby Konoha jōnin watched, stunned.
"That kid… moves like an adult Anbu…"
Shanks walked in behind Minato, dragging his feet lazily… then suddenly stopped.
His eyes narrowed.
The battlefield's noise seemed to fade.
'Too many targets. Our side's spread thin… tch.'
He exhaled.
The air trembled.
A ripple of pressure swept across the entire slope—silent yet crushing. Leaves stirred, dust rose, and every Iwa shinobi within fifty meters froze mid-step.
Some collapsed immediately.
Others dropped to one knee, gasping, eyes wide with panic at a force they couldn't identify.
Konoha shinobi felt it too—but softer, like a gust of wind brushing past them.
A Konoha chunin whispered, "What… what was that?"
Minato didn't answer. He knew the feeling well.
Shanks stepped forward, bored, eyes half-lidded.
"Don't get up," he muttered. "You're all annoying."
Half the Iwa advance collapsed entirely.
Just like that.
The Konoha line steadied instantly. They reformed, pushed back, and seized the terrain they had lost. The momentum flipped in a heartbeat.
But Iwa wasn't done.
Their real counterstrike arrived just as Konoha began regaining ground.
From the shattered treeline stepped a tall, hard-faced Iwa jōnin with thick armor plates and a great hammer slung over his shoulder. His presence alone made three Konoha shinobi step back instinctively.
"That's… Jūro of the Iron Spine…" someone whispered.
"A commander-ranked jōnin. Specializes in anti-shinobi combat."
Shanks blinked.
'Hammer guy. Cute.'
Jūro spit on the ground and pointed the hammer at him.
"You're the red brat killing my men. Good. Saves me time."
Shanks scratched his cheek.
"…Do you ever shut up?"
Jūro charged.
The hammer swung with enough force to shatter boulders. The shockwave alone uprooted trees.
Shanks sidestepped, unimpressed.
Jūro swung again, faster—the ground cracked. Shanks ducked under the blow and flicked his finger against the hammer's edge.
The hammer shook in Jūro's grip.
"What—?!"
Shanks sighed.
"Your weapon's annoying too."
The air thickened.
A wave of suppressive pressure slammed into Jūro point-blank. His knees buckled, blood dripping from his nose as he gritted his teeth.
"You… monster…"
Shanks appeared in front of him with a simple step.
"Sleep."
A single chop to the neck.
Jūro hit the dirt, unconscious.
The entire battlefield froze for two seconds… then erupted as Konoha forces surged forward.
Minato cut through fleeing Iwa shinobi like a whisper of yellow light, never wasting a motion, never showing emotion. His silent efficiency terrified enemies more than any jutsu could.
By the end of the clash, the ground was littered with stone armor fragments and broken weapons.
Konoha had won.
And almost entirely because of two boys.
Iwa called Shanks "The Crimson Calamity."
Minato became "The Silent Reaper."
Neither nickname pleased them.
Minato cleaned his blood-stained kunai quietly, expression unreadable.
Shanks closed one eye.
He flicked Minato on the forehead.
"Don't think too much. You'll get wrinkles."
Minato sighed.
In the Tsuchikage's Office
Hundreds of kilometers away, in the stone halls of Iwagakure, old man Ōnoki nearly choked on his tea.
"What do you MEAN… a child defeated Commander Jūro!?"
His aide bowed so deeply his forehead almost cracked the floor.
"Reports all confirm it, Tsuchikage-sama… also… entire squads were incapacitated by an unknown pressure-based technique."
Ōnoki's eyebrow twitched violently.
"A pressure technique? Are you telling me Konoha bred a child who can use mass-scale chakra shockwaves?"
"T-that seems to be the case…"
Ōnoki slammed his desk.
"That brat Hiruzen… he hid this! Prepare my entourage—we're going to the front."
"But Tsuchikage-sama—!"
"I am going. If Konoha is fielding monsters, I need to see them myself."