Snow whipped through the air, the night a black curtain torn by howling wind.
"Everyone, stay on my heels! We're cutting straight through!"
Kakashi's hand closed around the hilt of Kiba at his waist, his gaze already locked on the wave of Kumogakure shinobi rushing toward them. He didn't recognize their commander. It didn't matter anymore.
"Kill!"
The word tore from Kakashi's throat as he ripped Kiba free and charged. Eight hundred Konoha shinobi followed, eyes blazing with feral resolve, ghosts in the storm.
Three hundred meters. Two hundred. One hundred. Fifty. Ten.
They crashed together.
Steel screamed against steel. In the strobing glint of Kiba's blade, the snowy night turned white-hot. One heartbeat, and the outcome was decided.
The white-haired jonin strode through blood and blizzard like a demon reborn, eight hundred wolves at his back tearing into an enemy force that matched them in number yet shattered like glass. The Kumogakure captain who dared cross blades with Kakashi lasted exactly one strike. His final words—"The difference is too…"—were swallowed by the snow and the boots that trampled him into the mud.
No hesitation. No retreat. They carved a red path straight toward the main Kumogakure encampment and never looked back.
"They're here!"
"Form up, damn it—!"
A lookout on the camp's watchtower screamed until three fireballs punched through his chest in rapid succession. He burned where he fell, torchlight against the dark.
Kakashi's hands blurred through seals.
Fire Release: Phoenix Sage Fire Technique!
Dozens of fireballs streaked down like a meteor storm, slamming into the gates and the men beyond. The night turned orange.
"Success or failure—it all comes down to this moment!" Kakashi's voice cracked like a whip over the roar of flames. "Follow me and kill!"
Eight hundred voices answered as one, a single thunderous roar that made the blizzard itself falter.
"Stop them!" "They're insane—all of them!" "Kill the bastards!"
Kumogakure shinobi poured in from every direction, a living tide. Kakashi met it head-on, Kiba singing, blood painting the snow in frantic arcs. Blades bit flesh. Jutsu flared and died. Men fell on both sides without a sound.
At the very front, Kakashi was death incarnate. Kiba no longer a sword but a reaper's scythe—cut, step, cut, step—every swing claiming another life.
From the high command platform, the Fourth Raikage stared down at the carnage, face dark as the storm.
"How many?" he growled.
"Roughly… eight hundred," Darui answered, voice tight.
"Where the hell is Bee?"
"Not here yet."
The Raikage's fists clenched, lightning crawling over his knuckles. "Then I'll handle these eight hundred myself. Tell that idiot to move his ass!"
Even a man as hot-blooded as the Raikage could feel the wrongness of it. Kakashi Hatake—Konoha's rising star, the Yellow Flash's prized student—leading a suicide charge into the heart of Kumogakure with only eight hundred men? No village threw away a genius like that. Not without a deeper plan.
And yet the white-haired demon below carved through his camp like it was paper.
In minutes, Kakashi's force had torn past the outer defenses. Bodies carpeted the ground behind them—Cloud and Leaf alike.
Then a gauntlet gleaming with lightning rose and caught Kiba mid-swing.
The Fourth Raikage.
"Sakumo Hatake's son," he rumbled, voice low and dangerous. "The Yellow Flash's disciple." Lightning chakra crackled around his massive frame. "Is Konoha really worth throwing your life away like this?"
Kakashi's eye narrowed, cold as the blade still locked against the Raikage's palm.
"Mistakes have a price," he said quietly. "My father paid it. The ones who made him pay it did too." A pause. "So will you."
Blue-white lightning exploded from Kakashi's body, matching the Raikage's own watt for watt. One brutal clash and the Fourth was forced a half-step back.
The Raikage barked a harsh laugh. "Heh. So the Leaf isn't as united as they pretend."
His chakra cloak flared blindingly bright, hair rising like spears of lightning. Muscles coiled. Then he moved—one step, a sonic boom, the world narrowing to a single streak of thunder.
Lightning Release Chakra Mode.
Kakashi met him head-on, Kiba screaming down in a slash that parted the air itself.
The impact birthed a shockwave that hurled men off their feet in a twenty-meter ring.
For one impossible instant, Kiba's edge sheared through the Raikage's legendary armor of lightning. Unseen beneath the flash, Kakashi's chakra had already shifted—lightning giving way to the shrill, buzzing howl of wind.
Golden flames licked along the blade.
Wind devours lightning.
The Raikage's eyes narrowed. In his peripheral vision, Konoha's eight hundred were being whittled down by the second. Dozens had already fallen while he traded blows with their leader.
Kakashi saw it too.
No more time.
In the heartbeat the Raikage hesitated, Kakashi sprang backward, hands flashing through seals mid-air.
Shadow Clone Technique!
Smoke erupted—three perfect copies, four Kakashis in total. Sixty-four units of chakra split evenly, sixteen each.
The Raikage's stomach dropped.
Shadow clones in real combat meant one of two things: insanity, or chakra so obscene it didn't matter.
And the man who'd just night-raided six thousand enemy shinobi with eight hundred…
Four voices spoke at once, overlapping like a storm.
"Fire Release…" "Fire Release…" "Fire Release…" "Wind Release…"
The Raikage lunged, lightning screaming, but he was a fraction too late.
"Great Dragon Fire Technique!" "Dragon Flame Release Song Technique!" "Great Fire Annihilation!" "Great Hurricane Tornado!"
Three towering fire dragons and one roaring cyclone detonated simultaneously.
The Uchiha clan's most destructive fire jutsu—gifts from a certain sharp-tongued great-grandmother—fed by wind nature until the flames became a living inferno. A firestorm dragon coiled into the sky, swallowing tents, watchtowers, and screaming shinobi whole. The heat flash-boiled snow into steam; the light turned night into hellish day.
Even the Fourth Raikage was forced back three full steps, arm raised against the furnace roar.
The shadow clones vanished. Chakra slammed back into Kakashi like a tidal wave.
He didn't stop to admire the devastation.
"Everyone—follow me!"
Teeth bared against the heat and the blood in his mouth, Kakashi pivoted and led the remnants of his force into the burning heart of the camp, vanishing into the inferno he'd created.
The night swallowed them whole.
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