"How is he?!"
"You okay?!"
Jiraiya shoved his way through the scattered crowd of shinobi and dropped to a knee beside Kakashi, voice tight with worry.
"I'm still breathing," Kakashi rasped, pushing himself upright with the help of his sword buried in the snow.
Even with the vast reserves of chakra he possessed, the unrelenting high-intensity fighting had finally started to take its toll. His lungs burned. His arms trembled.
He forced his breathing to steady and cut straight to the point. "When do they get here?"
"Right now."
The words had barely left Jiraiya's mouth when the ring of Cloud shinobi around them stiffened as one. Every head turned toward the blackness beyond the campfires.
A low, guttural roar rolled through the wind and driving snow—like some primordial beast waking beneath the earth.
Then they saw it.
A wall of water, black and endless, thundering down the valley toward them.
"A flood?!"
"How the hell is there a flood here?!"
One of the Cloud shinobi screamed, panic cracking his voice.
Normal floodwaters wouldn't have frightened seasoned ninja. But riding the crest of that flood came dozens—no, hundreds—of sleek black boats, cutting through the deluge like arrows loosed from the dark.
Konoha shinobi.
"Stop them!"
"Block them, now!"
"Earth-style users! Water-style users! Where are you?!"
The Fourth Raikage shot to his feet again, lightning crackling around his massive frame in fury.
But before the order could fully leave his throat, every Konoha ninja aboard those boats slammed through the same sequence of hand seals in perfect unison.
The flood itself bellowed—a living, primal force—and surged forward even faster.
At the vanguard were Konoha's elite Water Release specialists.
Two streaks of motion burst ahead of the wave, streaking straight for the Eight-Tails and the Raikage.
Uchiha Shisui. Might Guy.
Kakashi's single visible eye narrowed. His knuckles went white around the hilt of his blade.
"We're inside the impact zone too," he said quietly.
If it had been just him, he wouldn't have hesitated. A single leap, a Lightning Release cloak, and he'd have cleared the wave without breaking stride.
But behind him…
He glanced back.
Dozens of his men—blood-soaked, battered, many barely able to stand—watched him with exhausted, trusting eyes. They'd bought a few precious seconds of breath when the Cloud ranks broke to stare at the coming flood.
One of them managed a tired grin. "We finished the mission, yeah, Captain?"
Another slumped to the ground, laughing through cracked lips. "Go on, sir. Get out of here."
A shinobi roughly Kakashi's age, face caked with blood and snow, gave a lopsided shrug. "You promised you'd look after the wives and kids for us. I don't have any yet, so… you're off the hook for me."
Jiraiya's massive hand clamped around Kakashi's wrist like iron. "Come on!"
"Wait."
Kakashi's head snapped up. He tore free in an instant, hands already flashing through seals.
Jiraiya's eyes widened. "Kakashi, the plan—"
"I know the plan." Half his chakra remained. That was enough.
"Earth Release: Earth Flow Divide!"
He slammed both palms to the frozen ground.
The earth screamed.
A jagged chasm ripped open beneath the exhausted Konoha squad, swallowing them whole. One hundred and thirty-seven men and women dropped into the sudden abyss.
"Hang on and control your breathing!" Kakashi shouted down at the startled faces below. Then he dragged the earth shut above them like a coffin lid.
He didn't stop there—another pulse of chakra reinforced the shell, packing it denser, harder.
Only then did he straighten and turn toward the onrushing wall of water.
"Let's go."
Jiraiya didn't argue. He just gave Kakashi a long look—part pride, part something heavier—and nodded.
If everything Kakashi had said earlier about Jiraiya one day calling him "Lord Fifth" had been a joke…
…then right here, right now, the Toad Sage was ready to mean it.
The flood hit like the wrath of a god.
Colossal waves smashed across the Cloud encampment, hurling men and tents and supply crates into the air as though they weighed nothing. Shinobi who tried to stand on the water's surface were instantly swept away; the current was too wild, too fast, for even elite chakra control to hold.
Konoha boats rode the chaos like vengeful spirits, kunai flashing, jutsu lighting the night.
And at the heart of the maelstrom—
A mountainous shadow erupted from the flood with an earth-shaking croak.
Gamabunta.
Kakashi and Jiraiya leapt onto the toad boss's broad head without a word. Gamabunta launched forward in a single titanic bound, landing atop the crest of the wave itself.
"Toad Oil Bullet!"
A geyser of thick black oil gushed from the summon's mouth, spreading across the floodwaters in a glistening sheet.
Kakashi and Jiraiya were already moving.
"Fire Release: Great Flame Bullet!"
"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!"
Crimson fire met oil.
Gale-force wind met fire.
The night ignited.
A sea of flame exploded across the surface of the flood, towering dozens of meters high, roaring pillar that swallowed the darkness and turned falling snow into hissing steam.
Water and fire became one living apocalypse.
The technique the three of them had planned—Goemon—unleashed in all its terrible glory.
Cloud shinobi caught in the inferno had no defense. Oil clung, fire devoured, wind fed the blaze until it became a starving beast. Screams rose and cut off abruptly as men and women vanished beneath waves of liquid fire.
Supplies burned. Tents became pyres. The entire forward camp was erased in minutes.
The Raikage stood on a crumbling hill of earth, lightning armor flickering weakly, watching his army drown in flame and flood. Blood dripped from his clenched fists.
Dodai appeared at his side, gripping the Raikage's arm with desperate strength.
"Lord Raikage… we've lost. We have to retreat."
The Raikage's roar of rage and grief split the night, shaking the very storm around them.
In the distance, the Eight-Tails—still locked in combat with Shisui—heard that roar. The scarlet in Shisui's eyes dimmed. The colossal bull-octopus fixed the Uchiha with one last inscrutable look, then let the crimson chakra cloak fall away.
Killer Bee shrank back into human form, cast a final glance toward the burning sea that had been their camp, and turned clumsily into the dark.
The Cloud had broken.
And somewhere beneath tons of reinforced earth, one hundred and thirty-seven Konoha shinobi breathed silent thanks to the man who had refused to leave them behind.
Kakashi Hatake stood atop Gamabunta's head, silver hair plastered to his face by spray and melted snow, single eye fixed on the hell he had helped create.
He didn't smile.
He simply whispered to the wind,
"Mission… complete."
————
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