The battlefield smelled of scorched earth and blood.
Under Nara Shikaku's calm but commanding voice, Konoha shinobi moved with practiced efficiency; collecting the dead, tending wounds, erasing traces of their jutsu.
Half an hour later, the field lay quiet, only the faint breeze stirring the ash. Shikaku called for a short rest, and for fifteen blessed minutes the survivors sat, drank, and let their hands stop trembling.
When the time was up, the formation moved out again—this time to the rendezvous point where Minato Namikaze and his unit were waiting.
After rejoining, they turned north, toward the front lines against Kumogakure.
The Konoha forces in the trenches still didn't know the truth, that the war with the Cloud was on the verge of ending. Until then, they needed to see reinforcements.
It took more than half a day of steady travel to reach the forward camp. Night had already swallowed the forest by the time they arrived.
Waiting for them was Orochimaru himself.
Long black hair framed his pale, almost porcelain face. Golden slit-pupils gleamed beneath the faint purple markings that ran from his eyelids to the sides of his nose. Clad in black and the standard flak vest, he carried himself with a composure that was both indifferent and unsettling.
To the emerging contender for Hokage, Minato, Orochimaru showed neither warmth nor hostility, only the cool neutrality of a commander with a job to do.
Minato met it with his usual gentle humility, his every word and gesture carrying quiet respect for his senior.
Greetings were brief. Then Orochimaru, Minato, Shikaku, Yamanaka Inoichi, and Akimichi Choza disappeared into the command tent to speak in low, decisive tones.
The rest of the shinobi dispersed to their assigned quarters.
Kakashi, despite already holding the jonin title, wasn't yet in the circle where front-line strategies were decided. As for Gen, who was still a chunin, such meetings weren't even a consideration.
But that wouldn't be true for much longer.
Gen's record was stacked high: the siege of Iwagakure, the Sunagakure assault, the interception of Cloud reinforcements. Fifty enemy ninja had fallen to his team's missions—ten chunin, four special jonin, three full jonin among them. If that didn't warrant promotion, then the word "merit" had lost all meaning.
More importantly, this was still before the Nine-Tails incident. The Uchiha's relations with the village elders were tense but not yet irreparably fractured, and the clan's main force was still in the thick of battle with Kirigakure. Konoha needed them, their Sharingan, to counter the Mist's bloodline warriors.
Water beat fire. Mist blunted the eye. A Sharingan couldn't pierce what it couldn't see. If the leadership wanted to keep morale high and the clan contributing, stifling one of its rising stars would be political suicide.
When the fighting with the Cloud abruptly ended, the Raikage A ordering the retreat the very next day, but Konoha didn't press the advantage.
No one wanted to keep killing for the sake of killing. The Cloud army fell back to the Land of Lightning, leaving only a token force at the border.
For Konoha, the large-scale war with the Cloud was over. Even Orochimaru allowed a faint smile to cross his lips—more time for his experiments, fewer interruptions.
News traveled fast. When word reached the village, the Hokage's joy was obvious. Hiruzen's orders came swiftly: commendations for those who fought, pensions for the families of the fallen, and staggered returns home for the survivors.
And in the paperwork from the administrative corps, one line stood out!
'Uchiha Gen: recommended for promotion to jonin.'
A chunin's promotion to jonin required the Hokage's own hand. Wartime made it easier, but not easy. Hiruzen hesitated over Gen's name… and then approved it.
Just like Kakashi, Gen would skip the special jonin rank entirely, thirteen years old, a full jonin. Not quite the youngest in history, but enough to mark him as one of the Uchiha's brightest.
The news spread quickly. Pride lit the Military Police Force's halls.
Someone started calling them 'the Uchiha twins: Shisui of the Body Flicker from the Mist front, and Gen of the Three Battlefields.'
When Kakashi and Rin heard, they insisted on celebrating. Gen didn't argue—he was just as pleased. They dragged Minato along, and the four of them ended up at BBQ.
The food was good; with quality meat, charred just right—but to Gen's palate, trained in another lifetime, it was simply a solid meal, not something to obsess over. Same with Ichiraku Ramen: great noodles, but hardly addictive. Most days, he preferred his own cooking.
That night, though, wasn't about the food. It was about the rare calmness between storms.
Kirigakure was still fighting. Minato still had a Hokage's chair to win. And Gen knew that Team 7's rest wouldn't last long.
He had barely set his mind to taking the next day off when a messenger arrived.
'An invitation from Uchiha Fugaku.'