The second Senju didn't make the same mistake as the first. He didn't rush. He stood twenty feet away, his chest heaving under blue-lacquered plates, eyes narrowed at the corpse of his comrade. To him, I was an anomaly—a child with the eyes of a veteran and the hands of a butcher.
To me, he was a set of variables.
Technical Assessment: Enemy is a mid-range specialist. Hand signs indicate 'Water Release: Wild Water Wave.' Atmospheric humidity is 82%. The salinity of the soil will increase the conductivity of any electrical counter-attack, but I lack Lightning Release. Strategy: Leverage the Acoustic Shadow.
"You're not a normal brat," the Senju growled. His hands blurred. Tiger. Ox. Hare.
In the anime, hand signs took seconds. In reality, a trained shinobi's fingers move at a frequency that creates a low-pitched hum in the air. He was fast, but he was loud. Every twitch of his tendons sent a signal through the air that my Sharingan—now fully calibrated to my 120Hz sensory intake—picked up like a glowing trail.
"Taiga," I said, my voice flat, "when I say 'Zero,' throw the smoke bomb at the limestone overhang. Not at him. The overhang."
"Kaito, he's going to drown us!" Taiga shrieked.
"Physics doesn't care about your fear. Just the timing. Three. Two."
The Senju exhaled. A torrent of pressurized water erupted from his mouth. It wasn't just a wave; it was a hydraulic cutter. It had enough kinetic energy to snap a cedar trunk like a toothpick.
"One."
I didn't move. I watched the water. Water is incompressible. It follows the path of least resistance.
"Zero."
Taiga threw the smoke bomb. It didn't hit the Senju. It hit the porous limestone above us. The explosion was small, but it wasn't meant to kill. It was meant to create a Phonic Barrier. The sudden release of particulate matter into the humid air created a localized pocket of high-density fog that muffled the sound of my next movement.
I dived. Not away from the water, but under the leading edge of the wave.
Technical Logic: The 'Ground Effect.' As a high-pressure fluid moves over a flat surface, a thin layer of air is trapped beneath it. If I stayed flat against the trench floor, the bulk of the water's kinetic energy would pass over me, dissipated by the friction of the mud.
The wave roared over me. It felt like a freight train passing an inch above my spine. The pressure was immense, pinning me into the muck, cold water soaking into my lungs, but the lethal force—the "cutting" edge—was diverted by the very trench I had been hiding in.
I emerged from the water like a ghost through the smoke.
The Senju was squinting, his eyes searching the fog. He expected us to be washed away. He was looking for bodies. He wasn't looking for a seven-year-old sliding through the "Acoustic Shadow" created by the crashing water.
I was at his feet.
I didn't use a kunai. I used a Flash Bomb, but I didn't throw it. I held it in my palm, shielded by my own body, and triggered it.
Technical Manipulation: The Sharingan can withstand high-intensity light by contracting the pupil at superhuman speeds. A normal human eye, even a Senju's, requires 0.5 to 2 seconds for the rhodopsin in the retina to reset after a flash.
White.
The world turned into a blank canvas. The Senju screamed, clutching his eyes. This was the "Absurdity" Nathaniel Gwyn lived for—the exploitation of a biological constant.
"Your optic nerve just suffered a massive photostress," I said, my voice appearing beside his left ear. I wasn't being dramatic; I was providing a status report. "Your brain is currently hallucinating purple blotches to fill the sensory void. You are technically blind for the next eight seconds."
I drove my kunai into the femoral artery of his inner thigh.
A clean, deep puncture. I twisted the blade 90 degrees to ensure the wound couldn't close. Arterial blood sprayed—hot, metallic, and high-pressure. It painted my face. I didn't blink.
He collapsed, the strength leaving his legs as his blood pressure plummeted. He tried to grab me, but his movements were clumsy, uncoordinated. I stepped back, watching him bleed out with the detached interest of a scientist watching a chemical reaction reach equilibrium.
"Why..." he wheezed, the water specialist's life draining into the mud he had just created. "You... monster..."
"I'm not a monster," I replied, checking the tension on my wire spool. "I'm just someone who actually bothered to read the manual on human anatomy."
Two down. One to go. And the third one was the problem.
I could feel it. A heavy, suffocating pressure on the edge of my perception. The third signature wasn't a scout. It was a sensory-type. And he was watching me from the canopy with a cold, calculating hunger.