The first Senju to reach me was an adult, a broad-shouldered brute with a scar that ran from his ear to his chin. He wielded a heavy naginata, the blade etched with the blue ripples of a Water Style tempering. He moved with the grounded stability of a man who believed his weight was his greatest asset.
Technical Assessment:
Enemy Stance: Low-centered (Earth/Water focus).
Weapon Reach: 2.1 meters.
Strike Velocity: 18 meters per second.
Vulnerability: Excessive reliance on friction.
As the naginata swung in a horizontal arc designed to bisect me at the waist, I didn't retreat. To retreat was to allow him to reset his momentum. Instead, I dropped my center of mass and slid across the mud, using a pulse of chakra to reduce the friction between my sandals and the ground.
I was a glitch in his visual processing. He expected a child to stumble; he didn't expect a child to move like a stone skipping across a frozen lake.
I passed under the blade, the wind of its passage ruffling my hair. As I slid past his lead leg, I didn't use a kunai. I reached out and tapped the underside of his kneecap with a finger coated in a thin, vibrating film of Lightning-natured chakra.
Technical Logic: The Neural Short-Circuit. I wasn't trying to cut the flesh. I was sending a high-frequency pulse directly into the patellar nerve. The brain's signal to 'stand' was overwritten by a command to 'collapse'.
The man's leg went limp. He didn't just fall; he imploded into his own momentum. His head hit the obsidian rock with a wet, heavy thud—a 9-on-the-concussion-scale.
I didn't stop to finish him. Efficiency dictated that I move to the next threat.
The battlefield was a chaotic symphony of sensory input. The air was a mixture of ozone, burnt iron, and the sharp, acidic tang of Fire Release. My Sharingan was screaming, processing the movements of fifty combatants at once. I could see the shimmering heat-wraiths of the Uchiha fireballs and the heavy, brown density of the Senju earth-walls.
"Kaito! Left!" Madara shouted.
I didn't look. I felt the displacement of air. Three Senju adolescents—my "peers"—were lunging from the ruins of the withered forest. They were fast, their movements synchronized in a "Wolf Pack" formation.
Target A (Leader): High-speed focus. Weapon: Twin short-swords.
Target B (Left Wing): Support. Preparing a 'Water Release: Syrup Capture'.
Target C (Right Wing): Heavy. Broad-blade. Center of gravity shifted right.
"The technical error," I muttered, my hands moving in a blur of seals that felt like clockwork, "is assuming that numbers overcome a superior algorithm."
I didn't use a fireball. I used a Dust Cloud Ignition.
I slammed my palms into the dry, grey ash of the dead leaves at my feet. A pulse of chakra sent the fine particulate matter into the air, creating a localized cloud of high-surface-area fuel.
Target B exhaled his syrup-water. It hit the dust cloud and turned into a heavy, useless sludge.
"Now," I whispered.
I clicked a small flint-and-steel mechanism I had rigged into my sleeve. A single spark.
BOOM.
The dust cloud didn't explode like a bomb; it flashed. The sudden thermal expansion created a localized pressure wave that knocked the three adolescents backward. The intense heat lasted for only 0.2 seconds—not enough to kill, but more than enough to scorch the rhodopsin in their retinas and sear the sensitive membranes of their lungs.
They collapsed, clutching their eyes and gasping for air that felt like molten lead.
I walked through the smoke, my Sharingan cutting through the haze with a cold, red clarity. I reached Target A—the leader. He was rolling on the ground, his swords abandoned.
"Why... why no fire?" he wheezed, his skin blistered and red.
"Fire is a waste of spirit-energy when the environment provides the fuel for free," I said, kneeling over him. I took his own short-sword from the mud. It was balanced, the steel high-quality. "You relied on your clan's vitality. I relied on the laws of combustion. The result was inevitable."
I ended his suffering with a single, technical thrust through the gap in his neck armor.
Chakra Reserves: 68%.
Neurological Load: 52%.
Progression: +1.2% toward second tomoe.
The battle raged around me, but I was in a state of data-trance. I was no longer a person; I was a processor. I saw an Uchiha warrior get his arm crushed by a Senju's Earth-style fist. I saw a Senju scout get turned into a human torch by a localized Fire-release trap.
It was dark. It was gritty. It was the Warring States Era. There were no heroes here, only survivors and the dead.
And then, the pressure shifted.
The air around me began to vibrate with a frequency so low it made my teeth ache. I turned.
Hashirama Senju was standing twenty meters away. He wasn't looking at the battle. He was looking at me. His hands were clasped together in the 'Ram' seal, and his chakra was no longer just a signature. It was an ocean.
"You," Hashirama said, his voice dropping to a register that shook the very bedrock beneath my feet. "The boy who sees the error. You are the one killing my brothers with 'logic'."
He moved his hands.
"Wood Release: Deep Forest Emergence."
I looked at my internal map.
Engagement Probability: 100%.
Survival Probability: 0.8%.
"Technical Assessment," I whispered, my Sharingan spinning so fast it felt like it was bleeding, "I am about to be deleted."