Kiyohara's nerves tightened. The Demon Leech was no ordinary enemy—he was a real jonin, the kind of ninja who had clawed his way up through blood and corpses. Against someone like that, Kakashi in his current state was no match at all. In the original timeline, he had only survived because Minato Namikaze arrived in time.
With that thought, Kiyohara made his choice immediately: keep a low profile, stay calm, and wait for the right moment. No matter what happened, survival came first.
Minato frowned slightly, then shifted his position just enough to keep the others behind him. "Everyone, be careful," he said in a low voice. "There are twenty enemy signatures, but most of them are shadow clones."
The moment he spoke, it felt as though twenty more hostile presences had bloomed in the forest. It was obvious the enemy had used the Shadow Clone Technique to multiply themselves and muddy the waters.
"Sensei... let me go first. Cover me from behind," Kakashi said.
He wanted to test the technique he had only recently created.
"Don't be rash, Kakashi. Stay back for now," Minato said at once.
As he spoke, his gaze flicked toward Kiyohara, who had already stepped farther to the rear. Minato couldn't help nodding inwardly. Kiyohara was cautious. Kakashi, on the other hand, was too eager.
At a moment like this, when the enemy's exact position and intentions were still unclear, caution mattered more than courage. Minato understood that better than anyone. No matter how strong a ninja was, a kunai through a vital point would still kill them.
"Sensei... I'm the captain for today's mission, aren't I?" Kakashi lowered his body, his right hand hanging toward the grass. "I want to test the ninjutsu I've been developing."
He ignored Minato's warning.
Crackle.
Lightning burst into life in Kakashi's palm, arcs flashing and hissing with a shrill, relentless cry—like a thousand birds screaming at once.
Chidori.
Kiyohara stared at the Lightning Release technique forming in Kakashi's hand. At this stage, it was still called Chidori. Only later, after Kakashi used it to sever an actual bolt of lightning, would it be renamed Raikiri.
They were the same jutsu, really. Even the hand seals were identical. Yet for some reason, the official records later classified Chidori as A-rank while Raikiri became S-rank. The ninja world loved dressing things up after the fact.
"Even if there are many enemies, this will bring them down instantly!"
Confidence blazing across his face, Kakashi rushed straight out before Minato could stop him.
Chik-chik-chik-chik—
The piercing cry of Chidori tore through the silence of the woods.
"He actually came charging right at us?"
Hidden among the trees, the Demon Leech was startled. He had expected to remain concealed, to control the pace of the encounter. Instead, the white-haired brat had sensed him and forced the fight into the open.
In an instant, the Iwa jonin flung several shuriken to disrupt Kakashi's approach.
Swoosh!
At that same moment, Kiyohara's arm snapped out.
His own shuriken cut through the air and slammed into the enemy's projectiles one by one, knocking them out of Kakashi's path before they could reach him.
Obito, who had been about to throw shuriken himself to assist with a feint, froze for a beat. He hadn't even had time to move, and Kiyohara had already acted first.
"How is Kiyohara's shurikenjutsu better than mine?" Obito thought, almost offended. "I'm an Uchiha!"
With the path in front of him cleared, Kakashi accelerated even faster. Driven forward by the violent thrust of Chidori, he shot ahead like a bolt of lightning made flesh.
Bang!
The body he struck dissolved into smoke.
Shadow Clone Technique.
For an instant, the entire battlefield fell silent.
Even the Byakugan couldn't see through shadow clones. They split chakra too evenly. Unless someone had the experience to read a body's subtleties—its timing, its stance, the smallest break in rhythm—there was no easy way to tell the real one from the fake.
While everyone else's attention followed Kakashi, Kiyohara's gaze had never left the ground.
He already knew where the next attack would come from.
Sure enough, the earth shifted. The Demon Leech burst upward from below, a kunai in hand, striking with the speed and viciousness of a serpent.
Obito's face changed. For a split second, he thought the attack was coming for him.
But at the last moment, the Demon Leech twisted and lunged at Kiyohara instead.
He had first intended to kill the brat wearing the Uchiha crest. But once he realized that Kiyohara had also noticed him almost immediately, he changed targets on the spot.
Clang!
Steel met steel, and a brief, brilliant spark flashed between them.
"What?!"
The Demon Leech's eyes widened. The black-haired boy had actually blocked him.
It felt as if the kid had been waiting for him there all along.
While the Iwa jonin was still stunned, Kiyohara's second move followed seamlessly. Another shuriken flew from his hand.
Bang!
The Demon Leech's body turned to smoke and vanished.
Another shadow clone.
For most ninja, shadow clones were powerful but costly. Every extra body split their chakra further and further. The more they made, the weaker each one became.
The Demon Leech clearly suffered from that weakness too. Twenty shadow clones meant his chakra had been divided into twenty portions. Every clone could only draw on a twentieth of the original pool.
Only a monster like Naruto—someone who could spend chakra as if it were air—could create hundreds or even thousands of clones without crippling himself.
"So my sneak attack failed too..."
Not far away, the real Demon Leech frowned. His first thought had been to kill one of the brats and shatter their formation. Instead, nothing had gone according to plan.
"Eighteen..."
Kakashi cut down clone after clone as he circled through the battlefield, then abruptly changed direction and rushed toward the real body.
"Don't get cocky, you little beast!"
The Demon Leech's expression twisted.
It was bad enough that the black-haired brat had seen through his ambush. But this white-haired kid was even more infuriating—calm, sharp, and relentless. The Iwa jonin adjusted his stance and slashed in a precise arc, choosing an angle that exploited Kakashi's loss of control.
He could see it. Kakashi's movement with Chidori was no longer stable.
The Demon Leech saw it.
And Minato Namikaze saw it too.
In the next instant, Minato disappeared.
There was no warning, no wind, no buildup. One moment he was there, the next he had already seized Kakashi and removed him from the line of attack.
He deposited Kakashi in a safe spot, shrugged off his pack, and before his feet even fully settled, the Flying Thunder God flashed again.
Minato appeared behind the Demon Leech as if he had always been standing there, his specially made kunai already aimed at the man's body.
"You're... Konoha's Yellow Flash?"
Cold sweat rolled down the Demon Leech's face. At last, he understood why the order from above had been so absolute: if you see Minato Namikaze, flee immediately.
Pfft.
Blood sprayed into the air.
The Demon Leech's body went slack and collapsed to the ground, dead before he even hit the earth.
Kiyohara watched the scene and couldn't help the thought that rose in his mind. This really was the world of ninja.
Minato usually seemed gentle, approachable, almost warm. But when it came time to kill, he didn't hesitate in the slightest. The profession of ninja had always been steeped in darkness. Assassination, ambush, slaughter—those were its roots. Naruto's brighter, adventure-colored future only made people forget that.
"Hn..."
Kakashi pressed a hand to his wound, and Rin hurried over to treat him at once.
The moment she started, Obito pounced on the chance to scold him. Kakashi had ignored Minato's orders, rushed in on his own, and nearly gotten himself killed. Obito seized on every part of it.
"I don't need your nagging," Kakashi said coldly, glancing at him.
"That's enough, both of you," Minato said as he flicked the blood from his kunai.
Then his voice turned serious.
"This time, the only person who truly satisfied me was Kiyohara."
The words landed like a stone thrown into still water.
Everyone's eyes turned toward Kiyohara.
Minato continued, his tone calm but carrying unmistakable disappointment.
"Kakashi, rules are important. I've told you that before. But a ninja also has to adapt to the situation. Charging ahead recklessly isn't courage. It's carelessness."
Kakashi lowered his gaze. For once, he had no retort.
"Obito, when the enemy struck, you froze."
Obito's face stiffened immediately.
"Rin and Kurenai are different. One is a medical ninja, the other specializes in genjutsu. They are not close-range assault types, so I won't judge them by the same standard."
"Genma... you were steady, but only steady. You neither discovered the enemy first nor disrupted the enemy's offense. You remained in the middle—neither wrong nor remarkable."
Genma rubbed the back of his neck and said nothing.
Minato's gaze fell on Kiyohara again.
"Only Kiyohara stayed alert from beginning to end. He observed the battlefield, protected his comrades, intercepted attacks at the critical moment, and never once acted blindly. That's what I wanted to see."
Kiyohara didn't say anything. He only let out a quiet breath in his heart.
He knew very well that his performance wasn't born from talent alone. Without the memories of the original timeline, without the guidance of his future self, he would never have been able to react so cleanly.
But on the battlefield, no one cared where your judgment came from. Only whether it kept people alive.
Obito looked at Kiyohara with complicated eyes, somewhere between resentment and grudging admiration. Kakashi's expression remained unreadable, though the tightness around his mouth made it obvious Minato's words had struck home.
Rin glanced at Kiyohara too, surprise and relief mixed together. Kurenai's ruby-red eyes lingered on him for a moment longer than usual. Even Genma, senbon in mouth, seemed to reassess him silently.
Kiyohara felt all those gazes land on him, and for the first time since leaving Konoha, he truly sensed the difference.
Before this, he had been little more than a background figure—a genin who happened to be there. But after this exchange, that had changed. On a battlefield, surviving one crucial moment was enough to redraw how others saw you.
The problem was that being noticed was not always a good thing.
If he drew too much attention, he would end up carrying more responsibility. More responsibility meant more danger. And danger, on a mission like Kannabi Bridge, meant death could arrive faster than expected.
Still, Minato's praise mattered.
If this mission succeeded and he returned alive, that single sentence might be enough to push his promotion to chunin through without resistance.
And once that happened, the second dying wish of the rogue-nin Kiyohara could finally be fulfilled.
That thought alone made his pulse quicken.
Strength. Status. A greater chance of surviving the disasters ahead. All of it depended on making it through this mission.
Nothing else mattered more.
Minato finally sheathed his kunai and looked around at the group. "We've already been delayed here long enough. Clean up the traces and move out immediately."
"Yes, sensei," everyone answered.
Kiyohara's gaze swept once over the Demon Leech's corpse.
A genuine jonin had died just like that—swiftly, decisively, with no grand final words. One mistake, one gap in strength, one encounter with the wrong enemy, and a life simply ended.
The sight pressed heavily against Kiyohara's chest.
He wasn't strong enough yet. Not nearly.
But at least for this moment, he had managed to protect everyone standing in front of him.
And on a battlefield like this, that alone was worth more than any speech.