The silence that followed Hoshi's wet gurgle was thicker than the swirling dust, heavier than the desert night. Thousands of Suna shinobi, moments ago a bristling fortress, now stood frozen, a tableau of shock painted in the flickering torchlight.
Oba, knuckles white around his kunai, felt the world tilt.
'Not Iwa?'
The enemy was faceless, nameless, and already among them, striking with impossible precision.
"There!"
A raw, terrified shout ripped from a chunin near the shattered watchtower base. He pointed a trembling finger towards the perimeter's edge, where the torchlight bled into the oppressive darkness beyond the earth walls. Every head, including Oba's, snapped towards the indicated spot. Eyes strained, scanning the shifting sands, the skeletal shadows of scrub brush.
Nothing.
Only the mocking whisper-whisper of the wind and the frantic pulse beating in Oba's own ears.
"Tink."
The sound was small, absurdly delicate. A kunai striking bare rock near the pointing chunin's feet. He looked down, confusion etching his dust-streaked face.
"SCHLICK!"
A sound like wet canvas tearing, impossibly fast. The chunin's head, still wearing an expression of bewildered curiosity, separated cleanly from his shoulders.
"Thump!"
It tumbled backwards in a grotesque arc, hitting the sand, while his body remained upright for a split second, a geyser of arterial blood fountaining into the air before collapsing like a puppet with severed strings.
The spray, warm and coppery, misted Oba's face.
Chaos, held at bay for a breath, erupted. Pure, unadulterated panic. Oba didn't think. Instinct screamed. Adrenaline, a molten river of pure survival energy, flooded his system, searing away conscious thought.
His vision tunnelled, sound distorting – the screams of his comrades were muffled roars, the clang of weapons frantic clatter. Logic, tactics, formations? Dust in the wind. Only the lizard-brain drive to move, to fight, to survive the unseen horror remained.
He dropped into a low crouch behind a half-formed earth wall, kunai held outwards in a white-knuckled grip, breath sawing in his throat. His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird, a frantic drumbeat against the symphony of death.
"Tink. Tink. Tink."
The sound was relentless now, a macabre counterpoint to the screams. Kunai landing with unnerving precision, not aimed to kill, but to mark. Like the tolling of death's bell.
"SCHLICK! SCHLICK! SCHLICK!"
The wet, tearing sound followed instantly. Each tink preceded a fountain of crimson, a headless body collapsing. To Oba's left, Jiro, the grizzled squad leader, vanished mid-shout, replaced by a headless torso crumpling to its knees.
To his right, a young kunoichi he'd shared rations with that morning, her eyes wide with terror, was abruptly silenced, her head bouncing against the earth wall before rolling away. A wind-user preparing a defensive vortex simply ceased to exist, his swirling chakra dissipating into nothingness as his body fell.
Oba's mind, already overloaded, spiraled into fragmented, terror-fueled thoughts.
'What? Who? How?' The questions screamed in the void where reason resided.
'Moving too fast… can't see… like a ghost! Is it one? Ten? A hundred?'
He saw flashes of movement at the edge of his peripheral vision – a flicker of darkness, a swirl of sand – but when he snapped his gaze towards it, nothing. Only the results: another comrade down, another spray of warm blood.
'Konoha? It has to be Konoha! That False Jinchuriki? But they said he used fire… summons… this is… this is something else! Something worse!' The sheer speed was incomprehensible. It wasn't just fast; it was instantaneous. Teleportation.
Desperation clawed at him. He needed to see! Gritting his teeth against the consuming fear, Oba focused inward, forcing chakra – raw, unfiltered panic-chakra – towards his eyes.
It burned, a searing pressure behind his retinas, blurring his vision momentarily. Then, the world snapped into sharper, painful focus. The dust motes hung like frozen stars. The blood splatters seemed to glow. And then he saw it.
A flash. Not of lightning, but of pure, blinding yellow. It wasn't light illuminating something; it was the something. It materialised behind a Suna shinobi desperately forming hand seals.
For a nanosecond, Oba saw a silhouette – tall, clad in Konoha blues and flak jacket, spiky blonde hair almost white in that impossible radiance. A hand, holding a simple kunai, moved with casual grace.
"SCHLICK."
The flash vanished, leaving behind only the collapsing body. It reappeared ten meters away, beside a shinobi raising a shield.
Flash.
Kunai.
'SCHLICK."
Gone. Then again, near a group forming a defensive circle. Flash. A single, impossibly fast spin, a kunai, a yellow blur.
"SCHLICK. SCHLICK. SCHLICK."
Three heads fell simultaneously. The golden flash didn't run; it flickered. It existed in one place, then instantly in another, leaving only death and the fading echo of its passage.
'Monster!'
Oba's mind screamed, his enhanced vision tracking the impossible apparition.
'Yellow Flash!' The rumours, the terrifying moniker reserved for one of Konoha's weapon, slammed into him with the force of a desert sandstorm. 'Minato Namikaze!'
Fear crystallised into absolute, soul-crushing terror. This wasn't war; it was extermination.
A surge of desperate courage, born of seeing the hunter, momentarily overrode the terror.
He had to move! He had to do something!
Oba tensed his muscles, preparing to lunge towards the command tent, to scream a warning that might save a handful. He willed his legs to push, his body to obey the frantic command from his brain.
Nothing happened.
His body remained utterly, terrifyingly still.
Rooted to the spot. Not paralysed by fear, but… disconnected. As if the command wires had been severed. Confusion warred with panic.
'Why can't I move?!'
He tried to look down at his legs, to see if they were pinned, trapped by debris.
His gaze drifted downwards, not by his own volition, but seemingly pulled. His vision, still chakra-sharpened, focused. There, lying half-buried in the churned, blood-soaked sand near his unmoving feet, was a body. A decapitated body wearing the standard Suna flak jacket.
Its legs were severed cleanly just below the knees. One arm was outstretched, fingers clawing at the dirt. The posture was eerily familiar – the low crouch he himself had assumed moments ago.
His breath hitched, a ragged, wet sound that wasn't quite a gasp.
'Another one… poor bastard…'
Pity flickered, quickly drowned by his own terror. But then his gaze locked onto the hand of the corpse. The outstretched hand. On the back, just below the knuckles, stark against the dust and grime, was a tattoo. A small, stylized scorpion in faded blue ink. The mark he'd gotten with his genin team a decade ago. His mark.
Time stopped.
The chaotic sounds faded into a muffled roar. The stench of blood and dust vanished. The world narrowed to that hand, that tattoo, and the horrifying, impossible understanding crashing down upon him.
'No… No, no, no… That's… that's MY hand.'
The realisation wasn't intellectual; it was visceral, a cold knife plunging into the core of his being. The unmoving legs weren't trapped; they were gone, still attached to the torso lying before him.
The body he was seeing… the decapitated body with the severed legs… it was his own. The perspective made sense now – he wasn't looking down at it; his head was lying beside it on the sand.
The slight tilt, the grains pressing against his cheek, the detached, horrifyingly clear view of his own corpse… He hadn't been unable to move. He couldn't move. He was already dead.
The yellow flash had passed by him in that first, blinding instant he'd tried to see. He hadn't felt the cut. There had been no pain. Only the sudden, absolute severance.
Panic exploded into silent, internal screaming. A torrent of denial, fear, and agonising regret flooded the remnants of his consciousness. 'Kyoko…!'
His son's face, bright-eyed and hopeful, flashed before him. 'I promised… I promised I'd come home…!'
The camp, his comrades dying around him, Minato's impossible speed – none of it mattered anymore. Only the crushing weight of the broken promise, the image of his son waiting for a father who was now just a head lying in the dirt.
Darkness began to creep in at the edges of his vision, not from unconsciousness, but from the final, inevitable shutting down.
'Kyoko… forgive me…'
His last sight was the blur of Suna shinobi scrambling, the flash of desperate jutsu, all rendered meaningless. Then, the world tilted violently as his head, nudged by a falling body or a stray foot, rolled slightly. His cheek pressed fully into the cold, sticky sand, facing upwards. The stars, cold and indifferent, wheeled above.
A figure materialised directly in his fading line of sight, standing calmly amidst the carnage, untouched by blood or dust. Spiky blonde hair with eyes the colour of a clear sky but holding the depth of a frozen ocean. Minato Namikaze.
The Yellow Flash.
He looked down, not at Oba's head, but through it, as if surveying the battlefield. His expression was serene, focused, utterly detached from the horror he'd wrought.
He closed his eyes for a brief moment, a faint, almost invisible ripple of chakra expanding from him like a silent sonar pulse.
Minato's eyes snapped open. He tilted his head slightly, as if listening to a distant sound only he could hear.
"Ooh… so that's where the rest were hiding."