Minato was a tempest of controlled annihilation. He flickered through the camp like a strobe light of death. A kunai appeared in a shinobi's eye socket before he could finish his Earth Style mud wall seal.
"Thock."
Another met a Rasengan in the chest, the spiraling energy tearing through flak jacket and ribcage. He teleported behind a man trying to flee, a swift neck-snap dropping him instantly.
"FWOOSH. SHINK. THUD."
It was over in less than ten seconds. Ten seconds of displaced air, flashes of yellow, sickening impacts, and the abrupt cessation of movement and sound.
Silence rushed back in, heavier now, saturated with the coppery stench of blood and the acrid tang of voided bowels. Bodies lay twisted, broken, leaking life onto the packed earth floor. The lantern flickered erratically over the carnage. Jiro stood frozen near the entrance, untouched only because Minato's systematic elimination hadn't reached him yet.
Minato reappeared in the centre of the camp, pristine haori still impossibly white, not a drop of gore marring him. He looked at Jiro. Those calm blue eyes held no triumph, no anger, only a profound, weary resignation. Jiro found his voice, a whimper escaping his lips.
"P-please…"
The Yellow Flash didn't speak. He simply raised a hand, fingers curled slightly. A sphere of swirling, violent blue chakra coalesced instantly above his palm, humming with contained destruction.
The Rasengan's light painted Jiro's terrified face in stark, flickering blue relief. There was no time for further pleas, no time for thought. Minato flickered forward – not a teleport, but blinding speed.
"FWUMP!"
The Rasengan struck Jiro square in the chest. There was no explosive blast; it was a terrible, focused implosion. Jiro felt his sternum shatter, his ribs cave inwards, organs pulped in an instant. The force lifted him off his feet and hurled him backwards through the reinforced earth entrance of the camp.
"CRASH-BOOM!"
He smashed through the thick wall, landing in a broken, motionless heap outside on the cold sand, the Rasengan's energy dissipating. The last thing Jiro's fading consciousness registered was the vast, indifferent canopy of desert stars above, cold and impossibly distant.
Silence, absolute and suffocating, reclaimed the Iwa camp. Minato stood amidst the carnage he had wrought inside the camp, the only living thing in a tomb of his own making. The necessary part was done. Now came the intricate, vital work of the lie.
'Now to ensure their deaths, and Suna's, serve Konoha.' he thought, the cold logic settling over him like armour.
The plan unfolded in his mind, precise and demanding. He needed to fabricate a battle – a brutal, mutually destructive clash between Iwa and Suna forces.
"Poof! Poof! Poof! Poof!"
Twenty Shadow Clones erupted around him in clouds of white smoke, each an exact replica of the Yellow Flash. Without a word, the clones sprang into action, a symphony of grim efficiency.
The first group consisted of the planters. Several clones moved among the Iwa bodies inside the camp and outside near Jiro. They meticulously planted Suna-issued kunai and shuriken into wounds or gripped in lifeless hands. They carefully added slashing wounds with Suna-style wind-chakra precision, using small, controlled bursts of Fuuton;
"Shwip! Shwip!"
The air hissed as invisible blades sliced fabric and flesh. They scattered Suna ration packs and distinctive Suna canteens amongst the fallen Iwa shinobi. Near Sachiko's body, a clone deliberately placed a Suna forehead protector, slightly bloodied, as if torn off in the struggle.
The next group was the Suna Body Transport. This was another group of clones who vanished in flashes of yellow, reappearing moments later staggering under the weight of Suna corpses retrieved from the massacre site miles away.
"FWOOSH! THUD. FWOOSH! THUD."
They deposited the bodies strategically around the perimeter of Outpost Sigma and amongst the Iwa dead inside the camp, creating scenes of close-quarters carnage.
One clone meticulously arranged a Suna shinobi locked in a death grapple with an Iwa shinobi, Suna kunai buried in the Iwa nin's gut, Iwa rock fist crushing the Suna nin's skull.
"Crunch.
The work of the next group was the Battlefield Creation. The most intensive work began outside. Clones surged chakra into the desert floor. "RUMBLE…"
The earth groaned and heaved. Massive spires of rock – unmistakably Earth Release: Earth-Style Rock Lodestone Spears (Doton: Iwa Gangan no Jutsu) – erupted violently from the sand in jagged clusters around the outpost.
"CRACK-BOOM!"
Simultaneously, other clones unleashed powerful Wind Release techniques.
"FUUOOOOSH!
A Great Wind Scythe (Fuuton: Dai Kamaitachi) howled across the dunes, carving deep, unnatural gouges in the sand and shearing the tops off several newly formed rock spires. They replicated Suna's signature Vacuum Wave (Fuuton: Shinku Taigyoku) by blasting craters near the entrance. They layered techniques, creating overlapping zones of destruction: areas scoured by wind, others shattered by earth, mimicking the chaotic aftermath of a fierce elemental clash.
Finally, Minato himself and several clones turned their attention to the Iwa outpost structures. But crucially, they used Wind Release. "FUUUOOOOOOSSSSHHHH!!!!"
Minato formed a complex series of hand seals. A colossal, roaring tornado of cutting wind, a Great Wind Destruction (Fuuton: Dai Fūsa), erupted from his position. It slammed into the central camp where the bodies lay. "CRUNCH-WHOOSH-BOOM!"
The reinforced earth structure didn't just collapse; it was shredded, torn apart from the outside in, reduced to flying chunks of debris and swirling dust in seconds, the destruction pattern screaming 'Suna's Wind Style'. Simultaneously, other clones targeted the smaller camps and supply tents with focused Wind Scythes slicing through stone and canvas alike. Nothing was left standing. Only scattered, wind-blasted rubble and debris fields remained where Outpost Sigma once stood.
One last clone vanished, reappearing at the obliterated Suna camp. Here, it unleashed powerful Earth Release techniques.
"DOTON: DORYUU HEKI!" (Earth Style: Earth Flow Wall)
Massive waves of earth surged over the wreckage, burying it deeper. "DOTON: GAIZAN KUUYAKU!" (Earth Style: Earth Shore Return)
Fissures split the ground beneath the ruins, swallowing chunks of debris. The destruction now clearly bore the hallmarks of Iwa's earth manipulation, completing the circular frame.
Minato stood amidst the ruins he and his clones had meticulously crafted. The pre-dawn light was just beginning to bleed into the eastern sky, painting the devastation in hues of cold gray and bloody rose. The air stank of ozone, chakra residue, pulverised earth, and the inevitable, coppery scent of death.
The fabricated battlefield stretched around him – wind-scoured craters, jagged earth spears, scattered bodies bearing each other's weapons and wounds, the buried Suna camp, the wind-ravaged Iwa outpost. It was a grim, convincing tapestry of mutual annihilation.
He looked at the broken form of Jiro half-buried in debris, then at the bloodied Suna forehead protector near Sachiko's crushed body. A profound weariness settled over him, deeper than any physical fatigue. This was the burden of a shinobi of the Leaf. To be the monster in the dark, the unseen hand that guided destruction, so that others might live in the light.
He had preserved Konoha's advantage, deepened the fissure between Suna and Iwa, bought precious time… at the cost of more souls added to the endless ledger of war.
'It was necessary,' he reaffirmed silently, the word tasting like ash.
'For the village. For the future.'
But the weight of the lie, the sheer brutality of the act, pressed down on him. He was Konoha's Yellow Flash. Yet here, under the indifferent gaze of the desert dawn, he felt only the cold isolation of the weapon he had become.