They say war shows a man for what he is. Watching Uchiha Tajima carve a notch into the Hyuga camp, I thought the saying was understating things.
From where I hung on my clay bird, the scene below was brutal, fast, and gloriously efficient. One moment the Hyuga were rallying; the next, a body split the air. Tajima moved like a blade with a personality disorder — a shadow that walked and laughed. One strike, and a Hyuga warrior's head separated from the rest of him mid-shout. The look frozen on that man's face could have been a painting if anyone back home had time to hold a brush.
"Old Uchiha, die!" the Hyuga commander shouted and lunged. He was no kid — Master Okamoto, silver hair, worn bones, still dangerous. He plunged a wave of chakra through his palms and slammed them at Tajima with everything left in him.
Tajima's Sharingan spun, and he just smiled. It was the kind of smile that said, you don't know the half of it. Around him, allied ninjas tried to swarm — fire, wind, earth, lightning, every standard response the Hyuga could throw. Great fireballs, gusts that could cleave a man in two, earth-shaking strikes, and a crackling lightning dash; they poured everything on him.
He loved it.
Hands cutting seals faster than blink-rate, Tajima answered with something close to religious ferocity. He birthed five enormous fire-dragons that tore the sky apart — not pretty, not subtle, but lethal as a siege. They crashed through the camp like meteors and detonated in a chain of explosions that turned tents into furnace iron and sent a mushroom of heat and smoke up the valley. The sound rolled through Lingshan Gorge like thunder that had learned to scream.
While Tajima held the camp's attention, his two partners moved like ghosts toward the supply depot. Their eyes had flickered to Sharingan, their bodies were a blur, and the first screams from the supply line were choked into silence. Explosions—detonating clay, no doubt—erupted, shredding tents and scattering what remained of the Hyuga defenders. When the blasts settled, bodies were heaped like rubble. The supply yards were gone.
From where I perched, bile and adrenaline did a tango in my gut. Seventy defenders had come for him; an hour later, most lay dead or broken. Thirty-odd survivors circled, pale, staring at Tajima like men watching a storm.
A few tried to run. One turned and fled — only to have Okamoto's palm smash a wave of chakra into him and stop him mid-breathe. The old man snarled, not just to kill but to light the remaining Hyuga on fire with rage. That's the thing about killing: it either breaks you or it claws you back up. The fugitives' fear curdled into hatred, and the dozen faces that had flinched now brandished knives with new fury.
Tajima, blood on his face, wounds across his arms and torso from the counterstrikes, laughed like a madman and looked for the one target that still mattered. Hyuga Okamoto. The old man had cost him — and that, Tajima decided, would not stand.
I had no delusions. Tajima was not invincible; Okamoto was the sort of shadow-rank threat that could close the distance and drown him in pain. But right now, with Tajima's Sharingan lit and his allies shredding supplies behind enemy lines, the camp had become a crucible that melted all the little plans into one big, ugly fact: someone here was about to die for everyone else.
And Tajima had made up his mind which someone would be.