"Madara, that brat Kiyohara who can use Magnet Release is heading toward Nohara Rin's side."
White Zetsu reported the situation.
Uchiha Madara looked at the distant rock wall that had already been smashed open, then slowly closed his eyes.
"The stage is finally reaching its climax."
A scarlet glint flashed through Madara's crimson Sharingan.
Everything he had done—was for one purpose: to corrupt Obito.
To make Obito awaken the Uchiha clan's true power.
That was why he had controlled the Third Mizukage and ordered the attack on the Land of Fire's eastern coastline.
Every powerhouse who could interfere—Minato Namikaze, Orochimaru, and the rest—had been lured away elsewhere.
"As long as the plan succeeds, I don't care what the process looks like."
Madara stared at his aged hand.
He didn't have much time left.
He had to select a successor who could replace him—fast.
If Uchiha Obito still couldn't awaken the Mangekyō Sharingan no matter what, Madara would immediately trigger his backup plan.
There were plenty of Uchiha bloodlines out there; he didn't have to hang everything on one tree.
But his time was running out. He couldn't afford to prepare too many alternate candidates anymore.
Delay only bred chaos.
The best plan was to successfully forge Obito this time.
"Go to the scene. I need to observe in real time," Madara said.
He would use White Zetsu as his eyes, and watch everything on the battlefield.
"Yes, Madara."
White Zetsu withdrew, melting into the wall.
Madara kept his eyes closed, but instead of darkness, his vision linked directly into White Zetsu's viewpoint.
…
Elsewhere—
Kiyohara was adapting to the Sharingan's power.
"So I really inherited Uchiha blood," he muttered.
He'd noticed activating the Sharingan didn't drain him much at all—nothing like Kakashi's "get your soul sucked out" situation.
"Correct. You inherited the Uchiha bloodline I carried," Uchiha-Kiyohara's spirit said as it appeared again.
The three tomoe in its eyes rotated slowly.
"Then do you know Izanagi and Izanami?" Kiyohara asked.
Izanagi and Izanami were Uchiha forbidden techniques—you had to learn them specifically.
Sasuke, for example, didn't know Izanagi at all without training, and he only learned Izanami existed because Itachi demonstrated it.
If adult Sasuke in Boruto had known Izanagi, he probably wouldn't have lost an eye—trading an Eternal Mangekyō for a six-tomoe Rinnegan would have been an incredible deal.
But whether it was because he didn't know it, couldn't use it in time, got careless, or ran out of chakra—his eye still ended up gone.
Without that six-tomoe Rinnegan, Sasuke basically got relegated to "same table as Naruto without Kurama."
"I know Izanagi, but not Izanami," Uchiha-Kiyohara said.
His face was as handsome as Kiyohara's—almost identical—only with a lingering melancholy.
"Teach me when we get back. And teach me your Fire Release and Lightning Release too," Kiyohara said.
He'd already inherited one classic jutsu: Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique.
It finally patched the hole in his toolkit—he could use fire for campfires in the wild now.
And against some Wind Release users, Fire Release could give him a better matchup.
Among the five basic natures: fire beats wind, and water beats fire.
"Fine," Uchiha-Kiyohara agreed.
Kiyohara picked the tallest tree nearby and ran up it.
He stood on the highest canopy and looked out over the lush forest below.
Here and there, smoke rose—where battles were converging.
His one-tomoe Sharingan turned slowly as he scanned the ground.
"Help me find Rin and Kakashi," Kiyohara asked Uchiha-Kiyohara.
Each tomoe upgrade boosted baseline stats.
A three-tomoe Sharingan's dynamic vision and perception were vastly stronger than a one-tomoe.
"Alright… let me look," Uchiha-Kiyohara said, rising higher.
In the dim dusk, his Sharingan looked like crimson lines flickering in the sockets, catching every movement.
"Found them. Over there."
Uchiha-Kiyohara pointed.
Kiyohara followed the direction with his gaze.
The Sharingan didn't have the Byakugan's range or "see-through-everything" power—but compared to normal vision, it was still a complete downgrade in difficulty.
And now Kiyohara finally spotted Kakashi and Rin.
He also saw Kurenai, Shiranui Genma, Ebisu, Might Guy, and seven or eight other Konoha ninja leading a group of medics off in another direction.
Meanwhile, Kakashi and Rin were fighting while retreating, with Mist ninja and Mist Anbu pressing them hard from behind.
"This is bad," Kiyohara murmured.
Kakashi kept throwing kunai wrapped with explosive tags, trying to slow the pursuit.
Boom! Boom!
The explosions stalled the Mist briefly, but then footsteps sounded from the opposite side of the forest.
They were being encircled.
"They caught up again…" Kakashi shifted to keep Rin behind him.
"Rin, don't be afraid. If we keep moving, reinforcements will arrive. We're almost back to camp."
He was forcing optimism—afraid Rin would give up.
But the Mist Anbu and Mist ninja chased like they never got tired.
Kakashi's chakra and stamina kept draining.
"White Fang's kid? That's all you've got!"
A Mist Anbu formed seals and fired a barrage of water bullets.
Water Release: Water Hail!
Kakashi's two-tomoe Sharingan tracked the trajectories. He batted each water bullet aside with kunai.
But as soon as one Anbu finished, another stepped in.
This one formed a whip of water and lashed at Kakashi.
Water Release: Water Whip!
Kakashi blocked again, but the Anbu retreated—clearly aiming to grind him down.
Kakashi understood, and his expression grew heavy under the black mask.
"Kakashi…" Rin looked at him, guilt flooding her.
She felt like dead weight.
It kept happening—she got captured, and everyone risked their lives to save her.
It happened at Kannabi Bridge too. If she weren't a medic—if she were a combat type—maybe she wouldn't have been taken.
Then Kakashi, Kiyohara, and Obito wouldn't have had to gamble their lives to rescue her.
"I… I'm so weak…"
She meant it.
And now, it looked like Kakashi was going to die with her.
There were at least thirty Mist ninja around them, plus thirty Mist Anbu.
Even an elite jōnin would struggle to escape that.
They were birds in a cage.
Rin realized it with bleak clarity.
Mist silhouettes appeared at both ends of the treeline.
At the front stood a tall man with a strange pair of blades strapped to his back.
Thick lips, dark skin, and unusually green hair.
"Finally got you."
He raised his hand and ripped away the bandages around the twin blades.
Snap.
The blades barely touched—and electricity sparked.
The arc lit the dark forest, and lit Kakashi's pale face.
"Raiga's Fangs of Lightning…"
Kakashi recognized the weapon.
"You're… Kurosuki Raiga."
"Correct."
Raiga grinned; his laughter echoed through the woods.
"Thanks for helping us finish the final adjustments on the jinchūriki. In return, I'll make your deaths quick—and personally send you off."
He raised Thunder Fang and clacked the blades again, firing a crackling bolt at Kakashi.
With the Sharingan's dynamic vision, Kakashi barely dodged it.
"An Uchiha transplant, huh?"
Raiga chuckled at Kakashi's mismatched eyes—one red, one black.
Even with a two-tomoe Sharingan, what could Kakashi do?
Raiga started clacking the blades repeatedly, arcs snapping again and again, the air reeking of scorched ozone.
…
"Kakashi can't hold much longer," Kiyohara said after only a few seconds of watching.
That was expected—Kakashi had been fighting almost nonstop for a long time. Making it this far was already impressive.
"Then…"
Kiyohara raised his arm. Chakra flowed out through the hand's meridians, and invisible magnetism surged.
Sand iron from the gourd at his waist gathered into his palm, forming a spindle-shaped round.
The wind whipped his long hair into a frenzy, like black fire dancing.
Crackle!
Dense sand iron triggered pale-blue electrical arcs.
Generally, mastering any elemental technique involved three stages:
First: strengthen the nature transformation—like Wind Release, injecting wind chakra into a leaf until it cuts through.
Kiyohara's Magnet Release was the same—endless refinement of the "magnetic" nature.
Second: increase instantaneous output—Kakashi's Chidori did this by stimulating the arm's cells so they could hold more lightning chakra.
Too much chakra could even hurt the user.
Third: fully integrate it with the technique, controlling it to near perfection.
Kiyohara's Lightning Release: Electromagnetic Round had reached that stage.
Stacked talent and growing mental energy meant sharper attention, finer control.
More chakra poured in. The projectile grew. A ring-like sand-iron coil formed around it.
When Kiyohara judged the cost was about right—
Hiss!
A black streak tore the air with a supersonic crack.
Driven by electromagnetic force—and boosted output—this shot reached three times the speed of sound, crossing kilometers in only seconds.
…
A few seconds earlier, neither Raiga nor Kakashi had imagined someone would snipe them from kilometers away.
Raiga was enjoying the hunt.
The White Fang had once chased them like dogs. Now Raiga would collect the debt from White Fang's son.
"Lightning Release: Fangs of Lightning!"
He began forming his signature jutsu.
BOOM!
A massive lightning pillar more than three meters wide crashed down from the sky, aimed at Kakashi's position.
Even before it struck, the violent ionization made Kakashi's hair stand on end and his skin go numb.
He couldn't dodge.
Kakashi's instincts screamed it.
In his current state, it was impossible.
He grit his teeth—prepared to take it with his body.
At the very end, he would still protect Rin.
He would still uphold his promise to Obito.
But in the instant before the bolt fell—
The spindle round arrived.
1000 meters. 500. 100.
Then—
A gust roared.
Splurt.
Blood sprayed across Raiga's face.
His right arm—the one holding the blade—was simply gone.
The lightning technique collapsed, instantly dispersed.
The smell of blood filled the air.
Raiga froze in a blank, confused daze.
…Wait. Where's my arm?
He turned stiffly and saw his hand had been blown into meat scraps, and Thunder Fang was lodged in a tree dozens of meters away.
Not just Raiga—Kakashi and Rin also froze.
So did every Mist ninja and Anbu present.
Outside a handful of body-hardened specialists, most ninja were still the kind of people who died from one clean kunai stab.
A surprise strike like this—with no warning—was naturally impossible to react to.
Even "Six Paths Madara" could get ambushed by Black Zetsu and take a clean heart stab.
Because sensing is an active ability—no one keeps awareness on "is someone kilometers away firing a jutsu at me" at all times.
"Sniper attack!!"
The pain finally jolted Raiga out of his daze. He raised Thunder Fang in his left hand and shouted for the Mist to go on guard.
"The precision at this range is still a little off," Kiyohara murmured, his Sharingan tracking Raiga from afar.
He'd intended to take Raiga's head clean off.
The Sharingan's eyesight was terrifying—three-tomoe Sasuke could see Deidara's nanobombs, and Sasuke's daughter could even see viruses in the air.
Even at one tomoe, Kiyohara felt like he'd strapped on an eight-times scope.
"But it's my turn to step in."
Kiyohara shut the Sharingan off, then exploded forward with repulsion underfoot and Leaf Body Flicker—his movement flashing like black lightning.
"He's coming!"
A sensory-type Mist ninja shouted.
Someone had just severed Raiga's arm with a long-range strike—everybody's threat level shot through the roof.
Kiyohara closed in.
Slash—
A head flew.
He decapitated a Mist ninja in one stroke, the swing even kicking up a shallow shockwave of wind.
Then it was like a wolf crashing into a flock of sheep.
Every flicker of Kiyohara's movement meant another life ended.
"M-monster…"
"His speed is insane!"
The remaining Mist ninja and Anbu were visibly shaken.
And only when Kiyohara paused briefly to catch his breath did Kakashi and Rin finally realize—
It was Kiyohara.
"Kiyohara got stronger again…" Rin thought in shock.
Compared to a month ago, he'd grown even more terrifying.
It felt like she and Kiyohara lived in different time streams.
Every time she saw him, he'd changed drastically.
One word fit too perfectly—
Genius.
"Kiyohara… you're here."
Only after Kiyohara arrived did Kakashi finally have enough breathing room to shove a soldier pill into his mouth.
"Be careful," Kiyohara said.
He looked at the Mist gathering around them—fifty, sixty people.
He drew his blade.
Dust-fine black sand iron wrapped it, extending the edge.
"An Uchiha brat? No… you're not Uchiha."
Raiga stared at the black hair and "Uchiha-level aura" and mistook him for an Uchiha for a split second.
After all, Uchiha had more than the Sharingan—they also had the core "build": style.
They always protected their cool factor.
"That doesn't matter," Kiyohara raised the blade slowly.
"What matters is: you need to get lost."
"Arrogant! You think you're Uchiha?!"
Raiga laughed in fury, raising Thunder Fang at Kiyohara.
"You're just a brat who got lucky with a sneak attack. What're you acting tough for?"
Raiga recognized Kiyohara's face.
At Uzushio's ruins, he'd been chased like a dog by Might Duy.
Back then they'd passed a retreating Konoha group. Raiga had glanced through the crowd and seen Kiyohara—someone who could only look up at him.
And now this kid wanted to challenge him?
"What's your name? I remember the names of everyone I kill."
Raiga gripped his blade; arcs crawled along it.
"My name is for the dead," Kiyohara said.
"Hmph!"
Raiga crossed ten meters in an instant.
Kiyohara stepped in to meet him—blade to blade.
CLANG!
Steel met steel. Sparks and lightning erupted at the collision.
Raiga's pupils tightened.
So much strength—!
And this kid's movement…
Too fast.
Every one of Kiyohara's actions was terrifyingly precise.
Suddenly Kiyohara twisted the blade.
The sand-iron extension softened and unravelled, whipping around Thunder Fang like a serpent.
Raiga's expression changed—this sand iron didn't have a fixed shape!
He yanked his blade back, but the iron sand clung like a curse, crawling up the weapon toward his arm.
"Ninja Art: Lightning Armor!"
CRACKLE!
Violent lightning exploded out of Raiga's body and blasted the sand iron off.
But in that instant, Kiyohara had already closed the gap. His right hand opened, palm aimed at Raiga's chest.
"Wind Release: Wind Cutter."
WHUM!
A compressed wind blade detonated point-blank.
Raiga was blasted backward—this time straight through a rock wall, embedded into the mountain face.
…
~~~
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