Hikaru had noticed it a long time ago—
Someone was standing behind them in the forest.
The man was hidden well, but under Hikaru's sensory range, it didn't matter how clean the concealment was. He still couldn't disappear.
Hikaru just hadn't acted immediately.
First, his chakra was running low. With only "chūnin-level" usable reserves, after a full fight he was already feeling the strain.
Sure, he'd carved through those Suna shinobi like chopping vegetables—
But that didn't mean the cost was small.
They'd been unlucky. They'd run into an ANBU veteran who specialized in speed, and the mismatch became a slaughter.
Under normal circumstances, even if those Suna were only chūnin, they wouldn't have collapsed that fast against a jōnin. If they kept their heads and stalled, they could've dragged things out—
even if the end result was still getting picked off one by one.
Hikaru had thrown out too many techniques. His chakra pool was near empty.
And the hidden watcher?
His chakra signature was already beyond chūnin.
Worse—he was clearly the one assigned to rendezvous with them.
Which usually meant only one thing:
A jōnin.
So Hikaru chose to "fish."
He dragged things out on purpose—half to poke at the man's emotions, half to buy time and recover chakra.
And this was where Hikaru was… contradictory.
In terms of chakra capacity, he was practically a disgrace to the Senju name.
But in recovery speed?
He was a point of pride.
In just a few minutes, he'd already regained nearly seventy percent—without even touching a soldier pill.
Once his reserves stabilized, there was no reason to keep playing.
And with his chakra limits, Hikaru made the decision cleanly:
Enemy is jōnin.
Enemy is hostile.
Unlike Kakuzu, there's no room to "probe and retreat."
So this time—go all out.
His thoughts were sharp, his strategy already set.
He didn't know who the enemy was, but surely he wasn't cursed enough to run into another monster like Kakuzu.
Kakuzu, at least, had a habit Hikaru could exploit.
Based on everything Hikaru remembered, that man rarely went full throttle unless forced.
Whether it was Chiriku, or Yugito the Two-Tails—Kakuzu barely exerted himself, letting Hidan do most of the dirty work.
Even when he fought Asuma, he wasn't truly serious.
Only against Kakashi did he finally commit—
and even then, it was because Kakashi had already ambushed him and destroyed one heart, and Kakuzu wanted to replace it with Kakashi's.
With that "data" as a safety net, Hikaru had held his Sage Mode back.
Besides, even if he used it, he still wouldn't have beaten Kakuzu. Better to keep it for escape.
And it turned out he'd been right—Kakuzu's arrogance had been so deep Hikaru didn't even need Sage Mode to get away.
But now?
Now was different.
Hikaru had no intention of holding back.
The instant he flickered forward, senjutsu chakra surged through his body like a flood.
If he weren't wearing a mask, you'd have seen it clearly—
A faint reddish shadow blooming around his eyes.
The hidden Suna operative had been listening.
When Hikaru claimed Konoha already knew they were from Sunagakure, the man hadn't panicked. Not really.
There were only two possibilities:
Either it was a bluff.
Or their operation really had been exposed.
But neither was a fatal problem.
A bluff didn't matter—there was no hard proof.
And even if they'd been discovered?
So what?
Suna didn't want another war after losing… but Konoha wasn't exactly in shape to start one either.
If they could provoke friction between Iwa and Konoha under an "Iwa-nin" flag, then everything was perfect.
They could expand influence in the Land of Birds and the Land of Rivers—
Buffer zones. Gold mines for mission contracts.
If Sunagakure could spread its reach there, the benefits were enormous.
In other words:
Success meant pure profit.
Failure still didn't truly lose.
A few shinobi sacrificed for village-wide gain was a cheap price.
The operative's conclusion was simple.
They've been caught.
So we clean it up.
And if possible… we take these two ANBU with us.
He was still thinking through angles—
When a spike of danger crawled up his spine.
In the next blink, the Konoha ANBU had already lunged.
That chakra—dense, refined, sharp—made the Suna operative's scalp tighten.
That quality was far beyond what he'd expected.
"How did he find me?" the operative thought, heart pounding.
"And his strength—this isn't what I saw earlier!"
From his observation, the kid was strong.
Jōnin-class, roughly equal.
But his chakra reserves didn't look deep.
A jōnin vs jōnin fight, with a surprise strike?
He should've been able to take it.
Even in a two-on-one—especially since the second one was just Kakashi—he hadn't been afraid.
In his eyes, Kakashi's "war hero" reputation was inflated—more credit to the Fourth Hokage than to Kakashi himself.
But now—
Before he could even move, he'd been locked.
And Hikaru's presence was completely different from what he'd calculated.
The blade came in like a line of lightning.
The operative reacted on instinct, slamming out a Substitution Technique. He wasn't incompetent—otherwise he never would've been assigned this mission.
BOOM!
The ground shuddered. Smoke burst outward.
The Suna operative landed firmly on a treetop, breath tight in his chest, eyes flicking down to his shoulder.
His clothing was torn open in a clean line.
A faint red stain seeped through.
He'd reacted fast enough—
And he'd still been clipped.
What kind of speed is that?
He didn't get time to process it.
Hikaru didn't give him a single breath of space.
Another flicker.
Another strike.
So fast it felt like teleportation.
The Suna operative gritted his teeth and forced chakra to explode outward.
In the next instant, sand from the earth responded to his call, surging up, hardening under chakra reinforcement—
But the blade still came.
It sliced through sand that hadn't fully solidified yet—
And continued on, tearing across the edge of his mask.
A thin line of blood slid down with the motion of the blade.
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