"So you finally came back into sight. Weren't you worried I might be an enemy using a Transformation Jutsu?"
Kiyohara pitched it like a joke, but beneath the lazy tone, he was probing. A battlefield had taught him one thing above all others: certainty was expensive, and carelessness was fatal.
"No," Kakashi said, looking straight at him. "I knew it was you."
The answer was short, simple, and absolute.
The Transformation Jutsu was one of the three basic techniques every genin learned, and among all the ninjutsu in the world, it was one of the most widely used. In the hands of someone truly skilled, it could fool the naked eye so thoroughly that the fake became almost indistinguishable from the real.
But mastery on that level required obsession. Unless someone spent half a lifetime specializing in it, the technique usually cracked under scrutiny.
"Good," Kiyohara said. "Then it's good you're not dead either."
Kurenai Yuhi stared at him for a long moment with those crimson eyes of hers before finally looking away. The tightness around her brows loosened, though only a little.
"What happened to that Hidden Mist jonin?" she asked.
"Looks like something went wrong with the drug he took," Kiyohara said, keeping his tone casual. "It backfired in the middle of the fight. He failed to get his ninjutsu off, and I managed to kill him by sheer luck."
He made it sound easy. Ordinary. Forgettable.
The truth had already been buried with the traces he'd erased. The battlefield had left no witness behind who could explain what had really happened in that mist.
"I see..."
Kurenai nodded and stepped closer, light on her feet in her open-toed ninja shoes.
Kiyohara's gaze dropped for a split second.
Her feet were pale and soft-looking, her toes neat and close together, the nails smooth and faintly pink. Fine-boned. Clean. Delicate in a way that didn't belong anywhere near blood-soaked earth and broken bodies.
Jade feet.
The thought flashed through his mind on instinct.
Then he buried it just as quickly.
This wasn't the time to indulge any strange tastes, nor was he interested in kneeling down to appreciate beauty in the middle of a war zone. Right now, he only wanted to get back to camp, lock himself away, and digest what he had inherited from Young Kiyohara before the next disaster came looking for him.
In the end, power still depended on the one who wielded it.
Otherwise, how could a being like Kaguya Otsutsuki, the so-called progenitor of chakra, end up getting beaten down after holding a maxed-out account? Her chakra reserves dwarfed even Six Paths Madara's. Sasuke himself had been shocked that such a monster could exist.
And yet she still managed to ruin the whole thing.
That thought amused Kiyohara enough to keep him from staring in the wrong direction a second time.
"Serves him right," Genma Shiranui said around the senbon in his mouth.
His voice was muffled, but his meaning came through clearly enough.
Any pill or drug that temporarily boosted chakra came with a price. The stronger the effect, the uglier the side effects. And ninjutsu was a delicate thing to begin with. A single disruption in the flow of chakra at the wrong moment could turn a killing move into a death sentence for the caster instead.
"Let's head back," Kakashi said.
They had gathered enough intelligence. More than enough, really. The existence of a ninja capable of interfering with the Byakugan was itself an enormous discovery. There was no point pushing deeper now.
The enemy had already shown their hand. If they stayed, all that would happen was the battlefield would become even less favorable.
"Hold on," Kiyohara said.
Then, with everyone watching, he turned toward the bodies littering the ground and started rifling through them with brisk, practiced efficiency.
"No one's taking these?"
He didn't even pause while he spoke. Armor pieces, spare kunai, shuriken, explosive tags, coins, medicine pouches, scrolls—anything that looked like it still had value went into his sealing scroll one item after another.
The others stared.
Kiyohara glanced back once, saw that no one was moving, and calmly continued.
"Then I'll take all of it."
He worked quickly. Too quickly for this to be the first time.
Kurenai gave him a long look, something halfway between disapproval and resignation. This guy really had no sense of the so-called ninja spirit. In the middle of battle, in the middle of danger, in the middle of all that blood and death, he still remembered to make money.
Kiyohara, however, didn't feel guilty in the slightest.
Money was a beautiful thing.
His inner chainmail had saved him from several nasty cuts today, but it was damaged now. If he didn't repair it—or replace it entirely—the next strike might go deeper. Every mission came with a cost ratio, whether anyone liked admitting it or not.
A ninja who failed to calculate profit and loss properly didn't survive long.
If the official reward for a mission couldn't cover the wear and tear, then you made the difference somewhere else. Looting corpses was the fastest, simplest way to close the gap.
And if fate smiled on you, maybe you'd even stumble across chakra metal.
That alone could change your whole month.
Once he had packed everything up, the group finally moved out.
The road back was much smoother than the one that had brought them there. Maybe because the Hidden Mist had already cut their losses. Maybe because even war grew tired once enough blood had been spilled in one place.
Either way, by the time they returned to the rear base, dusk had already deepened into night.
***
Inside the command tent at the Konoha outpost, the light was dim and steady.
Orochimaru sat alone, pale fingers holding the mission report that had just been delivered to him. His golden eyes moved over the lines slowly, lazily—and then sharpened the instant they reached the part describing the red-eyed ability.
The pupils narrowed.
A gleam surfaced.
"So it does exist after all," he murmured, the corners of his mouth curling upward. "I only remember seeing references to it in fragmented materials. I didn't think I'd actually encounter it here."
His tongue flicked lightly against the inside of his teeth, a tiny gesture of private excitement.
And then his gaze settled on the report's attribution.
Kiyohara.
It had been Kiyohara who'd identified the possibility.
"Very few things in the shinobi world can interfere with the Byakugan," Orochimaru said softly. "And he arrived at the correct conclusion through elimination."
He appreciated that.
More than raw talent, more than flashy bloodlines, more even than battlefield instinct, he valued curiosity. The willingness to read, remember, connect, infer. To most shinobi, six years in the academy produced nothing more than semi-literate killers. They learned enough to fight, enough to obey, enough to survive if they were lucky.
Anything beyond that had to be pursued deliberately.
Ninjas who actually studied were rare.
Ninjas who studied strange, obscure things hidden away in dusty records were rarer still.
The tent flap opened, and a Nara clan jonin stepped in from the rear.
"Did something happen, Orochimaru-sama?"
Nara Shikatane had come to review the latest logistical situation, only to find Orochimaru staring at a mission report as if he'd discovered gold in a corpse pile.
"Nothing serious," Orochimaru said. Then he tapped the paper lightly. "Increase Kiyohara's mission reward by one hundred thousand ryō. Tell him it's a personal sponsorship from me."
Shikatane paused. "A sponsorship?"
"Yes."
Orochimaru's smile deepened a little.
Seeing someone similar to oneself always brought a strange little joy. A learned man appearing in a crowd of illiterates. Even if the scholar wasn't that accomplished yet, the mere fact of his existence was pleasant.
Shikatane accepted the paper, scanned it quickly, and understood the source of the instruction. It was the red-eye report. Kiyohara's team.
"Understood," he said.
Then he withdrew.
Orochimaru remained behind in the tent, looking down at the map laid open before him.
He had only recently been transferred to this front, and already the battlefield was yielding interesting things.
Bloodline limits. Rare eyes. Bodies. Talent. Corpses.
War was expensive, but for a man like him, it was also profitable.
"Heh..."
His long tongue slid out to wet the corner of his lips.
"This battle should produce a great many useful materials."
***
Back in his own tent, Kiyohara had only just lain down for a short rest when the flap was lifted again.
He opened one eye.
Kurenai Yuhi stood there, looking mildly annoyed.
"Orochimaru's sponsorship?" Kiyohara repeated after she relayed the message.
"Yes," Kurenai said. "I didn't expect you to catch Orochimaru-sama's eye of all people."
There was genuine surprise in her voice.
Orochimaru was not the sort of person ordinary chunin drew attention from lightly. And even if they did, it usually wasn't the kind of attention anyone wanted.
"Also," she added, folding her arms, "why am I always the one delivering messages for you? You should go outside more often. Every time I run into one of our superiors, they hand me something and tell me to pass it to you."
She tossed a cloth bag at him.
Kiyohara caught it easily and checked the weight. Heavy. Very nice.
That brightened his expression at once.
Then, after rummaging in one of his pouches, he produced a lollipop and held it out to her.
"Here. Courier fee."
Kurenai froze.
For a second, she just stared at the candy in his hand.
That was it?
That was how he planned to brush her off?
Which ninja couldn't endure a little hardship? Which shinobi needed to be bought off with a piece of candy like a child?
"Don't want it?" Kiyohara asked, beginning to draw his hand back. "Fine. It was limited stock anyway. I was saving it for myself during a break."
"I want it," Kurenai said at once.
The answer came so fast it even surprised her.
But in wartime, most days were dry rations, bitter pills, and bland soup if you were lucky. A little sweetness had its own value.
So she followed her heart.
Kiyohara handed it over with a satisfied nod, then weighed the money bag in his palm again.
One hundred thousand ryō.
He could almost hear his future growing sturdier.
"Looks like today wasn't bad after all," he murmured.
Kurenai glanced at him. "You nearly got yourself killed."
"And yet here I am."
"That isn't a real answer."
"It's the best one I've got."
She peeled the wrapper from the lollipop and put it in her mouth, the irritation in her face easing by a degree.
Kiyohara looked at her, then at the money, then at the battered gear he had stacked in one corner of the tent.
A sword to maintain. Armor to repair. Debts still hanging over his head. More missions coming. More chances to die. More chances to get stronger.
Step by step.
That was all he had ever had.
But now his steps were getting bigger.
Outside, the camp quieted under the night, with only the occasional voice, bootstep, and rustle of canvas moving through the dark. Inside the tent, Kurenai sucked thoughtfully on the lollipop while Kiyohara sat cross-legged with the money bag in his hands.
He looked calm.
Only he knew how much had changed.
The young Kiyohara's inheritance was still settling inside him. His body was still adapting. His sword hand still felt subtly different every time he flexed his fingers. Even his perception of the world seemed sharper than before, as if some invisible film had been peeled away from reality.
This wasn't the kind of progress ordinary people got to enjoy.
And that was exactly why he couldn't afford to waste it.
More missions meant more merit.
More merit meant more access.
More access meant more strength.
And if he moved fast enough—if he survived long enough—then the day might really come when no one could casually decide his fate for him anymore.
Kurenai noticed he had gone quiet again and glanced over.
"What are you thinking about now?"
"How expensive it is to stay alive," Kiyohara said honestly.
That made her laugh, soft and brief.
"Only you would say something like that after receiving a reward from Orochimaru-sama."
"Only me would be right."
Kurenai rolled her eyes, but the tension in the tent finally broke.
For one rare moment in the middle of war, with money in his hand, a new sword at his side, a surviving body, and a lollipop buying him a little goodwill, Kiyohara allowed himself to feel something dangerously close to contentment.
It didn't last long.
It never did.
But for tonight, it was enough.