Dodai's death broke the Cloud shinobi's will to fight.
He'd been in command of the operation. He'd also been the strongest man on the field, with a Kekkei Genkai to boot — and Might Duy had put him down in a single exchange.
If that was what happened to Dodai, nobody needed to guess what happened to the rest of them.
Then they noticed the state Duy was in.
With Morning Peacock finished, he was standing rooted to the spot, chest heaving, visibly wrecked.
Seven gates still cost more than any body could pay without flinching.
"Kill him!" a Cloud Jonin barked, decision made.
Whatever that power was, it clearly came with a bill attached, and right now Duy looked incapable of fighting at all.
There was more to it than that, of course. Retreating now meant answering to the Fourth Raikage. Returning with Might Duy's head meant a commendation instead.
And they still had the numbers.
A Jonin broke from the line, lightning flooding his body, speed climbing past anything a normal shinobi could track.
"Gate of View — open!"
Guy forced the sixth gate open on reflex, panic doing what discipline hadn't.
Green chakra erupted off him in a column barely dimmer than his father's.
He flickered into the gap and planted himself in front of Duy.
"Iron Body: Wheel!"
Guy's body hardened to iron.
The Eight Gates locked ninjutsu out entirely, but taijutsu was still on the table — and Rokushiki, as Natsuki had taught them, was taijutsu.
Guy hit the Cloud Jonin like a runaway train.
The force of it arrived before the impact did. The Jonin felt his spine go cold and, at the last possible instant, tore his sword free and slashed at the boy's head.
Clang.
Steel rang off skin without leaving a mark.
The Jonin had time to register that, and no time at all for what came next — something struck him with the force of a maddened bull, and he went into the air trailing a fine red mist. What landed twenty meters back wasn't recognizable as a person.
"Hahaha! Beautiful!" Duy threw him a thumbs-up. "That is the power of youth!"
"So that's the Eight Gates." Minato clicked his tongue.
He'd never seen anything past the sixth before, and he certainly hadn't expected it to be this far past what ordinary Jonin could survive. If someone opened all eight at the cost of their life, he doubted the result would fall short of Kage level.
"He's strong," Shisui said, half to himself.
Four months on the same squad had taught him Guy's taijutsu was formidable. It had not prepared him for this.
Kurenai and Shizune took it better — they'd seen Guy use the gates before.
Just never the sixth.
"Now let's finish this!" Duy launched himself forward, a few moments' rest having restored enough of him to matter.
"Reverse Lotus!"
Guy went in right behind him.
One green, one blue, the two of them tore through the Cloud formation like a pair of animals let off a chain.
"Not falling behind either." Minato threw a kunai and vanished.
Rasengan!
He reappeared alongside a Cloud shinobi at the same instant the kunai did, and the man's midsection came apart in a spray of spiraling chakra.
"My turn!" Obito ripped through seals and spat a fireball the size of a house.
A Cloud shinobi threw himself left to clear it — and lightning came down where he landed.
Kakashi lowered his sword.
"Damn it, Kakashi!" Obito shouted. "I didn't need your help!"
Further down the road, Kurenai and Shizune worked with the ease of long practice. Kurenai's genjutsu took a Cloud shinobi's body away from him; Shizune closed the distance with Rokushiki and finished it with a blade.
"Die!"
Another Cloud shinobi's hands blurred, and a dense lattice of lightning tore toward the two of them.
Shizune didn't retreat. She stepped in, touched her ear — and the Guardian Pendant flared.
Every arc of lightning vanished into it.
The Cloud shinobi's face went blank with confusion.
Kurenai's hand was already up. Her bracelet unwound into the Golden Canopy Rope and snapped taut around him, and one hard pull later a kunai finished the job.
"Natsuki-sensei's ninja tools really are something," Kurenai said, smiling.
Shizune nodded without argument.
After that the fight ended quickly.
Between Duy and Minato, both squads came through it without a single injury.
"It didn't go the way we planned, but the mission's done," Minato said.
He had the Flying Thunder God; being surrounded meant nothing to him. Obito, Rin, and the others had no such luxury. Without what the Might family had done today, there would almost certainly have been bodies going home.
He unrolled a storage scroll and sealed away the supplies — and the corpses with them.
"Let's move. Now."
The whole encounter had been too strange for his liking, and he had no intention of standing around in Kumogakure's territory while he thought about it.
Nobody argued. The group formed up behind him and headed for Konoha's camp.
Not far from the road, Uchiha Madara stood facing Natsuki.
White Zetsu took one look and dove into the earth.
"You got here fast." Madara's mouth twisted.
He'd been about to intervene personally. Both of the Might shinobi had been spent, leaving only Minato — and against a surprise attack from him, Minato would have had a very hard time keeping Obito, Kakashi, and Rin alive.
Natsuki's arrival had killed that.
His one consolation was that Natsuki almost certainly didn't know which of the nine he'd been reaching for.
"They're my students," Natsuki said mildly. "Getting here fast is the job."
"Enjoy it while it lasts." Madara's hands moved through a seal. "We'll meet again."
He burst into smoke and was gone.
He'd fought Natsuki once already and lost. He saw no reason to waste the time doing it twice.
Natsuki wasn't surprised. Madara's real body couldn't leave the Gedo Statue; everything he sent into the world was a shadow clone.
Natsuki raised a hand, tore open a rift, and stepped back into the command tent.
An hour later, Minato's group filed in.
"Lord Hokage!" Obito was nearly bouncing. "We did something huge today!"
Before his fall, Obito had been a great deal like Nawaki — loud, warm, and entirely without an internal filter.
"Natsuki." Minato produced the storage scroll, smiling. "We ran into Dodai."
"Judging by your faces, Dodai isn't running into anyone else." Natsuki took the scroll. "That is huge."
"The credit isn't mine, though."
Minato ran through what had happened.
"Losing that many Jonin will hurt Kumogakure badly," Natsuki said, amused. "And Dodai sat near the top of their command structure."
"There's something else." Minato's tone shifted. "Dodai's arrival was too clean. It was as though they knew exactly where we'd be."
"I'll look into it." Natsuki paused. "You've earned a rest. Go."
Once they'd gone, he sent for the Anbu deputy commander, Elephant.
"Circulate this." He handed over a scroll.
It recorded the day's work: Might Duy's squad and Minato's, twenty-one Cloud shinobi killed, Dodai among them.
"Beyond that, push Might Duy, Might Guy, and Namikaze Minato. Hard."
"Yes, Lord Hokage."
"And give them titles," Natsuki added. "The Might father and son are Konoha's Blue Beast. Minato is the Yellow Flash."
Minato's reputation was already substantial. He'd traded blows with the Third Raikage and now the Fourth, and the Flying Thunder God had given both of them a great deal of trouble. He'd have earned the name Yellow Flash within the year whether Natsuki handed it to him or not.
In the original timeline, Guy had eventually styled himself Konoha's Noble Blue Beast. With Duy still alive here, Natsuki simply let father and son share it — their fighting styles were close enough that one title covered both.
Shisui would have to wait. His record wasn't there yet.
The same went for Kakashi.
As for Kurenai, Shizune, Obito, and Rin, they'd have to take their chances. At their current strength, a title wasn't a realistic goal.
Unless something pushed Obito into awakening the Mangekyo.
That was unlikely — and Natsuki intended to keep it that way.
He had no love for the man Obito would become. But that man didn't exist yet, and Natsuki had no interest in letting Madara and Black Zetsu carve Kakashi and Rin up to create him.
He was the Hokage now, and he had more than enough strength to make a different outcome stick.
The plan was to save all three of them.
And if Obito fell anyway, Natsuki wouldn't hesitate. Whatever the man was worth after his turn, it wasn't remotely close to enough.
Elephant left to do his work.
By the Anbu's efforts, the night's news moved through the army fast, and the effect on morale was immediate.
It was the single largest result Konoha had achieved since the fighting began — mostly because of Dodai.
Dodai had been a fixture of Kumogakure's leadership: the examiner who ran the Double Lariat trial, right hand to two consecutive Raikages, a name known in every village. In terms of pure renown he stood level with Konoha's Sannin. He'd never matched them in raw power, but Lava Style had always put him a full tier above an ordinary Jonin.
Kumogakure's forward camp.
"I should have led that team myself."
The Fourth Raikage had been silent a long time before he said it, and the regret in it was raw.
Minato's position had been located by the Cloud's Anbu — or so the record said. In reality, Madara had passed it to them.
On learning that Minato and four of Natsuki's students would be there, Dodai had volunteered to take the operation himself.
A had judged nine Jonin plus the convoy escort more than sufficient for four of Natsuki's students. Minato, with the Flying Thunder God, hadn't even been listed as a target — capture him if the chance came, let him go if it didn't.
"Damn the Leaf." Killer B's face was thunderous. "Every last one of them. Sooner or later."
Dodai had been half a teacher to him. His entire standing in the village traced back to passing the Double Lariat trial Dodai had presided over.
"Our intelligence was inadequate," Blue B said heavily. "None of us understood what the Eight Gates could actually do."
Might Duy had been moderately well known before this, but he had never once opened himself up completely. Nobody had known what was in there.
The Eight Gates were legendary ninjutsu in the most literal sense — a technique the world had very nearly forgotten. Without Duy and his son, it might have stayed forgotten, in Konoha as much as anywhere else.
In the original timeline, it had taken Might Duy annihilating the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist before Sarutobi Hiruzen started treating the Eight Gates as something worth studying.
"Flag Might Duy and Might Guy as priority targets," A ordered.
Priority target status meant something specific in Kumogakure: rank-and-file shinobi were permitted to run rather than die for nothing.
Nightfall. Tsunade's tent, Konoha's camp.
"Oh, come on." Nawaki's face was a study in misery. "Even Guy has a title now. I'm his senior and I've got nothing!"
"Titles don't mean anything," Kushina said around a mouthful of food.
"They mean everything! A title is what marks out a strong shinobi!"
"Which is a very roundabout way of saying you aren't one yet," Tsunade said, without looking up. "Keep at it."
"..."
Nawaki had no answer for that.
"Getting a title isn't difficult," Natsuki said, laughing. "I can arrange it."
"Really?" Nawaki brightened instantly. "How?"
"A title is built on what makes you distinctive." Natsuki turned it back on him. "So what's yours? Water Style? Or Wood Style?"
Nawaki thought about it. "I'd want it to be Wood Style."
Tsunade went still for a moment. She understood exactly what her brother meant.
Nawaki still wanted to see the Senju name restored.
"All right. But you'll need to learn the Wood Golem first."
"I can learn the Wood Golem." Nawaki's face fell. "I just don't have the chakra to hold it for any length of time."
Tsunade's eyes flicked, unbidden, to the bracelet Natsuki had given her. With one of those, Nawaki could probably manage it.
"I'll handle the chakra problem," Natsuki said, glancing at her, and smiled.
He meant White Zetsu.
When the time came, he'd have one merge with Nawaki and drive his Wood Style well past what his own reserves could support.
There was a second benefit. A White Zetsu was, in effect, an extra life carried in the pocket. In the original timeline, Obito had lost half his body and been put back together by one.
"Natsuki, is there anything you can't do?" Nawaki was practically glowing.
Tsunade felt something twist quietly in her chest.
Every day, her brother behaved a little more like Natsuki's junior and a little less like her own.
"Get some rest, all of you." Natsuki stood as the meal ended. "I'll be in the command tent."