_________ POV Narration_________

Akira dashed through the forest with great speed, he had been followed, but his pursuers were left in the dust, unable to keep up with him.

The thief looked back a few times before he finally came to a stop and hid in a tree.

'What do I do now?! Do I go back and try to help him out? I mean, I doubt I can do much there, it's why I ran away in the first place... But maybe I can be of more help from the sidelines?'

Akira was well-aware that he had left Ken alone against what was essentially a small army of Shinobi.

Escaping 7 Jonin and a few dozen Chunin was not something any regular shinobi was able to do. Even if the Red Dot was supposedly stronger than most Jonin.

Akira was already too far away to observe the situation, so he had decided to try and make an inventory of what he still had on him.

'Hmm... The Red Dot gave me all of my Shuriken and Kunai back, but he kept all of my paper bombs...'

The thief felt like crying at that moment, as paper bombs were a lot more expensive than kunai and shuriken, and he had amassed quite a few of them to use in dire situations.

Another thing that Akira realized he was missing was the Scroll he had pilfered from the Kusagakure.

'At least I got away with my life. I'm sure the Red Dot can handle himself well enough...'

It was at that moment that Akira felt his spine tremble, he immediately jumped away from the tree, which was promptly crushed by three earth dragons.

'Shit, they were still following me?!' Akira quickly turned around a few times in the air, only to notice that the Jonin had already anticipated his movements.

One Jonin had already completed his hand signs, he immediately started spitting flame bullets in Akira's trajectory.

The thief tried to dodge, but his lack of mobility in midair made that impossible.

Three of the flame bullets hit him and exploded, sending him tumbling to the ground where another had already prepared another jutsu.

"Earth Release: Bottomless Swamp!" The Jonin targeted the area where Akira was to land, using a weaker version of the 'Swamp of the Underworld'.

It was a similar jutsu, but it only caused the target to sink, it didn't stick them to it unlike the latter, so this was mostly just a diversion as the last one was preparing one last jutsu to finish their target off.

Akira was well aware of that, he knew that he was caught in a bad position.

'I got careless... Maybe I can still salvage this though...'

He didn't have any hopes of being able to escape, he did manage to turn in the air though, landing on his feet and trying to dash away instantly, unfortunately, the Jonin were already expecting that, with one of them slashing him across the chest with a kunai.

"You're not getting away, assassin..." The Jonin said as he stood in front of Akira.

The thief scowled, taking out a kunai and throwing it at the Jonin. That action had little to no effect, as the Jonin simply batted it away.

"Earth Release: Dust Storm!"

Akira didn't even get the time to think about his next move, as the Jonin from before was already done with his hand signs.

The ground in front of the Jonin broke and shifted, creating a torrent of mud and dirt that flowed towards Akira like a river.

The thief now only had one option left... Without even blinking, he disappeared from his previous position, the torrent of dirt and mud demolishing a good chunk of the forest as Akira ran in the opposite direction he had been running in previously.

The Jonin smiled when seeing that, as the now injured target was forced to return towards the battlefield.

They quickly gave chase though, managing to keep up with the injured Akira and tagging along right behind him.

Then they all heard it, a large explosion rumbled the forest, the trees shook and the winds churned, even from a distance, they could see the smoke rising from the battlefield.

Akira also gulped as he realised that he couldn't quite stop and change his course, nor could he avoid the battle in front of him.

'I just hope the Red Dot managed to take care of enough of them...'

The Jonin had the exact opposite thoughts though, they instead hoped to see Ken dead by the time they got there.

'The Leader should have already managed to do him in, right?'

What had happened on that battlefield was well beyond the expectations of either side though.

As they arrived, they noticed just how destroyed the surroundings were, no tree was intact in the radius of a few hundred meters.

Some parts were burnt to a crisp, other parts seemed inundated, and some had dried up and cracked earth.

But that wasn't really shocking, such a scene wasn't exactly uncommon in times of war.

The more shocking part was the person that stood in the middle of the battlefield.

The Red Dot was the only one still standing. His mask was bloodied, but the crimson dot in the middle was still very much visible.

His fingers sunken deep into the neck of one of the Jonin that he had been fighting, corpses piled up at his feet as blood pooled on the ground, dying it a deep red.

There was no one alive, the silence was just as deafening as the explosion they had heard earlier.

"Oh... You're all back. You sure took your time..." Ken's voice was the one that broke the silence. It was calm, unnervingly composed for such a situation.

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His tone didn't shake one bit, he was speaking as if he had just finished frying some meat on the grill.

The Shinobi and thief all couldn't help but gulp a bit. There were many nutjobs in the Shinobi world, but few were as powerful and demented as the Red Dot appeared to them at that moment.

As they stared, they also caught a glimpse of the Blind Swordsman's body. As he dropped the mangled corpse of the shinobi he had been holding to the ground, adding one more to the pile.

The usual red armour he had been wearing was no longer there, likely broken off during the battle. His body was only covered by a tattered cloak, loose pants and black sandals.

The scariest part about that scene?

The one that had massacred everyone was completely uninjured. Not even a mark was visible on his skin. No injury or burn, despite the destruction that surrounded him.

From the way things looked, it wouldn't be surprising to anyone to find out that none of the blood staining the ground belonged to Ken.

It hadn't even been a full minute from that explosion when they all figured the fight was still going on, yet now everything was basically over.

The three Jonin immediately thought of turning their tail and running away at full speed, knowing full well that the fight was lost at that point.

Still, before running, they could at least complete one of their objectives. So that they could say they hadn't wasted all of those lives pointlessly.

They immediately tried to kill Akira, the closest one to him took out a tanto and sliced towards the thief's neck, aiming to chop his head clean off.

Akira took notice of that, and rolled away, dodging the slash and dashing towards Ken's position.

The Jonin was about to give chase, but the others behind him urged him to retreat, as Ken's figure completely vanished from the middle of the battlefield.

The Jonin only blinked, and all he could see was a mask, a bloodied white mask with a large red dot in the middle was all that he could see.

And it also ended up being the last thing he would see, as Ken's fingers dug into his chest and cleanly pulled out his heart.

His hands moved swiftly then, twisting his head around and breaking it as the Blind Swordsman continued to dash towards the other two Jonin.

Akira stopped and looked back, almost terrified, as the Jonin that had been trying to kill him a second ago had already had his neck twisted and his heart gouged out.

The thief's spine trembled a bit when he saw just how quickly Ken had caught up to the other two.

The Jonin tried their best, using various jutsu to try and fend off the masked killer. From a flame wall to yet another 'Bottomless Swamp'.

But neither did anything to Ken, who simply stepped on the swamp without any issue and dashed through the fire without any regard for his own safety.

Akira couldn't see what happened behind that wall of fire, but he could hear a few muffled yelps before the fire died down.

Both Jonin were lying on the ground, their heads twisted, and Ken was simply walking back towards him.

Akira gulped, as he noticed the massive burns on Ken's abdominal region.

'He got a bit careless there at the en-'

He didn't even get to complete that thought, as he noticed Ken's flesh shifting unnaturally and mending itself at a quick rate as the masked murderer continued walking towards him.

'What the hell...' Akira was simply speechless at that point.

He had never heard of a Shinobi being able to instantly heal all of their wounds in that manner.

And, in truth, there really were none at that point. Tsunade, who was to become a Sannin, had yet to create her technique, which could lead to similar effects.

"Seems you were a bit injured... Unfortunately, I don't have much knowledge of medical ninjutsu, so some bandages and salve will have to do for now."

Ken spoke calmly, his voice unbothered by the smell of blood and burnt bodies that surrounded them.

Akira wasn't quite as unbothered, he had seen death in the past, but he wasn't quite used to such a gruesome scene.

So he was a bit too shocked and scared to speak to Ken for a few minutes, leading to a rather long pause.

Ken didn't just sit around and wait during that time, he went around and looked for anything useful on the Shinobi that had fallen to him.

The fight hadn't lasted long after he had started taking things seriously. More specifically, he moved too fast for any of them to react accordingly while in that transformed mode.

Ken had also decided to give that transformation a name, as he didn't see why he wouldn't be able to consider it a fully-fledged technique.

'Scaled Sage Mode' Was what he decided to call it. Taking after what the turtles had called him.

While in that state, the Jutsu of the Jonin and Chunin were basically useless against him.

The fire only served to warm him up a bit, the lighting jutsus seemed to bounce off his scales, and the earth bullets hitting him felt more like gentle taps.

Genjutsu was a joke to Ken in the first place, so no one could really do anything to him from that point forward. Kunai and Shuriken couldn't even scratch his thick scales, so the Shinobi were really just sitting ducks.

It was a mode that granted him overwhelming power. Ken still felt that it wasn't enough, but he wasn't exactly stressing out about it. He still had a lot of room for growth after all.

'That special Shinobi, the one leading them all, didn't turn out to be much... He died relatively quickly... Well, whatever. At least he gave me a bit of information.

I should pay the Kusagakure a visit, I'll make it clear that what happened here today is not acceptable, set a precedent for the other hidden villages as well.'

After finding a few scrolls and manuals, he went back to Akira, who was sitting on a log and still looking quite shaken.

"Get your head out of the gutter, Akira," Ken said as he slapped the teenager across the head.

Akira was immediately taken out of his trance. The Thief was certainly not used to that type of scene, but it seemed a slap did help him compose himself.

"S-sorry..." Akira muttered as he took a better look at Ken's body.

The Blind Swordsman was still very young, his musculature was already too pronounced for anyone to guess his age.

Maybe Ken's body simply matured differently due to his 'mutation'? Maybe it was just because of the excessive training he had been subjecting himself to from a young age.

At that point, not even Ken himself had any way of knowing for sure.

Still, Akira could see that muscles weren't the only aspects that were well-defined on Ken's body... He was also filled with scars.

It seemed the wounds that healed would still remain there for a while. Patches of skin still looked off from the burns he had received earlier, and some cuts were present here and there.

"You probably have a lot of questions, and you're definitely tired. But this doesn't seem like the type of place to stop and ponder things."

The Blind Swordsman threw a few bandages on Akira's lap. The thief nodded, already treating Ken as an authoritative figure as he started treating his own wounds.

Ken then went and collected his large sword, finding its sheath underneath a few fallen trees and allowing it to disappear in a puff of smoke as he tapped its hilt on his wrist.

His arm guards were still intact, so his weapon scrolls were still safe as well.

"Let's go. We'll find you a cave to rest quietly. Then I'll head off to the Grass Village."

"You plan to go after them for this? You're certainly strong, but all hidden villages are prepared for invasions... I don't think this is a good idea." Akira instantly was against the idea of Ken going off to the Grass Village.

Even if Ken somewhat scared him now, he had said those words almost instinctively.

"... Why do you suddenly care?" Ken simply tilted his head. His tone wasn't aggressive, nor was it pointed in any way. He simply seemed curious.

The thief was rather flabbergasted by that question. He stopped and blinked a few times.

"W-well, you did help me out... I wouldn't want the life of my saviour to end so abruptly." Akira coughed a bit as he crossed his arms and looked down at the short masked man in front of him.

"... Fair. But you don't have to worry about me, I can still escape even if I can't fight an entire village by myself." The confident tone that Ken used managed to somewhat sway Akira for a second.

It certainly helped that Akira had already seen Ken do something he had thought impossible.

'Maybe he really can just waltz into a hidden village... Well, even I was able to sneak into this one, but something tells me that the Red Dot plans to do a bit more than that...

Well, the fact that I was able to go in and out unnoticed is also a bit suspicious. After what I learned today, someone inside the village likely wanted me to escape successfully and 'unnoticed'...'

"Fine... We should really get moving though. I think you were right, hanging around here can't lead to anything good."

The young thief got up and dusted himself, his torso already bandaged. He clutched at his abdomen a bit and sighed. He quickly straightened up and dashed further into the forest.

Ken followed suit, keeping up with Akira without any issues.

'I can't wait to have a chat with the elders of that village...' The Blind Swordsman thought to himself as he felt the wind bend around him with every step.