While Takuma was lugging himself across the battlefield, trying to get himself to an iryo-nin to get himself healed, in another part of the battlefield, two opposing jonin faced each other.

“I didn’t think I would meet you here, ‘rainy cloud’ Ogata.” Toridasu smiled at the bear-bellied man while he fanned himself gently with his folding fan. “I didn’t know the Hidden Cloud was involved in this war. I must say, I’m unpleasantly surprised to see someone like you.”

Ogata of the Hidden Cloud was a large and hairy man with a wide frame, big, meaty arms and legs, and a broad torso. He had been a resident of the top-level Bingo Books issued by villages other than the Hidden Cloud. There was a large bounty on the accomplished jonin’s head and no one wanted him alive.

Ogata scratched his scruffy beard. “Color me surprised to see your bald head here. This isn’t a place for old bones like yours; go home and have your nanny tuck you in. I don’t want to be accused of abusing the elderly.”

Toridasu laughed behind his elaborate folding fan with metal tips. “But I’m not here, Ogata. None of us are,” he said. “And you are going to be nowhere after today.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Ogata sighed as though finding the conversation utterly dull. He had a heavy gauntlet around his left hand, and he put on another on his right hand as he exchanged words with Toridasu. “You made a mistake coming here, old man. All of your men will perish here because of that. Worry not, I will give all of you a proper burial. Unlike you Hidden Leaf folk, we are honorable people.”

The two jonin stood facing each other with bloody chaos around them. Dozens of shinobi from each side fought around them, but no one dared to approach the two men, leaving a wide berth for their own sakes.

“Really? Kidnapping a toddler from her home to steal her bloodline is honorable?” Toridasu shot back.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. All I know is that you people killed one of ours on the day we visited your filthy village to sign a peace treaty conference,” Ogata said in counter.

The infamous incident, now known as the Hyuga Affair, was an episode between the Hidden Leaf and Hidden Cloud, who were in conflict with each other. However, because of the prolonged fighting, the two villages sought to end it and came to a mutual decision to cease fire and sign a peace treaty. Both villages sent an envoy each to the other village.

However, the treaty was soon revealed to be nothing more than a cover when the Hidden Cloud envoy in the Hidden Leaf village kidnapped Hyuga Hinata, the eldest daughter of the Hyuga clan head, Hyuga Hiashi, on her third birthday. The envoy was killed during the attempt by Hiashi before he could leave the village with the little girl.

However, the Hidden Cloud denied all accusations of the kidnapping, and demanded the body of Hiashi as compensation for the death of their envoy as per the stipulations of the signed peace treaty.

Ultimately, the Hidden Leaf conceded as they didn’t want to break the peace treaty. The Hidden Leaf had suffered from the Nine Tail incident a few years prior and desperately needed time to recover. The continuance of the war with the Hidden Cloud would only drain the village’s already dwindling resources, and the Daimyo had tightened his purses.

The Hidden Leaf village sent the body of Hyuga Hiashi to the Hidden Cloud, but everyone involved knew that the Hidden Leaf had sent Hyuga Hizashi, Hiashi’s identical twin brother, instead. The Hidden Cloud didn’t say anything—rather, they couldn’t. They too wanted peace, and it didn’t matter whose body they got; they weren’t getting anything of use because the Hyuga’s cursed seal rid the body of all the Byakugan secrets—and anything else would be removed surgically before the body was sent out.

Toridasu snapped his fan shut, and the landscape changed drastically. The wet, muddy ground cracked, and bubbling lava flowed from between the gaps below. A series of cracks appeared around Ogata, and harsh lava in the shape of large monster claws snapped towards him. They grasped at the empty air with Ogata nowhere to be seen. The large man was much faster than his heavy frame suggested and shot forward Toridasu like a whistling arrow.

The cracks in the earth deepened and more lava burst to the surface. A dozen more claws burst forth, grabbing for Ogata, who evaded with agility and precision beyond what his frame suggested. More than his physical prowess, his mind was more impressive as he calculated the locations of a dozen moving lines on the fly.

He finished his hand seals and stomped his foot on the ground that cracked under his force. Cobalt sparks crackled around his leg before the stomp forced the concentrated lightning into the ground. There was a split second of silence before the earth groaned. Chunks of earth were sent hurtling in every direction and the cracks widened, and the ground shook as though struck by a mid magnitude earthquake. The lands shifted, displacing in every direction, making the cracks bigger. The lava surged, engulfing the claws in wide pillars that roared angrily.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

They were on the same plane at the start of the fight, but Ogata’s stomp had altered the landscape through pure force that resembled natural calamities. He looked down at Toridasu from a height and weaved hand seals with his metal-gloved fingers. His gauntlet-covered fingers sparked but just as he was about to leap toward Toridasu, the fiery claws burst out of the pillars—dripping and brighter than before— to surround him from all directions, jumping at him akin to starving wild wolves.

Ogata changed direction in the blink of an eye and leaped up high in the air to avoid certain death and looked down at Toridasu’s smiling face.

“Aye, you tricky old bastard,” Ogata scoffed.

The false world around him, constructed by genjutsu, shattered, and in the next moment, he was standing in front of Toridasu, taking a step forward. Toridasu looked surprised before taking a step back and standing upright.

“So there is a tiny bit of brain behind all that brawn,” he said.

“I think it’s good to have that tiny amount; it means there’s less for your kind to play around with,” said Ogata.

The two jonin smiled at each other and simultaneously flew through hand seals. Ogata finished first, a second earlier than Toridasu. A spark of lightning rose up into the air before the arcs and currents grew until a humongous lion made up of lightning stood behind Ogata. When Toridasu finished, he moved his hands apart for a growing ball of fire to mold itself into a bird akin to a phoenix.

As the lion roared and thrashed, jumping towards Toridasu, the tiny phoenix flew into the lightning lion and ballooned from within it. The two ninjutsu melded together, creating a dangerous flux of high volumes of chakra and a kaleidoscope of flashing light and color before resulting in an explosion that disrupted more than half the battlefield.

When the dust settled, the two jonin, who were deep in the blast’s territory, hadn’t moved an inch from their spaces. Toridasu was covered in a deep shroud of gentle winds while Ogata had erected a dome of chained lightning that snapped angrily.

Ogata dropped his defensive jutsu first and immediately went on the offensive. He appeared before Toridasu and punched the wind envelope. A crackle of lightning sparked around the wind before lighting lit up the surface. Within a moment, the wind defense broke down, already weakened thanks to the explosion the two had caused.

“Get hit by my honorable fist, old timer,” Ogata roared in laughter.

Ogata smashed Toridasu with a lightning-charged gauntlet but it passed through Toridasu as though he were an illusion. A cold chill shuddered down Ogata’s back, and he turned to see Toridasu hurling gouts of sweeping fire in his direction—but in the exact moment before they collided against him, Ogata flexed his chakra and the fires vanished, but the danger wasn’t over. Toridasu vanished in the distance and appeared beside him with a different, fully metal, folding fan in his hand. Ogata sensed chakra flowing through that metal.

At the last moment, Ogata brought his other arm up to block the sharp edges of the folding fan with his gauntlet. The two metal weapons screeched and scratched against each other as both jonin channeled their strength through the instruments, putting their best behind them.

“Your little tricks are annoying, old geezer,” Ogata spat. “Why not face me like a man?”

Toridasu beamed, taking Ogata’s words as praise. “Treating genjutsu as tricks in this day and age? What an old-fashioned belief. I worry about the Hidden Cloud’s future if they let someone like you crawl up to jonin.”

Ogata snarled the beginnings of a response but was cut off by an ear-shattering explosion in another part of the battlefield. He and Toridasu briefly turned part of their attention to see a cluster of fire—large enough to see from where they were—crashing into the side of the pit, causing a wide-spread landslides.

“Worried about your friend?” Ogata asked.

Toridasu shook his head. “My colleague is a proud jonin from my village. He will never be in danger against mere Hidden Frost jonin. These little Hidden Villages have no standards—they allow anyone to become jonin, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

The snide-mockery against the Hidden Cloud was not hidden in his tone or voice.

While Toridasu and Ogata were fighting each other, Shirakumo was fighting two Hidden Frost jonin alone.

“He can take care of himself,” Toridasu continued. “You worry about yourself… You’re bleeding, you know.”

Ogata looked down at his body and saw that he was bleeding from his lower abdomen above his thigh.

“This is a genjutsu,” he scoffed and disrupted his chakra to lift the genjutsu.

Ogata felt the genjutsu shatter. However, his eyes widened when the wound didn’t disappear, and instead, two more injuries—shoulder and calf—made themselves known to him.

‘D-Did he place a genjutsu on me so that I would not notice my injuries, so I would continue fighting?’ Ogata thought.

“Are you thinking that I hid your injuries with genjutsu?” Toridasu’s words snapped Ogata out of his thoughts. The smile on Toridasu’s face grew as he said, “Or maybe these injuries are genjutsu to deceive you into thinking that you’re injured.”

Ogata once again disrupted his chakra.

Toridasu laughed, full of amusement. “Are you trying to break the genjutsu? Maybe it’s not genjutsu, and this is reality. Or maybe every time you try to lift the genjutsu, it’s not you, but me tricking you into thinking that you disrupted your chakra? Try it again; perhaps it will work this time,” he chuckled.

Ogata felt a distinct fear settle into his heart as he disrupted his chakra. Once again, he felt the genjutsu shatter, but nothing changed. The wounds on his body remained and Toridasu still stood in front of him laughing.

“And so… are you in a genjutsu, or are you not? What is real and what is not?” Toridasu asked. His lips then flattened, and his voice dropped a few notes into a menacing laughter that echoed in Ogata’s ears, “This thing you call a trick will kill you today, my thick-skulled foe.”