"Draw them out! Kokinjo! (幌金縄: Golden Canopy Rope)" Kinkaku roared, throwing his forearm out as the glowing rope snaked through the air.
"Curse them! Shichiseiken! (七星剣: Seven Star Sword)" Ginkaku bellowed, swinging the massive star-engraved sword in a gleaming arc.
"Record them! Benihisago! (紅葫蘆: Crimson Gourd)" he commanded while unsealing the mouth of the crimson gourd.
"""UGH!!"""
In rapid, catastrophic succession, the Gold and Silver Brothers systematically dismantled the Konoha vanguard. For the lower-ranking Chunin, the twins directly cut them down using their raw, overwhelming physical might and savage taijutsu. But for the veteran Jonin—those who could not be instantly executed by a single blade strike—the brothers deployed their sacred Treasured Tools with lethal efficiency.
The moment the Golden Canopy Rope brushed against an elite ninja, Kinkaku forcibly extracted the target's Kotodama (言霊, word spirits/souls)—the literal word spirit and soul of the victim—which became instantly bound by the rope's cursed seal. Ginkaku would then step in seamlessly, severing the soul from the body with the Seven Star Sword and recording the spirit directly into the Crimson Gourd.
"…Uchiha… Senju, Sharingan… and Hashirama?" Ginkaku muttered, staring at the flat, metallic surface of the Seven Star Sword. He read the newly manifested words in brief bewilderment before tilting the blade toward his brother. "Hey, Kinkaku. What is wrong with these guys?"
Kinkaku glanced at the floating text, his face twisting in confusion. "These old fools must be the core Senju Jonin then…"
"Watch out! Whatever that weapon is doing, it isn't anything good!" an elderly Senju ninja donning a cracked green Senju battle armor covered in soot yelled.
Kinkaku's lips curled into a mischievous, predatory smirk. He stepped forward, raising his voice to taunt the entire Leaf perimeter. "You Senju are truly nothing compared to the Uchiha and their Sharingan. In fact, you bastards are absolutely nothing without Senju Hashirama!"
"YOU!!!"
"DON'T YOU DARE LOOK DOWN ON US SENJU!!!"
"Yeah, don't overestimate yourselves, Cloud scum!"
"Don't you dare compare us with those Evil Uchiha!"
"Hashirama-sama isn't a figure you can mention so casually!"
"Heh! All too easy!" Kinkaku mocked loudly.
Behind him, Ginkaku offered a silent, chilling smile as his grip tightened around the neck of the Benihisago.
The trap was sprung. By uttering the words they spoke most frequently in their lives—their own taboos recorded by the sword—three of the four raging Senju Jonin were violently warped, their bodies screaming as they were sucked cleanly into the vacuum of the Crimson Gourd.
"!"
The lone remaining Senju veteran, left entirely untouched, widened his eyes in horror and rage.
"Wha-what the hell did you just do to them?!"
"Heh! You can ask them yourself in the next life!"
With a sudden burst of Shunshin, Kinkaku materialized directly in front of the veteran's chest, throwing a savage, precision jab that directly crushed the man's vocal cords. As an elite shinobi who had survived the brutal Warring States era, the Senju Jonin instantly realized he was a fraction of a second too late to dodge due to his emotional mistake.
Instead of yielding to panic or trying to twist away, the veteran grimly accepted the lethal blow. He used the exact momentum of Kinkaku's fist sinking into his throat to anchor himself and launch a ferocious, point-blank counterattack.
Suiton: Mizu Kamikiri 水遁・水上切 (Water release: rising water slash)
A high-pressure, razor-sharp crescent of water erupted violently from the earth, slamming directly into Kinkaku's torso. The sheer force of the impact forced both combatants to execute a blind Shunshin, flashing away from each other to opposite sides of the clearing.
The veteran, Senju Bōrai, collapsed to one knee, coughing up a heavy torrent of crimson. A tragic, whistling whine escaped his shattered throat every time his lungs desperately fought for oxygen.
"Bōrai-san!!" Sarutobi Hiruzen and Uchiha Kagami yelled, blurring onto the scene a moment too late to protect the veteran. Behind them, Shimura Danzō and Akimichi Torifu formed a rearguard, having systematically cut down multiple Kinkaku Butai operatives on their frantic charge across the battlefield.
Bōrai tried to speak, to scream a warning to the younger generation, but only blood and a broken whistling sound escaped his lips. Operating under pure adrenaline, the veteran focused his chakra, manipulating a small puddle of water on the ground to quickly shape fluid kanji characters:
{Be careful. Sacred Treasure Tools. Kinkaku. Ginkaku.}
"I understand, Bōrai-san!" Hiruzen gritted his teeth, his heart breaking. "Get some rest! Focus on controlling your breathing and heal first!"
Bōrai offered a weak, solemn nod.
Across the field, Kinkaku and Ginkaku stood shoulder-to-shoulder.
"Kinkaku! Are you alright?"
Ginkaku questioned as his eyes tracked the dark stain on his brother's tunic.
"Yeah... that Senju old-timer..." Kinkaku growled, frowning as a visible aura of rust-orange Nine-Tails chakra began to ripple across his skin, rapidly regenerating the deep laceration on his torso.
"To think he would willingly trade his flesh just to land a strike... but a superficial injury like this is nothing."
Kinkaku had targeted the throat specifically to render Bōrai completely mute. If the veteran had attempted to dodge, the strike still would have clipped his jaw—not completely crushing the airway, but rendering him entirely speechless for a crucial few minutes.
"…The Senju are far tougher than I anticipated, especially the older generation," Ginkaku admitted, his tone darkening. "They carry the unyielding momentum of elite veterans, unlike anyone else we've butchered."
"But with this, his fate is sealed regardless," Kinkaku smirked with absolute confidence.
"You're right about that!" Ginkaku laughed, raising the Crimson Gourd once more.
Bōrai's eyes widened in sudden realization. Because his soul's spirit word on the blade had shifted to his current state—silence—and he had fallen completely mute from the crushed vocal cords, he had inadvertently triggered his own taboo. He desperately wanted to scrawl a final warning in the water, but the absolute gravity of the artifact overrode his movements.
{Sile- }
Before the watery script could even finish forming the word, Bōrai's entire physical form dissolved, violently sucked into the Benihisago. The water characters lost their chakra cohesion, splashing back down into a meaningless puddle.
"BŌRAI-SAN!!!" Hiruzen screamed in raw anguish.
Suddenly, Senju Tobirama's thunderous, commanding voice echoed across the entire valley, cutting through the despair.
"Konoha! Regroup on my coordinates!"
"Danzō, Torifu! Pull back now!"
Danzō, Torifu, and Kagami silently exchanged a rapid sequence of glances, nodding in perfect tactical unison. "Hiruzen! We have to move!"
Kagami roared, wrapping a tight grip around Hiruzen's forearm and forcefully dragging his grieving comrade backward.
"As if we will ever let you escape!" Kinkaku and Ginkaku bellowed in unison.
The brothers surged forward, but the moment they locked onto the fleeing squad, their vision collided directly with Kagami's fully matured Sharingan. The sudden, hypnotic illusion forced the twins to halt for less than a second—a microscopic hesitation, but enough time for their ancient-blooded instincts to break the bind and resume their charge.
"YOU UCHIHA BRAT!!!!" they roared, a single, physical tail of bubbling orange chakra erupting behind their hips.
However, the distraction had served its ultimate purpose. The remaining, highly disciplined Konoha forces had successfully consolidated their perimeter around the Second Hokage. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder, they were surrounded by four of Tobirama's shadow clones, who had already mapped out the coordinates.
Hiraijin no Jutsu 飛雷陣の術 (Flying Thunder formation Technique)
In a massive, blinding flash of spatial displacement, 285 surviving Konoha ninja, alongside Tobirama and his six elite disciples, vanished from the battlefield in an instant.
""DAMN IT!!"" the brothers screamed, their fists smashing into the empty earth where the Leaf army had stood a moment prior.
"Kinkaku-sama! They didn't escape too far from our perimeter!" a sensory specialist from the Kinkaku Butai announced, dropping to his knees as he tracked the displaced chakra signatures.
"They are still well within our sensory net. It appears the Hokage lacks the chakra capacity to transfer an army of that scale across a long distance—especially given the immense volume of poison actively circulating through his system!"
Kinkaku and Ginkaku snapped their heads toward the tracker, their faces demonic under the fox chakra. "WHERE ARE THEY?!"
"They materialized just under ten kilometers to the south, embedded in the forest!"
"Broadcast my execution orders!" Kinkaku roared. "Command the rest of our brothers to mobilize and hunt them to their graves!"
"HAI!" (Yes Sir!)
The Kinkaku Force represented Kumogakure's top tier elite vanguard—a massive division that originally boasted 3,000 highly trained ninja, including 300 active Jonin. Incredibly, one-tenth of their entire division consisted of elite, high-tier officers. Though the brutal global conflict had whittled their total numbers down to 1,892 active combatants, they still retained a terrifying core of 257 Jonin, with the remainder composed of hardened Chunin and elite special forces.
In this initial ambush party beneath the canopy, the brothers had brought exactly 200 Jonin and 200 elite Chunin to execute the Raikage. Now, Kinkaku had officially mobilized the remaining reserve: 1,502 fanatical ninja, ordered to hunt down the retreating Hokage.
The entirety of the Kinkaku Force was fanatically loyal to the Gold and Silver Brothers, fiercely sharing their bitter dissatisfaction with Kumo's administrative choice to surrender to Konoha. However, a small faction of 150 loyalist Kumo ninja—including 17 honorable Jonin—had discovered the assassination plot and attempted to warn the Second Raikage prior to the summit.
Tragically, those 150 loyalists had been systematically rounded up and silently executed by the brothers just twenty-four hours before the alliance ceremony began, ensuring no one would step forward to stop the downfall of the Kages.
***
"Tsk... I overextended my chakra," Senju Tobirama muttered under his breath as a cold bead of sweat cut through the grime on his face. 'If I had anticipated a multi-layered ambush of this scale, I would have prioritized refining the tactical range of the Hiraishin.'
The Second Hokage had successfully constructed a dense chakra buffer to suppress the Suna poison, but exiling it from his pathways completely was an impossibility under these conditions. The moment he attempted to mold chakra for any technique exceeding a baseline C-rank, the chemical toxins flared violently, fracturing his internal chakra circulation. His mass teleportation—the Hiraijin no Jutsu—had succeeded, but the internal disruption had forced him to truncate the spatial coordinates, dropping them drastically short of their destination.
"Sensei! This location...?" Hiruzen asked, scanning the ancient trunks.
""Yes. It is the exact path we navigated this morning," Tobirama answered calmly, kneeling to press his index and middle fingers firmly against the damp earth. His chakra rippled outward. "We have only established a margin of 9.6 kilometers between ourselves and the Kinkaku Butai. No... their formation is fracturing. They are actively converging."
The disciples braced themselves as Tobirama detailed the readings.
"The immediate vanguard consists of two Jonin and one hundred and twenty Chunin... Behind them, a massive host is mobilizing. Roughly fifteen hundred signatures."
"""!!!"""
Tobirama's crimson eyes swept the field as he evaluated the surviving forces huddled beneath the canopy.
'Roughly three hundred men remaining... but more than a third are severely injured.'
"Elder Bo—." Tobirama called out of habit.
"Borai-san..." Hiruzen stepped forward, his voice tight with an unspoken grief. "Sensei, Borai-san, he—"
"I am aware," Tobirama interrupted, his jaw tightening into iron as he stood up. "I sensed his chakra signature vanish from the valley."
Tobirama refused to permit his mind to fracture over the loss. Senju Bōrai had been a legendary Grand Elder—a contemporary and brother-in-arms to his late father, Senju Butsuma. Bōrai had personally beaten the fundamentals of combat into Hashirama, Tobirama, and their fallen younger brothers during the height of the Warring States era. Even after the founding of the Leaf, he had remained an unyielding, fiercely loyal pillar of the Senju administration.
Shaking off the ghost of the past, the Hokage immediately issued his command. "Time is our most scarce commodity! Kenji!"
"Hai! Hokage-sama!" Anbu commander wearing a white deer mask appeared in a blur of motion.
"You will assume command of the primary division. Lead the men southwest through the designated coordinates and establish a link with the Konoha main encampment. A ten-kilometer gap is nothing to a sensory unit; if we attempt to move this entire army as a single entity, their vanguard will overrun our rearguard within the hour. I will personally anchor this position and buy you the necessary window. You comprehend your orders, Heizō."
Kenji froze for a microscopic fraction of a second, the heavy weight of what Tobirama was implying crashed down upon him. He closed his eyes, offered a solemn, respectful salute, and nodded. "…Understood... Uncle."
"Saru, Danzō, Torifu, Kagami, Homura, Koharu—alongside Teams Seven through Nine! You will fan out across the primary corridor and seed the terrain with high-density traps," Tobirama commanded with confident voice to he mask his condition. "We will bleed their momentum and delay their advance by any means necessary. But before we fully retreat... we need to dismantle their vanguard!"
"""HAI! SENSEI!"""
In an instant, dozens of masked Anbu silhouettes flickered away into the foliage, disappearing into the emerald shadows. Behind them, the surviving healthy Konoha shinobi shouldered their crippled comrades, moving in tight, silent formations as they ran southwest, fleeing the impending meat grinder.
It did not take long for the quiet of the summer forest to be shattered. The woodland erupted in a chaotic symphony of explosive tags, splintering timber, and the violent thunder of colliding elemental jutsu.