Jonin were Jonin for a reason. Once they figured out Taiichi's tricks and synced their attacks, Taiichi was pushed to the brink. The only reason he was still standing was his Fire Body technique tanking the lethal hits.
But with Yohei and Saori on the way, it was time to wrap this up.
Since they had gotten used to his Fire and Water Styles, it was time to show them something new. With a thought, he dumped one skill point into Wind Nature Transformation, instantly pushing it to Lv11.
A massive flood of insights and muscle memory rushed into his brain. Taiichi steadied his mind, keeping his face blank as he continued clashing with the Cloud ninjas.
He didn't have to wait long. The island was tiny, and Yohei and Saori quickly broke into his line of sight.
"Fuck! She took a lethal hit, and she's already back in the fight?!" The Cloud leader was ready to pop a blood vessel. He had thought the intel overhyped Matsushita Taiichi's medical ninjutsu. Turns out, it wasn't an exaggeration—it was a massive understatement.
Yohei and Saori's arrival was the straw that broke the camel's back. The moment the Cloud ninjas had to split their forces to intercept the reinforcements, Taiichi exploded into action.
Wind Style: Great Breakthrough. A roaring gale packed with razor-sharp wind blades instantly forced the close-combat fighters back. Taiichi used the split-second opening to weave signs.
Wind Style: Vacuum Sphere. Bullet-like spheres of compressed wind blasted from his mouth in a relentless barrage. Compared to the slower travel times of Fire and Water jutsu, Wind Style was blindingly fast. Especially at point-blank range, the spheres crossed the gap instantly.
Countless wind bullets slammed into the Jonin named Cloud Water. In just a few breaths, he was riddled with holes, dead before he even hit the ground.
"Wind Style too...?" The Cloud leader didn't even have the energy to curse anymore. He finally got it. Kazema's intel wasn't wrong. Taiichi was just a freak who hid his trump cards too well.
With one Jonin dead from the water prison trap and another just shredded, the remaining two exhausted Jonin had no chance of holding Taiichi back. The Cloud ninjas knew they weren't walking off this island. Dropping all pretenses of survival, they braced themselves for one final, glorious clash.
Taiichi felt their resolve shift. A sliver of respect flickered in his chest. Anyone who could face death head-on deserved at least that much.
---
Over on Yohei's side, he watched the intercepting Jonin charge. Having rested up, Yohei was running hot and fully unleashed.
Fire Style: Majestic Destroyer Flame. A literal sea of fire roared from his mouth, swallowing everything in its path. His Sharingan locked dead onto the Jonin's every flinch. While the enemy was frantically dealing with the inferno, Yohei charged straight through his own flames.
The Cloud Jonin clearly hadn't expected the kid to be this psycho, risking severe burns just to launch a blindside attack.
The harder Yohei fought, the clearer his head got. The more he swung, the higher his adrenaline spiked. The three tomoe in his eyes spun frantically. He was entirely in the zone.
He ended the brutal exchange with a vicious sweeping kick that launched the Jonin into the air, instantly followed up with a Body Flicker. His kunai drove straight into the airborne enemy's heart.
The suffocating rage and frustration that had been choking him all day finally broke. In that exact moment of release, the tomoe in his eyes bled together, snapping into a new shape—a triangular pinwheel encased in two dark outer rings.
A massive surge of chakra erupted from every cell in his body. A sharp, violent spike of pain flared behind his eyes, followed instantly by absolute, terrifying clarity. The entire world looked like the sky after a storm—vivid, sharp, and hyper-defined.
Yohei froze. He hadn't expected this at all. No one had ever told him there was a level above the three-tomoe Sharingan. He was completely lost. But he was still on a battlefield, and the explosive power surging through his veins desperately needed an outlet.
He whipped his head toward Saori. Two Cloud Chunin were double-teaming her—and one of them was Kazema, that treacherous bastard.
Yohei flicked the blood off his kunai and flickered toward her. The scenery blurred past him, but to his new eyes, the entire world seemed to be moving in slow motion. The rush of this god-like perception made his blood boil with excitement.
Before he even arrived, he spat out a Great Fireball. As the Cloud Chunin scrambled to dodge, Yohei closed the gap, slashing his kunai straight for the man's throat. His monstrous dynamic vision tracked every millisecond of the enemy's flinch, and his accelerated reflexes adjusted the blade's trajectory flawlessly.
The result was horrifyingly clean—it looked like the Chunin intentionally threw his own neck onto the blade. Killing a Chunin felt like swatting a fly.
Yohei forced his racing heart to steady. For the first time in his life, he felt truly powerful. For a split second, he actually entertained the thought of sparring Taiichi.
He turned his attention to the last fight. Saori was currently beating Kazema into a bloody pulp. The sheer savagery of her bare-knuckle beatdown made Yohei's eye twitch. Clearly, taking a kunai to the chest for Taiichi had pissed her off beyond reason.
Only when Kazema's face was completely unrecognizable—a bruised, broken mess of flesh—did Saori finally end it, shattering his windpipe with a brutal knife-hand strike.
With her fight finished, Taiichi wrapped up the remaining Jonin on his end. The premeditated death trap was finally over.
---
The trio regrouped. The first thing Yohei and Saori noticed was Taiichi's clothes—or what was left of them. He had been slashed and stabbed at least twenty times during the brutal melee. The fact that his uniform was still hanging onto his body was a miracle of Leaf tailoring.
Panic flashing across her face, Saori rushed forward, pulling at his shredded shirt to check his wounds. But she found nothing. Between his elite medical ninjutsu and his Fire Body, every cut had healed without a scar. In her panic, she had completely forgotten he was a walking cheat code.
Meanwhile, the adrenaline crash hit her hard. Between her earlier blood loss and the heavy exertion, her legs gave out.
Taiichi caught her with one arm. Warm, soothing Yang-natured chakra glowed from his palm, flooding her body to stabilize her vitals. With Saori secured, Taiichi finally looked over at Yohei.
He opened his mouth to speak, then completely froze. He stared dead into Yohei's eyes.
Saori noticed his reaction and followed his gaze. She let out a sharp gasp. "Yohei, your eyes!"
Saori didn't know anything about the Sharingan's evolutions or what they meant, so her reaction wasn't nearly as visceral as Taiichi's.
At her shout, Yohei finally snapped back to reality. The rush of the fight had completely distracted him from his own eyes. He quickly crouched down and looked at his reflection in the lingering floodwater.
Staring back at him from the rippling surface was a pair of striking crimson eyes. A triangular pinwheel spun slowly in the center, framed by two stark black rings.
"What... what is this?" Yohei looked up at Taiichi, desperate for an answer.
Taiichi had recovered his composure, but his gaze was incredibly complex. Other Uchihas literally drove themselves insane trying to awaken the Mangekyo Sharingan, yet this idiot had stumbled into it without even trying.
Looking back, Yohei's entire evolution path was a bizarre anomaly. Aside from upgrading to three tomoe when their teammate Inuzuka Makoto died, his other awakenings came from emotional spikes, but never absolute, soul-crushing despair.
And this time? After a quick interrogation, Taiichi realized Yohei awakened the Mangekyo in a moment of pure catharsis—the exact second he vented his rage and killed the Jonin. Taiichi didn't even know what to say. This guy was the luckiest Uchiha in history.
"It's complicated, and we don't have time to unpack it right now. But Yohei, listen to me very carefully," Taiichi said, grabbing both of Yohei's shoulders. His eyes were dead serious. "Do not tell anyone about this evolution. Not even your parents. Keep it completely buried for now."
Yohei was rattled by how grim Taiichi looked, but knowing Taiichi would never steer him wrong, he gave a firm nod. Taiichi then shifted his gaze to Saori. She caught the hint instantly and swore she wouldn't breathe a word of it.
Taiichi finally let out a breath. "Let's figure out how to get off this rock. Once we're safe, I'll explain everything."
---
The trio split up and quickly scouted the perimeter of the barrier. When they regrouped, the mood was heavy.
"There's no one maintaining the barrier anymore. If we just wait, it'll dissolve on its own in about two days," Saori reported. As the squad's resident sealing specialist, her assessment was gospel.
"We can't sit here for two days! When the Cloud command realizes this squad went dark, they'll send a strike team to investigate," Yohei shot back, anxiety lacing his voice. They definitely couldn't afford to wait.
"Then we brute-force it," Taiichi said. "This barrier covers a massive area, and whoever set it up wasn't exactly a sealing master. The integrity is spread thin. If we focus our maximum firepower on a single point, we should be able to shatter it."
Saori nodded in agreement. Taiichi had solid sealing chops himself, so he could accurately read the barrier's structural limits.
Plan set, they spent the next few minutes tapping and probing the barrier wall. They layered chakra sensing with low-level jutsu strikes, hunting for the structural weak point. The tension in the air was suffocating as they worked, the silence only broken by the sound of ocean waves crashing against the rocks.
After an agonizingly tense search, Saori's eyes suddenly lit up. "Found it! Right here!" Her voice hitched with excitement, though it was quickly tempered by caution. "Judging by the chakra density, this spot is significantly weaker than the rest. But... it's still tough."
"As long as there's a crack, we can break it." Taiichi's eyes narrowed. He took a few steps back to create clearance. "Yohei, Saori, clear the blast radius. Watch the splash damage."
He took a deep breath. Chakra roared to life in his chest. To maximize the destructive output, his hands blurred through seals.
Fire Style: Fire Dragon Flame Bullet. With a low shout, a savage dragon made of pure, blinding golden fire erupted from his mouth. The sheer heat warped the air into a shimmering mirage. Carrying enough raw power to incinerate anything in its path, the golden dragon slammed violently into the weak point!
VMMMMM!
The invisible barrier violently rippled like a pond struck by a boulder. Golden flames ground fiercely against the transparent wall, screaming as the energies clashed and eroded each other, sending out visible shockwaves. The entire dome shuddered under the impact, flashing its massive silhouette like a giant soap bubble on the verge of popping.
Yohei and Saori held their breath, their eyes glued to the blinding point of impact. However, despite trembling violently, the barrier held firm. Once Taiichi's flames died down, the rippling wall slowly smoothed back out.
"No way..." Yohei's knuckles turned white, his voice dripping with dismay. "Even Taiichi's strongest jutsu couldn't..."
Saori went pale. Watching the barrier repair itself, her brain kicked into overdrive trying to formulate a backup plan.
"Not enough, huh?" Taiichi ground his teeth, but the fire in his eyes didn't dim. "If once didn't work, we hit it again!" Backing down wasn't in his vocabulary.
Poof. A cloud of smoke erupted, and a Shadow Clone materialized beside him. Without a word, the real Taiichi's hands blurred through seals again. That familiar, terrifying heat spiked!
Fire Style: Fire Dragon Flame Bullet.
In the exact same instant, the clone finished its own seals and its chest expanded.
Wind Style: Great Breakthrough. The golden fire dragon roared out again, bringing apocalyptic heat! But right behind it, the clone didn't unleash a scattered gale—it expelled a highly condensed, spinning tornado that drove perfectly into the fire dragon's tail!
Wind feeds fire, and fire rides the wind! Supercharged by the violent wind jutsu, the golden dragon became exponentially more volatile and terrifyingly fast. Its massive form swelled like a balloon, yet the core flames became impossibly dense and pressurized.
BOOM!!!
The spiraling fusion of wind and fire—carrying several times the destructive payload of the previous attack—slammed ruthlessly into the weak point! This wasn't a ringing vibration. It was a deafening, apocalyptic explosion that literally shook the bedrock of the island!
Crack... cr-crack... CRASH! The sickening sound of shattering glass tore through the air! Countless deep fissures spiderwebbed out from the impact zone, racing across the dome like cracking ice. Under Yohei and Saori's awe-struck gazes, the massive barrier finally hit its absolute limit and shattered!
BOOM. Shhhk. The wall dissolved into thousands of glittering fragments that rained down across the island. Taiichi didn't waste time celebrating. He signaled Yohei and Saori, and the three of them bolted straight for the mainland. This rock was compromised—they needed to haul ass!
---
Two hours later, a squad of Jonin rapidly approached the island. Judging by their flak jackets, they were Cloud elite. They didn't waste a second talking, instantly fanning out to scour the area.
Unfortunately for them, the island had been completely flooded. Aside from the leveled ruins of the warehouse, they couldn't recover a single piece of actionable intel. No bodies. The battle scars had been washed away by the tide. The only thing they could confirm was that the fight had been massive, leaving scattered debris stretching from the warehouse all the way to the shoreline.
"The barrier was brute-forced," one of them noted. "Can't tell if an extraction team hit it from the outside or if they blew it from within."
"Doesn't matter. The op is a bust. We lost a massive chunk of manpower and we don't even have confirmation of a kill."
"Pack it up and report to command. If Matsushita Taiichi died here, fine. But if he survived this trap... then going forward..."
He didn't need to finish the sentence. Every ninja there knew the score. If a monster like that was still breathing, the Hidden Cloud was going to have a very bad time.
---
By then, Team Taiichi was already deep inside the borders of the Land of Hot Water. They ran non-stop until nightfall before finally finding a hidden cave to camp.
The grueling marathon, stacked on top of a brutal death match, had drained them to the bone. Taiichi was too exhausted to even think about cooking, so the trio huddled in silence, chewing on dry field rations.
After forcing down enough food to kill their hunger, Yohei finally couldn't hold it in anymore. He asked Taiichi about his newly evolved Sharingan. Honestly, only Yohei could be this shameless—an Uchiha asking an outsider for a tutorial on his own clan's sacred bloodline. Any other Uchiha would have taken that secret to the grave out of sheer pride.
"Come here, Yohei. Let me give those eyes a medical check first to make sure there's no structural damage," Taiichi said smoothly, though internally, he was a little nervous.
But Yohei was an open book. He immediately scooted over and sat in front of Taiichi, showing zero hesitation about letting an outsider physically inspect his bloodline limit.
That level of absolute, blind trust actually touched Taiichi. It cemented his resolve to solve this problem for his friend. Yohei didn't have any siblings. If he spammed the Mangekyo, he was guaranteed to go blind. But as to how to prevent that blindness without a transplant? Taiichi actually had a few theories brewing in his head.
Gentle green light bathed Yohei's head. Taiichi dialed his focus to maximum, running a deep-tissue diagnostic on his friend's brain and optic nerves.
When his sensory chakra touched the eyes, he immediately felt a foreign, highly concentrated energy entirely distinct from standard chakra. This had to be the legendary "Visual Prowess." But maybe because Yohei's evolution path hadn't been paved with absolute trauma, this energy didn't feel sinister or cold like the rumors claimed.
That was a massive relief. It meant Taiichi didn't have to worry about Yohei turning into an edgy psychopath.
"Yohei, activate the Mangekyo Sharingan." Seeing Yohei's blank stare, Taiichi clarified, "The new, highest form of your eyes."
Yohei nodded and flared his chakra. The three tomoe spun into existence, accelerating rapidly until they bled into the triangular pinwheel.
As the eyes shifted, Taiichi felt the visual prowess flare to life. The moment the Mangekyo fully formed, the sheer density of that active energy began physically crushing Yohei's optic nerves and eyeballs. And this was just him turning it on.
If Yohei actually fired off a Mangekyo-specific jutsu—or God forbid, a Susanoo—the backlash would be catastrophic. This physical cellular degradation was exactly why Mangekyo users inevitably went blind.
Taiichi slowly pulled his hands back, closing his eyes in deep thought. He needed to figure out how to bypass this flaw.
But honestly, he felt pretty confident he could crack the code. After all, it wasn't every day a master medic got to run a live, granular autopsy on an active Mangekyo Sharingan.
---