Night fell over Isla Verna with an almost deliberate slowness.
Elian and Shikamaru waited. They settled into the shadow of an abandoned house across from the warehouse, sitting against the wall in silence. Every so often, a voice drifted out from inside the building—a short laugh, the dull thud of a bottle set down on wood. The two guards outside spoke to each other with the easy confidence of men who had never had to face real resistance.
Shikamaru watched the scene from the shadows, hands in his pockets.
"You want to try it alone," he said. It wasn't a question.
Elian didn't answer right away. He was watching the two guards, the warehouse, the layout of the surrounding buildings. He was calculating angles, distances, possible sequences.
"Yes," he said at last.
Shikamaru remained silent for a moment.
"Six men."
"I know."
"If it goes wrong—"
"I step in," Shikamaru cut in before he could finish. "But only if it really goes wrong."
Elian nodded.
He waited another hour, letting the night fully settle and the voices inside the warehouse grow slower, more sluggish. Then he rose without a sound and moved toward the dock.
***
The first guard never saw him coming.
Elian had circled around the warehouse from the left, moving along the wall in the shadows, taking three times longer than necessary to make sure each step was completely silent. When he was two meters behind the first guard, he stopped and waited for the man to turn his head slightly toward his companion to speak.
He struck at the base of the skull with the handle of his kunai. Not too hard, not too soft. The blow had to knock him out without seriously injuring him. The man collapsed with a dull sound, his legs giving out beneath him like those of a puppet with its strings cut.
The second guard heard the noise. He turned around.
That was when things stopped being clean.
The man was more alert than Elian had estimated. He saw his companion on the ground, saw Elian, and opened his mouth to shout. Elian threw a shuriken—fast, too fast, driven by the urgency to stop the cry. The blade struck the man's shoulder instead of his arm as intended. The guard let out a choked sound—not quite a scream, but loud enough to be heard from inside if anyone was listening.
Elian didn't wait. He closed the distance in two steps and drove his elbow into the man's jaw. The impact shot back up his own arm to the shoulder, more painful than he had expected. The guard staggered but didn't fall. He was tougher than the others. He grabbed Elian by the collar with his good hand and tried to slam him against the warehouse wall.
Elian took the hit against the wood, felt the air leave his lungs, and let himself slide down along the wall to slip out of the grip rather than resist. The man raised his saber with the hand that still held despite the shuriken in his shoulder, and as Elian watched him, he understood that pain alone wasn't enough to stop this kind of person.
He threw a second shuriken into the man's thigh, more precise this time because he had the time. The man stumbled, his knee giving under his weight. Elian pushed himself back up and drove a punch into the man's temple with everything he had. His hand protested sharply. The man collapsed.
Elian remained still for a second, his right hand burning, his back aching where it had struck the wall. He looked at the two guards on the ground, then at his hands. The knuckle of his index finger was split by the guard's teeth—something he hadn't seen coming.
Not catastrophic. But not clean either.
He dragged both men into the shadows, his hand protesting with every effort, and repositioned himself in front of the half-open door.
From inside, nothing. No one had heard.
Elian took a long breath and let the warmth of his chakra settle in his chest before moving on.
***
The inside of the warehouse was lit by two lanterns whose flickering light carved long shadows between the stacked crates. Four men. Three sitting around a crate, a nearly empty bottle between them. A fourth lay on burlap sacks in a corner, arms crossed over his chest, eyes closed but not clearly asleep.
Elian studied the layout for several seconds from the doorway—long enough for the scene to imprint itself in his memory. The distances. The visible weapons. The path between him and each of them.
He threw the explosive tag against the outer wall, to the left of the door.
The explosion was short, sharp, and far louder than he had calculated in the confined space along the warehouse wall. Wood cracked. One of the lanterns fell and nearly went out. All four men jumped to their feet with shouts, hands scrambling for their weapons in the confusion and smoke.
Elian moved in.
The first man who charged toward the door did so head down, blindly searching for an external threat. He only saw Elian at the last moment and had no time to change course. Elian stepped aside and used the man's momentum against him, guiding him into the crates with a push to the back. The man slammed into the wood with a dull thud and slid to the ground, stunned.
One. But the first man had shouted as he fell, and now the other three knew exactly where Elian was.
The second came with a saber this time, more cautious, both hands on the weapon. He wasn't drunk—or not enough for it to matter. He struck diagonally, forcing Elian to retreat between the crates into a space that limited his angles of movement. Elian blocked the first blow with his forearm, felt the blade cut into his sleeve and brush his skin, and realized he had misjudged the length of the saber.
He stepped back again, hit a crate behind him, and threw a shuriken point-blank into the shoulder of the armed arm. The pain threw off the next strike, but not enough. The flat of the blade slammed into his left shoulder with enough force to numb it momentarily. Elian gritted his teeth and slipped under the man's guard, driving his elbow into the ribs. Once, twice. The man folded. Elian finished with a knee to the solar plexus, and the man collapsed between the crates, gasping for air.
Two. But his left shoulder responded poorly, and he had lost precious time.
The third man did not attack alone. He had waited for his companion to engage Elian, and now he came in from the side with a short knife—an angle bad for Elian, who hadn't been watching him closely enough. The blade cut into his right forearm before he could fully evade, a sharp, immediate pain that forced a short sound from him.
Elian pulled back, put a crate between them, and took a second to breathe. His forearm was bleeding—not deeply, but clearly. His left shoulder was still numb. His right hand burned from the fight outside.
He was no longer in very good shape.
The third man circled the crate slowly, knife raised, with the patience of someone who knew he had the advantage. Behind him, the fourth man—the one who had been lying down—was now on his feet, searching for a weapon among the scattered belongings.
Elian made his decision quickly.
He threw his last shuriken not at the third man, but at the lantern hanging on the wall behind him. The lantern fell. Oil spread across the wooden floor and ignited immediately, creating a line of fire between Elian and the two remaining men.
It wasn't what he had planned. But it worked.
The two men instinctively stepped back from the flames. Elian moved around the fire to the right, grabbed a bucket of water set against the wall, and doused the flames before they could spread to the crates. The fire died in a cloud of thick black smoke that quickly filled the warehouse.
In the confusion of smoke and failing light, Elian struck the third man with an elbow to the face as he passed, felt the impact shoot through his injured arm, and ignored the pain. The man dropped.
Three.
The fourth—the one who had risen from the corner—had finally found a knife, but now stood alone in a smoke-filled warehouse with three of his companions on the ground. He looked at Elian through the haze, eyes stinging, and assessed the situation with the cold clarity of someone who had survived long enough to recognize a lost fight.
He set the knife down.
Elian said nothing. He watched him place the weapon on the ground, then sit with his hands visible. Then he stepped out of the warehouse into the cool night, breathing deeply of air that wasn't choked with smoke.
He found Shikamaru exactly where he had left him, leaning against the outer wall, hands in his pockets.
Shikamaru looked him up and down—the cut on his forearm, the shoulder that didn't quite move normally, the swelling at the knuckles of his right hand.
"Six men," he said.
"Six men," Elian confirmed.
A pause.
"You're bleeding."
"I know."
Shikamaru pushed himself off the wall and stepped closer, examining the cut on the forearm with the clinical eye of someone who had seen many wounds.
"It's not deep. But it needs to be cleaned tonight." He glanced at the shoulder. "And the shoulder?"
"Numb. It'll pass."
"Probably a bruise. Nothing broken, or you wouldn't be able to hold your arm like that." He stepped back. "You made mistakes."
"I know," Elian said. "The second guard was more alert than expected. And the third inside caught me from the side because I wasn't watching properly."
"Yes." Shikamaru looked toward the warehouse, from which a thin trail of smoke still drifted. "And the lantern?"
"Not planned. But it worked."
"This time." He paused. "Improvisation can save a situation. It can also create a much worse one. We'll need to work on your awareness of angles under pressure."
Elian nodded. His forearm was still bleeding slowly, a thin red line running down to his fingertips and dripping onto the dock's stones.
"We're going back," Shikamaru said simply.
They headed toward the village, leaving the six men bound in the warehouse for the morning.
The night over Isla Verna was calm and filled with stars. Somewhere in a nearby house, a light flicked on behind a shutter. Someone had heard. Someone was waiting to know.
Elian walked with his forearm held close, feeling the familiar burn of a wound—clean, but real. He hadn't controlled everything. He had made mistakes, taken hits, improvised where he should have anticipated.
But he was still standing.
And the six men were not.