Another Boring Uchiha Power Fantasy.

Mikoto realized she was the last one to arrive out of her new squad.

Three shinobi around a map spread on a fallen log. Two men and a woman. The taller of the men was standing with his arms folded, studying the map. Dark hair, high-collared shirt with the Uchiha crest on the back. He looked about nineteen or twenty with a serious look on his face.

Fugaku Uchiha.

Mikoto had never met him. He was a jonin. Six or seven years older than her. That was the extent of it.

He knew more about her.

The woman beside him was slender with dark, wavy hair and deep-set eyes. Kurama Yūri. Chunin. Genjutsu specialist. The Kurama clan's reputation preceded her, though Yūri herself looked more tired than dangerous.

The third was a man about Fugaku's age, big, with close-cropped brown hair and a no-nonsense expression on his face. Satō Hideo. Chunin. He had a naginata strapped to his back.

Fugaku looked up when she approached.

He nodded.

"Uchiha Mikoto." He greeted her.

"Hello, it's an honor to be assigned to your squad, Fugaku-san. I'm glad to be working alongside a fellow Uchiha." She gave a slight bow.

He studied her for a moment. The bandaged sword on her back. The red eyes she kept active at all times.

"The Red-Eyed Angel and Mikoto of the Shredding Sword." He was impressed. "You've done the Uchiha name proud."

"I just try to do my best."

"You do more than that. The shinobi from Kaminari Pass have been talking. Your reputation is well-earned." He turned back to the map. "Come. I'll brief you on the operation."

Yūri offered a small wave. "Kurama Yūri. Nice to meet you, Mikoto-chan. I've heard a lot."

"Satō Hideo, welcome to the squad." The third member nodded.

Mikoto joined them at the map.

The target was an Rain supply depot built into the base of a cliff face, three kilometers behind the current front line. Intelligence said it served as a place for Ame's resupply runs to their eastern positions. Taking it out would strain their logistics and force a gap in their supply chain that Konoha could exploit.

"We move through the forest to the northwest, bypass their outer patrols, hit the depot, and withdraw before their reinforcements arrive. Estimated response time from their nearest garrison is fifteen minutes. We need to be in and out in ten." Fugaku said, tracing the approach on the map.

"How many are even there?" Hideo asked.

"Intelligence says twelve to fifteen. There may also be a sensor among them, so we'll need to mask our chakra. Mikoto, you're combat medic but you're not staying in the rear on this one. Four people isn't enough to hold anyone back. If it comes to a fight, I need all four of us in it."

"No problem." She smiled.

"Between your eyes and mine, nothing in that depot moves without us seeing it." He looked at each of them in turn. "Questions?"

Nobody had questions.

They moved out at dusk.

The forest northwest of the depot was dense and wet. Rain had passed through that morning and every surface was slick with moisture that Mikoto's sandals found at the worst moments. The treetops were thick enough to block most of the fading light, turning the forest floor into a maze of shadow and root.

Fugaku moved at the front. His three-tomoe Sharingan was active now, the red catching the last scraps of light filtering through the leaves. He tracked everything. Every sound. Every shadow. Every shift in the wind that might carry their scent to an enemy sentry.

Mikoto moved behind him and to his left. Two Sharingan users in the same squad created an advantage that bordered on unfair. Fugaku's eyes swept forward and right. Mikoto's swept forward and left. Between them, the full 180-degree arc ahead was under constant surveillance.

They covered two and a half kilometers without encountering a patrol.

The depot appeared through the trees as a cluster of structures built into a natural alcove in the cliff face. Canvas roofs over wooden frames. Supply crates stacked in rows. A water source from a spring that fed a small basin. Two sentries at the entrance. Three more visible on the perimeter. The rest would be inside.

Fugaku held up a fist. The squad stopped.

He gestured. Sign language, the field shorthand every Konoha shinobi learned. Fourteen targets. Two at the gate. Three on patrol. Nine inside.

Mikoto's Sharingan confirmed. Fourteen chakra signatures.

Fugaku signed again. Yūri, perimeter sentries. Genjutsu. Drop them quiet. Hideo, gate. Mikoto, inside with me.

Everyone nodded.

Yūri dissolved into the treeline. Her presence vanished so completely that even Mikoto's Sharingan lost track of her for a moment. Kurama-level genjutsu applied to herself rather than a target. She'd made herself invisible.

Hideo circled left toward the gate, naginata in hand, moving low through the brush.

Mikoto looked at Fugaku. He looked at her. Two pairs of Sharingan, red against the dark.

He held up three fingers. Two. One.

They vanished.

The first sentry on the perimeter sat down without knowing why. His eyes glazed. His body folded. Yūri's genjutsu hit him so cleanly that he didn't even exhale. The second sentry, thirty meters away, turned toward a sound that wasn't there and walked into an illusion that convinced him the forest behind the depot was on fire. He ran. Straight into a tree. Yūri stabbed him with a kunai before he fell and lowered him to the ground.

The third sentry heard the impact and turned. Too late. Hideo's naginata took him across the backs of both knees from below. He dropped. Hideo's follow-up strike sent his head flying into the air.

The gate sentries had two seconds to react to the sound. In those two seconds, Hideo cleared the remaining distance and his naginata swept through both of them in a single arc. He was inside the gate before their bodies hit the ground.

Fugaku and Mikoto came through the depot's back wall.

Fugaku's fireball blew the wooden planks inward and the two Uchiha entered the chaos behind it. Mikoto's Sharingan mapped every body in the structure before the smoke cleared. Nine targets. Four were reaching for weapons. Three were scrambling toward exits. Two were already forming hand signs.

Fugaku went right. Mikoto went left.

Mikoto drew the transformed Shark Skin. She caught the first Ame shinobi mid-retreat, the bandaged sword crushing him into the ground.

A water jutsu came from her left. She saw the hand signs before the technique formed, stepped out of the stream's path, and closed the distance on the caster in three steps. Shark Skin caught him across the torso. The cleaver tore through his flak jacket and chest. The chakra ripped out of him had dropped him to his knees as he bled to death.

Another Ame chunin came from behind a stack of crates, kunai aimed at Mikoto's exposed back. He didn't see Fugaku's shuriken coming from the right. Two stars caught the man in the shoulder and hip. He spun from the impact and Mikoto finished him with a backhand swing of Shark Skin that sent his head flying.

Fugaku glanced at her. She glanced at him. He'd seen the attack on her blind side before it happened and covered it. She'd seen his shuriken trajectory and adjusted her position to give him the angle. Two Sharingan users fighting in the same space didn't just double the visual coverage. It created a feedback loop where each fighter's awareness compensated for the other's gaps in real time.

The jonin emerged from the northwest structure.

He was faster than the chunin by a significant margin. His hands blurred through signs and a pressurized water stream lanced across the depot toward Fugaku. Fugaku substituted, the log splintering under the water's force, and appeared on the jonin's right flank. The jonin tracked the substitution, pivoted, and caught Fugaku's kunai strike with a kunai of his own.

They exchanged three blows in the space of a second. The jonin was experienced. His water style gave him defensive options that let him create distance whenever Fugaku pressed.

Mikoto came in from the opposite side.

The jonin saw her. Two Sharingan users, one on each flank. His options narrowed to a hallway. He launched a water wall to block Mikoto's approach and focused on Fugaku, trying to finish the one-on-one before the two-on-one became inevitable.

Mikoto tossed a kunai through the water wall and her Sharingan caught his eyes through the small hole. For a fraction of a second, his gaze met hers.

That was all she needed.

Getting caught in her genjutsu while in his battle with Fugaku allowed the older Uchiha to finish him off with a slash across the throat with his kunai.

The jonin fell and the depot was quiet after that. Hideo secured the gate. Yūri confirmed the perimeter sentries were still down. Mikoto moved through the downed Ame shinobi, checking pulses, confirming kills, stabilizing the two who were still alive for interrogation.

Fugaku watched her work with a nod. "Seven minutes. Three minutes to spare."

"That was damn good." Hideo grinned, wiping his naginata.

"That genjutsu at the end, good work." Fugaku said to Mikoto.

"The faster the battle was over, the less likely anyone could get hurt." Mikoto reasoned.

Fugaku nodded. "Set the explosive tags. We're leaving."

They blew up the depot. The supplies went up in orange and black, flames climbing the cliff face, smoke visible for kilometers. By the time the Ame response team arrived, the four of them were long gone, moving south through the forest at high speeds.

The mission was a success. No casualties on their side. Fourteen enemies eliminated, two interrogated. One supply depot destroyed. And new information about the location of other enemy camps.

They made camp that night in a hollow between two ridges, far enough from the depot's remains that the smoke was just a smudge on the horizon.

Hideo took first watch. Yūri curled up against a tree and was asleep in minutes.

Fugaku sat across from her. He wasn't sleeping. His eyes were open, staring off into the distance.

"How long have you been on the front?" He suddenly asked.

"I was deployed right after graduation." Mikoto answered.

"Lucky you." Fugaku shook his head.

He looked at her. The fire caught his features, the sharp jaw, the dark eyes, the clan crest on his collar. He didn't say anything about her age. There was nothing to say. The war put children on battlefields and everyone knew it and nobody liked it and it happened anyway.

"Fight like that again tomorrow and the day after and every day until this war ends. That's what the Uchiha need." He looked at the fire. "That's what Konoha needs."

"I intend to." She told him.

He nodded. That was the end of the conversation. He closed his eyes to rest.

Mikoto leaned back against the tree. The night was quiet. She thought about her boys. Wondered if they were sleeping. Wondered if they missed her cooking already. Wondered if Chōza was eating the cooks out of supplies and how Inoichi was progressing with his medical studies and if Shikaku had figured out a way to use his umbrella.

She smiled.

Then she closed her eyes and rested.

…

Time continued.

She was attached to Fugaku's squad several more times over the following year. Each mission was a success. Each time, the two-Sharingan dynamic made the squad faster, sharper, harder to surprise. They developed the kind of professional trust that comes from watching someone work under pressure and knowing they won't fold. A friendship. A comradery. Both competent, respectful, and friendly.

Between deployments with Fugaku, she worked with other units. Combat medic rotations that took her all over the war. She healed in field hospitals and forward camps and once in a ditch while enemy jutsu exploded overhead. She fought when she had to and healed when she could and the two reputations grew in parallel, the Angel and the Shredding Sword, the same girl seen from different angles.

The sign-in continued every week without fail. Most weeks gave her useless items. Ninja tools, a cooking pot, a decorative fan, a calligraphy set, a children's toy that she gave to a child in a village affected by the war in Rain Country.

But some weeks were different.

She gained Earth Style mastery. The sign-in gave her what brute-force training was slowly handling, and she refined it through further practice.

She gained the Sealing Jutsu: Release. This technique is a counter-measure that can be used to undo fūinjutsu that may be binding the user. By placing their hand atop the seal, it activates, nullifying the effects of the fūinjutsu casted on them.

She gained the Amplified Summoning Jutsu. This was a summoning technique that bestows a special ability upon a summoned creature once predefined condition has been met. But she didn’t know the Summoning Jutsu nor did she have a contracted summon.

She gained Needle Mastery, which paired with senbon turned her into something nightmarish with senbon when she needed to be.

And she gained Earth Style: Weighted Boulder Jutsu. A technique which enhanced the target's gravity at the user's discretion. The enemy's mobility was diminished, as the person was crushed by gravity. When this technique was applied to the user it decreased their speed, but the increased weight drastically improved their strength.

The boys became chunin.

It happened not long after they left her. Each of the boys sent a letter to her and she read each one standing in the rain outside a supply tent. All three promoted after a joint operation where Shikaku's tactical leadership, Inoichi's information gathering, and Chōza's tactical combat prowess convinced the commanding officer on site that they were operating at chunin level or above. Field promotion. All three at once. She cheered. She wrote back immediately, a long letter full of pride and care and a sealed scroll containing three boxes of the dango she'd got from a weekly sign-in.

She saw them a few times here and there during the years that followed. Brief meetings when their squads or orders came together. They were taller. Stronger. Their voices were deeper and their eyes were harder and they still called her Mikoto-sensei and Chōza still hugged her so hard she couldn't breathe and Shikaku still wouldn't hug back while his ears still went red and Inoichi was talking about learning the Chakra Scalpel Jutsu as he had already learned the Mystical Palm Jutsu.

They told her about Enmaru. He was a cool sensei. Loud, warm, kind, and kind of silly. He taught them almost everything he knew. He pushed them on teamwork formations that leveraged the Ino-Shika-Cho dynamic in ways Mikoto hadn't known. He wasn't as good as her. They made sure she knew that many times in their letters. But he was fine enough they said.

Fugaku and Mikoto's paths continued to cross. Sometimes by assignment, sometimes by coincidence. He noticed things about her that other people missed, like the way she talked to her sword and didn't know he could hear, or the way she always cooked more food than she needed and left the extra for whoever was nearby. She noticed things about him too, like the way he checked on every member of his squad before sleeping, even when he thought nobody was watching.

The war continued on Positions were taken and lost and taken again. Konoha pushed deeper into Rain Country, and the name on everyone's lips was the same name it had been for nearly two years: Hanzō the Salamander. The leader of Amegakure. The man who had never been defeated. The wall that every Konoha offensive eventually hit.

The talk in the camps shifted from "when will we win" to "when will we fight Hanzō." And in the planning tents of Konoha's northern command, a major offensive was being assembled. One that would push deep enough into Ame territory to force Hanzō's hand.

The Hokage’s students were part of it.

So was Mikoto.

She was fourteen now. Special Jonin. Medical-nin. The Red-Eyed Angel. Mikoto of the Shredding Sword. Nearly two years of war behind her.