The Hurricane is here.
Only four goddamn words, but they change everything.
Morale along the kilometer-wide front had never been higher. After a day of hard fighting, the Konoha scum were close to breaking. They had made a major attack in the night, a sudden attack aimed right at the largest of our supply dumps, but we had hit them from the flank with a hail of explosive tags. Most did not get through, but it slowed their advance enough that Jounin Commander Heishi was able to bring reserves from the other end of the line to bear on the Konoha-nin and send them back with a bloodied nose. It was an expensive skirmish – according to Takemi we lost almost as many men as they did, but since we outnumbered them three to one even before the battle we came out with an even larger advantage. Word along the front line was that the final assault to drive them out would begin soon.
I was the one on sentry duty when Himiko stumbled into camp and utters those four words. She was the same age as me, but she had distinguished herself in the chuunin exam and got promoted, so she gets all the fun assignments. Genin like me they stick on a guard post with an admonishment not to fall asleep. It's harder than you'd think.
As the news spreads, the four words ripple down the line like a collective shiver. Some of the older shinobi call him the Demon of Konoha, which was fitting too, but most shinobi my age knew him simply as the Hurricane. Uzumaki Naruto, the Hurricane of Konoha. For the shinobi in my age group, the prospect of going against such a legend is exciting, but the bone-deep fear we saw in the eyes of our elders gave us pause. Most hide it well, but the hush that falls over the camp gives the upcoming battle an ominous cast. Feeding into this suddenly subdued atmosphere are rumours that Jounin Commander Heishi intended to retreat.
Then, the next morning, Heishi's head, and only his head, emerges out of the commander's tent impaled on a spike, surrounded by a cabal of jounin. They announce that there will be no retreat, and that the final attack will begin at noon. There are some mutinous side-glances from the older shinobi, but they do not protest. Like the rest of my contemporaries, I cheer, and feel a surge of savage relish at the prospect of total victory. The Hurricane is but a man. Fuck him.
The final assault is spearheaded by an enormous mudslide. It rips through the Konoha line, and before they could recover we are pouring through their defenses. From the spot my reserve squad is poised on, imminent victory is obvious, even to my inexperienced ear.
A blast of cutting wind and distant screams announces the Hurricane's arrival. In the distance, we see tree trunks and limp bodies flung impossibly high in the air. Inexplicably, in the blink of an eye, the battle turns. One moment we were winning, the next, our forces are streaming through the gap we made in the palisade. The reserve squads ahead of us rush in to stem the rout, but it is to no avail. And for the first time I begin to feel a frission of doubt.
Like most other shinobi my age, I've never seen him in action before, but I've heard the stories from some of the older shinobi, who fought alongside him in the Great Akatsuki War. They tell of his jutsu that shreds every nerve and cell in your body, his use of an entire army of massed shadow clones. Of the combination of the two in a lethal storm that scythes through everything in an area and leaves nothing alive. I had scoffed at those stories. Craven fools, I had thought. No one had that much chakra to spare. And no one is that powerful.
And then I see it. I catch only a glimpse of it before my teammate pulls me away, but a glimpse is enough. A huge whirlwind was building and rolling quickly towards our position. An implacable… hurricane, a divine wind so saturated with chakra that I feel the hair on the back of my neck stand rigid.
Our squad leader, an older chuunin who I had seen laughing madly as he cut through a dozen Konoha-nin just the previous day, was trembling uncontrollably. A sharp smell announced that he had wet himself. With a wordless glance of agreement, my teammates and I start running in the opposite direction.
We got maybe a hundred feet before the hurricane caught up with us. We duck into the hollow of a large log just as the stormfront enveloped us with a deafening roar. Impossibly, despite being sheltered in the log, excruciating pain sweeps over me like a chill, and my entire body becomes slick as I start bleeding everywhere at once. I scream and scream, my expression mirrored by the open mouths of my teammates, but the howl of the hurricane drowns our cries of anguish. As my eyeballs burst and I lose my eyesight, it occurs to me belatedly that I might die.
I don't want to die. Not like this. Not now. I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't w