The fires still burned.
But the battle was over.
Haji stood among the wreckage, his breath invisible, his body unmoving, his halberd quietly sheathed across his back. All around him, the broken stone and scattered corpses of the Kumogakure strike base told a simple truth:
They had lost.
He began to walk, silent and steady.
His psychic senses swept outward in every direction like an invisible tide. He didn't need eyes. He felt them, the heartbeats, the feeble chakra signatures crawling away through cracks in the walls, hidden compartnts, bloodstained corridors.
There were still a few left.
He gave them no rcy.
A wounded jonin, hidden beneath shattered beams, tried to form a hand sign with a shattered arm. Haji didn't even look. His gauntlet blurred once, tal cracking air.
Crack.
The shinobi's skull was crushed before the jutsu even finished forming.
Another, using a camouflage technique, tried crawling through a ventilation shaft. Haji reached up, palm flat against the wall, and crushed the tal inward with a flick of his wrist. A scream rang out for only half a second.
It stopped.
Kakashi's team stood nearby, grim-faced but silent.
"Those are… the survivors," Yugao murmured.
"Were," Raido corrected quietly.
One last chakra signature remained. Haji turned and marched through the ruined courtyard, the earth parting beneath his armored boots.
Yugito Nii.
The jinchūriki was barely conscious, her body still twitching from trauma, chakra coils fractured and disrupted from the halberd's massive impact. Matatabi's power had fully receded. Her arms were limp. Her clothes were burned. Her head hung low.
But she was alive.
And too valuable to waste.
Haji raised one hand. The air shimred.
Psychic energy rippled across his palm, and a series of binding seals ford midair, not from ink, but from projected will. He pressed them over her body, each sigil latching onto her skin and chakra network. She twitched once, then went completely still.
Sealed.
His voice ca through the helm, low and chanized.
"She will live. Konoha will extract what they need."
Kakashi stepped forward slightly. "What about the rest of the area?"
Haji turned toward him.
"Strip the base. Assess every scroll, tag, seal, weapon cache, and hidden vault. Take anything dangerous. Take anything useful."
He reached behind his waist, armor hissing slightly as a compartnt clicked open.
From within, he drew a thick scroll, black with silver bindings, and tossed it toward Kakashi.
Kakashi caught it cleanly, feeling the weight.
"Take the bodies," Haji said. "Heads attached. Prioritize jonin and squad leaders. The Intelligence Division will extract intel from their minds."
Tenzo spoke up. "Can they even get intel from these broken bodies ."
Kakashi nodded. "It's possible. If the brain is intact."
Yugao shivered. "That's… cold."
"It's efficient," Haji replied.
His blue eye-slit dimd for a mont as he looked around the battlefield, then to the distant horizon. The last of the thunderclouds were fading.
No more enemies moved.
Only smoke.
Haji said "After taking everything you'll walk back on you own, as I will be going back first."
Haji adjusted the bindings on Yugito, locking her into a floating psychic field, hovering weightlessly beside him. Then
Whoom.
A sudden, low-frequency pulse rippled through space. A gust of air blasted outward. The light shimred, and Haji vanished, along with the floating jinchūriki.
Teleportation.
Kakashi and their team did not even said anything yet and haji teleported back fast.
Kakashi with his hand on the scroll with his mouth open ".... We don't know the way back...."
...
Monts later, he reappeared within the main operations camp of the northern border command.
Dozens of Konoha shinobi paused mid-step, heads turning. Murmurs spread. So dropped their weapons in shock. Others backed away instinctively.
The air itself bent around him.
Haji walked through the forward camp like a phantom in steel, leaving footprints in the mud, the seals on his armor still glowing faintly from the teleportation jump.
Yugito's unconscious body floated behind him, limbs limp, expression dazed.
He walked toward the largest tent near the center of camp.
The command pavilion.
Inside, high command officers, tacticians, and veteran jonin had gathered, arguing quietly over new maps and response formations. At the head of the table sat Shikaku Nara, frowning down at a series of intelligence reports, arms folded.
The tent's flap lifted.
And silence dropped like a blade.
Haji entered.
The temperature changed.
Shikaku blinked once.
Then again.
His voice was calm, but almost stunned.
"...You're back."
Haji stepped fully into the light. Behind him, the limp form of Yugito Nii floated silently in the air, bound in psychic seals like glowing chains.
A living jinchūriki.
The room froze.
"You… captured the Two-Tails," one of the jonin whispered.
"She's alive?" another murmured.
Haji set her body down gently on a reinforced slab table near the back. She stirred faintly, still unconscious.
Then he turned toward Shikaku.
"We've destroyed their forward base," Haji said simply. "Killed most of their elite forces. Captured their jinchūriki. Survivors are few. Intelligence recovery in progress."
Shikaku slowly stood.
"I didn't expect… this fast."
"I had no reason to delay," Haji replied.
Shikaku scratched the back of his head, trying to hide the smile tugging at the edge of his lips.
"Well, then."
He looked around the room.
"You heard him. Adjust the maps. Alert Tsunade-sama. And sobody prepare a reinforced seal room. We're holding a tailed beast. This might be just the fastest war of konoha."
Haji turned once more, walking to the side and lowering himself slowly onto one knee, beginning healing Yugito as she might die if there are no treatnt as her tailed beast are sealed, she can't healed herself."
No one else spoke.
They only watched.
Because Haji hadn't just returned.
He ca back in Victory.
End of Chapter 94 – The Weight of Victory
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