The path out of Hidden Rain was narrow, treacherous, and half-drowned in mud. Ken led Unit K through the mire in absolute silence, every step calcuted. Behind them, six children—exhausted, frightened, and clinging to what little hope they had—moved in a tight column under Tenzō's protective wood dome, carried like a mobile shell.

  Daen, though injured, kept pace as best he could, leaning on Reina when necessary.

  The rain hadn’t let up.

  But something else had changed.

  The air felt wrong.

  The kind of wrong that made trained shinobi’s skin crawl.

  Ken felt it first. A flicker in chakra. The kind that didn’t belong.

  He froze, raised a fist. The unit halted immediately.

  “Sai,” he whispered.

  Sai’s brush was already in hand. His ink bird flew skyward, circling once.

  Then came the signal—a fsh of ink.

  “Incoming.”

  The ambush hit fast.

  Mist-nin. Rogue.

  Five at first—masked, coordinated, aiming to separate the children from the adults. Ken reacted instantly, flickering forward with wind chakra coursing through his legs, intercepting the first attacker mid-leap and smming him into the mud with a violent twist of Shukaku’s sand-coated fist.

  Tenzō raised wooden barricades, roots spiraling into a dome around the children.

  Reina and Daen fell into defensive arcs, while Sai rained ink lions onto the field, snarling shadows tearing through the fog.

  But it wasn’t over.

  From above came a sound like crackling cy.

  Ken’s head snapped upward.

  A shape dropped from the grey clouds—perched on a massive white bird, cloak fpping in the rain.

  Blonde. Smirking.

  Deidara.

  “Yo,” he said cheerfully. “Didn’t expect to find babysitters out here.”

  Ken’s Sharingan spun. “Akatsuki.”

  Deidara held up a cy sculpture in his palm. “Technically bounty hunting today, hm. But if you’re offering more interesting art—” he grinned— “then maybe I’ll py with you instead.”

  He tossed the cy bird.

  It exploded midair in a hail of white-hot shrapnel.

  Ken roared, smming both hands into the ground.

  Sand surged.

  A massive wave formed around the unit, deflecting the bst in a semi-circle of hardened earth, crumbling under impact but holding.

  Reina coughed through the smoke. “He’s targeting the kids.”

  “Of course he is,” Ken growled. “They’re worth more scared.”

  Deidara ughed above, weaving more cy birds from his strange palm-mouths. “Don’t worry! I’ll just take one or two! The rest can be… kaboom, yeah?”

  Ken looked at the team, then at the children—shivering behind Tenzō’s barricade.

  Then back at Deidara.

  And he made the call.

  He walked forward.

  Rain dripped from his brow. His hands glowed with chakra. The seal on his abdomen began to burn as he reached inside, past the pain, past the memory of the st time he had tapped too deep.

  Shukaku stirred.

  “You ready to lose control again, little thief?”

  Ken whispered, “Not this time.”

  He ripped the seal open manually—just enough.

  And Shukaku howled with joy.

  The transformation wasn’t complete, but it was enough.

  Sand tore from the earth, wrapping Ken’s body from legs to chest in jagged armor. His right arm morphed into a cwed appendage, lined with ancient markings. His left eye flickered from crimson to gold, half-Shukaku's influence.

  “Get them out of here!” he shouted.

  Reina blinked. “Ken—”

  “GO!”

  Tenzō didn’t hesitate. He grabbed Daen and motioned the team back. The wooden dome around the children colpsed into a mobile shell, forming legs, then began sprinting down the slope under Yamato’s control.

  Sai took aerial watch. Reina grabbed the rear.

  Ken turned to face Deidara alone.

  The Akatsuki artist grinned.

  “Oho? You’re the One-Tail thief. The Uchiha, yeah? That’s interesting.”

  Ken flexed his new cw.

  “You want to see what sand art really looks like?”

  He stomped the ground.

  A sand spike erupted from beneath Deidara’s bird, nearly piercing the beast’s belly. Deidara leapt off, midair, tossing cy spiders toward Ken’s position.

  Ken spun his arm, forming a Wind-Sand Vortex, slicing the spiders to ribbons before detonation.

  The two cshed in a dance of earth and sky—Ken unching jagged waves of iron sand, Deidara responding with shifting cy creatures, each more grotesque and beautiful than the st.

  The earth shook.

  Trees exploded.

  The rain turned to steam.

  But Deidara was relentless.

  He dropped two massive cy snakes, both charging with sizzling chakra.

  Ken couldn’t block both.

  He inhaled sharply. Focused on the flow inside him.

  Shukaku whispered. “Take it. All of it.”

  Ken exhaled—and took more.

  His entire body erupted in sand armor, his chakra fring into a storm. A sand-shield dome formed instantly over his position.

  The snakes hit—boom—the bst swallowed the entire gde.

  Smoke.

  Silence.

  Then—

  A gust of wind.

  Ken stepped forward, untouched.

  Deidara nded on a tree branch, sweating now.

  “Hm. Okay. Not bad.”

  Then he pulled something from his pouch—a sealed cy tube.

  Ken’s eyes narrowed.

  That chakra—

  C4.

  Ken dashed forward.

  If that went off near the retreat path, everyone died.

  He flickered, closing the distance, cw raised—

  Deidara activated the detonation.

  Ken roared.

  Sand expanded in every direction, forming a vacuum shield around his body, compressing chakra, absorbing the microscopic detonation into the armor.

  He colpsed forward as the dust cleared.

  Still breathing.

  Barely.

  Deidara retreated.

  Not because he was beaten.

  But because his art had met resistance.

  “Next time,” he muttered, vanishing into the trees, “I’ll use something more… permanent.”

  Ken y there for a moment, chest heaving, armor crumbling.

  Shukaku’s voice echoed in his skull.

  “Now you’re starting to get it.”

  He didn’t answer.

  He just got up, turned toward the path his team had taken—and limped forward.