Chapter 50: The Special Tactical Unit
Deep within the central region of the Land of Lightning, amid dense forest.
The environment was damp and cold, the air heavy and stagnant, as though it had solidified around the trees themselves. A squad of ninja advanced silently through the mountain forest.
Seven figures in total—none of them wore forehead protectors bearing any village insignia, making their origins impossible to identify at a glance.
At the head of the group was a young man whose disability was immediately apparent.
He wore a black cloak, half his face wrapped in bandages. The right sleeve of his robe hung empty, flapping loosely as he leapt from branch to branch. His only remaining left hand rested on the hilt of the ninja blade at his waist.
One look was enough to tell that this was an elite unit. Even while moving at speed, the seven maintained a precise formation, each member fully alert, guarding a specific direction with unwavering focus.
This was the Special Tactical Unit—the team that, under Shimura Danzō's command, had slipped from the Land of Frost deep into the Land of Lightning to sabotage Kumogakure's logistics.
And the one-armed man leading them needed no introduction.
He was Shimura Danzō—disciple of the Second Hokage, Senju Tobirama.
"—Stop."
With a sharp motion of his left hand, Danzō halted the entire team. All eyes turned toward one man.
"B. Report."
The man addressed as B was Tōne Ichirō of the Tōne clan, a jōnin—and the only sensory-type ninja in the unit.
Because this was a deep-cover operation behind enemy lines, Danzō had forbidden the use of real names. Throughout the mission, they were to address one another only by code names: A, B, C, D, E, F, G.
Ichirō formed a hand seal that was not a standard ninjutsu sign and closed his eyes, focusing intently.
Seconds passed.
Then his expression darkened.
"I'm detecting an enormous chakra presence," he said grimly.
"The exact number is unclear… but it's large. Possibly several hundred."
"Several hundred?"
Danzō frowned.
That was far beyond the scale of any normal logistics detachment. Had their infiltration already been exposed?
And more importantly—after the rebellion of the Gold and Silver Brothers, how could Kumogakure still have manpower to spare on this scale?
There was no time to overthink it.
Danzō immediately signaled a relocation. Moments later, the seven reappeared atop a towering cliff overlooking the valley below.
Standing beneath the shadow of the trees, Danzō's lone remaining eye gleamed sharply as he surveyed the winding formation advancing through the valley.
At his side, fellow Shimura clansman and jōnin Shimura Yuki spoke in a low voice, unable to fully suppress the tremor beneath his composure.
"Captain… that formation—"
"At minimum, it's two full-strength battalions."
The forest seemed to grow even quieter.
This was no logistics unit.
It was clearly Kumogakure's reinforcement force, dispatched to the front lines—escorting supplies along the way.
Danzō's fingers brushed unconsciously against the hilt of his blade. The pressure Senju Morin was exerting on the main battlefield had exceeded even his expectations, forcing the Third Raikage to mobilize on such a scale.
Danzō remained calm. He had no intention of overestimating himself by attacking a force of that size.
"Reinforcements…"
His voice was hoarse, like sand grinding against stone. "Change of objective."
After a brief moment of thought, Danzō turned sharply, his single eye sweeping across the six jōnin behind him, each wearing a different expression.
"Bypass them. Continue toward Kumogakure."
The unit moved again, plunging deeper into the heart of the Land of Lightning like a band of wraiths.
---
They became hunters.
Patient, methodical, they wove through the mountains and ravines surrounding Kumogakure, scouting and probing—searching for prey worthy of Danzō's ambition.
Hours later, as they skirted a heavily guarded supply depot, Tōne Ichirō suddenly froze. The color drained from his face.
"Captain!"
He pointed toward a distant valley, sealed in by sheer cliffs, isolated as if cut off from the world itself.
"That direction… inside the gorge…"
"There's chakra—enormous. Chaotic. Full of hatred. So dense it makes my skin crawl."
"The Cloud–Lightning Gorge…"
Danzō murmured the name—a place torn from memory through genjutsu interrogation. The cold, calculating gleam in his eye twisted, transforming into something disturbingly fervent.
So the greatest prize had been waiting here all along.
For the first time since entering enemy territory, the tension around his mouth eased—just barely—into a thin, almost imperceptible smile.
"Prepare to move."
"Yes."
---
The Cloud–Lightning Gorge had once been unremarkable.
Bare stone cliffs. A still, dark pool. Remote, mist-shrouded, and rarely visited. That was all it had ever been.
Until it became the prison of the Eight-Tails' jinchūriki.
Kumogakure's sealing techniques were imperfect. Since the First Hokage had distributed the tailed beasts, the previous two Raikage had repeatedly attempted—and failed—to create a controllable weapon of war.
In the end, to prevent a rampaging Eight-Tails from devastating the village, they had no choice but to confine the jinchūriki here, far from civilization.
The surrounding cliffs formed a natural cage—but to Ichirō's senses, the tailed beast's leaking chakra burned like a lighthouse in the dark, guiding them unerringly to their target.
Danzō's unit slipped into the gorge like ghosts.
The guards at the entrance—and the patrols within—were eliminated silently. Just as he'd predicted, only a standard ANBU squad had been left behind. Against overwhelming force and a meticulously planned ambush, they never even managed to organize a defense.
Bodies fell without a sound.
As he looked down at the uniforms of the fallen Kumogakure ANBU, a glint of icy calculation flashed through Danzō's eye.
"Put them on."
---
Moments later, seven "Kumogakure ANBU," masks in place, escorted a small, cloaked figure out of the Cloud–Lightning Gorge and toward the village.
Beneath the hood was the pale face of a thin man—eyes hollow with terror and numb resignation.
---
Kumogakure itself lacked a village-wide barrier, but it hardly needed one.
The treacherous mountains and deep ravines encircling it were natural fortifications in their own right. The village resembled a massive fortress rooted into the cliffs, its buildings—most notably the towering Raikage Building—embedded into sheer rock like the nests of giant birds of prey.
At the village entrance, two chūnin guards lounged against the stone, bored out of their minds—until they spotted an ANBU squad approaching with a prisoner.
"By order," the ANBU captain said coldly, "the container is being transferred to the Barrier Corps for reinforcement inspection."
He didn't wait for a reply.
The squad strode past them into the village, the rest following without even sparing the guards a glance. The sheer arrogance of their demeanor made the two chūnin swallow the questions on their lips.
They could only click their tongues in mild irritation and watch the group disappear into the village's jagged shadows.
Beneath the concealment of his robe, Danzō quietly withdrew his hand from his blade.
Unknowingly, the guards' discretion had just spared them their lives.