Sora looked at his two teammates. "I knew we'd get screwed. Didn't think it'd be this fast."
Teju frowned. "But Akimichi-sensei has a great relationship with the Nara clan, right? They're part of the Ino-Shika-Cho trio with the Yamanaka. Why is he just... leaving us out to dry?"
Kurenai knew more about Konoha's clan politics than Teju did. Her eyelids looked heavy, and her red irises carried an unease she couldn't quite mask. "Because Nara Masatake isn't just a Nara clan elder. He's an elder of the entire Ino-Shika-Cho alliance. He made his name decades ago. He's been a fixture in high command for longer than we've been alive."
"Clan protects clan. To Akimichi-sensei, we're outsiders." Sora kept his voice steady. His teammates needed encouragement, not more doom. "He's never going to cross his own elder for our sake. But it's fine. We trust ourselves. There are plenty of eyes on Masatake. If we can weather these first few hits, any further targeting starts looking obvious. Let's focus on this mission first. When we engage, follow my lead."
Kurenai, who rarely spoke up about combat planning, turned to Sora. "I still have six Explosive Tags. Two each. I noticed neither of you brought any to the field." She held them out. "I'll get more from my father when we're back."
Sora took the two tags without hesitation. Between people you trusted, politeness was wasted motion.
With strangers, courtesy was grease for the gears, useful but not decisive. What mattered was identifying what the other party cared about and delivering results. That was what earned you a voice at the table.
With your own people, courtesy did more harm than good. Relationships grew through give and take. Too much formality pushed people away instead of pulling them closer.
In his previous life, Sora had been an introvert who kept everyone at arm's length with excessive politeness. It took him far too long to learn that accepting someone's kindness mattered just as much as offering your own, and that asking for help wasn't weakness. It was trust.
Right now, though, what he needed was for Nara Masatake to understand something: petty sabotage wasn't going to break this squad. If the old man wanted to escalate, he'd have to be more blatant about it. And blatant left evidence.
The squad moved without hesitation.
The river canyon ran deep. The four sentries were posted along the rim, while the targets sat at the bottom. Phase one called for Sora's squad to draw the sentries away, ideally luring one of the Chunin from the riverbed to give Sakuji's team their opening.
The four sentries faced outward from the canyon, eyes scanning the approaches to the poisoning site. Focused attention like that was exactly what Genjutsu punished hardest.
The squad crept close to one sentry. Kurenai's hands formed a seal, and he dropped without a sound. Her Genjutsu had gotten noticeably sharper. Did that neurotoxin scare somehow jumpstart her training? That's all it took?
Genjutsu specialists were rare, and nightmarish to fight. On a battlefield where every ninja strained their eyes to track threats, minds ran at full throttle. That was precisely when they were most vulnerable to intrusion.
If a Genin like Kurenai could do this, he didn't want to imagine what the Uchiha clan's Genjutsu could do. No wonder the Sand Ninja had a saying: fighting an Uchiha one-on-one was suicide.
Something in Kurenai loosened. The tension she'd been carrying for days seemed to ease.
The truth was, she'd been miserable. At the Academy she'd been the golden girl, outperforming most clan-born kunoichi, convinced she'd dominate in real combat too. The front lines had taught her otherwise. There was so little she could do out here.
Sora commanded the squad. He was young and quiet, but he found the right path through every engagement, steady beyond his years. Teju's traps were devastatingly practical, and he never complained, locking down the battlefield without a word of protest.
Only Kurenai felt useless. Not strong enough to attack, not durable enough to hold. She wanted to do more.
After she dropped the sentry, Teju slipped in and finished the job. Silent, clean. The three pressed forward.
They were congratulating themselves on perfect stealth when a signal flare shot up from the canyon floor. The Chunin below had noticed something wrong.
The remaining three sentries snapped into combat stances instantly.
All three converged on Sora's position. He glanced down into the canyon. Still quiet. The enemies at the bottom weren't coming up to help their own perimeter guards. That's not ideal.
Following the plan, the three of them broke contact and fell back toward a field of scattered boulders.
The three pursuers chased them in.
They found nobody.
Ninja Wire sang through the gaps in the rocks, and a wave of kunai flew at the enemy from three angles.
"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!"
One of the enemy ninja, a tall man, exhaled a cyclone from his mouth that scattered the kunai trap like leaves.
Wind Release. Sora filed that away with a pang of envy. When would he ever learn new ninjutsu? He had no resources, no access. Learning techniques in Konoha was brutally difficult for anyone outside a clan. Jutsu were the foundation of a ninja family's strength, the reason the great clans stayed great. They didn't share.
But the technique confirmed what he'd suspected. Wind-natured ninja, operating this deep in the Land of Fire's territory. These three were Sand Ninja from Sunagakure, no question.
The boulder field became a standoff. No way to know what was happening down in the canyon.
One trap wasn't enough. Teju triggered the second wave. This time kunai flew from every direction, boxing the enemy in. All three leaped skyward to dodge.
That was the opening. Teju locked onto one mid-air target, whipped an Explosive Tag-wrapped kunai at him, and the man went down.
At the same moment, the fight erupted in the canyon below. Sakuji's squad proved once again why clan teams were feared.
While the enemy focused their attention upward, straining to follow the sounds of combat on the rim, Sakuji struck. The Shadow Possession Technique lashed out through the dim canyon floor, catching all four targets before they realized what was happening. In the murky light at the bottom of the gorge, shadow techniques worked with devastating surprise.
Natsuko used her Ninja Dog's speed to hoist the jar onto her back and run.
Sand Ninja poisons were critical battlefield intelligence. Any sample recovered went straight to the medical corps for analysis, to crack Sunagakure's latest toxin formulas.
The enemy Chunin in the canyon panicked. The mission had just shifted from contaminating the water supply to destroying the evidence. He couldn't let Konoha walk away with a sample.
The moment the jar was secured, Sakuji fired his own signal flare. Sora's squad: rear guard. Now.
Sora saw the flare and didn't waste a second. The three of them broke off and sprinted toward Sakuji's squad.
A shame about the two enemies still alive in the boulder field. Given a little more time, Teju's traps would have finished them.
Sakuji's squad raced across the surface of the river at the canyon bottom. Sora's team caught up and fell in alongside them.
Sakuji turned his head. Those cold eyes locked onto Sora.
Sora understood. The moment he'd been dreading had arrived.
"You two, keep moving with Squad Leader Nara," he told Teju and Kurenai. "Protect the recon team and the poison."
He stopped.
Alone on the river, he turned to face what was coming behind them: two Chunin, four Genin.
Damn you, pineapple head.