Wind screamed past his ears. Sora could barely keep his eyes open, learning firsthand what wind resistance meant at full sprint. He'd need to figure out a solution for that eventually. Too much of his output was being wasted just fighting the air.
A few kilometers in, he spotted his squad.
It was bad.
Kurenai ran ahead with the jar strapped to her back. Behind her, Tejuno stumbled and scrambled, half-crawling, doing everything he could to slow the pursuit while staying on his feet.
A massive scorpion bore down on both of them. The female Sand ninja, seeing Konoha reinforcements approaching, decided not to risk the delay and summoned a second one.
A chunin specializing in the Summoning Technique.
Two enormous black-backed scorpions, shaped like the fat-tailed scorpions from Sora's old world, crouched low with their backs still rising to the height of a grown man. Add the arched tails and they stood twice that. Huge black pincers gleamed cold in the sunlight. Barbed stingers twitched above them, eager.
Both scorpions closed on Tejuno from opposite sides. He threw himself clear of one's snapping claws but had nothing left to dodge the other's tail.
Kurenai looked back, saw what was happening, and screamed. She broke stride and ran toward him on instinct.
Sora took stock of his options. His ranged attacks were pitiful. The Gale Palm was too slow to cover the distance in time.
Only a throw had any chance. He hurled his sword at the scorpion with everything he had, firing the seals at his elbow and wrist simultaneously, jets of compressed air adding force along the trajectory of his arm.
Silver light, bright enough to sting the eyes. The sword crossed the gap like a meteor.
The strike punched clean through the scorpion's tail. Once again, Sora silently thanked Gale Palm: Revised 2.0. Without it, Tejuno would be dead.
The blade kept going and embedded itself in a nearby boulder, blue-white scorpion fluid smeared along its length. Disgusting.
Tejuno seized the opening and broke free, staggering over to where Sora stood doubled over and gasping.
One look at Sora's back, the fabric soaked through and darkened with sweat to the point of changing color entirely, told Tejuno everything about what it had cost him to get here.
Sora's legs ached so badly they shook. Bending his knees even slightly produced an audible cracking.
Both scorpions pulled back, wary of the newcomer. Their pain tolerance was impressive. A sword through the tail and the thing still maintained its summoning. Sora had hoped the hit would break the technique entirely.
"Kurenai, keep running!" he shouted over his shoulder. "Don't stop until you reach camp!"
She looked at the two of them standing side by side, backs to her. Her feet, which had stopped, started moving again. She turned and ran toward camp without looking back.
The Sand ninja ignored Sora and Tejuno entirely, directing her scorpions to chase Kurenai.
Sora circled to the flank with a kunai, whipping it at the scorpion's side.
The creature flinched and repositioned. Its dorsal shell, pincers, and tail were all reinforced with rigid exoskeleton, but the base of its six legs, right at the joint between the back plates and the softer belly armor, had no protection at all.
He'd actually played with scorpions as a kid, back in his previous life. Their undersides were soft, nowhere near as tough as the shell on top. If he could slide under one and drive a kunai into the belly, he'd finish it fast. But getting under a scorpion that size was a different problem.
These black giants were probably a desert species the Sand ninja had cultivated into summoning beasts. Big or small, a scorpion was still a scorpion. Biology didn't scale away its weak points.
The enlarged face, though. Up close, it looked like something out of a horror film. Mandibles the size of his forearm clicking open and shut, ringed with clusters of spines. Truly, profoundly ugly.
"Tejuno, can you still fight?"
"Yeah. I'm good." Tejuno shook out his sore arms. Sora's arrival had given him a second wind.
"You're on offense. Focus on the scorpions." Sora thought for a moment and locked in the plan.
Tejuno pulled out several kunai, one wrapped with an explosive tag.
Scorpions like these were devastating weapons of war. The Sand ninja wasn't even breaking a sweat while Sora and Tejuno scrambled. Any ninja with a large-scale summon became a one-person army on the battlefield. The Legendary Sannin, Hanzo... that was the tier. One ninja equaling an entire unit.
And then there are the tailed beasts. Sora didn't want to think about what those looked like on a real battlefield. That kind of size, that kind of destructive power... for an ordinary ninja, it was no different from a natural disaster.
In his previous life, what he'd loved about the manga was the early arcs: the blood-pumping, meticulously tactical combat. Not the later stuff where the Otsutsuki family kept showing up to punch each other through mountains, power scaling so broken it gutted everything that made ninja battles interesting. He'd only finished the series out of inertia, skimming faster the closer it got to the end.
Tejuno lobbed several kunai at the scorpions. The creatures blocked with their pincers, the blades bouncing off with a dull thud, like striking thick oiled leather.
He waited for the scorpions' limited field of vision to work against them, then threw the explosive-tagged kunai.
The detonation was enormous. Smoke and debris blanketed the field. The Sand ninja could see nothing through it, but she sensed her summons were intact. She waited calmly, eyes tracking Kurenai's retreating figure, calculating pursuit distance, estimating how much time she could afford to waste here.
Sora burst from the smoke and charged straight at her.
The corner of her mouth curled. She even took a moment to enjoy the panic on his face.
One scorpion's tail lashed backward and drove into Sora's thigh.
He screamed and hit the ground.
Tejuno flung kunai at the scorpion again, this time copying Sora's tactic, targeting the soft joints along its flank. The barrage forced the creature to back away from Sora's body.
The Sand ninja finally moved. She closed in to finish off the wounded Konoha genin writhing at her feet.
Sora crawled and rolled toward the nearest boulder. His good leg fired the Foot Seal and launched him forward in a desperate lunge. He tumbled behind the rock and started circling it, keeping the stone between them.
The ninja saw a boy on his last legs, out of tricks. She'd catch him in a few steps.
She chased him around the boulder. One step away from closing the gap. Sora could hear her footfalls right behind him, sharp and clear, and he scrambled on all fours trying to gain one more inch.
She stopped.
She'd been watching him crawl and hadn't noticed the sword jammed into the boulder, still coated in scorpion fluid. She caught herself a hair's breadth from the blade. Warm, sticky residue grazed her throat.
Before she could feel relieved about her near miss, Sora spun around, dropped to one knee, and drove a kunai into her stomach.
A master's tactics are like the night sky: you can see the stars, but you can't read them.