Hidden Leaf, Hidden Talents 56

Land of Lightning

The first civilian he questioned was a farmer with dirt under his fingernails and the shaky hands that came from watching too much violence in one day.

"They came from nowhere," the man said, wringing his cloth cap like it owed him money. "Shouting for everyone to get out, get out now. Said the mountain was gonna... you know. Explode or something."

"Who was shouting?" the Kumo-nin asked. The farmer had that glassy look that meant his brain was still trying to process what his eyes had seen.

"Our boys. Your boys. Kumo shinobi, I mean. They had the headbands and everything."

"You recognized them?"

The farmer shook his head. "Never seen 'em before. But hell, I don't know every face in the town, you know? They looked alright, though."

The Kumo-nin filed that away and moved on.

The second witness was an elderly woman who'd been hanging laundry. She remembered everything except what mattered. How one shinobi had apologized for making her drop her clothespins. How another had the brightest smile she'd seen in months. "Such polite boys," she kept saying. "Much nicer than that patrol guy who comes through here acting like he owns the place." When pressed about their appearance, she frowned. "Well, now that you mention it, the tall one's accent was funny.

The Kumo-nin made another note and kept searching.

The third witness was where things got interesting.

A teenager, maybe sixteen, with the wide eyes of someone who'd seen something he wasn't supposed to see. He kept glancing around like he expected kunai to start flying out of the shadows.

“It was crazy,” he said. “These guys in our colors show up, right? Telling everyone to run. So we’re running, and then Gumrot and Greaseface—” He stopped himself, throat clicking. Realized too late that maybe calling chunin by the names kids whispered behind their backs wasn’t smart. “Uh, I mean… the two who usually patrol through here.”

The Kumo-nin’s eyes narrowed, just slightly. Enough to make the boy’s chest feel tight.

"And?"

“And they… they started talking to each other,” the boy said quickly, eyes flicking up then down again. “The patrol guys with the ones telling us to run. But it didn’t look right. Like they weren’t getting along, or something.

"What kind of questions?"

“I—I couldn’t hear,” the boy admitted, shoulders hunching. “Not from where I was. But whatever it was, it set the others off. Next thing I know, one of ’em had a kunai out, threw it right at the patrol guys.”

Now they were getting somewhere.

The fourth witness was a middle-aged merchant who'd been loading his cart when the fighting started. He had the best view of what came next.

"Those weren't our boys," he said, then immediately looked around like someone might be listening. "Look, I've been trading in this town for twenty years. Seen plenty of weird shinobi stuff. But this..." He wiped sweat from his forehead. “One second the guy’s got a square face and brown hair, next second he’s bald, clean head, sharper jaw after getting hit by the patrol-nin. It was like watching someone peel off their own skin."

"You're sure about what you saw?"

"I wish I wasn't. That image is gonna be stuck in my head for weeks. Do all you shinobi know how to... change faces like that? Because that's the creepiest thing I've ever seen."

"And then?"

"Then they ran. All of them. Like rabbits when the wolves come calling."

The fifth witness, a carpenter who'd been on his roof fixing a leak filled in the final pieces.

"The patrol guys? They went after them," he said, wiping tar from his hands with a dirty rag. "Whole thing turned into a mess real quick. The evacuation team scattered like spooked rabbits, went three, maybe four different ways. Our boys tried to follow, but you can't chase everyone at once."

"What happened next?"

"Gone, every last one of them. Left the rest of us to deal with the injured." The carpenter gestured toward the town square. "Three civilians got caught in that blast. Nothing too serious, but enough blood to make the women scream. Made quite a scene without any shinobi around to help."

He questioned three more civilians, but they only confirmed what he’d already pieced together. Enemy agents disguised as Kumo shinobi had been evacuating the town when two real Kumo patrols spotted them. A confrontation followed. Their disguises failed under attack, and the infiltrators escaped.

But that still left the biggest question unanswered. Why evacuate civilians at all?

He made his way back through the town, past buildings still shaking from whatever had happened up in the mountains, past groups of old civilians huddled together and whispering about the end of the world.

The rooftop where his squad was meeting sat three stories above the main square, high enough to see the whole town. Several jonin were already there, clustered around their captain.

"—confirmed that the sealing site was hit by at least fifty hostile clones," one of them was saying. "Maybe more. They came in waves and killed the masters."

"Casualties?" the captain asked. He was standing at the edge of the roof, hands clasped behind his back, looking out over the town with the expression of a man trying to solve a puzzle that was missing half its pieces.

"Everyone at the site except the Third Raikage. They're all gone."

Another jonin. "We've identified the attackers' affiliation. Multiple witnesses confirm Iwagakure headbands and standard Earth Country gear."

"Iwa." The captain said it like he was tasting something bitter. "What do the civilians know?"

"Most of them don't know anything happened beyond the evacuation itself. They saw shinobi in our colors telling them to get out, so they got out." He shifted his weight. "Maybe a dozen people total witnessed the actual fight, and half of those were too panicked to give coherent statements. Far as the rest are concerned, some Kumo-nin showed up, got them to safety, and then the mountain started shaking."

The captain's jaw tightened. "So we have almost nothing. A handful of confused witnesses and a town full of people who think we saved them from a natural disaster."

The Kumo-nin who'd been questioning civilians cleared his throat. "Captain. I have something to add."

All eyes turned to him. The captain nodded for him to continue.

"I have additional details about the impersonation operation in town. The fake evacuation team wasn't just creating a diversion, they were genuinely helping civilians get to safety. Being polite about it, even helping elderly residents with their belongings."

One of the jonin frowned. "Why bother if they were planning to release the Eight-Tails anyway?"

"That's exactly what doesn't make sense. They went to significant effort to get people out of harm's way, right up until our patrol chunin spotted them and realized something was wrong."

He gave them the full report, the civilian testimonies, the confrontation, the failed henges, the escape. When he stopped talking, nobody said anything. Just the sound of roof tiles creaking in the wind and distant voices from the street below.

The captain stopped staring out at the town and faced them. The confusion in his expression had hardened into something much more serious.

"So ‘Iwa’ attacks our sealing ceremony," he said slowly, "kills our people, releases the Eight-Tails, and puts the entire region at risk. But at the same time, they're evacuating civilians to keep them safe."

"It doesn't add up," one of the jonin agreed. "If they wanted maximum chaos, why not let the beast rampage through the town? The casualties would have been enormous."

"And if they wanted to minimize casualties, why attack the sealing at all?"

The captain was quiet for a long moment, staring out at the town. Families were starting to trickle back now, parents carrying children, elderly couples walking slowly hand in hand. Normal people living normal lives who had no idea how close they'd come to being erased from existence.

"What were they planning to do with the civilians?" he said finally. "Why save them only to...?"

He didn't finish the sentence. Didn't need to. They were all thinking the same thing.

What if this wasn't over?

What if the evacuation had been preparation for something else?

Maybe psychological warfare? Gain the civilians' trust, then use them as intelligence assets? Create a false sense of security before the real attack? Maybe they wanted witnesses to spread specific information. The captain's mind raced through possibilities, but he had no idea he was overthinking what amounted to one teenager with a guilty conscience who didn't want a bunch of farmers getting eaten by a giant demon monster.

"What about the patrols?" he asked suddenly. "The ones who chased them. Any word?"

"Still missing. Search teams are out, but..."

The captain nodded grimly. "I want all of you to continue your current investigations. Full surveillance on the town until further notice. If there are more Iwa agents in the area, I want them found."

Nods all around.

The squad began to disperse, jonin flickering away into the growing dusk. The captain remained at the roof's edge, hands still clasped behind his back.

Iwa could be the culprit. Too many reasons pointed their way. But the shadows that had struck the sealing site weren’t tricks Iwa favored. Shadow Clone. Multiplying bodies, dispersing bodies. That stank of Konoha.

……

Kawazumi Outpost

I waited for my first S-rank mission the way you wait for a dentist, pretending you’re calm while your tongue keeps checking the tooth that hurts. The roof tile under me was warm from the afternoon sun and probably not designed to hold a shinobi plus the weight of his anxiety, but engineering isn’t a class they offer at the Academy, so here we are.

I had a yakitori skewer in my mouth, chicken and charcoal and glaze, chewing it like it owed me rent. I kept thinking about brains. I didn’t mean “what is the mind?” I meant the physical thing that senses, the sensor brain. My work on it had hit a wall so solid it might as well have been brick.

You need living specimens to map pathways, to see where chakra listens and where it shouts. You can’t hear a dead radio. And unlike a certain pale man who never met a snake he didn’t admire, I did not have a basement full of ethics violations and jars. Could I, technically, go full snake and start collecting? Yes. Would people notice? Also yes. Would Tsunade punt me into the stratosphere like I was a football in a stadium? Very yes.

So I told myself it wasn’t high on my priority list. Then I looked at the sky and mentally arranged it higher on my priority list. Then I rearranged it lower again because an S-rank mission tends to make all other lists look like grocery notes. “Eggs, salt, don’t die.”

In the meantime, I had my budget version of omniscience. Four clones, one at each compass point, tight to the perimeter. They didn’t ping like sensors; they breathed. They stayed. They watched. And when something came, something fast, something big, something pretending to be boring, they either intercepted and got erased like chalk under rain, or they dispelled themselves on purpose if the threat blew past them. Either way, I knew. Instant notification.

Sensors have to work. They have to concentrate and pulse and consume chakra like a lantern eating oil. My set-and-forget tripwire squad kept running on a different economy: passive and petty.

I flicked the skewer with my tongue and slid it out clean. My hand went into my flak jacket and came out with a dampening tag, the Uzumaki sheet that turned you into less of a lighthouse and more of a shadow. The paper was ordinary. The ink was not. It looked like someone had drawn a maze where the walls kept moving if you stared too long. Uzu handed Konoha a box with twenty of these and I had one of them right now.

Could I make more? No. Not yet. Explosive seals, sure. Kushina had been patient with me when I was failing the math of death. My explosive seals were getting neat, no not neat, neat is for handwriting, not for something that can turn a house into gravel. They were reliable. In other fields, my fuinjutsu was… what do you call a student who gets A+s in exactly one subject and a polite cough in everything else? Me. That was me. Some of my clones were back in Konoha, standing in a cramped workshop while Kushina barked corrections between her own studies, but progress moved like old honey, and that’s before you count how often she got dragged away to do ninja things instead of babysit my obsession.

Resources. That was the missing blood type in this operation. An S-rank mission meant money, favors, access, maybe a chance to stop building tools out of salvage and start building them out of things that hadn’t been a roof tile last week.

“Thinking about doing crimes?”

Tsunade dropped in beside me, and the roof didn’t complain about her weight, it complained out of respect. Sleeves shoved up, headband gleaming, she wore that almost-smile. For half a second the outpost quieted, probably just in my skull, but I believed it anyway.

“Only small crimes,” I said. “Medium, if they come with snacks.”

“Good,” she said. “We only approve snacks. You ready?”

“Define ready.”

“Define define.”

“Define—okay.” I sat up, rolled the stiffness out of my shoulders and the tag went back into my pocket. “Ready enough. It’s S-rank mission. If I say I’m ready ready, you’ll tell me to stop lying.”

She clicked her tongue. “I’d just ask you to say it twice with a straight face.”

“Now that I cannot do.”

“Do you actually want to take this?” She watched me closely. “You don’t have to. There are still plenty of A-rank missions if you’re not ready.”

“I do.” The words surprised me by not wobbling. “The little jobs are starting to feel like whetstones. I’m getting sharp in places that don’t cut anymore.”

“Hm.” She squinted at me the way doctors do right before announcing that your problem is sleep and vegetables. “How’s your medical training?”

“Ask me something harder,” I said, and lit my palm.

Chakra gathered, thin as floss. The scalpel formed along my fingers, a ghost blade that hummed against skin without breaking it. It made that soft, high feedback you feel in your wrist more than your ear. I pinched the tip with my other hand and felt the edge kiss the calluses. Tsunade’s brows went up a notch. Not shocked. Not even surprised. Just pleased, which is rarer and scarier.

“Show-off,” she said.

“You asked.”

She reached out, hooked a finger in my hair, and tugged. My hair has been growing out. Occupational hazard. You skip two cuts and suddenly you’re a drama protagonist. “You’re getting scruffy,” she said, ruffling it like I was a house cat and she was bad at boundaries.

“Hands,” I warned. “Do you know what a man does when cornered?”

“Cry?”

“Worse,” I said, and poked her in the stomach with two fingers.

Tsunade’s laugh, yes she laughed, hopped out of her like a startled sparrow. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself.” I grinned. “You’ve been eating well. Cheeks look fuller.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Fuller?”

“Yeah. Must be all the rice.”

She reached over and pinched my face hard enough to make me wince. “Say that again.”

“Ow, ow—alright! I take it back,” I said, words garbled through squished cheeks. “You’re perfect, okay? Strongest kunoichi alive, not an ounce out of place.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Don’t roll them too far back,” I said. “If they get stuck, I’m not qualified to fix it yet.”

That earned me her hand on my wrist. We didn’t decide to spar. We just tripped over the line and kept walking. Standing grappling, the sweet spot between ‘ha ha we’re joking’ and ‘I am now going to teach you a lesson using the ground.’

I went for an inside tie, elbow in, thumb light on her triceps. She pummelled for the underhook, shoulder pressure that said I might be strong, but she had bones carved by a cruel god. I tried a foot rake, heel to her laces to break stance, and she sticky-stepped like I was trying to sweep a tree. We drifted two steps on the roof. Tiles complained. Somewhere below us, a chunin yelled for someone to bring more barrels.

“Hands up,” she said.

“Always,” I said, and immediately dropped one to bait her.

She grabbed the back of my neck. I pushed off her arm, ducked under, and gave her head a token yank, nothing serious, just enough to see if she’d flinch. She didn’t. Instead, her grip tightened, and I could practically hear the smirk through her hand.

We locked and broke grips, over and over, like arguing without words. I shoved, she shifted. She pulled, I slipped free, like two arguments crashing into each other, both of us too stubborn to blink first.

I ducked low for a body lock. She stuffed it, cranking my arm and leaning her weight heavy across my shoulder. A quick knee bump rocked me, I clawed at her wrist to recover, and she slid behind me smooth, like she’d already read the page I hadn’t written yet.

“Don’t think I won’t throw you,” she warned.

“You won’t throw me,” I lied.

She grinned. “Make a bet?”

“I don’t gamble,” I said, already gambling.

We circled, hands locked at collar and bicep like a dance. I feinted a sacrifice throw, hips turning, then twisted harder than I should have, dropping my weight all wrong on purpose. A fake collapse.

She adjusted, of course she did, because no one expects their student to weaponize clumsiness. I shot back up under her arm, spinning off the rebound. Unorthodox, messy, but it stole her timing for half a second.

That was when my palm landed, slipped really, straight onto her chest.

Reflex is a traitor. My fingers clenched before my brain could send the memo. One brief squeeze, pure accident, a reflex mistake born from bad timing.

Silence had a shape for exactly one second.

“Whoops,” I said, doomed and aware of it. “Pure accident, don’t kill me.”

Her smile stopped pretending to be wholesome. She cocked her head, knuckles flexing, and the look in her eye made the dampening tag in my pocket feel like paper armor. Her grip cinched like steel cable, and I knew she was about to fold me into the roof. Muscle-on-muscle wasn’t an option, she had me there. So I did what any grappler does when they’re outclassed, changed the angle. A shrug underhook, sharp hip turn, and I slid down the line of her frame, not breaking her hold so much as leaking out of it. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t clean, but it was enough. The second I felt daylight, I took it, vaulting the roof’s ridge, tiles rattling under the burst of Shunshin.

Tsunade followed with a hop. She didn’t need Shunshin to catch me, she had long legs, terrifying quad strength, and a personal relationship with momentum.

“Misunderstanding!” I called, skittering across to the next building. A genin on a ladder ducked with a swear as I cleared his head and stepped off his rung.

“You’re dead,” she said flatly.

“I didn’t mean to!”

“You still did.”

That, unfortunately, was fact. I took a corner hard enough that the little vendor below dropped a bowl. Steam slapped my face with broth smell. I used a laundry line as a pivot, swung, landed, kept going. Tsunade’s shadow kept my shadow company.

“You can’t hit me,” I called over my shoulder.

“I can, and I will,” she shot back. “With interest.”

“Sounds like a bad deal.” I said, and jumped. The next roof had a patch of cheap tile that looked like it had already lost two arguments with rain. I stuck the landing like a cat then felt her hand on the back of my collar.

I tried a duck-under, spinning, hips down. She followed, body to body, and we wound up in a clinch again because that’s where this always ends. I hooked a leg, tried a trip. She smiled like she had just remembered something funny about physics.

“Careful,” she said.

“I am nothing but.”

She threw me.

Not a little toss. Not a polite “here’s the ground.” She turned, hip check, hand at my sleeve and back of the neck, and I felt the planet reach up and say come here, we need to talk. I hit the roof with enough force to crack tile and insult the beam underneath. Cracks spidered away from my spine like white chalk lines drawn by a very energetic child.

“Okay I surrender,” I said, hand up. “Hands. Up.”

She cracked her knuckles. First the left, then the right, or maybe the other way, I don’t remember. It was loud enough that I noticed the silence after. Birds flapped up in a rush, like the noise had given them orders.

“Mercy,” I added.

“No.”

“I have a medical exemption,” I tried. She came in with a gait that would’ve scared a tiger.

And that was when panic invented creativity. As she reached for me again, I rolled sideways, hooked her ankle with mine, and shoved my hip underneath just enough to redirect her weight. Not a throw exactly, more like borrowing her gravity and mailing it back. She stumbled, half a step, maybe less, but enough for me.

She caught herself instantly, of course, eyes bright, grin sharpening. Her fist came next, a short hook aimed at my ribs, fast enough that I saw the future where I’d be spitting them out. I twisted in close instead of away, jammed my elbow up to catch her forearm, and let the impact shove me backward rather than break me. It rattled, but it didn’t kill.

I was already up, legs moving before my brain signed off. Call it jujutsu. Call it dumb luck. Either way, it worked.

She was laughing now, which is both comforting and not.

We hit the roofs again. My boots slapped, skidded, then pushed off, barely stuck the landing. She was right there, not sprinting, just… closing. I ducked behind a chimney. She put a hand on it, and the whole thing gave a little like it knew better. I veered left, jumped the alley, skimmed the mess hall roof. A cook looked up, ladle in hand, staring like I was a bad dream running past her shift.

“Shinji! Come here so I can teach you respect.”

“I respect you from over here,” I said, and jumped again.

I pushed for the edge of the roof near the gate, view wide open. For a second I thought I’d made it. Then her sweep caught me, and the roof caught me harder.

“Mercy?” It slipped out before I could think better of it.

Her smile came slow, stretched, and it didn’t stop where normal smiles stop. For a second I thought she might actually say something back. She didn’t. She just looked at me like I’d asked the wrong god for help.

On the ground, near the newly reinforced gate where fresh timbers wore a shine of resin and a chunin had just finished chalking a duty roster on a board that still smelled like sawdust, the squad arrived in twos and threes. The jonin had the look of men and women who slept in armor and made peace with that years ago. The civilians who’d drifted in with their carts hugged the edges, curious, trying not to stare while failing completely.

They turned at the sound of screaming.

Not battle-screaming. Not pain. Something thinner, closer to pleading.

Up on the roofline, only Tsunade’s shoulders and head were visible, the rest hidden behind the ridge.

They all glanced at each other, trying to make sense of it. Nobody said anything. What could you even say?

The noise on the roof stopped. For a moment, the outpost seemed to breathe again.

And still, none of them asked, just exchanged that flabbergasted look.

……

A few minutes later, everyone in the squad was running through the northern forest, and I could feel their eyes on me like insects crawling across my skin.

Not in a paranoid way, this was just basic human curiosity, the natural reaction people have when they're stuck with the obvious outlier in their group. And I was definitely the outlier here. Youngest by at least five years, lowest rank, and the only one who'd spent the pre-mission prep time getting chased across rooftops by an angry princess instead of doing whatever serious, professional things elite jonin did before S-rank missions.

Actually, what did they do? I realized I had no idea. Meditate? Review intelligence reports? Sharpen their kunai while staring pensively into the distance? Write heartfelt letters to loved ones in case they didn't come back?

That last one was depressing. I pushed it away.

I pretended not to notice the stares and instead glanced at Tsunade, who was running beside Sakumo at the front of the group. They were having some kind of conversation, probably about the mission, or important jonin-level things that I wasn't privy to. Which was fine. Totally fine. I wasn't bitter about being left out.

I wondered if I should ask her about the mission details. Uncle Minoru had given me the broad strokes back in that meeting room, but broad strokes weren't exactly what you'd call comprehensive intelligence. No one else seemed to be asking questions, though, which made me wonder if I was the only one left in the dark.

I was still debating it, ask and look stupid, or stay quiet and stay stupid, when one of the jonin saved me the trouble of choosing.

"Is it really okay to bring your student on such a dangerous mission?" The voice came from behind me—male, concerned but not hostile. "Especially since he's still chunin."

I mean, the question wasn't unreasonable, actually pretty logical when you thought about it, but I was more curious about what Tsunade would say than anything else.

"It's fine," she replied without looking back. "He can hold his own against a couple of jonin. That's why the commander approved him. His presence will make this mission much easier."

Okay, I'll admit it, hearing her actually praise me in front of everyone made me feel pretty good. Maybe even a little smug.

Then everyone went quiet. Like, really quiet.

Well, not literally quiet. We were still moving through trees at high speed, so there was noise from branches and wind and feet hitting bark. But the silence was... yeah, it was loud. You know what I mean.

The four jonin were clearly processing this information. Probably recalculating their assumptions about the pretty boy they'd been stuck with. Or maybe they were just surprised. I could practically hear the gears turning in their heads, though that might've been wishful thinking on my part.

"Hold his own against a couple of jonin?" The voice this time was female, and when I glanced sideways, I found myself looking at a kunoichi with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and a figure that could probably stop traffic. In multiple countries.

She was staring at me like I’d suddenly transformed from a generic chunin into something actually worth paying attention to. Which was… well, it was nice.

"So you're a young prodigy, huh?" And there was something in her tone that made me think she was either flirting or making fun of me. Maybe both. Hard to tell sometimes.

Either way, I felt a familiar spark of interest, the automatic response I had when attractive women showed me attention. Which was probably exactly what I should be feeling, honestly. I mean, I wasn't some monk who'd sworn off worldly pleasures. And she was definitely attractive.

Though getting distracted by a teammate on my first S-rank mission was probably not the smartest move. Then again, building rapport with the squad was important too, right?

"I might be a prodigy," I said, "but I'm still lacking in many ways. Still learning."

Which was true. Technically.

"I'm Takashiro Aya," she said, falling into pace beside me. "I handle sensing and intelligence for the squad."

Aya. The name fit her, short and easy to remember. And she was a sensor, which was interesting. I'd been wondering how we were going to navigate potentially hostile territory without running into ambushes, and apparently the answer was that we had someone who could detect threats before they became problems.

She started chatting, asking casual questions about my background, my training, my experience with different mission types, my age, and whether I really was as strong as my sensei claimed. Normal getting-to-know-you conversation. I answered, sometimes serious, sometimes joking, because I could feel the eyes of the squad, but hers were the only ones that mattered.

And yes, maybe I’m something of a womanizer. Maybe. Don’t quote me. But when a beautiful kunoichi with curves like commas you want to follow takes an interest, you don’t complain. You answer her. You chat back. You let yourself enjoy it, even with the war in the background, even with branches slapping your arms.

“So it’s true then,” Aya said, smile audible in her voice. “You really took down more than two jonin by yourself?”

I scratched my cheek, pretending modesty I didn’t fully feel. “Depends on how you define ‘by myself’. They weren’t exactly the strongest.”

She laughed softly. “Still. Not bad for a chunin.”

And for one second I imagined taking that laugh somewhere else, somewhere with less armor and fewer witnesses.

But that's when Tsunade finally had enough.

"Don't get too cocky," she called back without turning around. "Most of the enemies you've fought so far were average jonin. But as this war drags on, you're going to face elite jonin with far more experience, opponents on an entirely different level."

Her voice had that tone teachers get when they're trying to deflate your ego. For your own good, supposedly. The whole "you're not as special as you think" lecture.

And she wasn't completely wrong, honestly. I mean, the jonin I'd fought before had been competent. Dangerous. Could've killed me if I screwed up badly enough. But they'd also been... how do I put this without sounding like an ass... not exactly the cream of the crop.

The really elite ones, the jonin with decades of experience that could reshape entire battlefields, those guys were probably deployed on more important stuff than harassing supply convoys.

The ones I'd encounter on an S-rank mission would probably be different. Better trained, better equipped. More ruthless. More creative, maybe. The type who didn't just try to kill you, they tried to kill you in ways you'd never seen coming.

Which was... yeah. Not exactly a comforting thought.

"Yes, sensei," I said, because arguing with her in front of the squad would accomplish nothing except making me look like an arrogant brat.

But her lecture had raised another question that was bothering me more than it probably should have.

"Why are we heading north?" I asked. "I thought the River outpost was in a different direction."

Tsunade glanced back at me. "Just as I mentioned in the briefing, we're going through Amegakure territory for a stealthier approach. Target the River outpost from their blind side."

The word snagged in my ears. “Briefing?”

I hadn’t been to any briefing.

The others gave me strange looks.

Tsunade coughed into her fist. “As my student, all you need to do is stay by my side. Don’t overthink it.”

I stared at her back. Speechless. My sensei had forgotten me. Not metaphorically. Literally. Forgotten to invite me.

The urge to call her out twitched in my chest. But another urge, self-preservation, dignity, slammed it down. Another beating wouldn’t help. Not with the squad watching. Not with Aya beside me, staring like she had better uses for my mouth than talking.

So I swallowed it. Not gracefully, more like you swallow too fast and it sits wrong in your chest, but I kept moving. Pretended it was nothing. Maybe it was nothing.

Branches blurred past. Breath in, breath out. And my eyes, traitors that they are, slid sideways for half a second. Just a glance. Aya’s stride matched mine, curves shifting with the bounce that came with running. I didn’t linger. Or at least I told myself I didn’t.

She caught me looking and smiled. Not long, not wide, just enough that I knew she knew. Then she leaned just close enough while running to murmur, “Eyes front, prodigy.”

The tease carried me farther than my legs wanted to. Maybe farther than I wanted to. And then, well, we kept running, because what else was there to do.

An hour of high-speed running. My lungs were fine, my legs were fine, my ego less fine, because when everyone else moves like wind cutting corners, you start to notice you’re not the wind, you’re the leaf trying to keep up. I filled the gaps by talking to Aya whenever the forest gave me nothing else. Questions about her sensory range, her training, a joke or two that weren’t funny but earned a smile anyway.

Another thirty minutes passed. Collar damp, shirt sticking. Breathing steady, or steady enough, until it wasn’t. Then Tsunade and Sakumo both stopped. We all pulled up with them, boots grinding bark. The pause wasn’t new. The silence after always was.

Tsunade raised her hand, pointed at Aya, same gesture as every half hour. Aya already knew. She closed her eyes, steadied her breathing.

Her lips parted. “A squad of eight,” she said after a pause. “Several kilometers west.”

The scarred jonin asked, “Ame-nin?”

Aya shook her head. “Not sure, but I doubt it. They’re heading toward the Land of Rivers.”

One of the jonin frowned. “Why would River squads be this deep in Ame territory?”

Sakumo finally spoke. “Could be the same reason we’re here. Or maybe they’re running patrols for exactly that, keeping other people from using it.”

Tsunade’s brow pinched. She didn’t speak right away, just kept her eyes ahead. A breath passed. Maybe two. Then she gave the smallest nod. “Use dampening seals.”

Everyone reached for the slips of paper. So did I. The Uzumaki tag burned faintly in my palm, that maze of ink I still didn’t understand. It felt alive in a way paper shouldn’t. I pressed it to the inside of my forearm. Cold, then warm, then gone, as if it had never been there. But I could feel it working, like a part of me had been erased from the air, like the world had decided not to acknowledge me anymore.

The squad looked at Tsunade again. She gave a sharp nod. “Quick kill. Move.”

And we did. No pause, no discussion. Boots slammed wood, then earth, then wood again. My body trailed behind the pack, no shame in admitting it, they were faster. Still, every stride I told myself the same thing, catch up, catch up, catch up.

Another branch snapped underfoot. Another breath. Another half-beat behind the others.

Running toward something I hadn’t seen yet. Running with the knowledge that the first thing we saw, we’d kill.

And that was the mission.