Deep within a damp, echoing heart of a limestone cave system, a different kind of war machine was humming. This was the forward command post for Iwagakure's Western Spearhead, a division tasked with applying pressure to Konoha's flanks.
Commander Ayaka, a man built like the bedrock around him with a face carved into a permanent scowl, finished his briefing. "—so we keep the pressure on their supply lines. We don't need a decisive victory here. We just need to make them bleed, to keep their resources stretched. Without the Yamanaka, Konoha's army is a blind, deaf giant. It will fall. Dismissed."
His subordinates, a mix of hardened jounin and ambitious chunin, nodded with grim satisfaction and filed out of the cavern, their footsteps echoing into the tunnels.
Alone, Ayaka allowed himself a tight, satisfied smile. The plan was brutal and beautiful in its simplicity. He and his counterpart from Kumo, a man named Bando, had a wager—a crate of Suna's finest sake—on whose strategy would inflict more critical damage. Ayaka was confident the sake would be his.
A faint shush of air, the barest disruption of the cave's stagnant atmosphere, was his only warning. Ayaka didn't look up from the map, his smile widening.
"Bando," he said, his voice a low rumble. "Come to pay your dues so soon? I told you. By now, the Third Division is ash, and Konoha's communications are in chaos. Your lightning-fast shinobi are impressive, but there's no substitute for pure, unadulterated destructive power." He finally glanced up, expecting to see his rival's frustrated but sportsmanlike expression.
"I hope you brought the sake."
The Kumo shinobi, Bando, stood just inside the pool of lantern light. He was tall and lean, a contrast to Ayaka's blocky form, his dark skin and white hair making him look like a spectre. His face, however, held no frustration. It was grim, etched with a strange, cautious pity that immediately set Ayaka on edge.
"It seems," Bando said, his voice quiet but cutting through the silence like a wire, "that you haven't gotten the news."
Ayaka's confident smirk faltered. "News? What news?"
Before Bando could answer, the ground at the edge of the lantern light bulged upwards. The earth cracked with a sound like snapping bones, and a shower of dirt and pebbles scattered across the map.
A massive, fur-covered head, followed by a heaving, struggling body, forced its way into the cavern. It was a Great Burrowing Mole, one of Iwa's most reliable messenger animals, its claws caked with mud and its flanks heaving.
With a final, exhausted squeak, it dropped a small, mud-spattered scroll sealed with the distinct, urgent mark of the Tsuchikage's personal intelligence network onto Ayaka's sandals before collapsing, panting.
The method of delivery alone sent a jolt of ice through Ayaka's veins. This was not a standard field report. This was a catastrophe, delivered by the fastest, most secure means possible.
His face darkened. He bent down, his movements slow and deliberate, and picked up the scroll. Breaking the seal, he unrolled the thin parchment. His eyes, initially narrowed in suspicion, scanned the coded script. Then they widened. The blood drained from his face, leaving his weathered skin a sickly grey. The parchment began to tremble in his hand.
"No…" he whispered, the word a breath of disbelief. "No, this is… this is impossible."
He read the words again, as if hoping they would rearrange themselves. They did not. The message was stark, brutal, and final.
'Third Division Siege Failed. Forces annihilated. Sole combatant: Konoha's Yellow Flash, Minato Namikaze. Total operational loss.'
The scroll fell from his nerveless fingers, fluttering to the stone floor like a dead leaf. The number echoed in the silent cavern. Ten thousand. A full division. Erased. Not by an army, not by a trap, but by one man.
His head snapped up, his eyes, now burning with a mixture of shock and dawning fury, locking onto Bando.
"Namikaze…" he breathed, the name a curse. Then, his voice rose to a roar that shook dust from the ceiling.
"YOU KNEW! This is why you and the Raikage were so eager for Iwa to lead the assault on the communications division! You knew the losses would be this catastrophic! You used us as a damn measuring stick for that monster!"
Bando held up his hands, a placating gesture that did nothing to mollify the seething Iwa commander. "Ayaka, be reasonable. I received the intelligence report barely an hour ahead of you. I came here personally, as a courtesy between allies, to discuss how we can remedy this situation together. We are all on the same side in this alliance."
"REMEDY?" Ayaka bellowed, slamming his fist onto the stone table. The maps jumped, and an inkpot tipped over, spilling black fluid like blood across the proposed routes of Konoha's supply lines.
"How do you remedy the loss of ten thousand shinobi? How do you remedy the complete destruction of our most elite assault corps? This wasn't a setback; this was a strategic amputation! And you, Kumo, you sat back and watched it happen! This was a setup!"
As Ayaka continued to vent his rage, spittle flying from his lips, Bando's face maintained its mask of concerned alliance, but internally, his thoughts were cold and clear.
'The Raikage's son's intel was spot on,' he thought, a shiver of retrospective fear running down his spine. Ayy's clandestine reports on Minato's capabilities, gleaned from their brief encounter, had seemed exaggerated. A man who could be in multiple places at once? Who could defeat an army alone? They had dismissed it as Konoha propaganda. Now, he saw it was a terrifying understatement. By manoeuvring Iwa into the primary assault role, Kumo had avoided a loss that would have crippled them for a generation.
This had been a live-fire test of Konoha's ultimate weapon, and the results had terrified the Kumo high command into a sudden, profound caution.
'Pushing Konoha into a corner,' Bando mused, 'does not make it surrender. And that is a price no village, not even an alliance of three, can afford to pay repeatedly.' Aloud, he said, "Ayaka, your anger is justified, but misdirected. Our shared enemy is Konoha. We must now adapt our strategy—"
"GET OUT!" Ayaka roared, pointing a trembling finger towards the tunnel entrance. "Get out of my sight! Our 'alliance' can go to hell! Iwa will remember this betrayal!"
The news, as seismic as the explosion that had likely killed Gando, did not remain confined to that one cavern. It travelled through the ranks of Iwa's forces like a tremor through the earth, a shockwave of disbelief and horror. From the front-line grunts to the strategic planners in the rear, the name Minato Namikaze became a synonym for annihilation. The confidence that had characterised the Iwa forces evaporated, replaced by a pervasive, gnawing fear. The war had just introduced a new, unpredictable variable, and it was dressed in Konoha's colors.
Days later, in the imposing, starkly lit audience chamber of the Tsuchikage's office, the Third Tsuchikage, Onoki, hovered a few inches above his stone chair, a sign of his immense agitation. The same scroll that had broken Commander Ayaka now lay on the desk before him. His small, aged frame trembled not with weakness, but with pure, undiluted fury. The lines on his face seemed to have deepened into canyons of rage.
"Ten thousand…" he seethed, his voice dangerously quiet. "… by one man." The air around him crackled with dense chakra. A nearby marble paperweight suddenly compressed in on itself with a sharp "CRACK", crushed into a tiny, dense cube.
"This… this is an outrage! An insult Iwa will not forget!"
An elder, one of his most trusted advisors, stood before him, his head bowed. He had seen Onoki angry before, but this was a cold, planetary fury that promised retribution on a continental scale.
"Tsuchikage-sama," the elder began, his voice cautious. "The losses are… unprecedented. The morale shock is immense. Our soldiers are now hearing the name 'Yellow Flash' and freezing in the field. They see a blonde-haired Konoha shinobi, and they break formation."
Onoki's eyes, sharp and ancient, snapped to the elder. "And what would you have me do? Recall our entire army? Surrender?"
"No, Tsuchikage-sama," the elder replied swiftly. "But perhaps… perhaps we must acknowledge this new reality. We cannot fight a ghost. We cannot spend our forces trying to swat a single, lightning-fast fly. For the preservation of our military strength…" He took a steadying breath, knowing the next words would taste like ash. "I advise we issue a new, standing order to all Iwagakure forces. Effective immediately."
Onoki stared at him, the fury in his eyes banked by a cold, pragmatic dread. He knew what was coming. He hated it. But he also knew the elder was right.
The elder finished, his voice firm and clear in the tense silence. "A Flee-on-Sight order for Minato Namikaze."