The faint shush of Jiraiya's Body Flicker faded into the night, leaving Renjiro alone with the whisper of the wind and the roaring silence of his own thoughts.
A slow, bitter smile touched Renjiro's lips. 'Hiruzen is finally going to fight in the war,' he thought.
'I wish I could see it.'
The desire was more profound than simple curiosity. In the annals of his previous life's knowledge, Sarutobi Hiruzen was a legend, but one often depicted in his twilight years—a kind, grandfatherly figure still possessing immense power, but past his prime.
The man leading Konoha now was different. This was Hiruzen in his late forties, a leader in his absolute physical and mental zenith, a veteran of two world wars. He was the "Professor," a master of all five nature transformations and every known Konoha jutsu.
To witness such a paragon unleashed upon a battlefield of this scale… it was a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle for any shinobi, a masterclass in the art of war. Renjiro, the strategist, the prodigy, ached with a scholar's hunger to observe, to analyze, to understand the full breadth of the Hokage's capabilities in this, the Third Shinobi War.
He let out a long, weary sigh, the sound swallowed by the vastness of the valley. 'But that would require me to first fix my eyes before anything else.'
His mind, a precision instrument even in despair, began coldly mapping the logistical nightmare of that endeavour.
It wasn't just a matter of will.
First, he would have to somehow return to Konoha, a journey of days even at top speed, all while blind and through enemy-infested territory. Then, he would have to access his most secret stash, the pair of Sharingan eyes he had… stored. He'd have to combine them, a painful and chakra-intensive process to force the evolution into a Mangekyo—a process that was neither guaranteed nor quick. Then came the actual transplant surgery, a delicate procedure that would require a level of trust he couldn't afford with any Konoha medic.
He'd likely have to do it himself, by feel and chakra sense alone, a terrifying prospect. And only after all that, after weeks of recovery and adaptation, could he even begin to track the Hokage's movements across the chaotic, continent-spanning warzone.
The chain of impossibilities stretched before him, a mountain too high to climb. The sheer, exhausting effort of it all felt insurmountable in his current state.
'Yeah,' he concluded, the bitter smile returning.
'It's not worth all the hype. At least I know that he isn't going to die.'
The thought was a small, cold comfort, a piece of meta-knowledge from a life long gone. Hiruzen would survive this war. That was one less thing to worry about in a world rapidly spiralling beyond his control. Pushing himself up from the grass, he began the careful, measured walk towards the small, earth-reinforced hut his shadow clone had emerged from earlier.
Each step was a calculation, his chakra field extending like sonar, painting a faint, ghostly image of the world in his mind—the dip in the ground here, the root there, the rough texture of the hut's wall.
Halfway there, he stopped dead in his tracks.
A cold prickle, like ice water trickling down his spine, seized him.
'I know he doesn't die… but did I just raise a death flag?'
In the narratives he remembered, such confident assertions of a character's safety were often the prelude to a shocking demise. Had his own casual, out-of-universe knowledge, somehow tempting fate? The paranoid thought, born of a mind that understood narrative tropes as well as battle tactics, gripped him tightly.
He shook his head, physically dispelling the fear.
'No. That's ridiculous. This is reality, not a story. Hiruzen Sarutobi is the strongest shinobi of his generation. There is no way he is going to die here.'
He reinforced the thought, a mental bulwark against the creeping dread, and continued his slow, deliberate walk into the hut, closing the door on the night and its uncertainties.
=====
Hundreds of miles to the northeast, where the dense forests of the Land of Fire began to give way to arid, rocky foothills, the night was not silent. It was torn apart by the sounds of a desperate, brutal engagement.
This was a key supply route, a narrow pass carved by an ancient riverbed, now dry and littered with boulders that provided perfect cover. One group, identifiable by their dark brown, practical uniforms and the distinctive cloth masks guarding their mouths from the swirling dust, were shinobi of Sunagakure. They were a logistics unit, tasked with escorting a convoy of scrolls containing sealed food, water, and medical supplies to the front-line Suna battalions pressuring Konoha's eastern flank. They were not frontline fighters; they were facilitators, their combat skills adequate for fending off bandits or small patrols, but not for this.
The other group was an unknown variable. They wore no village insignia, their clothing a mishmash of dark greys and muted greens, perfect for blending into the rocky terrain. They fought with a cold, merciless efficiency that was terrifying in its anonymity. And they were overpowering the Suna unit with methodical precision.
The air hissed with the sound of senbon. A Suna chunin cried out, stumbling back as several of the needle-like projectiles embedded themselves in his shoulder and thigh. He tried to form a hand seal for a wind jutsu, but a kunai, thrown with unerring accuracy, thwacked into his wrist, severing the tendons. He screamed, a short, sharp sound cut off as another kunai found his throat.
"Form a defensive circle around the supply scrolls!" the Suna captain, a woman with a scar running down her cheek, yelled. Her voice was steady, but her eyes were wide with the realisation that they were outclassed. "We just need to hold until—"
A figure dropped from the cliffs above, silent as a shadow. Before the captain could react, a wire-thin blade, glinting in the moonlight, lashed out.
"Swiish-thump" Her head, its expression frozen in mid-command, tumbled from her shoulders. Her body stood for a moment before collapsing.
The fight devolved into a slaughter. The Suna shinobi, though only chunin, fought with the desperate courage of cornered animals. One managed to unleash a "Wind Release: Great Breakthrough," the gust of air roaring through the pass and forcing several of the attackers to take cover. Another used "Earth Release: Hiding Like a Mole," burrowing into the ground to launch a surprise attack, his blade striking upward from the dirt to pierce an attacker's foot. The enemy shinobi merely grunted, yanking his foot free and stomping down on the ground with immense force. "CRUNCH." The earth compacted, and a sickening, muffled cry came from below.
It was a hopeless struggle. The unidentified shinobi moved in perfect sync, their attacks complementary. They used water-style techniques to turn the dusty ground to mud, hindering the Suna shinobi's movements, followed by precise lightning attacks that crackled through the damp air, "fizz-crackle-BOOM!", electrocuting those caught in the blast. They were like a well-oiled machine of death.
Within minutes, it was over. The last Suna shinobi, a boy who couldn't have been more than sixteen, stood trembling, his back against the sealed supply crate. He held a kunai in a shaking hand. One of the enemy shinobi, a tall man with a bored expression, casually flicked his wrist. A single senbon shot through the air, thip, and buried itself in the boy's eye. He slumped to the ground without a sound.
Silence returned to the pass, broken only by the heavy breathing of the victors and the moan of the wind.
One of the attackers, a woman with short-cropped black hair, nudged a Suna corpse with her foot. "A major shinobi village is really something else," she remarked, her voice devoid of emotion. "These were all just chunin, logistics personnel, and they still gave us problems. Took longer than projected."
Her colleague, the tall man who had delivered the final blow, nodded as he began collecting the valuable supply scrolls. "They are disciplined and resourceful. It speaks to the quality of their training." He straightened up, looking south towards the heart of the Land of Fire, a grim determination in his eyes.
He hefted a scroll filled with Konoha medical supplies.
"Still," he said, a faint, cold smile touching his lips. "Amegakure will play a decisive role in this great war."