[Ayane's POV(Azula's Tablemat, not a red flag, probably?)]
"Yosuke!" I hissed, the name leaving my lips while making the least sound possible. Then, with a flutter of my lashes that I hoped looked more calm than crazed, I raised two fingers to my temple.
He quickly understood my signal telling him the situation was catastrophically bad. Number of hostiles more than ours.
We were supposed to be on a simple run—investigate the smoke rising from one of Konoha's listening posts near the Land of Frost. 'Investigate and support,' the mission scroll said.
The investigation took all of five seconds: the post was a smoldering crater. The 'support' part? How can corpses full of worms be supported?
Now, we were a squad of twenty-eight, trying to be very quiet and return to the border of the Land of Fire—trying to slip home through the geopolitical crack between two superpowers.
Between the Land of Fire and the Land of Lightning is the Land of Hot Springs, where Konoha has many hidden bases, and the Land of Frost, where Kumogakure stashes theirs, making the two countries essentially the warzone between Konoha and Kumo.
And the base that was attacked was the nearest to the Land of Frost, which makes it most likely a Kumo attack because the Land of Frost and the Land of Hot Springs, under the supervision of the two countries, don't even have Ninja villages.
If not for my… particular talents, we'd already be decorating the trees in several artistic new ways.
My sensing range, which is one of the best in the village, screamed to me about the sixty-three chakra signatures, coiling and waiting like venomous snakes two kilometers ahead.
They were good, layered in concealment jutsu and tucked into the landscape. But to me, they blazed like bonfires in a pitch-black night.
I had to give credit to my best friend for training my sensing abilities to the limit, saying something like it's a requirement for being a friend of hers. Speaking of it, I couldn't help but recall her last letter.
It was, as usual, a masterpiece of backhanded concern: 'If you let yourself be blown to confetti by some common explosive tag, I shall strike your name from my memory. It would be an embarrassingly mundane end for my only tolerable correspondent.'
Thanks, Azula, the threat of your celestial disdain is one hell of a motivator. Because of it, I'd practiced sensory expansion until my brain felt like mush.
Now, I could out-range even a Hyūga's Byakugan. A fact that was currently the only thing standing between Team 'We're-So-Screwed' and an early grave.
Matsumoto-sensei, our Jonin commander and also the leader of our Team 8, was currently wearing the weight of all our lives like a lead cloak. He didn't flinch.
He just gave the tiniest, almost imperceptible nod. He felt it too, then, or, well, most likely he trusted my bulging-eyeball, two-finger-blinking signal.
We couldn't stop, not even by a half-step. Any break in our retreat's rhythm would be a neon sign screaming 'WE KNOW YOU'RE THERE!' And our one only advantage was their assumption of our ignorance.
The glorious life of a shinobi isn't just flashy jutsu and cool headbands.
It's this: marching with measured calm toward a killing zone the size of a small valley, your heart trying to climb out your throat, while you mentally review every contingency signal your team ever drilled.
It's planning for the worst possible outcome because, in our line of work, the worst actually has a rather good chance of happening.
Yosuke, to his credit, caught my signal and didn't panic. He just adjusted the strap of his tantō and scratched his nose with his free hand—our pre-agreed 'acknowledged' gesture. Good man. Maybe we'd all get to complain about the Frost Country's miserable weather back at the barracks tomorrow.
Or maybe, in about three minutes, we'd be testing just how serious Kumo's intentions really were.
...
...
...
Back in the village, Hiruzen was also having a day. Actually, he was having a decade.
But today, specifically, felt like someone had replaced his morning tea with distilled chaos and then kicked his desk over for good measure.
Ten years wearing the hat. A full decade of paperwork, petty squabbles, and politicking. Yet, for all his experience, overseeing an actual, honest-to-goodness shinobi war was a fresh and special kind of hell.
During the First Great War, he'd been a powerful weapon, a young 'Professor' on the battlefield.
But the real commanding had been left to the living legends, the Clan Heads from the Warring States era, men whose very names could make enemy troops reconsider their life choices.
They had the strength, the respect, and the terrifying gravitas. Hiruzen had just had a lot of fireballs and a can-do attitude.
Now, he was the one stuck in the office. And the title of Hokage, he was discovering, was less about majestic, mountain-carved profiles and more about being the village's designated adult while everyone else got to have a crisis.
Take the Uchiha situation.
Their conspicuous absence from the front lines wasn't just a tactical headache; it was a village-wide migraine that manifested as daily disputes.
Without their innate prowess and feared reputation keeping the peace, minor clan disagreements flared into full-blown shouting matches that inevitably, like gravitational pulls to a black hole, ended up in his office.
Just yesterday, he'd personally mediated a heated debate between a Hyūga elder and an Aburame representative over… ornamental garden beetle placement. He missed the days when his biggest concern was an Uchiha smiling.
And the cost? The budgetary pain.
Hiring and assigning other shinobi to cover the duties the Uchiha should have been performing was bleeding the treasury drier than Sunagakure in a drought.
Which, of course, brought him to his other favorite person: the Land of Fire's Daimyo.
The feudal lord had apparently decided that wartime was the perfect moment to practice fiscal restraint, squeezing Konoha's funding with the enthusiasm of a miser hoarding his last ryo.
The message was as subtle as a brick to the forehead: Let's see how mighty you ninja are without my money.
Hiruzen was staring at a scroll detailing the exorbitant cost of field rations for the northeastern front, wondering if he could get away with just sending everyone an IOU, when a sound broke his despair.
Knock. Knock.
Two polite, precise raps. It was so unnervingly civil it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
In his experience, urgent news usually arrived via panting ANBU, a crashing window, or a suddenly-materializing elder radiating displeasure.
A knock was… ominous.
"Enter," Hiruzen called, setting down his brush and arranging his face into what he hoped was a mask of serene, unflappable authority.
The door swung open to reveal Fukuyoshi, the Daimyo's personal envoy.
The man was a study in silken subtlety, gliding rather than walking, his smile a perfectly crafted artifact.
He looked down on shinobi as uncouth, hired tools—a sentiment he poorly concealed beneath a layer of courtly manners. Being the Daimyo's confidant granted him audience, not respect, but he often confused the two.
"Hiruzen-sama," Fukuyoshi greeted, his tone dripping with a familiar, almost cloying warmth. "I do hope my visit isn't an untimely intrusion. You seem… burdened."
Burdened? What a quaint word for 'one minor incident away from inventing a Shadow Clone just to have someone to scream with,' Hiruzen thought.
With his naturally amiable temperament and this man's practiced charm, anyone without a network of spies embedded in the capital might mistake him for a genuine ally. Hiruzen was not so naive.
He offered a smile that reached his eyes but no further.
"Fukuyoshi-sama, the pleasure is mine. You grace us with your presence. It has been too long since I enjoyed the capital's… refined atmosphere." Too long since I had to navigate your verbal labyrinths, he mentally added.
"Indeed," Fukuyoshi nodded, taking a seat without being offered one. "Lord Yoshiyuki often speaks of your past dialogues. He misses your counsel, but alas, the weight of the realm keeps him anchored to the capital." He misses having you where he can watch you, was the clear subtext.
They embarked on the delicate dance of meaningless courtesies—the weather, the state of the cherry blossoms by the palace, and the exquisite bitterness of the latest tea harvest.
It was a verbal sparring match, all feints and flourishes, each man measuring the other's steps.
Finally, Fukuyoshi made his true move, his voice laced with sympathetic concern. "A shame, truly. Reports from the borderlands grow more distressing by the day. Merchant guilds are in an uproar—banditry, skirmishes, and the roads grow unsafe. Commerce, the very lifeblood of the Land of Fire, is… clotting."
There it was. The pivot from small talk to soft, strategic pressure. The Daimyo wasn't sending money; he was sending a bill, wrapped in a complaint, delivered by a smiling messenger.
The goal was clear: leverage Konoha's desperate need for stability to extract concessions, more control, perhaps a few juicy, profitable trade monopolies for the Daimyo's cronies.
A decade ago, a younger Hiruzen might have taken the bait, rushing to prove Konoha's competence.
But ten years in this seat had sanded away any naivete. He was no fool.
He saw the board clearly: Kumo posturing like a thunderstorm testing the limits each day, Ame a den of shadows, Suna growing desperately bold, and Iwa, ever the stubborn rock, grinding away at their borders.
Hiruzen steepled his fingers, his gaze turning from that of a pleasant host to the hardened, calculating Professor.
"You are absolutely correct, Fukuyoshi-sama," he agreed, his voice dropping to a gravelly, serious tone. "The situation grows excessively dire. Kumo's aggression, in particular, is as brazen as it is troubling."
You want to talk about threats? Let's talk about the actual, enemy-ninja-army-shaped threats. "It is in times like these that the bond between Leaf and Capital must be… unshakable. A show of unified strength. Tell me, how does Lord Yoshiyuki propose we, together, reassure these anxious merchants?"
(END OF THE CHAPTER)
Another chapter after the yet another existential crisis