[Konoha Hokage Office]
"Say that again," Tsunade said, flat, not looking up.
"A small camp Kumo had set up northeast of the front," the messenger repeated, clearly uncomfortable. "Destroyed. Two hundred to three hundred personnel. Confirmed dead."
"Two hundred to three hundred shinobi. How much man power Tsume mobilized for that ?" Tsunade was alert, if the casulty from their side was significant then it would be a problem.
"Three-man cell. Led by Special Jōnin Sukuna Haruno."
Tsunade blink, for a second almost thought she heard it wrong but she knew better to question her own hearing, she set the report down very slowly, which was somehow worse than if she'd slammed it.
'Of course it was him.' She grumbled under her breath.
On one hand — genuine, unfiltered relief. The boy was Konoha's, not Kumo's, not Kiri's, not some enemy village's secret weapon she'd have to lose sleep over facing on a future battlefield. Whatever gods existed had at least gotten that part right.
On the other hand, she was going to need a drink the size of the ocean.
"Three people," she said, mostly to herself. "Three people wiped out an entire camp, who were the other two and how in the world they accomplish something like that ?"
She thought about summoning him back from the front just to shout at him properly, but what would that accomplish. He'll just shrug it off like everything else he does, with that same infuriatingly calm face, give a effortlessly fake promise to be more careful, and then go do something equally reckless within the week. Sakura complained about the pattern constantly, and Sakura lived with the brat.
"Should I send a formal reprimand, Hokage-sama?" the messenger asked carefully.
"Tsume already handled that," Tsunade muttered, rubbing her temples. "For all the good it'll do."
She allowed herself exactly one long, guttural curse under her breath — brat, menace, absolute headache of a shinobi — before straightening back up, because there was still a village to run and a hundred other fires demanding her attention. Sukuna being alive, effective, and terrifyingly overqualified for his rank was, annoyingly, the least of her problems today.
That, at least, was true right up until the alarms started going off across the hospital district not two hours later.
Elsewhere, considerably less officially, two other problems were being solved.
Gaara's guard rotation had thinned exactly as Itachi predicted, wartime pulling capable shinobi away from what should have been a secure hospital wing. It made things almost insultingly easy.
"Two guards," Kisame murmured, watching from the rooftop. "You sure this isn't a trap?"
"They don't need trap inside their own village to catch us." Itachi's tone carried no particular satisfaction in being right, only quiet observation. "Move."
They didn't bother with subtlety past that point — subtlety had done its job getting them this close. Itachi's genjutsu dropped both guards where they stood, silent, clean, no alarm raised. Gaara himself remained sedated, still recovering from whatever internal damage his aborted Shukaku transformation had left behind, unconscious and unaware as Kisame slung him over one shoulder like cargo.
"Lighter than I expected for a jinchūriki," Kisame commented.
"Move faster and comment less."
They almost made it clean. Almost.
A patrol rounding the corner at the wrong moment caught sight of Kisame's unmistakable silhouette — not many shinobi in the world carried a bandaged blade that size — and the shout that followed tore through the hospital district fast enough that within seconds, alarms were being raised across half the ward.
"So much for quiet," Kisame said, entirely too pleased about it.
Itachi didn't bother responding, already moving, taking down the first responders with clinical efficiency while Kisame kept Gaara secured and readied Samehada for anyone bold enough to get close. More shinobi arrived — chūnin mostly, a scattering of jōnin thin from the war effort — throwing themselves into the fight with more courage than sense.
It wasn't enough. It was never going to be enough, not against two S-rank missing-nin operating with the element of surprise and zero intention of holding back.
Fire jutsu tore through the corridor, smoke and screaming and collapsing support beams providing more than enough cover for their exit. By the time reinforcements capable of actually threatening them arrived, Itachi and Kisame were already three rooftops away, Gaara still slung over Kisame's shoulder, and Konoha's hospital wing left in smoking disarray behind them.
"That went well," Kisame said, grinning at the chaos below.
"Don't think its over, they'll come after us. We need to get out of here fast."
-x-
[Front Line]
Back at the front, Tsume had her own report to collect, entirely unaware of the chaos brewing back home.
"Anything?" she asked, arms crossed, watching all three of them with the same suspicious squint she reserved for her own son when he claimed he is going to ace the next mission. They all knew how that goes for him.
Sukuna shook his head. Kiyomi shook her head a half-second later. Neji, a beat after that, did the same.
The timing was just slightly too synchronized. Just slightly too clean.
Tsume's eyes narrowed. "Nothing at all? Three days of increased mobilization and you three came back with nothing?"
"Nothing conclusive," Sukuna said, tone even, unreadable. "Movement's there, but it's disorganized. Could be posturing. Could be logistics. Nothing worth acting on yet." He shrugged.
It wasn't technically a lie. It just left out roughly twenty corpses and one deeply missing jinchūriki, and of course the two more Akatsuki member, who had no business being there in the first place. Of course, they were dead as well. Water over the bridge or however else the saying goes, Sukuna didn't care anyways.
Tsume studied him a long moment, studied the other two as well, that same nagging itch in the back of her skull insisting something wasn't adding up. But there wasn't a shred of proof to point to, nothing concrete enough to challenge, and pressing a special jōnin with no actual evidence would only waste time she didn't have.
"Fine," she said finally, though the word came out clipped. "Keep watching them. Report the second something changes."
"Understood," all three said, again in that same faintly too-uniform tone.
Tsume watched them walk off, arms still crossed, muttering under her breath about brats and secrets and how she was getting too old for this war already.
"I need another scouting team…" She grumbled.
Outside, Sukuna before leaving the other two, stop them for a second.
"I had something to say to you all, I have an idea. You might like it. Meet me tonight on the edge of the camp." He said and without saying anything further before they ask any question, left.
-x-
Back in the Kumo camp, patience had long since curdled into dread.
"Still no word from Yugito-sama?" one of the junior officers asked, voice tight.
"Nothing. Not since they left." The senior officer's jaw was set hard enough to ache. "It's been too long."
They'd given it more time than they should have, hoping — praying, really — that the silence simply meant the mission required discretion, that Yugito's team was simply too deep behind enemy lines to risk a signal. But hope only bought so much patience before duty demanded confirmation.
A small scout team was dispatched at last, five shinobi moving fast and quiet along the same route Yugito's squad had taken two nights prior.
They found the ravine without much trouble.
What they found inside it, though, none of them were prepared for.
Bodies. Everywhere. Some in pieces so clean it looked almost surgical, others simply stopped mid-motion as if death had arrived too fast to even register. Scorched earth in patches, craters from what must have been an enormous explosion, and no sign — none at all — of Yugito herself among the wreckage.
"Confirm the identities," the scout team leader said, voice hollow, already dreading the answer.
It didn't take long. Every face they turned over belonged to someone they knew personally — comrades, classmates, some of Kumo's most promising rising talent, all of it undone in what looked like minutes, based on how little the surrounding terrain had time to settle.
"This isn't possible," one of the younger scouts whispered, staring at what remained of a jōnin he'd trained alongside for years. "Twenty of our best… and no sign of the enemy at all?"
The team leader said nothing, simply staring at the ravine floor, already dreading the report he'd have to deliver back to camp.
"Captain, we found something here." A subordinate shouted.
"What !"
"Look at this, its a strange coat." The shinobi handed it over to the captain of the Kumo scout team.
The captain observed the coat, black with red cloud painted on them.
"Anything else ?"
"Beside and entire section of the area missing as if someone erase it with the Current Tsuchikage's particle style, nothing."
Iwa…
'Is Onki taking his move already ?' The captain pursed his lips.
"Collect all the evidence, and be fast, we need to relate this to the camp. Hurry."
xXx
A/N : What you think, a little bit of showing what going on all over the place. Hope you like it, or you like when I write more centralized prospect.
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