"Almost there."
Through the night, after eliminating another wave of pursuing Iwagakure ninja, Yuji had built a clear picture of where he stood, his current level, his limits, and the practical performance of his ninja tools under real conditions.
Coming into the Land of Birds had served three purposes. Testing his current strength. Measuring what his ninja tools could actually do outside of controlled conditions. And finding a credible origin story for those tools, a source he could point to that explained their existence without raising questions he didn't want to answer.
The rescue mission had been a genuine rescue mission, but it had also been the frame he needed to accomplish all three.
On the battlefield, as a Medical Ninja, he could never fight with completely free hands. This had been the exception, and he had used it fully.
The waist pouch at his side was empty now. Exploding tags, senbon, shuriken, his scalpel, all of it spent across the day's engagements and the traps he had laid in advance along his route each time he had enough distance between himself and the pursuit.
He had arrived with limited supplies to begin with, only what he had been carrying, and one day had been enough to exhaust all of it.
The negative experience points accumulated in exchange had been substantial. The number of Iwagakure ninja who had died at his hands across the full day had reached somewhere between sixty and seventy.
If those sixty or seventy had arrived together rather than in scattered succession, the outcome would have been different.
But the incident had been sudden, the response uncoordinated, and Iwagakure's desire to eliminate him had apparently overridden their patience.
They had come as they arrived rather than waiting to consolidate, which meant they had delivered themselves to him in manageable portions.
He had moved constantly, never staying long enough to be surrounded, keeping them always one step behind.
The gap between this last wave and the one before it had been noticeably longer than the previous intervals.
That meant Iwagakure was adjusting. Planning something specifically for him rather than just pushing bodies forward.
Time to leave.
He assessed the terrain as he moved. The Iwagakure garrison in the Land of Birds was comparable in size to Sunagakure's deployment, but it was stretched across an enormous border line.
Concentrating enough force at every potential crossing point was impossible, they could only cover the key directions and accept gaps elsewhere.
Their real strategy was containment: keep him pinned inside the Land of Birds long enough for something more organized to reach him, because if he made it to the border the diluted forces stationed along the crossing points would not be enough to stop him.
That was why they were pushing so hard. Not because they could catch him, but because they were afraid he would simply walk out.
He kept moving. Every Iwagakure ninja who found him was dealt with quietly, leaving no one alive to give a precise location to whoever came next. Subsequent pursuers could follow the trail of bodies to estimate his general direction, but not his specific position.
Dawn came in a narrow line across the horizon.
Several Iwagakure Jonin team leaders stood over fresh corpses at the edge of the Land of Wind border and said nothing for a moment.
The traces at the scene were unambiguous. Their comrades had been killed by the same boy, recently, within sight of the border.
They had anticipated the most likely escape routes and positioned personnel accordingly, but the border between the Land of Birds and the Land of Wind was too vast to cover with the forces available.
What they had managed was reconnaissance density, not actual interdiction. Hoping to buy some time... but ultimately, they failed.
From start to finish, across a single day and night, nearly a hundred Iwagakure ninja had died at that boy's hands.
That was roughly equivalent to the losses Iwagakure would absorb in a small-scale pitched battle with Sunagakure. Except this had not been a battle. It had been one person.
"Sunagakure knows our Stronghold positions as well as we know theirs," one Jonin said, his voice low and deliberate. "This Yuji must have had a clear picture of where our coverage was thinner. He moved accordingly."
"A Medical Ninja," someone else said through their teeth. "Nearly a hundred of our people."
"The intelligence failure is the real problem here." Another Jonin spoke more carefully, working through it. "We categorized him as a Medical Ninja and assessed the threat accordingly.
Our people had no understanding of his actual methods, he is not simply a Medical Ninja, and we treated him as though he were.
Looking at the injuries on our fallen comrades, the primary technique activates at extreme speed and carries significant destructive force. And the bodies contain poison, potent concentration."
Poison. Everyone present registered it without surprise.
That was Sunagakure's signature.
"This genius is more dangerous than our assessment indicated. It reflects poorly on us, but the report to the Village needs to be accurate. Have the Medical Team examine the bodies.
Cross-reference everything with what the Analysis Team has observed of him on the battlefield and build a proper profile of his capabilities."
A younger face in the group spoke up, his tone carrying an edge that hadn't been there before. "Request that the Tsuchikage declare war. Sunagakure's recovery since the war ended has been slow, everyone can see it.
Their weakened state is obvious. Iwagakure has the strength to break them. We shouldn't be dragging this out. If they won't face us directly, they can hand that boy over. Otherwise..."
"It's not that simple." The team leader cut across him, not unkindly but without room for argument. "Early or mid-war, perhaps. But now? Every village is stretched. Yes, we are stronger than Sunagakure, but not so much stronger that the arithmetic is clean.
If real fighting breaks out, Konoha stays out of it, probably. But Kumogakure won't. They can't easily reach into the Land of Wind, but opposing us costs them almost nothing.
They are sitting on a bellyful of anger from Konoha and looking for somewhere to put it. Even without full-scale war, just harassment, that's a headache our village doesn't need right now." He paused.
"And then there's Kirigakure. They came out of this war lighter than anyone else and they are watching for exactly this kind of opening. Even if we defeat Sunagakure cleanly, do you think Iwagakure walks away from that untouched?"
Silence.
"The instinct isn't wrong. The timing is."
"I can't swallow this."
"Then find a way to make them pay a greater price on the battlefield. That's what the battlefield is for." The team leader looked at the bodies one last time.
"This grudge, Iwagakure will remember it."