Sora knew Teju's trap work well. For a quick deployment like this, Teju always arranged them in a triangle, enclosing a safe zone at the center.
It was a formation they'd drilled back in Konoha. Learn each other's specialties. Maximize them.
If the enemy had triggered a trap, they knew danger lay ahead. They'd map out a rough perimeter and avoid it. Which meant the area inside Teju's triangle was likely clear of hostiles.
Sora moved from the safe zone outward, checking each trap in sequence.
The first one showed nothing. No tracks, no disturbance.
At the second, he found what he was looking for.
A Sand ninja, about Sora's age, a Genin. A kunai buried in his abdomen. Ninja wire tangled around both legs. He lay on the ground in visible agony, a pool of red spreading beneath him, sweat beading fat and heavy on his forehead, veins standing out at his temples like they might split open.
Their eyes met.
This is war. Two strangers who'd never exchanged a word, bound by the machinery of conflict, each quietly calculating how to kill the other.
The Sand Genin glared up at him without speaking, body twitching in weak spasms against the ground. Sora felt nothing resembling hesitation. He flicked a kunai at the boy's throat.
Another kunai shot from the shadows and knocked it off course.
There you are.
The dying one on the ground was bait, whether he knew it or not. The real target was the rat hiding in the trees.
Sora had been exposed for a while now, and nobody had pressed an attack. He was betting the enemy was another leaderless Genin squad, same as his. If they had a Chunin or above calling the shots, then this was over. He'd lie down and die here.
The war's intensity had forced both Konoha and Sunagakure to throw Genin squads into the field as reserves. They were being ground down and forged at the same rate, cannon fodder and future veterans all at once.
Maybe the enemy was seeing their first real combat too. Both sides had already made enough fatal mistakes to fill a textbook.
Sora slammed his hands together and poured everything he had into a Wind Release: Gale Palm aimed at the bushes where the Sand ninja was hiding. Wind Blades laced the blast. The hidden Genin scrambled upward in a panic.
And there it was, the fundamental weakness of the Gale Palm, of most ninjutsu: it burned chakra and still couldn't hit a moving target.
"Kurenai, counterattack! It's two on two!"
The enemy Genin's eyes went wide as Kurenai burst from the treeline.
The Sand Genin, green and terrified, stared straight at her.
A rookie mistake. The kind you don't survive long enough to learn from. Locking eyes with a Genjutsu specialist was volunteering to die.
Kurenai's illusion took hold. Sora threw his kunai, aimed for the heart.
Three senbon streaked in and swatted it from the air.
Useless. The word tasted bitter.
No reconnaissance capability. The enemy had slipped through Teju's perimeter and dropped him before the fight even started.
No real offensive power. Kunai after kunai, deflected or dodged. Every ranged attack, wasted.
All he had was a soul older than his teammates'. And in the face of genuine danger, that counted for nothing.
Sora charged toward the source of the senbon, leaving the trapped Genin for Kurenai to handle.
What he found drained the fight out of him.
A puppet came skittering from the undergrowth, joints clicking and rattling. Its face was a carved mask, inhuman, mounted on a long segmented body that hugged the ground. The eyes were polished crystals of some purple material, fixed on Sora with an unblinking predator's focus.
Four tentacle-like appendages sprouted from its crown, whipping and swaying like agitated snakes. Each tip ended in a short blade stained black-purple.
The puppet's matte finish blended with the forest behind it. Only those violet eyes caught the dim light, glowing faintly. A thing built to hunt and kill.
Cold panic climbed from the soles of his feet to the crown of his skull. For one white-knuckle instant, every instinct screamed at him to turn and run. Now he understood how the enemy had bypassed Teju's trap perimeter. Send the puppet first. Tripwires and pressure plates were a minor inconvenience for something that wasn't alive.
Sora spun on his heel. "Run! Follow me!"
Behind him, the Sand Genin had broken free of Kurenai's Genjutsu and closed to Taijutsu range. Kurenai was young, still slight, and her options in close combat were limited. She couldn't finish him fast enough.
Sora grabbed her and they leapt away together, bouncing from trunk to trunk. Tree-hopping was the standard way to move through forest, and it made tracking from behind far harder.
After covering enough distance, Sora's mental map told him they'd crossed back into Teju's safe triangle.
He whipped around. A handful of kunai flew toward the pursuing Sand ninja and his puppet.
The puppet master was nowhere to be seen. Sora grimaced. Sand ninja puppeteers had earned their reputation. Even after he'd deliberately led the puppet on a long chase through the canopy, the operator hadn't exposed a single trace of their position.
But the puppet and its Genin partner were focused on dodging Sora's kunai. Neither of them noticed the one that sailed wide and struck a trigger hidden in the underbrush.
Teju's trap detonated. A wall of kunai erupted from the mechanism, filling the air like a volley of arrows bearing down on the two Sand ninja.
In that fractured second of chaos, Sora fired off a Gale Palm. No time to concentrate Wind Blades into it, but the raw force caught the scrambling Sand Genin square in the chest and gut. The boy folded like a shrimp and slammed into a tree trunk.
He raised his head to take stock of the battlefield. Kurenai's eyes were already on him.
Her Genjutsu took hold for the second time.
No interruptions this time. Sora threw three kunai and ended it.
One enemy down. The field held only the puppet now, twitching and resetting on its segmented legs.
Sora found he could breathe again. Barely. Enough to face this cricket-shaped nightmare one on one.
"It's a real two on two now." He kept his eyes locked on the puppet, speaking without turning his head. "Kurenai, be careful. Find the puppeteer. Signal me when you've got a location. I'll keep this thing busy."
Kurenai vanished, slipping into the shadows.
All right. Come on, wooden toy. Just you and me now.
Sora drew the blade strapped across his back. Time to get serious again. A shame Teju wasn't here to back him up.