With the intel sorted and their gear packed, Team Taiichi moved out, heading straight for their designated mission zone.
In truth, the mission carried a solid amount of risk. The enemy's numbers and strength were massive question marks. If their luck tanked and they bumped into an elite hit squad, Taiichi would be fine, but the rest of the team would be in serious danger—especially Kazema.
Half a day into the trek, Taiichi took point as the squad's sole sensor ninja. He pulsed his Chakra Sensory jutsu every ten minutes. With the skill leveled up to 6, his range had spiked. He could pick up clear signatures from a mile out, and get fuzzy early-warning pings from a mile and a quarter.
It still couldn't hold a candle to the Hyuga clan's Byakugan, but it blew the Aburame bugs and Inuzuka hounds out of the water.
Bringing up the rear, Kazema felt a bitter knot in his stomach every time he watched his captain cast a jutsu. He was a rare Wind Style user, yet he couldn't find a proper role in this squad.
Forget the others—they were all ridiculously strong for their age. Even Saori, arguably the weakest of the original trio, had a solid grasp of sealing jutsu and Lightning Style techniques that could wipe the floor with him.
And their captain? The youngest kid in the group was a total freak of nature. Sensory, medical, sealing, ninjutsu, taijutsu—there wasn't a single thing he couldn't do. As the oldest guy on the team, Kazema felt utterly humiliated.
Just as Kazema was busy throwing an internal pity party, Taiichi called out from the front.
"Halt! Take a breather."
The squad stopped instantly. Yohei stepped up.
"What's the situation, Taiichi?"
"We're about to cross into the red zone. We need to top off our stamina here. From this point on, a firefight could break out at any second."
The team nodded in agreement. There was no such thing as a small fight; life or death often came down to razor-thin margins. As seasoned ninjas, they immediately began recovering their physical and mental energy using their own preferred methods.
Half an hour later, Taiichi stood up. The rest of the squad gathered around him.
"Alright, I'm taking point. Yohei, you're in the center, cover our flanks. Saori, Kazema, take the rear guard on Yohei's left and right. Move out!"
The four ninjas pushed forward in dead silence. Before long, they crossed into the designated danger zone—a notorious stretch where Leaf supply lines were constantly getting hit.
The entire ninja world was sitting on a powder keg right now, just waiting for a spark. Every nation was relentlessly deploying sabotage squads into rival territory. Their goal was to slip behind enemy lines, cripple logistics, and secure an early advantage for the inevitable war.
Espionage, sabotage, defense, and assassination played out on a continuous loop along the borders, and the chaos was steadily bleeding deeper into the heartlands.
Sure enough, barely two hours into their patrol, Taiichi's chakra radar pinged. A squad of sneaky ninjas popped up on his sensory net.
"Heads up. Two o'clock, a mile out. Four hostile targets holding position. Two in the trees, two in the brush. Probably Sand ninjas. Watch out for Wind Style and puppets."
The squad smoothly adjusted their trajectory, charging straight for the Sand ninjas. There was no need to verify or probe. In this zone, any foreign ninja was a kill-on-sight target. This was war.
"Yohei and I will spearhead the assault. Saori, Kazema, run support."
Taiichi issued the final orders when they hit the two-hundred-yard mark.
A hundred and fifty yards.
One hundred yards.
Eighty yards.
Hitting the absolute limit of their approach, Taiichi chained a series of Body Flickers. He turned into a blur, carving a jagged, high-speed path through the woods straight toward the tree harboring two of the targets.
Not wanting to be outdone, Yohei pushed forward another ten yards before flickering out, diving toward the enemies hiding in the brush.
Mid-dash, Taiichi drew his short sword. Violent Fire Chakra flooded the steel, instantly igniting into a brilliant, golden blade of flame.
With a casual sweep, a vicious arc of blazing energy tore off the blade, cleanly bisecting a stunned Sand ninja.
In the same breath, Taiichi materialized on the branch. He followed through with a horizontal slash, cleaving the second Sand ninja—and the kunai he had just drawn to defend himself—clean in two. Standard weapons without chakra reinforcement simply melted under the Flame Blade's strike.
Over on Yohei's end, having moved a beat slower, he was already tangled up with his target. Taiichi gave it a quick glance, deemed Yohei fine, and shifted his focus to the other patch of brush.
The final Sand ninja was currently trapped in Saori's electrified net, his body locked in paralysis.
Taiichi wasn't about to pass up an easy kill. He flickered past, smoothly burying his short sword into the paralyzed enemy's heart. By then, Yohei had also finished off his opponent.
From the moment Taiichi initiated his first Body Flicker to the total annihilation of the enemy, the entire skirmish lasted less than thirty seconds. Based on their gear, the dead were four Chunin.
Behind the treeline, Kazema stood frozen. His eyes were wide, his mouth hung open, and his hands were stuck mid-seal.
Back when they were running standard B and C-Rank missions, he hadn't fully grasped the gap between them. Today was his first time seeing the squad go "weapons free."
That blistering speed, that lethal kenjutsu... even Saori's lightning-fast jutsu casting left him in the dust. He hadn't even managed to fire off a single jutsu before the fight was over.
It made him seriously wonder: what was he even doing here? Was he of any actual use to this team?
"Hurry up and police the bodies."
Taiichi's voice snapped him out of his spiral. If he couldn't help in the fight, he sure as hell wasn't going to slack off on cleanup duty.
A week into the deployment, the team settled into the brutal rhythm of the mission.
Beyond that initial four-man squad, they intercepted six more waves of hostiles over the following days. The vast majority were Chunin, with squad sizes ranging from two or three up to seven or eight.
The only time they ran into a Jonin, the guy ended up dead-to-rights in front of Kazema. It was a terrifyingly close call. If Taiichi hadn't shattered the enemy's Fire Style with a perfectly timed Phoenix Flower barrage, the newly-promoted Chunin would have been reduced to ash.
That Jonin didn't escape, smoothly becoming Taiichi's first high-value kill of the deployment.
Pushed through this meat grinder of non-stop combat, Kazema was finally starting to sync up with the team's pace. At the very least, he wasn't standing around completely helpless like his first day. It was a massive leap forward.
"We're tightening up out there," Taiichi said. "Especially you, Kazema. Solid progress."
Night had fallen. The squad found a sheltered spot out of the wind and gathered around a campfire.
It was early spring, and the night air still carried a bitter chill. The roaring fire didn't just beat back the darkness; it brought a much-needed touch of warmth.
Taiichi casually rotated the skewers stabbed into the dirt near the flames, cooking four freshly caught fish. He sprinkled his custom spice blend over them, sending a rich, mouth-watering aroma wafting through the camp.
Gulp.
Everyone turned to stare at Yohei, who just blinked back at them innocently.
"Haha, what? It smells amazing! Don't tell me you guys aren't starving."
The team chuckled, their eyes drifting back to the roasting food. Soon enough, the fish was perfectly cooked, and Taiichi handed one to everybody.
Yohei took a massive bite immediately, huffing and puffing as the scalding meat burned his mouth.
Beside him, Kazema took a cautious bite. His eyes practically glowed. Tossing his dignity into the fire, he started inhaling the meal like a starving man.
He didn't stop until the entire fish was gone. Letting out a long, satisfied sigh, he wiped his mouth.
"Captain, running missions with you is a dream. We get the job done fast, and the food is insane. Back in the day, I survived purely on dry rations."
"Oh really? Tell us how normal squads do it!"
Yohei chimed in, genuinely curious. Team 8 had been together since graduation. With Taiichi's all-rounder skillset, they basically never wanted for anything. Their field ops might not have been luxurious, but they never went hungry or thirsty.
"I remember one long-term op," Kazema began, looking like a war veteran recalling a tragedy. "We were in the wild for a month. Once the rations and soldier pills ran out, we had to live off the land. We ate whatever we could catch."
Yohei looked confused. Isn't that what they were doing right now? What was the difference?
Kazema sighed heavily at Yohei's clueless expression.
"You have to understand, not everyone knows how to cook. In my old squad, every single one of us was a disaster in the kitchen. The stuff we made... calling it 'edible' was a stretch. It just kept us from dying."
He mimed gagging, making Yohei and Saori burst out laughing.
The long day had drained them all. After a bit more banter, Taiichi ordered them to get some rest.
Naturally, in a combat zone, watches were mandatory.
"Kazema, you and I take the first watch. Yohei, Saori, you're on the second shift."
Nobody argued. Yohei and Saori quickly drifted off to sleep to recover their energy.
The campfire crackled. Taiichi sat near the flames, casually poking the logs with a stick to keep the fire going strong.
Glancing across the fire at the silent older ninja, Taiichi decided to check in.
"So, Kazema. How are you holding up? Managing to keep pace with us?"
Kazema looked up. In the warm, flickering light of the fire, his young captain looked reassuringly calm.
"I'm doing great, Captain. I actually feel like I've leveled up a ton since we deployed."
How could he not? Everyone else on this squad was an absolute freak. Standing next to them made a normal, capable ninja look like a complete amateur. It was an ego-crushing dynamic that only he could understand. Kazema kept that grumble to himself.
"If the situation allows, I'm going to have you take the lead more often," Taiichi said bluntly. "You're still too weak right now. If you keep coasting like this, you're going to get yourself killed."
Taiichi really hadn't expected the brass to assign them such a weak replacement. In peacetime, it would've been fine—just extra time grinding and building synergy.
But this was wartime. They were running lethal black ops. The intensity was brutal, and the variables were endless. An A-Rank mission could randomly throw S-Rank threats at them without warning.
In fairness, Taiichi was being a little harsh on the village administration. On paper, Team 8 was a squad of newly-promoted Chunin. Adding another newly-promoted Chunin to the mix made perfect administrative sense. The brass simply had no idea that this squad's actual combat output completely shattered their paper stats. That was the root of the current awkwardness.
Kazema flushed with embarrassment. He was being called out—and by a kid years younger than him, no less. But he couldn't deny it. He felt like dead weight. If things didn't change, the team would either have to slow down to babysit him, or he'd end up a corpse on the battlefield.
"Thank you, Captain. I promise to step it up."
"Hold down the fort. I'm going to run a perimeter check."
Taiichi said, giving Kazema an excuse to be alone with his thoughts. If he wanted to survive with them, he needed to lock in. They weren't a training academy.
The first watch passed without incident. Taiichi woke Yohei and Saori, handing off the guard duty before turning in.
The night went smoothly. The next morning, after breakfast and packing their gear, Taiichi wove a few seals. The earth beneath them rippled, swallowing up the ashes and every trace of their camp.
The four-man squad resumed their prowl along the border. They occasionally crossed paths with other Leaf hunter-killer teams, trading intel and sometimes teaming up to trap particularly slippery targets.
To secure the supply lines and protect the towns of the Fire Nation, every foreign ninja caught infiltrating had to be eliminated. No exceptions.
The team moved swiftly through the woods. The rustling of leaves in the breeze masked their footsteps, and the sunlight piercing the canopy kept the forest from feeling too oppressive.
Kazema stuck close behind Yohei. The grueling combat of the past few days had taught him that a lethal threat could explode out of this peaceful scenery at any moment. Sticking to his teammates was his only life insurance.
"Hold!"
Taiichi suddenly raised a closed fist. The squad hit the brakes, instantly snapping into a defensive perimeter around him.
Taiichi dropped his voice.
"Eleven o'clock. Eight hundred yards out. Eight hostiles approaching fast in an offensive formation."
"Judging by their chakra signatures, four of them are Jonin. The rest are Chunin. They've got a sensor on their side—they've locked onto us and are coming straight for us."
Kazema's spine locked up. He swallowed hard, visibly shaken by the intel.
Yohei, on the other hand, licked his lips. A feral, battle-hungry light ignited in his eyes.
"Four Jonin? Perfect. Now I won't have to fight you for them, Taiichi!"
Saori shed her usual gentle demeanor. She looked at Taiichi with eager anticipation, brimming with absolute confidence in their strength.
Seeing the unshakeable trust in his friends' eyes, Taiichi let out a sharp, genuine laugh. A surge of adrenaline pumped through his veins. Four Jonin? With his current power level, four Jonin were nothing he couldn't handle.
On his sensory net, the eight enemies were arranged in a spearhead formation—the four Jonin acting as the tip of the spear, with the Chunin flanking them. They were closing the distance fast.
Taiichi relayed the layout. Team Taiichi adopted a mirrored formation and charged right back at them.
The faint whistling of wind breaking echoed through the trees as the eight enemy figures darted through the canopy like phantoms. The lead ninja—a scarred Jonin with his eyes half-closed—was clearly their sensor.
"They're charging us!"
"Hah, got some nerve. Spotted us and didn't immediately run for their lives."
"Just a bunch of kids. A desperate final struggle!"
The banter lasted mere seconds. When two squads of ninjas sprinted at each other, a few hundred yards vanished in the blink of an eye.
Spotting the Sand ninjas breaking into their visual range, Taiichi and Yohei exchanged a look. Acting on pure synergy, they both hit the gas. They needed to draw the aggro and absorb the alpha strike to protect Saori and Kazema from taking Jonin-level heat right out of the gate.
But Taiichi pushed even further ahead of Yohei. Like the lethal edge of a master-crafted blade, he drove himself directly into the heaviest pressure the enemy had to offer.