The objective sat in a ravine between two ridgelines in the northern Land of Earth, half underground, half timber, with a single road in and no road out. Eight shinobi guarded it.
The flak jackets bore the double-rock insignia of the Explosion Corps, Stone's premier demolitions and rapid-assault unit, and the location they sat on held enough explosive tags and sealed ordnance to level a town. Sending Explosion Corps to guard this place was overkill, but overkill was the only language Stone spoke.
The squad above them, also had eloquence in such language.
"Eight." The voice behind the bird mask was quiet and flat. "Two on the road. Two on the roof. Four inside, rotating on what appears to be a twelve-minute cycle. The next rotation puts three of the four at the rear entrance simultaneously. That is the window."
The veins at Sparrow's temples smoothed back into skin. He had not needed to activate the Byakugan for more than four seconds. He already had the layout.
"Orders, Captain?" The pale one, crouched to his left, had a scroll already half-unrolled, a brush in his other hand.
"Standard assassination. No survivors. No evidence of origin." Sparrow's head turned one degree toward the road. "The two sentries first. Then the roof pair before they can signal. The interior four are mine."
"And the objective?" The third operative, masked, toneless.
"Destroyed. We begin on my mark."
The sentry on the left side of the road died without knowing it.
Sai's brush had moved once across the scroll, and a snake of black ink peeled off the paper, flattened itself against the ground, and crossed the thirty meters between the treeline and the road like a shadow thrown by nothing. It rose behind the sentry's ankles, coiled up his legs and torso in a single liquid movement, and wrapped his throat and mouth before the man's hand reached his weapon pouch. The ink construct squeezed. The sentry's eyes went wide, his hands clawing at the black band around his neck, and then the strength went out of him, and Sai's other hand caught the body on a second ink construct before it hit the ground, lowering it into the drainage ditch beside the road without a sound.
The sentry on the right saw it. He saw the ink creature, saw his partner vanish sideways into the ditch, and his hands flew together for a seal, and the chakra in his palms began to brighten, the telltale bloom of some sort of jutsu building toward release.
He never finished the seal.
Sparrow was already there. Covering the distance between the treeline and the road in a movement the sentry's eyes could not track and arriving inside the man's guard before the chakra in his palms reached critical mass. Two fingers drove into the tenketsu at the man's right wrist. The gathering light died. Two more struck the left. The other palm went dark. And then the heel of Sparrow's palm hit the sentry square in the chest with enough force to stop his heart in one beat, and the man flew backward into the ditch beside his partner without a breath leaving his body.
The Byakugan had read the chakra buildup in seconds. By the time the chakra reached the man's palm, the chakra points were already shut.
The roof pair came next.
They were sitting back to back, which was useless against a man who could see through walls. Sparrow came up from their blind side on the timber frame, reached the roofline, and was between them before either registered the footstep. The nearer one took several Gentle Fist strikes across the chest and arms in less than two seconds, and fell sideways with his internals in ruins. His partner spun, hands already glowing, Explosion Style building in both palms, and Sparrow stepped past the forming blast, let the brightening hands pass his ribcage by the width of a finger, and drove a palm strike up under the man's chin that lifted him off the roof entirely. The explosive chakra in his hands flickered and died, and he hit the timber beside his unconscious partner.
Sparrow stood on the roof of the depot with the stars above him and the silence below him and checked the interior through the floor. Four signatures. Three at the rear entrance, one still at the central desk. The twelve-minute cycle had delivered them exactly as predicted.
He went through the roof.
Punching through the timber with a kick that blew a hole in the planking, dropping straight down into the center of the objective like something falling out of the sky, and he hit the floor in a crouch with the Byakugan already showing him everything at once, three hundred and fifty-nine degrees of awareness, four men, four positions, four distances, four heartbeats accelerating as the ceiling caved in above them.
The one at the desk reacted first. His palms came together, Explosion Style flaring bright, and a ball of compressed chakra the size of a fist left his hands and screamed across the depot at the intruder.
Sparrow did not dodge it. He spun.
Rotation.
The sphere of chakra met a dome of spinning force and detonated against it, the blast washing across the surface of the rotation and scattering in every direction except inward, and the walls of the location cracked outward from the shockwave, and crates jumped, and the sealed ordnance rattled in its cases, and when the rotation stopped, Sparrow stood exactly where he had landed, untouched, the floor beneath him carved into a perfect circle.
The desk shinobi was already forming a second blast when Sparrow crossed the distance and struck him with several hits.
Two strikes. Four. Eight. Sixteen. By sixteen, he hit the floor like a puppet with every string cut at once.
The three shinobi at the rear entrance rushed the connecting corridor side by side, hands raised. All three built toward detonation at once. For one terrifying instant, the corridor became a tunnel of brightening light as their Explosion Style techniques charged in tandem, packing enough combined force to destroy everything.
Sparrow's Byakugan read the chakra buildups simultaneously. Three seconds to release. Two.
He leaped toward them.
The men unleashed their jutsu, a massive explosion flaring from their palms that merged into a single, gigantic blast. Just before it hit, Sparrow began to spin. His Rotation cleaved through the shockwave, redirecting the flames completely around him as he barreled through their formation.
Dropping out of the whirl, his boots hit the ground. He whipped his arms outward, burying three shuriken into their throats before they could even turn around.
Sparrow stood in the wrecked depot and breathed once. The Byakugan scanned outward: the road, the ridgeline, the surrounding forest to the limit of his range. No reinforcements. No observers. No one alive within two kilometers who had seen anything.
"Clear." He said.
"Clear." Sai appeared at the hole in the roof, brush in hand, ink constructs already flowing down the walls to begin the cleanup. His flat dark eyes moved across the eight bodies with professional interest and no visible emotion. "Good work as always, Captain."
"It was fine." Sparrow's veins smoothed beneath his mask. "Begin extraction. Bodies sealed. All evidence of engagement removed. We were never here."
"Understood, Captain."
They worked in silence, the four of them, Sai's ink constructs doing the heavy lifting while the other two operatives swept the depot for intelligence worth taking. Within twenty minutes the ravine was destroyed with several explosive tags. The bodies were sealed in scrolls. The depot's contents were now Danzo's.
Eight men who had families and posts and twelve-minute rotation cycles, who would be reported missing in the morning, investigated within the week, and never found.
The squad moved north through the dark, four shadows in a country that did not know they were there.
The road through the Land of Fire's western border was wide and well-kept, and the afternoon was warm, and Tenten was in a very good mood.
"So, be honest with me, Kakashi-san. How is it being Guy-sensei's aide? When you two were rivals since you were kids?"
"Mm." Kakashi walked with his hands in his pockets and the little orange book nowhere in sight, a courtesy he had extended to present company about an hour into the trip. "It's a lot less work than I'm used to. Quite relaxing actually."
"Relaxing?" Tenten looked at him.
"Relaxing compared to being a jonin-sensei or constantly going out on missions." The one visible eye curved in what might have been amusement. "Paperwork doesn't try to kill you. Usually."
"Do you feel like he overtook you? Being his right hand while he's Hokage?"
"Overtook me?" Kakashi actually turned his head to look at her. "No. Not once. While we may have a rivalry, I never once wanted that position. I doubt he wanted it either. I would say I got the lucky end of things. " He chuckled. "The man carries the entire village on his back and wakes up smiling. I carry a stamp and can finally knock out my book collection."
She laughed at that. It sounded like Kakashi-san really was the winner in one way!
The road bent south through a stretch of old forest, and the light came through the branches in long gold bars, and neither of them was in any hurry.
"Kakashi-san." Tenten's voice changed register, going somewhere lower and quieter. "I wanted to apologize. For the Sasuke mission. I know he was your student and we weren't able to bring him back, and I-"
"Don't." It came out mild, but stern. "Sasuke made his own choice. That isn't a burden any of you should hold over your shoulders." He walked a few paces in silence. "Naruto was giving me a headache about it before he left the village. He's journeying outside with Lord Jiraiya now. Training trip."
"A journey with one of the Legendary Sannin?" Tenten's eyes went wide. "That has to be exciting."
Kakashi gave her a look with his single visible eye.
"What, is journeying with a regular jonin like me too boring and not exciting enough for you?"
Tenten's hands came up in pure panic. "Who wouldn't want to journey alongside the legendary Kakashi?! The aide to Konoha's Hokage! A man who's said to know over a thousand jutsu! You even helped me with my lightning and wind natures! I didn't mean anything bad, I was just saying…"
"I was joking."
"...Oh."
"Cute."
Tenten exhaled. "Please don't do that again. I'm already a little nervous about taking on a Chunin Exams on my own."
He chuckled. The one visible eye curved, and for a moment the gap between their ranks and their ages simply was not there, just two Konoha shinobi on a long road in good weather with a job at the end of it.
They walked on. The border markers for the Land of Earth were a day ahead.
"Kakashi-san?"
"Hm?"
"Can we work some more on my lightning while we walk? I want to be sharper before we cross the border."
"I was wondering when you'd ask." He took out a kunai and held it up as a lightning ran across its surface. "Let's continue."
Tenten took the kunai.
Some distance north, on a ridge overlooking a river valley that fed into the Land of Earth's interior, Sparrow stopped walking.
The other three did not notice immediately. Sai noticed first, because Neji was his best pal, and he stopped two paces later and turned back, and the other two operatives halted behind him.
"Captain?"
The veins had risen at Sparrow's temples. The Byakugan was active, pushed to its maximum range, and it was pointed south.
He was quiet for ten seconds.
"Change of mission." he told them.
"We do not have authorization to change mission parameters," the third operative said. Flat. By the book. "Our orders are to extract to the rendezvous and report."
"I am the squad captain. I am changing the mission parameters."
"Lord Danzo-"
"Did not know what I am looking at right now when he issued those orders." Sparrow's head had not turned from the south. "Kakashi Hatake is on this road. Headed into the Land of Earth. He is escorting a Konoha genin."
The silence was brief but heavy.
"Hatake is the Hokage's aide and one of the most skilled shinobi in the village." Sai said it without inflection, stating facts. "His presence in enemy territory is not normal. Wasn't there a report about the Chunin Exams happening in Iwagakure?"
"Yes." Sparrow's veins pulsed once.
Sai did not react visibly. The other two operatives exchanged a glance behind their masks.
"Kakashi's appearance as an escort for a single genin means the Hokage considers the exams a significant security concern. It also means Konoha is sending its people into a hostile village with one of its most visible assets as a visible deterrent." Sparrow finally turned from the south and faced his squad. "I need to know why. What intelligence does the Hokage have about Stone that warranted sending Kakashi?"
"That is not our mission." the third operative repeated.
"It is now." Sparrow said. "Two of you will continue to the rendezvous and report the mission success to Lord Danzo as planned. Include my deviation in the report; I am not hiding it. Sai, you are with me."
The third operative looked at the fourth. The fourth looked at Sparrow.
"Lord Danzo will not approve."
"Lord Danzo will have my report when I have something worth reporting. If I am wrong and there is nothing, I will accept the consequences. If I am right and there is something, he will want the intelligence more than he wants my obedience." He paused, and through the mask his pale eyes held the operative's dark ones without blinking.
The two of them turned north and vanished into the treeline, headed for the rendezvous.
Sai remained.
He adjusted his scroll on his back and fell into step at Sparrow's left shoulder, exactly where he always positioned himself.
"So, the genin..." Sai said, after a while. "I imagine its not some ordinary genin, am I right?"
"..." Sparrow didn't say anything.
"You never talk about your old team. I'm curious about them. They obviously had a big effect on you to actively go against standard mission protocols."
"Maybe one day." Neji couldn't trust Sai. He was born and molded by Danzo's Root. Even if he could see small breaks of humanity in him, that did not mean he was trustworthy. And he had a feeling Danzo put him by his side purposely. Maybe it was because they were close in age? Neji didn't know for sure.
Sai said nothing more. He did not need to. The captain had given an order, and the order made sense, and the part of it that did not make sense, the part where his voice had changed on the word genin, was something Sai kept to himself.
They moved south through the falling dark, two shadows in a country that was about to become very crowded.