"The presence of hidden enemies is confirmed," Hizashi Hyuga repeated, his voice tight. "Descend further. I need to verify their numbers and identity."
"Enemies..." Hagoromo felt a jolt of alarm. Someone actually managed to infiltrate this lockdown zone? He didn't question Hizashi's judgment; when it came to reconnaissance, the Byakugan was the ultimate authority.
"Maintain this horizontal position?" he asked, focusing on controlling the flight.
"Yes!"
Receiving the affirmation, Hagoromo commanded the Yatagarasu into a tight, spiraling descent. The massive bird corkscrewed through the air, leveling out hundreds of meters lower but remaining precisely above their previous coordinates.
Hizashi's veins pulsed as he pushed his visual prowess. "One, two, three, four... I count four squads, sixteen ninjas total. They're using Earth Style to hide themselves thirty to fifty meters beneath the surface. They're tightly clustered, horizontally, within a radius of about two hundred meters."
In a "Forbidden Zone" like this, burring yourself that deep was the definition of hostile intent. And sixteen ninjas was a significant force, not a scout party.
"They aren't moving yet. They likely have a sensory type among them; hostile estimate is that they've already detected us," Hizashi added after a beat. If you buried yourself that deep, you absolutely needed sensory support to know what was happening on the surface.
"Are they Suna?" Hagoromo asked, cutting to the chase.
This was the critical question. If these sixteen belonged to some third party, it was a mess. But if they were Suna ninjas, it meant the entire peace treaty was a sham. The Fourth Kazekage was currently walking toward the Hokage while hiding a strikeforce on the path. If that was true, Hiruzen Sarutobi was walking into a trap.
Furthermore, if they were Suna, it meant they hadn't just "infiltrated"; Suna had deliberately opened a hole in their own defensive line. And if they did that for sixteen men, they could have done it for a hundred and sixty.
The enemy had buried themselves deep, clearly arriving long ago. This was a properly planned operation; they possessed precise intelligence on the time and location of the summit. Whether Konoha or Suna had leaked the intel was a secondary concern now; the immediate priority was neutralising them before they could rupture the talks.
The mission parameters Hagoromo had accepted included detailed protocols for handling unexpected variables. Ninjas were expected to exercise field autonomy, not wait like machines for a signal from headquarters. The enemy was here, and they had a objective. If the Kazekage hadn't just passed directly through this sector, prompting Hizashi to boost his Byakugan for a routine sweep that caught a lucky glimpse of the sub-surface, they might have never been found.
"Judging by their gear, they don't look like Suna," Hizashi said slowly. "They look like Hanzo of the Salamander's men."
"The Rain..." Hagoromo murmured. A strange wave of relief washed over him when he heard they likely weren't Suna.
Amegakure—the Hidden Rain Village—had been active early in this war. But a small nation was still just a small nation. Their leader, Hanzo, was undeniably a powerful shinobi, but you didn't win a war with just one man. Hanzo was elite, but beyond him, Amegakure lacked a deep bench of high-level talent.
The conflict between Konoha and Amegakure was still ongoing. Hanzo knew that if the front line with Suna collapsed, Konoha would be free to consolidate its forces and crush the Rain. Logically, Hanzo would desperate to sabotage this peace treaty.
But wait. If they wanted to ruin the talks, why did they let the Kazekage just walk past them? An attack on Rasa, successful or not, would have guaranteed the Kage turned back, and the treaty would be dead in the water.
Hagoromo was about to ask this, but the thought died on his lips as an unsettling theory formed.
What if... Suna and Amegakure are in this together?
He shook his head immediately. That didn't make sense. Fundamentally, Suna was the one desperate for this war to end. What did they gain by sabotaging the treaty? The right to keep fighting a war they were losing? That was absurd. Suna wouldn't have sued for peace if they still had the strength to take on the Land of Fire.
If a Suna-Ame conspiracy was unrealistic, only one conclusion remained: these sixteen were suicide squads. Their mission was to sow maximum chaos by simultaneously attacking both Kage.
The reason they hadn't attacked Rasa wasn't complicated. On one hand, it was probably an unexpected variable for them; no plan survives contact with reality, and "Targets walk directly over us" was likely too good to be true. On the other hand, a sudden ambush from thirty meters underground was physically impossible. By the time they tunneled to the surface, Rasa's sensory team would have felt them and annihilated them before they even popped out of the sand.
"While they are collectively clustered," Hizashi mused, "the individual four-man cells are still separated from each other. Mission protocols demand we neutralize the threat immediately and silently. But given their depth and separation, forcing all sixteen to the surface simultaneously seems impossible... Shall we wait for Lord Minato's link?"
Hizashi spoke as if consulting Hagoromo, but his tone suggested a private monologue. He wasn't truly expecting an eleven-year-old to offer a viable solution, even if the rumors about this kid's feats were true. He knew Hagoromo possessed destructive power—supposedly capable of cracking a Tailed Beast—but that was the opposite of what was needed here. A massive energy strike on this sector would bury the enemy, yes, but the resultant seismic shockwave would alert every ninja in the Forbidden Zone.
Hizashi, of course, had no way of knowing that Hagoromo had already placed a verbal "Seal" on that overpowered technique. He couldn't use it now even if he wanted to, since (according to his own "official" explanation) that S-rank AOE required three or four years to accumulate sufficient chakra.
But time was running out. Hagoromo decided it was time to move.
"Can you give me their precise coordinates?" Hagoromo asked. "I need the exact distances between the squads and the specific depth of each cell."
He was looking down at the empty desert, thinking that he actually possessed one very specific technique that was perfect for this job.
He was about to bury them all at once.