With Konoha's reinforcements in place, the tide began to turn.
The counteroffensive pushed the front line out of the Land of Fire's border territory and into the Land of Rivers itself.
The Land of Rivers sat wedged between the Land of Fire and the Land of Wind, helpless, watching two great nations wage war across its soil.
There were always people naive enough to believe that obedience kept small countries safe. But neutrality required the strength to enforce it. Without that, you were clay in larger hands.
The Land of Fire was forest, dense and green. The Land of Rivers was something else entirely: a vast canyon system running north to south, cutting across the whole country like a rift valley from some ancient geological upheaval. The terrain made trade nearly impossible, and poverty followed.
The canyon severed the forest's westward creep. The closer you got to the Land of Wind, the deeper the gorges plunged. Branching ravines drained the groundwater, and relentless seasonal winds did the rest. The Land of Wind was parched, barren, scoured by sand.
Within the main canyon, smaller gorges carved the earth into a maze of flat-topped mesas dotted with loose stone.
As the front advanced, Konoha's forces established a new command camp inside the Land of Rivers.
Once Teju and Kurenai had fully recovered, Squad 9 drew a C-rank assignment: perimeter sentry duty during the camp's construction phase.
Teju laid traps along their designated approach corridor. Sora stood on a boulder with binoculars, scanning the distance. Kurenai sat cross-legged with her scrolls, still studying whatever her father had given her.
Terrain like this is a defender's paradise. Natural trenches everywhere, perfect for concealment and infiltration. The fighting up ahead had to be brutal.
The binoculars couldn't reach that far, but Sora knew what was happening beyond the horizon. Konoha's mid-to-upper-rank ninja were grinding through a war of attrition. Akimichi-sensei was out there. Minato was out there.
Casualties streamed back to the medical wing daily. Squads rotated through camp for rest, most of them short-handed, waiting for command to reassemble them with whatever personnel remained.
Teju gazed up at Sora on his perch with envy. Sora had been jumping higher and higher lately. Then Teju looked down at himself, tried to see his feet past his stomach, and couldn't.
Maybe it's time for a diet.
No genin squads had been sent to the active front. They handled the periphery: patrols, supply runs, sentry work.
Sora swept his binoculars methodically. To the west lay the main battlefield. If Sand ninja appeared from that direction, it meant the front had collapsed and a three-person sentry post was irrelevant. Unlikely. He focused south and north instead, watching for flanking attempts on the camp while it was still under construction.
Three days of this. Three days of constant tension, not a second of slack, until the relief squad arrived.
He tracked the northern river through his lenses, following every moving shape in his field of vision.
His squad had already botched one mission. They were flagged at command. Nara Masatake wouldn't hesitate to pile on if given the chance.
Scanning along the riverbank, something caught his eye. Today was different. Fresh animal carcasses lay near the water's edge.
Dead animals in the wild weren't unusual. But dying animals didn't go looking for water. They didn't have the energy. Especially not here, where the rivers ran at the bottom of steep gorges. Dragging a failing body down those slopes would be near impossible.
He thought back. The past few days, a dead fish had drifted by now and then.
"Teju. Kurenai. We're checking the river."
The three descended into the gorge. Along the bank, several small carcasses lay in the shallows. Young animals, none of them fully grown.
"Should we report to command immediately? These don't look like natural deaths." Kurenai scooped a sample of river water into a bamboo tube.
"Let's head upstream first, see if we can find the source. Could be natural. Better to confirm before we raise an alarm."
They followed the riverbed upstream, careful not to stray too far from their assigned sector.
The farther they went, the worse it got. More dead fish. More carcasses along the banks.
"That's far enough. We're heading back."
Sora wasn't about to give Masatake a reason to come down on them for abandoning their post. They turned around with their water samples.
Kurenai took the samples and ran for the Command Tent to file a report. Sora and Teju held their position until the relief squad arrived, briefed them on the river anomaly, and headed back to the main camp.
The moment they walked in, a runner directed them to the Command Tent. Kurenai was already inside, waiting.
Only one officer sat at the head of the tent: Nara Masatake, alone. The fighting at the front had intensified enough that Danzo could no longer stay behind at the command camp.
Below the deputy commander, four ninja and a dog stood in formation alongside Kurenai.
Sora looked at the adult leading the other squad. Pineapple hair. The unmistakable Nara clan silhouette.
This is going to be bad.
"Sentry teams have reported an issue with our camp's water supply," Masatake began, addressing both squads. "Lab results are back. It's a slow-acting poison. For this type of toxin to be effective at river-volume dilution, someone would need to be introducing it continuously, upstream."
He let that settle.
"You are hereby assigned a joint B-rank mission: locate the source of the contamination and eliminate it. Chunin Nara Sakuji will serve as squad leader. Genin Kazeki Sora is appointed temporary second-in-command. Complete the mission."
Nara Sakuji's squad comprised three other members: Inuzuka Natsuko, Hyuga Yuka, and Aburame Daigo.
A textbook tracking and reconnaissance unit. The Inuzuka tracked by scent. The Hyuga could spot enemies kilometers away with the Byakugan. The Aburame deployed insects for covert surveillance. Add a Nara trained from birth to process and synthesize intelligence, and the squad's specialty was obvious.
As long as they didn't charge headlong into a fight, this team was nearly impossible to kill. Enemies detected from kilometers out, threat assessed before contact, escape route mapped before the first kunai flew.
Must be nice, being born with useful abilities.
What galled him was the command structure. Putting a Nara chunin in charge of a joint squad that included Sora, specifically as Sora's direct superior? That was deliberate. Masatake couldn't win against Danzo, so he was taking it out on the genin who'd embarrassed him.
Sora finally understood why Teju's father was so careful around clan ninja. If Nara Masatake stayed deputy commander at the front, Sora would end up dead by administrative attrition sooner or later.
He looked at the two pineapple heads: Masatake on the dais, Sakuji on the floor below.
Not a decent human being among them.
Somewhere out there, Akimichi-sensei's squad was falling apart, and their sensei didn't even know it. Sora was a freshly graduated genin with no connections and no leverage.
There was nothing he could do.