So far, too easy.
Ryugo picked up the lock with a simple Thunder Clap (D) jutsu. Opening the gate, he and Tetsu infiltrated the massive concrete dam. They slipped onto the walkway, hiding in the shadows. The control room was one hundred and fifty meters ahead, its windows glowing yellow in the grey gloom.
Ryugo raised a fist. Hold.
He focused his Raikōgan, pushing his perception deeper into the building. The four signatures were there, but their chakra…it was unexpectedly blurry. They did not the relaxed posture of guards on a boring shift. It was the patient tension of hunters at a blind.
"It's a trap", he breathed, the words barely audible, "The whole situation...they are not regular shinobi"
Before he could signal a retreat, the world changed.
The mist around them didn't just thicken—it solidified. One moment they were shrouded in vapor, the next they were encased in a transparent, gel-like prison that clung to their limbs and choked their breath. It wasn't water.
It was chakra-saturated mist, woven into a tangible net.
Genjutsu-Ninjutsu Hybrid: Mist Binding Snare (B-Rank).
"Kai!" Tetsu and Ryugo spat in unison. The genjutsu component shattered, but the physical chakra-mist held for a critical second, slowing them, revealing their positions.
From the mist above the walkway, four figures dropped down, landing in perfect formation.
No Tanigakure insignias.
Generic grey and green gear, masks covering the lower half of their faces. But their eyes… they held a cold, assessing gleam that Ryugo recognized. Eyes of predators.
[Tanigakure Operative 'Stalker' – Lv. 52 Jonin]
[Tanigakure Operative 'Brawler' – Lv. 38 Chunin]
[Tanigakure Operative 'Fang' – Lv. 36 Chunin]
[Tanigakure Operative 'Veil' – Lv. 34 Chunin]
The leader, 'Stalker,' held a hand casually on the hilt of a wakizashi (small Japanese sabre)
His voice was calm, almost amused. "See? Told you. They sent more rats. At this rate, the southern Amegakure batallion will be left with scraps. Fang, Veil, you go and take care of the other that has gone to the exit"
He continued, revealing Ryugo's plan: "Going for a pincer attack? Now that's ruthless. If the necessary precautions had not been made, it would have been a heavy blow for our village"
They had been expected. Not just suspected, but prepared for. Their patrol patterns, the bait in the control room… it was a script, and Team 11 had walked onto the stage.
Ryugo expected some level of preparation, but operatives from Tanigakure? They did not even try to hide their identity. It meant that they did not plan for any of them to survive the encounter.
One jonin, three fairly trained chunins.
The major hidden villages only had between 10 000 and 15 000 shinobi at this point. Most were recovering from the first shinobi war. More than 80% of those were genin. The rest were chunins, and only a select few who had the right amount of talent and resource would reach jonin rank. This meant that those hidden villages only had a few hundreds of jonins in total.
Ryugo did not have the complete data required to assess the major hidden village's strength, but even a famed village like Amegakure only had a little more than a hundred jonins, and that was including the JITE and Dark Hall Tower forces.
But a village like Tanigakure? They might not even have one hundred of them.
To assign this level of protection allocated to a single civil asset. There was something deeply wrong.
"Ambush!" Ryugo barked, no longer caring for silence, "Tetsu, support! I'll handle the leader!"
The enemy moved before his words finished.
'Brawler' and 'Fang,' the two chunins, disappearing, shooting towards Ameruyi's location. Brawler was a mountain of muscle. Fang was slender, moving with a serpentine grace, twin kodachi already drawn.
A taijutsu and kenjutsu specialist. It seemed like they did not just lay this trap here. They had observed them, and matched them against opponents for individual skirmishes. They wanted to kill them, and erase their existence altogether. Since it was a covert operation, it would just harm Amegakure, without giving them an opportunity to retaliate.
An innovative, cruel trap.
Meanwhile, the chunin 'Veil', a woman with cold, calculating eyes behind her mask, lunged for Tetsu. Her hands moved in rapid seals. It seemed like she was a ninjutsu specialist. Against Tetsu who seemed to be of genjutsu specialisation, it was the right matchup indeed...if Tetsu was normal that is.
"Doton: Earth-Style Rock Fists (C)!"
The walkway itself erupted around Tetsu, giant stone fists punching up from the concrete to crush him. However, he had trained with Ryugo.
"Substitution no jutsu (D)!"
He saw it coming and dodged the attack with a substitution jutsu, his smaller frame and agility allowing him to navigate through the barrage.
He flung a volley of shuriken, not at her, but at the mist around her, each blade trailing a nearly invisible wire of chakra.
"Genjutsu: Wireframe Labyrinth (C)!"
The wires didn't physically trap her. To Veil's eyes, the world became a shifting, confusing grid of lines, distorting distance and direction. She snarled, forming another seal.
"Kuchiyose: Summoning Jutsu!"
A puff of smoke, and a large, sleek barn owl appeared on her shoulder, its eyes glowing with shared vision. It would see through the visual distortion for her.
Tetsu didn't falter. As the owl took flight, he flung a single, special senbon. It wasn't aimed at the owl's body, but at the space between its wingbeats, a trajectory so improbable it shouldn't have connected. The senbon pierced the owl's primary feather, not killing it, but tangling its wing. The creature shrieked, spiraling momentarily, breaking its mistress's visual link.
This left Ryugo and the Jonin, 'Stalker'
Stalker hadn't drawn his wakizashi.
He stood calmly as Ryugo activated his Storm-Cage Blade, lightning sheathing the Storm-Sever katana with a furious crackle.
"A dojutsu user", Stalker observed, his tone one of clinical interest, "Kagutsu clan, then. The bounty hunter's eye. I haven't fought one of you since the first shinobi war. Let's see how the new generation fares against my sword"
He moved. There was no flashy technique, no dramatic charge. One moment he was ten feet away, the next he was inside Ryugo's guard, a kunai aimed with surgical precision at his Raikōgan eye. It was faster than any movement Ryugo had faced.
"Raiton: Thunderous Step (B)!"
Ryugo didn't dodge backwards.
He used the jutsu to blink laterally, the stochastic lightning-step carrying him in a jagged, unpredictable line along the walkway railing.
Stalker's kunai passed through empty air. Ryugo retaliated from his new position, a sweeping Lightning Arc(D) aimed low, not to hit, but to force Stalker into the air.
Stalker simply jumped, but as he did, his hands flashed through seals faster than Ryugo could track.
"Fūton: Vacuum Blade (C)!"
Invisible blades of compressed air, sharper than steel, sliced through the space Ryugo had just occupied, shearing through the iron railing like paper. Ryugo felt the wind pressure tear at his flak jacket. This jonin was a wind specialist, and his control was monstrous.
Ryugo landed, his mind cold.
Close combat was suicide against this speed. He needed space, needed to break the jonin's rhythm. He formed the long, complex sequence for White Lion Storm Bite (B), chakra gathering in a torrent.
Stalker's eyes narrowed. "A B-rank jutsu? Ambitious."
He didn't try to interrupt. Instead, he formed a single seal with one hand while the other flung three kunai in a fan.
"Fūton: Great Wind Bullet!"
The small, dense orb of wind he launched collided with Ryugo's forming lion head not head-on, but at a glancing angle. It didn't stop the technique. It deflected it.
The roaring lion of lightning veered off course, slamming into the dam's concrete face in a spectacular, sizzling explosion of debris, well away from Stalker.
*BOOOM*
The three kunai, meanwhile, arrived at Ryugo's blind spots. He twisted, his Raikōgan tracking their electrical trails, his sword batting two aside. The third grazed his thigh, a line of fire.
He's playing with me, Ryugo realized with a chill. Testing my limits. Starving my chakra pool.
A few hundreds meters below, Ameruyi was a tempest, one against two.
Tetsu's fight was a silent horror.
For the first time, team 11 was trapped in a predicament.