The routine of D-rank missions was broken by a simple scroll sealed with green ink. A C-rank mission.
"If you complete it with sound judgment and efficiency," Saito said, his voice as flat as ever, but his gray eyes scanning the three of them, "I'll consider you mature enough not to die stupidly in the Chūnin Exams. That will be your reward."
Hana jumped for joy, her eyes sparkling. "We'll make it, Sensei! I promise!"
Daiki thumped his fist into his palm, a spark of serious determination replacing his usual nervousness. "Finally, a real mission!"
Kaito, inwardly, assessed. A C-rank mission for supervised genin usually meant something like escorting a merchant along a road infested with petty bandits, or investigating a non-violent border dispute. But Saito wasn't the kind of sensei who coddled them. This would be a true test.
The mission: Investigate and report on the attacks of a "wild beast" that had decimated a small farming village on the border between the Land of Fire and a minor neutral territory. Elimination only if the threat was manageable. Priority: intelligence gathering.
The journey was silent and swift. Saito made them run at a pace that tested Hana and Daiki's stamina, and which Kenji, thanks to his brutal training, pretended to keep up with, albeit with some effort. The landscape changed from the familiar forests of Konoha to rugged hills and seldom-traveled valleys.
The smell reached them first.
A capricious wind carried a whiff of rotting meat, dried iron, and excrement. Hana stopped dead in her tracks, placing a hand over her nose and mouth. Her face paled.
"Control yourselves," Saito ordered, without breaking stride. "Death smells like this. Get used to it, or die."
As they reached the top of a hill, the village unfolded before them. Or what was left of it. A dozen mud-and-wood huts, reduced to charred skeletons and collapsed structures. There was no movement to be seen, save for the heavy, black buzzing of flies, forming low clouds above dark shapes scattered across the ground.
As they descended, the sight worsened. The corpses weren't whole. Pieces. An arm here, a torn torso there. The earth, a dark, sticky brown, was dotted with arcs and patches of dried blood.
Hana couldn't hold back any longer. She turned and vomited violently against a rock, trembling. Daiki was livid, his fists clenched until his knuckles turned white, but he stood firm, his eyes darting from one horror to another.
Kaito breathed through his mouth, his mind instantly switching from "student" mode to "Yakuza veteran" mode. He'd seen mangled bodies before, the results of messy score-settling. But this… this had a different quality. It wasn't the chaos of a gang fight. It was methodical.
"Report says 'wild beast,'" Saito murmured, kneeling beside a partially decomposed corpse. "Look. Not claws. Cuts. Clean. Razor-sharp." He pointed to the edge of a wound on what appeared to be a torso. "And here… embedded stone shards, minor burns. Low-power explosives, but targeted."
He stood, his cold eyes scanning the ruins. "This wasn't an animal. This was an operation. Clean-up. Or practice."
Kenji's heart pounded. Organized bandits? Mercenaries? Deserters? Any option was bad.
"Team, standard scouting formation," Saito ordered. "Hana, cover the rear and left flank. Daiki, point. Kaito, right flank. I'll take the center. We advance slowly. Look for any clues other than bodies: discarded weapons, footprints, traces of residual chakra."
They moved like ghosts through the ruins, the silence broken only by the buzzing of flies and Daiki's cautious footsteps. Kenji sharpened his senses, filtering the scent of death, searching for anomalies. He saw a broken kunai, of a generic design. A button print in the mud, too distinct to be from a villager. And then, something gleamed among the rubble of a hut: a piece of dark green cloth with a pattern of water droplets embroidered along the edge.
A symbol…
"Sensei! Here it is—!" Daiki began, from his position.
Then the air was cut.
A sharp whistle, followed by a dry THWACK. A large, serrated shuriken lodged itself in the wood inches from Daiki's head.
"CONTACT! ENEMIES TO THE RIGHT!" Saito roared, his body tensing like a spring.
From behind the rubble of the main farmhouse, three figures rose. They weren't adults. They were young, perhaps the age of a Chunin or advanced Genin. They wore the armbands of Takigakure, the Hidden Waterfall Village. But their faces didn't show the tension of a chance encounter. They displayed a mixture of surprise, alertness, and… irritation?
The one at the front, a slender young man with his black hair tied back and a scar on his cheek, brandished a short katana that dripped a dark liquid (fresh blood?). Beside him, a girl with short red hair and sharp eyes held an unrolled scroll. The third, a more robust figure, carried a large warhammer over his shoulder.
"Konoha," the leader spat, his voice harsh. "You arrived earlier than expected. This is getting complicated."
Saito remained unfazed. "Team 11, defensive position. These aren't scouts. They're the ones who caused this." His gray gaze was glacial. "Explanation. Now."
The red-haired girl smiled, a gesture devoid of warmth. "The explanation is simple, Konoha sensei. This village was in an inconvenient location. And we… we're clearing things out for our client. Too bad you have to be witnesses."
The atmosphere, already heavy with death, was saturated with a new tension: hostile chakra. The reconnaissance mission had just transformed, in an instant, into a fight for survival against shinobi from another village who clearly had no intention of leaving any witnesses.
Kenji felt the familiar rush of adrenaline, not from fear, but from cold calculation. Takigakure. Organized enemies, probably experienced. Hana is shaken. Daiki is brutish. Saito is an unknown in combat.
He looked at his companions, seeing the fear in Hana's eyes and the simmering rage in Daiki's. His plan to build a group, his "pillars," was about to face its first real test. And the price of failure wouldn't be a failed exam.
It would be an anonymous grave in a ghost town.