"What the hell!?" Chiyo exclaimed, for the first time that day, with wide, awake eyes as she stared at the massive purple poison cloud covering the place where most of the puppet corps were stationed. "What did that foolish boy do!?"
Then, she froze for a moment and woodenly turned toward Ren as a sudden realization struck her. "This is your job, isn't it?" She darkly asked, nearly growling. "The brat came to me with some outrageous ideas as of late. You pushed this stupidity into his head, didn't you?" She gave Ren a vicious glare.
Ren looked at her, especially watching her twitching fingers with the corner of his eye as he donned a wronged expression, "I will admit Kankuro came to me for advice, and we did discuss possible angles for taking the enemy by surprise. But I never expected him to just go for the most radical one and drown both his and the enemy side in poison." He exasperatedly explained, trying to pick his words carefully, lest the old woman start hurling senbon at him in outrage.
With senile people, one could never be sure. Sure, she was supposedly only pretending to be senile, but after interacting with her several times, Ren was no longer certain about that. At the very least, she definitely had more than one screw loose.
"You...!" Chiyo was about to retort, but Ebizo calmly put his hand on her shoulder.
"Calm down, sister. I am sure he told the boy to take precautions against friendly fire, right?" He spoke and gave Ren a heavy look that screamed, 'That better be the case.'
Ren wryly laughed, "Er, why are you asking me?" He replied, not making the Suna ninjas around him very happy. But what else was he supposed to say? It wasn't as if he planned this with Kankuro! He only provided the idea.
Seeing the unfriendly looks aimed at him, Ren huffed and turned toward the guy in charge of logistics. "Was there a request for a large-scale provision of specific antidotes? Say, enough to feed an entire army down there?" He dryly asked, making the logistics guy blink.
But everybody here was Suna's cream of the crop. They were all smart, so several eyes brightened with understanding and expectantly turned toward the poor logistics guy, who started sweating as he tried to remember.
"Oh! Yeah!" He finally answered, trying not to cringe as the looks aimed at him became quite fearsome after he stayed silent for over ten seconds. "Three days ago, we fulfilled a request to provide the army with an antidote to a specific poison alongside their breakfast. It should last them a week in their system, I believe."
Many important Suna ninjas around let out huge sighs of relief, while Ren rolled his eyes. Kankuro was smart. He wouldn't go for suicide, that would take hundreds of his comrades alongside him.
'Seriously, have some faith, people.' Ren inwardly grumbled.
Outwardly, however, he gave Chiyo an expectant look full of innocence, clearly expecting an apology. But the old woman just returned him a look drier than the desert before sniffing. Then, her face scrunched into a senile look, and she exclaimed in a silly tone, "Eeh? What were we talking about just now?"
Ren deadpanned at her, but she unashamedly turned around with a shrug, "Oh, well. It couldn't have been that important if I forgot!" Then, as if noticing the poison cloud for the first time, her eyes went wide. "Ah!" She gasped. "Which monumental idiot," Her eyes glanced at Ren, "had the idea to use poison like that!?"
Ren's eyebrow twitched. "Insufferable bitch." He muttered under his nose, loud enough for Chiyo to hear, while next to him, Ebizo chuckled at their antics.
They slowly returned to watching the battle from their lofty, elevated position, and Ren started to note that, despite the carnage on display, it was mostly the weaker and less experienced ninjas who were dying. The more experienced Jonin and Chunin became casualties from time to time, too, but for the most part, those who had much better battlefield awareness.
When they encountered somebody who could match them or got into an unfavorable position, they usually retreated. This applied to both sides, so many fights devolved into a game of cat and mouse before both sides disengaged. As such, the higher-level ninjas did not tend to die that often.
Of course, there were some, like the poor sods that Temari flash-cooked with her scorching winds. They were simply at the wrong time in the wrong place.
But even there, Ren noticed, the Iwa forces started to adapt and learn how to combat her techniques without suffering massive casualties. They no longer used just a vertical rock wall for defense. Now, they scattered into several smaller teams and used full earth domes to shield themselves from her attacks.
Their push might have come to a complete halt in that part of the battlefield, and they might not be capable of advancing even twenty meters before being pushed back, but at the same time, their turtling strategy forced Temari and her forces to be focused on them.
'They are keeping her aggro quite well.' Ren wryly thought. Temari was no doubt frustrated beyond belief by now, but she couldn't do much with the position she found herself in.
She had a large-scale, scarily powerful wind technique that only got more dangerous with Ren's new seal on her war fan. And with the war fan corps using their own wind jutsu, they were pretty much creating a localized hurricane on the battlefield. But at the same time, the Iwa forces were experts in defensive Earth Techniques, and they worked well together to shield their side from harm.
Ren suddenly frowned as his chakra senses pinged something peculiar. Creating a clone, discreetly enough that Onoki would not notice, Ren had it use the Hiding Like a Mole technique and rush through the ground closer to that side of the battlefield.
Only Ebizo glanced at him, feeling a small chakra fluctuation from Ren, who slightly shook his head at his questioning look.
Three minutes later, Ren got his answer, and his expression turned a bit grim. He spoke toward Ebizo, "Can you have somebody relay a message to Temari? The bunkering ninjas are also trying to dig up a tunnel underground toward her frontlines. They are halfway through, and the Explosion Corps is also on that side of the battlefield."
He didn't need to say more. Iwa's plan became obvious. They wanted to bomb the war fan corps from below. A simple plan. But Ren had to admit it would have been effective if he hadn't noticed the small fluctuations of earth chakra faintly brushing against his earth-based sensing technique.
With a nod, Ebizo quickly sent a chunin to warn Temari while Ren started to focus more on trying to discover any other underground tunnels with his earth sensing.
It was quite a hassle because of the distance between him and the battlefield, but alas, he had to stay in his position as a deterrent to Onoki. He had to make a do.
"So... Scorch Release. That's quite the news to me. When did Temari awaken that? Keeping secrets from me. That girl. Sigh. This old man feels sad." Ebizo suddenly started making small talk as Temari unleashed yet another hellishly scorching wind at the Iwa ninjas in front of her.
Surprised, Ren turned toward him, but he had to admit, there wasn't much active help they could provide right now, so he guessed they could afford to get a bit distracted with small talk.
"Don't look so pitiful." Ren snorted, "It is a recent development. She can only use it in a limited fashion, thanks to a seal I made and because she has the unawakened bloodline. That's pretty much a prototype."
"Truly?" Ebizo exclaimed in surprise. "We did quite the thorough lineage check on her before we married her off to you, but we didn't discover any ties to anybody with Scorch Release in the past hundred years."
'Checking her breeding value, were they?' Ren thought in distaste, but he didn't voice that complaint. He reckoned that to them, this was just a standard procedure.
"Don't ask me. I have no idea." He casually shrugged, "All I can tell you is that she had it from her mother's side, according to our findings."
"Pakura, huh? And here I was hoping you could give people artificial bloodlines with your seals." Ebizo mournfully said, causing Ren to give him a sardonic smile.
Yeah, wouldn't that be something? He inwardly rolled his eyes.
For a few moments, they stayed silent before Ebizo finally spoke, "She should also have an unawakened Magnet Release from her father's side." Ren turned toward him and raised his eyebrows at him. Ebizo, however, just nonchalantly hummed, "Just saying."
"Right." Ren snorted in amusement.
Though he would be lying if he said Ebizo's words didn't give him ideas. He kind of forgot about that little nugget of information. But the old man was right. Temari also should have a potential for Magnet Release.
He involuntarily started to wonder about the possibilities. His blonde girl was just a treasure trove for bloodline seal experimentation, now, wasn't she?