Squad One
They took the lull like professionals.
Aika and Raizen sank cross-legged at the tree line, eyes closed, breathing slow until the tremor left their hands. Reina paced the perimeter with her katana bare, the chakra-metal edge humming faintly each time it kissed the whetstone. Karui stripped and rebuilt her kunai pouch twice, then shadow-boxed until the tightness in her shoulders bled out.
Raizen's last act was messiest: fresh ink, clean paper, seal tags lined like dominoes. He checked the knots on his supply roll, thumbed the last drying crest, and let out a careful breath.
Reina sheathed her blade with a soft click. "We've rested enough. Rendezvous point. Two days left—plenty to finish this exam if we move now."
No one argued. Packs snapped shut, steel slid home, and Squad One ghosted back into the brush.
⸻
Squad Two
They chose stone over trees—high, cold air that carried sound and hid heat. A small fire breathed behind a boulder, its smoke braided thin through the mountain wind. After taking Squad Three's scroll, they'd earned their hour. Now the hour was over.
"The objective is simple," Tetsuo said, cleaver resting across his shoulders like an iron beam. "Sabotage the last team. We take Squad One's scroll."
Mizue's fingers idly spun a thread of seal-ink wire, the line catching firelight. "That team has Raizen."
At the name, Daichi's jaw set. He didn't speak.
Tetsuo watched, filed it away, continued. "We already know their layout. The question is specialties."
"I took Fūinjutsu with Raizen," Mizue said. "He's good. Better than me on raw constructs. He likes layered triggers and bait seals."
"Reina was in my Ninjutsu class," Daichi added. "Lightning nature. But she only gets serious with a blade in hand. Aika's got a summoning contract—animal unknown. In straight combat she's the softest target… unless her summon flips the board."
Tetsuo nodded. "Karui?"
"Fast," Daichi said. "Hits like she means it."
"And tilts if you press the right buttons," Mizue murmured.
Tetsuo planted the cleaver in the dirt, point down, and looked at each of them in turn. "Good. Then listen up.
"Reina is mine. Her kenjutsu plus that chakra-metal katana is our biggest close-range problem. I anchor her and keep her blade busy.
"Daichi—you draw Karui. She'll come to you. Control the ground, make her overcommit, and—if you need the edge—chirp a few insults. She's predictable when she's mad, but don't get cocky.
"Riku—contain Raizen. Keep range. If he closes, punish his blind side and don't get caught staring at his tags. Force him to waste time reading you through vapor or movement—whatever you've got.
"Mizue—you open on Aika. Expect a summon. Cut her hand signs, snare the contract hand, and put her down clean. Then you flex to Riku and choke Raizen's space. Two on one; no heroics."
He pulled the cleaver free, slung it across his back, and let the silence settle.
"Our win condition is pressure. We don't trade duels—we collapse lanes. If their formation breaks, Reina loses her anchor, Karui loses her timing, Raizen loses his setup, and Aika loses her nerve."
Tetsuo's mouth curled, almost a smile. "Pack up. We hunt before they do."
⸻
The mountain pass funneled wind and footsteps into a single, whispering line. Squad One moved fast, boots light on shale, eyes always scanning.
Reina raised a hand. "This second phase won't stay simple."
Aika blinked. "What do you mean?"
"More opponents," Reina said. "Or a squad that set the board before we arrived."
They slowed. Reina laid it out without drama. "If we're forced into a fight: countermeasures, not heroics. Aika—you're support. Stay glued to Karui or me, and use your monkey to screen, scout, and disrupt. Karui, Raizen—your priority is breaking pressure and keeping lanes clear. Our mission is the scroll."
She looked to Raizen. "You carry it. If you can, prep decoys. Throwing off pursuit is as good as winning a clash. And restock those weight seals."
They moved again, tighter now, senses flaring.
Hours later the rendezvous ledge came into view—just as a shadow spun out from the rock face.
"Duck!" Reina snapped.
A lightning-charged fūma shuriken roared over their heads and buried itself in the wall with a thundercrack. Pebbles rained. Karui's blade was already up.
"Who the hell threw—"
Vapor rolled in. Cold, dense, swallowing depth until the world shrank to breath and heartbeat.
"Move!" Reina's voice was clipped. "Spread and speed out—we're not getting wiped by one technique!"
Raizen flicked his wrist. Fine chakra threads unspooled, one latching to each teammate. A pulse through the line gave him their positions like pins on a map.
Aika's voice came thin through haze. "It's an ambush. They were waiting."
A calm tenor rolled out from everywhere at once. "You walked yourselves into my mist. In here, the mountain listens to me, not you."
Then the voices split—five, ten—echoes that sounded exactly the same.
"Careful," Raizen warned. "Could be clones."
He spread more threads and hissed, "Raiton: Raimō (Lightning Web)." Lines lashed outward, tasting the air. Sensation bloomed along the filaments—mass, motion, cold water signature.
"Karui, three closing on you," he called.
Karui didn't wait to see. She ripped her katana through the fog in a brutal fan of cuts, metal singing.
Raizen angled toward Aika. "On me. Summon now."
Aika snapped her hands into the boar-ram— A fist punched out of the vapor. Raizen caught the wrist, yanked, and kneed—his strike met liquid. The body burst into water and reformed as pellets.
Three water bullets hammered him—chest, thigh, shoulder—driving air from his lungs. A follow-up hook clipped his cheek and shoved him back on loose gravel.
He rolled, threads clawing for purchase, but the veil chewed depth and distance. Two more shapes surged at him—then a red-furred blur dropped from above. Aika's scarlet langur gave a two-note chirr—ti-ti—latched onto one attacker's face, shrieking; Raizen jab-crossed the second, swept the legs, and both "men" collapsed into puddles.
"It's Squad Two!" Raizen barked. "Riku's Suiton: Kirigakure no Jutsu (Hidden Mist), Mizu Bunshin (Water Clones)!"
His web pinged. Reina and Karui—separate fights, far apart. Aika—crouched behind a spur of stone. He pulsed the tether on her and hauled; she slid into his arms and he sprang up to a shallow ledge on the wall.
He didn't make two steps.
"Gotcha," a voice purred—ink-cool and close. Raizen's limbs locked. Binding seal.
"Stunned!" Raizen gritted. "Check for tags!"
Aika swept his vest, fingers quick. Water bullets shrieked out of the murk like rifle fire. She slapped down a tag Raizen had given her—barrier flared and the impacts drummed harmlessly against the invisible pane.
"D→C-grade barrier," Raizen managed. "Stops bullets, not a full torrent."
In the same motion she grabbed him and body-flickered—back into the haze, deeper, angles broken.
"Sorry," she whispered. "Riku and Mizue are pairing—trap and drown."
"Yeah." Raizen flexed; the seal snapped with a crackle as he forced chakra through a release. "We either clear the mist or fight through it. And this route is mined."
"Monkey—traps," Aika ordered. The langur chirred and vanished into the veil, nimble hands already unthreading triplines.
"Raiton: Raimō," Raizen breathed again, threads splaying wider. A flicker—there. Two steady signatures. He palmed tags and let them fly. "Raiton: Senrin Shuriken (Sparking Shuriken)!"
Crackling discs knifed through vapor, forcing silhouettes to scatter as he advanced by feel, shuriken, and thread.
Inside the haze, Riku clicked his tongue. "He's onto us. If he gets closer, it's bad."
Mizue's reply was cool steel. "We're not here to finish him. We stall until Daichi or Tetsuo arrives. If he pushes, we yield ground and keep the mist up."
"His sensing will eat that plan," Riku said, already shifting lanes.
"Then our traps will have to earn their ink," Mizue murmured—and somewhere ahead a fresh lattice of seal-threads kissed wet stone.
Raizen felt the pattern a heartbeat before he stepped into it.
"Watch your feet," he warned Aika, eyes narrowed, as the mountain itself seemed to hold its breath—and a heavy, dragging footfall sounded from beyond the veil.
⸻
Raizen's threads hummed against his fingertips. "Aika, I can feel them. Not far—retreating by inches. They're baiting us for time."
"What do we do?" she whispered.
He grinned. "Ever wanted to be slingshotted?"
The pass went quiet. Far ahead, Riku and Mizue slowed, listening between the echoes of distant clashes.
"Did they give up?" Riku murmured.
"Maybe they retreated," Mizue said, though she didn't sound convinced. "Or—"
Something snapped tight around Riku's ankle.
He looked down. "What the—"
"Thread," Mizue said instantly. "Cut—now!"
A second line flicked out of the fog and cinched her wrist. When she tried to leap, the tether yanked her back with brutal, elastic force.
"Dammit—anchored," Riku hissed, reaching for a blade.
The air changed—pressure racing at them like a thrown spear.
"What is that—"
A shape hit him like a meteor.
BOOM.
Static crackled off Aika's boots; the wall spat dust like breath. Riku carved a groove in the rock and slid down, a dark smear trailing, then went still. The Kirigakure jutsu shredded, thinning to tatters as his chakra control failed.
Aika uncurled from the impact, boots smoking against stone, eyes bright.
⸻
Moments Earlier
Aika's breath plumed in the cold. "Are you sure this works? What if you miss?"
"It's not a miss if I pick the angle," Raizen said, already working. "Trust me."
He planted three anchors with quick, precise motions: two Raimō threads stitched deep into opposite outcrops behind them, a third sunk into the cliff face ahead to act as a pivot—an elastic bowstring the size of the pass. In parallel, he laid two hair-thin drag-lines on Riku's ankle and Mizue's wrist—too slack to trigger a substitution, designed to bite on command.
"Safety first." He slapped two tags on Aika's vest, twin glyphs nested. "Weight Seal: Feather on launch, Stone on impact. I'll toggle mid-flight."
She nodded and rolled her shoulders. "Tell me where to hit."
"Center mass. Riku's chest. Hands up, chin tucked. On my count."
He hunted through rock and vapor for the faint signatures he knew belonged to Mizue and Riku. The threads kissed, anchored. Insurance.
"Three… two… one—"
The world twanged.
Aika shot forward like a sling-stone, cloak snapping tight around her as she tucked. Mid-arc, Raizen flicked a pulse—Feather → Stone—and her momentum doubled off the sudden mass shift. At the last instant she extended, both heels lined like a battering ram.
Impact. Rock. Silence.
The mist blew out.
⸻
Mizue staggered as visibility returned—only to find a seal-thread cinch at her calf tightening with each twitch.
"Substitution—" she began, flashing through signs.
Aika's scarlet langur dropped from above with a ti-ti chirr, slapping a muffle tag across Mizue's forearm and kicking her hands wide. Raizen's sparking shuriken hissed past—splitting the ground at Mizue's feet and forcing her to hop into a waiting line. The binding snapped shut.
Mizue bared her teeth and popped a palm-flare—ink burst like black fireworks, spitting barbed threadlets that forced Aika to skid back and guard her eyes.
"Clear," Raizen said, already scanning through his web. His threads flared, locating the rest of Squad One across the broken pass. "Reina—south, eight hundred meters. Steel on stone."
From that direction, a cleaver rang against a katana with a sound like thunder.
"I'll back her," Aika said, already moving.
"I'll peel Daichi off Karui," Raizen replied, palm sparking as he reeled his lines back in. Far across the ridge, earth plates ground and a shout cut short. "Go."
They split—Aika sprinting along the ridge with her langur skittering ahead, Raizen dropping into the vapor-frayed path with threads humming, ready to turn the mountain into another weapon.