"It must be an enemy invasion."
A Konoha jōnin spoke with certainty.
Instead of stopping at Uchiha Yashiro's tent, he rushed past it and dove straight into the tent belonging to the Yamanaka clan.
Inside Yashiro's tent, the gathered Uchiha weren't surprised by the distant explosion.
"Oh? Have they already engaged?"
A three-tomoe Sharingan user asked calmly.
They all knew of Yashiro's plan. The Fourth Squad had been deliberately chosen to be sacrificed—an opportunity to eliminate political rivals who refused to obey the clan head, all under the guise of battle losses. That way, there would be no gossip among Konoha's shinobi.
Most importantly, this plan aligned with Clan Head Fugaku's will.
If some of Hiruzen Sarutobi's old loyalists didn't die, they would never truly surrender to Uchiha rule. Even if they witnessed Fugaku's overwhelming power, they would still cling stubbornly to resistance.
Fugaku would not allow such an opportunity to slip away. A few hardliners simply had to be removed.
That was why he sent one of his most capable subordinates, Uchiha Yashiro, to personally oversee the border outpost.
"Lord Yashiro, the Fourth Squad consists of five jōnin. Can Kumogakure's forces really deal with them?" one Uchiha asked.
Yashiro replied, "According to the intel from our spies, the Cloud has deployed quite a few shinobi. Dealing with five jōnin shouldn't be an issue."
Still, even Yashiro felt a flicker of doubt. The spies in Kumogakure had only been recently established. It was already impressive that they managed to warn of a Cloud strike against the outpost.
Unfortunately, the Konoha operative who had handled those spies—a member of the Sarutobi clan—was killed during the clan's extermination. Since the spy network was structured as one-way communication for safety, contact was now lost.
Some of the Cloud spies had even reached positions inside the Raikage's administration, but that was useless now. All they knew was that Kumogakure had dispatched a strike force—they didn't even know who commanded it.
"I just hope these Kumogakure shinobi aren't useless," muttered Uchiha Masato.
"No matter," Yashiro said coldly. "Let's whittle them down as much as we can. Even if a few of ours escape, we'll arrange for them to cover our retreat."
Yashiro's real plan wasn't to flee immediately. He intended to clash with the enemy while retreating, letting the outpost experience a crushing defeat. Then, once Fugaku's reinforcements arrived and destroyed the pursuing Cloud forces, the survivors would have no choice but to revere the Uchiha clan head as a god.
If the border forces bent the knee, dissent in Konoha would vanish. Their available manpower would expand, and Fugaku's control would grow absolute.
But events didn't unfold quite as Yashiro anticipated.
---
In the Yamanaka tent, several shinobi held their breath as one of their clan members performed a secret technique on the unconscious captive brought back by the jōnin.
Normally, such invasive techniques were reserved for the dead. Using them on the living often left the target a mindless husk. But with time short and the Fourth Squad already engaged, the Yamanaka clan shinobi was urged to proceed immediately.
He pressed his hands together and sank his chakra into the captive's mind. Since the prisoner was unconscious, the jutsu faced no resistance and quickly reached the depths of memory.
The Yamanaka began to sift through the man's recollections.
Useless… skip. Useless… skip…
At last, he reached the fragments he sought—Kumogakure gathering shinobi for battle.
The Yamanaka's face tensed. This wasn't a mere intimidation tactic. The Cloud had actually mobilized for war.
From the scout's memory, at least thirty jōnin were present, along with ten special jōnin and nearly ninety chūnin and genin. A force of nearly one hundred shinobi—ten times the strength of the Fourth Squad.
If they were surrounded, annihilation was certain.
The Yamanaka silently mourned for the Fourth Squad. At the very least, their sacrifice had bought the outpost precious time. Now Konoha could choose whether to fight or retreat on its own terms.
He pressed deeper, searching for the identity of the enemy commander. In war, a single high-level shinobi could determine the outcome.
If it was the AB Combination—the Fourth Raikage A and his brother, Killer B, the Eight-Tails' perfect jinchūriki—the outpost stood no chance.
The technique fast-forwarded through memories like a film reel until the enemy commander appeared: a towering, bronze-skinned man with light yellow hair and a white cape.
When the Yamanaka operative saw his face clearly, his heart nearly stopped.
It was the Fourth Raikage himself.
---