Ten minutes earlier, on the eastern edge of Training Ground Zero.
Dusk slanted through the canopy. Roots coiled like snakes under the ferns, and a faint violet haze steamed above the treetops.
"Woof."
Akamaru lounged atop Kiba's head, paws kneading his hair, tail swishing. His nose twitched as he sifted scents from the air.
Shino, dark glasses hiding his eyes, rested his chin on his hand. A few kikaichū crawled over his fingertips.
"There is a wide tear in the fence ahead. The beasts are coming through there," Hinata said, veins standing like thorny branches at her temples.
"Mm. My kikaichū say there is a strange compound in the air. The source is the same direction," Shino murmured.
"Akamaru too. He says just smelling it makes his whole body boil," Kiba added, refusing to be outdone.
They were a rare trio of pure sensors. Trouble had not yet broken, but they felt the wrongness first. With Byakugan's absurd range and the Inuzuka clan's beast-repellent powder dusted over their clothes, they had little fear of ambush. They moved straight toward the source.
"Maybe we should go back. I am a little scared," Hinata whispered, pale eyes darting as glimpses of feral beasts flashed through the brush, tearing at one another.
"Hinata, we are the strongest sensing team in the Academy," Kiba thumped his chest, a sharp canine flashing. "With our range, if we pick up hostile chakra we can run before it hits."
Akamaru rapped Kiba's skull with a tiny paw.
"Right. The strongest sensing team and one dog," Kiba corrected quickly, rubbing his forehead.
Hinata kept walking. It was not that Kiba had convinced her. She was simply bad at refusing friends and dreaded conflict more than fear.
"The airborne signal is growing concentrated. We are close," Shino warned after a brief exchange with his insects.
The two boys and one dog nodded and slipped ahead. Thanks to Kiba's powder, no beasts lunged from the undergrowth.
Soon they reached the breach Hinata had seen. The fence, usually tough as wire sinew, gaped with a tear over three meters long. Beasts, clearly not right, shoved through as if funneled by a tide. Even when prey stood within reach, they did not strike. They barreled deeper into the ground as if summoned.
"Here," Kiba grinned, pumping a fist.
A gap that size was no animal's work. Someone had cut it. The hand behind it would be just beyond.
"Hinata. Use your Byakugan," Shino said, taking the lead.
"Yes."
Hinata formed the Ram seal.
"Byakugan, open."
Veins swelled further. The distance collapsed into her eyes.
"How is it," Kiba asked, unable to sit still.
"It looks like only one woman. And a few swallows," Hinata said, brows knit. "No chakra. Her musculature is weak. She is a civilian."
"A civilian," Kiba blurted. Even Shino faltered.
It was not that they despised ordinary people. Chakra drew a hard line in this world. In the Warring States age those with chakra were treated like gods. A civilian stirring trouble in Konoha sounded ridiculous.
"Let us see," Kiba said, interest spiking now that the danger seemed small.
"I will have the kikaichū confirm," Shino replied. He did not deny the plan. A civilian was unlikely to threaten them.
They waited as the insects fanned out. The report came back clean. No chakra. No other signatures. No traps.
They crept forward.
Sawada Fuka's face was bare of makeup, beautiful and bloodless. She wore high boots and a green field jacket, a matching pack on her back as if she had blurred herself into the forest's shade.
She checked the dial hidden on the inside of her wrist.
Five minutes left.
Three jonin from Kumogakure would strike Konoha's front gate. The goal was not to smash through and fight their way to the opposite side of the village to snatch the Nine-Tails. Not even the Fourth Raikage could do that.
All three were speed specialists in Lightning Release taijutsu. The frontal assault was a lure to drag Konoha's attention to the walls and buy time for the real objective at Training Ground Zero: the Byakugan and the Nine-Tails.
That was the first layer, a feint to the east to strike in the west.
Next, Fuka's drugged beasts would run wild among students. Beasts were weaker than shinobi, and Academy instructors watched over the ground, so casualties would be unlikely. The ruckus would split the Academy's focus while giving them the comforting illusion that a little extra effort would fix it without bothering the Hokage.
That was the second layer, revealing weakness to mislead.
The last layer was the killing stroke.
Fuka drew a small scroll from her pack. Even unrolled fully it was under a meter, no wider than a handkerchief. Crooked sealing script filled it edge to edge. It was the same scroll her swallows had carried back from Kumogakure.
She followed the instructions. She laid the scroll flat on the dirt, bit her thumb, and smeared blood across the last line of characters.
She waited.
The seal reacted. Lines of script seemed to wake and crawl off the paper to inscribe a formation across the soil.
A hum flickered along the surface, pulses like fireflies chasing one another.
The second hand on her wristwatch ticked in its tiny circle.
Fuka stepped back and counted down in her head.
Ten. Eight.
The strokes thickened, roots running under leaf mold.
The glow brightened, strobing like a signal through wire.
Five. Four.
The closer it came, the heavier the weight on her chest.
If the relay failed, the day was ruined. Her years as a spy would stretch further into a horizon she could not stand.
Worry frayed her focus.
She did not hear Kiba slip in behind her.
"Fang Over Fang."
Kiba barked. His body spun into a drilling blur and lunged.
Fuka jolted, frozen. At the last instant, wings drummed her cheek. One of her swallows slammed into her face. It held no power to stop the blow, but the shock snapped her awake. She twisted and threw herself right, Kiba's vortex passing a finger-width from her ribs. She hit the ground hard and dirty, breathless and alive.
"Missed," Kiba said, smudged with paint and disappointed, the cool image of a whirling spear already fading.
A streak of red shot skyward. Hinata had fired a flare to summon the instructors to arrest the skulking woman.
"It is fine. I have it," Shino said. His collar shadowed his face as he lifted the scroll from the ground.
Fuka's eyes went wide.
The seal was buried under a living carpet of kikaichū. The firefly flicker of chakra was gone, eaten to nothing by Shino's colony.
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