"Pour me another bowl," Tsunade said, holding out her empty dish. "That was disturbingly good."
I ladled more soup from the pot, watching steam curl up from the surface. "Disturbingly?"
"It feels... wrong."
"Wrong how?"
"Bad food builds character. Good food makes you soft."
"So you're saying I'm making you soft?"
"I'm saying you're making me question everything I know about field cooking." She took a long sip and sighed contentedly. "And I hate how much I like it."
I settled back with my own bowl, letting the warmth seep into my bones. "So about this mission..."
"Right. Tracking down ambushers." She gestured vaguely with her chopsticks. "Classic wartime shinobi work. It's defensive, protecting our supply lines, and proactive, hunting the hunters before they can hunt us."
"Hunt the hunters who hunt the hunters," I said.
"What?"
"Never mind. Inside joke with myself."
"You tell yourself jokes?"
"Sometimes I'm the only one who gets them."
"That's sad."
"That's selective humor."
She rolled her eyes. "Anyway, supply line raids are Warfare 101. Suna knows it, we know it, everyone knows it. Question is who does it better."
I frowned, working through the logic. "But if supply convoys are this close to the front lines, they'd already have jonin escort squads, right? Multiple teams, rotating security, the whole professional bodyguard treatment. Why do we need to actively hunt when prevention should be enough?"
"Because convoys are slow." She gestured with her bowl. "Wagons, pack animals, civilian drivers who wet themselves when kunai start flying. They can't move like strike teams."
I tilted my head. "Then it's not about winning the fight, it's about denying resources."
A quick nod. "Exactly. Suna doesn't need to defeat jonin guards or drag off a wagonload of rice. All they need is to torch the crates. Poison bombs, explosive tags, a little fire release, you can ruin days of rations in minutes and be gone before the escorts regroup. Even with jonin protection, a good squad with the right gear can wreck a convoy and vanish. Hit fast, burn everything, maximum damage with zero commitment."
I nodded slowly. "So the real threat isn't losing people, it's losing the supplies."
Her eyes flicked toward me. "Exactly. Most people think about protecting the convoy, not why the convoy needs protection in the first place."
"So we hunt them before they can ambush."
"Now you're getting it."
I finished my third bowl, brain already working the problem. Standard tracking would take days, maybe weeks to cover enough ground. But with shadow clones...
"Alright," I said. "How many clones do you want me to deploy?"
"All of them."
"All of them?"
"Every single one you can manage without keeling over."
"That's... a lot of chakra. What if we run into trouble and I'm tapped out?"
"Then I'll handle the trouble."
"Just you?"
"Just me."
I gave her a skeptical look. "No offense, but—"
"Do you not trust me?" She sounded almost hurt. Almost. If you ignored the fact that she was grinning like she'd just heard the world's best joke.
"It's not about trust."
"It sounds like it's about trust."
"It's about tactics."
"Tactics require trust."
"Since when?"
"Since always. You trust your teammates to do their jobs, you trust your equipment to work, you trust your sensei to keep you alive when you're doing something stupid."
"Am I doing something stupid?"
"You're about to empty your chakra reserves in hostile territory based on my say-so. What would you call that?"
"Following orders?"
"Same thing."
"How is following orders stupid?"
"Because you're following my orders."
"And your orders are stupid?"
"My orders are brilliant. Following them without question is stupid."
"So I should question your orders?"
"Only if you want to get hit again."
"So I shouldn't question them?"
"Now you're learning."
My head was starting to hurt. Conversations with Tsunade had this way of twisting around until you weren't sure what you'd originally been talking about. Like verbal jujitsu designed to leave you flat on your back wondering what had just happened.
"Fine," I said. "Maximum clones it is. But if I run out of chakra, you're carrying me the rest of the way."
She didn't look up from her bowl. "I'm not carrying you."
"Not even a little?"
"Not even your sandals."
I leaned back, eyeing her generous curves. "You sure? I wouldn't mind the princess carry treatment. Even if we got jumped, honestly sounds like a pretty good way to go."
Her bowl stopped halfway to her mouth. Slowly, she lowered it and looked at me. "Don't worry, if you collapse, I'll carry you by the ankle and let your head bounce off every root between here and the front lines."
I winced. "That's harsh."
"That's generous. The alternative is I just leave you there and let the crows figure it out."
I gave her a hopeful look. "Still sounds better than missing the princess carry."
She drained her fourth bowl in one go. "Kid, the only thing you're getting carried by is a stretcher, and that's if I'm feeling generous."
"Fair enough." I sighed, and she launched into tracking techniques, disturbed vegetation, movement patterns, the usual shinobi bread and butter. We were halfway through the pot when she cut herself off.
"Alright, get started."
"Right away, boss." I wiped my mouth and set down the empty bowl, brushing off my pants. Cross-seal formed, chakra rushing out like water through a broken dam. The first four clones appeared in puffs of smoke, already moving toward their assigned search vectors before the smoke had even cleared.
"Team one, northeast quadrant. Stay in contact, avoid engagement unless absolutely necessary."
Four more seals, four more clones. Then another set. I kept going, create four, rest, sip soup, repeat. More clones, more rest. When the pot was finally empty, she looked up at me.
"How many is that?" She watched the steady stream of copies vanish into the trees, tilting her head like she was watching ducks march in a line.
"How many what?"
"Clones. How many clones have you made?"
"I... wasn't counting." I scratched the side of my head, avoiding her stare.
"You weren't counting?"
"Should I have been counting?"
"How do you not know how many clones you made?"
"The same way you don't count your heartbeats."
"That's not the same thing."
"Isn't it?"
I formed another cross-seal, adding four more clones to whatever number I'd already deployed. "There. More clones."
"How many total now?"
"Still not counting."
"This is going to bother me."
"Then you count them."
"I wasn't watching from the beginning."
"Then we're both in the dark."
I was poking the fire with a stick, watching sparks float up toward the darkening sky, when the memory smacked me like a wet fish. One of my clones, northeast quadrant, maybe three kilometers out, had just popped itself after finding something worth reporting.
Faint traces, the memory supplied. Broken twigs at shoulder height, scuff marks on bark. People definitely passed through, but they cleaned up afterward. Maybe six hours old?
"Got something," I said, dropping the stick.
"What kind of something?"
"Tracks from earlier today. Then they just... disappeared."
"Disappeared how?"
"Like they knew someone might come looking. Professional cleanup." I paused. "Well, semi-professional. If they were really good at it, my clone wouldn't have found anything."
She nodded like this was old news. "Standard operating procedure. Leave just enough trail to confirm passage, scrub everything useful for tracking. Means they know what they're doing."
"Or think they do."
"Same thing, until someone proves them wrong."
I stared into the fire. This felt stupidly inefficient. If I could figure out when the next convoy was due, we could just camp the route and wait for the bastards to show up. Way easier than playing forest hide-and-seek. "Sensei, when's the next supply convoy coming through?"
"Tomorrow, maybe."
"Maybe?"
"Tomorrow." She poked the fire with a stick, sending sparks dancing.
"You said maybe."
"I meant tomorrow."
"But you said maybe."
"Maybe I meant definitely." She twirled the stick between her fingers.
"That's not how certainty works."
"How does certainty work?"
"Without maybes."
"Maybe." She tossed the stick into the fire and dusted off her hands.
I gave her a flat look. She grinned back like she'd just won something. I rubbed my temples.
"Fine. Tomorrow, definitely. Which raises the question, why are we playing hide-and-seek in the forest when we could just wait for them to come to us?"
"Because waiting is reactive."
"And this is proactive."
"Exactly."
"But reactive would be easier."
"Easier isn't always better."
"Sometimes easier is smarter."
"Smart people think that."
"I am smart people."
"That's what all smart people say."
"Because they're smart."
"Or because they think they're smart." She smirked. She picked up another stick and began drawing patterns in the dirt.
"What's the difference?"
"About the difference between a genius and a dead-last."
I blinked. "Are you calling me overconfident?"
She shrugged. The stick kept moving, now drawing what looked suspiciously like a stick figure with a very large head.
"Okay," I said slowly. I leaned and squinted at her dirt artwork. "Why is hunting them down better than setting up a counter-ambush?"
"Because ambushes require the target to show up where you expect them to."
"And supplies convoys follow predictable routes."
"Do they?" She added what might have been a crown to the stick figure's oversized head.
"Don't they?"
"Sometimes."
"Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't?"
"Sometimes the routes change. Sometimes they get delayed. Sometimes they take detours." She was now adding little squiggly lines around the crowned figure. Possibly representing smugness.
"So we might wait all day for a convoy that never comes."
"While the enemy hits a different convoy somewhere else." She nodded sagely and added arms to her masterpiece.
"That we're not protecting."
"Because we're sitting in the wrong forest." The stick figure now had what appeared to be a very sad expression.
"Waiting for the wrong ambush."
"While the right ambush happens without us." She sat back and admired her work, then looked at me expectantly.
I stared at the dirt drawing, then at her, then back at the drawing. It was definitely supposed to be me.
Sighing, I thought it over. The logic was solid. "Still, there's another option. Why not just request a sensor? Someone who can actually track these guys instead of relying on my clone spam?"
"Because we don't have sensors."
"We don't have any sensors?"
"We have sensors. We don't have available sensors."
"What's the difference?"
"Sand got him two days ago."
"So when do we get a replacement?"
"Three days."
"Three days?"
"Minimum. That's if they can spare someone from the western front. Getting one reassigned means rescheduling which means time..."
"Bureaucracy. The enemy of getting things done. But surely for something this important—"
"This important?" she raised an eyebrow. "This is routine work. Supply line security is important, but it's not 'reorganize the entire sensor corps' important."
Is that so? Well, if these raids were really crippling our war effort, they'd be throwing sensor specialists and full jonin squads at the problem. The fact that they sent one jonin and one "genius" chunin—me being the genius, obviously—meant the raids were more nuisance than catastrophe.
Or maybe they just had faith in my exceptional abilities. Yeah, that was probably it.
"Which is exactly why they gave it to us," she continued. "One experienced jonin, one eager new chunin, minimal resource allocation for maximum coverage. Peak efficiency."
"Well, when you put it that way, it sounds like they really know how to squeeze every drop out of their budget," I said, forming hand seals and popping another four clones into existence. "There. More coverage, peak efficiency."
She watched the clones vanish into the trees before looking back at me. "Has Moryo ever tried to mess with you?"
I raised an eyebrow. "The old man Hokage must have told you about that already, huh?"
"I'm your sensei." She shrugged. "Of course I need to know these things. It's standard procedure for the Hokage to brief me on anything that might affect your performance." She paused, watching my face. "What, don't tell me you're angry."
"I'm not angry," I said, using my stick to scrub out whatever she'd been doodling. "Just wondering what else—"
Her stick blocked mine, stopping me mid-swipe. "Stick to second-generation clones for now. Play it safe. Only break out the third-generation stuff if things go sideways or you absolutely need the extra juice."
I nodded. "Because third-generation clones draw more attention from... unwanted sources?"
"Exactly." She said. "Though 'unwanted' is such a quaint way to put it. Like calling a tsunami 'unwanted moisture' or a forest fire 'unwanted warmth.'" She paused, seeming to consider something. "You know, there's this old story about a fisherman who caught increasingly larger fish each day. Started with minnows, worked his way up to bass, then salmon, then tuna. Each catch made him prouder, more confident. Do you know how that story ends?"
"With him getting eaten by a whale?"
"Close. He attracted the attention of every fisherman, merchant, and pirate within a hundred miles. Suddenly everyone wanted to know his secret fishing spot." She jabbed her stick at my boot. "Third, fourth, whatever-generation clones don't just give you an edge, they paint a target on your back. Any shinobi worth their salt will pick up on the fact that not only can you create multiple clones, but your clones can create clones and maintain them. And once word gets out that there's a shinobi who's essentially a one-man army..."
"I become the tuna."
"You become the fishing spot everyone wants to raid." She flicked my stick out of my hand. "It's too early for you to reveal that capability. You need to get stronger first, strong enough to handle the attention it'll bring. Right now you're good, but you're not 'survive assassination attempts from three different villages' good."
"So I stay with the minnows for now."
"You stay with what keeps you breathing for now."
...
Tanzaku Quarters, Lotus House
The first thing that hit me when I woke up wasn't the sunlight streaming through paper windows or the distant sounds of Tanzaku Quarters coming alive for another day of debauchery. No, it was the smell.
Not bad, mind you. Just... distinctly feminine. Perfume and powder, silk and sweat, a scent that clung to everything in a place where women made their living being soft and pretty and available for the right price. It was the smell of temporary companionship, of coins changing hands and promises that lasted exactly as long as you kept paying for them.
I blinked at the ceiling, taking a moment to remember where I was when the woman beside me stirred slightly, dark hair fanned out across the pillow. The blanket had slipped down to her waist during the night, because of course it had, blankets have no sense of modesty, exposing pale skin that caught the morning light.
I reached over and pulled the blanket back up to her shoulders, tucking it around her like she was my date instead of a working girl who'd probably forgotten my name the moment I'd paid her fee.
She mumbled something in her sleep and rolled away from me, burying her face deeper into the pillow. I took that as my cue to stop being a gentleman and start being a person with places to go and whiskey empires to build.
The room was small but clean, which was more than I'd expected from a pleasure house in a gambling town. Wooden floors that didn't creak when you walked on them, paper screens that actually blocked out light instead of just looking decorative, and a small writing desk in one corner that somebody had actually bothered to dust recently. Even had a little vase with fresh flowers, though I figured that was more about masking other smells than any real love of pretty things.
I pulled on my clothes and headed for the door, stepping carefully to avoid waking my temporary roommate. Girl had worked late and deserved her sleep.
The veranda outside overlooked a small courtyard where morning light filtered through the leaves of what looked like an old cherry tree. Someone had set up a table with a steaming teapot and two ceramic cups, probably the same girl who'd brought it yesterday morning when I'd wandered out here looking for something hot to drink. Nice touch, remembering a customer's habits after just one day. Either this place took customer service seriously, or I was a better tipper than I remembered.
I poured myself tea and settled into one of the wooden chairs, propping my feet up on the railing as I watched Tanzaku Quarters wake up around me. The air was crisp and clean, carrying the scent of cooking food and fresh laundry from the buildings nearby. Down in the street, early-rising merchants were setting up their stalls while late-night revelers stumbled home with that satisfied smile that came from spending too much money on temporary pleasures.
Poor bastard, I thought, taking a sip of tea that was probably better than anything the original me had tasted in weeks. He got to be out there breaking his back in the wilderness while his clone sits on a veranda drinking tea and enjoying life.
Actually, that wasn't entirely fair. I mean, it was completely accurate, but it wasn't fair. The original had made his choice when he'd decided to send me to Tanzaku Quarters instead of handling this whiskey business himself. Could've come here personally, enjoyed the gambling and the women and the general atmosphere of organized vice. Instead, he'd stayed home to deal with whatever crisis was currently demanding his attention, leaving me to suffer through the terrible hardship of living like a king in a town where money could buy you anything and nobody asked awkward questions about your business.
Really, when you thought about it, I was the one making sacrifices here. Having to endure comfortable beds and good food and female companionship while he got to sleep on the ground and cook over a fire and pretend to care about whatever mission was keeping him busy. The poor bastard probably hadn't had a decent meal in days.
I raised my teacup in a toast to his suffering and took another sip.
But enough gloating. This was my second day drowning in debauchery, and I was starting to think it was time to actually work on the objective that had brought me here in the first place. Not that I was complaining about the delay, a man needed time to properly survey his surroundings and understand the local culture before making important business decisions, but even I had limits to how much luxury I could endure before guilt started setting in.
Well, not really guilt. More like... professional responsibility. Yeah, that sounded better.
The whiskey operation would need careful planning if I wanted to turn it into something more profitable than just a hobby that produced decent alcohol. I'd spent yesterday getting familiar with the town layout and general business climate, and today seemed like a good day to start laying groundwork for what would hopefully become a small empire of intoxication.
And when I said empire, I meant empire. A money-printing operation that could fund a private army of shinobi if we wanted, or buy enough political influence to make the Daimyo nervous, or just set us up as the sort of wealthy bastard who could afford to collect rare jutsu scrolls like other people collected stamps. Nobody in this world knew how to make proper whiskey, which meant we'd have a complete monopoly on something that would make sake look like children's juice once people got a taste for it. The profit margins on luxury alcohol were insane, and we'd be the only game in town.
First things first, I needed a proper fermentation setup. Nothing too fancy to start with, just something large enough to handle decent-sized batches without taking up so much space that people would start asking questions. A wooden vat lined with clay or lacquer to make it watertight would work for now. Big enough to be useful, small enough to be discreet, and common enough that ordering one wouldn't raise eyebrows.
Then I'd need a distillation still, which was where things would get tricky. Copper would be ideal for the pot and condenser, better heat distribution, easier to clean, less likely to add weird metallic flavors to the final product, but copper was expensive and took skill to work properly. Iron would be cheaper and easier to find, even if it wasn't quite as good for the job. And any blacksmith worth his hammer could work with iron, while copper required more specialized knowledge.
I drained my teacup and poured another, letting the warm ceramic settle in my hands as I thought through the logistics. The real challenge wouldn't be building the equipment or finding ingredients, grain was grain, yeast was yeast, and both were available in any town with decent agricultural connections. The challenge would be perfecting the process without anyone realizing what I was actually doing.
Whiskey wasn't just fermented grain mash. Any idiot could make that. Whiskey was fermented grain mash that had been distilled properly and aged in the right conditions to develop the complex flavors that made it worth drinking instead of just getting you drunk efficiently. The distillation process required careful temperature control and timing, while aging required the right barrels stored in the right environment for the right amount of time.
All of which meant I needed to not just build the equipment, but also figure out how to use it properly. And since nobody in this world seemed to know how to make whiskey, I'd be working from scratch.
This is either going to be brilliant or a complete disaster, I realized, watching a group of merchants argue over the price of silk in the street below. Probably both.
But that was fine. The original had sent me here to figure out whiskey production, not to succeed at it immediately. If I could establish a working distillation setup and produce something that didn't kill people, that would be more than enough for a first attempt. Everything else could be refined through experimentation and practice.
And if it worked out, we'd have the only whiskey operation in Fire Country. Maybe in all the elemental nations, depending on what other people were drinking in places I'd never been. That monopoly could be worth serious money to the right person with the right connections and enough sense to market luxury goods to people who'd never heard of them before.
Of course, monopolies never lasted forever. Sooner or later, someone would figure out the distillation process and start making their own version. But by then, we'd be the established brand, the original, the premium choice that everyone else would be trying to copy. Get in first, build a reputation for quality, and even when the competition showed up, we'd still be the name people thought of when they wanted the real thing. Like being the first ramen shop in a neighborhood. Sure, others would open eventually, but you'd always be the one everyone remembered.
I finished my tea, stood up from the table, and walked to the edge of the veranda. The cherry tree's branches stretched almost close enough to touch, leaves rustling gently in a breeze that carried the scent of cooking food and distant incense. Behind me, the door to the bedroom remained closed, and I could hear soft breathing that suggested my companion was still enjoying well-deserved sleep.
For just a moment, I let myself appreciate the scene, the quiet courtyard, the comfortable morning, the strange twist of fate that had landed me here instead of sleeping on dirt somewhere. Then I stepped off the veranda and disappeared into the wind, leaving only a few scattered petals drifting down where I'd been standing.
Time to get back to work.
...
The rabbit hung from my hands, its glassy eyes staring at nothing. Blood dripped from the clean cut across its throat, hitting the dirt with soft plops.
Death really is just biology giving up. I pulled out my knife. Disconnect the right parts, sever the right connections, and even the most complex life becomes tomorrow's dinner.
Speaking of disconnecting things, my Tanzaku Quarters clone still hasn't dispelled. It's been what, four days now? We agreed on daily dispersals after that whole Moryo conversation with the old man. Either the clone's having too much fun with sake and prostitutes to remember basic protocol, or something's gone wrong.
Who am I kidding? It's just a second-generation clone. The odds of it actually going rogue are pretty much zero. More likely it's just having too much fun playing house with working girls and quality alcohol to remember that dispersal schedules exist. Can't really blame it, if I had to choose between sleeping on the ground in a war zone or drinking expensive sake in a comfortable bed, I know which way I'd vote.
Still annoyed me though. I'd have to force-dispel the bastard once we wrapped this mission up.
I glanced at Tsunade as she sharpened her kunai with those deceptively delicate hands. Hard to believe that someone who looked like she could grace magazine covers could also punch through solid rock like it was made of paper. Those slender arms housed enough raw power to level buildings, and somehow she made it look effortless. The contrast between her appearance and her capabilities never stopped being fascinating.
I get the basic theory of channeling chakra into your limbs, but going from "hit a little harder" to "casually demolish a building"? That's the part I'm missing.
"So about that Enhanced Strength you've been using," I said, working the blade under the rabbit's skin. The pelt came away easily, separating meat from hide. "The technique that turns rocks into dust and faces into very abstract art."
She glanced up from sharpening her kunai. "Not happening."
"Come on." I peeled back another section, exposing pink muscle. "I've got the chakra for it. My control's good. What's the problem?"
"The problem is you're not ready."
"Not ready how?" Slice, peel, separate. The rabbit was transforming into something much more useful, protein and sustenance. "I've been doing the medical training like you said. I could probably perform surgery at this point."
"Surgery and enhanced strength are completely different animals." She tested her blade's edge against her thumb. "One needs precision. The other needs control over forces that'll turn your organs into soup if you mess up the chakra flow."
I opened the rabbit, letting the guts spill onto the ground in a wet pile. "But I won't screw it up."
"Everyone says that right before they screw it up."
"Everyone isn't me."
She raised an eyebrow. "What makes you so special?"
"I'm asking you to teach me instead of figuring it out myself through trial and error."
She paused mid-sharpen. "That's... actually a decent point."
"See? I'm responsible. Mature. Forward-thinking."
"You're also annoying."
The rabbit was clean now, ready for the fire. I skewered it with the other four on the spit. "Annoying gets results."
"Annoying gets you punched in the face."
"You haven't punched me yet."
"The day is young."
I was about to say something when a memory flooded in, like water through a broken dam.
"Company," I said, dropping the rabbit.
She was up before I finished the word. "Where?"
"A few kilometers northeast. Clone's being chased by six unknowns."
"Show me."
We vanished.
The world turned into a blur of green and brown as we covered ground fast enough to make the trees look like brushstrokes. She moved beside me like liquid lightning, her feet barely kissing the earth before she was airborne again.
We'd been running for maybe two minutes when I felt the vibration through the soles of my boots. Subtle at first, just a tremor that might have been my imagination or an earthquake happening somewhere else. Then it built, becoming a deep, bone-rattling rumble that could only mean something very large had just met something very solid at high velocity.
Her eyes flicked toward me. "Your clone?"
"My clone."
The crater came into view about thirty seconds later.
It was beautiful, in the way that natural disasters are beautiful. Twelve meters across, maybe thirteen, carved into the forest floor like someone had taken a giant ice cream scoop to the earth. The surrounding trees leaned away from the epicenter at drunken angles, their bark stripped and blackened. Chunks of stone and metal were scattered in a rough circle, some of them embedded so deep in tree trunks they'd probably be there until the wood rotted away.
Not bad. The seal enhancement was working exactly as intended. Two, maybe three times more powerful than a standard exploding clone could ever manage.
The seal enhancement was working exactly as intended.
I nodded, satisfied with my seal-enhanced exploding clone. Wonder if I can increase the power even more.
Before I could get too pleased with myself, Tsunade had already moved past the crater. She crouched beside a twisted piece of metal, examining it closely, a warped headband protector with a waterfall symbol barely visible through the damage.
"Tanigakure," she said, holding up the mangled forehead protector.
I blinked. "River Country. That's... not what I expected."
She tossed the headband aside and continued scanning the area. "You said six were chasing your clone, then—"
"There." She was already moving toward a cluster of trees about twenty meters away, her posture shifting into that alert stance that meant she'd found something. "Still alive."
We found him propped against a boulder, conscious but in no condition to appreciate the scenery. His left arm hung at an angle that suggested several bones had given up their structural integrity, and his right leg was twisted in a way that made it very ugly. Blood soaked through his clothes in dark patches, a slow, steady bleeding that pointed to internal damage.
But he was alive. And more importantly, he was awake.
She knelt beside him, green chakra already flowing from her hands while knocking him out with a touch. After a few seconds of patching up the bleeding and anything that might kill him in the next hour, she stopped.
"We need to get him back to Konoha," she said, rocking back on her heels.
I made the cross-seal, chakra flowing out. A clone appeared in a puff of smoke and immediately crouched next to our unconscious guest.
"Delivery service?" the clone asked.
"Get him to the village. Hand him over to Intelligence, then you can disappear." I looked at the mess around us. "Just try to keep him breathing. Corpses are terrible conversationalists."
"Got it." The clone scooped up the wounded shinobi, careful not to jostle anything that looked important. "What's the story?"
"Tell them that Tanigakure and Suna are playing together in our backyard." I glanced at Tsunade. "And that we're staying to clean house."
The clone nodded and took off through the trees—fast, but at a pace that got you there quickly without turning your passenger into luggage.
I looked around at the crater, the charred scraps of body parts, the scorched trees. "So… what now?"
She stood up, wiping the blood from her hands with a piece of cloth. "Now we figure out how many more squads are out there, because I have a feeling six guys weren't the whole party."
I sighed. "Yeah."
She started toward the edge of the blast zone, eyes sweeping for anything useful. "Your clones find anything else before this one got spotted?"
"Tracks from earlier today. Professional cleanup job, but not perfect. I'm thinking at least three squads working this area, maybe more." I followed her, stepping carefully around chunks of metal and stone. "Question is whether they're still here."
"Only one way to find out."
"More clones?"
"More clones."
I was halfway through the hand seals when she grabbed my wrist. "You forgot the rabbit."
My eyes went wide as I remembered the five rabbits I'd left roasting over our fire.
...
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