Border of the Land of Grass.
The dirt road was not exactly rough, but it stretched three long shadows across the ground. The air held the lingering damp of Ame, laced with grass and earth. Compared with that forever-sodden country of relentless rainfall, these green low hills and surprisingly open fields felt almost like paradise.
Nawaki stretched hard, sunlight splashing his face and chasing off the mildew clinging from the rainy front. "Finally, no more sleeping in tents you can wring water out of." He blew out a breath, glancing around. "Land of Grass is not half bad, huh?"
Mikoto did not pick it up. She tucked a windblown strand of black hair behind her ear, scanning the surroundings with calm eyes. At last she looked to the red-haired boy walking point. "Mission first, Nawaki-senpai. Remember our goal, track Iwa's movements." Her voice was clean and crisp. "Ryo-kun, Kusagakure, the key intel point is here, right?"
The corner of Ryo's mouth lifted in that habitual, faintly mocking line. "Of course," he said quietly. "A small nation jammed in the cracks is always a wall that leaks wind from both sides. Come on, let's take a look at Kusagakure."
The instant they stepped through the village gate, all three faltered, as if something had caught their feet.
Two words hit harder than any report could, filthy and sick.
Crooked wooden huts crowded together over mud, looking like the next stiff breeze would fold them. The rot of old timbers mixed with a faint reek of human waste, stabbing the nose. Narrow lanes were a mess of muck. The sparse passersby were sallow and thin, eyes hollow and dull. When a glance did land on the three, there was no curiosity, only thick, uncut suspicion and undisguised dislike.
"This dump is a ninja village?" Nawaki's eyes bulged, his voice sliding off key. "Konoha's sewer outlets are brighter than this. Where did their mission rewards go, down a dog's throat?"
"Maybe into the daimyo's vault. Or…" Ryo snorted, ripping the facade without mercy, "…maybe certain people's purses got so heavy they collapsed the whole village. The Land of Grass should be rich. Get a pig for a daimyo and a leader who only worships money, and the signboard falls right off."
Mikoto's gaze drifted over those numb, or openly hostile, faces. Her brows knit, catching the deeper wrongness. "Ryo-kun," she said very low, "the way they are looking at us… it is like they are warding off trouble."
They had not gone fifty paces deeper before three men in grass-green, ragged uniforms blocked the way. The leader's face was heaped with slabby muscle. A scar ran from brow to chin. A dry stalk hung at an angle in his mouth. His eyes raked them with smug superiority. When he saw how young they were, the contempt nearly spilled.
"Stop. Konoha?" Scarface spat the stem, voice cold and hard.
"Yes." Ryo's expression did not change. He treated the rudeness like air. "Konoha chūnin, Kamiyama Ryo, leading a squad on official duty. Standard intel exchange regarding—"
"Exchange my ass." Scarface cut him off, volume jumping. "Kusa does not take visitors, especially from Konoha." The two chūnin behind him stepped forward, hands casually, yet precisely, settling on their kunai.
Nawaki could not swallow that. He lunged a step. "Hey. What kind of attitude is that? We are allies, ironclad. Is this how Kusagakure talks to an ally?"
Scarface sneered, contempt dripping. "Allies? Spare me. You kids playing soldier need to roll out before I make you." His gaze flicked over Ryo's striking red hair without a spark of recognition, never linking it with the red-haired devil currently ripping through the ninja world. To him, they were pampered brats out to play. "Kamiyama Ryo? Familiar name? Who cares."
Mikoto's frown deepened. This was not mere bad manners, they were deliberately provoking.
But inside Scarface's bark, Ryo caught the key, "especially from Konoha." His eyes tightened. Fragments snapped together.
Use their age to bully them off? Fine, kids are easy to cow. But an alliance is still an alliance. Even if you hate it, you keep up appearances. To tear the mask off entirely, wrong. A special rejection just of Konoha? Why? Who is in the village that makes them this scared? When Nawaki challenged their attitude, that flicker in the man's eyes, like a man afraid of touching a live wire.
"Oh?" Ryo's quiet voice rasped like ice on glass and stabbed straight through Scarface. "So, no hosting allies… because you are busy hosting a different guest?"
Scarface's face twitched. His eyes suddenly went skittish. The bulldozed bravado drained out. "Shut your damn mouth. Do not spout nonsense." Louder now, but thin and anxious. "Get lost. Now."
That reaction was the best answer, nailing Ryo's guess in place.
"Tch." Ryo had his decision. Forcing a tear through now was not the time, and not needed. "Looks like we came at a bad time."
He lifted a hand, steady, onto Nawaki's shoulder just as the boy sparked again. His face relaxed into an almost lazy smile. "Fine. When the host is not welcoming, guests should not overstay. That warmth of yours? We simply cannot afford it. Nawaki, Mikoto, let's go. They are busy entertaining."
He turned on his heel and left, crisp and clean, steps even picking up a hint of leisurely stroll.
Mikoto fell right in, catching Nawaki, still throwing daggers with his eyes, and tugging him after Ryo.
"Seriously? We are tucking tail?" Nawaki hissed, unwilling. "They, why—"
"Leave them to farm mushrooms?" Ryo did not even look back, his voice drifting clearly down the unnaturally quiet lane. "We are not in a hurry. Take two days off. Land of Grass, nice hills, nice water. I hear there is a creek to the east. Roasting game beats getting glared at in this dump."
He said it loud enough for the eavesdropping Kusa sentries on the roadside to hear every syllable. He wanted them to file the trio under spoiled junior officers on a sightseeing trip, gone on their way, nothing to worry about.
Scarface watched them disappear and hawked up a wad of phlegm. "Tch. Know your place. Brats." His tight shoulders sagged. As long as these Konoha kids did not stumble into Iwa's honored guests, there should not be trouble.
---
Dusk stained the grass in dark gold. By a creekside copse, a campfire cracked and leapt, painting the trio's faces.
"Ryo." Nawaki finally burst. "What are you playing at? We are really running? What about the mission? Iwa intel? And those Kusa punks, right now I want to go back and knock their teeth in."
Across the flames, Mikoto was stripping a luckless deer with a kunai, precise and steady. She glanced at Ryo, firelight caught in her pupils, and waited.
Ryo prodded the fire. Sparks hopped. The curve at his mouth flattened. When he spoke, the warmth seemed to drain from the night. "Tail between our legs? Or did you just miss the devil in their eyes?"
"Devil, my ass. Their brains got slammed in a door." Nawaki flopped down, sulking.
"First, even a paper alliance does not expel envoys. That is spitting in your ally's face. Kusa's leadership may be stupid, but not so stupid they ignore the rules entirely. Unless…" Ryo's voice dropped. His gaze cut across his two teammates. "Unless there is a reason big enough to make them drive us out at any cost. As in, their own lives."
"Ryo-kun means…" Mikoto's kunai paused. A glint lit her eyes. "Iwa are already here?"
"Right." Ryo's reply was a nail. "They beat us by a step. Either paid a fortune or got Kusa by the throat. Enough that they tossed even pretense. When I turned the question back, Scarface's face collapsed in real time."
Nawaki slapped his thigh. "Damn. So that is why Konoha set them off, they are afraid we will spot Iwa in the village? Those grass mutts went full weathervane and started plotting with Iwa behind our backs?" He clenched his fist till it ticked.
"How deep the tie goes." Ryo stared through the flames, as if he could see Kusagakure's silhouette swallowed by dusk. "But the important intel is inside, and tied to Iwa's core deployments."
"Then what are we waiting for, go in and get it." Nawaki bounced, eager.
Ryo gave him a slanted look that said, Did a door really crush your skull? "Want to make a scene big enough to pull every Iwa out to play?"
"Uh…" Nawaki deflated like a punctured wineskin. "Then… what?"
The corner of Ryo's mouth curled again, the cold confidence of a man with the board in his hands. "They think we are useless and that shooing us fixes everything? Fine. We will play along." In the dark, his voice came down like nails. "Half false, half true, buy time."
The plan unrolled at once.
In the open, Ryo's squad became the Konoha tour group.
By day, they lazed in a conspicuous, open spot by the creek. Nawaki whooped over a homemade fishing rod. Mikoto sat quietly in tree shade. Ryo tinkered with a little gadget he had brought, coaxing out a simple music player that wafted popular tunes over the water. The smell of roasting meat drifted for too long, drawing Kusa sentries to glance from a distance, mutter "useless brats," and yawn back to their posts.
At the camp, Nawaki griping over skewered fish, Mikoto quietly sorting gear, the tinny music looping, nothing seemed off. But in the unnoticed angles, Mikoto's gaze cut through the flicker of coals to Ryo's back in the shadows. Nawaki was still cussing about the rod.
The humiliation from Scarface's barking still seemed lodged in Nawaki's throat. "Cowards. Useless." He bit into an overdone fish and scowled at the bitter char. "I swear I—" He waved the blackened tail, with no target to vent on.
"Wait." Ryo gave him one word.
Firelight rose and fell. Mikoto, a little farther off under a tree, lowered her eyes and repacked a water-spotted pouch. In the moonlight her lashes cast soft gray shadows on her lids. She watched Ryo's straight red silhouette blur, then melt into the tree-edge darkness. The small, deliberate nearnesses over the last days, the brief crossings of eyes, the wordless passings of tools, each action like an invisible strand of silk, winding, slow and unnoticed. As that bit of red finally fused with the night, the line of her lips quivered, almost imperceptibly.
She lowered her gaze to the edge of her wooden geta on the damp grass, where a slim ankle peeked. Moon and firelight glazed it gently. The memory of that afternoon dressing his wounds slid through. A minuscule ripple crossed her heart and vanished.
Kusa's arrogance and sloppiness became the perfect cover for Ryo's moves.
Two days straight, the music and meat by the river played on schedule. Kusa's watch slackened. The men on surveillance stopped even pretending, just wrote them off as Konoha fools wasting rations.
Scarface's report upward was smug. "Konoha's rice buckets. Sent a few kids to do what? One bark and they ran off for a picnic."
Kusa's leader sprawled in a broken chair and snorted. "Konoha? That is the level. Trash."
The three rested as usual.
Ryo, citing strategy, sat a bit apart, eyes closed, actually stretching his powerful observational sense toward the village, fishing for suspicious chakra pulses, Iwa signatures or a meeting site.
Nawaki gnawed meat, bored. "Eat roast every day and I will turn into roast. Ryo, are we still sitting here? Did your brain—"
Mikoto gave Nawaki a helpless look. "Patience. Ryo-kun is looking for an opening."
And then Ryo's senses brushed a thread of chakra, so faint and so uneasy, curled deep in tall grass near the camp. It held fear and hunger and a distinctive spark of life. Familiar, Kushina's lineage. And it was a child.
Ryo's eyes snapped open. He turned his head that way and said, low and absolute, "Who is there? Come out."
(To be continued.)
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◇ One bonus chapter will be released for every 200 Power Stones.
◇ You can read the ahead chapter on Pat if you're interested: p-atreon.c-om/Blownleaves (Just remove the hyphen to access normally.)