Within a small town on the northern border of the Land of Hidden Steam.
The members of the Fox Division appeared one by one via Body Flicker. Inside a nobleman's estate, six corpses lay beneath white sheets. The noble's mother, her hair stark white, walked unsteadily toward Yagami, supported by her servants.
The others wore standard black cloaks, but Yagami stood out in his white robes.
"Are you the Leaf ninja? Isn't the Land of Steam under your protection?" the old woman wailed, tears streaming down her face. "Someone assassinated my son! And my five grandsons! How are you so useless? Why are you so useless! If I had known, we would have defected to the Land of Lightning like the Land of Moon did!"
Yagami thought to himself: 'Lady, your logic is flawed. If you had defected to the Cloud, then the ones assassinating your son and grandsons would be us. In the end, what's the difference?'
Still, out of respect for the dead, he remained silent. Along the sprawling border of the Land of Steam, Cloud ninja were constantly provoking and sabotaging. Hatake Sakumo, commanding four battalions, was exhausted just trying to react.
It was a grueling war of attrition. In this tug-of-war, both sides organized superior forces for ambushes; wiping out a single enemy battalion could shift the entire momentum.
Yagami glanced at the servants kneeling in a circle and signaled White Sheep to screen them. The squad checked each one for tell-tale signs of shinobi training. While civilians in the Hidden Leaf had a path to becoming ninja, life for commoners in the Land of Fire or other nations was grim. In better places, they were tenant farmers; here, they were effectively serfs.
White Sheep found nothing. Antelope
finished examining the bodies. "Captain, the time of death is within the last three hours."
Flower Deer reported on the perimeter: "Captain, the assassins fled northeast. I found crushed leaves from a Body Flicker and distant footprints."
"Flower Deer, have your squad take to the air with gliders," Yagami ordered. "White Sheep, use your Parasitic Insects to track the scent. Pursue them."
His subordinates vanished. Yagami turned to the grieving matriarch. "My condolences." Before she could resume her scolding, he too disappeared.
...
After twenty minutes of travel, they crossed into the Land of Moon. Gliders were far faster than trekking through rugged mountains. Within an hour, Deer spotted a Cloud platoon through his binoculars.
Whether they were the killers or not, this platoon would not see tomorrow's sun. Flower Deer sent Leaf Monkey back to guide the division while he maintained his high-altitude shadow. To the Cloud ninja below, he was just a black speck in the sky, like a distant vulture.
The Cloud platoon eventually stopped to rest on a hillside. Their assassination had been a success. Killing a noble and his heirs would sow chaos within the Land of Steam.
If they killed enough of them, the Land of Steam would pressure the Leaf into a decisive battle—at which point the Cloud would lure them into a prepared trap.
The Cloud captain sat down, uncapping his canteen for a drink. Suddenly, a sharp whistle cut through the air, carrying a strange, high-frequency hum of rushing water.
A water needle pierced his canteen, causing it to explode and spray water across his face. Three screams erupted behind him. The captain wiped his eyes only to see three of his subordinates standing in a line, their chests pierced by a single line of water.
"Enemy attack!"
The Fox Division burst from the woods. Each squad utilized their coordinated jutsu: Fire combined with Wind, Water fused with Lightning.
They suppressed the Cloud platoon from a distance with overwhelming force. The Cloud captain was stunned—how did every single one of these masked ninjas possess the skill level of a Special Jonin?
Yagami stepped slowly from the trees, nodding in approval. Under his deliberate care, the Fox Division's casualty rate was low, and his subordinates were growing rapidly.
They had moved past basic techniques; every squad now possessed a combined offensive and defensive maneuver, magnifying their lethality.
After three rounds of elemental bombardment—flame, hurricane, flood, and lightning—Yagami spoke to White Sheep. "In the future, use fewer Water and Lightning combos against Cloud ninja. They have a high resistance to electricity; the numbing effect is wasted."
White Sheep watched the Cloud ninja quickly shaking off the shocks and nodded. The long-range phase was over. Now came the Taijutsu harvest.
The Cloud captain caught sight of the fox mask beneath the white hood and screamed in terror: "It's the Copper Fox of the Leaf! The one who blocked the Third Raikage!"
The Cloud didn't know much about Fox's performance in the Land of Rivers, but they knew he had survived a direct hit from the Third Raikage's Hell Stab: Four-Finger Nukite and stood back up as if nothing happened. To them, it was a ghost story. A strike that could pierce mountains had been blocked?
The captain turned to flee, but Yagami raised a hand. He suppressed the urge to use his Silent Body Flicker—that was a move for his "White Ghost" persona.
Instead, with a single seal, a high-pressure jet of water shot out, severing the Cloud captain at the waist mid-jump. The battle was a landslide.
...
Yagami captured one survivor, binding him with the Self-Exerting Binding Seal. "Process the scene," he told White Sheep. "I'll interrogate this one."
He dragged the prisoner into the woods and produced a scroll. On it, he wrote: 'Return to the Cloud camp, set a secret signal, and never leak my intelligence.' Then, he bit his finger and drew a long line of blood across the text.
"Cursed Tongue Eradication Seal!**"
The ink and blood transformed into a curse mark that crawled over the Cloud ninja's body, sliding into his mouth and embedding itself into his brain. The *遁* trigram appeared on the prisoner's tongue.
The seal acted as an absolute mental and physical constraint. Yagami sighed heavily. He had finally become what he hated most... but Danzo's "curated" techniques were undeniably efficient.
"I have placed a seal upon you," Yagami said. "Once you return to the Cloud camp, you will set a specific signal for me." Yagami needed to contact Yakushi Nono to get the latest intelligence.
"No! I will never set a signal for a Leaf ANBU!"
Yagami simply raised a finger, triggering the seal. The Cloud ninja instantly became paralyzed, convulsing on the ground in agony.
"Complete the task, and you won't be tortured," Yagami said coldly. "Otherwise, this seal will trigger every six hours. Look at yourself—how many times can even a man of iron endure that?"
Yagami drew a symbol in the dirt. "Remember this mark. Do your job, and the pain stops."
Without looking back, Yagami vanished into the trees.