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The search mission was a grueling exercise in futility. For days, the "Sandstorm" squad had navigated the jagged geography of Sector B-7, finding nothing but wind-scarred monoliths and shifting dunes. Fatigue had begun to settle into their marrow, and the heavy silence of the desert was starting to feel like a shroud.
They were traversing a desiccated, ancient riverbed when the equilibrium shattered. Sayo's three "Spider" puppets were distributed in a defensive triangle—one high on the canyon rim, two flanking the dried-up banks—acting as silent, tireless sentinels. Xu was straining to maintain her sensory net, while Lucado tracked the high ground. Captain Iryō, however, had come to a dead stop. His beast-like intuition for blood was screaming.
"Enemy contact! Northeast! High-velocity signatures!" Sayo's voice cut through the air, relayed directly from the visual feed of the high-ground spider.
"Combat formation! Defensive spread!" Iryō unsheathed his twin blades. The steel hummed as his Wind Release chakra began to oscillate.
Four figures clad in the stone-grey flak jackets of Iwagakure (Hidden Stone) materialized from behind a rock formation. They didn't pause for a challenge; they moved with the lethal intent of an execution squad. The leader was a massive, stern-faced shinobi with eyes like flint. The sheer density of his chakra was suffocating—a palpable weight that signaled a terrifying reality.
"An Elite Jōnin!" Iryō's pupils contracted. An opponent of that caliber was a death sentence for a standard reconnaissance squad.
"Erase them. Leave no witnesses," the Iwa leader commanded. His hands blurred through a sequence of signs. "Earth Release: Rock Fist!"
His forearms were instantly encased in dense, jagged boulders. He lunged at Iryō with a momentum that threatened to pulverize everything in its path.
"Sayo, handle the support! I'll hold the lead!" Iryō roared, his twin blades glowing with an azure gale. He met the crushing impact in a spray of sparks and pressurized air. "Wind Release: Fierce Wind Slash!"
CLANG!
The sound of stone meeting enchanted steel was deafening. Iryō was hurled back, his feet carving deep furrows in the sand. He was outmatched in raw power, barely surviving on his superior speed.
Simultaneously, the three Iwa Chūnin closed in. One channeled an Earth Spear beneath Lucado's feet, while another charged the trembling Xu with a kunai. The third attempted a wide flank to decapitate the struggling Iryō.
"Lucado! Intercept! Xu, fall back!" Sayo's voice remained unnaturally calm, the voice of an engineer assessing a catastrophic machine failure.
He didn't hesitate. One spider puppet dropped from the canyon wall like a stone, its legs locking mid-air to slam into the hands of the Iwa ninja performing the Earth Spear, disrupting the chakra flow. Lucado seized the opening, raising an Earth Flow Wall to shield Xu, but he was immediately locked in a desperate CQC (Close Quarters Combat) struggle with the second attacker.
Sayo's mind worked with algorithmic speed. He saw Iryō cough blood as the Rock Fist slammed into his guard again. If the Captain fell, the squad was dead.
While his fingers danced to keep two spiders harassing the Iwa Chūnin—keeping Lucado and Xu from being overwhelmed—Sayo focused his primary attention on the Elite Jōnin. He watched the man's rhythm, his weight shifts, and the microscopic gaps in his boulder-armor.
There.
The Iwa Jōnin pivoted to deliver a finishing blow, exposing a fraction of a second of his rear flank.
Sayo triggered a command. A fourth spider, a specialized "Infiltrator" unit he had kept buried beneath the sand—identical in hue to the desert grains—sprang like a trapdoor spider. Its abdomen retracted, revealing a pneumatic needle launcher. The tip of the needle shimmered with an eerie, cobalt-blue sheen—the paralyzing neurotoxin he had distilled from Chiyo's personal archives.
Whoosh.
The needle hissed through the air, aiming for the unarmored gap behind the Jōnin's knee. The elite sensed the displacement of air at the last millisecond and twisted, but the kinetic momentum of his own attack betrayed him. The needle grazed his calf, leaving a scratch no deeper than a paper cut.
"Gah!" The Jōnin grunted.
The neurotoxin, engineered for high-speed transmission, hit his nervous system like a lightning strike. His entire left leg went rigid. For a high-speed combatant, a micro-second of lag is a lifetime.
Iryō, sensing the sudden distortion in his opponent's balance, didn't question the miracle. He poured the last of his chakra into his blades, his body becoming a blur of wind.
"Wind Release: Vacuum Consecutive Waves!"
The compressed air blades acted like a high-pressure water jet cutting through stone. The rock armor, already fluctuating as the Jōnin struggled to fight the paralysis, shattered into dust. The wind blades followed through, carving into the enemy's chest.
The Elite Jōnin's eyes widened in shock as he looked down at his own life spilling into the sand. He collapsed, a fallen titan.
With their anchor gone, the morale of the remaining Iwa Chūnin evaporated. Iryō, ignoring his cracked ribs, joined Sayo in a ruthless counter-offensive. Caught between Sayo's precision puppetry and Iryō's vengeful wind, the remaining enemies were dismantled in minutes.
The desert returned to its heavy, silent state, broken only by the ragged breathing of the survivors.
Iryō leaned on his sword, blood dripping from his chin. He looked at Sayo with a mixture of awe and profound gratitude. He realized that this eleven-year-old hadn't just "supported" the squad—he had calculated their survival.
"Sayo... you..." Iryō breathed, finally managing a heavy nod. "Incredible work."
Sayo didn't celebrate. He simply walked over to retrieve his poisoned-needle unit, cleaning the sand from its joints. He looked at the corpses and then at the horizon. This wasn't a victory; it was an invitation. The Stone was moving into their territory.
The war had truly begun.
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