The north-western reaches of fire country remained untouched by industry, a three hundred mile stretch of interminably hilly terrain blanketed by uncountable trees. It was a dense, old growth, over a thousand years in age even as the Sage of Six Paths walked among their boughs. It lay across the strategic border with the Land of Grass, a natural barrier from the legions of men that may come marching from the mountains beyond. Konoha's great rival, Iwa, and the Land of Earth had crossed the buffer state of Grass before, finding only a twisting maze, a labyrinth of timber in which they had been divided and conquered, battle after battle.
It was in this terrain that three cadets trudged through the undergrowth, back laden with a four week combat load. Even with a type nine storage scroll it weighed almost twenty kilos. Unfortunately for them it was standard practice to carry all essential equipment and four days of supplies unsealed and on your person. Risking it all to a stray kunai or fire technique was a fool's prerogative but it hadn't stopped Naruto from bemoaning the long list of items he had read in the standard operations manual that Kakashi had given to each of them.
He didn't recall any of this during the march however. Naruto had long let his mind go blank, with no thought other than placing one foot ahead of another as he followed after Sasuke. Sakura brought up the rear, her feet swaddled in bandages inside her boots. The blisters had swallowed almost a third of her feet.
A few minutes later the three cadets came to rest, slumping against the trees, and taking slugs of water from their canteens.
"Oi Blue, the rest period should be ten minutes on the hour." Naruto said.
Sasuke turned his head to glare, which would have been more effective if Naruto could see his eyes.
"You have a problem with the pace I set?" He said.
"Yeah, I'm telling you the rest is too short." Naruto replied.
Sasuke stood, slowly using one arm to push himself upright, until he settled heavily on his feet. Naruto on the other hand had no trouble doing the same, his breath was light and even, and he shifted the weight on his shoulders with a shrug as he stood.
"This is super rough terrain and our window isn't going to close for ages. Ten minutes makes way more sense than five." Naruto continued. "We don't need to be in such a rush."
Sasuke caught the quick glance the blonde gave Sakura and scoffed.
"We're not slowing down. It's five and it's going to stay five." Sasuke said.
"Which I just told you is stupid." Naruto said.
"The Taisa made me Lead on this op. You had your turn so fall in line Yellow." Sasuke scowled.
Both boys squared their shoulders and their chests puffed just the slightest as they sized each other up. There was a twitch in Sasuke's fingers as Naruto clenched one hand in a loose fist.
"Five minutes are up." Sakura cut in. "Let's go."
She stood, even slower than Sasuke had.
"And don't argue with Blue, Yellow." She said. "He is the leader. Get it through your thick skull."
She moved off and didn't give them a choice if they wanted to maintain formation. Naruto pushed past Sasuke, bumping him with his shoulder. They both knew it hadn't been more than three.
Several hours passed before they came upon a gap in the trees. The earth was dead and dust, falling off the bottom of their feet like ash. Nothing grew there. It was a negative a space, a rent in a bolt of cloth, with straight lines demarking its boundaries. At its widest it was only forty meters across yet it stretched off in a long line for several hundred.
Naruto felt something crunch beneath his boot. He dug it out with his toe. It was a bone, or a series of small bones in the shape of a hand. There was the barest hint of what used to be a kunai in its grip, a puddle of twisted rust and a scrap of leather.
"We're here, point Asahi." Sasuke said. "Yellow secure the perimeter, Pink and I will find the dead drop."
Naruto grumbled under his breath as he held his fingers in a seal. Several clones appeared in puffs of smoke and moved off towards the tree-line on each side. With that accomplished he took the time to take in his surroundings. The grey dirt was rippled like sand by the winds yet he could just barely see something sticking out of the ground. He walked over and pulled it free.
It was a spear, bone dry and brittle like a charcoal briquette, and it crumbled just the same as he rolled it in his fingers. It stained his fingers black with soot and fell to the ground in two pieces. He found many other such pieces, weapons and armour torched into uselessness by some great heat, as he wandered through the devastated landscape.
"Stop daydreaming. We secured the package." Sasuke said and tossed a long package towards Naruto.
The cadet received it in both hands, briefly caught off balance by the weight and suddenness of the burden. Sasuke had a similar package slung over his shoulder as did Sakura who was standing beside him. It was almost a meter long and swaddled in thick waxed canvas held together with raw twine. The two were also coated in the grey dirt, staining their uniforms up their sleeves and trouser legs. Without a word they slipped back into the forest.
In the next hour of travel Naruto noticed the rest period had increased to eight minutes. He had smirked under his mask until Sakura had taken off her own to quickly choke down a ration bar. The wide smile she had given the other male on the team twisted something. Naruto chose not to eat.
"We're approaching point Kawase." Sakura said.
Naruto's head snapped up from the monotonous march. The girl had memorised the route they were taking and despite the landscape sliding by in a blur for him, she obviously had noticed some kind of landmark. The last hour of their climb had slowly increased in inclination and now they were approaching the edge of another ridgeline.
Once they reached it they quickly settled into a vantage point over a shallow valley. The outcropping they had settled on top of was quickly covered with a frame of slim branches and netting they had brought with them. A few bushes and leaves completed the camouflage and then they waited.
Below them was a small compound, a ring of five small warehouses and a central two story building that appeared to be a manor of some sort. They were all timber construction in typical Land of Fire style with flat tops and sloped eaves in various colours. The buildings were also hemmed by a crude palisade. Outside the compound was the reason for its existence. Terraces had been cut into the hills and filled with pale white and purple flowers, poppies.
Once the trio had settled into the observation post Sasuke turned to each of them.
"The countersign is Tora-ribbon." He said. "We'll be taking ninety minute shifts during the day, three hours at night. Sakura takes first shift, understood?"
"Understood." Sakura said.
Naruto just nodded with grit teeth before sending a squad of clones to the rear of the ridge to secure their exit and perimeter.
It was two hours later, during Naruto's observation shift, that he saw it through the eyeglass, a figure standing in the courtyard of the compound. It was dressed in yellow and green silks, the colours of Iwa.
"Show time guys." He said.
His two team mates immediately broke into action as Naruto did as well. The three of them retrieved the packages from the side of the post and began to free the contents. They pulled out several long pieces of shaped wood, steel, thick pins and rolls of leather. In the next thirty seconds they quickly assembled the pieces, slotting them together and slapping in the pins to secure them. It was a crossbow almost as large as Sakura was.
Continuing the flurry of activity the boys drew the bow with a pull lever and then Sasuke shouldered the weapon with the front stabilised on a flat stone as his eyes shifted from black to red. Sakura at the same time pulled a canvas map, a compass, and an abacus from her pack. Naruto then passed the eyeglass to her and unfurled the leather roll. Inside it were several long bolts tipped in steel with each bolt weighing almost half a kilo.
Sakura's glanced down at the map and compass before returning her eye to the eyeglass even as her fingers continued to dance across the abacus, shifting beads up and down.
"In the courtyard, single target, stationary, green yukata, distance eight hundred, adjust up six, adjust left one half." She said.
Naruto loaded a bolt into the groove. Behind the simple sight Sasuke's eye began to spin madly as he made minute adjustments to the angle of the crossbow. He could make out the red clothed figure with an unnatural clarity as chakra surged along his optical nerves and supercharged his perceptive abilities. Only a split second after Naruto had finished loading, his finger depressed the trigger.
There was a whip crack as the tightly wound steel of the crossbow string surged forwards at speed, propelling the mass of the bolt almost too quick to be seen with the naked eye. Sasuke, however, saw it all, even how the bolt almost seemed to slither through the air like a snake as the forces imparted on it warped the dense wood. He knew it then, that it would hit.
He hadn't told either of his team mates exactly what Kakashi had done to force his Sharingan to express. The bloodline was an old one and well understood, his ancestors having had hundreds of years of research and observation, yet it wasn't secrecy that held his tongue. There were simply some things that beared no repeating. Still, it was impossible to deny its utility and versatility. He didn't regret it at all.
"Shot out." He said.
A few seconds elapsed before the reply he knew was coming came.
"Good shot. Target down." Sakura completed the sequence.
"The Sharingan is fucking bullshit." Naruto muttered.
If he had seen Sasuke's shit eating grin he would have said more.
The three Not ANBUs were seated in the courtyard of the compound, resting back against their packs as they relaxed for the first time in almost two days. They were spent. Their extraction route had been almost as long as their insertion and the packs hadn't gotten any lighter. After a quick detour to the ash field to depose of the crossbow they had made their way in a meandering path that had ultimately led back to the compound.
Kakashi smiled at the three of them. The location was in fact one of many of Konoha's external training areas, the poppies completely legal and under Konoha's ownership as raw materials for making combat analgesics.
"Congratulations on completing the exercise." He said. "I myself often used this method of assassination during my early teens, came up with it in fact. It's uniquely suited for Sharingan users for assassinating targets guarded by sensors. Avoiding a disadvantage due to your smaller size is just a bonus."
The three cadets had their masks off and were inhaling the boxed lunches Kakashi had provided them and even so the three of them sat a little straighter at those words.
"Unfortunately if I had done it to the standard you three just demonstrated I would probably be in a shallow grave somewhere in the Land of Rivers." Kakashi continued. "I expected better from you Blue."
The cadets stopped eating. Sasuke frowned and stared into his lunch and Naruto chuckled even as Sakura shot him a venomous glare.
"We didn't use a single drop of chakra, we made all the operational windows, and the target was eliminated." Sasuke said. "Where exactly did I mess up?.. Taisa"
"Ah, the devil is in the details as they say." Kakashi replied.
The man pulled out a small notebook and quickly read through a couple pages before nodding to himself. He cleared his throat.
"First, the sixty kilometre insertion took you fifteen hours. That's barely adequate. Yes you made the window but I was generous with those. In the field will never be so neat. ANBU would be expected to cover this distance in ten hours or less." Kakashi said.
At this Sasuke glanced at Naruto and Sakura before the muscles in jaw visibly clenched. In contrast Naruto's grin only grew larger as did Sakura's discomfort.
"But were not ANBU Hatake-Taisa." Sakura muttered.
"I know." Kakashi replied. "I named you guys."
The three cadets were speechless.
"Second and especially embarrassing for you, Pink was unconsciously softening her footfalls with minute amounts of chakra due to her injury. If this had been a real mission the Jounin level sensor would have seen you coming within three kilometres, which defeats the purpose of this exercise." Kakashi continued without missing a beat.
Sakura wilted on the spot, hiding her face beneath her hair as she stared at her feet. Only Naruto who was sitting closer to her could hear the muttering of curses under her breath. Sasuke snapped the chopsticks in his hand.
"Third, when you arrived at your vantage point you assigned Pink first shift. This was a mistake. Either you or Yellow should have taken first shift while Pink and the other unoccupied member performed further treatment on her feet." Kakashi said. "Fourth your countersign was inappropriate. Anyone who has spent time in Konoha would know that Tora is identified by a ribbon. If there is even the slightest chance a password can be guessed from the challenge it's not good enough. Fifth, you failed to confirm the target was dead or take a follow up shot otherwise."
Sasuke jumped up as he heard the last criticism and threw the broken bits of wood in his hand to the ground.
"We hit him." Sasuke said. "I know we did."
Kakashi just chuckled like he found the boy's tantrum amusing.
"Yet you are the student and I am the master." Kakashi said.
He then unsealed an object from a scroll, the dissipating smoke revealing a burlap mannequin stuffed with straw. It was wearing a green yukata and was missing its left leg from the mid-thigh down.
"True, dismemberment is usually a death sentence from rapid blood loss and shock. However, I recall the intelligence briefing on this particular mission being uncharacteristically helpful and accurate. They had a Chūnin medic on the squad as well as a sensor. It might be a gruesome and debilitating wound but it's not a complex one. There was a good chance they would have saved his life." Kakashi said. "So pay attention."
Sasuke crashed back onto the ground.
"Half those things weren't even my fault." He spat. "If I didn't have these dead weights-"
He stopped mid-sentence and swallowed heavily. Kakashi was piercing him with his one eye. It was accusative and hard as iron. The rest of the man's face was just as impassive as if it were waiting for some kind trigger, for Sasuke to cross a line. Even so the Jounin never resorted to using any techniques such as killing intent, he didn't need to. The boy wisely shut his mouth and stopped speaking.
"The team leader takes responsibility for his entire team. That's non-negotiable. Don't try to deflect with poor excuses." Kakashi said. "If you had been attentive Pink wouldn't have had those blisters at all."
He furnished the Uchiha with a final warning glance and addressed all three of them.
"As with every exercise I will be expecting a report from each of you within three days just as I will provide you with individual feedback." He said. "Also, Sakura will be in charge of the next exercise. Team NANBU dismissed."
