"ANBU!" the kunoichi gasps in relief and staggers to a halt.
Hyuuga whips around, eyes wide. "You – oh thank you, thank fuck."
Aburame's ankle finally gives out and he drops to his knees. The other shinobi bends over with his hands on his thighs and pants raggedly. No one even cares how this happened, they're just so relieved.
Kakashi slowly stands, staring up into the mask peering down at him. "We're behind enemy lines. Iwa in pursuit. There are two groups coming at us in a pincer attack."
The ANBU looks at Kakashi for a long moment before calmly scanning the area. "You, carry the Aburame," he orders and then flickers away.
The group of Konoha-nin share glances with each other and then the kunoichi helps Aburame onto the shinobi's back. There's a cry off in the distance behind them and Hyuuga looks over, eyes pulsing white. Whatever he sees makes him grimace.
Most villages are made up of chunin, a good half of the forces. Genin are around 20% but cycle through quickly, promoted especially fast in war time, while jonin make up 30%. ANBU are 1% of the villages forces, the absolute elite.
You don't see ANBU on the frontlines because that would be wasteful. The ANBU are either protecting the Hokage or infiltrating the other villages for mass assassination and sabotage. It would almost be unfair to use ANBU on a battlefield - like they are right now.
The ANBU is suddenly standing in front of them. "Head for the trees. Sound off rank and specialty." He disappears as soon as they take off.
"Uh, um." The shinobi hefts Aburame a bit higher in the hold as he runs, looking around a bit. "Chunin, medic-nin."
"Chunin, water ninjutsu," the kunoichi reports.
"Chunin, taijutsu," Hyuuga states.
"Chunin, tracking," Aburame says.
"Chunin, ninjutsu," Kakashi offers.
There's a moment of silence as they all realise just how impossibly lucky they were getting this far when not a single one of them is jonin. It's also very clear that most of them made chunin recently just going off how young the whole group is.
"ANBU Hound," the summons introduces himself, crouched on a branch further into the shade of the trees as the chunin reach him. "Assassination."
Six Iwa-nin are dead on the ground underneath his tree, killed quietly, neatly, barely bloodied. He didn't use ninjutsu, just three kunai for the whole lot of them.
The ANBU must be bored, wasted on people like these.
Hound tosses down a scroll. "Take their headbands and flak jackets, bury yours here. Seal the bodies."
"Their headbands?" the kunoichi asks hesitantly.
Hound looks at her and she shrinks back. "Are you not behind enemy lines to take out the supply station?"
"You think we want to be here?" Hyuuga cries and then hesitates. "We don't have supplies anyway, and we're injured."
"I can see that," Hound states. "That's why you can take the headbands and walk into the station. You'll be healed, restock on supplies, and then sabotage the camp."
"I…haven't had infiltration training," the shinobi admits.
"You don't need any when it's this simple," Hound corrects. "The station is chaotic because we're at war. You'll be wearing their uniform. Just ask for medical attention and where the weapons are stored then walk right back out."
The chunin share looks with each other.
"I agree," Aburame says. "Why? We should not waste this opportunity and I expect an ANBU to understand the capabilities of chunin."
"I'm in," Kakashi says quietly. He just summoned an ANBU. It's not that he trusts the man, but he does trust the man's competency. Besides, if Hound wanted to kill them, he'd just do it himself.
"I'll go too," the kunoichi says after a brief pause.
"Me too," the shinobi agrees.
"Fine," Hyuuga sighs. "Okay, fine. Headbands and flak jackets, right?"
"Then head for the supply station but stay in the trees," Hound orders before he flickers away again.
They strip the bodies and seal them away while the shinobi works on Aburame's ankle with medical supplies he finds on the Iwa-nin.
Kakashi doesn't bother trying to find a vest small enough to fit him but he at least takes a headband and puts it on over a bandana he steals from a body to hide his hair. He strips out of his flak jacket as well because while it's doubtful, he can probably pass as a genin as long as there are no questions about his hair peeking out.
"How did you summon him?" the kunoichi asks quietly, looking around warily like the ANBU would care enough to eavesdrop on chunin.
"I don't know," Kakashi admits.
"Do you know who he is? Does he also have the same summons?"
"I don't know," is all Kakashi can say.
They're up and running in twenty minutes and keep to tree cover for another fifteen minutes until they catch sight of another group heading towards them.
"Stay calm," Hyuuga mutters.
Kakashi throws on a minor henge – just a bit taller, brown hair, nothing big enough to alert a sensor unless they're looking for it. Aburame changes up his glasses to a wide visor. The two groups pass by with only a brief nod.
Hound stands out in the grassy field, only a bit out of the supply station's camp, arms crossed and undetectable with a basic ANBU camouflage jutsu on.
It took him a moment to remember, which is why he got confused at first since he did vaguely recall sabotaging a supply station when he was eight. Actually seeing the Iwa camp here makes him realise this is the wrong point in time.
They were meant to die.
They were meant to run to the trees and the second group following them pulled away, back to the front lines, thinking it was handled because it was four exhausted Konoha-nin and a child up against six fresh-faced Iwa.
They fought the six Iwa and Kakashi was the only one left standing. He stayed in the trees on the way back, hid there until a lull in the fighting and shot out of cover, sprinted straight through back to Konoha's camp.
Minato was livid when he heard Kakashi was put on the front lines. He wasn't a Hokage candidate yet but he still had enough sway to be heard. He argued that as Kakashi's jonin sensei Minato should have had final say and it was such an outrageous breach of protocol he demanded the Chunin Commander get demoted. Kakashi never saw him that wrathful again.
Hound wonders how Minato will react to this change. This won't have too much of an impact, it's a small supply station and there's more scattered close by, but Iwa will be reeling for a while at the sheer audacity. Konoha might be too.
Hound sighs and looks back towards the trees. Chunin are slow so he has some time to think up a proper battle plan now that he can't just copy what he did when he was eight.
He should have just left, that would have been the smart plan, but then he would have doomed the lives of his comrades and those chunin would have ended up on the memorial stone. He wonders if he already knows their names. Either way, he's taken command now, he has to see it through.
…but was he always that small?
The group of chunin are so tense by the time they reach the end of the strip of trees that Kakashi flinches with the others as a genjutsu appears in front of them, a hovering platform of the basic layout of the supply station.
"Bordered by two cliffs, good defence, excellent range of sight," Hound says, standing on a low branch. He tosses down a thick stack of paper with the ink still shiny and a whole roll of ninja wire. "Hatake, Aburame, that's yours. Head up the mountain side to the lookout posts and start placing the exploding tags as deep into the rock face as you can along here."
One cliff lights up in red along the slope facing the supply station, a bit to the front and further down from the top than Kakashi would expect.
"Make sure to connect them with wire. I'll take care of the Iwa-nin already on shift at the top and then places tags along the other cliff." Hound throws sealing scrolls to the rest. "Go inside, get restocked. Take everything you can but don't be obvious about it. You all have an hour once you're inside the gate then I'll bring down the rockslide, so you need to be gone by then. Any questions?"
"What happens if we get caught?" the shinobi asks.
"Don't," Hound says.
No one stops them as they as they slow to a jog once they reach the supply station. It's not a structured place, just lots of tents piled high with crates.
Hyuuga, the kunoichi and the shinobi peel off into the mess of tents. Kakashi takes point after that because he might have a height issue but the Aburame has a particular speech pattern as well. Probably why they were both picked to stay away from the supply station proper.
The two walk to the beginnings of the spiral path up the left side of the cliff and no one stops them. They get nods as they pass the lower, middle and upper guard shifts. Kakashi gets side-eyed but no one makes a comment. It's not rare to see a genin with no flak jacket on the front lines.
No one is at the very top, like Hound said, he must have taken care of it. Kakashi keeps watch as Aburame calls out the few insects he has left and has them thread the ninja wire through the tags. After it's been unravelled, they move together in placing the tags over the rock face, either into already made crevices or into ones they drilled in with jutsu.
Forty-five minute later, they're walking back down, and at the hour mark they hit the tree line running as the explosions detonate with a bang, first one side and then the other immediately after.
They meet up with the other three and sprint as hard as they can as boulders the size of houses rain down on the supply station, pausing only briefly to dig up their hidden uniforms.
It takes them a good hour to get back to the frontlines and they stay crouched and hidden, waiting nervously for something, for Hound to appear. But Iwa is pulling back in a rush after the sound of the rockslide reaches the battle, which means the way is relatively clear as five tired chunin with headbands and flak jackets covered in dirt stumble through into camp.
"Satoshi!" a kunoichi cries, running up and even shoving aside Aburame to get to the shinobi. "What happened? Are you okay? I tried to find you but you were gone and you weren't at camp either!"
The shinobi grabs onto her shoulders, stares her dead in the eye. "You are not going to believe what just fucking happened to me."
After making sure they get back to the Konoha side of the battlefield, Hound feels a little bit proud of this chunin group. They clearly weren't prepared but they stuck it out and Hound only had to step in four times to quietly kill Iwa-nin who had gotten suspicious. That's not such a bad number.
Hopefully in this parallel -alternate?- universe they'll live much longer lives. Hound doesn't spontaneously remember any of this happening when he was a kid so he's pretty sure it's locked in now. That maybe coming here split his past and created this new timeline?
"Good luck," Kakashi muses, wishing them the best, and then looks around where he's perched in a branch, hidden to the Iwa-nin still running around under the tree.
There's a pause and then he dismisses himself like he's a clone, puffing back to the forest in Konoha that he left from.
Convenient.
Kakashi summons Pakkun, half worried he's going to get a mini version of himself but the nin-ken appears.
"Where did you go?" Pakkun asks, confused because Kakashi looked like he was really going to start rolling around in the puppies so the abrupt exit was a bit odd.
"Got summoned," Kakashi says casually. "Hey, you didn't happen to feel anything maybe three or four hours ago, around then?"
Pakkun raises as much of an eyebrow as a dog can. "Like what?"
"Like time travel?"
Pakkun stares. "What?"
"A time travel sensation?" Kakashi offers and then looks around. "Actually, you know what? Never mind, I'm sure it won't happen again."
.
A/N: Hound, speedrunning what he thinks is a C-rank, spending the entire mission like an encouraging father watching his kids play in the park.
The chunin, thrown head-first into what they think is an A-rank, thinking they're going to die for about 50% of that shitshow.