Hidden Base Six-Two-Twelve was a base set up to be an observation outpost specifically for the Village of Sunagakure.

We weren't so close that Suna shinobi would be falling over us, but neither would we be so far out that we couldn't make trips to observe the comings and goings from a distance. Trade caravans, shinobi patrols, and the state of Sunagakure itself. All was written down into reports and relayed back to Kiri in as timely a manner as possible.

Hidden Base Six-Two-Twelve didn't have enough shinobi to properly assault Sunagakure. That didn't mean we couldn't cause a lot of damage if the opportunity arose, but due to Suna's distance, it didn't offer Kirigakure any true advantage to weaken it.

If anything, we wanted it to remain strong as a check against Konoha and Iwa.

At least that's what I had picked up during the evening meal from Hanzo, Hito, and Dende, who, on the voyage over here, had become my very good friends. They'd taken a good amount of joy from being referred to as Senpai, which made them innocent enough.

They'd then only stolen a small amount of cash from me through gambling, along with a few kunai. Small things, theft, and abuse of power. In another world and life, this would have been workplace bullying.

In Kirigakure, it meant we were friends.

They'd never once tried to steal from me, or knife me outside of training, which was another positive.

So I suppose we were really good friends by that metric.

"So how do you go about getting assigned good jobs back home and here?" I asked as I devoured the food I'd been provided.

I noted that no one had tried to steal my food since we arrived, too busy trading insights and getting the lay of the land for how the base currently was. Things would shift again when some of the current contingent of shinobi departed, but for now, we were all in the base at once.

There would be some very careful patrols for the next few days or even a week, just to make sure it was safe before any group of shinobi left.

Hanzo mopped up his gruel with some bread in a practised manner. "Well, it's all about who you know, see? Also, how your rep is. If people know that you have certain skills and jutsu, then you will be given tasks assigned to them most of the time."

He waved a hand. "If you piss people off, they will have you assigned to shit jobs or send you on missions that will stink or see you killed. It's one of the reasons you always want to be respectful of Jonin; they call the shots out here and in the Village."

"Not as much as the clans do," said Dende slurping up the last of his meal.

Hanzo rolled his eyes, and Hito chuckled. "Most of the Jonin are Clan born; they control a lot of the power in the Village if you hadn't worked that out."

I shrugged. "That was pretty obvious in the Academy. The Clan kids got better training and were generally better for a while there."

Hito tilted his head. "Yeah, your year are a bit strange like that."

I offered a shrug. "Us civilians just stuck together in the one class."

Hitno nodded. "Yeah, that's what's strange. That never happens. The clans always take their picks. Becomes a split down the middle with Hozuki and Terumi fighting little proxy battles."

"Yup. They did that," I said.

"But not in your class, which meant what? Ten or so kids formed a group of civilians?"

"Twenty-five or so…"

Hito eyed me but didn't say anything. I considered him. He wasn't going to pry, I knew that much. Instead, he was going to make an assumption based on the information that was available to him.

I didn't want that. I wanted him guided towards an end goal I had in mind.

Him, and the other two. I'd spent long enough around them to realise they weren't bad people at heart.

Products of Kirigakure? Definitely. But that only meant they were rough around the edges and products of a barbaric schooling system.

"Guess we had an advantage for that though," I said, touching on the subject I'd been teasing at for a while. The other three didn't perk up, they were too controlled for that. But they didn't ask me to shut up either. They watched me, their interest showing despite their best efforts.

I hid my smirk, all too used to playing social games thanks to the Okiya ladies. "When we grouped up, we were able to start working together, achieving more by trading notes and offering insight when we learned something. When one of us struggled, the others helped lift them up." I drummed my fingers on the table in a show of agitation.

"I think I'm going to miss that support network… with how things went down… a few of them aren't going to want to speak to me." My mind thought back to Hanahime, who'd cried over her cousin.

The others nodded, their own gazes turning distant. I allowed them to reminisce about their pasts, knowing that each of them would have killed one of their classmates. They were all civilians, so they wouldn't have been given a pass like some of the Clan kids had.

"I'm probably going to have to do some favours for the other medics to learn the poison extraction jutsu. I think we'll need as many medics as we can," I said casually. Reminding them and anyone else listening in that I had very unique and valuable skills.

"But there's a lot more I'd like to learn, so If I can get good jobs, I can pick it up quicker…" I said thoughtfully.

Hanzo nodded his head. "Yeah, I wouldn't worry about that too much. I think Jonin Akiko liked that you kept a lot of us in good condition on the trip over here. She'll put you to use."

I nodded and allowed myself to sigh in relief. "That's good to hear," I said, slumping. I tilted my head. "So, I never got around to asking about this, but how does it normally go after graduation?"

The group snorted. "Typically, you are assigned to a duty roster unless you impress someone. Then they assign you an apprenticeship. You probably would have been given a medical apprenticeship if your year hadn't pulled the stunt it had."

"So no teams?" I asked.

The group shook their head. "That's for Leaf and Lightning nin. They love that buddy-buddy forced get-along crap. You make your own friends and stick with them. When you get strong enough to be chunin you have an idea who's got their heads on straight and who are crazy enough that you shouldn't work with them."

Dende pointed a chopstick at me. "You're supposed to build up a network of understanding of those around you with the various jobs you're given. Of course that doesn't really work when we're at war."

Hito and Hazno nodded at that.

"What happens then?" I asked, worried about how things would go with the rest of my graduating cohort.

Dende used his chopstick like a drum on his bowl for a moment. "Well, it'd be mostly the same, but there are group training exercises also offered in the Village that are mandatory. It's a bit like being back at the academy. For us Chunin, we get randomly assigned a group of five to ten genin, or sometimes even a group of Chunin, just to throw the chum in the water. Then we're given an objective, and we have to achieve it while any number of other groups work against us."

I nodded. He was talking about war games. "Is it as bad as the Academy? Do some people die?"

Hanzo snorted. "Nah, nothing gets as bad as the Academy graduation process kid… not unless you're in a full-on battle, and then it's obvious that you need to put the other shinobi into their graves, or lock em down I suppose."

He scratched his jawline, which had a scar along it. "We had a capture mission one time for intel, and those are sometimes worse than straight-up kill-each-other battles."

"Makes sense," I said, tapping the table in thought. "Any chance I could get your thoughts on what I need to know? I rather like keeping my limbs and blood where they are supposed to be."

"Heh, don't we all kid?" Hanzo said, "I wouldn't worry too much, you have good instincts from what I saw in your fights," he said, referencing the training matches we'd had during the voyage.

I'd been pleasantly surprised that I'd mostly been able to hold my own. I'd had to lose a few more kunai later that night thanks to causing some people's feelings to get hurt, but I'd managed to not make any actual enemies despite putting up tougher fights than they'd expected.

I made sure never to win too quickly. In fact, in the majority of the fights against another chunin, I made sure to lose convincingly. Any Genin I faced, I made sure to beat easily while teasing out the fights. From there, I was able to pick up a handful of minor jutsu.

Jonin Akiko and a few others had noticed and not said anything beyond nodding at me while tapping their noses to indicate they knew what I had been doing. Jonin Akiko's attention had felt like it even held a tinge of approval.

From these fights, I'd been able to pick up how to perform the Mist Jutsu, which was synonymous with Hiding in the Mist Jutsu, something I didn't rate as a good jutsu for fighting Suna shinobi.

The other small gain was the Water Prison Jutsu, which was a useful restriction jutsu… once again in a water-heavy environment.

I foresaw a lot of water being carted around on any patrols I went on, if not for me, then at least for my fellow shinobi.

The only other jutsu I had learned was a miniature fireball jutsu that reminded me of Sasuke's early flame jutsu with how fast you could spam the jutsu. With the qualifier that I didn't need to use a resource that would be severely lacking in Suna, I made sure to practise it during the voyage, much to the annoyance of the Chunin who had used it against me.

I nodded and set my bowl aside. "What about having a Jonin take you on for training, or even an apprenticeship?"

"You from a clan?" said Hito.

I sighed. This was fast becoming a barrier that I was running into quite a bit with our discussions. Wanted to advance? Easy missions? Safe Missions? Well-paying Missions? Choice roles in any of the departments, such as T , the Medics —such as they were— the administration hall, sensory corps, or even ANBU?

You needed to have backing for everything.

Specifically, backing from Clans.

Right now, the big clan was the Hozuki, with Gengetsu Hozuki being the Clan leader and the Mizukage. His clan therefore got preferential treatment with certain assignments; secondary to them, the Yuki, as a supportive clan to the Hozuki, were also taken care of.

A trickle-down occurred from there to the rest of the clans with the non-clan shinobi being the last to receive any attention. Not that any usually existed.

Hanzo, Hito, and Dende were all technically aligned with the Terumi clan but were known to straddle the lines of the clans by doing odd jobs with other clans.

Ostensibly, they were still seen as Terumi, but they weren't going to say no if they were tapped for a mission with other shinobi In their own words, they put their heads down and didn't draw attention to themselves.

Apparently, me just sitting with them was the most attention they'd had for years, and they were still determining if that was a good or a bad.

I toyed with a kunai and considered everything they'd presented to me. "What do you think is going to happen to me?" I asked. It was a question that had been hanging over me for weeks now.

This assignment felt like it was a stay of execution. It felt like a lull in which I was supposed to relax before the other shoe dropped.

From my limited understanding of Gengetsu, that was precisely what he'd do.

I nodded to myself and stood. "Good talk guys," I said.

I had an idea of what was going on. I knew where I was, I had no idea where I was going. That wasn't something I could control.

Not fully. But I had ways to nudge things along.

I eyed the table that housed a number of Jonin and saw how a few were starting to move. I'd been keeping an ear out for idle comments tossed out from them the entire time I'd been talking with my 'senpai'. A small plan I'd come up with was about to play out.

I walked into the medical wing and walked straight up to Chunin En, the leader of the medics. "Sir, I understand that the shinobi of Suna are skilled at poisons?"

He eyed me and nodded slowly. "They are at that," he said.

I bowed. "I have never learned a method of dealing with poisons, sir!"

He stared at me, and I saw his expression shift into a sneer. "You'll get nothing from me, you little—"

"Did I hear correctly?" said a voice, cutting through Chunin En's, no doubt, petty taunts.

En whirled around only to stiffen and bow. "Sir! I… this upjumped Genin is trying to pass himself off as a medic! I can't teach him!" he said, scrambling for any excuse. I had to admit that it was a good dodge.

The Jonin wasn't having any of it. He merely stared Chunin En down.

Where En was a threat to me, this man exuded danger. I knew he could flick a hand and I'd die.

The man finished openly inspecting En and turned his attention to me. "Ah, yes, the problem case. There's always one each year; this is the first time it has been presented to me as a glittering shit, though."

I blinked at that but continued to hold my bow, not saying anything.

The man snorted. "Both of you can stand," he said, allowing me to straighten. I also had a chance to look the man over. Heterochromatic eyes of blue and black stared out with a burn floating across his forehead marked him.

Sadly, I still had no idea who he was beyond a Jonin. I knew all the names of the Jonin that had been on the ship, so he had to have been here beforehand. With how he was talking, it wasn't much of a leap, so much as a step of logic, to assign him the role of 'commander' of Hidden Base Six-Two-Twelve.

"So, Chunin Matsu? You wish to learn more medical skills?" he asked.

I nodded. "Sir yes! It has been a fundamental skill that has kept me alive, sir!"

"Drop the sir shit boy, it's a waste of words, give me respect, and I won't backhand you into next week," the man said, his eyes boring into mine.

I nodded, and he grunted, turning his attention to En. "Chunin Matsu is well documented for healing others in his graduating year, which is why so many of them reached graduation. He's a skilled medic for triage purposes; get him up to snuff on poisons and anything else he might be called upon. I don't receive enough shinobi as it is, and I'll be damned if I'm wasting any. Work him hard," said the man.

"Very well Wano," said En with a bow.

The newly revealed Jonin Wano grunted and gave En some orders to get things ready for two patrols that were coming in later today, then swept out.

En watched Wano leave with a pinched expression. I could see from that look alone that if en ever got the chance, he'd drive a knife into Wano's back.

En then turned his head to me, his expression settling into that of having smelled something nasty only to realise he'd stepped in it. Then he grunted and waved his hand. "Get those bandages clean!" he barked.

I got to work, having expected this. I knew he'd visit as many petty tasks as he could onto me while making the learning process as dragged out as he could. That was fine. I just needed to be in the room doing busy work.

I'd try to pick up as much as I could with my chakra sense.

It wouldn't be the first time I'd done this.

I mentally ticked off one method of getting stronger, or rather, shoring up a weakness of mine, from a mental list I had.

Now I just needed an excuse to pick up the Puppet string jutsu. For that, I'd need to get out and about and witness how the Puppeteer Corps of Suna operated.

It turns out there were procedures that had to be observed before any shinobi went into the desert.

Everyone who had come in on the boat sat down and ran through a number of training exercises on how to travel across the sands and rocky outcroppings without giving away too much.

Or at least those of us who had never been here were given the lectures and training exercises.

It was a fascinating application of the watery walking method, but you had to be very controlled in how you moved. Too much would result in an explosion of sand, much like the tree-climbing jutsu. It was an interesting step towards the water-walking jutsu, but not all the way.

We had to skate, dart, and, in a few instances, bury ourselves in the sand at a moment's notice.

I noted that in a few instances, small kunai were laid below where I should have been, but this turned out to be a training exercise for all as more than a few people suddenly shot out of sand that hadn't held such threats in when we'd done the exercise the day before.

"Pay attention to your surroundings, you slack-jawed morons!" screamed Jonin Akiko, who'd been tasked with overseeing our group. Her fearsome gaze swept the cavern, and she paused, noting that I hadn't been stabbed when I'd burrowed into the ground to hide in the sand. She resumed her sweep to make a note of the others, but she was more attentive to those that had failed.

"You need to be aware that sometimes the sands might be trapped or even set up with mines! Suna aren't idiots! There are also rock formations to be aware of! If you can't move yourself into a position straight away, you need to know! Your failure might not mean just your own death but the death of everyone else in your squad!"

She blurred into a shunshin and punched a handful of men and women before returning to her position. "If I am your Jonin during such an instance, even if you survive the confrontation, I will kill you myself!" she growled.

I didn't smile. I was starting to believe it.

I shared a look with some others from my group, shooting them a commiserating look as they struggled to get their breath back. Akiko had the unerring accuracy of a sadist— I was starting to notice a trend about those who gained rank— in how she could punch you right in the diaphragm to wind the recipient of her punches.

When we lined up to run the drill again, a few people drifted close enough for me to quickly place a hand on their chests to help them regain control of their breathing. This earned me a few nods and some muttered thanks.

I had to wonder if Akiko wasn't doing this to allow me to slip into a place within a few people's minds as 'useful'. This was highly appreciated, as I felt like it was allowing me to evade a lot of the harassment I had been anticipating but had yet to experience.

"Again!" Jonin Akiko ordered, tossing a few kunai with some mild explosive tags at us to get pockets of us to move.

We ran what was a much more deadly version of basketball suicides up and down a cavern before having to either change directions, hide, stop, or move faster at Akiko's discretion.

When we were all sweaty, heaving messes, or most of us were anyway, she clicked her tongue and signalled that we were done for the day. I kept myself upright and walked through the group of my fellow trainees, relieving some aches and pains, bruises, cuts, and sore joints, earning myself more and more gratitude from what would have been an otherwise snarling, surly shinobi.

A few of them eyed me, with one kunoichi shaking her head. "Suppose it's about kami damned time we got ourselves a blasted Uzumaki," she said, her eyes flicking over the red hair that was growing now atop my head.

I chuckled, well aware that I had more in the tank. Akiko had done a number of drills like this, and I'd started to notice that my own training with my group was much greater than I'd expected. I had the ability to run for hours and not falter. I knew I had greater reserves than anyone in my year in terms of chakra, but it was becoming clear to me how much my Uzumaki heritage set me up for success.

I could train longer and harder than most people, and that allowed me to significantly improve faster than others.

I merely smiled and shared a chuckle. "I don't know if Gengetsu will let me claim that. More than a few people like to remind me I was born clanless," I said with a shrug.

"Not like being Uzumaki means much in Kiri," I said. This earned a few nods while others looked thoughtful.

I waved them off, finished up with those who were injured, and made my way to the medical wing where I was assigned the task of cleaning out bedpans. I didn't say anything and merely got to work. To outward appearances, it looked like I was scrubbing at the pans but in reality, I swept them clean with a fairly low-powered water tentacle jutsu I'd picked up.

It kept me in the room, and Chunin En got to feel good while I sat in the corner doing busy work. He'd then pull in another genin that I'd learned was looking to expand their skills as a medic. They got a specialised one-on-one session with En.

I knew that this favouritism would dry up the moment that I wasn't here.

En was rather easy to manipulate into teaching Genin Ala. I'd overheard through my constant monitoring of the mess hall, that when I wasn't in the room, he'd be less attentive and wouldn't give her the time of day.

I'd since then cornered her and revised a method of exploiting En. I'd keep coming as much as I could, eager-eyed and innocent for him to fob jobs onto, and she'd get some proper training. She'd owe me some lessons, but the trick I played when I'd set up our little agreement was that she'd agreed to teach, but that didn't mean she would be teaching me.

I had a plan for my little cluster of civilian shinobi. Plans I was going to keep planting seeds to later reap the rewards for.

For now, I was learning just as much as she was, if not more, during the sessions by looking busy and keeping my ears and chakra senses as open as possible.

It turned out that the Evil extraction jutsu, or poison removal jutsu, was a rather straightforward effort in controlling your chakra so that it flushed through the patient and bound itself to the poisons in their system. From there, you would draw the poison out as gently as you could.

There were a few poisons that were more dangerous than this, however, that either worked very quickly by latching onto chakra as a vector to spread through the body or were naturally potent. These were few and far between and usually had issues with limited shelf life.

It was only if you had ready access to some of the plants, or animal species that produced these, then it would be a struggle.

Which… wasn't saying much with all the dangerous wildlife running around the Land of Wind.

It also made me recall that the Yamanaka, dangerous due to their mind jutsu, were also subtle horticulturists and would likely also have a number of poisons that would make them much trickier to deal with.

Poison-coated weapons weren't the only method of spreading debilitation after all.

Gas could be even more deadly, especially if you used something that was invisible.

Since then, I'd started practicing the method of flooding and withdrawing my chakra throughout my body tissue in time with my breathing to act as a method of hampering any future poisoning.

It ended up being a rather interesting chakra exercise, with the need to contain the chakra in each organ or muscle further than I already had. Contamination by merely spreading the chakra around would do more harm than good.

It was like reinforcing the body with chakra but taken to another level. I started to notice an improvement in my speed a few days into using the method and had to hold back more and more.

I was drawing up plans on how to do this on a smaller scale if possible. If individual organs could cause me to grow stronger by another factor, what would individual muscle fibres result in?

Or better yet, individual cells?

Would that make me immune to poisons?

I could certainly dream, but I wasn't about to take on the most dangerous poison user known throughout the Elemental Nations, Salamander Hanzo of the Land of Rain. If memory serves, he should have or will be fighting the Sannin.

I leaned my head to the side, dodging a blunt kunai that had been thrown at my head.

"Chunin Matsu! Got those pans done?" Chunin En said. I turned them so they sparkled in the light back at him, causing him to grumble.

"Right! Well, get yourself clean! We've got a patrol coming in! You'll assist me!" He barked as he laid out some scalpels and other medical equipment. I merely nodded and made a note to help Genin Ala learn the scalpel jutsu as I scrubbed up for surgery.

It wasn't lost on me that Chunin En despised me, but that didn't stop him from knowing that I was the most qualified to help him during a rush of serious injuries or through proper surgery.

When the team of shinobi made it in I could only grimace along with En. The kunoichi that was being presented to us had a puppet's appendage stuck through her. It appeared to be some kind of scythe blade attached to an arm.

It punched right through her intestines. I'd wanted to see how things worked, and now I was getting a front-row seat as I tried to stabilise the kunoichi.

En flushed her system and cleared out the poisons, toxins, and bile that had spread through her body before starting to knit together her organs with the mystic palm jutsu. When he ran out of chakra, he waved me forward, and I put my hand above the gaping wound.

"You're letting—" one of the kunoichi's teammates started to growl.

"I'm nearly out of chakra! He knows the mystic palm! It's on him now to keep her alive!" En snapped.

I let their comments wash over me; instead, I focused my attention on connecting her torn organs as best I could with small flexes and twists of chakra. This would reduce the amount I needed to regenerate and the strain on her. I worked carefully, in as slow and precise a manner as possible.

By the end of an hour, her wound was cleared up without even a scar. She still wasn't out of danger, however, as the poisons had run riot through her and her blood pressure and heart were erratic with how she was responding.

"Should I put her into a healing coma?" I asked En.

He frowned at me before nodding. "Do it," he said. I put my hand on her forehead and made a show of slowly feeding chakra into her. I didn't want it known that I could knock someone out with a touch after all.

That might make people wonder.

The kunoichi relaxed, and her breathing evened out, allowing her body to relax as it came to terms with being out of danger. I sighed and leaned back. "Wow, that was a bit more intense than the academy," I said with a laugh.

En snorted and waved a hand at me. "Get some fluids ready for her to drink when she wakes up she'll get through your genjutsu quickly enough."

I decided not to correct him on the nature of the jutsu used and instead nodded, setting up a water bottle with some light nutrient broth for the kunoichi when she awoke in a few hours.

As I did so, I heard En start interrogating her team. "What happened?"

"Got ambushed by some Suna nin," said a ratty-looking shinobi. His eyes darted around the room and lingered on the sharp items on display. "Took them all out so they couldn't backtrack on us. The other team is clearing any trail we would have left, but there shouldn't be an issue."

En grimaced. "They're going to make us move sites because of this and delay any changes in our roster for a while, thanks a lot!" he said waspishly. He then reached out and slapped the rat-like man from pinching a scalpel while he thought we were all distracted.

"Hands to yourself!" En growled.

A few hours later, En's prediction of the commander's decision to be cautious proved true. We were ordered to pack everything away as we were moving. The entire base would be divided into five groups with my group, led by Jonin Akiko, to move on to Hidden Base Six-Two-Seven.

I could only sigh and rub my eyes, knowing that this would be a logistical nightmare.

I was sadly correct.

Moving a large group of shinobi, without being seen was an arduous, nerve-racking task. It involved groups being broken down so that none would be too large to cause a too-large chakra emission that could be followed or sensed from afar. More people moving in a group also increased the risk of things going wrong.

For this reason, there were five groups of twenty, with four groups of five moving to various temporary bases before we were to move to another within a week. When we came together, it would be at a new site, one as yet undetermined, so that if any singular group was captured, we wouldn't endanger the others too much.

Through some method I wasn't allowed to know of, the group leaders would learn when and where to meet so that we could resume duties within a new forward base for Kiri.

Everyone cursed out the group that had been caught by the Suna patrol.

Thanks to them, there were going to be controlled withdrawals. As a medic who could monitor and stabilise the kunoichi that had been wounded. I was added to her group to keep her upright as much as possible.

This wasn't seen as a favourable outcome, and the other two in my squad often said as much before we departed. I was simply happy enough that Jonin Akiko decided to lead our group of five. The wounded kunoichi, Suzi, barely had a clue what was going on, but she knew enough to keep her head down and follow orders when she woke from her coma.

She constantly probed at her stomach as though expecting it to unravel at her touch, and when I grew tired of her poking her old wound, I slapped her hand. "Stop it; you'll irritate your bowels!" I said, lying with a straight face. That got her to stop and instead focus on checking her equipment.

I did so myself and resisted the urge to unseal the puppet limb I'd claimed from healing Suzi. I figured it would make for a useful training aid when I started toying around with the puppet string jutsu properly.

I imagine if I brought it out, Suzi would freak out more than a little.

Shame that.

I half toyed with the idea of it being worth it before I shook it off as Akiko turned and gave our group a look. "We're heading out!" she barked before putting word to action and leading us out of our former Hidden base and into the desert.

Akiko eyed Suzi. "Is she going to be able to keep up?" she asked me.

"She's low on fluids, sore and fatigued from having to heal... If we're quick, there shouldn't be an issue," I said.

Akiko merely grunted in response to my answer. I didn't like how she fingered the kunai at her side, but she eventually shook her head and waved for us to begin. I had to count myself lucky that we'd drawn a departure time that saw us start our run during the night.

Sadly, that luck wasn't worth much when the run proved to be much longer than I'd anticipated. We were gliding our way over sandy dunes, occasionally interspersed with rocky outcroppings, all while the sun bore down on us.

We ran, and I started to drop out of position occasionally to bolster Suzi's flagging energy levels. Akiko growled, and I faded back into my position.

I had to slip back to Suzi a few minutes later. Each time this played out, Akiko would glare at me, but it kept Suzi on her feet and able to run. Sadly, the intervals between Suzi needing a boost grew shorter quickly as the sun sapped her of any strength.

I wasn't surprised when Suzi faceplanted into the ground. I caught her before she could hurt herself, and when Akiko halted our run, she did so with a click of her tongue. "Can she run?" she said to me.

I shook my head and felt my gut drop as Akiko fingered a knife while staring at Suzi's throat.

Suzi was too out of it to understand she was about to die, and I felt my mind race as I cast about for a method of saving my patient from an ignoble death.

I was about to suggest I carry her. "We should…" I paused and stiffened as I felt my mind latch onto something. "Contact! North!" I said.

Then I hissed as I registered more blips in my senses. "Lots of contacts!" I reported.

Akiko turned and glanced in the direction I was talking about, only to growl. "I have them, shit! Go to ground! Now!" she barked.

We slid into the sands, and within the space of a few heartbeats, we were hidden in the sand with only a small cave allowing us to view the outside world.

I was looking at another dune, and I had to swallow and struggle to control my breathing. The shinobi I could feel were on the other side of that—

A sudden storm whipped up on the other side of the dune, and the peak detonated as a body flew through it. I felt through my senses as the chakra signatures suddenly became much more frantic.

Various additional presences appeared, and I blinked as I suddenly was able to look into an open landscape where Suna shinobi were throwing themselves into a fight with what appeared to be a hurricane.

When the hurricane resolved itself, a man wearing the armour and headband of Konoha was revealed.

I felt my breath hitch as the shinobi flicked his hand and a white crescent edge arced from his sword, cutting through a trio of hapless Suna nin.

White hair. A mask across his face. A sword. Powerful jutsu.

There was only one man in this era matching those descriptors who could do this.

Sakumo Hatake, the White Fang of Konoha.

I watched as Suna threw its shinobi at Sakumo, only for him to cut his way through them.

I watched as he bissected shinobi carting huge fans to hurl giant blasts of wind. They leapt back only to topple over as they realised they'd been cut, unable to ever gain room to hurl their jutsu.

I hadn't been able to feel it before, but now, thankfully, I had a back-row seat to watch Sakumo flex his chakra as he flicked his blade. Another white crescent sweep flashed out across my chakra sense even as my eyes saw the air shimmer.

More heads and bodies fell to the ground.

Suna responded by flooding the field with poisonous clouds and unleashing a rain of senbon.

When the clouds dissipated, nothing was revealed, causing the Suna nin to stiffen in surprise. I grimaced, suspecting I knew what was about to happen.

Sure enough, echoing his son in the future, a pair of hands launched out of the ground behind the rearmost Suna nin and dragged them into the ground. As they fell into the ground, Sakumo, and it had to be Sakumo, cut their head off.

Blood splattered across the sands, and Suna shinobi whirled around in horror as they found Sakumo in their midst. It was like watching sheep realise the wolf had gotten past the fence.

I watched as Puppets were thrown against Sakumo, trying to shepherd him away from the other nin.

Minute twitches of fingers correlated with huge, flowing movements as strands caused limbs and weapons to move. Puppets skittered and leapt toward Sakumo, only for him to throw himself into a sprint. Other shinobi started setting up traps with kunai with explosive tags landing ahead of him, seeking to box him in.

Only for him to be too quick.

He turned and vanished in another shunshin only to appear amidst a cluster of Suna nin. He spun around once, his sword stabbing out at precise moments to skewer his foes before he jumped to the side and skidded to evade another round of senbon.

As he skipped backwards, his hands clapped together in a sequence that was too fat for me to track with my eyes. Then he raised his hands to his mouth, and a huge fireball was unleashed.

A huge chain lashed out of the sand to reveal a puppet that ensnared Sakumo with its chain. The trap caused Sakumo to stall for all of a second. That second allowed explosive tags to go off as Puppeteers peppered the area with senbon, or had their puppets surge forward. It looked like they'd gotten him.

The Suna nin had a moment to cheer, only for Sakumo to reveal that he'd replaced himself with a fallen puppet.

He made a point of killing that puppeteer who had caught him first before moving against the others. A slight hitch in his step now as he continued to carve his way through the Suna nin.

I watched as they continued to try to box him, outlast him, or trip him up. He was too smooth, too controlled. Each move somehow built into the next, allowing him to whittle away at their forces. When he was denied a kill, that shinobi was usually focused on.

A puppeteer disguised himself as a puppet only for Sakumo to skewer him with a fallen puppet's limb. Each move he made advanced his goal of ending the threat against him.

With tight, controlled applications of a few wind jutsu, shunsin, and his kenjutsu, he cut down the force sent against him, until there were no more to face him.

I took in a shuddering breath of disbelief. This was what a truly strong shinobi was like.

Where a few minutes before there had been a small army of shinobi, now there was only a sole survivor.

Sakumo Hatake, the sole survivor of this massacre and also the cause.

His gaze swept the field, taking in the blood, the torn-up sands, and broken bodies, both puppet and human. Overhead, the carrion birds began to circle.

His gaze swept over our position my heart lurched when he turned his head and looked in my direction.

He knew we were here.

He knew I was here. He had to, surely?

A moment later he vanished, and I felt my heart thunder. Was I about to be stabbed in the back and die in the sand?

I stayed where I was, paralyzed with indecision for long moments.

Then a whistle that mimicked the cry of a hawk made me rise from the sand. I did so with the others on my team; all of them, particularly Suzi, were white-faced.

Akiko merely had a flat expression. "We need to report this… Suna just lost a sizeable force… Any of you recognise who did it? They aren't in the Bingo book," Akiko said.

I blinked in surprise. Sakumo Hatake wasn't in there yet?

I almost said his name, but then I realised that there was no feasible way for me to know his name, so I kept my mouth shut.

None of the others said anything, causing Akiko to click her tongue. Interesting. Was Sakumo like Kakakashi with his extended stint in ANBU? He'd been a masked shinobi for so long until today?

"Great, another A rank threat at least for Konoha, fucking hells!" Akiko growled.

She huffed. "Alright! Let's loot the field of anything worthwhile. Suzi, stand guard and don't faint or some shit! We have some more running to do, and I need to see if any big names died in this fight."

We set about picking through the corpses. When we found a pair of puppeteers who'd died looking into each other's eyes. Akiko seemed to recognise them, and she cursed.

I collected what I could before becoming too loaded up. The entire time, I had to shake my head. I'd wanted to witness puppets in play. Sadly, I'd been a bit distracted by Sakumo killing them all to pick up much.

If anything, I'd gotten more insight into kenjutsu and wind jutsu.

So I had that going for me, at least.

I glanced around the red sands.

It was more than others could say.

Twenty minutes later, we departed for our temporary base, Akiko made us run around for another hour before we arrived. When prompted for why she was late Akiko just shook her head.

"Some white-haired Konoha nin just killed that Suna hag, Chiyo's son and daughter-in-law. She's going to be pissed.," AKiko announced. The other Jonin in our group hissed in surprise and a discussion broke out over who it was and how Suna would handle this.

I blinked. Ah, I'd forgotten about that. I swallowed, realising how lucky I had been to witness the making of the legend of the White Fang. At the same time, Sakumo was famous for killing a force of Suna nin, that contained Sasori's parents.

They hadn't even been able to put up much of a fight.

I led Suzi off to a room to rest. Before I left she put a hand on my shoulder. "Hey, kid, thanks… I owe you," she said with a slur as she started to fall asleep. I patted her on the shoulder before departing to toy with the Puppet String jutsu I'd picked up.

It might have been terrifying to witness Sakumo wipe away a force of Suna nin like he had, but that didn't mean I was going to run away. No, if anything I needed to work harder and get stronger.

I had ideas for that.

Starting with overlapping puppet strings around my body.

I think I'd call this the hidden self-puppeting jutsu.

I was already strong and fast. What if I built a pseudo-chakra exo skeleton to assist and make me move faster and hit harder? I already had ideas about how to use it as a resistance tool. It was filled with possibilities.

It wouldn't be as powerful a game changer as the Shadow clone jutsu would be, but… for now, it would work.

Small steps forward would add up. They'd have to if I planned to have a chance to change Kiri.

A.N. Thanks go to my Pat-reons who are up to chapter 26!

Here is the next instalment of Red Riot with a shock appearance with Sakumo Hatake, the White Fang! It might be an AU but there wasn't a hard date on that!

Hope you enjoyed it!