· By the following afternoon, the squad had finally arrived at their designated mission objective.
Staring up at the massive mountain, its slopes heavily choked by dense layers of ancient forest, Tsunade spoke with freezing clarity.
“The fortress tucked inside the upper ridge of this mountain is our target.
I have exactly one absolute mandate for you: every single bandit on that ridge—regardless of gender, age, or stature—is to be eliminated entirely.
Am I understood?” Faced with Tsunade’s unprecedented solemnity, Hideki Sato and the girls immediately abandoned their usual lightheartedness, nodding with equal gravity.
“Before we commit to the advance, let’s draft a basic tactical sequence,” Mikoto suggested.
Once the words left her lips, she and Kushina automatically turned their gazes toward Hideki.
Hideki fell into quiet calculation for a brief moment before outlining the formation.
“We trigger the assault at precisely three in the morning.
That window marks the baseline for a human’s deepest sleep cycle.
When the clock hits the hour, Charmander will infiltrate the main structures to generate widespread chaos.
I’ll secure the rear escape route, while the two of you maintain an iron lock on the main front gates.” Given that this was merely a baseline C-rank operation, and Kushina’s sensory radar had already verified the complete absence of chakra signatures among the targets, the operational framework was intentionally sparse.
Frequently, the most unrefined plans yielded the highest success rates; because the moving parts were minimal, the margin for operational error was practically nonexistent.
Had it not been for the necessity of enforcing Tsunade’s zero-escape policy, Charmander alone possessed the raw destructive capacity to march up the mountain and systematically level the fortress in a storm of fire.
With Kushina and Mikoto raising zero objections to the deployment, the trio claimed a quiet clearing to recuperate from the grueling march, mentally preparing themselves for the impending midnight strike.
Because the mandate required actual execution, both Kushina and Mikoto found themselves trapped in a volatile labyrinth of complex emotions.
Though they had mentally accepted the bloody reality of the profession from the exact day they entered the Academy, having the cold necessity placed directly before their eyes was a thoroughly punishing barrier to cross.
Even the historically unbothered, iron-fisted Kushina was experiencing a distinct, involuntary tremor through her limbs, to say nothing of the deeply sensitive Mikoto.
Sensing their internal distress, Hideki reached out, wrapping his hands securely around theirs.
His voice carried a smooth, grounding warmth as he offered quiet validation.
“Relax.
Those targets are predatory elements who have spent years bleeding the innocent.
This operation is a public purge.
Eliminating them directly guarantees the survival of countless civilians.
Don’t saddle your conscience with their weight.” Following Hideki’s quiet intervention, the sheer tension marring Kushina and Mikoto’s expressions finally softened a fraction.
Observing the sequence from the shade, Tsunade offered a quiet nod of approval.
She had fully anticipated having to step in personally to break their mental paralysis.
Though Hideki Sato’s raw physical metrics—excluding his anomalous companion—anchored him at the absolute baseline of the cell, his psychological maturity easily surpassed his peers.
In the absence of their Jonin commander, the boy was undeniably the unshakeable axis of the squad.
Before long, the celestial alignment marked two in the morning.
Exchanging a final, silent glance, the trio dissolved into the shadows, quietly filtering up the mountain paths.
Down at the primary choke point of the fortress, two low-tier sentries were idling away the hours in absolute boredom.
“You seriously think anyone’s tracking us up into a godforsaken trench like this at this hour?” “Not a chance in hell.
Who’d bother marching into a barren ditch like this?” “Then what exactly are we standing out here for?” “Probably just to fill the aesthetic requirement of having guards at the gate.” Swept up in their casual banter, the two sentries failed to discern the sudden, silent manifestation of a pair of dark eyes materializing directly within their blind spot.
Seeing that the targets remained completely oblivious to his proximity, Hideki smoothly extracted a pair of pristine kunai from his tactical pouch.
Pfft-pfft!
Two identical, muffled punctures echoed through the brush as the reinforced steel sheared cleanly through their windpipes.
The sentries collapsed into the dirt, departing for the pure shadow of the underworld without managing to emit a single syllable of alarm.
A stream of warm, viscous crimson pooled along the metal, spilling onto Hideki’s palm.
Yet, his internal equilibrium remained completely undisturbed.
The singular, hyper-fixated thought dominating his mind at that exact second was a mundane annoyance regarding how tedious it would be to scour the bloodstains from the steel.
With the fortress’s sole defensive sentries systematically neutralized, the infiltration party advanced through the primary palisades without encountering a fraction of resistance.
Adhering strictly to the blueprint, Kushina and Mikoto established an absolute lock on the front threshold, while Hideki fluidly maneuvered into the rear valley to seal the escape path.
Once the mental network confirmed everyone had secured their designated markers, Hideki offered a sharp nod to his partner.
Charmander snapped its jaws open, unleashing a roaring, continuous torrent of Flamethrower.
The quiet fortress instantly erupted into an inferno.
Because the architecture was composed entirely of dry, unreinforced timber, the conflagration expanded with terrifying velocity, transforming the pitch-black midnight into a stage as bright as high noon.
Within minutes, the sleeping bandits were violently jarred awake, scattering across the burning courtyard like a swarm of headless flies.
“Fire!
The whole place is coming down!” “Get the water buckets!
Move!” “Help me!
The beam pinned my leg!
Someone pull me out!” “Ambush!
It’s an ambush!” Moving through the smoke like a seasoned predator, Charmander systematically harvested the lives of the panicking bandits against the backdrop of the roaring flames.
The vast majority of the targets collapsed into ash before their brains could even process the source of the devastation.
The sparse few who managed to calculate the reality of the assault fared no better.
The sheer, overwhelming suddenness of the Pokémon’s strike had completely isolated them from their armories.
Though truth be told, even had they been fully armored, their steel weapons would have failed to leave a single scratch on Charmander’s dense, resilient scales.
Occasionally, a stray bandit would stumble out of the smoke directly into Hideki’s path, only to be systematically, cleanly dispatched by a fluid stroke of his kunai.
These men were proficient only at terrorizing unarmed, defenseless agrarian peasants; faced with a professionally conditioned shinobi, they possessed only the baseline qualification to offer their throats to the blade.
By the time the sprawling fortress had been entirely reduced to a smoldering field of ash and charcoal, Hideki and Charmander converged back toward the front gates.
Reaching the main threshold, he found Kushina and Mikoto standing perfectly pale, their eyes locked onto the handful of fresh corpses littering the dirt before them.
Though their bodies were completely unscathed, the raw, unpolished reality of their very first kill had carved a deep, psychological shadow into their minds.
Hideki closed the distance, bringing a gentle, supportive hand down on their shoulders.
He offered no hollow platitudes; he knew this was a boundary where the only functional medicine was time.
Suddenly, Tsunade materialized behind the trio, clapping her hands together with an unbothered grin.
“Well, look at you three!
That execution was exceptionally clean for a debut.
As a proper reward, how about I treat the entire cell to a massive spread of premium barbecue the second we clear the village gates?” Though the immediate violence had ceased, the stagnant mountain air remained thoroughly choked by the heavy, nauseating stench of scorched flesh.
The absolute moment the word “barbecue” left Tsunade’s lips, the internal equilibrium of both Kushina and Mikoto violently fractured.
Turning away from the clearing, the two girls dashed toward the brush, retching violently into the grass.
Watching the spectacular display of mutual misery, Tsunade let out a loud, thoroughly satisfied chuckle.
Hideki could only offer a long-suffering, exhausted sigh as he turned a deadpan stare toward their mentor.
“Sensei…
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