~ Every 100 Power Stones = Bonus Chapter!
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Two days on the road, and it was harder than anyone had expected.
The border terrain of the Land of Birds was brutal.
The official road cut off halfway through, leaving nothing but gravel and overgrown trails.
Jiraiya was the first to fold.
He sprawled across a roadside boulder, legs dangling, like a scallion left to wilt in the sun.
“Can we rest…
just for a bit…
my legs aren’t mine anymore…”
Tsunade was doing better, but only just.
She braced both hands on her knees and panted, bangs plastered to her forehead with sweat, lips gone pale.
She didn’t make a sound.
Murakami Takuya didn’t look back.
“There’s a stream two kilometers ahead.
We rest when we get there.”
Jiraiya let out a miserable wail.
Tsunade turned and cut him with a look.
Kitahara Kaede walked at the rear, breathing steady.
He fished a soldier pill from his ninja pouch, broke it in half, tucked one half into his mouth, and held the other out to Tsunade.
She took it and glanced at him.
“You’re not tired?”
“Not really.”
She didn’t fuss.
Just tossed it in her mouth and chewed.
The bitterness made her face scrunch.
But after she swallowed, her legs stopped shaking.
Jiraiya raised his hand.
“I—”
“You have your own.”
“I finished them.”
“I said bring three before we left.”
“I did bring three!
I ate two because I was hungry, and then one more because I was thirsty, ”
“That’s your problem.”
Jiraiya opened his mouth, found nothing to say, and wilted even further.
Tsunade scoffed, dug half a ration bar from her own pack, and threw it at him.
“Don’t die on the road.
It’d be embarrassing.”
Jiraiya’s eyes lit up the moment he caught it.
“Tsunade, you really—”
“One more word and I’m taking it back.”
Jiraiya shut his mouth and lowered his head, chewing faster than anyone.
Kaede glanced at Tsunade.
Sharp-tongued, soft-hearted.
She’d been that way since they were kids.
Never changed.
…
They made camp by the stream.
On Murakami Takuya’s word, Jiraiya dropped face-first into the grass, went completely still, and started snoring before anyone had even touched a tent pole.
Tsunade dropped her gear and kicked him.
“At least turn your head.
You suffocate, that’s on you.”
Jiraiya grunted, turned his face sideways, and kept sleeping.
Tsunade gave up on him and crouched down to pitch her tent.
Kaede didn’t stop.
He set his pack down beside Tsunade’s, made a full loop around the camp perimeter, then got to work.
Tripwires along the northern treeline, three of them, uneven spacing, varying heights, each end tied to empty tin cans and loose gravel.
Upstream, he wedged a smoke bomb into the creek bed.
Anyone wading through would set it off.
In under ten minutes, the camp had a warning net around its entire perimeter.
Tsunade finished her tent and turned just in time to see him walking back from the northern trees, hands caked with dirt.
“What were you doing?”
“Setting some things up.”
She walked to the northern treeline and crouched down, scanning the ground.
At first, nothing.
Then she found the first wire.
It was so thin it nearly disappeared into the dead grass, set exactly at shin height on an adult, anyone charging in at a run would get tripped, at minimum.
And the three lines weren’t parallel.
They crisscrossed.
Trip on the first one, scramble to your feet, and you’d walk straight into the second.
She looked back at Kaede.
This genin, the same rank as her, graduated from the Academy at the same time, spent three months chasing fat cats alongside her, when had he learned any of this?
“The Academy never taught this kind of setup.”
“Read it in a book.” Kaede’s face didn’t change.
He was crouched by the stream, washing the dirt off his hands.
Tsunade stared at him for two seconds.
Same expression as always.
Flat.
Unreadable.
There was no difference between when he lied and when he told the truth.
She opened her mouth.
Then closed it.
She turned and walked back toward the tents, and on her way past, kicked Jiraiya again.
“Get up and pitch your own tent.”
“Five more minutes…
just five…”
“Three seconds.
Three, two—”
Murakami Takuya leaned against a tree, hand resting on his sword hilt, gaze sliding away from Kaede.
The tripwire placements weren’t evenly distributed.
They were arranged around the terrain’s blind spots.
The northern side had the worst sightlines, three wires.
The southern side was open, one.
That kind of setup wasn’t learned from a book.
It was the kind of knowledge you bought with blood in real combat: put your limited resources into the most dangerous direction, and nowhere else.
This kid…
was this actually his first time outside the village?
…
By the time the fire was going, the night had gone fully dark.
Tsunade crouched by the flames, gnawing on a ration bar, frowning with every other bite.
“Like chewing wood.”
“Make do.”
“When we get back, I’m eating three bowls of pork bone ramen.
Extra egg.”
“Your treat.”
“Why?”
“You lost that bet last time and never paid up.”
Tsunade choked on her next bite, decided not to engage, and took a huge mouthful of ration bar instead, like she was picking a fight with the food.
Jiraiya was dead to the world, his snores rolling in one wave after another.
Kaede noticed that even in sleep, his hand was still wrapped around that battered notebook.
The open page showed a crooked stick figure and a line of handwriting beside it: Cool pose for a hero descending from the sky (TBD).
Kaede closed the page.
The fire crackled.
The night wind carried the sound of the stream over.
Tsunade finished her rations and sat hugging her knees.
“You think those wandering samurai…
are they really just ordinary people?”
“Don’t know.”
“The mission brief says seven to ten.”
“Yeah.”
“So it shouldn’t be too hard, right?”
Kaede added a stick to the fire.
“Don’t know.”
Tsunade looked at him sideways.
The firelight moved across his profile.
His expression didn’t shift.
But the hand adding the wood paused, very briefly.
Less than a second.
She wanted to say something.
Her eyelids had other ideas.
Upper and lower lids threw a round, and the upper won.
“You sleep first,” Kaede said.
“Not sleepy.”
The words were barely out before her head tilted on its own.
She snapped upright.
“Really.
Not sleepy.”
Kaede didn’t call her out.
A minute later, her eyelids shut again.
This time, her body followed, leaning slowly sideways, like a small tree bent by the wind.
Gradual.
Unhurried.
Kaede didn’t move.
Only when her center of gravity had fully shifted toward him did he tilt his shoulder slightly, just enough to let her head settle against it.
Gentle.
Barely anything.
A few strands of her ponytail had come loose.
They draped across his arm.
The firelight pressed their two shadows together and threw them onto the grass behind, overlapping.
The wind moved through.
The shadows swayed.
Their outlines stayed connected.
Murakami Takuya sat a few meters away, sword across his lap.
He looked over once, then looked away.
“You take first watch.
I’ll take second.”
Kaede nodded.
Quiet settled in.
“North side of camp, I set three tripwires, ”
“I saw.” Murakami Takuya cut him off, voice even.
“Not bad.”
Kaede didn’t answer.
Tsunade’s breathing came steady against his shoulder.
One breath after another.
Light and warm.
The fire burned bright.
A night like this wasn’t bad at all.
…
Second half of the night.
Murakami Takuya took over.
Kaede eased Tsunade’s head from his shoulder to a rolled-up bedroll, moving more carefully than he had setting the tripwires.
She furrowed her brow slightly and mumbled something.
“…don’t steal my…
candy…”
Kaede’s hand paused.
The corner of his mouth moved.
He didn’t actually smile.
He leaned back against the tree and closed his eyes.
Not sleeping.
Just listening.
Pre-dawn.
The bird calls in the northern woods stopped.
Before, there had been a steady, broken rhythm of them, tits, nightingales, the ordinary background noise of a forest at night.
Now, nothing.
Like something had reached in and wiped the sound out of the trees.
Kaede opened his eyes and looked toward Murakami Takuya.
Murakami Takuya was already looking north.
Their eyes met.
Murakami Takuya gave a single nod.
Kaede’s hand slipped into his ninja pouch.
A thin mist had begun rising off the surface of the stream.
Thirty meters.
Twenty-five.
Twenty.
The sound of grass stalks snapping underfoot.
Very quiet.
More than one person.
Kaede’s right hand drove forward, a blade cutting straight toward the northern trees.
His left foot kicked Jiraiya in the back.
“Up!”
The blade hit something.
A sharp metallic clang split the air.
Blocked.
Figures burst from the mist.
Dark shapes poured out of all three sides at once, blades slicing arcs through the dark.
Tsunade jolted upright, eyes snapping wide.
Kaede was already beside her.
Murakami Takuya’s sword cleared its sheath.
“Enemy attack!”
➤ Next: First Blood