"Aoi, keep healing Haruto. Kaede, clean up every footprint, broken kunai, all of it. Leave no trace. Don't touch the bodies, I'll handle those."
Kenji issued orders the moment the fighting stopped. They couldn't leave evidence of the engagement lying around. If anyone came looking, the supply point's location would be compromised immediately.
He walked to the first corpse, the Iwa ninja who'd been pinned to the tree trunk with kunai. Blood had pooled beneath the body, soaking into the dirt. Rain was already washing some of it away, but not fast enough.
He crouched down and started his inspection. First the tool pouch, checking each pocket for explosive tags or poison capsules. Enemy ninjas sometimes rigged their own gear to detonate posthumously, killing anyone who tried to loot them. After confirming the pouch was clean, he moved to the clothing. He ran his hands along the seams, feeling for hidden compartments or wires. Nothing.
The body came next. He pulled the kunai free and checked the wounds for any kind of seal work. Some villages trained their operatives to carry suicide seals that would destroy the corpse if certain conditions were met. Iwa wasn't known for that particular practice, but you couldn't be too careful.
Satisfied the body was safe to handle, he pulled a storage scroll from his own pouch and unrolled it on the ground. Black sealing formulae covered the parchment. He placed his palm flat against the center and channeled chakra into the seal.
The body dissolved into smoke and vanished into the scroll.
Ninja corpses contained valuable intelligence. Bloodline information, technique knowledge, or strategic data about troop movements. If you could bring an enemy body back intact, the Intelligence Division would pay well for it. Sometimes literally, other times in the form of merit points or priority mission assignments.
He moved to the second corpse and repeated the process. This one had died from the kunai strike to the heart. The chest wound was clean, a single puncture straight through. Less blood than the first kill, but just as dead.
After sealing the second body, he stood and surveyed the clearing. Kaede was working efficiently, using a branch to brush over footprints and drag fallen leaves across the ground. The kid was thorough, Kenji had to give him that. Within minutes, the ground looked undisturbed. You'd never know a fight had happened here unless you were specifically looking for it.
"Done, sensei," Kaede called out quietly.
Kenji gave the area one final sweep with his eyes, checking for anything they might have missed. Wire fragments, blood spatter on tree bark, and some displaced stones. Nothing obvious stood out. He quickly gathered the evidence and erased any trace of it.
"Good work. Let's get back."
They returned to the supply point quickly. Aoi had already moved Haruto inside and laid him on one of the beds in the small medical room. Green healing chakra glowed around her hands as she worked. Haruto's eyes were closed, his breathing shallow but steady.
After a few more minutes, the glow faded and she pulled her hands back, looking exhausted.
Before long, Haruto slowly opened his eyes. He stared up at the ceiling, blinking slowly like he wasn't sure where he was.
"Uh... am I dead?"
His head turned, and he spotted Aoi standing next to the bed.
"Aoi... you're dead too?"
"Who's as dumb as you? We're all alive!" Aoi snapped, but there was relief in her voice. She placed her fingers against his chest, sending another pulse of diagnostic chakra through his system to confirm everything was holding. "Don't move around. You're still injured."
"Heh, I really thought I was gonna die this time." Haruto grinned weakly and tried to push himself up on his elbows.
The moment he put weight on his arms, pain shot through his torso like someone had driven a spike through his ribs. He gasped and collapsed back onto the bed.
"Ah! Shit, that hurts!"
"I just told you not to move!" Aoi pressed him back down firmly. "You've got a cracked rib and internal bleeding. I healed most of it, but you still need to rest and let your body finish recovering."
"Thanks. You're amazing," Haruto said, lying flat again. His eyes were full of gratitude.
Aoi looked at him lying there with that stupid grateful expression and couldn't help thinking he'd gotten dumber somehow. His body was injured, not his brain. So why did he look even more brain-dead than usual?
"Just stay there. I'm going to tell sensei and Kaede you're awake."
She turned to leave, but Haruto's voice stopped her.
"Wait! What about the enemies? Is sensei okay? Kaede? Are you hurt?"
The last thing he remembered was getting kicked so hard he'd thought his chest was caving in, then nothing. He had no idea what happened after he blacked out.
"Relax. Sensei took care of them. Kaede and I are fine. You're the only one who got messed up," Aoi said with a small smile. "I'll be right back."
She left the room and returned a minute later with Kenji and Kaede following behind her.
"Sensei! Kaede!" Haruto's face lit up when he saw them. He tried to wave and immediately regretted it as his ribs protested. "Ow, damn it."
Kenji stepped forward and placed his palm against Haruto's chest, channeling a small amount of chakra to check the injuries personally. The internal bleeding had been stabilized by Aoi's healing. The cracked rib hadn't shifted out of position. Good work all around.
"You'll be fine. Our bodies heal fast, and with Aoi helping, you should be back on your feet in about a week."
His tone shifted, becoming more serious as he looked at all three students.
"Running into Iwa ninjas today means our position might be compromised. Starting tomorrow, patrol shifts are doubled. For the next few days, Aoi, you're staying here to look after Haruto. Kaede, you're with me on patrols. Once Haruto's recovered, we'll rotate. I've already sent a messenger hawk to the main camp about what happened. We should get a response soon. Until then, stay alert. No slacking off."
"Yes, sensei!" All three responded together.
Kenji turned to Aoi specifically. "It's going to be rough on you these next few days."
She'd be handling Haruto's treatment, continuing her medical training, preparing meals for the team, and occasionally joining patrols when Haruto was stable enough to be left alone. The girl was already working herself harder than either of the boys.
"I'm fine, sensei," Aoi said quickly, shaking her head. "I'm part of this team. This is what I'm supposed to do."
Kenji nodded and was about to head out to interrogate the captured Iwa ninja when a quiet voice made him stop.
"Sensei... am I useless?"
He turned back. Haruto was staring at the ceiling with a miserable expression. And it wasn't just him. Kaede and Aoi both had their heads down, eyes red, and fingers trembling slightly.
"We didn't help at all," Kaede muttered, gripping the hem of his clothes tightly. "If you hadn't been there, we'd all be dead right now."
"When I saw that Iwa ninja coming at me, I froze," Aoi added quietly. "I couldn't move. I couldn't even remember how to form hand seals. I just... stood there."
Tears welled in her eyes, but she forced them back.
"I was so scared," Haruto said. "I thought wearing this headband meant I was strong. But I couldn't even protect myself, let alone help anyone else."
Kenji looked at his three students and felt something twist in his chest.
They were kids, barely teenagers. They'd graduated from the Academy with dreams of becoming heroes. Then their first real mission had slammed them face-first into reality, showing them exactly how powerless they were.
Three fresh genin against a single experienced chunin. The outcome had been predictable. If he hadn't intervened, all three of them would be dead right now, and they knew it.
That kind of realization could break a person. Especially someone young and inexperienced. Ninjas who survived their first brush with death either became obsessed with power to the point of self-destruction, or gave up entirely and turned into hollow shells just going through the motions until something finally killed them.
He couldn't let that happen to his students.
Kenji walked over and stood between Aoi and Kaede. He placed a hand on each of their heads, ruffling their hair slightly.
"How could you be useless? If you three hadn't kept that Iwa ninja occupied, I would've had to fight all two of them at once. You think I could've handled that easily? You bought me time to take them out one by one. That's not useless. That's exactly what you were supposed to do."
"But we couldn't even fight properly," Haruto said. "We just... froze."
"You froze because you've never experienced killing intent before," Kenji said simply. "That Iwa ninja had years of combat experience. He'd killed dozens of people. That kind of presence isn't something you can train for in the Academy. You have to experience it firsthand before you can learn to push through it."
He looked at each of them in turn.
"You're not weak. You're inexperienced. There's a difference. You just graduated. You've been ninjas for what, a few months? That enemy was a chunin who'd been fighting in this war for years. The fact that you stood your ground and tried to fight at all is more than most fresh graduates manage on their first real mission."
"You did well today. All three of you. And you'll do even better next time."