The morning mist hung thick over the Changbai Forest, turning the air cold and heavy. Hatake Gintama lifted his hand, and the column of Amamiya shinobi behind him halted instantly. Not a single twig cracked. For men who lived and died in the silence between breaths, that was discipline.
"The Kaguya are tougher than I expected," Gintama muttered, his voice calm but laced with irritation. "Every last one of them fights like a Chūnin or better."
A few of his men exchanged uneasy glances.
He wasn't exaggerating. If Gintama hadn't gone all out in the last skirmish, half of them would be corpses by now instead of just bandaged and swearing.
One of the younger ninja swallowed hard. "If the rest of their ranks are like that… the next fight won't be simple."
"That's exactly why we're here," Gintama replied, crouching to inspect a blood-smeared kunai. "Our job isn't glory. It's information. We learn how they fight before the main force walks into hell."
The others nodded. Orders were orders. Even in exhaustion, no one questioned the Silver Flash of the Hatake.
"Patch yourselves up. Ten minutes. Then we move."
They obeyed without a word—wrapping wounds, reloading pouches, steadying their hands. When they vanished again into the forest, they left no trace but the faint scent of iron on bark.
By noon, they had filled the forest with traps—paper bombs buried in roots, tripwires strung through the mist, shuriken tied to threads like patient spiders.
But the prey never came.
Gintama should've known better. The Kaguya weren't idiots; they'd bled once already. Takemoto Kaguya was no fool—paranoid, yes, but not stupid. His next scouting unit wasn't the usual wild dogs; they were specialists. And specialists didn't walk into traps.
Somewhere deeper in the forest, two invisible fronts were stalking each other—each waiting for the other to breathe too loud.
Back at the Amamiya base, Amamiya Raizen sat over a rough map spread across a wooden crate. Mud-streaked, sleep-deprived, and annoyed by the faint smell of blood in everything, he traced three routes toward the Kaguya homeland.
"The Changbai route's suicide," he said flatly. "That's where Gintama's already clashing with their vanguard."
He marked the second path with his finger—the river. "The upstream waterway's narrow and violent. If we march through it, we'll drown before the Kaguya even find us."
That left the southern ridge—Xiebi Ridge, a rocky choke point rising from the valley like the spine of a sleeping dragon.
"Three routes," Raizen muttered, half to himself. "Two are traps. The last is a nightmare."
Across the table, Amamiya Gen—the clan's old patriarch—nodded grimly. "Reports say three hundred Kaguya shinobi hold the ridge. If we'd struck there during their raid last night, it might've been empty."
Raizen exhaled through his nose. "Yeah, and if I'd been born Senju, I'd have a forest jutsu. Regret's not a strategy, Gen-sama."
A few soldiers tried not to smile at his blunt tone.
Another ninja stepped forward. "Then what's the plan? We can't storm the ridge head-on. We don't have the numbers."
Raizen leaned back, eyes sharp despite his exhaustion. "Exactly. That's why we'll fight smart."
He looked over the map again, voice steady. "If we break through Xiebi Ridge, we split their forces. The Kaguya will have to defend two fronts instead of one, and their commander will bleed resources trying to hold the center."
"But with our manpower—"
"—we'll still lose a straight fight," Raizen cut in. "That's why we won't fight fair."
The tent went quiet.
The truth hung in the air: the Amamiya didn't have Senju forests or Uchiha firepower. They had grit, cheap chakra, and one reincarnated salaryman who was too bitter to die.
"The Kaguya think terrain will save them," Raizen said softly. "Let's make the terrain our weapon instead."
He tapped the southern ridge on the map. "I've been testing a new technique. If it works, their height advantage won't matter."
Gen raised a brow. "Something reckless again?"
Raizen smirked. "Reckless gets results. Besides… I can fly."
The tent fell silent for a heartbeat, then erupted in hushed disbelief.
"Fly?"
Raizen cracked his neck. "You heard me. The battlefield's about to get vertical."