The twelve Suna shinobi crouched low in the shadows of the thick bushes and tall trees.
The small wooden hut sat in the middle of a clearing, looking old and forgotten. Its roof sagged, vines crawled over the walls, and the door hung slightly open, creaking in the faint wind.
There were no footprints marked around it. To any passerby, it was just an abandoned hut, left to rot in the borderlands.
But their intel said otherwise. This hut hid something far more dangerous, an underground base run by Iwa shinobi.
Shota knew this too. He was pretty sure that the information about the base had come from the scroll that he had got. And his words to hit some important Iwa target while letting Konoha take the casualities might have also played a part in them being given this mission.
'My suspicions about the Kazekage and the elders acting on my words are growing stronger,' he thought, 'I need to be careful with what I say. One wrong word could twist the timeline in ways I can't predict.'
'But I can't stop now,' he continued in his head. 'Not when it's for Suna's sake. The stronger our village is, the safer my family and friends will be. To make the higher-ups listen, I have to prove I'm worth hearing. That's why I showed off my skills so openly back in the academy and as a genin, to the elders, to the Kazekage himself.'
He pushed those thoughts aside and focused on the hut. They stood a safe distance back.
Sōshi, the squad leader, glanced at the others. "They should be hidden in some underground tunnel," he said quietly. "Bases like this always have a sensor ninja who pops out now and then to check the area."
"Stay at this distance," Sōshi added. He turned to Shota. "Shota, can you spot the sensor from here and erase his chakra?"
Shota nodded firmly. "As long as he's visible to me."
"Good. You handle the chakra wipe. I'll take care of the rest." Sōshi's eyes scanned the hut patiently.
The team waited in silence, breaths steady, hands ready on weapons.
Minutes ticked by, five, ten, fifteen. Shota's legs started to ache from crouching, but he ignored it. This was a mission; focus was everything.
Then, after about twenty minutes, the hut's door creaked open wider. A man stepped out, tall and broad-shouldered, with Iwa's stone headband on his forehead.
The man closed his eyes and formed a quick hand sign to activate his sensing jutsu. Chakra should have flowed through him like a river, letting him feel every living thing nearby. But nothing happened. His eyes snapped open wide in shock.
He tried again, fingers twitching through the signs, but still.no chakra. It was gone, vanished as if it had never been there.
Panic flickered across his face. He froze for a few seconds, mind spinning. 'What is this? Poison?' He reached for a kunai at his belt, but that was all the time he had.
From the bushes, a massive wooden snake erupted. It was one of Sōshi's puppets. The snake's jaws unhinged wide, and in a blur, it swallowed the sensor whole. A muffled crunch echoed, then silence. The puppet slithered back into the undergrowth, leaving only a faint trail of disturbed leaves.
Shota stared in surprise. 'He can control puppets from such far distance?' he thought. 'His chakra threads must have stretched over fifty meters. That's insane control. Most puppeteers need to be close to keep the strings tight.'
Sōshi gave a sharp hand signal, advance. The twelve shinobi moved like ghosts, leaping from bush to tree branch without touching the ground. They knew better than to step inside the hut yet. Underground, Iwa ninjas had the edge: earth jutsu to collapse tunnels, traps in the walls, and they had the home-field advantage.
Sōshi whispered orders to their ownsensor to scan underground now.
Their own sensor ninja, a quiet woman named Mira, nodded. She knelt on a thick branch, hands pressed together in a sensing seal.
With the enemy sensor dead, no one below could detect her probing chakra waves. Sensors were rare; one per base was standard. A second would be a luxury Iwa probably couldn't afford here.
Mira's eyes glowed faintly as she concentrated. "Two jōnin-level chakras," she reported softly. "Six chūnin, and a couple of genin too. All clustered below the hut, probably in a main chamber."
Sōshi nodded, his mind already mapping the fight. "Don't touch the ground," he commanded. "Stick to the trees. They'll use earth tremor jutsu to feel vibrations up here if we do."
Everyone acknowledged with quick nods and shifted higher into the branches.
Something must have tipped off the Iwa team, the missing sensor check-in, perhaps. Suddenly, the earth exploded upward in a shower of dirt and rocks.
The hut's floor blasted apart as eleven Iwa shinobi leaped out.
Two jōnin led the pack, behind them, chūnin and genin fanned out, eyes scanning for threats.
But when they spotted the twelve Suna ninjas perched in the trees and Sōshi's calm, commanding presence, their faces twisted from confidence to grim realization. They were outnumbered, out in the open, and also outclassed.
Sōshi didn't hesitate. His giant wooden snake puppet reared up again, mouth gaping wide. From its throat poured a thick purple gas. It was poison that Sōshi had brewed himself.
He'd prepared his team hours earlier. Each Suna shinobi had injected a small dose of antidote into their arms. It neutralized the poison completely for them but left enemies helpless.
The Iwa ninjas shouted in alarm. "Poison! Scatter!" one jōnin barked. They body-flickered in blurs, trying to escape the expanding cloud. Chakra surged through their bodies, propelling them in high-speed.
But Shota was ready. From his perch, thirty meters away, his eyes locked on the fleeing figures.
The first to try flickering was a chūnin, mid-leap toward a distant rock. Shota focused on him. Instantly, the man's chakra vanished. His body-flicker failed halfway, momentum dying. He stumbled in the air, crashing to the ground right in the poison cloud's edge. Gas filled his lungs as he gasped, eyes watering.
He clawed at his throat, trying to stand, but the poison weakened him fast. A Suna chūnin dropped from a branch, kunai flashing, and ended him with a precise strike to the neck.
Another Iwa genin panicked and attempted to body-flicker straight up into the trees for cover. Shota's gaze snapped to him. Chakra erased. The genin plummeted like a stone, landing in the thickest part of the purple haze.
He inhaled deeply in shock, coughing violently. Poison seeped into his bloodstream. Before he could scream, a Suna shinobi's wire wrapped around his ankles, yanking him into the underbrush for a silent kill.
This pattern repeated over and over. Whenever an Iwa ninja tried to escape the gas with speed or jumps, Shota stopped them cold. No chakra meant no enhanced movement. They fell back into the cloud, breathing in more toxin. The antidote made Suna's team immune of the poison and allowed them to move inside the poison.
A iwa jōnin formed hand signs for an earth wall jutsu to block an attack. Chakra molded in his coils, ready to surge.
Shota saw it from afar. The jōnin's hands froze mid-sign. His eyes bulged as he tried to force the chakra out, but nothing came out.
'What's happening? My chakra... it's not there!' Valuable seconds ticked away as he fumbled, trying different signs, pressing his palms together harder.
That delay was fatal. Sōshi's snake puppet lunged, fangs dripping with extra venom. The jōnin dodged on pure instinct, no jutsu to help, but a Suna chūnin flanked him with a poison-tipped senbon. It pierced his shoulder. He roared, swinging a fist, but without chakra enhancement, his strength was human-normal. Another Suna ninja swept his legs, and a kunai to the heart finished it.
A chūnin tried a counterattack: fire release, a fireball to burn away the gas. Hands blurred—Tiger, Ram, Boar. Chakra built... then Shota erased it. The fireball sputtered out before forming, just a puff of smoke from his mouth. Confusion hit him like a wave.
Two Suna shinobi closed in. One threw shuriken that curved mid-air. The Iwa chūnin blocked with a kunai, but the second attacker used a puppet claw to grab his arm. Twist, snap. Bone broke. A follow-up slash across the throat, and he gurgled into silence.
Shota's role was perfect: stay back, eyes everywhere, erasing only when needed.
The Suna team moved as one until the last Iwa fell.
In the end, Eleven Iwa bodies lay scattered, blood mixing with the grass. There were no Suna casualties. Not even a scratch.
Within a few minutes a strong Iwa force was annihilated. Even if they were outnumbered and outclassed, the fight should have been not this easy but because of Shota it was.
--------Author Notes---------
For every 250 power stones. I would be posting and additional chapter. So gimme those power stones!!!
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