None of them brought up Jiraiya again after that.
He was an enemy. There was nothing to discuss. They had the intelligence, and that was enough.
The detour had cost them some time, but the mission carried no fixed deadline, only the requirement that they intercept Konoha's people, so the delay amounted to nothing in the end.
They crossed into the Land of Grass without difficulty.
Amegakure had reduced its border defenses on this side considerably, which made sense. Kusagakure posed no threat to anyone. Unlike Amegakure, which had Hanzo at its center, Kusagakure was a small village with no meaningful capacity for resistance.
It sat between the Land of Earth and the Land of Fire like a stone between two grinding wheels, and it had survived by doing something most small villages failed to understand in wartime: it sealed itself off entirely and refused to participate.
You could wage war across its territory. You could bleed out on its soil. But you would not touch the village itself, and you would not harm its civilians.
It was, Arai observed, one of the more rational decisions made by any minor power during this war. Kusagakure's geography was its only real protection, too valuable as a buffer for either Konoha or Iwagakure to absorb, which meant even Hanzo kept his hands off it. Attacking the Land of Grass would put Amegakure between those two nations simultaneously, and that was a position no one wanted. The Land of Grass had survived precisely because destroying it served no one's interest.
After days of grey skies and constant rain, the weather changed the moment they crossed the border. The clouds broke. Sunlight came through clean and steady, and the temperature lifted, and even the mood between the three of them shifted slightly without anyone acknowledging it.
They settled on a patch of open grass and Arai unfolded the map across his knee.
"We can't enter the Land of Fire," he said, tracing the route with one finger. "Everything happens here, within the Land of Grass. Once the enemy's supply team crosses in from the Fire side, they'll follow this corridor toward the Iwagakure front. The zone where we can actually operate is this section."
He circled a stretch of the route with his fingertip. "Far enough from Konoha's border that reinforcements can't reach quickly, and far enough from the active front that we won't draw attention from either direction. The middle of the route. If the engagement goes badly, we have room to pursue. If it goes worse than that, we have room to withdraw."
He looked up. "We reach the ambush point first. We learn the terrain and set traps.
And when the target appears, we don't move immediately, we observe their numbers and formation." He paused. "Konoha runs supply teams every two or three days on this route given how stretched the fighting with Iwagakure is right now. We're not here to win one fight. We're here to make this route unusable."
He turned to Sasori. "Killing one team accomplishes nothing on its own. A second team follows. Then a third. What we need is to remove every team that comes through this corridor, cleanly, without leaving anything that tells them what happened, until Konoha has no choice but to abandon the route and find another one. In unfamiliar territory, under the conditions of an active war, building a new supply corridor costs time and manpower they don't have to spare. That is the actual objective."
Yuji had been following the map while Arai spoke. "Then we can't work from the same position twice," he said. "If their teams start disappearing, they'll know the route is compromised. They'll either send people to investigate or reinforce the next team before sending it through. Either way, we lose the advantage if we stay put."
"Which means we withdraw before they have time to respond," Arai said, and gave him a measured look. "Correct. A supply route under active war conditions is as vital as anything on the front line itself. Konoha is already stretched. If they confirm the route is exposed, the most efficient decision for them is to abandon it rather than commit more shinobi to defending it. That's the pressure point."
Yuji turned it over. "That gives us two teams at most, realistically, provided the teams they're sending aren't too heavily configured." He considered for a moment. "I don't have a strong read on their composition. My experience against Konoha shinobi is limited."
Although he had fought against members of the Root organization, generally speaking, Yuji didn't have much combat experience against Konoha. He wasn't very good at assessing the level of Konoha Ninja.
Yuji knew Konoha well enough in theory. In practice, that was a different thing entirely.
Still, saying they could take out two supply teams was not overconfidence. The battlefield had been grinding for long enough that Konoha's logistics operations reflected the strain.
Supply teams were not combat units. They ran at Chunin level at best, and Genin mixed in among them was not unusual, the war had stretched Konoha's capable shinobi to the point where nobody worth deploying to the front lines was being held back for escort duty. The useful ones were already there. What remained for secondary operations like this were whoever could be spared.
Against that, they had Arai.
An elite Jonin against Chunin and Genin was not a fight in any meaningful sense. The distance between those levels was not a question of degree but of category, and Arai was not simply any Jonin, he was the Kazekage's personal guard. That position carried its own weight. He was not Minato Namikaze, who could cut through entire troop formations on his own, but he had the ability the role demanded, and that was more than sufficient for what they were walking into.
Arai finished laying out the remaining details of the plan, then looked at them both. "Understood?"
"Understood," Yuji said.
Sasori said nothing.
Arai nodded and let it go. "Then we move."
The Land of Grass was smaller than Amegakure, and easier to move through. The conflict between Konoha and Iwagakure had drawn shinobi from across the continent into its borders, observers, intelligence gatherers, opportunists, and the three of them passed through this traffic without incident.
They spotted Hidden Mist shinobi at one point, moving parallel to their own route, and gave them a wide berth without drawing attention. There was no reason to engage. Those shinobi were there to watch the war, to carry its developments back to their own village so that Kirigakure could measure the shifting weight of power and decide accordingly.
Everyone in the Land of Grass who wasn't Konoha or Iwagakure was doing some version of the same thing.
It made for a crowded territory, but not a dangerous one, at least not in the way Amegakure had been. The chaos here was passive. People were moving through, not looking for confrontation, and the three covered ground quickly because of it.
They reached the designated stretch of forest by late afternoon.
Upon arrival, they quickly began setting up traps, waiting for their prey to bite.