The news arrived by fishing boat.
A Funato scout pulled his vessel into the clan's hidden cove on the southwestern shore and ran up the beach without tying off. He was out of breath and pale. The words came out of him in a rush that the sentries at the cave mouth had to grab him by the shoulders to slow down.
"Lord Araumi is dead."
The cove went quiet.
Forty-three Funato clan members occupied this base. It was the largest remaining stronghold after Kirigakure's crackdown had scattered the clan across the archipelago's outer islands. Forty-three men and women who had been raised on the sea, trained for war, and bound to each other by blood or by oath or by the simple fact that the Funato clan was the only family most of them had ever known.
Forty-three faces turned toward the scout.
"Killed," the scout continued. "By Konoha shinobi. A team escorting the Water Daimyo back from Fire Country."
A murmur ran through the cave.
"Names." The voice came from the back of the cave, where the firelight did not reach easily. A tall man stepped forward into the orange glow. Tan skin. Narrow grey eyes behind small round goggles. A green tattered haori with a hood. Bandages on his forearms. The build of someone who had been fighting since before most of the people in this cave had been born.
Funamushi.
"The team is called Team Guy. Two genin, a chunin, and a Special Jonin captain. The genin are Rock Lee and Tenten. The chunin is an Inuzuka. The jonin is Aoba Yamashiro." The scout swallowed. "Lord Araumi was killed by the girl. Tenten."
Funamushi's jaw grinded. His hands, which had been at his sides, closed into fists. He held the fists for three seconds. Then he opened them.
"How?"
"I don't know. The stories aren't consistent."
The cave was silent.
A younger Funato member near the entrance, a boy of maybe sixteen with the purple twin-line tattoo on the left side of his forehead, punched the cave wall. His knuckles split. Blood ran down the stone.
"Those Leaf dogs..."
"Quiet." Funamushi did not raise his voice. The boy went quiet.
Funamushi walked to the mouth of the cave and looked out across the water. The mist sat on the ocean's surface. Somewhere beyond that mist, in the Water Daimyo's capital, the people who had killed Araumi were celebrating.
He turned back.
"There is only one port they can use to return to Fire Country from the capital. The southeastern harbor. They'll need a ship and they'll need to cross open water."
His eyes moved across the forty-three faces in the cave.
"We block the port. Every ship we have. Every man and woman who can hold a blade or form a jutsu. We hit them before they can board a vessel and leave our waters."
"Commander." An older woman near the fire spoke. She had the strawberry blond hair and tanned skin of the bloodline. Gill markings on her neck. "Kirigakure's forces have been-"
"I don't care about the Hidden Mist. They couldn't deal with us before and they won't stop us now." Funamushi's voice did not change volume but the temperature of it dropped. "Lord Araumi is dead. The clan's purpose is clear. Either we avenge him or we die alongside him. There is no version of this where we do nothing."
The cave held its silence.
"Kobanza."
A shape near the far wall shifted. A tall, burly man with a fish-like face, bald, pointy teeth, the purple clan marks on the left side of his head. He had been so still that most of the people in the cave had forgotten he was there. That was Kobanza's talent.
"Scout their approach. Find out when they're leaving the capital and which route they're taking. Report back. Do not engage."
Kobanza nodded once. His body rippled. The edges of his form softened, blurred, and then collapsed into water that splashed onto the cave floor and ran toward the entrance in a thin stream that found the rocks and the sand and the ocean's edge and disappeared into it.
Funamushi watched the water go.
"Everyone else." He turned to the cave. "Prepare for battle. Sharpen your blades. Eat something. We sail within the hour."
The Funato got to preparing.
There was no hesitation. No questions. No one asked whether this was wise or whether the odds were favorable or whether there was another option. Their leader was dead and the people who had killed him were within reach and every person in that cave understood that the only question left was whether they would succeed or whether they would die.
Either outcome was acceptable.
Hiding was not.
The Water Daimyo saw them off at the palace gates.
He bowed to all four of them, which caused his aide to nearly collapse from the breach of protocol. A Daimyo normally did not bow to shinobi. Apparently this Daimyo did.
"Konoha has my gratitude," the Daimyo said. "And my trust. Please relay to your village that the Land of Water will remember what was done for us."
"We will, Lord Daimyo." Aoba bowed back. "It was an honor."
"Come back and visit!" Lee waved as they departed.
Tenten pulled him forward by the collar.
They made their way through the capital's streets toward the southeastern port. The city was busier than it had been when they arrived. Word of Araumi's death had spread overnight and the mood in the streets had shifted from the usual misty gloom to something celebratory. Fishermen who had not taken their boats out in months were checking their hulls. Merchants who had avoided the sea routes were pricing cargo. The Funato's shadow had been lifted from these waters and the people were beginning to remember what the ocean looked like without a pirate lord sitting on it.
Team Aoba moved at a civilian pace through the city out of respect for the locals, then picked up speed once they cleared the outer gates.
They ran.
The southeastern port was half a day's travel from the capital by foot. By shinobi speed, it was closer to two hours. The route took them along the coastline, through fishing villages and over the low bridges that connected the smaller islands to the main landmass.
Lee's ears were listening.
They had been listening since they left the palace gates. Every sound within range was catalogued: the crash of waves, the creak of fishing boats, the distant calls of seabirds, the footsteps of villagers on the bridges they crossed. He listened for anything that did not belong.
The Haimaru Brothers ran in a loose formation around the group, noses sweeping the salt air.
"Anything?" Aoba asked from the front.
"Nothing unusual," Lee said. "Just the ocean."
"Dogs are calm," Hana confirmed. "No foreign scents on the wind."
Nothing they could detect.
In the water beneath the bridge they were crossing, a shape that was not a fish and not a current moved against the tide.
Kobanza traveled fast in water form.
He had been trailing them since they left the capital, staying below the surface, matching their pace from the sea. In this state, he was invisible to conventional senses. He had no chakra signature that a standard sensor could lock onto because his body was, for all functional purposes, water.
He stayed deep. He stayed still when the team stopped. He moved only when the water around him was already moving.
He watched them cross the third bridge and estimated their arrival at the port within ninety minutes.
He peeled away from the coastal shallows and dove, heading south toward the Funato staging point at maximum speed. Funamushi needed to know: four targets plus three dogs, approaching from the north, ninety minutes out.
The ambush would be ready.
The port came into view an hour and forty minutes after they left the capital.
It was a modest harbor built into a natural inlet. Stone piers. Wooden docks. A handful of trading vessels and fishing boats tied to their moorings. A harbor master's office on the hill above the waterline.
Lee heard the ships before he saw them.
The creak of wood under tension. The slap of water against hulls that were anchored too close together. The breathing of dozens of people trying to be quiet and failing because dozens of people could never be truly quiet.
"Aoba-sensei." Lee reported. "The harbor mouth is blocked. Multiple ships, hull to hull. And there are people on them. A lot of people."
Aoba's crow launched from his shoulder and returned thirty seconds later, cawing urgently.
"Nine ships across the inlet." Aoba translated. "Forty-plus fighters on the ships and docks."
The Haimaru Brothers' hackles rose simultaneously. All three noses pointed toward the harbor. A low growl, barely audible, came from the pack.
"Funato Clan," Hana said. "The dogs smell the same blood-scent from the pirate ships."
"They're here for revenge," Aoba said.
"They're here for me." Tenten had a grin on her face. "I killed their leader."
A figure stepped to the bow of the central ship in the blockade line. Tall. Tan-skinned. Muscular. Green tattered haori with a hood. Small round goggles. Bandages on his forearms.
Funamushi looked across the water at the four Konoha shinobi standing on the coastline, and his voice carried across the harbor with the weight of a man who had been waiting for this moment since the news had reached him.
"Which one of you is Tenten?"
The harbor went silent, the ocean itself being the only thing making noise.
"I am." Tenten stepped forward.
Funamushi studied her. The girl. The one who had killed Araumi. She was smaller than he had expected. Younger. She did not look like a person who could kill the strongest man Funamushi had ever known.
"You killed Lord Araumi."
"I did."
"Then you die today. All four of you. There will be no ship. There will be no crossing. There will be no return to Konoha." His hand went to the sword at his hip. "Funato! For Lord Araumi!"
The harbor erupted.
The water came first.
Dozens of Funato pirates standing on the docks and the ship decks weaved through seals and the ocean responded in kind. Water bullets screamed toward Team Guy's position in a barrage that covered the entire coastline. Water spikes erupted from the shallows beneath their feet. Waves rose and folded inward, trying to crush them.
Lee was already running.
A water bullet the size of his torso screamed toward his face. He punched it. The bullet shattered into spray that soaked his arm and kept going past him. A second bullet came from the left. He flipped over it, his body inverting in the air, and landed on a water spike that had erupted from the ground. He used the spike as a launch point and leaped forward, a third bullet passing beneath him. A wave rose in front of him, a wall of ocean reaching for his chest. He kicked through it, his outfit got soaked, and he came up on the other side already running.
Every step was a dodge. Every dodge was a step forward. The barrage was continuous and Lee moved through it without slowing, his body reading the angles and finding the gaps between them with the instincts of someone who had trained against projectiles faster than water since he was eleven.
Hana and the Haimaru Brothers moved as a pack.
Where Lee threaded through the barrage, they barreled through it. Hana dropped to all fours, the Four Legs Technique snapping her body into its feral state, and the three dogs matched her stride. A water bullet came at them head-on.
"Fang Rotating Fang!"
Hana and the largest Haimaru Brother launched into twin spinning drills that tore through the water bullet like it was paper, the rotation scattering the liquid into harmless spray. They hit the dock still spinning, carved through the two nearest pirates before they could react, and separated. The remaining two dogs hit the dock flanking wide, driving a group of Funato back from the waterline with snarling rushes that split their formation apart.
Tenten and Aoba broke right.
A wave crested over the edge of the pier toward them and Aoba grabbed Tenten's arm and pulled her sideways. They rolled together, came up running, and split apart. A water spike drove up through the stone where they had been connected.
Tenten's hand went to her scroll without breaking stride. Kunai was pulled out from the scroll and she threw even as she dodged. Two water bullets came at her from the front. She leaped, tucking her knees, and the bullets passed beneath her. At the apex of her jump, she threw four kunai in a spread that arced over the nearest ship and found three Funato pirates on the deck. Two in the chest. One in the throat.
She landed, rolled, and was already throwing again. Shuriken this time, eight of them, released from a scroll in a fan pattern that covered the dock. The shuriken hit the wooden pilings and redirected off the wire strings attached to them, angling in from behind a Funato squad that had been facing forward. Three went down from hits they never saw coming.
Aoba's hands were in seals beside her.
"Scattering Thousand Crows!"
Black shapes exploded outward from his position. Hundreds of crows materialized in a spreading cloud that engulfed the nearest section of the harbor, their wings and bodies creating a moving curtain of feathers and shadow that made it impossible for the Funato pirates inside the cloud to see anything.
Inside the crow cloud, Aoba struck.
His kunai found throats and vital points. A pirate swung a sword at a crow and Aoba's blade sliced open his waist from behind. Another pirate formed a hand sign and Aoba's kunai hit his wrist before the seal could complete, then a second slash opened his throat on the follow-through.
And Tenten threw through the crows without hesitation.
A fuma shuriken, massive, spinning, cleared the top of the crow cloud and descended on the far dock where a cluster of Funato were trying to form a coordinated water jutsu. The shuriken hit the dock between them and the blast of its rotation scattered them. Tenten was already redirecting it with wire strings, pulling it back around for a second pass that caught two of them across the backs of their legs.
A weighted net materialized from Tenten's scroll and sailed over a trio of pirates who had been trying to flank Aoba. It caught them mid-stride and tangled their legs. A bolas followed, wrapping a fourth pirate's ankles and dropping him face-first into the dock. A chakram spun off the end of Tenten's finger and crossed the harbor in a flat line, slicing through two ropes that had been holding a gangplank in place, dropping three pirates who had been crossing it into the water.
A Funato pirate on the central ship formed a long sequence of seals. A water dragon rose from the harbor behind Tenten, its jaws open, its body thick with compressed ocean water. It came at her back with enough mass to crush a building.
Tenten heard it.
She turned. She saw it. She had maybe half a second.
Her hand went to the empty scroll at her hip. She pulled it open, held it in front of her body, and channeled chakra into the storage scroll.
The water dragon hit the large scroll.
And the scroll ate it.
The entire mass of the jutsu, hundreds of gallons of compressed water shaped into a dragon form, funneled into the scroll and vanished into the storage dimension. Tenten rolled it shut, tucked it back at her hip, and threw three kunai at the pirate who had cast the jutsu. Two found his chest. The third found his eye.
She did not slow down.
Aoba's crow landed on his shoulder. He assessed the field in a single glance. The Funato were thinning. Hana and the dogs were shredding through the left flank. His crows held the right.
Tenten broke from the dock and ran for the central ship. Lee fell in beside her. They crossed the gangplank together, side by side, and landed on the deck three meters from Funamushi.
Funamushi looked at them.
The girl who had killed his lord. And the boy in green who rumors say is the strongest genin in the elemental nations.
"You brought him." Funamushi's voice was flat. "I'm more likely to believe that boy was the one to kill my captain over you."
"Sorry to disappoint, but it was just little ole me alone." Tenten's scroll was in her hand. "I fought him face to face on a ship deck with the ocean under his control. And I won."
"You got lucky."
"Then come find out if I get lucky twice."
Funamushi's hand drew the sword at his hip. Water climbed the blade from the ocean below, coating it in a sheath of liquid that spun along the steel in a tight spiral.
"I'll go through both of you. And then I'll go through the rest."
He came at them.
The first slash was aimed at Tenten. Lee stepped into the arc and caught the blade on his tonfa. The water sheath extended the blade's reach by a foot and the trailing edge of it cut the air past Lee's ear, close enough to feel the cold.
Lee shoved the blade wide and Tenten came through the opening. A kusarigama materialized in her hands, the weighted chain whipping out at Funamushi's legs. He leaped over the chain and brought his sword down in a vertical slash. Lee's second tonfa met it from below, the impact ringing across the deck.
Tenten pulled the chain back and redirected it in a rising arc aimed at Funamushi's sword arm. He twisted, and the chain wrapped around his water-coated blade instead of his wrist. The water sheath ate into the chain links, corroding them.
She let go before the corrosion reached her hands and drew two kunai.
Lee pressed forward. Three rapid strikes with his tonfas, each one aimed at a different angle. Funamushi parried the first two with his blade and caught the third on his forearm guard. The impact sent him sliding back several steps on the wet deck.
Funamushi's free hand formed a single seal.
"Water Style: Water Spikes!"
Spikes of compressed water erupted from the deck around Lee and Tenten's position. Lee grabbed Tenten by the waist and launched them both skyward, the spikes closing on empty air beneath them.
At the apex of the jump, Tenten threw. Both kunai, angled to converge on Funamushi from different trajectories. He deflected one with his blade and dodged the second by a hair.
Lee released Tenten at the peak. She unrolled her scrolls mid-air.
"Twin Rising Dragons!"
The weapon storm rained down on the central ship's deck. Funamushi raised a water wall to catch the barrage, but Tenten had learned from Araumi. She was not aiming at him. She was aiming at the deck around him.
Weapons embedded in the wood in a spreading circle. Swords. Spears. Halberds. The same pattern she had used against Araumi. The same forest of steel, planted in the deck, blades up.
Funamushi recognized what she was building.
"You think I'll fall for the same trick that killed Lord Araumi?!" He slashed through the nearest embedded sword, snapping it at the base. "I know what you did to him! The whole clan knows!"
Lee landed on the deck behind Funamushi.
"Then you know she doesn't need the trick." Lee's tonfa heading for him. "She just needs you to stop moving for one second."
Funamushi spun between them. Tenten in front, Lee behind. The water on his blade thickened.
"Water Style: Water Whip!"
A tendril of water lashed from the ocean and swept across the deck at ankle height. Lee jumped it. Tenten rolled under a second tendril that came from the opposite side. A third caught Lee across the ribs and sent him skidding, but he turned the skid into a slide and came back with a spinning kick that Funamushi barely blocked with the flat of his blade.
Tenten threw a chain from her scroll. It wrapped around Funamushi's ankle. She pulled. His footing broke. Lee was already there, his tonfa driving into Funamushi's gut before the man could recover his stance. The impact folded him forward.
Funamushi coughed. He grabbed the chain at his ankle and sent a pulse of water through it. The water raced up the chain toward Tenten's hands. She dropped it before the pulse could reach her.
He straightened, spitting blood.
"You're children." His voice was raw. "Children playing at being shinobi. Lord Araumi was worth a hundred of you."
"Then he should have fought like it." Tenten antagonized.
Funamushi's teeth gnashed. He charged.
Lee met him in the middle.
Tonfa against water-blade, the two of them exchanging strikes at a speed that turned the rainwater between them into spray. Lee's ears tracked every swing. His body moved around the blade's extended water reach, finding the angles where the sheath could not follow. Two strikes to Funamushi's ribs. One to his wrist. The water sheath flickered.
Tenten circled wide. She was pulling weapons from her scroll one at a time now, each one chosen for the moment. A three-section staff that she used to sweep Funamushi's legs when Lee drove him backward. A weighted chain that tangled his sword arm for the half-second Lee needed to land a clean hit to his jaw. A bo staff that blocked his counter-slash while Lee reset his footing.
They fought together with the excellent teamwork of teammates who had trained beside each other every day for over a year and knew, without speaking, where the other person would be.
Lee created the openings. Tenten filled them. Or Tenten created openings and Lee filled them.
Lee's tonfas never stopped coming.
Half a mile offshore, hidden in the mist, four figures stood on the water's surface.
Gonbee watched the harbor through a spyglass. He was an older man, lean, with a short crop of light brown hair and dark eyes. His Kirigakure forehead protector was tied with blue cloth. He had been a shinobi long enough to know what a port battle looked like and what he was watching qualified.
"Commander." Kussaku stood beside him with his eyes closed. His sensory range covered the entire harbor and two miles beyond it. "I'm sensing forty-plus chakra signatures in the port. The Funato are losing ground."
"They won't have it for long if those kids keep fighting like that." Misuno had her own spyglass up. She was watching the central ship where two small figures were engaging a larger one in close quarters. "Is that the girl? The one who killed Araumi?"
"That's Tenten." Gonbee lowered his spyglass. "And the one in green is Rock Lee."
Chojuro stood slightly behind the other three. Hiramekarei was strapped across his back, wrapped in bandages. His dark eyes were fixed on the harbor behind his black-rimmed glasses. He had not said anything since they had arrived.
"Sensei," Misuno said. "What are our orders? Do we engage?"
"That depends." Gonbee turned to face the three of them. "We have three options. We assist the Leaf shinobi and wipe out the Funato together. We let the battle play out and deal with whoever's left standing. Or we eliminate both parties."
He let the options sit.
"The third option is off the table," Gonbee continued before anyone could respond. "The Leaf team was just celebrated by the Water Daimyo himself. They killed Araumi Funato during an escort mission. If we let them die on our shores, or worse, kill them ourselves, the Daimyo will have our heads. Kirigakure can't afford that kind of political incident."
Kussaku nodded. Misuno lowered her spyglass.
"Which leaves us with options one and two." Gonbee looked at the harbor. "And option two is pointless because our mission was to investigate and eliminate any remaining Funato activity. They're right there, fighting. We'd be waiting for an opportunity that's already in front of us."
He paused.
"There's something you should know about those Leaf shinobi before we go in."
Chojuro's eyes moved to Gonbee.
"The boy in green. Rock Lee." Gonbee's voice took on the weight of a briefing. "He's currently known as the strongest genin in the elemental nations."
Misuno's spyglass lowered.
"A boy who can't use ninjutsu or genjutsu. Nothing. Not a single hand seal. But during the Chunin Exams in Konoha, he was reported to have killed Sunagakure's One-Tail jinchuriki by himself."
"Killed a tailed beast?" Kussaku's eyes opened. "Without ninjutsu?"
"With taijutsu alone. He's a user of the Eight Inner Gates. A forbidden technique that destroys the user's body at the cost of granting them strength comparable to a Kage."
The mist drifted between them.
"And the girl. Tenten." Gonbee continued. "She's the one who killed Araumi Funato on the open sea during the escort mission. The Water Daimyo held a banquet in her honor."
"And these are genin?" Chojuro finally spoke.
"For now." Gonbee tucked the spyglass into his vest. "Konoha produces monsters when it wants to."
"And we're watching them fight pirates." Misuno shook her head.
"We're about to stop watching and start helping." Gonbee drew a kunai. "Our mission is to wipe out the Funato Clan's remaining forces. The Leaf shinobi are doing half our job for us. We go in, we assist, we finish this together. Understood?"
"Yes, Commander." Three voices.
They ran forward.
Chojuro reached the harbor first.
He came through the mist in silence, running across the water's surface without a sound, Hiramekarei already unwrapped and held in both hands. The sword was massive.
The first Funato ship in his path had six pirates on its deck.
Chojuro went through the hull, the broadside of the ship. Hiramekarei's chakra flared and the blade expanded into an enormous hammer shape that punched through the wooden hull like a fist through paper. The ship split. The six pirates on its deck fell into the water with the wreckage. Chojuro emerged on the other side of the ship's remains without breaking stride, the hammer shape dissolving back into the twin-bladed default, water streaming off the bandaged steel.
He landed on the nearest dock, Hiramekarei's tip resting on the stone, and looked at the Funato pirates who had turned to face the new arrival.
He adjusted his glasses with his free hand.
"Hidden Mist." His voice carried more than his frame suggested it should. "We're here to help."
Gonbee, Kussaku, and Misuno landed on the dock behind him. Kussaku's hands were already forming seals, his sensory field expanding to cover the entire harbor. Misuno's tanto was drawn. Gonbee's kunai was in his right hand.
Aoba saw them arrive from inside the crow cloud. Four Kiri shinobi. Forehead protectors with the wave symbol. One of them had just cut a ship in half.
A crease appeared on his forehead.
"Hana."
Hana was mid-rotation, the Fang Rotating Fang carrying her through a cluster of Funato on the eastern dock. She pulled out of the spin, landing in a crouch, the Haimaru Brothers reforming around her.
"I see them. Kiri."
"Keep your guard up. Accept the help. Don't trust them completely."
"Understood." Hana wiped blood from her claws.
Gonbee crossed the dock toward Aoba. His hands were visible and empty except for the single kunai. The universal language of I'm armed but not pointing it at you.
"Konoha." Gonbee addressed Aoba directly. "Our mission is to eliminate the Funato clan. It appears you've already started."
Aoba studied him for half a second.
"We'll take the help." Aoba's crow landed on his shoulder. "Stay on our left. Don't get behind us."
Gonbee nodded. He understood the suspicion. He would have felt the same way.
"Chojuro. Misuno. Left flank. Clear the docks." Gonbee turned to his team. "Kussaku, with me. We push toward the ships."
The four Kiri shinobi moved into the battle.
The Funato, who had been slowly losing ground against four Konoha shinobi and three dogs, were now losing even more ground against eight shinobi and three dogs.
Chojuro hit the dock-side Funato like a landslide. Hiramekarei shifted between hammer and longsword and twin blades depending on the density of enemies in front of him, the transitions so fast that the pirates facing him could not adjust to a weapon that changed shape between every swing. Misuno fought beside him, her tanto finding the gaps his broad swings created, the two of them clearing the left dock in under a minute.
The harbor was turning red.
On the central ship, Funamushi felt the shift. His men were dying faster now. The reinforcements from the left flank had stopped arriving. Something had changed.
He could not afford to be distracted. They knew the outcome for this. Either they avenged their captain or they died. And these two brats were difficult enough to force him to go all out.