Sora lay sprawled on the camp grass, staring up at nothing. Sky. Clouds. The slow drift of both.
The puppet had been worth the blood. Medical ninja back at camp cracked the toxin profile within hours and synthesized a counter-agent. Konoha's overall strength ran deep, but its medical corps was something else entirely, famous across the shinobi world for a reason.
A pair of Nara clansmen passed nearby. One nudged the other and pointed in Sora's direction.
Wonderful. Of all the clans to offend, I picked the one that thinks it's the smartest in the room.
Life was about to get considerably harder.
The trouble was simple enough. Sora had made a Nara elder lose face, and not just any elder: Nara Masatake, deputy commander of the entire frontline camp, humiliated in front of subordinates. The Nara contingent had been giving Sora dirty looks for days. The unfairness of it gnawed at him. None of this had been his doing.
It started in the Command Tent, right after the failed mission.
He'd knelt before the command staff and delivered his report, braced for whatever punishment they saw fit. Demotion, labor detail, frontline assault duty. He'd have accepted any of it.
Deputy Commander Nara Masatake watched him from behind those narrow, perpetually half-lidded eyes, the kind that never let you know what was happening behind them. His lips were just as thin. Everything about the man's face said don't test me.
"Genin Kazeki Sora. Your squad's failure left the temporary supply depot on the battlefield's flank without timely resupply. You will now explain the course of your mission."
"The failure is mine," Sora said, head bowed. "I'll accept any punishment. My only concern is whether the frontline suffered for it. If it did, I won't be able to live with myself."
"The facts are clear enough. The depot's losses were minor. However, the nature of your squad's failure remains serious." Masatake's tone didn't waver. "Per regulations, you are to be reassigned to the frontline assault corps to redeem yourself through meritorious service. Do you object?"
Sora hadn't even opened his mouth before Tsunade spoke up.
"If we're talking about redemption through merit," she said, "the puppet Genin Kazeki brought back already qualifies. An intact puppet, and more importantly, freshly prepared Sand toxin. That's going to save lives for the rest of this war."
Sora blinked. Somehow, this had stopped being about him.
"Princess Tsunade." Masatake's voice was careful, measured. "Punishment for failure is the most fundamental principle of military discipline, is it not?"
"Hmm." She tilted her head, a razor smile forming. "Funny you should mention discipline. This entire frontline camp doesn't have a single Nara clansman besides yourself. The Nara clan's record here is spotless, no failures at all. Hard to fail when you never show up. Tell me, does 'no failures' mean 'no punishment required'?"
Now this is entertainment. Sora kept his eyes on the floor, but his ears were wide open. So the noble clans had decided the war wasn't ripe enough for harvesting glory yet, and hadn't bothered sending anyone to the front. Tsunade had just dragged that into the light.
Danzo tapped his cane once against the floor. The sound cut through the tent like a blade, and both deputy commanders fell silent.
"Genin Kazeki." Danzo's voice was dry, unhurried. "Your mission was a failure. That is fact. However, when your squad departed, intelligence regarding the flank depot's relocation had not yet reached the main camp. Your failure to complete the objective in a timely fashion is therefore... understandable."
He glanced at Masatake, reading whatever crossed those narrow features, then continued.
"You subsequently came under attack by a puppeteer. Your squad sustained two critically wounded in exchange for one confirmed kill and one intact puppet recovered. Per standing protocol, a puppet recovery is valued one grade above the kill bounty for the puppeteer. Merit offsets the demerit. You're dismissed."
Sora left the tent with his knees aching and his chest tight with relief.
He waited at a distance, watching the tent flap, until Tsunade emerged. Then he closed the gap fast, dropping into a bow before she could walk past.
"Tsunade-sama. Thank you for personally treating Teju and Kurenai. I didn't expect someone of your standing to..." He caught himself before the sentence turned into babbling. This was the first genuinely important figure he'd encountered since arriving in Konoha. Composure mattered.
"Don't thank me. I'm here specifically for detoxification work. Those two were just part of the job."
"Tsunade-sama, if there's ever anything I can do for you, anything at all, please don't hesitate to ask."
Not a bad outcome, all things considered. He'd just had an actual conversation with the future Fifth Hokage. An unexpected bonus.
She looked him over the way someone appraises a stray dog that followed them home. "How about you focus on getting stronger? Last time someone gave you orders, both your teammates ended up hospitalized. If I started giving you tasks, I'd be personally responsible for the next round of casualties." She flicked her hand. "See you around, kid."
Not even qualified to run errands for Tsunade. That stung, though he couldn't argue the point.
He went to the medical ward next. Teju and Kurenai were stable. The neurotoxin still hadn't fully cleared their systems, so they remained unconscious, but the worst was over.
Their faces had color again, flushed pink instead of that awful blue-green.
The knot in his chest loosened. Just a fraction.
A few days later, the camp's population swelled. Clan squads began arriving in waves. Word was that Danzo had petitioned the village for reinforcements, arguing that Iwagakure was getting restless on another front. Better to crush Sand quickly than let the conflict drag on and invite complications.
And just like that, Sora found himself the camp's favorite target.
You tell me how that's fair.
Tsunade had raised the issue. Danzo had seized on it. Sora was a minnow caught between two currents. He hadn't decided anything.
The Nara clan took it worst. Self-proclaimed brain trust of Konoha, famous for using "advisory roles" as an excuse to arrive at every battlefield last. Now they'd been shamed into deploying over a dozen members to the frontline, and they needed someone to blame. Danzo and Tsunade were untouchable. Sora was not.
He'd caught wind that groups of Nara ninja had been huddling together after midnight, pooling their considerable intellects to brainstorm ways to make his life miserable.
A clan of certified geniuses, collectively scheming against one genin.
I'm finished.
The Uchiha contingent, by contrast, was refreshingly straightforward. They'd swept into camp with the collective attitude of see, you couldn't handle it without us, and were already champing at the bit to prove themselves on the battlefield. No interest in petty grudges. Just glory.
Akimichi Yoshimaru turned up too, eventually. He checked on his squad, confirmed everyone still had a pulse, nodded with a look that said good enough, and left.
Yoshimaru and his former squad captain Namikaze Minato were both locked in the grinding attrition of the main front against Sand's primary force. Neither had time for babysitting.
That was the paradox of this war. The higher-ranked your squad leader, the less likely you were to actually see them. Squads led by chunin ran missions at full strength. Squads attached to jonin and above spent most of their time leaderless, because their captains were always pulled into operations far above genin pay grade.
Sora camped out in the medical ward as much as he could. After a few more days, Teju and Kurenai woke up.
Then Minato arrived, his students in tow: Kakashi, Obito, and Rin. He'd come specifically to visit the wounded.
Kakashi's team wasn't so different from Sora's, when you thought about it. Those three ran solo missions constantly, their jonin sensei perpetually off handling things only a jonin could handle.
But Minato was Minato. Warm, genuine, the kind of person who lit up a room without trying. He bowed to Sora's squad and apologized, actually apologized, explaining that his constant need for Yoshimaru on the front line had pulled their squad leader away and left three genin without guidance. A ninja of his reputation, offering a formal apology to three nobodies. Sora, Teju, and Kurenai barely knew where to put their hands.
It was the first time Sora spoke with Kakashi directly. By the time Sora had transferred into the Academy, Kakashi had already graduated. A monster prodigy on the protagonist's own road, and "terrifying" didn't begin to cover it. Kakashi had made chunin before Sora even finished school.
Get stronger. The thought lodged itself behind his teeth like a mantra. Fall behind and you get hit. Get hit enough and you die.