Scouting out the troop movements of the Kirigakure squad had been the easy part for the four-man team from Konoha. Specially with the Hyuga chunin leading it.

Getting the information back to the leaf camp bypassing the sentry posts of the Kiri ninja would be the hard part.

The setting sun shone down through the dense mangroves that defined the scenery of the Land of Waves, casting dappled shadows on the undergrowth.

Toshiro Hyuga activated his Byakugan and scanned their surroundings.

As his field of vision widened, colour bled out of his surroundings and the vegetation failed to impede his line of sight.

Finding no sign of life in the vicinity, he relaxed and deactivated his eyes. The bulging veins returned to normal and his eyes, to their usual pupil less white.

His three genin team-mates landed from the treetops as silently as their unpolished stealth skills would allow.

None of them were a day over ten, an outcome of the new war conscription policy and accelerated graduation programmes.

The flames of war were consuming lives faster than the villages could supplement them and so the young ninja… no, these children were sent to the front in the hopes that more of them would swim rather than sink.

It produced geniuses like Kakashi Hatake, the six-year-old chunin… and unmarked graves... lots of unmarked graves.

He gently caressed his forehead protector which concealed his caged bird seal. What exactly were they fighting for?

Pushing his melancholic thoughts to the back of his mind, he gave the orders to set up camp.

He observed his charges busy at work while he rested to restore the chakra he had consumed using his eyes.

The boy with the glasses, Ebisu, was textbook in his camp arrangements.

Shiranui Genma was calm and collected in his movements, setting up his sleeping area with a casual ease while chewing on a blade of grass.

A veritable bundle of enthusiasm in his viridian leotard, putting 120% effort into every task, was Might Guy. Toshiro couldn’t help but admire him. Not everyone could get as far with his meagre amount of talent in ninjutsu and genjutsu.

They wolfed down their rations of dried meat and water before settling down for the night with him keeping the first watch.

The dusk gave way to the night, making the grove sparkle mystically in the starlight.

Toshiro leaned on a tree, activating his Byakugan every twenty minutes to prevent them from being caught off guard by an enemy.

He paced himself so that at any point in time, he would have more than half of his chakra available for combat.

When trouble comes, it generally brings its friends. In this instance, it brought six.

His Byakugan nearly popped out of his sockets when he detected seven huge sources of chakra coming in their general direction at breakneck speeds.

If one spoke of teams of seven shinobi with the power level he was reading off them, only one group came to mind: The Seven Swordsmen of the Mist.

Leaping to his feet, he kicked the three genin to wakefulness and quickly packed up their camp, erasing their traces as far as possible.

Racing against time, they sped from tree to tree, perpendicular to the swordsmen’s path, hoping to avoid their sensation range and praying that whatever task they might have was urgent enough for them to avoid detours.

They were disappointed on both counts as Toshiro’s next sweep with the Byakugan showed that their routes had changed to an interception course with their own.

Keeping his cool despite the building pressure, the Hyuga sent up a pattern of flares that would reveal the presence of the Seven Swordsmen in the area.

Now, they just had to stay ahead of the pursuit of the swordsmen long enough for leaf reinforcements to catch up to them.

A task which was much easier said than done.

A needle-like long sword pierced through the intervening trees and nearly gutted Genma. If not for the Hyuga’s prior sensation of its path and prompt action of pushing him away, it would have pierced him.

Although they were temporarily safe, this manoeuvre had lost them their lead and the swordsmen were hot on their heels.

With another keening noise, the needle-like sword shot towards Ebisu, forcing Toshiro to protect him, shaving of precious metres off their lead.

Toshiro felt an aura of death hanging over them. Their situation was desperate.

Clenching his teeth, he stopped his advance, ordering his three juvenile charges to carry on without him.

Genma was calm, Ebisu seemed constipated and Guy was most exuberant in his protests. He took one last look at them, reiterated his order and turned and fired into the forest to bar the way of the swordsmen.

He hoped that the moments he bought for them would be enough.

He prayed that unlike him, they would live long enough to see the war end.

The veins around his eyes bulged and he saw them coming, seven humongous masses of chakra, one being extremely prominent, reaching levels comparable to tailed-beasts while the others were the level of elite jonin.

The kunai in his hand shivered as he pasted dozens of paper bombs all over his body and hid them with a transformation jutsu.

Just as the swordsmen emerged from the thickets, with a primal scream, he plunged into their midst.

…

Genma, Ebisu and Guy were rapidly traversing the forest, angling closer to the Konoha camp, when the sound of a huge explosion behind them caused them pause.

Grief and indignation filled them as they realized the source of the explosion. Clenching their teeth, they sped up even more, squeezing every drop of their potential in order to make the sacrifice of their comrade meaningful.

Genma still held onto his façade of calm but his fists, clenched hard enough to draw blood, spoke a tale of internal turmoil.

Ebisu’s face was frozen in a terrified rictus. As the physically weakest among them, he was finding it difficult to keep up.

Guy had tears streaming down his face unchecked as he threw himself into the rhythm of the run, trying to drown out the insidious thoughts that told him that he had traded his continued existence with the life of a comrade.

He ran faster and faster, his monstrous constitution causing him to take the lead.

When he was snapped out of his fugue state by a scalding heat on his chest, he realized that he had almost run out of the line of sight of his team.

Mortified by his near desertion, he waited for them to catch up while inspecting the pendant on his chest which was emitting heat.

His father had given it to him on his birthday as a lucky charm. It had never behaved so strangely before.

The heat grew stronger and stronger until with a sharp crack, the porcelain pendant shattered and almost at the same time, his father and his team both emerged from the thickets.

Everyone gawked at each other for an instant before with a tacit understanding, all four of them set out at full speed along the route Guy’s father, Might Duy, had come.

As they ran, Duy explained his appearance here.

Being a genin, he was patrolling the camp perimeter when the flares went up, informing them of the seven swordsmen’s presence.

Worried about Guy, who was scheduled to return from his duty around the current time, he had used a single use locator talisman, the pendant, and rushed to his aid.

He had thought that a different squad was being chased down by the swordsmen while Guy’s squad was hiding somewhere. He had planned to find them with the talisman and show them the road to the camp, helping them pass back safely.

How could he have known that they were the ones being chased and their chunin comrade had already sacrificed himself to win time for them.

After running a distance, Duy suddenly stopped and turned around to face the direction he could hear the swordsmen coming from.

The three genin ran for a distance before Guy realized the discrepancy. He turned around fiercely.

Sure enough, he saw Duy’s broad back as he waited preparing to meet the last enemies of his life.

Anxious, Guy ran up to him and tried to drag him back towards the camp. “You’re only a genin… leave the fighting to the higher ups.”

It was as if the man had taken root in the soil. Guy couldn’t move him even an inch.

Duy turned to him and spoke in a soft tone, “Son, today I will unlock the eight gates. A day will come when you have to protect the warmth behind you and your strength will not be enough. That day, you too will open the eight gates. So, live on my son. Live on and find that warmth worth igniting your youth for. Don’t cry. This is the happiest moment of my life.”

With a gentle push, Duy pushed his son back on the path towards the Konoha camp. Guy took one reluctant step after the other away from his father, speeding up until the trees blurred in his eyes, both due to his speed and his unshed tears.

…

As the dramatic tale of bravery and sacrifice was unfolding in the mangroves, high above them sitting on a platform of sand were a man and a woman.

The man wore a long white robe while the woman was attired in a backless and sleeveless black dress, with slits on both sides of the waist for increased mobility.

They were both keeping watch over a miniature of the area formed out of sand. Seven tiny figures made of sand could be seen advancing towards one figure that stood between them and the three fleeing figures.

The movements of the figures were accurate reproductions, based on the information being fed to them from several covert eyeballs of sand spread over the area.

“What do you want the seven swords for?” Pakura asked.

Lin Feng replied, “The same reason I’ve been collecting anything which has something remotely special about it. While most of them are duds, some of them contain fragments of the Will of the World. Those are important for me.”

“So, these seven swords are likely to have Will fragments?”

“Almost definitely. That living sword, Samehada, has a fragment large enough to grant it a modicum of sentience. The others have fragments too… but smaller.”

“You can teleport, right? Then why didn’t you just attack them one by one while they were in Kirigakure?”

“I couldn’t. There is a spatial blockade over the entire village. There was nothing like that in Suna. This means that there is either a Shattered Void realm expert in Kiri or, more likely, a Void level sealing formation. My cultivation needs to enhance for me to be able to bypass it.”

“Then, what are you waiting for? Do you want them to kill those genin before you take action?”

“Yes. The higher the contradictory degree between Konoha and Kiri, the more benefits Suna can reap. Thus, the easier it becomes to win the war. What? Your compassion won’t be in a flood for even our enemies, now, will it? Are you going to tell me how human they are?” He teased.

“Just stop bringing that episode up. Its already been a month. I was hopped up on soporifics and had just experienced a betrayal from the village I had dedicated my life to serve. I’d say I had a right to rant at someone who was using me as a test piece.” She retorted.

“Yeah. I apologized, didn’t I? Don’t forget, you’re still my test piece. I’ve kept my end of the deal and managed Suna as if it were truly my territory, rather than some place to toss about on a whim.”

“Alright. Alright. I heard you the hundredth time. Speaking of test piece, any results from the samples you’ve been taking from every part of my body?”

“Yes. Some. Firstly, the fragment is closely associated with every part of your body and soul. So, extracting it is not only beyond the current me, I fear that before Grasping Principles realm, I won’t have any progress in that direction.

"Secondly, there are some differences between you and the ocular kekkei genkai holders from Konoha. From what I gleaned from studying the captive Hyuga clan member, their powers come from the invader and not the Will of the World. Also, their principle fragments are concentrated in their eyes and soul.

"Again, extraction of the principles will require a higher realm.”

“Hmm… Ok. It seems to be a long-term proposition. At least something has come from the embarrassing things you make me do. If a month ago someone told me I'd willingly let someone study my excrement, I'd turn them into a scorched husk."

"Well, you did try that on me, the first time I asked. Thankfully I was immune due to the four-tails' power."

"Tch. Unfair matchups." she muttered darkly under her breath.

"What did you say?"

She hastily shifted the topic. "Ahem. Then, right now? How are you going to frame the disappearance of the seven swordsmen on the Leaf village?”

His amber eyes shone with the light of mischief.

“Sit back, relax and watch a master at his game. I wasn’t the hegemon of a Grand tier sect for nothing.”