The journey there had been a relatively relaxed steady walk. The journey back was a slow, interminable trudge. This in spite of the fact that they were covering the same distance at more or less the same speed.

Noburi was particularly frustrated. With social skills like his, he should have been able to charm the pants off the villagers (not that this was that sort of mission), not flail around like a kitten being given a surprise bath. Then again, it's not like he'd got the chance to show off his full abilities, not with Kurosawa stealing the spotlight as usual. Father and son indeed. Kurosawa was first among equals at best, and that was only because Shikigami-sensei said so. Yet he acted like he was the team's jōnin instructor, always taking point, always taking charge, always taking everything that was good about being a ninja—the control, the sense of power, the self-assurance that came with being at the top of the food chain—and keeping it all for himself, leaving Noburi with scraps. Even Mori seemed to look up to him, though admittedly it was hard to tell what she was thinking at the best of times.

Mori, huh? Noburi wished he could talk to her, but every time he tried it only seemed to make things worse. Well, if he was to take the place he deserved, in her eyes as much as everywhere else, the first step was to verbally take Kurosawa down a peg, and remind him that he was human like the rest of them.

Hazō was wishing that Wakahisa would shut his yap for once. The boy was like his neighbour's—his former neighbour's—terrier, constantly making noise and demanding attention, but with no good use for it when he finally got it. And Hazō had to concentrate. There was a report to prepare, and it would have to be good. He could already hear the exchange in his mind.

"Is that the best your team could do, Kurosawa? I told you to act like ignorant yokels with no long-term interest in the village, not be them."

"But, sir, you knew we weren't infiltration-spec when you sent us. If you'd assigned us a combat mission...."

"That's enough, Kurosawa. There will be no whining in my hand-picked genin squad. I gave you the opportunity to show everyone, to show me, that you were a competent, well-rounded team capable of rising to challenges outside your comfort zone. You squandered it and disappointed me. Get out of my sight. The three of you are on manual labour duty until further notice."

Hazō had to avoid that at all costs. He'd disappointed his instructors once (though he still wasn't completely clear how), and it had nearly been the end of his career. It had nearly been the end of his life. This was his second chance. The shinobi world never gave a third.

The same went for the others. Wakahisa and Mori bore the weight of failure on their shoulders just like he did. They shared the same dangers. And if he was going to live up to the trust they gave him as his teammates, he had to protect them as much as he protected himself (no matter how much he'd rather Wakahisa just fall down a quicksand pit). Right now, his way of protecting them was to once again prepare the perfect report. After all, they had brought back a lot of valuable intel. Yes, they could have found a lot more if they'd manoeuvred their conversations more carefully, but there was no need to draw Shikigami-sensei's attention to that. They'd acquired the necessary resources, or at least a reasonable proportion given the circumstances, and Hazō's report needed to emphasise those successes while keeping missed opportunities firmly in the background (but without hiding them altogether—the moment Hazō tried treating Shikigami-sensei as if he was stupid was the moment he got fed to the alligators).

Their teammate, meanwhile, was scanning the surrounding environment, because Wakahisa was busy displacing his anxiety, and Kurosawa was making plans, and somebody had to pay attention to the death swamp. And for some reason that somebody turned out to be her. Her, watching the dark waters for snakes and leeches and parasitic slimes and lurkers and why did it have to be her? She was a Logistics & Support intern. She wasn't supposed to be here. She wasn't supposed to be fighting for her life. She wasn't supposed to die—

Keep it together, Kei. Keep it together. Her dad's phrase, but deeply written into her after so many years. Keep it together, Kei. She wasn't going to die. Not necessarily. She had teammates, and superiors, and they were all in this together and all of them had been marked for death by the world's deadliest ninja village and were trapped in a deadly swamp in the middle of a hostile country with no resources and no intel and no allies and no spirals. No spirals.

Inoue-sensei was a good person. Complex, and more than a touch terrifying, as Kei had learned when she'd glimpsed a fragment of the jōnin's true self that evening, but deep down a good person. And she'd shown Kei how to pull out of spirals, how to take a thing and make it your absolute focus until your mind was fully off its previous train of thought.

The road layout had been oddly slanted, and the watchtowers across the west wall irregularly spaced. The palisade there was subtly different too. The woods to the west were full of cedars, yet no cedar had been used in the construction of the houses. A westward expansion of the town had been attempted, but something in the woods had prevented it. Was the fauna significantly more dangerous there than in the rest of the surrounding area? Or something else? Cross-border raiders? Bandits? If she were to consider....

Kei calmed as she wove crystalline networks of analysis around herself like a protective cloak.

o-o-o-o "Do you smell that?" Wakahisa asked abruptly.

Hazō stopped. "Smoke. And...something coppery."

The three exchanged worried glances, then shifted to a more stealthy style of approach for the last few hundred metres to the base.

Smoke. Yes, plenty of smoke. Charred trees. Holes in the stone of the cave mouth, visible from here. Shikigami-sensei's traps, detonated. Blood, but no bodies anywhere. Rubble, as of broken Earth Element techniques. Shattered pieces of everything they'd built.

"We have to look for survivors!" Wakahisa exclaimed, then winced as he realised the volume of his voice.

"There won't be any survivors," Hazō told him, shaking his head slowly. "If our people had won, they'd be here cleaning up. If the hunter-nin had won...."

"There is a possibility," Mori commented in a voice wholly without affect. "If the secret passage is intact, some may have used it to make their escape. In that case, we can reopen it to follow them."

The three genin tentatively entered the cave, expecting an attack at any second. But there was no one inside. Just blood. So much blood. Discarded kunai. Loops of cut ninja wire. Blood. And no bodies.

And no secret passage. Just a pile of charred rocks.

"What do we do now?" Wakahisa asked quietly.

"We get out of here." Hazō bit his lip. "We find somewhere to hide. Then we plan our next steps."

Then he was there.

Captain Momochi Zabuza stood across their only path of escape, a sword of legend on his back and killing intent coming off him in waves. One look at him told Hazō everything. This man was death. Implacable. Inescapable. Inevitable. And finally here.

Captain Zabuza didn't even bother drawing the sword (not that he needed to, not against mere genin). Instead, he slowly pointed at the ground in front of him with his left hand, as if indicating where they should kneel. "One clean stroke."

At that moment, something finally clicked. Why would the missing-nin fight inside the tight confines of the cave instead of scattering in every direction, to escape and regroup later? How long had there even been trees outside the entrance? Most conspicuously, why would Captain Zabuza, who could have taken them out in a fraction of a second, before they even knew he was there, bother doing it like a ritual execution?

"Dispel!"