Hazō quickly weighed retreat versus advance. If there was a friendly ninja over there, and one in enough danger to use exploding tags, then there was no time to lose. By the time Team Kurosawa reported back to base and got backup, the person in need of help would almost certainly be dead. And on the off-chance that it was a neutral ninja (perhaps the inhabitant of that mysterious shelter from earlier), rescuing them from a threat would be a great way to establish first contact.

But if it was an enemy... well, if it was an enemy, then they'd need to find out as fast as possible so they could warn the base. And the enemy couldn't be that tough if they were being forced to use exploding tags against the local wildlife—something even Hazō's genin team hadn't needed to do so far. Of course, if Hazō's assumptions were wrong, then he and his team would die horribly. Just like most missions.

Oh. There was one more possibility.

"Dispel!"

Nothing happened, which was definitely for the best. A genjutsu user would mean a chūnin or jōnin enemy.

Hazō quickly made a series of hand signals. Primary. Stealth. Secondary. Speed. Pincer Formation Three. He didn't know the sign for the Water Clone Technique, but improvised. Water. Clone. Take Point.

Wakahisa's two clones moved to the front of the formation, and the party began to move.

After a few seconds, Mori, still facing forward, suddenly moved her hand out towards Wakahisa, and made a series of signs. Abort. Ninjutsu. Risk of Exposure.

The movement being in Wakahisa's peripheral vision, it took him a second to notice and react. In that second, one of his clones moved too close to a clearly visible banshee lizard, and the creature let loose one of its characteristic paralytic shrieks before vanishing into the water.

Damn damn damn. Hazō had overlooked, and Wakahisa had failed to remind him, that water clones only had a small fraction of the original's skill and power—and Wakahisa's sneaking skills were already the minimum required to qualify as a genin. Now anything in the target area (and quite a large range nearby) would know that they were coming.

The team abandoned any pretence of stealth, and ran.

o-o-o-o

Of course, the area was completely empty.

"Great job," a frustrated and humiliated Hazō told Wakahisa. "I thought Mist didn't use distraction genin anymore, but since I'm clearly wrong, I'll get Shikigami-sensei to issue you the standard black pyjamas."

"Oh, yeah?" Wakahisa shot back, his face a vivid shade of pink. "Well, maybe it is my fault—for trusting our glorious leader to pay attention when giving orders. You're supposed to know your teammates' abilities off by heart instead of—"

"Boys."

If looks could kill, Mori would never have been assigned to Logistics & Support.

"Moving on..." Hazō said once the petrification had worn off, "we need to fan out and look for clues as to what happened here. Five minutes, then we report back to Shikigami-sensei."

The source of the explosion wasn't hard to find. There was a big, roughly spherical dent in a nearby ridge, the remaining soil covered with blood. If there were any other remains, Hazō suspected, they were somewhere deep under the water, and would probably be consumed by the local fauna before any detailed investigation could locate them.

What was odd was that there were no other signs of battle. No ninjutsu damage, no kunai or shuriken sticking out of any surfaces, no lesser predators drawn by blood in the water. Could it be that—

"Kurosawa, Wakahisa, you need to see this."

Mori led them to a nearby tree. Something glinted in the sunlight among the branches. No, not something. A forehead protector, its location about right for a small object thrown clear by the explosion.

The sight of its torn blue cloth sent a chill down Hazō's spine in a way that the splatter of blood on the ridge had not. Forehead protectors were an easily-replaced and rarely-useful piece of armour, but they were also sacred. The forehead protector was the spirit of a ninja; it was what you brought back when you couldn't retrieve the body.

And the symbol this one bore consisted of five lines. The four wavy lines of water-unbound-by-form, slashed by the sharp horizontal line of the missing-nin. Hazō's mother had explained to him once, in a particularly morose mood, that some missing-nin kept their forehead protectors the same, indicating that they had been forced to leave the village but were loyal in spirit. Others put a slash through theirs as if cutting away their past, faking the original marking only when an objective demanded it. To them, wearing an unaltered forehead protector was like wearing a dead lover's clothing.

What the forehead protector said, in short, was that an ally had died here.

"Check it out, but don't move it. The location might be important," Hazō said softly.

Wakahisa quickly found himself something else to investigate, while Mori obediently climbed up.

Her face was completely expressionless when she climbed down.

"I know this one."

At Hazō's questioning look, she elaborated. "Inoue-sensei told me that the scratch in the lower left-hand corner was from when a Hidden Rock sniper nearly killed her. She often tells. Told. She often told that story because of what she did to the sniper afterwards."

There was someone nearby powerful enough to take out Inoue-sensei. No prizes for guessing who.

"Well," the voice came from behind him. "So far, all according to plan."