Chương 8: Chapter 6

Fire Country Ryoma, Recently Promoted Ninja Near the end of the Third Great Shinobi War, Sasori of the Red Sands went missing. Shortly afterwards, the Third Kazekage also disappeared, and Sunagakure was left panicked and floundering for some time afterwards. Sunagakure had never had a surplus of legendary ninja, not like many of the other major ninja villages could reliably boast about. When the Third Great Shinobi War had started, they had maybe six such figures.

The Third Kazekage himself, The Honored Siblings Chiyo and Ebizo, Golden Boy Rasa, Scorching Sun Pakura, and upcoming prodigy of puppetry Sasori of the Red Sands. This was a pretty good number, overall, good enough to keep the smaller ninja villages that occasionally cropped up in line. Much like parasites or babies, smaller ninja villages sometimes crop up in the territories of larger ninja villages.

Normal economic opportunists, seeking power and wealth by exploiting market niches that the larger villages didn't cover as reliably. Sunagakure always had a handful simply from how much of a pain in the ass it was to cover long distances overland to provide services to more distant clients. Suna could, absolutely, if provoked to do so by a large enough paycheck, but the smaller jobs were historically speaking not worth the cost of sending someone that far out to fulfill them.

By the end of the Third Shinobi War, they were down to two legendary ninja. Rasa, promoted to the rank of Kazekage after his father's mysterious disappearance, and Pakura. Immediately shinobi of Suna scattered, searching far and wide for their missing Kazekage, but the ongoing war made spreading themselves too thin infeasible, and eventually Rasa was given the promotion a good decade or three before he probably should have been.

It was considered a shame that he was already married by then, otherwise they could have neatly secured the inter-village politics by having him and Pakura marry, thus forming a decisive power bloc that no one would be able to effectively threaten from within. Unfortunately he had already been married with a kid by that point, and Suna was left with two potential power blocs making everyone nervous.

It was always much less stressful when your military commander had no real potential opposition, making things nice and stable. There was a lot of worry that the smaller ninja villages would take advantage of the disappearance or retirement of four of Suna's six strategic assets, but that worry proved to be slightly unnecessary as rank and file ninja from smaller villages in the Land of Wind started to arrive at the gates and ask to join up.

Apparently, they had been on various missions, and when they returned their village had been utterly annihilated. Everyone dead, things looted or destroyed, some people outright missing, and so on. The popular running theory was that the Third Kazekage had simply gotten annoyed by having all the little competitors running around and had decided to remove them- lingering as an unseen presence in the dunes to annihilate any little ninja groups that tried to form.

This was sustained by everyone who tried to go independent in the years since mysteriously disappearing shortly after. This was bullshit, Ryoma knew, because Sasori had turned the Third Kazekage into a puppet and decided to get more materials for human puppets by wiping out every ninja in Wind Country that wasn't from Sunagakure. Still, the propaganda dulled the sting of their strongest ninja in history simply walking out on them, so Ryoma didn't want to take that from them.

Still, the problem remained that Sunagakure's population of low level ninja had swelled but their economic situation was only going to continue to worsen as time went along. These ninja from minor villages were able to compete and complete low level jobs, but they simply didn't have the training required to complete the higher level missions with any degree of reliability.

An oversaturated market of lower-level work being done contrasted with a lack of high-level agents capable of completing the high-level pay that ninja villages relied upon. This alone would've been an issue- when combined with the Daimyo of Wind refusing to send his various S and A rank missions to Sunagakure, the real money-makers, the things worth many dozens or hundreds of lower rank missions? The situation was dire, and nobody was really sure of what they could do to fix any of it.

Provoking another great ninja village was incredibly risky, with the complete lack of legendary ninja to counter their surplus legends. Provoking the Daimyo was incredibly risky, with the number of Samurai he still had under his employ that could easily handle the masses of fodder ninja Suna had on hand. There was a distinct lack of other high-paying clients that they could solicit for work. There was a distinct lack of anything in a desert to expand their side-hustles out to.

There was a distinct lack of rising talent in any given field to push anything forwards and unlock new forms of monetization for the village. Adding more ninja to the equation wouldn't really help things either- as potentially easy as it might be to recruit bloodlines from Kiri. That'll just add more ninja who aren't getting enough jobs to sustain everyone. There wasn't much of a point to him worrying about all of this.

It was both above his paygrade and something he couldn't do much to affect on his own, he didn't have many good ideas to alleviate these issues either. The best he had been able to spitball was 'blitzkrieg-conquer another ninja village and use it to subsidize Suna'. It couldn't be a civilian region, ninjas weren't exactly interested or skilled in managing normal economies and every noble on this side of the planet would be leery of them after pulling something like that.

Getting the nobles wary or, god forbid, mad enough to start sending Samurai over, would mean less jobs, which would only worsen the economic issues that they were trying to solve. By contrast, nobles and civilians usually didn't give a shit about ninja warring and conquering each other, so there wouldn't be as much diplomatic pushback except from other ninja. Strategically, their best target for such a conquest would be Tanigakure, their long term allies in the Land of Rivers.

That would both mean betraying an ally and potentially worsening everything afterwards if the blitzkrieg failed, but if it succeeded and Sunagakure was able to effectively annex all shinobi activity in the Land of Rivers? That would make them essentially independent from their Daimyo. The only other options were the Mountain, Fang, and Claw Countries to their north. All of which would be hotly contested by Iwagakure, a great shinobi village.

Even with the immense losses they suffered during the war, they were still a great shinobi village, and spreading Suna troops too thin would just leave them open to attack. There was no shinobi opposition worth caring about except Iwa in that region, just a bunch of incredibly minor independent groups and the occasional non-ninja bandit kingdom. Capturing all of those minor ninja villages combined would maybe, barely equal to just capturing the Land of Rivers and securing their independence from the Daimyo.

It would require spreading their military thinner, dealing with a great shinobi village, and providing less overall rewards, but it would mean not needing to betray Sunagakure's only long-term ally. The only other option, Land of Rain, had their shinobi led by Hanzo the Salamander and fighting him was what stupid people did if they were feeling suicidal.

The Sannin, the three legendary shinobi of Konoha, strongest great ninja village, got their names for managing to survive against Hanzo long enough for him to throw a compliment their way and allow them to leave. Needless to say- it was completely off the table in terms of plausible local conquests. Between rocks and hard places, or in local terminology, between sands and sun. He gave a rueful huff, staring at the chasm-spanning wooden bridge some distance away.

Tea Country was mostly mountains with valleys in between and lots of coastline, similar to Italy. Part of the transitory landscape between it and Fire Country was a number of immense canyons and deep gorges that led into fast flowing rivers cutting through sheer rock cliffs and eventually into springwaters, aquifers, or out to sea. This bridge was surrounded by boulders, relatively dense trees, and other sources of easy cover.

"That might be the most obvious ambush I've ever seen." Gaku muttered next to him, having raised a hand to slow the caravan behind them as they looked over it. The occasional sway in the tree branches and some kind of smell indicating the threat. His ninken made a huffing growl in agreement.

"Might be." Ryoma agreed with a nod, it was pretty damn embarrassing how blatant it was. He had noticed a little bit after the Konoha Jonin did.

"Issue is- we don't really have a choice to avoid it." The advantage with bridges was that they were very easy to set up choke points on, the disadvantage of bridges was that sometimes you had to go through someone else's chokepoint. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

"Madam Gozen, Lady Ikeda, do you know the fastest route down to Tea Country besides this one?" Gaku turned, pointing a thumb in the direction of the bridge. They glanced at one another, then over to an older looking gentleman wearing robes with Madam Gozen's symbol upon the breast. He coughed and leaned over, whispering something to them.

"Hmph." Madam Gozen responded in a dissatisfied manner.

"There's another road that winds down along the coast, but traveling along it will add another three days to our journey. Utterly unacceptable- simply destroy whatever threat is ahead of us instead." Ryoma exchanged a glance with his fellow Jonin, Gaku and Mari both, and then back to the bridge.

"How's everyone's reserves doing, and do you know any clone jutsu?" He asked with a grumble. He wasn't about to get completely accurate answers here, because giving away potential weakness in front of a potential enemy was just a bad idea, but it was good enough to start with. After a few moments of quiet, he turned his gaze back to his fellow ninja with furrowed brows. Gaku and Mari were looking off to the sides, badly pretending to whistle or rubbing the back of their necks.

The Genin likewise looked a bit awkward.

"Well… If you mean the basic clone technique…" Gaku began, looking over to the side. His ninken had raised a paw to partially cover its muzzle, looking down the opposite direction.

"A physical clone." Ryoma responded with a flatly unimpressed tone.

"A standard grade clone is not going to be useful here." Coughing and silence greeted him. He let out a long and low sigh, reaching up a hand to pinch his brows.

"Incompatible affinities?" He grumbled.

"Wind and Water." Gaku grunted. It was actionable intelligence but it seemed defending his pride was a bit more important at the moment.

"Wind." Mari coughed into her fist. Ryoma turned his gaze to the genin.

"Fire." Kurenai twirled a lock of hair.

"Wind." Asuma scratched his chest.

"Water." Raido scowled at nothing in particular. Ryoma knew that there were physical clone variants for water and earth, at least. The other affinities didn't lend themselves towards the jutsu as readily. He raised two of his fingers to point at Gaku and Raido.

"You two need to figure that shit out." He grumbled.

"I know for a fact water clones exist- ask an Uchiha, one probably copied it at some point."

"Tch- I suppose you're one to lecture?" Gaku grumbled and glared. Ryoma rolled his eyes.

"Cover me, will you? I need to provoke the ambush." He turned around, raising his hands and going through the handseals required. Next to him, loose soil and particulate matter rose up and took his likeness, outer layer then hardening into the shape of another sand clone. Clone created, he lowered himself into a stable crouch, made a handseal, and concentrated.

Sand clones maintained about ten percent of the strength of the original, and while that certainly wasn't great if he wanted to toss out big attacks, it didn't really stop him from using it as a disposable trooper. After all, he was a puppeteer. Chakra strings had almost negligible chakra cost to maintain. The Sand Clone reached out his fingers and connected chakra strings to the three deployed bolters, tugging them out of their hidden positions and making them float over to him.

The genin and civilians recoiled slightly to see the wooden spider-things hidden amongst them, but then slackened as the Sand Clone and the three Bolters jumped away and towards the bridge some fifty meters away. Nothing in that little group was irreplaceable- indeed the purpose of both clones and bolters was to be utterly disposable, and thus Ryoma didn't need to worry about preserving anything when using them. This disposability made them perfect for setting off traps from a very long distance.

The problem is that this took a fair bit of concentration to do- constantly ordering the sand clone around meant he couldn't concentrate on himself as much. It took a slightly different kind of concentration from puppeteering multiple things around, but the two arts had a fair bit of synergy between them. Sasori had called it lame when Ryoma mentioned the idea. Lame and uninspired.

This was because Sasori was a freak of nature who could control ten puppets at the same time and suffer no loss of personal efficacy while doing it. Clone Ryoma, Cloma leapt forwards a few times, crossing the many dozens of meters towards the destination, Bolters spread out, hopping, scuttling, and being dragged telekinetically along towards the bridge.

Soon enough Cloma had arrived at the beginning of the sturdy looking wooden construction, appreciating the broad and flat boards and the efficient layout of supporting struts. A glance up and down along the roaring gorge told him that he'd need to keep this bridge intact, because there wasn't another crossing anywhere in sight. A Bolter scuttled forwards, then down over the edge to start inspecting the area beneath the bridge proper.

Almost immediately, it came eye-to-eye with a very surprised looking collection of bandits. Ryoma, far away, raised a brow. He wasn't expecting them to be under the bridge too. Cloma's finger twitched, the bolter shot out a rapid stream of poisoned senbon. Thik-thik-thik-thik-thik as it fired, making robbers clinging to the underside of the bridge groan and grunt as they were hit and then fell. Judging by the five second fall, they were almost certainly very dead on impact with the rushing waters below.

The initial barrage and attack provoked all of the bandits to start running out, climbing up from under the bridge, coming from out of the trees, running towards him from various angles. Calmly, Cloma levitated the Bolters around him and fired precise shots at whatever happened to be closest to him. Each Bolter had fifty shots. These three particular bolters fired low-collateral shots, kunai, shuriken, and poisoned senbon.

ThikthikthikThikthikthikThikthikthik- and so on for several long seconds along with the warcries of common bandits and the occasional yell or scream of pain. Ryoma frowned. They were starting to use the bodies of their comrades as cover, which the low-collateral shots of those Bolters weren't really capable of handling. Cloma began to move backwards, reaching out a hand and a string to tug a spear from a corpse's hand and bring it over his shoulder.

"Keh-thunk." Cloma announced for the sake of the spear, it didn't have anything to make a shooting-noise for it. He imagined it might sound like a big wooden railgun or something. Screams as the spear rocketed forwards and impaled three men. Shame about that, they probably should've chosen a different profession. All in all it was looking like a reasonable clear-out of a-"YOU IDIOTS!" A feminine voice roared.

"Move!" Gaku roared, jumping to the side. Ryoma's eyes widened, concentration broken as he threw himself to the other side. It was always good to get moving when you get surprised. His instinct proved useful as the ground shook. Something smashed into the ground like a meteor where it had just been, and if there had been any loose soil it would've kicked up a cloud of obscuring dust. Thanks to his sand clone, it was just a heavy, loud impact with the road.

A very large rock, taller than he was and about half as wide. He flinched, as a moment later the mental feedback of his clone being destroyed somewhere up ahead hit him.

"What was that!?" Asuma called out, knives raised and eyes on the sky. All of them had been surprised by the sudden impact.

"Mari! Fan on any other incoming projectiles!" Ryoma immediately ordered, hand forming into a claw and giant kunai on his back whirling to life like a possessed buzzsaw.

"Understo- Great Breakthrough!" Mari began to acknowledge order, before cutting herself to make a massive swing of her iron warfan and summoning hurricane-force winds in an instant. Above their heads another tremendous boulder slowed as it met the massive force of the winds, just enough for it to fall short and crash a few meters away from the road instead of directly on them.

"Enemy is on the opposite side of the crevasse!" Gaku called out, tantos raised and ninken's hackles lifted.

"Team, guard the clients! I'm moving to engage!"

"Got it- behind us!" Ryoma had already spun, fingers twitching and giant shuriken roaring forwards.

"BOH-YAH!" Called out from above them, followed by an explosion that turned the giant kunai into scrap and scattered it widely. This was a distinctly poor situation to be in, Ryoma noted calmly. There was an unknown number of bandits on the road ahead, probably coming for them, someone hurling boulders at them from the other side of the canyon, and a brown-haired guy just exploded himself but didn't die, pulling himself out from a crater in the base of the tree. He made a snap decision.

"Mari! Join Inuzuka against the boulder thrower! Konoha Genin! You're with me!"

"Got it!" Mari called out, jumping forwards and then throwing herself up to land on her fan and glide towards the other side of the gorge.

"Understood!" The Genin called out, moving into defensive formations with him.

"Heheh, you guys are in over your heads, if I'm being honest." The man who just exploded grinned, pushing himself up and brushing off his otherwise nude form.

"Cause I'm the bomb, baby!" The exaggerated gestures and swagger indicated that the bandit was rather full of himself. They had about a minute before the normal bandits reached them. Looks like two B-ranks and an army of mooks, Gaku had guessed right a few days earlier.