"I like this view better."
Shikamaru yawned. "Didn't you say last night, 'Let them run if they want. Let's see if they can catch us'? And now you're already missing the village?"
"Obviously," Kiba said with a scoff. "Doing a job outside and coming back to sleep aren't mutually exclusive."
"Is there anything in your head besides fighting and sleeping?"
"Yeah."
"What?"
"Eating."
Shikamaru fell silent for a mont.
"Pretty complete."
Kakashi didn't join in. He only looked up at the sky, which was growing brighter by the mont, then glanced at Chizumi walking ahead.
Chizumi had barely spoken the entire way back. There was no sign of relaxation after a successful raid, either. His steps were unhurried, his breathing steady, as if he had only gone out to handle so perfectly ordinary errand and was now returning to the village as usual.
But the more he acted like that, the more Kakashi knew this matter was far from over in Chizumi's mind.
When they entered the village, the guards at Konoha's gate had just changed shifts.
Kotetsu Hagane was standing inside the gate, saying sothing to Izumo Kamizuki. The mont he looked up and saw the returning squad, he froze.
"You—"
Izumo's eyes widened too.
"You're back already?"
Kiba imdiately lifted his chin. "What else? You thought we'd stay outside playing until noon?"
Kotetsu instinctively looked them over. Their clothes had cuts, soot, and blood on them, but everyone was standing, and their breathing was stable. Then he looked at Chizumi and Kakashi at the front, and the weight hanging in his chest finally eased a little.
Izumo lowered his voice. "Is the news outside true? Was it really you—"
Kakashi raised a hand and patted his shoulder.
"You're on duty. Ask less, say less."
Izumo imdiately shut his mouth.
Kotetsu still couldn't help adding in a low voice, "The Intelligence Division exploded into chaos after midnight. I heard a whole major warehouse in the Allied Forces' rear burned down. Everyone in the village is guessing who did it."
Kiba snorted.
"What's there to guess—"
Shikamaru grabbed him by the back of his collar and dragged him forward.
"Move. Your na is on the rit list. No need to recite it at the gate."
"Stop dragging !"
The group passed through the gate and entered the village.
Konoha wasn't fully lively yet in the early morning, but voices had already started filling the streets. Breakfast shops stead with white mist. Wooden doors along the street opened one after another. So ninja hurried toward the mission hall, while won with vegetable baskets on their backs stepped along the stone road toward the market.
People passing by all paused their gazes on the squad.
So recognized Kakashi. So recognized Neji. Others imdiately saw Chizumi walking at the front. Those gazes held curiosity, shock, and the restless urge to ask questions that no one dared voice.
Last night's news had spread too quickly. No one in the village dared discuss it openly, but most of those who needed to know had already heard fragnts.
A major supply warehouse in the Allied Forces' rear had been blown up.
There hadn't been many attackers.
Soone from Konoha had left the village in the dead of night.
Once those fragnts were pieced together, many things no longer needed to be spelled out.
But no one ca forward to stop them. No one truly asked.
Because when Chizumi wore that expression, people instinctively felt it was best not to block his way.
After turning through two streets, they found Shizune already waiting on the steps outside the Hokage Building.
She clearly hadn't slept much all night. There were faint shadows beneath her eyes, and she was holding a stack of freshly organized papers. When she saw them return, she first let out a heavy breath, then imdiately frowned.
"You finally—"
Halfway through her sentence, her gaze landed on the blood on Kiba's sleeve, and she imdiately grew tense.
"Who's hurt?"
Kiba looked down, then gave an "Ah."
"It's not mine."
"Then whose is it?"
"Not Akamaru's either."
Akamaru cooperatively lifted a paw.
A vein twitched at Shizune's temple.
"I was asking—"
Kakashi cut in with smiling eyes. "Everyone's alive, mostly intact. The biggest loss is probably Shikamaru's sleep."
Shikamaru said listlessly, "No, my brain took more damage."
Shizune was left speechless for a mont. She carefully looked them all over again and confird no one had any obvious severe injuries before she relaxed slightly.
"Lady Tsunade is waiting for you."
After saying that, she looked at Chizumi and lowered her voice.
"She's been in a bad mood since the second half of the night. When you go in, try not to use that… hmm, too-matter-of-fact tone."
Chizumi glanced at her.
"What do you an by too-matter-of-fact tone?"
Shizune opened her mouth, then finally answered honestly, "The way you usually talk."
Kiba almost failed to hold back a laugh.
Shikamaru turned his head aside, his shoulders shaking lightly.
Chizumi didn't respond to that. He only said flatly, "Got it."
Shizune clearly didn't believe he would actually change, but she didn't have ti to say more and quickly led them inside.
As they went upstairs, voices could already be faintly heard from the office.
The mont the door opened, the people inside all looked up.
Tsunade stood in front of the desk, a large map spread open before her. Homura Mitokado and Koharu Utatane were both there, along with two mbers of the Intelligence Division. Several urgent reports were piled on the corner of the desk. The lamps were still lit, but the windows had already turned pale with dawn. Clearly, everyone in the room had stayed up until now.
When Tsunade saw Chizumi co in, her first reaction wasn't to speak. She looked him over from head to toe.
"Are you injured?"
"No."
"The others?"
"No serious injuries."
Only then did Tsunade seem to release half the breath caught in her throat. In the next mont, her face turned cold again.
"So you still rembered to co back."
Kiba, Shikamaru, and the others stood in the back and tacitly remained silent.
Chizumi said calmly, "The mission is complete, so of course I ca back."
Tsunade stared at him as though she really wanted to grab the inkstone on the desk and throw it at him.
"That attitude of yours really pisses off."
Shizune hurriedly placed the papers in her hands aside, afraid soone in the room would actually start fighting in the next second.
Kakashi raised a hand in greeting.
"Morning, everyone."
Koharu imdiately turned to look at him.
"Morning? Do you know what kind of chaos is happening outside right now?"
"I know a little," Kakashi said casually. "Judging by the scale of the fire, I'd say it's probably a pretty spectacular ss."
Homura asked darkly, "Exactly how much did you destroy?"
Chizumi walked to the desk, glanced at the map, and pointed to a spot in the western rear line.
"This forward supply warehouse. Main grain storage, dicine warehouse, ninja tool warehouse—all destroyed."
The two Intelligence Division mbers, who had been comparing data with their heads lowered, visibly paused when they heard "all destroyed."
One of them looked up. "Confird?"
Kakashi said, "You can cross out the word 'confird.' Writing 'basically nothing left to recover' would be more accurate."
Tsunade crossed her arms over her chest.
"What about pursuers?"
"There were so, but they couldn't keep up," Chizumi said. "We withdrew along the planned route. They'll expand the search area afterward, but they won't find any traces in the short term."
"In the short term?" Koharu frowned. "Are you planning to let them search for you long term?"
"They're not searching for ." Chizumi raised his eyes. "They won't find the next attack."
The room went quiet.
Tsunade's gaze darkened.
"So you really aren't done."
Chizumi didn't deny it.
"It was never over."
Shizune felt her scalp go slightly numb as she listened from the side. She said quietly, "You only just got back…"
"So we rest for half a day first," Chizumi said.
"Half a day?!" Shizune's voice rose. "You were gone all night, just finished blowing up a major enemy warehouse, and the first thing you say after coming back is 'rest for half a day'?"
Even Kiba was stunned. "We don't even get to sleep a full night?"
Shikamaru pressed a hand to his forehead. "I knew it…"
Tsunade ignored everyone else's reactions and only stared at Chizumi.
"Why half a day and not a full day?"
"Because the news has already spread." Chizumi's finger slowly traced along several supply routes on the map. "During the day, the Allied Forces will first fall into internal chaos. By tonight, they'll start reorganizing. By tomorrow, they'll push their tracking teams farther out and double the guards at the remaining supply points. After that, it'll be very hard to find an opening like last night."
Homura asked heavily, "You want to strike continuously?"
"Not continuously against warehouses like last night," Chizumi said. "One strike against that kind of warehouse is enough. A second may not be worth it. What we hit next are the new supply nodes and transfer routes they temporarily create because of panic."
The Intelligence Division mbers imdiately lowered their heads to look at the map, and everyone's gaze followed Chizumi's finger.
Kakashi stood off to the side with his hands in his pockets, looking as if he wasn't really involved. In truth, there was a faintly bright smile in his eye the whole ti.
He knew very well that Chizumi's mind was turning faster than anyone's right now.
Last night's strike hadn't only been about burning supplies.
It had been ant to force the enemy to reveal their next moves.
Tsunade said, "You want the Intelligence Division to keep up."
"Yes." Chizumi nodded. "From now on, every additional warehouse they move, every route they shift, every guard unit they change—I need to know as quickly as possible."
Homura frowned. "The Intelligence Division can cooperate, but don't forget, last night's attack has already put the enemy completely on alert. If Konoha continues sending small teams deep in and even one of them gets caught—"
"That's why we won't rely on luck."
"What do you an?"
Chizumi moved his gaze away from the map.
"The next thod needs to change."
Tsunade narrowed her eyes. "Change how?"
Chizumi didn't answer imdiately. Instead, he looked back at Kakashi, Shikamaru, Neji, and the others.
"You go rest first. Assemble at the training ground this afternoon."
Kiba opened his mouth. "Wait, seriously? Half a day—"
Chizumi looked at him. "Do you want to go now?"
Kiba imdiately shut up.
"…Half a day isn't impossible."
Shikamaru sighed. "I knew you shouldn't have asked. Asking only makes it worse."
Kakashi shrugged.
"Then we'll head out first?"
Tsunade glanced at him. "You stay."
Kakashi paused mid-step.
"Hm?"
"You listen too."
"All right." Kakashi very cooperatively stepped back into place.
Seeing that, Shikamaru, Kiba, Neji, Shino, Tenzō, and the others tactfully stopped lingering. Shizune opened the door, and they filed out one by one. When he reached the doorway, Kiba couldn't help looking back at Chizumi.
"We're really assembling this afternoon?"
Chizumi gave a hum.
"Don't be late."
The corner of Kiba's mouth twitched.
"Got it."
The door closed again, and the office beca much quieter.
Tsunade pulled out a chair and sat down, raising her chin.
"Speak."
Chizumi stood before the map, his voice low.
"Last night's thod only works as an opening move. From now on, the Allied Forces will defend their supply points more tightly and shorten the contact intervals between nodes. Trying to sneak in with ten or twenty people and plant explosive tags everywhere again isn't realistic."
Kakashi added from the side, "Especially since they'll definitely expand the patrol range of their sensor teams and deploy anti-infiltration traps and warning formulas throughout the rear."
Homura nodded with a heavy expression. "Correct."
"So we switch to sothing that uses fewer people, moves faster, and has a larger kill radius," Chizumi said.
Tsunade looked at him. "What are you planning?"
Chizumi raised a hand, took a blank sheet of paper from the side of the desk, and used a brush to draw several intersecting lines.
"Ordinary explosive tags have limited power and range. Either you pile them up in large numbers, or you set them at close range. Last night, we mostly relied on stacking them in large numbers."
"You call that limited?" Koharu's face stiffened. "Do you need to blow up half a mountain before it counts as large?"
"Against an Allied Force of that scale, if it isn't large enough, it has no aning." Chizumi's tone was calm. "What I want to do next is connect a string of explosive tags into a single whole."
Tsunade's eyes shifted slightly. "Connect them into a whole?"
"Chakra threads."
Chizumi turned the brush and drew very fine lines connecting one small tag after another on the paper.
"Like a puppeteer controlling a puppet, we use treated chakra-conducting wires to link the explosive tags together. Not simply tying them up, but making it so that when one explodes, the chakra impact travels through the thread and drives the next, then the next after that. That way, the explosions won't be scattered. They'll trigger in linked waves."
As Kakashi listened, the laziness in his eye finally faded a little.
"You're trying to make… a delayed chain detonation?"
"Not delayed." Chizumi shook his head. "Layered."
"Layered?"
"The first layer of explosions pushes the second layer. The second layer compresses the third. The blast center won't spread too far, but the shockwave will stack layer by layer. If arranged properly, a string of twenty tags can approach the destructive force of a jōnin-level Fire Release or Lightning Release technique."
Homura's expression changed.
"How did you suddenly think of this?"
Chizumi said calmly, "When the western warehouse exploded last night, I saw the crates of ninja tools undergo secondary detonations. They triggered one another, which was more effective than a single blast."
Tsunade frowned. "You thought of this on the spot?"
"Yes."
Shizune stood by the desk, looking at the increasingly dense lines drawn on the paper. She couldn't help asking, "But explosive tags are already unstable. If you connect them with chakra threads, won't they lose control and detonate prematurely?"
"They will. That's why we need structure."
Chizumi added several nodes to the paper.
"Primary blast tags, secondary blast tags, guiding tags, buffering sections. Each section has to be different. We'll need to test it."
Tsunade looked at the sheet, which was quickly filling up with diagrams, and lightly tapped the table with a finger.
"Who do you want for this?"
"The Sealing Division, the Ninja Tools Division, and a few people with precise chakra control." Chizumi paused. "Preferably soone who understands puppet structures too."
Shizune froze. "Puppet structures? Where would the village get—"
Kakashi cut in. "We can check whether any old blueprints from Kankurō were ever left for research, or look through the Sand Village chanisms captured during past missions."
~~~
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