As the Third Kazekage surveyed the ruin of his western army, a different kind of storm was already brewing hundreds of miles to the northeast, in the rugged, lightning-scarred mountains that formed the border with Kumogakure.
Here, the air was different. It was not the dry, static heat of the desert, but a charged, oppressive humidity that clung to the skin and promised violent storms. In a command center carved directly into the heart of a granite peak, Kumo's sensory units were a symphony of focused tension.
Large, polished crystals, etched with swirling seals, glowed with soft internal light, their surfaces rippling with the chakra signatures of thousands of shinobi across the front.
The chief sensor, a man with a network of faint scars around his eyes from decades of chakra overuse, suddenly stiffened. His fingers, which had been tracing a slow, familiar pattern on a smaller crystal, froze.
"Report," growled a voice from the entrance. The Third Raikage, Ay, stood there, a mountain of muscle and impatience. He didn't need sensors to feel the shift in the air; his own instincts, honed in a thousand battles, screamed that the balance of the night had been shattered.
"Sir," the sensor chief's voice was tight, awed. "The… the activity in the Suna sector. It's just… stopped. The massive chakra signature we were tracking—it's gone. Vanished from our scrying entirely."
The Raikage's eyes, like chips of flint, narrowed. "Destroyed?"
"No, sir. Not extinguished. Just… absent. As if it never was." The chief shook his head, his fingers now dancing frantically over the crystal, trying to recalibrate. "But there's more. A new pattern, faint, like a ghost. It's moving. Unbelievably fast. Bypassing the shattered Suna lines entirely. The trajectory…" He looked up, his face pale. "It's coming here."
A low growl rumbled in the Raikage's chest. He had heard the whispers, the panicked reports filtering in from the west about a single Konoha shinobi turning a Suna army into a smoldering ruin. He had dismissed it as hyperbole, the exaggerated terror of sand-rats who had never faced true power. But this… this cold, tactical disappearance and reappearance on a new front spoke of a mind, not just a weapon.
"He's moving again," the Raikage said, the words a statement of grim fact. "Tighten the chakra net. I want a full alert. No one gets through. I don't care if it's a field mouse, you incinerate it."
Alarms, deep and resonant like the beating of a colossal metal heart, began to sound throughout the Kumo encampments. Barriers of crackling lightning energy snapped into existence between mountain peaks. Patrols that usually moved with confident swagger now scanned the shadows with paranoid intensity. The very mountains seemed to be watching.
But Hiruzen Sarutobi was not a field mouse. He was the shadow that fell between the watchfires. He used the terrain itself as his accomplice. As a Kumo patrol crossed a narrow rock bridge, Hiruzen, clinging to the underside like a gecko, placed a single hand on the stone. A subtle application of Earth Release: the rock bridge, weathered by millennia, simply crumbled at its weakest point with a sound like grinding teeth. The patrol, with startled shouts, plummeted into the chasm below, their fall a distant, fading cry. He didn't wait to witness the impact.
He moved through their formations not by speed alone, but by misdirection. A shadow clone, blazing with a convincing chakra signature, would appear boldly on a ridge, drawing the attention of a whole platoon and their long-range lightning snipers. As they focused their fire, the real Hiruzen would be half a mile away, using a minor Water Release technique to create a thick, ground-hugging mist that seeped into a supply depot, its moisture short-circuiting delicate electrical components and ruining stores of dry goods. He was a phantom, a catalyst of chaos, his goal always the infrastructure, never the individual soldier.
Far behind the lines, the Konoha tracking teams were struggling to keep up. Their equipment, sophisticated as it was, could only paint a fragmentary, terrifying picture.
"He's… he's not fighting them, sir," Kenta stammered, his eyes wide as he watched the chakra readings on his screen. "It's like he's… untangling them. Look—he just collapsed a key supply route here, triggered a landslide that isolated their northern battalion here… he's systematically disassembling their logistics without engaging their main force."
Matsu, the squad leader, puffed slowly on his cold pipe. The awe he had felt watching the Suna camp's destruction was now curdled with a primal fear. This was different. The Suna had been a blunt instrument. Kumo was a precision scalpel of lightning and brute force. And the Hokage was proving he could dismantle a scalpel with the same efficiency as a sledgehammer.
"The Hokage is giving them a lesson," Matsu murmured, his voice hushed. "And they're failing."
The whispers began among the Konoha relays, voices tinged with both reverence and terror. "He's carving a path through an army alone."
"The Kazekage couldn't stop him."
"What is he?"
The engagement, when it finally came, was a masterpiece of brutal efficiency. A Kumo squad, the "Lightning Breakers," renowned for their ability to overwhelm enemies with coordinated, high-voltage taijutsu, intercepted Hiruzen in a high mountain pass. They moved with the blinding speed their village was famous for, their bodies sheathed in flickering blue energy.
"You're finished, Konoha dog!" their leader roared, a spear of pure lightning forming in his hand.
Hiruzen didn't meet their charge. He simply raised his hands.
"Earth Release: Dungeon Sand of Heaven!"
The ground beneath the Lightning Breakers turned not to mud, but to a super-fine, sucking quicksand that pulled at their limbs, slowing their legendary speed to a crawl. Before they could adapt, he combined the technique.
"Fire Release: Dragon Flame Bomb!"
But he didn't fire it at them. He fired it into the quicksand. The result was not an explosion, but a terrifying, instantaneous vitrification. The superheated sand around the trapped shinobi fused into a solid, glassy tomb, encasing them up to their necks in a transparent coffin of their own making. Their lightning chakra fizzled and died, grounded and useless. The squad was neutralised, not with overwhelming force, but with precise, elemental chemistry.
Reports of this encounter reached the Raikage in his command centre. He listened to the description of his elite squad being defeated not in a glorious clash of power, but entombed like insects in amber. His face, already stern, became a mask of cold, volcanic fury. His fist clenched, and the air around him crackled with static electricity. A small, blackened scar appeared on the stone table where his hand rested.
This was no longer a strategic problem. It was a personal insult. This Konoha Hokage was not just attacking his village; he was mocking its strengths, turning its signature speed and power into liabilities. He was treating the vaunted Kumo shinobi as practice dummies for his academic exercises.
"Enough," the Raikage's voice was low, but it cut through the hum of the command centre like a lightning strike. The word was final. Absolute. "He toys with my forces. He treats our land as his training ground."
He stood, his immense frame seeming to fill the cavernous room. The air grew thick with the smell of ozone and raw power. His body began to glow with a faint, blue-white aura, the Lightning Release Chakra Mode igniting around him like a shroud of storm energy.
"I will personally intercept this 'Professor'," he declared, his eyes burning with the promise of violence.