Rōran

The early morning mist had yet to clear, but several people were already standing before the Konoha Gate.

Tsume Inuzuka crouched at the front, her short gray-white hair stirring in the morning breeze. The red inverted triangle markings on her face were slightly damp with mist. Her Ninja Dog, Kuromaru, lay at her feet, dew clinging to his gray fur as his ears twitched from time to time.

When Baiye came over with his medical pack on his back, Kuromaru raised his head first and sniffed at him.

"He smells really strongly of medicine."

"That's how medical-nin are." Tsume Inuzuka stood and brushed the dirt off her knees. "Everyone's here. Let's go."

The four people and one dog leaped through the Konoha Gate and sped northwest along the main road. The shadows of trees on both sides swept past in the mist, and the road beneath their feet was damp and slightly soft from the night's dew, but it did nothing to slow them down.

Tsume Inuzuka led the way, while Kuromaru darted back and forth a dozen or so paces ahead of her. Every so often, he lowered his head to sniff the road, then called out without looking back, roughly meaning, "No one up ahead."

The two Chunin followed on either side of Baiye. Yamada was a man of few words and had spoken only three sentences since they set out. Sugimoto, on the other hand, was a chatterbox who went on about Rōran's dried fruit and towers as he ran, only shutting up when Yamada gave him a sidelong glare.

Baiye didn't join in. His gaze passed over the shadows of the trees ahead and settled on a distant ridgeline, faintly visible in the distance. Rōran lay to the northwest, between the Land of Fire and the Land of Wind, and the journey would take about two days in all.

After the sun rose that morning, the mist gradually dispersed. Several figures wearing Konoha Forehead Protectors sped along the main road. The merchants, accustomed to the sight, lowered their heads and continued on their way.

Near noon, they stopped by a stream to rest, drink water, and eat their rations. Kuromaru edged up to Baiye's hand and begged two pieces of rations from him, earning a distant shout of "Don't feed him whatever you like" from Tsume Inuzuka. Baiye sat on a rock by the stream, listening to the soft sounds of water flowing through the gaps between the stones. He suddenly remembered Hayate stumbling on the Training Ground before he left. He wondered how the kid's training was going and whether he was still tripping over his own heels.

They resumed their journey fifteen minutes later. That afternoon, the trees along the road grew sparse, the air grew drier, and the soil beneath their feet gradually turned sandy.

At dusk, the setting sun dyed the distant ridgeline dark red. A border outpost's watchtower appeared on the horizon, its Konoha flag snapping in the evening wind.

The ninja stationed at the outpost came out to meet them while they were still some distance away. "Senior Tsume, I didn't expect you to be leading the team. Dinner's already being prepared."

"Thanks for your hard work. We'll leave first thing tomorrow morning."

After entering the outpost, Baiye set down his medical pack and gave several of the long-term garrison ninja routine checkups first. Tsunade had instructed him to do so before he left.

Those stationed on the desert frontier were exposed to wind and sand year-round, leaving them prone to skin and respiratory problems. One young ninja had a mild case of trachoma, so Baiye prescribed a bottle of eye drops and handed it to him.

"Three times a day, and try not to rub your eyes."

"Thank you, Doctor Baiye."

Dinner consisted of vegetables grown at the outpost and game hunted nearby. The soup was light and the meat a little tough, but it was much better than rations.

Kuromaru got a bowl of meat soup with bones in it and tucked in, his tail wagging furiously. Sugimoto finally found new people to talk to and asked the outpost's residents about Rōran's dried fruit.

Baiye sat in a corner, looking out the window at the vast sea of sand. They would reach Rōran's border by noon tomorrow. The mission in Rōran was Minato's business; his own target had been Sunagakure from the start.

Early the next morning, the group replenished their drinking water and rations before leaving the outpost. Once they were outside, the vegetation rapidly thinned. The grass vanished, then the shrubs, and finally even the low thornbushes disappeared. The ground beneath their feet became nothing but sand.

Traveling across sand was less effortless than leaping between branches. The sand was loose and soft, and every push off the ground sank half an inch into it. Kuromaru led the way without even sticking out his tongue. Baiye's breathing remained steady. Since he began training in the Eight Gates, his stamina had increased considerably, and both his muscular endurance and cardiopulmonary function had risen a level. He had only drunk a couple more mouthfuls of water than he had the day before.

After stopping briefly beside a dead tree among the dunes to drink some water, they climbed the last dune just after noon.

Rōran City appeared on the horizon.

Sand-colored walls rose from the desert, with towers of varying heights. Dark green vines covered the walls—the fact that so much greenery could grow in the desert was strange in itself.

But Baiye's attention wasn't on the walls. He sensed a vast energy ahead, enveloping all of Rōran City like an invisible barrier. It wasn't just Chakra; there was also a strange power that was constantly changing, with no fixed form. Even with the naked eye, he could see the light bending.

"Stop." Tsume Inuzuka raised a hand.

Kuromaru had already stopped up ahead, his ears standing straight and the fur on his back slightly raised. A low whine came from his throat.

Baiye bent down, picked up a fist-sized stone, and hurled it toward the sky above Rōran City. The stone arced through the air—and then vanished. There was no sound of impact or of it landing, as though it had been swallowed by an invisible door.

"It looks like a special barrier." Baiye lowered his hand, his voice quieter than before. "There's an enormous power inside. It might involve space. If we rush in, there's no telling where we'll be thrown, and we might even be torn apart. We can't get in."

Tsume Inuzuka promptly ordered them to stand by outside, and Yamada summoned a carrier pigeon to send the news back to Konoha. Baiye extended his Reiatsu Detection forward, but it was blocked by the barrier and could penetrate no farther.

Just as expected—he knew that the barrier caused by the dragon vein's power had distorted not space, but time. Minato was already inside, and forcing their way in might ruin things instead. Waiting outside was the most sensible choice for now.

The team set up a temporary camp behind a dune sheltered from the wind. Baiye laid his Tachi across his knees and closed his eyes to rest, keeping his Reiatsu Detection active and narrowing its range toward the direction from which Sand Ninja might appear.

He hadn't forgotten his purpose—he had come for Shukaku. He needed an opportunity to leave the team, whether it came from Sand Ninja or an eruption of Rōran's energy. If no opportunity presented itself by the end, he was also prepared to make one himself.

The temperature plunged after nightfall. Baiye opened his eyes and looked at the ancient city in the distance, now reduced to a silhouette in the twilight, and breathed out a white cloud.

The following evening, Kuromaru was the first to notice something amiss. He raised his head at the edge of a dune, his ears standing straight, and sniffed hard several times.

"People. Three or four? That direction." He tilted his chin northwest, his nostrils still twitching. "What the hell kind of weather is this? It's so dry I can't tell exactly how many there are by scent."

Tsume Inuzuka frowned. "There's too much sand and dust. I can't track their exact position either. But Sand Ninja scouts really have been active in this area recently. Since they've come to us, let's quietly get closer and take a look. Minato and the others are still inside. We can't let the Sand Ninja find out about what's happening in Rōran."

Baiye rose with them, his right hand settling on his sword hilt. The four kept low as they crossed the dune, with Kuromaru leading the way, his ears flat against his head and his paws digging silently through the sand. The desert twilight deepened, and the Sand Ninja's trail was elusive. Kuromaru's sense of smell was severely hampered by the dry weather, so after running a stretch, he had to lower his nose to the ground and search inch by inch. Several times, they followed the trail only to find footprints half buried by windblown sand.

Suddenly, Baiye halted.

The leading edge of his Reiatsu Detection touched something that shouldn't have been there. Beyond the outline of the dune to their left, several distinct souls entered his perception, one of them brighter than all the others combined. They were definitely not an ordinary reconnaissance unit, and they couldn't be patrolmen who had lost their way by chance.

That left only one possibility.

It was a trap.

"Careful—" Baiye gripped his sword hilt.

A ball of incandescent white fire flew out from behind the dune.

"Scatter!" Tsume Inuzuka shouted.

The fireball struck the spot where she had just been standing. The intense heat instantly melted the sand, sending dark red, glasslike fragments flying. Tsume Inuzuka grunted as the fragments struck her right arm and the right side of her body, and the smell of scorching immediately spread through the air. Kuromaru lunged over to shield her, but she shoved him aside.

Five Sand Ninja emerged from behind the dune. Their leader was a woman with short, dark hair and a cold, severe face. Her right hand was loosely cupped around an incandescent white fireball floating in midair. The other four swept around on both flanks, surrounding them.

They were surrounded.