Victory over Choza and the Civil War

"Is this... Earth Release?" Choza asked in surprise. But he couldn't feel any chakra beneath his feet. "Could it just be a simple trap?"

If it was a trap, Choza naturally didn't need to bother with it. To him, it was far too crude to pose any threat. It couldn't restrain him at all.

Choza took the opportunity to assess the team's skill at setting traps. Their technique was nowhere near good enough to be worth worrying about. They would need plenty of training before their traps could be of any use in real combat.

So Choza continued forward, completely at ease. This little trap wasn't even good enough to be a side dish in his eyes.

After a few steps, Choza felt something wrong with his foot. His movement seemed a little restricted. Only then did he realize how serious the situation was. He looked down and saw a thin layer of glue stuck to the sole of his foot. It was almost as strong and fast-acting as 502 glue. By the time he noticed it, one of his feet was already completely immobilized.

That earlier trap had been deliberately made so crude. It had been placed there to show Choza how skilled they were at setting traps—to make him drop his guard! Once again, Choza had fallen for the trio's trick!

But even if you added together all three of their ninja tool pouches, they couldn't possibly carry this much glue. After Choza had enlarged himself, his feet were more than ten square meters across.

Choza suddenly understood. He looked back toward the place where they had fought. Hachiko, who had been lying on the ground, turned into a flock of crows and flew away. That meant only two of the three had remained in Choza's sight the whole time. The other one—Hachiko—had been hidden all along! It wasn't impossible that she had slipped away while concealed to replenish the glue.

"This team is no pushover... They're pretty good at fooling people..." Choza sighed. They had tricked him several times already that day. Their little tricks might not match the Nara Clan's wisdom, but they were impressive in their own right.

"Creak, creak..."

Just then, Choza felt the ground slowly sinking. At some point, ropes had wrapped around his arms and legs. He tried to tear free, only to find that the ropes had bound him in places where it was difficult to exert force. No matter how hard he tried to break free by brute strength, he couldn't do it.

The ground was sinking unevenly: one side was dropping while the other remained unchanged. This was real Earth Release, but the technique was far too crude compared to the trap itself.

The shifting ground made it clear that the trap was meant to throw Choza off balance. The longer this went on, the harder it would be for him to escape. The trap had nearly brought him to defeat at the hands of three Genin.

A trap that could ensnare an elite Jonin wasn't crude at all. On the contrary, its positioning, force, and timing had all been calculated perfectly. It was no exaggeration to call it a flawless trap. Hachiko was the only one who could have had time to set one up on this scale. Yashui and Xun had stayed in Choza's sight, fighting him all along. They couldn't have found the time to make a trap this massive.

The three members of this team weren't just good at fooling people. Yashui had his ninjutsu, Xun her Taijutsu, and Hachiko her traps—each of them had a specialty. Together, they could achieve more than the sum of their parts. Who would have thought their first time working together would be not on a mission, but in a match against their own teacher?

Choza was an elite Jonin, after all. Traps in complicated terrain were clearly his greatest weakness after enlarging himself. How could an elite Jonin like Choza not have tried to find a way to address it? There was, of course, a way to escape a trap: undo the Multi-Size Technique and shrink back to his normal size.

"Poof!" The smoke cleared, and Choza returned to his normal size. To avoid being trapped by the 502 glue again, he had thrown away one of his shoes.