Defeated Remnants

The humiliation and negotiations beneath Kikyō Mountain City could be set aside for now. For Shaye and the squad he led, there was only one path ahead—get their severely wounded comrades out of this land of despair as quickly as possible and return to the Land of Rivers encampment, which still held a faint sense of familiarity.

The process was far more difficult and stifling than they had imagined. They had been stripped of all their weapons. Shaye's battered yet still precious "Mirage," along with the puppets that the other puppet masters regarded as their lives, whether intact or damaged, were collected without expression by the Konoha ninja and placed under centralized guard. At this moment, they had truly become defeated soldiers with bare hands, left with only a few medical kits and rations.

A Konoha squad of roughly twenty people, led by a grim-faced Special Jonin, "escorted"—or rather, monitored—them the entire way. Though these Konoha ninja honored the agreement and did not humiliate or attack them, their wary, distant gazes and undisguised air of victors still pierced the hearts of every Sunagakure ninja like needles.

As the temporary appointed leader, Shaye bore the greatest pressure. Not only did he have to arrange for people to carry the most seriously wounded comrades on makeshift stretchers, but he also had to constantly watch over the squad's condition and soothe members on the verge of mental collapse from defeat and the loss of their puppets. He himself was already exhausted. The successive battles and command duties had drained an enormous amount of his strength, and only the faint current of energy continuously flowing from the Pocket Body Refining Furnace on his wrist, like a tiny stream, barely kept his body from collapsing.

The journey became exceptionally long. The route through which their