Uchiha Hiro was a true all-rounder. He was proficient in Uchiha Taijutsu, shurikenjutsu, and Fire Style. Armed with ten Attached Insect Limbs and his newly awakened Two-Tomoe Sharingan, he could fight, tank, and provide crowd control.
Tetsumaru's primary advice for him was to prioritize mastering the Sharingan. It was his core competitive advantage. Once he adapted to the increased visual prowess, his focus would shift to advanced Fire Style and Sharingan-based Genjutsu.
Beyond that, Tetsumaru planned for Hiro to develop Wind Style chakra to create Fire-Wind composite jutsus. Hiro had already experienced the devastating power of such combinations during his collaborations with Nara Yoshito and had fully embraced his teacher's roadmap. He understood that if he completed this training, he would possess Jonin-level combat power without having to wait for the Three-Tomoe Sharingan.
Nara Yoshito specialized in Shadow Secret Techniques and supplementary Wind and Earth Styles. He was brilliant—a natural tactician. Compared to Hiro, Tetsumaru viewed Yoshito as the prime candidate for a squad captain once they were promoted to Chunin.
However, Yoshito faced a significant hurdle in reaching the Jonin rank. His early training as part of an Ino-Shika-Cho team had skewed his foundations too heavily toward support. His individual combat capabilities had several glaring holes—a fatal flaw when seeking a Jonin promotion.
In truth, the Nara clan usually followed this trajectory: they focused on support and command in their youth, only beginning to patch their offensive and defensive weaknesses after age twenty-five. They typically reached Jonin in their thirties. But since Yoshito had lost his two childhood partners, he no longer had the luxury of that protection. He had to grow fast, or he wouldn't live to see thirty.
To solve this, Yoshito needed to bolster his independent combat strength through Taijutsu or Ninjutsu.
Taijutsu was out of the question; the Nara were thinkers, not brawlers, and "pineapple-heads" were notoriously unsuited for physical combat—an area Tetsumaru himself didn't specialize in. That left Ninjutsu. He needed to refine his Wind and Earth Styles to complement his shadows. Yet, this led back to the perennial Nara problem: a chronic lack of chakra.
Should I teach him Ninjutsu Meridian Mastery? Tetsumaru wondered.
He hesitated. On one hand, the technique was too powerful; he hadn't even shared it with his own clan, having only discussed the theory with Orochimaru. On the other hand, Orochimaru still hadn't figured out a standardized way to train it. Tetsumaru remained the only successful case. For now, it was a high-risk Forbidden Jutsu.
I'll wait until Orochimaru verifies the safety of the Meridians before I consider it.
Inuzuka O was a brawler. He excelled at Man-Beast Clones and Wind Style, utilizing claw-type Attached Insect Limbs. He was reckless and impulsive, with combat power already rivaling a Chunin, though he was utterly unsuited for leadership.
O's path was the most straightforward: refine his clan's secret techniques while learning Wind Style to boost his speed and attack power. Once he mastered Wind, he would move on to Lightning Style to stimulate his nervous system.
If he could eventually master Lightning Style to enhance his defense, he might even pave a path to the Kage level. However, the difficulty was astronomical. In the entire history of the Shinobi world, only the Third Raikage had truly perfected the Lightning Style Chakra Mode.
While Tetsumaru's Shadow Clones stayed behind to train his disciples and clear the battlefield, the man himself had quietly slipped into the Land of Wind. He was heading for the desert ruins where the Giant Ants were hidden.
Knowing that Orochimaru had arrived at the border with thousands of Konoha elites, Tetsumaru could no longer suppress his curiosity. He left a hundred Shadow Clones to maintain appearances and "slacked off." The opportunity was too rare to pass up.
The ruins were in Suna territory. Once the war ended and the Sand weren't pinned to their own front door, entering the Great Desert would be a nightmare of tunneling and stealth. He had to seize this window of time.
Since it was daytime, Tetsumaru moved through the tunnels dug by his Burrowing Worms, receiving data from the Broodmothers as he traveled. Because the worms followed underground water veins, his route naturally took him past various Suna settlements. He had to duck into the deep tunnels frequently to avoid detection.
He wasn't afraid of the Sand ninjas—infiltrating an enemy nation during a war was par for the course. However, he was terrified of Konoha finding out. If the village leadership looked too closely, he could be charged with desertion. Given his friction with the Aburame clan elders and Danzo, the consequences would be dire.
But he didn't dare take a shortcut through the open dunes. Without landmarks, the desert was a labyrinth. If he left the water veins, he'd have to rely on Triangulation from his Broodmothers, a calculation-heavy process that took longer than just tunneling through the mud.
He adopted a "nocturnal" schedule, sprinting past settlements under the cover of night. As for Suna's outposts and intelligence hubs? Most had been abandoned in the panic of the retreat.
During the day, a bored Tetsumaru would use the communication network to link with his clones in the Land of Rivers. He cross-referenced Orochimaru's reports with the data from his seven remaining Broodmothers to reconstruct the ongoing battle.
The Kazekage's failed ambush had left his army without effective high-level command for several hours.
By noon, Orochimaru—acting on Tetsumaru's intel—intercepted the retreating Kazekage. A fierce battle erupted. Orochimaru led 1,600 Konoha shinobi against 1,200 Suna elites in a traditional, large-scale engagement.
The Suna ninjas, who had been tormented by Tetsumaru's "mushroom warfare" for days, finally found a familiar rhythm. They fought with a desperate ferocity, holding the Konoha forces at bay, but their lack of centralized command made them sluggish.
Orochimaru didn't hesitate. He commanded the Leaf ninjas to feint a weakness, luring the Sand into a reckless advance. Once they were overextended, Orochimaru personally led a squad of elites and his giant pythons to sever the protrusion. They surrounded and annihilated over two hundred Suna ninjas in one stroke.
Suna's numbers plummeted. They were now at less than two-thirds of Konoha's strength, and a massive gap had opened in their line—a gap Orochimaru was currently exploiting. The situation was critical.
As Orochimaru summoned three more giant pythons to widen the breach, the Kazekage finally arrived from the east.
The Kage's strength was still superior to Orochimaru's. He drove the Sannin back, even killing one of the giant snakes. With the Kage's return, the Suna Jonin regained control, and the field stabilized.
However, fighting Tetsumaru had changed the Kazekage. He no longer believed in "sufficient" amounts of iron; he now believed he could never have enough. As the battle progressed, Iron Sand blanketed the sky and earth. The Leaf ninjas found it increasingly difficult to move. Despite having more men, Konoha began to lose ground.
Sensing the shift, Orochimaru decisively sacrificed his remaining two pythons to cover a tactical retreat. The Sand, already battered, didn't dare pursue.
The nine hundred surviving Suna ninjas cheered. They had finally secured a "victory."
But the celebration was short-lived. They hadn't even covered twenty kilometers before Orochimaru was back. The Leaf ninjas struck again, only to retreat the moment the Kazekage gathered his sand.
It didn't take long for the Sand to realize what was happening. This "can't hit them, can't shake them" feeling was maddeningly familiar.
"Lord Kazekage, there's something wrong," a staff officer whispered. "Orochimaru is trying to stall us. Is there another Konoha army pursuing us?"
The Kazekage's blood ran cold. He immediately ordered a forced march, personally taking the vanguard to clear the path.
Predictably, Orochimaru struck again—but this time, he hit the rear. Because the Kazekage had concentrated his elites at the front to break through potential blockades, the rear was vulnerable. Orochimaru shredded the tail of the Suna column and vanished before the enraged Kazekage could fly back.
The Kazekage was livid. Orochimaru didn't used to fight like this!
Indeed, he didn't. But Orochimaru had read Tetsumaru's combat logs. He had analyzed the "annoyance factor" of the kiting tactics and found them highly effective.
Orochimaru was enjoying himself. The Kazekage, however, was having flashbacks to the last three days of misery. He roared and pursued Orochimaru for ten miles, slaughtering several more of the Sannin's giant snakes in a vent of pure fury.
"An opening," Orochimaru muttered, unfazed by the loss of his summons. He had spotted a new tactical opportunity.
Three hours later, Orochimaru struck again.
The Kazekage had lost his patience. He unfurled his Iron Sand Wings and chased Orochimaru, determined to teach the snake a lesson. He didn't expect to kill him—he knew all too well how hard it was to kill Orochimaru.
The "Orochimaru-Style Shedding" technique, which combined cloning, healing, and substitution, was a nightmare the Kazekage had experienced before. Back on the southern front, he and Chiyo had led eight elite Jonin to ambush Orochimaru on Suna home turf, and they still couldn't pin him down.
But while the Kage had no hope of a kill, the Snake had every intention of a bite.
Orochimaru had spent those three hours setting a lethal trap. When the furious Kazekage chased him into the designated zone, the ground beneath them suddenly solidified via Earth Style. Simultaneously, over two hundred Leaf ninjas unleashed a massive, coordinated Fire Style barrage.
Initially, the Kazekage was unimpressed. Iron doesn't fear fire. He calmly began to construct his defenses while preparing to counter.
But Orochimaru wouldn't use an "ineffective" jutsu.
Under the continuous, focused heat of two hundred Fire Style users, the Iron Sand began to glow a dull, angry red. To his horror, the Kazekage realized he was losing control. The red-hot iron was losing its magnetism.
Without his sand, the Kazekage was forced into a desperate defense. As the Leaf's firepower intensified, more and more of his iron hit the Curie point and fell uselessly to the ground. It was a vicious cycle.
By the time the Kazekage scrambled back to the main Suna body, his wings were gone, and he was nearly disfigured by the heat.
The two armies continued their stop-and-go struggle. The Kazekage's raw power eventually allowed them to keep moving, and by nightfall, they were within 200 kilometers of Sunagakure.
But that was where the road ended. Four thousand Konoha reinforcements had arrived from the Land of Rivers to rendezvous with Orochimaru. Six thousand Leaf ninjas now faced eight hundred Suna survivors. They were completely surrounded.
Still, the Kazekage refused to break. He summoned a literal sea of Iron Sand, covering a four-square-kilometer area in a layer half a foot thick. Threads of magnetic chakra wove between the ground and the iron clouds above.
The Kazekage had placed a "Magnetic Mark" on every Suna ninja. Anyone without the mark who stepped into the field would be ensnared by the sand and dragged beneath the surface to be crushed.
The Leaf tried to push. They lost thirty men before realizing they couldn't fight in that environment. They tried the "dumb" method of manually removing the iron sand, but they couldn't clear it faster than the Kazekage could gather more. After a night of stalemate, neither side had secured a decisive win.
At ten the next morning, the White Fang arrived.
Sakumo Hatake was simply too fast. As he flickered through the iron field, the sand couldn't track his movements. He didn't waste time on the Jonin; he turned his blade toward the Suna Chunin, the backbone of the army. He bypassed the elites and carved through the rank and file.
With their numbers dwindling, the Sand were forced to turtle up even further. The Leaf used the opening to clear the Iron Sand. Suna was on the verge of total collapse.
At 11:20 AM, the tides shifted again. Chiyo arrived, leading the Southern Army, the Bear Cedar City garrison, and the village's emergency reserves. Ebizo, Fusheng, and Wosha—the famous masters of the Sand—were all in the vanguard.
Ten thousand Suna ninjas had arrived.
Orochimaru and Sakumo realized they couldn't finish the 400 surrounded ninjas before the massive relief force hit them. To avoid being caught in a pincer or being blown apart from the inside by the Kazekage, they opened the encirclement and allowed the survivors to regroup with Chiyo.
The battle shifted into a series of squad-level skirmishes—the traditional prelude to a massive army-scale collision.
Surprisingly, the Leaf held the upper hand. Despite being outnumbered, the Konoha ninjas were battle-hardened veterans. Even the fresh Genin from the previous year now had nine months of high-intensity combat experience.
In contrast, Suna was bleeding out. After three months of heavy losses, a significant portion of their "Chunin" were fresh, emergency promotions. They lacked the combat experience and raw power of their counterparts.
The stage was set for the final act.