The report and interrogation took Suna's intelligence division two days to fully gather everything, and the village about two hours to leak.
By the end of the week, everyone from the Puppet Brigade to the Genin Corps knew some version of it. Team Ebizo had walked into a five-village scramble in the Land of Rivers and walked out with the prize. The quiet version, the one that stayed with the Kazekage and his advisors, was more specific. The "broker" had been a Kiri operative, the whole auction a Mist trap with a retrieval cell waiting at the river: four chunin and a tokubetsu jonin lead, all five killed by Genin Mai. The assessment officer's note on the file was one line long. They had no information on her fighting style, and the first time anyone fights it appears to be the last.
Mai read that line upside down across the debrief desk and grinned so wide it hurt.
"Don't…" Pakura said.
"I'm having a moment."
"You got lucky."
"I trained every night for half a year in the Demon Desert until my hands stopped working right, and then I trained more." Mai fought the air with punches and kicks. "Luck had some help." She smirked.
The official commendation came down two days later. Initiative. Dedication to mission success. An exemplary understanding of Sunagakure's priorities and expectations. Mai pinned the notice to the wall above her bed and repeated it proudly whenever she had the chance.
Ebizo read the same commendation in silence, rolled it closed, and went to the mission desk, where he requested, by name and by route, the longest, flattest, emptiest assignment on the board.
"Border patrol," he told his team the next morning. "Six days. Standard sweep of the disputed zone."
"Six DAYS?" Mai's face fell like a dropped plate. "Of walking? And looking at rocks?"
"And following orders," Ebizo said pleasantly. "Every single one of them. For six days. Consider it conditioning."
Karura, who had been watching her sensei's face, hid a smile behind her scarf. The village had given Mai a commendation. Her sensei was giving her a leash. Both of them, she suspected, were right.
"You're not punishing me because I helped complete our mission, are you?! That'd be really petty sensei! Super petty! And childish!" Mai argued, narrowing her eyes at Ebizo.
"I don't have a clue in the world about what you're talking about, Mai. After so many exciting missions lately, a nice relaxing one is more than due." Ebizo explained, looking as innocent as could be.
"I think you're tricking me, Sensei… You don't like that the village said I was the perfect Sand ninja and because I didn't follow your orders to complete the mission, this is my punishment!" Mai could be smart sometimes too.
"Shut up and quit whining! Let's just get this snoozefest over with already." Pakura had her arms crossed as she rolled her eyes. She wasn't happy with this mission either but whatever. Seeing Mai getting her comeuppance instead of being praised and complimented was also nice.
"I think it could be fun actually." Karura piped up. "Imagine all the fun bonding we can do and sights we could see. It'll be like survival exercise classes back in the academy but with the chance of enemy ninjas!"
"I know you're just saying stuff to make me happy, Karura." Mai pouted.
"Let's go already, you baby." Pakura was the first to leave the mission assignment room. Her team soon followed behind her.
…
The disputed territory started where the sand turned red.
It was a gradual sight. The pale gold dunes of interior Wind Country darkened over the course of a day's travel, the sand mixing with iron-rich sediment that blew south from the mountains of Earth Country. By the second morning of the patrol, the ground beneath their feet was the color of dried blood, and the rock formations that jutted from the landscape were streaked with veins of rust and black stone.
"Oh dang, this place is depressing." Mai said.
"It gets worse." Ebizo said.
It got worse.
The badlands opened up on the afternoon of the second day. A sprawling expanse of eroded canyons and mesas that stretched north toward the Earth Country border, carved by wind and centuries of seasonal flooding into shapes that looked like something had taken bites out of the landscape. The canyons were deep and narrow, their walls striated in layers of red and orange and grey. The mesas rose like broken teeth against a sky that was too big and too empty.
Nothing grew here. Probably not even Karura's first generation cacti would survive in this soil. The iron content poisoned most plant life, and what little scrub managed to take root was grey and brittle and dead-looking even when it wasn't.
Team Ebizo moved along the ridgeline above the canyon system, staying high for visibility. Ebizo set the pace. He knew that rushing got you killed. Mai scanned ahead through her glasses. Pakura walked with her arms folded. Karura's scarf was pulled up against the iron-tinged dust that coated everything.
"How far does the disputed territory extend?" Karura asked.
"About sixty kilometers, north to south. The official border between the Land of Wind and the Land of Earth runs along the mountain pass to the north. But 'official' doesn't mean much out here. Both villages have been pushing patrols into this zone for decades. The line moves depending on who's feeling confident at the time." Ebizo said.
"So it's our land." Pakura nodded.
"It's land that belongs to whoever is standing on it at any given moment. Right now, that's us."
"So it's our land." Pakura repeated.
Ebizo had a small smile.
They walked in silence for a while. The wind picked up, carrying red dust that stung exposed skin and left a gritty film on everything. Mai kept wiping her glasses with the hem of her shirt, which only smeared the dust around.
"Sensei, have you patrolled this border before?" Karura said.
"Many times. My first mission outside the village was a border patrol along this exact route. I was thirteen."
"Were you a genin?" Mai asked.
"Chunin. I'd passed the exams a few months earlier."
"Thirteen and already chunin…" Pakura said
"It was a different time. The First Shinobi World War had ended not long before I was born, but the tensions never really cooled. Suna and Iwa have been at each other's throats since both villages were founded. The border was hotter then. Patrols clashed every few weeks. Sometimes it was just kunai and harsh words. Sometimes it was worse."
"Did you fight?" Mai asked.
"On that first patrol, no. We saw Iwa markings on the canyon walls and fresh tracks in the sand, but no contact. My sensei, a jonin named Takara, said we were lucky. The patrol before ours had lost a member. A chunin, nineteen years old. Caught a stone spike through the chest during an ambush in one of the lower canyons." Ebizo's eyes moved across the landscape. "She showed me the spot where it happened. There was still blood on the rocks."
The team was quiet.
"What happened to Takara-sensei?" Karura asked.
"She retired years later. Lost her left hand to an explosive tag during a mission. Went back to the village and became an academy teacher." A pause. "She was a good sensei. Strict but fair. She'd have liked you three."
"Even me?" Mai grinned.
"Especially you. She had a soft spot for hardheaded knuckleheads."
"What?! That's not a compliment at all!"
Pakura snickered.
"I don't see why you're laughing! You think she would've liked a stuck-up little prissy punk like you?"
"You're a liability sometimes. Especially on stealth missions."
"Who said anything about stealth? I thought we were here to look tough and scare off Stone ninjas."
"That is not why we're here." Ebizo said.
"It should be."
The banter continued as they walked.
They made camp on the third evening in a shallow cave cut into the side of a mesa. Ebizo built a small fire, just enough to heat water for tea, and they sat around it watching the sun drop behind the western ridgeline.
"Sensei, you said Suna and Iwa have been fighting over this territory since both villages were founded. Why? What's so important about rocks and sand?" Pakura said. She was sitting with her back against the cave wall, her legs extended, her arms crossed.
"Resources," Ebizo said. "The mineral deposits in the badlands are valuable. Iron, copper, rare earths. Both villages need them for weapons production and infrastructure. But more than that, it's about the buffer zone. Whoever controls this territory controls the approach to the other village. If Iwa pushes far enough south, they have a staging ground for an invasion. If we push far enough north, we can threaten their supply lines through the mountain passes."
"So it's never really about the land. It's about what the land lets you do." Karura said.
"Exactly. Wars are fought over resources and geography more than ideology. The First Kazekage understood that. He established the first permanent patrol routes along this border before the village was ten years old."
"Do you think it'll ever stop?" Karura asked. "The fighting. The patrols. Do you think Suna and Iwa will ever just... agree on where the line is?"
Ebizo poured tea into four clay cups and handed them out. Steam rose in thin curls.
"Maybe. When both villages decide that the cost of fighting is higher than the cost of compromise." He sipped his tea. "But that day isn't today. And it might not come in our lifetimes."
"That's terrible…" Karura said.
"It's the cold honest truth."
"Yeah..." Karura would like to change that… She believed she had the potential to do so. As long as she was given enough time…
"I guess it's sad that our people could keep getting killed out here." Mai tried to understand it from a different point of view.
"You're sad about that?" Pakura sounded shocked.
"I have feelings too, idiot!"
"Could've fooled me."
"That doesn't even make sense."
"Your face doesn't make sense!"
"Are you five years old?"
"I'm 11, which is older than you, which we've established!"
"By ONE WEEK! It doesn't count and it never will!"
Karura laughed. The sound bounced off the cave walls and both Mai and Pakura turned to look at her.
"What's so funny?" Pakura demanded.
"You two are so funny. You always fight about the funniest things."
"She started it," Mai said.
"You started it," Pakura said.
"See?" Karura giggled.
Pakura's mouth twitched. She didn't find it funny at all dealing with this brat.
Mai caught it. "Was that a smile? Pakura, did you almost smile? Karura, did you see that?"
"I did."
"I did NOT smile!"
"She smiled! The cactus head smiled! Everybody mark the date! This is historic!"
Pakura grabbed a handful of red sand and threw it at Mai's face. Mai rolled out of the way, laughing, and the sand hit the cave wall behind her. Karura fell onto her back clutching her stomach laughing.
Ebizo drank his tea and watched them. His expression was neutral but his eyes were soft. These were the moments he'd remember long after the missions blurred together. Not the fights. Not the kills. Three kids sitting around a fire in a cave, throwing sand and arguing about nothing, alive and whole and unaware of how rare that was.
The fourth day was the quietest.
They moved northeast along the border, following a ridgeline that overlooked the deepest canyons in the disputed zone. The terrain grew rougher, the mesas taller, the canyons narrower and darker. The red sand gave way to exposed rock, slate grey and sharp-edged, capable of cutting through sandals if one stepped wrong.
Mai scanned constantly. Her head turned in steady arcs as they walked, the glasses sweeping the landscape ahead and to the sides and behind them. Nothing. No chakra signatures. No movement. The badlands were empty.
"It's so boring…" Mai whined as she drooped over.
"Boring is good on a patrol." Ebizo said.
"Boring is boring."
"You want boring on a patrol. That means everything is going as it should."
"Which is boring."
"Mai." Pakura's voice was flat. "Please shut up."
"I'm just saying."
"You're always just saying about something."
Karura walked at the back of the group, her eyes on the landscape. The canyons below were beautiful in a harsh, unwelcoming way. The layers of stone told a story that spanned thousands of years, each stripe a different era, a different climate, a different world that had existed on this spot before anyone thought to draw a border through it.
She noticed things as they walked. A rusted kunai half-buried in the sand near a rock formation. Ebizo saw it too. He paused, looked at it, and kept walking without comment. Further on, they passed a section of canyon wall where someone had carved symbols into the stone. Suna's hourglass on one side. Iwa's twin rocks on the other. Both weathered almost to nothing.
"How old are those?" Karura asked.
Ebizo glanced at them. "Twenty years, maybe thirty. Patrols used to mark their routes. The practice stopped when the markings started telling the enemy exactly where to set ambushes."
"Who carved the Iwa symbol?"
"An Iwa patrol that came this far south."
"And the Suna one?"
"The patrol that caught them."
He kept walking. Karura looked at the carvings a moment longer. Two symbols facing each other across a canyon wall. Two villages staking their claim on the same piece of rock. She doubted the people who carved them were still alive.
On the fifth evening, they sat around another small fire in the shelter of a canyon overhang. The stars above them were bright and beautiful, a river of stars cutting across the sky in a band of white light that looked close enough to touch.
"Sensei, can I ask you something personal?" Karura asked.
"You can ask."
"Why did you become a ninja?"
Ebizo was quiet for a moment. He held his tea cup between both hands and looked at the fire.
"My sister, Chiyo. She was born two years before me. She was talented from the day she could walk. Everyone knew she'd be a great shinobi. Our parents, the village, everyone." He took a sip. "I wasn't as talented. Not as naturally gifted. But I wanted to stand beside her. I wanted to be strong enough that she'd never have to fight alone." He said.
"That's strange. You became a ninja for someone else, not yourself?" Mai said.
"I'm confused as well." Pakura agreed.
"Some might say it's sentimental." Ebizo gave a soft chuckle.
"I think it's sweet." Karura said.
"Why do you ask?" Ebizo said.
"I was thinking about why we all do this. Why we became shinobi. What keeps ninjas going when it gets hard." Karura said.
"For me it's proving that I can become the greatest even without ninjutsu or genjutsu! And I love fighting. I love getting stronger. I love the feeling of winning." Mai said immediately.
"That's barbaric." Pakura said.
"What about you, then?"
"I want to become the Kazekage," she said. "My parents raised me to be a ninja, but it wasn't just because of that. I've always wanted to become Kazekage before I found out about my Scorch Style. Before I understood what it meant that my parents were jonin. Being looked up to and admired by the whole village doesn't sound too bad."
"That was probably the first actually cool thing you ever said." Mai honestly said.
"Don't patronize me."
"I'm not! I'm saying it's cool!"
"It sounded patronizing."
"Well it doesn't matter. Now that I know you wanna become Kazekage, I gotta become Kazekage now." Mai decided.
"Like someone with your condition could become Kazekage." Pakura simply laughed instead of getting offended.
"You wanna go, Cactus Head?!"
"If we weren't on a mission, I'd bury you into the sand." Pakura scoffed.
Karura raised her hand before they could continue.
"For me, it's the people. My family. My friends. The village. Everyone who depends on the shinobi to keep them safe." She looked at the stars. "I want to protect the people I love. And I want to make the village better. Stronger. Kinder. A place where children can grow up without being afraid." Karura shared.
The fire crackled. The canyon walls reflected the light in warm tones that softened the red stone.
"That's so lame." Mai said.
"Mai…"
"What? It is! 'I want to protect people.' That's like the most generic answer ever. Every kid in the academy says that."
"Maybe they say it because it's true."
"Or maybe they say it because it sounds good and the real reason is that they like hitting things."
"Not everyone is you, Mai."
"Their loss. Who wouldn't want to be like me?"
"A cripple?!"
"A talented kunoichi!!!" Mai balled her fist.
Pakura lost her composure and laughed in Mai's face. Mai lunged after her and the two started brawling. Eventually the brawl wore itself out against the cave floor, and Ebizo set down his cup
"All of your reasons are valid. Proving your way of life. Wanting to be accepted. Protection. They're all real and they'll all carry you through different parts of your career. But I'll tell you something my sensei told me on my first border patrol." He looked at each of them in turn. "The reason you start isn't the reason you stay. The reason you stay is the person standing next to you."
The fire burned low. The stars turned overhead. Three genin and their sensei sat together and let the words settle.
On the sixth morning, Mai stopped walking.
They were on the northern edge of the patrol route, the highest point of the ridgeline, where the disputed territory began its slope toward the mountain passes of Earth Country. The wind was stronger here, carrying the smell of stone and cold air from the peaks.
Mai had been scanning ahead in her usual sweeps when her head stopped turning. It locked in one direction. North-northeast.
"Enemies!" she perked up.
The team froze.
"Six people. Moving south along the canyon floor, about four hundred meters out." Her head tilted slightly. "Headbands. I can see the symbol. Twin rocks."
"Iwa…" Ebizo inwardly cursed. He wasn't actually expecting an encounter with enemy nin.
"Six of them. They're armed but relaxed. They haven't seen us." Mai paused. "They're heading right along the border. If they keep this course, they'll pass below this ridge in about ten minutes."
Ebizo moved to the edge of the ridgeline and crouched, looking north. From this height, the canyon below was a dark slash in the red landscape, its floor hidden in shadow. He couldn't see the Iwa patrol. Not yet. But Mai could.
"Positions?"
"Loose. Two scouts ahead, four behind. The scouts are maybe fifty meters in front of the main group. No heavy weapons visible. Standard gear." Mai's glasses caught the morning light. "They don't know we're here."
Ebizo looked at Karura.
Karura met his gaze. She already knew what he was thinking. Six enemy shinobi on their side of the disputed line. Standard rules of engagement for border patrol: if they're on our side, they don't go home.
She reached for the scrolls at her hip.
"Wait," Ebizo said. He studied the ridgeline, the canyon below, the distance, the wind direction. "Karura. You mentioned you had something new to show us."
Karura's hand stopped on the third scroll.
"I was already reaching for it." she said.
"Is it ready?"
"Yes, Sensei."
Ebizo nodded once. "Then show us."