A few hours before the beginning of Panashe's mission…

“Gōketsu,” Nara said slowly. “These are designs for some manner of static fortification. A static fortification, furthermore, of a style practiced by neither Leaf nor Mist, for very good reasons in each case.”

“Yes,” Hazō agreed with more confidence than he felt. “That is exactly what they are.” The fort was a masterpiece if he said so himself, and the designs had—in their seventh iteration—received Keiko’s stamp of approval. But none of that meant a thing if he couldn’t convince the other teams to take up residence within its triangular walls instead of going out to hunt their enemies as they would ordinarily do.

Nara considered the designs some more.

“You have a seal you can mass-produce that fits the proctors’ requirements,” he concluded, “and you want a secure location in which to engage in said mass production.”

He paused.

“No. Your sister signed off on this plan, and she would know better than to build herself a tomb as a means of protection. You have some secondary purpose in mind that justifies the construction of this monument to inefficient resource allocation.”

Hazō nodded, choosing to ignore Nara’s choice of words. “It’s a challenge. It seems likely that somebody out there is going to hold a grudge against Leaf generally and the Gōketsu specifically, and they’re going to come for us sooner or later. They might even try to kill us and make it look like an accident. This way, instead of letting them prepare an ambush against us wherever, we’ve putting up a nice big sign saying ‘We’re staying here and you’re free to attack our poorly-thought-out defences whenever is most convenient for you’.

“The catch is that my team has Kagome certificates in trap arrays, battleground preparation, and the general art of securing a perimeter until the Sage of Six Paths himself would rather take the long way round. We once held off an elite assault force several times our number with nothing but traps and explosives. Unless the genin trying to kill us are experienced at dealing with defensive emplacements—which I doubt because, as you say, nobody uses them in the field anymore—they’re not going to know what hit them.”

“For a trap,” Nara said, “it has one distinct weakness. Notably, this royal road leading straight to the entrance.”

“That’s for trading, which is the fort’s other purpose. Some of the seals I make are going to be traded to other teams in exchange for their Night Lights. My version doesn’t drain your chakra or have a defined time limit, so it’s strictly superior.”

Nara went still for a few seconds.

“It all finally falls into place,” he said as he relaxed. “You will flood the market, so to speak, with seals of your own design until the proctors are unable to reject them, should they so desire, without upsetting the grading for the entire event. In that case,” he swept his finger in a circle a few centimetres outside the edge of the drawing, “you will only want to clear the area up to here. Some cover needs to be preserved to facilitate the Ring of Death.”

“Ring of Death?” Hazō repeated uncertainly.

“That is what we called an analogous effect in the Forest of Death in Leaf,” Nara said as if it explained everything.

Sometimes it could be very annoying dealing with the Nara Clan.

“What analogous effect?” Hazō asked.

Nara looked at him as if re-evaluating him. Hazō reminded himself to stay patient with his possible future brother-in-law whose approval was an absolute precondition to the fort plan's acceptance.

“Teams with fewer seals for potential trading," Nara said, "will be waiting outside the fort’s area of influence in order to ambush those returning from successful trades. With the only path of retreat being obstructed by your field of traps, such ambushes will have a particularly high rate of success. Conversely, the fact that the defending ninja are cornered will cause them to fight more desperately, increasing the level of injury on both sides.

“As the event proceeds, the amount of trade will increase, both due to word of mouth and due to chakra depletion from combat and the resulting motivation to obtain your superior seals. At the same time, the total number of teams will decrease, as some are robbed and incapacitated and others choose to leave the event early in order to avoid same. With the fort now the most reliable source of new seals, the area around it will increasingly fill with ambushers, who will prefer to fight single teams on their own prepared ground rather than assault the fort and fight multiple teams on somebody else’s. Thus, the fort will be surrounded by a ring of death that steadily eliminates team after team with no violent action required on our part.”

“Yes,” Hazō agreed. “That is exactly what I was planning.” He made a note not to mention the spirit of cooperation or ending cycles of hatred around Nara for a while.

“Of course,” Nara said mildly, “this is all a purely intellectual exercise, since I doubt the other Leaf teams will consent to sacrifice any semblance of mobility or stealth in favour of remaining within this deathtrap for the entire event. Out of curiosity, however… how many seals would you be able to make?”

-o-

​ Last day of the event, morning...​

“I still think this is a preposterous idea,” Hyūga Neji hissed. “I find it utterly plausible that the Mist Academy would fail to teach you basic military doctrine, but the rest of our so-called comrades have no excuse.”

Noburi smiled as he watched a water clone weave through one of the twelve intertwined and ridiculously complicated safe routes Shikamaru had plotted through the trap array.

“If you were any saltier, Hyūga, we’d send you to kiss the enemy kunoichi to make them die of instant dehydration.”

He waited for Hyūga to open his mouth.

“Actually, no, stupid thought,” Noburi interrupted the interruption. “That would require the existence of girls willing to kiss you.

“The fact is: Hazō's fort idea has worked. We've got a regular stream of trades going on, nobody's tried to take on our badass defences, and Hazō's cranking out Party Trick seals like he's been told to create a festive atmosphere for Jiraiya and the Mizukage's wedding celebration."

"And I suppose you think the proctors will look at this insanity and decide that a pack of foreign genin who don't even understand the fundamentals of shinobi warfare are worthy of chūnin promotion purely because they've found a single rules exploit? I can see where the concept might be alien to the likes of you, Wakahisa, but a ninja does need to have some skills other than cheating. If anyone had actually listened to me..."

Noburi rolled his eyes. "Just suck it up and admit that you lost fair and square. Shikamaru got on board once we accepted all his revisions, and that won us Yamanaka and Akimichi straight away, which was already half the group. Then Akane persuaded Lee that trying out new strategies was most youthful, and Tenten joined us for reasons she obviously didn’t explain, and that was a three-quarters majority. The people have spoken, and—“

“Wakahisa, I was there. Some of us have sufficient brainpower to remember an event that took place the previous day without needing to rehearse it as though it were oral tradition.”

“That’s good to hear. I’m sure you and your fanboys already have enough of an oral tradition—hold that thought, we’ve got another trade.”

He turned away from a fuming Hyūga, and towards the water clone, which had navigated Route Seven with a clone’s single-minded precision and now stood still with a handful of seals for trade in its right hand.

Noburi reached out, collected the bunch, and began to flick through them with a practised motion.

“Active Night Light, active Night Light, expired Night Light, expired Night Light, expired Night Light…”

Noburi’s hand stopped as if of its own accord. He was so familiar with Night Lights by now that he could probably draw one in his sleep (if he wanted to be lynched by a pair of furious sealmasters in the morning). But the next seal he saw was more familiar still.

It was an explosive tag.

He was holding an explosive tag.

He was holding an armed explosive tag.

He was holding an unknown number of armed explosive tags.

Behind him, Hyūga’s scream of warning came too late.

-o-​

“Explosive!”

Hazō wasn’t Kagome-sensei’s apprentice for nothing. By the time his brain had processed anything beyond the “ex”, he was already diving for cover behind the thick log that served as his sealcrafting seat.

…

…

The expected blast didn’t come. Slowly, carefully, Hazō lifted himself to peek over the top of the log.

“False alarm?” he called out tentatively as the rest of the Leaf contingent began to emerge from behind the various logs, stumps and general wooden debris that they’d carried in for this exact eventuality. All except Noburi, standing upright by the entrance with his arm extended as if giving a fist-bump to the empty air.

“False alarm nothing,” Noburi said, an expression of utter exhilaration slowly fading from his face. He opened his hand, and a sodden clump of paper fell to the ground.

Nara reacted instantly. “Neji!”

“Byakugan!”

After a few seconds, Hyūga shook his head. “Nothing. The perimeter is still clear. Whoever that was, they’re not pressing the attack.”

“What happened?” Yamanaka demanded, brushing twigs out of her hair with an offended scowl.

“Somebody mixed a bunch of explosive tags into their trade goods,” Noburi said. “I didn’t exactly have a lot of options when the things could have gone off any second, so I took the lot and rammed them right into my water clone's chest. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from two years of pranking Hazō, it’s that seals and water do not get on.”

He gave a roguish grin.

Hazō suddenly had a revelation regarding a number of mysterious incidents involving his sealing work, but since Noburi had quite possibly just saved all of their lives, he decided to let it go for now.

Hyūga, who must have been standing next to Noburi in order to notice the trap himself, was giving Noburi a disbelieving look.

“That was practically… inspired. Who are you and what have you done with the lackadaisical imbecile we have come to know and restrain ourselves from murdering out of political considerations?”

“Aww, Hyūga,” Noburi’s grin widened, “are you finally ready to stop flirting and confess your true feelings?”

Keiko cleared her throat pointedly. “If I may interrupt your ever-scintillating repartee…”

“What is it, Keiko?”

“We are not out of the woods yet,” she said grimly. “Consider why our unknown assailant would launch such a vicious offensive, yet not follow through.”

“Perhaps they suddenly awakened to the extreme unyouthfulness of their strategy and changed their minds?” Lee asked.

Keiko didn’t dignify this with a response, much like anything else Rock Lee had said since the previous night.

“The event ends in three hours,” Shikamaru explained. “Our enemies know that before long, we will have to leave the fort in order to head for the rendezvous point. This attack was intended either to kill us or to weaken us before a coming confrontation, taking advantage of the effectiveness of explosives within a confined space. If we assume that there will be a coming confrontation, then it is still waiting for us, somewhere beyond our prepared ground.

"Gōketsu's original plan envisioned using traps and fortifications to fend off whichever teams were bold enough to attack us, leaving the rest with a clear message on the inadvisability of doing so. This has not happened, perhaps due to an excessive intimidation factor, though more ominous explanations are possible. As such, the Ring of Death around us may now be filled with surviving teams waiting to relieve us of the seals we have been crafting over the course of the event. Now, it is likely that we will break through the Ring of Death, leaving all our defences behind and potentially taking injuries or expending chakra in the process, only to be set upon as we emerge."

“But why did they attack now?” Sakura asked. “The logical thing to do would be to leave it as late as possible, so we’d have minimal time to treat our injuries before we had to go.”

Hazō thought about it. Sakura was right, of course. There was no point injuring somebody if you were just going to give them time to recover afterwards. By the same token, now that they were aware of the enemy’s plans, they had time to plan countermeasures, which they wouldn’t have had if the attack had taken place at the last minute. The only circumstance under which it was acceptable to give the enemy time to prepare was…

“They think that if they have three hours, they can set up an ambush so good that our extra recovery time won’t make a difference.”

“We have found ourselves quite the troublesome opponent,” Nara said grimly. “The earlier we leave the fort, the less time Gōketsu has to make seals, and the more densely-populated the Ring of Death we must cross. But the later we leave, the more preparation time we allow our would-be assassins, and the greater the risk of being delayed enough to miss the event deadline.

“Let us begin planning. Every minute counts.”