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"What the fuck!"
Takuma's eyes widened incredulously when a paltry bundle of physical and spiritual energy returned to his body. He had sent a clone with Raven and was informed that two reconnaissance trackers had joined them; that was a three-man band chasing a single target. Then why was he getting back so little?
The next moment, the memories assimilated into his mind, and he had his answer.
A chill spread through his body as the feelings of dread clenched his heart. The clone might've thought that his death didn't mean much, but those memories gained a new meaning in his head. He didn't think he would have made the same decisions as the clone. Just the thought of fighting a jōnin was utterly terrifying. Sure, he managed to get a few hits in, and that genjutsu seemed to stick better than expected, but all of that had amounted to what? Some temporary pain, maybe light bruising afterward.
"Fuck…"
"P-Please, no. Have mercy."
"Shut up!"
The man before him screeched in fear when Takuma pushed the tip of his sword against his chest. Takuma glanced at the shattered mask lying a few feet away. They dressed like ROOT, but none of them had the demeanour of a typical agent. He had personally gone through five of them already, and from what he was hearing on radio communications, there were at least fifteen of them roaming around the port, causing chaos.
He glared at the man. Not to mention, they were sloppy. If ROOT agents were one thing, they were not sloppy. That was the only reason he was processing the clone's memories instead of putting them aside until later.
"Oi, answer truthfully if you want to live," Takuma said, pushing the sword through the clothes. The man flinched when he felt the cool steel against his skin. "Are you from ROOT?"
"N-No! I'm not! I don't even know what that is!"
"Then why the fuck are you doing this?"
"We… we got paid to cause some commotion."
"Who paid you?"
"I d-don't know. Got the job through a fixer."
Takuma clicked his tongue. He noted the fixer for a future to-do and glared at the man. These bastards had killed people in the name of causing 'some commotion.' He wanted to push his sword clean through the heart, and the man seemed to sense that as he started to beg for his life again.
He looked around the town. The ROOT jōnin's smoke jutsu refused to lift and had instead spread around near the ground level, causing problems for the people of Fune. The port's work halted; civilians couldn't breathe properly, and the scene triggered widespread panic as people didn't know what was happening. The hired fake agents had only made it worse by actively killing people.
Thankfully, Aquilla and the three members of the reconnaissance team were going around helping people, and Fox's assault squad, along with Tern, had all but taken care of the rest of the fake agents.
"Ratel!"
Tern landed on the rooftop with her gear stained with blood and her hair greyed with soot.
"Are you good?" Takuma asked.
"I'm uninjured. I think these people aren't ROOT." She stared at the impersonator at the mercy of his sword and said, "I don't think he's one either."
Takuma nodded in agreement. "Did any of yours burn?" he asked.
She shook her head. None of the people they had killed burned from Death Seals. It wasn't unprecedented, because the agents he had caught in the Hidden Leaf Village lacked Death Seals to avoid identification as agents, but these people not having them didn't make sense when the courier was turning into ash where the clone had died. He looked in that direction and saw an alarming number of crows circling in the sky before an explosion so large that it was visible from the city, with a plume of bright fire and smoke rising high up in the sky.
"What is that?" Tern said, utterly shocked.
"It's Weasel fighting the jōnin."
"How do you know?"
"I sent a clone after the courier." He turned away from the battle and locked eyes with her. "We have the base location. I'm sending Raven and two of the trackers back to report the location."
"What?! Wait, this is moving too fast—"
"Watch him, will you?" He pointed at the ROOT impersonator, who was probably hired to incite chaos and keep the ANBU busy to give the courier the best chance to escape. It also made sense that they wouldn't have so many agents out here who could potentially leak the base location.
He pulled out the radio, dialled in the relevant frequency, and called out to one of the trackers carrying a long-range transceiver. A response came in soon after.
"Ratel? I heard an explosion! Did Weasel reach him in time? Over," Raven said through the radio. Takuma tried to tune in to the frequency, but the audio clarity didn't improve even as the trio moved towards the city. There was too much chakra in the surroundings because of the ROOT jōnin's jutsu.
Takuma paused for a moment as he tried to decipher what Raven meant until it made sense. Raven had sent up the pillar of fire to inform Itachi of their position. He gazed at the circling crows in the sky and sighed because it was so obvious, and kicked himself for not thinking about that.
"Weasel is fighting the jōnin. Good job. I need all of you to return to report the information at the planned location. Split up and take different routes. Keep yourselves safe, but be fast. Over," Takuma said.
They had already planned for this possibility. If the operation succeeded in extracting the ROOT base location, they were to return to the nearest military base, where they would hand the information to a couple of fast messengers, who would carry it back to the village. The information would also be sent to the village by carrier hawks as a backup. As an additional precaution, it would also be forwarded to two nearby big installations, where a similar process of sending messengers and carrier hawks to the village would be repeated to ensure that the information would get to the village no matter what.
The moment the information reached the village, a battalion of shinobi consisting of ten jōnin, over two hundred chūnin, and a large number of genin would be directly deployed to the location. Takuma had seen the deployment plans, and it wasn't just the numbers; the quality of the troops themselves was high. There was one iryō-nin for every four shinobi, a rate much higher than the standard because of how rare they were. A similarly high rate of fūin-nin was going to be deployed. People from all major clans were going to be part of the battalion.
It was going to be a very strong battalion. That's how big a problem ROOT was considered for the Hidden Leaf Village. After the Steam-Frost War, it was the biggest Leaf shinobi deployment for a single operation, but unlike the war, where the jōnin were spread out, all the jōnin were being deployed together. The last time this many jōnin were deployed together, it was the Third Shinobi World War or the Nine-Tails incident, but that was entirely unexpected and forced.
And that was all, excluding Itachi and others sent to Fune.
Unfortunately, they had lost Kingfisher and his squad.
Takuma closed his eyes for a moment. He hadn't had the time to process that, and he didn't know if he wanted to process it because all that did was dredge up a sludge of feelings he didn't want to feel.
"Understood. We're leaving. Over," Raven said through the radio.
"I wish you the best of luck." Takuma said his final words before putting the radio down, pushing down his feelings to focus on the task at hand.
"What about Weasel?" Tern asked, who now had her foot on the fake agent, who was on the floor on his stomach with his hands spread wide.
"Nothing we can do there. If you want to worry, do it for the ROOT jōnin. That man just might be in the worst fight of his life—maybe even his last," Takuma said just in time for another explosion from around the same location that the two jōnin were fighting.
———
.
"A clone?"
Kinoto blinked as he saw the characteristic smoke of the Shadow Clone Jutsu disappear around Uchiha Itachi's arms.
He had long decided not to engage Itachi at Fune. The only reason he wasn't already long gone was that he wanted to pick up the valuable shipment from the agent acting as the courier. He wouldn't have cared about the ANBU-nin around the dead agent as long as he got the courier. A few chūnin meant nothing to him. But then he saw Takuma, and that was the only reason he chose to engage, knowing that it might risk Itachi catching up with him.
All that, just to know that his target was a clone. At least the Gemini Brothers had fought the real person. All he did was waste his time against a clone.
And it seemed as though Itachi was equally stunned in a different way because he uttered,
"A clone…"
For a moment, they shared a common reaction before their eyes met, when Itachi looked up from where he stood on the rushing surface of the river. Kinoto couldn't help but narrow his eyes when he saw the Uchiha dōjutsu, the fabled Sharingan, and then promptly avoided the scarlet as taught to him by Lord Danzo.
Never look at an Uchiha's Sharingan more than necessary. Even if it put you at a disadvantage, it was going to be a lesser disadvantage than looking into their eyes for an extended period of time.
During the first gathering of the ROOT jōnin after their exodus from the Hidden Leaf Village, one of the things Lord Danzo had spent time on was reiterating engagement tactics against the Sharingan. Even though all of them knew it by heart, he quizzed them like they were trainees.
However, none of them could blame him. During their confrontation, Uchiha Shisui tore through the best talent ROOT had developed—some of them had the potential to possibly ascend to the rank of jōnin—and put them behind nearly a decade in terms of development. Kinoto was there and knew how terrifying Shisui of the Body Flicker truly was in his use of his clan's dōjutsu. And while he wasn't there, Lord Danzo had suffered from his confrontation with the Third Hokage; however, most of his injuries were caused by Uchiha Itachi.
Lord Danzo had said in a voice as grave as he ever had, with pain twisting his face even though he had been mostly healed:
"—He possesses the cursed power of those eyes… The Mangekyō Sharingan—"
The eyes that had made him risk going after Uchiha Shisui and the eyes that Uchiha Madara possessed.
"I hope you won't take offence, but I find myself unusually angry," Itachi's voice made Kinoto clench up, "however, you did just kill my squad…"
Kinoto already knew that he was going to have a difficult time escaping.
.
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