Chapter 20
Yahiko didn't know what to even think about this trio. To put it mildly, they were quite pathetic. It was pitiful to even look at them. And they were supposed to be dangerous Ame shinobi that came looking for them.
Born killers. Soldiers who showed no remorse after taking the lives of others. Innocent or otherwise. Yahiko just couldn't see it in them. To him, they were just people who got beaten up by a bunch of kids, and now they were reevaluating their life choices.
The swordsman named Daiki looked resigned. The girl named Maeki looked the most pitiful; she was the youngest of the trio, and it was obvious. The captain, Tatsumaki, looked at Yahiko angrily with venom in her eyes, and yet to Yahiko, it looked like she was throwing a tantrum.
"Should we just kill them?"
Nagato knew that Yahiko wouldn't do that, but these three didn't. While both the leader and the swordsman kept their cool, the other girl instantly paled at such a suggestion. It looked like she was about to cry.
Yahiko didn't know what to do with this trio. There was no way he was going to kill them, but letting them go wouldn't be wise either. From the way Nagato was looking at him, Yahiko knew what he wanted to say.
It would be a lot easier if he could just kill them, but no matter how much reason there was for that, he just couldn't. It wasn't in his nature to even consider that. At the end of the day, they were still human beings. Pitiful human beings at that.
For now, they were bound by Konan's paper and Nagato's earth prison. Only their heads were visible. And they looked so damned pitiful. Even this woman, who seemed to like spitting venom out of her mouth, looked like a defenseless little girl before his eyes.
"Why were you looking for us?" The first thing he could think of doing was questioning them.
"Don't be so arrogant, boy," the leader of the team replied. "We aren't the only ones in danger. That arm of yours looks quite painful. If you won't free us, you will never be able to escape the venom running through your blood. You will die in pain, screaming for mercy very soon."
Nagato once again looked at Yahiko with eyes that said that he told him. Well, to him, it might look like they were vile people who didn't deserve any pity, but to Yahiko, those words were nothing but childish. Tatsumaki didn't even realize that she had just confessed that he had the antidote, even if Yahiko didn't need it.
Yahiko lifted his arm, which was now kind of purplish. It was irritating, but he wouldn't say it was painful or anything. He just ignored it for now, as it wasn't really a problem. But now that she mentioned it, he got quite a good idea.
"Oh," Yahiko tried to make as evil a smile as he could muster as he looked at the woman. "You think this is poison? Are you all just genin?"
"Chunin," the swordsman reluctantly replied. "We are chunin."
"Chunin? Then, probably near the bottom of them, if this is all your skill and knowledge amount to," Yahiko said. "Look carefully at how useless your venom is."
Yahiko sat down before them and showed off his arm as he took the lotus position. Meditating made him defenseless, but that wasn't a problem right now. He concentrated and let most of his chakra flow into his arm, which was infected with the venom.
As his chakra traveled through the chakra points, it quickly detected the foreign substance, and with little effort, his chakra pushed the venom out through his skin pores. As the black and purple substance shed from him, his arm returned to its normal color, as if nothing had happened to it to begin with.
It only took a couple of minutes, but that was enough to show the difference between him and the Ame shinobi. And Yahiko was the worst among them at chakra control. Yet with what he had and the little medical ninjutsu he knew, he was able to easily neutralize the venom.
"How?" Yahiko only smiled at his captives' expressions.
"This is the difference between bottom feeders like you and geniuses like us," Yahiko said arrogantly. "So now it's your turn. What do you have to show off?"
Of course, they couldn't do anything, as they were completely bound by Konan's papers. And even if they could free themselves, Nagato had a tight hold on them with his earth prison. They were defenseless against them.
"Nothing?" Yahiko continued to taunt them. "Then explain yourselves. Why were you looking for us? I suggest you do it before I get impatient."
Yahiko motioned for Nagato to tighten the earth around them, though he felt quite uncomfortable when he saw their pained expressions. He really didn't like using tactics like these, but he had to know if Ame was looking for them specifically or if it was something else.
"It was the captain's idea! We were on a mission to track down rogue shinobi before the captain found traces of you and wanted to go after you."
"Maeki, shut up," the captain tried to control her subordinate, but it was of no avail.
"You shut up! I don't want to die because of you, stupid witch."
Yahiko motioned Nagato to stop, as he was also at his limit looking at their painful expressions. Maeki was just a teenage girl; it was extremely disturbing to watch her squirm in pain. And she was already crying with a scared-to-death expression. There was no way Yahiko could continue to torture her.
"I see, so no one even knows you're here."
Yahiko's statement seemed to scare Maeki even more, as her pale face turned completely white. This hit them quite deeply, it seemed. It looked like they just realized that. They are idiots, and weak idiots at that. A pathetic sight to behold.
"Let's do this then," Yahiko continued. "You will answer all our questions, and we will let you go. How about it?"
"Will you now?" Daiki didn't seem to believe Yahiko's words.
"Don't worry, I'm not scared of you going after us again," Yahiko replied. "You're quite pathetic, you see. So weak that usually you wouldn't even notice my eyes. Cockroaches that I can stomp on any time. And there are ways to make sure you'll keep your mouths shut. I'm allowing you to live, but it's up to you to take it."
"I'll say anything, just don't kill me."
Yahiko smiled as Maeki was the first to break. He wasn't going to kill them anyway, but to them it would be far more suspicious if he left them alive without a good reason. And he did want to know what was going on in the shinobi world.
In the end, the other two also gave up on resisting and answered Yahiko's questions. It wasn't anything complicated. Yahiko only wanted to know if there were any dangerous shinobi around, how the atmosphere was in other villages, and so on.
Yahiko knew that the Third Shinobi War was coming, but he had no idea when. It could be in a couple of years, or it could be in ten. So, he wanted to know if there were any signs of it, even this early after the Second Shinobi War.
"Konan," Yahiko turned to her with eyes that pleaded to think of something for them after they finished questioning.
She sighed but understood what she had to do. After thinking for a second, she took a few blank papers from her pouch and drew something on them. Then she fed those papers to their captives.
"As those seals dissolve, they'll settle in your stomachs. If anyone comes after us, even at death's door, I'll activate them, and they'll burst your stomachs wide open. You won't be able to break them until I die. Nobody will even be able to notice them, even if your stomachs are open. There's no saving you from death the moment I activate it, so make sure neither you nor anyone else tries to find us."
Well, if any of that was true, it would certainly be a scary technique. Yahiko was quite surprised that Konan was able to come up with it so quickly. And from the expressions of this trio, Yahiko could tell they believed every word of it.
Well, they had been effortlessly beaten by them, and they saw Yahiko dissolve venom that would be deadly to others. So, their words were quite believable, especially when they didn't have any reason to let this trio go without assurance.
…
"You sure it's fine to leave them be?" Nagato asked after they left the pitiful trio.
"Yeah, by the time they get free, we'll be long gone, and I don't think they're shinobi who would die for their village. Even if they reported us, nobody would take three useless shinobi seriously."
They were weak, so even if Yahiko defeated them, it didn't mean he was strong. That's how he believed Amegakure would categorize them. At most, their profiles would be submitted to the higher-ups of their village, but they wouldn't try to hunt them down unless they caused trouble.
"Should we return to the others?" Konan asked.
Yahiko shook his head. As much as he would've liked to return to the caravan, and as much as he didn't think there would be a problem, he didn't want to involve those innocent people with him. The longer they stayed with them, the more danger they were in.
"Can you send a letter to them saying we're fine and that we've gone our own way?" Yahiko asked Konan, as he also didn't want them to worry.
When Konan nodded, they once again became homeless. But at this point, they didn't mind. Neither Nagato nor Konan seemed disturbed by it, and Yahiko thought that as long as he had them with him, home could be anywhere. Even under these grey clouds.
After running for a while to get some distance, they found a place under a few trees to rest for the night. Nagato quickly made a shelter from earth, and they all lay down. It was already past midnight.
"What next?" Neither of them could sleep, and Nagato just had to ask the most loaded question.
Yahiko honestly didn't know what was next for them. From what they found out from these Ame shinobi, none of the villages or countries were ready to start a war anytime soon. But all of them were in a race.
A race to gather resources and prepare. No hostility had been nullified. The villages had just come to a ceasefire agreement, as no one was winning and everyone had lost too much. None of them had enough manpower or resources to continue the war.
So even if one wouldn't call this time peacetime, it was still a time for rebuilding. The countries were filled with rogue shinobi, criminals, and corruption. Amegakure seemed to be working hard to clean up its homeland. Hanzo seemed to have quite a lot of ambition and wanted to be prepared for the next war.
And Yahiko didn't think their presence would be very welcome in this country that was mostly ruled by ambitious warmongers. In the end, even if they were quite strong compared to chunin and other normal shinobi, they were still kids and had limits.
Someone like Hanzo wouldn't struggle much to get rid of them. After all the training they had gone through, they couldn't handle Jiraiya even once when he got even a bit serious. And Hanzo was someone who had defeated all of the Sannin on his own. How could Yahiko compete with someone like that?
"You know, I'm quite tired of shinobi," Yahiko said. "And I think that maybe it isn't the best idea to roam this country any further."
"What are you thinking?" Konan asked.
"I'm quite curious about samurai," Yahiko confessed. "Let's go see them."
"The Land of Iron?" Nagato was more than happy to share the knowledge he'd learned from his books. "It's quite far, and we'd need to cross the Land of Fire to reach it."
"As long as we do it quietly without causing too much trouble, I'm sure we'll reach it before anyone even realizes we were there."
"It's in the north, right?" Konan asked. "I bet there'll be snow there."
"And it's by the sea," Nagato added.
"Then it's decided," Yahiko said. "We'll leave first thing in the morning."
Hopefully, their journey wouldn't be troublesome. The last thing Yahiko wanted was to cause trouble for Jiraiya. And he didn't want to draw attention from a certain person in Konoha either. But it should be fine, they wouldn't even go close to Konoha, pass through the Land of Fire.
It seemed that both Nagato and Konan liked the idea too, as they fell asleep with smiles on their faces. They weren't that attached to this country to begin with, and it wasn't like Hanzo would very welcome them if he found out about them.
So, while it was still a peaceful time, it was time to explore the world. To see how other countries were faring and what their feelings about war were.
Their first stop would be the only country that didn't need shinobi. Yahiko was curious about the samurai's life. And all they needed to do was to leave this country and go through the Land of Fire.
A.N. As always. Thanks for reading and supporting me. If you want 7 more chapters of this story and 42 chapters in total with all my current stories, please consider supporting me on pa treon ironworlf852. Thanks in advance.