It was by sheer luck that the Grass kunoichi missed being impaled by shuriken. Or perhaps it was a stroke of bad luck that she did not allow herself to be sent into oblivion the quick and easy way. Surely, she was no match for her seasoned and determined opponent.
Not the least of which, there was the fact that Haruka caught the Grass female with her pants down… literally. The foreign genin tried desperately to dodge her attacker while her pants and panties were bunched up around her ankles. Meanwhile, Haruka seemed to have lost every bit of her friendliness. Despite her distinctly feminine features and sizable assets, the blonde carried a slim profile. As such, she operated like the lean, mean killing machine that she truly was.
"Haruka?! What are you doing?" To the Grass girl's credit, the shock of Haruka's betrayal did not render her completely inert.
"My friends—"
"They're dead," the blonde uttered the words with such conviction that the Grass genin could not help but accept them as truth. It made sense that the Konoha backstabber came for her only after having neutralized the others. The sudden, demoralizing thought gave Haruka the opening she needed. The Grass genin did not have a prayer of a chance when her attacker Shunshin'd into range to deliver a devastating reverse sidekick that knocked her into a tree. Half a second later, a pair of kunai nailed her palms solidly into thick tree trunks, maiming her hands and effectively rendering her immobile.
"Argh! Damn it! Why?! Tell me why?" she managed through the shock and pain.
"Konoha requires this sacrifice from you and your team. Your teammate said that your village owed us, right? Well, we're calling in that favor." There was a great deal of perverse truth in that statement. So long as the truth was kept hidden, Konoha stood to benefit from this incident.
"Go die in a ditch, you monster!" Haruka turned away just as the Grass kunoichi spat a dirty mouthful at her. The secret Konoha jounin did not exactly expect the girl to faithfully accept her execution for the greater good of Konoha, but the other girl's choice of works invoked something primal inside the blonde. Acting on pure instinct, the Kyuubi container displayed just a fraction of the bottled fury that her namesake possessed.
One second the Grass kunoichi was glaring back defiantly, the next, she was howling like a banshee. In the blink of an eye, Haruka had smashed her victim's kneecaps. The other girl let loose a torrent of curses and tears. The blonde's eyes glazed over briefly before widening in realization. By force of will, she steeled herself against the anguished cries of her target. No genin was trained to withstand that sort of physical pain, so the Konoha jounin did not begrudge her victim's lack of silence.
Haruka delivered a quick chop to the base of her victim's neck, knocking her out. It was an act of mercy that even the Grass nin might have been thankful for. She then pulled out a kunai of Rain design. After taking just a brief moment to concentrate, she let the weapon fly. Her aim was true and just like that, it was done.
The Konoha assassin surveyed the landscape, ignoring the now chilling air that caressed her flesh like cold silk. She realized that close examination of the bodies would undoubtedly evoke troubling questions, but the people who were going to discover the body were not going to be interested in a forensics analysis. They were going to be interested in revenge and finding the bare justification necessary to exact said revenge. And by the time anyone could piece together what really happened (if they ever get around to that), it would already be too late.
Haruka did not even turn around to face the clone that suddenly popped into view.
"Looking good, Boss!" the clone whistled cheekily. The blonde original glared at his wayward doppelganger. His creation quickly went on with the briefing, "A second Grass team is approaching this area. Estimated time of arrival is roughly seventeen to twenty minutes."
Right on time. Dismissing her clone, the blonde quickly shifted back to her original male self. Haruto winced as he clothed himself. He always felt a bit strange whenever he stayed for an extended period in his female form.
"Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"
With barely a flinch, Haruto summoned an assorted dozen clones into existence.
"You three, move the other two bodies and their equipment over here. You four, start messing this place up a bit. I want overturned trees, burned vegetation and charcoaled soil. And you two, plant those Rain equipment and items. Let's move, you got seven minutes!"
They finished in six.
Whew! the blond thought as he crossed another item off of his mental to do list. Setting himself up as the rape victim to gain the others' trust, placing the genjutsu over the Grass nin's food to make it smell funky, providing the prepackaged and poisoned ramen, and finally setting up the battle scene… Haruto definitely went through a lot of trouble for a single genin team, especially a team that was not on Ibiki's list. This was, in fact, the ultra, ultra secret part of the ultra secret plan to defend Konoha. Absolutely no one but the Hokage and Haruto himself were privy to even the idea of knocking off a Grass team. The gamble was high, but the blond knew that the payoff could be the very survival of Konoha.
By the time the second Grass team found the bodies of their compatriots, Haruto was long gone. The young assassin did not need to hear the others' promise to maim and murder every single one of the Rain candidates. He sensed their fury in the raging wind.
And that was just perfect. The coming Rain-Grass fireworks were shaping up to be the precise opening Konoha needed to emerge victorious in the upcoming invasion. If three allied Grass genin had to pay for that victory with their lives then so be it. All things considered, it was quite the bargain.
I wonder how Anko's doing, the blond thought. Hopefully, she was having an easier time than him, but somehow he really doubted that.
From the safe and secure confines of the Hokage's tower, Sarutobi held solitary station before his spy snow globe, a remarkable device that proved its worth during situations like this one. The elderly Hokage had just watched the young Uzumaki flawlessly execute the latest component of his plan. While he never said as much, the magnitude of Haruto's operation had in fact taken him by surprise.
In poker terms, Konoha, under the child's extraordinary strategy, was essentially taking the "all in" position, militarily and diplomatically. Haruto's latest stunt in eliminating the Grass team and panning the blame off on Rain would undoubtedly have ripple effects far beyond the exam itself. Grass had been Konoha's staunchest ally ever since the last great shinobi war and was currently one of two nations to have an explicit security pact with the Land of Fire. Incidentally, it was for these precise factors that Haruto had pressed forward with his idea. No one would expect Konoha to make such a move against one of its most trusted allies. As a very brilliant strategist had once said, there was no stronger alibi than another person's own preconception. Anyone else, Sarutobi included, would not have even conceived of formulating such an audacious plan. While days remained until the end of the second portion of the Chuunin Exam, which was when they could truly assess the results of Haruto's actions, that was not what Sarutobi was truly concerned about.
No, the Sandaime was confident in the plan's success. The implications of Haruto's actions were of far greater personal importance. The way the twelve-year-old undermined and eliminated the Grass team revealed a level of creativity and controlled ruthlessness that was both inspired and frightening. It reminded him of the terrible efficiency of the Sannin and the Yondaime—Orochimaru and Minato in particular, if he was honest with himself—when they had been in their prime. Certainly that spoke well of Haruto's potential as a shinobi, but it also served as a harbinger of darker things.
Contrary to popular beliefs, the sort of skillful machinations and powers that Orochimaru possessed did not develop in a vacuum. The S-class criminal did not wake up one day and decide to conduct illegal experiments on Konoha citizens. No, it took many years of practice and experience, experience that was forged in the heat of the biggest shinobi war in history and which sterilized one's very humanity. Ditto for Tsunade, Jiraiya, the Yondaime, and countless others. The great irony, though, was that of all the potential greats that could have gone astray, and there were many, Orochimaru had ended up being the one to plunge headfirst into the abyss. For the longest time, everyone, including Sarutobi, had secretly pegged Minato as the one likeliest to crack.
Haruto, my dear boy, Sarutobi thought fondly, but also with a touch of regret. On that note, perhaps he was repeating the same mistake by judging the young blond so harshly. Despite his willingness to commit ruthless deeds in cold blood, no one who knew him could deny Haruto's willingness to make sacrifices and his fealty to causes he truly believed in. Of course, it did then beg the question of what would happen should he ever stop believing in his own dreams or in Konoha. The elderly leader knew better than anyone else that the village was far from perfect.
"Hokage-sama, sir!" The voice at the door broke the elderly Hokage from his reverie.
"Yes?"
"Your special guest is here. Should I send for him?"
The elderly man truly did see the young blond as his other grandson, an adopted one, but a grandson nonetheless. Unfortunately, Sarutobi noticed that since ascending through the ranks, Haruto's relationship with himself had deteriorated for a variety of reasons. At the heart of it might be the fact that while being one of his greatest joys, Haruto was also his greatest sadness. Sometimes the child empathetically resembled one, sometimes the other, and still other times, looking at Haruto brought forth feelings of joy and sadness inside Sarutobi at the same time. Was it so unreasonable for someone of his age to feel overwhelmed at times and to seek shelter under apathy? He was human, after all, and an increasingly frail one at that. Case in point was what happened in the aftermath of the death of his grandson's friend. Sarutobi certainly had not intended to freeze up, but it could not be helped.
Yes, it is time. I must act before it is too late.
"Your orders, sir?" his assistant called out again.
"Yes, please send Jiraiya in right away. Thank you."
Ah yes, Jiraiya, the Toad Hermit. He did wonders with Minato and hopefully could work his magic once again on his former star pupil's legacy. Who knew all those years ago that he, the esteemed Professor and God of Shinobi, would end up becoming so dependent on the slightly cracked brat, who was always more interested in his teammate's breasts than learning anything useful.
Ah, but such was life.