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"I sense high levels of chakra. It's a jōnin—!"
Before the words could even leave the radio receiver, Itachi vanished. None of them saw him leave. One moment, he was beside them; the next, their clothes were violently fluttering from a burst of wind.
A great fire loomed over the buildings, sending thick smoke rising to the sky. They could hear the panicked screams of people in the distance. The three of them stared at each other wide-eyed.
It was at that moment that they heard the radio crackle to life once again. Aquilla's voice came through amid radio static. "Team 1 is combat ineffective." The reserve team members felt a chill go down their spines as they put together those words with the sensory-nin's message from only a few seconds ago. "Team 2, Team 4. A squad of enemy combatants is closing in from the north. Over."
"Let's go!" Tern said as she used the Body Flicker Jutsu.
Ratel stopped masking his chakra and quickly signed a string of hand seals for a shadow clone to appear in a plume of white smoke before rushing after Tern. The clone stopped Raven from following them.
"What?" Raven asked, puzzled and impatient.
Combat ineffectiveness left Team 1 unable to operate, potentially leaving a majority of them injured beyond combat viability. With the report of a jōnin, it most probably meant a complete wipeout. Even one lost operative was too much. ROOT needed to pay.
"You and I are going to follow the courier," the clone said.
"The reconnaissance team has a handle on that!" Raven barked, pushing the clone aside.
The clone stopped him again. "Weasel brought you here to extract information; you're going to do that. If we get what we are looking for, it'll be rushed to the village to convey the information so we can mount an attack on the ROOT base. That's your mission."
Raven was shaken for a moment before a serious expression set on his face.
"Understood. Let's go," he said.
———
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In the burning wreckage of a warehouse containing goods worth millions of ryō, stood a masked man who looked eerily similar to a Leaf ANBU. He had a mask with red swirls and carried two swords strapped to his back: a katana and a shorter, double-edged tantō.
Kinoto held a good-as-dead operative by the neck as he looked at the bodies around him that were beginning to slowly burn as their death seals were erasing evidence. Even though they were in disguise, they were still an assault squad, ANBU's muscle, who rarely ever employed subtlety, mostly dealing in overwhelming force to overpower their targets to kill or capture. However, they were still ANBU and knew how to hide themselves—just not good enough to escape him. He was especially trained in stealth from a very young age; he knew how and where to look for someone hiding just as well as he knew how to hide.
Lord Danzō was right as always, he said to himself. The troubles around Baizan had been the doing of ANBU, and the iron merchant had sold ROOT out to save himself.
He had thought to hire a courier to transport their shipment to a decoy location to see if someone would take the bait and follow it, to check whether Baizan had betrayed them, but Lord Danzō instead chose to attack the shipment itself. ROOT had suffered some unforgivable losses recently, harming them in more than a few ways. The Hidden Leaf and the world needed to know that ROOT wasn't a weak twig but the thick trunk of a strong tree. Showing their strength would not only send a message but also attract forces of influence to work with them.
When his subordinate agent, acting as their courier, boarded the ship, Kinoto caught someone trying to buy a ride on the ship so soon after the agent. They were so busy getting themselves on the ship that they didn't notice someone was observing them as well.
So, as per his orders, he killed anyone who was following the shipment and made a show of it. He sighed, looking at the mess he had made. If not for the orders, he would've done things a lot more cleanly, according to his preferences.
He had volunteered and asked Lord Danzō to let him on the mission because, in a way, he felt partly responsible for the losses ROOT had suffered. Years ago, an assassination mission involving trainees had gone wrong. The target had created unnecessary problems for ROOT. However, there were several problems from the get-go. The agent in charge had made hasty and emotion-driven oversights. He had sent trainees into the Hidden Leaf Village, which was considered a high-risk location. He had misjudged the target's combat abilities, which had led to casualties. Some even claimed that the trainees were chosen because they were easier to deploy and that the mission wouldn't have been approved if it involved proper agents.
Things had gone wrong, and he had to interfere at the last moment to ensure nothing could be connected back to ROOT. He had even personally gone to dispose of the bodies of the dead trainees from a Police Force morgue, which had caused quite a commotion.
However, because of circumstances, he wasn't able to kill the target, and that turned out to be his mistake because Police Force Officer Takuma would later go on to interfere with ROOT's actions in the Steam-Frost War and then end up joining ANBU as Ratel, where he would end up being involved in almost all the action ANBU had taken against ROOT.
He deeply regretted letting him go that day because of the death of the Gemini Brothers. ROOT had lost one of its important assets that day. Kon died as well, but losing one hand had made him useless, and he had already made one too many mistakes in the past.
Kinoto scanned his surroundings for other ANBU-nin and spotted someone standing on a rooftop with blackout glasses, looking right at him.
"Got you," he whispered and was about to drop the operative in his grasp to pursue the faraway spectator when he caught something that most shinobi would've only registered as a blur.
His body went cold when he saw Uchiha Itachi appear on a nearby rooftop.
Immediately, Kinoto repositioned himself so there was thick rising smoke between them to obscure himself, if only for a moment. His mind rushed through his next actions. He dropped the operative in his grip, leaned him against some debris, and began weaving a complex string of hand seals. His objective was to cause damage to ANBU, which he thought he had done by killing an entire assault squad—especially if he assumed that it was ANBU Captain Weasel's assault squad.
He ripped the sleeves of the near-dead operative and gripped both of his upper arms until the death seal appeared on the right arm. He bit his thumb and drew on the death seal with his blood.
Wiping out an assault squad by taking them by surprise was one thing, but killing Uchiha Itachi was infeasible. If they fought, the chances of him killing the boy genius were low, and that, too, depended on a battle where he was ready to die for that result. Given time and the preparation, he could've increased his chances, but he wasn't interested in a head-on battle.
As a bloody, cursed seal appeared over the death seal, Kinoto stabbed the operative in his heart, and a moment later, Itachi tore through the smoke with the Sharingan glowing red in his eyes.
"Here, a gift," Kinoto said as he tossed the corpse towards him.
Itachi caught the operative in his arms and immediately leapt back.
Kinoto didn't wait around to see the result of his handiwork and immediately escaped while weaving another set of hand seals that caused an explosion of opaque smoke around him that grew greater in size, enveloping everything under its dome. Half a dozen thick smoke trails, each several meters thick, shot out in different directions, with Kinoto hidden in one of them, or perhaps all of them were decoys.
Back at the demolished warehouse, Itachi's Sharingan swept over his operative's body, and he knew that his subordinate of over three years was already dead—another dead comrade. The Sharingan saw the concentration of chakra flowing through the body that was growing cold in his arms. A mass of chakra that was supposed to spread out was being blocked inside the death seal. He looked down at the arm and saw a seal formed in blood.
Kinoto knew that he wasn't going to harm Itachi of the Sharingan with that little trick. However, hurting him was never the intention. He just needed to buy some time, and even the boy genius, who was known to be ruthless, didn't have a heart of stone. ANBU's death seal couldn't be removed or stopped without the secret information, especially not on the fly, but once it was triggered, some things could be done to twist its function slightly.
Itachi bit the corner of his lip just shy of drawing blood. Despite every fiber of his being unwilling to do it, he knew that it had to be done. He threw his subordinate's body high into the air, barely a couple of seconds before it exploded into a gory mess of flesh, blood, and bones.
He closed his eyes as a spray of bloody rain fell on him. It painted his face and dripped from his hair. He opened his eyes after a moment and turned around to gaze at the piles of blue flames that were his subordinates, who had already turned mostly into ash. This was the fate of an ANBU-nin who is killed in action. He already knew it, yet he still wished he had a moment to say goodbye to them properly.
As the opaque, choking smoke began to take him and his resting comrades over, Itachi took a breath. Despite being dripping with blood, he bit his thumb to draw blood. He wove hand seals before kneeling to press his palm into the ground for a jutsu formula to spread out on the floor.
Summoning Jutsu
A murder—nay, a massacre—of crows began pouring from the black cloak on his back. The winged shadows took to the air and began spreading out. If the spreading smoke that made it difficult to breathe wasn't terrifying enough, a black mass of birds, with their piercing caws, spreading through the sky made people think that hell had descended on Earth.
A pair of crows, two sizes larger than the others, landed on his shoulders.
"Find him."
The pair of crows gazed at him in silence for a moment before taking to the air.
———
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Takuma gazed at the spreading smoke and the crows flying into the air. He could smell burning in the air even though the smoke hadn't reached them yet. It was some kind of Fire Release ninjutsu, releasing a mixture of smoke and ash. He pulled the radio from his backpack and spoke: "Aquilla, don't participate in the fight. Focus on evacuating the people who are struggling in the smoke. Over."
There was a static silence before the Hyūga's response came in.
"Roger. Over."
He caught up with Tern, who asked, "Where's Raven?"
"He's going after the courier. Listen, I think they're going to cause some commotion and destroy property to keep us occupied, to give the courier a better chance to escape. The moment they think they've delayed us enough, they'll escape."
"Fuck!" Tern screamed, clearly emotional about what had happened.
He understood her and felt something burning in his gut.
"That's why, don't hesitate to kill," he said.
"You don't need to tell me—" She stopped herself and read his face for a moment, and a sense of rationality returned to her. "We might need them alive in case the courier escapes."
"I know… I'll take care of that. One will do. I'll make sure to keep one alive, so don't worry about holding back. Kill as many as you can."
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