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The link is also in the synopsis
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01:50 PM at Eastern Commercial Sector.
Aburame Kenzo, working as a logistics coordinator for the clan's agriculture side, walked out of a tea shop holding a package of tea snacks. He didn't even notice the civilian sweeping the street and barely heard the two genin sharing a laugh on a rooftop above.
The moment he walked past the alleyway beside the tea shop, the shadows ripped him out of the sunlight. Before his foot could touch the pavement, a garrotte lashed around his throat, just tight enough to induce panic and have Kenzo reach for his neck, leaving him open as two hands thrumming with blue energy pressed against his chest, forcing lightning-natured chakra through his body and the hive it housed.
Other than a panic-filled squeak, there was no sound as Kenzo was dragged deeper into the alleyway, leaving behind only the recently purchased tea snacks.
—
01:55 PM at the Ministry of Agriculture, Records Division.
Three floors up in the administrative building, Yori, a researcher and archivist who worked for the Aburame, was pulling crop yield data from the filing cabinets. She was humming a tune as she found the data when she noticed the room had suddenly gotten really dead. There was no sound, but the hair on her nape rose, and she whipped around to gasp and squeal as she came face to face with a white porcelain mask staring at her.
"Genin Yori, you're under arrest by the authority of ANBU." The masked kunoichi calmly slapped a pair of chakra-suppressing cuffs shut around her wrist, stuffed her mouth with a gag the moment she opened her mouth, and then pulled a black hood over her head.
The thought of resisting crossed Yori's mind a dozen times until she was picked up over a shoulder and the feeling of wind hit her as they leapt out of a window.
—
02:00 PM at the Woods to the West of the Old City.
Aburame Shinta rushed through the woods, leaping through the canopy. He looked back and saw a shadowy figure moving between the trees.
"Shit, shit, shit!"
Shinta made a mistake running. The moment he saw the masked ANBU, he gave in to instinct and ran away when they tried to arrest him. He looked back again; the figure was still on his tail. He thought about stopping and surrendering, but perhaps it was too late for it. He looked ahead and saw the edge of the woods. Out there was the city that he could use to lose his tail and reach the clan to gain protection.
But before he could reach the city, there was a short distance of open space he would need to cross.
He had already resisted arrest; doing it some more wasn't going to change things.
He leapt to the next tree, but midway through, a kunai with a tag struck the exact branch he planned to land on. The tag detonated, taking the branch with it. Shinta was caught in the explosion and was thrown; he barely managed to maintain his balance, but it wasn't enough when the earth beneath him opened and swallowed him whole.
"Wait—!"
Shinta tried to claw out of the hole, but the earth closed around him. He wanted to cross the open field to enter the city, but couldn't even get out of the forest.
———
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Shibi's pupils narrowed. The twist in his stomach turned into a knot. He looked at the greenhouse and then at the clan member who brought him the news of the arrests. Both of those things had happened simultaneously; it was as though ANBU was trying to blitz them from multiple directions.
"The people who were arrested. What's the link between them?" Shibi asked.
"I-I don't know, sir."
The Aburame clan—all clans as a matter of fact—had a few things in their present or past that would certainly interest ANBU. By now, Shibi should know what they were after, and he would use that to plan the clan's next actions, but here, he couldn't be certain. Not to mention, when the action against the clan was this strong, he expected to hear something—anything—beforehand, but there were no whispers or warning this time. The ANBU's actions were a complete surprise. He didn't think Seinpachi was holding back information from him, even though an ANBU captain had their own machinations, even if they were part of the clan. One didn't get to the position of captain without some careful and clever manoeuvring, leveraging both clan and ANBU at the same time for their own self-benefit.
Shibi asked the same question to the gathered clan members. There was a moment of silence before some offered their guesses. He dismissed all of them because they fell apart under surface-level scrutiny.
"Don't they all work around and under Elder Shigeki?"
Shibi was about to dismiss that as well but then stilled as he gazed at the greenhouse. It was completely dedicated to breeding pale beetles that were engineered by Aburame Shigeki.
If he were to assume that this all revolved around Shigeki, then…
"Where is Elder Shigeki right now?" Shibi asked. "Wherever he is, I want him moved to somewhere safe until we can find out what this is…"
———
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01:45 PM at Willow Pavilion, among Hidden Leaf's most exclusive social clubs.
Aburame Shigeki stepped through the sliding doors into the warm, afternoon sun, adjusting the collar of his high-necked coat.
Lunch had been productive. He secured a verbal agreement with two prominent merchants for the next quarter's raw material. The clan would buy from them, and they would kick back a tiny portion of that contract to him.
He walked down the manicured stone steps, his cane tapping rhythmically against the pavement, until he exited through the heavy set gates of the club. He took exactly three steps down the street when a portion of his hive began moving excitedly within his body. They weren't warning him of an attack; instead, they were asking to be let go because they sensed a large pool of chakra nearby. There had to be a jōnin nearby because his bugs wouldn't react like this otherwise.
Shigeki stopped, adjusted his dark glasses before looking around to see if he could socialise with the jōnin.
The entrance of Willow Pavilion was off the main street so that the guests could enter in peace and privacy. However, instead of seeing a jōnin, he noticed the guards and valet for carriages often used by civilian members that were usually there to receive and see off guests were missing. He had also brought two clan members to accompany him, but neither of them was here even though he had asked the club staff to tell them to meet him at the front gate.
He followed the hive's movements inside his body and looked up at the building to see two ANBU operatives standing on the clay-tiled roof. One more materialised in the street near him. They didn't draw weapons or take aggressive stances and just stared him down.
Shigeki's pulse ticked up a fraction, but he kept his exterior calm and called his hive to settle down. He was an elder of the Aburame clan and had more than enough political weight behind him. He gripped his cane and gazed up at the operatives on the roof. One of them had the chakra that was setting off his bugs. The sun was shining behind the man, casting a shadow that darkened his entire silhouette.
He squinted his eyes,
"Aburame Shigeki, by the authority of ANBU, you are placed under arrest. Surrender yourself into our custody peacefully; any attempts to resist will be met with force," said the man on the roof.
"Why am I being arrested?" Shigeki asked. He needed to be calm and get as much information as he could before making any moves.
"Corruption."
Shigeki slackened the grip on his cane. He straightened up, feeling confident. What was ANBU even trying to do? Getting him on the charges of corruption wasn't going to do him much harm, if any. It seemed like a run-of-the-mill power play. Which captain had ordered this?
But then the operative continued,
"Grand fraud and deception… criminal conspiracy… racketeering and extortion… biological terrorism."
The words hit Shigeki like a hammer to the jaw. Biological terrorism—they could only mean one thing by that. He glared at the ANBU as his face twitched. This had to be a bluff. There was no way they knew what he had done. There hadn't been any major problems since the day he had started. He refused to believe that the first sight of trouble would be ANBU knocking on his door without any prior signs of warning.
The operative wasn't done. He still had the last two charges. "High treason against the Land of Fire and high treason against the Hidden Leaf… Those are your crimes, Tokujo Shigeki."
"Alleged crime," Shigeki said, keeping a firm front, but his heart was growing crazy in his chest.
"Not according to the documents we found in that nice setup of yours underneath your home. How did you convince your wife to get a man cave like that?"
"Impossible! My lab is protected by the hijutsu laws. How dare you violate our village's foundation?!" Shigeki said, enraged. Internally, cracks were already forming because if they really said his lab, then that meant they knew what he had done. Even if all of it would be thrown out due to the laws, ANBU now knew what he had done, and they wouldn't stop until they reached the bottom of it all.
Unless his clan managed to make some arrangements to let all of this pass silently.
"Funny because that's what your wife claimed as well, that is until we showed her the warrant that bypassed that particular shield." The operative tossed a scroll to Shigeki. It was the warrant for his arrest—a blatant show of power and confidence—and if they had this, the claim about having a search warrant for his home was most likely true.
The silence in the street stretched. ShigekiShibi looked at the main road in the distance and was tempted. If he could somehow reach the clan, then he could overturn this situation on its head. Just as that thought passed his mind, the man descended from the roof and landed only a few steps away from him, and all thoughts of escape left him when he felt the man's presence. It was nothing tangible, but Shibi had spent plenty of time in the company of dangerous men, and he was getting a similar feeling from the man before him.
He had a distinct feeling that he would regret it if he tried to run—that the man's ideas of "force" were quite distinct from others.
Shigeki finally had a good look at the mask—a motif of the honey badger—and searched for a crack, a hesitation, a sliver of weakness or opening that could be exploited or bought, but there was nothing in there. He was standing in front of someone who didn't give a shit about Shigeki's money or his name.
The stiffness left Shigeki's spine. He let go of his cane, and it clattered on the cobblestones of the empty street. He held out his wrists, feeling every one of his years.
"I demand to speak to my clan head," Shigeki said in a firm tone.
"Everything in good time, Tokujo Shigeki. For now, you'll speak with our interrogation specialists."
The cuffs snapped shut around his wrists with a sharp crunch.
———
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"…Elder Shigeki's home was raided?"
Shibi had to stop on a rooftop on his way to the Aburame clan headquarters to convene with the clan leadership to decide their course of action. Their people were being kidnapped off their street and their properties raided. Now, ANBU was seizing their homes. This was an affront to their clan, and he was sure that the news of all the happenings was on its way to spreading to every corner of the village. And when the news reached the wrong ears, the hyenas would come out to smell the scent of weakness.
"Yes, sir. Elder Shigeki's wife said that they went down to the elder's home lab."
Shibi's finger twitched. Two separate places protected by the hiden jutsu law had been targeted. The Hokage had to know that this was happening because while the ANBU Commander could order this without needing explicit permission, he would most definitely loop in the Hokage because of the consequences.
Which meant that someone in ANBU had managed to convince the Hokage that this was all warranted.
"Where is Elder Shigeki?" Shibi asked.
"We haven't found him, sir. We have sent our men to Willow's Pavilion."
"The social club?" Shibi tapped his feet against the rough floor of the roof. "Elder Shigeki's assistant? Resa, yes, that's his name? Get him to the headquarters. In case we are unable to reach the elder, he will be our next best chance to understand what's happening."
"Chūnin Resa is out of the village on a mission."
Shibi was about to leap off the rooftop, but those words stopped him in his tracks. The timing was far too suspicious considering what was happening right now. The thing about coincidences was that they tended to occur from time to time, but this didn't seem like one of those.
"Get me information about that mission. Assume there's something wrong with it, so look deeper, find flaws until you hit something," Shibi ordered one of the men.
The more Shibi looked, the more time passed, the more things revealed themselves.
It was an uncomfortable feeling.
———
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As the chaos brewed out in the village, ANBU Captains Weasel and Tachinid faced each other inside the silence of the Hokage Mountain.
Seinpachi entered ANBU Lieutenant Ratel's main office, bypassing and ignoring the secretaries who called after him, only to find the Uchiha looking at a cartographic map spread on a map table. The young shinobi turned his head and affixed his eyes on his rank peer.
"Ratel is occupied, Captain Tachinid," Weasel said, his voice even and casual as though what was happening out in the village wasn't at all surprising.
"A pity, but maybe he can make some time for his former boss," Seinpachi said, stepping deeper into the densely furnished room.
He wasn't surprised that Weasel was protecting Ratel. It also confirmed that Ratel was behind all of this, and that wasn't a good sign for Aburame. He stared at the back of Weasel's head. The young captain's leadership style was similar to Seinpachi's own: let the subordinates do their thing. Weasel's approach with Ratel was similar to his approach with Barbary. He trusted his lieutenant to do a good job and bring in results. However, with the duties given to Ratel, even someone as hands-off as Seinpachi would've been more involved. Instead, Weasel had given a dangerously long leash to Ratel, who liked to bite more than bark.
"Facilities raided, doors of home kicked in, people disappearing to places no one knows… I was wondering if you could tell me why my clan is bleeding, Captain Weasel."
"Surgery. That's our job, is it not? To purge the rot to save the plaguing body," Weasel replied, turning around and leaning against the map table.
Seinpachi's eyes sharpened. Was Weasel calling his clan a rot that was plaguing the Hidden Leaf? But as soon as that thought came, it left. That couldn't be it. If the case were that big, he would've heard, no matter how well Weasel and Ratel tried to hide it—eradicating a clan as big and integrated into the village as Aburame wasn't possible in the Hidden Leaf. No, this was about a rot inside the clan that needed to be purged. In that analogy, the Aburame would be the victim and patient, but Seinpachi knew that would not be the case.
"Lord Shibi must be worried. You can tell him that it'll be all revealed very soon if he doesn't already know," Weasel said before walking towards the door. "Let's leave here. I'm sure Ratel wouldn't appreciate his former and current captain meeting in his office like this."
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