{Current Stones - 960}
{Needed Stones - 1240}
~~~
Even though Ren was fairly sure Kisame wouldn't chase him any further, he didn't relax. Not even a little.
His instincts were sharp enough to know when danger had passed, but caution wasn't about what you felt, it was about what you knew. And until he was well beyond the range of the battlefield, the only thing he knew for certain was that he couldn't afford to slow down.
Only once he cleared the final ridgeline, leaving the mountain range behind and hitting open, rolling terrain did he allow himself a moment of relief. It was not much but just enough to exhale without tension.
He didn't shut off the Eight Gates. He just stopped using them at full capacity. At this point, he was only cycling chakra into the propulsion system in short bursts, launching himself forward, recovering slightly, then blasting forward again.
His muscles were shot. Not torn beyond repair, but sore in ways even his regeneration couldn't fully handle on the move. He could feel the drag with every burst, his own body starting to weigh him down. But he kept going.
This whole run, this wild escape, had turned into the best workout he'd had since reaching S-rank.
Fighting Roku hadn't pushed him like this. That fight had been useful, sure, as it helped him polish the hardening technique and test how well his modified Eight Gates held up under sustained use, but it hadn't pressed him.
Kisame had.
Not just in strength or speed, but in pressure. Relentless, forward-driving combat. And that, Ren had to admit, was something rare.
Still, he couldn't stay back there to enjoy the challenge. Not even for the sake of pride. Because no matter how far he'd come, the fact was, he couldn't win, for now that is.
There was also chance of the rest of the Seven Swordsmen showing up and that was the real danger.
If more of them appeared, if the ones like Mangetsu or someone else caught wind of the fight and joined in, then Ren wouldn't be escaping anything. He'd be buried and he wouldn't get anymore chance to leave the mist village.
They'd already overstayed their welcome in the Mist. The mission had been clear, extract the embedded agents, confirm the status of the internal conflict, and leave. His personal task had been more flexible, if there was no civil war, then start one, as easy as that.
But then that one agent ruined everything.
Still, it wasn't really the agent's fault. Not entirely atleast. The real root of the problem was Danzo.
When Four had scanned the agent's memories, there hadn't been any mention of Root involvement. No thoughts of Danzo, no missions from him, nothing that connected the trail directly.
But the seal was there, buried way too deep than it should be, and that alone was proof. A Root seal, especially one that dangerous, didn't end up in someone's mind by accident.
Danzo had his hands in this. Whether directly or through his pawns, Ren didn't know. But the more he thought about it, the clearer the picture became.
It wasn't just this one agent who cracked under pressure. There were others, too many of them had "accidentally" revealed themselves to Mist authorities. Too many coincidences, too sloppy of a work which shouldn't be done by elite agents.
Ren didn't believe in that kind of luck.
Some of those agents might be real, sure. Loyal and careful and only revealed themselves by mistake. But so many of them? They were definitely plants. Root operatives sent in under the table. Danzo had been playing his own game from the start.
Ren had wanted to confirm it right there. Have Four scan them all, rip through their minds and sort the lies from truth. But he hadn't.
Not because he was afraid of confrontation, but because the timing was wrong.
These agents were already at their limit. Stuck behind enemy lines, half-treated like prisoners, half-used like tools. If they found out that one of their own was being probed, or worse, exposed as a traitor, it could break what little morale the team still had and morale was the only thing keeping this mission from turning into a total collapse.
So Ren held back.
But once they were out of here, once they were clear of the Mist, he wasn't going to stay quiet. Not about Danzo, not about Root, not about anything.
He was going to dig the root out from the ground even if it meant shaking the tree.
For now, though, none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was regrouping.
Ren continued forward, wind tearing past his ears, sweat already drying on his neck. His body ached, but he didn't let up as he needed to get back to the mountain base as fast as possible.
Kakashi, Itachi, and the others should've completed their objectives by now. If everything had gone according to plan, they would've started pulling back. But if something went wrong, if anyone had been caught or delayed, then Ren needed to know now, not later.
The window was closing and every second wasted was another second for the Mist to regroup.
~~~
It didn't take Ren long to reach the mountain base where their temporary hideout was. As he landed at the base and began moving up the familiar slope, his senses caught something, chakra embedded along the ridge.
A seal, and not just a basic barrier or detection tag. It was something much bigger.
He slowed slightly and raised a brow. 'Sensei's been busy, huh. I don't think I've seen this one before.'
He pressed forward without pausing, but the more he moved through the mountain's edge paths, the more seals he felt. Embedded into the stone, anchored into trees, even tucked into the wind patterns flowing through the crevices.
'Wait, this isn't random. It's an array.'
That realization made him pause internally. Sealing arrays weren't common anymore, not in the modern shinobi world. They required not only advanced Fuinjutsu knowledge, but a deep understanding of environmental chakra flow and natural barriers. Most current seal masters didn't bother learning them.
Back during the era of the Uzumaki clan, sealing arrays had been one of their specialties. Complex, multilayered techniques that could affect an entire battlefield, or protect an entire clan compound. They were rare for a reason.
Ren's mind wandered for a moment as he pushed forward, letting muscle memory carry his body while his thoughts wandered through what he knew.
Konoha hadn't originally known how to use sealing arrays. They only gained access to that kind of Fuinjutsu heritage after the First Hokage married Mito Uzumaki. She'd brought with her a deep well of knowledge, techniques, scrolls, bloodline wisdom and passed it to her husband's village without asking for anything.
That was how Konoha became the center of Fuinjutsu excellence.
But the other villages hadn't been so lucky and they didn't want to stay behind.
So during the Second Shinobi War, the four great nations, everyone except Konoha, had joined forces to wipe the Uzumaki clan out. Not just out of fear, but greed. They wanted that knowledge for themselves. The sealing arts were too valuable.
However, Konoha didn't lift a hand to help.
They didn't attack, but they didn't protect either. The Uzumaki were left to face the storm alone while their strongest ally watched from a distance.
And then, when it was all over, and the clan was gone, Konoha had the audacity to pretend like they still cared. The Third Hokage ordered that every shinobi uniform would carry the red Uzumaki spiral on the back, as a "symbol of friendship."
Ren snorted faintly at the memory.
A symbol.
That was it.
By then, the damage was done. The clan was fully destroyed with a few scattered, and their homeland destroyed.
Still, the attackers hadn't gotten everything they came for. Word was, the Uzumaki clan head at the time, before dying, burned or sealed away most of their sacred texts and techniques and the seal was so great that no one has been able to crack it away till date and overtime the entire information had just vanished without a trace.
However, the remaining fragments still gave the other villages enough to train one or two level 6 Fuinjutsu masters every generation.
But even now, they were playing catch-up.
Konoha had always been ahead. Even today, they still retained a third of the world's living Level 6 Fuinjutsu users. There was a time, not long ago, when half of them belonged to the Leaf.
Ren shook his head and put the thoughts away. Dwelling on that wouldn't help right now.
He continued climbing, his pace steady but not hurried. About halfway up, he spotted Tenzo on a narrow path leading a few agents toward the ridge. Ren gave them a glance, wondering what they were doing, but didn't stop to ask.
He was too exhausted. Whatever it was, it could wait.
Right now, he needed to close the Gates and crash before his legs gave out.
By the time he reached the mouth of the cave, he was running on fumes. The chakra he'd used to hold the Fifth Gate open was fading fast, and now the delayed backlash was catching up.
He spotted Utakata sitting just outside the entrance, legs crossed, staring out at the sky. Hitoshi was standing near him, while Itachi crouched nearby, both of them in the middle of some quiet discussion.
Ren didn't say a word as he staggered up. He just reached the entrance, collapsed down next to Utakata, and rested his back against the cool rock wall.
He exhaled heavily then shut the Gates.
That was when the weight hit him all at once.
His body felt like it had been dropped off a cliff. His breath turned ragged, lungs suddenly struggling to keep up. Muscles that had been forced past their natural limits were now screaming for recovery. The Fifth Gate didn't just burn energy, it ignored the body's warning signs.
And now that it was closed, everything came crashing down at once.
The bloodstains on his uniform, the cracks in his armor, and the raw exhaustion in his face made it obvious to the others what had happened.
He didn't need to say anything, they knew that he'd barely made it back.
Utakata, still seated beside him and clearly recovering himself, frowned as he placed a hand on Ren's chest, his chakra gently pulsing through his palm. "Your injuries are halfway healed already," he muttered, "but your body's showing signs of severe oxygen loss. Muscle fibers are strained too. You used the Fifth Gate, didn't you?"
His eyes narrowed slightly. "And you didn't just use it for a moment, you held it open for a long time?"
Ren let out a small breath and smiled wearily. "Oh yeah. And not the modified version either. Went full classic, and used the raw and unfiltered version."
Utakata's frown deepened. His hand moved a little, and healing chakra began flowing into Ren's system, not for wounds, but to help speed up recovery and ease the strain on his muscles. "Who did you fight?"
Ren let the healing wash over him for a moment before replying, "That old shark, Kisame. Bastard made me run around like a damn genin on a D-rank."
Utakata exhaled through his nose. "Kisame Hoshigaki. That explains it." He went quiet for a moment, then asked again, more seriously this time, "How strong was he?"
Ren didn't hesitate as he answered. "Definitely above S-rank. He didn't even seem tired by the end."
That made Utakata's expression tighten again. "Troublesome. If you're right, then the Mist has three Kage-level shinobi right now, Kisame, Mangetsu, and the Fourth Mizukage himself. And that's not even counting the S-rank shinobi still active on their side. If they weren't locked in a civil war, and they had just a few more years of peace to grow." He shook his head. "They'd be more dangerous than any other village."
Ren nodded, sitting up straighter now as the healing did its work. "Yeah. But that's not our immediate problem. We need to focus on getting out of here."
His gaze flicked toward the cave entrance, then to the half-scorched walls still marked from the hunter-nin assault. "From what I sensed earlier, you killed all the hunters that came in, but that's the problem. The Mist will know they're gone. They'll realize that this is our base and send in a full team next. Maybe more. We need to move soon, before we get caught in a full sweep."
Utakata gave a silent nod of agreement.
Ren turned his attention toward the two sitting on the other side of the cave. "How was the work on your end?" he asked.
Itachi and Hitoshi looked up, their posture far more relaxed than before. It was subtle, but Ren noticed that they were more comfortable with each other now than they were ever before and he wondered what happened to them.
Itachi was the first to speak. "We eliminated four elders. Faked Boil Release during the kills, it was easier to pass off than Lava Release, which is harder to mimic properly. Didn't want to risk giving ourselves away."
He continued, voice even and calm. "We made sure a few of the other elders saw us during the act, then I used Genjutsu to implant the idea that bloodline shinobi were behind the attacks. It should help stir more paranoia and internal conflict."
Ren gave a short nod. "Smart."
Itachi added, "We also tracked down a few pettier elders like you asked. We didn't go after them directly. Instead, we killed their most talented children or grandchildren, just enough to push them into lashing out."
He continued, "Thanks to fly-san we were able to avoid the hunters otherwise if we killed them in the mist village itself then all of them would be upon us no matter how much we tried to hide."
From the side, Hitoshi spoke up. "I didn't do much. Weasel-san handled the trickier stuff, mimicking the releases, using genjutsu. I just made sure we stayed off the hunters' radar."
Ren could already tell they were about to start quietly praising each other for the next ten minutes, so he raised a hand and cut in quickly. "Alright, alright. I get it. You both did great. Mission on your end is complete. Now we just wait for updates from Kakashi and Four, and once that's done, we're gone."
With that, he reached into one of the pouches strapped to his thigh, pulled out a small scroll, and unfurled it on the floor. After a quick bite of his thumb, he ran through a few hand seals and slammed his palm onto the center.
With a soft puff of smoke, a small golden-yellow butterfly appeared on his hand. Its wings shimmered faintly with chakra, delicate but clearly active.
He glanced at the others. There was no reason to hide it. If they hadn't guessed about his summoning contract already, they would have soon. And more importantly, everyone present could be trusted.
He looked down at the butterfly. "Mo-chan, I need you to gather intel from all the butterflies in the field. First, tell me what's going on with the team traveling with Ko. Second, I want everything you can find on Kakashi Hatake's situation." He opened his bingo book and flipped to a photo of Kakashi. "This is what he looks like."
Mo fluttered its wings and bobbed its head. "Understood, Ren-chan. I'm not as quick as Ko-san when it comes to communication, so it might take me a little longer to collect everything."
Ren gave a tired smile. "That's fine. Just don't take too long."
The butterfly gave another little dip, as if nodding again, then fluttered into the air and zipped out of the cave with surprising speed, leaving a faint golden shimmer in its wake.
~~~~~
{Do you guys think the other guys are fine? Or did something happen to them? You'll have to read more to know.}
{One more thing, do you guys want Ren to use sealing arrays like the one Utakata used?
I do want to introduce Fuinjutsu in his combat since, even though he is exceptional in Fuinjutsu he hadn't had much chance to show off his abilities so I can do something about it, but definitely not in this arc.}
{One last thing, what do you think would happen in the next interaction between Ren and Danzo, how high do you think are Danzo's chance of getting a punch in his only visible eye and making it go bad?
Let me give you a bit of spoiler, it's more than 90%}
{If you want, you can support me on pat-reon}
{ h t t p s : / / w w w . p a t r e o n . c o m / Z e e n o n }
{You know what else}
{280 Stones = Extra chapter}
{STONES!!!!}