(July, year 54 AK)
As Yuta was crouching beside the unconscious captured enemy, he glanced back at the incoming shurikens but didn't make any move to block or dodge them, neither did Hikari, and just like that, the shurikens hit them but they just passed through them harmlessly, revealing that they were just simple clones.
After the shurikens passed through the clones and hit the ground, the clones simply disappeared. Yuta had created them under the brief distraction of small clouds of smoke that were released as he and Hikari canceled their Transformation jutsus previously, allowing them to quickly change their location and hide.
At the same time the real Hikari sneaked around the enemy's location and attacked them from behind, while Yuta sneaked closer to them from a different direction.
As Hikari appeared behind the bushes where enemies were hiding, she charged at them directly with her sword, she immediately clashed in close combat with one of the enemies, while two others jumped back, creating a distance.
As enemies were revealed, Yuta observed the scene from his hiding spot in the branches of a nearby tree, there was a man in his late twenties that Hikari is currently locked in close combat with, that man looked as if he was the strongest and the most experienced one in their group.
And there also two men in their early twenties, who jumped slightly further away from the clash and now were looking around, clearly looking for Yuta. All three of the enemies were wearing some sort of ninja attire, but it looked different from what ninjas in Konoha were wearing, and neither of them had a headband with their village's sign.
Yuta concentrated on his chakra senses, he didn't sense anyone beside these three ninjas. Then he concentrated on them and felt, now that they weren't hiding their chakra anymore, the man that is likely a captain of this squad that Hikari is currently clashing with, he has about 5C of chakra, about the same amount as Yuta currently has, and as for the two others, they have only slightly higher than 1C amounts of chakra.
"Shuji, you go rescue Satoru, I'll cover for you and back you up, remember the mission the captain Jun gave us!" One of the younger men said to the other one hurriedly.
"Understood, Hiromitsu." Shuji replied.
'Interesting...' Yuta thought as he observed them from above from the cover of the tree branches.
'As I thought, there was more ninjas beside the captured one, and as I thought, they won't abandon their comrade just like that, they can't allow him to be interrogated and their intel to be leaked after all. So, their primary priority here is to rescue their comrade.'
'And their captain, Jun was his name? He would cover for them during that... Or he was supposed to...' Yuta thought as he glanced at Hikari who was in a midst of an intense looking close combat fight with Jun, and it seems that neither side has a clear advantage judging by the couple initial exchanges Yuta saw, although Yuta assumed that Hikari wasn't fighting at her full strength yet, after all, Yuta remembered that Hikari was able to defeat six Mist Chunins quite fast before.
Initially, Yuta wanted to quickly deal with the two younger ninjas and go help Hikari, but judging by Hikari's enthusiastic smirk as she was swinging her blade energetically, Yuta realized that she might hold a grudge against him if he were to "steal her fun" like that, so Yuta looked back at the two remaining ninjas who were about to go after their unconscious teammate and thought about taking his time with them instead.
At first Yuta had an idea to practice his rusty taijutsu on these opponents, but then he quickly dismissed the idea, since with his weak taijutsu it would be risky to engage in close combat with the enemies that he doesn't know anything about.
Even if he himself finds that risk acceptable, since he could time-travel if something bad happens, his teammates will find it as an utterly idiotic move on his part. After all, he is a long-range-type ninja who specializes in genjutsu, for someone like him to abandon all of his advantages just like that would be unacceptable.
Yuta saw as the two ninjas quickly approached their unconscious teammate Satoru, and since Yuta wanted to take his time with them, he wasn't about to let them take their teammate and leave just like that, so he formed a Shadow Cloak genjutsu without using any hand seals and made a whistling sound, imitating a local bird, directing his genjutsu through the sound on the both of the ninjas at once.
"He disappeared? Hiromitsu, do you see Satoru?" Shuji asked hurriedly as he stood just in front of his unconscious teammate Satoru and looked around frantically but wasn't able to locate him as if he didn't see him at all.
"Satoru disappeared? Must be another clone like those two before! It was all a trap from the start, damn it!" Hiromitsu answered angerly as he looked around as well.
"Is it possible that they had handed Satoru over to someone else on the way and we just didn't notice that? That must be it if he is not here!" Shuji said.
"Captain Jun said there is four of them that had arrived at Kohei's mansion, one was following Kohei, then there these two, all three of them just kids, there was also one young man who was among their group, should be their captain, he must've taken Satoru while these two were stalling for him to get away!" Hiromitsu said.
"If Satoru isn't here, then our rescue mission is a failure from the start!" Shuji said as he was quite literally standing with one of his feet on Satoru's stretched leg without even noticing, "We should warn captain Jun and regroup!"
'They didn't even notice anything at all, huh... That's disappointing really...' Yuta thought as he watched the two ninja's conversation from the branches of a tree, 'I wanted to test out placing one layer of a genjutsu on top of another, but I can't do that if my opponents is this incompetent, I need them to notice my genjutsu and to dispel it for me to time my second layer of genjutsu with their dispelling of my first one...'
...
'I guess I shouldn't be so discouraged, after all this shows how much my skills have improved after all. But still, if I wanted to test my skills like that, I should've gotten ahead of Hikari at the start and got Jun as my opponent before Hikari did... Sigh, too late for that, I guess, at least if I don't want to time-travel just for that, but that would be just petty.'
'Well, I guess I just have to help these guys a little, so they would have a chance here at all...' Yuta thought as he leaped from the tree without making a sound and landed quietly just beside the two ninjas, but they didn't notice him at all.
And as the two ninjas were about to leave and regroup with their captain, they turned around and already started moving, as one of them, Shuji, who was slightly behind had suddenly screamed in pain.
The intense pain of being stubbed with a kunai in the back had washed over Shuji's mind and had broken the genjutsu, so when Shuji glanced back, he saw how Yuta had appeared seemingly out of nowhere and now holding a kunai that was plunged deeply into his back. Yuta released the kunai and stepped back unhurriedly, his expression was calm.
"Shuji! NO!" Hiromitsu screamed in shock as he saw after he had turned around that his teammate is now gravely injured by a kunai that now plunged deeply into his back, that seemingly came out of nowhere.
Feeling an intense pain and now being able to see Yuta, who had stabbed him, Shuji finally realized what had happened and his face turned pale with realization.
He quickly shouted with all of his remaining strength, "Genjutsu! It's a genjutsu!" as he slowly falls to the ground, although he was still alive, Yuta didn't target any vital points and just stabbed Shuji to incapacitate him but not to kill him.
Hearing that, Hiromitsu stopped running back to Shuji and quickly formed a hand seal, using the standard genjutsu release technique while Yuta was calmly observing him while standing not too far away, while casting another Shadow Cloak genjutsu, trying to time it perfectly with the dispelling.
This idea of using genjutsu in layers like that had come to Yuta a long time ago during his combat evaluation match before he was promoted to Genin. Back then he was able to improvise and use it against his opponent in a moment of desperation, and it even worked to some extent, but now Yuta was testing this genjutsu layering mechanic seriously in an actual combat for the first time.
As Hiromitsu made an effort to stop his chakra flow completely and then to disrupt it in one powerful flare, he saw how the gravely injured Shuji in front of him simply vanished without a trace, as if he was never there in the first place.
"What?!" Hiromitsu shouted in disbelief, "How is this possible? Shuji was just an illusion all along too?"
Hiromitsu frantically looked around, but no matter how hard he looked for any traces, all he saw was his own footprints and no one else's.
"What is going on?!" He shouted frantically.
And only severely wounded Shuji, who is laying on the ground with a grave expression on his pale face, observed how Yuta slowly walking in Hiromitsu's direction with a kunai in his hand. A deep sense of dread overwhelmed Shuji completely.
He was trying to scream to Hiromitsu to warn him, but it was all futile, Hiromitsu seem unable to hear him, and the next second Shuji with a sense of horror saw how an eight-year-old kid with a kunai walks behind Hiromitsu and stabs him in the back, the same way that he was stabbed just a few seconds ago.
Hiromitsu screamed in pain, before falling to the ground shortly after.
'This is disappointing, really... Is this the same level of opponents as those Mist ninjas back then? No, I feel like these two are slightly weaker and much less competent than those Mist guys, but still, I can't test my theories on the opponents this weak, huh...' Yuta thought as he looked at his defeated opponents and sighed.
"Don't go anywhere, okay? I'll just go check on your captain, what was his name, it's Jun, right? And don't worry too much, I didn't hit anything vital, so you won't die, probably..." Yuta said as he looked at them before turning around and leaving.
As for why he didn't kill them, there was multiple reasons for that. First, he doesn't want to get the reputation of a cold-blooded murderer, especially not after what he did back then with the Mist ninjas, so leaving his enemies defeated but not killed, he thought, would be beneficial for his reputation after what happened back then.
Second, he dislikes killing needlessly, killing is still killing, and Yuta was still a human being who remembers his previous peaceful life, so even if he had adapted to this world to some degree and was able to kill his enemies without hesitation, like back then with the Mist ninjas, the situation is different here and he doesn't really need to kill these ninjas, so he just didn't.
Although, if his captain, Shisui, would later make a call to eliminate them, then Yuta would end their lives easily and without hesitation, or so he believed.
--- AN ---
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