Chapitre 312: CH_8.47 (312)

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———

Yamanaka Amami scouted the estate in the cover of the night. The main building and one of the secondary buildings, which seemed to be the guard quarters, were well-lit—but the rest of the grounds were covered in darkness. As long as she stayed clear of a couple of lamp posts around the property, she could observe the main building for as long as she liked.

Ukuri was inside the main building—the one with three samurai stationed around it. Two lazed on chairs, leaving one vigilant samurai to patrol the longest section of the building. She glanced at the other secondary building used as the staff quarters. It was dark, which made it a preferable entry and exit route.

It would be best if they entered through the wall behind the staff quarters, using the darkness to their advantage and took out the vigilant samurai first. He'd be the biggest problem if they failed to kill Ukuri stealthily. Taking out the vigilant samurai would also create a clear escape route in case Ukuri made noise.

Amami observed for a bit more before carefully leaving the estate and regrouping with Thirteen and informing him of her plan.

"The back right of the estate is dark; we should go in from there and remove the samurai actively patrolling the long side."

As she expected, Thirteen frowned and immediately questioned her suggestion.

"That's risky," he said. "We could alert everyone by confronting him. What if the target wakes up and decides to foot it out of here to avoid the entire situation?"

Since they started working together two days ago, he had questioned her suggestions and advice at every turn. While she was relieved that he wasn't an imbecilic asshole—and that he listened to her, and if her suggestions made sense, which they always did, he would readily accepted her ideas upon realising they made sense—it was a little irritating that he had to get a word in every time.

I could just take over the samurai's body, and we could finish him silently, thought Amami—not that she'd actually do it unless strictly necessary. The Yamanaka clan practised their Mind-Body hiden jutsu, allowing them to possess their target's body and scour their minds if they wished. Their jutsu wasn't protected by an inherent requirement like bloodline, and anyone could learn it, but they wouldn't gain the same proficiency as a Yamanaka.

Not only had the clan created the jutsu so that it would work the best for them, but the Yamanaka themselves had evolved through the generations to adapt to the jutsu—resulting in their clan's jutsu being categorised as a hiden jutsu, or simply, hijutsu.

The Akimichi clan's Calorie Control and the Nara clan's Shadow Manipulation were also categorised as hiden jutsu. Seven, the Hyūga, couldn't hide his bloodline limit because of his dōjutsu, but she could hide her hiden jutsu simply by not using it. The candidates didn't know if the ANBU had something more planned for them, so keeping some of her cards hidden to retain an advantage would be beneficial.

Amami glanced at Thirteen. The boy had been surprisingly open to showing his skills. She knew he could use genjutsu; he possessed a chakra augmentation jutsu, which meant he preferred taijutsu; finally, he used Water Release on the ninjutsu front. There was no way for her to know everything about him but Amami knew it was enough to gain an advantage during combat.

"You can use genjutsu to silence him," she answered, starting another conversation to make him understand line of thinking, "like you did with the old woman at the samurai's house."

"The paralysis worked as well as it did because she was a civilian." Thirteen shook his head. "This is a samurai with chakra training. My control over the genjutsu will not be anywhere as strong as it was on the old madam."

"So you can't paralyse him?" She sighed. It was her way of subtly challenging him.

In the short time they knew each other, she noticed he did not like it when she would speak down to him—nobody did. Thirteen, however, happened to be the sort of person who would do something about it. He was quick to bite back when someone assumed things about him. His usual bland tongue would sharpen and he'd throw a dig of his own instead of calmly explaining that he could.

She wanted to smile when Thirteen's eyes narrowed.

"I can do it," he said.

"Are you sure?"

"I just said that I can do it—keep up."

"Great, it's decided then."

Amami wasn't being reckless by ignoring the risk that Thirteen might fail. Something told her that he had an appetite for risk and understood the value of the risk-reward equation. In the assassination, he decided to kill the target in the middle of a busy street—but all of his suggestions and opinions played it safe.

She realised it was because he didn't trust her and was compensating by choosing options that left room for mistakes—but in doing so, he made things needlessly complicated.

Amami was simply pushing him just enough that they could hit the sweet spot.

"...So, no qualms against someone just trying to make a living?" she asked him.

Amami was surprised at how clearly the scroll stated that the bounty on Ukuri's head was because she offended the Hidden Leaf. One would think the ANBU would try to sugarcoat it so the duo would feel better about killing her, but they had very bluntly put the situation before them.

It didn't change her mind or anything, but it warranted some introspection on her part.

"...They're testing us by being so straightforward," said Thirteen as though reading her mind. "They most probably want to see if we will complete the mission despite our feelings about the situation. They wouldn't want to hire someone whose personal views interfere with every mission."

"You will do anything as long as they say it's a test?" she asked, curious at how he'd rationalised such a thing. She had been involved in a couple of assassination missions where the target hadn't done anything averse to her and would even be considered innocent from certain points of view, but had he?

"Those who kill must be ready to be killed. The lives of us shinobi aren't valuable enough to warrant guilt or hesitation. Besides, by killing a shinobi, you rid the world of a killer—net positive in the end."

"That's a rather grim view of your own profession, of your own self, don't you think?" she asked. As a shinobi herself, she thought her life had immense value not only to herself but to a good crowd of people.

Thirteen didn't reply, and Amami didn't feel like she should push it.

"But if you kill a shinobi, wouldn't the number of killers stay the same?" she asked to move past the heaviness of the topic.

"Kill two then," he replied.

———

The moment twilight began, and the sky started to lighten, they infiltrated the property from the darkest portion of the boundary and slipped past the staff quarters. It was reasonable that some staff would wake up early to prepare for the day, so they had to be quick to keep their footprint minimum.

The plan was to exit after ten to twelve minutes.

The vigilant samurai patrolling his route suddenly heard a clicking sound from a few trees and thick bushes at a distance.

"Cricket?" he muttered to himself. It sounded off to him. Having been focused his entire shift, he strayed from his position momentarily and approached the trees to get a better listen.

As he approached, the sound got clearer and louder, and it became apparent that it wasn't a cricket but something else entirely.

Before the samurai could even get the chance to register suspicion, his body froze up, and he found himself paralysed, unable even to shift his weight over his legs. As the panic rose, Three emerged from the thick bushes and stabbed the man in his chest, almost instantly killing him. Not wasting any time, she dragged his body into the bushes, where Takuma helped her hide it before they swiftly closed in on the main building.

They had scouted the building for several hours but never had an indoor view of the main building; as such, they couldn't be sure that there weren't samurai stationed inside. However, it was unlikely for someone on guard duty to not step out for fresh air or stretch their legs in the time they had been observing.

With that assumption, they entered the building through an open door. They remained cautious and quiet in case their assumption turned out to be false. Fortunately, the house seemed empty, with no guard presence.

The next problem was to find the target's bedroom. As they traversed the house, they had to be utterly silent to prevent alerting the samurai outside and the Ukuri. As the minutes passed, the tension between the duo rose until, five minutes later, they found the bedroom.

As Takuma grabbed the handle to pull the sliding door open, Three stopped him and gestured for him to step aside, after which she inspected the door. He didn't know what she was doing and simply observed as she took out a rigid wire and slipped it between the gap in the door to check if it was bobby-trapped.

Clear, she gestured.

Takuma nodded and took out a kunai as Three slowly opened the door. The room had no bed-frame bed, and Ukuri had pulled her futon away from the door and was facing the door.

The moment Takuma entered the room, he threw his kunai for her throat.

Three looked surprised at his sudden action—but it was the right choice as Ukuri's eyes snapped open an instant before the kunai hit her but she had no time to react to the kunai tearing through her throat.

Three reacted quickly and rushed towards Ukuri while she was still in shock and unable to even think, much less do anything directly to defend herself. She finished her off with a stab to the heart, Ukuri's hand trembled as she went for Three's mask, drawing on it with her blood. The strength left her fingers, and her arm went limp as life extinguished inside her body.

Takuma used a dagger to remove Ukuri's middle and ring finger from the base as proof of assassination for the bounty office. The most preferred proof was the entire body or the head—which would get them the money the quickest as the verification could be done on the spot—but they didn't care about the money, and the risk of carrying an entire body without a storage scroll was too much.

"Let's go," Takuma whispered as he bagged the fingers.

They left the estate without alerting the guards just as the sun became visible over the horizon and immediately split up with the plan to rendezvous at the bounty office .

Twenty minutes later, Takuma entered the bounty office located within a single-storey building. The office itself was built in the basement and accessible from the outside. The plain, white-painted metal pipe railings along the concrete steps leading to the green heavy metal gates set the tone.

If Takuma had to describe the interior, it would be— all function, zero form.

The interior was a reception area with not a single piece of furniture possessing aesthetic purpose. The reception desk looked like it was from another era. There were three types of mismatched waiting chairs without a care for uniformity and even the wall posters existed solely for instructional reasons.

Takuma stepped to the reception desk and rang the bell. There were two doors behind the desk—a single-panel door and a double-panel door—which closed off the rest of the building from the reception. Thirty seconds later, a stout man exited the single door with a bored expression. He looked at Takuma, and the blood on him made him click his tongue with unhidden dissatisfaction.

"Do you want to claim or register a bounty?" he asked.

"Claim."

"Name or reference number?"

"Kinohei Ukuri."

The man curled a brow when he heard the name, but it went back down almost immediately. "What proof do you have?"

"Two fingers."

"Show me. Don't put them on the table," said the man quickly.

Takuma held the fingers in the small pouch and put it in the man's gloved hand, who then took out one and gazed at it for a moment. "I can only issue the reward after I have confirmed the kill. It will take a week. After I confirm it, you can collect your reward." The man reached into his pocket and took out a token. It was stamped in the middle, surrounded by a blue-coloured outer ring. "Bring this back in a week and not a day before. You can show up a year later for all I care—but you need this token. Anyone who has this token will be given the reward."

"Understood," said Takuma as he put the token into one of his pockets. "Anything else?"

"No, nothing."

Takuma turned around and left without another word.

He was nervous as he stepped out. He feared that someone would be waiting to catch him—but he breathed a sigh of relief when the street was as empty as it should have been.

He caught a glimpse of Three on the edge of the street before she disappeared, which meant the situation was clear.

He weaved hand seals for the Body Flicker Jutsu and did the same himself.

———

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Chapitre 313: CH_8.48 (313)

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———

Agando Morosumu, a.k.a Four, felt a bead of sweat slip down his face. He sat in a restaurant with food before him, but had no appetite because he was in the middle of a task, and his target was aware of his presence.

Two tables down, he could feel three men glancing at him. One of them had a bounty target on his head that the ANBU wanted him to reap and claim with his partner. They had been following their target since the morning he had left his house, and somewhere along the line, he noticed.

Speaking of his partner, Ten was sitting opposite him, eating three men's worth of food without a care in the world, as though he had come to the restaurant to eat and not because their target entered it.

"Is this really okay?" he asked with a gulp.

The muscled man with a glorious afro raised a finger, gesturing to him to wait a moment as he finished chewing his food.

"You sure are one worrisome fellow, Four. Like I've been saying, it's fine," he stretched his words. "And look at that; you haven't touched your food. You better hurry up and eat before they leave."

"They're suspicious, Ten," Four whispered.

"I know, and it works well for us," said Ten as he munched on a leg piece.

"What if he decides to hide to avoid us? It's the last day; we will be screwed!" said Four.

Their other two tasks had gone exceptionally well; they had sabotaged some machinery in a samurai-guarded factory as their first task, and then they had kidnapped a man and delivered him to a designated place where a woman asked them to wait for an hour—after which, she came out with one of his kidneys that they delivered to a sprawling mansion.

Four closed his eyes and covered his face at the memory. He didn't know the man, but had done something terrible to him. He tried to console himself that perhaps the man had consented to donate his kidney—but that excuse was shot down internally almost immediately—if the man had consented, why would he need to be kidnapped?

Since yesterday, the thought he had done something terrible to an innocent man would not leave him be. To make things worse, they had picked him up near his house, so they knew he had a family—two energetic boys and a loving wife.

Four glanced at Ten, who had been extremely pissed when he realised what he was part of. Despite his tall, muscular stature and intense features, Ten had a friendly face and gave out a relaxed vibe—but the moment they found out why they had kidnapped the man, he went deathly silent and looked like he was ready to kill.

Four was worried that he would do something reckless, but Ten opted to finish the task before returning to the woman who had removed the man's kidney. She told them that she had returned the man to his house—which they confirmed to be true. The man was alive and back with his family.

It was the only silver lining of the whole ordeal.

Ten was back to normal in the morning, but Four could tell he didn't want to discuss it.

"We will automatically fail our task," Four stressed.

"Well, you're not wrong. If he shakes us off, they might go into hiding," said Ten, freaking him out.

"Then—!"

"But these guys aren't going to do that."

"What makes you so sure?"

"They would've already made a run for it," said Ten as he ate. "This is the type that believes in solving the problem instead of running away from it. I'm as sure as I can be that they're planning to confront and kill us."

"Fuck that," said Four, rolling his eyes. He wasn't going to die on a recruitment test. He was more concerned with failing the recruitment.

"Killing us would give them time to decide what they want to do next. You saw that house, it was prime real estate; no one would abandon a place like that. Moreover, killing us will send a signal to others that it's dangerous to go after them. And in case they do want to change their base, killing us gives them time to set their affairs in order."

"So why haven't they done anything yet?"

"The same reason we haven't done anything yet.." Ten's eyes wandered for a moment. "I think they're done with their prep, though... get ready for action, Four."

The three men, their target among them, walked past their table. Neither side glanced at the other despite being acutely aware of what they had come to do.

"See? You should've eaten when you had the chance. Let's go now. It's time for action," Ten got up and patted him on his shoulder.

Four looked at his untouched plate and sighed as he left the table and followed Ten. They followed the three men through the city for an hour, taking them to the city's edge. Their surroundings turned to an underdeveloped outskirt with farmland and dull factories in the distance with no people in sight.

It was the perfect place to fight and kill without gaining attention.

"Nice going! This place is perfect," Ten addressed the three men.

Four had his lips pressed into a line because they were at a numbers disadvantage with two against three. Even though they only had a single target, they had to face three men. The Fugazo Triplets were a mercenary trio trained in shinobi arts who hadn't been part of any shinobi village—having learned their craft from ex-shinobi.

They operated mostly in the Land of Wind but had moved to the Land of Fire after they caught too much heat from the Hidden Sand and the Wind Daimyo's samurai. Their bounty's sponsor was hidden, but the information from ANBU claimed that it was the Wind samurai.

Making only one of them a target felt like ANBU jerking them around.

"Which one of you is Fugazo Ren?" Ten asked straightforwardly.

The three men were identical to the point where they felt like clones rather than triplets. The only defining feature was their gear, which, while also identical, had some quirks, but that didn't help them identify which one of the triplets was their target.

Which meant they had to kill all three to be sure they had their target.

Or we could kill one and claim him to be our target, thought Four, but Ten filed the idea as a last option, opting to kill the right target before resorting to what he deemed as a last-ditch effort.

As expected, the triplets didn't respond. They were known to take all of their jobs together and were considered a package deal—marking one of the triplets was the same as going after all three.

"We only want Fugazo Ren," said Four, giving it a try. "The other two are free to leave."

In response, the triplets took out identical twin axes strapped to their backs.

"Shit," Four cursed as he took out a kunai, and it felt inadequate. His main weapon was a machete, but the ANBU had taken away all of his gear before the recruitment test started.

We should've planned an ambush or just blew their home up, Four thought.

Ten raised his massive hand and slapped Four's back.

"Don't be nervous, Four. My aunt says I'm not a guy with a great head on my shoulders, and she's not wrong. I'm not suited for smart stuff like iryojutsu or fuinjutsu, nor do I have the imagination for genjutsu… but when it comes to fighting, I'm really good at it, so don't worry so much—"

Ten disappeared with a strong gust of wind, startling Four—and the triplets too because when he reappeared, he was standing behind them.

He was so fast that no one could keep track of him.

The triplets moved in unison, surrounding Ten as they swung their axes at him with identical movements and tempo.

"—I'll make quick work of this miserable lot and we can move on, 'kay?" Ten smiled as siblings approached him.

———

Amami explored the abandoned ruins of a factory that would be used as the meeting point for the exchange. The building looked like it hadn't been used in years, and the surrounding area was similarly empty and abandoned.

The perfect location for an illicit deal.

She heard footsteps and turned back to see Thirteen pacing about. Usually, he would go on about the plan and details, but he had been silent since they had reached the factory. There was no change in his expression, but she could tell that something about the location made him uncomfortable.

"Found anything?" she asked.

"Nothing at all," he replied in a slightly quieter voice that echoed. "This place is big, but there's only one unobstructed entrance, so we can assume they will be near the entrance, but..."

"A trap would be too unreliable," she sighed.

Thirteen nodded.

The building was too long and wide for them to set up a reliable trap with limited provisions. Even if they stuck explosive tags on the ceiling and chained them up with steel wire to run chakra through to trigger the tags, there was no telling that they would be near the entrance and not somewhere else.

"It's better to just chuck the tags at them," he said.

"Agreed."

Seeing that the goods to be traded were explosive tags, shinobi were sure to be present among the two parties. They were sure to be outnumbered and thus had to rely on traps to gain an advantage.

A silence hung between them the moment the topic ended. The vibe from Thirteen seemed like he didn't want to be there, which made Amami curious, but she had no way to ask what he was thinking. She could be shameless and ask but didn't think he would answer.

"You have the bounty token, right?" she asked.

"I have it," Thirteen showed her a familiar metal token with a blue lip.

Amami had been to a bounty office a couple of times, and from what she knew about others, all bounty offices used the exact same tokens. "Give it to me; I'll keep it safe. That's going to be the proof we will have to show," she said, moving forward to take the token.

If the task had just been an assassination, the token wouldn't have mattered, but the task included claiming the bounty, which made the token important as proof that they had completed the task.

Thirteen pulled his hand back and put the token into one of his zipper pouches. "It's safe with me; don't worry about it," he said.

Amami thought about it for a moment before letting it go. "Alright, but don't lose it. It would be terrible if my performance suffers because you lost the token," she said. Thirteen had proven himself capable enough that she could trust him with the token.

"Don't worry." Thirteen nodded. "As for your performance, you're my teammate right now. I wouldn't let anyone on my team suffer. Either we both make it, or I go down with you—and because failing isn't an option, we'll both pass."

"Oh my, are you finally warming up to me, my dear Thirteen?" Amami joked with a sly grin. "I will give it seven points. It would've been nine if you said you would ensure I pass even if it meant failing yourself."

Thirteen rolled his eyes at her and walked away.

Amami giggled behind her hand.

What Thirteen said was true. They were teammates, so taking care of each other was par for the course and she wasn't the one to answer good with evil. As long as someone treated her well, she would return the favour.

———

There was a knock on the door to a large office that looked like it belonged to someone in a high-ranking position.

"Come in."

A young man stepped in with an urgent look. "Sir, we just got time-sensitive information. The rumoured weapon deal involving the Bedrock group was just confirmed. The deal is happening in the city right now! We might have a chance to catch them if we hurry!"

"Is the source reliable?"

"We have no confirmation, but the source has been reliable thus far."

"...Very well, alert the team. We move out in ten minutes," said Zakahira Nozan as he stood up from the desk in his workspace office. His house had been robbed, but he had no leads on who the robbers were—and that bothered him to no end.

"You're coming along, sir?"

"Yes, I'm feeling very frustrated; this might be the perfect opportunity to blow off some steam..."

———

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