章 25: Ch25. The seal inspection
After breakfast, Keigo still had something to do so Ren had to wait for him until lunch before they finally left to inspect the detection seals.
It sounded important. The detection seal system. But it was far less impressive than it sounded. Which was why nobody was rushing Ren to go and have a look at it.
It was just one component of the border security here and it wasn't even all that effective. The regular patrols with sensor ninjas probably caught more intruders than these seals. Especially since the seals were in the forest a few kilometers away from the shoreline.
But it was like locking the door to the house after already locking the gate. It simply added a bit more security.
The security seals send a signal to the master seal at the border base whenever somebody with a genin-level chakra or more passes near them. But their range is only around fifty meters and unfortunately, there are quite large gaps between the seal placements.
The border was just too wide to have these seals every fifty meters so they were only in key spots. Plus, it was obvious to Ren that they were painted by a single person so probably not many in the Barrier Corps could create them, which limited how many could Konoha put near each border base.
It also showed how stretched thin the Barrier Corps were to send a fresh chunin for this maintenance run. But he wouldn't complain. There were some benefits for him from it.
When Ren saw the first detection seal, he instantly had several ideas on how to improve them, but he didn't act on it. If he did so, the Konoha's higher-ups would definitely have him run all around the Land of Fire's border, adjusting every single one of these seals to be better.
It would take him years. No. This was not the time to show off. This was the time to shut up and do his job and only his job.
He would keep his ideas and create something for himself based on them later on.
"So, how are things back in Konoha?" Keigo asked after Ren checked the tenth seal and they were on their way to the eleventh, probably bored out of his mind.
They were supposed to stay silent and on guard but the man was a genuine chatterbox and clearly found it hard.
Ren shrugged, "I don't know. The same as always? Peaceful? The village is preparing for sure but the overall atmosphere did not change."
"That's good." Keigo happily smiled, "I really wish this conflict would end soon. Sitting in the border base all day is boring. Can't wait to get back home, ya know?"
"Somebody waiting for you?" Ren teased.
Keigo rubbed his nose in embarrassment, "Hehe. I have a childhood sweetheart back in Konoha. I miss her."
"That's nice." It really was. Ren was happy for him.
"She didn't agree to go out with me yet, but..." Keigo awkwardly turned his head away from Ren, making his lips twitch.
"Say no more. Let me guess." Ren rubbed his chin, pretending to be deep in thought before he deadpanned, "She doesn't know she is your childhood sweetheart."
It frankly wouldn't surprise him with how the man acted.
"Low blow." Keigo huffed, "But no. I... I didn't ask her out yet. I wanted to! But I kinda chickened out, hehe." He blushed before his shoulders slumped, "Haa~, I feel like a loser. But! I'll ask her out the second I return from this mission. I already made up my mind."
They walked in silence for a few moments because Ren genuinely didn't know what to say next. Fortunately, Keigo wasn't short for words.
"What about you? Anybody waiting for you back home?" He asked, making Ren's eyebrows furrow as he considered the answer.
"... not really? I am tutoring two academy students back in Konoha but I don't think that counts."
"Hmm... female students?" Keigo threw Ren a mischievous grin.
But Ren just rolled his eyes at the manchild, "Does it matter?"
"Yes." Keigo sagely nodded.
"They are girls." Ren dryly said.
"Uhu." Keigo's grin widened, "And do you want to have sex with them?"
Ren didn't expect such a blunt question. Not even from Keigo. So, it almost made him miss his next step. After finding his balance, he turned toward Keigo and retorted, "They are fourteen."
"That's not a no." Keigo helpfully informed Ren with a small shrug, making Ren snort.
"Fuck you."
"I am straight." Keigo casually shook his head in refusal.
Ren threw him an irritated look and muttered under his nose, "Could have fooled me."
"Still not a no." Keigo reminded Ren in a sing-song voice, making Ren sigh in exasperation.
"You need Jesus." Ren said, speeding up his walking speed and leaving Keigo slightly behind.
Keigo owlishly blinked, "Who?"
Quickly catching up with Ren, Keigo decided to change the topic, probably recognizing he was pushing a little bit too far into Ren's comfort zone with his teasing, "Anyway, we should totally go out for drinks back home. I can introduce you to a few chicks."
Ren glanced at him, noticing that he was actually serious right now, and slightly smiled. "I thought you were the guy who had problems confessing to your childhood friend? How come you know 'chicks'? Are there a lot of chicken coops near your house?"
Keigo just waved the question off, "Hmm... looking at you, you will need somebody who can take the reins. A dominatrix perha-"
Alright. He wasn't as serious as Ren thought.
Ren's fist sprang up and almost smashed into Keigo's shoulder but the man barely managed to jump back while shouting, "Otto! Hey! What was that for?"
"I'll show you dominatrix. I'll tie you up and leave you inside the Land of Earth borders if you try that." Ren threatened in a light-hearted tone.
"You don't need to go that far. I was just joking, bro." Keigo pouted and petulantly crossed his arms on his chest.
"Right. Because I am sure if I let you set up a blind date for me, Anko Mitarashi would totally not show up, yeah?" Ren retorted with a small amused smirk.
He did contemplate for a moment if it would be worth it. He was interested in Orochimaru's cursed seal but meeting a psycho like Anko... Ren wasn't very enthusiastic about it.
"You know me so well already?" Keigo interrupted Ren's thoughts, "You really are my brother from another mother!"
Ren blinked at that, finding it hard to believe Keigo said this to him. "You said the same thing to the guard just three hours ago. Right in front of me." He dryly said, giving Keigo a disbelieving look.
"Well... it works?" Keigo awkwardly defended, rubbing the back of his head while his cheeks slightly flushed from embarrassment.
Ren would bet the man forgot he said the same thing to the guard.
"Anyway, we are almost there. That detection seal is definitely faulty." Keigo seriously said, switching the topic and trying to pretend the previous few seconds did not happen.
Ren contemplated for a moment if he should tease him further but seeing the nervous look in his brown eyes, he decided to cut him some slack.
"How'd you know?" He asked, focusing on the faulty seal instead.
"I tried crossing near it but apparently, nothing was noticed back at the base. It clearly doesn't work." Keigo said as they approached a big rock reaching up to Ren's torso, sitting in the middle of the forest among the trees. "It's on the rock."
They came closer to the rock and Ren put his palm on it, pulsing his chakra in a specific way to... the seal suddenly appeared on the rock and Ren frowned.
More than faulty, it looked disru-
His eyes instantly widened as his ears caught a slight noise from behind and he jumped away from the rock, not even having enough time to shout out a warning for Keigo as swishing sounds passed the place he stood at just a split second ago.
Ren landed horizontally on a tree trunk in a crouch and looked back toward the rock, only to grimace in sadness as he saw Keigo riddled with several kunai handles deep in various parts of his body.
The one going straight through the middle of his neck was definitely fatal even if he somehow miraculously survived the others.
Releasing a sad breath, Ren glanced around the treetops and noticed four ninjas, all wearing a blank ANBU mask, making Ren curse under his nose but he didn't have the time to complain as he quickly had to jump away from the tree he stood on before a fireball smashed into it.
---
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章 26: Ch26. Ambush
Ren gritted his teeth as he barely evaded another kunai and cursed himself for getting careless. Keigo was so easy-going that Ren had to ashamedly admit it rubbed on him. He didn't even create a shadow clone to shadow him before he started to inspect the seals!
So, he now had to fight on an unprepared battlefield and if he created a shadow clone now, his enemies would instantly notice and be wary. He needed to be out of sight for that move to be effective.
Another ninja suddenly appeared behind Ren, slashing his tanto at his back. With no other choice, Ren pulsed his chakra outward while refining it into wind chakra and suddenly, a wave of slightly pressurized air blew everything around Ren away from him, the attacking ninja included.
It was a variant of wind release breakthrough technique but because the wind wasn't released in one direction, it wasn't concentrated enough to cause injuries. So, Ren's attacker just somersaulted in the air and landed on his feet a few meters away, ready to jump again at Ren.
Having now five ninjas surround him instead of four made Ren inwardly groan but he suspected there was still one or two hiding. It was a standard tactic to show a part of the assassination team, lulling the target into a false sense of security as the hiding members struck from the shadows.
Ren connected a chakra string with a tree trunk six meters to his left and managed to slingshot his body out of the trajectory of water bullet jutsu that instead crashed into the tree that was behind Ren a moment ago, cracking its bark as Ren once again landed in a crouch on a tree. This time, however, he instantly jumped toward one of his assailants while throwing a kunai at another.
The one Ren tried to engage pulled out tanto just as Ren's kunai was parried by his other target... but barely before Ren reached his opponent, the kunai the other ninja parried exploded with a resounding boom, painting the ground and the surrounding trees with his blood and torn pieces of his body from the metal shrapnel.
Ren didn't hesitate and instead of pressing on with his attack, he used the moment to jump back into the canopy, disappearing into it.
As he landed, he noticed with a backward glance that under the spot he stood a rock spike suddenly burst from the ground and a bead of sweat appeared on his brow as he realized how close to death he was.
If he pressed on with the attack, he would have gotten skewered. If he tried to sink into the ground as he for a moment thought of doing, he wouldn't have made it, and his upper body would have sported a new unwanted hole by now.
These fiv-, Ren noticed that none of the remaining four ninjas around had their hands joined in hand seals and the guy splattered around the forest ground in pieces certainly wasn't the source of the rock spike either.
These six ninjas were clearly a highly trained assassination squad. Their teamwork was impeccable and their attacks covered each other's blind spots. They were at least low-level jonins too.
Ren didn't need to wonder who sent them. Danzo's face appeared in Ren's mind. Then again, there was a non-zero chance that these six ninjas were indeed from Kiri and Ren was just at the wrong place at the wrong time.
It wasn't just Danzo's goons that wore blank masks. The anime used that to differentiate them but in reality, even regular ANBU from Konoha and other villages wore blank masks when on secret missions.
But somehow, Ren doubted this was a Kiri operation despite the fact the six were dressed the part.
From his hiding place, Ren saw one of the ninjas point his finger toward him just as two others had their hands flickering through various hand seals.
'Oh, shit! A sensor!?' Alarms rang through Ren's mind as the two ninjas finished their techniques and one spewed a wind bullet while the other used another fireball, both merging and becoming much stronger and bigger as they flew straight at Ren.
Knowing that using fire was a deliberate choice on their part because they saw him use wind, Ren didn't try to use a jutsu. He just threw another exploding kunai at the fireball and used the ensuing explosion to block it.
But Ren's opponents were too experienced to believe the fireball would be enough. Before he could counter-attack, he had already a hail of shuriken flying at him.
Jumping down from the canopy to avoid them, Ren threw a kunai at the ground in between the ninjas. They didn't fall for it. Knowing what happened to their late comrade, they didn't try to block it and simply jumped away.
It gave Ren the necessary seconds to start his counter-attack.
One of the ninjas, the sensor, evaded the kunai by jumping closer to Ren and that proved fatal to him when Ren appeared behind him and smacked an exploding tag right on the middle of his back before sinking into the ground.
The man clearly panicked and tried to take his vest off but Ren deliberately made that particular tag have a short fuse. The man wasn't even halfway done with undressing when it exploded and his body was ripped into bloody confetti of bones and pieces of meat.
Three seconds later, Ren burst from the ground under another enemy, the kunai in his hand aiming to burrow itself into the man's thigh to sever a major artery. But his attack was prevented when the hiding ninja, the one that used the rock spike, also appeared from the ground, his tanto blocking Ren's kunai before trying to send him flying away with a kick.
Without the gravity seals, Ren was much faster, though and he was about to break the man's leg at the knee when he was forced to retreat because the other two remaining enemies regained their wits too quickly and were about to skewer him with shurikens.
Noticing the earth spike using ninja trying to use a jutsu again, Ren jumped into the air, barely managing to avoid an earth spike only for the man he failed to kill to spew a fireball at him.
Ren dodged the fireball by pushing his body further up into the air with an application of wind chakra, only to notice four kunai flying at him from his blind spot. They were already far too close and he didn't have prepared anything for substitution nor did he have the time to mold more wind chakra. There was no evading them.
Twisting his body in mid-air, Ren winced as a kunai buried itself deep in his shoulders, but he managed to barely avoid the other three lethal hits, getting only two bloody scratches, one across his right biceps while the other on his left thigh, while the last kunai didn't hit him at all.
It was much preferable to having them hit important organs or arteries.
Unfortunately, the slight distraction from pain caused Ren to react a moment too late, and the follow-up attack, a water bullet, smashed into his body that was still in the air and propelled him toward a tree.
Ren's back painfully impacted the tree and he felt a rib or two snapping. Managing to ignore the pain, Ren instantly sent a chakra string toward a nearby tree and used it to pull his body away, just in time to avoid the finishing move, a wind bullet that completely shredded the tree trunk he previously smashed into.
Ren twisted his body, grimacing as he smacked into a tree with his uninjured shoulder. Due to the haste, he couldn't control the force behind his chakra string so the landing was rough. But at least he was still alive.
He instantly threw a smoke bomb under him to gain a few precious seconds and put his hand on the tree trunk. A seal slowly spread from his fingers onto the tree in the span of three seconds, just as a wind from some wind-release jutsu blew the smoke away. Ren threw his body to the side, evading yet another salvo of kunai as he activated the seal.
It was a magnetic seal supposed to attract everything magnetic.
Ren had his gear sealed in storage seals so the only magnetic thing was his head protector but he had already stored that into a seal too. The other ninjas didn't have the same luxury and the seal affected them.
It disrupted their following attack as their bodies were yanked in the direction of the seal by all the kunai, shuriken, and tanto they had on their person.
The seal was too far away from them so the pull wasn't especially strong. At best, it brought Ren a few precious seconds as they stumbled but it was enough as he suddenly noticed a scroll flying through the air above the tree line and his lips widened into a relieved smile.
Feeling a pull of substitution, Ren didn't fight it and let it whisk him away as his body was substituted with a shadow clone he made underground after dealing with the sensor ninja.
He appeared some distance away from the battlefield, in time to see the sealing scroll his clone threw into the air burst open, sending a veritable storm of paper tags all around.
The four ninjas who had only just recovered from their stumbling due to magnetic pull only managed to widen their eyes as they were abruptly covered in exploding tags, the seals on the tags already glowing red...
Ren watched as the scenery in front of him exploded into uncountable flaming balls followed by booming sounds of explosions and he had to brace himself against a tree to not be thrown away by the ensuing wave of uncomfortably hot air that hit him, making him close his eyes on instinct.
For fifteen seconds, the world turned into a fiery loud hell.
When it was all over and Ren opened his eyes again, in the radius of fifty meters around the scroll, where the forest was full of trees, were now just numerous molten craters.
Ren flopped onto the ground with a groan, completely spent.
'Note to self. Make a finishing move that you can use with your body still in the blast zone.' He inwardly grumbled.
This move was supposed to be used just before he teleported with his transportation seal but his opponents didn't exactly give him twenty seconds to concentrate for the teleport to happen.
It was insane how coordinated they were and how little time to react they had given him. This was the hardest fight he had so far. It had shown him quite a few of his shortcomings. Fighting six jonins at once was definitely not a fun experience.
Ren leaned his back on a tree behind him and pulled out the kunai from his shoulders with a wince of pain. Now he just had to wait for the border patrol to come and carry him back to the base.
The explosions were surely noticed and a team was definitely on its way by now.
Ren just had to rest... and think how to screw Danzo's day for this after he returned to the village.
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