章 308: CH_8.43 (308)
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———
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The Zakahira estate was abuzz with commotion. The house of a high-ranking samurai was robbed in broad daylight. For that to happen in the Ember Imperial City was astounding, and the news was bound to spread throughout the city by the following day.
A man with long salt-and-pepper hair dressed in a black montsuki stood in the study and stared at the empty spot where the framed daggers hung before they were robbed. He was Zakahira Mahachi, the family's patriarch and a high-ranking samurai whose wife had been held hostage in his own home. He held his sheathed sword in his left hand and flicked the hilt guard with his thumb—with each flick, the sword would jump an inch out of the scabbard before sliding back down.
A pair of nervous and fearful guards with their clothes drenched in sweat walked behind him. The robbery had happened under their nose. They recognised the flicking habit. It only appeared when he was displeased enough to want to use his sword on something or someone.
He left the office where the guard who had been knocked out during the robbery was waiting. The guard immediately knelt and pressed his head to the floor.
"What did you see?" Mahachi asked. He didn't ask the guard to raise his head.
"I... Not much, my liege. The masked man knocked me out before I could do anything." The guard pursed his lips. "I didn't... I didn't even see the mistress or the other woman. If I hadn't been taken by surprise, I would've—!"
"There are no ifs or buts, only your failure. Reflect on it until I declare your punishment," said Mahachi.
After tracing the robber's path, he returned to the room where his family was gathered. His wife was sitting on a floor chair in the corner with a blanket over his legs as she talked with the inspector about the robbers.
"Is there anything else you can remember about them?" the inspector asked.
"Unfortunately, that's all I can remember at the moment," said Aifumi apologetically.
The inspector pursed his lips. It was only for a moment, but he had a look of dissatisfaction and disappointment, which he hid quickly—but not fast enough for it to slip past the eyes of the young man standing beside her.
"She told you everything she knows; it's your damn job to make do with it!"
The young man had the same strong jaw and square face as Mahachi and resembled him during his youth, only with softer features, which he had inherited from his mother. He was Zakahira Nozan, Mahachi's eldest son, a samurai. He was fully dressed in his red samurai armour with his sword prominently hanging by his side.
The inspector looked uncomfortable. Even Aifumi sighed as her hand went to her temple.
"There's no need to raise your voice, Nozan. You are scaring your child," said Mahachi without hiding his disapproval.
Nozan looked guilty when he saw his daughter's face on the verge of tears and his wife's disapproving look while she soothed the little infant.
Mahachi went to his wife and knelt by her side. "Does your head hurt, my dear?" he asked.
Aifumi shook her head. "Nothing to be concerned about."
Mahachi knew she had the tendency to reduce her suffering, especially when she was in the presence of their family. He gently held her wrist and injected a minute sliver of chakra into her system to regulate the natural flow of chakra that an external force had disrupted.
A shinobi's genjutsu, he thought with a bitter taste in his mouth.
She was a civilian without an ounce of chakra training, and being faced with a foreign chakra in her system had some effect on her. When they married, he tried to convince her to train her chakra to gain a tool of protection no matter how small, but she refused, saying that she didn't need it because she had him to protect her.
It was flattering—but he was regretting not pushing more. If there was any silver lining, it was that he had drilled basic chakra training into their daughter so she could protect herself when she left home.
"From the looks of it all, I believe it's safe to say it was a shinobi," said the inspector as he flipped through his notes.
"Or someone trained in shinobi's jutsu." Mahachi stood up. "Do not limit your search radius to known shinobi in the city. You must look into everyone who might be trained in shinobi arts."
"Yes, sir," the inspector nodded.
Mahachi didn't expect much from the inspector. He was planning to have the case transferred under the samurai's authority so they could be handled by someone better equipped to handle those trained in chakra. It was clear that the duo who had invaded his house were trained. They had come into his house for one thing and took only that; if it was an amateur's work, he expected them to get greedy for other valuables in his study. His wife's hairpin itself would have earned the thieves a small fortune.
"Use your informants to look into fences in the city and see whether they have requests for shinobi artefacts. The stolen daggers are bound to appear on the market."
Even though Mahachi had no authority, the inspector took his words as orders. It was foolish to defy a samurai of Mahachi's calibre and influence.
"Green and grey gear with painted masks. Do you recognise any group or individual who wears that specific configuration?" Mahachi turned to his son.
"...Not anyone I can pinpoint off the top of my head," said Nozan with a sour look.
"Maybe they're from outside the city," Mahachi commented as he pulled his sword halfway through and stared at his eyes in the blade's reflection. "Whoever it is, they will die by my blade for thinking about soiling a thread on my wife's clothes."
———
Seven and Fourteen stood on the roof of a doll assembly workshop, looking across the street at a large carpet factory holding one of their targets. They had to retrieve a ledger keeping record of transactions tied to the illegal trade of chakra metal stolen from official sources.
According to the information in the scroll, the ledger was inside the factor's owner's office. It was a nondescript black leather hardback..
Fourteen, Azugimoto Etomi, observed the view before her, mapping the entry and exits points along with possible chokepoints and obstacles in case of a hot exit. Seven knelt beside her on one knee, watching something she couldn't imagine. The flared veins around his temple were the only evidence that he was using his Byakugan.
The Hyuuga's Byukugan made Etomi just as fascinated as it did uncomfortable. They had scouted the place for two hours. Not nearly enough time, in Etomi's opinion, but it was made possible through the Byakugan. Seven's findings had allowed Etomi to create a terrifyingly accurate map of the entire building.
"Eight of them are not civilians," said Seven.
The carpet factory was an authentic front with real workers that worked on real carpets, but there were others there who did no work and just sat around.
"Mark them with numbers," said Etomi, handing the factory's three-level map. "Hey, how sure are you that they're not civilians?"
"One hundred per cent," said Seven as he marked the map with the combatants. "No civilian carries as many weapons on their body as these people."
"...Makes sense." Etomi was thankful that she was a Leaf shinobi and that Seven was on her team.
"Are you ready?" Seven asked as he got up, his eyes still trained on the factory.
Etomi gave the map one last look. "Yeah, I think I've got it."
The duo shared specialities; they both had prior experience with infiltration, but Etomi was formulating the optimal route based on Seven's information. He was going to lead because of his vision, but she was the one who set the overall route.
"Do you understand everything?" she asked after explaining the route and the contingencies in case they were spotted.
"Yes, I'm ready. Let's go," Seven said, the veins around his eyes becoming more pronounced.
She nodded, and both of them put on their masks. A minute later, they were standing before the doll assembly workshop and started walking towards the factory with Seven in the lead and Etomi following his exact steps. They were walking right towards the factory's front entrance, something she would never have done, but Seven had said the entrance gave them the most access—and that they could enter without getting seen.
He gestured as they neared the welded chain link gate.. Etomi overtook him and opened the smaller gate within the larger gate soundlessly, using a niche D-rank jutsu that covered the door's hinges, bolts, knobs, locks—any moving part, really—in chakra, acting as a temporary lubricant.
Etomi entered first and immediately walked up the wall on the left. There was an office window above them on the wall, but it was locked from the inside. She weaved a quick sequence of hand seals, and a needle of wind chakra appeared from her fingertip. The wind needle cut through a section of glass, removing a uniform square using chakra adhesion to access the window latch.
The office was covered in shadow, giving them cover from the people in the building. Seven looked through the building with his Byakugan and updated the location of the people on the first floor for Etomi's benefit.
"Six has moved to the other end of the hallway. Two and Three left the room and are now on the ground floor," he said.
"Noted," she replied as she updated her mental map. "Proceed without change."
Seven retook the lead. He opened the door to the office but didn't exit. The corridor before them was open and visible from the ground floor to all workers. Their location was a door across the corridor, leading to the back section of the was also another office on the other side with a huge window and a wide view of the factory floor used by the factory manager, who was currently down on the factory floor.
Seven took a large bolt he had picked out from outside and chucked it down at a set of iron pipes leaning against the wall on the factory floor. As intended, the iron pipes fell to the ground, catching absolutely everyone's attention.
While everyone was looking at the pipes, two shinobi walked through the corridor and entered the back section.
"One is currently at the water cooler; he has two large bottles."
"Got it."
They proceed through the floor silently. Etomi had done her fair share of infiltrations, and they usually involved a lot of hiding, waiting around, slow movement, and looking around each corner—but what they were doing was unlike anything she had ever experienced. They were all but strolling through a building she usually would only break into at night when no one was around because of the sheer number of people in a comparatively small space.
But the ledger would mov to an inaccessible location past the evening time, so they had to do it during work hours. But because of Seven, they could just walk because he knew where everyone was and where they were looking.
The water cooler was around the corner, where one of the guards was filling water bottles. With Seven in the lead, they casually entered the janitor's closet in the hallway and closed the door. Five seconds later, the guard walked past the closet; five seconds after that, the duo exited and continued their walk through the building. Etomi was almost terrified because her experience told her they needed to slow down and be more careful, but her partner's all-seeing eyes guaranteed they wouldn't be seen—it was a fresh experience.
They reached the owner's locked office, but Etomi's lock-picking skills made short work of the door.
"Switch the lights on," said Etomi as she bee-lined to the vault-safe behind a painting. They didn't know if the correct ledger was in there because there were at least a dozen leather registers all over the office, but they assumed that with the owner away, they would lock it up.
Seven drew the blinds and turned on the lights.
Etomi laid down her picking tools and went to work on the lock mechanism.
"Six to seven minutes," she said. Seven couldn't describe the type of vault in the office, so she wasn't able to give him a specific time.
"Noted."
A minute and a half into her attempt to pick the vault, Seven said, "I'm turning the lights off."
Etomi stopped and held still as the room went dark, and someone walked past the hallway outside the office. Ten seconds later, the lights were back on, and Etomi returned to work. It happened once more at the four-minute mark.
"Are you done?" asked Seven as he checked the registers around the office.
Etomi frowned, "I told you not to ask me that."
"... I think the owner is back," he said as he looked through the building, "and he has three more non-civilians with him. We must leave now, or we must fight our way out." Neither of them wanted that; it would cause too much commotion and have people on their tail.
"I'm done!" Etomi said as the vault opened with a click.
There were three identical black registers in the safe. Etomi hastily flipped to the specified page and checked the last three entries.
"Found it! Let's go!" said Etomi as she quickly put things back where they were and closed the vault.
The moment they left the office, Seven stopped outside,
"Exit routes A and B are now both blocked... We either hide until they're open or fight our way out."
After she had opened the vault, Etomi's mind was racing at full speed. She recalled the map she had drawn and the people in the building.
"Tell me where the eight guards are right now," she said.
———
Hyuuga Kojuro was doubtful if he should waste time telling Fourteen where everyone was when they could choose a hiding spot, especially when the owner had just finished addressing the workers and was heading up to his office.
"There's no time," he said.
"Has Three moved from his spot?" she asked.
"No, he has not. Let's go hide."
Fourteen ignored him and asked, "Is Eight still near the staircase?"
"No, he's now on the corridor above the factory floor," he grabbed her hand and pulled her along.
"What about Two? Is he still sitting with the view of the corner? Can we take the window out in the room next to his?"
Kojuro wasn't going to answer, but his vision instinctively went to the route she described and was surprised to find that it was a viable exit route if not for Two, who would see them. That route was previously closed because Eight directly blocked it, but it had become open when he moved.
"No, he will see us." He still pulled her to a hiding spot but gave her a reply.
"Where's Six?" asked Fourteen.
"He's back to his original position."
"Check this. We take the back staircase, sprint past Six—he won't be able to see us from his position—and then take the back emergency exit on the factory floor. It's not visible, right?"
Kojuro mapped the right and stopped from the hiding spot because he found Fourteen's route open. They could leave the building without anyone seeing them.
"It's open. We must hurry," he said while pushing her in the opposite direction.
The two hastily followed the route, barely slipped the guard numbered 'Six', and reached the emergency exit at the back. Only half a wall separated them from a group of workers, who could move toward them at any time, as the back was also used as storage.
The emergency exit was locked from the inside with a heavy-duty lock. He stepped aside, thinking Fourteen would pick it up with her tools, but she hit the lock with the back of a kunai, and it unlocked. It was loud, but the machinery was louder.
He looked at her in surprise,
"Not a very good lock, this specific model," she whispered as she slipped out of the partially opened door.
They sprinted and used the Body Flicker Jutsu to cover distance until the factory was no longer in sight.
On a rooftop, Kojuro gazed at his partner sitting on the floor, reading the ledger without a hint of emotion on her face, as though all that had happened was a normal day. Because of his eyes, he knew the building and people's location better than her, but having more information was not the same as being able to use it. He was sure if he had looked, he would've been able to find the escape route, but he didn't think he would've been as fast as her.
Not only that, but she continued to look, even though he didn't think it was worth the risk. When they found that they had an asset retrieval task, he thought he would do all the work because that would be the best use of their resources. He had allowed Fourteen to do the planning to foster teamwork but was ready to reject her ideas if they were terrible.
But he had to admit... Fourteen had made equal contributions on an infiltration task with a Hyuuga teammate, something that almost never happened.
"Absolutely splendid work, Fourteen," he said, a rare impressed smile on his face.
"Huh? Thank you," she said, closing the ledger and standing up. "Let's see if we can complete another task before sunset."
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———
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