บท 52: Ambush At Dusk

"This is a bit of a weird mission," Aoi told us as he began the mission rundown. "Recently, our sensor corps has been picking up a peculiar chakra signature west of the mountain range. Your mission will be to explore what the signature is and bring whatever it is back with you to the village so we can do more thorough research."

"Understood, let's go, you imps," Hanzo said, standing up and walking out of the room with us following behind him.

Arriving outside, Sensei spoke up again. "Alright, we'll go with formation A all the way to our destination. Shiran, keep an eye out with your sensory abilities. Everybody be on the lookout for any adversaries."

We nodded and started running off to the western part of the mountains; the place where the signature was coming from.

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The sun was setting, and the air started to develop a chill through the forest that we were running in. Placing my hand to my chest, I activated a heating seal that feeds off a very negligible amount of chakra.

"Woah, what was that?" Kiyoko said, looking at me like I had just pulled a rabbit out of my ninja pouch.

"It's a utility seal that I learned how to use. It helps heat you up if you ever start to get cold on a mission," I responded. "Do any of you guys want one as well?"

Benimaru rolled his eyes at me, muttering something about 'toughness.' Kiyoko nodded her head enthusiastically, saying she'd take one, while our sensei kept staring forward, watching where we were going.

Running a little harder, I ran to her side and placed my hand on the back of Kiyoko's neck. As I placed a seal, immediately she felt a difference in comfort, as her sigh of relief was a very telling indicator.

"That is good; we should all really have one on missions if I'm being honest," Kiyoko let her opinion be heard.

Falling back in line, we ran for a few more minutes until I picked up on around six chakra signatures trailing us. They were arranged in such an order that we were surrounded by them on our back and two sides; three groups of two.

"Sensei, I'm picking up on around six chakra signatures trailing us on our sides and back. They are about three miles (4.83 km) out, though. Chakra signatures seem to be three fire, one wind, two water, all low to mid-chunin level."

"Hmm, seems troublesome. What is going to be your guys' plan here?" Sensei asked, almost lazily.

We all were lost in thought. I had a couple of ideas cooking up, but Benimaru spoke up first.

"I think it might be beneficial for us to lure them into a trap."

Flickering to his side, I pulled out a short sword I had on my hip that came from our sensei. "Who are you and what have you done to Benimaru?"

He gave me a flat look and continued speaking. "This trap will hopefully make them think we are dropping our guard and force them into making a move first. Once they do, we can fight them head-on and beat them into the ground."

Putting my sword away, I nodded. "That's more like it. Honestly, it's a good plan. Get them to make a false move and capitalize on their mistake. I guess you are learning from your mistakes." I smiled broadly.

We found a small clearing and settled down in it. "Yeah yeah, I'll start the fire," Benimaru said, while making a quick hand seal and igniting some of the sticks he picked up nearby to form a fire.

Sitting in a lotus position, I expanded my mind's eye out to its maximum 10 miles (16 km) to try and see if there were any other people trailing us. Not seeing any, I focused on the position of the few tails we had and sensed a weird disruption in their chakra.

'That's weird, I've never sensed something like this before. It's almost like they're being restricted somehow, maybe they're prisoners being forced to trail us?'

Shaking my head and opening my eyes, I relayed the information to my teammates. "Just be careful; it's not something that I've ever sensed before so it could possibly be a forbidden jutsu too, but don't quote me on that."

They nodded as all four of us waited at the campsite to see if we could get them to bite.

I thought for a second then asked, "Maybe if you three make it look like you're trying to get some sleep, we will be able to coax them out?"

Everyone agreed, and so they laid down to rest. Not even 10 minutes later, the signatures began to move from their meeting area that they had been sat at. Sitting there, I tried to remain unaware until I tilted my head sideways to dodge a kunai aimed at the back of my head.

"Finally, what was taking you guys so long?" Saying that, my two teammates got up, and we stood facing the six shinobi wearing Mist headbands on their foreheads.

None of the Mist shinobi said a word as they all dashed forward to take us out. "I'll take the two in the front; you guys take the two on either side of them," I called out as my kanjogan flared into action, and I disappeared and reappeared behind them.

My back shone with an ethereal glow in four different spots as chakra chains slowly slithered out of my back and floated in the air. Launching the chains at the two of them, they barely reacted in enough time to flicker away to a safer spot.

The two looked at each other and nodded, conveying something in silence as they moved in tandem to appear on either side of me. One set of hands was folded into a dragon seal, while the other was a bird.

'Hmmm, so they want to do a fire and air combination jutsu huh? Good combo, not fast enough though.' I thought as I once again sped myself up and flickered toward the shinobi with the bird seal ready to release an air jutsu.

Using only one hand seal, I condensed storm release chakra into my fists, causing a high-pitched whine to sound off (think of a supercharger in a car) while my hands glowed with the intensity of striking lightning.

'Storm Release: Plasma Fist'

At the same time, I launched my attack towards the wind shinobi's chest; I wrapped two of my chains around the hands of the fire shinobi currently behind me and pulled them apart, not allowing him to finish his jutsu. With him disarmed, the two other chains embedded themselves into his chest.

My fist connected to the wind shinobi's chest and pierced right through, disintegrating everything in its way.

"Seriously, did whoever sent these guys after us take us for weaklings?" I said out loud while looking at the two cold bodies in front of me and turning my gaze to both of my teammates.

Benimaru had a shinobi basically burned to a crisp in front of him, and the other's head impaled on his shortsword. Looking at Kiyoko, I saw about ten of her but rubbed my eyes when I saw how she was dismantling the two-man group with a familiar jutsu.

'What is this

jutsu? It's like the shadow clone but her clones are tangible but also intangible.' Even looking through my kanjogan, I had a hard time keeping track of her movements. 'So she's constantly switching between each place, but she's going so fast that she leaves behind an afterimage that disorients their opponent.'

Benimaru came to my side while watching Kiyoko use a jutsu neither of us has seen her use before. "I really don't understand how someone can be so fast; it seems almost unfair in close-range combat," he whispered to me.

My eyes suddenly snapped open. "That's where I remember this move from; it looks exactly like Shisui's body flicker technique. Man, no wonder he was so feared with his body flicker jutsu; seeing this in person is so much freakier than just watching it on TV.'

As I was thinking this, Kiyoko had incapacitated her two opponents and came to stand next to us. "They were weak; we probably didn't even need to set up the reverse ambush, honestly."

I nodded and shrugged. "Yeah, but it's better to be safe than sorry."

Sensei's voice was heard over everyone else as he appeared next to all of us and spoke. "Great plan and execution, guys. You were outnumbered, so you took a cautious route, and it paid off for you. Now for the next lesson here." He turned back to the bodies spread across the ground.

"What do you notice about each body here?"

We all stared at the bodies, trying to see what Hanzo was getting at. "They're Mist shinobi, and they've come to kill more of us; I can't believe those degenerates," Benimaru spat out as he looked at the corpses disgustingly.

"That could be true, but the real battle between shinobi is the intelligence battle. You looked at these ninja and saw the Mist headbands they wore, but when I looked at them, I saw shinobi who wanted to look a certain way to cause a reaction."

Kiyoko tilted her head. "I'm not really following, sensei."

"What I'm trying to say is they aren't Mist shinobi. They are simply trying to make themselves seem that way. What you guys will find out in the world of shinobi is that you can't trust surface-level information. You have to be willing to dig deeper, look at the bigger picture. You need to peer beyond the surface of what is presented to you and not fall into the trap of believing what other people want you to believe."

I looked at Sensei and spoke. "So you're saying someone is trying to provoke a reaction from us against the Mist, hoping to maybe start another war. But who would want to do that?" I thought about this question then answered it pretty quickly. 'Everyone would. Although there are some notable warhawks out there that would probably want it more than others.'

Hanzo reached down and grabbed a head of one of the ninjas, cutting it off. "Well, I think we can get our first clue here." He opened the mouth, cutting out the tongue of the person's head he had.

I stared at the tongue, and it clicked in my mind. "That repression of their chakra I felt was the juinjutsu." My eyes turned cold. 'This isn't who I think it is, is it?'

Correct, and now that you know what it feels like you'll be able to keep an eye out for it in the future." I nodded as he said this.

Hanzo took out a scroll and stored both the body and decapitated head of the ninja in it along with the tongue. "Well, let's take a rest tonight. We can start heading out to the place tomorrow morning. Kiyoko, you're on watch first."

"Yes, sir."