Chương 52: 52
A few days later people of Konoha found themselves with no money in their pockets to pay for breakfast, sellers found their goods gone, and merchants were left wondering where the hell their stock had vanished
As if that weren't enough, unreasonable scenes occurred throughout the village; many deaths were reported throughout the city.
As far as anyone could tell, someone had stolen all of the money from the civilians and murdered those who managed to see the said thief or a group of thieves.
Many theories came out of it, some say it was a gang of bandits or shinobi of other nations who managed to sneak into the village somehow, and others claimed it was one of the village shinobi gone rogue.
The truth is that nobody knows what happened and literally speaking it didn't matter what the reason was, what mattered is that innocent villagers lost their lives for nothing.
Another thing that is keeping everyone on the edge of their seat at the fact that the culprits are still on the loose. No one knew how long the culprit(s) would stay free.
The situation deteriorated so quickly that the Hokage felt compelled to issue an official proclamation: Konoha is under martial law. No civilians are allowed on the streets without proper identification or escort by military personnel.
~~ In Hokage's building..!!~~
Konoha's elders along with Hokage, all looked solemn.
The room stayed silent for a while.
"Fugaku, what was your Uchiha police force doing when this happened?!", Elder Homura asked the patriarch of the Uchiha clan.
"Nothing!!", Fugaku said impassively, "You left nothing for us to do anyway!!"
"FUGAKU!", Homura roared at him.
"Don't yell. My entire clan was forced to shift to the entire outskirts of the village. That, along with the villager's dissatisfaction with the Uchiha police force made them disheartened and caused a lot of my men to quit"
Hokage sighed...
"A few of my top officers got arrested because they tried to enforce justice disregarding the dissatisfaction of the villagers"
Danzo glared at the Uchiha patriarch, "Are you complaining about that?! That happened because of your incompetence! If you had properly controlled those guys then..."
"My apologies for my words but I must say that your men are more than capable enough of stopping whatever this is!! I and my clan can not help you with this..."
"You mean you won't help right?!!", Elder Koharu said, "I guess this must be a godsend opportunity for you and your clan. Truly, as sensei said, your clan is just-"
"If I am here just for the insults then I shall take my leave", Fugaku glared at them and left.
"This is completely unacceptable. Uchihas are getting more and more arrogant!", Elder Koharu said angrily, "Just because of these incompetent bastards we might lose control over the village. Sarutobi we need to do some-"
"We can work on that later. Right now, we need to figure out what's going on in the village", Homura interrupted.
Hokage nodded, "I agree, we need more men patrolling the village, how many root(s) agents are available right now?!"
Danzo shook his head, "Not many, only ten or so"
Hokage stared at him with disbelief, "Ten? There are so many root agents under your leadership! How did we end up with just ten root(s)?"
"We have been having a lot of trouble lately with some mysterious tentacle guy who came out of nowhere, apparently he killed many of my men already. This is a serious problem Sarutobi. We have to be on guard at all times because of that guy", Danzo said with a sigh.
Hokage sighed as well, "What about the sensors?! What are they doing?!"
Elder Homura shook his head as well, "We have interrogated Akimichi and Yamanaka clan leaders, the sensors found nothing suspicious at the time of the crime"
"Let's get Ghost then, with his sensory ability I am sure we will find something..!!", Elder Koharu said.
Danzo took a deep breath, "A few days ago Ghost had my permission to take his entire squad for special training somewhere far away for a month"
Elder Koharu frowned, "We need him right now"
Hokage frowned back at his old friend, "Koharu. You know very well just how Ghost's squad is. It would take me at least half a month just to track one of his men down"
"What do we do then?!", Elder Homura asked
Hokage thought for a moment and decided to compromise, "We will have Anbu patrol the streets to protect the villagers; Danzo, gather as many root members as you can and tell them to patrol the streets in search of the thieves. Sensors will work overtime on this one"
"You think that will be enough?", Homura asked, "I'm not sure if you know, but the whole village has been talking about this incident. If we do not solve this case anytime soon, this will cause civil strife"
"It will be fine. People like us have the strongest influence over public opinion. We have a lot of control over the masses. We might have to put some pressure on the village to keep this quiet, but we shouldn't have any problems for the time being", Danzo said and the meeting ended with that.
...
Under martial law, the village's streets were patrolled by two divisions. One was led by Kakashi and another one by Yin, Danzo's right-hand man.
Kakashi was in charge of the Hokage's personal squad, Anbu, which was made up of twenty men and women. He also had the help of all the Jonin in the village present. Along with the Yamanaka clan, Hyuga clan, Akimichi clan, and Nara clan.
Under Hokage sama orders, Anbu and the other Jonin made sure that nothing would go wrong while the root agents searched for the thief(s).
However, despite every precaution taken there was one thing everyone failed to realize; people are prone to be blindsided, especially when they don't even realize being stared at by a shadow known as Ghost...
~~ In the streets of Konoha...!!~~
Kurenai walked through the streets of Konohagakure, patrolling the streets as she was ordered to do.
Kurenai, a fair-skinned woman of slender build. She has long black untamed hair reaching her upper back and very unique eyes that are red in color with an additional ring in them. She wore a standard Konoha shinobi outfit with a flak jacket and a simple sleeveless red outfit underneath it.
As she walked on, she looked at her surroundings, searching for anything that may cause harm to anyone. After walking for what felt like hours, she realized something was off about the streets. Something eerie.
As if on cue, there came a commotion in one of the streets: screams of pain, shouts, and cries, footsteps of men running; everything was going to hell.
She rushed to the place of the commotion and saw something she would have nightmares about... There were multiple people laying on the ground, dead and badly mutilated, some were twitching in pain as their bodies melted...
To her surprise, the culprits had not just murdered these people but burned them alive. In front of her eyes, flames were devouring the village, one home after the next. Kurenai could only watch as more people fell on top of the ones who had already died.
A scream came from behind her as she turned to look at a girl of perhaps ten years old. The girl was crying for her parents, "Mommy! Mommy, help me! Daddy! Help me!!"
The Kunoichi rushed to help the little girl as the rest of the Anbus, Jonins, and root agents made their way toward the burned buildings.
Ghost looked at the burning buildings from atop the roof someplace far away from the commotion. His eyes glanced at the young man standing beside him. Uchiha Shisui.
The village was immediately put under red light. All the citizens of the village were moved under the Hokage rock.
But despite that, the culprit wasn't found.
...
It didn't take long for the villagers to go nuts, and chaos broke out. Not even a day passed when the Hokage declared martial law and this happened.
By that time the riots had spread to many places in the village, with people fighting and killing each other in an attempt to survive.
Several Konoha shinobis managed to calm people down before it got really bad but the indication is clear, they have to resolve the issue before the village gets into civil unrest.
...
Meanwhile, Ghost stood in front of a grave, caressing the name of the unknown Kunoichi under him. Someone who didn't even make it to the long list of the memorial stone where the past heroes are immortalized forever. No one knew her after all, her figure; her name is only limited to those she called comrades...
Ghost, the dark shadow, A ninja, so stealthy that even gods couldn't see him coming, took a deep breath as he closed his eyes, and opened them up slowly. He could sense Kakshi's chakra coming here.
Kakashi is visiting the grave again...
"My teacher! My father! My creator!! I will pay you back for what you did...", The voice dingle in the air as he slowly vanish from sight like a mirage in the desert as Kakashi entered the gravesite.
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