CH_5.3 (146)

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"We are going to enter through the west," said Takuma.

Takuma's team was the weakest of the three teams due to the lack of a chunin leader, but he didn't mind it as they weren't going to face a chunin-caliber opponent. Moreover, according to the intel and on-site scouting reports, there was only one enemy chunin, while they had two combat-ready chunin on their side.

He was satisfied with the people he had hand-picked for the mission. Takuma gazed up at them. Minoru, Fuma Arisu, and Uchiha Gouki.

Minoru was a sensory-nin who had been of great help during the Maiko Triad mission, and Takuma had actively "courted" him to join the Narcotics Task Force because he saw the clear value in a sensory-nin. While Minoru wasn't that great at traditional Police Force work, he made up for it when they went on raids by providing intel which kept the raiding party informed and thus safe. Minoru had been the top contributor in verifying the intel and identifying the number of shinobi at the farm in the scouting phase through his chakra sense abilities.

Arisu was his academy classmate, partner during their days under Kano, and now his second-in-command. Takuma didn't want to bring Arisu with him because he wanted his second-in-command to be at the office in case any emergency arose; plus, he wanted someone he trusted to be his eyes and ears on the ongoing attempts to take the task force away from him— but when Arisu saw the opportunity to have a B-rank mission on her record, she forced Takuma to take her with him, and when she really wanted something, Takuma couldn't deny it to her because how much work Arisu had done in setting up the Narcotics Task Force.

Finally, Uchiha Gouki, the final member. He wasn't Takuma's first choice for the slot, but despite having autonomous control over the Narcotics Task Force, Takuma still worked for the Leaf Military Police Force, owned by the Uchiha. So, when the order came up from above to include Gouki on the mission, Takuma had to oblige. Gouki wasn't a bad choice; in fact, Takuma liked Gouki enough. Gouki was a reasonable man to work with, didn't flaunt his Uchiha status (despite it still giving him privilege), and was competent at the job he did in the Narcotics Task Force. Gouki was also one of the two Uchiha who agreed to work under Takuma in the task force, a bold move considering Arisu had been rejected by every Uchiha who she had tried to recruit for Takuma.

And… Gouki hadn't activated his Sharingan. The man was about to turn seventeen this year and had yet to turn to gain access to his birthright.

From what Takuma had gathered, unlike Hyuga, who were guaranteed the Byakugan from the moment they were born, not every Uchiha activated their Sharingan. Every Uchiha was put through the clan's training system and was trained to be elite shinobi from early childhood. They had a lot going for them— a strong clan-wide natural affinity to Fire Release, the Uchiha Interceptor taijutsu, which was a top-grade taijutsu style even without the Sharingan, a rich culture of shinobi training, and envious opportunities for any member who desired them.

And yet, it was the Sharingan that turned an Uchiha into a superstar. The moment their eyes turned, they truly became an "Uchiha." Everything a clan member got before they activated their eyes, they got incomparably more afterward.

The importance of the Sharingan didn't need to be stated in the Uchiha clan— it was felt.

As for Gouki, his chances of activating Sharingan became thinner with every passing day. Statistically speaking, if an Uchiha was to activate their Sharingan, they did it by the time they were sixteen— when their emotions were in flux due to teenage pubescents, increasing the chance to activate the eye, which reacted to strong emotions.

Gouki had turned seventeen a month ago, and with every passing day, his chances plummeted.

The frontal lobe responsible for planning, organization, logical thinking, reasoning, and managing emotions developed completely by their twenty-fifth year in males, and those who were shinobi— or, to be specific, people who practiced chakra— developed their frontal lobe anywhere from nineteen to twenty-two depending on how much they used chakra on a daily basis.

Takuma had been learning a lot about the brain in his genjutsu sessions with Mikoto.

The older an Uchiha got without activating Sharingan, the more the chances plummeted of ever activating it.

But it didn't matter at the moment.

"We follow the diamond formation. Minoru stays at the back. I'll be leading the front. Arisu and Gouki flank the side," Takuma said. He sighed as he looked at his team, "Before we go, any of you faced a chunin in combat?"

Arisu's and Gouki's hands went up. Minoru looked at them in shock.

Takuma continued, "Which was not a combat exercise."

They put their hands down.

"I'm assuming those combat exercises were a chunin versus a group of genin." They nodded. "A piece of advice. A chunin fighting a chunin is a different ball game. When shinobi of that caliber fight, people like us tend to become collateral damage. You must keep their presence in mind constantly while you fight your opponent— lose track of them, and you might die without getting a chance to avoid it."

In fact, Takuma was the most scared of losing track. He fought in the 2v1 category regularly, won regularly, and because of that, he often feared that his perception might have become limited to two people.

But fear was good… it kept him on his toes.

"Any more questions?" he asked. He wanted to be focused on the impending combat before memories started bothering him.

Gouki said, "You should rub some mud to dull the smell before we go. I like whatever you're wearing, but it's too much."

"Agreed," Arisu added.

"Glad you like it. I'll give you the name and shop when we go back," Takuma said with a smile, fixing his ghillie suit. "Let's move out."

The farm they were raiding was a mid-size operation site. It was the first "production" site they were targeting, and thus it made this the highest stake Narcotics Task Force had faced to date. The operation was run by a rogue Hidden Leaf chunin, fifteen genin-equivalent combatants, and thirty civilian farmers.

Leaving the rogue chunin to their two chunin meant they were outnumbered by five people, but Takuma wasn't worried about that. They could deal with a few more people; plus, they couldn't allocate any more budget to getting more people.

Civilians could be a problem if they decided to stupidly interfere, but the general instinct of a civilian was to run away from a conflict between shinobi, which Takuma was counting on. If they didn't, a couple of explosive tags would do the trick.

"Try to keep them alive," Takuma whispered as they slowly moved through the thick bushes surrounding the farm. They needed enough people to bring back to the village, but casualties were inevitable.

As they reached the farm, Takuma's team stopped and stayed in hiding.

Before they could raid, they needed the enemy chunin to be occupied to clear the way for them. Which was why the two chunin would move first, and in the commotion, the genin of all teams would finally move in. They would be sacrificing the element of surprise, but they would gain a level of separation between the two power groups, increasing safety.

"The chunin are on the move," Minoru whispered.

Takuma felt his team shuffle behind him. They were nervous. He was too, but for some strange reason, their nervousness gave him confidence.

"They have entered the farm," said Minoru.

Boom!

There was a large explosion.

"Hold," Takuma said when he felt them shift.

"Why?" asked Gouki.

"Hold," Takuma repeated. "Minoru?"

The answer came a couple of seconds later. "They made contact," said Minoru.

"We should move," said Arisu.

"Hold," Takuma repeated.

"Why?" she asked.

Minoru spoke up before Takuma. "They're moving north."

"Go," said Takuma. They were far enough from them.

He stood up, retrieved a kunai with an explosive tag tied to its tail, and threw it deep into the farm.

Boom!

The moment the explosion blew up the crop, they moved in while maintaining the diamond formation. They laid low to give the ghillie suit some more use and blend into the produce for a few more movements.

"A group is forming to the right," said Minoru.

"Right," Takuma signaled, and they moved in that direction.

A group of five people came into view. They had their targets.

The confrontation started when Gouki launched a volley of shuriken toward the group.

One of the men stepped forward and thwarted the shuriken volley before alerting his group.

'A level of competence,' thought Takuma, 'or they have gotten used to the terrain.'

The people on the farm lived on site for long periods of time because the farm had to be protected at all times, meaning they had the terrain advantage in terms of vision.

A kunai targeted Takuma's heart which he easily deflected before abandoning the restricting ghillie suit. He took in a deep breath, and even in the commotion, Takuma could feel his heartbeat. 'Imagine a mask.' Almost immediately, Takuma's focus shot up, and he felt himself descending into a state he was familiar with every time he stepped into the arena.

A kunai slipped into his hand each, and he dashed towards the group, who were standing in the 2-3 formation. The two in the front broke away from the group as Takuma did— one had a machete, the other dual-wielded batons.

Takuma blocked the two batons with his two kunai and immediately pushed him away with a kick in the stomach. He turned towards the other front man expecting to be immediately engaged with him, only to see the man still two paces away. He glanced at the back-three, and they had barely moved.

'They're not used to cooperative combat, or they aren't used to fighting with each other,' Takuma deduced internally.

The other front man was slow, but Takuma wasn't going to be a sleeping rabbit. He stepped forward, shifted to dodge the machete, and sliced at the wrist holding the blade.

"AAH!" the man screamed.

Takuma shut the man up before his throat could open up completely. A knee to the stomach folded the man over. Chakra flowed through the chakra pathways system until they reached the tenketsu in the elbow­­— Takuma brought his elbow down at the man's back while expunging the chakra to augment the strike. Takuma held back because he didn't want to break the spine, but he spread the chakra enough to clean the man out of any fluids he held in his stomach.

Before the man could kiss the ground, Takuma had already moved past him. He glanced at the man he had kicked away, who was getting up; he launched both his kunai into the man— one to the thigh, second to the same calf. That would be enough to keep him down for a moment.

Takuma shifted his focus to the back-three. If the front-two were resilient enough to get up, his teammates were there to cover for them.

He weaved hands seals. The three men immediately panicked, which delayed their next move, giving Takuma more than enough opportunity to get close to them— close enough that they could smell the scent he was wearing.

They recovered when they saw Takuma standing there, looking at them with his arms up and his hands in fists. They immediately jumped on him, but before they could land a single strike, it happened…

The three men abruptly stopped; their eyes became hazy as they hastily bought their blocks up as though trying to protect them from something— and it wasn't Takuma.

Takuma, unphased, placed an augmented strike on each of them to knock them out before they could get out of the genjutsu he had put on them.

Genjutsu: Flower Hill

The genjutsu made the target seem like they were trapped in a tornado of petals which obscured everything and made them feel like they were about to be blown away. It obscured their vision and made them instinctively protect themselves from the winds. The downside of the jutsu was that it only lasted a couple of seconds before it automatically weaned off, but the genjutsu made it up with the absurdly strong couple of seconds while it was on.

And a couple of seconds was all Takuma needed to knock them out.

Takuma sighed and turned towards his team. Arisu had knocked out the man he had disabled with his kunai while Minoru and Gouki stood over the other man. They were looking at him. Minoru looked surprised, Gouki looked interested, and Arisu looked unbothered.

Takuma had no idea why Minoru was still surprised; he had taken him on every raid they had been inside the village. Gouki was a junkie who liked to spar; Takuma hadn't sparred with him yet. Arisu wasn't surprised because she had been with him the longest.

"Tie them up, we will go to—"

"Takuma," Minoru interrupted. His eyes were wide, and he was staring at the ground, but he was clearly focusing elsewhere. "A-Another 'chunin-grade' presence is closing in on us, and it's closing in quickly. T-There are more with, b-but they're not as strong."

Takuma's eyes widened. He weaved hand seals and pressed his palms into the ground.

Earth Release: Earth Tremor Sense Jutsu

A thrum went out of Takuma's hands, traveling through the ground. A moment later, the waves returned, and Takuma interpreted them.

"Four people." Takuma looked up at Minoru. "One of them has Grade-2 chakra levels?"

Minoru nodded.

Grade-2, or informally chunin-grade, was the bracket of chakra volume in a person which sensory-nin sensed. A genin could have more chakra than a chunin, but a median was calculated, and the grade brackets were created.

"They aren't moving quickly." Takuma looked around him. They were in a thick forest, and the foliage covered any smoke the chunin had already created in their fight. "We have very little time, but it's enough to prepare—"

"Prepare?" Gouki interrupted. "We should inform the chunin."

"Of course, we inform them. But we prepare; we can't just stand there doing nothing," said Takuma. He breathed deeply, "Gather the others… we are going to get everyone involved."

They were going to take out a chunin...

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