Chapter 16: Priority

That same day at night, on the outside of the village, Rasa, Nomad, and Custus were watching from a far outdistance the base where the bandits they had to eliminate were located.

Only the dry desert wind and the constant movement of the sand were the only things that could be heard at this time of night.

"Okay, be ready to act..." warned Rasa to his two teammates.

"Right..." nodded Custus.

"Indeed, today those desert rats are going to meet their death..." said Nomad with bloodlust, he really loved to fight.

After saying that, Rasa separated from the two and approached on his own to the surroundings of the base, hiding from the bandits' sight.

Rasa went inside the base and positioned himself in a dark alley, then covered his left eye with two fingers of his hand and with his free hand began to seal:

"Third Eye," said Rasa and after a while, he began to form seven eyes of sand dust that floated in different parts of the base.

That's right, he stole this technique from Gaara and replicated it.

Rasa only had to connect the eyes he created with his optic nerve using chakra, which allows him to see whatever is in the field of vision of these eyes.

For him it was like seeing 7 screens at once, it was difficult but after a lot of practice, he managed to focus his attention on up to seven eyes at once.

These eyes give Rasa a useful method to perform overwatching without being noticed.

Now he had decided to go ahead of his team and do a reconnaissance of the base first with this technique.

Rasa can even manipulate the gold dust from the Third Eye technique to allow the multiple third eyes to also function as a listening device.

He can also use this ability to create multiple Third Eyes with his gold dust without the need to close one of his own, but if he does that it drains too much of his chakra and is not convenient since his reserves are not high.

Rasa observed various corners of the base.

In the base, only a group of people could be seen awake and keeping watch late at night.

Rasa can also see the occasional bandit awake drinking and fornicating, but most of them seemed to be asleep.

He quickly begins to take note on the scroll map of the number and position of all the bandits in the Base.

After finishing and seeing that everything was in order, Rasa decided to return with Custus and Nomad.

Rasa left the base and headed to where his team was waiting for him, upon arrival he approached them and sat down on the ground.

"How's the situation?" asked Nomad impatiently.

"Captain Canteen is right. They are a large number of bandits, and there are four main buildings where there is a constant guard with 4 people in each place" Rasa took out the scroll with the map and pointed out the position of the bandits in the base along with the amount of people.

"Are you sure that's the amount of people there?" asked Custus a bit perplexed when she saw what Rasa noted on the map.

"Yes, there are around a hundred people in the Base, but I'm pretty sure that only half of them are bandits and the rest are family members or women, untrained civilians" explained Rasa with a sigh as it was a very large number of people and many innocent civilians for sure.

"What should we do then, do we rush in?" asked Nomad.

"Of course not" Custus quickly rebuked him and Rasa just nodded his head.

"According to the information provided by the captain there are renegade ninjas, the biggest problem is that I don't know what level of ninja these are and I could only identify over 14 genin, but those Chunin were undetectable" explained Rasa in frustration.

He was not a sensor ninja so he could only detect some of the more reckless Genin but the more experienced Chunin or Genin who knew how to cover their Chakra were not something he could detect yet.

And in Rasa's team, none of them were sensor ninja, Captain Canteen was the one who could best detect the chakra of the others but that was only because he was an elite Jonin, and even he couldn't detect the elite Chunin who knew how to hide their chakra.

Therefore, Rasa with his Third Eye technique was the best option to get information.

"The information given by the captain is very vague, but at least we know that there are inferior chunin, so we should expect the worst and that would be that there are some elite Chunin or more than one" analyzed Custus.

"Agreed, therefore, we should expect the bandits to have at least one or two elite Chunin ninja, of course, it is unlikely but better to be sure and we should even prepare for the probability of more than two elite Chunin ninja" Rasa continued the analysis.

"If the other side really has more than two elite Chunin, then we can pack up and buy some souvenirs and run away" Nomad shook his head and said jokingly.

"Yeah, I think so too, but we can't do that like Anbus, the good thing is that our training is superior to theirs, and we have the advantage of surprise attack, for now, so we should be smart before we act" Rasa explained staring along with Custus at Nomad who was the biggest problem of the group.

"Don't look at me, I know how to follow orders and even though I am a genius and the strongest of the three, I still understand my limits. I can't kill more than two elite Chunin, for now, two is my limit," Nomad said.

"How can someone be so shameless as you?" asked Custus with a frown.

"Actually, Nomad, you really know yourself. I'm afraid you'll be excited and crazy to fight to the point where you won't care if it's three elite Chunin you're facing, and we don't need that, as we need to get the upper hand in case that happens" Rasa told him seriously.

"Okay, okay, so what's the plan?" asked Nomad.

"I guess there are only two possible situations now. One where we can complete the mission perfectly and one where we're just left to improvise and hold" Rasa explained.

"So...The first situation would be that they are just inferior Chunin with maybe one or two elite Chunin, a situation we can handle" Custus analyzes the situation.

"And the second is that they are more than two elite Chunin, in that case, we are in trouble and can only make time until the captain defeats the rogue Jonin and comes to help us or we somehow eliminate the elite Chunin" Custus continued analyzing Rasa's words.

"That's right, considering the number of bandits if they are three elite chunin it would already be a problem, but I think we could deal with the situation somehow, the real problem is if they are four elite Chunin, in that case, we are only left to hold them and wait for the captain to return" nodded Rasa.

"But if we did that, couldn't some bandits or civilians escape making it possible to leak Suna's confidential information?" asked Nomad a bit lost, but to the surprise of both Rasa and Custus what he was saying was logical.

"For precisely that reason, our priority is actually to first solve all the trash fish or desert rats as Nomad likes to call them," told Rasa.

"Of course, if we do this later we will lose the advantage of the surprise attack against the Chunin. But our task is to ensure that no one leaves this base alive and I believe this is the most viable way for that to happen looking at all possible scenarios," explained Rasa.

"I understand, we eliminate first those who can escape, and then we hold those who we know will give us a fight, if we can't defeat them ourselves, at least we know we can buy some time until the captain arrives to help us" nodded in understanding Custus.

While Nomad just waited for them to decide what exactly he had to do, he didn't care about all these strategies or possible situations, he just wanted an objective to fulfill his part and that was it.

"Alright, it's not long before we have to act. At this moment there are only 18 bandits on guard around the base, and another 10 more awake but drinking or fornicating, the rest sleep" Rasa informed.

"Perfect, the opponent's combat power will be greatly reduced if we can eliminate most of the sleeping ones without expending energy, it could be our only real advantage" commented Custus.

"Yes, the biggest problem is that there are also several civilians awake in addition to the bandits and as soon as they find out there is trouble they will probably try to run away from the Base, complicating our mission" explained Rasa tiredly as he did not know what to do to prevent the civilians from escaping from the base.

Custus also had a headache as she tried to think of a way to deal with the problem without any success.