Confronting the Bandits and Rogue Shinobi

"You can drop the disguise now." Koichi said while observing his students.

This whole interrogation is done by Koichi not only to get the information for the mission, but also to evaluate his student's reactions. As Koichi are an experienced ANBU captain, he is used to perform his missions in the most efficient way, killing and torturing people is a norm for him.

But his students are different, they are just the freshman graduates from the academy, and the early graduates at that. So, Koichi was closely observing their reactions during the interrogation to get the better understanding of their state of mind, as he wanted to make a proper and efficient shinobi out of them.

Glancing at Itachi, Koichi saw no reaction during the interrogation, Itachi stayed calm and indifferent during the whole process, it seems that he is not affected by the scene in the slightest. Koichi expected from Itachi just that, as he knew that Fugaku brought Itachi to the battlefield when Itachi was 4, for him to observe the war for whatever reason Fugaku had, so Itachi has already seen much more bloodshed than that.

From what Koichi observed from Yuta's reaction, that was the best of what Koichi can expect from the young Genin with civilian background, Yuta was a slightly pale, his breathing and heartbeat is slightly faster, but his eyes show that Yuta is calm and his mind is in the right place, Koichi can only praise Yuta for his resilience and fast adaptation to the cruelty of shinobi life.

As for Hikari, Koichi saw that she is only reacted with a slight frown on her face, but neither her breathing or her heartbeat is changed in the slightest, that reactions is looked somewhat abnormal to Koichi, as Hikari is also from civilian background, but she doesn't show any reaction at all, as if she is already get used to killing.

Whatever the reason for this is, Koichi decided to not focus on it and just continue to observe his team in the future.

When everyone dropped their Henge jutsu disguise, Koichi said, "Now you know all the information needed for the mission, what approach will you take if you to decide?"

"Let's just go in and kill them all!" Hikari said immediately with excitement, "There is just two rogue shinobi and a bunch of bandits, it should be easy to deal with them!"

Koichi was a little worried about how rush and bloodthirsty Hikari shown herself in this situation, he looked at Yuta next.

"I say we go closer and observe them first." Yuta said calmly.

"Then we can set a trap" Itachi added, "Then lure the rouge shinobi in to it to swiftly deal with them, after that the remaining bandits will be no problem for us."

"Good" Koichi praise the two, "Collecting the information about your enemy to deal a decisive blow when they least expected, that is a good strategy."

Hikari was not happy with it, but she didn't object either.

With that being said, the team went to the bandit hideout with caution, its getting late, there only a few hours left before the sunset. When the team get close to the hideout, that is the large hidden cave between two hills, covered with trees and hard to spot if you don't know what you are looking for.

Koichi signaled his team to proceed with caution and stay hidden. Everyone proceeded carefully, and finally got to see the cave entrance and a few bandits guarding it.

After observing the cave entrance for some time with no additional movements around the cave, they gathered together to discuss their next move.

"See, there is no point to observe them." Hikari said impatiently, "Let's just go in and finish it, don't make it more complicated than it should be!"

"You are too rush, Hikari" Koichi said displeased with her attitude, "There are shinobi inside, who knows what type of traps they set in place, we can't just go in there blindly."

Hikari hearing that appears extremely annoyed but didn't say anything else.

'I got the feeling that Hikari will give us a lot of headache in the future, but at least she follows the orders and didn't do anything stupid on her own…'

"Let's proceed with the initial plan" Itachi said, "Me and Yuta will set up the trap, and then we can lure the rogue shinobi from inside the cave with some distraction."

"Good" Koichi said, "What kind of distraction you have in mind?"

"Well," Yuta said, "It should be something not too threatening, so rogue shinobi won't run straight away from it, and it should be threatening enough so it will deter the regular bandits from going and checking the situation by themselves, we don't want to waste our trap on regular bandits."

"You don't need to be worry of the regular bandits though" Koichi added, "If they come to check you will be able to swiftly deal with them without much noise before they step into the trap."

"I can be the bait" Hikari interjected hasty, "I will stumble upon the bandits and kill some of them while not showing my real skills, they will be forced to send rogue shinobi after me and I will lure them in to the trap."

"That is too risky" Koichi said coldly.

"It will be fine, sensei, I know what I'm doing, please let me do it, sensei!" Hikari said with poorly hidden excitement.

"Sigh, fine, it's your choice, don't blame me if you get injured or killed…" Koichi was frustrated by Hikari's behavior but decided to let her go and get hurt, maybe then she will calm down a little and will not act so rush in the future. As for getting killed, that just empty treat, as Koichi is confident in his skills that as long as he is around, he will not allow any of his students to get killed.

After that Yuta and Itachi proceed with making a trap. Yuta created two shadow clones and set a Fuinjutsu trap with similar but more efficient design compared to that one trap that he created against Koichi a two months ago.

This time Yuta used a better concealment seals and explosive seals were placed in more efficient way, and with some concealed chakra suppression seals on the floor. And all of that by only using the shadow clone seals, not wasting any reals seals at all.

'God bless Tobirama for inventing shadow clones…' Yuta thought while making a trap.

Itachi on the other hand, also created some traps around with wires, shurikens and kunais, everything is designed to push the enemy in to the center of the trap where most of the explosive seals are hidden.

Trap was ready in ten minutes, Hikari observed how her teammates making the trap to memorize the safe path through it, when everyone was ready, Hikari transformed in to older version of herself to appear more intimidating to lure the rogue shinobi and went directly to the cave entrance.

Koichi was disappeared from sight, being ready to intervene at any moment. Yuta and Itachi observed Hikari's actions from afar, also ready to act.

Yuta was a little nervous but unknown to him, Koichi has already prepared him a little for what will come next by showing him the cruel scene when he killed three bandits before. Now despite being a little nervous Yuta is ready for the coming fight and for taking lives.

Hikari went straight to the cave entrance in her transformed older form with her sword in hand. When bandits spotted her, they appeared surprised but not too afraid, one of them even laughed at Hikari's approach.

But that laughter is short lived as Hikari increased her speed and lashed at the closest bandit with her sword, cutting him in half through the chest area, blood is spurted everywhere, and the bandit is thudded on the ground.

The remaining two bandits were in shock, the previous moment they saw some stupid girl rushing at them with a sword, and they grabbed their weapons and already imagined how they will subdue the girl and what they will do to her next, but in the next moment she appeared right beside them and one of them is appeared dead, being cut in half, and the girl with a sword was bathed in blood, appearing like the scariest demon they can imagine…

Koichi observing the scene sighed, as Hikari was supposed to hide her skills until she lured rogue shinobi in to the trap, but right now she went all out against that bandit, well, at least this bandits were unable to comprehend how much skill did Hikari showed, so it's not a big of a problem Koichi thought.

While the remaining two bandits were still in shock, Hikari jumped at the closest one and cut his head off, spilling the blood everywhere once again. The events unfolding too fast for the last remaining bandit to comprehend, but this time Hikari was not in a rush and waited for him to run inside and ask the rogue shinobi for help. A few seconds later the remaining bandit screamed and ran inside the cave uninterrupted, while Hikari patiently waited outside.

Koichi watching the scene used his sensory skills to determine whether rogue shinobi will go outside or start to run away, in worse case Koichi is ready to take action to intercept them and don't let them to get away.

Yuta while observing the scene thought to himself, 'Damn she is scary, what is wrong with her? Didn't she also a civilian? Maybe it's a norm in this world and It's me who is wrong being nervous in this kind of situation? I don't want to appear as the weakest-minded among my team, I should go for the kills today without any hesitation!'

As Yuta thought about it, two more man exited the cave, they are middle aged and wear the shinobi attire with Kusagakure headband, with the grass symbol being slashed horizontally, the sign of a rogue shinobi.

'I wonder why they even do that though, isn't it just stupid to tell everyone with that that they are the rogue shinobi and considered as criminals?' Yuta thought looking at their headbands.

---

[AN: 6 extra chapters in advance on my patreon /SycoreNovels

Any support will be appreciated!]