CH_7.5 (223)

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Takuma wandered the streets of Yu alone, observing the city on foot.

He had completed his task of setting up the base in the abandoned factory handpicked by Gaku. The cleaning took the majority of time as he wanted a thorough job because, unlike the others, he was living in the base. The furnishings of the base were pre-prepared and brought from the outside, sealed in scrolls; setting them up was a quick couple hour job.

The others were still busy with their jobs, and Takuma decided to explore the city independently.

He put on civilian clothes that would allow him to carry a concealed weapon pouch and took off to roam the central part of the city. He didn't have any specific objective and simply wanted to take in the city's atmosphere.

The city was still very much functional, with people continuing on with their lives, but as he looked around, he could see the weight of the enemy's presence bearing down on the town. The streets were emptier than what Takuma would expect from a city of Yu's size. As he passed through a bazaar, many shopkeepers weren't calling out to the customers like one would expect from a bustling center of commerce. He passed a mother who had dressed herself and her two children in plain clothes that covered them from head to toe and was keeping them close as though in fear that they could be stolen from her at any moment.

He even hid in the shadows and watched two young men harassing a woman in the middle of a noticeably busy street, but not one passerby stopped to help the woman who had been pushed to tears.

Takuma guessed that the reason why the fruit shop owner, with hate in his eyes, wasn't already swinging the machete in his hand was because of the red armbands on the two young men. He had seen them on the gate guards and others while driving through the city.

According to Gaku, the city police wore armbands. Since the enemy had occupied the city, they had put the people who turned to support the new powers into the police to keep the population in check. They were using the people of the city against themselves. It was a classic tactic to maintain control.

"Hey, what are you two doing?!"

A middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair, wearing the same armband, came running, and the young men immediately stopped and stepped away from the woman. Unlike the young men wearing casual clothes, the new middle-aged man wore a proper uniform.

He tried to help the woman pick up the bag she had dropped but got his hand slapped away. The woman bowed to him despite looking thoroughly livid and ran away. The man stared at the woman, looking depressed, before immediately ripping into the two men with harsh words. They looked displeased but stood there in silence, listening to the scolding, though it looked like they weren't really listening to the older man.

Takuma moved on and continued roaming the city when he noticed red posters plastered on the walls. Looking closer at one, the notices were propaganda about how the occupying shinobi forces weren't enemies but liberators who were rescuing them and giving them an opportunity to live a better life.

He looked around, ripped one of the posters, and folded it into his pocket.

Takuma then saw a roadside stall manned by an old man selling shaved ice.

"The pink one," said Takuma, paying upfront.

"Coming up," said the old man with a balding head. As he shaved the block of ice, he asked, "So where are you from, young boy?"

Takuma titled his head. "Down west. How did you know I wasn't from here?"

 "You passed by one of those traitors and had no reaction. No hate, joy, fear, you didn't look away to avoid their eyes. Everyone in this city would have a reaction, but all you had was indifference," the old man laughed.

"Huh," Takuma was impressed. "Tell me, boss. What's it like living here?"

"It is what it is." The old man looked around. "This city is the grain storage for all the farming villages in the region. Every season, the farmers sell their hard-grown crops in the city. That hasn't changed. The farmer doesn't care if we're occupied by the enemy; they have mouths to feed, and city folk need food. Ever since those shinobi arrived, suddenly there's no food, and the price of everything shot up."

Yu was the hub for the farming villages selling their produce in the big city. The city had built infrastructure to store grains, and mills to grind them, among other things that the smaller farm villages lacked, and having a central hub made more logistical sense. Many farmers sold their entire harvest to the city itself, who would sell it to whoever needed it. Everyone from big businesses to small vendors bought from the city.

"You mean they're holding back the food?" said Takuma.

"Of course, what else could it be? They have been forcing the farmers to only sell to the city. They're forcing anyone who needs food to buy it from the city because there's no other choice." The old man then whispered, "I asked one of the farmers who came here after harvest season—he said that this year's harvest was abundant."

Takuma glanced at the shuttered restaurant behind the old man's stall on wheels. He looked around and didn't see any other stalls. The old man himself was selling shaved ice flavored with bottled syrups.

"Here you go," the old man handed him a shaved ice on a stick.

"Thank you, old man," Takuma gave him a smile and continued his walk.

Gaku was in Yu during the enemy invasion. He continued to stay in the city for months before he was contacted by the Hidden Steam to come out to help with a mission. According to him, the shinobi lived in an affluent part of the city. And as Takuma walked toward that part of the city, he noticed how empty the city got. He didn't see anyone for a good few minutes; it seemed the population was staying away from the shinobi.

Then he saw a group of shinobi laughing as they came down the street. Takuma jumped into tall grass and lay there watching them as they passed by. They passed him by quickly, but Takuma continued to lay in the tall grass for a few more minutes before getting up and walking away, deciding that he had done enough exploring for the day and that the next time he wanted to explore the area, he would do it at night with darkness as his ally.

———

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When Takuma returned to the base, some of the team members were waiting for him. He noticed that Gaku, Daiki, and Iori weren't present in the group.

"Where were you?" Anko had her arms crossed.

"Out, I left a note," said Takuma. He pointed at the small note which said: 'Out, will be back in the evening.'

"You weren't supposed to be out… So, what did you find?"

"Where are the others?"

"Iori and Daiki are at the house. Gaku is out spreading the word," said Rikku.

"Are we sure he's doing that?" asked Takuma, pulling out a MRE (Meal, Ready-To-Eat) from the stock of rationed pre-prepared meals they had brought from the outside. He was hungry after his walk and hadn't eaten since morning. He sighed as he looked at the MRE—with the food prices in Yu, he wouldn't be eating fresh food a lot.

"You really don't trust him, do you?" said Kameko.

Takuma shrugged. He had tried to apologize to Gaku and start anew with a positive attitude, but Gaku wasn't receptive, and unlike the duty clone, Takuma couldn't see anything good about the guy. The sound of Gaku's voice and his stupid face was irritating. They had done satisfactory work during the preparation period, but Takuma did not trust Gaku.

"They have done a good job at maintaining control over the city," he said, telling the team what he had seen. "I think I have the first course of action… I found these plastered around the city." He pulled out a few different red propaganda posters he had ripped off the wall and put it on the sheet metal table for the team to see. "They're controlling the amount of food the city has access to, artificially raising the prices. They blame the Land of Hot Waters for forbidding the villages to sell their harvest to the city because it has been occupied—trying to spread the impression that their nation has abandoned them.

"But I heard something interesting," he said.

The team looked up from the posters to Takuma.

"An old man told me that most farmers continue to sell their produce directly to the city. And he gave me the impression that the farmers sold without much resistance, which tells us that the enemy bought at a fair market price—but that means they spent money—where is that money coming from? I doubt they're using military funds; it's a lot of produce…"

Kameko's eyes lit up. "They're selling the produce somewhere else?"

Takuma snapped his fingers and nodded. "Yes, they're exporting the food to the Land of Frost… I read in a report that Yu has stopped all exports to other cities, but they're continuing to buy produce, and seeing that they're keeping the city hungry, they must have a lot of inventory—"

"It would be a waste to let it all go to waste," Anko completed his sentence.

"Right. They're keeping the population hungry to control them while also using it to spread misinformation. But most importantly, they're making it so that the farmers don't need to look elsewhere to sell their crops. By simply maintaining the existing relationship, the enemy got control over the entire region. They targeted Yu for this very reason."

It would be bad for the Land of Frost if the farmers selling their produce to Yu suddenly took their business elsewhere. They needed to keep the population fed, and if the farmers turned away, they would have to import food into Yu from the Land of Frost, meaning that another area in the Land of Frost would have less food.

The war wasn't just about land and territory; it was also about the people. By keeping it all the same as before, the farmers were kept happy, and the Land of Frost also got an additional food supply that they could sell into their territory. And that was likely to continue as long as Yu was under the Land of Frost's control.

"I think we need to shake this propaganda they're trying to spread before it's too late," said Takuma.

"Too late?" asked Rikku, confused

"I believe it's only time before they start ramping up the food available in the city, returning to normal. It will create the impression that while the Land of Hot Waters has abandoned them, the Land of Frost has embraced them as their own. We must disrupt the plan by revealing the truth before the entire city switches sides."

"And how do you say we do that?" asked Anko.

Takuma held up one of the red posters. "We copy the enemy," he said. "We make similar posters debunking the propaganda they're trying to push and plaster our posters around the city for the people to read."

"Okay," said Kameko with hum. "When Gaku returns, we have him find a printer to make prints."

"No, that won't work," Anko shook her head.

"Yeah, I thought of that first, but that's not suitable. When the enemy sees our posters, they will visit every printer in the city to find who printed them. We will be burning a civilian," Takuma sighed, but he had an alternative. "I know how to use woodblock printing. We carve a piece of wood as a template, dip it in ink, and stamp it on paper like a… stamp. The quality won't be as good, but I think it'll work."

He could carve wood, and they had a fuin-nin on the team to handle ink.

"No, we don't need that," said Anko, staring at the posters. "We can have the posters brought in from outside."

"How?" asked Takuma, furrowing his brow.

"Like we brought everything in here," Anko said, pointing to everything in the base.

"In a sealed scroll? But who will send the message and bring them in?"

"My babies, of course," Anko smiled.

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