CH_7.25 (243)

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Aranai was a Hidden Frost chunin who had made a great situation for himself in the city he was occupying as part of a war against the Land of Hot Water. He was making money hand over fist by not only selling drugs to his peers, but also exporting drugs to his home country along with all the food and produce they were diverting from the Land of Hot Water.

He had made more money in the past couple months than he had made in the last several years as a shinobi. Money aside, his reputation among his peers had improved considerably as he had become an important source of relaxation and recreation. Most people didn't want to be in a foreign country away from their home and the drugs helped calm them down and take their minds off the inevitable loneliness. However as he looked at the dozen shinobi lying down on the infirmary beds, and their extremely sick occupants, he had a feeling those good times were about to end. He recognised every single one of them as his regular customers. The iryo-nin had confirmed that none of them were going to die, but they would be sick for at least a week and weak for even longer.

"There's the star of the day. Come, Aranai. Let's have a chat."

He flinched and looked at Ebi, his jonin in command, standing at the end of the hallway. He glanced into the infirmary one final time before following him. They didn't exchange words until they were in his office, but that only had the effect of worsening his nervousness.

"I don't have a problem with you selling drugs," said Ebi after they sat down. "In fact, it helps me that you're keeping people in their rooms and away from the city. Their being there always creates trouble with Yu's citizens, which is always annoying to deal with. However, you must admit, putting people in the infirmary is overdoing it—sure they won't create any trouble because they can't get out of bed—but we're still in enemy territory, or have you forgotten that, Mr Businessman?"

Aranai sat straight in his chair with his hands clenched tightly in his lap. Ebi was generally a laid back man with no micromanagement in his leadership style. He trusted his men to act like adults, but when they screwed up, he became scary. Just last month a genin had beaten a civilian to death in a drunken stupor; Ebi, a jonin, had forced that genin to fight him for two hours every day for a week and had disallowed the iryo-nin from healing the genin.

"I apologise, sir... I didn't know the drugs were faulty." He was lucky he hadn't done any from the current batch. "I will rip those bastards at the Goharu family a new one."

"Typical," Ebi sighed, making Aranai's heat leap into his chest. "Diverting the blame; taking no responsibility."

"I... I-I am—"

"I—I—I. You don't have a stutter. Speak properly."

Aranai felt resentful but he chose to keep quiet with his head bowed. It wasn't his fault that those men had fallen sick. He hadn't told them to buy drugs. And he wasn't the one making the drugs; he was getting from the city's civilians, and they had delivered good products until now. How was he supposed to know that they would deliver a faulty batch?

"You'll be punished for this, of course," said Ebi with a flat tone, "but that's a minor affair. You should be more concerned about the drugs you're sending back to the country. I know Honjo is helping you send drugs back home... If those drugs are faulty, that'll be a much bigger problem. After all, Honjo's a social climber who'll do anything to save his skin—he's gunning for Jonin Commander, after all."

He looked up at Ebi with an ample amount of fear and surprise, making the jonin scoff. Recently, he had been sending larger amounts of the Goharu family's drugs into the Land of Frost. Jonin Honjo was helping him with the delivery, taking a cut in return. He was happy because his earnings had gone through the roof and he'd also grown closer to a jonin through mutually beneficial business.

But Ebi was right—if things went wrong, Honjo would throw him under the bus without a moment's hesitation. The consequences of such a situation made him feel incredibly lightheaded and he blinked half a dozen times to no avail.

"It goes without saying that I'll be banning the drugs moving forward," said Ebi.

Aranai wanted to argue against such a thing. It was only one batch and so long as he confirmed that the next batch was good, they wouldn't have any problems—but seeing the look in Ebi's eyes made him think that doing so would be a very bad idea.

"By your order, sir," he said.

Ebi excused Aranai after verbally beating him some more, putting the fear of retaliation and punishment into his heart. At the end of it, Aranai wanted to do nothing more than barge into the house of that bastard Waichi and rip him several new ones. He wanted to savour the fear in the Goharu family head's eyes as he told him how royally fucked he was.

But that would come tomorrow.

Today, he was meeting with the whore and he really wanted to blow off some steam. She had told him to bring along one of his subordinates because one of her handmaids wanted to get into the business but Aranai was of the mind to go alone and enjoy two women worshipping and serving him. Eventually, he decided to take one of the leeching bastards—it'd be wise to build some additional trust... in case he needed a scapegoat to put the blame on.

———

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Takuma gazed at the two-storey townhouse in an affluent part of the city. Chinatsu didn't like bringing business home, especially since the team was residing with her, so Gaku rented out the townhouse for Chinatsu to host her clients.

He entered the building and saw that the team was busy setting up the place. They seemed used to it from prior experience. Iori, Rikku, and Kameko were preparing everything from the rooms to the drinks and food, Gaku was talking to Chinatsu about being careful, and Daiki was conversing with Anko, who seemed to be completely ready for her role.

Takuma was at a loss about who to speak to about setting up his things. The objective was to capture two shinobi—one of them was a chunin with unknown combat ability—and they had to do it stealthily without leaving any trace of combat, something that required a degree of finesse.

"Come with me," Kameko snapped her fingers and gestured to him to follow.

Takuma followed her to one of the bedrooms. It had a huge canopy bed, the floor completely covered with an extremely soft rug, there was a full-size mirror facing the bed, and a two person dining table with a red table cover and padded chairs alongside an assortment of cutlery and scented candles.

"Look here." Kameko walked to one the walls with a cabinet lining the wall and pointed at something Takuma initially missed, but at a closer look he noticed a cigar-sized hole in the wall, partially covered by the cabinet. "Is this enough?"

Takuma leaned down to look at the hole in the wall that connected the bedroom to the tiny storage closet next door. "I'd like it to be bigger. I know there's not much time but can you do it now?" he asked.

"No," she said. "I'm sorry."

Takuma sighed before shrugging. "It's fine. We'll make it work."

He looked around the room. In less than an hour, the Hidden Frost chunin would be in here with Chinatsu. He was going to incapacitate the shinobi using genjutsu after which Iori would use prisoner fuinjutsu seals to restrict the chunin's chakra and body. In the other room, Anko would deal with the genin. Ideally, given that they didn't know the chunin's combat ability, they would want both Gaku and Anko to deal with chunin in case anything went wrong—but they didn't have a choice. Neither Rikku or Kameko could pull it off, and they needed Iori on the chunin for the fuinjutsu. Anko was not only stronger and could easily deal with a chunin, she was a much better actor, and was comfortable with the role.

"Are you confident?" asked Kameko.

"I think so," said Takuma, placing the fragrant incense sticks on the table in front of the hole.

"You think so?"

He looked up at her and shrugged. "I've done all the preparation I can do, so I'm not nervous. As long as the guy's not experienced with genjutsu—or has bullshit powers—I think I'll be able to ensnare him."

"Bullshit, how so?"

"As in genjutsu doesn't work on him."

"He doesn't have Sharingan."

"The Sharingan doesn't make you immune to genjutsu, it just makes things more difficult," Takuma sighed with a chuckle. He had tried to put genjutsu over Mikoto hundreds of times as part of their lessons and had failed every single time.

She always kept her sharingan active during those practice sessions; she didn't need to, she was a jonin with a mastery in genjutsu anyway, but she activated her eyes to raise a challenge he was never able to meet.

"Plus," he continued, "genjutsu doesn't work on me and I don't have the sharingan. I'm not discounting the option that the chunin will be the same. It's in the realm of possibility."

"What?" asked Kameko. "What do you mean genjutsu doesn't work on you?"

"It literally doesn't. Well, it does work, but I don't have to do anything to slip out of it. It just happens and then I know I'm in a genjutsu, and breaking it is easy enough after that."

Kameko looked like she didn't believe it.

"I'm not lying."

"How is that possible? Are you lying?"

"Absolutely no idea. It just doesn't work. If you know a genjutsu, you could try it."

Kameko looked thoughtful for a moment before saying. "If you're not fucking with me, it could be a new bloodline limit."

Bloodline limits were genetic mutations that granted unique chakra abilities. Dojutsu like the Sharingan and the Byakugan were bloodline limits, and so were the advanced nature transformations.

"It could be," said Takuma. "My teacher and I did discuss the possibility."

When Mikoto wasn't able to find any previous cases of automatic genjutsu breaking, they considered the possibility that Takuma was the progenitor of a genetic mutation which gave him a genjutsu related bloodline limit. The field of genetic testing wasn't advanced enough to reliably detect genetic mutations, so testing for them wasn't an option.

Mikoto, as an Uchiha with the Sharigan, wasn't a big fan of genetic testing. Moreover, Takuma was extremely busy with work and it didn't really matter if it was a bloodline limit because it didn't change anything.

"Maybe if Orochimaru hadn't defected, he would've been able to tell. He was big into genetic testing," Takuma laughed like he had told the funniest joke—he wasn't going to let Orochimaru anywhere near him; he didn't to get bit and cursed with a juinjutsu.

"How do you know that?"

"He's one of the Sannin. Of course, I read up on him," he said matter of factly. According to Maruboshi, history had important lessons and answers to problems, so Takuma had read a lot about the shinobi history, and the Sannin were quite prominently recorded in the Hidden Leaf's history.

Orochimaru was at the forefront of genetics. And with what Takuma knew about him from his meta-knowledge, he assumed that Orochimaru was ahead of the contributions to the field he had publicly available. While Tsunade was looked at as the greatest iryo-nin to ever live, Orochimaru wasn't a slouch in the medical and scientific field. His image had been tainted in recent years due to his actions, but his works were still very prominent.

"Hey," said Kameko. She looked hesitant for a moment. "Try to keep her safe, okay?"

"Chinatsu?"

Kameko nodded. "She... she's obsessed with revenge. That bastard's rough with her; she says it's not a problem, but I know she's hurt. He's a shinobi, he's much stronger than her, and you said it yourself that he'd be pissed because of the poisoned drugs. I'm worried he might overdo it... so hurry if possible."

Takuma looked at her. While he didn't have any personal connection with Chinatsu, the knowledge left a bad taste in his mouth. But he didn't live with her; the others did, so it wasn't strange to form some connection with the asset.

He nodded. "I'll do my best."

"Thank you," Kameko said earnestly and then left the room.

Takuma followed her with his eyes. He'd agreed, but he wasn't going to hurry to the detriment of the genjutsu. A lot depended on the shinobi's capture. Not only would it kickstart doubt and chaos in the enemy camp—but Takuma had a more personal stake in its success.

He wanted his questions about the assassination organisation, their identity, their role in Yu, and the overall war, to be answered so he couldn't afford for it to go wrong.

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———

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The link is in the synopsis!