Naruto : Chapter 89

The trip to the border of River Country took them half a day. They investigated the attacks by questioning eye-witnesses in the villages that had been attacked. They got a few more details than what had been in their briefing from the Hokage.

Not only were the attacks done with weapons, poison and fire jutsus, there was also nearly always a dizzy feeling left after the attack was over. It seemed that genjutsu was used as well.

From the route of the attacks it seemed as if the attackers always struck in a limited area so far. A stretch of fifty kilometres along the border and never more than ten kilometres into Fire Country, meaning that they could retreat back into River Country before any help from Konoha could reach the villages.

Naruto had Shino send out his bugs to scout if they could find a hideout within the area that they suspected to be the action radius. While the bugs were gone, the four boys started securing important buildings in the villages with the seals that Naruto created.

Fire protection seals were among the most important ones to prevent that the attackers could burn down whole villages to cover their escape when they could finally confront them. Shikamaru and Shino worked as one team, Naruto and Sasuke as another.

They went through all villages and prepared for an eventual attack. Normally there was an attack around every three to four weeks and the last attack had been two weeks ago.

The attackers always took supplies with them when they hit a village, next to valuables. So far there hadn't been any reports about them kidnapping people, which was a positive thing, as hostages made missions more difficult.

Naruto cleared with the officials in River Country that in case they came across the attackers, they had permission to pursue them, even if they had to cross the border.

It seemed that while River Country hadn't been hit as hard as Fire Country by the group, there had been thefts and small attacks, therefore the officials wouldn't mind at all if the ninjas from Konoha could get rid of the threat.

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Shikamaru watched the forest that was close to the walls of the village he was currently at. After one week of securing as many buildings as they could, he and Shino had separated and took over watching over one village each.

They had been given a kunai from Naruto, which would enable him to teleport to their location immediately if they pushed some chakra into the kunai. It was really incredible how much their classmate could do and how well he had hidden it all the time.

The Flying Thundergod jutsu was legendary and said to only be known by the second and fourth Hokages. Now Naruto could use it as well.

Shino's bugs hadn't had any success in finding the missing nins' camp so far, therefore they had all decided that guarding one village each and then calling the others if there was an attack would increase their chances of success a lot.

Naruto would first flash to the one that called for backup and leave a number of shadow clones, before flashing to the positions of the other two and bringing them to the attacked village as well.

This should enable them to take on the attackers properly. It would at most take five minutes to have the whole team assembled and ready to fight.

So far his watch had been uneventful. But it was only two hours after nightfall. A lot could happen until the morning.

...

Sasuke noticed movement from the cliffside of the village he was guarding. A closer look with his sharingan activated confirmed that three persons were sneaking up to the village walls from a side where no normal village would suspect an attack from.

He acted immediately and called Naruto. A second later his teammate was next to him and he silently informed Naruto of the observations he had made.

Naruto created twenty clones to support him and two flashed away to get Shikamaru and Shino. They arrived a few seconds later.

The group took the positions they had decided upon previously and waited until the three were close enough to start the surprise attack that clearly was planned.

...

Flashback

"Alright, we know that the attackers always come when it's dark outside and from places where it's hard to spot them," Shikamaru commented the collected data.

"All the villages that have been hit had that in common. Those where little to no cover is available close to the village have so far not been hit."

"True. In the first village they used to river to get to the village by staying underwater. In the dark they weren't spotted at all and they could attack within the village without anybody being aware that there were intruders at all. They took out the few policemen that the village had and stole whatever they wanted.

The villagers only really noticed that anything was wrong when the office of the major went up in flames and the fire guards were called to deal with it," Sasuke agreed.

"It was similar for the other villages. Unnoticed entry thanks to natural cover, then a diversion and they left before they were discovered. The only resistance they found was taken out by poison, with weapons or in one case fire," Shino analysed. "They don't seem to be interested in fighting a lot from their method of working."

"True, it could have many reasons. We don't know how strong they are and which rank they had before they became missing nins.

The only reason we can be sure that they are ninjas at all and not normal bandits, is that the injuries from fire were caused with chakra and not natural fire. There are no eye-witnesses that could give a proper description of the attackers, but the few that saw them at all, were sure that they were able to walk up walls, so they have to at least have had some formal training.

The reason for not attacking openly could be that they're too weak to take on large groups, that they are after something in particular that would be harder to get if they didn't infiltrate secretly and then leave while taking as many useful things as possible or even that all of this is a distraction for something bigger. Right now we can't really tell," Naruto commented.

"Well, I think the only way that we can succeed with this mission would be if we caught them in the act," Shikamaru said. "The problem is predicting which village they will hit next. There are too many options to cover them all properly. Even if we left a shadow clone of Naruto in each village we suspect to be the next target."

"True, while my clones can keep up a whole night, one lucky hit and they're down. While I get the memory of a dispelled clone and could act after that, I wouldn't be able to teleport there without a beacon. And I need a charged seal to flash that far.

We could do that with any of you. I can give you one of the kunais I use for the flying thundergod jutsu and if you spot the attackers, you can call me by pushing chakra into the seal. I could assemble the whole group there within at most five minutes," Naruto said.

"I've just noticed that with seals that I handed to my clones, it only works for up to three kilometres distance for some reason. And we have to cover far more distance than that."

"That's a good basic plan. I think we should split up and each of us takes one village to guard," Shikamaru said. "We will take a kunai each and if we spot the group, we call Naruto and he brings the others over as fast as possible, after leaving a few shadow clones in the other villages just in case.

There are seven villages that meet the criteria that we have come up with, we can cover four of them. Thanks to two of them only being three kilometres apart, we can place Naruto and a clone in those, meaning he can cover them both.

The two where we can't place one of us, we leave under the watch of twenty of Naruto's clones. They should be able to at least stall for a while until we can get there. Even if Naruto can't easily flash there, we could set up a net of his flying thundergod seals to make the time we need to get there as short as possible."

"That could work. I could be hopping from one seal to the other to get to the place. I would only have to charge the final seal with enough chakra to allow me to return to it with one of you before I get the other two. If I charge a seal like that, I can return to it from wherever I am up to twenty minutes after charging it," Naruto agreed.

They spent the next hour deciding on where to place the flying thundergod seals and which villages would be guarded by a group of clones and which by one of them.

Flashback end

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