Lost Children Arc (10) : Spy.

Tachibana, Sakura and Sasuke stood on the sidelines as Onizuka and his band of shinobi came to a stop with the wooden cart that had several children inside it.

"They sent someone new this time? Did the old guy shit too hard and die? His face did look like he was always constipated." Onizuka asked calmly with a perpetual smirk that made him look like he was the greatest human on the planet.

The Aburame shinobi didn't respond to the 'hilarious' joke and instead calmly ignored it before asking a different question, "What do you drink when you're tired?"

"Aww…come on! Who would like to imitate the great Onizuka?! No one in the entire black market would even try and do such a foolish thing-"

The Aburame shinobi placed his hand on his weapons pouch in silence and that was enough to shut Onizuka up and bring a frown onto his face.

"Wheat Wine." Onizuka spat out before stepping away from the cart with his shinobi bodyguards.

The Aburame shinobi quickly walked up and under Tachibana's stern gaze only scratched Naruto to check if he was real. He didn't even bother checking the other kids.

While to Sasuke and Sakura, this felt normal since they assumed he trusted Onizuka, Yamato and Tsunade quickly spotted the discrepancy since it was rather rare and naive or stupid for anyone to trust the other in the black market.

Meanwhile, Tachibana was trying hard to hide the smile from showing up on his face.

'So they're completely acting as if they're from Sunagakure and don't want to reveal that they're from Konoha.'

'Not that it is going to make my task any different.'

The Aburame shinobi tossed a storage scroll that was filled with money towards Onizuka before quickly dragging the wooden cart along with him deeper into the forest.

The genin trio followed the shinobi and as soon as Onizuka was out of view Tachibana looked at Sasuke and nodded.

With Sasuke having gotten the message, Tachibana led Sakura deeper into the forest to fight off the other two people he could see who were waiting to ambush them.

"How did you find them Tachibana-kun?" Sakura asked as she too soon spotted the people blending in with the forest foliage.

"I noticed that the shinobi that had revealed himself was confident in nothing going wrong with the deal. But since he wasn't a jonin I suspected that he was a part of a team, much like us. It wasn't hard to find them once I began seriously tried finding where they were hiding."

Of course, this was not true since Tachibana had only been able to find them with spirit vision but he told it so confidently that Sakura easily believed it.

It was also because the shinobi were poorly disguised to try and test if Tachibana could pay basic attention to his surroundings that they were caught.

Sakura nodded after sending a few signals Tachibana's way that she would be taking the shinobi hiding on the left, they split up.

Sasuke in the meanwhile pulled out two sharp kunai and activated his sharingan. He wanted to finish this fight soon since making any noise would only alert the other people hiding.

Tiptoeing on the branches of the trees, Sasuke paced his breathing as he controlled himself to launch a single but lethal attack.

And before the Aburame shinobi could react Sasuke *zipped* through the air as he used the body flicker jutsu to instantly appear in front of him.

The Aburame shinobi was genuinely startled when he suddenly saw a pair of Sharingan looking deep into his eyes, and for an instant, he fell into a daze.

But the insects in his body were quick.

Almost as soon as he fell into a daze, the Aburame woke up when the insects in his body that were trained to break him out of a genjutsu disrupted his chakra.

Without waiting a second more, the Aburame shinobi quickly retreated, causing Sasuke's planned next strike to his temple with the back of his kunai miss.

Sasuke's eyes widened given the speed at which the Aburame shinobi broke out of his Sharingan genjutsu and frowned before he tightened his grip around his kunai and attacked once again, not wanting to give the shinobi any time to inform or gather reinforcements.

On the other end, Sakura flicked thre shuriken out of each of her hands towards the shinobi who was hiding in front of her.

The shinobi instantly dropped his transformation that was seen through and pulled out his kunai to deflect the shuriken.

Unfortunately for her Sakura had pulled out a page from Sasuke's book by attaching wire to her shuriken. Almost instantly as the shinobi tried deflecting her kunai away, Sakura pulled on the wire and caused them to spin at obtuse angles so that they wrapped around the shinobi's hands and spun towards his face.

But unluckily for Sakura, the shinobi hadn't just prepared for Tachibana to spot them through the foliage. They had also prepared to test his skill in detecting traps.

Almost instantly as soon as the shinobi realised his life was under threat, he pulled his fingers, causing several traps to activate a t the same time, sending a plentyful assortment of kunai and shuriken flying towards Sakura.

Naruto woke up from his unconscious state slowly.

His vision was blurry at first but it soon cleared up as he remembered who he was and what he was doing a few seconds prior.

Naruto quickly pushed himself up the hard surface of the wooden cart and saw Sasuke fighting the shinobi from Sunagakure and frowned.

He was about to get up and shout, but then he remembered Yamato's orders to keep quiet and make sure he didn't reveal himself easily.

So Naruto froze as his mind started to cook up various ways he could take the shinobi that Sasuke was fighting with by surprise without revealing himself.

Tachibana didn't attack the shinobi who he had picked.

Instead, he simply prepared the battlefield to his advantage. He threw out several kunai with explosive tags he had modified to give them different detonation times that no one but him knew how to identify.

But as all good things come to an end, the shinobi quickly realised what Tachibana was doing and threw away the cloth that he had been using to hide himself using the transformation jutsu.

Except, it was already too late for him.

Tachibana looked at the shinobi and with a smile formed the detonation seal that suddenly caused all his kunai to spark.

'Well, at least now he knows that it isn't a good thing to test an enemy you know nothing about.'

*SSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHH*

None of the sealing tags exploded, but as soon as Sasuke, Sakura and Naruto heard those sounds resonate throughout the entire forest, their hair stood on ends.

A shudder travelled up their spines as they reflected back on how Tachibana had tortured them with it.

They all mentally looked in the same direction and prayed for whoever was facing Tachibana before focusing on their own fights.

What Tachibana and co. never noticed was the tiny paper and ink insects fluttering around the forest, covering each and every area meticulously, studying the battles with great interest.

Tsunade, Shizune and Yamato did and they didn't like it. But Tsunade and Shizune chose not to interfere since this was Yamato's mission while Yamato himself chose to remain on the sidelines since there wasn't a clear way he could deal with them without making sure that none of them escaped.