"When I agreed to participate in your impromptu black operation, I didn't expect to be worked like a pack mule!" Ino's shadow clone gave Ren an accusatory look, and for once, despite her complaining, her voice was not whiny. She was too tired to play her usual games, and her dry voice showed it.
Looking at her haggard visage and the dark circles around her eyes, Ren gave her an apologetic look of his own as he put down the book he was leisurely reading before he approached and hugged her. "I am sorry for the trouble." He muttered into her ear as she snuggled into his embrace.
"Mhmm~. You owe the original me. We demand compensation! Loads of sex and sweets!" She slurred into his shirt.
"That much I can do." Ren chuckled and affectionately rubbed her head. Clone or not, Ino was Ino. "Are you having a break?"
"Nah. My batch is finished. I just decided to come here to scold and extort some promises out of you for the original me before dispersing." The clone unashamedly admitted, rubbing her nose into Ren's chest as he helplessly held her. 'The hug is a nice bonus, though!'
Closing his eyes, Ren inwardly huffed, 'Yes. Ino will be Ino.' He exasperatedly shook his head.
The rescue operation in Kumo went surprisingly smoothly. Ren lowkey expected A or B to pop up midway through it and make a mess, but that was the former fanfiction reader in him speaking. This was a reality, and all those overpowered boss-like dudes who would in fanfiction conveniently appear to thwart the main character's plans and give him a cool battle actually had their own lives and jobs that kept them busy.
Thanks to Ino's genjutsu, no alarm was raised, so they had no reason to appear. With her invisibility, Ino strolled through the rooms of the facility and put everybody under her control within ten minutes. That was the easy part.
The hard part was the logistics. They had to knock out the prisoners before Ren transported them back to the Little Garden because they simply had no other place that could accommodate over four hundred people.
Ren expected at most one hundred prisoners, and four times that amount caught him way too off-guard. Two hours later, and over thirty more ninjas caught in Ino's genjutsu, Ren had been utterly spent as he teleported back and forth with batches of prisoners.
But he still had it good.
Ino and Hinata had it way worse.
As they were leaving after preparing a small surprise for Kumo in the now-empty facility, Hinata's shoulders slumped as she realized she had over four hundred abused people who needed a medical check-up back home. And as far as Ren knew, that's what she did for the next five hours with her clones.
He decided he really needed to do something nice for that girl. Especially since her hospital shift started just an hour after she finished with their prisoners.
As for Ino... when she heard Ren ask her to give four hundred people mental screening, she looked at him with a blank face and plainly asked him if he was insane.
He didn't make her happy. At all.
Especially since it was a time-sensitive matter and he needed it done as fast as possible. So, for the past ten hours, ever since they finished with their business in Kumo, Ino and her four clones were delving into the victims' minds, fishing for their basic information, like which village they came from, or any spicy secret intel they could unknowingly provide.
Each clone and Ino had a little less than a hundred people to go through, and considering that in T&I, she could take her sweet time with one person a day, having to go through close to a hundred in a few hours was almost an unreasonable difficulty increase.
Both she and Ren shared a tacit understanding that it was going to be a sloppy job. She was going to miss information, misunderstand some memories, and not pay enough attention to other possibly important things in the prisoners' minds, but they had to work with what they had.
Ren needed the four hundred prisoners processed and teleported to their respective villages within twenty-four hours of their attack on Kumo's facility. It would have the biggest impact, and that's what this whole thing was about.
Iwa was no doubt boiling with desire to go to war, as these revenge-driven fanatics usually were, and Kumo was their natural ally against the Suna-Konoha alliance. But what if they had over a few dozen traumatized kunoichi and some ninjas dropped on their proverbial porch, all with horror stories about their horrific mistreatment in Kumo's hands?
It might not move the village's higher-ups. Kumo is just too convenient an ally in their situation. But Ren's target was the 'little people'.
Most of these kunoichi and ninja they had rescued had families, friends, colleagues, teammates, classmates, and so on. Their stories will spread. And between the assassination of some noble they had never met and the suffering of somebody they actually know, most people would care more about the latter.
This would breed discontent and hopefully cause some issues for Iwa's higher-ups. If Ren was feeling extremely hopeful, he would even say that it might make the collaboration between Iwa and Kumo ninjas harder.
But that was just a side goal anyway.
The real prize was Kirigakure.
During the hunts on the bloodline users under the Bloody Mist regime, it wasn't just Kiri that hunted them. Kumo was close enough that they could easily dispatch their own teams to capture some females with bloodlines. And the bloodline users over there didn't have much protection. They were mostly roaming the country or in hiding. They were easy targets.
Ren reckoned that most of the prisoners they had rescued were most likely from the Land of Water. Suna did not have that many bloodlines. Neither did Iwa. And Konoha guarded theirs with zeal. Kirigakure, however, was a natural target for Kumo's rapey shenanigans.
But Kirigakure had changed. Under Mei Terumi, the bloodline users now had a sanctuary in that village. And most importantly for Ren, Kirigakure was neutral right now.
Yet, there was no such thing as 'neutral' during a Ninja War.
They will have to choose a side or risk standing against both alliances by themselves. Having over a hundred traumatized bloodline users returned to them, and hearing their horror stories will hopefully help them make the correct choice.
Ren wondered what face A would make if he heard Kirigakure would not join their side because of his village's past actions. His poor abused table would probably eat another punch.
Unlike Iwa, Kirigakure's political situation is different. Mei and her biggest supporters fought a civil war just so that their bloodline clans would not be hunted down. The stories of Kumo's cruelty were going to have a completely different sort of impact on them than they would have on Onoki and his ilk.
Especially after hearing that not all of them were rescued. Sadly, Ren definitely missed some of them. For example, the currently pregnant mothers were housed somewhere else. The children were also not rescued.
As much as Ren would like to sweep Kumo clean of those, he did not have the time, and it was unfortunately better for his cause to leave it be this way.
It was yet another thing that could infuriate people of Iwa and Kiri. And for Kiri, it might be a reason to fight Kumo.
Well, at least, that's what Ren hoped for. Kirigakure might still opt to join Kumo and Iwa. Nothing was certain just yet. But as far as Ren was concerned, he did his best to turn the situation around.
The Ino clone in Ren's embrace finally reached her breaking point as the last drop of her chakra was depleted, and she dispersed into a smoke, leaving Ren's arms empty.
Wryly smiling, Ren picked his book up again before sitting down in the armchair. He had maybe an hour of free time to enjoy before Ino would throw the four hundred people back at him, and he would have to teleport them all over the world again.
And he was going to enjoy every second of that hour. Remembering the memories of the hidden clone he left behind to witness the aftermath of their little surprise for the Raikage back in Kumo, Ren started reading with an amused smile.
Making A angry was slowly starting to become a nice hobby for him.