Want to read ahead of schedule? Head over to Patreón @
[ https://www̧̧.patreón.com/fictiononlyreader ]
The link is also in the synopsis
———
.
The city of Fune was a bustling commercial hub, owing to having the largest inland port in the country. A large part of the nation's trade flowed through the city. Large container ships and bulk carriers sailed in and out of the port, where massive cranes and hundreds of men worked hard to load and unload cargo.
Established around the same time as the domestic shinobi clan wars had subsided with the founding of the Hidden Leaf Village, Fune had only grown since then as the national trade grew and the port played an increasing part in it. The residents were no strangers to new faces, as merchants and couriers rolled in and out of the city every day; they welcomed them, as the traffic fuelled the hospitality industry, with hostels, inns, restaurants, and bars built to serve those who stopped by to do business.
That day, among the new faces was a teenager with a courier's wooden cargo box. Takuma, dressed in common garb, entered the city alongside other couriers. No one batted an eye as he walked through the plentiful wholesale bazaars, where the main customers were other merchants and businesses buying goods they could sell further down, as well as raw materials to make their own offerings.
A shop owner with a variety of goods in his store called out to him. "What do you have there, boy!"
Takuma looked up from the map he was following and yelled back, "It's spoken for, old man! I'll bring you something the next time I come here. You'd better give me a good deal then!"
"Aye, bring me the good stuff, kid," the shop owner laughed.
Takuma tipped his straw hat to the man and let the map steer him away from the wide market roads and towards the warehouse district near the riverside port. He took his time reaching his destination, taking in the sights; no one batted an eye as couriers came and went from warehouses, carrying their wooden cargo boxes on their backs. Fune was brimming with current and former shinobi working as couriers, as well as other chakra users who were never part of the shinobi establishment. It also had nearly as many Hidden Leaf seal specialists as the Hidden Leaf Village itself, all employed to seal away the goods into storage scrolls for ease of transportation.
Eventually, he reached the ANBU safehouse in the port city. He knocked on the back door of a nondescript building and removed his hat to give a clear view of his face. Feeling a gaze, he looked up to the second storey and saw an eye gazing at him from the darkness behind the crack in the curtains.
A minute later, the door opened, and he was greeted by a man with a bandana covering half of his face. He glanced past the man and saw Tern. They shared a nod. They had travelled together but had staggered their entry into Fune by fifteen minutes as a standard precaution.
"Everything was smooth, I hope?" she asked.
Takuma nodded. He was led inside and saw a dozen ANBU waiting for him: two assault squads and two members from the reconnaissance team.
"Aquilla is out?" he asked.
"Out with the recon guys," Tern replied.
Unlike the two of them, Aquilla had arrived the day before to make some preparations and scope out the area. The reconnaissance team wanted him with them for a week, but a Hyūga was far too conspicuous anywhere outside the Hidden Leaf Village, so Takuma decided to send him only two days before the operation to keep the risk down.
"Yo, Thirteen! You're finally here."
Takuma smiled when he saw Sonabo Yazo, or as Takuma called him, Four. He had joined ANBU in the same batch as Takuma (Thirteen) and Amami (Three) and was part of an assault squad under Fox. It was the same team that had assisted Takuma in his raid against the ROOT sleeper cell, making them one of the squads with experience against ROOT.
"I come bearing gifts, my friend." Takuma put down his wooden cargo box on the floor and pulled out the nails fastening the lid with his fingers to reveal a cache of weapons sealed in storage scrolls worthy of an assault squad.
"Much appreciated." Yazo picked up the box and carried it to his squad's preparation room.
Everything, from people to weapons, was brought into the city secretly. Despite the substantial Hidden Leaf presence, the operation was completely top-secret from the shinobi presence in the city. It was a repeat of the last raid Takuma and Yazo had been part of, which was deemed a mistake at the time, but the situation was different.
While Inahara was a big city, Fune was a bigger city and had a lot of money flowing through it. And with money often came corruption. Due to maritime trade, smuggling of goods was a known problem, and even the shinobi in the city had connections with the wealthy and often looked the other way on a few things. It wasn't an exaggeration to assume that Danzō had connections with people in the city. There was a reason why Baizan and ROOT had chosen Fune as their exchange location. They couldn't risk the news somehow leaking out to ROOT and them pulling out.
Not to mention, they already had a jōnin on their side this time.
"Is Weasel on track?" Hopper, the leader of Yazo's squad, asked from inside the room.
"Yes. He'll arrive tomorrow."
The delivery was the next day, and because they wanted to keep their presence to a minimum, Weasel would arrive that very morning.
An hour later, Aquilla returned with two members of the reconnaissance team, while the ones in the safehouse headed out to maintain around-the-clock surveillance of the Baizan warehouse, where the shipment was waiting to be collected.
Aquilla removed the blackout shades he had been wearing and sat on the couch with a sigh, putting his arm over his eyes and leaning into the cracked leather. He sat there for a few minutes in silence before taking a long breath as he looked around the room and was taken aback when he saw Takuma seated on a chair with a steaming cup in one hand and a glass of water in the other.
"When did you get here?" he asked, receiving the glass of water.
"Sometime ago," Takuma said, sipping on his tea. "You look exhausted. Your eyes are tough on you?"
A look of faint relief passed over Aquilla's face as he emptied the glass. "Keeping them up for an extended period of time is… And this place is too busy; too much input," he said, massaging his temple.
"Thank you for your hard work," Takuma said. "How is it looking? Any problems?"
"No, the warehouse is a good location. We have a clear view from all directions. Sneaking inside the building to have a more direct view is feasible. Recon and I judge that it'll be difficult to sneak out the shipment without us knowing."
"What about a trained ROOT agent?"
"I don't think that's a factor. Anyone coming to collect the shipment will have to deal with the civilian workers in the warehouse."
"We shouldn't underestimate civilians. A majority of our intelligence network is built on civilian contacts. In these sorts of things, it's the mind that matters," Takuma said, tapping his temple, "and in that regard, all of us are on an even playing field."
Aquilla didn't seem convinced that he could be outsmarted by a bunch of warehouse workers, which he couldn't blame him for. It was tough to escape a Hyūga's all-seeing eyes.
"Rest well. You'll have a busy day tomorrow," Takuma smiled.
In the evening, they had a meeting after dinner where they went through the location, personnel, routines, timings, and everything they needed to know about their target. Weasel's assault squad was taking the lead with an ANBU Lieutenant in charge of the field operation, with Fox's assault squad as the secondary squad. The Ratel Squad operatives were going to provide support wherever needed.
After the meeting, as everyone got ready to turn in for the night, Takuma was on the roof for some fresh air and silence with his equipment spread out on a tarp as he went through the final check. He heard the rickety sheet-metal door open and looked back to see Tern walk onto the roof.
"Am I disturbing you? Should I leave?" she asked.
"Not at all."
Tern leaned against the parapet as she gazed out at the city. The dark silhouettes of the port's docking cranes stood in the distance. Unlike the Hidden Leaf Village, which was still awake around midnight, Fune woke up and slept early.
"I didn't know you smoked," Takuma said when he noticed a pack of cigarettes in her hand.
"Nervous?"
She didn't answer for a moment. "Somewhat. Tomorrow could be… big."
Both of them knew that if things went well, they would be very close to having their hands on Danzō. It was more important than anything they had done in the months they had worked as a team, which meant that the failure would be just as severe.
"You know, we haven't really talked about it, but what is it going to be like for you?" Takuma asked. "Have you thought about what you'd do or say?"
"What do you mean?"
"If we're successful tomorrow, things will most probably move extremely quickly. We might not even get to return home. Who knows? In the next few days, we might have Shimura Danzō in our custody," Takuma said.
If they caught someone who knew the location of the ROOT base, the village would move quickly. They had a rudimentary plan ready for the possibility. They would have Itachi with them tomorrow, but if they found the location, the village wouldn't send him in there alone. More jōnin—ANBU or otherwise—would be sortied alongside more forces to attack the base. That process could take as short as a day.
"… I don't know what I'll say or feel," Tern replied.
"How do you feel about him? Before and after what happened," Takuma asked. Yes, she was recommended to him by the Hokage, and she had dedicated herself to the job ever since they had started working together, but he didn't know what she felt about the man who was once her clan leader.
"I looked up to him like everyone else. He was the clan leader when I was young; even after he stepped down, it was an open secret that he still held the reins. I visited him with my mother when I received my forehead protector and became a kunoichi; he was there at my promotion ceremony, put the flak jacket on me himself, and he hosted me at his home for dinner when I made ANBU, saying he was proud of me. I wanted to make him proud, impress him… We feared him, but at the same time, he was truly whom every Shimura looked up to. The ideal shinobi."
It wasn't an exaggeration. Shimura Danzō might very well be anyone's image of an ideal shinobi. A war-decorated jōnin, respected clan head, a Hokage candidate, the Second Hokage's student, the man who had shaped Leaf ANBU into what it was today, and an old man in a world where often, shinobi died young. Looking at his life and career, who wouldn't want to be him?
"We knew there were things he did that were clearly wrong, but then he never got in trouble, so that could only mean one thing, and everything worked out in his favour. He couldn't be wrong—doubting him was a sin, and speaking against him was traitorous. So when he did yet another thing that no one else would dare even think about, no one thought much of it because that was the norm. It was stupid looking back at it, wasn't it? Touching the Uchiha's eyes, that's…"
Bloodline theft was probably among the worst crimes one could commit in the Hidden Leaf Village. With the number of sought-after bloodline limits and hiden jutsu, going after a clan's source of power was taken seriously. And going after the Uchiha's Sharingan was the worst-case scenario, only comparable to targeting the Hyūga's Byakugan. To think that Danzō would get out scot-free was indeed stupid, but in an environment where people had seen one man do things that crossed the boundary and pay no price, and in fact gain time after time, one could see why they wouldn't be worried.
"Then hell broke loose, and in the blink of an eye, the entire village was standing against us, and everyone was calling for his head and demanding that the Shimura pay a price. We were scared, but we believed in him—that even if it looked worse than ever, he would pull through like he always did and everything would be fine." It just wasn't that. For a time, the Uchiha clan wasn't able to prove that Danzō had Uchiha Shisui's eyes. That was enough for his supporters to keep faith in him. "But then he abandoned us… fled with his prized ROOT, leaving his clan, his own family, behind to face the wrath. All the things he had done, but gotten away with—all of it came down on us. His enemies, who had never done anything in fear of him, now had nothing holding them back, so they all came at us."
The Shimura clan's situation was challenging. All of their supporters, if not outright abandoning them, were keeping their distance. Their political capital had shrunk drastically. Even though it would take some time for the effects to show, they had entered a definite period of decline.
"What do I think, you ask? Many in the clan think that all of this is unfair. That we are unjustly paying for the mistakes he made. But I think that he was only able to do those things because we allowed him." Tern took out a cigarette from her pack and lit it with a matchstick. She took a couple of long drags. "I can't do anything about the past. Those were mistakes that have already been made. All I can do is my part to end this chapter of my and my clan's history by bringing him to justice, and if possible, make things right—so that we can finally move forward."
"To build something anew and do it properly this time so nothing like this will ever happen again," she said, looking at him.
Takuma thought about how he should respond before deciding there were no words that would help her, and he simply gave her a nod. He couldn't imagine or relate to what she was feeling, just like she had no idea what he knew and how that knowledge bore down on him.
However, even if it meant something very different to both, they were after the same thing, and that was enough.
.
———
Chat with me and the rest of the community on our DISCORD server.
The link is in the synopsis!